Boston baked beans

Home-made Boston baked beans are deliciously, wonderfully, shockingly different from the canned variety. When you try these, you'll wonder just exactly what happened in the long-ago board meeting when Heinz made their plan to pass off their sweetly uninteresting beans as the real thing. There's so much more going on here than a thin tomato slime surrounding stiff little beans. In beans made properly you'll find delicately soft beans in a thick, rich sauce studded with clove-studded onions, herbs like bay and cinnamon, and deeply savoury chunks of ham.

Baked beans want your time and your love. You'll be baking them at a low temperature for six hours, stirring attentively every now and then. Your house will fill up with some really, really good smells. Eat these beans as main course with some good bread, or to accompany a porky barbecue or some pulled pork. This happens to be one of those recipes which improves after a night's refrigeration, which will help the flavours meld to an even deeper degree.

I've used part of a ham I cooked according to this recipe. That ham yielded three meals: the ham itself with fried potatoes, a Pasta alla Medici, and these beans. One of the ingredients in the beans is the liquor the ham cooked in. If you haven't made a ham yourself, or have made a ham to a recipe which doesn't yield a sweet cooking liquid, just replace the 500 ml of sweetened stock with 500 ml cola (not diet). It sounds barking, but it tastes divine.

To make six servings, you'll need:

500 g dried haricot beans
1.5 l water
500 g cooked, smoked ham (recipe here)
500 ml stock from a ham cooked in cola (see above for substitution)
1 large onion
10 cloves
3 bay leaves
1 tablespoon molasses (treacle)
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 dried chipotle pepper (use any hot chilli pepper if you can't find chipotles)
1 head garlic
1 cinnamon stick
2 teaspoons salt

Put the dried beans in a large bowl and pour the cold water over them. Soak overnight. The next morning, simmer the beans in this water in a covered pan without salt (which will make them tough) until they are soft - about an hour.

Heat the oven to 180° C (350° F). Drain the beans, reserving their soaking liquid, and put them in a heavy casserole dish with a tight-fitting lid. Quarter the onion and press the cloves into it, and chop the garlic. Push the ham, onion, garlic, chilli pepper, bay and cinnamon into the beans, stir in the garlic, then combine 500 ml of the soaking liquid from the beans with 500 ml of the ham's cooking liquid in a jug and stir in the molasses, the maple syrup, the salt and the mustard. Pour this over the bean mixture, put the lid on and put in the oven for six hours.

Stir the beans every hour or so. You'll notice that very gradually, the beans will take on colour and the sauce will thicken. If you think the dish is looking too dry, add some water to the casserole dish - if you reach the last hour of cooking and the mixture is looking wetter than you would like, remove the lid.

The beans will keep in the fridge for over a week, but they're so good that you're very unlikely to be able to keep them in the house for that long without eating them.

Sweet potato and chickpea curry

I like to make a vegetable curry as an accompaniment when I make a meat one, but this curry is substantial and tasty enough to stand up as a meal on its own with rice. This curry is in a southern Indian style, with coconut milk making the curry rich and thick, and lime juice adding zing. It's great for vegetarians - it's loaded with flavour, and will have the meat-eaters fighting among themselves (probably with forks) for a helping too.

I have been lazy in this recipe and haven't made my own curry paste. A good shop-bought curry powder works very well here - as usual, I recommend Bolst's Madras powder, which is really well-balanced and fragrant. To serve four, you'll need:

3 sweet potatoes
2 onions
6 spring onions plus more to garnish
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 inch piece of ginger
4 cloves garlic
1 can chickpeas
1 can coconut milk
1 bird's eye chilli (more if you want a hotter curry)
1 handful chopped coriander leaves
Juice of 1 lime
3 tablespoons oil
Salt to taste

Dice the onions and slice the spring onions, and sauté them in the oil with the curry powder and the coriander, cumin and fennel seeds until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the garlic and ginger, both chopped finely, with the diced and peeled sweet potato and the sliced chilli, and continue to sauté until the sweet potato starts to caramelise and brown a little at the edges.

Pour the coconut milk over the curry, cover and simmer for fifteen minutes, until the sweet potato is soft. Add the drained chickpeas to the pan with half the lime juice and a teaspoon of salt, and simmer for another five minutes. Taste for seasoning - you may want to add more lime. Remove from the heat and stir in the fresh coriander, and garnish with some sliced spring onion.

This curry tastes even better if you leave it in the fridge for a day before reheating and serving. If you do this, add some more fresh coriander when you serve it.

Padron peppers - Spanish roulette

One of the things I love about tapas is that they're often so easy to prepare. Slice a chorizo, pour over red wine, stick in pan, reduce, eat. Slice some manchego and quince cheese. Eat. Place olives in small bowl. Eat. Put prawns in dish with olive oil, garlic and chillies. Make hot. Eat. Procure a ham. Slice. Eat.

Given that tapas are there primarily as a salty accompaniment to your drink, these simple, clear flavours make a lot of sense. The quality of raw ingredients in preparations like this becomes all-important, and often the best of those raw ingredients are the seasonal ones. Enter the Padron pepper.

These little green jewels are a deliciously sweet, fresh-tasting pepper which comes ready in the summer. They are, for the most part, delightfully mild - but one in every ten or so has a strong chilli kick. There is nothing better than a dish that engages your sense of danger. The Spanish have a saying: Pimiento de Padrón, pequeño pero matón. Translated very approximately, this means: "Padron pepper - teensy-weensy thug".

To serve two as a nibble with drinks or as a starter, you'll need:

150-200g Padron peppers (see below for suppliers)
5 tablespoons olive oil
A generous sprinkling of sea salt

Heat the olive oil in a large pan to a medium temperature, and drop the peppers in. Stir the peppers in the oil for about four minutes, until their skins are blistering. Remove the peppers to bowls with a slotted spoon, sprinkle over plenty of salt, and serve piping hot. To eat, hold the peppers by the stem and bite off the whole fruit. Keep a glass of something cold to hand in case you get one of the very spicy ones.

It's worth getting your hands on some Padron peppers at this time of year, when they are at their very best. I've seen them in Waitrose, but if you don't have a local branch you can also order them online in the UK at Little Green Men, where they have some great chilli products.

