A dish like your favourite cardigan

Pyracantha berries – nearly ready for the birds

We studied a number of the poems of Keats during my schooling, but with the exception of this first stanza of Ode to Autumn, from 1819, they made me gurn at the mawkishness of them.

This, on the other hand, had something sensual about it; something of the voluptuousness of the season.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mos’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

The third of the stanzas in that Keats ode deals with the dying of the year.

Looking back on it, I can see why I didn’t appreciate that bit of the work as much: for a teenager growing up in a family that was far too absorbed with death and guilt and sin, it was almost impossible to comprehend death as an integral part of life, and to see that the cycle of life and death and life again was what Keats was noting.

Actually, the whole poem is a beautifully evocative description of England at this time of year. Yes – there are even hints of such sights and sounds to be found and experienced in The Smoke.

The weather changed two days ago, with temperatures falling by such noticeable degrees that a scarf was suddenly in order for the mornings.

With the nights having already drawn in, we’ve arrived at the days when the cardi and slippers call.

The cardigan of the food world – the ultimate comfort food – is soup. And this weekend offered the perfect opportunity to get busy creating warming bowls of comfort.

Chopped onions and garlic, softening

Given that La Bouche has Roscoff onions in, it was an obvious leap to opt for the first French onion soup of the season.

You can certainly use other onions (depending on what you can find), but the point is to make sure hat you’re decent. It’s the point of the dish, after all, so you want some quality flavour.

But perhaps most vital of all, this soup needs time: it’s not the business of 20 minutes.

For two people, I took four of the Roscoff onions, peeled and chopped them.

Now Raymond Blanc suggests slicing, but since The Other Half grouches and says he prefers chopped, this is one occasion on which I will ignore the great chef.

I use a Le Creuset shallow casserole dish to cook this – it allows a far better ratio of cooking surface to onion than any other pan I possess and, of course, its heat-retaining qualities work wonders with such a dish.

So, chop your onions, plus some garlic (four cloves for the two of us).

Over a gentle heat, melt a generous amount of butter – and I do mean generous: 50g won’t go amiss.

When the last of the solids have disappeared into a pool of yellow, pop in your onion and garlic and spread it evenly over the base of the pan. And then let everything start to do its magic.

Slowly does it, remember: this is a marathon of love, not a sprint of convenience.

More colours of autumn

It can take a long time to start browning, but don’t be tempted to turn up the temperature beyond what allows the liquid butter to just – and only just! – produce the odd bubble. Quite apart from anything else, you don’t want to burn either the butter or the garlic.

Don’t be tempted to stir it too much either or it won’t brown.

Now if you really want, you can try a bit of a cheat here, although I’m not convinced of its efficacy. A sprinkle of sugar is claimed by some to speed up the caramelisation process. As I said: I’m unconvinced – and it adds a sort of sweetness to the dish that you don’t want. Given the time it needs, this will sweeten up gorgeously all on its own.

Fast forward and the onion has turned golden. Sprinkle a little plain flour over it and stir in gently. Let it cook through for a minute or so, and then start adding some white wine.

To be honest, I don’t have developed enough taste buds to be able to really notice what I use in such a situation, but I stuck with M Blanc’s golden rule and spent less than a fiver on a bottle, the rest of which was destined for further culinary deployment.

Once you’ve got the got the pan deglazed, add a little stock too (chicken or vegetable; fresh or a cube*), then a sprig of thyme and a couple of bay leaves, cover and leave to simmer oh so gently for a good 40 minutes.

And that’s pretty much that. Check the seasoning – if you used a stock cube, you’re unlikely to need to add any further salt, but a grind or three of pepper will hardly go amiss.

French onion soup with gruyere croutons

To serve in the traditional way, you need a ‘crouton’ or two – no, not little cubes, but, to be strictly accurate, slices of toasted baguette.

Dish up the soup, place a crouton on top of each bowl and scatter coarsely grated gruyere cheese on top, before popping it briefly under the grill so that the cheese starts melting all the way off the bread and into the soup.

It goes without saying that there’s nothing wrong with using something like Cheddar if you can’t get gruyere, but the latter does have a nutty taste that matches superbly with the onion in this dish.

Of course, if – like The Other Half – you don’t like cheese, you do without this added treat or have a crouton spread with mustard.

Now sit and wrap yourself in the warm comfort of this wonderful classic.

It’s worth every moment.

* If you use stock cubes, I recommend Kallo’s Just Bouillon. Unlike most other stock cubes, it doesn’t use palm oil in the ingredients, and the production of this oil is doing grave damage to the habitat of orangutans, so it's a good one to avoid.

Here comes a spice girl

Yesterday was another of the gloomy but mild days that seem to have characterised this autumn so far, but it was perfect for restocking on stock – and a little experimentation.

The remains of Sunday’s roast chicken needed using up.

