And on a school night...!

Tonight I am on a flying visit to Cambridge, I have been lured over with the promise of oh joy of joys, a kitchen gadget party and arriving in D’s vibrant kitchen some enticing lemony, garlicky, chicken-y aromas are making me doubly delighted to be here. D has consulted the rather classic May delicious for inspiration, which has already helped me out this month, and from the article entitled spring chicken (which unsurprisingly, is chock-full of ‘chook’ delights) has picked the winner for this evening - Garlic roast chicken on potatoes with rosemary and pancetta.

Tying on her chicken garnished apron she has simmered the sliced potatoes, anointed the chicken in a garlic and lemon paste, doused it all with white wine and whipped up this admirable feast.

How this got past the chicken-hating fat and carb dodging GT is a mystery but I am so glad it did, it was a fabulous treatment for a frankly enormous beast - MC was buying for a village perhaps and selected a chicken crossed with an elephant!

And all this on a school night, D with your plump glistening bronzed bird you are spoiling us. And for another shocker, GT asked if he could have more chicken skin! A convert perhaps?

Update: I must make a public apology for daring to insinuate that G-my body is my temple-T would have indulged in the murky world of chicken skin. Whilst turning my plate to its good side for its photograph I hadn’t paid enough attention to the fact that his portion had already been denuded of the offending crispy and ever so fatty chicken jacket before deigning to appear in front of him. How could I have such cast such a slanderous aspersion that he may have joined the dark side, I feel suitably chastised!

The return of the risotto

I’ve particularly enjoyed the latest offering from delicious and olive this month. I generally find a couple of things to inspire me as I eagerly flick through the colourful pages but they’ve both themed their magazines this time around and they’re both a winner. For May, olive has gone all British again which I’ve admired in previous years. And to counteract that delicious have embraced all that is Italian, and it just looks, well bellisimo. Having some leftover dense potato and leek risotto from the dinner party the other night burning a hole in my fridge, I pounce on the Cheese and ham rice cakes recipe.

Traditionally your remaining risotto is shaped into little Arancini di riso but my abhorrence towards deep frying makes this unlikely. And it’s not deep fried food I object to but me wrestling with rivers of hot oil in my bijou and incredibly flammable kitchen. But these little risotto beauties are baked in the oven, no nasty combustible oil.

Last time I wanted to recycle some remaining risotto I pan-fried them which worked okay but the act of turning the cakes in the oil proved tricky and bits made a bid for freedom, so this ‘leave alone’ in the oven option might be a little safer.

The recipe used either freshly made or leftover risotto, and it suggested adding ham, mozzarella and an egg to the cooled risotto. I decided to serve my egg on the side instead and not having any mozzarella or ham to hand I just decided to stick to the tasty Jersey Royals and leek already in the risotto. With dampened hands I shaped my risotto into balls and then flatten into discs, popped them onto a baking tray, cling wrapped and slid into the fridge for 20 minutes. As the original risotto had been more robust than your average one, I think I was able to forgo the egg successfully. However if the original dish has been more all’onda as it should have been, I guess the eggy glue would have been more relevant.

The oven was set to 200^o C, the cakes removed from the fridge and dipped first in flour, then beaten egg and finally some fine dried breadcrumbs. The risotto cakes were returned to the baking tray and baked for 10-15 minutes until a lovely golden brown.

And the result was truly delicious, next time I might bury a morsel of torn mozzarella or even a spoonful of pesto before shaping into cakes. Who need deep-frying?

A very British Olive

When the latest edition of Olive magazine plopped onto my doormat I was delighted to see that it was a celebration of all things British. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, in fact according to my own blog I can see that last May's Olive was in a similar vein. But I don’t mind at all, it's a good thing. It’s odd but when I am asked to state my favourite nationality of food, I invariably say French, but I am also very passionate about British food. But for some reason, even though there are some great advocates of British food we still get tarred with the over-boiled cabbage, stodgy puddings and dodgy awful canned vegetables and also we have this inbuilt fear of appearing patriotic, somehow it’s un-British! And no I cannot explain that!.

