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Japanese coleslaw

This coleslaw is very quick and easy to throw together, and it’s a great alternative accompaniment for your barbecues. Wasabi and ginger give this coleslaw a great SE Asian kick, and the sweet white cabbage and carrot shreds really respond well to the savoury dressing.

I’ve used powdered wasabi here, which you can usually find at Asian grocers. It’s sweeter and has more zip to it than the pre-prepared version. Check your wasabi packaging to make sure that wasabi (horseradish on some packs) is the only ingredient.

To serve about four people, you’ll need:

1 white cabbage
2 large carrots
½ inch piece of ginger
3 tablespoons seasoned Japanese rice vinegar (I like Mitsukan, which you should be able to find at a good supermarket)
1 ½ tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 ½ tablespoons soy sauce
1 heaped teaspoon wasabi powder
2 teaspoons soft brown sugar

Shred the cabbage finely with a knife, and grate the carrots. Mix the vegetables together in a large bowl.

Add the vinegar to the wasabi in a small bowl, and leave aside for five minutes. Grate the ginger and stir it into the vinegar and wasabi mixture with the soy sauce and sugar, and keep stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Add the sesame oil, whisk briskly to emulsify all the ingredients, and pour the finished dressing over the cabbage and carrots. Toss everything together and serve immediately. This coleslaw does not keep well (the salad will wilt in the dressing), so you have a great excuse to eat it all in one go.

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Fennel salad

This is so easy – just slice and bung on a plate – that I hesitate to call it a recipe. Let’s call it an assembly.

A fennel bulb has an aniseedy, aromatic taste. Its flavour is very smooth, with no hint of acid to lift it, so I like to add some lemon juice whether I’m roasting it or eating it raw. It’s a lovely, underused vegetable – try making this very quick salad next time you have a pizza. It’s a great accompaniment to tomato-rich foods.

To serve two, you’ll need:

1 fennel bulb
1 shallot
1 small handful parsley
Juice of half a lemon
3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper

Slice the fennel bulb into thin rings, and arrange to cover a plate. Reserve the herby tops of the bulbs. Slice the shallot finely and separate into rings. Lay these on top of the fennel. Squeeze over the lemon juice and drizzle the olive oil over, sprinkle over salt and a generous amount of pepper, then leave at room temperature for at least half an hour for the flavours to meld. Just before serving, garnish with the reserved fennel tops and the parsley.

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Creamy cucumber salad

Here’s an eastern European way with cucumbers. This is particularly lovely if you can get your hands on home-grown cucumbers, which are often sweeter than the ones you find at the greengrocer. The cucumbers and some shallots are salted to drive out excess moisture and make them extra-crisp, then chilled and tossed in sharp dressing with crème fraîche. The mildly acidic dressing reacts with the cucumbers to form a lovely, lightly foaming texture. This salad is delicious with rich meats and with oily fish.

To serve four as a side dish, you’ll need:

1 large cucumber
1 banana shallot
3 heaped tablespoons crème fraîche or soured cream
1 tablespoon wine vinegar
4 tablespoons snipped chives
Salt and pepper

Slice the cucumber and the shallot as finely as possible, and layer the slices, sprinkling them with salt as you go, in a colander. Put a heavy plate on top of the slices inside the colander, and leave it to drain for four hours. Blot the cucumber and shallot pieces on kitchen paper and put in a large bowl, then chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

Add the chilled crème fraîche, some pepper and the vinegar to the dish and toss the salad vigorously with two spoons. The mixture should be looking frothy. Return to the fridge for half and hour, toss again, dress with the chives and serve cold.

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Shepherd’s salad – Coban Salatasi

Turkish saladIf you go to Istanbul expecting kebabs, meatballs and other chunks of protein, you might be pleased to find that there is also a rich tradition of salads, cooked vegetable dishes (especially aubergine) and dolmades, or stuffed vegetables. This simple salad pops up all over the place, and it’s a really good accompaniment for meat dishes – the fresh vegetables and tart lemon juice counter the wonderful oily richness of Turkish food like nothing else.

I made this last night, but the photo at the top of the page is of an identical salad I ate in a little restaurant next to the Bosphorus – unfortunately, I still don’t have my camera so couldn’t photograph last night’s version. Mine turned out pretty much exactly like the restaurant one, though: this is a very quick, very easy dish with half an hour’s thumb-twiddling in the middle.

To serve four, you’ll need:

4 medium tomatoes, very ripe
1 very mild onion
1 cucumber
1 large handful flat leaf parsley
1 mild green chilli
6 tablespoons olive oil
Juice of half a lemon (and more to taste)
Salt

Slice the onion very finely and chop the parsley roughly. Put them together in a bowl and squeeze over the juice of half a lemon and two tablespoons of olive oil. Set aside for thirty minutes before you put the rest of the dish together.

When the thirty minutes is up, dice the tomatoes and peel and dice the cucumber – the pieces of tomato and cucumber should be small and even. Slice the chilli into thin rings. Mix the chilli, tomatoes and cucumber together in your serving dish and dress with the remaining olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice. Place the onion slices and parsley on top of the dish and pour over any oily juices from the bowl. Bring the salad to the table with the onion on top, then allow the diners to mix it up themselves.

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Ezme – Turkish crushed tomato and chilli salad

It’s been an exciting few days. Some readers will be aware that I have a horrible allergic reaction to lobsters (face swells, airways close, scalp comes out in lumps, I get injected with adrenaline and then sleep for two days). Unfortunately, at a Chinese meal on Sunday where the rest of the family was munching their way through a couple of lobsters while I stuck to crab, I must have accidentally ingested some, because the evening saw my eyelids slowly but surely swelling up to resemble one of those bobbly goldfish. The rest of my face soon followed, and I’ve been lying under a duvet, groaning, ever since.

Then, as soon as I felt well enough to tackle a post here, I realised that I’ve left my camera at a party the day before the lobster incident. Fortunately the party was at my parents’ house, where we were celebrating my lovely Dad’s 60th. The camera is safe and sound, but it is about 60 miles away, full of photos, and this does mean that two of the Turkish posts I was planning on making will have to wait until I have it back. Similarly, today’s post has no accompanying photographs – please imagine a cheering, dark red paste.

Ezme is served as a starter alongside other salady nibbles to be eaten with bread in Turkey. It’s extremely spicy, and also serves as a deliciously fresh cold sauce to go with grilled meats. If you’re in Cambridge, check out the Turkish delicatessen on Mill Road for the hot paprika paste you’ll need. (Tips from readers about where other Turkish delis can be located would be very welcome – please leave a comment.)

To serve six, you’ll need:

½ lb fresh, ripe tomatoes
1 pointy green pepper (the pale sort which is good barbecued)
½ a cucumber
2 spring onions
1 small handful mint leaves
1 tablespoon hot Turkish paprika paste
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
Salt, pepper, paprika to taste

Peel the tomatoes and the cucumber, and remove the stalk, interior ribs and seeds of the pepper. Chop the tomatoes, cucumber, pepper and spring onions as finely as you can without reducing them to a pulp (careful pulsing in the food processor will also do the job). Stir in all the other ingredients, tasting for seasoning. Serve at room temperature.

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Sweet pepper salad

Sweet pepper saladI’ve given quantities here for four diners, but you should be aware that this is one of those things that people will ask for seconds and thirds of, so cook a generous amount. This is a lovely sunshine-filled salad, assertively flavoured with garlic, fresh lemon juice, sweetly salty anchovies, and good olive oil.

The peppers are grilled and peeled before the salad is assembled. This makes them much more digestible (many people’s stomachs are bothered by the indigestible skins of peppers in quantity), and gives them a wonderfully satiny texture. Allow your peppers to macerate in the fridge overnight (or preferably for two or three days), and you’ll find that all the flavours in the dish meld sweetly into a gorgeous golden, silky whole.

To serve four, you’ll need:

6 peppers – use a mix of red, yellow and orange
½ a lemon
4 anchovies in oil
3 cloves garlic
8 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper

Start by cutting each pepper into three or four segments (you’ll be able to see the pepper’s ribs – just cut along these). Discard the stalk and seeds, and lay the segments out, skin side up, on the grill tray.

