curlywurlyfi

my absolute favourite is the thin thin thin slices of raw foie gras with hunky large crystals of Maldon salt served at Cellar (and probably Club) Gascon, with chewy sourdough bread. Like eating livery butter. Magnificent.

My esteemed mama makes this - it's just tripe + peeled onions, simmered long and slow in milk - I think she bakes it in the oven. Maybe some black pepper (very avant garde). Eat with buttered brown bread. She and dad LOVE it, but then, they are war children. "So digestible!" they always say brightly, as if that phrase has ever in the history of the world made a dish more attractive. Personally, the smell of it cooking (I think it smells like kerosene) makes me feel so grim I have to leave and not come back till Tripe Club is over. But I do like tripe - just not this way! The Maltese have a very nice way - slightly curried with tomato sauce and some peas for colour. mmmm.

oh my god that's a good idea. Fi

chalk me up one more - enough of you have mentioned Laurie Colwin that those nice folks from Amazon just delivered me Home Cooking.

Jackal, that sounds delicious! Something's telling me (I can hear the 'clonk' in my head) that somewhere I've got a recipe for chocolate cake made with mayonnaise - I mean, it's eggs and oil, just in a slightly different format...? Fi

Mottmott, it was in the pull-out G2 section, so probably not on line. Can PM it to you, it's here on my desk and I have the last night's office Christmas party hangover as my valid reason to do nothing productive all day, a bit of mindless typing might be just the thing. Fi

Kym, there is a recipe in today's (London) Guardian for a date + olive oil cake (with optional pecans) - do you want me to PM you the recipe? Fi

Steak for 17 is going to be tricky, but if your sister insists on it you could do something like a Thai beef salad (grill steaks till rare, slice thinly, toss with halved red grapes, slivers of red chilli + dressing made with the usual Thai suspects, lemongrass/ginger/garlic/mint etc). Or do a carpaccio - had one at the Abingdon yesterday with cold and slightly sweet red wine jus, instead of the usual balsamic, mmm MMMMM it was good. And both do-able ahead of time so you get to spend time with your friends/guests. Potatoes (and finger food) could be taken care of by serving teeny weeny little roasted or steamed ones, split open, with a blob of creme fraiche and some caviare (lumpfish roe if there's 17 of you, unless you're the Russian mafia). just some thoughts. good luck! Fi

Yes, you can get 6-8 pans on the top - but with both lids open, don't expect the heat to stay high enough to do anything USEFUL WITH! That for me is the massive downside of Aga cooking - stuffing it full of delicious and nutritious dishes, only to have the heat level drop so far you have to use the microwave to cook everything anyway. Look! I'm a child of the 21st century and I want INSTANT gratification, none of this having to wait a year and a half for the heat to come back up again, raw duck anyone? Sorry to all those who love them, but I've had too many bad experiences with temperamental Agas. And as for those which are linked up to the house's hot water system?? Don't even get me started. Right, that's it, I'm off to declare war on the Swedes. This is all their fault anyway. Fi

if you have any kicking about, those cardboard tubes that (eg) bottles of malt whisky come in are useful for protecting bottles in suitcases if you don't have hard-shell cases.

- champagne with raspberry puree (we have for brunch) - the little juicy shards of turkey or ham that fall off the carver's knife (taste SO much better than the stuff on your plate!) - bread sauce (or is this a peculiarly UK thing?) - roast parsnips - black pudding + bacon (we use instead of stuffing) - Chateau Soleil 95 (my dad is eking out his final case...) - Stilton with celery + walnuts - port - satsumas, Clementines - dense, rich fruitcake - Bendicks Bittermints (stiff, almost brittle peppermint fondants in 95% cocoa solids dark chocolate) - what we call Spanish coffee - simmer orange rind, cinammon, cloves in sugar syrup, strain and add to brandy, pour into hot thick black coffee, garnish with cinnamon stick (+ a little cream if you're a wuss) great idea - but lots of work for you in a season when there is lots of cooking to be done anyway - make sure you get LOTS of plaudits, and someone else to do the washing up! Fi PS slightly off topic but - ExtraMSG, your avatar REALLY scares me.

Guajolote, you should be OK, there's a Nigella recipe for brownies with cream cheese filling which is v similar, just keep an eye on the cake and maybe turn down the heat or cover with tinfoil if baking too fast. on that note, for serious cupcakery, I recommend Nigella's How To Be A Domestic Goddess. There's a recipe in there for cherry chocolate cupcakes (basically, chocolate cupcakes with a jar of cherry jam stirred in, then iced with ganache) that moved a friend of mine to tears when I made them for her birthday. Also hundreds and hundreds of fantastic ideas for cupcakes, from simple (eg fairy cakes) to fancy (lavender-scented, with lilac-coloured icing and silver flowers to decorate).