There are so many crimes that have been committed in the name of British food but we do some things so very, very well. What about an elegant crust-less cucumber sandwiches afternoon tea or seaside fish and chips or even better Cromer crab on brown bread sandwiches or of course one of my favourites pie and mash? We make fabulous award winning cheese; have hedgerows full of elderflower and wild garlic, grow the world’s best asparagus and the sweetest strawberries, rear magnificent tasting beef, lamb and rare breed pork.

The month of May’s Olive contains too numerous examples to mention glorifying our nation’s fabulous food. But a few excepts that deserve a special attention, firstly 30 UK foodie must dos which perhaps not so coincidentally I didn’t read before writing the above and pretty much everything I’ve mentioned above is in their list also – great minds really do think alike!

A few recipes that get me reaching for my chopping board this month are: pea, radish and rare beef salad, artichoke and bacon tart, linguini with fresh rocket pesto,and asparagus and mozzarella and prosciutto parcels. The new series of Great British Menu starts on Monday so I was delighted to see some of the entrants being photographed by Lord Snowdon and some of their great recipes. They are look pretty good but my favourites are Marcus Wareing’s Lancashire hotpot and the fabulous Jeremy Lee’s Arbroath smokie and leek broth. There another seared beef salad, this time with watercress and Gordon Ramsay’s salmon creviche. On the next page there’s a stunning looking hot smoked salmon salad and of course plenty of asparagus recipes. John Torode whips up a fine looking fish pie which is compulsory for a celebration of British food. There's a taste test of the perfect pie and the winner of the steak and ale is the pure pie, not one I've tried - yet!

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Update: actually on further examination of their fabulously names "we are pie" site, I realise I have tried a pure pie as one of my favourite delis, Source, stocks them. So now I know where they get there ever so interesting pies from. Last time I had one though, I didn't enjoy it in the best of circumstances!

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If there's not enough titbits in the magazine there's also a little booklet showing 20 UK foodie weekends with some great destinations to give a try. I will definitely be taking it with me next I'm in in Manchester. And it was a good job that I didn't have it with my in York as I may have been inclined to stock up on "wantable French crockery, glassware and enamelware" in The French House. Phew, that was lucky!

Over the last year there has been to some great cookbook resources for British food lovers and food shoppers, Mark Hix British Regional Food, Peter Prescott and Terence Conran's Eat London, Great British Menu Cookbook and Rose Prince's The Savvy Shopper. We have no excuse for not supporting our local and regional food.

And with so many great foods to be proud of, this is a fantastic opportunity to fly the flag and I intend to do so. Now where do I start?

I'm counting tea towels...

I was browsing through the March edition of Good Food magazine and noticed something quite peculiar; they seem to have a very impressive collection of folded tea towels. And this inspired me to go through all this month’s food magazines and count all the tea towels that are featured in their food photographs. But before you think I need to get out more, remember I have been ill this week and counting tea towels is almost the most strenuous action I can perform at the moment.
And it really does seem they’re all at it, it was Good Food that set me off and they were top of the pops with 27 pictures of a random tea towel or thick napkin folded casually under the plate or dish that they were featuring. Olive were close behind them with 25, Delicious with 22 and Fresh and Waitrose Food Illustrated use less food shots and had 4 and 2 respectively. What is it with the tea towels? Let’s be honest if you’re lifting a dish from the oven maybe you’d grab a tea towel and then if you put this dish down it may still be sitting on the said tea towel. But personally I’d grab my skin burning hot dish from the oven with an oven glove. The clue is in the name, oven gloves are for removing hot meals from the oven and are pretty good at their job and tea towels; are generally for towelling ummm tea things? But apparently when photographing food, it’s just not going to look tasty unless a gently folded tea towel or napkin is somewhere in the frame. Even the advice on the UKTV Food site has “ten tips to making your food look good enough to eat” recommends both folded napkins and tea towels. Napkins I understand as you’d normally have some fine linen cloth to hand to drape over your lap or tuck into your collar if you insist to protect you from splashes. But as the photographs generally show the plate on top of the folded cloth, how is one expected to retrieve it and use it?

