Stuffed focaccia with mozzarella, artichokes and smoked ham

Oozy, garlicky, herby, smoky and greasy. What's not to like? Focaccia is the ideal bread to make this sort of baked sandwich from. It's oily, so it bakes to a gorgeous crisp, and it's a relatively flat bread, so works well sliced in two horizontally. I like to make my own focaccia (the feeling of an oil-enriched dough, stretchy, silky and puffy with yeast is obscenely - there's no other word for it - tactile against your palms), but this should work very well with a bought one.

To serve four at an al-fresco lunch (with other nibbles) you'll need:

1 focaccia
2 balls mozzarella di bufala
150g char-grilled artichoke hearts in olive oil
½ jar sun-dried red peppers in olive oil
12 slices raw smoked ham (I like Waitrose's prosciutto affumato)
1 fat clove garlic
1 handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 handful oregano, chopped
1 handful tarragon, chopped
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
100ml extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Slice the mozzarella and the artichoke hearts into pieces about ½ cm thick, and put in a mixing bowl. Add the sun-dried peppers, the ham, the garlic, crushed, the herbs, the zest and juice of the lemon and the olive oil with a good grating of pepper (no salt), and mix well so everything is coated with the oil and lemon juice. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least an hour (or up to overnight).

Preheat the oven to 180° C (350° F). Use a bread knife to cut the focaccia in half carefully along its equator, creating a top and a bottom for your sandwich. Layer the ingredients on the bottom half of the bread, starting with the mozzarella, then making a layer of the artichokes, peppers and ham, which you can tear into pieces before adding to the sandwich, if you like. Pour the marinade over the ingredients in the sandwich, sprinkle with salt to taste, and put the lid on, pressing down firmly.

Put the stuffed focaccia on a baking tray and bake for 25-30 minutes until the focaccia is golden and crusty on top, and the melting mozarella is oozing out of the sides of the sandwich. Slice and eat immediately.

Italian tuna dip

This is a lovely starter for lazy days when you're eating outdoors. I like to dibble crudités (especially sweet batons of carrot) and good bread in this tuna dip. It's also very good spread on toast or crostini, and, cold or warmed through, makes a good strong sauce to dollop on bland cooked fish.

Apologies for the horrendous photo - by the time I realised how rubbish this looked, the bowl had been licked clean, so there was nothing to photograph.

To serve two as a starter with crudités and bread, you'll need:

1 small can tuna (in oil, brine or spring water), drained
2 anchovies
2 teaspoons Marsala
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
1 heaped teaspoon grainy Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon fennel seed
1 tablespoon finely chopped oregano
½ teaspoon finely chopped rosemary
1 teaspoon finely chopped sage
1 teaspoon thyme
1 tablespoon finely chopped basil
1 tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon finely chopped mint
1 small clove of garlic, crushed
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon honey

Bash the fennel seed lightly in a pestle and mortar, and chop the herbs. Chop the anchovies very finely. Put all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix well until the dip ingredients all come together to form a rough paste. Add a little more olive oil if you prefer a looser texture, and taste for seasoning. Serve chilled as a dip or crostini topping, or warm through in a small saucepan to use as a sauce.

Roast garlic

I noticed last week that although I've included roast garlic as an ingredient in a few recipes here (use the search tool at the top right of the page if you want to try some when you've made this), I've never dedicated a post to it. This needs to be addressed, because roast garlic, slipped out of its skins onto crusty bread and popped straight into the mouth, still warm, is one of those things that tastebuds were invented for.

Roast garlic is at its best when you use a bulb of fresh (or 'green') garlic - not dried, like the papery garlic you usually buy in the supermarket, but still cream, green and pink, with flexible, cool-feeling skin. Some markets and supermarkets carry it at this time of year and also around October. I've seen it in Sainsbury's, Waitrose and the main market in Cambridge, so with a bit of sniffing around (it is very pungent) you should be able to find some. If it's out of season, never fear; you can also use a dried bulb, and it will still be very good indeed. If you do use dried garlic, try to find a variety that has big, fat cloves. The Really Garlicky Company do a fantastic product, and you can sometimes order fresh garlic from them as well (currently their website says it should be ready in July). As well as mail order, they have a stockists list on the page. Their Patagonian garlic is available in my local Waitrose, and it's a very superior bulb with huge, juicy cloves which are fragrant and easy to peel.

Picking out herbs to cook with the garlic is fun. I've used thyme, oregano, parsley, rosemary and bay from the garden, but you're not limited to these. Sage is also good, and it's worth experimenting with whatever green herbs you have to hand. The odd chilli tucked between the cloves can also be good. I've used butter to lubricate here, but goose or duck fat is also glorious in this dish. If you decide to use some, use 200g duck fat and 200g butter.

We are greedy when faced with roast garlic, and can get through three bulbs each with some good bread. You may find that six bulbs will happily serve three, or want to keep a couple back as an ingredient for a later recipe. To roast six bulbs you'll need:

Six bulbs green garlic
3 bay leaves
1 small handful each fresh thyme, oregano and parsley (reserve a little parsley to garnish at the end)
3 large sprigs rosemary
250g butter
Olive oil to drizzle
Salt and pepper

Slice each bulb of garlic in half across its equator and arrange in a heavy-bottomed roasting tin, tucking the clean spices all around the garlic. Make sure some of the pieces of garlic have their cut sides in the air, and some against the roasting tin, for a lovely variation in texture and stickiness. Dot the butter all over them (I know this is a lot of fat, but you'll thank me when you taste what's at the bottom of the dish when you're done cooking) and drizzle a couple of tablespoons of olive oil over to moisten any non-buttery bits. Sprinkle over salt and pepper.

Roast for 40 minutes at 180° C, opening the oven to baste the garlic with the juices three or four times. The house will smell strongly, so open a window. When the garlic is done, the ends of the cloves should be a gorgeous caramel brown. Serve the bulbs up immediately with some really good bread and a little salt for everyone to spike their own garlic with, keeping the cooking dish on the table for dipping in the juices (possibly the most delicious cooking liquid ever). You should be able to pop each clove out of its skin easily, and mash it onto the bread with the ends of a fork.

