Break the heart of a young lettuce, stuff the belly of a young marrow.

Apologies to Mrs Beeton (see below).

In Damon Lee Fowler's Classical Southern Cooking, there is a recipe for stuffed acorn squash. It's just simply a squash hollowed out and filled with sausage meat. Baked in the oven, it is cheap, delicious, very basic and yet it seems festive. The recipe put me in mind of a summer staple of my childhood. I hadn't thought about it in years.

Oh -- and the fine photo above is by Indigo Goat at www.flick'r.com. I'd guess this is someone who just loves their allotment.

When the first marrows were available, I would be sent to crop them and then cook this dish. My measurements for this recipe remain a little vague because much depends on the size of your marrow. (Girls: ain't that true?) It also works with courgettes, by the way -- but the latter doesn't, for me, hit the spot. I think the vegetable has to be larger and more robust for this to seem rustic and satisfying enough. I am aware this paragraph is managing to sound smutty.

Take your marrow --I suppose it would be one about 15cm in diameter: so hot foot it out the vegetable patch with your tape measure-- peel it with knife or peeler. This is very satisfying: do it in long thin stripes. One by one. Force yourself to think of nothing else. I digress: cooking keeps me sane. Now cut the marrow in half length ways and, with a dessertspoon, remove all pith and seeds, scraping the final threads out carefully.

For the filling, you can do simply fill it with sausage meat and a good grind of black pepper --that's it-- or do what I do, which is as follows. Oh --if you do want to use sausage meat, remember that you can always undress some decent sausages: there are easier to procure, I find, than decent sausage meat.

Quickly saute a chopped medium onion in a little oil then add about 480g of minced lamb (you could also use beef). Cook until browned and then add two medium tomatoes, finely chopped and a big handful of fresh thyme or marjoram which you have chopped finely. Cook for a couple of minutes and then check for seasoning. Pile it into the halves of the marrow and either bake each piece separately, covered in foil (take it off for the last ten minutes to brown) or put the whole vegetable back together, wrap it tightly in foil and then cook. It should take about forty five minutes if you have cooked it in two halves; about one and quarter hours if it is all of a piece.
Pierce it through the foil and, if it gives but there is just a touch of resistance, then that's your time to take it out and brown it. Or you could just skip the browning stage altogether. Either way, it won't be at all dr. It will be savoury and cheerful and you will wonder why you never did it before (as I wondered why I had forgotten).

If you want to make a vegetarian version, a marrow is nice filled with a mixture of cooked red, green or brown lentils, mixed with a little sauteed onion, some cheddar cheese (or feta-- but go easy) and the same herbs as before. I do want, though, to keep the number of ingredients down for this dish. Ideally, there would be just two!

And the bit about the lettuce in the title? That's just one of my favourite recipe opening lines. I shan't be dealing with lettuce now. But if you hang on for my winter edition, I will tell you how to make chou farci -- stuffed cabbage. Three ways! This does involve cutting out the heart of a (grown up) cabbage.

A Tale of Three Tins

1. Oxo. 1930s.

This tin of my grandfather's once contained six cubes. It was retrieved from his tool store. where it held thumb tacks. The Oxo cubes were a standby of my grandmother's who sprinkled them into gravy -- and sometimes into hot milk for her five children. I quote from the tin.

Children love OXO or OXO with milk and thrive on it.
OXO provides delicious soups and gravies in a few minutes and enriches all meat dishes.
OXO -- The Cook's best friend.
And my favourite tip on the back: An OXO cube crumbled into a glass of hot milk renders the milk more assimilable.

2. Burdall's Gravy Salt. 1930s.
ADDING FLAVOUR to the Joint
PIQUANCY to the Gravy
ZEST to the Meal.
Insist on having BURDALL'S GRAVY SALT, which is one of the purest and most useful foods ever invented by man.
The tin contains shoe tacks of a centimetre long. When grandfather was not shooting rabbits (no questions asked), managing estate gardens or his own, he made and mended shoes and boots.

3. A Large Biscuit tin of my great grandmother. Circa 1920. For the provenance of which we must look to A Handful of Broken Biscuits one last time. The tin is marked D Bassett of Portland Street, Sheffield and here is why this rusty, ruby red tin --and its former contents-- are so significant.

Eating biscuits: such a simple thing to remember, but John would never forget his grandma or that quiet shadowed room. The pictures of his soldier uncles on the mantelpiece, the dark green velvety cloth that covered the table, and the two of them sitting there eating cream wafers. The biscuit tin, red and gold, intrigued him. Spin wheels beneath three small windows in the lid showed the months of the year and the date in the month and, bit by bit, on Sunday afternoons at Grandma's knee, John learned the calendar. There, in that sanctuary, he learned it. Grandma left the tin to John when she died and if memory dimmed with the passing of twenty, thirty, forty years, he had but to take the tin in his hand and the flood gates would open, and those Sunday afternoons would be with him again.

So it isn't just the food, it's the receptacle, too. That's why the big red calendar biscuit tin --permanently left on July the 31st, my wedding day-- is on the shelf, kept company by its two smaller neighbours. And doesn't the description above put you in mind of a certain madeleine?

A Handful of Broken Biscuits: what Beth cooked and what she stored away.

The food described here, such as that in the cool pantry where Elizabeth (Beth) kept her preserves and pickled onions and eggs, is straight from my father's childhood; it is also a page out of mine. And a hint of the conservative eater that was my father.

Beth was a good cook and, though her family cramped her style with their conservative tastes, she persevered with the occasional new recipe she had seen in 'Woman's World'. Sometime, the experiment was not well received and would not be repeated after a few well chosen remarks about working fingers to the bone, people who didn't deserve good things for dinner and those who, if they thought they could do better, were welcome to try.

John often thought of his mother's rabbit pies: crisp light brown pastry crimped all round the side of the dish and with an upturned cup underneath to hold up the pastry in the centre. Two or three knife stabs were always made in the pastry covering to let the steam come wisping through. It made one feel hungry even at the bottom of the garden.

The other dish that particularly lingered in the mind was apple dumplings. Beth always used Bramleys -- always big apples. She cored and stuffed them with currants and covered them with a generous casing of suet pastry. Into the oven they went and when they came out half as big as footballs she would put them in individual dishes, douse them with a hefty sprinkling of sugar and perhaps the top of the milk. Ed could demolish a whole one at a sitting, but the children could manage only part each.

Besides all her jam and chutney making, Beth filled and sealed big one gallon jars of pickled onions, pickled red cabbage and pickled eggs, when the time was right. There was usually enough to last all year. She was proud of her store. The big jars lined the floor under the bottom shelf in her small larder and with home-made jam filling the top shelf she had enough food on hand to withstand a siege.

A Handful of Broken Biscuits: tea table.

This is a depiction of my grandmother's tea table in the 1930 in rural Somerset. While Auntie Polly sat alongside, smoking, coughing and being frowned at, the table was set.


A big noisy family tea would follow. Good, plain simple fare. Enough. Beth usually had a fruit cake, or part of one, from her last baking. She scorned 'bought cake' and never allowed it in the house. Bought cake was for shiftless housewives with no pride. There was plenty of bread and butter and cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes from the garden. She made copious amounts of jam in season and there was always a choice of two at any time -- blackberry and apple, rhubarb and ginger, raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, blackcurrant, wortleberry, damson and plum.

A tablecloth and cups of tea were set for the grown-ups at table and there was just room to squeeze in Eric, the eldest and Laura, the youngest. The other children all had a plate on their knees, sitting on stools, the wide window ledge or the wood box by the range. They had Tizer or home-made lemonade to drink. All the while, the grown-ups' conversation ran like a river over their heads, half understood if understood at all. A warm, companionable time.

A Handful of Broken Biscuits: in the garden.

This chapter of my father's book begins with a reflection on life in 1930s Britain. Again, he remembers the foods of this time -- of blackberrying, of scrambling along the hills and along the lake to find whortleberries, of the 'fire toast' which his father made upon a home-wrought toasting fork if he was having a bonfire. And there is this. Writing this in the summer of 2009, settling in for a long recession perhaps, we ought to take stock. Although this is about the growing of food for necessity, it is also about how, for a country man like my father or grandfather, it was consolation. So you see why the 'Father's garden' part of my overall title is so significant for me.

The years of depression lay hard on the land. The big cities rumbled with the discontent and the sadness of the legions of the unemployed. And a king to be came, saw and said "something must be done."

