I realised recently that I will only eat certain vegetables if they are served with very particular accompanying flavours. A mate asked me what my favourite vegetable was and I replied, without thinking, ‘spinach’ only to realise that it’s only my favourite when combined with feta, or ricotta. I will only eat pumpkin if it’s served with coconut milk and chilli and now I’ve realised beetroot needs the sharp cheese and spice treatment or you can throw it in the bin as far as I’m concerned. Unless it’s pickled.

I wasn’t even going to post this recipe at all, truth be told but someone called the_portland_barman asked me so nicely for it on Instagram (would I mind? If I had time?) that I said yes, actually, that will be no problem at all.

So yeah, I do read all your comments because I love to hear from you guys (stop retching at the back), and it so happens another reader sent me an email asking me to please, please sort out my subscription email because it was a bit of a mess. Thing is, I started blogging in the early days, as you know, and I’d always just used Feedburner because that’s what everyone did back then.

This poor frustrated reader had finally reached her wit’s end and forwarded her subscription email to me. Wow, it was bad. I had no idea you were all suffering through that eye poke and I’m sorry. I’ve changed to Mailchimp. If it doesn’t work and you all get the old email anyway this is going to be really embarrassing. Could happen.

So, there we go. A recipe, an apology and hopefully a snazzy email. Not bad for a… Friday? Yes, Friday. If someone could periodically update me on the day of the week that’d be grand. Thanks.

Beetroot Dip with Feta, Herbs and Scotch Bonnet Oil Recipe

I can’t remember the exact quantities here but it’s so easy it doesn’t really matter.

Five whole beetroots, leaves removed and left whole (don’t peel)
150g thick natural yoghurt
Feta, to crumble
Squeeze of lemon juice
Tarragon leaves
Mint leaves
Mixed seeds (by in a handy bag in the supermarket), toasted in a dry pan
5 scotch bonnets
125ml light olive oil
1 whole bulb garlic

Cook the beetroots whole in boiling until just tender (this takes about 40 mins), then allow to cool a bit and rub off the skins, which will come away very easily (I actually pressure cooked mine which took around 15-20 mins). At the same time, roast the garlic whole with the scotch bonnets. Heat the oven to 120C, slice the top off the garlic so the tops of the cloves are exposed and place in roasting dish with the chillies, rubbing the lot with a little oil. Cook for about 20 mins or until soft.

Blend chillies with light olive oil in a blender. I de-seeded mine.

Put beetroots in a blender with the natural yoghurt, lemon juice, half the garlic cloves and some salt and blend. Taste and add more yoghurt if you fancy it.

Spread the dip on a plate (more surface area for toppings – you could also use a nice wide bowl) and sprinkle over feta, herbs, toasted seeds. Drizzle over chilli oil.

The origin of börek is uncertain but here’s an undisputed fact: I am unable to walk past the Turkish food centre in Camberwell without going inside, buying a dirty little spinach and cheese börek and stuffing it into my face so fast all that can be seen to the keenest of peepers is my greasy hands and lots of little flakes of pastry, gently floating to the ground.

I call those börek dirty because they really are the scrag end of the spectrum. You can taste the margarine. I mean, I’m still going to eat them but you get what I’m saying. They are made in a factory (I’m guessing) with less than excellent ingredients and I’m ok with that.

When I was asked to write a börek recipe for Great British Chefs, however, I saw it as my chance to make amends with the world of Turkish pastries and I think I’ve done that rather nicely. Say so myself. Cavolo nero is a brilliant substitute for spinach with its iron-rich flavour and in fact, I think it’s a better choice, particularly now it’s cold and ‘orrible and we need fortifying in every way possible. A woman cannot live on Chocolate Orange alone.

