This is a great dish to make while having a day of cooking. Carrots are at their best in July but be careful not to buy any that have been kept too long in plastic bags. I like to serve this dish as part of a first course. 500g carrots 100ml virgin olive oil 2…

Sometimes recipes just come your way. My local shop supplies many of the best restaurants in Bath. While I was being served, a young chef came in wanting lovage. There was none in the shop but I have plenty of fresh lovage growing again after the first leaves had been cut down. The lovage was…

This dish marks another point in the allotment calendar. The asparagus season finishes on 18 June (Waterloo Day) and remaining spears are left to grow. We will weed the asparagus bed and give it a good feed. Bring on the next dish! This is very special. Its origin is in southern Italy where it is…

My mint patch is up and running. We use so much that all the caveats about being overrun with mint do not apply. Mint in salads and tabbouleh, with potatoes and, of course, lamb. Mint pesto is a great alternative to the basil version. As well as serving it with pasta and lamb dishes, it…

Welsh rarebit has been a staple quick meal all through my life, on a par with beans on toast or scrambled eggs. Usually we have fresh bread and a soft cheese for Saturday lunch along with a sherry or Madeira but last weekend there was enough of our toasting bread remaining and some local Cheddar…

This dish is one of the first delights of the year. I like it as a first course, served warm with broken pieces of feta cheese scattered on top. Offer crusty bread to soak up the juices. Trim young broad bean pods and cut them at an angle into lengths of about 2 cm. A…

Mussels seem to tick all the boxes; being tasty, good for us, environmentally friendly and excellent value. I need no encouragement to eat them. This recipe, billed as being ‘supper delicious’ was in an article by Gill Meller published in The Observer . It makes a perfect first course or part of an alfresco lunch.…

We had ‘Chaliapin Duck‘ (already on this website) over the Easter weekend and the rich stock was perfect for making onion soup.. As Elizabeth David writes in French Provincial Cooking, ‘The onion soup generally regarded as ‘French’, with sodden bread, strings of cheese and half-cooked onion floating about in it, seems to me a good…

As a child, ‘Mrs Arnold’s Ginger Cake’ was always a great favourite. I had the recipe, stuck in my recipe scrapbook but somehow the page was lost. By chance, I found a very similar recipe in a magazine. The result is just as good. On Madeira they sell locally produced treacle which I use whenever…

Signs of spring and we celebrated with a half leg of lamb. Simon Hopkinson in Week In Week Out serves best end of lamb with a gratin Dauphinois which I thought would also go well with our roast. SH’s method is convincing. He mingles the infused cream with the raw potato slices with his fingertips,…