Moroccan style roast lamb breast with lemon broad beans

Breast of lamb is a much underrated cut, usually overlooked in favour of shoulder or leg even though it makes a very good roast. It's cheap too (£3-4 average) and because it's small, it's ideal for the lone-dwelling cook. You'll have enough for a main meal and enough leftovers for sandwiches, a pilaf or risotto.

It's easy to make a mess of roast breast - it needs a good blast of heat to start with the a long, slow spell if it's not to end up greasy with a rubbery skin and chewy meat. Follow the rules to turn it into a dazzling dinner - tender and flavoursome.

This cut tends to be stuffed with the usual garlic and rosemary but, as mutton is eaten widely across north Africa, I prefer to give it a Moroccan twist with a good dollop of chermoula. The chillies and lemon help tenderise the flesh, while packing in extra flavour.

The warm side dish of lemon broad beans also originates from Morocco.

What you need: 
1 lamb breast
Chermoula paste
100 g fresh or frozen broad beans (podded weight)
1 preserved lemon
Juice of half a fresh lemon
Half a dozen black olives, stoned and sliced
Olive oil
1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced
1/4 tsp each of cumin and paprika
A little chopped coriander
Salt and pepper

What to do:
Make the chermoula paste. If the meat has already been rolled and tied with butcher's string, cut it off and unroll it. Put the meat skin-side down on a chopping board and spread a very generous heaped tablespoon of chermoula all over it, working the paste into every nook and cranny and ensuring all the flesh is coated. Roll it up tightly again and secure it with butcher's string or a couple of metal skewers. Pop it on a plate, cover it with cling film and leave it in the fridge for at least 4 hours (overnight if you can).

To cook it, heat the oven to 220C and roast it for 25 minutes. The skin should be starting to turn crispy. Turn the oven down to 160C, then roast it for another 2 hours, giving it a good basting every half-hour with its juices. Let it rest for 10-15 minutes after it comes out the oven.

To make the beans, boil them for 2-3 minutes in salted water, drain and cool quickly under cold running water. Leave to drain again then slip off the tough outer skins. Heat the olive oil in a heavy pan and gently fry the spices and garlic. Add the beans, lemon juice and finely chopped preserved lemon. Cook gently for about 10 minutes, adding the olives for the last couple of minutes. Season to taste and garnish with the chopped coriander.

Cook's tips:
Breast of lamb can be very fatty so choose one that has a good ratio of meat to fat. If you're buying from a butcher and he's cutting it off the carcass for you, make sure he takes the ribs out. Don't undercook it - for such a small joint, it's easy to think it won't need too long in the oven. Trust me, it does. A lot of fat will come off during cooking, even off a lean cut. The skin should be wonderfully thin and crispy at the end.

I do advise boiling and skinning the broad beans ahead - I tend to do the skinning on the sofa as it's the sort of mindless task you can get on with while watching TV. You can finish all the rest of the dish while the meat is resting.

Beetroot and spinach tarte tatin

Tarte tatin is a traditional French dessert - an apple pie baked upside down - but it lends itself well to a savoury filling too. I saw a recipe recently by Yotam Ottolenghi for a potato version. That's a bit too carb-laden for me but other root vegetables work nicely, partly because they have an inherent sweetness.

Like the traditional apple tarte, you need to add a little sugar in some form or other to generate a caramel that will help hold all the filling together.

What you need: 
2 medium cooked beetroot
Half a bag of fresh spinach
Butter
2 tsp demerara sugar
Salt, pepper
Half a pack of puff pastry

What to do:
Heat the oven to 220C. First steam the spinach, until it's slightly beyond wilted, set aside to cool then squeeze out as much water as you can. Cut the beetroot into 5mm slices. Melt a generous knob of butter in a medium-sized (20cm) ovenproof frying pan then sprinkle the sugar in. When the sugar has dissolved and the butter has started to sizzle, add the beetroot slices and gently fry them off on both sides (they should fill the pan in one layer). Scatter the spinach across the beetroot and season.

Roll out the pastry into a round just bigger than the pan. Take the pan off the heat and press the pastry over the beetroot and spinach, tucking the edges under. Pop it in the oven and bake for about 30 minutes until the pastry has risen up and is golden.

