I was so excited about making this dessert that I probably generated more heat from running around the house than the oven did from baking the bruleé itself.

I’m a desserter. I could quite happily live on desserts alone for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t live for a terrible long time because of all the fat and cholesterol that would cause a revolt in my arteries, but hot damn what an awesome way to die.

Vanilla Bean Crémé Bruleé!

Ingredients (i.e. The Stuff):

2 vanilla bean pods

2 1/2 cups whipping/fresh cream. Now, I get terribly confused with creams. I looked at Thickened Cream, Fresh Cream, Pure Cream and Unthickened Cream before I just gave up and grabbed whichever one had the word “whipping” in larger-than-2pt font on the carton. I ended up with this stuff, http://www.dairyfarmers.com.au/df/files/products/range_image_large/dairy-p1-cream300.jpg, which worked rather perfectly. AND, the word “whipping” was plastered all over the back.

8 egg yolks (do what I did and keep the whites in a bowl and cover and refridgerate to make meringues with later)

1/4 cup fine sugar – I used caster sugar, which was perfect. Just make sure it’s NOT icing sugar, as that’s too powdery. It must be granulated. MUST. MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUST!

That said, you also need about a cup of icing (confectioner’s) sugar for the awesome blow-torchy-bit. I say a cup because then you can make the crackly layer as thick or thin as you like.

How Tooooooooooooooooooooooo (i.e. The Fun Part)!

1. Go out and buy 4 medium sized (like roughly the same size as a tea cup) ramekin dishes from your local homewares boutique. If you read the recipe for pear and plum crumble earlier on, you may have seen the step suggesting something of similar requirements. Well, you should really hev anticipated this dish and bought some smaller ramekins while you were there, shouldn’t you? Yes, you should have. But you didn’t, so now the joke’s on you.

1B. Buy a chef’s blowtorch. You can do the crackly-top step under the grill, but it’s boring and silly, so don’t. Plus, it’s a damned blowtorch! AWESOME! I got mine from Dick Smith’s. I’m guessing a place like Circuit City in the US has the same thing.

2. Preheat your oven to 180 Deg-C. (I love saying that. Sounds so technical. Kinda like I expect Hugh Laurie to yell DEG-C, STAT, DAMNIT! in the middle of House). BEFORE YOU DO THIS, HOWEVER. Please, please, please for the love of puppies and modular synthesisers, make sure you have taken all racks out except for one, and that it is in the middle of the oven.

3. No really. Go move the racks. Now. NOW, NOW, NOW!

4. Slit the vanilla beans all the way down one side so they are still in one piece but the seeds are exposed.

5. Now just sit down for a moment, vanilla bean in hand, and breathe in. Really breathe in. You may not like the smell of vanilla that you get from candles and hand creams but I swear to L. Ron Hubbard you will love this. Real-vanilla-bean-smell has an oily, silky, dusky scent that isn’t anywhere NEAR the tripe you get from fake fragrances.

6. Okay, once you’ve had your fill, plonk the two pods into a medium saucepan and pour the cream over them. Heat the cream (medium-high on your stove dial-knobby-thing) until it’s definitely steaming and ALMOST boiling, but not quite. I didn’t have to wait for very long, maybe 5 minutes. Stir with a good whisk a few times but don’t get too epileptic.

7. As soon as you can feel the heat coming off it and the steam gets thicker, turn the heat off and move the saucepan off the hotplate. Grab a newspaper, book or a 20-minute workout DVD (OMG CALORIESSSSSSSSSSSS) or something and leave it alone for a while so the vanilla-aweomeness can steep.

8. Once you’ve PUMPED UP THE JAM, YO or whatever they say on these workout DVDs, take a damn shower. You’re sweating. Ugh.

9. Fish out the vanilla beans from the cooling cream. Get a sharp vegetable knife and for God’s sake don’t cut yourself. OH WELL DONE, IDIOT, NOW YOU’RE BLEEDING ALL OVER THE VANILLA BEANS.

10. Use the blade to scrape horizontally down the split in the pod (the opposite, 90 degree angle of how you would normally use a knife) and collect the tiny, tiny, tiny little black seeds-of-goodness.

11. Collect as many of the seeds as possible and throw them back into the pan with the cream. Give it a quick stir and reheat softly, softly, slowly, slowly. It doesn’t need to be hot, just warmed up again.

12. While that’s warming, get another whisk (I’m too lazy to use a fork) and whisk the sugar and egg yolks until they pale up and the mix looks silky. This takes about two-three minutes of continuous whisking, so make sure you get someone else to do it for you.

13. Once the sugar looks dissolved a little (don’t worry if it’s not after a fwe minutes, just stir for a little longer), add a little bit of the cream and stir. Use the whisk if you want to, but I’d suggest using a wooden spoon to prevent too much aeration and not enough sexy-bruleé-ness.

