I recently started reading Tamar Adler’s Everlasting Meal. If you’ve seen her extracts in the Guardian Cook supplement, you’ll have an idea of her tone. The language can feel a bit unexpected for food writing, but I think her ambition to imitate the approach of MFK Fisher is at least partly successful (and that’s a high bar). Among the digressions, there is a lot of practical advice.

This week, when the veg box arrived on Tuesday, I followed her advice to do a big batch of preparation all at once. So I roasted a butternut squash and a leftover sweet potato with a little chilli. I sliced and roasted a lurking fennel bulb. And I sliced and roasted cherry tomatoes, leaving them in with the oven turned off to get all ‘sunblush’ texture. Then I shredded the huge heap of cavolo nero and cooked it slowly on the stove with a little onion. This all made it easier to stick extra vegetables on the table this week.

Recipes:

• Pork chops with apples and onions, with mashed potato (that got reused as a topping for the fish pie) – more or less from Nigel Slater’s Eat
• Pasta with oven-roasted tomatoes and courgettes – Luisa Weiss (aka The Wednesday Chef). Barely a recipe, but exactly the weeknight inspiration I needed (and unusually, a mostly hands-off pasta recipe). NB – I’m looking forward to Luisa’s new book on german baking, out in the Autumn.
• Bean and red pepper quesadillas – from Anna Jones’ A Modern Way to Cook. I wouldn’t have thought of mashing the beans with the veg and cheese for these, but it worked really well to hold everything together without needing shuddering amounts of cheese.
• Marion Cunningham’s raised waffles and Violet Bakery Chocolate Rye brownies for a Belgian-themed potluck lunch at work.
• Coconut Chicken Curry – David Tanis in the New York Times. This needed a bit more spice for me, but it’s a nice subtle recipe.

Without a recipe:

• No-knead bread
• Fish pie – with prepared ahead roast squash and garlicky sautéed leftover broccoli

Reading:

• Four ways with roasted rhubarb
• Vegetable tarts for Spring with the usual amazing photographs from La Tartine Gourmande
• When and how to swap dairy products in baking by Alice Medrich. I *wish* I had written this. In fact, I might well do my own version soon.
• Intrigued by this Israeli technique of baking bread very slowly overnight.
• The Piglet has crowned this year’s winner. I always learn a lot from these reviews, and this year I have added A Bird in the Hand, Hot Bread Kitchen and Made in India to my wishlist (I already have The Violet Bakery Cookbook – see aforementioned brownies).
• Smitten Kitchen had me at ‘slow cooker’ and ‘black beans’ – black bean soup and toasted cumin seed crema. Also: Irish soda bread scones.