BonVivant

Pasta with prawns and samphire. Cream is the sauce. Samphire goes well with cream, and not tomato sauce. Host's note: this popular topic is broken into segments to reduce the load on our servers; click here for the next installment.

My riff on Porco à Alentejana (pork in the style of Alentejo). I prefer razors or almond clams in this dish. Sauce is not tomato, it's massa de pimentão / red pepper paste. Bread to mop up all that nice sauce of course.

You fortunate one. It's a 2-3hr flight for me (to Spain) for that kind of magnificent markets and foods/wines.

I love belacan (and Macanese Balichão)! Prawn prices in OZ are quite reasonable (for us here who pay for most things through the nose). Wish I had access to good, fresh shellfish. North Sea brown crabs are plentiful here but unfortunately I'm severely allergic to them.

Oven roasted sole. All 3 came with roe.

Not really duck. Not at all, actually.

Anna N, chopped up cucumber, beetroot, tomatoes and coriander. The mushrooms were meaty (and meaty tasting) and shrimps were salty enough.

Got a whole lamb shoulder (1.5kg) and this is the first meal from it.

Anna N, same as these but then shelled. North Sea shrimps are common around here in Northern Europe. Can be bought with shell intact but most people prefer without. I like the crunch. Besides, it tastes better with shell.

The cheeses

Skate wings, Vietnamese style. (with fresh turmeric and dill)

Tere, just from the legs. I got a kilo of just legs. 4 went in the cassoulet (photos posted a couple of pages back) and the rest in the pies. There was a lot of meat on those legs. To make it more substantial you could add cubed potatoes (I used swede and parsnip, amongst other things). Also add some flour and butter to thicken it. Herbs would be nice if you have any on hand. Cover with puff pastry (don't forget the egg wash) and bake in the oven til golden brown. Removing the meat from the legs took me the most time. It was worth it.

Thank you, Tere! Only 1 photo turned out presentable this time.

I removed and shredded all the meat from braised pheasant legs, added (root) vegs and turned it into 3 pies.

I banish winter with summery food. Mung bean noodles under there Steamed aubergines with preserved turnips, sherry and sesame oil. In the stir-fry: fish sauce, soy sauce, grated palm sugar.

(Thanks, Ann_T!) --------------------------------------------- Summery food today. If I mix the mince and the Turkish red pepper paste, spread it on the bread and bake it then it'd be Lahmacun (which I do make once every fortnight or so to take a break from Flammkuchen). The Iraqi flat bread is huge, I cut it up to eat in smaller portions. That's just red wine in the beer glass, btw.

My riff on Scottish Cullen skink. I used a Chinese wire skimmer to mash the potatoes then it occured to me the patterns would help the camera to find a texture. It worked. Overhead view

Cheat cassoulet! One of the things I put in it was pork rind. Got the pork rind idea from Raymond Blanc's (a French chef) recipe for cassoulet in BBC Good Food mag year 2003.

Thanks. A couple of them did leak. The sealing is appalling looking, I thought. I had no idea how to crimp so I pleated the dough in exactly the same way I pleat dumpling wrapers.

^^, lamb mince. I used packaged kebab spice mix, with added garlic and grated onions. Dough was made from scratch but it was really simple (flour, fresh yeast, water, salt).

I couldn't seem to be able to stop eating these.

Another miserable weekend. Nothing but rain, gale-force winds and it is also cold. This soupy thing makes the day a bit brighter (after my bread and several cheeses, of course). Wallpaper paste looking Beef balls are lurking somewhere Crunchy preserved mustard tubers and bamboo shoots

I'm a cheese fanatic so your plate above would easily be my dinner, lunch, breakfast or snack! Époisses is lovely. If you see Chaource give it a go. It's rich, oozy and doesn't have that "sweaty man" smell (according to you lol...).

It's still snowing and with this meal we forgot for a moment what we'd be facing tomorrow morning. Beef shanks braised in red wine (and some Bovril) for 3 hours in the oven. Dumplings contained the same amount of potatoes, plus eggs and flour. The colour of red wine and Bovril Dumplings close-up

[Clear throat...] insert Crocodile Dundee accent: That's not a sandwich. Now this' a sandwich! Monstrous! Open a stall now.