“It’s not a salad if you put bread in it” someone once told me. What a load of tosh. Have you ever heard of croutons? Hmmm? Although regular croutons depress me; rock hard squares that shatter to dust once bitten. I like to make bread more of the main event by getting some really good quality sourdough or a similar sturdy loaf, charring it and and tearing it into rough chunks (an idea I fell in love with after making this). It sponges up the dressing, leaving you with half juicy, half crisp pieces which really bulk out a salad in the most obscenely delicious manner.

Last night I wasn’t in the mood for meat, so I roasted some fennel and cherry tomatoes, added some fat kalamata olives and coated everything in an anchovy rich dressing – 10 really large, plump fillets which pumped things up a notch or twenty. Chilli, garlic, parsley, olive oil…you can imagine it all soaking into the bread. Go on, imagine it.

Deep-fried croutons, be gone.

Roast Fennel and Bread Salad with Anchovy Dressing (serves 2)

2 bulbs fennel
10 cherry tomatoes
3 cloves garlic
About 8 kalamata olives
2 slices sourdough bread

For the dressing:

1 red chilli, finely chopped
Small handful parsley, finely chopped
10 plump anchovy fillets, chopped
Juice of 1 lemon
Olive oil

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Remove the tough outer later of the fennel and trim any stalky bits at the top. Cut each bulb into quarters and then cut each quarter in half again. Arrange in a roasting dish and sling in the garlic (unpeeled) too. Drizzle with oil then give everything a good mix around to make sure it’s coated well. Season with salt and pepper and cook for 20 minutes.

Arrange the tomatoes in a separate dish, coat with oil and season as you did with the fennel. Once the fennel has been roasting for 20 minutes, put the tomatoes in the oven too. Cook for a further 15 minutes.

To make the dressing, put the chilli, parsley and anchovies in a pestle and mortar and pound to a paste. Add the lemon juice, a good slug of oil to loosen it and season with black pepper. Give everything a really good mix to emulsify the dressing. Once the vegetables are ready, remove the garlic and squeeze that into the dressing also. Mix well again.

Toast the bread, tear it into chunks and put into a large bowl. Add the fennel and tomatoes followed by the dressing. Give it a really good mix. Arrange on plates with the olives scattered over.

I’ve got a new oven. This is brilliant for 3 reasons. Firstly, it’s all clean and shiny; I mean, how often does your oven look clean and shiny on the inside? Not very often I think you’ll find. Not if you’re a slovenly layabout like me anyway. Second, my old oven was, quite frankly, a piece of shit. It had no numbers on the temperature dial and no symbols for the oven settings and it cooked unevenly so that everything had to be turned around halfway through or it would burn on one side – not exactly ideal. Thirdly, importantly: this new oven was free. The best of all reasons, let’s face it. New ovens are expensive and I can’t afford one, so when someone from Appliances Online e-mailed me randomly to ask if I wanted one, I said YES PLEASE I LOVE YOU THANK YOU MARRY ME. In exchange for this, they want me to link to their oven page, so here’s that and they want me to say that they also sell dishwashers, just in case you’re in the market for one of those.

So, I cooked pide in my swanky new oven; I made nice, evenly cooked pide and I knew exactly what temperature I was cooking them at by means of the lovely little digital display (imagine my panic when I saw the temp dial had no numbers around the outside). That’s 15 minutes at 220C, in case you’re wondering.

Pide are rather similar to lamacun* and are apparently sold on every street corner in their homeland. I topped mine with aubergine (which I blackened on the gas hob before scooping out the smoky flesh); lamb, minced; spices like coriander, cumin and cinnamon; onion, garlic and a little tomato. At one point I was feeling particularly rock and roll and recklessly squeezed in some incredible  Le Phare du Cap Bon harissa (from The Good Fork - they have some great stuff, like sardine spread, which is impossible to stop eating). Very spicy indeed. You could also use the fiery red pepper paste found in Middle Eastern shops or failing that just a decent amount of chopped red chilli.

