Refried beans with salsa and chorizo

This photo reminds me that the kitchen really, really needs painting in a colour that doesn't look like bloodless frogs.

Anyway. About the food. This is my slightly European-ised (and it's no worse for that) take on Mexican refried beans. You can serve yours in chi-chi little towers like this if you're feeling all...retentive, or you can just dollop piles of beans, salsa and avocado/crème fraîche on the plate however you fancy. I have a sense that life is probably too short for chi-chi little towers.

This recipe makes more in the way of beans than you'll eat at one sitting; you'll probably get two or three meals for four out of the amounts below. (The salsa amounts below are for one meal.) This is because the long simmering of the beans and the making of the sauce that flavours them is quite time-consuming, so it's worth making plenty and freezing the remainder before you mash them to cook quickly at a later date if you want to save yourself some work. To keep the chorizo crisp, you'll need to fry some up each time you make this (although you can, of course, leave it out, especially if you have a vegetarian to feed); chopping and frying the sausage is not so much of a hardship, though, given how good it tastes.

Refritos, despite the title of this post, doesn't actually mean 'refried', but 'well-fried'. These are really worth the effort; they're silky-smooth in the mouth, and intensely savoury: a billion times better than anything you might have had out of a can. Amazingly, they also do not make you fart. To make a large panful of beans for three meals and enough salsa for one meal, you'll need:

Beans
500g pinto beans
3 bay leaves
5 cloves
2 dried chillies
1 large onion
1.5l water
1 can tomatoes
4 banana shallots
6 anchovies (yes, even for anchovy-haters - see below)
1½ tablespoons smoked Spanish paprika
2 tablespoons chipotle chillies in adobo
Bacon fat or chorizo fat to fry
1 dried chorizo

Salsa
Six medium tomatoes (vine-ripened is your best bet at this time of year)
½ banana shallot
1 small handful (about 15g) coriander
A squeeze of lime juice
1 avocado
crème fraîche

Chop the onion into rough dice and put it in a large saucepan with the rinsed beans, bay leaves, cloves and water. Bring to a simmer, put the lid on and simmer for 2½ hours, until the beans are soft. Check during cooking to make sure there is plenty of water for the beans to swim around in, adding a little more if you think they need it.

When the 2½ hours is up, halve the shallots and cut them into half-moons. In a large frying pan, saute them in two tablespoons of bacon fat or chorizo fat (using these fats does simply astonishing things to the flavour of this dish, but you can use olive oil if they make you nervous or if you are not the sort of person who keeps jars of such artery-clogging things in the fridge) with the anchovies. The anchovies will melt and break down. They will not make the dish taste at all fishy - they just add an unidentifiable and delicious richness and depth to its structure. Keep sauteeing, stirring every now and then, until the shallots are golden. Add the tin of tomatoes to the pan with the chipotles in adobo and Spanish paprika, and simmer until thickened. Using two different kinds of smoked chillies may look like overkill, but they both have very different characters, the chipotles dark and chocolatey in their heat, and the paprika much brighter. Together they're fantastic here.

Add the thickened mixture to the beans pan with a tablespoon of salt (smoked Maldon salt is good, but isn't totally necessary) and return it to the heat, this time uncovered. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the liquid in the pan takes on a texture like the sauce in a can of baked beans. You'll be able to tell when it's ready; it can take anything from 45 minutes to a couple of hours.

You can serve the beans now as a kind of baked bean. This is also the point at which you should stop to reserve two thirds of the beans for cooking later on. Set the third you are using for refried beans aside until you are nearly ready to eat.

For the salsa, just peel and seed the tomatoes, dice and mix with the diced shallot and chopped coriander, and squeeze over lime juice to taste. Chop a chorizo into coins, quarter each of these coins and dry-fry them until they are crisp and rustling in the pan. Set aside in a small bowl, reserving the fat for another go at the beans.

To fry the beans, eat 2 tablespoons of bacon or chorizo fat in a large saucepan until very hot. Mash the beans in their sauce with a potato masher. They shouldn't be completely smooth, but work at it until most of the beans are reduced to a paste. Dollop the paste into the hot fat. It will hiss and spit. Use a wooden spoon to stir the beans around in the frying pan, and keep stirring every couple of minutes until all the fat is absorbed and the liquid from the beans has evaporated to leave them thick and dense.

Stir the crispy chorizo into the beans and serve with a hearty spoonful of the salsa, some sliced avocado and a good dollop of crème fraîche. This makes a great meal on its own. If you're feeling greedy, it's also a brilliant accompaniment for a steak.

Chilli choc chip cookies

Chillies and chocolate have a lovely affinity; they're a traditional pairing in South America, where the locals really know how to treat their cocoa. I was making up a traditional toll house cookie recipe - actually, it's the traditional toll house cookie recipe, as I'll explain below - yesterday with Dr W (the family that bakes together stays together), and decided to augment the recipe with some fresh Scotch bonnet chillies. Wonderful and potent little balls of fire, they're one of my favourite chillies. If you've not tried them before, be cautious, especially if you find chillies hard to tolerate; these are hot, rocking up at between 100,000 and 350,000 Scoville Units. (The humble jalapeño only rates at between 2,500 and 8,000 Scoville Units, for the sake of comparison.)

Scotch bonnets are closely related to the habanero, but have a very distinct flavour and aroma, fruity and sweet behind all the heat, which I think is just wonderful against chocolate. I've only used one here, chopped very finely and creamed in with the butter so its powerful capsaicin (the stuff that burns your tongue off), which is fat-soluble, can work its way smoothly through the cookie dough. The chocolate chunks are a good milk chocolate - nice and smoothly cooling on your tongue against the chilli heat.

The basic recipe I've used here is the original toll house cookie recipe - I've never found a better. The Toll House was a restaurant in Whitman, Massachusetts, where Ruth Wakefield, one of the owners, was responsible for all the recipes. She came up with this recipe around 1930. Nestle bought the rights to the recipe in 1939 - this ingredients list is from Ruth's original recipe from the 1947 edition of Toll House Tried and True Recipes, where she calls them Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies. (As well as adding the chillies, I have left out a cup of chopped pecan nuts from the recipe - if you want to use them, stir them in with the chocolate bits.) Ruth preferred very tiny, crisp cookies, and only used half a teaspoon of batter for each one, with a much shorter spell in the oven. I like them quite a lot bigger for the squashy middle, and suspect you will too - if you want to make teeny cookies, reduce the cooking time.

