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endive, blue cheese and pear salad

20 Feb

pear and endive salad

My February kitchen has not been much to write home about. Though I resolved to try 10 new recipes from neglected cookbooks, I often end up eating leftover cake for supper (hurrah for being a grown-up) or a plain salad to balance out the cake (curses on adult responsability).

There was a whole mackerel roasted with lemon and a particularly nice dinner among girlfriends with beef, apricot and spinach meatballs simmered in tomato sauce – but that is all self-explanatory.

I can only offer this salad, in imitation of a wonderful Lyonnais bistro in St-Germain, whose address I will be not sharing (bribes notwithstanding) because it was too full and their seven-hour lamb was too delicious.

Endives can be jarring – too bitter, too teeth-squeakingly watery. But here, sliced as finely as coleslaw, they are the the star of the plate, crunchy but delicate, spotlit by a mustard dressing. Its subtle colours – cream, pale green. mottled blue – hide a wallop of flavour: bitter endive, sweet pear, sharp cheese. It is a wintery salad full of promise, for crunch and light and better things to come.

~~~

Pear, endive and blue cheese salad

serves 4 as a starter

4 large endives

2 crisp, slightly unripe conference pears

200g blue cheese

3 tbs olive oil

2 tbs lemon juice

1 tsp dijon mustard

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

a pinch of pepper

Halve and core the pears. Slice them and the endives as thinly as possible. Shake the dressing ingredients in a jar, toss most of it with the salad, add more to taste. Crumble the blue cheese over the top.

chevre chaud au bacon (the perfect goat’s cheese salad)

27 Mar

I did it again. I ate my lunch before I could draw it for you nice people. But you have to have a life before a blog. And besides, the false spring has gone to my head.

These few balmy days when the trees are still stripped bare, the warm sunshine and the lone butterfly brave enough to venture out are lulling me into a syrupy stupor. I know that it will rain again in April, that I will have to leave my hideaway in the south of France for self-important Paris, but for the moment I have a diamond patio and a plate empty of anything but radish stalks, so blissful denial is the way forward.

What’s more, I have found the perfect salad, the perfect lunch. I already knew radishes and avocadoes and rocket and fennel were happy partners, but they are made bistrot-worthy by the simplest addition: a pat of soft goat’s cheese fried in bacon. Ours came from a local farmer, ready wrapped.

(I just asked my mother for a suitable simile for the size of the goat’s cheese crottins – which means poop, by the way, confirming my longheld prejudice that the French are obsessed with crap – and she suggested “larger than half a crown, slightly smaller than an Olympic medallion.” Neither of which I have ever seen or will see, in all probability. Thanks, Mum.)

So, take a tub of soft goat’s cheese and form a little fat pancake per person, as much as you can stomach. Wrap it all over in a thin streaky bacon like pancetta so it’s nicely sealed in and fry in a hot frying pan until crisp outside and just warm within. Serve on a bed of rocket and raddichio (bitter to cut the rich cheese flavour)with slivers of fennel, circles of radish and chunks of avocado, lightly dressed. Eat with lots of French bread and pale butter.

(Our favourite local just caught us finishing our lunch, barefoot, at 4pm.  He wished us a bon appetit, but refused a slice of apple tart on the grounds that his top dentures are being repaired at the moment. He is the picture of health for 87, always in the same black beret and wire rimmed sunglasses. The magic of the southern sunshine and the robust Gascon diet.)

ottolenghi inspired cauliflower with sultanas, hazelnuts and capers

2 Jan

On a dark dark night in the cold cold November air, five girls and one boy in a tuxedo met for dinner in London. They sat around a giant slab of a table, overlooking the bright lights of the kitchen. Cans of artichokes and bags of flour decorated the shelves, while the bathrooms were a circus hall of mirrors.

The menu listed burrata and pink grapefruit, twice cooked baby chicken, a finely sliced steak salad. Funnily enough, the most memorable flavours came from the vegetables: an oval dish of finely mashed potato laid with faintly spicy broccolini, the slender upcountry cousins of the basic broccoli.

And the cauliflower salad, the plain white and geometric green romaneso cauliflower, only just tender, sprinkled with sweet and salted, soft and crackly elements. Perhaps there were raisins, maybe capers. Definitely a drift of ricotta to smooth the sharp edges.It was glamourous, an epithet not often associated with dull wintery cauliflower.

That would be the genius of Ottolenghi, to spotlight the often sidelined greenery. NOPI isn’t vegetarian, but it could get away with it – people would still enthuse over the delicate/robust quality of the food, marvel that broccoli deserves a second helping.

The girls and the boy finished their balloon glasses of white wine, dove into the salted macadamia cheesecake – just light enough – and stumbled home. One girl fell asleep on the bus, dreaming spirals of cauliflower.

