I grew up among the vast, flat steppes of southern Ukraine. It is the land where Scythians had built their ancient civilisation, leaving 20m-high kurhans (burial grounds) and many miles of extremely fertile virgin soils, which luckily are still preserved in Askania Nova biosphere reserve. The soil, called chernozem (black soil) has always been extremely rich, and the climate hot and dry for five months of the year. Then came the Soviets, and in 1956 they built a dam over the river Dnieper, creating a colossal reservoir and a complex irrigation system and many a canal. Before that happened, my aunt once told me, the tomatoes our ancestors used to grow were tiny and fiercely sweet. Now, with water in abundance, but the soil just as rich and the sun even hotter than it used to be 60 years ago, we grow really superb and sizable fruit and vegetables.

The most common tomatoes are now dusty-pink, gnarled and comically misshapen, the size of a small grapefruit. They are some of the most perfect tomatoes in the world – fragrant, juicy, meaty. When I cook back home in Ukraine, or when I smuggle a small suitcase-full back to London, I don’t even bother grating them when I make tomato sauce. My son and I simply grab some with our hands and effortlessly squash them into the pan, juices splattering all over us and the wall behind the hob. I sometimes also smuggle some stubby, round aubergines, royal-purple with faint fragmented lines, as if splashed by a hapless painter-decorator.

Another thing I adore is courgettes, and luckily British ones are of amazing quality. What I love most is a slow-cooked, deep, dark brown and velvety courgette, with every single sugar molecule teased out of it. Sliced thinly and cooked for ages until they melt into the most delicious sauce, this was my favourite thing to eat when I lived in Italy as a student. In my view, the two culinary worlds of Ukraine and Italy make natural friends with their unbreakable atavistic spirit and exaltation of their land and the sun.

When I was a kid, we made a courgette paste at the end of the season to use up the glut and to eat over the winter. At least 20kg of courgettes would be slow-cooked with some onion, garlic and tomatoes until quite dry. This thick puree was then sent to sterilised jars and topped with a clever Soviet contraption that seals jars hermetically.

Of course, you could find a watery shop-bought version, which my dad shamelessly preferred! In fact, my mum says courgette paste wasn’t my grandmother’s favourite either – she preferred “aubergine caviar” for winter months. Courgettes were cheap, and at the end of the season she mostly gave them to the pigs.

But I loved it, eaten over a slice of coriander- and caraway-seed Borodinsky bread, molasses-dark. Nowadays, in autumn and winter, I love stuffing this paste into Azerbaijani-style qutabs or half moon flatbreads. I make an unleavened water and flour dough, let it rest, then roll it out into 30cm circles and spread the bottom half with the paste. I scatter over a little feta and a couple of pomegranate seeds and fry them in a dry pan for three minutes on each side.It is also amazing with crudités or some pitta breads, or heated with a pinch of chilli flakes and stirred through pasta with some of the cooking water and pecorino.

Slow-cooked courgette ‘caviar’

Makes 1.2 kg
2kg courgettes (green or yellow)
100ml vegetable oil or mild olive oil
500g white onions, peeled and diced
300g carrots, clean and coarsely grated
700g ripe, flavoursome tomatoes
2 tbsp sugar
Flaky sea salt

1 First, halve the courgettes lengthways and thinly slice them. Sometimes I just use the side of a box grater for speed.

2 In a large pan (I use a huge stock pot), heat 50ml of the oil. Add the onions and cook over a low-medium heat until they start to soften and just begin to acquire a gentle golden hue (it may take up to 10 minutes). Now, add the carrots and cook, stirring from time to time, until they too soften. Cook both for 5-10 minutes.

3 Add the courgettes and cook over a medium-high heat for the first 10 minutes, stirring regularly. When they start to collapse, lower the heat and cook slowly, stirring often, for about 30 minutes.

4 Once the courgettes have been on for 30 minutes, grate the tomatoes coarsely, discarding the skins. Add the tomato pulp and juice to the pan. Cook the mixture down over a medium-high heat, stirring from time to time. You want the mixture to keep catching slightly, so that it caramelises, but make sure to scrape at it with a wooden spoon, adding splashes of water to help it along and to stop it burning. Keep an eye on it for the next 30‑40 minutes. You can help the process along by gently crushing all the vegetables with a potato masher.

5 At this stage, season your courgettes. I just like flaky sea salt, but you can certainly get creative with it and add a little spice. When its starts spitting violently, lower the heat. You should end up with a thick, brown, paste.

6 Let the mixture cool and sterilise a jar. If there is no way you can seal those hermetically, pour a little oil on top of the paste to help keep it longer. Store it in a cold place like a cellar or your fridge until needed.

• Olia Hercules is a food writer, food stylist and the author of Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine and Beyond (Mitchell Beazley); @oliahercules. Rachel Roddy is away.

The recipe

Put a tablespoon of olive oil in a shallow-sided pan. Fry a peeled, crushed clove of garlic for a minute or so till fragrant, then stir in a teaspoon of cumin seed. Chop 500g of fresh tomatoes and add them to the pan. As the tomato simmers, stir in a teaspoon of mild or hot chilli powder, a half-teaspoon of ground turmeric and a generous seasoning of salt.

Pod 500g of broad beans, then cook them briefly in boiling water. If they are large, squeeze them from their thin, papery skins. Let the tomatoes and spices cook for 15-20 minutes or so, until you have a soft, sauce-like texture and much spicy juice. Roughly chop about 350g of summer squash or courgettes and add them to the pan. As the squash starts to soften, slice 150g sugar snaps and stir them in, together with the skinned, cooked broad beans. Add a couple of handfuls of peas (frozen are fine). Continue cooking till the peas are approaching tenderness.

Five minutes before serving, add 150g of cherry tomatoes, halved, and let them soften but not lose their shape. Check the seasoning – it should be quite spicy – and serve. Enough for 2.

The trick

Once the tomato and garlic sauce is simmering, take care not to cook the green vegetables for too long. They should be crisp and bright to contrast with the softness of the tomato sauce. At this point in the season, broad beans tend to be toughening up a little, so unless they are very small, boil them for a good 4 or 5 minutes, then pop them from their skins while the tomato sauce simmers.

The twist

The contrast of crisp, fresh green vegetables and soft, spicy tomatoes is the point of this dish, so avoid the temptation to add spinach or leafy greens. Fennel, finely sliced, and broccoli or artichoke hearts will work neatly instead of or as well as the peas and beans. This is a good recipe for using up your squash, not just the green summer variety but butternut and pumpkin, too. Use what you have around.

Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @NigelSlater

The best bit about the laziness that has dogged me throughout the month of August has been the slow vegetable roasts – the cooked jumbles of ripe peppers, garlic and tomatoes, sometimes with onions or aubergines or courgettes – that I use both hot as a main dish or cool as an accompaniment.

Opening the fridge and finding a china bowl of those soft, sweet harlequin vegetables has been useful to say the least: as a caponata-style salad; an accompaniment for grilled lamb chops splattered, Jackson Pollock-style, with a mint-laden sauce verte; and, this week, as a bed on which to bake whole fish (the fishy, tomato juices that collect in the roasting tin were as good as any fish soup).

Red mullet or bream seemed appropriate – what with the vegetables leaning towards the Mediterranean – and both fish have enough flavour to cope with the garlic in the roast vegetables. These were far from the only possibility: I could have used anything other than salmon (which seems out of kilter with peppers). Mackerel, especially if the skin catches in the oven’s extreme heat, would also be fine.

My high-summer lethargy didn’t prevent me from trimming the spiky leaves and the thistle-like choke from a bagful of small artichokes, then stewing their tender hearts with tomatoes and stock, and a fistful of warmly aromatic ras el hanout and mint.

The juices alone got us grabbing at the nearest loaf for something to sponge up the mint- and cinnamon-flecked liquid from our plates.

A little stew of artichokes and tomatoes

Every time I prepare globe artichokes, afterwards finding the work surface strewn with the inevitable leafy, thistle-like debris, I ask myself if they are really worth the trouble. But once my fork delves into the delicate, pale green hearts, fried in butter, stewed with tomatoes and spices or simmered in olive oil and lemon, I find myself smitten all over again.

Serves 4
olive oil 2 tbsp
onion 1, medium-sized
artichokes 4, young
a lemon
chilli 1 red, medium-hot
ras el hanout 2 tsp
tomatoes 500g
orange 1, medium-sized
stock 150ml
coriander a small bunch
mint a small bunch
parmesan a handful, grated

Warm the olive oil in a casserole dish over a medium heat. Halve and peel the onion then cut each half into 5 or 6 segments. Let the onion cook in the olive oil for 10 minutes until soft, stirring occasionally, and letting it colour lightly.

