This is the perfect meal for entertaining, as it can be made ahead. Reheat baked ham and serve along with cheddar biscuits later in the night when your guests are ready for a little filler. The "jammy" baked beans are deliciously old-fashioned and so great for a buffet. You can use the same preserve for both the ham and beans, or you can mix it up and get crazy with your combos - your choice!

As you may have guessed from the recipe title, this was inspired by my fun and wild adventures in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico! I’ve only been there once but it was fantastic. If we ever meet, be sure to ask me about my Chad Kruger (yes, from Nickelback) and Jell-O shot story. In this dish, I chose to use sustainably sourced U.S. wild shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico, because their taste takes me back to the beautiful beaches, hot sun, and fresh flavors of Mexico. Grab a margarita and you’ll be all set.

At Violet the scones come out of the oven around two in the afternoon. Much as I would love to make more cakes with fresh cream, we don’t have the capacity for this in the shop or in our fridges. But since we love the thick, rich cream that we get from Somerset, and because we make so many delicious quick jams for filling cakes and serving with toast, we simply had to make some scones to go with them. My scones are a bit like an American shortcake—that is to say they are made with a lot of butter and no eggs. To make them extra-rich we put cream in the dough. Everything, once assembled, becomes better than the sum of its parts. I think these scones work best with a tart berry or currant jam.

Although not an instant dinner, this is nonetheless simple and speedy to make. You do need to marinate the lamb for 30 minutes or so, but you can pour yourself a glass of wine, sit back and enjoy it, then whizz up the mint sauce in the meantime.

Speaking of which, this is a simple, spontaneous reworking of the old-fashioned vinegary mint sauce my mother used to make, using ingredients from my kitchen now. Namely, I saw two preserved lemons left bobbing hopefully about in their jar, and thought this would be an excellent opportunity to use them up. It was: the preserved lemons’ intense and scented sourness counters and enhances the mint perfectly.

When I was growing up, we often ate this for lunch at school. My school was a crumbling convent hidden behind the extravagantly baroque church of Santa Maria della Salute. It wasn’t in any way a fancy school, but it had the prettiest cloisters in which we played during morning break. Lunch was in a cavernous hall, and I still remember the nuns sweeping out of the kitchen doors at noon, carrying large pots of steaming risotto that they would dish out by the ladleful.

As with all risotto, the secret to success is in the stock. This recipe combines a bouillon cube with boiled carrot, celery, and onion for a vegetable broth that is more flavorful than what you might find in a container, but less time-consuming to make than homemade stock. My friend Maria, who is one of the best cooks I know, taught me this trick.

Take care when cooking the risotto that you not overcook it; or it will become mushy; the rice should have a little bite to it.