Eating Sicilian

After the rich feasting of Christmas — all that wine and chocolate, all those complicated sauces, stuffings and puddings — one turns with relief to something lighter, simpler and completely different. Yesterday, looking out at the first snowfall of the season, I thought nostalgically of a summer a few years ago, when we spent a fortnight eating our way through Sicily. What can I say about Sicilian food and drink? It's glorious — the fish, the arancini, the limoncello, the amaro, all those Greek and North African influences. Hoping to recapture a little taste of sunny Sicily in the midst of this cold snap, I shopped for the best vine tomatoes I could find. I also bought a packet of dried linguine (De Cecco is one of the best brands) and a jar of caper berries (capers are the buds of the Mediterranean caper bush, and caper berries the larger fruit, which have a slightly less intense, more rounded flavour).

Sometimes the simplest meals are the best, and this dish can be knocked up in an instant. Cook the linguine in furiously boiling salted water for ten minutes or until al dente. In the meantime sauté some crushed garlic in olive oil, then remove the garlic from the pan (you just want to flavour the oil). Halve the tomatoes, squeeze out the juice (you're aiming for a 'dry' sauce), chop roughly, then put them in the pan with some chilli flakes. Add some capers or chopped caper berries, chopped parsley and lots of chopped mint. Season and stir. Mix the pasta with the sauce. Top with grated parmesan and there you have it. You could include all sorts of other things — tuna, aubergine, olives, sultanas  — but I kept it simple. The key lies in the quality of the ingredients. Naturally this won't be as good as using fresh Italian foodstuffs, but it should be a fair approximation, and will bring a warm ray of Sicilian sunshine into your winter kitchen.

The garlic bread and wine in the picture aren't really necessary, but, hey, it's still Christmas! For the bread I made deep scores into a small baguette and filled with a crushed garlic/oregano/parsley/melted butter mixture. Then I wrapped the bread in foil and put it in a hot oven for ten minutes. The wine is Trinacria Bianco, a cheap but perfectly drinkable rustic Sicilian wine from Waitrose.

(The above is adapted from a recipe by Rick Stein.)

Gooseberries

We planted three gooseberry bushes in our newly-designed fruit, flower and vegetable garden last year. They fruited — though not prolifically —  and the moment the fruits were ripe, the blackbirds devoured them. This year I was more savvy, and netted them against any hungry avian predators. Success! We now have a bumper crop.

What could be more splendid than the unpretentious gooseberry? I'm in love with these humble, unfashionable fruits. One of our bushes has produced green verging on golden orbs; the other two jewels of blushing pink and red. To pick them this morning —  spearing my fingers on half-inch thorns — was a masochistic delight. What to do with them? So many recipes entice: gooseberry crumble, gooseberry pie, gooseberry fool, gooseberry jam . . .

But, to start with, I opted for something simple, and utterly wonderful and flavoursome: stewed gooseberries with home-made custard (or crème anglaise, as they say in French).

I topped and tailed them, then simmered them in a little sugar and water. Amazing how this simple process miraculously transformed these tart little bullets into a delicious, pulpy, sweet-sour purée. The custard was easy: egg yolks beaten with a little cornflour added to a warmed-up mixture of milk, sugar and vanilla. Why on earth do we ever buy that synthetic tinned stuff?

A dessert made in heaven. Especially with a dollop of Madagascan vanilla ice cream.

Sausage And Mushroom Tagliatelle

There's room for all sorts of recipes: complex ones with long lists of ingredients, and simple ones which are quick and easy to make. I've just eaten this flavoursome sausage and mushroom tagliatelle for lunch, and it's given me a real energy boost. It's fairly cheap too.

First I fried some sausage in a little olive oil. You need a tasty, coarse-textured one, preferably spicy — I used Welsh Dragon, a mixture of pork, leek and chilli (thank you my wonderful butcher). As always, the final result of the dish will depend on the quality and appropriateness of the contents. Soon I added English streaky bacon (pancetta would be ideal), then mushrooms, pine nuts, garlic and chilli. Meanwhile I boiled some fresh egg tagliatelle in salted water (a good-quality dried pasta would do equally as well). After deglazing with a little balsamic vinegar (wine even better) it was ready to eat. You could scatter some grated Parmesan over, but it's not really necessary. What is important is plenty of black pepper and chopped parsley (in my case straight from the garden!)

I'm always fascinated which ingredients go together, which don't, and how sometimes just adding one or two extra things to a dish can ruin it if you don't know what you're doing (often in my case). For instance, I feel instinctively that lemon or tomato, other classic Italian staples, would detract from this particular plate — yet why? Sometimes less is more — and sometimes more is more, as in a tagine or paella.

I'm very much drawn to the Chinese method of balancing flavours —  a Chinese meal ideally incorporating elements of sour, sweet, bitter, pungent and salty. So healthy and satisfying.

Stuffed Chine

I've said it before, but I have to restrain myself from writing about food and drink on this blog — a subject close to my heart. My feeling is this: most of us eat two or three times a day, so we may as well enjoy it. Luckily I don't need much persuasion. I'm not talking about greed and self-indulgence here; I'm talking about health, pleasure and love. What could be nicer than preparing a beautiful meal for someone? (Particularly if that person is appreciative, though I know it's not always the case!)

I live on the border of Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, and am fortunate in that Lincolnshire is one of England's great food-producing regions. It's also one of England's largest counties, one of the least populated and one with the biggest acreage of farmland. (I won't get into the complex and controversial debates about factory farming, prairie-style agriculture, the degradation of the soil and the depletion of our wild flowers right now.)

Lincolnshire has many specialities, including the excellent beef and vegetables (many grown on rich and dark, reclaimed fenland soil), plum bread (my mother used to bake this every week), Lincolnshire Poacher cheese, Lincolnshire sausage made out of coarsely chopped pork with sage, Bateman's beers. There's also a delicacy called stuffed chine, which I bought at the local mini-supermarket the other day (vegetarians, please look away now):

Imagine this, perhaps, with some picked onions, beetroot, gherkins and chillies, a small wedge of Lincolnshire Poacher hard cheese, and a slice of wholemeal bread! 

To cook this, the neck chine of a pig (a cut between the shoulder blades) is marinated in brine, then scored with a knife and the cuts filled with parsley, other herbs and some secret ingredients. After a long, slow simmer, it turns into very tasty salt pork, to be eaten cold. It's absolutely delicious. One of the biggest fans of this dish was the French Symbolist poet, Paul Verlaine!

Healthy Eating

There are enough real problems in life without creating problems where none exist. Take diet, for instance: a subject rife with fads and fallacies. What could be simpler than just eating sensibly — a balanced and varied diet, everything in moderation, lots of fresh fish, fruit and vegetables, meat but not to excess, an awareness of the dangers of too much fat, sugar and salt? Within these guidelines I eat what I want and have never bought a diet book in my life. Food is meant to be enjoyed, not agonised over. Diet books make money for publishers first and foremost; they are not blueprints for an eternal healthy life.

See this Observer article about why almost everything we've been told about unhealthy foods is wrong.

Wholemeal Loaf

I love cooking, but successful bread making has always eluded me. My loaves were very hit-and-miss affairs — too yeasty, not risen enough, dense and heavy as bricks. My soda bread was fine, but any other type was a disaster. Some of you kindly sent me your own tried-and-tested methods in response to this plea. I carefully followed the instructions for a white loaf and a wholemeal loaf, but still no luck.

I'm not one to give up easily, so yesterday I had another go, having found this piece in the Guardian. Success! Dan Lepard's recipe for wholemeal bread is simply brilliant. It's unusual in that you add half a crushed vitamin C tablet and melted butter to the mix. Also the dough requires hardly any kneading. The result is a pleasantly light loaf with a soft open crumb. You can find the recipe at the end of the Guardian article. (One tip: keep the dough nice and soft, on the wet side rather than too floury.)  

Bakewell Tart

I thought I'd better make amends for my rustic, rock-hard soda bread, so I've just taken a Bakewell tart from the oven which I'm actually quite pleased with. I don't like puddings which are too sweet, and this one fits the bill nicely. The shortcrust pastry is light, thin and buttery, and the tart has a lovely, fresh, almondy taste, with crunchy flaked almonds on top and a base layer of raspberry jam. In the jug there's some crème fraîche. All perfect for Sunday tea with a pot of Earl Grey.

The recipe I followed is Mary Berry's, and you can find it here. I can't resist namedropping shamelessly by saying that I've met Mary Berry and several other famous chefs, including the Roux Brothers and Antonio Carluccio. This was because I used to work for the publishers who produced some of their cookbooks. I'll never forget eating at Carluccio's flagship London restaurant (of course, there's a whole chain of these now). The benign and generous-hearted Antonio came to our table and gave us all a lesson in the finer points of olive oil appreciation. He convinced us that a fine olive oil dripped onto ciabatta bread was food heaven.

