I love haggis.

Let's be honest, Burns Night is the first excuse for excessive eating and drinking after Christmas. You've spent all of January skint, trying to lose weight and breaking resolutions, and by the time it gets to the 25^th you're sick of all that and it's time to just sack it off and gorge again. With this in mind, I decided to invite some friends round for a Burns Supper. Despite the fact I'm Scottish, I couldn't promise tartan, pipers or poems, but I made sure there was plenty of food and drink available. Rabbie would've been proud.

There were oats in every course, and whisky in two of them.

In a traditional-ish menu we had:

• Smoked mackerel pate with oatcakes (I decided cock-a-leekie soup was too boring)
• Haggis, neeps and tatties with a whisky cream sauce. (Except I added other root veg to the neeps)
• Sort of Cranachan

I prepared the starter and pud in the morning, then went out for the afternoon.

Smoked Mackerel Pate.

The pate is ridiculously easy. It would be even easier if I had a full sized blender, but as it is I had to do each mackerel fillet individually. I figured as I was serving them in individual ramekins, there's no harm done. For each fillet, add a teaspoonful of crème fraiche, a teaspoonful of cream cheese, the juice of a quarter of a lemon, and some pepper. Then blitz. Done. I served it with some token salad and some oatcakes. I didn't make those myself, life's too short.

Haggis, neeps and tatties.

Cook the haggis according to the instructions on the packet. We got MacSweens. It was ace. I'm debating going and eating the leftovers of it right now to see if it'll cure my hangover.

Peel your spuds and boil in plenty of salted water. Peel and cube a turnip. If you're English you will probably call it a swede. Once the turnip has boiled for five minutes, add carrots and parsnips. You don't have to, but I find neeps a bit boring on their own, but love mixed root veg mash.

Drain your spuds and let them steam off in the collander for five minutes before mashing/ricing with plenty of butter, milk and a touch of cream.

Mash your veg with plenty of butter. And serve. It's not the prettiest dish, but it is nice. 

Not a great picture - it's not pretty food!

For the sauce I made some lamb stock. You absolutely don't have to bother with this, just use some chicken or lamb stock cubes but I happened to have some lamb bones kicking around in the freezer. Add to this some whisky, some cream and salt and pepper and reduce down. When it's done, add some chopped chives. 

Cranachan.

 

Traditionally this is a blend of cream, oats, whisky, honey and raspberries. However, it's not raspberry season, so they're really expensive. I opted for buying one small pack of raspberries, and buying some frozen berries too to turn into a coulis. I did this first thing, by boiling up half a bag of frozen berries, a couple of tablespoons of whisky, and a few of honey. Add a drop of water, then pass it through a sieve to get rid of the seeds. 

Amazing colour!

Toast your oats in a frying pan over a lowish heat. Do this really slowly, because if they burn even a little bit they're ruined and they cranachan will taste rubbish. If they do burn just start again. Oats are cheap it's fine.

Now whip up some cream until it's in soft peaks, stir through three tablespoons of honey, three of whisky, your raspberries and toasted oats.

Then layer it up in some glasses. I don't have the right sized glasses for this, so it looks a little odd but still good. 

Now you've made all that, eat it with friends, drink loads of whisky and talk rubbish for hours.

Wake up with a terrible hangover, and a kitchen that still looks like this even after half an hours cleaning effort:

Whilst eating this we mostly listened to: our entire vinyl collection and discussed it drunkenly at great length.

Using my Christmas presents: Slow cooked beef shin and mash.

Happy New Year! Hope you've all had a lovely one. I was in the Highlands. Can't lose really!

I don't really believe in New Year's resolutions. It's January, it's cold, and therefore it is not the time for diets. To be honest, I've never been on a diet in my life, I love food too much. I eat pretty healthily and don't have a sweet tooth (the recipes on here are the ones I make as a treat at the weekend). I admit, I could try and sort out my crisp and wine intake a bit more... but ah well. Life's too short. And now is the time of year for comfort food.