Since I'd only travelled back from a weekend’s work in Brighton on Sunday afternoon, The Other Half had not only done the weekend's shopping, but was looking after dinner.

Now, while he fully appreciates the value of homemade stock, he isn't over-enthused by the smell of it being cooked, so we'd deliberately arranged that Monday would be my stock making day, with him out of the flat and the kitchen all to myself (and the cats, who were determined to help).

First, of course, the rest of the meat needed stripping from the bones. But once that was done, all that remained went into my biggest pot, together with the innards, the rest of a bottle of white wine that was hanging around aimlessly, carrot, celery, onion, peppercorns, bay and thyme leaves from the overcast garden, and water almost up to the top of the pot.

And it sat there, gently simmering away, for around an hour – losing little in volume and gaining much in the way of flavour.

Drained and decanted into jars to cool, it was time for a sort of improvised ploughman’s, with Cheddar, Shropshire Blue, lunch tongue, some pickle and a slice of the decent bread that The Other Half had found at the market.

Which does bring me to a little observation.

Having spent the previous days curled up at home with a cold, it seemed to all but disappear once I hit the seaside – and then reboot within an hour of so of chugging into London.

Is the air in this town really so bad?

Anyhow, back to that chicken.

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself experimenting one evening with spices, roasting a few and then pounding them in the mortar.

I don’t know what had come over me – I’ve never really been the sort of girl to spice up my life that way.

After all, it’s so easy to use too much, and then the headlines won’t be good for any wannabe cook.

My mother was never much of a one for spices – Christmas cake and pudding, I’m sure, although spice is not what springs to mind when I recall the taste of those.

And my first experience of anything spicy, as an adult, was a disaster.

A friend took me to the Royal Exchange Manchester to see Robert Lindsay in Philoctetes, and since he’d once worked in the restaurant there, treated me to a meal.

Curiosity kicking in, I tried a curry. It blew the roof off my mouth – it felt burnt for days. I didn’t touch spice (or heat) for years.

In recent times, though, my appreciation of chili has developed, but apart from the odd shaving of nutmeg on a custard, spice has been left pretty much in the cupboard.

Yet there I was, roasting mustard seeds and tentatively adding the pounded result to ground ginger and a couple of other things, before it went carefully into the day's dish.

The result was subtle but enjoyable.

So after adding a little spice to the recent slow-cooked venison shank, I decided to try again.

This time, it was a case of roasting more seeds – mustard, black onion, cumin and fennel: don’t ask me how much of each, because I haven’t a clue. It was all about judging by eye what seemed worth getting the pan out for, without doing too much.

It was all pounded merrily and had smoky paprika added.

And so to the cooking.

Two medium onions and three cloves of garlic were diced and slipped into the pan to soften in olive oil, followed by half a thinly-sliced red chili from this year’s crop, and then the spice mix.

Once that was blended through, the meat that I had stripped from the bird followed, to be gently folded in.

Tasting followed, with a general feeling of satisfaction, before a spoon of St Dalfour fig jam was added. The brand is worth noting, since it uses no extra sugar to set its rather excellent conserves.

And to all that was added the trimmings from Sunday’s potato fondants, which The Other Half had rustled up to go with the chicken. Just a few thin slices – but why waste anything?

The whole lot was lidded and cooked very gently for around half an hour, before a dozen halved chestnut mushrooms were tumbled in.

Not long after, with basmati rice nearing completion, there was a final check for seasoning – and a little salt added – before a spoon of crème fraiche was stirred through.

If the result hardly looked like an example of stunning haute cuisine, it was tasty and satisfying.

And there's a lovely sense of adventure to experimenting with combinations of spices. What will I do next time?

Because one thing's sure: spice won't be consigned to a custard or hot cross buns any longer.

The sole of simplicity

It is summer. No, you wouldn’t know it some of the time, – quite a lot of the time – as the rain continues to fall in almost Biblical volume.

The weather has been so crazy that, in the last 24 hours, train routes between England and Scotland are at a standstill because of landslides on both east and west coast lines.

Which does raise the question of whether God is an Englishman blocking off Scotland – or a Scot blocking off England.

But in the south east of England at least, it is warm – albeit often a close warmth; not pleasant, but sweaty and oppressive.

Combine that with my annual state of post-conference kanckeredness and you have, if not a recipe for disaster, than a recipe for not knowing what the recipe should be.

The Jersey Royals seem to have ended – and I’m not sure about the English asparagus.

The garden isn’t ready yet to harvest enough that it makes menu choices for me.

So it’s what I now recognise as an annual situation: sitting down and wondering, with enthusiasm that’s blurred around the edges, just what I want to cook and eat.

The answer usually has total simplicity at its heart.

Last weekend, as I wended my way along Broadway Market, a quick glance revealed that Vikki had a small number of slip soles on the ice. Now they’re supposed to be small, but these were hardly tiny.

