The rice cake was made using a mixture of wild and long grain rice, with a beaten egg, grated cheese and chopped chilli added. I fried the rice cake on one side for a few minutes until it was firm enough to slide onto a baking tray to finish cooking in the oven. The hot-smoked trout was heated through in the oven while the courgettes and leek slices were fried in a little butter.

I have been attempting to grow sweet peppers for a couple of years but have never had much success. The yield has always been poor with a lot of the peppers failing to ripen. Last year I decided to keep some sweet pepper and chilli pepper plants over the winter because I had read that it gives the plants a good head start. The chilli plant was looking a bit sad - the leaves had gone dry and turned brown. I expected the worst but some green shoots have started to appear. Last week I noticed some flower buds appearing on the sweet pepper and now a tiny pepper has started to form.

I only planted this years pepper seeds last week (sweet, cayenne and jalapeno) but it will be interesting to see what results we get compared to last year's plants.