Flammekueche

Flammekueche, street food from Alsace, is probably best described as a Franco-German pizza. You won't find any tomato sauce on it, or olives, peppers or any other traditional pizza topping but it's made in the same way - a very thin dough base topped with ingredients then cooked in a very hot wood-burning oven.

The French region of Alsace has historically changed hands with Germany many times, hence the German-sounding name for this dish. The Germans call it flammkuchen, the French tarte flambée, but the Alsatian name is what it's best known by. A while back I discovered that the discount supermarket Lidl sometimes has flammekueche in its freezer section, usually when it has a French promotion, so it's worth having a look there. If I see them, I snap them up quick!

However, it's ridiculously easy to make at home if you cheat. It's absolutely not worth knocking up a batch of pizza dough for one person but if you can get hold of a good quality, ready-made pizza base you can have food on the table in 15 minutes. All you need after that are the toppings - crème fraiche, onions and bacon.

What you need:
An artisan pizza base
Creme fraiche
A small packet of lardons
A small onion, finely diced
Seasoning

What to do:
Heat the oven to 200-220C - if you have time, get it hot well in advance so the heat really has a chance to build up and stay there.

Put the base on a pizza stone and spread it almost to the edge with the creme fraiche - about 3tbsp should be enough for a 12" base. Scatter over the onion and lardons and grind a little black pepper over. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes.

Cook's tips:
The base needs to be as thin as possible. Anything from a supermarket will be too thick and doughy. The one I used here came from a farmers' market and was handmade. At less than 1mm thick, it was perfect. Check the cooking instructions on the pack but the temperature and time I gave up should be about right. And of course it will depend on the idiosyncrasies of your oven.

If you're using regular bacon, 2-3 slices of streaky cut into 1mm shreds is a good substitute for the lardons.

A classic flammekueche has just the ingredients listed but variations in Alsace include mushrooms or cheese. If you decide to add cheese, don't use cheddar as it goes too gooey - a French-style hard cheese such as Gruyère works best.

Bacon, broad bean and black garlic pasta

I call this 3B pasta and it's really easy to make although it does use three pans. I think it's worth it, though, as the flavours go so well together. It's a store-cupboard dish - I usually have all the ingredients to hand so it's just a case of raiding the fridge and freezer for bacon, broad beans and parmesan, and the larder for pasta and the garlic.

What you need: 
Enough dried pasta spirals for one
A small shallot, chopped very finely
A small pack of lardons or a couple of snipped bacon rashers
A handful of broad beans
A bulb of black garlic
Olive oil
Fresh grated parmesan
A knob of butter

What to do:
Peel the garlic and crush the cloves to a paste in a mortar and pestle. Pour in about 3 tablespoons of olive oil, add a pinch of sea salt and work them together to create a dark flavoured oil. (One of those mini worktop food-processors will do an equally good job of blitzing everything together.)

Put the pasta on to cook and the broad beans. While they are boiling, sauté the the shallot in a knob of butter until it turns translucent, then add the lardons and fry until the fat starts to run off. Don't let them caramelise. Keep warm. Drain the beans (about 5 minutes) and pop them out of their skins then add them to the lardons. Drain the pasta when it's al dente (about 10 minutes) and add to the beans and lardons. Mix well, add a tablespoon of the black garlic oil, toss through and put in a bowl. Finish off with some grated parmesan.

Cook's tips: 
Black garlic is ordinary garlic that has been fermented - it has a deep, sweet flavour a little like licorice and is very soft. As a flavouring, it's not obviously garlicky at all but it will deliver a huge hit of umami to whatever you add it too. It's quite easy to find it online and a single bulb usually costs £1-1.50. Peel the cloves carefully with your fingers as they will be sticky and squishy.

The leftover oil will keep in a jar for weeks - try adding some to a mushroom risotto, dress a lamb chop with it before grilling or rub it over a chicken prior to roasting. On their own the cloves can be used to flavour dips, add to tapenade, or use in Asian stir-fries.

Much as I love broad beans, I find the skins can be tough sometimes. I won't skin the beans if they are very small but the bigger ones definitely benefit from losing their outer coat. If the beans have been boiled for 4-5 minutes, the skins will slip off very easily. If you're not a fan, use peas instead.

Blue tartiflette

A dish of tartiflette is pure indulgence - the blend of sautéed potatoes, onion, bacon and cheese smothered in cream then topped with breadcrumbs and grilled until it's bubbling is perhaps the ultimate in French comfort food. It's also staggeringly high in calories, so it should be a rare treat if you care about your weight - the French usually use butter at the frying stage and full-fat cream at the grilling stage.

Tartiflette originates from the alpine region of Haute Savoie, where the local Reblochon cheese is a key ingredient. However, the dish works well with most soft, creamy cheeses. I had a lump of Blacksticks Blue left over from Christmas so that's what I used here. My version is also lower in fat as I use half-fat crème fraiche and olive oil.

