Warm Goat Cheese Salad

Goat cheese, sometimes called chevre, is a cheese product made from the milk of goats. Goat cheese comes in a wide variety of forms, although the most common is a soft, easily spread cheese. Goat milk is much more similar to human milk than that of the cow, being much thinner, lower in fat, and higher in vitamin A and potassium. Because goat milk is leaner than that of cows, goat cheese tends to be leaner as well. For this reason, many dieters craving cheese will use goat cheese as a substitute, crumbling it on salads or melting it on cooked dishes. Goat cheese softens when exposed to heat, although it does not melt in the same way that many cow cheeses do. Firmer goat cheeses with rinds are sometimes baked in the oven to form a gooey warm cheese which is ideal for spreading on bread with roasted garlic, or alone. from Wisegeek

Recipe Source:Essen und Trinken

Vinaigrette	Salad
3 tbsp Walnut oil 1 tbsp Freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 Shallot, finely minced Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste	100 g / 5 rounds Fresh goat cheese 1 tbsp Walnut oil 2 tbsp Olive oil Some bread crumbs 60 g Salad greens 30 g Walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped 5 Grapes, cut into wedges Freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Whisk together 3 tablespoons of walnut oil with lemon juice, minced shallot, salt and pepper to make a vinaigrette. Coat each goat cheese round with walnut oil and then the bread crumbs, patting the crumbs to adhere.
   
2. Combine the greens and the walnuts in a large bowl. Add in enough of the vinaigrette and toss well. Adjust the seasoning and divide among two serving plates.
   
3. Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add in olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the goat cheese rounds. Cook until nicely browned, about 30 seconds. Turn and cook the other side. Do not allow it to burn or melt. Transfer the goat cheese to the plates, placing 2 or 3 atop each salad. Sprinkle the cheese with freshly ground pepper and garnish with grape wedges.

Warm Goat Cheese Salad

Coconut and rum cake

Now THIS is a fucking brilliant cake. I made a Nigella chocolate cake the other day and wasn't that impressed. All that ganache and stuff. Eugh. Didn't like it.

This, on the other hand, is absolutely wonderful. Light, crumbly, moist, coconutty. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's also an absolute cinch to make, as long as you've got a food processor or an electric hand whisk.

The recipe is from The New Penguin Cookery Book by Jill Norman, which along with Delia's Complete Cookery Course, is a real must for the novice/amateur cook.

So here we go:

200g butter

200g sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 eggs

75g cornflour

150g plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

100g dessicated coconut

2 tbs rum

1 Heat the oven to 180C and grease your cake tin. You'll need a normal-sized one (don't roll your eyes, you know what I mean. Not a massive one and not a tiny loaf tin, okay?)

2 Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk with a hand whisk, or power round with a food processor for about 2 mins.

3 Turn the mixture out into your tin and bake for 1 hour. I know, seems a rather long time, but that's how long it takes.

4 For a very lovely, boozy icing, combine icing sugar with rum instead of water and pour over

Spiced pork belly

This is a nice thing to do with pork belly, as it can be quite rich and the spiciness of the coating cuts through the fat and the gloop and is really quite delicious.

So, get a boned piece of pork belly with the skin scored (again, you might have to venture to a butcher for this - but probably only the butcher counter at Waitrose).

Make up a spiced paste that consists of:

1 2cm piece of ginger

2 cloves garlic

3 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 teaspoon of dried red chilli flakes (or more if you like it really spicy)

1 tablespoon honey

Chop roughly and then pound to a pulp in a pestle and mortar, or grind the whole thing up in a processfor for a bit. Put the pork skin-side up in a roasting tin and spread with the paste.

I bunged my bit of belly in the oven at 220C for 20 mins and then at 180C for 50 minutes with ten minutes' rest. If I hadn't had the paste on the top, which I didn't want to burn the shit out of, I'd have roasted it full pelt for maybe 30 minutes and then rested for 20 or something.

We had this with stir-fried long-stemmed brocolli, tossed with oyster sauce and it was a pretty cheerful protein-and-greens dinner.

Lamb sweetbreads

Continuing my occasional series on offal, today I'd like to talk about sweetbreads. Lamb sweetbreads in particular. These are the pancreas (I think) of a lamb and if you fry them and serve them with a parsely salad, I think you'll be very happy.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, because first you actually have to get hold of some sweetbreads, which isn't that easy. They don't, alas, do them in Waitrose, so if you want some you have to haul ass to a butcher. But they may very well not have any either, so you'll have to ring ahead and check.

I got mine, purely by chance, from Frank Godfrey, a butcher with two shops in North London http://www.fgodfrey.co.uk/. I went in for something else and they had sweetbreads on special, so I got some because they are Giles' absolute favourite. They do them at Tom Pemberton's place, Hereford Road and they are delish.

