Cheese and chorizo baked potato

I seem to be having a bit of a thing about chorizo at the moment. Blame this never-ending winter - a hot blast of smoke, paprika and garlic is surprisingly uplifting when it's this steadily grim outside.

This is a great storecupboard dish, and one that goes down very well with kids (if yours don't tolerate the heat of the paprika, substitute a teaspoon of Dijon mustard. You can also use good ham, preferably home-cooked, in place of the chorizo). This is fatsome and packed with carbs: it's absolutely not a diet dish. Cook it on a day when you've been yomping in the woods or chopping logs. To serve four, you'll need:

Four large potatoes
1 tablespoon olive oil
75g cream cheese
100g grated cheddar cheese
1 clove garlic, crushed into a paste
2 banana shallots, diced finely
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1 chorizo ring
1 handful (about 25g) chopped parsley
1 large pinch salt, plus salt to rub on the skins

Preheat the oven to 200°C (450°F). Use your hands to rub the olive oil into the skins of the potatoes, and dredge them with plenty of flaky salt. I used smoked Maldon salt, which marries nicely with the other smoky flavours in this dish. Bake the potatoes for an hour and a half.

While the potatoes are cooking, chop the chorizo into small pieces and fry them in a dry pan until the fat is running. Set aside. Chop and grate the other ingredients.

When the potatoes are ready, slice them in half and, holding the potato in an oven glove, scoop out the flesh into a mixing bowl. You'll be left with a nice little potato-skin cup. Stir the cheeses (reserving a little cheddar to sprinkle over the top), shallot, garlic, parsley and paprika into the fluffy potato with a large pinch of salt, and when everything is well-mixed, stir in the chorizo and its fat. Pile the mixture back into the potato skins, and top with the reserved cheese.

Return the filled skins to the oven for another 20 minutes, until golden brown on top, and serve piping hot.

Little break in Lille

The nice folks at Eurostar and Little Break, Big Difference invited me and a gaggle of other food bloggers to come with them to Lille for a day of foodie tourism. The basic idea here seems to be to demonstrate that destinations like Lille are so close to London that you can hop on a train in the morning, fill a day with Gallic excitement, and then pop back home on that same train in the evening. Once you're at St Pancras, you're less than an hour and a half from Lille - and Lille's station is under five minutes' walk from the old town centre, so there's really very little excuse for my not having been before. It's also, at around £60 a return ticket, far cheaper than I'd realised.

And if you're the sort of person for whom a day's food shopping, hunting for French tableware, tasting nibbly bits, soaking up atmosphere and dabbling at cookery lessons sounds just about perfect, you could do a lot worse than emulate the day's itinerary that was organised for us, perhaps with a slightly later start and an evening meal in France (we left London at 7am, which meant a 5am start for lots of us, and returned before supper time). I don't usually enjoy pre-organised, structured tourism (I get a lot of pleasure out of organising and planning things myself and get depressingly snobbish about guided tours and package holidays). Fortunately the company was so good and the city so packed with interesting food and drink - breakfast, a lunch cooked by the group at l'Atelier des Chefs, a cheese and beer tasting and an awful lot of pâtisseries - that I found myself enjoying being in something that would have felt a bit like a tour group if everybody hadn't been quite so single-mindedly seeking out and photographing food.

It's August, so northern France has emptied out. Lille was wonderfully quiet, especially before 10am, when the shops opened, giving us a great opportunity to take some pictures of a quiet, sunny city. We started with a spot of pâtisserie and chocolate shopping; this bread is from Aux Merveilleux de Fred (67 rue de la Monnaie), where fez-sized meringue merveilleuxes, sandwiched together with a dollop of buttercream and encased in chocolate, were also being prepared. (Sadly, a fez-sized meringue does not travel well, so Fred's merveilleuxes remain unsampled - if you can visit in the morning you'll have a very enjoyable few minutes watching them being made through the window.) We did buy a baguette here to sample as soon as the shop opened, and it was excellent in the way only something this fresh can be, with a crackling crust, a soft and yeasty crumb, and a total refusal to fit comfortably in anyone's bag. We then overwhelmed the poor staff at Patrick Hermand (Rue Basse), a modern pâtisserie in a tiny lacquered box of a room, where about twenty varieties of macarons were on offer, alongside these joyous pâtisseries. Note - what you are seeing here is cakes with macarons embedded in them. A large box of macarons came home with me.


On to Meert (27, Rue Esquermoise), a pâtisserie and restaurant opened in 1761, where we sampled deceptively slim and delicate waffles in the beautiful baroque dining room at the back of the shop. They might be slim, but these waffles or gauffres are, unusually, stuffed with an incredibly dense buttercream spiked with flecks of vanilla, and at this time in the morning I could only manage one, praying inbetween bites that death from an overwhelmed gall bladder would wait until I was finished. A photograph of me enjoying a waffle a little bit too much has been put on Flickr by the ladies from Little Break, Big Difference. Note that I've only managed one mouthful so far in the picture. Merveilleuxes were available here too, and we split one between four, helped down with some scented, fruity iced tea and a few gallons of coffee. Shopping at Meert is well worth your time even if you don't choose to sit down for a bite to eat; you'll find all kinds of pâtisseries, caramels, fruit jellies, chocolates, miniature waffles and some excellent teas and coffees.

A brisk trot through town, giving us a chance to enjoy the sunny morning, to a cookery class at l'Atelier des Chefs. If I'd been planning the day myself, there's absolutely no way I'd have been involved in cooking my own lunch, but if you are the sort of person who enjoys casual classes and an introduction to local produce and flavours, you might want to look into a session here. (L'Atelier also runs classes in London and many other cities - check their UK website for details.) Divided into groups of four and clad in very swanky Eurostar-branded aprons, we had a quick drink in a room full of kitchen equipment for sale. Once in the kitchen, we were talked through the preparation of tiramisu made with speculoos, the delicious caramel and cinnamon biscuits you'll find served alongside coffee in these parts; then we prepared cod flambéed in honey and fleur de bière, a hoppy, floral eau de vie distilled from beer. A pleasant but not fabulous meal (the honey/fleur de bière sauce made for a very unbalanced, candied flavour profile which doesn't sit well with cod) - and once we were perched on stools to eat our meal at a table surrounded by shelves and shelves of more expensive merchandise, I found myself wishing we'd gone to L'Huîtrière in the old town instead. But I am an avowed grump who does a lot of cooking - as you are doubtless of a sunnier disposition, your mileage may vary.

