Chicken and Bacon Croquettes Tapas

So, having got back off our summer hols in sunny Biarritz (many incredible recipes and restaurant reviews from our two week road trip to follow really soon), I thought I'd post one of the recipes I cooked while using the kitchen of our sunny and very delightful holiday flat rental.

The thing is, Biarritz is really close to the Spanish border - just a hop, skip and a jump to fabulous San Sebastian (or 'Donastia', if you're a sycophantic Basqueophile) - so the tapas influence is strong in that southern part of France.

We ate at many tapas places, and I couldn't help but marvel at the many pinxos on offer. These tasty morsels, usually fried or atop a crispy slice of baguette, accompany the local plonk and are usually reasonably priced and intensely tasty.

So, one day, I decided to attempt a pinxo or two of my own and made these delightful little croquettes. Mrs Ribeye loved them. The chicken I used was left over from a very fancy and expensive locally reared artisan black leg, and so the recipe came in at a very reasonable £3 per dozen croquettes. If you use a cheap UK chicken, the results won't be vastly different to these fritters in taste, but you won't get to gnaw on some freaky looking roasted black chicken feet as a cook's treat.

Saying that, the last time I saw feet on a supermarket chicken in Britain was in about 1975.

Makes 12 croquettes

INGREDIENTS:

200g leftover cooked chicken, shredded
150g bacon lardons
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
50ml olive oil
2 tbsps plain flour
300ml milk
Salt and black pepper
Small handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped

To fry:
50g flour
2 eggs, beaten
100g breadcrumbs or matzo meal
Sunflower or vegetable oil for deep frying

In a medium hot pan, fry the chicken, bacon, onion and garlic in the oil until soft and translucent. Add the flour and stir to remove lumps. Add the milk but-by-bit until you have a smooth thick mixture and then add the seasoning and parsley. Allow the mixture to cool and firm-up in the refrigerator. Once the mixture is cool, form into croquettes. Dip them into the flour egg and breadcrumbs until well coated. Deep fry at 180c for 5-6 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve with garlic mayo (aioli) or a spicy tomato sauce.

Asparagus with Instant Hollandaise Boiled Eggs

I do love a bit of drama. And I am a bit lazy. Put these virtues(?) together, and voila! Do-it-yourself beautiful seasonal food.

Today's dish is a bit of an old springtime favourite - asparagus with hollandaise sauce. However, instead of slaving over a hot stove trying not to let your sauce curdle, just soft-boil a few eggs, and add the sauce ingredients at the table. Or even better, let your guests do it themselves.

All you need to remember is to not let the eggs overcook, otherwise the sauce will not smoothly come together and you will end up with vinegary eggs topped with hard butter- yuck.

I made this dish for my mum, Mrs Ribeye Sr, and she 'quite liked' it. I would love to tell you that she 'loved' it, but she is a die-hard traditionalist and would have preferred not to have 'done-it-herself'. Mrs Ribeye Jr (the wife), however, loved it - as did I. We too are looking forward to getting old and stuck in our ways in a few years time. Our (as yet unborn) children are soooo lucky...!

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

10 fat asparagus spears
4 eggs
A few drops of white wine vinegar
4 small knobs of butter
Celery or rock salt
Black pepper

Boil the asparagus and eggs, in the same pan, for 4 minutes. Remove everything from the pan and arrange five asparagus spears and two eggs per person on a serving plate. Serve by removing the tops from the eggs and adding a few drops of vinegar and the butter; then sprinkle with the celery salt and pepper. Dip and swirl the asparagus into the eggs to create instant hollandaise sauce.

Sesame, Chilli and Ginger Salmon Sashimi with Watercress and Radish Salad

What a beautiful late spring/early summer dish!

Yesterday I noticed that Marks and Sparks had some fresh salmon fillet in, so I decided to eat it raw. I normally only eat fish raw if I can guarantee its freshness, and with supermarkets you can never tell 100% how long it has stayed in some cold storage unit in an industrial estate in Derbyshire (or somewhere equally inauspicious). So when I'm not certain of provenance, I use my nose - and some salt.

Salting raw fish does various great things: 1. It makes it taste nice; 2. It firms it up for slicing; 3. It cures it. How long you decide to cure it for will depend on what you what to do with it. For Gravadlax, I cure for it for a few days - for sashimi just a few hours.

The rest of the ingredients for this stunning dish are also found in supermarkets across the land. In a few minutes, you have a great dinner party starter or a lunch dish all on its own.

Maybe this dish could be made with other fish just as well - bream or sea bass would be great I reckon. Mackerel: Yes. Tuna: Of course. Cod or haddock? Not so much.

Get sashiming! It's cheap (£3 worth of salmon fillet feeds two easily), healthy, and most of all, a bit... 'WOW HOW DID YOU DO THAT?'!

All-in, this is a Potless thrift speciality - £2 per serving is all.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

250g very fresh salmon fillet
3 tablespoons salt
Large handful baby watercress
12 radishes, halved
2 large red chillies, sliced into 5mm rings
Thumb of ginger, finely chopped
Pinch of red chilli flakes
1 tablespoon each of rice wine vinegar, toasted sesame oil, dark soy sauce, honey, wasabi paste
1 tablespoon of sesame seeds

Sprinkle the salmon with the salt and refrigerate for an hour or two, until the fish has released about two tablespoons of moisture. Remove from the fridge and slice thinly (about 4mm thick). Arrange the watercress and the radishes on a serving plate and surround with the salmon slices, topping each slice with a piece of chilli. Mix the chilli flakes, ginger, vinegar, oil, soy, honey and wasabi together to make a dressing. Dress the plate generously. Sprinkle with sesame seeds immediately before serving.

Miso Soup

WARNING! THIS RECIPE IS NONSENSE.

I love eating at sushi restaurants but I'm getting sick and tired of the big con. Years ago sushi in the UK would be expensive because non-one really ate it; therefore only a few restaurants did it, and because they couldn't guarantee selling everything they bought they would factor in a huge wastage amount into the dish prices.

