The recent unseasonable weather has played havoc with our tastebuds. I’m craving comfort food such as bangers and mash, cauliflower cheese, pasta and stews instead of summer food. The other night, when rain stopped an optimistically planned barbecue, it was potato salad that saved the day.

You can’t go wrong with potato salad; it goes with everything and manages to be comforting and summery. When the barbecue is off-limits, try pairing it with a tray of roasted chicken legs, quickly smeared with olive oil and dusted with Maldon sea salt just before they go into a hot oven. Or try it with a mound of prawns tossed with coriander that has been chopped finely with garlic and lemon zest. Or prepare the side dish with fresh fish, particularly salmon fillets, mackerel or flat fish such as plaice or whiting, grilled with a smear of olive oil and squeeze of lemon juice.

This potato salad was inspired by salade cressonnière in Joel Robuchon’s exquisite book Le Meilleur & Le Plus Simple de la Pomme de Terre, which he wrote in 1993 with Patrick Pierre Sabatier and was published in France by Robert Laffont. As my French is menu-talk only, much of the finer detail of the book is lost on me and every so often I have to beg French-speaking friends to translate. The photographs – of his perfect pommes de terre pont-neuf (square chips), gaufrettes (lattice game chips) and gorgeous-looking gratinées, soups and tarts – are, for me, the most enticing food photography possible. My version of this great chef’s watercress potato salad is more homespun than the original but is none the worse for that.

Years ago at a tapas bar in Sitges, I came across what I now call Sitges salad. My adaptation is simplicity itself and made by dribbling a melted blue-cheese dressing over quartered little-gem lettuce hearts. I love this with a grilled cherry tomato salad, cooked with balsamic vinegar that stains slivers of garlic and brings extra interest to pitted, black olives with herbs.

It’s particularly good with cauliflower cheese and this combination of food could be built up into a colourful spread with roast peppers, hard-boiled eggs decorated with a kiss of anchovy fillets and Parma or Serrano ham, with crusty bread and butter. The blue cheese dressing is also good stirred into pasta with a handful of chopped walnuts and shredded flat-leaf parsley.

Despite the fact that there is a munificence of tomatoes in the shops, I often buy so-called sun-kissed or sun-blush tomatoes from the deli counter. These have been slowly roasted in the oven until they are half dried and then submerged in olive oil.

They succeed where sun-dried tomatoes fail because they are ready instantly for use in risotto, pasta dishes such as squid ink spaghetti, salads and tarts, imparting a similar concentrated tomato flavour while being soft and juicy yet slightly chewy. They look dramatic with black pasta, particularly with a crumble of feta and basil or, in this recipe, with Parmesan flakes and rocket.

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