Sunday's fish pie

Matt, my husband, had declined my offer of roast dinner. Wisely because roast dinner would probably have consisted of bean burgers, roast potatoes, peas and gravy. So I would have to be a bit more imaginative. Whilst ferreting in the freezer earlier in the week I had noticed a disproportionate amount of smoked fish. I tend to buy this (and other fish) when it's reduced and then freeze it for use when we fancy it. One of the things I like to make is fish pie, but in the absence of any plain white fish and only a massive side of salmon (which I should have chopped up before freezing but is now going to have to be deployed when we have lots of people round sometime) this wasn't an option in the traditional sense. What I envisaged instead was something with the smoked fish (2 of the 4 fillets) and tomato. There was also half a tin of sweetcorn, half a punnet of mushrooms and some spring onions that needed using up. I wouldn't normally buy spring onions but they were on offer so were effectively free with the celery (not deployed in this creation) that I had brought. So I decided to add the mushrooms and sweetcorn to the tomato / fish mix and to make some sort of fancy mashed potato to go on top of it all.

This had the potential to use a lot of pans, something that I generally strive to avoid. So I spent a few minutes working out how to reduce my pan usage. I got it down to a wok, a saucepan and an oven-proof dish. Unfortunately I had used my multifunction hob / oven dish for the previous day's curry and hadn't yet washed it up, otherwise this would have reduced my pan usage by a third.

Strategically, I started off cooking the chopped spring onions in the wok while the fish defrosted in the microwave. This has had the unfortunate side-effect of smoked fish aroma emanating from the microwave every time we used it for a number of days subsequently. I am yet to discover the way around this – apart from of course to be more organised and get the fish out the freezer earlier so that it can defrost naturally. I was reminded of one of the reasons why I don't buy spring onions very often – they were so full of mud and required a disproportionate amount of washing for their small volume.

Spring onions to one side – they would go in the mash. I replaced them in the wok with the mushrooms and once these were cooked down (and I never cease to be amazed just how much they do cook down) I added a tin of plum tomatoes which I chopped a little bit with my wooden spoon. While that heated up a bit I prepared the fish. This mainly involved deskinning it, which is relatively easy as long as you have some good soap for afterwards so that you're not afraid to tackle to quite assertively.

The fish went into the mushroom / tomato mix and I put the potatoes on to boil. I am of the opinion that lots of the goodness in a potato is in its skin. Therefore unless you are an exceptionally honoured guest or the potatoes have particularly grotty skins you will find that my mash has the added texture and flavour of the skins which I leave in. In posh restaurants I think they call this crushed potatoes, really it is just slack mash. I stirred the sweetcorn into the mushroom / tomato / fish mix and then had to wait for a while until the fish was cooked and the potatoes were ready for mashing. Rather than twiddling my thumbs I grated some strong cheddar that I decided would augment the mash rather nicely.

I finished off the mushroom / tomato / fish / sweetcorn mix with a tablespoon of crème fraiche (it seemed like a good idea) and lots of black pepper and transferred this to my oven-proof dish. I mashed up the potatoes with the spring onions and cheese (this smelt amazing in itself and I would have been quite happy just to eat this for my meal) and then carefully applied this on top of the mushroom / tomato / fish / sweetcorn mix. There was a little bit of mash left over but I didn't mind – I would look forward to eating it as reheat.

The whole thing went into a hottish oven (the standard 180°C for when you don't really know what temperature you should really be using) for about 20 minutes and I cooked a little bit of broccoli (one of my favourite vegetables but not one of my favourite spellings) to go with it. The smell coming from the oven was (even if I say so myself) amazing – that wonderful combination of smoked fish and cheese I think. And when it came to eating the smell lived up to the expectations that it had created - a delicious alternative to a slack roast dinner. This is definitely one that's going to be recreated, hopefully with fewer pans next time.

