Hugely versatile broad bean and herb salad

I love recipes you rustle up from what you have in the fridge, freezer and storecupboard. It lends a creative edge to cooking that you never get when you've gone out to buy exactly the right ingredients for a recipe.

I bought some tongue from Hobbs House butchery when I was there for a cookery course yesterday and was thinking what would go well with it. Salsa verde would have been a good accompaniment if you were serving it hot so why not, I wondered, use some of those flavours in a salad?

Broad beans are in season but you know what? They're expensive to buy and incredibly labour-intensive to prepare with larger beans needing to be skinned so I used a pack of frozen broad beans I had in the freezer. I added a couple of spring onions, sweated off in a little olive oil, some chopped gherkins and juice from the pickle jar and some chopped parsley and mint (very important the mint) and bingo!

I can think of a few good variations (see below) but in the meantime try this as your base:

Serves 2-3

250g frozen (or fresh podded broad beans if you grow them yourself)
3 tbsp olive oil
half a bunch of spring onions, trimmed and sliced
about 5-6 gherkins, finely chopped + some juice from the pickle jar
2 heaped tbsp freshly chopped parsley
1 heaped tbsp freshly chopped mint
Salt and pepper, preferably white

Bring a pan of water to the boil, salt and cook the broad beans for about 3 minutes until tender. Drain and rinse in cold water. Heat the oil and cook the onions gently until soft. Tip in the broad beans, finely chopped gherkins and herbs, season with salt and white pepper. Either eat as a veg (it would be great with roast lamb) or a warm salad with cold meats or cheeses (see below)

What else you could add. (Here's where it gets interesting):

*Some roughly crumbled goats or young sheeps cheese and a little grated lemon rind

* Give it a Spanish twist by adding some chopped chorizo when you fry off the onion - or add some shreds or serrano ham. I'd probably be inclined to leave out the mint in this case

* Add some steamed or boiled new potatoes, dice them and add them to turn it into a ritzed-up potato salad.

There are probably other possibilities. Any thoughts?

5:2 Hot smoked salmon, avocado and asparagus salad

You might well have wondered what happened to the 5:2 diet which has been conspicuously absent from the blog lately?

Well, I'm still on it. Sort of. Six months on it's not as regular as it was - I've been busy and travelling a lot but have also found ways of keeping my weight under control without it simply by skipping the odd meal. However I managed to have a fast day last Sunday (no, not ideal) and again today as I'm off to Holland for 5 days next week. Which is bound to mean loads of cheese and Dutch baking.

Anyway if you're going to fast on a Sunday you might as well have something nice and this was tonight's supper, built around some leftover asparagus and some other bits and pieces in the fridge and storecupboard (See! Frugal habits die hard!). I made double the quantity but always think it's more useful to have quantities for 1.

Hot-smoked salmon, avocado and asparagus salad (275 calories)
Serves 1

75g cooked asparagus spears (trimmed weight) - or steam, simmer or microwave it and cool it. No oil or butter, obviously.
20g cooked fresh or frozen peas. Again, NO butter!
A good handful of rocket (about 30g)
A spring onion, trimmed and very finely sliced (optional - just flung it in 'cos I had some)
Half a small avocado (mine weighed 45g) roughly broken up
50g hot-smoked salmon fillet, flaked (I got mine from the Co-op*)
A few torn mint leaves. Not essential. Just because I had them.
1 tsp olive oil
A good squeeze of lemon

Cook the asparagus and peas if you need to and cool. Arrange the rocket on the plate, top with the spring onions and avocado. Arrange the asparagus on top and flake over the salmon. Tear over the mint leaves and scatter with the peas. Season with salt, pepper and a good squeeze of lemon juice. and drizzle over the oil (which I left out when I made it because I thought it might take the day's intake over the 500 calorie limit. I needn't have worried.)

*In the mis-named Truly Irresistible range. I could have resisted it if I'd wanted to. I'm hard after months of 5:2!

3 meals for two from a £1 bag of veg

Having bought a £1 bag of veg at the Feeding the 5000 event last Saturday I decided to make it the basis for the next day's meals - fortunately a quiet Sunday at home with just me and my husband to cook for. I decided I wouldn’t buy anything extra and make do with what we had in the house.

