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Pancake Tuesday came early at the cottage this year. I always love to have friends come over to eat pancakes but with the Husband getting home from work late and a Little Missy who is decidedly not at her delightful best in the evenings, lunchtimes are a much better time to entertain. Sunday became our Pancake Tuesday so we were able to invite our three Rockmills Neighbours and, as one of the Husband's English Engineer friends was staying with us for the weekend, he - as well as doing a lot of washing up! - also got fed.

This year I made a break from the old routine (ie Spinach and Ricotta Pancake Bake) and, inspired by Julia Child's Gâteau de Crêpes à la Florentine from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, made a Gâteau de Galettes avec Poireaux aux Champignons or Buckwheat Pancake Cake with Leeks and Mushrooms (reads so much better in French!).

Although it may look like there are a lot of steps in the recipe below, it is easy to break it down over a couple of days. For instance, for dinner on Sunday I made the pancake batter and tomato sauce the previous Friday afternoon while Little Missy hung out at my ankles. On Saturday, child on my hip, I cooked the pancakes while the Husband and English Engineer went to the pub to watch the rugby match. During LM's nap on Sunday morning, I made the Béchamel and fillings, assembling the entire thing a couple of hours before our guests were due to arrive and landed it into the oven at 1pm for a 1.30pm lunch. (The washing up was all done, of course, by the Husband and English Engineer!)

This is a very filling main course so I just made a zesty Carrot and White Cabbage Salad and Beetroot Yoghurt Salad to accompany the gâteau. For desert? What else but plain pancakes, cooked to order and served with the traditional lemon and caster sugar. Enjoy your own Pancake Tuesday!

When I lived in New Zealand, cooking was my way of getting to know the (then Boyfriend, now) Husband's family and friends. Three of his sisters lived nearby in Christchurch and they, together with a boyfriend and various cousins, were regular visitors to our house. When I look back on the recipes that I gathered in those days, they rarely were for dining à deux; instead I cooked roasting tins full of Chicken with Garlic and Lemon, made overflowing pans of Beef and Chorizo Pie and baked large dishes of Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding.

Of all those recipes, this one for a Moroccan Lamb and Apricot Tagine, is one that I have returned to again and again and it was my first choice of dish to cook for Glenroe Ladies' Group last week. A tagine, is quite simply, a stew by another name, with plenty of warming spices and a sweetness from the apricots. It's one of those cheap and cheerful recipes, easy to make ahead of time - the flavour is, in fact, much improved by making it the day before you intend to eat it - and, as it uses a cheap cut of lamb (€11.50 a kilo from Hanley's butchers in Mitcheltown) , this is a meal that won't break the bank.

When I was small, we had rhubarb growing in the back garden. Whatever variety it was - we had sourced the crown from some friend or relative so there were no labels - it grew gigantic stems, as thick as a baby's wrist, topped by enormous leaves that we thought looked like child-sized umbrellas. I was never a fan: it was so stringy that it had to be peeled before cooking and I was always extremely dubious about any fruit or vegetable that did such a good job of shining the inside of the saucepan in which it was cooked.

Now, all grown up, I just can't get enough of rhubarb. When in season, this Irish vegetable - yes, it's a stem vegetable rather than a fruit - is easily found at the market or supermarket if you don't have enough in your garden and it is always reasonably priced. Over the years, the stringiness that so offended me as a child seems to have disappeared. I grab it each time I see it on sale (the crowns in our garden are still unproductive) and make sure to stash enough in the freezer to keep us going even when it's not available. I love Rhubarb Jam, Rhubarb Crumble is a great favourite around here, my mother makes a great Rhubarb Tart, sometimes with added apple, and it's a great fruit to use in cakes.

This cake I put together for a bring-your-own-pudding dinner at the Writer's house recently. It's quick, easy and ever so gently scented with rosewater. Do not use too much - you don't want your cake tasting of soap! If you don't have rosewater, and it is easily found in delis or Middle Eastern shops, then you could always substitute a teaspoon of dried ginger or the rind of an orange.

As a child, autumn was one of my favourite times of year. Going back to school was much eased by the fact that there were blackberries available for eating on nearby hedges, crab apples down the fields to be gathered and plenty of field mushrooms to be picked. This year, Little Missy in her sling for our daily walks, trying to grab any bramble that comes near her, we've been keeping an eye out for plump sloes and watching as the elderberries ripen, while eating lots of blackberries.

Last weekend we visited the Galway-based Schoolfriend. A chunk of Saturday afternoon was spent picking blackberries near her house, her three-year-old holding the bowl for us as the Husband, Schoolfriend and I picked the sweet, inky berries. Her 14-month-old kept an eagle eye on proceedings from the pushchair and Little Missy enjoyed the activity as their two dogs 'helped', grabbing mouthfuls of blackberries for themselves.

Back at the house, the Husband peeled and chopped a few apples and a couple of pears from their tree outside. The fruit was popped into the oven to soften while the three-year-old and I made a simple crumble topping: a big bowl for me, small one for him so we could both get our hands messy, rubbing the butter into the flour, then mixing it with the sugar and oats. We tossed the apple/pear mixture with a little sugar, a shake of cinnamon and the blackberries, spread the crumble over and landed it into the oven, just vacated by the Schoolfriend's Shepherd's Pie. It's easy to make dinner when there are a few people involved!

When we were in college, the Brother's Housemate came from a catering household. His mother used to make hundreds of superb Christmas cakes and puddings each year, cook for parties and events and, most importantly to us, make the best Caramel Squares known to students.

Living on an unbroken biscuit diet of Cadbury's Chocolate Fingers - our habitual study food (oh, the excitement when a white chocolate variety came on the market) - these were manna from heaven. Every time the Brother's Housemate was able to sneak or was given (we never knew, never asked) a box of them, we would descend on his house like a plague of biscuit-seeking locusts.

Although I'll never be able to make Caramel Squares quite as good - the circumstances will never lend themselves in exactly the same way - this recipe gets me pretty close. Very good to donate to any students you know, if you can bear to part with a few. The recipe is basically the same as the one for Tan Slice, which is handy to know if you discover at the last minute that you don't have any chocolate for the topping in the house.

I've always liked to bake. As soon as I was old enough to co-ordinate reading recipes and using a wooden spoon, I was anxious for any cake-making excuse - and most of them involved copious amounts of chocolate. Over the years there have been many good chocolate cakes, from my early attempts using chocolate-flavoured cake covering and marg to (when I started paying for my own shopping!) butter and 70% dark chocolate. This cake, however, although it may not look like much, stands head and shoulders above the rest.

I discovered it in the Green and Black's cookbook when we were in New Zealand. We had a friend who was coeliac so I was always on the look out for cakes that were suitable for her and this was a good one. Deep and dark and deliciously decadent, this was a gluten-free cake that didn't try to pretend it needed some kind of flour substitute. Neither did it need the eggs to be seperated and the whites whisked, something which - at the time I had no electric mixer or whisk - turned me off many a recipe.

This is a very quick cake to make: just melt, whisk, mix and bake. It can be served as it is with good vanilla ice cream or topped with a cloud of softly whipped cream and dusted with cocoa or grating of cacao. You can, of course, leave out the orange rind and spices but I love these flavours with the chocolate.

Here's a desert that's perfect eaten outside in the late evening sunshine - or to cheer up a rainy day. There's no real need for quantities as the amounts depend on how many people you are trying to make the strawberries stretch between, how big the glasses are and how greedy your audience!

Chop up the fruit before dinner and toss with the sugar so that the juices start to run then assemble the sundaes just before eating so that the biscuits don't get soggy. With each mouthful of sweet fruit, fragrant juice, cool yoghurt and almond crunch you could be almost forgiven for thinking that it's summertime.

Driving to Galley Head Lighthouse is a bit like a magical mystery tour. Although easy to see from a variety of locations along the West Cork coast, the lighthouse - like an ever-receeding mirage - seems to disappear from sight the closer you get. Eventually, however, after driving constantly south of Clonakilty, past numerous private property signs and along a low-lying road, protected on either side by stone walls, you get to where you can drive no further. The lighthouse stands at the tip of a peninsula, surrounded by the sea, and the lighthouse keeper's house that we were staying in is part of a two-sided structure that shelters the parking area at the front from the northern and western winds.