But apart from the proliferation of tea towel photographs what else has this month’s Good Food got to offer to tantalise my taste buds? Okay to be fair probably the reason I got distracted and started counting superfluous cloths was that there’s some good old stalwarts of recipes that I’d happily eat but very little to set the foodie world alight. There’s cheesy ham with leeks, Swiss cheese schnitzel, baked cabbage & cabbage risotto and salmon, broccoli & potato bake. For St. David’s day there’s a lovely looking Welsh goat’s cheese & leek tart obviously rather spoilt by the inclusion of goat’s cheese, a cheese substitution would make this very palatable. There’s a stack of things to do with tortillas illustrated with a shredded chicken and Brie dish. There’s a step-by-step on how to roast a chicken and as much as I love, absolutely adore a good roast chicken, I’m not sure I need another recipe. In the get kids cooking there’s some interesting looking Welsh rarebit muffins which getting back to my original rant, are sat rather incongruously plonked on top of a striped folded towel or possible paper serviette. The caramleised passion fruit & lime tart looks rather splendid and John Torode’s pepper steak and big oven chips is never going to be a bad thing and his gooey chocolate pots with boozy cherries sat, naturally on top of a folded black & white spotted cloth.

I’m always partial to pan-fried pork with crème fraîche & prunes and the rare beef with mustard Yorkshires looks succulent.

I’m also intrigued by the warm duck salad with walnut & orange dressing and the sticky marmalade loaf featured on the front cover looks tasty but I’m not sure I’d be crazy about eating it.

I thought it was a little naughty interviewing the chef that won the role of pub landlord of The Cock on Jamie Oliver’s new show Jamie’s Chef as I read it before the episode which showed the eventual winner had been aired. So the surprise was spoilt somewhat. I was pleased to read however, that Nigel Slater’s excellent ‘A taste of my life’ is returning and a new five-part series called rather magnificently ‘Kill it, Cook it, Eat it’ come to BBC3. They print the legendary Simon Rimmer’s mum’s lasagne recipe that uses cottage cheese instead of béchamel and somehow got Something for the Weekend’s (nutritionist) devout vegetarian Amanda Hamilton to tuck into it before realising it contained meat! Obviously all that tomato would have put me off but Amanda just forgot what lasagne normally contains! Hmmm!

So reliable old Good Food had some recipes that I might try but mainly it was all about the tea towels!

Not slow to spot a trend, I realise that the way to pep up my food photography and be in vogue is to deploy more indiscriminate use of folded tea towels and other cloths from now on. Here’s a picture of some figs that I took whilst in France back in October, perhaps I was just ahead of the game with my folded white linen tea towel? But going forward, I intend to raid my tea towel collection and join the fashionable crowd.

delicious March

In fact I think it will be a very delicious March, they’ve really come up trumps this month and in my opinion, trounced their peers. Actually both delicious and olive make the ‘ever – worthy’ fresh look a little stark and unsophisticated but they’re supportive towards vegetables!

This month’s delicious theme is eating well but on a budget, that seems fair enough as I guess we can’t each truffles every day!

They’ve even been trawling the high street looking for a few homeware bargains and my eye has been caught by some black Manhattan crockery at House of Fraser! Mmmm! The cover shot is a plate of lemon salmon fishcakes with a poached egg on top. The creamy mushroom and lemon spaghetti looks tasty and with a little tweaking could be a store cupboard standby. And the potato, Cheshire cheese and spring onion tarts looks really good, I really like this recipe and wouldn’t change a thing. The cauliflower cheese with ham looks pretty fabulous also; the wholegrain mustard gives the finished dish a pleasing speckled appearance. An enhanced cauliflower cheese; sounds good to me! The frankfurter and mushroom tortilla is a blast from ther past, I remember eating frankfurters as a child, sometimes in a finger shaped bun or with mash (and if my memory serves me correctly probably the Martian-friendly Smash!) Simon Rimmer starts his piece with the words “Potatoes are the finest ingredient in the world…” but then he makes potato cakes with sweet potatoes, curry paste and mayonnaise – hmmm, I don’t think so!

In Janet Street-Porter’s first delicious column she implores us “to keep it simple” and expresses her disgust with eating in “expensive, pretentious places” and as much as she likes Heston she thinks “his approach to food is ludicrous” Looks like we we’re in for a lively column!

