Confit Garlic

Garlic is one of the things that makes my life complete. I eat it practically daily in one form or another, crushed raw into salads and small plate type things, cooked gently into the base of braises and stews, tossed with abandon into roasting trays with meat and all kinds of vegetables, beaten to a paste with salt to stir into fresh mayonnaise, slivers crisped to golden for an unexpected crunch in salads, flipped through noodles and stir fries, mashed into butter and cream cheese for garlic bread. You get the idea - the list goes on....

It is used in most cuisines around the world with the exception of subgroups like Jains who don't do garlic or onion, carrot or potato either - which would leave me thoroughly discombobulated. It is surprisingly complex in flavour depending on the cooking methods, just adding to its brilliant versatility.

I thought I'd tried pretty much every permutation until I came across the idea of garlic confit. Mostly I tend to associate confit with duck and leave it at that but it is a much broader and well loved method of preserving that can also be used with fruit and vegetables and, though I've not tried this at home, is apparently just a fabulous way to cook any kind of animal tongue, larks included presumably.

Confit duck warmed in the oven to serve

This makes sense because to confit you submerge the ingredient in oil - or sugar syrup for fruits - and slow cook it making for a very tender result with no appreciable loss of moisture or flavour. It is a really seductive way to prep your duck legs for the winter as the longer they sit untouched on the pantry shelf the more tender the flesh becomes till it really does just melt in your mouth.

The same is true of garlic, I'm pleased to say. I bought a LOT of garlic and cooked it down and have spent the last few weeks adding garlic oil to everything, mashing confit cloves into salad dressings and, undoubtedly my absolute favourite, toasting ciabatta and topping it with confit and salt crystals for the most decadently fabulous garlic bread ever invented. Melt a little cheese on top for variation. Try it - you'll thank me!

Confit Garlic

3 or 4 juicy heads of garlic
Olive oil to cover

Break the garlic into individual cloves, peel them and drop them into a small saucepan. This looks like a pretty daunting task before you start but is remarkably quick once you begin.

A bit of a mess!

Pour over just enough olive oil to cover the cloves and put the pan over a low heat. Bring to a simmer, turn the heat as low as it will go, and cook for 45 minutes.

Take the pan off the heat and, using a slotted spoon transfer the softened garlic cloves to a clean jar then pour over the oil. When the contents are cool, seal the jar and keep it in the fridge.

Use it with everything from a sauce for steamed vegetables to a base layer for pizza and slathered onto warm naan bread as a snack - it's definitely all good.

Tomato Jam

Yes really, jam! They are a fruit, really, though most often used in a savoury fashion that it's easy to forget they may have other possibilities. I love them raw and cooked at this time of year, and the lovely summer we're (still?) having has produced a juicy well flavoured crop, piled in abundance in all the shops and street markets round me. I had a few too many last week so made a big pot of this lovely jam, originally from a recipe by Jose Pizarro. I made and bottled a couple of kilos but you can make a small quantity for a single jar - which I did last year - and it still tastes just great. It's a bit like a marmalade rather than a very sweet jam.

Tomato Jam

Makes approximately 300ml

1kg ripe, well flavoured tomatoes
125g caster sugar
125g demerara sugar
1 small cinnamon stick
peel of 1/2 lemon
peel of 1/2 orange - tie the two lots of peel together with string to make it easy to remove

Use a sharp knife to make a cross in the skin on the base of each tomato.

Bring a saucepan of water to the boil, add the tomatoes and simmer for 3 minutes.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the tomatoes from the pan and plunge them into iced water. Remove the stems and the skins - they will slip off really easily. Chop the tomatoes into 4 or 5 rough slices, making sure to catch the juice as you do.

Place the tomatoes and juice in a  saucepan and leave to reduce over a low heat for 20 - 30 minutes till most of the water has evaporated. Now add the sugars, cinnamon and peels and give everything a good stir. Don't break up the cinnamon.

Slowly cook the tomatoes for at about an hour - longer if you're making a bigger batch - stirring regularly. The end result should be a sticky, firm jam that is a shiny brown red colour.

When cooked remove the cinnamon stick and the citrus peel and pour into a warm sterilised jar.

Keeps well in the fridge.

This is gorgeous slathered on hot toast for breakfast, as a side with cheeses or cold roast pork or ham. And on twitter Joanne from joanne-eatswellwithothers.com suggested having with grilled cheese on toast - definitely on my list of weekend treats to try.

