A quick and easy dinner based on something seen in Olive magazine: red onion, diced courgette and carrots fried in oil flavoured with cumin and paprika. Once they’ve softened a little, a tin of tomatoes and a little veg stock is added then left to simmer until all the veg is tender.
I’ve topped it here with some sliced flour tortillas dry fried until crisp.
I’d never had a chance to try quinoa; the grain-like crop so prized by the Incas. A recipe presented itself so I tried it. I roasted some tomatoes in the oven until bursting, meanwhile I simmered some quinoa in water. Then I combined all of it with some sliced red onion and topped with grilled halloumi and fresh parsley.
The recipe was sound but the quinoa was a soggy disappointment. It was like cous cous but not as interesting.
My wife and I adore this salad. I’m not sure when we first had it but I strongly recall dining on this one sun-drenched afternoon on the shores of Lake Como. I suspect every time thereafter I’m trying to recapture that little bit of sunshine.
As with many of my favourites, it celebrates and unites it’s ingredients, sumultaneously making the most of them and allowing each to sing. It can’t really be called a recipe, it’s just sliced tomatoes (room-temperature), torn up mozzarella, basil leaves, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. But it’s the choice of components that makes this; you’ve got to have the ripest, juiciest tomatoes; the milkiest, most tender mozzarella; peppery basil; and sweet-sharp vinegar. For me it’s the vinegar that completes the dish. The one I tend to use is frighteningly expensive, but pours like syrup and tastes divine.
No matter what time of year it is, this is summer.
My presentation’s not quite there, but if you squint you might recognise this as the critic-pleasing dish from the Pixar film Ratatouille. That’s technically what this recipe is, but this is it as reinvented by the chef-genius Thomas Keller, who christened it confit byaldi. Spoilers ahoy, but in a scene that should make Heston applaud, as the grouchy critic chomps down he is transported to his mother’s cooking of his childhood. Evoking such memory and inspiration really makes me smile when it comes to cooking. This is a really classy way of improving a truly peasant dish.
