We are a fan of puff pastry but we don't eat it very often. Every now and then we get some sausage rolls or a puff pastry pie but recently we keep seeing ready made puff pastry on offer in the supermarkets.

Tonights tea was a crayfish tart with a 'garden herb' salsa verde.

To make the sauce:

• Gently fry a couple of cloves of garlic in olive oil for a couple of minutes then add to the liquidizer.
• Add a mixture of herbs, including water cress, rocket, oregano, mint and parsley. I had some 'fat hen' in the garden so I sautéed that in oil until it had wilted before adding it.
• Drain and add a tablespoon of capers and a couple of anchovies.
• Liquidize everything, adding a splash of oil to make a sauce.

Spread the sauce on the pastry then top with roast red peppers, crayfish and feta cheese. Cook for 20-25 minutes at gas mark 6 then serve with a rocket and feta salad.

We have some Fat Hen growing in the garden, courtesy of the 'Edible Leaves, Roots and Shoots' seed pack which came from Garden Organic at Ryton. Most of the plants in the pack are mainly considered weeds so I had sprinkled the seeds in a potato planter in an attempt to stop the plants from spreading too far in the garden. The most prominent leaves at the moment look like they could be Fat Hen so I read through my copy of the River Cottage 'Hedgerow' book by John Wright to see what I could do with it.

The most promising suggestion was to deep fry it and make a type of crispy seaweed. I washed and shredded the leaves then tried a couple of different versions. First I simply fried the leaves in some hot olive oil. The texture was very similar to crispy seaweed and olive-oil flavour gave it a nice edge. Restaurant seaweed often has a sweet & salty flavour so the 2nd attempt was marinated in soy sauce for a few minute before being fried. It was then sprinkled with a mixture of salt and brown sugar. This was much closer to 'real' seaweed. Since we have a lot of fat hen in the garden, it's good to know that we have a good recipe for it, and after tonight's tea we have 2 recipes.