14. Gradually add (this does not mean add a little bit at the beginning and then just whollop all the rest in at once because you’re too lazy to mix, pour, mix, mix, pour like the rest of us.) the cream to the egg mix, stirring all the while. This step is somehow incredibly soothing. I love this part. I love the sound the mixture makes and the aroma you get. It’s like kneading dough, or watching a montage of someone baking a delectable cake in a romantic comedy film. No idea why. I just get this mental iamge of a beam of golden light surrounding my kitchen while I magically turn into Nigella Lawson with blonde hair and fatter cheeks.

15. This step is optional. You can strain the mixture (just get really fine cheesecloth/muslin/old lacy curtain material) back into the pan to silky-it-out a little more, or you can not. I don’t, because I love the little vanilla seeds floating about in the custard. So, while it’s optional, don’t do it. Just don’t. It looks better. For serious!

16. Pour the mixture into your ramekin dishes. Make sure one of them has more than the other three (or however many you’re making) so that you get more. Whenever someone complains that you get more than they do, take their bruleé away from them and add it to yours.

17. Place the dishes into a baking tray/roasting pan and pour warm water (not super extra ultra mondo hot, just nicely warm) into the roasting pan around the dishes until it reaches halfway up the sides of the ramekins.

18. Get someone else to lift the tray onto the middle rack of your oven. You’ve just been steeping, whisking and mixing, so you deserve a break. Have a drink while they do this. Explain to them the amount of effort you went to in making this dessert, and that the ramekin dishes are hand-thrown by forty one-armed children in Peru who spent 92 hours a day gathering the porcelain (shh) from the unforgiving wastelands of Porcelania while their slave masters drink fresh mango nectar harvested by the childrens’ one-legged mothers from the hanging gardens of Babylon. Inform them that these children would then cart the collected porcelain WITHOUT A CART back to Peru (which is a sixty-year trek through the Mines of Morea) to crush the pieces into a fine powder using only their remaining elbows and then combine the powder with crystalised baby duck tears to form perfect ramekins, which are then imported by goose directly to your door.

19. Once you have re-made the mixture after your helper shattered the dishes under the pure mental pressure and placed the new ones on the rack in your oven, bake for 20-25 minutes. Do what I did, though, and start on about 23 minutes. That way you’re either going to hit the jackpot or end up with slightly undercooked custard, which is fine, because you can leave it for a little longer. The dishes are ready when the custard has JUUUUUST but still bobbles in the middle when touched.

20. (Yes, I know, 20 half-steps for a 7-step dessert?) Once done, turn the oven off and open the door. Leave the ramekins in the water in the tray to cool. Once at room temperature ish, throw them (not literally, you twit) into the fridge for AT LEAST 3 hours, 4 being better. If you’re as weak-willed as I am, you can taste a little bit of one at 2 hours.

21. Once your 3-4 hours has elapsed and you are ready to serve, get your blowtorch and the icing/confectioner’s sugar. Once you’re done setting fire to your house by playing with the torch (which is fun), make sure your sugar has NO lumps. Lumps = weird knobbly bits of sugar that don’t melt properly when you torch them, so sift that sugar good. Now sift it! Into shape! Shape it up! Get straight! Go forward! Move ahead! Try to detect it! It’s not too late! To sift it! SIFT IT GOOD!

22. Wow, what a ridiculously awesome song.

23. ANYWAY! Once you’ve removed all the lumps from the icing sugar, either dust over each ramekin dish or use a tablespoon to tap it over. I use the tablespoon method so you get a thicker layer, but it does take a little longer to crackle.

24. Fire up (bahahah) your blowtorch and heat the sugar until it melts and hardens. It should caramelise fairly easily and this is seriously the funnest part of the whole recipe, so go nuts!

25. Serve! But make sure you get the biggest one.

26. And stop playing with the damned blowtorch!

Lamb shanks with red wine and a bunch of other stuff.

Ingredients

Everything in the last post, except a bit more wine (okay, a lot more. We’ll get to that) and lamb shanks instead of fillet or mini-roasts. Oh, and don’t worry about the potato and parsnip, if you’re going to do what I would and make this with fettuccine pasta instead.

Roughly 1-2 kg of shanks. Once cooked, this will literally fall off the bone in an oh-so-deliciously awesome way, so there’s actually less meat than you would think for a kilo or two.

Method

1. Pre-heat your oven. That’s the big boxy thing that looks like a really, really big microwave. I use one that is fan-forced, so apparently we’re special enough to warrant a completely different set of temperature measures. According to a handy, I’ve-only-just-thought-about-this-so-googled-it-and-here’s-what-I’ve-found website, for everyone NOT using a fan-forced oven, add about 10-20 degrees.

2. So. Preheat your oven. I set mine to about 170.

3. Get your heavy-based casserole dish and turn the heat up high, juuuust like part one. While this is going on, get some basic, non-fancy-pants flour. Plain flour is fine. I can never tell the difference anyway. Pour this onto a flat-ish plate, probably a few cups, and quickly roll your raw shanks in it. To be honest, I don’t really know what this does, but every recipe I look at that involves lamb shanks and long cooking involves lamb-dusting. So do it. Don’t ooooverdo it, you don’t need that much. Just coat them.

