Panzanella

I run a fairly thrifty kitchen as I hate waste. If I've had meat on the bone, the bones get turned into stock. I cut the mould off cheese and eat the rest (not that cheese is around often enough for the most part to turn mouldy). And stale bread gets turned into breadcrumbs, which I freeze, or croutons for frisée au lardons. I also use it to make panzanella, a traditional, rustic Italian salad that is the very definition of "waste not, want not" - it doesn't just use up stale bread but overripe vegetables too, turning all the ingredients into a juicy, flavoursome salad. For someone who lives alone, it's an ideal way to clear out the fridge and is surprisingly filling, given its simplicity.

What you need:
Stale bread, enough to make a half-bowl of salad
2-3 very ripe tomatoes
Cucumber, about 10cm, cut into chunks
Handful of black olives
Small handful of roughly chopped flatleaf parsley
Half a ripe red pepper, diced or cut into strips
Olive oil
White wine vinegar or the juice of half a lemon
Salt and pepper
4-5 anchovies (optional)

What to do:
Tear the bread into bite-sized chunks and put in the bottom of a bowl or soup plate. Roughly chop the tomatoes and tip into the bowl, with all the juice, and add the cucumber, pepper, olives and parsley. Drizzle over some olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice, season, toss well and set aside for at least an hour so that the bread has time to soak up the dressing and tomato juices. Add the anchovies just before eating.

Cook's tips:
Good bread is essential - white sliced simply won't cut it. Sourdough, ciabatta, baguette or some other very crusty, dense loaf is what you need here. If the bread is very hard, soak it briefly - about 5 minutes - in a bowl of water, then drain and squeeze it out if you need to.

The tomatoes are the other core ingredient - well-ripened, even to the point of collapse, they provide the juices to soften the bread. Then it's just a case of using up whatever else you have to hand - a little shredded lettuce or some rocket, a few basil leaves, some capers, thinly sliced red onion... You could even throw in some cooked green beans, a few lumps of mozzarella torn off a ball, chunks of leftover chicken or tuna.

I don't bother to mix up a proper dressing, preferring to judge the quantity by eye. If you need to measure up, you need an oil to acidic ratio of 3:1.

Butternut squash and parma ham salad

I love the versatility of butternut squash. It's a fine key ingredient for a soup and makes great mash. Halved and roasted, it's a worthy main dish in its own right if you add a few extra ingredients to star alongside. And it's cheap as well as tasty. so what's not to like?

The downside for solo dwellers is that even the smallest butternut squash will merrily feed two. If you're making soup, you can freeze half, of course. Otherwise you need to be inventive to use it all up. It's best to cook it all in one go then use up the leftovers in something else - curry, a stir-fry, or even make banana bread using the squash instead of the bananas.

I like it in a salad, where the sweetness contrasts well with the other ingredients - the salty ham, sharp tomatoes and crunchy leaves.

What you need: 
1/2 a butternut squash
Mixed salad leaves
2 slices of Parma or other air-dried ham
A handful of cherry tomatoes
A few black olives
Seasoning
Olive oil
White wine vinegar

What to do:  
Deseed and peel the squash, then cut it into bite-sized cubes. Spread on a baking sheet, drizzle with a dribble of oil and toss well, then bake for about 40 minutes at 180C. Leave to cool.

Wash and dry the salad leaves and put them in a bowl. Halve the cherry tomatoes and scatter them and the olives over the leaves. Shred or tear the ham into small pieces and tuck into the salad. Lastly, add the squash cubes. Whisk up a light dressing of olive oil, vinegar and a little black pepper, pour it over the salad and toss everything together.

Cook's tips: 
Don't use too much oil to roast the squash - you only need just enough to stop it sticking to the baking sheet and no more. Cooked, the cubes should be quite firm and dry, almost like oven chips.

If you don't eat meat, replace the ham with slices of salty goat's cheese or feta.

A ripe avocado works really well too as an extra ingredient.

I don't bother adding salt to the dressing - the ham has plenty.

Souvlaki with khoriatiki

I can't claim any ownership of these two classic Greek dishes, but when the weather's hot the simplicity of both makes the perfect meal. Some of the best dinners I've ever enjoyed have involved sitting on a restaurant terrace in Greece somewhere, eating grilled souvlaki with a traditional salad on the side and either some chips or pita bread with hummus. Not forgetting the bottle of chilled retsina.