Japanese coleslaw

This coleslaw is very quick and easy to throw together, and it's a great alternative accompaniment for your barbecues. Wasabi and ginger give this coleslaw a great SE Asian kick, and the sweet white cabbage and carrot shreds really respond well to the savoury dressing.

I've used powdered wasabi here, which you can usually find at Asian grocers. It's sweeter and has more zip to it than the pre-prepared version. Check your wasabi packaging to make sure that wasabi (horseradish on some packs) is the only ingredient.

To serve about four people, you'll need:

1 white cabbage
2 large carrots
½ inch piece of ginger
3 tablespoons seasoned Japanese rice vinegar (I like Mitsukan, which you should be able to find at a good supermarket)
1 ½ tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 ½ tablespoons soy sauce
1 heaped teaspoon wasabi powder
2 teaspoons soft brown sugar

Shred the cabbage finely with a knife, and grate the carrots. Mix the vegetables together in a large bowl.

Add the vinegar to the wasabi in a small bowl, and leave aside for five minutes. Grate the ginger and stir it into the vinegar and wasabi mixture with the soy sauce and sugar, and keep stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Add the sesame oil, whisk briskly to emulsify all the ingredients, and pour the finished dressing over the cabbage and carrots. Toss everything together and serve immediately. This coleslaw does not keep well (the salad will wilt in the dressing), so you have a great excuse to eat it all in one go.

Focaccia with onion and rosemary

My week was brightened no end yesterday when I discovered that Jean-Christophe Novelli was linking to one of the recipes on Gastronomy Domine. I'm cooking a lot of things like the aubergine caviar he mentions at the moment - it must be the weather. To make the most of the short English summer, it's lovely to eat a cold al fresco supper with some good, home-made bread. This explains the bread-making binge I appear to be on at this week. Fresh bread tastes great, it makes the house smell fantastic, and there is something strangely soothing about pummelling the hell out of a wodge of dough as you knead it; not to mention the lovely feeling you get from poking your fingers into a baby-soft, freshly-risen batch to knock it down. Bread dough is deliciously tactile, but I shrink from describing the full puffy, silky, stretchy glory of it in case you all decide I'm some sort of dough pervert.

Focaccia is an Italian bread enriched with plenty of olive oil. The oil in the dough makes it a dream to work with, and although it has a long rising time to help it develop its lovely open texture, all you have to do is knead, then wait for the dough to rise a couple of times. I've flavoured this focaccia with rosemary and chillies stirred into the dough itself, and a caramelised onion topping slathered on top. It's lovely cut into squares and served with some Mediterranean-style cold nibbles like caponata, aubergine caviar, hummus or panzanella, and a bowl of olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip into.

To make one focaccia you'll need:

Bread
500g strong white bread flour
1 packet instant yeast
275ml tepid water
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons olive oil (plus extra for oiling bowl and dough)
5 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons Italian chilli flakes

Caramelised onion topping
2 large onions
3 tablespoons olive oil
A few sprigs of rosemary to decorate
12 olives
Olive oil to drizzle and salt to sprinkle over

Put 250g of the flour in a large mixing bowl with the yeast, chopped rosemary and chillies, then pour in the tepid water - this should be around blood heat - and the olive oil. Beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth, then start to stir in the remaining flour, a handful at a time, until you have a soft dough. The dough should not be completely dry - a little stickiness is fine, and should have vanished by the time you have finished kneading because of the magical development of the gluten in the wheat. You may not find you need to add all the flour - the amount you use will depend on the flour you have bought and the humidity and temperature of your kitchen. (I had about 20g left to put back in the bag when I was done.) Knead the dough vigorously for at least ten minutes, until it is very smooth and stretchy. Oil the dough ball and put it inside an oiled mixing bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise for two hours in a warm place.

The dough should have more than doubled in size. Knock it down to its original size and knead again for five minutes, then spread it out in a baking tin (mine was 25cm x 35cm), making sure the dough is even and pushed well into the edges and corners. Cover with the damp cloth again and let the focaccia rise for 45 minutes, then push the dough flat again and let it rise for a further 45 minutes while you heat the oven to 220° C (425° F) and prepare the onions by sautéing them in the oil over a low heat until they are sweet and golden (about 20 minutes), then putting them aside to cool.

Push 12 olives into the surface of the risen focaccia in a pattern with some rosemary sprigs, and spread the onions gently over the top (don't push too hard when you spread, so the bread does not deflate). Pour over some more olive oil to fill the olive holes, sprinkle with coarse-grained salt and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden on top, then place on a rack to cool.

Beer-leavened rye bread

Why is rye flour so tricky to get your hands on in the UK? I've been craving rye bread ever since we were in Finland, and ended up sending away to Shipton Mill in Gloucestershire, where you'll find some extraordinary speciality flours. How about mucking around with some Swiss dark flour, organic chestnut flour or something called Emmer wholemeal - an ancestor of modern wheat? There are eight white flours alone, including a specialist cake flour, a French white flour especially for baguettes and an Italian variety for ciabatta. Shipton Mill is fantastic for baking nerds.

I ordered a few kilos of flour, including some dark rye. I've not handled rye flour before, so I've started here with a relatively easy recipe (no sourdough starters, which need feeding for days), where the rye flour is supported by some strong white wheat flour. The gluten in rye is more fragile than wheat gluten, so you'll need to treat the bread dough a little more gently than you might with a loaf made entirely from wheat. The beer and brown sugar give the bread a lovely malty quality, and we really enjoyed it with some smoked salmon, capers, diced shallot and crème fraîche. To make two loaves you'll need:

375 ml beer (use something with some bite - I used an English bitter)
125 ml water
5 tablespoons softened butter
1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
200g dark rye flour
350g-400g strong white bread flour
1 pack instant yeast

Melt the butter and heat the beer and water together until they are lukewarm. They should be around body temperature - test the liquid on the inside of your wrist. Stir two tablespoons of the butter, the sugar and the salt into the beer and water mixture until the sugar and salt are dissolved.