I garnished the finished pide with diced Persian pickles (dill pickles would make a nice substitute), a sprinkle of lemon juice and some parsley. These things are essential for distracting from the richness of the lamb. The dough is a piece of piddle too. Well, it is if you have an electric mixer, anyway. It was thin, yet soft – extremely easy to demolish.

The end result is a bit like a banana shaped pizza. A delicious, meat-smeared boat of soft, spicy flatbread. Very evenly cooked.

*If you like the look of this, you’ll probably also like the look of my similar, Peckham Pizza.

Smoky Aubergine and Lamb Pide (makes 4)

For the topping:

1 large-ish aubergine
250g minced lamb
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
Pinch ground cinnamon
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tomatoes
A squeeze of tomato puree
2 red chillies (or a squeeze of very good quality, hot harissa)

To garnish:

Chopped pickled cucumbers, chopped parsley and lemon juice

Place the aubergine on the ring of a gas hob on a low heat (or under the grill), turning often, until completely blackened and collapsed. I think the hob gets a more smoky flavour but it sure as hell makes a mess. Once cool enough, scrape out the flesh, taking care to avoid any pieces of black skin. Finely chop the flesh. Set aside and discard the skins.

Skin the tomatoes by scoring a cross in the bottom and covering with boiling water for a couple of minutes. Drain, peel away the skin and chop finely. Toast the cumin and coriander seeds in a dry pan over a low heat, moving them around; when they start to smell fragrant, tip them into a pestle and mortar or spice grinder and grind to a powder.

Sauté the onions in a little oil and when soft, add the chilli and garlic and continue cooking for 30 seconds or so, stirring. Add the spices and stir again for another 30 seconds. Add the lamb and cook, breaking up the meat with a spoon, until it is all brown and cooked through. Add the tomatoes and aubergine flesh and cook for about 10-15 minutes, until any excess liquid has cooked out. Taste and season with salt and pepper. The topping is now ready so allow it to cool.

For the dough:

For the dough I used a recipe I found online which I now can’t locate for the life of me. If it’s your recipe, I’m sorry! I’ll reproduce it here anyway.

1 x 7g sachet fast action dried yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
150ml warm water
300g plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
2.5 tablespoons olive oil + more for brushing

Mix the yeast and sugar with the warm water. You want warm water, not hot, as it will kill the yeast. Leave it to one side to activate. When it’s ready (in about 5 minutes), it should be very frothy on top. If not, your water wasn’t warm enough or it was too hot – start again.

Sift the flour and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer or large mixing bowl. Add the yeast mixture and oil. If using a mixer, set it on low speed for 10 minutes until you have a smooth, elastic dough. If mixing my hand, you’re going to have to knead it until you have the same result.

Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Let it rise for about half an hour, or until doubled in size. Knock back the dough then cut into 4 pieces. Roll each piece out into a rectangle with tapered ends (much easier than it sounds – they don’t need to be neat at all).

Preheat the oven to 220C

Put each rectangle onto a baking tray lined with baking paper and then smear the topping over each, spreading it evenly. Fold up the sides of each pide and crimp at the ends. Brush the edges with olive oil and bake for 15 minutes. Brush the crust with olive oil once more when cooked. Sprinkle with the garnish and serve.

I recently spent a week in Puglia with 7 mates and 1 boyfriend. We cooked, ate and drank a lot in between lying around talking about cooking, eating and drinking. Before we left I’d read up on the food and came across what is apparently a classic recipe for focaccia with tomatoes pressed into the top. We didn’t find any there so I thought I’d have a bash myself; the ricotta is my own twist.

As the bread rises, the tomatoes roast and sweeten (after eating tomatoes in Puglia I’m not sure I could eat a raw one in this country ever again). The ricotta didn’t have quite enough time to disintegrate into little white heaps as it usually does but that didn’t matter at all. It was like a giant, fluffy, highly savoury pizza with bursts of juice from the tomatoes and creamy, crumbly patches of cheese. Make sure to sprinkle liberally with flaky sea salt crystals – if there’s one thing the people of Puglia aren’t scared of using, it’s salt.

