Nectarine Frangipane Tart, with my tips for making feather-light pastry

Every shelf in my local supermarket is brimming with South African summer fruits, and this week the loveliest of them all are plump nectarines in glorious sunset colours. They're delicious eaten raw, but equally good cooked in a rustic, fruity tart filled with a lightly brandied frangipane.

I get hot under the collar when someone nicks a recipe off this site without asking (and you won't believe how often this happens) so I feel a bit guilty about sharing a brilliant and reliable recipe that I personally nicked off someone else 25 years ago.

When I say 'nicked', I mean that I read it in a cook book, tried it, and liked it so much that I typed out the recipe (using an actual typewriter, as we did in those days) and stuck it in my recipe file. I must have made this thirty or forty times over the past two decades, using apples, pears, apricots and plums, and it comes close to what I regard as a perfect recipe. I'm sorry now that I didn't make a note of whose recipe it was, because I would like to shake that person firmly by the hand. (Nowadays, when I write down a recipe, I always make a note of whose recipe it is, and what book it came from.)

In its original form, this was a recipe for (and I recorded at least this part of the recipe) a Normandy Apple Tart. This is a classic French recipe using a crisp pâte brisée (shortcrust pastry), a frangipane of almonds and eggs, and very thinly sliced apples.

Although at first glance this recipe may seem technically demanding - as does any recipe that calls for home-made pastry - it's actually very easy to make, provided that you follow the instructions to the letter.

Before I give you the recipe, here are my top tips and tricks for making light, short, good-looking pastry.

Pastry tips and tricks

1. Use a food processor fitted with a metal blade, if you have one, and forget all this nonsense about using your fingertips. Food-processor pastry produces excellent results because it doesn't have a chance to heat up, is not touched by warm fingers, and is mixed in a jiffy. But don't over-process the pastry.

2. Use very cold butter. A good tip is to place your block of butter in the freezer for an hour or so before you make your pastry, and then grate it onto a pre-chilled plate.

3. Add just enough iced water to bring the mixture together into a crumbly ball, and let the ball turn round no more than six times in the food processor.

4. Don't overwork your pastry. Don't knead it, bash it, pound it or stretch it. The very most you should handle it is to push it together with your fingertips and then pat it out into a little circle. Dip your fingertips in iced water first.

5. Do rest your pastry, covered, for at least half an hour in the fridge.

6. Roll (and you are going to love me for this tip, which comes from Rachel Allen) your pastry out between two sheets of clingfilm. If the clingfilm sheets are too narrow, join several pieces together

7. Use light but firm rolling motions, in all directions. What you want is a smooth, even sheet about 3mm deep, and about 5 cm larger than the size of the tart pan.

8. Use a marble-sized ball of dough to press the pastry well into the corners.

9. Don't trim the edges, but allow them to drape over the sides of the pan; this prevents the pastry from shrinking at the edges. Trim the excess away with a knife when you've finished baking the tart.

10. Prick the base all over, using a fork, in about 40 places, before baking blind.

11. When baking blind, line the pastry with a sheet of proper baking paper (not foil or wax paper) and large lentils or ceramic baking beads. Avoid rice, as it inevitably spills and embeds itself in the pastry.

12. If you're adding a very wet filling (such as soggy apples) brush the bottom of the pastry with beaten egg before you blind-bake it.

13. Watch the tart like a hawk while it is cooking. If the edges are browning too quickly, cover them with narrow strips of foil.

Nectarine Frangipane Tart

For the pastry:
200 g flour
200 g cold butter
a pinch of salt
1 large egg yolk
2-3 T (30-45 ml) iced water

For the filling:
100 g softened butter
100 g caster sugar
1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk
2 tsp (10 ml) brandy
2 T (30 ml) flour
100 g ground almonds
½ tsp (2.5 ml) almond extract or essence
6 just-ripe nectarines, stoned and sliced

To finish:
caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180° C. First make the pastry. Put the flour, butter and salt into a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, then add the egg yolk. With the motor running, add the cold water in tiny trickles, until until the pastry just holds together. Remove from the processor, press together into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and place in the fridge to rest for half an hour.

