( For more recipes, take a look at my Flickr "food" set. The previous recipe on this site was Rice with bacon and mushrooms, which was a fried rice based dish. )

Having got to New Years Eve, we realised that our local Chinese takeaway was inexplicably closed. (They'd better not be planning to stay closed on 3rd February as well...) But anyway, we decided to rustle up our own chow mein style dish, and added some green chilli for extra zing!

PART I - Preparation

You'll need to have the following ingredients to hand:

• Noodles (I used these Chilli Noodles)
• Smoked sea salt
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Crushed black pepper
• Chopped garlic
• Chopped ginger
• Chopped green chilli
• Medium onion
• Sugar snap peas
• 1 x Cup of vegetable stock
• Soy sauce
• Five spice powder
• 2 x Chicken breasts

Chop the onion, and finely chop the garlic, ginger and chilli. Slice the sugar snap peas into bite-size pieces. Cube the chicken and season it with soy sauce, salt, pepper and a little five spice. Boil a kettle. The supposedly "straight to wok" noodles still need a quick soak!

I used a large saute pan throughout.

PART II - Cooking

Fry the chopped onion in a little extra virgin olive oil and add the chopped mixture of garlic, ginger and chilli. You might want to season with salt and pepper.

Add the cubed and seasoned chicken. Once the chicken is cooked through, add the vegetable stock. I let it simmer for a while.

Soak the noodles in boiling water. At the same time, add the chopped sugar snap peas to the pan. Cover and simmer.

Once you're happy with the sugar snap peas, drain the noodles, add them to the pan and mix well. Sprinkle in a little more soy sauce.

The noodles just need heating through. A couple of minutes should do the trick.

Serve onto heated plates. Don't know if it's just me, but this kind of stuff seems to go cold quickly.

PART III - Eating

What exactly is chow mein anyway? There seem to be about as many recipes as there are Internet users. (Well maybe not that many - but quite a lot.) I think this may not be very authentic, but who cares! The combination of garlic, ginger and chilli is a fine elixir that can be used to transform almost anything into a tasty meal. I'd summarise this as being a medium hot, spicy chicken and noodle dish. Enjoy with an ice cold beer!

For more recipes, take a look at my Flickr "food" set.

One day I will sit down (or stand up, more likely) and really take the time and trouble to learn how to make a decent risotto. For now, I settled on a quick and easy rice based dish, which probably has more in common with fried rice - but contained enough mushroom and bacon to make it into an adequate supper.

PART I - Preparation

You'll need to have the following ingredients to hand:

• Basmati Rice
• Sea salt
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Crushed black pepper
• Chopped garlic
• Thyme
• Tomato puree
• Medallions of smoked back bacon
• Mushrooms
• Small onion

PART II - Cooking

So far as timing is concerned, I don't multitask, and the following worked out fine for me...

Prepare the ingredients so far as you can. Chop the garlic, slice the onion, wash and slice the mushrooms, and cut the bacon into short strips. Keep everything else within arms reach.

I follow the Delia Smith approach to rice, which takes about ten minutes, plus you let it stand for a few minutes afterwards. In this instance, I seasoned the rice with salt, coriander and cumin. Set the rice off and immediately move to your other pan.

Fry the garlic and onions in a little extra virgin olive oil, and while they soften, fry the tomato puree for a minute or two. Mix, and then add the bacon and mushrooms. Season with salt, pepper and a little thyme.

With any degree of luck, your rice should be ready at about the same time as the bacon/mushroom and so tip it in and fry it all together for a couple of minutes.

Plate, and enjoy with ice cold beer. In this case, I'd picked up a 650ml bottle of Singha Thai beer, which was pretty good - definitely happy to have some again.

PART III - Eating

As I mentioned above, ultimately I want to learn to make risotto, but like many people I've been put off by the thought of standing over it and slowly adding the stock, etc. Until that time, this rice based recipe is not too bad. However, an occasional wild mushroom risotto would go down really rather nicely, so I'll have to take the plunge and see how it goes.

