Here’s a slightly different way of serving asparagus and wild garlic – which is still in late season, thanks to the cold weather we’ve had this year. It’s a simpler recipe than it looks. You need to make a lot of different things but none of them requires any skill or takes any longer than a few minutes.
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Menemen (Turkish-style scrambled eggs)
This is what I had with the flatbreads I made the other day. I’m not sure if it’s an entirely authentic version, since I hadn’t heard of this dish until last week, but it went down very well. According to the internet, the real deal should probably contain parsley, but I’m more of a coriander sort of person. It’s a fresh, spicy summer lunch in a matter of minutes.
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Gram flour 50-50 flatbreads
This takes maybe 10 minutes to make first time. Five minutes when you know what you’re doing. I used gram flour (aka chickpea flour or besan) because I wound up buying a massive bag of it when all I needed was a couple of spoonfuls for another recipe. It does taste good in these flatbreads, which contain 50% regular white flour for texture. They’re a bit like Indian chapatis, and you could easily substitute wholemeal flour or corn flour (the kind you use for tortillas or cornbread, not the starchy thickening agent which I also mistakenly bought a huge bag of).
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Tagliatelle with smoked salmon, watercress, horseradish and wild garlic
Smoked fish and horseradish is a brilliant combination that happens to go very well with peppery watercress. For this very simple and rather pretty pasta dish I’ve also used wild garlic, since it’s in season and quite abundant in this part of the world. If that’s not the case where you are, substitute some spinach and a crushed clove of garlic.
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Patatas bravas
Visit a dozen different Spanish restaurants and you’ll get a dozen different variations on the classic patatas bravas. Sometimes it comes with fresh tomato salsa, other times with a sort of spicy Marie Rose sauce, but my favourite type is the one that’s cooked in a rich, hot, chunky tomato and chilli sauce. Which is what this recipe makes, with a minimum of fuss, all in a single dish.
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Wild garlic, carrot and cumin soup
This was an experiment to get rid of some of our veg box carrot mountain without making the usual carrot and coriander soup, and it turned out to be pretty delicious. It’s spicy and a bit curryish. This recipe makes enough for four portions as a starter or maybe two as a main for lunch. Outside of wild garlic season, you could substitute spinach and a crushed clove of ordinary garlic.
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Conchiglioni stuffed with wild garlic and ricotta
Since wild garlic makes a tastier (and completely free) stand-in for spinach, here’s a garlicky variation on a classic spinach-based recipe. I used conchiglioni pasta – giant shells, big enough for stuffing – but if you can’t get those then you could easily turn it into canneloni by wrapping the filling in cooked lasagne sheets, or even ravioli, if you’re making your own pasta. The wild garlic is sweeter and far more aromatic than spinach, so it’s worth seeking out. It’s in season right now.
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Parmigiana di melanzane
Aubergines baked with cheese, eggs and tomato sauce. In the traditional Italian version of this dish you’d fry the aubergines in oil first, and while that does produce a rather nice silky texture, I think it’s a spectacularly unhealthy extravagance. Grilling the aubergines, which is what I’ve done here, gives a texture that’s pretty much as good, and you probably reduce the calorific content of the whole dish by about a third. I actually prefer it this way, as you get a really good chargrilled taste and the finished dish isn’t swimming in oil.
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Rice cubes
Making sushi is harder than it looks. It might appear to be just a blob of rice with an offcut of raw fish stuck to the top, but whenever I’ve tried to make it, it lacks a certain something. (Skill, probably – I read somewhere that before they’re ever allowed to wield a knife, trainee sushi chefs spend their first few years learning how to make rice.)
However, Kim got me a gadget that promises to take the hard work and talent out of semi-decent sushi. It’s called a Rice Cube, probably because it turns rice into cubes, and as far as I can tell that’s pretty much the basis of sushi. Here’s what I managed to make with it.
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Superior cauliflower cheese
The key to a good cauliflower cheese is to let the blanched cauliflower steam dry naturally before adding the cheese sauce. Also, the cheese sauce needs to be as thick as possible. If the cauliflower is too damp or the sauce too runny, you’ll end up with an undesirable watery layer at the bottom of the dish.
This recipe makes things a bit more special by adding leeks and hard-boiled eggs. It’s a vegetarian main course.
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