Three cheers for the start of the English asparagus season!

When I was a kid I can remember my father looking forward to the asparagus season all year. When it arrived, he'd tuck into a plateful of steamed asparagus (usually served with melted butter) every day for about six weeks, before the asparagus disappeared from the greengrocer's shelves for another year.

We've forgotten about seasonality in recent years, thanks to our ability to ship produce around the world whatever the season, but to my mind nothing tastes quite as good as local produce that's allowed to ripen properly. So I, too, yearn for the English asparagus season (I rarely cheat, although I sometimes succumb to the odd bunch of European asparagus in spring).

Once it arrives, I eat it as often as possible, although not every day – and I don't think I could eat it steamed with butter every time either (diet aside, I'd get bored).

The picture above is another idea of something to do with asparagus, inspired by a dish Mark ate at Chez Bruce when we went there for my mother's birthday dinner. He'd had delicate morilles with his asparagus and poached duck egg, but I got seduced into buying some chicken of the woods mushrooms instead – a mistake, I think: next time I'll try the morilles instead. The chicken of the woods took ages to cook and didn't really have that earthy flavour that I was looking for.

I also substituted scrambled eggs for the poached eggs, partly because my poached eggs always look a bit weird and scraggy, and partly because I really like scrambled eggs. It's not as easy as you might think to make good scrambled eggs, but these were delicious, so I'm including the method below. Please excuse me if I'm teaching granny to suck (duck) eggs.

Scrambled duck egg for three (Mark's mum has been staying with us):

4 duck eggs (one each is just too few, two each is a pretty large portion unless scrambled egg is all you're having)
50ml semi-skimmed milk
2 tbsp half-fat crème fraiche
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
salt and freshly ground black pepper
a small knob of butter

Break the eggs into a bowl and add all the other ingredients apart from the butter. Beat with an egg, but not so thoroughly that you end up with a homogenous yellow liquid.

I think it's important to use a good, heavy non-stick pan for this as you're not using much fat to cook with. Melt the butter in the pan over a medium-low heat, and tip in the egg mixture.

Stir it around, and keep scraping round the edges and at the bottom of the pan as this is where the egg tends to set first.

When the eggs are nearly set, turn off the pan as they keep cooking for a little while. You're looking to end up with a texture that hasn't quite set firm – there should be a little wobble in your scramble when you tip it onto the plate.

Serve with asparagus (steamed) and mushrooms, as I did, or with a slice of wholegrain toast.

More good news

When I went to the doctor to get my stitches taken out on Monday morning, I got some good news. Early in January, James measured my blood pressure and it was on the high side of normal. According to Monday's readings, however, I'm right back in the mid-range. This exercise lark must really have some benefits...

You never know who's watching you in cyberspace

I spent all day yesterday at the London Wine Fair in Docklands – absolutely fascinating stuff, but hell on the old damaged leg, which is still in fairly poor nick.

No matter. What really got me glowing was that I ran into an acquaintance on one of the stands – someone I've met several times over the years in a professional capacity, yet not someone I know well enough to have told her about the blog. Anyway, not only had she tracked the blog down off her own bat, she was enthusing about the recipes on it. It turns out she's cooked her way through a food few of my postings and has loved everything she's tried. I was incandescent with delight.

I have to admit I did ask her why she never posted anything on the blog to say she'd enjoyed one or other of the recipes, and she just said that she wasnt that kind of a girl. It's heartening to know that although I don't get that many postings on the blog that there may well be a whole group of readers out there enjoying what I've got to say without necessarily making themselves known. Whoever you are, thank you!

Summer soups

People always say that shopping at Borough Market is expensive, and it can be – especially if you go crazy in one of the cheese or charcuterie shops. But I find that there are benefits, apart from getting my hands on some of the best produce in London. If you get to know the stallholders, you'll often get the price of your purchase rounded down or something extra chucked into your bag. You also get a heads up on the best produce and inspiration on new ways to cook it.

I love gazpacho with a passion, so when Harry at the Wild Mushroom company told me last Saturday that he had some nice ripe tomatoes in, I knew just what I wanted to do with them. It's true that I did make the stuff in rather vast quantities, but I'm happy to have bowl after bowl of it – and a glassful makes a nice mid-afternoon snack.