Meanwhile, trim the artichokes, removing a good third of each one, then cut them in half and tug out the whiskery “choke”. Cut the lemon in half then rub each artichoke half with the cut side of half of the lemon as you go, to prevent them from discolouring. Chop the chilli, then stir it into the onion with the ras el hanout. Roughly chop the tomatoes and add them, with the artichokes, then leave it to simmer.

Remove a couple of sections of peel from the orange using a small, sharp knife or peeler, then add them to the pan together with the stock and bring to the boil. Lower the heat immediately, season then leave to simmer for 35 minutes or until the artichokes are completely tender.

Chop the coriander and mint and add them to the pan together with the juice of the remaining half of the lemon. Check the seasoning, adding more salt or pepper as you wish, then serve, passing bowls of grated parmesan around the table.

Baked bream, peppers and tomatoes

I like to make certain the vegetables are fully soft and roasted before adding the fish. When the fish is placed on top of the vegetables, spooning over some of the juices from the bottom of the roasting tin is a thoroughly good idea. At the table, you will need some bread, or a spoon, to make the most of them.

Serves 2
onion 1, large
olive oil 2 tbsp
butter 1 thin slice
orange or red peppers 4
tomatoes 300g
garlic a clove
basil a small bunch (about 8g)
red wine vinegar 1 tbsp
bream or red mullet fillets 4 (2 fish)
thyme sprigs 8

Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6. Peel, halve and thinly slice the onion. Warm the olive oil in a heavy-based, deep-sided roasting tin or baking dish over a moderate heat, then add the butter. Cook the onion until it is soft and pale gold, then remove it from the heat.

Slice the peppers in half, discard the seeds and core, then slice them thinly and add them to the softened onions. Chop the tomatoes and stir them in, seasoning as you go. Peel and thinly slice the garlic and add it to the vegetables.

Place the dish in the oven and bake for about 30 minutes until all is tender.

Tear the basil leaves and fold them into the mixture with the red wine vinegar. Place the fillets of bream on top of the vegetables, skin side down, season with salt and black pepper then add the thyme sprigs. Trickle a little olive oil over the surface and return the roasting tin to the oven. Continue cooking for 15 minutes till the fish is tender and turning golden.

Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @NigelSlater

No longer the domain of Saturday afternoon barbecues, cooking over wood and coals – intentionally charring and burning – has become quite a trend. Bearded men in waxed aprons fill every Nordic restaurant worth its salt and the technique has been celebrated at restaurants such as the wonderful Kitty Fisher’s and Black Axe Mangal. Though the grill masters of London’s Turkish ocakbasi restaurants will tell you it’s nothing new.

You’d be forgiven for assuming that this cavemanesque cooking is all about meat, but in fact vegetables sit centre stage at most of these kitchens. At home, we’ve overlooked how much a bit of char and smoke can compliment a beloved vegetable or boost a neutral cheese, such as halloumi or feta. An aubergine is an obvious pairing with a bit of smoke – babaganoush is a friendly blend of vegetables and smoke, as is a halved aubergine grilled and basted in white miso on every turn. Onions too, work well grilled slowly and tossed through plump pearl barley grains. Even halved little gems are transformed when quickly charred and simply dressed in oil, vinegar and chopped herbs.

This charring is, of course, possible on a griddle pan or even a good heavy‑based frying pan, but its natural habitat is on the barbecue. The resolution to cook outside to me seems most welcome on a weeknight, when taking the kitchen outside brings a holiday feeling to an otherwise normal Tuesday or Wednesday. These have been the char-edged suppers we’ve cooked quickly this summer.

Harissa and lime halloumi with flatbreads

Halloumi is a real crowd-pleaser when it comes to barbecues. I have never understood the blanket fascination, but I do like its texture when its cooked just right, charred and crisped a little on the outside and perfectly melting inside, if you hit this sweet spot, gone is the offputting rubbery squeakiness. It does need some help on the flavour front; a quick marinade will boost your squeaky cheese out of its simple milky profile. It pairs well with a hit of hot chilli and a little bit of sweetness.

Here, it has a quick dip in a harissa, lime and rose marinade, which is backed up by a grilled relish that combines smoke from charred red onions, some piquancy from a good drizzle of pomegranate molasses, sweetness from red peppers and a salty olive kick. It’s also great in flatbreads, burgers and toasted sandwiches. The cooling yoghurt dampens down the chilli as well as providing a pleasing temperature contrast between the fridge-cold yoghurt and the grill-hot halloumi.

If you like, you could stir a few crushed dried rose petals into your harissa to make it rosy. By all means, use jarred roasted red peppers to speed things up.

Serves 6
2 x 250g pack of halloumi, cut into 2cm slices
Juice and zest of 1 lime
1 tbsp rose harissa
A handful of dried crushed rose petals (optional)

For the relish
2 red onions, peeled and finely sliced
2 red peppers
A handful of pitted green olives
2 tbsp pomegranate molasses
Salt and black pepper, to taste

For the harissa yoghurt
6 tbsp Greek yoghurt
1 tsp harissa
2 tbsp tahini
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and black pepper
1 tbsp sumac

To serve
4 flatbreads or wraps (see my recipe here)
2 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted
A few handfuls of salad leaves

1 Combine the halloumi, lime zest, 1 tbsp harissa and, if you like, a few crushed petals. Mix by hand to coat the halloumi. Set aside.

2 Light your barbecue (or heat up your griddle pan). Let the flames die down a little, then cook the onions, turning occasionally, for 10 minutes, or until soft and sweet. Char the peppers alongside until black all over, then put them into a bowl and cover with a tea towel while they cool.

3 Meanwhile, ripple the yoghurt with harissa, tahini and lime, season, then sprinkle with sumac and refrigerate.

4 Peel the skins from the peppers and deseed them. Chop with the onions and green olives. Add 1 tbsp pomegranate molasses and mix well, taste and add seasoning, if needed.

5 Stoke the barbecue. You want it to be medium hot – no big flames. Cook the halloumi for 2-3 minutes on each side, or until just-charred and a little blistered, and softly melting inside.

6 Meanwhile, warm the flatbreads on the other side of the barbecue for a minute or so on each side.

7 Pile the halloumi on to the flatbreads, top with spoonfuls of the onion relish, the harissa yoghurt, sesame seeds and a few salad leaves.

Charred courgettes with mozzarella and lovage (main picture)

Courgettes can be grilled when finely sliced or in brave chunks. Wafer thin they grill in seconds and make a fine salad, but here I go for bigger pieces, cooked until the outside chars and the inside steams to a buttery softness. Sit them next to some cooling mozzarella and you’ve got all the contrasts, the hot and cold, neutral and punchy, calm and bitter.

The lovage oil is the crowning glory and simpler than you might think, though a good pesto would work too.

I cooked this on a hot and heavy day last summer at a supper club and it’s now a meal I regularly dream of: the sweetness of the charred courgettes paired with the cool, calm and creamy burrata and the verdant hit from the lovage is pure summer. It was the brainchild of the brilliant Robbin Holmgren, the head chef at Fifteen London. I am sure his version is much fancier, but this is how I do it at home. Any leftover lovage oil can be kept in a jar in the fridge for a few weeks. If lovage is hard to get hold of, a mixture of parsley and celery leaves will work, as would most other soft herbs.

Serves 4
A small bunch of lovage (or a mixture of parsley and celery leaves)
4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt and black pepper
6 courgettes (I use a mixture of yellow and green)
2 balls of mozzarella or burrata

1 First, make the lovage oil. Fill a bowl with boiling water. Plunge the lovage into it, scoop out immediately and immerse in a bowl of cold water to cool. Then pat dry with kitchen paper. This keeps the lovage green.

2 Put the lovage in a food processor or blender, add the extra-virgin olive oil and a small pinch of salt, then blend until really smooth. Sieve the oil to get rid of any big bits of herb, then transfer to a jar and set aside.

3 Next, heat your barbecue (or griddle pan) until it’s smoking hot. While it heats up, cut your courgettes – bigger ones into rounds and smaller ones into long slices. Once the griddle is hot, char your courgettes on both sides until nicely charred and softened a little in the middle.

