Or French Toast, which I made for the kids ages ago and they all hated it. Except now Henry loves it and wants it every day. Makes 1 portion.

• 1 egg
• 1 thick slice of soft bread
• splash of full-fat milk
• pinch of cinnamon - more if you fancy
• maple syrup to taste
• knob of butter
• heart of gold

Beat an egg and cinnamon with a splash of milk - and a fork. Put the butter in a hot frying pan. Put the eggy mixture on a plate and soak each side of the bread in it. Put the bread in the pan and fry until a beautiful mottled brown colour. Eat immediately with maple syrup - bacon on top is perfect too!

Okay, doesn’t sound that appetising, but this went down a treat with a bottle of the excellent ginger-spiced Blandford Fly beer. I didn’t even grumble about the brown rice - it was totally like being back in a cafe in Bristol in the 1980s… Recipe adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery, BBC, 1982, serves 4.

• 200g red split lentils
• 1 litre water
• half teaspoon ground turmeric
• vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 250g finely chopped cabbage
• dried flaked chillies
• tomato puree
• half teaspoon dried ginger

Boil the lentils in the water, removing scum and add the turmeric. Cover and simmer gently until tender. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a pan and sizzle the cumin seeds. Add the garlic and onion, cabbage & chillies. Fry until cabbage starts to crisp. Add salt if you want. When the lentils are cooked, add the tomato puree and ginger and the cabbage mix. Simmer for 2-3 minutes and serve with brown basmati rice.

Henry & Tilly went pumpkin carving the other day, and they brought home a couple of extra pumpkins they hadn’t finished - which was a bonus as I could make soup…

• Large pumpkin
• 1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
• large knob of butter
• 4 large carrots
• 2 large onions
• cumin seeds
• ground cinnamon
• ground ginger
• nutmeg

Scoop the inside of the pumpkin with an ice-cream scoop. Keep the seeds to one side and chop the pumpkin flesh. Save the empty pumpkin either for use as a soup tureen or to make a lantern.

Fry the onions gently in the butter for 5 minutes with a few cumin seeds, taking care not to brown the onions. Add the chopped carrots, pumpkin and stock. Add salt, pepper, ground ginger and cinnamon to taste - I used about a quarter of a teaspoon of ginger & cinnamon - a bit more would probably have been even nicer. Simmer on a low heat, lid on for about half an hour. Whizz up with a hand blender or food processor and serve with crusty bread, grating nutmeg on top. Perfect after an autumn walk in the park!

For the seeds… put the oven on a low heat - no more than 125 centigrade. Wash the seeds removing any flesh or stringy bits, pat dry with kitchen roll. Place on a baking tray in the oven until quite dry - took about half an hour. You can then put them in salads, or do what I did - toss them in a little sunflower oil and lots of sea-salt - deeeelishous!

Okay, dill pickles are not exactly a staple food but these are great with Buzz Burgers (today I simplified the burgers by just using organic minced beef, and small amounts of finely chopped onions, garlic, dried herbs, Worcester and Tabasco sauce. They went down a treat.)

I love pickles. I spend so much time with Mrs Elswood I’m surprised my wife isn’t jealous. And as we had a HUGE glut of cucumbers on our allotment this year, I decided to try to make my own.

The web is awash with grandmothers’ pickle recipes, but none seemed quite right. One even demanded that the cucumbers be placed in a bath tub of ice prior to picking to ensure they remain crisp. Well, sod that, life’s too short. So I adapted a recipe from Delia Smith’s Summer Collection, adding dill and using some white malt vinegar.

Ingredients:

• Glut of large cucumbers from your allotment
• large onions
• lots of salt, kosher salt if you can find it (it has no anti-caking agents and stops the juice going cloudy)
• a pint (570ml) or two of vinegar - I used a 50/50 mix of white wine vinegar and clear distilled malt vinegar
• a pound (450g) or two of soft brown sugar
• few tablespoons of mustard seeds
• few teaspoons of crushed cloves & turmeric
• sprigs of fresh dill
• lots of large jars with lids, steralised in the oven

Slice the cucumbers thinly; chuck out any really bitter cukes. You can cut them in circles or make large spears, but I found it hard getting hot cucumbers neatly packed in jars so my long neatly-cut spears ended up in a mess; Mrs Elswood would have been ashamed of me. Make layers of cucumber and onion on a plate, salting each layer and press the top down with something heavy. Leave for a couple of hours and pour off as much of the juice as you can.

