Puttanesca-style salmon bake

A super-tasty, easy recipe from Ottolenghi’s fabulous new book Ottolenghi Comfort (which you can also find on his YouTube channel if you want to see it being made.

If you make the tomato anchovy oil a day ahead, you can then delight in the fact that a midweek supper can be on the table within 20 minutes. (Although if you’ve got a little longer prep time it won’t take that long for the anchovy oil to cool FB)

The fuss-free cooking method – all hail the traybake! – plus the dialled-up flavours – all hail puttanesca! – makes such a winning combination.

Serves 4-6

200g fine green beans, trimmed

6 spring onions, cut widthways into thirds (75g)

200g mixed cherry tomatoes, halved

6 skin-on salmon fillets (about 720g)

salt and black pepper

Tomato anchovy oil

85ml olive oil

8 anchovies, finely chopped (25g)

2½ tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp chilli flakes

2 tsp coriander seeds, lightly bashed in a mortar

8 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced

2 preserved lemons, flesh and pips discarded, skin finely chopped (20g)

2 tsp maple syrup

Salsa

60g pitted Kalamata olives, halved

60g capers, roughly chopped

1 preserved lemon, flesh and pips discarded, skin thinly sliced (10g)

10g basil leaves, roughly chopped

10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp lemon juice

First make the tomato anchovy oil. Put the oil, anchovies and tomato paste into a small sauté pan and place on a medium heat. Once the mixture starts to simmer, cook for 5 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add the chilli flakes and coriander seeds and cook for another minute, until fragrant. Remove from the heat and add the garlic, preserved lemon and maple syrup. Stir to combine, then set aside to cool.

Preheat the oven to 220°C fan.

Place the beans, spring onions and tomatoes on a large, parchment-lined baking tray. Drizzle over 3 tablespoons of the tomato anchovy oil, along with ¼ teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. Toss to combine and place in the oven for 12–13 minutes, until the beans and tomatoes are starting to soften and taking on a little colour. Meanwhile, arrange the salmon fillets on a plate and, using a spoon, drizzle the remaining tomato anchovy oil (as well as all the solids) evenly over the fillets. Once the beans and tomatoes have had their time in the oven, nestle the salmon fillets among them and bake for a further 8 minutes. Set aside for 5 minutes, out of the oven, to rest.

While the salmon is baking, mix all the ingredients for the salsa in a small bowl and season with a good grind of pepper. Spoon half the salsa over the salmon and serve the fish warm (or at room temperature, which works just as well), with the rest of the salsa in a bowl on the side.

What to drink: You could drink a punchy white like a sauvignon blanc with this but I’m liking the thought of a bright juicy red - such as a basic Sicilian or Portuguese red. 

Extracted from Comfort by Yotam Ottolenghi, Helen Goh, Verena Lochmuller and Tara Wigley. published by Ebury Press. 

Romy Gill’s Paneer Burji (Scrambled Paneer Curry)

A wonderfully comforting recipe from celebrity chef Romy Gill’s India, her most accessible book yet, which is full of the simple, homely recipes she makes for her family and friends. 

Paneer Burji (Scrambled Paneer Curry)

Romy writes: This is the easiest and most delicious paneer dish to make. If you’re going to try paneer for the first time, then this is the perfect recipe.

It’s a great choice for packed lunches or picnics, too. My daughters like to cut a pitta in half, turn each half into a pocket and fill them with the paneer, then enjoy them with pickled onions and salad on the side. You could also eat this paneer in a wrap, along with sliced onions and the chutney of your choice.

Serves 4

5 tsp sunflower oil or any other oil of your choice

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp mustard seeds

3 banana shallots, peeled and finely chopped

4 large garlic cloves, peeled and grated (shredded)

20 g (3/4 oz) ginger root, peeled and grated (shredded)

2–3 green chillies, chopped

2 medium tomatoes, chopped

salt, to taste

1 tsp ground turmeric

75 g (2 1/2 oz) frozen peas, soaked in water and drain just before adding to the masala

225 g (8 oz) paneer, grated (shredded) – if using homemade paneer then simply crumble it

1 tsp garam masala 

small handful of fresh coriander (cilantro), chopped

Heat the oil in a saucepan over a high heat. Once the oil is hot, add the cumin and mustard seeds. As soon as they start to sizzle, add the shallots and cook for 3 minutes. Add the garlic and ginger and cook for a further minute. Add the green chillies and tomatoes and cook for 2–3 minutes. Season with the salt, add the turmeric and mix, then add the frozen peas and cook for 2–3 minutes more.

