fancy breakfast or brunch? baked egg and proscuitto in a bread roll

baked egg and proscuitto in a bread roll

Every so often I find a couple of rock-hard bread rolls looking up at me forlornly from the bread bin. One of my favourite things to do with them is to reheat the rolls, stuffed full of a few of my favourite things - ham, cheese and eggs and a little fresh basil. A fabulous breakfast or brunch.

a perfect spring pasta supper: spaghetti with leeks, parma ham and hazelnuts

spaghetti with leeks, parma ham and hazelnuts

Have you ever seen a recipe on a website, or while flicking through a cookbook or magazine and thought, I must cook that? And have you, despite modern technology, mobile internet, digital cameras and other technical fol-de-rols, failed to make a note of it, instead relying on your memory and an ability to substitute those ingredients you haven't got or that are hard to come by? So what happened? Did it turn out as expected, or like me, did it turn out that you had substituted every ingredient such that the recipe was unrecognisable and sadly just not terribly exciting.

a witches brew soup

a witches brew soup

Of all the food I cooked at Borough Market's demonstration kitchen suitable for a children's Halloween party, the one that got the most visceral reaction was my Witches Brew soup. Unfortunately that reaction was a unanimous "ugh". Where, oh where did it all go wrong? I suspect I was a victim of my own making.

spanish moorish skewers: pinchos morunos

pinchos morunos (Spanish Moorish skewers)

No country or its people particularly like being invaded by another, unless I suppose it is by friendly, high-spending tourists. But one of the things I love about looking at the history of food and the different world cuisines, is how conquest and migration can change or benefit a conquered country. Of course it is easy with the benefit and distance of a thousand or even a hundred years to look at the food highlights of conquest.

caldo verde: portuguese pork, potato and kale soup

caldo verde
(Portuguese pork, potato and kale soup)

I feel as if I am working with a northern-accented voiceover at the moment: "Day 35 in the Marmaduke Scarlet house. Rachel is in the kitchen making soup again." You get the picture. I am continuing to make soup for my friend Chris. Things seem to be going quite well; Chris seems healthy and he certainly hasn't lost his appetite; well at least not for soup.

in praise of damien trench: baked camembert

baked camembert with garlic, rosemary and bacon

My favourite radio food writer, Damien Trench, is back. He returns on Radio 4 for another series of his superlative programme, In and Out of the Kitchen. I have so missed his wise, fulsome words and unflappable approach to food.

Damien Trench is the comic creation of Miles Jupp; a gentle parody of the most florid aspects of food writing. The programme is an absolute hoot.

seafood chowder

seafood chowder

For the foreseeable future I shall be cooking for a friend of mine who is quite unwell. But while Chris is poorly, he hasn't lost his appetite at all; just his usual ease in swallowing. Feeling a bit helpless, I offered to make him soup and his eyes lit up. Poor old Chris had been living off baked beans and scrambled eggs, so he welcomed my intervention.

This arrangement is brilliant for both of us: Chris gets healthy, strengthening soups and I get to try out old favourites and make new discoveries. One of my first discoveries is that I don't hate seafood chowder at all.

chorizo, nutella, sour cheese and pickled apple crostini

chorizo and nutella crostini with pickled apples and labneh

A few years ago I started to make a party canape that was essentially a crostini smeared with Nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread) and topped with a crisp slice of Spanish chorizo sausage. While some people were a bit suspicious of the combination of cured pork with chocolate, they were usually won over by the flavour. What it lacked in sophistication, it definitely made up for in taste. It is, if I say so myself, a bit fabulous.

The reason why I think it works is because of the synchronicity in “companion eating” - serving meat with the kind of fruit or vegetables the animal might once have eaten - so venison with blackberries, or pork with apple and nuts. The peppery spices in the chorizo also seem to have an affinity with both hazelnuts and chorizo.

party nibbles: bacon-wrapped marinated water chestnuts

bacon-wrapped marinated water chestnuts

Growing up as expats in Malaysia, my little brother's obsession with the crunchy texture of water chestnuts was legendary. (Although I pretty certain no other family ate them in spag bol!)

An American friend of my mother's introduced my family to these delicious marinated water chestnuts. It was love at first bite.

Spicy, sweet and sour - these lovely nibbles are perfect for the party season.

mulled damson gin (brings a little festive cheer!)

mulled damson gin

If you read my post about making damson gin last year, you will know that as much as I love gin, I don't drink it very often as it brings out the miserablist in me; we are talking weeping, wailing, and teeth-gnashing. I end up looking like a demented panda caught in a rain storm.

