Prune sauce for venison and the joys of experimentation

Experimentation is always fun, as long as you keep your mind open, your ideas flexible and some degree of control over what you're doing. If you see something's not quite working out, why not change direction? This is what I did with this venison (and I was very pleased with the result).

My lilac tea (yes, from the pretty bush), which was meant to flavour the sauce, turned out bitter and disgusting. I know what I did wrong now- too many stems- but rather than go ahead with the original plan, I grabbed what was available and I felt would work with the taste of venison meat: prunes and red wine. I wasn't wrong. So now I'd like to share my discovery with you. This is how you make prune sauce for venison: soak the prunes in warm water if you have time. While they're soaking fry the venison steaks, and let them rest in a warm place for at least 10min, but no longer than 15min. Melt some butter on a frying pan and add the prunes, cover in red wine. Turn the heat down and allow to simmer, stirring occasionally. After about 10min, once the prunes have disintegrated and the sauce has reduced, push it through a sieve. Put it back on the frying pan and season with salt and pepper. Add a splash of wine if it's too thick. After about 2min it's ready to serve with your venison steaks.

An Autumn stew with beans and pumpkin

I was in Athens the other day visiting my heavily pregnant friend and wanted to make a huge pot of something that we could eat for dinner, then freeze for the busy days ahead. It's getting a bit chillier, even in Greece, so I was thinking warming and substantial dishes, and of course, the French cassoulet came to mind. The last time I made it was in the French Alps, and we ate it with great joy and relief almost (as well as fresh baguette), after a day on the slopes. But this was Greece - a different climate, different ingredients, so I reworked the recipe to include some lovely pumpkin that we found at the market, two types of dried Greek beans (black eye beans and another type I didn't recognise), Greek sausage with leek (rather than the traditional French garlic sausage). I made the recipe skinnier not for health reasons but because of the temperate climate here, so gone is the duck confit and goose fat and in come more meditterean vegetables. The French bouquet garni was also replaced, with local, wild oregano. This isn't fusion cuisine; this is using local, seasonal produce and creating a new version of a dish, based on a classic

Soak the beans overnight, then cook them slightly before you start the stew - about 15 minutes of simmering in salted water, then drain. Fry the chopped sausages first, in some of the olive oil, then remove from the pan, Add the lardons and the chopped onion next, fry for a couple of minutes, then add the grated carrots, chopped celery (which, incidently, looks completely different in Greece) and keep frying on a low heat, stirring now and again. After about 5min add the tomatoes, beans, white wine, garlic, herbs and spices. Bring to the boil then turn the heat down again and allow to simmer for about 10min or until the tomatoes start to disintergrate. Add some water and put the sausage back in the dish. Allow to simmer for about 45min, before adding the pumpkin and more wine/water if needed. After another 45min season the stew with plenty of salt pepper and taste. Perhaps it needs more paprika or oregano? I'd give it another half an hour on top of that before serving with crusty bread - so 2 hours of cooking time in total. The ingredients down there are approximate, as usual, so just experiment with the flavours and go with the flow

Ingredients - makes about 10 portions

1/4 large pupkin, roasted for 20min, peeled and chopped
6-8 leek sausages, chopped into bitesize pieces
200g lardons
1.5kg dried beans (2 types)
Bunch of celery (Greek celery is much thinner, so probably about 6 stalk of British celery)
3 red onions, chopped finely
4-6 cloves of garlic, chopped or crushed
10 large tomatoes, peeled and chopped
6-8 carrots, grated
1 tablespoon dried, wild oregano (if available)
1 teaspoon paprika
4 bay leaves
Half a bottle of white wine
Salt and pepper
Mild olive oil
Chilli flakes and crusty bread to serve

Venison stew with chocolate and chilli

Early Spring, with it's constantly changing moods, can bring about a melancholy in me. I have to remind myself that life isn't just about bright sunshine and balmy Summer evenings; that we need the rain, wind and grey moments too. I am impatient for the sun. I am in fact impatient for everything, bordering on intolerant at times. When something is clear to me, I want to impose that clarity on the whole world. This is an immaturity in me, reality can be seen and expressed in many different ways and everyone has their own process. I am learning to let go. Feeling my impatience, anger and sadness as strongly as I can and then accepting that it makes no difference, and that's how it's supposed to be, so I can relax. I made a late Mother's Day lunch for my mum and the family yesterday. They came an hour and a half early, catching me by surprise and I very nearly ruined it, but luckily managed to relax and accept the situation in the end. The main course was this stew