Take it out, let it cool a little and the, using oven gloves, place a plate bigger than the pan over it and quickly flip it over. The tarte should slip out intact onto the plate.

Cook's tips: 
Those vacuum packs of cooked beetroots that you find in the supermarkets are perfect for this if you don't want to boil or roast then peel the beetroot from scratch, plus they are vinegar-free and cheap. If you don't like beetroot, you can make this with rounds of carrots or long slices of parsnip - scatter a few fresh thyme leaves over them at the frying stage.

If you don't have an ovenproof frying pan, start the cooking in your usual frying pan then transfer the beetroot to a cake tin and finish the prepping in that.

When I buy packs of puff pastry, I usually cut them in half or even quarters and freeze what I'm not using. Half a pack is about right for this (a quarter pack makes a puff pizza pie).

A whole tatin on its own is quite a filling meal. I like a generous slice on the side of a roast or some pulled pork or pulled beef, then I'll finish it for lunch next day.

Pork and coriander rissoles with sticky coconut rice

These rissoles are really easy to make and have a lovely, light flavour from the coriander and lemon. This amount makes 4 to 6 patties, depending how big you make them and how hungry you are.

What you need:
500g pork mince
1 shallot
2-3 cloves of garlic
handful fresh coriander leaves
zest of a lemon
seasoning

For the rice:
50g basmati rice
50ml slightly sweetened coconut water

What to do:
Blitz the shallot, coriander and garlic in a food processor or chop very, very finely. Put into a mixing bowl with the pork mince, lemon zest and seasoning, then work it all together. Shape into burger patties and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. To cook, fry them in a little vegetable oil for about 6 minutes on each side.

To make the rice, put the basmati is a sieve and rinse well under the cold tap until the water runs clear. Put in a pan and add the coconut water. Bring it to the boil, then put a tight lid on it and turn the heat right down until is just simmering. It should take about 12 minutes for all the liquid to be absorbed and for the rice to be plump and sticky.

Cook's tips:
Uncooked rissoles can be frozen - wrap well in cling film, separately, then pop them in a container or freezer bag. They need to be thoroughly defrosted before cooking.

Coconut water is widely available now. Most supermarkets stock it and you can also find it in Asian grocery stores and health food shops. I like the plain version to drink but the slightly sweetened variety, which often has coconut shreds in it, is my preference for the rice. Add a small pinch of sugar to the coconut water if you only have the unsweetened sort. If you can't find coconut water, a mix of about 30ml low-fat coconut milk and 20 ml water works well.

It's a good idea to start the rice before you start frying the rissoles - it needs time to come to the boil and if it's ready before the rissoles, just take it off the heat and leave the lid on to keep it hot until you're ready to plate up. 

10-minute Thai crab soup

As the weather cools, my thoughts start turning to soups. I like this recipe because it's both warming and quick to make, plus it's mostly store-cupboard ingredients, plus the sort of veg you'd normally have to hand - at a pinch you could raid the freezer. This makes one bowlful.

What you need:
1 small tin of crab meat
1 small onion, chopped
1 spring onion, finely sliced
1 red or green pepper, sliced
Thai curry paste
Vegetable oil
150ml vegetable stock
1/3 can coconut milk
Chopped fresh coriander

What to do:
Heat a small amount of oil in a saucepan and fry the onion and pepper over a medium heat until they start to soften. Add a generously heaped teaspoon of the curry paste, cook for a couple of minutes then add the stock and the spring onion. Simmer gently for 5 minutes, add the coconut milk, bring back to a simmer and cook for a couple of minutes more then dish up. Sprinkle a little chopped coriander on the top before eating.

Cook's tips:
This recipe is very flexible. Substitute a handful of fresh or frozen prawns if you don't like crab. The pepper for me is a must, but I sometimes swap the other vegetables and use some beansprouts if I have them to hand, or a few sliced mushrooms, some julienned carrot or French beans. For a more filling soup, add noodles - I like to stir in some glass noodles a minute before plating up.

Green Thai curry paste will add more heat and sour if you prefer it. You can add some depth to the soup with a splash of fish sauce.

Lamb in date and lemon sauce

Poor, neglected blog. It's not that I've not been cooking. I have. I've just not been cooking much of my own food. Instead, I've been cooking other people's.