Once you have tracked down and purchased your sweetbreads, it's all quite easy. They have to be poached and skinned before frying, which I must say isn't an especially lovely job - it's for pretty hardcore animal-lovers only who are so pleased to be eating in such a nose-to-tail way that they can feel only love and gratitude for the piece of animal before them. Me? I just felt a bit queasy and Giles had to do it.

Anyway, you do this by washing and then placing the sweetbreads in some fresh unsalted water, bringing to the boil and simmering for 5 minutes only. Drain the sweetbreads and leave to cool - or at least cool enough to handle.

Then go over the sweetbreads, pulling off bits of grossness, grisle, connective tissue and all that other stuff. You can remove the thin membrane that covers the whole thing if you like, or leave it on. Hugh F-W recommends leaving it on but to be honest I can't really see what difference it makes.

If you encounter an especially large sweetbread you can cut it in half to cook.

This is what they look like raw and skinned. They smell faintly of fish. But don't let any of this put you off. Cooked, they are creamy and interesting and luscious.

There are a number of ways of cooking sweetbreads, but the way we did it was to coat the meat in heavily seasoned flour (just salt and pepper) and fry it for about 4-5 minutes in very hot oil until golden and crispy.

We ate it with a parsley salad that consisted of:

1 large bunch parsley

1/2 shallot, finely chopped

capers

lemon juice

Baba Ga-who?

I've started thinking that cooking is a bit like getting dressed. You CAN just wear a pair of jeans with a white t-shirt and some flip flops. Or you can wear a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt and some Christian Louboutins. OR you can wear jeans, white t-shirt, Louboutins, massive necklace, sunglasses and, like, a Kelly bag or something.

But that doesn't mean to say that you looked any the less fabulous in your plain jeans and t-shirt outift. It looks good, it's simple and it basically sends the same message.

I take this approach in the kitchen quite often these days. If I'm making something and I don't have all the ingredients specified in a recipe I just sort of gloss over it and make a more basic version of whatever the recipe is suggesting. Similarly, if I'm making something and I happen to have a jar of kaffir lime leaves, an avocado, or some sour cream hanging about, whatever I'm cooking takes on a more spruced-up, Louboutins-and-Kelly-bag attitude.

And so it went last night while making baba ganoush, which as you all know perfectly well is a mediterranean aubergine dip made with mashed grilled aubergines and tahini. But I didn't have any tahini. So I stood there looking at this damned aubergine that had been sitting in my larder for ages and needed to be eaten *somehow* and thought "Maybe I ought to just to a jeans and white t-shirt thing with this".

The resulting dip was so unbelievably delicious, although again apologies for horrible-looking photo - that I urge you to make it very soon, as soon as the sun comes out again.

Yes, okay, salting aubergines is boring but it's not labour-intensive and it's worth it.

1 aubergine makes more than enough dip for 2 people. I've split the ingredients up into things that are essential for this dip - the jeans and white t-shirt, if you like - and the added extras that will turn heads.

Jeans and t-shirt

1 aubergine

2 glugs olive oil

salt

lemon juice

paprika

Jeans, t-shirt and Louboutins

1 tablespoon yoghurt

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

Jeans, t-shirt, Louboutins and Kelly bag

garlic clove
small bunch parsley
small bunch mint

1 So, you've got to salt your aubergines now - bad luck. I cut mine into rounds, but you can cut them lengthways if you like. Sprinkle both cut sides with salt, sandwich them between 2 chopping boards and then pile a few heavy cookbooks on top of the boards. Leave them for as long as you like, minimum 35 minutes.

2 Now grill your aubergines. I fried mine on a griddle, but you can also stick them under a grill. It should take about 20 minutes for them to be soft all the way through and burnt and sticky on the outside.

3 The recipe I was working to said to take the skins off but this was too fiddly, so I just chucked them in, skins and all, to a food processor with all the rest of the ingredients. If you do it, you may find that you need to add more or less of certain ingredients depending on how much you like paprika and raw garlic.

Not strictly baba ganoush, but totally great. And, hey - if Patricia Field taught us anything, it's that there are no rules in fashion.

Whey Strawberry Rolls

Whey or milk plasma is the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained. It is a by-product of the manufacture of cheese or casein.

• 110 g German #405 flour
  
• 1 pacakge / 12 g Dr. Oetker strawberry icing powder
  ©angiesrecipes
  
• 3 g Baking powder
  
• 90 ml Whey
  
• 90 ml Corn oil
  
• 5 Eggs
  
• Pinch of salt
  
• 1/3 tsp Lemon juice
  
• 90 g White sugar
  
• Some whipped cream

1. Sift the flour and baking powder together in a mixing bowl. Line a 30x40-cm baking tray with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 175C/350F.
   
