It’s inspired by a brilliant book – Just Like Mother Used to Make by Tom Norrington-Davies. It bears little resemblance to the original now after a few years of playing about with it, but it’s a quick, easy way to knock up really tasty gravy from scratch.

Start off by finely slicing and onion. Sweat this in butter and a little oil with a lid on the pan for about 10 minutes until the onions have softened, then without the lid for a further ten. The onions should be sweet and just starting to catch – Tom recommends red onions.

Stir through a heaped tablespoon of flour which will thicken the gravy. Add a slug of wine and stir in well. A teaspoon of mustard, a squirt of tomato puree and a good shake of Worcester sauce (about a tablespoon).

Top this up with about 400ml of stock (chicken, beef or veg) and let it simmer for another ten minutes until thick and glossy.

Dip your bread in…

This is a rediscovered family favourite.

Not sure why I’d forgotten about it, or why it came up in conversation with my mum recently, but  once remembered it’s reestablished itself on our midweek menu very quickly indeed. Probably because it’s so simple to make and tastes amazing – I’m sure there’s a degree of nostalgia involved too.

Firstly get some spuds on for mash. While they’re cooking, slowly sweat a diced onion in a little butter and oil – it doesn’t matter if they pick up a little bit of colour.

Mash the potatoes with a splash of milk and a knob of butter then add a handful of grated strong cheese. I used Lancashire most recently as I’d just come back from there and always bring some home, but I’d normally use a good extra mature Welsh cheddar.

Stir the cheese into the mash and add the fried onions. Put this mix into an ovenproof dish and use a fork to ridge the surface. Sprinkle another handful of grated cheese over the top.

Put this under the grill until the top is golden and crispy.

Perfect with sausages, baked ham or gammon. Thanks mum x.

All over Prague, restaurants served delicious richly spiced grilled meats and kebabs. My inner carnivore was in heaven but I couldn’t work out the spicing. There was come citrus, a little chilli, garlic and herbs.

Not to be beaten by the mystery I headed for the market near to our hotel and many of the food stalls were selling spice mixes (labelled Steak Koreni) for meat. Case solved – I brought some back to try and ran the ingredients label through an online translation site.

There’s now always a jar of this mix in my cupboard to turn a midweek pork chop into something a bit special. It’s amazing for barbecues too – now that the summer seems to have arrived early.

To make enough to keep in a jar for a few meals, mix together two teaspoons each of:

• Sea salt
• Mustard seeds
• Dried thyme
• Coriander seeds
• Cumin seeds
• Dried onion or onion powder
• Black peppercorns (one teaspoon)
• Chilli flakes (up to you – two makes it quite pokey)

Grind together a couple of teaspoons of the mix as a dry rub for griddled or BBQed meat or mix with a little oil and lemon juice as a marinade. The smell as it’s cooking will bring tears of joy to the eye of any enthusiastic meat-eater.

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

Stuffed roasted tomato

As the saying goes, life’s too short to go around stuffing mushrooms. So stuff a tomato instead – much quicker and easier.

The garden’s full of them at the moment so I’m looking for different things to do to use them up. It’s also a good way to use up leftover rice.

This is great with grilled chicken, kebabs or a pork chop. We ate it with a barbie – back before the monsoon season started in Wales.

Take the ‘lid” off a large tomato and set aside. Scoop out the insides with a teaspoon.

In a bowl, mix together enough rice to fill the tomato, some crumbled up goat’s cheese (or torn up mozzarella) and some chopped herbs (basil, oregano, thyme are all good). Taste and season.

Fill the tomatoes with this mixture, pour over a little olive oil and put the lid back on. Sit them loosely in foil so the juices don’t all escape and put them in the oven for 20-30 minutes at about 150 degC. They’re ready when the cheese has melted and the tomato has softened.

They’ll make the whole house smell amazing too.

Sun’s out at the moment for a change – is it too foolhardy to plan a BBQ on a Bank Holiday weekend?

Tomatoes waiting for a bit of sun

In a rather rash spurt of enthusiasm I planted about two dozen tomato plants in pots in my tiny little garden. It’s now like a scene from the day of the triffids and I need ideas for what to do with lots of tomatoes – cherry, yellow, striped and plum.

Bruschetta are a great lunch or go well with a BBQ. It’s good if there’s time for it to sit in the fridge for a bit, but doesn’t matter too much so can be done very quickly – and the leftover tomato mix makes a lovely salsa-style accompaniment to grilled meat or with a salad.

Quarter up cherry tomatoes and dice larger ones. Mix them in a big bowl with a little chopped onion, a finely diced small clove of garlic and a little bunch of basil. Stir in a slug of olive oil and a teaspoon or two of balsamic vinegar and season to taste. Leave to sit in the fridge and the juice starts to come out of the tomatoes and all the flavours start to merge together.

