Recipes

The season of pumpkins coincides very happily with the apple harvest, and they go fabulously well together – especially with the addition of a teaspoon of fiery zhoug and a dollop of Greek yogurt.

This is a slightly off-centre take on the Sicilian Caponata. However, as the only obligatory ingredient in the dish is aubergines, and it is a notoriously anarchic dish that adds whatever it pleases – courgette… onion… celery – I feel quite at liberty to stick in a few nectarines. Especially as they make it so delicious.

This combination is not as mad as it sounds – I often put fruit and honey or something else sweet in a salad, and mincemeat is not so very different, and it goes fabulously well with the turkey. One of the things I love about Christmas is all the things I can do with the leftovers – I can chuck the rulebook in the compost bin and experiment with whatever’s hanging around in the fridge.

This is my absolute favourite way of cooking red cabbage: the cranberry sauce – a much underused substance – as well as giving sweetness, has a tiny hint of bitterness, and never mind Christmas, I eat it – hot or cold – with everything: salmon, lentils, beef, game, chicken, beans, chickpeas … and on its own.

Pickles are a fantastic thing for downsizing – masses of flavour packed into low-calorie-dense veg – and delicious as part of a meze or in sabich.

This is such a fantastic combination – and so quick and easy. Perfect as a starter or part of a meze – or it goes very well with roast lamb.

I love this salad – the combination of the chilli with the mango really gets me hooked – and it's low-calorie-dense as it gets because it has no dressing – the juice from the mango and the lemon make their own.

It's a rare day that I don't eat lentils – they make me feel so amazingly well – so I have an inexhaustible supply of lentil salads. I particularly like this one, especially in the autumn.

This is a fantastically easy downsizing alternative to quiche – perfect for brunch or lunch. I love leeks, especially when they are cooked down till they are dense and caramelised.

I love the combination of orange and fennel, and if you roast the fennel so it’s golden and caramelised on the outside and squidgily soft on the inside, and add some bitter black olives, it is really delicious.

For a very simple, 10-minute breakfast or brunch, this is hard to beat. You can add other herbs and spices – thyme is very good – but at breakfast, I want to eat quickly, not fiddle around. I have the legendary Elizabeth David to thank for introducing me to the idea of lightening-quick tomato sauces.

Radicchio makes for excellent salads – gorgeous colour, robust enough that it doesn’t collapse into a wimpy heap if you add heavier ingredients, and just enough bitterness to be interesting, without making your eyes water.