What do you say? Chef’s salad

Chef's salad

Today has just been a bit surreal and I’m feeling a little weirded out. Today I walked past the amazing Molly Wizenberg of Orangette fame! It’s not often you happen to pop out for a walk and a baguette and bump into someone you totally admire/kinda want to be on a side street a mere two minutes from your home. It was very exciting but all I could muster was a smile and crimson cheeks. No words would come out but in a way I’m glad. I don’t think I would have been able to talk much sense. The boyfriend who was completely oblivious as to who had just pasted us thought I had experienced a small stroke due to my ever-reddening face. He proceeded to tease my blushing throughout the day. Charming.

I’m not entirely sure why I felt such a strong reaction. I think it may have been because I had just walked passed a person who’s blog posts have touched and moved me, who’s photos have inspired me and who’s humanity has humbled me. The amazing thing was she looked so down to earth and friendly. We were almost in matching outfits for Pete’s sake. We were just two girls, out with friends, taking a walk in the New Town. I guess, maybe in that moment, I felt my aspirations were more achievable. Maybe given enough time I could try to be as creative as her? Maybe given enough effort.

On a completely unrelated note I’ve wanted to share this recipe for chef’s salad for a week or two now. I had it as a starter for our anniversary meal and it was perfectly balanced, wonderfully simple and relied on awesome ingredients. It is a recipe just up my street, just like Molly!

Chef’s Salad – serves 2

1 echalion shallot – very finely cut

50ml vegetable oil

1tsp salt

300g new potatoes

100g smoked bacon lardons

100g comte – cut into 2cm by 1cm (ish) cubes

One head of little gem – cut into 2-3cm slices

50g mixed salad leaves – herby, flavourful leaves work best

2 eggs at room temperature

5 dsp extra virgin olive oil

1 dsp white wine vinegar

1 dsp dijon mustard

salt and pepper

oil for frying

Add the shallot to the vegetable oil with 1tsp of salt, stir firmly and leave to stand.

Add the potatoes to a pan of salted, boiling water and leave to cook over a moderately high heat.

Fry off the lardons over a high heat until very crispy. Set aside on kitchen towel until later.

Add the eggs to a pan of warm water and bring up to the boil, cook for 6 minutes, drain and leave to stand in cold water until later.

Slice the cooked new potatoes and add them to the pan used to cook the lardons, season well and cook until the edges are crispy then set aside.

In a jam jar, add the extra virgin olive oil, white wine vinegar, dijon mustard and seasoning to taste, shake well.

Remove the shallots from the vegetable oil and add them to a large bowl with the sliced little gem, salad leaves, lardons, comte and fried potato slices.

Add the salad dressing to this bowl and mix though.

Peel the eggs and arrange on top.

Enjoy.

Unexpected pleasures – beluga lentil salad

Beluga lentil salad

I am ashamed to admit it but I am probably a creature of habit. I guess I am just less spontaneous than I once was. Get up, work, walk, diner, shower, sleep. Last week my usual program of events was altered by a train derailment and my evening was all the better for it.

It has got me thinking about how I would like to be more open to the possibilities that are out there every day. Maybe there is so much more I could do? Am I really making the most of my time on this “pale blue dot”? All very scary and metaphysical questions but for me the scariest thought in the world is lying on my death bed wishing I had spent more time being creative, being with friends, seeing the world… instead of watching sh*t TV. Maybe I’m worrying prematurely, I am only 24 after all. Fingers crossed I’ve got a few years left in me yet.

Due to the derailment I had to get off the train a stop early and instead of catching a bus or walking the shortest route back I made the most of the late summer sun by walking along the riverbank. Here are a few photos I took with my phone. I don’t think they really capture the peace and sense of age of the landscape. It has this lovely, forgotten and ancient atmosphere, all very romantic.

Tired feet

I would describe both my walk along the riverbank and this beluga lentil salad as an unexpected pleasure. I’ve always had a rather nonchalant attitude towards lentils, a bit too rough and earthy maybe, but these beluga ones are richer and creamier but still more delicate than their dhal making counterparts. The creaminess is cut through with the vinaigrette and spring onions and the earthy hint is lifted by the freshness of the parsley. Good ol’ Nigel Slater, that boy never puts a foot wrong in my opinion.