These days, however, sushi is pretty much a British signature cuisine. There's a sushi place every 50 yards in London and every 100 yards everywhere else. I'm not counting supermarket sushi or Pret a Manger ('no raw fish!' they proclaim, proudly for some reason), but I am including Yo Sushi, Wasabi and You&Me. The thing they all have in common is that the salmon and tuna is pretty much as exotic as it gets in these High Street places. And THAT is the big con. Order in any normal restaurant a tuna nicoise salad or a salmon fishcake and it'll cost you £8 maximum. Go to a sushi restaurant, however, and half that sized portion of fish is £20. AND THEY DON'T EVEN COOK IT!

Me, on the other hand, a veteran of a few Far Eastern trips, prefer eating the more obscure gungy stuff. I love sea urchin, any number of fish roes, raw molluscs and raw octopus. The weirder and more repugnant, the better (I'm not truly happy until I shudder at the very thought of putting the food in my mouth). But whatever I eat and wherever I eat it, I always need a miso soup to accompany it. It's very comforting.

For years, I was afraid of miso. When stirred in a soup, it clouds up. After settling for a minute, it looks like a living breathing amoebic organism. It is, regardless of its questionable looks, delicious and packed full of that mythical sixth taste, umami.

What I didn't know, was that it doesn't need cooking. You just stir and dissolve some of the fermented soya paste into some boiling water and add some cheap garnishes. In a way, a miso soup is closer to a Nescafe beverage than real food. It lasts forever (it's already fermented, FFS) and so there is no wastage. So why the f**k are the restaurants charging more than a pound a bowl? Some of the more 'upmarket' places charge a fiver! Since I discovered the secret, I refuse to eat it anywhere that charges more than a pound. Lie: I mean 75p.

One other thing to add, is that miso paste is not only completely delicious, but probably quite versatile too. It's hard to keep my fingers out of the jar. Over the course of the next few days, I'm going to experiment with it and see whether I can make some soup dumplings with it, maybe a salad dressing, maybe a dip. Whatever it is, will taste bloody brilliant.

At £4 for a big jar, a single serving comes in at 40 pence, including the garnishes.

It may be cheap, and not much of a recipe, but this soup is absolutely delightful. Buy some white miso paste flavoured with dashi (a type of dried fish flake, called bonito) and you won't look back.

Serves 1

INGREDIENTS:

1 tablespoon of white miso paste, flavoured with dashi (or without dashi, if you're a veggie)
400ml boiling water
50g block tofu, diced
1 spring (salad) onion, chopped
1 small piece wakame (seaweed), optional

Dissolve the miso in the boiling water and add the garnishes. Not very difficult, eh?

The Perfect Guacamole

Why the 'perfect' guacamole, you may ask?

Well, you really only need mashed avocados and salt to make a guacamole, because there really is no 'traditional' Mexican recipe. Therefore, after years of trying and testing, I can safely proclaim that I have found the true alchemic formula - and it's green. And delicious.

The key to making the perfect guac, is to use the perfect avocado - and this is no mean feat. I now use the Haas variety instead of those shiny green-skinned ones. I have found that the while the Haas is an altogether less aesthetically pleasing avocado, the flesh is richer and less prone to hairy fibrousness like the others.

I buy my Haas rock-hard on day one and do not attempt to eat it until day six. Any earlier and its slightly rubbery, much later and it's gunky, over-ripe and covered in black mushy spots.

As to the other ingredients: Lime juice? Check. De-seeded tomato? Check. Spring onion? Check. Fresh coriander? Check. Fresh Chilli? Check. Black pepper? Check.

Here are some 'no way' ingredients: Cumin (too pungent); sour cream or mayo or cream or yoghurt (yuck); garlic (too strong and all wrong); Anything else in the world? (er, no).

So here it is, the perfect guacamole. How do I know it's perfect? Well, last night our good friends Ophelia and Kumar came over for a food-and-movie-party (the director's cut of the 1973 version of The Wicker Man - incredible) and I made Fish Tacos (recipe to follow soon), and between the three of them - my wife included- I barely got a look-in at the guacamole. Ophelia even licked the GD bowl!

Four avocados for a pound at my local Morrison's supermarket, means that this dish comes in at a very delightful 50p per serving. 'Perfect' indeed.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

3 ripe avocados
3 large spring (salad) onions, finely chopped
3 tomatoes, de-seeded and finely chopped
Handful of fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped
1 large fresh red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped
Juice of a large lime
Salt and black pepper

Mash all ingredients together until blended, but still quite chunky. Serve chilled, with tortilla chips (or in Ophelia's case, with nothing at all...)

Caprese Salad

I am convinced that the live basil plant found in the 'living herbs' section, found in every supermarket in the land, is a complete racket.

The concept is simple: Buy a vaccuum pack of basil leaves for 80p, OR BUY A WHOLE PLANT FOR £1!!! No contest really. (a) The pack, once opened, is ruined - which means that you must eat the basil within an hour before the leaves get all soggy and shocked that they're now inhaling central London fumes and cooking smells after they were all used to being cosy in their hermetically-sealed plastic environment; (b) Who wants to eat a whole pack of basil in one sitting? The live plant will allow me to keep going back to the well for days (certainly)/weeks (hopefully)/months (can it be possible?)/years (dare I dream?) on end; (c) Live plants look good in my tiny kitchen - slightly like I'm living in Tuscany. All I need now is a lemon bush and an olive tree.

However, after TWO days, and a few snippets of leaves later, this is what my plumptuous basil plant looks like:

A ragbag of wilting blackening pulpy leaves and bent stalks.

Having tried every single tip on the internet to breathe life back into my herbal disaster zone (you can forget the care tips on the pack: 'Water when needed'. Bahh!), and failing miserably, I realised that I have been completely conned. The supermarket are injectingt the plants with fungus to get you to keep buying them! It doesn't matter where I live, how hot/cold my flat is, how sunny/dark my kitchen is, how much/little water I give the plant, how many times I crop/leave the plant alone, if I give/don't give the plant Baby Bio; the fact remains, I buy a new plant every week with the same steadfast optimism that 'this time, I KNOW where I am going to put it/when to water it/when to crop it' etc, but the plant curls up and dies within a day or two.

And I do buy a new plant every week. Why? Because basil rocks. I put it into as many dishes as I can justify: Italian, Thai, salads, stews and soups. Today's dish is a stalwart weekday light supper which I serve with some fresh bread and butter, and is so pretty and wholesome that Mrs Ribeye hardly notices that I've made very little effort.

Caprese salad is the simpler brother of the insalata tricolore. I barely buy avocados these days because I reckon only one in three is ever any good - and that is a risk-to-benefit ratio that I'm not happy with. Better to keep spending my money on those bloody basil plants...

