A perfect combination, and perfect too with the lentil salad I mentioned last week.
Some recommend wrapping beetroot in foil and baking it. In my limited experience, it remains moister if, after washing it, you bake it in a shallow bath of boiling water in an oven dish, covered with foil. I gave my medium-sized beetroot an hour at gas mark 6/200C.
Peel it, slice it, and top with the cheese, crumbled.
100g Puy lentils
1 onion, peeled, halved through the root
1 carrot, peeled, cut into chunks
1 clove garlic
10 cherry tomatoes
1dstsp balsamic vinegar
Salt, pepper
1/2tsp Dijon mustard
2tbsp olive oil
8 sundried tomatoes, cut into small pieces
Rinse the lentils. Put them in a pan, cover with cold water with a few cms to spare, throw in the onion, carrot and garlic (they will flavour the lentils a little, one assumes), bring to the boil, and simmer, partly covered. You want them softened but not mushy - it may take 20 to 40 minutes. The water may need topping up from time to time.
Roll the tomatoes in a little oil, and bake on a baking sheet at gas mark 6/200C for about 25 minutes. It doesn't matter if they burst.
Drain the lentils. Fish out the garlic, squeeze it from its skin, and mash it into the vinegar in a bowl. Stir in salt and pepper and mustard; then whisk in the oil.
Return to the sieve, discard the onion and carrot pieces, tip the lentils into the vinaigrette, and stir. Stir in the sundried and roasted cherry tomatoes. Some herbs would be good, too.
This frittata, cooked in a 28cm pan, contains only three eggs - because three were all I had. It means that you don't necessarily get a coherent mass of omelette to slice and lift on to plates, but in other respects works well - vegetables with an eggy accompaniment.
New potatoes, scrubbed and sliced - enough to form a layer in the pan
Olive oil
1 large red pepper, deseeded, cut into fork-sized pieces
120g mushrooms, sliced
Large knob butter
3 eggs, lightly beaten
120g hard cheese, such as Gruyere, grated
Drop the potatoes into a pan of lightly salted water, and simmer until tender. Drain.
Warm about a tbsp of olive oil in another pan, and add the peppers, frying on a low to medium heat and adjusting the flame if the oil threatens to burn. After about five minutes, add the mushrooms, with some salt, and cook until all the water they have disgorged has evaporated. Turn up the heat, if necessary, to speed this process.
Melt the butter in a heavy frying pan over a gentle heat. Pour in the eggs, and tip in the potatoes, peppers and mushrooms, spreading them out. Scatter the cheese over the top.
Cook gently until the egg shows signs of setting. Put the pan under a low grill to melt the cheese.
This is a very easy lunch. It consists of a tin of tuna, drained; a tin of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed; a large handful of Crespo, "Greek-style" olives, stoned; a tbsp of mayonnaise; and a dstsp of Encona hot pepper sauce. Parsley would have been a good addition. You need the olives not only for their tang, but to relieve the beigeness of the other ingredients.
I can find a salad of mixed leaves, no matter how varied they are and no matter how flavoursome the dressing, rather drab to eat. There is a monotonous, leafy chewiness to it. Mixing in a soft or softish cheese, though, transforms it into something much more beguiling. Goats cheeses work particularly well. Cream cheese works fine too.
The salad above would have been even nicer with some toasted pine nuts. As it was, it contained an organic salad bag, one dstsp of white wine vinegar, a little salt, two dstsps of olive oil (you don't need more, because of the creaminess of the cheese), and about 150g of Philadelphia. As you toss the salad, the cheese breaks up and coats the leaves.
This has been the best year for Jersey Royals I can remember in a long time. The potatoes are earthily flavoursome, and have a pleasing, waxy consistency. Buy them while you can. In a few weeks, many greengrocers will no longer have them, as the supermarkets hog the supplies.
Last night, we had chicken pieces roasted on a bed of sliced Jerseys, with rosemary, a whole head of garlic, and a quartered lemon. I sliced the Jerseys lengthways, about 50mm thick, and put them into a bowl of water. I rubbed them gently, to try to get rid of as much surface starch as possible. Even then, they can stick to the roasting tin; but it would be a shame to boil them first, losing more flavour.
I tossed the potatoes with olive oil, layered them in the tin, and scattered the rosemary, a whole head of garlic cloves, and the quartered lemon on top. (I did not squeeze the lemon - the acidity would have hindered the softening of the potatoes.) I rubbed a little oil over the chicken pieces, salted them, and placed them on top. I placed the tin in the oven for an hour and a quarter, turning the potatoes half way through.
We ate it with a garlic mayonnaise. Rather than use pungent, raw garlic, I removed one of the roasted cloves from the oven, and mashed that with my egg yolk and mustard.
I once believed that the way to preserve tenderness in meat was not, as many people believed, to surround it in water or steam, but to roast it at a low temperature. I have since discovered that the temperature of my oven, at its lowest setting, is higher than the temperature inside a heavy casserole placed in the oven. This lamb fell off the bone. Serves 4.
1 half-shoulder of lamb
1tbsp sunflower oil
2tbsp white wine (or red wine) vinegar
1 head of garlic, separated into cloves
1 large onion, cut into chunks
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into chunks
1 sprig rosemary
2 bay leaves
In a heavy casserole, warm the oil over a medium heat. Put in the lamb, salted, browning it on all the sides it will rest on. The pan will get very hot; the trick is to turn down the heat if the oil threatens to burn, while still getting the meat to brown.
Pour in the vinegar, which may splutter and evaporate almost immediately. Tip in the garlic, onion, carrot, and herbs. Cover, and place in a gas mark S/130C oven, for three and a half to four hours.
Check on the progress from time to time. You want a very gentle simmer, and you may find that this low heat does not achieve it, at least at first. My smaller Le Creuset pan will respond to gas mark S; my larger one takes ages to warm up, and may require a gas mark 2/150C setting to achieve the same effect. You have to learn how your oven and equipment behave through trial and error.
Remove the lamb from the casserole on to a chopping board. Tip the vegetables and sauce, of which there may be a fair amount, through a sieve into a saucepan. Return the lamb to the casserole, cover it again, and return it to the oven. Squeeze the garlic from the husks into the sauce; discard the other vegetables. Simmer the sauce until you have a consistency and concentration of flavour you like. Check the seasoning.
