Remember, Remember, the 5th of November

In honour of the esteemed Mr Fawkes, the 'only man ever to enter parliament with honest intentions', I give you - pie.


Leek and Sausage Pie:

Here's a winter warmer for you - an easy-to-make, tasty pie. It's quick to cook, impressive to look at, and tastes excellent.

You will need:
600g good plain sausage meat;
4 small, 3 medium, or 2 large leeks;
1 500g pack of ready-made pastry, defrosted;
a rolling pin;
Flour and a clear, clean work surface;
1 10" (roughly 10") flan case, with a detatchable base;
1 saucepan;
1 mixing bowl;
salt;
pepper;
fresh basil;
2 eggs;

First, cut your pack of pastry in half. Half will go in the bottom of the flan case and a bit less than half over the top. Flour your working area and your rolling pin.
Now, with even strokes, always rolling away from you, roll the pastry out so that you have a piece that'll fill the flan case. Turn it over and around regularly to make sure that you roll it in each direction.

Now put it in the flan case. Push it in to the edges and once it's pushed in to the edges all the way around, push it down around very gently around the top, and you can then trim off any excess. Save it if you want to decorate the top of the pie. Using a fork, prick the bottom of the pastry in the flan case a dozen or so times, so that it won't rise during the cooking process. Now put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 190C.

Wash the leeks thoroughly. You'll need to cut them open and wash them under running water to get rid of all the soil that collects between the leaves. Cut the leeks lengthways in half, and then widthways every 2-3 inches. Boil some water in a saucepan, add a dash of salt, and when the water's boiling, put the leeks in. Cook them for around 3 minutes, drain the hot water, and fill the saucepan with cold water (keeping the leeks in it). This helps them to keep their colour.

Put the sausagemeat in a mixing bowl. Add salt and pepper and half a dozen basil leaves, which you've chopped finely. Now beat one of the eggs in a separate bowl, and add to the meat and mix the whole thing together very well. The egg is to bind the meat to the leeks.

Drain the leeks well and if necessary, dry them on a towel or in some kitchen roll. If they're too soggy they'll spoil the pie.

After 30 minutes take the flan case out of the fridge.

Take half the sausagemeat from the mixing bowl, and spread it in to the bottom of the flan case. Make sure you tuck it around the edge. Now, add the leeks. Spread them evenly across the meat. Finally, put the second layer of meat over the top. Now beat the second egg in to a bowl. You'll need this to create a seal between the two pieces of pastry. Dip your finger in the beaten egg, and dab it around the rim of the pastry where it'll touch the pie lid. Make sure you do it well so that it'll seal the base and lid together.

Put the pie to one side while you prepare the pastry top.

Roll the second piece of pastry out in the same way as the first - even strokes away from you, turning the pastry around and over. Once you're happy that it's big enough to fit on the top of the pie, drape it over. Tuck it down and press the edge together. Go around the pie with your finger, pressing and leaving a small fingertip impression pattern around the edge. This looks pretty(unless you have fat bloke fingers like me) and it makes sure the pie's sealed. Now, trim off the excess edging from the pie lid.

Glaze the top of the pie with the remainder of the beaten egg.

If you want to decorate the top, save scraps of leftover pastry after the rolling, cut out the pattern that you want - leaves, animals, or whatever takes your fancy - then when you glaze the pie with beaten egg before you cook it, stick the decorations to the top of the glazed pie, and then glaze them. Easy.

Put the pie in the oven for 25-30 minutes at 190C.

My recipe book suggests this should be served cold, but it's perfectly good warm. I'm having it tonight with a potato and parsnip mash, steamed kale and beans.

Drink with: I would think a frisky red.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 2/5 - Practice makes perfect with pastry. If this is your first time you may struggle, but don't be afraid to give it a go.

Mess Factor: 2/5 - Lots of washing up, dirty surfaces and the like

Leftover value: 5/5 - Cold pie is magical. Eat with cold beer and pickles.


PS - Those of you wondering what pie has to do with November 5th are right to be stumped. Short of any other connection, I decorated my pie with V's trademark sign from V for Vendetta

Bloke's Cookbook - Risotto alla Milanese

Just got home and didn't have time to shop? Hardly any food left in the house? You're in luck. Arborio (risotto) rice, some piggy product and an onion - plus a couple of common spices - is all you need to create a satisfying, tasty snack. It's fast, too, and unless you forget to stir it, hard to mess up.

As with the other risotto dish, the message for this one is stir, stir, stir. It's fast but it requires all your attention. Never add more than a splash of the stock at a time, because otherwise the rice will lose that glossy starchiness.

This dish uses saffron, which is harvested from the stigma of the crocus flower. It's the most expensive spice in the world by weight. It gives food a yellow-orange tinge and has a distinctive flavour and smell. Its use in cooking is ancient - it was popular with the Romans, for example. Saffron tends to come in two styles - powdered, or strands. The strands are the dried stigmata. To use them, you put the saffron in warm milk or water to soak for a few minutes, and then add the mix to your dish.

You will need:

1 medium onion, chopped finely;
A small amount of piggy product - this can be bacon, ham, salami, pancetta, whatever. If it's the thickness of bacon, a piece about 3" by 2" will suffice. About that amount. Work it out. Then cut it into 1/2" squares.
1 chicken or vegetable stock cube to make between 1/3 and 1/2 pint stock;
150g (ish) of Arborio rice;
Butter;
Saffron, either powdered or strands;
Salt and pepper;
Parmesan;
1 saucepan;
1 spoon;
1 cheese grater;
2 bowls for hot water.

Take your saffron, and place it in the hot water bowl. Add the hot water - about half a mug's worth - and let it sit while you do the rest of the cooking.

Take a knob of butter, a cube around 3/4", and put it in the saucepan. Turn the heat on to medium, and let the butter melt without burning. Once it's melted, add the finely chopped onion, stir the onion to coat it in butter, and let it cook until it's turning translucent.

Make your stock by the simple expedient of using the stock cube and some boiling water.

Now add the piggy pieces. Stir them in, and let them cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the rice, pouring it straight in to the mix, and then stir it in, making sure all the grains are coated with butter.

Once this is done, add a splash of your stock. Stir in, wait until the stock has been absorbed, then add a bit more. Keep adding until you've used up all the stock. Season with salt and pepper, and then add the saffron and the warm water, bit by bit, stirring all the time.

What you'll have by the end is a rich, yellow risotto. It should have a thick consistency and a glossy coat, like a labrador.

Finally, grate in approximately three large spoons worth of the parmesan. Stir in well.

Allow the dish to rest for a couple of minutes before serving.

Drink with: Works with white or red wine.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 4/5 - Simple so long as you remember to stir.

Mess Factor: 4/5 - One saucepan, a couple of bowls and a grater.

Leftover value: 2/5 - Passable cold, but not great.

Bloke's Cookbook - Plum Crumble

The relentless rain and gloom that has characterised yet another summer is bad news for most of the soft fruits in the Garden of England where I live. The strawberries are insipid and pale and the raspberries are sharp instead of sweet. The one thing that has really benefited from this year's torrents (although if you believe the BBC sixteen weeks of grey cloud and rain in the summer is normal) are tree fruit such as plums. They don't like dry conditions and the consistent rainfall interspersed with brief bouts of sunshine suits them well. So this year's a bumper year for plums and so here's a recipe for you.

It's so easy to prepare. Assuming that some of you don't have access to the luxuries of a PYO farm, I'll be giving instructions for supermarket plums too. You'll be able to do nearly as good a job with them but it'll take some extra work

You will need:
Around 2lb plums;
50g dark brown muscovado sugar (for supermarket plums);
100g plain flour;
75g unsalted butter;
75g light brown sugar;
A mixing bowl;
A sieve;
A saucepan;
A cast iron or ceramic cooking/serving dish.

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Firstly, cut the plums in half and remove the stones. Place the halved plums in the saucepan with no more than a dash of water and, if you're using supermarket plums, the muscovado sugar. Turn the heat on to low and leave to cook gently while you prepare the crumble.

Sieve the flour in to the mixing bowl. Cut the butter in to 1cm cubes, and add this to the bowl. Now you need to mix the butter in to the flour so that the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. To do this, use both hands and rub the butter between the tips of your index fingers and thumbs. It'll take around ten minutes to get it the right consistency. It might not look as though it's going to work, but it will - just keep rubbing the butter in to the flour and gradually it'll go the way you want it.
You can, if you want, do this in a food processor but I prefer to do it by hand since it's less washing up.

Once you've got the crumble mix to the required consistency, add the brown sugar to the mix. Stir in with a spoon.

It's now time to check the plums. They should have softened, the sugar should have melted. Take your serving dish, and lift the plums out of the saucepan and put them in it. Make sure you leave the liquid behind for now. Put the plums in a layer in the bottom of the dish. Now, take a look at the amount of liquid you've got. You need to make sure there's enough for the plums to sit in while they cook. If you've got too much liquid, then boil it for a couple of minutes. This'll get rid of the excess water and leave the plummy goodness. Once you've got it reduced a bit, pour it over the plums.

Now pour the crumble mix across the top of the plums. Spread it out fairly evenly. It should give you around half an inch of crumble mix on top. It looks like a lot, but the plum juice should soak up some of that.

Now put the crumble in the oven for about 35 minutes. Check every now and then to make sure the top's not burning. Et voila.

You can reheat this dish by putting it in the oven for about 20 minutes at 180C if you need to. If you're worried about the topping burning, lightly sprinkle some water across the top.

If you want to serve it with something, try whipped cream (not the stuff out of a can) or custard. I'll be doing a custard recipe at some point but for now buy the good stuff from the shops.

Drink with: Not really applicable since this is a dessert.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 4/5 - Very easy.

Mess Factor: 4/5 - A saucepan, a mixing bowl.

Leftover value: 4/5 - It's pretty good cold but better hot and it reheats fine.

