I'll have a side of beet greens with that

This recipe takes 25 minutes and serves 2 people as a side dish.

I love beets! I eat them all the time. Look at how beautiful they are. The deep reddy purple. They currently fill the markets and I just had to do something with them. I was not sure what, but it was going to be seasonal and spectacular, and I was going to write about it.

I enthusiastically put the beetroots on to boil and went into the living room to read my book, but I forgot to turn the heat down and burnt the hell out of the beets. (Burnt beetroot is not a great smell by the way, and it hangs around for a remarkable length of time.)

So, I had to switch tack, from root to greens – which in all fairness is a too often overlooked part of the plant – and took my inspiration from the Southern US.

I went to university in New Orleans, which according to anyone in ‘the South’, is not actually 'the South'. While geographically it is right next to places like Alabama, which do count as the South, New Orleans is a different place entirely, with its own culture, language and food.

But, living in New Orleans for 4 years did let me explore other areas in the South and there are a lot of GREAT Southern foods. For me this is particularly true of breakfast foods, like grits and biscuits & gravy. Two of my favourite Southern dishes are actually sides: corn bread and collard greens.

Collard greens are a vegetable, a close relative to kale and so very similar to beet greens. The way people cook it varies quite considerably, but there is often ham involved and something acidic like lemon juice or vinegar.

I took these ingredients:

• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 yellow onion
• 2 garlic cloves diced
• ½ in chilli (seeds removed)
• 2 rashers back bacon
• Greens of 5 beets rough cut (circa 4 cups) and not dried
• ¼ lemon
• 1-2 tbsp cream optional

And did this with them:

Heat the oil on a low heat and gently fry the onion on a low heat until golden. Then add the garlic, chilli and bacon until the bacon is done.  Turn the heat up to medium and add the beat greens. Cook them for about 5 minutes, until the greens are limp. Add salt and pepper to taste. Squeeze over ¼ lemon. Add 1-2 tbsp cream if you like.

The final product looked like this …

I have to say I loved both the flavour and texture of the dish. The beet greens have a much deeper flavour to them than their cousin kale. It is more robust and more metallic almost, like you can taste the iron in them (for me that’s a turn on).

The greens also have a lovely toothsome bite to them. Unlike kale, the leaves have veins in them that remain slightly harder and crunchy as the green of the leaves soften.

Loquats

This is a straightforward brunch recipe and takes about 20 minutes. It is a healthy dish that serves 4 people.

These beautiful things are loquats. I know that’s not what the sign says but it is what I know them as.

Loquats or or nisperos Japanese medlars are a fruit I have not seen in years. While I was in Croatia, they were growing and I ate a million of them off the branch. This is what they look like on the tree …

 

We had a loquat tree in our yard in Kenya, but I went for years without trying them. The tree was kind of behind the house in a place I didn’t venture much and there were plenty more obvious fruit to distract myself with like mulberries, pomegranates and tree tomatoes. Then I saw Dorothy, who worked for my family, eating them and wondered what they were. They are fleshy and sweet, but not overly so, and whether you have to peel the skin to eat them is debateable – I don’t. The inside is fleshy like a plum with two big seeds in the very middle.

They are currently in the markets from Italy and as my friend and I were putting together a brunch I thought I would do something with them. I was inspired by the Mediterranean basin and so decided to roast them and serve them with a sweetened labneh (a thick, tart yoghurt from the Middle East, usually served savoury).

You will need:

For the fruit …

• 4 plums
• 4 loquats
• 1 tsp orange blossom water
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tbsp honey

For the yoghurt topping …

• 1 cup labneh
• 1 tbsp honey or to taste (I like it a bit on the tart side)
• 1 ball ginger in syrup diced very fine
• ¼ tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp orange blossom water

To garnish ...

• 16 pistachios – roughly crushed

Wash the fruit and cut each in half. Put them in a bowl and put the orange water, cinnamon and honey on top. Mix to coat.  Turn the oven grill onto the highest heat and put the oven shelf in the middle of the oven. Line a banking tray with tinfoil and put the fruit, skin side up on the tray. Put in the oven for about 4 minutes or until the plum skin is peeling back. Then flip the fruit and cook for a further four minutes.

Mix the second set of ingredients.

Pull the fruit out of the oven and immediately arrange 4 halves on each plate. Top each half with about 1 tbsp of the yoghurt mixture. Sprinkle all of them with the pistachios.

Visual inspiration from Croatia

I was lucky enough to be invited to Croatia for a wedding over the first weekend in June. It was amazing! Southern Croatia and the Dalmatian islands are much more well known for sailing, beaches and sunshine. Where I was in the north is spectacular; a place called Lovran on the Istrian peninsula. 

It is on the Opatija Riviera, which is a promenade that goes for about 10 kilometres along the Adriatic. It was a fashionable vacation spot for the Austro-Hungarian nobility and is an interesting mix of Italian and Austro-Hungarian, having belonged to both places at one point or more. It is littered with beautiful old villas and gardens and Lovran itself has a medieval core.

The town is sandwiched between the sea and a mountain and has a great climate for growing things, in particular asparagus (in spring), cherries (in early summer)  and chestnuts (in fall). 

Here are some of the photos of the amazing things I ate:

A representative sample of the pre-wedding buffet (a lovely tradition which means the wedding party gets to meet, eat and drink pre-service) on my lap, including:

• spicy salami-like sausage - dry, not too hard and just the right level of spicy hotness
• wheat bread - very soft, and to be honest I prefer my bread with hard crusts
• cod pâté - a fishy pate that was subtler than expected, not as overpowering as some
• beef tartare - rich and full of pickled things like chopped gherkins and capers
• French salad - very mayonnaise-y :-) and more pickled things
• cherries fresh from the tree - one of my favourite things in the world! 
• a soft and surprisingly dry nutty cake (with a bite missing) :-)

Of those my two favourites were:

The cherries were growing everywhere: by side of the road, by the mechanics, and throughout the groom's family's farm. I stood under the trees, and picked and ate them by the handful. My only regret is that I left right before the cherry festival started. Apparently it culminates in the cutting of a 10 meter long cherry strudel. Yummmmmm....

I could have eaten the pâté by the spoonful! It was made by the groom's father and SERIOUSLY good.

All washed down with a homemade and bottled red wine: