Roasted red peppers, both fresh and sun-dried tomatoes and basil are the perfect summer flavour combination. Add some orzo and a tangy dressing and you’ve got a vegan dish, serve with burrata for vegetarians or it makes the perfect accompaniment for BBQ meats. Simple, versatile and delicious.
Serves 4
8 sun drenched tomatoes cut in half
8 cherry tomatoes, quartered
8 green olives, stoned and quartered
3 pointed red peppers
1 handful of fresh basil leaves, torn into small pieces – don’t cut it with a knife as it will oxidise and turn black.
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
3 tbsps orzo pasta
1 tsp salt
To make…
Place the red peppers on a baking tray and cook for 15 minutes in the oven at 200C. They will cook lightly and the skin will blister. Remove from the oven and allow to cool. The skin should slip off easily and the seeds will detach once you pull at the stalk. Cut each pepper lengthwise and then into 1cm strips. Add to a salad bowl.
Cook the orzo in boiling salted water for 10 minutes until al dente, drain and refresh in cold water.
Add the cold drained orzo, chopped tomatoes, olives, torn basil, oil and vinegar to the chopped red peppers. Season with a generous pinch of sea salt and mix thoroughly.
Serve at room temperature, don’t put it in the fridge as it will mute the flavour of the tomatoes.
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Jersey Royal new potatoes and fresh British asparagus are the great joys of spring vegetables. I made this dish as part of my offering for the Coronation Big Lunch buffet we enjoyed recently with friends. ‘Captain Bob’ cooked us some delicious slow roasted pulled pork and I took this and my fennel and orange slaw and freekeh pilaf to go with it. What a celebratory treat it all was! Obviously, you can make this dish with a smaller amount of asparagus but a generous plate like this does look wonderful as a sharing dish. I love asparagus just with melted butter but that’s not really suitable for a cold sharing dish as it would just harden and set too quickly – not very visually appealing! Hollandaise sauce, another traditional pairing, can be a bit of a faff to make so I made this lemony yoghurt dressing instead which worked perfectly.
600g fresh young asparagus spears
250g thick Greek yoghurt
The zest of a lemon
The juice of half a lemon
4 tsps of extra-virgin olive oil
1 pinch of sea salt
Ground black pepper
To make…
Wash the asparagus and snap the woody ends off the base. The point to snap can be found by carefully bending the spears – there is a natural point on the stem where it will break easily.
You won’t need to do this with thin, young spears but if they are quite thick, you can use a vegetable peeler to remove the outer layer of the stem, from the base to about halfway up the spear. This will result in a shorter overall cooking time as the fibrous part of the asparagus has been removed, leaving a tender stem.
Cook the asparagus straight after preparation, if you do need to store it be sure to cover with a damp cloth.
To cook, layer the asparagus onto a steamer in a large pan. Add about 2 cm of water, cover the pot with a lid, bring the water up to boil rapidly and steam for just 5 minutes. Drain and refresh quickly with cold water to retain the bright green colour and to stop it cooking any further. Layer it onto a serving plate as above.
To make the dressing, mix the olive oil, lemon juice salt and yoghurt together. Taste and add a little more lemon or salt if it needs it. It should be slightly thicker than double cream.
Drizzle the sauce over the base of the stems, scatter with the lemon zest, black pepper and a little extra-virgin olive oil.
You can keep this in the fridge if you make it ahead but remember to serve it at room temperature.
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Like many families, we’ll be watching the historic Coronation of King Charles 111 on tv tomorrow. The key coverage starts from about 10am so I’ll be putting together a ‘morning tea’ for us to snack on throughout the proceedings; I’m talking dainty sandwiches, classic scones and cake with plenty of tea in the pot and a cheeky glass of champagne two to toast the Monarch’s health. I’m not making the quiche!
To make properly dainty finger sandwiches, you need to use a pre-sliced square tin loaf. Both white and wholemeal Homepride works perfectly as it’s uniform in shape, has a very thin crust that you will be cutting off anyway and is squishy enough to hold the filling without it squeezing out. Fill the sandwiches evenly, cut the crusts off carefully and cut into 3 or 4 equal rectangle slices depending on how dainty you want them. You can then display your perfectly uniform little finger sandwiches on a nice sharing platter or on a cake stand. I like to do a good range of fillings and for those that need butter, I make sure I’ve got a good quality spreadable butter like President or Lurpack slightly salted so that it spreads evenly without tearing the bread and I use Stokes mayonnaise. To judge quantities, I make one full round per person of each sandwich flavour plus one extra per 3 people (there is cake too don’t forget). So, for example, for six people I’d make 8 rounds of sandwiches. You can make however many you want though.
My favourite tea sandwich fillings
Cream cheese and smoked salmon. Mix the cream cheese with a little lemon juice, white pepper and chopped fresh dill. There’s no need to use butter. You could always mix in a few baby capers instead of the dill.
Cream cheese and cucumber. You can use the lemon and dill trick for the cream cheese or just mix in a little sea salt. The cucumber must be wafer thin so use a mandolin and build up overlapping layers> I don’t use butter but I do spread cream cheese on both sides of the bread so that cucumber stays in place.
Egg and chive mayonnaise. Boil your eggs (2 per sandwich) and mash with mayonnaise, a little salt, plenty of black pepper and finely snipped chives.
Prawn mayonnaise. Mix good quality cooked baby cold water prawns with Stokes mayo and a little white pepper.
Ham and mustard. I use wafer thin cut ham, salted butter and Dijon mustard.
Coronation chicken. One cooked and shredded chicken breast mixed with a tbsp of mayo, a tsp of Madras curry powder and dessert spoon of mango chutney.
Wensleydale and 1 stick of celery. Crumble the Wensleydale in a bowl and mix with finely chopped pieces of celery and some dressing – half Stokes mayo, half natural yoghurt. The dressing is just to bind the crumbly cheese and celery no need to drown it.
Roast beef and horseradish. I use wafer thin cut roast beef, horseradish mixed in with cream cheese and sprinkled with sea salt. Salted butter is optional.
The cakes
As this is a morning tea and I don’t want to do too much work, I would choose my baby scone recipe as they are easy to make freshly in the morning plus my lemon syrup loaf cake which you make as a loaf cake or a traybake to cut into squares. It can be eaten on its own or with clotted cream topped with strawberries.
Anyway, however to choose to spend it, have a fantastic Coronation weekend!
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I love a Greek salad for lunch but sometimes you want a little more substance for supper so I made my classic Greek salad but, as an experiment, mixed in some orzo pasta. Dear Reader, it was delicious; served with some chorizo sausages cooked on the BBQ, it was a perfect spring supper. You can mix the proportions of salad ingredients to orzo how you like but the recipe below is how I made it for roughly four servings.
100g feta cheese
150g orzo (I use Sainsbury’s ‘Taste the Difference’)
12 cherry tomatoes, quartered
25 cm piece of cucumber, quartered lengthwise, seeds removed, then chopped into 1cm chunks
Juice of a small lemon
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 heaped tbsp Kalamata olives
1 tsp dried oregano (chopped fresh dill is lovely too)
1/2 small red onion, very finely sliced
To make…
Cook the orzo according to the pack instructions – usually about 10 minutes in boiling salted water. Drain, rinse in cold water and set aside.
Meanwhile, prep the tomatoes, cucumber and red onion.
In a large salad bowl, whisk the lemon juice and olive oil together with the oregano. Season with a little black pepper. I don’t add salt as the feta is salty and the orzo has been cooked in salted water.
Add the salad ingredients, the orzo and olives. Mix thoroughly. Crumble the feta cheese over it and stir gently through the salad. Serve at room temperature.
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