I grated about 3 carrots,

thinly sliced some radishes – like paper thin,

coarsely chopped up heaps and heaps of flat parsley – i’d accidentally weeded a massive parsley bush when aiming to pull up the deadly nightshade next to it.

grated half a beetroot which i added at the end so the colour would compliment but not dye everything purple,

toasted sunflower seeds, black sesame seeds & cumin seeds, which i added just before serving so they’d keep their crunch

for the dressing, the juices from half an orange and half a grapefruit (with some of the pulp), a good dollop of olive oil and some sea salt.

It was pretty damn amazing and really beautiful. I wish i’d taken a photo. thanks to nigel slater for the inspiration.

You’ll need:

1 tin of tune, in oil. Mine was olive oil. I guess it’d work with any.

2 sheets of loo paper.

A lighter.

Open the lid of the tuna.

Push town loo paper onto the tuna, so it soaks up the oil. Light the 4 corners – it’ll need a bit of love before it catches light.

Watch it burn. You’ve created some sort of oil lamp, and it’ll burn for a while. 10/20 minutes, depending on how much oil your tuna was swimming in. Enjoy the vague light and warmth.

Roasted tuna in a tin!

So last time, my goose egg weighed 180g, fairly fresh from the fridge, and I stuck it in a pan of boiling water for 14 minutes. Which was a wee bit too long, yolk runny in the middle but there’s a lot of yolk, and most of it was going hard.

The perfect boiled goose egg is surely some sort of breakfast nirvana.

Catch your limpets. Hunt them, stalk them, track them down. Bring them home and keep them in the fridge with a wet cloth over them. We had a small freak out that we’d killed them all by not eating them soon enough. But if they’re moving it seems that they’re fine – we had ours in the fridge several days. Get them out the fridge and let them warm up, and they’ll soon be dragging themselves across your work surface in a quite alarming fashion. This is the point when you boil them to death.

They’re ready as soon as shells and bodies separate. Take them off the boil, separate out the foot and the flesh, and chop up the rubbery half real small. It’s not that chewable, so you want the bits small. The foot, on the other hand, is gooey and good.

And then make a simple pasta sauce. Lots of olive oil, garlic, chilli, parsley, the limpets, a squeeze of lemon. Rocket salad, that sorta ting.

So first you’ve picked your carragheen, or Irish Moss. You want to bleach it in the sun for a few days until it goes white, because else your panna cotta will be the colour of seaweed.

When you come to use it, you want to soak it in cold water for 20 minutes.

Put 600ml water in a saucepan, and the seaweed & bring to the boil, then simmer for 20-25 minutes, with the occasional stir.

Put 200ml milk into a different pan, and add 50g sugar. You could try and make it taste of elderflowers here, either by adding the flowers from about 12 heads in a muslin bag to the mixture (not if you’re also making the elderberry coulis tho, obviously). Heat the milk until it’s about to boil, then remove from heat and remove flowers. You could maybe put in a bit of elderflower cordial at this stage, if you didn’t have flowers.

Strain the gloopy mess through a jelly bag into the milk, whisking often. Lightly whisk in 200ml double cream, and pour into wee molds to set in the fridge.

For the coulis, from what i remember, you simmer down the fruit with sugar, and then pass it through a sieve. I always do this when making a coulis, and then wonder why i took all the good bit of the fruit out, and mix it back in with the juice. Your call.

Pour one on top of the other. Like in the picture.

For the pancakes (this made about 8):

3 large eggs, separated

115g plain flour + 1 heaped tsp baking powder

140ml milk (we had about 1/3 of that cream)

Roll up your sleeves and beat the whites, with a pinch of salt, into stiff peaks. It’ll make you strong and proud – don’t use an electric whisk.

Whisk the yolks and the other ingredients together to form a smooth batter, and then fold into the batter, nice and gently, as if you were putting a squirrel to bed.

Heat a good non-stick pan on a medium heat- if it’s a crap non-stick pan you might need a smidge of butter. Pour in your pancake, and when it’s flippable turn it over – you’re going for a golden brown sort of colour.

