Ingredients (two portions)

6 squares of lasagne pasta (1 egg and 100g flour if you’re making your own)
12-16 asparagus spears
100g wild garlic
a handful of sliced mushrooms
1 small onion, finely chopped
150g double cream
approx 30ml white wine
a pinch of ground nutmeg
salt
pepper
butter
olive oil
shavings of parmesan cheese

There are five things to make for this dish. Most of them can be done in advance, in any order, and then blasted in a microwave before serving, so don’t worry about timing.

1. Grilled asparagus
Put the asparagus in a bowl with a splash of olive oil. Toss to lightly cover the spears in oil, then grill – preferably on a ridged griddle pan – for about five minutes, turning occasionally.

2. Steamed wild garlic
Wash the wild garlic, put it in a lidded saucepan and cook over a medium-low heat until the leaves have wilted and the stalks are very soft. Remove from the pan, chop finely, and squeeze out the excess water. Return to the pan, add a knob of butter and season with salt and pepper.

3. Fried mushrooms
Heat a splash of olive oil and a knob of butter in a frying pan. Fry the mushrooms until soft and lightly coloured.

4. White wine and cream sauce
Fry the onions in a small amount of butter until translucent. Add the cream, wine and nutmeg. Simmer to boil off the alcohol and take the harshness from the wine. Season with a little salt.

5. Pasta
Making your own is preferable, in which case one egg and 100g flour is plenty for this recipe. Otherwise, cook the pasta according to the directions on the packet and cut it into squares. You need six squares for two portions, and the pasta should be the last thing you do as it’s the hardest to reheat.

To assemble, make sure everything’s piping hot and put a teaspoon of sauce in the middle of a plate. Cover with one sheet of pasta. Spread the wild garlic and mushrooms over this, and add a couple more teaspoons of sauce. Cover with another piece of pasta, then add the asparagus and another bit of sauce. Add the last piece of pasta, pour over more of the sauce and finish with parmesan. That’s it.

Ingredients (two portions)

4 eggs
1 sweet red pepper, sliced
1 chilli pepper, deseeded and chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
10-15 cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped
10-15 olives, roughly chopped
1 tsp paprika
2 tsp sea salt flakes
1 tsp ground black pepper
a handful of chopped coriander
4 tbsp olive oil

Lightly beat the eggs along with the salt, pepper and paprika.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan or sautée pan and cook the sweet pepper for a couple of minutes. Add the chilli and garlic and cook for a further couple of minutes, stirring frequently. Add the tomatoes and olives, give it another minute or so, then add the eggs.

Keep stirring the mixture to bring the cooked egg to the top. You don’t want rubbery scrambled eggs here – it should be quite sloppy. When it’s nearly done, stir in the coriander and serve with flatbreads.

Ingredients (four flatbreads)

100g gram flour
100g plain white flour
1 tsp salt
cold water

Combine the flours and salt in a large bowl. Add water – there’s really no point measuring this out; it’s all down to judgement. Start with about 50ml and mix it up with a fork.

Add a little more water until you’ve got a solid dough, which you should then knead a little on a well-floured surface. It doesn’t require much working – you want it to be fairly soft but not so wet that it becomes sticky when you roll it out. Add more water to make it softer or more flour to firm it back up. You can adjust the mix as much as you like without ruining the dough, but it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.

Divide the dough into four pieces. Take one piece, roll it into a ball and press it flat on a floured surface. Sprinkle more flour on top and gently roll it out until it’s a circle about 2-3mm thick.

Put a large frying pan over a medium-high heat. Dust the flatbread with more flour, to prevent sticking, and cook for about two minutes, until it puffs up and the bottom surface starts to char, then flip it over and cook for a further 90 seconds. That’s it. These flatbreads are good for dipping, wrapping or as substitutes for tortillas in huevos rancheros.

Ingredients (two portions)

Tagliatelle – 250g cooked (if using dried pasta) or two eggs and 200g pasta flour
200g smoked salmon, cut into strips
50g watercress
a small handful of wild garlic, shredded
1 tbsp grated horseradish (you can get this in jars)
1 lemon
1 onion, chopped finely
4 tbsp crème fraîche
1 tbsp olive oil
sea salt flakes and pepper

If you’re making your own pasta, I’m going to assume you know the standard ratio of 100g of flour and one egg per portion, and how to mix and roll the stuff. There are plenty of guides for that on the internet.

