Item 1: Pizza stone. Pizzas didn’t quite come out like from a wood oven, but they were crunchy and fragrant. I was very happy with the result.

Item2: Baguette tray. I only got around to try it today, weeks after its purchase. Religiously following Paul Hollywood’s recipe I managed to get a decent enough dough [although it took it four hours to prove, and not without a little help under the guise of a hot water bottle]. The result is baguettes with a gold crust and perfectly light and fluffy on the inside. It actually feels and tastes like any baguette bought from a bakery. The boyfriend is having it with butter as I write, and he keeps saying “This is AMAZING” so I guess he’s pretty impressed too!

My result is not as precise as this lady’s, but we had lunch with the most ridiculous amount of fried dumplings. Nothing to do with sharing a tiny starter of Duck Gyoza at Wagamama’s. We surely didn’t have the embarrassing ”take-the-last-piece-oh-no-you-take-it” moment!

In the meantime I had to promise the boyfriend, who jokingly accused me of being the cause of his weight gain, that I won’t bake any sweet treats until the end of summer [not eating every single piece of every single batch I bake wasn't an option, obviously]. But I guess steering away of sweets for a while can only do us both good. After my run yesterday I thought I deserved a treat, although I got a bit carried away and turned said treat in a day of bingeing that included a burger with chips and a ridiculous amount of biscuits. So today, when I started craving for biscuits again, I thought it wiser to break my promise and bake something healthy. I made up the recipe and wrote it down as I measured the ingredients.

• 50g peanuts, salted and toasted
• 50 raisins
• 1 ripened banana, mashed
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp runny honey
• 90g whole wheat flour
• 80g porridge oats
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Turn the oven on to 180˚C.
Mix the egg, the honey and the mashed banana until creamy. Add to the rest of the ingredients and combine well. Spoon into a tray lined with baking paper and bake for about 15′. That’s it!

As I was downing my umpteenth drink and enjoying my first scotch egg ever, I noticed these two gentlemen and their very stylish stall. I actually went over to them to tell them they were very fashionable and asked to take a photo; despite my poor state, or maybe amused by that, they graciously agreed.

In case you were wondering, Kamm & Sons produce and distribute a ginseng spirit. I haven’t tried it, but I loved the care they put in their stall — it was by far the most eye catching and tasteful.

After more Chinese cooking on Saturday — a prawn dumpling and noodle soup Gok Wan’s cookbook only refers to as Happiness In a Bowl – it was time for some traditional Italian food. I’m quite ashamed to say that, despite being born and bred in Rome, pizza and fresh pasta are two things I’ve always failed at. While my bread is lovely, my pizza could be used as a weapon. I bought a pasta machine in December for the only reason that “every real Italian owns one”, tried to make some tagliatelle that turned out as a slimy blob, got scared, put the machine in the cupboard and never used it again. I then read that La Cantina del Ponte, an Italian restaurant not too far away from Tower Hill, was organising pasta making workshops at a very reasonable price. I attended [the only Italian in the group. Shame on me!] and learned quite a lot. A few tricks I wasn’t aware of:

• Instead of using 100g 00 flour and 100 egg [1 egg], use 50 00 flour and 50 semolina, which is less finely ground. Apparently you can substitute the 00 flour with plain flour.
• Don’t add salt at this stage as it will “cook” the egg. The salt only goes in the water you use to cook the pasta.
• Make you dough the day before, wrap it in cling film and let it rest in the fridge overnight.
• Once you’ve cut to the desired shape, let it dry; the more humid the day, the longer it will take.

Thanks to their advice, I regained courage and had another go at pasta making. I made tagliatelle, which is what my mum prepares for special occasions. They came out perfect!

After this success I am very tempted to repeat the experience and attend some other workshop in the same restaurant.. bakery maybe! It would be nice to be able to make pizza as well..

Last weekend, the boyfriend was fantasising about eating an Oreo biscuit as big as his face. I toyed with the idea for a few days, learned that there’s such a thing as an Oreo Cake Mix and my heart sunk a bit. I decided move onto something similar: Chocolate and Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies.

While the biscuit is almost harmless, the filling is consists of 170g of butter, about 250g g icing sugar and 220g [i.e. a whole jar] of Fluff. We had one for lunch at it was enough. And we are usually greedy.

Even then, considering the amount of bowl licking activity going on in the kitchen I doubt that my morning run will make up for it…

Update: A really nice feedback from one of my colleagues: https://twitter.com/Lucifer_Marcho/status/214669301297332224

This weekend I was meant to post about amaretto biscuits, a sort of meringue with ground almonds. Truth is I made them and they came out too ugly to be photographed. Not even one of them could be saved for a shot. On the plus side, they were delicious.

Also, the highlight of the week is the sudden Chinese food frenzy my boyfriend and I are experiencing due to Gok Wan’s show on Channel 4. I love Gok Wan: he’s camp, he’s cheeky and he seems a genuinely nice guy. I find his show is very interesting; the recipes seem pretty straightforward and, above all, healthy. Last Tuesday we decided to invest in Gok’s cookbook, a cleaver [which I am now using for everything] and a bamboo steamer. With the first two items delivered in no time, we couldn’t wait to test some of the recipes. Tonight we made ginger beef, a healthier version of the shredded beef you would get in a restaurant. It was fragrant, aromatic, an experience that involved the sense of smell as well as the sense of taste. A relatively quick dish that could easily become my favourite. “One of the best meals I’ve ever had” the boyfriend commented “it almost beats your carbonara pasta”.

You have to be grateful to the Queen for giving us an extra day off in her 60th year of reign. I would have been even more excited if the weather were as nice as last weekend’s, and if the boyfriend didn’t have to study for an exam. I am left with:

• Cleaning/laundry sprees: since we moved house, the amount of laundry seems to have skyrocketed. No matter how many loads I wash, the basket is always full. I start suspecting there is a ghost in the house who changes its sheet with an embarrassing frequency.

• Excursions in South Woodford’s surroundings. That is, its shops. Grocery-wise, I can choose among a Sainsbury’s, a huge Waitrose and an M&S Simply food. But I am loving the way less fashionable International Supermarket, where I even managed to find some Italian buffalo mozzarella. Even more exciting, they offer an unbelievable choice of spices and beans. Entire isles. One day I might even know what is possible to do with them. And then there’s Treasure Chest, a household store. Every time I pay a visit I want to buy all their kitchen gadgets. More importantly they sell Astonish cleaning products, which are entirely cruelty free.

• My morning jogs in Epping Forest, which eventually will bring here. I am an incredibly lazy person, constantly out of shape, and I find physical activities unbearably painful and boring; I hate the feeling of my muscles getting tight and sore and being out of breath. So I thought that running a 10k wold be a heroic enough gesture to support a good cause [HUGE quotes around the word heroic]. In the past few years I have seen too many people taken away by cancer, one of them being a young man gifted with exceptional intelligence, sensitivity and kindness. With him in mind, last year I joined Cancer Research Race for Life. I did well in the run and raised way more than expected, having obviously underestimated my friends’ generosity. Straight afterwards, blinded by the excitement, I registered for the 2012 edition… But when I started training last month, half-hearted, I thought this would be the last time I joined a 10k run: too much effort. Four weeks later I am seeing a constant improvement and actually enjoying my early morning jogs in the forest. Depending on how long I can hold onto the running bug for, I might even join a half marathon next year =)

• And, of course, the unmissable baking session… I was unsure about what to do in occasion of the Jubilee weekend, also due to my renewed commitment to healthy eating. I have seen some truly lovely ideas online [this being my favourite so far], but all I could think of making seemed very unoriginal. Besides, my renewed commitment to healthy eating imposed me to choose something that wasn’t full of butter. Something with fruit maybe… Well I guess i partially succeeded! You can witness there is fruit on the top of my tartlets. One of your five a day indeed.. Shame about all the cream and the pâte sucrée.

Nevermind, I renew my commitment every other week anyway.

I took the recipe from the ever so precious The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts.

Born and bred in Italy, and the best focaccia recipe I’ve ever tried comes from the Hairy Bikers.