Chicken with cardamom and preserved lemons

Remember those Moroccan preserved lemons from a few months back? They turned out very nicely indeed - salty, zingy skins infused with the scents of the spices in the jar. One of the spices I used in the preserved lemons was cardamom, and I've used more in this dish; along with the lemons and some flowery olive oil, it lifts and brightens the flavour of this chicken dish. Pure sunshine in a bowl - and that's just what I feel like in dismal October. Be sure when choosing your ingredients that you use an olive oil with a good flavour.

I've used a box of the tiny fillets (sometimes called chicken tenders) you'll find to one side of a chicken breast here. They're a very easy piece of meat to work with if you're in a hurry - no skinning or chopping necessary. To serve two, you'll need:

450g chicken fillet pieces
3 shallots
3 tablespoons polenta or cornmeal
8 cardamom pods
1 preserved lemon
4 tablespoons good extra-virgin olive oil
1 handful parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper

Start by scraping the pulp out of the inside of the preserved lemon (the pulp of these is too salty to eat). Dice the skin and pour over three tablespoons of the olive oil, then set aside while you prepare the rest of the meal.

Slice the shallots very finely and put them in a large bowl with the chicken. Bash the cardamom pods lightly in a mortar and pestle to crack their tough skins, then use the back of a teaspoon or a fingernail to get all the seeds out. Discard the empty pods and crush the seeds in the mortar and pestle. Mix the cardamom seeds, polenta and some salt and pepper, then sprinkle evenly over the chicken and shallots and mix well.

Heat the remaining tablespoon of olive oil in a large sauté pan over a high flame. Tip in all the chicken mixture and sauté until crisp and brown. Remove the chicken and crispy shallots to a clean bowl and pour over the lemon and oil mixture and some parsley, tossing like a salad to mix. Serve immediately.

Tarragon cream chicken

This recipe is absurdly quick and simple - it's good for unexpected guests because you're likely to have most of the ingredients in the house already (and may well already find them all lurking in your fridge). It's rich and delicious, and it only needs a salad and some crusty bread to accompany it and soak up the creamy juices.

If you can get your hands on some fresh tarragon, use that. Dried tarragon, however, is surprisingly good here. There are no similar short-cuts you can take with the parsley, though; dried parsley is useless and revolting, so you'll have to find some fresh.

To serve three, you'll need:

Three chicken breast fillets
3 tablespoons flour
400ml crème fraîche
3 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon (or 3 teaspoons dried)
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Half a lemon
2 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper

Chop the chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces and dust them with the flour and a little salt and pepper. Melt the butter in a sauté pan and heat it until it starts to bubble. Add the chicken to the pan and sauté until it is cooked through and starting to brown at the edges. Turn the heat down low.

Tip the crème fraîche, herbs and mustard into the pan and stir well. Bring up to a simmer and add the lemon juice and some salt and pepper. Taste for seasoning, adding a little more lemon juice if you like, and serve immediately.

Chicken Kiev

This is a rather special Chicken Kiev. It has a super-crisp coating and is bursting with a garlic butter full of extra flavours. (You will notice that I am overdosing a little on saffron rice at the moment. It's lovely with chicken dishes - just cook your rice as usual, but add a large pinch of saffron, which you've soaked in an eggcup of water from the kettle for twenty minutes, with the rest of the cooking water.)

The flavoured butter carefully packed inside this chicken (and balancing cheekily on top of that lovely saffron rice) is worth making in bulk and keeping in the freezer. You can slice it direct from the frozen roll and use it to melt over steaks, to baste roast chickens, to flavour couscous, to fill a baked potato, and anywhere you need rich flavour and lovely moist butteryness. If roasting the garlic for the butter is just too much faff for you, use an extra three cloves of raw garlic instead.

Use the largest chicken breasts you can find for this recipe; this will make it much easier to keep the pool of butter inside the bird until you cut it on your plate. Waitrose is currently selling a chicken called the Poulet d'Or - a massive and delicious behemoth of a bird which grows slowly (and ethically, at Leckford Farm, an enterprise owned by Waitrose's parent company) - it's fed an organic, corn-rich diet, allowed to forage and roam free, and is slaughtered at around 90 days rather than the usual four weeks. It's a big bird, but it's tender and extremely flavourful - I've read comparisons to Poulet de Bresse, and for special occasions I will be very happy to spend the £12 again on two breasts. (A whole bird comes in at about twice that price, but I'd estimate that it would very happily feed six people, so the effective price is high but not unreasonable.)

To make half a pound of garlic and herb butter, and two Chicken Kievs, you'll need:

Garlic and herb butter
1 pat of good, salted butter (2 sticks in America), plus a tablespoon of butter to roast the garlic
1 head of garlic (to roast)
3 cloves of garlic (to be kept raw)
2 bay leaves
1 large sprig thyme
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chervil (leave this out if you can't find any)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1 fresh red chilli
½ teaspoon paprika
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon light soya sauce
Large pinch of salt

Chicken
2 large chicken breasts, skinned and boned
Crumbs from two slices of white bread (blend in a food processor to make crumbs)
An equal volume of polenta or cornmeal
5 tablespoons grated parmesan
4 extra tablespoons polenta or cornmeal
2 eggs, beaten
Salt and pepper
1 teaspoon chilli flakes

Start by roasting the garlic for the butter. Slice the bulb of garlic in half across its equator and put the tablespoon of butter, the bay leaves and the thyme on the cut side of the bottom half, seasoning generously. Place the top half of the garlic bulb on top, making a herby sandwich. Roast at 180° C for 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool.

Pop the soft, roast cloves of garlic out into the food processor, and add the raw garlic; the tarragon, parsley, chervil and basil; the chilli and paprika; the lemon zest and juice; and the soya sauce. Drop in the half pound of butter and blend until everything is amalgamated and finely chopped into the butter.

Make a long sausage of the flavoured butter on a piece of tin foil. Wrap tightly and place in the freezer for at least an hour.

When the butter has chilled, start on the chicken. Begin by combining the breadcrumbs and an equal volume of polenta in one bowl with the parmesan and chilli flakes. Put the four tablespoons of polenta in a separate bowl, and beat the eggs in a final bowl.

