Delicious impromptu lunch of proscuitto-wrapped grissini and chunks of parmesan sheared off a huge hunk (direct from italy – thanks muchly, kerrin) – goodbye, evil hangover!

Next up – home-made brownie and coffee

Dinner last night for Bruno's parents. I made best-ever roast chicken over baby rucola + wilted radicchio with balsamic + potato gratin + nusslisalat (lamb's lettuce) + raspberry marscapone cheesecake + espressos. We ate everything, it was so delicious, so savoury (except dessert, of course) that we ate everything.

I seem to have been extremely remiss in never posting my best
ever roast chicken recipe on this here ol' blog. I can't quite believe
that I haven't in the 5 or so years that I have maintained this blog.
Sure I have mentioned it here and there, but I've never actually posted
the 'recipe' (there is no recipe, really). The method I use comes from Simon Hopkinson's excellent cookbook 'Roast Chicken and Other Stories'. Don't bother with other recipes. this one is the best!

Recipes after the jump.

Best-ever roast chicken

1 chook

1 lemon

knob of butter, room temperature

garlic cloves – 3 or 4

rosemary sprigs, 3 or 4

salt and pepper

How to

- Preheat your oven to 240 degrees C.

- Put your chook in an oven roasting dish. Rub the butter all over it, making especially sure the breasts get a good smearing.

- Cut the skin off the lemon and squeeze the juice all over the chook. Stuff the squished lemon into the cavity of the chicken, along with the garlic and rosemary (you can also put the lemon peel in if you like).

- Sprinkle some flakes of sea salt over the chicken as well as a good grinding of pepper.

- Pop into the oven and let it roast at high heat for 15 minutes – this makes it good and crispy on the top.

- Turn the oven down to 200 degrees C and cook for a further 45-50 mins – it should be golden brown when finished, and when pulled gently, the leg should come easily away from the body. if the flesh between the leg and body is pink when you separate it, put it back in for a few minutes.

- When the chicken is ready, take it out and cover it with foil for 10-15 minutes. This keeps it succulent and tender. It will sit here quite happily until you are ready to eat.

- Whatever you do, don't discard the juices at the bottom of the roasting dish! They are the perfect mix of lemony savoury chicken goodness, and make the perfect gravy. I usually strain out all the bits and then bring the juice to the boil in a small saucepan, adding maybe a dash of wine or water. Probably you should then boil the liquid until it has thickened slightly, but I find that the Kitschenette family is rather greedy when it comes to gravy – if I boiled it down then there wouldn't be enough to go around! So I dissolve a spoonful of cornflour in a little wine/water and add it to the gravy to thicken. Bring to the boil again and stir until it is the desired thickness.

– I like to carve the chicken and place the meat on a bed of baby rocket
on a large platter. The chicken juices trickle down into the leaves and
make for a really delicious, palate-cleansing final mouthful.

This really is a super easy and fab meal that we all love (one of the few). It takes just the barest hint of chill or dreariness and I am immediately in a roast chicken mood. Often I make two chooks at the same time so we have lots of leftovers, which lend themselves well to sandwiches, bubble and squeak (Max's favourite) or chicken fried rice. And of course, don't forget to use the carcass for chicken stock that can't be beaten (chicken soup, anyone?)

Raspberry marscapone cheesecake

Amazingly delicious, but not too sweet or heavy.

Half a packet of oaty disgestive biscuits

Half a packet of caramelly-type biscuits – the ones I use here are called 'Karamellgeback'. if you can't find any, use gingernuts or something similar.

100g butter, melted

350g marscapone

350g quark (or thick natural yoghurt if you don't have quark)

icing sugar to taste

punnet of raspberries (mine were frozen)

How to

- Blitz the biscuits to crumbs in a food processor. Make sure to stop before they become powder, but you don't want too many big lumps.

- Add the melted butter and mix thoroughly. The buttery crumbs should hold together when you press them with the back of a spoon – if they are too dry the base won;t hold up. Add more melted butter if necessary.

- Tip the buttery crumbs onto a plate onto which the top part of a springform cake tin has been placed. Smooth the crumbs out along the bottom and use a straight-sided glass to press the crumbs down and up to make the sides. make sure the crumbs are well compacted. Put in the fridge (or outside, in our case – it is s cold outside that we use our balcony as a big fridge ) to set.

- Meanwhile, mix together the marscapone and quark. Go carefully with this – add the quark to the marscapone little by little, as you don't want the mixture to be too runny – once it is liquid it is hard to make it stiffer unless you happen to have spare marscapone standing by. Because this mixture isn't set with gelatine/agar agar or baked, it relies on the thickness of the marscapone/quark to hold up. It should be soft creamy billows that hold their peaks.

- Once you have achieved the right consistency, add sifted icing sugar to taste. Don't make it too sweet.

- Crush half of the raspberries with a fork and fold through the filling. Then gently fold in the whole berries, putting a few on the top to decorate.

- Pile the soft creamy filling into the biscuit case and put back into the fridge to set properly.

