Aubergines with den miso

Years ago, before I’d even met Dr W, I had a boyfriend whose sister-in-law was Japanese. She and I didn’t agree on much, but we did agree that these aubergines (which she made every time I visited her house) are pretty sublime.

Takako used to make this using those lovely wee Japanese aubergines – the sort that leave you gasping with their visual similarity to eggs and explain the whole eggplant nomenclature thing (not obvious when you are 18 and the only eggplants you have ever met are purple and shaped like a torpedo). Happily for those of us without a supplier of dear little Japanese aubergines, this works very well with the purple sort too. Aubergines are a wonderfully meaty sort of vegetable. Although this works really well as an accompaniment, this lovely meatiness means that you can happily serve this dish as the main event, with rice and perhaps a salad dressed with some rice vinegar. It’s also a good win if you have an unexpected visiting veggie, and, being one of those things you serve at room temperature, I think it’s really, really good as part of a picnic. These do soak up quite a lot of oil, as is common with aubergines, but hell – it’s not like you’re making this dish every day. To serve two, you’ll need:

2 medium aubergines
200g shiromiso (white miso)
2 tablespoons sake (Chinese rice wine is good here if you have no sake)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons mirin
6 tablespoons ground nut oil

As usual, if you’re having trouble finding white miso, head for a large independent health food shop. They tend to have a bewilderingly good selection of miso, seaweeds, pickled ginger and the like. I have no idea why, given that most of the other nutty, protein-knitted, fermenty things masquerading as food that the health food shop I use sells are things I have no interest in ingesting at all. Boo hippies.

Start by slicing the aubergines into three lengthways. Slash the cut surfaces diagonally, without cutting all the way through the flesh, and without cutting the skin. Fry in the hot oil over a medium heat, turning halfway through, until the skin and flesh is golden brown, and the aubergine is soft.

While the aubergine slices are frying, make the den miso by combining the mirin, sugar, sake and miso in a small frying pan and bringing to a very gentle simmer, stirring all the time. Cook the sauce for two minutes and keep warm until the aubergines are cooked.

Move the cooked aubergines to a plate and smear the hot den miso all over their upper surface, making sure the paste gets into the slashes. Leave the slices to come down to room temperature before serving – for some reason, this dish is all the more delicious when it’s cold.

Truffled mac and cheese

Back in the dark days of the 1980s, one of the first things I learned to make in home economics class at my all-girls’ school was macaroni cheese. Ours was a class training in the basics of good 1980s wifery – white sauces like the Mornay that forms the base of this dish, bread, pastry, and, bizarrely, the correct ironing of a man’s suit. (I like to think that I’m an excellent 2000s wife, but surely the ironing of suits is the dry cleaner’s job – or that of the suit owner?) I remember bringing a large carton of macaroni cheese home, and eating it with my proud parents. I also remember the girl who left her carton of macaroni cheese at school in her locker at the back of the classroom, and forgot to retrieve it until the smell became so strong that everyone thought that one of the rats from the biology department had escaped and died somewhere.

Last year, my excellent brother bought me a white truffle, preserved in a jar, for my birthday. I felt duty-bound to stop keeping it in the cupboard and just looking at it every now and then (when there are very good things in that cupboard I have a horrible habit of not cooking with them in case I come up with a better idea for them later on). I needed to do something with it before my next birthday, so I cast around for something simple that would showcase the truffle in a creamy, cheesy, soothing sort of way. What better than macaroni cheese?

If you have fresh truffles, so much the better. If you have no truffles at all, this dish will still be absolutely delicious; it just won’t be truffled.

