Melt in your mouth shin stew

Stew is one of the meals that shows how far I have come since The Picky Years and even since my student days. When I was a student, I wasn't actually that picky, but I lived on bastardized versions of Chinese, Thai and Italian food (aka pasta and stir-fries) and I suppose I despised stew as the sort of food your grandparents would eat, rather than the kind of food an upwardly mobile pseudo-sophisticate might go for. There may well have been a foodie revolution going on, sparked off I would guess by the rise of the gastropub, which made sausage and mash trendy, but I lived in Cambridge and I missed it (Cambridge is rightfully known for greatness in many areas - food is not one of them...). By the time I cottoned on to it, more through reading (and craving!) Nigel Slater's deliciously comforting Real Food than through frequenting the 'in' eating establishments of the time, I was hooked and I haven't looked back. I still love spicy food and I still eat a lot of pasta, but I also eat sausage and mash, lamb shanks (okay, so everyone likes lamb shanks these days, but I really, really like them), slow-cooked, gently warming casseroles, and shepherds pie. Somehow these dishes make the world feel safe; you can lock the doors and close the curtains and shut out the freezing darkness outside, and allow yourself to be comforted, cocooned by the reassuring, honest simplicity of that sort of food. It is this sort of food that makes the cold weather and short days not only bearable, but even in some ways desirable; if it really were 'forever summer', as Nigella put it, we would have to live on salad, and that is enough to make me welcome the autumn.

Jamie's shin stew is a fairly typical beef stew, with the usual ingredients - onion, celery, carrot, garlic, rosemary and bay, plum tomatoes and red wine - with cinnamon and dried porcini. Like all stews, the only effort it requires is chopping the vegetables - otherwise it is as easy as can be. Yesterday we started Christmas shopping, which for me tends to involve prolonged browsing in book shops and cook shops fantasizing about my ideal presents and then trying and failing to imagine what other people might want. I confess that I almost always buy people books; this is probably because that is what I want, and I find it hard to imagine that other people are less keen. I also have to resist the temptation to buy everyone a kitchen gadget that is essential to my life and utterly foreign to theirs. Anyway yesterday I did start Christmas shopping, while the stew simmered gently in the slow cooker (I increased the cooking time and used the slow cooker rather than the oven for convenience), which seemed like a highly productive way to spend a Sunday. I served the stew with mashed sweet potato and steamed curly kale (both from the farm shop).

Mmm. This really is as Jamie says 'fantastic comfort food', easy, simple, but certainly not to be despised or scoffed at. Oh and the best thing about stews is that you make far more than you need so that you can have leftovers when you are feeling down/tired/grumpy, and need a bit of food therapy - by which I mean food that warms you up inside without making you feel guilty afterwards. They should prescribe beef stew on the NHS.

Ultimate rib of beef with rosemary and garlic roast potatoes

In my picky years, I didn't eat beef. I blame the brisket that was served up on Sundays from time to time, slowly braised but still, to me, tough and tasteless, particularly when compared with juicy roast chicken with its crispy skin or pork with its crackling. I didn't care for burgers, either (which is probably a good thing given what was in those bought in burgers that my friends went crazy for). Since I stopped being so picky (and it was less a gradual process than a sharp culture shock: I went to live in the south of France for a year, aged 20, and discovered that I loved seafood and fish and rabbit, not to mention almost any cheese you could care to mention; had I not, I would probably have starved), I have more than got over my issues with beef (although I continue to reject commercially made burgers). In fact, I now crave beef occasionally: juicy steaks, melt-in-your-mouth slow cooked stews, home-made beefburgers not made with spooky mince, and preferably with Roquefort too, roast rib with horseradish, Indonesian curries with lemongrass and coconut milk... I like the look of all Jamie's beef recipes and this latest one (rib of beef with rosemary and garlic roast potatoes) seemed like a celebratory Saturday night with the X factor sort of dinner (I haven't managed to see any dancing. I know the rest of the nation is watching the dancing for the campness and the bright dresses, but I am a sucker for Simon Cowell demoralising people..).

This meal was easy. The steak took the form of a single rib of beef on the bone, my favourite roasting cut, but usually a larger piece. It was marinaded with lemon zest, garlic, rosemary and oil, browned in an oven-proof frying pan and then oven-roasted for up to 20 minutes, turned over and basted with marinade every five minutes. When the steak was ready, I squeezed over some lemon juice and drizzled olive oil and let it rest.

Meanwhile, I peeled and cubed some potatoes, covered in cold salted water and brought to the boil, and then tossed them with rosemary and garlic in an oiled baking tray that had been pre-heated in the oven. These little cubed potatoes are also a separate recipe in Jamie's book; I have made versions of these countless times before, originally, I think, inspired by Nigella in How To Eat. They are deliciously crunchy and flavoured - so much more so than the usual larger roasties (which nonetheless go much better with Sunday roasts).

The combination of rosemary-scented potatoes and rosemary-infused steak was divine. I cooked the steak to medium-rare and it was delicious, sliced into generous chunks and served with the baby roasties.

