Sunday best

There have been inevitable comparisons with Nigella and Pascale’s fellow model-turned-cook, Sophie Dahl. Unlike them, however, Pascale is a trained chef. In 2004, she enrolled at the celebrated Leiths cookery school. “It was the one thing that really got me going. I started devouring every cookbook I could find and constantly practising at home.” She went on to do a two-year pastry course, followed by stints at the Mandarin Oriental and Tom Aikens, and a job at the cult bakery Hummingbird. Finally she set up on her own, and the big break came when Selfridges commissioned her to make 250 Christmas cakes, which were a sellout. The following year, she opened her own cupcake shop, Ella’s Bakehouse, named after her 14-year-old daughter.

Though baking is clearly her first love, there is more to Pascale than cakes and cookies. “I was trained in everything and I love cooking it all,” she says. Unlike many chefs, she understands how real people live and cook. “Some days you only have time to throw pasta in a pan,” she says. “When there’s a bit more time, it’s about having a repertoire of recipes that taste good, like these roasts.” She clearly, though, has uncommon drive. Alongside cooking and writing, she is in the final year of a degree in international culinary arts and has been asked to teach on the pastry course where she was once a student.

Does she ever miss her modelling days? “I used to love doing London, Paris, Milan,” she says. “It was a whirlwind, going from show to show to show. It was a real energy buzz.”

Now, though, the buzz comes from cooking. As the shoot gets under way, she stands at the hob, a frying pan in her hand. Suddenly, she bursts out laughing. “I never thought when I was modelling that one day I would be photographed browning a rack of lamb.”

Lemon Roast chicken with tarragon, garlic and pancetta potatoes
Serves 4

For really crispy skin, remove the plastic wrap from the chicken the day before you cook it.

For the chicken
1.6kg chicken (preferably free range)
1 tbsp oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ bunch of tarragon
½ lemon

For the tarragon butter
60g soft butter
½ bunch of tarragon, finely chopped
Pinch of salt (if using unsalted butter)
Freshly ground black pepper

For the potatoes
1kg new potatoes
6 slices of pancetta or prosciutto
A few cloves of garlic
For the gravy
1 tbsp flour
450ml good liquid chicken stock

Serve with
400g purple sprouting broccoli, trimmed
Knob of butter
A handful of flaked almonds, toasted

Heat the oven to 200C/Gas Mark 6 and position the shelves so there is enough room to fit the bird in the oven. Take it out of the fridge a good 25 minutes before you need to cook it. Put in a roasting tin and pat the breast dry with some kitchen towel. Massage oil into the skin, season well, sprinkle with tarragon, put ½ a lemon in its cavity and roast in the oven for about 90 minutes.

To make the tarragon butter, combine the ingredients in a bowl. Wrap in clingfilm and roll it into a sausage shape and pop in the fridge.

After the chicken has been in for 20 minutes, put the potatoes in a roasting tin, drizzle with oil, scatter over the pancetta and unpeeled garlic, and season well. Roast until the potatoes are golden. If the pancetta crisps too quickly, remove it from the tin, putting it back in for 5 minutes at the end.

After 90 minutes, test the chicken by inserting a skewer into a leg — it’s done if the juices run clear. Remove from the tin, cover loosely and keep warm. Put the roasting tin over a medium heat and add the flour, and then the stock, stirring all the time and scraping up any bits in the tin. Boil for a couple of minutes so the gravy can thicken, then sieve into a jug, season to taste and keep warm.

Cook the broccoli in boiling water for about 4 minutes, until tender. When almost cooked, drain the water. Return the broccoli to the pan, place over a medium heat with a knob of butter and add the almonds. Season and cook for one minute.

Squeeze the roasted garlic over the potatoes and broccoli for extra flavour. Remove the tarragon butter from the fridge, cut off slices and serve with the chicken.

