Anyone who's seen Heath Ledger's performance of the Joker knows that clowns are the stuff of nightmares. Why? Because they never stop smiling. We are both fascinated and repulsed by clowns, for who could look at a world as dark and damaged as ours, and do nothing but grin? This is what makes the plight of Grinpayne in The Grinning Man so ripe for theatrical exploitation. In a dark, dystopic London of the past, audiences escape their miserable lives by laughing at the face of a freakish boy, whose features were contorted into an eternal grin by an enemy he never knew. In the jaunty, grating and horribly memorable opening number, Laughter is the best medicine, we are reminded that the only way to forget the monsters in our heads is by 'rubber-necking some other bugger's grief.' Which is essentially what audiences at Trafalgar Studios are doing eight times a week, at the highly-acclaimed transfer of the Bristol Old Vic production.

The show-within-a-show format expertly blurs the lines between the emotions of those on stage and those in the audience. In the world of the story, spectators burst into fits of gleeful laughter at the sight of Grinpayne. They are both delighted and troubled by him: for though he has the face of a monster, there is 'heaven in his eyes'. His terrible affliction makes them forget their own troubles and allows them to share in his. 'And then with sudden clarity you are him and he is you, and then you see that all the people round you feel it too' sing the chorus. Looking around myself, it was clear that the real-life audience were definitely all "feeling it", many of them on their third or fourth visit. I had heard people chatting before curtain up about how much they loved the musical, how it made them laugh and cry. So what is it about this macabre, twisted, faintly grotesque musical that had them shaking with anticipation?

To be clear, the stage is set for horror: the proscenium arch transformed into a wide, gaping mouth; the costumes ripped, mismatched and generally filthy-looking. Tim Phillips and Mark Teitler's music has a creepy, organ-grinder edge, with many a shrieking, discordant moment. Julian Bleach's Barkilphedro, the resident jester and malcontent, slithers around the stage, dripping with disdain, his voice as soft and inviting as a mouthful of gravel. Elsewhere there's incest, disfigurement, torture, opiate addiction and a healthy use of expletives. 42nd Street it ain't.


And yet, The Grinning Man is unquestionably beautiful. Spectators at the seedy Trafalgar Fair, we learn of Grinpayne's tale through exquisite puppetry from War Horse's Gyre & Gimble. His mother lost at sea, the boy Grinpayne is left wandering the woods, when he finds a blind baby girl. He saves the child's life and comes upon a man named Ursus (an earnest, husky-voiced Sean Kingsley), who promises to look after them. Grinpayne and the girl, Dea, grow up together, and ultimately fall in love: a touching romance between two damaged children who cling to one another to survive. Now a young man, Grinpayne performs in a freak show, earning money to grant him and his family passage to another country. But he is haunted by his past, and swears to take his revenge on the man who disfigured him. Louis Maskell's performance in the title role is superb, he portrays Grinpayne's internal conflict with enormous pathos and sensitivity, which is all the more impressive given that his face is almost always covered by a mask. He moves about the stage as deftly as a shadow, his voice nothing short of spine-chilling. The pain of his injury threatens to overwhelm him, and is kept in check by a mysteriously potent medicine made by Ursus. Meanwhile, in the royal palace of Catford, sex-crazy Princess Josiana (a striking performance from Amanda Wilkin) is sent into fits of orgasmic pleasure at the sight of Grinpayne, who seems to embody the notion of 'pure feeling' that she has been searching for. Grinpayne's face makes him a celebrity, and, seated among the nobility, he must choose between living a life of ease and facing his demons.

Taking inspiration from Victor Hugo's L'homme qui rit, writer Carl Grose weaves a narrative that is part fairytale, part coming-of-age story, part horror show and part comedy. It may not look like your average, laugh-a-minute musical, but the jokes come thick and fast (top marks for Barkilphedros mid-number exclamation "I hate this pissing song!") and the audience just lap it up. But despite the humour, the fiendishly clever lyrics (a collaboration between Grose, director Tom Morris and the composers) prove that this is more than a fairy story on LSD. Act Two is a rollercoaster of emotion, and Morris pulls no punches in his exposure of human suffering.

