Saturday night's recipe: Ching's won tons

A few weeks ago I bought myself Ching's Chinese Food in Minutes with some birthday money. I'd tried one or two of the recipes before, round at a friend's for dinner, and they were so delicious - and, she insisted, easy - I'd wanted the book since.

So far, I'm really enjoying it. I've cooked a couple of things from it, and keep going back to it for more. I've given it to my Dad for his birthday, alongside a big box of ingredients he'd need to go to a Chinese supermarket to get, ordered from the web. When I bought his box, I decided to buy myself one too, so now I have everything I need.

And on Saturday night, we decided to try her won ton recipe. I love won tons and dim sum -they're my favourite part of a Chinese takeaway, and I was really excited about trying them at home.

The recipe is here and I found it very easy. The only ingredient you couldn't pick up at any supermarket were the won ton wrappers themselves - all the rest you'll be able to get at your local supermarket.

The hardest part was chopping everything up small - we used pork escalopes because we didn't want a whole pound of mince. I should have used the food processor much earlier in the process than I did.

Making the won tons up was fun - you can see the results below. Mine are on the chopping board, The Husband's on the plate. His are more beautiful, but took longer!

Boiling them up was quick and fun - we waited until they rose to the surface, a sign they were cooked, although I found they stuck a bit to the pan and some needed a nudge with a spoon.

And here's the end result! We only made the soy, cider and sesame sauce, not the chilli one, for simplicity and to limit the amount of oil involved. In fact, I think this was a mistake, as without the chilli the dumpling filling was just a tiny bit bland - could have done with the ooomph. But it still tasted and looked great.

We decided to make the full quantity for two people as a main (we'd had some fruit and veg at other points in the day, I promise), but our pack had 30 wrappers, and the recipe catered for 36 won tons, so the remainder I fried off and fed to the cat. He rather liked it!

I was amazed at how relatively easy they were to make, and will make them again. I'd even consider making them as a dinner party starter, as almost all the work can be done in advance, and the final boiling is so quick and easy.

Tessa Kiros, and gingerbread hearts

For my birthday a couple of years ago my in laws bought me set of two Tessa Kiros cookbooks - Apples for Jam and Falling Cloudberries.

The books are stunning in themselves - beautifully shot pictures, full of intense colours. They're arranged along themes. Apples for Jam is full of family recipes, grouped by colour. Falling Cloudberries is more for grown ups, and that's arranged by the many countries Tessa and her family have lived.

And there you hit on the first reason why I don't use the books as often as I should. Does that seem to you an easily browsed format when you want a main course and a pudding for a dinner party, or a quick, cheap and lovely weeknight supper? Nope, me neither.

To me, although the books are a pleasure to flick through, they're a strange mix of recipes. Apples for Jam is full of deeply unshowy, even ordinary-sounding recipes, such as pasta with tuna, basil olives and tomato sauce, but made more complicated - but not necessarily much better. That one's the best example - we've made it a few times. To be honest, it had never occurred to me to cook that particular dish from a recipe until I saw it in the book, and I was stunned to find that, with the various faffing involved, it took more like 20 minutes to cook. It took The Husband a good deal longer than that. Now my version might not be as technically perfect, but the sauce is made in the length of time the pasta takes to boil, and tastes pretty damn good.

Other recipes do look lovely - little finger food canape things from all over the world, and an octopus, dried out on a washing line and then barbecued. But I'm not sure when I'd make either of those, or what the neighbours would think of an octopus on a communal washing line in the back yard!

But I realised I hadn't given the book a fair try and last weekend decided to make a cake or biscuits from it. There were lots of cakes, but most of them designed for puddings, or with so much fresh fruit or cream they'd need to be eaten on the day they were cooked - not ideal when there are two of you.

I found two possible recipes - a cake with olive oil, orange and pine nuts, and gingerbread cookies that were meant to be a Christmas recipe.

Always a sucker for gingerbread, I tried the latter, with the ingredients above (plus an egg, which I forgot to photograph).

I'd mixed it all up, it was smelling lovely and going well, and I was about to reconsider what I thought of the books. The oven was hot and I was all ready to go...

Until I realised the recipe said refrigerate overnight. At this point, I swore, lots. So much for having a house smelling of freshly cooked gingerbread for when the Husband came home from work.

So on went the clingfilm, into the fridge went the bowl.

The next day, I rolled out the biscuits. Or tried to. After a night in the fridge the mixture had become rock hard and it was a real effort to scoop it out onto a floured surface. But when I did it immediately became the stickiest substance imaginable, and near impossible to roll.

Which would have been forgivable if the end result had been delicious. But they're a bit plain, a bit too sensible tasting. They need darker sugar and more ginger to make them sing - at the moment, if anything they're bland. Not worth the fridge space overnight.

We're still eating them, mind - waste not, want not. But the real test? When I get home from work I find the husband has only eaten one or two of the tiny biscuits, if any. Just not up to Blondie standards.

I don't want to give up on the books - they're too pretty for that! And part of me wonders if they'll come into their own this summer as it warms up - once I've done something with a salmon fillet I run out ideas for summer dinner parties, and these books may help. But deep down, I suspect that they will be beautiful failures, and that they'll stay pretty - because they'll never have the splashes of oil, bits of flour and pencilled-in improvements that marks a recipe book which earns its keep.