To make about 20 cookies, you'll need:

1 Scotch bonnet pepper
2¼ cups plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup granulated sugar
¾ cup firmly-packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons chocolate morsels (I used two bars of Green & Black's cook's milk chocolate, walloped into rough chunks with a rolling pin while still in the wrappers)

Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F).

Chop the chilli very finely, discarding the seeds if you want to cut the heat down a bit. Sift the flour and salt together in one bowl. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and the chilli with an electric mixer (this should take about 2 minutes). Add the sugars gradually, creaming the mixture together until light and fluffy. Beat the vanilla and eggs (one at a time) into the mixture, then the baking soda. Turn the speed of your mixer down to low and add a third of the flour, then gradually add the rest. Stir in the chocolate pieces and drop heaping tablespoons of the mixture onto baking sheets about 2 inches apart to leave space for the cookies to spread.

Bake for between 8 and 10 minutes, until the edges and tops are just turning golden. Allow to cool on the baking sheets for a few minutes so they can firm up a little, then use a spatula to move the cookies to cooling racks (or direct to your mouth).

These are a lovely, crumbly, squashy cookie. They'll keep in an airtight container for about a week.

Crispy Thai lime chicken with fresh chilli sauce

I am currently all a-tizz about kaffir lime leaves. They're hard to find out here in the sodden fen; not all oriental grocers stock the fresh leaves (which are very pretty and look like a pair of leaves growing on the same central rib). When I have spotted them in shops, they have often been a bit elderly, and not as aromatic as you'll want them to be for cooking. Happily, you'll find them shredded and frozen in some supermarket freezer cabinets; there are currently a couple of packs in my freezer at home. They have a wonderful citrus fragrance, almost as if you were sniffing fresh lime zest through an olfactory magnifying glass. (The zest of a kaffir lime is astonishingly good stuff, but sadly I've only seen the fruit for sale in Malaysia, which isn't much help for UK home cooks.)

In most cooking, we use kaffir lime leaves in a similar way to bay leaves - as an aromatic to be infused in a wet mixture like a curry, then discarded before eating. The shredded leaves gave me an idea, though - how about using them to make a crispy crust with panko breadcrumbs for a neutral-tasting meat like chicken? Paired up with a fresh Thai chilli and ginger sauce, this turns out to be exactly how summer eating should be.

I've butterflied the chicken breasts and beaten them flat with a rolling pin to give them a bigger crispy surface area; this also helps them to cook really fast, preserving all the lovely lime flavour. I would like to believe that one per person is a sensible helping, but these were so good we ended up eating two each. To make four breaded, butterflied chicken breasts, you'll need:

Chicken
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
4 heaped tablespoons flour
1 egg
8 heaped tablespoons panko breadcrumbs (if you can't find Japanese panko crumbs, just use slices of white bread and whizz them to shrapnel in the food processor. Panko has a brilliant crispiness, though, and is worth seeking out.)
4 tablespoons shredded kaffir lime leaves (frozen or fresh - don't get the dried ones, which will leave you feeling as if you are cooking with cardboard)
Peanut oil or a flavourless oil for frying

Fresh Thai chilli sauce
1 piece of ginger the length of your thumb
Juice of 2 limes
4 fat, juicy cloves garlic
½ stalk of peeled lemongrass
2 birds eye chillies (reduce amount if you don't like your sauce too hot)
4 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
4 tablespoons palm sugar (most supermarkets seem to be stocking this now) or soft light brown sugar
1 small handful mint

It's easiest to make the sauce before you start on the chicken, which will need your attention for the very short time you'll be cooking it. Just put all the sauce ingredients except the mint in a mortar and pestle or (easier) a food processor or liquidiser, and process until you've a slightly chunky, wet sauce. Unlike commercial sauces, it won't be red - but it's none the worse for that. Chop the mint and sprinkle it over the sauce.

Start work on the chicken by butterflying your chicken breasts. This is far easier than you may have been expecting - just lay them flat, push a small, sharp knife into the thicker side of the chicken breast and make a horizontal cut almost all the way through to the other side. You should be able to open your chicken breast out like a book, with the fatter edge of the breast acting as the book's spine. Place the butterflied chicken breast between two pieces of cling film on a chopping board (the cling film stops them from sticking) and wallop the hell out of them with your rolling pin, until the chicken is a thin, even escalope, about half a centimetre thick. Don't worry about raggedy edges - the breading you're about to apply is amazingly forgiving.

Put the flour, seasoned with some salt and pepper, in one bowl, the beaten egg in a second and the crumbs, mixed well with the lime leaves, in a third. Dip the chicken in the flour, then the egg, then the crumbs, making sure it's coated well at every stage. Fry over a high heat for 2-3 minutes per side, until the crumbs are golden and crisp, and serve with the sauce, a salad or some stir-fried veg, and your choice of rice or noodles.

Som tum - Thai green papaya salad

Thanks for being so patient while I bunked off from blogging and from my other work for an indolent week. It's been lovely - I've been to the seaside, got sunburned, drunk lots of lovely summery booze, eaten some great meals, and done lots of work on new recipes: it means I'm able to come back to you fully recharged. There's lots to look forward to over a very busy couple of months to come, when I'll be blogging from Cardiff, a cruise ship just outside Southampton, New Orleans, then Vegas and Phoenix - you can probably see why I felt I needed a short break before getting back down to things!

So then: som tum. You might have ordered this dish (and if you haven't, you should; I'd rate it as one of the world's best salads) in a good Thai restaurant. Green papaya makes the base of this salad, its dense, crisp texture made the most of with some careful shredding with a sharp knife. It's bathed in a dressing which, for me, promotes it right to the head of the international salad flavour conspiracy. (See also: coban salatasi, panzanella and Swedish cucumber salad.) Som tum dressing touches every part of your tongue. It's sweet with palm sugar, salty and umami with fish sauce and dried shrimp, sour with fresh lime juice, and spiked with chilli to give the whole mouth heat. Some aromatic herbs give it a lovely nose as well - for my tastes, this is about as good a picnic dish as you could make.

Green papaya is surprisingly neutral in flavour. If you can't find any, Natacha de Pont du Bie, who encountered it in Laos, found to her pleasure that you can substitute a raw turnip in similar Laotian salads and that doing so will even fool Laotians, so I don't see why you shouldn't make the same substitution here. My papaya came from the Chinese supermarket on the railway bridge on Mill Road in Cambridge, and other oriental supermarkets with good fruit and veg sections will probably be able to help you too.