   
2. In another bowl, place together the whey, strawberry icing powder and corn oil. Whisk until the mixture is emulsified. Sift in flour mixture and blend until just combined. Add in egg yolks and fold until smooth.
   
3. Beat egg whites with salt and lemon juice over low speed until frothy and foamy. Gradually add in sugar, increase speed and beat until stiff but not dry. Carefully fold 1/3 of egg white mixture into flour mixture to lighten it and then carefully fold in remaining whites.
   
4. Pour the cake batter into the prepared baking tray and spread the surface even. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove, cool briefly, and invert the cake onto a new parchment paper. Carefully peel off the the paper liner and then invert again the baked side-up to cool on a wire rack. Trim the edges of cake. Spread the surface with whipped cream and roll it up. Chill for about 1 hour and slice.

Last, but not the least, I want to thank SHAHANA@ME N MY APRON sharing all these beautiful awards with me.


Whey Strawberry Rolls

How not to deep fry squid

I bought myself some squid yesterday in order to try out a barbequed squid recipe thing that I found in a magazine. But after 2 back to back episodes of Glee, with all that cheerleading and all-American razzmatazz, I was far more in the mood for deep-fried squid.

So I took to Nigella Bites, which has a salt-and-pepper squid recipe in there that I've always thought looked mega-delicious.

But it was GROSS. I did sort of wonder about the non-inclusion of breadcrumbs in this. The squid is just coated in cornflower and deep fried like that. And it was sort of gacky and sticky and really quite horrible.

Nigella's recipes often not working seems to be kind of an accepted thing these days. I can't quite believe it, as I'm such a fan and all her recipes LOOK so fun and interesting. Occasionally they are bang on and introduce me to things I'd never have known about if I hadn't read them in her book (here, I'm mostly thinking of how to do proper American pancakes, ceviche and no-churn ice-cream). But BURLAGH! that squid was horrible. It's only testament to how much white wine I'd glugged down in the previous two hours (when Giles is away I have to drink myself unconscious or I can't sleep) that I actually ate all the little buggers.

Anyway, I'm about taste this wretched chocolate cake of hers I made yesterday and if it's horrid I will be SO disappointed. Although it's not like I wasn't warned.

Mushroom quinoa with goat's cheese

At a loss of what to make for lunch, I had to resort to re-creating a thing I had last night, which was mushrooms with melted goat's cheese on top. Anyway, it worked out quite well, with the addition of some quinoa to bolster it all up a bit. I didn't use garlic for this recipe because I didn't feel like eating it, but you can if you like. Sorry, crap photo again (although my manicure looks pretty good) but it was v tasty.

So, for one robust, practically carb-free lunch you will need:

1 handful of interesting mushrooms (I used shitake), roughly chopped

1 bunch parsley

1 shallot, chopped

butter

a round of goat's cheese

about 40g quinoa

1 Boil up the quinoa in some salted water for 15 minutes

2 melt a knob of butter in a frying pan and cook the shallot gently for about 10 minutes, then add the mushrooms and cook until soft

3 drain the quinoa and throw in with the mushrooms. Snip or chop in some parsley and stir round. Season.

4 Turn it out in to a small gratin dish and place disks of goat's cheese on top. I cut mine too thin and they dissolved in a boring way. I reckon you should aim for disks about 1 cm thick.

5 Slide under a very hot grill until the cheese is bubbling

Home alone

Giles has gone skiing until Sunday and I'm in the house all by myself. Actually, he hasn't gone skiing because he doesn't like skiing, he's just gone with some people to Switzerland who are skiing and he's vowing to stay inside and read books. But he also took some emergency ski kit with him. No, I don't understand either.

It's always the way when Giles goes anywhere: I rather look forward to having the place to myself without his constant clattering, singing, shouting, cackling and raging, conducting his professional feuds and world-domination strategies in his massive office next door, fielding phone calls and hammering away at his laptop, which always sounds, when he is in full-cry, like a troop of teenaged boys galloping down the stairs.

He leaves the house after consulting me eight times about every single thing he's packing "Are you sure? Are you sure the red socks and not the striped ones? Sure? They're going in... Sure?" and looking briefly miserable on the doorstep. After I close the door I punch the air and shout "YES" and vow to leave the bed unmade, do no washing up, watch Judge Judy all day and drink the kind of cheap white wine that burns holes through carpet.

Within an hour I'm a gibbering wreck, wide-eyed at my spooky, silent house and jumping at small noises.

And I don't don't know what the hell to eat. Working withing Giles' strict things-we-can-and-can't-eat thing means a trip to Waitrose is a logistical assault. Nothing non-organic, basically no fish at all because it's all endangered, nothing processed, nothing from abroad. It's why we're constantly eating roast chicken. Sometimes I think to myself "Gosh, wouldn't it be easy to go shopping if I didn't have to cook for Giles and all his arseholish ways" but then I GO to Waitrose as I did just now and I can't find, or think of, anything that I might want to eat. Not one thing.