4 Serve the charred courgettes on a platter next to the burrata torn open, finished with a good pinch of sea salt and a grinding of black pepper, and a good drizzle of the lovage oil.

Anna’s tips for barbecuing vegetables

• Cook on charcoal or wood if you can as it will impart that smoky flavour that gas barbecues won’t.
• Use lumpwood charcoal. It’s more expensive but will hold heat longer so you will use less. Avoid firelighters if you can.
• Wait for the right moment to cook. This may sound basic but wait for the flames to properly die down. You want the coals white hot, grey and glowing which give the most even heat.
• Control the heat just as you would if you were using a gas hob. If things are too hot then take your food off and let the coals cool down.
• If you are cooking more than one thing it might be useful to have two temperatures on your barbecue. To do this, once the coals are hot pile most of them to one side which will be hot for grilling, and a few on the other side for warming bread and gentler cooking.
• Don’t oil your vegetables before they hit the grill. Instead, dress them carefully after grilling, while they are still warm in good olive oil, citrus or vinegar.

• Anna Jones is a chef, writer and author of A Modern Way to Eat and A Modern Way to Cook (Fourth Estate); annajones.co.uk; @we_are_food

This is one of our new “twisted” wine cocktails, made from spirits derived from grapes. Serves one.

25ml limoncello
25ml ginger liqueur (we use Giffard Ginger of the Indies)
2 tsp finely grated fresh ginger
20ml fresh lemon juice
Champagne, to top
Pickled ginger (pink, ideally), to garnish

Shake the limoncello, ginger liqueur and pulp, and lemon juice over ice, and strain into a chilled flute. Top with champagne and garnish with pickled ginger petals scrunched up into a flower shape.

• Clement Robert, 28°-50° Wine Workshop & Kitchen, London W1.

I am feeling stupidly nostalgic this week, because it’s 10 years since I started writing my Weekend column, and next week will be my 500th in total. It began life as The New Vegetarian, and one ingredient that has been at the heart of so many of my favourite dishes, then and now, is the aubergine – in my book Plenty, my first collection of Guardian recipes, I even had one chapter called The Mighty Aubergine. (Looking back, I feel sorry for the other vegetables, whose chapters just took their name – Tomatoes, Mushrooms, Green Beans and so forth.) It seems fitting, then, that both this week’s and next week’s recipes are full of aubergines.

Over the years, I have grilled, roasted, burned, steamed, stuffed and fried them, and used them in everything from croquettes and cheesecakes to salads and soups; the aubergine’s ability to reassure and surprise me knows no end. This week’s recipes are a case in point. The paneer-stuffed aubergine reminds me of an early favourite dish in which I wrapped little balls of ricotta in long, thin strips of roast aubergine, but I am also amazed at how brilliantly the very savoury combination of aubergines and anchovies works when the vegetable is roasted. In fact, I’m now getting excited just thinking about where my aubergine adventures will take me next.

Paneer-stuffed aubergine in red lentil and coconut sauce

There are two types of paneer available: the slightly rubbery kind, which is great for making tikka kebabs, and the softer kind, which has a texture more like compressed ricotta. The latter is the one you want here; I found it at Sainsbury’s, but if you can’t get hold of it, the rubbery kind will do – just coarsely grate it first. Both the aubergine slices and lentil sauce can be prepared the day before if you want to get ahead. That way, you can just roll up the paneer and bake the dish on the day. Serves six.

3 large aubergines, stalks removed, cut lengthways into 0.5cm-thick slices
100ml groundnut oil
Salt and black pepper
6 shallots, peeled and finely chopped
5cm piece ginger, peeled and finely chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely diced
40 fresh curry leaves (about 4-5 stems)
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp medium curry powder
2 tsp tomato paste
3 strips lime peel, plus the juice of 1 lime
100g red lentils
400ml coconut milk
100g large (not baby) spinach leaves, stems removed
220g paneer, broken into 2cm chunks
5g coriander, roughly chopped, to serve

Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. Lay out the aubergine slices on two large (30cm x 40cm) oven trays lined with baking paper. Brush with two tablespoons of oil and sprinkle with a third of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Turn over the aubergine slices and repeat, then roast for 20 minutes, until cooked through and golden brown. Leave to cool.

Put two tablespoons of oil in a large saute pan on a medium-high heat. Once hot, add the shallots and fry for eight minutes, until golden brown. Add the ginger, chilli and half the curry leaves, cook for two minutes, then add the spices, tomato paste, strips of lime peel and lentils. Stir for a minute, then add the coconut milk, 600ml water and half a teaspoon of salt. Turn down the heat to medium and leave to simmer for 20 minutes, stirring once in a while, until the lentils are soft and the sauce is thick. Pour into a medium (20cm x 30cm) baking dish and set aside.

Put one spinach leaf on top of each slice of aubergine. Put a piece or two of paneer in the middle, then roll up the aubergine, from the thinner end at the top down to the thicker bottom end, so the paneer is encased. Put the aubergine rolls seam-side down in the lentil sauce, and repeat with the remaining aubergine, spinach and paneer. You should end up with about 20 rolls, all sat snugly in the sauce. Press the rolls gently into the sauce, but not so far that they are submerged, then bake for 15-20 minutes, until the aubergine is golden brown on top and the sauce is bubbling. Remove from the oven and leave to rest for five minutes.

Heat the remaining two teaspoons of oil in a small pan on medium high flame. Add the remaining curry leaves and fry for a minute, until crisp and fragrant. Spoon over the aubergine rolls, drizzle over the lime juice and serve with coriander sprinkled on top.

Roast aubergine and tomato bake with rocket and walnut

A great side dish, or a lovely light lunch with some salad. Serves six.

40g walnut halves, lightly toasted and roughly chopped
40g rocket
25g basil leaves, plus a few extra, torn at the last minute, to garnish
40g parmesan, coarsely grated
About 100ml olive oil
Salt and black pepper
4 large aubergines, cut into 0.5cm-thick rounds
8 vine tomatoes, cut into 0.5cm-thick slices
1 large ball buffalo mozzarella, cut into 0.5cm-thick slices
100ml passata

Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. Put the walnuts, rocket, 15g basil leaves, parmesan, three tablespoons of oil, two tablespoons of water and a quarter-teaspoon of salt in the bowl of a food processor, and blitz to form a coarse pesto.

Spread out the aubergine slices on two or three baking trays lined with baking paper. Put 60ml olive oil in a small bowl and brush evenly over both sides of the aubergines. Sprinkle over half a teaspoon of salt and plenty of ground pepper, then roast for 25-30 minutes, until dark golden brown all over. Remove from the oven and spread the pesto evenly over each slice. Turn down the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6.

Arrange half the aubergine and pesto slices in a 20cm x 26cm baking dish, so they sit snugly in a single layer. Lay half the tomatoes on top, sprinkle with salt and a generous grind of pepper, then follow this with the slices of mozzarella and the remaining basil leaves. Lay the rest of the aubergine on top, then the remaining tomatoes. Pour over the passata, spreading it out with the back of a spoon, and sprinkle with a generous pinch of salt. Bake for 45 minutes, until the tomatoes on top have taken on a lot of colour, leave to rest for 10 minutes and serve sprinkled with basil.

Roast aubergine with anchovies and oregano

Serves two to four.

4 medium aubergines, cut into 2cm-thick discs
Salt and black pepper
145ml olive oil
1½ tbsp oregano leaves
20g anchovy fillets, finely chopped
1 tbsp white-wine vinegar
1 small garlic clove, peeled and crushed
5g parsley, roughly chopped

Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. In a large bowl, mix the aubergine with half a teaspoon of salt. Transfer to two large oven trays lined with baking paper and brush with 70ml oil: you want to coat both sides of the aubergine discs. Bake for 35 minutes, until dark golden brown and cooked through, then remove and set aside to cool.

Heat 45ml oil in a very small saucepan or frying pan on a high flame. Test the oil is hot enough by dropping in an oregano leaf: if it sizzles, goes crisp straight away and turns a brighter shade of green, the oil is ready (if the oil is too hot, the oregano will go dark green). When the oil is at the right temperature, add a tablespoon of oregano leaves and cook for 10 seconds, just until crisp, then remove with a slotted spoon and set aside on a plate lined with kitchen paper to drain. Take the pan off the heat.

In a small bowl, whisk the anchovies, vinegar, garlic, an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a quarter-teaspoon of pepper. Slowly pour in the remaining oil, whisking continuously, until well combined.

Finely chop the remaining oregano and put it in a large bowl with the aubergine and parsley. Pour over the anchovy dressing, gently toss, then transfer the salad to a platter. Sprinkle over the fried oregano and serve.

• Yotam Ottolenghi is chef/patron of Ottolenghi and Nopi in London.

Chamin, or cholent, as the Ashkenazi call it, is a really slow-cooked stew. It’s a Shabbat meal; in Judaism, you’re not allowed to cook from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday – so in this instance the pot is brought to the boil, before sunset, then left to sit on a electric hotplate at a very low temperature for 12-18 hours. It sits all night long, thick and heavy, and by Saturday morning you are losing your mind because it smells so good, but you can’t have any until it’s time. I could eat it every second of my life: it’s the one thing I can eat until I explode.

Whenever I visit my parents in Jerusalem, it’s the dish I want my mum to make. Mum is always in the kitchen – her specialities are Friday-night fish with whole garlic that explodes in your mouth, or Jewish chopped salad with loads of paprika and lemon, or a Moroccan carrot salad, or kube (semolina dumplings filled with meat, then cooked in a really sour, herby green soup). And there are always 5-6 salads in the fridge that you can make into a meal with just a hunk of challah bread. But of all of these, chamin is my favourite.

It is served with great ceremony, the big pot in the centre of the table, its contents spooned on to plates – the heavy bits first, followed by the beans and intensely spiced broth with cumin and paprika. So homely and fragrant. I usually have 3-4 platefuls. Each area, even each home, has its own recipe: it’s a bit like a Sunday roast in that way, every household and every kind of Jewish culture – from Russia to Yemen – has a version. I’ve tasted many different ones: the Kurdish version that my dad’s mother used to make had macaroni and chicken in it, but my favourite is my mother Sima’s Moroccan chamin – it’s more soupy, which keeps it lighter, with beans, potatoes, eggs, meatballs made with rice, some bones, and some beef cheeks. She often adds a little bag filled with wheat and a date or two for colour and depth. The egg and potato along with the meat and beans make it a whole meal, although you do often have mezze with it. When you finish all the meaty parts, you have leftovers for the day after – the sabich – a pitta bread sandwich with deep fried aubergine and tahini. But when I’m eating it, I tend not to interrupt my stomach with anything else. I want as much space for it as I can muster.

I love the history of this dish. Every community used to have a baker, who’d put the pots in his ovens while they were still hot, and leave them there until they had cooled down completely. Nowadays, hotplates have replaced those communal ovens, but I think the dish still brings people together.

I sometimes make it at home, but I never change the recipe. It’s the one thing I never tweak. And no matter how I try, I can never make it as good as my mother’s.

Chamin

Serves 4-5
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1kg beef cheeks, or oxtail, cut into chunks
225g white beans (soaked in 1 litre of water overnight)
225g dried chickpeas (soaked in 1 litre of water overnight)
4 litres water
3 pieces bone marrow
4 large potatoes, peeled
4 whole eggs (to be hard boiled)
2 dates (optional)
2 tbsp cumin
1 tsp sweet paprika
Salt and black pepper, to taste

For the meatballs
About 90g arborio rice or similar (soaked in 1 litre of water for two hours)
2 tbsp semolina or flour
500g minced beef (15-20% fat)
1 tsp cumin
Salt and black pepper

1 For the kofte, drain the rice and then mix with the minced beef along with 1 tsp cumin, the semolina or flour and then season generously with salt and pepper. Knead the mixture well before rolling into meatballs. It should make roughly 8 balls.

2 Heat the oil in a large, deep pot over a medium heat. Once this is hot, add your beef cheeks to the pan and gently seal them on both sides. Season well with salt and pepper.

3 Drain the beans and chickpeas, and add them to the pot with the beef. Add the water and deglaze the pot by scraping the bottom, which will release the flavours.

4 Bring the pot to the boil, and add the rest of the ingredients including the meatballs. Season with salt and pepper.

5 Turn the heat down as low as you can so the pot is at a gentle simmer, cover with a lid and cook for 10 hours.

• Tomer Amedi is head chef at the Palomar in London. Tomer will be hosting an exclusive dinner inspired by A Taste of Home on Thursday 29 September at The Geffrye Museum of the Home, London, and a special Guardian Masterclass on Monday 10 October. Go to membership.theguardian.com for more details.
  

It’s that time of year when Britain is besieged by little green veg. As any kitchen gardener who has ever tenderly bedded in a courgette plant, fondly envisaging a couple of gratins, will ruefully attest, they are more prolific than Barbara Cartland, and similarly long-lived. After a couple of weeks of courgettes with everything, even the most committed cucurbitophile might feel the romance turning sour.

The solution? Well, you can turn them into chutney or pickle, of course, to keep your relationship alive even when the plants are finally exhausted. You can freak your kids out with a courgette cake. Or you can save yourself a lot of time and effort, and turn them into fritters – because it is scientifically impossible to tire of hot, crisp little cakes, fresh from the frying pan.

While they might seem like the easiest thing in the world to put together, as reader Kay Sanderson, who put forward the idea in the first place, has found, there’s an awful lot of sub-standard recipes out there that make a mockery of your homegrown bounty. Courgettes may be easy to grow, but they are not always that easy to cook.

The courgettes

Opinion is divided as to whether the courgettes should be salted to draw out their liquid before use: Janet MacDonald, author of the magnificently specific recipe book Pumpkins and Squashes (sadly the even more niche title Cooking with Courgettes, which I also have in my possession, is silent on the subject of fritters) expressly cautions against this step, on the basis that “your batter will get diluted before you’ve finished cooking”. BBC Good Food magazine, food writer Katy Salter and Greek cookery icon Vefa Alexiadou are of the same opinion. In the opposite camp, chef Bill Granger, Deb Perelman of the Smitten Kitchen blog, and Martha Rose Shulman of the New York Times all recommend not only salting the grated courgette, but squeezing out the liquid as vigorously as possible before use. Perelman writes: “You’ll be shocked (I was!) by the amount of liquid you’ll lose, but this is a good thing as it will save the fritters from sogginess.”

While it’s certainly possible to make decent courgette fritters without this step, should you be in a tearing hurry, the extra liquid imparts a slightly sloppy quality that requires delicate handling in the pan, and makes them obstinately averse to crisping up. Wring them out, and you will have more solid foundations for your fritters, which means you can use more courgette and less batter – which has to be a good thing in a dish designed to make the most of them (and use them up). An initial salting, of course, helps to season this undeniably bland vegetable more effectively than doing so after cooking.

Perelman also writes that she prefers to use a food processor rather than a grater on her courgettes: “I’m convinced it creates the coarsest and most rope-like strands and frankly, I like my fritters to look like mops.” Unless you’re making a lot, however, I find it creates too much washing up – and there’s something oddly satisfying about grating something as soft and obliging as a squash.

The batter

The simplest recipes, from MacDonald and Granger, bind the courgette strands together with a mixture of flour and beaten egg. BBC Good Food makes a wetter, more pancake-like batter with milk as well as eggs, that gives a firm, almost frittata-like result – pleasant enough, but not as crisp as I would like.

Alexiadou’s recipe comes from her book of vegan recipes, Sunny Mediterranean Cuisine, “inspired by the tradition of the Nistia – the Christian church fast”, and as such, uses water, rather than eggs, which would probably work better for a more stridently flavoured vegetable, but leaves testers reaching for the hot sauce here.

Shulman substitutes flour for breadcrumbs to make what she describes as “a Greek version of latkes” – not bad if you also happen to have a heel in need of using up, but a bit soggy if not – and Salter swaps it for fine polenta in her book Dairy-Free Delicious, which, as she observes, not only makes them gluten-free, but adds “extra crunch”. They are indeed utterly delicious, though, for the gluten-tolerant among us, I think a mixture of flour and polenta would work even better; hers are quite delicate to manoeuvre, and not only does flour act as a more effective glue, but it will also make the cakes slightly softer inside, as a contrast to the crunchy outer layer.

After eating their body weight in fritters, the panel concludes the best are those in which the stands of courgette are just held together with the bare minimum of batter – too much and they become doughy and heavy.

Raising agent

You certainly don’t need a raising agent in a fritter – Shulman, Granger and MacDonald make perfectly good ones without any such thing, but as Perelman, who uses baking powder, enthuses: “You wouldn’t believe how amazing it makes them, how they just lift off the pan when they’re flipped.” It also gives them a fluffier texture.