A quick note about the truffle oil I’ve used alongside the real truffle here before we begin. Preserved truffles inevitably have less aroma than fresh ones, so I’ve used some white truffle oil alongside my truffle. It’s genuine truffle oil – but most of the truffle oil you’ll see on the market has never been near a real truffle. The stuff you’ll usually see on sale is made with olive oil and Bis-(methylthio)methane or 2,4-dithiapentane, both industrially synthesised versions of odour chemicals occurring in real truffles. It’s not a patch on real truffles, which have hundreds of different chemicals combining with the dismal-sounding Bis-(methylthio)methane and 2,4-dithiapentane to create a much more complex odour and flavour profile than the oil has. It’d be a real shame to use any near your real truffle (although some unscrupulous chefs do use the stuff to vamp up lacklustre truffles). Happily, you can also buy olive oil which has been infused with real truffles; unhappily, it’s far more expensive than the synthetic stuff. Check your label. If it says “truffle essence”, “truffle flavour”, or “truffle aroma”, it’s synthetic. If it’s heartstoppingly expensive and says clearly on the label that real truffles have been used to make it (you can buy the real stuff at e-Foodies, a company I’m very fond of), buy it and use it here. If all you can find is the synthetic stuff, I’ll leave it up to you – use it if you like, but be aware that it doesn’t really taste like truffles; and you should feel absolutely free to leave it out of this recipe.

To serve four, you’ll need:

400g macaroni
500ml milk
1 carrot
1 shallot
5 cloves
2 bay leaves
1 bunch thyme
1 bunch parsley
10 peppercorns
1 tablespoon olive oil
25g butter
25g plain flour
200g Parmesan cheese
75g Cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 small head broccoli
3 egg yolks
1 truffle (white or black)
2 tablespoons truffle oil
Salt to taste

Start by infusing the milk that will make the base of your Mornay (cheese) sauce with aromatics. Pour the milk into a saucepan with a well-fitting lid, and add the peeled carrot, cut into halves, the halved shallot, studded with the cloves, the bay leaves, thyme and parsley. Add a teaspoon of salt and ten whole peppercorns. Bring the milk to a bare simmer, then turn the heat off and leave the saucepan in a warm place for 3-4 hours. Strain the milk through a sieve.

Boil the macaroni according to the packet instructions with a tablespoon of olive oil. When the macaroni is cooked, rinse it in a colander to remove excess starch and set aside. Divide the raw broccoli into tiny florets and mix with the macaroni.

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

In a clean, dry saucepan, melt the butter and combine with the flour, stirring over a low to medium heat for three minutes. Stirring all the time (I like to use a balloon whisk), add a small amount of milk and stir until it is incorporated into the sauce and starts to thicken. Keep adding milk in small amounts and stirring vigorously until all the milk is incorporated and you have a smooth, thick sauce. Stir the grated cheeses (reserving a little parmesan to top the dish with) into the sauce with the beaten egg yolks, the finely chopped truffle and the truffle oil (if using). Taste the sauce and add more salt if you think it needs it – the cheese is quite salty, so you may not need any.

Combine the sauce and the macaroni/broccoli mixture in a shallow earthenware dish. Sprinkle the surface with the remaining Parmesan cheese, and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the top is brown and the sauce is bubbling. Serve immediately, pouring over a little more (real) truffle oil if you fancy.

Cauliflower cheese

There’s something disproportionately impressive about wheeling a whole cauliflower out to the table, glistening in a robe of scented, cheesy sauce. It raises cauliflower cheese from a nursery tea dish to the sort of thing you might serve as a dinner party accompaniment.

I only ever make cauliflower cheese when I can find a pristine cauliflower. The cauli you choose should be firm and white, and still surrounded by its green leaves, which should be stiff, not floppy (floppy leaves mean the cauliflower has been out of the ground for too long). Don’t use a cauliflower with any bruised bits visible.

The Mornay sauce that’s slathered all over the cauliflower is a little more complicated than usual; the milk for the sauce is infused with aromatic herbs for a couple of hours before making the sauce up. It’s worth the tiny amount of extra effort. You’ll end up with a delicately scented, Parmesan-savoury cloud of white curds, a much finer dish than the wet stuff you remember from school.