With a lesser severity, the hand of harsh necessity ruled, too, in the valleys ans fields of the West Country. Thirty five shillings was a common enough wage, and so the cottage garden had an all important part to play in family economy. It was not simply a charming adjunct to the home --though it was that too-- but a place to grow food for the table. Space had to be provided for a washing line, for a baby's pram in good weather, for a bonfire area to clear burn the rubbish and for a compost and manure heap. But pre-eminent was the growing. Potatoes, white, pink flecked or dull yellow to lift with a fork and pull from under a haulm. Savoy cabbage were tight leaved balls of crinkly dark green, that could stand fresh and firm against the hardest weather. Parsnips that were never touched till a hard frost had sweetened them. And carrots, received as an orange delight when new, were but a commonplace vegetable when old. Broad bean pods clustered and burgeoned in the late Spring and the peas were always a favourite with tomtits and jays: they would strip a row in a couple of days if not prevented.

A strong streak of puritanism was always present. It was somehow immoral to buy, if you had space to grow your own. Extravagance in any form was frowned on for working people, but paradoxically it was admired in the gentry.

Outside now in the warm early evenings of May, before bedtime, John stood on the newly turned ground, with soil crumbs in his socks and the scent of fresh moist earth and the new grass in his nostrils.

A Handful of Broken Biscuits: the sweet shop.

This is the title of the book my father wrote when he understood that he was terminally ill. "I am past my sell-by date", he told me. "Better finish that book, then." Reading this now --he wrote it for posterity, comfort, family and friends-- it is as if he is extending a cordial handshake across the years to me.

The book is about his childhood, growing up on the edge of Burrington Combe and Langford in Somerset, in the Mendip Hills. The broken biscuits of the title are those that my grandmother, Elizabeth (Beth in the book) would order from the grocer every week and which my father, if he was lucky, would also be able to buy at the village shop. Often, the generous shop keeper would slip him an extra toffee and, if the ice cream churn was nearly empty, give him a spoon and pretend not to notice. I noticed, when I read this book again, how much he remembered of the food of his childhood and, of course, of the garden from which much of it had come. Some extracts.

This first is about having a penny in hand and going into the sweet shop. This was in about 1930 (I was a late-flowering chrysanthemum). The humbugs I include in the picture above could induce a sort of sweetie shop frenzy in me, still. They must, of course, come in a rustling little white paper bag.

Into the shop they went and the door bell tinged behind them. They could see straight through to the post office counter where Mrs Thomson was serving the next customer with penny stamps and his pension. It was slow moving, slow speaking, easy going Miss Buxton who came forward to serve them. They could take their time with her as they weighed the merits of humbugs against licorice allsorts, or Nutalls mintoes against dolly mixtures. These shelves, with thirty six big glass bottles to inspect and choose from. The bottles winked cheerfully at them in the soft, mellow afternoon sunlight, seeming to say "Choose me. Choose me." Aniseed balls, with a sweet, powdery bloom on them, were in one jar; the pink pastel colours of fruit drops were in the next. The rich brown sheen of Sharpes' Bluebird toffee pieces were next to the brown and white whirls of Maynards' delights.

Lovely they were, but they gave you toothache if they took out one of your fillings. All you would get then was iodine treatment to see you through to the next visit of the school dentist, months away. So no: better not. Small black roll chunks of licorice gleamed dully; sherbet lemons spoke of high summer and Fox's Glacier mints of the North Pole, looking to him like bits chipped from an ice flow.

And for me? Mint Shrimps, licorice comfits, rhubard and custard, fruit pastilles, the aniseedy ones in the Licorice allsort box, mint imperials and sherbet lemons. And I'll never forget the box of sugared almonds that Father Christmas delivered and I sampled in a dark still house. I think it was the smoothness, the smell and the thinness of the sugar shell of that crisp nut. And the allure of the pretty pastel sweet -- to a girl mainly interested in mud and not at all sweet and pink things. And they were so cold. From the Pole, I imagine.

Trifle

This, along with summer pudding and bread and butter pudding (don't worry: these will follow), is my favourite pudding.

First, I cannot be fussed with exotic variations of trifle so here is what invariably happens in our family. It's big, bold, there should be a lot of it. I do like to make my own custard, but I'd bury my face in something made with Birds' custard powder, too.

6 or 7 sponge fingers --or alternatively, break up a sponge cake so that it sits in a generous mound in the bottom of a glass bowl about 1.5 litres in capacity.
400g raspberries
About three tbsps sherry
Raspberry jam
30g flaked almonds
150ml double cream for whipping
300ml custard. If you want to make your own, follow the recipe below. It's not hard and will, I promise, make you happy. The custard should be cold when you use it.


Right, take the sponge cakes, sponge fingers or whatever you are using and spread them with a little jam. I tend to split them in two and make a kind of jam sandwich out of each, replacing the other half when I'm done with the jam. Now, put them in a pretty bowl and drizzle the sherry over them. Leave them to soak. You could also add some finely grated lemon rind, if you like -- but I rarely bother with this touch. Now cover the sponges with the fruit, cover the fruit with the custard, smooth its top down gently and add the cream, which you will have whipped until it sits in soft peaks. Scatter over the almonds and it's ready, after a little chill in the fridge.

You will notice that there is no jelly in this custard. I prefer it not to be there. To make your own custard, here's what you do (in the amount needed for this recipe plus a bit of spoon licking).

Take 300ml milk. Full fat is best here. If you are that worried, why are you making trifle?
30g caster sugar
The yolks of three large eggs

The key word here is gently. Warm up the milk and then mix the eggs and sugar together then add this mixture to the milk. You should continue to warm it, stirring constantly. That way, the custard will be smooth. Use a wooden spoon and make sure that your custard does not boil. It should begin to thicken and look sleek and creamy and coat your wooden spoon: then, it's done. Leave it to cool and stir it regularly to avoid it forming a skin. You can make the custard richer by adding a tablespoon or two of cream. Either way, this recipe should make quite a thick custard, just right for your trifle.

We had this trifle, with eight of my family at table, as the pudding for a dinner of a beef casserole and boiled potatoes. A bit of a winter dinner, but with summer raspberries. Perfect.


Summer pudding. To me, summer pudding was a way to use up the heavy fruit crop of my father's garden. Invariably, we used blackcurrants and raspberries. If there were redcurrants, then in they went, too. Some people use sponge cake for this; I always use white bread, a day or two old. Let's assume we are using raspberries and blackcurrants. The colour is beautiful.

Take 480g raspberries and 120g blackcurrants. You need to stew these gently for five minutes or so with about 120 g caster sugar, but taste and taste again. The amount of sugar you need, obviously, depends on how sweet your tooth is and which fruit you are using. You do not need to add water. Stir gently. Then put the fruit to one side to cool.

Into a round deep dish or good sized basin, goes the bread. For old time's sake, I use an ancient white china basin, used since childhood and, amazingly, never broken-- despite my cack-handed tendencies in the kitchen.

The bread you use needs to be white, sliced, about a day old and have had its crusts removed. Make sure it is not too thin, otherwise your pudding will collapse. You need to make sure that the dish is well lined, sides and bottom, with the bread pressed in gently, with overlapping edges. Then, just pour in the fruit --if it there is a great deal of juice, reserve some-- and cover it with another slice or two of the bread. Put a plate on top of your pudding. It should be small enough to fit snugly inside the dish. Place a weight on top, for which I would probably use a couple of tins of baked beans. Leave your pudding overnight in a the fridge and then turn it out gently the next day. Serve with cream and, if you like, any reserved juices from yesterday. Summer pudding is, I think, rather ruined if it is not served very cold -- which is why I would never put custard with it. Some good vanilla ice cream might be nice, though.

Top tip: make sure that the plate onto which you turn your pudding is big enough to leave a large rim beyond the edge of the pudding --preferably one with an edge which slopes up. That way the juice will not end up on the floor. And if it does collapse, trim it up with some double cream and none-one may notice.


Bread and Butter pudding. Sweetly nostalgic for me. I did recently have seconds of a chocolate version -- but on with the original. It is very straightforward to make.

Take 6 thinnish slices of white bread -- I leave the crusts on because they will catch in the heat of the oven giving you crisp edges against the doughy and soothing quality of the rest. My mother always buttered them, therefore so do I. Just a thin spread of butter, though. Cut each piece into two triangles. If you want it to be a bit daintier make that four.

