Side - vo.rs

Jamaican Rice and Peas with Scotch Bonnet and Thyme

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 11:58:00 +0000

Rice and peas is Jamaica’s default starch, the dish that turns up under Sunday’s stewed chicken or curry goat as reliably as roast potatoes turn up next to a British Sunday joint. Get it right and it’s fragrant, faintly rich from coconut, and studded with tender kidney beans that have taken on real character from the pot rather than just sitting there as protein padding. Get it wrong — usually by chopping the scotch bonnet into the pot instead of leaving it whole — and you’ve made something too fierce to eat rather than something built to sit quietly under a plate of stewed meat.

German Rotkohl: Braised Red Cabbage with Apple and Clove

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 10:41:00 +0000

The first time I made rotkohl properly, rather than tipping a jar of the supermarket version into a pan to heat through, I was shocked at how little it resembled what I’d been eating for years. Real rotkohl isn’t sweet-and-sour cabbage in the takeaway-Chinese sense. It’s deep, faintly spiced, and balanced on a knife-edge between sharp and sweet that a jar simply can’t replicate once the cabbage has been sitting in vinegar brine for months.

Hasselback Potatoes with Anchovy Butter

Sat, 10 Aug 2024 09:24:00 +0000

recipeInstructions:

“Preheat the oven to 200C fan (220C conventional). Slice each potato crosswise at 3mm intervals, stopping before you cut all the way through, using chopsticks or wooden spoon handles either side as a guide.”
“Mash the softened butter with the chopped anchovy and crushed garlic until evenly combined.”
“Rub the potatoes all over with olive oil and a little salt, place cut-side up in a roasting dish, and roast for 40 minutes.”
“Remove from the oven and brush or spoon the anchovy butter down into the cuts, working it between the slices. Return to the oven for 15-20 minutes more until the edges are deeply golden and crisp.”
“If using breadcrumbs, scatter them over for the final 10 minutes to crisp further. Season with black pepper, scatter with chives, and serve hot.”

This is the recipe I make when someone claims they don’t like anchovies, because by the time the butter has melted down into every cut and roasted onto the potato skins, nobody can identify what’s making the dish taste so deeply savoury. I’ve served it at three separate dinners to people who swore off anchovies as children and had every one of them ask what the seasoning was. The answer surprises most of them.

Colcannon: Ireland's Mash with Cabbage and Butter

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 08:07:00 +0000

There’s a specific kind of Irish family argument about whether colcannon should have cabbage or kale in it, and I’ve learned not to referee it. What everyone agrees on is the well of melted butter in the middle of the bowl — that part is not negotiable, and if you serve colcannon without it, someone’s granny will notice.

Colcannon is mashed potato that decided it didn’t need to be plain. Fold in tender cabbage and spring onion, loosen the whole thing with warm milk, and finish with more butter than feels reasonable until you’ve tasted it and understood why the quantity is exactly right. It sits at every big Irish family table, from Sunday roasts to Halloween, when it traditionally carried small charms hidden inside for whoever found them — a coin for wealth, a ring for marriage, a thimble for a spinster’s year ahead. The butter deserves its own mention too: Irish butter, Kerrygold being the most widely exported example, tends to carry a noticeably higher butterfat content and a deeper yellow colour than most supermarket butter elsewhere, a direct result of cows grazing on grass for most of the year rather than being fed largely on grain. That extra fat and the beta-carotene from the grass are exactly what make the melted well in the middle of a bowl of colcannon taste as rich as it does — a lower-fat butter will melt into something thinner and less luxurious sitting in that well.

Braised Puy Lentils with Bacon and Bay

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 07:50:00 +0000

My grandmother’s side of the family ran a smallholding in the Limousin, and the one dish that turns up in every memory I have of her kitchen is a pot of lentils simmering with bacon and bay while something grander roasted alongside it. Nobody ever called it a recipe. It was just what happened to the lentils that lived in the cupboard next to the flour, and it went on the stove almost by reflex whenever the oven was already busy with something else.