Pumpkin, bacon, chestnut and barley risotto

I think this is the quintessence of autumn. The contrast in texture between the nutty grains of barley, the fudgy interior of the chestnuts and the meltingly soft roasted pumpkin is just what one needs on a chilly October evening. I also just realised that this dish is quite appropriate, today being Halloween. The recipe is here, for those who wish to try it. You can use normal risotto rice if you like - it will take half the time - but I quite like the flavour and texture of barley.

This recipe is a bit of a revelation because I've never eaten a chestnut before. Which strikes me as a little bit odd, given that I will eat anything. I suppose I have never had the opportunity. They always smell amazing, roasting on those stalls in the middle of towns in the run up to Christmas, but for some unknown reason I've never actually sampled one. So I got a little bit excited when I took my tray of scored and roasted chestnuts out of the oven, their skins unfurling to reveal a sumptuously soft interior. I love their texture and rich sweetness, and I love it even more when I remember that they are in fact very good for you. There's also something rather relaxing about peeling a tray of roasted chestnuts (it's one of those "One for the recipe, two for me..." moments). You can buy them ready-peeled and vacuum-packed, or frozen, but why forego the smell of roasting chestnuts in your kitchen?

I think I've stumbled upon a new addiction.

Polpo, Soho

Tapas-style eating scares me. As someone who is, let's face it, greedy, I tremble at the notion of someone else being able to lean over and help themselves to any plate of food that I have my eye on (which, needless to say, is every plate of food). Fortunately, I think Polpo have come up with the solution: make everything on the menu sound so delicious that you simply have to order far more food than you can possibly eat, and therefore get a satisfying amount of each dish without someone else stealing it. 

The format is based on the Venetian bacaro, a wine bar serving cichetti, which are small, bite-size snacks that you'd normally eat standing up at the bar. I think the owners realised that the English might be averse to a) eating their dinner standing up and b) eating things in bite-size portions. The menu is therefore divided into tiny snacks, and larger dishes. To begin with, we had arancini and crostini. Arancini are deep-fried rice balls, a typical Sicilian snack. I ate one in Palermo once that was the size of my head, and I had only a small, flimsy napkin with which to stem the flow of oil that trickled down my wrist as I bit into the creamy, starchy interior. These were very much smaller, about the size of small dumplings. They were non-greasy and immensely satisfying. The fig, prosciutto and mint crostino was very good too - you can't really go wrong with chargrilled bread, fig and ham. I thought mint might be a bit odd, but it worked well. 

Then the culinary onslaught began. Dish after dish arrived - I thought I'd been restrained when I ordered, but everything had just been too tempting and we ended up with slightly more than I had anticipated. First, a mackerel tartare served with horseradish and carta di musica, which is a long, wafer thin piece of bread. The tartare was nice and refreshing when eaten alongside all the other dishes we'd ordered, but it didn't taste enough of mackerel for my liking. Perhaps that's because I associate mackerel with a crispy, flavoursome, charred skin, which obviously you miss out on if you eat it raw. 

Possibly my favourite was the simplest dish of all: roast pumpkin, prosciutto, and ricotta salata. This cheese is something I've only ever had in Italy or in Italian restaurants (proper ones, like Bocca di Lupo, also in Soho - not Pizza Express), and it is divine - it has the saltiness of parmesan but the creaminess of a good goat's cheese. Sprinkled over a fat wedge of pumpkin, meltingly gold but charred and stickily caramelised in places, the ham draped over it like a blanket, it made a perfect contrast of textures and flavours: salty ham, creamy cheese and sweet pumpkin. The topping of crispy pumpkin seeds finished it off beautifully. It was the quintessence of Italian cooking: totally simple, but utterly wonderful.

Also wonderful was the wild mushroom piadina. Oh, how that word brought a leap of joy to my heart. I discovered piadine in Ravenna a year ago; they're very popular in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. It's basically a chewy flatbread made with pig fat as the shortening (so a cross between pastry and bread) which is then stuffed with whatever you like, folded in half and grilled. Like a panino, but infinitely better. The pig fat part sounds gross, but it doesn't taste like that - it just tastes like a chewy pitta bread. I had one in Ravenna filled with parma ham, mozzarella and rocket. I had another filled with a cheese with the most wonderful name - squacquerone - which was like a very mild cream cheese, and caramelised figs - almost black and dripping with aromatic syrup. The inside melts while the outside stays chewy and doughy...oh, it is actual gastronomic heaven. The thought of it fills me with happiness. I genuinely can't believe the idea hasn't caught on abroad, when almost everything else Italian has. Perhaps there is a niche in the market there...you read it here first...

Ah. A tangent. Anyway. Polpo's version was drenched in mushrooms. I'm not sure if you can apply the word 'drenched' to something that isn't liquid, but these mushrooms were so saturated with garlic butter that the dough really was drenched. It had been grilled to crispiness on the outside but was still chewy in the middle, and I think the chef had tipped an entire pan of mushrooms onto it. Beautiful, soft, earthy wild mushrooms. My only criticism is that there was far too much salt, but I was prepared to overlook this for the sheer joy of biting into chewy dough and dark, tangy, garlicky mushrooms.

Who would have thought that the humble panino could ever legitimise its presence on a restaurant menu? Well, stuff it with cured pork shoulder and peperonata (roasted, sweet, soft peppers), and you may never want to eat anything ever again. The peppers in particular were just perfect, juicy and sweet and wonderful against the rich slivers of pork. 

Dessert was a struggle. Even for my often-deployed second stomach, it was a challenge. But I wasn't going to pass up a flourless orange and almond cake with mascarpone. It was sweet and syrupy and rather lovely, but perhaps not moist or sharp enough for my liking - this is a very minor complaint, however, and if I hadn't just eaten a lot of rich food, I probably wouldn't care about sharpness. We also had an amazing layered dessert of thin pastry, caramelised apples and raisins. A bit like a deconstructed apple strudel...but somehow so much better. 

Please go to Polpo. Its atmosphere is great, the staff are really friendly and it's not bad, price-wise, for London (about £20 a head, depending on how greedy you are). Order more than you think you can eat, and then eat more than you thought you could. It's Italian food, but not as you know it - and this is definitely a good thing. 

Incidentally, polpo means octopus in Italian. I have yet to figure out why it's called that. I'm sure there is a reason.

Pollack with a Davidstow cheddar crust

My attention was recently drawn to the fact that Nathan Outlaw - one of Cornwall's biggest chefs, and also one of my favourite chefs (largely due to his appearances on Great British Menu) - has partnered with Davidstow cheddar and come up with a series of recipes designed to showcase this delicious cheese (which apparently won a gold award at the Nantwich International Cheese Awards). One of the first to catch my eye was the recipe for pollack with a cheese crust - very tasty for very little actual kitchen effort. 

