Entries Tagged 'Salads and Veg' ↓

Jill Dupleix is a smasher, and she certainly seems to like smashing things - she had a recipe in The Age the other day which called for smashed garlic cloves. She published this recipe, also in The Age, as the very prosaic “Roast Boiled potatoes”. Recently, I saw a reference to it by the foodie John Lethlean, under the much more satisfying name of “Jill Dupleix’s Smashed potatoes”.

This recipe is going viral. I found Dupleix’s original recipe here, via this wee Scottish blog (love the header), and another one on a Brazilian blog, the Technicolor Kitchen. In this incarnation it’s called Crash-hot potatoes.

But wait- there’s more! there’s an international dispute surrounding this recipe, no less. Did Dupleix steal Florentine chef Michael Chiarello’s Potatoes Da Delfina? No, it seems. Jill spills the beans here to blogger Trish at Light Sweet Crude. (H/T to Zoe.)

Get enough small, round floury potatoes to cover the base of a roasting pan or pyrex dish. You could use chats, new or whatever name your greengrocer gives to little’uns. If you don’t have this type of potato I suppose there is no law against cutting up bigger ones, it just won’t look as posh. Get the oven going berserk - 220 celsius or even hotter.

Boil the potatoes until they’re cooked, but not terribly soft. Drain them and tip them into the roasting pan so they’re kind of jostling together. You only want one layer.

Press a potato masher down on each potato so it bursts slightly. Don’t mash them - just break them a little. They should all be crowded together and touching each other.

Drizzle all of them with some EVOO, then sprinkle coarse sea or rock salt and fresh rosemary over the lot. How much EVOO is up to you. I like lots, but YMMV.

Incinerate in the hot oven for maybe fifteen-twenty minutes until the broken tops of the potatoes are golden brown and crusty and the interiors have done with any unfinished cooking business. You’re after soft, fluffy spuds with a salty baked crust. Too easy.

Rachel of Thus Bakes Zarathustra is presently sojourning with a bunch of Yankee pointyheads in pursuit of her PhD. Writing at TBZ’s previous incarnation she said:

… The thing is the next day I came home from the library starving and sick of books, and there was a bowl of carrot and avocado salad in the fridge and this cake, and I ate it and I felt a rush of righteous maturity akin to flossing my teeth or getting a pap smear.

We all need that feeling sometimes, don’t we?

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A few days ago we went to stay with my old friend Tallullah (not her real name). She is a very old and dear friend, but has always been a rotten cook. In fact until recently the only interesting thing she’d ever put on a dining table was her naked self and her moistie of the moment. It was a crap old share house table and of course it broke.

Would you believe they then proceeded, lust undiminished, to the kitchen table and then broke it too? Well, they did. What propelled this concupiscent wreckery to the realms of share house legend was that they had resorted to busting tables only because the entire household - four flatmates and one weekend guest - had scored on the same evening. At a bar called, “The Private Bin”, about which I shall make no further comment. Tallullah, while a resident, had got home too late that night to enjoy the privileges of her own bed. (So you see why I did that with her name, now, huhn?)

That was nearly fifteen years ago, and Tallullah’s cooking has come a million miles from the two minute noodles and sliced up oranges she used to serve for dinner. Last week we had a very tasty lasagne - she told me she’d been working on improving her cheesiness, and the cheesiness level was excellent, intense and creamy but still light. She’d also made a beautiful salad of chunks of avocado, tomato, and cucumber with butter lettuce. Tallullah’s known me for a long time too, so she waggled a bottle of “Fat Free French Dressing” at me and said “You don’t want this, do you?”

No.

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Five weeks now without a car, although the insurance company promises me it’ll be fixed on Wednesday. Promises, promises.

Having no car, even in Canberra, even in winter, has been absolutely fine until this last week when I’d already been sick for a week when both the kids got really crook. Bit of a bugger walking a five year old home from the doctor and having to wait while he vomits because he’s been coughing so hard. Could be worse, of course, as no-one has cancer (we hope) and everyone has all their limbs, but I felt sorry for the little bugger all the same.

