Hi Cheekychubby. Supplements are not the answer. You need to make sure your new diet is nutritionally balanced. It is perfectly possible to eat healthily without meat: my partner has done so for over a decade now. Try this link for the vegetarian society's advice on nutrition:

http://www.vegsoc.org/info/basic-nutrition.html

and best of luck with your new lifestyle!

This is a recipe I wrote for the Daily Telegraph in 2005. You can find this on their website http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Game of two hearths Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 04/03/2006

Lamb tagine may sound more exotic than hotpot, but the two dishes have much in common, says Tom Norrington-Davies

Picture an earthen-ware pot filled to the brim with produce from windswept mountainsides and humble kitchen gardens. Everything is being cooked together, long and slow, with a few simple seasonings. From the stove comes the unmistakeable aroma of rustic cooking. All you hear is a murmur from the pot as the stock is nudged into reluctant action by the gentle heat.

Spring lamb tagine: vibrant

What I am describing could be either of today's recipes, but the dish known as Lancashire hotpot doesn't conjure up such romantic images as a Moroccan tagine. In fact, the two dishes have just about everything in common, from the way they are cooked to their respective backgrounds. Historically, clay "hot pots" kept a shepherd's lunch warm as he travelled from farm to fell. Not exactly nomad food, but a moveable feast nonetheless.

Peasant cookery will always be more inspiring when it comes from another culture, because it seems exotic to us, whether or not frugality was the mother of its invention. One's eye will be drawn, magpie-like, to the colours of the saffron-infused tagine before the homely hotpot.

Then again, sometimes it's all in the name. My editor tells a funny story about her grandmother, who was highly averse to shepherd's pie, but could be persuaded to eat the very same dish if it was served as "Délices de Montebello" - a made-up name. Proof that it is possible to revisit our own humble dishes and be pleasantly surprised, even if familiarity has bred a touch of contempt.

Recently I was delighted to find a version of hotpot at the Fat Duck in Bray. Heston Blumenthal had cooked oysters, once commonplace in meat dishes, with the lamb. The results were extraordinary. His version inspired my one here.
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This makeover might warrant a new name: one that might even get past my editor's grandmother. I'd love to hear from anybody who dreams one up, or who knows of a similar tale of culinary coercion to the one above.

tom.norrington-davies@telegraph.co.uk


Simple lamb stock

Both dishes that follow will be enhanced if you can make them with this easy stock using the bones from a shoulder of lamb and one onion (handy, since you need both for your recipes).

Preheat the oven to its maximum setting and roast the lamb bones with the whole onion for about 20 minutes.

Remove them and transfer to a large pot immediately. Cover with approx 4 pints or 2 litres of water and simmer gently for two hours before straining.

If you can do this a day ahead of making your hotpot or tagine so much the better, since you can chill the stock and skim any fat from the top before using it.

Both recipes serve 4

Spring lamb tagine

This is vibrant and colourful, despite the long cooking time. The principle of tagine cooking is the order in which items are added to the pot. The meat must cook for longest, the broad beans for a short while only. So you don't really need to stir or intervene generally. My kind of cooking.

You don't need a tagine (terracotta pot with a conical lid). A casserole will suffice.

* 1 x 2.5lb/1.3k shoulder of lamb. Ask the butcher to remove the bones and use them to make the stock if you have time.
* Half tsp ground cumin
* 1 tsp salt
* 4 tbsp olive oil
* 1 onion
* 2 leeks
* 6 cloves garlic
* 12oz/350g new potatoes
* 8oz/250g cherry tomatoes
* Quarter tsp (i.e. a pinch) saffron threads
* 1 tsp dried mint
* 4 small artichokes (or 1 small tin artichoke hearts)
* 1 preserved lemon OR the peeled zest of half a lemon
* 8oz/250g broad beans (podded weight). Thaw if using frozen.
* Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
* A small bunch of chopped dill, coriander or parsley to garnish

Cut the lamb shoulder into eight pieces, roughly the same size. Mix the meat with the cumin and salt. Heat the oil in a large pot or tagine and brown the meat briskly.

Chop the onion, leeks and garlic then add them to the pot. Lower the heat and cover the pot. Halve the new potatoes and tomatoes and add them to the pot with the mint and saffron. Continue to cook on a very low heat.

If using fresh artichokes, peel the tough outer leaves, trim the tops and cut each one in half down the length. Pull out any "choke" and halve again.

Add these quarters to the pot with about 8fl oz/250ml of the stock. (It doesn't seem much but don't add more as the meat and vegetables produce lots of juice.) Now cook the tagine for about one-and-a-half hours.

Meanwhile, dice the preserved lemon roughly. (If you can't get one of these, use the peeled rind of half a fresh lemon. To ape the taste of the preserved version you could chop it with a teaspoon of capers, or a handful of pitted olives, which will add the slightly briny taste.)

Shuck the broad beans out of their little membranes by squeezing them between forefinger and thumb. Add the lemons and beans to the pot and cook for another 30 minutes. By this time the meat and vegetables should be very tender.

Let the tagine rest for 10 minutes before seasoning, garnishing with chopped herbs and serving. Some people like to eat couscous or rice with tagines, but my favourite is pitta-type flatbread. That way you can mop up all the lovely stock.

The Blueprint cafe, at the Design Museum, just by London's Tower bridge, is a hugely popular joint. Jeremy Lee is one of Conran's longest serving and best beloved chefs. His food is uncompromisingly seasonal, simply presented and, most importantly, delicious.

As Sinita83 has said, the recipe you want is probably available through the sainsbury's magazine archive of recipes. The reader enquiry service is on 02077755530.

As Sinita83 has said, the recipe you want is probably available through the sainsbury's magazine archive of recipes. The reader enquiry service is on 02077755530.

Here is a pizza dough recipe, from cupboard love (hodder and staughton, 2005). You can tweak it to add herbs or olives, or sundried tomatoes, but personally I'd leave all that malarky for the toppings.
This recipe is very reliable and freezes well, so if you have a good-sized freezer you can make a big batch of dough, roll it out into pizza bases as described in the recipe, and put some aside for another time.

To make four pizzas you need:
300ml tepid water
500g strong white flour (sometimes called bread flour), plus extra for dusting
1 teaspoon salt
7g sachet of Easyblend dried yeast (very handy to use sachets unless you do a lot of baking)
1 tablespoon olive oil

First, make sure the water is definitely tepid, not hot. It should be blood temperatureÖish. In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt and yeast and make a well in the centre. In a jug, combine the water and oil. Pour a third of the liquid into the well in the flour and, using a fork, whisk in some flour from around the well until you have the beginnings of a paste or loose batter. Add more of the water and work in more of the flour, and so on and so on, until you have a dough. It should easily come away from the sides of the bowl. Keep working at it if not, and it will happen.
Dust a worktop or a very large chopping board with flour and knead the dough for a good 10 minutes: just push it out away from you with the palm of your hand, then fold it towards you and give it a quarter turn. If you have a food processor with a dough hook you could, of course, use that and let it run for about 5 minutes. When the dough feels smooth and elastic, put it back into the mixing bowl, cover with baking parchment or cling film and let it rest in a warm place for about 45 minutesñ1 hour, until doubled in size. Now you need to knock it back; just punch it lightly with your knuckles. Take it from the bowl and roll it out into a sausage shape. Divie it into 4 pieces and roll them into balls.
Cut 4 large pieces from a roll of baking parchment, each about the size of your baking sheet. Lay the first piece on your worktop and flour it lightly. Now you can roll out your first piece of dough on it. Aim for as thin a base as possible, 23ñ25cm in diameter. Rolling it into a perfect circle is no mean feat and Iíve yet to master it. Iím envious when I see practised pizza chefs spinning the dough so nonchalantly between their hands. If you want a round pizza, itís best to place a cake tin, pizza stone or tart tin on top and cut round it with a small knife (use the excess dough to make an extra base or two later). Set your first base aside and go on to the next one. At this point it is possible to freeze the bases. You can lay them in the freezer on the sheets of parchment, stacking them up as you go. A tower of pizza!

