This is a great recipe for using frozen vegetables.

Frozen vegetables are often higher in nutritional value than their fresh counterparts, presuming the latter are bought and not grown yourself and eaten or frozen as soon as you pick them.

Buy fresh veg and you might get ones that have been around for a while. Provided they look and smell reasonably fresh, there’s no real problem with that, but they will have lost some of their vitamins.

Frozen veg may have more, being generally frozen within a short period of being harvested.

Having said that, in a few weeks’ time good, locally grown vegetables, including these, will be available in most parts of BritainK.

I have made this with both frozen and fresh — and with dried, soaked beans and canned — and must confess to not really noticing any difference.

If you really want to, you can put this into a pie-crust (shortcrust is best here), but for me that adds fat and calories to no good purpose. Instead, I serve it with a salad and steamed spuds.

Ingredients

• 110g/4oz green beans, cut into short pieces

• 110g/4oz peas

• 110g/4oz white (haricot or cannellini) beans

• 55g/2oz spinach, chopped small

• 2 standard small pots plain yoghurt

• 4 eggs, beaten

• ½ tsp mixed dried herbs/herbs de Provence

• Salt and freshly ground pepper

What to do

Preheat the oven to 200°C/ 390°F.

Steam or boil the frozen green beans for three minutes and mix them with the canned or pre-cooked white beans.

Separately, steam or boil the spinach for one minute. Rinse in cold water to cool, and stir into the yoghurt.

Add the eggs and the dried herbs. Rinse the rest of the steamed veg to cool and add these, along with the dried herbs and seasoning.

Line a round oven-proof shallow pan with baking parchment, or grease it well (which isn’t as good but needs sometimes must) and bake for 30 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving.