A Light Summer Lunch

Orzo salad and a lemon verbena baked custard

Hello everyone! Something a little bit different today. This week has been a bit all over the place - I finished a MASSIVE project on Monday, we had summer, and I have also had a few days of my step daughter Lilly shadowing me at work. Tempted as I was to give her my tax return to do (she’s much better than me at maths), I decided that wasn’t quite fair, so instead I set her the task of writing a guest post for this newsletter. Over the course of the week we have had a lot of conversations about food, cooking and writing. We’ve shopped together - something we haven’t really done much since Covid struck apart from meanders round farmers markets - and cooked together, which of course we do anyway, but not with this level of focus or with anything in mind other than what we’re going to eat for dinner. Lilly made notes and wrote up the recipes, and we sat down and edited it all together too. It was informative for both us. Deciding what to cook and write about is quite a process, and articulating to Lilly how I actually do this was a useful exercise. It is very rarely “that was nice, I should write it up” although I think I should do more of that too.

Before I hand over to Lilly, a couple of housekeeping things. If you are thinking of becoming a paid subscriber (and I would love it if you did), I have paused payments for a few weeks as output has been low during my annual May/June overload. Payments go live again towards the end of July. But I think you can still pledge (I hope you can still pledge). Secondly, I am quite excited as I am soon to launch a new series within this newsletter - still about pressure cooking but which also takes me right back to my earliest days of being a published food writer. More on this early next week.

Now, over to Lilly……

Hello, it’s Lilly here; Catherine set me the task of researching, developing and writing up 2 recipes for the pressure cooker. I came up with a few ideas and we decided on these - an orzo salad and a lemon verbena scented flan/baked custard. We talked a lot about the process of how to decide what to write about and the things we needed to consider, including seasonality, cost and availability of ingredients and what Catherine has already written about before as well as simply what we thought would taste nice and work well together. Also, I prefer to be vegetarian, so I looked through a lot of vegetarian and vegetable based books for inspiration.

Catherine pulled out a few books she thought might give me inspiration

Orzo Salad with Halloumi and Zhug

This recipe is based on something similar I made a few weeks ago with the ingredients we had in the fridge, and because I really felt like having orzo - it was a hot day when we were cooking and I thought a chilled pasta would work well in the heat of summer. My nana makes typical Greek dishes quite often as her husband - my Papou - was Greek, so orzo (called Kritharaki in Greek) always makes me think of her. It looks similar to white basmati rice, but I think it is lighter and when it is toasted in oil as below, it has a more interesting and nuttier flavour.

I had the idea to use zhug for the main salad dressing; it’s a spicy green sauce originally from Yemen which both Catherine and I really like. I especially like it because of its zingy-ness and because I really love chilli - I like a lot of heat in my food. When it is combined with the fried halloumi and orzo it makes for a really interesting fusion dish.

We used Tenderstem broccoli, but you can use any greens - fine green beans or runner beans work especially well instead.

Ingredients

150g of orzo/kritharaki

4 tbsp olive oil

A generous pinch of cinnamon

A generous pinch of allspice

2 sprigs of thyme

300g tender stem broccoli, trimmed

1 small red onion, finely sliced

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 blocks halloumi, sliced

2 small courgettes, finely sliced

100g salad leaves or shoots

150g cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped2 tbsp capers

2-3 tbsp zhug, see recipe below or use a jarred version

A few herbs - any including coriander, parsley, mint, dill, to garnish

First cook the orzo. Place your pressure cooker on a high heat then when it is hot, add a tablespoon of the olive oil. Add the orzo, the spices, the thyme and season generously. Toast over a high heat for a few minutes, stirring so the pasta doesn’t stick, until it is toasted and aromatic.

Add 300ml water and put on the lid. Once it reaches high pressure (this should be quite fast), adjust the heat so it is just high enough to maintain the pressure and cook for 5 minutes. Carefully fast release the pressure. Transfer the orzo to a container, breaking up any clumps as you do so, and when it’s cooled down enough place in the fridge to chill.

Next cook the broccoli. Heat your pressure again and when it is hot add another tablespoon of olive oil. Add the broccoli and leave to char for a couple of minutes, then turn. Season and add a splash of water. This will immediately create a lot of steam. Fix the lid on as fast as you can. Bring up to high pressure and immediately remove from the heat and fast release. Roughly chop the broccoli.

