Six of the best salads of summer

It's petered out somewhat over the last fortnight, but at least we can't moan that there's been no summer at all this year. July was a corker, and although August has been cooler and damper so far it's hardly been a monsoon style washout like some of those in recent years, and for that we should be thankful.

The return of prolonged warmth for the first time in a while has given me a new found interest in all things salad-y. If it's cold (or possibly warm, but definitely not hot) and you can mix it up and bung it on a plate with the minimum of fuss, that's the dish for me.

Easy, colourful, refreshing, no hot ovens necessary, only grilled meat needed by way of accompaniment, these are my six favourite salads of the summer.

Pickled carrots and beets, mozzarella. A Nigel Slater idea this, and a very good one. Give strips of root veg a light pickling in lemon juice and wine vinegar, then serve with mozzarella and dress with olive oil and the pickling juices. Quite subtle this, mild and tangy with a great contrast in textures.

Peas, cucumber, feta, mint, spring onion. Lovely mix of gently sweet and sharp in this one. Any fresh, lactic cheese would do the job. Fresh peas are essential, don't use frozen.

Bread Salad. Read about it here. Still my favourite discovery of the summer.

Watermelon, feta and mint. Make sure you chill the melon before making it and you'll end up with the sweetest, juiciest salad imaginable. Save this for a genuinely hot day.

Peaches and Parma ham. Discounting the black pepper and olive oil this only has two ingredients so I'm not sure it really counts as a salad. Is it just a meal? An assemblage? Who cares when it tastes this good. The contrasts here are the thing, so make sure your fruit is chilled and your meat isn't. Cold, sweet peach flesh and warm, salty pig flesh is a match made in heaven.

Grilled onions and pomegranate. More of a relish than a full blown salad, but an excellent accompaniment to any sort of barbecued lamb. Toss a thinly sliced red onion in a teaspoon of sugar and the same of sunflower oil, then sweat down under a hot grill until you get some lovely caramelised bits. Throw in the pips and any juices from half a pomegranate. Sweet, sharp and slightly bitter, it cuts through fatty meat beautifully.

Caudwell's Mill Café, Rowsley, Derbyshire

What a pleasant surprise to eat a meal, at a place chanced upon with no prior knowledge, where they've actually made an effort.

I'll spare you the lengthy rant about how eating in this country, brilliant though it certainly can be, is still rubbish if you don't plan ahead, about how you could travel the length and breadth of the country dining in wherever was obvious and looked nice, and not eat a single thing worth the money or calories. It's true though.

The particular speciality in this well-touristed part of the world is the 'doing just enough to get away with it café or tea room'. Your choice of mediocre panini served with a small pile of limp leaves? Six quid, thanks. 

So anyway, it's a refreshing change to end up somewhere like the café at Caudwell's Mill (the mill itself is worth a visit if like me, you like old industrial stuff with levers and pulleys and whatnot) where serving food that's worth bothering with is obviously of importance as well as keeping the bottom line ticking over.

They serve vegetarian food, which I only actually noticed after standing in the queue staring at the menu for at least five minutes. For me, it's always an indicator of appetising veggie food when the lack of meat isn't glaringly and instantly obvious.

As well as the usual sandwiches and jackets, there are daily specials served with salads. Homity pie was a cheesy, garlicky, comforting pile of goodness on a nutty wholemeal pastry base. In winter I could eat bowlfuls of this (probably swimming in a whole tin of beans), but it worked well as a summer dish too with all the associated greenery.

The salads were great; simple stuff done well. Amongst them a nice crunchy coleslaw; apple and beetroot; something vinegary with chickpeas; dressed leaves; and sweet carrot and corn given interest with seeds of some sort.

There are home made cakes galore for afters, the chocolate and coffee looked particularly good. We shared a slice of lemon which wasn't the best choice, being a bit overdone around the edges.

Service was quick and friendly, and you can sit by the window with a lovely view of the river that feeds the mill, then the Derbyshire countryside beyond. Meals are eight quid and a far better proposition than your aforementioned six pound panino, cakes £2-3 and a pot of tea a very reasonable £1.50. Worth a visit.

7/10

Caudwell's Mill
Rowsley
Matlock
DE4 2EB

http://www.caudwellsmillcraftcentre.co.uk/Thecafe.htm

Northern Food on tour: Self-catering in Spain again

I wouldn't normally choose to holiday twice in the same place in a matter of months, but thanks to the kindness and generosity of others we found ourselves heading off to Malaga once more for a repeat of last September's festivities.

I'm exceedingly grateful that we did because we had just as much fun this time around, but with the added bonus of a) not having all of our documents and stuff stolen, and b) my making a marriage proposal (accepted, thankfully). Good times.

On the eating and drinking front it was largely another self-catering affair, save for a pizza lunch in Nerja, a very average, touristy menu del dia in Granada, and a mini tapas crawl around Malaga (of which more later). We ate the same sort of thing as last time;- plenty of fresh fruit and salads to balance out the inevitable ham, bread and booze.

I'll not bore you with all the details, but here are a few things that were new discoveries or particularly good in spring rather than autumn.

The seasonal goods were all a month or two ahead of Britain, asparagus and strawberries being in particularly fine nick. We bought both in the supermarket, but later spotted strawberries growing locally and being sold at just three euros for an enormous box full.

As an aside it's interesting to note the lack of variety in the Spanish supermarkets, or at least what I perceived to be so. The number of fresh produce lines must be barely a quarter of what you'd find in the average British supermarket, but things are evidently much more seasonal. Asparagus and strawberries were in abundance in April, but were nowhere to be seen in September. Do we really need to be eating such things year round, expensive and air-freighted from Peru, or should we do as the Spanish seem to and gorge on them for pennies, but only when the right time arrives? On the other hand the lack of variety is definitely just that where some things are concerned. Good luck trying to get fresh herbs in a Spanish supermarket.

What is always readily available, and in wondrous, inexplicable variety in even the crappiest stores, is seafood. Especially shellfish. Bigging up Spain for eating seasonally and locally falls down completely when it comes to seafood, as they'll import the stuff from anywhere on the planet so long as it's good.

A bag of plump raw prawns were outstanding dunked in pungent alioli after flash-frying in olive oil with a good grind of salt and pepper. Beautifully sweet and perky, they were even good enough to make me eat a few Chinese-style;- sucking the juice from the heads. The cost of these little beauties? Seven euros something a kilo, which would be plenty for about six people.

My final and most exciting new discovery, and the one most fittingly Spanish given its use of delicious Andalusian booze, is Pedro Ximenez sherry as dessert ingredient. This is hardly a new idea, but the first time I'd got round to trying it.

Pedro Ximenez, or PX as it's commonly known, is the sweetest of all the sherry wines. It's thick, almost treacly with a complex, raisiny flavour. First attempt was PX poured straight over vanilla ice cream. Very good, but there was better to come.

A few recalcitrant plums were the only rubbish fruit we bought, with dry mealy flesh making it a waste of time eating them raw. Cooking a plum often works wonders though, so I quartered them and baked them slowly (they were in a medium oven for over an hour) with a generous pour of the PX. The result, served with more of the same ice cream, was divine. Tender fruit oozing syrupy, umber juice that was rich in dark, tannic flavour. Writing this is making me crave it now. If you see a strange man in Tesco late at night buying sherry, fruit and ice cream that'll probably be me.

This time around we did a little bit more sightseeing, visiting Granada and Malaga. The former really needs no introduction, the Alhambra is one major destination that absolutely lives up to its billing. It's stunning, just go.

Malaga on the other hand is a little hard done by, it doesn't always get the best press but is really rather lovely, especially on a Friday evening when what seems like the entire population is out on the streets enjoying themselves: talking, strolling and eating and drinking rather well. I'm going to write about that tomorrow.

