pasta for the confused

Put required amount of pasta on to cook (assuming that, with boiling time, your pasta takes about 20 minutes)

In wok/frying pan/something else put generous amount of olive oil, chopped garlic (fresh, dried, jar, paste, whatever), some basil, a tsp or thereabouts of capers, and some pepper. Put on low heat.

Chop up cherry tomatoes. Put in pan with herbs and garlic. If you have no fresh tomatoes, a tin will do at a push.

Chuck a couple of anchovies in the tomato-pan.

Prod with spoon.

Add some water, boil and reduce.

The more prodding, the more it all breaks up.

Do washing up from last two days.

Prod pasta for a change.

Make tea.

Turn pasta off, drain, lob in pan with tomato sauce, prod for a bit.

Discover there is not only no grated cheese, there is no sodding cheese.

Put it in chipped bowl, allow to cool as you've just put boiling tomato sauce in a bowl, ffs, it's not ready.

Write blog post.

Turn radio off.

Turn Sanctuary on.

Eat.

a veritable feast

Last weekend, the very lovely Kit came to visit from Minnesota - she flew in for two days in London, and there was LSG hanging out and whathaveyou. And she brought me a big fuckoff box of reese's

Nomnomnomnomnomnom.

Like any normal person, when faced with a massive pile of pb cups, I immediately think "cheesecake!". Duh.

I used this recipe, with the following changes:

• 200g gluten and wheat free chocolate chip cookies for the crust, with 50g dove farm gluten free flour, and 100g of butter.
• 300g cream cheese (because fuck knows how big they make cheesecakes in Houston, but nobody needs a whole KILO of cream cheese in one cake)
• 3 small eggs (could have used two, thinking about it)
• 75g soft brown sugar and 75g caster sugar (because I forgot to buy more caster sugar)
• 50ml whipping cream
• best part of a jar of smooth peanut butter (roughly 200g)
• 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
• 8 reese's peanut butter cups

The base, gluten free for Ellie, who has coeliac disease but likes cheesecake:

I fucking love my little kenwood. It's actually awesome.

The only problem with so many cheesecakes, is that they need to be baked. So I did. And then I stuck it in the fridge overnight to cool.

Gareth approved.

However, before consuming the glory that was cheesecake, we had sort-of enchiladas. Fuck knows what to call them. Anyway. Here:

• 3 chicken breasts, cooked and cut into bits.
• 50g cream cheese
• a dollop of sour cream
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• juice from half a lime - 1 tbsp
• 2 finely chopped garlic cloves
• about 1 tbps chopped coriander
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• good dollop of salsa verde (see below for my version, which isn't salsa verde at all)
• 100g grated cheese - I used a mix of mature cheddar, mild cheese and mozzarella

Mix all together. Place double spoonful in centre of corn tortilla, and wrap to form a tube. Put seam-down in baking pan - repeat 7 times more; if you do two layers put a bit of cheese in between. Cover with more grated cheese, whack in oven for about 15 mins on med-high heat. Eat with sour cream and more salsa verde:

• 2/3 of largish cucumber
• 1 decent-sized green pepper
• 1 smallish green chilli
• 7 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp minced garlic paste
• 1 small red onion
• 1/2 a lime
• a bunch of coriander.

Chop cucumber, pepper, chilli, garlic, onion and coriander. Mix together. Put about half of the mix through a blender to chop it small - include garlic paste and lime in the blender, use a good few glugs of olive oil. Let it sit for a bit. The longer the better - a few hours is ideal.

Excuse the lo-res iphone pics. It's too much of a mither to go find my cantankerous camera every time I cook.