Photo: Helen Maybanks via Facebook.com

Pain is woven into the very fabric of the story: grief, injury, heartbreak and injustice are at its core. Even without Grinpayne's eternal smile, The Grinning Man is suffused with nightmarish potential, showing us a world of decadence, driven by greed, in which innocent children are cruelly punished. Everyone on stage is lost: in the hypnotic solo, Labyrinth, Grinpayne questions whether he is nothing more than the mask he wears or whether his true self has been concealed beneath his scars. Rather than facing the demons that haunt him, he turns to the crimson leaf potion to drown the sorrow. The situation is desperate and painly relevant for a modern audience. Yet in Dea, the steadfast, moral core of the piece (played beautifully by Sanne Den Besten) Morris offers audiences a message of hope.
She may be blind, but Dea sees with more clarity that anyone. Grinpayne wants to run from pain, but Dea shows him that terror must be faced and embraced in order to move on. She demonstrates that neither revenge nor numbness can protect us from past suffering: they simply make us more lost. We may be 'shattered children' who were 'born broken', but Dea believes that our scars do not define us, they are merely part of us. It is love that gives us strength, and helps us find the courage to keep going.

The Grinning Man plays at Trafalgar Studios 1 until 5 May. You can find tickets on the official website.

Clodagh McKenna might just be one of the happiest people I’ve ever met. A bundle of enthusiasm, the queen of 'Irish soul food’ has a smile as sunny as her yellow blouse, her lilting voice frequently bursting into peals of excited laughter. And it seems she has plenty to be pleased about: her new recipe column in the Evening Standard is the latest of a string of successes in her twenty-year career in food. An alumna of the Ballymaloe Cookery School & House in County Cork, Clodagh started out by running farmers’ markets in Ireland, before penning five cookbooks, opening a restaurant, hosting numerous pop-ups and appearing on television across the world.

Her food is simple, seasonal and always stylish, presented with seemingly effortless grace. She passionately advocates eating with the seasons, for the sake of our health, the environment and our palates. So it is no surprise that the natural world is ever present in Clodagh’s food and styling: her home and kitchen are filled with wildflowers and bunches of dried leaves, her dishes elegantly garnished with petals and crushed herbs. Her unbridled joy at cooking with fresh ingredients is evident from the merest glimpse at any of her recipe videos: she handles every garden vegetable as though it were the finest saffron, inhaling the scent of a bunch of parsley as she might a Valentine’s bouquet. Her excitement is infectious.


As the US ambassador for Kerrygold, Clodagh spends much of her time in America, becoming the face of Irish food stateside, introducing television audiences to modern cuisine from the Emerald Isle. Despite a gruelling schedule that sees her splitting her time between London, Dublin, New York and Toronto, Clodagh insists she loves nothing more than having guests over for supper at home. ‘My heart fills with joy when I see everyone sat around my table enjoying my food’, she says.

These simple-yet-sophisticated meals, filled with the bounty of the season, have formed the basis of Clodagh’s latest cookbook and television series, Clodagh’s Suppers, which will be released in autumn 2018. In between her monthly transatlantic journeys, I met with Clodagh to learn about her food story and the ingredients for a perfect supper.


Can you summarise a supper at Clodagh's?

Cooking for people is one of my favourite things: it's how I socialise. I make everything: down to the syrup for the cocktail guests receive when they arrive. The menu is always based on seasonal ingredients, some of which are local and foraged. I cook everything personally; there isn’t a chef downstairs while I’m upstairs hosting.

So how do you go about planning them?

The first thing I do for the menu is to look at what’s in season and what I’ve been cooking for myself at home. I try to pick dishes that really sing of that particular time of the year, so, in autumn it would be apples, blackberries, figs or perhaps wild mushrooms. Then there’s the logistics of finding all the best producers. I always try and get one producer from Ireland, the rest I find locally; the best butchers, grocers and fishmongers in my area.



If people want to organise supper clubs themselves, what advice would you give them?

I would say, start off by making dinners for your friends, and organise them really well. You will always be stressed if you haven’t planned well enough. So, start by working out how many people you’re going to invite. Work back from there and plan the menu, your shopping lists and the tableware you’re going to use for each dish. Then organise your menu so that there is one course that needs your immediate attention before serving, and make the other two things that can be prepared beforehand and served straight away. If you do too many “stand-over” dishes then you’re not going to be able to do a good job. So only pick one that will require your attention for twenty minutes straight.

Happy International Women's Day!

In honour of this day, celebrating the lives and work of extraordinary women, I have written a blog about one of English literature's most famous heroines: Jane Eyre.

The piece, written for Bookishly, discusses whether Jane Eyre should be considered a 19th century feminist, or just a precursor for Anastasia Steele, in love with a Victorian Christian Grey.

You can find the original article here. If you agree with or strongly object to my thoughts, I'd love to know.

