When potato salad RSVP’d to the Christmas table this year, it decided to ditch the predictability and come in a fancier guise. Enter this sweet mustard-dressed number, with its crunchy green beans, nutty toasted buckwheat, soft eggs, and bursts of fresh dill. It’s hearty but fresh, earthy but bright—a salad that’s happy to play wingman to the glazed ham, sizzling steaks, roast pork…

Can we talk about chicken skin? (That’s a rhetorical question; we’re bloody talking about chicken skin). Peruse supermarket fridges where assorted poultry parts lurk, witness the pallid, pink, skin-free horror and you’ll be asking the same question as we regularly do... where the heck does it all go?…

Platter up! Grab the nicest of what’s in season, cook it simply, hurl it on a big plate, then do the ‘come help yourselves’ holler’ like a fishwife. We love a salad Nicoise and, while salmon might not be a traditional inclusion, it’s perfect with everything else. The recipe here is all about the emulsified vinaigrette…