Mozzarella cheeses seems to be getting cheaper and cheaper these days. A 125g ball of the cheap stuff is now 43p! Which means that this dish comes in at a crazily cheap £1.25 per serving.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

2 x 125g balls of mozzarella cheese
4 plum tomatoes
Quarter of an iceberg lettuce
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
Handful of fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper

Slice the cheese and tomatoes into 1cm thick rounds and arrange in rows on a plate. Finely chop the iceberg lettuce and place in a neat row down the centre of the plate. Sprinkle oregano over the cheese and tomato and dot the basil leaves around the edge. Dress the salad with the oil and vinegar (not on the basil) and season to taste. Serve immediately.

Salad of Seared Scallops with Butternut Squash Puree

Mrs Ribeye loves scallops. She didn't used to love scallops, but now she does.

Last year, I made the wife some delicious seared scallops, to which she replied: 'Why are you serving me eye-balls?' Not a good day. However, at a dinner party given by our friend Axel at Beach Blanket Babylon in Notting Hill last weekend, she ordered scallops again and found that she actually loved eye-balls after all. So so fickle.

Ok Ok, maybe last time I hadn't cooked them to her Holy Magisterial Regalness' highest standards, but all of a sudden she started to obsess about them. 'When are you making scallops again?' 'Why aren't we having scallops tonight?' 'It's my birthday next week. Can we have scallops?' 'It's Thursday - scallop day!' etc.

So, because today is my wife's twenty-seventh birthday (27? Eek! What an oldie), her wish is my desire and I managed to convince my local eye-ball merchant to set me aside a few plumptious specimens.

Ok Ok, maybe I learnt from my mistakes and Ok Ok, maybe I have now learnt to get the pan hot enough to allow the scallops to slightly caramelise, but this time there was no eye-ball comment; there was just a look of delight on my crusty old (mmm, still a decade-and-a-half younger than me) bird's face. Happy birthday indeed.

To pair up the scallywags, I decided to make a butternut squash mash - because it's easy; pairs up well with the sweet seafood; and is cheap to make - in line with my Potless budget.

Dare I say it? Yes I dare: My dish is better than Beach Blanket Babylon's. Not to say that BBB's isn't nice, but their scallops are a bit... eye-bally (joke). No, actually, their dish came with truffle oil, which I reckon is a bit musky for such sweet shellfish as scallops, and mine came with a balsamic-dressed salad which has more contrasting rich sourness than their (fairly nice, in all honesty) fried carrot garnish.

Oh, and mine's better because BBB's dish is £25, whereas mine comes in at £3 per serving - because I got my scallops for £15 per kilo. Not that I particularly cared last week, because Axel picked up the bill. But still.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 small butternut squash, halved and de-seeded
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon of Chinese five spice powder
Salt and pepper
250g shelled scallops (just the white meats, not corals)
2 tablespoons sunflower or olive oil
2 handfuls of mixed leaves
2 tablespoons of walnut or olive oil
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
Walnut pieces, to garnish (optional)

Rub the exposed flesh of the squash with the olive oil, five spice and seasoning and roast at 200c for an hour. In the meantime, rub the scallops with sunflower oil and black pepper. In a pan blisteringly hot pan, sear the scallops for 1-2 minutes on each side and then remove from pan to relax. Dress the salad leaves with the walnut oil and vinegar and place a mound on each serving plate. Remove the squash from the oven and mash the flesh, discarding the skin. Dot a small pile of squash in equal spaces around the salad leaves and top each with a scallop. Season to taste and garnish with walnuts, if using.

Crudites with Anchoiade

I'm sitting in my central London flat huddled over my laptop, wistfully looking out at the sunny morning (although in full knowledge that while the day looks deceptively warm and summery, the fact that I am necessarily sitting in copious layers of poly-viscose tells me that it is bloody freezing out there) and wishing I was back on my summer holiday in Nice on the French Riviera.

So, there's only one thing for it: No. Not giving up my life in England to become a street artist in Provence. I'll make some summery grub.

For some reason, anchoiade and crudites seems like something that you should only eat when you're on a patio overlooking the Med, while drinking a long-stemmed glass of local rose and surreptitiously ogling French strumpet. But no! I made I made some this weekend while sitting in my draughty London apartment, drinking a long-stemmed glass of non-local rose and overtly ogling my own strumpet. And it was (almost) as good.

Anchoiade is a fairly punchy dip, made with tinned anchovies, a fair amount of garlic (not too much - I'm not actually French), a dash of vinaigrette ingredients and a handful of fresh parsley from the old window box. Terrific. Just pair it with some vibrantly colourful raw vegetables or even crusty bread, and in no time, you'll be back on your summer hols with nothing to worry about, except for a bit of garlic breath and a slight mid-afternoon hangover. Truly lovely.

No kidding, though; try this dip, it is absolutely my newest favourite thing in the whole wide world. I made it for the first time this week, and I have resolved to make it again at the earliest opportunity.

A 70g tin of excellent quality anchovy fillets are 79p at Waitrose, which means that including the lovely vegetables, this dish comes in at a very reasonable £1.50 per serving, for a super duper starter, snack with drinks, or weekend treat. Ooh-la-la, as some would say (not me).

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

Anchoiade

6 tinned anchovy fillets, oil drained
1 fat clove of garlic, centre stem removed
1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
3-4 tablespoons of olive oil
Fresh black pepper

Fresh, raw salad vegetables, cut into two-bite-sized chunks, for dipping

In a pestle and mortar, crush together the anchovy fillets and garlic until you have a smooth paste. Add the red vinegar and olive oil until you have a smooth emulsion. Set aside until needed, to allow the flavours to intermingle and develop. Serve with the crudites.

Padron Peppers Tapas

One of the best things about having a cooking obsession, is trawling around food shops and markets on a search for the weird and wonderful.

My fascination for tapas started in a Spanish restaurant in the village of Caleta in a small forgotten windswept cove in Tenerife. The cafe sits atop a rocky precipice overlooking a particularly rugged part of the Atlantic coast, and is fairly well known for its fabulously fresh wide selection of authentic tapas and its main course cousin the ration. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the place.

