I’ve been to Turkey three times now, and I love the culture inordinately – a bizarre combination of insanely crowded streets and utterly tranquil little scenes, of old men drinking tea and playing backgammon while little kids run screaming and laughing around them. Most of all, I love the food. Most Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures have a tradition of meze, lots of little dishes meant to refresh, comfort and inspire – a far cry from stodgy Western European foods meant  to fill and warm the farm workers – but the Turkish really do it properly. Partly that has to do with the melting-pot nature of the country, and partly to do with the fact that Turkish food combines the peasant and the prince – the kitchens of the Sultans were famed all over the medieval world.

Before I wax too lyrical, I’ll give you a recipe for green beans in olive oil and tomatoes, a particular favourite of mine, and do nothing more than urge you to find your nearest Turkish restaurant (they do exist) and tucking into ten or twelve plates of meze with friends and family. It’s quite a dining experience. Turkish cuisine is also very good for vegetarians and vegans, not because they particularly recognise those preferences, but because they think of vegetables and pulses as the star of the show in their own right, not an accompaniment to meat.

Ingredients:

1 large handful green beans or runner beans, topped and tailed.

1 medium onion, halved lengthways and finely sliced.

1 large garlic clove, finely sliced.

1 tsp sugar

juice of half a lemon

1 tin chopped tomatoes

olive oil

Method:

Gently soften the onion and garlic in about three tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy based frying pan over a low heat. When the onion is translucent, halve the beans (or chop them into three or four pieces) and add to the pan, coating them in the oil. Allow to cook for a few minutes, then sprinkle over the sugar and lemon juice. Add the tomatoes, season liberally with salt and pepper, and bring to the boil. Let the sauce simmer for about half an hour until it’s nice and thick, then taste and add more sugar or lemon juice according to taste. They ought to be just a little sharp and crunchy.

Eat these as an accompaniment to chops or sausages, or better yet, on their own with some flat breads or pitta.

As ever, I’d recommend getting the meat from a proper local butcher – not just because I happen to work at a proper local butcher, but also because the meat is likely to be free range, well hung, and from a pig in this country, and more often than not, this county. Shoulder of pork is a fattier cut than the more traditional leg, but it’s well worth the longer cooking time for perfectly tender meat and crunchy crackling (which is, let’s face it, the best bit).

When you buy it, it’ll most likely be rolled and strung together already – this recipe requires you to cut the strings, unroll the meat, stuff it and then re-roll it – there is a special butcher’s knot for tying meat, but it’s a bit complex and not really necessary if you’re roasting it straight away, so I won’t bother explaining it here.

Ingredients:

Stuffing: 1 large cooking apple, 1 small onion, a large handful of dried apricots, 100g breadcrumbs, 50g butter, salt, pepper

Herb Rub: Two small sprigs of rosemary, a small handful each of sage, thyme and marjoram leaves, 1 1/2 tsp each celery seed (optional) and fennel seeds (not optional), 3 cloves garlic.

Pork Shoulder, about 2 1/2 kg or 5lbs. (Ideally, get this out of the fridge an hour or so before you start cooking, so the skin can dry out and the meat can relax)

Sea salt.

Method:

First, make the stuffing. Peel and core the apple, peel  the onion, then roughly chop both of these along with the apricots. In a food processor, whizz all three til they’re finely shredded. In a bowl mix the shredded fruit/veg with the breadcrumbs and butter, and add a good pinch of salt and a few twists of pepper. Mix with your hands until the stuffing can be loosely packed together.

Now make the herb paste. Bash the fennel and celery seeds in a pestle and mortar until roughly ground, then finely chop the herbs and add them to the pestle (or mortar, I forget which is which) with the peeled and squashed garlic cloves. Pound the hell out of the whole lot for a minute or so, then add a drizzle of oil.

Lay out your shoulder of pork skin side down and rub the herb mix into the flesh, then pack the stuffing into a rough roll in the middle of the pork. Re-roll and tie the joint quite tightly (start from the middle, and tie a couple of strings either side of the central one). Some of the stuffing will squeeze out of the ends, but chuck it in the roasting tray with the joint anyway. Place the joint in the tray. If you want perfect crackling, then make sure the skin is as dry as you can make it – rub it with kitchen paper and then rub in some sea salt. Some cook books will tell you to rub oil or butter into the skin – bad idea. That only softens the skin, which is not ideal for crackling.

Put the roast in a preheated oven at 200C for thirty minutes, then turn it down to 150C and give it a further 2/12 hours. You can roast vegetables around the joint in the pan, and the meat should provide plenty of tasty pork fat for roasties, although you can give it a helping hand with some oil or butter (or better yet, goose fat).