Bicarb makes the caramel fizzy, which puts the air into your hokey pokey. As the caramel sets, the air gets trapped as bubbles. Without this you would just have a sheet of caramel. For the uninitiated, hokey pokey is also known as "honeycomb" i.e. the gloriously naughty stuff in the middle of a cadbury's crunchy bar.

your third option is Argentinian Dulce de leche, which is what you get if you reduce milk to a toffee. It is a delicacy in South America, but only recently became available in the UK...which is odd when you think of the longtime popularity of boiled condensed milk (remember banoffee pie?!) Merchant gourmet import a good dulce de leche and it should be available in good supermarkets.

I wouldn't lose any sleep over this. one of the most charming things about Italian cookery is trying to get your head around all the funny little rules and rituals Italian cooks love to wax lyrical about. I can't claim to be the world's most authentic pasta chef but I cook it a lot and I nearly always add sauce to pasta! There is a simple, practical reason for this. You usually need a big pan or pot to cook the pasta and a small pan or pot to cook the sauce. I return the pasta to the pasta pan and use it like a large mixing bowl. One important thing to remember if you are stirring sauces through pasta is not to drain it too thoroughly. A couple of shakes in the colander is all you need. Pasta coheres more effectively with any sauce, from pesto to bolognese, if it is slightly damp rather than dry and sticky. There you go, another quirky rule...can't help it!

Hey, world traveller. It would be irresponsible for a cook to try and answer your question. This is a subject best discussed with your GP. I'm sure he or she can ensure you have a happy and nutritious trip.

Forgive the shameless self promotion, Tanja, but you need Cupboard Love! It is written by yours truly, published by hodder and staughton and is available in paperback. It tells you how to kit out your kitchen with stuff that will keep medium to long term, providing the basics for easy, cheap meals.

This is possibly a bad answer, and I'm a bit reluctant to implore, generally. BUT...save the money for the machine and get onto a bread making course! The one at Bath's Bertinet Kitchen is a one day, one way ticket to huge baking confidence. You will be able to make all those things you mention, since they are quick and easy: all you lack is the confidence to do them yourself, not the gadget. Gadgets take all the wonderfully therapeutic fun out of baking

The Hart Brother's Modern Spanish Cookery (Quadrille 2006) is good, Sam and Eddie Hart are the proud owners of Fino and Barafino in London. They are both hugely acclaimed tapas bars. For a truly comprehensive guide to Tapas, try 1080 recipes, published by Phaidon last year. It's a monster of a book; just about every Spanish dish you could dream up is there, from the titchiest tapas to the stickiest pud.

It depends whether you want fast or slow roasting! A leg of lamb is lean and pretty zippy to cook, especially if you get it boned out. It is best left pink. A shoulder needs a long slow roasting time, we do it for at least three or four hours at work, but the upside of this is meat that is rich and tender enough to eat with a spoon. Try this recipe, my current favorite.

This is perfect food for Easter time when you never know what the weather will get up to. Serve it with a pile of rice and its rich and comforting. With a salad and crusty bread, it is British summertime on a plate. Either way, the cooking and eating are effortless. The lamb is so tender it simply needs to be nudged apart with a spoon. The juices are surprisingly complex considering how few ingredients you need.

Serves 2 to 4

You need:
2 large carrots
2 large onions
4 cloves garlic
2 stalks celery
3 tbs olive oil
1 x 1.2 kilo shoulder of lamb, on the bone
1 tbs white wine vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
400 ml water

Pre heat the oven to 200c/gas6. Peel and halve each carrot, onion, garlic clove and celery stick. Heat the olive oil in a large pot or casserole and, when it is smoking hot, sear the vegetables so that they just catch and brown a tiny bit. Remove them, set them aside and add the lamb to the same pot, browning it generously all over. Mix the vinegar, salt, sugar, tomato puree and water into a slightly unpromising and cloudy looking stock. Pour it all over the lamb and bring it to a simmer. Add the vegetables, cover and transfer to the oven. Now cook the pot for at least two hours or until the lamb is so tender you can cut (or portion it) with a spoon. The juices should be slightly opaque and glossy. If there is a little more liquid than you like for a casserole, lift out the joint and rest it on the serving dish while you reduce the liquid. Either way you should rest the dish for a good ten minutes before serving. That way it will be extra tender.

The other answers you see here are excellent but don't forget your pulses. You will need to befriend the pulse if you are going to be a successful veggie. The best snacking pulse food has got to be hummus, spread on pitta bread or crackers. And you could liven it up with slivers of dried apricot, which sounds a bit odd but is delicious. I'm banging on a bit here but f you are going to become a seriosu veggie this is vital stuff to know. Research has shown that mixing a pulse and a grain gives people who don't eat meat a pretty good nutritional approximation of its protein content. Its all about chains of amino acids or something horribly scientific. If you think about it, every culture where meat is scarce for spiritual or economic reasons, has a pulse- grain combo at its culinary heart. Rice and Dal in India: Noodles and bean-curd in East Asia... beans and tortillas in south America. So Hummus and pitta is much more than a snack. It's a winning team effort. And don't forget the UK's contribution to this edible double act: Beans on toast. I'm not kidding!

The other option is a sourdough bread, which will have big bubbles through the read and a lovely chewy crust. It's very expensive but super trendy pain poilane is considered by many to be the king of these types of bread. It would make a fine base for your goat's cheese.

We have been experimenting with sorbets at work a lot lately and I think the answer to a really 'creamy' sorbet (without any cream of course!) is in the syrup. I have just started swapping traditional stock syrup for glucose syrup and the results are great. Try this: Squeeze the juice and pulp from 12 passion fruits into a good sized mixing bowl. Add 300 grams of glucose syrup and the juice of two limes. Mix thoroughly until you have an even mix, with no strands of syrup. If you don't want the seeds in the sorbet strain it, or simply transfer to the ice cream machine or freezer. If you are still freezing, leave the sorbet in a bowl, preferably a metal one, as it is easier to whisk...Here is what I mean: Pop your mix in the freezer for two hours or until a slush starts to form round the edges. Whisk the slush back in vigorously. Return to the freezer and, an hour or two later, repeat. You need to keep doing this until you have an even slush... then you can leave it to freeze until set. The reason you are whisking so vigorously is to break ice crystals as they form. This is what the paddle in an ice cream machine does. If, for any reason, you get an icy sorbet when still freezing it, don't get upset: Just tell everyone its a granita!

The only recipe I have ever used, with soaked but uncooked chickpeas is one for falafel. The soaked pulses are ground with spices and herbs before being deep fried. But this is obviously going to cook them! I'm not an expert on the subject but as a cook I can't recommend eating raw chickpeas, toxins or no. I am almost certain that they are indigestible until cooked. UNLESS, and it is a big unless, they have ben sprouted. The article you read may have been alluding to this. Most dried pulses can be sprouted after soaking and the results are a delicious, superfood-tastic addition to any salad or stir fry. Chickpeas are not the easiest to sprout, as they will take two or three days longer than, say, mung or soy beans. But the process is like so:
Soak the chickpeas for eight hours or overnight, then rinse them thoroughly and leave them for a day in a colander. Rinse them once again, by submerging them in water and swirling them round a few times, to make sure each pea gets a good drink. Drain again and leave for a day... and repeat the above process until you start to see sprouts, or small whitey green shoots forming. Now, once sprouted, the chickpea and its shoot are edible. You can apparently make an fathomably healthy 'raw hummus' with them, following recipes for the cooked version, but I have to say I have never done this.

I would say you are looking in the wrong places. Britain has to be one of the most veggie and vegan friendly places in Europe. And the establishments that offer the kind of food you need won't always advertise the fact. This might be because a lot of them are catering for all sorts of different communities. Indian restaurants, for example, are usually excellent for vegans since meat and dairy is anathema to so many people from the subcontinent. The southern style of Indian restaurant is best for veggie and vegan dining. Then there are falafel bars, and of course the veggie restaurants themselves. In London you could do a lot worse than check in with time out for their comprehensive eating out guide, but the website
www.veggieheaven.com
is a nationwide directory.
Now for your Pizza. The well established chain Pizza Express offer a guide to ordering vegan versions of some of their most popular dishes on their website. I would say that any reputable pizza joint will be happy to 'hold the mozzarella' if you ask them to nicely!

Here is a recipe from my book Cupboard Love, published by Hodder in 2005. It is not massively authentic, but is a good workaday green curry. I nearly always buy my thai paste, as the brand Namjai (available in most oriental supermarkets) makes excellent tubs of it that last for ages and, more importantly, don't contain any nonsense. Otherwise you will need to kit yourself out with quite a few store cupboard ingredients, of which gapi (or fermented shrimp paste) is essential...and smelly! If you are a big fan of the genre, you should try David Thompson's authoritative but massively readable Thai food (Pavilion books 2002) . Feel free to use small slivers of chicken breast instead of thighs if you are short of time. You could substitute another meat instead. Duck goes nicely with Green curry, as does pork.

For 2 people you need:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 chicken thighs
2 generous tablespoons green curry paste
400ml tin of coconut milk
2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
1/2 teaspoon sugar
juice of 1/2 lime (or 1 tablespoon bottled lime juice)
3 lime leaves
1 small tin (about 200g) bamboo shoots, drained (optional)
3 spring onions, sliced on the diagonal
a handful of Thai basil or coriander leaves

Heat the oil in a wok, add the chicken thighs and brown them all over. Remove and set aside. Add the curry paste to the wok with a couple of tablespoons of the coconut milk, then stir and fry until the paste has loosened. Return the chicken pieces to the pan with the fish sauce, sugar, lime juice and lime leaves. Add the remaining coconut milk, then immediately half fill the tin with water and add this to the wok. Simmer for about 20 minutes, until the chicken pieces are cooked through. Add the bamboo shoots, if using, and heat them through. Now taste and adjust the seasoning if you want the curry sweeter, hotter, saltier. Add the spring onions and basil or coriander as you serve up.

The answer lies in the cut of beef. I'm guessing you were eating shin, which is rich in connective tissue and makes the stew gelatinous (i.e. sticky!) Other cuts that would work well would be oxtail, flank or brisket. Avoid the lean cuts if you can, but if this is not possible, add a pigs trotter or some beef bones to the stew and remove once everything else is melting and tender.

Yes, it should be fine. "Best before" is a guide to optimum quality rather than perishability. "Use by" dates are different matter, as they are supposed to tell you whether or not the food is still safe to eat. I'm sure your stilton will be good. Enjoy it.

I presume you mean what to have with haggis! The answer is mashed neeps, which usually means swede, that dumpy but delicious member of the root veg fraternity. Haggis is yummy, not at all gory as some people think. If you like coarse sausages or even such stern stuff as black pudding, you will love haggis. And if you really don't want to have anything to do with sheep's tummies, then McSween's, one of the most famous haggis manufacturers, make a veggie version that my other half ( a vegetarian Scot would you believe it?) swears by.

It's got to, got to, got to be the real Jewish classic, chicken soup with dumplings (or, at a push, noodles). And here is a recipe from a lovely food blog, by someone who has clearly done their research. It is not the quickest soup in the world but heavenly comfort food (not to mention a tried and tested cure for the common cold) is worth waiting for.
Try this link.
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/000634chicken_and_dumplings.php

You can use any milk to make yoghurt. The type of milk will effect the richness of the finished product. And, although I've never eaten it, I'm told that carnation, or "evap" as my gran used to call it, makes a rich, creamy (but not too fatty) yoghurt. It's really a case of method rather than quantities. You need to bring the whole tin of milk up to scalding point (it will fizz against the side of the pan when you move it around). The let it cool, covered so that it stays sterile, to around blood temperature (approx. 36c). Basically you don't need to be scientific about this, just test it with finger or elbow as you would baby milk. Now add two generous tablespoons of live yogurt and stir or whisk it in thoroughly. You need to leave the yogurt culture to prove in a warm place (an airing cupboard is ideal. And do this in a non metallic container (recycle a yogurt pot!). It can take up to eight to ten hours to get a good yogurt flavor (just taste it after this time). Then for best results let the new yogurt set a little in the fridge before you use it. And one more thing! Before you gobble it all, keep some of this yogurt to use as a starter for your next one.

This is a recipe from my book Cupboard Love (Hodder, 2005). This is of course a cynical and blatant plug of my own work (bite me!) but it is also a really easy, and really nice cake.

Chocolate souffle cake.

This is really a baked chocolate mousse. What is wonderful about it is the total lack of flour, which gives it an intensely chocolate taste. It is very easy to put together and cooks quickly, which makes it a great last-minute choice for baking, especially as all the ingredients are loitering in my kitchen at any time.
This cake is spectacular when it is as dark and moody as it gets, so for the coffee I make a strong espresso. You can use instant coffee but make it stronger than usual.

For 8to10 people you need:
6 eggs, separated
125g icing sugar (set aside 1 heaped tablespoon)
200g bitter chocolate
125g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons strong black coffee

Grease a deep 20cm springform cake tin and line the base with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to 180∞C/Gas Mark 4.
Beat the egg yolks and icing sugar in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water or in a microwave, then stir in the coffee. Now, while the chocolate mix is still warm, beat it into the egg yolk mixture.
Whisk the egg whites with the reserved tablespoon of icing sugar until you have a meringue with very soft peaks. Fold this meringue into the chocolate and egg yolk mix as gently as you can, to keep it airy. The easiest way to do this is to take 1 or 2 heaped tablespoons of the meringue and whisk them in fairly briskly to loosen the chocolate mix, then after that go as gently as you can, using a spatula or a large metal spoon.
Transfer the mixture to the cake tin and bake for 30 minutes. No peeking, by the way, as this cake really needs constant heat. Even if it seems very wobbly after half an hour, take it out of the oven. Leave it to cool completely before removing it from the tin. As the cake cools, the centre collapses and becomes dense. Once cold, it is ready to eat but, if you leave it until the next day, the flavour becomes somehow more intense.

Poaching salmon is the best way to cook it fat free. Bring a pan of water, deep enough to just cover the fish, to a simmer. Season it with a bay leaf and some black peppercorns. Add a generous pinch of salt. Then add the salmon fillets or steaks, in a single layer. As soon as you do, take the pan off the heat, cover and leave it until the water has cooled enough for you to remove the fish without burning your fingers. Perfect poached salmon. However, see my other answer from today for what I think is the best way to cook salmon. It involves a smidgeon (just a smidgeon, I promise) of olive oil.

Poached or steamed salmon must be the most virtuous way. And it just so happens that the most delicous way to do this is oven poaching. It makes the fsh super moist and tender. You simply place a roasting tin or pot full of hot water on the lowet shelf in your oven and set it to 150c (gas 2). This works best with a whole side (approx 1 to 1.5 kilos. simply brush a roasting or baking tray with olive oil and line it with baking parchment. Brush the fish with olive oil on both sides and season it, also both sides, with a generous amount of salt and pepper. Poach- bake it for about 45 minutes or until it is just tender and starting to show its juices on the top of the fillet. You can do it with filleted pieces or steaks as well but they will take about a third of the time and won't be quite as juicy.

I presume you mean what to have with haggis! The answer is mashed neeps, which usually means swede, that dumpy but delicious member of the root veg fraternity. Haggis is yummy, not at all gory as some people think. If you like coarse sausages or even such stern stuff as black pudding, you will love haggis. And if you really don't want to have anything to do with sheep's tummies, then McSween's, one of the most famous haggis manufacturers, make a veggie version that my other half ( a vegetarian Scot would you believe it?) swears by.

Mimi is absolutely right. The potato is a real cure all, for over salted sauces and over spiced dishes. It will even lower the temperature of oil if you have let the old deep fat fryer get too hot.
But back to your Q. Just in case a spud is not the answer, you could also try tempering the soup with yoghurt. Lentils, or in fact any pulse, will also take on some of that heat, and win.

This is not a sauce to cook the salmon in but its a revelation with poached or roasted salmon and sea trout. Grate half a root of fresh horseradish into about five tablespoons of creme fraiche. Add the juice of half a lemon and season with salt and fresh ground black pepper. It's the best sauce for salmon in the world!

I'm not really an authority on this but you could try changing your eating pattern. After all, you have just made a fairly big life change so this one will be small fry (no pun intended), and perhaps eat four or five small meals in a day rather then the traditional three. This definitely stops you snacking. And try making those meals spicy or stimulating. Chillies are supposed to help make meals more satisfying without adding calories. Just a thought!

King Edwards, Maris Pipers, marfona, basically all you need to look out for is a floury type of potato (usually a main cropper with a white rather than yellow ish coloured flesh). This will stop the mash going gluey. But whilst Mimi is bang on about her first choice, can I just add that your best friend for mash is not the spud itself but a ricer. This is a contraption that allows you to push the spuds through some little holes rather than mash it traditionally which can overwork the starches and make them gluey.

You are right. Belly pork has rich seams of fat and connective tissue running through it and these need fairly slow cooking to render them down to give you that soft, melting flavor that belly pork is famous for. One way round the slow slow cooking time is to cut it up small like bacon and add it to other dishes where the main meat is lean. Chicken, fish or game casseroles and pot roasts love the addition of belly pork or bacon. Talking of bacon, you say you have slices of belly pork. Has it been salted by any chance? You can do this yourself. Just mix a good handful of salt with something very aromatic (a sprig of thyme or the zest of a lemon, or even just black peppercorns) sprinkle this liberally over the belly slices then leave them in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours. Wash and pat dry thoroughly. You now have salt pork which you can dice finely and use just like bacon!

Just before you go out to work in the morning leave the jars in a sink full of warm water. Be sure to fill the jars with water too so that they sink rather than float. By the time you get home the labels should be so pliant that pulling them of will be almost therapeutic. The best tool for scrubbing more gluey or stubborn labels off is a nail brush. The cactus ones sold as part of the 'botanics' range in boots are one of the world's most underrated culinary gadgets. I keep one in the kitchen for all sorts of jobs, including scrubbing new potatoes and jerusalem artichokes. And just in case you wondered, no I never use it for my nails. That would be gross.

For my money, you can't beat Indian cookery for veggie recipes. Any book of Indian food will have a wealth of meat free dishes. But closer to home, Simon Rimmer's the accidental vegetarian (Cassell Illustrated, 2004) is a winner. Simon is unusual in that he is a bona fide carnivore and yet the proud owner of a veggie restaurant, Greens in Manchester. Because of this anomaly the recipes in his book are fun and colorful and not remotely wholefoody or worthy. This is a good thing!

Becasue the olives and sundried tomatoes are essentially dry ingredients you should saute the mushrooms before you add them to the mix. Just chop them as finely as possible and dry fry them (with some garlic and perhaps a little thyme or tarragon) until your spoon leaves no moisture in its weight. When very finely chopped and sauteed like this the classic name for the recipe is duxelles. Its the mushroom sauce traditionally used to make beef wellington amongst other dishes, and it would work well in what you describe above.

This is a recipe I wrote for the Daily Telegraph in 2005. You can find this on their website

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Game of two hearthsLast Updated: 12:01am GMT 04/03/2006




Simple lamb stock
Spring lamb tagine
Hotpot


Lamb tagine may sound more exotic than hotpot, but the two dishes have much in common, says Tom Norrington-Davies

Picture an earthen-ware pot filled to the brim with produce from windswept mountainsides and humble kitchen gardens. Everything is being cooked together, long and slow, with a few simple seasonings. From the stove comes the unmistakeable aroma of rustic cooking. All you hear is a murmur from the pot as the stock is nudged into reluctant action by the gentle heat.  

Spring lamb tagine: vibrant

What I am describing could be either of today's recipes, but the dish known as Lancashire hotpot doesn't conjure up such romantic images as a Moroccan tagine. In fact, the two dishes have just about everything in common, from the way they are cooked to their respective backgrounds. Historically, clay "hot pots" kept a shepherd's lunch warm as he travelled from farm to fell. Not exactly nomad food, but a moveable feast nonetheless.

Peasant cookery will always be more inspiring when it comes from another culture, because it seems exotic to us, whether or not frugality was the mother of its invention. One's eye will be drawn, magpie-like, to the colours of the saffron-infused tagine before the homely hotpot.

Then again, sometimes it's all in the name. My editor tells a funny story about her grandmother, who was highly averse to shepherd's pie, but could be persuaded to eat the very same dish if it was served as "Délices de Montebello" - a made-up name. Proof that it is possible to revisit our own humble dishes and be pleasantly surprised, even if familiarity has bred a touch of contempt.

Recently I was delighted to find a version of hotpot at the Fat Duck in Bray. Heston Blumenthal had cooked oysters, once commonplace in meat dishes, with the lamb. The results were extraordinary. His version inspired my one here.
advertisement

This makeover might warrant a new name: one that might even get past my editor's grandmother. I'd love to hear from anybody who dreams one up, or who knows of a similar tale of culinary coercion to the one above.

tom.norrington-davies@telegraph.co.uk


Simple lamb stock

Both dishes that follow will be enhanced if you can make them with this easy stock using the bones from a shoulder of lamb and one onion (handy, since you need both for your recipes).

Preheat the oven to its maximum setting and roast the lamb bones with the whole onion for about 20 minutes.

Remove them and transfer to a large pot immediately. Cover with approx 4 pints or 2 litres of water and simmer gently for two hours before straining.

If you can do this a day ahead of making your hotpot or tagine so much the better, since you can chill the stock and skim any fat from the top before using it.

Both recipes serve 4

Spring lamb tagine

This is vibrant and colourful, despite the long cooking time. The principle of tagine cooking is the order in which items are added to the pot. The meat must cook for longest, the broad beans for a short while only. So you don't really need to stir or intervene generally. My kind of cooking.

You don't need a tagine (terracotta pot with a conical lid). A casserole will suffice.

* 1 x 2.5lb/1.3k shoulder of lamb. Ask the butcher to remove the bones and use them to make the stock if you have time.
* Half tsp ground cumin
* 1 tsp salt
* 4 tbsp olive oil
* 1 onion
* 2 leeks
* 6 cloves garlic
* 12oz/350g new potatoes
* 8oz/250g cherry tomatoes
* Quarter tsp (i.e. a pinch) saffron threads
* 1 tsp dried mint
* 4 small artichokes (or 1 small tin artichoke hearts)
* 1 preserved lemon OR the peeled zest of half a lemon
* 8oz/250g broad beans (podded weight). Thaw if using frozen.
* Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
* A small bunch of chopped dill, coriander or parsley to garnish

Cut the lamb shoulder into eight pieces, roughly the same size. Mix the meat with the cumin and salt. Heat the oil in a large pot or tagine and brown the meat briskly.