So I'm going to make a chocolate cake instead. Definitely something I can't do with him around.

Last night

I sat open-mouthed through the whole of The Delicious Miss Dahl last night. I think she's lovely and she's only trying to have a career for God's sake - but was any of that show her idea? Was all that stuff about the mozzarella and saying "luscious" every ten seconds and that Fifties frock and all that really, really what she's like? If so, then I guess that's all just fine.

But I suspect from the way that she giggled in a slightly embarrassed way after delivering some of the more risque lines that there was a producer off screen going "Sorry, sorry - this is supposed to be a SELFISH day. Can you say selfish and indulgent a bit more, please? Thanks."

I don't know, there was just something a bit contrived about it, like telly people can't fathom that you could just have a show called "Cooking with Sophie" where she makes some stuff and says "This is quite nice for breakfast." It has to be a massive themed performance, like a giant fancy-dress birthday party with clowns and a bouncy castle and a present table, rather than just jammy dodgers and crisps and a run round the garden.

And the worst thing about it was that she doesn't know how to pronounce "bruschetta", which just made me feel sad.

Fish Cubes And Pine Nuts / 松仁鱼米

An irresistible combination of the delicate flavors of the Alaska pollock, the earthy scent of the bell pepper and the rich buttery savour of the pine nuts makes this fish dish unbeatable!

	Marinade
350 g Alaska pollock fillet 100 g Pine nuts 60 g Red bell pepper 80 g Cucumber 1 stalk Chopped spring onion 25 g Jiafan rice wine 4 g Salt 50 g Cornstarch solution 15 g Sesame oil Oil for frying	1 Egg white 1. 5 g Chicken bouillon 1. 5 g White pepper powder 13 g Cornstarch 15 g Vegetable oil

1. Cut the fish fillets into the small cube size of pine nuts. Mix the fish cubes with the marinade and rest for 30 minutes. Cut the cucumber, bell pepper and spring onion into the size of the fish cubes.
   
2. Fill a skillet with some oil and heat until hot. Add in pine nuts and fry until they are golden. Remove and drain.
   
3. Heat the oil in the same skillet to about 110C/230F. Lower the marinated fish cubes into the skillet and stir gently. As soon as all the fish cubes have seperated, remove them with a slotted ladel and drain. Leave 2 teaspoons of oil in the skillet and heat up.
   
4. Add in chopped spring onions and stir briefly. Stir in diced sweet peppers, and then the rice wine, salt, fish cubes, diced cucumber and pine nuts, stirring gently. Add in the cornstarch-water mixture. Stir until well combined. Drizzle sesame oil over and stir until blended.

Fish Cubes And Pine Nuts / 松仁鱼米

Rack of lamb (WITHOUT a herb crust)

When did it suddenly become mandatory to add a herb crust to a rack of lamb? You don't seem to be able to order one in a restaurant, or go round to someone's house for dinner (usually a single man who rather fancies himself as a chef) without encountering a rack of lamb with a herb crust.

And I, too, was about to reach for my blender in order to whizz up some parsley, mint, garlic, breadcrumbs and whatever the hell else there is to a herb crust on Sunday when we were cooking a rack of lamb. But then I was struck with the very clear sensation that this was peer pressure, pure and simple.

So, feeling very defiant I - (and when I say I, I mean Giles) - just roasted a seasoned rack of lamb, a snip at £34,000 from the farmer's market, in a 220C oven on a bed of rosemary and lemon for about 10 minutes, 10 minutes at 180C and then 10 minutes' rest. Giles says that if he was going to do it again he'd lightly brown it first. But there was nothing wrong with it.

We had with it baked leeks, which were very easy. I parboiled some leeks for 5 minutes in salted water and then put them in a gratin dish, poured over a modest amount of extra thick single cream and a lot of grated gruyere and baked in a 180C oven for 25 minutes. They don't look very nice in the photo but they were great.

Then we ate it dancing around the kitchen a bit to Cheryl Cole, who'd come on the radio. And when I say we, I mean I.

How to talk to a butcher

Marrow bone and parsley salad

This is the kind of thing that I would never in a million years cook if it weren't for Giles and his not-scared-of-anything eating. It's a recipe from Fergus Henderson's seminal cookbook Nose to Tail Eating, which was published in a tiny print run in 1999.

It's a perfectly terrifying cookbook, advising on how to cook brains and brawn and pig's heads and other parts of animals you'd previously thought were totally un-eatable. Its saving grace for the amateur cook is how charmingly its written; you can tell that Fergus is a nice guy and just wants for you to do well and live a long and happy life. His exortation in his recipe for boiled gammon and carrots with parsley sauce that the sauce must be served in a jug so that guests can "express themselves" is an editorial tick that has entered into our daily cannon.

Anyway, on Saturday we went to the vastly overpriced farmer's market near us and found a butcher who was selling marrowbones for about tuppence each. (Butchers often throw them out, or give them to people to feed to their dogs, but don't let that put you off. You might be able to pick some up for free if you're more charming and brave than I am.)

We took them home and roasted them in a slightly too-hot oven for about 20 minutes. If you do this, I would advise you set your oven to about 200C and fashion little foil cups to sit the bottom of the bone in because otherwise stuff leaks out everywhere, which is a shame. Depending on the size of the marrow bone, people can eat three or four little ones and two or three big ones. You can tell the marrow bone is ready because the marrow will be sort of bouncy and slightly melted but hasn't entirely disappeared.

You serve these roasted bones with toasted sourdough and also a parsley salad, which goes like this:

1 large handful/bunch parsley, roughly chopped

small handful capers, chopped or not, up to you

half a shallot, chopped

You then dress this salad with a large squeeze of lemon and a splash of olive oil. The idea is to spread the toast with some marrow, top it with parsley and eat.

This isn't a meal, obviously, for anyone frightened of salt or fat as it's very greasy and an overindulgence can quickly make you feel queasy. But it IS delicious, modern and economical. And, I daresay, gives you a very shiny coat.

Duck and beetroot

Sometimes I surprise myself with the recipes I decide look nice. For example, this roast duck and beetroot thingy, which I picked out of Waitrose Food Illustrated the other day and tried out on Saturday, looks totally weird (doesn't help that I've put it on a black dish... should have used a white one to show up the colour). But something about it appealead to me. Often I think I'm lacking a vitamin supplied by an ingredient in the recipe. For a whole year, I went crazy for any recipe with eggs in it and I'm convinced it was because I was starved of B12.

Anyway, this is a Gordon Ramsay recipe, although these days I think when things are said to be by Gordon Ramsay they've actually been rustled up by an ambitious sous-chef and given the okay by GR via an iPhone video link.

But whoever made it up, this is jolly easy but looks pretty amazing. The sauce with the beetroot is quite sweet. Either just go with it, or reduce the sugar by a third.

For 4

800g beetroot, trimmed and peeled
100g butter
150g soft brown sugar
150ml sherry vinegar
75g sultanas (I didn't have any, so didn't use them)
4 duck breasts with skins on. All duck recipes make a huge song and dance about Gressingham duck, but Waitrose only have them smothered in all kinds of digusting sauces so I just used normal free range duck.


1 Cut the beetroot into thin slices. Melt the butter with the sugar and vinegar in a pan. When the sugar has dissolved, add the beetroot and toss to coat. Season then cover with crumpled piece of greaseproof paper. Simmer gently for 45 minutes.

2 Stir in the sultanas if using and cook for another 10-15 minutes, until the beetroot is just tender (which, with beetroot, means a bit of bite still left). If you want the sauce really syrupy, remove the beetroot and boil the liquid until it's like chocolate sauce.

3 Score the skin of the duck breasts with a sharp knife in a criss-cross pattern and season. Place skin-side down in a dry frying pan and cook gently for 8 minutes. Don't be tempted to use a non-stick frying pan because the skins won't go as crispy. Turn up the heat after the initial 8 minutes to give the skin a chance to really crisp up.

The duck breasts will stick like glue to the bottom of the pan. This is annoying, but all it means is that you have to take a slim fish slice and really get under the breasts to separate them from the bottom of the pan. If you're genuinely spooked by stuff like this you could, before you put the breasts into the pan, brush the skins with the MEREST HINT of oil. And really, I mean a tiny cat's lick.

After you flip the breasts, the recipe says to cook for another 3 minutes. This 8 min + 3 min cooking time doesn't give especially rare meat. If you want it rarer, I'd say cook for 6 + 2 mins. I guess commercial recipes don't want to recommend rare cooking times because they don't want to be accused of poisoning people.

4 Spoon the beetroot and cooking juices into the centre of a plate or onto a large serving dish. Slice the breasts up quite thick and arrange them over the top.

Poppy Bo Lo Baau - Pineapple Buns Straight Dough Method

High in carbohydrates, saturated fats and cholesterol!!! What a　freaking Calorie Bomb! Well....In spite the fact, that Bo Lo Baau is always loved and enjoyed by many many Chinese. It is known in Cantonese as BO LO BAAU, in which "BO LO" means "pineapple", and "BAAU" refers to bun, either with or without stuffing. The pineapple bun contains no pinepple at all, it's a sweet bun topped with a sugary checked crust.