What you need:
1 onion, roughly chopped
3-4 small potatoes, or 1 medium to large, diced
2 slices of bacon, cut into strips, or 1 small pack of lardons
Soft creamy cheese, about 150g, cubed
1 small carton of half-fat crème fraiche
Breadcrumbs

What to do:
Heat some olive oil in a heavy sauteuse and sauté the potatoes on a high heat until they soften and start to colour. Remove carefully, keeping as much of the oil in the pan as you can and place in an oven-proof dish. Sauté the bacon next and add to the potatoes, again leaving the oil in the pan. Finally, turn the heat down and sauté the onions until they are soft and translucent. Add to the potatoes and bacon and mix well. Season with freshly ground black pepper.

Heat the grill. Stir through the cheese and crème fraiche and top with homemade breadcrumbs. Grill until the mixture is bubbling and the breadcrumbs have formed a crispy gratin. Eat with a green salad on the side.

Cook's tips:
I make batches of breadcrumbs every so often, then freeze them in a storage container. They can be used straight from frozen.

In France smoked salmon is sometimes used instead of the bacon.

Quinoa stuffed peppers

With a food delivery due tomorrow, I'm having a leftovers spree as I clear out things from my fridge that need eating. I never bin food unless it's obviously gone off, then it goes into a special food waste bin that the council collects from every week. Things that have use-by dates get sniffed - if they smell ok, they are almost certainly still edible. Not so long ago, I ate a pot of plain yoghurt that was more than a month past its due date - it hadn't been opened and it was fine (it must have been - I'm still alive, with no symptoms of food poisoning, and anyway, yoghurt is fermented so unless it's been exposed to air and left out of the fridge it's unlikely to go off).

My veg bin is almost empty but I found three peppers that were just starting to wrinkle so I decided to stuff them. I also grabbed a half-full packet of lardons, half of which I ate a few days ago (I think they went into an omelette). And lurking in the back of my larder was an unopened box of quinoa. I bought this more than three years ago when I became single again and was stocking a larder from scratch in my new home but never got round to trying it. I usually use cous-cous as a filler grain but the jar is empty right now so it was time to experiment with the quinoa.

Cooking the quinoa ahead of preparing the peppers was interesting, to say the least. The packet instructions said to use 70g per person and boil in twice the volume of water - that is utterly meaningless when you're given two entirely different measurements so I did what I usually do and fetched my mug. This mug is old and white and I never drink from it - I use it only for rough measurements of dried ingredients, mainly rice (a mugful is enough for two generous portions). So I tipped the quinoa into the mug until it was just under half full, gave it a quick rinse in a sieve under the cold tap then put it in the pan and poured a kettle of boiling water on top. All guesswork. I left the grain to boil for 10 minutes as per the box instructions although, disappointingly, it only doubled in volume rather than quadrupled. I left it covered, off the heat, to absorb the rest of the cooking water and it did fluff up nicely. But my house now smells like wet cardboard.

Fortunately, the quinoa doesn't taste of wet cardboard but a bit like barley. Except nuttier.

What you need: 
2-3 peppers
1 small onion, chopped finely
Half a pack of lardons, or cut a couple of slices of bacon into strips
A clove of garlic, thinly sliced
A couple of small tomatoes, chopped
Small handful of roughly chopped parsley
Quinoa
Halloumi
Olive oil
Seasonings, to taste

What to do: 
Prepare enough quinoa to fill the peppers. Heat the oven to 180C. Sauté the onion gently in olive oil until it is transparent. Add the lardons and garlic and fry until cooked. Tip into a bowl with the grain, parsley and chopped raw tomatoes and mix well. Throw in a small handful of diced halloumi then season to taste - I used only black pepper as lardons and halloumi are already salty enough for me. Cut the peppers in half vertically, pull out the seeds and pith, then stuff. Pack the peppers into a small, ovenproof dish and pour about half a centimetre of cold water into the dish. Pop in the oven and bake for about 45 minutes.

Cook's notes: 
This is a great way to use up almost any leftovers - mushrooms, diced carrot or courgette, leeks, even a handful of frozen peas if you're short of veg (don't bother to defrost them). I've used spinach leaves and black olives before, and you can also add pinenuts, pumpkin seeds or capers. If you don't have quinoa, use cous-cous, rice, bulgur wheat or even breadcrumbs from a wholemeal loaf. Instead of halloumi, try feta or even some crumbled stilton or grated cheddar if that's all you have. If you don't have bacon, you can use leftover cooked chicken or pork, or ham or chorizo (replace the meat with nuts if you're vegetarian).

I had two half-peppers left over - that's tomorrow's lunch sorted, then...