Fritatta with potato and cooked greens

Lunch in ten minutes. One potato, one hanful of leftover cooked greens, three eggs. Easy.

Chop a potato into small dice and fry in olive oil until golden over a low heat

Stir in a small hanful of cooked cabbage or sprout tops, or use raw spinach or rocket, and allow to heat through and season well

Add three eggs, lightly beaten. Although it seems counterintuitive if you beat the eggs too much the frittata will be tough. Pour over the eggs and mix quickly with the potato and sprout topsCook on the hob for a minute or two then cook th top by putting in under the grill for a minute more. This is just a good cold, and wonderful packed lunch food.

Bubble and squeak

Bubble and squeak poses something of a dilemma to me. It is wonderful, and every time I eat it I vow to do so more often, but it also should be made from leftovers and I rarely have leftover cooked potatoes and cabbage.

True, it is possible to cook it from scratch but that just seems wrong, and also not in the spirit of what is a very good breakfast food. I don’t mind a bit of light cooking in the morning, I sometimes enjoy it, but peeling potatoes and cooking cabbage would be a step too far.

But this morning I found both the require ingredients, and it was clear what breakfast would be, although this is the sort of thing that works well at any time of day, particularly as a late night snack.

Heat a good layer of fat in a frying pan. I never tried but I think that in the same way that goose fat makes roast potatoes almost improbably crispy, it would do the same thing to the potatoes in bubble and squeak (does anyone know which is which?). The next best options are bacon fat (from frying a few rashers in the pan) or butte rand a drop of oil.

Squash the potatoes so that some of them are almost mashed and others are still in small pieces. Mix with roughly chopped cooked cabbage, a small handful of each per person. If the mixture is soft and sticky enough you can form it into a cake, if not, no matter (mine didn’t).

Place it in the sizzling fat, lowered to a medium heat and leave for at least there minutes or so to form a crust on the underside. If you’ve made one large patty then you can try and flip it over – good luck! If not just turn all the little bits over and let them brown on the other side.

Bubble and squeak was traditionally eaten with leftover roast meat, but is also very good with sausages, bacon or fried eggs. I like to fry eggs in a lot of oil – it acts a conductor of heat and it comes up towards the sides of the eggs then it makes the edges go brown and lacy. To cook the top of egg I spoon a bit of the fat over and then put a small saucepan lid over the whole egg for one minute. The heat then gathers underneath it and acts a bit like an oven to cook the top of the white.

Cut into the yolk and let it run through the crunchy and soft potatoes and cabbage. A bit of ketchup or chilli sauce can work well here and you must eat it with a cup of tea. If you’re really hungry or carb-loading, it’s rather good on toast.

Green pie

It is a familiar situation: I had decided to take food to work rather than buy it at the overpriced canteen, but it was getting late and I couldn't find anything in the house I would have wanted to eat the following lunchtime. All I could find was some eggs and salad, and although egg salad would do in an emergency, I wasn't feeling excited by it.

Then I remembered some spinach and peas in the freezer, and that with some flour and butter I could make pastry. Spinach and pea quiche it was, then.

I make fairly awful pasty. This doesn't seem very fair when my Mum makes some of the best pastry I've ever tasted. Maybe pastry-making ability skips a generation, like twins. So I crumbled the butter into the flour, trying to think light thoughts while I did it, then slowly mixed in some cold water.

While that rested in the fridge I put a handful of frozen peas and four spheres of frozen spinach into a pan with a lump of butter and put it over a low heat to warm through. Rather than rolling out the pastry I'd heard of people just pressing it out in the pan with their fingers until the bottom and sides were covered evenly. This was easier than it sounds, and more fun than struggling with a rolling pin!

Two beaten eggs were mixed into the pea and spinach mixture along with a teaspoon on pesto and a tablespoon of crumbled Lancashire cheese. This went into the pastry case and I intended to bake it for about forty minutes, but got distracted and eventually retrieved it after about an hour. Amazing it wasn't burned and I think the firmer texture made it better suited to being shaken about in a box on the way to work.

A slice of this, with some green salad and sun-dried tomatoes (halved cherry tomatoes, tossed in oil, in the oven on gas mark one for five hours) made a really satisfying lunch that was far better than anything on offer in the canteen. Next time I might not bother using any peas though as they didn't add much.