Dough	Topping
250 g Bread flour 20 g Milk powder 120 ml 3.5% Milk, warm 30 g Honey 3-4 g Instant dry yeast 1/2 Egg Pinch of salt 15 g Butter 150 g Poppy paste	3 tbsp Castor sugar 0.5 g Baking ammonia 0.5 g Baking soda 80 g All-purpose flour 2 tsp Milk powder 55 g Shortening 2 tsp Egg, beaten A few drops of pale lemon colouring

1. Dissolve sugar with warm milk in a mixing bowl. Sprinkle dry yeast over and let proof for about 10 minutes. Add in bread flour and egg. Stir at low speed until a rough dough ball formed. Stir in salt and butter until evenly dispersed. Increase the speed to medium and knead the dough until a soft and elastic dough has formed. The dough should pass the windowpane test. (stretching the dough to see if it thins out).
   
2. Turn onto floured surface and knead briefly, then form into a dough ball. Place it in lightly greased bowl. Cover with a plastic wrap and place the whole container in a warm bath (35C/95F) 45 minutes, until nearly double in size. Coat one of your fingers with flour, then press it gently into the center of risen dough to the bottom. If the indentation remains, the dough is ready. Punch down the dough and divide into 9 equal pieces, roll each piece into a ball. Cover with a plastic wrap and let rest for 10 minutes. Flatten each dough, with the seam side down. Turn and wrap in poppy fillings. Place them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Cover and let rise for about 35 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.
   At the meantime, combine together sugar, baking ammonia and baking soda in a bowl.
3. Sift in the flour and milk powder. Add in the rest of ingredients and mix till all incorporated. On a plastic wrap, flatten each pineapple topping to round, about the size of each dough bun. Place them on the dough bun and lightly score with a toothpick to create checked surface, which resembles a pineapple. Brush on egg wash and bake at 200C/400F for about 16 minutes on middle rack.

White sauce - experienced cooks look away

It took me years to master a white sauce. I was shown at an early age by my mother how to do it, but when trying to replicate it, it always went horribly wrong. Lumpy, floury and gross.

My mother, in her haste to make food for 4 children, while repairing a wall that had fallen down in the middle of the night and fixing the car, had left out two quite important steps when she was talking me through it, which I later discovered when reading a cookbook. Can't remember which.

So here we go, this is a white sauce. I'm not including exact amounts, because they don't really matter. The important thing is that you get the hang of the method and the idea.

Take a knob of butter, approximately 50g and melt it gently in a pan

Now take the pan off the heat (this is very important) and sprinkle over a tablespoon of flour. Stir in with a wooden spooon until there are no lumps. Add flour bit by bit until you have made a sort of butter-and-flour paste. Stop when it is still on the creamy side, rather than stiff and dry.

Now add about two glugs of milk and with a wooden spoon or whisk (still with the pan off the heat) mess it about until it seems more or less mixed in. A couple of little lumps don't matter.

Put the pan back on the heat and pour in the rest of the milk - eg. probably about 3/4 of a pint if you were doing a macaroni cheese for about 4-6 people.

Heat it all over a medium flame, stirring often with a whisk or a wooden spoon - or a combination of both. About three or four minutes into this, you ought to find that the sauce starts to thicken. At this point you can add cheese if you are making a cheese sauce. Either way, throw in a pinch of salt and a few twists of pepper.

After the sauce has thickened and you've added your extra ingredients cook the sauce for a bit - maybe 4 or 5 minutes or even more - over the lowest flame you've got, stirring all the time. This extra bit of cooking is what prevents the sauce from forming that horrible grainy floury texture that happens so often.

If you wander off for a minute and then come back and it's formed a skin, don't worry, just stir this all in. If for some reason your sauce turns out much more thick than you wanted it, you can add more milk.

And that ought to be that.

Matcha Bread Chiffon Roll

There are four primary polyphenols in green tea and they are often collectively referred to as catechins. Powerful antioxidants, catechins have been shown in recent studies to fight viruses, slow aging, and have a beneficial effect on health. Clinical tests have shown that catechins destroy free radicals and have far-reaching positive effects on the entire body. Free radicals are highly reactive molecules and fragments of molecules that can damage the body at the cellular level leaving the body susceptible to cancer, heart disease and other degenerative diseases.

Dough	Chiffon Cake
350 g All-purpose flour 15 g Motcha tea powder 55 g Sugar 1/2 tsp Salt 6 g Instant dry yeast 40 g Whole Egg 20 g Honey 120 g Warm milk 110 g Tangzhong Starter - Water Roux Starter via Starch Gelatinization 50 g Butter	3 Egg yolks 25 g Sugar 60 g Milk 40 g Vegetable oil 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract 100 g Cake flour 1/2 tsp Baking powder 4 Egg whites 75 g Sugar A few drops white vinegar

1. To prepare the bread dough. Sift together the flour, tea powder, sugar, salt and instant dry yeast in a mixing bowl. Add in egg, honey, milk and the starter. Mix with dough hook at slow speed for 1 minute. Increase the speed to the medium and continue to knead until a dough forms. Adjust the speed to slow and cut in butter. Stir until all incorporated. Increase the speed to medium again and knead until the gluten has developed, i. e. elastic, smooth, non-sticky and leave from sides of mixing bowl. Prove the dough in a lightly greased plastic bag for 1 hour, leave in a warm place until dough doubles in volume.
   
