Taste Memories

Weekend Eats, in Pictures

Heirloom tomatoes, basil, and squash blossoms from Union Square Farmer's Market.

Heirloom tomato closeup: green zebras, stripy Russians, Italian Genovese, and cherry tomatoes.

Assorted (but unpictured) treats: battered squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta and agave nectar; peaches with Greek yoghurt, honey, and pistachio dust; corn picked that very morning; beef bourguignon and mash; edamame succotash (recipe below).

What a weekend.

Edamame Succotash

Ingredients:

 

½ cup shucked edamame, cooked and cooled

½ avocado, sliced

1 corn cob’s worth of corn kernels (I like to take mine off a leftover grilled cob so as to add a smoky punch to the salad; but boiled would be fine too)

A handful of cherry tomatoes, halved

A handful of cilantro

A handful of mint

For the dressing:

Juice of 2 limes

1 tbsp good extra virgin olive oil

2 scallions, minced

A pinch of good salt

Method:

 

Combine the salad ingredients attractively in a bowl; whisk up the dressing and pour it over them, making sure to get plenty on the avocado (the lime juice will stop it from browning). Toss gently to combine.

 

P.S. As the ingredient list suggests, this salad is basically a deconstructed guacamole. Thus, if I have any leftovers, I often blitz them in a blender and enjoy the results as a dip.

Down with Cereal, Part III

 

OK, not really. You’re welcome to your cereal, if that’s your thing. But it’s not mine, and this is the third in a string of posts designed to provide some alternative ideas to the usual breakfast suspects. (See also here and here.) I’ve wanted to make this little breakfast dish for what feels like forever, but I had to bide my time until the relevant parabolic function (quality of tomatoes / price of tomatoes, over time) hit its vertex.

 

Fabulous tomatoes are surely one of the best things about summer. Along with candy-sweet corn, grilled in its husk and then gnawed greedily off the cob with lashings of butter; oh, and big white bowls filled with scarlet, tart, lascivious cherries; also, bunches of basil that smell like licorice might in heaven, perfuming the car on the ride home from the store; not to mention peaches that gush sticky ambrosial juices from the first to last bite, making you wonder why you ever bother to make dessert. And, and, and...

 

But summer produce is practically the only thing I like about summer. Despite growing up in Australia (or perhaps because of it), I recoil from the heat. I hate the cloying aftermath of summer thunderstorms, when I’d hoped for a refreshing cool change (as my Father always says, “beware of the weak cool change.”) I hate the way my long hair sticks to the back of my neck when I cook, and the fact that even the most refined hot supper dish ends up tasting sweaty and soggy and altogether disappointing. I yearn for a chill in my bones and the sense of inward stillness that comes to me with the first snow of the season. I think I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, only in reverse.

My only source of solace is the vat of beautiful roast tomatoes and leeks sitting in my fridge, just waiting to be topped with another egg fried in a smidge of butter. I can’t imagine a better breakfast. Or lunch. Or supper.

 

Roast Tomatoes and Crispy Leeks, with a Fried Egg

 

Ingredients:

 

3lb tomatoes (I used a mixture of heirlooms and romas)

2 – 3 leeks, rinsed and halved lengthwise

Olive oil

Kosher salt

A handful of fresh basil

1 egg

1 teaspoon butter

Freshly ground black pepper

 

Method:

 

Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).

 

Halve the tomatoes (or cut them into wedges, if they are big).

 

Place the leeks and tomatoes (cut-side up) on lightly oiled baking sheets. Drizzle them with a little olive oil, and give them a good sprinkling of salt.

 

Roast the vegetables (well, fruits and vegetables, but you know what I mean) for about half an hour, until the tomatoes are soft and tinged brown, and the leeks are crispy.

 

Tear little pieces of fresh basil over the tomatoes.

 

Then, add the butter to a small frying pan over medium heat. Add the egg, and baste it with the butter from time to time, until it is fried to the desired degree of doneness. (But I strongly suggest you leave the yolk at least a little runny, if you can.)

 

Serve, with lashings of pepper (if you’ve scrolled through the archives, you’ll notice I prefer not to use pepper in every savory dish. I feel that pepper is a spice, not a seasoning, and should be used with subsequent discretion. But it’s excellent here.)