And that’s it. He suggests putting ingredients onto the uncooked side before flipping. We had ours plain, with crispy bacon and about half a bottle of maple syrup.

As before, blett your medlars. I’ve been told putting them in the freezer speeds up the process, if you cannae wait.

You’ll want

1/2 lb medlar puree        1/2 lb ground almonds           2 oz cocoa powder          1tsp cinnamon           grated rind of 1 lemon             1/2lb sugar (i used granulated, a reckon a dark brown sugar would be lovely)          about 90ml of water.

Mix the sugar and water, dissolve it on a low heat, and then bring to the boil for a minute or two, until it just starts to thicken.

Meanwhile, you’ve mixed together everything else in a bowl. Yes you have.

Add it to the syrup, and cook for a few more minutes until it gets thicker, goes a bit shiny, lifts away nicely from the saucepan. Basically, until you think it will set well.

Put it in a shallow, oiled dish, and when it’s cooled stick it in the fridge. Cut it into squares when its set. Try and not eat it all at once.

This’ll make about 25-30 squares

Here’s how to make the medlar cheese, out of ‘Fruits of the Hedgerow’ by Charlotte Popescu

Get yourself a kilo of medlars, and blett them (let them rot in the dark – your house will fill with fruit flies) until they’re soft and gooey. Squeeze them through a sieve.

Add an equal amount of sugar to the medlar puree, and heat gently until the mixture is very thick (be careful not to burn it…) Spoon it until oiled molds and store.

Not sure how well this keeps yet. I’ve pasteurised a couple of jars by submerging them in water, bringing it up to 88C and keeping it there for 5 minutes.

Medlars are kinda an acquired taste. I’m getting into them. See the recipe for medlar fudge in a bit. Seem to be very good with chocolate.

this recipe comes from the riverford website. when i tried to follow it i didn’t have a cup measurer or scales so i just guessed and it kinda came out like chocolate beetroot mousse cake and everyone at the office was duly impressed.

75g cocoa (or powdered drinking chocolate if you must)

180 g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

225 g caster sugar

250 g cooked beetroot

3 large eggs

200ml sunflower oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

icing sugar for dusting

preheat oven to 180C.

sift the cocoa, flour & baking powder into a bowl

puree the beetroot in a food processor (i just used a potato masher). add the eggs one at a time. add the vanilla & oil and blend til smooth. add the sugar.

make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, add the beetroot goop and lightly mix.

pour into a greased (and lined? i didn’t) 9 inch cake tin. bake for 30-40min or til the top is firm when pressed with a finger.

cool on a wire rack and dust with icing sugar to impress.

they suggest slicing the cake lengthways and spreading it with creme fraiche & chocolate ganache. i don’t know what ganache is but it sounds good.

(i recommend smothering it with chocolate icing before dusting it with icing sugar.)

You’ll also need a few tomatoes. An onion. Garlic. Bread for crumbing. And some other bits and pieces that you’ll probably have anyway.

Chop up the beetroot and mixed it with a oil, a spoon of honey, pepper, maybe some chilli flakes. Roughly chop some onions for roasting too, and stick the whole caboodle in the oven for a while.

Meantime make the sauce. Fry a bit of onion and add all the chopped tomatoes, and simmer them down into a sauce. Add what you fancy – wine, garlic, salt n pepper, herbs, pinch of sugar. Just make a nice tomato sauce. Once it’s looking great, add the butterbeans and warm them up. Then remove from the heat and added the feta, chopped fairly small.

Get the onion & beetroot out the oven, and mix it in (make sure you get all that lovely oil in there as well)

Crumb yr bread, season it, and mix it with some dried herbs. You’ll need a lot more crumbs than you think as the first layer will sink into the mix.

Put the mix in an appropriate sized baking dish, and top with the breadcrumbs.

Bake till done at 180 – 25 minutes or so.

8th January – I made this again recently and felt it could have done with something crunchy in it. Like some raw carrot or radishes adde when it goes in the oven, so they just cook a little bit. It was all a bit sloppy. But then, as Tom Robbins says, “If it’s sloppy, eat it over the sink”.