You need about 90g currants. You could also use sultanas or raisins or a mixture of any of these.
Have to hand
3 large free range eggs
30g demerara sugar
About 750ml milk (I use semi skimmed)

Into a large oven dish -- I usually make this is an oblong earthenware oven dish which is, I think, 1.2 litres in capacity-- goes the bread, triangles overlapping. Sprinkle over the dried fruit. Then beat the eggs just a little with the milk and the sugar and pour this evenly over the bread. My mother would have left this to settle for twenty minutes, so that the milk saturates the bread. Then she would put it in a medium oven (4/180) for approximately 45 minutes. By this time, you should have a set custard and some little crisp peaks pf bread rising above it. You can encourage this further by sprinkling the pudding with just a little more sugar after about 30 minutes. You may find that you need to give this recipe an hour.

I don't think you need anything with this. A sprinkle of cinnamon or some grated nutmeg would be good, though. And, as with the potato earlier (see 'What to eat for a broken heart'), this is consoling when all is not well.

Breakfast and lunch from a seven year old

Today my eldest son served me breakfast and lunch for a surprise. He said he felt bad that I had had one child sick off school and then the other. I had probably been foul tempered as I tried to work at home with the boys periodically at my elbow. Back to the breakfast. (Above are my boys, by the way.)

Muesli, in a basin, with at least half a pint of milk plus a glass of milk and a glass of 'Katy' cider..

Lunch was a boiled egg in his favourite eggcup (he now eats boiled eggs because I draw faces on the eggs) plus a salad. The boiled egg had, as far I could understand, been flashed briefly under the grill (not a particularly watchful mother at that moment) and the salad was a whole unwashed carrot, a spring onion and a leaf from a cos lettuce. This was served with a mug of chardonnay.

Reader, it was perfection.

Lemon fridge cake

For Nest Davies and Jackie Rice

This was a regular whenever my parents went out, I remember. It's fresh tasting and a little bit tangy. I always helped with this one. It's not really in the repertoire of my kitchen these days, but I have a feeling that, pretty soon, I'll teach my boys to make it so they can impress, as Isaac aged five likes to say, "the laydeez."

Crush 300g digestive biscuits with a rolling pin. Best to put them in a bag first!
You also need150 g unsalted butter
3 level tbs cornflour
150ml water
The grated rind plus the juice of two lemons
120g caster sugar
2 egg yolks (from medium eggs)

So, melt the butter and add it to the crumbs. Now press this mixture into the base and sides of a 22cm flan dish. Actually, I find that, although I work in metric, I think, like my family, in inches for cake tins and cooking dishes. So, could I say 9 inch? Put this in the fridge to chill.

Blend the water and the cornflour together, then add the lemon rind and the juice. Bring slowly to the boil, stirring constantly and then simmer the mixture for 1 minute. Now remove it from the heat and add the caster sugar. Allow it to cool slightly --say for five minutes-- and then beat in the egg yolks. Cool for another five minutes and then pour into the crumb-lined dish. Chill this in the fridge for 5-6 hours. I remember that my mother used to decorate the top with a few little parings of lemon rind and also that she put the fridge cake in the freezer for the last hour before serving.

Marshmallow sludge (try it)

Something which I should not like, but do

This is something my aunts have tended to whip up over the years. You know, for what is known as informal family dining. In my family, this means that everyone comes quickly to the table and loads up. And then goes back to hoover up some more. This is the sort of pudding that might be on the table after cold meat and lots of salad if family are visiting each other. It's fabulously un-chic and, really, what my grandmother might have called common. And the thing is, I don't really like marsmallows, I dislike the texture of crushed pineapple and I wouldn't mind if I never ate a tinned mandarin orange ever again. By rights, this recipe should not work for me. Looking at the ingredient list, you might conclude it's not for you either. But you'd be wrong. I would bury my face in this. I don't make it for myself, though: I wait for one of the good aunts to dole it out.

I have this recipe, from an aunt, on a piece of paper which has been xeroxed. So it's getting on a bit. Word for word it says:

CONTENTS
Large packet of marshmallows
1 large tin of crushed pineapple
1 tin of mandarins
2 cartons of cour cream
packet of shredded coconut

METHOD
Cut marshmallows in 4, using a wet knife
Place in dish
Drain juice from fruit tins and place fruit in dish
Add sour cream and coconut
Place in fridge for two to three hours.

And then -- and this bit makes me laugh because it's an inappropriate nod to sophistication-- "serve in chilled glasses". Also, it forgets to tell you that you should mix everything together gently. The recipe is really not far away from the American 'Heavenly Delight', if you'd care to look. Clearly, this sounds better than 'marshmallow sludge.'

Books to go to bed with.

To cook with, go on holiday with or lounge with. In the case of the recipe box I mention below, to cry over.

Ours is a house of books. It's a peculiar, eclectic mixture. I'm looking across the room now and I can see Yertle the Turtle next to Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism. My kitchen is full of cookery books, too. My mother began buying them for me when I was growing up. I won't bore you with the whole library, but just list my favourites in the hope that you might read and be inspired by them, too. And yes, I like a proper recipe with no chit chat (that's very obviously not how I'm writing this, of course), but I like the way that foods are put in context. It's so much more, well, appetising. Especially if you are reading Elizabeth David -- so let's start with her. And I won't give them in order because they are all of a jumble on my shelf. Some of my books are now out of print, unfortunately.


An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. Almost my first cook book. A series of essays. I read this when I was thirteen (odd reading for an adolescent, but then, well, I I'm odd)) and two things happened. One that I went recipe spotting when in France with my parents and felt really grown up. (Reader, I was failing at school -- but I had Elizabeth David and who knew?) The second was that I developed the habit, which I have continued ever since, of reading a text about food whenever I was eating alone

French Provincial Cooking. If I had to choose one cookbook and burn the rest, this would be it. I have read and re-read this endlessly. I can tell you about the dishes the hors d'oeuvres were served in in a big dining room overlooking the Seine. The duck was served in a rugged and worn earthenware dish, the langoustines were served alongside pebbly black winkles and herrings and anchovies with their muted tones. and Or the filling station where she and her party once stopped and discovered, inadvertently, a cook of rare quality in the cafe to one side. Or the big round dish of Arles sausage and black olives which made you imagine you were seeing and tasting these things for the first time. You see my point.

It is from this book that I began to learn about Escoffier and Marcel Boulestin, of the great cooks and hotel owners of France and of what good food, in David's opinion, comprised.

Salt, Spices and Aromatics in the English kitchen. It was from here that I first learned about early British epicures, about her larger than life friend Norman Douglas, those who kept a generous table in the nineteenth century and about very simple food which made perfect use of herbs.

Elizabeth David Classics. This pulls together three different texts: Mediterranean Food, French Country Cooking and Summer Cooking. I particuarly like the latter, with an espevcial favourite being its picnic section. Why had I forgotten about the smoked cods' roe sandwiches my father loved? I also love her reminder that the Provencal pan bagna makes delicious out of doors food and that prawns with watercress dressing are nice for a seasside picnic.

You know, if you put your mind to it, nothing's changed that much since Mrs David wrote these books in the 1950s.

Is There a Nutmeg in the House. More essays. If you wanted to learn about John Nott, who compiled his dictionary of 'receipts' from the latter end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, then this is where to come. This text is really a sequel to An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. I loved her descriptions of cooks whose food she had known well, of the relishes of the Renaissance and of her loathing of the garlic press. But it was her description of what she would have on Christmas day if she had her way which held me most. An omelette and cold ham and good wine and --particularly-- a smoked sandwich and a glass of champagne to be eaten from a tray in bed in the evening. I do love dinner for six, or four or ten, but just sometimes..

Eastern Vegetarian Cooking. Madhur Jaffrey. I have found this particularly useful and an inspiration in how to use one ingredient --say the chick pea-- in lots of different ways. I find the chapters on 'little things' most enticing.

Rosemary Hempill. Herbs for All Seasons and The Penguin Book of Herbs and Spices. As with many of my favourite books, these were my mother's and published in the early seventies and late fifties, respectively. It was from her that I learned the value of, say, some chives snipped over 'eggs in a glass' -- how you could, therefore, make something luxurious out of something very simple and of very few ingredients, as long as they were good ingredients. It was also from her that I learned to make something I have made from childhood and continue to make to this day: a pomander, with an orange cloves and, ideally, orris root.

The Curry Bible. In this, Jaffrey sets out to define what an curry is the world over. The result is culinary history and a raft of extremely useful recipes. This book introduced me to the curries of, for example, Trinidad and South Africa.

A Taste of India. This is my favourite of the three, as we follow her round the homes or into temples and offices where she tries the food that the outstanding cooks of India turn out on a daily basis.