The Other Half is not overly fond of being served fish whole – his usual explanation is that it’s awkward to deal with when there are loads of other things on your plate.

Looking at those delicate soles, though, there was no way that I was going to have them filleted. So what to do?

A solution gradually took on coherent shape. And it was Italian in form.

First up – a minestrone. Okay – not a strictly accurate Genovese version, as there was no lard at the base and no pancetta either.

But given that, in reality, there are probably as many different versions of minestrone as there are people who have ever made it, variations seem to be entirely in keeping with the sense of the dish.

It began, as it should, with a sofritto. Onion, garlic, celery and carrot, chopped and sliced finely and then cooked gently in olive oil for around 10 minutes. This is simply the Italian form of the French mirepoix.

After that, a big squirt of tomato purée, loads of ground black pepper, a tin of decent quality tomatoes in their own juice (and with that juice rinsed out of the can and into the pan) and a couple of potatoes, peeled but left whole.

And then you need to add some stock. Now because I hadn’t been planning this, there wasn’t time to defrost some of my own stock.

I’d been looking for a store cupboard stock for just such circumstances – one that doesn't have a stack of additives and chemicals, but also one that that doesn't include palm oil, the farming and harvesting of which is seriously threatening the survival of the orangutan by devastating the habitat they live in.

So it’s thanks to Diana, who had read of my concerns in an earlier post and knew the solution.

Kallo’s Just Bouillon vegetable stock cubes fit the bill.

The ingredient list reads thus:

Hydrolysed Vegetable Protein (contains Soya), Sea Salt, Vegetable Fat, Potato Starch, Carrots (3%), Onion (2.5%), Tomato (1.5%), Sugar, Spices (Mace, Celery Seeds, Pepper), Lovage.

It beats the very similar Marigold Bouillon on the basis of having no palm oil – and it’s about 10p cheaper per 100g too. Since it also tastes okay, this is a win-win option.

And then all you do is cover the pan and leave it to simmer gently for a couple of hours, stirring occasionally.

After that, if the potatoes haven’t broken up, give them a little help with a fork.

This is the point at which you add the dried spaghetti, broken into small pieces. The packet said that the cooking time is about nine minutes.

But because it’s not in boiling water, but in simmering stock (and tomato juice etc) it will take longer. I gave it an initial 15 minutes, cooked with some fine beans and sliced courgette, both of which would also have needed less time if in boiling water.

After that, podded peas and broad beans went in and were given about seven minutes – again, longer than if simply being boiled.

And that was that – served with a drizzle of my best virgin oil, a dollop of pesto and a sprinkling of grated Parmesan (not for The Other Half, of course), we had a very substantial, tasty – and healthy – starter.

The second course was then simplicity itself: the soles, brushed with olive oil and cooked under a hot grill for approximately four minutes a side, served with a piece of lemon and a garnish of the first samphire of the summer.

Desert was even easier and simpler: after a week away, just enough strawberries had reached perfect ripeness to give us a portion each.

When they’re as fresh as that, you don’t need anything else with them.

With some of that, it almost felt like a cheat to call it cooking.

More drizzle than Jack the Dripper

It’s 2.17pm on Boxing Day. Coffee-flavoured custards in caramel-lined ramekins are in the oven and the sauce espagnole has just started its journey.

A week of feeling under the weather as a cold meandered its way to and fro in my system hadn’t left me feeling particularly inspired on the food front. All I wanted to do was curl up in a chair with a book.

But I’d motivated myself to make the beef stock early in the week and on Thursday, headed to Borough Market.

After the final trip to Broadway Market to collect various orders and pick up a few basics, Christmas Eve saw something close to a frenzy in the kitchen, with a turkey leg roasted – in a fit of nostalgia, I decided that, if I didn’t want a roast turkey dinner, I still wanted the dark meat to wedge, well seasoned, between slices of factory bread in the evening as I sat in front of the telly.

Two pears were poached in spiced red wine and the remaining liquid bubbled away to almost a syrup.

And, if not quite as expected after all my reading up, the consommé was clarifying. I’d thawed and deposited the two tubs of game stock from some weeks ago into a large saucepan, together with a big handful of dried mushrooms. And then, as per the clarifying instructions, stirred an egg white into the mix before heating very, very gently – it must barely simmer.

It’s a piece of culinary wizardry, as the egg white attracts fat and impurities in the broth to it, forming a sort of cloudy ‘raft’ on the top that can, after a couple of hours of the most gentle reduction imaginable, be skimmed away.

That made a difference to the clarity, but there was still some way to go. Eventually, I hauled out a square of muslin, lined a sieve and carefully poured the broth through. Which pretty much sorted it – although I still ended up convinced that it was a little cloudy at the bottom and, when I decanted it back to a pan the following day, it was with great care, attempting to avoid even that little cloudiness.

