When the weather is chilly, how better to keep warm than to huddle around the cooker most of the day; well that’s what I did today. Watercress Soup, Parsnip and Red Pepper Soup, Chocolate Chip cookies, and Chocolate and Walnut cake; I am Delia hear me roar!

I’m not going to list all the recipes here, but I will share the Watercress soup one because it’s one I carry around in my head. Take 2 pints of chicken stock, made however you want; either using stock cubes or boiling up chicken bones. Take 1 medium onion and dice finely. Place the onion in a saucepan with sufficient stock to cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove the larger stalks from 2 bags of Watercress and place the remainder into the pan with the remains of the stock. Simmer for a further 5 minutes. Finally season well with pepper and possibly a little salt before thoroughly blending. If you want a slightly thicker soup you can add a small diced potato with the onion, which I do sometimes really as the mood takes me.

In keeping with this week’s rather foody theme I asked the internet a question today, which unusually it couldn’t answer. Subway, the famous or possibly infamous (delete as applicable!) sandwich vendor, used to have a very particular way of cutting their bread. Rather than a simply single cut through the middle, apparently known as the “hinge cut”, they used to employ a more specialised cut which did a much better job of ensuring the filling stayed where it should be inside the sandwich.

I felt sure the internet would have the answer and provide explanations and doubtless advocacy on the relative merits of the different types of cut. Imagine my surprise when I could find very little, there is some discussion of the discontinuation of the “subway cut” but no tutorials or video comparisons. What the hell internet, an area of inconsequence that you’ve not already extensively covered. As a responsible and concerned citizen of the interwebs I think it’s probably my duty to plug that particular hole in the metaphorical dike. My only problem is I’ll be doing this from memory, so I suspect accuracy may be an issue. Maybe what I really should do is experiment with different ways of cutting the bread, who knows I may actually better the “Subway Cut”.

A rather large chunk of this week seems to have been spent on experimental cookery and today was no exception. I remembered an idea by Brigitte Dale I feel like I should be a tween to have even seen this, and yet I’m not but I still did... anyway. I rather liked the idea of cupcakes in a cone, but despite what many American recipes believe (this one included); I don’t think good bakery should include liquid fats. If I’m going to harden my arteries and shorten my life I’d rather do it in the tastiest way possible and for me that’s butter all the way.

So rather than a literal remake, this was more of an homage to or perhaps inspired by Brigitte’s recipe. I took the cone idea, and filled it with a cake batter recipe of my choosing. But that wasn’t enough for me. When I’d baked the “cupcones” I noticed they really did look somewhat like ice cream with their domed crevasse laden tops. So what I thought would complete an ice cream analogue, chocolate sauce and sprinkles of course; and that’s what I added. After all what desert isn’t improved with sprinkles!

Some weeks back I found a recipe for dry rub, specifically for pork ribs. It was a somewhat lengthy process which included an hour of brining, a half-hour waiting for the rub to penetrate and then four hours smoking on the BBQ. So intrigued to see how well it would work I decided to clear the decks and give it a spin. Unfortunately I’d run out of hickory and couldn’t find any locally so this would be a simple barbecuing rather than smoking, but I figure if the recipe works well I’ll try it again with the smoke.

And it did work well; I scoffed half the sample batch which pretty much made my evening meal meat with extra bit and a side order of meat. Not that I’m complaining, but probably some of my internal organs might be. Rather than slide the rest down my gullet, I thought I see how they worked as cold meat and slid them into the refrigerator.

Now I don’t really know what made me think of it, but I looked at the tray of ribs in the white cocoon with beads of moisture in the background and thought; food porn. I know these things are infinitely more complicated than they seem, but food photography seems to be essentially macro shots of food. So that’s what I took.

First off I’m going to blame my tools, this was a cheap digital point and shoot camera. Then I’m going to blame the lighting, it was the camera flash combined with the single bulb which was illuminating the fridge. Then I’m going to blame the fact that I didn’t have a “food stylist”. Ultimately the photo I took really does very little to suggest the tastiness of the actual food, but really it was very tasty grub honest, even if the photo was awful. Even Photoshop couldn’t save me!