Saturday's carrot cake

My intention had sort of been to make Christmas cakes / Christmas puddings today. Enough of an intention that I had got as far as calling my mum to ask for recipes. She agreed to email me. But I didn't have enough of an intention to purchase a slow cooker for the puddings, especially when it transpires that mum has two spare ones (who needs two spare slow cookers?) and I'm going to see her in a few weeks so can acquire one of these then. And it appears that I am a little premature for Christmas cake (up to 4 weeks in advance the recipe says). So it was off with the Christmas baking and on with the carrot cake.

I have often thought about making a carrot cake, ever since Matt, my husband, bought me a food processor a couple of years ago. You may wonder why the advent of a food processor would mean that I would think about making carrot cake. Well, one of the things that has always put me off before is the amount of manual carrot grating that I had envisaged. Since getting the food processor the thing that has been putting me off making carrot cake is my mum. Her carrot cake is so good that I really think I don't stand a chance of living up to it and all who eat it (who have previously tasted hers) will be disappointed. I have however made a number of successful batches of carrot muffins and was feeling confident enough now to extend my skills to a full on cake.

I've had mum's carrot cake recipe written on a scrap of paper since my university days but decided that rather than a direct comparison I'd try something different. So I selected a different recipe from my box. As well as carrots this also featured sultanas (also in mum's) and coconut which I thought sounded nice. In the end it turns out that for the required 175g of grated carrot you only need 2 carrots – so maybe I could have managed the manual grating after all. It was a pleasingly simple recipe: beat together 75ml sunflower oil and 100g dark brown soft sugar (I used light brown as this was all there was in the cupboard). Then beat in 2 eggs, then stir in everything else.

Unable to resist I decided to add a few more ingredients – as well as the carrot, 100g self-raising flour, cinnamon and nutmeg, 50g sultanas and 50g desiccated coconut, I also added 50g chopped dried apple (I've had carrot and apple soup before which was very nice). I tried to chop the apple in the food processor but it was having none of it (maybe I was using the wrong attachment) so had to chop manually. Then I got a bit worried that there wouldn't be enough moisture to deal with all the dry ingredients so I added a tablespoon of ginger syrup (I've been looking for a use for this since I used the balls of stem ginger in a big gingerbread).

Then you just pour it into a “prepared” 18cm square tin and bake at 180ºC for about half an hour (maybe just under – keep an eye on it). One thing that I have never got the hang of (to be honest I haven't ever really tried very hard) is lining cake tins. With square tins it isn't too bad though – I just stick a bit of greaseproof paper in it and poke a bit at the corners. The worst that happens is slightly untidy corners. I think that before I make Christmas cake(s) using lots of (relatively) expensive ingredients I should try to learn how to line the tins properly. Perhaps mum will have some tips.

In terms of icing I take after my mum i.e. we'd rather not. I was positively amazed that she had full on decorated a cake for my 30^th birthday. So something I could do to increase my chances of a good carrot cake taste comparison would be to ice this one. In general I don't really like the taste or texture of icing but I do like the cream cheese one traditional with carrot cake. In the absence of any oranges in our house, or in the local shop, I made do with the zest of a couple of clementines. Despite assiduously (wow, that word just came to me, I hope it's the one I'm after) sticking to the recipe (apart from the clementine substitution) the icing seemed to be quite runny but it tasted really nice (it would have been remiss not to test it) and I was loath to change the taste with the addition of more icing sugar. Once the cake had fully cooled I transferred it to my chosen tin (one that had previously contained biscuits celebrating a rather big wedding from last year) and spooned over the icing. The trick is to put the cake on the lid of the tin then you don't have to do any manoeuvring to ice or serve it. The icing did pour over the sides quite a bit but I wasn't too bothered, I just cleaned it up with my little finger.

We resisted until after our curry to try the cake out. And I must say I wasn't disappointed. Matt described it as having a good cakiness about it. I was particularly pleased by the apple which I think gave it a satisfying tanginess. Must try it out on my mum.

Saturday's curry

You might have noticed that it's been a bit quiet on the slack lasagne front recently. That's for two reasons:

1. We've been on holiday – to France. We ate out a lot, and self constructed meals consisted mainly of bread and cheese and a bit of salad.