Here Comes Summer!

Possibly a tad keen on my part but it was such a gloriously sunny weekend after all the rain, can't hurt  - much - to hope. Planning days out and dinners dominated by, if not delicacy, then certainly a lightness of touch seems marginally less ridiculous than usual. This positivity was enforced by an email from Sopexa enquiring whether I'd care to sample a couple of bottles of Chablis -  bien sur!

Chablis is the steely white wine produced in the Burgundy region of France. It has a slightly austere quality that is very refreshing on a warm day and means it pairs well with seafood and simple poultry dishes. Salad had pole position on the menu plan for the weekend - the verdant flavours of fresh leaves and cucumbers and, especially, asparagus have been seducing me these last few weeks. It is very definitely spring when the fat bundles of asparagus are piled up early at the market.

Loved the idea of warm roast chicken for Saturday night special, even more so with a bottle of Domaine Vocoret & Fils Premier Cru chilling in the fridge. Aiming for elegance and simplicity I planned no more than a beautiful green salad on the side, dressed with a tarragon cream sauce. I associate tarragon mostly with Italy, where it is known as dragoncello, a name that conjures for me all manner of excitements and fire. I love the mix of aniseed and light vanilla notes that judicious use confers on all manner of dishes and try and grow it in the summer, sometimes successfully.

Dragoncello Dressing

This makes enough for a generous bowl of your favourite mix of salad leaves spiked with thin slices of cucumber and chopped chives

1 medium egg, hard boiled and cooled
A pinch of smoked paprika
70ml double cream
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon chopped tarragon leaves
Salt and pepper

When the boiled egg is cold, peel and cut in half then scoop the yolk out into a small bowl. You can discard the white or, like me, add a twist of salt and claim it as cook's treat. Mash the yolk very thoroughly with a fork and season with a little paprika. Add a teaspoon of cold water and mix well then add the cream, vinegar and tarragon. Taste and season then add to your salad and toss gently to combine and serve immediately.

This makes such a great dressing I couldn't resist making another batch Sunday to dress still warm new potatoes for a fine dinner of cold roast chicken with basil dressed asparagus and peas for green. A cool glass of Jean-Marc Brocard Chablis 2012 rounded out the first weekend of *summer* delightfully.

Thanks to the Bureau Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bourgogne (BIVB) for supplying the wine!

Bun Noodles with Lemongrass Chicken Topping

I have been frequenting Vietnamese restaurants for many years, always with a great deal of pleasure. I can clearly remember the very first one - a tiny place in Glebe in Sydney in the early 1980's (yes I am that old!). I had never tasted anything like their chicken that had been marinated in honey and lemongrass, indeed I didn't even know what lemongrass was. It was such a great combination of flavours made sticky and smoky with chargrilling and served with noodles thinner than I'd ever seen topped with mint and coriander. A total WOW of a dish. Somehow they made huge flavours presented with an extraordinary delicacy. I was gobsmacked.

I visited this restaurant a few more times before I left Oz, always delighted by whatever I chose but completely unable to understand how this magic came to be. Over the years I have become a much better cook, gaining inspiration from far and wide with a serious penchant for Asian food. Indeed the book I have used most over the decades is Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook, but somehow I've never gone much past the chrystal spring rolls and the little deep fried parcels in the Vietnamese section, despite loving their lightness and genius use of fresh herbs and hot sweet chilli sauce.

I recently ought a copy of New Flavours of the Vietnamese Table by Mai Pham partly because I was tempted by the idea of cooking a bit more Viet food and partly because Fuchsia Dunlop, whose Szchewan food is thoroughly brilliant and has taught me so much, endorses it wholeheartedly on the cover. In truth I was hoping to learn something with this book about what underlies the cuisine rather than just have a couple of new recipes in the repertoire. Delighted to say that has happened quite comprehensively.

I had a little bit of very rare chargrilled steak leftover and I decided to make noodle salad. Browsing the book I came across bun - rice noodles with fresh herbs - which Mai Pham describes as the one dish that exemplifies just how flavours and textures are contrasted in Vietnamese cuisine.