We got the perfect weather, opening the window shutters - no curtains could blot out the lighthouse beams - to sunshine every day. Hours were spent lying on the near-deserted beaches nearby but we got just enough of a sea mist in the evenings to justify lighting the sitting room fire. With such a fabulous place to stay, there was no point in going out for dinner so we shopped in Clonakilty, especially in the well-stocked Scally's SuperValu, and cooked in every night.

The Husband came up with this Lighthouse Ling, which was so good that it made an appearance two nights during our stay. You can also try using any other firm white fish but ling, which I like for its good flavour, was also the cheapest on offer on Scally's well-stocked fish counter. They also had Spanish asparagus so we tucked the spears into the cooking dish alongside the fish to roast at the same time, serving it with a chunky vegetable stew (thanks to my Kildorrery Aunt who gave us a box of veg left over from a post-wedding barbeque!) and some crusty bread for mopping. This is also good with some chopped chorizo scattered on the base of the dish along with the garlic.

A quick marinade to make, with herbs from the garden, while someone else is lighting the barbecue. Avoid chicken breasts - overpriced and tasteless pieces of cotton wool that they are - and grab yourself some cheap and tasty chicken thighs instead.

I normally allow two per person or one if I have a lot of other edibles on offer. Because I have a tiny barbecue, I always finish the cooking in the oven to make space for other things - and to make sure that the chicken doesn't dry out too much.

1 saucepan + 1 gas burner + 1 vegetarian + 2 omnivores (1 very much on the carni- side of omnivore) = very simple one-pot cooking in the campsite at night. It's not difficult to do with a small store of non-perishable picnic basket perennials – olive oil, harissa paste, sherry vinegar, grainy mustard, Maldon salt and the tiniest pepper grinder – and a few purchases from the local market and shops, including garlic and onions, sun-warmed tomatoes, the sweetest of sweet peppers, a selection of cheese, pâté and salami (to keep the meat-lovers happy), les oeufs biologique (organic eggs) and a few tins of haricot beans and lentils.

All suppers started with chopped onions softening in the pan, the Husband balancing and stirring, while I chopped garlic to cook next and decided what was on the menu tonight. Sometimes it was a tomato and lentil stew, other nights we had creamy haricot beans with crème fraîche, Pipérade (scrambled eggs in a stew of peppers and tomatoes) or a tomato bean dish, sprinkled with crumbled feta. We also ate salads of parsley-flecked Tabouleh, laden with chopped tomatoes and diced cucumber; plates of sliced tomatoes and mozzarella with fleur de sel; bunches of radishes, dabbed with butter and sprinked with flakes of Maldon salt; and raw milk Camembert, smeared on ragged chunks of baguette.

There was nothing that took longer than 15 minutes to prepare while hunkered down on our picnic rug in the late evening sunshine, still salted from an afternoon on the beach, drinking our latest bottle of vin de pays. Vegetables that had never encountered a fridge tasted sweeter than normal, especially after they spent an afternoon under canvas, awaiting my knife. But then, it's the holidays – everything tastes magical when eaten in good company with the flavour of the outdoors, spiced with the relish of ridiculously cheap wine and mopped up with crusty bread from the local boulanger. It's a far cry from a rainy Monday in North Cork.

Working Saturdays means that any weekend entertaining needs to be planned and organised well in advance, especially when it comes to Saturday night barbeques at the cottage. The Naas Cousin was coming to stay so I grabbed the opportunity to get a few of the cousins together. There wasn't anything complex on offer: free-range chicken drumsticks marinaded for a little while in my thrown together barbeque sauce (mix enough tomato ketchup, wholegrain mustard, cider vinegar, soy sauce and seasonings to coat the chicken. Allow to stand. Throw on barbeque.), some decent meaty sausages, homemade mini-beef burgers and an assortment of roasted vegetables (red and yellow peppers, spring onions, large mushrooms with garlic butter and lemon, sweetcorn with smoked garlic salt). The Husband normally does the cooking outside while I look after the prep in the kitchen as there are always a couple of salads to assemble. This time it was a Pasta and Flageolet Bean Salad with Sundried Tomato Dressing alongside a Green Salad with Blue Cheese, Nectarines and Savoury Seeds, dressed with Sweet Blackberry Vinaigrette.

The Naas Cousin arrived well armed with hummus, vine leaves and wine to kick off the evening and, inspired by my perusal of Piri Piri Starfish, I had made Tessa Kiros' Caramel Cake a few days beforehand for an easy pudding. The Little Sister came armed with pineapples for dusting with vanilla sugar and caramelising over a dying barbeque to accompany the damp, dense cake. To go totally for a sweet overdose, we served the cake and caramelised pineapple with caramel sauce (from Murphy's Book of Sweet Things) and - at this stage I had run out of cream! - dollops of natural yoghurt. The post-barbeque sweet feast was further enlivened by another contribution from the Little Sister - Vodka Chilli Chocolates from Green and Black's cookbook. She didn't tell us that she hadn't gotten around to deseeding all the chillis until a bit later...

When making the Caramel Cake, I didn't have any cream in the house - again! - so I give you my less rich version of Tessa's recipe, which uses extra milk instead of the cream. This keeps exceptionally well but make sure you don't pull the caramel off the heat too soon. If it has been cooked until it is a lovely dark chestnut colour then it will have notes of bitterness to offset the sweetness all around.

I think my mother has one of her legendary Pavlovas already in the works for the aftermath of the Easter family lunch but, if you're not going to be as lucky, these Chocolate Hazelnut Mini-Puds, adapted from a Nigella recipe, are well worth trying.

This mixture makes eight - serving our family of seven, with one left over to fight for - but it's a very easy thing to halve the recipe if you are serving less people. You do not want to over cook these mini-puddings so the easiest way to make them is to melt the butter and dark chocolate just before lunch, leave to cool then combine with the rest of the pre-weighed ingredients as everyone relaxes after the lamb (it's Easter - it has to be lamb!), sticking it into the oven while the table is cleared and the obligatory pot of post-lunch tea is made. And please do serve with the recommended jug of pouring cream - the combination of cold cream, gooey chocolate interior, crunchy hazelnuts (and, in the spirit of keeping this simple, I don't worry about peeling them) and crusty sponge is truly worth enjoying in concentrated silence.

It's not exactly salad time yet but, when a gloriously sunny Sunday coincided with the local point-to-point races and the family coming round for a pre-race lunch, I couldn't resist poking out an old bag of puy lentils (still working my way through two kitchen's-worth of ingredients!) to combine with the last of our Ushiki Kuri squash.

This squash variety is due to become a garden staple - we had a fantastic yield last autumn, they stored well and the skin is thin enough to be eaten, all good things from a small garden patch. I decided to give the squash a Moroccan accent, roasting it with a sprinkling of Ras el Hanout. The current blend that I am using is a sweetly aromatic sachet that I got while in Morocco, and contains, amongst other spices, black and white peppers, cloves, maniguette or grains of paradise, ginger and rose petals. You can find numerous recipes for Ras el Hanout online (including this one from Greg Malouf) or, for this recipe, you can use a mixture of spices that you find appealing - cumin, coriander, cinnamon and cayenne pepper would do it for me.

I served the roasted squash on a bed of warm lentils, which I tossed in a chilli-spiked, citrus dressing, alongside a large empty-out-the-fridge-and-garden Tortilla, or Spanish Omelette, filled with potatoes, leeks, broccoli and bacon. Then it was off to the races - although some people were luckier with their betting than others!

Sunday was family dinner day. One of the advantages of living in the countryside in North Cork is getting to spend more time with my family - and getting to try out lots of new recipes on them! This time round I decided to go with something very simple - Roast Chicken with Garlic and Lemon. "That doesn't sound like you at all," the Little Sister said suspiciously when I was talking to her on the phone that morning. "What's the catch?" The last time she was around we were talking about serving her rabbit from the back garden so her reserve wasn't entirely unwarranted, although unnecessary on this occasion. A good chicken needs no disguising. I just pushed some lemon thyme under the skin on the breast, tucked a few cloves of garlic and half a lemon inside the cavity and landed it in the oven, serving it with roasted carrots and peppers (livened up with a few chillies) and potatoes. There was supposed to be a side dish of Buttered Leeks as well - our leeks, grown from a bundle of seedlings that a friendly neighbour left on the doorstep last summer, flourished in the garden all winter - but, between breakfast in bed and flat tyres we forgot to pull them.