When the peas are well coated, add the grated paneer and mix. Lower the heat, cover the pan with a lid and cook for a further 5 minutes. Just before the end of the cooking time, sprinkle with the garam masala and chopped fresh coriander (cilantro) and mix well.

Remove from the heat and leave to rest for 5 minutes before serving with the side dish of your choice.

What to drink: As this could easily be a breakfast dish you might want to have a fresh fruit juice with this or, if you’re having it for lunch or supper, a light or alcohol-free lager.

Credit: Romy Gill’s India by Romy Gill (Hardie Grant, £28), Photography © Sam A. Harris

Cavatelli with sausage, mint and tomato

This is one of the deceptively simple recipes in Rachel Roddy’s wonderful A-Z of Pasta.

Although, like many of the recipes, it looks - and is - straightforward it’s prefaced by a fascinating essay on how to make cavatelli and the origins of the shape which comes from southern Italy and is also known as cavateddi and cavasuneddi.

“What is clear though is that these small pasta sculptures are domestic works of art that came about through ingenuity and the need to make something to eat. We should approach cavatelli as people have for hundreds of years, finding a way to cave a nub of dough .... the aim of all [methods] is to create both a cave and a sauce-catching surface. Because at the end of the day, catching the sauce, that is the aim.”

I imagined that Rachel used Italian sausages (which you can buy from most good Italian delis) for the sausagemeat rather than the English style you might use for stuffing but while she says yes, for preference, any good sausagemeat will do.

There is also a wonderful footnote (below) on how to get the best out of garlic which is well worth reading.

Cavatelli with sausage, mint and tomato

Cavasuneddi or cavatelli con salsiccia, menta e pomodoro

Serves 4

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

4 tablespoons olive oil

400g sausage meat, crumbled

150ml white wine

400g ripe tomatoes, peeled and roughly chopped

a sprig of fresh mint

salt

450g fresh or 400g dried cavatelli, orecchiette, fusilli or casarecce

grated pecorino and red chilli flakes, to serve

In a capacious pot over a medium-low heat, fry the crushed garlic in the olive oil. Add the crumbled sausage and stir until all pinkness has gone.

Pour in the wine and raise the heat. When the wine has evaporated, add the diced tomatoes and cook for another 5–10 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened. Finally, add the mint leaves and salt to taste.

Cook and drain the cavatelli, put them into the pot with the sauce and let them simmer for a few minutes, stirring and adding some of the cooking water if needed. Serve, passing round grated pecorino and red chilli flakes for those who want them.

A note about garlic

While some would have us believe garlic is a fixed star, it varies massively in strength and pungency. This is to do with variety, but more so with age. Garlic is a spring vegetable – young bulbs have white skin and tender cloves with a sweet, sunny fragrance, with which you can be careless with quantity. As garlic gets older its skin turns translucent and flaky and the cloves take on a greater pungency and power. Which is great, but you need to take care, also pull out any green shoot that has developed inside. Too old and garlic can be acrid and a bit of a bully. Be reassured, garlic is no good at hiding, the smell as you open a clove tells you everything. Then prepare accordingly, also to your personal taste. It is all about surface area. Peel and gently crush with the back of a knife or the heel of your hand so the clove is broken but still whole, for a gentle fragrance (whole means it can be pulled out if you wish). Peel and slice thinly for a stronger flavour. Peel and mince for the strongest. In all three cases always put the garlic into a cold pan with cold oil (fat) and then on a gentle heat. To start, warm rather than fry garlic, to encourage and coax out the flavour, then progress to a gentle sizzle but not much more; too hot and the garlic will burn and, regardless of how young or carefully prepared, it will turn into a bitter bully. Store garlic out of the fridge.

