Deep purple salad

I sometimes have mixed feelings about red cabbage - especially when it's over-spiced and served as a side dish that obliterates every other flavour on your plate. Instead, here's a quick, light red cabbage dish that also happens to work well with leftover Christmas turkey, ham, pork pie or cheese - or just for when you want something lighter if you've eaten a bit too much over Christmas and New Year.

Easy salad for autumn

Autumn is here and sunshine becomes a precious commodity. I'm eating tomatoes while they still taste of something, but I'm all to aware that this won't be the case for much longer. Savoy cabbages are in all the shops - my favourite type of cabbage, with their crinkly leaves and a flavour that manages to be well-developed without any bitterness.
 

Salad of roasted tomatoes and rocket

Summer is fast disappearing, so I'm enjoying tomatoes while I can - they never taste the same when they haven't had the benefit of sunshine to ripen them. I find peppers to be more consistent year-round, but they still feel like a late-summer ingredient. So here's an easy salad that just needs a bit of time in the oven to draw out the sweetness and emphasise the flavour of the vegetables. Then there's some garlic and coriander to wake them up a bit more.

Five-minute salad with white beans and blackened peppers

This is a salad you can make in five minutes but it can be a meal in itself, especially with some slices of a crusty loaf alongside. And from just four ingredients.

Red peppers and white beans are a perfect pairing, the earthy beans setting off the sweetness of the peppers. I grill the peppers to soften them and add some smoky notes.

Still pretending it's summer: pasta with fresh tomatoes, green beans and herbs

This pasta dish was made to celebrate the unseasonably warm weather, and the fact that I found some vine tomatoes really cheaply in the shops.

Very soon there won't be enough sunshine for even imported tomatoes to taste of anything much, and I'll stop buying fresh tomatoes for a few months. But for now, here's a quick pasta dish that is equally good hot, or cold as a pasta salad.

You can make this in the time it takes to cook the pasta - who needs ready meals?

Nuts and roots: a deep purple salad recipe

With earthy beetroot, the crunch of some nuts and some substantial grains, this is a salad to soothe the soul and keep you going all day.

It's a dish that can take five minutes or 50, depending mainly on whether you want to cook the beetroot yourself.  You can also use couscous, which cooks in moments, or quinoa, which takes about 20. (I took the middle ground here, and used brown bulghur wheat - this cooks in less than five minutes and is, I think, far more interesting in flavour than couscous, and more nutritious too.)

Either way, it's brilliantly purple, and with interesting textural contrasts.

Two late summer salads

Picnic opportunities are fast running out, but I am planning to squeeze in one or two more. This weekend I enjoyed two easy dishes which celebrate vegetables, using strong flavourings to add punch to main ingredients which might seem rather pedestrian - cucumber and carrots. The winner to my mind was spiced carrots teamed with feta cheese, the spices helping to bring out the sweetness which was balanced by the salty feta. But I will certainly be making the garlicky smashed cucumber again too.

Personally, if I had these two dishes on a picnic I wouldn't need much else, though I might be tempted by the idea of some fresh bread and some home-made hummus. But it rather depends how lavish your idea of a picnic is. And if you're not picnicking, never fear - either or both of these will work well indoors, perhaps as a light lunch or side dish.

Salad of peaches and cheese

I've recently been on a trip to Egypt. The food was simple but good - things like smokey baba ghanoush (or baba ghanoug as the Egyptians have it), and falafel (spicy and bright green inside due to being made from broad beans, rather than chick peas as is more common in other countries).

Flat Egyptian breads, slightly similar to pitta but round and usually made with a mixture of white and wholemeal flour, are consumed at every opportunity and are bought by the carrier bag full.

I was struck by the fruit, piled up in abundance at roadside stalls, in shops, on donkey carts, even on pavements.

Chick pea salad with tomato and goats' cheese

Apparently it's been the warmest, driest and sunniest summer since 2006. Despite the turn for the worse today, I'm hoping that summer's last hurrah may be yet to come.

