Menestra

I first had this wonderful vegetable stew - a northern Spanish equivalent of a spring vegetable minestrone - in a restaurant in Pamplona and dreamed about it for several years before managing to recreate it.

This version comes from winemaker Maria Martinez of Bodegas Montecillo in Rioja who I was interviewing for a feature in Decanter. We bought the ingredients together from the market in Logrono.

Like cassoulet and bouillabaisse, menestra is one of those dishes about which huge arguments rage. Basically it can be made from any seasonal green vegetables, “from two up to twenty” as Maria puts it, but the ideal time of year to prepare it is in the spring when artichokes and spring vegetables such as peas and beans are in season.

There are apparently certain ground rules though. You mustn’t use dried beans or other pulses or peppers (too slimey). Jars of vegetables are permissible but should not be mixed with fresh ones. Spinach is fine if added at the end. Opinions differ as to whether you should use onions, garlic and herbs, whether the vegetables should be cooked separately or together and whether or not hard boiled egg should be added. The consistency should be more that of a stew than a soup though some cooks like to make it more liquid.

Serves 6-8

10-12 baby artichokes
2 heads of borraja* (borage)
1/2 a large head of chard
250g asparagus, trimmed
250g green beans
3-4 potatoes cut into small dice
125g thickly cut panceta (streaky bacon), diced
A thick slice of dry cured Spanish ham (about 100g)
About 75g chorizo, diced
4-5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Olive or corn oil
Salt and pepper

Trim the artichoke bottoms and strip off the outer leaves until you are down to the yellow leaves at the heart. (Handling artichokes can stain your hands black so you may want to use plastic or rubber gloves for this). Trim off the very top of the remaining leaves and cut the artichoke hearts in half and drop them into a pan of acidulated water. (Water with lemon juice added to stop them discolouring).

Cut the top and bottom off each stalk of borraja then peel away the fibrous strips (rather as you would the edge of a runner bean). Remove the green part of the chard leaves saving them for another recipe and chop the white stalks. Trim and chop the asparagus and roughly slice the beans.

Tip all the vegetables into a large pan of boiling, lightly salted water and cook until tender - about 30-40 minutes (Some cooks cook each vegetable separately) Meanwhile fry the cubed potato and cook until tender, then add the panceta. Once the fat starts to run add the diced ham and chorizo and finely chopped garlic. Drain the vegetables and tip the fried potatoes and ham into the pan. Mix well, adjust the seasoning and serve.

What to drink:
Breaking one of the cardinal rules of food and wine matching that red wine and artichokes simply don't go, we drank a 1975 magnum of Montecillo Gran Reserva Especial throughout this meal, including the menestra. As you’d expect for a wine of that age it was quite delicate but still full of seductive damson fruit which we were surprised to find worked perfectly well with the soup. Whether that was due to the long cooking time, the smokey notes provided by the chorizo or the age of the wine we weren't sure but the experiment would be hard to repeat successfully. A more conventional pairing would have been a white Rioja or Rioja rosado.

Asparagus soup topped with ricotta, chives and crispy chicken

A clever recipe from Tom Kitchin's Kitchin Suppers making the best of the short homegrown asparagus season. I love the twist of adding shredded chicken wings and ricotta as a topping which both poshes it up and makes it more substantial.

Tom writes: "I treasure asparagus during its short six-week season in late spring/early summer as it’s the only time I eat it; the flavour of imported asparagus is so inferior by comparison. If you have an asparagus farm nearby you may be able to buy ‘soup asparagus’, which is cheaper because the spears aren’t perfectly shaped, but are just as flavourful. You can serve the soup hot or cold. Shaved raw asparagus and crispy chicken with ricotta and chives give a lovely contrasting finish.

Serves 4

800g asparagus spears

olive oil for cooking

1 white onion, peeled and sliced

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

450ml homemade chicken stock

50g baby spinach leaves

Chicken and ricotta garnish

12 chicken wings

olive oil for cooking

1 teaspoon caraway seeds

150g ricotta

1 teaspoon chopped chives

To finish

4 asparagus spears, trimmed

extra virgin olive oil

freshly cracked black pepper

To prepare the asparagus for the soup, snap off the woody ends of the spears and peel the lower end of the stalks. Finely chop the asparagus. Heat a heavy-based saucepan over a medium heat and add a drizzle of olive oil. Add the onion, season with a little salt and sweat gently for 2–3 minutes to soften. Meanwhile, bring the chicken stock to the boil in another pan.

Add the asparagus to the onion and sweat together over a high heat for 1–2 minutes. Pour in enough of the hot stock to just cover the asparagus. Simmer for 5–6 minutes until the asparagus is just cooked, adding a little more stock to keep it covered if needed. Add the spinach and cook very briefly until it just wilts.

Tip the soup into a blender and blitz until smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Unless serving hot straight away, transfer to a bowl and cool quickly over another bowl of ice to preserve the lovely vivid green colour, then cover and refrigerate.

Heat the oven to 180°C/Gas 4. For the garnish, put the chicken wings into a bowl, drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and the caraway seeds. Heat a large non-stick ovenproof frying pan over a medium-high heat and add a drizzle of olive oil. Add the chicken wings and colour for 3–4 minutes on each side. Transfer the pan to the oven for 8–10 minutes until the wings are cooked through. Set aside to cool slightly.

Once cooled, pull the meat from the bone. Tear into strips and put into a bowl with the ricotta and chives. Mix together and season with salt and pepper to taste.

When ready to serve, trim the 4 raw asparagus spears (as above), then cut lengthways into fine slices, using a sharp knife. Rub with extra virgin olive oil and season with salt and pepper. If serving the soup hot, reheat it gently.

