Parsnip, Miso, Oat and Shallot Boulangère

A gorgeously hearty, warming vegetable-based dish from Gizzi Erskine's inspiring book Restore which is full of and advice on how to eat ethically and seasonally.

This recipe is from the Autumn to Winter section and combines one of my favourite winter vegetables, parsnips with miso and, intriguingly, with oats.

Gizzi writes: Boulangère is a gratin of potatoes made by cooking potatoes in the juice (stock) and fat of lamb - the unsung hero of the potato dauphinois. Playing around with root vegetables in a gratin is a great way to really understand them. I've replaced the lamb stock and fat with a chicken or vegetable stock pumped up with miso and oat cream, that you can buy or make yourself. The flavour of the oat is what I want here, not the creaminess, and oat and parsnip are dreamy together.

This dish is a good way to show how we often overlook the flavours of the modern plant-based movement. This gratin is superb as a main dish for a supper or served as a side dish, and if you make it with vegetable stock, your vegan friends will thank you."

SERVES 4 as a side dish

Preparation lime 15 minutes

Cooking lime 45 minutes

2 tbsp oil

4 shallots, very thinly sliced

500g parsnips, cut into very fine rounds (ideally using a mandolin e or a food processor with a thin slicing attachment)

500ml fresh vegetable stock (or chicken stock if you're not making it for vegetarians or vegans)

1 tbsp white miso paste

½ tsp salt

250ml oat cream

few sprigs of thyme

freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 240°C/220°C fan/gas mark 9.

Start by sweating the shallots. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium-low heat, add the shallots and cook gently for about 20 minutes, stirring regularly, until beautifully soft and caramelised.

Add the sliced parsnips (I don't think they need peeling - the peel adds a nice texture) to a separate saucepan, along with the stock, miso paste and salt. Bring to the boil then take off the heat immediately. Drain the parsnips, reserving the stock. Return the stock to the pan and cook over a high heat until the volume has reduced to about 150ml and the stock has a thick, syrupy consistency.

While the stock is reducing, you can start constructing the dish. Once the parsnips are cool enough to handle, take a gratin dish (about 2 litre capacity) and make a layer of parsnips on the bottom, two or three parsnip slices thick. Spoon over a thin layer of the shallots, season with pepper and the leaves from the sprigs of thyme. Repeat this process until you have used everything up.

To finish the sauce, add the oat cream to the stock and allow to reduce further for a couple of minutes until thickened slightly. Pour this over the parsnips and put the dish in the oven to bake for 20 minutes, until the top is crisp and golden. Remove from the oven and leave to sit for a couple of minutes before serving.

What to drink: I'd go for a rich white with this, maybe with a lick of oak. I'm thinking white Rhône or Roussillon (anything from grenache blanc or gris), oaked white rioja or a Douro white

Extracted from Restore: a modern guide to sustainable eating by Gizzi Erskine is published by HQ at £25

Photography credit – c. Issy Croker.

Hiyajiru (chilled miso soup) with cucumber ice cubes

The perfect hot weather dish from chef Tim Anderson's Nanban - even if you only make the cucumber ice cubes

Tim writes: One of my all-time favorite dishes on a hot day. Some may find the idea of a cold miso and fish soup strange, but keep in mind all the cold miso and fish dishes found throughout Japan – this just takes those flavours and translates them into a refreshing liquid format. Usually this is served with a side of hot rice so diners can enjoy the contrasting temperatures. I use room temperature rice so everything stays nice and cold, but do whatever you prefer.

In Miyazaki this is dished up with a few ice cubes in it to keep it cold. I don’t really like this because as they melt, all they do is dilute the soup. To add flavour where it would otherwise be lost, I use cucumber-chilli ice cubes, which make the dish both lighter and more exciting as you get to the bottom of the bowl. This will make more ice cubes than you need, but they are fantastic in a Bloody Mary, or G&T.

Hiyajiru
冷や汁
Chilled miso soup

Yield: 4-6 servings

For the miso soup:

2 mackerel fillets or 4 sardine fillets (about 150g total), skinned and boned
30g miso
15g toasted sesame seeds
40ml rice vinegar
40ml mirin
300ml dashi
340g firm silken tofu, pressed to extract moisture
300g rice
1/2 cucumber
20g beni shoga (red ginger), minced
4 leaves shiso or 8 leaves basil, cut into a chiffonade
salt
sesame oil

For the cucumber-chilli ice cubes

1/2 cucumber
juice of 1/2 lime
2 Thai green chillies
30ml rice vinegar
50ml water
pinch of salt

To make the ice cubes, simply puree all the ingredients in a blender. Pass the purée through a fine sieve and transfer to an ice cube tray. Freeze until set.