The tomatoes went into a tomato bruschetta - simply quartered, seasoned, anointed with olive oil and, at the last minute, a drizzle of balsamic (you could use a few drops of wine vinegar instead). Oh, and a sprinkling of fresh thyme - I didn’t have any parsley, basil or chives.  I split two of the rolls I'd also picked up, toasted them and rubbed a clove of garlic on the cut sides as the base. If I’d had some feta or goats cheese I’d have crumbled a bit on top.

I could alternatively have fried the tomatoes, added a dash of chilli sauce and served them with eggs for breakfast. Or turned them into a fresh pasta sauce or a tomato and rice salad like this one on the blog.

Next, what to do with the lettuce and leeks? I washed the lettuce and decided to make a soup with the outer leaves and two of the leeks along with a handful of frozen peas from the freezer to give it a bit more colour and texture. This is roughly the recipe I used though you could easily vary it. It was so delicious I'll make it another time.

Leek and lettuce soup

(enough for 3-4)

1 tbsp olive oil or other cooking oil
A slice of butter (20g or thereabouts)
2 leeks, trimmed and sliced or a large sweet onion
A handful of frozen peas (about 50g)
Outer leaves from a round lettuce, washed and roughly sliced
700ml vegetable or light chicken stock
sprig of fresh mint (optional but unnecessary if your peas are minted)
Salt and pepper, preferably white

Heat a saucepan over a moderate heat, add the oil and then the butter. Once the butter has melted, stir in the sliced leeks, put on a lid and cook over a low heat until the leeks begin to soften. Add the peas, cook for another couple of minutes then tip in the lettuce and the mint, if using and stir. Pour over the hot stock bring to the boil and simmer for about 10 minutes until the leeks and peas are cooked.

Take the pan off the heat and cool slightly then ladle the lettuce and a few other chunky bits into a blender or food processor. (Leave some behind for texture*). Whizz then return to the pan. Adjust the seasoning and reheat gently but don't cook it too long or you’ll lose the colour. If you had a little leftover cream to stir in at the end or some extra herbs to scatter that would be extra good.

You could also add some fried bacon or ham if you had some for the final heat-through which would make it more substantial. Even then we had enough for 4 bowls.

The remaining leek went into a favourite pilaf along with the mushrooms (could have sworn the recipe was on the blog but I can’t find it. It’s in the book though). It wasn’t as good as usual as I didn’t have any cashew nuts (I used walnuts instead which were a touch too bitter), had to use tomato paste instead of fresh tomatoes and had no fresh coriander.

As you can see it was all a bit brown, relieved only by the remains of the lettuce which I served as a salad with a yoghurt dressing (see below) and a slosh of hot pepper sauce which I acquired from a guy in a pub. As you do . . . Easily enough for 3 though, especially given the soup we had first.

What else could I have made with the mushrooms? A pasta sauce. Garlic mushrooms on toast. A sort of stroganoff if I’d had a dash of cream. Mushrooms à la grecque. And with the leeks? A frittata. Leeks vinaigrette, This smoked cod and leek chowder. Leek bhajis, maybe (I did think of that but didn’t have any gram flour).

The main thing, as I said at the beginning, was I didn’t buy anything I didn’t already have in the fridge or the storecupboard even if it meant altering an idea or a recipe. And that’s the whole point - to adapt what you cook to what you have available, which is easy enough to do assuming a basic set of spices and seasonings (though I accept this is tough on a really tight budget). For most of us though it’s primarily a question of not wasting what we have. And that’s what this event was all about.

What would you make from these ingredients?

For more information about Feeding the 5000 and Fare Share UK visit their websites. 

* Or, if you prefer or don't have a blender, just serve the veg un-whizzed which also preserves the colour better. (Note how the arty photography app Oggl I was playing about with also improves the look of the dish ;-)

** (1 tsp Dijon mustard, 1 tbsp cider or wine vinegar, 3 tbsp olive or other oil and 2 tbsp plain yoghurt - and a splash of water to thin it)

5:2 How I learned to love (or at least like) cottage cheese

Sooner or later everyone on a diet turns to cottage cheese. Everyone except me, up to now. I’ve always loathed the stuff.

But with ordinary cheese ruled out, on fast days at least, and feeling equally lukewarm about tofu it struck me that it must be possible to make it taste good.

It is.