 

Serves 1 for breakfast, with lots of leftovers for sating tomato cravings.

Seared Scallops with Mint Pesto

 

One of my fiancé Daniel’s myriad charms is his asymmetrical attitude towards gift-giving. Whenever I get him a present, he looks pleased and grateful, but turns slightly pink with embarrassment. However, when it comes to giving gifts to others, he’s in his element. He was so excited to give me my birthday present this year that he ended up asking me to open it the evening beforehand. He was taut with anticipation as I tore off the ribbons and wrapping. I didn’t take off the sapphire earrings he had bought me to match my engagement ring until about a week afterwards. (Are you nauseous yet?)

 

Daniel also loves surprising me. In fact, I have to be careful: if I casually mention that I might like to own a certain item someday, that item is rather likely to turn up at our house a few days later. This is how I came, a few months ago, to own a sparkling red KitchenAid. Luckily, I was able to repay Daniel for his kindness with batches of cookies, muffins, blueberry crumb bars, and blondies (made with valrhona milk chocolate buttons, walnuts, and a nip of our favorite Sctoch, the Talisker 18). I guess what I’m saying is that we spoil each other, in our different ways: also, that I feel terribly lucky. (OK, now I know you're nauseous.)

 

But lest this post dissolve into an unadultered mush-fest, let me tell you about the latest gift he’s gotten me: a stone mortar and pestle (pictured above, at its christening). I have a teeny-tiny dinky one already, but I’ve wanted a big, sturdy, hefty one for the longest time. What can I say? I grew up watching Jamie Oliver, who pulverized just about everything in a mortar on his BBC cooking show.

 

I particularly remember Jamie frequently opining that pesto made with a mortar and pestle is more fragrant than pesto made in a food processor, since more of the herb’s fragrant oils are released in the process of pounding and grinding. I wasn't sure whether or not that was true, but I couldn’t resist enlisting the newest addition to our kitchen to help test out the theory. And I have to say, I think Jamie is right: the mint pesto I made today was delicious, unusually so. Moreover, the pleasure of grinding the herbs while inhaling their scent far exceeds that derivable from pushing a button.

 

I paired this pesto with some seared scallops, and I thought they went beautifully together – from both an aesthetic and culinary point of view.

 

Ingredients:

 

1 tsp safflower or peanut oil

1lb scallops

Good salt

 

For the pesto:

2 cups mint leaves, packed fairly tightly

¼ cup salted, roasted cashews

1 lime, juiced

2 tbsp good extra virgin olive oil

 

Method:

 

Place a large skillet over medium-high heat, and slick it with the safflower or peanut oil.

 

Add the scallops, and give them a good sprinkling of salt. Now, please, let them sit – pushing them around the pan will prevent them from caramelizing properly.

 

Give the scallops a minute or two on each side, until they are cooked through (this will vary considerably, depending on their size).

 

Meanwhile, pound half the mint leaves and cashews together in a mortar. When they are ground to a fine paste, add the remaining mint leaves and cashews. Then, stir in the lime juice and olive oil. (You can also make the pesto by simply blending all the ingredients together in a food processor. But where’s the fun in that?)

 

Either way, taste the pesto, and adjust for seasoning and acidity (I didn’t add any salt, because of the saltiness of the cashews. You mileage may vary, as they say. But do be sure to add some salt if you started with unsalted cashews).

 

Serves 2 famished lovebirds.

 

 

Leek and Summer Squash Sauté

 

I’m implacable. For years I insisted that I despised summer squash in all its forms, that it had a flavor so despicable as to defy description. This aversion made me very sad: Elizabeth David (who, as I have mentioned before, is my favorite food writer) said she could write a whole book about courgettes (known over here as zucchini). Her love and my hatred of summer squash combined to fill me with regret, incomprehension, and (most of all) self-doubt. There must be something dreadfully wrong with my palate, I would think to myself glumly, while thumbing through Is there a Nutmeg in the House?

