192: Roast goose, juniper sauce and apple and lemon puree, p385

New Year's Eve! And the last two recipes! Hurrah! We searched high and low for a goose that wasn't going to bankrupt us and the hubby marvellously managed to find a frozen one in Sainsbury's for a mere £28, on Christmas Eve. Ha! We'd never had goose before, either of us, and ironically found out two days before Christmas that the aunt we were visiting for Christmas Day had decided to roast two geese for lunch this year - so we ended up having it twice in a week! Bizarre. Luckily we both really liked it on Christmas Day - phew.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture until we'd finished eating... whoops... but here's a picture of the carcass :)

It's not really a recipe in the book - no additions other than some salt, but I followed the cooking instructions exactly, and it was perfect. Not dry, not too fatty, crispy on the outside, and I did all of the accompaniments - the onion gravy from the pork leg with added juniper and redcurrant jelly (okay, cranberry sauce, but near enough...), the cabbage with orange and juniper, roast potatoes, and apple and lemon puree. Delicious. If goose wasn't so pricey, I would do this again. Frequently...

Now, on New Year's Day, the carcass has been picked, an enormous pot of stock has been made with the remains, there's a big tub of goose fat saved for future roasties, and I'm going to freeze some of the stock and use the rest to make some restorative noodle soup with the picked goose meat. Yum.

And here are the dinner guests post-goose:

179: A squid in the fryer, p276

I like squid a lot, but this wasn't a success. I don't have much luck when recipes call for ingredients to be tossed in flour - worse still when they are coated in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, turns into a sticky cleggy mess. A Cleggy Mess being nothing to do with the current government, of course. Ahem.

These (not so) little baby squids were fresh from the fishmongers two bus rides away, to whom I dashed away from work early tonight (red mullet tomorrow, hurrah!). Undercooked squid is disconcerting, overcooked is pretty horrid (like eating rubber bands, as Nigel says in the book), and I skillfully managed a bit of both here. The combination of ingredients promised much but sadly my execution of this recipe was a bit of a let down. A lighter touch, no flour, stirfrying, and a good squeeze of lime would have made all the difference. Oh well, you win some, you lose some!

159: Seared beef with mint and mustard dressing, p271, and 160: Garlic prawns, p272

Oh my... the seared beef was amazing. Dedicated carnivores that we are, it was always likely to be a winner, but this really was divine! Our budget rarely stretches to fillet (or steak at all - it's usually a special occasion treat, much to T's dismay) and I couldn't justify the quantity this recipe uses, just for the two of us, so got a much smaller piece of fillet, around 200g. Wasn't sure how long to cook it in the oven for, 10mins for the larger piece in the recipe, so tried 5mins, then a couple more, and then a good 10mins resting and it was perfect - rare in the middle, with a thin roasted layer outside. And it cut like butter with my super sharp filleting knife. Gorgeous.

The dressing was a success too, creamy and minty, love making these mayonnaises now I've found they are so easy. Used my little mini processor so couldn't drizzle the oil in continuously, instead stopped every minute or so to drizzle another tbsp over the top of the mixture before blitzing again and it seemed to work just fine. Despite using lots of fresh mint, the mint flavour didn't really come through, so might try more in the future, or less mustard, but still delicious!

Finally for the evening, we had the garlicky grilled prawns. Again, the budget, and the number of covers, didn't quite match the recipe's requirements but I decided not to scrimp on quality and got four enormous fresh sea king prawns, each a good four inches long, from the Waitrose fish counter. Hardly need a recipe for this one and it's one of our favourite combinations, although normally if we add red chilli to add a fiery kick, so not much to say other than it was easy (no more than 5mins under the grill) and delicious - especially with lashings of melted butter and lemon juice on top!

147: Slow-roast lamb with chickpea mash, p62, and 148: Cheese-smothered potatoes, p17

Tescos delivered lamb shanks instead of another leg of lamb (as the recipe says) the other day, but the shank is part of the arm of the shoulder, and includes part of the leg, so that's not that far from being a leg of lamb, right?

Three and a half hours of roasting and I was worried they were going to be wrecked, as they'd got rather crispy on the outside inspite of the hourly basting with the juices - the juices were starting to disappear in the ether so there wasn't that much to baste with towards the end. But luckily it was just the outside, the layer of fat over the meat and the spice rub over it, and the meat underneath was  perfectly tender and the cartilage and connective tissue had melted away just as it should - much better than the last time I cooked lamb shanks...

Served with the cheese-smothered potatoes, which were easy peasy, and must have been virtually calorie free... not... and the chickpea mash, which T described as 'revolting', and refused to eat after trying a teeny bit. I kinda had to agree with him on that, it wasn't very nice... glad I divided the recipe in half so we didn't have enough for six... :)

145: A simple flatbread, p77, and 146: Taramasalata - the real thing, p77

Oooooh, this was a revelation for both of us! Me, because I hadn't realised how easy taramasalata is to make and love recipes where something curious happens to the ingredients and they change into something completely unexpected, and T because he never knew taramasalata was a fishy pate-type of gloop. How? Who knows... but he'd always apparently regarded it as a suspicious pink relative of hummous or tzatziki.