Interestingly, Alexiadou’s fritters are yeast-risen, like little green-flecked crumpets. They’re not fritters as I know them but, with a little fat in the batter, they could be a very tasty alternative.

Flavourings

BBC Good Food keeps its fritters plain, but courgettes are crying out for some help in the flavour department. Not too much, though – Granger and Shulman’s feta cheese, though it pairs well with the vegetable, is very much the dominant partner in the relationship, which seems a shame unless you’re actively trying to disguise their presence.

The same goes for Alexiadou’s dill, Granger’s mint and parsley, and even the basil in MacDonald’s Italian-accented version – they’re lovely, and this is the kind of blank canvas of a dish that can take any of them, but if you want to taste the courgette go easy on the herbs. A similarly delicate hand is required on the spice rack: Salter uses smoked paprika, and Shulman cumin, but to my mind, the sweeter, gentler spice of MacDonald’s nutmeg is more complementary to the subtle, slightly creamy flavour of the courgette.

For exactly the same reason, the greener, fresher flavour of spring onion is a better match for a summer squash than MacDonald’s more pungent shallot. Like Salter’s fresh chilli, I think it would be best saved for the accompanying dip, though, truth be told, I could, and do, eat these on their own, hot from the pan. After a week of wall-to-wall courgette, that’s quite some boast.

Perfect courgette fritters

(Makes 10)
500g courgettes
½ tsp sea salt
40g plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
20g fine polenta or cornmeal
4 spring onions, finely chopped
2 eggs, beaten
Grating of nutmeg
Optional: 15g fresh herbs, chopped (I like dill), and 100g crumbled feta
Oil, to cook

Coarsely grate the courgettes into a colander and toss with the salt. Leave to drain for between 30 minutes and an hour, and then squeeze out very thoroughly and put into a large mixing bowl.

Mix the flour, polenta and baking powder together well, then stir into the courgettes, along with the spring onions, beaten eggs and a good grating of nutmeg (and the herbs or feta, if using). Season again lightly.

Coat the base of a frying pan with a decent layer of oil and put on a medium-high heat. When hot, dollop spoonfuls of the batter around the base and flatten slightly. Cook for a couple of minutes until golden brown, then flip and repeat. Blot with kitchen towel and serve immediately, while hot.

Are fritters the single most delicious way to deal with a glut in the garden, or do you have other, more exciting tricks up your sleeve for courgettes and other seasonal veg?

I grew up near the busy market town of Bridport in Dorset. My dad was a keen gardener: he liked growing new potatoes and runner beans in the big vegetable patch, and my mum liked growing tomatoes and soft herbs in her little green house. They cooked simple, fresh food for us. Buttered potatoes straight from the ground, beans with tarragon and black pepper and lettuce salads trickled with our family dressing.

In late summer, my mum would make salads with her homegrown tomatoes; she’d slice them thickly and toss them with diced red onion and fresh coriander as a side for roast lamb or grilled mackerel. I remember it so clearly and, to this day, find the aroma of ripe tomatoes so special: sensory, warm and coddling, like childhood.

I didn’t plan on being a chef. When I was 18, my wife, Alice, and I had our first daughter, Isla, and I began working in a kitchen. Soon I realised that I really enjoyed it, and, actually, I was quite good at it too.

Cooking has since become a part of who I am. I’ve spent the past 10 years or so cooking at River Cottage, a smallholding that produces its own fruit and vegetables in a simple and respectful way. There’s a beautiful walled garden and several productive polytunnels, which are right now full to bursting with of all sorts of tomato varieties with curious names such as Orange Banana, Green Zebra, Marmande and Scotland Yellow. Every time I go in, I pick a few and eat them in situ – they want for nothing else.

These days it’s easy to buy tomatoes at any time of year, just like apples or strawberries. We import loads of them, but they’re never as good to eat or cook with, so over the winter and spring I’ll eat other things or use decent tinned tomatoes instead.

When tomatoes are in season, I tend to treat them pretty simply. In many cases I’ll serve them straight up, bar some good olive oil and some flaky salt, good bread and saucisson. I like them with crab and aioli, or with lightly cured fish, and I love them with herbs. Fresh tomatoes with lovage (an unusual but delicious garden herb) are incredible, or with lots of chopped mint and capers or cheese and dill.

Occasionally, I’ll make a sauce or a soup with the really ripe ones. Both are made by roasting the tomatoes with garlic, thyme, salt, pepper and olive oil, and then passing the soft, blistered fruit through a sieve. The resulting puree or passata is incredible, and makes the most refreshing chilled soup. For a rich sauce, it might need to bubble away on the stove for a little longer.

There are no special tricks to today’s recipes. They are, at best, delicious assemblies, inspired by what I have to hand and the food-producing landscapes that surround me. Each of them celebrates the beauty that is sun-ripened tomatoes, while we still have them in season.

That said, you can make the pasta sauce with tinned tomatoes and pep up lacklustre supermarket varieties with garlic, herbs and seasoning in the fish recipe. The panzanella-style salad with tomatoes, anchovies, egg, bread and tarragon – a flavour explosion – would be as good in winter using raf or marinda tomatoes from the Mediterranean as any British seasonal varieties.

Spaghetti with tomato and fried chicken

My mum used to make this for us. It is, without question, one of life’s great things. Now it is my younger daughter’s favourite, so I make it for her, happily.

Serves 2
For the pasta sauce
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
A pinch of dried chilli flakes (optional)
A sprig of rosemary
2-3 bay leaves
500g skinned, ripe fresh tomatoes, chopped, or 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tsp sugar
Salt and black pepper

For the fried chicken
200g chicken breast
3 tbsp plain flour
1 egg, beaten
100g white breadcrumbs
2–3 sprigs thyme
2 tbsp light oil
About 100g spaghetti
A knob of butter
Salt

1 Put a heavy-based pan over a medium heat. Add the olive oil, followed by the onions, garlic, chilli and herbs. Season with a little salt and pepper. Cook gently, stirring occasionally for 8‑10 minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes, sugar and a good splash of water. Put a lid on the pan a simmer for 35-40 minutes. The tomatoes should be breaking down and tender. Remove the lid and cook for a further 8-10 minutes, to thicken the sauce. Taste, adjust the seasoning and keep warm.

2 While the sauce is cooking, prepare the chicken. If you have one breast, slice it in half as evenly as you can across its face, giving you two much thinner, similar-sized pieces. You can tap them out using a rolling pin to get them nice and thin. Season them with salt and pepper, toss them in the flour, then dip in the egg and cover liberally with the breadcrumbs.

3 Heat a heavy-based frying pan over a medium heat, add the light oil and, when hot, add the breaded chicken and the thyme. Fry for 6–8 minutes on each side or until the chicken is cooked through and the crumb is crisp and golden.

4 Cook the spaghetti in a large pan of salted water until done to your liking. Drain, then return to the pan. Add the tomato sauce, the butter and a little more seasoning.

5 Serve the spaghetti alongside the chicken with some grated parmesan and perhaps a crisp green salad.

Roast tomatoes with fish, marjoram and garlic (main picture)

Pollock is a firm-fleshed, delicate flavoured white fish, and although I’ve been cooking it for years, I still think it’s underrated. It goes beautifully with marjoram. I love to eat this with plenty of good bread to mop up the amazing juices from the base of the roasting tin. This dish would work well with all sorts of other fish. Mackerel or sardines would be amazing alternatives, provided you like your oily fish. Black bream or cod would also be delicious.

Serves 4-6
1 large fresh whole pollock (about 1.5kg), scaled and gutted
500g mixed ripe tomatoes
1 garlic bulb, cloves separated but not peeled
1 bunch of fresh marjoram
6-8 sprigs fresh thyme
4 tbsp olive oil
Salt and black pepper

1 Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Choose a large roasting tray. Scatter the base of the tray with some salt and pepper, then trickle over 1 tbsp olive oil.

2 Lay the fish on the tray. Halve the larger tomatoes and put them around the fish – you can leave the smaller ones whole. Scatter over the garlic cloves, the marjoram and the thyme, making sure you get a little into the cavity of the fish, then trickle everything with the remaining olive oil. Season both the fish and tomatoes well with salt and pepper.

3 Put the tray in the hot oven and cook for 25–30 minutes, or until the fish is just cooked through and the tomatoes are lovely, soft and blistered.

4 Serve the fish straight from the tray alongside spoonfuls of the tomatoes and all the amazing juices, some good bread and buttered new potatoes.

• Gill Meller is a chef, food writer, stylist, cookery teacher and the former head chef at River Cottage in Devon. His first book, Gather (Quadrille) is out in September.
  @gill.meller

This recipe is simple but relies on really good ingredients such as the freshest fish and peas, top-quality Japanese soy sauce, and a grassy Spanish or Portuguese olive oil for the tofu sauce.

Seared cured bass with tofu sauce raw peas, chillies and lemon

(Serves 4 as part of a sharing menu)
300g sustainably farmed small bass, filleted, scaled and pin boned.
60g caster sugar
40g fine sea salt
80g small raw peas
Pinch of salt
A squeeze of lemon
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 red long chilli, deseeded, sliced thinly

For the tofu sauce

350g very good quality soft tofu (Clearspring or Yutaka)
2 tbsp low sodium Japanese soy sauce
1 pinch of Maldon salt
2 tbsp top quality olive oil

Combine the sugar and salt, spread the mixture on a flat tray so that the fillets are covered above and below, then leave to cure for 45 minutes. While the fish is curing, blitz all of the ingredients for the tofu sauce in a blender - keep the sauce cold until serving.

Season the peas with a pinch of salt, a squeeze of lemon juice and some olive oil and set aside.

When you’re ready to serve, wash the cure off the fillets, pat them dry and sear them, skin-side down, for 45 seconds in a non-stick pan on a high heat to get the skin nice and crispy (if you apply pressure you will prevent the fish from curling). Cut each piece in two before plating.

Place the seared bass skin-side up on a large serving plate, spoon a generous amount of the tofu sauce around it, place mounds of the marinated peas around and scatter the red chilli slices with a little olive oil around the plate. Eat right away.

It is the season for stuffed vegetables. Aubergines with cinnamon-spiced onions; courgettes with crumbs and parmesan; tomatoes with soft, garlicky orzo and, of course, the sweet bell pepper – this last lending itself to anything from minced lamb with cumin and garlic to a jumble of tomatoes, olives and feta.

The recipe

Halve 4 large, ripe peppers and remove and discard any stalks, cores or seeds. Set the peppers, cut side up, in a roasting tin.

Halve 350g of cherry tomatoes and put them in a mixing bowl. Crumble 200g of feta into large pieces and add to the tomatoes. Stone 16 olives, adding them to the bowl with a grinding of black pepper (no salt).

Stir in 8 tsp of basil pesto then spoon it into the halved peppers. Pour enough olive oil into each to come up to the top. Bake for about 25 minutes at 180/gas mark 4, until the top is lightly brown.

The trick

This is one of those dishes that seems more appropriate warm than hot, so leave the peppers to settle for 20 minutes before eating. While they are in the oven you may want to cover the dish with foil to stop the pesto from darkening.

The twist

Fist-sized beefsteak tomatoes are a good vehicle for filling. Hollow out the cores and seeds and stuff them with the feta, pesto, olives and small, golden tomatoes. A splash of red wine vinegar is a good trick, sprinkled over the dish just before it goes in the oven, to sharpen its edges.

Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @NigelSlater

The half-used seed packets are kept on the shelf above the milk in the fridge. Shuffling through the chilled packets like cards, the names read like a list of 1970s pop stars or exotic dancers: Crimson King basil, Tangier Scarlet pea, Russian Giant sunflower, French Breakfast radish, Isabel climbing French bean, this last, a robust and vigorous performer. Who knew that seeds could be so tantalising? There is no chard packet though: the seeds were all used.

So next thing, my mum and I are crouched on the floor flicking through the Thompson & Morgan seed catalogue until we find it. It’s a customer favourite – easy to grow and generous, guaranteed to bring colour to any border and flavour to the table: Bright Lights swiss chard.

It is bright – a riot of colour, stems like techno nightclubbers with deep green plumes sprouting from one of the raised beds in my mums’s garden. It’s generous too; I have been picking and picking and it doesn’t seem diminished. The chard is yellow, and red, and pink, and white ... “bright lights” indeed.

While I cut away stems of the stuff, and pick green beans, my parents’ neighbour Peter digs up his potatoes. “Halloooooo,” he shouts over the hedge. Meanwhile, my son picks rotten plums and threatens to eat them, the sun blazes in the hard blue sky and the Dorset hills swell and roll – they are every possible shade of green, the sheep bleat up on Colmer’s Hill in almost ridiculous bucolic bliss.

When I first went to Rome, coming back to England caused me anxiety, as if afraid I might forget to go back, or I wouldn’t be allowed back in. Twelve years on, roots now firmly established there mean I can settle back here, enjoying how familiar it all feels, drink tea in the knowledge I am not going to forget how to knock back an espresso. Also the food – it used to be here and there, Italian food and English food, a stand-off that missed the point.

Of course making comparisons is inevitable, and I relish the differences. I am just as interested though, in the shared. Isn’t that what food is about? It has been great to visit Davy’s Locker to buy sea bass, flashing silver, pulled from the English Channel, to roast on top of just-dug potatoes as the Romans do. There is local mackerel, stonking fresh, to finish with breadcrumbs. I have made Sicilian maccu with English dried broad beans and dill from the garden. Last week, we opened the vacuum-packed pecorino I had brought from Rome. I will return with marmalade and cheddar, and as many boxes of tea, sea salt and Tunnock’s teacakes as I can in stuff in my suitcase.

Chard and chickpeas; what will we have with it? That was my Dad’s first question. Lamb chops or a slice of salty cheese – ricotta salata or feta. This is a trusted recipe that, like so many recipes, is a collisions of ideas – a River Cafe recipe, a dish once made by a friend, a picture – all mixed up and made mine. Chard is a tasty vegetable, the stems fleshy (sweet though slightly bitter), which then thread like veins through the leaf. It tastes a bit like the love child of spinach and sorrel. If the leaves and stem are the weave of this dish, the chickpeas are the substance, so they need to be tender. Soak them for at least 12 hours, then boil until soft enough to squash easily between your finger and thumb. Alternatively, use tinned. The tomatoes are optional, but they add a pleasing sweetness. The lemon is another bright light, sharpening and lifting. What to drink with it? Roman white wine, Sicilian red, Dorset cider? Whatever you prefer.

Chickpeas and chard

Serves 4
250g dried chickpeas, soaked and cooked, or 400 g tinned chickpeas, drained
600g chard
12 sweet cherry tomatoes
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
2 garlic cloves
Salt and black pepper
A handful of parsley, chopped
Juice of ½ lemon
Ricotta, feta, goats cheese, lamb chops, or a poached egg, to serve

1 If you are using dried chickpeas, soak them in plenty of cold water for 12 hours, then drain. Cover with more cold water, bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer for 90 minutes, or until they are tender. If you are using tinned, drain and rinse.

2 Wash the chard and cut the stems from the leaves, trimming tough ends and pulling away any stringy bits. Cut the stems into short lengths, then roll the leaves into cigars and chop roughly. Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add salt. Add the stems for a 1-2 minutes, then add the leaves for a few minutes more or until tender. Drain.

3 Warm the olive oil over a medium-low heat. Peel and crush the garlic for a milder flavour, or slice for a stronger hit. Add to the pan with half the cherry tomatoes. Fry, squashing the tomatoes gently with the back of a spoon, until they are soft and the oil is tinted red. Add the chard and stir until it glistens with oil, add the chickpeas and cook for a few minutes more. Remove from the heat, add the parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, then let it sit for a while. Before serving, check seasoning, and pour over a little more olive oil.

• Rachel Roddy is a food blogger based in Rome and the author of Five Quarters: Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Rome (Saltyard, 2015) and winner of the 2015 André Simon food book award

There is something about corn and warm days that sits just right. Every single summer holiday I have been on has memories of corn: maybe I seek it out. Crunched straight off the cob, bathed in lime and butter, eaten with sandy feet on the beaches of Indonesia. Little plastic cups piled with elote corn, trimmed from its kernels, topped with sour cream, mayonnaise, cayenne and a squeeze of lemon from stands that line Mexican beaches and roadsides, and tamales – little patties of fluffy cornmeal wrapped in their husks and steamed over fires on the Native American reservations of Arizona. There is something about the sweet pop of a kernel of corn that makes it OK to eat when its searingly hot, when almost nothing else (apart from an ice-cream or an ice-cold coconut) will do.

Here in the UK, we are eating record amounts of it – 4 million cobs a week in the summer of 2014 apparently – and here, too, there seems to be a rule that when its hot outside we reach for the corn. The first of the English corn arrived only a few weeks ago. It’s so good that I have had it for dinner at least twice a week and will again tonight. In my local greengrocer, six fat cobs still in their husks cost just £1: try to find me a cheaper dinner.

