I like quinoa but do not cook with it as often as I think I should. It has a great taste, it’s packed with protein and slow-releasing energy and is pretty healthy too. There are two main types of quinoa – red and creamy white/pale yellow. I use red for this recipe as the nutty taste is more intense and I quite like the colour too

This recipe is fairly complex, but perfect for impressing friends. The aubergine fondue can be made up to 3 days in advance (keep it refrigerated – see Chef’s Note) and it reheats very well. You could even make a larger quantity and freeze it. I love it and it’s great as a dip too.

This dish is simple and delicious. The spices are complex and sophisticated but not too punchy to put you off your cuppa. I serve the curried mussels on sourdough toast – perfect for soaking up the sauce and maximising the enjoyment.

I use rope-grown mussels from the River Deben here in Suffolk. They are farmed all year round, but my preference is still to enjoy them in their natural season, which is during the months with ‘r’ in the name, when the water is colder and the taste of the mussels is naturally sweeter (then leave them alone during the summer when the water is warmer).

Always make sure you clean fresh mussels thoroughly, removing the beards and giving them a good scrub, as there is nothing more disappointing than gritty mussels.

We could call this cheat’s consommé, if you prefer.

I adore smoked haddock, but then again I quite enjoy smoked foods in general. It’s the depth of flavour, the intriguing method of how the flavour is achieved and simply the fact that with wood and good-quality ingredients, the character and flavour of the food can be manipulated to achieve something rather remarkable.

I could smoke the haddock myself, but we do have a good supplier which means I can concentrate on cold-smoking my venison, lamb and other meat joints. In all fairness, I do not have that much experience in cold smoking fish.

I tend to hot-smoke fish and meat using a method that I concocted called the ‘quick smoking method’. I refer to this in my cookbook The British Larder A Cookbook for All Seasons. I hope you are intrigued enough to go and have a look!

The standard recommendation is to cook flat fish, such as plaice, on the bone to prevent it from overcooking and becoming dry, but to be honest, I and a lot of others, do not enjoy all the kerfuffle with the bones. Ask your fishmonger to do all the hard work for you and get them to take the fillets off the bone as two whole fillets per fish (one larger fillet from each side of the fish, rather than two smaller fillets from each side of the fish). The bones make a delicious stock too, so ask your fishmonger to reserve them for you.

Remember, the smaller the fish, the less cooking is required (and once the fish is cooked it will continue cooking a little more). As I use large plaice fillets for this recipe, I cook each fillet for 1½–2 minutes on each side.

I find a simple fish supper is incredibly satisfying and it does not necessarily have to involve battered fish served with chips (I am writing this whilst wagging and pointing my finger at Mr P; he will do anything for traditional battered fish and chips!). The brown shrimp and lemon butter sauce is very easy to make and is really tasty (the taste is so good, you would think it’s taken hours to prepare). Serve this dish with plain boiled new potatoes and wilted spinach, as the fish is so tasty you do not need accompaniments with big personalities. The simplicity of this dish tastes wonderful.

For this recipe, I use a mixture of smoked and natural (unsmoked) haddock, as I personally quite like the flavour of smoked haddock but find it a little too overpowering on its own in a recipe like this. However, you don’t have to use smoked fish if you are not so keen on it. Other alternatives and combinations that would work just as well are fresh salmon mixed with smoked salmon, fresh mackerel mixed with smoked mackerel, or simply cod or even sea trout.

To make these fishcakes, firstly a small amount of fish purée is made and this forms the ‘glue’ that holds the fishcakes together. The rest of the fish is then diced and mixed with the fish purée. No breadcrumbs are used, just fish and a few other choice ingredients. It is best to make these at least 2 hours before you intend to cook them as the resting time will help the fishcake mixture stick together, firm up and holds its shape. I also like to prepare the fishcakes a day in advance (keep them in the fridge overnight), as it really helps to get ahead and allows me more time to spend with my friends and enjoy their company.

The parsley sauce is also not quite as traditional as you might expect. For this recipe, I make a parsley purée rather than a traditional white sauce with parsley running through it. The purée is strong and more condensed in flavour and therefore you do not quite need as much. It is also served chilled or at room temperature rather than hot. If you prefer watercress instead, then simply replace the parsley with watercress, and add a few mint leaves to accentuate the flavour of watercress.