 

Indeed, I hated summer squash so much that I can’t remember the last time I ate it. I never buy it, of course. But then some pattypan squash (the yellow, knobbly variety) stole away (the little sneak!) in our weekly organic vegetable box. I didn’t know what to do. But, in the end, the thought of wastage was even more unbearable to me than the thought of eating summer squash. So I decided to sauté them up with some leeks (because, really, how bad can something be if it’s got buttered leeks in it?)

 

Thus, I cooked this dish, resentfully; ate it, gingerly; and loved it, wholeheartedly. It’s sweet, delicate, and altogether moreish. Turns out that the way to overcome my summer squash aversion was simply eating the object of it.

 

I was initially elated, but my joy quickly dissipated in favor of existential despair. Who knows how many delicious summer squash dishes I’ve been turning my stubborn little nose up at for all those years?

 

Ingredients:

 

1 tsp butter

1 tsp olive oil

1 large or 2 small leeks, rinsed and finely sliced

1 lb summer squash (I used pattypan, but you can use all varieties of summer squash more or less interchangeably, I hear), cut into bite-sized cubes

A handful of fresh basil or Italian parsley, rough-chopped

Kosher salt

 

Method:

 

Place a large skillet over medium heat, and add the butter and olive oil. Wait until the butter is “hot but quiet.” (To quote a friend who also food-blogs, albeit anonymously.)

 

Add the squash and the leeks and a good pinch of salt. Sauté the vegetables for 15 – 20 minutes, stirring from time to time.

 

When the squash are soft and tinged brown and the leeks are a pleasant tangle, take the skillet off the heat, and add the fresh herbs.

 

Serves 4.

 

A bit of context: I served this as a side for these chicken skewers the first time, and this time with some chicken marinated in olive oil, za’atar, and a squeeze of lemon (recipe forthcoming). I am planning to have the leftovers folded into scrambled eggs tomorrow morning, for another cereal-free breakfast (OK, so I’m on a bit of a crusade here).

 

P.S. It occurs to me now that persistent and seemingly arbitrary aversions to particular vegetables run in my family, on my Father’s side. My darling Dad will not so much as look at an uncooked tomato, and my cousin goes green at the very mention of cauliflower. Neither has consumed their respective nemesis since childhood. I wonder if a little experiment is in order...

Delia Smith's Tunisian Aubergine Salad, Redux

 

The aim of this blog is primarily to post original recipes (well, insofar as any recipe is original – if the recipe is worth blogging about, it’s likely to owe to numerous things I’ve read, and then forgotten I’ve read, over the years). This decision was born out of necessity: I am terrible at following recipes. I like reading about various flavor combinations, but then I tend to willfully go my own way in the preparation. This is part of the reason that I’m a lazy and lousy baker. (Despite that, we’re making our own wedding cake. Eek. Methinks we’ll be constantly on the phone to my wonderful Mother-in-Law-to-be, who’s a master baker, during wedding baking week!)

Anyway, as the title of this post suggests, I am about to offer you a recipe that didn’t originate with me. But I think I’ll occasionally post existing recipes that I’ve adapted significantly. I don’t mean adaptations like substituting scallions for shallots, because that’s all I had in the crisper – but rather recipes where I took the author’s basic idea, and reworked it in a way that better suits my tastes, inclinations, or (in this case) my level of patience.

This brings me to a woman who’s frequently tested my patience: Delia Smith, the iconic British cookbook writer. I have a deeply ambivalent relationship with Delia. On the one hand, watching her cooking show on Australian television as a kid augmented my interest in cooking tremendously. When my Mum subsequently bought me How to Cook, I read it almost obsessively. When I was learning my way about the kitchen, I was grateful for her detailed instructions, and precise measurements. In fact, there are many culinary tasks I still instinctively do Delia’s way in consequence.

On the other hand, her detailed instructions and precise measurements now tend to irritate the hell out of me. In baking, sure, measure measure measure: I know, I know. But watching my Mother make Delia’s bubble and squeak was an eye-opener. A British dish that’s supposed to be thrown together out of leftovers (mashed potatoes and cabbage primarily) took over an hour to make, since you had to weigh everything (even the parsley) down to the ounce, and grate everything by hand. Come on, Delia: surely this is false precision.

