As I have grown older, I have liked my beef rarer and rarer. I now prefer rare or medium rare beef, as I think it is more juicy, succulent and has a better flavour than overdone beef. It is also more pleasing to look at, more vivid and strong than a well done grey piece of meat.

Beef doesn’t need any extra flavours to go with it, so I just seasoned it well with pepper. To roast the beef, I wrapped it in cheese and bacon, which I hoped would keep it more moist. The cheese tended to just burn, so would probably be better inside. The bacon was fantastically tasty - baking is definitely a good way to cook bacon.

With the beef I cooked some roasted potatoes. I cut the potatoes into discs and boiled them before roasting. Boiling first makes roasting a lot easier as there are no worries about them being done, and they produce a nicer outside when boiled first. I boiled them with a cinnamon stick, which was a nice surprise when eating them.

Ingredients

• 2kg leg of beef
• 2tbsp mixed peppercorns (try and get some black and some pink or green)
• 100g Brie
• 6 rashers of smoked bacon
• 2 onions

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• 1.5kg potatoes
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 4tbsp oil

Recipe

1. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C.
2. Rub some salt and pepper into the beef, and spread the peppercorns over it. Push some into the meat by stabbing with a knife or filing any natural cavities.
   
3. Cut the cheese into thin slices and smear over the top of the beef. Place the bacon rashers over the top of that, covering the cheese and beef completely.
4. Slice the onions and place in the bottom of a oven proof dish. Place the beef on top of the onions.
5. Cook the beef for 30 minutes at 220 degrees C, then reduce the temperature to 200 degrees C and cook for another 30 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and slice into round discs, about a centimetres thick.
7. Boil the potatoes for about 12 minutes, with the cinnamon stick.
8. Place the potatoes in a roasting dish with the oil and spread the oil over them. Add to the oven.
9. Cook the beef and potatoes for another 30 minutes (so the meat has 1 hour 30 minutes altogether).
10. 

    Remove the beef and place to rest somewhere warm (a top oven is ideal). Check the potatoes are crisp; if not, give them a few more minutes.

11. Get the beef onto a plate or board to carve it. Put the juices and onions from the tin onto the plates for serving.
12. Carve the beef into thin slices. It should be nicely pink inside, as you can see below. It’s easiest if you pull all the bacon off before trying to carve.
    
13. Serve the potatoes and beef. Give everyone a piece of bacon as well!

This served 5 people very well, with lots of meat left over for about 6 servings of sandwiches!

This recipe also explains a nice way to cook chicken which leaves it tender and juicy with a nicely browned outside. I really recommend buying organic or free range chicken - it has a much better texture and actually tastes of something. People often comment that things “taste like chicken.” I’d say that is because all the chicken they eat tastes of very little, so anything bland tastes like it.

I’d serve chicken like this on a hot day, with some green salad, probably including spinach or rocket. It would also go well with some nice light bread.

Ingredients

• 4 chicken breasts
• 1tbsp oil for frying
• 75g salted butter
• 3 cloves of garlic

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• 3 crisp red apples
• A little lemon juice to stop the apple browning
• 300ml yoghurt
• 2tbsp light runny honey

Recipe

1. Heat the oil in a frying or griddle pan over a low to medium heat.
2. Crush or finely chop the garlic. Make several cuts half a centimetre deep across the chicken breasts. Rub some salt and black pepper into the chicken breasts.
3. Fry the chicken for a few minutes on each side, then add the butter and garlic.
4. Reduce the heat and turn regularly for about 10-15 minutes until the chicken is not pink inside and only clear juice runs out(check by stabbing with a knife). Keep basting the garlic butter over the chicken and into the slits you cut in it.
5. While the chicken is frying, or before if you can’t handle doing both at the same time, chop the apples into wedges (check out my Perfect Potato Wedges recipe for how to cut something round into 12 neat wedges.)
6. Add the lemon juice the apple wedges and then arrange so as to cover a serving dish one layer thick.
7. Mix the yoghurt and honey, then spread over the top of the apples.
8. Serve the chicken on top of the apple and yoghurt. Pour any garlic butter left in the pan over the chicken.

You can make them easily in the oven in 30 minutes, they are not too fatty and taste great. I made some just the other day so this recipe is going to have pictures to illustrate exactly how its done.

You can use different seasonings on potato wedges. As a minimum, there should be a little salt, some pepper and chilli. My favourite seasoning is a mixture called “Jamaican Jerk”, which is a mixture of allspice, chilli and pepper. Cajun spice blends are also excellent for wedges.

The type of potato is also important. You want large potatoes, but not massive ones. A potato that would be a little small for baking is perfect for wedges. Different potatoes give a different texture inside the wedge. I think a more floury potato is best, as it gives a crisp crust and a soft inside to the wedge. Good varieties include King Edward, Maris Piper and Desiree.

Ingredients

• One large potato per person
• 1tbsp of oil per potato
• 1tsp of spice mixture per potato

Recipe

1. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees and find a large metal tray.
2. Give the outside of the potatoes a good wash and rub down. Remove any eyes or other nasty bits.
3. Chop each potato into quarters. Don’t cut the long part of the potato in half.
4. Cut each quarter into thirds. Firstly, chop the lower third away:
   

   

   Then chop the remain two thirds in half:

   

5. Put the potatoes in a bowl with the oil and spice mixture and stir well.
6. Lay the wedges out on the tray. Try not to put potatoes on top of each other if you can help it. Sprinkle some more spice mixture onto any potato that looks like it has missed out so far.
7. Cook for about 25 minutes. They are done when golden brown and a knife goes through them easily. You may want to turn them part way through cooking, but this is not essential.

The finished wedges

Best served with mayonnaise or sour cream with chives!

Umami is a Japanese word meaning “meaty” or “savoury”. It can best be described as an in the mouth fullness, a savoury roundness to a dish. A stew that makes you want to smack you lips and grab another hunk of bread.

Umami flavour comes from glutamate, an amino acid that goes into making up proteins. Since it is found in protein, it is not surprising it is a meaty flavour. It is also found in some cheeses; the middle of tomatoes; mushrooms, particularly shittake; seaweed; peas(!); fermented sauces like soy and fish sauce; and flavour enhancers (usually containing monosodium glutamate, the commercially cheapest form of glutamate :))

Many dishes add glutamate to enhance the umami flavour, and I have bottle of fish sauce for this purpose. I don’t know why it is called sauce, as it smells rancid and you only use a few drops in a whole meal! It definitely improves the meaty flavours though.

Another “new” taste being investigated is fat. In 2001, a study showed chemical responses associated with tasting occurred when humans tasted or smelt pure fat (safflower oil). Certainly I can tell how much fat is in many foods by taste, although I suspect it is mostly the slick feel in the mouth that is the clue (or the droplets of oil floating on the surface!) If a dish should be sumptuous, but tastes a little bland and weak, a little pat of butter will usually improve it greatly.

The hot sensation of spicy food could also be counted as a basic taste. Making spicy food can often be a bit hit and miss. When using fresh chilli it can be very difficult to get the spicing right. A useful tip if you make a dish too spicy: add a teaspoon of sugar and taste again. The sugar combines with some of the spice and reduces the spiciness.

I decided to try making some carpaccio for a dinner party. It was really easy and tasted good, although many guests were a little unsure about it. The main thing that puts people off is the fact it is raw, but beef is pretty much totally safe to eat raw, although no official advice will say that. As long as it is quality beef and you have kept it refrigerated, it should be fine (N.B. Eat raw meat at your own risk!)

In order to cut the meat thinly, I cheated slightly by cutting it fairly thin and then hitting with a rolling pin until it was very thin indeed. The parmesan should also be cut as thinly as possible. It brings out the beef flavour well, but you don’t want it to overpower it.

The lemon juice tends to make the colour of the meat darken from pinky-red to a more brown colour, which may make it more appealing to some. I love the lemon flavour too - in fact, what I love abut this dish is the total disharmony of the ingredients - raw beef; very strong cheese; sour, undiluted lemon juice; and peppery rocket. Its amazing how they balance out, and I like it.

