A Modern Way to Cook: Over 150 quick, smart and flavour-packed recipes for every day

This is equally good on toast. I often double the recipe and serve it in bowls with home-made tortilla chips, to make an amazing snack for a crowd.

SERVES 2 AS A LUNCH, OR 4 AS A SNACK

2 ripe avocados

½ a lemon

1 clementine, or ½ an orange

2 tablespoons tahini

2 handfuls of Kalamata olives

½ a small clove of garlic

TO SERVE

4 flatbreads or tortillas

chilli flakes

toasted cumin seeds

fresh green herbs (I use dill, basil or parsley)

feta cheese (optional)

Get all your ingredients together.

Halve and de-stone the avocados and scoop the flesh into a bowl with a good pinch of salt and pepper. Squeeze over the juice of the lemon and the clementine or orange. Add the tahini and roughly smash and mash until you have a half smooth, half chunky mixture.

De-stone and roughly chop the olives and add them to the bowl. Very finely chop or grate the garlic and add that to the bowl too. Gently mix to combine.

Heat the flatbreads either in a dry frying pan or on an open gas flame, turning them with tongs once they have browned a little. This will take a few seconds on a gas hob and more like 30 seconds to 1 minute in a pan.

Cut the flatbreads into quarters and pile on the avocado mixture. Top with a scattering of chilli flakes, toasted cumin seeds and a few delicate herbs. If you like you can add a crumble of feta.

Avocado, cucumber and fennel soup

10–15 MINUTES

This soup couldn’t be easier and is one of the quickest recipes I’ve ever made. It’s what I eat on hot days or days when I feel like something light, refreshing and cleansing. I don’t think that this kind of super-fresh food should be banished from the winter though. I have been known to eat a bowl of this in front of the fire in January after the Christmas eating enthusiasm.

I mention using avocado oil here; if you don’t have it, a good extra virgin olive oil will be great, but avocado oil has such an amazing buttery taste that it is worth searching out. Use it anywhere you might use good olive oil, to finish soups and in dressings.

SERVES 2 AS A MEAL, OR 4 AS A STARTER

1 ripe avocado

1 cucumber

½ a large bulb of fennel

2 tablespoons Greek or coconut yoghurt

the juice of ½ a lemon

a handful of ice cubes

a few sprigs of fresh dill

a few sprigs of fresh basil

½ a green chilli

a handful of toasted pumpkin seeds

extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil

Get all your ingredients together.

De-stone the avocado and scoop the flesh into the jug of a blender. Chop the cucumber and fennel into large pieces and add these too, along with the yoghurt, lemon juice, ice cubes and a good pinch of salt and pepper. Blitz on high until you have a completely smooth pale green soup. Taste the soup and add more lemon or salt if needed; the flavour should be subtle and refreshing, with a back-note of lemon.

Once the soup is completely smooth, pour into bowls and top with fronds of dill, little basil leaves, chopped green chilli, some pumpkin seeds and a good drizzle of oil. If it’s a really hot day you can add a couple more ice cubes too.

(#ulink_331a1916-0644-55bd-9649-3db4b9d9801b)

Life-friendly dinners, layered with a rainbow of veg, for when you have a dash more time. These are hearty dinners: generous salads, hash browns and home-made beans, quick-as-a-flash Vietnamese noodles, rainbow goodness bowls, quick stews, vibrant nachos, roasted lemon courgetti and quick quinoa risotto.

Early summer greens goddess salad

20 MINUTES

Coconuts and avocados are two of my favourite things and luckily they are a happy pairing. Here they join forces to create an incredible dinner salad as fresh and zippy as it is satisfying. This dressing is inspired by the famous Green Goddess dressing I loved so much growing up in San Francisco. My version has some coconut milk and a kick from rice wine vinegar and soy.

Search out the ripest avocados, as this salad is really a love song to their creamy grassy deliciousness. When asparagus isn’t around I make this with purple sprouting broccoli. If I am really hungry I add some cooked and cooled buckwheat noodles, quinoa or brown rice to my bowl too.

SERVES 4

a bunch of asparagus

olive oil

400g sugar snap peas

300g edamame beans

300g baby spinach