Penang! restaurant, Westfield

I've had a lot of disappointing meals out recently. There's nothing in the world that will sap you of vitality quite like a meal that promised great things and delivered very little. There are various factors that can contribute to a poor restaurant experience, and naturally these will vary depending on the diner. Some people are extremely fussy about tablecloths, background music, or the availability of branded hand wash in the toilets. I, personally, am fussy about portion size, service, balance and the dessert menu.

That is, portions have to be generous, and this INCLUDES starters and desserts (one of my biggest restaurant bugbears is tiny desserts - some people save space for them, you know!); service has to be attentive and friendly, but not obsessively asking if everything is OK every five minutes, and it's definitely a no-no if I've booked a table and the restaurant claim to have no record of it; the dishes have to be well balanced, with enough carbohydrates to complement the meat/fish/vegetables or enough acidity to temper a very rich ingredient like duck or cheese; the dessert menu has to include proper desserts, like crumble, tart and pie - not like creme brûlée or panna cotta, which I consider a pointless waste of calories.

Several of these issues have been involved in my restaurant trips recently. I've had distinctly average pizza, incredibly bland and stodgy 'Asian' food, a delicious but overly rich duck dish which even the beetroot salad couldn't rescue from cloying, two consecutive experiences at the same restaurant where they lost my booking, a lacklustre bowl of 'Thai-flavoured' mussels...all these recollections are hurting me a little. I'm going to stop.

All these dishes were obtained from perfectly respectable restaurants with good internet reviews, which had promised much. Despite the unimpressive food, I've at least learned something: a nice facade, branded hand wash in the toilets, friendly staff and a good ambience are no indication of good food in the restaurant world.

I haven't quite got out of this 'don't judge a restaurant by its peripheral attributes' mentality, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Penang!, a new Malaysian restaurant in Westfield Shepherd's Bush, London. Its location in one of the biggest shopping centres in the UK, its cheery yellow and blue exterior, the exclamation mark at the end of its name, a pain to use in reviews because readers will constantly think I'm joyously exclaiming at them, its slightly odd on-purpose-bad-English on the menu, with titles like 'Little dish for big smile' or 'fun food on stick!'...all these attributes left me somewhat confused, a tad sceptical as to what the food would be like.

I was pleasantly surprised, then, to eat one of the best meals I've had in a long time at Penang!

Penang! does not claim to serve authentic Malaysian cuisine. Rather, it hopes to bring Malaysia's blend of Malay, Indian, Chinese and Thai food to the mass market, to introduce some of the classics of the Malaysian street food scene (the 'capital' of which is Penang, the Malaysian coastal state) to British palates (which sometimes necessitates the toning down of what is a very spicy cuisine). While we consider ourselves pretty au fait with Thai, Chinese and Japanese cuisine in the UK, you don't find much Malaysian food.

The Penang! brand has chosen for its ambassador the character of Mr Zuhri, a 'Malaysian ex-rockstar'. His caricature decorates the menu, and his 'voice' gives a little introduction to each of the dishes. On the back of the menu is Mr Zuhri's handy guide for helping you decide what to eat - simply choose your mood from a list such as 'You no like it hot?', 'You want no meat?' and 'You look for much healthy dish?' and he offers a list of suggestions. While no one could argue that this was sophisticated, it did - against my better judgement - raise a wry smile from me as I perused the menu, which I imagine is the point. It's certainly a memorable dining experience, with your every glance at the menu set to the backdrop of the imaginary Mr Zuhri's garrulous exclamations, and while the whole thing is somewhat gimmicky, I'm willing to forgive them that, as the food is excellent.

The restaurant is bright and airy, a cheery yellow, with a casual set-up: the menus, on brown paper, are on the tables and also serve as placemats. The cutlery (both chopsticks and knives/forks/spoons) stands in holders on each table, along with chilli and soy sauce. There are small plates - as the menu is really designed to be shared, you can order several dishes between your group and help yourself to your own plate. There were lots of families eating at the restaurant when I visited, which perhaps explains the jokey Mr Zuhri aspect - given its location inside a major shopping centre, it does a good job of catering to all tastes and ages.

The menu is divided between small sharing dishes ('Little dish for big smile') and 'Big bowl plates': one-bowl main meals like laksa, steamed sea bass and grilled marinated chicken. There are also satay skewers ('Fun food on stick'), sides (roti, rice, greens, prawn crackers), and desserts. Wanting to try almost everything on the menu, we ordered seven of the small sharing dishes so we could try a selection. I did notice, though, as we were giving the waitress our order, that at around £4-7 each it would easily get very expensive to order three or four of these small plates, particularly when you want to eat everything on the menu. However, as you'd probably order just one curry (£6-7.50) and several of the smaller dishes (around £4), it might still work out fairly reasonably. It is London, I suppose, and the menu does cater for those on a budget by offering the option of a 'big bowl plate', starting at £8.50 for laksa and peaking at £12.50 for a sirloin steak.

I don't normally do pre-dinner cocktails, but if it's a mango mojito I might make an exception. Fortunately just such a thing was on the Penang! menu - a delicious blend of lime, rum, sugar, mint and mango purée. It tasted dangerously like an Innocent smoothie, and I could probably have had three. (And then passed out on the tube home). The 'Penangoska', a blend of lemongrass vodka, fresh lime and mint was also intensely refreshing, though not quite as flavoursome as the mojito. There are several other cocktails as well as a fairly comprehensive wine list. 

This is a food blog, though, so here's the stuff you really care about. I apologise for the slightly odd lighting in the photos - restaurant lighting is never particularly camera-friendly, but hopefully you get the gist.

We had two Malaysian curries: ikan assam pedas, which was a very spicy sweet-sour salmon curry, with a strong lemongrass flavour and nice crunchy vegetables; and the classic beef rendang. The rendang was my favourite dish of the entire evening: the beef was so tender you could pull it apart with chopsticks, and it was cooked in the most exquisite sauce, sweet and rich and slightly tangy, fragrant with coconut and lime. I would have been happy with a plate of that on its own, with some steamed rice (which was also very well cooked, and came in its own little bamboo pot). It's in no way a glamorous plateful, given that it is entirely brown, but don't be put off by this - the flavour is intense and delicious.

We also had two smaller dishes, often key components of your standard noodle bar menu: gyoza - thin steamed dumplings with a deliciously tender and juicy prawn filling - and salt and pepper squid, which was gloriously crispy with a spicy, peppery hit. The gyoza were perfect little parcels, slightly chewy with a wonderful fragrant filling, accompanied by a salty dipping sauce. They're one of the healthier-tasting options on the menu, but still very flavoursome.

The squid was incredibly tender - very hard to achieve with squid - and still tasted juicy and of the sea, not overwhelmed by its peppery batter. It achieved that rare thing with deep-fried food: to be crunchy and crispy but in no way greasy or cloying.

Nasi goreng, the classic Malaysian fried rice dish, had a good texture, with crunchy vegetables, slightly chewy rice and huge meaty prawns. It was very moreish and savoury, in that way fried rice always is, and was a good side dish to accompany the other treats on the menu, though it might be a bit samey to eat on its own, which I imagine is why it appears as a small sharing dish rather than a one bowl meal.

Another highlight of the menu was the itik, a steamed white bun filled with crispy hoi sin duck. This was exactly like cha siu bao, the Chinese barbecue pork bun, but with duck instead. The bun was perfectly fluffy, and its sweet, meaty filling was delicious. A wonderful contrast of flavours and textures: crunchy spring onion, soft duck, delicate chewy bun...I could have eaten several of these.

Finally, to cleanse our palates, a pomelo salad. I discovered this incredible salad in Vietnam, and the Penang! version did not disappoint, although I'm not sure about the inclusion of tomatoes - the salad itself is so sweet and acidic that the tomatoes are a bit overpowering. There were juicy chunks of sweet pomelo (like a larger, much sweeter and less acidic grapefruit), crunchy leaves and a delicious sweet-sour dressing, with the crunch of peanuts. It is a fabulous addition to a meal otherwise rich in carbohydrates and strong, meaty flavours, offering a refreshing burst of flavour. There are other salads, like mango, available too, which I really like - sometimes you need a dish that is fresh and vibrant to balance the heavier, saltier, richer noodle dishes and curries of Asian cuisine.

The menu recommends 3-4 of the sharing dishes per person, and this seems about right - after seven between us, we were comfortably full. I couldn't resist a dessert, though, since the menu looked so appetising. It's rare for Asian restaurants to offer proper desserts, so I was truly enticed by the prospect of ginger and lemongrass cheesecake, mango pudding, chilli chocolate mousse, or fried banana with ice cream and coconut sauce.

We had the fried banana and the ginger cheesecake. The banana fritters, for so they were, came with creamed sago and a scoop of ice cream. The fritters were delicious, the ice cream lovely, and the texture contrast with the sago was interesting. I'm not really a fan of sago and rice pudding-esque things, though, so it wasn't really my thing. I imagine children would love it though.

The cheesecake, however, was one of the best I've ever had at a restaurant. It was a huge portion - appreciated - of baked cheesecake, with a thick, rich, creamy texture, a crunchy biscuit base, and the most delicious sweet, citrus flavour. It was studded with small pieces of sweet stem ginger, the preserved kind you get in syrup. I've never tried a cheesecake like this before, and now I can't wait to recreate it. Some people might find the portion a little overwhelming, but I'd much rather have too much on my plate than too little. There was quite a lot of cheesecake compared with biscuit base, but again this is not really a complaint. It was gorgeous, one of the most indulgent desserts I've had in a while.

None of the food we ate was particularly fancy. Some of it wasn't much to look at, either - it's hard to present beef rendang, which is all one colour and texture, in a very dignified and elegant way - although the duck bun in its own steamer was a nice touch. But every single dish was delicious, satisfying, and unusual. It looked like food you want to eat - nothing too artful, just presented nicely in a way that invites you to dig in. There is something for everyone on the menu - light fish dishes, rich aromatic curries, healthy noodles and stir fries, grilled meat, soups - and every dish is wonderfully different, bringing its own great combination of textures, flavours and spices. Given that Malaysian cuisine is not about fine-dining faffing around with garnishes, the presentation and design of the dishes makes perfect sense. It's about sharing, digging in, and having a good time without any pretentiousness. 

The atmosphere, menu and staff at Penang! reflect this perfectly. Our waiting staff were very helpful and friendly, frequently topping up our water glasses, something often forgotten in the rush of busy service in most restaurants. The atmosphere is informal, full of people just having a good time and enjoying the food. The menu - its organisation and content - I think perfectly encapsulates the whole point of Penang! - to bring Malaysian street food to the masses. It may not be authentic, but it's a delicious change from the tired Thai and Chinese food we find all too often on the high street. Everything tasted like real effort had gone into each individual dish, rather than the mass-produced feel you can get from some chain restaurants. I hope that as it expands, Penang! doesn't lose this somewhat quirky charm.

Nutmegs, seven dined as a guest of Penang! Thank you very much to the kind people at Penang! for my meal at their restaurant. I look forward to returning some time in the future.

Pear, gooseberry and almond breakfast oat crumble

Although some of my more rant-led blog posts may encourage you to believe that I am a constantly angry and occasionally violent grumpy old woman, I'm actually quite a nice person. However, there are certain things that you just don't do if you want to remain on speaking terms with me ever again. 

For example, cook rice as you would pasta, in a vat of boiling water, draining it with a sieve. This is not acceptable behaviour and I will not tolerate it from anyone in my life. 

Secondly, you never, ever, mess up the froth on my cappuccino. Drinking a cappuccino is a ritual, revolving around the steady scraping off of the chocolatey froth from the top with a spoon and the inhalation of its heady cocoa-rich aroma before indulging in the actual coffee lurking underneath. The chocolate is the best bit. I once went on a date with a boy who flagrantly ignored this, leaned over the table and swirled his spoon vigorously around in my cappuccino (which sounds like a euphemism, but is not). I was actually rendered speechless with horror for a good few seconds. Needless to say, it didn't work out. A person who could do such a thing is clearly evil and therefore not boyfriend material.

Thirdly, you don't announce that you can't cook, proudly and as if this is some kind of badge of honour. You say 'I can't cook'; I hear 'I'm a lazy good-for-nothing layabout'. Cooking is pretty much the easiest thing in the world. You don't have to rustle up a three-course feast involving foams, textures and an ingredient 'done three ways'. But to make something like pasta or a curry is about as difficult as cutting your toenails. If you claim you 'can't cook', I'm sorry, but I just think you're too lazy to try. ('Won't cook', incidentally, also hurts me to hear, but is at least more honest).

You don't wave your exposed wrists in my face when I tell you I have a phobia of wrists and blood. That, people, is just unkind and not actually very funny, because I have a tendency to pass out on such occasions and while that may sound hilarious, you really don't want to be responsible for my concussion. Because I will track you down and kill you.

You don't wear leggings that are slightly see-through instead of trousers, i.e. not concealed by some kind of skirt or shorts. This is never, under any circumstances, OK. I'm sorry, but I don't want to go out with you in public if everyone who walks behind you can read the slogan on your knickers.

Come to think of it, slogans on knickers are not really OK either.

On that note. Boys: Tom and Jerry boxers are not - I repeat, NOT - a thing that should exist. If they're made of silk, this does not somehow make it OK. In fact, I think it makes it worse, by suggesting said product is geared towards a hideous hybrid of pre-pubescent child and male porn star. Wearers of such things, you know who you are. If you're ever wondering why we didn't work out, there's your explanation.

You don't always arrive late and/or cancel things at the last minute. This drives me up the wall and is just bad manners. Just because we live in a luxurious world of technology where we can instantly let someone know if we're running late or unable to make it, it doesn't mean it's OK or socially acceptable.

You don't eat at Cafe Rouge. If you eat at Cafe Rouge, consider yourself judged. Like, as judged as you will be on the way into heaven. Except if you eat at Cafe Rouge, you are clearly not going to heaven. But don't worry, I think the food in hell is probably a marked improvement on what that ubiquitous, nauseating, faux-rustic chain serves up on a daily basis.

And, finally, you don't get in the way of my breakfast.

Breakfast, to me, is probably the best time of the day. It's a quiet time, a time of solace and reflection before the rush begins. 

(OK, I admit, as a PhD student my life never gets much more of a 'rush' than 'Oh! I must hurry my five-minute commute so I can get to that seminar in time to make a cup of tea first!!! I hope I remembered to leave my lapsang souchong teabags in my locker for just such an occasion!') 

It's a time to be on my own and enjoy the first meal of the day in peace. Sometimes I read recipe books or food magazines, or watch a food show on TV. I make sure I always have something delicious to eat and take my time over, whether it's a big bowl of porridge with fruit or a freshly baked loaf of soda bread with homemade jam and a big cup of tea. I have a special mug that I reserve for my breakfast cups of tea. (By 'special', I essentially mean 'giant').

For most people, breakfast is probably a bowl of supermarket cereal and a glass of juice or a cup of tea. Or maybe a couple of pre-sliced bits of flabby, plasticky, mass-produced bread. While I appreciate that a lot of people don't have much time in the morning, I've always felt it worth getting up a little bit earlier so that I can have a proper breakfast. For me, the prospect of a freshly baked loaf or a steaming bowl of porridge is infinitely better than an extra fifteen minutes in bed. I put more effort into my breakfast, I imagine, than most people, rarely eating the same thing for more than a few days in a row. 

Take, for example, this recipe. It is inspired by one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten: Joy the Baker's 'Vegan Apple Cranberry Oatmeal Bake', which she posted on her blog a few weeks ago and which instantly shot straight to the top of my 'to-make' list. Lucky recipe - some things languish for years on that list without a second glance. I made it a few days later, and spent the entire time I was eating it groaning with delight in a slightly indecent fashion. I changed her recipe only slightly in that I used pears as well as apples, which I think made it even better. You get a gorgeous muddle of burst, juicy, tart cranberries, sharp apples and soft, grainy, perfumed pear pieces. This is all interspersed with clusters of spiced oats, crunchy and crisp in places and soft and gooey in others where they've come into contact with the fruit juices. It's one of those absolute keepers of a recipe, one that I know will become a staple in my kitchen for evermore.

It is the closest I've ever come to eating crumble for breakfast. Honestly, it's pretty much impossible to tell that it isn't crumble. What's more, it's markedly healthier. This is essentially the holy grail: dessert for breakfast, plus no guilt. That said, it could also be happily served as a dessert with some ice cream, as Joy suggests. 

There are some gooseberries in my insanely middle class food hoard (freezer) that have been lurking there for months now; I bulk-bought them in the summer and didn't use them up, saving them - as always with things in the freezer - for a 'special' occasion that never arose. As my freezer was approaching bursting point and I'm going home for the holidays, I wanted to have a bit of a clear out before I left.

I made a wonderful gooseberry crumble a couple of months ago, infinitely better than any previous attempts due to roasting the gooseberries in the oven first with brown sugar then draining most of the juice, to prevent a soggy mess that has been the tragic downfall of previous noble crumbles. The result was beautifully tender, tart berries, slightly scorched in places and wrinkled in others, under a crunchy, buttery crust. It was probably the best crumble I've ever made. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have to wait for an occasion when I could justify eating huge amounts of crumble to use up those gooseberries...I could use the same principle of roasting the berries first then blanketing them with a crunchy topping, but in a form that could be eaten for breakfast.

I roasted the gooseberries with brown sugar until starting to burst. They didn't release too much juice, so I didn't drain them. Instead I tossed them with chunks of pear, some mixed spice and some cornflour, to thicken any juices that did emerge and stop everything becoming watery. The crust is a mixture of jumbo oats, spelt flour, salt, mixed spice and ginger, because ginger works very well with gooseberries. It's moistened with maple syrup, olive oil and almond extract, because almond also works very well with gooseberries. The result, which looks like flapjack mixture, goes onto the fruit. You stir it in very slightly, just so that some bits of the crust end up soaked in the bubbling fruity syrup, then scatter over some flaked almonds for extra crunch, and it goes in the oven.

