This year I have spent little time in my own kitchen.  Although cooking on holiday, I have not been photographing and making notes very much.

First some dishes under the Loire sun.

Some excellent large crevettes flash fried with cognac.   

Also good butterflied with large white beans.   

Sweet pole grown moules.   

Squid, lardons and red peppers.   

Here is how to eat your cherries.   

Several fishy dishes.

Seared scallops with fonteluna sausage and courgette.  This sausage is very spicy with aniseed flavour, black pudding (blood sausage) would be better.

Marlin can easily dry and toughen, so leave it very rare.  Here with potato and rocket, spring onions and a variation on Sauce Vierge.  This is an olive oil sauce, but the lemon or lime juice makes it very easy to eat.

Tagliatelle made with squid ink, served with pancetta and basil.

Trying to match parmesan cheese with seafood.  The Italians refuse to pair them, but the new research into umami suggests they should be a good match, with amplification of flavours.  This prawn, crisp prosciutto and 2 year old parmigiano left me unconvinced.

We like Tilapia.  Here it is seared with a herby mash and prawn sauce, with chives.

I have been working with jerusalem artichokes (actually a tuber of a type of sunflower, not an artichoke).  They make a lovely, non-gluey velouté or thick sauce.  Here it is boiled up with some celeriac and blitzed with cream and white pepper, plenty of salt.  Nice to eat, but looks a mess.  Served with good old Tilapia and grilled courgettes.

Better presentation with this lait of jerusalm artichoke.  It is poached in milk until soft and then blitzed with cream and butter, salt and pepper.  The lemon sole was baked on the bone and filleted for service.  It broke up a bit because it still stuck to the bone.  The expert filleting you sometimes see at the table relies on slightly overcooked fish.  Served with fennel and oyster mushrooms.

Now the meat course.

Joints of guinea fowl roasted with parsnip and carrot.  Buttered spinach, garlic and rosemary.

Classic roast beef.  There is plenty of sea salt, but it is not showing up.   Roast potato, parsnip, onion and carrot.  Buttered spinach.  A very dark beef stock was reduced with rosemary and horseradish.  It is such a light colour because cream was added and it was aerated with a stick blender.

A wonderful wild Mallard duck had lost most of its limbs during its demise.  The breast was pan grilled and rested in a warm oven.  New potatoes were just bashed with truffle oil.  Sauce of chicken stock, cream and preserved morel mushrooms.

That takes us up to our Christmas meal.
A very nice fresh goose.  The limbs are now a confit, waiting in the fridge.
The whole breast section was cut off and a light, simple stock made from the carcass.   One breast was filleted off and very briefly seared to make a carpaccio.   Peppered on one side and seared on both sides in an extremely hot pan.  Very briefly, so it can not be considered cooked.  Then wrapped in clingfilm and allowed to rest for a couple of hours at room temperature.  Thinly sliced and served with some variations on apple and white and szechuan pepper.

The main course was entirely traditional, with no mucking about; even boiled sprouts.   A stuffing of heart, liver, pancetta, bread and apple, moistened with butter and stock and baked in a bowl.  A gravy of very well reduced goose stock and a little apple purée and white pepper.  Roast veggies in goose fat and rosemary.   The breast was roasted on the bone and rested.