Yet even after a day of such kitchen delights, I still needed a metaphorical kick up the backside yesterday to actually get up and get going.

No decision had been taken about exactly when I was aiming to have dinner started on Christmas Day itself – that, of course, is one of the joys of not being tied down by the timings of anyone else.

But as we sat comfortably in front of the TV, The Other Half raised the issue of food – was I planning a Christmas lunch or something later? Because if it was going to be the latter, then he’d need to get himself something in the interim.

I took that as a cue and, after a sluggish beginning, got myself properly going.

The reality is that it was far from a difficult cook, because for once I’d really got the preparation and planning pretty much nailed on.

First things first: final prep. Four plum tomatoes, skinned, halved, de-seeded and then diced.

The steak: allowed to come to room temperature, trimmed and then well seasoned with crushed black pepper.

The consommé went on to come up to a merry old heat, while I clarified some butter.

One of the things I learnt about consommé is that you need to make plenty. Not as much as you would usually expect to be enough, but much more.

There was nowhere near enough to bother hauling out soup bowls, so I decanted it into cups. But if that didn’t allow me to revel in the clarity – and yes, I really did feel like preening over that – it detracted nothing from the taste, and that was really strong and not remotely salty.

It was a success.

Next up, the tomato concasse had been gently warmed with a little dried chili, a little olive oil and a drizzle of dipping Balsamic.

That was portioned out into neat circles (I have two rings for such things) as the scallops were pan fried. Pretty good.

Then the clarified butter was heated and the steak fried. Basmati rice was bubbling away in another pan, allowing me to heat the brandy over it in a ladle before setting it aflame and pouring it on the meat.

I’ve done it before, but there’s still something about seeing the flames that gives me an adrenalin surge. Once the alcohol has all burnt off, the meat is deposited onto a warm plate, covered with foil and popped into a just-warm oven. The sauce is reduced slightly, meaty bits scraped off the pan, and double cream added. Take the meat back out, drip any juices that have been released as it relaxes into the sauce and then serve.

Plate up by buttering a cup and using it as a mould for the rice, popping steak next to that and then dripping sauce around the plate in pale imitation of true cheffy drizzling.

After that, dessert was a doddle. Pop a pear in the centre of a small plate, drizzle the sauce around it, feel posy and drizzle a little raspberry vinegar on the plate too and then finish with a drizzlette of double cream. It might have looked quite good on a canvas in the Pompidou – it certainly tasted alright.

The only thing that had not worked had been the rhubarb sorbet, which I’d abandoned after seeing that it had become simply a mound of pink ice crystals that we barely capable of sticking together.

But you only learn by trial and error – and in general, I had plenty to be thrilled about.

Individually, everything was fine, but the consommé was way beyond my expectations.

The meal worked as a whole – not just on a practical level, but feeling balanced too.

And so to Boxing Day, invigorated and ready to spend more quality time in the kitchen.

Lancashire hotpot: a culinary treasure

It probably seems the most ridiculous link in culinary history, but in preparing to cook the first Lancashire hotpot of the season yesterday, Gordon Ramsay's name entered the equation.

'Gordon Ramsay?' you query, eyebrow rising à la Roger Moore. ‘And a Lancashire hotpot?'

Now stop looking like that – it was all for quite a good reason.

Rick Stein once opined that, were this France, hotpot would be a nationally hailed dish – and the French would seem to agree.

It even merits an individual mention in Larousse, where it’s described as "a classic British dish". There’s a second individual entry for the county in this bible of gastronomy, the other being "delicious" Lancashire cheese, plus a mention of hotpot and another Lancashire dish, Hindle Wakes, in the 'England' section, together with mentions in the 'Great Britain' section.

Yorkshire merits a solitary specific mention for the famous pudding, and nowhere near as many mentions in the GB and England sections.

You see – even on a culinary front, the Wars of the Roses went the way of the red rose.

Tragically – but perhaps unsurprisingly – a 2008 survey from Tesco revealed hotpot as being one of 10 traditional British dishes that were dying out.

The same Telegraph article also reported that high street butchers were dying at the rate of 23 a month. Not that the likes of Tesco has in any way affected that depressing statistic.

The rest of this sad list of endangered dishes was made up of spotted dick, beef Wellington, jam roly-poly, steak and kidney pie, coronation chicken (which hasn’t even been around very long), sherry trifle, bread and butter pudding, toad in the hole and fish pie.

That survey was almost three years ago: it's to be hoped that gastro pubs are increasingly keeping alive such cuisine, because there's a few classy dishes in that list that really do not deserve to go the way of all flesh.

I don't recall my mother ever cooking a hotpot – it may have happened, but it's not something that springs readily to mind when thinking of food in my childhood.

Indeed, when I start to think about it, I don't really remember there being much in the way of casserole dishes in her repertoire.

She used to make a stew occasionally – I remember little about it, except that we'd have slices of white bread to mop up the juices.