Another thing: with any roast meat, take it from the roasting tray and let it rest for about twenty minutes before you carve it (don’t put foil over the pork, keeping the steam in will do terrible things to your crackling) – this lets the fibres of the meat relax and the juices return to the surface. In that time, make gravy in the roasting pan by putting it on the hob over a medium heat, sprinkling some flour into the pan and scraping up all the burnt on bits (the food group of the gods). Pour some liquid into the pan (a mixture of stock and some meat-appropriate liquid – cider, red wine, white wine, sloe gin), bring to the boil and simmer until you have a nice flavoursome gravy. And promptly devour the lot.

(Leftover roast pork can be thinly sliced and ensandwiched with sauerkraut. Surprisingly good.)

Among the first things I ever learnt to make was  leek and potato soup – which is what learning to cook is all about, by the way; discovering what you really like to eat, and then learning to make those few things really well. I’ve added a few bits and bobs here and there to the basic recipe to end up with what I think is a particularly good winter warmer.

Leek and Potato Soup

Ingredients:

2 large leeks, washed and thinly sliced

2 large or 3 medium potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced

1 celery heart (take all the larger stalks off the outside until you’re left with the leafy, pale heart), chopped.

2-3  cloves of garlic

1 litre chicken stock

6-7 basil leaves, torn

oil/butter

double cream or milk

salt and black pepper

a good pinch of celery salt (I may have mentioned this particular condiment before. Well worth buying, for reasons I shall elaborate upon later)

Method:

Melt a large knob of butter with a couple of good glugs of oil (not olive oil) in a large saucepan or stock pot over a medium heat. Add your leeks, potatoes and celery, and mix it all up. Crush and peel the garlic and add to the pot. Stick a lid on and leave the vegetables to sweat for ten minutes or a little more.

Add the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 25 minutes. Allow the soup to cool a little, then add the basil and celery salt. At this point you’ll need a stick blender (hugely useful pieces of kit) or a food processor, or failing that, a potato masher. Whizz up the soup , drizzling in a dash of cream, a splash of milk or both, until the whole lot is creamy and smooth, then season to taste and serve. Crusty bread and a warm fire are my serving suggestions today.

In any case, it’s also the perfect time for one of my favourite past-times, viz, tramping heartily through wooded dell and mossy field, poking things with a stick, breezily ignoring signs warning of imminent death by shotgun if I take but one more step, and scouring the bases of trees and the undersides of dead logs for that most elusive of bosky treasures, the wild mushroom.

I’m sorry, I’m getting a bit carried away. In truth, as much as spring and summer have the goods in terms of sunshine, lazy days and all-round gloriousness, I’m a bit of a one for autumn. The snap in the air and the slow transition from light snacks, delicate fancies and salads to hearty stews, roasted meat and many, many pints of good ale really has me at my best.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been doing something almost entirely alien to my essentially indolent nature – taking voluntary exercise. The reason being, I’m lucky enough to live in the (relative) countryside, and the New Forest begins more or less at the end of my road. A short stroll down a green path with horses eyeing me suspiciously from afar, a hair-raising dash across the main road, a shaky tip-toe across a cattle grid, and an entire National Park stretches out before me, crammed to the ruddy gills with free food.

Which, of course, is the nub and crux of the whole issue. The reason I love early autumn so much is that I can go for a quick stroll and return with all the necessaries for supper, all of which I can guarantee is fresh, in excellent condition, and best of all, free.

I’m very aware, of course, that you may not have such a huge natural resource at your beck and call. Wherever you might live, however, there’s almost certainly a place within reach – a small patch of woodland, a city park, an overgrown stretch of scrubland – where something edible will have eked out an existence, ready for you to wander along and munch it. Whether it be blackberries for crumble, sloes for gin, rabbits and squirrels for those of you with a more direct approach to ‘free food’, or mushrooms for just about everything, there will be something edible, going free, right under your nose.

Beyond the above-mentioned, my expertise runs dry. I can heartily recommend Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s ‘A Cook on the Wild Side’ (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cook-Wild-Side-Channel-Four/dp/0752211153) and Richard Mabey’s excellent ‘Food for Free’ (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Collins-Gem-Food-Richard-Mabey/dp/0007183038/ref=pd_sim_b_6), together with their related mushroom books for further reading.

Anyway. Enough hyperbole. On with the recipes.

Blackberry and Apple Crumble

Picking blackberries is, I hope, something everybody has done at least once. The bloody things seem  to grow everywhere, so you’ve got no excuse. The actual plant is something of a pest, consisting of approximately one million tiny thorns per square inch, but the ripe, dark purple fruits are worth the hassle. Occasionally you come across one that is so ripe that it almost glows, and juice dribbles invitingly down your fingers (and anything white you happen to be wearing. Automatically. Even if said clothing got nowhere near the blackberries. It’s probably because of quantum), and there’s nothing for it but to scoff it right there and grin gleefully. All the rest will do for cooking.

Evidence of a good walk.