I had a hunch that venison and dark chocolate would work, especially with a chilli kick. And the red wine. These strong flavours together are a dream. Fry the carrot, onion, celery and ginger first for about 5min in the olive oil. Add the venison chunks and the chilli, seal the meat for a couple of minutes then add the paprika, ground ginger and cumin, stir and fry for another minute, add a splash of water. Season with salt and pepper. Pour over the wine, cover and simmer for about half an hour. Add the red pepper and chocolate. Simmer some more. If it looks dry then add more red wine. It needs about 2 hours in total, until the meat is so soft that it's falling apart, but make sure you stir it every 20min or so and make sure it's not drying out, adding splashes of wine when you need to. Right at the end add the fresh coriander and serve - it works well with sweet potato mash you see up there. For dessert we had Anja's chocolate mousse, which is the best chocolate mousse in the world, and I will tell you about next time

Ingredients (serves 4)

400g venison, in bite-sized chunks (remove any stringy bits)
6-8 squares dark chocolate
1 onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, grated
4 celery stalks, finely chopped
1 red chilli, chopped
1 inch fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
Approximately 1/3 bottle red wine
Handful chopped fresh coriander
Mild oil for frying
Salt and pepper

Polish chicken and tomato soup

In Poland, and throughout most of Eastern Europe, soups will probably be made with animal stock. If you are a vegetarian - beware - you may think you are safe ordering a vegetable soup, and the maker of it may not even consider the bones that the stock has been cooked on and happily tell you that you are eating a vegetarian soup. Because, you know, there's no "proper" meat in it, just a few bones... sometimes, it's easier to believe people, but the truth is always there if you delve a bit deeper. This applies not only to soups but also to life. I've realized that all you need to do is really want it, and commit to honesty within yourself, then the truth will always come to you. I'm talking from a lot of experience here...

You start off by cooking the chicken carcasses along with the vegetables and bay leaf (if you have one) in a big pan filled with cold water and a bit of sea salt for about 2 hours. Cook the rice separately. Remove the chicken carcasses and all the vegetables. Take any remaining meat off the carcasses and put it back into the soup, chop the carrot and put it back in too, discard the remaining vegetables. Add the tomato puree and season well with salt, pepper and a little bit of sugar. Add the cream and heat for a little while longer. Taste and decide if it needs anything else. Pour the soup over the rice and consume hot, perhaps with a sprinkling of hot chilli sauce if you fancy it (this is not a Polish thing, but a Zuza thing)

Ingredients

2 good quality (organic) chicken carcasses
1 parsnip
1 large carrot
2 celery stalks
Bay leaf (optional)
150ml single cream
1 tub of tomato puree
Rice
Sea salt
Black pepper
Large pinch of sugar
Chilli sauce if you fancy it

Beetroot stuffed with lamb and rice

January has started to make sense to me. It is a month which I would suggest we all fill with friends and plans: sharing food and hugs with the ones we love, while dreaming of what the year ahead may hold. Coming up with new ideas and discussing them at length with people who love to dream is one of my favourite things in life. Luckily, my unexpected lodger for the month also appears to like doing this, as does my love, so I feel grateful to be spending most of my January with these people, who inspire me and fill me with hope. What comes of all our plans is another matter altogether, but the great thing about this month is that we don't have to worry about that just yet - it's only January - time to simply think, try some things out tentatively, start feeling for the changes we would like to make, and find projects that we would like to pursue. One of my New Year's resolutions is to do recipe testing more frequently - I am writing a cookbook, and I have many old recipes that need honing and perfecting... and as in life, you never know how you're going to do that until you actually start doing it. These spiced-lamb beetroot symbolize a step toward my final goal. In this higher purpose, they are not only tasty, but also extremely important beetroot

Cook the beetroot in boiling water for about 40min. Peel and scoop out the insides. Meanwhile, fry the minced lamb in a small knob of butter with the garlic, and use a fork to break up the mince. Add the spices, season and finally add the cooked rice. Continue cooking while squashing with the fork. Stuff the beets with the mixture and cover with breadcrumbs. Place in a baking tray, drizzle with 

 olive oil and bake for about 30min

Ingredients

6 large beetroot

150g minced lamb

150g cooked white rice

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons breadbrumbs

Knob of butter (about 25g)

Olive oil
Garlic clove or two

Salt and pepper

Sour cream to serve

Chocolate Chlli Con Carne

I've had some kind of awful throat infection the past week, so I haven't been able to get much food down me, yet I've been craving Chilli Con Carne - melt-in-the-mouth beef and vegetables filling me with warm, spicy goodness. The Chilli that I make is always vegetable-rich and always cooked for as long as possible - usually between 2 and 3 hours. P loved it, and I asked him about Chilli Con Carne in Mexico, where he has spent a lot of time. He told me that they often add chocolate, an idea that I fell in love with immediately. So the next day I added some Green&Blacks dark chocolate to the Chilli that I'd made and it really has elevated it to a whole new level for me

