Description:
Last Saturday's dinner.

Ingredients:
Prawns, pesto, ravioli

Directions:
Pasta is not difficult, but it's time-consuming, and can be very fiddly. Italian house-wives must have far too little to do.

Sift six ounces of strong flour into a bowl. Add a good glug of extra-virgin olive oil and the contents of two largs eggs, and mix with the numb end of a wooden spoon. The result should be slightly claggy but not stick to the bowl; if it does, sprinkle a bit more flour and mix again. If it's much too dry, you might need to add half an egg yolk. Form into a ball about the size of a ball (if I knew anything about sport, I would specify the type of ball; let's say, the size of a small rolled-up hedgehog), wrap in cling-film and leave in the fridge for at least a couple of hours. (Esoteric things happen to the flour during this period and do much to improve the pasta, but if you're in a hurry you could skip it. Then again, if you're in a hurry, you really shouldn't be making this.) Meanwhile, prepare your prawns, probably just by thawing them; fresh prawns are virtually unobtainable around here, but good-quality frozen ones are OK for this purpose. (Just don't buy the cheap ones from Netto or Asda.) You have quite enough fiddling about to do as it is, but if you live near prawn habitat, you may care to rely on your hunter-gatherer skills. Catch (or buy) some, boil 'em, shell 'em. Either way, use small ones.

Similarly, you may care to make your own pesto. I've done this a few times, but it's rarely much better than a good shop-bought product. As with most ready-made food, the cheap stuff can give the rest a bad reputation and should be ignored. If you feel adventurous, chop a large handful of basil and mash it up with two or three table-spoons of lightly roasted pine kernels and a clove (or two) of garlic, then add sufficient extra-virgin olive oil to loosen it. If it looks as though it's been scooped off a duck-pond, it's probably OK.

Pour three fingers of good Russian vodka into a tumbler, top up with tonic, and sprinkle lightly with finely-ground black pepper. Deploy this mixture as required during the remainder of the procedure.

Retrieve the paste from the fridge and dump onto a large, well-floured board. (I use a sheet of toughened glass about 24" x 18", and it's barely big enough; if you only have a normal cutting-board, use a sheet of floured foil to store the rolled-out paste.) Chop off a bit about the size of a large thumb and roll it out so as to resemble a clown's shoe-print. You could just use a rolling-pin but I use a pasta machine for the sake of regularity; start at the thickest setting (7 on mine) then go to 5 then 3. (Pasta machines don't really need even numbers, except possibly 2.) Repeat until you've run out of either paste or bench space. Consider getting a bigger kitchen.

Proper ravioli moulds are available and are pretty much a waste of space; they're nowhere near deep enough for most purposes. Take two scone / cookie cutters of about 1 and 1.5 inches diameter, and cut equal numbers of each from your paste; aim to get about thirty-five or forty of each size. In the centre of each of the small rounds, arrange three or four prawns and top with a good dollop of pesto. (You could mix the prawns with the pesto first, but that's much messier, and tends to leave green greasy marks on your vodka glass.) Drape the large rounds over the filled small rounds, and seal them together; the paste should be sufficiently sticky that you can do this by just pressing the edges together, but if you were over-enthusiastic with your flour, you might need to dampen them with a drop of water. Leave the ravioli to dry slightly to ease further handling, but ensure again that your board is well-floured else stickage ensues.

You'll probably want the biggest pan that you own; pasta really does need a lot of space. Get plenty of water in there, add a couple of good glugs of olive oil, and bring to a vigorous boil.

Meanwhile, assemble the sauce: heat about a pint (or less, depending on the size of your pint) of double cream in a pan, and add eight or ten chopped-up dried tomatoes (I get Aga-dried tomatoes from Cornwall, but any oven- or sun-dried would do); get them in oil, not the dry ones in a packet. Finely grate some hard cheese - Parmiggiano is the obvious choice, but Grana Padano would be good if you can get it - and add enough to thicken the sauce to as thick as you want it; about an egg-sized amount will probably do.

Chuck the ravioli into the boiling water and stir gently. Cook for about four minutes, drain, and serve in individual bowls with the sauce poured over the top. Sprinkle with chopped-up basil leaves. We have this with bread rolls and a plain green salad, often just watercress.

For an even less subtle version, chop the prawns finely and mix with some Thai fish paste.

Description:
Well, not really all-purpose, but it can be a cold dip (for prawns and such) or a hot dip (for croutons or breadsticks) or a marinade or a barbecue glaze or a pasta sauce. I don't recommend it as petrol additive, or photographic developer, but you never know. If it's going to be a hot dip, you might reduce the proportion of oil. For a cold dip, you might want to use use olive oil instead of sunflower.

Ingredients:
Absolute quantities vary depending on what you're using it for and how many you're feeding, but they should be in these approximate proportions, by volume:
Sunflower oil: 10 parts
Honey: 5 parts
Tomato puree (the stuff in tubes is OK): 3 parts
Dark soy sauce: 1 part
Lemon juice: 1 part
Marjoram (fresh, finely chopped, but you can get away with dried) : 1 part
Crushed garlic: 1 part (less if you're a vampire)
Grated orange peel: 1 part
Cracked black pepper: 1 part (less if it's going to be a dip)

Directions:
Tip it all into a screw-topped jar and shake like whoever was in that film.
Sadly for Australians, Australian honey tends to make it taste odd because of the oil content. Blame your bees for snacking on eucalyptus pollen. Try acacia. Brits can use heather honey. I get my honey from Trevarno in Cornwall; lots of rhododendrons.