A Summer Dinner Party: Caramelised Walnut, Goat's Cheese and Orange Salad, with Sourdough Croutons

What to have at a dinner party when it's really hot - and you don't really feel like standing in a sweltering kitchen? Salad. It's the obvious answer, perhaps, but it can be tricky finding a salad that's enough to constitute a full main course! This one, however, I have tried out on three hungry men and they all seemed to approve...although this time I cooked it for my two sisters-in-law and a female cousin-in-law. One of the sisters-in-law is a professional chef so I was a little intimidated, but she left saying she was inspired by it, so I'm taking that as a compliment! I found the recipe on a snippet from a magazine I'd cut out ages ago, and have amended it slightly.

It might not be the prettiest...but it is totally delicious!

What makes it so lovely is the combination of crunchy sourdough and the tangy goat's cheese along with sweetness of the walnuts and summery-ness of the orange. This recipe does involve a little cooking, but it's so easy and low maintenance that it's totally bearable in the summer heat...

Ingredients - enough to feed 6

• 100g walnut halves
• 4 tablespoons clear honey
• 4 thick slices of sourdough bread, cut into crouton sized cubes
• 2 tablespoons wholegrain mustard
• 4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 10 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 medium sized oranges
• 400g salad leaves
• 250g goat's cheese, cubed

Heat oven to 200C.

1. Peel the oranges using a small sharp knife and cut them in to small segments. Transfer any juice that collects on the chopping board during this process into a small pan - this will form the basis of the salad dressing later!

2. Mix the walnuts with two tablespoons of the honey, and then spread them out on a baking tray covered with greaseproof paper - or alternatively, put them on a silicone baking sheet. In the pictures below I experimented with using foil, but it didn't work brilliantly!

3. Also place the sourdough bread cubes on a baking tray / in a roasting tin and drizzle a little olive oil over.

4. Place both trays into the oven for 15 minutes, checking them half way and turning the trays to make sure that the walnuts and bread are evenly browned.

Click to enlarge.

5. While the walnuts and sourdough bread are in the oven, prepare the dressing. Add the remaining honey, mustard, vinegar and oil to the pan with the orange juice. Stir, heat slowly and season.

6. Assemble the salad. Put the salad leaves in a large bowl and add the orange slices, sourdough croutons, goat's cheese and walnuts. Toss gently with the salad dressing.

Tip: if the walnut halves are too tricky to remove from the tray, place them back in the oven for a minute to soften the honey slightly.

We followed the salad with the raspberry baked cheesecake I've posted about before. I don't often repeat recipes so quickly, but the husband requested it! This time, I made it in a slightly bigger tin (although using the same quantities as in the posted recipes), left it in a little longer (I forgot...!) and dressed it up a bit...

I'm cooking for another dinner party tonight (got to make the most of the dying days of the summer holidays!), but something totally different: chocolate chilli chicken followed by lime souffles: check back later to see those recipes!

The Wonders of Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi - a recipe recommendation

My favourite gnocchi are the ones featured in the Polpo cookbook, where you make an amazing cavolo nero sauce to accompanying (sounds weird, tastes delicious). To me, however, these seem more of a wintery food...perhaps because I got the cookbook for Christmas and first made them in that fallow period after boxing day, when I'd come back home. I also made them while singing along to 'The Sound of Music Story' documentary - but perhaps that's not something to be proud of!

BUT there is a great, more summery, and speedier to make, version of gnocchi. It's probably healthier too. I like to think that anything involving spinach is immediately healthy and perhaps that's not always the case, but these are definitely lighter than the usual potato filled gnocchi and it's really satisfying to watch them float to the top of the pan once they're cooked.

Here's a basic overview of the steps:

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi
(click the picture to enlarge!)

They make a delicious summer lunch, or a light summer supper...or you could have them as a starter.

The recipe itself is here.

The Wonder of Lentils

In general, I am a major lover of lentils. They're comforting, cheap and nutritious! They also make a great addition to salads if you buy the ready cooked Puy Lentils in tins.

This recipe is to go along with the duck confit recipe posted a few days ago...

Serves 2.

• 200g uncooked Puy or green lentils
• An onion or shallot
• 1 carrot, diced
• 2 garlic cloves, unpeeled
• 2 tablespoons vinaigrette

1. Put the lentils in a saucepan with cold water, then bring to the boil. 
2. Add the other ingredients and simmer for 10 mins or so.
3. Strain the lentils, getting rid of the other ingredients apart from the carrots.
4. Add the vinaigrette and season.

On another lentil related note, if anyone has a really good recipe for dhal, I'd love to know it...

Dealings with Duck

Something for Sunday lunch or a Saturday supper...

On my first trip to The Wolseley five or so years ago, I'd recently stopped being a vegetarian. I wasn't quite up to the bravery of eating steak tartare (to be honest, not sure I'll ever quite get there!) that my lunching companion was eagerly ordering, so I plumped for the confit of duck. I thought if I didn't particularly like it, at least I knew I'd like the lentils it came with. But I did like it - in fact I liked it so much that when I went to try Brasserie Zedel (created by the same people who are behind The Wolseley) I knew exactly what I'd order.

My other random love involving the bird is the duck gyoza soup from Eat (I am definitely a lover of dumplings, whether in British or more glamorous foreign forms). I'd tried my hand at making vegetable gyoza as it seemed a bit more manageable, but having encountered this recipe suggestion for filling the little parcels with duck comfit, I knew I needed to get over my fears and give it a go. Pronto, in fact.

I had visions that making the duck confit would involve seriously complicated moves on a level with those involved in Julia Child's infamous 'Boned Stuffed Duck Baked in a Pastry Crust' recipe, Julie's nemesis at the end of the film.

Julie, in the film 'Julie and 'Julia', prepares to confront the duck.
Image from cornichon.org

Luckily, it wasn't anywhere near as complicated as I'd feared, which is why, along with its tastiness, I thoroughly recommend it to you! Although, I have to admit, the duck never made it to the dumpling wrappers. Smelling it cooking deliciously for two hours meant that there was no way I was going to faff around with gyoza. The duck had to be eaten.

The Recipe for the Duck Confit 

(or, as I shall be calling it, 'The Duck of Joy')

plus lentils.

I ended up amalgamating a few recipes; the end result was a mix of Nigel Slater's recipe for the Guardian, called 'The Duck Stops Here' (love the name), Raymond Blanc's recipe, which also has a video (probably only available to watch for a short time...) and Daniel Galmiche's recipe in the 'French Brasserie Cookbook'. I looked it up in the index of my Julia Child cookbook but it wasn't included...probably because I only have volume 1 at the moment!

Important note: the duck needs to marinate overnight (or two to three hours minimum!), so this is a recipe that requires a bit of planning ahead!

Ingredients to serve 2:

For the duck

• 2 duck legs (Nigel Slater would have you chopping up a duck, but that sounded like it veered a bit towards the 'boned stuffed duck' way of doings things to me...)
• 20g (or thereabouts) sea salt
• thyme sprigs
• 4 bay leaves
• jar of duck fat (295g if you have a narrow cooking pot, perhaps twice that if you don't...you'll see what I mean if you read ahead in the instructions!)

For the lentils

• Puy or green lentils (Puy would be best, but I only had green to hand)
• An onion or shallot
• 1 carrot, diced
• 2 garlic cloves, unpeeled
• 2 tablespoons vinaigrette

Heat oven to 150C.

1. Prepare the duck! (Or, as in 'Julie and Julia', "Confront the duck!"). Place the duck legs in a fridge safe container (but prob not something plastic!) and rub salt into them - 20g of salt should do it. Recipes seem to range widely in the amount they suggest, but this seems about right. Add bay leaves and sprigs of thyme to duck. Wrap tightly in clingfilm, pressing the clingfilm around the duck legs themselves. Leave in the fridge for two hours, or better, overnight. This, apparently, is lightly curing the duck, which I find rather an excitingly grand concept.

2. Remove duck from fridge and brush the salt from it using some kitchen roll. Some recipes tell you to wash it off, whereas others tell you to not take the duck anywhere near water...I say err on the safe side and just use kitchen roll! Save the bay leaves and thyme.

3. Lightly brown duck in heavy bottomed casserole pot. Remove duck and put it on a piece of kitchen roll. 

4. Add duck fat to casserole pot and heat it to 85C (you can see I used my sugar thermometer to do this...perhaps not the best move!), then put the duck back in the pan with it along with the bay leaves and thyme from earlier. Then put the whole lot into the preheated oven for one and a half to two hours. The fat should cover the duck, which is why if your pan is quite wide (as mine is, see picture) you might need two 295g jars...

5. After the alloted time (during which your kitchen will smell incredibly enticing), remove the duck from the pan and, with some more good old kitchen towels, wipe off most of the fat. Then fry the duck legs, skin side down, over a medium heat in a saucepan. Voila...and if you're anything like me, you'll feel surprised by the success of your culinary efforts!

I'll post the recipe for the lentils tomorrow...and meanwhile I'll go to sleep dreaming of the smell of the duck, my nose lifting away from the bed like in an old fashioned cartoon (not sure that made any sense to anyone but me!).