2. Other than being on holiday I've been eating a lot of jacket potatoes. These have mostly been consumed with cottage cheese, beans and cheese, or tinned sardines; as you can appreciate there's little blog material there.

On return from our holiday we ordered a big top-up from an online retailer. This was mainly successful but resulted in an extreme over supply of mushrooms. I had selected two packs of the cheapest own brand fresh mushrooms and one pack of dried mushrooms. The delivery driver informed me that the mushrooms had been substituted with premium own brand fresh mushrooms and even showed me what I was now getting. I was initially delighted as this appeared to be a £1 bonus in the mushroom stakes for us. However on further unpacking it transpired that we had been sent the premium fresh mushrooms instead of the dried mushrooms and I was now in possession of 4 punnets of fresh mushrooms.

Now I like mushrooms (and apparently they are very nutritious), but I was going to have my work cut out to use all these up before they turned into a horrible slimy mess. The first punnet (cheap ones) went into a sausage casserole. I hadn't planned to make a sausage casserole because I was catering for a visiting German friend. She's not a typical German so I thought that she might not want sausages. But she did (they were veggie sausages though which I think might be a blasphemy to many Germans), and this was a great use of 350g mushrooms. The next punnet (posh ones) were the main feature of a risotto. Half of the next punnet (posh ones) went onto a pizza (courtesy of Matt, my husband). Which left us with half a punnet of posh mushrooms and a whole punnet of cheap ones. Having eaten mushrooms for 4 days consecutively I wasn't particularly fancying more, but they had to be used or I would risk the slimy mess.

The solution would be curry. I love mushrooms in a curry. The usual would be mushroom,sweet potato and chickpea but I was going to try something slightly different: mushroom, sweet potato and vegetarian “chicken style” pieces. (I don't usually go for meat replacement options much (apart from the mince which I think is fab) but had a few lapses into carnivorism in France (they can just about cater for vegetarians these days but not yet pregnant vegetarians) and since then have found myself fancying that sort of “meaty” taste.)

As usual I started by sweating off a couple of onions (although I heard on the TV that they don't always use onions in India because it displeases the Gods). Usually one onion might do but one of these onions was slightly old and had a slight pickled aroma about it until I peeled off a good few layers and the other had that weird thing where you get a second layer of onion skin a few layers in. At the same time I also added a good lot of fresh ginger that I had finely chopped (maybe about an inch off the piece of ginger root) and a tablespoon of special curry powder. Sometimes I make up my own spice mixture but we have recently replenished with a fantastic product called “Magic Mix”. This is a big pot of a blend of spices which we discovered at a market in Cornwall a few years ago, where we had a taster and met the lady who runs the company. Since then it's become almost as much of a staple beside our hob as a pot of vegetable stock powder. It has no chilli or ginger in it so you add those (and anything else you fancy) to taste.

Next I added chopped sweet potato. Sometimes I chop it big but today I chopped it small. That cooked for as long as it took me to prepare the mushrooms. The remainder of the posh punnet (they were already going slimy) and half of a cheap punnet (still in perfect nick – and they have the same expiry as the posh ones). I added them to the pan along with the “chicken style” pieces. I was a bit concerned as I could smell burning but on closer inspection this turned out to be some grime on the hob ring rather than anything bad happening in my cooking. Once that had cooked down a bit (usually signified by juice release from the mushrooms) I would usually add a tin or two of chopped tomatoes. Today this would be impossible because the pan was already at capacity. So I just added enough boiling water to cover the contents – essential to ensure adequate cooking of the potato – along with a spoonful of branded yeast extract and then left it on a low heat while I got on with other things.

The problem with adding water is that it ended up a bit too liquidy so after a while (once the potato seemed soft) I chucked in a handful of lentils, mainly for the purpose of thickening but with the added benefit of protein and fibre, and left it on a low heat again. Unfortunately I forgot to turn the hob off when we went out for a swim, we could take a gamble and leave it but this would risk a horrible mush on our return. Fortunately Matt was in a chivalrous mood and dropped me off at the pool while he headed back to rescue the dinner. (He joined me about after about a quarter of an hour and as I'm a bit slow at the moment we did the same number of lengths.)

