Some notes on Christmas dinner, because everyone likes being told how to do that, plus a chowder so good it will make you reassess your religious beliefs.
Smoked salmon and shrimp chowder
Burgers with pickled cabbage relish
All food bets are off around the Christmas period: a lawless time when it feels reasonable to have fudge for breakfast and you can drink Hofmeister at 10am without anyone raising an eyebrow. So as going to the effort of making one burger seems a waste of energy, I'm going to have two.
New Year’s Eve failure steak
I ended the year as I lived it: doing something to a standard that was acceptable but ultimately fell short of its potential.
Lunch potato salads
I am trying the 5:2 diet, because I heard it facilitated George Osborne's transformation from awful bastard into slightly thinner awful bastard. This requires planning, especially where lunch is concerned, because it turns out that on your low-calorie days getting the turkey club sandwich from Sainsbury's will mean all you're allowed to eat for the rest of the day is dust and grass.
Gammon in Coca-Cola with a maple syrup glaze
Getting rid of unwanted things in the kitchen cupboard is becoming a bit of an obsession. I’ve had a bottle of Coke in there since it came with a takeaway pizza deal some time last year and I’m not a fan of the stuff. You can use it quite effectively to clean the toilet apparently, or you can drop a bit of a dead pig in it and boil it for a while.
Roast pork leg with glazed carrots and pesto
This pork marinade usually suits pesto on the side, but a roast needs gravy, and it worries me that these flavours might be overcome by a gravy. I say "worries": it'd be a blow but I'd probably get over it.