In the past few months I have written a variety of things. To-do lists, shopping lists, diary entries, translations, articles, recipes, poems (bad ones), work notes, play ideas, letters and several drafts of blog posts. When I don't write for a while my fingers start to itch, and I feel an overwhelming need to pick up a pen and scribble. The subject matter varies from the functional to the fictional, and occasionally I think I muster up a half-decent joke along the way. I currently have two foodie blog posts in draft-form, plus an interview waiting impatiently to be transcribed. Hopefully I'll get myself in gear at some point and finish them for this blog. In the meantime, there are other things to say.

If you've ever read this blog before you'll know how much food culture and history fascinate me, how they shape and reflect our society and tell us so much about ourselves. The thing is, I'm passionate about a lot of other things, too. Theatre. Books. Feminism. History. Mountains. Interesting words. And I'd like to write about those as well. Therefore, rather than setting up a new blog in order to indulge in these interests, I've decided to re-mould this one. So, from now on, Quirk and Spoon, will no longer be solely dedicated to food writing. It will definitely still include it (so help me if I don't get round to finishing that piece on porridge), but there'll be other things popping up every so often. Thoughts on a novel, a theatre review, a meditation on a trip or an unusual object, perhaps. Who knows? The plan is to be flexible, and, if possible, eloquent. So watch this space. I'll be back soon.

In 2012 a small restaurant called Honey & Co. opened in London’s Warren Street, a stone’s throw from the BT tower. Married Israeli co-owners Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, both successful professional chefs, set up the business on a hope and a prayer, with a tiny budget and secondhand furniture. Their concept was Middle Eastern home cooking, a mix of traditional mezze with simple stews and salads, showcasing the region’s quintessential ingredients and spices: sticky-sour pomegranate molasses, fragrant orange blossom, fiery Aleppo pepper and lots and lots of bulgar wheat.

The menu featured dishes such as apricot and pistachio tabouleh, smoky aubergine dip, slow cooked lamb with saffron rice, prawn tagine with preserved lemon and a whole host of exquisite homemade pastries and cakes. With bare walls and just ten tables they described their project as “a desperate act of faith.” Five years later, with glowing reviews, several awards, two cookbooks, a deli and a grill restaurant all under their belts, I think it’s fair to say that their prayers were answered.

When it comes to food, my experience of preserving has been limited to making a batch of muesli last more than a week. When it comes to the real business, involving Kilner jars, jam thermometers and muslin, I am very much the novice. Many a time have I watched as my mother, grandmother and aunt have brewed the annual batch of marmalade, hovering over a large silver cauldron like the witches in Macbeth, and wondered what the fuss was all about. But now that I'm older, wiser and generally more confident wielding a spatula, I've come to appreciate the social and personal value of preserving; and am determined to master it.

Salt, vinegar and sugar have been used for thousands of years to make food last longer - a necessary weapon against the threat of harsh winters and poor harvests. Luckily for us, pleasure and taste were in no way sacrificed in the effort. The earliest records of jam-making date back to the first century AD, when honey was used to preserve fruit in ancient Rome. Over time, this method made its way across the empire to Britain, and appeared in various guises (such as jellies, syrups, and compotes) at Tudor banquets. Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook of 1660, a book containing recipes fit for the great and good of Renaissance England, featured marmalade and various formulae for preserving fruits and vegetables. Fifty years later, cookery schools were teaching housewives how to make pickled vegetables, and by the mid-19th century the nation was hooked on a sumptuous Indian condiment known as chutney. As sugar and spices became more commonplace and affordable, sweet and savoury preserves moved from the domain of the aristocracy to the common British kitchen. And we couldn't get enough of them. The brewing and potting of jams, pickles and chutneys became both a way of celebrating the bounty of the season, and eking out supplies through the winter.


Fast forward a century of industrialisation, pasteurisation, the invention of mason jars and the appearance of brands such as Tiptree and Tracklement's, sweet and savoury preserves are widely available and relatively cheap - there is no need to make them at home. As a result, it is all too easy to dismiss jam-making as a superfluous, old-fashioned skill, practised only by pensioners and WI ladies in floral housecoats. However, while no one is judged for using shop-bought preserves, the homemade stuff still carries a certain cultural currency, as though those who make it know how to do things properly. The way I see it, if the ability to whip up the perfect omelette is the sign of a quality chef, making beautiful preserves is the benchmark of the top-notch home cook.