Ingredients

• If you do make this, you do so at your own risk!
• 250g sirloin or fillet steak (don’t get thin cut, as it is then to thin to cut thin, if you see what I mean)
• Juice of one lemon
• 50g parmesan
• 50g rocket

1. Make sure you buy the meat from a reputable source, it is not past its date, and has been kept refrigerated. Make sure it has not come into contact with any other raw meat (except other beef) if possible.
2. Cut any fat away from the beef, as that is not nice raw. Hold the beef vertical and attempt to cut thinly using a very sharp knife. You want the thinnest slice you can get, it doesn’t have to be that wide, just make sure it is thin.
3. Once you have you beef sliced thinly, use a rolling pin to further thin it. Don’t hit it too hard as it will break, and be careful it doesn’t stick to the surface you are hitting it on.
4. Arrange a layer of beef onto each plate and sprinkle with the lemon juice.
5. Cut the parmesan into the finest slices you can and half cover each plate with these.
6. Put a small pile of rocket in the middle of the plate.
7. Serve immediately.

This treacle tart also has two unique twists: fruitiness and a spicy sauce.

The fruitiness came more from serendipity than deliberate thought - always a valuable process in cooking. I didn’t have any nice bread handy, but I did have three hot cross buns. So, a fruited, spicy treacle tart seems like a good idea!

The spicy sauce is not really spicy, just a little tart. By mixing yogurt, lime juice and chili, I made something that could really cut through the richness of the tart and cleanse the palette.

Ingredients

• 200g of hot cross buns (3 of them)
• 454g tin of golden syrup
• 100g butter
• 1 egg
• 50ml single cream
• 30ml lemon juice

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• One 9 inch pastry case

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• 150g yogurt
• 30ml lime juice
• Half a teaspoon finely chopped chili (Bart’s Chili in a jar with minimal pickling is good)

Recipe

1. Chop the buns into strips and place in the oven on a low heat (120 degrees.)
2. While the bread strips are drying, heat the butter in a pan until it stops bubbling. Then add the syrup and stir until smooth and runny. Remove from the heat.
3. Beat the egg with the lemon juice and cream.
4. Remove the bread strips once they have dried out a little and grate them as best you can in handfuls! Add them to the egg mixture and stir in. They will break up when wet, so don’t worry about grating them too finely.
5. Add the syrup mixture to the eggy bread, stirring well to avoid cooking the egg before it mixes in.
6. Pour into the pastry case and bake for about 50 minutes at 160 degrees. You want the tart to be firm but not crisp. Any left over mixture can be microwaved for a few minutes and eaten, but don’t ruin your appetite for the real thing.
7. While it’s cooking, mix the yogurt, lime and chili in a bowl for serving. Taste and check it is tart without being spicy. Add more lime and chili if desired.
8. When the tart is cooked, allow it to cool for 10 minutes before serving, as sugar holds it heat well and you can’t taste the sweetness when it is burning hot.

Firstly, pork can be quite tough compared to beef and chicken. One idea I had was to try marinading the pork in some kind of tenderiser before cooking it. Another idea was to boil the pork as this would perhaps make it more tender. In the time-honoured fashion of inventions, I decided to do both. Firstly, the pork was soaked in grapefruit juice. I’ve heard that grapefruit contains enzymes that break down proteins, so figured I’d give it a go. Secondly, the pork was boiled slowly for an hour to tenderise it.

To add flavour to the pork, the cooking was done in cider. This added a delicate apple flavour to the pork. It was also fried for a few minutes on each side after boiling, in order to crisp up and add flavour to it.

The root vegetables were chopped very small, along with some apple, and boiled together. Once they were drained, they were mashed with a tub of creme fraiche, adding extra creaminess to the vegetable and apple sauce. Because it wasn’t so strong like apple sauce, you could eat lots of it with the pork.

Finally, in serving the dish, I used my dry carbs theory: You need to balance wet and dry in meals, and after all the boiling, I just knew the carbs had to be something dry. I therefore had made a big loaf of white farmhouse bread. It went just perfectly with the pork and was ideal for mopping up the leftover sauce. I also liked the idea of using bread because, in the UK, bread is almost never used as the main carbohydrate in a meal, which is a shame. You could also serve with some sort of roast or fried potatoes if you don’t fancy bread.