Beluga lentil salad served with grilled courgettes and iberico ham - just as Mr Slater suggested

Beluga lentil salad – adapted from Nigel Slater’s Tender Volume 1 (highly recommended)

Serves 4 as part of a lunch

For the lentils

200 g of beluga lentils

600 ml chicken or vegetable stock – ideally homemade as commercial stocks will have more salt which can toughen the skin on the lentils

For the dressing

4-5 spring onions – finely chopped

a clove of garlic – crushed

a large handful of flat leaf parsley – roughly chopped

6 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

salt and pepper

Have a quick look and rummage through the lentils, sometimes there can be debris in the packet.

Pop the lentils into a sieve and run under cold water for a minute or two until the water is clear.

Add the lentils to a pan of simmering chicken stock.

In the meantime make the vinaigrette by adding the dressing ingredients together and mixing.

Taste the lentils after 10 minutes but they may require up to 15-20 minutes cooking.

The lentils should be tender but still with a little bite when they are ready.

Drain using a sieve and run under cold water for a minute or two.

Put the lentils in a bowl and pour in the dressing and give it a gentle mix until all the lentil are coated.

Season to taste.

Enjoy.

Orzo pasta salad with peas, round courgettes and a few herbs

Orzo pasta salad with peas, courgettes and a few herbs

When I think of summer eating I have a strong image in my head and I’d like to share it with you if you don’t mind. Summer eating for me is light, fresh flavours, simple dishes and perfect produce. I dream of flat white peaches, dark blood coloured cherries, iridescent sardines, sweet crab and tender runner beans… I think of being in a lush, full country garden, bees and butterflies. It’s almost like a potager. I imagine a languid lunch eaten on white plates on an old wooden table, aged from years under the elements. There is flagstone paving that leads up a few steps into the garden beyond. Whatever food is eaten it is always enjoyed with something chilled and white, the glass is dewy on the outside where the cool wine has hit the warmed atmosphere of a late July afternoon. This image I have in my head is probably the result of indulging in few too many Rick Stein re runs recently. The reality of summer eating for me is sadly less romantic. I ate this salad for lunch 3 days on the trot in that darn windowless staffroom in Fife. A girl can daydream.

Orzo pasta

This is my take on a summery pasta salad. There are no rules, it is more of a framework than a recipe and works with whatever seasonal veggies you have in your fridge or whatever you like best. Think of this as a bit of inspiration.

Orzo pasta salad with peas, courgettes and a few herbs

Orzo pasta salad with peas, round courgettes and a few herbs.

Serves 4

300g of pasta, I used the pretty orzo

1 roasted chicken breast, shredded

fresh peas, shelled to give a handful or two

1 round courgette or 2 small standard courgettes, finely sliced

small handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped

couple of tablespoons of more flavourful herbs – I used mint and greek basil

few shavings of a hard aged cheese, I used pecorino

zest of 1 lemon

juice of at least one lemon

good glug of olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet, orzo takes about 7-8 minutes.

Drain the pasta and run it under cold water for a couple of minutes until cool.

Add all the ingredients to the pasta, taste and adjust proportions as required.

Season to taste.

Enjoy.

Broad bean, pea shoot and pecorino sardo salad

Broad bean, pea shoot and pecorino salad

The weather hasn’t even been remotely summery today but I'm keen to make the most of all the amazing produce that is available currently. Eating seasonally means that in the winter months our diet consists of lots of leeks and brassicas. Enjoyable, but after a few months the novelty can begin to wear off and the excitement of the summer vegetable cousins coming to stay starts to settle in. Oh yummy asparagus, broad beans, peas, courgette flowers….

Broad beans 

Broad beans remind me so much of summer. My grandpa had a small vegetable patch at the bottom of his garden. Tomatoes, little gem lettuce and raspberries were the main staples but he would often dabble in a season of this and that. Runner beans one year, broad beans the next. Walking barefoot on the hot, rough slabs down to the bottom of his garden then eating his home grown delights straight off the bushes is one of my earliest and most enduring memories. The year was punctuated by different crops and I think it is this that has given me an appreciation of nature and seasonality.