Summer vegetable frittata

Meals made from leftovers are often the best. Every ingredient in tonight's tea except for the eggs was originally bought for Sunday dinner, a slow roasted shoulder of lamb lightened up a bit with some seasonal vegetables.

The lamb was a great success, but then I knew it would be. The amount of fat on a shoulder makes it a very forgiving cut. Bung it in a pot with rosemary, garlic and onions, then stick it in the oven for anything from two and a half to four hours; - precise timing is hardly crucial.

What came as a surprise was how much I enjoyed tonight's frittata. All of the previous night's vegetables, lightly bound with eggs, seasoned with parmesan and pepper, and livened up a bit with lemon zest and parsley. We ate it cut it into thick wedges while still warm with just a green salad and tomatoes. A light, bright meal for a muggy August day.

Serves two to three as a main meal with salad, but would also be good cold cut into slices for a picnic. Next year I'll make it earlier in summer with the newest beans and asparagus.

What you'll need:

6 eggs
4 spring onions
very small clove garlic
small handful shelled broad beans
small handful freshly shelled peas (or frozen will do)
half a courgette
half an ear of sweetcorn
1 tbsp freshly grated parmesan
zest of 1 lemon
handful flat leaf parsley
salt and black pepper
light olive oil

What to do:

1. Finely chop the spring onions and garlic. Chop the courgette into small dice. Cut the sweetcorn off the ear. Set the oven to 170 deg C.

2. Heat up a little olive oil in a pan, then saute the vegetables until al dente. Put the spring onions in first, then the courgette, garlic, beans, sweetcorn and finally the peas. Don't let them brown.

3. While the veggies are cooking lightly beat the eggs, then season generously with black pepper and just a little salt. Throw in the parmesan and lemon zest, then finely chop the parsley and add that too.

4. Line an 8 inch loaf tin with baking parchment, then add the just cooked vegetables. Pour over the egg mixture then put in the oven.

5. Bake until the eggs are just set and it's lightly browned on top. Mine took around 25 minutes. Check for doneness with a skewer, it should come out clean without any wet egg mixture on it (like with a cake).

6. When it's done leave to cool for ten minutes before removing from the tin and slicing to serve.

 

Kebab week: Falafel

It's debatable whether falafels can really be classified as a kebab at all. They're not made from meat and they're not grilled. Not a kebab you may say. On the other hand they're often eaten stuffed in a pitta bread with salad and sauces. Is that not a kebab?

Anyhow Wikipedia says they count, and so do I.

Why I've never made falafel before I really don't know. They're ridiculously easy and much nicer than shop bought versions. These were light, moist and really fresh tasting as opposed to the dry, heavy dull specimens you often find. I think the handful of peas really helped.

I don't have a deep fat fryer but a few minutes either side in a centimetre of oil in the frying pan worked fine. I ate them stuffed in pitta with yoghurt sauce, mango and chilli sauce, salad and pickles.

For the falafels, makes 12-14

1 tin chickpeas
2 cloves garlic
1 chilli
2 big handfuls parsley
lots of salt and pepper
handful of freshly shelled peas
1 dsp plain flour

To serve

Pitta bread
lettuce, tomato, cucumber and onion
pickled gherkins and chillies
shop bought mango and chilli sauce
yoghurt sauce (greek yoghurt thinned with lemon juice)

1. Blitz all of the falafel ingredients in a food processor, then roll into little balls about 1 inch across.

2. Shallow fry them in a centimetre of hot oil for about 10 minutes, leave to form a good crust before turning otherwise they'll fall to bits. Deep frying them would probably be better if you've got the equipment.

3. Serve immediately in warm pitta bread with salad and sauce.

Roast squash, thyme, feta, sweet pepper & tomato sauce

This was a bit of a random throw it all together and see what happens supper. It turned out really well so I thought I'd write about it. I've roasted squashes with thyme before, and paired thyme with feta (usually crumbled over lamb chops), and eaten tomatoes and peppers with feta, but never the whole lot together.

