Recipes from A Table Full of Love by Skye McAlpine

It's a book that will inspire you to cook not because you feel you should but because you'll find that doing so makes you - and those around you - that little bit happier.

While chicken breast is undoubtedly an easy, quick and uncontroversial option for supper, I find it often to be quite disappointing: a little bland, usually dry and just a bit boring. Except when cooked this way: the meat is browned, then lightly poached in rich tomato sauce so it stays exquisitely tender, and each piece comes enrobed in a blanket of melting mozzarella cheese. Absolutely essential with this is some crusty bread for wiping up all the juices on your plate. And depending on your mood, you might also want a light salad or a few greens.

Ingredients

Method

1. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan that has a lid; you want a pan that is large enough to fit the four chicken breasts. Brown the meat on both sides over a medium heat, then take the pan off the heat. Take the breasts out of the pan, set on a plate and season them generously with salt and pepper.

2. Put the tomato sauce in the frying pan while the pan is still off the heat, so the difference in temperature between sauce and hot pan doesn't cause the sauce to spit, then put the pan back over the heat to warm through. Add the capers and basil. When the tomato begins to bubble, nestle the seasoned chicken in the pan.

3. Cook the chicken in the pan over a medium heat for seven to eight minutes, turning the breasts every now and then, until cooked through.

4. Lay a slice or two of mozzarella over each piece of chicken and cover the pan with its lid, or, if you don't have a lid big enough, you can cover the pan with foil. Cook for a further minute or two, until the cheese is melted. Serve immediately.

Serves 4.

I love duck cooked this way: the skin salty-crisp like charred paper and the meat mouth-meltingly tender. The potatoes and the orange, sliced thin, cook in the same pan as the duck and infuse with the deeply flavoursome fat from the legs as they roast, intermingling with the sweet juices from the fruit. My preference is to arrange the slices of orange under the meat, as far as possible, which means that they soften and tenderise rather than crisp and turn bitter as they cook in the oven. It's one of those delightful one-pan dishes that constitutes a complete meal in itself, though I often serve it with a bitter leaf salad on the side: just crisp, fresh leaves (ruby-red chicory or blush-pink radicchio) dressed with a little olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice and a generous sprinkling of salt flakes.

Ingredients

Method

1. Heat the oven to 190C.

2. Fry the duck legs, skin side down, in a large pan (ideally one with a heatproof handle) for three to five minutes, until the skin is browned all over. Take the pan off the heat, lift the duck legs on to a plate and set to one side.

3. Thinly slice the potatoes and the orange into rounds, roughly 5mm thick. Arrange most of the slices of orange in the centre of the same pan, and lay the duck on top of these, skin-side up. Arrange the potatoes overlapping in a single layer all around the duck and oranges, with the remaining slices of orange peeking out here and there.

4. Season everything liberally with salt and pepper, sprinkling over a few thyme sprigs. Set in the oven and roast for 75 minutes, or until both the duck legs and the potatoes are golden and exquisitely crisp.

5. Rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Serves 2.

There is no better present to give someone on their birthday than a homemade birthday cake. The recipe below is a go-to of mine, a vision of delicate, picture-perfect pink, made with raspberries rather than food colouring so you can taste the colour. The marzipan sponge and icing are both wonderfully light and fluffy and even people who think they don't like marzipan love this cake.

Ingredients

For the cake:

For the filling and icing:

Method

1. Heat the oven to 170C. Butter and line 2 x 23cm round cake tins.

2. Combine the caster sugar, marzipan and a generous pinch of salt in a food processor and blitz to something resembling sand. Add the butter and blitz until smooth.

3. Add the eggs, one at a time, blitzing after each to make a smooth batter. Add the flour and blitz again until thoroughly blended.

4. Divide the batter equally between the prepared tins and bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes until lightly golden on top and a knife comes out clean when inserted into the middle. Let cool in the tin for 20 minutes or so, then turn out onto a wire rack and let cool completely.

5. To make the icing, combine 120g raspberries in a food processor with the two heaped tablespoons of icing sugar and blitz to a smooth purée. Strain the purée through a sieve. Discard the seeds and set the deep pink liquid to one side.

6. In a small bowl, add the measured boiling water to the marzipan and mix it with a fork to melt it slightly (this stops it going lumpy when you add it to the buttercream).

7. In a second, large bowl, use a hand-held electric whisk to mix the 450g icing sugar and the butter until pale and fluffy, then add the marzipan and beat until smooth. Add a dash of raspberry purée and beat, then add more, depending what intensity of colour and flavour you like.

8. Spoon a large dollop of the pink icing over the first cake and spread it out evenly, then top with a layer of fresh raspberries (reserving just a few for the top). Sandwich on top the second cake and smother with the pink icing. Decorate with the last of the raspberries. While the cake tastes best on the day of baking, it will keep happily in an airtight container in a cool place for two to three days.

Serves 10-12.

I can't tell you how much I love this recipe: it's simple really, a pool of melted chocolate mixed with just a dash of cream, with fresh fruit for dipping. You could of course adopt the same principle and make this with plain dark - or indeed even milk - chocolate, and that would be very fine thing indeed; but melting Toblerone instead gives the fondue an especially velvety texture, with shards of chewy, toffee-like nougat, honeyed and sweet, in the dipping sauce. The sauce is perfectly fine at room temperature, but especially nice warm, so if you want to make it in advance (and I probably would) you can leave it resting in its pan on the hob, then just before serving set it over a low heat for a few minutes, just long enough to warm it through like hot chocolate, then pour into a bowl. Serve with fruit for dipping: strawberries and other berries, of course, but also physalis and even sliced, peeled citrus, chunks of white peach in summer, and - my particular favourite - sweet crisps of dried apple, mango or fig.

Ingredients

Method

1. Warm the cream in a small saucepan over a medium-low heat. Just before it begins to boil, when you see the tiniest bubbles rising up at the edge of the pan, take the pan off the heat and add the chocolate. Stir until the chocolate is melted and you have a velvety smooth sauce with shards of nougat. Add a generous pinch of salt and stir it in.

2. Pour the warm sauce into a small bowl and serve with fresh and/or dried fruit.

Serves 2.