Spelt rhubarb cake

It's our rhubarb season again and this big moist pillow of a cake has as already gone down well with gluten-avoiding - and, when I substituted the butter and milk - with dairy-free friends. For best results, allow time for all your ingredients to reach room temperature before mixing.

225g spelt flour, 1 tbsp baking powder (wheat free if avoiding gluten),1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, 200g ground almonds, 225g light brown sugar.
2 large eggs
75g butter and 250ml whole milk (or 3 tblsp olive oil and 250ml water if avoiding dairy)
1 small orange
300g rhubarb
3 tbsp Demerara sugar & 1 tsp ground cinnamon.

Preheat the oven to 190C/gas mark 5. Line a 23cm springform tin with baking paper.
Melt the butter and allow to cool. Grate the orange and squeeze its juice.
Chop the rhubarb into 2 cm lengths.

Mix the flour, ground almonds, light brown sugar, salt, baking powder, 1 tsp cinnamon and the orange zest in a large bowl. Whisk together the melted butter and eggs in a separate bowl, then whisk in the milk and orange juice. Fold the eggy mixture into the dry ingredients and mix lightly into a smooth batter with a knife.
Pour a third of the batter into the tin, scatter over half the rhubarb, add another third of batter and the rest of the rhubarb. Top with the remaining batter and sprinkle with the Demerara sugar and 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon.
Bake for about 50 minutes until the cake begins to shrink from the sides of the tin. Allow to cool for about 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

A very filling cake which lasts for days, so serve in small portions with a generous blob of plain Greek yogurt or vanilla ice cream and – if you have any to spare - some freshly stewed rhubarb.

Spring Salads

I love this time of year when the first blast of sunshine makes my comfort dishes of winter suddenly seem as hot and heavy as an old woolly sweater. I long for a change, for bright colours and crisp, raw tastes. Trouble is, although there's plenty of gorgeous looking fruit and vedg out there, it's not yet growing on my allotment and it still doesn't taste like much.
So, to inject that missing zing in shop-bought green leaves or tomatoes, I'm adding two ingredients for Spring: a teaspoon of honey in the vinaigrette and a handful of mixed seeds.
Most supermarkets stock some variety of mixed seeds - often in the healthy eating section as they're good for you, too. The mix I'm using from Waitrose contains sunflower, pumpkin, golden linseed, hemp and sesame seeds, which are all very fine, but be warned: nibbled straight from the pack they're as dull and worthy as bird food! The secret is to toast them quickly in a hot dry pan and scatter them, hot or cold, over your salad.

Big garlic

Have you seen the huge bulbs of garlic, the size of oranges, that are suddenly in our supermarkets? Odd. Like being in California, where everything is the wrong size and shape - tomatoes the size of grapes and minty green, citrus fruits the size and colour of tomatoes - very confusing to someone like me whose eyes and taste buds are irrevocably linked.
But the good thing about the new Uber-garlic is that it's very mild, more like the Spanish garlic that makes those heavenly sauces such as the one for "huevos escalfados", a strange (to us) supper dish of poached eggs with an almond and garlic sauce and more toasted almonds sprinkled on top.
A peculiar combination? Yes, but gorgeous. You slow-poach the peeled garlic cloves for 30 minutes in deep olive oil that only ever reaches 80 degrees (use a thermometer if you can, or do it by eye - if the oil starts to bubble even a tiny bit it is too hot so whip it off the stove to cool for a moment, or else it can make the garlic sour). The Catalans call this method of cooking garlic "confit" - I don't think there is a term for it in Italian or French cuisine. The cloves come out milky-spiky-sweet, without a suggestion of dragon-breath: you can eat them like beans, just piled up beside an egg or a steak, or squished on bread, or in a host of other recipes.
For this sauce, though, you whizz or pound them up with a handful of ground almonds, some salt and a generous pinch of chilli, adding a little of the cooking oil to make the right consistency - there is your sauce. Drizzle it over your softly poached eggs, which are sitting on top of a hunk of toasted bread (possibly itself rubbed with a little garlic and tomato), and if you love them sprinkle more sliced toasted almonds on top. Nothing fancy. It's peasant food, not haute cuisine. An excellent and unusual vegetarian dish: very good, and very good for you too.