Ingredients

• 1 grapefruit
• 3 decent pork chops
• 500ml cider

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• 3 carrots
• 2 parsnips
• 1 swede
• 1 apple
• 200g creme fraiche

Recipe

1. Squeeze the grapefruit juice into a shallow container and add the pork chops. Roughed up the surface of the pork with a knife and rub some salt into it. Leave for an hour or two.
2. Peel and chop the root vegetables (not the apple). They are quite hard and can be hard to chop, so work methodically to chop them into pieces, strips and then cubes.
3. Boil the cider and add the chops to it. Boil some water and add the vegetables to that.
4. After about 30 minutes, chop the apple and add it to the vegetables.
5. After another 30 minutes, check if the vegetables are soft. When they are nearly there, heat some oil in a pan and dry off the pork chops. Reserve the cider you cooked the pork chops in. You will probably want to cut them off the bone at this point.
6. Rub some pepper into the pork and fry for a few minutes on each side. While they are frying, drain the vegetables and mash.
7. Remove the pork chops and deglaze the pan with 50ml of the reserved cooking cider. Add to the vegetables with the creme fraiche. Mix and season well.
8. Serve the pork on top of a pile of the sauce, with bread or potatoes on the side.

A good replacement for meat is Quorn, a retextured mushroom protein, but I decided to be a bit more adventurous and use something based on beans and lentils. I used green lentils and haricot beans, but this recipe would work for most types of lentil and bean. After a little thought, I decided to adapt Shepherd’s Pie to be more vegetarian.

Amazingly, they all enjoyed it.

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 onions
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 green chili
• 1 tsp of cumin seeds

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• 100g sunflower seeds
• 1 leek
• 1 carrot

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• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 1 vegetable stock cube
• 1 tsp garam masala

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• 1 can of cooked green lentils
• 1 can of haricot beans

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• 3 large potatoes
• 50g butter
• 125g cheddar or other hard cheese

Recipe

1. Chop the onion finely and fry in the oil for 5 minutes on a medium heat.
2. Chop garlic and chili finely and add to the onions. Add the cumin seeds and fry for a furhter minute.
3. Chop the leek and carrot finely and add the the mix. Also add the sunflower seeds.
4. Fry for a few more minutes, adding more oil if required to stop it burning.
5. Add the tomatoes, stock cube, garam masala, lentils and beans. Add a little water if necessary to cover. Simmer for 20 minutes.
6. While that simmers, peel the potatoes and chop into centimetre chunks. Boil for about 15 minutes until soft.
7. Grate the cheese and drink some wine.
8. Mash the potatoes with the half the butter. Add the other half to the boiling mixture. Taste the boiling mixture and check the seasoning. Add some pepper.
9. Stuff the vegetables into a glass dish, about 30 by 20 cm should fit. Doesn’t matter if it’s nearly at the brim.
10. Attempt the spread the mash over the top (this is tricky, so maybe add some milk to the mash first so it is more runny.)
11. Add the grated cheese on top and some more black pepper.
12. Bake for about 20 minutes.
13. Serve with green salad and garlic bread.

This particular recipe is just a simple bread recipe with a couple of tweaks: added butter, and steam cooking.

Firstly, most bread recipes include a small quantity of oil, usually sunflower. The fancy recipes suggest olive oil. I didn’t see any using butter though, so I thought I’d try that instead. Butter adds a real delicious flavour to the bread (the French have it right of course with croissants and pain au chocolat.)

Secondly, to keep the crust soft, it is essential to keep the air in the oven moist. The way to do this in an ordinary oven is to place a container of water in with the bread. Dead simple, but gives a nice soft crust.

Another cheap trick is to put some flour on top of the loaf for that rustic farmhouse look. But then, eating is about looking as well as smelling and tasting, so I say sprinkle some flour on the top! For even nicer bread, try sprinkling grated hard cheese on top, which blends in to create a lovely, cheesy golden brown crust.

Ingredients

• 325g strong white flour (strong means it has more gluten, a vegetable protein, and thus it strengthens the dough)
• 1tsp salt
• 1tsp sugar
• 25g salted butter
• 200ml warm water (hottest your elbow can comfortably take, about 2 parts cold to one part boiling)
• 7g packet of instant yeast

