Recipe of the Week

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Make an aillade to liven up grilled vegetables by processing peeled garlic cloves and walnut halves with sea salt and a dessertspoon of iced water. Now slowly add olive oil until you have a thick emulsion. Add chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon then whizz again. The result will be a thick green sauce, to be served in dollops on top of summer veg such as courgettes and aubergines.

Give whole unpeeled tiger prawns a Provencal flavour by tossing them in olive oil with sliced garlic and plenty of seasoning. As soon as the grey shells turn pink, add a little pastis (such as Ricard) and some chopped parsley. Allow to bubble for a couple of minutes then serve with crusty bread and eat with your fingers.

‘Black butter’ with capers is delicious with fillets of sole or wings of skate and is simple to make - provided your timing is right. While the fish grills, melt a very generous knob of unsalted butter and as soon as its starts to fizz add a tablespoon of rinsed capers and some chopped parsley. Finish with a squeeze of lemon and pour straight away over the cooked fish.

For a quick and spicy Roman pasta dish, first fry some cubed smoked bacon, readily available in supermarkets, in a little olive oil with chopped garlic. As soon as the bacon takes some colour, add tomato passata and several crumbled dried red chillies. Simmer the sauce for ten minutes while you boil the rigatoni and grate some parmesan.

For an indulgent summer supper for two, serve fresh black figs, chopped into quarters, alongside thinly sliced Parma ham and chunks of mozzarella. Scatter with fresh basil and serve with toasted slices of ciabatta bread, rubbed with the cut side of a clove of garlic and drizzled with olive oil.p>

Make a classic French egg-mayonnaise salad by first hard-boiling fresh, free-range eggs then dunking them in cold water. Peel as soon as they are cool enough to handle, slice and arrange over crisp salad leaves such as Little Gem or frisee. Drape some cured anchovies over the yolk of the eggs, add a dollop of good-quality mayonnaise and a sprinkling of paprika and serve with hot baguette.

For a summer fish dish, try tuna tartare Caribbean style which, like the Mexican ceviche, uses raw fish ‘cooked’ in citric juices. Buy a thick slice of tuna and chop into very small pieces. Then marinate in lime juice with salt, chopped shallot, green chilli and fresh thyme. Leave for an hour in the fridge, turning once, before serving with a tomato and red onion salad.