Sweet potato gratin with peanut butter, chilli and lime

This is a dish for the tail end of winter. The clocks have now changed and we are fully into spring. And how welcome it is. However there's still some chill in the air along with the sun, and evenings are not yet as warm as they might be. Get a load of this extremely rich dish, although I'd be tempted to tone down the amount of cream next time. The full recipe is on the Guardian but you are going to need:

• sweet potato
• chilli, garlic
• cream
• crunchy peanut butter
• lime

Slice your potato and mix with cream and the flavourings. Layer up in a bowl and add the peanut butter in little blobs. Finish off layering the dish and bake at gas mark 5 for around 50 minutes. Serve with more lime squeezed on top and (this is essential!) something very plain such as steamed greens (and beetroot salad).

Peanut and chilli is of course a well tested combination. Lime and sweet potatoes might also occur alongside nuts and spice in a Thai curry. So it's perhaps not as unusual combination as it might seem - an Thai accented dish of English comfort food with spice as well as richness. Not an absolute knock-out dish but certainly worth a look. Possibly very satisfying to eat in bed.

Stuffed squash and parsnip bread

I've been watching episodes of River Cottage recently online and it's kind of weird in these two-duvet days to see Hugh gambolling through meadows and picking peas and summer lettuce. In the episodes, though, have been a few lovely ideas for food.

I made his camp-fire parsnip bread which came out a bit funny but sorted itself out over a few hours and ended up delicious. It's a really rough bread both literally and in the sense that it feels rustic. It has a dense crumb and the parsnip (I chopped mine rather than grating it) makes it sweet and moist. Unexpectedly delicious toasted with butter and marmite. I think marmite and parsnip could be a winning combo and I hope to return to it soon.

Ingredients

• one butternut squash
• breadcrumbs
• two leeks
• garlic
• cream
• mustards

For the stuffed squash firstly the squash was cut in half and roasted for half an hour. Meanwhile two leeks were sweated in a pan with plenty of garlic. When the squash had largely softened two thirds of the flesh were scopped out and mixed in with the leeks. Cream, dijon and whole-grain mustard were added as was plenty of black pepper. The mix was then stuffed back in and breadcrumbs put on the top and the whole lot roasted again for fifteen minutes.

Serve with the hot buttered bread, pickled onions and chutney.