Tabbouleh

We ate this with some cold roast lamb, and pitta breads.

Makes enough for four greedy adults, as a side dish (would be lovely too with some sharp cheese, like feta).

You'll need:

125g bulgar wheat
2-3 large tomatoes, chopped
3 spring onions, chopped
lots of flatleaf parsley, chopped
a good handful of mint, chopped
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice (I used the juice of 1 lemon)

Soak the bulgar wheat in hot water for 20 minutes or so, until it's softened. Drain, and run under the cold tap.

Chuck the bulgar wheat, tomatoes, spring onions, parsley and mint in a large bowl. Mix. Drizzle over the olive oil and lemon juice, and mix again. Season with salt and black pepper.

You can eat this straightaway, but I find it tastes nicer once it's been left for an hour or so, so the flavours have had a chance to mingle.

Treacle tart

I wanted to find the original recipe that Uncle Dom used to make - but Grandma thought she'd thrown out the book with it in. Nigel Slater's recipe was a good substitute (although I've tweaked it slightly to make it more lemony).

Makes enough for 6-8. You'll need:

1 lemon
200g fresh white breadcrumbs
1 small tin (454g) golden syrup (I know - the whole tin!)
180g self-raising flour
90g butter, cut into small cubes
a little cold water

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C, and dig out a pie/flan dish (about 20 cm across) - you'll need to grease it, or line with greaseproof paper.

In a food processor, whizz together the flour and butter, until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add a little cold water (2-3 tablespoons), and let it form small pellets in the processor. Tip into a large bowl, and bring together gently into one large blob. Cover with cling film, and leave in the fridge for 10 minutes.

Once the pastry's rested, roll it out, and line your flan dish. Prick with a fork, then stick a sheet of greaseproof paper on top, and use some baking beans (ceramic or just dried beans) to weight it down. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the pastry is golden.

In the meantime, mix together the breadcrumbs and golden syrup. Zest and juice the lemon, and sling that in there too. Tip this mixture into the pastry case, and then bake in the oven for 30 minutes or so.

Serve with ice cream. In very small portions.

Fish, spinach and rice parcel

This is a bit like the koulibiac recipe I've done before - except with a bit more veg. The parcel sounds rather sinister, but is actually made with puff pastry. Hurrah!

You'll need:

trout - a couple of fillets
200g (ish) cooked rice
1/3 bag of fresh spinach, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1 lemon, zested
salt and black pepper
250g block puff pastry

Stick the oven on at about 200 degrees C, and get out a large baking tray.

First of all, fry your onion in a little olive oil until it turns translucent. Chuck into a large bowl, and mix in the cooked rice. Add the spinach, and mix until everything has turned green.

Cover the trout with cold water, and bring to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes or so until the fish is poached, and has turned pink throughout. Remove from the water, flake and add to the spinach/rice mix. Season everything with the lemon zest, and a good screw of salt and black pepper.

Roll out your puff pastry into a long rectangle, and then put carefully on your lined/greased oven tray. Place the fish/rice/spinach mix in a line down the middle of the pastry. It'll be quite a big, fat line - carefully ease the pastry up on both sides, and pinch together at the top (if it doesn't stick, use a little water to wet it).

Sling the whole parcel/roll into the oven, and bake for 25-30 minutes. It's really nice with a green salad, and a wedge or two of lemon.

Spaghetti with tuna, spinach and lemon

Actually, this may not have been spinach - it might have been chard. It's grown some rather enormous leaves on the allotment, anyway, which the snails have started to take a liking to. So we thought we should get in first.

You'll need:

enough spaghetti for three (a small handful per person - spaghetti always miraculously expands when cooked)
1 large onion, finely sliced
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
unidentified green leaves - preferably spinach/chard or that sort of thing, sliced into strips
1 tin of tuna
lemon zest (about half a lemon will do)
lots of black pepper

Stick the spaghetti into a large pan of boiling water - it'll need 7-8 minutes until it's al dente.

In the meantime, fry the onion and garlic in a good slug of olive oil, until they've softened. Add the greens, and fry for a couple of minutes until they've wilted. Stir in the tuna, and leave to warm through.

Drain the spaghetti, and tip into the greens/tuna pan. Stir everything thoroughly, so the spaghetti becomes covered with the tuna and onions. Season well with lots of black pepper, and some grated lemon zest.

Divide up into bowls, and top with a little extra drizzle of olive oil, and maybe some parmesan cheese.