Sift the rye flour and instant yeast into a large bowl, and add the lukewarm liquid to the bowl, beating with a wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth. Add the strong white bread flour to the bowl a handful at a time, stirring all the time, until you have a soft dough. (You may find you do not need as much as 400g of flour to achieve a soft dough; you will probably need somewhere between 350g and 400g.) Make the dough into a ball and leave in the bowl, covered with a damp tea towel, for 15 minutes. This will help the gluten develop.

When the dough has rested for 15 minutes, knead it for five minutes. (This is less kneading than you would require with an all-wheat bread.) The dough should be soft and no longer sticky. Coat the inside of another large bowl with another tablespoon of butter and put the ball of kneaded dough into it, covering the dough ball with a tablespoon of softened butter too. Cover the bowl with the damp tea towel and leave in a warm (not hot) place for two hours to allow the dough to rise.

After two hours, punch the dough down and knead it gently for one minute. Divide the dough into two and form it into two round, flat loaves on baking sheets covered with greaseproof paper. Allow the bread to rise in a warm place again, this time uncovered, for forty minutes, while you heat the oven to 190° C (375° F). When the loaves have risen, drag a serrated knife across the tops to make a pattern.

Bake the loaves for around 45 minutes (start checking them from about 35 minutes in) until they are golden on top and sound hollow when you knock on the bottom. Glaze the loaves with the rest of the butter, melted. This bread is delicious served while it is still warm, but will keep for a few days in the bread crock.

Honey-mustard pork steaks with onion and apple pilaf

I'm going to the US for ten days tomorrow for a friend's wedding in MA and my first trip to New York. (Yes, I am almost pathologically excited about the restaurants.) Posts may be a bit thin on the ground while I'm away, but I'll try to update occasionally.

Today's recipe is a nice easy marinade for some pork shoulder steaks (a lean cut that benefits from some robust marinading), and an onion and apple pilaf to accompany them. What is it about apples and pork that works so well together? I've used Braeburn apples here - although they're an eating apple rather than a cooking one, they hold their shape well when cooked, especially if you leave the skin on, and that skin is a pretty pink, so they look good too. Being an eating apple, they're also nice and sweet, which is fantastic with the salty pork. This is an economical dish to cook for a lunch party. You can often find pork steaks on sale at a low price, and although rice is more expensive these days, it's still not crippling. Serve alongside a nice lemony salad to cut through the sweetness.

To serve six, you'll need:

Pork
6 pork steaks
3 heaped tablespoons grainy Dijon mustard
3 heaped tablespoons runny honey
4 tablespoons light soy sauce
Juice of 1 lemon
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Pilaf
800 g Basmati rice
2.25 litres chicken stock
2 large onions
3 Braeburn apples
5 cloves garlic
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon crushed dry chilli
8 fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
1 small handful parsley
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper

Pork method
Marinade the pork in the mustard, honey, lemon, soy and olive oil overnight. Cook under a hot grill, about 7 minutes per side, basting frequently with the marinade.

Pilaf method
Slice the onions thinly. Core two of the apples and chop them into dice. Chop the garlic. Sauté the onions, garlic and apple pieces with the chillies and cinnamon stick in the olive oil and butter until soft. Stir in the balsamic vinegar and sugar with a teaspoon of salt, and allow the vinegar to bubble and reduce for thirty seconds. Tip the dry rice and the sage into the pan and stir well to make everything is mixed. Pour over the hot stock and bring to a fast boil, then immediately turn the heat down low, put the lid on and simmer gently for 12 minutes. Season to taste and dress with the remaining apple (diced or sliced - it's up to you) and some fresh parsley.

Sautéed cauliflower

Ah, the cauliflowers of our youth. I'm sure you remember the buggers: grey and brain-ish, boiled until soft and claggy by the school dinnerladies; or (worse) bobbing up and down in salty water in your Grandma's kitchen sink as a legion of little black insects died in unison and floated out of the florets. They never all vacated the cauliflower - I spent miserable hours at the table with the tip of a knife, digging out wiggly, squashy bodies and things with far too many legs, and smearing them on my napkin.

It took me some years to mentally rehabilitate the cauliflower, and I know plenty of adults who still won't touch the things. Happily, these days you are very, very unlikely to come across an insect-riddled specimen (pesticides are the modern cook's friend), and grey mush is easily avoided if you're cooking them at home. Best of all, it turns out that a cauliflower which is roasted or sautéed is totally delicious. It has a great texture and takes on a sweet and toasty flavour a little like roast chestnuts - nothing at all like the bitter, wet stuff you remember from school. Serve as a side dish or as one of a selection of vegetably nibbles. And if you're low-carbing, which at least two of my friends are at the moment, this is a very tasty way to get your vitamins without carbs.

To saute a head of cauliflower you'll need:

1 cauliflower
Olive oil to cover the bottom of a large saute pan
Salt

(This may be the shortest ingredient list I have ever posted!)

Separate the cauliflower into large florets (see picture) and slice them lengthways so you have flat pieces of cauliflower about a centimetre thick. Heat the oil in the pan until it is shimmering, and slide the cauliflower in. Brown on one side (four or five minutes) before turning carefully and browning on the other side. Serve spread out on a large plate, sprinkled generously with sea salt.

Plantain and sweet potato cake

This is a kind of rösti, which I came up with to accompany some jerked chicken. Plantains are great: they are a cousin of the banana, and look like a giant, green, yellow or creamy version of the things you eat for pudding. Unlike a banana, a plantain is usually served cooked, either when under-ripe, when they are wonderfully starchy, or overripe, when they become sweet.

You can treat an under-ripe (green) plantain much as you would a potato. I've teamed my plantains up with a sweet potato here for some colour and extra sweetness. The allspice here is typically Jamaican, and goes really well with the jerked chicken you'll find on this site.

To serve 3-4 as a side dish, you'll need:

2 large green plantains
1 large sweet potato
1 medium onion
1 ½ teaspoons ground allspice
Butter and oil to fry
Salt and pepper

Peel the plantains by chopping them in half widthways (not lengthways, as you would a banana) and easing the tough skin off. Grate the creamy flesh of the fruit. Peel and grate the sweet potato and the onion. Mix the grated sweet potato, plantain, the onion and allspice and some salt and pepper to taste in a large bowl, and melt a generous amount of oil and butter together in a large, non-stick frying pan until the butter starts to bubble.