To serve four as an accompaniment or two as a main course (if you’re eating this as a dish on its own, it’s very good with some toasted sourdough bread to mop up the lovely sauce) you’ll need:

1 large, firm, fresh cauliflower (around 1kg)
300ml whole milk
1 shallot
5 cloves
10 peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 bunch parsley
75g butter
75g plain flour
A grating of nutmeg
1 teaspoon dry mustard powder
150g grated Parmesan cheese plus a couple of tablespoons for sprinkling
Salt

A few hours before you start to eat, cut the shallot in half and stud it with the cloves. Place it in a saucepan with the bay leaves, parsley and peppercorns and pour over the milk. Bring the milk up to a gentle simmer, put the lid on and remove from the heat, leaving in a warm place for about three hours.

When you are ready to assemble the dish, use a sharp knife to remove all the outer leaves from the cauliflower except the very fine ones from the inner layer of leaves which curl around the curds. Cut the stalk off the bottom of the vegetable so it will sit flat when placed on a plate. Cut two big slashes in a cross shape into the bottom of the stalk – this will help the thickest part of the cauliflower to steam faster, so nothing will overcook and the whole vegetable retains a good texture. (Nothing is worse than a soggy cauliflower cheese.)

Steam the cauliflower in a large pan for twenty minutes, and heat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

While the cauliflower is steaming, make up the Mornay sauce. Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan with the flour, and stir well over a low heat for three or four minutes – do not allow the roux (flour/butter mixture) to brown. Strain the milk and discard the aromatics. Add the milk to the pan very gradually, stirring all the time, until you have a thick white sauce. Stir the cheese, mustard and nutmeg through the sauce to finish.

Place the steamed cauliflower in an ovenproof serving dish, and spoon the thick sauce all over the cauliflower. Bake in the hot oven for 30 minutes – the sauce will be bubbling. Finish the dish by spooning some more of the sauce from the dish over the cauliflower and sprinkling over the extra grated parmesan, then placing under the grill until the cheese is golden and bubbling. Serve immediately.

Maple-mustard glazed vegetables

British readers will notice that the baby vegetables they are able to buy at the moment are, for babies, somewhat husky. This is because EU legislation, which was only repealed last week and which will remain in force until July 2009, sets strict rules for the dimensions of vegetables – carrots may not be sold, even as baby carrots, if they weigh under 8g.

Legislation on the weight, symmetry, roundness, straightness, evenness and colour of vegetables in the EU has, in my experience, been roundly ignored by market sellers in France, Italy and Spain, while it’s prosecuted with zeal by UK council officials. (Meanwhile, amazingly, it was the French, Italians and Spanish who were in particular opposition to any change in legislation – I am at a total loss to understand how it comes to be the rigid old British and the Germans who are calling the situation as it is untenable.) It’s good to know that these protectionist rules, which used to result in the waste of around 20% of all farm produce, are being dumped as a result of the EU-wide rise in food costs, and I look forward to the appearance of spurred and bendy cucumbers in my local supermarket. Meanwhile, I wish they’d extend the repeal of these rules to all vegetables – even once next year’s changes come into force, it will still be illegal to sell imperfect apples and pears (note that a lot of old English varieties are rusty and spotty, and as such impossible to sell legally) unless you slap a label on them saying “product intended for processing”. Citrus fruit, kiwi fruit, lettuces, peaches and nectarines, pears, strawberries, sweet peppers, table grapes and tomatoes will also remain covered by the old legislation. I long for a funny-shaped tomato, or one of those lovely ripply peppers. The law in this area is a mess, protecting the interests of farmers while raising prices, putting financial pressure on householders and excluding us from choice and flavour. Sometimes I feel my best option might be to turn the back garden into an allotment.

