Rocket recipes

Warm flatbreads loaded with wilted rocket, soft fried eggs and a smoky harissa yoghurt that pulls everything together. This is a brilliant fast supper or weekend brunch that takes the best of a Middle Eastern flavour palette and puts your garden rocket firmly at the centre. The heat of the harissa mellows the peppery bite of the rocket beautifully.

A punchy, peppery pesto made from a full bag of rocket blitzed with toasted walnuts, Parmesan and good olive oil, tossed through al dente linguine. This is weeknight cooking at its best — faster than ordering a takeaway and infinitely better. The rocket keeps its bite and vivid green colour because you dress the pasta off the heat.

A vivid, silky soup that starts with deeply roasted peppers and sweet onion, then has a full 100g of rocket wilted in right at the end to give it an unmistakable peppery bite and brilliant colour. The white beans make it genuinely filling without being heavy. This is one of those soups that tastes like you spent the afternoon on it, even though the hands-on time is modest.

The Italian trattoria classic done properly at home — a well-rested, thinly sliced sirloin laid over a generous mound of dressed rocket that wilts very slightly in the residual heat of the meat. A proper quantity of rocket is the point here, not a garnish. The bitterness and pepper of the leaves cuts through the richness of the beef beautifully.