The cheese is excellent on its own - strong enough to go well with other big flavours (I reckon it'd be lovely in a ham sandwich with apple chutney), which is probably due to it being matured for 14 months. For those of you who like your cheese tongue-tinglingly sharp, there's the Cornish Crackler version, which is matured for 19 months. It's called crackler because of the "naturally occurring crunchy crystals that the cheese acquires with age". I'm looking forward to cooking with this one...but more on that later.

For the pollack, it's really as simple as mixing together 75g breadcrumbs, 50g grated cheddar, 4 tbsp chopped parsley, 1 tbsp chopped dill, one finely chopped garlic clove, and 25g melted butter, then pressing the mixture onto oiled pollack fillets before baking for 10 minutes or so, depending on the thickness of the fish fillets. I served mine with saffron potato wedges, salad and green beans. Simple but delicious.

Watch this space for more cheese-themed recipes...but in the meantime you can find some other exciting ideas here (the cauliflower cheese looks particularly inviting as winter approaches...)

Two seafood dishes, and a crumble

I'd never considered stuffing a squid before. How blind I have been, stumbling ignorantly through life armed with a knife with which to slice these delicate slippery tubes into calamari-style rings. Nigel Slater has opened my eyes to the beauty of squid stuffed with a mixture of breadcrumbs, parsley, lemon zest, chopped tomato and anchovies, and served with a red pepper, tomato and chilli sauce. There's something incredibly satisfying about slicing into the soft squid with its salty, lemony interior, with the kick of tomato sauce to bring it all together. It's also a good way, I would imagine, to get squid-haters to eat squid - it doesn't taste too fishy, and the squid loses that rubbery, slimy texture that it can sometimes have if cooked badly in rings. 

To satisfy a recent craving of mine, we had moules marinieres to start. I'd never actually made this - I normally cook mussels with Asian aromatics (lemongrass, garlic, fish sauce, tarragon, shallots, rice). This is even easier - chopped shallots and garlic, cooked in butter until soft, to which you add chopped tomato, lots of parsley and a good glug of white wine (OK, fine, a third of a bottle). Throw in the mussels (cleaned and debearded) on a high heat, put a lid on the pan and leave for 3-4 minutes, then dish into bowls. Simple and immensely satisfying. It would make a good main course with a big baguette to soak up the delicious mussely juices, or some potato wedges. Or both.

For dessert, a rhubarb and strawberry crumble. It's a combination I've been told is good (and one of the few exceptions to the rule that you should never cook a strawberry), and it was indeed good - the two go together in a rather surprising way. Not to mention the beautiful pink colour of the juice as it bubbles up around the crumble mixture. 

Chicken, orange and pomegranate salad

I always used to discount the humble roast chicken as not really worth bothering with. I think it's because I never really liked roast chicken as a child - I found the combination of it, its gravy (bisto-enriched, of course), and roast potatoes far too heavy and cloying, and that is how we usually had it in my house. Come to think of it, I'm not sure any of my family are really hugely bothered about roast chicken. However, take a lovely, crispy, bronze chicken and pair it with some slightly unexpected ingredients, and you have something beautiful. Shreds of leftover roast chicken are infinitely superior to those bland, skinless chicken breasts you can buy in packets at the supermarket, and the real added bonus is the cooking juice from the chicken. This will add huge depth of flavour to whatever you decide to do with it. It is for this reason that I have found roast chicken to be a perfect partner to rice and couscous salads: the juices soak into the grains and make them moist and tasty, and then you can add a whole host of other ingredients. 

Ottolenghi has a nice recipe for a chicken and rice salad with rocket, fish sauce, lime juice and chilli. It works very well. Diana Henry, in her new cookbook that I am salivating over, has one for wild rice, chicken and blueberry salad which I am keen to try. This one is also a new favourite of mine. It's just couscous, mixed with the juice of a lemon and two oranges, the flesh of two oranges sliced into segments, the seeds from half a pomegranate, lots of salt and pepper, lots of torn basil and mint, the roasting juices from the chicken, and finally the chicken itself. It's nice served on a bed of watercress to cut through the sweetness of the fruit, and I think rocket would work well too. Because of the roasting juices, the whole thing is savoury rather than sweet, and the mint, basil and citrus stop it being too heavy. You will feel rather healthy after tucking in...though probably less so if, like me, your favourite part is the salty, crispy chicken skin.

My boyfriend tells me that roast chicken is not a normal student lunch. I think, actually, it is the ideal student lunch - my chicken cost a grand total of £4.49 (admittedly because I flirt with the butcher). The couscous salad will make four meals, and the stock that I am going to make from the carcass will make a very nice risotto or soup. So there. Frugal cooking that tastes lovely. OK, so baked beans on toast might be cheaper, but a) I don't want to be a stereotype and b) I don't like baked beans.

Lamb and quince tagine, and twice-cooked pears

If I ever find myself getting married, I hope it is a marriage like that of lamb and quinces: sweet, warm, rich, satisfying, perfectly balanced, slightly exotic, complementary to both parties, and never boring. (Just right with a bit of coriander; requiring a sharp knife; inedible when raw; only achievable during certain seasons - I think the marriage analogy falls down a bit here. Although I can tell you now that I refuse to marry anyone who doesn't like coriander). 

I've cooked lamb and quince tagine before, but this is a different recipe, from Nigel Slater's new book. It's basically the same as the one I usually use (Claudia Roden), except involves fresh ginger rather than ground. I think I actually prefer the fresh; it's more flavoursome. This is probably because I put in a piece about the size of my face. It mellows in the cooking process though (fortunately). The end result is fabulous: a fragrant, rather sweet sauce, lamb so tender you could swallow it without chewing, and soft, perfumed quinces. Just the thing to make the kitchen smell wonderful and inviting in the rather wintry weather we've been having lately. 

Tagines are generally very easy to make. Brown some diced lamb shoulder in a pan, remove and set aside. Add sliced onion and soften. Return the lamb to the pan, add a cinnamon stick, a generous amount of salt, a big pinch of saffron and a thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped. Pour in a couple of tablespoons of honey and cover the lamb with water. Partially cover with a lid and leave for at least an hour and a half - I left mine for two and a half. 20 minutes before you want to eat, peel, core and slice two large or three small quinces and add them to the pan until they are soft (don't stir too much or they'll disintegrate). Add more water/reduce the sauce to get it to the right consistency (I usually find that although it looks like a lot you can never have enough sauce, so more is better), stir in lots of chopped coriander, and serve with couscous. 

For dessert, pears. Conference and Comice. Peeled, cored and poached in a sugar syrup until approaching softness, then placed in the oven with a trickle of maple syrup and some vanilla extract until golden. Just right with some vanilla ice cream - you don't want to eat anything too filling after a tagine. Oddly, they tasted exactly like tinned pears, just a bit more maple-y. Maybe I shouldn't bother with the effort of peeling and coring nine pears next time, and instead just use the tinned variety...