It was there that I first had a plate of Padron peppers - the cousin of the chilli (but not too distant, since about 1 in 20 of them is a spicy timebomb) - to enjoy with a glass of the local wine. What a find! How on earth could a fried pepper sprinkled with sea salt be such a gastronomic treat? I thought that maybe my love of such a simple dish had more to do with the stunning surroundings, the strong wine or the holiday vibe. Until now.

Mrs Ribeye and I found a rare pack of 'Padrons' (as I affectionately call them) at: La Plaza Delicatessen, Portobello Road, London, W10, while we wandered through Portobello Market last Saturday. Of course, we had to pop in to Makan for lunch, but on the way home we happened past La Plaza and I wasted no time in picking up a pack from the vegetable counter. Having offered a timid 'gracias' to the shopkeeper and then moronically repeating 'de nada' when he replied to my thanks, I decided never to attempt to speak in a foreign tongue on home soil again.

So, were the peppers as good as I remember? Er, maybe even better actually. Our good friends Ophelia and Kumar came over for dinner last night and I made Cassoulet (I'll post the recipe soon Click the link!) as a main course and these Padrons as a snack with pre-dinner drinks. Maybe because I used less oil than our Spanish friends, or maybe because I used a ridged grill pan to give them a slightly charred taste or something, but they were a delight. Kumar and I are chilli-heads so anything that looks like a chilli is going to please us no-end. Mrs Ribeye is a chilli-hater, and so these were not her favourite (although I'm not sure why), and Ophelia seemed non-committal. So maybe they're a boy's thing.

Dessert was my Apple Strudel Samosas. The whole dinner was well-balanced and I was happy with the result. Oh, one thing about the peppers: They're a bit pricey. £3.75 for a 400g punnet, means that the cost per serving is £1. I suppose even a return Easyjet flight for the pepper-carrier from Tenerife doesn't come so cheap these days. Gracias indeed.

Serves 4 (tapas-sized servings)

INGREDIENTS:

400g Padron peppers
Sunflower/vegetable oil for frying
Coarse sea salt

In a blisteringly hot grill pan, fry the peppers in the oil until slightly charred. Sprinkle with seas salt and serve immediately with cold beer or wine.

Tzatziki

It's funny how our tastes change. When I was a kid, you couldn't get me to eat a yoghurt for love nor money, but these days I'm eating the stuff with gusto.

Acquiring a taste for things takes many methods. A childhood hatred for orange juice was reversed when I was given freshly squeezed juice for breakfast on holiday somewhere and after gingerly trying it, found that it was far more heavenly than the concentrated carton crap I had thought was the only way the stuff was available.

Like all children growing up in the 1970's can testify, a daily delivery of school milk was the only way that the  State could guarantee that the population grew up with healthy teeth and bones - until 'Margaret Thatcher Milk Snatcher' decided that the money was better spent elsewhere. I couldn't have been happier. Thanks to the school milk being served at a highly un-refreshing room temperature and seeming to contain revolting 'bits' in it, I haven't been able to drink milk at any time during the rest of my forty year life. It's something which upsets me to my very core. Watching Mrs Ribeye enjoy breakfast cereal always left me jealous, until I discovered muesli with yoghurt.

Loving yoghurt, but hating milk has got to be the most blatant way to illustrate how irrational food phobias are. I don't like milk, but I love sour milk? Madness. Secretly, I'm hoping that I'm locked in a room for a week with nothing but a create of milk slowly going off for company. I'd emerge a delighted breakfast cereal consumer and go about my life a more fulfilled person. But, as it's never going to happen, yoghurt will be my saviour instead.

Today's recipe is not only the last in my Greek meze series of dishes, it is also a celebration of the mighty yoghurt. I buy supermarket tubs of tzatziki on a daily basis to eat with pitta bread for snacks or as part of my vegetarian midweek lunch, but making it yourself is far better than buying it. I can't say the same for Houmous, which is far better shop bought, but tzatziki is way nicer when you assemble it yourself. I noticed that shop bought tzatziki frequently contains cornflour. How very inappropriate and disgusting (not that I can taste it, but still).

Just make sure you buy the very best Greek yoghurt to ensure that you have a lovely thick tzatziki. The other major tip is to use dried AND fresh mint. The dried herb adds a warm background note, while the chopped fresh leaves add a refreshingly zingy top note. I grow fresh mint on my roof terrace, and I have found that it is as easy to grow as weeds - the problem is more about keeping it from growing too big rather than worrying about it dying. Just buy a mint plant from the living herbs rack in you supermarket, and water it only when the very top surface of the soil is looking a bit dessicated.

Cost-wise, this easy delicious dish is super reasonable. 50p per serving is all.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

1 x 500ml tub of Greek yoghurt
Half a cucumber, de-seeded and finely chopped
Handful of fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of dried mint, plus some for sprinkling
1 clove of garlic, mashed
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt and pepper

Mix the ingredients together in a bowl and refrigerate until to need to allow the flavours to intermingle and develop. Remove from the fridge and sprinkle with the dried mint. Serve with hot pitta bread.

Rainbow Greek Salad

The weekend is upon us! Which means boozing, partying, eating meat and no bloody work. Nice.

Mrs Ribeye and I have been pretty pretty good at keeping away from the flesh during schooltime, but as soon as Friday night approaches, our carnivorous instincts re-awaken and I break out the beef. That's not to say that we exactly suffer for the other 5 days a week, but man oh man, those vegetarians do not know what they're missing.

Still, if was a veggie I wouldn't exactly starve. As long as you've got a nice bit of feta cheese and some crunchy salad veg, you're going to eat well - as today's recipe testifies.

I love a Greek salad. But as always, I reckon I can improve on it. Go to any Greek restaurant and the salad arrives after the main course and just before the baklava. I'm a big fan, but why have the Greeks decided that a salad has to be so damn boring? I've been to tavernas in Corfu, Crete and London, and they all seem to agree that a salad should consist only of tomato, cucumber, sweet peppers, onion, olives and cheese. All very good, but not colourful enough. With our supermarket shelves heaving with fresh colourful produce from all over the world, why stick to the basics?

Nowadays, a Greek salad for me is a challenge to buy the most eclectic mix of colourful vegetables I can find. Hence, my 'Rainbow Greek Salad'. Try making yours with beetroot, radishes, baby corn or roasted aubergines. It's a chance to put the 'Wow' back into your meze!