Grill the peppers until the skins are brown and blistering. Put all the segments into a plastic freezer bag and knot the top, then leave the bag alone for about twenty minutes. The peppers will steam gently inside the bag, loosening their skins. When the peppers are cool, unseal the bag and start to peel the skins off. You’ll find they come away easily. Do this over a bowl to catch any drips of sweet juice.

Cut the peeled segments of pepper into slim strips and put them in the bowl with the juice. Add the garlic, crushed or grated, the chopped anchovies, the lemon juice and the olive oil. Mix well, cover and refrigerate. The peppers will get better and better as they macerate, so feel free to leave them for up to three days – just remove them from the fridge a couple of hours before serving so they can come up to a toothsome room temperature.

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Swedish cucumber salad

Cucumber saladHere’s another Swedish recipe for your smorgasbord. This salad is right up there with my favourite cucumber applications: it’s sweet and tart, and spiked with aromatic dill and plenty of black pepper. This is a fat-free salad, and its clean and crisp taste makes it an excellent side dish where you’re serving up oily foods. It works especially well, for some reason, with fish; this is just fantastic with salmon. If you want to serve up some smoked salmon (or, more appropriately, gravadlax) with your smorgasbord, make the dill sauce here on Gastronomy Domine, which tastes authentically Scandinavian and goes extremely well with these dilly cucumbers.

I’m enjoying cucumbers a lot at the moment, largely because my Mum has been growing some real corkers in her greenhouse. They’re smaller than the kind you buy at the supermarket, but are extremely sweet and with a good flavour. If you too are in a particularly cucumberish mood right now, have a quick look at my recipe for Chinese smacked cucumbers.

To make a Swedish cucumber salad to serve six to eight as part of a smorgasbord you’ll need:

2 cucumbers
2 tablespoons coarse salt
2 level tablespoons caster sugar (superfine sugar for Americans)
2 tablespoons boiling water
4 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 small shallot, minced
1 small handful dill, chopped finely

Slice your cucumbers thinly and arrange in a colander, sprinkling with the salt as you go. Put a bowl on top of the sliced, salted cucumbers and weigh it down with the set of weights from your kitchen scales (a heavy book will do the job too if your scales are digital). Salting and pressing the cucumbers like this will drive out some of their moisture, leaving them much crisper, and better able to take up the flavours of the dressing. Leave the weighted colander for an hour (keep it on the draining board so the drips can fall into the sink). Remove the cucumber pieces to a large bowl, chill for an hour and pour off any extra liquid they might have produced.

To make the dressing, dissolve the caster sugar in the boiling water, then add the vinegar, shallot and dill. Mix well, leave to cool (I give mine a quick shock in the freezer) and pour over the chilled cucumber. Serve immediately.

I’m very fond of cucumber salads, and there are several on this blog – click here for a few more.

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Panzanella

PanzanellaSummer finally happened in Cambridge this weekend. It seems to have finished today, but I’m glad we made the most of it with a picnic on Sunday. I made a Spanish omelette and this easy and delicious tomato, cucumber and bread salad. Panzanella is a Tuscan salad which works really well as part of a summer lunch, and offers you a great way to use up extra bread you’ve got lying around – it’s traditionally made with stale bread, but any dry, open-textured bread like ciabatta will work very well here. Some recipes include tuna, onions, anchovies and other strong flavours, but when your tomatoes are good, this simpler preparation makes the most of them.

This is absolutely the best time of year for tomato recipes, and the English tomatoes you’ll find in the supermarket at the moment are at their sweetest and ripest. (My own are a bit of a disaster this year; it’s not been hot enough for them to ripen, so I’ve three vines of gorgeous big tomatoes in various exciting shades of vivid green.) This salad makes the most of them by macerating them overnight with salt, lots of olive oil and garlic, herbs and a glug of really, really good vinegar. The juice from the tomatoes leeches out and combines with the other ingredients, penetrating the crisp flesh of the cucumber, and pieces of bread are added just before serving to soak up the rest of the flavourful juices.

