We weren’t cooking, we were hosting for my vegan chef friend who used to blog here but is presently on hiatus.

I think it was a good evening. We had an interesting blend of people, who enjoyed our chef’s food. Our guests were a mix of vegans and not. For an evening, we had a house full of people who had never been here before.

In order to get the house ready we had spent about a week tidying clutter away, and I spent the Saturday hoovering, dusting and laying tables. Our guests didn’t seem disgusted by the state of our house, but then, as we learned on Come Dine With Me, they don’t usually express their disgust to your face! (And they weren’t allowed in as many rooms as the CDWM guys!)

Some things I learned:

* if I borrow a table and six chairs, I can easily seat 16 people for dinner in our house.

* We already have enough cutlery, crockery, glassware, candles, table linen without borrowing any more (!)

* in November, we need to run the heating all day to get the house tolerably warm

* if you deadbolt the kitchen door and put a camping table up against it you can get an extra prep surface. But it will be uncomfortably low down.

Some things that were hiccoughs along the way:

Boiling enough water to feed gnocchi to 16 people takes a looong time. They had to be cooked in separate batches because some of them were gluten free, so we needed two pans of boiling water. The gnocchi had been made ahead and frozen and needed to be plunged into large pans of boiling water. Getting 20l of water to the boil in a domestic kitchen is a time consuming challenge.

The second thing that held us up was plate warming. This is all the more important in our house because our kitchen is unheated and the cupboards fix directly to the walls. In winter, some of our cupboards are colder than our fridge. Our plates are often icy. There’s no point getting the food good and warm if you then By the time we needed warm plates, the oven was very hot cooking puff pastry, and the sink was full of used pots and pans. We actually warmed plates in the end by wetting them and microwaving them, all the while worrying this might break them.

Two of our guests were the hosts of North Nott’s Clarkies Supperclub (last few spaces remaining at their April event!). We had been worried they might be hostile to competition, but that wasn’t the case at all. It seems there is plenty of market share available for another supper club in the Nottingham neck of the woods – in fact there doesn’t appear to be any other one currently running anywhere in the East Midlands. The Clarkies have said they are keen for others to set up just so they have an opportunity to go and eat out instead of hosting for a change.

They had suggestions for the platewarming problem – buy a hostess trolley. They’re pricey new, but there does seem to be a steady supply of really cheap ones on eBay.

Which leads me to my conclusion. Would I do this again? Is it worth buying a hostess trolley off eBay? So far, I only have experience of hosting and not cooking. At our last event, our chef partner did all the cooking, devised the menu, and did all the publicity, mostly through the very obliging Nottingham Vegan website. I’m not sure I could cook as well as our chef, nor present the food as well, nor work out such an interesting menu.

Certainly working as a teacher I could not run an event in term time, as the prep and publicity would take too long. Do I want to spend half terms hosting a restaurant in my house?

If you do it regularly, it does seem to take over your house a little. In her book, Kerstin Rodgers confesses she’s had to move her entire life into the bedroom of her flat as her sitting room is dominated now by tables and chairs. In conversation with the Clarkies, it seems they have had to give over a spare bedroom to holding the folding chairs, tables, extra dinner services and linen they need.

Do you ever make any money from it? We were on a profit share basis with our chef partner and at the end of the evening divvied up the takings. And we got a nice handful of tenners in return for our efforts. We had incurred some cost – heating, and professional help in cleaning up ready for our guests – so we comfortably broke even. But the temptation to buy ever more things to make the evening go better – cooking kit, serving kit, must mean if you do it regularly, you incur costs. Would it ever get to the point where you made money? I doubt it. I guess most people who do it, do it for the love of food and the interesting times you end up with.

Will we do it again? I have not ruled it out forever, but I am sure as heck going to try and get teaching a bit more sorted out before I have another go myself. So certainly ruling it out for PGCE year and (hopefully) NQT year to summer 2013.

Last night at Pudding club, I made Osso Buco with polenta.

Normally I would doctor a recipe so that it had no more than half a clove of garlic per finished portion. Last night, my husband was not eating with us so I threw caution to the wind, and made it as per recipe, four cloves of garlic for three people, plus the gremolata. The recipe called the gremolata, a garnish of chopped parsley, lemon zest and raw garlic, an essential part of the dish. Without that warning, I would probably have not made it, because I know that raw garlic almost always has unpleasant effects on my digestion, not least horrible burps, heart burn and the sort of acid indigestion that leads to me waking up traumatically feeling like I’m drowning in bile. My only real cure on nights like that is to trough a packet of gaviscon and spend a few hours trying sleep sitting upright.

I should have trusted my instinct, because that’s exactly what happened! After feeling garlic-sick all evening, I could only finally go to bed without problems at gone 4 in the morning.

At least I now know for certain that I don’t like and cannot eat gremolata!

