I won’t spoil his sales by repeating the recipe, but this is a great use of left-over roast chicken meat with stock made from the carcass, finely-chopped carrot and leak, peas, plus small pasta stars and onion. Instead of using olive oil, I fried the veg in the schmaltz, the chicken fat scraped off the stock once it had solidified in the fridge. Full of golden flavour.

This should feed 5 people easily. Adapted from The Little Swedish Kitchen by Rachel Khoo – I highly recommend the book and TV series.

• 500g tagliatelle pasta
• 350g hot dogs, chopped into small chunks
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 100ml double cream
• knob of butter or slash of oil
• splash of milk
• 2 tablespoons of capers, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon tomato puree
• 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard
• heaped teaspoon of paprika (not smoked)
• 2 spring onions, finely chopped
• salt & pepper

Get a big pan of salted boiling water and get the pasta on.

Fry the onion and sausages in the butter or oil until the onion starts to brown. Add the cream, paprika and tomato puree. Simmer for a few minutes. Loosen the sauce with the milk and some of the pasta water if you think it needs it. Mix in the capers and spring onions. Serve.

I was lucky enough to meet Claudia Roden in 1997 when I was working for NPR and I am pleased to report that she was charming, gracious, and chatted to me for way longer than she needed to.

This is a simplified version of Claudia’s recipe. Fed 2 hungry boys and their dad.

• pack of 4 chicken thighs (I used fillets but this would be even better with skin-on unfilleted chicken)
• 1 onion
• half a big pack of smoked bacon lardons
• 2 fat cloves of garlic
• 500ml apple cider
• as many salad / waxy potatoes as you want, halved
• 2 handfuls of frozen peas
• salt, pepper, olive oil

Chop & gently fry the onion in a casserole dish until it starts to go soft, then add the lardons and then the chicken on a higher hear. Season well with salt & pepper. When the chicken is browning nicely, add the chopped garlic and continue to fry. Before the garlic can burn, add the cider, and the peas. We cooked the potatoes separately but I would suggest adding them to the pot now. Reduce heat to a simmer and put a lid on.

Cook for 30 min and serve on soup plates with crusty bread to mop up the sublime juice.

Ingredients

• 1 chicken stock cube
• a handful of frozen stir-fry veg, quickly fried
• 1 far garlic clove, thinly chopped
• 1 red chilli, thinly sliced
• a few good slugs of soy sauce
• a few shakes of Worcester sauce
• thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger root, thinly sliced – it’s always a ‘thumb-sized’ piece of ginger. Perhaps because ginger looks like thumbs.
• 1 teaspoon Chinese five spice
• pinch of chilli powder
• some sugar or sweetener, e.g. honey or agave nectar
• 2 packets of thick easy-cook ramen / udon noodles – the moist ones.
• 8 strips of pork belly
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• vegetable oil
• sesame seeds
• spring onion, chopped
• some baby spinach leaves
• a sheet of nori / dried seaweed

Method

Rub the pork belly strips with Chinese 5 spice and set aside.

Quickly fry a few handfuls of frozen stir-fry veg in some vegetable oil and set aside.

Add some sesame oil to the pan and turn up the heat. Sear the pork belly strips until they are brown on each side and set aside. Pour off any excess fat.

In the same pan, with all the caramelised porky bits, combine the chicken stock cube, sauces, sweetener, 750ml hot water, garlic, ginger, fresh chilli, a pinch of chilli powder and a pinch more 5 spice. Bring to the boil and simmer for a while. Add more water if required. Add the noodles and veg.

Slice the pork belly in the opposite direction to the strips so each porky chunk has a strip of meat and fat and add to the pot. Simmer gently until pork and noodles are cooked, add the spinach and put the lid on until it has wilted.

Serve and garnish with sesame seeds, spring onion and shredded nori.

I’ve adapted this to suit my pocket and tastes and reduced the quantities. Serves about 3 with rice or in wraps with cheese, lettuce, sour cream, more ketchup and mustard. It’s also a delight with tortilla chips or actual chips (i.e. fries).

Ingredients

• 500g minced beef. My Sainsbury’s dumps packets of this that have reached their sell-by date cheap on a Saturday afternoon, I buy & freeze.
• 1 beef stock cube (I use Knorr).
• 1 finely-chopped white onion.
• 2 minced cloves of garlic.
• 1 tablespoon tomato puree
• 1 large can of Sainsbury’s Basics Lager. It’s 2% abv (steady now) and tastes like weak apple juice but it’s only about 50p a can and works brilliantly in this recipe.
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin.
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander.
• 1 teaspoon each of chilli flakes, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika.
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano.
• 1 tablespoon of pickled jalapeños, finely chopped – more to garnish.
• Large squirt of Heinz tomato ketchup – more to garnish.
• Large squirt of French’s American Mustard – more to garnish.
• Salt and pepper.

Method

Fry the onions gently in some vegetable oil, add the garlic and remove when they start to brown. Fry the minced beef with the tomato puree until browned all over. Crumble in the beef stock cube and then deglaze with the beer. Add all of the other ingredients, stir, topping up with hot water if needed. This is a wet chili. Leave to simmer for at least an hour, preferably longer, adding water if it looks like it’s getting too dry. Serve with tortilla chips, wraps, fries, rice, cheese, sour cream, whatever. It is totally amazing.

Tilly likes these so much we’ve added this to the menu in our Imaginary Café.