The above recipe is not particularly sophisticated, but it was tasty and you can't go wrong with the preparation. My biggest mistake was to eat it while watching Airplane 2, but short of employing a triple starred Michelin chef in our kitchen, I don't think anything would have helped make Airplane 2 more digestible.

Enjoy!

For more recipes, take a look at my Flickr "food" set.

This is a very simple spaghetti dish, but very simply excellent! It's Spaghetti, tossed in extra virgin olive oil, with garlic, basil, crushed black pepper and sea salt. The finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano provides the finishing touch. Next time I think I'll try it with Linguine, but whatever the pasta, I'll definitely be returning to this recipe.

PART I - Preparation

You'll need to have the following ingredients to hand:

• Pasta
• Sea salt (I used a garlic infused sea salt)
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Crushed black pepper
• Chopped garlic
• Basil (I used dried, and it was fine)
• Parmigiano-Reggiano

PART II - Cooking

Bring a pot of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta to taste.

A few minutes before the pasta is ready, heat the olive oil in a non-stick pan. Grind in some black pepper, and add sea salt, the garlic and basil.

Drain the pasta and rinse under cold water. This appears to be a controversial practice, and personally I've never bothered with a rinse. However, a couple of the recipes I was basing this on suggested it, and it did seem to work nicely in this instance.

Add the spaghetti into the oil and toss until it's coated and heated through. I found I was wanting to add some extra black pepper at this point.

Sprinkle some sea salt over the pasta and use a rasp to finely grate some Parmesan on top. Mix again, and then plate.

Before serving, grate on some more Parmesan over the pasta, a final twist of black pepper, and as the French would say, "there you have it"...

PART III - Eating

I like pasta, but for some reason I'd never stuck to such a simple recipe. I've always tried some sort of tomato based sauce. After an episode of No Agenda where Adam sang the praises of Linguine and white truffle, I found myself surfing for recipes and looking at some different options that focused more on the pasta. Definitely something I'll have to try more of, although unfortunately, white truffle might be a bit out of my price range for a lunchtime snack!

For more recipes, take a look at my Flickr page.

Chilli Mushroom Pasta (Serves 2)

Not really sure where this recipe came from. Probably from a day when we planned on a classic spagbol and found we'd got no meat. Apart from the Parmigiano-Reggiano, I think this should qualify as vegetarian - and cheese substitutes are available!

PART I - Preparation

I used one onion, half of it chopped finely, the other half chunky. Slice a couple of handfuls of mushrooms, most of them normal, I held back two small mushrooms to be chopped extra-fine (see earlier recipes) and a few cloves of garlic, chopped coarse. Take a green chilli, de-seed to your personal preference, and I like to chop it extra fine because I don't like the texture of a stringy slice of chilli skin. Chop up a can of plum tomatoes.

Finally for the sauce, you'll need some tomato puree, caster sugar, oregano and a cup of vegetable stock. Have some coarse sea salt and some crushed black peppercorns within easy reach - obviously!

I like to use a large saute pan with lid for the sauce, and a large pot for the pasta; bigger the better to let it move around.

PART II - Cooking

1.) Heat a little extra-virgin olive oil in your saute pan. Once hot, fry the onions and garlic for a couple of minutes.

2.) Add the vegetable stock, chilli, tomato puree, caster sugar (decent spoonful) and a generous sprinkle of dried oregano.

3.) Bring to a nice simmer and add the mushrooms. Give them a few minutes before you add the plum tomatoes. Mix well, turn sown the heat and cover.

4.) Put lid on saute pan and let it simmer on a low heat for 10 minutes or more, stirring occasionally.

5.) Bring a pot of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta. Keep an eye on the sauce - uncover if it seems sensible to do so.

6.) Drain the pasta and return to the pot. Spoon in some sauce and mix well.

7.) Serve pasta in bowls and pour the sauce over. Shave some parmesan on top. Enjoy with an ice cold beer!