To serve up to six as a side dish, you'll need:

1 green papaya
2 fat cloves of garlic
1 Scotch bonnet chilli (or three or four Thai bird's eye chillies)
1 small handful (about 20g) dried shrimp (available from the Chinese supermarket in the chiller section)
8 cherry tomatoes
Juice of 2 limes
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons palm sugar (use soft dark brown sugar if you can't find any)
1 large handful coriander, chopped finely
1 small handful mint, chopped finely

Start by shredding the papaya. Peel it with a potato peeler (surprisingly easy), and cut into the thinnest possible strips. Some find that holding the papaya in one hand and making lengthways cuts like lots of guitar strings halfway into the fruit, then slicing down along those cuts so the shreds fall away from the fruit, is a good method. I prefer to cut the whole fruit into thin pages, and then cut piles of those into strips, because I have trouble with the hollow centre of the fruit when using the first method. Put the shredded papaya into a large bowl.

Crush the garlic thoroughly in a pestle and mortar, and add the shrimp, pounding it with the garlic for about 20 seconds. The shrimp won't reduce to shrimpy rubble, but they should be well-squished and full of flavour from the garlic. Mix the garlic and shrimp well with the papaya in the large bowl, and add the halved tomatoes, tossing everything in the bowl thoroughly as if to bruise the tomatoes and papaya a little.

Make the dressing in a jam jar so you can adjust seasoning as you go. Add the lime juice, fish sauce, palm sugar and very finely chopped chilli to the jar and shake it with the lid on until the palm sugar has dissolved. Taste the sauce - you may feel it needs to be sweeter, saltier or more sour depending on your taste, so adjust it with some extra juice, sauce or sugar. Pour it over the salad in the bowl, add the finely chopped herbs and toss vigorously again.

This salad will hang around happily for hours, so it's great to take to a picnic. I particularly love it with fatty meats or barbecued foods, or, of course, to accompany a Thai main dish.

Will you look at that - a hailstorm. Looks like I chose just the right moment to get back to work.

Tom yum soup

Certain foods are perfect for times when you're feeling a bit under the weather. Depressed? You need hot wings. Exhausted and frazzled? Mashed potato. Hormonal? Chocolate cake.

Right now, I'm sitting here with a streaming nose and stuffy head. It's not swine flu, it's hay fever. And there's one sure-fire way to nip a stuffy head in the bud: tom yum. This hot, sour Thai soup is flavoured with some of the world's most powerful aromatics, spiked with tongue-numbingly hot chillies and should be served hot enough to melt your spoon. Fantastic stuff.

You'll need to make a trip to the Chinese supermarket for most of the ingredients here. To save yourself time when making soup later on, you can freeze any leftover kaffir lime leaves, chopped galangal and lemongrass in airtight containers.

To serve two, you'll need:

1 litre homemade stock - pork or fish stock both work really well here
1 tablespoon tom yum soup paste (available at Chinese supermarkets and some Western ones too)
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 lemongrass stalks
5 kaffir lime leaves
2 inches galangal
2 small shallots
3 bird's eye chillies
1 tomato
1 carrot
12 fresh shitake mushrooms
8 fresh prawns (with shells and heads if possible - as usual, none of my local shops had any with shells on, which elicited loud cursing from me)
1 handful beansprouts
1 handful coriander
Juice of two limes

Wallop the lemongrass stalks with the end of a rolling pin until they are ragged, slice the galangal into thin coins, and remove the central stalk from the lime leaves. Slice the shallots finely, chop the chillies, dice the tomato, chop the carrot into julienne strips and slice the mushrooms. And breathe. Once you're done with the chopping, you'll be pleased to hear that you've done most of the work.

Bring the stock to a simmer, and stir through the tom yum paste and fish sauce. Add the lemongrass, galangal, chillies and lime leaves, and simmer for five minutes. Drop the tomato, shallots, mushrooms and prawns into the bubbling stock and cook for another five minutes.

While the tom yum is cooking, squeeze the juice of one lime into each of two soup bowls. Divide the raw beansprouts between the two bowls. When the five minutes are up, ladle the soup, aromatics and all (some people like to remove the lime leaves, lemongrass and galangal from the dish, but they will continue to flavour the soup once it's in the bowls) into the bowls. Garnish with generous amounts of coriander and serve immediately.

Mexican pickled red onions

These crisp, pink onions are a traditional Yucatan accompaniment for cochinita pibil, and oh, my beating heart, they're good. Red onions are par-boiled very briefly, then semi-preserved in a citrus, sugar and salt mixture spiked with chillies and cumin. They'll keep in the fridge for up to a month, which is good, good news, because besides being a perfectly pitched addition to a taco, these are one of the best accompaniments for strong cheeses I've come across. (Try some alongside a Stilton or some Gorgonzola.) They're great to look at, too; the acid in the preserving mixture turns the red onion, which acts as a universal indicator, a really vibrant pink.

I've used a little home-made habanero vinegar in the preserving mixture. It's a particularly delicious vinegar (and very easy - just steep a few whole habaneros in a bottle of white wine vinegar for a couple of weeks) - it picks up all the citrusy, fruity undertones of the habaneros and packs plenty of heat.

To make a large bowl of Barbie-toned pickled onions, you'll need:

2 medium red onions
Juice of 1 orange
Juice of 3 limes
Juice of 2 lemons
2 tablespoons habanero vinegar (white wine vinegar in which you've steeped a few habanero chillies for a week or so - see above)
1 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon sea salt
1½ tablespoons caster sugar

Halve the onions, and cut into slices. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil and drop in the onion slices. Count to twenty and drain the onions, and set aside in a large bowl.

Stir the citrus juices, vinegar, cumin, salt and sugar together in a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar and salt has dissolved. As soon as the mixture starts boiling, remove it from the heat and pour it over the onions. Cover the bowl and refrigerate until cold (a couple of hours).

Ma-po tofu

I write this with two of my friends in mind - Francis, whose tofu disintegrates, and Simon, who, on hearing that I was making something with beancurd in, said: "Ewww! Tofu!" - the sod.

