Growing up, roast lamb and mint sauce was such an established pairing ‘mint sauce’ even became the nick-name of a wool coat I once owned.  Long story which probably wouldn’t be funny in the re-telling ..

Mint Sauce is also a ‘by request’ recipe, if recipe you can call it.  It’s unbelievably simple to make – which makes it so strange how much those jars cost in the supermarket.

Sunday lunch today was slow-roast lamb.  The kind cooked long and slow so it falls away from the bone.  Roast potatoes, of course.  Mint Sauce, naturally, and I’m under orders to post it here.

It begins with mint.  Spearmint is my choice.  Chop it finely.  My mum used to have a gadget for this.  A kind of mouli with super sharp spikes.  I have absolutely no idea what’s happened to that ..!

Incidentally, if you are ending up with green smears across your chopping board it’s because your knife is too blunt.  For my family I make Mint Sauce in industrial quantities.  You may need to scale down.  Here, I’ve put 6 tablespoons of chopped mint in a bowl.

Mint is a bitter herb which is why it’s such a brilliant partner to sweet, fatty lamb, but in sauce form it needs a little sweetening.  You can use honey, but my mum always used granulated sugar.  It’s a ‘to taste’ thing.  I’ve added 2 tablespoons.

This is the point at which I deviate from my training.  My mum used to dissolve the sugar in a dash of boiling water before adding malt vinegar to give a sauce of the consistency she wanted.  My brother loved it so much he’d drink it from the jug if she wasn’t watching.

I like my Mint Sauce to taste a little more of the mint and less of vinegar.  It’s a choice.  I add a couple of tablespoons of white wine vinegar.

For me, adding boiling water is a visual thing.  Today, as a once in a life-time event, I measured it.  4 tablespoons.  Ish.  Taste it.  Adjust with a little more water or a little more vinegar, depending on your preference.

Stir until the sugar has dissolved, then set it aside to get acquainted.  Give it at least an hour.

This jug is important.  Throughout my entire childhood Mint Sauce was always, absolutely, never-not served in a jug like this.  The story goes …

As a little girl my mum used to visit her maternal grandma once a week.  They caught the bus back into Fulham (an area of London they’d left when their house was bombed) and went to tea.  ‘Nanny Carey’ owned the Mint Jug and my mum admired it so often her grandma said, ‘you’d better take it, girl’.

Fast forward a few decades …

My brother and I both wanted future custody of the Mint Jug.  Graham argued it was his by rights because he was the one who ate Mint Sauce to excess and I reckoned it should come to me because I actually knew how to make it.

One day, she discovered a duplicate at an antiques fair.  In monetary terms it’s not valuable.  Just carnival glass, I gather.  So, she bought a duplicate.  Almost.  One has a slightly raised centre on the bottom.  She set them side by side and asked Graham and I which was the original.

Sadly, he won.  On the up side – mine has a smooth bottom!

It’s one of the things I’d save in a fire, but who is going to inherit it ..???

With or without a mint jug, Mint Sauce is delicious.  Eat.

Mint Sauce

Serves 4

• 3 tablespoons of finely chopped mint, spearmint for preference
• 1 tablespoon of granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
• 4 tablespoons of boiling water, straight from a kettle

Remove the mint leaves from the stalks.  Discard the stalks and finely chop the leaves.  Place 3 tablespoons in a bowl.

Add 1 tablespoon of granulated sugar and 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar.  Pour over 4 tablespoons of boiling water.  Stir until the sugar crystals have dissolved.  Taste and adjust to taste with either a little more vinegar or a little more water.  Set aside to allows the flavours to harmonise.

Eat.

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This is just one of many, many tomato salads I make over the course the summer.  I love them.  It probably has something to do with the Sunday afternoon trips down my Grandad Dowton’s crazy paved garden path to pick tomatoes from his greenhouse.  Always supervised.  (It wasn’t, you must know, the kind of garden you were allowed to play in.  Wide flower beds were planted, Victorian style, with high maintenance bedding plants all lovingly raised from seed.)

I loved that strong, sweet smell of summer as you opened the greenhouse door.  Then, my brother and I would giggle over the irregular shaped ones before being given a warm tomato each to eat on the way back to the kitchen.

This Greek-Style Tomato Salad isn’t anything my grandparents would have served.  I’m not sure if they ever tasted feta cheese and I’m certain they didn’t eat olives.

When you think about it they wouldn’t have been brought up on tomatoes.  The Victorians thought they caused illness unless you boiled them into submission.  Tomatoes only became a regular part of the British diet during the food rationing of the Second World War when any source of vitamin C was a good thing.