You can rustle up the pair within minutes but you do need to give the meat at least 30 minutes to marinate, several hours if you have the time. I don't have any "twist" on these, unlike many well-known chefs - they are not dishes to be tinkered with, in my opinion.

What you need:
150-200g lamb fillet
A handful of ripe cherry or baby plum tomatoes
1 green pepper
5-6 cm piece of cucumber
7-8 dried black Greek olives
1 very small red onion
Olive oil
I lemon
A clove of garlic, crushed
Dried oregano
Seasoning
A small slab of feta cheese

What to do: 
First prepare the lamb. Trim off any excess fat and cut into about 12 2cm cubes. Zest the lemon and juice it. In a bowl, whisk up a marinade of a generous tablespoonful of olive oil, half the lemon juice and all the zest, garlic, a pinch of oregano and some freshly ground black pepper. Put the lamb cubes in, mix thoroughly, cover the bowl with clingfilm and chill in the fridge for as long as possible.

Make the salad. Halve the tomatoes (if you use regular tomatoes cut them into wedges). Halve the cucumber lengthwise, halve it again then cut into chunky quarters. Deseed the pepper and remove any white pith, then cut it half vertically and slice it horizontally into thin strips. Peel the onion and cut it into slim wedges. Put all the vegetables in a bowl and add the olives.

Grill the souvlaki. Thread the lamb cubes onto skewers, grind some sea salt over them and cook for about 9-10 minutes, turning them a couple of times.

While the meat is cooking, make the salad dressing. Add a good glug of olive oil to the rest of the lemon juice - about 3/4 oil. Add a pinch of oregano and some black pepper. Put the feta cheese in one piece on top of the salad and pour the dressing over.

Plate up - put the skewers on the plate, pile some salad next to it and add an extra lemon wedge for squeezing over the meat if you like. If you're very hungry, toast a pita bread for on the side - it's handy for mopping up the juices.

Cook's tips: 
Any of the lean lamb cuts can be used - neck, leg or shoulder fillet are all equally tender and grill well. If you can cook outdoors, do so as there may be a lot of smoke from the oil in the marinade. It's not worth firing up a full-on barbecue for one person, but the disposable ones are just the right size for this. If, like me, you don't even have a balcony then a ridged cast-iron grill pan on the hob is the best option - make sure it is scorching hot. You can also use the grill on your cooker, but the results won't be quite as good. 

Skewers - wooden or metal? I prefer metal myself as it conducts a little heat into the inside of the meat. I've never had much luck with wooden skewers - you need to soak them for at least an hour so they don't burn during cooking, which they always do when I use them.

There are only six ingredients ever in a Greek salad - tomatoes, peppers,olives, cucumber, onion and feta. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. There should be no lettuce of any sort, although even in Greece you might occasionally see a few sprigs of flat-leaf parsley - about the only permissible variation.

If you use an English cucumber for the salad, use a teaspoon to scoop out the seeds first so they don't make the salad watery - the small Mediterranean sort have very few seeds and are much firmer, if you can find them (they look like raw gherkins). Crespo do really nice dried Greek olives in a jar - most supermarkets stock them, but if you can't find any get some kalamata olives instead.

The Greeks always use fresh feta, which is softer, creamier and a lot less salty than the packaged sort. Unfortunately, it's really difficult to find here unless you are lucky enough to have a good cheese shop or deli nearby. If you're using packaged feta, as is most likely, make sure it says feta on the wrapper and not "salad cheese", which is inferior. About a quarter of the slab is enough. I rinse it under the cold tap first to get rid of some of the saltiness, then pat it dry carefully with a little kitchen roll.

Dried olives are salty too - I never add salt to the salad dressing for this reason.

Fennel and orange salad with poached salmon

Happy days - it's hot, finally, meaning I can stop having my oven on for an hour every day. It's salad time, which is good because when the temperature goes above 25C outside the heat tends to kill my appetite and I only want the lightest food. Two days in from this late May heatwave and I thought I should stop picking at olives and bowls of hummus for my tea and make proper food.

This is a proper meal, one that requires a plate rather than a lap tray filled with nibbles, substantial but light enough that you won't feel like a boa that swallowed a horse.

What you need: 
Half a small fennel bulb
1 orange
4-5cm cucumber
Olive oil
Seasoning
1 salmon fillet

What to do:
Trim the root off the fennel and then slice it wafer thin until you reach the top stems. If there are any fronds, cut them off and set aside. Zest the orange, cut it in half and juice one half. Put the shredded fennel in a bowl, pour over the orange juice, toss and leave. Cut the peel off the other orange half, making sure you remove all the pith. Halve it and slice thinly. Slice the cucumber thinly.