Put the vinegar, sugar and mustard seeds in a big pan, bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Put the cucumbers in and boil for 1 minute only (I failed here and boiled mine longer with no ill-effects). Put the cucumbers in jars, add a sprig or two of dill and cover with the liquor. Seal the jars, go and sit on a beach in Cornwall for a month, and when you get back they will be ready. And sweet. And delicious.

Adapted, if not pinched, from the Able & Cole recipe, adding Noilly Prat vermouth and using mint instead of thyme, as we have mint growing by our kitchen door but no thyme. That’s the trouble with modern life; never enough thyme.

• 450g broad beans, shelled. Peel the skins off the bigger beans.
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 glass Noilly Prat vermouth
• 2 or 3 big fat cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• 500g risotto rice
• 1.7 litres of hot chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you prefer but I’m afraid this really does taste a squillion times better with chicken stock). Best if you make your own chicken stock, it’s really easy and makes you feel good. I’ll post my highly scientific method soon.
• 1 tablespoon fresh mint
• Sea salt and pepper
• Fresh parmesan shavings

Gently heat the 2 tablespoons of oil in a saucepan. Cook the onion until it has softened but do not let it brown. Add broad beans and the garlic and cook for about 2 minutes. Stir in the rice and continue to cook until the grains have become translucent and glossy. Throw in the glass of Noilly Prat and inhale deeply. Life doesn’t get better than this.

Turn the heat down and add the stock, one ladle at a time. All the liquid must be absorbed before adding more. Stir all of the time. This will take no less than 20–25 minutes. Add half the mint with the last ladle of liquid. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Take the pan off the heat, cover and leave of stand. Serve hot on warmed plates and sprinkle with the last of the mint and shavings of Parmesan.

Thanks to Dave, Daisy and George in Carlisle for this.

Boil 2 small cans of condensed milk for 90 minutes. Have faith they will not explode, and use an old saucepan - when we did this a bit of the paint came off the tins. Better still try and find tins with paper labels.

Crush about 250-300g biscuits to a medium fine crumb - either digestives or ginger or some of each. Add 125-150g melted butter, push firmly into the base of a dish, making a layer about 1cm thick. Leave to set.

Chop enough bananas to make another layer 1cm on top of the biscuit base. Open the tins of condensed milk - the contents will have magically turned to toffee. Spread over the bananas, top with cream and grate chocolate on top.

This comes from my Mum, who got it from a magazine or newspaper before Christmas.

- 1 block of puff pastry.
- Enough sausage meat to feed your family.

Pre-heat your oven to 180C

Roll our the pastry into a square sheet.

Using your hands mould the sausage meat into a cylindrical shape, and place it in the middle of your pastry sheet. Wrap the sausage meat up in the pastry, and place your giant sausage roll seam-down on a baking tray. Trim off excess pastry from the ends and cut a few lines into the pastry on the top side of the roll. Brush milk over the pastry and slam in the oven for about half an hour.

…to obesity and beyond!

I can’t remember where this one came from. It might have been on the side of a tin of Campbell’s condensed soup. But it might not have.

- 1 block shortcrust pastry - taken from the freezer about 3 hours ago and now thoroughly de-frosted.
- 1 tin Campbell’s condensed chicken soup.
- 2 chicken fillets - diced.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C

Fry the diced chicken in a knob of melted butter.

Grease the inside of a pie dish or oven-proof plate. I use a shallow pyrex bowl which is very un-glamorous, but quite effective.

Roll out two sheets of pastry. Put one on your plate to form the bottom of the pie.

When the chicken’s cooked take it off the heat and stir in the condensed soup. Ladle this mixture into the pie and cover with the top sheet of pastry.

Trim the pastry so it’s nice and tidy round the outside of the pie, seal the edges by pressing down with the tines of a fork all the way round the rim. Cut a slit in the top of the pie and if you’re feeling creative make a few pastry leaves to decorate the top of the pie. Brush or sprinkle with milk.

Put it in the oven until the pastry’s cooked.

Lovely with roast potatoes and some veg or just some chips!