Quick tart

All you need to make this is some puff pastry, some onions and some other veg. It's a simple thing one might easily arrive at when discovering an aged block of pastry in a overlooked freezer drawer. In fact that's exactly what happened here.

• puff pastry
• onions or shallots
• olive oil
• sage
• tomatoes
• cured meat
• feta or salad cheese

Roll out the pastry and preheat the oven to a hottish setting.
 

Meanwhile fry your onions or shallots (whose mild flavours would go very well here) in some oil. Add some sage towards the end, and some sweet cherry tomatoes. Prepare anything else you want on there - a feta type white cheese goes well here, as does any type of sausage or cured meat. We used some Polish sausage. Chuck everything on an put into the oven for about half an hour.

Part way through the cooking monitor the toppings - there is obviously a risk that the onions may burn before the pastry in the centre has cooked. If it looks like this is happening put some foil over the tart and give it a bit more time. It's not an exact science so monitor carefully.

Like a cross between a pizza and a quiche, this egg-less entity is very easy to prepare. It's pretty rich, so serve with a big pile of greens or perhaps a mustardy leaf salad to offset things. By it's very nature it's also highly adaptable, although some nice juicy tomatoes are highly advised.

Saltfish gratin and a quince and chocolate squidge cake

The wet weather of winter demands potato and cream, amongst other things. This dish is extremely simple and recalls the Scandinavian dish of baked sliced potato with cream and anchovy whose name now escapes my head if it ever lodged there at all.

Ingredients

• five - seven potato
• saltfish amounting to roughly a quarter the mass of potato
• spinach (the proper stuff not namby-pamby baby nonsense)
• cream, butter and garlic
  

 

Boil the saltfish in three changes of water from a cold start to get rid of the salt. Slice the potato thin and put a layer in an oven-proof dish. Scatter over the saltfish (flaked), some bits of butter and plenty of pepper. Go easy with the salt on account of the preserved fish as the seasoning can be corrected easily later. Add a layer of spinach and repeat till everything is used up. Pour an amount of cream you feel comfortable ingesting over the dish and add pepper and a little butter to the top. We had a fish free version also. They will need around forty five minutes - keep an eye on the top spud slices to prevent over crisping. Foil can be used here.

In my one Euro bargain pyrex bowl from Brussels we made a chocolate squidge cake with an impromptu addition of some quince.

Ingredients

• four eggs
• the same weight on dark choc, butter and caster sugar
• eighty five grammes ground almonds
• one tablespoon cornflour
  

This comes out like a less chewy brownie. Firstly the chocolate is melted in a bain-marie then butter whisked in followed by sugar, egg yolks, ground almonds and cornflour. The egg whites are beaten till stiff, then folded in. It needs about forty minutes at 190C. I put some of the poached soft quince in small cubes in here but you could use whatever you fancy.

We had it with quince poached with sugar and a little spice and creme fraiche.

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.