Those of you with actual kitchens and an unusual desire not to cook every meal in a microwave will be pleased to hear that this is the last in my series of Hell's Kitchen posts. YAY. I now have a fully functioning lovely kitchen, so no need to exclusively eat takeaway or previously frozen batch cooked meals. For those of you who enjoy making your dinner in a microwave every night, you should take a look at my Microwave Meals series for The Debrief - a one bowl quick Jambalaya

This is a recipe for when your cupboards are beyond bare; in the same way as Spaghetti Puttanesca (aka 'slut's spaghetti') this uses only a handful of storecupboard ingredients and nothing fresh - its so called because supposedly only a slut (in the household sense!) would do such a thing. This was yest again made in my few hours of crazy cooking when I realised I was about to be completely kitchen-less for the forseeable. I didn't even have the ingredients for Puttanesca on

As I write this, I'm sat surveying the absolute chaos of my house. KitchenAids are piled on my dining table next to the microwave, my kitchen is still completely unusable and I have three different White Goods dotted throughout my hall - again, none of them in action. I'm chomping at the bit to use my lovely new oven but its still all frustratingly out of reach; so when the builders DIDN'T TURN UP today I almost lost my mind. It's my 30th birthday (argh!) this weekend and I *

This unlikely brunch dish was an out and out winner in our house. Rich declared it his favourite breakfast of all time; which having been fed all sorts of weird and wonderful (mostly wonderful) things like Indian Huevos Rancheros, Nduja Toast and of course, my egg cups in all their many permuatations. Having made vast vast amounts of saag paneer for this piece for The Debrief thanks to my mother-in-law relinquishing use of her own kitchen, I was left with quite a lot spare. I

Curries are one of the best things you can make ahead and freeze for when you need them; they're quick, tasty and actually improve from being left as the flavours deepen and intermingle. As you may be able to tell from the contents of this blog, we eat a lot of Indian food, but this curry is a Thai dish that I've made up and am quite pleased with. Since sourcing some shrimp paste and some dried shrimps from a Korean supermarket on Golders Green Road, my Thai cooking has come

If any of you have been watching Nigel Slater's Eating Together on Monday nights, you may well have been dribbling over the lamb tagine that featured last week. I know I was, but I felt happy in the knowledge that I had slaved over a good old hunk of stewing steak during my imposed cook-off and had a rich, fragrant tagine of my own to look forward to, safely ensconced in the freezer. It made the fact that my kitchen looks like this a look easier to take: Tagine in my opinion

STILL without kitchen, though the end is in sight. This was a quick lunch dish I scarfed down whilst working the other day - I must say, its absolute heaven to be able to just open the freezer and choose something to eat that's ready in minutes. During my mega cooking sesh, I made two types of dahl and this is one of them. I really love making dahl; in the same way as risotto, its a labour of love in terms of stirring, tweaking and waiting but it really is worth the effort to

Hi and welcome to part III of Hell's Kitchen. I'm still completely without kitchen and appliances, but its fine because I went mad on the batch cooking front and am just going through and microwaving nice things every night. So, today's post: it may not be the best of pictures - blame complete chaos in my house - but this duck tikka was a perfectly good way of using up two duck legs that had been languishing in the freezer for yonks. Like the jerk pork dish the other day, coo

In case you missed yesterday's post, the blog is currently on a slight diversion whilst my kitchen is being decimated. Essentially all I have is a fridge (semi working), a freezer and a microwave at my disposal, and they are all currently crammed into my dining room. I don't even have a worktop or chopping board to do anything with. So, for the forseeable I will be documenting how I'm managing to feed myself and my various hangers on with tasty, mostly healthy food instead of

I've been worried I might have to have a bit of a break from blogging, as my kitchen currently looks like this: Its been like this for a few days now, and it all happened a lot more quickly than I expected as our builders are excellent. This has meant most of last week was spent alternating takeaways (Tiffin Tin and Bedouin Lounge since you ask) and meals out at lovely Likya. When I struggled to squeeze into my shorts at the end of the week, I knew things had to stop, so got