Extracted from An A-Z of Pasta by Rachel Roddy, published by Penguin Fig Tree at £25. Photograph by Jonathan Lovekin.

What to drink: As the sauce includes white wine I’d be inclined to drink a white wine with it though given it’s meat-based a red would also do. If you want to keep it local you could chose a Sicilian or Southern Italian white though I often find the wines we get here are too fruity. You really just want a simple carafe wine of the kind you get in a trattoria so I’d personally go for something like a verdicchio or vernaccia. A simple Sicilian red like a young nero d’avola would work too but as Rachel told me when I interviewed her for my piece on wine with pasta in the Guardian you don’t drink anything from outside your immediate area and the house wine is just fine.

Tomato and tapenade tart

The most perfect Provençal-style summer tart from Alex Jackson's evocative book Sardine, named after his former London restaurant

Alex writees: This tart is extremely simple. Given the right tomatoes, it’s a highlight of the summer table. At Sardine, we wait until the heavy, deep-coloured Amalfi bull’s heart tomatoes are in season and throw over some datterini or small plum tomatoes to fill in the gaps. A sprinkling of fragrant basil at the end is essential, as well as a drizzle of your best olive oil. Nyons olives make amazing tapenade, but any soft black olives will do nicely.

Tomato & Tapenade Tart

Makes 1 large tart (enough for 4 people for lunch or lots of small squares for a party)

For the tart:

4 bull’s heart tomatoes

1 x 500-g/1lb 2-oz block of pre-rolled puff pastry

A handful of small Italian plum tomatoes, red and yellow if possible

Olive oil

1 bunch of basil

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the tapenade:

100g/3 1⁄2oz black olives, drained of any brine or oil and pitted

1⁄8 garlic clove, peeled and crushed to a fine paste

1⁄2 tsp picked thyme leaves

1 salted anchovy fillet, washed and patted dry

1 tsp salted capers, soaked well, washed and drained

1 tsp brandy

4 tsp olive oil

1 tsp red wine vinegar

First, slice the bull’s heart tomatoes into thick 1-cm/1⁄2-inch rounds. Transfer to a sieve (strainer) suspended over a bowl and season well with salt. Leave the tomatoes for a good half hour to allow the juices to drip into the bowl. This will prevent your pastry becoming soggy if the tomatoes hold a lot of juice.

To make the tapenade, put all the dry ingredients in a blender. Blitz well.

Add the wet ingredients and blitz further until everything is fully incorporated.

The tapenade should be very smooth.

Preheat the oven to 180°C fan/200°C/400°F/gas mark 6.

Next, roll out – or simply unfurl, if pre-rolled – the pastry to a rectangle to fit your largest, flat, heavy-based baking tray. Cut a rectangle of parchment paper to the same size, then place the pastry on top. Score a 2-cm/3⁄4-inch border all around the edges of the pastry. This pastry border will puff up around the filling.

Put the baking tray (without the pastry) in the oven to pre-heat for 10 minutes.

To assemble the tart, top the pastry inside the scored border with a generous smearing of tapenade. Arrange the sliced tomatoes in a single layer over the tapenade. Halve the small tomatoes, season with salt, and use them to fill any gaps. Drizzle the tart filling with olive oil and grind over some black pepper.

Remove the hot tray from the oven, slide in the tart on the parchment paper and return the tray to the oven. Bake the tart for 30 minutes, or until the pastry borders are puffed and crisp, the base is a light golden brown (lift the tart tentatively with a spatula to check) and the tomatoes are soft, squidgy and just started to take on a little colour.

Remove the tart from the oven, season lightly with a little flaky sea salt and black pepper, and scatter over the torn basil leaves. Allow the tart to cool on its tray, then slice into squares while still just warm. Drizzle with your best olive oil before serving.

What to drink: a Provençal rosé would be the obvious match with this summery tart but you could also enjoy a crisp white like a Vermentino or a Picpoul de Pinet.

Extracted from Sardine: Simple seasonal Provençal cooking by Alex Jackson, published by Pavilion Books. Photograph © Matt Russell