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"Toad in the hole" is a classic British dish for the colder months. To make it veggie you can use veggie sausages, sure. But this version, with the rich flavours of butternut squash and sage, is great! It's a good Sunday roast when you put it with roast potatoes, gravy and more.

Butternut squash is a good choice. I also made one using a "blue pumpkin" which appeared in our local grocer's, which works fine too. In either case, if the skin is not too thick then I recommend leaving the skin on -- it gives a good bit of texture to the dish. You do need to remove any knobbly or rough bits of skin though.

Serves 2--3. Takes maybe 90 minutes, including a lot of oven-time where you can do other things.

For two people I use a roasting tin about 20cm x 20cm. A larger tin is OK too - the dish can be wide and flat in that case, lots of surface area.

• Butternut squash (one small, or half a large one: 450--500g) and/or thin-skinned pumpkin
• 15--20 sage leaves (small, or 5--10 large ones)
• 2 eggs
• 300ml/300g oat milk
• 125g plain flour
• 2 tsp mustard
• To serve: roast potatoes (e.g. from 500g potatoes), gravy, and some greens

First we cook the squash until it's close-to-ready. You can do this just-in-time but it's a bit complex to juggle everything in the oven, so I suggest doing it first, as follows:

Heat the oven to 180C. You don't need to peel the squash but take off any knobbly bits, then slice in two and scoop out the seeds. Chop the squash into "chunky chip" shapes: i.e. cuboid finger-sized pieces e.g. 2cm x 2cm and not longer than about 5cm.

Put some oil in a metal baking tray, add the squash pieces and toss them to coat. Cook them in the oven for 20 minutes until they're starting to acquire some brown roasty colour -- but not too much! -- they'll be cooked more later. Take the tray out and put it to one side. It doesn't matter whether the squash has time to cool down or not.

Mix the batter: mix the eggs, milk, flour and mustard in a bowl, whisking with a whisk to beat out any small lumps. Let this rest for 15 to 30 minutes.

When you're ready for the main cook, turn the oven up to 200C. Preheat the dish that you'll be cooking in - put about 2 tbsp of vegetable oil in it and put it in the oven to heat right up. This may take 5 minutes. Stir the batter again.

Prepare the sage leaves: the small ones kept whole and the large ones chopped to a similar size.

Prepare your work surface ready for quickly assembling the dish: you'll need somewhere to stand the hot tin, and you'll need the batter, the squash and the sage. Working quickly, take the tin out (careful, hot oil), pour the batter in, arrange the squash pieces evenly (they should stick out a bit), then finally place the sage pieces into the batter in good spots between the squash pieces.

Then put the dish back in the oven and cook for 25--30 minutes until the batter is crispy at the sides and nicely cooked and starting to brown on top.

To serve, ideally you can cut slices of it and gently lift them out onto plates. To make that work, you should run a knife around the edge first to free it from the baking dish.

I tasted this amazing vegan version of a Moroccan dish in Tangier (at the NBTA restaurant), and wow - such delicate flavours! I definitely had to make a note and then try to recreate it. I think I've done pretty well!

The finished dish should be a gloopy honeyed collection of lovely stewed objects, garnished with almonds and sesame seeds, and if you're feeling glam even some rose petals or orange blossom?

Mrouzia is traditionally made with lamb so you can choose whatever non-flavoured fake meat you like, ideally something a bit stew-friendly. I use some nice seitan pieces that come in a jar.

The spice mix is "ras-el-hanout" which basically indicates the classic Moroccan spice mix. There shouldn't be any chilli in it - that's not appropriate for this dish. We've had a couple of different ras-el-hanouts and some of them had chilli in.

Serves 2 people, takes 30 minutes.

• 160g seitan pieces - or other fake meat, in bite-size chunks
• 1 large handful almonds, maybe about 20 nuts (unsalted, whole or halved) (you could use pre-roasted almonds as a shortcut)
• 3 or 4 strands of saffron
• a stick of cinnamon (1 to 2 inches)
• 1 clove garlic, crushed, or an equivalent dollop of liquid garlic
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 2 tsp ras-el-hanout
• 25g butter or vegan butter
• 6 prunes (whole, but with no stones)
• 6 dried apricots (whole, but with no stones)
• 2 tbsp honey or vegan honey
• 2 tsp lemon juice (optional - I didn't use it but you may wish to use it to balance the flavour at the end)
• 1tsp sesame oil (toasted, e.g. the common Japanese sesame oil) (optional)
• 3 tsp sesame seeds

Bloom the saffron by adding it to half-a-cupful of hot water, five minutes before you use it.

In your stewing pan, add a splash of water and the butter. Turn the heat on so that the butter begins to melt while you also add the garlic, cinnamon stick, salt, pepper, ras-el-hanout, and the bloomed saffron with its water. Give it a simple stir to mix.

Add the fake meat, apricots and prunes. Bring it all up to a medium-hot heat and let it stew gently for ~30 minutes, with a lid on, until it's nicely reduced and there's not that much liquid left. Stir occasionally.

- Note: if you want to make this dish ahead of time, you can pause the recipe at this point e.g. take it off the heat. -

While the stew is cooking, prepare the almonds. If they aren't already halved, slice them lengthways. Then roast for 5-10 minutes in an oven at 180C (or a frying pan on a medium-to-low heat), and take them out again. Save a few of the almonds to garnish at the end, but add most of the roasted almonds to the pan, when there's maybe five or ten minutes cooking time left.

When the stewing time is done, and the stew quite well reduced, remove the cinnamon stick then add the honey and the sesame oil and stir. Let it warm/cook for a minute more. Check for seasoning (any lemon needed?).

Serve garnished with a generous sprinkle of sesame seeds over the top, as well as the reserved almonds.

Accompany it with bread or couscous.

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.

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