Have you tried a new recipe lately? Come and link it/talk about it! Let's have a foodie chat

[Mintyy]

I am looking to expand my repetoire .

Tonight's effort (Delia's chicken basque with pancetta instead of chorizo and a sneaky hidden courgette)is still cooking but smelling good.

Tell us all about your recent culinary triumphs or disasters.

Ok then Mintyy, this sounds like an interesting kind of thread .

Delia's Chicken Basque recipe is supposedly one-pot but it let me down! I browned the chicken joints (thighs and drumsticks) in butter in a frying pan and gave them a good long time and got them nice and brown. Then you are supposed to put them on top of the vegetables and rice which you have got cooking in a separate lidded casserole on the stove top. Which I did. Leave for 40-50 mins til rice has absorbed all liquid.

So I did all that but chicken still not cooked through properly! Had to remove from casserole and give another quick blast in a hot frying pan to make sure that all the meat close to the bone was properly done.

Was tasty though.

Well as long as it tasted good who cares what went on behind the scenes

I riffed off a Riverford recipe that came in our meat box this week and made black beans, pork and kale braised in ale on Sunday in the slow cooker. It was flavoured with fennel seeds which was really different and delicious. Best thing was that a 500g bag of beans, 200g bag of kale and a 600g pork joint made about 12 very generous servings! Freezer stocked up nicely and DS (14 months) liked it too, mashed up a bit.

I bought the Dan Lepard baking book "short and sweet" last week and made the best loaf of white bread I've ever managed. Was considering a bread maker but not sure we need one now!! Also a lemon poppyseed cake that has 75g of ground oats added with the flour that seemed to make it extra delicious. I ran out of poppyseeds so made it up with black sesame seeds... V pleased with the outcome and I brought it round to a MNer who I met on here who has just moved a couple of miles away.

Made roasted aubergine with fried onion and lemon from Ottolenghi's Jerusalem at the weekend. It had raw lemon and chili chopped up on it but was surprisingly tasty. Recipe is http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/09/aubergine-lemon-belly-pork-recipes. I skipped the sumac, and used dried chili flakes instead of fresh, but was still delish.

From the same book also made courgette and tomato salad (veg are roasted but served cold in yoghurty dressing). Again sounded a bit strange to me but was delish.

Very similar to chicken basque is Delia's moroccan baked chicken with chickpeas and rice. Has never ever failed me.

raspberry and bramble trifle is what I'm making for pudding on Sunday! I'll let you know...

I've got Dan Lepard's book too! I'm going to make the uppercrust apple pie type thing in it for Sunday. From that book I've also made the black bread, the banana fudge cookies, and the marmalade flapjack, and the blueberry almond bar (though I have that recipe from the newspaper column) etc etc. It is a most brilliant book.