Forever Summer (21 page)

Arrange the caponata on a large flat plate or a bowl (as you like) and push the boiled egg through a small sieve to decorate the top. You can leave this out if you want: the taste will not be impaired. But there’s something so sunnily retro about that mimosa-garnish of hard-boiled egg. The shinily dark colours of the caponata are suddenly lifted, made alive. An eggless version will need, instead, a similarly refreshing sprinkle of parsley.

Serves 4–6.

ROASTED NEW SEASON’S VEGETABLES

I know you may think you’ve done roast vegetables to death, but these are different: small, intensely flavoured new season’s potatoes, carrots, courgettes, garlic somehow turned buttery by the oven’s intense heat.

You could braise them all with some oil, butter, bouillon or water in a large shallow pan – and the French often do – but I suggest the oven not only because it seems to point up the vegetables’ sweetness and fresh flavour, but also because as far as I’m concerned any cooking that involves stashing food in the oven, takes away some of that feeling of slaving under pressure.

If you can’t get fresh garlic – those as yet uncloved, aromatically damp bulbs – then use a head of ordinary garlic and just separate the cloves, leaving them unpeeled, and scatter them among the other vegetables.

500g small new potatoes, halved

salt

4 baby marrows, halved and quartered

3 small turnips, peeled, halved and quartered

2 heads fresh garlic, halved and quartered

2 bunches baby carrots, trimmed of their leaves

100g baby leeks, trimmed and left whole

4 tablespoons olive oil (not extra virgin) or more as needed for roasting the vegetables

Bring a largeish pan of water to the boil, and when it starts boiling add salt and then the potatoes, and let them boil for 10 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6.

Drain the potatoes well, and put them into a large roasting dish with all the other vegetables. Give everything a good coating of olive oil, and roast for about 35–45 minutes, by which time all the vegetables should be cooked, tender within and crisped and coloured, in parts, on top.

Serves 6.

BRAISED LITTLE GEMS

If you thought that lettuce had texture rather than flavour – an easy assumption if most of your salad is supermarketed and plastic-wrapped – then try cooking it. The tightly budded leaves become tender and, infused with chicken stock (for which the usual provisos hold), take on a delicate herbalness. I love these soft jade bundles with the
slow-roasted garlic and lemon chicken
, but try them too with a plain, lemony roast chicken. Any pan juices left make a wonderfully, soothing, single portion of light summer broth.

6 Little Gem lettuces, left whole

500ml chicken stock

60ml extra virgin olive oil

handful fresh thyme sprigs

salt and black pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6.

Cut the ends off the lettuce, and remove any discoloured outer leaves. Lay the Little Gems snugly in a baking dish, then pour in the chicken stock. Drizzle over the oil and pull the leaves off the sprigs of thyme and sprinkle them over, then season with salt and pepper.

Cover the dish tightly with foil, and put it in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes or until the lettuces are softly wilting and tender.

Serves 6.

COURGETTE FRITTERS

I know the word fritter conjures up a complex world of deep-frying and dense-eating, but these are light, simple babies – just grated courgettes, mixed with feta, herbs and spring onions, stirred up with flour and eggs and dolloped into a frying pan to make little vegetable pancakes which, unlike most fried food, are best eaten not straight out of the pan, but left to cool to room temperature. This takes any slaving over a hot stove element out of the equation: you just spoon serenely away over your pan before anyone’s around.

I like these best as a starter – or just as they are, along with a green salad, for a meat-free, summer’s lunch.

4 courgettes (approx. 750g)

5–6 spring onions, finely chopped

250g feta cheese

small bunch fresh parsley, chopped

small bunch fresh mint, chopped, plus extra to sprinkle over at the end

1 tablespoon dried mint

1 teaspoon paprika

140g plain flour

salt and pepper

3 eggs, beaten

olive oil for frying

3–4 limes

Coarsely grate the courgettes with either the grating blade in the processor or by hand. Spread the little shards out on a tea towel and leave for about 20 minutes to get rid of any excess wetness.

Put the chopped spring onions in a bowl and crumble in the feta. Stir in the chopped parsley and mint, along with the dried mint and paprika. Add the flour and season well with salt and pepper. Gradually add the beaten egg and mix thoroughly before stirring in the drained, grated courgettes. Don’t be alarmed by the unflowing straggly lumpiness of this batter; it’s meant to be this way.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a large frying pan and drop heaped dessert-spoons of the mixture into the hot oil, flattening the little cakes down with the back of the spoon as you go. Cook these little patties for about 2 minutes each side until golden, and then transfer to a couple of waiting plates.

Chop up the limes and tumble them about the edges of the plates. Sprinkle over a little more chopped mint and eat them just as they are, spritzed with lime juice as you go.

Makes about 25.