What a difference a day makes, though. Tonight there's a chill in the air. Yesterday the warm evening demanded a picnic, just in case it should be the last of the year, and the park was full of others enjoying the last rays of sunshine.

Here's what I ate on the picnic. Tomatoes and aubergines are pretty much at the height of their season now, and tomatoes in particular are as cheap as they come. This dish partners them with chick peas and warming Middle Eastern spices, and is the kind of salad that is a meal in itself.

Making the salad

Grilled courgettes with garlic and herbs

Courgettes are one of the real pleasures of summer. I know you can by them year-round, but a fresh English courgette has a sweetness and depth of flavour that the imported, glasshouse-grown kind just can't match up to.

Last week I found some for sale from a garden in East Dean, Sussex. This weekend they came from Kent, via Brixton farmers' market. When buying courgettes, look for smooth, glossy skins (duller ones may be past their best) and go for smaller specimens which have more flavour and are less watery.

Courgettes and garlic are a wonderful combination, and this easy, North African-inspired salad makes the most of that, with the addition of some warmth from the chilli and extra interest from the fresh herbs. Best served at room temperature or just warm, it's become a staple of recent picnics.

A cool green salad for a hot summer's day

It's still hot. The grass is turning beige in the parks, and the roses that looked so fresh and glorious last week are beginning to look faded. Who knew it was possible to have so many warm sunny days in a row?

I think I've enjoyed more picnics already than I had during the whole of last summer. Eating dinner in the sunshine, preferably in an open green space, seems like by far the most attractive option on evenings like these. The trick is to go for two or three dishes with bold flavours, that will travel well but don't require too much labouring over a hot stove, or take valuable time away for your picnic.

Spicy Spanish chick pea salad

A summer's day with a hint of sunshine for a change, and it seemed like a day for a salad. I'm not one for dainty salads, though. Something based mainly on leaves is only good for a side dish as far as I am concerned. I like salads that are hearty, filling and with unexpected combinations of flavours.

This one hits the spot. It is based quite heavily on a recipe in the Telegraph, with a few adaptations according to ingredients I didn't have (piquillo peppers in a jar are not one of my store-cupboard staples) and because I wanted to use less oil.

I love the way the chick peas become infused with the smoked paprika and other flavours, making them more interesting than you ever thought chick peas could be. The touch of sweetness from the pears is unusual, but welcome.

Ingredients

175g (6oz) dry chickpeas or 400g (14oz) cooked, drained chickpeas
1 onion, peeled
1 large bay leaf
1 large garlic clove, peeled and crushed
A good pinch salt
50g (2oz) sun-dried tomatoes in oil, finely chopped
1tsp ground coriander, finely chopped
1 tsp honey
½ tsp smoked paprika
1½ tbsp sherry vinegar
1tbsp extra-virgin olive oil (optional)
100g (3½oz) cucumber
1 large ripe pear
150g (5½oz) baby spinach
 Juice of ½ lemon
75g (2¾oz) feta
Sourdough or other crusty bread, to serve (optional)

Method
Soak the chickpeas overnight (if you are using dried chickpeas, which I recommend). Cook according to the packet instructions, with the onion and bay leaf added to the water. Once cooked, discard the bay leaf. You can throw away the onion, or even mash it in to the dressing below, if you want.

Meanwhile, mash the crushed garlic and salt in a pestle and mortar. Add the sundried tomatoes and coriander and keep on mashing to a paste. Mix in the honey, paprika and vinegar.

Drain the chickpeas, add the dressing and leave them to absorb the flavours while you prepare the salad.

Cut the cucumber into ribbons using a vegetable peeler. Thinly slice the pear. Mix the cucumber and pear with the spinach leaves. Squeeze the lemon juice over the top, season, drizzle with the olive oil, if using, and toss. The chickpeas should still be lukewarm: spoon them over the salad. Crumble the feta on top.

Serve just as it is or with some bread. I recommend making extra; the salad works very well for a packed lunch the next day.