summer supps

Still obsessed with fattoush, I naturally made it king of the table when Herb, Al and PJ came for a summery supps.

Its attendant dishes were very basic, but heavy on summer flavours: lemon roast chicken, mint new potatoes, rocket and orange salad.

To keep our hunger at bay to begin with, there was soda bread with oil and za'atar to dip into, and olives and gins... then lovely bubbly from Al.

And after we were sated, beyond really needing anything more, we still found a place for chocolate pots and cherries, with almond and apricot tart from Al and Herb again (via Konditor and Cook), and Turkish nuts and dried fruits from PJ.  No one, but no one wanted coffee, despite having two fresh bags from Monmouth at the ready!

But the most zingy, happy dish has to be fattoush. Incidentally, you can do anything with it should you have left-overs: stir through cold, leftover rice; put with pasta and chicken; cram into a pitta with falafel.  The apricot tart was breakfasts for a few days, and I am still enjoying the coffee ... along with the afterglow of a wonderful evening in good company.

fattoush fetish

Sometimes I have such a good time that I actually get jealous of myself.

I might taste something delicious and think 'that is so wonderful, I would LOVE to have that every day until I get sick of it'.  Then I realise that I made it, and that there is no restriction on when or what I eat and that, in short, my heart's desire was just granted.

Can anyone else be as lucky as that?

After a sustained but unsuccessful campaign on the national supermarkets I finally found the spices sumac and za'atar in the restaurant Comptoir Libanais which, it transpires, also sells Middle Eastern ingredients.  I had been impatient to make Fattoush, a fresh, zingy salad, which looked as if it could be different enough to feel like I wasn't eating yet more tomatoes and cucumber.

To sustain me while I prepared the salad, I ate Mallorcan sobrasada on oat cakes, with a spot of Oloroso sherry, standing on one leg, leaning over the sink.  As is my glamorous wont.

In a model of time-efficiency (I'm so jealous!) I put soda bread in the oven, along with some chicken thighs rubbed with oil and za'atar: whilst they cooked, I took a well-earned shower.  As my friend Anun said, so delicately, of hot weather and body odour "by noon, I am AWARE of myself".

Emerging like a bespectacled Venus from the waves, I found the bread baked to perfection - no room for modesty today - and the chicken thighs begging for a basting.  I appeased them, saucy wretches, and cracked on with the salad.

I started out following a recipe - of COURSE Nigella, of COURSE 'Forever Summer' - however I sort of lost myself in the salad drawer of my fridge and this is what I actually put together:

• 2 plump tomatoes, diced
• 1/3 cucumber, diced
• about 6 skinny spring onions, chopped big and rough
• a handful of radishes in quarters
• a very few baby gem leaves, torn. Almost tempted to say don't use these.
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 3/4 teaspoon sumac
• pinch salt
• a little glug of virgin olive oil
• juice of half a lime
• mint leaves, shredded

With the first mouthful I unravelled and nearly had to telephone someone - anyone - to tell them about it.  It is the taste equivalent of dazzling.  It is 'fresh' cubed.  It also leaves you with terrible garlic / onion breath.

I gathered myself together, put a roast chicken thigh* and quarter of soda bread onto the plate of fattoush, and ate fast.

*Something for the more sleazy eater: the chicken leaves a lot of za'atar-spiced oil/fat in the roasting dish which you might like to mop up with your soda bread. Do consider it...

Mallorcan munchies

Day 2 on this highly populated desert island and there is already a routine. Ham and bread is the routine, though it is by no means unvaried.

That international favourite supermarket, Lidl, was open on a Sunday and provided chorizo salame, jamon Serrano, Lomo, jamon al corte (cooked) and others. For a varied diet, I also chose some aged Manchego-like cheese and fruit. 

In another supermarket the wonderful ham counter, dangling with whole cured hams, quite took my breath away. I did a quick, mental calculation as to how many books & clothes I would have to jettison in order to fit a bulging jamon beauty into my suitcase (and would customs allow it?): sadly, not possible this time.

Breakfast, then, might be cereal or seeded bread and cheese, and fruit and coffee, eaten to this view of palm trees, pool and sea.  Lunch could be Ham Various with avocado or tomatoes, accompanied by a perky San Miguel. And ice cream.

Evening meals so far have been resolutely calamari-based, however a reluctant foray into the salad section means that tonight we will be navigating choppy Ham And Salad waters.

As I said: a routine, but not without variation. I don't see myself getting bored any time soon. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to cool down with another dip in the briney...

birthday treats

I invented my own birthday breakfast tradition a while back. Each year I think I will deviate from it, but then the lure of cherries, strawberries, raspberries - with granola and yogurt, or some bread and cheese - and always a little espresso, pulls me back. What could ever be better on a newborn summers day?

This year the berries were from the Bloomsbury farmers' market. The cherries were from the enormous and fertile tree in my neighbours' garden, its branches so wide and the boughs so laden, that at least half lists over onto my patch.

The weather was straight from a Laurie Lee poem.

Lunch was a surprise, and I love surprises. We sat in the open window of Randall & Aubin in Soho, refreshing ourselves with champagne and oysters. Such pretty little soft oysters, tinged sunrise-pink with shalotty-red-vinegar. I have so often passed this place and peeped in to see the (to my imagination) terribly sophisticated diners, sitting in the cool shade; how novel to now be inside, looking out of the open windows into a sunny, dusty street.

As if this didn't sate my senses enough, we then lounged over some tapas in Blacks. I say tapas, but you know it involved a chorizo scotch egg just oozing red pimento oil, with a rocket jumble of salad; olives, bread, oil. I was grateful for the bitter little espresso which jolted me awake from the lounging reverie I had fallen into, as we draped and murmured amongst threadbare and lumpy sofas, in an old townhouse in the middle of a working day, in high summer.  

I needed three hours with my girl friends and a stiff gin in the dusky evening, just to come down from the sensory high of the day.  Magical.