Forever Summer (9 page)

big bunch fresh dill (to yield about 6 tablespoons when chopped)

500g raw beetroot

juice of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons mustard seeds

a spoonful or so of chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (optional)

I always make this in the food processor, not because it’s necessary, but just because it makes life easier. Put quite a wodge of dill, without stalks, in the processor with the double-bladed knife fitted and blitz till finely chopped. About 6 tablespoons seems to me the right amount for this quantity of beetroot, but a bit here or there makes no difference. Scrape it out into a large bowl (keeping a small amount on one side for sprinkling later) and then fit, if you have one, the julienne disc, or if not, the grater disc. Peel the beetroot and chop it into chunks that will fit down the funnel; I use rubber gloves for this, so I’m not like Lady Macbeth with my incarnadined hands forever.

When all the beetroot is grated, turn it into the bowl with the dill and toss so both are mixed well together. Squeeze the lemon juice over, drizzle in the olive oil and toss again. When everything is well but lightly combined, put a non-stick or heavy-based frying pan on the heat and toast the mustard seeds for a couple of minutes. Add to the beetroot and dill salad and, again, toss well. Turn out to a bowl or plate – I always prefer salads on a plate – and scatter your little bit of reserved dill over, adding a little chopped fresh parsley, if you have some to hand, for a final uplifting hit of more vibrant green.

Serves 6.

BAKED POTATO SALAD

If the idea of a baked potato salad sounds ludicrous, let me attempt to reassure you. It is not in fact cooked, but rather evolved. It came about because I had a couple of leftover baked potatoes in the fridge one day, and although there are few things I like more than cold potatoes, sprinkled with Maldon salt and freshly ground black pepper, then smeared, bite by bite, while still standing at the fridge, with unsalted butter, I decided to make something a little more ceremonious, but scarcely more labour-intensive, out of them. It’s so good that I’d think nothing now of baking potatoes, then leaving them around to cool, especially for it.

Sumac, should you not have come across it before, is a dark red berry, ground to make a powder of aromatic, citrussy intensity. Use it once and you’ll find an excuse to add it more and more in your cooking: somehow it provides sharpness and mellow depth at the same time.

2 baked potatoes

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

juice of half a lemon

half teaspoon sumac

half teaspoon cumin

1 spring onion, sliced

lots of Maldon salt

chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Cut the baked potatoes in half and roughly scoop out the flesh on to a plate with a spoon. Don’t worry about bringing some of the scorched skin along with you; it aids appearance and taste and besides, this is a rough and ramshackle kind of a dish.

Spoon over the olive oil and squeeze over the lemon, then sprinkle over the sumac, cumin and sliced spring onion. Salt generously, and by all means add some freshly chopped parsley (or indeed coriander) if you want.

Serves about 3, depending on what’s being eaten alongside.

CACIK

Pronounced ‘jajek’, this is simply Turkish tsatsiki: cucumber salad, hot with garlic, but made coolly soothing with yoghurt and mint. I love it best with lamb, sweet pink loins of it, seared on the grill and then cut into tender rags, or dolloped alongside thick slices cut off a whole, roast, deeply-spiced leg, but this is not intended to be a limiting recommendation.

One constraint exists, however: don’t leave this hanging around too long. It’s true that the cucumber will get watery and make the salad too liquid after a while, but the real problem is that the raw garlic, once no-longer freshly minced, runs the risk of turning acrid. I’m not saying I don’t
like
eating it, spooned straight from leftover, fridge-bound bowl to mouth late at night, I just feel like I ought to be wearing a surgical mask afterwards.

1 cucumber

500g Greek yoghurt

1 teaspoon dried mint

1–2 teaspoons salt

leaves from 1 bunch fresh mint, chopped

1–2 cloves garlic, depending on size and intensity

extra virgin olive oil to drizzle over

Peel and dice the cucumber finely and add to the yoghurt in a mixing bowl. Stir in the dried mint, salt and most of the fresh mint, microplane in the garlic (or finely mince it), stir again, then tip the whole thing into a serving dish. Sprinkle over the last scrapings of chopped mint and drizzle with the oil.

It’s difficult to say how many this serves, as it all depends on how you like to eat it. I love it – to add to the introductory guidance above – as a mayonnaise substitute in sandwiches, as a dip for tortilla chips, spooned plateside as a sauce-like salad. But if this is part of a mezze, then this amount should do just fine for a desirably greedy group of about 8 at least.

THE RAINBOW ROOM’S CARROT AND PEANUT SALAD

This is not the place for in-depth social history, unless you take the view – as I do – that all food is social history, but I do need to provide a bit of provenance. Once upon a time there was Biba, an ill-lit but fabulous boutique, shoplifters’ paradise, at the top of Kensington High Street. It moved, triumphantly, down the road to the old Derry and Tom’s building, four or five huge floors of it, and on the fourth, or fifth, I can’t remember, was its restaurant, the Rainbow Room, where my mother took me for treats when I was a child, while she kitted herself out in suede boots, maxi-coats and mini-dresses. This salad, or some approximation of it, was on its menu and my mother loved it and made her own version at home regularly. I do, too. Its ingredients list may sound odd, but this is a combination that not only works but becomes addictive. Don’t be alarmed at the amount of vinegar: the astringency of the dressing, against the fulsome oiliness of the nuts and, in turn, nutty sweetness of the carrots, is the whole point.

