As Strong As Soup

Taloa is a simple Basque flatbread that can be wrapped around a variety of savoury and even some sweet fillings. It's quite often filled with ventrèche; in other words, it's made into a southern French bacon sandwich - kind of. I've come across quite a few variations on this simple little bread, some of which I suspect add yeast since they look and feel more like a pitta bread. This simpler version is based on a recipe from a tourist office leaflet so I assume it's reasonably authentic. The breads would normally be cooked on a flat grill (plancha) but a frying pan does the job too. If you're wondering why cornmeal is used then you clearly haven't driven along the many, many miles of road lined with maize fields in the south west of France. There are plenty of plums around in that area too so I've added some to the duck sauce. I used fairly large British plums, but if you have some of the smaller varieties (and smaller varieties do seem to be popular in th...

This recipe is a handy and tasty variation on tomato soup that uses plums to give a sweet and sour flavour. It’s based on a Michael Smith recipe from the 1980s. I don’t mean Michael Smith the very successful Scottish chef or Michael Smith the well-known Canadian TV chef; I’m talking about Michael Smith the cookery writer, TV chef of his day and great champion of British food, who sadly died back in 1989. This may not be exactly Mr Smith’s original recipe, but the spirit is there. It’s possible to make this with tinned tomatoes if you’re stuck for fresh, but you’re likely to need less passata in that case. It’s crucial to get the balance of sweet and sour right for this soup and you may need to adjust the amount of sugar you add depending on the sweetness of the plums and tomatoes you’re using. This will make 4 or 5 decent-sized portions. 1 onion, chopped 500 g plums (preferably red ones), stoned 325 g tomatoes, deseeded (you don’t have to be fanatical about the deseeding)...

This dish might sound as if it just wouldn't work, but oddly it does – as long as you like plums. I came across a French recipe using chicken and plums and since there were plenty of cheap plums around, I thought I'd try something along the same lines. It might sound a little complicated, but it's not really and can be prepared largely in advance. This recipe serves two hungry people, but the size of plums and chicken thighs will vary a lot so you might want to vary the amount of pasta or other ingredients to suit your appetite. 3-4 chicken thighs, skin on and bone in 3-4 plums, ripe but preferably still on the firm side 2 medium courgettes, topped and tailed Zest and juice of 1 small lime 150 g (or thereabouts) tagliatelle – or use whatever pasta you have Balsamic vinegar, olive oil, dried chilli flakes, salt and pepper and maybe a little sugar Cut the courgettes into thin slices lengthways. Dry these slices out by placing them on silicone sheets on baking tray...