Recipes

I love cranberry sauce, and if you have time, making your own is really worth it – it is zingy, fresh, and has much more flavour, and it only takes about 10 minutes. It keeps really well in the fridge, so make it in advance.

There are two reasons people don’t make their own mayo: it takes forever and usually curdles at the last minute – and after all that effort, it’s not as nice as Hellmann’s. ‍ This way, it takes 20 seconds – 60 if you include putting everything in the beaker – and it NEVER curdles. ‍

I love this fresh, almost-fruit salad – and with a bit more chopping it becomes a salsa. It goes fantastically well with an omelette if you want a very low-calorie-dense breakfast.

There are many ways to roast a chicken, and this is currently my favourite. Doing it upside down for the first 35 minutes keeps the breast very moist, and it self-bastes, so needs no extra butter or oil.

This very simple way of doing red peppers barely needs a recipe, but it's perfect in an antipasto or meze – and it's delicious with lamb or chicken.

I love red cabbage slaws and I particularly like the hints of cumin and coriander in this one – and the way the lime juice, honey, and chilli combine.

Lentil salads are a cornerstone of my downsizing life. This one is both delicious and looks stunning as part of as meze, a plant-based main or an accompaniment to salmon or lamb.

This is a lovely lemony, spicy, way of doing chickpeas – originally inspired by wonderful the Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley in their brilliant book, Fallastin. It's a great lunch dish, or accompaniment to a slow-roast shoulder of lamb.

This is a wonderful Venetian combination, which is delicious and very easy to make. If you already have lentils and salsa verde in the fridge, you can have it on the table in 10 minutes

This is a very simple and delicious venetian way of doing lentils that goes with everything – which is very helpful because I eat them with everything

This incredibly quick and easy cabbage is so good, I sometimes wonder why I eat anything else – and I am not alone: one eight-year-old of my acquaintance announced after her fourth helping that she was coming to live with me so she could eat it every day. I don’t know who felt prouder, me or the cabbage.

I am very enamoured with the pale green, pink-flecked Radicchio Castelfranco; it has something of the escarole about it, and is less bitter than other types of radicchio. It does very nicely simply drizzled with balsamic and olive oil, sprinkled with salt, and mixed well. But I absolutely love it like this.