Quinoa & fennel salad

May 20, 2020

We've been ordering lots of veggie boxes during this weird lockdown period (can recommend both Theodore's and The Local Drop if you're in the market). Our last box came with 3 bulbs of fennel, which left us scratching our heads a bit - luckily, Ottolenghi had us covered. Plenty More had a fennel and quinoa salad that perfectly used up our three fennel bulbs as well as a bunch of herbs we had lying around.

It's a nice combo of sweetness from the fennel, zing from the lime and nuttiness from the quinoa. We ad-libbed and threw in a couple of classic Ottolenghi ingredients that we had to use up - pistachios and pomegranate - which certainly didn't hurt. It's a relatively easy weeknight meal - you can serve it with some fried haloumi or something on the side, but it works as a meal on its own too.

Quinoa and fennel salad

(adapted from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

1/3 cup olive oil

3 fennel bulbs, trimmed and thinly sliced

1 tablespoon caster sugar

3 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 cup quinoa

300g broad beans, blanched and podded (we used frozen)

1 green chilli, finely chopped

2 teaspoons ground cumin

small bunches mint, coriander and dill

1/2 cup raisins

3 limes

salt and pepper

Fry the fennel in 3 tablespoons of the olive oil on high heat for about 5 minutes - you're trying to get a bit of colour going. Lower the heat and keep cooking, stirring occasionally until it's all nice and soft - maybe another 10 minutes. Add the sugar and vinegar and a good shake of salt and cook for another couple of minutes. Kill the heat and set aside.

Cook the quinoa as per the instructions (about 10 minutes in boiling water should do it). Drain and then combine with the fennel, beans, chilli, cumin, herbs and raisins. 

Carefully skin the limes, removing the pith and extracting the fleshy segments. Slice them up a bit and add them, along with the rest of the olive oil, to the salad. Stir and serve.

Taleggio & spinach roulade

January 27, 2019

We kicked off Ottolenghi club for 2019 with a big gathering at a friend's house - 10 people, 10 dishes and just an astonishingly good spread (see here for a full summary of the night's food). We decided not to make two dishes this time around, instead joining forces for one of the trickier dishes in Plenty More - the taleggio and spinach roulade.

It all takes a bit of time, but most if is waiting around for the dough to rest at various points in the process. The assembly requires a steadier hand than I can muster, but Cindy managed it very successfully. The result was delightful - a crusty, puffy dough and a rich delicious filling. We served it at room temperature, but I think it'd be even better if you got into it right out of the oven.

Taleggio & spinach roulade
(slightly adapted from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

dough
160ml milk
2 teaspoons dried active yeast (we used one standard 7g sachet)
3 cups white bread flour
1 teaspoon cater sugar
50ml sunflower oil
1 egg and 1 egg yolk
salt

filling
100g cream cheese
100g baby spinach leaves
20g basil leaves
100g pecorino cheese, grated
200g taleggio cheese, broken into chunks
150g semi-dried tomatoes, drained

finishing touches
1 egg white
sesame seeds

Gently heat the milk in a small saucepan until just lukewarm. Stir in the yeast and keep stirring until it dissolves. Set aside for 10 minutes.

Place the rest of the dough ingredients in a large bowl with a 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Add the milk and yeast and stir it all together until you've got a good dough going. Knead your dough for 10-15 minutes, until you've got a smooth, shiny dough ball. (You can do all of this with a dough hook and an electric mixer if you like, but it was easy by hand.)

Brush another large bowl with oil and pop the dough in it, covered with a damp tea towel. Leave it all to rest for about 45 minutes - it should double in size. 

Unroll enough baking paper to cover a 30cm x 40cm baking tray. Drop the dough onto it and roll it out flat to fit the baking tray. Carefully transfer the paper and dough into the tray. Cover the dough with the tea towel again and let it rest for half an hour.

Now it's time for the filling - spread the cream cheese as best you can across the surface, sprinkle with salt and then scatter over the spinach, basil, pecorino, taleggio and semi-dried tomatoes. Now it's wrapping time - pick up one of the longer sides of the dough rectangle and carefully roll it up into a rough spiral. Try to leave it standing on its seam so that it stays rolled up when it bakes. Cover with a tea towel again and let it rest for another half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Brush the surface of your big dough log with the egg white and then sprinkle over some sesame seeds. Bake for 10 minutes and then turn the heat down to 180°C and leave to cook for another 25 minutes. It should brown up nicely and a sharp knife should come out with some melted cheese on it, but no dough. 

Remove from the oven and let it sit for a few minutes. Cut into thick slices and serve.

Iranian vegetable stew with dried lime

June 25, 2017

Ottolenghi club took May off, but we reconvened on the weekend for a real winter-lenghi experience. As always, it was a sensational meal, featuring vego scotch eggs, sweetcorn soup with chipotle and lime, roast cauliflower with green olives and Cindy's dessert, which will be posted here soon. I considered trying this amazing looking potato dish, but decided that transporting it would be too difficult, so I settled for an Ottolenghi stew.

This stew is from Plenty More and features classic Ottolenghi ingredients Iranian dried limes and barberries, both of which we sourced from Middle Eastern grocery stores on Sydney Road. It's relatively simple for an Otto recipe, although he still manages to have you both simmer and bake the stew just to add some extra steps.

The end result is gigantic - only about two-thirds of it squeezed into our casserole dish in the picture above - I'd recommend cutting in half if you're not cooking for a group. It's tasty and warming, but not a complete showstopper - the dried limes didn't shine through to me and the barberries provided the occasional burst of zinginess, but nothing too distinctive. I'd up the limes next time, or grind one or two up in our spice grinder for the full effect. Still, this is a nice option for a winter night - especially when it's part of a five course feast.

