A tribute recipe to the great Antonio Carluccio  - total food legend

The Food Gatherer's Note: A beautiful purple pasta dish from The Nordic Bakery that’s simple to prepare. 

The Food Gatherer's Note: This is a lovely light and delicate dessert to serve at the end of a heavy meal. It's taken from one of my favourite recipe books of the last few years, Persiana by Sabrina Ghayour.  Serve the pears with good vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of runny honey if you have a sweeter tooth. 

The Food Gatherer's Note: This is ever so simple and great served up with a pork loin chop or roast.

The Food Gatherer's Note:  An easy recipe based on an Ottolenghi dish.  Miso is a Japanese seasoning made from fermenting soya beans with salt and a fungus known as Koji in Japan and sometimes rice and barley. Miso is also high in proteins, vitamins and minerals.  The flavour is rich, salty and earthy which compliments the sweetness of the squash brilliantly.  

The baked potato is perfect fodder for a bonfire night or halloween gathering. When the skin is thick, crispy and a little bit chewy and the centre, soft and fluffy this can be one of the greatest culinary pleasures!  Here's some do's and dont's...

The Food Gatherer's Note: Take advantage of the tail end of the courgette season with these highly addictive fried courgettes sticks, simple to make and slightly more virtuous than chips! 

The Food Gatherer's Note: If you have a parmesan rind add to the veg when cooking for added flavour and a little creaminess and to make the soup into even more of a meal, add fregola pasta .

The Food Gatherer's Note: It's that time of year again when the children look for everything to be turned to a halloween theme. So here I am turning perfectly healthy apples into dental appointments on sticks!  My girls love them and as long as I supervise the toffee, they love making them too.  Make sure you start with wax free apples or you will find that the toffee will just slip off or set in unsightly clumps! 

What could be better on a cold autumnal day than a steaming hot bowl of fragrant, sweet and aromatic soup.  As it cooks you will start to smell the heady scent of the turmeric and cardamon which is wonderful. I discovered this recipe from Anna Jones a fabulous vegetarian cook and love the combination of spices and squash. 

The Food Gatherer's Note: Healing and comforting aromatic Tuscan chicken soup, slowly cooked and topped with gently wilted kale. Of course it would be best to use your own chicken broth, made from a carcass of a chicken roast, but for a quick and easy fix you could use a good quality stock. Recipe taken from One Good Dish by David Tanis

The Food Gatherer's Note: A pretty special slow roast pork recipe for a big gathering from Jamie Oliver which is perfect if you aren't going out the night before!  Halve the quantities for a weekend family roast with leftovers for the week! Cooking time will be about 5 hours for this.  Great with a potato or celeriac gratin and steamed greens.