Health food: chocolate truffles

Just chocolate - 70% or 85%, depending on how bitter you want it - cream and butter. If I'm serving it to other people, I'll scoop it out in chunks and dust with cocoa, but I'll admit it's quite common for me to whip up a batch and just dig in with a spoon whenever I pass the fridge.

There are tweaks and additions. I've added hazelnut butter, for a gianduia effect; champagne; rum; coffee. I've whipped the cream, which makes the truffle lighter and more melting. You could add any liqueur; the only rule with adding booze is that less is more, in this instance - otherwise the alcohol overwhelms the flavour of the chocolate.

The proportions are 45% double cream, 45% chocolate, 10% butter. Melt the chocolate and butter together, then beat in the cream. The only potential pitfalls are letting the chocolate get too hot, in which case it separates, and dallying too long in mixing in the cream. In either case you won't get a smooth glossy mixture, but it'll still be perfectly edible.

And made with 70% chocolate, there's only about 3gram carb in a couple of 10-gram chunks. 85% would work out about half that.

Lamb curry

I haven't cooked much lamb. I was a vegetarian for a very long time, but even when I started eating meat again, it was a long time after that before I ventured to try lamb. Partly because I rather like lambs, and partly because I seemed to recall - from those distant days as a child before I got squeamish about meat - that I never liked the taste very much. But... partly in the interests of broadening horizons, and partly from ethical considerations - sheep generally don't take well to intensive farming and so tend to be more traditionally-reared, and also they can be farmed on marginal land that often isn't suitable for other forms of agriculture - I thought I should give it a chance.

I chose curry, because I thought that if I didn't like the taste of the meat, the spice would disguise it somewhat. Much to my surprise, I liked it a lot, that first time. I've made it a few times since.

Anyway. I toasted and ground fenugreek, coriander and cumin; seared the meat and removed from the pan to rest; fried an onion in coconut oil, added the spice mix plus cinnamon, turmeric, cardamom, ginger and garlic; added a chunk of frozen jellied stock from the freezer, some tomato paste, creamed coconut and a little water, replaced the meat and into a lowish oven for a few hours.

EDIT: The picture is from before the braising; it was a lot more photogenic at that stage. It turned out ok. Can't be any more enthusiastic; what with one thing and another, I'd ended up having a rough day, so between that and the fact that the rough day led me to overcook the curry, it wasn't the best eating experience. I'll have to try it again.

More leftover chicken

This was really a less-soupy version of the oriental chicken broth from a few days ago. More ginger and chilli, and less broth. Good.

Custard for breakfast

My current favourite thing to have for breakfast. Ideally I'd bake it, but that takes too long in the morning. I've been wondering if it would be possible to leave it overnight in a very low oven, but until then, I've been doing it on the stovetop. This method does require manic stirring to prevent curdling, and even then the texture is a little grainy. Really it needs a bain-marie to come out perfectly smooth, but that again takes time.

Anyway, it's just eggs and single cream, and a few grates of nutmeg. No sugar in the mixture, just some maple syrup and some more cream when it's done. Hits the spot.

Bacon for dinner

This was one of those strange meals when you don't really know what to cook, and have an odd assortment of things lying around. A few rashers of bacon, sautéed broccoli, and a sort of mess of various veg, stewed with a load of rosemary because I'd been pruning the rosemary bush earlier on. Really it could easily have been a breakfast; bacon and eggs with fried broccoli is actually a breakfast staple round here. Anyway, it may have been slightly unorthodox, but it was just the ticket after a strenuous day.

Sausages

When I was very young, sausages were a saturday night treat, at my grandmother's house. My job was to prick them with a fork before they went into the pan, a task I performed with such enthusiasm that they gave off multiple jets of boiling grease as they fried, resembling badly-punctured hosepipes. The reason advanced for the pricking process was that un-pricked sausages were liable to explode. Of course, I would have much preferred the drama of exploding sausages, but then I wasn't the one cleaning the cooker.

These days I never prick a sausage; I want the grease to stay inside where it belongs, and I've never yet had an explosion.

My grandmother was a wonderful person and a wonderful cook. She lived to a ripe old age, and would never have margarine in the house.

Spiced beef hash

Not corned beef, but the last of the New Year's spiced beef. It's lasted for nearly three weeks, and has been fabulous as a cold cut, sliced very thin with a dab of horseradish. The nub end I diced and fried with onion, boiled potato and swede, and a dash of Worcester sauce. Old school.