As well as this, I got some cracking Christmas presents which mean I absolutely have to make lovely stodgy food! We now own a Le Creuset casserole dish and I'm very excited! Plus I got a potato ricer, and they're supposed to make the best mash ever.

However, we are on a January budget... so it's time for cheap cuts of meat. I went to the butcher and bought a pound and a half of beef shin for a fiver. Brilliant. It does mean it has to cook for ages, but that's all the better as it left me with a lovely lazy Sunday afternoon.

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees.

First, get your butcher to cut your beef into casserole sized pieces (or do so yourself) and toss it in a little bit of seasoned flour. Get some oil nice and hot in your pan (either a big casserole dish that can go on your hob or a large saucepan) and fry the meat off a couple of pieces at a time. Don't do it all at once as it'll steam, you want lovely brown sticky bits at the bottom of the pan. 

You want it WELL browned. (Although not burned, obviously)

Put the meat to one side, then fry off a couple of sliced onions and some sliced celery. I also fried off a load of halved mushrooms, to make the cheap meat stretch even further, but this is optional. You could add root veg if you want? But I didn't want the sweetness of carrots or anything, I want this to be really rich and savoury. While it's frying use your wooden spoon to scrape up the brown stuff from the bottom of the pan – that's pure flavour.

Once everything has fried down nicely and picked up some of the colour from the bottom of the pan put the meat back in and stir in a couple of tablespoons of tomato puree. Whack up the heat and pour in as much red wine as you're willing to spare, about half a bottle for us! Then top up with some water or beef stock. You want the meat to be just about covered. Shove in a few bay leaves and some thyme, then season well. Put a lid on (or decant it into an oven proof dish, then put a lid on) then put in the oven for ages. I reckon about three hours should do the trick. Check it regularly to make sure it's not drying out, and add more water if you think it's getting low. You could also put some tin foil directly on top of the casserole underneath the lid to help contain the liquid if you're really worried about it drying out.

Mash: Peel your spuds and chop into fairly big chunks. (if they're too small they soak up more water; no one wants watery mash) Boil in salted water.

My latest trick with mashed potato (whether you have a ricer or standard masher) is to leave the potatoes sitting in the collander for five minutes after they're cooked. It stops them from being too watery as they drain more thoroughly, but more importantly give off loads of steam and dry out a bit. This isn't groundbreaking stuff, I probably saw it on the telly, but it really does make a difference.

While they're doing that, heat your butter and a little drop of milk over a low heat, and season it. Then either tip your spuds back in and get mashing, or send them through the ricer straight into the pan.

Serve with bloody great piles of veg. Delicious. The rest of this is going in a pie.

This weeks soup: Sort of potato and bacon. It's an interpretation of a Simon Hopkinson recipe which made me realise all my chives have died in the winter. It's cheap as chips and surprisingly tasty (even without the chives):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/potato_soup_with_soured_27576

Whilst making this I was mostly listening to: Lots of stuff. After all it was in the oven for three hours. But it included Laura Marling and Bon Iver.

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.

Curing the common cold – lamb shanks and hot toddies.

I don't get ill very often, but when I do I'm pretty pathetic. In the last few weeks everyone's been ill; My other half, my nephew, everyone at work. It was inevitable it would get me at some point. So come Friday I was bunged up, grumpy and generally feeling out of sorts. This is how I deal with it:

Day One: Pretend you're not ill. Go to work, power through, and just moan at anyone who'll listen.

Day Two: Take to the couch in a melodramatic fashion. Leave the house only to buy tinned chicken soup, vitamin C supplements and pain killers. Watch films from under a duvet, then have a hot toddy and go to bed in a grump.

 

Trying to cure the cold/flu

Day Three: Have a word with yourself. You've had enough wallowing time, now pull yourself together, and cook yourself out of your slump. Make soup and something really stodgy and lovely. You're still full of the cold and unlikely to be able to taste any of it, but that's not the point. (Do make sure you factor in plenty of time for hot lemon with honey etc.)

Lamb shanks in red wine with spring onion mash, carrots and kale.

It's a bit dark this picture isn't it?

For what you get in a lamb shank they are pretty cheap. They used to be much cheaper, but have become more fashionable. In a round about way, it'll do us two meals too.

First toss the lamb in some seasoned flour and brown it off in a hot pan. You don't necessarily need to add flour, but I find it helps to thicken the sauce a bit. You want the meat to have a decent colour all over it.

Put the lamb in a big casserole dish. I dream of a Le Creuset dish or equivalent which can go straight in the oven! But don't have one at the moment.

Slice a couple of red onions and two cloves of garlic and fry that off in the same pan you did the meat in then add them to the casserole.

De-glaze the pan with a bit of red wine to get any sticky bits off the bottom then add it to the casserole, along with another large glass of red wine, and a pint of stock (chicken or vegetable).

Mix in a tablespoon of tomato puree, and season with some salt and pepper. Then stir in some sprigs of rosemary, thyme and a bay leaf or two. 

Cover it and stick in a low oven for at least two hours at 150 degrees. It's done when the lamb just pulls away from the bone. For the last half an hour take the lid off so the juices reduce a little bit. I turned the meat once or twice to keep it moist.

Before...

Mine ended up being in for about three hours, as my Mum and Dad came round. It's a very forgiving recipe though...

After....

For the mash... er, make mash. Boiled potatoes, plenty of butter, a touch of cream and milk. To make spring onion mash stir in some finely chopped spring onions.

The sauce should be really rich, so I'm keeping the veg simple with big piles of restorative steamed kale and carrots.

What to do with the leftovers:

There ought to be loads of lovely sauce, and it transforms into the most amazing ragu-like sauce for pasta mid week. Once it's cooled just take any bits of fat off the top. Any bits of lamb leftover (our shanks were enormous... I do love my butcher) just pull it apart so it's almost shredded. Put your pasta on, heat up the sauce (and any shredded bits of lamb) and add a load of fresh spinach and halved cherry tomatoes. Pour the pasta into the sauce and stir it through on the heat for a minute or two and its ready to eat. Amazing midweek dinner, and makes your lamb shanks seem like really good value for money.

My hot toddy recipe (no idea if it's authentic):

- Put one measure of whisky in a mug. It doesn't have to be the nicest in the world, but something half decent will do.

- Take a slice of lemon and half it. Squeeze the juice out of one half of the slice into the whisky. Stick a couple of cloves into the other half of it and put that in the whisky.

- Top up with water that boiled a couple of minutes ago then add a teaspoon of honey. Give it a good stir and drink it while it's still quite hot.

Yum. It soothes the throat, and knocks you out. What's not to love?

September salad making, and some store cupboard pasta sauce.

Blimey isn't it warm?? In the space of a week I've gone from hearty roast and crumble making to craving salad! So today, on my day off, after hanging out washing in the garden, putting on suncream and generally lying around reading in the garden I decided to make a nice refreshing salad for tea. Chorizo and halloumi salad, here goes.

If you don't love halloumi then, frankly, what the hell is wrong with you? It is amazing stuff.

First chop up some chorizo and fry in a little oil until it releases all the paprika-oily-goodness. Shove that in a bowl, and add the juice of about half a lemon. Rinse a tin of green lentils or puy lentils. Throw them in the bowl. If you want this to be veggie-friendly don't bother with the chorizo, but it is really nice.

Slice some red onion into fine half moons, and chop up a clove of garlic. Add this to your chorizo and lentils. Chop up some tomatoes into big chunks. On the subject of tomatoes, check these out! I grew them myself, from seed. 

I've never grown anything I could actually harvest before... anyway I digress, put these in the bowl too. Now stir through some spinach leaves. Taste the mixture and season; add some olive oil to dress it, and plenty of salt and pepper to taste. Add some roughly chopped parsley.

Chop your halloumi into big chunks and fry in the pan you did the chorizo in.

Serve big chunks of halloumi on top of a big bowl of lentil-ly chorizo-y salad. Yum.

Today's added extra: Home made cherry tomato pasta sauce.