Lemon and mint chicken

We've spent the day dodging thunderstorms - the front garden was awash, and the cat cowered on the porch.

I made this for tea, to inject a little sunshine into the day. A girl can dream...

You'll need:

a couple of boned and skinless chicken thighs per person
a lemon, sliced into thin wedges
a largish sprig of mint per thigh
a slug of nice olive oil
black pepper
a little salt

Stick the oven on at about 200 degrees C.

Take each boned chicken thigh, and spread it out. Place a wedge of lemon and sprig of mint in the middle of each, and roll up again. Place in a baking dish/tray, and drizzle with a little olive oil. Season with lots of black pepper and a little salt.

Roast in the oven for 35-45 minutes, until the thighs are cooked through - they may be done sooner if they're very small.

We ate this with some onion, green pepper and parsley couscous, and spiced things up with Patak's aubergine pickle.

Spiced carrot and lamb salad

I can't claim credit for this one - it's pinched from the Sainted Jamie, who I saw extolling the virtues of carrots on his Jamie at Home programme.

Sadly, I didn't have the delightful purple/white/yellow varieties of carrots to play with (the allotment doesn't seem to like carrots very much), so my version didn't look quite so pretty as the original salad.

Makes enough for 3 greedy people. You'll need:

400g lamb mince
1 1/2 heaped teaspoons garam masala
3 or 4 large carrots, peeled
1 large teaspoon sesame seeds
lots of fresh mint leaves, shredded
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 large spring onion, finely chopped
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 teaspoon ginger (freshly grated or powder)
lots of olive oil

Tip the lamb mince into a large pan, and fry until the fat comes out. Add the garam masala, and then cook the mince until crispy.

In the meantime, make your carrot salad and dressing. You'll need to peel the carrots to get rid of the outer skin - then just keep peeling, so you get lots of very thin strips. Shove these in a bowl.

To make the dressing, toast the cumin seeds in a dry frying pan for about 30 seconds. Stick in a pestle and mortar, and grind up. Tip into a bowl, add the finely chopped spring onion, lemon zest, lemon juice, ginger and a pinch of salt. Pour in 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, mix well, and have a taste. If it's too lemony, add a little more oil.

Toast the sesame seeds in the dry frying pan too, until they go golden (should take a minute or so).

To assemble, tip the dressing over the carrots, and add the shredded mint (Jamie also suggests coriander as well, which I think would make things even better). Mix well. Decant onto plates, add the lamb mince, and then sprinkle the sesame seeds on top.

This goes well with bread (we only had baguette, but naan bread would be better), and aubergine or lime pickle.

Lemon drizzle cake

Just the thing for a hot day, especially if decorated with sugar flowers. I would add a picture, but it's nearly all gone.

You'll need:

4oz butter
6oz self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
6oz caster sugar
2 eggs
6 tablespoons milk
grated rind of a lemon

for the lemon drizzle icing

juice of a lemon (ie the one you've just used the rind from)
3oz caster sugar

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C, and line a rectangular baking tin with greaseproof paper.

You could just chuck all the cake ingredients in a food processor, and blitz until it's smooth. I suspect you'll get a fluffier sponge if you blitz the sugar/butter together first, then add the eggs/milk, and then the flour/lemon rind/baking powder.

Spoon the mixture into your tin, and bake in the oven for 30 minutes, or until it's turned golden brown. Take it out of the oven, but leave in the tin.

Mix together the lemon juice and sugar, and pour (drizzle) over the top of the cake. You might want to make a few tiny holes with a skewer first, so it soaks into the cake too.

Leave to cool - then cut into squares. We decorated ours with tiny sugar flowers (v tasteful), and then lots of pigs/rabbits/owls/dogs (v silly).

Spicy crab linguine

Not surprisingly, this was rather bland with tinned crab, and needed pepping up with lots of chilli and strong cheese grated on top. Definitely one to make with the real stuff (the cat, however, was less discerning).

Makes enough for 2. You'll need:

crab meat (a little will go a long way here - and you could get away with white or brown meat)
2 red chillies
1 clove garlic
a small bag or bunch of rocket (if you don't have any, courgette (finely diced and fried gently in a little olive oil) is a great substitute
zest and juice of a lemon
a tablespoon of good olive oil
lots of black pepper
your linguine/spaghetti of choice

Decant your crab meat into a bowl. Stick the chillies and garlic in a pestle and mortar, and pound away until they're nicely pulverised. Add the olive oil and mix well until it turns to a lovely slush. Add the zest and juice of a lemon, and mix everything with the crab meat.

Meanwhile, stick your linguine/spaghetti into a pot of boiling water, and cook until al dente. Drain, and bung back into the pan. Fling in the crab mixture and the rocket, and stir through the pasta.

Add lots of black pepper and some grated cheese (parmesan would be nice).

Spicy lemon chicken

A Middle Eastern-ish tea for a distinctly English spring day (grey and rainy).

It's dead easy to make, but you do need to marinate the chicken for a while - a couple of hours will do, but longer would be even better.

You'll need:

2 chicken breasts (either flattened with a rolling pin - most satisfying - or sliced into long strips)
3 tablespoons lemon juice (which probably works out at 1 lemon)
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon ground coriander
a slosh of olive oil
a handful of fresh mint, finely chopped

To make the marinade, chuck all the spices, olive oil, lemon juice and mint into a (non-metallic) bowl, and swish it all about. Drop in the chicken breasts, and make sure the marinade is spooned all over them.

A couple of hours later, coat a griddle pan with a little olive oil, and put onto a high heat. Take the chicken breasts out of the marinade (if there's any left you can discard it), and sear quickly on both sides in the pan. Turn the heat down a little, and leave the chicken to cook through - it'll take 5-10 minutes, depending on how thick your pieces are. You'll probably need to slice one in half, just to check whether it's done.

We ate this with a couscous salad and pitta bread. I reckon it would be a good barbecue dish in the summer - the chargrilled taste would really suit it.

Asparagus, lemon and parsley pasta

This should really be called 'Spring pasta', as it's so green. You were delighted at the thought that your wee would be too.

It's adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe in Forever Summer - her pasta recipes are lovely, and very simple to make.

Makes enough for three (two big, one small). You'll need:

a small lemon, zested and juiced
a very good splosh of olive oil
a clove of garlic, finely chopped
asparagus - whatever you can get your hands on (and afford - although this recipe is great because it stretches it quite a long way!)
lots of black pepper
grated cheese (something like pecorino or parmesan would be good - we happened to have mature cheddar in the fridge)
a handful of flat leaf parsley, washed and chopped
pasta (six good handfuls)

First of all, chop up your asparagus - bend the spears near the base until they break (discard the very woody bottom bit, and keep to use in some soup), and then chop into inch-long pieces.

Bung your pasta in some boiling water. Ideally, you need to cook this in the base of a steamer, and then you can stick the asparagus on top (you can just use a colander and a lid over the top of a pan if not). Keep an eye on your pasta, and once it's about 5 minutes' away from being done, pop the asparagus in the steamer on top (it'll take about 3-4 minutes).

In the meantime, tip a good slosh of olive oil in a frying pan on a low heat, and fry the garlic for a couple of minutes. Add the lemon juice, and switch off the heat.

Once the asparagus is cooked, whip it off the top of the pasta. Drain the pasta once it's al dente (not too soggy in other words), and tip into the frying pan or a bowl with the olive oil/garlic/lemon juice mix. Chuck in the asparagus, lemon zest and parsley, and swish it all round together.

Tip into bowls to serve - it'll need a good grind of pepper on top, and a generous scattering of cheese.

Lemon pudding

We gave this to Grandma and Grandad, to help them recover from an exhausting afternoon reading lots of children's books in Borders.

You'll need:

50g butter
200g sugar
zest of 2 lemons
100ml lemon juice (I juiced the lemons, then topped it up with a bit from a bottle)
3 eggs (separated)
50g self-raising flour
250ml milk

icing sugar to dust on top

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C.

Take your three egg whites, and whisk until they're firm (not stiff) - I did this in the food processor, but one of those hand whisks would also do the job.

In the food processor, cream together the butter, sugar and lemon zest. Add the lemon juice, egg yolks, flour and milk one at a time, giving each one a good blitz. You should have a smooth (ish) batter.

You'll then need to fold in the egg whites (carefully), and decant the lot into an oven-proof dish. It might be wise to run a little butter round the dish, so it doesn't stick.

Stand the dish on a baking tray, in about an inch of hot water. Carefully place the lot in the oven, and bake for 45-50 minutes. The top needs to be nice and brown, and should have set.

Dust with icing sugar, and eat while hot - you should have a beautiful gooey lemon curd underneath a very light sponge.

