It’s time to take advantage of one of our great native harvests – and, best of all, it’s free, too. But get your skates on before the squirrels take the lot

If you go down to the woods today, I can’t guarantee a big surprise, but there’s a very good chance of a delicious little snack. For it’s about this time of year that I rev up my efforts to gather hazelnuts and cobnuts before the squirrels get their mercilessly efficient little paws and jaws on them.

Hazelnuts can be found all over our ancient woodlands and hedgerows, and down the centuries they’ve supplied so much more than sustenance. They have long been associated with wisdom, even druidic magic, and everything from witches’ wands, royal sceptres and water dowsing rods were made from their precious and pliable wood.

The common wild hazel grows in abundance all over Britain, and seeking out its nuts is perhaps one of the easiest foraging jobs going, (alongside blackberrying, which you can often do at the same time). Fresh, green hazelnuts are quite different from the crunchy dried nuts you buy in the shop. Their flesh is crisp, slightly sweet, and I can run through a stash of them with a brisk and squirrel-like efficiency myself.

If you don’t have time to gather your own, at this time of year some greengrocers and farmers’ markets sell cobnuts, as commercially cultivated hazelnuts are known. Cobnuts are bigger than wild hazels, and just as delicious when very fresh – check the frilly casing is still sprightly and not too dried out.

Cobnuts were first cultivated around Maidstone in Kent probably as far back as the 16th century. Plantations, as growers called their nut farms, spread out as far as Sussex, Devon and Worcestershire, and by the time of the first world war there were 7,000 acres of hazelnut orchards, or “plats”, in Britain. By 1990, this had declined to 250 acres and today most of our hazelnuts come from Turkey.

All the more reason to keep alive the tradition of our seasonal cobnut harvest. If you’d like to track some down, kentishcobnutsassociation.org.uk gives details of pick-your-own places, farm-gate and mail-order sales, as well as advice on growing your own trees, should you have the space and inclination.

As well as cobnuts, there are also filberts about. If you want to make a distinction, cobnuts (Corylus avellana) are round with short, frilly husks that expose the end of the nut (their Latin name comes from the Greek for helmet, korys, because of the shape of the husk), while filberts (C. maxima) are longer, thinner and covered by their husks – they take their name from St Philibert’s Day on 22 August, the date by which hazelnuts are meant to start ripening. And just to keep you confused, one of the most widely available “cobnuts” is C. maxima ‘Kentish Cob’, which is actually a filbert.

Once you’ve had your fill of fresh hazels, dry any you have left over. Store in a dry, airy room or shed in shallow layers in slatted boxes, or hang them up in mesh bags. Turn them regularly, or give the bag a shake, to ensure they’re drying evenly and, once dry, remove the husks and store in a cool, dry place. And then you’ll have hazelnuts!

Dried hazelnuts are a great addition to all kinds of savoury and sweet dishes – toasting brings out their complex flavours. Whole or roughly chopped, they add crunch to autumn salads and stuffings; ground, they’re very good in biscuits and cakes, particularly when paired with chocolate (see today’s recipe). Look out for hazelnut oil, too – its distinctive flavour is good in dressings and baking, though it turns rancid quickly, so refrigerate after opening and devour swiftly and greedily.

Chocolate and hazelnut cake

This rather splendid-looking cake is really quite easy, and demonstrates perfectly the seductive combination of hazels and chocolate. Serves eight.

For the cake
400g shelled dried hazelnuts
1 tsp cocoa powder
250g dark chocolate, about 70%, broken into pieces
200g butter, plus a little more for greasing the tin, softened
200g caster sugar
5 egg yolks
Pinch of salt
1 tbsp brandy (optional)

For the chocolate glaze
100g caster sugar
50g dark chocolate (about 70%)
20g butter

Heat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Put the hazelnuts on a baking tray and roast until browned, checking regularly they aren’t burning – about five minutes.

Turn down the heat to 150C/300F/gas mark 2. Tip the hazelnuts into a clean tea towel, wrap them up and leave for a minute, then rub vigorously with the tea towel to loosen and remove their papery skins. When cool, reserve about 30g of the nuts to garnish the cake at the end and pulse the rest in a food processor until fine.

Grease the bottom and sides of a 23cm springform tin, then dust the insides with cocoa powder. Line the base with baking parchment and butter the parchment.

Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl and place over a pan of barely simmering water – the water should not touch the bottom of the bowl. Melt the chocolate, remove the bowl from the pan and leave to cool.

With a stand mixer or hand mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition and adding a pinch of salt with the last yolk. With a rubber spatula, fold in first the hazelnuts and then the chocolate and alcohol, if using. Spoon into the tin, smooth over the top and bake for about 45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out with just a few moist crumbs clinging to it. Place the tin on a wire rack and leave for 20 minutes before releasing the sides of the cake tin and leaving to cool completely. Invert the cake on to a plate, and remove the base and the paper.

To make the glaze, tip the sugar into a small pan with 100ml water and warm over a low heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Bring to a boil and boil hard for three minutes. Remove from the heat and cool until it’s very warm, rather than volcanically hot (you can put the base of the pan into the sink filled with a couple of centimetres of cold water to speed this up). Stir in the chocolate and butter until it’s melted, blended and glossy. Pour over the cake and finish with the remaining nuts.

Pear and hazelnut salad

Sweet, ripe pears and hazelnuts are a classic and delicious combination. Serves two as a starter.

30g dried hazelnuts or cobnuts (prepared weight)
1 pear
5 tbsp ricotta
2 tsp hazelnut oil
2 tsp runny honey
1 tsp sherry vinegar
Freshly ground black pepper

If using dried hazelnuts, toast them (see the preceding cake recipe); fresh hazels or cobnuts can be used as they are or fried lightly in a little olive oil with a sprinkling of flaky sea salt. Chop the nuts roughly.

Core the pear and slice thinly. Divide the slices between two plates. Scatter on the hazelnuts and then dot with ricotta. Trickle the oil, honey and vinegar on top, and finish with a few grinds of black pepper.

Honeyed hazels

This recipe is from my friend Pam Corbin, who runs our preserving courses at River Cottage, and is one of my great autumnal favourites. It’s a great way to squirrel away fresh cobnuts, for spooning on yoghurt for breakfast or ice-cream after dinner. Makes two 225g jars.

500g hazelnuts or cobnuts
340g runny honey

Crack all the nuts and remove the kernels. Heat a frying pan over low heat, and toast the shelled nuts in batches for four to five minutes, jiggling and shaking the pan to make sure they don’t burn. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Pack the nuts into sterilised jars, adding a tablespoon of honey every third or fourth layer. Continue until the jars are tightly packed with nuts and completely covered with honey. Seal securely with a lid and store in a cool, dry, dark place. Use within a year.

Hazelnut meringues

Hazelnuts are a great addition to a meringue, making a chewier, more substantial pud than the usual light-as-air concoction. Serves six.

5 egg whites
200g caster sugar
75g light muscovado sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
100g toasted hazelnuts (see preceding cake recipe), half finely ground and half roughly chopped
220ml double cream
2 tbsp icing sugar

Heat the oven to 110C/225F/gas mark ½. Line two baking sheets with parchment.

In a scrupulously clean bowl, whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks. In a separate bowl, whisk the sugars and cinnamon. Add the sugar to the egg whites a couple of tablespoons at a time, whisking as you go; once you’ve added half the sugar, you can begin to add the rest more swiftly. Keep beating until the meringues are stiff and glossy. Use a metal spoon or spatula to fold in the ground and chopped nuts.

Drop large tablespoonfuls of the mixture on to the parchment, leaving some space between them so they can spread out. Bake for about an hour and a half, until the meringues peel easily away from the paper and sound hollow when tapped. Turn off the oven and leave to dry out in the cooling oven for a couple of hours.

Whip the cream with the icing sugar until thickened, and use generous dollops to sandwich the meringues together in pairs.

guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle

From Cliff Richard’s passion for chicken tikka to Noel Gallagher’s favourite cuppa and Tinie Tempah’s love of seafood linguine, music stars give us a taste of their favourite foods and drinks

• Interactive: Love music love food

Tinie Tempah loves seafood

Life is good when you’re Tinie Tempah. The Plumstead-raised artist – otherwise known as Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu Jr – has won a tonne of praise for uniting the disparate music scenes of grime, underground rave and radio-friendly pop without selling any of them out. He’s had two No 1 singles, a No 1 album and two Brit awards.

One of the fringe benefits of fame is that you get to discover new experiences in eating. Born in London to Nigerian parents, Tinie has always appreciated his food. He reminisces about an “amazing” roast chicken with garlic and thyme jus that he had at the Salon Millesime in the Carlton Hotel, New York. “They warned me it would take 45 minutes. After about 35 minutes, they brought out an almost-cooked chicken and told me it was coming along nicely, and 10 minutes later I ate the best chicken I’ve ever had.”

Whenever he visits a new country, Tinie heads off the beaten track to try some traditional food – the old town in Dubai or backstreet places in Australia. “Didn’t enjoy kangaroo,” he says. “It was like a cross between beef and chicken, smoky and really chewy.” He’s kept a picture of the receipt on his phone: stubbie, stubbie, stubbie, kangaroo … and chips.

Nigerian food is a fundamental part of his life. It’s what he grew up with and it builds up the palate because it’s packed with flavour. “Nigerian food is lots of flavour, lots of tomato purée, rice, yam, beans… it’s a whole load of stuff, really good.” His favourite would be pounded yam with egusi soup, a savoury soup with meat and spinach which exists in countless variants across West Africa.

He has a couple of favourite Nigerian restaurants, both on the Old Kent Road in south-east London: the classy 805 and the more home-style Presidential Suya Grill. They’re both family-run businesses, friendly and personal. Presidential, in particular, is one of those places where you feel like you’re in Nigeria, he says. “There is a real nice atmosphere. When I come back from travelling the world, I do like to go there and chill. It’s humbling.”