Bloke's Cookbook - Bolognese

For many of us, the classic Spag Bol is one of the first things we learn to cook. It was the first meal I cooked for myself. Everyone seems to learn it a different way and this can lead to some truly hideous combinations, such as a university chum who, short of tomatoes, used tinned vegetables.
The traditional Italian tomato sauce which creates the dish is called a Ragu, which is a mixture of tomatoes, celery and carrot and ground beef which cooks for a minimum of 3 hours. Also in my recipe book's bolognese sauce are half a pint of milk and the same of dry white wine.
It is a marvellous dish but it takes an age and is not one you'd normally want to worry yourself with. What I've knocked up is something that cooks for around an hour. It's not a fast dish but there is at least a chance that you'll get home and get to eat it before you need to get up for work the next day.

In this recipe, I use pesto. Pesto is chopped basil in oil, sometimes with cheese. In the absence of really good quality fresh basil (which you can buy but it can be expensive) I use pesto. You can buy pesto in a jar from the supermarket. It's usually preserved in oil but it doesn't keep very well and within a couple of weeks you'll end up with a range of exciting moulds over the top. I have a cure for this problem. After you've taken the pesto you need out of the jar with a spoon, fill the jar back up with olive oil and keep it filled to the brim. This way, you can use the pesto for months without the mould destroying it. You might get some mould around the rim of the jar but you can take that off with a cloth. If the olive oil looks wierd after it's been in the jar in the fridge, bear in mind that chilled olive oil solidifies and it might not be cryptosporidium.

As for the beef mince, try to buy the darkest mince that you can. Beef that's pink hasn't been aged well and hasn't been exercised. It's unlikely to have lived a happy life. It also won't have been hung, a process which improves the flavour of the meat. Hanging for 3 weeks or more will give you a far better flavour.

Interestingly, meat sauce in Bologna is never served over spaghetti. I prefer not to use spaghetti at all in my cooking, since it's such a pain and I can't see the point. For this sauce you could use Fusilli, Penne or Tagliatelle.
My version of this classic will serve 2 with a bit left over.

You will need:
1 largeish onion, chopped;
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced;
Olive oil;
1 400g tin Italian plum tomatoes;
Tomato puree;
250g beef mince (or lamb if you have to);
Pesto;
Mixed dried herbs;
Salt and Pepper;
Parmesan cheese;
Pasta;
One medium saucepan with a lid for the sauce and one large saucepan with boiling water for the pasta.

Take your saucepan, and place it on the hob on a medium heat. Put a goodly amount of olive oil in (enough to cover around 1/3 of the bottom of the pan) and when the oil starts to bubble add the onion, and stir to cover the onion with oil. Turn the heat down to low. The onion has to cook slowly. If it's cooked fast it'll brown but the slow cooking will make it sweet. Let it sizzle on a low heat until it's softened - probably around ten minutes.

Next add the finely sliced garlic. Stir this in, and let it simmer for a few minutes.

Next add the beef mince. Turn the heat up to medium, and keep the mix moving. This will allow the beef to cook without burning. Once the mince has browned, put in some salt and pepper - several good twists of each. Mix again. Throw in a pinch or two of mixed dried herbs (but not too many because they'll make the sauce gritty). Stir. If the sauce starts to dry up, add some more olive oil. You can be pretty liberal with it since it won't taint the sauce in any way. If any beef gets stuck to the bottom of the pan, use the spoon to scrape it off.

Now add the tin of plum tomatoes. If they aren't pre-chopped, then mix them in and chop them in the pan. To get the sauce out of the tin, fill it around half-full of water, swirl it around, and add it to the sauce. Stir in.

Now add the pesto - a large heaped teaspoon - and mix in. If you want to use fresh basil leaves, you can. Simply get a dozen or so leaves, tear them by hand (don't chop them) into pieces and put them in the sauce.

Finally, put in a hefty squeeze of tomato puree. Stir it all in.

Put the lid on the pan and turn the heat down as low as it'll go. Now you need to leave this to simmer for an absolute minimum of 30 minutes. An hour is better. The longer you leave it, the better the sauce.

Once it's simmered for a while, come back to it and take the lid off. There'll be plenty of excess liquid and that needs to be boiled off otherwise you'll end up with a watery sauce. Turn the heat up to medium-high, and at the same time start boiling the water for your pasta.

Use the time that the water takes to boil and the pasta takes to cook to boil down the tomato sauce so that it loses much of its moisture. Keep stirring it otherwise it'll burn on to the bottom of the saucepan and the flavour will be ruined.

When pasta and sauce are done, drain the pasta, place in a serving bowl and then put the sauce over the top.

Finally, use a potato peeler to put shavings of parmesan all over the top, and serve.

Variations:
I sometimes add fresh mushrooms to the dish. The mushrooms should go in around 20 minutes before the end of the cooking time or they'll be soggy by the time you're ready to eat. Keep them in fairly big pieces, stir them in, and leave them to simmer. They'll give you a darker sauce than you'd otherwise have.


Drink with: This is a day-to-day meal, so pick your poison.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 4/5 - No special skills or equipment required.

Mess Factor: 4/5 - Two saucepans, one of which will need to soak.

Leftover value: 4/5 - Good cold the next day, poor reheated. Fine in a sandwich.

Bloke's Cookbook - Mixed vegetable curry

Like many great recipes, this one was the result of a lack of organisation and 'What have I got in the cupboard' syndrome. It's probably one of the best curries I've eaten. It's hot, the coconut milk makes it deliciously rich and it's reasonably healthy. It's also something that even a vegan can eat, so long as they don't believe that 'coconut milk' is cruelty to animals.

The only trouble with this recipe is that you have to be absolutely certain that the potatoes have cooked through, otherwise it wrecks the dish. Test them by sticking a fork in to the largest one. If they are still hard, they're not ready. You have to be patient.

This dish will feed 2 people. To feed more simply round up the quantities.

You will need:

Around 200g new potatoes, washed but not peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces;
Around 200g sweet potato, peeled and cubed into bite-sized pieces;
Around 200g green beans, chopped in to 1.5" lengths;
Around 100g tomatoes, chopped;
100ml coconut milk;
2 medium onions;
4 small thai or 3 large chillies (vary depending on how spicy you like it);
4 garlic cloves;
Ground coriander;
Turmeric;
Fennel seeds;
Fresh ginger;
A wok with a lid;
A pestle and mortar;
A food processor (not mandatory)

You can find coconut milk in the tinned foods section of your local supermarket. It's phenomenally fattening but gives an excellent flavour to (amongst other things) curry.

Firstly, put the onions in the food processor and process until they become a paste. If you don't have a food processor, then chop them finely. You'll get a different effect from the dish (it won't be quite as smooth) but it won't spoil the flavour.

Then, make the spice paste. In the pestle and mortar, put 2 of the garlic cloves, 3/4 of an inch of the fresh ginger, one of the chillies (chopped) and 1/2 a teaspoon of the fennel seeds. Fennel is a strongly-flavoured seed so don't overdo it. Now grind all the mix together. Once you've done that, add the chopped tomatoes and mix again.

Now on to the main dish. Slice the remaining chillies. Thinly slice the garlic cloves. Heat the oil in your wok on a medium heat and when it's starting to bubble, add the onions, garlic and chilli. Cook these fairly slowly, moving them around, until the onion starts to turn golden. Then lower the heat and add the potatoes. Put
the lid on the wok and leave for ten minutes.

After ten minutes, remove the lid. Mix in the spice paste from the pestle and mortar. Add the sweet potato, and replace the lid for another ten minutes.

After a total of 20 minutes, test the potatoes to see how well they've cooked. The sweet potatoes should be well on their way (they cook very fast) and starting to soften. The new potatoes should be pretty much done. If they're not, put the lid on, wait 5-10 minutes and check again.

Don't get impatient and try to rush the dish or eat the potatoes when they're hard.

When the spuds have reached the stage described, remove the lid and mix in the green beans. They'll take a matter of a few minutes. However, you've probably still got a fair amount of liquid in the bottom of the wok and it's all runny and a bit feeble. You need to burn some of that off, so keep the lid off, turn the heat up to full and keep everything moving for as long as it takes to get rid of most of that liquid.
We're going to add the coconut milk and you don't want your curry swimming in insipid liquid. You want it bright and fresh and frisky and so fierce on the tastebuds it could earn an ASBO.

As you cook, more liquid will come out of the tomatoes, so be patient.

When you've got rid of most of the excess liquid, turn the heat down and mix in the coconut milk and stir in slowly.

Serve with rice (perhaps flavoured with cloves and cardomon pods, perhaps saffron), and naans to soak up the sauce. Awesome.



Drink with: The usual - ice-cold beers.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 3/5 - No special skills required, just equipment.

Mess Factor: 3/5 - Wok plus rice saucepan plus baking tray for naans, and food processors are a bastard to clean, and you've got the pestle and mortar to wash up too. More of a slog.

Leftover value: 4/5 - Reheats flawlessly and edible (although not awesome) cold.

Bloke's Cookbook - Pasta in a smothered onion sauce

The allium family is a magical gift. It gives us garlic and onions, which together produce some of the greatest dishes known to man. Our curries would be blander, our sausage-in-a-bun poorer, without them. Is it possible to have too much onion? This recipe will let you find out.

The main - in fact almost the only - ingredient of this recipe is onion. When onion is cooked very slowly for an hour or so it loses its sharpness and becomes very sweet. The rest of the recipe involves giving the sauce some extra depth, but it's dead easy although it is time consuming - a total cooking time of around 90 minutes although only 30 minutes of actual work.

This recipe's one downfall, in my opinion, is its high antisocial rating. It's hard to consume a pound of onions and garlic without smelling of Frenchman. If you're planning to eat this, I advise you not to get close to anyone who hasn't also partaken for several hours afterwards.

