When I took a trip to New York a few days after my birthday this year, I had it in mind that I wanted a nice belated birthday dinner somewhere, but I never managed to pick a place ahead of time. Instead, Jeremy and I set out for Greenwich Village one Friday evening, with no reservation and no plan, simply trusting to fate that we’d stumble across a pleasant restaurant for a good meal.

We hadn’t made it very from the subway stop when we spotted a cozy-looking establishment across the street. As we approached, we saw that it was none other than Babbo, one of Mario Batali’s numerous restaurants and apparently one of the toughest restaurants in the US at which to get a table—which is why I had written it off when I was considering potential birthday spots.

But seeing as fate had guided us to Babbo anyway, we figured we had nothing to lose by going in and asking whether there was any chance of a table that night. It was really only a whim, so when the maitre d’ glanced around and said, “I can seat you in about five minutes”—well, you could have knocked us over with a feather.

Five minutes later, we were ensconced at a cozy table for two in the bar area at the front of the restaurant. Apparently, a certain type of New Yorker would not be seen dead dining in someplace as pedestrian as “the bar area”, but if—like Jeremy and me—you go to a restaurant not to see and be seen but rather to eat, then the bar area is just fine, thank you very much. In fact, you can see our little table in this picture: it’s the table on the left in the distance (space being at a premium in New York, you get pretty cozy with the people sitting around you).

The menu promptly overwhelmed us, so we eventually decided to take the easy way out and just go for the eight-course traditional tasting menu paired with wines, which would spare us having to choose our dishes and our wine (a most intimidating prospect). Somehow I managed to get surreptitious, if not terribly high-quality, photos of every course, so what follows is an illustrated, course-by-course account of our unexpected meal at Babbo.

Chickpea bruschetta - This was actually our amuse bouche before we received the first course of our meal. I adore chickpeas, so I loved this; it tasted a lot like something I’d make, but better. The very tender, slightly spicy chickpeas were drenched with balsamic vinegar and spooned over thick toasted bread. Even though I knew we had a ton of food coming, I found it impossible not to eat every last morsel of this.

Culatello with fiddleheads and pecorino - The only time I’ve seen culatello outside Italy was at Salumi in Seattle, which is, incidentally, run by Mario Batali’s father. It’s a beautifully rich Italian ham which was a treat to have again. I’d never tried fiddleheads, so I was happy to have the chance at Babbo. They were extremely yummy—funny, twirly, crunchy, pickly things. It’s pretty much impossible to fault something as sublime as culatello—or indeed pecorino—so I thought it was a lovely dish, though it couldn’t surpass the culatello with figs and pecorino I had on our first night in Bologna, since that was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten in my whole life, ever.

Pappardelle with morels and thyme - This was absolutely, positively scrumptious: golden, eggy ribbons of perfectly cooked pasta tossed with tender morel mushrooms and drenched in butter and parmesan. The flavor of this reminded me of my childhood, when my grandma would make me pastina with lots of butter and parmesan when I wasn’t feeling well. It’s the best comfort food ever. There was a generous portion of this pasta, but I could have easily eaten more. Lots more.

Duck tortelli with “sugo finto” - I was thrilled by the prospect of this dish: confit duck—inside tortellini! Disappointingly, the duck flavor didn’t come through as strongly as I would have expected, but the rich tomato sauce that topped the tortelli (the “sugo finto”, or “fake sauce”) was a revelation, because it tasted almost exactly like something else my grandma makes, which is one of my favorite, most nostalgia-laden dishes in the world: tocco. Tocco is going to get its own Principia Gastronomica entry, so for now I’ll just say that it’s a type of Italian pot roast that results in a rich, beefy tomato sauce which tastes remarkably like Batali’s “sugo finto” (which apparently doesn’t have any meat, hence the “fake”). It was a shockingly evocative taste.

Grilled lamb loin with summer caponata and mint pesto - I don’t see lamb very often on menus in the States, so it was nice to have the opportunity to try some American lamb (I’m assuming it was American, anyway, and not flown in from New Zealand—or indeed England). This was quite delicious, with the impeccably cooked lamb (really rare, just how Jeremy and I like it) nestling on a bed of summery vegetables. The mint pesto in particular was gorgeous, and it’s something that I’ve tried to recreate myself since then.

Coach Farm’s Finest with fennel honey - The menu gave no hint of what “Coach Farm’s Finest” might be. As it turned out, this was the cheese course to wrap up the savory portion of the menu and make the transition to the desserts (rather more quickly than I would have expected, to be honest). Coach Farm’s Finest is a fresh, tangy goat cheese which was perfectly complemented by an amber pool of honey fragranced with pungent fennel seeds. I’m a recent convert to fennel seeds. A little goes a very long way, but used judiciously, they add a wonderful Italian warmth to dishes. The fennel here was a tasty herbal counterpoint to the cheese and honey, so I enjoyed this dish a lot.