Appetite. Nigel Slater. How I love this book. Actually, along with Damon Lee Fowler (see below) I think I have a bit of a crush and have had for some time. Comprehensive without being dry, funny and, well, extremely useful. The fact that he writes so well make me come back to this book again and again.

The Kitchen Diaries and Real Fast Food Both of these books are just incredibly engaging and very useful. Practical guides for you to turn to. It had never occurred to me before I read Nigel Slater that it would be good to read a description of a chip butty and of how salty buttery fingers were an incredibly good feast when you've had a few. And that they need not necessarily be your fingers. You don't need the top shelf, gentlemen: you need a culinary education.

Book of Jewish Food. Huge, comprehensive and an education. There's a reason why Simon Schama is quoted on the cover as saying that Claudia Roden is no more a cookbook writer than Marcel Proust a biscuit baker. You can devour this from cover and learn about Jewish communities the world over. She tells you about vanished places and times, too.

Arabesque. Gorgeous photography. It's about Turkish Moroccan and Lebanese food. Three favourites of mine. It is the vegetable recipes that I like best, such as the Lebanese 'Spinach and beans with caramelised onion' or 'courgettes with vinegar, mint and garlic.'

Middle Eastern Food. This was the book that put me on to Claudia Roden. And, as is often the case, my favourite section is that about little dishes at the start of the book. You want to know about the pickle carts of Baghdad or how the savouring of a savoury morsel of something at the start of a meal with a glass of something potent can bring you ecstasy or put you in a mood of deep contemplation? Read this.

Eating the Elvis Presley Way. David Adler (Blake, 2002). This is both a collection of recipes for foods loved by the king (obviously that sandwich is in there) and a sensitive record of Elvis's life and of those around him. It's funny and sad and an interesting historical record of, for example, the South of his youth and of the American army. And the last meal, as remembered by his housekeeper? Peach ice cream, one other, forgotten flavour and 6 chips ahoy cookies. Between 2 and 4 a.m.

The mystery for me is not whether Elvis lives, but why, as with Johnny Cash, I had somehow failed to appreciate the genius of the man until I was 29. I give you the King.

Mrs Beeton Everyday Cooking. How could you not have this on your shelf? It was where I learned, for example, about cuts of meat, how to make a simple sauce and from Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management how to make beef tea and manage domestic staff.

M.K Fisher. How to Cook a Wolf. This is a book I recommend to everyone. Fisher was writing in time of wartime shortage in America and her theme is economy -- but not the sort of economy you would notice. That's how you keep the wolf at the door. You have money enough in your purse and you also scoff at him because you have made, with care and planning, something good. She will also tell you what to do for a broken heart. If this recession of 2009 is to last, I think we should turn to M.K. Fisher for advice. I have always admired the chapter titles -- such as "How to have a Sleek Pelt" and "How to rise up like New Bread" and the fact that she insists, like Edmund Burke, that some of our energy would best be directed not at saving, but at careful selection.

How to Eat. Now, I know people snipe at Nigella Lawson because she has become somewhat ubiquitous. But this is a superb book. It's a personal compendium of everything she knew about food. It's full of good recipes, conversation and good sense. And the fact that it was Nigel Slater's book of the decade, I notice, should also urge you to read it. I like her 'Basics' chapters best of all --especially her Christmas section. And also the thoroughly sensible chapters on cooking for One and Two and Fast Food.

Floyd on France. Keith Floyd. I have read this many times. I like Floyd's smart, loving and intolerant approach. It's an excellent selection of personal favourites.

Recipes from an Old Farmhouse. Alison Uttley. Read in one sitting. It may seem that you could not use this in your daily life, but use it for inspiration. A prompt to remember that one does not need a complicated list to make something splendid. Remember what you can do with some fresh herbs, some cheese, onions or some potatoes.

From the Southern States...

Southern Cooking: Mrs S. Dull. I love this. A piece of cultural history, but, much as I love the recipes, it's the "kitchen stunts" section that I love best. What daring! Experiment dangerously with your napkins!

Country Cooking by Dori Saunders. I just took to her because you want to go to her house and have her churn peach ice cream for you.

The Church Ladies Celestial Suppers and Sensible Advice. You know it makes sense. You may not want to win a place on a hospitality committee or cook the 'Holy Ghost Supper Party Meatballs' or even 'Pastor's in Trouble Meatloaf', but there is great comfort and kindness to be felt here. Possibly a bit too much jello, too.

Charleston Receipts. You want to know about the Gullah language (never heard of it? go see) or about low country cooking? This is an old and well loved chestnut in our house. And if I wanted to remember why I should be making grits and shrimp as a breakfast dish, I'd come here. As I would if I wanted to learn how to make a she crab soup.

New Southern Baking and Classical Southern Cooking by Damon Lee Fowler. He is funny and learned and compelling. The best introduction for a modern reader to the cooking of the South. And he is from Savannah, Georgia, which makes him, in our household, particularly cool.

And back to Blighty..

Rick Stein's Food Heroes. The best of British ingredients. When I was very young, we would drive over the Mendips to my paternal grandfather and always stop at the Mendip Cheese dairy to buy provisions and presents. And I would taste everything. The sort of cheddar that bites the roof of your mouth and leaves a wonderful aftertaste? Yes. That's what a food hero is.

River Cottage Cookbook. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. I read this from cover to cover in the hope that I could manage to keep hens and get a home smoking system going. Hasn't happened yet but I've had a decent introduction to smallholding and a wonderful sense of a man with a passion.

Invitation to Italian Cooking. I am a big fan of Antonio Carluccio and this is the book that has taught me most about Italian cooking. I am charmed by the clarity of the recipes and by his warmth and humour.

There are many more -- like some of my mother's old books (I particularly like the New Radiation Range) and battered old books which must have been brought back from Dhaka by the family just before Bangladesh came into creation. Mrs Zainab Curimbhoy's Joy of Cooking in Pakistan is a particular favourite. Battenburg cake alongside gulab jamuns and recipes for korma .

Then there is my mother's old recipe book, all in her beautiful teacher's handwriting. In blue ink from the decent fountain pen with which she would have liked all older children to write. Plus the giant stack of recipes culled from magazines, newspapers and leaflets between 1950 and 1990. All bound up in a special edition Terry's All Gold selection box, tied with string. My particular favourites being the earliest -- with their invocationto English people to "try foreign food at home!" And to have something called a "Parents' meal", when you eat off your lap with, perhaps, the television on. And afterwards you might elect to play cards. There is a real frisson of excitement around some of these recipes. Perhaps the notion that you were being a little too adventurous. Reading these, though, does make me think that maybe Philip Larkin was right when he said that sex began in 1963.

Dinner outside for one, alone.

Groovy noodles.

In summer and spring, when everyone else is out (or in bed!), this is a dinner I like all to myself. I have it in a big bowl and sit outside with a book. This meal relies on those thin cellophane noodles you can get in Asian stores or the bigger supermarkets. My local branch of Lidl has them and I bulk buy because I love these so much.

Just cook as many cellophane rice noodles as you think you would eat. They will take seconds in boiling water, so don't turn your back. Take them out, drain them and rinse them in cold water and set to one side.

The list that follows is endlessly variable. This is, essentially, a Thai or South East Asian noodle salad. The hot and sour kick of the dressing is what I crave. So try this.

1 big handful of prawns, fresh or defrosted. I tend to use the little ones here
1 clove of finely chopped garlic
Half a fresh red chilli, very finely chopped. Use what you have, but I suppose a Thai Bird's Eye chili would be good here. Proceed with caution: these guys are HOT.
2 spring onions, finely chopped

And I know I may have said elsewhere that I like tomatoes all on their own and not mixed in with other things for a salad -- but here's my exception. As long as you make this and eat it straight away. Four or five firm cherry tomatoes, finely chopped.

A small handful of coriander and --or-- if you can get it, half a small handful of Thai basil. Plus the same of fresh mint, finely chopped. As you see, I like my herbs and I like to be grabbed by them sometimes -- not just stroked. (At which point in my figurative language, I should stop.)

I know people have said that you can substitute the the other kind of basil but I don't think it works. There's something so fiercely aromatic about the former that is so right here in this salad and in a true love of mine, Vietnamese Pho: a noodle broth to which are added handfuls of fresh herbs.

Make a dressing from 1 tablespoon of nam pla (Thai fish sauce) and two tablespoons of lemon juice.

Just put everything in a bowl and toss gently with the dressing. And eat all alone. Probably just as well, as you're eating raw garlic and a number of powerful flavours here.