To start, you shred lettuce and herbs, beansprouts and cucumber and mix them, without any dressing or oil or seasoning, and add them to the bottom of a noodle bowl. Cooked, cooled thin rice vermicelli is put on top. As I followed that instruction it came back to me the number of times I have ordered bun in restaurants and been confused and disappointed by the odd dry salad beneath a tangle of noodles that somehow never worked and yet is on every Vietnamese menu I've ever seen. I kept going though, and I am so glad. She describes how to create a complete bun meal, by making a hot topping for this then - and here is the the magic that transforms the dish - you make and add a series of garnishes and gently toss the whole lot together to make a most fabulous meal. I was so thrilled with the result I made bun again the following night, topping it with lemongrass chicken and again, it was bliss.

Bun with Lemongrass Chicken

The first time you make it unfamiliarity makes it seems like a faff, but in truth it is not really very complex and the result is effort rewarded a thousand times over

Serves 2

For the noodles
150g thin dried rice vermicelli
50g red or green leaf lettuce, shredded into centimetre wide strips
A handful of fresh bean sprouts, topped and tailed
About a quarter of a long cucumber, peeled, deseeded and cut into matchstick strips
2 tablespoons Asian basil leaves, cut into thirds
2 tablespoons of perilla leaves, fresh mint or coriander, roughly chopped

Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Add the rice vermicelli and stir gently to loosen them. Cook for about 4 minutes until the noodles are white and soft but still slightly resilient. Drain and rinse under cold running water. Gently fluff the noodles and set them aside for at least thirty minutes. The noodles should be dry and sticky before serving.

Gently toss together the lettuce, bean sprouts, cucumber and herbs and divide the mixture between 2 bowls. Top each with half of the noodles. The bowls are now ready for the topping.

For the garnish
Spring onion oil
60 ml vegetable oil
5 spring onions, green parts only, cut into thin rings

Heat the vegetable oil in a small pan over a moderat heat. Add the spring onions and stir for 10 seconds. Immediately remove from the heat and transfer the oil with the spring onions to a small bowl. Place in the fridge for 10 minutes - this helps the spring onions stay green. Remove and set aside at room temperature till ready to serve. This sauce will keep for a couple of weeks in a sealed jar in the fridge.

Toasted Peanuts
3 tablespoons raw shelled peanuts, skins removed

Heat a pan over a medium heat, add the peanuts and stir for a few minutes till the peanuts are fragrant and starting to colour. Tip them into a mortar and pestle them lightly till they're roughly crushed.

Nuoc Cham - Dipping Sauce
2 Thai bird's eye chillies
1 garlic clove, sliced
3 tablespoons sugar
170ml warm water
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
5 tablespoons fish sauce

Cut the chillies into thin rings and put them into a mortar with the garlic and sugar and pound into a coarse wet paste. Transfer to a small bowl and add the water, lime juice and fish sauce and stir well to dissolve. Garnish with more chopped chilli and shredded carrot if desired.

For the topping
1 large chicken breast, skinned and thinly sliced
1 stalk lemon grass, sliced into very thin circles
1 thumb sized knob of ginger, peeled. Cut half into very thin dice and shred the other half into thin matchsticks
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
Half red onion, peeled and very thinly sliced
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 tablespoons fish sauce
Juice of half a lime

Mix the sliced chicken with the lemon grass and the thin ginger dice and set aside for 30 minutes to marinate. heat the oil in a wok and add the garlic, ginger shreds and red onion and stir fry for about 30 seconds. Add the chicken and toss over a high heat till it has cooked and turned white. Add the fish sauce and lime juice and toss to combine.

To serve, divide the chicken topping between the prepared noodle bowls. Garnsih each with half a tablepsoon of Spring Onion Oil, 1 tablespoon of peanuts and about 60ml of dipping sauce. Toss several times before eating.

Devour with the most enormous pleasure!

Passionfruit Curd

Passion fruit are rich in vitamins A and C and are a good source of potassium and iron. The seeds are high in fibre. What they are really good at though is bringing the taste of hot sunshine into your life, even if it's the tail end of winter. They are little crinkly black balls, with thin brittle shells, and when you cut one open it is full of glorious golden pulp, really intensely coloured, and spotted through with small edible black seeds. The perfume that assails you is divine. The seeded pulp is sweet and sharp in your mouth, a wonderful palate reviver after so many months of rich stews and roasted root veg.

I had forgotten how much joy they bring.

I bought a lot a few weeks ago, made some melting moments stuck together with passionfruit icing, and froze the rest of the pulp in ice cube blocks till I had a plan. Anne left a comment suggesting I try Nigella's Passionfruit Curd which was a stroke of brilliance on her part. When I was a teenager I used to make lemon curd at home, totally loved it on toast or dolloped onto hot scones for morning tea, feeling myself to be at the very height of sophistication.