As with most foraged food, eyes and fingers are your best tools – a ripe blackberry will come easily from its stem, and only the dark purple will do – red ones are NFG. That said, the closely-packed dark berries that require a little ‘help’ to come off the plant are fine for cooking too. I was lucky enough to find a couple of apple trees in the same field as the blackberries (and cooking-apple trees aren’t all that abundant in the wild, so I was probably poaching), but you can get bramley apples more or less anywhere.

170g plain or wholemeal flour (Spelt flour is pretty good, if you have such a thing)

50g porridge oats (not the jumbo ones)

150g soft brown sugar

75g butter, in small cubes

1tsp baking powder

1tsp mixed spice

Two good handfuls of blackberries, carefully washed and expunged of any spiny stalks or insect-life therein

4 medium cooking apples, peeled, cored and cut into centimetreish chunks.

First, make the crumble mix. Add the baking powder to the flour and oats in a large mixing bowl, then add the butter and rub between your fingers until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. The trick with this rubbing-in business – you can’t really get away from it – is to dive in hands first, grabbing lumps of butter, making sure there’s enough flour nearby, and then bringing the two into happy conjunction. The hand-movement you’re after is along the lines of the classic show-me-the-money, thumb-and-forefingers, only with all four fingers. Got it? Good.

Tip in the sugar and work it through the mix lightly, until everything’s combined together. Add the spice, plus any remnants of flaked or ground almonds you may have about the place, and give everything a final toss with your fingers. Chuck your diced apple and blackberries into a suitable ovenproof dish, sprinkle liberally with sugar and a splash of water, then pack the crumble mix on top. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t entirely cover the fruit – any gaps will simply allow fruit juices to surge upwards and caramelise on top during cooking, which is needless to say a good thing.

Bake at 180 degrees for 35-45 minutes. Custard, cream or vanilla ice cream would suit.

Mushrooms

I’m not going to give you a recipe here, because you know what you’d do with mushrooms – omelettes, stir frys, fried with garlic, whatever your preference – and though my plethora of mushrooms books have many recipes in them, I’ve yet to collect enough of any one type to give them a go.

First of all, A Warning. Do not, under any circumstances, eat any wild mushroom without knowing to 99% certainty what it is. Get a mushroom book or two – the River Cottage Mushroom Handbook is a good one, as is The Edible Mushroom Book and the Collins Mushroom book. Your first few mushrooming trips will, by necessity, involve more study than supper. By all means, however, pick one or two specimens of everything you see, bring them home and take time to identify them. Then next time, you’ll know what to look for. And don’t lick your fingers while you’re out there.

Actually, this is a good excuse for a picture. Recognise this?

Not pictured: a gnome.

‘Course you do. It’s not a very good picture, but that there is a Fly Agaric, probably the most well known of all poisonous mushrooms – although in point of fact you’d have to eat about 70kg of those in one go to seriously endanger yourself. A quick munch on a fried Fly Agaric will result in nothing more than stomach cramps, nausea, some amusing hallucinations and a powerful urge to sleep.

There are, however, plenty of seriously dangerous ones out there, and some of them are worryingly abundant. As far as the spectrum of mushrooms go, it’s about equal thirds delicious, dangerous, and dull. Two of the most prized are the Cep, or Penny Bun, an enormous specimen of which is to be seen below, and the Chanterelle, a relatively baby example of which is even further below

A very large Cep

Chante...oh. Well, what he said.

One afternoon's haul

The above, I should point out, is the work of four people in two different areas of the forest. The Cep and Chanterelle you’ve already met, but the grey ones in the plastic box are Oyster mushrooms, which you sometimes see in the supermarket (cultivated ones, mind) and, just to prove a point, that little brown one on the far left is the hilariously deadly Brown Rolled Rim which, if it hasn’t already featured in an episode of Midsomer Murders, will be shortly.

This underhand little bugger will, instead of poisoning you outright, instead do nothing. For a while. You can happily eat it several times, after which it will proceed to kill you dead. What it does is build up, slowly, a terribly allergy to itself in your body – up until about the 1970s it was considered edible, until one of the most prolific mycologists of all time suddenly found himself dropping dead unexpectedly after eating it for the ninth or tenth time. After that, people started taking notice.

In any case, I can give no heartier recommendation than for you to equip yourself with a good mushroom book, a basket and a small knife, and ho for the nearest patch of woodland to see what you can find. Look up as well as down, you get plenty of good fungi on trees as well as between their roots and in patches of moss and dirt. You’ll find that you start getting a genuine thrill from finding a particularly choice specimen. Well, I do.

As I said above, most of them can be used in any recipe that calls for mushrooms, although some types of cooking suit certain varieties better. When I’ve experimented more with some of that haul above, I’ll post the results here. That’s your lot for now.

This loathing of mine probably stems from a  badly made trifle when I was younger (I’ve often suspected that if I was ever conned onto the psychiatrist’s couch, any deep-rooted childhood traumas discovered would be food related), so a few years ago I came up with an alternative. It’s much tastier, and contains no traces of sherry at all.

