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Date porridge is naturally sweet, prepared the night before and cooked within minutes into chunky, nutritious and kick-ass breakfast.
Easy dirty rice with minced pork and homemade Creole seasoning, a bomb of flavours and a healthy main course ready in about 40 minutes.
Easy cherry sponge cake with fresh cherries lightly roasted; the base is gently prebaked and the end result is pure, gorgeous summer dessert.
Duck pastilla, a Moroccan pie made with filo pastry layers encasing leftover roast duck mixture filling, with onions and peppers.
Easy chocolate brownie, intense and fudgy but unbelievably quick to make. My best to date recipe for brownie is quite intricate, with beating eggs to a fluff and then folding and folding.
Ebi fry, Japanese style breaded and deep fried shrimp with tonkatsu sauce. Ebi-furai can fortuitously be pronounced ‘ebi fry’ and that’s what it is: shrimp fry. It’s not katsu - I’ve spent some time around various websites featuring katsu, tonkatsu and such, only to find that there is no ebi katsu.
Fennel and gorgonzola fettucine - I love pasta. I could eat pasta every day, if it only didn’t contain carbs. Since it does (hell, what other reason it tastes so good?), it’s an occasional treat.
Fennel and orange salad. The best thing about raw fennel is that it’s really a wonderful and versatile background for endless variants. I’ve used orange but any other large citrus fruit will do nicely. Ah well, you can even skip the citrus and just dress it with lemon juice...
Fennel and spinach lasagne rolls, a pasta bake with salty feta mixed into mild fennel, and creamy spinach sauce as a background to the rolled up, stuffed lasagne sheets.
Fennel and Taleggio cheese pie with savoury crust made from scratch, this is an easy and excellent vegetarian comfort dish recipe.
Fermented red cabbage with chillies and ginger, Europe’s answer to kimchi. Red cabbage sauerkraut is made exactly like the white but it’s vibrant and a bit more crunchy.
Feta and za’atar scones, with fluffy crumb like a proper English tearoom classic but suffused with Middle Eastern flavour of za’atar: oregano, thyme, sumac and sesame seed.
Feta saganaki with caramelised figs. Saganaki is a Greek dish of anything cooked and served in a small skillet, cheese saganaki the most popular.
Feta cheese, roasted grapes and crunchy walnuts are the perfect combination of juicy, sweet, crunchy and salty. It's a fantastic autumnal salad, to serve for lunch or as a starter.
Fideua, Spanish pasta dish with fish and seafood, is cooked exactly like paella: in an enormous pan, only with short vermicelli pasta replacing rice.
Fig and prosciutto tart with ready-rolled puff pastry takes about five minutes to prepare and twenty to bake. A divine, seasonal lunch or starter dish, best made with gorgeous Bursa figs.
Fig confit with fresh fig chunks in madeira syrup, great with cheese or charcuterie. Something with figs but not jam was the objective. Why not jam?
Filipino beef tapa with brown rice, sweet and sharp marinated beef strips, stir fried and served as part of a breakfast dish of tapsilog.
Filo pastry snails with mushroom, spinach and cheese filling. The original recipe for these snails calls for feta cheese. It actually calls for roasted fennel instead of spinach but here I think my improvement has worked – spinach in filo pastry is a classic after all.
Filo wrapped asparagus with Parmesan are a crunchy, golden, irresistible vegetarian snack or appetiser. Asparagus filo parcels rolled up like cigars are a must before the asparagus season ends.
Financier biscuits, French mini almond cakes made with brown butter are deliciously moist, light and tender, a little like madeleines and really easy to make.
Classic English fish and chips: crispy chip shop style batter and double cooked chips. I consulted Heston Blumenthal’s recipe for perfect fish and chips in order to produce mine; with the batter sans vodka (we don’t waste spirits in cooking).
Creamy fish pie with layered sliced potato topping. Chunky fish and prawns, Mornay sauce and crispy layer of sliced potato topping finished with bubbly cheese..
Fish with mushroom gratin: haddock, turbot or sole fillets baked au gratin, covered with delicious mushroom sauce topped with crisp breadcrumbs.