Upon our return it was already time to think about eating (it's the season for my favourite TV dancing programme so I didn't want to be faffing about in the kitchen while that was on). To me it didn't look like we had much rice left (Matt was cooking the rice) so I got it in my head that we should have something else to go with the curry. I had a quick look at recipes for typical “Indian” breads and decided that chapatis were significantly more achievable than naan in the available time. Even then it would be cutting it fine and I would have to take some short cuts, this was risky as I had never made chapatis before but at least I had nothing to compare them against.

So I mixed 115g wholemeal plain flour with 90ml lukewarm water (in which I dissolved a pinch of salt) and then kneaded. I skipped the “resting” phase and went straight to the forming phase – rolling out to 4 very thin discs (I rolled some cumin seeds into two of them). Then I cooked them in a hot frying pan (no oil required) until they started to get bubbles in them.

It was all ready in the nick of time (and it was a treat of Saturday night dancing). The curry itself was rich and spicy, possibly better for the absence of tomatoes. In the absence of chilli I “hotted” mine up with some lime pickle and we both enjoyed some mango chutney and some of our brother-in-law's delicious home made runner bean chutney. The chapatis were a great success – I can't believe I've never made them before.

Sunday's stuffing

We had a couple of slightly aging peppers in the fridge that I was keen to use up but as we were expecting a big delivery from the online supermarket on Monday so I didn't want to make anything for lunch that required the acquisition of any more ingredients. Unfortunately I discovered that we had no onions left. This was too restrictive but I would just pop to the shop quickly, I had to go out to buy tarpaulin anyway. Popping to the shop quickly didn't happen – it was absolute mayhem – but I was successful in acquiring an onion so lunch could proceed.

I decided to do stuffed peppers. Rather than bother with any sort of recipe I just made it up as I went along. One of the things that I sometimes don't like about stuffed peppers is when the peppers are crunchy. Crunchy peppers are for salads and dips, otherwise they should be soft and sweet. So I halved (lengthways) a yellow and an orange pepper, covered in boiling water and blasted in the microwave for a couple of minutes.

While they cooled I worked on the filling; this was going to be couscous based. I started by chopping and sweating my hard acquired onion, still unsure of what the rest of the filling was going to be like. I was tempted to go for my usual “camping” couscous but I'm trying to reduce the rate at which we get through tinned tomatoes. So for savouriness and protein I added a load of vegetarian mince to the pan – about as twice as much by volume as the onion. I cooked that for about 10 minutes and then tipped in the couscous, about the same amount by volume as the onion plus the mince, plus some veg stock powder and black pepper.

I have never quite recovered from a couscous incident when I was a student (my mum had assured me that you can't go wrong) in which I added too much water, so tried to correct the balance by adding more couscous, then it was too dry so in went more water. And so on until I had got through a whole packet of couscous and all I had was a gelatinous mess, too much for my jug and thus all over the work surface too. Since then I have been very careful with couscous, either being very precise with my measuring or adding water just a very little at a time. Today I went for the second of these techniques and added just a tablespoon or so of boiling water to the pan at a time. It was successful and I had lovely fluffy couscous.

Now to fill the peppers. I laid out the pepper halves in a deep pan and half filled each of them with the couscous mixture (it became apparent that I had far more filling than was strictly needed). Then I put on a sprinkling of feta (a bit of spontaneous cheese addition was sure to improve the whole thing) and then topped off with more filling. I could have saved the rest of the filling for another day but wasn't really in the mood for that so poured the rest of it around the peppers. Now I thought about, this would serve to stabilise the peppers in the pan.