The recipe quoted here will serve 2.

You will need:

Pasta (works pretty well with tagliatelle but you need something the sauce can wrap itself around);
6 medium onions, sliced finely (not chopped);
6 cloves garlic, sliced finely;
Olive oil;
Fresh parsley (enough to fill 2 table spoons after chopping);
Salt and Pepper;
Around 1/4 bottle dry white wine;
A large saucepan with a lid;
A second, smaller saucepan.


First, add a good amount of olive oil to the large saucepan and put the heat on medium. Once the oil's hot, but before it starts to bubble, put the onions in the saucpean. Stir them round and make sure they're thoroughly covered in the oil. When they start to sizzle, turn the heat down to low and put the lid on. Leave to cook on this low heat with the lid on for around an hour, checking every 20 minutes or so that nothing's burning, and giving everything a stir.

After an hour, you'll return to find that your half-hundredweight of onions looks rather smaller and sadder than it did. Fear not. Turn the heat up to medium/high and add the garlic, and then boil off all the liquid. You're aiming to get the onions to turn a golden colour (not brown) and this will take around 10-15 minutes. There will be some onion burned on to the sides and bottom of the pan. Don't worry too much about scraping it off since we'll deal with that shortly.

During this time you should start to heat the hot water. If you're having garlic bread with it (just in case there isn't enough garlic and onion) this is roughly the time to put it in the oven.

Once you've achieved this, add your chopped parsley and stir it in. Now season with salt and pepper. Don't stint here since the onions will be very sweet and you need to tone that down a bit. Cook your pasta now if you're using dried, or wait a few more minutes if you're using fresh.

Now add the white wine to the onions. You can use the wine to scrape off the golden oniony bits that are stuck to the saucepan (it's called deglazing). Cook on a high heat, stirring all the time, until all of the white wine has boiled off.

Finally, drain the pasta and toss with the onions.


I must admit that I'm stuck as to what to serve this one with. The white of the pasta and the gold of the onion seem to demand some more colour - perhaps a salad with radicchio in? If you have any bright ideas, let me know. I usually eat it with plenty of garlic bread and some grated parmesan.


Drink with: I'm out of ideas for this one. Please yourself.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 4/5 - Time consuming but very easy.

Mess Factor: 5/5 - Two pans and a colander.

Leftover value: 3/5 - Not great. Eat it all in the first sitting.

Bloke's Cookbook - Spicy Meatballs

One of the slightly vexing things about summer is that so much of my cooking is geared towards traditional bloke foods. Those foods include equal parts of pastry, potatoes, meat and beer. However, the weather's too hot for stodge on toast, so here's my take on an old fave.

This recipe basically takes the ingredients for the classic Spag Bol and does something a bit less dull to them. Preparation is long-winded - since the meatballs have to be chilled in the fridge for half an hour before you cook them - but straightforward. This recipe should serve 2 with some left over for a meatball sandwich for breakfast.

You will need:

Pasta (your preference, works well with tagliatelle, penne and fusilli in my experience);
2/3lb beef or lamb mince;
2 medium onions;
6 cloves garlic;
1 14oz(400g) tin plum tomatoes;
Olive oil;
Paprika, Cayenne Pepper, Salt and Pepper;
Fresh basil leaves;
A food processor (unless you can chop onion and garlic very finely);
A large saucepan, wok or crockpot.
A second, smaller saucepan.

Firstly, make the meatballs. Take 1 onion, quarter it and put it in the food processor. Process until very finely chopped. If you don't have a processor, welcome to the headache of chopping onion very finely. Make sure your knife is razor sharp and chop finely. Now process/chop the garlic with the onion. Now add the mince to the processor, and then add 2 teaspoons of paprika and 1 of cayenne pepper, a grind of salt and the same of pepper. If you're processorless, put everything into a mixing bowl and mix by hand.

With everything mixed, time to create the meatballs. I suggest you make small ones rather than large but it's up to you. To create the right size, I make roughly golf-ball-sized ones first, and then split each one in two and reshape them to give me the right size. Take a chunk of mixture, roll it around between the palms of your hands to give you the right shape. Once each ball is made, place it on a plate or tray.

When you're finished, put clingfilm over the meatballs and place them in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. This helps to keep them firm and stop them falling apart while they cook.

Now, prepare the sauce the meatballs are to cook in. Roughly chop the remaining onion and garlic cloves. Put some olive oil into your large cooking vessel, and turn the heat on, then fry the onions at a medium heat until they start to soften but not brown. Then add the garlic. Keep everything moving in the pan, and let the garlic fry for a couple of minutes. Now add the tin of tomatoes, chop them while in the pan, and add some water - fill the empty tomato tin roughly half way with water and add it to the pan.

Stir this all together, and let it simmer for around 30 minutes. If you leave the lid off the pot for the last 15 minutes then you should end up with a slightly thicker sauce which will coat the meatballs better.

Pour some water into your smaller saucepan, add some salt, and turn the heat on.

Take your fresh basil leaves - a dozen or so - and shred them with your fingers, then add them to the sauce. Stir in.

Take the meatballs from the fridge, and place them in the simmering tomato sauce. If they're the same size as mine, they'll cook right through in 10-15 minutes. Move them around in the sauce every few minutes, to cook them evenly.

When the meatballs are nearly cooked, put the pasta in the boiling water and cook until it's al dente - ever so slightly firm. Then drain it in a colander, shake it, and mix it into the meatball pot, stirring it in gently. This will complete the cooking process and coat the pasta in the sauce. After a minute or so, empty the whole lot into a serving dish, and serve. Garnish with some grated parmesan or some of the leftover basil leaves.

If you're looking for an accompaniment to this, garlic bread is a safe bet. A sharp salad, with little gem lettuces, rocket and chard will work well.

Drink with: A cold crisp white wine or a simple lager like 1664.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 3/5 - Time consuming rather than complicated but worth the effort.

Mess Factor: 4/5 - Washing up a food processor is always a pain in the bum, but everything else is pretty straightforward. Two pans to wash up isn't too bad.

Leftover value: 4/5 - Cold meatball sandwiches are awesome. Cold meatballs and pasta is pretty good, too. Be aware that the cayenne pepper gets stronger the next day so you may want a glass of water to hand.

Bloke's Cookbook - Chilli

We all know what chilli's supposed to look like. It's a sort of sad brown goo that you knock up with a packet sauce. Lots of tomato and, if you're adventurous, a piece of pepper.

No longer. This is my version of the age-old staple. I took some hints and tips from Americans, who know their stuff about chilli recipes. This recipe is one I've gradually refined and tweaked as the months have gone by, and I'm happy enough with it now to share it. It requires a fair amount of preparation, though, and unless you're well practiced I suggest you chop everything up before you start.

The majority of this recipe is done on a high heat. The reason for this is that peppers have a very high water content. You need to get almost all of the liquid out of the peppers otherwise you'll end up with an unpleasant gruel. It does mean you have to keep stirring, and you can't let your attention waver.

My recipe uses dried beans that you soak for at least 3 hours before use, and then boil for 20 minutes. Dried beans are cheaper than tinned beans, and have a far superior texture. Unless you rinse your tinned beans very thoroughly they'll turn the recipe goopy.

This chilli will easily serve four people. With plenty of rice you can serve 6. For the rice, use my steamed rice recipe. You can start the soaking process before you do the preparation for the chilli.

You will need:

1 large wok, and a wooden spoon. 1 saucepan if you're using dried beans;
1 cup dried kidney beans, 1 cup dried pinto beans, soaked for at least 3 hours;
1 large onion;
4 cloves garlic;
3 bell peppers of varying colours;
2 red, 2 green chillies;
Around 250g diced pork;
100g chorizo;
Olive oil;
Ground paprika (1 heaped tablespoon);
Ground cumin (1 heaped tablespoon);
Fresh coriander;
Juice of 1 lemon;
Tomato puree.

Chop the peppers and chillies - the peppers should be chopped into roughly bite-size pieces, and the chillies into pieces around the size of your thumbnail. Depending on how hot you like your chilli, you can leave the seeds in or take them out. To deseed a chilli, cut the top off, cut the chilli in half down its length, then turn the knife blade side-on to the exposed seeds and run the blade down the inside of the chilli. The whole lot should come off in one go. Set the chopped peppers and chillies aside.

Chop the onion and finely chop the garlic. Set aside.

Juice the lemon.

Dice the chorizo.

Chop the coriander. You can use stalks and roots for cooking, and save the tips of the leaves for garnish.

Put the soaked beans in plenty of water on the stove, bring to the boil. Whilst you're doing this, take the wok, add some olive oil - don't stint - and put it ona high heat until it bubbles.

The beans can be left to cook while you work on other things, but they will foam so don't let them boil over. It's a bitch to scrape off and it stinks, too.

Once the oil is hot enough - you'll be able to tell because there'll be bubbles on the bottom of the wok - put the onion in to the wok. Stir in, covering the onions in a coating of oil, and let them sizzle for a few minutes. Keep them moving.

Once the onions have started to turn golden, add the garlic and the chillies. Stir them in, let them sizzle for a couple of minutes.

Now add the peppers. Cook them for several minutes, keeping everything in the wok moving, and they should start to lose some of their water content.

The cooking so far will have taken you around 15 minutes, and you'll have a wok of rapidly-cooking pepper, onion, garlic and chilli. If, at any point,it looks like it's drying out, add more olive oil. Don't hold back, you can cook it off later.

Now add the diced pork, mix it right in, and let it brown for a couple of minutes. Now add the chorizo. Stir it in.

While this is cooking, drain the beans, rinse them, and put them in the wok.

Now add the chopped coriander.

Sprinkle the paprika and cumin on to the top of the chilli, pour some olive oil over the top if you need to, and stir it in. Keep stirring, and make sure everything's well coated in spices. You can't risk having any unpleasant lumps of spice in there.