For this reason, and the fact that autumn was creeping ever closer, I decided that mastering these tricksy condiments would make a very fitting end to my summer recipe challenge. First up was strawberry jam: an elemental preserve, sweet and unsophisticated, without any airs and graces. Saint Delia (with edits from my mother) provided the formula: combine equal parts of sugar and fruit, plus the juice of a lemon. Warm on a low heat "until the wooden spoon no longer feels gritty when you lick it" (my mother’s words, not Delia’s) and then set to bubble fragrantly until you have jam. Simple enough, but my hands were sweating within five minutes, everything got sticky, and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to put a lid on the pan while the fruit was bubbling. Fortunately Mama was on hand to correct this grave error of judgement.


Still, by the time it came to remove the saucer from the freezer to test for readiness, I was thoroughly fed up and convinced that the whole enterprise was a disaster. The well-known problem with strawberries is that, due to low levels of pectin in the fruit, reaching a jam-like consistency is quite tricky: in my family, only my grandma seems to know the exact moment to turn off the heat. (My mum quips that her own efforts only ever fall into one of two categories: soup or wallpaper paste.) So I was not feeling hopeful. However, to the great surprise of everyone involved, when I prodded the scarlet dribble on the saucer, a little wrinkle appeared. It was officially jam. Hurrah! I whipped it off the hob and (without tasting it) poured it into a single jar with a bendy orange lid. It now has pride of place at the back of the cupboard, waiting patiently until we've finished my grandma's latest batch. Naturally.

An unexpected windfall of apples prompted my next foray into preserving. There's only so much crumble a person can take in a short space of time, and it was my dad who sheepishly asked if I could make chutney, instead. "Of course!" I replied, vaguely recalling my single past attempt: a blackish, sticky and figgy concoction that you could probably lay bricks with. As I don’t really eat chutney (traumatic childhood experiences involving Branston) I’ve never really been tempted to have another go. Still, my father had laid down the gauntlet and, in the context of the recipe project, it seemed churlish to reject the challenge. So off I went in search of the formula.


Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess provided the solution, with a simple recipe laden with heady spices: cloves, ginger, chilli, allspice and black pepper. Nigella begins the chapter with the declaration that chutney is “a breeze to make”, and she is absolutely right: you bung apples, onions and spices in pan, add vinegar and cook "until you’ve got a pulpy mass". That's it. I therefore couldn’t understand why homemade chutney is such a rare breed: "why doesn't everyone make it?" I asked myself, “we could all save ourselves so much money!” Then I poured in the vinegar, and the reason became all too clear.


At first I quite liked the smell, and relished in its warm (albeit sinus-cleansing) spiciness. By the time I realised that it would be a good idea to open the window, it was too late. My sister complained of a headache and quickly vacated the room, my mum walked in and started coughing, meanwhile my eyes began streaming uncontrollably. It took two days for the odour to clear. Still, I got three rather excellent jars of chutney for my pains, all of which were opened (in different kitchens) and half empty by the time my grandmother said "you must wait for a few months before you eat it: it tastes much better that way." Ah well. Maybe next time.

All of this meditative peeling, chopping and stirring got me thinking about why everyone seems to love homemade pickles, jams and jellies. Perhaps they simply taste better than their industrial cousins, though I'd be hard pushed to say whether that's due to quality of ingredients and skill, or something deeper, related to the act of preserving itself.

Preserves are inherently associated with homeliness and domesticity, condiments that (once upon a time) would probably be present in every kitchen cupboard. There is comfort in their simple flavour, their sweetness and their straightforward nature: they require little effort to eat, and need only one or two accompaniments to become a meal. Forgive me, male jam-makers of the world, but homemade preserves tend to be associated with women, and particularly mothers. Perhaps this is why toast and jam or cheese and pickle sandwiches are so often named as comfort foods of choice, because they were originally made for us by the person who first gave us nourishment. And, like a mother's embrace, is there any problem a jam sandwich can't solve?


I believe that we cherish homemade preserves because they remind us of friends and loved ones. No one seems to make them for purely selfish enjoyment, but always to share with others. A jar of jam is one of the simplest homemade gifts, one that transcends social boundaries: appropriate for close relatives, colleagues and neighbours alike. True, such generosity may be motivated by nothing more than the desire to shift a glut of allotment produce, but it remains a gentle way of showing friendship and affection, one that is universally appreciated. Where words fail, jam speaks.

