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They're not secrets, but they are my favourite London places. All where you can have lovely tasty food for less than £15 a head and where they like to see you enjoy your food. Coincidentally quite a few of these are places where a tourist to London might find themselves staying or visiting 1. Loong Kee Cafe on 134 Kingsland High Street. Check out the Geffrye Museum while you're there. Delicious spicy Vietnamese food. 2. Taza shawarma grill at 35a Queensway. I would say the best shawarma sandwich in London, and if you want more salad, tomatoes, chilli, tahina, yoghurt its all there for you to add as much as you want. There is what looks like a very nice russian deli next door too. I've been in briefly but got thrown out for wheeling an arancia gelato around in the wheel of the pushchair. 3. Gerards Corner for dim sum in Chinatown. Everyone seems to have their favourite dim sum place. this is mine. I particularly like the octopus ball congee, fish maw dim sum and prawn chueng fun. What is fish maw? 4. The buffet lunch at Diwana Bhel Poori house on Drummond Street near Euston Station is sumptious. I have a rule about never having the buffet in an indian restaurant. I break it for this though The bhel pooris are nice too. 5. Alounak on westbourne grove. Iranian food, really delicious and nice tea. They have a different main dish each day. I really like the lamb with dried lemons. The bread and butter rice are fantastic too. This might be more than £15 6. Cafe Lisboa on Goldborne Road at the top of Portobello, London at its best, have a Galao (coffee in a glass) and a custard tart or rice cake. 7. Gita's on Westbourne Park Road. It's not fantastic but it is my local Indian Restaurant. Authentic dosas and vadai and i love the Fried Meat, I think it is mutton, nice and clovey. 8. Brick Lane Beigel Bakery. I don't think it ever shuts.Get there early on Sunday. There is a market like no other in London. The bagels are chewey sweet and filling. I either get salt beef or lox and cream cheese with cucumber

At breakfast, rhubarb and fig jam is a favourite at our house. If anyone is interested I'll work out what the recipe is.

The Sun [british tabloid newspaper] sends Matt and Stacey to the Fat Duck Matt was pretty keen, Stacey only liked the pudding and the wine.

I like making Pasta with squid ring sauce. you can use squid rings straight from the freezer. Brown a glove of garlic and a couple of small chillies in a scant tablespoon of oil. Remove the chillies and garlic and add the squid rings, fry until cooked (3-4 minutes). Squirt in a good dollop of tomato puree. add salt to taste. Mix up with the pasta and eat. Penne is nice with the squid.

Ah, I wondered what the cockroach like insects in plastic bags were in Tawana, a Thai supermarket in West London on Chepstow Road. What do you do with them?

... I also only buy what I've been told were male eggplants (no indentation at the base) bc they supposedly have fewer seeds. Anecdotal evidence, always tricky, bears out the effectiveness of these two techniques, but I'd be interested to know what people think. ← Shouldn't male aubergines contain NO seeds??

I won't have time to make this till the weekend either. The best Moussaka I've had was round the corner from where I live in London, a Greek Cypriot place called Tziakos (pronounced Chackos) It used to be run by a couple of old ladies and had decades of nic-nacs, farm implements, tobacco smoke festooned around the walls and ceiling. The thing to have was mixed metzes for about £8 ($12) There were umpteen delicious courses. The final course was a large piece of kleftico lamb which was usually impossible to actually eat. They were very good about putting it in a take-away container for you to have the next day. Among all these courses was moussaka. It was very solid with straight sides. I don't think there was any cheese in the bechemel sauce. I don't remember potato, just thick cut aubergine that left that metalic colour that aubergine imparts on the bechemel sauce. They didn't make it with raw minced lamb they used cooked lamb chopped up. Probably from all the klefticos people didn't eat. Once they served one that was a tiny bit mouldy, but it was so damn tasty I just cut the mould off and ate the rest! Anyway, that's what I'm going to try and reproduce, but without the mould.