- stir fry of king prawns, spring onions, shredded Brussels sprouts and a slightly elderly courgette with plenty of garlic, chili flakes, soy, mirin + nam pla - soba noodles - Nigella's baked rhubarb custard from How To Eat (and if you haven't made this, rush to do so, it is the nicest thing to do with rhubarb in the history of the world EVER). I slightly (OK a lot) mistimed it so it was completely liquid in the middle, but that's fine, we ate the edges and I think I can fix the leftovers in the microwave tonight, or am I insane?

this reminds me - my brother, aged about 15, voracious teenage appetite, blah blah blah, used to make fried egg sandwich with deep fried eggs. he would heat up the fryer, then crack the egg straight in. The egg puffs up like a hedgehog, goes brown and lacy on the outside but juicy in the middle, you clap it between the two waiting slices of ketchuped white bread, and serve with Irn Bru (incredibly sugary bright orange Scottish fizzy drink that tastes like Bazooka Joe in a can). I'm seeing him at Christmas and am going to remind him of this...

hear hear, that's one of my favourites. none of your evil goats cheese, though. Cottage cheese works well for the chevre-challenged. A French friend makes Roquefort quiche, and puts the cheese on the pastry crust while she is baking it blind, so the cheese melts into the pastry. mmmmm. But I think my absolute favourite is smoked fish, tarragon + tomatoes with a little Parmesan in the pastry.

didn't Petits Propos Culinaires* do a piece last year about cooking things by strapping them in tinfoil packages to parts of a car's engine? there was a touch of the Heath Robinsons to it - making wire loops to hold the sausages in place against the induction coils, etc etc. the baked potatoes were cremated at 60 minutes at 70mph, but the stew (four and a half hours on winding roads through the Lake District) came out just fine, though they'll never get it out of the exhaust manifold. Or something like that?? Hmmm. this doesn't count as a favourite method, but it certainly is non-traditional... Fi * not convinced it was this journal but cannot for the life of me remember where I saw it, grrrr

paperbacks. that way, when you're reading them in bed and you fall asleep, you don't kill your other half as the book slips out of your nerveless grasp and onto his/her windpipe.

Mongo, I have a rich and varied social life.

Fifi, try making a fennel gratin with potato, leek and stilton. Rowrrrrrrrr... I've recently converted to roasting green beans with anchovies, OO, garlic + cherry tomatoes - or even just naked (the beans, the BEANS, not me). Honourable mention also goes to courgette fingers roasted in OO with rosemary + whole unpeeled garlic cloves, served with feta cheese crumbled over + a squeeze of lemon.

Hmmm. At the beginning of last year, Mcdonalds lost about GBP22m on their investment in a coffee bar chain in the UK called Aroma (if I tell you they were all over the Millennium Dome, that will give you some idea of the market they were in) - they sold about 60% of the outlets to I think Caffe Nero. Seems odd that they're trying this (failed) idea again?

- Al's sweetcorn soup (my friend Alex's recipe, but I made it - celery potato + leek base, corn, chicken stock, milk) - cottage cheese rolls (puree cottage cheese + oil, work into flour with baking powder - no yeast, but they do rise, and taste like a yeast roll, somewhat like a solider ciabatta) - random courgette dish (because I had some that needed using) - courgette coins, steamed then dressed with soy, chili flakes, garlic, vinegar, sugar + sesame oil - two large gin + tonics then out to see Love Actually (much improved by two gin + tonics) oh and I forgot: half a hundredweight of jelly babies, marshmallows and peanut M&Ms consumed in the cinema

Borough Market recipe: per person. Pick a nice day, go EARLY and go to the Borough Cafe (opposite Neals Yard) and pick up a styrofoam box of their exemplary bubble + squeak (if you go later than about 10am they run out - disaster). then come back into the market and get a coffee and a hot sausage sandwich (or chorizo + rocket), and then have yourselves a picnic in Southwark Cathedral graveyard. one of my favourite things to do in London.

friend of mine recently gave me Green Thai Pheasant Curry (based on her freezer glut) which was absolutely knockout. Though if you don't have pheasant on a regular basis you might want to go with a slightly more classic treatment, perhaps. Fi

inspired by this, I thought I'd give it another go - the goat cheese thing - just been out for Friday lunch (yay! pub lunch Friday!) to The Atlas, very nice gastropub in Earl's Court, one of my colleagues had bruschetta with roasted vegetables, plum tomatoes + thyme, goat cheese and rocket pesto. I sneaked a crumb, literally a crumb, of cheese, and - nope - goat-o-rama. felt like that scene in Big where Tom Hanks takes his first taste of caviar and ends up wiping it off his tongue with a napkin. so - goats cheese 17, Fi zero. Again. Good luck, Ladybug!

goats cheese. to me, instead of being wonderfully earthy, it is like licking an old goat. I regularly try to overcome this, as I really would like to be able to eat it, but every time - feeeccccccch. still, it's a valuable opportunity to avoid calories.