The problem with liking your food is it likes you back. And it got to the point where my hips were too gourmet-sized for my liking. At the start of August, I began fasting twice a week on the 5:2 "diet". I'm seeing very good results already but it means that 2 days a week I have been calorie-counting rigorously, planning my meals for those days and also being a lot more aware of what I eat on "normal" days.

Cooking on fast days is pretty much routine now for me, nearly 6 weeks in. I've been eating someone else's skinny version of shakshuka for a very late breakfast most times and dipping in and out of several 5:2 cookbooks. I've also discovered some of my favourite food bloggers are doing 5:2 too (see, cooking leads to gourmet-sized hips). Lavender and Lovage and Big Cook Tiny Kitchen have both been tagging their "thin" recipes and I'm enjoying exploring them.

But to the lamb. I've been cooking this on and off for years - the sweet, sticky sauce is offset by the lemon's tartness and the savoury notes of the lamb and the shallots. It's very simple to cook and makes 2 portions.

What you need:
2 lamb fillets (or decent-sized chops)
1 shallot, finely diced
A handful of fresh dates
1 lemon, juiced
A pinch each of ground cumin and ground coriander
Olive oil
A few almond flakes

What to do: 
Stone the dates, chop roughly and put in a pan with the lemon juice, the spices and a splash of water. Cook down over a low heat, crushing the dates with the back of a wooden spoon as they soften, until you are left with a thick, sticky mush. Add a little more water if if you think it needs it. Season well.

While the dates are cooking, pour a generous glug of olive oil into a hot frying pan and brown the meat quickly on both sides. Lift out, put in an ovenproof dish and turn the hob heat down. Sauté the shallots gently until transparent. Tip the shallots over the lamb, scraping all the oil and any crusty bits out of the pan too.

Pour the sauce over the lamb, sprinkle a few flaked almonds on the top and bake in the oven at 180C for 15-20 minutes. Serve with a bulghur salad.

Cook's notes:
Don't use the dried, syrup-laden dates that come in an oblong box with a plastic fork and are usually sold in the run-up to Christmas. They are far too sweet. You can easily find fresh dates in Turkish or Middle Eastern grocers - it's possible to pick up a box for £1-2. Keep an eye out in supermarkets too - as I type this, Asda is selling a box of fresh dates for £2. 

The bulghur salad has clean, sharp flavours that help cut through the richness of the lamb. To make it (serves one), cook a small portion of bulghur according to the packet instructions. Dice 5cm of cucumber, slice a spring onion diagonally and extract the seeds and juice from half a small pomegranate. Mix well with the bulghur and add a little roughly chopped parsley. Dress with a little olive oil, a splash of white wine vinegar and a little salt and pepper.

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.

Couscous royale

When I lived in Paris, every Wednesday night without fail Parisian Boy and I went to a nearby Tunisian restaurant to eat couscous with friends. We were often a large group of 10-12 in total and there would be good-natured arguments over what type of couscous to order. Invariably, because couscous is a communal way to eat, we'd settle on couscous royale because the platter of mixed meats offers something for everyone.

When the food arrived, there would be one huge platter of steamed couscous laced with chickpeas, another huge platter of grilled merguez, lamb chops, skewers of grilled beef and chicken pieces, and perhaps other meats, and a huge tureen of vegetable broth. These would be passed round the table, along with the pots of harissa to add some fire to the mix.

Despite having three distinct components, it's fairly quick and easy to make for one. It takes about 30 minutes in total. The couscous grain itself is the most filling component (it can swell up in the stomach!) so start with a small amount on the plate and top up if you're still hungry.

What you need:
2-3 merguez sausages
1-2 small, boned chicken thighs, skin off
Olive oil
1 onion
1 large carrot
1 courgette
2-3 baby aubergines
1 baby turnip
1 small pepper
1.5 tsp ras el hanout
1/2 litre boiling water
Harissa paste
Portion of couscous, about 75g dry weight

What to do:
First make the broth. Peel and quarter the onion, leaving the root intact. Peel the carrot and slice into thick 2cm rounds. Trim the stalks off the baby aubergines. Trim and quarter the baby turnip. Quarter and deseed the pepper. Cut the courgette into very thick 3-4cm rounds. Heat the oil in a deep pan on a medium hob. Add all the vegetables except the courgette and pepper and fry gently for a few minutes. Don't let the veg brown. Add the ras el hanout, stir through and fry for a minute then pour in the boiling water. Bring it just to the boil then turn down the heat and leave it to simmer for 30 minutes. Add the courgette and pepper halfway through.