The pièce de résistance - I had to do something new after all - was desert. I had a long-frozen brioche that I was intent on using for Bread and Butter Pudding so, that morning, I smeared the layers with marmalade and soaked them in a chocolate custard. This pudding is a little like the Greg Malouf one that I made in New Zealand, but it is definitely easier to find decent marmalade nearby than good quality Turkish Delight. Due to my mother forgetting to bring cream, we ate and very much enjoyed this with copious amounts of natural yoghurt, I'm currently in love with the organic Glenilen brand that we stock in the shop and there's always plenty of it in the house. Better than cream, any day!

I have made this dish a couple of times for Pancake Tuesday as I love to have a pancake main as well as desert! One of the best things about it is that many of the elements can be made beforehand. This year I made the pancake batter on Sunday, the pancakes and tomato sauce on Monday, then assembled, baked and served on Tuesday.

I was feeding six people after work on Tuesday night - hence no pictures! - so I did a double mixture of the pancake batter and also doubled the amount of Simple Tomato Sauce. The ricotta and spinach filling that I use isn't a mile away from the one I normally make for Spanakopita and it's also good when used to stuff cannelloni.

Not being very clued in with dates, the first notice I received of the annual pancake flipping day was a display of bottles of squeezy lemon and pancake batter mixes at Morton's in Ranelagh. Pancakes really are one of the easiest things to make so don't bother with the mix - it's normally nothing but flour anyway - buy a real lemon and whip up your own pancakes in minutes with some of the recipes on Greatfood.ie - try sweet pancakes, crêpes, savoury French Galettes or even some fluffy American Buttermilk Pancakes from Bakingsheet.

With a few friends coming round for pancakes and hot chocolate (maybe some Mexican Hot Chocolate?) this evening, I'm using my old recipe for pancake batter (100g plain flour, a pinch of salt, 1 egg, 250ml milk and a dribble of melted butter all whisked together) to make a savoury Ricotta and Spinach Pancake Bake. Sweet pancakes will depend on the mood of the cook afterwards! And always remember, the first pancake invariably sticks and turns into a scrunched up mess. Don't get discouraged - just toss it onto a plate, sprinkle with caster sugar, squeeze a half lemon over and eat it to sweeten you mood while you get stuck into the rest of the batch. Non-stick frying pans have their fans but I wouldn't be without my very heavy cast iron frying pan - no flipping for me, you'd have to have wrists of steel to manage to move this baby so fast - which does a great job every time. Enjoy your pancakes!

To give my new cooker a good working test last weekend, I invited my family - Mum, two sisters, a brother and my Granny - to lunch on Sunday so, together with the Boyfriend and myself, we were seven. This, naturally enough, entailed several last minute phone calls home to see if they could bring an extra chair and several sets of cutlery!

Luckily the oven was able to cope with a very un-traditional Coq au Vin (a recipe that developed according to the foodstuffs I had in the house - not so easy to get extra ingredients at the drop of a hat when you're a couple of miles from the nearest town!) as well as two layers of roasting vegetables - one of potatoes, without which no family lunch is complete, and the other a mixture of carrots, onion, garlic, courgette and pumpkin. Amongst all the lurid-coloured pumpkins-for-carving on sale around the place, I was thrilled to discover a very decent crown pumpkin during the trip to the English Market in Cork City on Saturday, which also supplied me with a half-dozen meaty organic chicken pieces.

This recipe was inspired by Frances Bissell's Coq au Vin in her comprehensive Real Meat Cookbook (which also, luckily, contains recipes for rabbit!). I didn't have enough red wine in the house hence the mixture of red and white that I used - it didn't seem to cause any harm. The best dish to cook this in is a cast iron casserole as it lets you do the whole thing in just one pan, from frying the ingredients on the stove top to cooking it in the oven and onwards to the center of the kitchen table for serving. If you have any left-overs (if your little brother leaves any behind, that is!) they make a good supper, reheated and tossed with some freshly-cooked pasta.

Our last Bibliofemme bookclub - for The Rum Diaries by Hunter S Thompson - was held at my flat on a rapidly-darkening autumn evening. The previous evening had been cold and dreary as I walked home from my webmaster course so I decided to start a soup, leave it sit overnight, and then finish it off as the girls arrived. I'd recently come across Julie Le Clerk's version of Harira in an old copy of Cuisine so this was a good opportunity to try it out. I had made a meatless version of this last year in Christchurch but this time round I had plans for a complete meal in a bowl, stuffed with lamb, lentils, chickpeas and, after a look at Claudia Roden's version of the fast-breaking soup, haricot beans.

This is really one of those soups best made the night before you need it as the flavour improves so much by the spices having a chance to infuse the other ingredients overnight. And that makes life a lot easier if you have people coming round too. All you have to do as your guests arrive (or while one of them hoovers the floor - many thanks to the Connoisseur!) is reheat the soup, put a few warmed flatbreads or pita breads on the table and a bowl of natural yoghurt and just let everybody help themselves. This cauldron of Harira fed the six Bibliofemmers as well as a hungry - and very outnumbered! - Boyfriend, everyone taking their own soup from the table to their seat where we alternately juggled bowls and the two babies that had also turned up. Filling, suitably autumnal and - most importantly - hassle free!

For the last round of European Blogging by Post, I decided to make some Dukkah to include in my parcel for Petula in Italy. An Egyptian blend of coarsely ground nuts, spices and salt that you eat with pieces of crusty bread dipped in olive oil, I had never come across Dukkah before going to live in New Zealand last year. There it is often available at the many weekend markets dotted around the South Island and many food producers - Wild Country, elgani, Attitude Foods - make their own particular variation.

Back in Ireland, I was suffering from Dukkah deprivation so, inspired by Claudia Roden (again!), I used her recipe to make this version. Rather than dig my weighing scales out of the press, I used a normal teacup to measure the ingredients in the proportions that Claudia suggested.

You can make Dukkah in a food processor but, if so, be careful that it doesn't turn into a moist paste. What you're looking for is a rough texture so you don't have to grind the hazelnuts, in particular, too finely. I made good use of the Boyfriend's skill with a pestle and mortar, him grinding as I closely watched the nuts, seeds and spices roasting in the frying pan. It's much too easy to walk away, just at the wrong moment, and end up with a burnt mess.

The proportions below make about six cups of Dukkah but it keeps well in an air-tight jar and is really good tossed with green leafy salads, sprinkled over melted cheese on toast, on roasted vegetables or with dips like hummus or yoghurt. I've also used it a few times to revitalise sad-looking pita breads. Just cut the breads into strips, brush with olive oil and sprinkle with liberal amounts of Dukkah before crisping up in a warm oven. These don't take long so be careful when you're cooking them.

We've been eating the Dukkah with the remnants of the wonderfully nutty argan oil that we brought back from Morocco but avocado oil is also great with it (I've been able to find the Olivado brand in my local, normally ill-stocked Tesco) or, of course, some decent olive oil. It's a great snack or nibble with drinks. Just grab some crusty bread - sourdough, ciabatta or a baguette - cut into cubes, dip in the oil, then into the Dukkah and savour.

On Friday night two friends were arriving in from Cambridge in time for a late supper. They didn't arrive until after 9pm, fortunately, as the previous night at Mackerel and an after-work engagement party ensured that I didn't get home until around half seven. Walking home from town I nipped into Spiceland to pick up some pita breads and a tin of dolmades (rice stuffed vine leaves) and together with a few house basics - potatoes, carrots, chorizo, eggs - decided on a simple tapas-style meal with a Mediterranean flavour.

Once cooked, a whiz in the food processor turned the carrots into Spicy Carrot Dip, which I served with the pita breads and alongside some a bowl of natural yoghurt, sprinkled generously with ground cumin. The potatoes, chorizo and eggs all went into one of my current favourite dishes - a Potato and Chorizo Tortilla or Spanish omelette. I got over my long-term fear of the potato in New Zealand and now there's often a bag of organic spuds in the shopping bag. They have to be waxy though, I'm not yet ready to move on to the beloved Irish floury potatoes! When there are potatoes in the house, tortilla - or, as it is known in Italy, frittata - is a great standby. It doesn't take long to make and prefers not to be served hot, happily sitting around at room temperature until it is needed.

