REVIEW: Grey's Fine Foods Spanish gourmet hamper

A hamper is generally a welcome gift in my home, but Christmas ones less so - when you live alone, baskets full of Christmas pudding, family-sized tins of chocolate biscuits and the like seem like a wasted opportunity as well as useless (I hate Christmas pudding and it would take me half a year to get through a tin of biscuits).

Hampers like this, though? Now you're talking. This fabulous package came from Grey's Fine Foods, which imports a huge range of artisan Spanish produce, and is perfect for one person. I love Spanish food - I know my way reasonably round both standard and regional menus, sometimes cook Spanish dishes and am generally influenced by the cuisine. So a truckload of gourmet imported Spanish products is the sort of thing to put a smile on my face.

I tore into the charcuterie for a quick lunch. The Ibérico ham, produced from the renowned Iberian black pig, is a wonderfully dark red colour with a rich, nutty depth of flavour from their acorn and grassland diet. There was a good layer of creamy fat too, which for me is essential on an air-dried ham. The black pig salchiçon has a lighter flavour, with tones of fennel and something fruity that I couldn't quite place. I had these simply on a plate, with a handful of salted Spanish almonds (not in the hamper but lurking in my larder) and some of the roasted peppers straight from the jar. They had a decent, firm texture and a sweet intensity. The only thing missing was a glass of chilled fino sherry. 

I had a quick nibble of the chocolate, which was made with olive oil and sea salt - I could taste both of these, which cut nicely through the sweetness of the chocolate. The turrón I'm saving for when I crave a proper sugar hit - sticky Spanish nougat is always a winner for me because I love the chewy, nutty mix of honey, toasted almonds and egg white. It's a generous pack too, which will last me months. Alarmingly, when I took it out of the box the oils had leached out into the plastic vacuum wrapper so it will need to be opened carefully.

Of the store-cupboard ingredients, I dipped a little bread in the olive oil with my lunch. It was fruity with a distinctly peppery kick, definitely one for drizzling and dipping rather than cooking with. I love the pretty ceramic bottle - I'll be looking to reuse it in my kitchen for something. I was also blown away by the cute packaging of the piquant pimentón, which had a fiery punch beneath its dark smokiness. I'll be using that in my paella.

I'm not a big fan of tinned tuna, as most in the UK are cheap and nasty and taste very unpleasant - my larder tends to have sardines and mackerel instead. This can of bonito tuna (in olive oil, which really marks it out as a cut above) will make a great fallback staple though for a quick tuna and bean salad. I love gazpacho, the chilled tomato and cucumber soup - so easy to make yet never as good as the real thing. This bottle is also a great store-cupboard standby although I'll probably wait until the weather's warmer to eat it.

All in all, this is excellent value. All the products are artisanal and their total worth is slightly more than the cost of the hamper. The only item I missed was a wedge of manchego cheese, which would have rounded it out perfectly. Almost everything was in amounts ideal for one person: the charcuterie packs are 100g, for example. The packaging was beautiful and even the wooden crate - once I'd turfed Nelson out of what he thought was his new bed - was quickly repurposed as a storage box for my home office. 

Now the details... The Grey's Hamper costs £50 from Grey’s Fine Foods, one of a range starting from £35. Delivery is usually 3-7 days but they offer a one-day service too if you plan to order for Christmas (either for yourself - and why not? - or as a present).

Disclaimer: With thanks to Grey’s Fine Foods and Coffeepot Digital. I received the hamper free of charge, for review purposes. All views and opinions are my own and I was not paid nor obliged to write a positive review.

Wild boar ragout

I've started going to the occasional Manchester Meat Club evening over the last few months - basically, it's an evening of eating, drinking and butchery, focusing on a different beast each time and with a proper butcher teaching us about different cuts and how to cook them. I'm solidly in favour of this, as I believe if you're going to eat meat you shouldn't just pick up a slab of it on a cling-filmed polystyrene tray at the supermarket. You should understand it, respect it and be prepared to pay a bit more and eat a bit less so you can get really good quality meat.