Now, unlike Simon, I'm lucky enough to have spent a childhood being exposed not to the vegetarian tofu-masquerading-as-meat school of cooking, but the Chinese sort, where tofu is a delicious addendum to meat. In this dish (whose name means 'pock-marked old woman's tofu', just to put Simon off even further) the tofu isn't treated as a blank sponge of protein to absorb flavour - instead, its own flavour, actually rather subtle, delicate and somehow cooling, is a contrast to an amazingly savoury, chilli-hot surrounding of soy, chillies and pork. Totally delicious, and it's very easy to make - just make sure that all your ingredients are chopped and ready in bowls before you start to stir-fry, because you'll have to move fast once you begin cooking.

To serve six, you'll need:

500g pork mince
3 tablespoons dark soya sauce
3 teaspoons cornflour
1 teaspoon sugar
50ml Chinese wine
700g firm silken-style tofu (Blue Dragon is good, and it's easy to find in UK supermarkets)
5 cloves garlic
1 piece ginger, about the length of your thumb
6 dried shitake mushrooms without stems
400ml water
3 red bird's eye chillies (I like this hot - cut down on the chillies if you don't)
2 tablespoons chilli bean paste
12 spring onions (scallions)
1 tablespoon sesame oil

In a large bowl, mix the pork (I like quite a fatty mince here) with one teaspoon of the cornflour, the dark soy, sugar and Chinese wine. Set aside for a couple of hours in the fridge.

While the pork is marinading, soak the mushrooms in the boiling water. Chop the tofu into cubes about 2cm on each side and set aside in a bowl. Chop the garlic and ginger into tiny dice, slice the chillies finely, and put them all in another bowl. Chop the spring onions into small pieces and put the pieces from the lower, creamy and pale green half of the stem in the bowl with the garlic, ginger and chillies, and the pieces from the top, dark green half of the stem in a third bowl. When the mushrooms have soaked for half an hour, chop them into dice about the same size as the spring onion pieces, reserving the soaking liquid, and put the chopped mushrooms in the bowl with the garlic, ginger, chillies and the bottom half of the spring onions.

When you're ready to start cooking, heat a wok with a couple of tablespoons of flavourless oil in the bottom until it starts to smoke. Throw the pork and its marinade in, and stir-fry until the pork has browned and starts to look a little crusty. Add the contents of the ginger and garlic bowl, stir-fry for about twenty seconds, and add the chilli bean sauce. Keep stir-frying until everything is mixed well, and add the tofu with the soaking liquid from the mushrooms. Stir very gently to make sure everything is combined.

Turn the heat down low and bring everything to a simmer - the tofu should be distributed evenly through the mixture. Don't stir (this instruction is especially for you, Francis), or the tofu will break up - as it is, you'll notice it breaks up a little, but the vast majority should stay in firm cubes. Allow the mixture to simmer for ten minutes, then add the remaining cornflour mixed with a little cold water (the water must be cold, or you'll get lumps), stir very gently and simmer until thickened. Throw in the green tops of the spring onions, sprinkle over the sesame oil, and transfer to a bowl to serve.

Dal

I decided on a bit of childhood nostalgia for supper over the weekend. When I was a very little girl and we went to visit family in Malaysia, the biggest treat in the world was a trip with my Grandfather in his Mini Moke, starting before dawn, to inspect the rubber and palm oil plantations. It was magical - the stink of curing rubber, a thrilling terror of snakes in the dark, the burst jackfruit on the plantation floor, and the two of us bumping along jungly roots and mud in what looked for all the world like a set of tent poles in a wheeled orange dinghy.

At the end of his tour of inspection, my Grandfather habitually stopped for breakfast at an Indian coffee shop, and for me, this was the perfect end to an almost unbearably exciting morning. What we ordered was always perfectly simple: two bowls of rice, two roti canai, and a positive lake of delicious dal.

Proust had his Madelines. I have lentils. When I spooned this over my rice at the weekend, I felt as if I was seven again. Eating stuff like this is a fabulous way to keep young. To serve 4-5 people as one of two curries on the table, you'll need:

250g mung dal (mung lentils, available at Indian supermarkets)
1 large onion
4 cloves garlic
1 piece of ginger, about the length of your thumb
4 cloves
2 cardamom pods
1 star anise
3 dried chillies (I used Malaysian cili padi)
1 teaspoon curry powder (I used Bolst's)
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 or 2 Thai bird's eye chillies
Water
Salt
2 tablespoons ghee

Start by picking through the lentils for any twigs or stones. Rinse the lentils well in a sieve and soak in cold water while you prepare the base of the curry (about fifteen minutes).

Slice the onion finely and chop the garlic. Wallop the ginger with the side of a cleaver or something heavy, and chop into slices. In a saucepan, fry the onion, garlic, ginger, cloves, cardamom, anise and dried chillies in the ghee until the onion is browning. Add the turmeric and curry powder, and continue to cook for a couple of minutes. Add the drained lentils to the pan with the chopped bird's eye chillies, and pour over water to cover the lentils by about 3cm. Stir in about a teaspoon of salt.

Simmer the dal gently for between 30 and 45 minutes, until the lentils are soft. Add more water if you prefer a thinner, more sauce-like dal. Serve as one of a selection of curries.

Chilli con carne

It is with a degree of trepidation bordering on downright terror that I post a chilli con carne recipe. Chilli is one of those dishes which people have very set ideas about - your family chilli will probably differ from mine, the canonical chilli recipe from your town will differ in some subtle and important way from the canonical chilli recipe from the town next door, and I fully expect howls of outrage in the comments section because there's some detail in my chilli which you think is downright barbaric in comparison to yours. Howling makes me nervous. Let me know what makes your own chilli recipe special - and if you can do it without the howls I will be super-grateful.

This is one of those recipes which rewards you for making extra. Like all casseroles, it's best eaten when it's had a night in the fridge for the flavours to meld, and I like to freeze several portions for those lazy evenings when you just can't pull together the energy to cook from scratch.

I've used Ancho peppers here - compare them to the fresh Poblanos (their non-dried cousins) from the crema earlier this week. If you can get the fresh peppers, it's really worth making the crema to accompany this dish. The Anchos and another two varieties of chilli work with the bell peppers to achieve a gorgeously rounded, fruity base to the dish, packed with chilli heat.

