The dining room is a great place for a family to come together and discuss the events of the day while enjoying a meal. This is best in a comfortable manner so as not to feel to formal or rigid. Bearing this in mind, it is important to analyse whether your dining room is really as homely and relaxed as you believe.

Is there physically enough room? To feel comfortable, you can’t be packed into a tight space, so the space of your dining room needs to be taken into account. When you pull out the chairs, you ideally want there to be a good distance before they hit the wall. If not, you may want to consider buying smaller chairs or a thinner table from a dining room furniture store. The through traffic of the dining room also needs to be thought about. Look around at where the doors are and try to allow as much space as possible; you don’t want people bumping into things and dropping food or drink.

Is your table top left blank? A plain table is not a homely sight, so when it is not in use, why not decorate it? This can be achieved by placing a cloth or covering on and putting flowers, potpourri, candles or any other decorations you see fit. Symmetry is key when doing so, as it is with decorating the surface of coffee tables in your living room, as it will make it all fit together.

When the time comes to use the table for meals, there should be a storage place somewhere in the room to place these items. A good storage place should ideally be able to store cutlery and tableware also so they are not all in the kitchen, perhaps splitting them between the two.

Despite the vagaries of our weather, we Brits have embraced the barbecue with gusto. However, there is often a certain predictability about what we cook. For some families a barbecue just isn’t a barbecue without sausages and burgers. There’s nothing wrong with the good old British banger, especially if bought from some of the many butchers who have branched out into the more interesting varieties, and burgers if organic (or better still, if you’re a fan of the Schwartz home cooking club, homemade) can be very tasty. However, there are so many other things that barbecue well it’s a shame to get stuck in a rut.

One of the most novel ways of barbecuing a whole chicken involves impaling it on a can of beer! I haven’t tried it myself but it sounds as though it could be delicious. The chicken is marinated in a paste made from beer, garlic, sugar and various spices, then covered in yet more beer, left for 24 hours, smeared with butter under the skin and then cooked on the barbecue with an open can of beer in its cavity.

Fish always barbecues well, either whole or filleted and seafood such as prawns and scallops are excellent on skewers. If you want to marinade your prawns I can recommend a mixture of garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, chilli and fresh coriander. If you’re stuck for inspiration, check out the packets of spice mixes on offer from Schwartz.

The use of marinades for barbecues is always the subject of heated debate, with some people arguing for letting the meat, poultry or fish speak for themselves whilst others think that the marinade adds flavour and tenderises the meat.

Vegetables are good on skewers too; try peppers, big mushrooms, onions, and aubergines.

As far as accompaniments are concerned, a selection of salads, some French bread or some new potatoes always go down well. The potatoes are even tastier if pre-cooked, sprinkled with a couple of spoonfuls of olive oil and some sea salt and rosemary and then wrapped in a double layer of foil before being placed on the barbecue.

I had always loved the spaghetti alla vongole (along with, of course, the good old traditional spaghetti bolognese!) served up in my local Italian restaurant so, when I went to Bellagio on Lake Como a few years ago, I was hoping it would be on the menu. We were celebrating a special occasion and staying at a superb hotel complete with a Michelin starred restaurant. Sadly spaghetti vongole was obviously deemed insufficiently grand for it to make an appearance, so the following evening we decided to head off into town to see if we could seek it out.

The mission was easily accomplished; in fact it seemed to be on most of the menus. When my meal arrived I was slightly shocked to see a lack of tomatoes. It transpires that you can have vongole rosso or bianco, the former having tomatoes in the sauce and the latter not. If I had thought that my local Italian served up a good vongole, I was about to enter a different zone. The dish was absolutely delicious and despite extensive tasting I have yet to find another to come close.

The dish is in essence quite simple to prepare at home, even for people who normally just stick to Schwartz recipes. It revolves around a combination of garlic, olive oil, clams, parsley and white wine. My first attempt was, however, rather disappointing. Feeling slightly apprehensive of cooking clams myself, I copped out and bought a jar of clams. What a disappointment! They simply did not have the taste of fresh clams and what’s more were so tiny that they were hardly worth the effort of taking them out of their shells. My next attempt used fresh clams and in fact there was nothing much to cooking them. The main thing to remember was to remove them as soon as they opened so as not to allow them to dry out. It is also important to discard any with broken shells or ones that don’t open. They are dead and should definitely not be used.