~~~

(Thanks go to this pretty lady who recommended the restaurant in the first place.)

~~~

Cauliflower salad with sultanas, hazelnuts and capers

inspired by Ottolenghi, recreated haphazardly as far as we remember

Take one head of cauliflower (plain white or green romanesco, whatever you can find) and break into small florets. Chop the stalks as well, to roughly the size of the florets. Spread out over two baking sheets, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and lots of pepper. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 200C, or as long as it takes to turn brown at the edges, tender with some crunch.

In a small frying pan, heat a generous amount of olive oil and fry two tablespoons of capers until they start to burst into crisp flowers. (Test the olive oil with one caper first, it should sizzle when it hits the oil.)

Toast a handful of hazelnuts in the oven with the cauliflower, until they smell just right. Chop roughly.

In a large bowl, stir together the cauliflower, hazelnuts, capers and a handful of sultanas. Check the seasoning, add more salt and pepper if needed. Top with pomegranate seeds for a splash of colour, and serve with fresh ricotta if you have any lying around.

Best served straight from the oven for the crisp contrast of the blackened edges and tender middles of the cauliflower. Still good the next day, am reliably informed that leftovers are excellent with pasta.

three cheese stuffed mushrooms

1 Dec

According to the microbiology test we had at pastry school, Roquefort is a drug. A kind of pencillin, pencillin roqueforti, if I was paying attention. But it was a “colour in the correct answer” test, so…

In any case, cheese will never let you down. Three cheeses and you can retire happy. These little innocent mushrooms get packed with sauteed leeks, ricotta, roquefort and lemon zest then coated with crunchy parmesan and thyme. Baked until the insides are melty and the outsides brown, you can forget their humble vegetable origins and pretend like you’re eating pizza.

Make big portobello ones or cute little appetizer ones. Either way you’ll probably eat them all yourself – I don’t even want to say serves two, because that would be a lie. In fact, I made the fatal mistake of eating all my supper before I could draw it. Not the proper dedication required of a food blogger.

Mushrooms stuffed with leeks, ricotta and roquefort

(For the topping, use either bulghur wheat or chunky breadcrumbs, whatever you have lying around. The former will be a bit more substantial, suitable for supper rather than a snack.)

500g mushrooms (plain white ones or large portobello ones)

1 leek

some butter

50g ricotta

50g roquefort (or any other blue cheese)

a couple of dried porcini slices (optional)

zest of one lemon

50g fresh parmesan, grated

sprinkle of fresh thyme

either 70g dried bulghur wheat or 2 slices crusty bread

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200C. Brush any dirt off the mushrooms (do not wash, they go soggy) and break off the stems. Place caps down on a baking sheet lined with baking foil and stick in the oven for 10 minutes until they lose some of their liquid. Drain and leave to dry on a sheet of paper towel.

Prepare either the bulgur wheat (according to packet instructions) or the breadcrumbs, crumbling the bread roughly and baking in the oven until golden-brown.

Meanwhile chop the mushroom stalks very finely and cook in butter until soft and fragrant. If you have some, break up the porcini slices and stir them in. Tip into a large bowl. Melt some more butter in the same pan to cook the leek. Clean the leek (slice down the centre almost to the base, fan the leaves apart and rinse in cold water) chop into 1cm slices and fry in a little butter. Cover and leave on a medium heat until soft but brown at the edges.

Mix the mushroom stalks, leek, roquefort, ricotta and lemon zest. Season with salt and pepper. The mixture should be delicious enough to eat straight up with a spoon. In a separate bowl, mix breadcrumbs / bulghur wheat with the thyme and most of the parmesan.

Lightly salt and pepper the mushroom caps and heap with as much leek filling as possible. Top with the bulghur / breadcrumbs and finally sprinkle over the last of the parmesan.

Bake for about 20 minutes at 200c – depending on your oven. When it smells and looks cooked, it probably is. (Sorry, not very precise. Bad food-blogger.)

sucrée / salée : salade de pêches au basilic; tarte de pêches, jambon et mozzarella

3 Aug

Squeezing peaches feels somehow illicit. A tray of furry backsides waiting to be delicately palpated. Are they ripe yet?

The French word for a peach is very close to un péché, or a sin. And to fish, pêcher. (Can someone who likes etymology enlighten me before I make a bad pun?) (And if I do make a bad pun, does that mean I am finally French?)

In any case, no sin here. Maybe a little ambiguity. Two simple recipes that can’t decide if they are sweet or savoury. The peach and basil salad would be equally delicious with a wedge of gruyère as with some vanilla icecream. The tart combines the salty attack of Parma ham with the sweetness of roast peach, all covered with a subtle blanket of mozzarella.*

Use ripe, juicy peaches since they are the star of the show. And squeeze gently.

Peach and basil salad

at least 4 ripe peaches

several leaves of basil

a glug of olive oil

juice of half a lemon

salt and pepper

Cut the peaches into thick slices or chunks. Tear the basil into small shreds. (Tearing apparently releases the flavour better than cutting.) Toss with the olive oil and lemon then season with a little salt and pepper. Let it stand for a hour so that the flavous meld.

Note: Rosemary can also perfume this salad, except that the spines are less pleasant to eat.