The recipe I've always used for hotpot comes from Catherine Rothwell's Lancashire Cookbook, a volume that George gave me some years ago.

For the meat, it specifies lamb chops, which work fine. But in somewhat more ambitious mode last week, I decided to see what would have been a more traditional cut.

Even with Google, this wasn’t quite as obvious as one might imagine. But then I came across not one but two recipes from the shouty one in the Times.

Both had been published within four months of each other – 14 June 2007 and 3 Oct 2007 – and both had Ramsay saying that they were originally from Lanky lad and fellow chef Marcus Wareing.

There are, remarkably, quite a few differences between. One opts for chops, but the second mentions middle neck. The latter seems more traditional.

It also suggests getting the meat boned, but then using the bones to make a lamb stock, which seemed like an excellent and authentic idea. After all, in the days when women made a hotpot and took it to the local baker to cook, long and slow after the bread had finished baking, while they did a shift in the local cotton mill, the stock probably wouldn’t have been made from a cube.

Although the invention is attributed to Nicolas Appert in 1831, bouillon cubes were first commercially produced by Maggi in 1908, with Oxo coming up with a meat extract one a couple of years later. By 1913, there were apparently at least 10 brands available – containing an astonishing 59-72% of salt, according to a 2005 article in the Journal of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry – which seems like another good reason to make your own stock.

And then there's the flavour issue – and indeed, the whole thing of not wasting anything.

So yesterday morning, I roasted the bones for 25 minutes (the recipe said 15, but then Gordon doesn't have to deal with my oven) and simmered stock for an hour and a half. That provided enough for two hotpots.

The recipes also differ as to whether they include lambs' kidneys: for me, this is an absolute essential. At one time, oysters were included, but it’s some years since they were ‘poor people's' food. Gordon also suggests red wine in one version – but that's a step too far in my book.

Of course, there are probably as many different versions of Lancashire hotpot as there are people who have cooked it. An intriguing recipe from 1937, which is apparently based one in Elizabeth Craig’s 1936 Cookery Illustrated and Household Management, uses both oysters and kidneys for the dish, together with best end neck of mutton cutlets.

It’s difficult, then, to say that there’s ever been a single ‘authentic' recipe.

So my Lancashire hotpot this time was really a mix of versions.

If you can't get middle neck of lamb because you haven't got access to one of those proper butchers that concerned-for-our-culinary-heritage Tesco and co have helped drive into the ground, then lamb chops will do just fine.

Ms Rothwell says to set the oven to a "moderate” heat – I go for around 150˚ in my fan-assisted (and awkward) one.

For two people, I used around 500g of boned middle neck and five kidneys. If someone doesn’t like kidneys (as The Other Half doesn’t), then adjust the amounts accordingly and just give the kidneys to those who like them – but don't cut them out: they really add an important richness to the dish.

Halve and core the kidneys, remove any excess fat from the meat and chop it into largish pieces, then brown everything in some oil. Remove from the pan.

Pop in some herbs – could be bouquet garni or just some dried rosemary and/or thyme.

Put the meat back in. Arrange sliced onion and chopped carrot on top.

Then pour in around 300ml of stock – it should come about half way up.

Peel some potatoes and slice (around the thickness of a pound coin). Layer these on top and then dot with butter. Cover and pop into the oven for around two hours.

Remove the lid and give it another 20 minutes.

Serve – if you want to be really traditional, with some pickled red cabbage on the side.

It's perfect food for this weather – even the aromas from the kitchen are warming and comforting while it simmers away gently.

I was really pleased with this version: the meat was lovely – almost melting but still holding together. It was worth the effort of finding such a cut – and it wasn’t expensive.

This isn't a dish that should need saving. But then again, as Rick Stein effectively said: this isn't France.

Time to give the tastebuds a lift

Right. That's it. Enough of this winter thing!

It's been a long one – and colder than for many a year and with far more snow, more widely distributed, than the UK has seen for – well, decades. And with more of the white stuff forecast for the coming days. I find my enthusiasm for the season fading somewhat.

My body wants a change. I can feel it in terms of what I want to eat. I'm not actually craving light salads yet, but I'm moving away from what might be viewed as the most obviously season hearty, comfort food.

The last couple of weeks have seen a binge on pasta: but not with heavy sauces. A couple of shots at one I love where you roast tomatoes, red pepper and red chili, then blend that carefully with some toasted ground almonds, adding a little virgin oil if you need to loosen it.

There's another sauce with roasted tomatoes, anchovies, sultanas and toasted pine nuts – it's Sicilian in origin, apparently.

Last Saturday, when The Other Half was gadding around in Yorkshire for the Rugby League, I made myself a dish with quality tinned sardines, sultanas, some dried chili and some pine nuts. And tomorrow, when he heads in the same direction, I shall quite probably open another can of sardines and do them with chili, garlic and fennel.