Add the plantain and sweet potato mixture to the pan and pack it down so you have a thick pancake. Fry over a medium heat for ten minutes, then put a large plate over the pan and turn the whole arrangement upside-down, so the pancake ends up crispy side up on the plate. Return the pan to the heat, add more oil and butter and slide the pancake in, uncooked side downwards, and fry for another ten minutes. Serve piping hot.

Aromatic braised lamb shanks

A few years ago, when lamb shanks hadn't appeared on every pub menu in the country, they were a great cheap alternative to other cuts. These days, unfortunately, they're a bit pricier as people have become less scared of pieces of meat with bones in them - a shame, because when braised they're easy to handle and taste fantastic, their meat sweet from proximity to the bone and luxurious in the mouth from long simmering.

Because this is such a lusciously rich cut, lamb shanks benefit from lots of aromatics to lift the flavour. I've used a mixture of French and Moroccan flavours to produce what I imagine you might do with lamb shanks in Marrakesh. I have never been to Marrakesh, and this would probably be considered totally weird by any real Moroccans, but I'm very pleased with the results. Don't be put off by the long ingredients list; this isn't hard to make, and can all be done on the stove top.

To serve two, you'll need:

2 lamb shanks
3 carrots
5 sticks celery
1 large white onion
1 head garlic
½ bottle red wine
800ml stock (use lamb stock if you have some in the freezer - otherwise chicken will be fine)
800g passata
2 tablespoons tomato puree
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 heaped tablespoon soft brown sugar
1 tablespoon Ras al Hanout
1 inch piece of ginger, grated
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
½ stick cinnamon
2 dried chilllies
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
1 can chick peas
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Dice the onions, carrots and celery, chop the garlic and grind the fennel, cumin and coriander seeds together in a mortar and pestle. Rub the lamb shanks with salt and pepper.

Heat about 5 tablespoons of olive oil over a high flame in the bottom of a heavy casserole dish with a close-fitting lid until it begins to shimmer, then brown the lamb shanks all over in it. Remove the browned meat to a large bowl, and turn the heat down to medium. Add the diced vegetables to the oil you browned the meat in and sweat them with the garlic, grated ginger, Ras al Hanout, ground spices, thyme, cinnamon and chillies.

Cook the aromatic mixture without browning until the vegetables are turning soft, keeping everything moving, then return the lamb to the casserole. Pour over the wine, stock and passata and simmer for five minutes. Add the balsamic vinegar, sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest with some salt to taste (I used just over a tablespoon for this volume of sauce.) Turn the heat down to a very gentle simmer, put the lid on and leave for three hours, turning the lamb shanks in the sauce a couple of times during cooking.

When the three hours are up, add the drained chick peas to the pan and simmer for a further fifteen minutes. The sauce will have become rich and thick (insert joke about ideal spouse here). Skim off any fat that has risen to the surface, and serve with mashed potatoes to mop up the delicious sauce.

Chicken with morels

Rummaging in my kitchen cupboards last week, I had a very pleasant surprise - I found a pot of dried morel mushrooms which I'd bought last year and forgotten about. Morels are an utterly delicious mushroom, with a honeycomb-textured cap and a subtle and delicate flavour, much less musky than some other wild mushrooms. They can be very expensive, but it's worth shopping around: I found mine in a shop in Nice last year, where they were cheaper than they are in the UK.

The morel season is short, so you're most likely to be able to find them dried. (If you see them fresh anywhere, snap them up; a fresh morel is a thing of wonder.) Some people out there take morels very seriously - The Great Morel is just one of a number of websites dedicated to this fabulous little fungus, and is well worth a browse.

I chose to make a chicken dish to show my morels off to their best advantage. You don't require any complicated spicing here -with the crème fraîche and white wine in the sauce, the morels make this a velvety-rich dish with exceptional flavour. To serve two, you'll need:

2 plump chicken breasts, with skins
8 large dried morel mushrooms
3 shallots
2 fat cloves garlic
1 glass white wine
100ml water
5 tablespoons home-made chicken stock
3 heaped tablespoons crème fraîche
Juice of half a lemon
1 handful fresh chervil
2 heaped tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper

Soak the dried morels in 100ml of freshly boiled water for half an hour. If you're lucky enough to get your hands on fresh morels, skip this step, and replace the soaking liquid later in the recipe with chicken stock. (If your morels are not as large as those in the picture above, feel free to use a few more.) Dice the shallots and chop the garlic.

Melt the butter and olive oil in a sauté pan, and heat over a medium flame until the butter starts to bubble. Slide the chicken breasts in, skin side down, and cook for about seven minutes, until the skin is golden. Turn the chicken over and add the diced shallots and the garlic to the oil in the pan. Move the shallots and garlic around in the pan with a spatula until the shallots are turning translucent, then add the morels, reserving their soaking liquid, and continue to sauté for two minutes.

Pour the mushrooms' soaking liquid (being careful to avoid any gritty bits at the bottom of the bowl) and the wine around the chicken with five tablespoons of home-made chicken stock. The sauce in the pan should simmer - allow it to bubble down and evaporate until you have less than a third of the volume of liquid that you started with. Stir in the crème fraîche and simmer for another minute. The sauce should be glossy. Add the lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste.

Garnish with the chervil and serve with mashed potatoes, which you can use to mop up the gorgeous sauce, and a green vegetable.

Asparagus with hollandaise sauce

Isn't eating at this time of year brilliant? The rhubarb is still sprouting away, and now the asparagus is shooting up as well. If you live in Cambridgeshire, it's well worth making a trip to Burwash Manor Barns in Barton, just outside Cambridge, where they grow tonnes of the stuff. It's picked fresh daily and sold on-site at the Larder (a very nice deli), where you'll find a lady outside trimming the stems of an enormous heap of asparagus fresh from the fields, and packing it in wrappers for sale. If you cook it as soon as you get home so the sugars don't have a chance to turn into starch, you'll find it amazingly sweet. Supermarket (and, sadly, market) asparagus is never available this fresh.

