Recipe - Potato Pavé

This is the beta run of a side dish I'm serving tonight when we're having some friends over for dinner.

I've had similar dishes in restaurants over the years and thought I'd give it a go. Guests tends to get a little bit embarrassed if you go completely batshit mental if the dish doesn't work out so I thought I'd give it a go one weekend early.

Recipe - Pork Tenderloin Sandwich

Well, here it goes. A new recipe, finally. Not the most advanced or thrilling dish, but I thought I'd ease myself back into this malarkey again. It will take some time to get back to speed with the photography and all that - hopefully you'll stick with me though.

Things could start happening here soon again...

To start with - I'm not sure if anyone still will be reading this. Is anyone still subscribing to the RSS feed of this blog or even visiting it now and then in the hope(?) of a new post? I guess I'll find out one way or another.

Closed until further notice

Since I've run out of motivation and steam, at least for the moment, I've decided to close Freestyle Cookery.

I'll let all the old posts and comments stay up and if I get my mojo back I might continue where I left off.

In the meantime I just want to say a big thank you to all readers and fellow bloggers who made this little adventure so much fun.

As always, freestyle things to your hearts content.

// Mike

Recipe - Lemon Chicken with Roasted Tomatoes and Potatoes

Straight off I have to admit that I'm not entirely happy with this photo, I don't feel that it does the dish full justice. My only explanation, not a proper excuse, is that there was a guest around for dinner so I couldn't faff around as much with the camera as I'd normally do, I didn't want to look too much of a twunt for once. Having said all that, I guess it is better than no picture at all.

Recipe - Sous Vide cooked Pork Tenderloin with Mrs H.S. Ball's Creamy Sauce

Some of you that follow me on Twitter have probably already cottoned on to the fact that the newest weapon in my arsenal is a Sous Vide machine. For those of you that don't know what that is, have a look here.

Recipe - French Onion Soup

French onion soup is such classic dish for me. I'm not sure how many times I've eaten it, be it a poor version or a very nice rendition from a decent restaurant.

Shockingly enough this is the first time I've ever tried making it myself. I took my normal approach and had a look both in my library of cookbooks and online. What I learned from this is that there's as many ways of making French onion soup as there are people cooking it. I also got some great tips and advice from people like kingpieb on Twitter.

Review - Cold Smoking Course

Another weekend, another course. Recently I've spent quite a lot of time at various cookery courses, well spent time in my view. There's even some more courses lined up for later in the year.

This weekend it was time for the Food Smoking Course arranged by Turan of Coldsmoking.co.uk fame, a course I was given as a Christmas present.

Recipe - Red Wine Braised Ox Cheeks

Food magazines and cookery shows have been hailing the cheaper and more forgotten cuts of meat for some time now. It's not like the cuts have not been available, they have just been more likely to be ground down as part of some kind of processed offering.

Even with the quite frequent mentioning of these cuts they can be a bit hard to chase down if you have to rely on the 'bag openers' in what the supermarkets call their butcher/meat sections.

Recipe - Merguez Sausages with Couscous

As readers of this blog might remember, I recently made a batch of home made sausages for the first time. If you haven't read this post, or need a refresher, have a look here.

Having sausages on their own is one thing but cooking them and having them a suitable accompaniment is a completely different thing.