Focaccia Pugliese with Ricotta

225g potatoes
1 1/4 teaspoons fast action dried yeast
375ml warm water
400g strong white bread flour
1 teaspoons salt

For the topping

1 teaspoon dried oregano
250g ricotta
15 cherry tomatoes, halved
Sea salt for sprinkling
Olive oil, for sprinkling

Boil, drain and mash the potatoes. While they are boiling, mix the yeast with the warm water in a large mixing bowl and set aside to activate (you will know when this has happened because the top will be slightly frothy).

Mix the flour, salt and potatoes together. When the yeast-water mix is ready, add the potato-flour mix to it, in two halves. Combine everything, turn it out and knead for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.

Set the dough aside in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a tea towel and wait until doubled in size. Divide the dough in half then shape into 2 balls. Put each on a lightly oiled baking tray (the one you will be using to cook it) and stretch it out into a rectangle. There is no need to stretch it thinly, just make a rectangle shape and leave it for 10 minutes. After this time stretch it a little further. Let rise until doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 200c/Gas6/400F. Press the tomatoes lightly into the top of each focaccia, sprinkle with the oregano and sea salt. Use your fingers to sprinkle all over with olive oil. Bake for 20 minutes, then remove from the oven, dollop with the ricotta and bake for another 5. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Apparently there is a place in San Francisco that serves a chicken and bread salad and is famous for it. I dunno, I’ve never been to America but that’s what I found when I googled the recipe to see if anyone else had got there first.

Original or not, it’s definitely one of the most delicious salads I’ve ever made. I love how it’s not really in any way healthy. There are two important things to remember when making it, and that is to buy good chicken (free-range, doesn’t have to be organic) and really good bread. With a recipe this simple, the ingredients need to shine, cliché or not. Burnished, crackling chicken skin is glazed with lemon and honey and seasoned a little bit too much. Bread from St. John is robust and when torn into pieces, drizzled with the chicken drippings and lightly toasted, turns into chewy half-croutons; crisp in some places, moist with meaty juices in others. Cue that noise that Homer Simpson would make if he were daydreaming about a heap of doughnuts, skewered with fried chicken wings, stacked on a giant table made from icy Duff.

Watercress is just the right leaf for the salad I think, not too bolshy. Curly endive also works. For the dressing, it’s mild mustard, a touch more honey to sweeten and then let yourself go with the lemon. That rush of acidity really makes it work.

There are various bits and pieces you could add I suppose but personally, the furthest I’ll go is a few barely-existent slithers of spring onion. It’s all about the flavour of that bird.

Oh, and there’s a matching wine. Yeah, you heard me. Ben asked me to come up with a dish to match a Raimat Vina 27 Chardonnay. I was worried it wouldn’t have enough acidity to cut the richness of chicken skin but it stepped up well. Apple and citrus were predominant flavours and I’m pleased I didn’t go with the obvious choice of fish. Having to plan a dish before you’ve tasted a wine is a challenge, particularly for a novice like me. It’s all about reigning yourself in I suppose and not over-complicating flavours. Start out modest and work your way up, and then when you get a bit good, you can pare it all back down again because at the end of the day, the simplest pleasures are often the best.

Roast Chicken and Bread Salad

1 x 2kg  free range chicken
200g really good, dense bread (I used St. John’s white loaf which has the texture of sourdough but without the sourness)
A couple of handfuls of watercress
1 large lemon and possibly another
1 generous tablespoon honey
A few cloves of garlic, unpeeled
1/2 spring onion, sliced very thinly

For the dressing

Juice of half a large lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil (not extra virgin)
1 teaspoon mild mustard
1 teaspoon honey
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 220C/Gas 6

Put your bird in a roasting tin and scatter the garlic cloves around it. Peel the zest from half the lemon then scatter this around the bird too and squeeze the juice into a bowl. Warm the honey gently to make it runny then mix this with the lemon juice and brush the mixture all over the bird. Season it heavily, all over and then roast for 30 minutes. Turn the heat down to 160C/gas 3 and roast for another 20-30 minutes. The bird is cooked when the juices run clear when you insert a skewer sideways into the thickest part of the leg.

