88. Old-fashioned English muffins

Home Cooking Made Easy p44

Muffins are a lexical nightmare. They can mean so many things. Usually they mean American muffins, e.g. a Starbucks Skinny Blueberry Muffin, but in my homeland of Lancashire they have oven-bottom muffins – a kind of flat bread roll. Confusingly in the Oldham area, muffin is also a general word for bread roll.

87. Mini beef wellingtons

Home Cooking Made Easy p127

I can rarely be bothered to do a roast on Sundays but this dish satisfies that Sunday urge for meat and fat, without quite so much time and effort.

55. Hamburger baps

Home Cooking Made Easy p46

This summer was a bit of a let-down from the point of view of barbecues. So I never got round to making the minted lamb burgers on p116, or the baps to go with them.

52. Prosciutto & brie toastie and 53. Root vegetable rosti

Home Cooking Made Easy p35 and p157

I read this morning that applying nail varnish without a base coat is like applying foundation without moisturiser. Perhaps that means something to the initiated. To me, it sounds like a joke missing a punchline. I’m still trying to work out the link between the two. Are they both quicker, dangerous, foolhardy, uncouth, or daring?

48. Bloody Mary soup and 49. Chilli cornbread

Home Cooking Made Easy p28 and 53

For this Lorraine challenge, I’ve had to buy quite a few things I wouldn’t normally have in my storecupboard – kaffir lime leaves, mirin, pink peppercorns etc. But I’m afraid I wasn’t going to buy a bottle of vodka, just to add some to this soup. No, not even for you dear reader.

44. Puffed up pitta bread

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I feel cheated. I always thought pitta bread was unleavened bread, and that my lunch of pitta, houmous and olives was sort of Jewish. Well it’s not. Pitta bread contains yeast. My life has been a lie. It was a little bit like when I found out “Butter”kist microwave popcorn is dairy free.

39. Mrs Stephenson’s dinner party bread rolls and 40. Pan-fried asparagus

Home Cooking Made Easy p50 and p143

These bread rolls are named after Lorraine’s Home Economics Teacher, because they were her first GCSE assignment. We never did anything so useful in our “Food Technology” lessons. I just remember testing whether homemade or shop-bought pastry was better (Jus-Rol beat 13 year old Kerry), healthy food (fruit kebabs) and roux sauce. If I had to name a memorable recipe after my teacher it would have to be Mrs Collinson’s “Design your own packaging for a Christmas themed confectionary item.”

33. Sea salt & olive oil pain d’epi

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I have a bit of a backlog of recipes to blog, so prepare yourself for an abundance of well-written, witty and inspirational posts.

6. 21st century ham, cheese & chive bread

Home Cooking Made Easy p43

As Jamie Cullum sang, “This 21st Century Bread, is surrounded by illusion, and confusion.” It’s a no-yeast, no-knead bread, can it even be called a bread?

1. Really Quick ‘Danish Pastries’

Home Cooking Made Easy p54

Welcome to my first recipe of 2012 – enter with me into “an aromatic realm of flavours, zests, glazes and textures,” sometimes called “my kitchen.”