“Delizia di Susina” - This, our first dessert, really was scrumptious. It was a moist, spiced plum cake with the texture of bread pudding, topped with a tangy spoonful of something like creme fraiche ice cream. I love bread pudding, so this kind of dessert is right up my alley. Since it was also our first dessert of the evening, it was refreshing to have something sticky and sweet after the hearty savories we’d consumed.

Chocolate “Tartufino” - The “tartufino” was a softly frozen ball of hazelnut mousse topped with a drizzle of hard chocolate. Not being the world’s biggest fan of chocolate ice cream, or even hazelnuts (crazy, I know), I found this okay but not amazing. Also, my sweet tooth had already been satisfied with the plum cake, so the rich, sweet nuttiness of this was more than I really needed.

Lemon olive oil cake with thyme and olive oil gelato - We actually wound up getting two different desserts for this, our final course: the lemon cake (which I never got a picture of), and what I think was Babbo’s chocolate-hazelnut cake with orange sauce and hazelnut gelato. Our waiter said this was because they had run out of the lemon cake, but having read other reviews of the Babbo tasting menu, receiving two different cakes at this point seems to be par for the course (ha ha). We definitely liked the lemon cake better, in part because it was lighter, which was what we needed at this point in the meal, but also because 1) having already had a chocolate-hazelnut dessert, we didn’t really need another one, and 2) I really didn’t think the orange sauce complemented the chocolate and hazelnut very well. But by that time I was so full that it was hard to be objective about tastes anymore.

That’s the peril of almost any tasting menu, I suppose: if the amounts aren’t well-judged, you wind up not really enjoying your food by the time you get to the end of it. I think Babbo’s tasting menu was fairly well-judged in terms of amounts, but the balance of it wasn’t quite what I would have expected, or indeed wanted. I found the three desserts to be way too much (and then you get petit fours afterwards, which I could hardly even look at). I would have ditched at least one of the desserts in favor of another cheese course, or maybe even a fish or another meat course served prior to the lamb. It’s a matter of personal taste, of course. I would just prefer to have a bite of something sweet after a full savory meal, rather than to have almost half of my meal consist of sweet things.

The atmosphere at Babbo is definitely a matter of personal taste as well. Babbo famously has a thumping soundtrack taken directly from Batali’s own iPod. I didn’t mind the rather loud rock music because I happen to like U2 and Talking Heads and it seemed to fit in the already noisy bar area. But the volume did skirt the boundaries of being intrusive.

There’s also the matter of the pace of things—not just at Babbo, but in New York as a whole, I suspect. Even really high-end restaurants in the city like to get two, or even three, seatings a night. Since the pace of a tasting menu is largely determined by the kitchen, we couldn’t and didn’t rush through our meal. But I was very aware of the fact that the tables around us were turned over at least once while we sat there, and the brisk efficiency of the serving staff left no doubt that things are expected to move fast at Babbo. That’s fine, but when I’m paying that much for a dining experience (with or without a reservation), I don’t even want to feel a hint of being rushed.

Overall, I like Frank Bruni’s assessment from a New York Times article a few years ago: Babbo is an “absolutely terrific restaurant” though not a “wholly transcendent” one. But quibbles aside, the food was outstanding, and I feel supremely lucky to have been able to walk in off the street and snag a table at such a prestigious and pleasing restaurant. I’d certainly go back again—if I thought I could ever get a reservation…

Babbo, 110 Waverly Place, New York, NY 10011, +1 212 777 0303

There are vast regional food differences in Germany. According to my German friend Schorsch, a native southerner who has lived in the north for years (and who pines for the good bread and hearty, flavorful fare of the south), northern German cuisine shares more similarities with Scandinavia than with southern Germany—just compare the fish and boiled potatoes of the north to the hearty porks and pastas of the south.

Yes, it’s true: even Germany has an “indigenous” pasta—several different kinds, in fact. Known as Spätzle (which is roughly pronounced “shpayt-slee”, not “spat-sull” as Anglophone TV chefs would have you believe), it’s a type of egg pasta that is actually more like long, skinny dumplings than tagliatelle, say, or the wide, flat Eastern European egg noodles that are so easy to come by in the States but are oddly impossible to find in Brighton.

Spätzle is from the German state of Swabia. Its variations include Schupfnudeln or Bubespitzle, which are like the gnocchi of Germany, made with potatoes and often served with sauerkraut and bacon (very popular at Christmas markets and wine festivals), and Knöpfle, a variation from Baden which is made in the form of tiny knobbly dumplings rather than long noodles.

Spätzle batter consists of flour, eggs, salt and water or milk. Traditionally, Spätzle are geschabt, or scraped from a board, noodle by painstaking noodle. A Spätzle press, which is much like a potato ricer, or a Spätzlehobel, which is kind of like a big cheese grater, makes the job much easier. In a pinch, you could press the batter through a colander to get the same effect. I have both a Spätzle grater and a press, but I only use the press these days because it produces the best results with the least chance of me tipping a pot of boiling water onto myself. So to make the recipe below, I recommend getting a Spätzle press (you can find them online) or using a potato ricer.*

For no particular reason (other than it was the first Spätzle recipe I ever tried and it works perfectly), the recipe I use to make Spätzle comes from a German vegetarian cookbook I bought years ago in Freiburg. The original recipe calls for a mixture of plain flour and spelt flour, which is quite lovely, but I generally just use the plain flour alone. A neat trick I picked up from my friend Schorsch last Christmas is to add a pinch of nutmeg to the batter for a subtle touch of extra flavor.

