What to Cook Tonight #46
Chasing summer with warm flavours from the Mediterranean and Levant — a speedy Harissa Chicken Traybake with Potatoes & Fennel, vibrant Pappardelle with Olives & Capers, and a fabulous Carrot Salad.
We’re currently in a sweet shoulder season where Annabel is heading into autumn, Rose is in spring, and for a brief moment — we share similar temperatures and food cravings.
It’s amazing how much our food desires relate to the weather. When it’s cold out we hanker for stodgy, comforting fare, and in the dog days of summer we just want fresh salad. In the ‘in-betweens’ of these two extremes, whether spring or autumn, our appetites lean in to something that’s a bit more than salad and a bit less than rib-sticking. For us in the southern hemisphere, we have a wealth of sun-ripened harvests to enjoy and crops like fennel, carrots, rocket, and coriander which offer freshness as well as being dense and satisfying.
We’re returning to one of our best-loved flavour bombs this week, harissa. We first introduced harissa to our pantry in What to Cook Tonight #5. For those who missed it —
Harissa is a spicy North African paste made with chillies, garlic, and spices that is likely to become your new favourite condiment. Its rounded spiciness works well with meat, seafood, and vegetables. We also like to swirl it through mayonnaise or yoghurt, and use as a marinade. Storebought harissa is fine, if you’re feeling ambitious you can make your own using this recipe.
Harissa is such a fab shortcut for when you want to add a kick of spice and a lovely depth of flavour. It also keeps in the fridge for weeks so you can come back to it as and when needed. This week we’re using it in a wonderfully simple chicken traybake, and tossed through a gorgeous tomato pasta.
We love a good traybake — they are the perfect mid-week dinner when you’re busy and in need of an easy, comforting dinner. You can just pop everything in the oven and dinner is done. Minimal effort and minimal dishes!
The fennel bulbs are so fat and sweet right now, and they are also well-priced, so we’re going to be using fennel in two of our recipes this week. If you don’t love fennel, you can use a sweet brown onion in its place.
Roasted fennel is unbelievably delicious, a hot oven brings out the sweetness and some light caramelisation, whilst holding on to a pleasing dense texture and bite. Be mindful of how you cut the fennel — cut it in half lengthways, and then slice it lengthways into wedges, using the core to hold the wedges together so they can fan out and soak up all the marinade flavours, but still remain intact. You want thick wedges that are roughly the same size as your potatoes so the fennel doesn’t burn.
To make this traybake vegetarian, skip the chicken and double down on the veggies — it’s fab with a big fresh Everyday Green Salad for a light dinner.
If you need more traybake recipes, we’ve got you covered. Here are some more great traybakes we love any time of year…
• Roasted Eggplant with Spiced Chickpeas
• Greek Lemon Chicken Traybake
• Braised Chicken with Butter Beans and Magic Green Sauce
Perfect Potatoes
We’ve had a few people ask about when to use different potato varieties, so thought it would be helpful to give you the full low down. When buying (or growing) potatoes, there are three different kinds — waxy (the least starchy), medium (all-round potatoes with medium amount of starch), and floury (the most starchy).
Water and starch are the two variables that will determine what potato to use depending on the result you are looking for.
Less starch = more water = waxier texture
More starch = less water = fluffier texture
You are best to choose potatoes for the use you want — trying to make potato salad with a floury potato won’t work as they will fall apart. Just as using a waxy potato for chips or roast potatoes won’t produce a crispy crunchy crust.
Waxy potatoes have a dense texture that holds its shape and have a smooth texture inside when cooked. They have a high water content, are low in starch, and don’t absorb a lot of oil or dressing. For potato salads, boiling, or more of a wet roast/braise (like we’re doing in our traybake this week) where we want the potatoes to hold their shape and not fall apart, we love a good waxy potato such as Nadine, Jersey Bennie, Red King Edward, Highlander, Osprey, and Swift. Perla is also a lovely waxy variety.
If you want a crispy potato, like these Crispy Smashed Potatoes you need a starchy/floury potato like Agria, IIam Hardy, or Red Rascal. Floury potatoes are good for mashing, baking, and chips. They have a dry and delicate texture, break up easily when cooked, and absorb a lot of liquid and flavour. They are fluffy on the inside when cooked and get these nice shaggy edges when you parboil them before roasting, which soak up the oil (or duck fat) when you roast or chip them so they get nice and crunchy.
You can also buy all round, general-purpose potatoes. These have a moderate starch content and are not too floury, not too waxy. Varieties that tend to be general purpose are Rua, Desiree, Moonlight, Rocket, Van Rosa, Karaka, Driver, Vivaldi, Purple Passion, Maris Anchor, and Summer Delight.
Don’t store potatoes in the fridge or at temperatures below 5 degrees as the starches will convert to sugars. When this happens, normally starchy potatoes won’t make fluffy mash or nice crunchy roast potatoes or chips.
You may also have noticed that right at the end of the potato season — in late winter/ early spring when the potatoes are starting to get soft and sprout that it’s impossible to get a good crispy roast potato or crunchy chip, no matter what kind of potato you use. They go brown but they don’t get crunchy. This is because the starches are converting to sugars as the potato prepares to sprout and make a new plant.
