The Family Cook Book

We like Wagamama. We particularly those nose-run inducing bowls of soupy noodles with poached chicken or prawns. This is our home made version which makes for a very very healthy weekend lunch (serves 4) This is one of those things that you can customise to suit your own tastes. So feel free to do it with prawns, fish or just veg. Also spice it up or down according to your own taste. Ingredients 3 peeled cloves of garlic 1 thumb sized piece of ginger peeled 1 stick lemon grass 1-2 red birds eye chillies seeded and chopped finely 1 litre good chicken or vegetable stock (we like Marigold) 4 chicken breasts sliced across into slicesthe thickness of your little finger. handful fresh coriander chopped 4 small pak choi roughly chopped handful of green kenya beans topped tailed and chopped into 3 1/2 a pack of medium dried egg noodles 1 tbsp fish sauce method 1. Bash two cloves of garlic, half of the ginger the lemon grass in a pestle and mortar 2. Heat the stock in a saucepan, add the mixtur

I had overpurchased on the aubergine and red pepper front so I decided to do this fabulous Moro standby. This dish is delicious scooped up with some decent flatbread or even some shopbought pitta bread lightly toasted. Have it on it's own with some salad, as part of a meze or allegedly (I haven't tried it yet) with grilled lamb. This is incredibly easy Ingredients 3 aubergines 3 red peppers 1 clove of garlic crushed to a paste with salt (do this in a pestle and mortar if you have one) a squeeze of lemon 2 tablespoons olive oil 220g greek yoghurt thinned with two tablespoons milk and seasoned with salt chopped fresh coriander salta and black pepper Method 1. Pre heat the oven to 200 degrees 2. Line a roasting pan or baking sheet with foil (saves on the washing up) 3. Put the peppers and aubergines in the oven for 45 minutes 4. Take them out of the oven and put into seperate bowls and cover with clingfilm. Allow them to become cool enough to handle easily. 5. Slit the aubergines

Joe had been playing football for the school (a creditable 1-0 victory over Ardingly) and we thought that a curry might be nice, but not a take-away. So we put together this slight spin on Jamie Oliver’s favourite curry sauce from his second book. The changes are very slight but I think it just adds a little to the finished dish. Firstly I add garlic cloves to the onions, Jamie’s recipe, rather unusually for a curry, doesn’t seem to have any. Secondly I like to whizz the sauce with a stick blender (easier than pouring it into a machine although you could do that) to make the sauce much thicker and smoother. Thirdly we use a mixture of fish including prawns. We serve it with plain boiled basmati rice, shop bought Nan and popadoms, and coriander chutney The chutney, also by Jamie is made by blending a handful of coriander, two garlic cloves, a seeded green chilli, a knob of peeled ginger, half the juice of a lime and some salt with a 400ml pot of plain yoghurt. It’s delicious, you can ma

Gus has just come back from Australia. It's great to have him back, particularly to have him back in one piece. He's off to Falmouth next week to start Uni so we are making the most of him for the week and a bit that we've got him for. Last night Lisa was out and I came back a bit late after three pints in the Crown (Clerkenwell Green) with the three other founding krows. Lisa had very graciously prepared all the ingredients for this great recipe by Saint Jamie from his 'Jamie's Italy' book, so all Gus and I had to do was to bung it together with father and son working in very happy harmony. Like me he is happy in the kitchen and rather soppily I love these shared culinary moments. This takes a bit of preparation but is very easy and has a lovely tomato-ey, spicy, lemony taste. Despite it's ease this also has a deceptive elegance that means you could easily serve it for a dinner party. Ingredients 455g dried spaghetti sea salt & freshly ground black pepe

This is the thing I make when I can't be arsed to cook anything but I need the comfort of home cooked food. Think of it as a sort of multi-faith chicken noodle soup ...... except without the noodles. It's also incredibly cheap, good for you, requires hardly any equipment and no culinary skill. I also find that it is good hangover food. The basis of this dish is a decent powdered stock, our favourite is the swiss bouillion Marigold ... vegetable version (available at Waitrose..... and loads of other supermarkets I'm sure.) There are three versions of this: veggie chicken prawn Veggie Ingredients 1 tbs Marigold stock 1 litre water 1 chilli seeded and chopped finely 1 tbs chopped torn coriander leaves 1 thumb sized piece of ginger - peeled, sliced very thinly and sliced again into fine matchsticks or julienne 1 clove of garlic sliced very finely fish sauce light soy sauce Method Get two /three soup bowls put some coriander leaves and chilli in the bottom of each. Bring stock

