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   For Love and Chocolate, I am the Iron Chef, Sailor Coruscant...

Here's my newly-recovered recipe for Chocolate Nut Lasagne. Enjoy!
(For the record, the weird weight amounts are because I converted them from the imperial measures)

Pasta: 170g plain flour 28g cocoa 28g caster sugar 2 eggs pinch salt 1 tbsp olive oil.

Custard: 3 cups semi-skimmed milk 1 vanilla pod, split 1 egg 2 egg yolks 1 tbsp cornflour 56g caster sugar

Filling 170g jar pitted morello cherries 56g hazelnuts, toasted and roughly chopped 56g pine nuts, toasted 112g raisins 112g grated dark chocolate

Pasta: Sift flour and cocoa, stir in sugar. Make a well in the middle, and stir in the oil, eggs and salt. Mix to a smooth dough. Kneed for about 5 minutes on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Roll out onto a floured surface until about 3mm thick, and cut into 10x30cm rectangles (or pass through rollers of a pasta machine). Leave to rest for an hour while preparing the custard.

Custard: Heat milk with the vanilla pod until just boiling. In a bowl, beat egg, egg yolks, cornflour and sugar until smooth. Pour in the boiling milk, beating constantly. Strain back into the pain, bring to the boil and simmer for 3 minutes until thickened.

Assembling the lasagne: In a 30x20cm baking dish, start with 4tbsp of custard spread over the base. Top this with a layer of nuts, cherries, raisins and chocolate, then a layer of pasta. Repeat until all the ingredients are used up, finishing with a layer of custard and a sprinkling of nuts.

Bake covered at 220C for 20 minutes, then uncovered for a further 10 minutes. Serve hot with cream or ice cream.

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   The crazy frog certainly drives me crazy...

So, for months there's been an annoying ad on telly for a stupid frog ringtone, wallpaper and screensaver for your mobile phone. The frog is irritating, and ugly, and I hated every second of it being on tv, and therefore was glad that most of the ads aired during tv that I don't much watch, like music television, big brother and late night tv. But they still pissed me off royally when I did hit one.

So then last week I discovered that they released the stupid ring tone as a single in the UK and the bloody thing shot straight to the top of the charts! What the hell is wrong with these people? It's not cool, it's not good music, and it's certainly not in good taste. I heard the song in the supermarket the other day and it was all I could do not to scream and throw tomatoes at the speaker.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. A new band named "Frog Must Die" is releasing their first single "Kill the Frog" at the end of this month.

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