Having the folks round for dinner – the full three courses.

I admit, to me, having people round for dinner is just an excuse to spend the day in the kitchen listening to music and cooking. So when we had my mum and dad round last night that's exactly what I did. The great thing about this meal was that loads of it could be prepared in advance, and then it was just a case of shoving in the oven for a while and forgetting about it.

The menu:

- Piedmontese peppers with home made bread

- Slow roasted shoulder of lamb with mash, gravy, roasted vegetables and something green

- Chocolate mousse (Make this first!)

The starter:

Obviously if you're making this you don't have to have home made bread, I just fancied making some on Friday. See here for bread making:

http://idontjustmakesoup.blogspot.com/2011/07/rosemary-and-olive-bread.html

For the peppers just cut a load of peppers in half, take out the seeds and put some finely chopped garlic in. Season, then put in a load of peeled tomatoes. Shove in as many as you can fit in.

(to peel tomatoes put them in a bowl and cover with just boiled water for a minute. Refresh in cold water and the skin should come away easily.)

Halve some anchovies and cross them over the top. Pour in a generous tablespoon of olive oil. These take 45 minutes to an hour in the oven, or just until the look like they're collapsing a bit. When they're done stick some basil leaves in. I made these early in the day and just covered them and kept them in the fridge. Shove them in the oven an hour before you're ready to serve.

Peppers before they go in the oven to get juicy and lovely

The main:

This is the easiest roast ever. Heat your oven up to it's highest heat. Rub a shoulder of lamb (or a bit of one) with olive oil and season it. Chuck in loads of garlic, rosemary, thyme and whatever else you fancy then cover tightly with tin foil. Shove in the oven, then turn it straight down to about 150 – 160 degrees. Forget about it for four hours. Your house will smell fantastic. It will just fall apart. So tasty. It's not an expensive cut either - less than a tenner to feed four hungry people. 

It'll start out like this...

...It'll end up like this!

For the roasted veg, cut carrots and parsnips into big chunks and toss them in some honey, olive oil, grain mustard and salt and pepper. Your oven will be on quite low, so they'll take a while (45 minutes?) but will be sticky and lovely. Then just make mash and steam something green (we had broccoli and green beans)

When it's gravy making time, take out the meat and put it on a plate. Cover it and leave it to rest, it'll stay warm for quite a while. Pour away most of the fat and take out any big bits of rosemary and thyme, but leave the garlic in. Put the roasting tray on the hob. Stir in a teaspoon of flour and start the all important process of scraping up all the sticky bits. Add a glass of wine and stir and scrape as that comes up to the boil. I used white wine for this, as I was making so much food I didn't want it to be too rich, but you could easily use red for a much richer sauce. Add a pint of stock, again I used vegetable so it wasn't too heavy, but you could use lamb for it to be much richer. Then just reduce down to half the volume. Make sure there's nothing sticking to the bottom, and all the lovely roast garlic is squished out of the skin, then just sieve it. Sorted.

I wasn't too good at taking photos for this one, as I was busy chatting to my ma and pa. But here's the meat after you've pulled the bone out: 

You can't carve this... just serve up big hunks of meat

The pudding:

Make this early in the day as it takes a while in the fridge. I'm not big on desserts, as I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but this is very tasty and nicely rounds off the meal. I won't type it out, here's the recipe:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/330616/really-easy-chocolate-mousse

We don't have four matching ramekins... or four matching wine glasses for that matter

 I grated a bit of dark chocolate over the top.

There you go! Lovely and very very easy meal, with no stress. Serve with bucketloads of red wine.

This week's soup: Curried carrot and parsnip. I'm making this up because I've got loads of carrots and parsnips left. It's the Lidl effect, you end up with big bags of veg and massive boxes of fruit because they've cost about 10p.

Adventures with a pheasant.

My cooking's gone all autumnal in the last week or so. Lots of heavy warming things, like split pea and ham soup, sausage cassoulet and lots of things with mash. I have to admit I'm quite enjoying it! This rather continues on the same theme.

One of the perks of being the annoying person who bangs on about food all the time is that people sometimes ask for recipe help. A lovely colleague of mine won a lot of pheasants in a raffle, and was asking for suggestions for how to cook them. I'd never cooked pheasant before, and admitted this straight away, but then Googled recipes and passed them on. In return, said lovely colleague brought me a pheasant. I think it rather confused everyone we worked with when she walked into the newsroom and plonked a pheasant on the desk but hey ho. Helpfully she had gutted it, and also skinned it (because it wasn't plucking very well).

So my challenge on Friday night was to find a way to cook it without it being tough as old boots! True to form I googled it, looked up lots of recipes, then ignored them and made it up.

So here it is:

Pot roasted pheasant with bacon and cream with boulangere potatoes

First job was the potatoes. I decided I couldn't possibly have mash for the third time this week, so wanted to do something slightly different. Boulangere potatoes are a bit like dauphinois although without the insane amounts of cream.

 

Slice an onion and some potatoes as thinly as you can and layer them up in a buttered dish with salt and pepper and a little bit of thyme. Dot some butter on the top and pour in about half a pint of chicken or vegetable stock. Cover with tin foil and put in the oven at about 180 degrees. It'll take about 45 minutes, but be sure to uncover it for the last fifteen minutes. 

First brown your pheasant all over in some butter in a big oven proof pan. (I still dream of le Creuset which would have been perfect for this, our roasting tin has a lid so I used that.) Put to one side while you prepare the rest.

Fry off some smoked bacon lardons before adding finely slice shallots, garlic, a stick of celery and a carrot.

Season well, then chuck in some thyme and a few bay leaves then a very generous glass of white wine - as much as you are willing to use for cooking rather than drinking. Let that bubble away for a few minutes to burn off some of the alcohol. Then add three quarters of a pint of chicken stock and a good slug of cream. Bring up to the boil, stick the pheasant back in, put the lid on and shove in the oven for about 25 – 30 minutes. After that leave it to rest for ten minutes in the sauce.

Take the pheasant out and reduce the sauce down for a few minutes, and you're good to go. If the pheasant cools too much carve it, and pop it back in the sauce to warm through.

Serve with greens (I love kale, so we had steamed kale with butter and pepper) It was very tasty! It was still a little tougher than I would have liked, I think I would joint it next time and effectively casserole it, it might help with the legs in particular, but it wasn't too bad at all. We had the leftovers as a snack today and the sauce is just unbelievable.