I don't believe I ate anything that gave me these flavours until I was nineteen and went travelling in Thailand. I suppose I was aware of my uncle's 'Tulsi' (holy basil) supari mix (I cannot say I have developed a love of betel nut and tulsi --but the smell is transporting for me). I got hooked. It's that mix of sour, hot, sweet and savoury, balanced with wonderfully aromatic herbs.

Fish pie

This is a regular in my house now and was a regular as I grew up. I'd like to say that I make a white sauce in which the fish cooks -- but I don't. It's a slight cheat, but for everyday cooking, this is what I do. If you want to entertain a lot of people and give them something luxurious, thrn make a proper sauce and add smoked haddock and some prawns -- possibly even some scallops. I'll refer you to Nigel Slater --try Appetite (my favourite). But try this as a quick and very economical tea, just as it came from my mother's kitchen.

Now, I was taught to make this with coley. It's delicious and, I notice being marketed in our local fish and chip shop now that we know we should not be eating cod. Or maybe pollock? Try to find a fishmonger and tell him what you are making. Either way, you want some good white fish. I'd prefer fresh fish, but you might like to try out the 'value' frozen white fish fillets that folks seem to overlook in the freezer cabinets of your local supermarket. It's often coley or pollock --sometimes a mixture of more than one fish. Give it a try. But, yes, fresh is best of all.

I would want to serve this in big, generous portions, so allow the following.

For your mashed potato topping, 1.5 kg of potatoes, You want floury ones, otherwise this will not work.
In total, you need about 3 kg of fish. Filleted and checked over for bones and skin. Keep it in large pieces; don't mince it.
A big handful of fresh parsley
A big slice of unsalted butter. But keep the packet to hand.
500ml milk. Yes, full fat is most luxurious, but semi skimmed is what I have at home.

Put the fish in a large oven dish. This looks the part, I think, in a roasting dish. Lay it out evenly across the dish. Cover it with about 500ml of milk (the fish needs to be almost submerged) and a sprinkle of sea salt and black pepper plus the chopped parsley If you like, tuck in a bay leaf and, maybe a finely chopped small onion -- but that's all.

If the fish is being cooked from frozen, put it into the oven at gas 6/200 and allow it to poach for five to ten minutes in the milk. If it's fresh, you can skip this step.

Put your potatoes on to cook; they are done when they are soft enough to mash. Then, mash them well and add the slice of butter, a little milk and salt and pepper to taste. The potato should be silky, but not too runny. Put the mashed potato on top of the fish base, smoothing it over carefully and then roughening up the surface with a fork. You could dot it with just a little more butter, then put it into the oven for 45-50 minutes. The top should be browned and the forked-up peaks beginning to catch a little.

I love this as is, but if you want to make a proper sauce, do it with 500ml of milk to approximately four tablespoons of plain flour. You could also add cream to the recipe I've described above (in which case, reduce the quantity of milk you have put in) or cut the milk for the white sauce half and half with cream. Mussels, prawns, smoked haddock, as I've said, even scallops (coral and all) could be added. You could see which you like best -- or maybe which mood you are in today. But a jumble of different things would not please me. Perhaps the white fish and two other additions at most?

I like to serve this pie with lots of frozen peas. I never seem to get the quantity of fresh that I want --although I seem to remember we often did when I was little. Summers were longer then, as you know. You could also serve a mound of runner beans -- but nothing else. The pie should not be at all dry, but should, instead, spread across your plate: not a tidy plate of food at all

Vegetable samosa

In other words, subzi (in Hindi, for example) samosa!
 वेगेताब्ले समोसा
This is a bit of a weekend project. An essential form of childcare for me, as you may have surmised, involves a project with at least two children and a general writing off of the kitchen. Try this. I will say that you need to get the pastry nice and thin; other than that, don't fuss at the offspring: these will taste wonderful even if they have been dropped on the floor.

Makes 20-24.

180g plain white flour
Fat pinch of salt
4 level tbs soft unsalted butter

So, this is for your pastry. Get a child to do it (it'll get their hands clean! I'm joking, of course) and then finish off the rubbing in so that it's like fine breadcrumbs. Actually, I'm sure you know how to make pastry. Just add some water --say 5tbs, but take it bit by bit-- until you have a smooth ball and put it to one side. And an important thing about pastry is that it likes to be kept cool. Then it will behave better.

For the filling, try this for starters. As you get more confident, you could try adding other fillings: keema (minced lamb) some finely chopped chicken or even prawns. But always with potato: that's what makes these so good, I think.

4 medium potatoes, cut into small dice (or cook in larger pieces and then dice them when they are cooked)
1 onion, finely chopped
170g frozen peas
1 finely chopped red or green chilli
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper
1 dsp cumin seeds; ditto coriander: bash them up a bit first. Use a pestle and mortar.
1tbs finely chopped fresh ginger
1 dsp yellow mustard seeds
1 dsp garam masala

First, cook your potatoes until they are well done, adding the frozen peas just before they get to this point. You could also plonk a bit of frozen spinach in with them when they are cooking. Very good for you. Drain well and mash the potatoes and peas.

Now fry off the chopped onion in a bit of sunflower oil or ghee (clarified butter) and then add the spices. Don't let them burn. Cook gently for a couple of minutes and then add the potatoes to the frying pan. Mix well and cook for another minute. Taste, taste and see if you are happy. A little lemon or lime juice might be good here.

I have to say that the next bit is where I might disappoint Madhur Jaffrey or Vicky Bhogal. I roll my pastry out and cut it into about 24 squares and, having filled them with about a dessertspoonful of the mixture, I then fold them into triangles, folding the edges together neatly, dampening them down with a little water and trimming them, if necessary, with a sharp knife or my cooking scissors. If you want to be fabulously authentic, may I suggest that you repair to one of the above authors and follow their instructions for folding!

Now, the key points about samosas. Fry them slowly in shallow hot oil, turning once or twice, until they are golden brown and very crisp. Also, if you keep the filling to between a dessertspoon and a tablespoon, they should not explode. Keep the pastry thin and drain them well on kitchen paper after you've fried them and they won't be greasy, either.

I like these with a sharp tamarind and mind fresh chutney. Mix two tablespoons of tamarind paste with six tablespoons of water. It is watery, in case you were wondering. Salt and sugar to taste (although I dispense with the latter) and a big bunch of finely chopped fresh mint. OR, the same of tamarind and thick Greek yoghurt to taste with a good pinch of salt.

Alternatively, I was once served a lovely chutney for these which consisted of good thick yoghurt, tamarind paste and mint jelly from a jar. And a related household tip from my plumber which I cannot resist passing on: this thick green gelatinous stuff is brilliant for smearing on your taps and shower head in hard water areas. It clings, you see. Leave it overnight and your limescale is history. He advises you to go to Lidl for the best value mint jelly. It also has no bits! This is a jolly useful text, isn't it?

Boiled bacon and parsley sauce.

This says home --in at least four family houses-- to me. It's just a boiled hock of ham, cut into thick slices and served with whole carrots, potatoes (floury if you can but, as it's summer, some new little ones would be good, too) and a proper parsely sauce. Sometimes, my mother made this with butter beans rather than potatoes. I will say, though, that plenty of black pepper to grind over the top is a must. As is a splash of vinegar -- and I mean malt vinegar. Cheap as chips.

And yes I know I've called it bacon -- but that's because my family does. If you look back at my July the 4th ham, you'll see some clarification. Instead of the ham hock, you could use a decent piece of gammon which could be cheaper.

Get together a 2kg ham
6-8 medium potatoes (or, say, 12 smaller ones)
12 medium carrots
Your biggest pan!

So, first boil your ham. I'd think a 2kg ham hock should do it, with seconds and hopefully a few leftovers. Put it in a big saucepan filled with cold water. Bring it to the boil and simmer for around an hour and forty minutes. At which time, you would add the potatoes and the carrots to the pan. The potatoes should be in large chunks or whole if they are smaller; the carrots whould be whole, but cut in half or even in three sections, lengthwise, if they are on the big side. Cook the lot for another twenty minutes and during this time make your parsley sauce. You may prefer to cook your potatoes and carrots in two separate pans. I prefer not to for the sake of economy (as in fuel and washing up).

Make a roux in a small saucepan with about a tablespoon of plain flour and 50g of butter. Cook it very gently. Then add the milk --it's a good idea to whisk it-- about 500ml, a little at a time until you have a smooth mixture. Now simmer this very gently for around five minutes, add the chopped parsely and season to taste. Full fat milk is nicest (no surprises there) but semi skimmed is what I have to hand in our house.