Recipe

1. Mix all of the ingredients together well. Do not get too hot, but try and keep the mixture warm while you are mixing it.
2. Once you’ve stirred it well, it’s time to begin the kneading. Spread a thin layer of flour on a surface. If you have a flour shaker, use that. If not, then put a 50g pile of flour at the corner of your work surface. You can grab more flour from the pile and throw it over the surface as you need it, without making a mess.
3. Knead the dough until it is springy and dry. When it’s ready, it should stretch well without tearing, and if you twist it like you are giving a chinese burn, the dough you reveal inside should not be too damp or sticky.
4. If the dough is too wet, just keep flouring your work surface and kneading, it’ll get there. If it’s too dry, add a little water at a time, but this shouldn’t happen.
5. Once the kneading is finished, put a drop of oil in the bottom of your mixing bowl and put the bread in it. Spread it around a bit so the bottom is oily and won’t stick to the bowl, then cover with cling film or a clean towel.
6. You want to put it somewhere warm to rise. This used to be the airing cupboard, but I don’t have one of those. Thus, the place to prove bread for the internet generation is:on top of your PC! Just make sure the bowl is clean and dry, your computer does get somewhat warm in use, and don’t knock it off, and you’re set. You can watch it rise while being productive!
7. After about 30 minutes to two hours, it should be at least doubled in size. At this point, knead the dough for one more minute, which will make it shrink quite a lot, and pop it into a loaf tin. It should about half fill the tin.
8. Leave covered in a warm place for another 30 minutes. While it is rising again, put the oven on to preheat to 230 degrees, and place an oven proof dish of water in the oven at the bottom. After 30 minutes, the dough should have filled the tin. Cut some gentle slits in the top (two lengthways or 6 diagonal across it) and sprinkle with some flour.
9. Put carefully and quickly into the oven, which should be quite steamy by this point. Bake for about 25-30 minutes, this will depend on your oven and how golden you like the bread.
10. Remove from the oven and cool a little before trying to cut. Don’t remove the dish of water before it cools down, as it is easy to slosh boiling water on yourself if you do.
11. Enjoy on its own or as a delicious sandwich or soup bread.

Meatballs seemed like a good idea, and I like gnocchi, but don’t have it very often, so I thought it might be nice. Also, I thought the similarity in shape between the meatballs and the gnocchi would be interesting.

In flavouring the meatballs, I was trying to focus on the “meatiness” and the mouthfeel of the dish. As a result, it is quite fatty, as this gives a real juicy, full flavour to the meat, but as a treat, I think it is worth it. Chorizo sausage chopped finely and added to the meatballs really improved the flavour. Smoked paprika is also used, which is the final enhancement to the meat flavour.

Meatballs and gnocchi would be too dry, so a spicy tomato sauce and some melted cheese on top rounded the dish off nicely (although the cheese was quite fatty too, so it would probably be better to leave the cheese out.)

Ingredients

• 400g lamb mince
• 200g chorizo sausage
• 1 small onion
• 1tsp smoked paprika (or ordinary paprika if you can’t find smoked/don’t want to)
• 1tsp cumin seeds
• 1 egg
• 1tbsp lemon juice
• 50g flour

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• 500g fresh gnocchi

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• 1 small onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 400g can of chopped tomatoes
• 1tsp smoked paprika
• 1 red chilli

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• 100g grated Emmental (A hard, quite mild Swiss cheese)

Recipe

1. Chop the onion and chorizo as finely as you can. To chop the chorizo, cut into the thinnest slices you can (a very sharp, thin bladed knife is good here) and then stack these up and cut into the thinnest strips you can. After that, roughly chopping the strips in little stacks will be easy.
2. Mix the onion, chorizo, lamb, spices, lemon juice, and enough egg to bind the mixture together. Season well with salt and lots of pepper. Put a thin layer of flour on a board and then roll small balls of the meat in the flour to dry the surface. Place on a oiled baking sheet, not touching.
3. The meat balls should take about 30 minutes at 180 degrees, but timing may vary. Check them as they cook - when they are done, no pink colour should remain and the outside should be fairly dark but hopefully not crisp.
4. While the meatballs are in the oven, chop the onion and chilli and crush the garlic. If you don’t want it too spicy, deseed the chilli before chopping. Fry in a sauce pan on a medium heat for 5 minutes, then add the tomatoes and spices and reduce the heat to a simmer.
5. Put on a big pan of water for the gnocchi. The gnocchi should only take about 3 minutes to cook, so no hurry!
6. When the meatballs are nearly done, pop the gnocchi in and check the tomato sauce: It should be thick but not too dry. If it is still very liquid, increase the heat a little. Preheat the grill.
7. The gnocchi is done when they all start bobbing up to the surface. To serve, it is best to find a large dish. Put the gnocchi in the bottom of the dish, then the meatballs on top. Pour over the tomato sauce and sprinkle the cheese on top. Pop under the grill until the cheese is melted.