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Who knew that throwing some apples in with roasted red peppers (capsicums) and tomatoes could taste so fabulous? That touch of sweet fruit in amongst the chili and garlic makes all the difference. I made this salad as part of my Arabian Nights feast, and it all vanished quickly.
Roast Pepper, Tomato & Apple Salad
adapted from Claudia Roden's Arabesque
3 fleshy red bell peppers (capsicums)
1 large onion, sliced in wedges
3 to 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 lb (450g) tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 or 2 chili peppers, left whole
salt and black pepper
2 sweet apples (such as Golden Delicious)
Place the peppers (capsicums) on a sheet of foil on an oven tray under a preheater broiler (grill), 2.5 to 3.5 inches from the heat. Turn them until their skins are black and blistered all over. Alternatively - and more easily - roast them in the hottest oven for about 30 minutes, or until they are soft and their skins blistered and blackened, turning them once after 15 minutes.
To loosen the skins further, put them in a strong plastic bag, twist in shut, and leave for 10 to 15 minutes. When the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel them and remove and discard the stems and seeds. Now cut the peppers lengthwise into ribbons.
In a wide pan, fry the onion in 2 tablespoons of olive oil over a medium heat, stirring often until they are lightly coloured. Add the garlic and stir until it just begins to colour, then add the tomatoes and chili peppers. Season with salt and pepper and cook gently for about 20-30 minutes.
Leaving the peel on, core the apples, quarter them, and then halve each quarter. Stir the red pepper ribbons into the onion mixture, then add the apple slices. Cook gently until the apples are tender, adding a little water if the pan becomes too dry.
Serve cold, drizzled with the remaining olive oil.
This warm salad, which I served as part of my Arabian Nights feast, would also be fabulous with a roast chicken (maybe smeared with some harissa) and pilaf rice.
Moroccan Sweet Potato Salad
adapted from Claudia Roden, Arabesque
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 lb (450g) sweet potatoes, peeled
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
salt
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
6 or 7 green olives (optional)
Fry the onion in 2 tablespoons of oil until golden. Cut the sweet potatoes into pieces (about 1-inch cubes), add to the pan, and barely cover with water. Add the ginger, cumin, paprika, a little salt, and 2 more tablespoons of oil. Cook until the potato pieces are tender, about 20 minutes - keep watch so that they don't suddenly fall apart. The liquid should reduce to a sauce, but I found that I had more than I needed.
Serve at room temperature, mixed with the olives (if using - I just don't like olives!), and sprinkled with lemon juice, the remaining olive oil, and the chopped parsley.
A simple, delicious way of dressing carrots to go with the rest of my Arabian Nights feast.
Moroccan Carrot Salad
adapted from Barry Vera's Feast Bazaar
500g (1lb 2 oz) carrots, peeled and sliced into 5mm (1.4 in) rounds
60ml (1/4 cup) white wine vinegar
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 1/2 tsp caster (superfine) sugar (or ordinary sugar)
2 tbsp lemon juice
1-2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 handful coriander (cilantro) leaves, roughly chopped
sea salt, to taste
Cook the carrots in a large saucepan of boiling, salted water until just tender (5-10 minutes). Drain and refresh in cold water, then drain again.
In a bowl, mix together the vinegar, cumin, paprika and sugar. Taste, and add extra virgin olive oil until you like the mix. Stir in the carrots, making sure they're well coated with the spice mixture. Then mix in the lemon juice and coriander (cilantro), season with sea salt, and serve.
These are the green beans I made to serve alongside the Thai beef with chilli and mint I posted earlier in the week. They take 5 minutes to make and are absurdly delicious: salty with soy, spicy, and almost sweet with garlic. The beans aren't overwhelmed by all these flavours, but stay crisp and distinctly themselves.
Stir-fried Beans with Garlic & Chillies
150g / 5 oz green beans, topped and tailed
peanut (groundnut) oil
2 garlic cloves
2 Thai bird's eye chillies, or other hot red chilli peppers*
1 tbsp soy sauce
Prepare everything before you cook: top and tail the beans; crush the garlic cloves; remove the seeds from the chillies and dice (always wear gloves when working with bird's eye chillies). Have the soy sauce and a measuring spoon ready.
