Dinner

Smoked cod and potato soup has become my favourite Easter tradition and one of my favourite soups. The flavour exchange between the cod, potatoes and garlic is one of life’s great pleasures and brings a richness to the somewhat sombre Good Friday offerings.

The French have made a fine art out of pâté en croûte. Then there is the English pork pie. Both are delicious in their own way. This version bridges the rivalry and is a happy middle ground between the Plantagenets and the Valois.

The most frequent question I get from friends and diners is how to cook a piece of steak. There’s no foolproof recipe or technique. You have to be responsive to the cut, because there are so many variables – how long it’s been aged, the cut, the heat of the barbecue itself.

The process of brining meat should never be overlooked. This is a recipe for brined pork loin, where the skin has been removed. Pork loin is a cut that can often be dry when it is cooked, but by brining the meat, it can be transformed.

This is the most foolproof way I have found of cooking a turkey for Christmas. In this recipe, I try something festive without the struggle of wrestling a whole bird, usually too large for the oven. I’ve taken a fillet, wrapped it in streaky bacon to make up for a lack of fat, and roasted it gently to maintain moisture and flavour.

When you wish to roll the pastry tart, lightly butter the form. Remove the pastry from the fridge, shape into a four-centimetre roll and slice into one-centimetre thick disks. Place the disks in a fish-scale pattern in the base of the tart form. Using your fingers, push the pastry down to create a smooth surface and up the sides to fill the tart shell. Alternatively, you could roll the pastry out to a three-millimetre-thick sheet and line the tart form with this.

So why should we eat chicken sandwiches on Melbourne Cup Day? Because they are delicious, they are reasonably healthy, easy to transport and, let’s face it, they tend to soak up alcohol. For me, the perfect chicken sandwich starts with a gently poached chicken.

The flavours that I’ve used for this recipe are vaguely Moorish. I’ve been obsessed with the flavour combination of quail and pistachios since eating a quail flatbread served with yoghurt and pistachio nuts at a restaurant in London named Moro. That would have been almost 20 years ago.

Green and pink. Pink and green. Two of my favourite spring colours. Whether it be the beginnings of the berry season, the soft downy centres of broad bean pods, or the subtlety of spring lamb, they are colours that keep reappearing in the palette of my spring dishes.

A key flavour that makes a kebab a kebab is the coals it is cooked on. The wood infuses the meat with its greatest character. The concept of dicing the meat into two-centimetre cubes means there is more surface to take on the flavour of the coals and also of the marinade.