Oh, my goodness. I know I tell you all my recipes are good, even delicious, because obviously I'm a gastronomic genius and I crave love and acceptance, but this is beyond good. As Joy herself said of the cranberry version, it's 'bonkers delicious'. Firstly, the smell as it bakes is better than any scented candle (which makes me wonder if there isn't a gap in the market for brunch-based scented candles). Secondly, it's just so, so tasty. Hopefully you can see from the photos, because words kind of fail me. Imagine the best crumble you've ever eaten. It's sort of like that.

The gooseberries turn puckered and wrinkled, lending their beautiful honeyed, fragrant sweetness to the syrupy juice under the oats. The pears soften but still retain their grainy bite, adding their subtle perfumed flavour to the mix. The juice bubbles stickily. The oats soften and turn gooey in places, crunchy and crisp in others, with a toasty, buttery flavour (but of course, this uses olive oil so has the bonus of being vegan) and a hint of warm spice. There's crunch from the almonds. The whole thing is a delightful medley of textures and a riot of toasty and sweet, syrupy flavours. 

This is my new favourite breakfast. Eating it was a perfect ritual: big mug of tea, warm, spiced fruit, comforting crispy oats. I devoured half the dish in one sitting; Joy claims her original recipe served 4-6, but this is clearly some kind of conspiracy. I would be very, very surprised if you managed to make it serve four, let alone six. When I made it for friends a couple of weekends ago, I doubled the quantities, and it comfortably fed four of us. So be generous in your portion estimations.

I'm slightly devastated that I'm going to have to wait until summer to get gooseberries to make this again. Unfortunately it probably means I'm going to hoard even more of these fruits than last year, but at least now I'll know exactly what to do with them. However, out of season, you can use most berries for this: cranberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. You won't even need to roast them first, in that case - just put them in raw with the pears, cornflour and spices and add the oat mixture. I reckon blackberries would be insanely good.

So, after that somewhat scary list of things not to do if you want to be my friend, I'm going to give you one suggestion of something you should do: make this. And invite me round. Just be prepared for me to eat nearly all of it. And make sure you serve my tea in a suitably large mug.

Pear, gooseberry and almond breakfast oat crumble (serves 2-3):

• 3-4 large handfuls gooseberries, topped and tailed
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 3 medium pears (I used Rocha)
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 150g jumbo oats
• 40g spelt flour
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp mixed spice
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 3 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1 tbsp water
• 2 tbsp flaked almonds

Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Put the gooseberries in a medium baking dish with the brown sugar and toss together. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or so until they have softened and started to release their juice. Quarter the pears and remove the core, then cut half of them into thin slices and half into small chunks. Add to the gooseberries, and toss together with the 1tsp mixed spice and the cornflour.

In a small bowl, mix together the oats, flour, ginger, mixed spice and salt. In a measuring jug or mug, whisk together the olive oil, maple syrup, almond extract and water. Stir this into the oat mixture until it is moist and starts to clump together.

Pour the oat mixture over the gooseberries and pears, then give it a couple of stirs to roughly mix it together - you still want most of it over the top, though. Sprinkle over the almonds. Bake for around 40 minutes, until the oats have turned crunchy and golden and the fruit has softened. (Check it halfway through, and if it looks like it's a bit dry, add a drop of water to the fruit). Allow to rest for a couple of minutes, then serve.

Food highlights of 2012

I began 2012 with a list of food-related New Year's resolutions. This was, I have to admit, largely because I knew I'd be far better at keeping a set of food-related promises than any other arbitrary, unquantifiable, scarily significant 'life goals' that I set myself. Every year I tell myself I will a) be more patient, b) not be horrible to my dad when he tries to talk to me in the morning and c) stop getting so irritated by slow people and/or children. It never happens. At least if I tell myself I will eat more cheese, this is an easily measurable and attainable goal.

I totally forgot about my food resolutions until a couple of days ago, when I decided to self-indulgently look back over the blog post containing them. I was pleasantly surprised that I'd actually accomplished most of them, without even remembering I had made them in the first place.

I made sourdough bread, and am still making it to this day (there's a starter waiting to be fed on the kitchen counter right now). Every time I pull a freshly baked sourdough loaf from the oven, and every time I bite into that crispy crust and tangy, chewy interior, I can't quite believe that I made something so delicious.



I used my cookbooks more. Better yet, I only acquired two new ones for Christmas this year, which means I don't have an unmanageably large amount of new recipes to add to my ever-growing 'to make' list. OK, so I still cook from my head most of the time, but I am getting better at just following a damn recipe every now and again. It's oddly liberating, even though it should in theory be the reverse. It's quite nice having a page and a photograph to tell you exactly what to do in the kitchen every now and again. Plus you can blame the author, rather than yourself, when things go wrong.

I found a new lunch. Admittedly it still involves couscous, but still. I ate more jam, though not more chutney - I still have more to do in that department. I didn't eat as much more cheese as I'd like, but I did try and use up some of those special hoarded storecupboard products. Though it doesn't really feel like I've even made inroads, there are so many. I didn't bake enough scones, though my recent post sort of rectifies that. Sticky toffee pudding remains on the 'to make' list, which seems stupid. Why did I go a whole year without making this glorious combination of dates, sugar and butter?

This year, instead of making food resolutions, I thought I'd look back on some of the food-related highlights of last year, to remind me of why I cook and what to repeat next year. Most of these food moments were also general life highlights, such is the inextricable link in my world between gluttony and happiness.



1. Making this wonderful triple layer chocolate ganache cake for Mother's Day. Firstly, it taught me how to make ganache, which I've never done before. Stirring up the cream and chocolate and feeling it thicken and become spreadable and glossy is slightly magical. I was also really pleased with the photos for this post, and had great fun decorating the cake with strawberries and painting them with molten apricot jam to make them impossibly shiny.

2. The first time I made the baked oatmeal from the wonderful Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day cookbook. I've seen variations of this all over the food blog universe, and it completely deserves the hype. This has become one of my favourite breakfasts, something I make myself when I have the luxury of a lazy morning to chop fruit, stir up oats and bake. I've made so many variations of it since I tried the original, but I still think Heidi's banana version is one of the best, though my rhubarb creation came a close second.



3. Adding cardamom to a treacle tart. Not particularly earth-shattering, you'd think, but it was a complete revelation. I've never come across this addition before, but it turns a treacle tart from something sweet and yummy to something sublime, reminiscent of all those gorgeous nutty syrup-drenched sweets from the Middle East. Cardamom + huge amounts of sugar = bliss (for the tastebuds, not the teeth, unfortunately).

Incidentally, I now think it should be made mandatory to serve treacle tart with some sort of sharp fruit to balance out the sweetness. I've found rhubarb very effective, cooked with a little vanilla and sugar, as well as blackberries and raspberries (both mixed together would look beautiful against the burnished gold of the baked tart).



4. Winning a weekend in Chablis. This was just such a lovely weekend, wandering around the gorgeous little town of Chablis and finding out a huge amount about wine from the experts. Drinking a lot of it and eating rustic, beautiful French food was obviously also a highlight. It was also the first (and last) time I tried andouillette, the infamous French pig colon sausage that remains to this day the most disgusting thing I have ever put in my mouth.



5. My easter holiday in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, revisiting some much-loved Italian places, restaurants and dishes, and discovering a few new ones. Also being rather underwhelmed by the tower of Pisa. I have particularly fond memories of a certain street in Bologna, where I stumbled upon a surprise Wi-fi connection, only to discover an email telling me I had a funded place for a PhD at the University of York - something I'd hardly dared to hope for after all my other PhD dreams had come crashing down around my ears with repeated emails denying me funding. That night my boyfriend and I went and drank prosecco al fresco in the balmy evening, followed by pizza. Happy times.



6. Being sent Reza's Indian Spice to review by Quadrille Books, which shot straight towards the top of my favourite cookbooks list and has remained there. I'm so glad it's part of my collection, and I'm very grateful to Quadrille, as I doubt I would have come across it otherwise. I can't wait for an occasion special enough to warrant making the fabulous-looking stuffed haunch of venison.

7. Cooking this wonderfully unusual duck with chocolate and marsala from the Bocca di Lupo cookbook, simply because it was a total revelation for the tastebuds and I've never tried anything like it. There is also something intensely satisfying about stirring chopped dark chocolate into a sauce of simmering marsala and duck juices, watching it melt and turn the sauce thick and glossy, punctuated by sweet raisins which have swollen up like balloons in the hot liquid.



8. Taking part in a five-day gluten-free challenge, firstly because it opened my eyes to the prevalence of gluten in so many products (soy sauce, for example), and secondly because I got involved in the mad world of video blogging, which was pretty fun (although a bit weird being able to watch myself chop stuff, to a jaunty soundtrack - I kept wanting to shout out 'watch your fingers!').

Another reason this is a highlight is because, as my prize, I won a meal for two at Theo Randall's restaurant in Park Lane, which is the poshest place I've ever eaten at (apart from maybe the Ritz). I had the five-course tasting menu, which was delicious - the best bits were the creamy wild mushroom tagliatelle and the Amalfi lemon tart.



9. Discovering an insanely good new way to use up ripe bananas: in these banana and brazil nut blondies by Dan Lepard. Unbelievably delicious - even better than my usual banana bread.

10. Putting bacon, fennel, caramelised pears and blue cheese in a pasta dish, only to discover that not only does it work, it's possibly even better than carbonara.

11. Finally getting around to baking Dan Lepard's orange and pistachio stollen squares, and thereby negating the need to ever faff around making real stollen ever again. All the flavour and goodness is here, but it takes a fraction of the time. I've made about eight batches of these in the month or so since I first tried out the recipe. They're a Christmas staple now.



12. Creating this rhubarb ginger crumble cheesecake. Unfortunately I have to be rather enigmatic about the reasons behind picking this one as a highlight, but watch this space towards the end of February (or thereabouts) and all will be revealed.

13. My trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. This was a general life highlight, but food played a heavy part in my enjoyment of it. I keep meaning to write a blog post about the food on my trip, but it's destined to be such a giant post that the magnitude of it keeps putting me off. It will happen, though. There were several magical and revelatory moments during my trip, but the main one has to be coming round to the idea of soup for breakfast - specifically, a steaming bowl of meaty broth filled with slippery rice noodles, a scattering of vibrant herbs, and shreds of chicken or rare beef, spritzed with a good squeeze of lime juice. Vietnamese pho is comfort food like nothing else, and although I've gone back to my heavy Western breakfasts, I do miss the idea of a bowl of nourishing, cleansing broth first thing in the morning.



14. Making homemade sourdough, as discussed above. I love everything about making this bread: the feel of the dough, the pungent yeasty scent of the bubbling starter, the warm bakery smell as the loaf crisps up in the oven over a tray of bubbling water sending up a cloud of steam. I love taking the bowl of dough out of the airing cupboard after its first proving, feeling the weight of it as the dough has doubled in size. It sounds mad, but I can almost feel it breathing. It's warm, weighty, comforting, a living thing. All from flour and water.

15. More trips than I can count to Dojo, the tiny and wonderful noodle bar in Cambridge where you can get anything from pad thai to Vietnamese pho, from yaki soba to Malaysian stir-fries. If I could only eat at one restaurant for the rest of my life, it would be here. The food is cheap, gigantically portioned, healthy, and packed full of vibrant flavour every time.

16. Eating sticky toffee bread and butter pudding at the Hole in the Wall, Cambridge, run by Masterchef finalist Alex Rushmer. A combination of two classic and wonderful desserts; squidgy, gooey, buttery and sweet, it was a revelation and I had to go back a second time to eat it again.



17. A trip to Mien Tay, a Vietnamese restaurant in Shoreditch. I ordered a favourite dish from my travels, of grilled pork served on cold rice noodles with a sweet-sour dipping sauce, and was astounded to find it looking and tasting exactly as it did on a hot, steamy day in Vietnam, as I sat under a corrugated iron roof at a wooden bench, breaking my motorbike journey with a bowl of reviving noodles. I'm going back there as soon as is humanly possible, and will not cease until I have sampled the entire menu. Which is giant, so this may be a bit of a challenge.

18. Getting a KitchenAid ice cream maker for Christmas. It's been over a year since I made homemade ice cream, mainly because I lived at home this year and my parents can't cope with my weird and wonderful flavours (bay leaf, rosemary, Chai tea, Earl grey, lemon thyme...), but also because my tiny little ice cream maker gets more useless every time I use it, so I sort of gave up. The ice cream on the bottom of the basin freezes solid, stopping the churner from moving around, and the whole thing turns into a frozen mess. Now that I have the attachment for my KitchenAid, beautiful ice cream is achievable once more. Not that I've actually tried it yet, but I have every faith in KitchenAid and their pretty, pretty things.



19. Finally getting round to making some dishes I've had my eye on for months, if not years. Tarte tatin, gooseberry meringue pie, olive oil cake (a blood orange version and a chocolate version), roast pork with crackling, braised oxtail, pissaladière, gooseberry cheesecake, my granny's shortbread...there's nothing quite like crossing something off a mental 'to cook' list. Not only is it (usually) as tasty as you'd hoped, it's infinitely more satisfying for finally being cooked.

20. Meeting Mauro, lovely purveyor of beautiful olive oil from Italy. After a chance visit to my house, I am now a loyal customer of his, trying to find new and exciting ways of using his wonderful olive oil in my cooking. Since I bought six flavoured varieties from him (bergamot, mandarin, lemon, rosemary, garlic and pepper, and chilli), the possibilities have expanded even more. My favourite has to be the blood orange and cardamom syrup cake, pictured above.

21. Discovering flavoured balsamic vinegars from the Gourmet Spice Company - the chocolate & vanilla and blackberry & rosemary have endless uses in my kitchen, mainly as instant salad dressings for rich ingredients like smoked duck or chicken, or venison.

22. Moving to York, a complete treasure trove of delis, butchers, fishmongers and other weird and wonderful shops selling things I've never managed to find before (Norwegian brown cheese, for example). Plus there's a chocolate factory outside town, and on days where the wind is blowing in the right direction, the entire city smells of baking brownies. It's intoxicating. I can't believe I have actually moved to a town that smells of melted chocolate.



23. Improving my photography. I still have so much to learn in the field of food photography, and I still feel a total amateur, but I've had some lovely comments from people over the last year about my photos. These still surprise me every time, but I've learned to accept that I have come a long way since I started this blog, and took photos under my glaring flourescent worktop lights of weird neon-looking food, or quickly snapped things in the dark of my room with a camera phone.

I've had several real moments of satisfaction over the last year, where photos have turned out better than I'd hoped, and I've been quite excited about getting them onto the blog to showcase them. That's what keeps me doing this, the sense of improvement and achievement. Though I still haven't solved the problem of how to photograph my dinner in winter, when there's no natural light after around 3pm...



24. Laughing at Masterchef: The Professionals, which has become so riddled with gastronomic innuendo that I think it might be verging on a parody of itself. There's almost no need to collate all the hilarious euphemistic moments into a YouTube video like this one, when they occur on such a regular basis. Unfortunately I can't quote any classic ones for you, as a) I like to think this blog is vaguely family-friendly and b) I've forgotten them, there are so many.

On a food TV note, other highlights of this year include Two Greedy Italians, which inspired me to buy my first ever spin-off cookbook from a food TV show (there were just so many recipes in it that I couldn't wait to make, like this orange torta di riso); Nigel Slater's series, for its genius way of bringing together totally normal ingredients and turning them into something mouthwatering; the Great British Food Revival, which I love both for its noble campaign and for a chance to see some of my favourite TV chefs - OK, pretty much just Raymond Blanc - in action; and Nigelissima, not for the food but because Nigella is always amusingly watchable.

25. Finally, everyone I've met and bonded with this year through my love of food. I'm always amazed by how you find food-lovers in the most unexpected places. With a passion for food, you're never stuck for conversation with someone at a dinner party, or - more likely, these days - a boring academic conference. I've met some great people over the last year, either at food blogging events, on cookery courses in Vietnam, or at parties where we've bonded over the quality of the canapés. That's another reason why I keep this blog going - for me, food is primarily a social thing, and my social life would definitely be lacking without it.

A big thank you to everyone who reads or has read this blog in 2012; I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do writing it. Keep your lovely comments coming, as they really do brighten my days. Have a wonderful 2013!

Cheese and onion scones with pepper, paprika and nutmeg

In the heady rush of frivolous Christmas excess, there are several things that we suddenly, out of some bizarre and frequently misguided notion of 'tradition', decide we absolutely need in our lives, regardless of all restraining logic or common sense. The classic example is, of course, brussels sprouts, those contentious little green globes that, deep down, no one actually likes, regardless of how many innovative recipes you throw at them (although it has to be said that generally the amount of butter, cream and/or bacon used in a brussels sprout dish is directly proportional to how edible it is). There is also Christmas pudding, which alienates many eaters due to its sheer density, yet always features on the Christmas table, ready to languish and congeal for weeks later at the back of the fridge as we realise we'd rather finish our meal with a mince pie or a handful from the Quality Street tin. Even turkey, which we never eat the rest of the year round, complaining about its dry, tasteless nature; we still force it down, year after year, combining it with a sauce made from fruits we otherwise show a complete apathy towards - cranberries. 

Another foodstuff on this list is cheese. There was an advert recently, I think it was for a Burger King cheeseburger, that declared something along the lines of 'It isn't Christmas without cheese'. We Brits seem to adopt the same view, rushing out during the festive period to burden ourselves with Brie, smother ourselves with Stilton, choke ourselves on Cheddar and wallow in vast amounts of Wensleydale. We seem to perpetuate the myth that Christmas is the time to get involved in lovingly crafting a delicious cheeseboard, like the ones we see in glossy magazine adverts for Saint Agur. Maybe this is the year we'll finally do it, we think - we'll get the grapes, the fresh figs, the four different types of chutney, the special cheese knives, the slate board - it'll be just what we need to really make Christmas.