Pour the lemon juice over the top, and stir.

Finally, add a large squeeze (at least a tablespoon) of tomato puree, and mix in thoroughly.

Now, turn the heat right down and put the lid on for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, take the lid off, and start cooking the rice. There should be a fairly large quantity of liquid left in the bottom of the wok. Turn the heat back up, keep stirring, and keep everything moving until the majority of the liquid has steamed off. With practice, you'll be able to time it so that the rice is cooked at the same time that the chilli is.

Serve the chilli in a large dish, with the rice underneath. I also do a dish of my cumin dip, which goes very well with it.

Drink with: Ice-cold beer.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 3/5 - It's not especially tricky to do, but it'll take practice and organisation to get it right.

Mess Factor: 3/5 - Not much in the way of peelings, but the wok will be a bastard to clean (so soak it for 30 minutes in scalding hot water with washing-up liquid before you start), and the chilli will spit all over the worktop and hob.

Leftover value: 4/5 - The rice isn't ideal, but leftover cold chilli is very good. It works well in a sandwich with some of the cumin dip over the top.

Bloke's Cookbook - Sweet Potato Risotto

Although we think of pasta as Italian, one of my cookery books claims that two generations ago you probably wouldn't have been able to get pasta in northern Italy. Northern Italy ate risotto and polenta, southern Italy pasta. The country itself is clearly divided along north-south lines, the heavily industrialised north paying for the (frankly) corrupt, poor rural south.
Pasta has taken over from polenta, though, and I can quite see why. Polenta is cornmeal, that has to be very slowly cooked over a period of about 45 minutes, whereas pasta is much faster and requires far less dicking around.

Risotto, though, is well worth the effort. It's made with Arborio rice, which, in contrast to long-grained rices such as basmati, is rounder. When heated slowly it produces a starch which binds the food together.

You can put almost anything in a risotto, which makes it a very versatile food. One of the best recipes I have is just rice, onion, butter, cheese and saffron. Don't be afraid to experiment with this one. With practice you'll find what works and what doesn't.

With practice, you can produce a risotto in around 35 minutes, including all the cooking and chopping. It's incredibly filling, great for a cold day and it's even - at a push - edible cold the day after. There's not too much washing up, either.

You will need:

1 Large saucepan - I use a wok since the heat is distributed far better and the end result is superior, but a saucepan is adequate.

1 knob butter (around 2" by 1");
1 onion;
2 cloves garlic;
1/2 large sweet potato (large means the size of a pint glass);
1 mug arborio rice per person;
2 stock cubes (vegetable or chicken for this recipe) in a jug, and boiling water;
Parmesan cheese (around 100g), grated or peeled into strips with a potato peeler.

Firstly, peel the sweet potato. Then cut it into bite-sized chunks. Chop the onion. Then slice the garlic very finely.

Take the butter, place it in the saucepan. Turn the heat on the hob, and let the butter melt. Don't let it get too hot, since if it does this is separates, and that's a bugger for this recipe.
Once the butter's melted, add the onion and fry gently until the onion starts to turn transparent. At this point, you should use your stock cubes and boiling water to make your stock - you'll need around a pint. If you've actually got proper stock, then good on you, but there's nothing wrong with cubes.
With the onion turning transparent, it's time to add the rice. Pour it into the mix and stir it up. Make sure the rice is well coated with the sizzling butter, but don't let it burn since this will ruin the flavour.

Once the rice is coated with butter, add a splash - and no more - of stock. Stir the rice into the stock and keep stirring until almost all of the stock has evaporated. Add the sweet potato now, stir it in, and add more stock.

From now on, you need to just keep adding a dash of your stock and stirring it. Keep the whole of the risotto moving in the pan - let it settle and it may burn. Keep working it round for 15-20 minutes. The rice needs to keep absorbing the stock, since this is partly what gives the risotto its rich flavour.

At the end of this, take a grain of rice and taste it. The outside of the rice needs to glisten and be soft, and the interior should still be al dente - firm in the middle when you bite into it. If it's chalky, hard or dry, you need to cook for longer. With this recipe, you should also check the firmness of the sweet potato. If it's still firm in the middle, it's not cooked properly.

When you've got the rice to the stage described above, add the parmesan cheese and stir it in slowly to let it melt. This will take a few minutes and will help to bind the whole recipe together.

When your rice and your sweet potato are cooked properly, you're ready to eat. You should let it stand for a couple of minutes to allow it to cool, since it'll burn your mouth if you're not careful.

The great thing about a risotto is that you can combine a whole range of different things with it. Don't be afraid to experiment, but don't blame me if you poison yourself.

Drink with: Whatever you want. Wine, beer, babycham - doesn't matter.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 2/5 - Needs constant attention and careful stirring, so you have to pay attention. Very easy to fuck this one up by letting it burn onto the bottom of the pan.

Mess Factor: 4/5 - One saucepan (although it needs to soak to get the cheese off), so it's pretty good.

Leftover value: 3/5 - It's okish as a cold snack but it wouldn't be my first choice. You can, however, reheat it (more stock, slowly warm it up, more cheese) and it'll be quite adequate the next day.

Bloke's Cookbook - Sweet Potato Curry

I'm teaching a chum to cook. Like most modern men, he's not received any instruction in the functions of the kitchen, beyond 'This is the fridge, it is for beer'. It'll be an uphill struggle but in the interests of chumdom, and of proving that any man can cook given sufficient training, I'm going to show him how.

He's a vegetarian. Not completely vegetarian, I might add - there's the occasional slip if there's something truly awesome on the table or if he's simply very hungry, but someone who's made the commitment out of conscience and is only intermittently weak when, for example, a friend decides to torture him by preparing a leg of slow-cooked venison.

So this evening I'm showing him a simple curry. By 'simple' I mean that there's no clever preparation required, just organisation.

The basis of this curry is the Lamb Rogan Josh recipe that I posted some months ago. As a result, most of this post is just a copy/paste from the old one. I found out that it translates very effectively into a vegetarian dish. There are two advantages to making it with sweet potato. Firstly there's no need to marinade, which leaves space in the fridge and cuts down on preparation time. Secondly the cooking time is shorter - about an hour instead of two hours.

Sweet potato responds to cooking in the same way as parsnip does. It becomes very soft and fluffy and cooks fast. Compared to normal potato, even starchy potato, the texture is much softer.

This dish should serve 8 people if you accompany it with naan bread and rice, 4-6 if you don't.

Ingredients:

2 large sweet potatoes;
1 large onion;
1 large pot plain yoghurt;
1 400g tin plum tomatoes;
Tomato puree;
8 cloves garlic;
8 fresh chillies;
1 inch ginger;
Cumin seeds;
Cardomom pods;
Bay leaves;
Large bunch fresh coriander;
Olive oil or ghee;
Juice of 1 lemon.

Equipment:

Large crockpot, heavy wok or deep saucepan, preferably with a lid.

Chop the onions, finely chop the garlic, and chop the chillies in to pieces. You don't have to put chillies in at all if you don't like spicy food. If you do, then feel free to bung in as many as you think you'll enjoy. You can leave out the chilli seeds if you want the chilli flavour but less heat. Finally, chop the coriander.

Peel the sweet potatoes, and cut them in to larger-than-bite-size chunks. The reason for this is that sweet potato cooks fast, and falls to bits when it does. If you want a litre of oily orange goop as your curry, cut it small. If you want something with texture, cut it bigger.

Fling a good-sized lump of ghee or a hefty dollop of olive oil into your cooking receptacle. Ghee is more authentic although I can't really tell the difference in flavour. Heat the pan until the ghee/oil is hot and then pour in a couple of teaspoons worth of cumin seeds. Fry for 2 minutes. Then add a bay leaf and half a dozen cardomom pods. Fry for 2 more minutes. Put in the chopped garlic and the chillies. Fry for 2 more minutes then add the onion. Stir everything up and make sure nothing burns. Fry for several minutes, at least until the onion goes translucent and soft and preferably until it starts to brown.

At this point, add the chopped sweet potato and yoghurt to the pan. Mix it all in well, making sure the yoghurt and potato is very thoroughly mixed in with the spices. Keep stirring, and you'll end up with a thick mixture where the yoghurt has formed into tiny lumps. That's fine.

Now add the tin of tomatoes, chopped, wash the tin with tap water until it's about half full, and pour the half tin of tomato/tap water into the mix. Now add at least a tablespoon of tomato puree. Stir everything in for a couple of minutes, because it'll take a while for the puree to mix.

Now, cover and leave to simmer for between 45 minutes and an hour. Stir it a couple of times if you want, but it's really a recipe where you can leave it to do its own thing.

If, after 45 minutes, you find that the sauce is too runny, then take the lid off the pot, turn the heat up to get it bubbling and give it 15-20 minutes like that - although you can expect to have to wash your hob and your surfaces down after.

During this time, you can sort your rice and naan breads out as you see fit. My 'steamed rice' recipe can be found here.


Drink with: Cobra beer.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 3/5 - No special skills are required but the cooking is slow and there's lots to remember.

Mess Factor: 4/5 - A few peelings, lots of tidying up and a large pan to wash up. Pretty good.

Leftover value: 3/5 - On this occasion I didn't get to find out, since my chum managed to eat a serving for 4 people entirely on his own. However, I've had it cold for lunch in the past and it's been good. Not as good as the Rogan Josh, but good.

Bloke's Cookbook - Chocolate Brownies

Blokes tend not to be choc fans. I'm not. Give me a Cornish Pasty, or a steak sandwich. But there's one great advantage with cooking these. The ladies will adore you. Take a box of these into the office on your birthday and they will trill and coo like demented doves.

This recipe is a variation on a Nigella Lawson one. In my opinion, Nigella's brownie recipe is sickly-sweet and there's not enough chocolate. My changes to her recipe boost the amount of dark chocolate in the recipe, and cut the amount of sugar in half. While my variant doesn't have the same thick, gooey centre that hers has, it's a richer flavour.

