Will you be cooking this Food Revolution Day? Now, normally I don’t ever need an excuse to cook for friends (or with friends – or to eat food made by my friends!), but Food Revolution Day is the perfect opportunity to organise a get-together and celebrate all things food.

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Day encourages people to share their own personal knowledge of cooking with others. Basically, the aim of the day is to foster a culture of sharing good-quality food, passing on tips,  and sharing recipes and simple – yet easily overlooked –  ‘how to’s’.

There would be no way that I would have succeeded in the food world if I hadn’t had the support of my family encouraging me to learn to cook when I was growing up, so I’m all for motivating people to learn as much as they can about healthy eating and simple cooking.

Food Revolution Day 2013 is May 17, and the overall aim is to cook it, share it, live it!

Also, if you’re on twitter, you can join the FRD Thunderclap (where we can all send out an automatic message at the same time on May 17 to support the day).

Look out for some familiar faces in the video below!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lasagne + seafood + samphire = great comfort food. Try my Salmon and Samphire Open Lasagne recipe in my Evening Standard column this week.

These two kept me company in the kitchen. One of them ended up finishing off a plate of the cheese & tomato sablé I made (see below pic). Note: don’t leave anything out, even if it’s on the top shelf.

Hard work walking in the snow but needed in preparation of eating these…

…hardcore butter pastry swirls filled with lingonberries I picked this summer.

Soaking up some sunshine in Stockholm…

…and warming up over a bowl of some spicy beef, crunchy vegetables and udon noodles.

Brightly coloured ‘navets’ (turnips) at Joël Thiebault’s vegetable stall

I can feel a change in the air, with the hope that warmer weather is inching its way around the corner. And when it arrives, I know what it will bring. Spring ingredients! Fresh fruit, beautiful leafy vegetables, and a flurry of excitement at markets all around, as people rejoice that (finally!) spring has arrived. Until then – we must make do with winter produce.

Compared to the sunny hues of springtime, wintertime usually involves fairly dull shades. Black coats, grey jumpers, black boots, grey hats, grey skies. And likewise, winter produce can sometime feel like it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to colour.

But a quick visit to one of Paris’ finest vegetable producers, and you’ll look on winter with new eyes. Winter cooking doesn’t have to rely on dull colours, especially if you can get your hands on some beautiful vibrant vegetables – such as the gems sold by gourmet producer Joël Thiébault at his stall at Marché Ave du Président Wilson, in Paris’ 16th arrondissement.

Known in Paris as the king of vegetables (a moniker I’d definitely agree with), Joël Thiébault sells his produce to some of the top chefs and restaurateurs in the city (and beyond). You might recognise the name from Episode 5 of my BBC television show, where I paid Joël a visit.

You can even have Joël’s vegetables delivered to your house. But I think it’s much more fun to go to the market yourself, and feast your eyes on a truly beautiful spread of the most colourful vegetables you’ve ever seen.

My market goodies

When you’re on a mission to brighten up your winter produce, look for carrots in a range of colours – purple, yellow, pink-ish hues, and classic orange.

Some of Joël’s fabulously colourful carrots

Purple carrot

Try more uncommon beetroot varieties like pink and white striped, or bright yellow. They’ll look stunning either roasted, or thinly sliced and tossed through a salad (and their curious colours will make for good meal-time conversation too!). Opt for turnips in purple or warm yellow shades (rather than white), and try long scarlet radishes.

Beautiful beets

Yellow beetroot. Looks like sunshine

See Joël in action here, and check opening hours and address details of his market stalls here. I’ve listed the Marché Ave du Président Wilson (and Joël Thiebault’s stall) in my round-up of my favourite places in Paris. To check out some of my other must-see spots, have a browse of my list.

Best to arrive early whilst the top produce is still available. I’d recommend arriving at around 9am to beat the crowds (this way you’ll only have to contend with serious market shoppers and little Parisian grannies ). And if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed at the thought of tackling a market in Paris, this BBC language video is a good place to practice some French phrases to try au marché.

Here are some delicious ideas for cooking with colourful winter vegetables:

Try my Spring Lamb Stew

Jamie Oliver’s favourite ways to cook with carrots

Turnip gratin

Roasted purple carrots with rosemary and garlic

Craving a pastry (or vegetable) hit? Give my vegetarian galette a try, featured in my latest Evening Standard column.

We now find ourselves midway through winter, and the choice of fresh seasonal fruits is somewhat limited. It’s around this time of year that we start to crave summer fruit salads, and an abundance of fresh fruit sitting pretty in the fruit bowl. But rather than lamenting the fact that we have a few more months of chilly weather on the horizon, why not embrace one of the very finest winter gems…the delectable clementine?

A tasty street-side snack whilst wandering near Canal Saint Martin

Not quite an orange, not quite a mandarin, and far from a kumquat – the clementine is officially part of the mandarin family, and is a sweet little addition to winter snacking. Packed with vitamins, clementines are a staple food for me during the winter months, especially when I’m warding off a cold.