Recipe for four people (it won’t look like much batter, but believe me, it expands when it hits the water!):

• 250 g plain (all-purpose) flour
• 3 eggs
• 80 ml milk
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of nutmeg

Mix all of the ingredients to form a thick, sticky batter. Let the batter sit for about 15 minutes while you bring a big pot of salted water to the boil. When the water is simmering nicely, take your Spätzle press and spoon your batter into it. This might be a rather awkward procedure since the batter will be quite viscous, but don’t fret: with a sturdy rubber spatula and a bit of patience, you’ll be able to get the batter in without making a tremendous mess. Don’t fill the press/ricer more than about three-quarters of the way or else batter will squeeze out the top when you close it.

When your press is ready to go, position it over the boiling water and…press! The Spätzle will glide into the water and sink to the bottom of the pot. When they rise to the top (it will only take a minute or so), scoop them out with a slotted spoon and drain them in a colander; then you can cook the next batch in the same way. You can mix the finished Spätzle with some butter and keep them warm in a covered dish in a low oven until you’re ready to serve them.

Spätzle are a fantastic side dish for stews or anything with lots of gravy, German or otherwise. I love them with Belgian carbonnade, Hungarian goulash and French boeuf bourguignon. They’re also gorgeous with pork in mustard or mushroom sauce. A ragout of wild mushrooms with white wine and cream would make an ideal vegetarian topping for Spätzle, or you could use Spätzle in place of noodles or rice in a soup. And then, of course, there is the classic Käsespätzle, which is like macaroni and cheese German-style: layer the cooked Spätzle with grated cheese (Emmental, for example) and golden-brown sauteed onions, heat it in the oven until the cheese has melted, and serve it with a green salad and a big mug of good beer.

Mahlzeit!

*If you do use a Spätzle press or potato ricer to make Spätzle, make sure you soak the thing in hot water immediately after you use it, because when Spätzle batter dries, it kind of turns to concrete. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time painstakingly clearing out all the clogged-up holes in my Spätzle press with a toothpick, and believe me, it’s not fun.

For a full pictorial overview of making Spätzle, check out Jeremy’s Making Spätzle set on Flickr!

There’s no mystery to a good salad dressing. A vinaigrette, for example—the type of dressing I generally make—is simply a combination of a fat and an acid, generally an oil and a vinegar. The only trick is in the proportions, but those can be adjusted to taste (the classic proportion is one part vinegar to three parts oil, though I usually make a more acidic dressing than that). By varying your oil and your vinegar and adjusting the proportions to fit your salad ingredients and your tastebuds, you can quickly whip up a homemade salad dressing to suit any type of meal.

The dressing I probably make the most is a basic balsamic vinaigrette which works well on any type of green or tomato salad and goes perfectly with Italian food or steaks (incidentally, I also use it to dress my salad Niçoise, which is probably heretical, but hey…). Chop one small clove of garlic and whisk in 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, 5 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil, freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of sugar if you like. Voilá: instant vinaigrette. This and all following recipes makes enough dressing for one large salad, though the dressing will also keep for a few days if you don’t wind up using it all at once.

With just a slight adjustment, you can create an entirely different beast: instead of extra-virgin olive oil, use 2 tablespoons of walnut oil and 3 tablespoons of regular olive oil, and you have a lovely balsamic-walnut vinaigrette. I make this dressing all through the winter to put on spinach and watercress salad with roasted beets, walnuts and blue cheese. Apple balsamic vinegar works beautifully in this dressing as well.

One dressing that would give the balsamic vinaigrette a run for its money in my house is a classic oil and vinegar dressing I found on Epicurious which calls for sherry vinegar. This is the perfect dressing for tender baby greens, but it can be easily beefed up with extra mustard for use on a spinach or watercress salad, maybe with mushrooms. This is my generic “French food” dressing, but the use of sherry vinegar means that it goes equally well with Spanish food. It’s also a nice dressing for green vegetables like asparagus.

Epicurious was the source of another mustard vinaigrette that I’ve had good success with. It’s a grainy mustard vinaigrette that’s ideal for bitter greens like endive or chicory. A tangy salad like this can be a nice counterpoint to a rich carbonnade—or with the addition of some artichokes and mushrooms, it can almost be a meal in itself. This type of vinaigrette also works well on a potato salad with boiled eggs and crunchy green beans, or a mixed bean salad, or a dinner salad topped with a seared salmon filet

It doesn’t take much tweaking to make a really simple vinaigrette that tastes quite exotic. One of my favorite things to eat growing up (and even now, I might add) was avocado with a curry vinaigrette made by my grandparents in Florida. I make this curry vinaigrette with about 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar, 4 tablespoons of olive oil (it doesn’t have to be extra virgin), a chopped clove of garlic, a pinch of paprika, a hefty pinch of mild curry powder, a dash of salt, a dash of sugar and some ground black pepper. Cut an avocado in half, remove the pit, pour the dressing into the cavity and eat the avocado straight out of its skin—sometimes messy, but always delicious. This dressing is also good on a salad made with avocado, red onion, cucumber and radish, or just on a simple green salad.