I made this trifle more-or-less to comission, to persuade a younger sister (not mine, I’m lacking in the sister department) of my acquaintance that puddings without chocolate are indeed worthy of the title. Fruit-wise, you’re after soft fruits in season – strawberries and raspberries are traditional, but also try halved and stoned cherries, diced peaches, blueberries and blackberries.

(Last time I briefly experimented with not listing the ingredients, and instead just highlighting them. This was ill-received, so ho for the traditional list!)

You’ll need:

Strawberries/Raspberries/Other soft fruit (see above)

One of those cheap raspberry swiss rolls.

Disaronno Amaretto – or some other kind of Amaretto, if there is one.

Custard – fresh or packet. Fresh won’t set that well, but will taste better.

Double cream, a medium pot.

Amaretto biscuits, a handful, crushed.

Balsamic vinegar (optional)

N.B - that is *not* enough cream. Trust me on this.

Method:

Hull and quarter the strawberries, then set aside with the raspberries. If you want to be a little adventurous, then splash them with a teaspoon or two of balsamic vinegar, a teaspoon of Amaretto, and three teaspoons of sugar, and leave to macerate for an hour or two before you make the trifle. This is a pretty good way of dealing with strawberries in any situation, they respond well to the depth and sweetness of good balsamic. If not, well, as you were.

The three stages of strawberry preparation.

Cut the swiss roll into slices about 1cm thick and line the trifle dish with them. Soak liberally with amaretto.

About the only suitable use for long-life swiss roll.

Insert fruit, then pour over the custard. At this stage, stick the whole thing in the fridge for an hour, which will let the instant custard set, or the fresh custard… get cold.

Whip the cream with a hand whisk or electric beater until it forms stiff peaks, then layer over the custard. Decorate the top with a few raspberries and the crushed Amaretti biscuits (crush them by sticking them in a sandwich bag and going nuts with a rolling pin). Devour.

There are no pictures of the final product, because it got eaten before I could take any. I’m choosing to see this as a good thing. That’s your lot for today, folks.

P.S. Photos! I’d like your feedback, pls. Do they work? Are they too small? Too big? Too blurry (can’t do much about this one, I’m taking them on my phone until my freeloading brother gets back from India with my camera *shakes fist*)?. Comments appreciated.

After a stern talking to by someone who I’m this close to referring to as ‘my lovely assistant’, just because it would annoy her, I’ll try and keep you updated with my culinary gallivantings as I zoom hither and yon, sampling this and munching that. And if you’re really lucky, there may even be pictures…

But not today, because I didn’t take any when I was making…

Home-made Pizza

First things first: the base. I happen to own a breadmaker, not because I have the disposable income to buy these sorts of kitchen gadgets (a statement to be flatly contradicted in an upcoming post involving ice cream), but because I was lucky enough to find one in a charity shop for less than a tenner. For making pizza bases, I use one of those pre-blended bread mixes, the ciabatta kind, stick it in the breadmaker on the ‘dough setting’, and Bob turns up claiming to be my uncle.

If you don’t happen to own one of these luxury electronic doodads, a) buy one – they’re not that expensive, and fresh bread is definitely worth it – especially if you set it the night before to be ready for breakfast, or b) there are other options. You can buy ready-made pizza bases, which are almost invariably terrible, or ready-to-make dough mixes, which generally aren’t. Or you can make the dough properly, in which case good luck to you. Try the River Cottage Family Cookbook for a good from-scratch recipe.

Anyway, assuming you’ve picked your option and have your dough in front of you, roll it out on a well floured surface until it’s as thin as you can possibly make it without the whole thing falling apart. Transfer to a large, flat baking sheet, brush with olive oil and preheat the oven to 220C (200C for fan ovens).

The sauce: Easy as anything. You’ll need a tin of tomatoes, salt, pepper, olive oil, butter and half an onion at the very least.

Tomatoes in a saucepan, over a high heat. If they’re not chopped already, mash them with a fork.

Finely chop half a medium onion, add to the tomatoes, and season.

A dash of olive oil, a small knob of butter, and stir.

Boil the hell out of it for ten minutes, until the sauce has thickened and reduced by half. Let it cool a little while you get on with the real reason we’re all here – the pizza toppings.

The Cheese: The classic pizza cheese is of course mozzarella, but you need to be careful here – what you mostly see in the supermarkets is buffalo mozzarella, which is delicious in a tomato salad, but expensive and sod all good for pizza – it doesn’t spread as it melts, and it can also make the base and surrounding ingredients wet. This doesn’t mean you can’t use it as a pizza topping, just don’t rely on it as your main cheese.