Back in the spring I went to a Meat Club night on ground game, came home with a whole hare and made hare au vin with it. Not long after, I went to their class on wild boar. Boar is something I've eaten a lot in restaurants, particularly abroad, but it's hard to find here unless you have a good butcher on your doorstep or the sort of artisan deli or farmers' market where you can pick up pate or boar salami. The boar on the night was butchered in front of us, as well as compared to a pig that was brought in so we could look at size differences etc, then cooked for us in different ways.

At the end of the night, I managed to scrounge a tiny bit of the scrag end from the butcher as he finished taking the meat off the carcass. The scrag is the neck and can sometimes be tough so be flexible with cooking times. This recipe here is something I've made a few times with one of the cheaper cuts of pork but lends itself well to its gamier cousin.

What you need:
150g stewing cut of wild boar (I used scrag)
1 onion, finely chopped
Olive oil
1 red pepper, roughly diced
1/2 fennel bulb, roughly diced
Vermouth
Chicken stock
Seasoning
1 tsp fennel seeds
Pinch of dried thyme
1 bayleaf

What to do:
Trim any fat off the meat and cut it into cubes. Sweat the onion in some olive oil then brown the meat. Deglaze the pan with a very generous glug of vermouth, then add the red pepper and fennel. Add the herbs and seasoning, then top up the liquid with about 150ml of chicken stock. Simmer very gently for 2 hours on the hob.

To serve, cut the other half of the fennel bulb into wedges and griddle until tender.

Cook's tips:
If you can't get hold of boar meat, use pork - the neck, chump,and the hand and spring are all cheap, tougher cuts that lend themselves well to a nice slow braise.

Chicken and banana curry

I have a very lazy relationship with curry. I either go out to eat it, or I order in a takeaway - both on the basis that it'll be far superior to my own efforts. I have a jar of balti paste in the cupboard for when I do decide to rustle up a curry of my own, particularly if I have ripe tomatoes that need eating. And once in a while I make this.

Years ago my parents used to make a chicken and banana curry from a recipe book, but it wasn't particularly tasty as it used a standard curry powder blend. Despite my laziness, I did learn a bit about curry spices some years back and I'm confident that this is an upmarket recreation of that dish from my teens. If you can be bothered it's well worth experimenting - whole spices vastly improve a curry, but South Asians already know that!

I like the combination of chicken and banana as I'm not keen on very hot curries - this produces something milder, slightly sweet and more aromatic. It's not quick - you need about an hour from start to finish, but for soothing, warming comfort food it's hard to beat. Makes 2 portions, on the grounds that curry often tastes better the day after.

What you need: 
Vegetable oil
2 skinless chicken thighs
An inch of cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp mustard seeds
6 cardamon pods, lightly crushed
6 crushed black peppercorns
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
an inch of fresh ginger, grated
1 small onion, diced
1/2 pint chicken stock
1 small green pepper, sliced
2 medium ripe bananas, thickly sliced
A handful of roughly chopped fresh coriander

What to do: 
Prep all the spices first and chop the vegetables. Heat a splash of vegetable oil in a sauteuse on a medium hob and brown the chicken thighs. Set aside, add a little more oil if the pan looks dry then fry the whole spices until they release their aromas.

Add the ginger, garlic and onion and fry until the onion starts to soften - about 5 minutes. Pour the chicken stock in, then add the chicken thighs, banana and green pepper. Stir well and turn up the heat until it starts to bubble gently. Then turn the heat back down, put a lid on, and leave to simmer gently for about 45 minutes.

Plate up - sprinkle the chopped coriander over the curry and add a portion of basmati rice on the side.

Cook's tips:
This works just as well with chicken fillet - if you're in a hurry, it'll cook in about 30 minutes.

Don't use bananas that are very ripe else they will break down completely and you want to have some texture from the fruit even while it's melted into the sauce. And don't swap the green pepper for red or yellow - it will make the curry too sweet. If you prefer more heat, substitute a fresh green chilli, finely chopped, for the mustard seeds.