Anyway. I seem to have gone off on a tangent. These glazed carrots and radishes are delicious, extremely easy to make, and not as bad for you as you might imagine. They’re a regular fixture on our table at Christmas, but they’re fantastic at any time of year. I have faked true baby Chantenay carrots here with the judicious trimming of pubescent-but-legal, 8-gram Chantenays. Until next year, you’ll have to do the same. Or emigrate.To serve two, you’ll need:

12 baby carrots
12 radishes
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 heaped tablespoon grainy Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon salt
50g butter
50ml water

Top and tail the radishes. Top and tail the carrots and trim them to be a similar size to the radishes. Melt the butter with the water, maple syrup, salt and mustard in a small saucepan, and bring the mixture to a gentle simmer. Cook the carrots in the mixture over a low heat, stirring, for about eight minutes, then add the radishes and cook for a further two minutes. Serve immediately, with some of the glaze drizzled over the top.

Spiced parmesan parsnips

One of my very favourite Delia Smith recipes is this lovely way with roast parsnips, where she tosses them in grated parmesan and flour before cooking. My Grandma used to make Delia’s parsnips every Christmas, and there was always a fight over who got the last few.

It’s funny, really; in the UK, parsnips are a very ordinary accompaniment to a roast dinner, a slightly posh vegetable to be rolled out only on Sunday lunchtimes. Elsewhere in the world, the parsnip is considered more appropriate for feeding animals than people. Part of this is down to our climate. Parsnips need exposure to frost for their flavour to be fully developed, so in warmer places the parsnip is a less impressive beast, weedy and comparatively flavourless – hence the French tendency to feed them to pigs rather than people.

This is my version of the Delia recipe my Grandma used to cook. I’ve changed the fat used – you’ll get a much better crisp using dripping, and the flavour you’ll achieve with a good butcher’s pot of beef dripping is amazingly good if you serve these next to roast beef . I’ve also upped the ratio of parmesan and added some curry powder (always unbelievably good with a parsnip) and lots of lemon zest and fresh basil, which lifts the whole dish. Result: crunchy, savoury parsnips, sweetly fluffy inside and amazingly crisp outside – and so delicious you too will be fighting over the leftovers.

To serve eight with a roast, you’ll need:

1.25kg parsnips
175g plain flour
100g parmesan, grated finely
1 tablespoon medium curry powder (I like Bolst’s)
Grated zest of 2 lemons
1 heaped teaspoon salt
3 large tablespoons beef dripping
3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Put a heavy roasting dish containing the dripping in the oven as it heats up. Combine the flour, parmesan, curry powder, salt and lemon zest in a large mixing bowl. Peel the parsnips and cut them in half across their width. Cut the top half of each parsnip into four long pieces, and the bottom half into two.

Cook the prepared parsnips in boiling water for five minutes. Remove the saucepan from the heat and drain the parsnips a few at a time, rolling the steaming-hot parsnips in the flour mixture and setting aside on a plate. When all the parsnips are coated thoroughly, remove the roasting dish from the oven and arrange the parsnips in the hot fat (careful – it may spit). Put the dish of parsnips high in the oven for 20 minutes, turn the parsnips and put back in the oven for another 20 minutes.

When the parsnips are ready, they’ll be a lovely golden colour. Remove them to a serving dish and sprinkle generously with basil.

Roasted butternut squash and red pepper soup with garlic parmesan croutons

Just in time for you to buy the ingredients before Halloween, here’s a seasonal soup. (When I mentioned to Dr W that I was making a Halloween soup, his response was: “Ooh. Will it have blood and pus?” Sorry, love. It’s only got squash and peppers.)

The pumpkins you buy for carving don’t have the sweet, chestnutty character of many of the smaller squashes, so they’re better kept for carving and putting on the windowledge. A pumpkin-type soup is better made with something like a butternut squash instead, which has a great flavour and texture, and can be a bit easier to handle than some of the rounder squashes. In this recipe, the vegetables that make up the soup are all roasted. The squash will caramelise nuttily, the peppers become sweet and silky…and surely, there can’t be anything nicer than a roast onion? I’ve topped the lot off with some gorgeously savoury, crispy garlic and parmesan croutons. Halloween heaven.