Lemon syllabub

Grandma and Grandad are staying at the moment, and made this for tea, after a hard day's work planting potatoes at the allotment.

This makes enough for 4. You'll need:

a carton of whipping cream (about 250-300 ml)
50 ml white wine
juice of a lemon
zest of two lemons
50g caster sugar

Put the caster sugar and whipping cream together into a mixing bowl, and whip until you've got soft peaks of cream. Carefully stir in the wine and lemon juice, and most of the lemon zest (you
need to save a bit to sprinkle on the top of the pudding at the end).

Decant into little ramekins or pretty glasses, sprinkle the remaining lemon zest on top, and serve with some lemony biscuits. It would also be lovely with some raspberries, I suspect.

Chard with lemon and olive oil

You wouldn't want to eat this on its own, but (a) it's good with things like sausages and (b) it makes chard taste nice, which is something of a miracle.

You'll need:

chard - much like spinach it cooks down, so you'll need more than you think
a lemon, juiced
a very good slug of peppery olive oil
lots of black pepper

Wash the chard, and roughly slice the leaves/stalks (you could do fine ribbons, but I can't usually be bothered). Plunge into a pan of boiling water for 6 minutes.

Drain, and tip the chard into a bowl. Pour over the lemon juice, and a really good slug of olive oil. Grind over lots of black pepper.

Serve fast, before it has chance to cool down.

Lemon, raisin and sour cream muffins

We made these in the morning, and then spent this afternoon at Whitburn, marvelling at the stripy lighthouse and the beautiful pebbles on the beach.

Makes an enormous amount (26 small cupcakes, or presumably about 13 large muffins). You'll need:

180g raisins
375g self-raising flour
220g sugar
rind of a lemon, finely grated
90g butter, melted
180g creme fraiche or sour cream
125ml milk
2 eggs

Stick your oven on at 180 degrees C, and line a cupcake pan with some paper cases.

Mix the flour, raisins, sugar and lemon rind in a bowl. Add the melted butter. In a large jug beat the milk, creme fraiche and eggs together, and then tip in. It'll look like an unholy mess - give it all a swish about, until all the flour has mixed in properly. It'll still look lumpy (that's the raisins for you), but will smell amazing.

Decant the mixture into your paper cases, trying not to drop it all over the floor. Bung in the oven for about 20 minutes, until they've started to go golden brown.

Mini carrot cakes with lemon drizzle icing

This was an an attempt to cheer you up, and distract you from the spots. It seemed to work - you had a ball drizzling the icing everywhere.

Makes about 12 little fairy cakes/cupcakes.

You'll need:

4oz butter
4oz sugar
4oz self-raising flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
3oz grated carrot
1 tablespoon raisins

Stick the oven on at 175 degrees C, and line your tins with baking cases (your favourite bit).

Put the butter, sugar, flour, mixed spice and eggs in a food processor, and blitz until everything's well combined and smooth. You could do this by hand - it'll just take longer and need more elbow grease.

Take your blade out of the food processor. Add the grated carrot and raisins, and mix by hand (you don't want to do this bit with the processor, as you'll end up with shredded raisins) to create a fairly sloppy batter.

Spoon the batter into your cases, trying not to drip. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or so, until the cakes have risen, and turned golden brown. Take out of the tins, and place on a rack to cool.

For the lemon drizzle icing you'll need:

1oz icing sugar
a little lemon juice

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Add a couple of splashes of lemon juice, and mix to a smooth paste. Thin this with a little more lemon juice, until it drips nicely off your spoon, and can be drizzled dramatically over the cakes, plate and worktop.

Purple sprouting broccoli, lemon and tuna pasta

You'd been at nursery all day, pootling about, and were starving. So this was a variation on an oldie (but a goodie).

You'll need (for two adults and one small person)

a couple of handfuls of purple sprouting broccoli
a tin of tuna in sunflower/olive oil
a clove of garlic, finely sliced/smashed
a lemon
lots of parmesan cheese
pasta

Stick the pasta on to cook in lots of boiling water.

Drain the oil from the tuna into a frying pan. Once it's heated up, add the garlic, and cook for a minute or so. Add the purple sprouting broccoli, and swish round and round in the pan for 3-4 minutes, until it's turned a dark greeny-purple colour. Add the tuna to the pan, breaking up any large chunks. Squeeze the juice of a lemon on top, and let it heat through. (If you like it really really lemony you could add some lemon zest at this point too.)