I’ve had it three ways recently - twice for breakfast and once, just now, for lunch. And it’s tasted good every time.

The key, of course, is to make it not taste like cottage cheese - unless you’re a cottage cheese fanatic in which case you probably won’t have got beyond the first paragraph. And that is by adding low fat yoghurt which zips it up and gives it a much better texture. About half as much yoghurt as cottage cheese does the trick.

Breakfast idea no. 1 was to serve it (or rather my yoghurt/cottage cheese combo) Turkish style (above) with cucumber, tomato and a seeded flatbread with a sprinkle of za'atar (a middle-eastern blend of dried, sesame seeds and sumac) sprinkled over the top. The second time I had it with blueberries and grated lemon rind (below). I really liked this.

And the picture at the top of the post is today’s salad which is slightly more calorific than it need have been due to the sprinkle of seeds. You could leave them out or pass on the Ryvita Thin I ate with it. Or both.

Cottage cheese, spring onion + beet salad (157 calories)

60g cottage cheese (44 cals)
35g 0% Greek yoghurt or other low fat yoghurt (20 cals)
1 spring onion, trimmed and very finely sliced or a heaped tbsp of chopped chives (2 cals)
100g cooked beetroot, drained and cubed (48 cals)
1 tsp balsamic vinegar (optional - 7 cals)
25g spinach and watercress salad (6.5 cals)
1 tsp (5g) seed sprinkle (optional - 29 cals)

Weigh out and mix the cottage cheese with the yoghurt and finely sliced spring onion. Add a little water if you’re using a very thick yoghurt like Total.  Drain and cube the beetroot and mix with balsamic vinegar if you fancy it - though if you’ve deliberately bought it because it wasn’t in vinegar that might not appeal.

Place a handful of salad on a plate, top with the cottage cheese mixture, scatter over the beetroot then sprinkle with the seeds if using. Or za'atar, a pinch of cumin or more chives or spring onion.

As I said, I added a 37 calorie Ryvita thin which brought the calorie total to 193.5. And doesn't leave me much for the rest of the day. But this was pretty filling.

Are you a cottage cheese lover or loather? And if the former, how do you eat it?

5:2 A 100 calorie lunch (near as . . .)

Although I find I can skip lunch more readily than I used to when I started the 5:2 diet there are days when the hunger pangs just won’t go away - particularly if I’ve eaten lightly the night before. This salad was in response to just such an emergency.

I’d been thinking if I had one egg instead of two that wouldn’t gobble up too many of the evening’s calories. I had a tomato and a spinach, watercress and rocket salad in the fridge but the ingredient that brought them all together and which turned out to have a welcome lack of calories was capers. They gave the salad punch and the liquid from the jar provided an instant, calorie-free dressing. Result!

Egg, tomato and caper salad (107 cals)

1 egg (78 cals)
1 tomato (115g) (21 cals)
2 tsp capers (10g) 1.4 cals + some liquid from the jar
a handful of watercress or watercress, spinach and rocket salad 25g (6.5 cals)
freshly ground black pepper

Hard boil the egg. Skin and slice the tomato. (Actually you don’t have to skin it but I think it tastes better). Arrange both on a small plate thus creating the illusion of greater quantity. Place a handful of watercress alongside. Spoon over the capers and trickle some of the liquid from the jar on the tomatoes and salad leaves. Grind over some black pepper. Voilà!

Confession: I also had a 34 calorie Peter’s Yard crispbread with it which brought the total to 141 calories. But that’s still not a lot.

How to cook purple potatoes

Having whinged about veg boxes for years, I'm now giving them another try. Why? Because I've found a really good scheme on my doorstep. Well, 7 odd miles away at the Barley Wood Walled Garden in Wrington.

This week's box (amazingly good value for £10) included purple potatoes so I've been debating for a couple of days what to do with them. My friend Elly had told me they disintegrated quite fast and ended up paler than she'd expected but I wanted to see if I could keep more of the shape and colour. (A similar challenge to my recent chiogga beets experiment.)

My initial idea was to buy a bunch of beets and combine them with the potatoes which I hoped would stain them a deeper red but when I cooked them (slowly, and for a shorter time than conventional potatoes) they actually looked quite pretty on their own.