Chicken liver pate

You think you know this one only too well - it's become a more or less dull-to-awful staple of so many cheapo bistro menus and mass-catered events. But there's potential in the humble chicken liver. It's so much less fatty than you'd think, and packed with iron too - a good choice for keeping your favourite carnivores happy as it tastes so meaty. The classic chicken liver parfait is a nutritional minefield, however, boobytrapped with butter, egg yolks and double cream. So this is a slender, dairyfree version - no butter, cream or eggs, but it's transformed into something pretty damn good by a trio of magic ingredients. The first is anchovies (yes really) - all they do is give it a rich salty kick, there is nothing fishy about the finished mixture. The next is lemon juice - not so surprising, as it cuts that claggy over-richness that livers can have. The third is a bit expensive, but it does do something luscious to the mixture - a good sweet red wine. You can use hefty old-fashioned sherry - an oloroso or similar - but get the sweet red wine if you can. A dessert wine, or a vinsanto. You can buy it in half bottles in most supermarkets, and you don't use much - the rest you can serve in tiny glasses to drink with the pate, as in my picture.

Take 500g chuicken livers and cut away any bits you don't like the look of - although supermarkets usually sell them quite well-cleaned. Fry them not too fast in a small amount of olive oil, turning and squishing them a bit as you go; add 6/7 anchovy fillets (the little ones that come in tins or jars, and are a staple of my storecupboard, are fine) and stir them in until they melt away. When the livers are gently browned add the juice of a whole lemon, stirring all the time, and about 150ml of sweet red wine. You won't need salt because of the anchovies so just add a very generous amount of ground black pepper, and - if you like - a pinch of chilli powder. Let the whole lot bubble away for about 10 mins, or until there is no more pink in the middle of the livers and they are just cooked, then leave to cool a bit. Stick it all in the food processor and whizz it up until smooth, put it in a bowl in the fridge to set - and there you are.

This makes a tuck-in family supper stand-by but will do fine for guests as well - you can dress it up with posh bread and smart leaves (an oily-lemony-mustardy dressing goes well), or make a bruscetta by piling it onto Italian bread brushed with garlicky oil and toasted under the grill . . . whatever. It's quick, cheap and popular, can be made ages in advance, fit for kings. And queens. And princesses.

A Moveable Feast

Unusually for London (unless you’re an Arab prince) our mutual friends, John and Anna Maria, have a cinema in their basement. Sunday nights there are a matter of watching a quirky old movie from the comfort of ancient sofas before moving upstairs to eat, drink and talk about the film (and a whole lot else) far too late into the night.

Last week we saw ‘Morgan, a Suitable Case for Treatment’. It was my turn to supply the food, and, as I wasn’t sure how many people might turn up, I brought a pot of my favourite lamb tagine. All I had to do was heat it up and served it with some precooked wholegrain cous cous. For afters we had chocolate sorbet with freshly sliced oranges.

Low Fat Lamb Tagine

Lamb, beef, kid, game or chicken, any meat will do for this fragrant North African stew, just so long as the pieces are allowed to simmer slowly into a melting tenderness.

For a lamb version, the most important thing is to chop out as much fat as possible before you begin cooking. Too many recipes suggest using boned shoulder meat, but removing the fat from that cut is time consuming and can reduce quantity by a quarter or more! Far better to look for diced lamb pieces from which it’s easy to cut the odd bit of fat, or neck fillets which are already very lean. Also, I can never have too many vegetables in my stews, so I always ra

id the vege box and add any stray bits I find there.

1 kg lean lamb.

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion

8 carrots.

