Saturday 12 September 2009

Red veg

I love going to Parliament Hill Farmers' Market on Saturday mornings and picking up some interesting veg for the weekend. Last weekend I bought a purple cauliflower and a bunch of beetroot.

Pete cooked a beetroot risotto - quickly becoming a staple in our house. Unsurprisingly, it turns out looking like a garish reddy-purple maggot slime. But it has a delicious sweet, root-y celery-like taste that you don't get from beetroot when you prepare it any other way. With added mascarpone, this is a perfectly lovely, rich, warming dish for a cooler end of summer evening.



We use the Times recipe, but with a little less parmesan.



The purple cauliflower went to good use in one of my favourite Ottolenghi salads: Chargrilled cauliflower with dill, capers and cherry tomatoes. The cauliflowers are very lightly parboiled - about three minutes - then flung into a smokin' hot griddle pan until they are nicely charred.



The dressing helps the magic of this dish - 2 parts olive oil to one part cider vinegar, finely chop some capers, add some crushed garlic, salt'n'pepa, some wholegrain mustard. There you have a very tangy jus for your salad.

Combine the charred cauliflower with baby spinach leaves and cherry tomatoes and pour over the dressing. Chop up a generous handful of dill and drop it in. Enjoy with toasted pitta bread. We served with lemon-y turkey breasts. Yum.

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