Well not quite a disaster, but it certainly didn’t turn out like it should. Which is why I don’t do desserts, apart from the fact the Gra and I both prefer savoury, you have to be more accurate with desserts and there are too many things that can go wrong.

As it was a Saturday and Gra was in the garden doing deck stuff it gave me an opportunity do do something that takes a bit more time – 3 courses it is then! I’m afraid I strayed away from Jamie for the entrée. There is a Tetsuya’s recipe I’ve been wanting to cook for ages, but it was one of those that you have to start the day before, and it’s taken me 6 months to be organised enough to do it! So duck terrine it is, a mixture of duck, chicken and pork mince (all minced in my very own mincer!) mixed with herbs, spices, mirin, soy and orange zest, then steamed – yum yum. Tetsuya is all about the degustation menu so there weren’t any suggestions of what to serve with it, so toast, gherkins and pickled onions were my addition, because Gemma is the only person I know who would just eat meat for dinner!

The main course was home-made ravioli, back to Jamie for this one.  Home-made pasta is definitely a Jamie special, and there are so many good ones to choose from I just couldn’t decide. But in order to squeeze the very last leaves out of the home-grown basil, it had to be the ravioli with prosciutto mozzarella, sun dried tomato and basil. I’m sorry Jamie but I couldn’t get hold of the very best mozzarella and prosciutto, I had to make do with what Coles had to offer, which is far from the best, but not a bad substitute. So I had to make little parcels, wrapping all the ingredients in the prosciutto before putting the parcels in the ravioli. This sounds complicated, but it was actually the easiest ravioli I’ve ever made, because the filling is solid, which is much easier to work with than the usually soggy ricotta based fillings. Jamie said to serve with basil and olive oil, but I had some filling left over (quantities a bit too generous, and I did follow the recipe to the letter) so I used that as a sauce. And as another aside Jamie, The quantity of pasta you suggest is way too much so I’ve got enough left over for another day. So Jamie, if you’re reading this, or anyone else who happens to know – can you freeze pasta dough? I’ve tried making tagliatelle with the left overs then drying it, but it just went mouldy

Here are the before and after photos:

And this brings me onto dessert. It was meat to be a beautiful lemon and lime tart, and it started off so well.  I normally avoid pastry like the plague, and if I do use it I buy it, but today I tried to make it, which actually went pretty well. I followed the recipe to the letter, including Jamie’s top tip for lining the tart tin. The bit that usually goes wrong is the lining of the tart tin, as the pastry falls apart when I roll it, but Jamie suggested cutting thin slices from your pastry sausage then pressing it into the tin. Tadah! It worked. It doesn’t look as pretty as when you roll it but it worked, and didn’t crack when I baked it.

It was the filling that went pear shaped.  I followed the instructions to the letter, but the lemon and lime juice curdled my cream, which meant I was left with a scrambled egg like filling, that when cooked looked a bit like lemon curd but had a very strange texture. Definitely not one to serve to the the queen of desserts, my mother-in-law.  Maybe I’ll try the chocolate one and see if that one works any better, but if it doesn’t I quit desserts.  And yet again Jamie, I have 500ml of tart filling left over as your quantities were too much.

Well page 95 of Jamie Oliver’s ‘The Naked Chef’ brings us to Seared Encrusted Tuna Steak with Fresh Coriander and Basil. So home-made chunky chips, peas and tuna on a Friday night it was!

We had to go out to the doctors to get Yellow Fever jabs for our upcoming trip to Peru (part of which will be in the Amazonian jungle!), par boiled the chips before we left and set the oven to come on before we got back so everything would be ready to go when we got back at around 7.30.

Nic managed to get hold of two cracking bits of fresh tuna steak and it was also a good recipe to use up the last of our basil which has performed fantastically all summer and autumn – but now winter is here it’s dying off. I think there’ll be more basil based recipes over the next day or so!

