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This Kurdish lentil soup is lovely and smooth. Simple but nicely balanced. A handful of rice balances the lentil flavour nicely and the whole thing becomes very smooth (even without blending it).

Thanks to the Asylum seekers' and Refugees Support Group, Nelson, UK, for writing this down, and thanks to the Kurdish woman whose name I don't know, for passing this recipe on!

Makes 6--8 servings, takes 45 minutes.

• 400g lentils (split red lentils, my mum uses - I don't know what's standard)
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1 stock cube
• handful (e.g. 100g) basmati rice
• sunflower oil
• 1/2 tsp crushed chillis
• 1 onion chopped fine
• pinch of salt

Wash the lentils in warm water, then rinse them in cold. Put in a pan with ~4cm of cold water over them, cover, bring to boil.

Once the lentils boil turn the heat down, skim off the scummy bits - no need to be precise, doesn't matter if some remains. Do this while in parallel you start the next step of cooking the onions. (Maybe this means cooking the lentils for 10-15 minutes or so?)

Chop the onions finely and fry in a frying pan with the oil, on a medium heat, until starting to brown.

Tip the onions and oil into the lentil pan, plus 1 mug cold water or more (a pint?). Add salt, chilli, turmeric, rice.

Gently simmer for about 30 to 45 minutes - so that it is the right soupy consistency you want! If you need to add more water as it gently summers, do so.

Oven-roasted fennel is great - it's roasty, and yet still fresh and fragrant. This simple dish makes the most of it. We made this in 2019 and remembered it today! And it's as lovely as it is easy.

Serves 2. Takes 35 minutes.

• 1 bulb of fennel
• 1 packet (250g) of fresh tagliatelle pasta, plain or spinachy (but not wholemeal)
• 1 lemon (juice and zest)
• 1 clove of garlic
• olive oil
• 1 tbsp oat cream
• 1 small handful fresh parsley

Preheat an oven at 180C, and lightly oil a baking tray.

Chop the fennel in half top to bottom, then cut into slices approx half a centimetre thick. (Those cuts are also top to bottom, so that you're left with connected half-moon pieces.) Save any wispy "fennel tops" to one side, to use as garnish at the end.

Crush or finely chop the garlic. Zest and juice the lemon. Put half of the lemon juice into a mixing bowl, and add 1 tbsp oil plus the garlic and a good pinch of salt. Whisk this with a fork, then add the fennel pieces and give everything a good but gentle mix, to get them evenly coated.

Spread the fennel pieces out on the baking tray, then roast in the oven for 30 minutes. Half-way through, turn the pieces over.

Meanwhile, wash and finely chop the parsley.

Five minutes before the fennel is ready, in a large pan of boiling water, cook the tagliatelle according to the pack instructions. Once you've drained the pasta, return it to the pan, and add a dash of olive oil plus the oat cream, salt and pepper. With two forks, toss this around so that all the pasta is separated and nicely coated. Check the seasoning. Then add the parsley and mix again.

Take the fennel out of the oven and add it to the pasta. Sprinkle over the lemon zest and the remaining lemon juice, and gently stir again to mix.

Serve in 2 dishes, with the fennel tops chopped and sprinkled over.

Did you know that cranberries and rice are the 2 crops that can be grown on fully-saturated (i.e. damp) land? I learnt that this week from a colleague who studies how Dutch "polder" land can be farmed to absorb the most carbon.

So I decided to try making a rice and cranberry dish this weekend!

It's getting wintry here, too, so a nice festive wintry dish is needed. I was inspired by this recipe by Little Spice Jar, but I think their way of pre-cooking the rice is odd and a bit complex, so my version is (I hope) easier and makes the most of the saffron. One thing they're right about: use good quality basmati rice. You'll really notice.

Total time: 50 minutes. Serves 2.

• 1/2 a mug of basmati rice (thus approx 160ml - I know it's odd to measure rice by volume, in a recipe, but I do it with a standard British tea mug.)
• 35g approx butter or vegan butter
• 1 small red onion, thinly sliced
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
• 1/4 to 1/2 to 1 tsp granulated sugar (choose how sweet to make it)
• 1/2 teaspoon sumac powder
• 1 handful dried cranberries (or dried cherries, or barberries)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/8 teaspoon saffron (we'll soak it - see below)
• 1 handful roasted shelled pistachios (or slivered almonds or pecans)

Pre-soak the rice. Measure out the amount, rinse it in a sieve under running water, and then soak it in fresh cold water for 20 minutes. Meanwhile do the next steps.

Heat up a small frying pan on a medium heat. If your pistachios haven't been roasted, you can first toast them at this point, and then put them to one side. You'll be re-using the frying pan.

Boil hot water in a kettle, and then use this to soak the saffron. BUT do this in an exact quantity of water, as follows: one-and-a-half times the amount as the rice. We'll be using the classic way to "steam-cook" rice in a pan, and one-and-a-half times is how much water will be absorbed. Leave the saffron to soak in this warm water for about 10 minutes while you do the next part.