Put the red onion in a bowl with the red wine vinegar and lemon juice. Season with plenty of salt and leave to stand for at least half an hour.

When you almost ready to eat, fry the halloumi in batches in the remaining olive oil. Drain onto kitchen towel and roughly chop.

To assemble, add the broccoli and courgettes to the orzo and mix in 2 tbsp of the zhug. Stir well. Arrange over a large platter, then add all the remaining ingredients. Toss together, then drizzle with a little more zhug and garnish with herbs before serving.

Zhug Recipe

Here is the zhug recipe, based on versions in Catherine’s Chicken and Leaf books. It makes a lot more zhug than is necessary for the salad, but it will keep in the fridge for a while and can be used as a dip (or in a dip if you mix with yogurt), or as a sauce with meat or falafel, spread on bread, or really, any way you like.

Ingredients:

1 tsp caraway seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp coriander seeds

1 tsp seeds from green cardamom pods

1/2 tsp cinnamon

A small bunch of coriander

A small bunch of parsley

A very small bunch of dill

3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

3 mild green chilli peppers, roughly chopped (deseeded if you like)

The zest and juice of 1 lemon

60ml olive oil.

Put the whole spices in a dry pan on a high heat, shaking regularly and keeping a close eye. When the smell of the spices becomes stronger, take them off the heat and leave to cool. Place into a spice grinder, or use a pestle and mortar, and grind them into a powder.

Put all the zhug ingredients into a food processor and process until it reaches your preferred consistency (I like mine quite coarse).

Lemon Verbena Flan with Lavender Poached Apricots

A flan - or baked, set custard - is an easy, light dessert, cool to eat on hot summer afternoons. The lemon zest the bright, sherberty lemon verbena create a sharp notes that really lift the richness of the custard. Catherine always has lemon verbena growing in the summer - if you can’t find any, just increase the citrus zest. You can also opt for different types of citrus, or different leaves - fig leaves, lemon thyme, lemon balm if you like it, lime basil, lavender, scented geraniums all work.

If you prefer, you can make individual flans, using ramekins. These will take 5 minutes at high pressure. We’ve gone for the simpler option of using one larger dish and spooning out the custard.

It is the beginning of apricot season - you need firm ones for this recipe as they will disintegrate very quickly if too ripe. Another option is to cook them in a small baking dish on a trivet, advisable if they are very ripe. If you decide to do this, halve the amount of wine and honey, drizzle both over the apricots, cover with foil and bake for 3 minutes at high pressure with fast release.

For the flan:

500ml whole milk or a mixture of whole milk and buttermilk

A few sprigs of lemon verbena, lightly bruised

Two strips of lemon peel (or any other citrus you fancy), lightly bruised

2 eggs and 4 egg yolks

100g caster sugar

For the apricots:

8 firm apricots, halved and stoned

100g honey

100g sweet wine (optional)

2 lavender

Pour the milk into a saucepan with the lemon verbena and lemon peel. Heat until blood temperature, then remove from the heat and leave to cool down and infuse.

Whisk the eggs, egg yolks and sugar with a pinch of salt - just combine, don’t allow to get frothy. Pour the milk over the eggs, stirring gently to combine, then strain through a sieve. Leave to stand for a few minutes to allow air bubbles to disperse - skim away any that remain.

Lightly oil an ovenproof dish with butter or a neutral tasting oil. Pour the custard into the bowl and cover with foil. Secure with a strong elastic band or string. Add 2cm water to the base of your pressure cooker. Add a trivet and place the dish on top.

Bring up to high pressure, then adjust the heat so it is just high enough to maintain the pressure. Cook for 8 minutes, then remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure naturally. Remove the foil and check for doneness - a toothpick should come out clean. Once the custard is at room temperature, transfer to the fridge to chill for at least 3 hours.

To cook the apricots, put the honey and wine into your pressure cooker and heat it gently until the honey has dissolved. Increase the heat until the amount of steam increases, then add the apricots, cut side up, and sprinkle over the lavender. Bring up to high pressure and immediately fast release. Open the lid straight away and transfer to a bowl to cool.

Serve large spoonfuls of the custard with the apricots and their syrup spooned over. If you have a blow torch you could also sprinkle the custard with sugar and brulee it.