Remove the bird from the tray and allow to cool. Remove the majority of the crust from the bread and tear it into bite sized pieces. Put the pieces in a bowl and spoon over about 3 tablespoons of the chicken drippings. use your hands to give it a good mix about then pop them into the oven for a few minutes until lightly toasted, but not too crisp – you still want a good bit of chew.

To make the dressing, mix the lemon juice, olive oil, mustard and honey together and season with salt and pepper. Give it a good whisking to emulsify the mixture.

Arrange the watercress on a plate, then arrange some of the bread pieces and chicken on top. Make sure to get plenty of crisp skin. Scatter over a few spring onion pieces if you fancy then drizzle with the dressing and serve. I’m jealous.

I came across this dish when I was looking for new ways to eat pickled garlic, which is something I’ve been doing a lot. What a condiment. Spiky yet sweet, it’s an unusual and addictive flavour. My friend Sally Butcher who owns the Iranian shop and deli, Persepolis tells me that in the Middle East, “they eat it with everything.” This makes sense to me.

On my internet travels I came across an apparently famous Chinese dish called the mutton or yangrou paomo; it’s from Xi’an, the result of cuisines converging via the Silk Road. Small pieces of unleavened ‘Muslim flat bread’ are an Arabian influence; the diner tears the bread into peanut-sized pieces and returns the bowl to the cook who tops it with mutton slices, spiced broth and often, glass noodles.* The dough pieces swell to form springy nuggets as they soak up the liquid. Common accompaniments are chilli paste, coriander leaves and most importantly, the pickled garlic. I was having me some of that.

The bread was a bit of a ball-ache. An e-mail exchange with Sunflower revealed that it’s usually a “heavy, griddled bun similar to an English muffin” but attempts to find a recipe failed. I considered substituting a muffin but it seemed the wrong way to approach a challenge. In the end I used the ingredients found scrawled on a piece of paper, apparently the results of a frantic searching session; I have no recollection. Cooked in a dry pan, it was dense enough to form the desired sticky dumplings rather than gummy mush.

Mostly you just need to chuck everything in a pot, but it will take a good three hours to cook, so one for the weekend. Other recipes cook broth and meat separately but I didn’t have time for that so I asked the butcher to cut up a leg of mutton and simmered the meat and bones together. Mighty black cardamom pods swelled like giant raisins on the broth, releasing their smoky, underground flavour. A lean over the pot made my nostrils buzz with chilli and star anise.

I’m pretty sure that this dish only partly resembles the real thing. I needed more broth in the bowl that’s for sure and usually the meat would be added separately before the hot stock is poured over. At least, that’s what I managed to glean from some rather dodgy translation. I do know however, that the dish is the most famous contribution of Xi’an to Chinese cuisine and apparently, served nearly everywhere in the city and also as part of the state banquet. I think it’s fair to say they are proud of it. If I’ve made it wrong or done it a disservice then I apologise but in my defence, it tasted great.

Mutton Paomo (Yangrou Paomo)

1kg of mutton (mostly chunks of meat and a few large pieces of bone)
2 onions, roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 x 2 inch piece of ginger, finely grated
1 mild red chilli, slit lengthways or chopped (I slit mine as I wanted to add chilli paste as a garnish)
200g glass noodles*
2.5 teaspoons of salt
8 peppercorns
2 star anise
A few pieces of cassia bark
3 black cardamom pods, crushed with the side of a knife
2 tablespoons cooking wine

Pickled garlic (available from Persepolis and Khan’s if you live in Peckham), plus chilli paste and coriander leaves to garnish

Trim your meat of any large pieces of fat. Put your meat, bones and everything else apart from the noodles and garnish into a large stock pot. If you want to get fancy, you could bundle your spices into a piece of muslin to make them easier to remove later on. Cover with water (mine took about 3 litres) and bring to the boil. Turn down to a simmer and allow to cook, uncovered for about 3 hours. After this time, remove the bones, whole spices and any remaining pieces of visible fat. I now allowed the broth to cool and skimmed the excess fat from the top. There is already enough fat in the broth to give a good flavour.