Bread

Here's two I made earlier: rather (ahem) rustic-looking soda breads. They are ok, but I prefer them sliced and toasted and spread with butter and jam the next morning.

I've tried making my own bread for years, but it's been very much a hit-and-miss affair. Some loaves have turned out fine; others not so well. Like all cookery, it's an art and a skill, and you've got to get it right. It seems to me there are so many stages where you can go wrong: flour not fresh enough, yeast too old, not enough yeast, too much yeast, water too hot, water too cold, under-kneading, over-kneading, too quick a rise and so on. A common problem I have is for the finished loaf to be too dense and moist in the middle, and for it to have too 'yeasty' an odour. If you search the internet for solutions, it's a minefield, and would probably put you off breadmaking for life! I'm thinking of drastically slowing down the proving time, as I'm assured this will produce a better, healthier, tastier loaf. I wonder if anyone out there has a bread recipe they've been using for years and is absolutely foolproof?

Chilli Crisis

Good morning, and here is the news. The chilli crisis has now reached epidemic proportions. They have taken over the fridge, the freezer, the kitchen, the larder and the conservatory. In an attempt to control numbers, many have been dried and imprisoned in jars, but the jars have now crowded most of the cupboard space. And they are still breeding in the garden. In a desperate last-ditch manoeuvre, I tried the neutralising tactic of adding them to a caramelised red onion chutney, but to no avail (ingredients: red onions, bay leaves, olive oil, brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar — and chillies). Pickling was also suggested, but it didn't restrain them for long (pickling liquid: white vinegar, water, peppercorns, fennel seeds, salt, caster sugar, bay leaves). Watch out: they may soon be wriggling down a road near you. I shall not be in hot pursuit.

Pickled chillies.

Some think it incredibly silly

To eat a bowl full of raw chilli

When tradition agrees

It's best roasted with cheese —

Rocamadour, Reblechon or Caerphilly.

Harvest

Harvesting the last of the summer fruit before the first frosts. In the jars are pickled beetroot, dried chillies and plum jam. But what on earth am I going to do with all those fresh chillies? I picked another bumper crop yesterday. And there are already lots in the freezer and hanging up to dry. I made a chilli cheese omelette last night, but that only used two. Still, if an overabundance of chillies were the only problem in life . . .

Chillies And Cauliflowers

'A chilli,' said Rebecca, gasping, 'Oh, yes!' She thought a chilli was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. 'How fresh and green they look,' she said, and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork. 'Water, for Heaven's sake, water!' she cried.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY Vanity Fair, Chapter 3

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

MARK TWAIN

The Garden In September

The roses just keep blooming and blooming . . .

. . . and the water lilies seem to like the refurbished pond.

Arctotis (Heidi) in three green pots.

Because of the long hot summer, the fruit and vegetable harvest has been bountiful this year. We've had copious amounts of potatoes, French beans, mangetout, lettuce and plums. However, the birds ate most of the gooseberries and blueberries, and, even though we'd netted the strawberries for protection, I wish we'd planted more. Leeks, cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli are on the way. The photo shows new crops of potatoes, lettuce and beetroot. They've shot up really quickly.

Oh, and there are lots of chillies! I love them. They're on the bush, in the fridge, in the freezer and hanging up to dry. And some are just about to go into a salsa verde. Yum!

These gorgeous blackberries were picked in a secret spot in the countryside where few people venture. Here everything's ready for a blackberry and apple pie. Just the pastry to make . . .

. . . mmm . . . not bad!

Here are some of the ingredients . . .

. . . for blackberry fool. Sheer indulgence!

There's a glut of plums. Amazing, really, since last year there were hardly any. The freezer is full. The wasps and butterflies have had their fill. But there are so many more we scarcely know what to do with them. We've had plum crumble, plum pie, stewed plums with custard . . .

. . . and plum jam, which proved delicious with butter on a baguette . . .

Thursday Lunch

Why don't you join me for lunch? I've just picked lettuce and new potatoes fresh from the garden...

... and we could have them with chicken, grated carrot and celery, tomatoes, olives, a squeeze of lemon, a drizzle of olive oil, a hint of mayonnaise and a little seasoning...

... to be eaten, of course, away from the sun's glare in the shade of the old plum tree at the bottom of the garden...

