At Ben’s Farm Shop, we love dishes that celebrate simple, honest ingredients and this vibrant salad does just that. This recipe is a from Brindisa, it’s all about contrast: smooth, creamy hummus paired with crunchy roasted chickpeas and cauliflower, finished with a fresh, colourful chopped salad.
Using quality chickpeas that crisp up beautifully in the oven, this dish is as satisfying as it is wholesome. Perfect for a light lunch or as a generous sharing side, it’s a great example of how a few good ingredients can come together to create something really special.
As with so many tarts, this is best served at room temperature so, if the weather is suitably clement, it will guarantee you a prime spot on the picnic rug. There’s nothing terribly original about the spinach and ricotta combination, with a little Parmesan thrown in for good measure – but it works. Some recipes call for spinach, others for chard, but right now, with delicious true spinach in the shops, there was no competition.
I went for small pies with one egg in the middle, but if you prefer a larger torta, make indentations for three or four eggs – see below.
When chef, Rowley Leigh, suggested serving a frittedda at our, somewhat premature, 'end of covid' celebratory lunch in June, 2021 I thought he was talking a bout an omelette. I missed the lunch because my daughter came back from London with, guess what, covid, so it was a while before I really familiarised myself with Sicilian frittedda. Since then it's become a family staple and I'm particularly partial to extending the primavera theme by adding a few Jersey Royal or Cornish new potatoes. Obviously fresh peas and beans are best but frozen will still give a pretty good result. Just adjust the cooking times accordingly. I also like to add a little preserved lemon. It's not traditional but, with North Africa just across the Strait of Sicily, it doesn't feel too sacrilegious.
Frittedda is a tasty vegetable stew / salad originating in the Sicilian capital, Palermo. Prepared with fresh broad beans, peas, asparagus and artichokes, it’s a ‘primavera’ classic for spring (in Italy) or early summer in the UK and can truly be called “spring on a plate”. The vegetables are slowly sautéed, and gently shaken rather than stirred in order to preserve the textures and flavours of each ingredient – the sweetness of the peas, the pleasant bitterness of the artichokes, and the nutty flavour of broad beans.
These flavours can be rounded with the addition of agrodolce, sauce made with caramelized sugar and vinegar. Our Frittedda will work with the antipasto, as a side dish with the cheese tart of pork, or a vegetarian main course. Back in Palermo, it is often served with panelle – Sicilian chickpea/gram flour fritters.
My artichokes were so young that no choke had formed at the centre; larger ones will have to be quartered and the chokes carefully removed. Fresh peas can be added to the mix, or as a substitute for asparagus.
The agrodolce sauce (one part sugar dissolved in two parts white wine vinegar and reduced by half) can be gently mixed in, warm, at the end. How much you add is a matter of choice. If you're serving frittedda as a side dish, you don't want it too fierce so keep it minimal. If it's as part of an antipasta platter a stronger agrodolce flavour might be in order.
Using a good dollop of our lemon marmalade and lemon curd, this recipe will turn your excess of leftover hot cross buns into a delicious dessert this Easter.
Poaching, as a method of cooking meat, is sadly out of vogue, largely because of the slightly gelatinous, ‘Spam-like’ texture you get in high-collagen cuts like ox tongue, pressed brisket (corned beef) and cotechino, saveloy or zampone type sausages. It’s a bit like Marmite, I love it but it doesn’t seem to do it for most of the UK population. In Europe, where they have a firmer hold on their culinary traditions, it’s still commonly paired with something sharp like salsa verde or mustard. Think bollito misto, cotechino and lentils, or Austrian Tafelspitz.
But with a carefully poached chicken you get perfectly cooked, moist meat suitable for all manner of dishes and, if you give it a blast in a hot oven before serving, it becomes a very superior cheat’s roast, with the added bonus of a saucepan of delicious broth for whatever’s on the menu the next day. Gentle poaching is also the perfect way to cook a slightly more mature organic bird which, it pains me to admit, can be a little dry.
The key is to keep the liquid at a steady simmer (90–95°C) and, if you’re going for the cheat’s roast, to give the skin plenty of time to dry off. I did mine on the sous-vide function in my Instant Pot multi-cooker, but a saucepan and thermometer will work just as well. A tight-fitting lid, so the breasts can steam, is a must. To be extra safe, make a cartouche out of baking parchment.
Using cloves of confit garlic not only gives a lovely mellow garlic flavour, but also helps create a thicker, creamier mayonnaise. Traditionally, aioli was made without egg, making it more of a sauce than a mayonnaise and lacking the yolky yellow colour.
Shamelessly plagiarised and adapted from a recipe on the Riverford website, the combination of nutty brown rice and true spinach works a treat. Old Winchester and Parmesan breadcrumbs bring sweetness and crunch. Served by itself it’s a satisfyingly simple supper or add protein (bacon or ham for example) of your choice.
Tapas come in many guises, from simple tortilla to London-centric ‘picture on a plate’ restaurant creations but often in Spain, and also Chez Ben’s, they can just be a ladle of whatever is in the pot at the time. Spain has an abundance of bean stews and Fabada Asturiana is, without question, the best known – almost the paella of the north. It's as simple as they come but totally dependent on the quality of the meat ingredients. It's almost a religion and the packs of, ready to go, belly pork, morcilla and chorizo are available in every food shop (including Ben's Farm Shop). Complete authenticity requires fabes de la granja (large dried runner beans) and a lightly smoked, semi cured morcilla (black pudding), chorizo and thick slices of salted belly pork. In damp Asturia, they smoke all their preserved meats in the chimney. The morcilla is the only one that keeps it’s form when cooked so definitely isn't interchangeable. The real deal beans are expensive and hard to find so most people, including me, substitute fava/butter/judion beans. It's important to stir as gently and little as possible to keep the beans intact.
The end result isn't exactly short of flavour but the extremely inauthentic mojo picon adds a little body to what can be a pretty thin broth. As with all these dishes, a slow cooker is ideal.
First Nation people were baking beans, sweetened with maple syrup, a long time before the Pilgrim Fathers arrived. A rum distilling industry soon developed in New England so the maple syrup was swapped for molasses or black treacle and Boston Baked Beans were born. It’s hard to imagine that tinned baked beans came from anywhere else. They were the first thing I cooked after my mother shipped me off to university with a slow cooker and a copy of Jocasta Innes’s Pauper’s Cookbook and they’ve remained a firm favourite ever since.