Serve these fishcakes as I do with wilted spinach and charred spring onions, to create a delicious supper perfect for summer dining, ideal with a glass or two of chilled Gavi di Gavi.

This quick smoked method is one I used in my cookbook in a few recipes; it’s very effective and delicious, and it does not break the bank as you don’t need any specialist equipment. I would recommend though that you vent the kitchen well when using this quick smoke technique, as it can get quite smoky.

Fresh sea trout is almost like salmon and if you cannot find any, simply replace it with fresh salmon. The crispy air-dried ham brings a salty taste and crispy texture to the dish that works beautifully with the slightly sharp leeks in vinaigrette and the mild but aromatic horseradish cream.

It’s almost a whole meal in itself and is ideal for a light main course or lunch.

I believe it’s sometimes harder to cook a piece of fish than a piece of meat. The skin has to be crisp and the flesh moist but not under or over cooked. My advice is that the pan must not be too hot, it’s got to be medium-hot so that the skin will crisp beautifully but won’t burn and the flesh will be cooked but not dried out.

Hake brings back fond memories of my earlier days in London working as a chef. I particularly enjoyed working on the fish section and filleting fish was one of the jobs I found most satisfying. Filleting hake is particularly difficult as the bone structure is slightly odd for a round fish, and if you are not careful it is easy to let your knife slip so you lose the prime thick parts of the fillet. The flake of the fish is also large which makes it quite hard to handle, and if you are too heavy-handed then the fish may flake to pieces in your hands. But, please do not be put off by this, simply ask your fishmonger to do all the tricky hard work for you. If you do have a choice, ask your fishmonger for portions from a 2–3kg fish, as they are larger but the fillets are chunkier and cook up a treat (a far cry from the battered hake from the local chippie!).

We are lucky enough to have plenty of good butchers to choose from in our area, we buy our sausages from Five Winds Farm, and I believe their spicy British-made chorizo-style sausages are delicious and the best we can buy in the local area. They are packed full of flavour with an ever so slightly mild spiciness which makes them the perfect ingredient to use in recipes such as this one and also in my very popular Mushroom and English Chorizo Minestrone Soup.

Gurnard is a rather peculiar-looking fish, for me it’s quite pretty, but others describe it as an ugly fish. It’s got a large head with large wing-type fins that help it to stay upright when feeding at the bottom of the seabed. Red gurnard is regularly available in the British waters around our coasts and it’s easy to come by. It’s a fairly bony fish with a firm flesh, that is quite bland, but when cooked with the spicy chorizo-style sausages, it’s delicious and the combination works very well together. Gurnard is fairly inexpensive, which makes this dish a perfect mid-week supper recipe.

If you are super-organised, then cook the Puy lentils and sausages a day in advance and keep them refrigerated until needed. Make sure when reheating the sausages and lentils that the mixture is roasting hot before serving. Enjoy!

The fresh apple, crispy bacon and soft pâté-like texture of the rillettes, plus the silky softness of the smoked eel, all work beautifully together in this recipe. Do not overdo the smoked eel as it could easily overpower the dish and it’s also pricy. You don’t really need that much either.

We have a wonderful smokehouse situated 9 miles from us here in Suffolk, called Pinney’s of Orford. Their award wining oak smoked wild English silver eels are delicious and perfect used in small quantities in a salad such as this one.

After making choux pastry in the Thermomix the previous week, Steve wanted to try this method for himself, and yes, it works a treat! The only difference is that the sugar is left out of the choux pastry recipe and replaced with a pinch of salt. The beauty about choux pastry is that you can make the dough up to 3 days in advance, keep it in the fridge until needed, then fold in the flavouring and hey presto!, cook and serve. You also get plenty out of one recipe, which means you can either feed a small army or make plenty for the following day. I include both the conventional method and the Thermomix method for making choux pastry. See the Cook’s Tips at the end of the recipe for the Thermomix method.

These crab beignets are delicious served either hot or cold. Served cold they will lose a bit of their crispness, but they are just as delicious.