If you ever fancied having a go at home curing, this recipe is a great place to start. The cure intensifies the flavour of the meat and preserves it enough to keep in the fridge for up to a week. Once you've given this a go, you might want to try your hand at bacon belly – take about 1kg of off-the-bone pork belly, cut it into 4cm strips, and cure it in the same way, but for 48 hours rather than overnight. Rinse off the cure and use it cut into chunks or diced, to add to sauces, stews or salads. Serves four.

In many families, mine included, Christmas can be quite a challenge. Everyone, but everyone has an opinion, and it's often that everything should be exactly the same as it was last year. And the year before that. "We always have turkey/brussels sprouts with chestnuts/parsnips roasted with honey…" come the cries, even from those who never do any of the cooking.

Savoury muffins are a great way of using up the garden's bounty, too. If you have abundant courgettes, carrots, beetroot, spinach (or even a few handfuls wallowing in the salad drawer, about to expire from neglect), whip them into a batch of muffins. I'm not saying this because it's a good way of ensuring your five a day – though it is – but because grated or puréed vegetables are delicious and help to keep a savoury muffin moist, light and, well, savoury.

Crumpets are made from a thickish, yeasty batter and poured into rings. If you don't have rings, make thinner pancakes, or pikelets. Whether they are thick or thin, crumpets or pikelets, toast on the flattened bottom first and then on the holey side, so that maximum butter will melt into the crisp toasted holes. Now all you need is a big pot of tea, a fire and, possibly, a clean shirt standing by.

Dan's recipe is foolproof and the dough keeps well, sealed in the fridge, for a couple of weeks. Whenever you feel that pizza craving coming on, simply break off a lime-sized piece of dough and get rolling. Makes eight small pizzas.

Look, I'm delighted that rosemary flourishes in my garden. I use it so frequently, tucking it in and under game birds, lamb joints and whole fish when I roast them, chopping it into marinades, adding it to stews and scattering it over foccacia (see today's recipe). Picking a branch and rubbing my fingers along its tough, glossy leaves to release their bracing, pine-y scent is sometimes all it takes to perk me up in the middle of a busy day. So I care nothing for the old saying that where rosemary flourishes, the woman of the household rules.

Autumn's just the time to learn a few new skills and brush up a few old ones. Of course, it's the season for bottling and preserving, to lay down a body- and soul-feeding store of sparkling, enticing jars to see us through until spring. But it's a chance for other culinary adventures, too.

Red cabbage is like beetroot, and not just because it's purple. It's the victim of a swath of cultural prejudice – and I suspect there is quite a big overlap with the anti-beetroot brigade. It seems some shoppers and cooks are just plain purplist…

They're one of the unalloyed joys of late summer, fair bursting with juice and flavour. Best of all, they're free – provided you're willing to risk a few scratches

It's amazing what even quite young children can achieve in the kitchen, and the summer holidays are the perfect time to let them find their culinary feet.