I dressed them with a mustardy dressing, scattered over a few pieces of the red onion I was cooking with the beets, crumbled over some feta-like sheeps cheese in oil that had been lurking in the fridge, drizzled over a few drops of balsamic and a little extra oil and scattered over some parsley. A few edible flowers would have provided the perfect finishing touch.

I did however prefer the flavour of the roast beet and potato salad combo (see top of post) wich streaked the potatoes with an amazing magenta colour. I also added in the roasted potato skins, a super-thrifty touch which accentuated the potato flavour and crunch. My husband and I were discussing what would go well with this and came up with Stilton (or other blue cheese) and leek tart, German style sausages or other salty/smokey porky products and smoked mackerel. Not all on the same plate, obviously.

Anyway, try it for yourself:

Roast beetroot, red onion and purple potato salad

Serves 6-8

2 large beets or 3 medium-sized ones
500g purple potatoes
2 red onions
About 2 tbsp chopped parsley
A few chives
For the dressing
1 good tsp Dijon mustard
1 large clove of garlic crushed with 1/2 tsp coarse salt
1 1/2 tbsp red wine vinegar
6 tbsp light olive oil or 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and 3 of sunflower oil
A little balsamic vinegar (optional)
A pinch of cumin
Freshly ground pepper and more salt if you need it

Set the oven to 190°C. Cut off the beet leaves*, scrub the beets clean and wrap loosely in lightly oiled foil. Place on a baking tray and roast for about an hour to an hour and a quarter, depending on size until you can pierce them with a sharp knife.

About 20 minutes before the beets are ready peel and cut the onions into quarters or eighths, place on a baking tray, drizzle with a little oil and roast for about 15-20 minutes. Set the beets and onions aside to cool.

Meanwhile scrub the potatoes and cut into even sized pieces (small potatoes whole, bigger ones into halves, still larger ones into quarters, etc). Place in a saucepan cover with boiling water and bring to the boil. Add salt and simmer (not boil) the potatoes for about 10 minutes until you can easily pierce them with a knife. (They don't take as long as conventional potatoes.)

Make the dressing. Put the crushed garlic and mustard into a bowl, whisk in the wine vinegar, ground cumin, salt and pepper then gradually add the oil or oils until the dressing thickens.


Drain the potatoes and set aside until cool enough to handle and remove the skins. (You'll probably already find them peeling away as above). Put the skins on the baking sheet you used to roast the onions, trickle over a little oil and crisp them up in the oven. Remove and cool.

Cut the potatoes into large chunks, tip into the dressing and turn them carefully so they are well coated without breaking up.

Peel the beets and cut into large dice and add to the potato along with the roast onion, most of the crisp potato skins, parsley and chives if using. Tip onto a plate and decorate with the remaining skins and a scattering of herbs.

I reckon the basic purple potato salad would also be good with raw rather than roast onion and perhaps a few capers if you wanted to ring the changes. And you might get an even better texture and colour if you steamed them.

* You can use the leaves as suggested in my recent post here.

Devilled eggs

I've been thinking for a while about making devilled eggs since I spotted this feature in Saveur.

They are, of course, ridiculously old-fashioned. My grandmother used to make them as a cocktail snack, I remember. (She was a great one for drinks and nibbles for which she used to get dressed up in a gold braid-trimmed kaftan, right into her '80's. Even for me.)

You forget how delicious dishes like this are if they're freshly made. With a few crunchy Little Gem lettuce leaves they make a nice light summery lunch. Or even, if you dare, a retro dinner-party starter.

Serves 2
4 large eggs at room temperature
2 tbsp mayonnaise
a pinch of curry powder or a 1/4 tsp curry paste
a few drops of Worcestershire sauce
a few drops of Tabasco or a pinch of cayenne or chilli powder
1 tbsp finely snipped chives plus a few longer lengths for decoration
1 Little Gem lettuce or the inner leaves of a round lettuce
Olive oil
Crispbread to serve

Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil and carefully lower in the eggs. Bring back to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes then drain the eggs and run cold water over them. Leave until cool enough to handle.

Meanwhile separate the lettuce leaves and wash in cold water. Drain and dry.

Crack the eggs lightly and carefully peel off the shell. Cut the eggs in half lengthways and ease the yolks into a bowl. Mash them and add the mayonnaise then season with a little curry powder or paste, a few drops of Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco or cayenne pepper and a little salt. Mix in the chopped chives.