To make between eight and ten portions, you'll need:

1kg lean steak mince
2 large onions
6 fat cloves garlic
6 stalks celery
3 yellow, orange or red bell peppers
3 Ancho peppers
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 cinnamon stick
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons Chipotle peppers in adobo
1 litre passata
1 large glass red wine
2 tablespoons tomato puree
Juice of 1-2 limes
2 x 400g cans kidney beans
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Dice the onions, celery stalks and bell peppers into even pieces, and use scissors to chop the Anchos (seeds and all) into bits about the same size. Chop the garlic into small pieces. Take a large, heavy-based casserole dish, and blanch the diced vegetables with the cumin, fennel, cinnamon stick, cayenne and bay leaves in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, stirring all the time, until they are turning soft, but not taking on any colour.

Add the steak mince to the casserole dish and cook over a medium heat, stirring well, until the meat is browned. Pour over the passata and the wine, stir the Chipotle peppers and their sauce, the tomato puree and a large teaspoon of salt into the mixture and bring up to a simmer. Turn the heat down low and put on the lid, and leave to simmer for 1½ hours, stirring regularly.

At the end of the cooking time, stir the drained beans in and continue to cook for ten minutes. Taste for seasoning - you will probably have to add a little more salt. Add the juice of one of the limes, taste again and judge whether you will need the other one. (Limes vary in sharpness and juiciness, so you may be able to use just one.) Decorate the finished chilli with chopped coriander - I like to have a bowl on the table so diners can add as much as they like.

If you haven't made the crema, a bowl of sour cream on the table will be tasty and will help take the heat of the chillies down a little. There are plenty of easy Mexican recipes on Gastronomy Domine you can pep this up and add interest with - it's great for an informal party - try one of the salsas, some guacamole or a gorgeous corn and squash puree. You can serve your chilli on rice, as I have here - it's also great in tortillas, on a baked potato or even with chips for dipping.

Roast Poblano crema

I live about ten miles from Ely, where there is a cathedral, a very, very good bookshop, and an excellent twice-monthly farmers' market. There are about 30 stalls, and it's a great place to pick up local meats (a slab of belly pork is lurking deliciously in the freezer as we speak) and things like good free-range eggs, pork pies and ostrich products from Bisbrook farm. Because this area is right at the heart of East Anglia's patchwork of farms, the stalls are packed to the gills with interesting fruit and vegetables. The bread in particular tends to run out early - if you do visit Ely for the market, try to get there before 11am.

Edible Ornamentals, a Bedfordshire farm growing chillies, usually has a stall full of chilli plants, pots of sauce and chillies both fresh and dried. I love their chilli sauces (some so hot it's amazing that a glass jar can contain them without dissolving in protest), but their fresh chillies can be downright amazing, and I was delighted to score five big, fresh Poblanos for £3.

Poblanos are the fresh pepper which, when dried, become Ancho and Mulato chillies. (An Ancho is dried more than the slightly soft and fruity Mulato.) They are a mild, purple pepper with a deep, fruity background - lots of flavour and very little heat, although the redder pepper in my bag was a little hotter than the others. I was planning a chilli con carne, and had some Mulatos in the cupboard ready for deployment in that. What better to eat as a side dish than a Poblano crema - those fresh Poblanos roasted, skinned and mixed with crème fraîche, lime and coriander?

To make enough crema to accompany a chilli for two or three, you'll need:

5 fresh Poblano peppers
5 tablespoons crème fraîche (or Mexican crema, if you can find it)
6 spring onions (scallions), chopped
1 large handful chopped coriander
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Rub the whole peppers with olive oil and arrange in a baking tray. Cook at 180° C (350° F) for 20 minutes, until the skin is browned and blistering (see picture). Put the whole cooked peppers in a plastic freezer bag, seal the top and put aside for five minutes while you chop the spring onions.

The business with the freezer bag will help the peppers steam from the inside, loosening the skin so you can peel it off easily. When the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel off their skins and discard, then chop open and carefully remove all the seeds. Some people like to do this under a running tap, but I recommend keeping the cooked peppers well away from water to preserve their delicious juices. Slice the silky peeled peppers into long, thin strips and put in a bowl with any juices. (I really enjoy this bit - peeled, roast peppers feel beautiful between the fingers.) Reserve a few strips on a plate to use as a garnish.

Stir the crème fraîche, pepper strips, spring onion and coriander together with the lime juice. Taste, and add salt and pepper. Garnish with more coriander and the reserved peppers, and chill for an hour before serving.

This is deliciously cooling served alongside a chilli con carne - it also makes a fantastic filling for baked potatoes and is gorgeous slopped on a baguette.

Mexican squash and corn cream

Do try this one - it's seriously good and has worked its way up to being a frequent star alongside my roast dinners. This silky, sweet puree works unbelievably well as an accompaniment, especially with poultry - I hope some of you will try it with your Christmas turkey. It's rich and packed with flavour; and like many recipes which utilise creamed corn, it's a favourite with children. It also works as a great quick main dish (and is lovely if you're entertaining vegetarians - try it over rice with an interesting salad).

Butternut squash originates in Mexico, and it has an affinity for other Mexican ingredients like the corn, the coriander and the chillies. I've used crème fraîche here to loosen the mixture - an authentic Mexican dish might use crema, the thick, Mexican, sour cream, but really the difference between the two products is minuscule. If you can't find smoky ground chipotle chillies where you are, just substitute your favourite crushed, dried chillies or chilli powder.

To serve two as a main dish or about four (depending on greed) as a side dish, you'll need:

1 butternut squash
1 can creamed corn
3 heaped tablespoons crème fraîche
1 tablespoon salted butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¾ teaspoon ground chipotle chilli
1 large handful roughly chopped coriander

Peel the squash (you'll find a serrated knife the best tool for this job - that peel is tough), remove the seeds and stringy pith, and chop the flesh into pieces about an inch square. Cover with water and simmer for 15 minutes until the pieces of squash are tender and soft when poked with a knife.

Drain the water off and return the squash pieces to the pan. Add the corn, butter and crème fraîche to the pan and mash with a potato masher off the heat until smooth. Season with the salt, pepper and chillies - you'll find this dish will require quite a lot of salt for maximum flavour because of the natural sweetness of the vegetables.

Return the pan to a low heat and bring to a gentle simmer. Remove from the heat again and stir in the coarsely chopped coriander. Serve immediately.

This squash and corn cream freezes well.

Ezme - Turkish crushed tomato and chilli salad

It's been an exciting few days. Some readers will be aware that I have a horrible allergic reaction to lobsters (face swells, airways close, scalp comes out in lumps, I get injected with adrenaline and then sleep for two days). Unfortunately, at a Chinese meal on Sunday where the rest of the family was munching their way through a couple of lobsters while I stuck to crab, I must have accidentally ingested some, because the evening saw my eyelids slowly but surely swelling up to resemble one of those bobbly goldfish. The rest of my face soon followed, and I've been lying under a duvet, groaning, ever since.

Then, as soon as I felt well enough to tackle a post here, I realised that I've left my camera at a party the day before the lobster incident. Fortunately the party was at my parents' house, where we were celebrating my lovely Dad's 60th. The camera is safe and sound, but it is about 60 miles away, full of photos, and this does mean that two of the Turkish posts I was planning on making will have to wait until I have it back. Similarly, today's post has no accompanying photographs - please imagine a cheering, dark red paste.

Ezme is served as a starter alongside other salady nibbles to be eaten with bread in Turkey. It's extremely spicy, and also serves as a deliciously fresh cold sauce to go with grilled meats. If you're in Cambridge, check out the Turkish delicatessen on Mill Road for the hot paprika paste you'll need. (Tips from readers about where other Turkish delis can be located would be very welcome - please leave a comment.)

To serve six, you'll need:

½ lb fresh, ripe tomatoes
1 pointy green pepper (the pale sort which is good barbecued)
½ a cucumber
2 spring onions
1 small handful mint leaves
1 tablespoon hot Turkish paprika paste
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
Salt, pepper, paprika to taste

Peel the tomatoes and the cucumber, and remove the stalk, interior ribs and seeds of the pepper. Chop the tomatoes, cucumber, pepper and spring onions as finely as you can without reducing them to a pulp (careful pulsing in the food processor will also do the job). Stir in all the other ingredients, tasting for seasoning. Serve at room temperature.

Halloumi wrapped in vine leaves

I had a very nice halloumi and vine leaf nibble with drinks at 6 St Chad's Place, a bar in London (a place I can't recommend to you with my hand on my heart - it's so appallingly noisy that you can forget meeting your friends there, because you won't be able to hear them speak; the chips are frozen; and they made my very pricey Dirty Martini with olives in oil, which floated repellently on top of the gin). The halloumi was excellent, though, so I've come up with my own version to be eaten in the quiet calm of my own kitchen, with a Dirty Martini made properly with brined olives and a little of their juice.

Vine leaves and halloumi are excellent with this particular drink because they are both preserved in brine, like the olives; prepared with some aromatic herbs, sharp chilli and herby honey they go down very nicely indeed, and make a good supper dish or a posh nibble to serve with cocktails. To make 12 little packets of flavour (enough to serve three as a main course with some bread or couscous) you'll need:

2 blocks of halloumi
12 large vine leaves
1 large red chilli
3 tablespoons runny Greek honey (thyme honey is great if you can find it)
1 tablespoon chopped marjoram

Any given pack of vine leaves will contain a mixture of sizes - you should be able to find at least 12 big ones in there. Discard or freeze the rest - piddling small vine leaves aren't very useful.

Rinse the vine leaves beneath a cold tap and dry with kitchen paper. Chop the chilli into 12 slivers. Slice each block of halloumi into six pieces, and lay each piece on a vine leaf as in the picture above, with a piece of chilli on top. Fold the vine leaf around the cheese as in these pictures:


Heat a large, nonstick frying pan without any oil over a medium flame. Twelve little packets fit snugly in my largest pan, but it is unusually big, so you may find you need to cook in two batches or use two pans. Carefully place each little halloumi parcel, the side with the open leaf edges down, in the hot pan and cook for four minutes. The hot cheese will have sealed the edges, so you can be less careful when turning the parcels. Cook the other side for another four minutes, and remove to a serving dish.

Drizzle the honey evenly over the halloumi and sprinkle the oregano over the dish. Serve piping hot.

Sticky Thai garlic-chilli prawns

One of the things the area I live in really lacks is a good fishmonger. As a result, raw prawns with the shells still on are very hard to find, so whenever I spot them in the supermarket I grab about six bags and freeze them.

Why do I want to keep the shells on, you ask? It's perfectly simple; cooked like this, the shells not only add rich flavour to the flesh of the prawns, but become delicious in their own right. They're a little crunchy, a little chewy, and extremely tasty, so don't bother peeling your prawn - eat it shell and all. I wish my prawns has also had heads (ask any Chinese person; the head is the best bit), but head-on raw prawns are increasingly hard to find these days.

I was planning on barbecuing these little guys, but the summer of torrential rain shows no signs of abating, and I've barely been able to use the barbecue at all this year. If the weather's this bad where you are, put the prawns under the conventional grill. Lucky readers living where there's sunshine and enough warmth to eat outdoors should drag out the barbecue for this one.

To cook enough prawns for a very substantial meal for two (or a sensibly sized meal for three) you'll need:

500g raw, defrosted prawns with the shells on (raw frozen prawns will be blue-grey, not pink)
4 tablespoons light soya sauce
2 tablespoons sweet dark soya sauce (kejap manis)
4 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
2 tablespoons honey
1 bird's eye chilli
1 head garlic
1 large handful coriander, chopped

Use a sharp knife to butterfly the prawns - make a slit between the prawn's legs from the base of the tail to the place where the head was, slicing through the flesh, but not through the shell on the prawn's back. Flatten the prawns out with your hand. Cutting the prawns like this will maximise the surface area, helping them to take up the flavour of the marinade.

Mince all the cloves from the head of garlic with a large, sharp knife. (This is very easy - just lay the cloves on a chopping board and, holding the knife at the tip and the hilt and using a rocking motion, 'walk' the blade up and down the board for about five minutes. You'll find the garlic is chopped finely and evenly. It's probably not best to eat this immediately before going on a date.) Chop the chilli finely and mix it and the garlic with all the liquid ingredients. Stir the marinade mixture well to blend everything, then tip the prawns in, stirring to make sure they're well covered. Refrigerate for 40 minutes. This is quite a penetrating marinade, so don't leave the prawns for more than an hour or they will taste too strong.

When you are ready to cook the prawns, reserve the marinade and place them on a barbecue or under a very hot grill for three or four minutes per side, until they turn pink and the skins start to caramelise a little. Meanwhile, bring the marinade to a strong boil for about thirty seconds. Drizzle a little of the wonderfully garlicky cooked marinade over the prawns to serve, and dress with plenty of fresh coriander...and remember to eat those delicious shells!

US shopping - chillies and peanut butter

Regular readers will have noticed that there are a number of American recipes on this blog, some of them requiring ingredients that are hard to source in the UK. I usually deal with this by dragging a very heavy suitcase full of cans of creamed corn and hot sauce back home every time I visit America.

Happily, I've found an online company operating in the UK (and delivering worldwide) which stocks almost all the American ingredients I use habitually. (See this post for other online suppliers.) There's Franks Hot Sauce for making Buffalo wings (in the picture above); Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker cake mixes (great for cheats' cake recipes); creamed corn (unaccountably hard to find here) and cornmeal to make cornbread; Aunt Jemima pancake mix; and all the Cap'n Crunch you can shake a milky spoon at. The Stateside Candy Co has slightly awkward navigation, but once you've found your way round, it's easy to get your hands on what you're after. Prices are a little higher than they are in America, but shopping like this does mean that you don't need to buy an extra suitcase.

Alongside several pints of Frank's hot sauce and enough creamed corn to bring the digestive tracts of a small village to a shuddering halt, I bought a jar of one of my favourite things on Earth: Smuckers Goober Grape (pictured left). This is a wonderful swirled confection of peanut butter and grape jelly (grape jelly being yet another thing it's hard to find here) to spread on your toast direct from the jar. This is the problem (at least for me) with shopping for food online - it seems perfectly calibrated to make me buy snacks. I also ended up with a pack of Scorned Woman cheese straws made with chilli sauce (mediocre, full of additives and not recommended) and some perfectly noxious but also perfectly addictive pretzel bits filled with cheese.

Best of all was the bottle of Amazon Peppers. These are preserved in vinegar, and their small size and prettiness might obscure the fact that these are basically the hottest things I have ever put in my mouth. The orange ones at the neck of the bottle are orange habaneros - at between 200,000 and 300,000 Scoville Units, these are among the hottest chillies in the world. Touching the edge of your little fingernail to one of these guys and then touching the nail to your tongue will have you running to the tap for a big glass of water.

Habaneros are deliciously fruity, and, treated with respect, can act like a solid hot sauce. I used one between the two of us to accompany the Coca Cola chicken I cooked on Monday, and we sliced minuscule slivers off it to dab on the chicken pieces on our forks. We sweated a lot and found ourselves screaming occasionally, but we were happy. The yellow and red peppers in the bottle are the much more benign (at 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units) Capsicum frutescens, the same pepper that's used to make Tabasco sauce. Happily, the vinegar has carried the heat from the habaneros at the top all the way to the bottom of the bottle. You can use the very spicy vinegar as a cooking ingredient, and top it up when you're done - heat will continue leaching out of the chillies.

Excuse me as I wrap up this post early. I need to go and wash my tongue.

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.

Green curry

Thai green curry is fierce stuff. A green chicken curry is also pretty easy to make at home; with half an hour to spare you can produce a wok full of searingly hot, aromatic deliciousness.

Although you can make your own curry paste from spices and fermented fish paste at home, I've found that Mae Ploy's green curry paste is so good and so convenient I don't bother any more. Some UK supermarkets stock it (I've seen it in Waitrose and Sainsbury's), you'll find it in oriental supermarkets as a matter of course, and it's available online in the UK and through Amazon in the US, where you can buy things to eat while you read your books. Please do not believe what it says on the pot. If you use three tablespoons of this extremely hot paste in a curry of this size, you'll lose sensation in most of your digestive tract for the rest of the evening (which may be a blessing). I love hot curries, but there's a point past which even my tastebuds refuse to go.

To serve two you'll need:

1 can coconut milk
2 tablespoons Mae Ploy green curry paste
2 large chicken breasts, boned and skinned
8 small aubergines, halved, or one large one cut into pieces
1 small can bamboo shoots
1 tablespoon palm sugar (substitute soft brown sugar if you can't find any)
5 kaffir lime leaves, torn
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 handful basil leaves

I couldn't find any kaffir lime leaves - they'd sold out at the Malaysian supermarket I went to in London at the weekend, so I used the pared zest of a lime instead. If your supermarket stocks Bart's Spices, you should be able to find freeze-dried kaffir lime leaves, which work very well.

I like to use Chaokoh coconut milk (Americans can find it here, and Brits here; it's very inexpensive and extremely useful in the kitchen, so stock up on plenty). It's something Rosemary Brissenden's excellent South East Asian Food put me onto; when cooking a Thai curry, you need to look out for a coconut milk like Chaokoh, without emulsifiers, thickeners and God knows what else. This is because you'll be cooking with the thick part of the milk, which will float to the top of the can, until it separates and releases its oil - in a coconut milk with added gubbins, the oil will never separate out, no matter how much you cook it. You need this oil for flavour, and because it's the fat you'll be 'frying' the curry's ingredients in.

Chop all your ingredients before you start. Put the thick, solid part of the coconut milk in the wok (about half a can of a watery-looking liquid will remain in the can), and cook it, stirring, over a high flame until it is bubbling and the oil has separated from it. Add two tablespoons of curry paste to the wok and carry on stirring until the paste no longer smells harsh and raw - you'll notice a mellow, aromatic fragrance starts to develop.

Add the chicken to the wok and continue to 'fry' until the meat has all changed colour. As you stir, add the remaining liquid from the coconut can, a tablespoon at a time. Add the sugar, fish sauce, lime leaves or zest and vegetables to the wok and turn the heat down. Simmer for about eight minutes, until the meat and vegetables are cooked through and the sauce has thickened a little. Taste a little of the sauce to check the seasoning and adjust if you want to.

Take the wok off the heat and stir in a large handful of basil, torn roughly. Thai basil is much more fragrant, with a delicious edge of anise, but if you can't find any, the European sort will be fine. Serve on top of a bowl of rice, and make sure you allow plenty of the delicious sauce to soak into the rice.

Seared scallops in smoked prosciutto with chilli oil

Waitrose is currently carrying a really good prosciutto affumicato - a cold-smoked, raw Italian ham. It's delicious straight out of the packet, but I've been wondering for a few weeks what I could do with it in a recipe. It needed to be something simple; this stuff is very good indeed, and deserves not to have its flavour masked with too many other ingredients.