Now, when you have made the sauce and the two hour ham cooking time is up, take out your ham, slice it into generous pieces and give everyone some potatoes and carrots. Hand round the parsley sauce. I have never known anyone not to be grateful for a dinner such as this.

Those butter beans. If you want, soak some butter beans overnight or for about 8 hours. I'd give precise measurements, but it seems simpler to suggest allowing two handfuls of dried butterbeans per person. Cook them with the ham for the second hour. They should be soft but not have turned to mush. And I don't think this recipe works with tinned butterbeans, which seem to have been boiled to death and acquired an unpleasant acidic tang into the bargain -- but correct me if you've found some better ones.

The leftover ham would be splendid with a good salad or in sandwiches with pickle. And don't waste that ham stock. I mentioned that with the July 4th ham. Turn it into a split pea soup (there should be twice as much liquid in volume as lentils) or do the same with fresh or frozen green peas, in which case liquidise or hand blend the soup after you have brought it to the boil and simmered for ten minutes.

A simple summer salad

Just right for this time of year

The ingredients of this could vary, but I like it as is and make it plentifully in the summer. Put on six eggs to boil and, when they have cooked for about four minutes, take them out and leave them to cool -- or just refill their cooking pan with cold water and leave them in it.

Take a green lettuce. How about a butterhead or some cos -- or just any proper floppy lettuce from your garden? Wash it and dry it well and put it in a bit wide bowl. Now add a small bunch of radishes, topped and tailed as necessary (although you can eat the green tops, too) and cut into slices. Chop a bunch of spring onions into small pieces. Tap the eggs all around --I tend to bash them on the side of the sink-- so that the shell cracks. Peel it off, rinse and dry the eggs and cut them in half. Fluff up all the ingredients in the bowl and add the eggs. Dress the salad at the last minute with a dressing of three parts extra virgin olive oil to one part white wine vinegar or lemon juice. Season well. You could add some finely chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley or, my favourite, chervil.

That's it. Just a simple summer salad. You could serve it with some cheese and bread -- or with the leftover ham from the next recipe.

Coming back from the brink dinner.

When you've been ill, had your heart broken, been bereaved, you need good food. Sometimes, upset can bring a hearty appetite with it. Either way, we need to tempt you. Thus far, you've survived: can there be something to celebrate? How I hope so.

I tend to roast things when solace is required. You know: home and hearth. And I tend to come back to a roast chicken dinner -- but here is another idea which I will probably manage some time soon. It's what my mother used to cook for her Easter meal and sometimes for midsummer, too. I have a sweet memory of recovering from mumps as a child. Still in my nightdress, she took me out to the garden and there, inside the long feathery arms of the willow tree, were a table, cushions, four cousins and one aunt. And we ate roast turkey with all the trimmings. Me in my nightie, with sweet peas on it, aged eight. I'm not sure how much I ate but sitting there, in the summer warmth, it was seared in my memory. Being loved. Feeling better. Next to the willow was a hazel tree which my father planted on the day I was born. He was, for me --they both were-- of few words. But he was, like Thomas Hardy's hope for himself, "a man who used to notice such things."

Read on. The table in the willow's arms is not obligatory. But even now, I like to build a den. Try it.

Roast turkey
Stuffing
Carrots
Cabbage
Roast potatoes
Gravy

For your turkey, a Kelly bronze is what you are after. Like chicken, though, I won't touch it if it's not free range. Weight would be 5-6 kg. When you first get it home, remember to remove the giblets because you will use them to make gravy. Get the turkey to room temperature first. While this is happening, pop the giblets into a pan with water to cover, give the liver to the cat and bring to the boil (the giblets and water, not the cat) and leave to summer very gently. This will form the basis for your turkey gravy.

When the chill of the fridge has lessened, rinse the inside of the bird with cold water and then blot the bird dry (with a kitchen towel, she hastens to add: but you knew that!). Brush some melted butter over the turkey breast or just squish some pieces onto it, here and there.

Now, as with chicken, I cook the turkey upside down first. As with chicken, the fattest bits are in the back and, cooked this way, the fat bastes the meat, percolates down through it and keeps it all succulent. Now cook it at gas 6/200 for about forty minutes and then turn the heat down to 4/180 (I cannot honestly say that my mother or I would always have done this, though). I expect that the turkey will take about two and a half hours. For the last half hour to forty minutes, turn it right side up. That way, you get good meat and proper, sticky skin. The bird is done when the juices run clear. I test where the thigh meats the body. Use a meat thermometer if you lack confidence.

While the turkey is cooking, peel and parboil some potatoes. I'm thinking, as usual, for four to six with seconds. Allow two to three potatoes each. When they are a little softened, but the centre is still not yielding, drain them and then shake them hard against the sides of the pan. Put to one side.

Prepare some carrots. As I've said before, from the garden or organic. When the government suggested we always peel carrots some years back, I thought "Hmmm: time to switch to organic!" I just give the carrots a good scrub (unless they look a bit scruffy still) and cut them into long, thick strips. Put them in a pan and cover them with water. But don't cook them yet. I allow two medium carrots per person.

Prepare some cabbage. Overdo ye not the water. Having said that, I love all sorts of greens: overcooked, done to death, hospital and school dinner sprouts. The lot. I also like a nice perky savoy, well shredded. Pull off any tatty outer leaves, shred and put in a pan just covered with water. Leave to one side. When you've done that, check that the giblets don't need some extra water.

For your stuffing. Now here's a sea change. Our turkey was always stuffed. Because the man from Georgia lives with me (and also because it's easier to time the turkey cooking if the bird is unstuffed), I usually cook it alongside, as he likes it. In his vocabulary, then, it's dressing, not stuffing. Not that I am quite at ease with this state of affairs, I add.

2 large onions finely chopped
125g unsalted butter
1 small handful of sage leaves, finely chopped. Or dried, crumbled. But I do think that dried sage can be a little musty.
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large egg, beaten
Approximately 120 ml water
500g breadcrumbs. Perhaps have a little more to hand.
A nutmeg to grate into the mixture

Melt the butter, sweat the onions very gently until they are soft and golden, add the sage. In a separate bowl, beat the egg well and add the breadcrumbs. Tip the onions in, add the water (you could add a little of the liquid from the simmering giblets to replace part of the water), season to taste and add a generous grating of fresh nutmeg. I cook this in well buttered dishes for about 40 minutes.

For your roast potatoes. When the turkey is about fifty minutes from done, put a baking dish of hot fat into the oven. Sunflower oil -- up to you. When it's shimmering and very hot, chuck in the potatoes. They will sizzle. Make sure they are coated with the oil (or fat of your choice: my mother used lard and I'm not dead yet). Ten minutes later, put in the stuffing.

The gravy. While that's all cooking, take the giblets from the gravy. Make a roux with a tablespoon or plain flour and a little of the giblet liquor. Now, add the rest of the giblet broth --you will need about 500ml in total-- and cook gently until smooth. Keep to one side.

About five minutes before the turkey has had its allotted cooking time, put the cabbage and carrot on to cook. You can now turn up the oven temperature to blitz the potatoes so that they crisp up. Be careful not to burn the stuffing, though.

When your turkey is done, take it out of the oven and leave it to rest on a plate. Pour off some of the fat from the roasting tin, then put the tin on the hob and scrape and scrape to get at all the good bits which will have stuck to the pan. These are the caramelised meat juices and you musn't waste them! Add the roux, cooking it very gently. Then add the broth from the giblets, making sure there are no lumps. By now, your vegetables should be done. Drain them and add a little water from the carrot pan to the gravy. Bring to the boil, stir well and check for seasoning.
Put your turkey on the table. Take the potatoes out, shake them well to dislodge any that have welded themselves to the dish (the best ones!), put the vegetables in three dishes (I like plain white ones), put the stuffing in a bowl and put the gravy in a jug. All is well. You might like proper English trifle for afters. Read on.

Quiche Lorraine.

Subtitled: how to make something very fine. Luxurious. Comforting. Of something which is so often destroyed.

Elizabeth David once decribed this quiche as a culinary dustbin. She was right. I was reading in a popular magazine last night all about a 'luxury quiche Lorraine' which contained onions, lots of herbs, mushrooms all manner of things. Nice, maybe, but not really a simple and splendid Quiche Lorraine. And, in my view, luxury often derives from simplicity.