Roasted red pepper salad An antipasti of red peppers roasted, peeled and dressed in a little olive oil and a few capers and herbs are easy and delicious. It's one of my favourite stand by dishes they will also keep for a few days and are a brilliant addition to a sandwich. I think people are a bit put off by the whole cooking them over an open flame thing, so I put the peppers in a roasting tin in a hot oven (pre heated to 180) for about 45 minutes. By that time they should be a bit blackened and the skins nice and wrinkled. Now whack the peppers whole in a bowl and cover with clingfilm. This will steam them a bit and make it easier to get the skin off. When they are cool enough to handle easily skin them and get rid of the seeds ( Do Not under any circumstances be tempted to rinse the seeds off you will get rid of all the flavour at the same time) Tear the peppers into bite sized pieces and spread out on a nice plate. Drizzle with olive oil, season with a little black pepper and

Pasta Puttanesca apparently means whore’s pasta. I have read two explanations for why it’s called this. One is that it’s a bit spicy and racy and the other (and the one I prefer) is that it can be made from ingredients that even a puttane would have in her cupboard. Which seems to me to make it a perfect candidate for student food, it's cheap and all the stuff can be kept in the cupboard and put together in a matter of minutes almost regardless of how much you've had to drink. Not only is this dead easy and can be tuned to your personal preference. You can also make it posher (more posh?) by substituting fresh tomatoes for the tinned ones Ingredients ( serves 4 ) 1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes or 450g/1lb small cherry, plum or vine-ripened tomatoes 4 tbsp olive oil 3 garlic cloves, chopped a good pinch of dried chilli flakes, or 1 red finger chilli, seeded and finely chopped 2 tbs capers 110g/4oz small black olives, pitted 2 x 50g/2oz cans of anchovy fillets in oil, drained a

Celeriac is one of those vegetables that most people wouldn’t recognise, let alone know what to do with it. However, in my humble estimation it is also one of the most delicious. This recipe is an absolutely blinding accompaniment to Roast Pork with fennel seeds, and makes a really nice change to potatoes. To prepare celeriac you have to peel it until it all the dark skin and roots are gone. This recipe can be prepared ahead of time and you can leave out the chilli if you really don’t like spicy things, although I would encourage you to persevere, as the combination of Thyme, garlic and chilli is rather magical. Try to cut the celeriac into fairly equal sized chunks and it will all cook to a consistent texture Ingredients (serves 6 ) 3lb celeriac peeled and cubed 4tbs olive oil 3 garlic cloves peeled and finely chopped 1 fresh chilli seeded and finely chopped a handful of fersh thyme leaves 425 ml chicken stock sea salt and freshly ground pepper Method Heat the oil in a sucepan or Le C

Sunday lunch is an occasion I always look forward to, but let's face it sometimes it turns into a bit of a nightmare. The vision in my mind is one of harmony via gastronomy. It’s a sort of East Moleseyian version of A Table in Provence. The only problem is that it can turn into a bit of a chore. Getting the food right can help. It won’t stop the kids arguing but it might just stop you and your better half coming to blows. One of my family’s favourite meals is Roast Chicken, which has, of course, to be served with roast potatoes. This is one of my favourite recipes and is simplicity itself. Once again it is courtesey of The River Cafe. Get the best chicken you can, preferably free-range and organic, but it will work with any old chicken. Wipe it clean, trim off the fat that sits just inside the neck. Get a lemon, roll it on a board until you feel it lose its structure a bit and go soft, then pierce all over with a sharp fork; It will go really soft. Whack this in the cavity with 4 t

We first discovered Granita when we went to Sicily with the Levy family. We loved Sicily and had such a good time that a few years later we went back with my Mum, and brother Steve and family. One of the little rituals that we got into (that I think we have to thank Nushi Levy for) was to go to a litttle local beach quite late on in the afternoon when the pretty fierce Sicilian rays had died down a bit. We had the bit of the beach that didn’t have seried ranks of sunloungers on, pretty much to ourselves, if you didn’t count the odd couple heavy petting that is. Anyway, one of the favourite parts of the trip was Lemon Granita. Granita is basically flavoured shaved ice. However the simplicity of the description belies the joy of the dish. In Sicily the granita came in a plastic cup with a half straw/half spoon kind-of-thang, which enabled you to suck up every last drop of the remaining cold,sticky,sweet,sour deliciousness. Some time after we got back I tried the recipe out from the Rive