For all we think we’re so much more sophisticated with our food choices now, supermarkets sell some tasteless tomatoes.  On the vine or off it, they’re picked green and left to ripen.  I’m not convinced it’s worth paying the extra money charged for the on-the-vine sort and am absolutely certain there’s no point buying anything that has been transported miles in refrigerated storage units.

Mine came from a local farmers’ market, but the best tomatoes of all are the ones you grow yourself.  Second best, are the excess garden produce you sometimes see placed on tables by front gates.

Here’s the entire cast of characters of my salad, minus the feta which is still tucked in the fridge.  I made this on 1 July and that was a record breaking warm day and my kitchen is South facing.  It was hot.

The round salad tomato is fine.  Don’t put them in the fridge and store root end down.  I have absolutely no idea why that works, but stem end down keeps them better.  When you come to use them, if there’s any decay you should throw the entire tomato away.  No just cutting off the rotten bit.

For a salad like this, I like the skins off.  Put a saucepan of water on to the boil and cut a shallow cross in the base end of the tomato. You’ll find it easier if you use a serrated knife – a bread knife is fine!

When the water is boiling, pop the tomatoes in for 30 seconds.  1 minute, tops.

Drain, then put the tomatoes into a bowl of cold water.

The skins peel off.

There they are.

Cut into quarters and slice out the core.

Then into bite sized crescents.

Season with sea salt and crushed black peppercorns.  A little sugar will help sweeten if you’re not entirely convinced they’re sufficiently sun-kissed.

Then, cover and leave to ‘settle’ for an hour.  I had a fly in the kitchen and spent the next ten minutes or so darting about the kitchen with a dampened tea towel in my hand.  I got the blighter.

Wash, trim any straggly green bits and chop off the roots.

And slice.

Roughly chop a bunch of flat-leaf parsley.

Some fresh oregano, if you have it.  Just the leaves and roughly chop.

I love olives.  Like Globe Artichokes, I met them in my twenties and thought they were so sophisticated.  Yes, I hated my first olive – but I worked at it.  Now I pop them like sweets.

These are Kalamata olives and I buy them stone in.  You don’t need a fancy olive stoner.  I just cut mine in half and ease any stubborn stones out with the tip of my knife.

When it’s time to serve, start layering everything up.  Add the spring onions.

Parsley, oregano and olives.

Not all feta is equal.  I look for barrel-aged feta made from sheep or goat milk and buy in a block which I store in brine.  (The best feta I’ve ever eaten was made at home by a Greek lady living in London, so under EU rules I’m not even sure she could call it feta.)

If you want to tone down the salty edge, you can soak your feta block in a half milk/half water for an hour.

Crumble in the feta and dried oregano.

Add olive oil, lemon zest and the juice of a lemon.

Give everything a mix.  Eat.

Greek-Style Greek Salad

Serves 8

• 12 ripe tomatoes, skinned
• Sea salt and cracked black peppercorns
• 1 tsp of sugar, optional
• 8 spring onions, including the green ends, finely sliced
• Bunch of fresh flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• 2 tablespoons of fresh oregano, leaves only, roughly chopped
• 20 Kalamata Olives, stoned
• 150g/5oz feta cheese
• 4 tablespoons dried oregano
• 12 tablespoons of cold-pressed Greek olive oil
• Grated zest and juice of one unwaxed lemon

Core the tomatoes and cut into bite-sized crescents.  Arrange on a serving plate and sprinkle over sea salt and crushed black peppercorns.  Sugar, if needed.  Cover and leave for 45 minutes – 1 hour.

When you are ready to serve, sprinkle over the chopped spring onions, chopped parsley, chopped oregano, stoned olive and dried oregano.  Crumble over the feta.  Add the lemon zest, olive oil and lemon juice.

Eat.

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Yesterday was a record breaking hot day – and this was lunch.  I made some olive bread and put together a Greek-Style Tomato Salad, too, but I’ll post them next week.  I think I must be thinking ‘Greece’ because the news is so full of scenes from Athens.  Tough times ahead for a lovely country whichever way they vote, I fear.

I love Greek food, but then I love the herbs that predominate in it – oregano, mint, dill, bay leaves, Greek basil, thyme and fennel are the ones that spring to mind.  Being a home cook, I have to use what I can buy.  My oregano is not the evocative rigani, as far as I’m aware.  It’s Bart’s.  Greek basil, I can get.  The bitter salad leaves don’t taste quite as bitter as they do under Greek sunshine, but I probably would balk at so many unnecessary air-miles just to feed my children lunch.