To serve six as part of a picnic, you’ll need:

10 large fresh plum tomatoes
½ large cucumber
100g small, mild olives (again, I heartily recommend Waitrose’s Spanish Couchillo olives)
100g Sunblush tomatoes and their oil (or 100g of your own home-made slow-roasted tomatoes)
1 tablespoon chopped oregano
1 tablespoon chopped basil
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
Zest of ½ a lemon
5 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons good balsamic vinegar
1 large pinch salt
1 pinch sugar
8 turns of the peppermill
½ a ciabatta, torn into pieces

Chop the tomatoes and cucumber roughly into 1cm cubes, and place in a large bowl. (If you’re going to be eating this at a picnic use a Tupperware box so you can transport it easily.) Stir in all the rest of the ingredients except the bread, and taste for seasoning – add some juice from the lemon if you want the salad to be more tart. Put in the fridge and leave, covered, overnight until you are ready to eat. The flavours will meld (there is something magical about what happens when you use this combination of herbs with raw tomatoes) and soften overnight.

Immediately before serving, tear the ciabatta into small pieces and stir it into the salad. This is great with a chilled glass of Prosecco and lots of sunshine.

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Tuna and borlotti bean salad

This salad is brilliant at barbecues, where it’s a great light, sunshine-filled alternative to any giant hunks of charred meat you might be serving. It’s full of assertive flavours – the lemon, deliciously sweet peppers and raw onion, the celery and, of course, the tuna. It’s also very simple, and only takes a few minutes to throw together.

I’m a lazy cook. I very, very seldom cook beans from scratch – they’re very cheap to buy in cans, and in a salad like this the borlotti beans don’t suffer at all from coming out of a tin. If you prefer to use dried beans, you’ll need to soak them overnight, then boil for ten minutes. Take the pan off the heat and leave the beans to soak in their cooking water for two hours. Borlotti beans are a lovely little legume. They’re related to the kidney bean, and they have a lovely creamy texture and a slightly sweet taste. If you can’t find any, try making this with cannellini beans, which make a good alternative. To make a large bowl, big enough for a large family barbecue, you’ll need:

2 cans tuna in spring water
1 large sweet onion (a Vidalia or other sweet salad onion is excellent in this dish)
1 handful fresh parsley
1 plump clove garlic
1 can borlotti beans
5 stalks from a celery heart
1 orange pepper
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Juice of ½ a lemon
Salt and pepper

Chop the onion into quarters and slice finely. Mince the parsley and cut the celery and pepper into small dice. Crush the garlic and flake the tuna. Put the beans in a sieve and rinse them under cold running water.

Toss all the prepared ingredients together in a large bowl with the olive oil, lemon and seasoning, and cover with cling film. Leave in the fridge for an hour before serving for the flavours to mingle.

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Smacked cucumber

This is as closely as I’ve been able to duplicate the wonderful cucumber salad at Fuchsia Dunlop’s Bar Shu. It’s an easy accompaniment and it’s great at cutting through rich flavours. The dressing keeps for a week in the fridge; try making a double amount and keeping half for a really quick salad later in the week.

The smacking of the cucumber is an important first step in this recipe. It opens cracks up in the flesh of the vegetable for the dressing to seep into, and means that when you salt the cucumber, there will be more surface area for its liquid to escape from. I use the flat edge of my Chinese cleaver to wallop the cucumber, but you can use a rolling pin if you don’t own a cleaver.

To smack enough for four (although we can easily demolish this amount between two) you’ll need:

1 large cucumber
2 teaspoons soft brown sugar
4 cloves fresh garlic
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon soya sauce
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon Chinese chilli oil (leave this out if you prefer your cucumber not to be spicy)
Salt to sprinkle

Lay the cucumber on a wooden board and slap it hard with the flat of a cleaver until cracks have opened up all along it. Chop the cucumber into bite-sized pieces, put in a colander and sprinkle with salt to disgorge some of the liquid from the flesh.

Meanwhile, chop the garlic finely and mix it with the sugar, soy and rice vinegar until the sugar is dissolved. Add the oils and set aside.

When the cucumber has been draining for 40 minutes, pat it dry with kitchen paper and place on a large flat plate. Sprinkle over the stirred dressing and serve immediately.