we’ve been away for a few days and came back to a kitchen which was home to 3 bulbs of fennel and not much else. my original plan was to make a pasta gratin, which a friend recommended, where the fennel is complemented with black olives, sundried tomatoes, lemon, oregano.

however, i had a craving for meat so decided to try these flavours and ingredients with a slow-roasted neck of lamb recipe that i've made before. this is wonderfully easy one-dish cooking – three bulbs of fennel and a red onion, all sliced thinly, put in a bowl with some chopped garlic, a handful of black olives (i used kalamata), a few chopped sundried tomatoes and chunks of lamb. add some oregano (dried is fine), the juice and zest of a lemon, olive oil and black pepper, mix together and then roast for c3hours at 160c.

we ate this with a salad of red onions (put them in a bowl with some lime juice, which is discarded after 5-10 minutes, to soften their flavour), cannelloni beans and tomatoes, dressed with olive oil and an extra squeeze of lime juice.

if the weather had been a bit cooler i’d have just added the beans to the lamb dish an hour before it finished cooking – it’s wonderfully forgiving and will adapt to whatever you have in.

a couple of years ago i came up with a recipe for roasted sausages with fennel and cherry tomatoes. it is incredibly quick, easy and packed full of flavour.

i love it with crusty bread smeared with butter. last night we had it with a side portion of cavolo nero cooked with garlic and chilli.

the original recipe for the sausages is here but it is something you can adapt according to what you fancy. this time i tossed sausages (i still rate marks & spencer sausages as particularly good), cherry tomatoes and sliced fennel with  glugs of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and red wine. a sprinkling of chopped rosemary, dried oregano, a bay leaf, garlic, salt and pepper were the extra bits needed. an hour in the over at 200c and the result was truly delicious. you really should try it.