It's a good few days into December now, so time to start thinking about what to make for Christmas dinner. I grew up in the 80s which meant that for our Christmas dinner starter we had to have Prawn Cocktail. Through the more sophisticated 90s this developed into Avocado and Prawns in Marie Rose Sauce and with the turn of the new millenium the menu became Smoked Salmon Salad served with dainty pieces of buttered wholemeal bread, sliced into neat little triangles with the crusts cut off, very posh. The rest of my family still have this. I however have brought trouble with my fussy ban on animal food stuffs. There is, however a good simple solution, which so far has been universally approved of by all it has been served to - soup. Quick and easy to prepare, not too filling and almost impossible to mess up. You can even make it the day before, so save yourself that little bit of stress on the big day if you're the kind of person who gets their knickers in a twist at just the thought of preparing what is really just a fancy Sunday dinner. Mind you, I suppose we ...

My new student is flying! Last week we made this amazing roast vegetable lasagne. I'd never made a roast vegetable lasagne so I was a little nervous about how it would turn out, but all went to plan and it was very tasty indeed. I'm a little worried I could be out of a job soon though, apart from putting together the recipe and a bit of advice on making sure the cheese sauce was smooth, she did the whole thing. Gonna have to do something really tricky next time or I'll be out! It could probably do with a bit more cheese, there wasn't quite enough saved for over the top, I like it  when you get a nice crispy cheesy topping. It still got 8 out of 10 Andy points, so a potential 9 I recon with this adjustment. Roast Vegetable Lasagne 4 cloves garlic, chopped Olive oil 1 red onion, cut into chunks and separated 1 aubergine, cut in half and sliced 3 courgettes, sliced 1 red and 1 yellow pepper, deseeded and sliced 15 mushrooms, sliced 2 x 400g tinned tomatoes, chopped 2tsp paprika 3 tbsp oregano Salt and freshly ground black pepper 8 lasagne sheets 8oz cheddar cheese, grated 2 oz butter 2 oz plain flour 1 pt milk nutmeg Pre-heat oven to 190°C, ...

When I was living in Manchester I wrote a series of posts called  Laura's Lesson's about cooking lessons I was giving to my housemate in exchange for piano lessons. It seems they have had some success, we went to visit Laura last weekend, and she cooked us a lovely meal, very tasty vegetable stew, with sweet potatoes and lots of coriander, yummy. I did take photos to show off my former student's achievements, but our camera has broken (sob!) and the photo is no more. One worrying thing Laura mentioned, apparently she was scared to cook for us! It seems we (well Andy) has got himself a reputation for rating meals, and she was worried her her meal would be judged. Hope this isn't putting other people off cooking for us! I promise we're not like some evil restaurant critics, coming round on the pretense of wanting to see much missed friends, then harshly judging your hospitality. Besides Andy gave the meal 8 out of 10, so you had nothing to worry about... erm. Anyway, given the clear success of the lessons I'm feeling more confident with my new student, who I like to call Erm (still can't quite bring myself to ...

Just days after one batter based British tradition another, more established one, comes along. Hurrah! February must be the month for them. It was only right that for Laura's lesson this week we should make pancakes, and invite lots of people round to eat them with us in what was to be know as "Pancake Hour (and ten minutes)". What a brilliant night. After a shady start and a few mis-flips cleverly rebranded as "Pancake Tapas" by Laura, we were rocking. I can't believe Laura had never made pancakes before! By the 43rd minute she had three on the go at once. Woop! So from 6.30pm the race for the title of Mr or Mrs Pancake 2008 was on. With a point for every pancake that was finished and a price of an old wooden spoon from our drawer there was a lot to play for. The atmosphere was tense. A variety of fillings were on offer, the traditional lemon and sugar, maple syrup, ice cream, bananas, nutella, and a few savoury options, cheese, hummous, salad, cream cheese, mushrooms and my favourite, salad cream. Mmm. The clever ones with an eye on the spoon trophy went for simpler fillings, just ...

I went to a lot of festivals last summer, one of the best was the Green Man. It chucked it down solidly for 3 days and I got covered in mud, but I saw some amazing bands, had a brilliant time wandering around aimlessly bumping into random friends here and there, and they had pies. Pie Minister pies. Mmm mmm mmm. When I got back I thought 'mmm... pie minister pies... yummy tasty pie minister pie... I want one'. So I went down to Wet and Wild (actually called Wild at Heart, but I prefer the idea of cows, so free range and organic they get their own water theme park- mooweeeeeeee!), bought some cheese and eggs and looked at their lovely range of pie minister pies. I felt like Charlie looking at the chocolate through the sweet shop window. Ahhh. So anyway instead of buying one I decided just to look at the ingredients of the Heidi Pie and well basically rip them off. It is pretty handy that stuff like this has to list each and every one of their ingredients. You can have a guess at the festival, but the sneaky sweet chilli sauce- I recon it's ...