Arrange the lettuce leaves on individual plates and arrange the halved egg whites on top. Spoon the seasoned egg yolks into the hollows in each egg white. Drizzle a little olive oil over the lettuce leaves. Scatter a few longer lengths of chives over the top and serve as soon as possible with crispbread. (Leaving them around discolours the egg yolk and dries it out.)

There are a number of different ways of doing this depending on what you have to hand. Anything fishy works well with eggs so you could mix the yolks with a little anchovy paste, crab paté, mashed sardines or tuna or that Scandi-style salmon paste in a tube. (If you wanted to jazz it up you could top the eggs with a bit of salmon roe.) Or you could mix in some finely chopped ham and spike it up with a bit of English mustard. Good party eating too.

Would you eat devilled eggs or would you feel embarrassed to serve them. What retro recipes (if any) do you make?

Remember lettuce?

I've been in the south of France for the last few days where we're lucky to have a fantastic fruit and veg shop down the road. The most impressive bit is the salad section which generally has 5 or 6 different kinds of lettuces - all local and really fresh.

This particular one cost 70 cents - 62p at the current rate of exchange - and is easily enough for a green salad for six. At home it would cost twice that to buy a bag of mixed leaves for two.

It's really easy to get into the bagged leaves habit but how long does it take to wash and dry a lettuce? Three minutes, if that? If the French can spare the time why can't we?

Peppered mackerel and potato salad with mustard dressing

My husband seems to have taken over in the kitchen recently which isn't too good for this blog so I'm having to raid the back catalogue for recipes. This is another that went into the giveaway Guardian student book I wrote for them a couple of months ago. I'm not mad about smoked mackerel but it's fantastically good value and works brilliantly in this chunky potato salad

Serves 3-4
45 mins including cooling time

450-500g new potatoes
1/2 a small onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 level tsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp wine or cider vinegar
6 tbsp light olive oil or sunflower oil
200g peppered smoked mackerel
A handful of chopped parsley or some snipped chives (optional but adds a bit of colour)
Salt and pepper

Wash and scrub the potatoes clean leaving on the skins. Cook in boiling salted water until just tender (about 12-15 minutes) then drain and leave until cool enough to handle (another 10 minutes or so). Meanwhile whisk together the mustard and vinegar in a bowl and season with salt and pepper then gradually whisk in the oil plus a tablespoon of water if it seems a bit thick. Slice the potatoes roughly into the dressing and leave for another 15 minutes if you’ve time for the flavours to absorb. Pull the mackerel off the skin and break up with a fork into largeish pieces, removing any bones and lightly mix with the potatoes and parsley. Serve straight away (potato salads are never as good if they’re chilled)

IMO you can never have too many potato salad recipes. What's your favourite?

Return of The Frugal Cook and some musings on veg

Well, here I am back again. You might well wonder why when I already have two other blogs (Food and Wine Finds and The Cheeselover) but the fact is that more people still visit this blog than both of the other two combined. Which some might say is an reason for not blogging at all but, ever the optimist, I'm not taking it that way.

The other reason is that we're by no means out of the woods economically. A lot of people are losing their jobs. Even more - and I'm thinking of recent graduates - are having trouble finding them. Money is tight for many people who have never had to think twice about what they spend or may never have got round to acquiring cooking or shopping skills.

I'm not going to be overly ambitious about this. I probably won't post more than two or three times a month but I hope it will be useful and occasionally inspiring - not least for the very helpful comments that visitors have always left on this blog.

So, to start with, a reminder about the virtues of farmers' markets which are at their best at this time of year. And here (above) is what I bought at ours the other day. It came to £6.60 which I think is pretty good and will certainly keep us in veg for the week. To give you a price comparison a small vegbox from Abel & Cole would cost £7.99 + 99p delivery. The 580g of runner beans I bought for £1 would have cost twice that in Tesco and I doubt would have been half as fresh. So it's a good deal.

I also like the fact that having such great produce I can build whole meals round them, cutting the costs of the other food I buy. The onions actually cost more than I'd pay in a supermarket but because they're large and sweet I can use them for an onion-based dish like Jill Dupleix's baked stuffed onions with parmesan cream or even, given this unseasonal weather, make a creamy onion soup.