This will make around 20 brownies which are 2 inches long, 1 inch wide and 1 inch deep (ish). Tweak the recipe to your needs by just increasing or decreasing the amounts in the mix. So long as you keep it in proportion, it'll work.

You will need:

A large, deep brownie or roasting tin;
Two mixing bowls (not plastic);
Baking parchment;
A saucepan.

Ingredients:
250g unsalted butter
400g dark chocolate (70% or higher cocoa content)
4 eggs
Half a vanilla pod (or vanilla extract if you absolutely must)
300g caster sugar
250g plain flour
1 teaspoon salt

Optional:
300g chopped walnuts
300g morello cherries

Firstly, switch the oven on to 180C. Then, melt the chocolate and butter. Burning chocolate is very easy, so here's the traditional way to do it. Take your saucepan, and fill it with water to a depth of around 1 inch. Then, place one of the mixing bowls in the saucepan. Now you can see why the bowl shouldn't be plastic (although I found out that plastic mixing bowls retain some of the stuff you've mixed in them in the plastic, so you should chuck them away and shop for those nice cream-coloured ones with the white inside that your granny had). Make sure the bottom of the mixing bowl doesn't touch the water. Now switch the heat on, put the chocolate and butter in, and let it melt. This will take some time - 20 minutes or so - but you should check it every few minutes or so, and give it a stir. Once it's melted, you'll end up with a mixture of liquid dark chocolate and butter which would give Gillian McKeith an eppy. Make sure you turn the heat off as soon as it's melted enough.

Now, in the second mixing bowl, beat the eggs using a balloon whisk or a fork. Take your vanilla pod and, with a sharp knife, split it down the side. Peel back the edges of the pod. Vanilla seeds are absolutely tiny. Scrape them out of the pod with the edge of the knife and add them to the beaten eggs. Mix them in well, because they have a tendency to clump.

Now add the sugar to the eggs, and beat together very well to give you an eggy sugary mix. Stir in the chocolate and butter goo and mix it together. Finally, measure out and add the flour. You can sieve the flour for added fineness but it doesn't seem to make much difference. Stir everything together and you'll end up with a thick, dark runny brownie mix.

If you want to add walnuts or cherries (or both), this is when you do it. Just stir them in.

Put this to one side, and line the baking tin with baking parchment. This is a pain, but you'll thank me for it. Get the parchment, stretch it over the tin, leaving about 3" more than you'll need on each side. Fit the parchment into the tin - I used a pair of scissors to cut slits in the corners to make it fold neatly.

Finally, pour the brownie mix into the parchment-lined baking tin. Make sure it's levelled out before you put it in the oven.

It'll take between 20 and 30 minutes to cook. To check to see whether it's cooked, take it from the oven, and start to cut it into squares with a knife. If the mixture clings to the knife, it's not quite done and needs a few more minutes.

Once it's cooked, take it from the oven, use the parchment to lift it out onto a flat surface, then cut into squares. Leave it to cool.

With practice you can get from ingredients to brownies in under an hour.

Chorizo and Chickpea casserole

This is very much a winter comfort dish - filling, spicy and just the thing on a wet windy night. With the icy grasp of winter now gripping the ballsack of the country, this hearty meal will keep you toasty.

I was looking for something to do with chickpeas - I'm trying to broaden my diet and these are supposed to be good for you. They don't taste of much but they're alright, I suppose. The local supermarket now stocks a very good Chorizo and the two mesh very well in this recipe, which I found on this website: http://www.sausagelinks.co.uk/index.asp

I've made some changes to their recipe. This will easily serve 4 and probably 6. Scale recipe up or down to suit your needs.

You will need:

1 medium saucepan
1 large casserole dish.
Ingredients:

200 g dried chorizo, peeled and sliced into thick coins
A few pork sausages, skinned and crumbled (optional)
Pigs trotter (ask the butcher to clean and split this for you) or a ham hock
2 cans of chickpeas, drained
Large can of chopped tomatoes
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Large onion, sliced into rings
Pinch of sweet paprika (optional)
Salt and black pepper

The pig's trotter isn't mandatory - I didn't have one and it still tasted fine. If you don't have red wine vinegar, use plain red wine. It says cans of chickpeas but I soaked and boiled the dried ones, which I find to have a better texture and no aftertaste. I used roughly 1 1/2 cups of dried chickpeas, left in a bowl of water overnight.

Heat some olive oil in a large casserole, add the trotter and brown for 10 minutes. Add the onion rings and cook until softened, add the chorizo coins and any other sausage meat. Cook gently for a further 10 minutes, add the wine vinegar, tomatoes and chick peas. If you are using a ham hock add this now. Cover and gently simmer for 1 hour. Taste and adjust seasoning - you may not need any salt if you have used a ham hock. Remove the trotter/ham hock, remove meat and return to the pan.

Serve with crusty bread and a green salad.

For the green salad, I recommend something with rocket (roquette), which is a peppery leaf which goes very well with chorizo. The recipe says a 'pinch' of paprika but if you like it spicy - and I do - a couple of dried chillies, crushed in your hands into the casserole dish before it goes in the oven, adds some real fire to this recipe.

Drink with: Probably a heavy, oaky type red wine - one of the Aussie ones, perhaps, in a large glass.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 4/5 - Very straightforward, needs stirring intermittently but can be left to simmer. Requires forward planning, though, to make sure the chickpeas are soaked.

Mess Factor: 4/5 - Barely any mess at all, and just one cooking pot and one saucepan.

Leftover value: 2/5 - I'm going to mark this one down. It's not a morning-after snack. It does reheat really well for a second or even third day, but the thought of cold leftover casserole makes me queasy.

Bloke's Cookbook - Tartiflette

I first tasted this truly awesome dish in France and have cooked it myself on many occasions. It can be turned into a vegetarian dish by omitting the salami/bacon, although I find it wise not to tell the girls what's in it until they've finished eating - a pint of double cream will make anyone on a diet panic.

The recipe was originally conjured up in the 1980s by a bunch of cheese makers who found the market share for their Reblochon slipping. They marketed it as an old-fashioned authentic farmhouse recipe and all of a sudden their cheese sales went back up.

It's an absolute doddle to make - with practice you can have it prepared in 15 minutes - and looks brilliant. It's also a great dinner party meal, because you do all the work 90 minutes before you're due to eat and then requires minimal attention right up until serving time. This means you can socialise, pour out drinks and have fun whilst not having to fret about your dinner burning.

For this recipe, you'll need a large, relatively shallow ceramic dish. You'll also need a small pan to fry the mushroom, onion, bacon, or all three, and a mixing bowl to toss the potato slices in.

Ingredients:

1kg waxy potatoes, finely sliced;
2 large pieces bacon or equivalent amount of salami;
1 white onion, finely sliced;
2 cloves garlic, sliced down their length;
A chunk of butter around 3" by 1" by 1" (around 50g);
250g Reblochon cheese (in most supermarkets);
1 pint double cream;
Salt and Pepper;

For the vegetarian option - 250g mushrooms.

A quick note on potatoes:

The texture of a potato is very important for recipes. Floury potatoes, such as Maris Piper or Shetland Black, make excellent mashes, chips and roasts. They tend to disintegrate very fast when boiled. Waxy potatoes, such as Charlotte or Pink Fir Apple, or new potatoes, keep their shape when cooked but they make very poor mashing or roasting potatoes.
With this recipe, it's critical that the potatoes retain their shape and texture, so you should use waxy potatoes.

The Reblochon:

This cheese has a rind but goes gooey very fast. Keep it refridgerated until the last minute, then quickly cut the rind off with a cold dry knife and then you should be able to chop the cheese before it sticks to your fingers permanently.

Cooking:

Preheat the oven to 150C.

Peel your potatoes and slice them finely - the slices need to be around 1/8th of an inch, or 2-3mm, thick. Do the same to the onion and garlic.

Now chop the meat and fry in a splash of olive oil for a few minutes. No need to cook it completely.

If you're going for the vegetarian option, leave out the salami/bacon and slice your mushrooms the same way that you did the potatoes, then fry them lightly in olive oil.

Put the sliced potoates in a mixing bowl, grind some pepper and salt onto them, and toss them in the salt and pepper.

Grease the cooking dish with some of the butter. Layer half the potatoes in the bottom of the dish. Add the onion, garlic, mushroom, bacon, etc. Cut the rind off the cheese, cut half the cheese into rough cubes, and scatter it on the potatoes. Now put the remaining potatoes on top, then season with pepper again.

Pour the double cream over the dish, and cut the butter into cubes and place it all over the top.

Now place the dish in the oven for an hour and a quarter. After this time, take the dish out, place the remaining cheese on the top, leave for another 15 minutes, and then remove from the oven.

Leave for 15 minutes before you serve it.


Drinks and Side Dishes:

I normally recommend a Burgundy for this dish. It's a fairly light wine and won't overwhelm the flavour of the food. Make sure you open it at least one hour, preferably two hours, before you start drinking it. Beer drinkers will probably want something fairly light aswell. Lager drinkers should forego the typical Stella/Carling range and look for something less metallic - maybe Hoegaarden.

For side dishes, I'd probably consider garlic bread and a green salad.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 4/5 - A cinch. The hardest part is cutting stuff finely - try not to chop your fingers off.

Mess Factor: 4/5 - Pretty hard to make a mess with this one. Loads of potato peelings, though, and the bowl you've cooked it in will usually need to go in to soak to get the worst off.

Leftover value: 3/5 - It's not bad as leftovers. However, the amount of cream and butter means it's not one to be eaten when hung over.

