Roast pork belly with honey and mustard parsnips, carrots, onions and roast garlic cloves; red cabbage with bacon

This has got to be one of the most delicious meals I've ever cooked. It was quite improbably, unusually, disgustingly delicious. Everything caramelised, sticky and gooey, the crunch of the red cabbage and the saltiness of the bacon (they really know how to do bacon in Germany) and the garlickyness of the garlic cloves and the sweetness of the onions, parsnips and carrots - and the crackling! Oh, my, the crackling!

For pudding, as an afterthought, I whacked together an apple tart using some leftover ready made pastry that had been sitting in the fridge for weeks and a couple of ageing apples that had been in the fruit bowl for almost as long. Served with vanilla ice cream, it was delicious.

And because it's Hallowe'en, we made our pumpkin, which ended up looking more gruesomely ghoul-like than intended when the red candle inside started dripping blood-coloured wax all the way down to the floor:

Fish, fish fish!

First of all I want to share with you the stunning fish soup that Sam made a few nights ago (recipe from Robuchon):

We ate this with toasted gruyère on baguette slices:

Then there was the amazing meditteranean baked fish with vegetables, also by Sam, also from Robuchon (he's getting really into this Robuchon book - I'm all for it!):

And last night I made a Moroccan fish tagine, flavoured with paprika, garlic, cumin and lemon and cooked with carrots, onions, tomatoes, potatoes and peppers.

So all in all it's been a pretty fishy couple of weeks - no bad thing, if you ask me.

Pea, lettuce and lovage soup; beetroot and walnut salad with garlic yogurt dressing; tomato and chilli jam - and Scrabble...

There have been so many great meals lately that I've built up something of a backlog. First there was the tomato and chilli jam that I cooked the other day - the first successful chutney I've ever made, sweet as heaven and spicy as hell, and I already couldn't imagine cheese, not to mention life, without it:

Then there was the delicious pea, lettuce and lovage soup that Sam made last night, with lovage from our herb garden and stock from the other night's chicken:

Which was followed by a beetroot and walnut salad with a dressing made from yogurt, lemon juice, garlic and chives:

We ended that meal with a wonderfully fungal Tomme de Savoie, complemented by figs and the tomato and chilli jam. Or rather, we thought that was the end - until I hit on the idea of making a dessert out of the surplus lemon icing from the carrot cake I'd made for our tea party with the neighbours on Sunday (just mascarpone, lemon and sugar, so really a lemon mousse), topped with crumbled up homemade ginger biscuits, also leftover from said tea party:

It was one of those evenings where the food had been so good that I couldn't bear for it to end. Afterwards we played a game of Scrabble (our first in German), which is still on hold halfway through because we were too tired to finish it before bed (I'm currently winning by a long way, having cleared my rack on my very first go with 'reintun', simultaneously making 're' off the end of Sam's 'Wege' for a whopping 62 points...)

Tonight Sam was working and a girlfriend of mine came over - she brought pork medallions, which we grilled and served with a garlic, mustard and cream sauce, and bacon (the Germans don't half do good pork products), which we fried up with red cabbage and chestnuts - delicious.

Soy chicken wings...and the ones that got away

There have been so many great meals lately - and I've not been able to photograph any of them because my camera was bust! Wild mushroom and basil lasagne; hot tropical fruit salad; veal escalope with lemon and sage; plum cake. Here, at least, are a few that I did manage to photograph: aubergine parmigiana (the first meal I cooked in our brand new oven), soy chicken wings with rice and kohlrabi (tonight's dinner), and the first roast chicken in our new home. On the menu for tomorrow night, when we have friends coming for dinner, is coleslaw (the real thing), wild mushroom and sage risotto, and tarte tatin (because we currently have more apples than we know what to do with). And we're working on getting a vegetable box delivered.

Grilled mackerel with pea mashed potato

The second meal I cooked for myself and my husband in our new home in Cologne (the first was an Indian meal of dal, rice and spiced vegetables which unfortunately I forgot to photograph for this blog). Our oven still hasn't been installed yet, so every meal has to be cooked on the hob until then. I'm not complaining, though, because the inconvenience of not having an oven is (for the moment at least) far outweighed by the luxury of having a proper gas hob after putting up with a shitty electric one for three years. We are doubly lucky because gas hobs are extremely rare in Germany - so much so that there is no mains gas supply and we have to get ours from a canister that needs replacing every couple of months. (Electric hobs being so vastly inferior to gas, this suggests a conclusion I don't want to draw about German attitudes towards food and cooking. What on earth do they do in restaurant kitchens, I wonder?)