Yet I'm sure my family is not alone in never getting round to this cheeseboard creation. The multiple packets of cheese (best purchased from whole wheels at a supermarket deli counter or, better still, an independent artisan cheesemonger - no pre-packaged wedges of sweaty Brie here, please, it's Christmas) languish at the back of the fridge, next to the two soggy roast potatoes, the mealy, curling slices of white turkey and the bowl of greying, uneaten brussels sprouts, slowly developing their 'little furry jackets', as my mother so charmingly calls them.

Because honestly, Christmas is perhaps the most inappropriate time in the world for a cheeseboard. What you need to supplement your diet at this time of year is definitely and emphatically not a slab festooned with multiple manifestations of saturated fat. If you can still want to tuck into an array of molten, fatty, gooey cheese after all the mince pies, Christmas pudding, roast dinners and mulled wine at this time of year, I admire you. But I suspect you might be in the minority. 

There's a reason all the recipe magazines pack their January issues chock-full of vivid salads, stir fries and vegetable dishes. While I hate the annual obsession with 'detox' that surfaces after the hangover has faded on New Years Day, I have to admit I often welcome these new, healthy recipe ideas. Christmas leaves me feeling disgusting. I just can't hack the sheer amount of meat and sugar I feel obliged to force down on a yearly basis. Of course it's entirely my own fault - I just had to go back for that last roast potato, or nibble a bit of stollen with my cup of afternoon tea - but that doesn't make it any less uncomfortable. 

How anyone, after subsisting almost entirely on dried fruit soaked in alcohol, roast meat, buttered vegetables and various forms of spiced booze for the best part of a month, could actually welcome the idea of indulging in cheese and biscuits is beyond me, and therein lies the fallacy of our national cheeseboard tradition. Like brussels sprouts and turkey, perhaps we should finally admit to ourselves that it's okay to break with tradition at Christmas, that maybe we should listen to our appetites and what we feel like eating rather than what we believe anxiously that we should be eating.

Case in point: this year, after a discussion with my mother in which we both realised no one in our family actually likes turkey very much, we decided to do something totally wild for Christmas dinner. We had roast beef instead. A glorious rib of beef, gigantic and bloody and marbled and smelling emphatically of cow. We had: roast potatoes in beef dripping, mashed swede, broccoli and homemade Yorkshire puddings. We did not have: brussels sprouts, bread sauce, turkey, or cranberry sauce - i.e. most of those festive 'trimmings' that send cooks into a mad frenzy at this time of year as they try to juggle timings and oven space. We also didn't have parsnips, but that is simply because they are the devil's food and should be prohibited by law.

It was one of the most delicious meals I've had in a long time. I hardly ever eat roast beef - I haven't had it for over a year. Roast beef for me is far more of a treat than roast turkey, which is similar to roast chicken, something I make a lot. I would never buy and cook a rib of beef, nor order it in a restaurant. Yet when I tucked in on Christmas Day, I couldn't believe I'd been missing out on such sheer deliciousness for so long. That's a feeling I never get with turkey. It was liberating, there being so little to do - no faffing around making multiple sauces, just putting a spoon in a jar of horseradish. No bothering to make stuffing or pigs in blankets. No frantically worrying about salmonella or dry meat. 

All this said, my mum still went out this year and bought a small glut of cheese. While we may have shaken off the shackles of turkey tradition trauma, we have yet to escape what I shall now term 'British Festive Cheeseboard Syndrome'. A classic symptom of said syndrome? Buying a 'mulled cheese', i.e. Wensleydale with spiced fruits in. Another symptom? Buying exotic-sounding chutneys even when there are about eighty different chutneys slowly dying in the larder, gifts from mis-judged hampers of Christmases past. 

However, should you have various bits of cheese lurking in your fridge, making you feel guilty that you can't bear the notion of eating them - and you should if you want to call yourself a proper Brit - here is a great recipe for you. It turns those guilt-inducing bits of cheese into light, fluffy, deeply savoury scones that work very well with all manner of festive leftovers. They're great with cold meats and some chutney, or served with even more cheese - spread with soft Brie or Stilton, or a cream cheese. They're nice simply spread with butter and served warm, maybe with a cup of tea as an afternoon snack, if you like your snacks savoury. 

These are a simple scone mixture, jazzed up with some caramelised red onion and some feisty spices - smoked paprika for a delicious moreish tang; black pepper for a little kick of flavour; nutmeg for a seasonal spiced warmth. The combination of the spices, savoury onion and tangy cheese results in a rich, flavoursome scone that pairs well with so many other flavours. You can use most hard cheeses in this recipe - I used the remnants of a Lancashire bomb cheese, a tongue-ticklingly strong cheese that comes in a wax 'bomb' shape - but strong cheddar or goat's cheese would work best, as would something like Wensleydale or Gruyere. You don't get an overly strong cheese flavour, which is why these work well with other ingredients - just a subtle savoury note that makes you want to reach for another.

You may not fancy plying your stomach with huge amounts of oozing cheese at this time of year, but by transforming it into these little scones, you have something that not only provides a vehicle for eating up other Christmas leftovers, but also makes the cheese a lot more palatable. The idea of a ripe wedge of Brie is a tad nauseating right now, but these warm, crispy, fluffy little scones are definitely not. Whip up a batch this week - they take hardly any time to make - and lighten the cheese burden a little.

Cheese and onion scones with pepper, paprika and nutmeg (makes around 12):

• 1 red onion, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 185g self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 30g cold butter, cubed
• 60g strong cheese, crumbled or grated (I used a
• Lancashire bomb
• cheese)
• 1 large egg
• 3 tbsp milk, plus extra for brushing
• Parmesan cheese or strong cheddar, for grating on top

First, fry the onion in the olive oil over a medium heat until soft and golden in places. Set aside to cool. Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Sift the flour into a medium bowl then add the salt, paprika, pepper and nutmeg. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the cheese and red onion to the flour mixture.

Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and crack in the egg. Using a wooden spoon, beat the egg, gradually incorporating a little of the flour as you go, until you have a thick dough. Add the milk and combine using the spoon and then your hands to form a soft but not sticky dough. Tip onto a floured work surface and knead until smooth, then roll out to a circle around one inch thick.

Use small cutters (around 5-7cm diameter) to cut out the scones, then arrange, spaced out, on a piece of baking parchment on an oven tray. Roll any remaining dough out again and cut more scones, until all the dough is used up.

Brush the tops of the scones with milk, then grate over some parmesan or strong cheddar. Bake for around 10-12 minutes until golden on top.

Merry Christmas!

I'd like to wish all my readers a very merry Christmas. Naturally, I hope your Christmas is full of delicious things to eat as well as happy times with friends and family. I for one have started my day with a delicious bowl of pear and cranberry baked oatmeal and a cup of spiced Christmas tea. There's a huge, majestic rib of beef sitting proudly on the worktop waiting to come to room temperate before it goes into a searing oven; there's smoked salmon in the fridge, to be eaten with butter, horseradish and soda bread; there are mini sausage rolls waiting to puff up and go gloriously golden in the oven, mulled wine to sip around the fire, and - of course - a huge array of vegetables waiting to be peeled. I'd better go and get back to the kitchen.

I leave you with a festive picture of my cat in the snow. It's not snowing here, just doing that standard British grey drizzle thing, so I thought I'd bring a little feline-based snowy joy into your lives.

Merry Christmas!

Smoked sardines with harissa mango couscous

For those of us who can't afford those tempting 'winter sun' breaks at this time of year (a notion I generally hate and associate with terrifying mental images of lobster-red English bodies splayed out on the Costa del Vomit), there is a much easier way to capture a little of that summer cheer on cold, rainy days: cook your way to it. In the market the other day, I was transfixed by the sheer brightness and colour of the fruit and vegetable displays: vibrant glossy red and yellow peppers; jewel-like cranberries; luminous citrus globes; vivid, feathery fennel; bulbous gleaming aubergines; hot pink shards of rhubarb; marigold, bulgingly ripe persimmons; dusky pink lychees...it's probably the most colourful and inviting I've seen the market all year, and it seemed very fitting that all this wonderful fruit and veg (admittedly, most of it imported), bursting with colour and flavour, appears at the time of year when we most desperately need it.

Inspired by a lovely box of goodies I received recently from Belazu, producers of Mediterranean and North African ingredients (I especially love their preserved lemons), I've come up with a recipe that will bring a little Moroccan sunshine into your life. It uses mangoes, which is obviously not very Moroccan, but these sweet cubes of golden fruit are exactly what both your eyes and your tastebuds need during the winter. They're paired with sardine fillets, used a lot in Moroccan cooking, although these ones have been smoked, rather like haddock. They sound unusual, but I found them in my local Tesco, and would definitely recommend them if you can find them. While normal sardines will work perfectly well for this recipe too, the smokiness definitely adds a lovely savoury edge.

I've used barley couscous from Belazu, which is exactly like ordinary couscous except with a lovely nutty flavour and slightly firmer texture. I've also used their rose harissa paste, which is a blend of over 40 herbs and spices with a beautiful deep red colour and intense spicy flavour. I went through a phase in my second year of university of putting harissa on practically everything, and I have a feeling I might be tempted that way again. It adds a great earthy kick to whatever you put it on - it's great rubbed over fish or meat before grilling, but it's also good stirred into couscous, as I've done here.

To the harissa couscous I've added chopped spinach and cubes of juicy ripe mango. The sweetness of the mango counteracts the spiciness of the harissa paste, and also works very well with the rich oily flesh of the sardines. I've rubbed the sardine fillets with ras-el-hanout, a Moroccan spice mix whose Arabic name means 'head of the shop', indicating the tradition whereby the mixture featured the best spices the seller had to offer. There's no set recipe for this, and different brands all have different mixtures, but generally they include cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, chilli, coriander, cumin, pepper, turmeric, and rose petals. You can buy ras-el-hanout in most delis and supermarkets now.

The spices really enhance the deep flavour of the smoky sardine flesh, which is perfect with the sweet, juicy mango cubes and the spicy kick from the harissa couscous. All the dish needs is a scattering of toasted flaked almonds, for crunch and a deep toasty flavour, and a dollop of yoghurt, to cool everything down. It's nutritious, filling and satisfying, and the perfect recipe to transport you to sunnier climes.

Smoked sardines with harissa mango couscous (serves 2):

• 180g barley couscous
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tsp rose harissa (or more if you like it hot!)
• 2 large handfuls baby spinach
• 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh coriander
• 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley
• 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh mint
• 1 medium mango, peeled, stoned and cut into 1cm cubes
• 3 tsp ras-el-hanout spice mix
• 6 smoked/unsmoked sardine fillets (this would also work with mackerel)
• Olive oil
• 2 tbsp flaked almonds or pine nuts, toasted in a hot pan or under the grill
• Greek yoghurt, to serve

Put the couscous in a bowl and pour over enough boiling water to cover it by around 1cm. Put a plate over the top of the bowl and set aside.

Meanwhile, wilt the spinach either in a large frying pan or by microwaving it in a bowl for a minute on high heat. Chop it finely. When the couscous has absorbed all the water, after around 5-10 minutes, stir in the rose harissa and some seasoning. Add the spinach, herbs and mango, and set aside.

Rub the ras-el-hanout over both sides of the sardine fillets. Heat a little olive oil in a non-stick frying pan and get it quite hot. Add the sardines, skin side down first, and cook for a couple of minutes on each side. Divide the mango couscous between two plates, then put the cooked sardines on top. Scatter over the flaked almonds and serve with a dollop of yoghurt on each plate.

Pheasant salad with pear, chestnut, spiced seeds and rosemary salt

Isn't it just so annoying when you have four pheasant breasts in the fridge for dinner, but only three people to feed, so you have to come up with a way of using that leftover pheasant?

Yeah, I didn't think so. 'Leftover pheasant' is probably not the most likely thing you'll have in your fridge. If you do, though, we are kindred middle-class-food-lover spirits and should clearly be friends. However, should you happen to come across some pheasant breasts in the butcher, buy them on impulse, then stash them in the freezer while you figure out what on earth to do with them, this recipe is for you. It would also work if you happen to have roasted a whole pheasant and have some meat left over. Failing that, it would work with chicken. But humour me, and go with pheasant - we don't eat enough game in this country, and it's such a versatile and under-appreciated meat.

I've never cooked pheasant breasts before. All my pheasant cooking adventures have involved a whole bird, the most successful of which was a wonderful roast I made a few weeks ago. I smeared the bird in seasoned butter (salt, thyme, rosemary), layered the breast in streaky bacon, then roasted it until the bacon and skin were crispy. I served it with mash, greens, and the most incredible gravy made by deglazing the cooking pan with sherry and adding redcurrant jelly, rosé wine, and fresh blackberries. It was the best gravy I think I've ever tasted; a vivid dark purple, with delectable tart little morsels of berry that went so well with the rich meat and salty bacon. If you're stuck for pheasant recipes, I'd urge you to try this. I was a bit apprehensive as pheasant can be quite dry (I usually pot-roast it with cider and apples to avoid dryness), but roasting it can be very successful as long as you're generous with the butter and the bacon.

And if you're not generous with the butter and the bacon, life is clearly not going well for you. Sort it out.

Pheasant breasts are a much less scary option than a whole pheasant - they're much easier to cook, less prone to dryness because they can be cooked quickly, and more versatile when it comes to recipes. They can be used in the same way as chicken breasts, but provide much more meaty flavour. They're also not very expensive; at around £4 for a pack of four, they're probably cheaper than chicken breasts. 

While I always used to cook my game on the bone, recently I've come round to using just the breast fillets instead (as you can see in my recent recipe for spiced grouse with roast grapes). Most game birds have hardly any meat on their legs anyway, so you don't end up eating them, and hacking your way through a whole bird is not the most harmonious dinnertime activity. It makes it hard to glean that perfectly balanced forkful of mash, meat, gravy and veg if you've got to manipulate your way around leg bones and breast bones and bits of cartilage first. So if you see pigeon, pheasant or grouse breasts in the butcher, I'd snap them up while you can. I even found goose breasts recently, which I'm indecently excited about cooking - watch this space.

This salad is made special by the addition of two things: spiced seeds, and rosemary salt. The former are simply pumpkin and sunflower seeds toasted in a little olive oil in a hot pan before being tossed with cinnamon and nutmeg. The spices seep into the oil and the seeds turn crunchy, golden, and wonderfully aromatic. They add a beautiful warmth and depth of flavour to the salad, plus a lovely crunchy texture. 

Although the use of cinnamon and nutmeg in a salad might sound strange, you only get little bursts of it, and it makes the dish really special. For other recipes you could experiment with the spices - I think a combination of paprika and chilli would make the most incredible spiced seeds to scatter over a roasted vegetable salad, or cinnamon and ginger for sprinkling over a bowl of warming porridge with chunks of apple or pear. 

The rosemary (and garlic) salt adds a wonderful fragrant salty crunch to anything you sprinkle it on. Here, the rosemary and garlic work well with both the pheasant and the pears (pears and rosemary go wonderfully together), and the coarse grains of salt add another texture to the salad, as well as the saltiness to make all the flavours much more pronounced - the combination of rosemary salt and sweet caramelised pear is fabulous. I can't wait to try this salt over a roast lamb or pork joint, or sprinkled over a focaccia dough before it goes into the oven, but it's also good for anything that needs a little flavour boost.

To pears caramelised in a little butter and the remnants of the seed-toasting spices, I added cooked green beans, the pheasant meat, some thyme, the rosemary salt, the spiced seeds, and some sliced chestnuts. This was all tossed together over a high heat to warm through and allow the flavours to mingle slightly. While you're doing this, appreciate the lovely muted autumnal colours - golden spice-flecked pears, jade beans, russet chestnuts, and bronzed seeds. To garnish, add ruby-red pomegranate seeds - both for colour and a little sweetness - and a little more salt. 

Although this isn't perhaps the most orthodox combination of ingredients, it makes sense. Game goes well with fruit, as it provides a sweet foil to its rich meatiness. Game also goes well with chestnuts, which perform the same function, as well as contributing their delicious fudgy texture. Rosemary and thyme work well with almost all meat, but also pears. Cinnamon and nutmeg are warming autumn flavours that are a perfect match for both game and pears. Add all this together, with the fresh crunch of green beans, the snap of toasted seeds and the juicy bite of pomegranate seeds, and you have a salad that is as interesting to eat as it is delicious.

Although this basically arose from what I had in the fridge, it surprised me at being so much more than the sum of its parts. You have everything there - sweetness, saltiness, crunch, softness, meat, vegetables. It's nourishing yet substantial, perfect for colder weather when you want something a little healthier and more interesting than soup and bread, or a toasted sandwich. If you want to make it even more of a meal, add some cooked couscous or quinoa, or serve with good crusty bread.

Worth hunting down pheasant breasts for, I think.

Pheasant salad (serves 2, easily doubled):

• 2 cooked pheasant breasts* (see below for cooking instructions)
• 2 large handfuls of green beans, topped, tailed and halved
• Olive oil
• 2 tsp pumpkin seeds
• 2 tsp sunflower seeds
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• A knob of butter
• 2 small pears, cored and thinly sliced
• A couple of sprigs of lemon/normal thyme
• 1/2 tsp rosemary and garlic salt
• 80g cooked chestnuts, halved
• Seeds from half a pomegranate

Bring a pan of water to the boil and cook the green beans for 5 minutes or until tender but still with some bite. Drain and set aside. Slice the pheasant breasts into thick strips.

Heat 1tsp olive oil in a non-stick saucepan or frying pan, and add the seeds. Toast over a medium heat until they turn golden and start to pop, then add the cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir to coat the seeds, then remove from the pan and set aside. Add a knob of butter to the pan and add the pears. Cook over a medium heat until they start to caramelise (around 5 minutes). Add the green beans to the pan, then add the leaves from the thyme sprigs, the rosemary salt, the chestnuts, and the pheasant slices. Toss everything together over the heat for a couple of minutes, then divide between two plates. Scatter over the pomegranate seeds and a little extra salt and thyme, if you like, then serve immediately.