The first, freshest corn I treat with restraint, just like the first asparagus: I cook them simply with little fuss and flavour; just a good dousing of sea salt and butter. The first heads have their green, papery husks peeled away and the cobs simply plunged into boiling water in my biggest pot. I use a lid from a smaller pan to weigh them down and stop them bobbing, so they cook evenly. I don’t add salt when cooking, as it’s said to toughen up the kernels, but I add it generously after to offset the sweetness.

As the weeks draw on and the corn nears the end of its run, I look for more ways to use my six cobs for £1. This week, I took my cobs to south India, with a dousing of spice and ghee and a fresh green herb and coconut chutney. My favourite combinations are mapped out below.

Often a corn soup finds its way to the stove, or a chowder with some potato and musky smoked paprika, or a green, coriander-heavy Mexican soup (more of that in a couple of weeks).

I make quick curries from quickly shaved ears of corn, with chilli, cumin seeds and toasted coconut and serve it piled next to chapatis with a spoonful of mango, thick cooling yoghurt and a few wedges of lime. I mix some freshly sheared kernels with a couple of eggs, a spoonful of flour and some cottage cheese and – corn’s favourite flavour match – chilli, then fry spoonfuls into little fritters, eaten at breakfast with some mashed avocado, or at tea with some salad.

Then there is cornmeal, the mainstay of cooking in Central America. Polenta recipes we’ll leave for the winter, but one thing I often make with cornmeal is cornbread. This one I make on repeat, dotted with little tomatoes and eaten with avocado-and chilli-spiked black beans for a summer breakfast or brunch – but it has enough flavour to stand up on its own.

Sweetcorn loses its sweetness by the hour. The quicker you can get it into the pot, or on to the grill, the better. Success depends more on shopping than cooking. If you find the corn still in its husk, make sure the husks are green and supple, not dry and pale, and that the corn underneath feels plump and full. Avoid the overly sweet varieties at the supermarket, which are, in my opinion, sweeter than necessary – and I have a very sweet tooth.

Traffic-light tomato cornbread brunch (pictured above)

Serves 6
150g cornmeal or polenta
A pinch of salt
1½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp runny honey
A good pinch of ground cumin
A good pinch of hot smoked paprika
150ml milk
100ml natural yoghurt
½ a bunch of fresh coriander
½ a bunch of fresh basil
Olive oil
Zest and juice from 1 unwaxed lime
1 egg, beaten
2 ears of corn, husks removed
1 fresh green chilli, trimmed and sliced
400g ripe small or cherry tomatoes, halved
2 avocados

For the beans
2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
2 x 400g tins black beans with liquid
A pinch of cinnamon

1 Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Grease a high-sided 20cm ovenproof dish or frying pan and pop it in the oven until hot – this will give a nice crisp crust to your cornbread.

2 Put the cornmeal/polenta, sea salt, baking powder, honey and spices in a bowl and mix to combine.

3 Put the milk, yoghurt, coriander and basil (including the stalks), 2 tbsp of oil and lime zest into a liquidiser. Squeeze in the juice from half the lime and whizz until combined. Add the beaten egg, and pulse to combine.

4 Pour the wet mixture into the dry and stir. Cut the kernels from the ears of corn and fold into the mixture along with the chilli.

5 Remove the hot dish from the oven and pour the mixture in. Put the tomatoes on top, cut-side up, then bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until puffed and golden.

6 Meanwhile, heat a little oil in a small saucepan. Add the garlic, cook for a minute, then add the black beans and their liquid and the cinnamon. Cook for 6-8 minutes, or until thick and glossy, then set aside. Keep warm.

7 Stone, peel and mash the avocado with some lime juice. Serve the cornbread in slices with the smashed avocado and black beans on the side.

Corn on the cob with chutney and mustard-seed butter

How I’ve been eating corn all summer: grilled and rolled in spiced butter then topped with a punchy, but fresh, green chutney.

For the corn
4 ears of corn
100g butter or ghee
1 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
A sprinkling of dried red chilli
For the chutney
A large bunch of coriander
A large bunch of mint
2 green chillies
2 tbsp coconut cream
Juice and zest of 2 limes

1 Warm a griddle or barbecue. Pull the leaves from four corn cobs, and when the griddle is hot, cook the corn on the grill, turning regularly, so it is deep gold and brown here and there: this will take about 10 minutes.

2 Put the herbs, chillies, coconut cream and lime juice in a blender and blitz until you have a brilliant green herb paste, adding a little water or olive oil to loosen, if you need to. Taste and season with salt, adding a little more lime or chilli, if needed.

3 Warm the ghee or butter in a small pan and, once it’s hot, add the mustard seeds and cumin seeds. Cook for a minute or so until the mustard seeds pop, then take off the heat and sprinkle with chilli.

4 When the corn is tender, remove to a baking tray and pour over the warm butter, anointing every last kernel in the spiced butter. Put on plates, spoon over the green chutney and serve.

Flavour map

Here are seven flavour combinations that work well with corn on the cob:

• Butter, lime zest, red chilli, coriander and crumbled feta
• Butter, lemon juice, smoked paprika, parsley and grated manchego
• Coconut oil, lemon zest, green chilli, mint and coriander
• Peanut butter, lime juice, red chilli, coriander and toaster coconut
• Tahini, lemon juice, coriander seeds, and other toasted seeds
• Olive oil, chopped garlic, basil and grated parmesan

• Anna Jones is a chef, writer and author of A Modern Way to Eat and A Modern Way to Cook (Fourth Estate); annajones.co.uk; @we_are_food

I grow herbs in scruffy terracotta pots on the kitchen steps, their rims chipped and pitted from years of use. My garden soil is too damp and dense for such delicate souls as lavender, basil and thyme, who seem to prefer a light lunch to a rich dinner –the fine, well-drained soils of Provence or the Greek hillsides rather than my London clay. In a pot, I can control the earth they grow in, adding more grit and light compost as necessary.

In high summer, many of the soft-stemmed herbs bolt. Coriander bursts into delicate flowers, a cluster of tiny umbels, like a white lace parasol. Basil sends up a host of timid leaves and white buds. Thyme becomes dry and coarse, and dill, clearly more used to cool Nordic air, is often bleached by the sun. It is time to use them up.

This week I used generous handfuls of parsley – the flat-leaved variety – in a green pea soup; mint and dill were tossed with broad beans and sizzling bacon, and a goodly amount of basil found its way into a cool, white summer lunch of torn mozzarella and ripe peaches. I added a few clove-scented pinks as we were in the garden.

A glut of basil could well mean salsa verde but also a summer ice. Blitz 25g basil with 225g sugar, then put it into a pan with 250ml water. Bring to the boil then cool quickly in a bowl of ice. Process a further 25g of basil with 500ml of natural yogurt and the juice of a lemon, stir in the basil syrup then freeze in a plastic box. Stir occasionally as it freezes.

Pea and parsley soup

The brilliant vibrancy of this soup appeals here, but you could soften its healthy green edges by stirring in 100ml of double cream at the end. Take care not to overfill the blender in case the hot soup overflows. I only say this because I invariably do.

Serves 6
butter 30g
spring onions 75g
flat-leaf parsley 300g (2 bunches)
a medium potato
peas 200g (shelled weight)
garlic 2 cloves (peeled)
stock, chicken or vegetable 1 litre

Melt the butter in a large, heavy-based pan. Chop the spring onions and stir them into the butter, letting them cook for 4 or 5 minutes over a moderate heat.

Chop one of the bunches of parsley, stalks and all, combine it with the spring onions and leave to cook for a minute or two till the colour has darkened. Peel, dice and add the potato. Add the peas and peeled garlic, and pour in the stock. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat to a simmer and cook for 8-10 minutes.

Put a pan of water on to boil. Discard the stalks from the reserved parsley, add the leaves to the boiling water and leave for 2 minutes, then drain. Stir the leaves into the soup, then remove from the heat and reduce to a smooth, green purée in a blender or food processor and serve.

Mozzarella, peaches, basil dressing

A serene, cooling dish when the sun is high.

Serves 2
mozzarella 2 balls
peaches 2

For the dressing:
white wine vinegar 2 tbsp
natural yogurt 6 heaped tbsp
olive oil 4 tbsp
basil 12 large leaves

Put the white wine vinegar in a small mixing bowl, then add the yogurt and the olive oil. Season with salt and black pepper, then beat gently with a fork or, better still, a small whisk, until the ingredients are combined and you have a creamy dressing. Shred the basil leaves finely and fold in.

