Roast beetroot with smoked mackerel, horseradish cream and hawthorn shoots

The countryside yields a meagre harvest in the final few weeks of winter. I found myself clutching at straws in late January; returning from the wood with nothing but a couple of herb bennett leaves and a bag of pine needles. There's a bit of young nettle growth knocking around, but that's about it.

So it was with genuine excitement that I wrote about the emergence of hawthorn shoots last week. These young leaves have a gentle nutty flavour; it's best to pick them now as they get increasingly bitter with age. Spring abounds. Nearly.

Serves 4

8 Small beetroots

4 Smoked mackerel fillets

3tbsp Creme fraiche

3tbsp Creamed horseradish

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

1 Lemon

Hawthorn shoots

Heat your oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Give the beets a good scrub; dry with kitchen paper, then quarter. Season in an oven-proof dish, drizzle with olive oil and roast for about 45 minutes. Mix the creme fraiche and horseradish together in a small bowl. When the beetroot is cooked, transfer into a medium-sized bowl, flake in the mackerel and spoon in the horseradish cream. Toss briefly with salad tongs, just so the beetroot and mackerel lightly catch the horseradish cream. Serve with a squeeze of lemon juice and fresh hawthorn shoots.

Mackerel Pate

In event terms, the creation of a batch of Mackerel Pate in the Ovenden household is a high ranker. Normally it resides in an old souffle dish in the fridge to spread across toast as and when the need arises, but I've adapted it slightly to make it into individual servings.

Makes enough to fill 3 ramekins
250g Smoked Mackerel fillets
150g Cottage cheese
75g Unsalted butter
Juice of 1/2 lemon
A good grating of fresh horseradish root
Salt & pepper
Bay leaves

Melt 25g of the butter in a pan. Peel the skin off the mackerel fillets and flake into a bowl, removing any bones you spot along the way. Use a wooden spoon to crush the fish to a paste, then pass the cottage cheese through a seive into the bowl. Add the melted butter, lemon juice, horseradish and seasoning, then mix everything together. Spoon into ramekins; stop about 5mm from the top and level off with the back of a spoon.

To clarify the butter, slowly melt the remaining butter in a pan and skim the foamy milk solids off the surface with a spoon. Carefully pour the clear yellow butterfat into a jug - make sure that the sunken cloudy layer at the bottom of the pan doesn't come with it. Slowly pour the clarified butter over the pate-filled ramekins. A bay leaf pushed into the seal before the butter sets looks dead posh like.