Infused Oil –Chili, thyme & sage, garlic

The simplest way to dress pasta or a salad is to have a ready store of infused oils. All you need is good quality olive or safflower oil (olive lasts 1 month, safflower lasts 2). A choice of ‘aromatics’ and a little warmth. Start with 3 small glass bottles that hold 1 cup of oil. Crush 8 cloves of garlic. ‘Flower’ about 8 red chillies. Find some crisp, dry thyme and sage (blast it with your hair dryer for a minute to dry properly). Now place each of the above in individual jars. Warm oil gently (not hot) and pour into each jar. Cover. Keep at room temperature or in the sun for about ¾ days. Then refrigerate.

Banh Xeo - Vietnamese Rice Pancakes (with respect to Yotam Ottolenghi)

Yotam Ottolenghi used to do a column called the New Vegetarian in the Guardian. His recipes are/were always a fantastic combination of the familiar (easy ingredients, non-fussy preparation procedures) and the surprising (mushrooms with cinnamon or apples with fennel). 

He now has a website www.ottolenghi.co.uk, recipe books and a blog – just reading through them make you hungry and inspire a trip to the kitchen. Here’s one of my favourite recipes from his column, slightly tweaked to accommodate the season.

Pancake Batter:

1 cup rice flour

Pinch turmeric

1 egg

½ tsp salt

3 cups thin coconut milk

For the sauce:

Sesame oil – 1 tablespoon

Brown sugar – 1 tablespoon

Rice wine – 1 tsp

Soy sauce – 1 tbsp

Ginger-garlic paste – 1tsp

Chili – to taste

Mix all ingredients to make a sauce and let stand to help flavours meld.

For the filling

Carrot - shredded

Mooli - shredded

2 Spring onion – chopped

1 green, 1 fresh red chilli – de-seeded and chopped

Sliced asparagus, beansprouts (blanched in boiling water)

Shiitake mushrooms (soaked in hot, soy water, drained and sliced thinly)

Fresh Basil Leaves

Pancakes:

Make batter by whipping all the ingredients together. Let the batter stand for at least 30 minutes. Check that the batter is quite thin and runny – you want a light, lacy sort of pancake. Heat a pan and with a halved potato or a tissue, grease it lightly with sesame oil. When the pan is quite hot, pour in a measure of batter and swirl it around. When the pancake edges start to leave the pan, give the pan a little shake to loosen the pancake and then flip (mid-air if no-one is looking). Serve folded around the vegetables and dress with the sauce. It’s delicious! 

Toasted-oat & wheat-flour pancakes

Ingredients:

1 cup of raw oats gently toasted till lightly brown

1 cup of wheat flour (atta or ½ and 1/3 with nachani flour)

2 eggs

1 cup of skimmed milk

Cool water

1 tsp salt

Method:

Mix the flour, the oats, salt and skimmed milk well and taste for salt. Now beat in the eggs and whisk till smooth. This batter does work better slightly thick, but still runny enough to move – you get a lovely textured pancake with bite and its quite filling so it’s brunch-worthy. 

Heat a non-stick pan and brush with olive oil. When it’s quite hot, pour batter into the pan and gently swirl around until the mixture covers the bottom of the pan. Let the bottom of the pancake ‘seal’ and then lower the temperature until the top of the pancake begins to look like its cooking – about 2 minutes for the first and then quicker for subsequent pancakes. Tilt the pan. If the pancake shifts easily, you’ll know it's ready to be flipped, cooked for 30 seconds on the under side and serve.

Fold 'em around.... You can stuff these pancakes with ham & cheese, nutella and banana, marmalade and gouda, homemade applesauce or anything you want depending on what time it is and what you have in your fridge. These are rolled around beautiful smoked salmon, cream cheese and parsley and garnished with long, garlicky chives. 

