Anna Jones - The Modern Cook’s Year

SERVES 4

FOR THE STORECUPBOARD SALSA VERDE

a small bunch of flat-leaf parsley

2 tablespoons capers, drained

1 tablespoon cornichons, drained

2 sun-dried tomatoes, drained

the zest of 1 unwaxed lemon

10 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

FOR THE POLPETTE

1 red onion, peeled and roughly chopped

2 cloves of garlic, peeled

2 teaspoons coriander seeds

a generous pinch of dried chilli flakes

olive oil

300g frozen peas

1 x 400g tin of white beans (or 250g home-cooked, see here), drained

50g breadcrumbs or roughly blitzed oats

½ a preserved lemon, flesh removed and discarded, peel finely chopped

1 teaspoon flaky sea salt

the zest of 1 unwaxed lemon

4 sun-dried tomatoes

50g freshly grated Parmesan (I use a vegetarian one) or 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast

Preheat the oven to 200°C/180ºC fan/gas 6 (if you are baking your polpette).

To make the salsa, roughly chop together all the ingredients except the oil. Put in to a bowl and add the oil little by little, stirring well. Taste as you go – you may not need all the oil.

Put the onion into your food processor with the garlic, coriander seeds and chilli and pulse until the onion is finely chopped. Heat a frying pan, add 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and fry the onion mixture gently until it’s soft and fragrant. Next, add the rest of the polpette ingredients to the food processor with a good grind of black pepper and mix until the beans have been mashed and everything has come together.

Shape the polpette. Wet your hands and roll into balls using roughly a tablespoon of mixture for each one (you should get about 18), then place on a baking sheet. If you are baking them, drizzle the balls with a little olive oil and bake in the oven for 20–25 minutes, or until golden. To cook them in a frying pan, chill them for at least 20 minutes, then simply fry them in a little olive oil on a medium heat for about 10–15 minutes, turning every few minutes. Serve with the salsa verde.

If you are freezing the polpette, cook them for a few minutes less, then let them cool completely (they firm up as they cool down). Transfer to containers or bags and freeze.

Spelt with pickled pears and pink leaves

This warm winter salad has everything going for it. It’s the prettiest of salads, with gentle off-white celeriac and caramel-coloured spelt offset by the dusky rose of pink radicchio and the Expressionist pink and cream splatter of Castelfranco lettuce. If you haven’t guessed already, I love these bitter lettuces; they cheer up my January table and happily, they are now much more widely available, though a few heads of chicory would do fine in their place. Be careful not to use overripe pears; you need them to be a little on the firm side so they hold their shape as they cook.

SERVES 4

5 tablespoons white wine vinegar

½ teaspoon black peppercorns

2 tablespoons golden caster sugar

a generous pinch of flaky sea salt

4 just-ripe pears

400g celeriac or parsnip, peeled and cut into small 2cm pieces

1 tablespoon runny honey

1 tablespoon white miso paste

2 tablespoons wholegrain mustard

200g pearled spelt

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

2 heads of bitter salad leaves (see note above)

50g blue cheese

Put 4 tablespoons of the vinegar, the black peppercorns, caster sugar and salt into a saucepan with 100ml of water and bring to the boil. Meanwhile, peel the pears, halve them and scoop out the cores with a teaspoon. Lower the pears into the pickling liquid, lower the heat and leave to cook until tender (about 10 minutes). Remove from the heat, cover with a lid and leave to rest.

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/180ºC fan/gas 6. Roast the celeriac in the oven on a baking tray, with a little oil, for 20 minutes. Mix the honey with the miso and mustard. After 20 minutes take the tray out of the oven and add 1 tablespoon of the miso mixture, toss through the celeriac, then return to the oven for a further 5–10 minutes, until crispy and golden.

Meanwhile, cook the spelt. Bring a pan of salted water to the boil, then add the spelt and cook for 20–25 minutes or until cooked through and tender. Mix the remaining miso mixture with the remaining tablespoon of vinegar and the olive oil, drain the spelt and toss in the dressing.

Once everything else is ready, tear all the leaves from your bitter lettuces and lay on plates. Top with the spelt, celeriac and the pickled pears and crumble over the cheese.

Quick carrot dhal

This dhal has its roots in South India. It comes together quickly but has rich layers of flavour which might lead you to think it had spent hours on the hob – pops of mustard seeds, warming cinnamon, everything I love in a dhal.

The turmeric and carrots make this a vibrant sunny-hued bowl, and on top lies a colour pop of sweet-shop pink radish pickle. I serve it with poppadoms scrunched into shards over the top for a welcome bit of crunch. We have dhal in some form or another at least once a week, and this is one I keep coming back to. If you really wanted to speed things up you could do all your grating in the food processor.

SERVES 4

2 cloves of garlic

1 green chilli

a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled

1 red onion, peeled

coconut or vegetable oil

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1 teaspoon black mustard seeds

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

200g red lentils

1 × 400ml tin of coconut milk

600ml vegetable stock

6 carrots, peeled

2 large handfuls of spinach

juice of 1 lemon

FOR THE PICKLE

a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled

1 green chilli

1 unwaxed lemon

2 handfuls of radishes

1 tablespoon nigella seeds

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

honey or agave nectar

a bunch of coriander, chopped

TO SERVE

plain yoghurt

cooked brown basmati rice

a few poppadoms

Finely grate the garlic, chilli and ginger (I use a sharp Microplane grater; if your grater isn’t quite up to the job, finely chop them), then coarsely grate the red onion. Put a large saucepan on a medium heat, add a little oil and everything you have grated and cook for 10 minutes until soft and sweet.

Pound the cumin and coriander seeds a bit in a pestle and mortar, then add to the pan with the other spices and cook for a couple of minutes to toast and release their oils. Add the lentils, coconut milk and stock to the pan and bring to a simmer, then turn the heat down and bubble for 25–30 minutes. Meanwhile, grate all the carrots and add those too.

While that is cooking make a little pickle to go on top. Finely grate the ginger, chilli and the zest of the lemon into a bowl, then use a coarser grater to grate the radishes into the bowl. Add the nigella seeds, vinegar, a squeeze of honey, half the coriander, a good pinch of salt and mix well.

To finish your dhal, take it off the heat, then stir in the spinach and allow it to wilt a little, stirring in the other half of the coriander and the juice of the lemon too. Pile into bowls and top with the radish pickle, spoonfuls of yoghurt and brown basmati rice. At the table, crumble over your poppadoms.

Beetroot, rhubarb and potato gratin

This might just get the all-time gratin crown. There’s gentle comfort from the potatoes and cream, with an unexpected pop of sweet acidity from the rhubarb, a foil for the unrepentant earthiness of the beetroot. The lively warmth of the pink peppercorns tops things off. It’s a pretty beautiful-looking dishful too; there are some amazing colours at play: whites, neon pinks, magenta and the dots of fluoro pink peppercorns – you’d struggle to find one pinker.