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.