The cabbage witll make a slaw and a stir-fry, the courgettes can be grilled, anointed with oil and served with feta and the beans can be cooked as a veg or sliced and frozen for less plentiful times. Or use them as I did today, to make this variation on a salade niçoise for a quick, healthy lunch for one


Mackerel, tomato and bean salad
Serves 1
150g runner beans, trimmed and sliced
4-5 cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered
2 tinned mackerel fillets, roughly broken up*
1 tbsp finely chopped onion, spring onion or chives
About 2 tbsp oil from the mackerel can or jar if it tastes nice, otherwise use olive oil
A few drops of wine vinegar or lemon juice
Salt and pepper
A heaped tablespoon of parsley or a little chopped mint if you have some

Trim and thinly slice the runner beans, put them in a saucepan and pour boiling water over them. Bring back to the boil add a little salt and cook until tender but still crunchy (about 4 minutes). Drain and rinse with cold water and pat dry. Put in a bowl with the cherry tomatoes, mackerel, chopped onion or chives. Drizzle with a little oil a few drops of wine vinegar, season with salt and pepper and lightly mix together. Scatter over some parsley or other fresh herbs if you have some.

*Another economy. Mackerel is cheaper and more sustainable than tuna!

Any other good ideas as to what to do with runner beans which are at their peak - and lowest price - right now?

Charred Aubergine, Tomato and Mint Salad

Another salad. It's so hot here (in the Languedoc) I can't get my head round making anything else. Hot too in London, I gather, so maybe you'll enjoy this recipe which comes from my veggie student cookbook Beyond Baked Beans Green.

It's a spin on the Middle Eastern spread Baba Ganoush which I love but which I never think looks too great - a sort of khaki-coloured splodge. This basically uses the same ingredients but turns them into a salad that can be served with grilled or leftover lamb or, more frugally, with feta or with other mezze which is how we've having it tonight.

Serves 4
2 medium or 1 large aubergine (about 500g)
4 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion (about 100g), peeled and roughly chopped
1 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
2 medium tomatoes, skinned, de-seeded and diced
2 tbsp roughly chopped parsley and 1 tbsp chopped mint leaves
1 - 1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp ground cumin
Salt and pepper

Cut the stalks off each aubergine, cut in half lengthways then cut into cubes. Heat a wok for about 2 minutes over a high heat, add the oil, heat for a few seconds then tip in the aubergine cubes. Stir fry over a moderate heat for about 5 minutes until lightly browned then turn the heat down low, add the onion and garlic, stir, cover the pan and cook gently for a further 15 minutes, stirring from time to time to stop it catching.

Tip the cooked aubergine into a shallow dish while you prepare the other ingredients. When the aubergine is cool (about 20 minutes), cut it up roughly with a knife and fork then mix in the chopped tomato, parsley and mint. Season with the lemon juice, cumin and salt and pepper and serve in any of the ways suggested above or simply with warm pitta bread.

Tomato, basil and rice salad

The key to this simple salad, which I got from a French friend several years ago, is frying the onion well as it providea a really flavourful base to the rice. Frugal and delicious.

Serves 4

3 tbsp olive oil + extra if needed
1 medium to large onion, peeled and roughly chopped
200ml basmati rice (measured in a jug)
400ml water
4-5 medium-sized, ripe tomatoes
2-3 heaped tbsp basil, tarragon or parsley leaves
Red or white wine vinegar to taste
Salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the chopped onion and fry over a medium heat for about 5-6 minutes until the edges of the onion are beginning to turn dark brown. Tip in the rice, stir then add the water and stir again. Bring to the boil, put a lid on the pan, turn the heat down and cook until the water has been absorbed (12-15 minutes). Turn off the heat and leave another 5 minutes. Meanwhile skin the tomatoes by nicking the skin near the stem with a sharp knife, putting them in a bowl and pouring boiling water over them. Leave a minute, then drain and cover with cold water. The skins should come away easily. Roughly chop the tomatoes. Spread the rice out in a shallow dish and leave to cool for five minutes then add the chopped tomatoes. Season to taste with salt, pepper and a few drops of wine vinegar and mix well. Just before serving add a couple of heaped tablespoons of torn basil or tarragon leaves and toss the salad again, adding a little extra olive oil if you think it needs it. Best served at room temperature. (Particularly good with grilled chicken).