Roast garlic and mint-crusted lamb, mint and tarragon Jersey royals and baby carrots (Tim Winter)

Roast garlic and mint-crusted lamb, mint and tarragon jersey royals and glazed baby carrots
Serves 4

For the lamb
2 racks of lamb (6-7 bones each), French trimmed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
100g fine dried breadcrumbs
I bunches of mint leaves, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, ground to a paste
Extra-virgin olive oil
3-4 tbsp English mustard

For the potatoes
450g new potatoes (Jersey royals if possible)
Sea salt and pepper
40g butter
Extra-virgin olive oil
3-5 tbsp chopped mint and tarragon

For the carrots
225g baby carrots
1 tbsp brown sugar
25g butter
Handful of chopped mint
For the mint sauce
A bunch of mint leaves, finely chopped
100ml white wine vinegar
1 tbsp sugar

Put a pan of salted water on to boil. Heat the oven to 230C/Gas Mark 8. Trim most of the fat off the meat and season well. Put some oil in a frying pan over a high heat and brown the meat on all sides and the ends.

Meanwhile, in a shallow bowl, mix together the breadcrumbs, mint, garlic and olive oil. Once the meat is well browned, remove the pan from the heat and leave for a minute or two to cool. Then, using a pastry brush, paint the lamb racks with the mustard. Dip the racks in the crumb mixture, squishing it on all over the meat. Place the racks in a roasting tin and pop in the oven. The cooking time will depend on the size of the racks and how long they were cooked in the pan. As a guide, go for just under 25 minutes. If you need to cut into the end bit to have a little look and check, that is fine. Once the lamb is cooked, leave it to rest in a warm place for 10 minutes.

Once the lamb is in the oven, put the potatoes in the pan of boiling water. When cooked, place a colander over another pan and drain the potatoes into it. Put the potatoes back in to their pan and use the reserved potato water to boil the carrots. Crush the potatoes gently with a potato masher or the end of a rolling pin so they are still in big chunks. Season to taste, add the butter and a small drizzle of olive oil and keep warm.

Cook the carrots in boiling water for about 8 minutes until tender. Once cooked, drain off the water and return the carrots to the pan. Add the brown sugar and butter, and cook gently for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and keep warm.

For the mint sauce, gently heat the white wine vinegar and the sugar with the finely chopped mint, then pour into a jug.

Cut the racks of lamb between each of the bones and place on a large serving plate. Mix the chopped mint and tarragon into the potatoes and toss the mint through the carrots. Serve with the mint sauce (or use a shop-bought sauce).

On the rack
Rack of lamb is a firm favourite in my household. If I have the time, I will go to the butcher’s to get the meat, but supermarket cuts work fine, too. As with most roasts, there is a fair amount of juggling of pots and pans towards the end, but for me it is totally worth it. I make my mint sauce: it may not look as pretty as the bought stuff, but the taste is fresh, zingy and cuts through the lamb perfectly

Hazelnut and pecan nut roast with a chive and parmesan sauce
Serves 4

For the nut roast
I bunch of spring onions, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped or ground to a paste
300g mixed nuts, toasted and finely chopped (I like hazelnuts and pecans)
100g chestnuts
400g cooked rice, preferably brown
2 eggs
100g gruyère cheese
1 tsp thyme leaves
Freshly ground black pepper and a little salt

For the sauce
25g butter
25g plain flour
450ml of milk
Pinch of nutmeg
75g parmesan, grated
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Small bunch of chives, finely chopped

To serve
A couple of bunches of asparagus, trimmed
Good knob of butter

Heat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4. Grease a loaf tin. Mix all the nut roast ingredients together and pour into the tin. Cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until the loaf is firm and golden brown.

Ten minutes before the roast is ready, prepare the sauce. Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat, add the flour and mix well. Cook for about 1 minute, then add a little of the milk and stir well. Keep adding the milk, stirring well between each addition, making sure all the lumps are gone. Don’t add all the milk in one go as lots of floury lumps will form that are difficult to get rid of. If the sauce does look a bit lumpy at any stage, grab a whisk and whisk it like crazy, the lumps should soon disappear. Once all the milk is added, grate in the nutmeg and add the cheese. Remove from the heat and stir until the cheese is incorporated. Add the chives, season and keep warm.

Put a pan of water on to boil, add the asparagus and cook until just tender. I like mine still with a bit of bite in them. Drain and return to the pan. Season and add a small knob of butter. Serve the nut roast with the asparagus and parmesan and chive béchamel sauce alongside.

