Salad of Green Beans with Lemon, Garlic, Toasted Hazelnuts and Peppered Cream Cheese

That's a long-winded title for a plain little dish, but this salad is so quick to make, and so tasty, that I think it deserves a grand  headline.

Lemon, beans and hazelnuts may sound like an unusual combination of ingredients but the whole thing is bought together by the addition of a little soy sauce to the garlicky dressing. I am mad about the combination of soy sauce and lemon juice.

I've used a peppered, crumbly Jersey milk cream cheese from Fairview (available at Woolies in South Africa), but you could use any peppered feta or goat's milk cheese in this recipe.

Salad of Green Beans with Lemon, Garlic, Toasted Hazelnuts and Pepper Cream Cheese

450 g young green beans, topped and tailed
3 Tbsp (45 ml) hazelnuts
1 fat glove garlic, peeled
the juice of a lemon
a pinch of mustard powder
1 tsp (5 ml) soy sauce
1/3 cup (80 ml) olive oil
salt
peppered cream cheese or feta

Cook the green beans in plenty of boiling salted water for 3-4 minutes, or until just tender-crisp. Or microwave them on high for 3-4 minutes in a covered glass dish to which you have added a splash of water.  Plunge immediately into a bowl of iced water to set the colour.  Drain in a colander. Toast the hazelnuts in a hot dry frying pan for minute or so, watching like a hawk that they don't burn.  Chop roughly and set aside.

Crush the garlic and whisk in the lemon juice, mustard powder, soy sauce and olive oil.  Pour the dressing over the beans, toss well and season to taste. Allow to stand for 10 minutes.  Just before serving, crumble the cheese into the salad and sprinkle with hazelnuts. Serve immediately, at room temperature.

Delicious with pan-fried salmon.

Serves 6 as a side salad. 

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Moroccan-style Tomato and Preserved-Lemon Salad with a Tomato & Paprika 'Broth'

Made with red onion, preserved lemons, capers, radishes and green olives, this Moroccan-style salad is not for shrinking palates. But I love these boisterous flavours, and would be happy to eat a bucketful. The picture below, taken in fading light, doesn't do justice to the brilliant colours of this salad.

If you're not sure your family will go for this, treat it like a rough-cut salsa and serve each person just a dollop to pep up grilled chicken, spicy fish or steak. Cubes of mild creamy feta cheese (look, Greece is not that far from Morocco) might entice kids and teens to try it. If you're presenting it on its own as a starter or snack, provide plenty of hot pita bread to soak up the juices.

Perfectly red, ripe tomatoes and fresh paprika and cumin are essential if the dressing is to taste like the knees of the bees (and there should be lots of dressing; it should be like - without wanting to sound poncy - a cold broth). The pips and pulp are scooped out, but they are squished through a sieve to make the dressing (British chef Heston Blumenthal recently proved that the wobbly inside bits of tomatoes are packed with the elusive fifth flavour, umami; see my notes about this here.) If you don't have preserved lemons to hand, leave them out.

Tomato, Onion and Preserved-Lemon Salad with Tomato & Paprika Dressing

6 ripe, very red, but not mushy tomatoes
1 red onion, peeled
half a preserved lemon (or more, to taste)
6 radishes
12 green olives
a small bunch each of fresh coriander, mint and flat-leaf parsley
3 T (45 ml) capers

For the dressing:
2 red, ripe tomatoes
about 4 T (60 ml) olive oil
the juice of half a lemon
one and a half tsp (7.5ml) fresh paprika
1 tsp (5 ml) freshly ground cumin

First make the salad. Cut a cross on the stalk end of each tomato and cover with boiling water. Leave for a minute or two, and then, as soon as you see their skins begin to furl and loosen, scoop them out of the hot water and slip off their skins. Set a sieve over a separate bowl.

Cut the tomatoes in half, scoop out the pulp and pips with a teaspoon, and place the pulp in the sieve to drain. Cut each tomato half in half again, or into thirds, if you are using big tomatoes. Halve the onion lengthways, place the halves cut-side down onto a board, and slice finely into crescent-moon shapes. Rinse the preserved lemons under running water to remove any excess salt. Using a sharp knife, held parallel to the chopping board, slice away any pulp and white pith. Cut into fine slivers. Slice the radish into thin discs. Depip the olives and cut them in half.