Yet it seems ironic that preserves are seen as lovely, homely things, given that their origins lie in frugality, not feasting. After all, the reason we preserve food in seasons of abundance is to arm ourselves against the threat of scarcity. It may now be seen as an idle pleasure, but preserving was once a necessity, a tactic to improve the probability of survival of the winter months, a long sea journey or trench warfare. And although the situation has changed in the UK, there is still something reassuring in stocking your cupboards full of jam and pickles, so you can sleep secure in the knowledge that should it come to famine, alien invasion or World War Three, there will be enough marmalade to see you through.


Preserving is thus a bittersweet practice, both a celebration of the sunshine we have enjoyed and a grim acceptance of the darker, colder days to come. A ritualistic practice at the end of the summer, preserving is a gentle reminder of the seasons and the fact that nothing lasts forever, that the August light must give way to the greyish tint of November. But by bottling and storing the bounty of the season we find a way to enjoy it for longer: when in need of a little warmth on a frosty February morning, comfort can be found in slathering a glistening dollop of apricot jam on hot buttered toast.

Of course, no amount of jam can really preserve the light and optimism of the summer; it only provides a memory, like a faded photograph. The seasons march on and life continues on its twisty, unknowable path, with many a winter storm to blow us off course. But the giving and serving of jam is a beautiful reminder of the one constant in our existence, the one that lasts beyond all seasons and lifetimes. Love.

The decision to stop eating meat was far less difficult than I had imagined. I was introduced to the idea at university while living with two vegetarians, both of whom had equal respect for the planet and their stomachs. In a cramped student kitchen I tried tofu for the first time (I remember thinking it was subtle, silky and soothing) and realised that there was a whole world of cuisine out there that I had not yet experienced, one that was rich in variety and flavour and deserved more attention. Weekly flat dinners included a host of new and exciting dishes: tamarind-laced dhal, creamy laksa and scorchingly spicy Nepalese noodle soup. The food was interesting, satisfying (never once did I think 'this would be perfect with a lamb chop') and, crucially, delicious.

My curiosity and taste buds now piqued, I practically dismissed my student survival cookbook and began to research new chefs and recipes of my own. A host of what were once alien ingredients now started appearing regularly in my weekly shopping basket: broad beans, sesame oil, curry leaves and smoked paprika, to name but a few. Over time, I created my own little repertoire of meat-free dishes to which I returned again and again. Plenty of those initial experiments are best left forgotten (the parsnip tagine was a particular low point), but I was enjoying myself so much that by the time my final year rolled around, I was ready to give up sausages and steak for good.


No one else in my immediate family has renounced the pleasures of the flesh, and, while they have always respected my choice, they have not always been entirely convinced by it. Many of the iconic dishes of my childhood feature meat (stuffed vine leaves, kibbeh,  pasta al ragù, scaloppini Milanese), and it has been hard to assure my folks that a life without these dishes is not inherently lacking. I have worked tirelessly to prove that a meat-free diet does not mean a lifetime of nut cutlets and indistinguishable vegetable gratins. My aim remains to demonstrate that cutting out meat is not restrictive but enriching, opening the gateway to a whole new galaxy of gastronomy.

The trick, I've found, is to take vegetables from the supporting act to the star of the show, creating a selection of dishes so tasty and satisfying that no one notices the absence of meat. This summer's recipe challenge has been an ideal opportunity to try out new things on my suspicious guinea pigs, and so I have recently turned to three vegetarian cookbooks for inspiration: Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi, River Cottage Veg Every Day! by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and A Modern Way To Cook, by Anna Jones.




There was a packet of green beans lurking in the fridge the other week, and I was sick of the sight of them. I tend to rely on beans as a last minute green fix, cooking them quickly and without much fanfare. It was high time to do something more interesting and Yotam Ottolenghi was the natural solution. His award-winning book Jerusalem marked a turning point in my kitchen: he taught me to be more adventurous with flavours (the spice rack has never recovered) and that it really is possible to 'make miracles' with vegetables. I can always rely on Ottolenghi to use ingredients in a way I wouldn't expect, and so to resolve the green bean conundrum I turned to Plenty, a book I purchased in a wholly selfish move for my mother last Christmas.