Iranian vegetable stew with dried lime
(slightly adapted from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

50g ghee

1 large onion, finely sliced

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

2 teaspoons cumin seeds

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 small bunch coriander

1/2 bunch tarragon

1/2 bunch dill

1 kg waxy potatoes, chopped into 4 cm chunks

1 butternut pumpkin, peeled, seeded and chopped into 4 cm chunks

3 Iranian limes, pierced 3-4 times

1 green chilli, slit on one side

4 tomatoes, quartered

150g spinach leaves

15g barberries

salt

yoghurt for dolloping

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Place a large saucepan on medium heat and melt the ghee, before sauteing the butter, onion, turmeric and cumin seeds for 10 minutes, until the onion is nice and soft.

Add in the tomato paste and cook, stirring, for another couple of minutes.

Bundle the herbs together and tie them up with a piece of string. Throw them in the pot, along with the potatoes, pumpkin, dried limes, chilli and 1 litre of water, plus a generous amount of salt.

Bring to the boil and then simmer gently for 15 minutes, until the potatoes have started to soften. Stir in the spinach leaves, tomatoes and barberries, and crush the dried limes gently to release more of their flavour.

Transfer the entire mixture to a casserole dish or baking tray and bake for 20 minutes, until all the veggies are nice and soft. 

Serve with rice and a dollop of yoghurt.

Fig & goat's cheese tart

April 8, 2017

Well, I think we squeezed every last possible picnic out of this summer! I'm sure of it because little more than an hour after we finished up our outdoor Ottolenghi Club last Saturday, the wind changed and it poured with rain. But while the breeze was still blowing from the north and the sun was shining, we shared kuku, salads, and florets of fried cauliflower. We saw out the summer with this fig tart.

It's one of the most eye-catching pictures in Plenty More, I reckon - several dozen glistening crimson fig geodes stacked across a golden square of pastry, drizzled with lemon glaze, with teeny herb leaves tucked in. Read the ingredient list and it goes one better - there's some kind of goat's cheese frangipane in between the figs and the pastry! It seems like one of those clever dishes that straddles sweet and savoury, a tantalising hybrid of cheese platter and Danish pastry.

The original recipe includes instructions for a yeasted pastry dough, but Ottolenghi graciously grants us permission to purchase puff pastry instead. I found a small frozen block that I could roll myself to fit the base of my baking dish, and I gave it a little blind-bake to help ensure it cooked through. I thought it still ended up a bit tough, and I'd try something different on a second attempt.

The other layers didn't quite meet my high expectations either. The goat's cheese, once diluted with eggs and almond meal, lacked pungency; the tanginess of the lemon glaze didn't quite carry either. But the fresh figs, lightly dusted with caster sugar and baked until sparkling, were spectacular. I reckon they carried the whole dish. So I could change up the cheese or double the lemon juice glaze, but maybe I'm just better off grilling my figs next autumn.

Fig & goat's cheese tart
(slightly adapted from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

375g puff pastry, thawed
150g soft goat's cheese
85g icing sugar
grated zest of 1/2 orange
1-2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
2 eggs, beaten
100g almonds
600g figs
1 tablespoon castor sugar
juice of 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Line a large high-walled baking tray with paper.

Roll out the puff pastry to fit the base of the baking tray and gently ease it in. Poke the pastry with a fork and bake it for about 10 minutes. Set the tray aside to cool a little.

In the meantime, put the cheese in a small bowl. Add 2 teaspoons of the icing sugar, the orange zest, a tablespoon of thyme leaves and three-quarters of the beaten eggs. Beat everything together until smooth. Grind the almonds to a meal and stir them into the goat's cheese mixture.

Spoon the goat's cheese mixture over the cooling pastry, leaving an inch-wide border around the edge. Brush the remaining egg on the exposed pastry. Slice the figs in half and arrange them, cut side up, over the goat's cheese mixture. Place the figs close together, even overlapping. Bake the tart for about 30 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown and the figs are bubbling with juice.

Let the tart cool down a bit. Whisk together the remaining icing sugar and lemon juice into a smooth glaze and drizzle it over the tart.

Eggplant kataifi nests

January 21, 2017

January saw the long-awaited return of Ottolenghi club, our semi-regular potluck-style assault on Yotam's greatest hits. We had an empty day before the dinner, so I decided to take on something a bit more challenging than my usual fancy salad and dove head-first into these eggplant nests. These were an outstanding success - the choice dish in a meal loaded up with excellence and one that we made again before we even managed to get this blog post written. The crispy nests are wrapped around a smooth, smoky eggplant filling and served with a tangy and spicy dipping sauce - they're great straight out of the oven and nearly as good at room temperature. 

The key ingredient is kataifi pastry - we found some at A1 Grocery on Sydney Road, and I imagine any decent Mediterranean or Middle Eastern food-store will come through for you. I've read that you can substitute shredded filo pastry, but I reckon you're better off making the effort to track this down - it's really worth it. Once you've got the pastry it's just a matter of working your way through the recipe - the roasting of the eggplants, capsicum, chilli and garlic stretches out over a few hours and the assembly of the little nests takes a bit of time, but the pay-off is really, really worth it. These will definitely be on our where's the best? list the next time we update it.

Eggplant kataifi nests
(adapted very slightly from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

4 eggplants (about 1.2kg)
200g ricotta
65g pecorino, roughly grated
1 small bunch parsley, chopped
1 egg, beaten
100g ghee
80ml sunflower oil
340g packet kataifi pastry (thawed)
salt and pepper

capsicum & tomato salsa
1 medium capsicum
1 red chilli
3 unpeeled garlic cloves
200g crushed tomatoes
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
50ml olive oil
salt

Preheat the oven to 250°C.

Pierce the eggplants a few times with a knife and lay them out on a baking tray. Roast them in the oven for 90 minutes, turning every 20 minutes or so to make sure they all get nice and blackened. Remove from the oven and leave to cool, before scooping out the flesh and leaving it to drain in a colander for half an hour.

While the eggplants are roasting you can get to work on the salsa. Put the capsicum, chilli and garlic on another oven tray and roast them in the oven for 10 minutes. Take the chilli and garlic out and turn the capsicum, roasting for another 20 minutes or so until its skin is all blistered. Remove the capsicum and pop it in a bowl covered with plastic wrap to cool (this makes the skin easier to peel off). Peel and deseed the capsicum and chilli and peel the garlic.

Pop the roasted capsicum, chilli and garlic into a small food processor and whizz to a paste. Add the vinegar, oil and about 1 teaspoon of salt and and the crushed tomatoes and whizz some more until you've got a smooth sauce.

Melt the ghee in a small saucepan and combine it with the sunflower oil.

Once all the veggies have been roasted drop the oven temperature down to 200°C and get ready to make the nests. First up, make the filling - mix the eggplant flesh together with the ricotta, pecorino, parsley, egg and generous amounts of salt and pepper.

Now it's time to build the nests! Lightly grease a baking tray - we started with a 30cm x 20cm tray but overflowed and had to use a small square tray as well. Pull out about 25g of the kataifi pastry (I weighed the first couple before I got into a rhythm). Stir a tablespoon of the butter mix into the pastry parcel and then spread it out on a cutting board until you have a rectangle about 15cm x 5cm. Spoon 1-2 tablespoons of the mix onto one end of the rectangle and then roll the pastry loosely around the filling. 

Lay the rolled up pastry in the baking tray and then repeat - you can squish them up right against each other. Once you've made all the rolls, drizzle whatever oil/butter mix you have leftover on top and bake for 25-30 minutes until the tops go nice and golden.

Serve, with the sauce on the side.

Ottolenghi's eggplant cheesecake

October 22-23, 2016

I picked this recipe out of Plenty More with the express purpose of using up some ingredients (cream cheese, eggs, za'atar) but we'd make it again on its own merits. It's kind of a crustless quiche, although the main feature is really a dozen or so melt-in-the-mouth eggplant slices, and the cherry tomatoes nestled among them. 

The egg-and-dairy filling is more of a light, fluffy binder with the odd dot of sharp feta. Fresh oregano leaves and a last-minute sprinkle of za'atar bring some complexity to the flavour - all this savoury 'cheesecake' needs is a simple green salad on the side to make up a pretty warm-weather meal. (You might spy some leftover carrot salad filled out with spinach and tomatoes in the background.)

Eggplant cheesecake
(slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More,
also published on The Guardian)

2 medium eggplants
1/4 cup olive oil
100g cream cheese
1/4 cup double cream
4 eggs
150g feta
150g cherry tomatoes
10g oregano leaves
2 teaspoons za'atar
salt and black pepper

Preheat an oven to 210°C. Line a large baking tray with paper

Slice the eggplants into 2cm thick rounds and lay them out flat on the baking tray. Drizzle the eggplants with most of the oil and sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Roast them for 40 minutes, until they're soft and golden but not falling apart. Allow them to cool.

Turn the oven down to 170°C. Line a 20cm square baking tin with foil and lightly spray or brush it with a bit of oil.

In a medium-large bowl, beat together the cream cheese and cream with an electric mixer. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Crumble over the feta and beat it in too, but allow the feta to stay a bit lumpy. Mix in a little salt and pepper. Slice the cherry tomatoes into halves.

When the eggplant is cool enough to handle, layer the slices into the foil-lined baking tin. Sit them upright or diagonally, so that they're partially overlapping and not flat and on top of each other (check out my photo above). Arrange the tomato halves in between the eggplants, filling all the gaps. Tear up half of the oregano and sprinkle it over the eggplants and tomatoes. Pour the cheesecake mixture into the tin, gently guiding it to evenly cover the vegetables. Tear up the remaining oregano and sprinkle it over the top. Bake the cheesecake until it's set and golden, 35-40 minutes.

Mix the za'atar up with a tablespoon of olive oil and drizzle it over the top. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Polenta crisps with avocado and yoghurt

March 20, 2016

Our semi-regular Ottolenghi cooking crew took advantage of one of the last glorious summer evenings of the season to head to Princes Park for a picnic potluck. I decided to avoid the big sharable salad-style dishes I usually fall back on and went scoping for snackier options, settling on two dip-based dishes that looked relatively easy to throw together.

First up: polenta crisps an avocado and yoghurt dip. This was not as easy as I originally assumed - the dip was super simple, but the polenta crisp making required a lot of challenging shallow-frying. It all worked out okay in the end, but this is a recipe that you need to devote a bit of time and effort to. The pay-off is worth it in the end - my polenta chips turned out like mini schnitzels, and were an excellent vessel for gulping down big dollops of tangy avocado and lime sauce.

The second recipe actually was an easy one (I won't reproduce it here - see the 2nd recipe on this page) - a simple combination of yoghurt, grated veggies, herbs, lime and butter. The melting of the butter seemed a bit unnecessary to me, and I doubt I'd bother with it next time, which would make it even simpler. It was delicious smeared across some lightly toasted Rustica sourdough.