The idea of using a lot of my stash this way hadn't occurred to me, but I was more than happy to go with the suggestion. Much stirring and spoon licking later I had a big pot of beautiful passionfruit curd, which mostly I've been eating on hot toast as weekend breakfast treat. Every mouthful a delight.

Passionfruit Curd

11 passionfruit
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
150g caster sugar
100g unsalted butter

Cut 10 of the passionfruit open and scoop the seeded pulp into a bowl then blitz with a hand held processor for a minute or two just to loosen the seeds. Strain through a fine sieve into a jug or bowl.

Beat the eggs, egg yolks and sugar together till pale and creamy.

Melt the butter over a low heat in a heavy- based pan then stir in the sugar/egg mixture and the passionfruit juice. Cook over a low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, unitl the mixture thickens to the consistency of double cream. This takes about ten minutes so you need to be a little bit patient.

Off the heat, whisk in the pulp - seeds and all - of the remaining passionfruit, let cool slightly, then pour the curd into a large clean jar.

Keep refrigerated for as long as it lasts!

As with all things Nigella the final result was rich, voluptuous and totally gorgeous.

Seared Ginger Raita

I love raita, always have. It is the single element that brings spicy dishes and rice and bits and bobs together whilst never losing its own autonomy. It is a quite perfect accompaniment, an important part of many Indian meals. Not a single dish, its forms are as myriad as the curries it comes with.

Plain (natural) yoghurt 'dahi' is one of my favourite things, cold and creamy with a good sour tang it is somehow challenging and soothing simultaneously. It is the base of all raita, its coolness offering respite from spicy, and it can bring its own complexity and pleasure to the meal. My first one was simple - a little cucumber and mint, a perfect mouthful of summer. Then I tried it with coriander and toasted cumin seeds for a quite different set of flavours and textures, the crisp little seeds a tiny surprise. Mamta's Kitchen suggests the bacteria aids digestion, which is probably true, but the suggestion I like more is that raita should be served in generous portions. I must concur!

This particular recipe comes from Viet World Kitchen via Niloufer King, the award-winning author of My Bombay Kitchen. Using both raw ginger and some that you fry gently till it 'candies' this raita brings a whole other dimension of gingerness to the table.

Seared Ginger Raita

I had no curry leaves but did have some oil I made using fresh curry leaves so that was my base. Andrea Nguyen adds a note to her version worth passing on 'You can't really over do it so - go wild'.

Serves 4 to 6
1 1/2 cups plain yogurt, any level of fat
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh ginger
1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon canola or peanut oil
2 fresh red or green Thai chiles, slit to the stem
Leaves from 1 branch of curry leaves, wiped dry
1/4 cup finely julienned fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon brown or black mustard seeds
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro leaves

Put the yogurt into a large measuring cup or bowl and whisk it a few times to break it up. Add the chopped ginger and salt to taste. If the yogurt is super thick, add water by the tablespoon. Keep the yoghurt by the stove along with the remaining ingredients, except the cilantro which you’ll add later.

In a small skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the chiles and let them sizzle for a minute, until aromatic. Toss in the curry leaves and when they begin to darken and change color, add the julienned ginger. Raise the heat to high and cook, stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes, until the ginger starts turning brown and caramelizing. Now add the mustard seeds.

When the mustard seeds pop, pour all of the ingredients into the yogurt. Stir to combine well and set aside to rest for at least 30 minutes to develop the flavors. The yogurt will take on some of the gingery goodness.

Sprinkle with chopped coriander to serve.

This is a gorgeous thing - as I ate it with aubergine and chickpea curry I started imagining it with other dishes, grilled fish and steaks and as a dipping sauce for raw vegetables. This one has serious possibilities!

Parsley Butter

A very quick one - just wanted to share. Saturday night I'd been planning to make a steamed marinated salmon dish but when I looked more closely at the recipe - after having bought the ingredients, obviously - I realised it involved marinating the fish for 24 hours in citrus juice which would probably ruin the fish. Would certainly 'cook' it before it came anywhere near heat. So I opted for ultra simple instead. Pan fried the fish skin side down for a crisp crust, then finished it for a couple of minutes in the oven. Steamed broccoli and potatoes to go with and made a simple parsley butter to make the plate special.

The trick with this is that you really want to end up with parsley flecked with butter rather than the other way round for a really intense fresh burst of flavour.

