Creamy cauliflower and leek bake

I don't know about you, but I'd be quite happy if I never saw another mince pie. After all the indulgence of the festive season I feel it's time to load up on veggies. This dish couldn't be more full of vegetables, but is still warm and comforting, topped with a crispy, cheesy (but not too cheesy) crust.

 

Warm salad of leeks and tomatoes

I often use leeks in pies and risottos, but here's a more summery, Mediterranean way with leeks. This fairly humble vegetable pairs really well with the more bright and glamorous flavours of tomatoes and olives. Use cherry tomatoes if you can - I couldn't get hold of any on the day I made this dish.

This makes a nice side dish, or perhaps a light lunch with some crusty bread. Adding some new potatoes will make it more substantial.

Pumpkin part 2 - pumpkin and bean curry

Perhaps not surprisingly, I hadn't managed to use a whole pumpkin in my previous pumpkin tagine. So I had some leftover cooked pumpkin to use up, and this Indian-inspired dish turned out to be the answer.

I was actually planning something quite different, but I discovered at the start of the cooking process that I'd left the tin opener at work (don't ask...) So I couldn't open most of the tins in the cupboard. Luckily the tins of kidney beans turned out to have ring pulls on them. (I usually save kidney beans for chilli rather than curry, but I couldn't see any reason not to put them in curry, and I didn't have too many other options.)

Spicy eggs for a lazy weekend brunch

Here's a spicy, flavour-packed brunch for a lazy weekend morning. Or it could equally be a lunch or supper, if you're not keen on spices too early in the day.

This recipe is from Sunshine on a Plate by Masterchef winner Shelina Permalloo (£20; Ebury Press). It's a dish from Mauritius, whose global melting pot of flavours can be seen in the mixture of ginger and coriander with parsley and thyme, plus plenty of heat from the chilli.

Roast Mediterranean vegetable soup

Still recovering from my dental surgery, home-made soup seemed like a good option. The weather demanded something a bit summery, though - something with flavours of the Mediterranean.This soup almost tastes like sunshine.

It's easy to make, too, though not the quickest soup ever due to the fact that you have to roast the vegetables. Sliced courgettes, red peppers, onions and whole cloves of garlic were roasted until soft. Then all that remained was to blend them with some tinned tomatoes, herbs and seasoning. I kept it thick and substantial, but you could add more water if you prefer a thinner stock. It's so full of ripe summery flavours that you don't need stock - water will do fine.

Feast to cure melancholy

It's not every day you get to attend "an edible experiment". The Wellcome Collection hosted two events called Feast to Cure Melancholy. The blurb promised: "If the experiment succeeds you will take home new tools for living. Even if it fails, the evening will be an imaginative and sensory delight."

It's possible they were over-selling it slightly. I certainly didn't feel I acquired any new tools for living. On the other hand, the imaginative and sensory delight bit probably was true.

It was inspired by the Wellcome's collection of historic recipe, food and medical books, in particular Robert Burton’s 1621 work The Anatomy of Melancholy. This is a collection of advice, quotations and musings on the subject of what we would now call depression. Quite a bit of it is about food - Burton thought the melancholy man should avoid beef, venison, hare, heavy wines, cabbage and fresh-water fish, among other things.

Robert Burton

Last night's event drew heavily on the ancient and medieval theory of humours. A melancholy person was afflicted by too much cold and dry humour, and would need something hot and wet (such as duck or radishes) to balance it. A phlegmatic person is cold and wet, and could be treated with choleric foods such as wine and mutton.There were other treatments too, such as blood-letting or enemas.

Having learned all this it was time to eat - four small and unusual courses created by food artists Blanch and Shock. A couple of the dishes were "Butter-roasted onions with nutmeg and cinnamon-spiced potatoes, chestnut cream powder, spring onions and capers," and "Potted wild boar in hay-infused fat, pompion (squash) crisp, apple gel, scurvy grass and toasted hogweed seeds." This was certainly the first time I had eaten hogweed seeds, or for that matter dittander, which turns out to be a wild plant with a mustard flavour. It wasn't the best meal of my life, but it was possibly the most original.

The blurb had asked: "Can our minds benefit today from Burton’s dietary and medicinal advice on food and drink, moderation and exercise, sleeping and dreaming" Well, not as far as I could tell from last night. The theme of food and health seems timely, though, when Channel Four is broadcasting Food Hospital, looking at whether conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome and breast cancer can be helped by diet. There is some evidence that nutritional deficiencies can affect mental development and behaviour, including that lack of iron and iodine can affect children's mental development.

Certainly food for thought.