All dead simple, all quick, all cheap, all tasty – and all healthy.

But last weekend I roasted a chicken for the first time in more than a couple of months. The first time since the kittens arrived, indeed. And of course that afforded the opportunity to experience being thoroughly kittened when I was stripping the carcase to make stock on Monday evening.

None of our previous cats – nor Boudicca – have ever been bothered about chicken, whether in a prepared cat food or the proper stuff. With the Queen B, indeed, it seems to be her least liked meat flavour. Otto, on the other hand, seems to have set his stall on becoming a full-blown feline bon vivant. When I gave him and his brother some scraps to taste, he went bonkers – and even growled lowly at Loki, as if to say: 'This is MY chicken – not yours!'

After stock making, I took the opportunity to make risotto last night. And with plenty of meat left from the weekend bird, I decided to find a way of using some with this classic rice dish.

I have to say, I was delighted with the result.

Take a shallot or two and chop finely. Soften this is some olive oil, adding some chopped garlic and chopped celery as you go.

When it's good and soft – but not brown – add your risotto rice (a good basic guide is around 45g of raw rice per person). Keep stirring and after that's gained a nice translucence, pour in a glass of Noilly Prat. If you can't get that, use white Vermouth or even a dry white wine. The smell at this point is utterly divine – and just think of the flavour it's adding.

After that's absorbed, start adding chicken stock by the ladle – make sure you've had it warming on another hob, because you don't want it to cool down the dish. Stir frequently and, as each ladle of stock is absorbed, add another. It'll probably take around 20 minutes.

In the meantime, take a parsnip or two and peel it. When you've done that, use a potato peeler like the one pictured to cut long ribbons of parsnip.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Add the parsnip ribbons. As they soften, add some sage leaves and then a glug of the booze you used earlier and let it bubble away for a few minutes. Again, a great smell. Season to taste – plenty of fresh ground pepper is great.

Once your rice has absorbed all the stock it's going to, check your seasoning and then add your cooked chicken. I didn't dice mine, leaving it in pretty much in the shapes and sizes that had come when I'd torn it off a thigh bone. Let that warm through.

Then you could do the classic risotto thing of adding a knob of butter and some grated Parmesan, but since The Other Half hates cheese, I skip this and the butter and add a good dollop of crème fraiche instead. Then pop in around half your parsnip and sage and stir carefully.

To serve, pop the risotto on a plate or in a bowl and top with the remainder of the parsnip mix.

Still comforting, but pretty healthy, it tastes great, it's really easy – and it's a lot lighter than those classic winter warmers.

Taking stock of autumn menus

Back to the weekend and back to Broadway Market.

List-making – or put another way, creating menus – seems to get easier. I'd pretty much sorted out my ideas by last night, even with a little after-work Friday inebriation.

But that's not to say that I didn't spend my usual time sitting up in bed with a coffee and various cookbooks. Soup remained a question for the day – what was I going to make? I settled on an idea from River Café Easy: an artichoke and potato soup.

Now buying fresh artichokes – even if it were the season – would not be considered. Like soaking and boiling beans for hours, life is just too short for some things, so I bought artichoke hearts.

Cut them up and then cook gently in a little oil. Add some chili flakes, chopped flat leaf parsley and some garlic, then some chicken stock. This was a first – the first time I've used some of my own home-made stock in a soup. Cook for around 15 minutes and then add a diced potato and some more stock. Cook until the potato is cooked, then mash a little with a potato masher and serve, drizzled with virgin oil and topped with crostini – toasted slices of ciabatta, rubbed with garlic and drizzled with more oil.

I was completely wowed, but it was certainly okay and made a change.

Tonight gave me the chance to use yet more chicken stock in a way I haven't before – this time, as part of a sauce for salmon. This is a dish of my own creation and I'm rather proud of it, even though its getting refined every time I do it.

Chop a couple of shallots and a couple of sticks of celery and soften them in some olive oil. The add some very good quality cider and reduce. Add around the same amount of chicken stock and reduce further. Strain. Make up some beurre manié (half and half of plain flour and softened butter, mixed together). Drain and rinse some green peppercorns, and then crush them a little. Add to the strained sauce. Whisk in the beurre manié to thicken.

In the meantime, poach salmon fillet in more cider. Serve the salmon with the sauce.

To accompany this, I boiled some swede, celeriac and carrots together, then pureed them, mixed in a little butter and added plenty of black pepper. I also served some mixed mushrooms that had been very gently cooked in a little olive oil, with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Great, earthy tastes – perfect autumn fodder. Very comforting and also pretty healthy: oily fish and three portions of fruit & veg.

I should know to trust Rick

Rick Stein, that is. One of my favourite celebrity chefs.

On Thursday, I hit a point; a point of feeble concentration at work. Or rather, a point where I had to work very, very hard indeed to maintain concentration.