Somehow it didn't seem finished. I keep coming across breadcrumbs in the freezer and thought that adding some as a topping would add a bit of interest in the texture. (I am mainly saving these breadcrumbs from a bargain loaf of bread in the Spring to make Christmas puddings, but the consensus is that this should be done in November). I augmented the breadcrumbs with a bit more spontaneous cheese (just a little grate of parmesan this time) and more black pepper, sprinkled over the stuffed peppers / loose couscous and put it all in the oven at 180ºC. Having never made this before I had no idea how long it would take, but everything was pre-cooked so burning was the main risk. I took it out when the top had started to crisp up nicely.

Really the stuffed peppers should have been served with a lovely crisp green salad, but we had nothing suitable from which to assemble this so I just served them with extra of the filling. They were really nice. The microwaving of the peppers had really done the trick to make them nice and soft, the filling tasted just good and the spontaneous cheese additions did indeed improve the whole thing. It would be nice with a few toasted pine nuts too.

Saturday's sweet things

Recently I've mostly gone off sweet things, and therefore haven't had them in stock. But this evening I really fancied a nice biscuit. I now faced a choice:

1. Get changed out of my pyjamas and make my way to the corner shop to take a chance that they had something nice in stock.

or

2. Make something myself.

I went for option 2.

Still not being in total sweet-toothed mode I was feeling quite picky about what sort of biscuit I was going to make. It would have to feature ginger or lemon. Having done a lot of ginger baking recently I opted for lemon. It being reasonably late I didn't want anything too complex so had in mind some sort of lemony shortbread. I found a recipe for orange shortbread and felt that it would be reasonably safe to substitute the orange for lemon.

Not wanting to feel left out Matt, my husband, decided that he wanted to take part in some kitchen based activity too. He announced that he was going to make a crumble (probably his second favourite non-chocolate pudding). We usually have plenty of fruit in the freezer, the current selection being cherries, gooseberries and raspberries (or maybe loganberries). After persuading Matt that none of these were likely to make a good combination (there's a conspicuous absence of apple which goes with everything in a crumble, a bit like yeast extract in savoury dishes) he settled on just defrosting the gooseberries.

Meanwhile he made the crumble topping. This is one of the most reliable recipes that my mum has ever given to me and requires just a little manipulation of ratios:

• 3 parts flour (you can substitute some with oats, but Matt didn't today)
• 2 parts sugar (a reasonably grainy sort, Matt used caster, granulated would probably have been fine or even including a bit of demerara. You can actually reduce the amount of sugar)
• 1 part fat (I think butter is best)

For a usual sort of size crumble 1 part = 50g is fairly good. Matt mixed the dry ingredients together and then rubbed in the butter.

It was a good job that my shortbread recipe didn't require the rubbing in of butter as this is to be avoided whilst in a dressing gown. Instead I whisked together the butter and sugar and lemon rind, stirred in the flour and only had to use my fingers to pull it all together into a ball. I tried a new technique for rolling out. On a popular television baking contest I have noticed that the contestants often use their rolling pin on top of a piece of greaseproof paper. Not wanting to waste greaseproof paper I used my rolling pin on top of a thin plastic chopping board (at least that's what I've always used them for before today, I think mum gave them to me). This worked really well to get an even roll and no unwanted stickage.

Matt was now concentrating on applying the crumble topping to the gooseberries and I was getting tired. When I get tired get very bad at making decisions so I slightly distracted Matt and asked him what shape lemon shortbread he would like: hearts. I can do hearts and not having totally lost my decision making faculties decided to go for smallish hearts – this would make more which would hopefully mean the whole lot would last longer.

Both of our creations were ready to go in the oven at the same time. The lemon shortbread were ready after 10 minutes or so. The crumble would take a little longer. Unfortunately my biscuit craving wouldn't be met for a few minutes yet as I had to wait for the shortbread to cool. But that few minutes passed quickly enough and the first test was with the mis-shapen bit that was left over after I made all the hearts. A little bit of warm lemon shortbread was just what I was after and then I was ready for bed.

But Matt was keen that I try his crumble, so I agreed to a spoonful. But spoons come in different sizes and the kind of spoon that Matt had in mind was clearly larger than the kind of spoon I had in mind. Still, it was tasty, not too sweet and the top was nice and crunchy (yet slightly gooey – in a good way – where it met the fruit), and I slowly made my way through my portion.

