FLAVOURS

I love sorrel. It’s wincing sourness crumples your nose like an old lady at a bus stop. I remember, crouching in the kitchen garden of my childhood, sucking the lemony stalks, one eye half closed.

In 1980 Elizabeth David wrote a delightfully perverse and typically judicious article called 'The Besprinkling of a Rosemary Branch'. She finds it an overbearingly fragrant and frankly undeservedly ubiquitous herb.

The mezze is a perfect antidote to festive feasting and an ideal way to eat for those of us resolved to shake off the lingering effects of over-indulgence.

An introduction to some paisos Catalan food prepared for a wedding banquet in Barcelona. Local dishes such as Escalivada, Xatonada with Romesco sauce, butifarra and faves.

In the most unlikely corner of Vieux Nice at Oliviera, Nadim Beyrouti and his wife combine a passion for the oils of the region with the simplest ingredients.

I have an on-off relationship with tomatoes. Mostly off. Being so often tasteless renders them largely pointless. Tinned tomatoes start in Italy and so some flavour is guaranteed. They are great when it comes to sauces and soups and there is no need to use those watery ragus or passata from a jar.

You can really let your imagination loose on salads. You can compose anything you want, from recreating a standard hot dish as a salad to combining the bizarre and the sublime in hitherto unknown combinations.

Rouille is a provencal sauce comprising olive oil with breadcrumbs, garlic, saffron and chile peppers. A common accompaniment to fish soup and often served with a crouton and grated gruyere. It is something of a rare treat and I love it.

Whenever we come back from Barcelona, it’s always laden with anything tinned I can’t get here. One of them is the little baby squid in olive oil – chipirones. No comparison with the fresh ones but when in need.