Olivia Potts

In the middle of an unpredictable Indian summer, here is a recipe from sultry southern Italy which is suitable for the changing seasons. While aubergine parmigiana (or parmigiana di melanzane) was born of hot Italian summers, it is also perfect for autumn, as the days shorten and darken. There is inherent comfort in the hot, almost-melting aubergine, covered in a rich sauce and blankets of cheese. Aubergines, tomato sauce, mozzarella and parmesan, all layered until they meld and transform The name is possibly a red herring, possibly not. Aubergine parmigiana is most associated with Naples, and is also beloved in Sicily and Calabria.

Is there a more glamorous piece of pâtisserie than the tarte tropézienne? Born in the inherently chic Saint-Tropez, named by Brigitte Bardot on the set of a film before becoming such a cult favourite that it  graces virtually every bakery on the French Riviera, the tarte tropézienne has star quality. But for some reason, it’s rarely found beyond its namesake town; I’ve never even seen it anywhere in the UK. There’s been a real resurgence in recent years of retro or comparatively unknown European pastries – the choux bun, the pain Suisse and the Kouign-amann have all become cool, widely available bakery favourites – but the tropézienne remains uncharacteristically low profile.

The last meal my parents had before I graced the world with my presence was fish and chips, so I like to think it forms part of my origin story. Growing up on the coast, fish and chips featured in all its forms: bags of chips clutched on windy beach walks; takeaway fish suppers brought home by Dad, steam escaping from cardboard boxes; and the ultimate luxury, a sit-in experience at Colmans, the South Shields king of fish and chip restaurants, accompanied by a slice of bread and butter and a cup of tea. I was built on fish and chips; salt and vinegar course through my blood. Battered fried fish was brought over to London by Jewish immigrants coming from Spain and Portugal, via the Netherlands, as long ago as the 16th century.

Whenever I tell someone that I’m making a pavlova the response is the same: sheer joy. Even the most fervent pudding-denier struggles to resist a slice of pav. It makes sense – fragile, crisp meringue with a tender, mallowy centre, soft waves of cream and some kind of fruit is such a brilliant combination. You can turn whatever you have to hand into a glorious, celebratory pav You don’t often see pavlovas on restaurant menus. There’s a good reason for that. A little like a trifle, part of the joy of a pavlova is that it arrives at the table looking unruffled: fruit perched perkily on clouds of cream atop a mountain of meringue. Then, as soon as the spoon hits it, it’s a mess.

Last year, we grew tomatoes for the first time. And we did so with our characteristic enthusiasm, lack of knowledge and ignoring of instructions. So inside our raised bed we planted out radishes and beetroot, chard and kale, tenderstem broccoli and Brussels sprouts – and one very busy row of tomatoes. We didn’t let this lack of real estate hold us back, oh no. We really went to town with the tomato seedlings. Crammed ’em in. ‘You should pinch those out,’ my father-in-law, a seasoned gardener, said more than once, with a hint of panic in his voice. We did not heed his advice.

I could map out my life geographically and temporally in scoops of ice cream. From the oyster delights handed over in tracing-paper napkins from Minchella’s hatch in South Shields on the beachfront, to the little silver coupe bowls of ice cream we ordered every night on family holiday in France (always the same, one ball of pistachio, one of blackcurrant). The perfect brown-bread ice cream I had at Andrew Edmunds in Soho when I first moved to London. An elder-flower ice cream with a damson swirl that we ordered on honeymoon in the Cotswolds; a strikingly memorable blue-cheese ice cream which was the first thing I ate upon arriving in Bilbao. A red-bean ice bar we were handed as we stepped out of a sweltering day in Georgetown into a cool and calm hotel.

They do salads differently in America. Caesar salad, Waldorf salad, even their egg salads and potato salads: they’re big, they’re gutsy and often they’re the main event, not an afterthought shoved to one side. This is never more true than when it comes to the Cobb salad: a riot of colour and instantly recognisable thanks to its various components being plated in tidy rows. The dish was invented at the Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant, probably in the 1930s, and is named after the owner, Robert Howard Cobb. Stories abound as to who exactly at the restaurant was responsible for the creation: was it Robert Kreis, the executive chef; Paul J. Posti, another chef; or Cobb himself?

I’m pretty easygoing when it comes to most aspects of cooking. I don’t think there’s much to be gained from being dogmatic or dictatorial. It’s just supper, at the end of the day. There are, as they say, many ways to skin a rabbit. And cooking is supposed to be about joy; it’s not an exam. But the exception is measuring ingredients for baking. Oh boy, do I get on my high horse about this. I can be very boring indeed about the need to measure accurately. The American system of cups and tablespoons drives me mad. Cups are inexact and inaccurate, they rely on scooping and sweeping, they don’t account for the varying density of dry ingredients. Scales, I will declaim – with only the slightest impetus – are inexpensive and an essential piece of kitchen equipment.

Of all the myriad ways of preserving, confit always strikes me as wonderfully improbable. The ability to preserve meat just through cooking it slowly in its own fat feels particularly wild. And the fact that this simple, unlikely process makes the meat more tender, more flavoursome than any other way of handling it only adds to the magic. Of course, if I pause for a moment and engage my brain, it’s very obvious why it’s such a successful method: most preservation relies on salting to reduce water levels, or excluding oxygen from the preserved food, both of which prevent bacteria from growing. Duck confit takes a belt and braces approach. The duck is salted (and sometimes spiced) for 24 hours – and once cooked, it is entirely submerged in fat, which protects it from air.