Parsley butter

2 tablespoons roughly choppped flat leaf parsley

20g unsalted butter

Dash lemon juice

Salt and pepper

Put the parsley, butter and seasoning into a pestle bowl and grind till you have a bright green emulsion. Add about half a teaspoon of lemon juice and mix again till it is incorporated.

That's it. Brilliant with the fish would also work a treat with steak or lentils or even melted atop a plain omelette.

Boiled Chicken with leeks and aioli

Fergus Henderson is rightly famous for his long followed creed of nose to tail eating and the pared down aesthetic of St John. His guiding principle seems to be that it’s only polite if you knock an animal on the head to eat it all: tripe, heart, feet, ears, head, tail. It’s what he's renowned for, his signature dish is roasted bone marrow with parsley caper sauce, which is utterly sublime. It seems his infamy is based on the notion that he only cooks the offal bits but really he cooks the whole animal - and lots of vegetables - sublimely.

I'm lucky enough to work near enough to St John at Smithfields to have an occasional lunch in the bar but one of the stand out treats for my birthday this year was eating again in the restaurant, a much expanded experience to the small plates in the bar. Everything was simply outstandingly good from langoustines with the best mayonnaise I have ever eaten - so good I had to fight the rest of the party off 'sharing' it to a plate of madeline hot from the oven that were indeed intended for sharing.

For my main course I opted for poached chicken with leeks, juicy, tender and deeply flavoured, just wonderful. Simple, elegant and as close to perfect as poached chicken can be. So I checked my copy of Nose to Tail and found the recipe for it, which also suggested serving the finished dish with aioli. Though it needs to be done over two days, logically, so the meat can cool completely it is a very simple dish to make, good as I remembered it and quite unlike most of the food I make. British and ethereal at the same time.

Boiled Chicken and Leeks

1 free range chicken (slit the skin between the leg and breast) or I used 6 chicken legs, about 1.5kg in weight

2 carrots, unpeeled and chopped

2 leeks, chopped

1 onion, unpeeled and halved

1 whole head of garlic

2 sticks celery, chopped

2 bay leaves

a bundle of thyme, parsley and rosemary

20 or so whole peppercorns

sea salt

6 leeks, trimmed

Place the chicken and all the ingredients down to the sea salt in a large pot, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. As soon as it boils cover it with a lid, take it off the heat and leave it to cool, which takes about 6 hours.

I then left the chicken in the broth in the fridge for the day before making dinner next night.

Remove the chicken from the stock and put it into a clean pot. Strain the stock and put some of it in with the chicken, retaining enough of the broth for another pot to cook the leeks. Bring the stock to a gentle simmer and cook for 30 minutes. You will now have a moist bird - or bits - without it being toughened or falling apart from hard boiling.

In a separate pan put the trimmed leeks and the remaining stock. Bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for about 7 minutes till tender.

Serve the chicken and leeks with a splash of the chicken broth, a bowl of the aioli and coarse sea salt. As with any boiled unbrined meat, coarse sea salt applied just before eating is very good.

Save the rest of the stock for future cooking.

Aioli

10 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

sea salt and pepper

2 free range egg yolks

about 300ml of extra virgin olive oil

juice of 2 lemons - you may not need it all.

Put the garlic into a processer chopping bowl with a pinch of salt (to help break it up) and a good grinding of pepper. Whizz until finely pulped, this is important as you do not want garlic chippings in the aioli. Add the egg yolks, let them meet the garlic for a moment, then carefully and slowly add the oil in a gently stream, whisking all the while. The emulsion should safely hold 300ml, perhaps a little more. Now add the lemon juice, tasting as you go. Adjust the seasoning, then refrigerate.

The aioli is delicate and pungent simultaneously and really brings the finished dish together. I served it with hot boiled new potatoes to make a delicately pale plate. I mixed the leftover potatoes and leeks into some aioli as a salad to go with the remaining chicken next day for lunch.

This was one of the nicest meals I've cooked in a while amidst pretty stiff competition. As Fergus Henderson says, making this dish is emphatically worth it.

Garlic Mayonnaise

It is spring, that loveliest of seasons. The parks turn from smudges of grey to acid green, my clematis drips with ten thousand creamy flowers and Borough Market stalls start selling asparagus and strawberries and spring lamb. Joy.

