The new cookbook from award-winning food writer, food historian and cook Angela Clutton, Seasoning, shares a wealth of seasonal knowledge and recipes. It has also earned some famous fans, including actor Stanley Tucci, who calls it “a brilliant and beautiful book that everyone who loves to cook should own.”
As the weather changes consider star ingredients that shine from late summer into early autumn; produce like aubergine, beetroot and fennel are all in focus as we look to cook and celebrate the seasons.
Aubergine
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Look for shiny skin with gorgeous gloss and vibrancy. No wrinkles, no bruising. Older aubergines are more bitter, and easy to spot as they are losing their shine.
Hold it and hope it feels hard and heavy.
Look where the stem meets the skin, and see if its points are sitting down smoothly. If not, the aubergine is already drying out.
Don’t worry too much about dark spots on the skin if everything else checks out — they’re often just caused by overly tight packaging.
Store
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Advertise with NZME.Somewhere cool, dry and dark. The fridge is fine but a cool larder even better. Keep them in a cloth or paper bag.
Don’t store aubergines anywhere near potatoes or onions as they’ll make the aubergines go off quicker.
Serves 6-8 as a main
The delight of this roasted joint is that it starts off with the aubergine rounds making a bed for the meat. There they can take on its fat and juices as the lamb cooks, with the spicy chermoula and sherry vinegar marinade seeping into them too. The lamb then carries on to cook into tenderness, and the aubergines are blitzed to a creamy sauce with garlic and yoghurt. Simple and delicious. Save any leftover aubergine cream to toss over hot new potatoes, or spread on bread.
6 cloves garlic
1½ Tbsp chermoula spice (not paste)
75ml olive oil
1½ Tbsp sherry vinegar
1.2kg aubergines (eggplants)
About 2.8kg lamb shoulder
225g Greek yoghurt
2 tsp lemon juice
Handful of mint sprigs
Salt and black pepper
- Preheat the oven to 220C fan.
- Peel 4 garlic cloves, crush, put into a mortar with a good pinch of salt and pestle to a paste. Mix with the chermoula, oil and vinegar to make a loose paste.
- Trim and peel the aubergines, and then slice into rounds, 1cm thick. Lay them in a large roasting tin, arranging the aubergines to be roughly the same size as the lamb. Sit the lamb skin-side up on top of the aubergines. Pierce its skin several times with the point of a sharp knife. Rub the chermoula paste over the skin. Loosely cover the roasting tin with foil, put into the oven and immediately turn the oven down to 170C fan.
- After 1½ hours, take the tin out and gently lift up the lamb to remove the aubergine slices. Some might be stuck to the base of the joint – be sure to get them all. Put the aubergines slices into a sieve set over a bowl to drain. Pour 200ml hot water into the roasting tin (but not over the meat), cover it again, return to the oven and turn the temperature down to 140C fan. Roast for a further 2½ hours, then put the oven back up to 220C fan, take off the foil, and return to the oven for a final 20 minutes. Carefully lift out the lamb and set aside to rest.
- Make the aubergine cream while the lamb rests: Peel and roughly chop the remaining 2 garlic cloves. Blitz the aubergine flesh with the garlic, yoghurt and lemon juice. Season, being particularly generous with the salt. Finely chop the mint leaves from one of the mint sprigs and scatter over. Serve with more mint to garnish.
Fennel
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Look for bulbs that are firm and crisp. As they get older they’ll lose moisture and look a bit tired. Slimy patches or browned bits can be signs that the fennel has been in cold storage too long.
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Advertise with NZME.At the risk of sounding contradictory, don’t worry too much about perfection, though. Sometimes a pristine ‘perfect’ fennel can actually be lacking in flavour. Ideally, you’ll be able to see colour gradations through the bulb from white to creams to all the greens. It should look full of flavour life.
Round bulbs tend to be sweeter than the flatter ones.
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In the crisper drawer of the fridge, but not for too long as its flavour will diminish.
Pick off the fronds and store separately, wrapped in damp kitchen paper or cloth and in the fridge.
Resurrect a tired fennel bulb by cutting off any bruises, slicing it and sitting in ice-cold water for up to 1 hour before using. Don’t be tempted to do that for longer, though. All you’ll achieve is it losing fennel flavour to the water.
Serves 4-6 as a main
This is a go-to dish in my house. Most often on Saturday night rotation, when I want to cook and eat something I can prepare in advance or that needs very little finishing after our Saturday-night ritual of a cocktail (or two). Its marriage of fennel and aromatics hits the sweet spot of the fennel flavour spectrum: there is just enough going on to balance out fennel’s dominance, yet somehow also let it shine. The essential accompaniment is good bread for mopping up the juices.