Add the olive oil to the frying pan, and start the onion frying. After about 4 minutes once the onion has softened, add the turmeric, sumac, dried cranberries, and stir. Add the sugar, and a small splash of water to help the sugar get absorbed. Once that has all mixed together, and the onions nicely softened with a touch of caramelisation, take this off the heat.

Drain the rice, using a sieve.

Add half of the pistachios to the cranberry onion mixture.

Now we can assemble the pilaf. Take a pan that has a tight-fitting lid, add the butter, and put the pan on the medium heat. Once the butter has melted and coated the pan, add the rice to it, and let it cook slightly on the heat while you add the rest. Pour the saffron and its water over the rice, making sure to pour it evenly around so that the saffron isn't in clumps, and then make sure the rice is spread evenly with a flat top. Then spoon the cranberry onion mixture on top of this, again trying to make a nice even layer.

Now put the lid on tightly, and don't open it again for the next 20 minutes! For the first 3 or 4 minutes, you should let it cook at medium heat Then turn the heat right down to very low - on a gas hob, I would turn it to the lowest it can possibly go, and on an induction I use setting 2 out of 9. You then have about 15 minutes to prepare other parts of the meal, or to relax.

The pilaf is ready when all the water has been absorbed. When this happens the pan gets hotter, and you can test it by putting a splash of water on the side - it should fizzle away.

Open the pan, give the pilaf a stir (or don't, if you want to preserve the layering), and then serve it, topped with the remaining pistachios and maybe a nice little sprinkle of some more sumac.

"Cobbler" is a British kind of casserole made with a topping that looks like cobblestones. It can be savoury or sweet. I grew up with savoury cobbler as a school dinner. And the topping, is, basically... scones! Stew and scones, what's not to like?

Here's my vegan version, a delicious mushroom and chestnut cobbler. The combination of mushroom and chestnut is a classic. The herby scones make a great complement to it, their dry scone texture soaking up the moist stew.

For the topping, I derived my version from domestic gothess' excellent vegan scone recipe. The coconut oil and butter make good "lumpy" fats to achieve the crumbly texture. In my version, the herbs and nutritional yeast make a lovely savoury complement to the stew. You don't need to serve this with bread, since the topping basically fulfils that role.

Serves 2. Takes 75 minutes.

Ingredients:

For the stew:

• 1 onion
• 250g mushrooms
• 100ml white wine
• 200g pre-cooked chesnuts (ours were vacuum-packed)
• 1.5 tsp flour
• 1 tsp miso
• 1 tsp italian herbs
• 2 tsp vegetable stock powder

For the scone topping:

• 175g plain flour
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 25g vegan block butter
• 25g solid refined coconut oil
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 2 tsp italian herbs
• 1 tsp salt
• 80--90 ml unsweetened vegan milk

Method:

Turn the oven on at 200 C (for a fan oven), to preheat.

For the stew:

Peel and finely dice the onions. Clean the mushrooms and chop them into nice bite-sized pieces. Chop the chestnuts to the same size (probably chopping them in halves).

In a stew pan, heat up some flavourless oil and fry the mushrooms for 3-4 minutes to give them some colour, then take them out and put them to one side for a moment. Heat up some more oil in the same pan, and fry the onions for about 5 minutes until they become soft and golden.

Add the 1.5 tsp flour and mix it through the onions. Then put the mushrooms back in, as well as the chestnuts, and stir.

Add the white wine to this pan, bring it to the boil, and scrape the bottom of the pan to deglaze. Turn the heat down to medium, add the miso, herbs, and veg stock. Boil a kettle, and add enough boiling water to cover the stew contents, then let it bubble gently while you prepare the topping. Don't cook it too hard, and try to keep it quite a "wet" stew - it's going to thicken up more in the oven.

For the topping:

In a mixing bowl, place the flour and baking powder and mix together.

The coconut oil and the butter - both of these, you want to add them in small chunks or small blocks to the flour. Keep them cold so they don't melt too quickly.

With the tips of your fingers, rub the flour into the cubes of fat, squishing the pieces of fat into the mixture. Keep doing this until the mixture turns into a "breadcrumb" texture.

Next sprinkle over the nutritional yeast, herbs and salt. Using the back of a knife, mix these through. Don't over-mix.

Gradually stir in the milk, again using the back of a knife, trying to bring the mixture together without over-mixing it (that's how you keep the crumbly texture). Bring the dough together into a loose shaggy ball.

To assemble:

Put the stew into a casserole dish - ours was about 15cm x 20cm rectangle.

Using your hands, shape the dough into 6 small "scones" and place them on top of the stew. They should be not too thick, maybe 2cm thick. When you place them onto the stew, try to keep them separate and not touching. Of course it's not a crisis if they're touching, you can separate them after it's cooked - but you do want there to be at least some space between the cobbles.