Venison with blueberries

"Come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner; come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness." ~ The Merry Wives of Windsor

Possibly my ideal food combination: game, and fruit. Even better when "game" refers to a steak that has been seared to perfection on the outside and is still juicy and bloody in the middle. Deglaze the pan with some red wine, add a couple of teaspoons of redcurrant jelly and a handful of blueberries, throw in a sprig of thyme while it's bubbling away, and you have the perfect sauce for a venison steak. Sharp enough not to cloy, but sweet enough to deal with the rich-tasting meat. To go with it, new potatoes and jerusalem artichokes. I'm a bit obsessed with them at the moment, and their earthy taste and texture are perfect with game. I also discovered today that they are not that much of a faff to peel when armed with a super Y-shaped peeler: bits of soil in the mouth are now a thing of the past. There were going to be mushrooms roasted with them too...but in my excitement at deglazing a pan I forgot to put them in the oven. I'm sure they would have made the dish even better. But even so, this makes a very nice dinner. You might want something green to finish it off, like a watercress salad.

Autumn fruits and their perfect partners

I was going to start this post by declaring that I am a happier person when both figs and quinces can be found in the market. However, I realise that is not strictly true. I am, in fact, a more anxious person - anxious that their short season will be over before I can exploit them to their full potential. I've already devoted at least two whole posts to the magnificence of such fruits - they seem exotic and otherworldly, somehow, yet both grow quite happily on our own English soil - so will spare you the raptures. Instead, I will write about a meal that did actually make me a happier person, comprising as it did both figs and quinces and ticking another of the "things I want to try with figs and quinces" list. 

I set out for the market intending to purchase a nice fat chicken with which to make a fig and walnut tagine. Unfortunately, lack of said chicken meant I had to compromise. I would go as far as to say that this was in fact infinitely better than compromise - it was improvement. I ended up with a shoulder of lamb on the bone, a cut I don't normally use, preferring to use diced shoulder in a tagine or casserole. However, I figured I could still incorporate elements of the originally intended tagine: I rubbed the lamb with saffron, cinnamon and ginger mixed with olive oil. It went in a hot (240C) oven for 15 minutes and then I turned it down to 160C and let it cook away for a couple of hours. How long exactly I am not sure - as long as it took for me to read a few pages of Gifford's Dialogue Concerning Witches and decide that it was too late in the day to be reading annoying early modern script where all the S's look like Fs.

Next, some couscous stirred up with the seeds of half a pomegranate. The pomegranates I found at the market today are truly fine specimens, infinitely better than the watery, pale pink and slightly bitter versions I've been putting up with so far this autumn. The seeds of these have a real sweet sourness to them and are a beautiful vibrant colour. I also put some crumbled walnuts into the couscous. For the last five minutes of cooking, I put some halved figs into the roasting tray with the lamb and drizzled over some honey. The shredded lamb meat went in with the couscous with the figs on the side. They had turned molten and scarlet, almost the colour of the pomegranate seeds, and went beautifully with the lamb. I'd forgotten how much I love lamb shoulder cooked on the bone; the meat is sublime and so versatile. 

For dessert. something from the new Nigel Slater book, Tender II. This book is enough to bring me to the verge of tears because I don't have Mr Slater's metabolism. There are enough recipes for pies, crumbles and tarts in there to guarantee I'd never see my hipbones again. How he manages it, I really don't know, especially because he recommends serving everything with "cream: thick, yellow, unpasteurised". The photo for the recipe of "soft quinces under a crisp crust" simply looked too good to resist.

Said crisp crust is a mixture of brown sugar, flour, butter, brown breadcrumbs and ground almonds. It is a bit like the pear betty topping I made a few weeks ago; much crunchier and more buttery than a traditional crumble topping, I think it will be my new blanket with which to wrap up warm fruits. The quinces are sauteed into soft, golden tenderness with butter, sugar and lemon juice and then baked under the crumble for half an hour or so. I put a pear in with the quinces just for a difference in flavour and texture. They go rather well together, which makes sense, seeing as they are quite similar in shape. 

I must say, however, that the task of peeling, halving, quartering, coring and slicing four large quinces is enough to mean I probably don't need to do any arm-based weightlifting at the gym tomorrow. Especially with a blunt knife. I can almost see why so many people overlook these fine fruits: preparation is a faff and a half. 

But so, so worth it, however, when you bite into that mouthful of perfumed, buttery, juicy fruit and its crunchy topping, with hints of treacle from the dark brown sugar used and little nuggets of toasted breadcrumb. I might have to make this one again; it is beautiful. As are its colours, which I think look like autumn in a bowl.

So there we have it. Two of my favourite things, and some excellent other things with which to partner them to maximise their full potential. Delicious.

Sicilian-style cauliflower, and a strudel

I'm a big fan of the intriguing way the Sicilians manage to blend sweet, sour and salty to produce unexpected and magnificent results. Take caponata, for example, which I posted about a while ago: aubergines, vinegar, sugar, raisins, capers. Sounds odd, tastes sublime. Similarly, pasta con le sarde features fennel, chilli, pine nuts, raisins, parsley, and sometimes anchovies, saffron and breadcrumbs. That topping is the inspiration for this recipe, which is also loosely based on a popular Italian pasta dish of broccoli with anchovies, garlic and breadcrumbs, usually served with orecchiette (meaning "little ears") pasta.

It's incredibly simple: break a cauliflower into florets and cook in boiling water until tender. Meanwhile, fry a couple of handfuls of breadcrumbs in olive oil until crispy. Add some chopped garlic, dried chilli flakes, toasted pine nuts, capers, raisins (soaked in boiling water for 15 minutes and drained), chopped parsley and anchovies. Cook for a couple of minutes, add the cauliflower and some more olive oil (I used the oil left in the tin of anchovies), and then toss with pasta and a squeeze or two of lemon juice. Or you can eat it on its own as a side dish. I imagine broccoli would work just as well, too. It's delicious - in each mouthful you get salty anchovy and caper, but it's perfectly balanced by a sweet and juicy raisin, and a crunchy pine nut. The parsley stops the whole thing being too cloying. It may sound an odd combination, but I urge you to try it. I'll be making the sardine version once I get within reach of a decent fishmonger again.

For dessert, a pear and blackberry strudel to use up more of my Yorkshire blackberry stash. Chopped pears, blackberries, cinnamon and flaked almonds in the middle, buttered filo on the outside. Unfortunately I seem to be incapable of getting a sensible filling/pastry ratio when I make a strudel, and end up with something vastly wide and very unsliceable. The pastry barely fitted around the lovely fruit mixture. But it didn't matter really. It tasted nice and I like to think the collapsibility factor just added to a sense of rusticity.