4. I’m assuming, at this point, that you’ve learned your lesson from the last recipe and have chopped your vegetables already. If not, just…go away. Don’t read any further.

5. Once your pan is heated, throw some oil in (again, I suggest that engine oil won’t taste so hot)
and then brown your shanks one or two at a time, depending on how many will fit in there.

6. Once each shank has been browned nicely, put them on a plate to rest while you do…well, everything else.

7. Throw your garlic, leek and carrot in and fry them off quickly-ish. Once they look a bit squishy, drop everything else in – your crushed tomato, herbs, potato and parsnip if you really want them, stock and the wine. Be liberal with the wine. A good several cups if you want to measure it that desperately, but I just pour for a while.

8. Stir it all up and let it bubble for a few minutes.

9. In the meantime, get a high-sided baking tray and plonk your shanks into that. The one I use is quite deep, which allows for all sorts of saucy goodness to mingle and frolick as it cooks.

10. Take your liquid-stuff off the heat and just pour it straight over the shanks. It’s fun, isn’t it? I love that part. Everything just slops around so nicely and it smells pretty damned good, I must say.

11. Put the tray onto the middle shelf of your oven if possible, but don’t stress if you can’t. Somehow the trays in my oven get moved around so often it’s like someone actually gets up in the middle of the night and rearranges my kitchen, then goes back to bed. No idea why.

12. At this point, things get a little…fuzzy. You can have this as hot or as low as you like, depending on how tender or rare you want your lamb to be. I’d turn the oven down to about 150 here and just leave it alone. LEAVE IT!

13. After half an hour or so, take the tray out, add some sage, basil and oregano and stir it all up a bit. See if you can get some of the sauce to slither over the shanks, or, if you’re feeling particularly coordinated, turn your shanks over.

14. Put it back in the oven and let it sit for a little longer. This can vary from another 15 minutes to another 45, if you like. Turn the heat down a little if you’re leaving it for a longer time than 15 minutes. I don’t really know how this dish is going to work for you, but I’ve seen measurements from half an hour total time to two hours. Obviously, longer than half an hour is good. I’d say about an hour in total, then cut a piece off the lamb and try it. If it’s nice, take it out and serve it. If it’s raw, what the hell are you doing? If it’s crap, throw it away and go out for dinner.

15. Towards the last 15 minutes or so of cooking, boil some water and cook a box or twelve of fettuccine pasta. Make sure you pour some olive oil or grind some salt into the water first.

16. Once everything is done, take the shanks out of the oven and plate them, without any sauce. Then, pour the pasta into the baking tray and stir it all through the sauce. I warn you, this will look amazingly awesome.

17. Add some pasta+sauce to your place and spoon a little sauce over the top.

18. Serve with the rest of the red, if there is any, and some fresh, crusty Italian bread.

19. Enjoy, because it really is nice. And addictive. And really, really easy.

Sooo, here’s a recipe.

Lamb Stew.

I have recently discovered the wonders of lamb. It’s not something that appears very often on my house, but when it does, I fall in love with it.

I sort of made this recipe up. I’m posting it in two parts, because I like to think it will work with both lamb pieces and shanks.

Part One.

Ingredients

Regular Olive, Canola, Vegetable, Engine oil. Use whichever you like. My guess is that the engine oil will taste rubbish, though.

1-2kg of lamb. Seriously. It’s a lotta meat but this is awesome. I used fillet the first time and mini-roasts the second. Both are chopped to 1cm cubey-type shapes. Size is completely arbitrary, of course.

2 carrots, chopped. Do all the chopping first, because it’s crap and no one likes doing it.

1 parsnip, chopped. Optional. I had never had parsnip in my life before this dish. Pretty sure I won’t use it again in anything else.

8 decent sized fancy potatoes, chopped. I like potato.

1 leek, chopped. Also optional, I just like the name and how non-onion-y it looks.

Maybe, like, 2 cloves of garlic. Garlic, like lamb, is rare in my house, much to my dispair. So, this is also optional. It’s more because one of my favourite smells is frying onion and garlic.

1 400g (ish) can of chopped/crushed tomato. I prefer to cut tomato myself and kill it in the awesome blender, but I also like to be lazy.

1 cup beef stock. Don’t be silly, just go and buy a box/bottle/whateveritcomesin of liquid beef stock. I have no idea how to make a real stock. This is just as good.

Red wine. A bunch. Maybe a cup. Or two.

Rosemary

Basil

Oregano

Sage

Method

1. Chop everthing if you haven’t done so already. If not, why the hell not? Don’t cut yourself. Don’t cry at me if you do. I told you not to and I even told you to cut everything earlier on. Why didn’t you listen to me? Now you’ve got blood all over my kitchen. Go bandage your hand in a plastic bag with gaffer tape.

