168: Green curry of prawns and Thai aubergines, p118

'Small purple Thai aubergines' and 'pea aubergines available from Chinese and Thai grocers'? Hmm. Not round here, I'm afraid. Like Maggie Don, I eventually gave up on trying to find either, having looking and looked, and used a normal aubergine. Love aubergines, love their almost meaty texture and the way they make dishes taste rich but at the same time balance out lots of rich flavours. T doesn't like aubergines :( But he did try and actually ate quite a lot of this (and all the prawns and cherry tomatoes, of course).

Lots of lovely Thai-inspired flavours, and an easy peasy recipe, just need to make sure you have a little mini-blitzer/processor to whizz up the spice paste quickly and you're away. I skipped the coriander root in the ingredients list too, I'm afraid. Oh well :)

99: Steamed sea bass with ginger and cucumber, p180

Not a whole seabass, as per the recipe, and not for one person - but two seabass fillets for a light lunch for two of us. And it was scrummy! More clean simple asian flavours, with the nam pla, soy, lime and coriander, served with jersey potatoes, very Nigel... And very simple. Never having cooked seabass before, one thing this book is definitely doing is teaching me to cook fish I wouldn't normally cook, which is quite fun. Yummy.

71: Pumpkin and tomato laksa, p333

Scrummy stuff, this! Full of flavour, quite hot (!), creamy, and zingy with the lemongrass and ginger, and the squash and tomato cooked just right - still a bit firm and fresh tasting, al dente. Annoyingly, I found I'd run out of lime leaves, so had to miss them out... and where on earth can I get coriander root in West London?? The specialist oriental supermarket in Richmond doesn't have it... The 'only' other substitution was some very ripe, tasty vine tomatoes instead of the cherry tomatoes specified - in the interests of me actually managing to complete this challenge, I'm afraid I'm going to have to be a little less strict about following everything to the letter... :)

46: A curry of aubergine, tomatoes and lemon grass, p132

Partway through, this looked like it was going to be a terrible disaster, as the aubergines just floated on top of the simmering curry below, looking like they'd never cook, but again, the final result was really surprisingly tasty. Creamy coconutty sauce, with a good garlicky kick, and perfectly cooked aubergine. Oddly the mushrooms seemed to vanish... and I made a cheat by using a tin of tomatoes instead of fresh as somehow I completely underestimated how many tomatoes I needed in the supermarket the other day... instead of counting for this recipe, plus the other curry I did tonight, I just counted the one tomatoey recipe. Doh.

So, with the chickpea curry, spicy potatoes, dal soup, and naans, this made a pretty fab meal. And a total of four Nigel recipes done in one meal. I did manage to use every single pan and dish we own in the process though...

33: Prawn and coriander rolls, p94

Another bottle-misidentification mistake tonight - rice vinegar was actually another bottle of white wine vinegar. Damn damn damn. Got to have a good look at what's in the cupboard and what's not... Annoyingly I can picture the label on the bottle of rice vinegar, and could have sworn it was there, but knowing me it ran out a couple of years ago and the bottle went in the recycling...

Not bad at all these, but still not a patch on the pork patties... Oddly, inspite of being chiefly king prawn, and containing no potato and just a smidge of flour to help bind them together, they had a strangely potatoey texture, more like traditional fishcakes. More chilli and lemongrass I think next time. The sauce was a bit sweet for my taste on its own but drizzled over the rolls and accompanying noodles worked much better.

The enormous iceberg lettuce which has been taunting me from the fridge for its bland wateriness, and which was purchased particularly for this recipe, was finally pressed into service, but we only needed about a third of the thing and now I've got to think of something else to do with the rest... And no, Kingsley the bunny cannot have it as bunnies cannot eat lettuce, it makes them sick, with horrid stomach cramps, and they can die. So there. Bet you didn't know that. Plus Kingsley is such a fusspot, I'm sure he'd think it was below him to eat such a thing.

I always remember my dad telling us how iceberg lettuce was developed specifically for McDonalds, for its texture and shelf-life in the fastfood business. Yum.

29: Stir-fried mushrooms, spring leaves and lemon grass, p100

More winter leaves than spring leaves, so perhaps not as tender as Nigel intended when he made this in March, but resulted in a simple but tasty, garlicky stir-fry, served on basmati rice. Easy peasy and virtuous too - lots of greenery and no meat! And the bunny rabbit enjoyed demolishing the stems/midribs from the greens...

20: Chicken with mushrooms and lemon grass, p107

OOOOOOOOOOOOhhh, this was good. The name of the recipe is somewhat uninspiring and does this little stirfry a great disservice - it's a scrummy, zingy, fresh-tasting mixture, with lots of garlic and ginger, plus a little red chilli and a good kick of lemongrass, and that delicious but-don't-inhale-too-deeply salty-meatiness given by a good glug of nam pla. Served on steamed basmati rice, and many contented 'mmmm's all round...