Rose Prince - The New English Kitchen - Changing the Way You Shop, Cook and Eat

This can be spooned on to halved tomatoes, cylinders of courgette or thick aubergine slices before baking them in the oven. You can also fry it and serve it beside game or poultry with the gravy.

4 tablespoons breadcrumbs, fresh or dried (see here)

2 sprigs of basil or oregano, chopped

1 garlic clove, crushed with a little salt

3 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F/Gas Mark 7. Mix together all the ingredients until they are well blended and have the texture of wet sand. Spoon on to the vegetables and transfer them to an oiled baking dish. Cook for half an hour or until the vegetables are soft. Eat them on their own, or beside meat or fish.

While I am grateful for those herbs in their little plastic packs, bags of washed infant lettuce leaves are expensive and taste suspiciously of chlorine. Washing salad in a strong solution of chlorine and water to kill the bugs that cause food poisoning seems to wash away the flavour, too. It can also make the leaves smell downright manky once they have sat on the shelf for a time. This is not to say that all small leaf salad is bad. You can buy fresh leaves, loosely packed, all year round – some from British farmers. Rocket, mizuna, ruby chard, sorrel, purslane, dandelion and pak choi have a beautiful fresh taste and can be bought from specialist grocers and farmers’ markets. At £10 per kilo, however, it hurts. The popularity of fresh wild rocket makes it easier to obtain, and slightly cheaper.

Whole Cos or romaine lettuces, on the other hand, are inexpensive, keep for ages and have a good mineral flavour. A salad made with torn romaine lettuce and herbs will be as good as any so-called gourmet leaf mixture. Use the inner leaves for salads and the outer leaves for stock or for creamy lettuce soups (see here).

Store whole lettuces and salad leaves as you would herbs. They will keep for a week wrapped in slightly damp newspaper in a plastic bag. Limp lettuce can be revived by separating the leaves and putting them in a ceramic bowl. Cover with a dampened tea towel and leave in or out of the fridge.

The standard supermarket cucumber is a watery creature but you can boost its flavour with a simple method. Peel the cucumber, halve it lengthways and scoop out the seeds. Slice thinly, then place in a colander in the sink and throw a little salt over it. Leave for an hour, during which time the water will seep out of the cucumber flesh. Pat dry with a towel, which will absorb the water and excess salt.

Cucumbers store well in the lower drawers of the fridge.

Butter very fresh white bread and sandwich a few layers of cucumber, prepared as above and seasoned with freshly ground black pepper, between 2 slices.

Serves 4

1 cucumber, prepared as on here 93

6 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 teaspoons golden caster sugar

1/ 2teaspoon soft crystal sea salt

2 tablespoons water

4 sprigs of dill, chopped

10 chives, chopped

freshly ground black pepper

Combine the cucumber with all the remaining ingredients, scattering the herbs on top. Serve with Fried Sole (see here).

An easy, instant curry to eat with flat bread (see here).

Serves 2

1 tablespoon butter or ghee

1 onion, chopped

1 green chilli, chopped

1 tablespoon mild curry paste

1/ 2can of coconut milk

4 tablespoons water

1 cucumber, peeled, halved, deseeded and cut into slices

1cm/ 1/ 2inch thick

1 teaspoon black onion seeds (nigella)

4 sprigs of coriander, chopped

Melt the fat in a pan, add the onion and cook until soft. Stir in the chilli and curry paste and cook for 1 minute, then add the coconut milk and water. Finally add the cucumber slices, bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Finish with the black onion seeds and coriander.

1/ 2cucumber, peeled, prepared as on here 93

1 teaspoon golden caster sugar

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar a pinch of salt

2.5cm/1 inch piece of fresh ginger, grated

3 small green chillies, chopped

Combine the cucumber with all the remaining ingredients. It’s good served with curries or boiled ham.

When an avocado is perfectly ripe, its oil-rich flesh is almost a sauce, a kind of green mayonnaise that goes so well with crustaceans – yes, it’s a refugee from the avocado-and-prawn generation talking – but also matches red chilli, lime and fresh coriander. Avocados are imported into the UK from South Africa, the Caribbean and Mexico. The dark, knobbly-skinned variety, the Hass avocado, has more flavour but some prefer the gentle taste of the smooth, soft-skinned type. Both are available all year round and are as welcome to me as bananas and oranges – fruit that I cannot do without.

Treat this as a starter. It looks dazzling with the yellow oil, particularly if decorated with a few sprouting beans or pea shoots. Smooth-skinned avocados are ripe if the skin gives a little when pressed at the round end; knobbly avocados are ripe when the skin turns from green to a dark greeny-black.

Serves 4

2 teaspoons Madras curry powder

6 tablespoons avocado oil (see the Shopping Guide)

2 ripe avocados

2 tablespoons yoghurt

juice of 1 lime

4 sprigs of coriander, including their roots, well washed

2 shallots, finely chopped

salt

Stir the curry powder into the oil and leave to infuse for 30 minutes. Strain through a fine sieve and reserve.

Peel and stone the avocados, then mash the flesh until almost smooth. Beat in the yoghurt and lime juice. Tear the leaves from the coriander stalks and roots and set to one side. Chop the stalks and roots finely and stir them into the avocado mixture. Season with salt.

To serve, spoon the avocado mash into a neat mound on each starter plate, then scatter over the shallots and coriander leaves. Zigzag the curry oil over the top and eat with toasted flat bread.

If the curry powder does not contain turmeric, add 1 teaspoon to colour the oil a zingy yellow.

Watercress now grows all year round, and stores well in the fridge. It relies on a supply of clean water to grow and only several days of hard frost will dry up the supply. Most British watercress comes from an admirable co-operative of farms in the south of England, particularly Hampshire and Dorset. Choose this type in preference to French imported – there is no excuse for shops to sell this. Watercress is very underrated, and so English.

The nutritional qualities of watercress were once valued so highly that it was known as poor man’s meat. I use watercress frequently in this book as a replacement for the ubiquitously trendy rocket. Its peppery leaf goes with dozens of dishes, and finds a place in sauces and salads, too. Grumble if you are sold sealed bags of watercress that smell of rank water when opened; it means it has been hanging around a bit.

Watercress has the winning attribute of being slow to change colour from bright green to dull olive when cooked, unlike spinach or herb leaves. For that reason, as well as its powerful, clean flavours, I use it in dumplings and soups and in the simple sauce below.

1 bunch of watercress