For the miso soup: Season the fish with a little salt and grill until done – it should actually be a little overcooked so it’s quite dry. Purée this in a blender along with the miso, sesame seeds, vinegar, mirin, dashi, and 100g of the tofu until completely smooth. Pass through a fine sieve and refrigerate for at least an hour to get it really nice and cold. (The mixture will separate as it chills. Not to worry – store it in a jar and give it a good shake to bring it back together before serving).

To serve: Cook the rice. Cut the remaining half of cucumber lengthwise, then shave it thinly – use a mandolin, if you have one. Salt the cucumber slices liberally and leave them to sit for 10 minutes, then squeeze out the liquid and give them a quick rinse under cold water. Cut the remaining tofu into small cubes.

Place a mound of tofu and cucumber slices in each bowl. Add a small spoonful of beni shoga on top, and then a pile of shiso chiffonade. Pour in the soup, stopping just before it reaches the top of the tofu and cucumbers. Add a few drops of sesame oil and the ice cubes. Serve rice on the side.

What to drink: Like many soups I'm not sure this needs any liquid accompaniment but a glass of chilled sake would work or a very dry white such as a muscadet.

© Nanban: Japanese Soul Food by Tim Anderson (Square Peg), photography by Paul Winch-Furness.

Japanese ginger and garlic chicken with smashed cucumber

A simple but spectacular Japanese-style dish from Diana Henry's marvellous new book A Change of Appetite which I've also reviewed on the site here.

Diana writes: "This dish has a great interplay of temperatures. The chicken is hot and spicy, the cucumber like eating shards of ice (make sure you serve it direct from the fridge).

The cucumber recipe is adapted from a recipe in a wonderful American book called Japanese Farm Food by Nancy Singleton Hachisu. You can also make the chicken with boneless thighs and griddle them."

Serves 4

For the chicken

3 1/2 tbsp soy sauce

3 tbsp sake or dry sherry

3 tbsp soft dark brown sugar

1/2 tbsp brown miso

60g (2oz) root ginger, peeled and finely grated

4 garlic cloves, finely grated

1 tsp togarashi seasoning (available in Waitrose), or 1/2 tsp chilli powder

8 good-sized skinless bone-in chicken thighs, or other bone-in chicken pieces

For the cucumber

500g (1lb 2oz) cucumber

2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

2 tsp sea salt

2 tbsp pink pickled ginger, very finely shredded

small handful of shiso leaves, if available, or mint leaves, torn (optional)

Mix everything for the chicken (except the chicken itself ) to make a marinade. Pierce the chicken on the fleshy sides with a knife, put the pieces into a shallow dish and pour the marinade over. Massage it in well, turning the pieces over. Cover and put in the fridge for 30–60 minutes.

When you’re ready to cook, preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Take the pieces out of the marinade and put them in a shallow ovenproof dish in which they can sit snugly in a single layer. Pour over half the marinade. Roast in the oven for40 minutes, basting every so often with the juices and leftover marinade (don’t add any leftover marinade after 20 minutes, it needs to cook properly as it has had raw chicken in it). Check for doneness: the juices that run out of the chicken when you pierce the flesh with a knife should be clear and not at all pink.

When the chicken is halfway through cooking, peel and halve the cucumber and scoop out the seeds. Set on a board and bang the pieces gently with a pestle or rolling pin. This should break them up a little. Now break them into chunks with your hands.

Crush the garlic with a pinch of the salt and massage this – and the rest of the salt – into the cucumber. Put in a small plastic bag, squeeze out the air and put in the fridge for 10 minutes. When you’re ready to eat, tip the cucumber into a sieve so the juices can drain away. Add the shredded ginger. You can add shiso leaves if you can find them (I can’t, I have no Japanese shop nearby). Nothing else really tastes like it, but I sometimes add mint.

Serve the chicken with brown rice or rice vermicelli (the rice vermicelli is good served cold) and the cucumber.

Try this with… edamame and sugar snap salad Mix 2 tbsp white miso paste, 1 tbsp rice vinegar, 2 tbsp groundnut oil, 2 tbsp water, 1 tsp runny honey and 2cm (3/4in) peeled, grated root ginger. Toss with 100g (3 1/2oz) cooked edamame beans, 100g (3 1/2oz) raw sugar snap peas, sliced lengthways, 8 sliced radishes and a handful of mizuna. Serves 4.

What to drink: While this type of sweet-savoury dish is delicious it can be tricky with wine. Chilled sake might be your best bet - otherwise I'd go for a strong fruity rosé, a light red like a Beaujolais cru or a New Zealand pinot gris.

You can read my full review of A Change of Appetite here.

From A Change of Appetite by Diana Henry, published by Mitchell Beazley. Photograph © Laura Edwards.