#108 - Spring Side Dishes

Hello Feeder gang!

I won’t lie, this is not my favourite time of year for seasonal produce in the UK. The veg we get in the autumn/winter (squashes! Mushrooms! Earthy greens!) and the late summer glut of tomatoes, courgettes, herbs and corn feel so much more plentiful than the short list of things you can pull out of the ground and off plants at the moment.

Having said that, the few things that are popping up right now are quite lovely. Leeks, cauliflowers and purple sprouting broccoli are very good things indeed, and asparagus is finally showing her face for her annual strut around town.

This week, we’ve got recipes for pickled cauliflower salad, a leek, bean and pesto bake, and asparagus with brown butter vinaigrette with pancetta crumbs. All are side dishes, but as most good sides are, they have enough going for them that they could very much be upgraded to a main dish.

Over on the rest-ipes, you have my recommendations for 3 fabulous cookbooks that have come out in the last couple of weeks.

Enjoy!

Sophie x

Sometimes, when I’m really hungry and need a big of crisps ASAP, I lament being an ingredients household, but other times it really does come in handy, particularly when making fridge raid meals.

A new segment I thought I’d occasionally do over here is one of these fridge raid recipes. You can swap a lot of the ingredients out for whatever else you may have that needs using at home.

In this instance, the cauliflower could instead be fennel, squash or courgettes (though you’d cook the courgettes for 3 minutes instead). Bulgur wheat could become giant cous cous or rice, cooked to packet instructions. Red onion could be spring onion, white onion or shallots. The feta gives a nice tang, but you could leave it out, or serve it with a dollop of yoghurt instead. No pitta? No problem. You can make croutons out of any bready thing you have. I’m using a combo of dill and parsley, but you could use just one of them, or get some fresh coriander in there instead.

Regardless of how you tweak it, this is a really crowd pleasing salad. It is plentiful enough to be a big lunch for 2, or you could serve it as part of a bigger spread

Serves 2 as a main, 4 as a side

½ cauliflower

250g white wine vinegar

1 tsp turmeric

25g sugar

2 white pitta

1 tsp dried oregano

150g bulgur wheat

½ red onion

15g dill

15g parsley

1 lemon

70g pickled green chillies

150g feta

salt and olive oil

1. Heat the oven to 200°C fan.

2. Add the vinegar to a small saucepan along with the turmeric, sugar, 400ml of water and a tablespoon of salt. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer.

3. Cut the cauliflower into equally sized florets, cutting the stalks into similar size chunks. Add it to the pan and cook for 10 minutes until tender. Drain in a colander and set aside.

4. Bring a small saucepan of salted water up to a boil. Add the bulgur wheat, and cook for 10–12 minutes until tender, then drain in a sieve.

5. Cut the pittas into triangular pieces, and get them on a baking tray. Drizzle over 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the dried oregano, then toss to coat. Bake for 10 minutes until golden and crispy.

6. Finely slice the red onion and add it to a large mixing bowl with the juice of the lemon. Roughly chop the dill and parsley, and add them to the bowl along with the pickled chillies.

7. Tip in the bulgur wheat, cauliflower and pitta chips. Drizzle over 2 tablespoons of olive oil and give everything a really good mix to combine. Season to taste with salt.

8. Pile onto a serving dish and crumble over the feta in large chunks. Serve it up.

Asparagus isn’t a veg you want to hide behind a lot of big flavours, but a few things it goes really well with are butter, bacon and lemon. This dish has it all! The recipe has a couple of steps, and you have to be careful with your brown butter so as not to split the dressing, but it is worth it, I promise. Silky and rich, it’s a nice boujie one to serve up if you have people coming round for lunch this spring. This with some roast chicken would be 10/10.

What do I mean by be careful with the brown butter? Well, firstly you need to let it cool down a bit before making a dressing with it. Leave it to cool for at least 10 minutes after you’ve taken it off the heat, as really hot butter will not emulsify the other ingredients; instead it will spilt them up. The other thing is you want to make the dressing as close to eating the salad as possible. It may seize up otherwise if you let the acidic ingredients mingle with the butter for too long.

Serves 2 as a main, 4 as a side