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.

Mackerel for tea with a sweet treat for afters.

For me, hangovers usually bring out one of two approaches to food; I either want to gorge on rubbish and stodge all day, or I want to eat incredibly healthy food to undo the badness of the night before.

Today is a mixture of both. I decided to make brownies to distract myself from the pain, and because I’ve got to work on Bank Holiday Monday, so I thought they would brighten up a quiet newsroom.

Chocolate Brownies:

I don’t have a massively sweet tooth, and I’m not great at baking, but I can just about stretch to some cookies or brownies. I think the trick is to get the best possible chocolate with lots of cocoa in it; cooking chocolate just doesn’t cut it.

Melt about 200 grammes of dark chocolate with about two thirds of a bar of butter. (The recipe I used suggested 165g of butter; my scales aren’t that precise). 

When it’s melted and cooled a little beat in about 200g of brown sugar, preferably muscovado but I only had Demerara. Add a pinch of salt, and some vanilla extract.

Beat in three eggs one by one, then some plain flour. (Again, the recipe I used for amounts said 85g, but my scales are not that good.) Put in a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. 

Bake at 160 degrees for about 40 minutes. Allow to cool on a wire rack.Then slice.

And now for the healthy (ish) supper…

Mackerel fillets with chorizo, leeks and peas.

I’m going through quite a chorizo/paprika phase at the moment. 

First slice a leek and fry in a little butter and vegetable oil, with a pinch of salt. Put some potatoes on to boil.

Take the papery skin off a good chunk of chorizo, and cut it up into chunks. Technically you should use cooking chorizo for this, but it’s not that easy to get hold of, so I used some ordinary chorizo. When the leeks are starting to collapse a bit, add the chorizo to the pan along with a good pinch of paprika. You want the edges of the chorizo to go a little crispy. 

 Add the nearly cooked potatoes to the pan to allow them to crisp a little, before adding a small amount of vegetable stock and some frozen peas. If you want, you can add a few spoonfuls of cream to the sauce, but it doesn’t necessarily need it. Add a good squidge of lemon juice, and turn the heat right down.

Season the mackerel fillets. Heat a little vegetable oil in a pan until it’s fairly hot, then put the fish in, skin side down.  If you want to be really healthy you could just grill the mackerel.

It doesn’t take long – just three or four minutes, then turn the heat off and flip the fish to finish cooking in the residual heat.

Serve the fillets on top of a big mound of chorizo leek-y loveliness. If you can hack it, have with a nice chilled glass of white wine.

I’m off for a lie down.