Beetroot and spinach is a match made in heaven, the earthy flavour of freshly boiled beetroot with sweet-sour tomato works in many ways. Here, the dish begins with onion, softened and flavoured with crushed garlic, chilli and aniseedy caraway. Diced beetroot and peeled, seeded tomato are simmered with the onion then stirred with quickly blanched…

Leftover roast chicken was the inspiration for this gratin. I added it to faux sausage meatballs with a hint of shallot, lemon zest and nutmeg, all held in a Dijon mustard flavoured sauce made with chicken stock and milk. The gratinee topping ended up suitably crusty and golden, the perfect foil for the essentially soft…

I hate clearing out my deep freeze and usually end up throwing out forgotten food, the single lamb chop and burst packet of peas. The happy discovery of two half eaten bags of frozen broad beans and four forlorn rashers of streaky bacon led to this fantastic soup. By starting the recipe with smoked streaky…

This might sound like a disparate combination of ingredients but the end result is fantastic. Cooking begins with browning onions, adding diced pork belly, soy, lemonade and water, then its left to simmer filling the house with amazing smells. Do try it. One tip, if you are concerned about the vast amount of fat in…

This year the Summer Festival at Daylesford Organic Farm in Gloucestershire has a theme: The Summer of Love – 1967. It’s happening this Saturday 8 June, promising to be a fun, family day out with plenty of eating and drinking in various tents around the farm shop near Kingham, GL56 OYG. It starts at 10am…

Oh my goodness, this is so good, so easy to make and pretty to present. The only down side is peeling and slicing the squash. My recipe includes some tips for achieving that with minimal difficulty. Serves 4 Prep: 35 min Cook: 40 min 1 butternut squash 2 tbsp groundnut oil For the tomato vinaigrette:…

This is one of my favourite ways of cooking monkfish because it is so easy and so delicious. The carefully trimmed fillet is spiked with garlic and laid over very finely sliced onion and both liberally doused with olive oil. The fish ends up tender and succulent, the onions soft, juicy and sweet. Be warned,…

As I write, it’s National Vegetarian Week. It’s also the start of the asparagus season, so the two go hand-in-hand in this clever dish copied after eating something similar recently at The Chelsea Arts Club. Orzo is the Greek pasta shaped like a grain of rice that suits being treated like risotto. It’s boiled in…

I first met Jake Hodges when he was still working at the River Café alongside Sam and Sam Clark and they all left to open Moro. Shortly after that, now over 15 years ago, Jake branched out on his own to open Cigala, in Bloomsbury. That is where I had tumbet recently, a wonderful Mallorquin…

Comfort food was the name of the game last night as rain hammered at the windows and a fire roared in the grate. In the fridge the remains of bank holiday roast chicken and a bag of young spinach beckoned along with a few rashers of bacon in need of eating up. The result was…