Pea and bacon fritters

I can't help but feel that I've missed a stage out here and have gone back to the recipe twice to check and find that I have indeed followed it to the letter.  There was no picture to guide me so I was on my own, and despite them being called fritters Nigel asks that we make croquettes.  After 2 hours in the fridge the mixture was still pretty sloppy but I forged ahead.   It's fair to say that this hasn't been my finest hour but they did taste ok - not good enough to make again as they were incredibly fiddly and took a bit of planning in as they have 2 stints in the fridge.  I'm not sure the bacon taste fully comes through and I'd perhaps have doubled the quantity of bacon had I known that.  What does come through, and in a perfect way is the tarragon.

Chicken with yuzu and sesame

No, me either!  I really feel that Nigel is testing me here with not only yuzu but without warning he threw in 'shichimi togarishi' - I had to look both up and then trekked to the Chinese hyper market near work, which is fantastic and not just Chinese, with Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese sections.  When shopping there yesterday I lolled at the 'English' section, which mainly consisted of tomato ketchup.   Anyway, I passed Nigel's test and found the necessary ingredients and I'm really glad I did.  Apart from being super, super easy to make this it has wonderful flavours, a really delicate hit of spice and  a deep citrus flavour that was more complex than lemon - I can't explain it, but it was great.  I will make this again come barbecue season and imagine this being a staple.

Browned butter, rosemary and honey frozen yoghurt

Erm, interesting is the word I'm going to use for this - not unpleasant, not altogether pleasant, but interesting.  There is a real lemon flavour to it, but as no lemon was added I can only assume that this is the yoghurt coming through. I can definitely taste the rosemary and as I say it's not unpleasant, but I won't be making this again.

grilled fish with soy and sesame

I ended up buying a whole mackerel today and had to fillet it myself, something that a couple of years ago would have terrified me, and I realised how far I've come when I took a knife to the fish without fear. I must say that this is fast food at its absolute best, taking 10 minutes to make at most but delivering a beautiful flavour for that minimal effort.

Tempura vegetables

Astonishingly, I have never ventured into tempura territory as a cook before - I've been there plenty of times as an eater, one of my favourite meals from our local Japanese restaurant being tempura veg with curry sauce.  Inspired by this I sacked off Nigel's suggestion of a dipping sauce to go with the veg and made a katsu curry.  And I've got to say, this was great, and a very authentic fake away.   I used a sweet potato, woodland mushrooms, golden beetroot and chard, the latter two being in this week's veg box, thus killing two birds.

Hemp seed pizza with egg and rocket

My other half surprised me today by commenting positively and without prompt on this- he felt that the hemp enhanced the flavour and that the bread was almost a focaccia.  I have to say this impressed me less and I doubt I'd make it again, although I may adopt the pizza base method for my future pizzas as it was good.  Eagle eyed may see that I've not stuck completely to the brief and have used general salad leaves as that is what is in my weekly veg box this week.