By this stage, your pasta should be cooked. Drain, mix the whole lot together and serve with lashings of parmesan cheese.

Smoked salmon, lemon and courgette pasta

We had a freezing cold morning in the park being pursued by ravenous geese, followed by a trip to Borders in the frenzied sale crowds. The former was rather better than the latter.

Tea was the result of leftovers from Christmas day (we had smoked salmon on little blinis as a starter).

You'll need:

pasta (spirali were good for this)
smoked salmon - whatever you've got left
grated rind of a lemon
a large courgette - sliced into chunks
an onion, finely sliced
salt and lots of black pepper

Gently fry the onion in a little olive oil until it's translucent. Add the courgette (you may need to add more olive oil at this point), and fry until soft.

While this is happening, stick your pasta on.

Grate the rind of your lemon into the courgette/onion mixture. Add some pepper/salt to season it. When your pasta's only got a couple of minutes to go, throw the smoked salmon into the frying pan with the courgette/onion mix, to heat it through.

Drain the pasta, and shove it in the pan with everything else. You could add a squeeze or two of juice from the lemon at this point, if you like the lemony taste.

Sprinkle with lots of grated cheese and eat straightaway. It'd be nice with a green salad.

Salmon with lemon and ginger

Another of the "oh, stick it all together in a foil parcel and it'll taste fabulous" recipes. Very useful, epsecially when you're in the middle of watching Shaun the Sheep, and want something quick to bung in the oven for tea.

You'll need:

a couple of pieces of salmon
a couple of inches of ginger
half a lemon, sliced into small chunks
lots of black pepper

Take two large squares of foil, and plonk each piece of salmon in the middle of one, skin down. Squeeze a little lemon juice over the top from the lemon chunks, and scatter them non-artistically around and over each fish. Peel and finely slice the ginger, and place on top of the salmon. Finish off with a good screw of black pepper.

Close the parcel so no steam can escape, and stick in the oven (at about 180 degrees) for around 20 minutes or so - it all depends on how thick your slices of salmon are. Once they're pale pink, you're onto a winner.

We ate this with noodles, stir fried with broccoli, onion and carrot. Chopsticks were quite popular...

Lemon and rosemary chicken with feta and tomato salad

We made Captain Jack a dress this afternoon, at the Shipley Art Gallery (they were having a Top Shop Toy Shop day...).

To celebrate his cross-dressing exploits (picture to follow on View from Nappy Mountain sometime soon), I stuck some chicken in the oven for tea.

You'll need:

a couple of chicken pieces
half a lemon, sliced into large chunks
a drizzle of olive oil
some rosemary from the garden

Chuck the chicken in a roasting dish. Drizzle the olive oil over the pieces, thrown in the lemon and rosemary, and stick a bit of black pepper on top. Roast in the oven at around 200 degrees for an hour (or until the juices run clear when you stick a knife in the chicken).

We ate this with a green salad (natch), a rice, onion and pepper salad (does what it says on the tin, and was really to use up yesterday's rice that we'd had with the sticky pork ribs), and a feta and tomato salad.

2 large tomatoes, preferably fairly ripe, and sliced
whatever feta you've got left in the fridge (assuming you may have cooked roast vegetables, feta and couscous earlier in the week)
some nice balsamic vinegar (although maybe not as nice as the stuff I accidentally bought in Morrisons on Monday that I thought was £1.99 and turned out to be £5.99...)
salt and pepper

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, and leave to marinade for half an hour.

Roast chicken with lemon

This is about the easiest thing you could ever hope to make.

one chicken (for lots of people) or one pouissin (for one)
one lemon

Cut the lemon into quarters. Squeeze a bit of juice over the chicken, and stick three of the quarters inside. Leave the other one in the roasting dish. Grind black pepper over the top of the chicken.

Put either a lid on, or a bit of foil over the top, and put the chicken in the oven (around 180 degrees) for an hour. If it's a small chicken, it'll probably need another half an hour, with the foil/lid taken off - if it's bigger, just keep testing it until the juices run clear (that means stick a knife in it, and if the stuff that comes out is pink, it needs cooking for longer!).

Bring out of the oven and leave to rest for a few minutes before carving.

We ate this with boiled new potatoes from Grandma and Grandad's garden, a green salad, and some lime pickle. Oh, and a bottle of La Ressaudie 2007 - but that bit went way over your head.