By expanding your range of oils and vinegars just a bit more, you can make extremely flavorful vinaigrettes that go wonderfully with Chinese or Japanese food. I make an Asian vinaigrette using about 2 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar, 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce, 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil, 1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil, a small chopped clove of garlic and an equal amount of fresh grated ginger, a pinch of sugar and some black pepper. This makes a great dressing for a leafy green salad with baby spinach and coriander (cilantro), or it can be used on an Asian-style slaw with chopped Chinese cabbage and grated carrot.

Of course, a vinaigrette-style dressing doesn’t have to be made with vinegar. Citrus juice, particularly lemon or lime, does the trick as well. You can make an easy Mexican citrus vinaigrette by taking the basic balsamic vinaigrette recipe and using lime or lemon juice instead of vinegar and adding a pinch of cumin. Leave out the cumin and throw in a generous portion of chopped fresh herbs (things like mint, parsley and basil work particularly nicely), and you have a great, fresh-tasting dressing that’s wonderful on a mixed salad with avocados, cucumbers, radishes and maybe some feta cheese. Or skip the herbs and add a splash of Worcestershire sauce and some grated parmesan for a simplified Caesar vinaigrette that’s perfect on robust leaves like romaine lettuce.

In fact, a lemony dressing is delicious on just about any salad or green vegetables, hot or cold: fresh pea salad with radishes and feta, warm green beans, broad beans, runner beans, asparagus… And the more I think about it, the more I realize that vinaigrettes in all their forms are a fundamental aspect of my cooking. They’re so versatile, and they’re an easy way of adding a real kick of flavor. So if you’ve been buying oil-and-vinegar dressings, I would encourage you to try your hand at making a vinaigrette or two yourself. They’re easy-peasy, and once you’ve discovered the acid-to-oil ratio you like, the flavor possibilities are endless.

When myself and Jessica had the very good fortune to find ourselves in Australia last year, we just knew that we’d have to make a trip to Melbourne. We wound up staying in the St. Kilda area, a funky place with lots of young hip people hanging out at the beach. It reminded me a lot of Brighton.

The main drag in St. Kilda is renowned for its cake shops. But I don’t have much of a sweet tooth so I was interested in more savory fare. I found my wishes answered at a restaurant called Claypots.

Claypots is a seafood restaurant with an almost overwhelming choice of fish and shellfish. They’ve got just about everything you could possibly want. The good news is that you don’t have to decide on just one thing. You can pick and choose any number of things from the menu. Just flag down your server and tell them when you fancy some more nibbles, the order gets relayed to the kitchen—situated right in the middle of the restaurant behind the food counter—and your fish dish is cooked right there in front of you.

You can fill up the edges with plenty of other tapas too. It was a busy night when we showed up here and we had been waiting a while to get a table. We must have looked hungry because our waitress treated us to some tzaziki while we waited to place our order.

I really liked the atmosphere in this place. It was noisy but in a good way. The place is filled with the sound of people having fun, the sizzle of seafood and the kitchen staff calling out to one another. The smell of hot butter and garlic is an added bonus.

Instead of a printed menu, the options at Claypots are listed out on a blackboard. This list will vary from night to night and, of course, from season to season. As the evening progresses, the list gets shorter as prized items are consumed and removed from the list.

I highly recommend trying Morton Bay bugs if they’re on the menu: a delicious crab-like crustacean with firm tasty flesh inside a primordial looking shell. It was also at Claypots that I tried yabbies for the first time. These Australian fresh-water crayfish were served up without any fuss. You can’t beat simple fresh food in a bustling but cosy restaurant.

You won’t be able to reserve a table ahead of time at Claypots. Just show up early. If they can’t seat you straight away, they’ll get your mobile number and call you when a table is free. In the meantime, you can pop into the wine shop next door and choose a nice Australian wine to go with your meal—it’s a BYO restaurant.

If you’re in Melbourne, don’t pass up the chance to eat at Claypots. If you can’t make it all the way out to St. Kilda, there’s a second restaurant at 153 Gertrude Street in Fitzroy. Either way, if you like fresh seafood, you can’t go wrong here.

Claypots, 213 Barkly Street, Melbourne, 3182 VIC, Australia, +61 (03) 9534 1282

The simplest way of finding new meals is to look for recipes in cookbooks or online, of course. Another fun method is trying to replicate tasty dishes I’ve had in restaurants. And a third way is to play the variations on a theme game. This involves taking a recipe that I already like and tweaking it by “transposing” its components and, essentially, moving the whole thing to a different country (the variations on a tomato salad with herbs and cheese described in this post are a good example of this).