Divide the soup between bowls and top each portion with a generous spoonful of the ricotta mixture and the raw asparagus slices. Top the ricotta with a sprinkling of cracked pepper and drizzle a little extra virgin olive oil around the soup.

What to drink: not the easiest dish to match with wine. I think I'd probably go for an Albarino or a young, unoaked Austrian Grüner Veltliner but a Sancerre should work well too.

Recipe from: Kitchin Suppers by Tom Kitchin (Quadrille, £20). Photograph: Laura Edwards. Another recipe I'm tempted to cook from the book is the smoked salmon and spinach lasagne though it's Tom's wife Michaela's rather than Tom's.

Rhubarb & strawberry crumble sundae

It was the savoury dishes that initially attracted me to Henry Dimbleby and Jane Baxter’s excellent Leon: Fast Vegetarian but this is a cracking dessert with in-season rhubarb.

Jane and Henry write: "So easy. So good. This is basically an assembly job, with just a little cooking at the beginning"

SERVES 4

PREPARATION TIME: 20 MINUTES • COOKING TIME: 20 MINUTES

150ml double cream, whipped

4 scoops of vanilla ice cream

4 tablespoons thick custard

FOR THE CRUMBLE

50g plain flour

30g cold butter, cut into small pieces

2 tablespoons caster sugar

50g amaretti biscuits, crushed

FOR THE RHUBARB COMPOTE

150g strawberries, quartered

1 x Rhubarb & Orange Compote recipe (see below)

FOR THE SAUCE

100g strawberries

1 tablespoon caster sugar

a drop of vanilla extract

juice of 1 orange

1. Heat the oven to 160°C/325°F/gas mark 3.
To make the crumble topping, put the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar and crushed amaretti. Spread on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Set aside to cool.

2. Stir the quartered strawberries into the rhubarb compote.

3. Blend all the sauce ingredients to a purée in a blender, then pass the purée through a sieve.

4. To assemble, divide half the compote between four sundae glasses and top with the cream. Next add the strawberry sauce and ice cream, followed by the rest of the compote and the custard.

5. Top with the crumble mix, then serve.

VARIATIONS

This sundae can be made with all sorts of fruit combinations. All you need is a fruit compote and/or sauce, custard, ice cream, or whipped cream and something for texture such as crumble or nuts. Serious adult versions could have booze in, too. Try the following combos:

• Banana with toffee and chocolate.

• Raspberry, peach and flaked almonds.

• Pear with caramelized pecans and butterscotch or chocolate sauce.

Rhubarb & Orange Compote

SERVES 4

PREPARATION TIME: 5 MINUTES • COOKING TIME: 10 MINUTES

200g rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 2cm pieces

125g caster sugar

1 tablespoon grenadine

50ml water

juice and grated zest of 2 oranges

Put the rhubarb, sugar, grenadine, water, orange juice and zest into a pan. Cook gently over a medium heat for 10 minutes, or until the rhubarb is soft.

What to drink: A tricky one. This dessert is already quite orangey so I'm not sure I'd go for the obvious choice of an orange muscat. (The orange in the pudding will strip out the orange in the wine). Try a late harvest sauvignon blanc or a young fragrant moscatel.

Recipe from Leon: Fast Vegetarian by Jane Baxter & Henry Dimbleby, £25, Published in March 2014 www.octopusbooks.co.uk

Lamb and porcini kebabs with sage and parmesan

Maybe I've got a bit overexcited with all the sun this week but the barbecue season doesn't seem that far away so it was good to find Dan Vaux-Nobes' 101 BBQ and Grill recipes arriving through my letterbox.

Dan (who's a friend so maybe I'm just a teeny bit biased) has selected some great recipes and given each a practical and quite often hilarious introduction, typical of his blog Essex Eating. The intro below is comparatively restrained but he picked the recipe because it was one of his favourites from the book and could also be cooked on a ridged grill which is useful since it could well be snowing next week. You never know at this time of year.

This is what he says: (good tip about the porcini!)

"Beautiful Italian flavours of sage, porchini mushroom and parmesan are used here to compliment chunks of chargrilled lamb. The recipe calls for fresh porcini which unless you live in rural Italy isn't the easiest (or cheapest) thing to obtain so use the dried and reconstituted in water variety - just make sure you get a pack with dried pieces and not a bag of dried dust. Good luck with threading that on a skewer! Otherwise use chestnut mushrooms. Lovely stuff!"

serves 4

1 lb. (500g) tender lamb, from the leg or shoulder, cut into bite-sized chunks

2 tablespoons olive oil

freshly squeezed juice of 1–2 lemons

leaves from a bunch of fresh sage, finely chopped (reserve a few whole leaves)

2 garlic cloves, crushed

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

4–8 fresh medium-sized porcini/ceps cut into quarters or thickly sliced

To serve

truffle oil, to drizzle

Parmesan cheese shavings

grilled or toasted sourdough bread

* Put the lamb pieces in a bowl and toss in the oil and lemon juice. Add the sage and garlic and season with salt and pepper. Cover, refrigerate, and leave to marinate for about 2 hours.

* Thread the lamb onto skewers adding a quarter, or slice, of porcini every so often with a sage leaf. Brush with any of the marinade left in the bowl. Prepare a charcoal grill. Cook the kebabs for 3–4 minutes on each side.

* Serve immediately with a drizzle of truffle oil, Parmesan shavings, and toasted sourdough bread, if liked.

What to drink: Frankly any medium-bodied red would be pretty good with this but given the influence is Italian I'd probably go for a Chianti or other Tuscan red. That said, a pinot noir would be great too, especially with the truffle oil.

101 BBQ and Grill Recipes compiled by Dan Vaux-Nobes (CICO Books, £12.99)

Photos © Richard Jung