Our next book was Angela Hartnett’s Cucina by Angela Hartnett. Angela’s restaurant is Murano in Mayfair. Before the little ones arrived on the scene, we had some of her amazing Italian inspired food at the Connaught when that was her home. With addresses like these in Mayfair, one might assume that this is a seriously cheffy cookbook, but Angela Hartnett’s Cucina is much, much more down to earth. The week started with the simply titled Roast Duck with Mustard Fruits. This recipe is really all about combining the simply roasted duck (our duck was bigger than Angela’s, so we followed the roasting guide on the producer’s website) with the firey/sweet mustard fruits. Angela talks about making her own (provided you can get hold of mustard extract). We tried a couple of Italian food stores in Soho but to no avail. It looks like we can get it on Amazon, though. That said, we bought some from one of the stores (it takes a few days to develop flavour, so there wasn’t time this week to make our own – we’ll give it a go, though). The combination of the fatty duck with the mustardy fruits is terrific and something that we’ll do again.

Next up was Penne Bolognese – we must have cooked bolognese hundreds of times over the years but we’re always trying different versions. Most recently was a fab version in “What Katie Ate”. Angela’s version is outstanding. We loved the way it uses hand-cut rather than minced beef. The result is something much more like the ragu’s you get in Italy and was truly brilliant.

For some fish this week, we tried Baked Baby Seabass. This was a simple one tray recipe with the vegetables, lemon, fennel and dill (dill and Bass wasn’t a combination we’d tried before but worked brilliantly – it makes sense when you think fennel works well with Bass, which is also quite aniseedy). It was a lovely midweek dinner dish.

Now the absolute star of the week was Meatballs and Tomato Sauce. The tomato sauce was straightforward and tasty, but the meatballs were fabulous. The recipe was easy to do and quite quick, really. Rather than a slice of white bread, we used breadcrumbs from Mrs B’s latest Sourdough batch. The meatballs were great big ones about 5cms across with the tangy tomato sauce; perhaps a little more sauce would have been nice, but all in all, a winning dish.

Angela’s book is excellent and a lot more approachable than you might expect. Next week we’re heading to the home of Michael Caines.