I would certainly recommend this recipe, the cake was moist, flavoursome, and kept well.  I used raspberries that had been frozen from the summer and they worked fine, I really don’t think you need fresh raspberries for this cake since they kinda cook a little and lose their  shape anyway.

I’m going to be baking a ‘Raspberry Bakewell’ cake which I have a nice recipe for, I’ll let you know how I get on, I may even post some photos.

After

September.  It’s that month in the year where the summer fades away, the cold weather starts to creep in, and cozy evenings in start to become very enticing.  Every year this dish kicks off the autumn for me, most of the vegetables are fairly seasonal, and it’s the kind of dinner that is great to eat in front of the TV with a beer.

For me, the following vegetables work a treat:

• Squash / pumpkin
• Potatoes (especially new)
• Parsnips
• Carrots (whole baby ones are great)
• Onions
• Garlic cloves (leave whole)
• Beetroot
• Leeks (leave them whole, sliced vertically in two)
• Mushrooms (leave them whole)
• Courgettes (cut them chunky, or leave whole if they are small)
• Cooked chestnuts (okay, this is a nut but they work a treat)

And a selection of the following herbs are essential (leave them whole):

• Bay leaves
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Sage

1. Par-boil your vegetables for 8-10 mins, they should be slightly tender to a prick of a fork, be careful not to over-boil.
2. Add some olive oil to a large roasting dish and pre-heat for 3-4 mins.
3. Add the vegetables and herbs to the dish, and drape the bacon over the vegetables.  Roast for 45 mins or until everything is a little sticky and crispy.  You will need to check on the veg every 15 mins or so and give it all mix around.  Most of the fat should render out of the bacon, making it go all nice and crispy while at the same time flavouring the vegetables.

Make sure you season before  serving, a little chopped parsley doesn’t go a miss.  Adding some balsamic vinegar to the vegetables before roasting is a nice trick to add a little sweet and sour.

Before

Okay I’ll admit it, this isn’t strictly a  risotto, but it’s the same kind of thing.  The recipe comes from one of my favourite food writers, Yotam Ottolenghi, I just made a few tweaks as it suited what I had in the fridge/cupboard.  This is a dish that has a strong taste of garlic, adjust the quantities if you’d like it a little milder.

1. First up, fry up 5-6 crushed garlic cloves in olive oil until pungent, followed by a whole white onion.
2. Once the garlic and onion are soft, throw in some meatballs until they have some colour on them (you may notice mine don’t have any colour in the photos, I added them directly the sauce since the idea of adding them was an afterthought).  I used shop-bought beef meatballs (since they were on special offer ), you could use any kind of meat here, I imagine chicken meatballs would be lovely.  Of course, if you would like to keep this dish vegetarian, and/or cheaper then omit the meatballs, the dish is substantial enough without.
3.  Add a tin of chopped tomatoes, a teaspoon of paprika, half a teaspoon dried chilli flakes, some thyme, a bay leaf, salt, a teaspoon of sugar, stock, a few cups of water, and finally,  250g of pearl barley.
4. Let it simmer for an hour or so with a lid on, the pearl barley should be soft but have some bite to it.

Serve with grated cheese (I used cheddar), and whatever soft herb you have around (I used curly parsley).

1. First I roughly chop 4-6 garlic cloves and add them to a pan with butter and olive oil in.  The reason I use two fats here is that the olive oil stops the butter from browning too soon, as well as getting a little extra flavour.
2. Once the garlic is approaching slightly golden, I add a good amount of mushrooms, usually a combination of chestnut and oyster, but really it doesn’t matter what varieties you use.  The mushrooms need to cook until soft and tender.
3. Meanwhile, I’ll boil up a pot of spaghetti (linguine works well here), and chop up a load of parsley.
4. Depending on how much liquid the mushrooms have given off during cooking, I may or may not make a roux up in order to thicken the pan liquid.  A roux is just butter and flour combined (do it in a small bowl or cup), and then added to the pan.  The butter helps the flour to cook and prevents it from getting lumpy, while the flour itself thickens the sauce.  I’ll then add a load of chopped parsley to the pan.
5. In order to give the dish’s sauce a bit of creaminess I’ll add some natutal yoghurt, creme fraiche, or cream to the dish.  To be honest, I only ever have yoghurt in the fridge and it does the job perfectly for me.
6. All I do now is drain the pasta, add it to the pan that has the garlic mushrooms in, and then serve the dish sprinkled with more chopped  parsley, grated cheese, and drizzle of olive oil if feeling decadent.

Sometimes I will add shallots to the pan while the garlic is cooking, and if I have any open in the house, I may add some white wine as the mushrooms are cooking.

