This week’s cookbook was a great one from Gordon Ramsay called Cooking for Friends. Not a book of his we’ve used much before. Our son chose all the recipes this week, ranging from simple to quite challenging. The week started with a cheeky little barbecue starter of Grilled Scallop and Prawn Brochettes with Coriander and Chilli butter. This was delicious, and the butter was a little belting recipe which we’ll make again and has been spread on bread and melted over steak on several occasions already! Sunday lunch was the somewhat unusual combination of Leg of lamb and Cider. It proved to be a perfect combination, especially when served with Gordon’s Red Cabbage recipe, which was fabulous! We do his red cabbage from his Christmas cookbook every Christmas, but this was a perfect all-year-round version. Dessert was a genuinely excellent summer crumble of peach, raspberries and ginger. We used a jar of peaches as we couldn’t get fresh, which was great.

Now Monday was a bank holiday, and our son had suggested making sausages! We gave it a go, and they were excellent – we all had a lot of fun making them. We served them with mash and leftover red cabbage. We will be making sausages again! Tuesday, we had the rather lovely Duck, and Sweet potato Rosti followed by a Double chocolate parfait which we made the day before. The Rosti was excellent – the parfait was pretty tasty too.

We served a lovely recipe of Braised Chicken legs with honey and five-spice with a fantastic parsnip mash. The final dish of the week was a “mixed grill” to finish the last of the sausages, with steak, Iberico chops, bacon, black pudding and chips. That was quite a week. Gordon is up again next week with our daughter choosing the recipes.