2. Punch the dough down to release gases produced in the fermenting process. Divide them into 4 portions and round up. Rest, covered, for 15 minutes at the room temperature.
   
3. To prepare the chiffon cake. Beat the egg yolk with sugar until the sugar completely dissolved. In another bowl, stir together the milk, oil, and vanilla extract. Warm the mixture to 35C/95F. Add into the egg yolk mixture. Sift the cake flour and baking powder into the liquid mixture.
   
4. Whip the egg whites on high speed until foamy. Add the white vinegar and continue beating until soft peaks form. Beat in the sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Gently fold 1/3 of the whites into the batter to lighten it, and then fold in the rest of the whites. Pour the batter into 2 Swiss roll pan each lined with a baking sheet, spreading the cake batter with an offset spatula. Bake in a preheated oven 165C/340F for 10-12 minutes until gold brown. A toothpick inserted in the center will come out clean and the cake, when lightly pressed, will spring back.
   
5. Immediately upon removing the cake from the oven carefully remove the parchment paper. If the baking paper sticks to the cake, lightly brush the back of the paper with a little warm water, allow to stand for a few moments, then peel the paper from the cake. Each cut into half and set aside. Roll the each bread dough out with a rolling pin to about 15 x 12 cm.
   
6. Set the cake atop the dough and roll up from a short side. Place them on the baking pan lined with a baking sheet. Cover with a wet towel and leave to rise for about 1 hour until doubled in bulk. Preheat oven to 175C/350F and bake the bread for 20-25 minutes.

Matcha Bread Chiffon Roll

Flexible gratin

So I made it to Waitrose in the end and actually had a pretty nice time. I stopped to look at a cookbook I always see there, which is called "Do-Ahead Dishes for the Dinner Party Diva" or something. I had always thought it looked like my least favourite kind of cookbook - swirly cartoon drawings of stick-thin women on the front and then crappy boring recipes for roast chicken and salad dressings on the inside.

But actually, it was quite good. I flicked through and happened to land on a recipe for Pork and Ginger potstickers, which sound from the description like little Chinese dumpling things, which I've always been curious about. So, to hell with it, I thought - this book can't be that bad and I tossed it into my trolley.

Anyway, back to lunch. I decided to make a gratin. I love making gratins because they are a way of eating a meal consisting of mostly vegetables without wanting to hang yourself. I'm not one of those girls who thinks that fat and dairy are bad for you. I eat no processed food, nor do I often eat meals where carbohydrate is the focus (pasta, baked potato, rice), so I feel blithely entitled to cover everything I do eat in cream and cheese, fat and salt.

This particular gratin was a variation of one in Nigel Slater's Tender. He describes it as being a white cabbage gratin with cheese and mustard, although he then forgets to include the mustard in the recipe or the method. But it's okay, I forgave him. I'm not so mojo-less that I can't add a bit of mustard to a damned white sauce.

My take on Nigel's gratin was white cabbage based, but also included spinach, mushrooms and a lot of chopped up left over roast chicken covered with a pecorino/parmesan cheese sauce and topped off with two generous handfuls of breadcrumbs.

So, here we go:
1 pointed cabbage
6 chestnut mushrooms, chopped
2 large handfuls of spinach
chopped up leftover roast chicken (or anything if you have it and not if not)
pecorino and parmesan
salt and pepper
2 large handfuls breadcrumbs
enough white sauce to cover the lot. Have we talked about white sauce? I kind of assume that if I can make it, anyone can - but if you can't, just shout.

1 - Boil the cabbage for 2 mins in salted water
2 - melt some butter in a pan and briskly toss round the chopped mushrooms and spinach until wilted but not totally surrendered
2- Make up a white sauce, using about 300ml of milk and then throw in a very large handful of chopped or grated pecorino and two large pinches of parmesan, salt, pepper and some cream if you've got it
3 - Add a level teaspoon of dijon mustard and stir until the cheese has melted
4 - spread the cabbage out on the bottom of a gratin dish, then arrange over that the spinach and mushrooms, then over that the chicken if using, then the white sauce and finally the breadcrumbs.
5 - shove in a 180C oven for 20-25 mins

Cooking fatigue

Ok, I lied. I AM bored with writing this blog. Or, rather, I'm bored with cooking. Bored as hell. I think it might be because I had a couple of things go wrong and there's nothing more dispiriting than failure. I've simply lost my mojo.