Cavolo Nero and Feta Cheese Börek Recipe

This recipe first appeared on Great British Chefs

300g cavolo nero, (weight with stalks, which yielded 150g without stalks)
8 sheets yufka pastry, or filo pastry
200g feta, or Sütdiyarı Picnic Börek Cheese if you can find it (or another white Turkish cheese)
100g butter, melted
1 egg, and 1 egg yolk, beaten lightly with a fork

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4

Strip the cavolo nero leaves from the stalks (the stalks can be saved for other dishes, and are particularly good finely chopped and added to fried rice), blanch them for 1 minute in boiling water, then drain.

Dry the leaves thoroughly by pressing them between two clean tea towels and placing something heavy (like a wooden chopping board) on top for a few minutes. Chop the leaves finely and mix with the cheese and a small pinch of salt (if using feta, skip the salt).

Take a sheet of yufka, place on a clean work surface and brush with melted butter. Lay another on top. Then, on one side of the pastry, brush a little more melted butter and lay a fresh sheet of yufka on top, so that it overlaps slightly with the two sheets already there (the idea is to make one long strip of yufka). In the end you will have four pieces of double layered yufka, overlapping in a line.

On the bottom edge of the yufka, begin to lay out your filling in a long snake, continuing right to the other end of the pastry.

Then, carefully roll the pastry up and around the filling until you have one long snake of pastry filled with the cavolo nero and cheese. The snake can then be curled around and placed on a baking tray. Don’t worry if your tin isn’t the right size or shape.

Brush the borek with the egg and cook for 25–30 minutes or until golden brown.

I sit here stroking my weary ribs, which have only just stopped jiggling after I read your comments on my food confessions post. It seems that we’re all secretly hoofing back corned beef and salad cream sandwiches, washed down with buckets of instant coffee (mainly to annoy people with beards, apparently). There’s a time and a place though, guys. Just been dumped? Grab the Cheesestrings. Hungover? Anything goes, frankly – the world is your pickled onion Monster Munch cheese toastie.

Sunday lunch though, that’s sacred turf. One cannot be messing around with Gregg’s steak slices and cheap Cheddar on the Official Day of Long, Slow Cooking.

Goat is now becoming more mainstream in the UK, not found only in Caribbean takeaways. It’s not that easy to get down here in Peckham or Brixton actually, with most places selling you mutton instead. In the past couple of years, we’ve seen dedicated suppliers like Cabrito become known, and Turner and George are selling goat from Tailored Goat Company (based in Cumbria), which is how I got hold of this shoulder.

It’s fantastic meat, with a flavour not unlike mutton (hence the substitution), but without that ‘slightly high’ kiff you often get with lamb. The best way to cook a shoulder is to braise it in liquid for around 4 hours (I once tried to cook it entirely on the BBQ – total cock up, it’s too lean), after which time you’ll have meat tender enough to pull apart.

We decided to go Greek, and it went into a roasting tray with garlic, onions, about ten bay leaves (I’m all for silly amounts of bay) and half a bottle of retsina, which we had to beg off the staff at a local restaurant who thought we were the council trying to stitch them up. It’s a classic ‘stick it in the oven and forget about it’ job, with serious springtime Mediterranean vibes.

We ate it with toasted pitta, a salad of blood orange and olives (Greek, obvs), some quick pickled red onions, and Feta which I whipped up because that is what we do with Feta now, don’t ya know. It turns into a sort of fluffy paste when mixed with cream cheese or yoghurt, great for spreading inside little goat-y sandwiches. They really do take some bleating.

SORRY.

Retsina Braised Shoulder of Goat with Whipped Feta

This method looks long but every stage is about as simple as it gets. I reckon this would easily serve 6 people. It kept us going for a week… more on that soon. 

1 x 2.5kg shoulder of goat
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 head of garlic, cut in half
2 onions, peeled and roughly sliced
10 bay leaves
1/2 bottle retsina (standard wine bottle size)

Preheat the oven to 160C. Place the shoulder on top of the onions in a roasting tray and rub with the oil. Season with salt and pepper. Add everything else to the tray, cover with foil and cook for 4 hours, or until very tender.