If you haven't had a chance to cook the potatoes ahead of time and you're boiling them as part of your evening preparation, make sure you spare yourself the washing-up and cook them the same saucepan as the carrots that you're using in the dip.

By the time our guests arrived I would have been ready but, emboldened by my success at getting everything together, at the last minute I decided to make a cake...and that's a story for another day!

No photos this time. The digital camera seems to have given up the ghost at the moment so we're imageless. Hopefully we'll figure out what's ailing it soon.

In the summertime I love to cook quiches and tarts - although I do have to admit that I often cheat and use ready-made frozen pastry. When I've time to actually make the pastry as well as the quiche (all too often it becomes a trade-off), I use Susan Loomis' short, sumptuous and food processor-friendly recipe but, last Friday, with our Scottish ex-NZ Housemates coming round for dinner, there simply wasn't time. I ditched the idea of making the pastry but, while talking to our guests from the kitchen and getting some salad together, I did manage to give the onions enough cooking time so that they were meltingly sweet and a really good base for the rest of the flavours - pungent smoked bacon and sharp mature cheddar cheese.

There are undoubtedly thousands of recipes and interpretations for Quiche Lorraine but my recipe always has plenty of cream and the minimum of eggs. That means that the sweet, slow cooked onions, smoked bacon and cheese are nestled in a rich, voluptuous custard which wobbles slightly when cut. This is not necessarily a slimmer's choice for supper but it always seems to be an appreciated one. If you were being very frugal you could probably use less cream and more eggs - but then it wouldn't have that glorious custard which, after all, is the main point of a quiche.

A word about baking blind: there are many recipes that don't bother to pre-bake the pastry case before adding the filling - known as baking blind - but, all too often, I've found that it means the base is disappointingly soggy and undercooked. When you're making a quiche or tart, just roll out the pastry first and use it to line the quiche tin. Use tinfoil or greaseproof paper to line the pastry-lined tin and weigh it down with - if you're hyper-organised - ceramic baking beans or, if you're me, some dried beans, chickpeas or uncooked rice. (I store these and just reuse them when ever I'm baking blind. I've currently got a jar of very well cooked barley that I use.) Bake the pasty shell in your preheated oven at 190°C for about 10 minutes, take out the tinfoil/greaseproof paper and baking beans, and give it another 5 minutes in the oven. It is now ready for filling and baking immediately or you can set it aside and use it the next day. As well as baking blind, cooking your quiche on a preheated baking sheet (just put it into the oven when you're turning it on) will also help to avoid soggy bottom situations.

The Tax Advisor had decided to have another bring-a-course dinner party and, because the Boyfriend and I have plenty of space in our current Dublin flat - as well as small but useful items such as cooking utensils, crockery, chairs and a table - I volunteered us as hosts. Although there were to be eight for dinner, we decided to avoid having as many courses as last time, and limited it to just an opener, mains plus salads, and deserts. There were still the usual "who's cooking what " emails doing the rounds and, only being just back from our travels, I decided to make something Moroccan.

Having always treated couscous as a salad or accompaniment, it was only during our travels there that I realised it is a dish in itself. Couscous is both a basic ingredient - a semolina, synonymous with Moroccan food - and a dish, which is the semolina topped with a stew with the rich broth served on the side. In Morocco, the stew is often cooked in the bottom of a special two-level pot called a couscoussier (check out the cover of Nigella's Feast to get idea of what it looks like) while the couscous is steamed on top. I had hoped to bring a couscoussier home with me but the morning that the Boyfriend was looking at them he only saw terribly light aluminium ones so we decided to leave it. But there's plenty of other ways of steaming couscous - I often use the microwave and, if you've the oven on, it's as easy to land your tinfoil-wrapped dish of couscous in there until it's warmed through. And, when you've a kilo of raw couscous reconstituted - with six boys going to be in the house, I was having lack-of-food-fear on Friday night! - it definitely won't fit in the microwave.

A bit of scouting around brought me to Claudia Roden's recipe for Couscous with Spring Vegetables (from her current book, Arabesque) which I amalgamated with Paul Gayler's Seven Vegetable Couscous with Dried Fruits and Ras el Hanout (Mediterranean Cook) and several of my own additions - more spices, some tinned tomatoes, a chilli and just a pinch of sugar. Luckily our friend, the English Engineer, turned up just in time to painstakingly peel a bowl of defrosted broad beans. Offering to help in my kitchen often means that you get landed with the fiddly tasks that I don't have time to do! I'm a recent convert to broad beans but don't think that there's any point unless they're naked and vivid green rather than wrapped up in a dull, tough, indigestible skin. The broad beans peeled, they were chucked into a pot of aromatic broth along with six other vegetables to make up the magic (and traditionally Moroccan) seven vegetable combination.

Despite Dublin selling out of Pimm's because of this current stretch of glorious summer weather, we managed - courtesy of the English Engineer and his flight through Stanstead - to get our hands on a couple of bottles, making a suitably atmospheric opening to a very entertaining evening. As a matter of fact, we ended up having such a good time that some people didn't get home until Saturday evening - they still didn't manage to finish the couscous mountain though! Note to self: a kilo of couscous is more likely to feed 12-14 people than just 8...

The Boyfriend and I are about to head off to Morocco in a week's time so I thought I should use up my last year's supply of Moroccan spice blend ras el hanout on a meal for the Writer - who brought me my first taste of spices from Morocco - and her husband. I decided to make my favourite Moroccan Lamb Tagine and, to accompany it, thought that I'd jazz up my usual plain couscous a little.

A lonely-looking squash in the fridge from the tail end of last season's shopping, tossed with some olive oil and spices (I used Ras al hanout but you could easily substitute a mixture of ground cumin, coriander and chilli powder) happily roasted in the oven alongside the tagine. While it tenderised and caramelised, I prepared the couscous, adding in some thinly sliced red onion (for tang), toasted pine nuts (for crunch) and dried cranberries or "craisins" (for sweet tartness). Inspired by an idea from New Zealand cook Allyson Gofton, I grabbed a couple of oranges from the fruit bowl, threw the zest on top of the couscous and used the juice for a dressing. Living in a first floor flat without window sills means that there's a dearth of fresh herbs these days, unlike last summer in NZ, but I had a little bunch of chives which I added to the salad although, I have to say, parsley (as suggested below) would have been much better.

Spiced Squash and Couscous Salad is good with a tagine but nearly even better in a lunchbox the following day, with a dollop of natural yoghurt, so you get to appreciate all the tastes and textures. This is also a very good salad for stuffing in pita breads or rolling up in a flatbread but do make sure that you serve it at room temperature - the flavour is very much dulled when it is refridgerator-cold.

Nothing strikes more terror into the heart of a cook than being told that a guest is allergic or intolerant to certain foods. I find that it tends to concentrate the mind, not - as you may think - on what you can cook but, rather, what you can't. Told that I need to avoid spicy foods, my brain invariably starts wandering through all my Indian and Moroccan favourites. For vegetarians, I start musing over soups with meat bases or, perhaps, Mexican Beans - cooked with bacon!

In New Zealand we had regular coeliac and gluten-intolerant visitors and, once I had wrenched my mind away from couscous, bulgur and pasta-based meals, there was no problem. Roast Leg of Lamb, cooked with haricot beans, and served with Garlic Potatoes and Roasted Carrots was a particular favourite. Other safe - and tasty - dishes were Frittatas, curries or even Braised Lamb Shanks with Chickpea Mash. Fellow blogger, Gluten-Free Girl is always a good source of recipes as well.

As a result, I constantly keep an eye out for good gluten-free dishes and, when I first came across Mark Bittman's recipe for a French flatbread, made with gluten-free chickpea flour, called Socca (or farinata in Italy) in an old New York Times article, my interest was piqued. However, getting my hands on the chickpea flour, was a little difficult and, between one thing and another, I almost forgot about it. An entry, however, on The Laughing Gastronome reminded me about the dish and, when I finally tracked the flour down - in one of Dublin's great Middle Eastern shops, Spiceland (also the source of large, wonderfully fragrant bunches of coriander for curries) - I was newly determined to try the recipe.