* To cook pheasant breasts, sear in a hot pan with a little oil for 2 minutes on each side, then place in the oven at 170C for 8 minutes. Remove, season, and leave for 3 minutes to rest before serving or slicing.

Orange and pistachio stollen squares

Christmas in the kitchen, for me, is a time to start searching for those 'definitive' recipes. Seeing as the annual festival of getting fat and eating too much with some exchanging presents in between generally involves cooking the same dishes every year - mince pies, Christmas pudding, a roast, cabbage, sprouts, Christmas cake, cranberry sauce - I've been on the hunt for the past few years for recipes for these things that are so good I'll want to just go straight back to them next year, rather than continuing to experiment. So far, Delia's braised red cabbage with apple, Levi Roots' tropical Christmas pudding and Fiona Cairn's Christmas cake recipes are all lucky enough to have made it onto this list. My mum's mince pies are also a staple, but I long ago accepted that they'll only taste right if mum makes them herself, so they're not something I can really recreate on my own.

However, there's still a gap as far as stollen is concerned. Ever since I discovered this baked delight a few years ago - I can't actually remember when I had my first taste, but it had me hooked - I've tried every year to create the perfect stollen. For those of you who have never tried it, sort this out. It's a delicious cross between a bread and a cake, studded with dried fruit and nuts, with a thick vein of marzipan running through the middle. It's often glazed with butter and liberal amounts of icing sugar, and scented with spices like cardamom and cinnamon. 

The first recipe I tried was from a book that came with our bread-making machine at home. I made the fruity dough in the breadmaker, stuffed it with marzipan and baked it. The result was rather like a giant, elongated hot cross bun. It was bready rather than cakey, with quite a loose crumb. It was delicious, especially toasted and buttered, but not really what I was after. Stollen should have quite a dense texture, closer to bread than cake. It's moist yet crumbly at the same time, often from the addition of ground almonds. 

The next recipe I tried was Dan Lepard's sour cherry stollen. This was much closer to what I wanted: it had a lovely cakey texture and was even better after maturing, soaked in rum, sugar and butter, for a few days (although I obviously had to nibble a piece before I put it away for its little rum bath, just to quality control). It had a lovely cardamom flavour, which I think is essential to a good stollen - the combination of super-sugary marzipan and the citrus hit of cardamom is fabulous. It's like the gastronomic equivalent of getting a snowball in the face. But in a good way.

Last year, I tried Richard Bertinet's stollen recipe, which was in the delicious magazine Christmas issue. The main advantage of this recipe was that it made not one, not two, but four stollen loaves. It was quite involved - a lot of kneading and proving and folding fruit into dough, as well as making a 'creme d'amande' out of eggs, sugar, ground almonds and butter - but the end result was gorgeous. The crumb texture was very buttery, rather like a croissant, with a wonderful almond hit. We froze two of the stollen and my mum begged me on a monthly basis throughout the following year to allow her to defrost one and eat it. 

This year, I think I'll probably make the Bertinet version again. However, this recipe for orange and pistachio stollen bars, another Dan Lepard creation, has been sitting in my Bookmarks folder for an entire year, since it appeared in the 2011 Observer Christmas food special. The other day I felt the urge to bake something festive, and these sprung to mind.

The advantage of these is that they are incredibly quick and easy to make. Pretty much everything just goes into a bowl, then a pan, then the oven, then your mouth. No kneading or proving, as you often get with the more bread-like stollen recipes. Yet the end result tastes pretty much exactly like real stollen. There's that dense, cakey crumb - made with the addition of cream cheese, which I think gives it its richness - the hit of cardamom, juicy pieces of raisin, crunchy pistachios, and finally the delicious grainy squidgyness of marzipan pieces. The crumb is also infused with orange extract, which gives it a delicious Christmassy flavour. 

Also, because it's baked in a wide tray, you get more of the delicious crunchy, caramelised crust, which is one of the best bits of stollen. Particularly here where pieces of marzipan near the surface of the mixture bubble up in the oven and turn crunchy and toffee-like. 

When I make these again, I think I'll chop the pistachios rather than leave them whole, as I prefer a little bit of crunch rather than whole nuts. I'd also chop the marzipan into smaller pieces - Dan suggests 2cm squares, but that's a sizeable chunk of marzipan to chew on, and they're also harder to fold through the batter, which is pretty dense already. [Since I wrote this post I have indeed made them again, and can confirm that chopping the nuts and using smaller marzipan pieces is definitely the way forward]. I think the raisins would be excellent replaced with dried cranberries or cherries, or maybe with some dried apricots added too. 

The best part of this is removing the warm cake from the oven, then brushing it with melted butter and dousing it in icing sugar. The smell as it bakes is sumptuous, filling the kitchen with the aroma of Christmas; fruit, spice, nuts and butter. Slicing the cake into squares is also deeply satisfying, particularly when crumbs or corners end up crumbling off and you have to eat them to neaten everything up. 

While not a true stollen, these may just make it onto my list of 'go-to' Christmas recipes. All the flavour of stollen, with none of the faff. Apparently they keep for a good while if you're generous with the melted butter and sugar, and wrap them tightly in foil. But of course, if you're generous with the melted butter and sugar, you're going to want to devour them all in an indecently short amount of time, as I did. Fortunately my department at university has an actual thing that we call 'Cake Thursday', which involves sharing home-baked treats on a weekly basis. Without these human bins in which to dispose of all my baking, I would be well on the way to obesity right now. It's cold up in York. I need baked goods for insulation.

These little squares are the essence of Christmas. Whip up a batch to sustain you through the arduous weeks of shopping, card-writing and turkey-buying ahead. Make some and give them to your friends. Just make sure they don't have a nut allergy.

For the recipe, from Dan Lepard, click here.

Indian spiced grouse with roasted grapes

Of all the meats in the world, it is those that are dark and mysterious which intrigue me the most. While I do believe that literally nothing on this earth beats a good roast chicken, at the same time I have a love for and fascination with those darker, gamier, more interesting meats. Those that can be eaten rare and rather bloody, sliced into gorgeous glistening pink strips on the plate. Those that can more than cope with a heavy dose of spicing and flavouring to bring them to life. Those with an iron-rich tang that pairs so well with all manner of sweet and savoury ingredients. Those that unequivocally scream 'carnivorous feast' when you see them on the plate, red and juicy with a burnished outer crust and a tender blushing centre.

One of these, a meat I've only recently discovered, is grouse. I first tried grouse a few months ago, and remember it well. I'd asked my mum to get me a grouse from the butchers near our house in Pateley Bridge, north Yorkshire, some time last winter. This had been sitting in the freezer for months, preying on my conscience, demanding that I get round to eating it before the poor thing froze away into oblivion. Having never cooked grouse before, I didn't feel particularly inspired, and had no idea what to do with it. I'd asked her to buy it on impulse, because I was curious about this elusive bird, which has a very short season starting on the twelfth of August (the 'glorious twelfth') and lasting around a month.

One night, however, I decided to bite the bullet (something that you literally end up doing a lot with game, which has a little surprise in the form of metal shot lurking in its flesh waiting to break your teeth) and cook the damn thing. I looked for a recipe online, but all I kept finding was the traditional grouse with bread sauce and cabbage. As nice as that sounded, it was July and I really wasn't in the mood for a traditional British autumnal feast. Bread sauce is not a thing that should be on plates in the summer. I was also in the middle of planning my August trip to Vietnam, which definitely wasn't putting me in the mood for winter fare.

I then came across a recipe for roast grouse with grapes (ignore the rather alarming photo at the top, which looks somewhat like a poultry foetus zombie - not entirely sure what editor allowed that unappetising shrivelled monstrosity onto the website...). This involved smearing the bird in seasoned butter, roasting it in the oven, then adding red grapes and red wine to the roasting tray. Always a huge fan of meat with fruit, and intrigued by the concept of cooked grapes, I went with it. It was fantastic - the meat was dark, rich and gamey, while the grapes were a delicious burst of sweetness. I served it with couscous, to soak up the red wine sauce and the juice of the grapes, and because I find it hard to go more than a couple of days without couscous in my life.

My first taste of grouse was delicious. I'd probably describe it as a cross between pigeon and partridge - the birds are a little bigger than a partridge but smaller than a pheasant, but the meat is much darker, more reminiscent of pigeon. It's also best served quite rare, otherwise it dries out completely and (I imagine) tastes of leather. It does have quite a strong gamey taste, but in a pleasant way, and this works very well accompanied by some sort of sweet fruit. 

Inspired by this success, I bought some grouse breasts from the same butcher this year. Buying just the breasts takes the faff out of trying to hack your way through a whole bird, and seeing as there isn't much meat on the legs this is the best bit anyway. They're also much easier to cook, as you can just pan-fry them, and it means it's easier to get the exact degree of done-ness (I like my meat almost still alive - if it's not bleeding, it makes me sad). I love cooking pigeon breasts, as they're like little baby steaks - dark and sizzling and best served rare. I imagined grouse would be very similar.

This recipe, with its accompaniment of juicy roasted grapes, is inspired by that summer feast. The spiced grouse is inspired by a gorgeous dish I had at Cinnamon Kitchen in London a couple of months ago. Chef Vivek Singh served us the most delicious combination of spiced grouse breasts, spiced minced grouse leg meat, and black lentil dhal. It was a revelation to me: I'd never really thought of using Indian spices with grouse, but after I tasted it it made perfect sense. Grouse has such a strong, meaty flavour that it can perfectly withstand such strong spices. In fact, I would argue that they're almost necessary, to temper the very bold flavour of the meat. It was an ingenious dish and one that has stayed with me long after.

I've attempted to recreate it here, by marinating the grouse breasts in a spice paste before pan-frying them and accompanying them with roasted grapes. For the marinade, I've used three lovely spices: cardamom, garam masala, and chilli flakes. The aromatic garam masala is lifted by the citrus freshness of the cardamom, while the chilli adds a bit of heat. There's also grated ginger and crushed garlic for warmth and depth, and a little salt, plus some oil to bind everything together. This delicious scented paste is rubbed onto the grouse breasts, which are left to marinate for as long as you have time. 

The grapes are placed in a roasting dish with a splash of red wine and a drizzle of olive oil, then seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh thyme. They go into the oven, where they wrinkle and pucker gloriously, ending up crispy in places and soft in others, their skins slightly split, oozing luscious juice. I pan-fried the grouse breasts for a minute or so on each side, to leave them nicely rare in the middle. The spice paste formed a delicious aromatic crust in the pan. 

I served my grouse and grapes with pomegranate seed couscous, coriander and spinach. It's a fantastic combination - the bland, comforting couscous is the perfect foil to the rich, gamey grouse with its hit of spices and the juicy sweet grapes. It's a delightful Anglo-Indian fusion of flavours, and a really unusual dish. If you've never paired game with spices or fruit before, try this recipe and kill two birds with one stone. I think it's definitely the best way to cook and eat game.

Indian spiced grouse with roasted grapes (serves 1):

• 2/3 grouse breasts
• 6 cardamom pods, husks removed
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 3 tsp grated fresh ginger
• 1 tsp garam masala
• Pinch of chilli flakes
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil
• 2 small bunches red grapes
• A splash of red wine
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil
• A couple of sprigs fresh thyme
• Couscous mixed with pomegranate seeds and chopped coriander, to serve

Using a pestle and mortar, crush the cardamom seeds to a fine powder. Add the garlic, ginger, garam masala, chilli flakes, salt and oil, and mix to form a paste. Rub this over the grouse breasts and leave to marinate in the fridge for as long as possible (mine were in for around 4 hours).

When ready to cook, heat the oven to 190C. Put the grapes in a roasting dish with the red wine. Drizzle over a little olive oil, then season with salt and pepper. Strip the thyme leaves from their sprigs and sprinkle over the grapes. Roast in the oven for around 15-20 minutes, until the grapes have started to wrinkle and split.

When the grapes are done, heat a non-stick frying pan. Add the grouse breasts and cook for 1-2 minutes on each side. Remove to a chopping board and rest for a minute or so while you get the couscous ready on the plate, then slice the breasts into thick strips. Arrange on the plate and place the grapes alongside. Sprinkle with fresh coriander and serve immediately.

Chocolate and mandarin olive oil cake

What food would you find it hardest to give up? Sometimes, when I'm bored, I ask myself this. Because I'm gastronomically masochistic like that. I've frequently toyed with the idea of going vegetarian or even vegan for a month, just to challenge myself. In fact, I very nearly went vegan for Lent this year, until I realised that I was going on holiday to Italy slap bang in the middle of it. There's pretty much no point in going to Italy unless you're going to eat vast quantities of meat and cheese. Apparently they have some decent art and some Roman ruins and stuff, but we all know that the only reason to go to Italy is to gorge oneself on bread, cheese and meat, preferably all together in that excellent vehicle designed by the Italians to combine these things into one coherent meal: pizza. 

There's one main thing that stops me embracing vegetarianism, and it isn't, as you might suspect, bacon. I'm not much of a carnivore; in fact, I have an unhealthy habit of hoarding meat in my freezer without ever actually getting round to cooking it. Currently the contents of my freezer include two chickens, four pig cheeks, two goose breasts, three grouse breasts, four pheasant breasts, a stuffed mallard, and ten rashers of bacon. (I'm sure there's some kind of breast joke in there somewhere, but I'm too mature to make it. The comments box below is designed for just such a thing). 

While not a carnivorous eater, however, I am a carnivorous cook. This I think is an important distinction. I really enjoy cooking meat, especially meat that lends itself to all sorts of diverse flavours like game or lamb. I enjoy the potential for experimenting that it offers, particularly with so many different cuts for every animal. Pigs aren't just for chops and sausages, for example; pig cheeks are surprisingly delicious, as are ham hocks and ribs. I love cooking meat, though more often than not I don't actually tend to eat very much of it. But I know I would feel like a huge part of my cooking repertoire had been removed if I turned vegetarian.

Veganism would be an interesting challenge, but it's never going to happen full-time. Two words: eggs and cheese. In fact, mainly eggs. Scrambled eggs on toast is the ultimate 'can't be bothered but it will still taste delicious' dinner. When I was contemplating Lent veganism, I thought about how my usual daily intake of food would be affected. Porridge for breakfast as usual, I thought - that's totally vegan. Except it's made with milk. Soya milk is not a thing I want in my life. Lunch is usually couscous, roasted veg and feta cheese. Feta cheese is a thing I want in my life. You see where this is going. 

Sometimes I think the food I'd miss most would be couscous. It struck me today that I think I've eaten couscous literally every day since I started university again in October. I'm not sure what I'd do without its comforting starchy goodness for a mid-library lunch. That said, giving up porridge might make it impossible to get out of bed in the morning. And giving up fruit would undoubtedly leave me in a state of traumatised despair, possibly with rickets and maybe also scurvy. I'd have to find something new to replace my five-a-day, and I'm pretty sure it would end up being cake. 

I gave up gluten for five days back in July as part of a gluten-free blogger challenge. While it wasn't as hard as I thought, what really struck me was the myriad of places where gluten hides its wily self. Soy sauce, stock cubes, sushi and packaged salads all fell victim to the gluten plague. It made me think much more about how difficult it would be to live with a real gluten intolerance, particularly when eating out. Plus, gluten-free porridge oats are approximately one million times the price of normal porridge oats, which is not really OK. And gluten-free bread is generally one million times more cardboard-like than normal bread. However, gluten-free pasta is pretty much the same. Those are my profound conclusions from my gluten-free five days.

This cake arose out of a need for a gluten-free, lactose-free dessert. I have a friend who can't eat either, and I wanted to make her something so she didn't feel left out during a night when the rest of us were tucking into a giant apple crumble I'd made. 

Unfortunately, it's surprisingly hard to find cake recipes that are both gluten- and dairy-free. Gluten-free cakes are everywhere these days now that awareness of food intolerances is much higher than it used to be, which is great. Such cakes usually replace the flour with ground almonds (or other nuts) or something like polenta. However, they nearly always use a lot of butter to compensate for the lack of that wheat-based tastiness. Dairy-free cakes, generally made with olive oil instead of butter, usually feature flour. I reckon you could substitute the butter for olive oil in the gluten-free cakes and the flour for ground nuts in the lactose-free cakes, but I wanted to be sure before embarking on a baking mission.

Fortunately, I found this excellent recipe from Nigella. I think it's actually from her latest TV series, which is impeccably good timing. I was pretty excited about the idea of a chocolate olive oil cake, but even more excited about the prospect of using some delicious mandarin-infused olive oil that I had in the cupboard (as you do). A while ago, I wrote about a nice Italian man named Mauro, who came to our house in Cambridge selling beautiful Calabrian extra-virgin olive oil. I used this delicious oil in a blood orange and cardamom syrup cake (every bit as amazing as it sounds - click and ogle the pictures), and when Mauro came back to our house a few months later he introduced me to a range of six different flavoured oils: bergamot, mandarin, chilli, balsamic vinegar with black pepper and garlic, rosemary, and lemon. Unable to choose between them, I bought all six. They're really wonderful and incredibly versatile for cooking, especially the black pepper, garlic and balsamic one which is basically an instant salad dressing. If you want more information on where to get them, click here. (Incidentally, I'm not being asked to write about these - I just really like them and wanted to share, particularly since Mauro is so friendly and sells such a brilliant product). 

I hadn't had an opportunity to use the mandarin version yet, and it seemed the perfect ingredient for this cake. Obviously, chocolate and orange work very well together - those awful Terry's chocolate orange adverts have certainly immortalised that flavour pairing - so I swapped the normal oil in the recipe for the mandarin version. I also scaled down the recipe to fit a smaller cake tin, using 2/3 of Nigella's quantities. 

You dissolve cocoa powder in boiling water and add vanilla, then whisk together eggs, sugar and olive oil until thick and creamy. The scent of citrus as my KitchenAid whisked the whole thing round at lightning speed was delicious. In goes the cocoa mixture, turning everything a gorgeous rich chocolate brown, followed by ground almonds, bicarbonate of soda, and salt.