Vast quantities of gazpacho

a dozen ripe mid-sized plum tomatoes (or the equivalent if you find other kinds of tomatoes in the right stage of ripeness – around a kilo and a half is my best guess)
1 slightly stale ciabatta or other open-textured loaf, cut into chunks
1 cucumber, de-seeded and cut into chunks
1 Spanish onion, peeled and cut into chunks
3 peppers, cored, de-seeded and cut into chunks
1-2 chillies
2-3 cloves garlic
1.5 litres tomato juice (preferably not from concentrate)
2 tsp ground cumin
2-3 tbsp sherry vinegar
good-quality olive oil
1 tray of ice cubes
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Peel the tomatoes by cutting a cross in their bases and allowing them to lie in a bowl of just-boiled water until the skin starts to split (anywhere between a few seconds and a minute or so, depending on how ripe the tomatoes are). It should then be easy to peel off the skin.

Once they're peeled, remove the hard core near the stem and rinse out the seeds under a running tap.

Tear the bread into chunks and place in a bowl to soak in cold water.

Put the tomatoes, the cucumber, the onion and the peppers into your food processor and blitz. You probably won't get everything into the bowl of your food processor all together, but it doesn't much matter as you can mix everything up in a large bowl.

Squeeze the excess water out of the bread and add that to the contents of the processor, along with the chilli, the garlic and some of the tomato juice.

Tip everything into a large bowl and stir together with the remaining tomato juice, the cumin and vinegar (which should give the soup a zesty lift without making it taste at all vinegary). Sprinkle with olive oil, season and then drop the ice cubes in.

Leave in the fridge for at least an hour or two for the flavours to meld together before serving.

I sometimes garnish mine with fried croutons, but as those are currently out of the question, a quarter of a ripe avocado, sliced, makes a pleasant addition.

I digress...

This has got absolutely nothing to do with dieting, but I thought this was such a cute picture I wanted to post it anyway.

It's Laszlo, of course, with one of his favourite toys, Turkey Lurkey. The 'friends' that gave it to him just before Christmas did so knowing full well that Lurkey had the squeak from hell. Luckily Laszlo punctured Lurkey by January, thus killing the squeak.

Mark and I already have our revenge planned. The friends in question had a baby earlier this year and the only question is whether his first present will be a toy trumpet or a drum...

Another week, another weigh in

85.2 kilos this week. I'm going to have to watch it, though, as I'm entering review season. For the next few months, as long as I'm in London, I'll be eating out several times a week in my role as section editor of a restaurant guide. Given that I can't exercise at the moment, keeping on track is going to be tough.

Outdoor eating (part one)

I have to admit, I love a barbie. I'm a real sucker for eating outdoors (and so's Mark), so the minute the sun comes out, so does the Weber.

I often think dieting is easier when the weather's hot, too. For starters, I find I don't get terribly hungry once the thermometer hits the mid-20s C, but even when I am feeling peckish, simply cooked meat or fish and loads of veg and fruit tends to be the order of the day. All very healthy.

One of the first barbecues we had this year involved marinating some chicken in a spicy semi-liquid rub, then serving it up with some roast veg and a bean and tomato salad. Recipes below.

Marinade for spicy chicken:

20ml olive oil
1 tbsp chipotle in adobo (from www.coolchile.co.uk)
1 tsp ground cumin
juice from 1/2 lime
1 clove garlic, mashed
salt

Mix all the marinade ingredients together.

Skin two portions of chicken (I think a small leg and thigh is the best option rather than breast), then score the flesh almost through to the bone.

Rub the marinade into the chicken and leave for at least a couple of hours (and up to a whole day).

You can barbecue or grill the chicken. I served ours with a roast tomato, garlic and green bean salad; roast butternut squash and barbecued sweetcorn (the last is an indulgence, I admit).


Roast tomato, garlic and green bean salad:

250g cherry tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, skins left on
1 tbsp olive oil
150-200g green beans, topped and tailed
50g pine nuts
a small amount of dressing made from extra virgin olive oil, sherry vinegar and a dollop of Dijon mustard, plus salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 100C, then place the tomatoes and garlic in a roasting dish and sprinkle with olive oil.

Roast gently for up to four hours, by which time the tomatoes should have shrivelled and blackened a bit, and their taste will have intensified. The garlic should be soft and creamy. Allow to cool.

In the interim, blanch the beans and refresh them under cold water. Leave to one side until cooled.

Toast the pine nuts in a frying pan. Watch them carefully as they go from raw to burned very quickly.

Place the tomatoes, pine nuts and beans in a salad bowl. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins and toss them into the veg. Dress with a small amount of dressing.