Broad beans

Eating by the seasons wasn’t something my grandparents and their generation thought about, it was just the way things were. They weren’t eating broad beans in June because it was a trendy, middle class thing to do. They did it because that was option available. Today, in our world of readily available non native food such as bananas, broad beans can be quite tricky to get hold of in their short 8 week window. Some supermarkets stock them but your best bet is greengrocers or farmers markets. I got some today and was determined to make the most of them.

Broad beans, pecorino sardo and crusty bread - hello lunch

I’ll always remember my Grandma telling me about her first taste of bananas. Transatlantic shipping recommenced after the Second World War and it was then that my Grandma had her first taste of banana. She would have been about 15. Today 95% of British household buy them on a weekly basis. They are available all year round in every supermarket. Not exotic. Not exotic at all. The Oxford dictionary defines exotic as ‘‘strikingly unusual”. I guess you could perhaps now argue that the broad bean is more exotic than the banana?  Even if you disagree, it is difficult to class a banana as exotic despite the average 5106 food miles it has traveled to arrive on our plates.

Anyways rant over.

Broad bean, pea shoot and pecorino sardo salad

Serves 2

300g of broad bean pods

2 handfuls of pea shoots

50g pecorino sardo shards

juice of 1 lemon

good glug of olive oil, nice and grassy ideally

salt and pepper to taste

Remove the broad beans from their thick pods and boil in salted water for 3 minutes.

Personally I tend to then remove the beans from their inner casing mainly because I find it too bitter. I will not judge you for leaving it on. It is your diner, not mine, after all.

Mix all the other ingredients together.

I served the salad on top of some crusty bread brushed with more olive oil and then griddled on a high heat till crisp.

Enjoy.

Tea time tabouleh

Tabouleh salad with grilled chicken

Food blog + gluttonous tendencies = expanding waistline.

TWO extra belt holes since Christmas to be exact.

Time for a lighter diner me thinks - tabouleh and griddled chicken.

nice sweet tomatoes - hooray

Butterflied chicken grilling away nicely

Tabouleh - serves 2

80g bulgar wheat

80g flat leaf parsley (aka a massive bunch)

the leaves from a few stalks of mint, finely chopped

4 finely cut spring onions

handful of nice tomatoes, in small cubes

juice of 2 lemons

very, very good glug of olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Pour salted boiling water over the bulgar wheat and leave for 10-15 mins.

Its nice when there is still a little texture to the grain i.e. don’t nuke it.

Drain, the run some cold water over the grain to chill it.

Add the cooked bulgar wheat to the other ingredients.

Stir and serve.

Enjoy.

Beetroot crisp and goat's cheese salad

            beetroot crisp and goats cheese salad

Ok, this combination is never going to win awards for pushing culinary boundaries but it does hit the yummy spot. I really, really love beetroot: sweet, earthy and oh so versatile.  From roasted on a Sunday to a winter's borsht to this crisp, light salad. It's wonderful stuff. I saw some in the local farmers shop on as I was walking home the other day and couldn't resist. Beetroot is normally in season from late June to early November so I don't know how they managed it but I wasn't going to complain.

One of my favourite beetroot dishes that I've experienced was an amuse bouche that I had the first time I went to a Michelin restaurant. The boyfriend was a sweetie and treated me to it for finishing my degree. It was early summer and it felt like we had so much ahead of us. It was a tiny chilled beetroot soup with horseradish cream and smoked eel. It did exactly what an amuse bouche should and made us so excited about what we were in store for that night. 

The goat's cheese I used is called Golden Cross. Its an ash rolled, bloom rinded log. It is made in southeast England and has a bit of a following apparently. When the goat's cheese is first made the texture is light and mousey, a few days later it can be crumbled and after a week it can be sliced. The "natural rind" or mould coating will take about a month to develop.

Although this salad is so simple sometimes these are the hardest dishes to get just right. This recipe works because the light, fresh, crispy beetroot contrasts beautifully with the velvety, tangy goats cheese. 

Beetroot crisp and goat's cheese salad - serves 2 

2 beetroot

1/4 log of goat's cheese

herby salad leaves

for the dressing -

one third lemon juice 

two thirds extra virgin olive oil

seasoning.

Peel the beetroot and thinly slice. Not too thinly as the texture of the crunch is all important. 

Put into a bowl and add the dressing.

Arrange on a plate with the sliced goat's cheese on top.

Add the salad leaves to the bowl and add more dressing.

Place this on top of the cheese and beets.

Simples.