Holiday breakfast

Cooking blueberry pancakes

Served them in a big pile with some maple syrup

The Drunken Duck

A few days away at The Drunken Duck in the lake district. Great food.

Breakfast was three courses - started with granola, yoghurt and fruit

Followed by grilled grapefruit

Followed by a full english breakfast

Dinner was also good - the bar was great and had a marvellous wine list

An example starter - this was steak tartare, served with raw egg, shallots, cress and chopped ginger

There was a tendency to put too much foam on everything - there's some tasty duck under there somewhere

Packed lunches were also good - some great cheese and chutney sandwiches under there

Left overs

I made the left over mash into potato cakes, and served it with rocket and the rest of the chicken

Coq au vin

A really nice bottle of wine - a 1994 St Emilion Monbousquet

Coq au vin - chicken with red wine, shallots, mushrooms and pancetta

Served with creamy mash and pak choi

Followed by a Portugese custard tart

Finished off with gruyere

Dinner with friends

Steak for main course, but you've seen enough photos of steak, so here's the brownies for pudding

And some gruyere thereafter

Monday dinner

Really good De Cecco pasta with a reduced tomato and garlic sauce

Very simple, but so good I could eat it every night and still be happy

A whole weekend of food

Started the weekend on Friday evening with steamed spicy chicken parcels with sweet chilli sauce and soy sauce

Followed by a chocolate and apricot tart

Close up of the pastry

French toast for Saturday breakfast

A mid-morning snack of chilli-fried prawns

Pasta making for lunch

More pasta making

Starting the ragu bolognese

More ragu making - an alaborate affair with beef, pancetta, chicken livers, carrots, celery, onion, nutmeg, wine and stock.

Letting it reduce

Rolling the pasta

Building the dish

A sort of deconstructed lasagne - with a fresh tomato sauce to garnish. It was a lot of work, but tasted amazing

Dinner was an old favourite - peppered steak with dauphinoise potatoes and broccoli

For the first time I tried circles of dauphinoise - surprisingly easy to do, and somehow seems to taste even better.

Salmon for tea

Wrapped in foil

With a bay leaf, butter, lemon juice and seasoning

Served with spinach and new potatoes