Blackberry and apple jam

There's something satisfying about making your own jam. I think it's the pride you can take in your own sheer organisation as you stack neatly labelled, hand-written jars in the larder, ready for numerous breakfasts to come. Or the notion that you have taken something that may have gone to waste, and turned it into something delicious. I once came home from a holiday in Nice to find two huge bowls of green figs on the kitchen table. My mum's boss had given them to her from his tree in the garden. Unfortunately, given that none of my family share my wild enthusiasm for figs, they had been left to fester. Some were beyond salvaging, and went in the compost (it was with a heavy heart that I put them in there). The rest were too far gone to be edible as they were. Desperate not to let such gastronomic potential go to waste, I jumped on my bike and rushed to Tesco to get some jam sugar. An hour later, and I had four jars of beautiful fig jam. 

Jam-making is at its most rewarding if it involves parting with no money at all. The apples for this came from the tree in our garden, the blackberries from the bushes in Yorkshire. I've made apple jam before, and can't understand why it isn't made commercially. I've never seen apple jam in the shops, but mine was delicious - just apples, sugar and raisins, with a bit of sourness to it that sets it apart from sweeter jams. I would definitely buy it if I could find it (though I'd rather make my own). Apples have a high pectin content so the jam sets easily - I just use ordinary granulated sugar to make apple-based jams, rather than special jam sugar with added pectin. 

The recipe for this is so simple you could probably do it with your eyes closed. I wouldn't advise it, though, because being in close proximity to a vat of boiling sugar is probably one of those times where you should have full visual capability. Put 500g blackberries and 500g apples (peeled, cored and diced weight) in a sturdy pan with the juice of a lemon and 100ml water. Simmer until the fruit has softened and turned blood-red. Then pour in (you might want to close your eyes for this bit, as the amount of sugar that goes in is rather shocking) a 1kg bag of granulated sugar. Stir and boil vigorously for about 10 minutes. To test if it has set, put a saucer in the freezer for a few minutes to chill. Dollop some jam onto it, leave it for a minute, then drag the back of a spoon over it. If it wrinkles, it's done. If not, keep boiling until it sets - it can take anything from 5 minutes to half an hour. If it really isn't setting, add the juice of another lemon.

A spot of foraging up north

"Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I." ~ Henry IV, Part I

If there is an ideal place in which to celebrate autumn, and everything nature brings with it, then Yorkshire is perhaps it. There are forests in abundance that are impersonating traffic lights with their leaves, turning yellow around the edges with a rim of burnished red. The breeze that whips your face as you climb a steep hill covered in heather has a bite to it that you wouldn't have felt a few weeks ago. Best of all, the gastronomic evidence of autumn's arrival is on display wherever you go, from the butchers advertising a brace of grouse or local pigeon to the blackberries that adorn stretches of roadside for miles, glistening and begging for someone to brave their thorny garrisons and pick them. As Shakespeare observed, blackberries are indeed plentiful. It would be a shame not to succumb to the bushes' proffering, and to leave such a versatile ingredient untouched.

I succumbed. And you can tell, because my hands are covered in scratches. Not only scratches, but little red lumps that itch annoyingly - I think nature was being a tad unfair when she decided to always place a thick patch of nettles in very close proximity to the juiciest-looking blackberries. Still, at least I have two big bags of berries to show for my labour. 

A slightly less successful quest involved the pursuit of the bilberry. These are like blueberries in appearance, but tarter and more flavoursome - your average supermarket blueberry, I find, more often tastes like a small capsule of flavourless banana than anything deserving of the name "berry", a word that carries pleasant associations of tartness, juiciness and sweetness. Bilberries are rarely cultivated; instead, you find them growing in the wild on small shrubs barely a foot high. They grow best on high ground and heathlands. Indeed, I was driven for fifteen minutes uphill this morning to "Crocodile Rock", a rock overlooking the Dales and so called because it looks like a crocodile with its mouth open. 

The reason behind this being that my mother had been waxing lyrical about bilberries, and their superiority to blueberries. She bought some in the deli up here last year for some extortionate price, but knew they were to be picked up by this rock. I was sent to harvest said berries if I could. 

After identifying the bilberry bushes using Google Images - they are everywhere, amongst the heather - I spent about half an hour sure that this couldn't be the right bush, even though the internet was adamant. There were no berries to be found. She had told me they are quite hard to spot, lying just underneath the leaves, but I combed through about fifty bushes and found nothing. I was just giving up, sure it was too late in the season (August to September) to find them, when I saw this:

This, at least, was proof that the bilberry was not a fictional construct designed to test my patience. I was a little bit elated, I must admit (tragic, isn't it? I really must get myself one of these life things, one of these days). Sure it could not be a one-off, I scoured the bushes again.

Another slight leap of the heart and spirits.

I imagine normally these bushes are festooned with berries, when the season is in full swing. I was clearly too late in the year; it took me two hours of pained scouring to gather barely a handful of berries. But the sheer joy and satisfaction when I saw one gleaming on the underside of a twig...I take pride in my little tupperware box of bilberries. There are probably enough to fill something about the size of a mini mince pie. The kind you get at Christmas drinks parties. I did feel bad having to tell my mother that the huge bag of berries I came home with did not, in fact, contain bilberries, but blackberries (I found loads on the way home) - her face fell when I presented the optimistically-sized box with its scattering of purple jewels. 

I've told her that she had better find some use for them, however small-scale, because I do not want my two hours of braving the cold, getting scratched hands, ferreting around in bushes and getting very odd looks from dog-walkers to be in vain. I think the £4 she paid for a bag back last August was a bargain, now that I know how much sheer effort it takes to harvest these elusive berries.

As for the blackberries, I think a pear and blackberry strudel, and a batch of apple and blackberry jam (using windfall apples from the tree in our garden back home) are on the cards.

A duck salad, and more figs

This is one of those "put many of my favourite things in a bowl together, stir, and hope it tastes nice" recipes. Couscous, parsley, fresh mint, coriander, pomegranate seeds, chopped pistachios, pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, and then the shredded meat from roasted duck legs, tossed with more pomegranate molasses before adding it to the couscous. It's delicious. Sliced rare duck breast would work well too, as would lamb. 

For dessert, poached figs and ice cream. These specimens were not quite luscious enough to eat raw with cheese, but simmering them for five minutes in a syrup of honey, saffron, orange flower water and cinnamon rendered them rather lovely. 

Aubergine cheesecake

Sounds bizarre, doesn't it? But when it comes from the pen (or rather, the keyboard, via the medium of Guardian Online) of the great Ottolenghi, one can't help but have faith. Faith did indeed pay off in this situation - the end result is delicious. A bit like a quiche, but without the pastry, and with the bonus of soft roasted aubergines and sharp tomatoes. 