The flatbreads were great. We make all our bread in our breadmaker so I wasn't really looking forward to making these by hand, but it was easy and didn't need too much kneading at all. It more than quadrupled in size after being left for an hour, but started to deflate pretty quickly when being divided up into pieces. The main problem was that it was still pretty sticky and difficult to handle - so I had to use a lot of flour to manhandle it into pieces to bake, let alone form them into 'slipper' shapes. They puffed up like footballs in the oven, so I squished them down onto the baking tray to flatten them out a bit but they weren't very 'flat' flatbreads... I thought flatbreads weren't supposed to use yeast, hence the 'flat', but hey. And they were yummy - I love different types of breads, especially doughy ones like these with very little salt or sugar in them.

Located a lump of cod's roe in the wonderful Sandy's - it wasn't as expensive as Nigel seems to suggest in the book (but the red mullet made up for that...) - rather revolting looking solid sausagey type brownish lump with a hard, plasticky skin which the recipe states to peel off. Yum! Blitzed with the rest of the ingredients it curiously changed from the brownish colour and turned pale pink like the bought taramasalata. Bizarre! Then with the gradual addition of the olive oil it suddenly changed from a fishy slurry into a thick cream - like mayonnaise, as it says in the book. T loved it.

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...

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!!

108: Grilled pork steaks with vermouth and fennel, p380

Yummy tasty garlicky rosemary-y marinade this, nice and thick, and made the pork steaks deliciously juicy and tasty after 5-10mins on the griddle pan. Definitely a marinade to use again. Fennel was interesting... as stated previously, I don't really like fennel, but clearly Nigel does... however, softening it in butter and then braising it in vermouth got rid of the overwhelmingly aniseedy taste I don't like, and gave it a lovely soft taste instead, but at the same time retaining quite a lot of crunch and texture. Not bad at all :)

80: Roast chicken wings with lemon and cracked pepper, p138, and 81: Sweet and sticky chicken wings, p323

Two-in-one here - two recipes using chicken wings in the book, so I made both, and roasted the chicken wings (and thighs) in two separate roasting tins. Scrummy, tasty, sticky wings, as promised, but would definitely have benefited from being left to marinate for a few hours as the flavour was mainly on the skin and so the meat underneath was fairly plain - especially the lemony ones, where the lemon was a bit too subtle, we both thought.

Served with mangetout and homemade new potato oven chips.

63: A chicken roasted with new garlic and a fresh pea pilau to go with it, p184

Yuuuuuum. Can't beat a roast chicken. Especially not on a weeknight, what a treat! I had the cunning idea of chopping the legs/wings off and freezing them to use another day for other recipes, since it was only me and T for dinner - and having the added advantage of meaning the chicken cooked quicker too, about an hour plus 30mins resting. Perfick! Who says a roast is a faff and takes loads of time?

This was a very easy, quick way of roasting the bird, very similar to how I normally do it (upside down to start with, stops the breast meat drying out, and then right way up for last 30mins or so to crisp up on top), but rubbed with oil instead of butter as I usually use. Really super tasty, crisp skin - not sure that's a good thing though, as it means I eat more of it...

The new (green) garlic was amazing. Bit of a faff to parboil it first, and it ended up burning in the pan around the chicken anyway - not sure what I did wrong there, but it was a shame, and meant there wasn't much squidging of soft roasted garlic to be done, but it did manage to massively infuse the chicken and the gravy with incredible garlickiness. Yum! The gravy was amazing - mostly alcohol, and what wasn't alcohol was garlic :) Good times.

The pea pilau was a mini cheat... instead of fresh peas (in May?? Yes, I should be trying to be more seasonal... this recipe is from June in the book...) I used Bird's Eye's finest... but they were petit pois! And they are peas. Honestly, does it really matter that much? Hmm. Maybe it does? Ho hum. Ignorance is bliss. And the pilau was a different, but very good, accompaniment to the chicken. And the gravy. Mmm. Did I mention how good the gravy was?

32: Pork ribs with honey and anise, p300

Oooooh, proper meaty tasty Chinese ribs, with sticky very-star-anisey sauce.

Made a bit of a boo-boo, after defrosting the ribs last night, and getting all the rest of the ingredients in the bowl, I found that the big bottle of oyster sauce in the cupboard was actually another bottle of thick dark soy sauce. There's a fantastic Asian supermarket not far from us in Richmond, and they sell great big bottles of soy, nam pla, oyster sauce, sesame oil, etc which I stock up on from time to time - and which last ages, hadn't realised that one had run out. Ooops... So I improvised with nam pla and soy sauce, so fingers crossed it wasn't too far from the actual recipe.

It's a really easy recipe, mixed up the marinade this morning and coated the ribs with it, leaving them in the sauce, and roasting the ribs this evening for an hour. Served with basmati rice and steamed winter greens, that was it! Scrummy.