Nothing for it, a visit to Greece is in my future.

In the meantime, we’re coming to the end of the British asparagus season.  I have treated my early spears with utmost respect and I’m now putting them in tarts, wrapping in pancakes and making them into salads.

I picked up a couple of bundles – which was a little over 500g.  There’s a point on an asparagus spear where it’ll snap naturally.  That place marks the end of the fibrous bit and the start of the tender, delicious bit.

(Incidentally, I read something the other day about the English style of eating – and cooking – asparagus.  Apparently, we steam the whole asparagus spear and then use the fibrous bit to hold.  I will confess to eating with my fingers on occasion, but I’m afraid I eat the whole thing and would be irritated to get fibrous bits between my teeth.  Plus, I am inclined to lick my fingers when no-one is looking rather than look for a finger bowl.  I would be more disappointed in myself if the writer didn’t labour under the assumption all households own an asparagus steamer but I have never lived in a household which possessed one.)

If you are aesthetically fastidious, you can neaten up the ends with a knife.  I do that.  Sorry!

My asparagus I would classify as ‘medium’.  What chefs call sprue asparagus (that’s the spindly ones) I’d use for something else.  Fatter asparagus will need peeling.  Just the lower part to make sure what you have in your salad is tender.

Whatever you are left with – pop the snapped off ends and any trimmings in a freezer bag.  That’s asparagus soup in the making.

The asparagus spears I give a rinse under running water and fill a wide saucepan with about 5cm/2″ of water.  Just enough to cover the asparagus in a single layer.  Ish.  You can be a little relaxed about it.

When the water is boiling add a little sea salt.  I season lightly, partly because I’m going to save the asparagus water for soup and that will intensify the salt content and partly because these spears are going in a flavourful dressing.

Simmer for 3 minutes.  It’s almost more of a blanch.  Just tender.  Then drain, reserving the water if you want to make soup.  I put mine in a freezer bag for another day.  Usually, I lay the spears on kitchen paper to dry .. but I’d run out.

And the dressing …

Finely zest one lemon.  Put it and the juice into a bowl.

100ml/3½fl oz of cold-pressed Greek olive oil.  Use one you like the flavour of.

1 teaspoon of dried oregano.

Salt and pepper.  This is such a subjective thing, but I used 2 scant teaspoons of coarse sea salt and crushed 1 teaspoon of black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar.

Give the drained – and still perky – asparagus a toss in the dressing.

Finely chop three shallots and add those.

A small bunch of flat-leaf parsley.  I had to use a small supermarket pot and I used it all.  Roughly chop.  It’s part of the salad so I like to see bits of parsley.

Give everything a light toss and leave it at room temperature for all the flavours to get acquainted.  If you want to leave it longer than an hour, pop into the fridge and bring it back to room temperature before serving.

Eat.

Greek-Style Asparagus Salad

Serves 4-6 as a side.

• 2 bundles of medium asparagus spears (about 500g/1lb)
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 100ml/3½fl oz of cold-pressed Greek olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of dried oregano
• 3 shallots, finely chopped
• small bunch of flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• 1 teaspoon of roughly crushed black peppercorns
• Sea-salt, to taste

Snap off the tough ends of the asparagus spears and freeze to use in stocks or soup.  Rinse the spears under running water.

Bring 5cm/2½” of water to a boil in a wide saucepan.  Season lightly and add the spears.  Simmer for 3 minutes, or until the asparagus spears are just tender.  Drain and spread on kitchen towel to dry.

Place the zest and juice of the lemon in a bowl.  Add 100ml/3½fl oz of cold-pressed Greek olive oil, 1 teaspoon of dried oregano and season with salt and crushed black peppercorns.

Lightly toss the asparagus spears in the dressing.

Add the finely chopped shallots and the roughly chopped parsley.  Give everything a final toss and serve at room temperature.

Eat.

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The parent dish of this salad is peperonata.  It must be sixty plus years since Elizabeth David’s ‘A Book of Mediterranean Food’ was published in the UK and brought it to our notice.   I do think we’ve got over the grief of not being a misplaced mediterranean country now, but peperonata remains a lovely part of my summer.  It’s that silky mix of sweet peppers, onions and tomatoes. Sometimes with garlic, basil and, I read the other day, potatoes …

Really lovely – and I make it and use it in all kinds of sacrilegious non antipasto situations.