3 parsnips

5 sticks celery

½ tsp ground saffron

½ tsp cayenne pepper

1tsp ground tumeric

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp tomato puree

2 cinnamon sticks

2 tsp orange flower water

12 dried apricots

8 pitted dates

A handful of chopped parsley

Remove as much fat as possible and cut the lamb into 4cm chunks. Peel the carrots & parsnips, and cut into thick lengths. Chop the celery into large bits and peel & slice the onion. Heat the oil in a large, thick bottomed pan and cook the onions & celery over a low heat for about 5 minutes. Stir in the lamb, remaining vegetables and spices and add just enough water to cover the lamb. Bring to the boil and stir in the tomato puree. Reduce the heat and simmer very gently, with the lid half on, for about 1 hour (or longer if the meat is still

a bit chewy). When the meat is tender, add the apricots with the honey, orange flower water and a little seasoning. Simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes until the gravy looks like a thick soup. Add the dates and simmer a few minutes more. Scatter with chopped parsley and serve with wholegrain cous cous or brown basmati rice - cooked in stock if possible- to which (if none of your guests are nut allergic) you might add a crunch of chopped and toasted almonds.

Chocolate Sorbet

Forget dairy and eggs, the witchy thing about the smooth finish of this sorbet is you might really think you're eating ice cream. Something to do with the high chocolate content, I suppose, and the trick of boiling the syrup really hard before adding it to the chocolate.

30g white sugar

650ml water

250g best dark chocolate (min 70% cocoa solids)

1 heaped tbsp cocoa powder

1 tbsp liqueur (optional)

Dissolve the sugar & water over a low heat. Bring to the boil and bubble for about 5 minutes until the syrup looks like glossy satin.

Break the chocolate into a large, heatproof bowl with the cocoa. Gradually pour in the hot syrup, stirring until the chocolate has mixed to a smooth gloop. Leave to cool. When the mixture is completely cold, churn in your ice cream maker until thick and fudgy (my machine takes about 40 minutes, but check your maker’s instructions). Transfer to a freezer container and - if you want to – stir in your favourite liqueur (I used Cointreau to go with a side dish of sliced oranges) remembering that the alcohol will effect a softer, less frozen consistency. Store in the freezer and serve with seasonal fruit or crispy biscuits or both.

Note: this sorbet melts very quickly, so keep it frozen until the very last minute.

Keeping meat-eaters happy without too much fat

I may have been a caterpillar in a former life - I'm always happiest when chomping my way through something green and leafy. Unlike Aisling, who is a cheerful carnivore and a brilliant meat-cook, I wouldn't really mind if I didn't eat meat at all. But I know that for anyone who loves meat, a low-fat diet can be a real penance - and if you have that person in your life, the trick is to find ways to make them feel they've had the full caveman experience without consuming too much, either in fat content or in overall quantity.

Now you may think it's odd to nominate pork, if you're looking for a lowish fat content, but it's all about the cuts you choose. Pigs are bred much leaner now, and if you look for a farm pig that has had a happy life and run about a good deal, and you go for the tenderloin, the fat content is just about the same as skinless chicken - miles lower than the fat content of the good cuts of beef. Yes, tenderloin is pricey, but you don't need very much of it, and no one is better at making small quantities go a long way than the Chinese.

This Chinese pork is light, delicious and very satisfying. You can eat it with any sort of noodles, of course, or with rice, but it's also delicious as a starter or main served piping hot on a cold lettuce leaf (I told you I was a caterpillar) or a bed of warm rich shredded cabbage. (One word of warning, though - almost all Chinese food is very high in salt, so if that is a consideration, don't use this recipe.)

