Blood Orange, Fennel & Hazelnut Salad

On a grey and dank Winter’s day, when even the thought of waiting at a bus stop or standing in the playground whilst your toddler heads for his five hundredth go on the slide fills you with frostbite dread, this little salad is a shining beacon of lunchtime pleasure. Vibrant, tart and crisp. Everything a winter salad should be.

I am a little ashamed to admit that when I encountered a blood orange for the first time, it was not love at first sight. In much the same way as I have done with my boys in recent years, my Mum proffered this golden globe like a precious jewel to behold. A rare, seasonal treat, which undoubtedly cost her an arm and a leg, but which she was excited and happy to share with me.

I wasn’t a squeamish child, but I just could not see past the word ‘blood’. I truly believed that this precious orange had been tainted, so I failed to understand and share my Mum’s enthusiasm.

Making up for all those lost years I now gorge myself on them. Particularly Sicilian blood oranges which, for me, are the best. And what’s more, I don’t have to share. For now at least.

Ingredients

1 large bulb of fennel

4 blood oranges

40g good hazelnuts, toasted

¼ tsp Malden salt

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp cold pressed rapeseed oil*

Method

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the salt and lemon juice with a fork. Add the oil and whisk again. Set to one side. 

Remove the leafy fronds from the fennel and set to one side. Cut the fennel in half lengthways and then, using a sharp knife or a mandolin, slice the fennel as thin as you can. Put the sliced fennel into the bowl and turn well in the dressing.

Using a sharp knife, slice off the top and the bottom off one of the blood oranges. Sit the orange flat on a chopping board and remove the skin and pith by slicing the knife downwards between the flesh and the skin. Work your way around the orange until all of the skin and white pith has been removed and discarded. Set to one side and repeat with the remaining three blood oranges.

Slice the blood oranges through the centre into slices about ½cm thick. Roughly chop the toasted hazelnuts.

Arrange the dressed fennel on a serving plate and add the blood orange slices. Scatter the toasted hazelnuts and fennel fronds over the top. Serve straight away.

*If you have a bottle of good hazelnut oil, substitute 1 tablespoon of the rapeseed oil for hazelnut oil.

Winter Slaw (or the only way to eat red cabbage)

Red cabbage and sprouts. Two vegetables best eaten raw. 

After a childhood of sprout and red cabbage aversion (in which I am fully aware I am not alone) it was a revelation to discover that neither require nor, in my most humble opinion, benefit from cooking. 

Nine. That was the number of sprouts on my plate as a child. Nine. What sort of parents make their sprout-detesting child sit and look at nine whole sprouts? Mine. Although of course they'll laugh and dismiss the very idea if I ever mention it. I recall my attempts to disguise them from myself by smothering them in mashed swede (why sully a decent element of my roast dinner with the dreaded sprouts when I could combine two of the most revolting foods on my plate?). Luckily for me I had younger siblings who were rather partial to a sprout or two. So with a little distraction and the odd flick of a knife here and there, I managed to offload a few. The requirement to eat nine did eventually reduce to three. Three. Still three too many. 

The first time I willing ate, and (gasp) actually enjoyed, sprouts was with family in France last Easter. A simple salad of finely shaved raw sprouts, lemon, cheese and hazelnuts made by Lisa. I even had seconds. 

Red cabbage at its best

Red cabbage was no better. As a child I only ever knew it slowly braised with apple or pickled and served straight from the jar along side homemade shepherd's pie. (I'm guessing that's a northern thing). Pickled I could live with, crisp at least, even if the vinegar it was doused in was of the most mouth-stripping, astringent kind. But braised was up there with the worst of the over cooked sprouts. Slightly sweet, heady with clove and allspice. It has a bit of the marmites about it. Love it or hate it. 

A winter slaw is where red cabbage excels. I'm not overly fond of the traditional coleslaw. Vegetables which have spent too long languishing in a creamy, almost cloying, sauce made with excessive amounts of cheap mayonnaise. (Although that is not to say that a simple, well made celeriac rémoulade would be banished from my plate. An entirely different beast. Crisp celeriac given the briefest of introductions to lemon juice, Dijon mustard, good mayonnaise and a little natural yogurt. Perhaps tinged pink with grated beetroot stirred through moments before serving). 

When a red cabbage finds its way into my fridge it is for the sole purpose of making a salad. A crisp, colourful, wintery salad. Or three or four. It is a bountiful vegetable which keeps on giving, staying fresh long after the parsley has wilted, making this salad a great fridge foraged lunch.

