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.

Fishcakes

Perfect for a quick tea, after a busy afternoon jumping on beds and playing with Playmobil dinosaurs.

Makes 10 fishcakes

6 or 7 small/medium potatoes, peeled and chopped (or whatever leftover mash you have in the fridge)
a little milk
a good couple of knobs of butter
1 tin of tuna, drained
1 onion, finely diced
a handful of fresh parsley, chopped
a handful of fresh chives, chopped
a couple of tablespoons of flour

Stick the chopped potatoes in a pan of hot water, and simmer until soft. Mash together, adding a little milk to get a smooth texture. Tip into a large bowl, and add the tuna, parsley and chives.

Fry the onion in a little olive oil, until it's translucent. Chuck into the potato/tuna mixture. Mix everything together gently, and form into smallish fishcakes (about the diameter of digestive biscuits, but a lot thicker).

Melt a little butter in a frying pan over a gentle heat. Coat each fishcake in a little flour, and let sizzle in the pan - it'll need a couple of minutes each side.

We ate our fishcakes with some homemade coleslaw, and a green salad.

Note: If you want to do this properly with fresh fish, you'll need to poach your piece of fish in simmering milk to start off with. Flake the fish (taking off the skin, and removing any bones), and use the milk in the mash.

Butternut squash stuffed with fragrant rice and feta

You're not a fan of butternut squash at the moment, so you had bolognese and rice for tea. It was the first time you really got the hang of the whole knife and fork thing (mainly because your Dad explained it to you in terms of Thunderbirds rockets).

This makes enough for 2. You'll need:

1 large butternut squash
cooked rice (I used about a mugful of dried rice)
half a pack of feta cheese, cubed
a large handful of fresh flatleaf parsley, chopped
a large handful of fresh coriander, chopped
lots of black pepper

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C. First of all, you need to sort out your butternut squash - halve it, and scoop out (and discard) all the seeds and stringy stuff. An ice-cream scoop is quite handy for doing this bit.

Then you'll need to hack out a bit of the flesh (again, the scoop is quite useful for this), to give you room to stuff in the rice. Don't discard this - roast it in the oven, and shove it in some soup.

Drizzle a little olive oil into your butternut squash halves, and stick in the oven to roast for about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, tip the cooked rice into a large bowl, add the parsley, coriander, feta and lots of black pepper and mix well. This is the stuffing that's going to go in your squash.

After it's had 30 minutes in the oven (and the flesh is nicely softened), bring it out and stuff it with the rice mixture. Put it back in the oven again for another 20-30 minutes, until the rice has heated through, and any bits of feta peeking out the top have browned.

Decant onto a plate, and eat. You could have it as it is, but I ended up making a tomato sauce to go with it:

You could eat this as it is, but I made a tomato sauce to go with it. You'll need:

half a tin of tomatoes
a slosh or two of olive oil
a tablespoon balsamic vingegar
black pepper
a few flakes of dried chilli

Chuck half a tin of chopped tomatoes into a frying pan with a splash of olive oil and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Add a little black pepper and a few chilli flakes, and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes or so, until it's reduced.

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.

Spring greens soup with feta

I adapted this one from a lovely recipe in Olive. It's very green, and goes well with some freshly baked dough balls. It's also a good way of using up the parsley mountain, which is threatening to take over the front garden.

Makes enough for 3. You'll need:

an onion, finely chopped
a clove of garlic, finely chopped
a small spring cabbage (or spring greens), shredded
a couple of spring onions, chopped into large chunks
a large bunch of parsley, scissored into small strips
half a pack of feta cheese, chopped into smallish pieces
chicken or vegetable stock - enough to cover the cabbage
lots of black pepper

Fry the onion and garlic in a little olive oil (or whatever there is to hand - I ended up using some bacon fat that was left over after cooking your tea - it gave it a lovely flavour). Once they've softened, tip them into your soup pot.

Add the cabbage, parsley, spring onions and stock, and bring to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes until the cabbage is tender. Decant into bowls, sprinkle the feta over the top, and douse with lots of black pepper.

Fish parcels, with tomatoes, olives and parsley

A funny old day today - we went to the Baltic this afternoon, which was unusually uninspiring (all the kids things in the Quay on Level 2 just looked battered and old, and there didn't seem to be much that engaged you).

We ended up taking so long at the supermarket afterwards (thank you Tesco, your new layout is most unappreciated) that tea had to be something bung-in-the-oven-quick that would cook in 20 minutes while we watched a bit of telly.

You'll need:

a fillet each of white fish or salmon (we had pouting, which I'd never come across before, but was cheap in Morrisons. I think salmon would have been better - it was a bit bland)
half a jar of black olives
half a punnet of cherry tomatoes, halved
some long stems of parsley (we are still inundated with the stuff, even in March)
a little olive oil
black pepper

Turn the oven on to about 180 degrees C. Take a large piece of foil (squareish), and place a fillet in the centre. Chuck a tablespoon of cherry tomatoes on top, add 8-10 black olives and a couple of stems of parsley, and drizzle a little olive oil over the top. Season well with black pepper.

Fold up the foil into a parcel, and then place on a baking tray (if it leaks, you don't want fish juice all over the floor of your oven). Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or so - depending on the thickness of your fish.

We ate ours with some boiled, buttered potatoes, and some shredded cabbage.