Typically, a recipe that specifies (say) a handful of parsley is much more endearing to me than one that specifies (say) 2.764 oz of parsley. For one thing, I can eyeball a handful at the store and at home, whereas I rarely have a clue what an ounce of something looks like. For another, I can use a little more or less parsley depending on how I want the dish to taste, and how much I happen to have in the house. And let’s be honest: in the majority of dishes, a little more or less parsley won’t make a whole lot of difference.

Anyway, despite the aforementioned complaints, I’ve made Delia’s recipe for Tunisian Aubergine Salad many a time (she adapted it herself from Elizabeth David, but I’ve never found the original recipe). The dish is wonderful melange of the spicy, the sweet, and the savory, and is one of my favorite vegetarian dishes (it’s actually vegan if you skip the final benediction of yoghurt). But, predictably, making it is such a palaver. Having to salt the aubergines (called eggplants over here), skinning the tomatoes, and toasting and grinding the spices is quite bad enough. But letting the whole thing sit in the fridge while you wait, wanly and hungrily, for at least 24 hours? Torture. I had the feeling that I could create something just as good with far less fuss. Happily, I was proved correct. I practically licked the plate clean.

Ingredients:

 

2 large eggplants, or 3 small/medium ones (I used oriental eggplants)

2 large tomatoes, or 3 small/medium ones

1 onion (I used red), diced

2 teaspoons ras el hanout

3 tsp olive oil (= 1 tbsp, divided use)

A handful fresh cilantro, rough-chopped

A handful fresh mint, rough-chopped

Kosher salt

For the harissa yoghurt (optional but good):

2 tbsp Greek yoghurt (I used Fage 0% fat)

½ tsp harissa (or to taste)

A small pinch of good salt

Method:

 

Preheat the oven to 450°F (230°C).

Chop the eggplant into bite-sized cubes. Toss them about in a teaspoon of the olive oil and give them a rather generous sprinkle of salt.

Halve or quarter the tomatoes, and brush them with an additional teaspoon of the olive oil and sprinkle them with some more salt.

Place the eggplant and tomatoes (cut-side up) on a non-stick or lightly oiled baking sheet, and roast for about 30 minutes, or until they are soft and becoming caramelized.

Meanwhile, combine the ingredients for the harissa yoghurt (if you’re making it), and adjust for seasoning.

Then, put a pan over medium heat, and slick it with the remaining teaspoon of olive oil. Add the onion, the ras el hanout, and a pinch of salt. Sauté until the onions are soft.

Then, stir in the tomatoes and eggplants (stir gently – you want the tomatoes to give off enough juice to make the dish cohere, but you want the wedges to retain their integrity.)

When the mixture reaches a gentle simmer, remove the pan from the heat, and stir in the herbs. Taste, and adjust for seasoning.

Add a dollop of the harissa yoghurt (if you’re using it). Now, eat this immediately, if not sooner.

Serves 2-3.

 

A bit of context: I ate this with some lovely marinated anchovies on the side. Highly recommended if you’re not a vegetarian! It's also terrific with a fried or hard-boiled egg on top.

P.S. This, I submit, is How to Cheat. Chocolate cake made with discs of frozen mashed potato (scroll halfway down the page for the recipe), I fear, is not. What on earth were you thinking, Delia? You nearly made me cry.

The Coleslaw Sandwich Principle

 

When my little sister was about six, there weren’t too many vegetable dishes that she ate readily. The primary exception was coleslaw, which my Mother discovered she loved.

Thus, my Mother – always understandably keen to get us to eat our vegetables – began to pack Lucy off to school with a coleslaw sandwich almost every day. Early during this period, I remember Lucy grabbing her lunchbox with enthusiasm. I think this lasted about a week. Then poor Lucy began to look less and less enthusiastic each morning, so deeply sick had she become of coleslaw sandwiches. She took a long time to tell my Mother, though – I gather she didn’t want to disappoint her, especially since Lucy’s supposed partiality for coleslaw had become family lore by then.

