Hello everyone,
This week, I am landing in your inbox a couple of days early, because if you wanted to cook these recipes over Easter weekend, I figured you might need time to organise your shop.
Easter weekend is one of my favourites of the year. The first bank holiday in the UK (four day weekend!!), with normally some excellent weather to boot (I am choosing to ignore this year’s forecast), it marks the beginning of my hosting-lunch-in-the-garden season. Every year, me, my husband and my best pal host a lunch for our friends. There is an egg hunt, silly games, lots of wine and LOTS of food.
This year, I’m going to be cooking up a beautiful piece of hogget from FTJ Butchers in Bermondsey. Farmer Tom Jones is the longtime meat supplier to some of London’s best restaurants, and has now opened a butcher in Bermondsey with chef Mike Davies (of my beloved The Camberwell Arms) so the general public can get their paws on it too. Let me tell you, the meat is phenomenal quality - I had some sausages from there this weekend that almost made me weep.
I am so excited to cook the hogget shoulder from FTJ this weekend. Lamb is generally ready to eat when it is a couple of months old, whereas hogget is allowed to grow and mature for another year, making it much more flavoursome. These guys have been roaming around on the beautiful farm in mid Wales for well over a year before heading down to the butchers. I’ll be slow cooking mine with lots of mint, white wine and whole plum tomatoes.
In this week’s newsletter, I thought I’d give you the recipes for all the sides I’m going to be cooking with it - 4 recipes rather than the usual 2! This would create a very satisfying meal, or add a hogget dish to compliment them as I will be. These are as follows:
Leek, spinach and feta pie
Potato and fennel gratin
Charred greens and chickpeas with salsa verde
Roasted radishes with Aleppo chilli butter
The majority of the recipes will be for my paid subscribers, so if you’d like to cook up this feast on the weekend, do consider upgrading your subscription.
Enjoy!
Sophie x
P.S. If you did want a meaty main recipe, this Lamb with Tomatoes and Pomegranate Molasses from last year is a goodie (it would work equally well with hogget). Or, in my book Tucking In, you can find a recipe for my Slow Roast Tikka Lamb, which is an absolute hit.
The Recipes
This whole menu would serve 8 people comfortably if you added a bit of extra meat in there. Bon appetit!
Charred Greens and Chickpeas with Salsa Verde
Asparagus season is upon us! This is a really lovely way of eating it - lightly charred, and tossed with a zingy salsa verde, with soft onions and chunky chickpeas.
20g fresh mint
20g fresh parsley
2 tbsp capers
1 tbsp dijon mustard
6 tbsp olive oil
Juice of ½ lemon
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
½ tsp ground cumin
1 tsp sherry vinegar
400g asparagus
200g sugar snap peas
560g jar of chickpeas (Bold Bean Co are my favourite)
salt, pepper and olive oil
Add your mint, parsley, capers and mustard to the bowl of a blender, and pulse to paste. Gradually pour in 90ml olive oil until emulsified, then season with your lemon juice and a good pinch of salt.
Peel and finely slice your onion. Add a good glug of olive oil to a large frying pan over a medium heat, and add your onion with a pinch of salt. Cook for 20 minutes until softened and caramelised, adding splashes of water occasionally if it starts sticking.
Grate in your garlic and add your cumin, then cook out for another 2 minutes. Add your sherry vinegar, then tip your onions out of the pan.
Cut the woody ends off your asparagus, then cut the spears in half.
Wipe your frying pan to clean it, then get it over a medium-high heat. Add your sugar snaps and fry for about 5 minutes until the outsides are lightly blistered, adding a splash of water halfway through to steam them. Remove from the pan and repeat with your asparagus.
In a large bowl, mix your onions, sugar snaps, asparagus, drained chickpeas and salsa verde. Adjust the seasoning with salt and more lemon, if needed. Spoon onto a platter and serve up whilst still warm.
Leek, Spinach and Feta Pie
This method of pie making is a favourite of mine because it is so forgiving. The veggies at your party will not be able to get enough of this, and the meat eaters will be after it too.