Well the tuna was a raging success. Beautiful bit of fish, cooked perfectly by me – the recipe has chilli in it and it worked very well. I thought it might be a bit too much heat as Nic doesn’t do chilli in any quantity, but it was just right.

This is another recipe where the picture in the book has ingredients that are not in the recipe. Capers this time. I think Nic has taken to going over all the pictures with a magnifying glass to spot rogue ingredients!

Definitely will do this one again.

Oh and the chips were awesome too!

Well Nic was curled up on the sofa (lounge to you Aussies!) so it was my turn to cook. This usually happens at the weekends only, because I tend to drag the cooking time out by a factor of at least two!

So it was nice to have a recipe for…… mash potato put in front of me! Well, it was fancy mash with olives in it – but nothing I couldn’t cope with. Nic made some more home-made sausages again the other day so it was home-made sausages with olive mash and onion gravy. Nic said “where’s the veg” when I put it in front of her, but I reckon sausage and mash shouldn’t be messed with! It’s sausage and mash! I mean – it’s a classic and shouldn’t be ruined with ‘other’ veg!

It was good – as mash potato goes. I still had to stick a big lump of butter in the top (not in the recipe, but couldn’t resist – you MUST have butter in mash right?!). The sausages were good (remember we have a good selection of Nic produced home made sausages to compare against) but a little dry.

…was risotto. The very same recipe that first got us into risotto 10 years ago, which has now become an almost weekly staple. Well the basic recipe is the tried and tested then I vary it with different flavours. Since I haven’t looked at the recipe for a good 9 years I thought I should follow it to the letter, and not just one recipe but two. All of Jamie’s risotto recipes follow his basic recipe with a variation of fillings, so tonight I followed the basic recipe and the mushroom recipe, and blooming tasty it was too. Although if I wasn’t following the recipe I’d have put in a few more mushrooms and of course I couldn’t quite stick to the exact recipe and had to add a splash of truffle oil, which really did make it I think truffle oil is another of those things that didn’t really exist in 1999.

Graham has been promising me faithfully that he will write a blog post, and yet another week has gone by and not a peep. He says he’s too busy; busy doing nothing if you ask me.  There’s about 6 months worth of writing to do, but thankfully we haven’t done a great deal in those 6 months as we are building up for our big Peru trip.  So what I’ve done instead is put a few videos and photos on the relevant pages.

For our regular readers (all 4 of you – Chris, Beth, Becky and Trish) you will be pleased to know that we have revolutionised our web technology and it is now much easier to update, so I am hoping it will inspire me to do it more often, especially as I often think “I should put that on the website” then the moment has passed and another post dies a death. You will be even more excited to here I can also update from my phone so you may even be able to share the adventures of a travelling speechie!

As Graham so rightly pointed out I have a new hair brained scheme! I have been inspired by a movie. Sadly I have not decided to save our planet; adopt an African orphan; or work for a voluntary aid charity overseas – I’m far too selfish for all of that! Instead I have decided to cook all the recipes in a cook book – the story behind Julie and Julia.

So the first decision to be made was which of my many cook books do I choose? I figured it couldn’t be the Tetsuya’s book as it’s hardly Tuesday night dining, and the same goes for Gordon. So that left me with my old faithful – Jamie The next decision was which book, and after much deliberation I thought I should just start at the beginning, then if it all goes well I can just keep on going!

Now it’s taken me a little while to get into the swing of this. I’m on day 9 and of the 128ish recipes in the book I have cooked 12.  I say 128ish because Jamie does a lot of variations to try and I haven’t yet decided whether I am going to cook all of the variations.  I guess it depends on the quality of the recipes.  It has been a while since I have cooked from The Naked Chef, and looking back with a critical eye I can tell it is his first effort. You can also tell it was written in 1999. Who’s have thought that recipes would date, but fashions and tastes have definitely changed. There are a few Asian recipes that don’t have fish sauce in, but definitely need it. But that just shows where cooking and ingredients were in 1999!

