Spiralizer Week: Day One: Puttanesca Sauce

My middle sister gave me a Spiralizer for Christmas, so I decided that this week would be Spiralizer Week, and every day I would do a different recipe from a beginner's Spiralizer recipe blog: a nice way to ease back from all-salads into slightly more filling food, while hopefully still shedding a few Christmas pounds. We started off well with this "spaghetti" alla puttanesca. You could, of course, make it with normal pasta, and it might fill you up for a little longer.

Ingredients

• 1 clove of garlic
• 2-3 anchovy fillets
• 400g can of chopped tomatoes
• 1 tbsp capers, chopped if they are large
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 2-3 tbsp chopped parsley
• 1/4 cup sliced olives
• 1 tsp chilli flakes (optional)
• 2 zucchini, spiralized into thin noodles

Method

Crush the garlic into a frying pan with a little oil (use olive, or if you prefer, anchovy oil from the jar) and snip in the anchovy fillets, then fry over a low heat until the anchovy has dissolved and the garlic has softened. Pour in the tin of tomatoes and add the parsley, capers and olives; season with chilli flakes, if using, or black pepper. Simmer for about 10-15 minutes or until liquid from the sauce has completely evaporated.

Once the sauce is dry, add the zucchini noodles, and cook until they have *just* softened and enough water has come out to make the sauce a little liquid. Stop cooking immediately and serve the noodles with the sauce.

Roast Green Peppers with Giant Cous-Cous

Green peppers have a hard time competing with their red, orange and yellow brethren. Chefs are full of admonitions to 'never ever' substitute green peppers for red, and it's understandable: the flavour is noticeably different, being less sweet and grassier. However they're indispensable for the gorgeous lamb abruzzio and a staple of my Mexican cooking. Tonight I wanted to try stuffing and roasting them, but using flavours which would complement their green taste. I used a Nigel recipe for inspiration, but like the risotto I made earlier in the week, substituted most of the ingredients. To figure out the flavours, I started with the 'abruzzio' flavours, then subtracted the lamb (I try to eat veggie on days when I'm not exercising) and replaced its umameness with a little anchovy.

If you can't get giant cous-cous (and I have to say, I was amazed to find it in my local market), I'm sure normal cous-cous would work just fine. You would, however, miss out on the joy of the escapee giant cous-cous, which leap from the peppers onto the hot roasting tray, and bake through to produce joyous bonus crunchy popcorn-like additions. This recipe makes enough for two hungry people, or in our case, enough for dinner and then lunch the next day.

Ingredients:

• 200g giant cous-cous (also called pearl cous-cous, or mograbiah)
• six spring onions
• a large handful of mint
• six large salted anchovy fillets
• 10-12 olives
• four medium to large green peppers
• half a lemon
• 100ml sour cream
• 1 tsp paprika

Cook the cous-cous according to its packet instructions; mine didn't have any but took about 20 minutes to become tender. Finely chop the spring onions and fry in a little olive oil until softened. Zest the lemon, chop the mint, halve the olives, and crumble the anchovies; turn off the heat and add them all to the spring onions, then season with black pepper. (You probably won't need salt because of the olives and anchovies.) Drain and tip in the cooked cous-cous and squeeze over the lemon, then gently combine.

Cut the peppers in half and remove the seeds and pith, but leave the stalks on. Lay out in a large baking tray and fill with the cous-cous combination. Cover loosely with foil and roast in a 200C oven or on a hot bbq for 35-40 minutes, until the peppers are cooked through and beginning to caramelise at the edges. Stir the paprika through the sour cream and serve with the cooked peppers.

Pissaladiere

I'm re-purposing snorkel gear in the kitchen.

Ma plus jeune soeur a passé les derniers mois à Paris sur un placement, au cours de laquelle elle a échantillonné de nombreux délices français, y compris de grandes quantités de vin rouge ;) Son petit ami sait une excellente recette de la pizza, de sa région à la frontière espagnole.

Translation: this is totally delish!

Ingredients:

• your favourite pizza dough
• three large white onions
• 20-25 anchovies
• 3-4 tablespoons of capers, drained
• a couple handfuls of green olives, halved
• a few pinches of dried oregano

YUM.

