One recent afternoon, I was unpacking my shopping bags and sorting out the fruit and vegetables when I could not help but notice how beautiful they were and how they represented virtually all colours of the spectrum, from the red peppers and tomatoes right round to the indigo blueberries and violet potatoes.

Without even thinking about it, we were eating a rainbow. All this colourful food is rich in vitamins and antioxidants which helps neutralise free radicals, those nasty little organisms which accelerate cellular ageing.

And the more colourful the product, the more antioxidant it contains, and even better if we eat it raw. It would be a pity to regard such food as a penance. These islands have such glorious fruit and vegetables that it is easy to make a feast of them, at any time of year.

Try, for example, a beetroot soup, including apple and onion, cooked in vegetable stock. Cream or soya cream can be used to enrich the soup. Beetroot, containing betanine, has the highest proportion of antioxidants of any vegetable.

The best beetroot dish I’ve eaten was at, of all places, an airport hotel restaurant, the Radisson Blu at Stansted, familiar, I am sure, to many readers. Their Italian restaurant, Filini, is very decent and their beetroot gnocchi a winner. I had to try it at home.

Lycopene, the most powerful antioxidant of all the carotenoids, is found in tomatoes and enhanced in cooked tomato products such as coulis, polpo and kunserva. So a dish of pasta with a rich, home-made tomato sauce would scarcely be a hardship.

Before it, you might serve a pear and rocket salad with ġbejniet and a dressing of cider vinegar, mustard and walnut oil. Dark green rocket is full of beta carotene (three times as much as lettuce), quercitine (another powerful antioxidant, also found in onions) and luteine, twice as much as other salad leaves.

Mustard itself, with other ‘warming’ spices, such as ginger, chilli and black pepper, are good sources of polyphenols, which have a moderating influence on insulin production, as does cinnamon. Other herbs and spices also have nutritional benefits; mint and star anise have digestive properties, so why not combine them to flavour a pink grapefruit and orange salad to serve at the end of a rich meal?

Turmeric, especially the fresh root, has powerful anti-inflammatory properties and is found in virtually all curry pastes. I use these to flavour root vegetable soups, especially good in pumpkin soup, and also with potatoes.

But without getting too technical about the beneficial properties of a rainbow of fruit and vegetables, let us just bear in mind how good they are, and the more of them we eat, the less room we will have for too much protein, dairy produce and sugar.

Later in the year, I like to make a red coleslaw, using red cabbage, red onions, beetroot and dried cranberries or cherries. Raisins or currants can be substituted. Make a large bowlful of this with the dressing of your choice and serve it with marinated herring pieces or smoked fish for a first course.

A juicer is a useful piece of kit, as I use the juice as a cooking medium, as well as serving freshly juiced vegetables in a glass. It makes easy work of the beetroot gnocchi recipe and also for this oriental cucumber and carrot salad: halve two cucumbers, discard the watery core and slice thinly. Put in a colander, sprinkle with Gozo salt and leave to drain for at least an hour, if possible up to four hours. Rinse the cucumber and dry thoroughly in a clean towel. The cucumber will be soft and wilted but will have a good flavour and a surprisingly crisp texture.

Peel four carrots and shave two of them into long strips. Juice the other two carrots with a piece of fresh ginger and a stalk of lemongrass. Into this juice, stir some grated lime zest, some of the juice, a pinch of sugar, freshly ground pepper, a splash of soy sauce and sesame oil.

Heap the carrot on to plates with the cucumber around it. Pour the dressing over the carrots and scatter a few crushed toasted peanuts over the salad. Simply grated carrots, chopped dried apricots and walnuts make a very good salad, dressed with walnut oil and sherry vinegar.

Pomegranate juice, combined with a little oil and seasoning, makes a very good marinade, particularly for poultry and game, with which season the fruit coincides perfectly. With its gentle acidity, pomegranate juice also makes a most satisfactory dressing for salads and vegetables that is very kind to any wine you might be drinking with it.

The juice marries particularly well with hazelnut oil and walnut oil. The seeds, too, look very good mixed in with salad leaves and just as good in a fruit salad made with green and purple fruit.

The reddest, most richly flavoured pomegranate juice makes a stunning cocktail when mixed with champagne. And to finish a meal with a flourish, freeze it into a granita. Or try this idea: having discarded the skin and pith from six pomegranates, crush the fruit with a fork, mix with a little icing sugar, rosewater and lemon juice and serve well chilled, if not iced.

Beetroot gnocchi

(Serves 4)

4 small beetroot
1 carrot
1 shallot, peeled and diced
1 tbsp olive oil
Splash of balsamic vinegar
400g freshly mashed potatoes
Plain flour – see recipe
½ tsp Gozo salt
100g cheese – Gorgonzola or Dolcelatte, or fresh sheep or goats cheese
Greenery such as rocket, parsley or microgreens

Put two of the beetroot in a saucepan of water and simmer until very tender. Scrub the other two and juice them with the carrot. Put the juice to one side.

When the beetroot is tender, peel both of them. Dice one and sauté it gently with the shallot in the olive oil. Make a purée of the other beetroot, sieving it if necessary to obtain a fine texture.

Put a large shallow pan of water to boil.

Put the mashed potatoes in a bowl and add a tablespoon or so of juice. Mix well and add the puréed beetroot. Gradually add enough flour to make a soft, still rather sticky dough. Take a handful and knead it lightly on a floured worktop. Roll it with your hands into a rope, about 2-3cm in diameter.

With a sharp knife, cut into 2cm lengths. If you have the patience, roll into ovals and press the tines of a fork into each one. Once all the dough has been used up, carefully lower the gnocchi into the pan of simmering water. They are ready once they float back to the surface.

Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to heated shallow soup plates. Serve with the beetroot sauce, some crumbled cheese and a little greenery. You can add Parmesan shavings if you like.

Mango and lime kulfi

(Serves 8)

1 large can sweetened condensed milk (approx. 400ml)
2 large cans evaporated milk (approx 400ml each)
2 large ripe mangoes
1 or 2 limes

Empty the contents of the cans into a bowl. Whisk well to combine textures. Peel and purée the mangoes, keeping back eight thin slices for decoration, then mix thoroughly into the milk mixture together with the finely grated zest and the juice of the limes.

Pour it either into eight moulds or into a shallow, rectangular container, so that you will get something about 4cm deep, and will be able to cut into eight portions.

Freeze for several hours, until thick but not hard. Break up the mixture and put it in the food processor for a minute or so, processing until smooth, then refreeze until ready to use. Turn out, or cut up, and decorate each portion with a thin curl of peeled mango.

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