Roast fennel, tomato & spelt salad with green olives

This is an easy one tray salad that is almost ready straight from the oven! All you need to do is roast the veggies in one big tray, mix in the spelt and drizzle with olive oil and lemon! It really is as simple as that - I love this salad served warm and topped with crumbled feta, but it works equally well as part of a salad spread or a side to fish, chicken or some fresh bread and butter would be lovely too.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

• 200g pearled spelt

• 2 fennel, sliced

• 350g baby plum tomatoes

• 1 large garlic clove

• A small handful of green or black olives, ripped in half or thirds if large

• Juice of ½ lemon

• 1/2 tsp sea salt

• Handful of chopped parsley leaves

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180ºc.

• Cook spelt as per instructions, usually simmer for 20 minutes

• Spread the fennel and tomatoes out on a large baking tray and drizzle with olive oil ad a sprinkle of sea salt, roast for 15 minutes, turn and toss in the olives. Put back in the oven for 10 minutes.

• Once the vegetables are cooked, immediately deglaze the tray with approx 80ml of water and then gently stir in the spelt, plus 1-2 tbsp olive oil, lemon juice, salt and a good grind of black pepper.

• Top with fresh parsley to serve.

Tip

• Use the best quality olives as you can afford. I bought some amazing large green olives from Sous Chef linked here, they had a slight chilli heat which worked really well. Cheaper olives can always be improved by soaking for 5-10 minutes in water to make them less salty. Even rinsing will help if you done hace time to soak.

Fresh tomato & basil sauce

In our house we eat a lot of pasta, so I’m always trying to make different kinds of sauces to change things up a bit. I often make a big batch of tomato sauce using tinned as it’s is good solid classic that is great vfm, but I like to use fresh sometimes as you get quite a different result. Roasting fresh cherry tomatoes with onion and then blitzing gives a creamier and sweeter taste to the sauce, which in my opinion is the posh sister of the tinned version! It’s a bit more expensive as you’re using fresh tomatoes, but the total cost for 4 portions should be around £2, depending on where you shop, so it’s still pretty good value.

Serve with any kind of pasta, fried or roasted gnocchi, grilled/breaded chicken or fish, veggie/meat balls, courgetti, mix with rice and cheese for stuffed peppers or courgettes, mini roast potatoes, or as a French bread pizza (tomato base topped with cheese). Lots of choices!!

Ingredients

Serves 4

• 1 large onion, sliced in thin half moons

• 500g baby plum tomatoes

• 1 garlic clove

• 3 stems of basil, stalks chopped finely, leaves ripped

• ½ tsp sea salt

Method

• Preheat the oven to 200ºc.

• Put the onions, whole tomatoes and unpeeled garlic cloves on a large baking tray, drizzle with oil and then space out so they’re not too crowded

• Place in the oven for 20 minutes.

• Check and turn with a spatula and put back in for a further 10 minutes.

• Squeeze out the cooked garlic on to the tray and then scrape all the tomato mix into a large saucepan.

• Pour about 100ml of water onto the tray and deglaze to get all the lovely flavour from roasting the vegetables of it and add to the pan along with approx 100ml of water, salt, the basil stalks and cook gently for 5 minutes.

• Next add the basil leaves and salt, blitz the sauce with a hand blender until it has a smooth consistency but leaving some texture.

• You might need to add another 50ml of water to get the right consistency though - the same as a normal tomato sauce for pasta.

Speedy brunch: avocado, tomato & mushrooms on sourdough

I made this for lunch today with basically what was left in my fridge and thought it would be perfect for a weekend brunch too - add an egg / veggie sausage / bacon or even feta depending on how hungry you are.

Ingredients

• 1-2 slices toasted sourdough

• 6 cherry tomatoes

• 3-4 mushrooms, sliced

• 1/2 small clove garlic, grated

• 1/2 avocado, mashed

• Squeeze of lemon

• Pinch of cayenne

• Small handful of toasted pumpkin seeds

• Salt & pepper

Method

• Mash the avocado with the lemon juice, cayenne and season.

• Fry the tomatoes and mushrooms in a hot pan with a little olive or rapeseed oil until softened and browned, turn down the heat then add the garlic for a couple of minutes, set aside.

• Toast the sourdough half way through cooking the veggies.

• Assemble: toast + avocado + tomato & mushrooms + pumpkin seeds + extra squeeze of lemon

Roast tomato & red pepper risotto with garlic ciabatta

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

• 300g cherry tomatoes

• 1 red pepper

• 1 onion, chopped finely

• 1 stick celery, chopped finely

• 1 clove garlic, grated

• 15g fresh basil, stalks finely chopped / leaves torn

• 1 glass of white wine

• 350g risotto rice

• 900ml vegetable stock

• 40g parmesan, finely grated

• 1 tbsp unsalted butter

• ¾ tsp sea salt

  Garlic ciabatta

• ½ ciabatta loaf, cut into about 6 slices slices

• 20g unsalted butter, room temperature

• 1 small clove garlic, grated

• pinch sea salt

• chopped chives, optional

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180°C

• Chop the cherry tomatoes in half and spread out on a baking tray, drizzle with olive or rapeseed oil. Bake for 20 minutes until starting to brown on the tray. After you take them out make sure you scrape the tray to loosen all the brown caramelisation to use later.

• Put the whole red pepper on some tin foil and place under a hot grill and blacken on all sides - this should take about 12-15 minutes, turning every 2-3. Wrap in the foil once cooked and leave to cool for 5 minutes, then peel, deseed and chop or tear into ½ cm wide strips.

• While the tomatoes and pepper are cooking, chop the onion, celery and basil stalks then add a glug of olive oil to a wide low sided pan and cook gently for around 10 minutes or until soft, but not browned.

• Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute.

• Warm the stock on the hob or microwave.

• Next add the risotto rice to the onion mix and stir well to coat, turn the heat up a little and pour in the wine. Let the rice sizzle until the alcohol has burnt off - about 2/3 minutes.

• Now turn the heat down and start to add the stock one ladle at a time, stirring well to combine. The rice will need to cook for 20 minutes, but after 12 minutes add the roasted tomatoes (don’t forget the tasty tray scrapings!) and red pepper strips.

• Get the garlic bread prepped while the risotto is cooking. Mix the garlic into the butter with a fork and spread on once side of each slice. Place on a baking tray and put in a 180°C oven for 6-8 minutes, or place under a hot grill (non buttered side first) for a couple of minutes a side.

• Keep adding the rest of the stock and then finish by stirring in the butter, basil leaves and 2/3 of the parmesan, reserving the last bit to sprinkle on top to serve. You could artfully place a few pretty basil leaves on top too if you’re feeling flash :-)

• Serve with a green salad, garlic bread and a glass of chilled Albariño.

Tip

• A note about stock - if I’m using a cube then I will double the amount of water recommended on the pack, so for this recipe I just used one cube for one litre of water. Otherwise you’ll end up tasting the stock cube rather than it being a savoury back note.

• I don’t always want to open a bottle of wine just for cooking, so I keep a bottle of Sherry or Vermouth in the cupboard to use for risotto. It doesn’t go off like wine, so you can just use a glass as and when you need it.

• To make the risotto vegan, you could use non-dairy butter and add a tablespoon of nutritional yeast and or a little oat cream instead of cheese. Top with toasted pine nuts or pumpkin seeds.

• I use a Microplane or fine grater for the cheese and garlic.