Like most curries that I cook, the recipe is flexible and ingredients can be omitted or substituted to match your taste or depending on what is in the cupboard or fridge.

1. First of all I fry off about a teaspoon of black mustard seeds in vegetable oil until they start to colour and maybe pop.  I then add onions, diced carrots, garlic, fresh chilli, and fresh ginger.
2. Once the vegetables  have picked up some colour, I’ll add some ready-made curry paste from a jar, tomato purée, and various ground spices such as cumin, coriander, paprika, chilli powder.   If you have them, a couple of bay leaves are great to add at this stage.
3. Next come the chopped tomatoes, and good pinch or so of sugar, and one third of the cooked chickpeas.  I then blitz up the curry with a hand blender (watch out for the bay leaves!) mainly to break up some the chickpeas.  Blitzed chickpeas give off a wonderful taste to the curry and also help to thicken the sauce.
4. I then add the rest of the chickpeas, the lentils, a chicken stock cube, and any vegetables such as peppers, sweet potato, or squash.  I always season with salt, pepper, and sometimes more sugar at this stage.  I may also play around with adding some more ground spices (perhaps some cinnamon for a more aromatic curry, or some more chilli powder for more kick).
5. I’ll cook the curry for about 1 hour, but it only needs 10 minutes or so as long as any extra vegetable are cooked.  Once the curry is cooked, I’ll stir in a little natural yoghurt to add a little body to the sauce.

I like to serve the curry with sliced cucumber dressed in a little fresh mint, and with or without plain white rice or cous-cous.

I have not met any adult who cannot cook bolognese (usually called Spaghetti bolognese), and to be honest I can’t say I’ve ever had a bad one.

Cooking bolognese is comforting in a manner of different ways:

• It’s hard to go wrong or burn anything.
• It is mandatory that the chef drinks a glass of wine while cooking the bolognese, if only to ensure that the wine going into the dish is good enough.
• Throughout the cooking process you can look forward to giving the people you share it with a ‘food baby’, as well as being able justify slobbing on the couch to for hours after eating.

So, this is how I cook my version of bolognese, I’m sure it could be improved somehow, but this is how I like it.

1. First I fry off beef mince in batches so that it gets colour as it frys off, if you add too much to the pan at once it will kinda boil rather than fry.
2. Once the beef has some colour on it, I transfer it out of the cooking pan, and fry off onions, carrots, celery, and lots of garlic.  I had a little salt at this stage in order to let the vegetables soften a little quicker.
3. Once I’m happy with the vegetables (just approaching tender), I add dried oregano, dried marjoram, dried basil, fresh thyme, fresh bay leaves, black pepper, and a beef stock cube.
4. I then add a good slug of red wine to the cooking pan, and after 20 seconds or so to let the alcohol cook off, I add the lid to the pan in order to let everything come together, before adding the previously cooked beef.  If I’m using mushrooms or bell peppers then these will be added at this stage.
5. Next come the tinned tomatoes, well, I actually prefer to use passata since it gives a smoother sauce than chopped tomatoes.  I also add a big whack of tomato purée, and the same amount again of tomato ketchup.  If you’ve never used ketchup in your bolognese, then I really recommend you try it next time, it gives the dish a lovely rich sweetness, and makes up for not having  the best quality, sweet fresh tomatoes.
6. Next comes a little white sugar, water, more salt, and loads of black pepper. Depending on how I’m feeling, I may add more garlic at this point.  At this stage, you should be tasting the dish to make sure it’s seasoned to your liking.  Using sugar will counteract any acidity the tomatoes bring.

As much as I love spicy food, I rarely add chilli to a bolognese, it never feels right once cooked.  However, that approach never stops me adding a few douses of hot sauce to a sloppy joe sandwich the next day.  The same goes for Worcestershire sauce, I can do with out it to be honest, but if I have it in the cupboard then I’ll add a few drops (for some reason, I never seem to have Worcestershire sauce in the cupboard since I always forget to pick some up whenever I go shopping, meh).

I’ll cook my bolognese with the lid on for about 3 hours, and serve with good quality dried spaghetti, a little grated cheese (parmesan if possible), and a fresh green salad.  Oh, and a bottle of red wine of course.

The reasons I’m writing this blog is mainly to give me something to do when I’m thinking about food, but not hungry enough to be eating it.

I have  previously written for a food blog before, but due to various reasons, I passed it on to another author who seems to keep it fairly up to date.  I wrote all posts on Cooking up a storm between April 2008 to November 2008 if you’re interested.

So that’s it, I’m going to let the posts speak for themselves now, I hope you enjoy the blog!