As the Boyfriend had put himself in charge of dinner that evening, he did all the actual cooking. There was some simple homemade tomato pasta sauce in the fridge, courtesy of his previous night's dinner, which he smeared on top of the cooked flatbread, sprinkling it with a handful of chopped chorizo before finishing it off with grated cheese for a Pizza-style Socca. We ate it hot and the base was very good, moist and supple, a little like polenta. This is perfect snack or light supper for your gluten-intolerant friends or family - and it's also tasty enough to be well worth cooking even if you don't have to cut gluten out of your diet.

Update 17 May 2006: As Maj pointed out in the comments below, chorizo may not be suitable for those on a gluten-free diet. Always check the label and, if in doubt, there's lots of information about non-friendly additives on US site Celiac.com.

Ever since I've discovered the glories of butternut squash, there's rarely a week goes by without it being added to a dish or several. As with pumpkin, I tend to use more Middle Eastern or Indian flavours in my squash dishes - cumin and coriander seeds are particular favourites - but, as it's been a while since we've had a curry, I turned to the January edition of delicious. magazine for a recipe with more Asian leanings.

Telegraph food writer Tom Norrington-Davies (looking like a terribly cute yellow-jumpered gnome in the photos!) did a feature on oh-so-seasonal root vegetables under the heading of The Comfort Zone which, somehow, managed to incorporate a Pumpkin and Peanut Curry. As always, I busily messed around with the recipe, substituting squash for the pumpkin, adding carrots, and stepping up the chilli content.

As with all recipes involving chilli, add as much - or as little - as you feel comfortable with and always remember that their strength vary considerably. I am speaking from bitter (albeit slightly warm!) experience, here, after my fingertips tingled for a couple of days the first time I made a Thai Green Curry. Now I do all deseeding and chopping chillies with my hands safely enclosed in rubber gloves.

It might be an unusual ingredient in a curry but it is worth searching out some decent peanut butter for this storecupboard recipe. In New Zealand we used to buy the most amazing peanut butter from Piko Wholefoods that they seemed to make on the premises. There was no salt or sugar added to the mix - it was just, simply, peanuts ground into a paste. Here even slightly substandard peanut butter gives this convenient curry a delicious savoury, nutty depth.

I have become a cast iron convert. A Thursday night dash into a post-Christmas sale at Kitchen Compliments on Chatham Street in Dublin led to me becoming the proud owner of an oval "Racing Green" enamelled cast iron Chasseur casserole dish (the Chasseur range is like Le Creuset but a little cheaper). Well, I started off being proud until I realised how heavy it was and that I had to drag it - with the Boyfriend's help - to an opening at an art gallery, all the way round the (very large) exhibition, to the after-opening drinks in a local pub, and into a bad Mexican take-away on its way home to my kitchen. It survived its eventful night out in Dublin and, since then, has been put to use on many occasions, some of which have, again, involved trips across town.

This Spiced Chicken Tagine, inspired by Julie Le Clerc's recipe for Spiced Chicken with Apricots and Chickpeas, was the first dish I cooked using my cast iron pot. Being a terribly lazy cook (and refusing to use a dishwasher!), I love when I can use one pot from start to finish. No special serving dishes for me, thank you, as meals normally arrive on the table in whatever they've been cooked in - a "Racing Green" casserole in this case.

One of the first guests I cooked this for - my cousin's husband - is chilli-intolerant so, unlike many of my recipes, this is not hot-spicy. The ginger and cinnamon give it more of a mellow, laid-back, warm spicy flavour. I normally serve it with roasted vegetables - carrots and squash are current favourites - tossed in a little olive oil and a sprinkling of cumin, and a Spinach Bulgar Pilaf or piles of plain buttered couscous.

As with all casserole-type dishes, this Spiced Chicken Tagine gets tastier if made the day before you need it. Depending on the chicken pieces that you use, this can be a little fatty so an overnight sojourn in the fridge lets any excess fat rise to the top and solidify so that you can remove it easily. If you're not that organised - and I rarely am - you can just use a spoon to skim any fat off the surface before you serve up.

There are seven members of the Bibliofemme bookclub and, every month, one of us hosts a meeting where we discuss the book distributed at the previous meeting. As I had picked the last book - Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider - all the Femmes were coming round to mine on Saturday and, in a change from our normal night-time get-together, we were meeting at 12pm. Normally we just have nibbles and wine - having taken a vow when the club started not to have anyone slaving over a hot stove - but I couldn't resist the chance to try out some brunch recipes. Although, having carelessly tossed off an invitation to brunch to six people (normally seven but the Artist couldn't make it back from London), those recipes seemed to be rather difficult to come by.

Despite being stuffed full of recommendations for other group events, Tom's Big Dinners didn't have one idea for brunch so I had to look elsewhere. A trawl through my collection of Nigella's books left me similarly lost but, somewhere en route, I had decided that eggs were an appropriate thing to have and, after a zoom around the local supermarket to see what was in stock, I settled on a Smoked Salmon, Cream Cheese and Potato Frittata (to try out my new cast-iron frying pan!) served with Mushrooms in Milk. This mushroom recipe, adapted from Denis Cotter's ever-useful A Paradiso Year: Autumn and Winter Cooking, is something that I remember my Nana making on the Aga cooker in Oldcastle town when I was small.

The morning of the brunch I picked up some small crusty bread rolls and made a couple of loaves of fresh brown bread. I had intended to make some chocolate muffins (I've rediscovered the muffin recipe book that Bibliofemme's Writer gave me years ago) but, as I started to weigh out ingredients, I discovered that I was almost out of paper muffin cases so that idea had to go out the window at the last minute. Just as well - I had to keep leaving the apartment to find lost Femmes and lead them home! And The Whale Rider? A disappointment. Which reminds me, I need to go and review it now for the Bibliofemme site...

Last week we were going to one of the semi-regular dinner parties hosted by our friend the Tax Advisor. The Tax Advisor loves to host - but he doesn't cook. For years now he has been hosting these dinner parties in his city centre apartment while the other guests come bearing food and dishes and, on several occasions, spare chairs!

For the first dinner in his new flat, there were eight guests. This time there was no point in bringing spare chairs as the Tax Advisor doesn't have a table. Or many plates. Or any serving spoons. Or a sharp knife. So, faced with such a lack of utensils, I decided to cook the dish that I was going to bring for dinner at home the night before. As a couple of the guests are vegetarian, it gave me an opportunity to work on one of my favourite meatless recipes from last year - Chickpea and Tomato Curry.

A trawl through the Asian Market on Dublin's Drury Lane furnished me with a large bunch of spinach - I had decided to turn the curry into a Chickpea, Spinach and Tomato Curry - and I got a similarly generous bunch of fresh coriander at Middle Eastern shop Spiceland, along with the tinned tomatoes. My spice cupboard was well supplied with all the ingredients for an Indian curry (mainly from the Boyfriend's previous trip to Spiceland) and, as usual, I had soaked too many chickpeas (from more local Middle Eastern shop Al Khyrat in Rathmines) the previous night.

I cooked the curry, from start to finish, in my large cast-iron casserole dish, which also had the advantage of being transportable, adding the garam masala, spinach and coriander at the Tax Advisor's flat when it was reheating (I forgot the lemon!). I also forgot the natural yoghurt that I normally serve with this although I did remember to bring a large pot of cooked basmati rice which turned out perfectly fluffy despite me:
1) not putting enough water in at first
2) adding more then having to take the pot off the heat to take it across town
3) forgetting about it when we got there, and then
4) landing the whole pot in the oven to warm up.
About the only thing that I did right was in following my rule to not stir the rice AT ALL. Basmati rice seems to be very good natured as long as you don't mess with it.

We got round the lack of a table by spreading a picnic rug on the floor and laying the feast on top. There was rather a lot of food with my curry only one of (approximately) eight courses - an assortment of Indian starters, bruschetta, asparagus wrapped in Parma ham, vegetarian fajitas, sherry trifle, French pastries with coffee and delicious sangria to finish. Richly replete, we all rolled home - until the next time the Tax Advisor decides to summon us to a co-operative dinner party...

Seeing as both Darina and Rachel have recently been assuring the readers of their cookery books that it's become very fashionable to entertain at home instead of going out - that, and the fact that the Boyfriend and I finally have somewhere to call home - we had some friends round last week after work for hot chocolates. It was a bitterly cold evening as I made my way home from work so I decided to supplement the hot chocolates with some soup.