There are some seriously splendid looking pies from Angela Boggiano’s new Pie book, the smoked fish and cider pie and the braised lamb shank pie with lamb bones intriguingly poking out of the crust look winners.

I also like the look of the zesty herb and chilli crab salad and blackened five-spice duck with mini roasties and the orange and Campari jellies with caramelised vanilla oranges looks a fabulous jewel bright end to a meal. There are some tasty looking desserts but the winner has to be Marcus Wareing’s astounding custard tart from the Queen’s 80^th birthday meal.

We also get treated to the lovely Clotilde Dusoulier of Chocolate and Zucchini fame giving us a tour of her favourite foodie hangouts of Paris. Now where’s my passport?

And there’s more! There’s a chorizo frittata, baked gnocchi with spinach and mushrooms in the assembly cook section. There’s a reminder how to make perfect pancakes, a sausage and onion rosti and the last page has a wonderful oozing creamy pancetta, Brie and mushrrom croissants. Mmmm, mmmm a delicious month, I think.

A fresh fresh

It seems like I sounded the death knell for fresh too soon because three months after their last issue (the Christmas one) a March issue has materialised. And they’re back, back, back – or are they? They are seemingly unapologetic about the absence; the only reference to their mysterious disappearance is a 'welcome back' at the start of the editor's letter. Though that kind of implies that we the readers have been somewhere, not them! They nearly blew it for me by doing an advertorial entitled 'tantalising tomatoes' two pages in but despite the fact that fresh have never lived up to their peers olive and delicious (I wonder why they all favour lower case, it is more trendy and is that why the older stalwart Good Food magazine has two capital letters?) I was still quite sad at its lack of appearance. There's always something a little less glossy about fresh and I think they use a lot of stock photos. I base this assumption that sometimes the photograph doesn't really depict the accompanying recipe but I guess they have smaller budgets. I can forgive the lack of polish, but some of the articles lack a certain depth that I can’t really put my finger on. And whilst I'm being critical, some of their recipes seem more like serving suggestions and can hardly warrant a full page like this month’s recipe for Greens with Butter Drizzle which is actually a steamed torn up Savoy cabbage served dotted with butter. And this honestly has a full page spread devoted to it.

Well enough from the things I didn't like about the magazine, what did they have in this month which I fancy whipping up? There’s an interesting take on duck with duck, coriander and orange fritters with crispy carrot salad. I’m not crazy about coriander, so I’d probably leave that out. There’s a tasty looking leek, thyme, garlic and blue cheese tart but I’d swap the blue cheese for maybe some Wensleydale. The photograph of the tart is rather interesting, the thyme and leeks are in sharp focus and the rest of the tart is out of focus. This seems quite unusual for food photography nowadays; a gritty realism seems to be the order of the day. The Mother’s Day menu has a succulent looking slow roasted pork loin with red onion, garlic and thyme and another winning potato dish – slow-baked creamy garlic potatoes which is just really gratin Dauphinois with the addition of some leek and spring onions. And I’m never going to complain about gooey chocolate pudding. The St. Patrick’s Day recipes have a couple of odd drinks and a fine looking roasted rosemary potato pizza but the blue cheese would have to be substituted again, maybe for Tallegio. There’s a pizza place near work whose waiters often ignore my request to leave off the blue cheese from the four cheese pizza – to make it more of a three cheese pizza. And I find the blue cheese takes all the other cheeses hostage and overwhelms everything. And blue cheese just tastes off to me!

There are recipes for Caerphilly and wholegrain mustard soufflé and Caerphilly Glamorgan sausages in honour of St David’s Day but neither have any pictures, though saying that there’s a big picture of a Caerphilly cheese. I like the idea of serving the chive speckled scrambled duck egg in the egg shell. I would like try that!

So fresh maybe back, or maybe it's just a one off. It may not be the favourite of my monthly foodie fixes but if there’s some worthy food for thought still, I'm still happy to peruse it.

olive on a Sunday

The latest olive magazine plopped onto my doormat and I always have the same quandary. Do I dive straight it picking out tasty titbits as I go or slowly savour each morsel? I know D always wants to be the first to crack the cover on every new magazine and I know what she means the moments before you start reading a new food magazine you don’t know if it will have some great inspirations and run immediately into the kitchen or it will be tomato soaked fest or all abstinence and Asian broth. It might sound rather dramatic for a mere magazine, but I feel the same before opening any book for the first time (and I don’t just mean cookbooks but all books, not even good ones make we want to run and sharpen my Global knives).