These were just the starters to another incredible meal - Kate brought along the sweet potato in orange bitters that lit up our Christmas last year, and Erin and Matt came through with a ridiculously indulgent chocolate babka. Cindy's contribution was my favourite dish of all, and it's up next on the blog! (You can cheat and peak at the whole spread on our Facebook page.)

Polenta crisps with avocado and yoghurt
(from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

750ml of veggie stock (I just made up some Massel 'chicken' stock)

160g polenta

10g chives, chopped finely

30g grated parmesan

100g semolina

Veggie oil for frying (you'll need at least a cup, probably more)

Avocado dipping sauce

Flesh of 2 avocados

100g Greek yoghurt

Juice and zest of a lime

1 teaspoon olive oil

Whiz all the dipping sauce ingredients together in a food processor along with a dash of salt and pepper. Set aside.

Bring the stock to the boil in a medium sized saucepan. Slowly pour in the polenta and cook over high heat for about five minutes, stirring as much as you can to keep things smooth. Once the mixture is nice and thick and the liquid absorbed, stir through the chives and parmesan for about 30 seconds and then kill the heat.

Pour the polenta out onto flat surfaces - we used two large baking trays lined with baking paper, but chopping boards would work fine as well. Ottolenghi wants you to spread the polenta out so it's nice and thin - maybe 2-3mm. I used the back of a spoon and maybe didn't quite get things as thin as that - it's a tricky balance between getting crisp little chips and having chunks that will hold together.

Leave the polenta to set for half an hour or so and then break it up in to pieces about 5cm x 5cm - it won't break super evenly and it doesn't really matter if some are much larger and some much smaller. Dip each piece in the semolina and set them aside for frying.

Heat enough oil in a frying pan so that you've got a depth of about 1cm. When it's nice and hot, fry the polenta pieces in batches, for about 2-3 minutes on each side until they go golden brown and get a little crispy around the edges. Transfer the cooked chips to a plate lined with paper towel and keep on frying, topping up the oil as necessary. 

Serve, with the dipping sauce at the ready.

Plenty More salads

January 26, 2016

Our semi-regular Ottolenghi potluck club had its first meeting for 2016 on the January 26 public holiday. With warm weather forecast and a whole day to prepare food, I decided to whip up a couple of salads from Plenty More as our savoury contribution to the spread (the full feast is on display over on our facebook page). My first choice was pumpkin with chilli yoghurt and coriander sauce (pictured above), at least partly because it was pitched as the simplest recipe in the whole book. Given I was turning the oven on to cook the pumpkin, I stuck to the 'roast' section of the book and added the roasted cauliflower, grape and cheddar salad as dish #2.

The pumpkin dish was indeed easy - you roast up some cinnamon-coated pumpkin wedges, whiz together a herby sauce and stir some Sriracha into yoghurt and you're done. The results belie the relative simplicity of the recipe - the sweetness of the pumpkin perfectly complements the tangy yoghurt and the slightly salty coriander sauce.

The cauliflower salad also proved to be relatively simple (I'm pretty amazed that each of these recipes just have one fresh herb and leave it at that). Again, the pay-off easily exceeds the effort put in - roasting cauliflower really brings out its sweet nuttiness while adding some slightly smoky hints (if you get the charring level right). The remaining ingredients - grapes, cheddar, hazelnuts, raisins and parsley - are just about a perfect combination of flavours and textures. 

Making these two recipes in one hit is a relatively efficient way to get stuck into Plenty More - all the miscellaneous prep can be done while the pumpkin and cauliflower are roasting, so the whole process should take less than 90 minutes. We've already remade the pumpkin dish once, and I reckon both of these will slip into our semi-regular Ottolenghi rotation.

Pumpkin with chilli yoghurt & coriander sauce
(very slightly adapted from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

1 large butternut pumpkin
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
90ml olive oil
1 small bunch coriander
1 garlic clove, crushed
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
200g Greek yoghurt
1-2 tablespoons Sriracha chilli sauce
salt and black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C.

Halve the pumpkin and scoop out the seeds. Cut the pumpkin into thin wedges (about 2cm thick and 10cm long). Leave the skin on. Put all the wedges in a bowl and mix through the ground cinnamon, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper. Lay the pumpkin wedges out on a baking tray (or two) with the skin down. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the pumpkin is cooked through and starting to brown up.

Combine the coriander (leave a few leaves aside for garnishing), garlic, the remaining olive oil and another pinch of salt in a small food processor and blitz to a smooth paste. 

When you've got about 10 minutes left on the pumpkin roasting, pop the pumpkin seeds in on another tray to roast. Keep a close eye on them and pull them out when they've just started to blister and crisp up.

Swirl together the yoghurt and the chilli sauce.

Allow everything to cool a bit. Lay the wedges on a platter and drizzle over with the yoghurt sauce and the herb paste and then scatter the pumpkin seeds and reserved coriander leaves on top.

Roasted cauliflower, grape & cheddar salad
(very slightly adapted from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

1 head of cauliflower, broken into bite-sized florets

90ml olive oil

2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/2 teaspoon maple syrup

1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup hazelnuts, toasted and roughly crushed

100g crumbled cheddar cheese

100g red grapes, halved (and seeded if necessary)

1/2 bunch parsley, roughly chopped (about 3/4 cup)

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C.

Toss the cauliflower with half the oil and some salt and pepper. Spread them out on a baking tray and roast for 25 minutes, stirring a couple of times. You want them to come out golden brown. Set aside to cool.

Whisk together the rest of the oil, the mustard, the vinegar, syrup and some salt. Add the raisins to the dressing and let them marinate for 10 minutes or so.

When you're ready to serve things up put the cauliflower in a large mixing  bowl, along with the hazelnuts, cheese, grapes and parsley and then pour over the raisins and the dressing. Toss everything together gently and serve. 

Spring Salad

September 2, 2015

September saw the fifth meeting of our Ottolenghi potluck gang after a few months off, with a vaguely spring-themed dinner to take advantage of Victoria's newest public holiday. (The wonders of our previous meals can be seen in various degrees of blurriness here, here, here and here.)

As always it was an incredible spread, featuring stuffed onions, muhammara, stuffed peppers, rosemary savoury bread pudding, carrot & mungbean salad, green salad plus the spring salad featured in this post and an incredible dessert that Cindy will post about in a day or two.

I was inspired by Melbourne's burst of warm weather to go for a very spring-themed dish, a simple salad making use of asparagus and broad beans that are both at their peak right now. I altered a couple of things, frying the shallot gently rather than using it raw and bafflingly failing to buy nigella seeds. It was reasonably straightforward by Ottolenghi standards and added some freshness and variety to our meal - the sesame oil was pretty dominant flavour-wise, so you might consider going a bit heavier on the lemon juice and chilli.

Ottolenghi has many show-stopping salads, and this is a more unassuming effort - it's a worthy contribution to a big table of food, but it's probably never going to be the star of the show.

Spring Salad
(very slightly adapted from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

2 small bunches asparagus, trimmed and sliced at an angle into 4-5 pieces each
200g green beans, trimmed
300g broad beans (if you're using fresh, you'll need ~1.5kg of pods)
50g baby spinach leaves
1 shallot, finely sliced
1 red chilli, finely sliced
1 teaspoon sesame oil
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon black and white sesame seeds, toasted
salt
(the original recipe also includes 1 teaspoon nigella seeds, which I forgot to include)

In a small frying pan heat up 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and fry the diced shallot for 5 minutes or so, until it's nicely softened. Set it aside for later.

Fill a bowl with iced water to cool the veggies once they're blanched.

Bring a large saucepan of water to boil and throw in the asparagus, blanching for 3 minutes and then extracting them with a slotted spoon and dumping them in the iced water. Pop the beans in to blanch for 4 minutes and then throw them in the iced water as well. Add the broad beans into the boiling water and blanch them for 2 minutes and throw them in the cold water as well.

Drain the veggies and set the asparagus and beans aside to dry. Pop the broad beans out of their little protective shells and then combine them with the other veggies (including the spinach) in a large bowl.

Stir through the shallots, the chilli, sesame oil, the rest of the olive oil, the lemon juice, the sesame seeds and the salt and serve.

Pomegranate poached quinces

April 26, 2015

At the end of April, we hosted the fourth gathering of Ottolenghi admirers in our home. Without a bike ride constraining our cooking choice, Michael and I committed to preparing the extravagant mushroom and cheese lasagne from Plenty as the autumnal centrepiece. But of course I couldn't leave dessert alone, flicking through Plenty More and jotting down simple rhubarb and quince options on the end of the shopping list.

The quinces won out in the end. You probably already know how to poach them, and I've done it before too. The vanilla, orange and star anise in the poaching liquid here aren't anything surprising, but using pomegranate juice instead of water is a very Ottolenghi tweak. It lends a deep crimson to the dish where the quinces can't - they're poached for just 20 minutes and retain the translucent colour of a pear on the inside.

On their own, the quinces are rich, velvety, vegan and gluten-free. Ottolenghi serves them with clotted cream and pomegranate seeds, and ours were embellished further with cocoa-streaked meringues made by our guest Matt. He and I had unwittingly teamed to create some rather fancy deconstructed pavlovas.

Pomegranate poached quinces
(very slightly adapted from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

2 large quinces
800mL pomegranate juice
70g caster sugar
1 vanilla pod
1 orange
2 star anise
120g double cream
seeds from 1/2 pomegranate

Peel the quinces and slice them into quarters. Cut away the cores and keep half of them. Slice the quince flesh into wedges and place them in a very large saucepan. Wrap the reserved cores in a muslin cloth or similar (I used a clean Chux wipe) and bundle them up firmly, adding them to the pot. Pour over the pomegranate juice and sprinkle over the sugar. Slice the vanilla pod lengthways, scrape the seeds into the pot and drop the pods in too. Grate the rind of the orange into the pot, then juice the orange and pour the liquid in. Drop in the star anise. Bring it all to the boil, cover the pot and reduce it to a gentle simmer for around 20 minutes, until the quince is soft. When the quince is ready, use a slotted spoon to retrieve the wedges. With the pot uncovered, simmer the syrup for a further 20 minutes to reduce and thicken it. 

When it's time to serve the quinces, remove the core bundle, vanilla pods and star anise from the pot. Place the quince wedges back in the syrup and gently warm them. Spoon the quinces into individual serving dishes, dollop on some cream and sprinkle over the pomegranate seeds.

Grilled figs in pomegranate syrup

March 8, 2015

The March meeting of Cookbook Club was a Sunday brunch, with the express purpose of eating the Super French Toast in Ottolenghi's Plenty More. I thought it was the right occasion to push a secondary fig agenda. Of course Ottolenghi could assist, with a recipe for 'roasted figs with pomegranate molasses and orange zest' tucked into the Sweetened section of Plenty More.

Michael helpfully picked up the ingredients on Saturday, and that had me in good shape to cobble it all together on Sunday morning in less than an hour. A little whisking and chopping, 30 minutes' maceration passed with simmering and more whisking, 10 minutes under the grill and we had a handsome side dish all packed up and ready to be cycled over to our hosts. I was a little skeptical that a brief grilling would produce the soft, glistening figs pictured in the cookbook, but mine were a very respectable mimic.