~~~

Peach tart with prosciutto and mozzarella

(simplified from Victoria O’Neill’s soon-to-be published debut cookbook)

1 quantity puff or shortcrust pastry (bought or homemade)

1 packet of Parma ham / prosciutto crudo / air-dried ham

1 or 2 balls fresh mozzarella

at least 4 ripe peaches

fresh herbs (thyme is good)

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C. Roll out the pastry into a large rectangle or circle. Grease a large baking tray or tart pan and gently lift the pastry onto it. Cover with a single layer of ham slices. Cut the peaches into thick wedges (6-8 per peach) and line them up in rows or circles on top of the ham. Tear the mozzarella into chunks and scatter over peaches. Finally sprinkle over some thyme (or other herbs) with salt and pepper.

Bake in the oven until the pastry is brown and the cheese bubbling. Leave it to cool a little, then cut into wedges and serve just warm.

*Please excuse the overblown mixed metaphor. It’s very hot today.

picnic food: panzanella

8 Jul

Picnics? Again? Can’t we just go to a restaurant?

This scandalous remark was tantamount to declaring the end of our friendship. Even my four year old students understand that summer means pique-nique. They are so happy about our virtual picnics that they try to eat the flashcards.

No cardboard cakes at my idea of a picnic. Nor just crisps and beer. A picnic is a delicate balance – you need some bread and cheese, of course, as well as a vegetable, some fruit and something luxurious. The most recent one was capped by wine-dark cherries dragged through the puddle of chocolate that had melted in the evening heat. Though it might sound sophisticated, we ended up spitting the pips into the Seine, competing for the furthest distance. Our picnic-adjacent neighbours gave us a disgusted look and moved. We returned home barefoot, grubby, happy to withstand the glares on the metro.

