Ricotta is one of those ingredients that needs quite a lot done to it to make it exciting. I personally love the fact that it is rather the blank canvas and perfect for both sweet and savoury. In the restaurant where I work we do a fantastic lemon and ricotta cake, delicious, squishy and sharp.

It can be quite wet, so baking it adds an interesting extra layer of textures and flavours as in this recipe for a late summer salad, full of vibrant herbs to perk you up on a near-Autumnal evening.

The earthy lentils add a wonderful contrast of texture. I wrote a note in the margin of this recipe suggesting that a roasted red pepper cut into strips might make a lovely addition.

Lentil and baked ricotta salad

Ingredients (serves 2 as a light salad)

• 75g lentils
• 200g ricotta
• 4 tomatoes
• 1/2 a red onion
• A handful basil
• A handful mint
• half a small packet of cress

For the dressing

• 1tsp Dijon
• 1 tbs chestnut honey
• 2 tbs white wine vinegar
• 4 tbs olive oil

Method

Cook the lentil in stock or water for 12-15 minutes until cooked but still with bite. Set aside to cool.

Cut the ricotta into ½ cm slices and bake at 180 for 20 minutes until starting to brown.

Quarter the tomatoes, finely slice the red onion and chop the herbs. Mix these all together gently with the cress and season with salt and pepper. Add the cooled lentils and crumble in the cheese.

Whisk the ingredients for the dressing together and pour over the salad. Serve with crusty bread.

As the saying goes, the best things in life are free - and nowhere is this more true that in the vegetable growing department.

A while ago I wrote about my tomato plants and how the first tomato had sprouted. The three plants I had on my balcony continued to grow and grow until the branches were bowing, so laden were they with fruit.

When it came to eating them, they were the sweetest, juiciest tomatoes I'd ever eaten on these shores - the skin slightly thicker from their outdoor growing, the flesh more intense and deep. I'd been given a handful of green beans my friends had grown on their allotment and a deliciously simple salad was born. To make this a standout you'd need to really source the best beans and tomatoes you could find - with so few ingredients the ones you do use must be heroes.

It would be silly to call this a recipe - merely a combination of delicious things - and as such the quantities are as haphazard as its coming together. A perfect summer accompaniment to a roast lunch or barbecue.

Tomato, shallot and green bean salad

Ingredients

• A handful of tomatoes, halved or quartered depending on size
• A handful of green beans
• 2 small shallots or 1 banana, sliced into rings
• Balsamic vinegar
• Extra virgin olive oil

Method

Trim the beans and blanch in salted boiling water for 1-2 minutes. Refresh in iced water.

Drain and shake off the excess water before combining with the tomatoes and shallots in a bowl.

A splash of olive oil and a drizzle of good balsamic are all you will need, along with a good sprinkling of sea salt and black pepper.

Peanut butter is a great ingredient - both delicious and versatile. It's one of those things that I sometimes forget about and find a jar lurking in the back of the fridge. I'm not a fussy one either - I'm just as happy with Sunpat as I am with the premium organic varieties, although it must be the crunchy one though.
I'm a big fan of the American classic PBJ - the combination of peanut butter and jam on buttered toast is a thing of greatness.  Peanut butter is the key addition alongside chocolate in my peanut butter brownie cookies.
 
They use it in the Victoria kitchen to make a fantastic ice cream - peanut butter is mixed into the traditional custard base and served on a devilishly dark cookie.

A chocolate and peanut butter milkshake is one of my guilty pleasures.

Peanut butter does make a great savoury ingredient too - and it was as a last minute addition to the classic South East Asian salad dressing of lime juice, chilli, fish sauce and palm sugar that it now comes before you.

A very large pestle and mortar are ideal here, but a whisk and bowl would work equally well.  Feel free to replace the beef with grilled chicken or even fish.

Thai beef salad with peanut dressing

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 2 sirloin or fillet steaks weighing approx 200g each
• 4 tomatoes or 8 cherry tomatoes
• ½ a cucumber
• 1 red onion or 10 thai pink shallots
• A couple of handfuls of bean sprouts
• Handful of chopped coriander
• Handful of chopped mint
• 1 tsp ground rice (method below)

For the dressing

• 2 tbs palm sugar
• 2 tbs fish sauce
• 1-2 bird's eye chillis
• Juice of 2 limes
• 4 tbs peanut butter

Method

First make the ground rice. This is traditionally done with sticky rice but feel free to use basmati. Toast the uncooked rice in a frying pan over a medium heat for a few minutes until golden brown. Crush in a pestle and mortar or spice grinder until you have a fairly fine powder. Set aside.

Cook the steaks on a griddle to your liking - I'd suggest medium rare for this recipe.
To make the dressing, crush the chillies in a pestle and mortar. Use one if you don't like it too hot. Add the rest of the dressing ingredients and gentle bash it together. It will look like it won't come together but then suddenly it will. Taste the dressing as it may need more fish sauce or lime juice.

Quarter the tomatoes, seed and dice the cucumber, finely slice the red onion and mix together with the bean sprouts and the herbs. Add half the dressing and toss to coat. Place the salad on a plate and then slice the steak and put this on top of the salad. Drizzle with the remaining dressing, scatter over the ground rice and serve.

