A visit from Uncle Patrick and a recipe that I have finally got around to writing up
Jenny asked me for this recipe ages ago and I decided to make it yesterday evening, as there were a couple of sweet potatoes left from the Supper Club last week.
Uncle P and I had toyed with dining out, but there was food in the house. Then we considered popping out for a drink just because we could, as Missy B has flown off to Germany for a week on her school exchange, so no child care required. As the sun had pretty much disappeared by the time we got our act together, we stayed put.
This a gorgeous salad – it’s meant to have prunes in, but they are not my favourite, so I substituted sultanas, thinking this was a rather marvellous idea by me. But now I come to look at the recipe, I see that it’s called “Sweet potato, sultana and coriander salad with a yoghurt dressing”, despite having no sultanas in the ingredients. Weird.
Anyway…. here it is, from Ali Benamar’s Family Food (he runs Coffee Cake in Crouch End), done my way:
The salad:
4 large sweet potatoes
A pinch each of: sea salt, pepper, cumin seeds
1 level tsp clear honey
1 tbsp olive oil
10 baby cherry tomatoes
A large handful of fresh coriander, chopped
Chopped pistachio nuts
A few leaves of tarragon
A sprinkle of sweet paprika
Small pot of natural Greek yoghurt
The dressing:
2 garlic cloves
1 level tbsp English mustard
1 level tbsp wholegrain mustard
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp honey
salt and pepper
200 ml sunflower oil
Cut the sweet potatoes into cubes, then mix in a bowl with salt, pepper, cumin seeds, honey and olive oil. Place on a baking tray and cook for 25 minutes at 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4.
When the sweet potatoes are cool, mix with the coriander, tomatoes, pistachios, sultanas and tarragon. Mix dressing ingredients together, then slowly add the oil. Dress the salad and add a few dollops of yoghurt.
I had to make a few changes – no paprika, as Uncle P is the allergic brother, Dijon mustard in place of English, as that’s what I had, rapeseed oil instead of sunflower, for the same reason.
It was still very delicious indeed, even with my deviations from the recipe. We started with some asparagus with some mayonnaise left from the Supper Club, and with the salad we had chicken schnitzels – Uncle P very much enjoyed bashing the chicken with this tenderising implement (sounds like some kind of innuendo, but it’s not).
I dipped the chicken in a bit of seasoned flour, then beaten egg and finally some Panko breadcrumbs and shallow fried them in a mixture of butter and olive oil. Quick, easy and very tasty.
Now I have to decide how to fill a week without Missy B to amuse and entertain me…
I’ll do my best to keep you amused on Monday! I bet you’ll have people queuing up for this task…
That salad really was delicious when you made it for me. I might surprise Mr R with some of that tonight. Although I’m not sure it would really “go” with James Garner’s Chilli which I was thinking of making in the slow cooker…
I do have a schedule of events for the week. Off to Manchester right now!
Just finished the last of the salad off with an unfortunate (shop bought) sausage roll. Salad still GOOD 🙂
Ah Manchester. So much to answer for! Have fun my lovely x