He’s a recent convert to seafood. Tinie used to be apprehensive about shellfish and squid. Then he saw that his Maltese mate, who ate it all the time, was light on his feet and full of energy, whereas a steak would wipe Tinie out. Then he tried a seafood linguine, “and all my prayers were answered. It just felt right – it was light but it filled me up. I could still run around and do my thing.”

The recipe: Seafood linguine

Serves four as a starter.

325g linguine
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A knob of butter
75ml olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped
200g raw prawns, peeled and deveined
4 large scallops, shelled, cleaned and halved
4 langoustines, cleaned
The tail of 1 small lobster, cooked, peeled and sliced
4 ripe plum tomatoes, peeled,

deseeded and diced
8 basil leaves, finely chopped
100g clams, cleaned
Lemon juice, to taste (about ½ lemon)
A pinch of dried chilli flakes
Lemon wedges, to serve

Three-quarters fill a large saucepan with water and bring to a boil. Add the linguine and a good pinch of salt, and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, or until just cooked.

Meanwhile, heat a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the butter and all but a dash of the oil, and gently fry the garlic and onion until soft. Add the prawns, scallops, langoustines and lobster tail slices, and fry quickly for about two minutes.

As soon as the pasta is cooked, drain, toss with a dash of olive oil and add to the frying pan, along with the tomatoes, basil, salt, pepper and clams. Pop the lid on the pan for a minute, or until the clams open, then remove from the heat.

Divide between four warm pasta bowls and finish with a squeeze of fresh lemon, a sprinkling of chilli flakes and salt to taste. Serve with a wedge of lemon on the side.

Johnny Borrell loves salmon

Johnny Borrell was a latecomer to the kitchen. “But cooking’s creative – it’s the same impulse as writing or painting. If you’ve got that interest, it will transfer to cooking. There’s the macho gamesmanship aspect, too. I’ve got at least three friends who reckon they’re the best cooks in the world – as all blokes do.”

He likes to cook dishes that take plenty of time: “Something with the quality of a grand project. Get a few cod fillets and leave them salting in your airing cupboard for a week, to get that deep flavour. Something epic.”

Borrell grew up on fish fingers, chips and pizza, and discovered food by travelling the world with his band, Razorlight. (They chose to sign with Universal in part because the label took them out for a better meal than rival bidders.) Most bands don’t take enough advantage of the places they visit, he says, but Razorlight consult the Zagat guide and try to go local.

At home he loves the Bell in Oxfordshire. “I’ll turn up starving and without fail they’ve got an incredible hot, crusty roll with coarse Ardennes pâté.” And the Food Lab in Islington does a brilliant Italian-English breakfast. Then there’s the temple of nose-to-tail eating, St John in Smithfield. “It’s not for the squeamish – it’s brains and hearts and tails – but I’m not squeamish. There’s nothing I wouldn’t eat off their menu.”

But the best thing he’s ever eaten was a little less exalted. When Borrell was first trying to become a musician, he lived on the dole with a friend who wanted to be a writer. One week their benefits didn’t come through and they applied for – “This sounds very dramatic” – a hardship loan. They queued for three hours, filled in the forms and waited. “We’d spent all our money on alcohol and cigarettes, and hadn’t eaten in two days.” When the £35 loan came through, they ran straight to Safeway on Holloway Road, bought lamb chops and ran home. “The feeling of just getting these chops home was sheer delight. We chucked them in the pan – I think we seared them for only a minute on each side – and just devoured them. It’s got to be the most satisfying thing I’ve ever eaten. That’s my Proustian lamb chop, the one I’ll always remember. It’ll never get better than that.”

The recipe: Smoked salt and chilli crispy-skin salmon

Serves four.

Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp smoked sea salt flakes
½ tbsp chopped fresh parsley
½ tsp dried chilli flakes
4 salmon fillets, about 150g each, descaled
Oil, for brushing and frying
4 tbsp soy sauce

In a small bowl, mix together the lemon zest, smoked sea salt, parsley and chilli flakes. Put to one side.

Check over the salmon for pin bones, removing any you come across. Lay the fillets skin-side up on a board and score the skin with a sharp knife. Brush with some oil and rub in most of the salt mixture.

Heat a large frying pan over a high heat and add a little oil. Lay the salmon skin-side down in the pan, fry for three minutes, then turn over and sprinkle with half of the lemon juice. Cook for another minute or two, until the fish is cooked through.

Transfer to warm plates, drizzle with the soy sauce and finish with the remaining salt mixture and a squeeze of lemon.

VV Brown loves Marmite

“My boyfriend says I’m a bit of a jazz cook,” VV Brown says. “I experiment, chuck everything in. You don’t know what you’ll get until you try.” Her successes include lamb joint glazed with chilli sauce and wine, and putting couscous in a pineapple and refrigerating it overnight: “You get pineapple-flavoured couscous in its own bowl.” Among her disasters, salad cream on mince: “It went hard in the fridge and looked disgusting.”

Her parents ran a school in Northampton, and the dinner lady was her Auntie Corinne, who cooked fish and chips, Caribbean and the occasional Chinese. “Much better than ordinary school dinners,” she says proudly.

“I’m a simple girl; I don’t like flashy restaurants.” She prefers quiet Thai or Japanese places, or a “gorgeous” place in Greenwich Village, where her meal is lodged in her memory: fried mushroom, scallops with cauliflower and crème brûlée. “There were maybe 15 people in the restaurant and it was like home cooking, really cute and cosy. Just what I like.”

The recipe: Marmite and red onion scones

Makes eight scones.

75g butter
1 red onion, peeled and diced
180g self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting
100g wholemeal flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp Marmite
1 medium egg
2 tbsp plain yoghurt
3 tbsp milk, plus extra for brushing

Heat the oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5. Melt 50g of the butter in a frying pan over medium heat and sweat the onion until soft. Set aside to cool.

Mix the flours and baking powder in a bowl, then rub in the rest of the butter until it resembles breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre. In another bowl, whisk the remaining ingredients, pour into the flour, add the onion and mix to combine (add a little more milk if it’s too dry).

Turn out on to a floured surface and gently roll to about 3cm thick. Using a scone cutter, cut out eight rounds and place on a floured baking sheet. Score the tops and brush with milk. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden. Cool on a wire rack. Best eaten warm.

Noel Gallagher loves Yorkshire Tea

“I am obsessed with Yorkshire Tea,” declares Noel Gallagher, for 18 years the leader of Oasis and now forging a solo career. “I even bring it on tour. It was always on the Oasis rider: ‘Tea – must be Yorkshire.’”

Why does a man whose formative musical years were characterised by cigarettes and alcohol and champagne supernovas feel the pull of this most homely of English beverages? “I’m a northerner,” he says, “and it’s part of our staple diet. Plus, I’m of Irish descent. The kettle always seemed to be on when I was growing up. It’s part of the fabric of your life.”

Gallagher gets through about five cups a day these days, but he used to have a debilitating 20-bag-a-day habit. When he was younger and worked on building sites, his standard brew was two bags, one cup. “I liked it really strong,” he says. “Then, one day, I saw how brown and manky the inside of the cup was and I thought, ‘That’s what my insides look like – better get off it.’”

Like a true tea drinker, Gallagher has rules that must not be broken. Milk goes in last. Put your sugar in first, with the teabag, then fill it up to about an inch from the top and leave it for a good while. And what colour should the tea be? ”You know the Quality Street toffees in the yellow wrapper?” he says. “It’s got to be the exact same colour as them or it’s going down the sink.” When in London, he makes his own cuppa because “there’s a lack of good tea-making down here. Paul Weller’s tea-making leaves a lot to be desired. It’s pretty watery and the colour’s not right.”

And, like a true connoisseur, Gallagher wonders about the mysteries of tea. How old should you be before you start drinking it? Why can’t you get a decent cup of tea in America? “Because the whole country runs on coffee, caffeine and people talking a load of shit.” And why, as Nicky Wire of the Manic Street Preachers has pointed out, do people in London never use teapots? “Tells you a lot about London, that,” says Gallagher.

He admits he is not a great cook, although insists his missus is. “She’s truly excellent – she could have made a profession out of it.” He retains a taste for the things he loved as a kid, like fish and chips. With his mum raising three sons on her own, the Gallaghers were “on the breadline. We were just eating to survive.”

He didn’t go to a Chinese restaurant until he was about 21, and still rates his first ever Chinese – at the famously brusque Wong Kei on Wardour Street, London, with Inspiral Carpets, for whom he used to roadie – as probably his favourite meal ever. “It was like a whole new world,” he says. “I used to live in that place in the 90s. Best hangover cure ever – that and a can of Coke.”

Mick Hucknall loves lobster thermidor

Reputations once earned tend to stick, and Mick Hucknall will always have a name as a lover of both food and women. The latter is a bit out of date – he is now happily married with a daughter – but the former passion remains intact. He’s been a vintner since the late 90s, producing wines under the name Il Cantante (“the singer”) from grapes grown in the volcanic Sicilian soils of Mount Etna, but Hucknall tries to let his own offerings speak for themselves. “It’s all well and good being a pop star, but what does that have to do with wine?” he asks. “I’ve tried to avoid the celebrity angle.”

Hucknall has owned restaurants in the past, too. There was a minor stake in a bar in his native Manchester, and a Parisian restaurant, Man Ray, co-owned with Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and John Malkovich, an experience he recalls with a shiver. “It becomes a chain round your neck. I’d advise any aspiring pop star or actor to never ever invest in clubs or restaurants. You’ll get screwed. Stick with what you’re good at.”

A genuinely disadvantaged youth has made Hucknell appreciate the fruits of his success all the more. His mother left when he was three years old and his father, a barber, brought him up “just above the poverty line”. It was mostly northern dishes on the table at home in Denton: “Lancashire hotpot, steak and cow-heel pie… it sounds like Desperate Dan food, doesn’t it? But when they’re made well, these dishes can stand up to anything in the world.”

After Hucknall left home and moved into a bedsit in Moss Side in the early 80s, he learned to cook by default, picking up a talent for Indian food from shopkeepers in Rusholme. When Simply Red took off, he discovered a love of Italian, then French and German food. “German food’s very underrated,” he says. “It’s so beautifully simple. Roast goose, or Schweinshaxe – a roast knuckle of pork with crispy skin… it’s so good..”

The best meal he ever had, he says, was as a guest of one of the founders of Gambero Rosso, the Italian equivalent to Michelin, who took the band to a restaurant in the back streets of Rome. “We ate until about four in the morning, a beautiful array prepared with such skill and care that it was astonishing. The whole band were fainting because of its brilliance.”

He feels he’s come full circle with high-end cuisine. “Having lived in Paris for a number of years, I now loathe Michelin-starred food. To me, it loses touch with what food should be. I like really good quality, fresh, well-bred food, cooked simply. The Michelin thing underwhelms me. You’re supposed to be grateful for a three-inch piece of fish on a huge plate for 50 quid. It bores me.”

Though he loves lobster, as seen in the photograph, he’s just as happy with a tricolore salad. “Italian food is just genius,” he says. “Tomato, mozzarella and basil. Or garlic, oil and red pepper on pasta – those things are timeless.”

Does Hucknall’s track record prove the old saying that a lad will never be short of a girlfriend if he can cook? “It definitely helps,” he smiles. “I mean, if you can’t take her to a restaurant, you’re either going to her place or yours, aren’t you?’

The recipe: Lobster thermidor with roasted vegetables

Serves four.

2 large lobsters, cooked
40g parmesan, freshly grated

For the sauce
60g butter
2 shallots, peeled and finely chopped
570ml fish stock
2 tbsp medium dry white wine
110ml double cream
½ tsp English mustard
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 tbsp chopped fresh chives
1 tbsp chopped fresh dill
Juice of 1 lemon
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Lemon wedges, to serve

For the roasted vegetables
8 tbsp olive oil
2 large red onions, peeled and quartered
10 asparagus spears, trimmed and cut into long diagonal slices
2 courgettes, trimmed, halved and cut into thick diagonal slices
1 fennel bulb, trimmed, halved lengthways and cut into 1cm thick slices
8 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tbsp fennel seeds, crushed
Pinch of sea salt (ideally Fleur de Sel de Camargue)
4 trusses baby plum tomatoes on the vine
Good-quality balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp chopped fresh basil
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

Lay the cooked lobsters belly down on a board, hold firmly and cut lengthways in half. Remove all the meat from the claws, tail and head, saving any coral. Cut the meat up into small pieces and place back in the shell, along with the coral.

For the sauce, melt the butter in a large saucepan, add the shallots and cook until softened. Add the stock, wine and cream and bring to the boil. Let bubble until reduced by half, then add the mustard, chopped herbs, lemon juice and cayenne. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Preheat the grill to high. Spoon the sauce over the lobster meat, sprinkle with the parmesan, and grill for three to four minutes until golden brown. Serve with lemon wedges.

For the roasted veg, heat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Pour half the olive oil into a large ovenproof dish and place in the oven to heat up. Meanwhile, put the red onions, asparagus, courgettes, fennel, garlic, fennel seeds, salt and remaining oil into a large bowl and toss. Carefully tip it all into the heated dish.

Cook in the oven for 15 minutes, checking after 10 minutes and turning down the heat if the vegetables are browning too quickly. Add the tomatoes on their vines and roast for a further five minutes, or until the vegetables are caramelised.Serve immediately, drizzled with balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with the chopped herbs.

Sir Cliff Richard loves curry

Harry Rodger Webb was born in Lucknow, India, in 1940 and grew up on curries. His father, Rodger, managed a catering company for the sprawling Indian railways, and though the Webbs were experiencing the final days of the Raj, they lived modestly, in Lucknow and later in Howrah.

“Curry will always be my favourite food because it reminds me of my childhood,” Sir Cliff Richard says, relaxing in his converted farmhouse in the Algarve, Portgual, bought with the proceeds of six decades of hits and 260m record sales, and the place where he likes to spend much of the summer. “It’s the most highly flavoured, the most vibrantly scented food there is. After we moved back to England in 1948, my mother used to hold back on the chilli, but we always used to ask her for more.” He pauses. “Well, I say we came back to England, but I’d never been before. Neither had my parents. But we still talked about ‘coming back to Blighty’.”

In India his father had been relatively wealthy, but in England “we had absolutely zero. We went through real poverty.” One of the standard meals of the day would be toast dipped in tea with sugar on it. “It was that bad.”

But a love of curry stayed with him over the years – not so much the heat as the spice. “Spice is what gives curry all its dimensions,” he says. “The cardamom seeds, the coriander, the cloves… Most Brits don’t like the heat. I do, but I like to taste the food, too.”

In particular, Richard loves chicken tikka masala, that peculiar, unbeatable, ever-changing but always dependable dish whose origins are lost in the past. (Is it Punjabi street food, or was it synthesised in the Indian kitchens of Soho and Glasgow? No one knows.)

When he’s back in England, Richard’s favourite curry places are School Of Spice in Shepperton or, a new favourite, the Tiger’s Pad in Sunningdale. He doesn’t like his Indian food too westernised, though. “The Bombay Brasserie had the most fantastic starters,” he says, “but I always thought the main courses were too posh. I like my curries to have a nice, thick sauce, I like a good mound of lentils and rice. I like it traditional-style, lots of everything.”

The recipe: Chicken tikka masala

Serves four.

4 skinless chicken breasts, cut into 3cm cubes
For the chicken tikka marinade
250ml plain yoghurt
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp ground cumin
2 tbsp paprika
2 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2.5cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
Sea salt

For the tikka masala sauce
15g butter
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 green chilli, deseeded and very finely chopped or grated
2 tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp garam masala
½ tsp sea salt
400g tin chopped tomatoes
250ml single cream
4 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped

For the marinade, mix together the yoghurt, lemon juice, cumin, paprika, black pepper, cinnamon, ginger and some salt in a large bowl. Stir well and leave for 15–30 minutes. Add the chicken and turn to make sure it is well coated. Cover and leave to marinate in the fridge for at least two hours.

Preheat the grill to medium. Thread the chicken pieces on to skewers and grill, turning regularly, for about 15 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through – when pierced with a knife, the juices should run clear. Place on a plate to rest while you make the sauce.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the garlic and chilli, cook for a minute, then stir in the spices and salt. Tip in the tomatoes and simmer gently for 30 minutes. Stir in the cream to enrich the sauce, and cook gently for about five minutes.

Pull the chicken off the skewers, add to the sauce and place over a low heat for five minutes, gently and thoroughly to heat it through.

Garnish with coriander and serve immediately.

Ellie Goulding loves sushi

“I never used to eat fish a lot when I was young, but now it’s like my body craves it. If I’m out, I try to order fish for every meal, and sea bass is the best in my opinion. If you don’t have fish often, you’re more inclined to choose cod or tuna, but sea bass is light and delicious. Grilled sea bass with Thai vegetables is perfect.

I hated sushi when I first tried it, and was quite intimidated by it. But curiosity kept getting the better of me and I kept trying it, until it became my favourite thing.”

The recipe: Miso-glazed suzuki (sea bass)

Serves four.

2 tbsp sake
2 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp light yellow miso paste
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp light soy sauce
4 sea bass fillets, about 150g each, skinned
1 tbsp chopped spring onions
1 tbsp chopped fresh basil

In a shallow dish, mix together the sake, mirin, miso paste, sugar and soy sauce. Place the fish fillets in the marinade, turning them to make sure they are entirely coated. Cover the dish with clingfilm and refrigerate for six hours.

Heat the grill to medium. Remove the bass from the marinade and place on a baking tray. Grill, close to the heat, without turning, until the fillets are just about opaque in the centre – about six minutes. Transfer to warm plates, sprinkle over the spring onions and basil, and serve with sticky rice or soba noodles.

Brett Anderson loves blueberries

“Music, food and sex are the three most important things in life,” says Brett Anderson, singer with reunited glam-punk Britpop Suede. “You can’t do without any of them.” He pauses and considers. “Well, you can do without a couple of them. But you shouldn’t.

“In the 90s, I had a phase of only eating brown rice for two months at a time,” Anderson says. “I was very unhealthy and I had this idea that brown rice would somehow be very good for me. Basically, all I was putting in my body was brown rice and cocaine, and that’s not healthy.”

He kicked the drugs before Suede split up in 2003, and in 2007 he went to see a naturopath: “And that changed my life.” (His wife also studies naturopathic medicine.) A diet tailored to his individual metabolism (no mushrooms, corn, milk or wheat) has “really, really worked, to a startling degree… I feel a lot better and I’m very conscious of my diet now.” Hence the love of antioxidant blueberries. Anderson makes his own muesli with oats, flax and crushed pumpkin and sunflower seeds, and the blueberries go on top: “I try to have them every day.”

In Suede, eating well wasn’t at the top of their priorities. “It was pearls before swine. We’d be in Hollywood or Japan, and we just wanted chips!”

The recipe: Blueberry fool

Serves four.

450g blueberries
Juice of 1 lime
425ml double cream
400g mascarpone
Juice of 2 lemons
6 tsp honey
4 fresh mint sprigs
Icing sugar, for dusting

Blend the blueberries and lime juice until smooth. Whisk the cream to peaks. In a bowl, gently combine the mascarpone, lemon juice, honey and three-quarters of the berry mix, then fold in the cream. Spoon or pipe into serving dishes and drizzle over the rest of the purée. Top with a mint sprig and a dusting of icing sugar.

(A behind-the-scenes video of Brett Anderson’s shoot for Love Music Love Food)

Juliette Lewis loves coconut and papaya

Music is a matter of dark and light, heaven and hell, good and evil, and all that sort of stuff. Thus the star of movies and rock and roll Juliette Lewis – who knows a little about such things, having starred in Cape Fear, Natural Born Killers and From Dusk Til Dawn – has both sinful and redemptive modes. “It’s yin and yang,” she says. “I love the healthy stuff and I love chocolate and ice cream, too. You have to balance it.”