So on Saturday morning I pounced on my dear friend Steevy when he dropped by IN HIS CAR and inveigled him into taking us to Choku Bai Jo. It was lovely to see Cristy, Paul and Lily there, even though I had to confess that I was buying a bunch of baby turnips just because they were tiny! (the largest nearly an inch wide) and cute! although I had no idea what I was going to do with them.

Pasta with baby turnips, bacon and turnip greens

This needs about 10 minutes preparation time and up to 15 minutes to cook, depending on the pasta you choose (wholemeal spirals for us). Will serve 3 adults or 2 adults and two kids.

Ingredients

1 bunch baby turnips, washed thoroughly with the greens cut into 3-4 cm lengths.
2 rashers bacon
2 cloves garlic, crushed or finely chopped
fresh flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
toasted walnut fragments
romano cheese, grated finely
black pepper
a sturdy pasta that you like

Preparation

Put on a big pot of water to boil.

I’d planned to leave a little of the stems on the turnip bulbs, Japanese-style but was defeated by the tiny grit filled folds of stem and cleanly beheaded them before slicing each one into two or three thick slices. Go with whatever you’ve got the patience for.

Parboil the turnips for a minute or so and retrieve them. Add the turnip greens to the pot for just a minute and drain them, then add salt and the pasta to the pot.

Chop the bacon into 1 cm slices and fry gently. I only had that poxy flabby packet bacon - thanks, Dad - so cooked it veerrrrrrry slowly until it had crisped gently and then splashed on some some Camellia Oil. I have fallen in love with Camellia Oil thanks (again) to Fuchsia Dunlop - it’s earthy, peppery and delicious. Add in the crushed garlic and turnips and after a few minutes stir through the greens. In just a minute the pasta will be ready, and you can throw some in the pan.

Serving

Serve in a nice deep bowl, and sprinkle generously with parsley and walnuts and a bit less generously with cheese and pepper. The turnips are mellow and subtle, the greens are zingy and delicious and the pasta gives you enough energy to chase children all afternoon. Ann, you may omit the bacon, but then you’d want to add some salt.

So now I have to work out what to do with the cavolo nero (aka Tuscan kale, black kale or dinosaur kale) that was the other thing I couldn’t resist …

From epicurious, via the best-named food blog evah, Rachel’s Thus Bakes Zarathustra, a slightly spooky salad for Owy to take to the school fundraiser trivia night. (I was going, but have got an evil lurgy and instead I am going to bed with a pile of magazines. There is no need to feel sorry for me as I have been doing a very good job of that myself. But thank you.)

 
I hate it when “bring food to share” turns into six kinds of dip and two kinds of biscuits, so the plan is to take some trimmed up corn mountain bread and let people make little wrappy things with this rather lurid beetroot pesto from stone soup and the salad.
 

I used tinned black beans, which Rachel found impossible to find. I’ve only found organic ones, which suits me fine. I used a little hack picked up from another outspoken female (I think) and briefly boiled the tinned beans to remove any metallic flavour. Because I am undeniably poncy, and because it is Friday the 13th, I used black quinoa.

Who knew there was such a world of quinoa? I’ve seen the white and red varieties before, but the health food store at the local shops has a new owner and she’s really expanded their product range. She didn’t know much about it, other than it was organic, and she suggested that you could cook all three kinds together. Not sure about that, as the black to me is a little toothier than the white or red. I boiled then steamed it as per the epicurous method and I’m a convert. The little white rings so characteristic of quinoa become more apparent after cooking, so you lose some of the intensity of the colour, but it has that lovely quinoa nuttiness. The salad dressing features melted butter and lime juice so of course it’s excellent.

You’d think that realising how much of my thinking about what to have for dinner comes from food blogs might stop me buying cookbooks, wouldn’t you?