If you’re not making fresh pasta, cook it according to the instructions on the pack. Around 250g should be plenty for two people.

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan or sautée pan. Fry the onion until translucent, throw in the wild garlic (or spinach and crushed garlic) and stir for a further minute.

Add the crème fraîche, the horseradish, the juice of half a lemon and about a teaspoon each of salt flakes and black pepper. Warm it through but don’t let it boil.

Add the cooked and drained (and still warm) pasta, the watercress and the smoked salmon. Mix everything together by using tongs to gently lift and drop the pasta. You should do this fairly quickly, as you don’t really want the salmon to get cooked. It doesn’t matter if it does but it’s nicer in its translucent raw state. Serve with lemon wedges.

Ingredients

400g potatoes, peeled and cut into 2cm chunks
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
2 red chillies, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
a handful of fresh parsley
olive oil
salt and pepper

You need to cook this in a medium-size oven dish. Pour in enough olive oil to thickly cover the bottom, then pre-heat it in the oven at 200C.

Add the potatoes. Mix them up so they get completely coated in hot oil, season generously with salt and pepper, then put them back in the oven until the edges begin to go brown (about 10 minutes).

Mix up the chillies, garlic and tomatoes. Pour over the potatoes, shake the dish, then return to the oven for a further 30 minutes. Check it every 10 minutes or so, and stir it up to ensure the bits of potato that poke out of the sauce get browned on all sides.

Stir in the parsley, check for seasoning and serve.

Ingredients

400g carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
150g potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
1 leek, sliced
1 red chilli, chopped
150g wild garlic, washed and shredded
1 tbsp vegetable stock powder
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp honey
1 tbsp olive oil

Using a large saucepan, gently fry the leek and chilli in olive oil until soft. Add the carrots and potatoes, then pour in enough cold water to submerge everything. Stir in the stock powder and cumin, bring to the boil, and simmer for about 15 minutes.

When the carrots and potatoes are cooked through, blitz everything to a smooth puree with a stick blender. Check for seasoning (you might need to add a pinch of salt).

Add the wild garlic and bring back to a simmer for 8-10 minutes, until it has thoroughly wilted and has lost any fibrous bite it may have had. Thin it out with a little more stock if you prefer a more watery soup (I don’t), then stir in the honey and serve.

Ingredients

150g wild garlic
20g butter
250g ricotta
75g parmesan or similar tangy hard cheese, grated
juice of 1 lemon

14-16 conchiglioni pasta shells
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
50g tomato puree
1 medium onion, finely chopped
20 green olives, sliced
2 tbsp capers, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp vegetable stock powder
a handful of fresh basil leaves
salt and pepper

Wash the wild garlic, shake it to remove some excess water, and put it in a large saucepan, lid on, over a low-medium heat. After a couple of minutes, when it starts to steam, add the butter and replace the lid.

Stir every couple of minutes. After about 10-12 minutes, when it’s meltingly tender, season with salt and pepper and leave it to drain in a colander over the pan until cool enough to handle. Chop the wild garlic very finely and return to the colander. Don’t throw away the juice that drips off.

To make the tomato sauce, fry the onion in the oil until translucent. Add the tomato puree, veg stock powder, olives, capers and the juice from the wild garlic. Simmer for about 15 minutes, then stir in the basil leaves.

Boil the pasta shells for five minutes – they don’t have to be completely cooked through, and in fact will be easier to stuff if they’re slightly firm. Rinse with cold water and drain thoroughly.

To make the filling for the pasta, mix together the wild garlic, ricotta, grated parmesan and lemon juice. Season with more salt and pepper, if you think it’s required, then stuff a couple of hefty teaspoons of the mixture into each shell.

Pack the stuffed shells into a baking dish. Pour over the tomato sauce, shake the dish a bit, to help the sauce get into the gaps, and bake it for 20 minutes at 180C. Serve with bread.

Ingredients (up to four portions, if you’re serving it with side dishes)

2 large aubergines
250g mozzarella
100g pecorino romano cheese (or parmesan or similar)
4 hard boiled eggs, sliced
a handful of basil leaves

For the tomato sauce

400g tin of plum tomatoes
100g tomato puree
4 tbsp capers, chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tsp dried mixed herbs
2 tsp vegetable stock powder

Plus

olive oil
black pepper
lots of table salt

Slice the aubergines just over 1cm thick (about half an inch). Layer the slices in a colander, sprinkling plenty of salt between each layer, and leave for about half an hour. This will draw out the bitter juices from the aubergine, but you need to remember to wash the salt off before using, otherwise it will be inedible. Rinse the slices thoroughly and pat dry with a tea towel.

