Bill Granger's braised pork meatballs

This recipe comes from Bill Granger's latest book 'Bill's Italian Food' published by HarperCollins. It also featured in the August 2013 edition of delicious magazine.

I like Bill Granger, or rather his cooking; relatively simple food that tastes and looks great. And he seems to have a wonderful life of travelling around to different countries, immersing himself with the local cuisine and writing cooking books about his (and his family's) experiences. How cool would that be? My dream job I think.

I have spoken before of my love of meatballs. They are high on my list of easy comfort food, popular with big and little people, tasty and relatively healthy. I would cook some sort of meatball at least once a week. I like Italian style with a tomato-based sauce, or chicken meatballs in an Asian-style soup, or Turkish-style lamb meatballs with yogurt and lots of herbs. The possibilities are endless really.

Baked, stuffed mushrooms

Inspiration struck when I saw these beautiful grilling mushrooms at my local fruit and vegetable shop. I had to have them! Mushroom desire perhaps? Clearly I needed some protein, or perhaps it was just that I really like mushrooms.

Anyway, into the basket they went along with some feta cheese, prosciutto and some fresh herbs.

We had these as a starter and I served the leftover filling mixture on the side, so not to waste it. It was a very tasty little morsel.

You could also make these for a dinner party or as party food, although you may need to let them cool a bit before serving to your guests as finger food.

Super-easy, cheesy sausage rolls

Three ingredient snack food recipe coming up.

Gather ready-made puff pastry, sausages and some grated cheese from your nearest grocery store and turn it into these sausage rolls.

Five minutes preparation time, 15 minutes cooking time and you have a 'homemade', filling and tasty snack or lunch if served with salad or vegetables.

These sausage rolls are totally kid-friendly and could be served at a party or as 'in front of the TV' snacks during the football.

Flourless orange cake

I'm thinking of the best way to describe this cake. 'Moist' is probably the first adjective that comes to mind, 'citrussy' is another, and perhaps 'morish'. This is a really lovely cake to add to your repertoire. It is easy to make, is gluten-free, tastes so wonderful, and is superb to take along as a contribution to morning or afternoon tea.

It is a little extra time and effort to make the syrup that accompanies this cake, but it is worth it. It gives the cake that extra dimension and turns it into something really special.

Serve warm with some mascarpone and a drizzle of the syrup and a hot cup of coffee for a wonderful treat.

With thanks to our friends the Hofmanns for providing the beautiful lake setting for afternoon tea.

Jam Drops

I like a good bikkie on occasion, especially with a cup of tea. A bikkie with a good dollop of sweet jam in the middle rates right up there.

I made these jam drops to take to a BBQ we were invited to. It was something a bit different than turning up with a cake or a bottle of wine. And the day of the BBQ was extremely hot, so bikkies went down a treat.

Luckily for me, I was given six jars of homemade jam recently. So I was able to use this jam in the middle of my jam drops - thanks Melanie for the jam. I put it to good use.