This brings me neatly to what I have consequently dubbed the coleslaw sandwich principle: even if you love a dish or ingredient (in fact, maybe especially if you love it), don’t eat it too frequently. I’ve unwittingly ruined numerous perfectly good foodstuffs for myself by flouting these guidelines. Peanut butter, tuna, gelatin-based desserts, sushi, ricotta cheese, turkey slices, walnuts – all spoiled for me by periods of reckless overuse. I can barely look at a jar of peanut butter anymore, and forget Reese’s pieces. It’s sort of sad.

There is one ingredient, however, to which the coleslaw sandwich principle does not apply: mayonnaise. I make my own almost every week, and also keep an emergency supply of Wholefoods’ excellent organic stuff in the fridge (I’m not a big fan of Hellman’s, though. It’s too sweet for me.) Anyway, no matter how frequently I consume mayonnaise, I never get sick of it – the only reason I pull back is for considerations calorific. So I made this slaw with a mayonnaise-based dressing to celebrate both the coleslaw sandwich rule, and the one crucial exception to it. I thoroughly enjoyed the results, but duly stopped myself going back for seconds.

Shrimp Slaw

Ingredients:

 

1 tsp olive oil

1lb raw shrimp, peeled and de-veined

1 head of cabbage

1 bunch of radishes

1 large cucumber, peeled

Kosher salt

For the dressing:

½ cup mayonnaise

½ cup half-and-half (I used fat-free, and it was fine)

1 tbsp tarragon

1 tbsp chardonnay vinegar

2 scallions

A pinch of good salt

1 tsp sugar (optional, and I didn’t include it because I dislike sweet salad dressings. You can do as you please, obviously.)

Method:

Chop the cabbage finely, and slice the radishes and cucumber with a mandolin (or grate them).

Place the vegetables in a large colander, and toss them with a tablespoon of salt. Leave them to sit for a few hours, and then squeeze out the excess liquid. (This step can be skipped, but it concentrates the vegetable’s flavor.)

Place a skillet over medium-high heat, and add the oil. Cook the shrimp until just pink (about a minute on each side), sprinkling them with a little kosher salt as they sizzle. (You’ll probably have to do this in two batches.)

Add the shrimp to the vegetables. (I do this while they’re still warm, which will cause the shrimp to wilt the cabbage just a tad. I like the effect, but if you want the slaw to be extra-crunchy, cool the shrimp thoroughly before adding them.)

Now, whizz all the dressing ingredients together in a blender. Taste and adjust for seasoning and acidity. Then pour the dressing over the vegetables and shrimp, and toss well to combine.

Eat, but proceed with caution. Not too much now!

Serves 4 – 6.

Post-gym salad

 

There’s something so nice about opening the fridge and finding you have the makings for a good salad, isn’t there? I made this in about three minutes flat, after I got home from the gym completely ravenous. I loved the interplay of the aniseed elements (the fennel and the tarragon in the dressing), and the peppery elements (the arugula and the radishes). The cherry tomatoes added a little sweetness, and the tart, creamy dressing pulled the whole thing together. It’s also very easy on the eye. So I think I’ll make this again – perhaps even by design.

 

Ingredients:

 

A few handfuls arugula

A few slices of fennel bulb (or stalks, which is what I used), sliced

A few radishes, sliced

A handful of cherry tomatoes, halved

 

For the dressing:

1 tbsp mayonnaise (I used homemade since I had some on hand, but store bought would be fine)

1 tbsp chardonnay vinegar

1 tbsp good extra virgin olive oil

1 tbsp chopped tarragon

A pinch of good salt

 

Method:

 

Arrange the salad ingredients prettily in a bowl; mix up the dressing ingredients, and drizzle the dressing over the salad; now gobble it rapidly – preferably while still wearing your scuzzy gym sweatpants.

Another Perfect Summer Breakfast

 

Here’s another of my favorite replacements for cereal. Indeed, calling it a replacement is a bit like calling Obama a replacement for Bush (cross fingers). The basic idea is this: a few tissue-paper-thin crumples of fine, dry-aged prosciutto, sitting beside a fresh artichoke half, lightly steamed and cradling a puddle of melted cheese. What could be better?