Take your smallest knife. Sharpen it vigorously. Use it to make a slit down the side of one chicken breast, creating a pocket inside the muscle. Be very careful not to cut all the way through. Remove the little fillet strip from underneath the breast and set it to one side.

Slice a disc of butter from the frozen butter sausage and tuck it inside the pocket. You may be able to fit more than one disc in, but be careful not to overstuff the breast, or the butter will leak out in cooking. If the butter sticks out at all, just trim it carefully so it's firmly inside the meaty pocket.

Dip the fillet strip in the polenta, then back in the egg. Dip the chicken breast in the polenta, then the egg, and sprinkle the area where the slit is with a bit of extra polenta. Use the polenta and egg to glue the fillet strip around the slit. Roll the whole sticky assembly in the breadcrumbs mixture, patting plenty on around the slit/fillet area to make a good seal and ensuring everything is covered well. Repeat the process with the other breast.

Heat two tablespoons of butter and two of olive oil in a heavy, large frying pan. Bring the pan to a high temperature and carefully slide the chicken pieces in, slit/fillet area facing down. Turn the heat down to just below medium and leave the chicken breasts for 15 minutes, without poking or moving. After 15 minutes, flip them over (the bottoms will have turned an amazing golden crisp) and leave for another 15 minutes. Serve immediately. The melted butter will have formed a delicious pool inside the chicken breasts, and will pool out when you slice into the meat with your knife. Make sure you have plenty of rice to soak it all up.

Pasta with anchovy crumbs and gremolata

A great no-money recipe for the end of the month, when all the money has gone on beer and skittles. You probably have all these ingredients in the storecupboard already. This is a fiercely savoury dish, where the contrasting textures of crisply fried anchovy breadcrumbs and the soft pasta come together to make something really special.

Gremolata is a bit like a salsa verde - a finely-chopped Italian mixture of herbs, lemon zest and something sharp like capers. It's delicious with meats, and I love it with this pasta, where its freshness lifts the richness of the crumbs and infused oil.

It's important that you choose a good, well-flavoured olive oil for this recipe. Although it is tempting to use the oil you fried the crumbs in for infusing the garlic and chilli, it's best to use fresh extra-virgin olive oil instead. The heat that the breadcrumbs oil is subject to over the cooking period will change its flavour slightly, and you'll find you achieve a much fresher, more aromatic flavour from the infusing oil if you use a fresh batch and only allow it to warm gently.

To serve two you'll need:

2 slices white bread
8 anchovy fillets
4 fat cloves garlic
4 dried chillies
1 small handful parsley
1 small handful basil
Zest of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons capers
2 servings of your favourite pasta
Parmesan cheese to taste
Salt and pepper
Plenty of olive oil

Put the bread in the food processor and whizz until you've got coarse breadcrumbs. In a large frying pan, fry the anchovies in about half a centimetre of olive oil until they 'melt' and come to pieces. Add the breadcrumbs to the pan, stir them well to combine them with the anchovies, and add more olive oil to the pan until the breadcrumbs are just covered. (Don't worry; we'll be draining this oil later.) At this point, the contents of the pan will look like a wet mess. Turn the heat to medium and leave, stirring every minute or so: gradually the wet mess will turn into golden, crisp, anchovy flavoured crumbs (10-15 minutes). Turn the oil and breadcrumbs into a sieve and leave the sieve over a bowl for ten minutes for as much oil to drain out as possible.

While the crumbs are cooking, prepare the infused oil by crushing the garlic and frying it gently in a little olive oil until it releases its scent (about thirty seconds). Remove from the heat and add half a wine glass of extra-virgin olive oil to the pan. Bash the chillies in a mortar and pestle until they are flaked and add them to the oil. Return the pan to the heat and warm the oil gently, then leave it in a warm place to infuse until the pasta is ready to be served.

To prepare the gremolata, chop the herbs finely, and mix with the lemon zest and chopped capers in a small bowl. This is one of the rare occasions where I prefer capers preserved in a briny vinegar to the salted kind - use whatever you have to hand.

Cook the pasta as usual, drain and return to the pan you cooked it in. Pour over the garlic and chilli oil, then spoon into serving bowls. Dress generously with the crumbs and gremolata, check for seasoning, and serve with lots of parmesan cheese to grate over.

Minted chicken stir-fry

Summer's here, and my herb garden's doing really well. When we moved here a couple of years ago, we found an abandoned butler sink in the garden. While they look lovely in the kitchen, I wouldn't want one in the house; they're much less practical than a double sink with a waste disposal unit, and it's surprisingly easy to drop and break crockery in an something as deep as a butler sink. We used it as a herb trough instead - it's just the right size, comes with instant drainage (the plug hole), fits nicely into the space by the back door, and you can get a good depth of compost in there.

Mint (back left in the photo) is a herb that I only ever plant in containers, because if it gets going in the garden it spreads and spreads and spreads until you've not got a garden any more, just a minty carpet. This recipe uses the fresh leaves in an unusual non-lamb application - it's fresh, clean-tasting and an excellent hayfever season dish - the curry clears your nose out and the mint gives you something to smell. To serve four, you'll need:

450g (1 lb) chicken breasts, cut into cubes
1 egg white
1 tablespoon cornflour
2 red peppers, cut into large dice
1 handful mange tout peas
4 cloves crushed garlic
150 ml chicken stock (a stock cube is fine here)
1 tablespoon curry paste
2 teaspoons Chinese black bean sauce
2 teaspoons soft brown sugar
1 glass Chinese rice wine
2 tablespoons light soya sauce
1 small handful fresh mint leaves
Salt
Flavourless oil for stir-frying

Put the chicken pieces in a bowl with the egg white and cornflour, and leave aside for half an hour. Stir-frying chicken marinaded in this way is called velveting, and makes the meat very succulent, but if you're in a dreadful hurry or simply out of eggs, you can leave this stage out.