I was definitely ready for bed now and Matt agreed to package up the food. The crumble would make a good Sunday pudding. The recipe said that the shortbread would keep for 2 weeks in an airtight container – obviously the recipe does not take into consideration the resilience of the householders when faced with something delicious.

When it came to pudding time on Sunday I was slightly confused. When we went to bed there was definitely enough for a bowlful of crumble each. Now all that was left was some gooseberries. According to Matt the rest of the crumble had just disappeared somewhere. On further questioning it transpired that it had disappeared into his mouth. But I had psyched myself up for pudding so undeterred decided to turn the remaining gooseberries into a fool. I am not sure what the technical definition of a fool is but I basically added some crème fraiche and tinned custard (about the same amount of each) to the gooseberries, so that overall there was approximately a 1:1 ratio of fruit to creamy stuff. It was absolutely delicious. Possibly (but don't tell Matt) even more delicious than the original crumble.

As for the shortbread, I give them half a week max.

Wednesday's men and ladies

I had foolishly promised one of my work mates some form of ginger baking for today. This was a foolish promise because I hadn't really planned how I would fit baking into my evening – there were a lot of chores that needed doing. On the plus side baking is preferable to chores. My services were also to be called upon for a rehearsal of an imminent best-men speech (yes, there are two of them).

I fancied doing some sort of biscuits and had a browse of my recipe books. There were loads of recipes for different types of ginger biscuits so I opted for what seemed to be the easiest, involving the fewest ingredients, from one of my most trusted recipe books: gingerbread men. Thus far I'd managed one chore – putting away the groceries that had just arrived from a large internet order. I decided that in order to achieve my chore goals I'd need to do some multi-tasking so put a load of washing on before starting work on the baking.

The recipe said to melt 2 tablespoons of black treacle with 50g of butter and 15ml of milk. Thinking about it now I'm not sure that the milk is really necessary but the book has “dairy” in the title so I think they're keen to get as many farmyard products in as possible. I have found that it's very difficult to accurately measure any type of treacle or syrup product in any units apart from grams (or another actual weight I suppose). This was further complicated because the recipe seemed to indicate that 2 tablespoons of black treacle is equivalent 60ml. As far as I'm concerned one tablespoon is 15ml (no matter what the substance), so I was confused. I wasn't about to start working out the density of black treacle so I just went with 2 big dollops of black treacle.

While that was melting I mixed together 100g plain flour, 50g sugar (soft brown) and 1 (generous) teaspoon of ground ginger.

The next instruction was to mix the treacle mixture into the dry ingredients until it formed a soft ball. Once I'd thoroughly mixed the two sets of ingredients it resembled nothing like a soft ball. It was more of a sludgy cake mixture. In retrospect perhaps I should have just beaten in an egg and turned it into a cake but in my mind I was committed to gingerbread men. So I added a bit more flour in the hope of turning the sludge into a soft ball. After several additions of flour (just a little at a time) I worried that the ginger would be losing its potency so I added another shake of this. With a few more little additions of flour my soft ball finally formed.

The final part of the pre-bake was surprisingly uneventful. I rolled out to about half a centimetre and then cut out both men and lady shapes (with a clever double-sided cutter that I had acquired from my mum). They baked for about 10 minutes at 180°C and came out looking remarkably like gingerbread men and ladies.

Gingerbread men and ladies aren't the same without decoration. The recipe had said to apply currants for eyes, nose, buttons etc before baking but we didn't have any currants and sultanas were too big. So I decided to risk some post-baking icing. Icing is not my strong point. Cautious to avoid my usual mistake of making it too runny I tipped a load of icing sugar into a bowl and very slowly added water, just half a teaspoon at a time. It's on occasions like these that I would like to own some food colouring. But I don't, so we would have to make do with all white features. I was not about to start using a piping – this would require my full concentration and by now I was in full swing with the best men speech. Instead I applied the icing with a cocktail stick (or tooth pick if you prefer) and finished off with a few silver balls.