She loves papaya – “It goes with anything, it has natural digestive enzymes and the taste is wonderful” – but it’s clear that coconut is her real passion. Oh, the flavour, the scent, the texture… she uses coconut hair and skin lotions and, when at home in Los Angeles, has a regular coconut smoothie from her favourite juice place at home. “It’s decadent and sensual and natural all at the same time,” she says. “On a purely nutritional level, coconut water is pretty much the most hydrating thing you can drink, and much better than man-made sports drinks. If you’re an energetic, physical person like me, it’s hard to imagine anything better for you. Papaya and coconut are like instant vacations in your mouth.”

Lewis is rare in the ranks of actors turned musicians because, unlike certain movie stars’ vanity bands, her music actually stands up on its own – a raw but poppy garage-punk noise with the magnetic Lewis as its focal point. But how does one move from the comfortable world of movie-making to the grind of the touring rock band?

When you play rock festivals, you’re always “pathetically grateful” if the catering is good, she says. You always remember who feeds you well, such as the German festivals, Leeds, Reading and the Isle of Wight. “If you’re tired and haven’t had a shower in days, you are so glad of any home comforts.” But she does love the touring life, only occasionally missing favourite restaurants in LA, such as Little Dom’s in Los Feliz or La Loggia in Studio City.

Movie versus rock and roll – who’s got the best food? “Oh, please, do you even need to ask?” she says, and laughs. “There’s so much more money in the movie world for food. I make a nice living from my touring, but half the time we live off bread and lunch meat.”

The recipe: Virgin detox cocktail

Serves two.

50g papaya
3 fresh mint leaves, shredded
Juice of 1 lime
Juice of 1 fresh coconut, chilled
4 cherries

Put two martini glasses in the freezer to chill for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, peel and deseed the papaya, then cut into small cubes. Spoon the papaya into the chilled glasses, add the shredded mint and squeeze over the lime juice. Pour in the coconut juice and garnish each with a couple of fresh cherries.

Rolf Harris loves curry

“Curry’s my absolute favourite food,” says Rolf Harris – painter and art educator, musician, creator of the wobble board, late-flowering patron saint of Glastonbury and international treasure in both hemispheres. “My wife and I have withdrawal symptoms if we don’t have one every few days.”

Indian food has become central to the lives of Rolf and his wife, Arwen, whom he married in 1958. They started going to London’s new wave of Indian restaurants in the late 1950s, when curry was far from widespread, and they’ve stuck with it ever since. He has now developed a connoisseur’s knowledge of curry houses in the Buckinghamshire-Berkshire area. They don’t like it fiercely hot, they’re in it for the endlessly fascinating mix of spices. “One of the many great things about curry is that you can find your own personal optimum level of heat,” he says.

When touring, he has made it a tradition to take the band out for a curry after every date. “We get the promoters to scout ahead, and we’re rarely disappointed, because England is the world curry capital.” He admits he’s no great shakes in the kitchen – “Scrambled egg is about as good as it gets” – but why bother when every street in the land offers the finest dishes on earth?

His love of bright, assertive flavours surely comes from his childhood in Perth, Australia, where his diet did not exactly sparkle. Rolf grew up on the “very traditional” English food of the years before the Australian culinary explosion. His mum’s approach in the kitchen was “to cook anything – meat, vegetables, whatever – until it was almost incinerated… Australian food is world-famous now, and rightly so, but when I was a kid it was overcooked British food, tomato ketchup with everything, very, very boring and every day your dinner was exactly the same. No wonder I love curry now.”

The recipe: Poori

Serves four.

200g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
50g chapatti flour
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp ground turmeric
½ tsp sea salt
Warm water, to mix
Vegetable oil, for frying

Put the flours, curry powder, turmeric and salt into a large bowl and mix well. Slowly mix in enough warm water to make a dough. Turn out on to a floured surface and work with your hands until smooth and elastic. Place back in the bowl, cover and leave to rest for 30 minutes.

Knead the dough on a floured surface until light and springy. Divide into about 12 equal-sized pieces and roll into balls. Keep covered with a damp cloth. Take one ball of dough and roll it out into a 10–12cm round. Repeat with the rest.

Pour a layer of oil into a heavy-based frying pan so it comes a quarter of the way up the sides, and place over a high heat. When very hot, carefully lower a dough round into the oil. Use a fish slice to baste and turn it, so that the poori swells up. It will be cooked in a few minutes. When golden brown, remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Keep warm while you cook the rest of the poori.

• This is an edited extract from Love Music, Love Food – The Rock Star Cookbook, published by Quadrille at £30 in support of Teenage Cancer Trust. Concept and photography: Patrice de Villiers (patricedevilliers.com). Interviews: Andrew Harrison. Recipes: Sarah Muir. The book is currently available to buy from Selfridges exclusively, and from high street stores and at a discounted price of £24 from the Guardian bookshop from 5 September

• About Teenage Cancer Trust. Teenage Cancer Trust believes young people shouldn’t stop being teenagers just because they have cancer, so the charity builds units in NHS hospitals that offer young people specialist care, bringing them together so they can support each other in an environment suited to their needs. As well as these specialist units, it also funds a number of services all with the same goal – to help young people fight cancer. To watch a video about the work of the Teenage Cancer Trust, click here

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A gently spiced first course to get your meal off with a bang

Tawa jhinga is a type of griddle cooking carried out on a flat iron disc; it’s known as tak-a-tak in northern India and Pakistan.

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp ajwain seeds (they’re from the lovage family)
1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 green chilli, finely chopped
1 tsp grated ginger
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
12 large head-on prawns, deveined but shell left on
¼ tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp coriander powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
Salt (optional)
¼ tsp fenugreek leaf powder
¼ tsp garam masala
1 tbsp finely chopped coriander leaves
Mixed cress, to garnish

Heat the oil in a pan, add the ajwain seeds and, when they begin to sizzle, add the onion, chilli and ginger, and sauté until the onion is translucent. Add three-quarters of the tomatoes and cook until reduced to a nice, saucy consistency. Add the prawns, cook until they curl up, then add the powdered chilli, coriander and turmeric, plus a little salt, if using. Cook until prawns are done, stir in the remaining tomatoes, fenugreek and garam masala, and sauté for a minute or two more. Serve sprinkled with coriander and garnished with cress. Serve with chapati.

Atul Kochhar is chef/patron of Benares in London.

Fiona Beckett’s drink match Aromatic wines such as Argentina’s torrontés work really well with gently spiced dishes: try the Alma Andina Torrontés Sauvignon Blanc 2010 (£7.49 as part of a half-case, Laithwaites; 13.5% abv).

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A light starter to kick off a summer’s meal

Yes, our asparagus season is over (sob!), but even with imported stuff, this is a lovely starter. Serves four.

2 bunches asparagus
Sea salt and black pepper
100ml olive oil, plus a bit extra
25ml red-wine vinegar
½ tsp Dijon mustard
100g goat’s cheese, crumbled
100g fresh peas, blanched
Fresh mint (chop it at the last minute, otherwise it’ll go black)
Grated zest of ½ lemon
1 handful mixed salad leaves
1 tsp pine nuts, toasted

Cut the woody ends off the asparagus spears, season and rub with a little olive oil. Heat a ridged griddle pan (a normal cast-iron frying pan will do, if need be) and griddle the asparagus for three minutes. Transfer to a bowl, add the oil, vinegar and mustard, and mix. Add the remaining ingredients and mix gently, so as not to bruise the leaves. Serve on a large plate, so everyone can help themselves.

Angela Hartnett is chef/patron of Murano, London W1. Her new book, A Taste Of Home, is published by Ebury at £25. To order a copy for £18.49, go to guardian.co.uk/ bookshop, or call 0330 333 6846.

Fiona Beckett’s drink match This dish is a shoo-in for sauvignon blanc, but try a lightly oaked one for a change, such as the gentle, aromatic Domaine Rives-Blanques Sauvageon 2009 Pays d’Oc (£12.25, Leon Stolarski; £12.99, Cambridge Wine Merchants; 13.5% abv).

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Don’t save barbecues for parties and special occasions ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì they’re far more suited to when you’ve got friends or family over for lunch

As I write, three solid weeks of outstanding barbecue weather have just been broken by a night-long downpour. Has that put me off writing about barbecues? Not at all. I’m sure there’s a load more sunshine on the way. And you know what, even if there isn’t, it really doesn’t matter. Here’s the thing about barbecuing ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì a liberating secret I’d like to share, and one that keen barbecuers should never forget ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì it doesn’t have to be a scorching, sunny day to cook outside over smouldering charcoal or wood. It just has to be not pouring with rain. The rest of the summer may be rubbish, but we’re not actually expecting a biblical 40 days and nights of ceaseless rain? Are we?

It surprises me that we often save barbecues for special occasions or parties when, frankly, it can be quite stressful catering for such numbers over fire. Really, the barbecue is just another agreeable weapon in the thinking cook’s arsenal, more appropriate for a family lunch or friends over for supper than for feeding the whole village/street/cricket team.

Here are a few pointers for making it all go swimmingly (but not in the Noah’s flood sense). Most important of all, you need to light the fire well in advance so the coals are glowing red and covered in a layer of white ash. This will take at least 30 minutes with charcoal, longer with gathered wood. By far the best charcoal, incidentally, is that made from sustainably coppiced British woodland. It’s easy to light, and burns fast and even. And if the heat starts to fade, a quick top-up will have it back in business within 10 minutes.

You need to get the bars really hot to stop food from sticking to them. Better lightly to oil the food and lay it on searing hot bars than attempt to oil the bars themselves. And don’t be tempted to move things about too quickly or too often. You need the food to build up a burned edge at the point of contact with the bars, so it won’t break up or tear when you flip them.

