This didn’t start life quite like this. That’s to say, I happened to have a bit of cold black rice and some Vietnamese dipping sauce left over in the fridge one day, along with a fresh consignment of raw, peeled prawns. The black rice had gone with a fish curry; the dipping sauce I’d eaten with a lemongrass-stuffed roast chicken. I’m telling you this simply to illustrate that this is what real cooking is about: you just go with what you’ve got.

In fact you could play with this a number of ways. You could have the rice hot, the hot prawns, too, just stirred through with the cold dipping sauce-turned-dressing; in place of the prawns, you could have hot, quickly fried squid rings; you could forgo the fish part and turn this vegetarian by adding some soft, jade chunks of avocado to the cold black rice and chilli-speckled dressing. The dipping sauce anyway is something I wouldn’t want to live without: I love it with roast or poached chicken, grilled chicken wings, to dunk prawns into, or to spoon over plain steamed pak choi or broccoli. I could go on – and often do.

The black rice is real black rice, not wild rice and not white rice dyed black with squid ink. It’s packaged by Merchant Gourmet and I get it from the supermarket, usually without any trouble.

for the Vietnamese dipping sauce/dressing:

2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed

2 fresh Thai birdeye chillies or other red chillies, finely sliced

approx. 4cm fresh ginger, finely minced

4 tablespoons fish sauce

2 tablespoons lime juice (about 1 lime)

4 tablespoons water

2 tablespoons caster sugar

for the salad:

250g Nanking black rice

500g raw, peeled prawns

salt

juice of half a lemon

To make the sauce, simply mix all the ingredients together. It doesn’t get much less complicated than that, frankly.

Well, there is the small matter of the rice and prawns. The rice you just cook by following the instructions on the packet; the prawns you poach in some simmering salted water, to which you’ve added the juice of half a lemon, for 5 minutes or so or until just cooked through but still very tender. Let both rice and prawns cool, then give the sauce a quick stir and spoon some over the rice, fork this through and then tumble the prawns on top, spooning a little more sauce over as you go.

Serves 2 as a main course; 4 as a starter.

MAURITIAN PRAWN CURRY

Mostly I cook in lieu of travelling, but this is my way of reminding myself that I once was that person who sat in the shade on gold sand under blue skies gazing at an ocean bluer still…

This is a sprightly curry, fierily orange and warm with cinnamon and nutmeg. Make some plain basmati rice to go with it and you’re done.

1 tablespoon turmeric

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cumin

half teaspoon chilli powder

quarter teaspoon mace

4cm piece fresh ginger

2 cloves garlic

1 onion

salt

2 tablespoons groundnut oil

1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes

juice and zest of half a lemon

1 stick cinnamon

1 tablespoon curry leaves

750g medium raw prawns, shelled and deveined

good grating nutmeg

handful chopped fresh coriander

3–4 green finger chillies

Measure out the turmeric, coriander, cumin, chilli powder and mace into a bowl and grate over the peeled ginger and garlic cloves with a microplane. Add a little water to form a paste, and then leave to one side. Finely chop the onion, adding a bit of Maldon salt to stop it catching, and fry gently in the oil until it softens. Stir in the spice paste and, stirring still, cook for a minute or so. Pour in the tomatoes, then fill the empty can with water and add it to the pan. Squeeze in the lemon juice and pop in the cinnamon stick and curry leaves, and let the whole sauce simmer gently for about half an hour so that it can thicken and the ground spices will lose their floury taste.

When you are ready to eat – and you can cook the sauce well in advance if this suits – add the raw prawns and let them cook through. Keep tasting them to make sure they have lost their glassy middle.

Pour the curry into a shallow bowl and grate well with fresh nutmeg and the lemon zest. Sprinkle over the coriander, and split the finger chillies lengthwise leaving their stalks and seeds intact (unless you are a wuss about such matters, in which case deseed by all means). Arrange them as artistically as you please over the dish.

Serves 4–6.

BARBECUED SEA BASS WITH PRESERVED LEMONS

You don’t need to barbecue the sea bass for this: wrap it in foil and bake it in the oven if that’s easier. Similarly, you don’t need to use sea bass, which, though delicious, is expensive. The point is, any fish goes with these lemons which are preserved not quite in the usual way of being steeped in salt for weeks but are quickly blanched and then cooked in a light, briney syrup. The advantages are twofold: you can prepare the lemons just the day before you need to use them rather than having to get yourself efficiently ahead of yourself by starting the lemons ten days before (who knows what they’re going to do, let alone going to cook, ten days in advance?); and this method tamps down rather than points up their rasping acidity, providing a mellow fruitfulness rather than acerbic tang.

for the preserved lemons:

4 unwaxed lemons

250g caster sugar

100g Maldon salt

500ml water

Cut each lemon into quarters, removing any pips or white pith. Cook in a large saucepan of boiling water for 5 minutes, then drain them and put the lemon quarters in a bowl of cold water and leave to soak for an hour.

Mix the sugar, salt and the measured water in a saucepan and put on the heat to dissolve. Drain the lemon quarters and add to the pan, bring them to the boil and then turn down the heat and let them simmer until the skins are tender, which should take about 20 minutes. Remove the lemons to a Kilner jar or similar and then reduce the syrup a little by letting it bubble away over high heat on the hob for a while, and pour over the lemons in the jar. The lemons will be ready to use the following day, though obviously you can keep them in their liquid in the jar to be plundered whenever you want them.

And actually, since you’re going to need about 2 lemons’ worth for the sea bass below, you might well want to boost quantities for regular use.

for the sea bass:

1 sea bass, approx. 1kg, gutted and scaled

3 tablespoons olive oil

6–8 quarters preserved lemons

small bunch fresh parsley, chopped

1 small bunch fresh mint, chopped

1 tablespoon syrup from the lemons

black pepper

Score the sea bass, making about three slashes almost to the bone on each side of the fish. Brush the fish with the olive oil, taking care to paint the head and tail well, as those parts stick the most.

Chop the lemon pieces finely and put them in a bowl with the chopped parsley and mint, mix everything up with your fingers and then stuff the six slashes with the lemon-herb mixture. Any herby, lemony gunge that’s left once you’ve done this can be put into the cavity of the fish.

Lay the fish on a piece of foil and drizzle with the syrup, and season with black pepper. Then when you are ready to cook, lay the fish (on the foil) straight on to a very hot barbecue. Cooking the fish on a piece of foil means that it doesn’t stick to the grill bars and you can also manoeuvre the fish off the heat easily when it’s ready. Cook the sea bass for about 15 minutes. That’s to say, it takes this long on my barbecue – which has a lid – but if you’re cooking on an open barbecue, you will probably need to turn the fish. Otherwise, you can wrap the fish entirely in foil – making a tightly sealed but baggy package – and sit it on a baking tray in a hot oven (about 200°C/gas mark 6) for about the same length of time.

Serves 4.

SALMON KEBABS WITH POMEGRANATE MOLASSES AND HONEY

Salmon may not be the most refined fish in the sea, but it does have the advantage of being able to take just about anything you want to throw at it. This may not be the most positive way of putting it; there is a lot to be said for its juicy coral meatiness. Here, treacly pomegranate molasses, honey and soy pervade it with sour-sweet pungency; once grilled, it takes on a burnished, barbecued stickiness.

80ml pomegranate molasses

80ml good-quality runny honey

1 tablespoon soy sauce

500g salmon fillet, cubed (approx. 4cm square)

Whisk together the pomegranate molasses, honey and soy, and pour into a freezer bag. Add the salmon pieces, and tie the bag, expelling any air first, then marinate for at least an hour.

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