It looks extremely hopeful as the cover is shows a fabulous Sunday roast instead of last month’s abundance of healthy eating ideas. And the very first recipe is yummy looking French onion soup. So I started off slowly to ensure I don’t miss any of the little snippets of news as that’s how I found about my food photography course in France last year. This month they send a lucky food editor to the River Cottage HQ “Pig in a Day” course which sounds a real treat and news of soon to be available ready made spam fritters which doesn’t! Next there’s a great profile of Olive top 50 decadent foodies including some of my favourites, Uncle Monty from Withnail and I, Richard Corrigan, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Giles Coren, the Two Fat Ladies, Stephen Fry, Jeffrey Steingarten and the slightly scandalous Elizabeth David. It’s a rather eclectic bunch is rather thought provoking. I love the fact that they’ve included the Swedish Chef and his chocolate mousse recipe that includes the ingredients – chocolate and a moose! Though I think that Simon Hopkinson and Nigel Slater should be there for the incredible mark they’ve already made on the world of food literature and everyone knows what a seminal book Roast Chicken and Other Stories is.

But what about the seasonal recipes? Well for the ‘barren lull’ between the end of the winter vegetables and the spring vegetables there are some great recipes. Firstly, there is a recipe for mussels with garlic and herb breadcrumbs and ever since I fell in the love with the “Popeye” dish at Belgo’s I been trying to find the tray for grilling mussels to recreate it. Maybe I’ve been just looking too hard and I could just use a baking tray like in this recipe. And then it’s purple sprouting broccoli with proscuitto and duck egg which looks seriously tasty also. Jo Pratt’s new book “In the mood for food” is coming out next month and my eye was particularly caught by the berry and ginger crumble. That would seem a perfect way to utilise some of my frozen berries. And not surprisingly, with the fine hunk of beef on the cover, there are some fine Sunday best meaty-licious dishes to tuck into.

I think this month is going to be mighty tasty!

Good food in new Good Food

The Christmas Good Food magazine has hit the shops and as I don’t subscribe anymore (because I prefer Delicious and Olive) I grabbed a copy. I also annoying saw that the new Delicious is out but I haven’t received mine yet – seethe! Delicious have done this before, not being very quick with delivering the subscriptions and you see it enticingly flaunting itself in the shops before you your copy turns up. Hmmm.

Good Food has launched a fine new website which definitely seems worth a look and has lots of classic recipes on it. I do like these websites, it really handy when you have a yen for a particular dish or suddenly find yourself with a glut of a particular ingredient especially when I am apart from my beloved cook books. If I find myself in need of inspiration I can consult Waitrose, UK Food or BBC Food and now I can add the BBC Good Food to the list.

December’s Good Food has a recipe for ‘microwave butternut squash risotto’ which does seem perfect for this season and is marked as ‘hassle-free comfort food’. I am not sure about cooking a risotto in a microwave however; as I think I’d really miss the soothing stirring and watching the magical transformation as the hard little grains slowly release their starch to make an unctuous soft, comforting mound of loveliness.

Other recipes that have possibilities are ‘sausage and apple toad-in the-hole’, ‘tear and share garlic bread’, ‘smoked salmon daupinoise’, ‘crab and herby hollandaise tarts’, ‘smoked haddock croquettes’, ‘Parmesan baskets with Parma ham and the rather boringly named ‘no-fuss tart’ which seems a rather pleasing combination of short crust pastry topped with cheddar, honey roasted ham, spring onions, wholegrain mustard and crème fraîche. Brian Turner does a 'mature cheddar and onion pudding' in lieu of a Yorkshire pudding, Rick Stein has a 'monkfish en croute with mushroom gravy', Gary Rhodes has a menu for two with ‘sautéed scallops with mushrooms and spinach’ and ‘slow roast honey and sesame duck’ and Gordon Ramsay and his terribly photogenic family cook up a ‘maple and mustard glazed ham’, ‘bubble and squeak cakes’ and other festive accoutrements. I am starting to devise the Christmas lunch feast - I can definitely see those crab and herby hollandaise bread case tarts featuring somewhere.