Ragù Alla Bolognese: The Real Thing

This is the ultimate authentic recipe for spaghetti bolognese or, as we have now learnt to call it, ragù alla bolognese. It's based on America's Test Kitchens' recipe via Cook's Illustrated (thanks, Ruth!) and also on Antonio Caluccio's classic recipe. First, transform your kitchen into cool monochrome (optional)...

Then assemble from left to right some pancetta (I used English streaky bacon), some minced pork and beef, some tomato paste (I used tomato purée), some chicken stock (I happened to have some real, homemade chicken stock — yum!), a mirepoix of finely chopped carrot, celery and onion, salt and pepper, some fresh egg tagliatelle, a glass of red wine, some butter and a wedge of Parmesan cheese (I know Romano and Grana Padano are less expensive, but you can't beat the salty depth of Parmigiano in this dish).

Gently fry the pancetta, carrot, celery and onion in butter for 10 min, then added the minced meats and fry for a further 10 min. Add the wine, reduce, stir in some stock and the tomato paste. Simmer for 1 and a half hours, adding more stock when the mixture becomes dry. Season if necessary (I found it needed hardly any seasoning). Remember: no garlic, no herbs, no canned tomatoes! Cook the tagliatelle for a few minutes in boiling water until al dente, drain and combine with the sauce. Sprinkle liberally with Parmesan.

Enjoy with a glass of red wine, preferably Italian. You'll find the tagliatelle winds easily round a fork so no spoon necessary! This is a fabulous, utterly satisfying dish, of a rich, deep flavour. It kept me happy all evening.

Obsessed With Food? What, Me?

Tagine

Lately I've been writing a lot about food on this blog. I don't think I'm obsessed with it (though my wife may disagree!), but I do think it's an important and interesting subject. Much of the world can't get the food it wants and needs, but I find it miraculous that, given half a chance, people will still find a way to produce nutritious and tasty food from limited resources.

We in the indulgent West are spoilt for choice, of course. Yet it never fails to amaze me how we (I'm talking now of the UK) are prepared to put up with such a low gastronomic standard. Naturally, I'm generalising — but I think it's evident that good food here is a much more hit-and-miss affair than it is, say, in France, Spain or Italy. Although cuisine has improved in this country compared with 20 or 30 years ago, there's still a long way to go, and it's a fact that continental Europeans think that British food is a joke. And can you blame them?

Let's take pubs and restaurants. Pub food, despite a superficial, glossy makeover, is still irredeemably awful in the main. It's usually corporate chain fare: insipid steaks; inauthentic 'hand-cut' fries; sickly burgers; undressed, unimaginative salads; and a hundred and one other ready-prepared, microwaved nightmare items listed on laminated, greasy-fingered menus. No thanks.

Sadly, many of the old, traditional pubs are closing, which is a tragedy, as some of these did use to produce proper, homemade food: such as the White Hart in Northend, Bucks, set among the fabulous Chiltern hills and beech woods. I regularly visited this welcoming, old-fashioned, oak-beamed country inn once a fortnight when I worked as a mobile librarian. The landlord's wife used to produce a cracking steak and kidney pudding fresh out of the oven. (I've just tried to trace this pub on the internet and found it was turned into a private house long ago.) Next door to the pub lived the lonely and eccentric author Alan Hull Walton, translator of Baudelaire, who used to jump aboard the mobile library for a chat and to reserve some very weird books. He invited me into his house once, which stank of mildew and urine. But I digress...

Then you have the nationwide chain restaurants: your Nandos, your Bella Italias, your Wetherspoons, your Harvesters. The occasional one is very good (Wagamama), but most are dire (Frankie & Benny's).

You are left with the private, individually-run restaurants — some no-frills, others more up-market, fine-dining concerns — and even these vary enormously. Just read the late Michael Winner's columns in The Sunday Times to see how, even in some of London's supposedly top restaurants, the service, and the quality of the food, can't always be relied on. All you can rely on is the over-inflated price of the meal.

Of course, there are many exceptions. One exception not far from here is La Parisienne, a café-restaurant in Southwell, which specialises in French-Moroccan food. It's cramped; it's friendly; it serves brochettes and tagines and cassoulets and tartiflettes at very reasonable prices, and an incredibly drinkable house red. What more could one want? But my real point remains: eating out in Britain is an unreliable business at best, and pity the poor continental visitor who comes to these shores and takes pot luck. He or she will almost certainly be disappointed.

