Parsnip Crisps
These are almost addictively delicious. Serve them with roast pheasant, sprinkle them over parsnip soup, or just enjoy them on their own.
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Nettle Beer
We love nettles at River Cottage, turning them into everything from soup to gnocchi and tagliatelle (see recipe) and, yes, beer.
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Sea-buckthorn and crab apple jelly with hedge berry syrup
If you can’t find sea-buckthorn berries, you can substitute rosehips or haws, or simply use 1.5kg crab apples.
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Squirrel Ragout
You can substitute rabbit for squirrel in this tasty ragout. The long cooking time ensures maximum flavour and perfectly tender meat.
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Squirrel Offal Skewers
If you can’t lay your hands on a squirrel, you can certainly use rabbit offal for these tasty skewers, but it’s essential that the offal is very fresh.
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Nettle Tagliatelle
This goes wonderfully with our squirrel ragout, but it’s also delicious simply tossed in some warmed roast tomato passata (see recipe) and sprinkled with a little grated Parmesan.
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Bramble Farm Goat's Cheese
It’s enormously satisfying to make your own cheese - and not as complicated as you might think. The quantities of ingredients are easily scalable, so you can halve the quantities if you like.
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Oyster & Comfrey Fritters
If you can’t find comfrey, you can wrap oysters in a spinach leaf or even in a tender strip from the inside of a leek before dipping them in the tempura batter.
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Spelt Rolls
Spelt is an ancient form of modern wheat and gives a subtly nutty flavour to these bread rolls.
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Half the Garden Soup
This simple, tasty soup is a great way of using up produce from the veg patch or veg box. The key to getting everything cooked at the same time is to make sure the carrots and squash are chopped into an even, smallish dice.
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Pearled Spelt Risotto
Spelt contains more protein and fibre than rice and is more filling, so in order to make this a lighter dish, it’s important to use a greater ratio of vegetables to spelt than you would in a normal risotto.
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Roast Stuffed Pork Belly
This has to be one of the easiest and most delicious ways of roasting inexpensive and flavoursome pork belly. The slow cooking makes it really tender.
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Rillons of Pork Belly
Pork belly is a deep flavoured, dark meat, which is excellent for roasting due to the layer of thick fat and benefits from long, slow cooking. Rillons are a delicious combination of chewy fat and meltingly tender meat – they’ll keep sealed in a jar in the fridge for several weeks, if you have that much self control.
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Hot Smoked Grayling
The lemony piquancy of the sorrel sauce provides a delicious counterpoint to the rich, smoky flavour of the hot smoked fish.
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Cheese Cauliflower
I love experimenting with standard recipes, tweaking them and reinventing them until you have an entirely new dish. Here, instead of coating cauliflower in a cheese sauce, we deep fry the bites of cheese and serve them with a cauliflower sauce. I hope you’ll agree it’s a winning combination.
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Curried Butternut Squash
The sweet flesh of butternut squash is great with all kinds of strong and spicy flavours. This makes a simple and delicious side dish.
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Fried Sea Bream
This is one of the simplest and tastiest ways of cooking a fillet of bream, ensuring perfectly crispy skin and moist, white flesh.
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Cauliflower Pakora
Using beer in the batter makes it extremely light and crisp – it’s delicious with cauliflower, but you can use it with other vegetables too. Onions and cubes of sweet potato and squash work well.
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Chocolate and Beetroot Brownies
I’m convinced this recipe is going to sweep the nation! The beetroot and chocolate go together brilliantly and the beetroot gives the brownie a deliciously moist texture.
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Haw-Sin Sauce
This is fantastic with our roast duck, but you’ll also find it great for perking up marinades, stirring into beef or pork casseroles - you could even try adding a spoonful or two to shepherd’s pie.
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Faggots
Well made faggots are a wonderful thing. Ask a good butcher about getting hold of caul fat - if you have difficulty in getting hold of some, wrapping them in bacon is an appropriate and flavoursome alternative.
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Spelt Tortillas
Don’t just make these tortillas to go with duck. Use them to scoop up dips or roll them around all kinds of fillings, from roasted vegetables to bacon and scrambled eggs.
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Beetroot and Apple Crumble
Sweet, earthy beetroot combine beautifully with tart Bramley apples in this fantastic crumble. Roasting the topping before sprinkling over the filling gives it a wonderful crunchiness, too.
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Potato and Leek Champ
You could make this Irish favourite as we do here, or add any other root vegetables such as parsnips, carrots or turnips, depending on your mood and what’s available to you.
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Beetroot Ice Cream
It may seem like an unusual idea, but the dramatic colour and rich, delicious flavour of our beetroot ice cream makes it a winner in my book.
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Borlotti Beans on Toast
Making a big batch of passata ensures you have the foundation of many great recipes easily at hand, including these tasty borlotti beans on toast.
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Pork Sausages
Making your own sausages is great fun, especially if you rope in a volunteer or two to help. Many butchers who make their own sausages will be happy to sell you a few metres of sausage casing, especially if you buy the meat from them too.
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Roast Duck
This recipe will give you a duck with crisp, well seasoned skin and tender, flavoursome meat. Served with the tortillas and haw-sin sauce, it's a feast!
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Recipes from River Cottage Autumn
Catch up with all the recipes from the series....
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Fried Chicken with Potatoes and Anchovies
This is just a kind of hot salad, a very simple and delicious way to employ the leftovers from a roast or poached chicken. Other possible additions include bacon, black olives, capers and sun-dried tomatoes...
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Autumn Bliss
I worked this recipe out from scratch, experimenting in the kitchen with my friend, Brian, and I have to say I couldn't be more delighted with the results. My plan was to celebrate the wonderful variety of autumn raspberry after which the dish is named.
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Whole Pumpkin Baked with Cream
This is an incredibly simple and elegant dish, in which the finished 'soup' is scooped out from the whole baked pumpkin - rich, filling and satisfying, so ideal sustenance after some hard graft in the garden on a cold autumn day. You can use as big a pumpkin as will fit in your oven...
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Walnut Pasta Sauce
If you have gathered some 'wild' walnuts, their strong flavour makes them ideal for this recipe. Alternatively use imported cultivated ones.
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Cuttlefish (or Squid) in the Greek Style
The danger of rubberiness when cooking cuttlefish or squid is well known. The secret of avoiding this tragedy is either to cook them fast and short, for just a few minutes, or long and slow, for at least 1 1/2 hours.
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Warm Borlotti Bean Salad
By October the borlotti bean pods are showing their stunning red- and yellow-flecked colour and are full to bursting with beautiful variegated beans. When boiled, they have a mild flavour and a pleasant, creamy texture.
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Tripe
Tripe isn’t really seasonal – especially since most tripe is sold frozen (and recovers well from defrosting) but it fits nicely into October as Hugh’s Devon Ruby’s calve outdoors in April or May , which means, 30 months later, they are ready for slaughter in September or October.
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