You don't have to use the same ingredients every time, it really will depend on what is lurking in your fridge, but the crisper and more robust the better. Celeriac, beetroot, cabbage, kohlrabi… 

Winter Slaw

Ingredients

¼ tsp salt

juice ½ lemon

2 tbsp light extra virgin olive oil

1 carrot, peeled

¼ medium red cabbage

½ apple, core removed

½ pomegranate

2 or 3 mejool dates

small handful of flat leaf parsley leaves

Method

Begin by making the dressing. Put the salt and lemon juice into a medium sized bowl and whisk with a fork. Add the olive oil and whisk until combined.

You can use a mandolin to prepare the carrot, red cabbage and apple, or (like me) a chopping board and a big sharp knife. Julienne the carrot and finely slice the red cabbage. Add them to the dressing and stir well to combine.

Finely slice the apple (I like to leave the skin on) and add to the carrot and red cabbage before it has chance to start turning brown.

Remove and discard the stones from the dates and finely chop the dates. Remove the seeds from the pomegranate (I do this by holding the half a pomegranate over a bowl and bashing the skin side with a wooden spoon or rolling pin).

Add the dates, pomegranate seeds and flat leaf parsley to the slaw, stir and serve immediately. 

Winter Slaw

Spelt, Sprouted Bean & Tomato Salad

The glorious Isle of Wight tomatoes which have brightened my days all summer are still tasting pretty good, but my mind has already begun to wander to the the delights of autumn.  My favourite season, with its orange tones, majestic squash and gutsy fruit puddings.  But before I bid the summer farewell, there is that short period where my light lunchtime salads slowly become a little more robust and certain ingredients start to reappear like long lost friends.

I had dug out a box of Sharpham Park pearled spelt last week when the weather was damp and dismal with thoughts of a spelt risotto with squash, chestnuts, spinach and goat's cheese, but the summer has decided to grace us with one last hurrah.  So one short fridge forage later, the risotto was ditched in favour of a hearty salad.

The tahini gives the dressing a lovely creamy texture.  Go easy on the garlic - it really does only need one small clove or half a large clove. 

Ingredients

200g pearled spelt

125g sprouted beans

4 or 5 medium tomatoes

8 radishes

a small bunch flat leaf parsley

For the dressing:

1/2 tsp Maldon sea salt, ground

1 small clove garlic, crushed

1 tbsp light tahini

1 & 1/2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 tbsp olive oil

Method

Cook the pearled spelt according the the packet instructions.  I usually wash mine well, put in a small pan, add 300ml water, put the lid on the pan and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to the lowest setting and cook for 20 minutes or until tender.  If there is any moisture left, I remove the lid and stir over a low heat for a minute or two.  Spread out on a plate to cool.

In a medium sized bowl mix the ingredients for the dressing until emulsified (one of those little 'wonder whisks' does this job brilliantly).

Cut each of the tomatoes into quarters and chop or slice the radishes.  Roughly chop the parsley - leaves and stalks.

Add the spelt, sprouted beans and chopped parsley to the dressing and mix well.  Then add the tomatoes and radishes, stir lightly and serve.

Serves 4 for a light lunch.

Food for Sharing

Our Big Lunch went off with a bang! What a fantastic day. Even before we'd all sat down to eat together at our long mish mash of tables up the middle of our street we felt like it had all been worthwhile. I caught up with neighbours who I wave to most days and met others who I had honestly never seen before despite them living only 10 doors away. Everyone brought the most amazing homemade and homegrown food - lettuces, tomatoes and courgettes from peoples' gardens, Sri Lankan pastries, huge bowls of colourful salads, sundried tomato bread, tarts and quiches, soups, cinnamon whirls (why oh why did I not get my hands on one of them...?!)... We had magic tricks, a clown on stilts, middle class dub from the back of a morris minor courtesy of Sly and Reggie, giant jenga and a lot of talking. And the rain stayed away!

I wanted to make food to share and also to test out my brownies ahead of my turn on the UKFBA stall at the Covent Garden Real Food Market on 30th July 2009! So I decided to make some vegetarian salads which would go with anything and Delia's Tomato & Goat's Cheese Tart which is not only the simplest tart you can make it is also super, super tasty.

Delia's Tomato & Goat's Cheese Tart

Ingredients

1 pack all butter puff pastry (you can make your own, but are there really enough hours in the day?!)
750g tomatoes (thinly sliced)
150g soft goat's cheese
2 cloves garlic (crushed)
fresh thyme
olive oil
salt & pepper

Method

If you have the ready rolled pastry then just unroll it onto a lightly oiled baking tray. Otherwise, roll out your pastry into a rectangle measuring approximately 15"x12". With a sharp knife, mark a line about 1/2" from the edge of the pastry all the way around without cutting right through the pastry. This allows the pastry to rise at the edge.