You can turn this into a korma by using half stock and half coconut milk, plus a tablespoon of ground almonds and a few sultanas.

Shakshuka

This dish of eggs baked in tomato sauce is found all over the Middle East and north Africa, where it's usually eaten for breakfast. I first tried it back in the mid-80s when I was thumbing my way round Israel and had pitched up in the small northern town of Safed. I stopped at a café to get a beer and got chatting to an elderly man called Jack, who seemed to know absolutely everyone - he kept telling me, "this is Jack's town". He very kindly invited me to his home for a late lunch, which consisted of shakshuka and more beer, followed by coffee.

It took me a while to track down a recipe or two when I finally got home, in those pre-internet days - there are so many variations you could eat a different version every week for a year at least. The basic ingredients are eggs and tomatoes, obviously, and usually peppers - the variation is in the added spices and other flavourings. It's simplicity itself and if you don't fancy it for breakfast, it makes a great brunch, lunch or supper. This is my take on it.

What you need:
1/2tsp fennel seeds
Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 peppers (red/green) sliced very thinly
2 large ripe tomatoes, chopped
1/2 preserved lemon (optional)
1 small bay leaf
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp muscovado sugar
2-3 sprigs of thyme, just the leaves
Pinch of saffron (optional)
1 egg
Seasoning
A little paprika

What to do:
Dry fry the fennel seeds in a heavy sauteuse over a medium heat until they start to toast and release their aroma then pour in a generous splash of oil and fry the onion until it starts to soften and turn translucent. Add all the other ingredients except for the egg, stir it through, put a lid on and let it cook down gently for about 30 minutes.

Put the tomato sauce in a small ovenproof dish. Break the egg into a small dish, make a well in the tomatoes and gently slide in the egg. Sprinkle with the paprika and bake in a hot oven (180-190C) for about 20 minutes until the egg is fully set.

Cook's tips: 
I like my eggs well cooked, so my shakshuka always goes in the oven but it's just as usual to cook the egg on the hob. Keep the mix in the pan, make the well as before and slide in the egg. Put the lid back on the pan to help the top cook - this method will produce a runnier yolk.

A lot of versions pack in the heat, so don't be afraid to add red chillies to the tomatoes if you like it spicy.

This is also a great way to use up leftover peperonata. Just reheat on the hob and add the egg.

Steamed lime haddock with mango and pepper salsa

This chilly wet summer has sent me scurrying back to favourite dishes I'd never normally cook between May and September. On the rare nice days we've had, though, I've been buying the best seasonal veg at my local market and seeing what's on the slab at the fishmongers. In warm weather I don't want heavy food that lies like a stone in my stomach fish is my first choice for something light and healthy as well as versatile. Whatever fish I buy, I usually steam it or bake it en papillote, as it traps all the flavours and juices and you don't need to add oil.

What you need: 
For the fish
Haddock fillet
1 lime
2 spring onions
1 small stalk of fresh lemongrass
a few slivers of sliced fresh ginger

For the salsa
1/2 a ripe mango
1/2 a red pepper, deseeded
2 spring onions
A few sprigs of fresh coriander

What to do:
Put the fish on a large sheet of tin foil and pull the edges up slightly to start making a pocket. Zest the lime and scatter it over the fish. Shred the spring onions lengthways, slice the lemongrass finely and scatter these and the ginger slices over the fish. Squeeze the juice from the lime and drizzle half of it over the fish. Close the foil parcel tightly.

Bring a pan of water to the boil and then pop a steamer over the top and steam the fish for 10-12 minutes, depending on the size and thickness of the fish.

Make the salsa. Cut the mango into cubes, dice the red pepper and slice the spring onions on the diagonal. Chop the coriander finely and add, then pour over the rest of the lime juice. Season to taste then mix well.

Plate up, keeping the spring onions and ginger with the fish (if, like me, you plan to eat them) and pile the salsa alongside.

Cook's tips: 
En papillote means "in paper", but tin foil works just as well as baking parchment. 

You don't need a special steamer pan to steam food. One of those Chinese bamboo lidded steamer baskets works just as well in a pan as in a wok. Or you can improvise, as I do - I use a metal sieve over the top of the pan, which also makes lifting the food out very easy.