That day, two colleagues had set off for Argeles-sur-mer, just north of Collioure, where I'll be in ... oh, just a day under three weeks! They had set off from St Pancras, on the Eurostar, just a five minute walk from the office I was sitting in, struggling to concentrate. I could have looked out of the window of my office and seen their train pull out, an hour after I'd got to work.

Anyway, in a mood of heightened longing-for-the-Mediterranean, I had found myself planning a weekend menu of varied dishes from the region. Things started on Friday evening with ratatouille – southern French vegetable stew of tomatoes, aubergine, courgettes, peppers, onion and basil, garnished with a mixture of crushed garlic and chopped flat-leaf parsley. And served, of course, with good bread.

Well, that was a decent start. Tasty and most certainly healthy.

With Vicki my fishmonger away for a wedding on Saturday, I had a choice. I could either have a meaty weekend or I could try the new fish shop at the top end of the market.

Now, I'd already, the week before, had a look in that shop. Since Vicki didn't have any cod, I'd wondered if they had, since I wanted to salt it for bacalao. We didn't get off to a good start. First, supposedly specialist fishmonger doesn't know what bacalao is. And then, receiving something akin to a lecture about sustainable fishing and cod.

Yes. I know about the issues with sustainable cod fishing. Vicki and I have discussed it at length. It's why I know that there are no problems with certain stocks of cod. And, unlike a lot of my fellow Brits, I can think beyond cod.

But most of all, I don't take kindly to such patronising lectures. So at least there will be no temptation to betray Vicki by going into their shop again. And even then, they shouldn't have said shop, since Spirit, a trader on street for years, was very wrongly ousted from his shop (where he sold fish) by our very dodgy local council in their very dodgy dealings with a local property developer.

Meat it was, therefore.

So on Saturday, we had roast chicken, done my favourite way, as in River Café Easy Two.

Heat the oven to 80˚C. Take your bird. Remove any inards and stuff with a good handful of rosemary, a handful of sage and some chopped garlic. (I chucked in a half lemon that was sitting in the fridge looking forlorn)

Pop it into roasting dish that it fits quite tightly. Pour 200ml of water into the dish. Pop in the oven and cook for an hour.

Remove. Turn the bird the other way up. Pop back in the oven and cook for another hour. Turn again and cook for a third hour. Remove from the oven. Turn the heat up to 200˚C. Take some butter and massage it all over the skin of the bird (great, messy fun). Season well. And then pour 100ml of Vermouth (Pernod would work too) into the dish. Put it back in the oven and give it half an hour.

Bingo! Superb chicken. And after you've had your dinner, superb chicken needs using properly. So after stripping the remaining meat, I took the carcass, plus an onion, additional herbs, three sticks of celery, a carrot, some peppercorns and a very large amount of water, cooked it all for around two hours and then strained it through muslin to give myself around three litres of stock for the freezer.

But what of Sunday's efforts?

Well, a couple of years ago, I was asked to review a cookery book – Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes. In an incredibly brief period between getting my paws on the tome itself and filing my copy, I had time to test out one recipe – a dish with sausages and lemon. Perfectly tasty. I wrote my concise 200 words, put the book on the shelf and pretty much forgot about it.

Fast forward to last week. Mulling over what to do for midweek meals, I picked it up and started reading rather more seriously. And realised that there were many more options than I had previously realised.

One that sprung to my attention was kleftiko, a Greek lamb dish.

Apparently, it was known as 'thieves' roast' and allegedly used to be made by the criminal classes in the Greek countryside. They would nick a lamb, put it in a hole in the ground with hot embers, seal it with earth so that no smoke could give it away, and then go about their nefarious business during the day, returning in the evening to their slow-cooked meat.

And that lovely bit of colour was thanks to m'friend George – not Mr Stein.

Anyway. I've never had it and indeed, have had a low idea of Greek food since a poor meal in a Greek restaurant in Amsterdam in 2000, where the salad was washed out and devoid of taste.

And I've never cooked a dish like that – slow-cooking a big piece of meat in such a way. But I grasped the nettle and was encouraged by the interest displayed by The Other Half, who mused that, in the days before I had emerged on his scene, he used to quite regularly eat it in a Greek restaurant around Clerkenwell. He was also able to advise that the meat needs to be really falling away from the bone.

Okay. So I bought a should of lamb and got the butcher to quarter it for me (the easiest way to portion it for two people). A couple of online recipes talked of putting greaseproof paper at the bottom of the dish to stop the ingredients sticking, but Rick didn't mention this, so after some consideration, I stuck with Mr Stein.

Heat the oven to around 190˚C. Peel and dice some maincrop potatoes. Take a whole bulb of garlic and pull off the papery cover. Then cut the whole bulb in half. Pop the meat, potatoes and garlic in a big casserole.