2 onions
3 Tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic
1 fennel bulb
2 bay leaves
2 thyme sprigs
1 tsp smoked paprika
250ml white wine or dry vermouth
800g filleted skinless white fish
2 prepared squid, including wings and tentacles
8 raw king prawns
Salt and black pepper
- Peel the onions, cut in half and slice into thin half-moons. Heat the oil in a large deep frying pan or casserole, then add the onions and cook gently with a lid on, so they soften but do not colour. Check the onions regularly to make sure they aren’t catching on the bottom of the pan.
- Meanwhile, peel and crush the garlic cloves. Prepare the fennel: Remove and set aside the fronds, trim off the upper stalks and keep for stock, then thinly slice the fennel bulb into rounds. When the onions are nearly tender, add the garlic and fennel to the pan. Mix, season with salt, put the lid back on and sweat the vegetables for about 5 minutes, or until the fennel is softening. Stir in the bay, thyme and paprika, pour in the wine/vermouth and let it bubble for a minute, then add 500ml water. Season and gently simmer with a partial lid on for 20 minutes.
- Remove the herbs and either carry straight on or set the sauce aside if making ahead of time. Reheat, if it has cooled.
- Cut the hake into chunks and stir into the sauce. Cut the squid into rings and add those too. Turn the heat up and cook for 5 minutes. Sit the squid wings on top, cut each set of tentacles in half and add to the pan, and lastly sit the prawns on top. Cover and leave for 5 minutes for all the fish to cook through. It’s ready when the prawns are pink.
- Scatter over the fennel fronds, give it plenty of black pepper and serve straight away.
Beetroot
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Beetroots should feel firm. You don’t want any wrinkling or withering — both signs of getting older and losing moisture.
Try to buy beetroots with some soil still on them. It’s a good sign they haven’t been out of the ground for too long.
Similarly, try to buy beetroots with leaves attached. Not just because they are delicious, but if they are nicely glossy with edges that aren’t wilting, it’s a good sign of healthy, fresh beetroots.
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Leave any soil on — it acts as a protective cover. Only wash off when it’s time to use.
Soil-on beetroots can be stored out of the fridge, somewhere cool and dark. Soil-less beetroots are best kept in the fridge.
Any leaves will need to be removed to help the roots stay fresh longer; otherwise the leaves will just try to draw moisture out of the roots. Take the leaves off as soon as you can and keep them separately in the fridge, wrapped in damp kitchen paper or a cloth.
Serves 4 as a main
This is not just a terrific dinner, but shows off just how beetroot stalks and leaves are delicious and useful in their own right, too. This dish would certainly be nice enough without the beetroot stalks cooked into the base of the dish, or indeed the beetroot leaves added for the finish — but not nearly so good as with them. Serve with plenty of couscous, stirred through with lots of chopped herbs, salt and a squeeze of lemon.
2 red onions
3 Tbsp olive oil
4 garlic cloves
Stalks and leaves from 6 beetroots
5 anchovy fillets, drained of oil
1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 Tbsp horseradish
2 Tbsp crème fraîche
Salt and black pepper
1 red onion
2 garlic cloves
400g minced beef or lamb
1 Tbsp za’atar
80g breadcrumbs
1 egg
2 Tbsp olive oil
Salt and black pepper
- Make the sauce first: Peel and chop the onions. Heat the olive oil in a large, deep frying pan and cook the onions over a gentle heat until starting to tenderise and take on a little colour. Peel and finely chop the garlic cloves, and add those too.
- While they are cooking, separate the beetroot leaves from the stalks. Sit the leaves in very cold water to keep them perky. Finely chop the stalks, and add to the frying pan. Let them cook down for 5 minutes, stirring, then add the anchovies and chopped tomatoes. Rinse out the tomato tin with water and add that to the pan too. Season. Simmer for 20 minutes. Set aside while you make the meatballs.
- For the meatballs: Preheat the oven to 210C fan.
- Peel and grate the onion and garlic into a bowl, add the minced meat, za’atar and breadcrumbs, and season well. Beat the egg and add, then use your hands to bring the mixture together. Divide into 20 equal pieces, rolling them into balls as you go. Sit the meatballs on a baking tray, drizzle over the oil and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.
- For the last 5 minutes of the meatballs’ baking time, put the sauce back on the heat and stir in the horseradish. Lift the beetroot leaves out of the water and sit on kitchen paper to dry, then just before the meatballs are ready, stir the crème fraîche and beetroot leaves through the sauce. Remove the meatballs from the oven and sit them on top of the sauce. Pour over any oil left behind in the baking tray, grind over plenty of black pepper and serve straight away.
Edited extract from Seasoning by Angela Clutton, $60, published by Murdoch Books, available now.
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Petite Kitchen’s massaged kale salad with ricotta and garlic. It’s beautiful on its own or served with grilled meat or fish.
Petite Kitchen’s frittata with kale. As well as being gluten-free, dairy-free and vegetarian, it also happily packs in plenty of kale and fresh herbs.
Courgette tacos with cherry tomatoes, sweetcorn and pickled onion. Shredded courgettes add a crispy texture to this flavourful summer recipe.