Brobdingnagian garlic

Awe-inspiring.

Peanut beef curry

The picture doesn't look particularly appetising, I know. In fact it resembles something shoveled out of a drain. Believe it or not, though, it's pretty good. Basically a tomato-based curry sauce with a few dollops of peanut butter, with the beef braised in it.

Oriental chicken soup

This is probably not very authentic. It's certainly not from an authentic recipe, because I just threw it together; I suppose you could say at best that it was Oriental-inspired. Basically I made a broth of chicken stock, chilli, star anise, fennel seeds and creamed coconut, and added it to veg and leftover chicken stir-fried in sesame oil and chicken fat.

Tasty.

By the way, I added a good soy sauce to the broth. I don't as a rule eat any soya, but I do make an exception now and then for wheat-free, traditionally made and aged soy sauce. After being fermented for months, and at the sort of quantity it's consumed in, I think it's probably ok. Besides, you can't really replace it in a dish like this, and flavour is important too. Food should be fun.

Schmaltz

Also known as chicken fat. When you roast a chicken, particularly if you do it at a higher temperature rather than a long, low roast, you get a lot of liquid left in the dish. If you carefully pour off first the top layer, then what's left, into separate receptacles, when they're cool you get a pot of lovely amber jelly, and another pot of creamy white fat. The jelly I think of as the first press, extra virgin of stock; the fat makes a nice cooking fat, slightly chickeny in flavour but less meaty than lard, say. Good for roasting veg. You can even eat it as it is, on rye bread, if so inclined - that's an Eastern European Jewish tradition, I think, and the word schmaltz itself comes from the Yiddish, though strictly speaking schmaltz has onions in it.

The polyunsaturated content is higher than goose or duck fat at around 30%. I wouldn't use it every day, but I'll use it when I've got it. Waste not want not.

Fish stew

An improvised dish, something like a wet paella. Onions, garlic, carrot, some cubes of butternut squash, white fish, and seasoned with saffron, fennel, paprika, fish sauce, tomato paste, cayenne and dry sherry. A few handfuls of spinach at the end. Plus enough rice to thicken and absorb some of the juices.

I eat moderately low carb - usually 75-100 grams a day. The rice in this probably adds about 10 grams of carb per portion, so I can easily accommodate that. In my view, the biggest problem with carbs like rice is the amounts most people consume them by. A regular portion of rice - say two cups - could easily rack up close to 100g of carb by itself. Follow that with dessert and a glass of pop on the side and you're really in trouble.

It was delicious, by the way.

Chicken with shallots and mushrooms

I had some leftover roast chicken, so I stir-fried it with shallots, celery, mushrooms and a ton of garlic.

Simple and tasty.

Stew

This is a dish that, for obscure reasons, is known in our house as 'stew of pieces'.

It's very, very, simple: diced stewing steak, onions and whatever vegetable matter you have on hand. This time it was just onions, celery and mushrooms; I also put in a splash of madeira and a chunk of duck stock from the freezer. No other liquid necessary. All day in a very low oven, or several hours on the stovetop over a very low flame (alternatively, it's the kind of dish that would be perfect for a slow cooker); the longer and slower it's cooked, the tenderer the meat will be. If necessary, boil uncovered for a few minutes at the end to reduce.

You can simply chuck everything in the pot and it'll come out just fine. Softening the veg in fat first is a step up, and browning the meat over a high heat is another, but neither refinement is essential.

Quite apart from its being cheap, nutritious and tasty, I rather like the feeling that this is the sort of thing people have been cooking and eating for millennia.

Brussels sprouts with mushrooms, garlic and almonds

I like brussels sprouts a lot. Roasted, steamed and buttered, sautéed; you name it, I haven't got tired of it yet.

This was a new one, though. First I toasted some flaked almonds. Then I had a load of mushrooms that needed using, so I sliced them and fried them with olive oil, a little garlic and soy sauce. Out of the pan and briefly fry the halved sprouts, then add a little water and into the oven for a quick braise. Reassemble, stir to coat, job done.

Had it with some Christmas turkey and butternut squash.

I don't know that this would win over anyone who actively disliked sprouts. But it did draw compliments from someone professedly weary of them, and one can't ask for more than that at this time of year.

Snacks: squash, sweet potato and coconut soup

I unaccountably forgot to include the usual chilli, but it was pretty good without. Silky and subtle. Would have been nice with a bit of fresh coriander, if I'd had it.

Chilli

This was a pretty mild chilli - ground beef with a sweeter spice mix including star anise and cinnamon, and not much heat. Comfort food, really. The weather's dismal.

Salmon

Salmon fillet, cooked in a very low oven for about 45 minutes. That's my current favourite way to do fish - it gives a moist and tender result and it's harder to overcook.

The stuff on the top is creme fraiche with capers, dill and horseradish. Swede and celeriac mash on the side. And BS.

Sometimes a kipper is not just a kipper

Check out this can of kippers:

Pretty simple, eh? You'd expect it to contain kippers, salt and water. Maybe a preservative, or a firming agent, or something, but not much else.

Certainly not wheat.

And yet, when I happened to check the ingredients - unfortunately after I'd already eaten a few cans of the stuff - wheat appeared not once but twice. A host of other unexpected delights also put in an appearance, including maltodextrin, sugar, and yeast extract.

This is irritating. I avoid gluten, not because I have celiac disease but because, having done a lot of reading on the subject, I suspect it's implicated in other autoimmune conditions (and very probably a host of other diseases). I'm currently excluding gluten very strictly as an experiment, and now, because I've eaten these wheaty kippers, I'm back to square one.

Now, I'm not blaming the manufacturer as such. They are perfectly at liberty to include barmy ingredients; it's my responsibility to check the list. My point is a) you really can't be too careful about checking ingredients, even on products you'd never suspect; and b) why the hell would anyone put a load of flour, sugar and marmite - things with no discernible similarity to to smoked herring - onto a smoked herring, and expect it to do anything other than make it taste less like a smoked herring? The other brand I regularly buy doesn't, and guess what? The kippers taste better! More like kippers!

Message: check the label. Better yet, don't eat anything that has a label, but when you do, check it.

Chicken pie

What I did on my holidays, with the leftover roast chicken. Chicken, leeks, mushrooms, cream and a little chopped gammon. Then the sliced potato topping as for the turkey pie - a new idea, so I'm testing it out a lot. That's some cubed roast celeriac with it, and buttered brussels sprouts of course; you can't have too many brussels sprouts, in my book.

The Christmas turkey this year was a very good one. Free range of course, organic, heritage breed, and hung for three weeks. Even so, I have to say I prefer chicken. I like the creaminess of it, and the mellowness. By the way, that chicken made five human meals and a couple of feline. This was a free range bird - I wouldn't buy one that wasn't - but even so that worked out at not much more than £1 a head. Pretty good going.

Roast chicken

Unwrap. Wipe with olive oil. Sprinkle on a little salt and thyme, and put half a lemon in the cavity. Stick in the oven.

It doesn't get much easier than that. Hardly any more time-consuming than preparing a ready meal; in fact, given the amount of packaging they put on those things, it might even be quicker.

Normally I'd put it in a low oven for several hours. There wasn't time for that, so it had just under two hours at 190ºC. The meat was drier than with the slow method, undoubtedly, but some butter and pan juices solved that.

Plenty of leftovers, too. Tomorrow will be another happy day.

Turkey and gammon pie

Christmas leftovers: when you're tired of cold turkey and gammon, you're tired of... oh, well. Combine the two!

This was the last of the turkey, the rest having been eaten or frozen. The gammon I cooked the day after Boxing Day, and that's still going strong. This was about one part gammon, chopped, to 2-3 parts turkey. Simmered with onion, celery, sage and bay, some of the jellied stock from both carcases, and about a cup of white beans. The top is thinly sliced potato, one or two slices deep. Baked half an hour covered, then another half hour uncovered.

Note: beans and potatoes might set carb alarms ringing, but the quantities involved are low, especially the potato. The beans sort of soak up the stock and fat, and the top slows down the cooking process, giving the whole thing both shape and identity.

I served it with squash and swede roasted in beef dripping, and savoy cabbage sautéd in olive oil.

Spiced beef

Well, what I had for dinner last night, actually. It's Elizabeth David's recipe, cured for a week in brown sugar, salt, black pepper, juniper and allspice. Cooked in a covered casserole for about 8 hours in a very low oven, 80ºC. I'd never tried it before; the texture was both tender and firm, something like corned beef, and the juniper, while it smelled pretty strong during cooking, was present but not overpowering in flavour.

Had it with potatoes and parsnips in duck fat, and brussels sprouts with a slab of butter. Champagne and truffles to follow.