River cottage recipes

Rice pudding is one of Hugh's all-time favourites and a brilliant example of the three-key-ingredients principle. The vanilla isn’t essential, nor is the cream – you can make the pud with just a litre of milk if you prefer.

We love these wonderful, soft but slightly charred, yeast-free breads (also known as soft tortillas). I could eat a whole pile of them, hot from the pan, just trickled with oil and sprinkled with salt. However, they are incredibly versatile and the ideal partner to everything from hummus to a bulghur wheat salad such as tabula kisir. They are also ideal for wrapping burgers, sausages, kebabs and other barbecued meat or veg, and for mopping up a good wet curry or stew.

This is a great way to use up odds and ends of fresh veg, and leftovers too. You can use more or less whatever you fancy from the list, though I do think some kind of onion is essential. As the egg is poured straight into the roasting dish full of hot veg, you don’t need to fry this frittata at all, but it helps to have a heavy ceramic or cast-iron dish, which retains the heat well. And the eggs should be at room temperature, not cold from the fridge.

This classic potato dish with its glorious caramelised top and rich, melting interior will always be one of Hugh's favourites. Something magical happens when you bake potatoes, thinly sliced, in garlic-scented cream. Hugh tends to use whichever floury variety he has to hand, but you can also make it with large, new potatoes. The texture is a bit different but still very good. He loves a dauphinoise with a green salad and plain-cooked Puy lentils.

These home made Monte Carlo Biscuits from River Cottage Australia are just as good as you would expect them to be. Better even!

This is a version of that cosy favourite, lemon delicious pudding. On cooking, the batter separates, leaving a pool of lemon curd-y sauce at the base of the dish and a tender, light sponge on top. The recipe makes great use of slightly mature yoghurt. If you don’t have quite enough, simply combine the yoghurt with some whole milk to bring it up to 250g.

Frittata with summer veg and goat’s cheese - © Simon Wheeler. Taken from River Cottage Veg Every Day by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, published by Bloomsbury. A traditional frittata is a lovely way to celebrate the arrival of early summer veg. If you have some cooked new potatoes to hand, or indeed any other leftover veg, you can use them here – but cooking them from scratch doesn’t take long. I like to use two or three different green veg.

This cake recipe is out of the River Cottage Everyday cookbook, which, if I could only own three cookbooks, this would be one of them. The recipe needs no alteration, it’s perfect just the wa…

This is a wonderful muffin recipe that also works deliciously with anything from alpine strawberries to currants. You can even throw in a few crushed nuts. The more adventurous should try adding half a teaspoonful of freshly ground coriander seeds when you add the blueberries I know it sounds peculiar, but it works... A few of these muffins, crumbled up, are perfect as the sponge element in a trifle.