With just 20 minutes before my guests were due to arrive, I crossed my fingers and opened the cupboard doors. After a quick scan of the ingredients available to me, and with one eye on the clock, I decided to merge two recipes. The first was a Roast Tomato and Lentil Soup that Judith Cullen had cooked at a Christchurch cookery demonstration but, having neither the time for roasting tomatoes nor cooking lentils, I took the idea of that recipe and added it to my speedy store cupboard saviour, Fran's Best Lentil Soup. A tin supplied the lentils and, if the roasted tomatoes were not available to me, I could at least substitute some decent Italian tinned plum tomatoes picked up on sale earlier in the week at The Best of Italy on Dunville Avenue in Ranelagh. No fresh thyme either this time round but, as this is supposed to be a store cupboard soup, it's probably not so bad to use dried.

Luckily, while getting milk for the hot chocolates, I had already picked up some decent Brown Soda Bread on the way home. We served mugs of the soup with thick slices of the bread and plenty of good salty Irish butter. A warming opening for a relaxing evening of hot chocolates, cookies and lots of chat.

Last weekend - the macaroon-making one - I was down home cooking dinner for my mother's birthday. As we farm beef cattle, roasts are a regular part of life at home so, as the kitchen was in my hands on Saturday, I decided that it was a good opportunity to make something completely different. On Friday night I dug out the cookbooks that haven't yet made it to Dublin - they're the ones that got co-opted by the Little Sister - and started leafing through them, looking for inspiration. One of the Avoca books had an interesting-sounding Beef and Guinness Stew so I bookmarked the recipe for consultation the following day.

I only glanced at the recipe before I went into the local town of Charleville but I did remember to get a kilo of stewing steak, half a dozen muddy carrots, a few heads of broccoli and some puff pastry, as the Boyfriend had suggested turning what was supposed to be a simple casserole into a slightly more elaborate pie. I figured that we would have Guinness somewhere in the house after Christmas so I didn't worry about getting that only to discover, when I started searching at home, that I had used all the Guinness when cooking the Spiced Beef on Christmas Eve.

Never being one to let the absence of a major ingredient stop me from trying out a recipe, I decided to substitute a bottle of red wine for the missing Guinness and ended up with a Beef and Red Wine Pie. I used a whole bottle of wine to ensure that there was plenty of rich gravy. Deeply succulent and cold-weather friendly, this was a good sturdy dinner for a grey, raw January Saturday and went down well with the entire family - apart from my teenaged Little Sister who mostly doesn't eat the kind of "horrible food" that I cook. As there were both broccoli and carrots in the pie, we just served it with boiled potatoes to soak up all the lovely juices although some crusty French bread wouldn't go amiss either.

Of course, you don't need to bother turning this into a pie as it makes an exceptionally good casserole by itself. On the other hand, if you want to cook the meat in advance - always something which improves the flavour - remove the casserole from the fridge and let it come to room temperature before you add the pastry topping and pop it in the oven. Although, I must admit, that I ran out of time (not the first time this has happened) so the pastry got landed on the hot filling and put in the oven straight away. Not strictly orthodox but it works if you're stuck or disorganised like me!

The best thing about being back in Ireland is Christmas in winter. Somehow - although my readers from the other side of the world may not agree! - cold long nights and short wet days make me feel Christmasy. It's that whole feeling of getting indoors and battening down the hatches for the miserable weather. Perfect for Christmas preparations! And driving home for Christmas surely isn't the same unless you arrive late, on the evening before Christmas Eve, to see the house lit up with all the lights on and there's lots of tasty smells coming out of the kitchen.

And that brings up to the food. At home, all the preparation is done in a mad rush on Christmas Eve and then there's only cooking on the day itself. My own special contribution to dinner - besides peeling acres of potatoes, chopping stacks of carrots, making two kinds of stuffing and mince pies, just a few bits and pieces! - is Cranberry Sauce. I was never a fan of the solid stuff that came in a jar but, years ago, I couldn't resist trying out a recipe from Simply Delicious Christmas by Irish queen of cooking, Darina Allen. That was the year the whole family became converted and I've made it every year since then although I've strayed far from the original recipe over the years.

My cousin won't be down home for Christmas this year and, when I was home a couple of weeks ago, I had intended on making her some sauce to take to dinner at her husband's family house. Alas, cranberries hadn't yet reached the shops so I figured that I had to forget that idea. But when I saw them in the supermarket this week I dived for a punnet. I was going out to have dinner (Nigella's Stroganoff made with good Kilfinane beef!) with herself and her husband last night so I brought along the ingredients and, while chatting in the kitchen after dinner and sipping our hot ports, made two jars of Cranberry, Orange and Port Sauce. The orange - only juice this time as I forgot to add the rind - is a usual addition but, when I caught sight of the port bottle, I couldn't resist adding a shot.

If you would like your Cranberry Sauce unadulterated, then just use 200ml water and leave out the orange juice/rind and port. This takes only a few minutes to make and, unlike trying to make Brussels Sprouts palatable, it is worth it.

In the timeless words of Clement Clarke Moore, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

I've been having more than a few Mexican moments lately with my chocolate and chilli experiments and I've also cooked several Mexican meals. The first was for a pot-luck dinner for eight in our house when some of the Boyfriend's college friends and their wives were about. This was only arranged that morning and when the Boyfriend asked what we should cook, I figured that it was the perfect time to try Nigella's recipe for Cornbread-Topped Chilli.

It's been years since I had a good chilli - I think I may have overdosed on my Tipperary friend's ever-present saucepan of chilli con carne while in college (he used to cook it at the start of the week and just leave it on the cooker, adding extra veg and beans as the mood took him!) - but this chilli had the intriguing addition of cocoa powder and I just couldn't resist the idea of another chocolate/chilli combination!

Served with tortilla chips, guacamole, salsa and sour cream this was a perfect dish for a crowd. The most of the meal is presented in one cooking dish, topped by a glorious browned wodge of cornbread. Unfortunately I forgot to sprinkle the cheese on the cornbread before I cooked it but it still tasted very good, especially the part which had soaked up some of the savoury juices from the chilli. You'll find the recipe for that in Nigella's Feast.

A week later, seeing the glut of pinto beans in my pantry, I determined to make some Mexican Beans. These fulfil all the criteria that I demand of my most used recipes – that they be easy to make, can be used in different ways and, most of all, taste fantastic. After soaking the pinto beans overnight, you just throw them in a large saucepan with chilli, garlic, onions, spices and some chopped bacon. Simmer until cooked and then serve what ever way you want. I've used these to fill tortilla wraps, scattered cheese over and baked them in the oven until they were all all bubbling and warm; as the base for Ruth's Refried Beans; as the bean component in nachos; and, with cornbread, as a soup - the original idea of the recipe! This quantity makes a large batch but it is well worth your while cooking plenty and freezing some to use at a later date.

I've been getting plenty of use out of the ras el hanout that I made fairly recently and it is particularly good with lamb. Of course, being in New Zealand, there's no shortage of the baa-ing beast although, as the Boyfriend told a former vegetarian friend after one such dinner, we only eat the ugly ones!

A little while ago I was cooking dinner - which I decided should have a Moroccan flavour - for some members of the Boyfriend's family. Desert, in the form of Greg Malouf's Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding with Turkish Delight, was decided on first so all that remained was to figure out a complementary main course for eight people beforehand. I decided on two dishes - a vegetarian (albeit Greek) Spanakopita and my slow cooked Moroccan Lamb and Apricot Tagine with Ral Al Hanout, with a large bowlful of Couscous with Toasted Nuts served alongside.

Most of this menu can be prepared ahead which is always a huge advantage when people are coming round for dinner and you have a small kitchen. The Boyfriend and I made the Spanakopita and Bread and Butter Pudding in the morning, putting them aside to be cooked at the last minute. About two hours before guests were due I got the Moroccan Lamb and Apricot Tagine into the oven. As always, there were plenty of things to be done at the last minute but, with all hands on deck, nothing got out of hand and we managed to feed everybody - eventually!

