Buttery corn pasta, a stale bread salad & a beautiful scallop crudo.
Three recipes from behind my paywall you need right now.
Slowly easing back into things after (or well I think and home I’m in the ‘after’ stage) Covid volume #3 I’m finally excited about making dinner again, even with the added challenges of the opening notes of what is shaping up to be one of the most intense heatwaves we’ve ever experienced, and the fact that J’s sense of taste is not all there at the moment.
I’m reading (a review copy) of Olia Hercules’ brand new book Home Food: recipes to comfort and connect right now before I take it with me into the kitchen, and at the start of the chapter titled ‘Food and Love’ she explains that:
I love cooking, I love all the stages: picking ingredients, choosing what to make, taking my time to cook it. And when I get an opportunity, I cook something special, which more often than not involves some kind of dough, or handmade pasta, or dumplings. I put a binge-able podcast on and I get to work. Although I can’t even call it work.
I really connected with this passage, because my love of cooking is not just about the physical act of cooking with some music or a good audiobook in the background: people in my life have often mocked me for this, but I take just as much pleasure from choosing what to cook, especially if it is that ‘something special’ (I cook all the way through the two weeks I take off every year over Christmas, usually super involved recipes I want to cook, and not just that I have to cook for ‘work’) which includes the choosing from books, magazines, blogs, newsletters and websites, the shopping list writing, the ingredient sourcing.
This is my roundabout way of explaining that I’ve been thinking a lot about the super seasonal summer recipes I was making all the time last summer that I need to make sure get a look in this year alongside all the new things I want to try this year with my garden peas, green beans, yellow courgettes, cucumbers, corn, and more tomato varieties than I care to list.
I love that subscriptions on Substack allow you to support my writing and recipes not just here, but places like my blog too where I create content for free. As I’m always saying on Instagram, it only costs £4/month to subscribe which is less than the price of a fancy coffee or cocktail (or £40/year if you can manage it) - I’d love to make more and more of my work less reliant on ads and sponsorships, and reader supported.
But, I know that my paywall means that some of you don’t get to enjoy some of my content, so this afternoon I thought I’d share three ingredient archive recipes I adore, which are perfect for right now and which, prior to this afternoon, sat behind a paywall. I really hope you enjoy them, and all I ask to support me and them is if you fancy like giving one of them a go, either hit the ‘Subscribe Now’ button above to become a supporter, or if things are a little tight, hit the ‘Share’ button below so hopefully more people can become ingredient readers - who knows, they may enjoy this newsletter enough to become a paid subscriber instead!
Corn & Paprika Butter Penne
Serves: 2, Preparation time: 5 minutes, Cooking time: 20 minutes
Whilst at first glance pasta is a comfort food, I think it is also the perfect vehicle to showcase the best of summer produce, a meal in itself that you can stir through something fresh or barely cooked before taking it to sit outside with a nice glass of wine. Here, freshly shaved corn kernels are gently taken from pale yellow to their signature golden hue by gently warming them in a miso and paprika-flavoured butter before the whole thing is married together into a silken sauce with the application of yet more butter and a little bit of the pasta cooking water. Utter magic.
If you don’t have penne do please choose another tube-style pasta shape, as the corn kernels will happily work their way inside as the sauce is coming together in the pan.
200g (7 oz) penne
sea salt
1 large or 2 small ears of corn
60g (2 oz) salted butter, plus extra as required
1 tsp white miso paste
1/2 tsp sweet smoked paprika, plus extra for serving
small handful fresh chives, finely chopped
Cook the penne in a pan of boiling, salted water as per the packet’s instructions - I usually start checking for doneness around the 16 minute mark.
Meanwhile, using a large serrated or bread knife slice the corn off of it’s cob(s).
Gently heat half the butter in a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat until frothy. Stir in the corn, followed by the miso and the paprika. Gently cook until the corn has turned tender and golden.
Drain the pasta, reserving about 1/2 cup of the cooking water.
Stir the pasta into the corn. Add the remaining butter, and once it has melted, stirring all the time, gradually add cooking water until you’re created an emulsified sauce. If you’ve added a little too much pasta cooking water, you might want to add a little more butter to stop the pasta getting too sticky or starchy.
