A taste of spring

FOOD

FROM TIME TO TIME we hear about “brain food” and which types of food can provide optimum performance for our minds: oily fish, omega 3s, good fats and carbs and B vitamins being the usual suspects.

I’ve always hoped that some sort of elaborate survey could be done to track world leaders, their performance, and what they were eating when they made critical decisions during their tenure. It would be interesting to know what the most powerful rulers in the world were gobbling when they decided to invade a country, or look the other way, possibly at a good-looking intern.

It was widely acknowledged that Bill Clinton was a fan of jalapeño cheeseburgers and pork rinds, and that George W liked the same type of food a five-year-old might demand at a birthday party – peanut butter and jelly sandwiches being a favourite. The executive chef at the White House, Cristeta Comerford, (who will cook for the Obamas), let it be known that Dubya came up with his very own signature dish, known as the cheeseburger pizza. Enough said.

The only culinary info I’ve garnered so far on the new US president is that he is not a fan of beetroot. “I always avoid eating them,” he said in one report, relegating beetroot to the sad position formerly occupied by broccoli, which was not popular with George Bush senior.

Thankfully, I have no such issues with vegetables, including the frozen varieties. We’re not quite in the throes of spring time and still have to cook lots of root vegetables, especially if you’re good folk and eating seasonally. And as good as I try to be about eating seasonally – if the truth be told, I’m probably not that good – every now and then I have to break out and cook something that tastes of sunshine.

The other night, some red peppers were cut in half, seeds were scooped out, then the peppers were doused in olive oil and sherry vinegar and baked off while I sweated some onions, black olives, Russian cabbage and a load of haloumi to stuff them with. It was pretty tasty and smacked of the sun and gallons of rosé wine. A detailed recipe will follow as soon as we get enough sunshine to take a nice picture of it.

In the meantime, this vegetable dish looks great, tastes of spring, and is a meal in itself. The pistachio cake wasn’t too bad, either, but mainly because the poached apricots tasted so good. They were actually tasty enough to serve just with some Greek yoghurt. I’ll do anything to avoid baking a cake.

Artichoke, broad bean, pea and lemon salad (serves four to six)

Use frozen veg for this salad, but if you have to use tinned artichokes, drain and rinse them thoroughly.

60ml olive oil

1 tbsp pink peppercorns

2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced

Few sprigs thyme

2 bay leaves

125ml white wine

50g butter

100ml water

250g artichokes

250g peas

250g broad beans

1 lemon, thinly sliced

Chopped parsley

Heat the olive oil, peppercorns, garlic, thyme, bay leaves and wine together in a saucepan for 10 minutes, so that the wine reduces and mellows in flavour. Heat up the butter and water and add the rest of the ingredients, tossing the veg so that they barely cook. Strain and then toss them with the warm peppercorn vinaigrette. Serve warm.

Apricot and pistachio cake with poached apricots

Taken from a Tom Kime book, Exploring Taste and Flavour.

150g pistachios, without skins

150g plain flour

¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda

¼ tsp baking powder

Good pinch of salt

Zest of one lemon

6 eggs, separated

225g caster sugar

150ml plain yoghurt

150ml olive oil

Poached apricots

200g dried apricots

1 cinnamon stick

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp brown sugar

Seeds from one vanilla pod

Juice and zest of one orange

600ml water

½ tsp allspice

1 tsp ground black pepper

Preheat an oven to 180 degrees/gas four. Grease a 25-centimetre spring-form cake tin. Grind up the pistachio nuts. Sieve the dry ingredients and add the lemon zest. Beat the egg yolks with half the sugar until they are pale and creamy. Add the yoghurt and olive oil and then fold in the flour and pistachio nuts.

Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add the remaining sugar and beat until stiff. Fold the egg whites into the cake mix and then pour into the cake tin and bake for 50-55 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean.

Meanwhile, put all the ingredients for the poached apricots into a saucepan, heat gently and simmer for 10 minutes. Allow to cool slightly, remove the apricots and reduce the sugar syrup by a third. Add the apricots back to the syrup and then allow to cool fully.

Serve with the warm pistachio cake.

dkemp@irishtimes.com