So I’m sure you’re dying to know what I’ve cooked this week? NO?!?! Well I’m going to tell you anyway, and if you do own this book I’ll also tell you my improvements as I’m not very good at sticking to recipes…

The highlight of the week so far has been the meatballs (p133) and the  chickpea and leek soup – sounds weird, which is why I’ve never cooked it before, but it really was very tasty and perfect for a cold(ish) winters day. I also tried baking some focaccia but yet again I found baking your own bread just isn’t worth the effort, it was disappointing. The dough made much more successful pizza’s and I would say it is more authentic than Tony and Georgio’s recipe, mind you I shouldn’t be surprised as Jamie did learn from the masters.

We had Jamie’s roast chicken on Sunday, which is the page this book opens to by default. It is a tried and tested recipe that never lets me down. Although on Sunday I did follow the recipe to the letter which I don’t normally do. I usually add butter and garlic because I thought it would be an improvement, but I have to hand it to Jamie, you don’t actually need it.

The disappointments of the week were the Thai chicken curry; chicken fusion broth and the Asian greens. All needed fish sauce and the chicken curry had way too much lime. I’m no Asian cooking expert, but I’m fast becoming an eating expert and they definitely didn’t taste quite right. I’m pretty sure his more recent books correct this!

I’m relying on the pasta dishes in this book to keep me going through the week, however, in his wisdom Jamie decided that fresh is best, and you don’t get dried pasta recipes until book two, so I will be cheating – even I don’t make homemade pasta on a weeknight! This weeks recipe was tagliatelle with peas, broad beans, cream and parmesan. And again I had to make my own adjustments as the cream was just too rich without some lemon.

So all in all I think this project is achievable – well cooking through the first book anyway, and we’ll just have to see whether I make it to any of the other books! My last criticism for this week is Jamie’s photos aren’t an accurate portrayal of the recipes, clearly containing ingredients that aren’t written down, but again I’ll forgive him as it’s Jamie!

Hello! Here’s our new website! It looks quite similar to the previous one, but there’s lots and lots changed ‘under the hood’ – which will hopefully mean it will be updated much more regularly. It’s now really easy for us to write rubbish and post photos to it from anywhere where there is a computer with internet access.

There’s also a facility for you to comment on individual posts etc., and also search for stuff much more easily.

That even includes our iPhones which, as you can imagine, I am particularly chuffed with!

Here’s to lots more updating!!

Now we have vacancies at the hotel Midgley it’s time to start doing the things we do best – diving and walking. We survived one of the hottest days of the year 12m under. It was a little hot kitting up, but despite the 40 degree temperatures on land the sea was still a mere 23 degrees, which was very refreshing. We were also lucky to experience the best underwater conditions we’ve had in ages, which meant clear visibility and lots of life. This should have been the perfect opportunity to practice my underwater photography, but of course the camera wasn’t working properly and then it ran out of batteries so I was relegated to chief spotter again. I did manage to spot some good stuff for Graham though. Have a look at his photos on the diving pages.

The following weekend the weather wasn’t quite so good. But this meant it was perfect walking weather. So off we went for our first training walk for our four day trek in Peru. We will find it a bit difficult to simulate the altitude in Australia but I have been advised that the walking is all up and down, and that we can simulate to a certain extent. So we chose an up and down walk from the book, packed a picnic in Coles, and headed off. The bonus was it was actually a really nice walk. Have a look at the video to see what we got up to, and the minor difficulties we had finding our way out!

And if all that wasn’t enough excitement for one month we also had the Laneways festival. It wasn’t quite the Reading Festival, for a start it only lasts a day, so no camping needed. But it was a really good day out and a great chance to see some new music, and fantastic bands that we’ve been wanting to see for a while.

This weekend brought a temporary break to summer with non stop rain! It’s been quite muggy still, but no need to water the garden that’s for sure! We decided to make the most of the wet weather by going to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. It was a really nice way to spend a couple of hours, followed by a stroll in the rain and lunch!