Grease an 22 cm non-stick flan or pie pan. Place a long piece of cling film on your countertop. Put the cold pastry ball on top, and cover with another piece of clingfilm. Using a rolling pin, roll out the pastry into a rough circle about 5 cm bigger than your pan, and about 2-3 mm thick.

Peel off the top layer of cling film, wrap the pastry over your rolling pin, and centre it, pastry-side down, on the pie dish. Gently peel away the clingfilm and, using your fingertips and a ball of left-over pastry, lightly press the pastry into the dish. Allow the edges to drape over the sides of the dish.

Prick the base all over with a fork, cover with a piece of greaseproof paper and fill with lentils or baking beans. Bake blind for about 15 minutes, then remove the paper and beans and bake for a further 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Using a whisk or electric beater, cream together the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Combine the egg and egg yolk in a small bowl, and then add the egg, a little at a time, to the butter mixture. Add the brandy, flour, almonds and almond extract and stir well to combine.

Tip the frangipane into the cooled pastry case and smooth the top with a spatula. Arrange the nectarine slices in overlapping rows or circles on the filling, pressing them down slightly. Bake at 180° C for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven, sprinkle lightly with caster sugar, and bake for another 10 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown and the filling cooked through. Allow the tart to cool a little, then trim away the excess pastry with a knife.

Serve at room temperature, with whipped cream or vanilla icecream.

Makes one  22 cm tart.

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Buttermilk Cheesecake with a Fresh Strawberry Topping

This delicate fridge cheesecake is perfect for a light finish to a summer meal, with its creamy, barely-set filling and zingy topping of fresh strawberries. I made this cheesecake a few months ago, and have been itching to share it with you ever since, but I held it back because I created the recipe specially for the fourth issue of South Africa's ground-breaking digital food & wine magazine Crush! Online, which went live yesterday.  Now that the December edition of Crush! has been released into the wild, I feel I can let my little cheesecake out of its cage.

Buttermilk Cheesecake with a Strawberry Topping

I'm very tickled to have been invited by Michael Olivier, editor and owner of Crush!, to contribute five of my original recipes to his regular 'Which Wine? Which Food?' feature. Michael - whom I first met less than a year ago, at the first South African Food Blogger's Conference - is an esteemed and well-loved elder of  the Cape's buzzing food and wine community.

When I say 'elder', I don't mean some sorry old fart or has-been, but someone who has earned the genuine respect of  his peers - and his many younger protégés  - by spending decades honing his pen, his palate, his knowledge and his exceptional people skills.

I've used buttermilk in this recipe because I think it's a most under-used ingredient, and because I love its taste: cultured buttermilk is tart, with a slight sweetness, and has a nice creamy consistency. And - agree with me please - it has a delightful name.

 [Postscript: Try using fresh maas in this recipe!]

Use a knife dipped in boiling water to cut perfect slices of this cheesecake.

A challenge with an unbaked cheesecake like this one is getting it out of the tin in one beautiful piece. My method is to line the base of the pan with clingfilm, which allows you easily to loosen the crust. Use a microwaveable hot-pack, or a cloth dipped in boiling water, to warm the sides of the tin before you unmould it (see Cook's Notes, below).

You can use any seasonal fruit as a topping: this cake is very good with granadilla (passion fruit) or mango. Use the same ratio of fruit pulp to gelatine, as laid out in my recipe, below.