This lentil soup recipe is actually the product of all three methods. While browsing through food blogs one day, I chanced upon this recipe for lentil, chestnut and pancetta soup. If ever two words could make my heart sing, it would be “lentils” and “pancetta”, so I quickly set about making the soup, and it was very good indeed.

Then one evening, as I sat pondering what to do with a bit of leftover chorizo I had in the fridge, I remembered a smoky lentil casserole I’d had at Bodega D’Tapa, a little (very little) gem of a tapas bar in Brighton. The idea of lentils and cured meat got me to thinking about the lentil and pancetta soup, which I decided I’d move from Italy to Spain by substituting chorizo for the pancetta, replacing the sage and thyme with pimentón (smoked Spanish paprika), and adding some onions and garlic for extra richness.

To my delight, the Spanish version of the soup turned out great. The combination of earthy lentils, smoky paprika, spicy chorizo and sweet chestnuts is a real winner, and it’s quick and easy to make to boot.

The following recipe will really serve four, though I make the same amount for two because the leftovers are yummy for lunch. Though the ingredients have been tweaked, this recipe hews very closely to the original one, so most of the credit for it should go to Meg of Though small, it is tasty (who, incidentally, used to be a resident of Brighton! Small world…)

• 150 g lentils
• 2 bay leaves
• 75 g Spanish chorizo, sliced
• 1/2 onion (preferably red), chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 200 g roasted and peeled chestnuts, chopped a bit
• 150 mL red wine
• 250 g canned tomatoes
• 1/2 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• red chili flakes and salt to taste

Cook the lentils and bay leaves in a pot of boiling water for about 25 minutes, until the lentils are tender but still firm. Drain the lentils, saving the cooking water.

In the meantime, heat a splash of olive oil in a pot over medium-low heat and sauté the chorizo for a minute. Remove the chorizo and set it aside, then sauté the onion in the oil for about 10 minutes, until it’s soft. Add the garlic and sauté a minute or two, then add the chestnuts and cook them for a few minutes too.

Pour in the wine and simmer until most of the liquid has cooked off, then add the tomatoes, tomato paste, paprika, chili flakes if you’re using them, and salt to taste.

Simmer all of this until the mixture has thickened, roughly 15 minutes. Then stir in the lentils and as much lentil cooking water as you want (I make this like a thick lentil stew, but you can add more liquid if you want something more soup-like). Cook this together for another 10 minutes or so, adding the chorizo towards the end to heat it through. Season again if you need to, then serve it up!

I like to use small, firm lentils such as Puy lentils for this, but I’m sure regular brown lentils would work just as well (or for extra authenticity, use Spanish Pardina lentils if you can find them). The chestnuts add a nice texture and sweetness, but I’ve made the soup without them and it’s still very good (and by the way, I don’t roast my own chestnuts—I just buy them already roasted and peeled).

For a vegetarian version of the soup, just leave out the chorizo. The pimentón will still give you a deep smokiness, and you could substitute some roasted red peppers to boost the flavor even more. Then you need nothing more than a spicy Spanish red and maybe a crisp salad to have a dinner that’s just delicioso.

Update: For an extremely fast variation on this soup, you can use tinned black beans instead of lentils.

Follow the steps for cooking the chorizo, onion and garlic mentioned above (you can sauté carrots and/or celery along with the onion if you have them), stir in the smoked paprika, add some tomato paste/puree or some tinned tomatoes if you like, then chuck in two tins of black beans (with their juices) and enough water or vegetable stock for the soup to reach the consistency you want. Simmer it for as long as you like, put the chorizo back in, season it to taste, and enjoy!

But the country has a host of other delicious dishes to offer as well: creamy soups with fish or chicken (waterzooi); salads and fritters made with North Sea shrimp; endives/chicory baked under a bubbling blanket of ham and cheese; sweet lobster and other seafood; sausages and game; tender white asparagus, waxy yellow potatoes and bright green Brussels sprouts (don’t scoff: Brussels sprouts sauteed in butter with caramelized onions and mustard are delightful).

My favorite Belgian recipe features one of Belgium’s other great gifts to the culinary world: beer. Carbonnade à la flamande is Flemish beef stew in which beef and onions are simmered in Belgian ale until the meat is tender, the onions are sweet and the ale has cooked down into a rich, dark gravy. I imagine carbonnade was as popular in the 14th century as it is today.

The key - as with so many great dishes - lies in taking a few good ingredients and treating them well to create something much greater than the sum of its parts. And those parts are as follows:

• 500 g cubed stewing/braising beef
• 2 slices bacon, chopped
• 3-4 medium onions, sliced
• 1/2 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon flour
• 1 bottle Belgian ale
• 500 mL strong beef broth/stock
• 1-2 bay leaves
• pinch of thyme (fresh or dried)
• pinch of allspice (optional)
• salt and pepper
• chopped parsley
• mustard

The basic recipe is very straightforward. You can make the carbonnade either entirely on the stovetop, or you can start it on the stove and finish it in the oven. If you’re going to use the oven, preheat it to 175C/350F.