2. Warm your pan up to high heat. I use a heavy Le Chasseur pan that I’ve just googled and discovered is called a French Oven. I call it a casserole dish.

3. Once hot, dump your lamb in. That’s right, aaaaaall of it.

4. Let it brown a little, move it about, dance to your favourite song. you can’t really go wrong at this step – once everything is brown rather than red, it’s ready.

5. Add your leek and garlic, if using. Cook it around a little bit.

6. Add…well, everything else. Carrot, parsnip, potato, stock, wine (be free with the wine part.), herbs (just shove a bunch in and use your nose.) and tomato.

7. Wasn’t that fun?

8. Now, stir it all around a little bit until it’s mixed well, then put the lid on, turn the heat down to a simmer and walk away. WALK AWAY, I SAID! Don’t touch it for at least 15 minutes. When that precious time comes, stir lightly, replace lid and leave it for another 15 minutes ir so.

9. A note here. Simmering is not hard. I thought it was, but it’s really not. Simmering, in my terms, just means “occasionally bubbling”. Watch it for one minute. You should see about 20 bubbles at most. That is simmering. It’s light heating.

10. Leave this for one hour. If you’re one of those weird people who can’t leave something alone, learn how to knit. I could use a new scarf.

11. Chuck in a few more shakes of sage. Take the pan off the heat and serve with fresh, crusty bread and a glass of the red you used in the dish.

12. Get a good movie and veg out. I, personally, am a fan of disaster movies for mindless escapism. Some Star Trek wouldn’t go amiss, either. Actually, come to think of it, it’s on now. Has anyone seen the remote? Bugger finishing this blog, I’m off to watch me some St—

I’ll get around to posting again soon. Next up will be the Mars bar cheesecake, because that actually worked quite well.

I’m considering starting a story/novel-type blog with the recipes thrown in, because I don’t really have enough recipes in my repertoire to justify having this blog for cooking alone. Opinions?

Ah yes, from all two of my faithful readers: me, and my non-English-speaking grandmother in Holland.

Anyway, to cut a long..thing…short, a very, very, very, very, very sincere thank you.

On with the show.

Pear + Plum Crumble.

(or, Fruit of choice + fruit of choice crumble, as no one ever has all these things “just lying about the place”. I’m using pears and plums because they are easy words to spell and are in season here in Australia most of the year.)

Ingredients:

Be practical when making this recipe. Think logically. Certain fruits do not stew well. Certain fruits do. Banana, for example, is an atrocious stewing fruit. You cannot put sliced banana in a pan with some sugar and a cinnamon quill and hope for the best. Not only will you end up with a gloopy-looking gloop of melted banana with a piece of bark sticking out of the middle, but your kitchen will never, ever smell of anything other than banana again. Apple, on the other hand, stews beautifully. Throw it in a pan and let it smudge around and you can create some smashing desserts. So, I say again, think logically. Use fruits that are juicy but not squishy. Sweet but not custardy.

…Oh for Pete(Peat’s? I’ve always loved that phrase. Makes me think some chap walks about in the world saying “FOR MY SAKE DO BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!”)’s sake, here are the fruits that will work with this dessert.

Pear

Plum

Apple

Nectarine

Apricot (but if you use it, I will skin you alive. Yeuch.)

Peach

Orange/general citrus fruits (iffy, though. Never tried it.)

ANYWAY. I AM USING PEARS AND PLUMS.

INGREDIENTS. (remember the bit further up about how I tend to ramble?)

3-4 ripe pears. Whichever pears you like. However, FINDING ripe pears is hard. You can only ever find them in one of these two forms: 1 – So hard you can use them as ammunition against hated neighbours and cause serious damage. 2 – So soft you try to pick them up and they decide to immitate Cheezles and will smoosh down over each finger until you look like a demented frog. So, buy the ammunition-esque pears and leave them in a warm, sunny place for a day or so – they should ripen up nicely.

4-5 plump plums of your choice (…what a saucy sentence.) I don’t care if you use Blood Amber, Ruby Toothpaste, whatever. Just get a bunch of plums.

Roughly 1/3 cup of caster sugar (no, you don’t want your teeth anymore…). Use less if you’re that worried.

1 cinnamon quill

Ground cinnamon

1 box digestive biscuits/graham crackers (I’ve just figured out that graham crackers are the US equivalent of what Australia calls digestives – MY WORLD MAKES SENSE AGAIN!) – roughly 250g.

Full stick of butter – I’m talking a 250g glop of solidified fat. Yeah. This recipe is great to lose weight by.

Method

1. Get yourself a ramekin dish. Go on, right now. Go to your local supermarket/homewares store and buy one. I’m not talking of those sad little 5cm wide ones, I mean a soufflé-size one – mine, for example, is about 20cms across.