You will need:

• Some chicken thighs (or breasts, but thighs are cheaper and tastier. Cheaper and tastier in the Suppertime way.) – 1 per person.
• Some buttermilk – or and egg / milk mix.
• Spicy sauce of your choice, e.g. a Mexican chilli sauce.
• Some polenta or semolina
• Plenty of salt, freshly-ground pepper
• 1 tsp garlic powder / granules
• 1 tbsp smoked paprika
• 1 tbsp dried oregano

Bash the chicken flat with a rolling pin. Put it in a bowl for a while with the buttermilk and spicy sauce mix to marinade.

Meanwhile, in an old ice cream tub, mix all the dry ingredients, then put the lid on and shake like a Polaroid picture.

When you’re ready to cook, take the chicken out of the marinade bowl, add to the dry mix, coat and shake. Then shallow fry for about 10 minutes on each side until golden brown. Serve with veg or in a sandwich.

Cooking al fresco:

• 1 medium or small chicken
• 1 bottle of full-bodied red wine
• 1 onion
• 3 miserable carrots, chopped chunkily
• a few manky bits of limp celery
• 1 chicken stock cube or stockpot
• some sprigs of thyme
• 3 bay leaves – if you have three leaves left
• a few chunks of celeriac (optional)
• 1 tablespoon brandy
• 2 tablespoons flour
• salt’n'pepa (push it)
• 100g lardons/pancetta/bacon
• 1 fat clove garlic

Put the oven on around 170C. In a casserole with a sploosh of olive oil fry the bacon chunks with the onion, carrots, celery, cleriac until soft. Remove them from the casserole and then brown the whole chicken (seasoned with salt’n'pepa mmm baby baby) all over. Remove the chicken and put the other ingredients back in the dish. Add the flour and stir as you gradually add the brandy, stock cube and the wine. A whole bottle. Do it. You will thank me.

When your mix is bubbling and getting a bit thick, chuck the chicken back in with the bay leaves and thyme. Cover and cook in the oven for an hour or two, turning the carcass twice during the process.

Remove the chicken and reduce the sauce on the hob for 10 minutes or so. Pull the chicken apart and serve with lashings of the rich red wine sauce, vegetables – and I made some small rosemary roast potatoes to go with this, which absorbed that delicious red wine sauce just beautfully.

Nigel Slater: you showed me what to do. You showed me what to do…

Ok, this is about as French as cricket, but I was listening to fip as I was eating this, and the presenter wished her listeners a ‘bonne Dimanche’. Bonne Dimanche indeed.

To feed one person you will need:

• 2 slices off a large white crusty loaf of bread
• 1 rasher of bacon
• A sausage opened out, or a sausage-amount of sausage meat
• A slice of cheese (I used Emmental)
• Condiments of choice

Put the grill on! On some foil, flatten out the sausage meat so it’s the same shape and size as your bread. The idea here is that it cooks much more quickly than a normal sausage. Put it under a medium-high grill with the bacon.

When the bacon and sausage are looking cooked on one side, flip them and put the bread under the grill. Keep an eye on it.

When the bread is toasted on one side, flip it over, put the sausage meat on one slice and add the cheese on top. Keep under the grill for a minute or two until all the meat is cooked and cheese melted.

Assemble and eat with condiments like tomato ketchup or American mustard.

SonA had a fried egg in his as well, but I think that’s de trop.

• 800g beef brisket
• 2 red peppers
• 1 red onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• half tsp smoked paprika
• 2 fresh red chillis
• 1 beef stock cube or pot
• 1 can of cooking beer
• 1 tin of tomatoes
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 tbsp tomato ketchup
• 1 tbsp French’s American mustard
• fresh coriander leaves
• 1 tsp red wine vinegar

Put the oven on at 200 C. Cut deep slices into the brisket. Rub the spices with salt & pepper into the meat. In a casserole fry the chopped onion until translucent, then add the garlic and sliced peppers and thinly sliced red chillis. Cook for a bit longer on a low heat, then whack the heat up and fry the brisket. Then add the tinned tomatoes, beer, beef stock, ketchup, tomato puree, mustard and bring to the boil. If needed, top up with water. Put a lid on, turn the over down low (I went down to 100C) and leave in there for 3 or 4 hours.

Then remove the meat, put the sauce on the stove and simmer vigorously to thicken, adding the vinegar and chopped coriander. Pull the beef apart with a couple of forks, and re-immerse in the liquid.

Serve in wraps, with rice, grated cheese and sour cream. Delicious!

Whilst cooking this, I also invented Tequila Rice. I can confirm that tequila does not add enough flavour to rice to warrant flambé-ing half your hair off.

Serves 4. You will need:

• 1 packet of Lidl bratwurst.
• 1 jar of Sainsbury’s Basics Curry Sauce
• Heinz ketchup
• skinny oven fries

Sainsbury’s Basics curry sauce is currently on sale for THIRTY PENCE for a large jar, same size as their ‘Chinese Chip Shop Curry Sauce’ which is around FIVE TIMES more expensive. The cheaper sauce has less salt, less fat and fits the bill perfectly.

I fried the bratwurst, but next time I’ll grill them and I grilled the skinny oven fries. I heated the curry sauce in a small saucepan with a very large squirt of ketchup.

When the fried are crispy, serve with the sausages and douse in curry sauce / ketchup mix. EAT. And feel very, very guilty.