Thomasina Miers’ recipes for rice-stuffed roast chicken and courgette soda bread

Little beats a loaf of fresh bread still warm from the oven. Today’s one is flecked with courgettes (zucchini), toasted seeds, a pleasing hint of green chilli and plenty of cheddar – the more mature, the better. It is delicious in the extreme, and even more so when spread with pickled chilli butter. But first a year-round roast chicken, inspired by the red rices of Mexico, that fills the day with a happy glow. If ever there was a dish to sing for its supper …I am endlessly in awe of the amount of umami unleashed by a simple braise of tomatoes, garlic and onion

Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for spiced coffee granita with whipped cream | The sweet spot

A low-effort dessert inspired by café de olla, which is a drink I consumed daily while on holiday in Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s a black coffee gently spiced with cinnamon and cloves, and sweetened with piloncillo (an unrefined sugar). Here, I’ve turned it into something refreshing for summer, using dark brown sugar instead, not least because it’s easier to find. I can never resist a post-dinner coffee, and this scratches both that caffeine and sugar itch.Prep 5 min Cook 15 min, plus cooling Freeze 2 hr 30 min+ Serves 4500ml freshly brewed coffee, or espresso 1 stick cinnamon 3 cloves 75g dark brown sugar 120ml double cream Pinch of flaky sea saltPour the coffee into a small pan, add the cinnamon, cloves and sugar and heat gently until it comes to a simmer

Can do: the tinnification of wine and cocktails

I’ve been asked about the “tinnification” of drinks pretty much everywhere else, so it feels only apt to talk about it here, too, because producers are putting just about everything they can in a can these days. Obviously, canned drinks aren’t anything new – the first canned beer went on sale in 1935, when post-prohibition America saw Krueger’s Finest Beer punted to drinkers in Virginia. Similar attempts had been made many years earlier, but it wasn’t until after two years of testing that the boffins finally developed a special coating that prevented the beer from reacting with the tin can.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link

The magic of samphire season: Jimi Famurewa’s recipe for mackerel, chorizo, new potato and samphire

North Norfolk captured our hearts by stealth. For most of my life, this arcing coastal stretch of East Anglia was somewhere I had never visited, nor ever spent that much time thinking about; a span of English countryside that I mostly associated with Alan Partridge, Colman’s mustard and, in the context of my south London home, an awkward schlep. But then, almost exactly a decade ago, I stumbled through an internet rabbit hole on to an entry for a clutch of self-catering cottages in a seaside village near the gently bougie, wax-jacketed market town of Holt. Decision made.Soon we were rumbling out across an impossibly wide and flat expanse, bound for the ripe, blustering winds and billowing steam trains of a varied network of time-warp beaches and little towns

How to turn beetroot tops into a delectable Japanese side dish – recipe

The ohitashi method is such an elegant way to enhance the natural flavours of leafy greens, while also reducing food waste. This traditional Japanese technique involves blanching and chilling leafy greens, then steeping them in a simple seasoned broth that imparts a wonderful and rounded savoury umami flavour. Most recipes for such greens use just the leafy part, but with ohitashi the stems are cooked first.Ohitashi is a wonderful way to prepare vegetables in advance, because the vegetables need to steep in a delicious broth for at least a few hours and up to five days, soaking up the marinade as they age. You can make ohitashi-style vegetables with just about any leafy greens: spinach, kale, chard, radish leaves, turnip tops or nettles

There’s a lot more to lettuce than salad | Kitchen aide

My garden has produced an abundance of lettuce (mainly butter lettuce) this year but there’s a limit to how much salad I can eat. What else can I use them for? Julian, by email“Start thinking of lettuce, and especially butter lettuce, as bread or a taco shell,” says Jesse Jenkins, author of Cooking with Vegetables, and happily this is a “highly adaptable” strategy, too. Sure, you could pile in grilled spicy pork belly and herbs, but this dinner fix also works well “with everything a big green salad does: a piece of nicely grilled protein, some sauce, a few pickled crunchy things, all wrapped in a big, beautiful green leaf”. But why stop there? “I also like to use butter lettuce to wrap cheese toasties,” Jenkins says. “It catches all the fatty goodness and acts as a barrier between the crunchy bread and the roof of your mouth