Baked sweet potato and pecan salad

This is a robust and fit for chilly autumn kind of salad; with the slow baked sweet potato and feta. The crunchy toasted pecans, zingy lime dressing and crisp spinach leaves lift it and prevent it from being too stodgy. There is also a real fusion of new flavours in this salad. I used to think pinenuts were the only nuts worth pairing with sweet potato, but since they accidentally shared a moment with toasted pecans here I don't think I'll ever look back.

Having said that, pine nuts probably work better with it as a summer salad dish, when the potatoes have been boiled in honey water and toasted on the BBQ afterwards, where as baking it with crunchy salty, sweet pecans gives it a suprising contrast and depth of flavour. Unique and, most importantly tastes amazing.

Ingredients:
4 medium sized sweet potatoes
150g / 5 oz pecans
200g/ 7 oz feta
250 / 9 oz baby spinach leaves
3 tbsp golden syrup
4 limes
2 garlic cloves
1 thumb sized piece of ginger
100ml of good vegetable stock
5 tbsp olive oil
2 tsps brown sugar
Sea Salt and black pepper for seasoning

Pre-heat the oven to 180 Degrees C, Gas mark 4. Peel and finely chop the garlic and the ginger.

Get a small pan on the hob and squeeze in the 4 limes and golden syrup. Place on a low heat and stir for 2 minutes until they combine. Throw in your ginger and garlic and give it a stir. Add a few pinches of salt and pepper.

Stir for a few minutes more, add the boiled vegetable stock and take off the heat and allow to cool. Whilst this cools, peel the sweet potatoes and cut in half, then in half again length ways and across at 2cm intervals to make nice big chunks.

Get a large baking tray ready and line it with grease proof paper to stop the potato sticking.

Stir the olive oil into your dressing.  Toss half with the chunks of sweet potato and tip on to the tray. Cover tightly in tin foil and place in the pre-heated oven for about 40 minutes or until the potato is soft so you can stick a knife through it.

Whilst these are cooking roughly chop your pecans and get another small pan on the hob on a medium heat. Dry fry the nuts in there then add some more seasoning and the sugar. Keep an eye on these and keep tossing them about as they will burn easily. Once browned nicely set aside.

When the Sweet potato are just about soft and good to eat crumble over your 200g of feta and remove the tin foil and pop back in the oven turning the oven right down to 80 degrees C/gas mark 1. After 5 minutes take this out. The feta will have melted but leave it to cool and it will harden with a nice baked flavour.

Build the salad on a large serving plate with handfuls of the spinach leaves tossed with chunks of sweet potato, scrape in the cooled crumbled feta, toss in handfuls of the pecans, and drizzle a spoonful or the remaining dressing made earlier. Repeat until you have no more left. Serve with some warmed ciabatta or foccacia to make a nice light meal.

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Mushroom, feta and tarragon soup with pinenuts

This is a soup for all you mushroom worshipers who adore the vegetable in all its multiple forms. There are so many packed into this one; giving it a great diversity and richness. Use whatever type you can get of a good quality, but make some effort to keep it as varied as possible. Diversity gets the best results. There is so much liquid released when cooking mushrooms I figured it was much better to use their juices than a vegetable stock and so made a hybrid mushroom stock/béchamel sauce as a base for the soup, which was delicious. There is so much depth and thickness in this soup a small amount goes a very long way. We had this out of small cups with some toasted sourdough bread. The left-over soup got even better with age and was fantastic the next day as a sauce for orecchiette pasta, with olive oil, extra toasted pine nuts, and thin fine slices of Parmesan.

Ingredients:

80g / 2.7 oz butter

2 cloves of garlic

2 shallots

800g / 27 oz (approx) of mixed mushrooms, I used Buna Shimeji (small cluster), chestnut, portobello, and button.

large handful of tarragon

large handful of flat-leaf parsley

3 sprigs of thyme

1 lemon

60g / 2 oz plain flour

300ml milk

100g / 3.4 oz creme friache

100g / 3.4 oz feta, crumled

Sea salt and black pepper for seasoning

2 tbsp olive oil

100g / 3.4 oz pine nuts

Finely chop the shallots and garlic and roughly chop the mushrooms.

Start a large heavy based, deep frying warming off on a low-heat with 40g of the butter. When melted add 1 of the shallots, after a minute, add the garlic and cook for a minute more.

Add all the mushrooms and cook for 3 minutes, until they give off a lot of their juices. Squeeze over a juice of half the lemon and roughly chop all you herbs, (saving a small amount of tarragon for later), don't use the stalks from the thyme just shred the leaves off. Add to the pot with a teaspoon of salt and a few grinds of black pepper.

Cook for a further 2 minutes. Drain the mushrooms. You need to separate the liquid from the mushrooms here but keep hold of both. This can be done easily by pouring them into a large sieve or colander with a large bowl underneath.

In the same pot, (no need to wash), add the remaining butter. Once melted add the other chopped shallot. Then add the flour and stir to make a paste. Now begin adding, slowly, the milk and reserved mushrooms liquid, stirring all the time and turn the heat up slightly in order for the sauce to thicken more easily.

Turn the heat up to a boil then reduce to simmer. Stirring all the time. Now add all the creme friache.

You need to make sure your pan is big enough for this next bit. If not tip in to a larger bowl and whizz together with a hand-held blender, with 100-ml of hot water. You could, instead, turn these into a blender if you have one with large enough capacity. Either way, blend until smooth.

Return your soup to a large enough pan, hopefully the one you cooked in so you can retain the flavour, and return to a medium heat on the hob. Add the juice of the half of the lemon, the feta, the remaining tarragon and season a little more. Whilst this is warming through get a small frying pan and heat up the olive oil, once hot add the pinenuts and cook until golden brown. Drain on to kitchen paper.

Once the soup is hot pour into cups and sprinkle the toasted pinenuts on top. Serve with toasted sourdough bread.

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