Chop the onion, leeks and garlic then add them to the pot. Lower the heat and cover the pot. Halve the new potatoes and tomatoes and add them to the pot with the mint and saffron. Continue to cook on a very low heat.

If using fresh artichokes, peel the tough outer leaves, trim the tops and cut each one in half down the length. Pull out any "choke" and halve again.

Add these quarters to the pot with about 8fl oz/250ml of the stock. (It doesn't seem much but don't add more as the meat and vegetables produce lots of juice.) Now cook the tagine for about one-and-a-half hours.

Meanwhile, dice the preserved lemon roughly. (If you can't get one of these, use the peeled rind of half a fresh lemon. To ape the taste of the preserved version you could chop it with a teaspoon of capers, or a handful of pitted olives, which will add the slightly briny taste.)

Shuck the broad beans out of their little membranes by squeezing them between forefinger and thumb. Add the lemons and beans to the pot and cook for another 30 minutes. By this time the meat and vegetables should be very tender.

Let the tagine rest for 10 minutes before seasoning, garnishing with chopped herbs and serving. Some people like to eat couscous or rice with tagines, but my favourite is pitta-type flatbread. That way you can mop up all the lovely stock.

This is a recipe I wrote for the Daily Telegraph in 2005. You can find this on their website

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Game of two hearthsLast Updated: 12:01am GMT 04/03/2006




Simple lamb stock
Spring lamb tagine
Hotpot


Lamb tagine may sound more exotic than hotpot, but the two dishes have much in common, says Tom Norrington-Davies

Picture an earthen-ware pot filled to the brim with produce from windswept mountainsides and humble kitchen gardens. Everything is being cooked together, long and slow, with a few simple seasonings. From the stove comes the unmistakeable aroma of rustic cooking. All you hear is a murmur from the pot as the stock is nudged into reluctant action by the gentle heat.  

Spring lamb tagine: vibrant

What I am describing could be either of today's recipes, but the dish known as Lancashire hotpot doesn't conjure up such romantic images as a Moroccan tagine. In fact, the two dishes have just about everything in common, from the way they are cooked to their respective backgrounds. Historically, clay "hot pots" kept a shepherd's lunch warm as he travelled from farm to fell. Not exactly nomad food, but a moveable feast nonetheless.

Peasant cookery will always be more inspiring when it comes from another culture, because it seems exotic to us, whether or not frugality was the mother of its invention. One's eye will be drawn, magpie-like, to the colours of the saffron-infused tagine before the homely hotpot.

Then again, sometimes it's all in the name. My editor tells a funny story about her grandmother, who was highly averse to shepherd's pie, but could be persuaded to eat the very same dish if it was served as "Délices de Montebello" - a made-up name. Proof that it is possible to revisit our own humble dishes and be pleasantly surprised, even if familiarity has bred a touch of contempt.

Recently I was delighted to find a version of hotpot at the Fat Duck in Bray. Heston Blumenthal had cooked oysters, once commonplace in meat dishes, with the lamb. The results were extraordinary. His version inspired my one here.
advertisement

This makeover might warrant a new name: one that might even get past my editor's grandmother. I'd love to hear from anybody who dreams one up, or who knows of a similar tale of culinary coercion to the one above.

tom.norrington-davies@telegraph.co.uk


Simple lamb stock

Both dishes that follow will be enhanced if you can make them with this easy stock using the bones from a shoulder of lamb and one onion (handy, since you need both for your recipes).

Preheat the oven to its maximum setting and roast the lamb bones with the whole onion for about 20 minutes.

Remove them and transfer to a large pot immediately. Cover with approx 4 pints or 2 litres of water and simmer gently for two hours before straining.

If you can do this a day ahead of making your hotpot or tagine so much the better, since you can chill the stock and skim any fat from the top before using it.

Both recipes serve 4

Spring lamb tagine

This is vibrant and colourful, despite the long cooking time. The principle of tagine cooking is the order in which items are added to the pot. The meat must cook for longest, the broad beans for a short while only. So you don't really need to stir or intervene generally. My kind of cooking.

You don't need a tagine (terracotta pot with a conical lid). A casserole will suffice.

* 1 x 2.5lb/1.3k shoulder of lamb. Ask the butcher to remove the bones and use them to make the stock if you have time.
* Half tsp ground cumin
* 1 tsp salt
* 4 tbsp olive oil
* 1 onion
* 2 leeks
* 6 cloves garlic
* 12oz/350g new potatoes
* 8oz/250g cherry tomatoes
* Quarter tsp (i.e. a pinch) saffron threads
* 1 tsp dried mint
* 4 small artichokes (or 1 small tin artichoke hearts)
* 1 preserved lemon OR the peeled zest of half a lemon
* 8oz/250g broad beans (podded weight). Thaw if using frozen.
* Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
* A small bunch of chopped dill, coriander or parsley to garnish

Cut the lamb shoulder into eight pieces, roughly the same size. Mix the meat with the cumin and salt. Heat the oil in a large pot or tagine and brown the meat briskly.

Chop the onion, leeks and garlic then add them to the pot. Lower the heat and cover the pot. Halve the new potatoes and tomatoes and add them to the pot with the mint and saffron. Continue to cook on a very low heat.

If using fresh artichokes, peel the tough outer leaves, trim the tops and cut each one in half down the length. Pull out any "choke" and halve again.

Add these quarters to the pot with about 8fl oz/250ml of the stock. (It doesn't seem much but don't add more as the meat and vegetables produce lots of juice.) Now cook the tagine for about one-and-a-half hours.

Meanwhile, dice the preserved lemon roughly. (If you can't get one of these, use the peeled rind of half a fresh lemon. To ape the taste of the preserved version you could chop it with a teaspoon of capers, or a handful of pitted olives, which will add the slightly briny taste.)

Shuck the broad beans out of their little membranes by squeezing them between forefinger and thumb. Add the lemons and beans to the pot and cook for another 30 minutes. By this time the meat and vegetables should be very tender.

Let the tagine rest for 10 minutes before seasoning, garnishing with chopped herbs and serving. Some people like to eat couscous or rice with tagines, but my favourite is pitta-type flatbread. That way you can mop up all the lovely stock.

Whilst I'm a keen amateur cook of anything Indian I feel duty bound to pass you on to a proper expert. Anjum Anand, author of the super usable book Indian Everyday (headline, 2003) has a website. Try
http://anjumanand.co.uk

She also has recipes on the times website

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

Happy hunting!

If you mean the recipe for the old fashioned scottish raspberry bun try this link
http://www.recipesource.com/ethnic/europe/scottish
and search for raspberry buns. There is a handy looking recipe on the site.

If you are not looking for an alternative to dairy, yoghurt usually works where cream does, but add it at the end of cooking time, and don't let it boil as it splits. And low fat is less stable than the strained greek types. (the good news here is that even Greek yoghurt is lower in fat than cream).

It's really a matter of taste! Do you like yours punchy and dark green (often sold as peppery) or golden and mellow(fruity)? If you like mellower oils those from Greece, made from Kalamata olives are a good bet. And at the other end of the scale, Arbequina olives from Spain make the sternest stuff. To buy the best, why not ignore the supermarket next time you want oil? Go to a deli where they let you tase the stuff. Brindisa in London's Borough Market do this. My personal favorite at their shop is Nunez de Prado, a really intense olive oil made from very young olives in Andalusia. If you don't really have a taste preference but want an assurance of quality, single estate olive oils tend to be more interesting than the big commercial 'blends' which can be bland. Worth noting is that blended oils can say they are 'from' the country in which they were processed rather than where the olives were grown. Which is just daft.

