Another quick and easy meal fromthe Cook's galley. It makes a great Saturday lunch to eat in the garden if the weather is nice, with a jug of the Cook's Sangria or a nice big bottle of St Miguel or Cruzcampo lager.

Mood music I'd say slap on the best piece of Spanish music ever written by a Frenchman namely Carmen or perhaps Rimsky Korsakov's Spanish fantasy. With some salad this should serve three or four people. Have a splash of vino tinto and get cooking.

First cut up three medium spuds into small cubes, bung tham in a pot of boiling water until they are soft enough to eat but not soggy. While they are boiling away chop up two large onions, six cloves of garlic and two chili peppers and sling them in a pan with some oil, fry until the onions go transparent. Chop a nice chorizo sausage into chunks, chuck it in the pan and let it sweat out some of that gorgeous pimenton flavoured fat, chuck in the spuds and some herbs (coriander is good) and grind in some black pepper. Let the flavoured fat taint the spuds for a few minutes before pouring in six beaten eggs. Let the bottom half cook then stick the pan under the grill to cook off the top half.

As I said its good with salad as a main meal or if you have a full crew cut into wedges and serve it as tapas along with some olives, wedges of Manchego cheese, boccaroni (these are small fish in vinegar), pickled squid or octopus, sardines, coleslaw, potato salad etc.

Yum

This is one for those days when you get home from a hard days pillaging and want something simple and tasty.

Slip a couple of relaxing tunes on the stereo like maybe some ZZ Top, Captain Beefheart or a bit of early 70s Iggy (none of that rubbish from the late 70s and early 80s mind) and pour yourself a nice pint of Adnams bitter, Arr that's better

Heat some oil in a pan and chuck in a chopped onion, about six smashed garlic cloves and two or three chopped chilli peppers. Grind in some black pepper and fry on a low heat till the onions go soft and translucent. Have a slurp while you are waiting and put on some decent Blue Oyster Cult preferably Agents of Fortune or Fire of Unknown Origen.

Add a teaspoon or so of cinnamon and a punnet of chopped fresh mushrooms. Add a dash of soy sauce and cook down until the liquid starts to come out of the mushrooms, then add two teaspoons of Dijon mustard, about a glass of sherry (or vermouth or white wine if you like) some herbs (I used some fresh parsley and coriander that I had left over from making some meatballs the other day), a slurp of vinegar (mine came from a jar of pickled red cabbage so it helped the colour along too), a tin of tomato puree and then about two pints of water. Crumble in a stock cube, then bring to the boil, chuck in your pasta then turn down the heat and let it simmer away until the liquid has reduced and the pasta is ready to eat. As I've said before quantities are never exact in the Cook's galley so how much pasta you use really depends upon how big a crew you are cooking for and how hungry they are.

For a bit of variety you could always bung a tin of tuna fish in though make sure its the kind in oil not brine and use the oil for frying (Cook can't stand waste).

Turn it out on a plate chuck some grated cheese, Parmesan, Chedder or whatever you fancy, and chow down. I'd recommend a nice Italian red with this like a Barolo, Chianti or a Valpolicella.