Courgette and mint salad

When it's hot, as it is (steamingly . . . ) right now in the south of France, I really don't like to cook that much so the best thing is to prepare food while it's still relatively cool and eat it at room temperature. Cooked vegetables like this lend themselves perfectly to this treatment and make a nice change from conventional salads. You can serve it, mezze style, as part of a selection of cooked vegetable dishes, with feta, goats' cheese or hummus or as an accompaniment to grilled chicken, lamb or pork.

Serves 3-4
2 large courgettes
4 tbsp olive oil
1 large clove of garlic finely sliced
2 tbsp finely chopped mint
2-3 tsp wine vinegar or lemon juice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Trim the ends off the courgettes, quarter lengthways then cut into thin strips (see pic above). Heat a large frying pan and add the olive oil then fry the courgette strips for about 10-12 minutes until soft and lightly browned. Add the garlic for the last couple of minutes then turn off the heat and stir in the mint. Tip the courgettes into a shallow dish with their oil which goes a beautiful emerald colour and leave to cool for 10-15 minutes. Add 2-3 teaspoons of vinegar or lemon juice, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and toss together.

Big (or small) bowl salads

The way food looks is always important, to me at least, but all the more so if you're using up leftovers. There's nothing more depressing than a pile of brown sludge. Or random bits of food plonked unceremoniously on a plate. (Better to eat it straight from the fridge, which at least has an indulgent frisson to it)

Doing even a minimum of chopping and slicing immediately makes leftovers look more appetising. As does - weirdly - putting them in a bowl (cuts down the washing up too!)

Here's a little salad I rustled up the other day from some leftover haricot beans with some chopped onion, red pepper, half a can of tuna and some chopped parsley - all except the tuna being leftovers. OK we're not talking about a culinary masterpiece here but it doesn't look too bad, does it?

I didn't even make a dressing - just drizzled over a bit of olive oil, a few drops of vinegar (hold your thumb half over the top of the bottle to control the flow), seasoned it with salt and pepper and tossed it together. Five minutes work, max.

What to do with leftover lettuce

With two days left to go in France before we pack up and head home I seem to have a fridge full of lettuce - mainly outer leaves I've saved to do something useful with. Some, frankly have had it and have had to go straight in the bin (such profligacy offends me these days) but there's still a fair amount.

What can you do with leftover lettuce? Well you can make soup but somehow it doesn't seem quite summery enough yet despite a blistering 22° C here today. You can add it to another soup as I may well do with the watercress soup I'm planning for tonight. You can chuck a few shredded leaves into a French-style braised dish of peas. (That works really well) You can probably stir fry it but I suspect it may turn out a bit slimey. You can . . . what? Any suggestions welcome.

Incidentally you may be interested to know there is a lettuce crisis here in southern France. The lettuce growers have gone on strike (how French) because their return on lettuces has reached its lowest point for the past 25 years. Serious indeed! The lettuce, as I've mentioned before has a central role in French meals - the French have never taken to bagged salads quite the way we have, justly taking the point of view that they're far too expensive and don't taste of much. Quite right too!

A crisp, healthy winter salad

Yesterday's shopping trip wasn't wildly exciting but yielded some good bargains. 2 kilos of oranges (11 in total) for €1.99 (£1.48), a kilo of endive or chicory for €1.39 (£1.04) and a huge bunch of fresh flat leaf parsley for 78p. That'll last all week.

I don't know why chicory is so much cheaper in France. You'd be lucky to get two heads in England for the price I paid. We'll bake some tonight with the 'Label Rouge' chicken we bought (also reasonable value at €6.53 or £4.86) and probably have some tomorrow wrapped in ham topped with cheese sauce but today I used two to make a simple salad together with a couple of the oranges, some chopped green olives and a can of mackerel (the latter ingredients retrieved from the back of the storecupboard). And a generous handful of chopped parsley. The dressing was made from the juice of half of one of the oranges and some of the oil from the olive jar. Lots of pepper - a bit of cayenne wouldn't have gone amiss - but you couldn't fault it for healthiness. Oily fish and all.

If you can't get hold of any cheap chicory you could substitute fennel or celery.

Incidentally, as you may have gathered, I didn't flake out as a result of eating the out of date Caprice des Dieux which was perfectly fine. Not that I would urge you to follow my example. Heaven forbid.