'Cheese me, cheese me, cheese me, baby'

...the almost words of Chaka Demus and Pliers

Week to week I tend to run an ever evolving list round my head of food I want to cook. Often I only have a vague idea that I keep returning to and tweaking, until it becomes a fully formed meal or dish. Other times my passion wanes and it gets relegated to my pile of ‘meh’.

The following are the semi-conceived dishes I am currently mulling over:

Tuna steaks: Cooked rare with a salsa made from tomato, black olive, red onion, lemon (juice or flesh?) and fresh herbs (one or more of basil, parsley, coriander?)

A beef and mushroom stroganoff-type dish: strips of steak, chestnut mushrooms, some porcini mushrooms for depth of flavour, maybe a shot of brandy, cooked off. Low fat crème fraiche to finish and plenty of black pepper. Does it need garlic?

Pork and rhubarb: Pork steaks/chops/diced, topped with a sauce made of rhubarb, ginger, soy etc and baked.

In other exciting-only-to-me news, there is a cheese shop opening up the road from us. I fear greatly for both my bank balance and my waist measurements. In my expert opinion cheese is a meal in itself. You need only some good bread and I challenge you to find a finer meal. I am predominantly a fan of the soft French cheese family, as it is undoubtedly the mack daddy. I reckon Camembert is probably the very mackest daddiest, but I also make room in my heart for Epoisses and Brillat Savarin. Additionally I have a great deal of time for mature hard cheeses. Aged Parmesan dipped in white balsamic is almost a sexually exciting experience, and Cornish Cruncher is stone-cold amazing. I’ll tell you the cheese that can quite frankly ‘do one’ though, and that is the lowly goat. I CAN eat it, but I wouldn’t choose to. In fact I studiously avoid it. Anything that tastes like goat faeces smells cannot be right.  Endof.