127: Macaroni with Fontina and mustard, p303

I can't find Fontina cheese. I tried. I gave up. I used Taleggio, which is used earlier in the book for an easily melted cheese... You may have noticed that I'm definitely getting more relaxed about the occasional ingredient substitution - if I'm going to have any chance of finishing this challenge, I think I have to! But I do TRY to find all the right ingredients before swapping... :)

This was scrummy comfort food at it's best. I love macaroni cheese, T can't stand it - doesn't like 'bland' foods. Hah. He liked this though, and finished the leftovers for lunch today :) I'll definitely use this recipe again in the future, the addition of the mustards (Dijon and wholegrain) really added a little kick to it, and it was deliciously creamy and moreish. Served with a salad of rocket leaves and balsamic dressing, yummy!

126: Baked lamb with tomatoes and rosemary, p285

A lovely, super easy, throw it all in one dish and bake meal this - essentially roasted vegetables and potatoes, with the meat put on top halfway through so the juices run down onto everything below. Very tasty too - the rosemary came out really strongly. The lamb neck was delicious - tender and sweet, and I always find neck much less fatty than other lamb cuts, so was pleased that's what was specified in this recipe. 30mins was a bit too long though, not much pinkness remained, I should have checked it earlier but then the potatoes might not have been done. Ho hum. Definitely one to repeat.

125: Orange and lemon cheesecake, p129

Marathon weekend of cooking is at an end! This was the finale to Sunday lunch, and nearly finished us all off... I was worried it wouldn't set properly, and it was awfully soft, but held it's shape when cut, hurray! Extremely creamy, and not as lemony or orangey as I though it might be, but Dad managed to polish off a good quarter of the whole thing. Not sure it's the best baked cheesecake recipe around as Nigel describes it (my friend Kirsty wins that prize), but it was jolly good nonetheless :)

123: Baked onions with Parmesan and cream, p338, and 124: Peas with lemon and mint, p374

Ooooh, delicous onions! Very very easy, only three ingredients, and a deliciously sweet, creamy accompaniment to the roast pork I made for lunch. Seemed odd to boil the onions first, but it seemed to work, and they were gorgeously tender after baking, and the sauce was delicious!

The peas weren't really a recipe, but a very nice way to cook them, which I'll definitely use in the future. Not really much to write about otherwise though...

122: Roast pork with grapes, juniper and Vin Santo, p308

Parents visiting for Sunday lunch today, so followed the Nigel souffle-opener with another four recipes from the book...The fat on the pork loin wasn't scored and it was really difficult to cut into it, even with my sharpest sharpest knife, grrr, so the spice mixture ended up kinda rubbed all over the meat and balanced on top :)

Was a bit hesitant about the juniper berries, can't stand the taste of juniper (yes, that includes gin too therefore...) and this smelt very junipery during cooking, but luckily the end taste wasn't too strong and overpowering. Although it was definitely there... And the dry marsala - yum! Definitely a good thing, and combined with the grapes (which were pretty blackened by the end of the cooking), made the most amazing deep, rich, tasty gravy. Served with roast potatoes as per the recipe, and the baked onions and lemon mint peas as in the next couple of recipes...

121: Goat's cheese puddings, p166

Yum! My first souffle! And they worked! The 'soft' goat's cheeses I bought weren't exactly what I'd call 'soft' and took a lot of mashing until they were soft enough to mix into the egg yolks (thank you lovely husband for sitting down and doing this so well...), so I was a bit worried this wasn't going to work... but they did! Hurrah! And they were scrummy. Took about 15mins to bake in the oven and were puffed up and golden brown on top, and the crisp sweetness of lettuce heart salad went very nicely with their creamy cheesiness. Definitely to be repeated in the future...

120: Braised oxtail with mustard and mash, p63

A little visceral, this one...  Hunting down an oxtail, I found one rather quickly in Waitrose, who apparently have a range of 'forgotten cuts' - well done them! A bargain too, under a couple of quid for a whole oxtail. People seem to be incredibly squeamish about the idea though - the number of 'eughs!' and 'yuck, really??' responses I got when I mentioned I was making this, you'd have thought I was cooking a rat. Stupidly anticipating an oxtail to be long thick lump of meat, at the meat counter I was momentarily taken aback by the fact that the 'oxtail' sign was sitting on a little pile of neat, medallion-like rounds, before realising that they were all different sizes, about 1/2 inch through to 3 inches in diameter - and are of course each of the vertebrae of the tail, already chopped apart and ready to cook... doh!

An easy stew to throw together, and with the addition of a whole bottle of wine (no stock!) and the mustards, really meaty and rich and scrummy. After 2 1/2 hours, the meat was falling off the bones, and the next day, as per the recipe, I finished it off and served it with creamy mashed potato. The meat was lovely, but a little thin on the ground, and a little slimy still for T's liking, so maybe a bit longer in the oven to reduce the collagen down a bit more might have been a good idea.

119: Smoked mackerel on toast, p90

Fishy fishy pate-type foods a happy husband make... I mentioned this to T just before he went to work this morning and apparently he's been looking forward to it all day :) I was hoping the cheese in it wouldn't put him off too much though...

I don't really like smoked foods, and smoked fish in particular, but smoked mackerel is rather tasty. Very meaty and moreish, I always end up picking little bits of it as T makes his sarnies, if I've bought it, and it is rather nice in a kedgeree (dry not sticky and wet though) and in the occasional salad. Hmm. I think it's lack of bones is one of the biggest things that make me able to like it though :) Hurray!

