Les Perez touchdown in London

Some dear friends of ours are visiting from Australia and last night I cooked dinner for about eight of us. Congregating around a big table with old friends with plenty of food and booze is most definitely one of the nicer things in life - my kitchen is too small for me to go all Babette's Feast, so dinner had to be a very simple affair.

With my ice cream maker in storage somewhere in Cricklewood, this summer I've been getting into cheats homemade ice cream. My mum used to make this in the late 80s by mixing some cointreau and a smashed up Flake with shop bought vanilla ice cream.

I made two types using some of the alcohol collecting dust at the back of our liquor shelf - the more we drink now, the less Jasmine T will have to hand when she starts mixing up her own cocktails. I have some Frangelico which I'm going to mix with chopped hazelnuts and Drambuie which I'm going to soak some raisins in before adding to the ice cream.

Cheats ice cream

What you need

2 large flat plastic containers

2L shop vanilla ice-cream (best you can afford)

couple handfuls chopped roasted hazelnuts

couple handfuls of raisins

3 tablespoons Drambuie

3 tablespoons Frangelico (hazelnut liqueur)

ice cream cones (less washing up)

The do

Place raisins in a bowl and add the Drambuie, leave to soak for a couple of hours.

Take the ice cream out of the freezer and leave out for around 10 minutes. Transfer the ice cream into the plastic containers add the ingredients and mix in with a rubber spatula. Put the lids on and return to the freezer.

You can do this with anything - fruit, chocolate, nuts. Just bear in mind that adding too much alcohol will prevent your ice cream from freezing.

For dinner (serves 8): boil up two packs of angel hair pasta, then 3 minutes before the pasta is ready, throw in a bag of frozen peas and half a bag of broad beans. In a separate small pan, gently heat a big glug of olive oil with some thinly sliced garlic for a minute or so. When the pasta is done, drain it, add the garlic oil, then toss the whole lot with the juice of a lemon, a handful of chopped mint, a handful of torn basil, two handfuls of parmesan and two packs of crumbled feta cheese. Season with olive oil, salt and pepper and marvel at the quivering mountain of steaming pasta before you.

Tunes
Alas I cannot swim Laura Marling

Nutty Spice

This evening I arrived home to find the kitchen floor covered in food. At first I thought the cat had tried to fix her own dinner, but soon realised that the shelves in the pantry had collapsed, spilling its contents everywhere. A pain in the arse, but once I finished sweeping up the pesky bits of quinoa and risotto rice, I discovered that I had about ten almost-finished packets of assorted nuts. Instead of throwing them back into the bowels of the pantry never to be seen again, I chucked them all into a baking tray and made the best of a very nutty situation.

What you need
About 280-300 grams of mixed nuts, unsalted (I used raw cashews, brazil nuts, raw peanuts, hazelnuts, walnuts
half a teaspoon each of smoked paprika, ground cumin, ground coriander, chili powder (less or more depending on how much heat you can take)
1 very big pinch of sea salt (or 2 if you love salt)
3 tablespoons of olive oil

The do
Heat oven to 200 degrees C. Grab a deepish metal baking tray, throw in the nuts, then the spices then the oil. Shake the tray around until the nuts are evenly coated in the oil and spices. Roast in the oven for around 10 minutes or less, toss them every couple of minutes so they roast evenly. They burn very quickly so don't get distracted like I did. When they are slightly browned they're done. Empty tray onto some kitchen paper to cool completely then store in a airtight jar.

bringing home the baked goods

A couple of weeks ago I brought a tray of cupcakes to work. It just so happened that a fellow inmate, Stef D, had baked some muffins on the same day. Naturally, we challenged each other to a bake-off. It took place on Monday and was a joy to behold; a bundle of cooks produced so many baked goods people were getting high on the sugar fumes alone. From Swedish Macaroons and rude gingerbread bodies to mince pies and five types of brownies, the spread was amazing.



My hands down favourite sweet was Stef's version of this Choc-hazelnut Meringue Cake from the BBC's Olive Magazine. Include it in your festive spread on Christmas day (alongside Chew's Leek and Sweet Potato Roulade of course) and the folks will adore you. I took a punt with a few recipes I hadn't tried before, including these nutty Russian balls I nicked from Smitten Kitchen. I used a combination of pecans, hazelnuts and almonds and added a little sweetened condensed milk to the dough because I found it quite dry. The result was a very tasty treat for nut freaks.

With so many sweet nibbles on the bake-off table, we raised over a hundred quid in donations for the homelessness charity, Crisis. Job well done.