We were met at Le Capsule (25 Rue des 3 Molettes), a fantastically atmospheric little bar full of French emo kids, by Aymeric Gillet-Chevais, the president and founder of ATPUB, the French version of CAMRA. Down in the damp (and very dark, so I'm showing you a picture of the town square instead) cellar, he talked us through French beer culture, and told us about the different producers. The bar is not tied to a specific brewery (unlike a shocking 99% of French bars), so you'll find 130 beers on the list from minuscule breweries, many very close to Lille itself. We worked our way through four beers; I particularly liked Page 24, from a small brewery 35km outside the city. Chicory is a common addition to northern French beers, says Aymeric, who must have France's very best name; and this blonde beer packs a bitter punch, rounded off with a lovely coriander nose. Four local cheeses from Philippe Olivier (3, Rue Curé St Etienne) were served too, and it is to my eternal misery that a family emergency had closed the shop for the afternoon, because I would have murdered for a slab of the Maroilles we ate to take home.

We had about twenty minutes before having to dash for the train, so I visited La Capsule's sister shop, l'Abbaye des Saveurs and stocked up on beers and some other local goodies. Happily for all those of us in the EU, the shop also has an e-commerce arm. Homeware shops, cookware shops and delicatessens proliferate all the way round the old town, so you should be able to find some foodie bits and pieces to take home (save this for the end of the afternoon - if you're only around for a day, you'll be doing a lot of walking and this is no fun with four litres of beer, a camera and a bushel of macarons in your bag) no matter how little time you have.

You'll find more about the day on the blogs listed at the top of the post, and video and more pictures have been unleashed on the Internet by the Little Break Big Difference ladies. I have to admit, I'm not too sure what went on on the train on the way home. I fell asleep.

Granny Sue's seeded cheese nibbles

Granny Sue, I should explain, is not my granny. She's the granny of a friend, and creator of the world's greatest cheese biscuit recipe. Last time we visited, her grandson's lovely wife produced a dish of Granny Sue's most excellent biscuits, and kicked half the batch she made up a notch with a sprinkle of cumin seeds. I waited until they were both rendered soft and giving with drink, and demanded the recipe: here it is, unaltered by me aside from the addition of some more whole spices.

The unholy amount of butter and cheese in these makes for an intensely crisp, rich finish - I defy you not to scarf the lot in about five minutes flat.

To make about 25 toothsome little biscuits, you'll need:

60g plain flour
60g sharp Cheddar cheese
60g salted butter
1 egg yolk
1 heaped tablespoon whole-grain mustard
Water
20g Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon each fennel seeds, cumin seeds and coriander seeds

Put the butter in the freezer for 20 minutes, while the oven heats to 200°C (400°F). Sieve the flour from a height, making sure you get plenty of air into it, into a large mixing bowl, and grate the Cheddar cheese into it. Grate the frozen butter into the bowl, and use a knife to mix the butter, cheese and flour together well. Add the egg yolk and the mustard to the bowl with a little water (the amount of water you'll need to make a soft dough will vary according to the conditions on the day you make the biscuits) and mix with the knife until you have a dough which comes together nicely without sticking.

On baking sheets, form teaspoons of the mixture with your fingers into little rounds or lozenges about half a centimetre thick - it's fussy but rather nice to create a different shape for each of the three different spices you'll be using. Sprinkle a pinch of grated Parmesan on each one, then a pinch of one of the spices. I made a third of my batch of biscuits with cumin, a third with coriander and a third with fennel. Press the top of each biscuit gently with your finger to make sure the whole spices are firmly engaged with the cheese. Bake for 12 minutes until the biscuits are sizzling and golden. Cool on the baking sheets for ten minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. Serve with drinks before dinner.

Ambrose Heath's Anchovy Biscuits

If you've been following me on Twitter, you may have noticed a few references to Edwardian savouries and a writer called Ambrose Heath this week. The savoury used to be a course served at the end of a formal English meal. Salty, umami and often highly spiced, the savoury was packed in by English gentlemen after dessert while they discussed hats and feudalism. A salty nibble was meant to cleanse the palate of whatever gelatinous pudding you'd just eaten so you could happily assault it with a cigar and too much port.

The savoury didn't survive the period of rationing during and after the Second World War (a period which rendered English food completely joyless - it's only started to recover recently). A grave shame, especially for those, like me, who lack a particularly sweet tooth; I'd far sooner eat a bacon sarnie than an ice-cream. Recipes for savouries are, these days, pretty hard to find, but I have several in a pre-war book by Andre Simon, and I couldn't believe my luck when I found a copy of Ambrose Heath's Good Savouries in a second-hand book shop last week.

Ambrose Heath was a prolific food writer: there are more than 70 books to his name. One of the first cookery books I owned was his book on sauces, which, along with his other books, appeals to the systematising, cataloguing part of my soul that lives somewhere on the autistic spectrum. His books are exhaustive and meticulous treatments of their subjects - there are multiple recipes with tiny tweaks for many of the dishes, alternative approaches and ingredient substitutions, and a lovely sense of a rather plump, happy man behind the pen. (And isn't that a gorgeous cover illustration?)

Most of the savouries in this book are based around salty ingredients like ham, bacon, anchovy or bloaters; they're usually spiced vigorously with curry powder or chutney, and are presented sitting on a fried crisp of bread, a puff of pastry or a hollowed roll buttered and baked crisp. This recipe for anchovy biscuits reads as follows:


To make the pastry for the cheese straws, Heath says you'll need:

2oz plain flour
2oz grated parmesan
2oz butter
Yolk of 1 egg
A dash of mustard
Salt and pepper

His recipe will have you rubbing the butter into the flour/parmesan/mustard mixture, binding with the egg yolk and a little water, then baking for ten minutes. I changed the method a little, freezing the butter for 15 minutes and shredding it on the coarse side of the grater into the flour/parmesan mixture (to which I'd added a teaspoon of Madras curry powder), stirring everything together with a knife and binding the resulting mixture with the egg yolk and some ice-cold water mixed with four anchovies pounded in the mortar and pestle. I rested the pastry in the fridge for half an hour before rolling it out very thinly, cutting out 48 rounds with my smallest cookie cutter, and baking at 200°C for 12 minutes until golden. Rub the mixture in if you prefer, but grating in hard butter will give you a puffier, crisper result. I left out salt and pepper - the anchovies and curry powder will provide all the salt and spice you need.