This recipe was very easy, no real cooking, just a little grilling at the end, and hey presto - maximum wife points for minimum effort! And it was scrummy too. A definite one to repeat...

118: Peach and blueberry soured cream cobbler, p230

Mmm, yummy! I suddenly had a craving for a bit of comfort food of the pudding variety and spur of the moment made this, having all the ingredients in stock. Wasn't sure what made it a cobbler and not a crumble until I started making it - and I think the distinction is that you make a dough and pile little rounds of dough on top of the fruit. What a faff! The dough was quite sticky and difficult to make into flat enough rounds to possibly cover the top of the fruit so I ended up with quite a 'rustic' mishmash of odd shapes stretched out across the surface, and covered in the stuff. It took longer to cook than 25mins too, more like 40mins, after 25mins I cut into it and found the cobblers (??) were still raw and sticky inside, so had to pop it back in. The result was good though, not too sweet, not too sour, and I quite liked the topping... Hmm. But would probably stick with regular crumble topping normally... Less messy... and quicker...

117: Bramley apple shortcake, p124

Yummy! I made pastry!! Hot paws are not conducive to pastry making, which is a terrible shame as I love love love pastry. Actually it's probably a good thing I can't make it very well... or I'd eat it all the time...

This was a very short shortcrust pastry, and I tried really hard... but it still ended up being placed in the bottom of the pie tin and over the top of the filling in multiple pieces. Added a very homemade 'rustic' look, I like to think... Only a pic (to follow) of the outside for this one as I took it to a family party and we had to leave early as hubby had an opera to get to, at Glyndebourne, so had to leave it there and in the rush, although I tried a bit of it quickly, completely forgot to take a picture of it cut. Ho hum. But I can report that it was really rather good - not too sweet, not too sour, not too sloppy. Hate it when the filling makes the pastry too soggy and thought that might happen with this as I made the pie last night - but no, it didn't, success! And even grumpy uncle, who doesn't do complements, said it wasn't bad at all. And then had a second piece :)

116: Bream with lemon and anchovy potatoes, p245

Another fishy first - seabream! Quite a fishy tasting fish, but meaty white flesh and not too many bones (hurray!). A very simple recipe, baked in the oven, and 15-20mins was spot on timing-wise, the fish was cooked perfectly. The real 'recipe' bit is the potatoes, browned a little on the hob, with lemon and anchovies added, and then cooked in the oven swimming in stock, which braised the potatoes, making them extra tasty, and turned into a lovely rich lemony, meaty gravy to serve with the fish and potatoes. Served with steamed green beans, a very nice Saturday night supper to have whilst watching a movie on tv.

115: Grilled squid with lime and thyme, p280

First time buying and cooking squid! Was amazed at how inexpensive they were - six 2-2.5inch long squids, cleaned, and with their tentacles tucked inside, for £1.40, not bad at all... Nice marinade of garlic and thyme, and leaving them for an hour or two definitely gave them lots of flavour. The nice flat crisscrossed meat curled up almost instantly on contact with the griddlepan, and I probably gave them a minute or two too long in the pan, trying to get the griddlemarks as in the recipe and picture, before I gave up and served them, so they were slightly overdone. Ho hum. But good though!!

114: Bread and tomato salad, p273

A simple salad jazzed up with the addition of anchovy fillets, olives and red wine vinegar. Not sure if the bread was supposed to be chopped up after baking, as it definitely didn't say in the recipe... I cut the oblong ciabatta into thick rounds so they were c. 2x3inches, mixed them with the salad and dressing, and then placed the bread in the bowls and piled the salad and poured the dressing on top, but I think it might have been better to chop the bread up into more bite-sized crouton pieces so they would soak up more of the juices and be easier to eat (who wants to be trying to cut pieces of crispy bread in a salad?? We used our fingers to eat the bread in the end...). If I did this again I'd also chop the anchovies up and mix them in the dressing and then dress the salad with them, to make the fishy meatiness of the anchovies go that bit further, throughout the whole salad.

113: Kipper patties, dill mayonnaise, p48

Hmm, don't like smoked fish, and kippers might just be the smokiest of smoked fish... yuck. But these were duly made (recipe halved), and served to the hubby, who loves smoked fish, thank goodness, and I tried a little bit. Not sure about blitzing the potatoes in the food processor (I used my stick blender, since it was such a small amount), as it makes them release all the starch, resulting in a thick, gluey consistency which is really quite horrid. The patties were gooey on the inside and threatened to break up into gloopy little dollops during frying, and they were too soft to risk blotting the excess oil on kitchen towel after frying, ick. I think I'll stick to mashing the potato up with a fork/masher... Hubby liked them very much, and they weren't horrid at all, just smoked fishy, so not my thing :) But the dill/garlic/mayo was scrummy, v nice indeed!

112: Ham and butter beans, p321

An autumnal dish for the first day of August! Hmm, a hearty, meaty stew didn't really suit the weather today, but hey, I fancied it, and had all the bits... plus it will make for easy lunches at work this week. I halved the quantities and still had enough for four, the butter beans were from a tin, not dried, so a little shortcut there... and boiling bacon was replaced with a gammon joint. The resulting stew was scrummy, but I should have used two tins of butter beans to balance out the salty spiciness of the chorizo and gammon. I'm not sure about serving a slice of the fat with each serving - the slice of fat browned up at the start of the recipe but didn't exactly go crispy, and remained rather slimy - not very appetising!