The answer came to me at the fish counter at the end of the day. There were a dozen queen scallops left - small, but sweet and firm, and not pumped full of weight-increasing water. (If you are shopping for shucked scallops, ignore any which are soft and white - they will be full of water. A non-watered scallop is a creamy colour, and is sometimes tinted the palest pink.) They were labelled with some money off, since they'd have gone out in the trash at closing time if they'd not been bought. I snaffled them along with a dozen slices of the prosciutto and ran in the direction of my frying pan.

Pork goes curiously well with shellfish. One of the most memorable meals I've had in years of French eating - I even lived in Paris for a bit, hunting down that perfect supper - was a silky, heady casserole of pig's trotters and beautiful baby clams. (The restaurant was le Pont de l'Ouysse in the Dordogne, for those doing the stereotypically British thing this summer. Turn your speakers off before clicking that link - there's French electric guitar midi on the jump page.) Of course, the Chinese specialise in the pork/shellfish combination; much of the filling in your dim sum is made from a minced prawn and pork mixture, and some of the more wonderful things I've had with scallops, preserved oysters and abalone have been heavy on the stewed belly pork.

This being the case, I got some Chinese chilli oil out of the fridge to go with the scallops. I usually have a few jars on the go; one with a dried shrimp base, one with just garlic and chillis (surprisingly good in Italian sauces) and one with a dried scallop base. This was Way On's XO scallop version (many Chinese supermarkets in the UK carry it - if you can't find it, use one with shrimp), and it finished the dish beautifully, making the scallops darkly rich and spicy without tasting characteristically Asian.

For twelve little parcels, you'll need:

12 queen scallops, without roe
12 slices of prosciutto affumicato (use Speck if you can't find the prosciutto)
1 teaspoon chilli oil (see above)
Olive oil

Wrap each scallop, parcel-style, in a piece of the prosciutto. You don't need to secure with a skewer; the ham clings to itself nicely, and once heated will not be soft enough to unravel. Don't season - there's plenty of salt and spicing in the ham, and you'll get heat from the chilli oil. Heat the olive oil over a medium flame for a couple of minutes.

Cook the scallops for precisely four minutes on each side (you want the ham to be crisp and golden where it's touched the pan, but the scallops should be only barely cooked in the centre to keep them sweet and toothsome). Remove to a serving dish and drizzle with the chilli oil - it's packed with searingly hot chillis, so a little goes a long way. Serve with crusty bread and a Sauvignon Blanc.

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.

Weeping Tiger

It's a chromosomal abnormality passed on by my father (Chinese by way of Malaysia); every week or so I find myself subject to an overwhelming craving for oriental food. One kitchen cupboard is kept full of Chinese, Malaysian, Thai, Indonesian and Japanese condiments, including seven kinds of soy sauce, numerous sticky brown things in jars, hermetically sealed packets of blachan (the stinkiest thing in the house, but completely necessary in a lot of Malaysian and Thai dishes), dried fungus, four different kinds of dried noodle, four kinds of rice (not including the two risotto rices in the other cupboard), lye water, pork floss, fish floss, rice wines, black and red vinegars and some mysterious tins which have lost their labels. This is all in order that this craving can be assuaged any time it hits, as long as I'm in the house.

The craving thumped me between the eyes this time when we were expecting some friends. Weeping Tiger, a Thai beef dish, would hit the spot, with some Chinese noodles for some stodge. I took a good-sized piece of sirloin steak per person, and rubbed each well with kejap manis, an Indonesian sweet soy sauce.

I made some Nuoc Mam Gung - a sweet, salty, strong sauce made from raw ingredients. I put a peeled piece of ginger the length of my forefinger, two peeled limes, four cloves of garlic, half a stalk of peeled lemongrass, two birds eye chilis, four tablespoons of Nam Pla (Thai fermented fish sauce - I use Squid Brand, a Thai premium brand, because it has a fabulous label) and four tablespoons of caster sugar into the Magimix, and whizzed the lot until I had a sauce. If you follow this recipe, you may prefer to use less chili; taste the sauce when it's out of the blender and see whether you think it needs more lime juice or fish sauce. You may want to add a little water if you find it too strong.

After the sirloins had marinated for half an hour, I grilled them in a very hot, stovetop grill-pan, keeping the middles pink (about two minutes per side). The steaks were then sliced very thin and placed, still warm, on top of a crisp salad with grated carrot, Chinese leaves, cabbage, shallot, mint leaves and coriander leaves. The nuoc mam gung I'd made earlier was drizzled on top - delicious.

This dish is notably lacking in carbohydrate. To remedy this, I made a very simple garlic cauliflower noodle stir fry which my Dad used to make regularly when my brother and I were little; real childhood comfort food.

This dish needs pea thread noodles - a very thin noodle made from mung beans. These noodles are one of my favourite kinds; they're thread-thing, transluscent and glassy, and they don't go slimy in sauces. I broke off half a packet and made them soft in boiling water, then drained them and rinsed them under the tap in a sieve. At the same time, I took eight dried shitake mushrooms and put them in boiling water to rehydrate. When they were soft I sliced them thinly.

To serve four people, I broke up a large cauliflower into bite-sized florets. I stir-fried six roughly chopped cloves of garlic in very hot groundnut oil, added the cauliflower and mushrooms after about a minute and stir-fried that for another three minutes. I then added a pint of chicken stock (I usually keep home-made stock in the freezer, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with a stock cube if you don't have the time), half a glass of Shaosing rice wine, about three tablespoons of mushroom soy and the same amount of light soy. I then put the lid on the wok for four minutes. Lid off, noodles in, taste, add more soy sauce. (I also add half a teaspoon of MSG at this point, which will doubtless cause gasps of horror from my Mum when she reads this; sorry Mummy.)

I thought my Chinese food craving had been squashed for the week. Unfortunately, writing this meal up has made it come back again. Time for a pork floss sandwich.

Lunchtime update:
Emails and comments have been arriving asking what the hell pork floss is. It's not something I shall be cooking for you, since I don't want another bout of RSI (this is a dish which needs several hours' constant stirring); besides, it's one of those things I always fill suitcases with when returning from Malaysia. There's an excellent post at Umami on pork floss, which I commend to you.

Pork floss is, simply, lean, lean pork cooked with spices, sugar and sauces until the muscle fibres come apart in a dry, flossy mass; it melts in the mouth and tastes beautiful. It's a gorgeous garnish, a delicious snack and one of my favourite things.