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.

31: Salmon and dill fishcakes, p161

Yummy yummy yum yum... Scrummy little fishcakes, Nigel IS the king of such creations. I've never made fishcakes before, but I know that they tend to contain potato... but these don't, just egg white, mustard, dill, lemon, bit of flour, and a lot of salmon. When I scrunched them into little cakes to fry, they seemed very wet, possibly because the salmon came out of the freezer rather being fresh, so I thought they might fall apart and be a bit of a disaster, but they didn't, and they made lovely little cakes, golden brown on each side.

Served with new potatoes and steamed sugar snap peas, it's definitely worth making the very simple sauce to go with the fishcakes - I used some homemade yoghurt, mixed up with a good teaspoonful of grain mustard, but forgot to add any dill - oh well, the fishcakes were very dill-y!

30: A herb and barley broth to bring you back to health, p41

Don't really need to be brought back to health, but hey, can't beat a bit of broth... uses up lots of veggies too, which is useful because I slightly over-bought in Tescos yesterday and the fridge is overflowing...

Essentially stew without the meat, very similar in delicate sweet taste to the lamb stew earlier this month. I'm not sure that the specially-purchased goose fat really adds that much, but c'est la vie...

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...

28: Toasted chocolate brioche, p137

This isn't a recipe!! Definitely an excuse for a decadent breakfast though... Actually, toasting the brioche in a ridged pan, melting the chocolate inside, did create something greater than the sum of it's parts... I'm used to having brioche warm and soft, but not toasted, and I think it was actually better! I cheated a little - used brioche rolls instead of slices, and chocolate chips as I just realised I used up all the dark chocolate in the chocolate puddings on Friday - they used a LOT of chocolate... Yum...

27: Mushroom pappardelle, p283

Not really a recipe this, very similar to the kind of thing I do for a quick mid-week super, garlic 'shrooms on pappardelle (actually the fresh linguine I made last week, dried now). Chestnut mushrooms gave it a nice nutty taste, and the parsley and Parmesan added a little extra flavour.

26: Orange and ricotta pancakes, p156

Feeling a bit bad about making T eat squash again, and having been a bit grumpy and snappy at him for no real reason, I decided to make another pudding (two, in one weekend! No wonder we're getting podgy...) and made these pancakes for a late pudding/supper. T got a jar of gourmet handmade chocolate fudge sauce in his Christmas foodie hamper, so I thought these might go nicely... and use up the pot of ricotta in the fridge. An unusual pancake recipe - no milk! And the egg whites are whisked separately until firm and then folded in, eugh. It was 10pm and my initial enthusiasm started to wane slightly, especially when I split the egg whites all over the place when I started whisking. Damn damn damn. But they were whisked, and folded, and dolloped in the frying pan four at a time. Because of the egg whites they are fluffy and thick, and the cheese makes them very soft too, so it's difficult to tell when they are cooked - let alone turn them over. I'm not very patient waiting for little pancakes to cook, and couldn't quite get them at the right point - not cooked enough and they splurge on turning, too long and they're a little over-brown on the pan-side. Unfortunately I seemed to keep getting a combination of the two, even with the pan on the lowest heat. Hey ho! What's a bit of aesthetic carbonisation and raw egg between husband and wife? Eek.

The orange zest wasn't too strong and the pancakes soft and fluffy still at the end, if a little brown on the outside, and the chocolate fudge sauce melted gorgeously all over them. Yum! Happy T, and me, order and calm restored.

However... although they were extremely good, and it was a novel use for ricotta, I can't say I'd honestly be likely to bother to make them again - partly because I love normal crepe-style pancakes (which are so easy and quick anyway), and partly because if I want to make little scotch-pancake-style pancakes, a couple of months ago I discovered Jamie Oliver's recipe for apple pancakes and they are so so quick and easy, I'd make them instead. Sorry, Nigel!