2. Once purchased, wash the damned thing. You never know what grubby child has smeared his filthly little fingers all over it in the shop. (Picture a Victoria Beckham-style mother: “WILLIAM SMYTHINGTON WALLIS THE THIRD, PUT THAT DISH BACK WHERE YOU FOUND IT! NOW! MUMMY WILL NOT BUY YOU THOSE GORGEOUS LITTLE GUCCIBABY CAPRI PANTS IF YOU DON’T!” )

3. Turn your oven on low (probably about 100 degrees. I’d put it into farenheit but….well, I don’t know what the hell 100 degrees IS in farenheit) to let it heat up. I put this step here rather than first because if I don’t, someone will turn the oven on and THEN go out and buy a ramekin dish. I am not going to be responsible for destroyed houses.

4. Chop your selected fruit into around 1cm cubes. Don’t be anal about this. Seriously. Just put the knife down. I SAID PUT THE KNIFE DOWN! Good. Now, take a deep breath and back away slooooowlyyyyyyyy. That said, the smaller the pieces, the quicker they stew.

5. Heat a small pot on the stove and throw the fruit straight in, the sugar on top and then shove the quill in the middle. Turn your stove-dial-heat-thing on medium until you hear a VERY slight hissing sound coming from the contents of said pot. This is a good thing – it means the juices in the fruits are releasing and hitting the bottom of the pan. Stir a little.

6. Let the fruit mix heat up. In the meantime, put your biscuits in a gladbag/plastic bag and get a wooden mallet/dead fish.

7. BEAT THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF THE BAG.

8. Once your biscuits have been reduced to crumbs, throw them into a metal bowl (if you have one. Easier to clean.)

9. Stir the fruit. If it’s hissing loudly, turn the heat down a tad. We don’t want it cooking, we want it reducing. Stir it all around a little so the fruit is all coated in the sugar and the cinnamon quill gets rubbed against it all.

10. Cut your butter into cubes and microwave ONLY until it is melted. Please do not experiment with destroying your microwave. If you want to destroy a microwave, get a ball of aluminium (or ah-loom-inum, as you weird Americans say) foil, throw it in and put it on high for a minute. Leave the room. When you return, you will not have a microwave anymore. Or a kitchen.

11. Pour a quarter of the butter into the biscuit crumbs and GET YER HANDS DIRTY. Mix it all around. You’re aiming for a greasy bowl of biscuit crumbs that are bunching together in little groups – what you’d expect from a cheesecake base. Add the butter in small amounts and mix in until you feel your biscuit crumble is actually a biscuit crumble and not a half-dry-half-buttery bowl of sand.

12. Stir your fruit again. By this stage you should have a syrupy, goopy mix. The fruit will still be a little solid but there will be a thick glaze of juices over everything. If this is not happening, turn the heat up a little and move it all around until it becomes this way.

13. Shake some of the ground cinnamon onto the butter-biscuit mix. This is an optional step, because those of you who are not mad about cinnamon are crazy, crazy heathens and can leave this part out. I usually end up with roughly 2 teaspoons, but that’s for 250g of biscuits, so adjust accordingly (less for less, etc)

14. Stir your fruit again. Enjoying your stirring? Thought you would be.

15. If you have the patience to wait long enough for the fruit to reduce properly, you’ll be there for hours. So, if you’re S-M-A-T-R like me, you’ll turn the heat up a little more, stir a little more and wait only until you have a definite glaze going on whilst still having soft, squooshy pieces of fruit in it. Take the cinnamon quill out.

16. Take a tablespoon or so of the liquid only out of the pan and mix it into the biscuit mix. This is also optional. In fact, I don’t know if it would work, because I made it up as I was typing, because we all know that I have too many steps in my recipes as I tend to get carried away with my own sense of humour.

17. Pour the fruit mix into the ramekin dish and shake a little more cinnamon over it as though lightly dusting a cake. You can also use cinnamon sugar, if you like. In fact, do that. Use cinnamon sugar.

18. Push the biscuit mix over the top of the fruit. It should reach the top of the ramekin dish. Make sure you leave at least one tablespoon in the bowl.

19. Put the ramekin dish into the oven for approximately 10-15 minutes until the (and this is the part I love) already golden-brown biscuit mix goes…a darker golden-brown.

20. Eat the tablespoon of biscuit mix you left over.

21. Aren’t you glad you did that?

22. Once the crumble has finished oven-ing, allow to cool only for a little while, because this is best served warm. Give it about 10 minutes.

23. Scoop a dessert spoon-full onto a place and top with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or just plain double (or triple, if you can find it)/heavy cream.

24. Hand this to whoever you are making this dessert for/sharing it with.

25. Eat the rest. All of it. Every bite.

Unfortunately, it is pricey, so beware.

Time required: About 45 minutes at absolute max, but that includes the four million hours it takes to cut proper prosciutto into pieces.

