So I’ve been getting back into the cooking of late – and still trying to do things I haven’t cooked before. Last week I tried to make shoestring fries to go with a Foccacia burger. I have the fries when I’m in Dallas at Houston’s, and they are amazing. So I thought I’d try doing them myself. First off, I ran the potatoes through a julienne slicer in my food processor. Job done, they were exactly right.

I don’t like frying stuff, so I put the potato in a freezer bag, with a good lug of olive oil and shook them about until the fries were coated. On a baking tray next, in to the oven at 235 degrees C for 35 minutes and they came out rubbish. Half were burnt, the others weren’t cooked. That was despite moving them around regularly with tongs during cooking. Any ideas anyone? I’m thinking maybe the oven was too hot. So that was my cooking failure last week.

Cooking success? My chicken, shallot and mushroom pie. I’d never made a pie before, but made everything from scratch. Including the pastry. I’ve got to say it tasted (and looked) amazing, and it was a lot easier than I thought, so that kind of made up for the fry distaster earlier in the week!