Chocolate-dipped cherries

What do you do when your Mum is a highly successful consultant and receives hampers filled with cherries as Christmas presents, and then gives you heaps of cherries and then you get home and your boyfriend says he doesn't really eat cherries?


You dip them in chocolate and serve them to guests, that's what!


Calling this a recipe feels like a cop-out, but sometimes it's all too easy to forget how good dipping fruit in chocolate can be.  Let this be your reminder.


Ingredients:

• dark chocolate
• cherries

Melt the chocolate in the microwave, in 20 second batches.  When it's about two thirds melted, remove it and stir until it completely melts (this will prevent burning and keep the chocolate lovely and glossy.

 Line a plate with foil.  Dip your cherries and place on the plate.  Then put them in the fridge.

Pull them out to impress guests during the festive season. And have a few yourself every now and then, just to continue the spirit of the things, and make a contribution.

Potato, tomato and onion pie

 How do you define a pie?  Because frankly, this dish is very possibly not one.  But look, shut up okay, it's full of potato and what more do you want? So it's kind of a casserole, layered like a lasagne, but in a pie dish, and crunchy on top.  It's classic peasant/student fare, and given the December Austerity Measures this should free up enough coin to subsidise the high quality cooking chocolate I need for all my Christmassy treats and not at all for gnawing on after dinner.


Ingredients:

• 2 potatoes
• 3 tomatoes
• 1 onion
• 1 teaspoon wholeseed mustard
• slice of butter
• olive oil 
• salt and pepper  

Brush a pie dish with olive oil and turn the oven on to 180 C. Melt the butter with the mustard and add salt and pepper.  Then finely slice everything.

Line the pie dish first with a layer of potatoes, then onion, then tomato.  Add half the mustardy butter mixture.  Repeat. 

Top with potato and brush the top with olive oil.  Sprinkle with salt if you know what's good for you.

Cover with foil and put in the oven.  After 30 minutes remove the foil and turn the oven up to 190.  Remove after another 30 minutes.


Consume.