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Did the SeriousEats/J. Kenji Lopez-Alt porchetta. Rolled in garlic and rosemary, cooked SV at 68.3C for 36 hours, and deep fried. Was a winner.

Porchetta; pork belly, rolled with garlic and rosemary, cooked sous vide for 36 hours and then bathed in oil (aka deep fried) and browned with my massive flamethrowing Searzall. It's the J. Kenji Lopez Alt recipe from SeriousEats. We chopped it up and ate it wrapped in rice paper, with lettuce, mint, rice vermicelli, pickled carrot and daikon, crispy fried shallots and a fish sauce/lime juice/sugar/chilli dipping sauce.

Roasted strawberry, Pimm's and black pepper. And the roster of my planned popsicles this summer.

Crap! You're right..let's not tell the vegan..

Proving that I sometimes make Western food; the meatarian houseguest's breakfast; homemade pork and fennel sausage rolls, with rough puff. #hostesswiththemostess

Vegan houseguest welcome dinner prep: 1. Spinach leaves, blanched and dressed in crushed garlic, honey, soy sauce, chilli flakes and black pepper; 2. Iced cucumbers with a smear of homemade miso paste; 3. Carrots, shredded and wilted in sesame oil, mirin, matcha green tea salt and black sesame; 4. Eggplant, shredded and wilted in sesame oil and white soy and dressed in maesil sour green plum syrup and sesame seeds; 5. Shredded daikon, cucumber and seaweed 'white' kimchi; 6. Blanched soybean sprouts, with Sichuan pepper oil and honey; 7. Shiitake mushrooms, toasted till nearly dry and then re-plumped with Shaohsing wine and a dab of rice syrup; 8. Sliced radish, marinated in plum vinegar and topped with dried chilli threads; 9. My precious homemade honey umeboshi plums. Further, not shown; blanched Korean crown daisy tops, rubbed in sweet white saikyo miso, and raw shredded shiso/perilla leaves. To be eaten as bibimbap, on top of 9 grain Korean rice, with sheets of crispy seaweed, brushed in sesame oil and toasted at the table. And for the vegetable-phobic meatarian who's coming to dinner as well: meat. Just meat.

I did a ham for Christmas day - Chinese char siu-style. I double-smoked it myself, in lapsang souchong tea and brown sugar, studded with cloves and then roasted and glazed in char siu sauce, star anise and brushed with more honey to caramelise. A goodly ham.

Breakfast of (Chinese) champions; fresh, warm, homemade silken tofu, doused in chilli oil, dark soy sauce and black Chinkiang vinegar, sprinkled with toasted Sichuan peppercorns, green onion and chopped siu mi yacai, which are Sichuanese preserved mustard greens. And eaten with a crispy yu tiao savoury Chinese doughnut.

It's not.

This is a tale of love. A few months ago, I ordered the knife I mentioned above. I knew the handle wasn’t bound and wondered how best to wrap it. One of my close friends at work is very good at doing things with his hands, so I brought him the knife, semi-jokingly sent him a bunch of YouTube videos on ‘ornamental coxcombing’, the kind of rope-tying techniques 19th century shipwrights used, and left him to it. Seven weeks later and after a few increasingly impatient queries from me, he’s reported back with the following: “Well, it’s been involved. First, I watched about seven hours of the YouTube videos and bought some thin plasticky rope and a vice and made some blade-protectors out of an old tire, and I practiced the knotting over the course of about three days on broom handles and rolling pins before trying it on the knife. Then, when I thought I had the technique down OK, I decided the rope gauge was too thick and it didn’t look good, so I went to three different Bunnings hardware shops to try to find different kinds of rope thicknesses and re-did it. I re-did it about four or five times after that, but I still didn’t think it was good enough, so I then went to a specialist boating shop and bought some 5mm yachting twine. That was the right thickness and everything, but then the ends were fraying every time, so I tried burning them off, but it looked shit, and then I tried covering them in wax, and I didn’t like that either, so then I tried binding the rope ends in fishing wire and using needle-nose pliers to do the pushing through. THEN I realised that the handle of the knife is just slightly curved, which meant the rope was sitting up slightly higher on one end than the other, so I went to a chemist and bought a syringe and injected acrylic cement underneath the last knots to raise them slightly. Well, I had to go to the chemist four times because the first needles I bought were far too thin to push the acrylic through. I’m pretty sure they thought I was a smack addict. Then, when I asked you to send me a photo of where they’ll go and I saw you’ve mounted your knife block on the left and you’re right handed? That’s why I’ve put the knots on that side. Anyway, here it is and it's for you and I hope you like it." Now that’s a man who loves me.

I'll PM you.

