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.

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.

You will need:

• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 2 small red chillis
• 1 potato, peeled and chopped
• 450g carrots, peeled and chopped
• small piece of fresh ginger, finely diced
• 1  litre vegetable stock
• knob of creamed coconut
• small amount of fresh coriander, chopped

Fry the onion in some oil for 5 minutes. Add the potato, one of the red chillis, chopped with seeds and all,  fresh ginger and ground coriander. Fry for about 10 minutes. Add the carrots and vegetable stock. Simmer for 20 minutes. Add a knob of creamed coconut, let it melt then blitz in a blender. Season to taste.

Sprinkle some slices of red chilli and fresh coriander on top when you serve. Hot, spicy and delicious.

• 1 medium or small pumpkin
• 2 carrots
• 1 onion
• tablespoon of ground coriander
• thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger
• 1 litre of stock – I used chicken
• 2 cardamom pods
• tablespoon double cream

Chop the onion roughly and fry in some oil until soft along with the ground coriander. Then peel, seed and dice the pumpkin, and fry off along with the diced carrots and peeled, chopped ginger.

When it’s all looking soft, crush 2 cardamom pods and squeeze the seeds into the mix. I threw the husks in as well. Add the chicken stock, bring to the boil and then simmer for half an hour.

Remove the cardamom husks, if you left them in, and blitz with a hand-blender or in a food processor. Add salt and pepper to taste, and stir in the cream. Enjoy!

• A large thick-bottomed saucepan – Le Creuset would be ideal
• 3 very large yellow onions
• 1 litre of chicken stock, 1 litre of veg stock (or a bit less – I used about 1.5 litres)
• splash of olive oil, knob of butter, heart of gold – thank you don’t call us
• tablespoon of balsamic vingear
• Gruyere cheese
• salt & pepper

Roughly chop the onion, and fry very gently in the oil and butter for about 40 mins. Turn up the heat towards the end to caramalise (but not burn) the onions. Add the stock & balsamic vinegar. Bring to a simmer and season with salt & pepper to taste. Serve with shards of gruyere (which our local Sainsbury’s doesn’t seem to stock. Grrr.)

Bless you, Sophie. Now, what’s Jamie Cullum got that I haven’t?

• Half a dozen small potatoes, chopped
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 clove of garlic
• 2 carrots, thinly sliced
• 1 leaf of curly kale
• small wedge of pumpkin, chopped
• 600ml chicken stock (or veg if you must)
• stick of celery, sliced

Fry the onion in a bit of olive oil, then add the veg and fry until starting to go soft. Add the stock, some salt and plenty of black pepper. Simmer for about 40 minutes and blitz with a hand-blender or in a Magimix. Serve with freshly-baked soda bread.

It all went. William had thirds – though I may have been a bit economical with the truth when it came to the ingredients…

This is a great way of using up any allotment tomato glut. The sweet sauce can be frozen and used as a base for pasta sauce (just add basil, chilli, anchovies or whatever you fancy) or as a base for soup.
Heat the oven to 180 C. Get a load of ripe, or over-ripe, tomatoes. Wash, dry and halve the tomatoes. Sprinkle with a little olive oil, salt, pepper and finely chopped garlic.
Roast for about 45 minutes, then in small batches, press the roasted tomatoes while still warm through a sieve with a wooden spoon, to remove the seeds and skins. Really delicious even on its own. (A top tip from the original River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.)

Anyway, I managed to just about filter out the infuriating camerawork and we made her Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato soup – it’s fab.

You just roast a load of chopped sweet potato and butternut squash with an onion and some wintery spices – cinnamon and nutmeg for example. Then when cooked whizz them in a blender with some veg or chicken stock, season and serve. We did make the buttermilk & blue cheese sauce (you whizz up buttermilk and blue cheese) but it’s very nice without.

Nigella recommends pouring the soup into things called ‘bowls’. I’ll have to investigate those, they sound quite useful.

• 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!

- 1 head of celery.
- 1 large carrot.
- 1 large onion.
- 1 and a half pints (900ml) vegetable stock
- 75g grated cheddar cheese
- 100g grated stilton cheese

Trim the celery (optionally leave one or two stalks aside for later). Peel and chop the carrot and onion and place in a saucepan with the stock (I just use a veggie Oxo cube) and season.

Let it come to the boil and then simmer for about an hour.

Give the soup a whirr with a blender. Reheat in the pan and add the grated cheese.

If you decided to save some celery stalks now is the time to chop them into slices. Add them to the bowls when you serve to give the soup a bit of crunch.