To make the paste to spread on top of the biscuits, I pounded four more anchovy fillets, 1 teaspoon of curry powder (Madras again - Bolsts is my favourite curry powder, but you should use your favourite brand/ferocity), 2 tablespoons of parmesan, 1 tablespoon of chopped capers (in wine vinegar, not salt, which would just be too much with the anchovies), 1 tablespoon of oil from the anchovies and 1 teaspoon of smooth Dijon mustard in the mortar and pestle until smooth. This will give you enough to smear each biscuit with the tip of a knife - look to use a very tiny amount of the topping, which is strong and salty. If you are familiar with Marmite or Vegemite, you need to spread in about the proportions you would spread those on toast. Allow the biscuits to cool before spreading them or they will be too fragile to work with.

Pop the biscuits in an oven heated to 180°C for five minutes. The spread will go slightly puffy. Dress with a little parsley before serving warm. Rather than eating your anchovy biscuits at the end of a meal, I'd suggest you use them as nibbles with drinks - a very dry Fino sherry or a Dirty Martini will work beautifully against them.

Truffled mac and cheese

Back in the dark days of the 1980s, one of the first things I learned to make in home economics class at my all-girls' school was macaroni cheese. Ours was a class training in the basics of good 1980s wifery - white sauces like the Mornay that forms the base of this dish, bread, pastry, and, bizarrely, the correct ironing of a man's suit. (I like to think that I'm an excellent 2000s wife, but surely the ironing of suits is the dry cleaner's job - or that of the suit owner?) I remember bringing a large carton of macaroni cheese home, and eating it with my proud parents. I also remember the girl who left her carton of macaroni cheese at school in her locker at the back of the classroom, and forgot to retrieve it until the smell became so strong that everyone thought that one of the rats from the biology department had escaped and died somewhere.

Last year, my excellent brother bought me a white truffle, preserved in a jar, for my birthday. I felt duty-bound to stop keeping it in the cupboard and just looking at it every now and then (when there are very good things in that cupboard I have a horrible habit of not cooking with them in case I come up with a better idea for them later on). I needed to do something with it before my next birthday, so I cast around for something simple that would showcase the truffle in a creamy, cheesy, soothing sort of way. What better than macaroni cheese?

If you have fresh truffles, so much the better. If you have no truffles at all, this dish will still be absolutely delicious; it just won't be truffled.

A quick note about the truffle oil I've used alongside the real truffle here before we begin. Preserved truffles inevitably have less aroma than fresh ones, so I've used some white truffle oil alongside my truffle. It's genuine truffle oil - but most of the truffle oil you'll see on the market has never been near a real truffle. The stuff you'll usually see on sale is made with olive oil and Bis-(methylthio)methane or 2,4-dithiapentane, both industrially synthesised versions of odour chemicals occurring in real truffles. It's not a patch on real truffles, which have hundreds of different chemicals combining with the dismal-sounding Bis-(methylthio)methane and 2,4-dithiapentane to create a much more complex odour and flavour profile than the oil has. It'd be a real shame to use any near your real truffle (although some unscrupulous chefs do use the stuff to vamp up lacklustre truffles). Happily, you can also buy olive oil which has been infused with real truffles; unhappily, it's far more expensive than the synthetic stuff. Check your label. If it says "truffle essence", "truffle flavour", or "truffle aroma", it's synthetic. If it's heartstoppingly expensive and says clearly on the label that real truffles have been used to make it (you can buy the real stuff at e-Foodies, a company I'm very fond of), buy it and use it here. If all you can find is the synthetic stuff, I'll leave it up to you - use it if you like, but be aware that it doesn't really taste like truffles; and you should feel absolutely free to leave it out of this recipe.

To serve four, you'll need:

400g macaroni
500ml milk
1 carrot
1 shallot
5 cloves
2 bay leaves
1 bunch thyme
1 bunch parsley
10 peppercorns
1 tablespoon olive oil
25g butter
25g plain flour
200g Parmesan cheese
75g Cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 small head broccoli
3 egg yolks
1 truffle (white or black)
2 tablespoons truffle oil
Salt to taste

Start by infusing the milk that will make the base of your Mornay (cheese) sauce with aromatics. Pour the milk into a saucepan with a well-fitting lid, and add the peeled carrot, cut into halves, the halved shallot, studded with the cloves, the bay leaves, thyme and parsley. Add a teaspoon of salt and ten whole peppercorns. Bring the milk to a bare simmer, then turn the heat off and leave the saucepan in a warm place for 3-4 hours. Strain the milk through a sieve.

Boil the macaroni according to the packet instructions with a tablespoon of olive oil. When the macaroni is cooked, rinse it in a colander to remove excess starch and set aside. Divide the raw broccoli into tiny florets and mix with the macaroni.

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

In a clean, dry saucepan, melt the butter and combine with the flour, stirring over a low to medium heat for three minutes. Stirring all the time (I like to use a balloon whisk), add a small amount of milk and stir until it is incorporated into the sauce and starts to thicken. Keep adding milk in small amounts and stirring vigorously until all the milk is incorporated and you have a smooth, thick sauce. Stir the grated cheeses (reserving a little parmesan to top the dish with) into the sauce with the beaten egg yolks, the finely chopped truffle and the truffle oil (if using). Taste the sauce and add more salt if you think it needs it - the cheese is quite salty, so you may not need any.

Combine the sauce and the macaroni/broccoli mixture in a shallow earthenware dish. Sprinkle the surface with the remaining Parmesan cheese, and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the top is brown and the sauce is bubbling. Serve immediately, pouring over a little more (real) truffle oil if you fancy.

Cauliflower cheese

There's something disproportionately impressive about wheeling a whole cauliflower out to the table, glistening in a robe of scented, cheesy sauce. It raises cauliflower cheese from a nursery tea dish to the sort of thing you might serve as a dinner party accompaniment.

I only ever make cauliflower cheese when I can find a pristine cauliflower. The cauli you choose should be firm and white, and still surrounded by its green leaves, which should be stiff, not floppy (floppy leaves mean the cauliflower has been out of the ground for too long). Don't use a cauliflower with any bruised bits visible.

The Mornay sauce that's slathered all over the cauliflower is a little more complicated than usual; the milk for the sauce is infused with aromatic herbs for a couple of hours before making the sauce up. It's worth the tiny amount of extra effort. You'll end up with a delicately scented, Parmesan-savoury cloud of white curds, a much finer dish than the wet stuff you remember from school.

