Roasted Vegetable Salsa

There comes a point when you have to admit that autumn is coming. I’m not ready to think of winter yet, give me time for that... But when summer days start ending on a chilly note and you find yourself reaching for your stash of vests (everyone has one, right?), it’s time to adapt your food to fit. This is often helped on by supermarkets, who begin to stock basic ingredients that just don’t work as well as they did in summer months. Take tomatoes. They’re ripe and juicy in the summer, albeit for a price. By autumn, the packets that grace the shelves are full of fruit as hard as stones and just as tasteless. Luckily, salt, pepper, olive oil and a spell in a hot oven at everyone’s favourite gas mark (6, duh!) is enough to get the tastebuds excited again.

Dogs n’ Dough, Manchester

Now that I’m based back in West Yorkshire, Manchester is only a half hour train ride away, rather than a two-hour trek. Exhausting all the restaurant options in York really made me feel like it was time to be moving on and Manchester, with its seemingly endless eatery options really gets me excited. I get the sense that the city cares about its food; Simon Rogan's The French narrowly missed out on a Michelin star this year but has raised the bar pretty high, and there's enough money knocking about to warrant some pretty good cocktail bars. If I had the money I know where I’d spend it. But I don’t have the money. And as for drinks, the 10.30 curfew of the last-train-home doesn’t really give me the option for a night on the tiles, nor am I an afternoon cocktail person.