I consulted Hugh (that's Fearnley-Whittingstall, needless to say) on how best to achieve a crispy skin and nicely cooked flesh. Unfortunately by the time I consulted him I'd already slapped the fish on the griddle, so all I discovered was that I'd done just about everything wrong! (I used olive oil, which is too volatile to be used at such a high temperature, and I oiled the pan when I should have oiled the fish. Oh well - I know better for next time.) But I did make use of a nice little tip from Jamie Oliver, which is to season the fish well 15 minutes before cooking and leave it out. That way, the salt draws water away from the skin and stops the skin from sticking to the pan. It worked for me - the skin was lovely and crispy.

At least I got the temperature and timing just about right (medium-high flame, 5 minutes on each side), and the end result was completely delicious despite my errors. For a sauce I simply fried some sliced garlic for a minute or two in the still-hot oil after I'd taken the fish out, then mixed both garlic and oil with some lemon juice and torn basil leaves and poured the lot over the fish. With mashed potato and peas as an accompaniment, this was a memorably good dinner.

Honeymoon delights

Just returned from a glorious honeymoon in Liguria, Italy. Haven't cooked a thing for almost a month, but here are one or two photos of some of the culinary highlights of the holiday: grilled prawns (the most gigantic, juicy and delicious I have ever had), fritto misto of fish, and a plateau of frutti di mare. The first two were both from a wonderful restaurant recommended by a chef friend of my husband's called La Bitta in the small town of Fezzano, near La Spezia. It was everything a restaurant should be: inexpensive, unpretentious, and serving simple, fresh, delicious food cooked with skill and love. I strongly recommend it to anyone visiting the region.

Having eaten nothing but seafood for the last two weeks I'm rather looking forward to the rack of lamb which my husband is marinating downstairs in the kitchen as I write! But that's for another post.

Grilled salmon with teriyaki marinade, rice, broccoli

Bit of a cheat putting this on here, really, because I didn't make the marinade - it's out of a bottle. I was going to make it - I got the soy sauce, mirin and brown sugar out the cupboard - only to find that nestling behind them was a bottle of Tesco ready-made teriyaki marinade! I haven't been in much of a cooking mood lately - too many other things to do - so I decided to go with it. I did fry some ginger along with it though.

Sardines, roasted peppers and lemon ice cream in NYC

I've been staying with family in New York for the last 10 days and cooking dinner for them every night. It was boiling hot, so I made lots of summery salady things, trying to minimise oven and hob use because it was like a furnace in that kitchen. Made lots of lovely things, only some of which we got round to photographing. In these photos (in a random order) we have:

- Tilapia fillets cooked en papillote with white wine, garlic, lemon and herbs, served with cannellini bean and roast vegetable salad

- Grilled sardines

- Tomato, basil and cucumber salad

- Mashed cannellini beans with rosemary and olive oil; tzatziki

- Roasted red and yellow peppers with garlic, olive oil and balsamic

- Homemade lemon ice cream with blueberries and strawberries

I also made a killer Boston corn chowder, but the photo didn't come out well.

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Seared tuna steak with lemongrass, garlic and cherry tomatoes; new potatoes, broad beans

I got this lovely tuna steak from the fishmonger in the market on Sunday, intending to have it for dinner that night, but impromptu dinner invitations from friends on both Sunday and Monday nights meant that I couldn't eat it until today. It was still delicious though - seared on a hot griddle with chopped garlic, ginger, lemongrass and cherry tomatoes, with a good squeeze of lime juice to finish.

Mezze plate

Got these lovely soused anchovies, gigantes, houmous and harissa at the market yesterday. Another delicious summery lunch on the balcony to look forward to as I spent the morning ploughing through difficult philosophy of language essays. Thankfully the building works outside are now a lot quieter than they used to be!