To serve four as an accompaniment or two as a main course (if you're eating this as a dish on its own, it's very good with some toasted sourdough bread to mop up the lovely sauce) you'll need:

1 large, firm, fresh cauliflower (around 1kg)
300ml whole milk
1 shallot
5 cloves
10 peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 bunch parsley
75g butter
75g plain flour
A grating of nutmeg
1 teaspoon dry mustard powder
150g grated Parmesan cheese plus a couple of tablespoons for sprinkling
Salt

A few hours before you start to eat, cut the shallot in half and stud it with the cloves. Place it in a saucepan with the bay leaves, parsley and peppercorns and pour over the milk. Bring the milk up to a gentle simmer, put the lid on and remove from the heat, leaving in a warm place for about three hours.

When you are ready to assemble the dish, use a sharp knife to remove all the outer leaves from the cauliflower except the very fine ones from the inner layer of leaves which curl around the curds. Cut the stalk off the bottom of the vegetable so it will sit flat when placed on a plate. Cut two big slashes in a cross shape into the bottom of the stalk - this will help the thickest part of the cauliflower to steam faster, so nothing will overcook and the whole vegetable retains a good texture. (Nothing is worse than a soggy cauliflower cheese.)

Steam the cauliflower in a large pan for twenty minutes, and heat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

While the cauliflower is steaming, make up the Mornay sauce. Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan with the flour, and stir well over a low heat for three or four minutes - do not allow the roux (flour/butter mixture) to brown. Strain the milk and discard the aromatics. Add the milk to the pan very gradually, stirring all the time, until you have a thick white sauce. Stir the cheese, mustard and nutmeg through the sauce to finish.

Place the steamed cauliflower in an ovenproof serving dish, and spoon the thick sauce all over the cauliflower. Bake in the hot oven for 30 minutes - the sauce will be bubbling. Finish the dish by spooning some more of the sauce from the dish over the cauliflower and sprinkling over the extra grated parmesan, then placing under the grill until the cheese is golden and bubbling. Serve immediately.

Cheese scones

Cheese scones, English, savoury and light, were one of the first things I learnt how to cook in school home economics lessons. The scones we turned out at school were really pretty awful - there was not enough cheese, and they were full of margarine. But a good cheese scone, properly spiced, made with butter and plenty of strong cheese, can be very different, such that Dr W will eat three, buttered, in one go and then make strange contented sighing sounds for the next couple of hours.

This is (as my home economics teacher doubtless realised, despite her margarine/cheese stinginess problems) a great recipe for kids. It's easy, it introduces them to the rubbing-in method they'll use when they're feeling advanced enough to attempt pastry, and it's hard to mess up. And what child doesn't get a huge kick out of baking something to go in his own lunchbox?

We ate these as part of a sort of high-tea arrangement late on Sunday afternoon. I like them with lots of butter and a little Marmite, which really makes the parmesan and cheddar in the scones sing. When buying the cheese for these scones, make sure your cheddar is a mature, flavourful variety.

To make 8 cheese scones you'll need:

225g self-raising flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon powdered mustard
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
50g softened, salted butter
50g cheddar, grated
25g parmesan, grated
150ml whole milk, plus a little to glaze

Preheat the oven to 230° C (450° F).

Sift the flour, salt, mustard and cayenne into a bowl (hold the sieve up high - you're trying to aerate the mixture as much as you can). Cut the butter into pieces and rub it into the flour mixture with your fingertips until you have a mixture that resembles breadcrumbs. Grate the cheeses and stir them into the flour mixture. Pour all the milk into the bowl with the flour and cheese, and use a knife to bring everything together into a dough.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface until it is 1cm thick, and cut into rounds with a fluted 6.5cm cutter. Arrange on a greased baking sheet and brush the top of each scone with milk. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until the scones have risen and are golden. These are fantastic served straight from the oven. If you want to ring the changes, try adding a tablespoon of Herbes de Provence with the cheeses for a cheese and herb scone - really good served with a slice of sharp cheese.

Stuffed focaccia with mozzarella, artichokes and smoked ham

Oozy, garlicky, herby, smoky and greasy. What's not to like? Focaccia is the ideal bread to make this sort of baked sandwich from. It's oily, so it bakes to a gorgeous crisp, and it's a relatively flat bread, so works well sliced in two horizontally. I like to make my own focaccia (the feeling of an oil-enriched dough, stretchy, silky and puffy with yeast is obscenely - there's no other word for it - tactile against your palms), but this should work very well with a bought one.

To serve four at an al-fresco lunch (with other nibbles) you'll need:

1 focaccia
2 balls mozzarella di bufala
150g char-grilled artichoke hearts in olive oil
½ jar sun-dried red peppers in olive oil
12 slices raw smoked ham (I like Waitrose's prosciutto affumato)
1 fat clove garlic
1 handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 handful oregano, chopped
1 handful tarragon, chopped
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
100ml extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Slice the mozzarella and the artichoke hearts into pieces about ½ cm thick, and put in a mixing bowl. Add the sun-dried peppers, the ham, the garlic, crushed, the herbs, the zest and juice of the lemon and the olive oil with a good grating of pepper (no salt), and mix well so everything is coated with the oil and lemon juice. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least an hour (or up to overnight).

Preheat the oven to 180° C (350° F). Use a bread knife to cut the focaccia in half carefully along its equator, creating a top and a bottom for your sandwich. Layer the ingredients on the bottom half of the bread, starting with the mozzarella, then making a layer of the artichokes, peppers and ham, which you can tear into pieces before adding to the sandwich, if you like. Pour the marinade over the ingredients in the sandwich, sprinkle with salt to taste, and put the lid on, pressing down firmly.

Put the stuffed focaccia on a baking tray and bake for 25-30 minutes until the focaccia is golden and crusty on top, and the melting mozarella is oozing out of the sides of the sandwich. Slice and eat immediately.

Cheese fondue

I was born in the 1970s, which makes Dr W's gift of a fondue set a pleasingly retro and apposite birthday present. Everybody's parents had a set back in the day which they used for entertaining, and I remember hiding on the landing listening to raucous parties, then sneaking downstairs once they'd all finished and my parents had gone to bed. I would then while away the small hours eating any remaining cheesy bits and polishing off any leftover wine.

This, dear reader, is how I became a dipso at the tender age of three.

Fondues are fantastic interactive food. I've always held that the foods that require you to *do* something with what's on your plate, whether it's wrapping stuff in lettuce leaves, dribbling sauce down your arms or making minty little parcels, taste all the better for the work involved. Convivial and delicious - who could ask for more? You can do all the preparation of the fondue on top of the stove, and move it to the table and its little stand with the flame when you're ready to eat.

