It's getting chilly

"Mummy, I want to tell you something but I'm scared you'll be cross"... Children, as even the childless know, have an infinite capacity to surprise - but no-one was more surprised than me when Child 2 told me that she wants to be a vegetarian. She's 8. We need to talk about the reasons for this, but not 30 seconds before she gets on the school bus. So, to try and change her mind I made a chilli beef casserole.

Thick, rich, glossy chilli

Chilli beef casserole

2 onions, chopped

500g diced beef - I cut each piece in half again as they were a bit large

1 red pepper

30g plain flour

Tin of tomatoes

Tin of kidney beans in chilli sauce

Oxo cube

A large glass of red wine

Pre-heat oven to 180/gas 4. Fry the onions and pepper in a splosh of oil over a medium-high heat in a casserole dish. Add the steak and keep stirring until it has browned, then add the flour and stir well for another minute or so. Tip in the tomatoes, Oxo cube and wine and keep stirring until the mixture thickens. Finally, add the kidney beans and sauce, and about half the empty tin of water. Stir some more until it starts to bubble, then turn off the heat, put a lid on it and transfer to the oven for 2 - 2 and a half hours. 

Go all out and serve with rice, (blue corn) tortilla chips, grated cheese and home made guacamole.

Guacamole: Mash a ripe avocado with a good squeeze of lemon juice, a couple of pinches of salt and half a clove of crushed garlic.

Tarte Tatin

If one of your new year's resolutions was to eat more fruit and veg, then this is for you. Invented in the 1880s by those tarty Tatin sisters 100 miles south of Paris, I bet my version would barely raise a Gallic sneer as I've used ready-made puff pastry for speed. There are also some nifty savoury versions, made with tomatoes or red onions and cheesy pastry which we'll come back to another day.

I rushed the caramelisation - 7/10 for looks, 10/10 for taste

Tarte Tatin

6 apples
70g butter
70g brown sugar
A block of ready-made puff pastry
Vanilla pod (optional)

Pre-heat oven to 200/gas 6. Put the sugar, butter and vanilla seeds (if using) into a frying pan with a heatproof handle and heat until the sugar dissolves, the mixture foams and it starts to turn a darker shade of brown. Meanwhile, slice the apples (not too thin, not too thick). Take the pan off the heat and arrange the apples in 2 or 3 concentric layers, then return it to the heat for 5-10 minutes until the caramel starts to bubble up around the edges of the apples. Remove it and cover with a circle of pastry large enough to tuck down inside the edge of the pan. Put some slits in the pastry and bake it for about 20-25 minutes until golden brown. Leave it to cool until the pan can be picked up with bare hands, then invert it over a large plate - and pray. Eat warm with cold cream, ice cream, creme fraiche etc.

Save your dough

January - the month of austerity. Maybe Dave's nicked your child benefit; maybe you spent a little too much on Christmas; or maybe you've resolved to save up for something nice. Just don't spend it on supermarket or takeaway pizza when you can make your own so easily.

Made by children for children

Pizza dough

1 teaspoon easy-blend dried yeast
300g white bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
150 ml warm water

I use a bread maker, putting all the ingredients into it in the order listed above. It only takes 45 minutes, though I often make it in advance and leave it to rest in the machine until I am ready to cook. Pre-heat the oven to 220/gas 7 and roll out the dough to about 30cm diameter. Now add the tomato base layer. (Use ready-made tomato pasta sauce for speed - you can jazz up a bit by heating it in a pan with some crushed garlic, herbs, chopped tomatoes and a bit of sugar.) Then pile on anything you can find - sliced mozzarella plus a bit of Stilton, Brie, goat's cheese, parmesan, mascarpone, salami, ham, parma ham, bacon, olives, pine nuts, sliced tomatoes, mushrooms, courgettes, herbs, a drizzle of olive oil (chilli oil is my favourite)... Cook for about 15-20 minutes until it looks delicious.

