A surprising soup, a great preservative against winter colds.
Author: Veronica
Yorkshire Pudding
As recorded in a Yorkshire kitchen. Photos taken in haste, they are too good to leave hanging around!
Warm broad bean and potato salad with cheese and prosciutto
This is loosely based on a recipe in an old Sainsbury’s magazine. It’s an unusual idea — a kind of cross between salad and gratin, pretty and refreshing — a good light summer lunch or starter. You may vary the ingredients depending on what you have.
Tomates à la crème
From Edouard de Pomiane via Elizabeth David, who says it ‘makes tomatoes taste startlingly unlike any other dish of cooked tomatoes’.
We had it as a starter but we reckoned it would be fab with some nice fillet steak – or with roast/grilled lamb.
Salade aux lentilles du Puy
This is an absolutely classic French bistro dish. I still remember eating it in a little café in Violès after an arduous morning’s grape-picking.
Poisson cru au lait de coco
The Polynesian national dish, as prepared on a Tahitian beach.
Note: when not on a beach in Tahiti it is much more practical to just buy coconut milk in a can or package. We found it was thicker than the fresh-off-the-tree variety so you could dilute it a bit with water.
Pa amb tomaquet, or pan con tomate
The Catalan national dish — “bread and tomatoes”, which I admit doesn’t sound very exciting. But with ripe tomatoes and good olive oil, it is delicious. A simple starter; or, in Catalonia, a breakfast dish.
Moules farcies au four
Serves 4 as a starter or 2 as a main course. Best with the large Spanish mussels — small moules de bouchot should not be wasted on this!
Mouclade
Devised by Steve from several different recipes, this is the best sauce for mussels I have ever tasted. It deserves small, fresh moules de bouchot (grown on posts in Brittany). Make sure you have lots of French bread for mopping up the sauce. This will serve six as a starter, or 3-4 as a main course.