Feta cheese tastes the same to me whether I buy the dearest artisan block or the cheapest value range - so I always buy the cheapest. I'm not sure why feta cheese is ever expensive. After all, it's only separated milk (which can be bought for 45p a pint). Be a skinflint like me and this dish comes in at a very pocket-friendly £1.50 per serving. Or buy the dearer stuff if you like. After all, it is the weekend...

A great lunch dish, starter, or pre-baklava meze staple. Just don't tell the Greeks...

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

Tomatoes, cucumber, yellow and red peppers, spring (salad) or red onions, peeled carrot - all cut into 2 cm dice
Handful of pitted black olives
1 x 200g block feta cheese, cut into 2cm dice
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
Pinches of salt and pepper

Arrange the vegetables on a serving plate with the olives and top with the feta chunks. Sprinkle oregano over the cheese and dress with the oil and vinegar about a half hour before serving. Season to taste (remember that the cheese is naturally quite salty).

Home-made Houmous

I'm sorry but shop-bought houmous is better than home-made. I don't care who makes it or which shop you buy it in, the houmous sold in a tub always trumps your own. Why? I suggest that there is a special ingredient only known to manufacturers of middle eastern dips which they sprinkle into the machine with the rest of the ingredients. I'll bet it's fairy dust.

So why bother making your own, and why have I posted a recipe here at all? I'll tell you. It's because I have an obsession with telling the truth, and last night I made a middle eastern meze for friends and didn't want to tell them that I made my own houmous when I didn't. Tzatziki, on the other hand, IS better home-made than shop-bought (recipe to follow soon) and so I was delighted to offer them a delightful yoghurty alternative to embellish the start of the feast.

So why is shop-bought houmous actually better? The answer is that it's mellower and has a better texture. The ingredients have had a long time in their hermetically sealed polythene container to really get to know each other and balance each other out - a bit like leaving two heavyweight boxers in the ring for an hour and seeing them emerge all battered and calm. The other thing is, the manufacturers have managed to find a way to easily peel the skins off the chickpeas, ensuring that their finished dish is smoother than a baby's bum - not full of papery shards of floppy old skin. Yuck.

I am, of course, exaggerating. Home-made houmous is fine, and tastes approximately the same as the one from Waitrose etc. It's even quite pleasant when you garnish it with reserved chickpeas, olive oil and paprika. But let's face it, once you garnish some of the shop-bought stuff with reserved chickpeas, olive oil and paprika, who the hell would know if you made it yourself or not? Maybe half a lie is better than a lie or no lie?

Oh, a quick note on tahini: Buy a big tub of it from your local middle eastern grocer. I use Green Valley just off the Edgware Road near Marble Arch (who also sell baklava to die for). Once you've got over your obsession with making your own houmous, you'll find yourself unable to pop to the fridge hourly to steal a spoonful of the deliciously rich clay-like sesame paste. It's like a slightly bitter peanut buter, but for some reason, so much better - it's gotta be that bloody  fairy dust again.

Oh, the other thing about shop-bought houmous, is that it's really cheap. 80p-£1 for a 200g tub is about the going rate. Make it yourself and it's going to cost you 75p per serving. Why bother?

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

1 x 400g can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed with 1 tablespoon reserved for garnish

2 tablespoons of tahini (sesame seed) paste, or 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds, ground to a powder

1 clove of garlic, peeled

3 tablespoons of lemon juice

3 tablespoons of olive oil

Pinches of salt and pepper
Ground paprika, for sprinkling

Toasted pitta bread to serve

In a blender, whizz up the chickpeas, tahini, garlic, lemon juice, 3 tablespoons of the olive oil and seasoning. Transfer the houmous to a bowl and make a shallow well in the centre. Garnish with the reserved chickpeas, sprinkle with paprika and drizzle with the reserved tablespoon of olive oil. Serve with the pitta bread.

Toasted Goats Cheese Salad with Red Onion Marmalade and a Creamy Vinaigrette

One of the best things about French food, is their love of the salad. On nearly every restaurant menu is a selection of different salads, all featuring local ingredients, and which are almost always served in huge portions. I love them all.

One day, I might fancy a salad with chicken livers, as I did in Langres; on another occasion I might fancy a selection of crudites, as I did in Kaysersberg. However, if I absolutely had to choose a death row salad (sorry - a bit of a contrived scenario, even for me), I would choose a good old salade de chevre chaud.

I don't know why goats cheese tastes so much better once it's had a bit of a heat-up under a grill, but it takes on a sort of souffle'd quality with added richness. I know - it's like eating a savoury cheesecake!

To cut the richness, I have added a red onion marmalade to each toasted cheese slice. I know it's a bit fiddly and a bit poncey to start smearing your own home-made jams onto bread before covering them with cheese and popping them under a grill, but I promise you, it is well worth it. The marmalade is only 3-4 ingredients anyway. Try it - you can also use it as a nice accompaniment to an after-dinner cheese board (another brilliant French invention) or as part of my Mozzarella, Sweet Red Onion, Garlic and Rosemary Foccacia recipe.


By the by, I watched a fantastic episode of Raymond Blanc's 'The Very Hungry Frenchman' the other day, which was set in Lyon. Not only was the cheese board creatively constructed out of a wooden packing crate (tres sauvage), but the episode reminded me of when Mrs Ribeye and I visited an authentic Lyonnaise bouchon to eat the local specialities of tripe and andouillette (intestine) sausage. I shall report back soon, of course - suffice to say that the not-easily-forgotten experience has left me with conflicting feelings of strange cravings/revulsion. An ex-girlfriend once described her feelings for me in a similar way.


Back to today's recipe: If I'm honest, I would have grilled the goats cheese a little more to really melt it down, but I was afraid that I would burn the bread (see how dark it is in the picture - oops). Next time, I'll turn up the heat on the grill to maximum and reduce the cooking time. I reckon that that'll do the trick.


A quick note on the vinaigrette dressing: I now add a little boiling water to my mix, which takes away the sharpness and aids in creating a smooth creamy emulsion - a tip I picked-up from a Marco Pierre White recipe. He's quite the chef, you know.

