spiced pickled beans Rather than leaving them on the plant to toughen, pick beans when they're small and bottle them while in preserving jars. Fine French beans are the nicest, but baby runners are also delicious. T
grape jelly recipe Home-grown grapes in this country tend to be small, not all of them ripen and they can be thick with pips. You can eat a few with cheese and make jelly with the rest. This is lovely on bread or
gooseberry tart recipe A tart of sharp, delicious just-cooked gooseberries in a very light pastry.serves 6 450g gooseberries 3 eggs 100g caster sugar 284ml double cream, plus more to serve 1 teaspoon vanil
watercress soup This soup is very simple, with the pepperiness of watercress set against the creaminess of coconut milk. It’s also versatile; you can add a bunch of parsley, sorrel, mustard leaves, chard or spi
globe artichokes with angelica's sauce recipe This recipe reminds me of Angelica, the cook in the house my parents used to rent in the Dolomites. I love the whole palaver of artichokes: pulling the leaves off and dipping them into the r
spiced aubergine salad recipe This salad is lovely served warm as a first course with cucumber raita and flatbread.Serves 6-8 3 large-to-medium-sized aubergines (about 1kg) 3 tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil 1
rosemary, olive and lemon chicken recipe A delicious take on the classic Sunday roast. Try this for your next family meal – it's so simple!Serves 5-6 8 chicken thighsjuice of 3 lemonsleaves of 4 sprigs of rosemary (or 1 heaped tablespoon),
smoked chicken, mango and spring herb salad recipe The perfect salad to eat as we, and the garden, emerge from hibernation in spring.serves 4 1 whole smoked chicken 2 mangoes 'cheeks' chopped and trimmings pureed, or 4 tbsp tinned mango p
slow-roast carrots with garlic lemon butter recipe The best way to eat winter carrots is to slow-roast them whole for about an hour; it brings out their sweetness and flavour. This is an ideal veg to have on Christmas Day when time and oven spac
leek and potato soup recipe January is a good time to make soup with last year’s maincrop potatoes, stored frost-free over the winter in a cool, dark spot in hessian bags. One of my favourite meal-in-a-bowl soups for this
large hollow easter egg recipe I used a metal mould (about 10 × 6cm) to make this egg. It's best made when you have a few hours to spare, as you build up the thickness of the chocolate gradually, but this Easter recipe is dea
ithaca pie recipe This is the local version of spanakopita which we ate in a small taverna in Stavros. It was cooked with spinach mixed with horta – wild greens picked from the hillside. A combination of spinach,
roast cumin carrots recipe The beauty of these carrots is that you can make them the day before – they are just as good reheated. The slow roasting brings out all their sweetness, and finely chopped rosemary can be used inst
thai prawn, mango and coconut lettuce parcels recipe I love this when the weather's warm and sunny, piling the different ingredients on to individual lettuce leaves and then folding the leaves into parcels. A good way of smashing the coconut is once
stuffed butternut squash with creamy goat's cheese recipe The shape, colour, texture and taste of this dish make it a good all-rounder in autumn and winter. The skin of the butternuts is thin, so once cooked, you can eat this too and then you’ll get all the
sausage burgers with cheese and fennel scones recipe You might wonder, 'Why not just have hot dogs?' - sausage burgers are much easier to eat, with the meat sitting safely in it's bun, and nicer, with none of that sausage skin, slight sliminess and worr