Are you talking about de glazing a pan in which you have cooked meat? The marmite ish bits that have stuck to the bottom of the pan are full of ultra savory flavor. You can ease them off by removing whatever you have been roasting or frying, then adding a splash of wine, or stock, or both to bring a pretty instant gravy to life. Just add enough liquid to cover the pan's surface, then simmer and stir until what you have looks glossy and tastes good. Keep tasting it as you simmer. And do season it again or add herbs when you have the reduction you wanted. I hope this is what you meant by pan sauce!

It is generally accepted wisdom that cooking acid foods such as tomato sauces or chutneys etc is better in stainless steel because aluminum can taint them. I'm not really qualified to say whether there is a definite health risk from aluminum pans but since stainless steel is a better cooking medium all round, why not make the switch anyway? As a chef, I find stainless is easier to clean, and less likely to get bashed about.

Some types of fish and shellfish have seasons. Shellfish such as mussels and oysters are taditionally only eaten when there is an r in the month, like game. But farming of both fish and shellfish means that you don't really have to worry about this anymore. Fish farming got a bad name in recent years due to the intensive nature of, say shrimp farms in south asia or salmon farming in Europe and Scandinavia but rope grown mussels, native oysters and more recent additions to the industry like cod are generally regarded as sustainable and even beneficial to the environment. If you want a nice, user friendly guide to which fish are in season when, Hugh Fearnely whittingstall's river cottage year book (Hodder, 2003) has charts of what's good and when.

Steve Hatt on The Essex Rd just up from the Angel Islington has some serious devotees and I think the foodhall in Selfridges on Oxford Street is very good if you are central. But you could also do a lot worse then the two excellent fish stalls at Borough Market (Furness being my personal favorite). Worth mentioning, although I am wary of supermarkets in general, is that Morrisons have won an award for their wet fish counters. The last time I visited one I bought some of the best squid I have eaten in a long time.

I know how you feel! I think many of us do this (including chefs). A lot of it is to do with being time poor. The answer is to set yourself some new challenges for the year ahead. Do you cook seasonally, for example? If you make this a rule, your menus will write themselves to a certain extent. It isn't always easy to be inspired by the limitations of the bleak midwinter but don't forget that there is loads of game around, great sea food and oddities such as forced Yorkshire rhubarb or wild sea kale are just coming into their own. When I want to try something new I often pick a seasonal ingredient and then trawl through my recipe books to look for something new to do with it. You could actually do this with any of your favorite ingredients. If you want an account of how this can be done Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries (fourth estate 2005) is great. His weekly column in the observer offers more of the same and the recipes are never mind boggling( I don't think Nigel does stressful!). The internet is your friend as well, as there are now tons of food blogs and forums. Egullet is a good place to start
www.egullet.com

The milky liquid you are talking about is one of the perils of buying cheap bacon. Brine injection is a fast cure, used to produce commercial brands quickly. Real bacon should be salted for longer, either in a wet (brine) or dry cure. Then it should be hung for a time to get a real depth of flavor. Whether or not you want smoked bacon is really up to personal taste (or the recipe you are using). I think dry cured bacon is best for frying if you want a dense, meaty bacon in the pan with no liquid leaking from it. Now to the cut you choose: Back bacon is leaner, taken from what would be the loin of pork, if it were fresh. That's the best type for sarnies. Streaky bacon is usually made from the belly, and has a lot more fat content, making it perfect for cooking in stews or for crispy lardons in salads. There are excellent brands around these days and most of the big supermarkets have realized that they need to offer more than the dreaded vac pacs of danish bacon (sorry Denmark). Pancetta, which is Spanish, French or Italian dry cured streaky, is usually a safe bet. And, did you know, it is really easy to make your own? Hugh Fearnely - Whittingstall's recipes for curing pork are excellent. We now follow them to make our own hams and bacons at Great Queen Street, and customer feedback has been very positive.

Forman and field have arbroath smokies, sold traditionally by the pair (two whole smoked haddock tied together at the tail. You can buy online at

www.formanandfield.com

When it comes to fresh fish online your options are pretty vast these days. I would be inclined to go for a busy, well established site if buying something as perishable as fish. Able and cole are recommended by several of my friends who buy their organic veg boxes. I haven't used them for fish but I was impressed to see sustainable options such as pollack and whiting on offer when researching this answer for you. Good luck with your catch, Loon.

Let me just check you are doing everything right. Are you cutting everything to the same size? Heating the wok before you add anything, even the cooking oil? I thought so. In that case, you are probably doing something we are all guilty of: over - filling the wok.

Stir-fries are a great addition to the great British kitchen but a vital aspect of wok cookery has gone missing in translation. If you ever watch a good oriental kitchen in action you will see fairly diminutive amounts of food going into outsize woks. This is to ensure the brief, even cooking time of all the ingredients. So for the average sized domestic wok, you should add enough food for a couple of diners, and no more. If there are 4 of you, don’t double up on ingredients; make two different stir-fries. The best oriental meals are compound affairs anyway. You can cook one stir-fry after the other in no time, and as long as your rice or noodles are ready, nothing will spoil while it waits. And of course, you needn’t confine yourself to the wok. If you are making a meat or fish stir fry, why not add steamed greens or a lovely Thai style spicy salad as the side dish?

I think you must mean breast of lamb, which is the equivalent of pork belly. Its a fatty cut that hangs just beaneath the saddle, or loin. Traditional ways to cook it include rolling and stuffing it before roasting it slowly. Just like pork belly. My favourite stuffing for any lamb recipe is breadcrumbs, sage or rosemary, garlic and a couple of anchovy fillets. But there is another way of cooking the breast. You can poach it on the bone, in plain water, then when it is good and tender, drain it and let it cool. Pull out the breast bones and remove some of the fat, then smear the remaining cutlets with dijon mustard before rolling them in breadcrumbs and frying them off. Delicious!

Are we talking pie and mash type of pies? If so, there is a great, burgeoning chain called square pie. They have outlets in spitalfields and selfridges and a website too.
www.squarepie.com

If you mean raised pies, (i.e the jelly rich, cold pork pies that the famous five were so fond of) then the best bet is borough market, at the melton mowbray pork pie stall. M.M are either in the process of getting, or have got a DOC on the name so it will always be a sign of quality. Watch out Mrs Miggins.

Are we talking pie and mash type of pies? If so, there is a great, burgeoning chain called square pie. They have outlets in spitalfields and selfridges and a website too.
www.squarepie.com

If you mean raised pies, (i.e the jelly rich, cold pork pies that the famous five were so fond of) then the best bet is borough market, at the melton mowbray pork pie stall. M.M are either in the process of getting, or have got a DOC on the name so it will always be a sign of quality. Watch out Mrs Miggins.

There are two things you can do. First, boil a kettle of water. Then, whisking your curdled mayo hard, add a little splash of the hot water at a time. Sounds bonkers? Most people split mayo by adding room-temperature oil to fridge-cold eggs. Unless your two ingredients are at similar temps, they will not want to emulsify, no matter how nice you are to them. The hot water will moderate this disparity and bring them together. Just remember to check the seasoning afterwards.

