English Salad Dressing

I’m pretty pleased to have found this recipe – a British version of French dressing. The boy gets a salad with most meals so it’s nice to rotate the dressing as well as the salad ingredients.

Rapeseed oil

Grated horseradish

English mustard

White wine vinegar

The boy and I like our salad dressing sharp so we have it almost one to one, with perhaps a tablespoon more oil than vinegar. Rapeseed oil is wonderful stuff – much richer than olive oil. My suggestion is:

12tbsp rapeseed oil

9 tbsp white wine vinegar

1tsp mustard

1tsp horseradish.

And of course salt and pepper. The horseradish needs to be fresh – not the creamed stuff that comes in jars. We grow ours in the garden and preserve it in vinegar through the winter.

The boy has made what he calls an English salad to have with it: little gem lettuce, ripe tomatoes and radishes. It’s the sort of salad you would have had in the 50s but the spicy dressing livens it up no end. Personally I can't wait to have it with avocado, mozzarella and tomato.

Szechuan Cauliflower

This was one of my Mum’s favourite Chinese dishes – we only ever found it at the Pagoda restaurant in Nairobi. It has taken me 20 years to track down the recipe.

The Sauce

2tbsp oil

1tbsp ginger paste

1 green chilli, chopped

I stick celery finely chopped

2tbsp chilli sauce

2tbsp soy sauce

1tbsp vinegar

2tbsp tomato puree

2tbsp corn flour

1/2tbsp sugar

½ cup water

Cauliflower

A medium cauliflower cut into 20 pieces

1/3 cup plain flour

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

½ cup water

2 cups oil

The Pagoda served this cauliflower whole, though I’m so grateful for this recipe that I’m following it religiously.

I have the Yellow River  Concerto on the CD player to get the mood right. Start with the sauce. Slake the corn flour in the water. Heat the oil in a wok and fry off the ginger paste. Add the chilli and celery and fry for a minute.

Once soft, add the vinegar, sugar and tomato puree. The sauce should be a vivid orange.

Set it aside, as you will thicken it later.

Make a batter from the corn flour, salt and water. Mix until smooth. The boy finds a whisk and bowl thrust into his hands for this job.

Heat the oil to medium hot. Coat the oil in the batter and deep fry for 4 minutes. Turn them occasionally with a slotted spoon until golden brown.

Finish the sauce – add corn flour until thick and syrupy. Add water if it goes too far.

Plate up the cauliflower and pour on the sauce. Give it more than it looks like it needs as the rice or noodles you serve it with will mop plenty up.

Jalapenorita

This recipe was tweeted by Tabasco, so it is shamelessly stolen. I love Margaritas and Dirty Martinis so I have been really keen to try this.

½ a lime

Coarse sea salt

400ml gold tequila

100ml Grand Marnier

1tsp Green Tabasco

Dampen the rim of a glass with a piece of lime and dip it into a saucer of salt a few times until the rim is nice and crusty. We have some Martini glasses that my brother persuaded me to buy from Ikea ages ago. They turned out to be a good investment.

Squeeze the lime into a cocktail shaker. It needs to be nice ripe juicy one which can be a challenge.

I have a couple of cocktail shakers but my favourite is etched with the Martini logo which I think is from the 70s. Pour in everything else and add some ice and strain into the glass, being careful to preserve the salty rim. We have had to hunt the ingredients down. Our tequila is silver, so that needed replacing, and we don’t have Grand Marnier, though we do have Cointreau which will do just as well. Hardest to track down was the green Tabasco, though Waitrose do stock it. The boy loves it for dipping chips in. We stock up when we find it. I feel I want to try a really good tequila but Jose Cuervo is all I can find.I can't bring myself to buy the brand that has a plastic sombrero as a bottle top.

It’s cocktail hour. We have a Josephine Baker CD on but are mostly ignoring it. Dipping tortilla chips into some very hot tomato salsa. I think the tartness of tomato goes with this; the boy just likes salty snacks.