The potato is one of the most underrated vegetables, it is very versatile, comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes and goes with almost anything.  I have even been known to make a gluten-free lemon drizzle cake which uses potato instead of flour.  We all expect to be able to buy them all year round though they should really be seasonal and only available in the autumn and winter.  Potatoes became the favourite staple ingredient centuries ago when they came over from South America, taking over from bread, but due to its density and construction does not count as one of the five-a-day, which is a shame.

My brother loves potatoes, so when i read a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi’s (also known as ‘my lengthy tomato’ in our house for some strange reason…) ‘Plenty’ for a potato style tarte tatin I had to cook it for him.  It was as delicious as it sounded, and very easy to do.  Prepare all the elements separately and then arrange them in a cake tin, top with puff pastry and bake.

• caramel simply made with sugar and butter
• picked thyme leaves. The recipe used fresh oregano, but that’s not easy to come across in England.  Though i did grow some years ago which was very easy to do, it sort of looked after itself, perhaps i’ll plant another one!
• boiled new potatoes, cool, then take ends off and slice into decent sized pieces of at least 1.5 – 2cm
• oven-dried cherry tomatoes, halved with a squidge of olive oil and grind of salt and black pepper
• sautéd sliced onions, gently cooked till golden
• slices of a hard goats cheese
• All topped with puff pastry.  Sainsbury’s now do a ready-rolled puff pastry which is cheaper than the usual one and it worked fine.

Cooking it in a cake tin made it easy to turn out, always the tricky bit with tarte tatins.  The quantities in the recipes were perfect, sometimes I find that it needs more or less of one element or another but not this time.

I wish I’d taken a picture it looked so beautiful when it came out of the tin but before I remembered it was in our tummies.  Yummy!

My favourite farm shop is Calcott Hall Farm Shop near Brentwood and I go there every few weeks to stock up on vegetables.  The last time I went I bought loads of vegetables for my very own photoshoot with my lovely brother-in-law.  Thank you Adrian, I’m not sure you knew what you were letting yourself in for!  I am now the happy owner of a library of vegetable pictures for use in my blog and website that I am developing.  And knowing that (most) of the vegetables are grown locally makes me glad, well done Calcott Hall for championing local produce as well as all your own varieties.

My apologies for the sweet potatoes, butternut squash and aubergine but in this global economy and international web-linking world, vegetables which were never even heard of when I was a mere slip of a lass, are now available on our doorstep.  As a result of this mega-shop we have been eating a lot of vegetarian and mainly vegetable-based dishes, and I have spent less money at the butchers and fishmongers.  We have had cauliflower cheese soup, cauliflower and aubergine curry, roasted beetroots, Antonio Carluccio’s braised Kohlrabi (which is now my favourite way to cook this vegetable but more on that in another blog), and lots more.

Today I have been using the pumpkin and made a broth for lunch with chicken stock (I save my meaty chicken stock for just such occasions as a good broth needs lots of meat) from the freezer and lots of pumpkin, pearl barley and lentils.  Perfect for a cold autumnal day!  Still delicious during this Indian summer heatwave we are currently experiencing.

Pumkins are very versatile and I prefer Calcott Hall’s Crown Prince Squash variety for flavour but I couldn’t resist this beautiful orange orb to use as the centre piece for the photoshoot.  The bland flavour of the pumpkin needs strong pairings and the paprika and garlic in chirozo are ideal for a savoury dish whilst cloves, allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg are perfect for sweeter dishes. Tonight I shall make a chorizo and pumpkin risotto blending a sumptuous mix of Italian, Spanish and British, whilst my weekend baking is going to be an American style pumpkin pie, where the secret is all in the mix of spices.