Frequent and voluminous sampling, Nicholas.

I have a major horror of dried fruit and generally think mince pies, Christmas pudding, and things of that ilk are disgusting. But when I really look myself squarely in the face think about it, I think what I have a problem with are shrivelled little dead insect-adjacent fruits, like raisins, currants and sultanas. Even typing those words makes me feel ooky. So my mission today was to make non-vomitous mince pies; fat, plump cranberries I'll macerate in orange juice, sour dried cherries, luscious Luxardo Maraschino cherries, sweet Chinese stem ginger in syrup, dark molasses-y muscovado sugar, bourbon vanilla bean paste, almond oil, a bit of Fortnum and Mason mulled wine Christmas jelly with gold leaf in it (naturally), orange zest, ginger, cloves, cinnamon and a dash of black pepper. And I DID put raisins in them but they're giant, fat juicy golden raisins I've been steeping in spiced rum for 3 months now, so they're actually a lot more like highly alcoholic, only slightly deflated grapes. So I think I can live with that.

The perfect hangover food; jianbing. Chinese savoury pancakes, smeared with Pixian doubanjian chilli broad bean sauce and hoi sin, spring onions, crunchy fried dough skins, a yu tiao Chinese savoury, crispy doughnut/cruller. And an egg. All rolled up and then inserted directly into your face.

37C/98F in Sydney. So, hiyashi chuka; cold ramen with shredded chicken, egg, cucumber, pickled ginger, ham, prawns, crumbled nori and a dressing of soy, rice vinegar, ginger and Japanese mustard. And a nice fat honey umeboshi pickled plum.

An everyday sort of picnic, or a special occasion insofar as I met my friends, and we spread out some picnic blankets under a tree and lay on them and talked and ate.

Well, I really only love Nina Simone, so that might be a bit tricky!

And assembled.

Why I'm generally a pretty solid option to invite to a picnic. Chirashi zushi fixins, pre assembly. It's sushi rice, mixed with shredded pickled carrot, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots and lotus root. On top of that, I'm scattering sashimi salmon, tuna, kingfish, salmon roe, raw scallops, and cooked prawns I've marinated in mirin and white soy. Then I'll garnish with shredded omelette, cucumber, crumbled toasted nori, pickled ginger and sesame seeds. And cha gio re, Vietnamese net spring rolls, filled with crab and prawn and doctored with edible calcium hydroxide (slaked lime), so that they're physically incapable of going soggy or anywhere even remotely non crisp, even cold.

Re lime paste - if you go into any Thai grocery store and show them this picture, they'll have it. It's usually no more than $1 or $2.

When your bf is like, "What's for lunch" and you're all, "Oh, you know, just mentaiko fish roe, egg yolk omelette, nori, sushi rice and thinly-sliced raw squid molded into the shape of Japanese carp again." And he's like, "Wtf, AGAIN??" And you're all just, "Make your own damn lunch then, what is this, the 1950s??" (Kidding. Carp sushi. First time.)

And last meal before the airport.. Why yes, Korea, you land of twisted geniuses, I know it's only 9am, but I WOULD like a moat of molten cheese poured around my cauldron of fire-hot chicken and ramyun noodles for breakfast. Delicious! Anyway, thanks for reading, everyone! It's been lovely sharing it all with you! Kate

5 degrees Celsius here, and pathetic Australians start dying at anything under 10 Celsius, so had galbi jjim at Gangnam Myeondok in an attempt to warm up; beef short ribs and king mushrooms braised in soy sauce and honey, soooo meltingly tender. And tofu mandu dumplings. And a whole bottle of soju.

No filing, they're plain and just for eating/mopping up juices with. On the home stretch now, folks! I'm flying back to Sydney tomorrow afternoon but a time for a few more good eats between now and then.. Today; a wee snack of kkultarae, Korean dragon beard's candy; strands and strands of spun sugar wrapped around a filling of sugared peanuts and almonds: Some delicious BBQ at Baekjeong (all ladies!) with neuk gan sal intercostal rib meat (my favourite cut), some highly marbled beef flap, pork neck, spicy chilli pork and an ingenious egg-moat poured around a channel in the side of the pan, for either dipping your meat into, or letting it cook up into a nice fluffy omelette: A brief stop at 'World Dumpling Day' in Lotte Department store: And, uh, that classic Korean dessert, Fauchon eclairs..

A few more eats; hotteok crispy brown sugar and walnut pancakes (with lipstick!), some beautifully fatty BBQ, more fried chicken doused in butter powder and curry powder, peach soju, black raspberry wine and a delicious Korean-Chinese meal of jjangmyeon black bean noodles, ma po tofu, and shredded pork and leeks with steamed buns.