Ingredients:

Roughly 1kg of prosciutto – UNSLICED. Your deli attendant will hate you for it and it will take a while to cut, but you need a chunk of it, not slices, as you’re going to cut it up into pieces later. Prosciutto around here (AU) costs approximately $35-$40 a kilo, so I suggest you buy bacon pieces or something similar if you don’t want to spend that much.

3-4 punnets of cherry or grape tomatoes

1 large hunk of GOOD parmesan cheese – none of this mass-produced-plastic crap. I usually go for a piece about 5-6 in length and an inch thick or so.

1 bunch fresh basil

1 bag baby spinach leaves – optional (I don’t actually like them, but the person I first served it to did)

GOOD olive oil

3-4 punnets shiitake mushrooms (also expensive, so feel free to use cheaper, sliced button mushrooms)

Butter

1 tub ricotta cheese – around 350g or however it comes

3 garlic cloves

1 packet Buccatini pasta (thick spaghetti which is “hollow”. Once again, choose your own version of this)

2-3 teaspoons ground/dried sage leaves

2-3 teaspoons ground/dried basil leaves

Method

1. Preheat your oven to a low-med temperature – my fan forced oven is set to around 120 degrees for this.

2. Chop your tasty, tasty prosciutto (/bacon/NotMeat!/spam etc) into 1cm-ish pieces and throw into a bowl. Try not to eat too much of it.

3. Once your prosciutto is chopped and you’ve eaten enough of it, cut your cherry/grape tomatoes in two. Throw half straight into the bowl with the prosciutto and crush the other half on top (i.e. use your nails/fingertips to SQUISH them into the bowl)

4. MIX! GET YER FINGERS DIRTY!

5. Throw this mix into a glass/heatproof oven dish with a lid. My chosen baking implement for this is a large oval shape (around 35 cm long and 10ish deep), because I make this dish with large quantities of ingredients. Drizzle over a happily generous slog of olive oil, cover, and shove into the oven. Set for 20 minutes.

6. While this is going on, slice your mushrooms as finely as you can get them. Heat a generous knob of butter in a pan on medium and throw the mushrooms on top. Add your garlic, nicely minced, to the mushroom.

7. Add more butter.

8. Add more butter again.

9. Once the mushrooms have shrunk a bunch and are nicely browned, take the dish out of the oven and add the mushrooms. Mix it around a little, then add a little more olive oil as well as your sage and basil. I don’t measure these two ingredients, so the 2-3 teaspoons are just guidelines. I probably add more, but I go by smell.

10. Return to the oven for the remaining 10 minutes or so

11. While this is happening, boil some salted water in a large pan and cook your pasta of choice. Drain.

12. Once all this is done, get a large bowl (believe me, you will need a large one) and throw the pasta into it. Carefully pour the prosciutto/mushroom/tomato mix on top, then rip off a generous handful of the fresh basil (as well as the baby spinach if using) and mix. Scoop on a few tablespoons of ricotta and pour all the grated parmesan over and mix again.

13. Eat!

Takes about 10 minutes to make, but hours to enjoy.

Ingredients:

1 x 250g pack of white + pink marshmallows. Use both colours. It looks pretty.

375g of your favourite melty chocolate. If you like Lindt, use Lindt. If you like Cadbury’s (you cultural barbarian), use Cadbury’s. The measurement is the equivalent of 1 pack of Melts but hey, use more if you’re game

1/2 cup (ish) of desiccated coconut (optional)

1/2 cup (ish) snakes/glacé cherries/gummi bears, depending on how immature or nostalgic you are feeling (optional)

1/4 cup crushed nuts (optional)

A child

Method:

1. If your chocolate is in block form, cut into 1 inch pieces (approx – easier to melt). If you want to be lazy like me, place the chocolate (with the exception of one or two pieces – you do have to taste the chocolate, you see…) in a microwave save bowl and zap for one minute at a time until melted nicely, stirring in between zaps.

2. While microwaving, get a pair of scissors you don’t like. Cut the marshmallows in half (if they are the giant ones, cut into quarters) into a large metal bowl. You’ll notice that the scissors will be covered in sticky fluff by the end, thus the reason for using a pair you have no particular attachment to. 

 3. If using the coconut, nuts and/or cherries, throw them/it onto the marshmallows and get a child to mix them up (a child is always willing to get his or her hands dirty, particularly if it involves food)

4. Once the chocolate has melted, throw it all onto the dry ingredients and mix – beat the child away with the spoon if you have to.

5. Give the mixing spoon to the child (to keep them from asking for some of the chocolate).

6. Get a loaf tin/baking tray/bowl/whichever shape you would like your Rocky Road to be, and grab a roll of baking paper that overlaps the sides of the tin by at least 3 inches.

7. POUR! Pour all the gooey chocolate goodness into the tin, making sure you try and get little piles of just chocolate in the corners – this makes for good eating later.

8. Shove in the fridge on the highest shelf (once again, to ward off the children) for at least an hour.

9. Once it’s gone all non-squishy, remove from your setting implement of choice and cut into desired sized. I cut giant huge massive pieces because…well, I do. And it tastes good.