Preparing a mango can be a bit fiddly but I've always found the easiest way is to quarter it with a sharp knife then insert the knife blade inside to cut round the stone and ease each quarter off it. Once the stone's out, cut the flesh lengthways and across then carefully cut the cubes off the skin.

Aubergine Howard

Many years ago I cooked professionally at a long-gone restaurant in Leeds - the Wharfe Street Vegetarian Café. Before it closed, the owners published a cookbook of the same name, full of many of the recipes they'd served up over the years. I lost my copy only a couple of years later after lending it to someone and, inevitably, it went out of print. I spent a couple of decades looking for a replacement but a friend recently tracked a copy down for me, so I've had a delightful trip down memory lane.

This original recipe, Aubergine Jamaica, was an exotic sort of moussaka, with the sliced aubergines layered with potatoes, celery and mushrooms and the spicy coconut sauce inspired by both Caribbean and Sri Lankan food. I've stripped it right back, ousting the potatoes and the rest and substituting peppers. I've tinkered quite a lot with the sauce too, changing most of the spices. I've renamed this incarnation for my book-hunting friend.

What you need:
About 250g baby aubergines
A large red pepper
Half a block creamed coconut (about 100g)
Tahini
1 small red chilli, finely chopped, or 2tsp "lazy" chillies from a jar
1/2 inch grated fresh ginger root
1 heaped tsp allspice
1/4tsp paprika
1/4tsp celery salt
Flaked almonds

What to do: 
Trim the stalks off the aubergines then halve, or even quarter them depending on their size. Put them in a small casserole dish. Deseed the pepper and dice it. Scatter over the aubergines.

Make the sauce. Put the creamed coconut in a pan with 1/2 pint (300ml) boiling water, a heaped tablespoon of tahini and all the spices. Warm it over a low hob, stirring while everything blends together and creamed coconut has fully melted. Don't let it boil. Taste to check the seasoning and adjust the spices and salt to suit. Pour the sauce over the aubergines, cover it with a lid and bake for 45 minutes at 200C. Check it during cooking to ensure it's not drying out - top it up with a little boiling water if you need to.

Take the lid off and scatter over some flaked almonds then pop back in the oven for 15 minutes more.

Cook's tips: 
Don't be alarmed at the amount of aubergines - they will shrink right down during cooking.

Do add more heat with chilli and ginger if you like things hotter - the coconut and tahini can absorb quite a lot of spices before their flavours become masked. Check for salt too - aubergines love salt and this is one dish where I'd add more than I usually do. Just add a pinch at a time and taste in between.

For a less calorific sauce, use half a can of low-fat coconut milk instead of creamed coconut.

If you want carbs alongside, rice is the best partner.

Peperonata

Nearly the end of May and the weather is still so erratic that my cooking is veering between winter comfort food one day and lighter summer dishes the next. Peperonata falls into both camps.

This Italian dish is usually served as an antipasto, but it works just as well as main dish in itself or as an accompaniment to some grilled fish or meat of some sort. The classic version usually has tomatoes and garlic in it and some recipes have a list of ingredients as long as your arm. My preference is to keep it simple - no tomatoes, no garlic, just letting the sweetness of the peppers speak for themselves.

This takes just 5 minutes to prepare and makes enough for one very generous portion (depending on the size of the peppers) or two smaller ones. Like a lot of slow-cooked dishes, this tastes just as good if not better when reheated the next day.

What you need:
3 peppers
1 onion
Olive oil
Seasoning

What to do: 
Halve the peeled onion and slice it thinly. Pour a very generous glug of olive oil into a heavy sauteuse and sauté the onion over a medium heat until it turns translucent. While the onion is cooking, deseed the peppers, remove any white pith inside, halve them vertically and slice thinly.

Add the peppers to the pan and stir them through thoroughly so they are completely coated in oil. Leave them to cook down over a low heat for about an hour. Stir them once in a while so they cook evenly and put a lid on halfway through to generate some juices. Season to taste at the end.