Bloke's Cookbook - Lamb Rogan Josh

It can be hard to find a good curry. There are a great many tandoori or Indian restaurants that really haven't moved with the times - flock wallpaper and 300 different dishes. I'm fortunate that there are half a dozen good Indian restaurants within a few miles but I still enjoy cooking my own. It's cheaper, it's fun and you know what goes in. That's why I've given you a recipe straight from one of my Indian cookbooks.

Remember that the key to this recipe is slow cooking. If you want the best from it you can't rush it. Aim to marinade the meat 24 hours beforehand. Then allow at least 2 hours for cooking. You don't need to stand over the lamb whilst it cooks, so you can go and do other things for at least 1 1/2 hours, but plan your time well.

I've written the recipe with half a leg of lamb in mind. This is a pricey way of doing the recipe, though. You can save yourself an awful lot of money by using mutton or by using shoulder of lamb instead of leg. Shoulder is between half and a third as expensive as leg. Mutton is at least half the price of leg. Both will taste as good but shoulder is much harder to bone and produces scads of fat which needs to be spooned off. There's also cartilage which needs to be removed before serving and sheets of tough fat which must be cut away. As for mutton, you need to make sure you don't cook it too fast or it'll be like leather. Marinading it also improves the texture.

With a half-leg of lamb, this will serve 4-6. If you are doing veg curry side dishes, naan and rice, it will serve at least 8. It makes an excellent centrepiece to a curry evening.

Ingredients:

1/2 leg of lamb;
2 large onions;
1 large pot plain yoghurt;
1 400g tin plum tomatoes;
Tomato puree;
8 cloves garlic;
8 fresh chillies;
1 inch ginger;
Cumin seeds;
Cardomom pods;
Bay leaves;
Large bunch fresh coriander;
Olive oil or ghee;
Juice of 1 lemon.

Equipment:

Large mixing bowl to prepare marinade;
Large crockpot, heavy wok or deep saucepan, preferably with a lid.


Stage 1 - the day before:

Finely chop half the garlic cloves and the ginger.

Using a very sharp knife, joint the meat and cut the lamb into bite-sized cubes. If your joint has a very large amount of fat, discard some of it, but don't trim the fat off the cubes - it will cook off over time.

Do not discard the bone from the joint. This will go into the curry and will cook with it. It will improve the flavour. Don't forget to take it out before you serve.

Place the meat and bone in the mixing bowl. Now add the yoghurt. Add the chopped garlic, chopped ginger, and lemon juice. Mix together thoroughly, cover and put in the fridge overnight.

Note - you can skip the marinade step although I do not recommend it.

Stage 2 - on the day:

Chop the onions, finely chop the garlic, and chop the chillies in to pieces. You don't have to put chillies in at all if you don't like spicy food. If you do, then feel free to bung in as many as you think you'll enjoy. You can leave out the chilli seeds if you want the chilli flavour but less heat. Finally, chop the coriander up.

Fling a good-sized lump of ghee or a hefty dollop of olive oil into your cooking receptacle. Ghee is more authentic although I can't really tell the difference in flavour. Heat the pan until the ghee/oil is hot and then pour in a couple of teaspoons worth of cumin seeds. Fry for 2 minutes. Then add a bay leaf and half a dozen cardomom pods. Fry for 2 more minutes. Put in the chopped garlic and the chillies. Fry for 2 more minutes then add the onion. Stir everything up and make sure nothing burns. Fry for several minutes, at least until the onion goes translucent and soft and preferably until it starts to brown.

Now add the lamb to the pan. Turn the heat down, stir everything in together and cook for ten minutes, stirring regularly and making sure there's no burning. After ten minutes, add the tinned tomatoes (chopped), around half a tomato can's worth of water, and a big squeeze of tomato puree. Stir slowly and keep the heat on low. Stir everything in well for a couple of minutes. Now add almost all the fresh coriander. You will need a bit left over as a garnish so don't use it all.

Stir the coriander in, cover with a lid and cook at the lowest hob setting for around 1 1/2 hours. Stir roughly every half hour. If you used a shoulder of lamb, make sure that you spoon off the excess fat - and there'll be a fair bit of it - before you serve it at the table. If the sauce looks very watery, then take the lid off, turn the heat up for the last 20 minutes and stir regularly to get the excess liquid cooked off.

This is one of the easiest curries I've cooked and one of the best, too. The variety of spices and flavours makes it a winner and it can be tailored to spicy and non-spicy eaters. The slow cooking brings out the best in the lamb or mutton.

I'd normally serve this with basmati rice and naan breads. As a rule, I buy premade naan breads - life's too short and my oven's too crappy to do a good job on making my own. You'll need something to soak up the sauce.

Drink with: Cobra beer.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 3/5 - No special skills are required but the cooking is slow and there's lots to remember.

Mess Factor: 4/5 - A few peelings, lots of tidying up and a large pan to wash up. Pretty good.

Leftover value: 4/5 - The great thing about this curry is that it's better the day after you've cooked it. If you can, cook it a day in advance.

Bloke's Cookbook - Roasted vegetables and rice

This speedy, simple recipe is healthy, vegan and good for you. By rights, it shouldn't belong on this page at all, since there's nothing that qualifies it as Bloke Food. That said, many of you will have a girlfriend or wife whose idea of Ideal Food is not dead animal in between two slices of bread and we have to pander to those tastes.

This recipe can be used as a very quick evening snack - it can be prepared in a few minutes in the morning and flung in the oven when you get home - or as a core side dish for a barbecue. This recipe serves two people - just scale it up and keep cooking times the same if you're serving more.

Ingredients:

2 bell peppers;
1 large onion;
2 medium tomatoes;
4 cloves garlic;
olive oil;
salt and pepper;
rice.

Equipment:

1 baking tray;
1 sharp knife;
1 saucepan with a lid.

Switch the oven on to around 170C. Prepare the vegetables first. Do this by cutting the peppers, onion and tomatoes into bite-sized pieces. Peel the cloves of garlic, cut them into halves or quarters. Pour some olive oil onto the baking tray. Put the vegetables onto the baking tray, push them around in the oil to get them covered, then season with salt and plenty of ground black pepper. If you've been a bit mean with the olive oil, chuck some more on. The vegetables should be coated, but not swimming, in oil.

Put the tray in the oven. Then put the rice on to soak. The veg will take about half an hour to cook which gives you time to prepare the rice, too.

This next bit assumes that you've bought the same rice as me - the stuff that needs to soak for about 20 minutes before you use it. If you haven't, adjust your times to suit your rice.

After the rice has soaked for 20 minutes, rinse it through with plenty of cold water to get rid of the excess starch. Then put enough water in the saucepan to cover the rice plus about half an inch. Then put the pan on the stove, put the lid on, and turn the heat up to full. When the water is boiling, turn the heat right down. With the lid on, the rice will steam which fluffs it up. The rice should be ready in about ten minutes.

Once the rice is cooking, open the oven and check the progress of the veg. The peppers should have begun to brown and the tomatoes to cook right through. Turn over any pieces of pepper or onion that haven't.

You'll be able to tell that when the rice is cooked because some of it will be sticking to the bottom of the pan. If you take the lid off and it's not, then it's not quite done and needs a couple more minutes. Put the lid back on, turn the heat up to max for ten seconds then turn it back down.
Don't worry about the roasting veg if your rice is taking longer than expected. It's hard to overcook it. Just turn the oven down and leave it where it is.

Once the rice is done, take it from the saucepan and put it in a serving bowl. It shouldn't need straining since the water will all have steamed off. Then take the veg from the oven, pour the olive oil and juices over the rice, and heap the vegetables on top.

The whole thing can be done in around 30 minutes, with practice, including preparation, and makes for a filling meal (although I can't help feeling a couple of sausages would set it off). It takes practice to get the timing of the rice and roasted vegetables right - it depends on your oven, your rice and your stove amongst other things.

Drink with: Take your pick, frankly. It's a quick and easy meal.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 4/5 - No special skills required apart from knife-wielding.

Mess Factor: 4/5 - A few peelings, a couple of things to wash up.

Leftover value: 1/5 - I don't rate cold rice and cold veg as an ideal snack.

Bloke's Cookbook - Cauliflower Cheese

Don't scroll away. Don't retch. I know. I felt the same way. It never occurred to me that cauliflower cheese could actually be edible.

Like me, you probably suffered at school at the hands of a ham-fisted food butcher who turned cauliflower cheese into the most revolting sludgy lumpen mess that ever oozed onto your plate. Frequently grey, sometimes yellow, this foul horror was a dining room staple at my school and was one of the reasons I lived on packed lunch cheese sandwiches for six years.

However, partly out of curiousity, partly out of a desire to silence the Wench who was complaining about too few vegetables in her diet, I decided, a couple of years ago, to try to cook a good cauliflower cheese. I tracked down a recipe and it was so good that I cook it once every couple of weeks.

One particularly handy aspect of this recipe is that it teaches you to prepare a roux. A roux is the base for a range of thickened sauces. You need flour and a fat or oil, stirred vigorously over a long period of time. The darker the roux, the longer the time it takes. This recipe is for a white roux and takes around 15 minutes to prepare (with practice). It's (apparently) the easiest kind of roux to make so it's a great way to learn.

A large cauliflower will serve three or four people, a smaller one will serve two.

Ingredients:

Butter (varies, but around 100g);
White flour (around 50g);
Milk (between half and a full pint);
Ground nutmeg;
Mustard powder;
Ground black pepper;
Single cream;
A strong cheese such as cheddar, grated;
A cauliflower.

Equipment:

1 large saucepan for cooking the cauliflower;
1 smaller saucepan for preparing the sauce;
1 serving dish;
1 baking tray;
1 wooden spoon.

First prepare the cauliflower. Using a sharp knife, cut away all the green leaves and the thick knot at the base of the cauliflower from which the leaves spring. Then, cut away the individual florets at the base, where they join the stem of the cauliflower.