Griddle, grill or BBQ a slice of nice bread that has been rubbed with olive oil. Top the bread with the tomato mix – it’s good with a bit of parmesan or goats cheese spread over at the last minute.

It’s deliciously fresh with a nice kick from the garlic and balsamic vinegar.

The next day, the leftovers were even better with some barbecued sausages.

Any idea how to make passata…

Salad with bacon, chicken and croutons

My heart sinks at the thought of ‘just a salad’ for tea – I’m too much of a carnivore. But I don’t want to end up the size of a hippo so I’m always on the lookout for ideas to make a meal of more exciting salads.

The best lesson I learnt came from Jamie at Home – never eat an undressed salad and make sure every leaf is coated. Simple, really, but it makes a hell of a difference to dress the leaves in a big bowl rather than pouring dressing over a salad once it’s on the plate.

My regular dressing mix is an easy one – a teaspoon of vinegar (balsamic, cider, white wine or lemon juice), six teaspoons of olive oil, a quarter teaspoon of mustard (English mustard powder or Dijon) and salt and pepper. Whisk this or shake together in a jam jar until it’s thick and emulsified.

Then there’s what to add to a mix of lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, spring onions, red onion, baby spinach and radishes.

Roasted chicken thighs cook quickly and if you blast the oven up there’s the benefit of salty, crispy skin on top. Cooked prawns are good, maybe warmed through in a frying pan with a bit of spice or some crispy streaky bacon or pancetta lardons.

I’ll often add thin slices of parmesan for a savoury kick in place of meat or goats cheese, particularly with a lemon dressing.

But my favourite has to be slices of chorizo fried until they release their oil and start to go crispy on the edges. Then, very naughtily, fry torn up chunks of bread in the chorizo oil to make the most amazing croutons.

Just realised I’ve spent a lot of time coming up with ideas to add calories and additional fat to a selection of otherwise harmless leaves and things. Bugger it – life’s too short to count calories.

Salted cucumber before it's squeezed out

I found a yellowed newspaper clipping that I’d ripped out in the summer of 1997 – a recipe for tsatsiki that been meaning to get round to for 12 years!

I studied in Germany for  a year in 1996 and was fortunate to be invited to join in with my landlord’s family barbecues. I still think Bratwurst are just about the best thing in the world to cook on a bbq and it was also my first taste of this brilliant Greek sauce or dip which goes so well with grilled meat. Which I guess is why I spotted this recipe in what I think looks like the Telegraph.

It only needs about 5 minutes’ prep and I made some quick beef kebabs to go with it, although I’m going to do it again next time I cook burgers or sausages.

First roughly grate about six inches of cucumber into a bowl. Sprinkle over a good pinch of salt and leave it for 20 minutes – the salt draws out the water from the cucumber so that it’s not soggy in the sauce.

Once 20 mins are up, you need to squeeze out the liquid. Take handfuls of the cucumber at a time and squeeze as much water out as you can. Put the cucumber back into a clean bowl. Add a smooshed up clove of garlic, about a tablespoon of chopped mint leaves (or a teaspoon of dried mint), salt and pepper and a pot of natural/Greek style yoghurt (250g pot, I think but anything between 200 and 300 will probably work ok). Stir this all together and pour in a tablespoon of olive oil as you stir.

To go with the sauce I made some curried beef kebabs – like shami kebab patties as I was cooking on the griddle, but you could always shape them round skewers for the grill or bbq.

Simplicity itself to make. To a bowl of lean mince, I added about four teaspoons of chat spice mix (cos I spotted it in Tesco and the name amused me in a highly juvenile way) and a squeeze of lemon juice. Get your hands in to mix the spice and meat together then pinch off a small amount, fry it quickly and taste. You may need more spice, or if you can taste the spice but it’s a bit bland, add more salt. Once you’re happy, form them into small patties or round skewers and cook for about 15 mins until they’re done all the way through.

Other spice mixes which work well are jerk/Jamaican all purpose seasoning, garam masala, good madras curry powder or make your own – dry fry a teaspoon of cumin seed, corriander seed, black peppercorns and dried chilli flakes, add salt and grind in a pestle and mortar.

The next time I’m stuck for an idea to liven up a midweek pork chop or a bit of grilled fish I’m going to try this tsatsiki just because it adds a lively, fresh zing to the meal.

So, chop the spuds up – smaller than for boiled so they cook quicker and are easier to mash. Boil in salted water until a knife goes into the middle easily. Drain well.

Mash or put through a potato ricer (only recently got one of these and I can’t believe the difference it makes – best tenner I’ve spent for the kitchen in a long time). Add a generous knob of butter and a splash of milk. I then grate in a little pile of parmesan which give the mash a really deep savoury flavour. Stir thouroughly with a fork to bring everything together. A little spoon of mustard or some chopped spring onions are good too.

I had this with some lovely thick gammon steaks from the market and a few veggies, avoiding the age-old egg vs pineapple debate. The answer’s egg, anyway.