The other method is best if you have a food processor. Pop an egg yolk (two if the yolks are small) into the processor. Start it up and add your split mayo as if it was the oil. And here is one more tip: add it just a bit faster than you might think is OK. Another common cause of mayo splittage is food processors. Old hand-whisked recipes tell you to add the oil at a super slow ‘drizzle’ but the whirring blades of a machine are working much faster than your wrist would. Therefore you actually need to add the oil at quite a pace to keep up. This is by the by but I think ‘drizzle’ is the most unappetizing, unhelpful culinary word of all time. I prefer to say glug. If you are making mayo in a food processor, take that daft pourer thing off the oil bottle and add it by the glug!

Keep it well away from the fridge and, if possible, up close and personal with a bunch of bananas. The nitrates in a banana will help ripen lots of fruit. In fact, if you find that you are constantly fishing over-ripe fruit from your fruit bowl, no matter how fast you get through it, try keeping the bananas in another place (not the fridge! When cold, the banana turns from a helpful ripening agent into an evil, tasteless fruit which gives you toothache when you try and eat it).

This is a slightly tricky one to answer. What is going wrong?

Are the egg whites not whisking to those poetically prescribed “soft peaks”? This is usually caused by contamination. Some yolk getting in with the whites will stop them in their tracks and so, may I say tactfully, will a slightly greasy mixing bowl. Even if it is super clean, run half a lemon round the bowl to cut away any trace of old oil or what have you. Now all you have to do is whisk for just long enough but not too long. As soon as you can invert the bowl without the meringue sliding out, the mix is ready.

OR

Are you cooking them too fast? This sounds odd but here's my grandmother’s tried and trusted method for cooking meringues. Heat the oven to 150c or gas 2 and add the meringues. As soon as they go in, turn the heat down to 100c (gas 1) for an hour. Then turn it off altogether and leave the meringues in the oven until it is totally cold (overnight is perfect for this).

OR

Are they gooey in the middle, no mater how you try to get them just like the ones in the shops, super dry and crumbly? In which case….nothing is wrong with your gorgeous (and slightly gooey) meringues! They rock! The ones in the shop suck! Don’t ever buy them again!

I am almost certain that alcohol evaporates when it is added to braised dishes like beef in red wine. If you have ever made a risotto for example, you may have noticed these alcohol fumes coming from the pot as the wine cooks. Smell the same pot a few minutes later and all you will get is a musky, grape like scent. I can't help wonder if your question means someone in the family may be reluctant to eat food with alcohol in it. You can use grape juice in recipes that require wine. To sharpen it up a bit why not add a couple of shakes of red or white wine vinegar.

A Casserole is an oven proof cooking pot, made of cast iron. So the word casserole is often applied to braised, stewed or pot roast dishes that are cooked in and served from this type of cooking vessel. It follows that casseroles will be slightly different to stews, having spent time in the oven, which will change the way the ingredients have cooked.

It is, definitely. I think most shop-bought bread is rubbish. The good stuff is expensive and never as handy as you want. And so many people who think they are wheat intolerant are simply struggling, as anyone would, with the rather unsavory cocktail of additives in commercial loaves - from flour improvers to badly proved yeasts. Aside from this, bread making is the most therapeutic of culinary past-times, and not as time-consuming or difficult as you might think. You could get a bread maker for total convenience (but this comes without the feel-good factor that comes with making and proving your own dough). A bread-making course would be a great present for loved ones. One of the best is at the acclaimed Bertinet kitchen in Bath. Award-winning author and master baker Richard Bertinet makes it seem so easy you will never buy another loaf. If you don’t fancy the course, his user-friendly books dough and crust (kyle cath 2005/2007) come with DVDs to help demonstrate his methods. Check out
www.thebertinetkitchen.com

Yes, the best I've ever had is from The Prawn Cocktail Years by Simon Hopkinson and Lindsay Bareham; it is seriously dark and moody…the mousse, not the book.

To serve 4 you need:
200g best bitter choc (that means 70% or more cocoa solids)
3 tbs strong coffee
25g butter
1 and a half tbs rum
3 free range eggs, separated (use 4 if they come up small)
Melt the chocolate in a bowl with the butter and coffee, over a double boiler. Don’t stir as it melts (it is easy to curdle dark chocolate).
When melted, remove from the heat and gently fold in the rum. While still warm ish, beat in the egg yolks, gently.

Now beat the whites in a separate bowl until they form soft, billowing peaks. Fold them into the chocolate and pour the mousse into little ramekins or pots (at Great Queen Street we use little wine tumblers).
Cover and allow to chill, and set for a good 3 to 6 hours. Serve with pouring cream, or a float of more good rum or brandy.

First and foremost, you need really fresh eggs and good butter. Lots of recipes call for too much milk. I hardly use any. Finally, you need to have absolutely everything else ready before you start to cook. That means toast, tea, coffee, and all other diners present and correct at the table. Scrambled eggs continue to cook in the pan long after you take it off the heat. Here is my recipe, as taught to me by my dad, John. The king of scrambled eggs. For 4 people you need 6 eggs, 1 tbs butter, 100 ml milk, and a generous pinch each of salt and pepper.

Heat the butter gently in a good saucepan. Add the milk and let both come to a gentle fizz. Then the trick is to break the eggs into the pan, rather than beat them in advance. Beat them as you cook them, stirring constantly. And cook them only until just set. Scrambled eggs should be wobbly, not rubbery. Season to taste once cooked to your liking then serve and eat immediately!

Gravadlax! The super chef Richard Corrigan showed me how to make his great version of this wonderful centerpiece to any buffet. And you can freeze it. Try this link
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/wine/main.jhtml?xml=/wine/2006/03/11/edtom11.xml&page=2 for the recipe

Vegan food precludes any animal products including dairy and eggs. And this makes it hard to feed vegans following a western template. Do you have any Indian cook books? With more vegetarians on the subcontinent than anywhere else on the planet, this is the king of vegetarian cuisines. What’s more, because many vegetarian Hindus and Jains eschew eggs and milk for spiritual reasons, lots of Indian vegetable dishes are vegan as a matter of course. Meat-free Indian recipes are also unfailingly delicious without seeming all that, you know, VEGGIE! I don’t mean this in a daft way; it’s just that a good spread of vegetarian Indian food will delight meat eaters and vegans alike without making anyone feel like they have been singled out for specialist catering. What’s more, meat-free Indian dishes tend to be full of all the right, fulfilling ingredients such as pulses and legumes that vegans need to be eating. Do a spread of tasty Indian dishes, around a fragrant mound of basmati rice and you are sure to impress everybody.

How squeamish are you Flayraph ? The magic ingredient, basil and all that aside, is gapi, a dark, pungent paste made from fermented shrimps. This is the stuff that gives Thai food its hard-to-define savory taste, which some cooks call umami. Lots of recipes for thai curries omit this ingredient or tell you to use the thai fermented fish sauce nam pla in its place. A recipe with neither is not worth the paper it is written on. As icky as both nam pla and gapi seem, they are at the core of most south east asian cooking. If you have ever been over there and found that your efforts to produce something similar back home lack a certain something it is bound to be the salty pungency they impart. Think of an oriental equivalent of what the anchovy is to Mediterranean food. You need to find an oriental supermarket or thai supplier to get gapi. , Wing yip, the chinese shop, have an online store with lots of other asian ingredients.

http://www.importfood.com

is a thai supplier on line and they do gapi. If you buy some, don't be put off by the look of it! It's ot a pretty murky purple-ish hue. Then of course there is the strong (and frankly unpromising) smell to contend with. Persevere, as once it enters the balancing act of all the other ingredients, it is unobtrusive and brings everything together. Incidentally if you are a keen thai cook, you might love David Thompson's Thai Food (pavilion books 2002) which is about as encyclopedic as it gets when it comes to this deservedly popular, but much mistreated cuisine!