Finely slice the onions, preferably into rings. Fry gently for 15 minutes, until golden, caramelised and soft. Roll out your pizza dough as thinly as possible and place on a pizza stone. Was the anchovies if they are particularly salty. Lay over the fried onions, then decorate with the rest of the ingredients, sprinkling over the oregano at the end, then season well with black pepper. Bake for 15 minutes or so, until the pizza has risen and the onion edges are just beginning to curl.

A French-ish Salad

The weather has taken a turn for the hotter - MUCH hotter. Yesterday we feasted on Thai beef salad in a comfortable 28C; today the mercury hit 34C and we took beef satay to a riverside barbecue. All beefed out and sunstroked at home, we wanted nothing more than a super veggie hit - preferably with a salty, mustardy dressing. I whipped up a French "ish" salad; all of the ingredients are as  you'd expect to get in Provence... but I'm not sure the serving style there would be quite so "rustique".

Ingredients

• 10 quails eggs, or two hen's eggs (Yes, yes, I'm the sort of person who just has quail's eggs lying around in the pantry. Deal with it.)
• two white potatoes, scrubbed
• half a bunch of asparagus
• a tomato
• a few giant leaves of lettuce
• a handful of olives
• a couple of anchovies
• a handful of sprouting seeds or other mild lettuce
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• juice of half a lemon
• one generous tsp dijon mustard
• one flat tsp grain mustard
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• salt and pepper

Simmer the eggs for 5-10 minutes, until hard-boiled, then run under cold water, peel, and slice in half. Slice the potatoes into thick rounds, and simmer for 10-12 minutes, until tender. Snap the asparagus and cut into bite-sized pieces, and steam for five minutes, until tasty and bright green. Halve the tomato, slice again lengthwise, then cut into thin slices. Pit and halve the olives (olive-pitter from the wedding list is AWESOME). Roughly shred the lettuce, and add with the anchovies and the rest of the solid ingredients to a nice big salad bowl.

Whisk the olive oil, lemon juice, mustards and vinegar together in a jug or jar, then taste and season. Pour over the salad and toss well, then serve immediately.

Roast Herby Lamb Chops with Tiny Tatoes

Today I adapted another Nigel Slater recipe to suit the chunky lamb chops I bought from the butcher's at the weekend. I also used it as a good excuse to pop out in the fresh spring afternoon to buy some anchovies, for a marinating herb rub. If you don't like anchovies, you could substitute strong black olives. And if you don't like those, I guess you could ... grow some taste buds!

I serve the lamb with some tiny roast potatoes tucked around the lamb. I'd usually flavour potatoes but the lamb herb rub is very strongly-flavoured so it's best to leave them plain. Also I finished off the last of the ruby salad from Saturday; a spinach salad with a splash of lemon juice would be equally delicious with this. As per usual for food this week, this serves one hungry person!

Ingredients:

• 10 sprigs of fresh mint
• 4 medium cloves of garlic, peeled
• 6 anchovy fillets
• 2 lamb chops
• 1-2 medium potatoes
• 1 tbsp duck fat (or vegetable oil)

Whiz the mint, garlic and anchovies in a small food blender, and grind over a good seasoning of black pepper. Cover the chops with the rub on both sides, and leave in a cool place for a couple of hours - you could do this before you go to work and cook when you get home.

Preheat the oven to 220 C. Scrub and de-eye the potatoes - I never peel them, the skins are the best bit! - then chop into 1cm cubes. Parboil for about 8 minutes, keeping an eye on them. You want to cook them until they'll fluff in the pan when you shake them, and they need to roast in the oven in about 20 minutes, so they should be slightly more done than your usual pre-roast parboil.

Put a roasting tin or pyrex tray in the oven with the dollop of duck fat. Drain the potatoes and shake in their pan to give a good fluffiness. Tip into the tray and toss with a spatula to get a good coating of fat. Nestle the lamb chops in amongst the potatoes, trying to give everything enough space to breathe. Roast for 20 minutes; the rub will soften, the lamb will become tender and pink, and the potatoes will crisp around the edges.