Plenty is a collection of Ottolenghi's vegetarian recipes, divided by ingredient. Luckily for me, there is an entire chapter devoted to green beans. This recipe involves blanching the beans, along with mangetout and peas, and mixing them in a bowl. Nothing new there, then. The twist is the dressing: you gently heat coriander and mustard seeds in oil until they 'pop', and toss them immediately with the veg. Among several extra seasonings are nigella seeds, a spice with which I am lately obsessed, but whose subtle flavour I still struggle to describe - it's lost somewhere fragrant between pepper, coriander and sesame. The final addition is tarragon, which I almost never use, as it only ever seems to be paired with chicken - not particularly helpful. I now know that it it lends a pleasing aniseed note to the potential blandness of the beans. Served alongside a simple tomato and bulgar wheat pilaf, the salad was an absolute hit. The whole dish is best described by Ottolenghi himself, as one that offers 'a good balance of clean freshness from the beans with the punchy complexity of the herbs and spices.' He's right: the sweet and crunchy greens were the perfect foil for such a hefty dressing. The flavour combination was utterly unexpected: spicy yet subtle, zingy and fresh. I'm now desperate to buy green beans so I can make it all over again.




This was the first vegetarian cookbook I owned. Unlike Ottolenghi, who maintains a careful distance from the diet debate, Whittingstall adamantly asserts the positives of cutting down on meat consumption. 'Call me power crazed' he says, 'but I am trying to change your life, here.' I can't say that the book has had such an impact on me, as I hardly needed convincing of the benefits of vegetarian food, but it has provided a useful bank of sturdy, reliable recipes, with comforting, uncomplicated flavours. Whittingstall also makes the valid point that vegetarian food becomes so much more interesting if you stop seeking to simply replace meat (ie. swapping your mince for TVP) and just ignore it instead - freeing you from the shackles of the 'meat and two veg' structure. Once you've done that, he argues, you 'can get on with the 'life-enhancing business of enjoying the extraordinary range of fresh seasonal vegetables we can buy... cooking them in a whole range of new and exciting ways.' Hear hear. 



Given that Whittingstall is, in his own words, 'a notorious carnivore' I felt the book was particularly appropriate for winning over vegetarian sceptics. I handed it to my sister, and asked her to pick out something that she'd be interested in eating. To my great surprise, she opted for one of the simplest recipes in the book, a 'store-cupboard supper' involving boiled potatoes (a paradigm shift as far as she is concerned) and yet more green beans. The process is straightforward: you boil new potatoes in salty water and throw in the beans for the last two minutes. In the meantime, you gently fry slivers of garlic in olive oil, adding in chopped black olives. You then mix the two together and dress with torn basil, lemon, salt and pepper. That's it. I'm not sure I agree that it tastes like a 'deconstructed tapenade' as Whittingstall suggests, but it certainly has a lovely Niçoise nuance to it. The flavours are simple, unfussy and aromatic: summer food at it's best. We ate it alongside 4-minute eggs and a crunchy green salad, and my sister had not a bad word to say. Result. 





A Modern Way To Cook is my latest vegetarian compendium. Clear, concise and uncluttered, Jones' recipes are full of interesting new ways to get the best out of veg, without spending hours slaving over the hob. Unlike Ottolenghi and Whittingstall, Jones is a full-time vegetarian, and you do get a sense that this is 'straight-up everyday food' that someone committed to meat-free eating would want to make regularly. I particularly enjoy her algebraic approach to staple recipes, providing a basic formula on which the cook can improvise - suggesting both a practical mind and a thorough knowledge of what makes a dish work. 


This was the first recipe I made from the book, when, at a last minute family get together, I needed to find a meat-free meal for me, while my relatives enjoyed beef-stuffed aubergines. Given the time and space restraints, it needed to be quick, fuss-free and economical with kitchenware, all of which Jones caters for brilliantly. This recipe is essentially an unorthodox ratatouille, created by charring grated courgettes under the grill, followed by onion, garlic, tomatoes and jarred red peppers. Meanwhile, you pan fry chickpeas in lemon zest until golden and crispy. Then you mix it all together and serve. Job done. The whole concept felt thoroughly 'modern': the reworking of familiar flavours with a time-saving, yet taste-boosting technique was a stroke of brilliance. Unusual, yes, but my, was it moreish. I put this down partly to the contrasting textures: crunchy chickpeas set against meltingly soft veg, but I had no complaints on the flavour-front, either. The faint hint of charcoal from the grill, combined with the sweetness of the peppers tasted like the quintessance of summer. I loved it, and the notable absence of leftovers (given that I'd followed a recipe for four) suggested that all the carnivores at the table did, too. They just couldn't keep their forks to themselves.

Now, I'm not under the delusion that any of these meals were enough to wean my family off meat for good, nor was that ever my intention. But I think they all served as a useful reminder that, when it comes to mealtimes, focusing on vegetables is hardly a sacrifice. In fact, it's bloody brilliant.