The Super French Toast demonstrates that Ottolenghi is as devoted to fats as he is to fresh produce - he manages to saturate thick brioche slices with custard, set it by baking, then fry it all in butter. It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and one that was complemented by these grilled figs. The sour, slightly bitter flavour of this particular bottle of pomegranate molasses was a welcome respite from layer-upon-layer of dairy fat.

Super French Toast might need sour fruits, but sour fruits don't need Super French Toast - I reckon I'll find other occasions to grill figs like this again.

Grilled figs in pomegranate syrup
(very slightly adapted from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

1/3 cup pomegranate molasses
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/3 cup brown sugar
pinch of salt
1 1/2 tablespoons water
12 ripe figs, cut in half lengthways
~8 stems fresh thyme
rind of 1-2 oranges, finely shredded

150g mascarpone
150g Greek yoghurt
1 1/2 tablespoons icing sugar

In a medium-large bowl, whisk together the pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, one third of the brown sugar, the salt and the water. Once the sugar is dissolved, toss through the figs, thyme and orange rind. Allow the mixture to rest and macerate for 30 minutes.

Place the mascarpone and yoghurt in a small bowl and sift over the icing sugar. Whisk it all together until smooth, and then refrigerate the mixture until serving time.

Pick the figs out of the bowl one-by-one and place them cut-side-up in a medium-large baking dish (reserve the marinade that remains in the bottom of the bowl). Sprinkle the remaining brown sugar over the figs and then place them under a hot grill. Grill them until the sugar has melted and the figs have softened. This may take around 10 minutes, but keep a close eye on them to ensure they don't burn!

Pour the marinade from the bowl of figs into a small saucepan. Bring it to the boil and simmer it until the sauce has reduced by half and 'has the consistency of runny honey'. Pick out the whole thyme sprigs.

To serve place the figs on individual plates, pour over the pomegranate reduction and spoon on the yoghurt cream. Ottolenghi also garnishes the figs with fresh thyme leaves and finely grated orange rind.

Chocolate halva sundae

February 6-7, 2015

Our friend Erin promptly scheduled in a second Ottolenghi potluck one month after the first. I spent that month utterly occupied by my job, working through all three weekends, and by the time the potluck rolled around I was keen to break out and contribute one of the Plenty More desserts.

Predictably, it was the icecream recipe that took my fancy. Ottolenghi's halva icecream is rich with cream and egg yolks, with only a hint of sugar and tahini in the custard. It's fudgy chunks of halva folded through that provide most of the bitter-edged sweetness. The chocolate halva I bought from a local deli was crumbly and breaking it down into the directed half-centimetre cubes wasn't possible - I liked the texture it asserted in bigger blocks anyway.

Ottolenghi elevates the icecream to full-blown sundae with brandy-spiked ganache, peanuts and black sesame seeds. It's the best kind of over-the-top - alternate spoonfuls of smooth chocolate with salted crunchy peanut, rich custard or a stealthy chunk of halva elicited the odd uh!, ohhh and mmmm around the table. 

The quantities below made little more than a half-litre of icecream - enough for a small scoop each - but double the chocolate sauce we could reasonably pour over it. It's no longer my habit to make recipes so heavy with cream and eggs, and I'd be inclined to roll this one back if I made it again - I know a great vegan ganache recipe, and I reckon the icecream could bear a nut-and-coconut milk adaptation.

Chocolate halva sundae
(a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

ice cream
250mL cream
350mL milk
1 vanilla pod
2 egg yolks
40g caster sugar
30g tahini
100g sesame halva, finely diced

chocolate sauce
150mL cream
80g dark chocolate chips
1 teaspoon brandy

60g roasted salted peanuts
1 teaspoon black sesame seeds

Place the cream and milk in a small saucepan. Slice the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape the seeds into the saucepan; place the pods in the saucepan too. Heat everything in the saucepan until it's just starting to boil, then take it off the heat.

In a small bowl, beat together the egg yolks and the sugar. Whisk a little of the hot cream mixture into the eggs, then a little more, and then finally pour the egg mixture into the saucepan and return it all to a medium heat. Continue to stir and cook the custard until it's thickened slightly. Take it off the heat and whisk in the tahini until it's a smooth as you can manage - I found some little oil flecks in mine that just wouldn't go away. Refrigerate the custard until it's completely chilled, preferably overnight.

Strain the vanilla pods out of the custard and reserve them for other uses. Pour the custard into an icecream maker and churn it according to the manufacturer's instructions. Gently fold in the chopped halva and freeze the icecream in a plastic container.

Take the icecream out of the freezer to soften 10-15 minutes before you plan to serve it. Make the chocolate sauce by bringing the cream to a gentle boil in a small saucepan. Turn off the heat and whisk in the chocolate chips and the brandy.

Construct the sundaes by serving modest icecream scoops, topped with chocolate sauce then sprinkled with peanuts and sesame seeds.

Apricot, walnut & lavender cake

February 1-2, 2015

Cindy spent most of January up in the Alpine National Park working like crazy and barely sleeping while I lived a life of leisure back in Melbourne. So it seemed only fair that I welcomed her return home with some sort of cake-ish reward. I had the perfect cake in mind – fellow potluckers had presented a stunning apricot-covered cake at our recent Plenty More-themed dinner and I decided I’d try to replicate their achievement despite its seeming complexity. What’s the worst that could happen? If the cake was a complete disaster I could just scoff down the wreckage and make another weird ketchup cake to replace it.

