I’ve been enjoying BBC’s The Good Cook over the last couple of weeks.

I first came across Simon Hopkinson a couple of years ago when I’d noticed his book ‘Roast Chicken and other Stories’ kept appearing at the top of  lists of  chefs’ favourite books or best cookbooks.

At the time I’d never heard of it, but there’s now a well-thumbed copy of it on my shelf too – I like his focus on ingredients and simplicity – something that comes through strongly on TV. Despite the director’s attempts to cram in every camera trick and lens effect available, which is a bit of a distraction.

The point of which is that his very simple risotto alla parmigiana was a reminder that risotto’s a dish that doesn’t need to be over complicated. Inspired, I made this light fresh vegetable version.

I just followed the usual method- there’s no better way as far as I’m concerned to banish the stresses and strains of the day than with the methodical, constant stirring of a risotto pan.

So I made a plain risotto – onion, rice, stock – and about five minutes before it was done added peas, chopped french beans and fresh broad beans from the garden. I had some prawns in the fridge so they went in too, but it was lovely with just the veg.

Finish with parmesan and butter.

I’ve been experimenting with different rices of late – currently using Carluccio’s carnaroli rice which is lovely and creamy.

It was quite strange to find out in my 20s that what I’d eaten all my life as spag bol was really nothing of the sort. It was ragu and it’s supposed to go with wide pasta.

And since I’ve discovered a more authentic version of Bolognese I’d got out of the habit of making the ragu that I’d grown up eating. I can’t recommend the Bolognese highly enough and there’s always a few tubs of it in the freezer, but there’s something about the food the way your mum used to cook it that somehow makes it taste better.

I was given a pasta machine for Christmas and it was playing about making ravioli and tagliatelle which reminded me it had been a couple of years since I’d knocked up a proper ragu.

So here’s my (or rather, mostly my mum’s) spag bol sauce – or ragu if we’re being pedantic about it. It’s rich, herby and smells like nothing else on earth while it’s simmering away.

Although it’s quick to prepare, I allow at least an hour for cooking time so often make a big pot on a weekend to freeze in batches for quick midweek teas.

This is all about building up flavours so start by frying some smoked streaky bacon, pancetta or lardons. When they’re really crispy they come out and into their fat goes a pack of beef mince until its well browned. Again, remove and add finely chopped onion and garlic to the pan.

Fry until translucent and add veg – peppers, courgettes, mushrooms are all good but keep them in biggish chunks so they don’t all break up. Many traditional recipes start with a soffritto, but I personally think that to add carrot or celery would be the work of a madman. Up to you.

I’ll put a lid on this now for five minutes or so to let the veg sweat and give out its flavour to the sauce. Turn up the heat, pour in a glass of red wine and let it bubble away until it’s reduced by about half. Now add the meats back into the pan and stir in a good squeeze of tomato puree.

Add a tin of plum tomatoes (chop them up a bit) and use a jug of beef stock (about 400ml) to swill out any of the tomato juice left in the can. Grind in plenty of black pepper – salt it in about half an hour though once it’s cooked down a bit.

The last ingredient is mixed herbs or herbes de Provence. Put a good pinch in and then grind up another good pinch in the palm of your hand to a fine powder – it makes a mess but it infuses the sauce with great flavour.

Cook with a lid on for about 20mins and uncovered for at least another 40mins until it’s cooked down to a thick, rich, stewy sauce.

Stir through pappardelle, stuff it into ravioli or spoon on top of a pile of spaghetti and call it spag bol. Best served with the rest of the wine you opened and lots of parmesan and ground black pepper.

With a bag of prawns in the freezer I’m never more than 10 or 20 minutes away from something that feels fairly celebratory for tea. And more often than not, that’s a midweek curry, normally korma or something a bit Thai.

I spotted this recipe for Kerolan prawns in a recent Olive magazine. I found the original a bit bland so I’ve tweaked it with a bit more spice. So here’s my now totally inauthentic “Kerolan” prawn curry.

Fry a diced onion until translucent then add smooshed up garlic and ginger. Stir in a teaspoon of turmeric and (this is where I go off piste) two teaspoons of garam masarla and a pinch of chilli flakes. Let the spices toast a bit then add a tin of tomatoes.

Pop a pan of rice on.

Let the sauce reduce until thickened for about five minutes or so. Put the cooked prawns in for another three or four minutes to warm through.

Midweek curry in less than 15 minutes.

This is my version of a rich, silky Carbonara.

A bit of low fat creme fraiche supplies the creaminess so that clearly cancels out any calories from the cheese and bacon. I’m sure that’s how it works, isn’t it?