To serve 4, you’ll need:

Soup
1 large butternut squash
5 large red peppers
5 small onions
1 litre stock (I used some home-made chicken stock)
1 tablespoon paprika
½ teaspoon ground coriander
Juice of 1 lime
20g butter
Olive oil to drizzle
Salt and pepper
Fresh coriander to garnish

Croutons
½ loaf white bread (unsliced)
4 grated cloves garlic
1 handful grated parmesan
4 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat the oven to 180°C (340°F). Peel the butternut squash and cut it into chunks about an inch square. Arrange them on a baking tray and drizzle generously with olive oil. Peel and quarter the onions, and put them on another baking tray, cut side up. Dot with the butter and drizzle with a little more olive oil, then sprinkle with salt.

Put the squash and onions in the oven, and roast for 40 minutes, basting once. When the 40 minutes are up, put the peppers (on another baking tray, and rubbed gently with olive oil) in the oven, baste the squash and onions once more, and continue to roast everything for a further 20 minutes. The butternut squash should be soft and turning a sticky, caramel-brown at the edges, the onions should be browning nicely, and the peppers should be wrinkly. Set the squash and onions aside, and put the peppers in a plastic freezer bag. Seal and leave until the peppers have cooled. The steam coming off the peppers will loosen the skin and make them easy to peel – once cooled, you can slip the skins off.

Saute the paprika and coriander in a tablespoon of olive oil in a large saucepan for one minute, then add the squash, onions and peeled peppers to the pan. Saute gently, stirring, for five minutes, then pour over the stock, and bring to a simmer for five minutes. Puree the soup in a food processor (you’ll need to do this in batches) and push the resulting puree through a seive, back into the large pan. Add the lime juice, which will push the flavour of the peppers to the fore, taste for seasoning and leave the soup to one side while you make the croutons.

To make the croutons, preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Cut the crusts off the half loaf and discard. Chop the white part of the loaf into cubes about 2cm on each side (a large-ish crouton is nice here, the outside turning crisp and the inside retaining a bit of squashiness). Arrange the croutons on a baking sheet. Grate the garlic into the olive oil, mix well and drizzle over the croutons. Toss them well in the oil so every side is covered with the garlicky mixture, then sprinkle over the parmesan and toss again. Bake in the hot oven for ten minutes until golden, but start checking after eight minutes – these are quite easy to burn.

Warm the soup through, sprinkle with croutons and garnish with a bit of fresh coriander.

Sweet potato and chickpea curry

I like to make a vegetable curry as an accompaniment when I make a meat one, but this curry is substantial and tasty enough to stand up as a meal on its own with rice. This curry is in a southern Indian style, with coconut milk making the curry rich and thick, and lime juice adding zing. It’s great for vegetarians – it’s loaded with flavour, and will have the meat-eaters fighting among themselves (probably with forks) for a helping too.

I have been lazy in this recipe and haven’t made my own curry paste. A good shop-bought curry powder works very well here – as usual, I recommend Bolst’s Madras powder, which is really well-balanced and fragrant. To serve four, you’ll need:

3 sweet potatoes
2 onions
6 spring onions plus more to garnish
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 inch piece of ginger
4 cloves garlic
1 can chickpeas
1 can coconut milk
1 bird’s eye chilli (more if you want a hotter curry)
1 handful chopped coriander leaves
Juice of 1 lime
3 tablespoons oil
Salt to taste

Dice the onions and slice the spring onions, and sauté them in the oil with the curry powder and the coriander, cumin and fennel seeds until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the garlic and ginger, both chopped finely, with the diced and peeled sweet potato and the sliced chilli, and continue to sauté until the sweet potato starts to caramelise and brown a little at the edges.