Mmm. This is really easy but satisfying home cooking at its best. I think the instructions read slightly oddly, because Jamie keeps saying 'steaks' not 'steak' as though you have already cut the meat up, although clearly this is not intended; this wouldn't really constitute a problem for anyone other than pedantic me, because the whole dish is really very easy. I think that using beef on the bone rather than the usual steak cuts works really well because rib is so tasty and because you can put it in the oven and baste occasionally, rather than having to worry about over-cooking two pieces of steak on a griddle pan on the hob. It feels rustic and warming and somehow it is; another success.

Pan-fried sirloin steak with simple Chianti butter sauce

Last night's dinner: steak, red wine, butter. Sounds like an Atkins diet dream - and sounds delicious. It nearly wasn't, through no fault of the recipe. I had been out with my parents and managed to leave my handbag in their car; when I realized, we had to drive to my parents' house to retrieve it, only they weren't there and hadn't got their mobiles switched on and we had to wait. We returned home incredibly hungry and eager to make dinner as fast as possible. This meant that instead of making the olive oil mash that Jamie teams with the steak first, then doing the steak, as he suggests, I was doing both at once, as well as chopping shallots, making a lemon dressing for the salad and tramping round the garden for thyme leaves. It is not so surprising that I succeeded in over-cooking the steak (I think it was medium; I like it more rare than that), because I was distractedly following the instructions like a sheep and not using my brain. Jamie suggested 8 minutes frying for medium-rare steak; I did 8 minutes, but my steaks were clearly, from the image, thinner than his, so 8 minutes was that bit too long. I would have noticed, if I hadn't been doing about ten other things at the same time and swigging a glass of (medicinal!) wine into the bargain. Anyway apart from the steak being overdone, this was delicious. I liked the Chianti butter sauce; I have made this sort of sauce before and it is a winner. The olive oil mash (which also has butter and Parmesan in it...) was also delicious, although ours didn't look anything like as creamy as Jamie's does in his picture. Either he used a lot more olive oil than we did, or he uses electric beaters to mash his potatoes, or... I don't know! Still, even if our dinner didn't look like a carbon copy of Jamie's, it was still very nice indeed. Weekend comfort food - yum.

Tonight I also did some baking - peanut butter choc chip cookies from Bill Granger's new book. I had vaguely intended to make Jamie's carrot cake but we have been out all day today and there is a duck roasting in the oven now, so there wouldn't have been time. The cookies were quick and easy but delicious.

Grilled fillet steak with the creamiest white beans and leeks

I never, ever buy fillet steak. Partly because it is expensive, partly because I accept the received wisdom that rump, although tougher, is tastier - Jamie himself recommends rump over fillet in one episode of The Naked Chef. I bought fillet today in order to make this recipe, because I had leeks and creme fraiche waiting to be used, and because it sounded like the right sort of indulgent Saturday night fare. This dish is simple: fillet steak, seasoned, patted with olive oil, and griddled until medium-rare, then sliced. Served with creamy white beans and leaks: I sweated leeks, garlic and thyme, in a little butter and olive oil until soft, added white wine and butter beans; simmered briefly; added a little creme fraiche, parsley and olive oil.

The steak was meltingly tender - beautifully medium-rare - and so soft that the knife slid through it like butter. The butter beans and the leeks were soft and creamy and complemented the fillet steak beautifully. Mmm. I made a green salad with lemony dressing which we ate after the steak and beans, which was also delicious.

This dinner was another grade A dinner, and best of all, it was incredibly easy. I think I could get used to fillet steak dinners...

Roast forerib of beef with beetroot and horseradish

Sunday - roast dinner day. Well it was in my childhood. Once I reached an age to decide for myself, I went years without a roast dinner. As a student I didn't have an oven for three years, and then doing a PhD I did have an oven but a temperamental one with an attitude problem, two spiral staircases below my attic room. I rediscovered roasts when I finished studying, finally, aged 26, and started work. There is something immensely comforting about a Sunday roast when work looms on a dark Monday.

Anyway Jamie's recipe for forerib of beef with beetroot and horseradish caught my eye. It is meant to serve eight, but I did some complicated and probably erroneous divisions, cut down the amount of everything and made it for two of us with enough for leftovers. Basically, it is a forerib of beef, rubbed with a mixture of lemon zest, rosemary, anchovies and oil, roasted with beetroots that have been boiled and then marinaded in thyme and marjoram, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. The horseradish cream is grated fresh horseradish with lemon juice, creme fraiche and marjoram or parsley. I went to locate our parsley in the garden and it had been colonized by the over-excitable mint, while the marjoram appeared to have been eaten by the fennel. So my herby creme fraiche-horseradish was herbfree! Anyway it tasted good.

The creme fraiche and horseradish mix:

The beef was delicious.

The beef was beautiful, the beets were amazingly flavoursome and I love the lemon juice in the horseradish cream sauce. It made me happy on a Sunday evening, even while my husband sneezed away with a monster cold in the background and I felt I was battling to ward it off. I hope all that fresh horseradish has scared away any lurking bugs...