The Family Cook Book

We have just come back from Florence. As well as seeing more Renaissance paintings, churches and statuary than you can throw a stick at we also ate some great food.  Florence is famous for its Steaks, its tripe and its gelato. We only had tripe once and not very much of it but Martha and I had gelato every day; even if it was just a small scoop. I love, love, love gelato ... particularly Nocciola. Luckily there was a small but perfectly formed gelateria that had been recommended to us that was just a hop, a skip and a jump from our hotel. If you happen to find yourself in Florence in the Oltrarno area then give it a whirl .. it's called Gelateria della Passera . Other great recommendations from friends and family that we managed to visit were Quattro Leoni  - it was our first night so we were a bit shattered but we had lovely service from our Albanian, football loving host. The following night we visted the very, very, tiny but fantastically tasty and good value piz

This is one of our favourite standby recipes which is a bastardisation of a recipe from the River cafe Easy (silver) book, which uses Guinea fowl instead of chicken. I first blogged about it in 2008 but I thought it was worth posting again having  made it last week for the Lacosta massive who gave it a pretty universal thumbs up (they could have just been being polite of course!) Because it's a one tray bake it is very easy to make and prepare ahead, which makes it perfect for an easy lunch or dinner for a crowd.  It is also easy to double it up for a larger group but unless you have a humungous tray, and oven, then I would recommend going for two trays so that you can still arrange all the ingredients in one layer. If you don't you end up not only failing to brown the chicken very well but you also run the risk of poaching the chicken in the wine.  Ingredients - serves 4 8 pieces of chicken ( we use thighs or whole legs ) 5 garlic cloves 2 tablespoons ros