I've used a mixture of cheeses here - Emmenthal, Gruyere and Comte. Using these cheeses results in a sweetly nutty fondue, and for me the balance of flavours between the three is pretty much perfect.

Cider's not traditional here (fondue isn't from Normandy), but it's great with the cheese mixture, and hell - once you've spent all that money on cheese, I don't want you impoverishing yourself by using good wine on this dish when you could be impoverishing yourself by drinking it instead. Be sure to mix the cornflour into the cold cider before you start to cook - this will make your fondue smooth and will prevent lumpy or greasy bits, making the cheese and other ingredients coexist in happy, glossy suspension.

I have read warnings that you should not drink too much cold liquid during or after consumption of a cheese fondue for fear of solidifying a bolus of melted cheese in your stomach and finding your digestive system horribly overwhelmed (and presumably dying, eventually, of cheese). If you have read similar warnings I can assure you that you can ignore them. I drank like a fish when we christened the fondue set in the picture at the top, and suffered neither indigestion nor death.

To serve three, you'll need:

Fondue
200 g Emmenthal
200 g Gruyere
200 g Comte
2 shallots
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon cornflour
300 ml medium dry cider
1 tablespoon grainy Dijon mustard
1 shot-glass Armagnac (this is mere posing - I've used it because it's great with the cider and apples, but it's not absolutely necessary. You can leave it out if you can't find any)

To serve
1 large baguette
3 large carrots
3 apples (choose something tart like a Granny Smith)
9 new potatoes (Fingerlings, Pink Fir Apple and other nobbly potatoes are great here)

Chop the raw carrots and apples into bite-sized pieces and set aside. Steam the new potatoes whole for 20 minutes and set aside to cool.

Grate the cheeses and mix together in a large bowl. Dice the shallot very, very finely, and stir the cornflour into the cider in a large jug. (Be careful here - when you stir it in, it will foam, so make sure your jug is large enough to stop any bubbles from escaping.)

Put your fondue pot on the oven hob over a low heat, and sauté the finely diced shallots gently in the butter until they are sweet and translucent (about 10 minutes), stirring all the time so they do not colour. Stir the cider and cornflour mixture well, and pour it over the shallots. Bring everything to a gentle simmer.

Still over a low flame, add the grated cheese to the liquid in the fondue pot a handful at a time, stirring after you add each handful until the cheese is melted and incorporated into the cider mixture. Stir in the mustard and Armagnac with salt and pepper to taste (you may not need any salt - taste the mixture before seasoning). Move the fondue pot to the table, light the little flame, and dig in, dipping hunks of baguette, bits of carrot and apple, and whole, tiny potatoes into the gorgeously savoury cheese sauce.

Asterix in Switzerland(seriously) suggests vaguely sexual forfeits for anyone losing a piece of bread in the fondue pot. I have a better idea - if someone loses the bread, tell them it's their turn to do the washing-up.

Chicken parmigiana

This is, for me, one of the very nicest things you can do with a chicken breast. The chicken is beaten flat with a heavy rolling pin, coated in crumbs and parmesan cheese, and sautéed gently in butter and olive oil until golden and crisp. It's served on a bed of rich tomato sauce. I love this dish served with some buttered white rice - you can also serve it with pasta.

Parmigiana simply means 'cooked with parmesan cheese'. If, like me, you find yourself cooking with a lot of parmesan, you should consider investing in a Microplane grater. I love these things (mine was a wedding present and gets used several times a week) - they grate your parmesan very finely, and with no risk to your knuckles. The fine grade is absolutely perfect for parmesan, and it's also great for reducing garlic to a pulp, for zesting fruit and for grating nutmeg.

To serve four greedy people you'll need:

Sauce
1.5 kg fresh ripe tomatoes
3 large onions
4 cloves of garlic
1 handful fresh basil
1 handful fresh oregano
1 mild red chilli
1 ½ tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 large knob butter, plus extra to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper

Chicken
4 large chicken breasts
4 oz fresh breadcrumbs (about a cup for Americans)
4 oz freshly grated parmesan cheese (ditto)
½ teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1 large knob butter
1 tablespoon olive oil

Begin by peeling and seeding the tomatoes. (This is very easy - use a knife to make a little cross in the skin at the bottom of the tomato, then pour over boiling water and leave for ten seconds. Fish the tomato out with a slotted spoon. You'll find the skin will come away easily. Slice open to remove the seeds.) Chop the tomato flesh and set aside in a bowl.

Dice the onions and chop the garlic finely, and fry in a large knob of butter until translucent and fragrant. Add the tomatoes and finely chopped chilli to the saucepan and stir to combine everything. Bring to a very low simmer, and reduce (this will take more than an hour) to half its original volume or a little less. Bring the vinegar and sugar to the boil in a small pan and stir it into the sauce. Add the oregano and season with salt and pepper. Taste to check whether you need more salt or sugar. Add another knob of butter for a more mellow flavour if you like. Set the finished sauce aside.

Place the chicken between two sheets of cling film and beat it with the end of a rolling pin to flatten it out. Mix the paprika, salt, pepper, cheese and breadcrumbs well in a shallow dish. Dip the flattened chicken breast into the beaten egg, then dip the eggy chicken into the dish of cheesy crumbs until it is well coated. Set the sauce to reheat.

Heat the oil and butter in a non-stick frying pan until it sizzles, and drop in the breaded chicken pieces. Saute on each side for about 5 minutes, until golden and crisp. Spoon some of the sauce into the middle of a ring of rice on each plate and place a chicken breast on top of it. Dress with a bit of basil, if you're feeling artistic. Serve immediately with a green salad dressed sharply.

Feminist cheese

I have an absolutely excellent brother, who sent me a big box of cheese from The Fine Cheese Company in Bath for my birthday. (He's got the hang of this birthday lark; he sent my Mum a big box of oysters for hers. Go Ben.)

The Fine Cheese Company are great - their cheese is beautifully kept, and the cheeses in the box arrived at a perfect stage of ripeness: the stinky cheeses were stinky, the soft ones meltingly gooey.

This particular selection, called the Sisters in Cheese Box, is all produced by female cheesemakers. My initial reaction on learning this was 'Out of what?', but it turns out that the milk in question is actually squirted benignly out of sheep and cows. I think I just have a filthy mind.