 10. Allow the waiting child a small piece, if you like, but seeing as I don’t like children, I tend to eat it all myself.

Time Required: About 15-20 minutes, PLUS minimum 2hrs setting time.

Ingredients:

2 x 250 tubs of Mascarpone cheese

500ml fresh cream (2 x 300ml cartons is easier – just use the rest on strawberries!)

4 eggs, separated

1/2 a cup caster sugar

200g melted milk/dark/white chocolate (optional)

1 x pack of savoiardi sponge biscuits – they come in packs of about 20 or so

About 2 tablespoons your choice of liqueur stirred into about 2 cups of water- I like Tia Maria in this, but you can use anything really, Marsala etc.

Dark cocoa powder for garnish (optional)

What to do:

1. Get yourself an electric mixer. I know this shouldn’t really be a step in the method for Tiramisu, but a good mixer is essential to cooking in general, so get one. NOW. NOWNOWNOW.

2. While you are getting acquainted with your new mixer, asking for its name and that sort of thing, let your Mascarpone cheese soften to room temperature.

3. Beat your egg yolks and the caster sugar until everything is pale yellow and somewhat thick. Takes about a minute, give or take.

4. Spoon your softened Mascarpone into the egg yolk mix and use the electric mixer until it is combined nicely.

5. Move the mix into a large bowl (if you haven’t already), because there is lots of filling in this once it’s all aerated and fluffy.

6. Beat the cream until it fluffs up and forms soft peaks when you dunk a spoon in and pull it out again. This takes a little time, say about five to ten minutes, so grab a book, a chair and just chillax until it’s ready.

7. Fold (i.e. don’t stir like a maniac) the cream into the mascarpone mix – just lightly twist the spoon over and under the ingredients to combine it all.

8. Lick the beaters (please ensure mixer is off at this stage.)

9. This is where your mixer comes in handy. If you have never tried whisking egg whites into peaks by hand, you have no idea of what pain is.

Anyway. Beat your egg whites with the mixer until they form peaks and until you can (theoretically) hold the bowl above your head, upside down, with no movement. This takes a little while, so once again, get your book. Cookbooks suggest using a bowl that is dry and also clean. Er, what? Isn’t it logic to use clean implements? Maybe surgeons have the same set of instructions. “Clean scalpel before use? Bugger. LENNY! COME WASH THIS SCALPEL – I JUST USED IT TO EAT MY MEAT PIE A LUNCH.”

10. Once this is done, take a whollop of the fluff and again fold into the mascarpone mix(Aren’t you glad you moved everything into a bigger bowl?) and repeat until all the egg has been folded in.

11. Set all this aside and get your sponge biscuits sorted. Stir your alcohol-water around a little, then dunk a sponge finger in, turn it over, take it out and arrange it in a visually appealing manner at the base of your serving dish. I use a big glass bowl for this, because it looks awesome once everything has set. Rinse, repeat until you have a bottom layer of squishy sponge on the bottom of your bowl. Top with the melted chocolate, if using.

12. Spoon a layer of sweet, sweet mascarpone mix over. Then, once again, get a’dunkin’ and top with sponge fingers. Repeat this process until you have run out of one or the other, then eat the remaining liquid mix if there is any. Do not allow any others to approach the dessert. Beat them away with your mixers if you have to.

13. Dust the top with the dark cocoa but do not eat any, because in dry form this stuff is foul. Once it has soaked into the cream them it will taste okay.

14. Place in the fridge either overnight, or, if you can’t stand that long a wait, let it sit in there for at LEAST two hours before service/eating.

15. Ensure you get the biggest spoonful when serving. Seeing as you made it, and all.

Time Required: 10 minutes, max.

Ingredients:

3-4 free range eggs (on principle, you see)

A bunch of salt and pepper

Butter

Maggi Seasoning (Optional. This stuff has a salty, slightly sour taste. It’s brilliant on white rice and tastes good on pasta, soups and so on. It’s essentially a yeasty sort of thing – like runny Vegemite, but not as strong, a little sweeter and…well, better on rice. Apparently it’s like Worcestershire sauce, but less musky.

JUST TRY THE STUFF.)

A pan

A plate

Milk

Method:

1. Heat a little butter in your frying pan. While this is warming up, crack your eggs into a bowl. Grab your whisker (or fork – more fun) and GO CRAZY! Whisk for about a minute or until everything is the same colour.

2. Grind some salt + pepper over the egg. If you are using Maggi, forget the salt and just add the pepper.

3. Tip the whole load into the frying pan. Let it sit for a little, or until you start seeing a few bubbles and it goes a little pale. Then, grab a spatula (metal) and start shoving it through the eggs. It will lump all over the place and will pile up and run and do all sorts of things that look somewhat odd. Let it do this.

4. When it starts looking like solidifying, pour in a dollop of milk. I don’t have a cup measurement, because it probably equates to about 1/3 of a cup but I change the measurement.

