I made these biscuits as a gift for my friend Louise. She has an intolerance to gluten and loves Amaretto, in fact, she is responsible for my current obsession with it. The biscuits are incredibly simple to make and very delicious although a lot more chewy than other Amaretti biscuits, I guess due to the lack of gluten. I think next time I will add a touch more liqueur as I do have a real taste for it. I also didn’t have enough ready-ground almonds and so I bumped up the quantity by grinding some whole and flaked almonds in a pestle and mortar which worked a treat. In fact, it was nice to have some lightly larger chunks of nut inside the soft and chewy biscuit. Warning – these are so unbelievably moreish! I must admit I did eat a few so called, ‘burnt ones’ before I finally packaged them up….I must start limiting myself with the Amaretto recipes, right now, I have an amaretti biscuit fridge cake chilling and I’ve promised myself the seafood flambe that Trig kindly brought to my attention. I do have a rather large bottle of Amaretto and I wouldn’t want to drink it all now would I?

Amaretti Biscuits

120g ground almonds
120g caster sugar
2 eggs, whites only
20ml Amaretto liqueur
Butter or oil for greasing the baking sheet
Baking parchment

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C/325 F/Gas 3

-Use a small amount of butter or oil to grease the baking sheet and lay a sheet of baking parchment on top.

-Beat the egg whites until quite stiff

-Mix in the sugar and almonds, add the Amaretto and mix again until you have a smoothish paste.

-Use a teaspoon to put small ‘blob’s’ of the mixture onto the baking sheet. Leave a gap of a couple of centimeters between each one as they will expand as they cook.

-Bake for around 15 minutes until golden.

Roast dinners, I think, are the sort of meals that allow you to practice the art of preserving every single bit of flavour and always get me thinking how I can squeeze the most out of every ingredient. Just the thought of cooking a meal with so many elements – all needing to come together at the same time but practice has seen fear dissolve into excitement.

Recent adventures in Yorkshire pudding making have led Chris to perfect his method. It seems that, whatever your recipe, allowing the batter to rest, heating the oil until very, very hot and definitely not opening the oven door during cooking are all crucial. These sound like tips I always knew about, so how come it’s only just started working? We’ve started cooking Yorkshire’s in the iron skillet instead of individually out of necessity but they work perfectly and are great for filling with sausages and onion gravy…In fact, putting the entire roast dinner inside is a very tempting idea.

The past few months, we’ve roasted pheasant, lamb, beef and quails. I recently learned that adding a small amount of water to the roasting tray creates some steam which helps to keep the meat moist (particularly in the case of pheasant, which can be dry) and leaves you with a nice amount of reducible juice for graving making at the end. I suspect this may not be news to everyone else…I love it when a good bird comes with heart, kidneys and maybe even the neck, a little gift for the gravy and a treat for the chef. The bones are then left for making stock, which we freeze for using in soups and sauces for example.

We like to bring elements of the meal together and get flavours running throughout so we might make a celeriac and apple mash for example and then continue the apple theme by making a cider gravy. If something is fried, maybe some bacon to combine with spring greens as a side dish; the fatty pan is waiting to impart flavour into the next part of the meal. We can get a little carried away, trying to preserve every last bit of flavour. 

And afterwards there must be something sweet (and often chocolatey!). The baked cheesecake in the picture is a Gordon Ramsay recipe from his book ‘Sunday Lunch’.

Sometimes I like to change the menu completely and hop to a totally different cuisine, perhaps serving a middle eastern buffet followed by a baklava. Tomorrow, I am told, it is my turn to put my feet up (it’s Saturday not Sunday but I kept my mouth shut) and Chris will be cooking for me. I feel this may be a more regular occurrence if only I would get the hell out of the kitchen once in a while and let the poor man in!

Anyway, what I am wondering is – what do you like to cook on Sundays?