I don't think they were the greatest gingerbread men and ladies ever made – slightly on the tough side – but my colleagues were very polite and said that they enjoyed them and no-one lost any teeth.

Even still, next time I'm going to try a different recipe. And maybe I'll invest in some food colouring.

(In case you were wondering the best men speech went down very well).

Sunday's gingerbread

Recently, I have had a bit of a problem:

• Matt remains adamant that he wants to lose some weight
• I am keen to support Matt's health kick
• I love making cake
• Matt can't resist eating it if there is cake in the house

* Therefore by making cake and leaving it in the house I am implicit in impeding Matt's slenderising efforts.

So whenever there's an opportunity to bake a cake to share with others I'm only too happy to do this. The current occasion was a visit from Matt's sister and brother-in-law and a visit for all of us down to some friends in Cornwall.

I decided that I wanted to make something gingery. I had loads of recipes for gingery things but, overwhelmed by the choice, I chose to make something that I didn't have the recipe for: my granny's gingerbread. My granny was a great baker (I have particularly fond memories of her chocolate melting moments) and I remember her gingerbread being rich and moist and delicious.

A telephone call to, and an email from my mum (complete with attachment) later I was ready to go. Mum had even converted the recipe to metric for me which, given that the scales can do imperial, was unnecessary but very kind (imperial makes my brain go a little bit funny).

Like all the best recipes this one is very simple and requires no complex techniques.

1. Melt together 100g of butter (the instructions from mum actually said margarine but butter usually tastes better although I suppose that margarine might be more authentic if it's a WW2 era recipe), 100g of sugar (I used soft brown sugar) and 250g of black treacle (mmm, I love black treacle). I intended to do this in the microwave (again, very non-authentic but granny did embrace mod-cons) but first had to eliminate the smell of garlic from said appliance. In the early hours of the morning Matt had decided that he would cook a garlic bread in the microwave (that's a whole other story) and it now wreaked. So I found an old lemon and squeezed it into a wide bowl and put it in the microwave on high for a few minutes – this is a very effective microwave de-odourising method. The melting of the ingredients took just a few 20 second blasts on high with a stir in between each one.

2. Sift / stir together 275g plain flour, ½ teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, 1 teaspoon of ground ginger and 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon (I was pretty generous with the spices).

3. Whisk up an egg with 200ml of milk (whisking with a fork is adequate).

4. Stir the egg / milk into the dry ingredients – it looked a bit like raw bread dough when I'd done this bit.

5. Stir the butter / sugar / treacle mixture into the rest of it. I used a wooden spoon and just kept mixing until it all looked even.

6. Add some lumpy bits if you fancy – I used a large tablespoon of chopped stem ginger and a handful of sultanas. Some chopped nuts might also be nice. I had to resist the temptation of adding loads because I figured this would absorb a lot of the moisture and dry out the gingerbread.

7. Pour into a lined 20cm square tin (that's what the instructions said but I used a long loaf tin instead) and bake at 150-160ºC (fan) for one and a half hours. At least that was the instructions, I think it might have got away with a little less time.

Matt just about managed to squeeze the loaf into our largest plastic food box for the trip westwards. It was extracted again after we had let our delicious barbecue dinner go down. All seven of us had a slice, some of us two. I was informed that it went very nicely with crème fraiche and there was one voice who lamented the lack of clotted cream but I enjoyed mine very much just as it was. There was a unanimously positive verdict including (what I rate as a key indicator of success) a request for the recipe. And Matt was saved from himself as our hosts were only too happy to finish off the leftovers over the next few days.

(I'm waiting for my sister-in-law to send me the pic that she took of the finished product! In the meantime I'm sure you can use your imagination.)

It wasn't as sticky as I remember Granny's gingerbread being but tasted just right. On a follow-up phone call to my mum to report of the outcome, she told me that it gets stickier (and thus probably better) with age – up to a point. Apparently it will keep well for up to a week. So I'm going to do another one midweek for next weekend.