Pies truly are a New Zealand classic. Maybe it's because of the British influence and their Pork Pies, although colonisation of Ireland didn't leave us with any such culinary heritage. As I mentioned the other day, pies are eaten by Kiwis on long road trips - the guarantee of a good pie will encourage people to take major detours - and they are apparently the traditional accompaniment to a rugby match. The national pie is bacon and egg and, every summer, magazines and newspapers compete to give the perfect recipe for this picnic standard. Apparently a good Bacon and Egg Pie is dependent on you not breaking the egg yokes as you add them to the sliced bacon in the pastry case. Hmm...another recipe to try out at some stage in the future!

When I was small I remember my mother regularly making a deliciously savoury Lamb's Kidney Pie encased in shortcrust pastry. It was never steak and kidney, for some reason, not that I ever minded. For me the Kidney Pie, with bacon and sometimes mushrooms, was the height of culinary sophistication although, if I took a piece of it for lunch at school, I was bound to get someone going "urgh...kidney...disgusting!" I think I put them off their lunches more often than they managed to put me off mine.

But, back to my pie-fest for the Boyfriend's birthday dinner, the Beef and Chorizo Pie was topped with a thick homemade scone-like pastry so I decided that the pastry for the Chicken and Mushroom Pie should just be plain (bought) puff pastry. I must admit to not being particularly precise about how the pastry fitted across the top of the pies as, for me, the nicest part of a pie is where the gravy bubbles up around the pastry.

A search online for Nigel Slater plus Chicken Pie brought up this recipe for Deep-dish Chicken Pie which I adjusted to my own needs. The filling is fabulous, much richer by being made from stock than it would have been from milk (although I couldn't resist adding a little cream). Thickened a little, it would make a great filling for a Chicken Lasagne or you could use it as a pasta sauce or on top of rice or...

Yesterday was the Boyfriend's birthday so I decided to throw a small surprise birthday dinner - just us, three of his sisters, one sister's boyfriend and our two Scottish Housemates. The plotting and planning for this has been going on for a couple of weeks but, after pondering various options, I only decided on what we were going to eat fairly late in the day. My first idea was for a kind of Chinese banquet, heavily influenced by the fact that I'm reading a cookbook by Chinese Australian chef Kylie Kwong at the moment. That, and the fact that it contains a recipe for Sung Choi Bao of Pork. We loved this when we had it for the first time - and the second - at Indochine restaurant and it looks like a good dish to try out at home. I think I'll still end up cooking it at some stage but it looked like a difficult dish to make for eight. So, eventually, I decided on another of the Boyfriend's favourites - the good old Kiwi meat pie.

Pies are big business over here. You can get them at any local corner store or garage shop and they, rather than the plastic Irish sandwich in a plastic box, seem to be the food of choice for anyone travelling a long distance. Why I don't know. The only way they seem to differ from that typical 'hang' (otherwise known as ham) sandwich is that they're usually served hot. Other than that, the pies that I've had seem to be a matter of indifferent pastry enclosing mysterious meat filling and dried up gravy. Not necessarily a culinary classic - but, when well made, pies can be delicious. Never being one to cook a single dish when two will be too much, I decided to make a Beef and Chorizo Pie, adapted from Julie Le Clerc's Simple Café Food, as well as a Chicken and Mushroom Pie, inspired by Nigel Slater.

Simple Café Food and its successor, More Simple Café Food, were the origins of my accompanying salads for the meal. Fed up with my usual tabbouleh and couscous salads, I branched out with slight adaptations of Julie Le Clerc's Orzo with Spice-Roasted Carrots, Currants and Pine Nuts, Cracked Wheat with Lemon, Spinach, Herbs and Seeds and Roasted Purple Onions with Dried Sour Cherries. Although not a very extensive menu, I would have been lost without the help of one of the Boyfriend's sisters, on the salad-making side of things, and one of our Scottish Housemates who got stuck into the washing-up with a will and a way so that we were finished - just! - before the Boyfriend and the other Scottish Housemate (deputised to distract Boyfriend from preparations) returned from the local pub.

For desert we had a dense Chocolate Birthday Cake with cinnamon and chilli. I had just purchased this fabulous Kashmiri Chilli Powder from Aji in Christchurch and, being a fan of chocolate/chilli combinations, couldn't resist using it. Although both the cinnamon and chilli did add a depth to the flavour of the cake, it was not enough to satisfy me. More chilli the next time, methinks, and I might even pop back to Aji for some of their 'Triple A grade' cinnamon to give it an extra richness.

One of the nicest meals out that I ever had with my family occurred in a small, unpromising, cellar-type Italian restaurant on the Douglas promenade in the Isle of Man about five years ago. We were on a family holiday and, when the ages of the family members range from my Granny, still sprightly in her mid-eighties, to an ever-active obstreperous pair of children, then aged nine and ten, it is sometimes difficult to strike the right balance between keeping the kids fed and entertained while the adults relax. But this restaurant managed it very well. The younger duo were fascinated at being able to observe the cooking in the open plan kitchen and the older members of the party were kept laughing by a flirtatious Italian waiter who tried to insist that Granny had wine. They were no mean shakes in the food department either but my clearest memory is of the dish that my sister ordered. She was the last to be served but we were all impressed at her plate of lamb shanks, braised so that the meat was meltingly tender, falling off the bone when touched by her fork. Or touched by the forks of others at the table for we weren't going to allow her to struggle through such a plateful on her own!

Since then I have rarely encountered lamb shanks on a restaurant menu. I have, however, often come across them in cookbooks and have been amassing a collection of recipes in case some shanks should arrive on the doorstep some day. Recently, when some former housemates from Ireland were coming round for dinner, I decided to take the plunge. Peter Timbs Butchers in Edgeware provided me with four meaty shanks and all I had to do was figure out which way I wanted to cook them. As I had been going through an Indian and Middle Eastern phase lately, I decided that I wanted to go with something more straightforward and Tamasin Day-Lewis' West of Ireland Summers had just the recipe I needed. Her Braised Lamb Shanks were served with Champ but, as I am not in the least bit interested in potatoes, I decided to accompany the dish with Nigel Slater's Chickpea Mash. With Cauliflower and Broccoli Cheese as vegetables on the side and (another) Feijoa and Apple Crumble for desert we had the perfect cold winter evening comfort dinner.

When I was a kid, Bread and Butter Pudding was the desert that we all loved. I wasn't too impressed with other traditional milk puddings like Farola or semolina and often would walk away from the dinner table with my pockets full of secreted spoonfuls rather than actually eat a bowl of the insipid stuff.

But Bread and Butter Pudding was another story. I always seem to remember it being made in an enamelled dish. My mother used to scatter plenty of sultanas through the buttered bread slices before she poured over the eggy milk. My job, at that age, was to poke the bread down into the milk and ensure that it got as soggy as possible before it was sprinkled with sugar and whisked into the oven. That day I would even try to eat up my potatoes (another childhood foodstuff that usually got the same treatment as Farola and semolina) before tucking into a bowlful of the Bread and Butter Pudding. I loved the combination of the crunchy sweet topping and soft custardy interior, studded with plumped-up sultanas.

Although I have tried my hand at savoury Bread and Butter Puddings, it's been years since I had a sweet one. Then I came across a recipe for a Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding with Turkish Delight in Greg and Lucy Malouf's Moorish. Their recipe brought Bread and Butter Pudding right up to date, putting a decadent spin on what used to be a wholesome desert. Could I resist? Not at all. When we had the Boyfriend's sisters and cousins round for a Moroccan meal one night I decided that this was going to be the piece de resistance and it didn't leave me down. As I was chopping pistachio nuts for the couscous that night I added a handful of them to the topping for another layer of crunch. It's a very rich desert so be sure and serve it in small portions. To really gild the lily, you can accompany it with some softly whipped cream.

Sometimes familiarity breeds contempt and that has surely been the case with one of my trademark dishes - Chicken with Garlic and Lemon. This is a dish that I have been cooking for years. It gets trotted out at regular intervals if friends are coming round for dinner and for many years it, and a variation on Apple Crumble, were my fail-safe dishes for those occasions. In fact, a poor housemate that I lived with for a couple of years must have gotten well sick of the sight and smell of garlic and lemon!

For all that I criticise it, this recipe is a great one to have up your sleeve - and it leads to endless variations. I think I got the original idea from the ever fabulous Nigel Slater but I've been tweaking it ever since, adding chopped or whole garlic cloves, a glass of white or red wine at the beginning or end of the cooking time, not adding any liquid at all, sitting the chicken on a bed of onions and/or other vegetables and experimenting with herbs - fresh thyme and rosemary being two of the most readily available favourites.