Buttermilk Cheesecake with a Fresh Strawberry Topping

For the biscuit crust:
one packet (200 g) Eet-Sum-Mor biscuits, or similar shortbread biscuits
80 g (80 ml) unsalted butter, softened or melted

For the filling:
⅓ cup (80 ml) water
4 tsp (20 ml) powdered gelatine
one x 250 g tub of cream cheese
1 cup (250 ml) cultured buttermilk or maas [amasi]
1 cup (250 ml) caster sugar
1 tsp (5 ml) pure vanilla extract
finely grated zest of a small lemon
1 cup (250 ml) cream

For the topping:
a punnet (about 250g) of fresh strawberries, hulled
2 Tbsp (30 ml) water
1 tsp (5 ml) powdered gelatine
lemon juice and caster sugar, to taste

Break up the biscuits and process them to fine crumbs in a food processor (or crush them with a rolling pin). Place in a bowl, add the soft or melted butter, and stir well to combine. Butter the base of a non-stick 24-cm springform cake tin, cover with clingfilm, and butter again. Tuck the edges of the clingfilm under the base, and place it in its ring. Press the biscuit mixture evenly onto the base of the tin and place in the fridge while you make the topping.

Put the water in a little heat-proof bowl and sprinkle the gelatine on top. Set aside for a few minutes to sponge. Place the bowl in a pot of simmering water (the water should come half-way up the sides) and stir occasionally as the gelatine melts. When the liquid is clear, remove the bowl and set aside to cool for a few minutes. Alternatively, you can melt the gelatine, in its bowl, in your microwave, but be sure to do this in 7-9 second bursts, on high.  Don't allow the gelatine to boil, or its setting properties may be affected.

Put the cream cheese and half the buttermilk into a large bowl and, using a whisk, beat until quite smooth. Beat in the remaining buttermilk, the caster sugar, the vanilla extract and the lemon zest, until you have a smooth mixture. Strain the warm gelatine into the bowl and mix well.  In a separate bowl, whisk the cream until it has formed thick, soft peaks.  Gently fold the cream into the cream cheese/buttermilk mixture. Pour the mixture over the crumb crust and refrigerate for 2-3 hours, or until firm.

Now make the topping. Sponge and melt the gelatine and water, as described above. Put the strawberries in a liquidiser, add a few tablespoons of caster sugar (depending on the sweetness of your strawberries) and blitz to a purée. Measure out a cup (250 ml) of this purée and to it add a few drops of lemon juice. Strain the warm gelatine into the purée, stir well and pour it evenly over the top of the cake. Refrigerate until set.

Warm the sides of the tin (as described below) and release the cake. Slide a palette knife between the crust and the clingfilm, turning the cake as you go, and then slide the cake onto a platter. Slice the cake using a knife dipped in hot water.

Makes one 24-cm cake

Cook's Notes

There are various methods of loosening a gelatine-set dessert from its mould. Professional chefs use a blowtorch, which is briefly flicked over the outside of the tin, but this is a risky business, as a few seconds too long can liquefy the outside of the cheesecake and, besides, it's useless if you're using a plastic jelly mould. A better way is to dip a kitchen cloth in boiling water, and press it to outside of the cold tin for a few seconds. But the best way of all, I've found, is to use a hot pack designed for soothing acheing muscles.

If you don't have a Happy Hugger, here's how to make one yourself. (I keep one of these in my kitchen drawer for the sole purpose of loosening jellies!). Steal a long cotton sock from someone's drawer. Fill it with rice or barley, and tie a firm knot in the open end. Place the sock in a microwave oven for 2-3 minutes, or until very warm to the touch. Press the hot pack around the edges of the tin, for 30 seconds at a time, moving it around the edges as necessary. At the same time, release the spring-form lever (or lift the cake ring)  in small increments.

 When you cut the cheesecake, use a hot knife (heated over a flame, or in a bowl of boiling water) for slicing. Print Friendly

My heaven on a plate: Profiteroles with a Double-Creamy Blue-Cheese Filling

Wicked, decadent and sinful hardly begin to describe these dreamy little puffs, which are so packed with calories that you might as well skip eating them and strap them directly to your thighs and bottom*. But hell, Christmas is coming, so why not go ahead and indulge? Besides - if you're in my frame of mind (and body) - there are going to be slim pickings indeed come January.