Spaghetti with ham, broad beans, cherry tomatoes and crème fraîche

Another rambling, mixed-up 'whatever's in the fridge' type meal, thrown together with the ubiquitous garlic (a restrained two cloves this time) and lemon juice. As usual, I made enough for two people, then proceeded to munch my way through the whole lot (what you see in the picture is only the first helping...) I have an overripe mango which I ought to have for dessert, but can't bring myself to eat anything else just now.

Poached salmon, new potatoes, freshly podded peas, roast garlic

A pretty classic one, this. Had two friends round for dinner and we had this on the balcony in the evening sun with a glass of Trinity apple juice. Almost forgot to photograph it for the blog - hence the half-eaten photo!

Broad beans, bacon, mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, basil, garlic, lemon

Today is Suicide Sunday, the beginning of May Week, which is traditionally spent drinking as much alcohol as is humanly possible. Needless to say that isn't so much my cup of tea (as it were), but I still spent most of the day drinking Pimms and eating strawberries in the Master's Garden at the TCMS Garden Party. And before that I went to a fair with some friends where I had a roast lamb wrap, a mezze plate and rather a lot of chocolate fudge. So come the evening I didn't really feel like eating anything much. A friend joined me for dinner and we made this lovely light meal with the broad beans and huge elephant garlic I'd just bought at the organic stall in the market. We blanched the chopped garlic along with the beans - a nice idea, although even less than the two minutes we gave it would have been better - then scattered it all over the salad, along with some torn leaves from my basil plant. A slug of olive oil and a good squeeze of lemon juice made it the perfect light meal for a summer's evening.

Grilled chicken marinated in garlic, lemon and rosemary

I picked some rosemary from my other source yesterday: the front garden of a house in a little street near me. For dinner tonight I put it in a marinade for some chicken fillets with plenty of crushed garlic and lemon juice/zest. A few minutes on the grill was all it took - then I served it with rice and asparagus.

Pasta with smoked salmon, asparagus and crème fraîche

I didn't think this simple supper would be worth posting on the food blog, but in fact it was one of the most delicious meals I've had in a while. (Well, actually, not that long, given the general standard of what I eat! But still.)

Not cheap, Marks and Spencer's smoked salmon, but it certainly is nice. I didn't really want it to cook at all, so I just threw it over the cooked conchiglie with a dollop of Taste the Difference crème fraîche (and I could). I then added the asparagus, which I'd steamed over the pasta water for the final couple of minutes of cooking. A good grinding of black pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice, und es war soweit.

Bacon-wrapped chicken breasts stuffed with cream cheese, garlic and herbs

I needed to find a use for the cream cheese leftover from last week's rhubarb and strawberry cheesecake. (Sorry not to keep my promise to upload photos of that, by the way - the filling was extremely wobbly, so although it tasted amazing it looked a mess! Went all over the table when we tried to cut it.)

I remembered a dish my Mum once made which involved stuffing chicken breasts with cream cheese, wrapping them in bacon and baking them in the oven. So that's pretty much what I did, mashing some herbes de Provence, lemon juice and plenty of garlic into the cream cheese first. I had it with rice and the leftover grilled vegetables from lunch the other day, which I eked out with a tin of beans, some more fresh peas and the usual lemon juice and basil leaves - plus a few slices of chorizo as a random last-minute addition. It's rare that I cook a single meal without involving lemon these days.

A summery lunch on the balcony

A friend came round for lunch today, so I threw together this vegetably, summery spread of grilled aubergines, red peppers and onions (with garlic, basil and lemon) and a salad with fresh peas and cherry tomatoes. We had it on the balcony with fresh bread from the market.

Meditteranean fish stew with chilli and chorizo

Sam and I made this fish stew while I was visiting him in Cologne last week. We fried up onions, celery, garlic, chilli and chorizo, then added chickpeas, tinned tomatoes, red wine and fish stock (made from the remains of the trout en papillote from a couple of days before). At the end we added pieces of smoked mackerel. We ate it with German dunkelbrot and blanched cabbage with a squeeze of lemon juice. To say it was delicious would be an understatement.

Pasta with asparagus tips, fresh peas, ricotta and basil

As it says on the tin, really. The lemon-infused olive oil was a good addition.

