Vinaigrette

This is not a copy of a recipe, but my memory of some instructions given to an interviewer of Raymond Blanc in a Sunday magazine. Its importance lies not in the ingredients, which are standard, but the method.

Put a teaspoon of Dijon mustard into a mug. Add some sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Then add olive oil, as though you were making mayonnaise, slowly at first and then a little more quickly, stirring vigorously, until you have a mixture so thick you could turn the mug upside down. Then add about a teaspoon of vinegar.

The advantage of doing it this way is that you have an uncurdled vinaigrette which coats every leaf beautifully.

Mozzarella and tomato

Tricolore requires red, white and green: it does not, however, require avocado but basil. Then olive oil, sea salt and pepper. And no vinegar.

Griddle

There are some cooking implements which become venerable and my griddle pan is one. It came from a shop called Aladdin's Cave in Catford where I bought the contents of my kitchen. Besides the griddle, I found a red engine oil can which, for a while, served as an olive oil dispenser.

The griddle itself was square, made of cast iron, with a wooden handle. Now it is coated with the residue of many meals. Probably I have used it most often to make a Nigel Slater recipe: chicken thighs with balsamic vinegar and lemon juice.

Ingredients:
4 fat chicken thighs, skin on
Olive oil
Sea salt
One lemon, juiced
About 4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Rub the chicken thighs with olive oil and salt. Get the griddle pan really hot and slap the thighs on, skin side down, so they stick to the ridges of the griddle pan. Leave them to smoke and resist the temptation to keep turning them. After about five minutes, turn. The object is for them to be golden brown, particularly on the skin side. When they are cooked, pour over the lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. There will be smoke, even, possibly, flames if the oil catches, followed by furious bubbling. Turn off the heat and the sauce will continue to reduce. Eat.

I once cooked this in a dressing gown which caught fire at the final stage. I live to tell the tale.

Sea bream

Buried under cubes of ice in a polystyrene box, looking mournful, he was about to be my lunch. "Dorade", the waiter told us. The disappointing taramasalata beforehand was fortunately not a precursor. Crispy skin, white meaty flesh and boiled potatoes, beans and carrots which I dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and salt. I ate him peering at faint mountains across the Aegean. The little black cat that came to join our table was treated to a little chopped Calamari and the remains of the Taramasalata.

Buttered noodles

This discovery was in the south of France on a blazing hot day. At lunchtime, Mum produced them from an enormous saucepan:  French noodles - short strips of pasta - dressed with nothing but French unsalted butter, sea salt (which did not destroy the point of the unsalted butter) and black pepper. A mound of them on a yellow glass plate, melted butter and salt crystals glistening, the steam gently rising. How quickly they swam down our throats.

Years later, they became a staple at university. I once cooked a bowl of buttered noodles for a girl I rather liked there; these particular noodles were green. "Thank you for the lovely tagliatelle", she said on leaving my room shortly after finishing her bowlful. She was far too sophisticated for me, a friend told me, having disclosed my secret to the object of my affection and been told there was no reciprocal interest.

Cold turkey

The turkey is a bird I could live without. As Pippa Middleton reminds us, it is convenient for feeding large numbers, but that ought not to be the test. It seems more than a little ominous if the first thing to be considered is its ability to assist with mass catering. Just multiply your chickens or pheasants is my alternative suggestion. That said, the size of the bird does mean a large quantity of the very finest dripping, for spreading on toast with flakes of sea salt.

To begin with, we did have turkey on Christmas Day. My father was particularly keen on it cold and there I think he is right. There is something rather fine about slices of cold, dry, crumbly turkey breast. That reminds me of the appalling moment in our house when I realised that the turkey which I had been picking at had started to grow a white beard. Cucumber with lashings of Tabasco seemed, for some reason, a sensible plan.

Let me conclude with a post-Christmas story. It happened in London, maybe the day after Boxing Day. Plenty of cold food around. I had offered to prepare supper for my parents and the offer had been accepted. So I "paved their plates" with turkey slices, probably cold ham as well, and potato salad. Then disaster struck when I decided to make a French dressing to go on the green salad. Olive oil and wine vinegar: can't go wrong, you might think. But shortly after I triumphantly carried in the plates of food came howls of outrage from my mother. What on earth had I put into the salad dressing? It turned out that the bottle of what I thought was red wine vinegar was in fact cherry brandy.

Completely unintended by me, but my mother was unforgiving, thinking it was one of my "jokes" which had been becoming increasingly tiresome of late. But food was not something with which I would ever joke.

Chicken skins

I get very irritated when I am eating chicken with somebody else and see that somebody else carefully putting the chicken skin to one side, not with a view to saving the best bit till last, but to outright rejection.

In order to be worth eating, however, a chicken skin needs to be crisp. Never flabby. In other words, the skin should always be removed for the purposes of a casserole or a curry. But not, in my view, discarded. This is what to do with them, as a little reward, once you have put the casserole or whatever in the oven.

Slosh some olive oil and sea salt on the skins and rub them together. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan. Get it pretty hot. Then put in the chicken skins, pressing and spreading them very flatly across the pan with a spatula. There will be lots of smoke and possibly even sparks. Sprinkle a little curry powder (Bolst's for preference) over the top and then turn the skin and, if necessary, add some more curry powder. Allow the skins to crisp but not burn in the pan. Every so often, tip off the excess fat. Right at the end, when the skins are as crisp as they will get, squeeze on some lemon juice. More smoke. Tip on to a plate and then eat. The photograph isn't just of chicken skins: there is partridge, poussin, guinea fowl and pheasant as well. A feast following the making of last year's cold raised game pie.