Chinese five spice duck breast with perfectly rendered fat seared in a pan, atop aubergines and mushrooms stir fried with oyster sauce, is the kind of brilliant recipe that is quick and easy but very impressive.
Five spice shrimp with greens and crispy noodles. This is different to your usual stir fry: it’s a warm stir fried salad. The crispy noodles are totally optional: you can do soft noodles or no noodles.
Flash pickles made with cucumber and carrot slices. These quick refrigerator pickles are ready in 3 hours and keep more nutritious elements than ordinary pickles.
Flat iron mushrooms, a mix of cultivated mushrooms pressed flat whilst cooking, to concentrate and wonderfully enhance their flavour.
Flourless sponge cake with ground walnuts and a layer of apricot jam with grated dark chocolate topping: exquisite, elegant, delicious and gluten free.
Fondant carrots are cooked in a water and butter emulsion, seasoned with carraway and cinnamon. Starting off in lots of sizzling butter, they are then soused with hot stock to become tender and fullest of flavour.
Celeriac fondant makes a great side dish. Recipes featuring celeriac are usually for mash or puree, but dicing the celeriac root and cooking it in butter brings out the great flavour.
Fragrant fish stew with mixed fish chunks and seared scallops, crunchy vegetables and herbs. Easy, healthy and incredibly tasty.
Fresh, raw porcini salad with minimal seasoning is an epic treat. Sliced porcini, aka ceps or penny buns only need a sprinkling of salt and a drop of olive oil.
Courgette flowers (fiori di zuccha) in light batter, shallow fried in olive oil with a touch of mint inside each blossom. It’s pan-fried poetry!
Fried sliced mushrooms, cooked in butter and a little oil, perfect for breakfast or as a side to steak. Cook them for 10-15 minutes until caramelised and crisp.
Homemade granola, easy and healthy with just the fruit and seed mix you like; only waiting for milk, yoghurt or fresh fruit. Take back control of your breakfast!
The best pizza made at home is born between the frying pan and the grill. Easy dough, basic toppings, thin crust; no pizza stone, no wood fired oven. Beats takeaway every time!
Roasted gammon hock with plum sauce. Gammon hock is a cured pork shank or knuckle, easy to prepare and extremely good value. Soak it, boil it and then roast it for meat falling off the bone.
Garlic, lemon and thyme new potatoes gently poached in oil are incredibly flavoursome and super easy to prepare: oven baked in a covered casserole dish.
Fresh clams cooked with plenty of garlic and white wine. And then – off they go into spaghetti or linguine, or soup or chowder , or just as a splendid dish of little morsels of saltiness with the juices mopped by some good bread.
Garlic fried chicken marinated in buttermilk. If I was a KFC fan, I’d be really happy with this garlic fried chicken. Of course it’s a southern American classic, but they tend to fry chicken on the bone.
Garlic mushrooms with parsley - simple and delicious. Mushrooms are an excellent source of protein and fibre. Season them generously and fry them with garlic - so tasty just with a chunk of bread. This is a suggestion for a lovely side dish.
Garlicky runner beans in butter and Parmesan. Nobody likes to admit they were wrong. It’s in human nature I guess – nobody knows their stuff better than we do ours.
Chicken general Tso, crispy fried chunks of chicken with the best hot and sour sauce. Deep fried chicken breast tossed in sweet and hot sauce is an American Chinese dish, cooked all in a wok. Serve with plain rice or noodles.
Giant (aka Israeli) couscous salad with tomatoes, roasted peppers and feta cheese. This is a great recipe for a vegetarian salad that can be eaten warm or cold.
Latkes with roasted apple topping, crispy fried shredded potato pancakes traditionally eaten for Jewish Hanukkah. I like to make one giant latke for brunch, topped with crème fraiche and tart roasted apples.
Quick and simple glace cherries recipe: make your own candied fruit. They will last for a couple of weeks in a jar. Joking, of course – they’ll never last that long…
Glazed carrots cooked in a butter and stock emulsion, flavoured with cinnamon and finished with parsley, lemon and almond flakes. Just the side for a roast chicken or a meatloaf!