Then you can really give your imagination free rein, cooking everything from whole birds and large pieces of meat (see today’s spatchcocked chicken) to sweet and delicate fruit. I’ve experimented with whole fish wrapped in layers of wet newspaper; oysters and mussels in their shells, which open up miraculously as they cook; and practically the entire contents of the vegetable garden ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì grilled lettuce hearts and spring onions with olive oil and shaved goat’s cheese are a great favourite. But you don’t have to be obsessively experimental. I hear weird tales of people attempting brownies and all sorts of cakey stuff on barbecues, but that seems a bit bonkers to me. They’re never going to be as good as ones made in the oven, are they?

You want your ingredients to be enhanced by barbecuing, not merely to survive it. For me, when it comes to pudding, fruit wins every time, whether in the form of kebabs or halved stone fruit, slices of pineapple or, that barbecue stalwart, the banana. Just add a few scoops of ice-cream for summery perfection. But not until you’ve taken the fruit off the barbecue, obviously?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¶

Five barbecue inspirations

My favourite griller thrillers?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¶

Tomatoes Cut in half lengthways, brush with olive oil and grill, cut side down, for about three minutes.

Garlic Trickle whole garlic bulbs with olive or rapeseed oil, wrap in foil and grill until tender, about 20 minutes. Cool slightly, then squeeze cooked cloves on to steak or toasted bread, or use them to make a?É?í?ǬØoli.

Sardines Rub gutted sardines with a little olive oil and season with chopped garlic, thyme, salt and pepper. Ideally, put them into a barbecue fish basket to make it easier to turn them, and cook for two to three minutes a side.

Fruit kebabs Thread cubes of apple, pear, banana, mango, pineapple, halved figs or plums on to skewers. Brush with honey thinned with a little apple or orange juice and grill over a low, fading barbecue, turning very frequently, until lightly caramelised, about five minutes.

Peaches or nectarines Halve, then brush the cut sides with a little melted butter, sprinkle lightly with brown sugar and grill, cut side down, for three to four minutes. Serve with ricotta, ice-cream or mascarpone and a sprinkling of toasted flaked almonds or chopped hazelnuts.

Roasted artichokes and lemons

These grilled lemons go wonder-fully well with artichokes, but they’re great with barbecued fish, chicken and lamb as well. Serves six as a starter.

6 small to medium-sized artichokes
4 tbsp olive oil
2 large lemons, quartered lengthways
Flaky sea salt

Simmer or steam the artichokes whole until just tender, about 15-25 minutes ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì you can tell they’re done by tugging at one of the lower leaves: it should pull away easily. (Incidentally, if you grow your own, they’ll take less time to cook, so reduce the cooking time to around seven or eight minutes.) Lift the artichokes from the pan and leave for a few minutes to steam and lose some of their moisture, then cut in half lengthways and use a teaspoon to scrape out the hairy choke. Brush the cut sides with olive oil. Brush olive oil over the lemon quarters, place on the grill and cook until just charred on one side, about three minutes, then turn and cook on the other side for two to three minutes. Now grill the artichokes cut side down, until the leaves just begin to char ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì about three minutes. Serve with a trickle of olive oil, a sprinkling of sea salt and the grilled lemons to squeeze over the top.

Yoghurty spatchcocked chicken

Even though you have to be careful about controlling the temperature, cooking a whole chicken on the grill is less trouble than fiddling with lots of drumsticks. This really needs to be done on a relatively low barbecue, to avoid burnt-on-the-outside-but-raw-in-the-middle syndrome. If you are not sure how to spatchcock a bird, ask the butcher to do it for you. Serves six.

1 spatchcocked free-range chicken
Salt
For the marinade
8 tbsp whole milk yoghurt
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Juice of ?É‚Äö?Ǭ? lemon
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tsp chilli flakes
?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tsp freshly ground black pepper

Mix together all the ingredients for the marinade. Put the chicken in a non-reactive bowl and pour on the marinade. Turn the chicken over with your hands, making sure the marinade gets into every nook and cranny, cover, refrigerate and leave to marinate for at least two hours. Make sure it is at room temperature before grilling. Sprinkle with salt.

Place the bird breast side up towards the edge of the grill where it’s slightly cooler, and cook for 20-25 minutes, then turn over and cook for a further 15-20 minutes, spraying from time to time with a little water if it’s browning too fast. Deploy the lid, if your barbecue has one, or simply use an upturned roasting tin, to reflect the heat back down and semi-roast your barbecuing chicken.

The bird is done when the juices run clear when pierced between the thigh and breast bone (or when it reads 80C on a meat thermometer). Remove from the heat and leave to rest for 10-15 minutes before carving.

Roasted courgette and spring onion tabboule

Courgettes and spring onions are delicious barbecued, but you can also make this salad with other grilled vegetables such as peppers, red onions or aubergines. If you like, toss in some toasted sunflower or pumpkin seeds for crunch and some chopped, dried apricots for sweetness. Serves four to six.

5 courgettes, cut lengthways into 1cm slices
10 spring onions, trimmed
2-3 tbsp olive oil
250g bulgur wheat or couscous
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 handful fresh mint, tough stalks removed and chopped
1 handful fresh parsley, tough stalks removed and chopped
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Brush the courgettes and onions with oil and grill, turning from time to time, for about five minutes, until lightly charred and tender.

Cook the bulgur wheat or couscous according to the packet instructions, toss with the zest of half the lemon, a good squeeze of lemon juice, a trickle of oil and the herbs, season and serve with the grilled vegetables.

?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¢ Want to join us for one of our Build And Bake courses? Weekend readers get 10% off the usual price. For details, call Alex on 01297 630302 and mention the Guardian, or go to rivercottage.net.

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Vinegar: it’s one of the most useful ingredients in the whole store cupboard

Wherever there has been wine, there has been vinegar, its sharp-tongued twin. I don’t mean this disparagingly. I wouldn’t be without its puckery, palate-bracing charms. From the mildest rice wine vinegar to potent, syrupy, complex balsamic, vinegars perk up my cooking every day.

Vinegar is one of history’s happiest culinary accidents. Who would have thought that sour wine (literally, “vin aigre”) would play such an important role in all the world’s great cuisines, from Tokyo to Burgundy? And, indeed, here in the West Country, where cider vinegar is my reach-for default for dressings and sauces.

The first batch of vinegar was no doubt a great surprise to its owner, a disappointment ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì amusing now, when you think that the finest Italian balsamics command a price to rival the world’s greatest wines. But when air seeped into that first cask, along with a few yeasty spores, allowing the vinegar mother to thrive and grow like some all-consuming alien, it must have been something of a blow. What a credit to whomever then took this throat-rasping liquor and said to themselves, “There must be something useful I can do with this. Now where’s the olive oil?”

There are records of vinegar going back thousands of years. Hippocrates mentions its medicinal properties in the fifth century BC. The Greeks used it to preserve food ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì very important in the days before refrigeration. Caesar’s armies fortified themselves with it. Pliny the Elder wrote that Cleopatra dissolved her pearls in it to impress Mark Antony that she could throw the most expensive banquet in history. Wags, take note?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¶

I have quite the collection at home, from white-wine vinegars with tarragon (perfect for a b?É?í?Ǭ©arnaise sauce), to brown rice vinegar and homemade red-wine vinegar, made from our (scant) leftovers, which is slowly gathering age and complexity in its special jar. But my beloved cider vinegar comes out more often than the rest put together. I use it not only for most of my dressings, but for most of my pickling, too, where its genuine fruitiness lends far more character than white distilled vinegar or even malt vinegar (save that for the chips).

Recently, I’ve been using quite a bit of apple balsamic vinegar, too ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì the Suffolk company Aspall, still family-run, makes a stunner ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì adding it to recipes or simply mixing it with olive oil to dip bread into, or trickling it over ripe, sliced tomatoes with a sprinkling of salt.

From time to time, I very purposefully reach for rice vinegar, made ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì as its name suggests ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì through the fermentation of sugars derived from rice. Used in Japanese and Chinese cooking, it has a light, sweet flavour with a nice hint of sake about it. It’s great for dressing ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì or the very light pickling of ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì delicate vegetables, such as cucumbers, courgettes, peas and beans, or for using in marinades and sauces for fish or shellfish.

Many vinegars have a great affinity with sweet things, too. Add a spoonful of white-wine or cider vinegar to meringues as you whip them. Some swear a spoonful added to the dough makes pastry especially flaky, so try it next time you make a tart. And vinegar is astonishingly good with fruit. Who didn’t, during the 1990s, trickle a little balsamic over strawberries to create one of the laziest, tastiest puds ever? Try it again, with strawberries, blueberries, cherries, even ripe peaches. It really is delicious.

So let’s hear it for one of the kitchen’s hardest working ingredients. So often, when I think a dish is missing a little something, it turns out to be a vinegar-shaped hole. If forced to choose, by some evil demon, would I pick wine over vinegar? I’m not sure I would. As long as I could have cider, that is?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¶

Sticky apple balsamic spare ribs

These sticky ribs are near-addictively good, and incredibly easy to make. Serves four to six.

1.5kg free-range pork ribs (2 racks)
For the marinade
4 tbsp redcurrant, plum, crab apple or other fruit jelly
3 tbsp apple balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp light muscovado sugar
3 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste
1 tbsp finely grated fresh ginger
?É‚Äö?Ǭ?-1 medium-hot red chilli, finely chopped, or ?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tsp dried chilli flakes
2 tbsp soy sauce
Steamed rice and wilted greens, to serve

Whisk together all the marinade ingredients. Put the ribs in a large, ovenproof dish, pour the marinade over and, using your hands, turn the ribs around in it so they’re all well coated. Cover and leave to marinate in a cool place for at least an hour, several hours if possible, turning them from time to time.

Heat the oven to 170C/335F/gas mark 3. Turn the ribs in their marinade one final time, cover the dish with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Raise the temperature to 190C/375F/gas mark 5.

