This is a very good recipe to remember when you are short on sausages but have several to feed. Only seven went into this feast for four but they were big, meaty sausages with a low fat content. I browned them first, cut them into bite-size chunks, adding them towards the end of making a…

In the eighties, when hotel chefs still reigned as top dogs, before rising stars like Raymond Blanc and Marco Pierre White stole a march with their glamorous good looks, the ultimate treat for restaurant critics like me was lunch with the chef in his office overlooking the worker slaves in the kitchen. On one such…

What a glorious upturn in the weather, putting us all in the mood for salads rather than soup. I’m always in the mood for soup, usually following the seasons, a useful way of eating cheaply. Right now, in our strange times, I’m having a field day scrounging round our diminishing supplies for new ideas. A…

This is a painter’s palette of colours and flavours, a forgiving soup with each mouthful slightly different. Cous cous thickens the broth, in turn thick with carrot, red onion, leeks, spinach and tomato, the whole flavoured with garlic, ginger and chilli. It gets its name because it’s really fridge clear out soup, the one of…

In these weird times, it was two wrinkled parsnips withering at the bottom of the fridge that inspired this recipe, a make-do but really delicious version of Jane Grigson’s Curried Parsnip Soup (also in my recipe index). It is very lightly curried using (stale) curry powder, adding double the weight of potato to parsnip, an…

This almost tastes like liquid cauli cheese but it’s a soft, bumpy bowlful. I am low on milk and have no cream, so creaminess comes only from cheese, a particularly sharp, aged Cheddar, a splash of milk and the last piece of soft goat cheese. Salt and lemon juice point up the flavours and the…

The fag end of a packet of red split lentils and a few lone vegetables at the bottom of the fridge were the inspiration for this soup. It’s thick and hearty, aromatic and enticing, a muddle of sweet butternut squash and carrot with onion and leek, everything livened up and united by ras al hanout,…

One of the surprising pleasures of lockdown is being able to buy Cornish fish on line (hooked@fishforthought.co.uk), even in obscure parts of our land-locked countryside. Mackerel is abundant at the moment and this simple yet simply wonderful salad is made with grilled mackerel fillets on Dijon mustard-spread toast. I have made a similar version with…

The sight of a billowing bag of spinach at the local shop here in the Black Mountains actually set my heart racing. I’d been craving spinach and I’ve just made this thick, voluptuous soup with it, adding peas for viscosity, potato for thickness and leeks for their gentle onion flavor. I’ll almost certainly serve it…

I like adding unexpected extras to soup and these little meatballs go extremely well with almost any smooth soup from spinach to yesterday’s Butternut Squash Soup, turning it into more of a meal. I was using up a stray 250g bag of minced pork found in the freezer, making 24 little meatballs with the addition…