Cook the noodles according to packet instructions.

To serve, re-heat and spoon over peanut sized pieces of the bread (recipe below). Add a serving of noodles to the bowl and garnish as desired with the chilli, coriander and pickled garlic.

For the bread

300g plain (all purpose) flour
1 teaspoon salt
200ml boiling water
1 tablespoon lard, softened (by softened I mean leave it out until completely soft)

Mix all the ingredients together until you have a smooth dough. Let it rest for a little while before rolling it out into 8 pieces, about 4-5 inches in diameter. Wipe a heavy skillet or tava with oil and cook each bread for 5 minutes or so on each side until lightly golden. To serve, tear into small pieces and spoon the broth and condiments on top.

* As you can see, I only had wheat noodles.

You’ve probably heard that it is really easy to make good hummus at home and that, once you’ve tried it, you’ll ‘never go back’ to the shop-bought stuff. This is rubbish. I’ve rarely met anyone in real life who hasn’t told me that their experiences of making this classic Middle Eastern chickpea slurry at home were wildly disappointing. Recipes say things like, “for a super simple, healthy supper, just whizz two tins chickpeas with 1 clove garlic, 2 tablespoons tahini, juice of 1 lemon and a glug of olive oil.” It absolutely never comes out right. It’s never smooth enough and the flavours always seem out of kilter.

I’ve been trying to make a decent version myself for years because, once I fail at something in the kitchen, I’m like a dog with a bone; Steingarten-esque in my persistence of perfection. I think I’ve cracked it but let me warn you now, you’ve got to put a little work in to get the results.

I’d been approaching the task in entirely the wrong way, viewing it as a five minute job – whack it all in the blender and hope for the best. Really good hummus though, is actually a labour of love.

It is essential to cook your own chickpeas. Tinned ones pong, their flesh weak and pallid. Soak the dried ones overnight in cold water with bicarbonate of soda then cook the next day; a 10-minute rapid boil and skimming plus an hours simmer should do it. If you think that’s a lot of effort then brace yourself for the next step. The creamiest texture comes from individually popping each chickpea from its papery skin; it is these tough coatings which make the hummus coarse. We’re talking one episode (new format) of Come Dine with Me to skin those suckers.

Another tip is to use the smallest chickpeas you can find. I’ve taken to these brown ones recently; they’re small and nutty, although the end result is never quite as smooth as with white peas. When it comes to blending, I do the tahini and lemon juice first, otherwise the tahini can clump and never distribute properly and then add the chickpeas in batches with a splash of water each time. Again, it all helps to make a smooth paste. The rest is down to personal taste although of course it’s better to add a little at a time rather than try to counteract a dominant flavour later.

Buoyed by my success with the hummus, I decided to have a go at making pitta bread. They only needed an hour to rise and puffed up really well. Unlike the hummus, very easy to get right first time and honestly, so much better than shop-bought. Really.

Hummus

This makes a big batch but let’s face it, if you’re going to faff about skinning chickpeas then you may as well make it worth your while.

325g dried chickpeas (they will double in weight once cooked)
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
5-6 tablespoons tahini
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
Juice of 1 lemon and possibly the juice of another (at least half)
2 fat cloves of garlic
1 heaped teaspoon fine salt
Olive oil

Parsley and paprika to garnish (optional). Toasted pine nuts or whole chickpeas are also good on top.

Begin the day before, by soaking your chickpeas in cold water with the bicarbonate of soda and leaving them overnight. The next day, rinse them, cover with cold water (no salt) and bring to a rapid boil and leave for 10 minutes, skimming off the scum that rises to the top. Drain then re-cover with water and simmer for an hour – 90 minutes, until they are soft and squish easily between your fingers.

Once cool, pop each one from its skin. It takes a while but I found plonking myself in front of the telly eased the pain.