Start by roasting two sliced aubergines with some oil and salt and pepper in a hot oven, until soft. Line an oven dish with oiled foil and arrange the aubergine slices across the bottom, filling the gaps with halved baby plum tomatoes. Sprinkle with fresh oregano (do you know how rare it is for a recipe to specify fresh oregano?! And how annoying this is, given that it grows completely wild in our garden, an untapped resource begging to be exploited?!) Then make the cheesecake mixture: whisk three eggs with some feta, creme fraiche (Ottolenghi says cream, but I had an open pot of creme fraiche that needed using), ricotta (Ottolenghi says cream cheese, but again, I had ricotta in need of use) and black pepper, and pour this over the aubergines. Bake for about 40 minutes until set, then leave to cool until it can be cut into pieces. I skipped this step as I was too hungry, but it is still nice with a slightly molten interior.

I reckon this basic recipe would work with most things - oven-roasted tomatoes on the top would be delicious, as would roasted red and yellow peppers (might try that one soon actually), bacon and spinach, caramelised onions...Lovely. Some sort of base, like a sweet cheesecake, might be nice too - made out of melted butter and breadcrumbs. Definitely a recipe to tweak at some point. Not that the original isn't yummy, of course.

Pasta stuffed with courgette and feta

I think I've finally mastered the art of stuffed pasta. I attempted something novel this evening in that I cut little circles out of pasta to make circular ravioli instead of square. It means there's more stuffing and less overlap of pasta round the edges that tastes of nothing. Which is definitely a good thing. I also changed my pasta dough recipe by omitting the tablespoon of water I normally add: it means the dough is more difficult to pass through the machine at first (it crumbles a bit), but after that it is infinitely easier to work with, and doesn't stick together. The eggs I used were laid by my Dad's colleague's hens, and they turned the dough a rather startlingly bright orange. 

I've long been a fan of a Nigel Slater recipe for courgette and feta cakes: saute spring onions with garlic and grated courgette until golden, then mix in feta, flour and dill and form into cakes, then fry. They are delicious - I'm not normally a fan of courgettes because they can often be watery and bitter, but somehow when mixed with dill and feta they take on a wonderful flavour. When you fry the cakes and get a lovely crispy outside and a soft inside where the feta has melted...food heaven.

It seemed an obvious candidate for stuffing pasta. I added pine nuts for a bit more texture, and served the pasta with a lemon, parsley and butter sauce. I figured a creamy sauce would be overkill given the feta in the stuffing; these lovely little ravioli (not the technical term I am sure, as I think ravioli are square, but I am too tired to look it up right now) taste great just with lemon, butter and parmesan. 

Sushi: a first attempt

Having recently developed a slight obsession with sushi, accompanied by a sinking feeling every time I hand over the best part of a fiver and receive a tiny box full of the stuff, I decided to try making my own. If one of the contestants on Junior Masterchef can do it, I figured, so can I. 

A trip to the oriental supermarket followed, and I returned laden with the following: sushi rice, pickled ginger, wasabi paste, miso soup, nori seaweed sheets, and even a bamboo sushi-rolling mat.

The rice is easy: soak in cold water for an hour, then put in a pan with twice as much water, bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes or so until all the water is absorbed. Then stir in a mixture of caster sugar, rice vinegar and salt, and leave to cool. It ends up incredibly glutinous and sticky - I have a feeling that the "sticky rice" you can order in oriental restaurants is just sushi rice. It's actually quite hard work to extract the amount you want from the entire mass in the pan at the end.

The type I decided to make is called makisushi: rice and filling inside a sheet of nori seaweed. To make this, you lay a sheet of seaweed down on the bamboo mat.

Put the rice on top with a little bit of wasabi paste spread over it (in future, I may skip this step and let people add their own wasabi as they eat it...it was a little too strong!)

Then add the filling - this one is smoked salmon and cucumber - and use the bamboo mat to roll the nori up around the rice. You can wet the end to seal it together, but I found it held together nicely without me needing to bother.

This one is "crab" (i.e. crab sticks, because I can't afford real crab, nor can I find any in Cambridge) with avocado mashed with lime juice. 

And finally, a filling of smoked mackerel mashed with roasted, skinned red peppers (which, by the way, tastes absolutely amazing on its own and would make a beautiful sandwich):

So you're left with nice long rolls of sushi, which you can then slice (using a very sharp serrated knife) into rounds as long as you like - shorter is better for ease of eating, I found.

I think they look rather stylish laid out on plates with some pickled ginger and wasabi sauce. I also found some miso soup in the oriental supermarket to go with them. Some edamame beans would have been nice - there are few things more satisfying than podding them yourself straight into your mouth - but unfortunately I couldn't find any fresh ones. Next time, perhaps. Next time I also want to do it properly and use raw fish, maybe once I'm back in Oxford and have access to a proper fishmonger. I'd like to try nigiri sushi, which is just blocks of sushi rice with a strip of raw fish laid out on top. 

Not bad for a first attempt though, I think. And the best part? I still have at least two lunch-sized servings left, with no need to hand over my hard-earned cash to M&S.

Ottolenghi's "One-pan wonder"

I love this man. A rather outlandish statement, perhaps, seeing as the great Yotam and I have never met, but if one's cooking is an expression of one's personality, then I have reason to believe I would like him very much. This is delicious. Surprisingly so; I wasn't sure yoghurt and lemon juice on top of raw tahini and eggs would taste very nice. However, Ottolenghi's recipes have yet to let me down and this one was no exception. One problem though is that the raw potatoes take forever to cook in the pan, and by the time they are edible the onions are burnt. I would par-boil them first. Other than that - yum. I made some flatbread which I cooked on a griddle pan to go with it, but pitta bread or even a white baguette would go nicely as well - you need something to soak up all the lovely yoghurt, tomato and tahini mixture.

Pork and lemon meatballs

There are few things more satisfying than spaghetti with meatballs. The crispiness of the seared outside, the softness of the seasoned meat in the middle, all enveloped in a nest of pasta, tomato sauce and lashings of cheese. I prefer this version to the more traditional beef; pork mince is lighter than beef and, when coupled with lemon and parsley, produces something quite refreshing rather than something that will make you want to lie down immediately after finishing it. 

The recipe is based on a Nigel Slater creation. He suggests adding chopped anchovies to the mixture; I heartily agree (they give everything so much more depth of flavour), but unfortunately Jon does not like anchovies, therefore they were banned from the mix. Alas. 