Prawns with chilli, garlic and lime

I wasn't particularly hungry this evening after the piled-high plate of pasta I had for lunch. Plus I made an utterly delicious rhubarb and strawberry cheesecake this afternoon for a friend's birthday party tomorrow (photos to follow), and had a bowl of the delectable filling - cream cheese and whipped cream mixed with stewed rhubarb and strawberries, sugar and lemon juice - as a stand-alone mousse before dinner. (I was in a 'life's short - eat dessert first' kind of mood.) If I'd been hungrier I would have tossed these prawns through spaghetti for the ultimate 5-minute supper, but as it was I decided just to eat them neat. What I hadn't reckoned on was how much liquid they give off. Shame I didn't have any bread to mop up the precious prawny, limey, garlicky juices.

Spaghetti with fresh peas, cherry tomatoes, anchovies and garlic

Lunch today was another super-quick, fresh, summery affair, eaten on the balcony in the blazing June sun. Fresh peas and anchovies are two of my favourite things. (Garlic, of course, goes without saying.)

Pork and apple burgers, lentils and peas

It's been ages since I've posted to my food blog! I've been in Germany with Sam and we've been cooking all sorts of delicious things - trout en papillote; tagliatelle with fresh peas, asparagus tips, ricotta and mint; a Meditteranean fish stew with chilli and chorizo - so I've got a backlog of entries to write. I'm waiting for him to email me all the photos that I took on his camera.

Anyway, tonight (my first night back), I had two of these lovely pork and apple burgers from the butcher in the market. I didn't have any potatoes, so instead I had them with lentils (cooked up with onions, carrots, garlic and bay leaves) and freshly podded peas. Some 'chilli jam' from the farm shop set it off nicely. I also made a delicious rhubarb and strawberry stew, which I plan to feature in a cheesecake that I'm going to make for a friend's birthday next week.

Cupcakes!

These are Nigella Lawson's wonderful Burnt Butter Brown Sugar Cupcakes, which I made for a tea party. They are extraordinarily delicious. Recipe can be found here: http://esurientes.blogspot.com/2005/04/burnt-butter-brown-sugar-cupcakes_03.html

Chicken with tarragon, white wine and cream

Ironically I forgot to include the ingredient for which I decided to make this dish in the first place: my roast garlic purée! But it was still delicious. I browned the chicken legs in butter and olive oil in my trusty Le Creuset, then fried onions, mushrooms and garlic in the juices. Then I added the white wine, cream and tarragon leaves, returned the chicken to the pan, and simmered it all up with the lid on for 15 minutes or so. Lovely.

Chocolate apple betty

The first sweet thing to make it into my blog! I went round to a friend's house for dinner last night and brought this as dessert. Lucky that I took the photo before I went out, because it looked somewhat the worse for wear after 10 minutes' bumping over the cobbles in my bike basket!

This dessert was a real random mishmash of things that needed using up. First on the list were some apples that I'd bought at the organic stall in the market last Sunday, but which were already on their last legs by yesterday. I thumbed through my recipe books and found a recipe in Nigel Slater's 'Real Food' (a great book) for 'chocolate apple betty', which is like an apple crumble but with breadcrumbs and brown sugar instead of crumble, chocolate pieces dotted around the apple, and a mixture of melted butter and golden syrup poured over the top before baking for goood measure! In place of the breadcrumbs, I decided to crumble up the remaining three ginger cookies that I'd bought at the same organic stall and sprinkle them over the top. Apples, chocolate and ginger - what could be better? There weren't enough ginger biscuit crumbs to go round so I bulked it out with some of my granola from the farm shop, which is basically oats. Naturally, I retained the butter and golden syrup topping. We ate it with Haagen Dazs dulche de leche ice cream.

Between the two of us we polished off about two thirds of it, but my friend insisted that I take the rest back home with me, suggesting I have it for breakfast the next day. A nice idea, but it would take a braver woman than me.

Salmon and leek pasta bake

The warm Spring weather has vanished, and with it my appetite for fresh, summery meals. Tonight I fancied something homelier. I also needed to do something with a gigantic leek that had been in the vegetable drawer of my fridge for a rather long time. So I made this pasta bake with some smoked salmon from the farm shop. I bound it together with a basic cheesy roux and topped it with breadcrumbs (another leftover) and more cheese, then baked it in the oven for half an hour.