A few notes: I'm endeavouring not to be preachy on this blog, but I recommend you get the best prosciutto you can lay your hands on for this. Pre-packaged, supermarket prosciutto (even the fancier stuff from Whole Foods) is usually horrid: expensive but unpleasantly slimy, whereas prosciutto should be quite dry to the touch. (I buy my prosciutto from my wonderful butchers, Jason and Dean, of Savenor’s in Cambridge, MA. They’re so nice, and always want to know what I’ve made with their superb meat.)

Now, for the cheese, you want something with good melting properties, and a fairly placid flavor. A morning cheese, in other words. It’s easiest to define a morning cheese negatively: for example, I love blue cheese, but I couldn’t possibly deal with it in the mornings. (Your tastebuds may dictate otherwise of course, but bear in mind the morning factor.) Typically, I use mozzarella, fontina, or taleggio (which has a strong aroma, but a mild flavor).

As for the artichoke, I tend to prepare it the day before, since there’s nary a morning when I feel like wrestling with one. But they're not that difficult to deal with in the afternoon or evening. I even go the cheat’s route, by microwaving them (actually, I stand by that choice: one of the few things the microwave is good for is steaming vegetables and, uh, thistles).

Anyway, here’s what I do: I tear off the tough, outer leaves of the artichoke, until they are making a satisfying snap when I pull at them (another sign that you’re in tender territory is that the top half of the leaves will be yellow rather than green). Then, I cut off the top third of the leaves, trim the stem, and halve the whole thing. I scrape out the choke (the inedible thisly bits) and remove all the purple leaves. (This is where there’ll be some wrestling, and some swearing, at least if you’re as clumsy as I am. But it’s kind of fun, really.)

Then I dip the whole thing in a (microwavable) bowl filled with water, to which I’ve added the juice of two lemons (to prevent discoloration), a teaspoon of salt, and a few tablespoons of red wine vinegar (for extra flavor). After this, I microwave the halves in their briny bath for about 6 minutes on high. They’re done when the base of an outer leaf is tender. I leave them to soak overnight in their cooking liquid, and then they’re ready to go the next morning.

In the morning, I simply take an artichoke half, and tuck a little lump of cheese into the cavity. I broil it for about five minutes or so, until the cheese bubbles. I grind a bit of black pepper on top, and lay a few strips of the prosciutto on the side. (I typically tear off most of the fat, but only because little Freddy loves it so much. As Jason and Dean demonstrated to me a few weeks ago, the fat from good prosciutto is actually delicious, as long as you rub it between your fingers first, to bring it up to room temperature.)

 

Eating this meal has a sort of ritualistic quality. I take off each artichoke leaf, dip it in the cheese, and scrape it through my teeth to get at the flesh. I pause periodically for bites of prosciutto. Then, after all the leaves are gone, I eat the delicate artichoke heart. Bliss.

Taste Memories

One of the many traits my Mother and I share is a passion for food. We had a recent email exchange about some superb madeleines my Mother enjoyed recently at Vue de Monde, a fine French restaurant in Melbourne, my hometown. She described them beautifully (which is unsurprising – she’s a writer) as “shaped like a small shell, with a taste sublimely subtle. They came with a kind of tiny mound of honey and a similarly shaped one of vanilla icecream.” She wrote that she “now understands why the madeleine became a part of world literature.”

I recalled in my reply that I myself had some sublime madeleines, flecked with lemon zest, at Cafe Boulud in New York last October (we celebrated our anniversary there). They were sent out, gratis, after dessert. As I told my Mother, I still think about those madeleines from time to time. However, I also felt obliged to inform her that not everyone is as pro-madeleine as the two of us (or Proust). In a 1959 article that appeared in The New Yorker, the ever-arch gourmant A.J. Liebling wrote:

“The Proust madeleine phenomenon is now as firmly established in folklore as Newton's apple or Watt’s steam kettle. The man ate a tea biscuit, the taste evoked memories, he wrote a book. This is capable of expression by the formula TMB, for Taste > Memory > Book... The quantity of brandy in a madeleine would not furnish a grat with an alcohol rub. In light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world's loss that he did not have a heartier appetite. On a dozen Gardiners Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sauteed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh-picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island duck, he might have written a masterpiece.”