Season the beef generously with salt and pepper and brown it on all sides in a dash of oil over medium heat in a heavy-bottomed pot or casserole. When the meat is browned, take it out of the pot and set it aside, then deglaze the pot by adding a splash of beef broth and scraping up any browned bits with a wooden spoon. Add the broth and bits to the beef, then drop the bacon into the pot and fry it over medium heat until it’s brown. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and set it aside with the beef.

Put the onions in the pot and fry them gently in the bacon fat until they start to turn soft and golden, which will take about 15 minutes. After the onions have been cooking for a few minutes, sprinkle over the brown sugar, which will help them caramelize slightly.

Once the onions are cooked, sprinkle the flour over them and stir it in (a lot of recipes call for tossing the beef cubes in flour before browning them, but I’ve found that you wind up just browning the flour instead of the meat when you do this). Then add the beef, bacon and any accumulated juices to the onions in the pot.

Now comes the fun bit: turn up the heat slightly, and pour in the bottle of ale. It will go all fizzy for a few seconds, but then it will calm down. Add enough beef broth to cover the meat and onions, along with the bay leaf, thyme, allspice if you’re using it, and some salt and pepper.

Bring this to a boil, then cover and place in the oven. Let it cook for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally, until the meat is tender (if you’re cooking the carbonnade on the stovetop, simply simmer it over low heat for 2 hours; you’ll have to stir it slightly more often to prevent it from burning to the bottom of the pot).

To finish the carbonnade, stir in a handful of chopped parsley and a tablespoon or two of mustard if you’d like. Carbonnade is traditionally served with boiled potatoes or sometimes buttered noodles, but I think Spätzle is really the perfect accompaniment (so carbonnade is from Belgium and Spätzle is from southern Germany—it’s still a match made in heaven). A salad of chicory or endive dressed with a mustard vinaigrette makes for a sprightly accompaniment to balance out the dark, rich carbonnade.

There are just a few things to take note of if you’re making carbonnade. First of all, the beer: If you can get hold of Belgian ale, I highly recommend using it, even if it is more expensive than your average bottle of beer. I used a Chimay Blue the first time I made carbonnade, and it worked so well that I’ve stuck to it ever since. Chimay Blue is a fairly dark ale which gives the carbonnade a pleasing depth. I’ve tried a Leffe Radieuse as well, which is dark and malty, but I thought it gave the carbonnade a slightly bitter edge. If you can’t get hold of Belgian ale, try some other well-rounded copper ale. I would avoid using a stout, however; beef and Guinness stew is great, but that’s not what this recipe is meant to be.

Also, resist the temptation to add too much butter or oil to the pot while you’re browning the meat and sautéing the onions; otherwise the final product could taste greasy.

The allspice, mustard and herbs are really “optional extras”. For true medieval flair, carbonnade should have a spiced, sweet-and-sour tang to it. To achieve this, some cooks spread mustard on a piece of gingerbread and place the bread on top of the carbonnade; as the carbonnade cooks, the mustard-smeared bread breaks down, thickening and flavoring the stew.

Since I don’t typically have gingerbread lying around my house, I make do with the allspice and a hefty dollop of wholegrain mustard (cloves might be interesting to experiment with as well). It’s also not uncommon for vinegar to be added once the carbonnade is done, but I find that the mustard alone gives the stew enough sharpness. The sugar provides the sweetness, though I’ve also seen recipes that call for a spoonful of red currant jelly for the same effect. And as for the thyme and the parsley: if you don’t have any, don’t fret.

And finally, you may have noticed that the pictures accompanying this recipe clearly show mushrooms in my carbonnade. It’s true, I have on occasion used mushrooms if I happened to have them in the fridge. It works out fine, but if you tip the delicate mushroom/meat balance, you just wind up with beef and mushroom stew. This is okay as far as it goes—but again, it’s not carbonnade à la flamande.

I’ve since decided that “purity of spirit” is what’s called for in a carbonnade. Beef, beer and onions are really all you need to create a hearty winter meal fit for a medieval monarch—or a 21st-century foodie.

I first heard of quinoa in a lovely little cookbook that I bought many years ago called simply Grains, by Miriam Rubin (the book appears to be out of print now, but it’s definitely worth grabbing if you happen to see it somewhere). The Grains book piqued my interest in this food of the Incas, so I hunted down some quinoa in a health food store, and it’s been a permanent staple in my pantry ever since.

Quinoa is billed as a grain, but it’s actually a high-protein, gluten-free, super-nutritious seed that is as tasty and versatile as it is healthy. In its uncooked state, it takes the form of small off-white disks. It swells when it’s cooked and has a lightly nutty, slightly earthy flavor - very mild but distinct, and much more interesting than rice or couscous.

Quinoa is as easy to cook as rice. In fact, it’s cooked exactly like rice, though it needs to be rinsed first. No big deal: just throw it in a fine sieve/colander and run it under some cold water, or swish it around in a bowl of water and then drain it.

To cook it, use two parts liquid to one part quinoa. I like cooking quinoa in vegetable or chicken broth to boost its flavor even more. So, for one cup of quinoa, bring two cups of broth to a boil (you can use a stock cube - no need to go boiling up a whole chicken just to cook some quinoa). Add your rinsed quinoa and maybe a bit of ground pepper, then cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes. When the quinoa is done, it will have a gorgeous texture: soft and fluffy, with the lightest bit of crunch.