For the blood orange salad:

3 blood oranges, segmented
10 kalamata olives
Soft lettuce
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1.5 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon honey

Mix olive oil, lemon juice and honey in a jar. Add salt and pepper. Put lid on and shake until combined. Set aside. To assemble the salad, mix the orange segments, olives and lettuce and mix with a enough of the dressing to coat.

For the whipped feta:

140g feta cheese
80g cream cheese
Parsley, chopped

Crumble the feta into a food processor and blend. Add cream cheese and blend again. Taste and season with pepper, garnish with parsley.

For the quick pickled red onions:

1 red onion, finely sliced
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
Large pinch of salt

Mix all the ingredients together and leave to pickle. Stir occasionally.

Serve the goat with toasted pitta breads and the rest of the bits and pieces.

When moving to a new flat recently I envisaged the shiny new, mahoosive balcony as a lush urban garden, flourishing verdant green with bush upon bushy bushel of salad leaves, herbs, courgettes, beans, basically anything I could get to grow vertically; anything that would crawl, climb or thrive in a pot. The only flowers I’d allow would be my favourite sweet peas, the odd geranium, a clematis or four and and…okay so I wanted everything.

I’ve managed to cultivate the sweet peas, the geraniums (already here) and a dying clematis. Some herbs are flourishing, albeit left field ones, like wormwood (absinthe) which is bitter but rather tasty in many things including, surprisingly, hollandaise. The vegetables, well, not so much action on that front. Some lettuces are doing well. Ummmm. Hmmm. So as I sat pondering this state of affairs from my makeshift office/boot camp (I’m currently working 12 + hour days – get the tiny violins out), it struck me that there was one more thing that could be eaten – the marigolds. I was damn well going to get a meal out of this balcony.

The basis of this salad is herbs. Recently I’ve been taking the approach to herb usage seen in countries such as Iran and Georgia, by which I mean I’ve been using them basically like salad leaves. See below a salad of mint, parsley and dill with asparagus. We ate it with lamb chops rubbed with za’atar, Turkish chilli and garlic, sprinkled with radishes.

For the marigold salad I used mint and parsley, tossed with pieces of fried flat bread, red onion slivers, sliced dates, pomegranate seeds and feta. The marigold petals have a slight peppery heat, but mainly they just look gorgeous. It’s a festival of sweetness from the fruit, against salty feta. The dressing has it going on too – olive oil mixed with viscous date syrup, balanced with acidity. It’s a lesson in the power of contrasts basically, and darn if it doesn’t look purdy.

Date, Feta, Pomegranate and Marigold Salad Recipe

(serves 4 as a side salad, 2 as a main)

1 handful of mint leaves, picked, although leave some in sprigs
1 handful parsley leaves, picked,  same as above
A few crunchy lettuce leaves like little gem or romaine, shredded roughly
150g feta cheese (proper feta cheese)
8 dates, pitted and each cut into a few pieces
1 small red onion, finely sliced
1 small pomegranate, seeds removed (the easiest way to do this is to halve it, then smack each half on the skin side with a wooden spoon, working your way around until the seeds come out. Wear an apron. Pick out any white pithy bits)
1 flatbread, or one large pitta bread or similar
The petals from 1 marigold (optional, obviously), picked and really, really thoroughly washed (the bugs LOVE them)

For the dressing

4 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons date syrup
1.5 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Cut the flatbread into squares and fry it gently in a little oil until crisp. Set aside on kitchen paper.

On a large serving plate arrange the lettuce, mint and parsley leaves. In another bowl, combine the dates, pomegranate seeds, feta cheese and red onion. Add the flatbread pieces and mix well.

Combine the dressing ingredients and whisk to emulsify. Season with salt and pepper.

Arrange the cheesy fruit mixture on top of the herbs, and drizzle with the dressing. Sprinkle over the marigold petals, and serve.