I always keep a few little packs of diced pancetta in the freezer as a midweek standby as they’re a great starting point for a store cupboard tea if I’ve not shopped. This is one of those dishes.

Put a pan of pasta on to cook. Fry half a diced onion and a clove of garlic in some olive oil. Add diced pancetta or a few rashers of streaky bacon once the onion’s cooked and fry until crispy. In a bowl, mix two egg yolks with two heaped tablespoons of creme fraiche and some grated Parmesan. Add black pepper but not salt as the bacon will have supplied this.

Drain the pasta and toss it about in the pan with the onions. Take off the heat and stir through the egg mix until the cheese has melted. Taste for seasoning and stir through some chopped parsley if you’re feeling a bit fruity.

Get stuck in.

After another week of solid rain and daytime darkness, I’m falling back on comfort food.

Anything with mash in/on it is my ultimate comfort dish I think, but macaroni cheese is a serious contender. Its big advantage being how quick and easy it is to cook and that it’s all storecupboard stuff.

I still remember being cooked my first macaroni cheese by friends in uni and being (discreetly) horrified that I was being served vegetarian food for tea. I’ve got over that initial shock now, but if I’m making this for a main meal I do usually add something to make it a bit more interesting. Crispy-fried bacon lardons, pancetta or chorizo are all good, as are sweet cheery tomatoes which explode into the sauce in the oven or a few mixed mushrooms.

So, while a pan of macaroni is boiling away (needs about 8 mins so that it’s just slightly underdone – it’ll go on cooking in the sauce) make a quick cheese sauce and put the oven on to preheat at about 180 degC.

I’ll use the strongest cheese I can find for the sauce – more flavour means using less cheese so it’s a bit healthier.

Stir any of the additional ingredients into the drained cooked pasta and pop into an ovenproof dish. Pour over the cheese sauce and grate more cheese on top – parmesan or gruyere are good for this as they’ll form a nice crispy crust. Which I guess cancels out the ‘bit healthier’ idea.

It’ll need 15-20 mins in the oven until the sauce is bubbling away, the top is golden brown and the cheese is all stringy and gooey.

Best served with hunks of crusty bread to mop up the sauce. OK, it’s really not going to win any weight watchers points is it – but everything in moderation…

It’s going to be a long winter apparently – any thoughts on the ultimate comfort food?

Just finished watching the Great British Waste Menu.

It was a BBC challenge in which four top chefs had to produce a banquet for 60 from food that had been (or would have been) thrown away. The scale of waste is shocking – from farmers ploughing crops which don’t meet supermarket standards back into the ground, to bin-loads of edible food wasted simply because its sell-by date is near. Apparently, though the majority of food waste happens at home.

Personally, I’ll always trust my nose over a packaging date and see a fridge full of leftovers as a cooking challenge. I hate throwing anything edible away and I’m glad the Council will now take any peelings away to compost. Even food that looks a bit unappetising to eat fresh can often be cooked to eat or store – we’ve always got a tub of stewed apples in the freezer because we don’t eat them quickly enough and older tomatoes and peppers usually end up as soup.

Before I go over all ‘Dig for Victory’, here’s a roundup of regular leftover recipes.

• Too many tomatoes or leftover rice in the fridge – try roasted stuffed tomatoes
• Lots of odds and ends in the fridge like cheese, ham, peppers, boiled potatoes, tomatoes, tuna…add a few eggs for a tortilla style omelette
• No eggs? Use the fridge leftovers to spruce up a quick salad. Bread that’s past its best can make great croutons
• Leftover fish bits or some spare mash potatoes in the fridge or freezer? Fishcakes are a regular favourite. I even freeze crusts to make breadcrumbs.
• Risotto is pretty forgiving and lots of different things can go into the basic recipe. Great for using up cooked meats, a few leftover beans, peas and a bit of onion. It’s a good storecupboard staple too – we’ll often do chorizo and a few frozen veg or half a jar of chargrilled peppers.
• And one final one – because it’s such good value and can stretch a chicken out for an extra meal every time – a pot of stock. Not only does it get the best out of a roast chicken, it’s a chance to use up a few carrots, leeks or onions that might need using. The stock makes a fantastic risotto or soup (as above) or freezes well.

The programme’s on the iPlayer until 1 September. If you’re looking for other ideas, there’s more here too at the Love Food Hate Waste website*.

*Disclosure – WRAP is a client but I’m not involved in the promotion of this campaign

Pesto pasta with prawns and bacon

I’d never made pesto before – always seemed like too much hassle when the stuff in jars is so convenient. But I bought a huge bunch of basil from the market recently, did nothing with it for a week and couldn’t think of anything else.