I think this is might be what they call cooking fatigue, although it's more commonly experienced by working mothers of three than by lazy freelancers who can't be bothered to go to Waitrose. It's also maybe because of my diet. I rarely find exciting recipes that conform to my diet plans that aren't things you've heard about before: quinoa, broad bean salad, ceviche. Yawn.

Or what happens is that I decide to "make things up", which are almost always disgusting because while I'm an OK cook, I'm no kind of chef. Maybe this is it? Maybe this is the end of my cooking "journey"? Now I know that if I follow a recipe it'll probably turn out okay and I've conquered (mostly) my fear of mass catering all that's left is to sit about eating leftover roast chicken until I die.

But before I flake out completely I scoured Waitrose Food Illustrated and today's the table, which if you don't know is the Times' new food section thing and found some food that I can be almost bothered to slop downstairs and put my apron on for:

Barbequed squid
Roast pork with a muscovado crust
Lamb tagine

All that's missing are all the ingredients. Do they sell mojo at Waitrose?

Kale with garlic and chilli

I didn't die, or get bored with writing the blog, or drink too many hot toddies and then drive into a lampost, while aiming for Waitrose. I went to France - the South of France. To Nice where it is nice. To kvetch about the wedding in French. "Sacre bleu! La robe! La robe N'EST PAS FINI!" And also, it felt like, to eat nothing but baguettes and cheese. Although there was one cheese that was so uric that it tasted exactly like I imagine pissy knickers might taste.

A lot of the cooking was done by my friend Julia Churchill, a brilliant home cook who really ought to be writing about cooking but she's too busy being some kind of high-powered literary agent. Fact about Julia: she once cooked a vegan lemon tart for Lou Reed.

So I came back from France late on Sunday night and dived back into my no-booze all-greens diet. Whoopee!!

Above is some of Monday night's supper (out of shot is a huge, meltingly roasted chicken) and what you're looking at really is the green stuff, which is kale not the carrots, although they were nice too.

I've cooked kale before but I was doing it wrong - I'm pretty sure I just boiled it and plonked it on a plate and it was absolutely disgusting. Beyond disgusting. Giles is a huge greens freak so I grudgingly bought some more last week but was secretly hoping that it would just sit in the larder and go gross and we'd eventually throw it away. But the game was up and he insisted on cooking it last night properly.

This meant me pinching yet another idea off Henry, who braises kale with chilli and garlic. G heated some oil in a large heavy frying pan-thing and added lots of chopped chilli and garlic. Then he added the kale (no water or anything!) and cooked it until it all sort of wilted down like spinach, for about 5-10 minutes. And then we ate it, feeling like such good little citizens and it was actually really nice. Not as good as a hot toddy, but much better than pissy French cheese.

Pan-Fried Stuffed Bell Peppers

A wonderful combination of tangy taste, watery, and crunchy texture, bell peppers are excellent sources of vitamin C and vitamin A----two very powerful antioxidants. In addition to providing the vitamins that convert homocysteine into other beneficial molecules, bell peppers also provide fiber that can help lower high cholesterol levels, another risk factor for heart attack and stroke. WHFoods

	Sauce
8 Bell pepper wedges ©angiesrecipes 1 tbsp Cornstarch Corn oil 150 g Ground meat 5 Shelled shrimps 2 tbsp Dried shrimps ©angiesrecipes 1/3 tsp Salt 1/3 tsp Sugar Pinch of white pepper powder 1-2 tbsp Cornstarch	1/2 tbsp Black beans 2 clove Garlic paste 1/2 tsp Ginger paste 1/2 tbsp Light soya sauce 1/3 tsp Sugar 1/2 tsp Salt 100 ml Water 1 tbsp Stachy solution

1. Soak dried shrimps in water for about 10 minutes. Drain. Devine and finely chop the shelled shrimps. Then mix in the dried shrimps and ground meat. Chop until the whole mixture is fully incorporated. Add in sugar, salt, white pepper and cornstarch and stir vigorously until the mixture is elastic.
   
   
2. Lightly dust the inside of bell pepper wedges with cornstarch. Fill each pepper wedge with the mixture, mounding slightly. Pat the top with a bit cornstarch.
   
   
3. Heat up a skillet with some oil. Place the stuffed pepper wedges, filling upside down, in the skillet and pan-fry for about 3-5 minutes. Gently shovel the bell peppers to the sides. Leave half tablespoon of oil to stir-fry ginger, garlic and black beans until fragrant. Pour in water, season with salt and sugar and cover to simmer for 5-8 minutes. Arrange the peppers on a serving dish and thicken the sauce with the starchy solution. Spoon over the stuffed bell peppers and serve.

Pan-Fried Stuffed Bell Peppers "Can't find a Recipe? Check out Reader's Digest Canada."