Cook's tips: 
Like ratatouille, peperonata should be lush and unctuous, never watery.  Plenty of oil and a low heat (gas/electric 2 or 3 depending on your hob) are essential, as is time. Cook it too quickly on a higher heat and the water will leach out, the peppers will break down too fast and you'll end up with a soggy mess.

The peppers need to be very ripe to maximise their natural sweetness, but they should still have smooth, wrinkle-free skins. The Italians use red peppers throughout but I like to mix it up with different colours - those trio packs of red, green and yellow or orange peppers produce lovely colours as well different levels of sweetness.

You can add a small pinch of sugar to boost the sweetness if you wish. A bayleaf tucked in will add a little savoury depth, as will a small sprig of lemon thyme. You could also add a few torn fresh basil leaves at the end. But, really, this is not a dish for mucking around with - simple is best. 

Ratatouille

For such a simple dish, there's been an awful lot of hoohah written about how to make ratatouille - whole columns on which order to add the ingredients, or whether to cook them separately then bring them together, or if it's acceptable to use an Italian olive oil in this quintessentially French dish...

Personally, I don't think it matters much. I prefer to cook everything together because I think the ingredients should get to know each other in the pan rather than on the plate. And besides, life's too short to have five pans to wash up instead of one. I use the olive oil to hand - as long as it's good quality I don't care if it was pressed in Outer Mongolia.

What does matter to me are having good quality fresh ingredients, nothing wrinkly or tired-looking. The tomatoes matter most of all - a good tomato needs sunshine to have flavour, which means it needs to come from a hot country where it was grown outside in soil. I never, ever buy Dutch or Belgian tomatoes as they are grown in vast sheds under artificial lighting and rooted in water. They don't see earth or fresh air and they taste of nothing. I buy British in season and the rest of the year I only buy Spanish or Moroccan or whatever, as long as it's had sun.

On the basis that it is almost impossible to make one portion of ratatouille, this makes two generous ones, or even three if you dish it up alongside meat and carbs. And besides, ratatouille is one of those dishes that often tastes better next day...

What you need:
1 onion
4-6 medium size tomatoes
2 small courgettes
1 small aubergine, or 5-6 baby ones
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
A handful button mushrooms (optional)
2-3 cloves of garlic
Herbes de Provence or a bouquet garni
A bay leaf
Olive oil

What to do:
Heat a very generous amount of olive oil in a heavy pan on a moderate heat. Prepare the veg - cut the onion into wedges, the peppers into wide strips, the tomatoes into quarters, the courgettes into thick rounds and the aubergine into chunks (you can leave baby ones whole, or halve them). Peel and crush the garlic.

Sauté the onion and garlic until they are soft and the onion turns translucent. Add the tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and a pinch of the herbs, stir through, turn the heat down a notch and let everything stew gently for 20 minutes. Add the courgettes to the pan, stir through again and let stew for another 10-15 minutes. If you're including mushrooms, this is the time to add them. Season to taste and dish up. 

Cook's tips:
Ratatouille should not only look glossy and luscious, it should be unctuous too. If it's watery, it's not right. That's why it's important to turn the heat down and cook it slowly - if the hob's too hot the vegetables will boil and leach water. They will also break up too much. Don't put a lid on - let the water evaporate during cooking. This is another reason not to use hydroponic tomatoes as their water content is ridiculously high. It's also why I add the courgettes a bit later as they can turn soggy very quickly once they are cooked.

More on tomatoes - a punnet of cherry tomatoes or the baby plum type also work well in ratatouille.

Mushrooms have no place in a classic ratatouille but are a useful and acceptable extra to pad it out, especially if you're vegetarian and won't be having any meat on the side.

Grilled meats make a good accompaniment for carnivores - a lamb chop or two, sausages of some sort, or even a steak. Grilled or roasted fish is good too.

If you want carbs, rice, grains such as cous-cous, bulgur or quinoa, or a noodly pasta such as tagliatelle are all a good match. Or mop up the juices with some crusty bread.

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).

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...