You can see the cheeses above. The top cheese, soft and unctuous, was my favourite. It's a half baby Wigmore, made by Anne Wigmore in Berkshire from ewes' milk, and it's a wonderfully sticky little beast. Moving clockwise, the hard cheese with the yellow label is a Curworthy, made to a centuries-old recipe. The next cheese is a delicious unpasturised Brie made by Debbie Mumford in Sharpham, Devon, and was by far the best (and best-kept) English Brie I've tasted. Finally, the wedge of cheese is the fruity Keltic Gold, a rind-washed hard cow's cheese from Cornwall.

A useful card on the proper storage and keeping of cheese for those of us without a lovely cool pantry is included with the box, and this cheesy cornucopia kept us busy after dinner for several days, accompanied by lots of wine, some Bath Oliver biscuits and some digestives. Thanks Ben and Katie!

Welsh Rarebit

If you're feeling lazy, just lay some cheese on some toast, and grill it. I won't judge you. But if you've ten extra minutes to spend on your supper tonight, you might want to make this deliciously savoury rarebit, flavoured with beer and shallots.

Welsh rarebit (called Welsh rabbit in some versions) used to be served by the Edwardians as a savoury - a course to be tucked under the straining waistband just after pudding. If you cool this rarebit on a cake rack (to keep the toast crisp), remove the crusts and slice the rarebit into little squares, it also makes a great canapé when speared on a toothpick with a cherry tomato.

To make three generous slices you'll need:

3 slices seedy bread
400g sharp cheddar cheese (for extra cheesy bite, use a mixture of cheddar and parmesan)
1 shallot
5 sun-dried tomatoes in oil
1 teaspoon cornflour
1 level teaspoon mustard powder
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper (use less if you want your rarebit to be less spicy)
2 tablespoons beer (use something strongly flavoured, like a real ale)
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
A few twists of the pepper grinder

Toast the bread lightly until just golden. Grate the cheese and the shallot finely, chop the tomatoes into tiny dice, and mix with the other ingredients. (The mustard will not taste aggressively mustardy, but reinforces the cheesiness of the cheese.)

Spread the mixture evenly on the pieces of toast, making sure you cover the whole slice right to the edges. Be careful to make the covering a little thicker in the centre of the slice to avoid run-off. The cornflour will stop the beer from making the cheesy paste too wet. Place the slices of bread under the grill for five minutes or until golden. Garnish with more of the sun-dried tomatoes, and serve immediately with a glass of the beer.

Persian-spiced Halloumi

There's a shelf in our fridge full of emergency foods. There's emergency bacon (for those evenings where nothing but a bacon sandwich or some magic beans will do), emergency anchovies, emergency chorizo and other good things with a good long shelf-life. They'll all make a quick and tasty supper dish. Among the preserved meats and fish, there's always at least one emergency packet of halloumi, a lovely, salty, Greek ewe's cheese, which does not melt when grilled.

Grilled or pan-fried Halloumi has a soft texture with a crisp surface, pleasantly resilient to the tooth. It makes a quick and delicious supper dish with a few extra ingredients - the pine nuts and sultanas work well with the salty cheese, and the capers add a lovely aromatic zing. (Rinse your capers well to make sure the dish isn't too salty.) I served this with some cous-cous which I'd spiked with harissa and a lemony green salad.

To serve two, you'll need:

1 pack of Halloumi
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon nonpareil capers in salt, soaked in cold water for ten minutes and well-rinsed
1 tablespoon fat sultanas
1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts
3 chopped shallots
Juice of ½ a lemon

Melt the butter in a large, non-stick frying pan, and saute the shallots with the cumin until they begin to take on a golden colour. Add the halloumi, cut into 1cm-thick slices, and lay in the pan surrounded by the shallots. After five minutes, turn the halloumi and sprinkle over the capers, sultanas and pine nuts.

After another five minutes, turn the halloumi again and pour over the lemon juice. Stir to make sure everything is combined and serve immediately.

Parmigiana di Melanzane

This is probably Dr Weasel's favourite supper dish. Parmigiana di melanzane is a layered, baked dish of aubergines (eggplants for all the Americans out there), rich tomato sauce, parmesan and mozzarella. It's a wonderfully savoury meal to brighten up an autumn evening.

This tomato sauce, simmered for ages until thick and unctuous, is unbelievably good - it's also very simple, containing very few ingredients. It freezes well, so if you can face seeding and peeling even more tomatoes, make some extra and save it for the sort of snowy day when you need to eat something red. Try it with pasta, or over meatballs.

To serve four with some left over for lunch you'll need:

2kg ripe tomatoes
4 medium aubergines
3 large onions
4 cloves of garlic
1 handful fresh basil
1 handful fresh oregano
1 mild red chilli
1 ½ tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 large knob butter, plus extra to taste
250 g mozzarella
Salt and pepper
Grated parmesan
Olive oil to fry

Begin by peeling and seeding the tomatoes. (Cut a shallow cross at the bottom of the tomatoes and pour over boiling water. Fish the tomatoes straight out of the water, which will have loosened their skin, and peel it off. Cut open and discard the seeds.) Cut into small dice.

Dice the onions and chop the garlic finely, and fry in a large knob of butter until translucent and fragrant. Add the tomatoes and finely chopped chilli to the saucepan and stir to combine everything. Bring to a very low simmer, and reduce (this will take more than an hour) to half its original volume or a little less. Bring the vinegar and sugar to the boil in a small pan and stir it into the sauce. Add the oregano and season with salt and pepper. Taste to check whether you need more salt or sugar. Add another knob of butter for a more mellow flavour if you like. Set the finished sauce aside.

While the sauce is reducing, prepare the aubergine. Slice it into rounds about 1 cm thick (salt to remove the juices if you like; with modern aubergines the bitter juices have been bred out, and you'll probably find you don't need to salt at all) and fry each round in very hot olive oil (the aubergine slices are like little sponges, so you'll need plenty), until brown on each side. Drain on kitchen paper and season with salt and pepper.

Set out a layer of aubergine slices in the bottom of a baking dish. Place some basil leaves on top. Pour over a layer of sauce, layer over some mozzarella, then more aubergine, more basil, more sauce and so on. When you've used everything up, sprinkle over the parmesan and bake for 45 minutes at 180° C, until brown on top. Scatter over some fresh basil.

Serve with crusty bread to mop up the rich juices.