Here, the same ingredients become something different.  Rather than stew everything together over a low heat for 40 minutes or so, I’m roasting my peppers and onions.  It’s super easy to make and, like the French-Style Potato Salad, sits perfectly happily in the sunshine.

If you want to make it ahead, it will only taste better if it’s been allowed to sit in the fridge overnight.  It makes a good side dish for a barbecue or buffet and the leftovers are fantastic in a wrap.  (Try it with hummus.)  I love it in a baked potato with or without cheddar.  And, if I’m still trying convince you to give it a try, it freezes brilliantly.

It begins with lots of good things.  This is the recipe in which to make use of the bowls of small peppers you find at the market or bagged together at the supermarket.  If they are particularly small, simply add an extra pepper or two in.  As far as colour goes, I like a sunshine mix but it really doesn’t matter.

Cut off the top and the bottom.  Then run your knife along the remaining pepper strip, removing the seeds and the pith.

And slice into 5mm strips.

If presentation were my main concern I’d probably use the ends for something else, but it isn’t – and I don’t.  Slice them up.

A bowl of summer sunshine.  I’ve used 6 medium sized peppers here.

Then, top and tail the onions.  Peel and slice into 5mm crescents.  1 onion for every 3 peppers.  Roughly.  It really isn’t an exact science.

Don’t be horrified at how much garlic is going in this.  Once it has been roasted it’s sweet and mellow.

2 whole bulbs of garlic went into my salad.  1 bulb for every onion.  Roughly.  Peel and cut in half if the clove is particularly enormous.

Place everything into a big bowl.  Add 4 teaspoons of dried oregano, 2 teaspoons of ground cumin, a grinding of peppercorns and a drizzle of olive oil.

Then spread out onto baking trays.  You want the vegetables to roast rather than steam, so don’t overfill the baking trays.  Cook at 200ºC/Gas Mark 6/400ºF for 15 minutes.  (Aga Roasting Oven:  fourth set of runners for 10 minutes.)

Meanwhile, prepare the tomatoes.  6 tomatoes.  De-seed.

And cut into cubes.

When the initial cooking time is up, add the chopped tomatoes.  Give everything a stir and return to the oven for a further 15 minutes.  (Aga: 10 minutes).

Squeeze the juice from a lemon.  (I used a microplane grater to remove the zest first.  You don’t need it for this, but it freezes.  I made ‘rock cakes’.)

Place all the roasted vegetables into a big bowl and add the juice of the lemon.  Give everything a stir and let it all cool.

Just before serving, roughly chop a large bunch of parsley and add that to the salad.  Basil is a nice alternative.

Eat.

Roasted Pepper Salad

Serves 8

• 6 medium-sized peppers in a mix of colours, de-seeded and sliced into 5mm strips
• 3 onions, peeled and sliced into 5mm crescents
• 2 bulbs of garlic, separated into cloves and peeled
• 4 tablespoons of olive oil
• 3 teaspoons of oregano
• 2 teaspoons of ground cumin
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 6 tomatoes, de-seeded and cut into cubes
• juice of 1 lemon
• large bunch of chopped parsley

Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC/Gas Mark 6/400ºF.

Place the pepper strips, the onion crescents and the peeled garlic cloves into a big bowl.  Add the oregano, ground cumin, freshly ground black pepper and olive oil.  Mix everything together.

Lay everything out in a shallow layer on baking sheets and cook for 15 minutes.  (Aga:  Roasting Oven fourth set of runners – 10 minutes.)

Add the chopped tomatoes and give everything a stir.  Return to the oven and cook for a further 15 minutes.  (Aga:  Roasting Oven fourth set of runners – 10 minutes.)

Transfer everything into a bowl and add the juice of a lemon.  Allow the salad to cool.  Just before serving add a large bunch of roughly chopped parsley.  Stir.

Eat.

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Fasolakia (Φασολακια) simply means ‘green bean’ in Greek – and this is a deliciously old fashioned Greek green bean casserole.  It doesn’t take much imagination to realise it’s a way of using up a summer glut but, truly, it’s so much more than the sum of its parts.

It’s one of those recipes where the origin is lost in the mists of time, but it’s something you find in tavernas all over Greece.

Sometimes there is potato, sometimes courgettes and even the occasional beef rib bone.  I rather like the beef rib bone – if you happen to have one around.  I prefer it without the courgette and, since I like  to freeze this down in batches, I don’t include potato.

Non negotiable are the green beans.