With my current jam-packed schedule, I’m often on the look out for snacks to keep me going on the road. Clementines are a great travel snack, as they don’t squash as easily as bananas (bananas in hand luggage = recipe for disaster), and don’t really bruise like apples. And another plus is that clementines have such a sweet and refreshing smell, so they provide a nice break on a stuffy plane.

And my favourite bit about clementines? You don’t need to bother with a knife to cut them up like an orange, you can just eat them straight out of the bag from the market.

Clementines tend to be less messier to eat than oranges

Ask at your local market or grocer if clementines from Corsica are in stock. These varieties are slightly more expensive, but well worth it. Perfectly sweet, with just the right amount of tartness, Corsican clementines tend to have a very thin skin, and are virtually seedless.

Officially, clementines grown in Corsica are the only clementines produced in France. Chances are most clementines you spy at a French market or fruit shop will be Spanish or Moroccan varieties.

Citrus fruits are often best eaten fresh, straight from the market (or the tree!), but you can also get creative and whip up some simple recipes with clementines too. Whether you add them to cocktails, salads or sweets, clementines can brighten up a winter menu, and keep things fresh. If you’re looking for some new inspiration for cooking with clementines (or any citrus fruit for that matter), give these recipes a try:

Chocolate Dipped Clementines

Everybody Loves the Sunshine Citrus Salad

Striped Clementine Jelly

Image courtesy Richard Perry/The New York Times

*1 – 2013 is nearly here! That means, time to celebrate. I enjoy a good glass of bubbly, but am not one to know the ins and outs of how to choose a good bottle of Champagne. You’ll find a good sparkling wine guide here.

*2 – Good combination of French Champagne and English design – the Perrier-Jouët Collection by Claire Coles.

*3 – These inside-out glasses are a cool twist on the classic Champagne flute.

Via Office de Tourisme de Reims © Carmen Moya

*4 – Take things to the next level and plan a trip to the Champagne region in France (might want to prolong your NYE holiday and visit the region in warmer weather though, when all the flowers are in full bloom).

Karen Cline of Pretty Simple Productions for Oh Happy Day

* 5 – If you’re hosting your own New Year’s Eve party, check out these stunning table decoration ideas.

P.S. Here’s my Champagne Bellini Verrines recipe.

The past few months have flown by, and September feels like an age ago – but I’m excited to now be able to share with you a Christmas-themed photoshoot that I did with You Magazine back in September! The shoot started with two days food prep in my Little Paris Kitchen. Not an easy task to do… great idea at the time, not quite such a good idea come 10pm the night before the shoot and every single inch of space in my apartment was taken over by some form of Christmas culinary creation!

Prepping in my kitchen

Biscuits for Gingerbread Lanterns

For the shoot, I was joined by a creative team, including photographer David Loftus (David shot the lovely images in my book), Frankie (who helped prepare all the recipes in my kitchen with me) and Elodie, (who styled the shoot). Early morning of the shoot, we loaded up a van with a phenomenal amount of props, bits and bobs and of course, lots of food, and we headed outside of Paris, bound for the countryside! We were channeling an Austrian-style Christmas, surrounded by pretty woodland, a cosy cabin and an open fireplace.

Props galore

From stringing up handmade decorations, to crafting a Christmas tree from wooden bits and pieces found in the nearby farmland, Elodie and her team all got crafty to whip up a festive vibe (even though it was in fact a warm Autumn day, we all managed to get into the Christmas spirit!).

Frankie putting the finishing touches to a Viennese Coffee Martini

We prepared the dishes inside the rustic little cabin, very graciously lent to us by our hosts. We even roasted bread and Camembert over the open fire. David whipped through shooting all the recipes, and we sat down to lunch together, with the little wooden cabin as our backdrop.

You can see the full feature in You Magazine, including all the recipes from the shoot. We included a mix of main meals and bite-sized festive treats, perfect for sharing.

The You Magazine feature includes my recipe for Mini Eggnog Cakes. Whilst you can always use store-bought eggnog, I’m a firm believer that cakes always taste best with homemade ingredients! Here’s my eggnog recipe below.

Eggnog

250ml double cream
200ml full fat milk
1 vanilla pod
½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
5 eggyolks
200g caster sugar
150ml brandy

Cut the vanilla pod in half lengthwise. Use the back of the knife to scrape out the vanilla grains. Add the grains with the pod to a pot with the cream, milk, cinnamon and nutmeg. Bring to a boil.

Meanwhile whisk the eggyolks with the sugar until pale and fluffy. Once the cream comes to a boil, pour it slowly while whisking the eggyolks. Then pour the mix into a clean pan, set over a gentle heat and whisk constantly. Do not let the custard simmer at any point or it will split. After 5 minutes it will begin to thicken slightly and become the consistency of single cream (it will thicken more when it cools down). Stir in the brandy. Serve warm or wait until it’s cool to pour into a glass bottle. It will keep in the fridge for several days. Shake the bottle before serving.

Nothing like some Christmas spices and baking to get you into the holiday spirit.