Watercress soup is a vibrant shade of green if you don’t overcook the watercress. I think it benefits from a rich, meaty stock-base. I simmered left-over bones and gravy of a shoulder of hogget for a few hours just covered in water in the slow cooker. I used half the strained liquid as a stock and froze the other half for later. This also gave the soup a pleasant, slightly minty, flavour. Vegetarians would probably disagree and substitute a well-made vegetable stock. You could use spinach or silverbeet if you don’t have watercress.

large knob of butter
a small onion, finely chopped or a handful of garlic chives
500ml good stock
large bunch of watercress
1 large potato, cooked and diced
a dollop of sour cream and snipped chives to garnish
2 eggs (optional)

Melt the butter gently in a large pan. cook the onion or garlic chives until soft but not coloured. Add the potato and stock and bring to the boil. Wash the watercress well and remove any tough stems. Chop roughly and add to the pan. Return to the boil and simmer for a minute. Turn off the heat and blend with a stick blender or in a food processor. Taste and season with salt, pepper and freshly-grated nutmeg to taste. Reheat without boiling and serve garnished with cream and chives. Float a poached or soft-boiled egg in the centre of each bowl to make lunch. Serves two.

In a household that always has plenty of lemons and eggs, lemon curd is delicious spread on scones, pikelets or freshly made bread. I mix it with natural yoghurt as a fruit topping, use it as a filling for mini tartlet cases or make a lemon ice-cream by rippling it through slightly softened boughten vanilla ice-cream. You can substitute limes for some or all or the lemons.  Read more

If you’ve made salsa verde and have a few anchovies left in the tin, you can enjoy an interpretation of ‘salad nicoise’ using baby salad leaves, sliced tomatoes, hard boiled free-range egg (eight minutes only please), a few olives and some french dressing (olive oil, lemon juice and dijon mustard). Or a dollop of home made mayonnaise. You could pack it undressed (the salad, not you) for a decadent lunch at work or serve it for dinner as I did, followed by a mini pumpkin soup.

The rocket leaves I used I had sown less than a month ago on the 4th March. There’s still time to become a rocket scientist.