Trawling through my old recipes often turns up a forgotten gem - and it's always with a little bit of joy that I remember the flavours and wonder why I haven't cooked this or that for ages. This recipe is what our French cousins are so very good at - taking the healthy and turning it into something distinctly naughty.

Now, strictly this is an Alpine dish, so in theory one should do some serious trekking before tucking in without the faintest glimmer of guilt, but a brisk walk around the garden should suffice.

It's perfect for a British summer and will convert even the most resolute of meat n' two veg eaters. A little something for everyone.


Salade Savoyarde

Ingredients (Serves 4)

• 200g Beaufort cheese (you could use Comte or Gruyère)
• 200g lardons or diced bacon
• 400g potatoes
• 50g walnuts
• 50g bread, cubed
• 1 head Frisée or a bag of mixed salad
• 1 carrot, grated

For the dressing

• 2 tbs balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 5 tbs olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Method

Peel the potatoes and boil them in salted water until tender, a matter of some 15 minutes or so. Drain, and when cool enough to handle, cut into 1/2 centimetre slices and set aside.

Cut the cheese into pieces roughly the same size as the lardons.

Toast the walnuts in a dry pan for a few minutes, then tip them out and fry the lardons in the same pan until crisp. Set these aside also.

Fry the croutons - you may need to add some butter to the pan if there isn't enough bacon fat. Drain them on kitchen paper when done.

Allow everything to cool slightly, before lightly tossing together with the frisée and the grated carrot.

Whisk the ingredients for the dressing, or shake in a jam jar. Pour over the salad and season. Serve with crusty bread.

I am lucky enough to have a particularly green-fingered mother, a dab hand in the garden, who manages to live for the greater part of the year off her allotment. I'm slightly green myself, with envy at the wonderful produce that comes off it, the tiny courgettes with their flowers, onions, potatoes, beans, beetroot, carrots, herbs, asparagus. They taste like vegetables should - fresh and deeply flavourful.

I live in London, which as you can imagine, creates something of a problem when it comes to having a garden. Fortunately, having moved recently, we opted for a flat with a balcony, just big enough to house a barbecue, a table and a few chairs, and more importantly some plants. Well ok, the barbecue might have taken priority...

We're only growing a few things - tomatoes, herbs and salad but there is something distinctly satisfying with tending these things as they attempt to grow in Blighty.

But while the rain pours down outside, we'll be eating a wonderfully simple lunch - some toasted sourdough, smoked anchovies and some salad leaves from our box, dressed with good balsamic, some very good olive oil and a sprinkle of grated parmesan - a little dose of sunshine.

These days I'm a big fan of coriander, but there was a time when I just didn't get it. Its perfumed aroma seemed over-powering. Now I can't get enough of it.

 

Its aromatic taste lifts food and is a quintessential part of many Asian cuisines. It is especially interesting because its seeds, stalk and leaves offer three different flavour profiles and have drastically different culinary uses.

 

If you aren't already converted, try it in this recipe to see the wonderful effect it has. Be sparing - it should be a background scent, a whiff and no more.

 

Thai chicken burgers with an Asian salad and a hot and sour dipping sauce

 

Ingredients (serves 2)

 

For the burgers

• 2  chicken breasts
• 1 stalk lemon grass
• 1 red chilli
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• Juice of 1 lime
• 2 tbsp chopped coriander (to your own personal taste)
• 1 egg
• handful breadcrumbs
• optional 2 lime leaves

 

For salad

• few handfuls mixed leaves
• ¼ cucumber
• 4 spring onions
• small bunch coriander
• handful cashew nuts

 

For dressing

• juice 1 lime
• 1 tbsp soy
• 1 tbsp honey
• pinch chilli flakes
• 2 tbsp olive oil

 

 

For dipping sauce

• 5 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 5 tbsp palm or caster sugar
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 red chilli
• 1 tbsp chopped coriander

 

 

• 2 flat bread or wrap to serve

 

Method

 

Start by making the dipping sauce. Heat together rice wine vinegar and palm sugar for a few minutes until mixture thickens. Take off heat, add soy sauce and chopped chilli and set aside. Just before serving add coriander.

 

For the burgers, finely chop chilli and the lemon grass. Place these and all other burger ingredients in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse a few times until you have a mush - something like mince. Divide mixture into four and shape into patties. Place these in fridge to firm up slightly.

 

Make dressing by whisking together the ingredients.

 

Cut cucumber in half and scrape out the seeds using a teaspoon. Slice it up about the width of a 50p piece. Finely slice spring onion, and mix these with leaves, nuts, and cucumber. Dress salad when you are ready to serve.

 

Place frying pan over medium heat, pour a couple of tablespoons of groundnut or similar flavourless oil into pan and fry chicken burgers for about 6-8 minutes on each side, until golden brown.

 

Warm flatbreads by wrapping in tinfoil, and place in a low oven for about five minutes.

 

Once warmed through, wrap burgers with a little salad and enjoy.