So the food is not really the point. Just the underpinnings. Panzanella is low key – just plump tomatoes, stale bread and highlights of basil. But somehow the bread absorbs the tomato juice, the olive oil and a hint of onion and binds it all together. Pan-zan-ella. The word itself sounds like it should mean “bread salad wearing a pretty skirt”.

~~~

Panzanella

serves a crowd

1 kg ripe tomatoes

1 large baguette tradition, preferably a day old

1 red onion

1 bunch radishes

liberal amounts of olive oil

a splash of balsamic vinegar

several leaves of basil

salt

Cut the tomatoes into large chunks and dice the onions. Toss with oil and vinegar, violently enough to release the juice from the tomatoes. Add the bread ripped into crouton-sized pieces (the same as the tomatoes) the basil, torn up, and some salt. Toss it all together and taste, adjust seasoning if necessary.

Leave for about an hour so that the bread absorbs the dressing without becoming too soggy.

Eat straight from the bowl.

guest edition: thai chicken and mango salad

11 Jun

Mama used to say: never apologise for your cooking. (She also used to say: the cook gets to eat the mango stone.)*

Never admit to your mistakes. At least, don’t point them out. Maybe your guests won’t notice, maybe they are not perfectionists like you. So I didn’t mention that I had forgotten the garlic. Or toasted the cashews too enthusiastically. I didn’t mention the half-kilo of clingy glass noodles abandoned in the rubbish bin. I made more peanut noodle salad with our best spaghetti. (Mama used to say: don’t buy value pasta.) And no-one did notice.

No-one noticed because my chicken and mango salad was so damn spicy it seared away most of our tastebuds. I only used one chili, as warned by the chatty man in our Indian corner store. Even so, the boys picked through it manfully. “It’s not that hot.” They even had seconds; that’s friendship for you. The girl nearly died on the sofa, drank litres of water. (Like the time we thought we had given our Japanese exchange student a heart attack with our spicy curry.)

Such a shame, because it is a perfect summer salad otherwise. It follows the Thai principles of sweet, salty, spicy, sour and fishy. The latter sounds a bit odd, but it is the splash of nam pla (fish sauce) that gives it an extra savoury edge. Sweet mangoes, sharp lime juice, tender chicken. Green leaves and herbs. A crunch from the cashews. Ralph made us this, his signature dish, numerous times in the summer term at Regent Street. I clearly remember stabbing at a bowl of it while sitting on our trampoline. Every now and then some joker would bounce up and down a little. We had to hold onto our plates as if we were sailors being shipwrecked.

So make sure to take your greengrocer seriously when he warns you about the strong strong chilis. Prepare your salad ahead of time, nibble on the mango stones, then relax and drink a gin and tonic. Pretend that you are a student again, a student with only a very few deadlines but important discussions about webcomics and the meaning of life to solve over supper.

*Also not apologising for half-drawn illustration. Hungry guests arrived, I got distracted. You have to imagine the rich orange, crumpled green and flashes of hot red.

…

Ralph’s Thai Chicken and Mango Salad

(in his words, because they are funny words)

serves 3-4

3 chicken breasts, cut into strips

6 spring onions, sliced (I like to do it lengthways for shards of onion, rather than what my friend Giles used to call ‘roly-polies’ when he was much younger)

4 cloves garlic, sliced very thinly

2 mangos, sliced (apparently they’re meant to be underripe, but if they’re too underripe they’re too chewy and dry, so ripe ones will do)

4 chopped, seeded red chillis

a bunch of watercress

a very slightly smaller bunch of coriander, chopped

a considerably smaller bunch of mint leaves, chopped also

juice of 1-2 limes

1 tbsp nam pla (fish sauce)

1 tbsp caster sugar

1 tbsp groundnut oil (in addition to frying oil)

peanut and cashews

Fry the chicken, then saute the garlic and onions in the same pan.  Throw everything into the biggest bowl you’ve got and mix it up a bit.  Have more nuts around to add if you want them.  That’s it! 

(Ed. note: Try serving with peanut noodles for a more substantial dish: add several spoonfuls of peanut butter to this amazing dressing)

bittersweet salad (third simple pleasure)

14 May

I could make so many stupid comparisons about this salad and life in general. Life is indeed sometimes bitter. Sometimes sour.  (I prefer the crunchy times.) But really it reminds me of my third simple pleasure:

Be in nature.

