Courgette, artichoke and spelt salad
Just a quick post today with a recipe for a nice spelt salad, which is what I just ate for my lunch. Spelt is lovely - chewy, versatile and much faster to cook than barley. I know barley is cheaper, but I resent standing around boiling it for the entire evening. I have some very important telly-watching to do.
Ingredients
4 baby courgettes (trimmed and sliced in half lengthways)
A handful of pinenuts (toasted)
A handful of spelt
A few semi-dried tomatoes
5 artichoke hearts
1/2 lemon
Extra virgin olive oil
A handful of basil leaves
Sea salt and black pepper
Recipe
If you’re using artichoke hearts from a jar, rinse the oil and herbs off first as these can be a bit dull tasting. It’s better to soak them in your own dressing as I think artichokes really work best with a bit of a sharp flavour. In a bowl, mix your artichokes with a bit of extra virgin olive oil, some salt and pepper and the juice of half a lemon (a bit of garlic is good here too). If your hearts are big enough, slice them lengthways into smaller pieces so they’ll go a bit further. Leave them to sit in the dressing whilst you prepare the rest of your salad.
Boil your spelt for about 15-20 minutes then rinse in cold water. Leave to stand in a sieve for a while.
Place your courgettes in a griddle pan with a little oil and heat until you have lovely stripes across them. Turn them over to cook the skin side then remove from the heat.
When all of your ingredients are cool, in a bowl mix together the spelt, the courgettes, the artichokes (save the dressing though) and the semi-dried tomatoes.
For the dressing, finely chop your basil and add it to the olive oil and lemon mixture that you had your artichokes in. Season a little more if needed, them mix into the salad. Finally add your toasted pine nuts and mix.
If you’re having this for tea instead of lunch, serve with some torn up mozzarella and some crusty bread and pretend you’re somewhere sunnier than you are.
(the salad when it was freshly made last night, struggling not to be eaten)
Purple Asparagus
It’s been a funny year for asparagus. Bad weather delayed the British season by two weeks, which had me tearing my hair out back at the start of May. Happily though, this means that the season is only just ending and you can still grab a bunch if you’re quick. Most shops are starting to run out of it now, but yesterday I hunted some down in M&S - a British purple variety, which I’d never seen before.
Apparently, purple asparagus is higher in sugar and lower in fibre than the green or white stuff - but it looked pretty, so I bought it. Only the skin is purple, so I shaved mine down to get a nice contrast. Asparagus doesn’t normally need to be shaved, but it helps if you’ve got a particular woody batch.
Disappointingly, the purple hue washed out in the boil a little, even though I like to almost undercook my asparagus. It wasn’t a sweet as I expected either, but it was fresh and tasty. I put my spears with an avocado salad and silently sobbed my way through mouthfuls. I’ll miss you British Asparagus season.
Courgette, quinoa and samphire salad
Today’s lunch was supposed to be this Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall salad, but I added samphire because I still had half a pack, and basil because I love it too much. To be honest, I didn’t really follow the recipe much at all (I made it without butter), but that’s ok - it was really tasty and makes for a pretty picture.
Potato, samphire, baby spinach and pine nut salad
This was my lunch today (yes, I remembered to make something!) It is a variation on an Ottolenghi recipe, made with what I had in, rather than what the ingredients are supposed to be, and was obviously not warm. It was pretty tasty though, and I’ve got enough for tomorrow too.
I’m finding it hard to find good recipes for samphire that don’t involve fish, so if you know of any send them my way.
Quinoa, breakfast radish and broad bean salad
At the start of the week I always intend to take my own lunch to work, but by Wednesday (probably Tuesday if I’m honest) I’ve given up and have resorted to stuffing my face at my desk with M&S hummus and pitta breads. This is one of my more successful lunch attempts. It’s an Ottolenghi recipe from Plenty (I forgot the avocado) and was pretty good. I used lime instead of lemon (all I had in), but it worked well with the cumin. Wish me luck this week!