I love chilli, and each time I cook it I feel like it tastes just that little bit better than the last time. This is because I have picked up many little "chilli secrets" along the way, and found some things out through the repetitive cooking of this dish over the years. Adding plenty of vegetables is one of these little secrets - they really do add so much flavour - yet they must be chopped as finely as possible for maximum effect. For some reason, this makes a big difference. So once chopped, fry the onion with the grated carrot and celery in plenty of olive oil for about 5 minutes, add the beef and chopped chillies and fry while stirring and breaking up the mince for another 5 min. Add the paprika and ginger, add the wine, keep stirring. Add the chopped tomatoes, crushed garlic, plop the whole chilli in the pan, some salt and pepper and bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Add more wine if at any point it seems a bit dry in there - we want enough extra liquid for there to be bubbles. After two hours, taste it and season to your taste, add more paprika if required. Add the chocolate, kidney beans and most of the chopped coriander, reserve some for garnish. Allow the chilli to simmer for another 20min or so like this, then serve on top of rice, with fresh coriander on top and, if you fancy, some sour cream on the side. It's easy to make a good chilli, but to make a really excellent one, you really must put a bit of love and care into it, don't just cook it automatically, but strive to improve and perfect it. Perhaps sometime in the future I will learn a few more secrets and make a better chilli than this, but at the moment, this is the pinnacle 

Ingredients

500g organic minced beef

3 red chillies, 2 chopped finely, 1 whole

2 garlic cloves, chopped and pressed with the back of a knife

2 carrots, grated

1 onion, chopped finely

2 celery sticks, chopped

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

2 glasses of red wine

1 tin of red kidney beans (the ones in chilli sauce work especially well)

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

1 tablespoon paprika

1 teaspoon ground ginger

50g good quality dark chocolate

Large handful fresh, chopped coriander

A hearty pumpkin soup with pork and pearl barley

I know that hearty soups without meat do exist (I'm sure they do), and I certainly do not feel the need to eat meat every day of the week, yet I have found that the addition of meaty goodness is what constitutes a hearty soup for me personally. At the risk of sounding like a witch, I always like to boil a good carcass. To make my own stock or as a soup base. And I get 2 carcasses for £1 at Ginger Pig, so it's a small price to pay for the depth that it will give a dish. I also bought some good quality lardons from them (by good quality I mean from happy pigs, which is the only kind I like to eat), so this soup is more than a little meaty

Start off by making the chicken and onion stock - boil a couple of carcasses with a peeled onion and some salt for 2-3 hours. You can add a bay leaf in there if you have one, I didn't. Meanwhile, roast the pumpkin, in chunks, with some olive oil and salt, for about 20min. It's much easier to peel then. Drain the stock into a new pan, so that you are left with a clear liquid. Add the pumpkin chunks and any meat that's on the carcasses to the clear stock and allow to cool. Blend. Pour it back in the pan, season with garlic salt, black pepper and nutmeg, then add the pearl barley and bring back to the boil. Simmer until pearl barley is ready (about 30min). Chop the lardons up if they are quite big, like mine were, then fry until crispy. Add to the soup. Deglaze the pan with the soup to get all the flavour off it. Add chilli sauce if you like it spicy

 Ingredients

Half a pumpkin

2 chicken carcasses

1 onion

Handful of Lardons

Pearl barley (large handful)

Garlic salt

Black pepper

Nutmeg

Chilli sauce

Olive oil

As for the seeds, you may want to roast them for an hour with some salt and a little olive oil. Half way through, sprinkle with a little soya sauce and chilli sauce for an amazing beer snack. I like to leave a bit of the pith on there too as it turns brown and crunchy

Courgettes stuffed with cinnamon lamb

When I was working all the time I imagined that having free time in London would be massively productive. In actual fact, I have become a cat. I sleep, I sunbathe, I eat, I meditate, I run in the park, make love and stretch, write a little bit. OK, so cats don't write, but you get the picture. I thought that I would be blogging every day, but no, I am too busy stretching and meditating, apparently this can  take entire days. At times I feel that familiar, suffocating feeling start to creep in - guilt. I then remind myself that I had been working full time for over 8 years, that I deserve to live a little, even a lot, that life is short, that I need to enjoy my freedom, and I try and let that suffocating feeling go, to feel grateful that I've had this beautiful Summer in London. Being brought up a Catholic, it's not easy letting go of guilt, but I won't give up trying. I want my actions to come from a place of love, and not of guilt or any other negative emotion. I'm still cooking all the time, but right now it always seems to be late at night, when I can't take good pictures. Yesterday, I finally managed to cook something before the sun set - it was these lovingly stuffed courgettes

They seem Middle-Eastern in flavour with the lamb and cinnamon flavours, yet this is a (heavily modified) Polish recipe. Often these two worlds meet in the kitchen, due to many factors - Arab traders in the Middle-Ages swapping spices for amber from the Baltic sea, Jewish and Armenian influences from the movements of people through this land over many centuries, and constant wars with the Ottoman Empire when Poland was still great...

Wash and dry the courgettes, then slice them in half and scoop out the insides carefully (I used a small, sharp knife and my fingers). Chop these bits and blanche in boiling, salted water for about 5min. Meanwhile, chop the onion as finely as you possibly can. Fry it in the olive oil, then after 10min, add the lamb mince. Use a fork to mash these together while they are cooking. Add the cinnamon, salt and pepper. Keep mashing and cooking for about 5min, then add the drained courgette meat. Cover and allow to simmer for about 10min, then take the lid off and keep mashing. Finally, remove from heat and add a tablespoon of breadcrumbs to soak up the juices. Allow to cool slightly before stuffing the courgettes with the mixture. Bake for 30min at about 150 degrees C, serve with white rice

Ingredients (serves 2)

150g minced lamb's meat

3 courgettes

1 red onion

2 teaspoons cinnamon

Breadcrumbs

Salt and pepper

Olive oil for frying

Cucumber salad for a rustic bluebell barbeque

I'm going to start by saying something jaw-droppingly controversial: I don't think the weather has been that bad this Spring. There, I said it. OK, it's been massively changeable, we've had rain, we've had sun, and now I've actually caught a cold... but actually when it really mattered, for me at least, it's been nice. Please note that both Bank Holidays have been lovely, with rain either side. During the last one, I decided to have a small barbeque among the bluebells in my garden. I baked bread buns made from a Danish rye flour, mixed with fluffy white flour, bought meat from Ginger Pig, including that sausage spiral down here, and little, multi-coloured peppers that we grilled along with slices of hallumi cheese

And finally, I made an unusual version of the Polish "mizeria' salad, which was pretty great, even if I do say so myself

You slice the (peeled) cucumber paper thin, and cover in salt. After 10min squeeze out any excess water. Chop the onion very finely also and add to the cucumber slices. Blend the sour cream with the chopped dill and pour over the cucumbers. Mix together delicately but thoroughly (you may have noticed that there is an art to this). Crumble a block of feta on top. This salad is good with all meats or just crusty bread, tzaziki-style

We bathed in the sunshine, marveled at the bluebells, drank sangria as usual and stuffed our faces with charred meats, saying how "rustic" it all was and how very sophisticated. Then Mike asked me for a napkin and I handed him the bogroll. Not quite there yet then...

Ingredients

2 Cucumbers
1 red onion
250ml sour cream
Handful chopped fresh dill
Black of feta (250g)
Sea salt

Chiara's Maple pork belly with Jerusalem artichoke crisps

I've been travelling a lot over the past few weeks and eating plenty of good food, but one meal has stuck with me. I'm on the road again tomorrow so if I don't tell you about it now, it will be lost in the vortex of delicious meals never mentioned, which would be a massive shame. In New York I was invited to dinner at Chiara's flat. Knowing that Chiara is Italian and also a chef (at Bevacco in Brooklyn Heights if you're interested) did not prepare me for this meal. I was eating too much to make notes on every single course, but I did manage to get the recipe for the maple pork belly, which, if you ever try it, you will be grateful for. I plan to try it myself as soon as my detox is over

Boil the pork belly for about 2 hours (depending on how much of it you've got - we're talking 6 people here) with a carrot, celery, celery root, parsnip and peppercorns. Cool and cut into large cubes. Cover in pure maple syrup and allow to stand for a minimum of 1 hour. Sear it on the pan - both sides - until it looks like that up there, brown and crispy. For the celery purée - boil the celery root until soft, then blend with cream and some of the water it was cooked in, season to taste. The dish was finished off with chopped spring onion and Jerusalem artichoke crisps. These crisps were totally addictive, and a great snack on their own. You use a vegetable peel to cut the Jerusalem artichoke into fine slithers and fry these in very hot oil

Ingredients

Pork belly

Carrot

Parsnip

Celery

Celery root,

Peppercorns

Maple syrup

Single cream

Spring onion

Jerulsalem artichoke

Salt and pepper

Oil for frying

Spicy mutton with pearl barley

It's cold outside, I'm broke, I miss my ex and I'm worried that my cat wants to leave me for the insane woman down the road. Yet I also know that this sad time is the perfect moment to reflect on the past year and to focus on everything I want (and don't want) in the coming one. The good news is that I have no regrets, so nothing is going to hold me back. I know that I did my best in my career, my relationship (even though it didn't work out) and my dreamwork, as I like to call all the stuff I'm working on in my own time. I'm still a little tired, a little jaded, but soon, soon...