Running along the edge of the river in Sesto Calende, I started thinking about the difference a little sunshine makes. Or anything natural. The village was rich in natural beauty – a long curving river with a proud swan’s nest, a green canopy of trees along the towpath. The locals were all out for an evening walk – la passeggiata - just watching the sun go down, checking up on the nine swan eggs. Though I like my new incarnation as a city girl, I always forget just how much I need some green leaves, sun on my face, a stretch of water.

The evening entertainment in Sesto was perhaps the most romantic picnic possible. We packed a tub of this salad, bread, ricotta and some slightly squashed carrot cake, clambered onto a dinghy and rowed out to a pirate boat, floating alone in the middle of a lake. Just one proud mast. Four hungry pirates armed with tealights and thick socks. At one point I watched in the candlelight as a single swan feather floated by on the black water. It was ridiculously poetic.

We stabbed at leaves of radicchio and crumbs of feta. Talked of seed bombs and guerrilla gardening. And of “Spiderman”, a tiny student of mine who refuses to learn the word rainbow. Finally the cold breeze and what looked like a real leech chased us back inside.

Despite the leeches, despite all the rainy days spent camping with Scouts, just being surrounded by green still does me a world of good. Epecially when the little Spidermen get too frustrating. When I have to keep confiscating the scissors or saying “sit down” as if I were dog training. Lunch in the scrubby park in the sun and a perfectly balanced salad like this one are all I need. Appropriately rainbow coloured – red, green, yellow and cream – it mixes sharp flavours, crunchy textures and smooth salty cheese. Play around with the ingredients, but make sure to eat it outside.

Bittersweet salad

(inspired by Orangette’s A Homemade Life)

feeds 4 hungry pirates

bitter: 1 whole radicchio

sweet: 1 red pepper

tart: 1 braeburn (or other sharp apple)

crunchy: 1/2 bulb fennel or 2 sticks celery

creamy: 200g feta (or 1 avocado)

sour: lemon dressing (3 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp lemon juice, 1/2 tsp mustard, 1/2 tsp sugar, 1/2 tsp salt)

Tear the radicchio into bite-sized leaves. Slice the pepper, apple and fennel into long elegant strips. Toss all together. Cube the feta (or avocado) and sprinkle on top of the salad. In a small jar, shake all of the dressing ingedients together until smooth. Taste – add more lemon/salt/oil as needed. It should be quite sour. Just before you are ready to eat, tip the dressing over the salad and toss gently.


memories of paris

28 Mar

Of waiting for the beautiful blonde girls at the Gare du Nord. Wandering the streets in the blistering sunshine. Mint tea in the mosaic-walled courtyard. Solemnly shaking hands with Rodin’s creations, then draping ourselves shamelessly over an empty plinth.

Of macarons. Of getting topsy-turvy lost on the way back from the Pantheon. Of rolling home across the bridge after the decadent but cheap meal at Claudio’s bar. Lying on my bedroom floor, breathing hard from my run, tears rolling soft silent as they made me origami flowers. The cocktail tasting session at tea time.

But above all, the evening at the Parc de la Villette, jigsawed onto a rough blanket, a bottle of wine, cheese, tomatoes and grains of pearl barley scattered everywhere. Little Miss Sunshine, and that dance. This salad.

Moroccan spiced aubergine and barley picnic salad

Melting warm spiced aubergine, silky with lemon and olive oil, the pearl barley a satisfying contrast. Best eaten straight out of the bowl, three forks. Try not to spill all over picnic blanket. Wine obligatory, outdoor movie optional.

½ cup pearl barley

2 aubergines cut into 1cm cubes

1 lemon, juice and zest

olive oil

paprika

cumin

cinnamon

salt and pepper

several sprigs rosemary, finely chopped

(goat’s cheese, if you have any)

Cook the pearl barley with 2 cups of water and a pinch of salt until puffed up and only slightly chewy. Drain, and add the lemon juice and zest, salt and pepper and a splash of olive oil. Meanwhile heat a large frying pan with 2 teaspoons olive oil then add the cubed aubergine and the rosemary. Cook on a high heat, stirring until the aubergine is very soft, almost falling apart. Add salt and pepper then the spices, half a teaspoon at a time, until suitably spiced. Stir into the barley, taste and add extra olive oil if it needs it. Top with goat’s cheese and serve with juicy tomatoes and French bread. (Serves 3 hungry girls.)

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