A Sunday roast of sorts

The thing about living alone is that you can really miss a Sunday roast. There's something special about this British tradition of roasted meat, potatoes and vegetables, plus gravy and maybe stuffing, and followed with a proper pudding. Ideally accompanied by a bottle of good wine.

If I'm lucky, I'll be invited to a friend's for the roast, or we might meet at a restaurant so someone else gets to cook and wash up. Small as my house is, I try to invite people round once in a while for my own Sunday cooking even if it means eating off our laps on the sofa.

But even when I'm on my own, I still want something "roast-like" on a Sunday. Every few weeks I'll buy a small chicken because I can do lots of interesting things with the leftovers, including making stock from the carcass. If you don't have a joint, however, there are still things you can toss in the oven for an hour that almost replicate the meal. The following dish makes just enough for a generous portion.

What you need: 
3 good quality sausages
1 onion, peeled and cut into wedges
8-10 baby plum tomatoes
2-3 cloves of garlic
A handful of new potatoes (or old ones cut into small chunks)
Olive oil

What to do:
Heat the oven to 210C. Line a roasting tin with some foil then put all the ingredients in and drizzle generously with the olive oil. Turn everything with your hands until well coated. Season with sea salt and black pepper and tuck in a couple of bay leaves. Put in the oven for about an hour. I usually have a look about halfway through and turn things again with a wooden spatula to make sure everything browns evenly. It's ready when the house is full of wafting aromas and everything looks pleasingly sticky and just crispy round the edges.

Cook's tips: 
If you don't have sausages, use a couple of chicken thighs. You can use whatever vegetables you have to hand - peppers cut into quarters, chunks of butternut squash, carrots, parsnips and wedges of fennel are all good options. Don't leave out the potatoes though - it's these that help create the illusion of a Sunday roast.

Depending on the ingredients of the sausage, I might use a flavoured olive oil. I particularly like using a lemon-flavoured olive oil if I use chicken and then I'll also tuck in a couple of lemon quarters and bit more garlic. If you use half a ring of chorizo cut into chunks, you could use chilli oil to boost the spiciness.

French brasserie-style fish chowder

I don't often make soup because I always seem to end up with a giant panful that would feed 8 or 10 people, when there's only me. I keep a couple of tins of lentil soup in the cupboard for those occasions when I'm ill or it's late and I'm tired and I want the easy option.

But there is one soup recipe I always go back to because it's foolproof and it's possible to make it in a quantity that produces two or three generous helpings (you can freeze it if you defrost with care and reheat it slowly).

My inspiration came from a Nigel Slater recipe called "A French(ish) fish broth", which I found in his 1997 book, Real Cooking. The original version is for 4 people and contains leeks, celery, chilli flakes, tomatoes and tarragon - none of these appear in my adaptation. I'm not keen on tomato in fish soup even though it's a standard ingredient of bouillabaisse and I steered away from the chilli because Slater also uses pastis in the broth - I felt it would overpower the delicate aniseed flavours of the pastis and the fennel he includes. As I adore both fennel and pastis (both hangovers from when I lived in Paris), my version sticks with the aniseed tones and incorporates fresh dill too. My added vegetables, apart from the fennel, are carrot and pepper and the end result is a wonderfully aromatic, brightly coloured chowder that I think would not be out of place on a brasserie menu.

What you need: 
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 fat cloves of garlic, crushed
Olive oil
A generous glug of pastis
About a pint/half a litre of vegetable stock (I use Marigold bouillon)
A generous pinch of saffron
I medium carrot, diced
I small red pepper, deseeded and sliced into thin strips
I fennel bulb, thinly sliced
4-5 small new potatoes, cut into 1cm chunks
A pack of fish pie mix (from the supermarket or fishmonger and usually containing a mix of cod, salmon and smoked haddock chunks)
Fresh dill

What to do:
Sauté the onion in a little olive oil on a low heat until it turns translucent, add the crushed garlic, stir through and cook for a couple more minutes then pour in the pastis, let it sizzle briefly, and then the stock and the saffron. Add the carrot, fennel, potato and red pepper, turn up the heat then let it simmer for around 20 minutes with a lid on until the vegetables are tender. Add the fish, bring it back to a simmer and cook for a further 5 minutes until the fish is just starting to flake. Turn off the heat, season to taste and stir in a tablespoon of roughly chopped dill. Then dish up.

Cook's tips:
If you don't have any Pernod, Ricard or other type of pastis, any other aniseed drink such as ouzo or raki will do.

Do add more water to the pan if it looks too dry -you don't want a very watery soup, rather it should be like a stew just held together with the broth.

If your fennel bulb has the fronds on it, keep them back and add to the soup with the dill, or instead of if you can't get fresh dill.

I often add a small bag of frozen cooked jumbo prawns a couple of minutes before I chuck the fish in, or a handful of frozen mixed seafood (usually mussels, squid and prawns). I don't bother to defrost first - they are already cooked and will thaw and heat up quickly in the hot broth.

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...

10-minute tortelloni with smoked salmon and rocket

I don't eat a lot of pasta but I do buy fresh tortelloni and ravioli. They are the only sort worth buying fresh because, frankly, it's not worth making your own stuffed pasta when there's only one of you and fresh tagliatelle etc go from raw to mush very quickly during cooking and it's hard to catch them at the al dente stage. I keep dried lasagne sheets and fusilli in my larder and that's the lot. Stuffed fresh pasta also freezes very well. Sainsbury's is also the only supermarket that does one-person portions of stuffed pasta in both meat and veggie varieties - yay! Whenever I do an online grocery shop, I always order two or three packs.

So, I cheat on the pasta but I always make my own sauces. For tomato-based sauces, I cook a big panful then freeze portions - more on that another time. Tonight, I made a very simple sauce that also used up lots of leftovers in my fridge.

What you need: 
Pack of tortelloni
Half a bag of rocket (or two fistfuls if you bought it loose)
About 70g smoked salmon, cut into strips
Crème fraîche
Black pepper, to taste

What to do:
Put a big pan of water on to boil, add a pinch of sea salt then when the water reaches a vigorous rolling boil, throw in your tortelloni - mine was stuffed with spinach and ricotta. Boil for around 5 minutes, then drain and return to the hot pan. Add a very generous tablespoonful of half-fat crème fraîche, the rocket and the smoked salmon. Grind some black pepper over it then stir everything through gently. The rocket should wilt in the heat to about a half its volume. Tip into a bowl and eat. I had a small salad on the side too, which meant I had three, possibly even four, of my five a day in one meal and barely noticed it.

Fridge staples: 
Crème fraîche: I always keep a pot of this in my fridge as it's so useful. The full-fat variety is calorie-laden but half-fat crème fraîche still gives the flavour and mouth feel. It's a great standby for lots of recipes that require cream of some sort. If you don't want to use crème fraîche then try 0%-fat Greek yoghurt (Total does a really good one), which still has a good, thick, creamy texture.

Rocket: I buy the ready-washed bags but I recommend giving it a quick rinse in a colander anyway. You can use it as a salad, for the green stuff in a sandwich or in hot dishes as an extra veg portion.

Smoked salmon: I love smoked salmon but it can be expensive. It's less of a pricey treat if you look out for 3-for-2 or 3 for £10 offers in the supermarkets - it freezes well so you can chuck the extra packs straight in the freezer and defrost in the fridge when you need (or want) them. A 120g pack of supermarket own brand normally costs around £4 so three for a tenner is good value. Half the pack is enough for this pasta recipe. Use the rest for a lunchtime sandwich or for a Sunday brunch with scrambled eggs (once the pack is opened it will keep for up to a week if you seal it carefully).