Dinner party

Get your butcher to de-bone and butterfly a decent-sized pork loin, then take your time to roll it around the stuffing before roasting to perfection.

It’s no secret I love cooking any kind of meat over an open fire. An Asado Grill is a great piece of kit and loads of fun to experiment with. Marinated, smokey, tender lamb served up family style with your choice of condiments - we’ve used Dahl for this dish but you could replace with Baba Ghanoush or similar for a Middle Eastern spin. - Al Brown

I’ve always been a big fan of eating octopus and tend to order it whenever I see it on a menu. We’ve been playing around with this dish for a while and the result looks a picture, and more to the point - eats like a dream! While we’ve given you the steps to tackle the octopus prep, it can be a bit daunting so you can always ask your fishmonger to do this part for you. - Al Brown

This salad is full of flavour. Bitter greens cut through richness of the confit duck, the pear adds sweetness and the walnuts texture. While pinot noir tends to be a typical wine match for many duck dishes, we found a rose worked better with the bitter greens - perfect for a lighter summer meal. - Al Brown

Food to me is all about simplicity and generosity. A simply roasted whole fish is a pretty good example of this. Serving this dish with Huntley & Palmers Flatbread is great for added texture and mopping up all the delicious juice and flavour. Turbot can sometimes be a bit difficult to find, so any large flat fish (flounder, brill) or even the belly of a large species like kingfish or hapuka will do. - Al Brown

The size of these Raspberry & Coconut and Marmalade & Lime petite lamingtons means the ratio of sponge to delicious flavoured coating is stepped up a notch

This dish of dark puy lentils with glistening strings of roasted red tomatoes will make your summer plates picture perfect. Photography by Jani Shepherd/Gatherum Collectif.