Unfortunately I would only give myself six out of ten. I’m not sure where I went wrong (maybe not using expensive wine or perhaps the olive oil was not the same as the one used in Bellagio) but at least it gives me a good excuse to return to Italy soon!

Trying a new cuisine from somewhere you have never visited on holiday can be daunting. However, it can also be one of the most rewarding culinary experiences you will ever have. Those who have tried out Thai or Greek recipes will know what I’m talking about here, but another fantastic one to try when you get the chance is Japanese.

Contrary to popular belief, sushi does not entirely comprise of raw fish. There are many different varieties and some can even be made according to vegetarian recipes (not to be confused with fish-eating vegetarians or “pescatarians”). The basic ingredients to sushi are:

- Nori (the seaweed wrap)
- Shari (the short-grained sushi rice, often mixed with vinegar)
- Neta (the primary ingredient(s))
- Condiments

Sushi is an art; you are not going to perfect it on your first attempt. However, you really shouldn’t be put off by this. When you get into the rhythm, rolling the perfect sushi can provide such satisfaction and variety from your usual meals.

The ingredients are not too hard to find; there may not be entire isles dedicated to nori and shari but you can find them at supermarkets, or even find the more authentic, imported ingredients at Asian markets.

Putting together the ingredients is not the difficult part of the process; it is all in the roll. They are going to fall apart again and again and again but there are some techniques to help you through the learning curve.

To begin with, you are going to want to use a vegetable as the filling as this will be much easier. Start by laying the sheet of nori smooth side down; you will be able to feel which side is smooth and which side is slightly rough.

The shari is notoriously sticky, so you will need to keep your hands wet when handling, which will make your work a lot less frustrating. Put the rice into a bowl and grab a handful, gently rolling a ball in your hand. Place this ball in the middle of the nori and delicately spread it evenly across the sheet. It is very important not to overstuff the sushi roll, so make sure that there is only a light layer, removing some rice if necessary. The entire sheet should be covered by rice, except two centimetres at the top and bottom which will help you when it comes to rolling.

The next step is to put your neta into the roll. For beginners, I would recommend using asparagus or cucumber as they will be sturdier for when it comes to the time to roll. The cucumber would need to be sliced to fit and a width of about 1.5cm is ideal for the filling. Line the cucumber or asparagus along the edge of the nori, next to one of the margins we left in the previous step. For now, we’ll just leave it with the one ingredient.

Now comes the roll. It will be difficult but keep soldiering on. You will need to take the edge of the nori and close it around your ingredient, attempting to make a rectangular shape. The key here is the rectangular shape and trying to make a circular one will result in it falling apart a lot more. Once the nori is around the ingredient, make sure it is tight and fitting so there is no room to fall out. Make sure you are applying pressure from all three sides and continue with the roll, keeping it tight at all times. Once you have reached the end of the roll, it should be nice and compact.

To finish, use a wet knife to cut the roll in to six or eight pieces. Serve with some condiments on the side, such as soy sauce, wasabi and horse radish. Gari, a sweet ginger, also goes well with sushi.

Once you are confident with your abilities, you should try putting a light sprinkling of condiments on top of the vegetables in the roll or including more in it. Then, move on to putting fish it and combining it with vegetables. Here is a list of popular sushi rolls for you to try out:

- Salmon
- Tuna
- Prawn & Chive
- California Roll
· Avocado, Crab Stick, Cucumber
- Philadelphia Roll
· Raw/Smoked Salmon, Cream Cheese, Cucumber/Avocado

There are lot of different kinds of pasta in Rome. It looks beautiful and it’s really tasty.

Actually to make perfect homemade pasta is not difficult as you may think. There are various different pasta resipes online with ratings, reviews and cooking tips.
Then you can choose the most suited recipe to try to prepare homemade Italian pasta.
All what you need is
1. Flour (200g)
2. Eggs (2 big or 3 small)
3. salt by taste
4. water
You even dont need a pasta machinecut but cut your pasta with a knife.