Rosie Lovell - Spooning with Rosie

2 duck breasts

50g butter

1 nectarine

Now for the breasts: score the skins so that you go almost as deep as the flesh. Using a griddle pan, if you have one, heat the butter on a medium to high heat so that it is near to smoking. Attentively place the duck in the pan, skin side down. This will create some serious spitting. Fry for 10 minutes, or until the skin is beginning to brown and become crispy, then turn the breasts over. Continue to cook, allowing all the fat to melt out of the bird, while finely slicing the nectarine. Once the breasts have had another 5 minutes and they are to your taste (like steak, it is up to you how rare you want them – for me, the bloodier the better), remove and let them relax on a chopping board. Add the sliced nectarine to the pan, so it cooks in the duck juices. Quickly pan-fry for a few minutes, then with a heavy fork mash it a little so that it is almost like a chutney. Carve the duck into morsels and pile the champ on to the plate, with the nectarine alongside.

For 2

I’m planning a fish-off with Raf. He’s going to cook tuna marinated in grapefruit juice and soy sauce, and I’m seducing him with ceviche and Corona. Do eat it with beer, though: I’ve made the mistake of eating this with red wine, and spent a good few minutes hopping around trying to assuage the heat of the chillies.

Most famously from Peru, ceviche is seafood marinated in lime juice. You can use any white fish or shellfish: scallops, prawns, squid, sea bass, cod and so on. Partially cooked by the lime, it’s just a small step from sushi, and therefore exceedingly enticing for fish fanatics. The chilli heat is tempered by the tender fish that will melt in your sizzling mouth. The first time I made this dish, it really did blow my mind.

The flavours in the fish are fresh and zesty and chilli hot, and suit equally fresh vegetables like this salsa and guacamole. You’ll need to buy a sack of limes. You have been warned! The ceviche and salsa can be served with fried plantain, pitta, crispy tortilla chips or with the corn cakes in Dawn Chorus (on page 33). I like the pic’n’mix style – an array of little bowls to get entangled over. But of course, guacamole is one of those favourite foods that everyone loves, especially if there’s a big bowl of it in the middle of a table of waiting and drinking friends. I often make this to whet everyone’s appetite, whether having an Americas meal or not.

12 tiger prawns

200g sea bass or sea bream

1 fleshy index-finger-sized chilli

2 generous handfuls of fresh coriander

6 limes

Start with the ceviche, as it needs time to marinate. You need to prepare your fish carefully, so with a very sharp knife, cut down the back of the prawns and remove the black string. Strip them of their legs and shells, carefully removing the head. Take the skin off the fish and cut into slivers about 1cm wide. Place the seafood and fish in a freezer bag. Finely chop the chilli and coriander, and add this to the bag. Squeeze in the limes and give it all a really good mix around. Tie up the bag and leave to marinate in the fridge, sitting in a bowl, for a couple of hours.

2 garlic cloves

2 really ripe avocados

3 cherry tomatoes

juice of 3 limes

1 fleshy index-finger-sized chilli, with seeds

1/ 2red onion

a small handful of fresh coriander

Maldon sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

Now for the guacamole. If you have a hand-held blender this would come in very handy. (If not, a pestle and mortar is fine.) Peel the garlic and place in a tall-sided bowl or jug. Now stone the avocados (I do this by halving the fruit then flailing a large knife into the stone, which will twist the whole thing out – precarious but effective) and scoop the bright green flesh into the bowl. Chuck in the tomatoes, and squeeze in the lime juice. Then add the chopped chilli, peeled and diced onion and roughly chopped coriander, and give it a good pulsing with the blender. Season after tasting.

1/ 2cucumber

4 big tomatoes

3 garlic cloves

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

freshly ground black pepper

Maldon sea salt

Lastly the salsa. Partly peel the cucumber, halve it lengthways and then deseed by incising either side of the seeds and scooping them out with a teaspoon. Deseed the tomatoes. Chop both finely into little cubes, peel and finely chop the garlic, and put everything into a bowl. Dress with the olive oil and season.

For 2

This was Doctor Helen’s idea. It’s brilliant, and perfect for sharing, cuddled up on the sofa with your sweetheart. It is exactly as it says, and so couldn’t be easier. The frozen fruits come out like little bullets of sorbet, perfect for grappling over after a good feed.

berries of your choice

Choose your berries (I would suggest green grapes and blueberries, and raspberries are great too, all in season during the summer) and rinse them under a running tap. Dry them with some kitchen towel or a clean linen drying-up cloth. Leave them in a Tupperware box for at least 2 hours in the freezer, and there waiting, with no effort, are your mini sorbet jewels.

Makes about 15 sweets

Using up off-cuts of pastry is something I end up doing a lot. It’s my family thriftiness, where all wastage was rehashed into the next meal, fed to the chickens or dogs, or put in the compost. It is a natural reflex. So if you have some leftover pastry, after making a tart, you are already halfway there. I’m cheating by calling it pudding, because it is really just something to munch on with coffee that will look effortless. In the shop I make these with cinnamon, to treat my special customers, a surprise nestling in the saucer of their cappuccino. You could also try spreading with a film of chocolate or jam – fig or quince is delicious. It is not that far from a fig roll, after all. You can really experiment.

off-cuts of pastry, about a handfu

some plain flour for rolling

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

3 tablespoons ground cinnamon

2 tablespoons warm full-fat milk

Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas 4 and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Roll out the pastry on a floured surface so that it forms a long but not too wide sheet, about 10cm in width, and as long as you can make it. Create a paste by mixing the olive oil with the sugar and ground cinnamon. Add 1 tablespoon of milk to the paste to loosen it. With a palette knife, spread this evenly over the pastry. Using a pastry brush, dab some of the remaining milk along one side of the pastry sheet. Now roll it from the opposite side to create a long thin sausage. It should seal where you have dabbed it with milk when pressed. Paint the top of the sausage with the rest of the milk. Slice into 2.5cm pieces, and bake on the lined baking tray for 10 minutes, or until the pastry colours. Remove from the tray to cool, and serve with good coffee.

For 2

This is a great way of doing something super stylish with zero effort. Perfect, therefore, for a date. It is, quite simply, ice cream drowned in espresso. There is something amazing about the contrasts of hot and bitter with ice cold and sweet. It throws your tastebuds into confusion. The added brilliance is that you can really experiment with the ice cream flavours here, though I would avoid fruit ice creams. Anything nutty works really well with the espresso. My favourite is Amaretto, but Jude’s (www.judes.co.uk) do an awesome butterscotch one too that is delicious here and perfectly sweetens the coffee.