I have an important food memory of being served this, in a big slice, somewhere near Strasbourg in Lorraine and Alsace. I was a feisty teenager of 17 taken on holiday, alone, with my parents. And this, as my mother said, shut me up. It was hot from the oven. My first globe artichoke did the same thing on that trip. I thought it was so beautiful, but did not know what to do with it. Now I do, the rest is silence

A proper quiche was also one of the first things I was ever taught to make. It was, along with a cake for the week ahead, my Sunday afternoon project as a child.

250g of shortcrust pastry. I should say make your own, having harped on about simplicity and luxury above. But I don't always.
4 large eggs, beaten well.
40g smoked bacon. Buy the best you can (as in naturally smoked, not smoke flavoured by something scary) and dice it. I snip mine with kitchen scissors, then fry it gently for a few minutes.
450 ml double cream
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1-2 teaspoons of unsalted butter to dot on top.

And nothing else!

Just line a pie or flan dish (20cm) with your pastry. My mother always kept some white beans (haricots, I believe) to use as baking beans. To be sure that your pastry won't collapse, you add the beans to the pastry and then part cook. Five to ten minutes should do it at gas 6/200. If you are confident, though, just prick the pastry gently with a fork before you add the filling.

Now beat the eggs and cream welll together and season with a small pinch of salt and a good grind of pepper. Scatter the bacon pieces evenly across the dish and pour over this liquid. Finish by breaking the butter into little pieces and dotting them here and there on top. Now bake the lot for about 25 minutes. If it looks well set before this -- pierce the middle gently with a skewer-- take it out. Be careful not to over-do it, though.

I would serve this hot, quite unadorned, on a plate. It needs no other accompaniment, but I might like a tomato or green salad afterwards. This was, in fact, a perfect Saturday lunch for me.

Chicken obsession.

I am aware that I mention chicken a lot in my writing. I just think that, for a small guy, your average chicken gives us a great deal. So, while I had cheese on toast (see previous recipe) for tea last night, I'll detail yesterday's chicken adventures. It's July, but this could have happened at any time of year in our house -- give or take the variation of a few seasonal greens from the garden.

First, you roast a large free range chicken. So about a 4 kg bird. I no longer even look at weights or timings; I just roast it breast down for half an hour or so (the oven is on 200), turn it over and cook it until the juices run clear when you pierce its thickest part: that's where the thigh meets the body. It will smell wonderful and its skin will be golden; there will be nuggets of caramelised juices around the chicken in the roasting tin.

Oh -- why roast breast down first? Because the greatest deposits of fat are on the underside, so roasting upside down allows the fat to percolate down through the meat, moistening it.

Lunch was another sublime chicken sandwich

I shredded some hot breast meat with my hands and then piled it inside a warmed tortilla with some butterhead lettuce from my neighbour's garden, a good dollop of sweet chilli pickle and the same of Greek yoghurt. A sprinkling of sea salt. I ate in the garden with the juices dripping down my front. Had to change my clothes.

Dinner for hungry young children.
Not all of this has something to do with chicken -- but perhaps it's a useful digression.

Elijah and Isaac were ravenous when they came home from school. The chicken was still warm and they ate the legs and wings with hunks of cucumber and carrot and -- I'm aware this is hideously middle class- they asked for sea salt (most specifically) to sprinkle on it.

Pudding was what we refer to as never-ending ice cream

Rather than give the children spoonfuls from a big tub, buy them a small tub each. That is, one that is, I suppose, intended to be two helpings for an adult. They get excited about this because they get to have the whole of something and each time they add more sprinkles, chocolate buttons and chocolate sauce.It's novel; it makes them happy; be careful they don't dribble in it. I suspect this breaks hygiene rules, but so far, so good. Back to the chicken.

A chicken salad for summer with seasonal variation!


Tea done, I pulled the rest of (most of) the lumps of white meat from the chicken. About five handfuls. Into a big bowl they went. Then, on a chopping board, I minced half a fresh red chilli, 4 spring onions (all the green, too!), two carrots and one yellow pepper. I added a dessertspoon of Marigold Bouillon powder, which is a trusty staple of mine: I use the reduced salt version. In went the chicken, followed by lots of freshly ground black pepper and the juice of a lemon. To this you add 180g of previously cooked and cooled plain couscous. Mix well. Check for seasoning,.

Voila! This fed one adult for dinner, me as a little snack at 5 p.m. and did lunch today for me, too.

But we're not done yet! Chicken soup.

This time, I was not making stock, but a soup with plenty of meat left on the carcass. Just put what's left of the chicken in a big deep pan, cover with cold water and then add about twice as much again in volume. Add three large potatoes, peeled (or not if they are new), a fat bunch of broccoli,with only the toughest end of the stem removed and four carrots, chunked. Add another green vegetable, if you have it.I also added, for extra succour, a tablespoon of the Marigold bouillon I mentioned above.

Bring the soup to the boil and then simmer for about forty minutes. By this time, the meat will have fallen away from the bone, the vegetables will be soft and the broccoli will have virtually melted into the soup. Today, that's what I'm after. Check for seasoning and, when the soup is cooler, strip away the meat still on the bones and remove all the rest of the chicken bones from the soup. I don't mind with other meat if all the bones are still there; with chicken, I do. I would also remove the skin*, as it does not look or taste so good (if only in texture) when boiled in a soup. In reality, my children will probably have stripped it all off the chicken anyway.

This soup fed a weary traveller at 10 p.m. and will do dinner tonight for two, with possible seconds. Bread and cheese.


*Stretching the Meat

I have seen, in more than a few recipes from the American South, descriptions of how nothing, historically, was wasted. If you had some chicken skins, you would cut them into little pieces and then either roast them in the oven or fry them in a pan. They should be very crispy. Then, for example, just add them to a dish of mashed potatoes. It gives the potatoes a little crunch here and there plus a hit of deep savoury flavour. And that, so you see, is called stretching the meat.You'll either like this, or you won't. If you want to know more about such good sense, though, may I introduce you to Dori Saunders? She's billed as "America's favourite peach farmer" and grew up on one of the oldest African American-owned farms in South Carolina.I especially like Country Cooking. Recipes and Stories from the Family Farm Stand.

And Ladies and Gentlemen, now we have expended the chicken --and I hope nothing was wasted.

The simplest pudding on the planet

I am almost embarrassed to suggest this here, it's so simple -- but off we go.

P.J.'s yoghurt pudding.

Had in childhood from the kitchen of my beloved auntie Pat, never forgotten, often wanted.

Take a large and pretty bowl. Preferably glass. Cover the bottom with a thick layer of soft brown sugar. It has to be soft brown or it won't work. Now, put on top two large pots of the best Greek yoghurt you can find. Smooth off the top and scatter flaked toasted almonds on it. Chill until it's, well, chilled. And your bowl should, ideally, look like it's generously filled.

To serve, make sure you scoop up a generous helping from bottom to top of bowl, so that everyone gets the cold, fudgy-brown sugar from the bottom, the creamy yoghurt and the crunch of the almonds.

Cheese on toast to beat all.

I am particularly fond of cheese on toast -- plain and simple or with a few variations. But I don't make it unless I've got some good crusty bread, brown or white. Also best,I think, with some mature cheddar.

A home alone cheese on toast tea last night went like this.

Lightly toast two fairly hefty slices of granary bread. Lightly. Then, add slices of mature cheddar so that the toast is covered -- but leaving the edges a little free here and there. The point of this, you see, is so that the edges might get a bit charred. And I toast the bread first so that it's firm under the cheese.

Under the grill it goes and, when it comes out, you have to slather it with Worcester sauce and eat immediately. That's it. I had this with a small tumbler of rough red wine and, all things considered, it was a rustic and satisfying tea.

Here's another suggestion. Welsh Rarebit.

Now, this is also known as "Welsh Rabbit". Cymingen! (That's rabbit in Welsh. I'm joking.)I've only see it referred to as rabbit in America -- and a book which I won't name, but which makes me chortle, says that, in England, you have it for high tea, often topped with tomatoes. In Britain, both names seems to be used.I'll come back to that in a moment.

Historically, there are a few variations. The simplest is that you top your cheese on toast with some good English mustard before you cook it, remembering to add a good grinding of pepper. Serve it piping hot. This is the most straightforward in conception and I see it's the one recommended by Mrs Beeton. It's also what we tended to have for a weekend breakfast, sometimes topped with a couple of slices of back bacon, crispy at the edges.

Alternatively, if you wanted to serve a more complicated (and authentic) and really very luxurious version of Welsh rarebit, try this.

