Lemon and ginger pork skewers

Lemon and ginger are natural bedfellows, providing a blast of heat and sweet-sour contrast. I used to buy a ready-made marinating paste when I lived in France but on my last couple of trips back I've not been able to find it. I've been experimenting for some time with a homemade version.

It's nice to be back, by the way. I've not been living on takeaways in my absence (well, ok, one or two) - it's just that life got in the way.

What you need:
125g fresh ginger
2-3 very thin-skinned lemons
Vegetable oil
Sea salt
2 slices belly pork

What to do: 
Make the lemon and ginger paste. Peel the ginger and cut it into small chunks. Chop the lemons and discard all the pips. If a lot of juice runs off, set it aside. Put the ginger and lemons into a food processor, with a generous pinch of salt and a good glug of the oil, then blitz into a smooth paste. Thin it with a little lemon juice if very stiff.

Cut the pork into bite-sized chunks, put into a bowl and rub a heaped tablespoon of the paste in. Leave in the fridge to marinate for 2-3 hours minimum, overnight if possible.

Thread onto 2 metal kebab skewers and grill for about 10 minutes, turning frequently. Serve with sweet potato and coriander mash.

Cook's tips: 
The easiest way to peel ginger root is to scrape the skin off with the tip of a teaspoon. It comes off very fast. The lemons need to be very thin-skinned because they have almost no pith and this uses whole lemons. If you can't find thin-skinned ones, you could use preserved lemons, but the paste will be much sharper in taste. Don't be afraid to tinker with the proportions if you want more heat or more lemon. And you may need to add more salt to taste.

This makes about two jam jars' worth of paste. It'll keep in the fridge for up to 2 weeks and it freezes well. You can stir it into tagines and curries, or pretty much anything where you want a hit of heat and sour. It's also very nice with chicken, either grilled fillets or rubbed into slow-cooked thighs (slash the meat to get the paste right in). I've even rubbed it over a whole chicken for roasting.

Use pork fillet if you prefer a leaner cut, just be sure to reduce the grilling time so the meat doesn't overcook and turn dry.

Red lentil and sweet potato soup

I really need colourful food at this time of the year - it cheers me up no end when outside it is grey, cold and spring seems a long way off. A trip to the market brought beetroots (which went into my beetroot risotto), a bundle of bright green chard that I steamed with prawns in coconut milk and spices, and sweet potatoes.

This soup is very filling and warming, a welcome splash of orange in the bowl. Makes two portions.

What you need: 
1 finely chopped large shallot
125g red lentils
1 large sweet potato
2/3 litre vegetable stock
1/2 tsp English mustard powder
1/4 tsp sumac (optional)
Salt, pepper
Harissa (optional)
A little chopped fresh parsley

What to do:
Peel the sweet potato and cut into 2cm cubes. Rinse the lentils under the cold tap in a sieve, to remove any dust. In a large pan, sauté the shallot in a splash of vegetable oil until soft and translucent. Add the lentils to the pan, stir through then pour in the stock and add the sweet potato. Add the spices - the mustard powder and sumac, if using, then a generous pinch of sea salt and a good grinding of black pepper.

Bring the pan to the boil then turn it down to a gentle simmer and let it cook for half an hour. Red lentils can absorb a lot of water so keep an eye on the liquid level and top up with boiling water from the kettle if necessary.

When the lentils are swollen and soft and the sweet potato is completely tender, take the pan off the heat and use a stick blender to blend it. Add more salt to taste and put the pan back on the hob until it starts to bubble again. Dish up and top with the parsley.

Cook's tips: 
Even allowing for the salt in the stock and the early seasoning, I find lentils need a lot of salt to stop the soup tasting bland. Check as you go and add more if you need to. While I normally shy away from adding salt if I can get away with it, this is one dish that really needs it.

You can freeze the second portion - I like to jazz it up with a generous teaspoonful of rose harissa to add a little zing to it as it reheats.

Sweet potato bubble and squeak

Bubble and squeak is the classic way to use up leftover mash and greens, usually from the Sunday lunch. The greens are most likely to be sprouts these days, the one green veg I really hate although I'll eat any other sort of cabbage. If you have one of the two basic ingredients hanging around cooked, it's worth making up the other half to mix up a panful of bubble squeak. I often find I have some braised kale left over as a prepacked bag contains around two portions. I rarely eat mash as a side dish - it seems a lot of work for one portion - but if you have plans to make fish cakes or gnocchi, then double up and make enough for this too. I find about 60% sweet potato and 40% greens is about the right proportion.