One tenderloin fillet (usually around 400g) will serve six for a starter, four for main. You will need:

400 g pork tenderloin fillet, trimmed and chopped as finely as you can
2 tbsps oil, probably corn oil or nut oil
200g dried porcini or other mushrooms, well soaked
2 cms ginger, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves
2 tsps sugar
2 tbsps each of soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce
large handful of fresh rocket, roughly chopped
chopped spring onions
a little sesame oil

Pour boiling water over the dried mushrooms and let them stand for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, in a wok or other wide pan fry the garlic and ginger in the oil, just for about half a minute, then add the pork. It should be chopped very small; in a hot pan it will only take a few minutes to cook. Then add the drained and chopped mushrooms, the sugar, the three sauces (don't use any other salt as there's already plenty in the soy sauce) and cook for another few minutes, adding a little of the mushroom water if the mixture is too dry. (To be more authentic, at this point you could stir in some cornflour as a thickener, but personally I don't like that slightly slimy effect so I don't.)

When the pork and the mushrooms are cooked, turn off the heat and chuck in the chopped rocket; stir it in loosely - it doesn't need to cook, just to wilt in the heat of the mixture. If you like, you can drizzle a little sesame oil and scatter chopped spring onions over the top, and serve as I suggested above - on leaves for a very lean effect, with noodles, or with rice.

What to do with mackerel?

If, like me, you have seen the film "The End of the Line?", you may be feeling thoroughly confused about fish. I used to love shopping for fish - all those shiny rows of delicious and fragrant things, poised beautifully on their bed of ice- but now I find myself standing in front of the fishmonger's counter and staring at it, totally baffled. For any one who cares about sustainability, all certainties seem swept away - so many of our most familiar and most delicious fish are endangered now, or farmed in vaguely disgusting conditions.

But there's always the lowly mackerel. They really are plentiful - I remember only a few years ago the children pulling their rods out of the sea near Teignmouth with five or six mackerel squiggling on the multiple hooks every time, and that hasn't changed. No one has yet suggested that there's any scarcity.

In cooking and eating terms, though, mackerel's a bit of a problem. It's an uncompromising taste, and it doesn't lend itself to many recipes. Very fresh and simply pan-fried, perhaps rolled in oats, and eaten with a squeeze of lemon, mackerel is great - but that's about it. Other ways of cooking it seem hard to come by. Here's one, though, that is a bit more unexpected. It's mackerel that is cured and pressed, rather than actually cooked, by the same method that makes gravadlax of salmon. It's eaten cold, so it's a perfect starter or lunch dish, but it's chunky enough to serve as a main course with potatoes, salad, whatever.

As with any cured fish, you need to be sure it's really fresh. That's not so hard with mackerel - it smells quite strongly even when first caught, so if your nose tells you it is a little overwhelming, it's not good enough.

Get fillets, with the skin on. Start the day before, or the morning before a dinner, as it takes a while to marinate in the curing mixture.

For six:

Six mackerel fillets

3 heaped tablespoons sea salt

3 heaped tablespoons granulated sugar

1 heaped tablespoon green peppercorns

2 bunches dill

All you do is to grind the peppercorns roughly, and mix them with the salt, the sugar and the dill roughly chopped, stalks and all. There's so much oil in the fish that you don't need anything else.

Line a low dish with cling film, and put a layer of curing mixture in the bottom. Lay the fillets, skin side down, on top, then put another layer of mixture over them, rubbing it well in. Wrap the whole lot up in the cling film.

Now find a way of putting weight on top of your packet of fish, to press it down quite hard. A board that fits inside the dish would be perfect: put a pile of cookbooks on top of the board, if you have't any old-fashioned weights. Now put the dish in a cool place for anything between 12-24 hours (longer is better), and once or twice turn over the packet of fillets and pour off the oil that will have accumulated in the bottom of the dish.

When you're ready to eat, take the fillets out of the marinade and rinse them in cold water to get rid of excess salt - and then go for it. Lime is nicer than lemon, if you want to squeeze something on them - but the ideal thing is a mustard/dill sauce or a very nippy dill mayo. I often cheat by taking a good shop-bought mayo and tarting it up with a bit of plain yogurt, lots of chopped dill, a spoon of grainy mustard and a big squeeze of lemon.