I’m off to London soon to meet my new granddaughter. I love England in the autumn when the pretence of some sort of summer has passed (although we do sometimes get a late ‘Indian’ summer) and the leaves are changing colour and looking beautiful. Not quite as stunning as north America in autumn, but beautiful all the same.

We don’t get that in Malta, but it’s a nice time of year here too, when the stifling heat has gone, and we are still getting warm mild days, plus a spot of rain to wash away the dust of the summer.

And what has all this got to do with cooking? Not a lot really, but I was thinking about autumn leaves and one leaf led to another – spinach leaves, cabbage leaves, vine leaves, phyllo and puff pastry leaves, and what you could do with them.

The Spanish have their tapas and the Greeks have their mezze, and one of the most popular mezze is stuffed vine leaves or dolmades, tasty little morsels to serve with a dip and drinks.

Sometimes they are made with meat, usually pork (but I occasionally use lamb), and sometimes they are meat-free like this recipe. Jars or packets of prepared vine leaves are hard to find in Malta, but if you use fresh ones you will have to soak them well in boiling water first. It’s a bit too late in the season for that now, so I wrap the filling in filo pastry instead and then bake them.

Fresh spinach is a versatile vegetable. You can put it in things, under things, line ramekins with it or wrap things around it. I think one of the simplest and nicest recipes is eggs Florentine – a poached eggnestled in a mound of spinach and masked with a little cheese sauce. So too are spinach and prawn pancakes which make a very nice starter or light supper dish, baked until brown and bubbling under a creamy sauce.

Lovely crisp savoy cabbages are quite widely available here now, so break off some of the big crinkly outside leaves, blanch them in boiling water and then stuff them with a savoury mixture of meat, mushrooms and breadcrumbs. Or vegetarians could try stuffing them with lentils and cheese.

Bake them in the oven for an hour, then serve them with roast potatoes for a tasty autumn supper. If you can’t find a savoy, an ordinary cabbage will do just as well, but it won’t be quite as colourful.

And last but not least, an easy apple tart made with flaky puff pastry. I like the sharpness of Granny Smith’s, but Golden Delicious are just as good.

Glazed with some apricot jam and served warm with either ice-cream or whipped cream, it makes an ideal pudding for Sunday lunch. And there you have it – my autumn collection!