Stir-fry the chicken in a very hot wok until it's turned white and has cooked through. Remove the chicken to a plate, put some new oil in the wok and heat it up again. Stir-fry the peppers, peas and garlic for two minutes, then add all the other ingredients except the chicken and mint. Cook for another two minutes, then throw in the chicken, coating it with the sauce. Remove from the heat, add the mint, stir thoroughly to mix and serve immediately with rice.

Aubergine caviar

This eggplant caviar recipe is a great way to squeeze every ounce of flavour out of an aubergine. It's extremely easy to make if you have a food processor (and only a little more difficult if you don't; I used to make it when I was a student using a large knife to chop everything very finely instead). Although the amount of garlic in this recipe looks a bit alarming, the garlic in the finished dip is roasted, so it's very mellow and sweet. You won't find it overpowering.

Traditionally called 'caviar' or 'poor man's caviar', this is not at all fishy, nor very similar to caviar. I think it got the name from the days when aubergines were much seedier; those seeds have a lovely texture a little (if you are imagining hard) like fish roe. Today, aubergines are usually propagated without the seeds, which many people do not enjoy.

This is a particularly good accompaniment for lamb, and it's really, really good with yesterday's kofta kebab. The roast aubergine has a wonderful natural sweetness, brought out by the raw parsley, which seems made to be paired with hot lamb. Try it some time.

To serve four as a mezze you'll need:

2 large purple aubergines (eggplants)
10 fat cloves garlic
1 large bunch parsley
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Cut both aubergines in half lengthways. Don't bother salting and disgorging it - the same growing techniques which have made modern aubergines near-seedless have also made sure they aren't bitter. Peel the garlic, lay the whole cloves on the cut side of the aubergines, and wrap each aubergine half with its garlic tightly in tin foil. Bake on a sheet at 180° C for 45 minutes, until the garlic and aubergines are very soft.

Peel the skin from the aubergines and discard it. Use a food processor or very sharp knife to finely mince the garlic, aubergine flesh and parsley. Stir in the olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve at room temperature.

Aubergine caviar will keep in the fridge for a few days. Try it on its own on toast for a quick lunch.

Watercress soup

A friend tells me that there's watercress growing in one of the wet bits of fen round here. I've been out combing the countryside and can't find it - and my friend (who will become an ex-friend if this continues) will not tell me exactly where it is so he can eat all of it.

In the meantime, I've been buying my watercress in the shops and at the market. There's plenty on sale at the moment, so head out and buy some. When you make this soup, try to find watercress with plenty of stalk - there's a lot of flavour in the parts you wouldn't necessarily use in a salad.

This soup is simple and delicious; it also freezes well, so you can make it in advance and bring it out when you have guests. When reheating, try not to bring it to a rolling boil - you'll lose some of the lovely green colour if you overcook the watercress.

For a starter for four, you'll need:

2 large bunches of watercress (about 150g)
1 large knob of butter
2 medium onions
2 medium-sized potatoes
800 ml chicken stock
150 ml double cream
Salt and pepper

Chop the onions roughly and sweat them in the butter until soft, but not coloured. Add the potatoes, chopped into medium dice and unpeeled, and keep everything moving around in the butter for five minutes until the potatoes are glistening. Pour over the stock, put the lid on the pan and bring to a gentle boil for about twenty minutes, until the potatoes are very soft.

Chop the watercress roughly (if you have any stalks left over from salads you've made, you can store these in the freezer until you make this soup and add these too) and add it to the pan, stirring for about a minute until the cress has turned a vivid green. Hold a bit of watercress back to garnish the soup with when you're finished. Remove the pan from the heat and liquidise the soup in a food processor.

Return the soup to the pan and over a low heat add the cream and seasoning. This soup can be served chilled, like a Vichyssoise, but I prefer it hot from the pan with lots of crusty bread.

Online product shopping

In the last week or so, I've had several emails and comments on old posts asking me where to find certain products I've mentioned. I thought listing some favourite suppliers here would be more useful than replying in the comments section of each post. So here, in no particular order, are the online suppliers who I find myself using again and again. Most of these companies deliver outside the UK. If you are in the USA, have a look at Amazon, where you'll find a lot of the ethnic ingredients listed below. (Sadly for those of us on this side of the Atlantic, Amazon in the UK is very slow in catching on to the grocery shopping it offers in the US. I'm hoping they'll roll out the service soon.)

Many of the supermarkets in the UK now offer an online delivery service. I prefer to do my own supermarket shopping (and I get much of my fruit and veg from the very good market in Cambridge), but friends who use Ocado (Waitrose's service) have been delighted. Tesco and Sainsbury's also offer a similar service, but I find that the quality of the produce at Waitrose is much better, with Sainsbury's coming in second place.

American ingredients
**Update 08 June 2007**
If you're looking for American ingredients, check out this post.

Chinese, Thai and other oriental ingredients
The Asian Cookshop is fantastic if you're living somewhere with no access to good Oriental supermarkets. They stock Mae Ploy curry pastes (my favourite brand), some fresh ingredients including pandang leaves and galangal, bottled sauces which are hard to find even in some Chinese supermarkets, and dried goods. They also carry Bombay Duck, an Indian dried fish which was unaccountably banned by the EU for a few years. It's legal again now, and if you've not tried it, I'd really recommend buying a pack to eat as a garnish with curry. This is where I come for Vietnamese spring roll wrappers, Chinese lily pods and dried mushrooms. There's even a sushi section. The Asian Cookshop delivers worldwide.

Wholesale spices and other Indian ingredients
Sweetmart, an Indian wholesalers in Bristol, sells a great range of large boxes and bags of whole spices, alongside other Indian ingredients including some excellent curry pastes. They also carry speciality flours made from barley, beans and so forth. Check out the recipe section.

Ambala foods are a great supplier. Their thoughtful range of sweet and savoury nibbles is wide, their service is impeccable (they'll always deliver within 24 hours, and are always exceptionally friendly and helpful on the telephone if you need to talk to someone in person). Sweets are posted on the same day that they are made. Try the absolutely delicious Ferrari Chevda (a nibbly, salty, spicy mix with puffed rice, cashews, sev and other good things) and the amazing Assorted Sweets box. Ambala delivers worldwide.

