Enjoyably rare beef

Beef with roast potatoes, creamed leeks, horseradish and gravy

What I do on my holidays

Preserving lemons - with salt, peppercorns, bay leaves and coriander seeds

Homemade muesli

Quite the cliche

Homemade muesli with a freshly grated apple, juice of one orange, natural yoghurt and honey

Hearty supper

Food that tasted much better than it looks - a warming sausage and root veg casserole

Started by browning some sausages, then softening onions, leeks and celery in the same dish

Added white wine, potatues, parsnips, celeriac and herbs and cooked down for about an hour

Nourishing supper

Smoked haddock

With crushed new potatoes

Served on a bed of spinach

Plenty of butter with the potatoes, but still felt like a healthy meal

Saturday night supper

Started with a mini prawn cocktail

Then roast pork - with plenty of gravy

Also with crackling, courgettes and carrots

Gu chocolate souffles for a lazy dessert

Fat Friday Food

Fish and chips, just to show that it's not all fine foods

Out for a curry

Out to Devdas in St Albans for a friend's birthday - poppadoms and pickles to start

Lamb curry

With a peshwari naan and sag aloo

Factory food!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Making salmon fishcakes

Mixed cold poached salmon with mashed potatoes, a little mayonnaise, gherkins, capers, parsley, mustard, mayonnaise and seasoning

Chilled, then shaped into small cakes

Chilled again, then flour, egg and breadcrumbs

Shallpw fried for a few minutes in sunflower oil, and served with a soft herby salad

Carrot cakes

Carrot and walnut cakes, with a cream cheese and lime icing

Retro dinner

Started with prawns in a marie rose sauce in a halved avocado

The cold poached salmon with green beans and hot dauphinoise

Finished with a chocolate cheesecake brownie - a great, albeit tricky, recipe from Nigella's 'Domestic Goddess'

Poaching a whole salmon

A change from meat for a weekend, so poached a whole salmon this afternoon

Started by preparing a court bouillon with celery, carrots, red onion, leeks, garlic, white wine vinegar, black peppercorns and star anise

A nice fresh salmon from the market

Poached in the strained liquid for 20 minutes

Before cooling and removing from the bones

Crispy duck for lunch

Crispy duck for lunch - the duck and pancakes were bought, but the plum sauce was a homemade gift, and gettting more delicious all the time

Friday night cooking

A relaxing Friday night risotto, made with the stock from last week's chicken

Sustenance while stirring

Finished with mushrooms, parmesan, butter and parsley

A mushroom risotto

Tasty food, but in retrospect, throwing a spare parsnip into the stock when I made it was a bit of a mistake . . .

Leftover chicken

Using the last of Sunday's roast chicken for a thai green curry, with homemade paste, green beans and spring onions