Bacon or ham with fresh pea purée

My favourite piece of meat for this recipe is a good chunk of salt belly or pancetta with the skin still on. But any piece of boiling ham or gammon will work well.

In the winter you can make the same dish using split green or yellow peas, though they'll take longer to cook and you'll need to keep adding the ham stock, risotto style, to stop them boiling dry.

To serve 5 - 6

Take a piece of bacon or ham weighing about 1 kilo (pre-soaked in fresh water for a few hours if very salty) and place in a saucepan with a few roughly chopped stock vegetables, such as carrots, onions and celery, and a bay leaf. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for up to 2 hours, until the meat is completely tender. Put 750g fresh or frozen peas in a small pan and ladle over just enough stock from cooking the ham to cover them. You can add a sprig or two of fresh mint to the pan at this stage. Bring to the boil and simmer fast for about 10 minutes (for cannonballs; half that time for young or frozen peas), until the peas are tender.

Drain the peas, discarding the mint leaves if you have used any, but reserving the cooking liquor, and mash or process with a knob of butter, adding just enough of the liquor to give a loose but thick purée. You can make the purée as coarse or as smooth as you like. My preference is for velvety smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

To serve, ladle generous pools of the purée onto warmed plates and lay thick slices of the ham or bacon on top.

Garlic, salt and pepper prawns

This is what I do with the prawns I catch myself in Dorset, from mid-August until November (at which point the stormy seas tend to suggest my little boat would be better out of the harbour and in the boatyard for a winter rest up). You can make the dish with shell-on prawns, which are worth buying frozen in bulk and defrosting in batches as you need them (since that's exactly what the fishmonger does).

This dish is all about fingers, and the garlicky, oily, prawny taste that is left on them when you've peeled. So please don't make it with peeled prawns and please don't use a knife and fork. It just wouldn't be fun.

To serve 2 generously, 4 less so

Take 500g live prawns or thoroughly defrosted raw shell-on prawns. The former should be dropped in well-salted boiling water for 1 minute, then removed with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Melt about 50g butter in a large frying pan and add a trickle of olive oil to help prevent it burning. Add 2 finely chopped cloves of garlic and fry gently, so the garlic softens without browning. Turn up the heat and add the prawns. Toss and shake, coating them thoroughly with the garlic and butter. Sprinkle, as you go, with generous pinches of flaky sea salt and vigorous twists of freshly ground black pepper. About 2-3 minutes on a fierce heat should do it. The idea is to get the prawns thoroughly hot, but stop before they start to shrink and lose their juices.

Serve at once, with brown bread and no cutlery.

Mackerel with melted onions and black olives

In Dorset, mackerel usually arrive in June, as they chase the sand eels and whitebait inshore, sometimes chasing them right up onto the beach. They may disappear for a few weeks in August, before returning with a vengeance to gorge on the sprats. I'll take them whenever I can get them, and never tire of eating them, whether grilled over charcoal, raw as sushi, pickled with dill, or even boiled in seawater on the beach (try it). This Provençal-style dish is one of the few 'fancy' treatments I'll allow myself - not that it's difficult or time-consuming.

To serve 4 as a starter, 2 as a main course

Cut the fillets from either side of 2 whole, ungutted mackerel and season them with a little salt and pepper.

Slice 2 - 3 large onions - enough almost to fill a large frying pan (they will reduce to about a quarter of their volume as they cook). Heat a film of olive oil in the pan and add the onions with 3 or 4 bay leaves and a sprig or two of thyme. Sweat the onions gently, tossing and stirring frequently, for at least 10 minutes, until they are softened and golden, very tender and sweet. Don't let them burn. Add a handful of black olives, stoned and roughly chopped, and a splash of white wine. Cook for a few minutes until the wine has evaporated, then season with a little salt and pepper.

Push the onions to the edges of the pan, making space for the mackerel fillets to cook in the middle. Lay the fillets in the pan, flesh-side down. Turn them after a few minutes to cook the skin side, spreading the onions over the fish to help the transfer of heat. They should be cooked through in 7 -8 minutes.

This dish can be served hot, straight from the pan, but is arguably even better at room temperature. Serve with a good chilled rosé - which will taste particularly fine with the rich, oily fish, sweet onions and salty olives.

Blackcurrant double-ripple ice cream

Blackcurrants are so intensely flavoured that you don't need much of their purée to make an ice cream. This recipe keeps the purée very tart and sharp. Half of it is used to flavour a classic, custard-based ice cream, while the other half makes ripples of very intense, concentrated fruit juice. It's a tantalising, sherbety, sweet-and-sour effect.

To serve 6 - 8

Place 600g blackcurrants in a saucepan with a dribble of water to get them started and 50g caster sugar. Stir over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 10 - 15 minutes, until the blackcurrants are completely soft and the juices have run. Rub the mixture through a sieve into a bowl and chill.

Measure 500 ml double cream and combine half of it with 250 ml whole milk. Scald this mixture in a pan until almost boiling. Mix 4 egg yolks with 125g caster sugar, then pour the hot milk and cream on to them, whisking all the time. Return this custard to the pan and stir constantly over a very gentle heat until it starts to thicken. Take off the heat and keep stirring as it cools and thickens further.

Combine the custard with half the blackcurrant purée, mixing thoroughly. Lightly whip the remaining 250 ml double cream and fold it in. Taste the mixture and add more sugar if you think it needs it. An ice cream mixture before freezing shouldtaste a little too sweet, as sweetness is muted in the freezing process.

Now either pour the mixture into an ice cream machine and churn until nearly frozen or freeze-churn the old-fashioned way by putting the mixing bowl in the freezer and removing every hour or so to whisk up and emulsify the half-frozen mixture. Whichever route you choose, when the ice cream is thick enough to hold its shape but soft enough to work a little, spread it in a large mixing basin and make several channels, grooves and holes in it. Into these, trickle little pools of the remaining blackcurrant purée. Cut and turn the mixture a few times to spread these ripples around, but don't overdo it, or they'll get too mixed up with the ice-cream. The aim is to create a contrast of both colour and taste.

Pack into tubs and freeze. Leave at room temperature for a good half-hour before serving. Serve with shortbread or other sweet biscuits.

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