For enough meatballs for four people, mix 500g minced pork with salt and pepper, 70g breadcrumbs, the zest and juice of a lemon, a big handful of chopped parsley, a teaspoon of dried thyme and two tablespoons grated parmesan (and 8 chopped anchovy fillets if you're lucky enough to be cooking for someone who appreciates their salty goodness). Shape into little balls. You can pan-fry them, but I prefer to cook them in the oven, a) to guarantee they're fully cooked through and b) to guarantee they're crispy on all sides. Put them in the oven at 180C for about 15 minutes - keep checking as you don't want them to dry out.

For the tomato sauce, just saute a chopped red onion and three crushed cloves of garlic in some olive oil until soft. Add a couple of tins of chopped tomatoes and some tomato puree, a pinch of sugar and a dash of Worcester sauce, and simmer until thick. Season to taste and serve over the meatballs on top of spaghetti (or penne, for that matter). An immensely satisfying dinner.

(Thank you to Jon for the photos).

The Middle (F)east

If New York is where one travels to shop, the Caribbean is where one travels to sunbathe, and South America is where one travels on one’s Gap Yah, then the Middle East is where one travels to eat. Or so I firmly believed when I set off there three weeks ago, and even more firmly believe having returned, undoubtedly fatter and with cravings for flatbread.

I fell in love with Moroccan cuisine when I first inhaled the scent of a lamb tagine. Admittedly it was in England, in the kitchen of the restaurant where I then worked, but it sparked a love affair that did indeed take me to Morocco and to more magical tagines (amongst other delights). Having worked my way through one Moroccan cookbook, I purchased the beautiful Arabesque by Claudia Roden, a guide to the cuisines of not only Morocco but of Turkey and Lebanon too. It’s a wonderful book, with notes on the culture of the three countries and how this affects the way they cook. A lot of the middle eastern food I make derives from Roden’s recipes.

So, having read Roden’s book cover to cover, and followed it up with the Lonely Planet’s section on Middle Eastern food, I set off to Turkey, Syria and Jordan with high hopes (and a large appetite...but that’s nothing new).

First stop, Istanbul. I found uttering the words “Shall we go and get a kebab?” an alien experience, having never succumbed to that student favourite in England: unidentifiable meat carved into an unnatural cone shape, dripping in fat and crammed into a pitta bread with some flaccid lettuce. This is a sorry state of affairs, because the authentic kebab is a beautiful thing, and one undeserving of such a massacre. The main difference between a Turkish and an English kebab is that the Turkish rotating cone of meat has visible layers of meat on it. You can believe that it is real, unprocessed meat that has simply been pressed together into a slab and spit-roasted, unlike the slick, greyish mass that graces kebab vans all over England. This is most obvious for the chicken kebabs, which I actually preferred to their lamb counterparts. In Goreme, Cappadocia, I ate an Iskender kebab, which is marinated chicken served on top of torn pitta bread in a spicy tomato sauce. In Istanbul, a lamb doner kebab in pitta bread with tomato and, oddly, chips. Why they put chips in the bread I am not entirely sure, but the kebab sans chips was very good. Speaking of lamb, I also sampled what the menu translated as “Turkish pizza”: flatbread topped with minced lamb and spices. Not a bad lunch for 2.50 lira, or £1.25.

Istanbul was also our first experience of the Middle East during Ramadan. The two main things I noticed were the increasing irritability and tiredness of taxi drivers and waiters, and the overwhelming sense of being stared at every time you lifted a bottle of water to your lips in the street. Much as I wanted to placate the locals and let nothing pass my lips from dawn until dusk, being unused to the heat, and doing a lot of walking, meant that this was never going to happen. We did, however, find ourselves inadvertently experiencing Ramadan, Muslim-style. Arriving at a kofte restaurant recommended in my guidebook, we were greeted by a large queue out of the door. We were eventually ushered into the bustling restaurant and seated at a table for six with food and drink already laid out on it: bread, salad, water. Puzzled, we eventually realised that everyone else was sitting, staring at their food and waiting for the announcement that they could finally eat it. We decided to wait too, though the waiters said we didn’t have to. We finished the salad, and they brought us steaming bowls of soup (lemon and chickpea, I think), followed by plates of kofte (minced meat and spices) with pickled peppers. The kofte were delicious, and it was great to be sitting eating in a place with so much atmosphere.

Some other excellent Turkish delights included imam bayeldi, a dish of slow-cooked aubergine in olive oil with tomatoes and spices. It translates as “the imam fainted”, and there are various theories as to why, the main one being because the dish was so delicious, although I prefer the theory that he fainted when he discovered just how much olive oil the dish contained (aubergines really are the sponge of the vegetable world when it comes to soaking up oil). In Goreme we ate a local speciality, gozleme, which is flatbread stuffed with various fillings and cooked on a griddle. I had one with minced meat and spices, and another with cheese. Another local speciality there is the testat, or “pottery kebab”. This is a dish of meat cooked inside a sealed terracotta pot, which is broken open for you at the table – quite a spectacle to behold (see left). You have to order it at least three hours in advance to allow for the slow cooking time. We ate two, a meat one and a chicken one, at a lovely little restaurant where we sat on carpets around a low table and ordered half the menu, including a dish of baked okra, more gozleme, and an aubergine stew. I suppose it is the Turkish equivalent of a tagine. Also in Goreme we sampled borek, which is a coil of filo pastry with various fillings, oven baked and served with two sauces: spicy tomato, and yoghurt. I had the nazar, or minced meat, version. Possibly one of my favourite dishes from Turkey.

Of course, no mention of Turkish cuisine is complete without a nod to baklava, the ultimate in sugary goodness. I couldn’t even wait 24 hours to sample some after arriving in Istanbul: we quickly tracked down a baklava shop, and the friendly owner gave us a mixed box to take away. I’ve sampled many different forms of this teeth-crumbling confectionary, including milk and hazelnut, pistachio and chocolate, walnut, and custard, but my favourite remains plain pistachio. There is nothing as delicious as that first bite of syrupy, buttery, crispy, wafer-thin pastry. Although the subsequent bites are pretty good too, as I discovered when I ate five pieces in quick succession. Soon followed the greatest sugar headache of my eating life so far. It was worth it. I returned to that baklava shop three times. I ate variations in Damascus that were nice but not as syrupy (including an interesting triangle-shaped one that was filled with custard and made with vermicelli soaked in syrup round the outside), and in Amman that featured custard as well as nuts, but the Turkish variety remains my favourite.