I was a bit sceptical as I poured the batter into the tin, as it seemed very runny, but who am I to distrust the buxom Ms Lawson herself?

Obviously, this cake was delicious. You only have to look at the photos to see how dark and moist it is. I was quite surprised by the sheer darkness of it; it's pretty much black which is rather odd as a food colour (just try not to think that you're eating coal), but once you get past that it's just plain wonderful. The crumb is incredibly light and incredibly moist from the olive oil and almonds; it's rich and flavoursome while still remaining feather light. There's a real chocolate hit with just a hint of citrus tang from the olive oil. My cake sunk a little bit in the middle, perhaps because I scaled the recipe down, but this was more than compensated for by the flavour (also, I think it looks quite charming - a bit like it's sighing wistfully at its own goodness). 

It's definitely an unusual cake and probably unlike anything you've made before. For that reason I'd urge you to try it. 

It's also a fabulous recipe to have up your sleeve for anyone with allergies to either gluten or lactose (or both). It works well as an afternoon slice of cake with a cup of tea, or as a lavish dessert accompanied by some juicy red berries and - if lactose isn't an issue - a scoop of ice cream (though I think you can get very good dairy-free ice cream these days). Decorate with orange zest and a good dusting of icing sugar, and you have a beautiful decadent cake no one would guess was missing a good hit of flour and butter. 

Chocolate and mandarin olive oil cake (serves 6-8):

(Adapted from Nigella Lawson's recipe here)

• 35g good quality cocoa powder (I used Green & Blacks)
• 85ml boiling water
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 100ml mandarin-infused olive oil (or other flavour/plain oil)
• 130g caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 100g ground almonds
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• Pinch of salt

Pre-heat the oven to 170C. Grease and line an 18cm springform cake tin (you could use a 20cm tin too, it will just give you a slightly flatter cake).

Sift the cocoa powder into a bowl then whisk in the boiling water to form a paste. Whisk in the vanilla then set aside to cool.

Using an electric mixer or whisk, whisk together the oil, sugar and eggs for several minutes until thick and creamy. Turn down the speed then pour in the cocoa mixture, whisking well to incorporate it. Fold in the almonds, bicarb and salt. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for around 40 minutes, until the edges have started to pull away from the side of the tin and the top is fairly firm.

Bacon, apple and cheddar potato scones

Potatoes get a bit sadly overlooked in my kitchen, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to neglect these noble tubers. I reckon I cook with potatoes once a month at the very most, and probably not even that. I'm not entirely sure why they're so seldom featured in my recipes. Perhaps because mashed potato is a little bit of a faff, so generally I accompany my food with rice or couscous, which has a more interesting texture and which I actually prefer. Perhaps because I cook a lot of Middle Eastern and Asian food, where potatoes don't usually feature. Perhaps because I've got into this habit of rarely using them, they're not something that comes into my head when I'm thinking up recipes.

I remember the Great British Food Revival did an episode on potatoes a couple of years ago. Gregg Wallace did a fine job of persuading us all to reignite our love affair with the humble potato, bemoaning the fact that we're so obsessed with trendy foreign carbs (pasta, rice, couscous, bulgur wheat...) that we neglect our own home-grown starchy goodness. He offered a number of potato recipes designed to inspire us. One of them, potato gnocchi, he made look so easy and delicious that I made it the very next day.

Unfortunately, it was a disaster. My gnocchi, on contact with boiling water, disintegrated into a sieve full of squidgy mush. They were completely unrecognisable as gnocchi, and definitely not the kind of thing you can just toss in a tomato sauce and serve. I threw them in the bin - something I abhor doing - and cooked some pasta instead. Maybe it was this scarring experience that has all but banished the potato from my larder (I still have never tried to revisit making gnocchi, and doubt I ever will). I very rarely have kitchen disasters, so when I do it's pretty catastrophic - there are usually tears.

However, when Good Natured asked me to take part in a competition to design a warming potato recipe for winter, I figured I may as well put my creative energies to the test with this little-used ingredient. Plus there was a chance of winning some Le Creuset, and as anyone who knows me will know, I am a complete fiend for Le Creuset.

I had a number of ideas in mind, mainly based around memories of French ski resort food - i.e. heavy in butter, cream, cheese and bacon - but this one popped into my head and won. I'm a big fan of those potato farls you can buy in supermarkets - dense, doughy, fluffy pancake-like breads that are delicious toasted and smothered in scrambled eggs and (on a day when I'm feeling rich, so very rarely) smoked salmon. The use of potato in baked goods lends a really amazing moistness and a fluffy texture, so I wanted to try it in scones.

These are emphatically not the kind of scones you want to slather in jam and cream for afternoon tea. Instead they're dense, doughy and moist, ideal for brunch or lunch. They're enriched with aromatic thyme and sage, crispy bits of salty bacon, grated mature cheddar, and grated apple. The apple gives a slight sweetness and more moisture to the scone, while the cheese melts lusciously and turns gooey. The bacon and herbs work really well with the rich cheese, making the whole thing deliciously savoury.

The potato here lends an amazing moistness to the crumb. They're very doughy scones, rather than light and fluffy like your typical afternoon tea scones, but they would make a wonderful accompaniment to soup or stew - the perfect doughy morsel to mop up all those delicious juices left in your bowl. They'd also be good simply spread with butter and eaten for breakfast (which I did this morning while waiting for my porridge to cook), or topped with a light goat's cheese and some slices of apple for lunch. They're basically your typical bakery cheese scone, just made more interesting with the addition of potato, apple and bacon, and with a savoury squidgyness that is perfect for the colder months.

If this isn't warming winter comfort food, I'm not sure what is.

Bacon, apple and cheddar potato scones (makes 8):

• 300g peeled potatoes
• 4 rashers of smoky bacon
• 350g self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp dried sage
• 80g cold butter, cubed
• 80g grated mature cheddar, plus extra to finish
• 1 apple, grated (I used cox)
• 4 tbsp milk, plus extra for brushing
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard

First, boil the potatoes until tender, then drain and set aside to cool completely. When cool, cut into chunks. Cut the bacon into small pieces then fry in a hot pan until crispy. When cooked, place it on some kitchen paper to absorb excess fat and let cool.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

Put the flour, salt, baking powder, thyme, sage and butter in a blender and blitz until the butter has been incorporated. Add the potatoes and blitz again. Put the mixture in a bowl and stir in the bacon, cheese and apple, then whisk together the milk and mustard and add to the bowl. Knead until the mixture forms a smooth and slightly sticky dough.

Flour a baking sheet (non-stick if possible). Place the dough on a worktop and knead for a minute or so, then shape into a disc around an inch thick. Place on the baking sheet. Brush with a little milk, then grate some more cheddar over the top to cover. Then use a sharp knife to divide into eight pieces, cutting about 1cm down into the dough.

Bake for 45 minutes, until crispy and golden on top. Best eaten warm.

Spiced banana bread

Sometimes, you just need to go back to basics. This is, of course, true in all areas of life, but I'm primarily talking about the kitchen. Sometimes you just need to. To put the mandolin, potato ricer, apple corer, waffle maker and julienne-slicer back in the cupboard. To leave the ice cream maker in the freezer. To unplug the KitchenAid mixer. To stack up the dariole pudding moulds and tuck them safely into the cupboard along with the bundt cake tin, the individual tart cases, the trifle glasses. To leave the oyster knife in the drawer along with the boning knife, filleting knife and cheese knife. To dispense with the mezzaluna and say goodbye to the sugar thermometer.

Sometimes, you need to realise that what people want to eat is not necessarily the same as what they can see by tuning into Masterchef. You need to realise that while you slave away preparing numerous drizzles and sauces to adorn the plate, they will be getting hungrier and hungrier, and as they squash everything on the plate together with their knife and fork, they are unlikely to notice the artful balsamic drizzle here, the tasteful garnish of micro-herbs there. Neatly sliced cuts of meat are made to be accompanied by a pile of mash and vegetables, not by three different kinds of puree, no matter how delightfully colour-contrasting they are or how subtly different in texture.

You need to realise that, although this new recipe of yours may showcase some exotic and unusual ingredient, people are unlikely to care as much as you do. Yes, there may be kumquats with the pork belly, but what is wrong with old-fashioned apple sauce? There may be basil ice cream with the strawberry tart, but...y'know...vanilla can be really nice. A stew with polenta? It may be oozing Italian sophistication, but it ain't mash.

That sourdough, that you spent months maturing and days baking? To you it may have the perfect nuanced flavour, so much better than anything you can buy for the simple reason that you nurtured it and perfected it, but no one else is likely to pick up on that. To them, it will taste exactly the same as something you could pick up from a baker. Save that luscious tangy crumb for yourself, and buy a loaf instead for dinner.

I have to remind myself of all of this sometimes. It's difficult to remember that not everyone takes cooking as seriously as I do, that not everyone will care as much as I do, and appreciate the effort and (I like to think) ingenuity that goes into conceiving and preparing a dish. I've come to realise that actually, what really matters is that people sit around the table and have a good time with something they enjoy eating. Sometimes, it's OK to rustle up a simple beef and ale stew, or fish pie, or pasta. It's more than OK; it's better. There are times when simplicity and (relative) ease can make a meal like nothing else.

This is, I think, at its most applicable when it comes to the realm of dessert. To me, there is simply no point faffing about making numerous different kinds of compotes, jellies, ganaches, tuiles, sugar cages and mousses in order to construct a dessert more akin to a piece of modern art than the final course of a meal. While such things are easy on the eye, they're tiresome and a faff to eat, with a million and one different components to analyse with your tastebuds before you can actually enjoy the thing.

I'm not sure if anyone, honestly, would take that sort of dessert over something hearty and home baked.

This banana bread, for me, is a perfect example of the beauty of simplicity. Even more so because it actually arose out of an attempt to be too clever. I was experimenting with a rhubarb and cardamom cake the other day, involving alternate layers of cake batter and rhubarb compote. All seemed well when I took its gloriously risen form out of the oven and left it to cool. When I came to slice the thing, however, it was a disaster: the cake mixture hadn't cooked at all, sodden and weighed down by the sticky, wet rhubarb compote. It was doughy, stodgy and inedible. 

I've never really had a baking failure before. Generally my instinct, developed through years of practice, is sharp enough to know when something is going to work or not. This time, though, something was clearly off. I'll put it down to what was a very stressful week, coupled with the general stress of starting a totally new life in a totally new city. To me, it was a sign that I needed to slow down a bit, to stop trying to be too clever. To go back to basics.

This banana bread never fails me. It is the epitome of a trustworthy, reliable recipe. You will probably always have the ingredients for it available in your kitchen already - especially if, like me, you peel overripe bananas and freeze them for such an occasion. I make it every time I need a good, proper, hearty cake. It is moist, squidgy, with a delicious caramel aroma from the baked bananas. It develops a crunchy crust on the top, scattered with chunks of toasted almonds, while the inside stays gloriously soft and cakey. 

I bashed open some jade-green cardamom pods, ground the seeds into a fragrant powder, then added cinnamon and ginger. This infused the banana batter with a deliciously warm, comforting aroma - cardamom especially goes very well with bananas, with its citrussy fragrance balancing the caramel flavour well. 

Going back to basics tastes delicious. It makes the kitchen smell warm, sugary and buttery as it cooks. It looks rustic, hearty, promising warm flavours and a tender crumb. It slices into wobbly, steaming pieces demanding to be devoured before they have properly cooled. But it's also still delicious the next day with a slick of soft butter. The addition of warming spices lifts the whole thing to a delicious new level; it is the ultimate comfort cake.

Spiced banana bread (makes one loaf):

• 100g self-raising flour
• 80g wholemeal flour
• 1 heaped tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 50g cold butter
• 50g dark brown sugar
• 6 cardamom pods
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 60ml milk
• 2 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 2-3 tbsp flaked almonds

Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a loaf tin.

Mix together the flours, salt and baking powder in a large bowl. Cut the butter into cubes and rub into the flour mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the brown sugar. 

Using a pestle and mortar, bash the cardamom pods and remove the black seeds. Grind the seeds to a fine powder. Add to the flour and butter mixture along with the cinnamon and ginger. 

In a smaller bowl, mash together the bananas and milk. Add this to the flour mixture and mix together until you have a thick batter.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and scatter over the flaked almonds. Bake for 40 minutes until golden and firm, and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Five things I love this week #7

1. Lentil salad with roast butternut squash, blue cheese, cranberries and chestnuts. I made this to use up some leftovers: roast squash, a piece of Yorkshire blue cheese, and half a pack of cooked chestnuts. It was definitely better than the sum of its parts. I cooked lentils in chicken stock with some thyme, then stirred in the roast squash, some dried cranberries which I'd soaked in hot water, sliced chestnuts, and some lemon thyme leaves. I crumbled over some blue cheese, and had a delicious earthy autumn feast. It also works very well with feta, which I tried the next day. In fact, I think I prefer the feta version, but the only photo I got was the blue cheese one. This is possibly the most festive, yet healthy, dish you will find. Plus, isn't it pretty?

2. Lakeland St Kew Teacup hamper. I was very kindly sent this adorable hamper by Lakeland recently, and I just had to write about it. Largely because it comes in a wicker basket shaped like a teacup, which I think is a fantastic idea. I'm planning to keep fruit in it once I've worked my way through the hamper ingredients - it looks lovely on my kitchen worktop - although Lakeland also suggest lining it and using it for planting herbs, which I think might be the quaintest idea ever for a herb garden. If only we could grow tea in this country, I would use it for that.

There's always something special about a hamper, and this is a really good size if you don't want to confer on someone a gigantic wicker box that's too heavy to do anything but gather dust in the attic. It's neat and a refreshing change from your standard hampers full of cheese and chutney that no one will ever eat (I have a special cupboard in my kitchen reserved just for unwanted jars of chutney - it's not that I don't like it, but I don't eat it nearly often enough to necessitate several jars every December).



St Kew make biscuits, preserves and confectionery to traditional, old-fashioned recipes, and this little hamper contains two packets of biscuits, some strawberry and champagne conserve, and English breakfast tea. My favourite biscuits were the 'fabulous oatie flips' which, despite their rather quirky name, are a gorgeous cross between a hobnob and shortbread. Essentially, they taste like a vanilla-y crumble topping, and I devoured them at an indecently fast rate. Despite their inclusion in a hamper alongside tea, I would not recommend dunking them in your tea unless you want to lose all that buttery crumblyness to the bottom of your cup. Eat them on their own, and I defy you to stop at just one (okay, five).

The strawberries and cream shortbread is also delicious; rich and buttery with the sweet tang of strawberry pieces. It's an idea I've never come across before and rather like. This would make a great gift for lovers of afternoon tea, although one thing is sadly lacking from it: freshly baked, oven-warm scones on which to slather the delicious strawberry and champagne conserve while sipping a cup of St Kew English breakfast tea.

I suppose you can't really be over-critical, though - it does come in an excellent basket, after all.



3. My new bowl. It may seem a bit odd to be telling you I bought a new bowl, but this is much more than a bowl. This is about what the bowl stands for. I found it in the oriental supermarket just down the road from my new house. With one glimpse I was back in Vietnam, hunched over a table barely a foot from the ground, wedged into a tiny plastic chair more suited for children, with beads of sweat on my skin and condensation dripping from my forehead from the steaming bowl of noodle broth in front of me. The air was rent by the droning of motorbikes and sticky with September humidity, while the aromas of sizzling meat and fish wafted past enticingly to the background music of multiple blenders whizzing up condensed milk and fresh mango smoothies.

Although the bowl I purchased was (obviously) empty, I could practically see the golden, crystal-clear broth with its scattering of vivid green herbs and tangle of chewy, slippery rice noodles.

I ate out of several bowls just like this on my travels this summer. While I am very happy in my new life up north in the UK, not a day goes by where I don't yearn to be in south east Asia again, or feel painfully nostalgic for those beautiful, beautiful four weeks. It may sound stupid, but every time I sit on the sofa with this bowl full of rice and a pair of chopsticks (purchased in Saigon) in my hand, it eases the pain just a little.

4. Sea Island Coffee. I'm not a coffee connoisseur, but I really like this coffee from Knightsbridge-based Sea Island Coffee, which they very kindly sent me to try. This may be because it's Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee which even I, a die-hard tea drinker, know is one of the best in the world. I remember a friend of mine once bought me a bag of this exclusive, almost mythical substance for Christmas in my first year of university, back when I loved the stuff and before I converted to Yorkshire tea. It was possibly the most exciting present I received that year, and I treasured it, saving it for 'special' coffee occasions only. Needless to say, it was never shared with anyone else.

According to the website, this coffee has notes of dark chocolate and floral undertones. I'm not entirely sure I detected those, but it does have a delicious full, almost creamy, flavour, with a slightly sweet aftertaste. Grown on the Clifton Mount Estate in Jamaica, which has fertile soil, regular rainfall and cloud cover from the mountains, this coffee (mostly the Arabica Typica bean) thrives and consequently has such a sought-after flavour and aroma; it's often labelled as the champagne of coffees. It's not cheap, at £14.99 for a tin, but it would be a great present for the coffee-lover in your life (or for yourself, when you're having one of those days). It also won a Gold Taste award in both 2010 and 2012, which can't be a bad thing. Sea Island also sell numerous other types of coffee; for more information, and to read a bit about the estates behind the coffee, visit their website here.

I'll be hoarding this precious tin for as long as I possibly can. It goes without saying that if you come round for coffee, you're probably just getting the normal stuff while this sits ensconced at the back of my cupboard. Sorry.

5. Chaource cheese. If you're an avid reader of this blog (and if not, why not?), you may remember I wrote about my wonderful trip to Chablis last April. Although my tastebuds were extremely well looked after the entire time, and I enriched my life with the second-best tarte tatin I've ever eaten, one of the real highlights was the cheese course in a little rustic restaurant on the first night. Here I was introduced to Chaource, a typical cheese of the region.