For all its fanciness, the recipe wasn’t actually that complicated – there was a bit of faffing around grinding up nuts, zesting lemons and beating eggs, but the basic processes were all well within my non-baking skill set. The biggest difficulty was locating some lavender – our plant wasn’t flowering and none of Brunswick’s fancy food purveyors seemed to sell it, so I was reduced to wandering the backstreets and ‘foraging’ some flowers from someone’s front garden. Thanks anonymous Barkly Street benefactor!

The end result: a qualified success. This cake is super delicious with the sweet, juicy apricots really coming into their own. The downside is that the apricot juice soggifies (a technical term) the top of the cake a bit - it definitely needs the full 70-80 minutes in the oven and could probably handle longer if you covered the top to avoid burning anything. I gave it about 75 minutes and the mix was still a little bit underdone – it didn’t really diminish its deliciousness, but it made slicing it up a bit tricky. Still – I was pretty thrilled to be able to present this fruity, floral delight to Cindy on her return from three weeks of exhausting work. We’ll definitely make it again – at least if we can think of a non-vegan non-coeliac audience to appreciate it (or maybe we should try to veganise it!?).

Apricot, walnut & lavender cake
(based on a recipe from Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

185g unsalted butter, diced
2 tablespoons peanut oil (the original recipe wanted walnut oil, but we didn't have any)
220g caster sugar
120g almond meal
4 eggs, beaten
120g walnuts, blitzed to a coarse powder in a food processor
90g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of 1 lemon, grated
600g apricots, halved and pitted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-2 teaspoons lavender, chopped finely

icing
50g icing sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Lightly grease a 25cm spring-form cake tin (if you're using a regular tin you probably want to line it with baking paper).

Beat the butter, oil, sugar and almond meal in an electric mixer until the mixture is combined and is light and fluffy. Add the eggs in slowly, beating as you go until they're incorporated. Fold in the walnuts, flour, vanilla, lemon zest, salt and half of your lavender.

Pour the cake mix into the tin and smooth out the top. Arrange the apricot halves on top, skin side down as tightly packed as you can squeeze them in. Bake in the over for 70-80 minutes - it's a delicate balance between the top burning and the cake cooking through, you can cover it with foil if it gets too brown.

While the cake's in the oven whisk together the icing sugar and lemon juice until you get a smooth pourable consistency. Once the cake is cooked, spread the icing on top (a brush works well) and sprinkle over the remaining lavender. Leave the cake to cool and then feast.

Broccolini & edamame salad with curry leaves & coconut

January 10, 2015

One of our friends had a brainwave recently - why not have an Ottolengh-themed potluck? She noticed that most of her friends had wound up with a copy of  Plenty More over the Christmas period, so she invited a bunch of us over with dishes in tow, so we could all sample widely from our new book. It was a cracking success - there was a stunning sweetcorn slaw, a gorgeous artichoke, mozzarella and candied lemon dish, some slightly disappointing spicy turnips and simple but effective green beans with freekeh. Plus the most beautiful cake I think I've ever seen - a lavender, apricot and walnut concoction that was mind-blowingly good (spoilers: this cake will be turning up here before too long!). We didn't get a very good shot of the whole meal, so multiply this blurry phone photo by about a million to get a sense of how spectacular it was.

We added a typical Ottolenghi salad to the mix - a combination of green veggies with the pizzazz coming from some curry leaves and grated, fresh coconut. Like any Ottolenghi recipe, there's a bit going on. The first (and scariest) step is to crack the coconut - youtube is your friend here. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to break it open, and then a bit trickier to actually dig the flesh off the shell. It's totally worth it though - the fresh coconut kicked this up from a good dish to something really memorable. After that you've just got to juggle your blanching and your frying and everything comes together. The green veggies are just barely blanched so that they maintain their crunch and flavour and the curry leaves, coriander, mustard seeds and lime give a tangy, complex flavour to it all. This was a real success story and a Plenty More recipe we'll return to again in the future.

Broccolini & edamame salad with curry leaves & coconut
(based on a recipe from Ottolenghi's Plenty More)

400g broccolini, trimmed (the original recipe uses sprouting broccoli, but broccolini works fine)
220g green beans, trimmed
200g podded edamame beans (we used frozen ones picked up at our local Asian grocer)
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 brown onion, diced
1 tablespoon black mustard seeds
30 curry leaves
3 whole dried chillies
zest and juice of 1 lime
10g coriander leaves
the flesh from 1 coconut, coarsely grated
salt

Bring a large pot of water to the boil and throw in the broccoli and beans, blanching for about 2 minutes before throwing in the edamame beans. After another two minutes kill the heat - you want everything to be cooked but still with some crispness. Scoop out the veggies, put them in a colander and freshen them up with cold water. Drain them, pat them dry and pop them in a big mixing bowl and mix with a generous sprinkle of salt.

Heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil in a frying pan. Throw in the onion with 1/4 teaspoon of salt and stir-fry for 5 minutes, until it's softened. Throw in the black mustard seeds and wait for them to pop. Add in the curry leaves, lime zest and dry chillies. Stir fry for another couple of minutes and then pour the mix over the vegetables. Stir everything up and leave it to combine for a while, at least 10 minutes.

When you're about to serve it up, gently stir in the lime juice, coriander and coconut.

Sweet potatoes with orange bitters

December 25, 2014

We hosted a small Christmas gathering at our place this year - just us and a handful of family members picnicking in the park. Even with just a small group, we figured Christmas was the perfect excuse to delve further into Plenty More - Ottolenghi's recipes are Christmas staples around here, so we were excited to try a few new ones. 

