It feels good to be here, sharing my kitchen with you. This place where we have been meeting up for a while now (three decades and counting), somewhere that feels as much like a kitchen table as a weekly magazine column. Food has always been part of the heart and soul of The Observer, and never more than now.
Rarely have I enjoyed food shopping as much as I have this week. You can feel it in the air, the freshness and energy of the new season. The early radishes are here, with their snow-white tips; tiny cucumbers and blousy lettuces with soft, buttery leaves line up in the market. There is wild garlic and, from Italy, fresh peas. The late spring weather, those cloudless blue skies and occasional showers, bring with them a bounty of opportunity for good eating. I came home from the shops leaving a trail of mint in my wake, a bag full of spring with much to celebrate. There were herbs you could smell from six feet away and spinach, the dagger-shaped leaves tied in fat bunches, their stems so strong and crisp they could stand up on their own.
I had been spoilt for choice. There were boxes of peas, their pods a luminescent green, so sweet and crisp, I ate them whole. Broad beans the size of a fingernail, the sort you can stew in their pods with olive oil, lemon and oregano. Courgettes, firm, stripy and palest eau de nil or deep green and glossy. Either are good for slicing, tossing in flour and frying with lemon and basil, but I like to stuff the pale ones, perhaps with freekeh or rice, preserved lemon and dill. The dark-skinned fruits I brought back were sliced into small pieces and simmered with haricot beans, a few nuggets of pancetta and new garlic, its skin flushed with mauve, its cloves sweet and mild.
I brushed my fingers through the mint, to release its cool, invigorating, scent. The leaves were pointed and rough to the touch, bought with a vegetable stew in mind, to bring a fresh top note, a hit of spring. I saved a handful for a salad of pink grapefruit, cucumber and feta. I sometimes make a mint oil by blending the leaves with olive oil, parsley and lemon. A vivid elixir to trickle over leaves leaves, grilled lamb or steamed couscous.
It is a rare moment when my fridge is without a bowl of stewed apple. Whether for eating at breakfast with yoghurt or overnight oats, to add a cool sweet-sharp note to the golden fat of a grilled pork chop or for stirring into cream and custard for a quick apple fool. This week my snowy slush of bramleys got an outing with hot, sugar-dusted panettone as a light version of eggy bread, with hints of vanilla and lemon. You could use brioche in place of the panettone, in which case I would stir a little vanilla paste into the cream.
I have been planting, mostly the herbs I find impossible to buy in the shops, such as nigella and sweet cicely. Nasturtiums, which will add a peppery note to summer salads, and marigolds, whose orange petals carry a spicy note and smile to everyone’s faces.
Courgettes, pancetta, haricot and green sauce
Serves 4. Ready in 1 hour
The spinach sauce is a useful one to have around and will keep – tightly covered – in the fridge for a couple of days. Good with grilled chicken for tossing new potatoes, steamed in their skins.
pancetta 150g
olive oil 2 tbsp
onions 2, medium
garlic cloves 4
thyme leaves 2 tsp
courgettes 600g
haricot beans 1 x 400g tin
mint 8g
For the green sauce:
spinach 250g
parsley 50g
olive oil 80ml
lemon 1
Make the sauce. Bring a medium pan of water to the boil. Have a bowl of iced water to hand.
Remove any tough stalks from the spinach and parsley, then wash the leaves thoroughly. When the water is boiling, push the parsley and spinach leaves under the surface and leave for 3–4 minutes, until they have relaxed and darkened in colour. Lift the leaves out with kitchen tongs or a spider and dunk them into the iced water. Measure out 250ml of the cooking water and set aside.
Drain the leaves and put them in a blender jug with 100ml of the reserved water, the olive oil, a generous seasoning of salt and black pepper and a small squeeze of juice from the lemon. (You will need the rest later.) Reduce everything in the blender jug to a thick, smooth, green purée, then scoop into a bowl using a rubber spatula, and set aside.
Cut the pancetta into small pieces, roughly 1cm thick. Put them and the olive oil in a large, deep saucepan over a medium heat and let them colour lightly on all sides.
Peel and roughly chop the onion, stir into the pancetta and continue cooking with the occasional stir. Peel the garlic and grate to a paste, then stir, together with the thyme leaves, into the onions.
Wash and cut the courgettes. If they are fat, then cut in half lengthways, then into 1cm thick slices. If they are young and slim, cut into rounds. (You want nothing larger than you can comfortably get on a fork.) When the onion is soft, stir in the courgettes and season with salt and black pepper. Leave to cook for about 7-8 minutes, until the courgettes are starting to colour.
Tip in the haricot beans together with the liquor, the aqua faba, from the tin. Pour in the remaining 150ml of reserved water and cook for another 20 minutes. Watch the liquid level – add a splash more water if needed. Squeeze the remaining lemon juice, chop the mint leaves, then stir both into the stew. Check the seasoning, it should be light and slightly smoky (from the pancetta) with the freshness of lemon and mint.
If you wish to warm the green sauce, heat it briefly in a small pan, then divide between 4 shallow bowls (pasta bowls are ideal), then spoon over the bean and courgette stew.