It tasted great. Sweet, caramelised squash with tart, lactic cheese and fragrant thyme. The sauce sort of mirrored the squash and the cheese, being both sweet and sour, and stopped the whole from being a little too dry and mushy. I ate it scooped out of the skins onto airy, open textured crusty bread. Lovely.

What you'll need, enough for 2

For the squash:
1 large or 2 small squashes (I used butternut)
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
a chunk of feta (I used about 75g)
olive oil
salt and pepper

For the sauce:
half a tin of chopped tomatoes
1 red or yellow pepper
1 clove of garlic
white wine vinegar
sugar
salt and pepper

What to do, takes about an hour:

1. Set the oven to 190 deg C. Cut the squash into fat wedges, scooping out all the seedy bits. Put the wedges into a roasting dish, season generously with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle on plenty of thyme leaves. Put the squash in the hot oven for about 45 minutes.

2. Cut the pepper into large chunks and grill it until soft and charred at the edges. Put the tomatoes in a small pan over a low heat with the clove of garlic, peeled but not chopped.

3. Cook the tomatoes for about 15 minutes over a low heat. When the peppers are done let them cool for a bit then scrape off the skins, blend them to a liquid then add them in with the tomatoes. Add a good pinch of sugar and a good splash of wine vinegar. Heat for another few minutes.

4. Remove the garlic from the sauce. Taste it and season it, then set aside.

5. Check the squash after about 45 minutes. It should be almost tender. If not return it to the oven for a bit longer. When it's almost tender and caramelised at the edges remove it from the oven and crumble over the feta and a little more thyme. Return to the oven for 5 more minutes.

6. Heat the sauce back up, then remove the cheesy squash from the oven. Pour the sauce over the squash, drizzle with olive oil and serve immediately with crusty bread.

Grilled aubergine and peppers with spiced yoghurt

Lacking in inspiration one night last week I made a plea on Twitter for aubergine recipe ideas. Several people came up with suggestions (thanks!), a couple of which were Middle Eastern in style which whet my appetite and got me thinking. I wasn't really in the mood for following a proper recipe, so made it up as I went along.

Sometimes I do this and get it wrong, ending up with something that's usually edible but either very dull or interesting but ill-advised. Sometimes I do this and get it right, ending up with something surprisingly tasty and well worth repeating. This was very much in the latter camp, so I thought I'd share.

Smoky charred aubergine and cumin contrasts well with creamy, tart yoghurt and the sweetness of the peppers. The nuts add a bit of textural variety. Very nice scooped up with some sort of flatbread.

You will need, enough for two:

1 aubergine
2 red peppers (preferably Romano, the long thin sweet ones)
extra virgin olive oil
coarse salt
pepper
Coriander, about 1/2 a tbsp, chopped
about 150ml thick greek yoghurt
half a lemon
1 tsp cumin seeds
a few cashew nuts
pinch chilli flakes
bread to serve

What to do:

1. Slice the aubergine into thick slices and the pepper into long strips. Put them into a grill pan, drizzle over a generous amount of olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

2. Grill the aubergine and peppers under a medium-hot grill, turning half way through until they are soft with slightly blackened edges.

3. While the veg is grilling, coarsely chop the nuts and toast them in a dry frying pan with the cumin seeds, the chilli flakes and a generous pinch of coarse salt. Toast until fragrant and just starting to brown without burning.

4. Chop the coriander, and stir the lemon juice into the yoghurt.

5. Plate up the aubergine and peppers, sprinkle over the coriander then top with the yoghurt then the toasted nut and spice mixture.

