Extra-crunchy Celery Salad

Possibly the world’s crunchiest salad, this employs a technique which gives you super-crisp celery. It’s indescribably good. I’ve combined it here with beautiful blood oranges and black olives for an enlivening winter side dish. It’ll make your taste buds tap dance. Continue reading

Lebanese Cauliflower (Zahra Maqlia) and French Beans (Loubieh Bzeit)

Image of Lebanese Beans and a glimpse of the cauliflower

We went to a friend’s birthday party in Oxford recently and he sensibly (and generously) catered for the ravening hordes by getting a local restaurant to deliver the food. It came from Al-Shami, a Lebanese restaurant close to the city centre in Jericho and something of an Oxford institution.

Tim had ordered an array of vegetarian mezze and although it was all good, I liked one dish so much I went to Al-Shami the next day to ask how they’d made it Continue reading

Stir-fried Asparagus with Peas

Image of stir-fried asparagus with peas

A friend said to me recently: “Oh, asparagus, lovely when it first arrives but then you get bored with it, don’t you?”

Um, no, actually. I can eat industrial quantities of asparagus and I never get fed up with it, literally or figuratively. I do like to ring the changes with the way I cook it though. Continue reading

Goan Cauliflower Curry

Image of a bowl of the sauceI usually use this sauce for a Goan fish curry but after the meat-filled excesses of Christmas we were craving something different. So I adapted it to use a slightly frostbitten cauli I had sitting shivering in the fridge for a warming, flavour-packed but vegetarian supper. It would also work well with chunks of roasted pumpkin. Continue reading