Artichoke and Potato Salad

From Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, Jane Grigson, Penguin Books, 1988.

Well, I’d have to confess before I go any further that I cheated on this one. I did not cook the fresh artichokes and used tinned ones instead—and in Jane Grigson’s book her advice for using canned artichokes is: Don’t. What is more I did not stick to the recipe at all but added other ingredients. So, I guess, the recipe was basically just used as a starting off point.

I cut two potatoes into cubes and placed them in salted water, brought them to the boil and let them simmer until just cooked. They were drained and placed in a bowl.

I opened a can of artichoke hearts and cut these into dice and added them to the potatoes.

I had some cooked chick peas in the refrigerator so added these to the mix.

It all looked pretty dull at this stage so I took some frozen peas from the freezer, gave them a quick boil and added them to give a little bit of colour.

A commercial mayonnaise was added as dressing, sufficient to moisten the salad. A touch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper were added to taste. A couple of boiled eggs were shelled and sliced into quarters and added with a few black olives. The salad was ready.

Not quite Jane Grigson’s salad but it went down nicely. The ingredients all worked together well. It’s quite a heavy salad so only a small quantity was needed to satisfy the hunger.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

Potato Salad with vinaigrette

From Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, Jane Grigson, Penguin Books, 1988.

I wanted a salad but all I had in the house were potatoes and a few asparagus stalks. So I turned to Jane Grigson.

I put 2 large potatoes into a saucepan with some salted water and cooked them until they were tender but not too soft. They were then peeled while hot and cut into dice. These were placed in 75ml white wine.

I would not cook potatoes for a salad in this way again. When you cook them whole it is difficult to maintain an even cooking throughout and the centre can turn out slightly underdone while the skin side too soft. In future I would use the way I generally do it, and that is to dice the potatoes first them cook them for a few minutes while watching them to see they are just done right. This way they are more evenly cooked and it is easier to manage the final result.

The asparagus was cut into bite-sized pieces and cooked in the potato water.

When the potatoes had cooled somewhat the remaining wine was drained off and a commercial French vinaigrette dressing was added to the potatoes. The asparagus went in together with a little chopped Spanish onion and chopped parsley. It went into the refrigerator until cold.

I must say this potato salad was disappointing. It should have worked, but it didn’t and I’m not sure why. The asparagus was not from Grigson’s recipe but I felt I could use it up. I don’t think this detracted from the overall result. Oddly, the wine flavour did not really come through; I think the vinaigrette disguised it somewhat.

Taste: ✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Kohlrabi Soup

From Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, Jane Grigson, Penguin, 1980.

Whenever I’m at a loss for what to do with some vegetables I turn to Jane Grigson. I had two kohlrabi on hand so it seemed that a soup would be the answer.

The two vegetables (about 500 g) were peeled, halved and sliced thinly. In a saucepan I heated two tablespoons of cooking oil to a reasonably high heat and then sprinkled in one tablespoon of sugar. I stirred this until the sugar had turned a light brown colour, then dropped in the kohlrabi pieces and stirred them until they were coated. The heat was turned down, the saucepan was lidded and the vegetables were cooked for about 15 minutes.

One tablespoon of flour was now sprinkled on and stirred into the vegetables. I added a couple of cups of water, half a stock cube and salt and pepper. This was brought to the boil and simmered for another 10 minutes. The mixture was now pureed with a stick blender, tasted for seasoning and it was ready. Chopped parsley was added before serving.

The soup turned out to be a little too sweet for my taste.  I had eaten the non-soup version of this as a vegetable side dish (Elisabeth Bond’s Kohlrabi) and it had worked quite well, but increased in liquid volume to make a soup it was not so successful.

Taste: ✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