Eating in the garden with Prue Leith A less frequently used pagoda across the lake is the place Prue unwinds when she has more time. It used to be called the pond until Prue was informed by a man who came to work on it that anything over an acre is definitely a lake. There is an electric frying pan in the pagoda, handy for making a favourite dish: freshly picked elderflowers dipped in batter and fried, preferably eaten on Prue's small boat with a glass of champagne. Prue's vegetable garden is undergoing changes. While her house was being renovated recently, she moved into her barn and the previously large vegetable garden was covered with builders. To make do, she made two raised beds on the terrace, around 4m by 1m (13ft by 3.3ft), and grew veg in those. She just "stuck things in wherever": cabbage, runner beans up wigwams, courgettes, leeks, tomatoes, and was amazed how productive and easy it was: "Small areas that don't over fa ce you." Previously, her extensive vegetable garden meant she was often dealing with gluts ("which give you a huge guilt trip if you don't use," she says), freezing things that weren't used until they were hoicked out to make room for the next year's pickings, or making "Everything in the Garden Chutney" for village fetes. This she tends to make with a basic apple and onion base and then divides by colour. A purple version will be made with damson and beetroot, a yellow with butternut squash and sweetcorn. So now she is limiting her vegetable-growing space to a couple of existing large frames about 7m by 1m (23ft by 3ft) and producing more intensively in that. She grows some vegetables in the borders, such as globe artichokes, but they give rise to dilemmas. When she recently cut some from the veg area and was a couple short, taking glamorous specimens from her grey and pink border to make up the necessary number was too much of a sacrifice - they looked just too perfect to eat. Another favourite glamorous vegetable is the long-lasting black cabbage or black Tuscan kale. "It tastes good, even when the leaves look a bit passed it," says Prue. She shreds it into things such as bean soup. Gardener cooks are great with gluts. Prue's recipe for her tomato sauce has a twist on the classic combination of basil and tomatoes. She fries sliced onions, throws in as many tomatoes as she has and adds a box of tomato juice, garlic and olives. Then at the end she adds in leftover home-made pesto and some basil leaves. The pesto makes it richer, and it is perfect over pasta. The glut of apples, pears and plums is soon going to be here. For this, I will try her Muscovado Heaven. She says she made it for a bevy of famous foodies recently and they swooned over it, deliberating whether it was pannacotta, mascarpone or other fine fare. In fact it was yogurt from Tesco mixed 50:50 with double cream, beaten quickly until thick and placed over a layer of fruit purée (apples, pears, rhubarb - whatever you have) with a thin layer of dark muscovado sugar over the top. You leave it for half an hour in the fridge. Serving it in clear glasses apparently gives you beautiful brown drips inside the glass. Special and delicious drinks with a difference, sipped alfresco, add no end to the atmosphere and mood generated in any gathering. Prue was stuck with a large quantity of cheap, but not cheerful, cava after a charity do organised by her son. She experimented and now has a firm favourite. Mixed with the same volume of supermarket-brand ginger ale, and an addition of freshly squeezed lemon, plus fresh, bruised mint and a few slices of fresh ginger, the drink is regularly on the menu and trumps wine in the popularity stakes. Perhaps the best tip, which I have copied often, is her selection of large pots of herbs immediately outside her kitchen door, so convenient you cannot resist snipping them - and the perfect lift to many a dish. Prue Leith's 'Relish: My Life on a Plate" is published by Quercus, £16.99