Puff-pastry tomato tart

Alert readers will have gathered that I am currently drowning in tomatoes, and that yesterday's promised recipe for the other half of a packet of puff pastry was bound to include them. You're right - today it's tomato tart. If, as a friend I was talking to tonight does, you have a vegetarian to entertain, you'll find this little tart really pretty, delicious and very quick and easy to prepare.

I found this goat's cheese (Picolive) something of a blessing; my original plan had been to stir a teaspoon of tapenade into the cheese, but this came with olive paste already sandwiched in the cheese. I bought two; it's a very nice little cheese, and I'd like some for lunch on some crusty bread.

To serve one (again, multiply the amounts to serve more people, or serve alongside yesterday's Pissaladiere), you'll need:

½ sheet of puff pastry from the supermarket refrigerator cabinet
1 crottin of goat's cheese
1 teaspoon tapenade
2 cloves garlic
10 small tomatoes (or to cover)
2 sprigs rosemary
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Score a centimetre from each edge of the pastry rectangle to form a crusty border which will puff up when you cook it. Use a fork to prick holes in the inner rectangle so it doesn't rise.

Mix the tapenade and two grated cloves of garlic with the goat's cheese, and spread it on the inner rectangle of pastry. Slice the tomatoes and arrange them in overlapping layers on top of the cheese. Top with the rosemary, season and bake at 200° C for 20-25 minutes, until brown and puffy. The tomatoes will be sweet and juicy, the cheese toothsome and the pastry crisp. It's almost enough to make you swear off meat.

French onion soup

A friend of mine is visiting New York for work at the moment. I received an anguished message from him about a French onion soup he experienced at the Crowne Plaza off Times Square. I quote him in full, because it made me laugh.

'The soup itself is quite nice, but is plugged by a solid lump of melted cheese that is about the diameter of a Camembert, and an inch think. We're talking essentially an entire Camembert's worth of American plastic cheese. I don't mind a delicate top to the bowl, but you could have taken this out, chilled it, and made plastic cheese sandwiches for a hungry family of six.'

Poor him. (I am keeping him anonymous so he doesn't get any death threats from Americans fond of plastic cheese.) French onion soup isn't really that hard to get right, but not many restaurants seem to bother trying; the very worst I've ever had was, shamefully, in Les Halles, the old market district in Paris. Les Halles is meant to be the birthplace of French onion soup, and Le Pied au Cochon is meant to be a restaurant which specialises in the stuff. Ha. It's rubbish. The stock's insipid, the rubbery onions haven't been left to caramelise, and there's no booze in sight. The cheesey bread lid is mostly bread, and the whole leaves you with the sort of hurt feeling you get when someone you trusted has stolen your teddy bear and sold it to buy drugs. Avoid.

The cheese you use here is important, but you do have a choice open to you. You can do it the Les Halles way and use Camembert on your giant crouton, which is delicious and, when stirred into the soup, makes it creamy and cheesey and gloopy and glorious.

I consider we've been overdoing the soft washed-rind French cheese thing recently (I have discovered a local source of Epoisse, and that Tartiflette the other week had enough Camembert in it to keep your arteries busy for a good six months). So I went the other way with our croutons, and topped them with sweet, stringy Gruyere (actually Swiss, but who's checking?). Gruyere has a special affinity for the sweetly Madeira-caramelised onions in this soup; try it instead of Camembert some time and see what you think.

To serve six as a starter or four as a main course, you'll need:

3lb onions, sliced
1 small wineglass Madeira
2½ pints good beef stock or good consommé
Open-textured white bread (ciabatta or a French loaf) - 2 slices per person
1 slice Gruyere per piece of bread
3oz butter
Salt and pepper

Put the onions in a large, heavy saucepan with the butter, and simmer, stirring every twenty minutes or so, for longer than you think you should. You're aiming to cook these to a golden, caramel unctuousness. I didn't use a kitchen timer; I put the DVD of Ziegfeld Girl on and sang along with Judy, running to the kitchen occasionally to stir, until Lana Turner did her tragic thing with the stairs and the chaise longue at the end. (Those who are not Judy Garland fans can just set their timers for 132 minutes, but you're missing a treat.) The onions will have cooked down to a fraction of their original volume.

When your onions are done and you have spent a quiet five minutes being surprised at how Hedy Lamarr was able to look fantastic walking down stairs with fruit on her head and invent spread-spectrum communications without turning a hair, throw the Marsala into the hot pan with the onions and let it simmer away to nothing. Add the stock or consommé, turn the heat right down and bring slowly to a simmer again.

While the soup is coming up to temperature, prepare the croutons. Toast thick slices of bread (I used a grill pan to get good dark, charred lines on each slice), lay the cheese on them and put them under the grill until the cheese starts to brown.

Serve the soup with a crouton floating on top. The soup should soak into the crisp crouton, its heat softening the cheese. Slurp the lot quickly while it's still deliciously hot.

Tartiflette

Please do not serve this to people on diets.

Tartiflette is a dish from the Savoy region of France, where they take their dairy products very, very seriously. Despite its extreme good looks and fantastic taste, it's not actually a traditional recipe - it was invented in the 1980s by the union of Reblochon cheesemakers as a way to popularise the cheese. Since then, it's become popular throughout the region, and different recipes have proliferated. This is my take on it.

At heart, and as the Reblochon cheesemakers intended, this is an absurdly creamy potato gratin with a whole cheese sitting on top of it. The nutmeg and thyme in here make the cheese sing, the rich Marsala makes the cream a velvety thing of beauty, and the sweet shallots and salty, smoked bacon infuse the whole dish. Serve with a salad and some crusty bread. (The salad is there so you can pretend you're eating healthily.)

Reblochon is hard to come by here, so I have used a Camembert. You can use any soft, washed-rinded, reasonably stinky cheese (an Epoisse would work equally well). To serve two for supper, with enough for lunch tomorrow, you'll need:

8 potatoes (I used Vivaldi, which are firm and creamy when cooked)
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 pint crème fraîche
12 rashers smoked streaky bacon
6 shallots
½ wine glass Marsala
1 Camembert
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
Butter
Nutmeg
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Chop the shallots into small dice, and cut the bacon into dice the same size. Saute in a little butter until the shallots are sweet and the bacon browning at the edges. Set aside. Peel the potatoes and slice them as thin as you can. (My new mandoline has made this the work of a couple of minutes, and I'm yet to injure myself on it, so I'm still recommending you go straight to the cookware shop and buy one. A plastic Japanese one is very inexpensive - mine was £5 - and works splendidly.) Arrange one overlapping layer of potato slices in the bottom of a heavy baking dish which you have buttered generously, then sprinkle over the thyme, a grating of nutmeg and half of the crushed garlic. Scatter over half of the bacon and shallot mixture, then spread half the crème fraîche over the top. Repeat with another layer, then put a final potato lid on the top.