You can also make it by hand: combine the dry ingredients in a bowl, make a well for the water and oil and mix until everything is incorporated. Knead on a floured surface for about 5 minutes, then cover with a tea towel and set aside until you are ready.

Chestnuts - not just for Christmas

Don't mess with Christmas or Christmas will mess with you... I spent December chirping about my plans for a foolproof Christmas - making and freezing all the food in advance - and (radically) planning to eat it on Christmas Eve, leaving me free to enjoy Christmas day outside the kitchen. With comic timing, I was taken ill just before the meal and spent the next two days in an opioid haze before being cut open on 28th. I was unable to eat a single thing for six days; my circadian rhythms altered, leaving me glued to Peter Andre at 4.00am and falling asleep bolt upright during the day. But amidst all this corporeal chaos was inspiration - in the form of Nigella and the Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network making delicious, fresh dishes which I longed to re-create.

Now convalescing (aka 'milking it'), I find that it is simple foods I crave. Things like this nourishing

Chestnut and bacon soup:

75g streaky bacon
50g celery
125g onions
50g carrots (I used butternut squash)
25g butter
1 tsp dried thyme
240g tin cooked chestnuts
1.25 litres stock (or water plus stock cube)

Melt the butter in a pan, add the bacon, thyme and vegetables and cook for about 10 minutes until soft. Add the chestnuts and stock, season well and cook for about 20 minutes with a lid on. Blend and serve. Reheat with a little cream.

Chestnuts - not just for Christmas

Floody hell, it's Christmas Eve!

2012: Memorable for the queen's diamond jubilee, the Olympics, The Great British Bake Off and the Christmas floods. All of it overshadowed (in my mind, at least) by My Christmas Cooking Marathon. Loyal followers will know that I have been smugly preparing for weeks, but I have recently been having this recurring nightmare where I am locked in the kitchen for hours at a time cooking, while the hands on the clock turn faster and faster, but the list of jobs barely diminishes. And then I realise that's no dream - it's my really real life.

Merry Christmas

If anyone wants me, I'll be lying behind the sofa with an empty bottle of cooking sherry...

With best wishes for a salmonella-free Christmas.

Feast your mince pies on these

I'm not the biggest fan of mince pies, but these have the most delicious pastry - like shortbread - which just melts in your mouth. You can't roll it out in the normal way; instead it has to be manipulated, but this is very easy (especially if you enlist some child labour). They are supposed to look rustic, for homespun appeal. The recipe comes from the Good Food website, where they have 265 five star ratings.

Mince pies

Mince pies

225g cold butter

350g plain flour

100g caster sugar

280g mincemeat

1 small egg, beaten

This will make about 18

Pre-heat oven to 200/gas 6. Whizz the butter and flour together in a food processor, then add the sugar. Add a small amount of the beaten egg - a couple of teaspoons - and keep the motor running until the mixture forms a dough (I had to use my hands a bit at the end). Now take a piece of dough about the same size as a walnut and press it into one of the holes in your bun tin. Fill with mincemeat. To make the lids, start with a marble size piece of dough, pat it out in your hands to form a round lid and lie it on top of the mincemeat. Glaze with egg and bake for about 20 minutes until golden. Leave them in the tin to cool for about 5 minutes before removing. Dust with icing sugar when cool. 

Oh yes you can!

Roast potatoes: For some, the most important element of the feast. You can get ahead by par-boiling your potatoes and freezing them now, freeing up hob space and saving your Christmas manicure from the peeler.

Ready for roasting

Perfect make-ahead roast potatoes

Bring the potatoes to the boil and let them bubble away for about 7-10 minutes until the centres are still firm but the outsides are getting soft, before draining and shaking them to rough up their edges. Then open freeze them (on baking trays, covered in plastic), before bagging them up. You can cook them straight from frozen, but allow an extra 15 minutes' cooking time. Put them into the hot fat of your choice at 200/gas 6 and cook for about 60-90 minutes depending on size and whether or not you defrosted them first. Turn them once during cooking.