Herbs and spices
Seasoned Pioneers carries a vast range of spice blends from all over the world; I always have their Ras-al-Hanout, shrimp paste and tamarind paste in the cupboard. Every major cuisine in the world is represented in their range, and I love their resealable packs. The blends are fantastically imaginative, and the quality of the product is much better than anything you'll find in those little glass pots at the supermarket. (The opaque packaging helps here too.) Seasoned Pioneers delivers worldwide.

Steenbergs Organic are appallingly, addictively good. The whole range is organic, and they are the first British herb and spice supplier to use the Fairtrade mark. Alongside all this social responsibility, they've managed to find an absolute genius to blend their various seasoning mixtures; their Perfect Salt is something I simply can't manage without. They carry some fascinating and esoteric spices (the person who asked about pink peppercorns should look here). Look out for grains of paradise, a medieval English favourite; sumach (hard to find elsewhere) and white poppy seeds, which I've never seen anywhere else. Their recipes are great too. Give your credit card to someone responsible before you click on the link, or, like me, you might find yourself buying nearly everything they sell.

Steenberg's do deliver worldwide, but if you are not in the UK you will have to contact them to arrange postage.

Flavourings
I've not found any British suppliers as good as Patiwizz in France. They sell flower essences which I love for sweets and cakes (there is nothing as good as a violet fondant). The baking essences are listed alongside other flavourings I've not dared try - artichoke, sea urchin, lamb... Patiwizz are currently developing an English-language site, but for now you'll need to be able to read French to order. They deliver worldwide.

Mexican food
I've got a soft spot for Mexican food. Mexican ingredients are really hard to find in the UK, but Lupe Pinto's in Edinburgh is a terrific source. You'll find ingredients like chipotle chillies in adobo (an delicious ingredient regular readers will notice I use almost to the point of obsession), taco sauces, whole yellow chillies and my Mexican holy grail, canned tomatillos. They stock the hard-to-find chipotle Tabasco sauce, which means I don't have to import it from America any more. Lupe Pinto's also carries some American groceries for hungry ex-pats, and a great selection of tequila.

Lupe Pinto's only delivers to the mainland UK at the moment, but they hope to expand.

Chocolate
The English language is not sufficiently developed yet to allow me to express just precisely how good l'Artisan du Chocolat, based in London, is. I promise that you have never, ever tasted chocolates this good. The prices reflect the quality of the product, but once you've got one in your mouth, the chocolates feel like an absolute bargain.

L'Artisan du Chocolat delivers worldwide.

Shooter's sandwich

I first came across this recipe on the Two Fat Ladies' television show a decade or so ago. Their version of a shooter's sandwich was very plain - just a steak, salt, pepper and two Portobello mushrooms inside a hollow loaf of bread. My recipe for this perfect picnic food is a bit more exciting, with more steak, more mushrooms, plenty of garlic, fresh herbs, some sauteed wild mushrooms and a generous spiking of vermouth. It's delicious, and it looks so fantastic when you slice into it that your fellow picnickers will be speechless first with awe and later because it's very hard to talk through a mouthful of mushrooms and meat.

The sandwich looks complex, but it's very easy to prepare. The secret is in the long pressing it receives between two chopping boards. To make enough for four (alongside other picnic nibbles) you'll need:

1 loaf white bread
2 sirloin steaks, a bit shorter than the loaf
4 Portobello mushrooms
1 handful dried mushrooms
4 cloves garlic
1 handful fresh herbs (I used parsley, marjoram, chives and thyme)
½ wineglass vermouth (I used Noilly Prat)
Olive oil
Butter

Cover the dried mushrooms (I used a mixture of porcini, shitake and oyster mushrooms) with boiling water and set aside. Slice one end off the loaf and hollow out the middle, setting the soft crumb to one side.

Saute the steaks, seasoned with pepper but without salt, for two minutes per side in the olive oil. Remove to a plate. It is important that your steaks are rare so that they give up their moisture to the sandwich when pressed.

Reduce the heat and melt one knob of butter in the pan with the olive oil from the steaks. Saute the Portobello mushrooms with two smashed cloves of garlic until the mushrooms are soft and starting to release their juices. Transfer to the plate with the steaks.

Melt the other knob of butter in the same pan, and drain the dried mushrooms, reserving their liquid. Saute the dried mushrooms with two more smashed cloves of garlic for about five minutes, then add half the soaking liquid and the vermouth. Simmer until all this liquid is reduced to a few tablespoons of glossy syrup.

Season the steaks and mushrooms with plenty of salt and some more pepper. Build layers of steak, Portobello mushrooms, wild mushrooms and herbs inside the loaf until you have used everything up - if any cracks appear in the loaf, patch with the crumb you reserved. Pour any juices from the plate into the sandwich with the liquid from the pan. Wipe the cut end of the loaf in any remaining pan juices and put it back on the loaf. Wrap the whole thing in three layers of greaseproof paper and tie up tightly with string.

Place the loaf on a chopping board so the steaks are lying horizontally. Place another chopping board on top of the loaf and weight it down - I used two large, cast-iron pans and both sets of weights from the scales. Leave the sandwich (no need to refrigerate) for five hours.

Serve the sandwich by simply slicing through the whole stuffed loaf with a breadknife. The steaks will be juicy, the pressed mushrooms silky, and the whole thing full of concentrated flavour. If it's too late in the year for picnics, don't worry; just serve with some hot sauteed potatoes for a filling supper. Make a martini with some more of the vermouth if you feel that way inclined, and enjoy.

Puff-pastry tomato tart

Alert readers will have gathered that I am currently drowning in tomatoes, and that yesterday's promised recipe for the other half of a packet of puff pastry was bound to include them. You're right - today it's tomato tart. If, as a friend I was talking to tonight does, you have a vegetarian to entertain, you'll find this little tart really pretty, delicious and very quick and easy to prepare.

I found this goat's cheese (Picolive) something of a blessing; my original plan had been to stir a teaspoon of tapenade into the cheese, but this came with olive paste already sandwiched in the cheese. I bought two; it's a very nice little cheese, and I'd like some for lunch on some crusty bread.

