Hi, team. Welcome to another edition of What’s That You’re Cooking, Thea?.
This week it’s a vegetarian sides special, with 3 dishes - Summer Cauliflower Cheese, Mexican-Ish Potato Salad, and Toasty Chickpeas with Sage - which can come together to form one whole meal, or be made to accompany a barbecue or general warm weather feast. I hope you will like them.
Currently obsessing over all things whipped, I got it in my head that I wanted to centre some dishes around whipped feta. It is a glorious thing, only needing a few ingredients and a matter of seconds to prepare. It works just as well as a starter with some crudités or warm flat bread (try these) or focaccia for dipping, too (you could drizzle some olive oil and sprinkle some Aleppo chilli on top). It’s delightfully tangy because the yogurt is used to help create a creaminess, and it’s got plenty of saltiness from everyone’s favourite brined cheese.
I paired the whipped feta with sweet and nutty roasted cauliflower, and plenty of oniony elements for a rich and tasty summer-take on a Cauliflower Cheese, because why should that famous combination be resigned to the cold and dark months only?
Summer Cauliflower Cheese
Serves 2
For the whipped feta
1 packet feta
180g yogurt
2 tbsp olive oil
1 lemon
For the cauliflower
1 red onion, thinly sliced
30ml white/red wine vinegar
1 head cauliflower, broken into medium florets
1 tsp Urfa chilli flakes
1 tsp Aleppo chilli flakes
1 handful crispy fried shallots (from a packet)
1 handful fresh chives, finely chopped
Turn oven on to 200°c.
To prepare your whipped feta, crumble the packet of feta into a blender and add the 200g yogurt (I use a Nutribullet but a hand blender would also work), along with the olive oil and zest of the lemon. Blend well until really smooth. Taste and add any lemon juice to taste and a touch of seasoning.
To pickle your onion, add the slices to a Tupperware or bowl and cover with ½ cup boiling water, the wine vinegar, and ½ tsp salt and sugar. Leave, covered, for at last 30 minutes (they’ll keep for up to 5 days). Toss them well now and again if not completely covered.
Now toss your cauliflower florets with olive oil, the chilli flakes, and plenty of salt and pepper. Add your cauliflower florets to the oven and roast well until burnished at the edges.
To plate up, lay most of your whipped feta on the base of your dish (the rest can be used in the below chickpeas, or kept for another day), and top with the browned cauli, pink pickled onions, crispy fried shallots, and chopped chives.
What makes a salad a salad? No one really knows. Potato salads come in many forms, and in this one, the mayonnaise is spiced with chipotle and dolloped alongside the green salsa. And that’s it! This dish is the result of leftover tomatillos I had in my fridge/freezer from taco nights of yore.
Mexican-Ish Potato Salad
Serves 2
500g small potatoes
Olive oil
3-4 green tomatillos from a can (available here)
1-2 pickled green chillies (jalapeños or guindillas are fine)
30g fresh coriander
Juice of ½ lemon/lime
2 tbsp chipotle from a can, chopped
50ml mayonnaise
Fresh coriander/chives to garnish
Par boil the potatoes for 10 minutes until just softening. Meanwhile, get oven turned on to 200°c and heat up an oven dish/tray with 2 tbsp olive oil inside. Drain your potatoes and allow to dry off for 1-2 minutes, then remove pre-heated oven dish from the oven and add the potatoes to the oil. They should sizzle! Season them with salt, and crush them with the back of a flat glass to increase their surface area a little.
Roast the potatoes for 15-20 minutes. Meanwhile, blend your tomatillos, fresh coriander, pickled chilli and lemon/lime juice. You should have a vibrant green liquid. If you can’t find tomatillos, you could make a salsa with the coriander, chillies and replace the tomatillos with spinach.
Mix your chopped chipotle with the mayonnaise and stir well. When the potatoes are golden and beginning to crisp, remove from the oven, and allow to cool a few minutes. Dress them with dollops of the tomatillo salsa and chipotle mayonnaise. Finish with a scattering of fresh coriander and chives.
This takes minutes to put together and makes use of our cauliflower stalks from the above Summer Cauliflower Cheese. We get a meatiness from the sage as well as a pleasing crunch. You could add bulgar wheat or rice to this to transform it into a little lunch in itself. Enjoy!
Toasty Chickpeas with Sage
Serves 2
1 can chickpeas
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp sumac
10-12 sage leaves
Olive oil
Cauliflower leaves from a cauliflower head
100g whipped feta (as above) or plain yogurt
Turn oven on to 200°c. Toss your cauliflower leaves on a baking tray in oil so they are completely coated. Sprinkle with salt and place on the top rack of oven for 15 minutes or until golden and crispy.
Open your can of chickpeas, drain and rinse. Pop a pan on a medium heat, add 2 tbsp olive oil, throw in chickpeas and add the coriander seeds and ground cumin. Stir vigorously until the chickpeas are coated in the spices. Toast like this for 3-4 minutes until the spices smell great and the chickpeas toasty. Season with salt and put to one side.
In a small frying pan, add a tbsp olive oil and fry your sage leaves on a medium heat for 1-2 minutes until they are just turning crispy but still green.
Place cauli leaves on a plate, scatter chickpeas on top, and finish with dollops of whipped feta or yogurt, the tsp of sumac, and the crispy fried sage leaves. A squeeze of lemon juice wouldn’t hurt here, if you like.
The trio. Who needs meat?
Eating at Glastonbury, a retrospective
It’s fair to say eating is not most people’s priority at Glastonbury. But my first full Glasto experience involved at least 3 meals a day, because walking 15 miles per 24 hour period requires sustenance, let me tell you. I brought a camp stove, and I’m not afraid to admit it. Sometimes you need to know you’re going to get a vegetable intake or some Indomie noodles when you need them, do you know what I mean?
I made pesto which we brought in a Nutribullet container and tossed with spaghetti and broccoli florets and crispy breadcrumbs - it was just the ticket after setting up the tent on the Wednesday, and the pesto kept for a second meal too. Just nice to know you’re going to have ingested a few vitamins, know what I mean?
I’m afraid to say the food stalls were resolutely hit and miss. A £6.50 bacon and sausage bap with bread so dry it came apart like cotton wool was what I like to call: a rip-off. On the other hand, a masala dosa from the Williams Green field was just the kind of overly salted yet well-spiced dish I needed to recalibrate the old electrolytes. Spicy food seemed to be a safe bet, as the Caribbean stall at the Park served the best meal I had over the weekend - goat curry with rice and peas. But you don’t even want to know about Charles’ Thai Red Curry from a suspiciously named ‘Oriental Food’ stall serving Chinese, Japanese and Thai food all at once. All this is to say that one needs to be careful about where one splurges ones’ £9 at Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts… all paper plates are not created equal.
Tune in next week when it will be a Greek inspired BBQ special, with a sizzling hot discount code from one of my favourite meat delivery companies, none other than the great HG Walter! There’ll be some vegetarian extras too. Become a paid subscriber below if you want to get involved. Legends only.