Hunt instead for cow mozzarella, which is frowned upon by mozzarella purists, but makes a perfect melty, stringy topping. Most supermarkets stock at least one variety, usually huddled alongside other cheese refugees like halloumi. You can also get grated mozzarella, if you’re willing to shell out for it – I wouldn’t bother.

Simply dice the mozzarella, as much or as little as you like, and if you feel like it grate some parmesan to add to the cheese quota of your pizza.

The Rest: Well, you know what you like on pizza – have a ball. If you’re stuck for ideas, try finely diced chorizo, sliced peppers, mushrooms, thin rings of red onion, sweetcorn, olives, chunks of ham or chicken, spiced minced beef – the possibilities, as the feller said, are endless. I prefer my toppings on the small-chunks-and-fine-slices side of things, but as long as you keep everything roughly the same size, it’s up to you.

Assembly: Base, drizzled with olive oil (only a dash, you don’t want it to be greasy). Spread with the tomato sauce. Arrange your chosen toppings artfully, then scatter generously with cheese. Some people do the last two stages in reverse order – those people are misguided and we can only hope they will one day see reason.

A final sprinkling of oregano, and pop the whole thing in the oven, fairly high up, for 10-15 minutes, depending on the thickness of your base/chunkiness of toppings.

Re: shapes – if you can make your dough into a circle, and have the requisite baking sheet, then well done, you’re a better man than I. For the rest of us, the standard rectangular-amoeba shape will have to do. Enjoy.

<<So much for no big blocks of text. I tried, honestly.>>

Broad beans are just coming into season in England, and they’re one of my favourite summer vegetables. They’re a bit of a hassle to grow, but not hugely expensive, so if you see them in the supermarket or the greengrocers, grab them in huge quantities – you generally only get six or seven beans to a pod.

It’s purely personal preference, but I prefer to pop the beans out of their greyish skins – the bright green of the beans themselves are very summery.

Broad Bean Salad

Ingredients:

Broad beans, podded, a good double handful

Olive oil

Salt (preferably good flaky sea salt – it’s more of an ingredient than a seasoning here)

Fresh mint (or if you have such a thing, a few lovage leaves)

Method:

Put the beans in a pan, cover and bring to the boil. Let it bubble away for four or five minutes, then drain and let them cool (or rinse them in cold water). Once the skins have gone a bit wrinkly, you need to de-skin them. There’s a trick to this – grasp the bean firmly at one end between the finger and thumb of one hand, then tear the skin at the other end with a fingernail. Give it a squeeze and the beautiful bright green bean will pop out. You’ll get into the rhythm pretty easily. Save the skins – see the recipe below.

Drizzle the beans with olive oil and scatter with a pinch of sea salt and some roughly ripped mint leaves. Stir everything well and leave it for a few minutes so that the flavours can infuse.

Spicy bean skins

Ingredients:

Broad bean skins

Chilli flakes

Cumin seeds

2 cloves of garlic, finely choppped

Paprika

Sea salt and black pepper

Olive oil

Method:

Fry the skins in a small splash of olive oil over a high heat for a couple of minutes. Scatter over the spices, salt and pepper, stir, and turn the heat down to medium. Let the skins cook for another five minutes, til they’re just a tad crispy, then tip into a bowl and munch them down with a cold glass of beer.

Peaches

Peaches are one of my favourite fruits – their lightly feathery skins are far superior to the rather dull nectarine, in my opinion. A perfectly ripe peach (give it a squeeze and a sniff – a little give in the flesh and a fresh, peachy smell from about six inches away are the indicators you’re looking for) needs no more accompaniment than something to catch the drips. If, as with most peaches you find in the supermarket, they’re a few days away from ripe, then here’s a couple of ways to tart them up.

If you’re having a barbecue, then wrap a peach in a double layer of foil (shiny side on the inside – physics!) with a scrap of unsalted butter, a  teaspoon of soft brown sugar, and a generous glug of rum. Wrap the peachy parcels very tightly and put them in the embers of the barbecue for ten to fifteen minutes. Before you eat them, make sure to smell – half the pleasure of food is in the smell, and these smell fantastic.

ETA: What is done cannot be undone, etc, but at the top of this post I distinctly remember promising two peach-based recipes, and yet I’ve give you only the  one – so, more than a month later, here is the second:

Peaches, halved, destoned. A wee dollop of marscapone in the hollow. Sprinkle with crushed Amaretti biscuits, brown sugar and a dash of Amaretto. Grill. Wolf, with chilled white wine. Oh yes.

The cheese tarts, which are basically quiches but a bit smaller, we just had for supper and they’re delicious. The recipe for dukka, an Egyptian spicy seed/nut mix is stolen almost in its entirety from the River Cottage Every Day book, which I thoroughly recommend you buy – it’s a very economising/thrift oriented book, and he does things with fruit that could make even the most hardened carnivore go ‘ooh, yes please’. The scallops recipe I have to admit I haven’t tried yet, I just made it up, but from experience it should turn out pretty well – I’ll amend it later if necessary. And the marinades are tried, tested, and made up as i went along. They’re both ostensibly aimed at chicken. Hurrah!