The flavour of the sweet potato marries well with the greens, while the added spring onion and garlic will cook during the frying and add extra notes. The colour is also appealing as bubble and squeak made with potato can look a bit grey.

This goes well with almost any kind of meat and makes a meal on its own too. Don't drown it in Bisto as it will overpower the sweet potato.

What you need: 
Sweet potato
1 spring onion
1 small clove of garlic
Seasoning
Leftover greens
Butter

What to do: 
Make the mash - peel the sweet potato, cut into chunks and boil until tender. Drain well. Slice the spring onion very finely and crush the garlic. Mash the sweet potato with a small knob of butter and then add the spring onion and garlic. Season to taste. Mix the mash and greens together in a bowl so the cabbage is well distributed.

Heat some butter in a frying pan over a high flame until it starts to foam but before it starts to turn brown. Tip in the bubble and squeak mixture, flatten it into a cake and turn the heat down a notch. Let it fry gently for about 10 minutes until it has formed a firm crust underneath. Flip and cook the other side for another 10 minutes.

Cook's tips: 
The pan is important. Use a frying pan with a very heavy base and a non-stick surface, for the best results.

Don't have the heat too high or it'll burn before the inside is thoroughly heated.

To flip the bubble and squeak, slide it cooked side down onto a plate, turn the frying pan upside down over the plate then flick your wrist and turn it all back on itself. The cake should now be cooked side up. It's a tricky technique that requires speed and confidence. Do it over the hob so that if it does go wrong, it won't be all over the floor. Use a pair of oven gloves to protect your hands and arms.

Sweet potato is a lot less starchy than potato so it makes a sloppier mash. Drain it very well, pop the pan back over the heat briefly to dry it out and don't add any milk to the mash - a small knob of butter is plenty.

Vegetable tagine

I tweeted in passing the other week that I'd rustled up a vegetable tagine and someone tweeted back to ask for the recipe. Alas, I hadn't taken any photos or made any proper notes of what I was doing.

I'd originally planned to make a vegetable curry - the night before, I'd had a Spanish takeaway and ended up with half a carton of leftovers from a chickpea and spinach dish. I also had a sweet potato that needed to be eaten and a red pepper in the fridge. Then I discovered I had no curry paste in the cupboard, but I remembered I did have a jar of tagine paste. And voila, dinner!

The recipe here is for is my original dish from the other week, the photo is what I knocked up last week, with slightly different vegetables. I must say, the original looked prettier - with lots of contrasting colours - but for me tagine is as much about the flavours as the look and sometimes the tastiest flavour combinations don't necessarily look attractive.

What you need:
1 onion, roughly chopped
A clove of garlic, chopped
1 small sweet potato
2 small carrots
1/2 tin chickpeas
1 red or green pepper, deseeded and sliced
A small bunch of spinach
Tagine paste (Al'fez, from most supermarkets)
A handful of stoned olives
1 preserved lemon (can buy in most supermarkets)
Small handful fresh coriander 

What to do:  

Boil the kettle. Sauté the chopped onion in a glug of olive oil. When it's soft and translucent, add half a small jar of tagine paste and fry for 2 minutes. Add the diced sweet potato, sliced carrot rounds, sliced red pepper and the chick peas. Throw in 3-4 lumps of frozen spinach (or use a small bag of washed fresh). Stir through and add the boiling water to make a sauce). Add a handful of stoned black olives and a preserved lemon, sliced finely. Put a tight lid on and turn down the heat. Simmer until the root vegetables are tender. Finish with a little chopped fresh coriander and eat with flatbreads.

 
Cook's notes:
Tagine is a Moroccan dish and can be made with meat too. It's also the name of the clay pot it's cooked in - a round, flattish dish with a tall, conical lid. The pot goes in the oven at a low temperature to braise slowly and the lid acts as a funnel to keep the steam circulating, ensuring the food won't dry out. A decent sauteuse will do the job well on a hob, or transfer the ingredients to a casserole once before you add the hot water and pop it into a moderate oven for an hour or two.

Olives are pretty much an essential for any kind of tagine and many recipes include preserved lemon, a staple in Moroccan cooking. Dried fruit of all sorts is often added - apricots, figs, dates and prunes all pop up regularly, making a good sweet/savoury contrast with the other ingredients - particularly if you're using meat (lamb and chicken being the most common).

