We cook with beetroot (red beets) a lot. It’s not unusual for us to have several bunches on the go at once. To think that as a youngster I assumed you only got this out of a jar in vinegar is quite unbelievable.

It’s good to keep track of the times you eat beetroot. It does tend to colour ‘things’ a day later!

More importantly, if you are cooking with fresh beetroot you have to be prepared to get red splatters everywhere and to gradually discolour all your chopping boards! Definitely keep the book you are following well away from them!

We typically roast beetroot in a halogen oven – then peel it and add it to dishes but this dish is with raw beetroot.

If you are as unfortunate as I was – to get the smallest beetroots ever – you’ll find peeling them and julienning them to be very fiddly indeed. Bigger beetroot is better I think – although you can’t predict what will arrive in your online shop.

This dish is essentially beef tartare with the beef substituted for raw beetroot. The dressing has capers, cornichon, parsley, dijon mustard, olive oil and spring onions (scallions). The recipe suggests serving with hard boiled eggs – which is convenient given I had two left over from the Egyptian Bean Salad!

Looks beautiful doesn’t it! Marinate the beetroot in the dressing for a while and it’ll really come together beautifully.

This is a great salad – but it can get messy – so be careful and don’t wear your best T-Shirt!

I was going to hold off making this until the dried peeled fava beans arrived from souschef.co.uk but we happened to have a couple of tins of broad beans in our shop this week. I’m assured that fava beans and broad beans are the same thing but I’m not convinced.

Anyway I made this recipe without the slog of boiling the fava beans for an hour and it came out pretty good. You essentially boil up the beans until they start to fall apart, add garlic and olive oil and cook some more. Serving is simply spooning it in a bowl and garnishing with red onion, ripe tomatoes and hard boiled eggs. The dusting of toasted and ground cumin seeds really finishes the dish off.

I will make this properly when the dried fava beans arrive but the tinned beans variety wasn’t bad at all. Very filling and warming. We really like this kind of warm dish dressed with raw onions and chopped tomatoes. It’s like seasoning it with salt and pepper.

This took less than 30 mins to make but I did cheat with the tinned beans.

If you – like me – always end up with a bag of carrots in your fridge then this is what you should make with them.

I love this – and it is so easy.

Boil and simmer some carrots and when they are tender drain them and let them cool right down. Then make the dressing which as just enough ginger and garlic to give you a bit of heat but not too much that it overpowers the carrots.

Mash the carrots a bit (I didn’t as I didn’t have a masher! – I just blitzed them for 5 seconds in a Magimix) and dress the carrots in the dressing and top with mixed olives, feta and coriander (cilantro in the book) and optionally some spring onion (scallions) and preserved lemons.

This really is a keeper – and I can’t imagine not having this every week. There’s loads left over too (there’s only the two of us) so we’ll have the rest for lunch at work.

Hopefully the dressing with infuse even more with the carrots and it’ll be even better!