Once you've cut the florets away, place them in the serving dish as though you're ready to serve up. This way, you can gauge how much cauliflower you'll need and avoid over or under-cooking. The dish should be a high-sided one and should ideally be fairly packed with cauliflower.

Once you've cut enough cauliflower, rinse the florets and then place them into your large saucepan. Pour water into the saucepan so that the florets are covered - although they'll float so you'll have to make your own mind up - then put some salt in the water to lower the boiling temperature. Put this on the hob now and start to boil it. It will need several minutes to reach boiling temperature, but do not let it overcook. To check this, stab the stem of a floret with a fork. If it's firm, that's fine. Boil for around five minutes. Then drain the water out and set the cauliflower aside.

If you overcook, you really should start again with the cauliflower - mushy cauliflower cheese is just rank.

Switch the oven on to around 170C. Now, on to the roux.

Take a lump of butter around an inch cubed. Put in your smaller saucepan, put the pan on the hob and turn on to the lowest setting. The butter needs to melt slowly. If it starts to sizzle or burn you'll ruin the flavour.

Once the butter's melted, turn the heat off, and add a heaped tablespoon of white flour. You don't need to sieve the flour. I used to, but it seems to make no real difference and life's too short. With a wooden spoon, stir the flour into the melted butter. If there's any butter left over, add more flour.

What you'll end up with is a light-brown-coloured lump in the bottom of the pan. It looks hideous, but that's fine and it's what you should expect. There shouldn't be any excess liquid and when you push the lump around it shouldn't leave a buttery trail. If it does, add a bit more flour and really stir it in.

Once this is done, turn the heat back on to medium. Add a small splash of milk to the pan and, using the wooden spoon, stir it very quickly in to the flour. The milk should sizzle. Mop up any milk using the flour and, once it's gone, add some more. Keep doing this, adding little by little. Do not allow the flour to burn onto the bottom of the pan and keep all the flour moving. Gradually, the flour/butter mix will absorb enough milk to start to turn into the thick white sauce that you need.

Once you've added all the milk, you need to keep the roux moving in the pan for several minutes whilst the texture changes. Keep the bottom of the pan free from stuck-on flour. If you get any, mash it back in on the sides of the pan and keep stirring. This bit is very labour-intensive.

After a while, the texture will change. It'll change from a liquidy texture to something approaching warm golden syrup. You'll be able to see the change beginning because as you stir the ripples on the surface of the roux will move more slowly across the pan. You need the roux to be reasonably thick, so that it retains a good texture and doesn't go separate. When it reaches this texture, turn off the heat.

Quickly add plenty of ground black pepper, a teaspoon or two of Colmans English Mustard powder, and a couple of teaspoons of ground nutmeg. Stir this in well - the mustard in particular has a propensity to clump and few things will bring tears to your eyes more effectively than swallowing a ball of mustard powder.

Now add the grated cheese. I use a strong cheddar and sometimes some Parmesan if I want it to be very strong. Stir the cheese in until it melts, then taste the sauce. It should be punchy. If you can't taste the pepper, nutmeg or mustard you've not added enough. You'll need to decide, though, how strong you like it.

Finally, add a dash of cream and stir in well.

Now, take the cauliflower florets and put them in your serving dish. Cover the florets with the cheese sauce and make sure there's plenty in the bowl, too. You can sprinkle some grated cheese on top to make it brown faster. This will go into the oven for around half an hour. When the top is golden brown and the liquid is starting to froth, it's ready to serve.

As an accompaniment, I suggest home-made garlic bread (see the Carbonara recipe for how to make it). Not being a salad man I'm hard pressed to advise on such fripperies but the Wench insists upon at least some foliage to snack on afterwards.

It seems like an awful lot of work, and, to be fair, it is. However, the roux is a critical skill to master. A good sauce makes a dish, and when I move on to future recipes such as game en croute and Gumbo - both of which will require a roux, you'll see the benefits of learning how to make an easy roux.

Drink with: I don't have any specific recommendations for this dish. Red wine goes pretty well with it (but then it goes well with most things). Choose your poison.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 2/5 - It's tricky to get the roux right, particularly the first few times. It does get easier.

Mess Factor: 3/5 - For the outcome, it's a messy dish. One cheesy saucepan and spoon, one other saucepan, and the serving bowl. As with the Carbonara recipe, dried on cheese is a bugger to get off, so fill the cheese saucepan with hot soapy water as soon as you've taken the sauce out - it will make the cleaning process a bit less painful.

Leftover value: 0/5 - Cold cauliflower cheese. Chunder city.

Bloke's Cookbook - Pittas stuffed with Piri-Piri chicken

This gem of a summer recipe is ideal bloke food. The essence of it is that it's make-your-own, like fajitas. It's very spicy so you need ice-cold beers. It has bread, it has barbecued meat. It's almost perfect. It's also staggeringly easy to make and very quick to do. This recipe will serve 6 hungry blokes.

Ingredients:

8 chicken breasts;
Piri-piri seasoning (see below);
4 steak tomatoes;
Mixed salad leaves, including rocket;
1 large pot plain yoghurt;
24 large pittas (white or brown);
Ground cumin;
Olive oil.

Equipment:

Large non-metallic mixing bowl;
Large wok;
Large Baking tray.

First, cut the chicken breasts in strips. Put them in your mixing bowl, add your piri-piri seasoning, mix together so that the chicken breasts are covered with the seasoning. If you're organised, you can do this several hours beforehand to allow the chicken to marinade and to give the food some real fire. Cover the bowl with clingfilm. If you're only reading this as you start to cut up the chicken, then your chicken will be inferior and your friends will hate you for ever. Organise yourself better next time.

Preheat your oven to about 180c. You'll be warming the pittas in this. Then heat the barbecue up to cooking temperature.

Now cut up the tomatoes. They need to be in small enough pieces to stuff inside the pitta bread with the chicken. I suggest you cut the tomato in half vertically, then cut each side in strips. Put the tomato bits in a serving bowl.

Next, the salady stuff. No need to go overboard on this but it adds a bit of colour, and the peppery rocket will set off the piri-piri. Wash it, dry it, put it in a serving bowl.

Prepare your cumin dip (see below), put it in a serving bowl.

Now onto the chicken. It should have marinated nicely over the last few hours (or few minutes if you were disorganised). Place the wok on the barbecue's griddle, add a hefty splash of olive oil and leave to heat up until the oil is smoking.

Once the oil is smoking, take the chicken and put it in the wok. Stand back for a minute and keep your eyes well clear of the acrid smoke. Now you can see why this dish is best cooked outside. This will cook in 10-15 minutes.

The wok has to be kept very hot. The chicken will burn onto the sides of the wok, and that's fine because you want that slightly crispy texture, but make sure that you move the chicken round in the wok every few minutes to ensure you don't end up eating scraps of charcoal.

Whilst the chicken is cooking, put the pittas on the baking tray in the oven. They'll need several minutes to warm through. When they're done, take some scissors and cut off the top 1/4 inch from one of the long sides. This will give you a sort of bready envelope into which you can stuff the chicken and accessories. Put the pittas in a serving bowl.

With practice you'll be able to tell when the chicken is done. The worst of the smoke will clear, the oil will have cooked off and the strips of chicken will start to glisten. The thinner you cut the strips, the faster it'll cook.

When it's cooked, take the wok off the barbeque and put the chicken in a serving bowl.

To eat, take an opened pitta, stuff with chunks of spicy chicken, some pieces of tomato, some salady stuff and pour on a teaspoon or two of cumin dip. Enjoy on a scorching summer day with beer in your back garden. Bliss.


Cumin Dip

This easy-to-make dip is absolutely brilliant for taking the edge off spicy food whilst enhancing the flavour. Pour your plain yoghurt into a bowl. Add a couple of spoons of ground cumin to the yoghurt, then stir vigorously until it's all mixed in.


Piri-Piri:

Piri-Piri is a ferociously hot chilli from western Africa, which was imported there by the Portugese. It's what gives this recipe its bite.

I buy powdered piri-piri from Fox's Spices, a spice company who don't have a website (although they used to) but whose range of spices really is first class. For this recipe, I'd take 2 heaped teaspoons of the seasoning, mix in a bowl with a few tablespoons of olive oil, and then pour onto the chicken, mix up, and leave to marinade for a couple of hours.
If you want to make your own, there are plenty of recipes on the internet. Basically, you need lots of chillies, some garlic, salt, some lemon juice and some paprika. Grind to a paste, add some olive oil, and there you have it.



Drink with: Ice cold beer. Cobra is probably your best bet although whatever you drink, make sure it has been in the freezer for half an hour.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 5/5 - A doddle.

Mess factor: 4/5 - The wok which had the piri-piri chicken in it will need to soak to get off all the burned-on bits. Beyond that, it's really not too bad.

Leftover value: 4/5 - Pretty good. Cold bits of spicy chicken make excellent sandwiches the next day - use the cumin dip as a spread instead of butter. Any leftover pittas will have to go out for the birds, though, since their shelf life is shorter than a boy band's.

Tagliatelle Carbonara with homemade garlic bread

This recipe is a fast, filling, ittle number. If you're out of fresh veg or you want something to eat on your lap in front of the TV, if you're down to just milk and eggs in the fridge or you're short of time, this is the coming-in-late-but-I-still-want-to-eat meal. It also makes pretty good leftovers if you overcater.

The garlic bread recipe is sweet and simple and tastes way better than that supermarket crap, and it takes no longer to prepare. I promise.

For the tagliatelle, you will need:

1 large saucepan, 1 small saucepan;
1 mixing bowl;
2 eggs;
Pepper;
Parmesan or Cheddar cheese;
Bacon, salami or ham;
Milk;
Olive oil;
Tagliatelle - recipe is for dried pasta, not fresh.

For the garlic bread, you will need:

1 of those 'cook-yourself' baguettes;
butter;
garlic cloves;
mixed herbs;
A baking tray.