English asparagus is a real delicacy. Unlike asparagus grown in hotter climates, it pops up out of the ground relatively slowly, allowing the plant to build up a much greater concentration of sugars. Burwash asparagus is available as Class I and Class II (50p cheaper than the Class I this year) - I'd recommend the Class II packs, which taste exactly the same as the Class I asparagus, but contain spears which are a bit bendier than the ruler-straight Class I. (See picture for extent of bendiness.) The thickness of spear you choose is entirely a matter of personal taste, but do make sure that all the asparagus that you steam is the same thickness, or else it won't cook evenly.

Of course, dressing your asparagus with melted butter or just dipping each spear into the yolk of a soft-boiled egg makes for a perfectly delicious starter. That said, dressing them with a hollandaise sauce - essentially just butter and yolks with an acidic spike of reduced vinegar - somehow works out to be about ten times as delicious as either butter or yolk on their own.

Hollandaise sauce is a rich emulsification of butter and good vinegar (or lemon juice in some recipes), held together by egg yolks. I always add a little boiling water to loosen the sauce and prevent it from becoming too solid - a very thick hollandaise can be overpoweringly rich.

Making hollandaise isn't as intimidating or difficult as some make out, but it will need your full attention, so you need to make sure the answering machine gets any phone calls and ignore any cries of 'I can't find my shoes!' from the family for the ten minutes or so it takes to make.

Hollandaise is cooked at a very, very low heat. In order to stop the yolks from getting too hot and turning into an omelette, you'll be making the sauce in a bain marie or double boiler. I don't own one of the expensive dedicated double boilers - sitting a mixing bowl on the rim of a pan part-filled with simmering water works just fine and doesn't take up any extra precious cupboard space. To dress asparagus for four, you'll need:

2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons boiling water
3 tablespoons good white wine vinegar (I used Maille, which, for no very good reason, keeps turning up at my local branch of TK Maxx.)
225g (half a pat) good butter
2 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
Salt to taste

The quality of your butter is all-important here. I used Bridel from Normandy. Bridel or Beurre d'Isigny is fantastic here because of its rounded and smooth flavour.

Make sure the water for steaming the asparagus is ready and boiling on the hob as you make the sauce - you'll need a couple of spoonfuls of it for the hollandaise. Throw the asparagus into the water and put the lid on as you start to whisk the butter into the hollandaise - it only wants a little cooking, and should be bright green and ready when you finish the sauce.

Put the vinegar in a small pan with the peppercorns and bay leaf, and simmer it gently until it has reduced to about a tablespoon-full. Remove from the heat but keep warm. Melt the butter and put it in a warm jug.

Place a mixing bowl on top of a saucepan part-filled with water. The water should not touch the bowl. Bring the water to a simmer while beating the egg yolks vigorously with a hand whisk in the bowl. As the bowl warms, you will notice that the yolks start to thicken. Add a tablespoon of the boiling water to the yolks and continue beating until they begin to thicken again. Add another tablespoon and beat until the yolks are thickening once more, then add the vinegar with the bay and peppercorns removed, beating all the time until the sauce starts to thicken up again.

Pour the butter into the egg mixture in a very thin stream (as if you were making mayonnaise). Continue to whisk as you pour until all the butter is amalgamated, then remove the bowl from the heat. Taste for saltiness and acidity. If you want a little more bite to the sauce, squeeze in a few drops of lemon juice. Remove the asparagus from its water and serve with the sauce either drizzled over or as a dip.

Hollandaise sauce freezes well - when you want to use it, just bring it back to room temperature slowly.

Spicy barbecue chicken wings

I've been barbecuing a lot in the last couple of weeks, as the UK has sunburned its way through a heat wave. Recently I've been experimenting with old-fashioned barbecue sauce, and I think I've finally come up with a pretty much world-beating home-made version. (Of course, any recipe which starts with eight tablespoons of ketchup can barely be called a recipe - but I hope you'll let me off this time.) This is a great marinade and baste, and is thick enough to stay on the wings as they cook. If you baste well during cooking, it will caramelise into a dense, sticky-crispy layer on the skin, making wings just aching to be torn apart with fingers and popped into your mouth.

Chicken wings are one of the best things in the world on the barbecue. The flesh is succulent and sweet because of the proximity to the bone, they cook (and marinade) faster than a larger joint would, and all that lovely skin crisps up to a mahogany deliciousness. To marinade ten chicken wings, tips removed, you'll need:

8 tablespoons tomato ketchup
2 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce (use your favourite - I like Kampong Koh or Sriracha)
4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 crushed garlic cloves
2 tablespoons muscavado sugar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons Tabasco chipotle sauce
2 teaspoons ground chipotle peppers (use ground cayenne if you can't find chipotle)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons liquid smoke

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and marinade the chicken wings for about eight hours. (You can cut down on this with a vacuum container like a SealSaver, which is what I did.) Cook on the barbecue (or under the grill indoors if the weather is bad), which should not be blistering hot, for 15 minutes, turning regularly and basting each time you turn with the remaining marinade.

A note on the balsamic vinegar: don't use the best stuff that you keep for salads. A cheaper version will do here. I like Aspall's balsamic for cooking. Maille also do a very good balsamic vinegar, but I've not seen it outside France - if anyone knows of any stockists here, please leave a note in the comments!

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.

Glazed halloumi and baby fennel

I had a stroke of luck the other day, when I found some baby fennel in the supermarket. These tiny bulbs with their tender stalks are delicious. They're a little less strong in flavour than their grown-up cousin, and they've got a lovely texture, giving easily to the tooth with a good crunch even after cooking. If you can't find baby fennel for this recipe, you can use a sliced bulb of the adult version.

I've teamed the aromatic fennel up with some salty halloumi here, and glazed the lot with a white wine and soft brown sugar reduction. This is a great (and surprisingly quick and easy) supper dish with some crusty bread to mop up the juices.

To serve two, you'll need:

1 block (half a pound) halloumi
8 whole baby fennel bulbs
2 large shallots
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 small glass white wine
1 rounded tablespoon soft brown sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper
Basil flowers or chopped basil leaves to garnish

Dice the shallots finely and slice the garlic. Slice the halloumi into pieces about half a centimetre thick. Melt the butter and oil together in a large, non-stick frying pan, and fry the shallots with the fennel seeds for a minute or so until the shallots are becoming soft, then add the garlic, fennel bulbs and cayenne. Cook, turning the fennel, for another two minutes, then add the halloumi to the pan in a single layer with an extra drizzle of oil if you think it needs it. There won't be much room in there, so put the fennel on top of the pieces of halloumi while the halloumi browns - this will take between five and ten minutes minutes, turning regularly (and carefully - a flexible silicone spatula is really useful here).

When the halloumi is golden on both sides, tip in the wine and sugar. Let it bubble up and simmer it hard until the liquid has almost all evaporated. You should be left with a dense syrup coating the fennel and halloumi. Taste to check the seasoning, then serve with a sprinkling of basil (the plant in my kitchen is flowering at the moment, as you'll see from the photo) with plenty of bread to mop up the aromatic sauce.

Cheese fondue

I was born in the 1970s, which makes Dr W's gift of a fondue set a pleasingly retro and apposite birthday present. Everybody's parents had a set back in the day which they used for entertaining, and I remember hiding on the landing listening to raucous parties, then sneaking downstairs once they'd all finished and my parents had gone to bed. I would then while away the small hours eating any remaining cheesy bits and polishing off any leftover wine.

This, dear reader, is how I became a dipso at the tender age of three.

Fondues are fantastic interactive food. I've always held that the foods that require you to *do* something with what's on your plate, whether it's wrapping stuff in lettuce leaves, dribbling sauce down your arms or making minty little parcels, taste all the better for the work involved. Convivial and delicious - who could ask for more? You can do all the preparation of the fondue on top of the stove, and move it to the table and its little stand with the flame when you're ready to eat.

I've used a mixture of cheeses here - Emmenthal, Gruyere and Comte. Using these cheeses results in a sweetly nutty fondue, and for me the balance of flavours between the three is pretty much perfect.

Cider's not traditional here (fondue isn't from Normandy), but it's great with the cheese mixture, and hell - once you've spent all that money on cheese, I don't want you impoverishing yourself by using good wine on this dish when you could be impoverishing yourself by drinking it instead. Be sure to mix the cornflour into the cold cider before you start to cook - this will make your fondue smooth and will prevent lumpy or greasy bits, making the cheese and other ingredients coexist in happy, glossy suspension.

I have read warnings that you should not drink too much cold liquid during or after consumption of a cheese fondue for fear of solidifying a bolus of melted cheese in your stomach and finding your digestive system horribly overwhelmed (and presumably dying, eventually, of cheese). If you have read similar warnings I can assure you that you can ignore them. I drank like a fish when we christened the fondue set in the picture at the top, and suffered neither indigestion nor death.

To serve three, you'll need:

Fondue
200 g Emmenthal
200 g Gruyere
200 g Comte
2 shallots
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon cornflour
300 ml medium dry cider
1 tablespoon grainy Dijon mustard
1 shot-glass Armagnac (this is mere posing - I've used it because it's great with the cider and apples, but it's not absolutely necessary. You can leave it out if you can't find any)

To serve
1 large baguette
3 large carrots
3 apples (choose something tart like a Granny Smith)
9 new potatoes (Fingerlings, Pink Fir Apple and other nobbly potatoes are great here)

Chop the raw carrots and apples into bite-sized pieces and set aside. Steam the new potatoes whole for 20 minutes and set aside to cool.

Grate the cheeses and mix together in a large bowl. Dice the shallot very, very finely, and stir the cornflour into the cider in a large jug. (Be careful here - when you stir it in, it will foam, so make sure your jug is large enough to stop any bubbles from escaping.)

Put your fondue pot on the oven hob over a low heat, and sauté the finely diced shallots gently in the butter until they are sweet and translucent (about 10 minutes), stirring all the time so they do not colour. Stir the cider and cornflour mixture well, and pour it over the shallots. Bring everything to a gentle simmer.

Still over a low flame, add the grated cheese to the liquid in the fondue pot a handful at a time, stirring after you add each handful until the cheese is melted and incorporated into the cider mixture. Stir in the mustard and Armagnac with salt and pepper to taste (you may not need any salt - taste the mixture before seasoning). Move the fondue pot to the table, light the little flame, and dig in, dipping hunks of baguette, bits of carrot and apple, and whole, tiny potatoes into the gorgeously savoury cheese sauce.

Asterix in Switzerland(seriously) suggests vaguely sexual forfeits for anyone losing a piece of bread in the fondue pot. I have a better idea - if someone loses the bread, tell them it's their turn to do the washing-up.

Malaysian curried lamb shoulder

I'm cheating a bit here. The flavours are bang-on Malaysian, but you'd be unlikely to find a shoulder joint cooked in this way in Malaysia proper, where bite-sized pieces of meat are the norm in this kind of a curry. I decided to cook half a lamb shoulder on the bone in this curry sauce to maximise the flavour by keeping the meat near the bone - and because I love the fall-off-the-bone texture that a fatty shoulder achieves after a couple of hours slow cooking.

What makes a curry definably Malaysian? A few things - the spicing will be rather different from Indian curries, making use of more eastern aromatics like lemongrass, coriander, star anise and ginger. The liquid in the curry will probably be coconut milk, rather than yoghurt or any other dairy product.

I've made my own curry paste here, but if you don't have the time or the inclination, you should be able to find good Malaysian curry powders and pastes on sale in any Chinese supermarket. I particularly like Yeo's curry powder. This will make more paste than you need, but it keeps well in the fridge for a few weeks if you put it in a jar and pour over some oil to stop the air getting to the paste.

To serve two greedy people, you'll need:

Curry paste
4 tablespoons coriander seeds
2 tablespoons cumin seeds
12 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
2 star anise flowers
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
3 stalks lemongrass
1 peeled piece galangal, about the length of your thumb (substitute with extra ginger if you can't find any)
1 peeled piece ginger, about the length of your thumb
3 fresh birds-eye chillies (cili padi in Malay - cut down here if you want to reduce the heat)
10 dried chillies (you can find sun-dried cili kering, a less fearsome chilli than cili padi, in some Chinese supermarkets - otherwise, use what you can find)
1 teaspoon turmeric powder or 1 grated fresh turmeric root
1 bulb garlic

Lamb and sauce
½ shoulder of lamb, on the bone
2 large onions
1 can coconut milk
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1 handful coriander leaves
Salt
Flavourless oil for frying

Preheat the oven to 180° C (350° F).