To serve one (again, multiply the amounts to serve more people, or serve alongside yesterday's Pissaladiere), you'll need:

½ sheet of puff pastry from the supermarket refrigerator cabinet
1 crottin of goat's cheese
1 teaspoon tapenade
2 cloves garlic
10 small tomatoes (or to cover)
2 sprigs rosemary
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Score a centimetre from each edge of the pastry rectangle to form a crusty border which will puff up when you cook it. Use a fork to prick holes in the inner rectangle so it doesn't rise.

Mix the tapenade and two grated cloves of garlic with the goat's cheese, and spread it on the inner rectangle of pastry. Slice the tomatoes and arrange them in overlapping layers on top of the cheese. Top with the rosemary, season and bake at 200° C for 20-25 minutes, until brown and puffy. The tomatoes will be sweet and juicy, the cheese toothsome and the pastry crisp. It's almost enough to make you swear off meat.

Roast garlic and fresh tomato sauce for pasta

A quick and dirty recipe for gardeners with a glut of garlic and tomatoes. This pasta sauce makes the most of each ingredient - the garlic is roast for a sweet, fragrant mellow taste, and the tomatoes, fresh and juicy out of the garden. I am having unbelievable success this year with Tumbler tomatoes, which do very well in a pot.

If you're cooking this for guests, you may want to seed and peel the tomatoes, but we enjoy the tomatoes in this just chopped into chunks. I used angel hair pasta - use whatever's in your cupboard.

To serve two, you'll need:

1 bulb garlic
1 large knob butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small handful thyme
1 small handful oregano
1 large handful basil
1 lb tomatoes, chopped roughly
Salt and pepper

Roast the garlic whole with the thyme and oregano tucked around it, the butter and olive oil smeared and drizzled over it, for 40 minutes at 180° C. When the garlic comes out of the oven, set it aside to cool a little while you put the pasta on to cook and cut the tomatoes into large dice.

Squeeze the soft cloves of garlic out of their hard skins into a serving bowl. If your garlic is very fresh, you can leave the skins in to nibble on too. Mine was straight out of the ground, so the skins went into the bowl. Tear the basil roughly and put it in the bowl along with the herbs, butter and oil from the garlic dish and the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper, and put the steaming hot pasta on top of everything. Mix gently and serve immediately.

Best tomato salad

This tomato salad recipe is the perfect, sunny, flavourful accompaniment to long summer's evenings in the garden, basking by the barbecue and drinking silly amounts of Pimms. There's no cooking involved; just some slicing which is easily done with a glass by your side and the sun pouring in through the kitchen window.

If you're like me, you'll find yourself with a glut of tomatoes late in the summer. This salad is remarkable in that you can make it again and again, and it doesn't become boring. It brings out the gorgeous flavour of the sun all those tomatoes have soaked up; the basil, oregano and sweet balsamic vinegar all work together to make your tomatoes platonically tomato-ish.

Use whatever tomatoes come to hand. This salad is really pretty with a couple of yellow tomatoes scattered among the reds, or with large and small-fruiting varieties mixed together. Here, I've used small vine tomatoes and some baby plum tomatoes. To serve four as a side dish (or two as a lunch on its own with some crusty bread) you'll need:

20 small tomatoes (see note above)
1 shallot
1 handful basil leaves
½ handful oregano leaves
1 small clove garlic
1 ½ teaspoons balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons good olive oil
Salt and pepper

Slice the tomatoes and lay them out on a large serving plate. Slice the shallot into thin rings and scatter over. Roll the basil leaves into little tubes and slice them thinly to cut it into thin strips (chiffonade), and throw them over the salad with the whole oregano leaves.

Immediately before serving, drizzle the olive oil and balsamic vinegar over, and season with salt and plenty of pepper. Crusty bread will come in handy to mop up the juices.

Honey-mustard dill sauce for smoked salmon

Before we get onto the recipe, some family boasting is in order. Mr Weasel had his viva voce yesterday, and was let out after two hours fierce examining with no corrections to his thesis. This means that in June, he'll become Dr Weasel at a ceremony for which I get to wear a hat. Well done, sweetheart!

Onto the food.

Evelyn Rose is an English cookery writer who specialises in Jewish family recipes and entertaining on a large scale. This recipe is from her The Entertaining Cookbook, published in 1980, which I seem to find myself drawn back to on every large family occasion. She has a calm and deft ability with cooking for large groups, and all the recipes I've tried have been foolproof. I use my mother's copy, which she's had for twenty years; most of its pages are falling apart now, and the cucumber salad page is splattered with two decades of the best sugary Swedish dressing in the world. Sadly, the book seems to be out of print now, although I have spotted second-hand copies online for around £40. Fortunately, I am frequently to be found in second-hand bookshops, so it's likely I'll find a cheaper copy some time before I get too old to read.

Update: I finally found a copy of the book in late 2007, at the tender age of 31, for a mere quid on good old eBay.

This dill mustard is far better than the stuff from a jar. It's my favourite accompaniment for smoked salmon; try it with salmon, some buttered rye bread and a small salad. Evelyn Rose says it keeps in the fridge for a month - here, it's never hung around long for enough for me to test that assertion. The ingredients list may sound a little unorthodox, but I promise you it's the nicest honey-mustard dill sauce you've tried.

To make a small bowlful (enough for ten people or more) you'll need:

4 rounded tablespoons mayonnaise (I used Hellmann's)
1 level tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 level tablespoon clear honey
2 teaspoons soya sauce (I used Kikkoman)
White pepper
2 teaspoons chopped fresh dill (or more to taste)

Just mix all the ingredients together in a small bowl until everything is well-blended, and chill for a few hours before serving so the flavours mingle. I prefer freshly ground black pepper in this recipe, and usually use far more dill - two of the regular-sized supermarket packs, or about five tablespoons when chopped finely.

Provençale roast lamb with flageolet beans

Spring is finally here in Cambridgeshire. In celebration of the fact that some of my bulbs are finally flowering, I thought I'd eat a dear little fluffy baa-lamb.

This recipe is wonderful for this time of year, when the sun is bright and there's a jug of tulips on the windowsill. The herbs and sweet tomatoes are a real foretaste of summer. Enjoy this with a cold glass of white wine, or a pint of real ale.

To serve two, you'll need:

½ a shoulder of lamb
100g tin flageolet beans, drained
10 small tomatoes
6 cloves garlic
1 glass white wine
1 tablespoon tomato puree
1 teaspoon Marigold vegetable bouillon
A few stems of rosemary
A few stems of thyme
4 teaspoons quince jelly (use redcurrant if you can't get hold of quince)
1 handful parsley
1 handful oregano

Begin by making little slits in the skin of the lamb - six to a half-shoulder will be plenty. Stuff each resulting pocket with a quarter of a clove of garlic and a sprig of rosemary. (You may want to leave the knife in the slit and twist it to fit the garlic and rosemary into the hole.) Slice the rest of the garlic finely. Sprinkle the skin of the lamb with salt.

Quarter the tomatoes, and mix them with the the remaining rosemary and garlic and the rest of the ingredients in a heavy baking tray. Place the lamb on top, skin side up, and roast for an hour and twenty minutes at 180°C.

While the lamb is roasting, finely chop the parsley and oregano, and combine it half of it with two teaspoons of the quince jelly and a large pinch of salt. Remove the lamb from the oven and smear the herb paste all over the skin. Stir the other two teaspoons of quince jelly and the rest of the herbs into the beans around the lamb, and return to the oven for ten minutes, until glossy and beautiful.

The beans will have soaked up the juices from the tomatoes and meat, becoming sticky, rich and packed with flavour. You should be left with some meat for tomorrow's sandwiches - the beans are also delicious cold.

Herb, halloumi and green garlic salad

Wandering through Sainsbury's this evening, I saw a shelf full of fresh garlic. I spent a whole five seconds or so wondering how they'd managed to get hold of fresh garlic in March, and then (I'm being slow today) thought to read the label. It's from Egypt. Now, usually, I wouldn't buy an overpriced, overpackaged single bulb that had flown such a long way to get to me . . . but as I continued my shopping, my mind kept going back to the garlic. After being slightly snappish with the lady at the fish counter about the pathetic lack of shellfish, I finally left self-control at the vegetable counter and bought a single bulb.

Here it is, the thick outer skin peeled off. You can see each individual clove in place; the green tendrils growing in a point from each become the white, straw-like threads you'll recognise on the cloves of ordinary, cured garlic you have in your kitchen cupboard. When green, these tendrils are edible and very tasty; imagine a garlicky spring onion.

This year, I'm growing a lot of garlic for eating fresh in the garden; it's sweeter, more fragrant and less harsh than the dry product. (I'm planning to have a go at curing my own this year if I manage to raise enough in the garden.) This fresh garlic roasts to a sweet, delectable paste, perfect spread on sourdough bread or stirred into a sauce. It is mild enough to be eaten raw. Sauteed gently, as in this recipe, it is juicy, plump and delicious.

Halloumi is a salty, mild-tasting, ewes'-milk cheese from the Middle East. It has a very special quality; it holds its shape and does not melt in cooking, instead turning crisply golden outside and tender inside. The Lebanese call it the kebab cheese, and it's excellent on a skewer over a barbecue.

For a cooked herb, halloumi and green garlic salad to serve three as a main course, you'll need:

1 bulb green (fresh) garlic, separated into cloves
6 shallots, finely diced
2 packs halloumi, sliced
1 handful each chives, coriander and tarragon
Juice of 1 lemon
1 large, sweet red chili
1 knob butter

Melt the butter in a thick pan, and gently fry the whole cloves of garlic (green parts still attached) and the shallots for about ten minutes until golden. Slide the halloumi into the pan and fry on one side for five minutes until golden. Add the chili, cut into strips, turn the cheese over and wait until the second side is golden too.

Layer half the cheese, shallots, garlic and chilis in a large mixing bowl, then sprinkle herbs on top. Arrange the rest of the halloumi and the pan juices over the herbs. Squeeze the juice of a lemon all over the salad and serve with crusty bread and some sliced tomatoes.

Crisp sauteed potatoes with speck

King Edward potatoes are in the shops at the moment; they're my very favourite potato for frying and roasting flavour and texture. Extremely floury, they roast and saute to a beautiful crisp, and they also mash beautifully.

Speck is a smoked, raw ham from northern Italy. It can be eaten raw like prosciutto, but it also cooks to a glassy crispiness like a very superior bacon. It's usually in the delicatessen section of the supermarket; one small pack is plenty in this dish.

To serve two, you'll need:

6 King Edward potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
6 slices Speck
2 tablespoons duck or goose fat
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Salt and pepper to taste

Simmer the potatoes for ten minutes, until they are soft enough to push a knife through. Melt the fat in a large saute pan, and throw in the potatoes and Speck. Saute over a medium heat for twenty minutes, turning regularly until the potatoes are crusty and brown and the Speck is frizzled and crisp.

Stir in the parsley, salt and pepper away from the heat and serve immediately.

The duck or goose fat is important here. No other fat I've tried (it should be noted that Jeffrey Steingarten has a soft spot for horse fat - sadly unavailable in the UK) will result in the friable golden crisp that duck or goose fat gives. If you've made your own by roasting a duck and draining the tray, so much the better; the fat will be flavourful and will carry the scent of all the herbs and garlic you cooked the duck with.

Cha gio (nems) - Vietnamese crispy spring rolls

When Mr Weasel and I were living in Paris, we spent a lot of our time in one of the city's Chinatowns, along the Avenue d'Ivry. It's more a Cambodia-town or a Vietnam-town than London's Chinatown, which is full of Chinese people and food; France is home to many more Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian people than the UK is, and this is reflected in the food.

One of my favourite Vietnamese dishes is these spring rolls, which are very hard to find in restaurants in the UK. Many cultures cook things wrapped in other things - there is the burrito, the Malaysian po pia, the fajita, the crèpe and . . . I suppose the closest English equivalent is the Cornish pasty. The cha gio stands head and shoulders above all of these - it' s got texture and flavour to beat them all to a pulp in any contest of wrapped-up-things you may choose to imagine.

