Ratatouille

This is a really easy to make dish that has a multitude of uses. It can be eaten as is with just some bread, made into various sauces for pasta, added to lasagna and other baked dishes as well as being a great side dish. It is several of your 5 a day  (depending on how large a serving you have). It's ingredients are variable depending on how much you have and what is in season. I realise that none of these are currently in season but sometimes you need a bit of sunshine in your life and this dish has bucketloads of it. Roast these at 180 degrees as you don't want the veg becoming soggy and tasteless but do remember that undercooked aubergine is disgusting.

To make about 10 portions you need:

• 4 peppers (I used 1 green, 1 yellow and 2 red)
• 4 red onions
• 2 white onions
• 2 aubergines
• 3 courgettes 
• 5 tomatoes
• oregano
• olive oil

Chop everything up into bite sized pieces, drizzle generously with olive oil, add a decent amount of oregano, season, and mix. It will look a bit like this.

After roasting for about 30 mins it should be done. 

Oaty cookies

These can be cooked at a higher temperature (180 with a fan oven) or lower (170 with a fan) depending on how brown and crunchy you like them (higher is more crunchy coz sugar has caramelised). I read loads and loads of cookie recipes, some science of cookies and messed about with the proportions until I like to texture to get the following ratios of butter:wet:sugar:dry:filling of 1: 2 : 1.2 : 2.4 : 1.75 some were rounded to make it easier for me to weigh stuff out. I used a 2:1 ratio of oats to flour.

Makes about 18 cookies.

• 170g butter
• 200g sugar
• 2tbsp maple flavoured golden syrup
• 2 eggs
• 133g plain flour
• 266g oats
• 2tsp baking powder
• 100g mixed berries (cranberries, blueberries and sultanas)
• 50g walnuts chopped/crushed
• 150g milk chocolate

Beat the butter and sugar together then add the syrup and eggs followed by the flour and oats and finally the filling ingredient. Place spoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet, as the dough is quite dense it needs to be flattened a bit. Bake at whichever temp suits you (I went for the lower one) for about 15 mins (depending on how big you make them: I used a tbsp). Lift to wire rack to cool.