Gratinated Asparagus

Oven-Roasted Chicken with Sumac, Pomegranate Molasses, Chilli & Sesame Seeds
Lightly-Stewed Broad Beans, Peas and Gem Lettuce
Turkish Spiced Pilaf

In hindsight, since I was cooking the day after the referendum result, we should have eaten a plate from each of the other 27 EU countries, plus one for Scotland and one for Northern Ireland. It would have been some sort of solidarity. But also a lot of food, so let’s leave that for a party, maybe in the approach to next referendum.

Instead, this was a mix of English and Turkish. I had not thought of the irony.

This was also the weekend that comes round every year: the last asparagus (although sometimes it tricks you and turns up for another couple of weeks). John, from John & Elena’s Fruit & Veg at Bermondsey Spa Terminus, had given us two huge bundles of asparagus because he didn’t think it was fit for sale. We thought it was perfectly good late season produce. There was so much of it that we had asparagus eggs benedict for brunch the next day and asparagus and mushroom pasta later in the week. There was one curious aspect to this asparagus, though: it didn’t have the usual physiological (you know what I mean: urinary) consequences…

Gratinated Asparagus
Apparently, I haven’t made this Gratinated Asparagus starter for three years, which is strange because it’s simple and great, particularly late in the season. It’s from the days when Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall wrote in The Guardian. As HFW notes, it’s a simple variation on other ways of mixing asparagus, butter and something a bit crunchier. But why isn’t it simply called Asparagus Gratin?

From our two big bundles of asparagus, I chose a more-than-generous handful for the two of us. I steamed the asparagus until almost done (the recipe says blanche, but I never do that as I explained in a previous post), then laid the spears in a small ovenproof dish. I melted c.15g of butter in small pan and stirred in a small handful of breadcrumbs, a similar quantity of flaked almonds (the recipe suggests 25g of each) and some seasoning. You can easily vary the quantities to taste – more butter if you prefer, or more or less almonds and crumbs.

I trickled about 4 tbsp of double cream over the asparagus, spread over the breadcrumb-almond-butter mix and grilled for just a couple of minutes. Done.

Incidentally, when making asparagus pasta later in the week, I hit upon an idea, prompted by the not dissimilar idea of adding the woody bottoms of asparagus to stock. I boiled the asparagus trimmings in the pasta water for a few minutes before cooking the pasta. The pasta didn’t exactly taste of asparagus, but there was just a hint there. I’ll now have to remember this for next year.

 

Oven-Roasted Chicken with Sumac, Pomegranate Molasses Chilli & Sesame Seeds

This Oven-Roasted Chicken with Sumac and Pomegranate Molasses is from Rick Stein’s excellent Venice to Istanbul. It’s a flavoursome Turkish take on roast chicken. It wasn’t quite as tasty as on previous occasions because we had almost run out of sumac. I added some lemon zest to compensate but it didn’t deliver the same depth and sharpness of flavour.

I jointed a chicken into eight, as usual making a mess of separating the legs and thighs. I always forget to ask a butcher to show me the knack. I know the theory but I never pull it off neatly. Why don’t I look up a video on the internet? Good idea: I’d never thought of that… So now I have. Here’s a good one, and here’s a different and more amusing take on it from a very young Delia, with a good trick for the leg/thigh cut.

Next I made the rub. I mixed as much sumac as I could get out of the jar (it should have been 2 tbsp), added two crushed garlic cloves, ¼ tsp of chilli flakes (the recipe says ½-1 tsp but ours are VERY hot), 1 tbsp tomato puree, 1 tbsp pomegranate molasses and 1 tsp salt. I rubbed this all over the chicken pieces and left for about an hour. There’s always something very visceral and basic about applying a rub, and so it proved again!

After that, it’s incredibly simple: I put the chicken in an oven dish, splashed over 3 tbsp of olive oil, and sprinkled 1 tbsp or a little more sesame seeds on top. I cooked the chicken at 200ºC/180ºC Fan/Gas 6 for about 30 minutes

The first time I cooked this, I was a bit worried because it comes out looking almost burnt but that’s the marinade and the chicken is actually juicy and beautifully flavoured.