It looks rather like a goat's cheese, with a white rind and a sticky creamy texture around the outside that turns almost crumbly in the middle. It also has the tang of a goat's cheese, but with the buttery texture of a Brie or Camembert - the best of both worlds. One of my mum's colleagues went to Chablis recently, and was lovely enough to bring me back a Chaource of my very own. It's delicious, and I can't wait to try it in a recipe or two - I think it would work very well with caramelised pears, or some dried fruit. If you can get your hands on this cheese - I reckon most good cheese shops would stock it or order it for you - then I'd heartily recommend it.

Figs baked in sloe gin

If I had to name my biggest personality flaw (or, rather, select one from an epic list that includes 'raging temper', 'neuroses' and 'inability to not say what I really think'), it would probably be my impatience. I'm just awful. I notice it the most when in public places. Striding quickly down the street, for example, keen to get to my destination, I frequently find myself stuck behind some idiot who insists on dithering around, moving from side to side of the pavement and generally holding up my entire life with their sheer ineptitude. 

Perhaps I'm in the pool, eager to get my sixty lengths over and done with so I can go home and eat dinner (that, after all, is the only reason I swim: so I can eat more). But oh, there's someone who is clearly blind and hasn't read the 'Medium Lane' sign properly, so is floating along on their back without a care in the world, flailing their arms wildly and preventing any kind of normal or serious swimming from going on around them while moving at a pace approximately slower than a pond snail. This is the kind of person who inevitably believes that breaststroke on your back is actually a legitimate stroke that really exists. It doesn't. You look like an idiot. Roll over and move on.

I could be on a cycle path, breezily pedalling away until I come to a crowd of people, invariably middle-aged and therefore not in a hurry, walking five or six abreast along the path, laughing away, not a care in the world, completely oblivious to the fact that I'm hovering behind them, making that 'Um, hello, there's a cyclist behind you' noise by back-pedalling. So I ring my bell, and they take approximately two hours to actually move and let me past. What amazes me is always the look of surprise and/or indignation that accompanies this action, as if the path was their sacred domain and I've just waltzed in and hideously violated it.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the tourists when I used to live in Oxford. You can tell someone who's just moved to Oxford a mile off by the fact that they actually stop to avoid getting in the way of tourists' photos. It doesn't take you long to realise that if you make that a habit, you WILL NEVER MOVE ANYWHERE in the city centre. Literally nowhere. You will be stuck, for eternity, slowly circling the Rad Cam, unable to progress beyond the Bridge of Sighs and definitely without a chance of ever passing the Sheldonian theatre. You will perish tragically, incarcerated in this touristic Bermuda triangle, unable to escape to find food, water, or your own house. 

'But,' I hear you ask, 'Why don't you just say 'excuse me'?' 

Because, dear readers, I long ago decided that the best strategy in all these situations is not politeness. The obvious solution is to passive-aggressively mutter 'Moron' at a decibel level that is not quite under my breath, so is still vaguely audible to the offending party, and then fly past while simultaneously making a sort of huffing noise. 

It surprises me, then, that when I get into the kitchen I become a different person in this respect. What I lack in everyday life in terms of patience, I make up for in the world of cooking. 

While there is a lot to be said for food that you can get on the table in a matter of minutes (but not, I think, for the crazed antics of a certain Mr Oliver who writes meal plans which are only feasible if you  have a small army of kitchen minions on hand to wash everything up on the go, plug in your blender, open your packets and weigh out your ingredients), there is also much merit to be had from taking it a little bit easier, culinarily speaking. (Again, I can only do this in the kitchen - I'm totally incapable of taking anything remotely easy when it comes to normal life). 

Take a stew, for example. While a stir-fry or pasta dish is a lovely thing, it can't really compete with the utterly divine aroma of a meaty mass that has been bubbling away in the oven for a good three hours or so - or even longer, if you go for that slow-roasting, oven on overnight thing (the idea of an unattended oven scares me a little, so I've never tried this). My favourite thing about stew is the total transformation it undergoes, from a mass of disparate meat and veg floating around in stock to a sumptuous, tender medley of slippery vegetables, ultra-soft meat and rich, thick gravy. 

While I frequently make a loaf of soda bread for breakfast, enabling me to have fresh, warm, cake-like bread on my plate slathered in jam in under forty-five minutes, it can't quite compete with my homemade sourdough, the starter for which has been months in the making. The actual loaf takes pretty much a whole day to make, but oh my goodness is it worth it. The first time I took homemade sourdough out of the oven, I may have done a small gleeful dance when I spied its burnished, floured crust, looking exactly like something you'd pay good money for at an artisan baker's. When I bit into it, and tasted that tangy, sour, aerated crumb, it was so worth the days and days of stirring up an increasingly pungent mixture of flour and water. 

Then there are marinades - nothing quite like placing some lovely meat or fish in a veritable bath of flavour for a few hours then taking it out to cook, knowing it's been soaking up all that deliciousness. I'm always suspicious of recipes that instruct you to marinate something for around 30 minutes - surely that's not enough time for proper absorption to take place. I love the feeling of sticking a tray of spice-rubbed, oil-soaked meat or fish in the fridge before I go to bed, knowing it's sitting there becoming tastier and tastier as I sleep. 

Then there are the joys of preserving. While it is a faff, during the height of summer, to slice and poach kilos of apricots before packing them into a jar, spooning over syrup and sealing them in the oven, when there are gluts of these gorgeous fruits at the market, it is so worth it a few months later, in the middle of January, when I can spoon these delicious golden fruits onto my morning porridge; just as tasty as they were when they were in season. While my first instinct with gluts of fruit is just to gorge myself on them, pure and unadulterated, there's a lot to be said for taking the time to make jam, to be enjoyed at a later date. 

Last autumn, I made sloe gin. I couldn't resist picking the sloes that were everywhere up in the Yorkshire dales when I was on holiday for a week. It's funny to read that post, where I extol the delights of Yorkshire eating, a year later, now that I've ended up living here. 

I spent an hour or so dodging thorns to end up with a bag of fat, speckled sloes which I put in the freezer then bashed with a rolling pin until they were all crushed. They went into a big jar with gin and sugar, and then the waiting game began. I shook the jars every week or so, to let everything mingle nicely. It was a good seven months later before I had my first taste. Definitely more patience involved than I've ever had in public.

Sloe gin is a delightful beverage. Unfortunately it's so delightful because it's sweet and warming, and you can easily forget it's alcoholic. That way awkward drunkenness lies. However, as luck would have it, it's also wonderful to use in cooking. During the summer I baked halved peaches and apricots with a splash of sloe gin in a foil parcel in the oven and on the barbecue, and they were utterly luscious. The gin imparts a gorgeous rich syrupy sweetness. 

So, in the spirit of using two classic autumn ingredients, I've combined our lovely sloes with one of my favourite autumn fruits: the fig. While figs are generally imported from Turkey at this time of year, you can grow your own if you're lucky. Running with the idea of the baked peaches and apricots, here I've baked halved figs in sloe gin and brown sugar until the figs mellow and soften, leaving behind purple syrupy juices. It's sweet and delicious, and a beautifully simple way to enjoy the perfection of a fig without too much messing around. All you need is a spoon and some good ice cream. 

Figs baked in sloe gin (serves 2):

• 6 figs, ideally fairly ripe, but rock-solid ones will still work
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 5 tbsp sloe gin

Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Slice the figs in half and place into a baking dish that will fit them snugly. Toss them together with the sugar and gin, then arrange cut side down in the dish. Cover with foil and bake for 20-30 minutes, until soft and tender. Serve with some of the cooking liquid spooned over.

Spiced mackerel with apple, fennel and beetroot salad

This salad that showcases everything special and beautiful about our British autumn produce. It also uses my absolute favourite fish, mackerel, smothered in warm and aromatic spices and fried until crispy. This sits on a bed of tangy, crunchy, flavoursome salad that is also stunning to look at, using beautiful tangles of ivory fennel and apple, slivers of bold pink beetroot and sparkling pomegranate seeds. Just looking at it will make you feel warm and nourished, and every mouthful is an absolute treat to eat.

While not your stereotypical autumn comfort food - piping hot, featuring both meat and potatoes and generally various shades of brown - I sometimes think there is comfort to be had, in the frost of autumn, in vibrant flavours that wake your tastebuds up from their stew-induced stupor.

You can't think of British autumn produce without thinking of apples. I'm especially aware of their existence now that I have an apple tree in my garden, laden with bulbous blushing fruits ready to drop at the slightest breath of wind. I've been donning my wellies and heading into the long grass on a weekly basis to collect the windfalls. It always makes me sad when I find one too bruised or worm-eaten to be gastronomically viable, as it seems such a waste. Still, I try and do what I can to ensure they don't all become food for the lawn and the worms. This month has seen an apple and blackberry pie, an apple, date and cranberry crumble, a delicious apple and blackberry baked oatmeal for breakfast, and a wonderful quince and apple compote that I've been eating over cinnamon-enriched porridge studded with blackberries.

When they're not baked into a tart-sweet froth and nestled juicily under a buttery crust, apples have a lot of savoury potential in the kitchen too, particularly when coupled with other autumn ingredients - they're delicious in a casserole with pork, sausages or pheasant, or roasted in wedges with some potatoes to serve alongside a roast. I also love them thinly sliced in a sharp salad to accompany richer ingredients; their crispness and sweetness is always welcome, particularly when encased in a tangy mustard dressing.

Fennel is something I pretty much always have in the fridge. I can't resist a salad of thinly sliced fennel (I actually bought a mandolin just for this purpose) tossed in grain mustard, olive oil, herbs and salt. It goes with pretty much anything - meat, fish or cheese - and is infinitely adaptable, working with a huge variety of other fruit, herbs and veg. I usually add pomegranate seeds - their sweetness works well against the aniseed tang of the fennel - and sliced pear, which is a delicious contrast in texture, tending to be soft and melting against the crunch of the fennel strands. Here I've used apples, but pears would work well too. Fennel also goes very well with orange.

Also, a little cook's tip for you - don't try slicing a ripe pear on a mandolin, unless you want to be hunting around in your salad for the tip of your middle finger.

If you're not a big fan of the aniseedy crunch of fennel, try caramelising it in butter and a little brown sugar before using it in a recipe. It might have you converted. I love using it in any recipes involving fish, where its fresh, light flavour is a perfect complement. Fennel seeds are also a hugely underrated ingredient, working incredibly well with tomatoes, pork, fish, cheese and anything in need of a little herbal note.

Beetroot is something I always mean to eat more of, but fail to. I think it's because I can find it quite sickly. I absolutely cannot stomach those dark purple globes that come ready cooked and peeled in the supermarket - they have a disgusting squidgy texture and vile sickly flavour that makes me gag. Don't even get me started on the pickled stuff.

However, raw beetroot sliced into wedges, tossed in oil and liberal seasoning, then roasted until tender and caramelised, is a beautiful thing. One of my favourite ways to eat it is in this beetroot, carrot, orange and mackerel salad. It goes really well with mackerel, providing a sweet earthiness to counteract the rich flavour of the fish. It also works well with apple, being similarly crisp and sweet.

Raw beetroot isn't something I've eaten a lot of, but when I found these gorgeous candy and golden beetroot in the supermarket I knew I didn't want to roast them and risk marring their stunning colours. Instead I decided to slice them wafer-thin (again using my trusty mandolin, and risking the tips of my fingers with every stroke) to add another layer of crunch to my salad. They were just so pretty. I tend to wax lyrical about the beauty of fruit and veg at the best of times, but these really were incredibly beautiful. Why would you ever buy that pre-cooked vacuum-packed (or worse, vinegar-soaked) stuff when you could get some of these globes of gorgeous goodness? (To use a Nigella-esque phrase).

I also like how they are called 'candy' beetroot, which conjures up images of lurid sweet shop jars and neon sherbet, somehow making the beetroot more appealing. Maybe it's a clever marketing ploy. If so, I fell for it.

Speaking of beetroot and candy, I've always been intrigued by the use of beetroot in chocolate cakes and brownies. Think carrot in carrot cakes - the vegetable adds a moisture and subtle sweetness, and apparently its earthiness goes very well with chocolate. Something on the 'to try' list.

Also, another bonus of these beetroot varieties - they don't stain your fingers nearly as badly as traditional beetroot, nor bleed horribly into the other salad ingredients, which is always sad.

Pomegranatesare everywhere at this time of year; they are, to me, the Christmas fruit (along with clementines). There's very little I won't scatter a load of pomegranate seeds over - their snap of juiciness is always welcome, as is their jewel-like appearance. Here they add a delicious bite to the salad, and a little freshness to counteract the strong flavours of the mackerel.

Finally, the mackerel. While perhaps not as obviously autumnal as something like pheasant or venison, mackerel is the perfect partner for a lot of autumn fruit and veg. It's very healthy, very quick and easy to cook, and you can throw all sorts of strong flavours at it without it blinking an eye (well, I'd hope not anyway - if your mackerel is blinking then your fishmonger probably isn't doing his job properly). Mackerel is one of those fish that is generally better cooked as fillets - you can roast a whole one, but because it's quite oily the skin doesn't really crisp up properly, and it's all a bit flabby. Go for a nice big fillet, which will sizzle deliciously in the pan, its skin becoming burnished and crispy while the oily flesh stays wonderfully moist and meaty.

Here I've covered it in turmeric, cumin, coriander and chilli flakes, mixed with a little oil to make a spice rub. This gives it a gorgeous aromatic crust, and the spicy flavours work so well with the oily flesh of the fish. It goes into a very hot pan to allow the skin to crisp up, and then is ready to serve alongside the salad.

I really love this dish. The salad, with its lemon and mustard dressing, is tangy, crunchy and fresh, which is perfect to sit alongside the spicy, oily fish. It's also cooling against the rather assertive heat of the chilli flakes, resulting in little explosions of sweet/spicy/sour flavour in your mouth as you eat it. It takes everything that is great about British produce at this time of year, and uses those ingredients in a slightly unusual, and exciting, way. If you're sceptical about raw veg, don't be - it really works.

If you wanted to, you could swap the fish for chicken or pork, or to make it vegetarian use thick slices of griddled halloumi. It's super-nutritious - by the end you'll have had all of your five-a-day!

Spiced mackerel with apple, fennel and beetroot salad (serves 2):

• 2 mackerel, filleted
• 2 tsp turmeric
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• A generous pinch of chilli flakes
• Olive oil
• Juice of half a lemon
• 2 tsp wholegrain mustard (I used Tracklements horseradish mustard)
• Salt and pepper
• 2 large eating apples (I used Cox)
• 1 small bulb fennel
• 2 small beetroot (about the size of a golf ball)
• 2 tbsp finely chopped flat leaf parsley
• A few sprigs lemon or normal thyme, leaves picked
• Seeds of half a pomegranate
• A large handful of pea shoots, rocket or watercress

First, make the spice rub. Mix together the turmeric, cumin, coriander and chilli flakes with some salt and pepper, then add enough olive oil to form a thick paste. Rub this all over the mackerel fillets, on both sides. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together a generous glug (around 2-3 tbsp) of olive oil with the lemon juice, mustard, and some salt and pepper. Cut the apples into quarters, remove the core, then thinly slice. Add these to the bowl. Using a mandolin, slice the fennel and the beetroot wafer-thin and add these to the bowl (or use a very sharp knife and try and slice as thinly as possible). Add the parsley, thyme leaves and pomegranate seeds, then toss together well. Divide between two plates or bowls and top with the pea shoots/rocket/watercress.

Get a non-stick frying pan very hot. Add a little olive oil, then use some kitchen paper to rub it evenly over the pan. Press the mackerel fillets into the pan, skin-side down. They should sizzle. Cook for around 3 minutes, or until the underside of the fish is nearly opaque. Flip over and cook for another minute. You may need to do this in batches if all the fillets won't fit in the pan at once.

Place two mackerel fillets on top of each plate of salad, then serve immediately.

Stuffed squash with swiss chard, cranberries, chestnuts and gruyere

I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that autumn is the best time of year to be cooking. While I love the colourful bounty of summer, particularly gluts of downy apricots and bouncy red berries, autumn brings with it wonders of equal beauty, along with another crucial ingredient: weather. 

You see, along with the mists and chill days of autumn comes that magical thing: an excuse to eat comfort food. Suddenly we can justify wanting nothing more than to curl up with a bowl of hearty stew and a pile of pillowy mashed potato. How lucky that Mother Nature chooses this time of the year to offer us dark, rich game; golden, robust  root vegetables; glossy burnished nuts; curled, crunchy, springy greens; mellow, juicy, russet-skinned orchard fruits. While perhaps not as obviously glowing and vibrant as the produce of high summer, to me autumn ingredients have a dark, subtle and muted magic of their own.

In order to celebrate British autumn produce, I was asked by Floral & Hardy garden designers to come up with a three-course autumn feast, to demonstrate the range of ingredients that can be grown in British gardens, making the most of our gardens and also saving a bit of money in the supermarket. Given my aforementioned love of the culinary potential of this season, I of course said yes, and had great fun coming up with three lovely autumnal recipes for you, the first of which is this starter - stay tuned for the main course and dessert over the next week or so.

You probably don't need to be told that growing your own fruit and veg is a great thing to do. I am looking forward to turning the patch of wilderness that is the garden of my new house into a treasure trove of home-grown delights at some point; I love the romanticism that comes with being able to take your dinner from its natural habitat to the kitchen by walking a matter of metres, saving money and food miles. Among the wealth of produce available to be grown by the home gardener are courgettes, tomatoes, peppers, beetroot, blackberries, beans and mushrooms - all beautiful autumn ingredients. I'm no expert on home-grown, though, so if you're keen to get started I would recommend the wonderful Tender  cookbooks by Nigel Slater, who talks about growing your own from a cook's point of view. Floral & Hardy also have a gardening blog for the keen (or amateur!) gardener.

This recipe, a perfect autumnal starter, combines several of my favourite seasonal staples.