Slice the cheese in half along its equator, and cut each half into quarters. Arrange the pieces on top of the dish. Pour the Marsala over the dish, dot with butter, season (don't use too much salt - you'll get plenty from the bacon and the salty cheese) and bake in the hot oven for an hour, or a little longer - test to make sure that the potatoes are tender. It's advisable to put a tray under the dish to catch any drips.

This is very rich. Make sure your salad has a tart dressing to offset the extreme creaminess of it all, and dig in.

Spice-crusted chicken with Boursin stuffing

Regular readers will note that I'm very fond of Boursin - the garlic-spiked cream cheese which comes in a dear little corrugated tinfoil hat. It's got a lot more kick than the Philadelphia variety, and I find it much more robust in cooking than other cream cheeses.

It may be a mass-produced cheese, but Boursin actually has quite a history behind it. It's been around for more than forty years, and was the first large-scale soft cheese production business in France. François Boursin took the idea behind the meal of fromage frais and herbs eaten in French villages (it was a popular meal in Gournay, his own home town), and turned it into "All-natural Gournay cheese". The ad campaign with the "Du pain, du vin, du Boursin" tagline has been around for nearly as long; it started in 1968, and you can still buy wedge-shaped bits of Boursin for your cheeseboard, if you are the sort of person who has a cheeseboard and thinks Boursin belongs on it.

I like it very much on bread, but Boursin really comes into its own when it's hot, and acting as a hard sauce.

For this dish you'll need (per person):

1 breast joint of chicken with skin and bones
1/2 round Boursin
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
Butter, olive oil, salt

Push your fingers under the skin of the chicken until it's loosened and you've got a little pocket under all the skin. Push the Boursin under it, squashing and flattening until you've forced it all into the pocket. (This is a lot of cheese for a little chicken; just keep going until it's all packed in there.) Smear any that's left over the outside of the breast - it'll help the crust to stick.

Bash the coriander, cumin and a pinch of salt in a pestle and mortar; you're aiming for a rough grind, so don't go mad with it. Press the spices and salt into the skin side of the chicken breast (which you have cleverly prepared by making it sticky with cheese).

Melt butter (about a teaspoon per breast) and a slug of olive oil in a large, non-stick frying pan which will fit in your oven (if you don't own one, use a non-stick roasting tin on the hob) over a high heat, and put the chicken breasts in it, skin side up, for three minutes. Turn the breasts skin-side down when your three minutes are up, and put the whole pan in the oven at 180c for 25 minutes.

You'll end up with a sweet, toothsome chicken breast annointed with a creamy garlic sauce, and a crisp, herbed skin. Serve with rice, to soak up the cheese and the chicken's spicy juices.

Incidentally, the corn in this picture, which I served with the chicken, is white corn (maïs blanc) which I found in France, produced by good old Green Giant. The kernels are paler, smaller and longer than normal niblets, and they're delicious; buttery and sweet. If anybody has seen any in the UK, please let me know. I've only got two tins left, and I seem to have become addicted.

Buffalo wings

Another item from the Great American Suitcase Load of Food I brought back last February was a large bottle of Frank's Hot Sauce. Frank's is the traditional sauce used for gorgeous, buttery, spicy Buffalo wings; unfortunately it's hard to find the dish or the sauce readily in the UK, so you'll have to resort to importing sauce and making your own wings.

We're in luck; chicken wings, being bony and a little unprepossessing, are not something the English, who seem to prefer meat that comes in boneless, skinless chunks, buy very often. While they're usually available in the shops, they're not expensive. This is great news for me; there are plenty of excellent Chinese chicken wing recipes (when I was little we'd fight over the wings, which my Dad always assured us were where the very tastiest, most succulent meat was), and I have an artery-clagging love for Buffalo wings with blue cheese dip and celery. I decided to break into my bottle of Frank's, and pay no attention to the calories.

You'll need to joint your chicken wings. It's extremely easy; you just need a sharp knife. This wing is whole - spread it out and look for the two joints. Mr Weasel, taller, stronger and kinder than me, suggested that his extra height would make the jointing easier. Shamefully, I stood back, beaming, and let him do it. I really don't enjoy handling raw chicken very much; I'm usually fine with raw meats, but for some reason I find chicken a bit difficult. There's something about the way it smells raw which makes me enjoy the cooked product less. Poor thing; he does work for his supper. The joints themselves are softer than the bone itself, so your knife should penetrate cleanly and neatly.

Chop through both joints like this, and discard the wing tip. You'll end up with a little drumstick-looking bit, and one with two little bones (much like your forearm, if you, like me, can only remember which bits of meat are where on an animal by comparing the animal with yourself).

Heat deep oil for frying to 190c (375f). I use a wok and a jam thermometer for deep frying; the wok means you use less oil, and having a wide container means you can fry more wings at once. Fry the winglets in batches ( I did six at a time) until they are golden brown.

When one batch of wings is ready (they should be about this colour), put them to drain on some kitchen paper in a very low oven, where they can keep warm until all their friends are ready. I cooked fifteen wings (so thirty chopped up wing bits), which should serve three people.

Meanwhile, you can get to work on the blue cheese dip while your sous chef gets on with cutting celery into strips. I used a recipe given to me by an American friend, which I've further messed about with and added to a bit; I think it's pretty much perfect:

1 cup sour cream
1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese (use the strongest cheese you can find; for me, this time round it was Gorgonzola, but Roquefort's great in this too)
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 grated shallot
1 clove grated garlic
1 handful fresh herbs, chopped finely (I used parsley and chives)
2 teaspoons Chipotle Tabasco sauce (use regular Tabasco if you can't get the lovely smokey Chipotle version)
Salt and pepper to taste.

Easy as pie; just mix the lot up together.

Now warm half a bottle of that Frank's hot sauce, transported across continents wrapped in your knickers like precious jewellery, with half a pat of butter. When the butter is melted, whisk it all together. Pour the lot over the crispy little winglets in a deep bowl, and toss like a divine salad.

Serve with the blue cheese dip and the sticks of celery. You'll make a terrible mess; have lots of napkins on the table.

I really must find out who the hell this Frank fellow with the sauce is, find him and shake his hand.