This was a huge success when I made it, creamy, plump scallops with their sweet tenderness against very crisp scraps of salty back bacon eaten with a bright green pea puree with a hint of mint. Oven frites – M&S in a green box, ready in 11 minutes is still the favourite – are the…

When I saw tinned pears at knock down prices the other day, I remembered a recipe using them from Alastair Little’s seminal Keep It Simple. Why not, he says, when needing poached pears, use tinned ones. And I did, copying his idea of teaming them with frangipane paste to make stunning little puff pastry tarts….

When I’d been checking out ways to cook meatballs recently, I dipped into Trina Hahnemann’s glossily glamorous but very useable Scandinavian Cookbook. It inspired Pork Meatballs in Lemon Gravy with Carrots and Leeks which I highly recommend but made me want to have a go at making a version of her Swedish Curried Meatballs. They…

Red wine and Seville orange marmalade give surprising depth of flavour to a tomato and onion soupy stew with chunks of spicy chorizo and bigger chunks of meaty pork sausages. Serve with crusty bread and butter or potatoes to crush into the parsley-flecked juices. Navarrico Spanish chickpeas (garbanzos), as I’ve mentioned before, are in a…

This is a dead easy, colourful and delicious fish supper. Either make or buy decent pesto (just google pesto in my recipe section), serve it over a fillet of roast cod (haddock, hake or salmon) with cherry tomatoes roasted with black olives, slivers of garlic and a splash of balsamico and another of olive oil….

Light, elegant flavours here, of leftover roast chicken torn into a bay-flavoured sauce hidden under a cloak of pale creamed cauliflower enriched with crème fraiche and Parmesan. Hidden in the cauli cream, giving bursts of salty creaminess, are nuggets of molten feta cheese. The gratinee finish is home made breadcrumbs and more grated Parmesan. Highly…

Making a meal of salad Nicoise with fresh tuna is a treat indeed. Be sure, though, to cook the tuna quickly, ideally on a griddle or heavy frying pan, to avoid dryness. You want it pink in the middle. Everything, I’m happy to say, can be prepped in advance ready for a quick assembly at…

Quiche and salad can be the dull option but home made quiche Lorraine, the eggy, creamy filling seasoned with salty bacon in decent pastry, is food of the gods. This version cheats with thinly rolled puff pastry, adding chives but not cheese with the bacon. Try it Burgundy-style, with an oak leaf and frisee salad…

Tomatoes and peas are an unfamiliar marriage made in heaven. I discovered that first in salads; cooked peas with diced tomato but together in almost any salad you care to mention. I particularly love soft and gooey, sweet and luscious roast tomato halves with the freshest, sweetest new season peas or petits pois from the…

Leeks and potatoes are one of those culinary marriages made in heaven. Louis Diat’s now ubiquitous Vichysoisse, devised when he was chef at the Ritz-Carlton in the 1920, is a refinement of potage bonne femme, the simple leek and potato soup made every day in thousands of households all over France (check out my version…