Firstly, we have squash. Perhaps the most quintessential autumn vegetable, owing to its presence on our doorsteps hollowed out with an evil grimace and a candle inside, there are very few uses to which squash cannot be put in the kitchen (but don't try cooking with those pumpkins the supermarkets sell for Halloween, which are watery and tasteless). It generally finds its way into my lunchbox every day alongside couscous and feta cheese, but can form a sturdy basis for substantial cold-weather salads, combined with pulses like lentils, pearl barley, or bulgur wheat. It's also excellent in risotto. Owing to its sweetness, squash needs to be paired with salty flavours - strong cheeses are ideal, or bacon. It also works surprisingly well with other sweet things, like dried fruit and chestnuts, which somehow make it seem less sweet in comparison.

While the butternut squash is ubiquitous in markets and supermarkets, it's worth tracking down other varieties if you can - farmers' markets often have them. Crown Prince squash are lovely, with a delicate teal-coloured skin and a robust flesh, although they're often giant. I'm a big fan of the little squash that can be served as individual portions, as is the case here. They come in a multitude of shapes, sizes and colours, and possess a knobbly, rustic charm that is lacking in the predictably super-smooth, tapered butternut. That's one of the reasons for growing your own, too - you can enjoy varieties you might otherwise struggle to track down.

Next up, Swiss chard. This is both a blessing and a curse to the magpie-like food shopper, a breed to which I am unashamed to state I belong. Whenever I spy bunches of glorious chard at a market or supermarket, I can never resist hoarding it. Those rainbow stems are just too beautiful. However, it then languishes in my fridge because I'm never entirely sure what to do with it - unlike squash, I have no knee-jerk recipes up my sleeve for chard (until now). The best guide is to treat the stems a little like celery, and the leaves like spinach. I once made a delicious Swiss chard and feta filo pastry pie, which combined the chard with salty feta, pine nuts, and plump raisins. The combination is delicious - the raisins go wonderfully well with chard, enhancing its natural sweetness and preventing its iron tang from cloying, while the nuts provide texture.

I adapted that combination here, for the stuffing of the squash. I sauteed the chard stalks along with some sliced red onion - another ingredient that seems very autumnal to me - and garlic. To this I added dried cranberries, soaked in boiling water until plump and juicy. I could have used raisins, but cranberries - though not grown over here - seem very British at this time of year, given our penchant for them on the Christmas table. The chard leaves went in too, to soften, and finally some chestnuts.

Chestnuts are an ingredient I only discovered a couple of years ago. I went through a phase of dutifully roasting my own in the oven, until I realised that life is too short and you can buy perfectly decent pre-cooked, pre-peeled vacuum packed ones that are fine for cooking (though if you just want to eat them on their own, I'd suggest buying a bag of raw ones and doing it yourself). I may also have had a few explode in the oven due to my sub-standard scoring of their skins - they make a thoroughly alarming cannon-like explosion sound; I wouldn't recommend it, for your own sanity.

Chestnuts, with their rich flavour and fudgy, crumbly texture, add a beautiful sweetness and interest to all sorts of autumn dishes. They're great with rich meat, like game, because of their sweet flavour. They're also good with other sweet ingredients, like squash. I added them to my chard mixture for texture and flavour, where they went extremely well with the sweet cranberries and the crunchy, earthy chard.

This is a really lovely starter dish for autumn. The sweet chard mixture is combined with gruyere cheese, spooned into a squash that has been hollowed out, seasoned and roasted until tender, then everything is baked in the oven with more gruyere cheese on top. You could use any cheese - blue cheese, goat's cheese or feta would all work well - but gruyere has a delicious strong, salty, rich flavour that is necessary to contrast with the sweet squash, cranberries and chestnuts. Each person ends up with a delightful little squash bowl encasing a delicious sweet-sour-savoury filling, with a moreish crust of salty, burnished gruyere cheese on top. It's pretty easy to make, can be assembled in advance, and is vegetarian (though gruyere probably isn't totally veggie, like a lot of cheeses, so you might want to check which cheese you use).

I really love the combination of flavours in this dish. It would be the kind of nauseating food-writer cliche that I hate to pronounce it 'autumn on a plate'...so instead I will call it 'autumn made better by putting cheese on top'.

Stuffed squash with swiss chard, cranberries, chestnuts and gruyere (serves 2 generously):

• 2 small squash - best if you can get round ones, but if not just use the rounded ends of butternut squash
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil
• A few sprigs lemon thyme (or normal thyme)
• 50g dried cranberries
• 80ml boiling water
• 2 bunches swiss chard
• 2 red onions
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 150g cooked chestnuts
• 60-80g gruyere cheese, grated (or more if you love cheese...and who doesn't?!)

Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Cut the squash in half horizontally and scoop out the seeds, so you have four cup-shaped halves. Rub the squash inside and out with olive oil, then season well. Sprinkle over a few thyme leaves. Place in the oven and cook for around 30 minutes, hollow side up, until just tender.

Meanwhile, make the stuffing. Soak the cranberries in the boiling water. Heat a little olive oil in a large frying pan. Peel and thinly slice the red onions. Cook these over a gentle heat for a few minutes until starting to soften, then add the garlic cloves and cook for a few more minutes. Slice the chard stalks thinly and add to the pan. Cook for a few minutes until these are softening too, then add the cranberries, the cranberry soaking water, and the chard leaves.

Cover with a lid and cook for around 5 minutes, until everything is softening. Remove the lid and allow the water to evaporate away. Roughly chop the chestnuts and add to the pan, along with a generous amount of salt and pepper and a few thyme leaves. Taste and check the seasoning.

When the squash is cooked, remove it from the oven. Stir half the gruyere into the chard mixture, then use this to stuff the squash. Sprinkle the remaining gruyere over the top of the chard in the squash. (If you have any chard mixture left over, just serve it alongside when the squash are done). Put these back in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the cheese has melted.

Apple and quince almond crumble tart

The street is a soothing, nondescript muddle of brickwork and grey cobbles, glistening slightly in the aftermath of the morning rain. The sombre wares of the shop windows merge into a blur; dusty vintage clothing, old leather-bound books, pens of various shapes, sizes and degrees of antiquity. Everything has an air of tiredness to it, of weary age yearning to be invigorated with new life. It's calming, easy to walk down the street in a daze as everything blends into the background.

But there they are. Sitting there in their little wicker basket. Great orbs of primrose-coloured sunshine, their vivid yellow blazing out like a flame amidst their drab surroundings. Their voluptuous curves whisper seductively of hotter, more exotic and carefree climes, yet the soft down that clings to their skin like cobwebs suggests light snowflakes, or a vain attempt to wrap up warm for the winter. They are firm in the hand; heavy, satisfying. They feel sturdy, promising robust, heady flavours; whispering of brightness both to look at and to eat. I pick up two, cradling them gently against my stomach, leaving the rest to their quiet yellow repose.

I am, of course, talking about the first quinces of the year. Always a happy moment, the arrival of quinces in the markets promises delicious culinary joy for the coming months. It's like Mother Nature's way of making up for the cold, dreary weather that starts to grate and sadden at this time of year. You can't refuse to be cheered up by the bright spectacle of a quince, and you definitely can't refuse to be made happier by eating one.

Okay, so maybe all that was a little over-the-top and wannabe-poetic. But I really do love these fruits, which seem so modern and exotic despite dating back thousands of years. We still haven't quite figured them out as a nation - they're pretty tricky to track down, and currently the only place I can find them in York is a lovely little deli called the Hairy Fig, which is where I spied the aforementioned glowing yellow basket. None of my new friends at university have ever heard of, let alone eaten, a quince.

I'm not quite mean enough to try the 'Oh, just bite into it - it's really nice, like an apple!' trick, though. Damn my good nature, getting in the way of hilarious practical jokes.

To celebrate the first quinces of the year, I've made a rather wonderful little tart. While I love using quinces in savoury recipes, sometimes their fragrant perfumed flesh just yearns to be coupled with a liberal amount of butter, either in the form of pastry or crumble. This tart does both, in that half the crumble is pressed down to form a rough pastry, onto which the fruit is spread, while the remaining half is scattered over the top, to bake into a rough, crunchy, buttery mass. This was inspired by a Dan Lepard recipe that uses plums and cobnuts, but I figured it would work with quinces and almonds (and, dare I suggest that it might be even tastier?)

It's very common to pair quinces with apples - sometimes pears - in baking. This is, I think, because their strong flavour can rather overwhelm when left to its own devices. I don't agree, loving the taste of quince pure and unadulterated, but this is the first time I've tempered it with apples and I rather liked the result. I used cooking apples from the tree in my garden, which are rather tart, and take the edge off the cloying sweetness of the quince. The result is a gorgeous marriage; it tastes homely, somehow, like going back to basics - you can't beat the purity of stewed fruit, enhanced only with a little sugar.

There's also something rather texturally appealing about cooking apples with quinces - the quinces don't soften as much, remaining delectable, tender morsels, while the apples dissolve into a froth. The combination is delicious, and the perfect filling for this crumble tart. It's basically apple crumble, but in sliceable form, and improved with the delectable fragrance of quince. I added some flaked almonds to the crumble mixture, which give a lovely nutty crunch, and sprinkled some demerara sugar over the top for the same reason.

One of the reasons behind this dessert, apart from my passionate love for the quince, is that I was recently sent some lovely wines from South West France to sample (I know, it's a hard life being a food blogger). Home to around twenty indigenous grape varieties and the point of origin for grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Malbec, the South West is a wonderful region for wine diversity (there are 16 PDO wine denominations). Even more excitingly, wines from this region have the highest procyanidin content of any in the world - the chemical that means wine can have positive effects on cardiovascular health.

I haven't noticed any immediate benefits yet, so I guess I'll just have to keep drinking it until I am fully conscious of my arteries expanding.

My first taste was of the PDO Gaillac, Domaine Rotier, 2008. This is a beautiful dessert wine. I don't know that much about wine, so I won't be a fraudulent bore and start waxing lyrical about bouquets and body and finish. Instead, I will tell you that this wine is like drinking liquid honey. It warms you from the inside, and is gorgeously sweet and aromatic. It has, according to the bottle, notes of apricot, fig and quince, which makes it the perfect partner for this dessert.

I made the dessert with the inkling that it would go well with the wine. In fact, it was an even better match than I could have hoped.

It's quite hard to pair wine with dessert, because very sweet or tart things tend to make the wine taste overly sour and acidic. The best way is to ensure there is a rich, buttery component to said dessert, to mellow out any assertive fruit flavours. This crumble, then, is the ideal way to go. It provides a rich, buttery base for the sweet, fragrant wine, which perfectly reflects the quince flavours in the fruit filling.

It's a way of putting a proper autumnal pudding on the table without the heaviness of crumble (not that I'd ever turn down crumble, but sometimes you want something a bit lighter and more refined). You can serve it in elegant slices. It looks far more effort than it actually is. It's exotic and will make people say 'Ooh, what's quince?' It's an amalgam of two very traditional British ingredients: quince and crumble. It breathes sweet and tasty life into a much misunderstood fruit.

Then you have the taste, which is just wonderful. Serve it with lots of vanilla ice cream, while it's still a little warm from the oven. There's rich buttery pastry, the crunch of toasted almonds, and the soft, unctuous collapsed autumnal fruit inside; sweet, yet tart, standing up robustly to its crumbly trappings.

Buttery crumble, a sweet fruit filling and a glass of ambrosial dessert wine - the absolute best way to end a meal.

Quince and apple crumble tart (serves 6):

(Adapted from a recipe from Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet)

• 1 medium quince
• 3-4 tbsp brown sugar
• Water
• Squeeze of lemon juice
• 3 medium cooking apples
• 2 tsp cornflour
• 3 tsp water
• 100g plain flour
• 75g wholemeal flour
• 100g cold butter, cubed
• 50g brown sugar
• 50g flaked almonds, toasted, plus 1 tbsp to garnish
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1 tbsp demerara sugar

First, make the fruit filling. Peel and quarter the quince. Remove the core. Cut into 2cm cubes and put in a medium saucepan with the brown sugar, lemon juice and enough water to just cover it. Cover the pan and bring to the boil, then simmer gently for 10 minutes or so until almost tender. Peel, core and chop the apples into similar sized pieces, then add to the quince and simmer for another 10-15 minutes, uncovered, until the fruit has mostly collapsed. Taste and check the sweetness - add a little more sugar if it's too tart (but you want it fairly tart to contrast with the crumble).  Mix the cornflour with the water then stir into the fruit to thicken it. Set aside to cool.

Grease a 20cm tart tin with a removable base. Pre-heat the oven to 190C.

For the pastry, rub the butter into the flours using your fingers or a food processor. Stir in the sugar. Finely chop the toasted almonds (except the ones for the garnish) then stir these in too along with the baking powder. Stir in the milk. Press half of this mixture into the tart tin, along the bottom and up around the sides too, to make a crust. Spoon in the fruit filling, then scatter the rest of the pastry mixture evenly over the top, but don't press down. Sprinkle over the demerara sugar and reserved flaked almonds.

Bake for 45-50 minutes, until the top is golden brown. Check it halfway through to make sure it isn't burning - if so, cover with foil and turn the oven down slightly. Leave to cool in the tin before dusting with icing sugar, removing and slicing to serve (preferably with ice cream).

Baked fig and smoked mozzarella piadina

Generally, as a culture, we're getting to grips pretty well with the idea of street food. It's been the 'next big thing' in gastronomy for a while now, with nomadic vendors of everything from ice cream to burgers, particularly those in London, drawing huge crowds mainly through that potent combination of word of mouth advertising and a half-decent product to sell. I've heard countless stories of an obscure street trader suddenly faced with queues snaking round several streets, packed with people eager to sample his wares, simply because word got out on twitter. Such places are deeply trendy, especially if they start changing location and requiring you to be 'in the know' to actually be able to locate your dinner.

We're also getting increasingly au fait with street food from other countries, which is just as well really, because I don't think the British actually have a famous street food. You can find Thai noodle stalls in most major cities; you can track down the delectably filling Vietnamese banh mi sandwich in your local branch of Eat (which many agree is a curse rather than a blessing); there are countless pseudo-Japanese places offering bowls of slurpy ramen, and burritos are nearly as common parlance as baguettes.

While this is, of course, great news for us travellers-cum-foodlovers, many would argue - correctly I think - that street food away from its street of origin is never quite the same. For starters, a lot of ingredients that are found in abundance in foreign climes just don't exist over here, and those that do are usually exported and inferior in quality and flavour. Fruit and vegetables, for example. Not only are food miles bad for the environment; they're also not great for the taste of the produce either. Fruits and vegetables are picked underripe for easier transportation, and consequently arrive on our home shores barely edible.

The next big issue is cost. Recently I came home from a month in Vietnam, having indulged in gorgeous steaming bowls of beef or chicken noodle soup on an almost daily basis for under £1 a time, to find that the same thing would cost me around £10 to order in a restaurant. And I'd have to go to London to get it, rather than simply turn out of my hotel and be guaranteed to find a pho vendor on the next corner. While I understand that our economy is very different to that of Vietnam, and everything is generally cheaper in South East Asia, it still hurts me and seems against the free, gluttonous, instant-gratification-led spirit of street food to charge prices for it that wouldn't look amiss on a restaurant menu.

Then, of course, there's the fact that it simply isn't the same. Many street food sellers in foreign countries have been making those burritos, noodles or dumplings their entire lives. Their recipes were probably passed on from generation to generation. They have their dish down to a wonderful, delicious art. In Vietnam, I watched women speedily ladling rice batter onto steamers covered with muslin, then deftly rolling the resulting banh cuon pancakes around pork and mushrooms, scattering over fresh herbs and piling them onto a plate. The process took about twenty seconds from start to finish, and was repeated over and over again. They must have made thousands of those pancakes in a single day. Try as you might, you'll never be able to replicate that skill and tradition on the other side of the world. 

Plus, while you can list the obvious ingredients for a street food recipe, down to the last pinch of salt or scattering of spices, there are those hidden ingredients to be considered. The ones that I would argue are equally important. The baking heat of the midday sun. The humidity of the rainy season clinging to the air like a wet teatowel. The dust from the daily onslaught of mopeds speeding past the stall, throwing up fragments of earth. The bustle of the nearby markets, the sheer vibrance of life as it goes on around. Culture is an ingredient one simply can't buy or export, and it changes the flavour of a dish entirely. 

I could order a bowl of pho somewhere in the UK, I'm sure. But eating it on a proper chair, on a proper table, rather than a tiny plastic stool perched in a dingy alleyway corner, without a constant cascade of sweat beading its way down my face and the back of my neck, would just be wrong. It wouldn't taste the same. The whole point of street food is its sheer evocativeness. It is inextricably linked to romanticised, nostalgic holiday memories. Translating it into the harsh, often cold, reality of England is perhaps not such a good idea after all. (That said, given our climate, perhaps a hot bowl of pho is exactly what we should be eating more of...)

However, in this current climate of street-food mania, there's nothing more depressing than spending hedonistic holiday days gorging oneself on cheap and plentiful street food, only to find that your staple of choice is completely untraceable once you get home. While you may be able to find restaurants for every cuisine imaginable in our country nowadays, certain types of street food just don't seem to be able to translate across borders. 

One of the best things I have ever eaten in Italy (and I have eaten a lot in Italy) is a piadina. I first tried this in Turin, where it was basically a tortilla wrap filled with cheese and vegetables and grilled so the cheese melted. It was nice. But then I went to Ravenna, a beautiful city in the Emilia-Romagna region and home to some incredible UNESCO-listed mosaics. Here I found the piadina to be a rather different creature: this was a big flatbread, much thicker and squidgier than a tortilla; in fact, almost like a naan bread. Its soft, supple texture and fluffy crumb is due to the inclusion of pig fat (strutto) in the dough. This is stuffed with a variety of fillings, grilled to melt the filling and toast the outside of the bread, then served in a sleeve of foil. 

This is a photo of me in Ravenna. My smile is entirely due to a diet of piadina, not the fact that I was riding the most ridiculous hire bike in the world.