Put this into the oven, uncovered, and bake for 15-18 minutes until the top of the cobbles is golden. Remove and serve in dishes, making sure to keep the cobbles on top when you spoon everything out, with a big spoon or ladle.

It's rhubarb season. Rhubarb is IMPORTANT. You need to know how to make stewed rhubarb, because (a) it's lovely (b) it's simple, BUT (c) there are some basic mistakes that people make. Here's my expert guide. Come with me!

The key things you need to know are:

1. Don't add too much water, because otherwise you'll need to over-cook it to reduce it down again. (You'll be shocked at how much liquid magically appears in the pan!)
2. Don't stir it much at all (and don't chop it too small) -- so that the end result has nice texture, and doesn't turn to pure mush.
3. Add a small amount of cornflour to the rhubarb, right at the start. This is chemistry: the alkaline cornflour helps to prevent the rhubarb from oxidising, and thus keeps it a jolly red colour.

Oh, and if you're wondering about tips for buying rhubarb - well, you don't want it floppy, and the redder the better, though it's OK to have some green. Fat or thin doesn't make much difference. And of course, buying it in season is best. There are two rhubarb seasons in my part of the world, late winter and early summer.

Stewed rhubarb is simple. Here's how:

• 100g rhubarb per person
• 25g sugar per person (adjust the quantity to taste)
• 1/2 to 1 tsp cornflour per person
• 2 tsp water

Rinse the rhubarb sticks under the tap. No need to dry them, in fact it's good that they're wet.

Chop them into 2cm or 1-inch pieces. DON'T cut them too small! I've seen people cut them much smaller - the problem is then that all the structure disappears into mush when you cook them. Don't worry - 2cm might seem too big, but these will quickly turn into soft and jammy nothings.

Place the rhubarb in a pan that has a lid. Add about 2 teaspoons of water. I mean it! Really only that tiny amount of water. Here's the key: the water on the outside of the rhubarb is already helping, plus a LOT of liquid will come out of the rhubarb as it cooks. The only role for this added water is to become steam at the start of the process, helping to get everything going.

Sprinkle the cornflour over the rhubarb. Then sprinkle the sugar over. (You can keep some of the sugar back, if you're not sure how sweet you want it.) No need to stir! Really!

Put the pan on a medium-low heat, and put the lid on. Leave this to cook gently for about 20 minutes. Pretty quickly there will be some steam in the pan (from that small amount of water), and this will warm up the rhubarb and encourage all the juices out.

DON'T STIR THE RHUBARB at any point. I know it seems strange. But the less you mess with it, the more of the "structure" of the rhubarb is still there, it doesn't turn to textureless mush. It will still become very soft throughout, and the cornflour and sugar will naturally mix through, thanks to convection etc.

After the 20 minutes are done, you can take the lid off, and give it one exploratory stir to find out if you need to cook it down a bit more. You can also check the balance of sweet-versus-tart and add more sugar if needed. The rhubarb might be ready at this point, or you might want to cook it 5 minutes with the lid off to thicken it more.

Serve this as dessert either with plain yogurt or with custard. There are various other things you can do with it too (e.g. rhubarb crumble), but even if you serve it simply, it's great.

The man in the little Turkish shop got excited when I bought a tin of coconut milk and a fennel. "Oh, are you making fennel soup?" "...No?" But then he persuaded me, telling me how he used coconut milk to make it creamy and rich.

What I love is that the "grassy" fennel flavours actually balance against the coconut milk well, so the end result is rich but makes perfect sense. I emphasise the fennel-ness with the other herbal flavours of dill seed and lemon zest.

Serves 2, takes 30 minutes.

• 50g vegan butter
• 1 bulb fennel
• 1 tsp dill seed
• 1/2 a courgette
• a small handful of parsley
• 100ml coconut milk
• salt and pepper
• zest of 1/4 lemon

Rinse the fennel. If your fennel has dill-like sprigs of "hair" on, cut them off and save them to use as garnish at the end.

In a large pan with a lid, melt the butter over a medium heat, while you slice the fennel fairly finely. Start the fennel frying, adding the dill seed too, and let it fry (with stirring) until it only-just starts to take a bit of golden colour (not too much!).

Meanwhile boil a kettle, then add about 400ml of boiling water to the fennel to cover it. Add about 1/2 a teaspoon of salt too. Bring it to the boil, and let it bubble modestly for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop the courgette, and zest the lemon. When the fennel is nicely softened, add the courgette and give that just a couple of minutes to soften. Add the parsley. Then take the pan off the heat and, using a blender, whizz it all to a nice smooth consistency. It's up to you whether you blitz it to uniformity or you leave some different-coloured bits in it.

Return the soup to the pan if you took it out. Add the coconut milk - maybe not all of it, hold some back for now and maybe add the rest according to taste. Add the lemon zest, add salt and pepper. Stir it and check the seasoning.

Serve in bowls, with the garnish on top if you have it, with bread on the side.

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