Add the juice of two lemons, two teaspoons of salt and lots of ground black pepper, a tablespoon of dried oregano and two tablespoons of fresh oregano (or marjoram), six bay leaves and then 100ml of water. Cover the ingredients with kitchen foil, pop on the lid and then put it in the oven. After two hours, check it hasn't dried out and needs more water. Then give it at least another hour.

In the event, I needed to give it around 45 minutes more before the meat, as The Other Half had described, was really starting to fall away from the bone. But there had been no worry about potato sticking to the pan – the water sees to that. It really is a great flavour – and reheated, it'll do at least one (and probably two) more meals.

I should know to trust Rick.

S is for Saturday, shopping and stock

It’s a rather sybaritic day, in other words.

As I plod into middle age, it becomes increasingly clear that food is truly one of life’s great pleasures.

Thus my Saturday, as so often, started with a mug of coffee, a few cookery books and paper for the compiling of lists. There are two lists – menus for three days and then the shopping list itself.

It is said that real foodies descend on the market sans such lists: they are prepared for whatever treasures they might unearth, and able instantly to know what they’ll conjure with their finds.

I am nowhere near that experienced or confident: it’s a racing certainty that, if I tried it, I’d forget something important. Like the wine or the crème fraîche – you know. So I sit up in bed with a coffee, browsing my books and making my lists.

For almost five years now, our little corner of Hackney has entertained a farmers’ market. It’s a haven for those who don’t share the rather widespread British belief that the belly is best served by taking a trolley around a supermarket and filling it with a week’s worth of ready-made meals, selections of crisps in perverse ‘favours’ such as Cajun squirrel and builder’s breakfast, and bottles of lemonade that have never been within a million miles of a lemon.

Until the farmer’s market arrived, helping to breathe new life into a street that had been three-quarters derelict for decades, I too had to endure the supermarket trip.

Now, I start by delivering my empty egg boxes back to the farmer I bought eggs from seven days earlier. If I have meat I want from him, I order it then and pick it up on the way back.

The next port of call is Vicki, my fishmonger. She has a small stall, full of wet fish, gleaming and bright on a bed of ice. This is a paradise all of its own – and as near as I get to that list-less shopping. The new-old shopping experience of the market means, today, waiting quite a while as, with consummate skill, she fillets eight herring for the customer in front of me.

The British have forgotten herring. We used to eat it by the ton, but now we neglect it. Unfortunately, The Other Half isn’t a big fan, so I take a nice piece of tuna, which will be poached later in a tomato sauce with garlic, chilli and rosemary. A Spurs fan, she has us all, I suspect, categorised by our interest or otherwise in the game. Mr Herring is a West Ham follower: they discuss the possibility of coach Gianfranco Zola being poached by Chelsea (but not quite as nicely as my tuna). When it’s my turn, we consider Manchester City’s chances this afternoon at Portsmouth.

At a stall that sells Dartmoor beef, the farmer tells me in jovial fashion about dealing with the recent snow.

At the French deli, Stephane updates me on how well the move to their new premises is going.

And as always, I exchange pleasantries with Turkish Tony in the general shop.

This is shopping as it should be: a sociable affair; friendly and not rushed. Food is worth taking time for: producers and shopkeepers worth building relationships with.

Back home, once everything has been unpacked and put away, I roughly chop onion, carrot and celery. Celery is one of the miracles of the market – it comes covered in soil, and it smells and tastes, for goodness sake. Smells and tastes, not of water and insipid nothingness, but of celery – real celery. Peppercorns, bay leaves from the tree in the garden, parsley stalks and crushed garlic cloves go into the pot too, before the water is added. I’m in the mood for more risotto in the coming days, and good stock is essential.

And it’s hardly as though making stock is difficult or expensive. This is another joy – knowing how do make these building bricks, and knowing what a difference they make.

Then it’s time to consider lunch: since we’re doing our own thing, I chop more celery, a couple of shallots, some chilli and some more garlic and sauté them gently in olive oil. Re-hydrated couscous is added, together with a few pine kernels and some raisins. Then the whole mix is seasoned and packed into a halved and cored courgette and a yellow pepper to be baked. How easy is this? Tasty, cheap and healthy too.

Some locals complain about the market. They complain about the £3.50 loaves of bread that have taken on an almost mythical status amongst those who have heard, who have never been but who like to carp.

One day, a neighbour was complaining thus to me in my local pub. Every so often, she went outside for a cigarette (over a fiver for 20), between swigs of an almost-£3-a-pint stout. How odd to think that £3.50 for an organic seven-day sour is considered particularly expensive alongside much more ephemeral pleasures.

But that’s what so many Britons seem to think – that food is merely fuel: it should be cheap as chips, should take as little time as possible to prepare and should be consumed in front of the telly, in a house that doesn't even have a dining table.

For myself, I’ll continue to take my time, to appreciate and learn, thank you. It’s the only properly sybaritic approach.