GREEN VEGETABLE CURRY

Look, I know green curry is hardly hot culinary news, but I don’t think it’s possible to be reminded too often how wonderful it is. This is a meat-free version, to serve either to vegetarians, just with rice or noodles, or as an aromatic side dish to go with something that has enough body to stand up to it but a gentle enough flavour not to fight with it: grilled monkfish or unsauced, lime-sharpened chicken breasts would be just right.

1 x 400ml tin of coconut milk

1 tablespoon green Thai curry paste

1 lemongrass stalk, bruised and cut in half lengthwise

2 lime leaves, roughly shredded

1–2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce

2–3cm fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

1 teaspoon caster sugar

300ml vegetable stock

75g baby corn, cut into thirds at an angle

250g asparagus, chopped at an angle into 3cm pieces

200g pak choi, sliced so that stalks and greens are separate

200g fine beans, topped and tailed

125g sugar snaps

juice of 1 lime

3 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander

In a large wide pan, over medium heat, whisk a little of the coconut milk into the Thai paste. Let it bubble away for a couple of minutes, then stir in the rest of the coconut milk. Put the lemongrass, lime leaves, fish sauce, ginger, sugar and stock into the pan and bring to the boil. Add the baby corn first, and let these cook for 5 minutes, then add the asparagus and after a couple of minutes, the pak choi stalks and fine beans. Let the pan come back up to the boil, and after a minute add the sugar snaps and pak choi greens. These won’t need more than a minute: everything should look vibrantly green and still taste a bit squeaky. Take off the heat and add the lime juice and check the seasoning. Sprinkle with the coriander before serving.

Serves 4.

MOUTABAL

I have recently emerged from a complicated and long-standing love-hate relationship with aubergines generally, but for this smoky, buff-coloured, sesame-thick and lemon-sharp purée I have always had an unqualified, unreserved passion. It also happens to work wonderfully with roast, barbecued or griddled lamb, as a kind of thick dipping sauce. But don’t think of it exclusively in that light: eat it squashed into pitta, or dunk thick batons of raw vegetables in it; or serve it alongside bowls of
hummus
(the bought kind if you want, fiddled about with as) and
tabbouleh
(a version of which appears).

I find it easiest to make it in advance bar the garlic, then just mince or crush and stir the garlic in at the last moment. But whatever, this is a very simple procedure. A griddle (or barbecue) is best for cooking the aubergines, since by charring them you infuse the flesh with the requisite smokiness, but to be honest (just because it’s the least hassle) I mostly cook them in the oven.

Try and buy the tahina – that clay-like sesame paste – from a Middle-Eastern shop if you can, otherwise you can resort to any healthstore.

3 aubergines

4 tablespoons tahina

Maldon salt

juice of one to one and a half lemons

3 cloves garlic

1 tablespoon or so extra virgin olive oil

1 pomegranate (optional) or small bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

If you’re going to griddle the aubergines, then prick them a few times with the tines of a fork and then cook them for about 20 minutes a side on a hot griddle (or under a hot grill) until they’ve deflated and shrivelled and are pulpily soft in the middle, charred on the outside. If you’re baking them, put them, pricked as above, in a 210°C/gas mark 7 oven for about an hour, till the skin’s blackened and the flesh soft. In either case, remove when cooked and set aside till cool enough to handle. Put a large sieve over a bowl and then cut open the aubergines and spoon the soft pulp into the sieve. Leave to drain for about a quarter of an hour.

In a large bowl, using a fork, mix the tahina with a tablespoonful of warm water and a teaspoon of Maldon salt, then stir the lemon juice into the mixture. Turn the dry aubergine pulp into this, and mash with a fork till all’s combined. When you want to eat it, add the garlic, chopped very fine or crushed, then turn into a shallowish bowl, drizzle with a little olive oil and, if you feel so authentically inclined, dot with a few scarlet glassy beads of pomegranate. I admit it’s hard, if not impossible to get pomegranates over here in summer, but don’t panic: just sprinkle over some freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley instead. The flavours of this moodily buff-coloured purée are fabulous enough; it’s last minute, vivifying colour it needs.

Serves about 8 as part of a mezze.

BAKED RICOTTA WITH GRILLED RADICCHIO

For all that you need to clatter about with Springform tins and baking sheets, this is remarkably easy to make. I always seem to have spare egg white knocking around, which also inclines me to cook it. But it’s worth making the – slight – effort even if you have to put aside the yolks for use elsewhere. This makes a wonderful summer starter or light lunch, the latter either by itself or rustled up as a vegetarian-pleaser.

If you want to forgo the grilled radicchio alongside, then do and just make a green salad to go with it, but the combination, as it stands, is perfect: the heat-wilted radicchio loses some of its bitterness, but keeps just enough perfectly to offset the delicate, not-quite-blandness of the ricotta. The summer-scentedness of thyme deliciously permeates both.

for the baked ricotta:

500g ricotta cheese

2 egg whites, lightly beaten

1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme

zest of 1 lemon

salt and pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

for the radicchio:

approx. 6 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme

1 large radicchio, cut into eighths lengthways