I bought my first bunch of asparagus for the season on Saturday planning for it to be the centrepiece of a simple snacking supper. I love the stuff so much I really wanted it to be extra special so I decided to make mayonnaise into which we could dip the warm green stalks. I seldom make my own mostly because it seems incredibly decadent - it is such a fabulous rich concoction that I could happily stand and eat a whole bowl with a spoon. For some reason I think that might not be good for me on a weekly basis.

But for the first of the asparagus it had to be. I had some new season garlic in the fridge, pale and delicate and a very good match for my simple supper plan. I'd bought fresh prawns as well that would be divine dipped and some lovely ratte potatoes that would make a good salad to use the remains to go with burgers Sunday night. Frugal and decadent.

There is much palaver about the supposed difficulty of making mayonnaise but it is fairly simple and straightforward, particularly if you have a whisk attachment for a stick blender. Which I do. In this recipe I use olive oil which makes for a very rich mayonnaise indeed but you could make it using vegetable oil just as successfully. The following quantities makes enough to keep you blissfully happy for a long weekend.

Garlic Mayonnaise

250 ml olive oil or vegetable oil if you want a lighter mayonnaise

4 cloves of new season garlic or 1 ordinary clove, peeled and halved

1 egg + 1 egg yolk

A few drops of lemon juice

Salt and pepper

In a small pan warm 2 tablespoons of the olive oil with the garlic very gently, and cook till the garlic turns golden, about 4 minutes. Take off the heat and allow to cool.

In a clean bowl - or a food processor - whisk the egg and yolk then slowly add the rest of the olive oil, literally a drop at a time at the beginning, whisking all the time. As it starts to thicken and become straw coloured increase the volume of oil to a thin steady stream. When you have incorporated about two thirds of the oil add a few drops of lemon juice then slowly add the rest of the oil. Season with salt and pepper.

Mash the golden garlic finely into the oil in the pan then stir it into the mayonnaise. Taste and adjust the seasoning or add more lemon if you need to.

Try and resist eating it all in one go - it will keep in the fridge for a couple of days if you have the strength of will.

Very fine with warm asparagus, fresh prawns, with chicken or ham, as a dip for crisp raw vegetables, with tuna and beans - anywhere that decadence seems good, really.

Date & Parsnip Salad

Saturday night I wanted to do a series of tapassy type dishes for dinner as the original plan had been to meet up with David for tapas and sherry at a place he'd heard about in Borough. Except then he couldn't find it again and he'd consumed an excess of sherry elsewhere in the meantime and, after waking with a dreadful hangover, was subsequently less convinced he wanted to repeat the experience. So they came to us instead but I still fancied a Spanish theme to the evening.

We started with a lightly chilled manzanilla with hot padron peppers and marinated olives. Then I had a whole collection of dishes, mostly cold, except for some saffron potatoes and tiny lamb balls, which I made up as I went along. The array of salads largely came from Moro type recipes I found on the web, particularly an incredibly beautiful blood orange and chicory salad from Helen's Food Stories blog and a richly textured chick pea and butternut dish made luscious with tahini dressing.

The last one made, and I almost didn't, was date and parsnip salad from a very old article in the Guardian. I read the instructions, looking for how to cook the parsnips and realised - you don't. Just grate them and mix with everything else. And I doubted it deep inside, even though it was a recipe from Moro, from Sam and Sam Clark, and I love their food. It just didn't seem right. Their intro suggested it was half salad, half relish and that kind of put me off too. I love salad but I loathe relish - which half would triumph? And the man doesn't much like mint. It was Lebanese rather than Spanish. And I'd already made enough food to cover the table with jeweled plates.

But hey, what the hell. I had the ingredients, no cooking only chopping means it would be quick to make, disaster or no. Dinner should be an adventure. Good call - it turned out to be my favourite dish of the night. Savoury, sweet and decadently rich with a myriad of textures it really was the perfect accompaniment to the lamb and the rest of the vegetables.

Parsnip, yogurt and date salad

600g parsnips

10 dates, stoned and roughly chopped

2 tbsp fresh mint, roughly chopped

150g Greek yogurt with a squeeze of lemon, or any slightly sour yogurt

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp runny honey

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Sea salt and black pepper

Peel the parsnips, cut in quarters lengthways, and get rid of any woody centre. Grate coarsely and place in a bowl. Add the chopped dates and mint, followed by all the remaining ingredients. Season with salt and pepper, toss well and taste. Serve immediately.

Utterly divine. Suspect it would be even better with barbecue...