Cook the meat. Rub the chicken thighs with a little oil and either grill them on the hob in a cast-iron grill pan or cook them under the grill of your oven. They need about 15 minutes. Turn halfway through. Grill the merguez for 10 minutes in the same pan, turning halfway through. Turn off the heat when cooked and keep warm.

Make the couscous. Boil the kettle again. Tip the dry couscous into a heatproof bowl and pour over just enough boiling water to cover it. Cover the bowl with a plate and leave it for 5 minutes to swell then fluff it up with a fork.

To dish up, pile the couscous into one side of a deep soup plate. Use a slotted spoon to take out the vegetables and pile them on the other side of the plate. Fill a ladle with the broth and stir in about 1/2 tsp of the harissa, then pour it over the veg. Pile the meat on top.

Cook's tips:
Harissa and ras el hanout are widely available in supermarkets. Finding merguez - a fresh, lamb-based, long and skinny sausage flavoured with paprika and harissa - is a little trickier. They sometimes turn up in the meat section in supermarkets, mainly in the summer barbecue season. I always buy them when I spot them, freezing the spare packs for later. You can buy them online too. If you can't get hold of any, grill a couple of small lamb chops instead.

Be flexible with the vegetables. It's traditional to use what's in season, so that could include chunks of squash, broad beans or green beans (haricots verts). If you are very hungry, you can add a spoonful of cooked chickpeas to the couscous grains (use the rest of the tin to make hummus).

If you have leftover couscous, you can use it up as the basis of a tabbouleh salad. I like to whiz any leftover vegetable broth in a blender to make a spicy and filling soup.

Warm chorizo and rocket salad

This substantial salad is ready in the time it takes to boil the potatoes - about 10 minutes - and is perfect for a cooler summer evening when you don't want hot food but still want something more filling than simply a plate of salad leaves.

What you need:
6-7 smallish new or salad potatoes
1/3rd of a loop of cooking chorizo
A handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
A large handful of rocket
Juice of half a small lemon
A dessert spoon of walnut oil
A crushed clove of garlic
Black pepper

What to do:
Put the rocket and cherry tomatoes in a bowl or on a plate. Cut the potatoes in half or quarters, so they are bite-sized, and boil until tender but firm - about 10 minutes. Slice the chorizo into rounds and fry over a medium heat until it just crisps. Lift out with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. While everything's on the hob, make a dressing with the oil, lemon juice, garlic and black pepper. Toss everything together and eat.

Cook's tips:
Don't add all the lemon juice - start with half, taste and add more if needed. You don't want to overpower the flavour of the walnut oil.

If you're very hungry, add a few shavings of parmesan or a quartered hard-boiled egg.

Watercress is a great substitute for the rocket in this dish.

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.

A cracker of a box

When I'm snacking, savoury wins over sweet every time for me - crisps, pretzels, crackers, cheese twists, olives... I have chocolate in my cupboard that has lain untouched for weeks and months. Every month, when #FoodiePenpals comes around and my parcel sender enquires about my likes I always tell them I don't have a very sweet tooth. And this month I received a really exciting box from Jenna, who writes the splendid Sausage Tarts and Marmalade Rolls blog.

This was intriguing - a tiny wheel of waxed cheese, a jar of flour, two sprigs of fresh rosemary and a cookie cutter and what appeared to be a small jar of chutney (it was). There was also a brown paper package tied up with string, which immediately made me want to sing my way through the Sound of Music.

The mini parcel turned out to contain half a dozen heart-shaped crisp cheesy biscuits. And all was revealed when I opened the card, for it contained the recipe! All I had to add was some butter and an egg yolk to the ingredients from the parcel, chop up some of the rosemary then mix it all up into a pastry dough. I managed to get 17 heart-shaped biscuits out of the dough.

Mine turned out a little more overdone than Jenna's but I shall be making these again. You'll have to ask Jenna for the exact recipe, if it's not on her blog, but it's a basic pastry dough with a little paprika and seasoning added to the salt.

The final instructions were to enjoy with some paté and red wine. It would have been rude to refuse, not that I need any encouragement!