Winter root veg casserole

For me Christmas is almost entirely about the food - it's an opportunity to seriously indulge in rich dishes that you'd probably never eat during the rest of the year, and there's the excess too. I don't know anyone who doesn't overeat at Christmas.

My dinner this year was a small partridge, roasted along with some root vegetables (parsnips and carrots) plus homemade cranberry sauce from a friend. Then there was the cheese, the stollen, the mince-pie ice-cream... All that came after my traditional breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast with smoked salmon and cava. Then onto Boxing Day, which is where eating up the leftovers starts. I'd roasted two partridges so I stripped the spare of its meat and turned it into a casserole (and there was just enough left for lunch the next day). Last night's supper consisted of cheese - a by-now very runny Camembert and the rest of the Blacksticks Blue - plus chutney, gherkins, olives and oatcakes.

And now, with delayed-onset indigestion, I feel the need for simplicity again and to give my overworked stomach a break. After so much meat and fat, I want only vegetables. (I'm also seriously considering the alcohol-free January challenge, which is becoming more popular, but that's another matter.) And with a pile of parsnips, swedes, carrots and sweet potato to finish up, this is healthy, filling, frugal and seasonal. This makes up to two helpings, depending on how much veg you use.


What you need: 
1-2 parsnips
1 carrots
1 medium onion, diced
1 small swede
1 large sweet potato
1 small fennel bulb
Half a litre of vegetable stock
A little plain flour
Half a glass of tawny port
Worcestershire Sauce
A couple of sprigs of thyme
2 bay leaves

What to do:
Peel all the roots and cut into large bite-size chunks. Trim the fennel and cut into slender wedges. Sweat the onion in a little olive oil over a moderate heat and when it's softened and translucent, add a couple of heaped teaspoons of flour. Stir the flour through and cook it a little then add the stock slowly, stirring into the flour to stop any lumps forming. Add the port and a small dash of Worcestershire Sauce, the thyme and the bay leaves. Grind in some black pepper. Add the vegetables, bring the pot to the boil then turn down the heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes until all the veg are tender. Season to taste and eat.

Cook's tips:
No port left over? Use a glass of dry white wine instead, or a little cider or beer.

This casserole is ideal for using up some of the Christmas leftovers, so you could chuck in the last few mushrooms at the back of the fridge or ordinary potatoes. You can chop and change the roots - if you don't like swede, for example, use some celeriac instead, which will add some woody depth to the flavours. If you must have meat, chop up the last couple of slices of streaky bacon and cook them with the onions. You could also throw in leftover goose or ham if you have some.

Leftover duck or goose fat can be used to sweat the onions.

Strict vegetarians should leave out the Worcestershire Sauce as it contains anchovy. Use some soy sauce instead.

One haggis, two suppers

Somehow, a whole month has passed - a month filled with settling into a new home and extreme busyness with work. Naturally, I've been cooking and eating but I've been pretty short of time to blog. So, without further ado, here's the first in a backlog of dinners!

Haggis is rather like Marmite - it's one of those things you tend to either love or hate, with no middle ground. The squeamish are put off by the ingredients, but much as I love haggis, I wouldn't want to eat a sheep's pluck* on its own. Yet when minced with oatmeal, suet and spices it's nothing short of delicious. And if no one told you what the meaty bits were you'd not be able to tell.

A haggis is not just for Burns Night (25 January, if you're wondering). One haggis will feed two people very well indeed, but as I live alone I don't see why I should deprive myself - I just turn it into two dinners instead.

A traditional haggis dinner sees the meaty mix accompanied by "bashed neeps and tatties". Neeps are not actually turnips, but swedes and both these and the spuds are cooked and mashed separately and served alongside the haggis, with a tot of whisky. It can sit very heavy in the stomach after - my take on the mash is both sweeter and lighter, to cut through the dense spiciness of the haggis. The leftovers I turn into a shepherd's pie.

*That's the heart, lungs and liver.

Haggis with three-root mash

What you need: 
1 haggis
1-2 parsnips
2 sweet potatoes
2-3 carrots
crèmefraiche
butter
black pepper

What to do:
First, catch your haggis. Just joking... Cook the haggis according to the instructions - most come in a plastic casing rather than a sheep stomach these days. Boiling, steaming or baking are the usual methods - each takes around 60-90 minutes. Follow the instructions on the packaging or, if you bought it loose from a butcher, ask their advice on cooking times.

