Read Online Forever Summer by Nigella Lawson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Nigella Lawson
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disappointingly dried up and barren when you cut them in half, in which case add more.
Remove the rind and pips from the watermelon, and cut into approximately 4cm triangular chunks, if that makes sense (maths is not my strong point). Cut the feta into similar sized pieces and put them both into a large, wide shallow bowl. Tear off sprigs of parsley so that it is used like a salad leaf, rather than a garnish, and add to the bowl along with the chopped mint.
Tip the now glowingly puce onions, along with their pink juices over the salad in the bowl, add the oil and olives, then using your hands toss the salad very gently so that the feta and melon don’t lose their shape. Add a good grinding of black pepper and taste to see whether the dressing needs more lime. Hava Negila! The taste of Tel Aviv sunshine!
Serves 8.
FETA, WALNUT AND HERB SALAD
I call this a salad, with the excuse that these sorts of grainy pastes are often thus described in Greece and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean from where, give or take, this emanates, but the real reason is that in the struggle between ‘dip’ and ‘purée’, neither won out. I urgently needed to convey to you the simple freshness, the raw-depthed flavour, of this combination: once you make it (I won’t begin to call it cooking) you’ll be convinced, but I didn’t want any unseemly word to get in the way before you even start. You might now gather that, however it’s named, it’s best eaten by sludging it over chunks of raw vegetable, or just by dipping them into it.
25g each of: fresh mint, parsley and basil
200g feta cheese
200g shelled walnuts, chopped
6 spring onions
1 clove garlic
half teaspoon salt
pepper
1 tablespoon lime juice
60ml olive oil
Process all of the above to make a grainy paste. That’s it. What are you waiting for?
Serves 4–6 with cruditées.
PRAWN AND BLACK RICE SALAD WITH VIETNAMESE DRESSING
This didn’t start life quite like this. That’s to say, I happened to have a bit of cold black rice and some Vietnamese dipping sauce left over in the fridge one day, along with a fresh consignment of raw, peeled prawns. The black rice had gone with a fish curry; the dipping sauce I’d eaten with a lemongrass-stuffed roast chicken. I’m telling you this simply to illustrate that this is what real cooking is about: you just go with what you’ve got.
In fact you could play with this a number of ways. You could have the rice hot, the hot prawns, too, just stirred through with the cold dipping sauce-turned-dressing; in place of the prawns, you could have hot, quickly fried squid rings; you could forgo the fish part and turn this vegetarian by adding some soft, jade chunks of avocado to the cold black rice and chilli-speckled dressing. The dipping sauce anyway is something I wouldn’t want to live without: I love it with roast or poached chicken, grilled chicken wings, to dunk prawns into, or to spoon over plain steamed pak choi or broccoli. I could go on – and often do.
The black rice is real black rice, not wild rice and not white rice dyed black with squid ink. It’s packaged by Merchant Gourmet and I get it from the supermarket, usually without any trouble.
for the Vietnamese dipping sauce/dressing:
2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
2 fresh Thai birdeye chillies or other red chillies, finely sliced
approx. 4cm fresh ginger, finely minced
4 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice (about 1 lime)
4 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons caster sugar
for the salad:
250g Nanking black rice
500g raw, peeled prawns
salt
juice of half a lemon
To make the sauce, simply mix all the ingredients together. It doesn’t get much less complicated than that, frankly.
Well, there is the small matter of the rice and prawns. The rice you just cook by following the instructions on the packet; the prawns you poach in some simmering salted water, to which you’ve added the juice of half a lemon, for 5 minutes or so or until just
Remove the rind and pips from the watermelon, and cut into approximately 4cm triangular chunks, if that makes sense (maths is not my strong point). Cut the feta into similar sized pieces and put them both into a large, wide shallow bowl. Tear off sprigs of parsley so that it is used like a salad leaf, rather than a garnish, and add to the bowl along with the chopped mint.
Tip the now glowingly puce onions, along with their pink juices over the salad in the bowl, add the oil and olives, then using your hands toss the salad very gently so that the feta and melon don’t lose their shape. Add a good grinding of black pepper and taste to see whether the dressing needs more lime. Hava Negila! The taste of Tel Aviv sunshine!
Serves 8.
FETA, WALNUT AND HERB SALAD
I call this a salad, with the excuse that these sorts of grainy pastes are often thus described in Greece and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean from where, give or take, this emanates, but the real reason is that in the struggle between ‘dip’ and ‘purée’, neither won out. I urgently needed to convey to you the simple freshness, the raw-depthed flavour, of this combination: once you make it (I won’t begin to call it cooking) you’ll be convinced, but I didn’t want any unseemly word to get in the way before you even start. You might now gather that, however it’s named, it’s best eaten by sludging it over chunks of raw vegetable, or just by dipping them into it.
25g each of: fresh mint, parsley and basil
200g feta cheese
200g shelled walnuts, chopped
6 spring onions
1 clove garlic
half teaspoon salt
pepper
1 tablespoon lime juice
60ml olive oil
Process all of the above to make a grainy paste. That’s it. What are you waiting for?
Serves 4–6 with cruditées.
PRAWN AND BLACK RICE SALAD WITH VIETNAMESE DRESSING
This didn’t start life quite like this. That’s to say, I happened to have a bit of cold black rice and some Vietnamese dipping sauce left over in the fridge one day, along with a fresh consignment of raw, peeled prawns. The black rice had gone with a fish curry; the dipping sauce I’d eaten with a lemongrass-stuffed roast chicken. I’m telling you this simply to illustrate that this is what real cooking is about: you just go with what you’ve got.
In fact you could play with this a number of ways. You could have the rice hot, the hot prawns, too, just stirred through with the cold dipping sauce-turned-dressing; in place of the prawns, you could have hot, quickly fried squid rings; you could forgo the fish part and turn this vegetarian by adding some soft, jade chunks of avocado to the cold black rice and chilli-speckled dressing. The dipping sauce anyway is something I wouldn’t want to live without: I love it with roast or poached chicken, grilled chicken wings, to dunk prawns into, or to spoon over plain steamed pak choi or broccoli. I could go on – and often do.
The black rice is real black rice, not wild rice and not white rice dyed black with squid ink. It’s packaged by Merchant Gourmet and I get it from the supermarket, usually without any trouble.
for the Vietnamese dipping sauce/dressing:
2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
2 fresh Thai birdeye chillies or other red chillies, finely sliced
approx. 4cm fresh ginger, finely minced
4 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice (about 1 lime)
4 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons caster sugar
for the salad:
250g Nanking black rice
500g raw, peeled prawns
salt
juice of half a lemon
To make the sauce, simply mix all the ingredients together. It doesn’t get much less complicated than that, frankly.
Well, there is the small matter of the rice and prawns. The rice you just cook by following the instructions on the packet; the prawns you poach in some simmering salted water, to which you’ve added the juice of half a lemon, for 5 minutes or so or until just
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