Tear or slice each ball of mozzarella into 3 or 4 pieces. Pour the dressing over and cover with clingfilm. Chill for about 30 minutes.

Halve the peaches, remove and discard the stone, then cut each half into 4 slices. Place the peaches with the cheese and its dressing. Serve, if you wish, with a few more basil leaves or, should you happen to have them, petals.

Broad beans, mint, dill and bacon

The spot-on pairing of beans and bacon, this time with mint and dill. One for the last of the broad beans.

Serves 2
shelled broad beans 250g
spring onions 6
a small bunch of dill
a small bunch of mint
white wine vinegar 2 tbsp
olive oil
smoked back bacon 4 rashers

Cook the broad beans in a deep pan of lightly salted boiling water. They should be tender in 4 or 5 minutes. Cool them under running water, popping the beans from their papery skins as you go.

Finely slice the spring onions and drop them in a mixing bowl. Chop enough dill to give you a couple of heaped tablespoons. Pull a loose handful of mint leaves from their stalks and add them to the onions with the dill and white wine vinegar. Crumble in a little salt and some coarse black pepper, then stir in enough olive oil to make a slushy dressing. I find 80-90ml is enough.

Lay the bacon in a non-stick frying pan with the merest drop of oil and let it fry till the fat is golden, and verging on crisp. Fold the skinned broad beans into the herb dressing and divide between 2 plates. Put a couple of rashers of bacon on each, tipping any hot fat in the pan over the beans.

Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @NigelSlater

People, in general, would rather not eat whole fish. This may sound like a sweeping statement, but anyone in the restaurant business will tell you that customers are vastly less likely to order a whole fried bream than two seared fillets. You hear two common explanations: “I don’t like looking my food in the eye,” and, “Eating a whole fish is just too messy.” In short, it’s all too fishy.

While I respect people’s preferences, I am afraid we don’t see eye to eye here. For me, losing the head and the tail means also losing out on some extraordinary flavours and super-crisp textures; in fact, with many fish, fried heads, tails and even bones, drizzled with a drop of lemon juice, are heavenly.

If, however, you are completely set on avoiding all the visceral stuff, the solution is simple: a fishcake.

The beauty of a fishcake, by which I mean any dish made of chopped-up fish (squidgy Thai tod mun pla, Turkish balik koftesi, Jewish gefilte fish, British flaky potato-based cakes, South American ceviche) is that it allows the fish to mix with all sorts of other ingredients and absorb their flavours, resulting in some wonderfully surprising combinations. In many cases, the fish turns into something far more textural, while its flavour stays in the background, gently holding everything together.

I had a great example of this on a tiny fishing boat off the coast of Essaouira in Morocco, when a couple of local fisherman minced whole freshly caught sardines, mixed them with local bread, shaped them into balls and quickly cooked them with tomatoes, cumin and preserved lemon. The sardines, with all their natural intensity, just bowed down to the acidity of the tomatoes and the lemon, creating a memorable yet subtle experience, not fishy at all.

Polenta-crusted fishcakes with spicy tomato and tarragon sauce

Serves four as a starter (12 cakes).

350g skinless and boneless firm white fish, cut into 3cm chunks
1 egg, beaten
1½ tsp ground cumin
¼ tsp chilli flakes
3 garlic cloves, crushed
150g cooked potato, roughly mashed (1 medium potato)
10g parsley, roughly chopped
10g coriander, roughly chopped, plus a few small leaves to garnish
40g quick-cook polenta
About 150ml sunflower oil, for frying
Salt
For the sauce
60ml olive oil
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 red chilli, de-seeded, finely chopped
4 ripe tomatoes, blanched, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tsp caster sugar
5g tarragon, roughly chopped

First make the sauce. Pour the oil into a small saucepan and place on a medium heat. Add the garlic and chilli and fry for one or two minutes, until the garlic turns golden. Add the tomatoes, sugar and a third of a teaspoon of salt and cook on a low heat for about 15 minutes, or until the sauce thickens. Set aside until ready to serve, stirring in the tarragon at the last minute.

To make the fishcakes, place the fish in the bowl of a food processor and add the egg, cumin, chilli, garlic and a half-teaspoon of salt. Pulse several times to break the fish into small pieces. Don’t overdo it, though: you don’t want it to turn to mush.

Transfer everything to a large mixing bowl, add the potato and herbs and gently stir everything together. Use your hands to form 12 balls, about 45g each. Place the polenta in a shallow bowl and roll the balls in it to coat them.

Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Pour enough oil into a medium saute pan that it rises 1cm up the sides. Place on a medium heat and, when hot, add half the fishcakes. Fry for about four minutes, turning so they become golden-brown on all sides. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking tray and repeat with the remaining cakes. Place in the oven for five minutes, to cook through. Serve warm with the sauce, heated up if needed, spooned on top or alongside. Garnish with coriander leaves, if you like.

Smoked fish and parsnip cakes

I love these for breakfast, but they’re good at any time. If you don’t want to make the cream, serve with a wedge of lemon instead. Serves four.

4-5 parsnips (550g)
260g smoked cod or haddock fillets, skinless and boneless, chopped into 4cm pieces
25g fresh white breadcrumbs (about 1 thin slice of bread, crust removed)
5g dill, roughly chopped
5g chives, roughly chopped
10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
4 spring onions, finely chopped
Finely grated zest of ½ lemon
1 egg, lightly whisked
1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed
20g unsalted butter
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt and black pepper
For the horseradish cream
2 tbsp finely grated fresh horseradish (or 1 tbsp horseradish sauce)
150g soured cream
2 tsp lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Mix together the ingredients for the horseradish cream with an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Keep in the fridge until needed.

Place the parsnips on a small baking tray and roast for 30-35 minutes, until cooked through and soft. Once cool enough to handle, peel off and discard the skin. Place the flesh in a large bowl (you should have 270g cooked parsnip) roughly mash and set aside to cool.

Place the fish in a food processor and pulse a few times (you want it roughly chopped rather than minced) then add to the parsnip, with a half-teaspoon of salt, plenty of pepper and the remaining ingredients apart from the oil and butter. Mix well and form into eight patties: they should be about 8cm wide and 2-3cm thick. At this stage you could cover the patties and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours ahead of time.

Add the butter and oil to a large frying pan and place on a medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to foam, add the patties and fry for six to eight minutes, turning over halfway through, until the fish is cooked and the patties are golden-brown. Serve warm, with a spoonful of the horseradish cream alongside. 

Mediterranean ceviche

Pictured overleaf. The perfect summer starter, needing little more than bread alongside. Serves four.

3 small sea bass fillets, skinless and boneless, cut widthways into 2mm-wide slivers (240g)
2 tbsp olive oil
Finely grated zest of ½ small lemon, plus 2 tsp juice
1 small garlic clove, crushed
1 small preserved lemon, skin and flesh roughly chopped
20g pine nuts
½ plum tomato, cut into ½cm dice
25g pitted kalamata olives, roughly chopped
15g small nonpareille capers, or larger ones, chopped
2 spring onions, finely sliced
1 red chilli, finely diced
5g parsley leaves, finely chopped
10g basil leaves, finely shredded
Sea salt flakes and black pepper

Place the fish in a medium bowl with two teaspoons of oil, the lemon zest, garlic and a half-teaspoon of salt. Mix well and set aside for 10 minutes while you make the salad; at this stage you can also refrigerate the fish for up to two hours.

Mash together the preserved lemon skin and flesh using a pestle and mortar and set aside.

Place the pine nuts in a small frying pan with a teaspoon of oil. Fry on a medium heat for three to four minutes, stirring frequently, until golden-brown. Add to the preserved lemon and briefly grind so some are left whole and some are roughly crushed. Spoon into a medium bowl and mix with the tomato, olives, capers, spring onions, chilli, parsley, basil, two teaspoons of oil, a teaspoon of lemon juice, a quarter-teaspoon of salt and plenty of black pepper.

Divide the fish between four plates, spreading it out in a circle about 12cm wide. Spoon over the salad, making sure that some of the fish can still be seen around the edges. Drizzle each portion with a quarter-teaspoon of oil and a quarter-teaspoon of lemon juice and serve, with a final sprinkle of salt.

• Yotam Ottolenghi is chef/patron of Ottolenghi and Nopi in London.