Salad doesn’t have to be something on the side or a bit of greenery bringing up the rear. It can be a starter or the main event and it can be childlishly simple to prepare, but it will only be delicious if the ingredients are of impeccable quality and genuinely complementary. Sounds obvious, but it’s surprising how often people - and restaurants - slip up. Using good oil and vinegar is a start: they won’t guarantee success, but they’ll pay dividends along the way. That doesn’

This is a River Café Cookbook recipe. Over the years, I have tried varying it by adding chopped crystallised and stem ginger, rum-soaked raisins, lime zest, vanilla extract, cardamom, and coffee instead of some of the cocoa, but I always come back to the original, which I’ve now decided I can’t improve on. Pressing it makes it particularly rich and dense, but I once forgot and it was still delicious. Serve it warm or cold with crème fraiche. Serves 6 200g dark chocolate, 70%

This may lack sophistication as a strategy, but experience has shown that there are two surefire ways to success when giving a lunch or dinner party. The first goes without saying: decent wine in generous quantities. The second is a chocolate pudding. You can overcook the pheasant, undercook the veg and curdle the sauce, but all will be forgiven and forgotten by the time the chocolate has been administered. If anyone doubts this approach, I should point out that the health-po

An effortless way to cook whole fish, either one per person or sharing. Just put the fish in a foil parcel with herbs and liquor and put it in the oven. Lots of fish are suitable, including bream, large salmon and small trout, but my favourite is sea bass, so that’s what’s here. (You can also adapt this recipe to pork chops, but cook them more slowly for longer.) Serves 2 Olive oil 1 shallot, very finely sliced 1 x 500g sea bass, cleaned and gutted 2 sprigs dill or tarragon S

Aka irresistible chocolate mousse with rum. It's another simple classic that we could all be making instead of more elaborate cakes. And it doesn’t have to be rum, although there is an affinity with chocolate. Almost any liqueur forgotten at the back of the cupboard can be brought out of retirement, as can brandy and whisky, although you may need to add some sugar to the melted chocolate. Serves 8 generously 340g dark chocolate (preferably 70% cocoa solids) 6 large eggs, sepa

Irish whiskey may sound unlikely, but trust me. Ideally you should buy live prawns and cook them yourself, but I’ve been known to use supermarket tiger prawns and I’m still here. I’ve also used Scotch whisky instead of Irish whiskey and lived to tell the tale, although Northern Irish chef Paul Rankin, who gave me the idea, swears by his local – Bushmills - which he says is lighter than many a Scotch. I wouldn’t use a peaty Islay, although I might try a French brandy. The red

Why aren’t we all eating syllabub? It’s a breeze to make and delicious. This one, based on Elizabeth David’s classic Everlasting Syllabub, doesn’t separate, so can be made in advance, and it doesn’t demand a whole bottle of wine. In fact, it doesn’t demand any and you can swap the sherry for dry white vermouth and the brandy for Grand Marnier or Cointreau. But whatever alcohol you use it must be drinkable, because, uncooked, the flavours come through loud and clear. Serves 6-

Far be it from me to suggest that anyone should find cooking with wine in Britain off-puttingly expensive, but I do concede that, thanks to our swingeing taxes on alcohol, it can be expensive. The trouble with wine is that once opened, it doesn’t keep, so anything left over has to be drunk (isn’t life hard?) which means that next time you want to cook with wine you have to buy another bottle. This is where, spirits and fortified wines have the edge. Spirits, including liqueur

Anything this lacks in colour compared with pears poached in red wine it more than makes up for in flavour - and on the budget front it uses half a bottle of cheap Spanish wine instead of a whole bottle of red. Re-cork or screw up the remaining half bottle tightly and keep it in the fridge. It’ll lose a touch of freshness, but will be fine for a second batch of pears in a couple of weeks. Use a potator peeler to get the citrus peels off in unbroken strips if you can. Serves 6

Pork is cheap, but chops are often so lean (obsessively so in supermarkets) they need remedial treatment to stop them being dry. The tricks here are a coating of honey and mustard and brining the chops before you start – although if you haven't time to brine, the chops will still taste good. You can speed up the brining process by dissolving the salt and sugar in some boiling water and then topping up with ice and cold water. The brine must be cold when you put the chops in.

If the sound of meat and milk sounds odd, remember that pork braised in milk has a impeccable pedigree from both Venice and southwest France, and the lamb and fennel combination is a winner. I’ve had teenagers claiming to hate fennel, then come back for more. You can use any cut of lamb, but the weight, trimmed of fat, needs to be at least 900g. That may not sound much for six people, but it’s a rich dish. Sometimes I buy boned, rolled neck joints and unroll them. A typical p

Another from my Sunday Times recipe series, again very relevant right now - November and the run-up to Christmas are definitely a time when a little bit of scrimping wouldn't go amiss... They aren’t cheap eats in the completely threadbare student sense, but ideas for entertaining on a tighter budget. After all, feeding friends at home is perennially the new going out, isn’t it? They involve cheaper cuts and types of meat and poultry and fewer or less luxurious ingredients. No