Cheese Tarts

Ingredients:

Quantities are going to be fairly rough here – it’s a using-things-up recipe

Shortcrust pastry

Dijon mustard

Cheddar or other strong grating cheese

1 medium red onion, finely diced

2 very large or three medium eggs, free range.

a couple of dollops creme fraiche (or a few tablespoons double cream)

a splash of milk

finely chopped fresh parsley and chives

Method:

Line several greased mini-quiche tins, or one big one, with the pastry. Don’t bother to bake it blind, I’ve never found it particularly necessary, especially if you’re using shop-bought stuff. Spread a little Dijon mustard over the bottom of the pastry cases.

Gently fry the onion in a little oil or butter, then divide it between the cases. Grate the cheddar and pile it in, leaving a little room around the edges. Beat the eggs, add the creme fraiche and milk, and season to taste. Add the chopped herbs to the egg mixture, then pour over the cheese so it comes to just short of the top.

Bake at 180 degrees C for about half an hour – test the tarts after this time with a knife, they should be slightly firm and probably have risen quite a lot. They’ll deflate when you take them out of the oven.

This is very much a springtime supper, so have it with a green salad, new potatoes and white wine.

A note on potatoes – even the most bland and boring of new potatoes can be enlivened by, when they’re cooked, draining, adding a little butter and black pepper to the pan, and then sticking on a lid and shaking the hell out of them. The edges go all soft and mashed, which is amazing. A sprig or two of fresh mint works wonders, too.

Dukka

Ingredients:

A large handful of hazelnuts or cashew nuts, shelled

1/2 tbsp of cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon dried chilli flakes

1tbsp coriander seeds

1tbsp sunflower seeds

2tbsp sesame seeds

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

a handful of fresh mint and coriander leaves

Method:

You need to dry fry the various ingredients separately (i.e. toast them in a frying pan with no oil etc). First, the nuts. Dry fry them in a pan for about five minutes, or roast them at 180 degrees C for about the same time, til the skins are blistered. Wrap them in a clean tea towel and leave for the minute.

Toast the coriander and cumin seeds until they start to give off their amazing scent, probably less than a minute. Don’t do what I did and put the chilli flakes in there too, or everyone within a mile will be coughing, spluttering, eyes streaming etc. Once they’re done, set them aside and repeat the process with the sunflower and sesame seeds, til the latter are golden, about four or five minutes. They’ll give off a little oil of their own, which is all that the recipe needs.

Rub the nuts in the towel vigorously, and don’t you dare read anything into that sentence, until some or all of the skins have come off. Obviously cashew nuts won’t require that. Bash the cumin and coriander seeds up moderately in a pestle and mortar. If you don’t have one, I suggest you make the investment, they’re fantastic pieces of kit. You can get them from Ikea, or most Indian food shops, and loads of other places these days. Failing that, use a very solid bowl and the end of a rolling pin. You don’t want to crush the seeds into a powder, just break them up a bit.

Put the spices on one side, and give the nuts the same treatment. You want smallish pieces. Finally, mix everything together and add the mint and coriander. It’ll keep in an airtight container in the cupboard for a few weeks, assuming there’s no water or anything in there. The best way to eat dukka is by dipping crusty bread or flatbread into good olive oil and then the dukka, or by sprinkling it into hummus or on salads.

Scallops with tarragon cream sauce

Ingredients:

6 king scallops (do buy these from a fishmonger, frozen or shrink wrapped scallops are lacking in the taste/healthy bowel departments respectively)

a glug of cream

a squeeze of lemon

a dash of Pernod, pastis or something else aniseed flavoured and alcoholic. Probably not absinthe. Although, who knows?

2 shallots, finely chopped.

A few fresh or dried tarragon leaves

1 garlic clove, minced, or a good squeeze of garlic puree

Method:

Pat the scallops dry, season them lightly with salt and black pepper, then fry in butter or oil for no more than a couple of minutes each side. Give them a light prod with your finger to see if they’re done – if they bounce back, they are, if you leave a dent, they’re not. Set aside.

To the same pan add the chopped shallot, garlic and tarragon. Soften for a couple of minutes. Add the pastis, let it reduce for a minute or so, then add the cream, lemon and a little black pepper. Cook on a low heat for two minutes, stirring so the cream doesn’t curdle. Sling some sauce over the scallops, and wolf it down.

Barbecue Marinade

Ingredients:

Ketchup

Reggae Reggae Sauce (I’m not the BBC, so I can use brand names. This stuff is excellent)

2tsp Dijon, English or German mustard, depending on how strong you like it.

1 red pepper, cut into strips.