Basil Oil

What with it being almost Christmas and the credit crunch doing it's thing I thought I'd add a couple of seasonal treats to the blog. I have previously made some basil oil for myself because I really love the stuff. It is such a superbly flavoured herb but sadly doesn't last long once picked, so preserving it this way is fabulous. And frugal.

I was talking to a few others recently, amongst them Lizzie from Hollowlegs, about this thing about xmas - the endless pressure to be giving gifts to all and sundry feels unceasing from about September but the reality is it's unlikely most adults need or even want anything that they haven't already bought or planned to buy for themselves. It's why most people go out to earn a wage. So you are most likely to both give and receive something for the sake of it. But if you give consumables all that will be left is the bottle and the pleasant sensation of being replete.

A few weeks ago I had a big bunch of basil left from another dish, so decided I'd make some oil with it rather than have it go to waste. I put the picked leaves into my pan, added two 500ml bottles of olive oil, infused it gently then let it cool. I stuffed the leaves through the skinny neck of each bottle then filled them with oil and sealed the tops. Obviously the outside of the bottles were still a little oily. Picked one up to clean it, had it slip then in what seemed like slow motion I watched it fall to the floor and smash. Oil, leaves, glass for miles - all over the floor, up the walls, down the cupboards, everywhere. If you've never had to clean up that much olive oil you are very lucky. It's a nightmare, it seems to multiply every time you peep out from behind your hands. Took me an hour or more. The only good thing was still having one bottle left. Which I cleaned very very carefully before I put it away.

Basil Oil

2 x 500ml olive oil in glass bottles

1 large bunch basil, leaves picked from the stems

2 dried red chillies

Put the leaves and chillies into a large pan and add the olive oil. Very very gently bring it to a point where there are just bubbles forming. Keep it at that temperature for about ten minutes to infuse. Turn off the heat, cover and allow the oil to return to room temperature.

If you're feeling brave gently push the leaves into the empty bottles after discarding the chillies. There will be oil that runs down the outside of the bottle making them slick. Then with a funnel pour the infused oil into the bottles and seal.

Make a label and decorate with a little festive ribbon.

And that's it - a lovely present that is a joy to receive as well as to give. It is great on hot pasta with nothing more than a sprinkle of Parmesan, it makes a fabuolous salad dressing, particularly for peppers and you can roast tomatoes and garlic in it to make a wonderful dish eaten hot or cold. Or indeed to put into sterilised jars and given as presents.

If you're lucky enough to have a basil plant in the summer you can make more of this lovely oil before the plant dies off in the autumn.

White Onion Foam

White onions are striking looking things - at their peak they are glowing white bulbs with gleaming skins. They have a higher water content than brown onions giving them a milder flavour - they are good raw if you like raw onion. They cook beautifully but store badly - the extra moisture gives them a tendency to rot.

This easy dish is quite simply brilliant whne warm with roast beef or cold with sausages - we had it both ways this week. I'm sure it would also work well with roast chicken.

White Onion Foam

About 500g white onions, peeled and thinly sliced

A large knob of butter - about 40-50g

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Melt the butter over a gentle heat and fry the onion slices till they are transparent - about 30 minutes. Let it cool then with a blender stick or in a blender whizz till smooth. Season.

Warm it through before serving with a roast but it works really well cold with sausages and salad.

It is so good that everyone who eats this will think you are brilliant!

Spice Crusted Salmon with Mint Chutney

I wonder on and off about eating more fish - it is healthy, provides oils not found elsewhere, and generally adds a different texture and flavour to dishes. It has a whole repertoire that I seldom tap in to. There are reasons for this - I haven't cooked much fish so it is not familiar and is therefore daunting. I do not like 'fishy' fish - the strong flavour of oily fish - though I do like mackerel raw and I do think tastes can be acquired. There is the whole vexed matter of sustainability, the disastrous decline in native fish stocks in UK waters. I confess I do not know enough about it to shop wisely - though it is true that that is easily remedied with some research. It is reasonably expensive to buy most fish and that makes me tentative - if I cook it badly then it's a bruising defeat.

But when I was making the vague list that accompanies us every week on the trip to Borough Market on Friday evening I asked the man what he'd like for dinner Saturday and he said 'Fish'. So that was it. I'd enjoyed watching Hugh Fearmley-Whittingstall's programme on fish in the week, and was taken with his pleasure in organic farmed salmon - good quality fish that is sustainably produced. Flicking through some cookbooks it took a while for something to really leap out at me - but eventually I found this in Christine Manfield's Spice. It was simple and utterly delicious. Fast too - from go to whoah in half an hour.

