This is a ‘multiple choice’ recipe for chutney, designed to help you use whatever seasonal fruit and vegetables are in full glut at the time. For me, the courgettes/overgrown marrows are pretty much a staple in August and September, and they may give way to pumpkins and squashes in October and November. Tomatoes and plums are around at roughly the same time, though the tomatoes will start early – particularly if you use green ones.

Only two ingredients here, bar the salt and pepper, yet this is an elegant dish that I wouldn’t hesitate to serve at even the most formal dinner.

Ratatouille can be delightful, but it can also be awful. Stewed in too much liquid, the different vegetables all start to taste the same instead of complementing each other. I have taken to cooking all the vegetables separately, then combining them at the end.

This is a classic dish and an unbeatable one. One good-sized lobster does two people to make one of the finest special-occasion dishes I can think of. Ideally the lobster flesh, smothered in the finished sauce, is piled back into the two half shells and finished under the grill.

This is my dish for using up those fat cannonball peas that inevitably escape the attention of even the wiliest picker. They are a bit mealy and starchy compared to their baby cousins but...

For me, this is sheer delight – a celebration of all those fantastic things coming ready in the garden at the same time. The great thing about it is that no stock is necessary, as the vegetables give plenty of flavour to the liquor, and no single ingredient is truly essential – although I might feel a little compromised without the tomatoes and onions.

I love plum jam and I love plum compote, and I particularly love this dish, which ends up somewhere between the two – hence the name. It can be used as a sauce for vanilla ice-cream or a topping for pancakes...

Marinated grilled vegetables have been ‘trendy’ for so long now that they’re about as cool as your dad at the wedding disco.