Recipe collections

Steak tartare with crispy capers should be served deconstructed, the diner mixing it to their taste. My secret to perfect tartare is three Cs: the cut, the chop and the crunch.

Rib-eye steak with green vegetables and blue cheese sauce. This is the easiest sauce for steak: simply toss cooked green vegetables in blue cheese until it melts.

Steamed side of salmon in a foil parcel with dill, chilies and soy sauce. Steaming takes only 15 minutes and the salmon can be served hot or cold.

Sticky pear and ginger cake is dark, moist and incredibly easy to make. With juicy chunks of pears and crunchy pecans scattered over the sticky syrupy surface, it’s the perfect winter dessert.

Sticky pork and vegetables stir fry, with honey and soy marinade. A wok is a truly weird and wonderful utensil. Vessel. Cooking implement? Surely it's not just a ‘pot’?

Stir fry cabbage - super quick, super tasty, with herbs, garlic and honey. First off – buy the right stuff. The new season, loosely packed cabbage is the best, in fact the less on the head, the better. What the supermarkets call spring cabbage will do too.

Stir-fried cucumbers Asian style, with ginger, garlic and a pinch of chilli. Spicy but also refreshing which is logical as cukes are 96% water.

Mixed vegetable stir-fry seasoned with ginger, oyster sauce and sesame oil. I like to stir fry veg as a side to not-necessarily-oriental mains like fish or steaks but this recipe works as a good veggie stir-fry too, to be served over plain rice or noodles.

Strawberry butter cake is a buttery sponge with fresh strawberries scattered over the batter and it's simple and easy to make. Delicious melt-in-your-mouth sponge with seasonal fruit.

Strawberry crumble cake, the easiest cake batter in the world thickly covered with fresh strawberries and finished with crunchy crumble topping. The only summer cake recipe you'll ever need.

Strawberry fool is the supreme of strawberries and cream, with layers of vanilla scented whipped cream and gorgeous fresh strawberry puree, barely sweetened.

Baked jalapenos stuffed with cheesy herby filling, easy to prepare, healthier than deep fried peppers and tasty to die for. Make sure you use gloves!

Summer berry ice cream, made in a blender, churned in an ice cream maker. The base contains no eggs but a balanced mix of dairy and natiral emulsifiers.

Summer cherry cake with a hint of cinnamon and minimal effort involved. This cake mix is pathetically simple – it takes 5 minutes to prepare and always comes out well.

Toasted crunchy oats with summer fruit compote, perfect for breakfast. I call it ‘fruit compote’ but it most probably is a completely wrong term technically.

Roasted summer vegetables with couscous, with dressing made from the juices of vegetables marinated in harissa, honey and spice mix.

Swedish almond caramel cake, Toscakaka, is a lovely and easy cake to make ahead. Bake the base in advance, then add caramel topping and blast it under the grill just before serving.

Baked sweet potato halves loaded with spicy black beans and Cheddar cheese: vegetarian lunch, snack or dinner, blissfully comforting.

Sweet potatoes baked in foil, topped with tahini butter are a fabulous fiesta of flavours. Recipe adapted from NY Times Cooking.

Sweet puff pastry straws brushed with jam and sugar glaze, twice baked and still the easiest biscuits there are. Shop-bought or homemade puff pastry sheet makes dessert ready in less than an hour.

Sweetcorn and nduja salad made with fresh or frozen corn, served on a bed of lettuce and topped with homemade tortilla crisps – an easy and gorgeous lunch dish.

Tarta de Santiago, traditional Spanish almond cake. Three basic ingredients and no electric appliances required: that’s St James’ cake, or tarta de Santiago. It’s a Galician specialty going back to Middle Ages;

Tartiflette, the best potato and cheese dish ever invented; with bacon lardons and Reblochon cheese. Tartiflette is the definitive comfort food. Potatoes, bacon and cheese – you can’t go wrong with that. It’s a simple dish and like any recipe coming from the highlands of any country, it looks in the pantry, finds stale bits and bobs and puts them together for dinner both nutritious and satisfying.

Thai beef salad made with finely sliced seared bavette steak, aka flank or skirt steak. Perfectly flavoursome beef on a bed of crunchy vegetables, with classic Thai dressing makes a delightful dish.

Whole grilled trout, with Thai style marinade, oven or barbecue-ready. Asian flavours of ginger, chilli and coriander go well with trout's meaty flesh.

Vegetarian Thai noodles flavoured with cinnamon, star anise, ketjap manis and ginger. This was originally Nigella Lawson’s recipe which had been originally her Thai chef’s one while on holiday there; Nigella, not chef or me.

Thai tom yum soup with rice vermicelli noodles and fresh clams. I’ve concocted the recipe from an extensive search through various, more and less authentic-looking sources.

Aubergine and tomato pasta bake with mozzarella. Pasta - fusilli. Tomato sauce - from scratch. Aubergine - lightly fried. A great vegetarian pasta al forno.

Tomato and chickpea tray bake with chunks of feta roasting upon the vegetables, spiced and sweet with honey and chilli dressing.

Very easy, basic tomato sauce made from fresh tomatoes. Heat the oil in a large pan and add the garlic, only to warm it up. Add the chopped tomatoes (or the contents of a tin), season generously...

Savoury tarte Tatin with confit tomatoes. Tomatoes are generally rubbish through three quarters of the year in the non-Mediterranean part of Europe. Tasteless and watery, with thick skins and not much flavour.

Chewy and crispy chocolate chip cookies with white and brown sugar. These are triple choc, but you can add the chocolate chips of your choice: dark or white or milk.

Turkey breast fillet steaks with wild chanterelle mushroom creamy sauce, this is an easy-but-impressive dish. Cook these simple turkey escalopes with wild mushroom sauce for the next special occasion!

Twice roasted beetroots with figs and pomegranate seeds. Crimson central – this is a dish of red, red and more red, suitable for the season of flaming gold on tree branches and misty mornings.

Mini heart shaped sponge cake for Valentine’s Day. A cute and easy Valentine Victoria sponge sandwich filled with jam and whipped cream, made with a heart shaped cookie cutter.

Rose veal topside with simple salty and sweet glaze, roasted to medium rare. It needs only 15 minutes per pound in the oven after a 20 minute blast at high heat.

Veal T-bone steaks with a dry rub, perfect for a barbecue. The dry rub creates a bit of protective coating for the event of burning, and on the bone is more resilient than off the bone. A nice touch will be a bit of veg kebabbed and barbied alongside the meat and don't you dare burn THOSE.

Courgette, aubergine, fennel and mushroom parmigiana with chopped tomatoes and Parmesan. This is a mixed vegetable parmigiana, with lots of Parmesan on layers of pre-cooked veg.

Vegetarian chili with pickled red onions. The recipe is dead simple beside that, and a good weekday supper if you put in canned beans. Soaking and boiling is as much worth the bother as it gives you the right crookedness – tinned beans might get mushy after half an hour in the company of tomatoes.

Venetian carrot cake, gluten free carrot cake with pine nuts and a handful of boozy raisins. This is a lovely cake, squidgy and wet (‘wet’ being the word I’m campaigning for to replace the hateful ‘moist’).

Roast venison loin with chocolate sauce, as impressive as it is easy to prepare. Amazingly flavoursome, as well as healthy and sustainable.

Vietnamese summer rolls in rice wrappers, with pork, shrimp and herb filling. Daintily packaged, with shrimp peeking pinkily through the thin film of the wrapper, like some kind of exotic reptile or jellyfish with transparent skin.

Smoked mackerel and roasted potato salad with peppers and cucumbers. This dish is the best of all possible worlds: not only a potato salad but ROASTED potatoes

Watermelon granita with no added sugar makes a fantastic dessert when served with a scoop of ice cream. Plus, instructions how to cube a watermelon.

Whipped feta and hazelnut dip is heavenly spooned on cherry tomato halves. Snacking does not get much healthier than this!

Raspberry muffins with white chocolate chunks. Muffin is not a biscuit. It's not a cake. It's not quite breakfast fodder. It's this weird cakey thing that you grab when on the go, when hungry but its not lunchtime.

Oven baked whole brill with basil and miso. Whole trimmed brill, fresh basil, lime slices and miso paste make an easy and exquisite dinner, with one small brill per individual portion.

Whole John Dory oven roasted with thyme on a bed of red peppers and tomatoes is a one-pan dish that tastes fabulous.