I served this dish as a main course, but you could halve the portion and serve it as a starter. Or do as Mrs Ribeye and I sometimes do: Don't halve the ingredients, and still serve it as a starter nonetheless. All-in, a large portion of this salad comes in at very reasonable £2 per serving.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 small sourdough loaf, cut into 8 thick slices
1 portion of red onion marmalade
150g goats cheese log, cut into 8 slices
1 soft round lettuce, leaves torn
3 large tomatoes, cut into 1cm dice
1 large spring (salad) onion, finely chopped

Creamy Vinaigrette:


4 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons boiling water
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Large pinches of salt and pepper

Firstly, make the vinaigrette by blending the ingredients and setting the dressing aside until needed. Then, grill both sides of the bread - one side slightly less than the other. On the lighter sides, spread a spoonful of the onion marmalade, then top with a slice of goats cheese. Grill the goats cheese slices under a hot grill until bubbling (3-4 minutes approx). In the meantime, arrange the lettuce, tomato and onion on a serving plate, and dress with the vinaigrette. Top the salad with four goats cheese slices each. Serve immediately.

Globe Artichoke Vinaigrette

Look, this is hardly a recipe - boiled globe artichokes served with French vinaigrette - instead it is a celebration of French produce, over that of our meagre English offerings.

Having spent a week in Nice in a rented flat, with small kitchen, I was given the opportunity to do some food shopping and cooking in France. What a revelation. The supermarkets are incredible - racks and racks of fresh produce all beautifully fanned-out in concentric circles of colourful and interesting ingredients, all waiting to inspire any eager cook to turn them into culinary alchemy.

The fruit and vegetable range changes daily - selling whatever is in season and happens to have provided the most bountiful, high quality, locally-grown crop on any given day. Of course, most of the obvious salad veg is on sale every day, but as the week went on, I grew to be less surprised by the daily almighty fluctuations of price and strain of each item as I browsed the racks, looking for the day's bargains.

Some days, watermelons were 2 Euros each, then the price would rise to 5 Euros each as the supply and demand curve dictated. Large Coeur de Beauf tomatoes would regularly flip-flop between 1-3 Euros a piece.

Fish prices were a little more stable and meat prices even more so. Wine and beer stocks changed almost daily, and the French seemed to get through lakes of the stuff. One day, Mrs Ribeye took a liking to a nectarine-infused wine, and asked me to get her another bottle while I did the day's shopping. No chance - the entire shelf had been picked clean.

One day, the rack of artichokes which had normally featured some tennis ball-sized examples at 1.50 Euros each, gave way to some melon-sized ones for 75 cents. A bargain! So I picked up a couple, and decided to simply boil them for an hour and serve them warm with a vinaigrette made with a lovely local olive oil/red wine vinegar and Dijon mustard dressing. Heaven.

Another thing about these artichokes - unlike the imported ones we buy over here in England - is that they are cheaper and better in every way. Firstly, they are huge, with enormous, smooth meaty hearts, with easy-to-remove hairy chokes, and chunky leaves with a good mouthful of edible stuff at the base of each one. Not scrawny with stringy hearts, impossible-to-remove chokes, and mostly inedible leaves, like ours. Secondly, they are prettier - when cut, the interiors have the most vibrant purple-coloured inner leaves I have ever seen. Positively psychedelic. Thirdly, when cut and boiled, they don't discolour and go that horrible black colour like the ones here at home - which even a sprinkle of lemon juice during the cooking period cannot cure (regardless of what published recipes might say). And fourthly, they're home-grown in France, which means that they were picked and sold within a day - not passengers on a long haul flight, where almost all of that fresh goodness had been lost in transit.

Also, even if I buy French olive oil, French red wine vinegar and Dijon mustard at home, the dressing wouldn't be as good as the one I made in Nice. Why? Because anything you make and eat abroad, somehow loses its appeal a bit when you bring it back. I don't know why - The French will probably say something about terroir or something. But surely if the stuff was grown there and merely imported here, the terroir is the same? Infuriating.

This recipe, a fabulous starter on a warm summer's day, came in at under £1 per serving. Even if you pay more for your ingredients, it's still a very reasonably-priced dish.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

2 large globe artichokes
A large pinch of salt

Vinaigrette:

4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard
Pinches of salt and black pepper

Snip off the top third of the artichoke to remove the woodier parts of the upper leaves, and expose the inner leaves. Twist-off the stalk at the base of the artichoke. Boil in plenty of salted water until soft (an hour approx) - the outer leaves should easily part from the rest of the body when cooked. In the meantime, mix the vinaigrette ingredients together, until you have a smooth emulsion, and set aside until needed.


To serve: Place an artichoke in a serving bowl and pour some of the vinaigrette around the base. Eat the leaves by picking them one-by-one from the artichoke and dipping them in the sauce - eat only the soft lower portion and discard the rest. Once all leaves have been eaten, remove the hairy choke from the heart, by pulling it away gently - it should come away quite easily. Cut the heart into chunks with a knife and fork and eat it with the rest of the vinaigrette.

Thai Coconut and Coriander Soup with Courgettes and Mussels

Over the weekend, I made a joint birthday lunch at my sister Roxanne's house for her and our mum, Mrs Ribeye Sr; and the rest of our family were in attendance to shower them with gifts and love. It was a fantastic day.

Because it was a lunch do, and my stepfather Stefano was taking my mum out for a birthday dinner in the evening, I decided to cook a fairly light fish-centric meal, consisting of this soup as a starter, followed by my Pan-Fried Salmon in a Mushroom Cream Sauce (recipe to follow soon click on the link!) as a main course. 

The 'eating light' plan got buggered-up though when Roxanne presented a chocolate birthday cake, jam doughnuts and assorted sweets to the table as dessert. As a token gesture, she also brought to the table a large platter of assorted fresh berries and grapes - it was barely given the time of day.

Neither my stepfather, nor my eight year old nephew Rocky can stand too much spice, so I decided to adapt a Thai green curry recipe, but take out the curry part, or at least the chilli, to make this soup. The result was amazing. A fragrant coconut broth which can be used as a soup base for almost any garnish ingredient. I chose cooked and shelled mussel meats, which are delicious and cheap to buy, together with courgettes, which add a welcome vegetable-y accompaniment to the shellfish.

Of course, Roxanne and I piled on the chillies ourselves after the soup was served. The Ribeye family are total chilli-heads - and I'm sure Rocky will follow suit once he is a year or two older.

You could make this soup with chunks of chicken, king prawns, or even butternut squash, instead of the mussels/courgettes if you fancy; but you must try this combination. It really went down a treat. 

