I love pickled cucumber, useful in salads and sandwiches.  My favourite quick way of making it, is peeling, splitting and scraping out the seeds of half a cucumber, then slicing across the halves in skinny half moons. I then lay the pieces out on a plate and splash with cider or white wine vinegar. It’s…

The soft but dense and creamy texture of hake goes particularly well with the creamy texture of butter beans but I know not everyone likes them. If preferred, this could be made with cod, haddock or Pollack and other canned beans could replace butter beans; haricot or cannellini would work very well. The fish is…

The dense flesh of thick salmon fillets won’t fall apart when it’s cooked in kebab-style chunks, so is ideal for quick noodle dishes like this one. It’s briefly marinated in soy sauce then stirred into soft red onion with a hint of garlic, using miso soup paste or half a chicken stock cube for the…

The other night, when I faced leftover roast chicken and leftover peas, the memory of a lovely way of combining them popped into my mind. This fricassee is actually one of my earliest recipes and last night’s version with plenty of herbs, microplaned lemon zest and ‘garnish’ of little new potatoes tossed with lemon juice…

Mine is a typical postage stamp London garden with lousy soil depleted by ivy grown to hide the fence and block out the neighbours. Three things flourish, jasmine, honeysuckle and a vine, other things are grown in big pots. The vine, now 20-odd years old, produces small sweet green grapes but in late May, June…

This is one of my go-to what-can-I-cook-with-chicken suppers. I would always choose thigh rather than breast for stewy dishes like this because the flesh is less likely to dry out. I’m rarely without a whole chorizo in my fridge ready to fry into crisps to serve with a simple pureed soup or add chunkier slices…

This photo shows the leftovers, a packed lunch treat with a soft-boiled egg and cress but the real deal (which I forgot to photograph) was hot, slippery, chilli-hot, red wine soaked chunks of buttery aubergine piled over golden strands of pasta loaded with Parmesan. All it took was a couple of aubergine, the dregs of…

I can’t remember the last time I ate a burger in a bun. I prefer treating them like giant meatballs and serving them with salad or salsa or something creamy like tzatziki or hummus. These burgers were flavoured with slippery soft onion and garlic and formed into thick, round blocks, the oil from frying the…

I’ve got several courgette plants crammed into my tiny front garden and two whoppers in pots in the back garden. They are such productive plants but it’s the bright yellow flowers rather than the little marrows that I get excited by. Yesterday morning there were four flowers with baby courgettes attached and I couldn’t resist…

I’m on a pea jag at the moment, popping them out of their tight little cases, pinging into a bowl in the garden. I always cook too many because they are a perfect leftover; versatile in salads and a good bulk ingredient to anything from an Itsu miso easy soup sachet (with leftover rice, splash…