First I need soul food, in every sense. I'm going to fill myself up on nourishing stuff like this spicy mutton with pearl barley, meditate every day to attain acceptance and sleep as much as I want to. Right now this is anything from 9.5 to 11 hours a night. The mutton needs lots of time too, so I would suggest cooking it over the weekend. First, season the meat with salt and pepper and set aside for half an hour. Dry-fry the meat for about 5 minutes, and remove from the pan. In the same pan, fry the onion, garlic and the scotch bonnet in some oil until translucent and golden - probably about 3-4 minutes - stir in the Jamaican curry spices and return the meat to the pan. Stir all the spices over the meat, then add the stock. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat right down, cover the pan and allow to stew for 3 hours. Check it now and again to make sure it has moisture, and add water if it's looking dry. Add the coconut milk and the tomatoes. Cook for 45min and add the pearl barley. Cook until the pearl barley is soft - another 45min or so

Ingredients (serves 4)

400g mutton

2 onions, chopped finely

4 inches of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

1 scotch bonnet pepper

1 tin of coconut milk

3 tomatoes

600g pearl barley

2 tablespoons coconut oil

1 tablespoon Jamaican curry spices

2 litres vegetable stock

Salt and pepper

Uncle Kazik's Polish Pâté with Prunes

Usually, I go to Poland twice a year - for Christmas and during the Summer. Yet this year, my original homeland has been calling me back again and again. First, to see my grandma Ziuta before her death, then her funeral in March... Then it was the usual Summer trip, and now, my grandma Halinka is unwell and I needed to return. In 6 weeks, we are going to spend Christmas in Zakopane with my cousin and his family, then back to Warsaw. Perhaps I am more attached to this harsh, unstable land than I admit, even to myself. My aunt who has been staying with us laughs at how our life here on the plains of Eastern Europe is so typical of the area. It is funny, since our family is not a traditional one. Or perhaps this is precisely why we cling to the old ways... In our manic four days spent in Poland we have cooked bigos and made pâté. While I was grinding meat for the pâté yesterday it occured to me that despite everything going on in my life right now, in that particular moment, I felt happy. It is comforting to know know that whatever happens in life, happiness can still be found in performing a simple task that has been performed for hundreds, if not thousands of years. I hope that if you make this pâté, you too will find that soothing connection to something bigger

Ingredients

500g fatty bacon

500g chicken breast

500g pork

700g beef

500g pork liver (but can be any liver)

3 onions

large handful wild, dry mushrooms

5 bay leaves

2 tblsp majoram

1 tsp dried juniper berries

1 tsp whole black peppercorns

6 eggs

2 white, dry bread buns

2 handfuls pitted prunes

3 tsp nutmeg

2 tblsp fine (sea) salt or to taste

vegetable oil for frying

butter for greasing the baking trays

1 tblsp breadcrumbs

First, we cook the meat, which is best done a day ahead of the pate making. The meat needs 2 hours cooking time, then it needs time to cool. Fry the meat on both sides to seal it.  Put it in large pan and pour the frying oil over the top. We cook the meat (apart from the liver) in a pan half-full of water with the onions, bayleaves, juniper berries, peppercorns, majoram and dried mushrooms (these need to be soaked for 10min in boiling hot water first). Here, this kind of cooking is called suffocating the meat, because we do it covered and for a long period of time. Once the meat is falling off the bone (after about 1hr 45min) add the liver and cook for a further 10-15min. Finally, add the bread and allow to cool overnight. The next day, mince it all a couple of times, or until you get the consistency of pâté. Put it back in the pan with the remaining liquid - this will give the pâté moisture. Now, break in the eggs, roll up your sleeves and get dirty squishing the mixture between your hands until it's all completely smooth. Add the salt and nutmeg. Taste the mixture to see if you feel it needs anything more right now... then fill the pre-buttered and breadcrumbed baking trays, like so

 Bake these on 180 degrees Celsius for about 1 and a half hours, or until they look like this

