In My Week In Food 5 Jan 2020, I write about making fish cakes with leftover roast cod tail. The mix is approximately equal amounts of fish and leftover mashed potato with chopped flat leaf parsley, an egg yolk, salt and pepper. The mix made 5 plump fishcakes. I floured them, dipped them in leftover…

This mushroom soup ends up almost black with a thick, creamy, fluffy texture. It makes a heartening bowlful with a dollop of something creamy or a crumble of grilled bacon  but becomes more of a meal served over a trencher of toast topped with a soft-poached egg. It could, if you prefer, be thinned with…

I’m very partial to little brown shrimps or crevettes grises as they’re called in France. I buy them shell-on and eat all or whip off their whiskery heads, wolfing them down with crusty bread and butter and a glass of chilled white wine. They’re usually a summer treat although I’m often tempted at this time…

Any short, curly or chunky pasta would work well for this recipe but I particularly like fusilli. It will spring like a bouncy coil as it boils and will trap prawns and peas in a lemony, cheesy béchamel sauce. This is a lovely mix of textures and flavours and a useful rustle-from-fridge-and-freezer sort of supper….

The creamy mild flavour of Dijon mustard goes deliciously well with smoked haddock and gives a mild background tang to this lovely soufflé. Dusting the inside of the deep, straight-sided dish with finely grated Parmesan creates a thin, golden cheesy shell for the soufflé and this crusty carapace is always the favourite mouthful. It’s not…

The colour of this soup is so dramatic it’s almost worth making it just for its looks. The texture, too, is beguiling. Fluffy, yet creamy, light and easy to digest, satisfying too, as if glides over your tongue leaving a delicious trail of sweet sour beetroot. The sourness comes from cooking apples and fresh lime…

I love mint and it always gives me a frisson of pleasure when I see the first leaves curling out of my enduring mint patch. I picked enough of the pink-flushed early little leaves to make salsa verde and they sang through assertive flat leaf parsley, anchovy, capers and garlic, in this versatile mayo-style dark…

Greek holiday blues always leave me craving spinach dal with squashy grilled tomatoes and crusty lamb chops. It’s a great combination of creamy, spicy dal, slippery, sweet tomatoes and juicy, crusty lamb. Leftover dal is easily turned into delicious soup; I like it with scoops of mango chutney as you can see in this photo….

One of my greatest gastronomic experiences was a meal at Georges Blanc’s restaurant at Vonnas near Bourg en Bresse. While the entire meal was perfection, these little pancakes stole the show. They always remind me of ice cream in wafers because the base forms a crusty surface and the potato ‘filling’ puffs but remains smaller…