Because we didn't have a heat wave for the first three weeks of this month we haven't been eating an awful lot of salad. This means I have an entire packet of cherry tomatoes that are about to give up. To stop them going to waste, I've decided to turn them into a pasta sauce for another day. Very easy to do, and much nicer than shop bought pasta sauce.

Just finely chop an onion, a stick of celery and a couple of cloves of garlic, then fry them on a low heat until they've gone soft. Add the cherry tomatoes and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Add a teaspoon of sugar and let it cook down for a while. Don't add any herbs, but do season liberally with salt and pepper. This is a good base sauce, and when you go to use it later you can add the herbs of your choice, such as a good handful of fresh basil. (Or some fried chorizo, chilli and peppers, or a good dollop of crème fraiche to make creamy or... the list is endless really)

Keep in a sterilised jar in the fridge, with a layer of olive oil over the top to keep it fresh.

This is not just a stir fry (and Turkish lentil soup)

Last time I bought steak from the butcher, he very kindly gave me some off cuts he had leftover (it pays to go when he's just about to close). They've been sitting in my freezer for some time while I worked out what to do with them – not quite big enough for steak and chips but I wanted to do them justice!

I decided to do a stir fry – but try and make it a bit nicer than my usual chuck everything in the wok and hope for the best.

Bit blurry as I was stirring at the time!

First, do all the prep! It really is the key with stir fry – as it only takes five minutes to cook.

Blitz up a glove of garlic, a chilli, and about an inch of peeled ginger. Crush together some cumin) and some coriander. (All a bit fusion, I'm guessing this wouldn't be that authentic but I love cumin

Finely slice into strips all your veg; whatever you've got really. I used carrots, peppers, broccoli, mushrooms and courgettes.

Prep everything before cooking

Cook your noodles according to the packet! I used rice noodles. When they're cooked rinse through with cold water to keep them separate. Put to one side.

Mix together a teaspoonful of cornflour, with two tablespoons of rice vinegar and a tablespoon or two of soy sauce. I have some new soy sauce from a Chinese supermarket which is INSANELY dark. Really tasty, but turned everything a bit brown with only a few tablespoons of it! If you do live/work near a Chinese supermarket I would recommend buying a big bottle of soy sauce – the little bottles in the normal supermarkets just don't really compare.

Have some finely sliced spring onions at the ready, and some sesame oil. (I'd run out of spring onions unfortunately!)

Season your steak with a little soy sauce, then fry on a really high heat in the wok for two minutes on each side. This is really nice sirloin so I want it to be a bit rare, and it will be heated through at the end.

Put to one side and allow to rest while you make everything else. Heat some oil in the wok (it doesn't need cleaning after the steak) Once it's quite hot throw in your garlic/ginger/chilli mix then the spices. Add all your veg. Stir before adding the soy/cornflour mix. Keep everything moving around, then add the rice noodles. Whilst everything is heating through, slice the steak into strips. 

Taste it – and add more soy sauce if you think it needs it.(depends on the quality of your soy sauce really)

Chuck in the steak, sliced spring onion and a drizzle of sesame oil – and it's done!

This week's soup is Turkish lentil. I rarely put my soup recipes on here, but thought this was good enough to share. When we were in Istanbul we had this and I thought it was lovely, I've since googled, tasted and guessed until I came up with a reasonably authentic version. It's really cheap, and really easy!

Finely chop an onion and cook in some butter on a low heat in an enormous pan until it goes a little golden, but not caramelised. Stir in a good teaspoonful of paprika. Add a small cupful of red lentils, and half a small cupful of bulgur wheat. Stir this around until it's coated with the butter.

Add a couple of tablespoons of tomato purée, and a couple of pints of vegetable stock, and a good pinch of chilli flakes (if you like spicy food). Simmer until all the lentils have broken down (about half an hour). When it's cooked, crumble in a teaspoon of dried mint, and the juice of about half a lemon. Season to taste. It's that easy. And trust me, it's lovely. Eat with pitta bread if you're trying to be authentic!

My packed lunches for the rest of the week

 Whilst making this I mostly listened to: the new Laura Marling album. I think she's ace.