Starting point tonight: sitting in my chair at 6pm. What are we going to have? I know: mangetout in the garden. But we need more. I found a pork fillet in the freezer, so decided on a stir fry. This is typical of my cooking: making a meal of what we have in the house or garden. I don't very often pre-plan.

The stir fry was pretty standard. Sliced onion, red pepper, and carrot sticks were separately stir fried, as was the thinly sliced fillet of pork. Then, to a little heated oil in the wok, I added crushed garlic and ginger. After 1 minute I splashed in chinese rice wine and soy sauce. I put the pork and vegetables back in the pan, covered it and gently reheated. The mangetout were stir fried separately in a very little oil. Once cooked I flavoured them with some soy sauce and a teaspoon of sesame oil. They remained nicely crunchy, patchy blackness along their green sides. I served the food with plain noodles.

To follow: the first raspberries.

I've got more gooseberries on my bushes than I know what to do with. So far we've picked at least 12lbs of them. Last week I made gooseberry and elderflower jam. Tonight I've made a cake with some of them. First course was:

Broccoli and cheese sauce for pasta

(adapted from Antonio

Carluccio)

2 heads broccoli chopped

2 cloves garlic

4 slices bacon

300mls milk

good handful grated`parmesan

First cook the broccoli in salted water until tender. Cook the bacon slices in a little olive oil . Remove from the pan, and cook 2 cloves chopped garlic in the same oil until just brown. Put the cooked broccoli in the pan, add the milk and chopped bacon and simmer while the pasta is cooking. Carluccio said orrechiette, but I just had penne. When the pasta is cooked mix it into the broccoli mixture and stir in the parmesan.

This tasted`surprisingly good, and was given a nice bite by the garlic.

Gooseberry and almond cake

125g chilled butter,chopped

250g plain flour

10mls baking powder

125g greek yogurt

125g ground almonds

125g light muscovado sugar

350g gooseberries

85g castor sugar

flaked almonds

Heat oven to 180C. Line a 27x18cm baking tin with baking parchment.

Put the flour, baking powder, ground almonds and sugar into a bowl. Rub in the butter to make crumbs, then stir in the yogurt. This makes a moist dough. Form the dough into a sausage. Use two thirds to line the base and sides of the tin. I just pressed it out with my fingers. Put the gooseberries on the dough. Sprinkle with the sugar. Roll out the remaining dough, drape over the gooseberries, and seal the edges. In practice the dough broke into pieces. I just patched them together, leaving a few berries showing through. Sprinkle with flaked almonds. put in the oven for about 45 minutes.

This recipe was adapted from a streusel recipe on the BBC Good Food site. Instead of using 250g butter, I used half butter and half yogurt, in a bid to lower the fat content. The result was very good: a tender dough with slightly biscuity edges; the gooseberry juices nicely soaked up by the ground almonds.

An almost vegetarian supper tonight. Three large portobello mushrooms were more than enough for the two of us. Beautiful pink strawberry and yogurt ice cream to follow.

Portobello mushrooms with leek and cheese sauce

3 portobello mushrooms

cheese sauce, about 300g

leeks chopped and softened in butter

Rub the mushrooms with a little oil and grill each side about 5 minutes. Mix the leeks with the cheese sauce, pile on top of the mushrooms. Grate extra cheese on top. Put back under grill until nicely browned. We ate this with boiled new potatoes and mangetout peas freshly picked from the garden(the peas, not the potatoes).

Strawberry and yogurt ice cream

500g strawberries

125g castor sugar

juice half a lemon

200g full fat greek yogurt

Roughly crush the strawberries with the sugar and lemon juice. Mix in the yogurt. I don't have an ice cream maker, so I pour the mixture into a shallow bowl and put in the freezer. After about an hour and a half, take out the bowl and stir well, mixing all the just frozen portions with the rest. put back in freezer and repeat the mixture a couple more times at about half hour intervals. Divide frozen mixture into 3 or 4 containers and put back in freezer.

This is a lovely, relatively guilt free ice cream, I like pieces of strawberry in it, so I just roughly crush the mixture.

Staple tonight, Ragu made by G

To go with the ragu I made

Chinese style cabbage with cumin

I had a whole spring cabbage in the fridge which needed to be used. I fried half a chopped onion until it browned. I then added sliced fresh ginger, sliced garlic and 1 teaspoon cumin seeds and cooked for another couple of minutes. I poured a couple of tablespoons of Chinese rice wine into the pan and let it evaporate. I then put in the cabbage, which I had cut into wedges, several shakes of soy sauce, and a little water. I covered the pan and let it cook for about another 10 minutes.

The taste combination was good. The cumin enhanced the other seasonings.

Cold supper at the end of a lovely warm May day

Potato salad on a bed of lettuce from my garden, chopped chicken from a couple of nights ago on top of the potato. The potatoes are cooked whole in their skins, cooled quickly in cold water then peeled and cut in pieces. It's best to use a salad potato because the flesh stays firm. However, I've used other types and just undercooked them slightly.

Potato salad

Potatoes

Mayonnaise (preferably home made with lots of garlic)

Tomato chutney (see labels)

Greek yoghourt

Mix mayonnaise, chutney and yoghourt. Fold in potatoes gently. I use yoghourt because slightly less mayonnaise is then needed.

To follow, strawberries, again from the garden, sprinkled with sugar and a little balsamic vinegar.

We had a bulk delivery of meat yesterday from Somerset Local Food Direct. http://www.sfmdirect.co.uk/

Chicken with garlic and herb butter

Preheat oven to 180C.

Part of our order was free range chicken thighs. I decided to try cooking them with a garlic butter. I mixed softened butter with crushed garlic and chopped coriander. I loosened the skin on the chicken to make a pocket. In the pocket I put about 2 teaspoons of the garlic butter. Put thighs skin side up in an oven pan and cook for about 45 minutes. They came out with a lovely crisp skin.

Simple supper. I've got lots to do in the garden at the moment, so don't have much energy for cooking. The roast tomato sauce is an old favourite, made and frozen last summer, very garlicky. Fresh from the garden Little Gem lettuce and beetroot thinnings. The beetroot stalks and young leaves glowing scarlet against the lettuce.