First thoughts of C time

(great photo courtesy of the Harvey Nix hamper website, which always gets me virtually shopping - and sometimes, actually)

Wow, it’s still October (just) and the first Christmas food magazines had dropped onto my doormat and it’s Olive. It comes with a little olive covered 2007 diary but to my chagrin the recipe for September is tomato gnocchi. Arghh! Am I the only person who always has the check the pictures, quotes or recipes for their birthday month? It’s just a little quirk!

Well one of the first good things I noticed – the suggestion of having Gü brownies in lieu of Christmas pudding – what a fabulous idea!

There’s a recipe for ‘dead good’ blinis, which I am rather partial to. And a tough-in-cheek article entitled ‘What kind of foodie are you?’ The choices are ‘the traditionalist’, ‘the perfectionist’, ‘the foodie maniac’, ‘the party animal’, ‘the environmentalist’ and ‘the forager’. It supposed to indicate what sort of Christmas dinner cook you are, how organised you are, what food you serve and where you buy it from. I think I am a hybrid perfectionist/party animal – Gordon Ramsay with a soupçon of Nigella! I’d like everything to be just so but a touch of last minute randomness normally kicks in. Well no one’s perfect!

What did leap out and catch my eye is ‘mini beef en croute’ and an article on Joël Robuchon and his fabulous signature dish of purée de pommes de terre. It is “the first thing clients ask for”’ says M. Robuchon. I am salivating already!

There’s some creative cocktail canapés including ‘potato skins with smoked trout and horseradish cream’, ‘proscuitto, pear and rocket rolls’ and of course ‘honey and rosemary cocktail sausages’.

Gordon Ramsay produces a stunning looking turkey with a lemon and sage butter – I don’t normally do a turkey for Christmas but it does look good.

The UK’s 10 best dishes according to Restaurant magazine make very interesting reading. I think some of my restaurants to visit for 2007 will have to come from this selection. I am extrememely intrigued by the best sausage and mash which they vote Boisdale of Belgravia number one. Very interesting indeed.

Well it’s to soon to decide on a Christmas menu but it’s food for thought and I do enjoy the planning. I’ll try not to mention it to D though - the ‘c’ word is not a popular one!

(F)light reading

I had a brilliant idea for a little light reading on the plane; I’d been dying to really tuck into Anna Del Conte’s “Amaretto, Apple Cake and Artichokes” but hadn’t really considered how heavy the book is – even for a paperback. And with the current restrictions on hand baggage, it was a tight fit cramming the book, my handbag and a few emergency packets of Minstrels in my carry on bag. But I was extremely grateful that I brought it along – I starting reading the first chapter “pasta” and started salivating. Pasta with fennel and cream, with garlicky béchamel, with artichokes, with pumpkin sauce, with mozzarella, anchovies and parsley, with a creamy courgette sauce, fish ravioli, with a fontina and cream sauce and all utterly tomato free! Where is a kitchen when you want one? I was just desperate to grab my knife and start creating. And then I espied a recipe for a “one egg ravioli in clear broth”. What was really amazing about this is that I’ve been trying to find this recipe for years. I’d enjoyed a stunning dish of a poached egg inside a ravioli at Gary Rhodes’ original restaurant City Rhodes and had been trying to find the recipe for it since. And here it was, way above the clouds I had eventually found the elusive recipe. Anna Del Conte’s method is to build a wall with a ricotta and spinach mixture onto of the 4” rounds of fresh pasta before popping the egg yolk into the middle and topping with the second pasta round. I have always wondered if I should attempt pressing the fresh pasta round into a mould of some sort and then drop the egg into the resultant indentation before topping off with the other round. This sounds a bit fiddlier and is probably what Gary would do!