5. Still using the spatula, spatula everything around until it becomes solid and jiggles about on the pan like set jelly.

6. Make yourself some thick pieces of toast and butter liberally while the egg is jigglin’. Spatula the egg over the toast. Shake a little Maggi over (if using), make yourself a cup of tea/coffee/Vodka tonic/chosen beverage, take a seat, and enjoy.

And don’t tell me that ain’t good.

“Osso Bucco” means, basically, “bone with a hole in it”. Sophisticated, huh? If you are not a fan of veal, try lamb shanks. Beef osso bucco works too, is more easily found and probably takes less time cooking. I like the veal, though, so that’s what I’m going to use here.

Serves 4, ish. 2-3 if you’re like me and eat a lot.

Time Required: About 2 hours in total. This can also be made the day before and left, as everything soaks up all the flavours of the dish and becomes super-awesome.

Ingredients:

Olive oil

Plain flour

8 veal shanks (cut to about 1-2 inches thick. Your butcher usually has them pre-cut)

1/2 an onion, chopped

1-2 cloves of garlic, minced or sliced

3 carrots, chopped into roughly 1cm cubes

About a teaspoon of lemon zest (more if you want – I use a teaspoon because I can never get more than that from one lemon as I am uncoordinated)

Several (about 6-7) large sprigs of rosemary and tarragon, both chopped finely. Don’t spend hours chopping the herbs here, just…mince them a bit.

1 very generous handful of basil leaves torn from the stalks – the tearing part is fun and makes your hands smell good. Chop it roughly but in smallish pieces – or, do what I do and just bunch them up in your hand and use scissors to cut the leaves into the pan

6-7 large tomatoes, half chopped roughly and the other half puréed roughly – just blitz for about 10 seconds

1 bottle of good dry white wine – I used Riesling the first time because I know nothing about wine, and it works pretty well

2 cans each of Borlotti, Butter and Cannellini beans, drained

1 can of chickpeas

How to:

1. Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan. Roll the shanks in the flour until all sides are covered (chuck a bunch of flour onto a plate and go nuts), then place in the pan and cook on ALL sides until you cannot see any pink whatsoever. This usually takes about two minutes per shank. If you’re like me and get impatient, grab a shank with your tongs and press each side into the pan until it goes very faint golden. Once done, pile the shanks on a separate plate and cover to keep warmish.

2. Heat more oil (medium-high heat) in a large casserole-y type dish(the pan I use is a big hunk of ceramic that is almost as heavy when it’s empty as when it’s full, no matter what you have in it) and throw in the onion, garlic and carrots. Fry them off until the onion becomes transparent and it’s soft and squishy. Throw in the lemon and half the rosemary and tarragon and let it all sort of…mush around until your kitchen smells good.

3. Add your veal shanks and the tomato. Shake the pan a little to let everything settle, then pour over the white wine. Now, here’s where you get to choose. If you don’t like the taste of wine in your cooking, pour in about a quarter of your bottle. Otherwise, keep pouring until you see the liquid level rise slightly (or until it reaches the same level as the meat and tomato), then stop. Put the lid on the bottle and put it away. It’s fun to add wine to food, so once you’ve started, it’s hard to stop. By all means, pour yourself a glass to drink, though.

4. Turn the heat up until everything boils for a minute or so, then turn the heat waaaaay down and watch the liquid for signs of simmering. Once it starts bubbling very very occasionally, turn the heat up a tiny bit, put the lid on, and go away. Leave it alone and don’t touch it for an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Go read a book. Go outside. Watch some tv. Go for a walk. Read some more of these recipes. Do something else.

5. After you’ve let it all simmer away slowly, take the lid off and very carefully turn the shanks. Squish everything around and add the rest of your herbs, including all the basil chopped in. Add all your beans and try not to let everything wash out of the pan because of the sheer amount of food involved. If you think it’s too much, add one can of each bean and the chickpeas, then survey the damage. If the pan is bursting, bugger the rest of the beans.

6. Put the lid back on and leave it for another half hour or so – don’t touch the heat, just let it simmer quietly.

7. After half an hour, take it off the heat and stir it around a little. The veal will be falling off the bone by now, so be careful when turning. Have a taste and add some salt and/or pepper if you think it needs it. The alcohol should have boiled off by now, so you’ll just have a tomato-ey, bean-y basily taste floating about.

8. Serve! Pull out a shank onto a plate and cover with some of the saucy mix (harhar). It’s quite a lot on one plate, but if you like a little variation, make some mashed potatoes (or polenta, if you like. Which I don’t.)in the half hour you have and serve the osso bucco on top.

9. Enjoy either with the rest of the white wine, or with whatever drink takes your fancy. This dish must be eaten in the company of others, so that everyone can marvel at how lovely it is. Because it really is.

Suggestions? Leave a comment! I’m always happy to hear any ideas you may have for this dish.