This chicken is also nice the following day, at room temperature.

 

Lightly Stewed Broad Beans, Peas and Gem Lettuce
I was looking for something vaguely Turkish or Middle Eastern to accompany the chicken and so turned to Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty More. But it’s also the time of the year when new season broad beans and peas are at their tender, young best and so I also had that in mind. I came across Lightly Stewed Broad Beans, Peas and Little Gem Lettuce, and that seemed to fit the bill without there being any Turkish influence whatsoever. Ottolenghi has this as a supper to be served with Parmesan Rice. I’m sure it’s lovely that way, but I wanted it as an accompaniment, and indeed it did go pretty well with the chicken.

There are some very minor differences between the recipe in Plenty More and the link, which is Ottolenghi’s Guardian recipe: in the book he uses 50% more broad beans, 50ml more vegetable stock and double the spring onions. Those seem marginal differences. In any case, with broad beans and peas I prefer to go with what looks right – and you’re never sure exactly what the pods will deliver. Recipe quantities can also only ever be a guide for spring onions, which vary so much in size.

When I use broad beans I almost always blanche and skin them after podding. I know it’s a faff but it’s part and parcel of summer for me. Except very early in the season, when some of the most tender beans can be eaten in their skins, I really think it’s worth the effort. The taste is so much better, without the chewy, bitter skins that get caught in your teeth, and the skinned beans are such a vibrant green.

I sautéed six spring onions, cut diagonally into 2cm lengths, in 4 tbsp of olive oil, with 3 cloves of garlic, cut into slithers rather than chopped. When they had taken on some colour, I added a couple of handfuls of peas, 350ml vegetable stock, 4 sprigs of thyme, and some salt and pepper. The aim is just to cover the vegetables with stock, so the amount needed depends on the size of the pan.

I actually reversed Ottolenghi’s recipe because, having already blanched and skinned the broad beans, I judged they needed less cooking than the peas. After simmering the peas for five minutes I threw in a couple of handfuls of broad beans and two little gem lettuces, trimmed and quartered lengthways (two seemed enough for our purposes). I left this to simmer for as long as it took for the lettuce to become tender but not soggy – the recipe suggests seven minutes, but I found it was more like five. I picked out the woody sprigs of thyme, by this time largely bare of their leaves, stirred in a small handful of chopped mint (the recipe suggests 20g but I am overdoing mint with everything at the moment because it is taking over our herb garden) and some black pepper, and sprinkled over the grated zest of a lemon.

This was a lovely, fresh accompaniment that sung of early summer. It was also good either at room temperature or briefly reheated for a couple of days afterwards.

 

Turkish Spiced Pilaf
I also served a Turkish Pilaf, from Venice to Istanbul, simply because Rick Stein says that the chicken would typically be served with a mix of dishes, including a pilaf. I like this dish: the dill, pine nuts and currants make it very different to other rice dishes; I saw one online variation using toasted flaked almonds rather than pine nuts, which I might just try next time.

I soaked 300g of basmati rice in cold water for half-an-hour or so, then fried an onion, halved and sliced, in 2 tbsp of olive oil until soft. I added the drained rice and stirred it around to toast for two or three minutes. I stirred in ½ tsp ground cinnamon, ½ tsp salt, some pepper and 450ml water. Then it’s the usual way with rice: bring to the boil, immediately turn down to a gentle simmer, cover and cook for ten minutes or until the water is absorbed, then leave to stand. The final touch here is to stir in small handfuls of parsley and dill, 2 tbsp pine nuts and 2 tbsp currants.

The herbs, currants and nuts give the rice a nice lift – it instantly tastes, well yes, Turkish. Dill is a remarkable herb because it changes so wonderfully according to the other ingredients – it’s inimitably Scandinavian in the North, but it can make a very different dish taste more Turkish.

The pilaf was a decent accompaniment to the chicken, and was not wholly out of place with the broad beans, peas and lettuce.

 
All this worked together pretty well: a good set of dishes to mark asparagus passing the baton to broad beans and peas. But I do wish I had thought about something more obviously European rather than dishes from the continent’s two outliers. It might just have cheered us up. A tiny bit.