It’s too early for any beans to be harvested in my garden – and I suspect the plants are drowning since we’ve had so much rain this year.  I’m not holding out for a glut.  Fortunately, I happened upon a bargain.  (There’s a lot to be said for picking up your daughter from work!  I shall miss that when Liddy starts uni.)

The easiest way to deal with the topping and tailing is to slice through the bag.  Any bean evading my knife can be easily dealt with but it’s so less mind numbing than working through them individually.

I wanted to make a bumper batch of Fasolakia so I added some stringless Helda beans to my stash of bargain fine green beans.  It’s entirely in the spirit of the thing to use all and every type of bean.  Use whatever is the best value.  (Bet you can’t beat 10p for 280g!)

Fasolakia is the kind of thing you want to eat with a fork so cut the beans into bite sized pieces.

Chop your onions into small dice.

Cut the top off the onion.  Then cut in half leaving the root attached.  Peel the skin away.  If you want something to hold you can leave it attached.  Cut two horizontal cuts.

Then make lots of vertical ones.  Working towards the root, slice downwards to make dice.

Soften in olive oil – or groundnut oil – until soft and translucent.  Take your time.

While that’s happening, grate the carrot.  I use a chunky box grater.

Toast and grind some coriander seeds.

Put the seeds in a dry frying pan and place over a low heat.  Keep an eye on it as they can burn quickly.  You know when it’s ‘done’ by the smell.  If you’re cooking on an Aga – place your seeds in a frying pan and place in the Roasting Oven for 5 minutes.

Either way, transfer the warm seeds to a pestle and mortar and grind.

If I lived in Greece I’d use fresh tomatoes, but I don’t.   Out-of-season tomatoes seem to taste of nothing so I prefer to use tinned tomatoes.  I buy ‘whole’ tomatoes in preference to ‘chopped’.

If you think about it, it’s obvious the better quality tomatoes go into the ‘whole tomato’ tins and the less-than-perfect tomatoes end up in the ‘chopped’.  It’s not much effort to give it all a squeeze.  Clean hands are convenient and you don’t cut into the seed which is the most bitter part of a tomato.  A teaspoon of sugar per tin mimics the sweetness of sun ripened fresh tomatoes.

Garlic.  I grate mine on a microplane grater because I think it distributes the garlic more evenly through the dish.  If you don’t own a microplane grater – add it to your Birthday List – and bash and finely chop in the meantime.

Then, place all the vegetables and garlic in a nice big casserole dish.

Add some chilli flakes to the semi-ground coriander.  Grind.

Now, some ginger.  The easiest way to peel a knobbly lump of ginger is to use a teaspoon and scrape.  A coarse microplane grater is the best tool to reduce it to a desirable mush but a box grater also works well.

Everything goes into the casserole.

Add chicken or vegetable stock.

Chop lots of fresh parsley.

Add the softened onions and most of the parsley to the casserole.  Now, it’s a question of cooking long and slow.

Cover and simmer over a low heat for 1 hour.  Aga:  Place in the Simmering Oven.

Taste.  Season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Now it the point at which it freezes wonderfully.

Feta is best bought ‘in brine’.  It means you can take what you need and store the rest in the fridge for another day.

Sprinkle the Fasolakia with a little chopped parsley and some crumbled feta cheese.

Fasolakia is even tastier the day after you make it; when all the flavours have become acquainted.  It’s even lovely served cold in pita bread.

Personally, I love it warm and served with lots of freshly baked crusty bread.  Try it as a side dish with barbecued lamb.  Just lovely.

Eat.

Fasolakia

Serves 4 with crusty bread (more with slow-cooked lamb)

• 500g/1lb green beans, cut into bite sized pieces
• 2 onions, diced
• 4 tablespoons of olive oil or ground nut oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, grated to a pulp
• 2 carrots, peeled and grated
• 1 x 400g tin of whole tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon of coriander seeds, toasted and ground
• Pinch of dried chilli flakes
• A chunky thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and grated to a mush
• 100ml/3 ½ fl oz chicken or vegetable stock
• Large bunch of freshly chopped parsley
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Soften the diced onions in oil until they are soft and translucent.

Place the beans, grated carrot, garlic, tomatoes, ginger, ground coriander, chilli flakes, ginger, stock, chopped parsley and the softened onions in a large casserole dish.  Mix everything together.  Cover and simmer gently for an hour.  (Aga:  Bring up to a boil and transfer to the Simmering Oven for an hour.)

Taste and season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

To serve, sprinkle over some chopped parsley and some chunks of salty feta cheese.

Eat.

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