Brush the slices with a little olive oil and grill them, in batches, on a medium hot griddle pan for about five minutes per side. They should be very soft and tender when done.

To make the tomato sauce, gently fry the onion and garlic in a splash of oil. Add the capers, herbs and stock powder, then the tomatoes and tomato puree. Rinse the tomato can with half a can of water and add that too. Simmer for 20 minutes, until it’s smooth. Season with black pepper.

To assemble the dish, follow these steps:

• Spread a third of the tomato sauce over the bottom of a baking dish.
• Arrange half of the aubergine slices on top.
• Scatter half of the mozzarella, half of the pecorino, all of the basil and all of the egg slices on top of that.
• Put another third of the tomato sauce on top (you can dot it around, it doesn’t have to cover everything evenly).
• Arrange the rest of the aubergine on top.
• Add the last of the tomato sauce.
• Cover with the rest of the pecorino and finally the mozzarella.

Bake the dish at 180C for 15-20 minutes, and serve with garlic bread to mop up the sauce.

However, Kim got me a gadget that promises to take the hard work and talent out of semi-decent sushi. It’s called a Rice Cube, probably because it turns rice into cubes, and as far as I can tell that’s pretty much the basis of sushi. Here’s what I managed to make with it.

Since this is really a gadget review rather than a recipe, I’ll just offer a few tips. I used 250g of sushi rice, and that was enough to construct the eight cubic sushis in the picture above – allowing for a couple of failures (chef’s treat, plus some extra for the cat).

The Rice Cube gizmo could hardly be easier to use, so I won’t bother repeating the instruction leaflet that comes with it. If you want to make cubes with ingredients on the outside (like the salmon-coated one, second left) then line the mold with your ingredient before putting the rice in, or try alternating layers of rice and fish or vegetables. Otherwise, my advice is to mix a large quantity of rice with some finely chopped pieces of salmon, radish, or anything else you fancy, and make them all the same.

Most of the cubes above had an inner ‘surprise’ of cream cheese, which was lovely. To do that, fill the mold two thirds of the way up, jam your thumb in it, put cheese in the hole and cover it with more rice.

Final sushi chef pro tip: use wet hands for touching the rice and dry hands for touching the nori seaweed, otherwise you’ll get in a right old mess. Oh, and the dip on the platter in the picture is a mixture of one part mirin rice wine, two parts ponzu soy sauce and a lot of furikake (sesame seed and seaweed sprinkles) – it’s the essence of Japan.

This recipe makes things a bit more special by adding leeks and hard-boiled eggs. It’s a vegetarian main course.

Ingredients

1 large cauliflower, separated into chunky florets
4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and quartered
1 or 2 leeks, washed and chopped into thick slices
30g + 10g butter
4 tbsp plain white flour
approximately 200 ml milk
2 bay leaves
200 g strong cheddar cheese, grated
sea salt, pepper, freshly ground nutmeg

Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Add the cauliflower florets and boil vigorously for three or four minutes, until the stems are just tender enough to sink a knife into. Don’t overcook them. Remove them from the water and leave them to steam on a worktop or, ideally, a wire rack. They’ll never go completely dry but the more moisture that comes off them right now, the better.

Fry the leeks in a little butter over a very low heat until soft.

To make the cheese sauce, melt 30g of butter and stir in the flour. Pour in a good slosh of cold milk and turn up the heat, stirring constantly and energetically. You’ll get a thick, biscuity paste. Add more milk and keep stirring until all the lumps have gone. Add the bay leaves. Add more milk, and repeat until the sauce is the right consistency (very thick and not at all runny). It’s a balancing act, adding just enough milk so as not to ‘overload’ the amount of flour you’ve used and make it too thin. Practice makes perfect here. I always use a large pair of chopsticks for stirring this, and the sauce never goes lumpy – much better than using a wooden spoon. If you only have a wooden spoon, I’d suggest turning it upside down and stirring with the handle, as a thin stirring-stick seems to make all the difference.

Remove the bay leaves, stir in the cheese and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Finally, pile the cauliflower, eggs and leeks in a baking dish, pour over the sauce and bake at 180C until the top goes brown.