Remove the foil and turn the ribs again, basting them with the sauce. Return the uncovered dish to the oven and cook for 35-45 minutes longer, turning and basting the ribs two or three more times, until they are glossy and dark and coated in the caramelised sauce.

Lift the ribs on to a serving plate and spoon any remaining sauce over them. Leave until they are cool enough to pick up with your fingers, then tuck in. Serve with steamed rice and wilted greens.

Chilli dipping sauce

This easy sauce is delicious with deep-fried squid, tempura vegetables and Thai fish or crab cakes. It will keep, sealed in a jar, for a week, and is the perfect thing to perk up all manner of dressings and marinades. Before serving, when the sauce is cool, add some chopped coriander if you like, too.

3 tbsp redcurrant or crab apple jelly
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tsp soy sauce
1 red chilli, deseeded and very finely chopped
1 small garlic clove, very finely chopped
A few twists black pepper

Tip all of the ingredients into a small saucepan and stir over a very low heat until the fruit jelly has dissolved and you are left with a silky syrup.

Bring up to a simmer and allow to bubble gently for a few minutes ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì this will mellow the harshness of the garlic. Set aside to cool and serve at room temperature. If the sauce re-sets to a jelly when it’s cool, simply whisk in a splash of warm water.

Tarragon vinegar

Use this vinegar in mayonnaise to dress egg or chicken salads, or in a light vinaigrette to dress still-warm potatoes, French beans or leeks. Makes about 500ml.

500ml white-wine or cider vinegar
?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tsp pink peppercorns (optional)
?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tsp black peppercorns (optional)
6 large sprigs French tarragon

Pour the vinegar into a Kilner-type jar and add the peppercorns and tarragon. Seal and refrigerate for a couple of weeks. Strain, discard the herbs, and seal in sterilised bottles.

Strawberry vinegar

This works equally well with raspberries, blackcurrants or blackberries, too. It’s a recipe from the queen of all things bottled and jarred, Pam Corbin, who wrote River Cottage Handbook 2: Preserves (Bloomsbury, ?É‚Äö?Ǭ£12.99). Use in salad dressing, trickled over goat’s cheese or ice cream, or as a cordial to make refreshing summer drinks. Makes 1.5 litres.

1kg strawberries
600ml cider vinegar or white-wine vinegar
Granulated sugar

Put the fruit in a bowl and crush lightly with a wooden spoon. Add the vinegar, cover and leave to steep for four to five days, stirring occasionally. Pour the fruit and vinegar into a scalded jelly bag or piece of muslin suspended over a bowl, and leave to drain overnight. You can squeeze it a bit if you like.

Measure the liquid, pour into a saucepan and add 450g of sugar for every 600ml of fruit vinegar. Over a low heat, bring gently to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Boil for eight to 10 minutes, removing any scum as it rises. Take off the heat and set aside to cool. When cold, bottle and seal. Use within 12 months.

?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¢ Go to rivercottage.net for the latest news from River Cottage HQ.

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What to eat on a hot summer’s day? You could do a whole lot worse than a bowl of cold soup

I’m an optimistic sort. As I write, this morning’s gloom has just been banished by glorious unpredicted sunshine, now streaming through the window and blurring my computer screen. Surely it’s a sign. As if the weather gods were trying to tell me something important: “Yes, Hugh, this summer really will be lovely. Not like last year’s debacle, honest. We won’t let you down. OK, let’s not mention barbecues, just in case. But feel free to write about chilled soups?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¶” Great! Thanks! It’ll be my pleasure.

First off, being soups, they’re incredibly simple to make. And being chilled soups, they’re particularly laid-back and forgiving. No heart-sink instructions to “serve immediately”, rather “serve in a few hours, when you’re ready, in your own time. Would you like a beer first?” Chill while your soup is chilling, in other words.

Gazpacho is perhaps the best-known chilled soup of them all (just don’t tell the borscht or the vichysoisse). From Andaluc?É?í?Ǭ?a, the southern-most province of Spain, this refreshing combination of ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, olive oil, vinegar and garlic has rather humble origins as a quick lunch to cool and nourish field labourers. But today’s white gazpacho is even older. Some say it’s a soupy descendant of the Roman habit of dipping bread into vinegar, others that it arrived in Spain with the Moors in the eighth century and is based on an Arab soup of bread, olive oil, water and garlic. It was only when the conquistadors brought tomatoes back from the Americas to Spain that it turned into the red soup we know today.

Vichysoisse, a silky mixture of potatoes, leeks, onions and cream, was invented in the early 1900s by Louis Diat, head chef at the Ritz Carlton in New York. I’ve played around with the original, tossing in lettuce and cucumber, and I’d urge you to play, too. Use whatever lettuce you have to hand, try courgettes instead of cucumbers, and throw in some sorrel or watercress if the mood, and the veg plot, suggests it.

Borscht ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì that unbeatably hued soup originally from the Ukraine but enjoyed all over the eastern European borscht belt ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì is, of all today’s soups, the one that benefits most from being made well ahead. Its paler cousins are better chilled for no more than four hours, or their flavours begin to lose their vitality. The borscht just gets better the next day. The beets go on, you could say.

Whizzing your veg into chilled soups really allows the flavours to shine. But their very simplicity will show up shoddy ingredients like nothing else. Use the freshest produce you can, thin with the best stock, and season carefully.

It’s funny, but it always feels rather grown up, rather elegant, to serve a chilled soup, but when all the guests are gone and it’s just me and the fridge, I’m happy the next day to discover any leftovers. After a sticky morning working in the garden, a chilly bowlful makes the perfect quick, refreshing lunch. It makes me wonder why I don’t make chilled soups more often, just for us. Well, this summer I will.

White gazpacho

Read the recipe, and you might imagine you’re going to come up with a kind of oily bread goo. But bear with me. This classic Spanish ajo blanco is simple, elegant and delicious. It’s really worth the trouble of buying unblanched almonds and peeling them yourself. It’s not such an awful job, and the flavour is far better. If you prefer, finish the soup with little slices of melon or crisp apple instead of the grapes. Serves six.

140g almonds, unblanched are much better if possible
170g good white bread, stale and trimmed of its crust
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
Salt
About 220ml extra-virgin olive oil
3-4 tbsp sherry vinegar
Green grapes, to garnish
First, blanch the almonds by dropping them into a pan of boiling water and simmering for about 30 seconds, and certainly no more than a minute. Drain, refresh under the cold tap, then peel by squeezing between your thumb and forefinger.

Soak the bread in just enough cold water to cover for around 10 minutes. While it’s soaking, put the garlic and almonds in a food processor and pulse until smooth. Add the bread, drained of the water, and about half a teaspoon of salt, and blitz until smooth. Gradually trickle in the oil through the feed tube until the soup is the consistency of cream, then add the vinegar. Add a little more salt or vinegar to taste

For a very fine texture, press through a sieve into a container, cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours. Serve in chilled bowls with halved grapes floating on the top.

Cucumber and lettuce vichysoisse

Pretty, green and light, this is a great way to start a summer meal. Serves six.

50g unsalted butter
2 leeks (white part only), sliced
1 large, floury potato, peeled and cut into large chunks
1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
2 cucumbers, peeled and cubed
2 Little Gem lettuces, shredded
3 tbsp double cream
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the croutons
4 slices of white bread
4 tbsp olive oil, for frying
Chives and/or cr?É?í?Ǭ®me fra?É?í?ǬÆche, to serve

Melt the butter in a large pan and sweat the leeks until soft. Add the potato and stock, bring to a boil and simmer until the potato is almost cooked. Add the cucumbers and lettuce, and simmer for four minutes. Remove the potato with a slotted spoon and rub it through a sieve into a bowl. Strain the veg, reserving the liquid, then pur?É?í?Ǭ©e in a blender along with a little stock until smooth. Tip everything back into the pan and stir in two tablespoons of double cream. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and chill for a couple of hours.

Cut the bread into cubes and fry on a medium-high heat until golden brown. Serve the chilled soup with croutons, chopped chives and/or a swirl of cr?É?í?Ǭ®me fra?É?í?ǬÆche.

Beetroot soup

Roasting the beetroot adds a greater depth of flavour. The tartness of the sour cream is great with the sweet, earthy soup. Serves four to six.

550g beetroot
4?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tbsp olive oil
2 bay leaves
2 thyme sprigs
4 garlic cloves, 2 unpeeled and bashed, 2 peeled and minced
1 onion, diced
1 small carrot, diced
800ml good vegetable stock
4 tbsp sour cream
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Fronds of dill, to garnish

Give the beetroot a scrub, but leave the roots and part of the tops attached. Toss in a roasting pan with three tablespoons of olive oil, the bay, thyme sprigs and the bashed, unpeeled garlic, cover tightly with foil and roast at 200C/400F/gas mark 6 for 60-75 minutes, until you can pierce them easily with a knife. Leave to cool slightly, then peel (the skins should just slip off) and chop into 2.5cm cubes.

Warm the remaining oil in a saucepan over a medium-low heat and saut?É?í?Ǭ© the onion until soft, for around 15 minutes, add the carrot and saut?É?í?Ǭ© for a further five minutes. Add the beetroot and garlic, stir for a minute or two, then add the stock. Simmer for 20 minutes, set aside to cool a little, then pur?É?í?Ǭ©e until very smooth. Thin with a little stock or water if too thick, taste, season, cover and chill for at least four hours or overnight ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì it’s even better served the day after you’ve made it.

To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and serve with a swirl of sour cream and a sprinkling of dill.

?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¢ Want to join us at River Cottage for one of our Preserved Days, taught by Pam Corbin? Guardian readers get 10% off the usual price. To book, call Alex on 01297 630302 and mention the Guardian.

Last week, Hugh won two awards at the Guild of Food Writers Awards 2010, the Evelyn Rose award for Cookery Journalist of the Year for this weekly column, the other the New Media of the Year award for his work with Landshare.

