Spaghetti again

With a sauce of red onion, pancetta, tomato, rosemary, oregano and enoki mushrooms. With edam on top for a touch of authenticity.

Basmati rice

cooked with turmeric then mixed into a wok-full of onions fried with cumin seeds and some smoked paprika, peas, raisins, pine nuts and prawns.

Spaghetti carbonara

Following Nigella's good recipe but omitting the marsala.

Chinese takeaway

Yum yum.

Baked aubergine

...for about half an hour then smeared with yogurt, tahini and thyme and grilled. With couscous containing peas, toasted pine nuts, black sesame seeds and shimeji mushrooms, purely because I was so astounded to find them in Asda. And salad.

Lasagne again

I made extra on Saturday so here's the other half. Cameron is away and I've had no sleep so it was a bit of a life-saver.

Oyako-don

(chicken and egg rice-bowl).

Make a broth of 1 cup dashi (Japanese stock made from konbu and/or bonito, or out of a packet), 1/2 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp mirin and 1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce - I use a mix of dark and light soy. Bring to the boil and add half a sliced onion, then after a couple of minutes, some chicken thigh cut into 2-cm cubes. Cook until the chicken is done then slide 2 beaten eggs onto the top; cook until the egg is soft but cooked. Serve over a bowl of rice - inauthentic brown rice in our case - and with some nori crumbled over the top (or mitsuba is even better but I didn't have any). Do not add carrots unless you have a small child; they taste weird with it.

Jacket potatoes

with tuna mayonnaise.

Fishfingers, wedges and baked beans

With both ketchup and tartare sauce: it's been that sort of day.

Toast

...following a Pizza Express lunch. We eat a lot of pizza.

Lasagne

With some semi-hidden veg (carrots, yellow pepper, onion, celery, mushroom) and served with garlic bread made using green garlic - not a huge success but an interesting experiment.

Salmon with den miso

Den miso involves heating white miso for about 20 minutes with sugar, sake and mirin, until it darkens a bit. Nigella says to be sure not to let it catch but I have only managed that once: it doesn't seem to make much difference. After cooling, you smear it over some bits of salmon and put it in the fridge for a day or so, then grill it fast so the middle stays pink. With boiled potatoes and purple sprouting broccoli. ("Purple broccoli?" says M. "That's weird.")

Pizza from the freezer

(No energy, and not photographed either.)

Black-eyed bean and squash stew

Also containing potatoes, curry paste, parsley, onions. Makes a darn fine thick soup when blended the next day, too.

Pasta again

This time with half a kabocha-type squash, chopped up and roasted in olive oil, some bacon and rather more sweetcorn than intended (my hand slipped). I'd have liked to add cream but there isn't any.

Risotto

Risotto, made with shallots, thyme*, chicken stock**, parsley, left-over bits of roast chicken, a dollop of yogurt* and lashings and lashings of lovely parmesan. With steamed purple-sprouting broccoli on the side.

*Nige says to add creme fraiche (yogurt the closest thing I had) and thyme, which I would skip if I were to do it again.

**No, not from that chicken. Do you think I am wonderwoman?

A proper old-fashioned roast

Chicken, with potatoes, parsnips, jerusalem artichokes, carrots and (unusually for me) proper gravy. No bread sauce, sadly.

Cheese on toast

After a large lunch of chilli con carne, rice, salad followed by tarte tatin made by my own fair hands.

Sausages, beans and mash

(Mash is a funny colour because it's a mixture of real potatoes and sweet ones.)

Chicken

Chicken pieces braised on the hob (is that braising?) in a bit of cider with green garlic and parsley added. With rice and sugar-snap peas.

Butterbeans and chorizo

Softened onions; mixed in cumin, soaked saffron and some chopped rosemary, then a tin of tomatoes and a drained jar of roast red and yellow peppers. Added chorizo, chopped then fried hot until a bit crispy and butterbeans, soaked overnight then cooked earlier this afternoon. Simmered until not so liquid; spinach (washed extremely thoroughly by Maggie) stirred in at the last minute just until it wilted.

Quick pasta

Penne mixed with frozen peas (well, defrosted ones), frozen sweetcorn, tuna (sorry, fish again), red pepper, lots of olive oil and a splash of balsamic vineagr then with some chilli sauce at the last minute for the over-3s. And grated mozzarella mixed in.

lamb stew

Very uninspired: lamb, carrots, celery, onion, fennel, a bit of rosemary and some barley. It was OK.

Mackerel

Steeped in a mixture of lemon juice, cumin, coriander seed, paprika, cayenne and fennel seeds (and salt apart from Maggie's) for about an hour then baked for 20 minutes. With couscous mixed with peas, onions, sultanas, pine nuts and sesame seeds.

We've had our Omega-3 rations this weekend alright: I'm going to do the crossword in record time now.

Temaki-zushi

(Hand-wrapped sushi)
With prawns, salmon, tuna, cucumber, avocado, cress and sesame seeds as well as the usual accoutrements. A nice excuse to get out some of the crockery, too.
Maggie surprised me by rejecting the rice (it's a bit sticky) but scoffing huge amounts of raw salmon. With hindsight, I should not have given her wasabi.

Friday tea

Egg and chips. And sauce.

Chicken pie

Chicken, leek, tarragon, a bit of apple, and creme fraiche, to be precise. It was supposed to be creamy but the cream was a bit too far past it's use-by date so I added creme fraiche instead. It separated but still tasted nice.

With mash, carrots and green beans.