Tagliatelle

It's important to get this done in the right order. Firstly, in the small saucepan, put a splash of olive oil. Put it on the hob on a medium heat, wait for 30 seconds, and then chuck in your meat. You need to let it cook for several minutes to make sure it's crispy. If it's supermarket ham, then you need to make sure that all of the water content has cooked out. You'll be able to tell because it'll shrivel up and darken.

When your meat is adequately frizzled, take the pan from the hob and drain the contents onto some kitchen roll. The best way to do this is to get several sheets of the stuff, stack it up, then pour the oil and ham straight on to it. Dab the ham with the kitchen roll, then put the ham aside on a plate and discard the kitchen roll.

On to the cheesy sauce. Take your eggs. You have to separate the yolk from the white and there's a knack to this. In this case, we're not retaining the egg white (although you may wish to for whatever purpose) and it can go straight down the sink.

Find a knife or fork, cup the egg in the palm of one hand and strike it using the edge of the knife or fork. The shell will crack neatly and you can now prise it into two halves. Pour the white into one half, keeping the yolk put.

One system that I find works extremely well is to separate the egg through my fingers. Crack the shell and pour the contents carefully into the palm of your hand, keeping your fingers just slightly parted. The yolk - assuming you haven't shattered it when cracking the shell - will stay put whilst the white runs through your fingers and into the sink.

When you've got your two egg yolks in the bowl, add a dash of milk and beat with a fork. It'll mixup into a yellowy-white froth. Once it's done this, add some more milk. I'd estimate perhaps half a pint per person, but once you've done this recipe you'll know what suits you best.
Beat the mixture again to mix it all up, and then add plenty of ground pepper.

Next, grate the cheese directly into the egg/milk/pepper combo.

When you've finished this, you'll have a plate with some cooling frizzled meat, a bowl with some eggs, milk, cheese and pepper in it, and a saucepan of water. Put a sprinkling of salt in the water. Heat the saucepan until the water is boiling.

Now for the pasta. Now tagliatelle can be - not to put too fine a point on it - a bugger. Because it tends to be longer than your saucepan is wide, the only alternative to snapping it and thus losing the long strands is to slowly feed it into the water, which can be a nuisance and - if you're on a gas hob on high heat - will char one side of your hand quite adequately. It's up to you how you do this, but if - like me - your pasta's longer than your pan you typically have to hold one end of the tagliatelle whilst the other end softens. If you rest it on the pan it'll burn.

You need to make sure you stir the pasta up and keep it separate, otherwise the strands will stick together and it becomes pretty nasty.

After 5-10 minutes of cooking, the pasta should have softened and started to change colour. Drain the water off and return the pasta to the pan. Now throw in the meat, stir it together, then add your cheese mix. Turn the heat down to low and keep stirring your carbonara. When it changes texture, to slightly sticky, and all the cheese has melted, it's cooked.

Garlic bread

Preheat your oven to 220C. Get a small bowl - cereal-size or smaller - and put a inch cube of butter into it. If you use the spreadable butter, you won't have to wait half an hour whilst it softens.
Peel your garlic cloves - 2 per baguette gives you a pretty strong hit, and crush them into the bowl. If you don't have a crusher, chop the cloves very finely and go and buy a crusher for next time.
Sprinkle some mixed herbs onto the butter.

Now use a spoon to mix the butter, garlic and herbs together until you've got your garlic butter.

To cut the baguette, use a knife and put cuts an inch apart, diagonally, so that the loaf will break apart into pieces. Use a knife to push the garlic butter into the cuts. Spread any leftover butter on to the top of the baguette, place on the baking tray and fling in the oven for 8-10 minutes. If you're preparing this with the carbonara, make the garlic bread first and then stick it in the oven just after you pour the water away and put the pasta back in the saucepan.



Drink with: Pretty much anything. Strong red wines will kill the garlic flavour but may boost the pepperiness of the Carbonara.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 3/5 - Separating eggs, whiskingmixing, extra saucepan for the salami or bacon - it all adds up to a fair amount of work. It's not hard to do but it is time consuming.

Mess Factor: 2/5 - Getting dried-on cold eggy cheese sauce off a saucepan is a bastard. Leave the pan to soak in hot soapy water for 20 minutes before you try to clean it. Put it straight in to soak literally as soon as you've finished using it. You end up with at least 2 saucepans, one mixing bowl, cheese grater - a lot of work for a short meal.

Leftover value: 3/5 - Cold pasta isn't bad. The cheese and meat combo is pretty good. Not my first choice for leftovers but it makes a passable lunch. Cold garlic bread is pretty rough, in my opinion, so chuck it out for the birds if there's any left over, or better still finish it all off the night before.

Bloke's Cookbook - Vegetable Soup

Blokes know what vegetables are for. They're an accompaniment to meat in all its glorious guises and they're there to soak up gravy. But bear with me on this, because this very simple veg soup is cheap, fast to prepare and dead easy, as well as being filling and tasting good. The downside is it takes a long time to cook. However, the preparation takes 5 minutes.

You need:

A couple of large potatoes (4-5 inches long)
A leek
An onion
2 stock cubes (vegetable ideally, chicken if you don't have veg)
Olive oil

Wash the potatoes but don't peel them. Wash the leek - these get alot of grit in the end, so make sure you've got any little black bits of soil out. Chop the tip off the bottom of the leek and chop the green bits off the top, and discard them. Now chop the leek along its length into pieces about 1/2" thick. Then chop the potatoes into bite-sized cubes. Now peel the onion and chop it into smaller pieces.

Find a big saucepan, and put plenty of olive oil into it. Put it on the hob and turn the heat up to medium. After a minute, put the chopped onion in. This needs to sizzle - gently - for several minutes until it softens and starts to go translucent. If it starts to brown then you've got the heat up too high. Whilst this is happening, boil at least 2 pints of water in the kettle.

Once the onion's softened, add the leek. Mix the onion and leek together and let them cook together on the medium heat for 5 minutes or so. This will make sure the leek softens.

Now you need to use the stock cubes to make 2 pints of stock. This is simple - place cubes in jug, add hot water, stir. When you've made this, add it to the sizzling leeks and onions in the saucepan.

Stir the leeks and onions together.

What you'll have now is a saucepan with some hot stock and cooked leeks and onions in it. At this point, you should add your potato chunks.

This is, in essence, the base for the soup. At this point you can add other vegetables if you want, or you can just stick with this leek and potato soup. I add parsnip and sweet potato, which makes for a great winter soup.

Now, just stir all your veg together, cover the saucepan, turn down to the lowest heat possible and leave for at least an hour, longer if you can wait. Stir everything together every half hour or so.

When the soup's done - after at least an hour, preferably two hours - you can eat it. Personally, I don't like those big chunks of veg, so I use a potato masher and mash around half the soup. I then mix it all together. The starch in the potatoes firms the soup up a bit but it doesn't end up too runny or too thick. You may prefer to use a liquidiser to make the soup very runny, or you may like the chunks. It's up to
you.


How to make your own croutons.

It's a doddle. Heat the oven to 200C+ - 250C is better if your oven goes that far. Get some bread.

Slice the bread into cubes. Get a baking tin - a small one is preferable - and slosh some olive oil into it. Chuck the bread in and mix the bread and oil together - gently - so that all the sides of the cubes of bread have some oil on them. Then, place in the tray in the oven. They should take about 10 minutes to do - take them out when they're golden.

You can do this with plain old sliced bread from the supermarket. I think it works better if you buy those uncooked baguettes - the ones that need to be cooked for 10 minutes - and chop one into cubes.

A word of warning - don't eat them straight away because they WILL contain scalding-hot oil and you WILL end up with blisters on your tongue. Trust me on this. When you take them from the tray, put them on a piece of kitchen roll to soak off the excess oil before you use them.


Ease of cooking and preparation: 5/5 - Almost impossible to get wrong and you don't need any specialist equipment, just a saucepan, a peeler and a sharp knife.

Leftover value: 3/5 - Can't really be eaten cold the next day. However, it will reheat and taste as good as it did the day before. You can keep this on the hob for a couple of days, reheating as necessary. No animal products so it won't go off too quick.

Mess factor: 4/5 - Some veg peelings, and one large saucepan to wash up. A baking tray if you do the croutons. Couldn't get much less messy.

The Bloke's Cookbook

Welcome to the Bloke's Cookbook - your one-stop recipe source for cooking. Here you'll find a range of recipes, with exact cooking instructions for each one. There's also handy information about the difficulty of the recipe, the clearing-up that's required and - because we're blokes and cold leftovers from the fridge are how many of us round off an evening out - how good the recipe is the day after.

I can't promise to cover everything. There won't be an enormous amount of fish and seafood for example, because I'm not a big fan, so if that's all you eat then I regret that I can't help you much. I hope you'll find some consolation in the variety of stuff that I'm cooking and that there's something you can use.

There are usually two reasons why men learn to cook. Firstly, they've left home and there's a limit to the amount of pizza they can eat before they end up the size of a manatee. Second, they want to impress a girl. This blog will allow you to do both.

Cooking, as an ordinary man instead of a chef, is probably easier now than it has ever been. There's an enormous range of role models ranging from the patronising to the demented but all of them have one thing in common - they're on TV. Techniques are scarce, and recipes are rushed through to fit in with everything else that's on the show. You can pick some stuff up from the TV, and from books, but it takes time, and often the recipes are - how shall we put this - less than suitable. What self-respecting man comes home in the pissing rain from a hard day's work and thinks to himself 'I know, what I could really do with is a salad tossed with radicchio and walnut oil.' No, no, no. We want chunky food that'll fill us up.

So, chaps, if you want to really cook, this blog is for you. Whether you want to improve your own diet, wow the ladies with your culinary expertise or convince your mates to worship you, these recipes will guide you in the right direction.