Poach the salmon in a heavy lidded pan in an inch of water - bring the water to simmering point and as soon as it starts to bubble turn it right down so it's barely moving. Let the fish poach for 5 minutes until it's only just turned pale pink, then switch off the hob and leave the fish to cool slightly in the liquid.

Add the orange slices, zest and cucumber to the fennel, season and pour over 2 dessertspoons of olive oil. If you have any fennel fronds, chop them finely and add them. Mix everything well, then plate up with the salmon and some new potatoes on the side.

Cook's tips: 
The easiest way to shred the fennel and slice the cucumber thinly is with a mandoline. The fennel especially needs to be as thin as possible so it can soften in the orange juice. If you don't have a mandoline, a heavy, very sharp knife is essential.

If you prefer a sharper, less fruity dressing, swap the orange juice for the juice of half a lemon.

Don't overcook the fish. You need only 2-3cm of water in the pan and if you use a shallow sauteuse the water will reach simmering point much faster, while the lid will help the steam circulate in the pan to cook the fish from the top. As soon as the top is as pale as the bottom of the fillet take the pan off the hob. If you have an electric hob, as I do, that means moving the pan and placing it elsewhere. The fish will continue to cook in the water as it cools, leaving you with a perfectly moist portion. In hot weather I prefer to eat my salmon cool rather than hot or chilled. You can poach ahead - it'll keep in the fridge a day or two if covered in clingfilm.

It's still the season for Jersey Royals if you can find them. They are more expensive than the other varieties of new potato but the season is so brief I think it's worth paying the extra to enjoy their nutty flavour. I usually cook more than I need for a meal so I can turn the remainder into a salad.

Warm mackerel and beetroot salad

I love fish, almost all kinds, and I aim to eat it twice a week. Oily fish especially is a very healthy food as it contains important omega oils that are good for the heart. I'm lucky enough to have a fishmonger on my doorstep where I can get super-fresh fish off the boats that morning. The bigger supermarkets have a fish counter but I must admit I'm sometimes a little wary how fresh the fish is.

Smoked fish is a good option if you can't get fresh. As with all fish, you may need to pick out some bones but smoked mackerel has very few. It can be a bit smelly so wrap it well when you store it in the fridge. This recipe is very quick to make, filling and very good for you.

What you need: 
2 small fillets of smoked mackerel
4-5 small potatoes
1 medium cooked beetroot, peeled
9-10 capers
A generous handful of flat-leaf parsley
Oil, white wine vinegar and grain mustard

What to do:
Boil the potatoes in their skins until just tender. While they are cooking, skin the mackerel and break the flesh into large flakes. Cut the beetroot into quarters and then each quarter into 2-3 pieces. Rinse the capers to rid them of their brine and drain them. Roughly chop the parsley.

Whisk up a dressing of olive oil, white wine vinegar and half a teaspoon of grain mustard, then season it with a little freshly ground black pepper. Drain the potatoes when ready, then halve or quarter them into bite-sized pieces. Put all the ingredients into a bowl and pour over the dressing so the potatoes can absorb it while they are still hot. Stir through to mix everything.

Cook's tips:
It's easier to skin the mackerel by hand. Take it out of the fridge at least half an hour before you start cooking - the skin slides off easier at room temperature. I also break it into pieces by hand.

I like to roast my beetroot as it brings out its sweetness but it can take 1.5 to 2 hours (scrub, wrap in foil and bake at 180C, then skin when cool) so I often roast 3-4 or in one batch, keeping most in the fridge after cooking until I'm ready to use them. If you buy precooked beetroot, make sure you don't get the ones preserved in vinegar as they are too sour for this. Most supermarkets sell cooked beets that are preserved only by their vacuum-packing.

If you don't like capers, use sliced gherkins. Either way, rinse before use to get rid of the vinegar.

For the dressing I like to use 2/3 olive oil and 1/3 lemon-infused oil to add a sharp lemon tang. Mackerel is a very oily fish so I tend to use more vinegar in the dressing than I would usually - a proportion of 2/3 oil to 1/3 vinegar, rather than the usual ratio of 3/4 to 1/4. Don't add salt - there's plenty in the fish.