6. Drizzle over some olive oil, then serve immediately with some bread, ideally warm pitta.

The Wee Curry Shop, Partick, Glasgow

Best laid plans and all that. I started out with no intention whatsoever of eating Indian food in Glasgow this week. I was thinking Spanish or maybe even a rare foray into Italian, but my first two restaurant choices were both utterly deserted. I didn't fancy being the sole diner staring out at the drizzle from an empty room, so moved on. Said drizzle wasn't really conducive to a lengthy walk either so I ended up at the Wee Curry Shop near the bottom of Byres Road. Not entirely a random choice as I dined at one of their other restaurants last summer and really enjoyed it.

The menu here is refreshingly short, and gives equal billing to both vegetables and meat. There are just five starters and eleven main courses, a rare sight in Indian restaurants where the 'something for everyone 500 different options' menu seems to prevail over the 'do few things and do them well' school of thought.

To begin, haddock with mustard seed and curry leaves was served in the foil it had been baked in. It was simple and delicious, lightly cooked until it just flaked and marinaded with nothing but the named ingredients and a bit of salt.

Sticking with the meat avoidance plan, next up was channa paneer with broccoli. I've heard paneer described as being a bit like feta, or a bit like cottage cheese. This was nothing like either. It was slightly rubbery, but not in a bad way. The flavour was really mellow and milky, perhaps more like mozarella if anything. Despite the mildness it was still distinct through all of the other tastes in the dish.

The earthier tastes; creamy paneer, nutty chickpeas and vegetal broccoli were offset beautifully with the tangy, garlicky tomato based sauce. Slivers of raw ginger and coriander leaf added little vibrant bursts of flavour. Scooped up in light, pillowy roti this was fantastic. Great with rice too, although an extra roti would have been a better choice.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, despite the deliberate lack of lamb it was the best Indian meal I've eaten this year. Service was efficient and amenable, and it was great value too (£16.90 including a generous tip).


9/10

The Wee Curry Shop
41 Byres Road
Glasgow
G11 5RG

http://www.weecurryshopglasgow.co.uk/

Manjit's Kitchen, Leeds (and sometimes elsewhere)

Manjit's Kitchen is a home delivery service based in Leeds. Anyone on Twitter with an interest in all things food and all things Leeds has probably heard of them by now, as they've been getting rave reviews for Manjit's home cooked vegetarian Punjabi food. I'm no vegetarian but if meat abstinence was forced upon me I would almost certainly survive on a diet of Indian food. Rich, creamy dhals; crunchy, fresh thorans; light dosai with zingy chutneys; India is pretty much number one in the world for vegetarian cuisine. I live way outside Manjit's delivery area so when I heard they would be manning a stall at the first ever fiery food market in Dewsbury I was there like a shot.

A quick word on the market first. I was quite impressed, there were a lot of stalls selling some good looking stuff. Of particular note was a truck selling food from the Seychelles, not something I've ever come across before. A free sample of a pork curry was delicious with tender, slow cooked meat in a fiery, coconutty sauce that also had hints of peanut. Back to Manjit's Kitchen. Did it live up to expectations?

The dhal certainly did. I think it was a dhal makhani (black lentils in a rich buttery sauce). The sauce was wonderfully rich and creamy, cut with acidity from the addition of tomatoes. The spicing was just right, complex and slow burning but not too fiery. I could eat this stuff by the bucket load.

Accompaniments weren't all so successful. The rice was fine, plain basmati cooked perfectly. The nan bread was rubbish though, foamy and lifeless. I just don't think nan bread really works pre-cooked and then warmed up, chappattis would be a better bet. Full marks for letting us help ourselves to salad, but a bowl of dressing would have livened things up a bit.

In summary the main event, the dhal was excellent. The meal was good value at £4 for dhal, rice, bread and salad. A chick pea dish and the samosa's were also looking good. If I lived in the delivery area I'd definitely be ordering soon.


7/10

Home delivery within a 4 mile radius of LS8 (which covers Gipton, Harehills, Oakwood, Roundhay)
Also at various other events - check the website for details

http://www.manjitskitchen.com/