To set the seal on it, let's take fish and chips, our national staple. Yes, I've occasionally eaten takeaway fish and chips in places — Scotland and the East Anglian coast come to mind — where it's been a hugely memorable experience. But your average fish and chip shop in your average English town or village is just that — very average indeed, and I've stopped going to them.

Let's now compare with France, Spain, Italy. I'll give just one example. A couple of years ago I was walking the pilgrim route from Geneva to Le Puy, and slept one night in a dilapidated caravan on a camp site in Frangy, one of the less salubrious towns en route. By evening I was starving, but it was a Sunday, and there didn't seem to be many places open in the centre of town. The gap-toothed old crone of a campsite owner directed me to an industrial estate half a mile away. 'You can eat there,' she cackled. I followed a main road past rows and rows of prefab units and parked-up lorries. It didn't look very promising. Then, unexpectedly, right at the end of this edge-of-town development, a modest, unpretentious little restaurant came into view. And I ate and drank there like a king — some of the best food and wine I've ever had in my life — and was served with such exquisite friendliness, hospitality and expertise that the memory of it warms my heart still.    

Fish and chips

(All pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Spaghetti Bolognese

Spaghetti Bolognese (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

One of the endlessly fascinating things about cookery is how difficult it can be to get even the simplest dishes right. Of course, we're often in such a rush, we haven't time to check the recipe, we think we know what we're doing. And I'm sure most of you brilliant cooks and chefs out there do know what you're doing. But, speaking for myself, I must admit that if I hurry and guess and estimate, the result can sometimes be mediocre, if not plain inedible.

What I'm really saying is this: respect for those of us who can cook standard dishes brilliantly, whether it's a Sunday roast dinner, a full English breakfast, a loaf of bread, a vegetable curry, a beef casserole, a cottage pie (got this one cracked— the best recipe in the world has got to be Delia Smith's cottage pie, which includes swede as well as carrot, a surprising half-teaspoonful of cinnamon, fresh thyme and parsley, and cheese-encrusted leeks on top) or a simple poached egg.

To reinforce my point: how often have you eaten any of these dishes, whether at the house of a friend or a family member, or even at a restaurant, and thought: this is legendary! Not often, I bet. (I don't want to sound mean here. Naturally, we're very forgiving of and generous to friends and family!) To rest my case: during my mammoth South West Coast Path walk, when I stayed in B & Bs most nights, only one breakfast in ten showed all three attributes of love, care and skill.

All of which is a roundabout way of introducing a thought which came to me this afternoon. Spaghetti bolognese! Yes, an ordinary, classic dish, beloved of adults and children alike. We've probably consumed many in our time. Yet how do you get it perfect? There are hundreds of recipes out there in cookery books — and many more to be found on the internet (and the internet can be a minefield for recipes). I must have cooked this dish a million times, yet it's often just adequate rather than sensational.

There are so many variable factors. I mean, do you add white wine or red wine — or no wine at all? Do you make it with a mirepoix of onion, carrot and celery, or some other combination? Fresh tomatoes or canned tomatoes? And if canned tomatoes, what sort? How do you avoid the sauce turning bitter? And how long do you cook the sauce for? (Recipes vary from 20 minutes to 3 hours!) Which pasta do you use (spaghetti, linguine, tagliatelle or some other kind)? And do you include either chicken livers or streaky bacon with the minced beef? And is the mince top-quality butcher's steak or fatty, supermarket mince of dubious origin? And what do you use for stock? Which herbs do you favour, and are they fresh or dried? And why does Italian food always taste much better in Italy than if you try to replicate it elsewhere? (The Italian ragù alla bolognese is rather different from UK and US versions.) And how do you eat the spaghetti — with a fork, or with a fork and spoon? And is there an elegant way to eat it, or doesn't it matter? You see, there are endless variables. You could spend your life debating the ins and outs. If you hadn't anything better to do.

My challenge to you is this. Let's discover the perfect spaghetti bolognese! If you have a wonderful tried-and-tested formula, do post it in my comment box. If you want to take part, and experiment with different cookery book or internet recipes, please report on the result. If you want to join me in trying out any suggested recipes from mutual blog friends, do this too. No rush — we can do this over a period of months!

(Apologies to vegetarian readers — but any contributions, suggestions and ideas about tomato-based sauces would be very welcome.)                  

Beef And Orange Casserole With Wine

A rather rustically arranged plate of beef and orange casserole.