Stir in the chives, check the seasoning (if your miso or butter are not salty enough you may need to add a little salt) and serve immediately in warm bowls, sprinkled with a little more paprika.
Herby Bread & Sumac Salad
Serves 1 as a main or 2 as a side dish, Preparation time: 15 minutes (plus 20 minute marinating time), Cooking time: 5 minutes
To get to this salad I started with a classic mezze recipe for Turkish sumac onions (delicious, but not really a recipe that can stand on it’s own) and the wish to make a tonne of panzanella out of all the ends of homemade loaves I keep stashed in the freezer. So, I reached this fantastic bread salad that also has a lot in common with another Middle Eastern bread and sumac salad - fattouch - and is wonderful to enjoy just for you at lunch, or to scale up to serve alongside some grilled or barbecued meats, koftas, that sort of thing.
A few notes here on substitutions I’m sure you’ll want to make, with a few cautionary notes because this is a recipe where you really shouldn’t. First, if you don’t have a bottle of white balsamic vinegar (sometimes also labeled as white condiment if it has not been sourced from the right part of Italy) get one. A salad using just lemon will be far too sharp. And on that note, you do really need that one date, slithered into the salad: it provides the sweetness to bring the brightness of this recipe back down to earth.
1/2 red onion
1 tsp sumac
1/4 tsp ground coriander
1 lemon
sea salt
125g (4.5 oz) stale bread
1 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
small handful fresh mint
small handful fresh coriander
small handful fresh flat leaf parsley
1 pitted date
Peel and slice the onion into the thinnest half moons possible. Combine in the bottom of a large bowl with the sumac, coriander, juice of 1/2 of the lemon and a pinch of sea salt and set aside to marinate, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, tear the bread into bite size pieces and toss on a baking tray with 1 tbsp of the olive oil and a little more salt. Heat the grill (broiler) up to medium and toast the bread for 2-5 minutes - watching it very carefully as it can burn in moments - so that the tips of the bread are just golden and toasted.
Slice the skin off the remaining lemon half and chop the flesh into very small pieces.
Add the toasted bread to the bowl with the onions along with the remaining 1/2 tbsp of oil, the vinegar, the lemon flesh, all of the herbs, roughly chopped, and the date, sliced into thin slithers. Toss everything well and set aside to marinate for 5 minutes before serving with a little more salt, if you think it needs it.
Scallop & Radish Crudo
Serves 2, Preparation time: 15 minutes
My fishmonger is down on the beach at Dungeness and aside from a few bits and bobs that come from other parts of the English coast that are not landed here in Kent, all of their fish comes off their day boats which is why, whilst they’re still very good seared with some lemon butter or stuffed into a scallop and bacon sandwiches, my favourite way to enjoy their scallops is raw in a simple scallop crudo - if you have access to fresh day boat scallops I find this dish scales up to make a simple yet impressive dinner party starter, as you can slice the scallops and radishes ahead and keep them on their serving plates in the fridge until you’re just ready to serve. You can also mix up the dressing earlier in the day, too.
Not only do the radishes add colour and visual contrast here, but their peppery crunch is the perfect counterbalance to the fresh, creamy softness of the scallops.
6-8 fresh day boat scallops, roes removed
6 mixed radishes
juice and zest of 1/2 lime
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
1/2 tsp gochujang
1/2 tsp toasted black sesame seeds
15g (1/2 oz) roasted cashews (unsalted)
small handful chopped chives
Maldon flaky sea salt
Under the cold tap rinse the scallops and carefully pull off any lingering membrane from when the roes were removed. Pat dry on a piece of kitchen towel. Using a very sharp knife thinly slice the scallops and lay them carefully out across two large flat plates.
Top, tail and thinly slice the radishes. Arrange the slices around the scallops.
To make the dressing, whisk together the lime juice and zest, extra virgin olive oil, gochujang, and half of the sesame seeds.
Drizzle the dressing over the two plates of scallops. Sprinkle over the rest of the sesame seeds, with your fingertips roughly crumble over the cashews, and scatter over the chives. Finish each plate with another good drizzle of olive oil (I use my very best bottle for this) and a few flakes of sea salt.