You can eat this pâté with crusty bread, cranberry sauce and gherkins like I did, take it to parties or give it to people as a little gift. It may sound a bit weird, but I think giving someone something you made to eat is always a welcome present. Unless they're vegetarian perhaps. Although simple, pâté making is one hell of an effort, so it's nice to share the spoils and show it off

British game roasted with Polish buckwheat honey and Greek oregano

The grouse season is short this year. I'm not using code, I mean that sentence completely literally. I'm trying to explain (to myself as much as anyone) how on earth I paid £12.50 for one of those birds down there (the dark one). It's pretty bloody expensive. The partridge is only marginally smaller at £5.50, and arguably tastier

Lots of niggling, small things that I normally don't care about have been bothering me lately, so I'll just stick the grouse on that tedious list. Sometimes life is just like that. Or perhaps sometimes  we just perceive it that way as we experience some kind of inner turmoil or conflict we can't quite put our finger on. I'm just riding it out and waiting for clouds to clear, and from time to time, catching a little ray breaking through - like a delicious meal, or LT bringing me lego (did I mention that I have the sunniest boyfriend on the whole planet?). So here we are - a gamey Sunday feast of grouse and partridge. The birds were tenderized with a marinade of Polish buckwheat honey, lemon juice, garlic salt and pepper 

And flavoured with Greek oregano which my friend Karina brought straight from the source (that's the countryside near Athens). Miod Gryczany is this really dark, strong-tasting honey. You could easily substitute it for Eucalyptus honey or even Manuka honey as they're  quite similar in flavour, and would also stand up to game

I left them like this for about 45min before roasting for an hour at 150 degrees C, along with some carrots and sweet potatoes, basting the birds regularly to make sure that they didn't dry out. The vegetables were flavoured with fresh chilli, olive oil, garlic salt and pepper. I was going to make gravy, but I forgot, and actually, it wasn't needed - everything was moist and tender. Once we finished, I cooked the bones to make a delicious game stock, for a Middle-Eastern style soup, with bulgur wheat, chickpeas, lemon juice and eggs. At that price, I had to squeeze another meal of the grouse somehow

Boned chicken with liver stuffing

As I was describing to my friend on Friday how my mum was stuffing a chicken with liver in preparation for our weekend at home, I saw a horrified expression slowly spread across her lovely face and I realized that this recipe isn't going to be for everyone. It didn't help that she's a vegetarian, of course (a fact I forgot in my eagerness to share the excitement) but even so, not many meat-eaters like liver either. Now, I pride myself on the fact that at least three of my ex boyfriends hated liver until I cooked it for them when they were dutifully converted, but even so... I can't convince everyone in this way. I have nothing to barter with for start, so if you really really hate every liver product, then there is no point reading anymore, though I do hope you come back soon. Yet there are many liver haters who love pate for instance. And if you are one of these people then this recipe is for you, as well as all the liver lovers out there. The stuffing is extremely pate-esque, especially when eaten on a fresh baguette with mustard for lunch, as I did today

I have never boned a chicken, or any other bird. Even though my mum assures me that it's really very simple and all you do is stick you hand up the chicken's bottom cutting round all the bones, I cannot say, or write, this with any conviction, until I have actually done it myself. In the meantime, here's someone who knows what they're talking about

For the stuffing you simply blend all the ingredients below in a blender- first the liver, then any bits of chicken you may have lying around from the de-boning operation, then everything else. Stuff the chicken. Once you have done this, you will need to take a needle and some thick thread or light string and sow up any holes you've made (you take this out later). Fry the chicken a little in some butter, perhaps 5min each side - we as want the skin to brown slightly before roasting. Now put it in a baking tray with a tiny bit of water in the bottom, and roast, covered in baking foil, for about an hour and a half at 160 degrees C. You'll have lots of gooey stuff at the bottom of the pan, pour this over the chicken. This is great cold, eaten as a starter like in the photo up there, or with a big salad for lunch, or stuffed in sandwich

Ingredients - for 1 medium chicken

500g lambs liver
Soft white bread roll soaked in milk, then squeezed out
2 eggs
Large handful of fresh parsley
Raisins soaked in water for 30min
2 tsp soya sauce
Salt and pepper

Buen Ayre on Broadway Market

I can be such a bad friend sometimes. When I have a guest visiting me, I use it as an excuse to do stuff that I really want to do. Instead of trying to find out where my friend wants to go for dinner, what they really feel like eating on their rare trip to London, I give the impression that I'm asking, whilst making sure that the place I want to go seems by far the best option. And after a few months living with the resolution to limit my meat intake, I was dying to go to Buen Ayre on Broadway Market. I've never been here, you see, because you can rarely get a table if you pop in - it's very popular. And now I know why. The meat. And the wine

