Charred broccoli, lentils and beetroot

Charred food seems to be all the rage right now. Charred (you might say burnt if you were being less pretentious) vegetables in particular are something that I'd barely encountered, at least outside of barbecues, until recently. Whether the trend began as an error by an inattentive chef (a bit like the legend of the origin of tarte tatin), I couldn't say. In any case, aubergines and peppers respond particularly well to this treatment - I made a very moreish baba ghanoush at the weekend whose smokiness was matched only by the kick of garlic.

But brassicas are worth trying too. Bringing a bit of char to broccoli brings out a sweetness in its stems, balanced by a hint of bitterness from the burnt patches on the florets. If you ask me, it's as glamorous as broccoli ever gets.

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.