Mix the goat's cheese, garlic, seasoning and a good handful of chopped thyme leaves. Spread onto the pastry base. Layer the tomato slices in lines on top of the cheese mixture, overlapping as you go. Drizzle with a little olive oil, season with salt and pepper and lay some thyme on top.

Bake in a medium oven (approx 170 - 180 C) for around 50 minutes to an hour, until the pastry is cooked and the tomatoes are starting to crisp at the edges.

Allow to cool slightly, then cut into slices and share with family, friends or neighbours!

For the salads I chose a Tabbouleh, which is light and fresh and goes really well with most things, including the Tomato Tart, and a potato salad. Potato salads tend to be the sort of thing most people like - a crowd pleaser. This particular recipe is one that I have made for years ever since reading Delia's recipe for Anya Potato Salad in her Vegetarian Collection. It's a good solid vegetarian cookbook - not my favourite, but one that covers so much day to day food and food for entertaining that it spends most of its time in my kitchen rather than on the bookshelf.

Tabbouleh

Indredients

200g bulgar wheat
1 small red onion
large bunch of flat leaf parsley
750g - 1kg tomatoes
1 lemon
olive oil
salt & pepper
1 clove garlic (optional)

Method

Cook the bulgar wheat and leave to cool. I do this by putting the bulgar in a small pan, covering with cold water, bringing it to the boil with the lid on and then I turn the heat off and let the steam do the rest.

Make the dressing in the bottom of a big serving bowl by whisking the juice of 1 lemon (this isn't set in stone - use less or more depending on your own taste), salt, pepper and crushed garlic clove together, then whisk in the olive oil. I always find those little 'wonder whisks' are perfect for making dressings as they help the ingredients emulsify which is what you want from a good dressing.

Finely chop the red onion and add it to the dressing.

Chop the tomatoes into small pieces - around 1cm square and pop them in a sieve over a bowl to drain off any excess juice. You can put them in juice and all but I find that it sometimes makes the salad too soggy. Slice the parsley as thinly as possible starting at the leafy top and going all the way down to the stalks. Slicing the parsley this way is something I learnt a few months ago and really makes a difference to the taste.

Mix all the ingredients together with the dressing and red onion and it's ready to serve. It keeps well for a day or so which means you can make it in advance if you need to.

Anya Potato Salad

Ingredients

2kg Anya potatoes
5 or 6 shallots (finely chopped)
chives
1 dessertspoon Dijon mustard
1 dessertspoon balsamic vinegar
1 dessertspoon white wine vinegar
4 or 5 dessertspoons olive oil
salt & pepper

Method

Cook the potatoes in salted water, drain and put to one side.

Make the dressing by mixing the salt, pepper and mustard together in the bottom of a big serving bowl. Add the balsamic and white wine vinegars and mix with a wonder whisk (or a fork if you don't have one). Then add the olive oil and whisk until emulsified. Put the shallots in the dressing.

Once the potatoes have cooled slightly (but are still warm) add them to the dressing and mix. Sprinkle with chopped chives and serve either warm or cold. Again this can be made in advance, but the chives are best if you sprinkle them over at the last minute.

What I Ate: Roasted Beetroot & Puy Lentil Salad

I'm always hungry when I get home from pilates. It's such hard work! But I'm not great at organising myself to make lunch when I get home on a Saturday, especially if Andrew isn't around. For some reason Saturday lunch always ends up being a grab and run affair squeezed in between pilates and shopping and washing and doing all those things I didn't have chance to do during the week. Which is wrong seeing as that means that one of my two 'this is my time' lunches is always a non-event. That's not the way it should be surely?

Today I guess I was fortunate to find good leftovers in the fridge which I could craft into a tasty lunchtime salad. Roasted beetroot left over from making Lebanese beetroot salad on Thursday evening, some cooked puy lentils (the rest of which went into a puy lentil tabbouleh with grilled halloumi earlier in the week) and flat leaf parsley which was beginning to wilt.

Ingredients

2 roasted beetroot (peeled)
1 spring onion
3 tbsp cooked puy lentils
a handful of chopped flat leaf parsley
1/2 tsp dijon mustard
1 dessert spoon sherry vinegar
2 dessert spoons olive oil
salt & pepper

Method

Make the dressing by mixing the mustard with some salt and pepper in a bowl, add the vinegar and combine, then whisk in the olive oil. Finely slice the spring onion and add to the dressing with the lentils, sliced beetroot and parsley.

If you haven't got roasted beetroot lying around in the fridge then you can roast them by washing, wrapping in a foil parcel and popping them in a medium oven for an hour or so (preferably whilst you've got the oven on for something else!).

A super simple, earthy salad. It would work so well with some goat's cheese or goat's curd but alas the goat's cheese in my fridge is destined for a tomato tart for tomorrow's Big Lunch street party!