Good things come to those who wait...

... Or so goes the adage. Well, let me say, that is totally and utterly true. You may remember my stumbling upon a recipe for a chorizo and bean soup over on the BBC Food website and mentally filing it away to make this week. I made it tonight and my goodness was it good. The recipe calls it a soup but mine turned out as more of a stew - a 'stoup', if you like - which I think was from using a tin of chopped tomatoes rather than cutting fresh tomatoes into quarters and putting that in. It's the longest I've waited for a meal to cook since I got here but it was well worth the wait. It was also a good way of finding out that the hobs in my kitchen switch off after being on for an hour - luckily this particular discovery was made just as I was coming in to collect it after leaving it to simmer for 45 minutes.

The joy of this recipe is that once everything is cooked through, which doesn't really take that long, it's up to you how much longer you leave it before digging in. I used normal, rather than cooking, chorizo which means you don't have to wait for it to cook through. Plus, I tend to find that this kind of chorizo tends to have a more intense flavour than the uncooked ones, which means that the spicy paprika from the sausage really flavours the rest of the 'stoup'.

This was definitely the perfect meal for a day like today when you want something that'll keep you full for a while. I had it at dinner with a slice of bread and butter because I didn't surface early enough to have a 'proper' breakfast; but it could easily be had as a late-ish lunch so you'd just need a bit of bread and cheese for your dinner. Even better, I've got some batter left from the cinnamon cake pops I made earlier in the week so I think I'll be making some of those for eating as I sob into my jumper during the "Sherlock" finale. It's funny how on days when I can't summon up the energy just to make a sandwich I can still find the motivation to make teeny tiny little cakes, dipped in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar while still piping hot. Scrumptious.

Monday is for Mulled Wine and Much too much to eat...

I sort of abandoned this for a bit towards the end of the week, essay deadlines, long days at work and lack of effort has led to an awful lot of food that can just be bunged in the oven from frozen, although I did go to the effort of making my childhood favourite - cinnamon chicken, on Saturday.

Today, however, was a totally different story. Despite having a bit of a wobbly moment at work when I just lost the enthusiasm for being anywhere but home home, the end of the day took a sudden turn for the best and I left cheerful and ready to hit Sainsbury's to get the makings for my first me-made Christmas dinner for myself and Georgia (who had bought some gorgeous festive chocolates from Hotel Chocolat).

This was the result of about an hour's cooking - and a helping hand from Mr. Sainsbury's!

I got a ready-seasoned turkey leg joint, some of the Basic's sage and onion stuffing, parsnips, and some mini-sausages wrapped in bacon, and we had some frozen broccoli, carrots in the freezer and some hefty potatoes for roasting, which meant that the most expensive part of the dinner was actually the mulled wine! The total bill came to just over £9, and with £3.99 of that being the wine, I'd guess that per head the meal came to probably less than £3.

Although it was all delicious, I'm going to be very immodest and say that my roast potatoes were a highlight for me. I parboiled the potatoes, then put them on a shallow roasting tin with some vegetable oil drizzled, a nob or two of real butter (which I think made all the difference) and a couple of shakes of rosemary. I rolled the potatoes around in this, then stuck it in the oven at about 180 degrees for around 45 minutes - 15 minutes in, I added the sausages, then once everything was cooked and crispy, just turned the oven way way down to about 150 degrees, just so that everything stayed warm without cooking it too much. I was so proud that I had Georgia take a picture of me getting my Nigella on:

The turkey was something I was quite nervous about, I'd never cooked a big joint of meat before, and was concerned it wouldn't cook properly and could end in food poisoning for me and Georgia - not exactly the Christmas I'd been hoping for, although it would provide the ideal excuse for the two of us to skive work tomorrow! The instructions said to cook it at 160 for a fan oven for an hour and a quarter, with ten minutes to rest, but after the hour and 15 minutes the juices were still a bit pink, so I put it in for another fifteen or so and left it to rest for about five, and it was really really good. It's also given me more confidence to cook something like that again.

Without much doubt, that was one of the best meals I've cooked, and the most rewarding, because it wasn't just me eating it, and Georgia certainly seemed to enjoy it!

I can't imagine cooking anything that massive in the immediate future, but it's nice to know that when I do decide to, I'll be able to do it justice! Now, what to do with those leftovers...