Hopefully, now you can choose the right potato for the job!
Next up, we have a gorgeous Pappardelle with Olives and Capers. Inspired by an old Ottolenghi recipe, this fab pasta is speedy and delicious, and the combination of flavours really hits the spot.
There’s something about a wide, thick pasta strand that makes for such a satisfying bite. Thick ribbons of pappardelle work so well here, but you can use fettuccine or linguini too. Use the best quality pasta you can find — it does make a big difference.
We love to serve this with a big spoonful of creamy yoghurt to balance out the spicy harissa. We recommend you use a thick Greek yoghurt with a high fat content so it’s silky and unctuous.
You can use 1 x 400g/140z can cherry tomatoes in place of the fresh tomatoes if preferred. To make this gluten-free, use gluten-free pasta. To make this vegan, skip the yoghurt. Any leftover Kalamata olives are put to good use in this abundant Greek Panzanella or any of the recipes in What to Cook Tonight #10 — Spanish Baked Chicken with Creamy Polenta, One-Pot Pantry Puttanesca, Sicilian Roasted Fish with Potatoes & Onions.
Cook’s note — for both the fennel and the onions, you’re going to cut them in half lengthways, and then thinly them slice lengthways, this is known as a vertical slice. When you cut with the fibres of the onion/fennel you end up with pieces that hold their shape a little better as they cook. This is perfect for whenever you are cooking onions right down and caramelising them, but still want to keep some bite/texture.
If you love fennel pasta as much as we do, we recommend you make our fabulous Joel’s Fennel & Sun-Dried Tomato Pasta and this knockout Prawn, Fennel & Harissa Pasta.
On the tomato pasta side of things, you could savour the last of the summer tomatoes in this fresh Pasta Caprese or keep things simple with our family-favourite Sugo & Meatballs.
Use any leftover harissa to make this tasty Whole Roasted Cauliflower with Harissa Butter or this yummy Harissa Grilled Lamb. We also love it with our Grilled Lamb Flatbreads from Summer at Home.
Last but not least, we have another gorgeous ribboned recipe for you — a fab Carrot & Lentil Salad that tastes as good as it looks.
We love salads like this. Layering ingredients and textures is such an easy way to make a dish feel elevated and special — a very useful trick to have up your sleeve! Here we have a creamy bed of yoghurt topped with al dente lentils and a parade of carrot ribbons, finished off with fresh herbs and the crunch of a nut. Perfection! Using a vegetable peeler to peel carrots into long beautiful ribbons takes the humble carrot to new heights. You get a lovely fresh texture but it’s not too dense and rabbity (for lack of a better word).
When you are plating the salad up, think about layering — spoon the yoghurt out to the edges of the plate so it creates a nice bed, then sprinkle over the lentils so they can peek out behind the carrots. Finally, use your hands to pile the carrots up high. You’re going for height here, you don’t want the carrot densely packed down. A big tower of a salad feels wonderfully generous and bountiful, as Via Carota does so well.
Serve the salad immediately after plating up as the juices will leach into the yoghurt. Any leftovers will keep for a couple of days in a sealed container in the fridge, it will taste great as the flavours will be nice and marinated, it just won’t look as pretty once the yoghurt gets all mixed in. Add the nuts just before eating to retain their crunch.
If you liked this carrot salad, re-visit our yummy Spiced Carrot Salad with Orange Maple Dressing. As noted by Lesley — “The carrot salad from last week was AMAZING. I even sold the carrot haters in the family”. Our Rainbow Beetroot Salad with Orange & Almonds is so vibrant and fresh too, perfect for any time of year.
This lovely Roasted Cauliflower with Peas & Almonds uses the same layering technique to create a wonderfully impressive dish that we love as a vegan/vegetarian main or alongside a yummy Slow-Roasted Lamb Shoulder or this gorgeous Za’atar-Crusted Salmon with Pickled Onions & Herbs. This winning Roasted Cauliflower and Chickpea Salad with Mint Oil & Yoghurt also hits the spot.
Back to the salad. We’ve used both orange and lemon zest and juice here — orange lends sweetness and flavour, while lemon adds fresh, bright acidity. Acid is a magical element, it brightens food, creates necessary contrast, and is tasked with the important job of balancing flavours. As we’ve mentioned before —
Adding acid to your dish can coax more flavour out of your dishes, mask excess saltiness, and give your dish more length of flavour (if you try something and the flavour just seems to fall short on your palate and disappear, try adding a squeeze of lemon to lengthen and extend the flavour).
A quick note on substitutions. Lemons are expensive in NZ right now, so in their place you can use rice vinegar or cider vinegar as their acidity isn’t too sharp. A lime also works — while a little more aromatic and even more tangy, the acid has a similar clean, bright profile.
For salad dressings — red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, and sherry vinegar can be used more or less interchangeably. Sherry vinegar has a slightly nutty flavour which we love. Chinese black vinegar and balsamic vinegar have a more robust flavour (with balsamic being a little sweeter) so tread carefully.
That is all from us this week! Recipes are in plain text at the bottom of this email and in the downloadable pdf below (your shopping list is here too). We will see you next Sunday.
With love,
Annabel & Rose xx
Recipes
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