- When you are ready to eat it, carefully loosen the springform mould and lift it off. You might need to run a thin knife around the edge first (run the knife under hot water first). Be careful not to wrench it off too quickly or you might just collapse your cheesecake walls.

- This is a fairly fragile creation, so take care when cutting and serving it. But it's all the more precious because of it, I think

You;ll enjoy every mouthful, I promise.

It was cold, and grey, so I felt like baking. Juicy fat blackberries from last summer’s crop and meek, mild apples – good mix.

The kitchen smells heavenly…looking forward to this. Sorry i don't have any more pictures, but it's still sitting in the oven, cooking itself slowly to perfection. Yum.

I haven't done any slow cooking for ages, and I miss the comforting smells and sense of accomplishment ratio (lots of gain, for not much effort!).

It's deep deep winter here, and going outside is a thought just too hideous to contemplate at the moment. So we are happily staying in and hibernating. I bought all the ingredients for this yesterday, so all that was left to do this afternoon was to put it all together.

I particularly love this recipe because the Guinness imparts a lovely rich, slightly bitter flavour to the stew*. And I can't help but think of all that extra iron and vitamin B that we are ingesting, to boot. Thinking of either rice or polenta to go with this. Polenta wouldn't be my first choice but Bruno has a hankering for it, and all it really needs is a warm, comforting starch to soak up all the delicious sauce. We've also had it with hot buttered noodles, which makes it top notch comfort food, in my book.

* Stew – now that is a word which I can never bring myself to like. Whenever I make a stew-type thing I always search around for better word to describe it, with not much success. Not sure why I dislike it so. Perhaps it is its remarkable closeness to the word 'spew' (!). Anyway, I guess I'll just have to stick with 'stew' (phew, I really needed to get that off my chest, thanks for listening).

Without further ado, here's the recipe for your delectation:

Beef and Guinness Winter Warmer Stew for Hibernation Days

1 kg beef, cubed

2 onions, sliced finely

4 large carrots, chopped into half rounds

5 or so medium potatoes, in chunks

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

few sprigs of thyme

2 bay leaves

2 bottles of Guinness

2 Tb butter

3 Tb flour

Olive oil

2 Tb tomato paste

Beef stock

Salt and pepper

Optional: Gremolata – finely chopped flat-leaf parsley and lemon zest

How to

- In a large oven-proof casserole, heat up a good glug of oil and brown the meat well. Now I was always confused when a recipe said 'brown the meat' because, well, the meat was already brown, wasn't it? After much experience I now reckon (for slow cooking at least) they mean to cook the meat over a high heat until it is well-crisped on the outside, almost seared. The meat holds it appetising brown colour even after long slow cooking (cubes of pallid meat are pretty awful), and most important of all, creates a delicious savoury crust on the bottom of the pan which will then be melted into the vegetables and the stew in general, giving you an unrivalled depth of flavour. So don't be faint-hearted, make sure that meat really is good and crispy brown! It will take a while for all the juices to evaporate and give you the savoury crust that you want, but persevere, it is well worth it. Once the meat is properly browned, take it out of the pot and set aside.

- Melt the butter and another good glug of oil to the pot. Start to scrape up the crusty bits on the bottom. Add the onions, carrots and potatoes and sweat for a good 10-15 minutes til all the vegetables are well softened. Add the garlic, bay leaves and thyme and keep sweating.

- Add the meat back in and any juices that have collected underneath it. Stir it all up and enjoy the smell.

- Add the tomato paste and flour, and stir well to ensure everything is evenly coated with the flour.

- Add the Guinness and about a cup of beef stock (the meat and vegetables must be covered with liquid). Bring to the boil and stir.

- Place into a preheated oven (around 180-200 degrees C) and leave to cook slowly for a few hours. Check every so often that it hasn't dried out or stuck to the bottom – if so, add some more water or stock to loosen it up. The stew is ready when the meat is soft and almost falling apart.

- When you are ready to eat, take the stew out of the oven and season it. Add the gremolata just before serving, if using.

- Make sure to eat it with an appropriately stodgy (read: comforting) accompaniment – hot buttered noodles, rice, polenta, mashed potatoes etc etc. It really is a wonderful winter meal to warm the cockles of your heart!

Have you ever tried one of these delicious little mouthfuls? Just divine, soft cream sandwiched between two fragile meringue biscuits. They come in all sorts of amazing flavours, like pistachio, lemon, raspberry, hazelnut, coffee, chestnut and bitter chocolate, and lots of seasonal specials. I especially like the one with dark chocolate and gold brushed biscuit – beautiful.
On Saturday morning I was in Zurich for some German exam prep and we went into Sprungli to buy a gift for our teacher and I couldn’t resist snapping off a few shots of the amazing creations.

Check out my new music blog, High Rotation. It's been keeping me busy of late, but it's a bit of fun.

(found at this is why you're fat)

eating these at a rate of knots lately. so delicious, a burst of sunshine and sweetness in my day.