Whizz the tahini and juice of 1 lemon together in a blender until well combined, then blend the garlic and salt into the mix before adding the chickpeas, a handful plus a splash of water each time. When all your chickpeas are blended in, add a good glug of olive oil (hold the bottle over the blender for a couple of seconds), turn the blender on and leave it for a few minutes. Adjust the flavours to your taste. I find it always needs more lemon juice.

Garnish with more olive oil, parsley and paprika.

Pitta Bread (makes eight)

I used part wholemeal flour, firstly because I had some hanging around and secondly for a bit more of a robust flavour. I think it works well but you can use entirely strong white bread flour if you prefer.

220g strong white bread flour
150g whole wheat flour
1 heaped teaspoon fine salt
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1 x 7g sachet fast action dried yeast
300ml warm (not hot) water
2 tablespoons olive oil

Add the yeast to the water and leave in a warm place for about 10 minutes until frothy. This means that the yeast is activated.

In a large bowl combine the flours, salt, sugar and oil and then add the yeasty water. If you have an electric mixer with a dough hook then simply set the lot on the lowest speed for 10 minutes, adding more water if necessary, until smooth and elastic. If you don’t have a mixer, combine the mix until it comes together into a ball of dough. Again, add a little more water if necessary to bring it together. Knead on a lightly floured surface for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.

Rest the dough in a lightly oiled bowl (so that it doesn’t stick) and cover with clingfilm or a damp tea towel and leave in a warm place until doubled in size – mine only took an hour.

After this time, knock the dough back a little by punching it a few times then divide it up into 8 pieces. Roll each into a ball, then recover for another 15-20 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200C and preheat a baking stone or baking tray (turned upside down).

On a lightly floured surface, roll out each dough ball into a pitta shape – each should be about 0.5 cm thick. Bake them on the stone or baking tray for about 5 minutes, or until golden and puffy. They are best eaten warm from the oven and they re-heat well.

Labneh is strained yoghurt. Now now, do bear with me, it’s delicious. You mix regular, full-fat Greek yoghurt with a scant half-teaspoon of salt then bung it in some muslin and hang it over a bowl overnight. Drip, drip, drip. In the morning all the whey has drained away and what remains is a creamy thick ‘yoghurt-cheese’. It’s magic scooped up with warmed flat breads and sprinkled with za’atar, smeared in a kebab, or rolled into balls, covered with herbs and stored in olive oil.* I’ve taken to eating it plain on walnut toast first thing too; the contrast of hot toast and cool, tangy topping really floats my breakfast boat.

Popular in the Middle East and South Asia, it pops up in mezze, sandwiches, dips and even desserts. It’s basically a flavour whore and will take whatever it can get.

When it comes to comfort snacking, I tend to top it with my salty little friends the anchovies; briny, umami-packed miniatures. First it was the boiled egg with anchovy dippers, then the baked eggs with the same. Now I can’t get enough of them slivered and draped over the labneh, prickled with chilli and sprinkled with whatever herbs are lying around, or perhaps some papery shavings of red onion.

Despite labneh’s surprising richness, I like to reason with myself that it’s fairly healthy; not that the fat content of anything has ever held me back, as I’m sure you’ve come to realise. A drizzle of olive oil is all that’s needed to counter the balance back towards gluttonsville though, so don’t worry about that.

Labneh with chilli and anchovy

500g good quality, full fat Greek yoghurt (I find Total is the best brand)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
Anchovy fillets, sliced in half lengthways
1 small mild red chilli, finely chopped
A few leaves parsley (or other herbs), finely chopped
Black pepper
Good bread, toasted, to serve

Muslin and string to strain the yoghurt

Mix the yoghurt with the salt then line a bowl with the muslin and dollop the yoghurt in the middle. Gather up the muslin then tie the top with string and hang somewhere (preferably cool, although I’ve never had a problem in my kitchen), over a bowl, overnight. In the morning remove from the muslin, mix in the lemon juice and refrigerate until needed. It will last a few days.

Spread on hot toast and top with the anchovies, chilli and herbs. Some black pepper and a drizzle of olive oil won’t go amiss.

* I’ll dig out a jar and post a piccy and recipe up for you; it’s really beautiful.