I completely forgot about this beauty from the Gougenheim Winery. A couple of years ago this was my favourite wine - all the memories came flooding back as if I'd just sat down to a meal with someone who had once meant everything to me but I hadn't thought of for a long time. Which actually happened later on this weekend, but that's another story. However, while revisiting old relationships isn't usually the cleverest idea (I should know, I've done it enough times), going back to old wines is precisely the opposite

We shared the marinated ox tongue to start, with a side salad, and we both followed it by the smaller of the sirloin steaks. There's not much to say about that, because it was perfect. And we all know exactly what that tastes like. If you don't, then you'd better get yourself to Buen Ayre pronto! The staff are really friendly too, flirty without being obnoxious or sleazy. It was weirdly smoky when we went in, due to the indoor grill but they managed to sort that out pretty quickly. Pricewise, I'd say it's kind of average, £35 per head including wine

Mum's "kotlet" on rye bread with pickled mushrooms for lunch

I loved having my mum come to stay last week, even though my flat is so tidy now, that I can't find a thing. Not that it's usually massively messy, I'm just quite laissez-faire while my mum's standards are very, very high. It caused a lot of stress between us when we lived together, with my mum always striving for perfection and young me striving for freedom, but I like to think that now we've learnt to love certain differences between us, and accept the other ones

A "kotlet" is something between a burger and a meatball, and my mum's ones are fantastic. It's great with mash, gravy and gherkins for dinner, but I've always prefererd them cold, cut into slices and served in an open sandwich with mustard, just like that up there. Here's the recipe for about 12 of these babies:

Ingredients

500g minced pork

500g minced beef

2 eggs

2 toast - soaked in milk for 10min then squeezed

Onion - chopped finely and fried gently until soft

1 tsp paprika (or any other spice that you like)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

breadcrumbs

You mix all the ingredients with your hands, squeezing and mashing for about 5min. Then rinse your hands in cold water, so you can form the cutlets. You want them to have a flat shape, then you cover them with breadcrumbs and fry for 3min each side. Finally, put them all in a baking dish, cover in the oil they've been fried in and give them another 15min in the oven. Apparently, some people feel this dries them out and use the method of pouring stock over the whole lot and finishing them off on the stove, but I prefer them a bit drier myself. Probably because that's the way my mum makes them, and that always tastes the best, right?

Pork hock and kale mash in Eastbourne

I went to Eastbourne at the weekend. I used to hate it there as a teenager ("where are the cool shops/bars/clubs?") but with time I've grown to appreciate this sleepy seaside town. I love walking on the South Downs, trawling the charity shops and watching the sea. Although I'm sure that I've changed a lot since I was a teenager, this is one of the only things that I actually feel has changed inside me.  Whenever I come here, I read some of my old diaries. I have hundreds of them, as I've been writing since I was 12, and read Anne Frank. Sometimes they make me cringe, other times they make me laugh, but this time what I read just made me really sad. Between the lines, there seemed to be this longing for something pure and good that was forever out of reach, and I had no idea how to find. What cheered me up, however, and what I initially wanted to share with you, was this dinner my mum made. With a little help from me, in the form of drinking wine, chatting and grating cheese

It's a pork hock, otherwise known as knuckle. The one up there was already prepared (mum brought it  from Holland, where it's more popular than here) but if you buy this at the butcher, you need to cook it for a looong time in some kind of sauce. Beer and a bay leaf work well. If you have a slow cooker, you could leave it on all day, otherwise I reckon about 3 hours, but you'll know when it's ready as the meat will be practically falling off the bone. The mash was extra creamy, as mum used double cream instead of milk. We mashed it with salt and then added chopped and sauteed kale. Then, just to be really healthy we put loads of cheddar on top and baked it in the oven until the cheese melted. Amazing.