As for those websites that see raw garlic as a cure for heartburn, well!

I made the osso buco in the first place really only because the butcher didn’t have any lamb shanks when I ordered and suggested this as a substitute, stewed, bone-in, meat.

Not a huge fan of polenta as a side dish either.

We have had a number of restaurant meals since I resolved to start writing reviews, and, erm, no reviews yet. So I thought I would write a list as a warm up. This is non-exhaustive, and I am sure I will miss out loads of places we like in my haste to write something – anything!

Local to us in Sherwood

Sherwood’s restaurant scene is one of the key reasons we chose this awesome suburb when we bought our house. There is such a glorious range of eateries just a few hundred metres from our front door, and as often as not you can just turn up and eat at any of them without booking on those nights when the Hob Fairy has deserted you.

La Capanna - lovely Italian food, pasta and meat dishes mainly but I see they have started doing pizza as well. Regular specials and a permanent menu. Have the stroganoff if it’s on the board, otherwise I almost always have the pâté con crostini and the tagliatelle chef special. House wine is in litre bottles, which is sometimes a surprise.

Le Mistral – small and friendly French restaurant chain operating in a few counties near here. Good wine list. Small, tasty menu. Good value.

Rajah – our local curry house. V tasty. Good for veggies too.

Up in the other direction from home, on the edge of Mapperley Top, is the Bread and Bitter, fab pub with food, and definitely in the category of “should go here more often.”

Panda  - not the best food in the world but cheap and tasty and just right for when it’s Chinese you fancy.

City centre

Yammas - P’s sister had her birthday in their upstairs room, and we’ve been itching to go back since. Greek, meze style restaurant, food lovely, not too pricey, good and quick for a pre-cinema bite. On our last visit they did try and get us to order a little more food than you strictly speaking need, ie more than one meze main per person, but backed off when we said we were in a hurry and on a diet. (less convincing when you have puddings)

French Living - definitely my favourite of the French restaurants in town, but I tend to find it a little on the pricey side as I get carried away in the wine pages. Other options are Petit Paris and the other Nottingham Le Mistral, but by choice for me it is French Living. There is a really authentic French vibe about the place and all the staff are fluent French speakers, which gives me a little chance to show off slightly. It’s often the place we go ahead of a French trip to get P back in the mood of speaking French.  Open lunchtime and evenings, and although every time we have eaten there has been as a walk-in, we are always made to feel as if we were lucky to have got a table without booking.

Aubrey’s Creperie - great for lunch or an early, pre 6pm dinner, this creperie is valiantly trying, almost single handedly, to regenerate the seriously faded West End Arcade. They have super crepes, French cider, will cater gluten free or vegan if asked, and have delicious food. The place is tiny, and it sometimes takes a while to get fed, but it’s worth the wait.

Erm, right. List to be continued.

I’m by no means veggie, but we try and have two meat-free evening meals a week.

Here are some of the things we eat.  (These are on the pink cards in my card index meal planning box… that has pretty much been gathering dust for the last month.) Many of these things are categories rather than specific recipes.

Pie.  Onion or mushroom and stilton.

Quiche. This old Jewish recipe is a particular fave. But I also like quiche that’s mostly tomato – spread tom purée on the bottom of the pastry case before adding the rest of the filling for more tomatoey oomph.

Patates yahni me ellis – a fab greek potato stew, dead simple, store cupboard ingredients, packed with flavour, also vegan.

Dahl. Amongst the first things I blogged about here – the recipe is around halfway down the page. Vegan. I’ll confess, I’m not a huge pulses fan, and I often struggle to eat an entire plate of lentils of any sort of cooking, but dahl is pretty good. As is hummus, which is easy to make yourself, especially if you start with tinned, cooked chickpeas.

Soup.  Leek and potato à la Julia Childs, I made a lot after seeing Julie and Julia. But caution – the recipe calls for parmesan rinds, and if it’s called parmesan, it’s not veggie! (this also means many pestos are surprisingly not veggie.) Other soups that go down well are mushroom, roasted tomato,  things with those little tiny pasta pieces like orzo, and things made with that bag of mixed things in the pulses aisle called soup mix, things like lentils, pearl barley and split peas in.  Pea soup is also a good one, but I usually make pea and ham, so that’s not a veggie night one.

Pasta bake, eg this Simon Hopkinson special that needs you to get almost every saucepan dirty. (Srsly, read the recipe. A saucepan for heating the milk. One for making the roux. One for cooking the pasta, along with a sieve and a bowl.  An oven dish, another bowl)

Noodle salad with asian peanut dressing. This was on the meal plan for this week, and the ingredients are slowly rotting, uneaten, in the fridge still.

Things many veggies are sick to death of, as they are often the only choice. Mushroom risotto. Stuffed peppers. Stuffed mushrooms.  All nice things to have occasionally, however.