Roast Chicken and Balsamic Sun-dried Tomatoes Sandwich Spread

If there is only one culinary accomplishment you aim for, let it be to convince the family that sandwiches are a plausible, substantial meal. If you go back in time (before Subway), sandwiches were regarded as a snack, or ‘picnic’ food – a.k.a. not a real meal and nothing that ‘standing kho-kho’, motion sickness and mild sunstroke could send into “repeat”.
 

But we’ve come a long way from the sliced cheese, tomato and white bread constructs (admittedly, a beautiful, nostalgic flavour forever sweetened in my mind with the taste of slightly warm apple juice and the smell of ‘the bus’). Now, within ½ km of where I live, there are at least three, non-franchise sandwich places where you can build-your-own proscuitto, brie and arugula on multi-grain bread, tuna salad on rye or buy bagels laden with goat-cheese and honey.

Some days, for friends, family or fuss-pot kids, we bring the toaster into the hall, butter, olive oil, meats, cheeses, olives, leaves, sliced tomatoes, onions…. A slice of ham here, a smudge of mustard there, everyone constructs their own dinner and perhaps reminded of picnics, the mood invariably turns celebratory and there is always much laughter at the table.

 Ingredients for Balsamic Sun-Dried Tomatoes 

½ kilo of tomatoes, sliced into 1 cm wedges *

4 pods of garlic

4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon Rosemary or parsley chopped

½ tsp of salt

 *(I used 250 gms of orange cherry tomatoes which I bruised, 2 normal, red tomatoes and about ½ a red pepper that I found skulking in the back of my vegetable drawer)

Method: 

In a bowl, stir all the ingredients around except the tomatoes and the salt. Now brush the bottom of an oven-proof tray with olive oil (if you’re using a regular oven and metal tray, you may want to put a sheet of foil down). Arrange the wedges of tomato so that they’re not really overlapping and pour the oil, vinegar, herb, garlic mix over evenly. Sprinkle some salt.

Put the tray into a warm oven – (I’m afraid I’m rubbish at telling you what temperature it should be. When my oven was working, I’d put it on 1 – that’s less than 100 degrees) and keep the tomatoes gently de-hydrating in the oven for about 5 hours.

For this recipe, I put the tomatoes in the microwave oven on the grill setting and left it there for 1 hour. They were far from sun-dried but had a deliciously sweet-roasted-slightly charred flavour to them.

For the Spread:

Take equal parts sun-dried tomatoes and plain roast chicken, about half a part of black olives and a big bunch of fresh parsley and puree roughly. You will get a gorgeous mix of colours – red, black, green, gold that has the texture of country-style pate and some of the smokiness as well. Now spread on toast or crackers with a simple leafy salad on the side.

Mango Pannacotta

Ingredients

4 teaspoons powdered gelatin


1/4 cup cold water


2 cups cream


1/4 cup sugar

1 cup whole milk 


1 pod of vanilla, split and scraped*


Pinch salt


3 ripe mangoes*

This is a sexy but summery version of the traditional pannacotta made almost blushingly sensuous with helpings of tropical fruit. 

Soften the gelatin in the water for about 5 minutes. Pour the cream into a heavy bottomed saucepan, add the sugar and the vanilla bean and on a low simmer, gently warm the through stirring to help the sugar dissolve and the vanilla to release its aromas. Turn the heat off. Now add the milk and the salt and whisk for another minute. Leave it to cool for about 10 minutes.

Peel two mangoes and cube the flesh into chunks. Place at the bottom of 6 ramekins, small bowls or even clear wine glasses (be careful the mixture is not too hot for the wine glasses though). Now ladle the panna cotta mixture over the mango. Leave in the fridge to chill for about 4 hours or until firm. Garnish with slices of the last mango.

* This recipe works with other fleshy fruit – peaches, apricots, fruit preserves and on its own. You can try substituting vanilla with good quality saffron. Not too much though. A nice variation is to replace one cup of milk with one cup of fruit yoghurt. Skip the vanilla then because its subtlety will be lost in the boisterous fruit yoghurt flavours.