Skewered

Welcome to Christopher Dos Santos to the follow list. Christopher describes himself as a "lover of knowledge and truth." Well truth I have in abundance, the knowledge bit is questionable. Welcome anyway.

As a family, we tend to be fairly traditional with food, British cooking with the occasional venture into the exotic world of the culinary unknown. In the last couple of months however, my two oldest sons, who watch lots of cooking programmes have come up with recipes they see and like the look of, print them off from the Internet and we proceed to experiment and have produced some surprisingly good meals.

Last night we did Chicken Skewers with Satay Sauce. We had to buy a lot of the ingredients which we don't stock for example: Fresh coriander, limes, red chilli, fresh ginger, egg noodles, sesame oil, fish sauce and unsalted cashews.

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe and of course as a professional, Jamie runs through it, mainly without thinking too much - he's a natural and he has the four stages of this recipe all going in preparation at the same time. I can't do that!

As the chicken skewers are finally laid in the pan ready for grilling, my kitchen looks like a bomb's hit it. Several pans, two blenders - hand held and kitchen top one, bowls - several, utensils - dozens, ingredients - a shop full.

Considering I'm not a chilli lover, except exceptionally mild and sweet only, I was looking forward to the meal not without some trepidation. However, it smelt lovely and the taste (one has to try the flavours during preparation haven't you?) were surprisingly pleasant and not at all 'hot,' considering the chilli and ginger involved.

The noodles were a faff but when it was all laid out on the plates it looked - well, fantastic.

I am delighted to report that all the hard work and cleaning up and cost was worth it and it was very nice indeed. Highly recommended. We finished it off with a pineapple mint pudding which consisted of pineapple rings (we forgot to take the core out!) with a paste of fresh mint and caster sugar and topped with blueberries and Greek coconut yoghurt. Yummy.

The recipe can be found at Channel 4 website.

Roast pork for tea tonight - very traditional with crackling, stuffing, roast potatoesand parsnips and fresh British vegetables, with gravy of course. What did you have for tea?

Cry for Help by John C Desmond

To whoever finds this note.

Me and twenty-three others
are trapped in a large pie
at King's.
Take this to Special Branch
and earn yourself a
nest egg reward.
Blackbird.

Chat soon

Ta-ra.