Warming wild rabbit stew/soup

Vegetarians look away now - it's shooting season in the UK and the butcher shops are full of pheasant, partridge, grouse and wild rabbit. I am typing this while eating a delicious rabbit and spinach stew/soup (depending on how you look at it), the recipe for which I would like to share with you, even though it was a by-product of another dish I was making - a "huntsman bake", for which I needed strips of rabbit. So, I was left with the bones with plenty of meat still attached, that I didn't have the will to scrape off with my not-so-great knife. I covered these in cold water, added a couple of bay leaves, a cinnamon stick and some garlic cloves and allowed to boil for 2-3 hours, adding water as it evaporated. I then allowed it to cool, and the next day, I took the carcass out, pulling any meat off it. I brought the stock back to the boil, this time adding lots of pearl barley. When the grains were soft, I added spinach leaves, salt, pepper, a squeeze of lemon and finished it off with tabasco

Ingredients

Rabbit carcass (preferably in bits and with some meat still on it)

Pearl barley

Spinach

Cinnamon stick

2 bay leaves

3 garlic cloves

Squeeze of lemon

Salt and pepper

Tabasco

In doing research for my cookbook, I've been learning about hunting in Eastern Europe. A fact that made me particularly proud of my countrymen was that, throughout Polish history, women were just as keen hunters as men. One piece of poetry that I read, from the 16th Century, suggested that many men found women more attractive in this sort of pursuit than dolled up in tight dresses! This makes me happy because it feels like the ultimate liberation from stereotypes. It's men loving women for what they are, and women being free to be what they are - natural, strong and fierce - rather than feeling forced to create a permanent ladylike illusion. There's hope yet...

Stuffed red peppers with rosemary-roasted sweet potatoes in a wild garden

If a garden reflects the person that it belongs to then I must be at least slightly wild

My peas and pumpkins appear to have vanished, and the courgettes and broad beans are doing whatever they please. Which is nice for them (I'm going to make a wonderful mother some day)

It used to be the same with my room, I was forever "sorting it out". My ex, Jamie, would say that it was as if I was trying to tame some wild animal, and I think he had a point. My life often feels like that. I used to wish that I could be one of those girls with proper little outfits, immaculate make-up and nicely highlighted hair. But my make-up smudges, the nail varnish chips after just one day, my hair gets messy really easily and I simply refuse to wear any shoes that I can't dance in all night long. I'm growing to love it though - as you get older, you realize that it's it's all these little things that make up the essence of you. And I've always preferred wild flowers to the pruned, high maintenance ones. However, my grass was getting so long that I was afraid that if I left it any longer, it would be impossible to get it under control ever again. So I invited my little brother round for dinner. He mowed, while I cooked Carluccio's stuffed red peppers with rosemary-roasted sweet potatoes. The last time I made this, I swapped the breacrumbs for toasted pinenuts, and it worked beautifully, so I've stuck with this development now

Ingredients

Long red peppers (Romano)

Pine nuts

Sausages (1 per pepper)

Egg

Salt and pepper

Paprika

Sweet potato

Rosemary

Garlic salt

Olive oil

Finally, I managed to get to Ginger Pig this weekend and buy some meat. I used the most ordinary, original sausages I could find for the stuffing, mashed (sans skin, obviously) with an egg, toasted pine nuts, paprika and seasoning. I roasted the sweet potato with olive oil, garlic salt and rosemary, and put it in the oven first, then added the stuffed peppers after about 10min. Then it all need another half an hour in a medium hot oven

Venison, wine and a nice salad at Wyndstock Festival

I have so much to write about and so little time. I have just returned from Greece for one night, and tomorrow I'm off to the Cotswolds. But what I want to tell you about first, is the weekend before I went on holiday, when I was asked to accompany my friend, Astrid, to Wyndstock festival in the beautiful New Forest

Wyndstock is the sort of party that I imagine people from other countries imagine that people in the UK have all the time. If that makes any sense. It's all floaty tea dresses, Pimms with lemonade and men in pale linen suits wearing fedoras... everyone looking dapper, with an old-school, vintage feel

We danced to a swing band, met a story teller who told us incredible tales in a hot tub in the woods, made animals from vegetables... you know, the usual. Astrid broke her thumb playing midnight badminton and I got feasted on by mosquitoes, but apart from that we had a great time. Frolicking is the word, I believe. That's our vegetable snake up there, in case you were wondering. Considering the high standard of vegetable animals on display, I was surprised when someone decided to nick our one. Perhaps they were planning a BBQ 

We drank plenty of rose...

Spit-roasted venison...

And I stabbed a crab with a butter knife until it split into two (no easy feat) which inspired people to say that Hitchcock would have loved me. I took that as a massive compliment, as I tend to do when not sure which way to go... I hope it doesn't mean that I appear to have psychopathic tendencies, but who knows

As usual, my favourite thing was the simplest - a rocket and parmesan salad with an addition of fresh strawberries. It will be my summer staple from now on. Although the food was delicious, my only criticism is that there wasn't enough of it. However, I'm sure that the organizers will have learnt from their mistakes in time for the next party, which is in August apparently. I can't make it, but if you decide to go next year, then we'll have some good times. I'll bring the mossie repellant