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Be it smoky, fiery or fruity, paprika is one of the most important weapons in the cook’s culinary arsenal

Sweetly smoky, fiercely fiery or mildly fruity, in shades from lipstick red to earthy terracotta, paprika is one of the most beguiling spices in the culinary arsenal. Today I’m sending out a red alert. Warning: if you are using paprika in your cooking less than once a week, it’s not enough.

Sure, it lends a dash of lively colour to everything from devilled eggs to potato salad, but it’s so much more than a glamorous garnish. It offers its rich depth of flavour to everything from marinades and stews to salads and batters.

Christopher Columbus brought peppers back from the Americas and started a red rush for their sunny sweetness. It’s thought that the first Spanish paprika was made at the Jer?É?í?Ǭ?nimo monastery near La Vera, Spain, and the region’s been famous for its paprika ever since.

Paprika is the dried (by sun, oven or smoke) and ground flesh of various members of the pepper family, though generally not the Asian and south American varieties that we tend to call chillies. Though their forefathers were indeed brought from the Americas, the chilli varieties grown for paprika, especially Capsicum annuum, were developed in Europe, particularly in Spain and Hungary, where paprika has a starring role in so many dishes. And the milder varieties are used in amazingly gung-ho quantities, especially in Spanish and Hungarian cooking ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì those “tbsp” of sweet paprika in this week’s recipes below are not misprints!

In La Vera, peppers are dried over oak fires, which gives the paprika, or piment?É?í?Ǭ?n, its distinctive flavour. It comes in three varieties: dulce, or sweet, which is soft but tangy; agridulce, or bittersweet, which is lively and sharp; and picante, or hot. They’re used in everything from chorizo to patatas bravas and paella.

Hungarian paprika is mostly grown in the Szeged and Kalocsa regions in the south of the country. There are six varieties, from the delicate, sweet K?É?í?Ǭºl?É?í?Ǭ?nleges to fiery Eros. It’s used as a condiment and as an ingredient in many dishes, particularly stews such as p?É?í?Ǭ?rk?É?í?Ǭ?lt, goulash and, of course, chicken paprikash (see today’s recipe).

I warn you that it can become a bit addictive, this paprika business. Of course, you’ll want to add it to traditional dishes, but its warming depth of flavour marries well with other earthy seasonings such as coriander, cumin, cinnamon and cloves. Try adding a sprinkling to spice rubs and marinades.

Paprika has a particular affinity with potatoes and tomatoes ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì they’re both, along with peppers, members of the nightshade group of plants. So make it a family affair by adding it to potato-y, tomato-y salads, sauces and soups. It’s also great with chickpeas and other pulses, which soak up its smoky-sweet flavour in the most delicious way. It’s sometimes just the ingredient to lift a simple dish to another level, too ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì try stirring some into mayonnaise to serve with shellfish or sprinkling a dash into a cheese sauce, and you’ll see what I mean.

If you have a hard time tracking down the more exotic paprikas, try seasonedpioneers.co.uk or thespicery.com. And take care of your stash ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì store it in an airtight container in a cool, dark place, and it should be good for a year or so. A final word of caution: be careful not to scorch paprika on too much direct heat or the flavour will spoil and go bitter, like burned tomato. Treat it with tenderness and it will, without doubt, love you back.

Chicken paprikash

It’s more traditional to use green peppers in this classic Hungarian dish, but I prefer to use sweeter red peppers. Use dill instead of parsley, if you like. Serves six.

1 free range chicken, jointed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil and 15g unsalted butter, or 25g lard in place of both
2 onions, diced
1 clove of garlic, minced
2-3 tbsp sweet paprika
1 tsp hot paprika
1 tbsp plain flour
3 tomatoes, cored, deseeded and finely chopped
350ml chicken stock
2 red peppers, cut into thin strips
1 small handful parsley leaves, finely chopped
140ml sour cream

Season the pieces of chicken with salt and pepper. Warm the oil and butter (or the lard) in a large, heavy-bottomed casserole and brown the chicken ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì you may need to do this in batches ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì and transfer to a large plate. Once all the chicken is done, put the onions in the same pan and saut?É?í?Ǭ© over a low heat until softened and translucent, about 15 minutes. Add the garlic, paprika and flour, and stir for a couple of minutes, being very careful not to scorch the paprikas. Stir in the tomatoes and pour in the stock.

Now return the browned chicken to the pan, bring to a simmer, and cook, partially covered, for 30 minutes. Add most of the peppers and parsley (keep some of both back, to garnish), and simmer, partially covered, for 30 minutes more.

When the chicken is cooked, stir a ladleful of the hot cooking liquid into the sour cream, then pour the lot back into the pot. Taste and adjust seasoning, if necessary. Serve with rice, with the remaining peppers and parsley scattered on top.

Fried halloumi salad

A dash of paprika adds flavour and colour to slices of salty, chewy halloumi. It’s also a great addition to batters for fried squid. Serves four.

1 small red onion, very finely sliced
150g cucumber, cut into chunks
200g cherry tomatoes, halved
50g kalamata or other black olives, stoned
1 big handful mint leaves, roughly shredded
1 big handful flat-leaf parsley leaves
50g plain flour
?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tsp smoked paprika
250g halloumi cheese, cut into 8 slices
2 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the dressing
1 tsp clear honey
Juice of half a lemon
1 small garlic clove, crushed
1 pinch dried chilli flakes
1 pinch sea salt
3 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil

First, make the dressing. Stir together the honey, lemon juice, garlic, chilli flakes and salt until well combined, then whisk in the oil. In a large bowl, toss together the onion, cucumber, tomatoes, olives, mint and parsley.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, paprika and some salt and pepper. Moisten the halloumi slices slightly with water, then press into the seasoned flour and shake off any excess. Heat the oil in a large frying pan and fry the halloumi over a medium heat for about two minutes on each side, until golden and slightly softened on the inside.

Toss the salad vegetables with the dressing, turning them over with your hands to make sure everything is lightly coated. Divide the salad between four plates, put two pieces of hot halloumi on each one and serve immediately.

Portuguese paprika potatoes

This looks like a pretty far out way to cook potatoes. But have faith: it’s easy and delicious. Serves four to six.

3 tbsp red-wine vinegar
2 tbsp sweet paprika
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
2 large, ripe tomatoes, cored, deseeded and roughly chopped
4 large potatoes, cut into large chunks
400g cooking chorizo, broken into chunks
1 big handful parsley leaves or fennel tops, chopped
1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Pour about 700ml water into a roasting tray and add the vinegar. Whisk the paprika into the water, then add the onion, tomatoes, potatoes, chorizo, half the parsley or fennel tops and the salt and pepper.

Bake uncovered for two hours, stirring halfway through, until the potatoes are tender and have absorbed all the other flavours. Scatter with the remaining parsley or fennel tops and serve with a crisp, green salad.

?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¢ Want to join us for one of our Friday Night At River Cottage dinners? Guardian readers get 10% off the usual price. To book, call Alex on 01297 630302 and mention the Guardian, or go to rivercottage.net for more details.

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American muffins don’t have to be heavy and sugary. Made well, they can be tasty, light and, best of all, a cinch. What’s more, they don’t have to be sweet, either

I feel a bit sorry for the muffin. Not the yeasty, bready, English ones ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì the centrepiece of many a jammy afternoon tea ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì but their cakey American counterparts. Too often, we associate them with the sweet, cellophane-wrapped offerings on many a coffee-chain counter, cloying with too much sugar and sticky with cheap oil, or worthily stuffed with bran and heavy enough to take out a bear at 20 paces, if you have a half-decent throwing arm.

But it doesn’t have to be so. They can be tasty, light and flavoursome, and, better yet, they’re incredibly easy to make. Personally, I’m particularly partial to a savoury muffin. You can whip up a batch in half an hour and have a perfect homemade offering to tuck into lunchboxes and picnic baskets, to enjoy as a mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack, or to serve with soup as a quirky alternative to a bread roll.

Savoury muffins are a great way of using up the garden’s bounty, too. If you have abundant courgettes, carrots, beetroot, spinach (or even a few handfuls wallowing in the salad drawer, about to expire from neglect), whip them into a batch of muffins. I’m not saying this because it’s a good way of ensuring your five a day ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì though it is ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì but because grated or pur?É?í?Ǭ©ed vegetables are delicious and help to keep a savoury muffin moist, light and, well, savoury.

I hope you’ll try my recipes today, but I hope you’ll also use them as a blueprint to create your own. It’s kind of like fancy bread-making without all the hassle of proving dough. So, experiment with different flours ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì substitute a third of the flours used here with cornmeal, buckwheat or spelt. Toss some grated apple in with grated carrot, try them with different cheeses ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì dollops of soft goat’s cheese or cubed feta stirred into the mix work well. Add a handful of toasted nuts and be generous with the herbs. Stir in some chopped olives or strips of roasted red pepper. Roasted and pur?É?í?Ǭ©ed squash or sweet potato with a few grinds of nutmeg are delicious later in the year, too.

I have a few tips to avoid the bear-missile situation. First, and perhaps most importantly, work quickly. Fold the ingredients in with a spatula until only just combined. This will ensure the finished result is light, not rubbery. I use yoghurt or buttermilk to moisten, because it gives a good flavour and pleasing texture. If you don’t have buttermilk, just add a good squeeze of lemon juice to whole milk and leave it for 10 minutes or so before adding to the mix.

When it comes to ladling the batter into the muffin tin (you will need a proper, deep-cupped muffin tin, but they’re easy to get hold of and pretty cheap), use an ice-cream scoop if you have one. It ensures you get evenly-sized muffins that bake at the same rate. Alternatively, use a large spoon and rub it with a little cooking oil, which helps the batter slip off easily. When you get them out of the oven, leave them to cool in a tin for a few minutes, so they firm up a bit, then transfer to a rack. They’re best eaten on the day you make them ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì while they’re still warm, if possible ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì but will freeze quite well for a month, too.

