Today we are having grilled baby squid with aioli for lunch. To make aioli you will need:

4 peeled cloves of garlic
Half a teaspoon of salt
A large egg yolk
The juice of half a lemon
150ml extra virgin olive oil

Crush the garlic cloves into a bowl, add the salt and mix into a paste. Add the egg yolk and lemon juice, then start mixing with an electric whisk. Slowly dribble in the olive oil whilst mixing so it is incorporated and finally forms a thick fluid of mayonnaise-like consistency.

This makes a quite delicious aioli that has real garlic heat. Lovely.

After my over-done goose and chicken I have finally realised I should have used one of my Christmas presents, a digital temperature probe. Tonight's meal is roast rib of beef and all I had to do was put it in the oven at the correct temperature (230°C for 25 minutes before turning it down to 160°C) until the alarm on the temperature probe went off. I like pretty rare beef so I set the probe to beep when the centre of the meat reached 50°C. It looks pretty good from the outside:

And on the inside (with pommes dauphinoises and green beans):

For pieces at the edge of the joint that looks just perfect to me. It was delicious.

Lunch today is lobster rolls. We had these twice in New York from the Pearl Oyster Bar and they were quite delicious. To make them you will need:

Two brioche rolls
A reasonable-sized cooked lobster
Mayonnaise
Goose fat or butter

Get all of the meat out of the lobster and chop it into not too small pieces. Mix this with some mayonnaise. Slice the brioche rolls in half and fry the inside in (ideally) goose fat or butter until golden. Fill the now-fried rolls with the lobster and mayonnaise mix. Eat with a lot of pleasure. These are very nice with extremely thin frites.

I roasted a goose for Christmas dinner tonight; it did not work out exactly as I had hoped. Roasting meat in a fan oven is always difficult, but I failed to take enough account of its drying effect, cooked it for too long that resulted in quite a dry bird.

Tip of the day: Don't roast a 4.5kg goose for two hours at 180°C in a fan oven.

Sadly I didn't take a picture when the chicken was just out of the oven. It looked good, but sadly turned out to be a bit dried-out. Still had a reasonable flavour, though. My advice is that to cook a 4.5kg you need to do it for less than 2.5 hours. Maybe I could have turned the temperature down a bit as well.

The Christmas goose and chicken were delivered today. Here is the chicken:

It may not look it in that picture but it is a monster. Over four and a half kilograms. My recipe books give instructions for cooking chickens weighing up to two kilograms... Hmmm...

I had some fresh tortellini planned for lunch today. I didn't have any sauce, alas, so I wondered if I could perk them up a bit by grating cheese over them. Then it struck me that I could put the pasta with the cheese on it under the grill:

It was rather nice. You need a characterful cheese, ideally. I used some old cheddar. Don't skimp on the amount of cheese used.

I warn you that if you put a plate or bowl under the grill it will get mind-bendingly hot.