Quinoa pairs particularly well with tomato-based dishes - or at least, that’s what I’ve always had it with. Try using quinoa anywhere you’d use couscous or rice. In the Grains cookbook, Miriam Rubin suggests serving it with ratatouille or stirring cooked quinoa into tomato soup along with a dollop of pesto.

Lately I’ve been enjoying quinoa as an accompaniment to an easy chorizo and chickpea stew. To make the stew, take about half a cup of sliced spicy Spanish chorizo and sauté it in a bit of olive oil over medium heat for two or three minutes. Remove the chorizo with a slotted spoon and set it aside, then sauté a small chopped onion in the same pan until the onion is soft. Stir in a crushed garlic clove, then add a splash of dry sherry or white wine.

When the liquid has mostly cooked off, stir in about a tablespoon of tomato paste (tomato puree). Season with half a teaspoon of smoked paprika and a some salt, then add half a tin of chopped tomatoes, some chopped roasted red peppers if you have them on hand, a tin of drained chickpeas, and about a cup of vegetable or chicken broth (enough to almost but not quite cover the other ingredients - and again, you can use a stock cube).

Simmer this for 15 or 20 minutes, or however long it takes you to cook up some quinoa separately. Add a few handfuls of chopped kale, chard or spinach to your chickpea mixture towards the end of the cooking time and simmer it for a few minutes, then stir in the chorizo again just to warm it through. Serve the stew with the quinoa, adding a dollop or two of Greek yogurt if you’re feeling decadent (this may sound weird, but trust me, it’s good).

I’m pretty much stuck in a rut with using quinoa like rice because it’s so easy and so good, but there’s a whole world of quinoa to explore out there: quinoa pilaf, quinoa in a salad, sweetened quinoa with fruits and yogurt for breakfast, toasted quinoa cereal, quinoa in muffins and bread…

Still, if you’ve never had quinoa before, then I recommend starting simple. The next time you’re tempted by couscous or rice, try boiling up some quinoa instead. It’s healthy, it’s yummy and it’s fun to say. And if it was good enough for the Incas, it’s good enough for me.

When tomatoes are at their peak, I find a simple salad gets the most out of their flavor. The classic summery tomato salad is the Insalata Caprese, a perfectly harmonious combination of tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. If you have the time and inclination, you can be very particular about your Insalata Caprese, cutting precise rounds of tomato and topping them with individual slices of cheese and single basil leaves.

I prefer to follow the Jamie Oliver school of cooking, however: just chuck it all onto a plate. Slice up your ripe tomatoes (not too thick, not too thin) and spread them out on individual plates or a big platter. Then tear off pieces of mozzarella (ideally buffalo mozzarella, but good cow’s milk mozzarella will do) and scatter them over the tomatoes. Follow this with basil leaves and a generous drizzle of your best extra virgin olive oil. A pinch of sea salt and grind of black pepper aren’t out of place either—but forgo the vinegar. If your only two ingredients are really good tomatoes and really good mozzarella, you don’t want to swamp them.

You can, however, transfer the Insalata Caprese idea to a green salad by scattering tomatoes, mozzarella and basil over green leaves (anything from butter/round lettuce to arugula/rocket), in which case you could use a light oil and vinegar dressing to make a heartier salad.

There are countless variations of the tomatoes/cheese/herbs concept. One of my favorites—a salad that Jeremy and I practically live off during the summer—involves not mild mozzarella and tender basil, but rather salty feta cheese and punchy parsley. It’s extremely easy to prepare. Slice tomatoes as you would for an Insalata Caprese and spread them on a plate. Then finely slice a red onion and layer the onion over the tomatoes. Next, drizzle over extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar (for a dinner-plate-sized salad, I’d use about 2 tablespoons of oil and 2 tablespoons of vinegar, but you can do it to taste) and season with salt and pepper.

Now you can let all of this stand for an hour or more. Usually I would never let cut onions sit out for any length of time because of the unpleasant smell and taste they can take on, but in this case the vinegar “cooks” them and mellows them out so there’s no unpleasantness. When you’re ready to serve the salad, crumble feta cheese over the tomatoes and onion and sprinkle on a good handful of chopped parsley. The salad goes perfectly with simply grilled steaks or lamb.

The other great thing about the salad—besides the fact that it tastes amazing—is that it’s so versatile. You can use basil or oregano instead of the parsley, you can change the cheese, leave out the onions, or add olives (like in the original Epicurious recipe). For a more Mexican or Asian flair, leave out the cheese and replace the parsley with cilantro/coriander and replace the balsamic vinegar with lime juice sweetened by a pinch of sugar.

Along the same lines, chopped tomato, cucumber and green onion can be dressed with lime juice and a dash of oil to make a refreshing accompaniment to spicy curry dishes. Add jalapenos or other chilies and you’ll have a version of pico de gallo, a spicy Mexican condiment that goes great with fajitas.