Mimi, you need to et the brassica habit! Now is the time for all things cruciferous. This ancient family of vegetables includes cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips and even some of the salad type leaves such as watercress and rocket. First, the good news. These veg are loaded with goodness. You already knew that eating your greens would be healthy but recent research has found them to contain flu and cancer busting qualities. Now the even better news. Trillions of them are in season right now. From super trendy Cavolo Nero to kale, brussels sprouts and tops, savoy, red, white and january king cabbages. Purple sprouting broccoli, turnips and kohlrabi. I could go on... because if the idea of cleaning and cooking the fresh stuff doesn't appeal there is sauerkraut, or pickled red cabbage, or kimchi. There, I'm done.

It never did my granny any harm but the Food Standards Agency does not recommend re-heating stock more than once. During its cooling phase it is possible for stock to develop the pathogen clostridium perfringens (notorious for food poisoning). Even if you use stock daily I recommend making a batch then freezing it. If you don’t have a freezer then skimmed, strained meat stock will keep for three days in the fridge.

Roni, I wonder if your two boys (that's the big one and the little one) are open to game? Birds such as pheasant and partridge are ideal for smaller gatherings at christmas. A large (cock) pheasant will look after three people or you could have a partridge each. Both birds are also easy to cook and if you roast them, served with your usual festive accompaniments, you'd have dinner on the table in no time. Partridge takes about twenty minutes and pheasant needs roughly half an hour. But the easiest way to approach Christmas dinner without all the trimmings is to do a pot roast ( a sort of casserole) with one of the game birds, which you could serve with roasties, mash or nothing more than crusty bread. Not a sprout in sight. For recipes, the best place I can direct you is Delicious magazine. Their homepage this year features a natty section called "hate turkey?" Click on this link and you get directed to a list of alternative recipes... including one for pot roast pheasant by yours truly.

That’s the million dollar question! It depends what you think of force feeding. Migratory birds have the natural ability to shore up fat in their livers to cope with long flights south for winter. Force feeding them causes the livers to behave this way, exaggeratedly so, which makes them rich and slightly sweet.
Now, fattening animals up for slaughter is an ancient practice and unless you only eat wild meat, you can’t deny that you’ve eaten beasties that are, to some extent, force-fed. But what gets people jumpy about foie gras is the practice of ‘gavage’. Some geese or ducks bred for foie gras are literally held down and given corn meal through a funnel. In small farms where the traditional methods are still practiced, this is done by hand. Some people even argue that the geese and ducks on these small “fermiers” like the force feeding.
Sadly, the vast majority of foie gras available in shops is factory farmed. The animals are caged, like our battery hens, and the whole process is mechanized.
Personally I think all battery farming, for whatever purpose, is cruel. I wouldn’t eat a factory-farmed goose, duck or hen, let alone its liver.
In Spain, they have recently come up with what some people are calling ethical foie gras, which is only available seasonally. Just before they migrate, geese and ducks will fatten themselves up naturally. No ‘gavage’ is involved. This means that ‘Ganzo Iberico’, as it is known, is only available just before Christmas time. Personally, this appeals to me, since I think naturally occurring, seasonal food, is always the best.
I hope this goes some way to answering your question. One more, curious foie gras fact: It is illegal to produce foie gras in the UK but not to buy it, which says everything about our widespread ambivalence to animal welfare. In a recent poll, the RSPCA found that 63% of UK respondents would like to see it banned altogether. You cold check out their arguments and images of gavage feeding on: www.rspca.org.uk/foiegras

Shallots are smaller and sweeter than onions, with a slightly pink hue. Shallots come in many sizes, from button small Asian types (sometimes sold as Thai shallots), to the elongated and aptly named banana shallot. The best substitutes, should a recipe call for shallots and you can’t get them, are red onions.

It sounds like you are cooking the stock too hard, and not for long enough. Stock goes cloudy if you boil it. The fats and proteins all churn together, resulting in an emulsified liquid. Bring your stockpot to no more than a gentle simmer.

As for the setting: You might be over filling the pot with water and not reducing it enough. Only just cover, rather than drown the bones in your stockpot. Then cook it really slowly for at least three hours. Finally, strain it then return it to the pot and reduce it by a third or so. You get less stock but what you have is richer and tastier. And it should set.

But (there had to be a but!) not all stocks become jelly. It depends on the type of bones you were using to start with. Some bones tend to be richer in collagen than others. This collagen is what breaks down in the cooking process to become gelatin. Some really lean bones like those of game animals, won’t give you a jelly. If you want to guarantee the stock setting you can cheat by adding a pig’s trotter to the pot.

If you want to know more about stock making you could check out my piece for G2 earlier this year at:

www.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,1992085,00.html

You will hear and read a lot about roasting potatoes in this fat, that pan, at that temperature and for so long but, truth be told, the fate of your roasties is decided long before you even get near the oven. It’s all about the spud.

Potatoes fall into two broad camps. Waxy types and floury types. Waxy potatoes will hold on to their shape for grim life, no matter how long you cook them, which is why they make great additions to soups, curries, tagines and stews etc. Floury types will start to fall and go fluffy when cooked. You need this fluffiness in a roastie. So when shopping, look for varieties like Maris Piper, King Edward or Marfona.

Now you have the right spud, follow these four easy steps to crispy edged roasties. 1. Pre-boil the potatoes. Cut them into pieces roughly the size of an egg. Little cubes of potato will cook through too quickly, and like love, you can’t hurry a good roastie. You want to bring the potatoes to a boil in plenty of salted water until you start to see fluffing round the edges (after about five to ten minutes normally).
2. Drain the potatoes thoroughly. Some people recommend knocking them round the colander. I don’t. Just leave them there for a good five
3. Pre-heat the roasting tray and the fat. Meat eaters should use duck fat, lard or dripping. For veggies, I recommend groundnut oil (from good oriental supermarkets) or rapeseed oil, which has a wonderful flavour. Olive oil doesn’t work well since it can’t take high temps. Heat the oil up in the roasting tray, in the oven, set to around 220c / Gas Mk 6.
4.Add the potatoes to the hot oil, and shake them round the tray gently so that they get fully coated with the hot fat. Now season them and roast, turning once if you like, for about thirty minutes. The fluffy edges should be crispy. I’m hungry now.

I get asked this so often. What do you want from a chicken? Great tasting, lean white meat encased in just enough crispy skin to give you a mildly indulgent dose of essential omega-three type fats?

Perhaps the above gastro porn is sidestepping the real issue and you want to buy meat that isn’t cruelly, intensively farmed in cages.

The answer is simple, either way. You should not buy battery-farmed hens. Nor, for that matter their eggs. For me, taste and ethics go hand in hand with meat. Intensive farming is cruel, so I don’t support it with my hard-earned money. And it just so happens that it produces food which tastes pants. So I won’t eat it.

Now, I would say beware the tags “free range” and “organic”. They were dreamed up by well meaning folks but have been hijacked by big business. You can buy free-range chickens from big retailers that have fared only a little better than their caged cousins. If the supermarket you are using sells both battery-farmed and free-range chickens I’d say stop buying any meat there, let alone poultry.
If you are on line, you have the power to buy chicken direct from an increasing number of small-scale producers. You can peruse their details, and ask as many questions as you like before buying. Not all of them bother to register with the Soil Association (which is how they get to use the term ‘organic’, even though their farms may be as good as).

At my gaff in London we buy hand-reared and hand-plucked chickens from Heron Farm in Essex. Even if you don’t really worry too much about how a chicken lived and what it ate when it was alive, I urge you to try one of these birds next time you want chicken. They are firm, dry-skinned and so tasty and juicy when you roast them that you will wonder how the sad retailed nonsense labeled “chicken” in most shops was ever allowed onto the shelves.

www.blackwellsfarmproduce.co.uk