Definitely experiment with the grains: couscous, pearl barley, bulghar wheat or quinoa. All need cooking with something like stock to stop them being boring, but you can use this pilaf recipe with any of them, or rice.

Experiment with interesting vegetables, eg fennel.

Make your own pizza.

Roast tomatoes are awesome with anything – how about grilled halloumi and sweetcorn fritters? Or with boiled lentils, which have been jazzed up as follows: finely chop an onion and garlic and soak in red wine vinegar as the lentils boil in stock. Add a dollop of sweet chilli sauce and stir through the lentils.

Stir fry.

Any kind of salad, but we like Greek salad especially.

Fritatta. Omelette.

Roasted aubergine curry, eg this one from Come Dine With Me.  (This, along with the stuffed marrows I’ve done variously, are things that I have cooked and then for some reason not been able to face eating!)

I cooked it for our dinner party on Saturday, and apart from it tying up your oven for an entire day ((or a slow cooker if you have one. I’m almost considering getting a slow cooker again just for this!)), it’s a really good dinner party dish. I had cooked the starter and pudding the day before, and it came out of the oven in good time to let me make the canapés in the half-hour before the guests arrived.

As I put the starter out, I set the fire under a big pan of potatoes which would eventually become mustard mash (potatoes with the skins still on, but cut smaller; wholegrain mustard; butter and something creamy – cream, yoghurt or quark, whatever was in the fridge). Then about halfway through the spud cooking time, I put prepared French beans and broccoli florets into boiling water. The pork had been ready since about 6pm, so I put the jug of gravy sauce into the microwave to boil it, stirred it through the meat, then brought out the meat, mash and veg in big steaming pots for people to help themselves.

The main recipe I read was Matt Tebbut’s, from last September’s Olive magazine, reproduced here. We’re not terribly seafoody people, and some of our guests had specifically said no fish, so no clams. Reading around on the internet found an enormous variety of different rubs and sauces, but the essential thing seemed to be that anything vaguely marinadey would do. So I rubbed mine the night before with salt and sugar, then on the day, improvised a marinade. It included: chopped onions, shallots and garlic; HP brown sauce, tomato purée, red wine vinegar, sherry ((I love sherry)), sugar, Dijon mustard. The lot was whisked together in a big lidded cast-iron casserole and the meat joint was wiped of its salt and plonked on top. I kept opening it up during the day to see how it was getting along, and ended up worrying it wasn’t cooking quickly enough. It got 7 hours in total, and each time I looked at it, I turned it up a bit, so it got 3 hours at 140 deg, a few more at 150 and had the last two hours at 180. It could well have been fine at the lower temperature, but didn’t seem harmed by the higher. I think this is a fairly forgiving dish. Each time I looked, I also basted, by spooning the juices over the side.

In terms of it being everywhere, it’s on the Clarkies supperclub September menu, for starters (their mixed grill sounds fab!)

And this evening I have been reading through the back posts on the blog of one of the Great British Bake Off contestants, Mary-Anne – and there was a gorgeous looking version made with apples, which sounds like a very good combination and which I am itching to try out.

So, pulled pork has a lot going for it. Delicious, cheap, flexible… but one final benefit, given that I am now starting to think with my “back to school” head on, is that it looks to be very easily doable either on a prepare ahead basis – make the marinade the night before and leave it cooking in the oven during the day on a timer – or that it looks eminently freezable. Make it at the weekend, and make ghost portions for the following week.

Mary-Anne on the GBBO is one of my favourite contestants, and her blog is top notch. Special shout out for her gorgeous looking and sounding Apple Rose Tarts.

Recipe here, and the improvements I made last time were definitely worth repeating – ie make a vanilla mascarpone and rather than glazing the tarte with apricot jam, slightly reduce the spicy red wine used to poach the pears, and paint that on with a pastry brush.

It’s one of the last weekends before term begins, so we are having a little soirée and I’ve gone completely over the top with the food.

• Peach Kir royale on arrival
• Canapés – roasted tomato tartlets and fig and goats cheese mini-croissants (*)
• Chicken liver mousse topped with parsley jelly with home made bread
• Pulled pork with mustard mash and green veg (*)
• Pear and chocolate tarte
• Coffee with home-made after dinner mints, earl grey truffles

In a sign of how badly behind with my reading I am, the starred recipes are inspired by September Olive magazine. That’s September, 2010.

The earl grey truffles are recovered from the hateful ganache made to top the awful cake I made last weekend that no-body apart from me would eat. Half of it went into work with P and has been eaten by his colleagues, and I ate the other half myself.

Cooking for dinner parties is so much more fun a) without a camera crew and b) when you can spread it out over several days.

Our chef-partner has begun setting up a website for the series of events she is cooking for this Autumn, including a sample menu page. And whilst the dishes there are not necessarily those she will be cooking on the night, as seasonality is an important factor, they do look pretty damn amazing.