Finely chop the coriander, mint and parsley. Put the tomatoes, onion, lemon slivers, radish, olives and chopped herbs in a salad bowl, add the capers and toss gently to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

To make the dressing, quarter the two tomatoes, place in a liquidizer or food processer and whizz to a chunky pulp. Pour the pulp into the sieve containing the reserved tomato pulp and pips. Using the back of a soup ladle, press down on the mixture to extract the juice. Discard the pulp. To the tomato juice, add all the remaining dressing ingredients. (You may need to add more olive oil, depending on the size of the tomatoes you've used.) Whisk well and pour over the salad. Toss well, cover, and set aside for 30 minutes for the flavours to mingle.

Serves 6.

This recipe was inspired by a salad from Moroccan: A Culinary Journey of Discovery by Ghillie Basan. Print Friendly

Teen fodder: War-time Meat Pies with Mashed-Potato Pastry

War-time Meat Pies with Mashed-Potato Pastry. These ivy-patterned
plates from the 1930s or 40s belonged to my grandmother Cecilie Walters. 

I'm always on the look-out for rib-sticking dishes to feed the army of young people who use my house as a base-camp, and I was intrigued by this war-time recipe for a pie made of potato pastry filled with minced beef.

'Do Try These Inviting Patties!' says the recipe, and I did, adding several extra ingredients.

The recipe comes from a 1941 issue of Woman's Weekly, which I picked up in my local charity shop, along with a pile of quite wonderful knitting patterns from the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
This pie is sort of a cross between a pasty and a cottage pie. The pastry holds its shape very well, is easy to handle and cooks to a lovely golden brown.

I expected the pastry to be somewhat stodgy,  but it wasn't - although it's not what I would call feather-light.

'Do Try These Inviting Patties!'

You can make these up to a day in advance and store them in the fridge until you're ready to bake them. I made individual pies using small flan tins, but you could quite easily use ceramic ramekins, deep muffin pans or a single large pie dish.

Best served hot, with plenty of tomato sauce.

The savoury mince filling below is a lot sexier than that given in the original recipe (see pic below). You can use any savoury pie filling you like, as long as it's not too sloppy. Next time I make these, I'll try them with  strips of beef in a peppery gravy; they would also be good with a filling of asparagus in a cheesy white sauce (recipe here).



War-Time Meat Pies with Potato Pastry

For the filling:
2 Tbsp (30 ml) vegetable oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 large carrots, coarsely grated
1.5 kg lean minced beef (ground beef)
350 ml wine, white or red
4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
a few sprigs of thyme, leaves stripped
1 Tbsp (15 ml) good dried oregano, or a few fresh rosemary needles, finely chopped
2 Tbsp (30 ml) tomato paste
2 Tbsp (30 ml) dark soy sauce
2 Tbsp (30 ml) Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper

For the pastry:
450 g floury potatoes (about 6 large potatoes), peeled and quartered
125 g butter, melted
about 2 cups (500 ml) white flour, sifted (see recipe)
2 tsp (10 ml) baking powder
1 tsp (5 ml) hot English mustard powder
1 tsp (5 ml) salt, or more to taste
white pepper
1 cup (250 ml) grated cheddar [optional]
a beaten egg

Heat the oil in a large pan and fry the onion and grated carrot until just softened. Turn up the heat to its maximum and crumble in the minced beef, in batches, stirring well as it browns.  Drain away any excess fat (a good way to do this is to tip the whole lot into a large sieve set over a bowl). Add the wine and the garlic and cook briskly until most of the wine has evaporated.  Now stir in all the remaining filling  ingredients. Turn down the heat and simmer gently for an hour, or until the mixture is slightly thickened. If it looks a little dry, add some water or chicken stock.

To make the pastry, boil the potatoes in plenty of salted water until quite tender.  Drain.  Pour in the melted butter and mash until smooth.   Sift the flour, mustard powder, baking powder, salt and pepper into a separate bowl.

Now add the flour, in increments, to the mashed potato, stirring well to form a pliable soft dough. You may not need all of it - this will depend on the size and flouriness of the potatoes you used. Add the cheese, if you are using it.  Flour a pastry board well and lightly roll the pastry out to a thickness of about 7 mm.

Cut out circles the same size as your muffin tins or flan case (use a cookie cutter, or cut around the base of an upturned bowl). Gently press the pastry onto the base and sides of the tins. Brush the rims with a little beaten egg and fill the cases with the mince.

Gather up all the pastry, roll it out again, and cut out enough lids to cover all the pies. Drape the lids over the pies and, using your fingers, gently seal the edges.  Brush all over with beaten egg. Cut a small slit in the top of each pie.  Place in a hot oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until puffed and golden brown.

