The Family Cook Book

I first made this when I was up in Vermont with the boys recently. We had it with grilled t-bone steaks and green beans. I have made it again since and I really like the combination of flavours and the soft texture. Ingredients 500g waxy potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters 500g fennel bulbs tough outer layers and stalks removed 30g dried porcini soaked in 120ml hot water for 15 minutes 4 garlic cloves, 2 peeled and sliced, 2 peeled but left whole Extra virgin olive oil Method Preheat oven to 200 c Drain the porcini, retaining the soaking liquid. Rinse gently in sieve under running tap to get rid of any grit. Strain the liquid through a sieve lined with kitchen paper Heat 2 tbs of olive oil in a thick-bottomed frying pan, add the porcini and the sliced garlic and fry gently until the garlic is beginning to brown. Season and pour in half the reserved soaking water. Simmer for 15 minutes, adding more water as it becomes absorbed. Remove from the

If you’re not so much of a crowd but more of a gaggle then this recipe should do the trick. You get the same slow cooked loveliness but it in a smaller form. There is also the added benefit that you can get it in the oven in the morning and have it at lunch. A couple of little spins on the Jamie recipe - I have added a bit of fennel seediness - I have apple’d it up a bit by using cider plus stock instead of just stock - I have nicked the salsa from Jamies winter nights chilli as a kind of crunchy apple sauce. We served this with River café fennel, porcini mushrooms and potatoes (more of which in a later post) Ingredients 2kg bone-in shoulder of pork, skin on, scored by your butcher sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 tbs fennel seeds finely ground 1 apple quartered 2 red onions halved 400ml cider 200ml vegetable stock 2 carrots, peeled and halved length ways 2 sticks of celery, halved 1 bulb of garlic, skin on, broken into cloves 6-8 fresh

This is a perfect low stress recipe to feed crowd. In our family there is also a palpable sense of excitement when the smell indicates that we are having roast pork which of course means crackling! We have tried a few different ways of doing it. Here's the river cafe 12 hour version We cooked this the other evening for 12 people. Our joint was a bit bigger, more like 4.5kg and had been beautifully scored by our butcher. This recipe requires three things really good meat, an accurate oven and faith. You gotta have faith. The meat needs to be nice and dry and room temperature before you put it in the oven. If it's at all slimy you wont get good crackling. The same will be the case if it spends the first ten minutes in the oven taking the refrigerator chill off of it. I've seen that some recipes say that you should take a hairdryer to the joint to make sure its really dry, not sure I will be doing that but might be interesting to try if your meat is at all wet. On the