4 medium carrots, peeled

75g salted peanuts

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons groundnut oil

few drops sesame oil

Grate the carrots very coarsely, push them through the french-fry cutter in the processor, or just cut them into skinny batons. In a bowl, combine them with the peanuts and then add the remaining ingredients. I like to eat this, straight out of the Pyrex pudding basin I mix it in, held up high, under my chin, for ease of eating-action. In fact, the only way I stop eating it is by having someone prise the bowl out of my hands.

Serves 1–2, depending on your compulsiveness or generosity.

DOUBLE COURGETTE AND BEAN SALAD

The double component is that both courgette and bean elements are twofold: yellow and green courgettes, cut into batons, oil-dressed and oven-roasted; waxy, kidney-curling vibrantly green broad beans, and darker green fine beans, both lightly boiled then refreshed to keep their verdant intensity. It’s a salad just in the sense that all the vegetables are left to get to room temperature – though certainly no colder – before being spritzed with lemon and tossed with basil and parsley: early summer on a plate.

1kg yellow courgettes

500g green courgettes

approx. 80ml olive oil

750g fresh broad beans, podded and – I’m sorry – shelled (or 250g frozen broad beans, shelled)

250g fine green beans

salt and pepper

juice of 1 lemon

bunch fresh basil

bunch fresh parsley

Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6.

Cut all the courgettes into 3 then cut each third into batons. Arrange them in a large roasting tin and coat them well with the oil. Frankly, the best way to do this is to pour the oil over and then smoosh everything about in the tin with your hands. Stick the tin in the oven and roast the courgettes for about 30 minutes, by which time they should be cooked through and golden at the edges.

While this is going on, cook the broad beans (and it truly is worth popping them out of their skins; see directions for
minestrone
) and fine beans separately in salted boiling water until tender, then drain and refresh them both by plunging them in iced water and then draining them again.

When the courgettes are cool, put them in a bowl with the two beans and dress them with lemon juice; the courgettes should be sufficiently, and desirably, oily to need no extra drizzling here. Chop the basil and parsley and add them to the bowl, mixing everything gently (again, just hands is easiest) to avoid squashing the courgette batons.

Check the seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed, decant into a clean serving dish and sprinkle over whatever bits of basil and parsley are clinging to the chopping board.

Serves 4–6.

THE ULTIMATE GREEK SALAD

Greek salad is the sort of abominated fixture in the culinary canon which no appetite for retro-chic can make cool. Forget about all that, because a good Greek salad is, not surprisingly, made for languorous picking at in the heat. Whenever I make this, it’s met, at first, with just slightly patronising amusement – and then the most colossal greed. I think the trick is twofold: substitute sliced fennel for the more traditional cucumber (which also has the benefit of not making the salad go wet and soggy on standing around); and let the onion steep, sprinkled with dried oregano, in the oil and vinegar for long enough for it to lose any potential for that acrid, rib-sticking aftertaste. This version is mild, abundant, gloriously summery. If you don’t like fennel, then just leave it out, but exclude, still, the cucumber.

1 red onion

1 tablespoon dried oregano

black pepper

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

200ml extra virgin olive oil

5 good tomatoes

1 teaspoon caster sugar

pinch of Maldon salt

1 very large cos lettuce

1 bulb fennel

125g pitted black olives

400g feta cheese

juice of half a lemon

Peel and finely slice the red onion then sprinkle over the oregano and grind over some pepper. Pour in the vinegar and oil and toss well, cover with clingfilm and leave to steep for a good 2 hours; longer’s fine. What you’ll notice, once it’s had its time, as well, is that the blooded crimson of the onion is somehow now a luminescent puce. It’s a science thing, something to do with the acid in the vinegar: don’t ask. You don’t need to be fully conversant with the technicalities to be able to take advantage of them. That’s to say, I often use this trick in other ways. An otherwise overwhelmingly brown slab of meat can be immediately lifted (in looks and taste) by being covered with some red onions, cut into wedges of 8 or so, and then fried in olive oil, to which, once softened, you add the juice of a lemon. On top of the lemony pink onions add some sprinkled Maldon salt and a generous amount of summer-green chopped parsley. Or make a quick sauce for pasta (this should be enough for a 500g packet of spaghetti) by cutting a red onion into very fine half-moons (ie, cut the onion in half and then slice each half as finely as you can), frying it in olive oil, spritzing in the juice of half a lemon, as before, and then tossing this, along with 200g tuna cut into thin little rags, into the cooked drained spaghetti; the heat of the pasta will cook the raw tuna plenty. Add seasoning to taste, and some extra virgin olive oil as you like, and a goodish amount of chopped fresh parsley (again). But these are just suggestions: the pink onion technique can be drawn on in whatever way pleases you.