On to Syria, where prices halve and the amount of food doubles. The way to eat in Syria is mezze, all the way. Although all the restaurants seem to offer an odd mix of French-influenced dishes, my advice would be to order as much mezze as takes your fancy, and enjoy attempting to finish it all (I guarantee you won’t – even with six of us, we struggled). All our Syrian meals began with a big basket of flatbread and several dishes of mezze, and often ended with a complimentary platter of fruit, which we were often far too full for. There was also an occasion where some Syrians celebrating a birthday at the next table shared their enormous chocolate mousse cake with us, and we soon wished we hadn’t eaten so much flatbread. We had mohamara, a dip made of red peppers, walnuts and pomegranate molasses; moutabal, burnt aubergine mixed with yoghurt; baba ganoush, burnt aubergine mixed with olive oil, garlic, peppers and tahini; hummus (which needs no explanation, although hummus beiruti, hummus with meat and pine nuts on top, is a lovely variation); fattoush (salad of vegetables, toasted pitta bread and sumac); tabbouleh (bulgar wheat, parsley, and lots of lemon juice); beef stir-fried with mushrooms and onions; deep-fried mushrooms with garlic dip...

One of my favourite Syrian mezze dishes is kibbeh, which are lemon-shaped patties made of bulgar wheat, minced meat, pine nuts/walnuts and spices, and deep fried. They are crunchy and incredibly moreish. Apparently before the invention of food processors, Syrian women used to pound the meat and wheat together using special pestles and mortars, and you would be able to hear the grinding all through the villages; it was the test of a cook’s skill. I think every meal I ate in Syria featured kibbeh of some description. Later when I found them in Amman, it was like some sort of homecoming.

Another dish I was keen to try was fatta, a breakfast dish consisting of meat and pitta bread layered in a tahini sauce. However, it wasn’t quite what I expected; I imagined a thick layer of meat and break with a dollop of sauce on top. What arrived was a huge bowl containing some chunks of chicken, flakes of bread, and an absolutely enormous amount of tahini, garnished with a thick layer of olive oil and toasted pine nuts (see left). The first few mouthfuls were delicious, but the sheer amount of rich sauce and total fat content was overwhelming, and rendered the dish unfinishable. Not something I could eat for breakfast every day if I didn’t want to be lifted out of bed by a crane – I would indeed be fatter if I ate fatta with any regularity. Luckily we had also ordered saaj, a Syrian sandwich made of flatbread with various fillings: one of my favourites is za’atar, a thyme and sesame seed spice mix which is mixed with olive oil and spread on bread. I also bought an enormous bag of the stuff from a street vendor for 50p, and thought with dismay of the same sized tub I had purchased in Oxford for £3 a few months earlier. Later in Amman I found a za’atar pizza; bread spread with thyme and olive oil doesn’t sound like it could be particularly addictive, but it really is.

One of the joys of Syrian food is its prevalence on every street. As we struggled through Aleppo with our bags, having arrived after an epic journey from Turkey, confused by the Arabic street signs and unable to find our hotel, we passed one of the main food-selling streets. Even amidst all the chaos, I was entranced by the huge piles of fruit and vegetables; more aubergines than I’ve ever seen in my life; a bakery bringing huge trays of freshly-baked bread out onto the street; vendors selling cheese in strange knot shapes, piled up in huge vats; a man forming chickpeas into falafel and deep-frying them; mountains of dates, dark and glistening. In Damascus they eat shwarma, the Syrian equivalent of a doner kebab; marinated meat sliced and piled into flatbread with a garlicky yoghurt sauce. The people in Aleppo are the friendliest I have ever encountered; wherever we went, we were offered handfuls of food. We passed a shop selling Syrian sweets, and were immediately inundated with samples to try, including some delicious marzipan and pistachio sweets, and little slabs of apricot paste – apricots pureed with sugar and set like toffee. I was still finding samples in my bag days later. In Damascus you can find candied fruit for £2.50 a kilo. I recalled my trip to Nice a year ago, where a box of four small candied clementines cost the best part of 10 euros, and purchased a large wooden box of candied oranges, apples, dates, lemons and plums.

In Aleppo I attempted to buy some figs from a street vendor (there they were, piled up high, properly ripe and oozing ambrosial syrup, a sight you will never see in England, where figs arrive underripe, rock hard and woolly-tasting, and are best consigned to the bin), only to be led down the back of the market to the vendor’s friend, who requested to have a photo taken with me on his phone. After obliging two other Syrian men with photos, the vendor piled up a tray with figs, spent a long time selecting a perfect bunch of grapes, and then presented me with the whole thing for free. And oh, those figs tasted good. On the way out of the market we bought some bread; I expected it to be hard and rather bland-tasting from the way it looked, but it turned out to be the most delicious brioche-like creation, with a thick layer of sugar crystals on top. Also divine was the date-stuffed brioche loaf which we succumbed to as well. You simply have to look curiously at any food item in Aleppo to be obligingly presented with a sample: we nibbled bits of falafel, date bread, dates, apricots, pancakes, fresh pistachios, having set out to sightsee rather than eat. Perhaps, being unable to eat themselves because of Ramadan, the locals were enjoying the food vicariously through us. Either that, or they are just genuinely hospitable, generous people who are proud to show off their food. And so they should be.

Food is quite literally everywhere in Syria, a fact that was driven home when I saw a man cycling down Aleppo’s manic roads with a huge carcass strapped to the back of his bike. It was probably a sheep, and had been skinned but otherwise left intact, and there it was just hanging off the back of his bike. Similarly, a walk through the meat section of the market is enough to turn our delicate English stomachs, as you see fish writhing in pits on the ground, waiting to be killed, and whole carcasses hanging up in windows, as well as sheep’s heads piled up high, and various entrails. It really does drive home how sterile our shopping experience is in England, where meat is packaged in plastic with very little to link it to the animal it originated from. Unlike in England, there is a real sense of abundance to food shopping in Syria; everything is piled up high in huge bags or crates, and stall holders will grab handfuls of dates, spices, fruit, vegetables, cheeses, pistachios, and pile them into bags for you. Buying things in small quantities raises eyebrows, as I discovered – clearly everybody was shopping for the breaking of the Ramadan fast, and therefore quantity was a priority.

Breakfast on our first morning in Aleppo opened our eyes to the delightfully named “King of the Vitamin”, one in a long line of Syrian juice bars that I am missing greatly now I have returned home and find a small bottle of smoothie costing about £3. You could smell the fruit hanging up outside these stalls metres away. They will chop, peel and juice, and present you with an enormous tankard of fresh fruit smoothie for the absurd cost of around 50p. My favourite was a pink-coloured mixture of (I think) banana, orange, strawberry and kiwi. They also sell marinated cheese paninis for 25p; the cheese was halloumi-like in texture but tasted like feta. Better than any panini you’ll find in the UK, I guarantee. You can present the vendor with an empty 1.5litre bottle, and have it filled with fresh orange juice, squeezed before your eyes, for £1.50. Found on restaurant menus everywhere is a “lemon and mint” drink, which is basically still lemonade mixed with fresh mint. It sounds odd, but is incredibly delicious and immensely refreshing in Syria’s 35+ degrees C. Also found on the streets is a curious creation that looks and tastes a bit like Ribena, and I believe is made with water, sugar, ice and dried berries. I was sort of forced into accepting one by a street vendor, and was very glad I had done, especially as it contained lots of ice and I was still acclimatising to the massive increase in temperature between Turkey and Syria.