Roast potatoes are one of those things that people go on and on about. There’s no doubt that if you cook perfectly turned potatoes in goose fat, they will probably taste amazing. But let’s face it; number one you’ll die an early death. Number two, where the hell are you going to get goose fat. So this is my recipe for perfectly acceptable roast potatoes. Peel potatoes, choose a floury variety like Maris piper or King Edward, cut into whatever size you like. The bigger the pieces the better they are for you by the way, as less of the food will end up soaking up the fat. I normally cut ordinary size potatoes into two and big ones into four. Boil the potatoes in salted water for about five to ten minutes, you can tell if they are done enough by putting the point of a cooking knife in to the potato, if when you pick it up it slides off, fairly easily then they are done. Drain the potatoes and then put back on the hob that you have just turned off, the residual heat will make sure all of th

When I think of this River Cafe dish I think of the Pricey’s 25th wedding anniversary in LA, and cooking with Ken. I can’t remember how many chickens we cooked, mainly becuase over the course of the three days I drank enough to last most people a lifetime. Suffice to say it was quite a few. I had a team of people sitting by the pool shredding thyme leaves, and singing the old negro ( or should that be Afriican American?) spritual thyme shredding song. You know the one ‘ lift that twig, shred those leaves, Mama’s gonna cook us chicken tonight’. The evening ended pretty riotously and rather embarrassingly for me as it involved me dancing on a table with Suzy. I also managed to rather embarass my lovely godaughter Gabriella in front of her family and friends by making up an impromptu rap about her ... oh dear. I think that the chicken was appreciated by all ( in fact several other dishes from the Cookfamily cookbook also featured) nothing beats the combination of good friends, good food a

I wrote this just after we had set up krow. I am heading off to Italy for the first meetings with our new client FIAT. As soon as I return Joe and I are heading up to Vermont for our Father/Son revision bonding session. I can’t believe that it’s two years ago that I went up there with Gus. We are all at home for Saturday night dinner and I decide to do Beef steak Fiorentina, this basically involves cooking a Flintstone size t-bone steak, very rare and then carving it off the bone and serving it in slices. This dish only works if you can eat your meat really rare. Up until now Gus has really always wanted his meat well done but he decided that tonight would be the night he would try it rare. Good lad. A T-bone, for those of you who don’t know, has the sirloin on one side of the T and fillet on the other. To get the quality of meat you need and to get it cut the way you want for this recipe, you really do need a decent butcher, as you will know by now Peter Dale of Hampton Court will alw

This is from The River Café blue book it’s so simple but absolutely delicious, however it really does rely on having fabulous beef as the meat is barely cooked. I know it sounds poncey but I now think that you can really only get that level of quality if you have a really good butcher. For most things I think a good supermarket is absolutely fine, but for some things you just can’t beat Peter Dale (or your local equivalent of course) Anyway, back to the recipe, if you can call it that. Buy a piece of fillet, not steaks, a big piece (allow about half a pound per person) later on you’re going to sear it and slice it a bit like carpaccio. It will cost a few bob, about five or six pounds per person but it really is worth it. Get some rocket too; loads of it if you’re anything like us. I can remember having dinner in Italy with the lovely Jeremy Pemberton about fifteen years ago and us saying we should become rocket farmers, or Rucola farmers, or even Arugula farmers. Based on my families

I wrote this last year but didn't have a blog to put it in Joe and I headed up to Vermont in March this year (2006) The weather is unbelievable. We went up on the mountain yesterday for a ski, it was bright sunshine, sixty degrees, a bit slushy but glorious all the same. It’s great being up here together; the combination of revision and general bonding seems to work out really well for both parties. It also reminds me of how important our little place up here is to me. We ate out the first night but decided to stay in and fire up the gas barbecue last night. I bought some local Misty Knoll Farm, boned chicken breasts, a bag of Mesclun salad, fennel and some potatoes …. And a bottle of Rosemount GSM for me (which I need to get Lisa to try, I think she might rather like it) We decided to do a bit of cookery research and made two marinades for the chicken. One was a classic salsa Verde the other a combination of thyme garlic and salt, both were marinated using the patent ‘Peter Lazor