This recipe, which I finally wrestled to the floor last week after several failed attempts, is all wound up with my personal history as a devoted lover of food.

Let me explain. Do you remember something utterly delicious that you ate as a child or teenager; something that turned your knees to jelly and filled your eyes with tears? I had two such tasting epiphanies in my early years.

The second was when I tasted Boursin cheese with garlic on a trip to Paris when I was fifteen (but more about that in a future post). The first, also involving cheese, was a few years earlier, when I reached into the fridge and sunk my teeth into a little puffy ball filled with a chilled, creamy mixture that tasted, frankly, of heaven. I believe I might have given out a low whimper: there were choirs of angels, and beams of celestial light fell through the kitchen windows.

Okay, I exaggerate, but the memory of tasting those little beauties remains as clear as day.

I reached back into the fridge, and had another one. And another. And another. Within a few minutes, I'd demolished most of the savoury profiteroles my mother had bought for some special occasion. She was furious with me: 'How could you eat so many?' she asked. 'You might have left one or two for the rest of us!'

'I just couldn't help myself, Ma,' I told her, wiping the crumbs off my bulging cheeks, and that was the honest truth.

My mum hasn't any memory of this event, so she was not able to help when I asked her if she recalled what was in those little puffs. At that tender age, I didn't have a library of tastes to draw upon, so in recreating the recipe I've had to take a guess, using my more experienced adult palate.

And, do you know what? I believe that what I was tasting was either blue cheese, or camembert, or very likely both.

In my most recent attempts, I've tried a combination of creamy blue cheese and camembert, and I've also tried using Brie. The mixture tasted right, but the the filling was a little oily and stiff. So I've abandoned the camembert, and come up with a silken mixture of blue cheese, cream cheese and whipped cream that is as close as I think I'll ever get.

I presume that whoever created these intended them to be served at room temperature, with a crispy outer shell and a soft and fluffy filling. But, for me, these are perfect eaten cold, somewhat soggy on the outside, and straight from the fridge. With bulging cheeks.

As choux pastry is quite tricky to get right, I've given detailed instructions below. Please measure the ingredients exactly (and see Cook's Notes, below).

For best results, a good-quality creamy blue cheese and a thick, full-fat cream cheese are essential. I used Lancewood's lovely plain cream cheese, and a Simonsberg creamy blue.




Profiteroles with a Double-Creamy Blue-Cheese Filling

For the profiteroles:
1 cup (250 ml) cake flour
a large pinch of salt
125 g salted butter (this is a quarter of a 500-gram block of butter)
1 cup (250 ml) water
4 extra-large free range eggs

For the filling:
130 g creamy blue cheese
1 cup (250 ml) whipping [single] cream
one tub (240 g) full-fat cream cheese, at room temperature
freshly milled black pepper

First make the profiteroles.

Preheat the oven to 180º C. Line a baking sheet with a piece of greaseproof paper. Sift the flour and salt into a little bowl, or onto a sheet of paper. Put the butter and the water into a large saucepan and set over a brisk heat. When the mixture begins to boil rapidly, remove the pan from the heat. Immediately tip the sifted flour and salt, all in one go, into the butter/water mixture. Stir energetically with a wooden spoon, and return to the heat. Turn down the heat and cook, stirring vigorously and continuously, for one to two minutes, or until the mixture forms a ball that comes cleanly away from the sides of the pan.

Take the pan off the heat and allow to cool for five minutes, or until just warm to the touch. Now beat in the whole eggs, one at a time, beating hard after each addition. Once you've added the fourth egg, you should have a glossy and thick - though slightly slack - mixture. Pile the mixture into a large piping bag fitted with a big plain nozzle, and pipe blobs the size of a litchi onto the baking paper (or use a teaspoon to make neat little dollops).

