This is a good side dish to serve with richer dishes. It’s light and zingy which is just what’s needed sometimes. Another great combination of flavours suggested by Sabrina Ghayour.
Carrot, pistachio & dill salad with lime & honey dressing – serves 4 to 6
500g carrots, coarsely grated
½ a small red onion, thinly sliced
75g pistachio nuts, roughly chopped
about 30g of dill, finely chopped
2 tsp nigella seeds
FOR THE DRESSING:
2 tbsp olive oil
finely grated zest and juice of 1 lime
1 generous tbsp of runny honey
Mix all the dressing ingredients together and season well with sea salt and black pepper.
Put the other ingredients into a large bowl. Add the dressing when you’re ready to serve and toss gently to coat. Check the seasoning and serve.
(Original recipe from Simply by Sabrina Ghayour, Mitchell Beazley, 2020.)
You need cooked beetroots for this. You can of course buy them pre-cooked in vac packs but they’re much nicer when you cook them fresh. Just give them a good scrub, dry with paper and wrap in tin foil. Roast for about an hour (or as long as it takes) at 200ºC. Let them cool before making the salad. We served this with roast chicken and the next day with a ham salad. Make this up at least an hour in advance to allow the flavours to mingle.
Beetroot & mint salad – serves 4 to 6
4 tsp caster sugar
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
juice of 2 lemons
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
12 cooked beetroots, finely sliced into rounds
a small bunch of mint leaves
Whisk the sugar, vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil and a pinch of salt in a small bowl.
Put the sliced beetroot into a bowl. Roughly chop half the mint leaves, and add to the beetroots before pouring over the dressing. Leave in the fridge for an hour or so.
To serve, drain off some of the marinade, arrange the slices on a platter and scatter over the rest of the mint.
(Original recipe from Skye McAlpine’s A Table for Friends: The Art of Cooking for Two or Twenty, Bloomsbury, 2020.)
We recently bought Skye McAlpine’s book, A Table for Friends, which has lovely menus for each season. We’re well and truly into Autumn now and the farm shop is full of potatoes, pumpkins and beetroots. Tonight we made Skye’s suggested autumn menu of buttery lemon roast chicken, beetroot & mint salad, butter & sage roast pumpkin and roast potatoes. A perfect combination of dishes and all can be prepped in advance. Unfortunately we were minus the friends but hopefully those days will be back again before too long.
We ignore all timings for roast chicken these days and stick to Diana Henry’s failsafe instructions to roast for 20 minutes at 190C for each 500g plus an extra 10 minutes.
Wine Suggestion: Quite often with roast chicken we lean towards oaked Chardonnay as it’s such a classic match but tonight we remembered that another great match is good red Bordeaux from the Left Bank, so Cabernet Sauvignon dominant, and also with a little age, but not too much. We continued our lockdown habit of dipping into the cellar once a week and pulled out a Domaine de Chevalier red from 2010. It still has years, if not a couple of decades of life ahead of it but at 10 years old it still has a spriteliness of youth while all components have come together harmoniously into a smooth, elegant wine.
Buttery Lemon Roast Chicken – serves 4
a large bunch of sage
1 lemon, finely zested
50g butter, softened
1 tsp sea salt flakes
1 free-range chicken
You can prep the chicken early in the day and keep in the fridge but make sure you take it out an hour or two before you want to put it into the oven so it’s at room temperature.
Heat the oven to 190C.
Finely chop half the sage and mash in a bowl with the butter, lemon zest and salt.
Put the chicken into a roasting tray. Cut the lemon in half and squeeze some of the juice into the cavity, then stuff the halves into the chicken with the remaining sage.
Gently lift the skin over the breast and smear a quarter of the butter mixture under the skin over each breast. You should be able to push the butter quite far down with your fingers, but careful not tear the skin. Rub the rest of the butter over the chicken and sprinkle with some extra salt.
Roast the chicken according to the timings given above. When cooked the legs should feel loose and the juice should run clear when you pierce a thick bit with a sharp knife.
Leave to rest for 10 minutes before carving and served with some of the juices spooned over.
(Original recipe from A Table for Friends: The Art of Cooking for Two or Twenty by Skye McAlpine, Bloomsbury, 2020.)
We made this by accident having planned to do a different tagine from a magazine, only to realised that it required a slow-cooker, so this was a last-minute substitute. It is really and truly delicious, so you must try making this dish at some stage. You can serve with plain couscous but it’s particularly good with this. If chickpeas don’t float your boat as a main course for Sunday lunch both dishes would be excellent with some roast lamb.
Wine Suggestion: this is great with a juicy, brambly Grenache, or a blend with this in it. We had the joyful Les Dissidents “le Paria” made by Domaine Ventenac from 100% Grenache and made without sulphur; fresh, juicy and minerally.
Tomato, date & chickpea tagine – serves 4
2 tbsp olive olive oil or unsalted butter
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 x 400g tin plum tomatoes
120g pitted dates, halved
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
a small bunch of coriander, leaves roughly chopped and stalks reserved
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground cinnamon or 1 cinnamon stick
2 strips of lemon zest and the juice of ½ a lemon
2 x 400g tins of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
FOR THE SEASONED YOGHURT
200g natural yoghurt
juice of ½ a lemon
Heat the oil or butter in a frying pan over a medium heat, then add the onion and fry for 8-10 minutes, until soft.
Whizz half the tomatoes with half of the dates, then add the rest of the tomatoes to the mixture and set aside.
Add the garlic, coriander stalks and all of the spices to the cooked onions, stir and cook for 1 minute. Add the tomato mixture, the lemon zest and 100ml of water, season well with salt and pepper, then cook for 10 minutes or until rich and thickened.
Meanwhile, make the seasoned yoghurt. Mix the yoghurt with the lemon juice and a good pinch of salt in a bowl, then set aside.
Stir the chickpeas and the rest of the dates into the tomato mixture and cook for 5 minutes to heat through. Add the lemon juice and check the seasoning. Discard the pieces of lemon zest, then remove the dish from the heat.
Stir in the coriander leaves and serve with some seasoned yoghurt and golden couscous.
(Original recipe from New Kitchen Basics by Claire Thompson, Quadrille, 2019.)
Jono & Jules do food & wine 