And if you can make pico de gallo, you can make salsa: Just blitz ripe tomatoes in a food processor (ideally you should de-seed them first), mix in some finely chopped onion, garlic and jalapenos and stir in a squeeze of lemon or lime juice, a splash of olive oil, some salt, pepper and sugar to taste, and a sprinkling of fresh coriander/cilantro. Let it sit for a bit so that the flavors gel, then get yourself a bag of tortilla chips and tuck in.

And if all of this seems like too much slicing, dicing, dressing and fiddling, then just get the reddest, ripest cherry tomatoes you can find and pop them in your mouth. That sweet, tangy, tingly, juicy explosion you’ll get when you bite down is the undiluted taste of summer.

There seem to be two schools of thought on how runner beans should be prepared: stewed slowly and served up soft, or cooked quickly and left with some bite. There also appear to be two main ways of carving up the massive beans into serving-sized pieces: either cut width-wise into small diamond shapes, or sliced length-wise into long strings.

I subscribe to the latter school of thought on both counts: I like my beans a bit on the crisp side, and long slices not only cook more evenly, they’re more fun to eat. And if you have a “bean slicer”, then the slicing should be a breeze (I recently bought a bean slicer but haven’t used it yet, so I can’t comment on its performance—but it’s got to be easier than slicing runner beans by hand).

If you find yourself with a big pile of runner beans, here’s what I recommend doing with them. First, wash them, of course. Then top and tail them.

Next, I recommend cutting them in half if they’re really long so that they’re easier to work with.

If you need to string the beans, you can do so with a sharp knife, vegetable peeler, or the aforementioned bean slicer (mine comes with a little blade on the top for stringing). I took the lazy way out and just cut off a thin bit on either edge of the bean to get rid of any stringiness.

Then cut what’s left into long, thin slices. If you don’t have a bean slicer, you’ll want a big, sharp knife (and a good deal of patience).

When you’ve got a nice big pile of sliced beans, bring a pot of water to the boil, add a hefty pinch of salt, and throw in your beans. They should take about 5-10 minutes to cook. You don’t want them to go mushy, so test them after a few minutes to see how they’re progressing.

Once they’re done to your liking, drain them and then put them in a dish or throw them back into the warm pot. Dress them generously with extra virgin olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice, and season them well with salt and pepper (don’t be shy with the dressing and seasoning—these beans can take it).

They can be served hot or at room temperature and make a good accompaniment to a summery meal. I reckon that with some feta cheese mixed in with them, they’d even make a good salad.

They may be a bit labor-intensive, but runner beans make for good seasonal summer eating in England.

Right now it’s Summertime in England. It’s a good time for food and it’s an especially good time for eating outdoors.

Berries are ripe for the picking. The English really have a thing for strawberries and, for a brief period during the Summer, it’s easy to understand why.

The traditional way to have strawberries is with cream. If you want to try something slightly different, try having strawberries with a dollop of yoghurt, drizzled with honey. The combination is remarkably good.

This is also the one time of year when tomatoes won’t necessarily taste mealy and flavourless. I know quite a few people who claim not to like tomatoes, but I think they’ve just never had one at the right time. Tomatoes can be grown all year ‘round in a greenhouse but they won’t taste anything like vine-grown tomatoes. When they’re ready for eating, they are unbelievably tasty.

There are plenty of green things in season right now; peas, broad beans, courgettes. I know you can get peas all year ‘round, but they’ll never taste as good as they do right now. This is also the time for new potatoes — the two go great together.

But most people’s interest in verdant vegetables is eclipsed by the uncontrollable urge to sear some meat. There’s nothing nicer than sitting outdoors, eating some freshly cooked food from the barbecue.

I would caution against going down the traditional route of cooking sausages on the BBQ. There’s a whole world of delicious foods to try throwing on the grill. Sausages are a fiddly shape and they can take ages to cook right through.

I’ll admit there is some perverse pleasure to be had in consuming little tubes of meat that are carbonised on the outside and barely cooked in the middle. But you’re not in the boy scouts anymore. You don’t want to spend all your time playing with fire, do you?

Try getting some minute steaks. They’ll be cooked in no time and the smoky barbecue flavour really adds to the taste.

How about some fish? You could put some nice firm monkfish on a skewer with bacon. If that sounds too time-consuming, just slap down a nice fillet of mackerel.

When you’ve eaten your fill of charred animals, you can make a tasty dessert with some bananas and chocolate. Take a banana, slice it open on top, stuff in some chocolate, and place on the barbecue. The skin will blacken, but that’s okay: you won’t be eating the skin. The chocolate will melt and the banana will soften, making a lovely gooey mixture that you can eat straight out of the skin with a spoon. I know bananas aren’t exactly local produce, but they are in season all year and this is a great way to get your potassium.

Every season has its own treasures. Winter, for example, is a great time for hearty, cosy meals. But Summer is the only time that you’ll get to sample seasonal food at the same time as you’re soaking up the sun.

Make the most of it. You know how fickle this weather can be.

You can find more seasonal suggestions at the BBC Food website.