Put the baking sheet into the hot oven and bake for 25-35 minutes (depending on the ferocity of your oven) until well risen, golden brown and crisp. Turn off the oven, open the door, and allow the profiteroles to dry out for 10 minutes. Remove the profiteroles from the oven and turn them onto their sides. Use a piping nozzle (or the handle-end of a wooden spoon) to poke a hole into the bottom of each one. Set aside to cool completely.


In the meantime make the filling. Crumble the blue cheese into a saucepan, and add half (125 ml) of the cream. Place over a gentle flame and heat through, stirring often as the cheese melts. Do not allow to boil. When all the cheese has melted, remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool for a few minutes.

Place the cream cheese in a large bowl, add the warm blue cheese mixture and, using a metal spoon, stir furiously until the mixture is smooth and well combined. Whip the remaining half-cup (125 ml) of cream to a soft peak, then stir it lightly into the blue cheese mixture. If the mixture seems a little stiff, don't worry: persist with gentle stirring, and it will all come together Season with a few grindings of black pepper. Cover and set aside, at room temperature.

Wash and dry your piping bag and fit a medium nozzle to it. Fill the piping bag with the blue cheese mixture. Poke the nozzle into the underside of each profiterole and squeeze in just enough of the cheese mixture to fill the cavity.

Serve immediately with a dab of wine jelly. Or - please trust me on this - put them in the fridge for a couple of hours, or until the filling is firm.

Makes 12 large profiteroles, or 18 small ones


Cook's Notes

• Choux pastry, although easy to make, is a little temperamental, and you can really only learn from experience when the batter is of a perfect consistency. Much depends on the flour you're using and the size of your eggs. Measure all the ingredients exactly, and follow the instructions above to the letter.
• If your first batch of choux pastry doesn't turn out well, don't be discouraged. Try again!  Perfect choux buns are light and crispy, hollow on the inside, and have a soft golden-brown colour.  

* With apologies to a friend of my sister's, who came up with the idea of strapping fatty foods directly to your backside.

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Feeding a crowd: North African Chicken and Couscous 'Everything' Salad

Expecting a crowd this festive season? Here's a bountiful salad crammed with deep flavours, interesting textures and the sunny, spicy flavours of North Africa.  It's the first recipe in a series I'll be running between now and Christmas, containing my favourite crowd-pleasing dishes.

I'm such a fan of big, generous salads, those wonderful meals-in-one that you can prepare in advance and dish up in gargantuan portions to the festive hordes. And let's face it: not many who live in the Southern Hemisphere feel like sitting down to a rib-sticking hot meal in the sultriest days of December. (Although, because I and two of my three sisters are married to men from England, Wales and Scotland respectively, we always pull out the stops and come together on Christmas Eve to produce a ham, a turkey with several stuffings, and the obligatory roast spuds, gravy, minted peas, bacon-wrapped chipolatas, and so on.)

But back to salads. Over the past  few decades, salads have become simpler, fresher and lighter -  my own idea of a perfect salad, for example, is fresh, peppery rocket and watercress dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and Parmesan - but there are times I miss the abundant salads we ate as children and teens in the Seventies & Eighties.

This was the age of the square-meal salad, when a Proper Salad contained a bewildering salmagundi of ingredients: all the usual crunchy greens, plus bacon, cheese, avocado, nuts, seeds, peas, mushrooms, pasta, tuna, chicken, olives, onion rings, boiled potatoes, anchovies, and so on. And if that wasn't enough, a salad of this sort was topped with croutons, parsley, chives, a garlicky dressing and home-made mayonnaise - everything, in fact, but the kitchen sink.  It usually came in a big perspex-like bowl (which grew cloudy over time) or a shining wooden salad dish, with carved salad spoons to match.

I quite often make salads like this for my family, using a shop-bought roast chicken and anything I find lying around in the fridge and store cupboard.  My kids call it 'Everything Salad' because it contains, well, everything.