Begin by heating a couple of teaspoons of oil in a heavy pan with a lid, large enough to fit the lamb in snugly. The pan should be able to fit inside your oven. When the oil is very hot, sear the lamb on all sides, and remove it to a plate.

Chop the onions finely and fry them with two tablespoons of the curry paste in the same oil you seared the lamb in. Add a little more oil if necessary. Fry, stirring all the time, until the onions are translucent and soft (about eight minutes).

Return the meat to the pan with any juices it has released onto its plate. Pour over the coconut milk, add the salt and the soy sauce, and bring the whole confection to a gentle simmer. Put the lid on and put the pan in the oven for 2 hours, turning the meat occasionally.

Taste the sauce when the cooking time is finished - you may find you want to add a spot of sugar or a squeeze of lemon juice. Skim off any fat that's floating on top of the sauce. Peel the skin off the lamb and discard. Sprinkle over the fresh coriander leaves and serve with rice. I like a salad of fresh pineapple and cucumber with this.

Smoked mackerel pate

This is a lovely starter (or a light meal on its own), and looks a lot more complicated than it actually is, making it a great stand-by for dinner parties. I've prepared my smoked mackerel pate in little ramekins, but you can also take spoonsful of the pate and wrap them, Chinese dumpling-style, in a sheet of smoked salmon tied tight with a string of chive if you want something particularly pretty to serve. The finished pate is quite stiff, so if you line your ramekins or another mould with an abundance of cling film (saran wrap for Americans) you will also be able to tug on the edges of the film once the dish is cooled and turn out the smoked mackerel pate onto a plate. Smoked fish fans in and around Cambridge should head out to the River Farm Smokery in Bottisham for some very superior smoked mackerel.

I've used a generous amount of horseradish here. If you can find the whole root for sale, grab it and use a coarse grater (swimming goggles can come in handy here for minimising something similar to the effects of mustard gas) on it. Otherwise, the English Provender company does freshly grated horseradish in a little jar, which you can also use to make your own creamed horseradish by folding it into some lightly whipped cream with a pinch of sugar, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste.

I really like this pate with melba toast. See this crab pate recipe for instructions on how to make melba toast at home.

To make enough for a starter for four, or lunch for two, you'll need:

200g smoked mackerel
200g soft cream cheese
Juice of 1 lime
2 tablespoons snipped chives
1 tablespoon snipped chervil (leave this out if you can't find any - it's easy to grow at home and worth cultivating, because it's often hard to find fresh in the UK)
2 teaspoons freshly grated horseradish
Salt and pepper to taste

You don't need any machinery here - simply peel the papery skins off the mackerel, check for any stray bones, then flake finely with a fork. Stir the flaked fish vigorously into the cream cheese and lime juice with your fork (if you don't have any limes use a lemon - I prefer the aromatic nature of lime here, but lemon will be just fine), and fold in the herbs, horseradish and seasoning.

Pack the pate into ramekins and chill until you are ready to eat.

Fennel salad

This is so easy - just slice and bung on a plate - that I hesitate to call it a recipe. Let's call it an assembly.

A fennel bulb has an aniseedy, aromatic taste. Its flavour is very smooth, with no hint of acid to lift it, so I like to add some lemon juice whether I'm roasting it or eating it raw. It's a lovely, underused vegetable - try making this very quick salad next time you have a pizza. It's a great accompaniment to tomato-rich foods.

To serve two, you'll need:

1 fennel bulb
1 shallot
1 small handful parsley
Juice of half a lemon
3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper

Slice the fennel bulb into thin rings, and arrange to cover a plate. Reserve the herby tops of the bulbs. Slice the shallot finely and separate into rings. Lay these on top of the fennel. Squeeze over the lemon juice and drizzle the olive oil over, sprinkle over salt and a generous amount of pepper, then leave at room temperature for at least half an hour for the flavours to meld. Just before serving, garnish with the reserved fennel tops and the parsley.

Lemon-pepper crispy chicken with tomato sauce

Lemons. Tomatoes. Lots and lots of basil. Who said it was February?

I really love a good breading mixture. This one's just great - it's seasoned with lemon zest and freshly ground pepper, so it's really fresh and zingy. I'm sure there are non-fried things just as crispy and delicious as this, but I've yet to find out what they are.

To serve four, you'll need:

Chicken
4 chicken breasts, without skins
8 tablespoons olive oil (choose a really fruity one)
Juice of ½ a lemon
1 clove of garlic, crushed
½ teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 eggs, beaten
250g breadcrumbs
Grated zest of a lemon
1 teaspoon chilli flakes

Sauce
1.5 kg fresh ripe tomatoes
3 large onions
4 cloves of garlic
1 handful fresh basil
1 handful fresh oregano
1 mild red chilli
1 ½ tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 large knob butter, plus extra to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper

Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces and marinade it overnight in the olive oil, lemon juice, salt garlic and ten turns of the peppermill.

Here comes the tedious bit - peel and seed the tomatoes. (This is very easy but takes a while - use a knife to make a little cross in the skin at the bottom of the tomato, then pour over boiling water and leave for ten seconds. Fish the tomato out with a slotted spoon. You'll find the skin will come away easily. Slice open to remove the seeds.) Chop the tomato flesh and set aside in a bowl. If you are pressed for time, use tinned tomatoes. They won't be quite as good, but they'll still be pretty darn tasty.

Dice the onions and chop the garlic finely, and fry in a large knob of butter until translucent and fragrant. Add the tomatoes and finely chopped chilli to the saucepan and stir to combine everything. Bring to a very low simmer, and reduce (this will take more than an hour) to half its original volume or a little less. Bring the vinegar and sugar to the boil in a small pan and stir it into the sauce. Add the oregano and season with salt and pepper. Taste to check whether you need more salt or sugar. Add another knob of butter for a more mellow flavour if you like.

Combine the breadcrumbs, lemon zest, chilli flakes and a tablespoon of freshly ground pepper in a large bowl. When the sauce is nearly reduced, bread the chicken by removing the pieces from the marinade, dipping in the beaten egg, and rolling in the breadcrumb mixture until each piece is nicely coated with the crumbs and aromatics. Heat a large knob of butter and three tablespoons of olive oil together in a non-stick frying pan, and slide the breaded chicken pieces in when the oil is very hot. Cook for about 5 minutes each side, until the chicken is golden and crisp.

