Crispy potato cakes

This makes four biggish ones, enough for two helpings. You will need:

• 4 potatoes
• 1 shallot
• Salt (I use Maldon Sea Salt because I'm a bit of a wanker)
• Pepper (Black, freshly ground - see above)
• About a teaspoon of nutmeg (best to grate it from a whole nutmeg - again, see above)
• 1 egg (battery farmed)
• Groundnut (or veg) oil and a splash of olive oil for shallow frying.

Grate the potatoes, then squeeze the moisture out of them in big starchy fistfuls over the sink. Try and grate the shallot on the smaller grater holes - you'll get a kind of shallot paste, then finely chop the stuff you can't get through and add it all to the potato. Add a hefty pinch of salt, an equally hefty pepper fix, then quite a bit of nutmeg.

Beat the egg, then add it, and mix it in well. Resist the urge to add flour - trust me, it'll come together in the pan.

Get a centimetre or so of oil hot in a large, heavy-based frying pan. Dollop in the mixture in quarters, shaping and flattening them into a sort of patty then leave them to brown. Okay, maybe the bold was a bit much, but don't play with them at this point or they'll break up. Leave them to brown for a good few minutes, then turn them. After another 6-7 minutes when they're done, transfer them to some kitchen paper to soak up the excess oil. A bit more sea salt and you're away.

I had them with cold ham and a fried egg. No picture, they went down too fast.

Rambo

After the pleasant surprise that was Rocky Balboa, I guess I was expecting too much of Rambo. It’s absolute shit. Morally bankrupt and shamefully lacking in irony, its one redeeming feature is that it raises awareness of bad things happening in Burma, an issue it handles with all the subtlety of Jodie Marsh at a premiere.

Sweeney Todd

Stylish as hell and almost as bloody, the latest Burton/Depp collaboration is a macabre musical masterpiece. That’s the good news. The bad news is that unless you’re among that rare group of people that love both slash-gore-horror flicks and musicals, you’re going to have a problem with it.

Benjamin Barker (Depp), a dashing young barber with a beautiful blonde wife and fluffy-haired newborn, is falsely convicted by a jealous judge. He’s duly deported to foreign lands and his daughter adopted/abducted by the evil lawmaker (another star-toppling turn from serial scene-stealer Alan Rickman).

A couple of years later, he comes back to London, and he’s sporting a new look, a new name, and a new lust for vengeance. He soon teams up with pie-maker Helena Bonham-Carter (the director’s wife and muse) – she needs pie-meat, he needs his blood lust satisfying, and so they team up and kill two birds with one stone. Or, more accurately, a lot of people with one razor - between songs, and sometimes during them.

The look of the film is vintage Burton, and the most accomplished work he’s produced to date. His gothic whims are indulged and no expense spared. Sets are exquisitely grimy and each crease, crack and wrinkle has been neatly thought through. Ultimately though, the concept doesn’t hold water. There’s one audience for the songs and another for the rest. The way I see it, Burton’s clearly surrounded by Yes Men, especially when it comes to projects with Edward Chocolate-hands (whose singing, by the way is okay, but from the moment you realise it sounds like a mediocre Bowie impression – and that’s fairly early on – loses its credibility.) Frankly this 18-rated, all singing all-dancing gothic slashical should never have been green-lit.

The Wire, seasons 1 to 4 and counting

I’m in danger of becoming evangelical about The Wire. But if there is Good television and Evil television (and I think there is), then David Simon’s visionary crime series is firmly on the side of the angels.

It’s a slow-burner, and takes some early stamina. The episodes aren’t self-contained and satisfying, no bite-size chunks of glitzy drama here. The tone and pace are established immediately, the programme-maker unapologetically sacrificing short-term titillation for things that disappeared long ago from American TV drama – characterisation, narrative, a proper hour per episode – and for a moment it’s disconcerting and strangely uncomfortable, like picking up a book after watching too much MTV.

But as the stories unfold, the characters develop, the worlds and underworlds are created, the effect is rewarding, entertaining and gripping, as the plotlines twist, turn, delight and repulse. The whole thing does have a literary quality, with exquisitely woven narrative strands slowly but surely seducing and engaging an increasingly captive audience.

There’s been a lot of talk about the show recently, with critics like Charlie Brooker herding people onto the bandwagon. Don’t let that put you off. As Brooker says, it’s fucking brilliant – time to get in the game.