The Family Cook Book

First a confession, amongst all of the drinking and general jollity and the candle light I very nearly poisoned my lovely guests by not cooking the chicken all the way through. Let this be a lesson to you … or two in fact: Firstly don’t blindly believe what recipes say even when they are from a smiling Australian like Bill Granger… always check. Secondly barbecues can be lethal when it comes to chicken. Like all of Bills recipes this is very easy and I think its pretty tasty with lots of clever little touches. I have adapted the couscous slightly .. he uses peas …I have added the toms and the pomegranate seeds. Overall the dish has a very nice summery Spanish vibe to it Ingredients 1 x 1.5kg chicken (you could do this with chicken pieces if you prefer) Marinade 4 garlic cloves roughly chopped 1 red chilli finely chopped 1 tsp coriander seeds Sea salt 125ml extra virgin olive oil 1 tbsp sherry vinegar 2 tbsp lime juice 2 tbsp orange juice (freshly squeezed) Freshly ground black

Home made humus is one of those things that is an absolute walk in the park to make but really does taste much better than the shop bought variety. Ingredients 1 tin chickpeas drained and rinsed 2 ½ tablespoons lemon juice 1 clove garlic finely chopped 1 tablespoon tahini 70ml extra virgin olive oil 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper salt and pepper. Method Whack everything apart from the salt and pepper in a blender and blitz until it reaches the consistency you prefer (it doesn’t have to be baby food smooth as in commercial recipes) If it’s a bit thick loosen with extra olive oil Put into a bowl season an stir in a shot of olive oil Serve with fresh bread or even better home made flatbread (elsewhere on this blog)

This is a recipe by the lovely Alice Waters from The Art of Simple Food. Ingredients 2 medium aubergines (eggplant) 4 tablespoons ex virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons lemon juice salt 1 garlic clove pounded to a puree with a little salt 2 tablespoons coriander pepper method Pre heat oven to 200C Cut aubergines in half lengthwise Sprinkle cut surfaces with olive oil and a little Maldon salt and ground black pepper. Place cut side down on a non-stick baking sheet and put in the oven for about 30 to 40 mins. You can tell when they are done by testing if they are very soft at the stem end. Leave to cool. Scrape the flesh out of the skin into a bowl and chop and stir vigorously to make a puree. Add the rest of the ingredients excluding salt and pepper and stir to mix well. Taste and season accordingly

We had an impromptu dinner with Joel and Nushi on Saturday night. We sat outside, drank copious amounts of Champagne, Red wine and dessert wine, laughed a lot and toasted Nushi’s latest thespian success. We also ate a ton of food! We started with Lisas favourite: picky things. Given the time of year one of those things just has to be asparagus. I have referred to this River Café recipe for asparagus with anchovy and milk sauce before but here is the recipe…..slightly amended. Do not be put off by the slightly weird sound of this, it is absolutely delicious. Btw depending on your appetite this may make enough sauce for another outing and my experience would suggest that it will keep in the fridge for at least a day. Ingredients for 4 24 spears of asparagus sauce 6 anchovy fillets(1/2 a small tin) grated peel of 1 lemon (I do mine on a microplane but a grater will do) 1 small dried chilli (or ½ teaspoon of chilli flakes) 1 garlic clove (peeled and crushed with a little salt) 125ml milk 4

We had a delightful lunch last weekend with Andy and Julia ... it was made all the more pleasurable by the fact that they brought Olly (just back from Afghanistan) and Rupert (just back from Cheltenham) and the dogs (just back from a walk) No Ally as he is somewhere in Australia and no Gus (Falmouth) or Joe (St Maarten) but of course we did have Martha (not gone anywhere yet!) and Phoebe Olly regaled us with stories about Afghanistan peppered with military acronyms and we all had a very very nice time. We started the meal with the Moro Aubergine and red pepper dip and some Hummus (elsewhere on this blog)and continued with an improvised version of the Chicken with fennel pancetta and red onion recipe.... the improvisation was in the form of the replacement of rosemary with thyme ..... seemed to work.... and the addition of Lemon roasted potatoes to add a bit of bulk which we thought that four blokes( including one Marine ) might require This is also one of those meals where you can just

Gus is home for a night and has brought a mate with him. They are up in town tomorrow making a competitive pitch.A bit of a case of like father like son I suppose.I hope it goes better than my first pitch ... I was spectacularly nervous and totally crap! I decided to provide some hearty sustenance in the form of the Leon meatballs recipe from their excellent and eponymous book. As with most of Allegra McEvedy's cooking it is good easy family food ... this one will definitely make it to the 'regular' list. I served it with a salad and some couscous made with chicken stock, a little preserved lemon and a large handful of fresh mint stirred through after it had been fluffed up ps I made one change which was to leave out the flatbread as I prefer my meatballs 100% meat but I'm sure they are equally brilliant with the bread left in pps I also dialled down the Harissa a bit (1/2 tablespoon instead of 1) for Martha's sake and put some on the table for the boys to spice thi

Bank holiday monday night, Joe had been working all day in the white heat of the t-shirt folding mecca that is The Gap. Martha back to school tomorrow and me back on the 7.52. I had seen Mr. Granger do this recipe on Saturday Kitchen ... then we got the book at work and it spurred me on to try it. This is classic Aussie fare: a fresh light Asian fusion kinda thing. I left the chillies out of the dumplings for Martha's sake and added some asparagus spears that I had in the fridge. We all loved it and dinner ended with clean plates and us all laughing at Joe's usual operatic comedy routine ... hard to explain why it's so funny but if you imagine Pavarotti with tourettes then you'll start to get the picture Ingredients For the dumplings 350g/13oz minced chicken 60g/2½oz vacuum packed bamboo shoots (thank you Waitrose), drained and finely chopped 2 tsp freshly grated root ginger 1 long red chilli, seeds removed, finely chopped 2 tbsp chopped coriander leaves 2 tsp fish sau