The first New Year's Resolution I've ever kept...

So this is the final post. The last four recipes have been cooked, I can return to a life of beans on toast, with occasional fish fingers and chips thrown in for good measure. This is a four recipe post, so I'll jump right in.

Firstly: pheasant. I hadn't eaten this game bird in years, to be honest, I didn't think I liked it (for the reason that it did not taste like chicken). I wasn't even be supposed to be cooking it for Green Eggs and Ham, but the butcher was out of rabbit. I pot roasted it using this recipe (it has white wine, cream and sweetcorn mash). The bird I bought was rather large, so I just used one, rather than the two suggested.

The smell of game is alarming, much stronger than meat you buy in the supermarket. I questioned whether we should eat it, but Sam was hungry and grew alarmed that I might bin it when I suggested that it wasn't fragrant, so full of trepidation I pressed on. It hadn't quite been drawn properly--and I don't mean that the giblets were included. Sam had to be a knight in shining armour and rescue me from the offending innard: I am squeamish in the extreme. However, after bubbling away on the stove for a hour and being served on its bed of mash, with carrots from the pot, it came out as a rather delicious supper. The sweetcorn complimented the strength of flavour in the meat. Pheasant, I am pleased to say, was not at all as I had remembered it.

The second dish was a pudding from Olive Magazine's December issue: raspberry and mascarpone terrine. I'm afraid it's not online, so I'll describe as best I can: it's a layered dessert, done in a loaf tin, comprising layers of: sponge fingers (should be soaked in sherry, but I used brandy); mascarpone and cream, which are slightly set with gelatine; raspberries; and raspberry coulis, topped off with more whipped cream and raspberries. Sounds good, festive and calorific, right? Well it was--although I blew my dinner guests' heads off a bit with the switch in alcohol.

As bread has been my big victory of this project, I felt it wouldn't be right to write the final post without doing another loaf of bread. This week I tackled Dan Lepard's cottage loaf from Short and Sweet. The difference with this one, is that you use half of the flour to make a 'sponge' over a few hours before you make the dough. This did make nice bread, however I really couldn't taste the difference between this and his simple bread--perhaps my bread tasting palate is defective. Becoming able to make bread has taken the best part of this year, but now I am quite smug with the pleasure of being able to do it.

So, lastly: lasagne. My mum's lasagne is one of my favourite things ever and I've never bothered learning how to make it, as I always put an order in when I go home. I'm finishing up with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's butternut squash and fennel lasagne, which is not at all like Mum's. This is from his Veg Everyday book. It has a bechemal sauce, which is infused with peppercorns, onion, celery and bay leaves, pasta, a layer of roasted butternut squash, a bit more sauce, another layer of pasta, a layer of sautéed fennel (I used a third of the 750g recommended, as I think massive amounts of fennel make food taste like soap, so I replaced with caramelised onions), goats cheese (lots), the rest of the bechemal and a layer of cheddar. Vegetarian lasagne is often an extremely dull meal of mean ratatouille slapped in between pasta sheets and a poor replacement for it's meaty, savoury cousin. Hugh F-W has come up with something altogether different, and it seemed to go down well with carnivores and vegetarians alike. Friends E and G and baby O came to join us for a final lazy blog lunch. The lasagne takes a while to make, so I made some vanilla ice-cream the day before, and also bought the starters from a farmers' market. It was the perfect to celebrate the end of 2012 and this challenge: with an old friend, her husband, their baby who was born this year and Sam. I may not cook as many new recipes in 2012, but I'm fairly sure that boozy lunches and dinners with friends will remain on the menu. Thanks so much for reading.