Pour the coconut milk over the curry, cover and simmer for fifteen minutes, until the sweet potato is soft. Add the drained chickpeas to the pan with half the lime juice and a teaspoon of salt, and simmer for another five minutes. Taste for seasoning – you may want to add more lime. Remove from the heat and stir in the fresh coriander, and garnish with some sliced spring onion.

This curry tastes even better if you leave it in the fridge for a day before reheating and serving. If you do this, add some more fresh coriander when you serve it.

Padron peppers – Spanish roulette

One of the things I love about tapas is that they’re often so easy to prepare. Slice a chorizo, pour over red wine, stick in pan, reduce, eat. Slice some manchego and quince cheese. Eat. Place olives in small bowl. Eat. Put prawns in dish with olive oil, garlic and chillies. Make hot. Eat. Procure a ham. Slice. Eat.

Given that tapas are there primarily as a salty accompaniment to your drink, these simple, clear flavours make a lot of sense. The quality of raw ingredients in preparations like this becomes all-important, and often the best of those raw ingredients are the seasonal ones. Enter the Padron pepper.

These little green jewels are a deliciously sweet, fresh-tasting pepper which comes ready in the summer. They are, for the most part, delightfully mild – but one in every ten or so has a strong chilli kick. There is nothing better than a dish that engages your sense of danger. The Spanish have a saying: Pimiento de Padrón, pequeño pero matón. Translated very approximately, this means: “Padron pepper – teensy-weensy thug”.

To serve two as a nibble with drinks or as a starter, you’ll need:

150-200g Padron peppers (see below for suppliers)
5 tablespoons olive oil
A generous sprinkling of sea salt

Heat the olive oil in a large pan to a medium temperature, and drop the peppers in. Stir the peppers in the oil for about four minutes, until their skins are blistering. Remove the peppers to bowls with a slotted spoon, sprinkle over plenty of salt, and serve piping hot. To eat, hold the peppers by the stem and bite off the whole fruit. Keep a glass of something cold to hand in case you get one of the very spicy ones.

It’s worth getting your hands on some Padron peppers at this time of year, when they are at their very best. I’ve seen them in Waitrose, but if you don’t have a local branch you can also order them online in the UK at Little Green Men, where they have some great chilli products.

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.

Sautéed cauliflower

Ah, the cauliflowers of our youth. I’m sure you remember the buggers: grey and brain-ish, boiled until soft and claggy by the school dinnerladies; or (worse) bobbing up and down in salty water in your Grandma’s kitchen sink as a legion of little black insects died in unison and floated out of the florets. They never all vacated the cauliflower – I spent miserable hours at the table with the tip of a knife, digging out wiggly, squashy bodies and things with far too many legs, and smearing them on my napkin.

It took me some years to mentally rehabilitate the cauliflower, and I know plenty of adults who still won’t touch the things. Happily, these days you are very, very unlikely to come across an insect-riddled specimen (pesticides are the modern cook’s friend), and grey mush is easily avoided if you’re cooking them at home. Best of all, it turns out that a cauliflower which is roasted or sautéed is totally delicious. It has a great texture and takes on a sweet and toasty flavour a little like roast chestnuts – nothing at all like the bitter, wet stuff you remember from school. Serve as a side dish or as one of a selection of vegetably nibbles. And if you’re low-carbing, which at least two of my friends are at the moment, this is a very tasty way to get your vitamins without carbs.

To saute a head of cauliflower you’ll need:

1 cauliflower
Olive oil to cover the bottom of a large saute pan
Salt

(This may be the shortest ingredient list I have ever posted!)

Separate the cauliflower into large florets (see picture) and slice them lengthways so you have flat pieces of cauliflower about a centimetre thick. Heat the oil in the pan until it is shimmering, and slide the cauliflower in. Brown on one side (four or five minutes) before turning carefully and browning on the other side. Serve spread out on a large plate, sprinkled generously with sea salt.