Serve the chicken and its tomato sauce with buttered tagliatelle or some basmati rice mixed with a knob of butter and a small handful of parmesan.

Celeriac purée

These days, few of the vegetables you'll find in the supermarket are truly seasonal. We've got year-round mange tout peas (I remember the days when my parents grew them in the garden - the season only lasted for about about a month, but my, were we sick of peas at the end of that month); year-round broccoli and year-round cauliflower. Spring cabbage appears in the shops in summer, autumn and winter, and out-of-season asparagus is there whenever you want it. It doesn't taste of anything, but if you want it, it's there.

Happily for those outraged by man's twisting of nature, here are a few season-specific things that you won't find all year round. Some English root vegetables in particular are only easy to find in the winter (for the most part - there's always bound to be someone bussing turnips in from Australia in high summer), and they're wonderful in the cold months. It makes sense really - these roots are the energy store of the plants, and so they're full of sugars and other nutrients.

Celeriac is one of my favourite winter roots. It's the taproot of a celery plant (not the same one you use to dip in your hummus or to stir your Bloody Mary), but tastes much richer, deeper, creamier and sweeter than celery. I know people who can't bear celery, but who will happily munch on celeriac; they're really very different flavours. This vegetable isn't readily found outside Europe, but if you are an American reader and happen upon one in a market, snap it up so you can impress your friends with your cosmopolitan cooking.

Although modern 'best before' stickers tend to suggest you can only keep your celeriac for a week or so, the root will actually keep in the fridge for a month or so if wrapped in plastic to keep it nice and humid- inside your fridge it is dark and cold, which fools the root into thinking it's still underground - the celeriac won't be any the worse for it.

The celeriac is a knobbly, rough-skinned vegetable, and its flesh is very hard. Make sure you have a very sharp knife to remove all the skin and nubbly bits, and to cut through the solid root. It makes a lovely soup (which I really ought to blog some time), and it's great raw in coleslaw. One of the very nicest of French crudités is simply grated raw celeriac blended with a little home-made mayonnaise. But for my money, one of the best things you can do with a chunk of celeriac is to cook it until soft, mash it with a little potato, push the resulting mixture through a sieve and whip it with butter and cream for a very fine and rich side dish.

To make celeriac purée as an accompaniment for four, you'll need:

1 large celeriac, about 20 cm in diameter (anything larger than this may be a bit woody)
2 medium potatoes (choose a variety which is good for mashing)
100 ml double cream
2 heaping tablespoons salted butter
2 level teaspoons salt (plus more to taste)

Using a very sharp knife, peel the celeriac and cut it into 2 cm square chunks. As soon as you have cut a piece, put it in a saucepan of cold water to stop it from oxidising and turning brown. Peel the potatoes and cut them into chunks about twice the size of the celeriac pieces, and add them to the pan. Warm a mixing/serving bowl.

Bring the potatoes and celeriac to the boil, put the lid on the pan and simmer for 15 minutes. Poke the vegetables with a fork to check they are soft (if they are not, cook for another 5 minutes). Drain and use a potato masher to mash the celeriac and potatoes until they are as even as you can manage.

Melt the butter and cream together in a milk pan, and bring to a very low simmer as you sieve the purée.

Push the mashed mixture through a sieve using the back of a ladle. You can also use a mouli or food mill if you have one. The resulting purée will be extremely smooth. Put the purée into the warmed bowl and use a hand whisk to whip the butter and cream mixture into the purée with the salt, and serve immediately. This is particularly good with rich meat dishes and roasts.

Soy and anise braised pork

I know a lot of you come here for the Chinese and Malaysian recipes, and it hit me last week that I've not produced anything new in that line for a couple of months. This soy and anise pork has been worth the wait, though - here, belly pork is braised in a deeply fragrant and savoury sauce until it's so tender that it positively melts in the mouth.

Star anise is a beautiful, flower-shaped spice from a Chinese evergreen; it's an entirely different species of plant from European anise, although it has a similar flavour. It's one of the aromatics used in five-spice powder, and has a warm, intensely fragrant taste. There's been something of a shortage of the spice in recent years because an acid found in star anise is used in making Tamiflu, the anti-influenza drug. Happily for the cooks among you (and those with flu), drugs companies have since started to synthesise shikimic acid, so star anise is back on the shelves again. The Chinese use it as an indigestion remedy - you can try it yourself by releasing a seed from the woody star and chewing it after a meal if you feel you've overindulged.

This recipe capitalises on the affinity star anise has for rich meats like pork. Belly pork is one of my favourite cuts of meat (you can find some more recipes for belly pork here) - it's flavourful, has brilliant texture, and the fat gives it a wonderful unctuous quality as it bastes itself from within. To serve four with rice and a stir-fried vegetable, you'll need:

1 kg pork belly
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon five-spice powder
2 tablespoons lard or flavourless oil
5 cloves garlic
6 shallots
4 flowers of star anise
2 tablespoons soft brown sugar
4 tablespoons dark soy sauce
2 teaspoons salt
250 ml pork or chicken stock

Using a very sharp knife or a Chinese cleaver, chop the pork into strips about 1.5 cm thick. (Do not remove the skin, which will become deliciously melting when cooked.) Mix one tablespoon of the soy sauce with the honey and five-spice powder in a bowl, and marinade the sliced pork in the mixture for an hour.

Chop the garlic and shallots very finely. Heat the lard to a high temperature in a thick-bottomed pan with a close-fitting lid, and fry the garlic, shallots, star anise and brown sugar together until they begin to turn gold. Turn the heat down to medium, add the pork to the pan with its marinade, and fry until the meat is coloured on all sides.

Pour over the chicken stock, and add the salt and the rest of the soy sauce. Bring the mixture to the boil, reduce to a gentle simmer, cover and continue to simmer for two hours, turning the meat every now and then. If the sauce seems to be reducing and thickening, add a little water.

This is one of those recipes which is even better left to cool, refrigerated, and then reheated the next day.