We couldn't go past a couple of pretty classic Ottolenghi-style salads - a mango and curried chickpea salad (bottom of the picture above) and a parsley, lemon, cannellini bean and quinoa salad (top left). The quinoa salad was actually surprisingly straightforward for Ottolenghi - the usual array of shredded herbs (parsley and mint in this case, plus some coriander I threw in by mistake!), a bit of quinoa, some beans, lemon and a few spices - it's really simple and pretty effective. 

The curried chickpea salad took a bit more work, even with the shortcuts we used (tinned chickpeas and pre-ground spices rather than soaked chickpeas and roasting and grinding our own). You've got onion to fry, cauliflower to blanch and fry and a whole lot of mango to slice up. The pay-off is worth it though - this is an excellent mix of sweet mango, spicy curry flavours and some nice charred cauliflower chunks (plus plenty of greens for freshness). We'll definitely be making this again.

Our centrepiece though was the most time-consuming dish of the lot - roasted sweet potatoes with orange bitters (recipe below). It's actually not a lot of work, just lots of chopping and then an hour of roasting, with regular stops to stir things together. It's a phenomenally good dish - the glaze that you roast the potatoes in is a mix of sweet and bitter and it caramelises as it roasts, leaving the potatoes sticky and loaded with flavour. Throw in the infusion of deliciousness from the roasted garlic, sage and thyme and you've got a classic veggie dish that's destined to impress. The goats cheese in the recipe can be omitted without really diminishing the dish, so it's easily adapted for vegans.

We had a lovely Christmas lunch - a few nibblies, some wine, sunshine and these three dishes is a winning combination, especially when followed up with a batch of these cream cheese brownies that Cindy whipped up for us. We've made our way through a lot of Ottolenghi recipes over the years, but he keeps coming up with brilliant dishes and will remain a regular Christmas visitor at our place.

Sweet potatoes with orange bitters
(adapted very slightly from Ottolenghi's new book Plenty More)

350ml orange juice (the recipe calls for freshly squeezed, but we had some decent bottled juice that worked fine)

80g brown sugar

60ml red wine vinegar

60ml Agnostura bitters

2 tablespoons olive oil

1.5kg of sweet potatoes, unpeeled (about 4)

2 red chillies, slit open longways

4 stems of sage

10 sprigs of thyme

2 heads garlic

100g goats cheese, broken into pieces

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C.

Slice the sweet potato into wedges, about 3cm wide and 15cm long. 

Combine the orange juice, vinegar and sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and keep it at a low simmer for about 20 minutes - you want the liquid to have thickened up and reduced by about half. When it's done, take it off the heat and add in the olive oil, bitters and a teaspoon or two of salt.

Put the sweet potatoes in a large bowl, along with the garlic, chilli and herbs. Pour over the sauce and toss everything together so that it all gets well coated. Lay the mixture out in two lightly oiled baking trays - you want to try to get it all in a single layer, but it's not critical if things get a bit too crowded (see our pictures above).

Roast for an hour, taking the pans out every 15 minutes to shuffle the potatoes around and make sure they're coated in the liquid. Ours dried out by the 45 minute mark so we added an extra splash of orange juice to each pan. 

Remove from the oven and let them cool slightly. Serve warm or at room temperature, dotted with the goats cheese and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Lentils, radicchio & walnuts with Manuka honey

December 13, 2014

Cindy headed off to the country for work over the weekend, leaving me at home with our newly purchased Christmas present to ourselves: Yotam Ottolenghi's new cookbook Plenty More. I couldn't resist a flick through, which inevitably led directly to a more attentive reading, which progressed directly to dinner plans for Saturday night. 

I started with one of the simpler dishes in the book - a lentil-y salad, typically loaded with herbs and fancy flavours, including the ludicrously expensive Manuka honey that I'd bought by mistake months ago. There are a handful of different components to put together - the lentils, the walnuts and the radicchio all get cooked separately - but nothing is very taxing and it's all simply stirred together at the end. It's the usual flavour riot - the dill and radicchio combining into something quite bitter, offset by the sweetness of the honey that's infused in the lentils and the crunchy walnuts. It's an excellent dish - even better as leftovers the day after when the flavours have had more time to soak together. Like Plenty before it, Plenty More is looking like it's going to get some serious action around here.

Lentils, radicchio & walnuts with Manuka honey
(adapted very slightly from Ottolenghi's new book Plenty More)

200g puy lentils
2 bay leaves
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
80g Manuka honey
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 small raddichio, roughly chopped
100g walnuts
80g pecorino cheese
20g basil, roughly chopped
20g dill, roughly chopped
20g parsley, roughly shopped
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 170°C.

Put the lentils and the bay leaves in a medium saucepan, cover with plenty of water and bring to the boil. Get it on a low simmer and cook for about 20 minutes, until the lentils are tender. Drain, pick out the bay leaves and return to the saucepan.

Whisk together the red wine vinegar, half the honey, half the olive oil, a teaspoon of salt and some pepper. Stir this dressing into the warm lentils and leave it all to cool.

Mix together the rest of the honey, the chilli flakes, turmeric and a few shakes of salt with a teaspoon of water, creating a thick paste. Toss the walnuts through the paste, coating them.

Spread the walnuts out on a lined baking tray and roast for about 20 minutes, until crunchy.

Add the remaining olive oil into a frying pan on high heat. Quickly stir-fry the radicchio - you want to cook it for no more than a couple of minutes. Take it off the heat and stir it together with the lentil and walnut mixes, the pecorino and the herbs. Season with salt and pepper and serve.