It is the work of minutes to prepare the ingredients then all you have to do is put your roasting tin in the oven and let the heat go to work. You can make this dish with a whole chicken or pieces. If I am cooking a whole chicken I normally put a lemon half into the bird. If not, I snuggle the halves into the tin with the chicken pieces. I normally use thighs, favouring the dark juicy meat over the white breasts. For this recipe I am going to presume that you are using chicken pieces - make sure they come with skin and bones intact. Crispy chicken skin is one of life's pure joys. And do try to cook free-range chicken if you can at all afford it. The flavour is just so much better - and there's none of the associated guilt that you get from eating chickens that have had an unhappy factory life. Having said that, this recipe does give flavour even to the most pallid of supermarket chickens.

If you've ever seen photos of Morocco, you'll be familiar with the piles of vividly coloured spices in the market places. My one-time housemate, on a trip to Morocco a long time ago, brought me a mysterious little bag from one of the piles. She didn't know what it was, neither did I, but I delighted in trying it out - until the day I discovered that the spice had turned into a wriggling mass of maggots. Not that that would put me off trying the spices, however, if someone should happen to bring me more of them, I think that I'd just look over them more carefully!

My fascination with Moroccan food has continued, despite the maggots, and I've been experimenting with a blend of spices called Ras el Hanout from a Kiwi company called Alexandra's Bazaar. There seems to be as many variations of Ras el Hanout as there are cooks in Morocco to argue about it which didn't help me when I went looking for a recipe to make my own blend. Paula Wolfert, in Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, got a sample of Ras el Hanout from Fez and had it analysed in New York. That blend had a total of 26 ingredients, including the aphrodisiac Spanish fly and poisonous belladonna leaves. Suffice it to say that I did not intend to going so far so when I discovered a recipe for the seasoning in Greg Malouf's Moorish that only had 12, easily obtainable, ingredients I determined to give it a try. Greg calls it Ras al Hanout and, in the introduction to his version in Moorish (he's got at least two others that I've discovered so far) says that this is a humble blend, for daily use. He says that it can be used in soups and tagines, as a marinade, or with rice and couscous.

We were having five people over for dinner on Saturday night and, as I was digging through the cookbooks looking for inspiration, the Boyfriend asked if I had ever cooked an Indian curry from first principles. Well, with a challenge like that it didn't take me too long to dig out a few recipes that I'd been wanting to try. Indian food was particularly appropriate seeing as two of the guests - the Canadian girl and the Cobh boy - are heading off to India in November and, as they're leaving Christchurch soon, this meal was in their honour.

Normally I don't have much time for starters but when we were at the supermarket we picked up a couple of packets of poppadums and decided to serve them with some of our Lady Rose relish from the Saturday St Albans Market. The Boyfriend took over cooking or, rather, frying duties on the poppadums as I prepared desert (Feijoa and Apple Crumble) and thoroughly enjoyed himself. Once the oil is hot enough, the poppadums cooked in seconds and the major problem was making sure that they didn't burn. I thought they might be oily but, after spending draining on a few pieces of kitchen towel, they were fine - I've had far greasier ones from real Indian restaurants.

As regards the main course, the first thing I wanted to try out was a recipe from Nigella's Feast for what she calls Mughali Chicken, a creamy almondy curry with a slow chilli burn. She uses a food processor to blend the ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander and chilli to a paste but who would need one of those when they've got their perfect pestle and mortar on hand? Unusually for me, I actually followed the recipe - apart from her addition of sultanas. There's something about finding sultanas in savoury dishes that just doesn't sit right with me. To accompany the pale elegance of the Mughali Chicken I also decided to cook a Chickpea and Tomato Curry adapted from a wee Family Circle Step-By-Step Indian Cooking book that I picked up for 50c in the charity shop (a surprisingly good resource). Just in case anyone would be hungry after that, I found a recipe for Cauliflower with Roasted Cumin in Tamasin Day-Lewis' evocative West of Ireland Summers and fiddled with that until it was to my liking. With all those, and a massive pot of basmati rice, piled on the table there nearly wasn't any room for the plates. But we managed...

The first time that the Boyfriend's parents were coming to dinner, last summer in Ireland, was a bit of a challenge. It was intimidating enough having to meet the 'out-laws', as my Monaghan friend calls those to whom you are related by having a relationship with their son, but apparently the Boyfriend's father wasn't into spicy food. At that time, I was going though a phase where most things involved the addition of heat, whether in the form of a fresh or dried chilli or using some spicy hot sauce. So, the fact that I had to avoid my favourites made me do some serious thinking about what to cook. In the end, I decided to introduce them to that great Irish fish - the salmon. But, in order to minimise preparation and cooking on the day, I went towards the idea of making a savoury tart (sounds so much classier than quiche!).

As the Boyfriend was at the time working in Dun Laoghaire, he bought some beautiful salmon fillets from the pier so I poached them with a couple of bay leaves the day before we were going to have dinner. I also cooked the tart pastry base in advance, made, I must admit, from bought pastry. Being lazy, I find ready made pastry far more convenient and, I figure, it's either use bought pastry or never make savoury tarts! One of these fine days, when I have both my food processor and a proper freezer in the same country I intend on making several batches of pastry from scratch and freezing them so I can be an oh-so-organised cook. Well, I can dream at least...

Last weekend I had the same guests for dinner so, as it had been a while since our first meeting and the Boyfriend's father seemed to like my first attempt at a Salmon and Leek Tart, I decided to update the recipe. In my freezer I had several hot smoked Akaroa salmon fillets from a Vin de Pays food and wine tour I did earlier this year. I have often had cold smoked salmon, especially at home over Christmas time as part of the festive season, but never tasted hot smoked salmon before. The moment it passed my lips on the tour I was hooked. It has a more delicate flavour than the cold smoked variety and a lovely flaky texture. The friends that I was with were kind enough to buy me a bag of the fillets and that night a portion was put to delicious use with pasta and some cream. The sizeable remnants had ended up in the freezer as we were going away for a few days and stayed there, awaiting their fate, until the other night.

Although I specify hot smoked salmon in the recipe, you can - like I did the first time - use poached salmon or, alternatively, substitute cold smoked salmon. They're all very good in their different ways. I use a half-and-half mixture of cream and crème fraîche to give the filling a bit of bite but you can, of course, use all cream - or all crème fraîche . I also add some paprika, more for colour than flavour, and am sure I got this idea from Clotilde's exemplary Chocolate & Zucchini food blog but can't seem to track it down there now.

Last night we had a couple of the Boyfriend's friends staying over - giving me the opportunity to cook dinner for more than the usual two people. Given that we were abroad in the Southern Alps for the day there wasn't much time for planning. I toyed with the idea of my usual, but easy and delicious, Chicken with Garlic and Lemon for dinner but a chance encounter with a menu in the café where we stocked up on caffeine while driving back from Lake Coleridge gave me the idea of doing a Mexican and cooking my cousin's Refried Beans. So there was a quick dash to the supermarket to stock up on the ingredients for the side dishes - Ruth's Refried Beans are tasty by themselves but half the fun of this meal is in piling your tortilla too high with guacamole, salsa and sour cream so that the beans start to fall out the bottom. Messy but fun! Some tortilla chips, if you have them in the house, are good for the purposes of trying to keep the food in the wraps or mopping up the excess afterwards.

This is a recipe that my cousin once cooked, in a whirl of activity, for me and her family at the end of a very long drive. After a bit of begging she emailed me the recipe and it's since become a staple in my own collection. Since I've started cooking and freezing my own beans here, Ruth's Refried Beans are never too far away. This time, as it happened, I had the kidney beans in the freezer and just had to supply the tins of white beans. Normally I - and my cousin - use black eyed beans but last night I only had one tin of cannellini beans and one of butter beans and it worked fine. If you're making this for vegetarians then use vegie stock but otherwise you can use chicken stock. I never use real stock for the Refried Beans instead relying on powder. I've found Vegeta Chicken Stock to be good here in New Zealand but, if at home in Ireland, Marigold Swiss vegetable bouillon powder can't be beaten.

One word of advice, though. I once cooked this for eight people and had to use three pans so, unless the frying pan you have is ginormous then it's easiest to stick for meals for two or four.