A large pinch each of ground cumin, coriander, chilli powder/cayenne pepper and celery salt

Lots of black pepper

a pinch of brown sugar

a splash of Maple syrup

a splash of Worcester Sauce

Garlic, either 2 good squeezes of paste or 2 cloves

Method:

As a preamble, I should note that this is very much a ‘whatever you’ve got in the cupboard’ recipe. Nearly all of the ingredients can be swapped out or substituted, although the first three are a reliable base.

Brush the strips of pepper with oil, then grill them skin side up til the skin is nice and smoky and charred. Let it cool and then whizz it up in a blender or food processor into a fine paste. To this, add a really good glug of ketchup (maybe a third or half a bottle) and a smaller glug of Reggae Reggae sauce. Then chuck everything else in, whizz it all up and coat your chicken, or maybe pork, with it.

Orientalish Marinade

Ingredients:

4 large spring onions, quartered and chopped very finely

1 red chilli, finely chopped

a good squeeze of garlic paste

a good squeeze of tomato puree

a splash each of soy sauce and vegetable/groundnut oil

a pinch each of salt, pepper, celery salt, ginger, cayenne pepper

finely chopped chives and coriander

Optional: finely grated and chopped rind of one lime

Method:

Pretty simple. Let the spring onions macerate in the soy sauce for a few minutes, then bung everything else in. Good for fried chicken or beef, or probably even stir fried vegetables.

Risotto

Ingredients:

1/3 of a pack Risotto Rice (Look, I’m sorry about the measurement. I’m talking a standard, compact-dictionary-ish-sized cardboard box, the standard from any supermarket. Probably. I got mine from Asda. And it must, must be proper Arborio rice, or the other one beginning with C [which i incidentally think is better] or at a push plain old pudding rice. No other will suffice. Canaranoli, it might be called.)

1 medium onion, finely diced.

50g butter (see, I can do measurements. ‘A walnut (with shell) sized lump’ seemed a bit crude)

three field mushrooms (or any damned mushroom you have handy – I just find those big white ones a bit slimy)

1 pint chicken stock (or vegetable if you want to keep it clean – if you’ve got mushroom ketchup or, better, water from soaking dried mushrooms (for the risotto) a good splash into the stock would be lovely)

1 glass/two large glugs white wine (for once, a purpose for the 1.99 tesco cartons! or not. Those mini bottles work well, if they’re fresh. Half for the rice, half for you.)

Any spices or herbs you think appropriate

Salt, freshly ground black pepper

A bit of Parmesan or similar for grating. Optional but recommended.

Method:

Melt half the butter over a low-medium heat and add the diced onion. Let it cook gently, until soft and translucent but not brown at the edges. Add a small glug of oil and the rice, stirring around to coat everything. Add the wine, and stir. Let the liquid cook off, then add some stock, stir, and let it cook off.  Rinse and repeat. You want to cook the risotto for about 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding more liquid whenever it runs out. About ten minutes before the end, clear a space in the pan (if you can, add the rest of the butter and the mushrooms. Let the mushrooms fry a bit, then mix everything together and let it finish cooking.  Season to taste.

Salad and wine would be good, or you can try the good old-fashioned fork-and-bowl combo that saw me in good stead.
All-Purpose Tomato Sauce

Ingredients:

1-2 kg of ripe tomatoes (I got lucky at the supermarket and there were some big bags of too-small-for-Asda, slightly squashy tomatoes. There’s not much flavour in them this time of year, but not to worry, you’ll add plenty.)

1 medium onion, roughly sliced.

3-5 garlic cloves

olive oil

salt and freshly-ground-you-get-the-idea

Method:

Depending on whether or not you can be bothered/really hate them, you can scoop the seeds out of the tomatoes. I do, because I wear a brace and combining the two leads to all manner o’ trouble, but it’s up to you. Anyway, half them and cram as many as you can into a roasting tray, along with the (squashed with the blade of a knife) garlic cloves, a good drizzle of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Roast at 180 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until the skins are nicely charred and everything smells good.

When they’re done, tip the lot into a saucepan along with any leftover tomatoes. Add a pinch of mixed herbs if you want, as well as another glug of olive oil and some more pepper. Add a teaspoon of paprika, if you have such a thing, or chilli powder, cayenne, whatever. Or not. As you please. If it looks a bit dry, add a little bit of water or stock, but the tomatoes will release a lot of liquid as they cook. Set the whole lot over a medium heat and let it reduce in volume by 1/2 to 2/3rds.

Taste it, and stir it around a bit to see the consistency. You don’t want too much liquid. If you’re happy with the sauce, then blitz it to within an inch of its life, let it cool, and scoop the whole lot into a tub or jar. Keeps in the fridge for, I don’t really know how long. Til you finish it or it creates a new civilisation, whichever is the sooner.

