The redoubtable Jane and Bob Kaufmann joined us for dinner last night and alongside the giant vat of red wine we had a few old favourites ( butterflied leg of lamb in a Moro marinade, chopped Turkish salad, grilled asparagus)and a new middle eastern inspired salad of fennel,chickpea and tomatoes from the shelburne farms cookery book that Stuart and Saskia Smith bought us.
The fact that the barbecue ran out of gas one minute after I put the lamb on threw a bit of a curve ball but we managed to heat the griddle pan and the oven up pretty quickly and the meat still seemed to taste ok. As for the asparagus it ended up being seared in a dry non stick frying pan rather than grilled, but again it was fairly edible.
We finished off with a Hero island sour cherry oatmeal crumble from the kingsbury Market garden- a farmer foodbank fellowship in the mad river valley, if you please. (www.kingsburymarketgarden.com)
Here's the fennel recipe
Ingredients
1 larrge fennel or 2 small ones
1 large tin of chickpeas
20 cherry tomatoes
dressing
1 cup plain yoghurt
1-2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 tbs lemon juice
2tbs olive oil
Salt and pepper
Method
First make the yoghurt dressing.
Combine all the ingredients and whisk together
Set to one side
Now for the salad.
Remove hard outer layer of the fennel, cut in half vertically, remove hard core and then either cut very finely across or preferably shave finely on a mandoline.
Drain and rinse the chickpeas.
Cut the tomatoes into quarters or halves depending on their size.
mix all the salad ingredients together then fold in the dressing until the salad is well covered.
Now stir in some chopped flat leaf parsley
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