River Cottage Good Comfort: Best-Loved Favourites Made Better for You

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Vegans, you could have sold me a meal if you were serving more than chocolate brownies and Impossible Burgers stacked with sheeze and relish. As far as is possible, given they don't have a dairy-free book - although there is a gluten-free baking one. This quick (and utterly delicious) chocolate pud, which I've been making for years to delight my family, occupies a space somewhere between a brownie, a soufflé and a cake. After trying this recipe I felt I could make something similar enough at home that I would no longer miss the takeaways - and using up what was in the fridge even became fun, like selecting options from the menu, rather than making do.

Vegan baking books themselves, for example Karolina Tegelaar's Vegan Baking Bible whose methodical scientific outlook I otherwise find admirable and relatable, are tiresomely insistent about making vegan food as "decadent" as possible.This is pretty much a complete dish, but some steamed greens, such as purple sprouting broccoli, cavolo nero or shredded Savoy cabbage, will go well with it. Take off the foil, give the rice a gentle stir and finish in the oven for a final 15 minutes, or until everything is bubbling nicely and the chicken is cooked through. It becomes tougher sometimes to find the ingredients and turn on the oven - all those things are becoming harder and more expensive. Fast-forward a few thousand years, and going back down the generations of the comfort foods we eat, those ones represent those moments of family togetherness, plenty, we're not too short of everything, we've got what we need, and we're content," he explains. Put the chocolate and butter into a saucepan and melt gently over a very low heat, watching all the time and stirring often so that the chocolate doesn't get too hot.

I used to make coffee and peppermint creams and dip them in chocolate - and truffles, things like that," Fearnley-Whittingstall remembers.His key principle is 'Go Whole: The more whole, unrefined ingredients we can get on to our plates, the better.

Anyway, I'm off to make something omni, but which I think is in the spirit of this book: a version of Elizabeth David's Omelette au Boudin, with one omelette folded in half rather than two, and added spinach. It's tempting to move it but try not to: it's better that the base is a little overbrowned than that the whole thing is underdone and sticks to the pan. Last time we had friends over for dinner, I made a dessert of home-made avocado ice-cream, with brownies.Maybe they are planning a River Cottage Vegan Baking handbook, like they have the Gluten Free one and other food-group specific handbooks like Mushrooms. Likewise, full-on wholemeal flour can take you a little far from textures you know and love, so 'half-wholemeal' is a better choice.

There is more and more great technical advice out there from the likes of the aforementioned Vegan Baking Bible, and Philip Khoury's upcoming A New Way to Bake, on restaurant-grade patisserie, with restaurant-grade ingredients you can also see listed under his YT videos. And we can put tea time treats on the table knowing they will bring our family and friends – and kids in particular – goodness as well as happiness. Even as I say that, I'm aware that is a notion that's under challenge at the moment from the really tough times we're having. Where the savoury dishes are concerned, it's a distillation of the sort of recipes I earmark in other books, while mostly ignoring the fancier things and side dishes.The experience was so inspiring he decided to see if it would work nationwide, and Landshare was created to bring keen growers and landowners together.