In a mini-chopper I blitzed up a half a handful of cashew nuts (I’ve subsequently done it again with the more traditional pine nuts), a clove of garlic went in next followed by a thumb-sized piece of parmesan, with a mix as each ingredient is added.

It needs a little olive oil now to loosen it, then the basil (about the amount that comes in a supermarket packet) can go in for a final mix. Add enough olive oil to loosen it to pesto consistency. Pop it in a jar and pour a layer of oil over the surface of the pesto to seal it – it’s kept quite happily for two weeks in my fridge. It’s a lot fresher than shop-bought and you get a better flavour from the individual ingredients.

It’s lovely to use as a kind of garlic bread substitute – slice a part-baked baguette and spread the pesto into the slices before baking. We’ve also used it simply stirred through a pan of warm pasta then cooled for a lunchtime salad.

Or it makes a great warm sauce for pasta. I had some large prawns and bacon in the freezer so while a pan of pasta was cooking I fried the diced bacon then the prawns in a small frying pan. Once done, four or five good teaspoons of pesto went in until warmed then i added a couple of spoons of creme fraiche. The drained pasta goes into the pan with the sauce for a quick stir before serving.

The result is a lovely creamy, light, basil infused sauce and all done in the time it takes to cook a pan of pasta.

Classic flavours together in a light, creamy sauce with pasta. We’ve done it with fresh or frozen cod fillets and both work fine. The whole dish from start to finish takes about 20 minutes.

In a hot pan, seal a couple of cod fillets, season them with s&p and pop them into an oven at about 150 degC. They’ll take about 10 minutes, so put a pan of pasta on (linguine/tagliatelle both good, but whatever’s in the cupboard’s fine).

While the fish and pasta are cooking, cut a three inch piece of chorizo into dice and fry until it releases its oil, stir in a teaspoon of paprika and continue to cook for a minute or so. Time to turn this into the sauce now so pour in a small glass of white wine (or a good slug of dry vermouth) and the juice of half a lemon and let these cook for a few minutes. Stir in 2 good tablespoons of creme fraiche and add some thyme if you have it.

The pasta should be cooked so drain it and add it into the chorizo sauce. Stir through to coat the pasta and serve into bowls. Flake the cod over the top and tuck in.

This rich, creamy dish is a great way to make steak go a bit further.It’s tasty, quick and if you use low fat creme fraiche in place of sour cream it’s pretty healthy too.

The meat is not cooked for long so is best with fillet (although sirloin and rump are both fine too). See what’s on offer this week!

This all cooks really quickly so you need to get everything cut up first. Slice the steak into thin strips then slice an onion, clove of garlic and a handful of mushrooms. While you’re doing that, get a wide frying pan good and hot.

Now quickly seal the steak – fry until you get a good brown colour – for a minute or two, no more. Remove the meat to a plate and add the veg to the pan and fry for a couple of minutes. Once it’s starting to cook, dust over a teaspoon of flour and about four teaspoons of paprika. Stir this around so it coats the veg and let it cook for a minute or two. If you happen to have brandy in the house, pour in a generous capful and let it flame – it’s a bit showy but it does add a depth to the flavour. The alternative is to add a little wine vinegar.

Now add about a mugful of beef bouillon to put out the fire and stir well so that the paprika and flour mix in and start to thicken. I let this reduce down for about 10 minutes or so before returning the beef to the pan and adding two tablespoons of creme fraiche (healthier and less likely to split than cream). This literally just needs to warm through – any longer and you run the risk of the steak going tough – it should still be pink in the middle and sauce should be thick, rich and marbled from the cream/paprika.

That’s it – all done in about 20 minutes. You do see it served with noodles or fried potatoes but I prefer rice.

You can use beef mince or casserole/stewing beef for this – the later makes a really hearty chilli stew which is good for tacos or fajita wraps.

So, fry the mince until browned. Remove to a dish and fry an onion and a roughly chopped red pepper and chilli in the juices from the meat along with two cloves of garlic. Once the onion is on its way return the meat to the pan and it’s time to add some spices.

For a 500g pack of mince, I use a good two teaspoons of cumin, about five of paprika and one of turmeric. If you like it hot, add some chilli powder and a pinch of cayenne too. Let this cook for a few minutes before adding a tin of tomatoes a few squirts of tomato puree and enough beef stock to generously cover the meat. Get this up to the boil then back to barely simmering and cook for about an hour. Check it regularly to make sure it doesn’t go too dry or stick to the pan.

You should end up with a thick, spicy, unctuous sauce which is great with rice and a little sour cream on the side. It keeps very well and I think is often better a day or two after being made. Great to make a batch on the weekend and keep it portioned up in the freezer too for a really quick tea.