This recipe has been driven by flavour and colour. Jerusalem artichokes are in season and there is something about the bite of them I love. It reminds me of coconut. So perhaps I will add a little coconut milk to this soup for creaminess. Nobly blue potatoes are in the shops too so I thought they might look lovely as crisps aloft this delicate soup. The colour of pink pepper corns also sprang to mind, so too did lemon grass and ginger and before long I had the recipe for a very pretty soup which was lovely to eat and gorgeous to photograph. Just the thing for a cold winter day with a biting wind. 

Spicy, fragrant, sweet, sour, hot and gutsy were the flavours I tasted the first time I ate falafel in a soft, freshly cooked pillowy pita. I was a student working on a kibbutz outside Jerusalem. After finishing a day's work I would hitch a lift into the city and revel in tasting new foods cooked on the street in the stifling heat.