Courgette and pine nut muffins

In summer, I like to toss hot pasta with saut?É?í?Ǭ©ed courgettes, pine nuts and parmesan. The combination works very well in a muffin, too. Makes 12.

200g plain flour
40g jumbo oats
2 tsp baking powder
?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tsp bicarbonate of soda
1-2 tsp flaky sea salt (depending on how salty your parmesan is)
A few grinds of black pepper
8 large basil leaves, shredded
60g parmesan, coarsely grated, plus another 20g or so to sprinkle on top
2 eggs
250g whole milk yoghurt
4 tbsps olive or rapeseed oil
200g courgettes, coarsely grated
40g cup pine nuts, toasted
40g sultanas

Heat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6 and line a muffin tin with 12 paper cases.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, oats, baking powder, bicarb, salt, pepper, basil and parmesan. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, yoghurt and oil, pour this over the dry ingredients and stir with a spatula until roughly combined ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì don’t overmix. Add the courgettes, pine nuts and sultanas, and stir just until evenly distributed.

Spoon or scoop the batter into the muffin tin and sprinkle over the rest of the parmesan. Bake for about 18 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean.

Red onion, cheddar and bacon muffins

These strong flavours work well together, but you can always play around with the combinations. Try spring onions instead of red, pancetta instead of bacon, and any strong cheese in place of the cheddar. Makes 12.

1 tsp oil
100g streaky bacon, cut into 1cm pieces
1 red onion, finely diced
250g wholemeal self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tsp bicarbonate of soda
?É‚Äö?Ǭº tsp salt
2 eggs
80g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
200ml buttermilk
1 tbsp finely chopped chives (optional)
150g strong cheddar, grated

Heat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6 and line a muffin tin with 12 paper cases.

Warm the oil over a medium heat and fry the bacon in it until just crisp. Lift the bacon from the pan with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. In the same fat, saut?É?í?Ǭ© the onion until just softened, about five minutes, then set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. In a jug, whisk the eggs, butter and buttermilk, stir them into the flour mixture with a spatula until just combined, then fold in the cooled bacon, onion, chives, if using, and two-thirds of the cheese until just evenly distributed.

Spoon or scoop the mixture into the muffin tin, sprinkle on the rest of the cheese, and bake for about 18 minutes, until the tops are golden and a toothpick inserted into the centre of a muffin comes out clean.

Carrot, spinach and cumin muffins

Cumin adds great flavour to these muffins, and the seeds add a little crunch. If you don’t have pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds make a good substitute, or use a combination of the two. Makes 12.

80g unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus 10g for frying
1 onion, finely diced
2 tsp ground cumin
150g spinach, tough stalks removed and very finely shredded
250g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tsp bicarbonate of soda
1?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tsp salt
2 eggs
275g whole milk yoghurt
150g carrots, grated
40g pumpkin seeds, toasted

Heat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6 and line a muffin tin with 12 paper cases.

Warm the 10g of butter in a large frying pan and saut?É?í?Ǭ© the onion with a pinch of salt until soft and translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the cumin, stir for a minute, then add the spinach and stir until wilted and soft. Cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. In a jug, whisk the melted butter, eggs and yoghurt. Pour the wet ingredients over the flour and stir with a spatula until just combined. Fold in the cooled onions and spinach, the carrots and seeds. Spoon into the cases and bake for about 18 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¢ Visit River Cottage in August for just ?É‚Äö?Ǭ£11 ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì go to rivercottage.net for details.

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Thyme is so ubiquitous in my cooking, but it’s rarely the star of the show. Let’s set the record straight?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¶

Alas, poor thyme: always the bridesmaid, never the bride. It’s perhaps the herb I reach for most often ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì I rely on it to add flavour to stews, stocks, stuffings, p?É?í?Ǭ¢t?É?í?Ǭ©s and terrines, the bellies of baking fish ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì yet we seldom give it the starring role. It’s destined to work tirelessly in the kitchen, a culinary Cinderella, seldom given top billing like those flashy “finishing” herbs, parsley, basil, mint and coriander. But today it shall go to the ball. It’s thyme (sorry) for a change. I’m celebrating its clean, bracing pungency and putting it centre stage.

There are many different types of thyme, but the ones we use most often are common thyme, Thymus vulgaris, and lemon thyme, T. citrodius. I have a particular affection for the latter and use it almost as much as T. vulgaris; in fact, I’d maybe use it more if it wasn’t such a slow grower. It’s very good with fish, shellfish, lamb, chicken and veal, and even works well in breads and biscuits (see today’s recipe). It has a gentler flavour than old vulgaris, so I often add it at the end, in a final, finishing flourish, as well as at the beginning.

Thyme’s special charm is the extraordinary concentration of scent in those tiny but fleshy leaves which are ready to eke out a living in the meagrest of soils. Thyme grows wild all over the Mediterranean, pushing itself through the rocky earth and perfuming the air with its pungent aroma.

So when you grow it at home, try to replicate these conditions as closely as you can. Plant it in well-drained, poorish soil in the sunniest spot you can find to ensure the best flavour. It grows brilliantly in pots and will put up with all kinds of harsh treatment, apart from overwatering, for which it will not thank you. Pillage your pots often ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ?ì the more you cut, the more it will throw up those fresh, fragrant young leaves that really are the most delicious. Without frequent cutting, it can become woody, so don’t hold back. The dainty flowers are a delicious addition to drinks and fruit salads, and look wonderful scattered over cakes. Once it has flowered, though, give it a good haircut to encourage new growth.

Thyme has found its way into kitchens all over the world, from the Med to Mexico, and into dishes as diverse as casseroles, chillies and chowders. Of course, it is an essential component of bouquet garni because it stands up to long, slow cooking, giving up its mellow flavour without overpowering the finished dish.

But it’s not all about stews and stocks. Rub some thyme leaves on the crackling of your pork joint. Add a sprig or two next time you’re frying onions into creamy softness. Scatter it into the roasting tin with the potatoes, other root veg, and squashes and pumpkins, too. When you’re frying mushrooms, add a few bruised thyme leaves along with the garlic, and finish with a tiny squeeze of lemon for perfect mushrooms on toast. You can sprinkle it, very finely chopped, into bread dough (especially pizza and focaccia) and even, lightly, into yorkshire pudding batter. Next time you make a tomato salad, use young and tender thyme leaves (and flowers, too) in place of the ubiquitous basil. And use today’s gremolata by beating some into softened butter to add a final, melting element of deliciousness to a juicy steak or lamb chop.

If you’re cooking this weekend and want something extra-special, then please, take your thyme.

Lamb cutlets with thyme gremolata

These are delicious served just with boiled new potatoes and a green salad. You can grill them on the barbecue, if you like. Serves four.

2 small garlic cloves, peeled and very finely chopped
1 small lemon, zest finely grated
1?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tbsp lemon thyme leaves, finely chopped
3 tbsp olive oil
12 lamb cutlets
Flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

First, make the gremolata. Combine the garlic, lemon zest and thyme, and put half the mixture in a bowl large enough to hold all of the cutlets. Whisk in the oil and a squeeze of lemon juice. Turn the cutlets over in the mixture until well coated and leave to marinate for 15 minutes.

Heat a large griddle pan or frying pan until hot. Lift the cutlets from the marinade, season with salt and pepper, and cook for two to three minutes on each side, depending on thickness. Transfer the cutlets to a warm plate, leave to rest, then sprinkle with the remaining gremolata and serve.

Za’atar

Different versions of this classic spice blend (pictured left) appear all over the Arab world (some contain oregano, cumin, fennel and coriander seeds). Experiment to find a mix you like, though I think this one is rather good. In Lebanon, parents think that za’atar for breakfast sharpens concentration, so they encourage their children to eat some before an exam.

3 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted
2 tbsp minced fresh thyme leaves
2 tsp ground sumac
?É‚Äö?Ǭ? tsp flaky sea salt

Mix everything together in a bowl.

Five things to do with za’atar

?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¢ Fill a small bowl with extra-virgin olive oil and another with za’atar. Dip chunks of flatbread or good, country-style bread first in the oil and then in the za’atar.

?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¢ Cook asparagus on a barbecue or griddle until just tender, trickle over some extra-virgin olive or rapeseed oil, and sprinkle with za’atar.

?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¢ Sprinkle it over hummus.

?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¢ Scatter over labneh. Alternatively, strain labneh or Greek yogurt through muslin until it is very thick, roll into balls the size of small walnuts and leave to dry for a few hours. Roll these in za’atar to make a tasty nibble to go with drinks.

?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?Ǭ¢ Mix some za’atar with a little honey and olive oil to make a delicious glaze to brush over chicken or lamb before roasting

Lemon thyme shortbread

The thyme adds charm to these simple biscuits. Makes 24-40, depending on the size of the cutter.

55g caster sugar
2 tsp lemon thyme leaves, finely chopped
115g butter, softened
Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
170g plain flour
Extra caster sugar, for dusting (or 2 tbsp caster sugar mixed with 1 tsp finely chopped lemon thyme, for an extra hit)

Preheat the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2 and set aside a buttered nonstick baking sheet. Beat the sugar, thyme, butter and lemon zest until pale and creamy (this can be done in a food processor), then scrape into a large bowl and beat in the flour until it forms a stiff dough.

Place the dough on a sheet of greaseproof paper and lay another sheet of greaseproof paper on top. Gently press down with a rolling pin and roll out thinly. Lift off the top sheet and stamp out the biscuits with a floured 4cm- or 6cm-diameter round cutter (or use any size or shape you like). With a palette knife dipped in flour, carefully lift the rounds off the bottom sheet of paper and gently transfer to the baking sheet. Lightly squidge together the dough offcuts, and repeat until all the dough is used up.

Bake in the centre of the oven for eight to 12 minutes, or until tinged a very pale brown around the edges. Transfer the biscuits to a cooling rack (take care: they will still be soft) and immediately sprinkle with extra caster sugar (or the sugar/thyme mix). Serve once cool and crisp..

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