30g unsalted butter
1 level tbs plain flour
1 tsp English mustard
4 or 5 drops of Worcester sauce
180 g grated mature cheddar cheese (or, whatever cheddar you have)
5 tbs milk OR, as a variation, make it half and half milk and a decent beer. Or just use beer.
4 slices of lightly toasted bread
salt and pepper to taste, but I don't expect it needs it.

First, you make a roux in a pan with the fat and flour, then add the beer, milk, mustard, Worcester sauce and the cheese.Cook it only a very little, otherwise things begin to separate and look a little greasy rather than tempting. Spoon the mixture onto the toast, spread it gently and cook it immediately under a hot grill. It will be golden and bubbling and, hopefully, you might also have a few charred edges of toast, too.

You could, I see from some of my mother's 1950s cookbooks, serve these as 'savouries'. In this way, cut into small pieces, this amount might do 8. But sod that for a lark: this is best in generous portions for two famished people or possibly four more polite ones -- with mugs of steaming tea. Actually, why not make double? It keeps well for a few days in the fridge if you don't end up using it all at once.

If you top any version of the rarebit with a poached egg, you end up with a Golden Buck (note the rabbit theme) -- which sounds quite racy to me. I've read elsewhere that another variety, known as Yorkshire Rarebit, has slices of ham under the cheese (or cheese preparation)or that it is sometimes chopped up and mixed with the cheese before the whole is grilled.

And the etymology of the word: which came first, the rarebit or the rabbit? You'd think that the rabbit was a corruption of the rarebit -- so a later addition.But I'll bow to the Oxford English Dictionary (complete edition -- I got curious)which says that rabbit came first and lists 1725 as its first recorded usage. (I wonder if someone thought rarebit sounded posher?) The OED also tells us that it included cayenne pepper and makes no mention of milk in the recipe -- only ale.

So why the rabbit? Ah,it's ironic, most likely. While in the England of the 18th century, the poor man's meat tended to be rabbit, in Wales, where folk were even poorer, it was cheese. But there's nothing poor about Welsh 'rabbit': it's my dream tea, so take that hob nobs who could afford to go to the butcher and buy sirloin!

I have one more thought along the same lines. One of my most loved cookery books is Alison Uttley's Recipes from an Old Farmhouse (Faber, 1966). It's a record of the author's childhood memories in the Derbyshire countryside. I loved --and still do-- the cosiness of many of the dishes mentioned: cheese pudding, toad in the hole, herb pudding and --my favourite-- a preparation of cheese. If you need to feel cossetted and full of nostalgia, try and get hold of it. But the simplicity of its recipes are just right for today, too -- so try these, based on this wonderful book.

Scotch Woodcock.

The preparation for this is just like the more authentic of the rarebit (rabbit?) recipes I gave above. In a saucepan, over a low heat, mix together 60g of grated parmesan cheese, 1 tsp of cream, (single or double) and a good pinch of cayenne pepper. Other recipes I have seen for this include eggs and milk, but I like the austerity of mine! To this you add either two tsps of anchovy paste (as in Gentleman's Relish -- with which I am obsessed) or the equivalent of gently mashed up anchovy fillets from a can. Just let it all cohere and melt gently in the pan, spread it on hot toast and eat. Does one greedy person (me) or two more genteel folk.

Here's another. In France or Switzerland, you may have eaten a raclette -- great hunks of melting cheese, scooped toward your mouth with bits of good bread. Here's the Wiltshire version of my childhood, which I based on Alison Uttely's and still love today.I shall just call it Cheese.


Just get two medium sized onions and then either peel and cut up into largeish chunks and boil until softened OR (which I prefer) roast in a hot oven with just a little oil. Thy should begin to caramelise at the edges.When the onion is done, add it, in a pan over a low heat, to about 120g grated mature cheddar and 3 tablespoons of cream. I don't think it needs butter, but some do. You could add 60 g to make it extra rich. Just pile in onto hot toast, jacket potatoes -- or scoop it up from the pan with hunks of bread. You might want a couple of pieces of bacon alongside. I might like some gherkins-- for sharpness-- too.

All of these are very simple, but wouldn't you like to go to someone's house for tea and get any of these (unless anchovies repel you, I suppose)with a hug and a mug of tea, tumbler of beer or carafe of red wine? Thought so. And who is not delighted by really good toast --especially with something delectable on top?

A Guinness cake

Now Guinness: there's something I grew to love. Not keen? Try this cake. It's rich and malty. This recipe is in my handwriting. I think I was nine or tens and had probably just cooked this. The inviting picture above --ooh: it's 10 a.m.: is that too early for a pint of the dark stuff?-- is by Nifty at www.flick'r.com Thank you!

240g unsalted butter
240g soft brown sugar
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
300g plain flour
2 level teaspoons of mixed spice
240g seedless raisins
240g sultanas
120g mixed peel
120 chopped walnuts
8-12 tablespooons of Guinness.

Cream the butter and the sugar together -- it needs to be light and creamy. Gradually beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour and mixed spice. Add the raisins, sultanas, mixed peel and walnuts. Mix well together. Stir 4 tablespoons of Guinness into the mixture and stir to a soft dropping consistency. Turn the mixture into a greased 7 inch round cake tin and bake in a moderate oven for 1 hour. Then reduce the heat to cool (so down from Gas 3 to 2 or 160 to 150) and cook for another one and a half hours. Out it comes (do the trick with the skewer) and leave it to cool.

When your lovely cake is cool, remove it from the tin, prick the base with a skewer and spoon over the remaining Guinness.

I see that my mother has written a footnote to the recipe: "This cake is improved if kept for one week before eating." And, like the previous recipe for mincemeat cake, it's the sort of thing that keeps well. Probably higher in iron than your average cake,too, so I expect it would be healthier for you to have two slices.

A mincemeat cake.

A Sunday afternoon cake.

This is a little Christmassey -- but nice any time of year. It's a family recipe, sent from one sister to another. I shall make this on Sunday. It's just a little spicy -- and very comforting.


90g unsalted butter
30g vegetable shortening or, in the case of my mother, some lard!
2 large free range eggs
210g self raising flour
120g soft brown sugar
360g good quality mincemeat. You could make your own, but, well, I don't
A little milk -- just in case you need it.
I also like to add a fat pinch of cinnamon and one of nutmeg.

You need a 7 inch round cake tin; grease it and then line it. Cream the butter and the sugar and beat in the eggs. Stir in the mincemeat, add your fat pinches of spice and fold in the flour. Now, the mixture should be moist but if you think not, add a little milk -- say a tablespoon?

Bake in a warm oven (by which I mean 160/gas mark 3)for about twenty minutes and then turn the oven down to gas mark 2 (150) and cook for about one and a quarter hours. The top should be firm and you should see that your cake is shrinking slightly from the sides of the tin. I'm sure you know all about skewers going in and coming out clean when the cake is done, though. Turn out. Looks fetching when dusted with a little icing sugar. Also, I'm not convinced about the turning down of the oven - but the cake works as is!

Flapjacks that never fail

I have this recipe, scribbled on a brown envelope, in my father's hand. It is postmarked Fishguard, Dyfed -- July 1978. Why was my father overcome with a sudden urge to write down a flapjack recipe in a rush of inspiration and why had he saved this tatty old envelope? I recall that he found cooking tiresome and stressful, but perhaps he had a yen to bake cakes for the fete? I shall never know. The picture above, by the way, shows a reminder on my chalk board at home which was prompted by my youngest son. When making flapjacks with him, we don't usually get much into the oven. x

Our house is never short of flapjacks. I do diverge from the following recipe a little in that I sometimes add some flour to make them a bit weightier (for school lunchboxes)and a splash of milk -- which gives them a slightly creamy taste and me the impression that I am giving more calcium to my milk-shy offspring.

240g rolled oats
150g unsalted butter
60g demerara sugar
2 level tablespoons of golden syrup.

Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a saucepan then, in a large bowl, mix it into the oats. Just press the mixture into a greased 8 inch tin and bake for about 15 minutes in a medium hot oven.

Now, my father was a man who enjoyed precision. I notice that the recipe goes on to include the following in short neat sentences: "Bake in the centre of the oven. Cut into 2 inch squares. Cool in the tin. Turn onto a rack. Store in an airtight tin. Eat quickly before anyone else gets them."

I made these today after I looked at this recipe. I was glad I did. It's the twenty first anniversary of my father's death. I wish that, as an adult, I had known him. We could have had ourselves a proper tea party in the sun right now. He could admonish his grandsons.