Cooked mussel meats to buy from the local supermarket are about £1 per three generous servings, for a starter. Using these ingredients, I managed to keep the cost down to a very reasonable £1.25 per serving. Even if you used lobster meat instead of mussels, I reckon you'd still be under your Potless budget.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

1 portion of Thai Green Curry Paste - but omit the chillies, if you like

2 tablespoons of olive or sunflower oil

1.5 litres of chicken stock

1 x 400g tin of coconut milk

2 large courgettes, cut into 1cm dice

300g cooked and shelled mussel meats

Pinches of salt and pepper

Fresh basil, to serve

Fresh chillies, finely cut into rings, to serve

Fry the Thai paste with half of the oil until fragrant, and add the chicken stock. Simmer for 20 minutes and add the coconut milk, and simmer again for a further 20 minutes. Sieve the soup to remove the paste ingredients and return to the hob. In the meantime, fry the courgettes in the remaining half of the oil, until soft and translucent, and add them to the soup with the mussels. Season to taste. Heat the soup through for a further 5 minutes to warm up the mussels without overcooking them, and serve with the basil leaves and fresh chilli rings as a garnish.

English Asparagus, Soft Boiled Eggs, Salami and Olives

Springtime in London means unpredictable weather, longer evenings and asparagus. The English asparagus season is now well upon us, and the fattest stems are being sold all over town at bargain basement prices.

Asparagus wasn't always so cheap:

Many years ago, my family and I went to Signor Baffi, an Italian restaurant (I don't think it's still in business - if it is, it shouldn't be) in a north London suburb for dinner. The daily special included a starter of English asparagus with drawn butter for a whopping £6, and we were horrified at the price. How could asparagus merit that kind of money? At that time, asparagus WAS pretty dear, but even so.

Anyway, in the unlikely event that Mr Baffi is still in business, he couldn't possibly justify charging sick squid for a few bits of 'grass, whatever he may think of its qualities. Tesco and the rest of the High Street supermarkets are all charging around £1.50 for a good sized bunch of asparagus, and very good value it certainly is. Even with a restaurant's mark-up, but allowing for a trade discount on the raw materials, the Baffi, or his successor, should be charging you no more than about £4.50 per portion. Tell him.

My favourite way of eating asparagus is to dip them 'soldier-style' into soft boiled eggs. If I'm feeling fancy, I may wrap the spears in smoked salmon or parma ham, but for today it's going to be naked - with salami on the side of course. I don't know why, but some kind of smoked food is necessary to offset the richness of the egg and the smoothness of the asparagus. The olives are for... er, actually I just like olives.

As you can see, we chose to eat this little lunchtime feast on the good old roof terrace - for a week or two we had blistering 30c heat, but now it's raining and overcast - and very jolly and Mediterranean-y feeling it was too (but only for for a week or two). Now I just stare out of the patio door with a wistful expression, praying for a bit more global warming to break up this effing drizzle.

This little feast set me back £3 per serving. Wine extra, but necessary, of course.

Serves 2


INGREDIENTS:

200g fat asparagus stems
1 teaspoon of sea salt
4 eggs
150 peppered salami, thinly sliced
Handful of pimento stuffed olives

Remove the woody ends of the asparagus spears and place the asparagus into boiling salted water with the eggs. After 3 minutes remove the eggs and place them into egg cups. After a further 2 minutes, remove the asparagus and place on a plate, sprinkling them with the sea salt. Serve the asparagus by wrapping them in a piece of salami and dipping them into the eggs, or just eat the salami separately. Olives are on the side as palate cleansers.

Masala Chips

Mrs Ribeye and I had a fabulous lunch at the Indian vegetarian diner, Sakonis in Wembley, on bank holiday Monday earlier this week.

Gotta love bank holidays, but gotta love Sakonis even more. I won't rave about it here, because I'll write a full review later this week as part of my Potless Budget Restaurant Review series. However, I will write about a stealthily brilliant dish I ate there. I say 'stealthily', because ostensibly this dish is a mere plate of chips with a spicy sauce on it, and while it may be more obvious to bang on about the diner's legendary potato bhajis or masala dosai instead, I won't, because masala chips, for all of its unpretentious concept and simple flavours and ingredients is utterly and completely incredible.

I am using oven chips here to keep the oil consumption to a minimum, and it won't matter whether the chips are fried or baked first anyway, because they're going to get deliciously soggy, once folded into the sauce. Weirdly enough, although anathema to usual chip recipes, sogginess is the preferred texture for a plate of masala chips. In fact, it may even be better to buy a plate of chip shop chips to make this recipe - I reckon they have the right 'sog' factor necessary for an authentic take on this Indian classic. Don't tell Sakonis, but Mrs Ribeye reckons my recipe is even better than theirs.

Anyway, back to bank holiday Mondays: We should have them twice a week.

Keep an eye out later this week for my Sakonis review. It's a corker. But in the meantime, if you fancy a quick hit of their delicious Indian veggie fare, whip up a quick batch of these masala chips for only £1 per serving.

Fabulous as a starter, side dish, or as a snack with drinks. 

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

1 red pepper, cut into 1cm strips

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

3 chillies, cut into 1cm rings

1 tablespoon of sunflower or olive oil

200g tinned chopped tomatoes

1 teaspoon of madras or medium curry powder
1 teaspoon of black onion (nigella) seeds

500g cooked chips (French fries)

Pinches of salt and pepper
Fresh coriander leaves, for sprinkling

In a large wok, fry the onion, pepper, garlic and most of the chillies (reserving some for later) together until soft and translucent. Add the tomatoes, curry powder and black onion seeds and simmer for 10 minutes, until the sauce has thickened. Add the chips to the sauce and fold through until the chips are evenly coated. Season to taste. Sprinkle with fresh coriander and the reserved chillies before serving.

Chinese Smoked Mackerel Pancake Canapes

I love drinks parties and I especially love food served at drinks parties.

Last weekend, my friend Andrea had a wonderful 30th birthday party in a wine bar in the newly refurbished St Pancras station, and laid on some delicious canapes brought over by white-aproned bar staff. There were cubes of succulent pork belly, salt cod fritters, goats cheese tartlets and roasted tomato bruschetta. Mrs Ribeye and I made utter pigs of ourselves.

