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…

This is a delicious way of turning meatballs into an interesting family meal. I used pork but lamb would work and so would a mixture of lamb and beef. The meatballs are seasoned with onion and garlic, thyme and spinach, bolstered and kept light in texture by breadcrumbs in milk with a couple of eggs….

I really recommend having a supply of roast tomato halves boxed up in the fridge, invaluable for so many quick and easy snacks and meals. Sliding a few off their skins into hot pasta is delicious on its own but here complements white crab meat mixed with a chilli, lemon vinaigrette and lots of coriander….

Inspired by leftover boiled basmati rice but good enough to cook from scratch, this salad has a mayo-base vinaigrette, the first broad beans of the season, petits pois from the freezer, diced tomato sweetened first with a hint of sugar and plenty of herbs including basil and flat leaf parsley. The saving grace, though, is…

This is a good way to make one steak feed two. I used a piece of skirt and cooked it briefly on the griddle – oiled, salt-seasoned as each side hit the pan – but let it rest covered with a stretch of clingfilm – while I prepared everything else for this salad. I also…

Leeks that are on the bendy side of fresh are worth roasting. I cook them in pieces in a foil lined Swiss roll tin with sufficient foil to flop over to make a loose cover. I smear them with oil but always find the top sheet/furl ends up stiff and needs to be removed. You…

Towards the end of my pregnancy with Zach I gave up work and immersed myself in Michel Guerard`s seminal gourmet dieting book Cuisine Minceur. To use the book successfully it is essential to surrender to the regime. One dish that really appealed to me was ratatouille with eggs poached in red wine. Intrigued by his…

In my early days as a restaurant critic I fell in love with Lebanese food. I learnt to cook it at home thanks to Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food and later through regular visits to (sadly, long-gone) The Phoenicia in Kensington. This was where I’d take sons Zach and Henry for a…