A couple of desertspoonfuls of this work well in most things – bolognese/chilli/curry, as a sauce for pasta, as a soup base for noodles, whatever you might use tomato puree in. A good hit of tomatoeyness. Lovely.
That’s your lot for now. Hopefully I’ll be back sooner than last time.

x

Lasagne is a surprisingly time-consuming meal to make, but it can taste amazing if you give each part long enough to cook. Another recipe that works best if you’ve got lots of stuff lying around.

Burgers

These are fairly standard burgers, to which you can add a few different bits and bobs depending on what you’ve got.

Ingredients:

Two big handfuls of minced beef, around 12-15% fat – generally it’s called ‘lean minced beef’ or ‘steak mince’

Half a red onion

A pinch of mixed herbs (or fresh chopped parsley, coriander or thyme, if you’ve got it)

Salt and black pepper

1 egg

Worcester Sauce

Tabasco Sauce

Method:

Crumble the beef finely into a mixing bowl. Chop the onion finely and fry it gently in a little oil or butter until soft and a little golden. Add to the beef, and mix in the salt, pepper, herbs and a dash each of Worcester Sauce (or mushroom ketchup) and Tabasco. Mix everything well. Separate the egg (I’ll add a little guide at the bottom if you’re not sure how to do this. It’s not hard and it looks very cheffy) and add the yolk to the mix. Time to get your hands dirty. Leave the wooden spoon aside (assuming you’ve been using one so far – I don’t tend to bother) and mash everything together with your hands. Shape the mix into as many burgers as you can (probably two or three big ones) by getting a roughly tennis-ball sized lump and squashing it flat. You don’t want them too thick, or they’ll take forever to cook, but try and get them roughly the same thickness all the way across. Chill the burgers in the fridge for a little while before you cook them. Fry them over a medium-high heat, maybe with some onion to go on top. If you’re going to have cheese on them, wait til they’re cooked and then put the cheese on and stick them under the grill.

Variatons:

Add a few finely chopped capers and gherkins to the meat mix for a slightly chunkier, sharper burger.

Spices: add cayenne pepper/chilli powder, celery salt, ground cumin, or a couple of pinches of those pre-mixed Moroccan or Mexican or whatever spice powders.

For meatballs, cut a couple of slices of white or brown bread into small cubes and soak them in a little milk for ten minutes or so. Squeeze the bread cubes to drain as much milk as possible, then add them to the burger mix. This bulks out the mix and stops the meatballs drying out if you’re cooking them for a long time.

Lasagne

Ingredients:

500g minced beef

1 (very) large or 2 medium onions, finely chopped

2 medium carrots, finely diced

1 stick of celery, finely chopped

1 red pepper, finely chopped

1 red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped

1 tin of chopped tomatoes or 1 pack of passata

1 beef stock cube or some of that liquid stock.

Spices: Oregano/Mixed herbs, paprika, chilli powder, salt, black pepper

Lasagne sheets (I don’t know if there is a variety that you have to pre-cook, but avoid it if there is)

Grated chedder, gruyere, whatever melty cheese you’ve got.

For the sauce:

75g butter (or a walnut and a half, depending on how you measure things)

75g flour

750ml milk

(1 bay leaf)

(a few black peppercorns)

Method:

Fry the beef in a good glug of flavourless oil until it’s nice and brown. Make sure there aren’t any big lumps. Leave it to rest on some kitchen paper to soak up any remaining oil. In the same pan, fry the onions gently for a few minutes and then add the rest of the vegetables. Cook everything over a medium heat for ten to fifteen minutes, then add the beef again. Stir everything well, and add the spices. Let everything cook for another few minutes until it smells good, and then add the tomatoes and stock – if it’s a cube, mix it up with a little hot water, but not too much – you don’t want the sauce to be too liquid. Let everything cook down for a while, and if it needs it, add a little boiling water.

For the bechamel sauce, warm the milk in a pan until it’s just simmering (if you’re using the bay leaf and peppercorns, add them). Pour it into a jug and dry out the saucepan. Melt the butter, add the flour and stir to make a paste. Take the pan off the heat and gradually add the milk, stirring all the time. When it’s all in, bring the sauce to the boil and then simmer it until it thickens a little. Let it cool.

Grease a big dish and layer some of the meat sauce in the bottom. Cover with a layer of lasagne then add more meat sauce, a layer of bechamel, and more lasagne. If you’ve got more meat and lasagne, rinse and repeat. Finish with a layer of bechamel and then the grated cheese.  Bake in the oven (180 ish) for about 30-35 minutes. Poke it with a knife – if the layers are cooked, everything else is too (touch the tip of the knife to see if it’s hot). Munch with salad and red wine.

Ok, that’s all your minced beef goodness for now. Which reminds me, the egg thing. Crack it in the middle, then hold it with the thin end upwards. Split the egg apart so that the yolk stays in the bottom, andthen tip it from one half to the other, losing the white along the way. It might take a bit of practice, but it’s easy when you get the hang of it.