This weekend, alas, no party. However, did that stop the missus and I eating canapes in the comfort of our own home? Oh no! Still in pyjamas at 5.30pm on a Sunday afternoon, I prepared our very own cocktail party for two at home, featuring my Chicken Liver Pate on crackers and these little pancake delights. The decadence!

The thing is, I had bought a large free range duck and fancied making crispy duck with all the Chinese accoutrements, but after making my Confit Duck the day before and my Seared Duck Breast with Roast Duck Wings (recipe to follow later this week) the day before that, I didn't fancy eating another meal featuring our webbed-footed friend - especially as we are still on our 'meat-in-moderation' schtick.

So, with the Chinese pancakes, sweet hoi sin sauce and spring onions burning a hole in my pocket, I had to come up with a solution: Smoked mackerel! Crispy duck is a bit smoky and oily like mackerel, isn't it? So I tried it, and I PROMISE you, it is better than crispy duck! Mrs Ribeye couldn't believe how delicious these pancakes were, washed down by some of her sickly sweet rose. I can't wait to try these out on some actual friends - even though these cocktail parties a deux are quite fun.

Try making these Chinese pancakes with smoked mackerel - they are lighter, tastier, less rich and healthier than duck, and a lot less bother. I just took the mackerel out of its vaccuum pack and wapped it straight in the pancake with the sauce and veg. Canapes in 2 minutes. Eaten in 2 seconds.

I buy the cheapest 'value' smoked mackerel in the supermarket, at £1.50 for four large fillets. The sauce and the pancakes come from my local Asian cash and carry. All-in, these canapes cost about 30p each.

Serves 2 (makes 10 pancakes)

INGREDIENTS:

10 Chinese pancakes
3-4 tablespoons of sweet hoi sin sauce
1 smoked mackerel fillet, flaked
Half a cucumber or yellow sweet pepper, sliced into 5mm strips
1 spring (salad) onion, sliced into 2mm strips

Spread a little hoi sin sauce onto a pancake, and top with the mackerel, cucumber or pepper and spring onion. Roll the pancake into a cone and serve immediately.

My Mother-in-Law's Russian Salad 'Olivier'

Please welcome my mother-in-law to Potless!

Each year, Mrs Ribeye and I take a trip together to Syktyvkar in northern Russia to visit with the eastern wing of the family. We absolutely love it and I especially do, because it gives me a week-off from cooking and a chance to sample and learn to make for myself some authentic Russki cuisine from someone who has been cooking it for the best part of 50 years. I can't learn it from my wife - she hasn't cooked a dish in her entire 26 years. Bless.

Today's dish was invented 150 years ago by Lucien Olivier in the Hermitage restaurant in Moscow, and traditionally contained all sorts of decadent ingredients: Veal, caviar, duck, crayfish etc. These days, the salad is a mayonnaise-y delight featuring everyday stuff (the more humdrum the ingredients, the better and more authentic the dish - tinned peas are preferable to fresh etc), but is still utterly delicious and reminds me of family. I love it.

Anyway, Mrs Ribeye also takes an annual Easter trip home, without me, to get some quality time with her parents without having to be chief translator, and on this year's trip, her mum made her her favourite Olivier salad - and the missus had to take a picture of it to make me all jealous.

We're both going to visit at the end of the year for Russian New Year (on 7th January - don't ask) and we'll sit down for something to eat at whatever time of day or night we arrive. It's always dinner time at the in-laws place - I am hoping for some Olivier salad, my favourite Seledka pod Shuboy, and some various Pirogi (recipe to follow soon).

Excuse the quality of the photo - it has been taken with an iPhone in Russia, emailed to my Blackberry in London and passed through a filter to make it the right size and give it the right border. That's a lot of technology! Oh, but check out the crockery and tablecloth patterns - how pretty and adorable are they?

Due to the recent Russian clamour for western capitalistic values, food in England is now a lot cheaper to buy than in Russia. £1.50 per serving is all it'll cost you in London. Twice that in Syktyvkar.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into 1cm dice
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into 1cm dice
200g cooked ham, cut into 1cm dice
1 small tin of peas, drained
2 hardboiled eggs, cut into 1cm dice
2 spring (salad) onions, chopped
100g mayonnaise
Pinches of salt and pepper

Crusty bread, to serve.

Combine the salad ingredients and chill for an hour or two to allow the flavours to intermingle and develop. Serve with the crusty bread.

Zucchini Fritti with Garlic and Mint Yoghurt Dip

Courgettes are so versatile. Sometimes I want to eat them all soft and velvety in my Ratatouille, sometimes I want them to be smoothly blended in a soup, and often I add them to a frittata. However, when the day is as miserable outside as it it is today in London, the only thing for it is fried food.

For some reason, frying courgettes in breadcrumbs feels more virtuous than frying, say, French fries, but I don't see why. Courgettes and potatoes are both vegetables (actually the potato is a tuber, but who's counting?), so there should be no hierarchy of virtuousness (virtue? virtuosity? virtuositousness?) between those two dishes.

Anyway, this dish is so easy to do, that it seems a shame to reserve making it for special occasions. I made this batch in ten minutes flat , from chopping the veg, to sitting down to dip the finished article in this delicious yoghurt dip. That's another thing - yoghurt instead of mayonnaise. What a healthy(ish) treat!

When you cook the courgettes, don't fry them to death. They are much nicer with a small amount of bite left in the centre, and with the breadcrumbs a light, rather than a darkly caramelised, colour.

Cost-wise, these fritti are certainly as cheap as chips: £1 per serving, including the dip.

N.B. They are also fabulous served with my Courgette Soup.

Serves 2 (as a side dish)

Zuchini Fritti

INGREDIENTS:

1 large courgette, cut into 1cm dice
1 tablespoon of flour
1 egg, beaten
50g breadcrumbs
Pinches of salt and pepper
Sunflower or vegetable oil for frying

Dip the courgette chunks into the flour, then the egg and then the breadcrumbs. Deep fry until golden and crunchy on the outside (2-3 minutes approx). Season with the salt and pepper. Serve with the Garlic and Mint Yoghurt Dip.

---------------------------------------------------

Garlic and Mint Yoghurt Dip

INGREDIENTS:

100ml plain yoghurt
Half a clove of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon of dried mint
Pinches of salt and pepper

Mix the ingredients together and refrigerate for an hour to let the flavours mingle, and the dip to chill.