Spice Crusted Salmon

2 pieces of organic salmon fillet, about 150 - 200g per piece

150ml vegetable oil

1 large dried chilli

2 teaspoons cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1/2 tspn black peppercorns

seeds from 2 cardamom pods

1 tspn brown mustard seeds

2 teaspoons nigella seeds

1/4 tspn ground cassia (I didn't have any but it didn't matter)

1/4 tspn ground ginger

2 tspns salt

20g chick pea (gram) flour

To make the spice crust, in a small frypan dry roast chilli and whole spices except mustard and nigella seeds over gentle heat until fragrant and slightly coloured. Cool then grind to a fine powder - in a pestle and mortar is the hard way, in an old coffee grinder is the easy way. Stir in mustard and nigella seeds, ground cassia and ginger, salt and chick pea flour.

Coat the fish thoroughly.

Heat the oil in a heavy frying pan and cook the fish for 3 minutes until fish is a paler pink at the base. Turn fish over and cook for another 2 minutes. The fish should be rosy-rare in the middle and crusted gold on the outside.

Mint Chutney

1 cup firmly packed mint leaves

6 spring onions, sliced

3 small chillis, sliced

1 tspn minced ginger

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tspn fish sauce

2 tspns castor sugar

1 tspn garam masala

60ml fresh lime juice

50ml vegetable oil

Blend all the ingredients to a smooth paste, adding the oil slowly. Spoon into a bowl for serving. It will keep refrigerated in a jar for a couple of days.

We had the fish with chutney drizzled, generous servings of cucumber raita and boiled ratte potatoes. It was a seriously good meal - better perhaps than I was expecting. Which makes me think I may cook a little more fish soon.

Black Olive Paste

I have been making this dip for about twenty years - it is simplicity itself. Though it takes no time at all you end up with a really beautiful bowl of dip. A deep oily black flecked with tiny bits of green herbs you essentially can't go wrong with making this. Just remember to err on the side of generosity as you add the herbs.

Perfect with drinks, it's a good one to have up your sleeve as xmas approaches. It's a star at parties.

Black Olive Paste

200g black olives, pitted (you can cheat and buy them ready stoned)

1 clove garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

Mix of green herbs including parsley, thyme, rosemary and basil

Fresh ground black pepper

A little olive oil to loosen the mix - or basil oil if you have some

Put everything into a blender or a bowl and use a stick blender. Whizz the mix, adding some oil to make it amalgamate, until everything is roughly chopped.

That's it. Sooooooooooooooooooo easy

It will live happily in the fridge, covered, for weeks. It is wonderful partnered with celery and peeled carrot batons and also nice with hard cheeses as part of a cheese platter. You can cook with it too - makes a great stuffing for chicken breasts or lamb. Adding a small chilli would give it a sparkly heat.

Spiced Orange Oil

Though it is a simple thing these days to buy flavoured oils it is difficult to find ones that are exceptional, or even particularly interesting. It is also a simple thing to make this spiced orange oil and it doesn't fail on either of the other two counts, being intense and complex with what can only be described as a long finish. I made my first batch a couple of years ago and was smitten. It's easy to make - just bung everything into a pot and warm gently for fifteen or twenty minutes then allow it to steep while it cools. Decant back into the bottles the oil came from and voila! what was pale and inconspicuous is now a rich gold and tasting fabulous. It is a great base for salad dressings and stir fries, marinades and rubs. I use it any time I want to add a little kick to a dish.

The recipe comes from Spice, the quite wonderful book by Christine Manfield. She now makes a range of spiced products selling widely in Australia and available at Harvey Nicks in London but this oil is not amongst them.

Spiced Orange Oil
4 pieces of dried orange peel, broken up into smaller pieces
10 large dried chillies, crumbled
4 fresh small chillies, sliced
Zest of 3 oranges
4 garlic cloves, sliced
1 stalk lemon grass, sliced
1 litre vegetable oil or light olive oil
150 ml sesame oi

Put all the ingredients into a large saucepan and heat gently for 20 minutes without boiling. Allow to cool completely - if you leave it overnight the flavour develops further. Pour through a fine mesh and decant back into the original bottles. Some of the oil is absorbed into the dry ingredients so you end up with about a litre.