There are certain food marriages made in heaven: chicken and thyme, pork and apple, lamb and mint sauce (don't tell the French, they'll think you're mad), venison and blackberry sauce, liver and onions, duck and orange. But have you tried beef and orange? I've had a couple of beef-with-orange dishes before, but not this simple casserole, which I made today, and found richly flavoursome. (Yes, we're still cooking winter casseroles here in Solitarywalkerville, and we're not ashamed to be regressive either: the weather still feels like winter, the central heating's on, and there are hailstorms outside.) You can't beat a casserole for a warm and comforting glow. Here's what I did:

I fried a sliced onion, a large diced carrot, a diced parsnip (turnip would also be good) and 2 diced celery stalks in a mixture of olive oil and butter for 5 minutes. Half way through I added 2 chopped garlic cloves. After removing the veg from the casserole, I added more oil and browned 500 gm cubed braising/stewing steak, which I then coated in seasoned flour. Returning the veg to the casserole, I mixed in about 300 ml of beef stock and 150 ml of red wine (enough to cover) plus a good dollop of tomato purée, a bay leaf, a few drops of Tabasco sauce, a few strips of orange zest, and the juice of an orange. I put on the lid and cooked it in the oven for 2 hours at a low temperature (150 deg C/gas mark 2). I took the lid off for the last half hour after stirring (keep an eye on it in case it needs a touch more liquid). Finally I sprinkled chopped parsley over the top and served with mashed potato (creamed with with butter and horseradish sauce) and fresh greens (dwarf beans and mangetout). There should be enough for 4 servings here.

Roast Vegetables With Couscous

I'm tending to eat less meat and more fish or vegetable-based dishes these days. I'm also a big fan of Mediterranean food. This dish, which I made yesterday, combines both these preferences. Quite honestly, it's one of the most flavoursome vegetarian meals you could ever hope to eat. Absolutely delicious! Here's the recipe.

Roast a tray of Mediterranean-type vegetables in the oven for 20-30 minutes at a very high temperature (230-240 degrees C). Beforehand coat the vegetables with plenty of extra virgin olive oil, and mix in a generous amount of crushed garlic, freshly-torn basil leaves and seasoning.

A good combination of vegetables might be: aubergine, courgette, red and yellow pepper, cherry tomato, onion. I used the vegetables I already had, so there was no aubergine or yellow pepper, but I used green pepper instead. For onions I used both red onions and shallots. (Incidentally, it's a good idea to squeeze out some of the bitter liquid from the aubergines and courgettes first. To do this, dice them, salt them, then place in a colander for half an hour with a weighted plate on top.)

While the vegetables are roasting (ah, the aroma!) pour 500 ml of boiling vegetable stock over 275 gm of couscous, season, stir and leave to one side. The liquid will soon be absorbed and the couscous will soften. Then prepare a salad dressing by whisking together 5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, 1 tablespoon of ground cumin, 2 tablespoons of tomato purée, and the juice of 2 limes (I used lemon).

Ok, now build the salad! (I love to make this in one of those wooden salad bowls and serve with a wooden fork and spoon.) Put the couscous at the bottom, fluffed up with a fork. Then spoon in a layer of roasted vegetables, to which you've added some pitted and chopped black olives and a tablespoon of capers. On top of the veg sprinkle cubes of firm goat's cheese. Finally top with mixed salad leaves and drizzle part of the dressing over them (serve the rest of the dressing in a jug on the side). Eat warm or cold. You really don't miss at all a fish or meat component to this dish. It's a meal in itself, and perfectly satisfying on its own.   

Fougasse

Bacon and onion fougasse straight out of the oven... rather inelegant, and slightly undercooked in the middle (should have sliced bigger holes in it)... never mind... it's still delicious, and homemade, and that's the important thing..! 

Bubble And Squeak

Bubble and squeak: hangover cure. Eat with a strong coffee on the side. My patties here contain mashed potato, carrot, peas and runner beans, plus a little seasoning. (Grating in some cheese would also be good.) And yes, I know, I broke the egg yolk!

An addendum to my recent post Waste Not, Want Not: I'd completely forgotten about one of the best ways to use up any cooked veg left over from dinner: bubble and squeak! (Worth making for the name alone.)

Mash up the potato with all the other veg and shape into patties (the potato should bind them together — if not, try adding some beaten egg). Fry up with bacon and egg until crispy and brown. Enjoy for breakfast, brunch or lunch with strong coffee. Excellent for hangovers.