My only concern with the Stripey Cat diet is that I know our hostess is much more able to eat chilli and garlic than we are – we are fast turning into People Who Like Garlic But It Doesn’t Like Us. (of which, another blogpost sometime soon)

Less vegan, we’ve also secured tickets for Clarkies in October, so we will be able to see how the only supper club in Notts does things (although their style – including a choice of three dishes for each course – seems to me to be pretty hard work!)

EDIT: Clarkies have got in touch on Facebook to say they DO do vegan food too – my apols for missing their link!

We’ve been eating a lot of corn on the cob since I found them in the freezer aisle. I’d previously thought of them as a summer only, barbecue type of thing, and bought the loose corn in frozen bags, or occasionally in tins (for making sweetcorn chowder or sweetcorn fritters, in theory, although I can’t recall ever actually doing so). But the mini-cobettes from the freezer bag taste really good, microwave really quickly at the end of cooking time, and are just slightly annoying to eat using standard cutlery.

So to overcome that eating annoyance, I had been looking out for corn picks for a few weeks, and just not seeing them in any of the old familiar places, so I resorted to the internet. And the ones I chose are lovely bright colours, make the job of eating corn on the cob much easier, and most cleverly of all, they clip together to keep the sharp prongs safely concealed when they are stored in the cutlery drawer.

The Amazon reviews all point out that they are good for toddlers too, although I cannot really comment on that.

It has made such a tiny cake it was barely worth bothering with! We will be hard pressed to get six slices out of it. I don’t have a square tin, so had to use loaf tins, which worked pretty well. The mix barely filled them, and the cakes weren’t square at the end. It took quite a bit of cutting off to get something even vaguely square. I was too hasty with licking out the buttercream bowl and missed instructions about extra buttercream needed for the sides and top, hence why the walnuts are poked into the (shop-bought) marzipan Stegosaurus-style.

I have been busy telling myself it was a huge waste of time for such a tiny amount of cake and I will never take on so foolish a project again… when I just happened to see a Choc-Orange Battenberg Cake recipe mid-google and starting thinking hmmmm…. all over again.

Anyway. Put these foolish frippery battenberg fancies out of your mind and make this gorgeous boiled fruit cake instead. This makes a good, honest, large fruitcake that will easily serve a goodly number of friends or do a fortnight’s worth of packed lunches. It’s my mother’s recipe. When I was home with my parents for a week in August, I learned that their century-long recipe, which has made hundreds of fruit cakes for packed lunches had been superseded, and now they alternate between “light” fruit cake and “dark” fruit cake, both made in double batches and frozen until needed. Below is “dark” – I have lost “light” which is nice enough, but so familiar as not to feel terribly special.

Casting your eyes down the list of ingredients for this makes you think it’s just a bog standard fruit-cake. Nothing on the list sticks out as making it taste as special as it does. But something magic happens in the cooking, giving this cake a stickiness, a darkness and punchy taste whose origin I can’t figure out.

And hey, if you want to mess around with marzipan and decorations, better to do it with a fruit cake than a Battenberg!

I do my weekly mealplan with Google Docs, in front of the computer. Seems a bit nerdy to type about food, but incrementally benefits have emerged.

The first is that I can plug it into my shopping list doublequick. I have been using OurGroceries for a few years now. It’s a smartphone app that can sync the household shopping list between my phone, P’s phone and all the various computers. If either of us wants something, we can put it on the list from wherever we are and it’s in the right place for whipping out the phone at the supermarket. Once you get there, tapping each item as you go round the store crosses it through. (and were anyone watching from home, they could see how fast you were getting around)

For ages I was planning the week’s meals, printing them out and sticking them to the cooker hood with a magnet (the fridge front is part of a fitted kitchen, so not metal!) This meant unless I was actually in front of the cooker, I couldn’t necessarily remember what was for dinner that night. Now, thanks to the magic of Google and cutting and pasting, I create an event in my calendar for the meal each night. I have access to P’s calendar too, so I can easily see if there things that will delay him or mean he isn’t eating at home. I can make the event longer if it’s something that needs extra cooking, and if I’m out of the house and need additional ingredients, all I have to do is check my phone.

Thirdly, I’ve gotten into the habit of posting the week’s plan into Google Plus and pushing it to a group of contacts I know are interested in food. This leads to helpful discussion and interesting facts and helps share some of the ideas. (You can find me on Google Plus here.) In fact, this has fast become my only use of Google Plus. It tends to be the social network I check last and only if I have time. And almost all of my contacts seem to be using it as their secondary network, so by the time I get there, most of what I read I have already encountered from those people on Twitter or Facebook.

I have been thinking about posting the meal plans here on the blog. Is that de trop? To be honest, much of the writing I do here now is food and twitter, so at least that would mean a weekly post!