Lightly oil a wok, then place over medium-high heat. When the wok is very hot, add the beans and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add the chilli, stir-frying very briefly, and then the garlic. You must be very careful not to burn the garlic, so keep stirring the beans as you add it, and wait only a few seconds before adding the soy sauce. Cook for about 10 more seconds, stirring all the while, before removing from the heat and serving immediately.
* If you replace the Thai bird's eye chillies with another kind of hot chilli pepper, you'll need to experiment - you may need more or less than two of them.
One day, some years ago, a group of friends arrived in Barcelona for four days. For many of them, it was their first visit. They had the very best intentions - the Picasso Museum, plenty of Gaudi and Miro - but instead, they spent their days eating. Well, their nights staying up late, drinking and talking; their mornings sleeping; their afternoons wandering the city looking for more food; their evenings in tapas bars; their late evenings in restaurants. Since then, most of them have been back to Barcelona and seen everything they intended to on that trip, and more. I doubt any of them would change the way they first discovered the city.
I know I wouldn't. I'd rarely eaten Spanish food before, and there's something so wonderful about discovering a cuisine in the country of its origin. My memories of that and subsequent trips to Spain are very bound up in its food: eating empanadas in a sunny square in Granada before searching the streets for Lorca's house (we found it full of children and men dressed as sailors); hot chorizo sandwiches with sweet sherry, late at night in the Jewish Quarter of Seville; albondigas in a tiny bar in the Alpujarras, watching Eurovision. But I discovered patatas a lo pobre on that trip to Barcelona, my first time in Spain, with those very dear friends.
Patatas a lo pobre roughly translates as 'poor man's potatoes', and it's very simple: potatoes cooked slowly in oil, with green capsicum (peppers), onions and bay leaves. It's one of those alchemical dishes in which the simplest of ingredients become complex and surprising in the finished product. It's Andalusian, although it's cooked all over Spain (along with that other incredibly good potato dish, patatas bravas), and it's wonderful with fish or roast meats.
{Also, I would love someone to tell me the correct name for this dish - is it patatas a la pobre, or patatas a lo pobre? I can find both versions online, although the former tends to be on the menus of British restaurants. It's 'a la' in the Moro cookbook, too, which is where this recipe comes from. Alas, it's been too long since I ate these in Spain to remember how they were spelled there.}
Patatas a lo Pobre
adapted from The Moro Cookbook, by Sam and Sam Clark (US, UK)
8 tbsp olive oil
1 red (Spanish) onion, thinly sliced
1 large green capsicum (pepper), roughly diced
2 bay leaves, preferably fresh
3 or 4 large, waxy-skinned potatoes
Heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the onion and a pinch of salt. Cook the onion slowly, turning down the heat if necessary, for about 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden and sweet in smell and taste. Now add the garlic, capsicum (green pepper) and bay leaves and cook for 15 more minutes to release their flavour.
Meanwhile, cut the potatoes in half lengthways and each half in two or three wedges, depending on the size of the potato. Salt them lightly and leave for about 5 minutes. When the capsicum (pepper) has softened, add the remaining oil and when the oil is hot again, add the potatoes. Let everything simmer gently, stirring occasionally, for another 15-20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Drain in a colander or sieve, keeping the onion oil aside for further use if desired. Serve immediately.
Is there such a thing as a light potato salad? Probably not. Potato is one of the earth's heavier substances, and that's as it should be. But when the weather warms and you're baking pork chops and you want a little something on the side, but the thought of mayonnaise or sour cream is too daunting, may I present this solution: a potato salad that's creamy with mustard and bright with parsley.
The dressing is loosely borrowed from a bean salad in Simon Hopkinson's Week In, Week Out, a compilation of 52 of his weekly food columns for The Independent. I love the way Hopkinson writes and cooks. He's unapologetically irritable - sort of the Simon Cowell of UK food writers. But he's also generous, passionate, perfectionist, uncompromising; and his food is so good.
I haven't specified the amount of potato - the recipe makes plenty of dressing, more than I needed for the pound of potatoes I cooked, so there's room for maneuver.
Creamy Mustard Potato Salad
small waxy-skinned potatoes (I used red Yukons)
1 tbsp smooth Dijon mustard
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1/2 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
4 tbsp warm water
150 ml peanut oil
150ml extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper1 red onion, diced very fine
a handful of parsley
Peel the potatoes and place in a saucepan with plenty of water. Bring to the boil; add a dash of salt once boiling. From this point, cook the potatoes for 10-15 minutes, or until just tender. Drain.
While the potatoes are cooking, combine the mustard, red wine vinegar, garlic and warm water. Blend or whisk until smooth. Slowly add the oils and blend/whisk well until the dressing is creamy. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Fry the finely diced red onion in a little hot butter or oil for 3 or 4 minutes (if you like raw onion, feel free to omit this step).
Carefully cut the cooked potatoes into small chunks - whichever size you prefer, really. Toss with the dressing, the red onion, and a handful of parsley leaves, some chopped and some left whole. Add more salt and pepper if necessary.
This dressing is also delicious drizzled over barely-blanched green beans.
This potato gratin will make your kitchen smell like France. The recipe is from Patricia Wells's introduction to the cooking of French chef Joel Robuchon, Simply French. It's a fabulous and chunky book full of thoroughly home-cookable recipes with a little something extra - they might require a little more precision, a few more steps, a little more effort, and as a reward, they produce really wonderful food. This gratin, for example, tastes as elegant as saucy potato can: thinly sliced and soaked in chicken stock, smothered in a sweet onion and tomato sauce, garlic-studded, and topped with fresh herbs. It was everything my Sunday needed.
The gratin could easily become vegetarian with the use of vegetable rather than chicken stock; grease the pan with olive oil, and toss the top potatoes in olive oil and parsley instead of butter, and it could make a delicious vegan main.
And by the way, what is it about potato dishes that means photographs of them are so likely to look like they belong in a 1970s cookbook?
Potato, Tomato & Garlic Gratin
From Patricia Wells & Joel Robuchon, Simply French
Serves 6-8
For the onion & tomato sauce:
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 medium onions, halved and thinly sliced
sea salt & freshly ground pepper
3 garlic cloves, minced
5 medium tomatoes, cored, peeled, seeded & chopped*
1 tbsp sugar
3 lbs baking potatoes
1 garlic clove, halved
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1.5 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves, snipped
2 tsp fresh thyme
Preheat the oven to 425°F / 220°C. Prepare the sauce: In a large skillet, heat 2 tbsp oil over a high heat. When hot, reduce the heat to moderate and add the onions. Cook until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Season and set aside.
In another large skillet, heat the remaining 2 tbsp oil over moderately high heat. When hot, add the garlic and cook until just tender, 1 or 2 minutes. Be careful not to let the garlic burn, or it will taste bitter in the final dish. Add the tomatoes and cook until the mixture thickens, about 10 minutes. Add the sugar, and season.
Combine the onions and tomatoes, and continue cooking to thicken, about 10 minutes more. Taste for seasoning.
Meanwhile, prepare the potatoes: peel, wash, and cut the potatoes into very thin slices. Wash again and dry thoroughly. In a small bowl, set aside about one quarter of the potatoes, which will be used as the topping.
Rub the bottom of an oval baking dish (about 9 x 13 inches) with the garlic and 1 tbsp of the butter.
In a large bowl, combine the remaining potatoes with the sauce and toss carefully to blend. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish, smoothing it out with the back of a spoon. Add enough chicken stock to cover.
In a medium-size bowl, combine the reserved topping potatoes, the remaining 1 tbsp butter, and the parsley. Toss to coat evenly. Beginning at one end of the dish, place the buttered potatoes, one by one, in slightly overlapping rows on top of the tomato-covered potatoes, until the entire dish is covered with an even potato layer. Sprinkle with the thyme.
Place the dish in the centre of the oven and bake until the potatoes are soft, most of the liquid has been absorbed, and the top is golden, about 1.5 hours. Serve immediately.
* How I peel tomatoes: bring a saucepan of water to a rolling boil. Prepare a bowl of cold water large enough to hold all the tomatoes. Cut a slit in the skin of each tomato from top to bottom, and drop them all into the boiling water. Leave them in the boiling water for approximately 1 minute before removing each tomato with a slotted spoon and placing it immediately in the bowl of cold water. As soon as the tomato is cool enough to touch, remove the skin, which will now slide away easily.