Half an hour before you want to eat, peel the roots, chop them into evenly sized chunks and put on the boil with just the tiniest pinch of salt in the cooking water. Simmer until they are so tender they start to break up when you test them with a fork. Drain well, add a knob of butter and mash. Beat in a spoonful of crème fraiche and season with black pepper.

Serve half the mash with half the haggis and set the rest aside. 

Now for the leftovers...

Shepherd's haggis pie

What you need:
Half a cooked haggis
1 onion, finely chopped
I small carrot, finely diced
Gravy granules
Leftover mash
Butter

What to do:
Gently fry the onion in a little onion until it's very soft and translucent, then stir through the carrot, fry for a few minutes more then take it off the heat. While that's cooking make up 200mls (1/4 pint) of gravy granules. Put the leftover haggis in the bottom of a small pie dish and break it up gently with a fork. Add the onions and carrots, mix well then stir in enough gravy to keep it moist but not sloppy. Top with the leftover mash, dot with butter and pop into a hot oven (180-190C) for 30 minutes.

Cook's tips:
If you don't eat meat, haggis comes in vegetarian versions these days and they are so tasty they are hard to tell apart from traditional sort.

You can use any sort of root vegetable for the mash - celeriac works well with haggis, but if you only have potatoes and swedes to hand use them and add a third root to lift the flavour.

The shepherd's pie will keep in the fridge for a couple of days if you don't fancy haggis two days in a row. It also freezes well - assemble the pie in a foil container and reheat in a hot oven (200c) - 30 minutes from chilled, an hour if from frozen.

Grilled lamb steak with sweet potato mash

I absolutely love lamb, it's one of my favourite meats despite not being quite as versatile as others. If I have guests, it's a good excuse to roast a leg studded with garlic and rosemary. Conjuring up something tasty for one is a little trickier. There's the ubiquitous lamb chop - I buy chops, I'll often roast them with them root vegetables, adding the meat only for the last 10 or 15 minutes. The problem is you don't get a lot of meat on a chop, so you may need several for a decent portion.

I pick up leg steaks if I see them on the butcher's slab, especially if they are on special offer. Leg steaks are usually fairly lean and you can cook them quickly on the hob over a high heat, as quickly as a beef steak.

As winter approaches, this dish ranks well as comfort food and for that extra touch I'll make a quick redcurrant jus to accompany.

What you need: 
1 or 2 lamb leg steaks (depending on size and hunger)
2-3 sweet potatoes
Half-fat crème fraiche
Salt and black pepper
Olive oil
Half a dessert spoonful of redcurrant jelly
Half a glass of red wine.

What to do:
Put the lamb steak on a small plate and rub generously with the olive oil. Set aside. Peel and chop the sweet potatoes into 1-inch chunks. Put them on to boil but do not salt the water. They are ready when they break up when you stick in a fork in them - about 20 minutes. Heat a cast iron griddle pan on a high heat. Toss on the steaks - they need 4-5 minutes each side, depending on size and how pink you like your lamb. Season with salt and a little pepper. If you are very hungry, you could also put a second vegetable on now - my fallback is frozen peas.

Meanwhile dissolve the redcurrant jelly in a small pan with the red wine and heat gently until it's only just simmering. If you have any fresh rosemary to hand you can add a small sprig. When the sweet potatoes are soft enough, drain them well, crush them with a potato masher or a wooden spoon and beat in a generous dessert spoonful of creme fraiche. Season well with black pepper.

Put the meat and mash on a plate and pour the redcurrant jus over the steak.

Cook's tips:
Lamb can be quite fatty and it's not healthy fat but the artery-hardening variety. Leg steaks are usually quite lean but do trim off any excess fat.

Redcurrant jelly tends to appear in the shops only in the run-up to Christmas, but if you don't have any use cranberry preserve instead, which is now available all year round. Redcurrant works particularly well with lamb, but any red berry sauce is a good partner. The wine helps to take the edge off the sweetness of the jelly.

With ordinary potato mash, I like to add plenty of butter and even a splash of cream to enrich it, but you don't need these with sweet potatoes. They are indeed sweet so the crème fraiche adds a welcome touch of acidity and the pepper adds a spicy note.