On arrival at JFK I stocked up with a couple of US food magazines that I hadn’t read for a while – Bon Appétit and Gourmet. I used to subscribe to both when there was a dearth of food magazines in the UK but now this has been rectified and I read Good Food Magazine, Observer Food Monthly, Waitrose Food Illustrated, Olive, Delicious and Fresh. I used to also try and get “Elle - A la table” and wade slowly through the French. When I picked up the September edition of Bon Appétit it fell open to a recipe for “Soft Egg Ravioli” which as you’ve guessed it was the second time in several hours I’d read a recipe for a dish that I’ve been trying to locate for about eight years. The Bon Appétit recipe used a ricotta and finely zested lemon mixture to build the retaining wall. I have a few Italian cookbooks wending their way to me soon and it will be amusing if they all contain this impossible to find recipe!

Update: I have finally, after first tasting it so many years ago, made my own gooey egg in a fresh ravioli – see here for the results.

The next chapter is “risotto” and one of the first recipes I find is another old much-loved friend – “risotto with lemon”. This innocuous recipe is a favourite of Nigella’s and Anna Del Conte’s recipe appears in “Nigella Bites”. I have mentioned in the past that I’ve been caught out by the quantities as even though Nigella claims it’s a recipe for two, it produces a river of risotto and in my experience is really too much for two, however hungry. Now I’ve got the original recipe with the same quantities I can see that Anna thinks this will feed three to four!

After the fabulous “risotto” chapter it’s “polenta” which I’ve been meaning to get more into, then “bread”, “pulses”, “fish” and “molluscs”. I’m not even a third through the book and I just crazy to get cooking. Nigella is so right about Anna Del Conte, she is the person to turn to when in need of bolstering and comfort and just incredible Italian food.
I am hooked!
Now where’s my knife…?

Low fat or Italian?

The latest delicious and olive have winged their way to me. Two very different themes this month. Delicious is all about low fat and low calorie with definitely some interesting things. For example, ‘poached egg and new potato salad with crispy bacon and a mustard dressing’, ‘lemon and lime granita’, ‘pea, ham & Taleggio tart’, the fabulously green ‘basil sorbet’, a very interesting sounding ‘crab and salmon cheesecake’ and ‘old fashioned ginger beer’. All very interesting if a tiny tad virtuous! This month’s olive has a distinctly Italian feel to it. After a quick flick, my initial highlights are: ‘poached chicken with a mustard herb sauce’, and three very interesting dishes with my personal super food pesto – ‘pesto and potato tart’ – sorry Dr Atkins, this sounds fabulous! ‘butterflied chicken with pesto cream’, ‘salmon with lemon pesto crust’, ‘Gennaro’s grilled lamb cutlets filled with Parma ham and herbs’, ‘chocolate crinkle cookies’, ‘spinach, bacon and new potato salad’, ‘Giorgio Locatelli’s Grana Padano crisps’ served with aged Balsamicand surprisingly for me and collection of interesting desserts. However, personally I felt the desserts were not displayed at their best on the busy retro crockery. Seeing the Midwinter’ design from my childhood was really nice but it just didn’t work with the mango and vanilla terrine. My favourite desserts at first glance were ‘blackberry fluff’, ‘quick peach brûlée’ and my top pick - ‘chocolate and raspberry torte’. As I have a trip to D, MC and T’s next weekend, we have plenty of delicious material to work with.

It's supposed to be tomato free!

I have always believed that I can make a very tasty lasagne without resorting to tomatoes.
As in my mind, tomatoes are just entirely unnecessary! Maybe I would agree to a squeeze of tomato paste if forced but never, never those strange flaccid red lumps from a can. And I have been proved right. There were two fine recipes for lasagne in this month's delicious and apart from the obligatory squirt of tomato paste, they were tomato-less! Today I succumbed to a chicken and asparagus lasagne which also wasn't sullied by the evil red stuff. I have been vindicated!

I can't wait for the first asparagus

The new issue of Olive arrived in the post today - it's all about British food. And we have much to be proud of. I can't wait for this year's asparagus, I can envisage dipping lightly cooked spears into a soft boiled egg or wrapping them tenderly in Parma ham and topping with a few Parmesan shavings. Yum! Or maybe an asparagus and Tallegio tart straight from the oven. Decisions, decisions - but good decisions all the same. And I will make a better effort this year to save all my asparagus shavings and woody ends and turn them into a rich frothy soup - maybe topped with a Parmesan crisp.