The Family Cook Book

Sunday was horrendous. It was as if someone had turned the switch that said Indian summer to OFF and clicked autumn to ON in an unseemly rush. The only good thing to be said about it is that it means comfort food is back on the agenda. We had a late late lunch (or was it an early supper) of roast loin of pork served with potatoes cooked with fennel and porcini mushrooms, both recipes were from Lucy Boyd's book. The potatoes were pretty damn nice so here's the recipe The veg need to be sliced very thinly for this recipe I use a small hand held mandoline like the one in the picture. In my opinion every food loving house should have one.I have a larger contraption but its a bit of a faff to use in comparison with this little beauty. However, be warned, mind your fingers, it is dead sharp and its pretty easy to whip the end of your finger tip off. Ingredients 600g medium sized waxy potatoes, washed and peeled 1 large or 2 small fennel bulbs

I spent most of S unday morning  making cakes for cake club on Monday. Unlike most of the contestants on great British bake off, I do not find baking as relaxing as say cooking the Sunday lunch. I chose to make carrot cakes with sultanas soaked in Cointreau from 'what Katie ate'. Despite having the book right in front of me I still managed to make a few mistakes ... Particularly annoying as I was trying to double up the recipe. There was the usual stress as I put them in the oven and within minutes they looked giant compared with the pictures in the book, but then again Katie Quinn Davies is a food stylist ... It probably wasn't her first attempt. Piping the frosting on was also a bit of a mess as I hadn't done it before. However I can see that it could be quite addictive. In the end I thought the cakes came out ok but if I do them again I would put more fruit and carrots in. Sadly I also managed to bash them up a bit on the way to work so I'm not sur

Martha and I did lots of sightseeing and walking but we also did our fair share of eating whilst we were there Our first night was dinner at The Breslin http://thebreslin.com/ April Bloomfield's restaurant at the Ace hotel ... we enjoyed it, particularly the octopus with pickled watermelon (Martha now converted to Octopus) the strumpets and the Lamb burger. Second night was at Il Buco di alimentari http://www.ilbucovineria.com/ ... the picture above shows us getting stuck into the short ribs. A word of warning we had two portions between four and we still could barely move later on. Food was fab as usual. We also did Shake Shack http://www.shakeshack.com/ mailano for a light lunch http://www.maialinonyc.com/ and we finished off with a great mexican in Williamsburg http://mesacoyoacan.com/