Staring into the cupboard where I keep my tinned and bottled goods my eyes fell on a jar of tuna. It almost pushed itself towards me, ready to make fishcakes with leftover mashed potato winking at me from the fridge. I also happened to have a little packet of dill in the fridge but flat…

This is surely the ultimate Greek spinach pie, the pie that swells with egg and feta cheese enveloping the slippery soft spinach with mint and dill, in layers of crisp golden pastry. I don’t know why I don’t make it more often, it never fails and always seems such a treat. The top is etched…

Puttanesca is a chilli-hot, fresh tomato sauce flecked with capers and black olives, the flavours underpinned with surprising gravitas by crushed anchovy and garlic softened in olive oil, the salad-sauce littered with basil. It’s normally something to make in late summer when tomatoes are at their most flavoursome but winter tomatoes, slow-ripened in Sicily, Sardinia…

This is one of the simplest and most delicious ways of cooking a whole chicken. Whenever I cook it, everyone wants the recipe. It’s known as buried chicken in my house (others call it Antibes Roast Chicken), a dish I discovered years ago in Elizabeth David’s A Book of Mediterranean Food. The bird nestles upside…

It’s intriguing how a pinch of an unexpected seasoning can lift quite ordinary ingredients. That’s the case with this thick and chunky vegetable soup that sprang into life when the caraway carton fell off the herb rack and scattered its black seed everywhere. Lightly pounded it combined with fresh ginger, garlic and chilli to give…

This is one of the most useful recipes ever. It is such a simple soup and one that you can vary and jazz up with minimal trouble. And so quick. I often add a little mint sauce or a handful of fresh mint but it’s not really necessary. Other soft herbs like basil, chervil and…

I had extraordinarily good spaghetti alla carbonara last winter wedged at the bar of an impossibly busy restaurant in a Rome backstreet. Cooked the traditional way with cured pork cheeks (guanciale) and an excess of golden egg yolks thickened with Pecorino Romano, it needed plenty of red wine to wash it down. My easy-to-eat version,…

Making coq au vin properly, marinating the chicken over night in aromatic concentrated wine, then allowing enough time for the flavours to develop, is not an after work dish. This quickie version for two is one of my favourite comfort suppers. I add peas, sometimes boiled carrot and waxy potatoes too, with a parsley garnish…