As predicted, my Mother found this excerpt quite amusing. She also ventured that “the true test of good food is whether one ‘still thinks about it from time to time.’”

I found myself in wholehearted agreement. I thought about making some madeleines to celebrate the discovery of this small but important truth, but then remembered that – alas, alack – I do not presently own a madeleine tin. And then, possibly due to extant nostalgia for Melbourne, I found myself reminiscing about another wonderful meal that I had back there a few years ago.

It was at a venerable Lebanese restaurant – Abla’s – that is deservedly something of a Melbourne institution. I went there for a family birthday – whose I can no longer recall. Everything we ate was delicious, but the best thing of all was some simple chicken skewers, marinated in lemon, garlic, olive oil and coriander. If I saw the recipe in a magazine, I’d probably have shrugged and thumbed past it. But despite its straightforwardness, it was really divine: the chicken unspeakably tender, the flavours bold but clean.

So I recreated the dish last night. I think it was fairly close to the original, and it was almost as delicious. 

 

Chicken Skewers with Lemon, Garlic, and Coriander

 

Ingredients:

 

2lb chicken breasts, cut into small pieces

2 lemons, juiced*

4 cloves garlic, minced**

1 handful of coriander, finely chopped

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp kosher salt

wooden skewers, for threading

 

Method:

 

Combine the lemon juice, garlic, coriander, oil and salt.

 

Marinate the chicken in the lemon juice mixture for at least 12 hours, or preferably overnight.

 

Thread the chicken onto the skewers, and broil until the chicken is cooked through.

 

* To maximize the amount of juice the lemons yield, I microwave them for 30 seconds or so, and then give them a few vigorous squeezes in the palm of my hand. They spurt forth an impressive amount of juice after this abrasive treatment.

 

** I don’t use a garlic press for this, or for anything else for that matter. Indeed, according to my favourite food writer, Elizabeth David, “garlic presses are utterly useless.” Harsh words, perhaps, but she's right - pressed garlic tastes acrid and vile. So I just smash the cloves with the back of a heavy knife, and then chop them finely.

 

A bit of context: I served this with some Greek yoghurt laced with coriander and a squeeze of lemon juice, and a delicious side-dish of sautéed leeks and summer squash (recipe forthcoming).

Edamame, Avocado, Cilantro, and Lime Soup

Not exactly a beauty queen, is she? Still, the invention of this soup has made me very happy. I'm always on the lookout for a vegetarian recipe that's satisfying, but neither heavy nor dripping with cheese (Daniel and I aren’t vegetarian, but many of our friends are). This soup is also packed with protein, and delicious to boot. If only I could get it to look a little more appetizing! It occurs to me that perhaps a little more avocado would take it from a slightly grisly looking grey-green sludge, to something more presentable. Ah well, so it goes. Happily, I've always been one for substance over style.

 

I’ve played around with various ways of making this soup, and this is my favourite so far. I like the vaguely southwestern flavours: onion, cumin, lime, avocado, cilantro, and sour cream. They conjure up in me an image of Texas, a place I’ve never been. Forgive me if the association is erroneous, but I think you’ll find the soup is anything but.

 

Ingredients:

 

1 tbsp olive oil

2 medium onions, roughly chopped (I used red onions)

1 tsp salt

2 tsp cumin

6 cups vegetable stock

1lb frozen, shucked edamame

1 punnet silken tofu

2 limes

1 avocado, de-stoned

1 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped

½ cup sour cream

 

Method:

 

Add the olive oil to a large pan over medium-high heat.

 

Add the onions, the salt and the cumin, and sauté the mixture for a few minutes, until the onions are soft and beginning to caramelize.

 

Then, add the vegetable stock and bring it to a boil.

 

Add the edamame, and boil for about 10 minutes or until soft.

 

Next, puree the soup in a blender, together with the remaining ingredients (you may need to do this in batches).

 

Adjust the soup for seasoning and acidity. You can also add a little more liquid if you like. I actually prefer to serve this soup cold, but it’s nice warm too. Either way, you might want to swirl a little more sour cream into it.  

 

Serves 6, generously.