And then to Jordan, which seems to have a lot of food in common with Syria. Here we finally sampled proper falafel, after being unable to find it in Damascus due to street vendors being closed for Ramadan. We sat down at a “restaurant” in Amman that was really more of a fast food stall that spilled out onto the street (cockroaches scuttling over the ground all part of the experience). A man approached carrying a large metal bowl from which he scooped handfuls of falafel onto a napkin in the middle of the plastic table (there was no cutlery in sight). We were then given a huge basket of flatbread and two bowls of dip: one was hummus, the other fuul (an Egyptian mix of fava beans and spices). Later the waiter brought six steaming glasses of mint tea, sweet enough to cause instant tooth decay. The total cost: £1 each. The falafel was delicious: small, crunchy and incredibly addictive. Also good was a meal we had at “Cairo Restaurant”, which was just barbecued chicken served with bread soaked in the spicy cooking juices, and rice. Simple but immensely satisfying after a seven hour border crossing by bus. Another dish I was urged to try by Lonely Planet was mensaf, a Bedouin dish of lamb spit-roasted and basted with spices and served with rice and a yoghurt sauce. We went to a restaurant where the menu was entirely in Arabic, so the easiest option was to just ask for mensaf. It arrived, a big bowl of yellow rice topped with a piece of slow cooked lamb, tender enough to eat with a spoon, and a big bowl of rich yoghurt sauce. No one managed to finish the dish, such was its richness. Delicious, though. 

In Aqaba I had to try the sayadiah, a local dish of fish served with spicy rice and caramelised onions, and a tomato sauce. It was enormous and wonderful; the fish had been battered and fried before being placed on top of a mound of fragrant rice. Other good things eaten by the Red Sea included a dish of labneh, creamy cheese spread on a plate and topped with olive oil, crushed garlic and walnuts. I could still taste the garlic several days later, but it was worth it; so delicious mopped up with flatbread. Mufaraka potatoes with egg was a pleasant surprise; it was a sort of mixed up Spanish omelette, cooked diced potatoes fried in spices with beaten egg. The owner of our hotel on our last night presented us with a plate of home-made baklava; it was just as good as the stuff I had in Turkey, possibly even better for being free. It followed a nice dish of grilled fish, which tasted wonderful after a hard day’s snorkelling (and probably observing said fish swimming around the coral reef...)

And now I am home, decanting my za’atar into a jar and flicking through Claudia Roden’s book to find recipes for everything I have eaten over the last two and a half weeks. No doubt tomorrow’s trip to Tesco will be a depressing affair, and I will be dismayed at the paucity of fresh fruit and vegetables, the price of smoothies, the meat in plastic trays and the lack of friendly vendors offering me pieces of falafel or handfuls of pistachios to sample. On the  plus side, there are several countries that are no doubt eagerly awaiting me and my stomach. Next stop, Lebanon, methinks. 

More Ottolenghi, and a medley of berries

I realise as I write this that I have made quite a lot of risotto recently. I think it is turning into a bit of a habit; I just love the depth of flavour you can get from a good risotto. I think it is also to do with my parmesan addiction: anything you can grate the stuff liberally over is going down well at the moment. I had also been asked to cook something vegetarian for dinner, and risotto is always a good way to make people forget that their meal lacks meat, because it makes up for it with lots of flavour.

Naturally, I turned to Ottolenghi's Plenty, my favourite vegetarian cookbook. This lemon and aubergine risotto caught my eye, because I love aubergines and the idea of using roasted aubergine flesh in a risotto intrigued me. It's just a basic risotto but with lemon zest and juice added to it, with roasted aubergine (put under a very hot grill until blackened then cut in half and scoop out the flesh) stirred in and chopped sauteed aubergine sprinkled on top. Next time I will use more aubergines; I used three smallish ones for six people but I think more wouldn't hurt. 

For dessert, a white chocolate and vanilla mousse with summer fruits. The mousse is Green & Blacks vanilla white chocolate, milk, and vanilla extract, set with egg whites. The fruits are a medley of redcurrants, blackcurrants, blueberries, peaches, strawberries, raspberries, cherries and small plums macerated in vanilla sugar. It could almost trick you into thinking it was healthy. 

A salad to wake you up, and dessert heaven

I was going to start this post by saying that the above pear tart is the best dessert I have had in ages/my new favourite dessert. But my boyfriend cruelly mocked me yesterday for apparently starting all my blog posts (or at least those that are dessert-related) with that phrase, so in defiance I am not going to use such an opening. I will instead say that this pear tart is simply "a dessert worth making". (Even though it is in fact one of my new favourite desserts. Sshh...)

The recipe came from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cookery, a book I have only recently discovered amid my mother's recipe book collection. It is quite an old one, I think, and has no photos, but does have some charming illustrations and is a complete bible of Italian food. It taught me how to make pasta - quite an accolade - and has all the information you could ever need about Italian ingredients, how to match pasta to sauces, how to make a proper risotto... The recipe for "A farm wife's fresh pear tart" caught my eye, as the words "pear tart" are generally quite likely to do in any circumstance. Better still, it involved no faffing around making pastry. You simply take about a kilo of pears (I used conference), peel, core and slice them, then fold them into a batter of eggs, milk, flour and sugar. Pour into a tin greased and dusted with breadcrumbs, stud with cloves, and bake for about 45 minutes. A sort of pear clafoutis, I suppose, but more fruity than cakey. I could stress how incredibly delicious it is, warm from the oven, with vanilla ice cream, but I am now wary of saying such things thanks to Jon. So, I will just say, try it yourself. Ask me if you want the recipe.

Preceding this dessert I made a salad from Ottolenghi's first cookbook. I am beginning to think that anything he creates is guaranteed to be mouthwateringly delicious; I've never had an average Ottolenghi recipe yet. Sometimes the list of ingredients may strike me as a bit bizarre, and I find it hard to imagine how it would taste. This was one such recipe. It involves roasting a chicken (easy), then making a salad using three types of rice: basmati, wild and brown. To this you add chopped spring onions, sauteed whole onion, chopped red chilli, loads of mint and coriander, chopped rocket, and a dressing made from the chicken roasting juices, sesame oil, Thai fish sauce, olive oil and lemon juice. The result is truly delicious: it has a kick from the chilli and is quite sharp from the lemon juice and fish sauce, but you end up with beautifully moist rice from the chicken juices and then tasty pieces of chicken meat scattered throughout. Not a difficult dish to make and well worth the effort it takes to separately cook three types of rice. Yotam himself remarks that it is "delicious and nutritious". I could not agree more.