Grilled honeyed figs and labneh cheese salad (infused with middle eastern flavours)

grilled honeyed figs and labneh cheese salad

I wanted to create a salad suitable for the colder weather. (Yes, you can eat salads in the autumn and winter!) I wanted something that looked pretty on the plate, which reflected the warm muted colours of an English autumn. Seasonal figs seemed perfect in every way; such a beautiful colour both inside and out, as well as sweetly delicious. I couldn't make up my mind whether to serve the fig salad as a savoury course or a dessert, but my nub of saucisson sec won me over to the savoury side, which worked beautifully with the sweet perfumed flavour of the figs.

lost in france: my salade lyonnaise

salade lyonnaise (bacon and egg salad)

After walking around a small town in southern France for what seemed like hours, we still hadn't found either our friends we were meeting for lunch. We are lost in France and not in a big-haired, floaty chiffon 1970s soft focus kind of way; no birds singing, bands playing or people dancing (just the rumble of traffic and me scowling). I am hot, dusty, and footsore and, possibly more importantly, I haven't eaten for more than three hours. Quelle horreur! 

nigel slater's roasted courgettes with thai-style minced chilli and lime pork

 nigel slater's roasted courgettes with thai-style minced chilli and lime pork

Apart from charcuterie, pork doesn't have much of a place in my kitchen, for no other reason that I just don't think it tastes of an awful lot. However, occasionally pork mince gets a workout in meatballs and recently in burgers for the barbecue. I had a little mince left over and was looking for an idea of how to use it up.

So when in doubt and looking for a little bit of inspiration, as ever I turn to Nigel Slater. This time to Tender, Volume 1, since I also have a glut of courgettes to use up. Since Tender is organised by vegetable, it was only a matter of minutes, page 290 and "baked marrow, minced pork" that I had my recipe.

summery sausages and caramelised onions with crushed buttered peas

summery sausages and caramelised onions with crushed buttered peas

It's one of those days when the weather doesn't know whether it's Arthur or Martha; we've had three seasons in one day. The morning started bright and fresh as spring, before segueing into a drizzly autumn, returning to a splash of summer and now settling, halfway between the three, as if controlled by some malevolent weather swing-o-meter. Just a normal summer in England again.

poached cherry, roasted balsamic red onions and goat's cheese salad with cherry vinaigrette

poached cherry and goat's cheese salad with cherry vinaigrette

When it comes to recipes, I am something of a tinkerer. I find something I like and then wonder to myself whether there was something I might have missed. Could the recipe be improved?

In itself, this is not a problem. Unless you are like me; you write a food blog and have set yourself the challenge of getting out of a culinary rut (number one in my culinary New Year's resolutions). I had assumed that no-one would want to read the same old, same old, with my minor tweaks and fol-de-rols.There are also times when frankly I had tinkered too far and the food was only fit for the compost heap. (But let that be our little secret.)

perfect whatever the weather: nigel slater's smoked haddock, potato and bacon

Nigel Slater's smoked haddock, potato and bacon

Why Rachel, when your profile says that you love to cook seasonally, are you posting a dish which screams winter comfort in June? A reasonable question.

Well it is for several reasons, one of which is the bloody English weather. After a weekend away enjoying balmy sunny weather (I even managed to catch a touch of sun), I have returned to London to grey skies and a distinct chill in the air. It feels like 2012 all over again. Bah!

thai-style noodle salad with crispy garlic pork

thai-style noodle salad with crispy garlic pork

Another lucky dip day, when I turn spring cleaning the freezer into a food adventure. What do we have today? Er . . . well . . . um . . . it looks like meat. I'm not sure what it is. All my well intentioned plans and new year's resolutions to start labelling what I put in the freezer have gone awry again - clearly the freezer-proof pen that I had used to label the container wasn't actually proof against my hot sticky fingers. The neatly printed label is now merely a smear of black ink. Perhaps I could market it as art - take a photograph and suddenly it's all a bit William Eggleston. Or not!

(overnight) stuffed deli sandwich: it goes to work while you sleep!

stuffed deli sandwich

The French have pan bagnat, those from New Orleans have the muffaletta. Here in Kentish Town, I have a deli sandwich that goes to work while you are sleeping and tastes divine.

Take your favourite deli ingredients (and yes potato salad isn't traditional, but I like it) stuff them into a hollowed-out loaf, wrap in clingfilm and press down. Leave overnight in a cool place. By the time you unwrap the sandwich all the ingredients have got to know each other and the olive oil soaks through the bread, infusing it with yet more flavours. Absolutely delicious.

a quick midweek supper: sausage and roasted fennel stew

sausage and roasted fennel stew

For me flattery is when someone requests one of my recipes or meals. It makes me absurdly happy. So last weekend's request for my Sunday lunch accompaniment of roasted fennel stew had me doing a little dance of glee on the inside. For years I was convinced that fennel was an acquired taste; now that I have decided that fennel is a taste that I have acquired it gives me a lot of pleasure that I can introduce friends to the flavours I have started to enjoy and the fact that they seem to like these flavours too is a definite bonus!

a "normal-service-has-been-resumed" sausage sandwich with honey-mustard caramelised onions

sausage sandwich with honey-mustard
caramelised onions

A big part of my life has been missing recently. Not in a lost-in-action kind of a way, just "gone". My default position as food obsessive had changed, so no longer was I eating, dreaming, reading, singing and talking my way through all things food. I had, I am afraid to say, completely lost my appetite.