The Family Cook Book

We had a lovely dinner on Saturday. We had decided not to cook anything that involved too much stress or effort ... that meant cooking stuff I had done before. Both of these dishes aren't really recipes they are just a question of putting together some ingredients in a tried and tested but not slavish way. The peppers are based on Piedmontese peppers that you will find in many recipe books and indeed elsewhere on this blog. I 'pimped up' the basic recipe, as Jamie would say, by adding some torn mozarella, rocket and black olives to the basic cooked peppers. Peppers with tomatoes and anchovy   Serves 6 Ingredients 3 red and 3 yellow peppers 5 tablespoons olive oil 36 cherry tomatoes 3 garlic cloves, peeled and cut into slivers 1 tin anchovy fillets 1 bunch fresh basil or marjoram 100g/4oz capers buffalo mozzarella black olives, pitted Maldon salt and freshly ground black pepper Method Preheat oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Halve e

I've blogged about it before but this is a real family favourite.  Today we wanted a quick, light, pre-golf lunch and this is perfect. It's very easy to make and just requires a little bit of effort in the assembling of all the different parts. ingredients • ½ tsp cayenne pepper • 1 tbsp paprika • ½ tsp white pepper • 1 tsp dried oregano •  600g chicken  • Extra-virgin olive oil • 2 ripe avocados, halved and stoned • 4 tbsp fat-free plain yoghurt • 2 limes, plus extra to serve • 1 green chilli • A large bunch of coriander • 2 corn tortillas, sliced into 1cm strips • 4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon • 1 cos lettuce, separated into leaves and chopped • 2 little gem lettuce, separated into leaves • Handful of rocket leaves Method 1. Preheat your oven to 180C/gas 4. Place a griddle pan over a high heat. Mix the cayenne pepper, paprika, white pepper and oregano with a good pinch of salt and a little olive oil and rub all over the turkey breast. Put 

We first ate this at some friends where we had a wonderful dinner. I was really taken by how refreshing and light this was but mainly by how much I liked the taste of the ricotta when combined with the sugar and lemon. It's very very easy to prepare ... just look at how short this post is! Martha made this today for lunch with Joe and Grandma. It was delicious and is in severe danger of becoming a favourite. Thanks Roz for introducing me to it. Ingredients 500g Raspberries  250g Ricotta  1 Lemon 4 tbsp Caster sugar  Method Finely grate the lemon peel and mix with the sugar. Leave for a while  to allow the flavours to combine  and the sugar to be absorbed. Scatter the raspberries on a large plate.  Turn the ricotta very carefully out of the tub, then slice it as finely as possible.  Place these ricotta slices carefully over the raspberries. Sprinkle with the lemon sugar.

  I had a lovely fathers day. It started with a game of golf with Joe ... and he paid. My kids definitely know where my heart is, when I got home I received a bottle of delicious Chianti from Joe and from Martha I got a card and a kilner jar of salted caramel and a beer and thyme mustard. What I didn't realise was that Martha had made them and created the labels herself. The reason that I couldn't tell was because they looked so professional ... nice one Marth! The recipes were from her favourite blog http://www.brit.co/ http://www.brit.co/ The day was complete when I got a call from Gus once he had woken up in Brooklyn. All we need now is for England to get out of their group.

We had a lovely dinner on Saturday night.  What were the key ingredients? First and foremost, really nice people (you know who you are) who we haven't seen for ages, so we had plenty to talk about.  Also our kids are all very grown up, so no one was under any pressure to get home for the babysitter. Add to that the fact that it was a lovely early summer evening and you can see that the Gods were on our side. However, as the 'chef' the other really important thing was that the menu worked too.  But what do I mean by 'worked'?  Well, appreciative noises are always nice but the probably the most important thing is that you don't either  a. get incredibly stressed out and not enjoy the evening or b. cook something that promised to be great but just turned out a bit ... meh! One simple way of avoiding this is obviously to resist the desire to cook something experimental in favour of cooking something you've done before. I also like to do as much