No matter how busy you are, Carla Lalli Music believes that delicious food is an essential and attainable part of life. The key is to have recipes up your sleeve for every situation. Carla knows that the most successful home cooks choose dishes they actually have time to make, based on what they already have on hand. So, the recipes in her new cookbook, That Sounds So Good, are organised by needs we all have: quick stovetop suppers and one-pot meals for weeknights, big salads and grain bowls if you want to burn a little cleaner, and lazy lunches and all-day roasts for the weekend.
Today, we’re featuring Carla’s recipe for crunchy and juicy feta salad, along with her recommendations for tracking down the key ingredients and even subbing in the ones you can’t find. Happy cooking!
Crunchy and Juicy Feta Salad
Serves: 4
You could give me this bowl of snappy vegetables topped with slabs of feta for dinner every night of the week, and I’d be happy. Urfa biber is a Turkish dried chilli related to Aleppo pepper; it’s mildly spicy and has dark chocolatey-raisiny sweetness along with some smoky notes. You can order it online or find it at specialty stores, especially those with deep Middle Eastern sections.
Ingredients
1 fennel bulb
1 bunch radishes, tops removed 4 Persian (mini) cucumbers
kosher salt; freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon dried oregano, crumbled
1 teaspoon dried mint
1 teaspoon Urfa biber, plus more for serving
170 g (6 oz) feta
170 g (6 oz) cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
Method
Thinly slice fennel and radishes. Cut the cucumbers crossways into 1 cm (½ in) thick rounds. Submerge the fennel, radishes and cucumbers in a large bowl of generously salted ice water. This icy bath will take some of the bite out of the radishes, along with making all the vegetables super crunchy and resilient and seasoning them at the same time.
While the veggies soak, prep the other components: in a small bowl, whisk together 3 tablespoons oil, lemon juice, vinegar, oregano, mint and Urfa biber. Taste dressing and season with salt and pepper. Cut the feta into 5 mm (¼ in) thick slabs.
Drain the fennel, radishes and cucumbers and transfer to a clean tea towel (dish towel); fold the towel over and press and pat vegetables dry. Transfer to a large serving bowl. Halve the tomatoes and add them to the vegetables; add sesame seeds and dressing. Season with salt and pepper and toss with your hands to combine and coat everything with dressing. Divide salad among four shallow bowls and top each with a couple pieces of feta. Sprinkle with more Urfa biber and drizzle with oil.
From the Market
Fennel
Radishes
Persian (mini) Cucumbers
Urfa biber Feta
Cherry tomatoes
Spin It
Try daikon (white radish), Black radish, Watermelon radish, French or iciclie radishes
Use lemon or 1 large short (Lebanese) cucumber instead of Persian
A chopped large beefsteak tomato can replace cherry tomatoes
Dry salted Ricotta salata or any young sheep’s-milk cheese can sub in for the feta
Instead of Urfa biber, use Aleppo or Maras pepper
At Home
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Lemon
Red wine vinegar
Dried oregano
Dried mint
Toasted sesame seeds
Spin It
If you don’t have a lemon, use 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
If you can’t find dried mint in the spice aisle, cut open a mint tea bag and use that
—This is an edited extract from That Sounds So Good by Carla Lalli Music published by Hardie Grant Books.
That Sounds So Good
100 Real-Life Recipes for Every Day of the Week
No matter how busy you are, Carla Lalli Music believes that delicious food is an essential and attainable part of life. The key is to have recipes up your sleeve for every situation.
Carla knows that the most successful home cooks choose dishes they actually have time to make, based on what they already have on hand. So, the recipes in That Sounds So Good are organised by needs we all have...
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