Courgette, chickpea and filo pastry pie

I made this on a whim, mainly to use up a box of filo pastry I had in the freezer and the mountain of courgettes from the allotment. It was really good - and would be perfect if you've got vegetarian friends coming round for a meal.

I can't claim credit for thinking it up though - it's the blessed Nigella's recipe, slightly tweaked. Feeds 4 if you add a nice green salad, and maybe some crispy French baguette.

You'll need:

1 smallish onion, finely chopped
2 medium-sized courgettes, diced
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
60g rice (I used basmati)
1 can of chickpeas, drained
a good blob of butter (about 25g), melted
100g filo pastry

Stick the oven on at about 200 degrees C. Dig out a springform tin (one of those where you unhitch the sides, leaving the base free) - it needs to be a good 5cm deep.

Fry the onion and cumin seeds in a good slosh of olive oil, until the onion goes translucent. Add the coriander and turmeric, and mix well. Sling in the courgettes, and fry on a high-ish heat, until they too are soft and bright yellow. Add the rice, and stir it round well, so it takes on the oil and spices.

Gently add around 250-300ml water in stages - you want the water to be gradually absorbed by the rice. Stir well every couple of minutes - it should be cooked after 10-12 minutes. Drain the chickpeas, and chuck into the mixture.

Then comes the fun bit (you really liked this part). Take your springform tin, and thoroughly brush it all over with melted butter. Then layer the sheets of filo pastry (keep a couple for the lid), putting them at an angle to each other so no filling will escape, and leaving a little overlap at the sides. As you slide each pastry sheet into the tin, brush each one carefully with more melted butter.

Tip in the filling, and fold over the overlaps. Take your last couple of sheets of filo, scrunch them, and arrange on the top. Brush with more melted butter to seal.

Stick in the oven for 20 minutes or so, until the pastry is golden brown and crispy. Once you've retrieved it from the oven, decant from the springform tin, and stand back and admire for all of...ooh 20 seconds before you dig in.

Chorizo, chickpea and spinach salad

We spent the afternoon at the swimming pool, and came home completely knackered and starving. Luckily, you can make this in about 10 minutes.

Makes enough for three. You'll need:

chorizo sausage (a couple of hundred grammes should do - depends how chorizo mad you are)
a large avocado, peeled and sliced
half a small bag of spinach
a tin of chickpeas, drained

Slice the chorizo, and sling into a frying pan (you don't need to add any extra oil). Fry for 8-10 minutes or so, until it goes crispy and has released all its oil. Tip in the chickpeas, mix well so they're coated in the chorizo oil, and warm through.

Stick the spinach into a bowl, and scatter the avocado throughout. Tip in the warm chickpeas and chorizo, and gently mix together (the chorizo oil will coat the spinach, so there's no need for any extra dressing).

Season with lots of black pepper, and then decant into some bowls. We ate ours with some crusty bread. It disappeared very rapidly...

Chicken cacciatore

Back from a week in the sunshine in France with Grandma and Grandad, we needed some comfort food - Gateshead is freezing cold, rainy and windy.

Makes enough for 4. You'll need:

4 chicken thighs (skinned)
1 onion, finely sliced
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 large courgette, sliced
1 tin of chickpeas
1 tin of tomatoes
1 tablespoon of chopped rosemary
2 bay leaves
3 or 4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon, chopped (or a small pack of lardons)
a splosh of balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar

Depending on how much time you have, you can either leave the thighs whole (they'll take longer to cook this way), or take as much meat off the bones as you can (which gives you the added bonus of making chicken stock with the leftovers).

Stick the onion and garlic in a pan with the bacon and a little olive oil. Fry for 5 minutes or so, until the onion has turned translucent. Add the chopped rosemary and chicken, and fry for another 5 minutes or so, until the chicken has browned. Chuck in the tin of tomatoes, about half a tin of water (you could go the whole hog here and add wine instead), a splosh of balsamic vinegar the sugar and the bay leaves. Leave to simmer for 15 minutes, until the chicken is cooked (this may well be nearer 30-40 minutes if you're using the chicken thighs whole).

Chuck in the courgette slices and chickpeas, and simmer for another 5 minutes, until the courgettes have softened and the chickpeas heated through. Season with lots of black pepper and a little salt, and you're done.

We ate this with some couscous and chopped coriander (and sneakily added a few dried chillies on the top).

Pepper and chickpea couscous

It was a leftovers kind of night - there was some pastry left from yesterday's quiches, and tomato sauce from the night before's sausage, roasted vegetables and couscous. Magically, these became pizza, to be eaten with salad and some chickpea couscous.

You'll need

5 handfuls of dried couscous
a little butter
half a large red pepper, chopped
an onion, finely chopped
a clove of garlic, finely chopped
salt and pepper
a can of chickpeas

Stick a little knob of butter in a non-stick pan, and let it melt. Add the couscous, and swirl it about in the butter for a couple of minutes. (If you wanted a spiced couscous, you could add a teaspoon of ras al hanout at this point). Add enough water to cover the top of the couscous by about half a centimetre, and leave on a low heat for a couple of minutes until it's been absorbed. Have a try of the couscous - if it's still too gritty and hard, give it a stir, add a little more water, and take off the heat. When you come back to it in a couple of minutes, it should be done, and you should be able to fluff it up with a fork.

Fry the onion and garlic in a tablespoon of olive oil until softened. Add the pepper, and cook until everything is soft. Drain the chickpeas and add to the mixture. Take off the heat, and add in the cooked couscous. Chuck a bit of salt and pepper over the top, and you're good to go. If you've got some flat leaf parsley hanging around that looks quite nice finely chopped and scattered on top.

Sausages with spicy tomato and chickpea couscous

A bit of a cheat, really, as the only thing I cooked today was the sausages and couscous - the sauce was made a few weeks ago and has been languishing in the freezer for a day when we got in late. We spent the afternoon in Leazes Park feeding the ducks, clambering in the playground and eating ice cream, so there really wasn't much time to be terribly creative for tea.

To feed all three of us, you need

6 large sausages (3 for your Dad, 2 for me and 1 for you - although you often nick some of mine as well...)

tin of tomatoes
one onion, sliced
tin of chickpeas
tomato puree
cinnamon/cumin, maybe a little paprika
veg - a pepper/courgette/aubergine, whatever you've got
a clove of garlic

Fry the onion and garlic in some olive oil until they're translucent. Add the pepper/courgette/whatever, and fry for a couple of minutes more until they soften slightly. Add a teaspoon of cinnamon and cumin, and if you'd like it spicy a teaspoon of hot paprika or chilli powder/flakes, and a squeeze of tomato puree. Fry for a minute or two.

Then add your tomatoes, and probably half a tomato tin of water. Bring to the boil, and then simmer for 15 minutes. Add your chickpeas, and cook for another 15 minutes minimum - it'd benefit from about an hour altogether, I reckon.

Cook your sausages - I quite like bunging them in the oven, or grilling them. You could also put them into the sauce to cook - just put them in at the same time as the chickpeas, and make sure you cook them for at least half an hour.

Serve the sauce sloshed over some couscous (about 6 handfuls-worth of grains seems to work for the three of us), with some green salad. There's usually enough sauce left to stick a couple of portions in the freezer.