Here is my 'everything' couscous and roast-chicken salad, which has a Moroccan/Tunisian feel, with a bit of the nearby Mediterranean thrown in for good measure. The recipe is easily doubled, or even tripled, and it's very versatile, because you can add just about anything you please.

Please don't feel hesitant about combining ingredients that you wouldn't normally put together: for example, the recipe below contains roast tomatoes and fresh orange juice and Turkish apricots, three things I usually wouldn't put in the same dish, but they are all bought together by a peppy, citrussy dressing containing all the deliciously perfumed flavours of the region.

Obviously, you will need to use common sense when adding extra ingredients: tinned tuna, for example, or  prawns, or bacon or avocado will not work here. But I would have no problems adding any or (in the spirit of things) all of the following: raisins or sultanas, feta cheese, pine nuts, toasted sesame and sunflower seeds, preserved lemons, fresh orange wedges, pitted black olives, roasted peppers, pomegranate seeds, and so on.

This is a long  recipe, but do take your time over it, because it is the wonderful aromatic stock created while the chicken is roasting in water and flavourings that gives the couscous a special depth of flavour. Also, roasting the chicken this way results in flakes of perfectly tender flesh that you can't achieve by, say, poaching chicken breasts in stock. You will need to buy very fresh spices, and do try to get your hands on dried mint, which has a flavour quite distinct from that of fresh mint.

This salad improves upon standing for an hour or two, but add the coriander, parsley and toasted almonds just before serving. Serve at room temperature.

North African Chicken and Couscous 'Everything' Salad

For the chicken and stock:
a large free-range chicken, trimmed of all excess fat
salt
1 carrot, thickly sliced
a stick of celery, sliced
6 parsley stalks (reserve the leaves)
10 peppercorns
2 bay leaves
3 whole cloves
a large, unskinned onion, quartered
water
half a lemon
2 cloves garlic, peeled

For the spice paste:
1 Tbsp (15 ml) cumin seeds
2 tsp (10 ml) coriander seeds
1 tsp (5 ml) flaky sea salt
1 tsp (5 ml) black peppercorns
4 fat cloves garlic, peeled
1 large red chilli, chopped, or 2 tsp (10 ml) chilli flakes (to taste)
the finely grated zest of a large lemon
1½ tsp (7.5 ml) ground cinnamon
6 Tbsp (90 ml) olive oil

For the salad:
2 large, shining aubergines (see Cooks' Notes, below)
olive oil (see recipe)
salt
600 g ripe cherry tomatoes
3 cups (500 g) couscous (see Cooks' Notes, below)
1 punnet snow peas, sliced
12 Turkish apricots, coarsely chopped
1 cup (250 ml) pitted green olives
a tin of chickpeas, drained
a bunch of fresh coriander (about 40 g) [cilantro]
a bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley

For the dressing:
the juice of a large lemon
the juice of an orange
1½ tsp (7.5 ml) ground cumin
1½ tsp (7.5 ml) sweet paprika
½ tsp (2.5 ml) chilli powder (or more, to taste)
2 tsp (10 ml) dried mint
1 tsp (5 ml) finely grated lemon zest
a pinch of cinnamon
6 Tbsp (90 ml) olive oil

To top:
extra parsley and coriander
100 g slivered almonds, lightly toasted until golden brown
a little powdered cumin and paprika

Heat the oven to 160º C. (If your oven is not fan-assisted, preheat it to 170º C.)

First make the spice paste. Heat a frying pan and toast the cumin and coriander seeds until fragrant. Place them with the salt and peppercorns in a mortar and grind to a powder (or put them through a spice- or coffee- grinder). Now add the garlic cloves and the chilli and pound to a paste. Stir in the lemon zest, cinnamon and olive oil.

Put the chicken into a large, deep roasting pan. Take one heaped tablespoon of the spice paste and, using a spoon, smear it inside the chicken. Put the carrot, parsley stalks, peppercorns, bay leaves, cloves and onion into the pan. Fill the pan with water to a depth of two centimetres -  or deep enough so that the water just touches the tip of the pope's nose. Make sure that the water level is well below the open cavity of the chicken, so that the stock doesn't flood into the chicken during cooking and wash out the spice paste.