Cha gio get their texture, both crisp and chewy all at once, from the rice paper skins they are wrapped in. You can find these in good oriental supermarkets, and although they're a little fragile when dry, they're very easy to handle and wrap with. The finished rolls are wrapped in lettuce and herbs, making them taste fresh and light.

To make about sixty cha gio, you'll need:

Rolls
225g cellophane (bean thread) noodles
4 carrots, grated
8 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked
8 water chestnuts
1 dressed crab
12 raw tiger prawns, peeled and deveined
350g minced pork
1 onion
5 spring onions
4 cloves garlic
6 shallots
4 tablespoons fish sauce (nuoc mam)
3 eggs
15 x 25cm discs of rice paper (available in oriental supermarkets)

Sugar and water for soaking
Oil for deep-frying
Lettuce and mint leaves for wrapping

Sauce
4 cloves minced garlic
½ cup nuoc mam
¼ cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon chili oil
1 diced red chili

Soak the noodles in boiling water and set aside, draining and rinsing in cold water after 15 minutes. Put the mushrooms, water chestnuts, crab, pork, prawns, onions, garlic and shallots in the food processor and pulse until chopped finely. Use your hands to stir in the fish sauce, the eggs, the carrots and the noodles.

Fill a mixing bowl half-full with warm water, and dissolve about six tablespoons of caster sugar in it - the sugar will help the rolls brown and help the sweetness of the carrots come through. Soak a rice-paper disc in this until it's soft and pliable. Cut it with scissors into quarters. Place a dessert spoonful of the filling on the curved edge, fold over the adjacent corners and roll up, as in these photographs.


Deep fry the little rolls (I use a wok, which helps save on oil) until they are golden brown.

To serve, wrap each one in a leaf of lettuce with some mint leaves. Dip in the spicy sauce and do your very best to nibble delicately. Delicious.

Those visiting Paris should run, not walk to Kim Anh (51 Av Emile Zola, 15e, 01 45 79 96), where the nems are . . . pretty much as good as these, only you don't have to do all the work. (I lie. They're even better, and they're served alongside the very best Vietnamese food I've ever eaten.)

Crostini al funghi - mushrooms on toast for grown-ups

Mushrooms on toast is a noble and ancient English nursery tea. When I was tiny, I read Alison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit and loved it dearly; Little Grey Rabbit would peel the pinky-beige satin skins off field mushrooms and stroke them before cooking them on her stove. In love with the bunny, I developed a fascination with mushrooms.

I'm grown up now. I can't eat mushrooms on toast without being all post-ironic about it. In this form, though, kiddies' mushrooms on toast becomes elevated to a dinner party amuse bouche; a gorgeous, silky, creamy, rich cloud of mushrooms on crisp slices of grilled ciabatta.

I still eat it for tea. What the hell; I'm posh.

To serve three for a grown-up nursery supper, you'll need:

1 large knob of butter
1 punnet small chestnut mushrooms, sliced thin
1 punnet shitake mushrooms, sliced thin
4 shallots, chopped finely
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 small handful (palmful, really) dried porcini mushrooms, soaked
A glug of Marsala
1/4 pint cream
Juice of half a lemon
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 large handful chopped parsley
Salt and pepper
1 ciabatta

Melt the butter over a medium heat in a non-stick pan until it's bubbling gently, and turn the fresh mushrooms, shallots and garlic into it. Saute, stirring frequently, until they soften and give up their juices. Add the soaked porcini, and continue to saute until all the juices have evaporated.

Add the Marsala (about a shot-glass full) and simmer until it's all evaporated and the alcohol has burned off. Add the cream, cayenne pepper and mustard, and stir in the lemon juice, tasting all the time (you might want to use more or less than half a lemon). Simmer until the mixture bubbles and thickens, stir in the parsley off the heat, and season to taste.

While you cook the mushrooms, slice a ciabatta diagonally into ten, and toast the slices until crisp. Pile the mushrooms on the ciabatta slices, and serve immediately. Little Grey Rabbit was missing a trick.

Weekend herb blogging

Kalyn, from Kalyn' s Kitchen, is hosting a weekly herb blogging event, where bloggers photograph and talk about the herbs and other edible things in their garden. It just happened that I was in the garden early this morning waving my camera around and being looked at suspiciously by the postman and the village's early risers (most of whom were walking dogs. When I find out which of them owns the dog that keeps coming into my back garden, digging up bulbs and pooing in the hole, I shall...photograph it).

The small, flat herb in the centre here is a lemon thyme. I grow several thymes, and this is my favourite; it's very fragrant, and has a verbena edge which goes beautifully in a bouquet garni. I'll be using some in a beef and Guinness casserole later this weekend. The lemon thyme is surrounded by a French lavender, which is flowering steadily, and has been since early summer. (Given the very hard frost last night, I suspect it'll give up now.) I use the flower heads and leaves in a lavender ice-cream which you'll have to wait until next year to try. This is a fairly horrible photo when viewed this size; I was trying to be artistic. Must remember to stick to being mundane.

These are the last of the rowan (mountain ash) berries. They make a very good jelly earlier in the season, when they are still hard, mixed with crab apples, but the house is currently groaning under the weight of dozens of jars of quince jelly, so I left them on the tree this year.

An old wive's tale says that plants near a mountain ash will fail to thrive, and often die. I do have some trouble planting around this tree, especially with plants like annual fuchsias, which aren't all that hardy to start with. This year I've put in some wood anemone bulbs to flower early next year, and the hellebores under the tree do well too, so we'll see how things are doing in the spring.

Finally, the prickly wild English roses (Rosa Acidularis) in the garden, which smell so wonderful when they flower, are covered with bright haws at the moment. Rosehips can be used in an infusion, are used in a Chinese children's sweet, make another excellent jelly, and can be used as a cooked dessert fruit once the white, hairy centres are removed. I deadhead all my roses to keep them flowering late into the summer and on into autumn, but this bush I leave alone to form its haws, which are as beautiful as flowers; red, fat and shiny, they decorate the bush for months. And don't they look good in the frost?