September salad making, and some store cupboard pasta sauce.

Blimey isn't it warm?? In the space of a week I've gone from hearty roast and crumble making to craving salad! So today, on my day off, after hanging out washing in the garden, putting on suncream and generally lying around reading in the garden I decided to make a nice refreshing salad for tea. Chorizo and halloumi salad, here goes.

If you don't love halloumi then, frankly, what the hell is wrong with you? It is amazing stuff.

First chop up some chorizo and fry in a little oil until it releases all the paprika-oily-goodness. Shove that in a bowl, and add the juice of about half a lemon. Rinse a tin of green lentils or puy lentils. Throw them in the bowl. If you want this to be veggie-friendly don't bother with the chorizo, but it is really nice.

Slice some red onion into fine half moons, and chop up a clove of garlic. Add this to your chorizo and lentils. Chop up some tomatoes into big chunks. On the subject of tomatoes, check these out! I grew them myself, from seed. 

I've never grown anything I could actually harvest before... anyway I digress, put these in the bowl too. Now stir through some spinach leaves. Taste the mixture and season; add some olive oil to dress it, and plenty of salt and pepper to taste. Add some roughly chopped parsley.

Chop your halloumi into big chunks and fry in the pan you did the chorizo in.

Serve big chunks of halloumi on top of a big bowl of lentil-ly chorizo-y salad. Yum.

Today's added extra: Home made cherry tomato pasta sauce.

Because we didn't have a heat wave for the first three weeks of this month we haven't been eating an awful lot of salad. This means I have an entire packet of cherry tomatoes that are about to give up. To stop them going to waste, I've decided to turn them into a pasta sauce for another day. Very easy to do, and much nicer than shop bought pasta sauce.

Just finely chop an onion, a stick of celery and a couple of cloves of garlic, then fry them on a low heat until they've gone soft. Add the cherry tomatoes and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Add a teaspoon of sugar and let it cook down for a while. Don't add any herbs, but do season liberally with salt and pepper. This is a good base sauce, and when you go to use it later you can add the herbs of your choice, such as a good handful of fresh basil. (Or some fried chorizo, chilli and peppers, or a good dollop of crème fraiche to make creamy or... the list is endless really)

Keep in a sterilised jar in the fridge, with a layer of olive oil over the top to keep it fresh.

This is not just a stir fry (and Turkish lentil soup)

Last time I bought steak from the butcher, he very kindly gave me some off cuts he had leftover (it pays to go when he's just about to close). They've been sitting in my freezer for some time while I worked out what to do with them – not quite big enough for steak and chips but I wanted to do them justice!

I decided to do a stir fry – but try and make it a bit nicer than my usual chuck everything in the wok and hope for the best.

Bit blurry as I was stirring at the time!

First, do all the prep! It really is the key with stir fry – as it only takes five minutes to cook.

Blitz up a glove of garlic, a chilli, and about an inch of peeled ginger. Crush together some cumin) and some coriander. (All a bit fusion, I'm guessing this wouldn't be that authentic but I love cumin

Finely slice into strips all your veg; whatever you've got really. I used carrots, peppers, broccoli, mushrooms and courgettes.

Prep everything before cooking

Cook your noodles according to the packet! I used rice noodles. When they're cooked rinse through with cold water to keep them separate. Put to one side.

Mix together a teaspoonful of cornflour, with two tablespoons of rice vinegar and a tablespoon or two of soy sauce. I have some new soy sauce from a Chinese supermarket which is INSANELY dark. Really tasty, but turned everything a bit brown with only a few tablespoons of it! If you do live/work near a Chinese supermarket I would recommend buying a big bottle of soy sauce – the little bottles in the normal supermarkets just don't really compare.

Have some finely sliced spring onions at the ready, and some sesame oil. (I'd run out of spring onions unfortunately!)

Season your steak with a little soy sauce, then fry on a really high heat in the wok for two minutes on each side. This is really nice sirloin so I want it to be a bit rare, and it will be heated through at the end.

Put to one side and allow to rest while you make everything else. Heat some oil in the wok (it doesn't need cleaning after the steak) Once it's quite hot throw in your garlic/ginger/chilli mix then the spices. Add all your veg. Stir before adding the soy/cornflour mix. Keep everything moving around, then add the rice noodles. Whilst everything is heating through, slice the steak into strips. 

Taste it – and add more soy sauce if you think it needs it.(depends on the quality of your soy sauce really)

Chuck in the steak, sliced spring onion and a drizzle of sesame oil – and it's done!

This week's soup is Turkish lentil. I rarely put my soup recipes on here, but thought this was good enough to share. When we were in Istanbul we had this and I thought it was lovely, I've since googled, tasted and guessed until I came up with a reasonably authentic version. It's really cheap, and really easy!

Finely chop an onion and cook in some butter on a low heat in an enormous pan until it goes a little golden, but not caramelised. Stir in a good teaspoonful of paprika. Add a small cupful of red lentils, and half a small cupful of bulgur wheat. Stir this around until it's coated with the butter.

Add a couple of tablespoons of tomato purée, and a couple of pints of vegetable stock, and a good pinch of chilli flakes (if you like spicy food). Simmer until all the lentils have broken down (about half an hour). When it's cooked, crumble in a teaspoon of dried mint, and the juice of about half a lemon. Season to taste. It's that easy. And trust me, it's lovely. Eat with pitta bread if you're trying to be authentic!

My packed lunches for the rest of the week

 Whilst making this I mostly listened to: the new Laura Marling album. I think she's ace.

Easiest. Dinner. Ever

Gosh, hasn’t it been a while? My apologies for the lack of recipes lately. August was crazily busy and (mostly) very good fun. Lots of good eating – but none of the cooking was done by me. Fabulous wedding in Ireland with a seven course meal (I think, I lost count), a beautiful tapas meal cooked for my birthday, and a late birthday lasagne and enormous cake. All lovely.

But now it’s time for me to start contributing again. This is a bit of a cheat. Anyone can do this recipe, or variations of it, but the fact is it’s really really nice. And if you don’t already have a version of this in your repertoire, you should, because it tastes much better than you’d expect from just a bit of chopping.

So here’s my recipe for roasted chicken legs with Mediterranean vegetables, and a lemon and pine nut cous cous.

To tart up this dinner I made foccacia earlier today, according to this recipe:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/rosemary_and_sea_salt_12392

But added my own toppings. I made a couple, one with olives and rosemary, another with chopped garlic and basil and some lemon juice. It was all good fun! But I’m not one for typing out someone else’s recipes so click on the link above.

Stick your oven on to preheat at around 190 degrees.

For this you will need a bucketload of Mediterranean type veg. I had a courgette, an aubergine, a pepper, a couple of small onions, a handful of cherry tomatoes and a few cloves of garlic. Chop everything up into big chunks and put it in a roasting tin. Chop the garlic roughly and scatter it over the top, then if you’ve got any basil tuck half a dozen basil leaves in amongst it too. (Rosemary works well with this; the first time I had a variation of this meal at a friend’s house it was made with rosemary and the smells were brilliant).

Now slosh over a good load of olive oil (erm, maybe 6 tablespoons? I have no idea) and about half as much balsamic vinegar.

Now put a couple of chicken legs on the top of it and season liberally – the salt will help the chicken skin to go crispy, but the meat will stay moist because of all the steam from the vegetables. I’m a big fan of chicken legs (or any meat on the bone really) as it is so much tastier than chicken breasts, which go dry very easily.

Shove in the oven for about forty minutes. I lifted the chicken and gave the vegetables a good stir around half way through.

It also helps to baste the chicken with some of the lovely juices from the bottom of the pan – but you only need to do this once. 

You don’t have to have this with cous cous – it’s nice with roasted new potatoes or just steamed new potatoes. But this time we were having easy dinner.

Toast some pine nuts in a dry frying pan (keep an eye on them, they burn easily) and chop some parsley. You’ll be able to tell if the chicken is nearly ready because the juices will run clear when you poke it with a skewer or sharp knife. At this point, cook some cous cous according to the instructions on the packet, then stir through the pine nuts, parsley, the juice of half a lemon, another slosh of olive oil and some salt and pepper. 

A bonus from this recipe is that you will have chuffing LOADS of roasted veg leftover. This makes a lovely pasta sauce for another day. Just cook some pasta, warm the roasted veg, add a dollop of crème fraiche and stir the whole lot together. Again, you wouldn't expect it to be so good, but it’s awesome.