Makes 8 individual pies; serves 8.


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Easy Chicken, Feta and Bacon Roll-Ups in a Tomato & Rosemary Sauce

Stuffed with feta, garlic and sage, rolled in bacon, crisped in a hot pan and then finished off in a buttery tomato sauce, these chicken-breast rolls make a delicious family meal. Okay, they do involve a little fiddling, but I reckon it's worth the effort. This is a low-carb recipe suitable for diabetics, or for anyone on a #LCHF regime. 

Chicken breasts, being so lean and light, feature on our family menu at least twice a week, but  I have to say that a single deboned chicken breast is not nearly enough to satisfy the appetite of a teen who has grown so tall I have to stand on a ladder to lecture him.

What he really needs is several thick ropes of fillet steak - heck, a whole cow - every week, but as these are beyond our family budget, I'm always looking for ways to stretch the common-or-garden (and shockingly expensive) breast of a chicken.

You can use ordinary tinned tomatoes for this sauce, but good, deep-red plummy Italian ones will make the difference. I buy tinned tomatoes in bulk (along with superb olive oil, vinegar, olives, pasta and polenta) from the excellent Italian supermarket Super Sconto, in Norwood, Johannesburg.

Leave the cream out if you are watching your weight.  No, on second thoughts, leave the cream in.  The combination of cream and tomatoes is  sublime.

Easy Chicken, Feta and Bacon Roll-Ups in a Tomato & Rosemary Sauce

6 deboned, skinned chicken breasts
3 Tbsp (45 ml) olive oil, plus extra for frying
3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
3 'wheels' (about 200 g) feta cheese
12 slices streaky bacon
salt and milled black pepper
18 fresh sage leaves
chopped parsley, to garnish

For the tomato sauce:
4 Tbsp (60 ml) butter
1 large onion, peeled and very finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
2  x 210 g tins good Italian canned tomatoes, chopped, plus their liquid
1 x  8 cm sprig fresh rosemary
½ cup (125 ml) dry white wine
salt and milled black pepper
½ cup (125 ml) cream
a little water, to thin

First make the tomato sauce. Melt the butter over a medium flame, add the onion and cook gently for 4-5 minutes, or until it's soft and just beginning to turn golden. Stir in the garlic and cook for a further minute, without allowing it to brown. Add the chopped tomatoes, rosemary and wine, season to taste with salt and pepper, and simmer gently for 30-45 minutes, or until slightly thickened. Fish out the sprig of rosemary, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cream, a tablespoon or two at a time to prevent the sauce from curdling.  If the mixture seems too thick and gloopy, thin it with a little water. At this point, you can liquidise the mixture using a food processor or stick blender, but I prefer it slightly chunky. Set aside.

While the sauce is cooking, prepare the chicken. Place a breast between two large sheets of clingfilm [saran wrap]. Using a rolling pin (or an empty wine bottle), gently bash it so it flattens out to about 5 mm thick.  Don't smack it too hard, or it will break apart into strings: a gentle, persistent pounding, starting from the middle and working outwards, is the way to go. Repeat with the remaining breasts.

In a little bowl, mix together the olive oil and crushed garlic.  Cut the feta cheese into batons that are about as thick as your ring finger, and three-quarters its length.  Toss the feta pieces in the olive oil and garlic mixture. Place two strips of streaky bacon on a chopping board, about 1 cm apart. Lay a flattened chicken breast crossways on top of the bacon strips.  Place a baton of oil-and-garlic coated feta on the breast, add two sage leaves, and season with salt and pepper.  Starting from the side closest to you, pick up the edge of the breast and the bacon strips and roll into a neat, tight bundle. Tie two lengths of kitchen string crossways around each bundle, tuck a large sage leave under the strings, and trim away the excess string. Repeat with the remaining breasts.

Heat a big pan over a medium-high heat and add a splash of olive oil.  When the oil is very hot - but not smoking - add the chicken rolls and brown them - about a minute and a half a side - until the bacon is crisp.  Drain any excess fat from the pan. Now pour the reserved tomato sauce over the chicken rolls, turn down the heat, cover the pan with a tilted lid and simmer very gently for 7-10 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked right through but still very tender.  If you're not certain it's cooked, make a sneaky cut on the underside of the thickest breast: if there is no trace of pink, it's done.

Serve hot, topped with chopped parsley and a swirl of olive oil.  Lovely with crunchy potato wedges and a green salad.

Serves 6.

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