Take another tablespoon of the spice paste and, using your hands, smear it all over the skin of the chicken, extending it down to a centimetre above the water line. Squeeze the half-lemon all over the top of the chicken, then push the squeezed-out half into the cavity, along with the two garlic cloves.

Set aside while you prepare the aubergines. Remove the stalks and cut them into neat 3-cm chunks. Place these on a separate baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Now add a heaped tablespoon of the spice paste and, using your hands, toss well to coat. Season with salt. Place the chicken in the oven, on the top shelf, and the baking sheet with the aubergines on the lower shelf. Set the timer for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, take the aubergines out of the oven and add the cherry tomatoes, mixing together with your hands so the tomatoes are well coated in spicy oil. (Add a little more olive oil if the aubergines seem dry.)

Place the vegetables back in the oven and cook for a further 20 minutes, or until the tomatoes are just beginning to collapse, and the aubergines are soft. Remove the vegetables from the oven, cover with foil and set aside.

Continue roasting the chicken for another 35-40 minutes, or until it is cooked through. (Note: the total roasting time for the chicken is 1 hour 20 minutes, for the aubergines 45 minutes, and for the tomatoes 20 minutes.)

Remove the chicken from the oven, cover the dish and allow to sit until cool enough to handle. Carefully lift the chicken from the stock, making sure not to spill any of the cavity juices into the stock. Put the chicken into a large shallow dish and tilt it so that the juices run out. Cut off the breasts, with their skin, and slice into neat pieces. Pull away all the remaining chicken flesh and tear into bite-size pieces. Discard the bones, fat and non-crispy skin (or keep for making stock). Turn all the chicken pieces over in the juices, cover, and set aside to marinate while you finish making the salad.

Strain the stock left in the roasting pan into a bowl and leave to settle. Discard all the stock vegetables and flavorings. Skim any excess fat off the top of the stock. Measure the stock into a bowl, adding enough hot water to bring the quantity up to 4 cups (1 litre) in total.

Place the dry couscous in a very large mixing bowl and pour in 800 ml of the warm stock. Do not stir. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and set aside, undisturbed, for 20 minutes. After this time, taste a grain of couscous. If it's at all gritty in texture, add a little more warm stock, and leave to stand for another ten minutes. Using a fork, fluff up the couscous to separate the grains. (See Cook's Notes, below).

In the meantime, make the dressing. Place the remaining spice paste into a bowl, add all the remaining dressing ingredients, and whisk well to combine.

Now assemble the salad. Put a quarter of the aubergines, tomatoes, chickpeas, snow peas, olives and apricots to one side, for topping the salad. Gently mix the remaining three-quarters into the couscous. Pour three-quarters of the dressing over the salad, add the coriander and parsley and toss very thoroughly. Season with salt and pepper, if necessary (this salad needs more salt than you would think).

Tip the couscous salad onto a very large platter, letting it fall into a loose volcano shape. Scatter the reserved aubergines, tomatoes, chickpeas, olives and apricots over the top. Pile the chicken pieces around the edges of of the dish.  Drizzle the remaining dressing all over the couscous and chicken. Scatter the toasted almonds, and some more coriander and parsley, all over the salad, and dust generously with cumin and paprika. Serve immediately.

Serves eight.

Cooks' Notes

• You can salt the aubergines to remove any bitterness if you like, but I don't find this necessary when using young, fresh aubergines.
• I always make couscous using warm (not boiling) stock, and I never cook it or steam it, but if you're not confident about this method, follow the instructions on the packet, using the stock you've made instead of water. The amount of liquid that your couscous will absorb depends on the brand you're using. If you find you've added too much liquid, drain the couscous in a large sieve for a few minutes.

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