Oh, if I could only go back and eat one thing from my travels to Italy, it would probably be that. The combination of toasty yet squidgy bread with its molten filling is beyond tasty. A favourite combination for the piadina is that classic Italian triumvirate of prosciutto, mozzarella and rocket, but there were other delightful fillings too, mostly based around a cheese-meat-rocket combination (gorgonzola and bresaola, for instance, which is salty salty heaven).

My favourite, and something I still dream about a little bit, was a mixture of squacquerone cheese and caramelised figs. The cheese - pronounced s-quack-er-oh-nay - is a soft, spreadable cheese with a slightly lumpy texture. It has a very mild, creamy flavour with a bit of a tang to it. The taste is actually reminiscent of Dairylea cheese, those awful processed triangles I used to love as a kid, but this is a million miles from that. The figs are a big thing in the Emilia-Romagna region. They appear in huge, dark vats in delis, flecked with their nutty seeds and all clumped and tangled together into one delicious, sugary mass. I imagine they're cooked for hours in some kind of sugar syrup, possibly with some balsamic vinegar to add that acidity. Their flavour is so strong it tastes almost alcoholic. Coupled with the mild cheese, they are gorgeous. Add some Parma ham, and you may as well never eat anything else again.

I can't understand why piadina hasn't travelled over here. It's the perfect street food - quick to make, filling, involving pig fat, and with all sorts of potential for different delicious combinations of flavours. To this day I lament the fact that I can't find it here. So when Crosta & Mollica, makers of authentic Italian breads, announced a new addition to their range -  packs of piadana breads (also known as piada) made in Emilia Romagna - memories of that cheese/fig combo flooded my mind and I just had to have a go at recreating it. 

I should point out straight away that this is definitely not the same as the piadina in Ravenna. This is much closer to the type I tried in Turin. It's thicker than a tortilla wrap, and more pliable, but definitely not the squidgy, lard-enriched beast of Ravenna. Because of this, it's ideal for warming and filling with whatever you like. I shouldn't really have teased you with that enticing description of the fluffy pork-fat bread, only to tell you that it's still a maddeningly distant prospect, but this is the next best thing.

Although I do have a jar of fichi caramellati from Emilia-Romagna, I had some baked figs left over in my fridge (as you do - recipe coming shortly). I went to the wonderful cheese shop in York on the off chance that they'd have squacquerone, but was (predictably) disappointed - I've never managed to find it in the UK; I imagine because it's soft and mild it doesn't travel well, like fresh ricotta. However, I did find some smoked mozzarella which was a bit exciting, and decided to use that. Most cheeses work well with figs, though - you could go strong, with a nice gorgonzola, cheddar, pecorino or stilton, or mild, with some ricotta, buffalo mozzarella or taleggio. I put the piada bread in a dry, hot frying pan and scattered half of it with sliced cheese, sliced figs, some pea shoots for crunch (rocket would also have worked0, and some lemon thyme (works so well with cheese and figs). 

As I'd hoped, the cheese started to melt. Once the bread had softened, I folded the unfigged half over the filling and flipped it over, to toast the other side. The result was a deeply satisfying combination of toasty, crunchy flatbread with gooey, smokey cheese and sweet crunchy figs. It was very reminiscent of a quesadilla, that Mexican toasted tortilla sandwich. 

It's been too long since I had melted cheese between pieces of bread. I feel this needs to become a regular fixture in my life.

I'm not going to give a recipe for this, because it's so straightforward. Get yourself a pack of Crosta & Mollica piada flatbreads (they stock them in Waitrose and Ocado). Put one in a hot, dry frying pan. Scatter your choice of filling over half the bread. Some suggestions for fillings:

Goat's cheese and roasted red peppers with a scattering of basil

Rare roast beef and stilton or gorgonzola

Parma ham, mozzarella and basil, with some sliced tomatoes

Smoked salmon and cream cheese

Smoked cheddar and caramelised apples

Turkey, brie and cranberry

Once the cheese starts to melt a bit, fold the bare half of bread over the filling. Flip the whole thing over and toast the other side. Remove, cut in half, and eat with your hands. Relish the contrast in textures and temperatures. 

Then start saving up for a plane ticket to Ravenna, so you can try the real thing. Because, as with all street food, it's just not the same otherwise. 

Apple, blackberry and hazelnut cake with nutmeg icing

Winter seems to have arrived early up in York. Where this time last year, back down south, we were still basking in the afterglow of a surprise 'Indian summer' in October, on Friday I came out of the cinema to find a flurry of snowflakes had settled over the city, turning everything wet and slightly crunchy underfoot. My woollen gloves turned instantly sodden as they grasped my bike handlebars and my journey home mostly involved wincing as trees shook off their light smattering of snow onto my head. There's a real biting chill in the air, although one that for some strange reason I find more exhilarating than unpleasant. Perhaps it's the still lingering novelty of the bracing northern air flushing out my stagnant southern lungs, one that will probably wear off soon and involve me digging out my skiing thermals to wear on an everyday basis.

Weather like this calls for a bit of spice in the kitchen. I don't mean the hot snap of a chilli, but the warm, cosseting blanket of aromatics like ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. Although I have previously never really understood the notion of 'warm' spices (no one ever seems to have placed any spices into a 'cold' category), I think I'm starting to get it a bit more now that I have to don four layers just to go and put something in the outside bin. 

Perhaps it's the colour. Spices like turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg all have that beautiful golden hue, like so many different shades of warm Arabian desert sand. Although, that said, the only Arabian desert I have ever been in was in Jordan, and the sand there was more of a crazy paprika red than a turmeric yellow. It was pretty amazing. Such colours promise warmth, reminiscent of roaring fires, of sun-baked terracotta. 

Perhaps it's their origin in warm countries. When I went to Vietnam this summer, one of the best things I bought (out of the 35 kilos of stuff I brought home, ahem...) was a set of little round boxes made out of cinnamon wood. The Vietnamese use the tiny ones for storing toothpicks in; I bought some bigger ones to keep sugar in: a sneaky shortcut to ready-made cinnamon sugar. I remember walking through the market in Hanoi and seeing big baskets of fresh turmeric, still muddy from the earth. We visited orchards of black pepper trees, their peppercorns hanging down like tiny bunches of glossy green grapes. There's something wonderfully exotic about the idea of all these aromatic spices growing around you; tasting them can't help but trigger some subconscious mental wandering to the hot, heady, humid climes where they grow, I think.

Perhaps it's also their use in association with warm dishes. Cinnamon stirred into hot, frothy apples, bubbling below a buttery crumble crust. Turmeric lending its distinctive marigold stain to the rich, meaty sauce of a lamb tagine. Flecks of russet-coloured nutmeg perfuming a cloud of creamy, steaming mashed potato. The subtle fire of ground ginger through a warm piece of freshly-baked cake. With a history like this, it's perhaps no wonder these are called the warm spices. I can't really imagine cinnamon working so well in something cold. 

I was sent a wonderful treasure-trove of spices from JustIngredients recently - their website is a brilliant resource for all sorts of culinary enhancers, from the obvious (salt, pepper, cumin) to the more esoteric (chamomile flowers, beetroot powder and bee pollen). Aside from the rather exciting rosemary salt, the one that interested me most was the ground nutmeg. I always use freshly grated nutmeg, but it has a tendency to be very overpowering. 

(So I'm told, anyway - I have a sort of immunity to the stuff and can put huge amounts on my morning porridge without finding it in any way detrimental. You may have guessed from the title of this blog that I have a bit of a penchant for this lovely spice.) Anyway, I was curious about cooking with the ready-ground version and what sort of flavour it would have.

This cake is a beautiful marriage of warm spices and seasonal autumnal fruit. So seasonal, in fact, that it was collected a mere five metres from my back door. The apple tree in my new garden is dropping fruit at an alarming rate, more quickly than I can find uses for it, and I have some blackberries that I foraged at the beginning of the month from the brambles nestling around the tree trunk. There's a small wilderness outside my back door, and something intensely satisfying about the journey from earth to plate taking a mere five minutes and five metres. 

Although pairing warm spices with apples and blackberries is hardly novel, this cake is a really interesting medley. The nutmeg cream cheese icing is the key; it brings a gorgeous aromatic note to the cake and works so well with the soft apples and berries. 

I used my favourite cake batter mix, one that uses yoghurt to give the cake a lovely moist crumb, and spelt flour for a delicious nutty flavour that works well with fruit and spice. Sandwiched between two layers of batter is a vein of sliced apples, a scattering of blackberries, and a sprinkling of chopped toasted hazelnuts, for crunch and another warm flavour. Can hazelnuts be said to have a 'warm flavour'? I think they can; nuts are generally quite a comforting, warm ingredient. The cake batter is infused with ground cinnamon and ground ginger, for a delicious warm spiced note. 

Once this is baked, and the apples have softened and moistened the cake with their sweet-tart juice, and the blackberries have bled purple into the crumb, the cake is iced with a cream cheese icing, perfumed with ground nutmeg. The combination of thick, moist cake, sweet fruit and sugary, spiced icing is wonderful. The icing stays pretty gooey, and is a lovely texture contrast with the rather dense, substantial cake batter. The nutmeg doesn't overpower, though; it just provides a subtle background of aromatic flavour.

I was really pleased with this cake. It's quite a substantial one, probably best for afternoon tea (or even breakfast?!), though small squares for dessert would also be lovely. It doesn't keep for very long because the icing and the fruit are both quite moist, so it's best eaten on the day it's made, or the day after. Be warned: you'll need a fork rather than fingers, because the icing is pretty sticky and goes everywhere. That's part of the fun of eating it. Soft, spiced cake; sweet juicy fruit; fragrant sugary icing.

I had a vague idea of how I wanted to photograph this cake, with some apples in the background. I wasn't prepared for the lovely ready-made setting provided by the ice on my outside table. I don't think I've ever been satisfied with the photos on the very first shot before, but this time I was - the weather did all the decorating and styling for me. 

I think they sum up this recipe very well: cold, frosty weather = warm, spiced cake.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, this cake is feline-approved - my cat just had to get in on the action. Even chilly paws could not get in the way of a sniff of that lovely icing.

Apple, blackberry and hazelnut cake with nutmeg icing (serves 8-10):

• 40g hazelnuts
• 75g light brown sugar
• 75g caster sugar
• 60g soft butter
• 2 eggs
• 200g plain or spelt flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 250ml yoghurt
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2-3 large cooking apples
• 100g blackberries
• 100g cream cheese
• 60g icing sugar
• 1/2-1 tsp ground nutmeg

Pre-heat the oven to 170C (fan oven). Grease and line an 8x8in square cake tin (though I'm sure you could also use a round 20cm tin). Toast the hazelnuts on a baking dish in the oven for around 10 minutes while it heats up, until they are dark and fragrant (keep an eye on them, though, as they tend to burn easily). Set aside to cool, then chop roughly.

Using an electric mixer or whisk, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Fold in the flour, mixed spice, ginger and baking powder, then add the yoghurt, salt and vanilla and mix to form a smooth batter.

Pour half the mixture into the tin. Peel, core and finely slice the apples, then layer them over the batter in the tin. Sprinkle over the blackberries and chopped hazelnuts. Pour the rest of the batter over the fruit (be careful when smoothing it out not to move the fruit around too much) then put the cake in the oven. Bake for around 40 minutes, until light golden on top and a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin.

Turn the cake out onto a plate or board. Mix together the icing sugar and cream cheese using an electric whisk. Add the nutmeg - do it bit by bit and keep tasting; nutmeg is quite strong and you don't want it to overpower. Smooth the icing over the cake. Leave in a cool place for a little while to set (it doesn't set fully and will still be quite gooey). Devour.

Spiced caramelised apple and cranberry toast with ricotta and thyme

I sometimes feel like I neglect the poor humble apple. Caught up in the irresistible nectar-like liquor of a ripe marigold mango, or the perfumed snap of a pale translucent lychee, or the honeyed notes of a sugared gooseberry in high summer, it's easy to forget the value of our most beloved home-grown fruit. But the apple sits there patiently in the background, biding its time, a reliable constant. Like that best friend who will still always be there once passionate romances have long faded into the distance, proffering a consolatory cup of tea and telling you there are plenty more fish in the sea and you could do much better, and she always thought there was something suspicious anyway about the way he tied his shoelaces.

We tend to just lump apples into a single category. They are the generic crunchy, juicy, perfect fruit for eating on the go. Especially if you're one of those odd people who eat the entire lot, core, stalk and all. Children like them. You can just put one in a lunchbox. You don't have to worry about bruising, unlike with bananas, which are effectively untransportable. (Unless, like me, you own a much-mocked banana guard). Apples are pretty much the same, right?

This, I think, is a mistake. Unlike oranges, other citrus fruits, bananas, berries, lychees, which generally have a pretty uniform flavour regardless of type, apples vary wildly depending on variety. It is a mistake, I think, to just blindly lunge for the expensive bag of imported Pink Lady apples. While I can understand their appeal - they are, mostly, uniformly crisp, fragrant and tasty - there is great joy to be had from some of the other apple varieties out there.

My personal favourites are Coxes and Russets. You can't beat a really good Cox apple, crisp, dripping with tart, citrus-tinged juice, its skin overspread with a delightful red blush. Russets are also a favourite; I love their sage-green skin and matt golden bloom, and their subtly fragrant flesh. They work very well in salads, like this caramelised apple, rabbit and barley salad I made last year. 

Discovery apples are also fabulous, coming into season in late summer. They have an amazing tartness and crispness to them, and are probably one of the more refreshing apples. I also lust after the perfect Granny Smith, which is surprisingly hard to find - vivid, alien green, often with a speckling of white freckles on its skin, and mouth-puckeringly tart within.

Regardless of your apple varieties, though, sometimes it's hard to eat them all before they start to turn less than perfect; and by that, I mean soft and floury inside, with a slight greasiness to the skin. 

As part of my Fruitdrop delivery a few weeks ago, I received around twenty apples, of several varieties.  By sight, I think they were Golden Delicious, Royal Gala, and Braeburn. While I ate a few raw, I could tell that I wouldn't be able to polish them off before they started to deteriorate; the nerve-wracking downside of getting so much fruit delivered. I set to thinking about how to use them in cooking; once cooked, it's impossible to tell an imperfect apple from a perfect one.

My first endeavour was a salted caramel tarte tatin, a recipe from last month's Delicious magazine. The recipe claimed said tarte would serve eight; I would like to amend this to 'serves four', simply because it was insanely good. There was salted caramel; into this went nine peeled, cored and halved apples. Over that went a thick layer of puff pastry, which baked to a burnished, crispy, feathery base for the oozing caramel and tender apples. It was essentially my idea of food heaven. That is definitely one viable suggestion for using up eating apples (don't try it with cooking apples, like Bramleys - they will collapse into mush and the tart will not be pretty).

However, if you want more of an everyday recipe (much as I love tarte tatin, I fear it's not a surefire route to slim hips and a toned physique) to use up ailing apples, this is almost as delicious.

It's also barely even a recipe, really, but the combination of ingredients is lovely and I felt I should share it. Caramelising apples is always a good idea; they become much more pronounced in flavour, turning into a soft, golden tangle of sweet deliciousness. You simply cook them in a little butter and brown sugar until they have turned sticky and dark. I always add a little cinnamon and ground ginger, because they both work so well with apples. Adding dried fruit, such as raisins or cranberries, provides an interesting contrast in texture, and a rich, toffee-like sugary note. 

You can use caramelised apples as the basis of numerous recipes - mainly desserts, but if you use less sugar they work well with rich savoury ingredients, like cheese or meat. I decided to pair them with some soft, milky ricotta, because I figured its creamy blandness would provide a lovely contrast to the sweet, crunchy apples. This is a great recipe that would work for either breakfast or lunch.

There's bread, lightly toasted. You could use any bread, but I used fruited soda bread because I love soda bread and I thought the fruit in it would go well with the apples. I reckon sourdough would be fabulous, as would brioche and maybe even a toasted muffin or some rye bread. Over this you slather a thick layer of ricotta. Then on goes a liberal sprinkling of lemon thyme leaves; thyme works very well with both cheese and apples, and helps to cut through their sticky sweetness.

On go the apples, which have caramelised in butter, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and had a handful of jewel-like dried cranberries thrown in alongside them, to plump up in the syrupy juices. Then a few toasted nuts - I used walnuts, but pecans or hazelnuts would also be excellent. This gives a nice contrast in texture. Then another sprinkling of thyme. 

It's a fabulous combination of textures; crunchy toast, soft and cold cheese, hot, crispy sugary apples and cranberries, and earthy nuts. I had it for lunch, but I can see it sitting happily on a breakfast table alongside a big mug of tea, or even as a dessert after a light meal. If you can't be bothered with the rest, just make up a big batch of caramelised apples, and have them on your muesli or porridge for breakfast. They're also excellent tucked into featherlight French crêpes, too. 

I'd suggest you wander down to your local market soon and find yourself some unusual apple varieties. Go on, go crazy. Step out of that comfort zone. Purchase an unknown species of apple. 

And if you don't like it enough to eat raw, caramelise it and stick it on some toast.

Spiced apple and cranberry toast with ricotta and thyme (serves 1):

• 2-3 slices of bread (I used fruited soda bread, but a walnut or raisin loaf would be good, or rye bread)
• 15g butter
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 2 small apples
• A small handful of dried cranberries or raisins
• 100g ricotta cheese
• A few sprigs of lemon thyme
• 1-2 tbsp chopped walnuts or pecans

Get the bread ready in the toaster while you make the apples. Heat the butter and sugar in a small non-stick pan until foaming and bubbling. Add the spices. Quarter and core the apples, then cut into thin slices. Add to the pan along with the cranberries, and cook over a high heat until softened and caramelised in places - this should take around 10 minutes. Turn the heat down once they are caramelised to let them soften some more.

Toast the bread and spread with the ricotta cheese. Pick the leaves from the thyme and sprinkle over the ricotta. Spoon the hot apples over the cheese and sprinkle with the nuts. Serve immediately.