Slow-roast pork belly with apricot salsa, pak choy and fluffy white rice
Serves 4

Although the pork does enjoy quite a spell in the oven, there is not too much faffing about to do for its preparation. I find as the satisfying porky smells wind their way around my flat, my usual impatience takes a calm back seat in anticipation of the great meat fest to come. The pork is so delightfully filling, I tend to serve it alone with some lightly wilted greens, but fluffy white rice cooked in some chicken stock goes with it very nicely, too.

For the roast
1-1.5kg belly of pork with the rind in vertical slashes about 1cm apart (as soon as you get the pork belly home, take it out of the wrapping so the rind can air-dry a bit to give a real good head start on the crackling front)
Oil
Salt
1 tsp five spice powder
2 large onions, cut into chunks
1 bulb of garlic, broken in to cloves but left unpeeled
20g butter

For the apricot salsa
6 very ripe apricots stoned and diced or 12 dried ripe apricots
5 spring onions finely sliced or 1 not-too-strong red onion finely diced
1 tsp five spice powder
1 tbsp soft light brown sugar
A drizzle of oil
Salt and pepper
The juice of ½ lime (or to taste)
1 red chilli, seeded and finely chopped or 1tsp of chilli flakes
½ bunch of coriander leaves, roughly chopped

For the rice
400g rice
600ml chicken stock

For the gravy
1 glass of white wine
500ml good meat stock

For the vegetables
3 pak choi, ends removed
500g bag of spinach
1 bunch of spring onions, trimmed and cut into bitesize lengths

Heat the oven to 240C/Gas Mark 9. Dab the rind with kitchen towel to get it as dry as you can (I have even been known to dry it for a couple of minutes with a hair dryer first, although this shall of course remain a secret). This will ensure that the crackling has a good chance to get going. Meanwhile, rub the meat with some oil and then sprinkle liberally with sea salt, then rub in the five spice. Put in a roasting tin and cook for 30 minutes or until the skin starts to dance as the crackling begins to form.

Now turn the oven down to 180C/Gas Mark 4 and cook for a further 2 and a half hours, basting every hour. One hour before the meat is ready, put the onions and garlic around the meat in the pan.

Meanwhile, put all the ingredients for the salsa in small pan, except the coriander, which will go in later. For this to work well, the apricots really need to be perfectly ripe and flavourful. Heat together gently, just long enough for the brown sugar to dissolve, then turn off the heat and set aside.

If at the end of this slow roasting extravaganza you find your crackling lacking that vital “crack”, then shove it under a steaming hot grill and blast the living daylights out of it. I have the tendency to burn it at this stage, so it needs a careful eye to watch over it as it crisps up super-fast. This is not strictly the “right” way to do it, but it works brilliantly.

Then remove the meat from the pan and put onto a plate and cover loosely with foil and leave to rest for a good 15 minutes in a warm place. The juices in the meat will distribute themselves more evenly and the meat fibres will relax over this time, giving a more tender joint. Pop some plates in the oven to heat up. Also, put the rice on to cook at this time in the stock, or water if you don’t have any. I love cooking it in chicken stock as it gives the rice a great flavour.

Pour the fatty liquid from the tin and put it over a medium heat on the hob. Add the white wine and boil until reduced by half, then add the meat stock (the liquid stuff from the shops will do just fine) and then heat it, scraping in any of the crunchy stuff left over from the meat as you go. Boil the juices until they have reduced by about a third.

Then hold a sieve over a jug and pour this liquid into the sieve, squishing all the flavour from the vegetables to add a flavour punch. Taste the liquid and season if necessary — once this is made, place it in the oven to keep warm.

Heat some butter in a frying pan, add the spring onions and cook over a high heat for a couple of minutes. Add the pak choi, season well and cook for a couple more minutes, then add the spinach and cook until it is just beginning to wilt. Season to taste and then serve.

Remove the plates from the oven and plate up the pork, toss some coriander through the apricot salsa and serve along with the rice, wilted greens and warm gravy.

Baking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascale (HarperCollins £18.99) is out now. To buy it for £15.99 (including p&p), call The Sunday Times Bookshop on 0845 271 2135 or visit thesundaytimes.co.uk/bookshop