This recipe came out of a magazine. I love gazpacho. I love the flavours and I love the fact that its so healthy. This recipe has the added litle twist of cumin and Sherry vinegar which I think lifts it above the run of the mill. This is a perfect summer starter. It’s easy to make and can be made the night before you need it If you’re trying to be a bit posh sieve the soup after you have made it, you will get a very smooth and sophisticated finish. You can also add a few peices of neatly chopped cucumber and pepper to the finished dish ... and croutons if that sort of thing floats your boat. As with all things tomato-ey, the riper the toms, the better the finished dish Ingredients 900g ripe tomatoes (preferably plum tomatoes) 1 medium cucumber chopped into chunks 1 red pepper chopped into chunks 1 small red onion chopped into chunks 1 garlic clove finely chopped 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 125ml chicken stock 60ml sherry vinegar 1tbsp each cayenne pepper, paprika, cumin seeds 1tsp sa

Good decision Raymond. Sam can't even play the drums let alone cook.

I saw this one morning on Saturday kitchen and fell in love with it. I have to confess that one of my favourite things to do at the weekend is to exercise whilst watching the programme – sad I know. Allegra McEvedy is co-founder of fast-food health chain Leon and this recipe is definitely fast, very easy and I bloody well hope it’s healthy. You can get preserved lemons in Waitrose, the brand is Belazu. When she made it on TV she served it with a yoghurt, cucumber and mint sauce on the side … a sort of tzatziki. The first time you cook this for anyone I guarantee that they will be impressed … as will you be with the ease with which you have done so. Ingredients (Serves four) 180g cous-cous ½ teaspoon ground cumin ½ teaspoon cumin seeds 3 spring onions, thinly sliced 1 preserved lemon, golf-ball sized, roughly chopped 10g fresh coriander, washed and roughly chopped 10 cherry tomatoes, quartered 700g monkfish fillet, cut into equal portions 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil Big pinch s

These recipes are all for snacks to go with drinks. Ones that will keep marauding teenagers at bay whilst you try and get on with cooking the main event. They are also great as very casual starters, normally wolfed down whilst standing around the sink in our kitchen. They are also a pretty good as a stand-by for a light lunch Piquillo peppers - Moro cookbook Ingredients 1 jar of piquillo peppers 1 clove garlic Extra virgin olive oil Sherry vinegar Ciabatta or sourdough bread A really quick recipe that tastes great … whip them out of the jar, tear into three, with a bit of garlic, a few tablespoons of olive oil and a dash of sherry vinegar.. Delicious. It’s a great standby to go with drinks as the jar will keep in the cupboard for ever well not quite but you know what I mean). You need a decent bit of bread to go alongside Smashed Cannellini beans - River Cafe easy 1 This recipe has converted me to cannellini beans, given I thought that I absoloutely hated them this is no mean feat. I

Tomato salads feature heavily in Cook family life. I like them on their own, on the side of a beautiful rare sirloin steak with a bit of Rocket salad, on Bruschetta, or as part of an antipast misti. Tomato salads form a staple part of the Mediterranean diet and when you buy those beautiful dark red, ripe, sweet tomatoes in a market in Italy or France you know why. Also for all you blokes out there, they also contain Licapedes (sp?) which apparently help to ward of Prostate cancer. There are recipes in virtually every mediterranean cook book here's a couple of thoughts from me Billy Sweeneys Bruschetta salad (or Tuscan toasted bread and tomato salad) This salad was christened by my oldest friend Billy Sweeney. The Sweeney’s introduced us to Vermont and own the condo next door but one to us in Sugarbush. I made this salad one day when we were up there and Bill went wild for it, so much so I taught him, and Will, his son, how to make it. Hence the new name for the recipe. At its most

A year or so ago I read that, perhaps unsurprisingly, Norfolk’s finest, Delia Smith remains the nation's favourite cookery book writer – perhaps more surprising is the fact that despite her success the average Briton only attempts to make 35 of the 1,000 recipes they have in the home. And while there are 171 million cookbooks in the nation's homes (about a million of which are in mine), according to the survey 61 million remain unopened and on the shelves. The majority of people are put off trying out a new recipe before they have donned an apron - 80% because they look too complicated and 70% because they are short of the right ingredients. Almost two thirds of adults (65%) in the survey admit that they keep cookery books for show rather than for use … in my case that would certainly be true of the Nobu cookery book. It will come as little shock to most women that despite the rise of the modern man, only 28% will try to cook new dishes, compared to 71% of women. Wannabe chefs