Monkfish is the perfect fish for people with a thing about fish bones: it doesn’t have any. We are only ever confronted with fillets from this beastly looking fish, and the dense, firm flesh has a sweet, mild flavour. Monkfish fillet is so meaty that it can be treated like chicken, cooked relatively quickly in kebabs but simmered in stews without falling apart. It can take strong flavours such as saffron and thyme and loves being sauced in red wine or studded with garlic and roasted like lamb.

Faced with two expensive meagre fillets recently, I decided to make them go farther by slicing down the fillet to make little escalopes to fry quickly in olive oil with lemon. This was such a good idea that I repeated it the next day, but instead of serving it with lemon mash I went with pea purée made from frozen petits pois and a dollop of crème fraîche.

Chicken livers are still remarkably good value and immensely versatile. They must be picked over and any stringy bits pulled away and the occasional lump of fat removed. It’s a messy job but easy and quick enough. I love them dusted with flour and quickly fried in garlicky oil to form a thin crust while the inside remains pink and creamy. They can be piled on to thick doorsteps of buttered toast or put on a mound of slippery onions sitting atop fluffy mashed potato. I keep a tub in the freezer for dishes like this or for one of my favourite pasta suppers. The combination of buttery pasta with a rosemary-flavoured tomato sauce and tender chicken liver is moreish in the extreme.

When you order hoummos at a Lebanese restaurant, it is often served with a garnish of pomegranate. The bold chunks of glassy pink look like jewels, and the combination of their sweet juice and bitter pips offset this creamy, garlicky chickpea dip extremely well. I often serve this combo with lamb chops or little kebabs, but now that pomegranates are flavour of the moment, I’ve been thinking up other ways of adding them to everyday food. One idea is this healthy carrot salad.

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