Roast nectarine, mozzarella and almond salad

Roast nectarine, mozzarella and almond salad

Happy last day of August everyone. The British summer kind of came good in the end, didn't it? Certainly August had enough sunny days in it for me to wear most items of my summer wardrobe once, and to develop my obsession with sticking fruit in salads.

This recipe is for these last, fade-to-grey days of summer. It's for using up those stubborn nectarines that skulk in the fruit bowl, refusing to ripen and remaining steadfastly rock-hard. Roast them in the oven, sprinkled with a little brown sugar and butter to coax out the sweetness (I know you're in there somewhere, sweetness). Serve with mozzarella, toasted flaked almonds and lots of rocket and watercress.

Of course, you could add a dash of vanilla extract to the sugar and butter and you also have the makings of an easy last-days-of-summer pudding. Top with a blob of creme fraiche and err, probably leave out the rocket and watercress.

Roast nectarine, mozzarella and almond salad

Serves 4

For the salad

3 nectarines
20g dark muscavado sugar
15g butter, at room temperature
70g watercress
70g rocket
75g flaked almonds
1 x 125g ball mozzarella

For the dressing

1 tsp Dijon mustard
4 tbsp groundnut oil
Juice of 1 lime
1 1/2 tsp soy sauce

Preheat the oven to 220°C/gas mark 7

Cut the nectarines into thick slices. Place in a roasting tin or on a baking tray and crumble the sugar and butter over the top. Roast for 20 minutes or until lightly golden, then leave to cool.

Meanwhile, toast the flaked almonds in a small, dry frying pan over a medium heat. Keep a close eye on them and remove from the heat when they start to turn golden. Leave to cool.

Make the dressing by stirring together the mustard, lime and soy sauce, then slowly adding the oil until it is all combined and you have a smooth, pale yellow vinaigrette.

Divide the rocket and watercress between the four plates. Tear pieces of mozzarella off the ball and add to each plate. Sprinkle over the almonds, add the nectarine slices and then drizzle over the dressing. Sprinkle over a little sea salt and black pepper to finish.

Wilderness Festival and Ottolenghi banquet

The lake at Wilderness

Wilderness Festival is held at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire - a rambling country estate with shady dells, wide-open fields and lakes for midnight swims. I went along as a guest of Wilderness last weekend to check out what has been billed as Britain's 'foodiest festival.'


The food was several dozen levels above the dodgy offerings at most festivals, with stalls from The Breakfast Club, Liverpool's Bold Street Coffee (great flat whites), The Bowler's meatball van and Anna Mae's southern comfort food (I love their mac n' cheese) among the many highlights...

Cheeky sign from The British Sausage Company stall

 Moro had a souk tent filled with long tables, comfy cushions and jars of blue and red wildflowers. The tent was packed all weekend, but I managed to grab a bowl of granola and yogurt with a delicate rose syrup for breakfast.

The Moro souk tent at Wilderness

An adorable sweet shop in a shed in the children's area...

Sweetie time at Wilderness

Anna Mae's - one of my favourite street food vans

Always good to see The Bowler's turf-covered van dishing up meatballs. Its Thai chicken meatballs with brown rice and homemade 'slaw were delicious.

The Bowler

One of the highlights of the weekend was the feasts held in a banqueting tent. The feasts were catered by Valentine Warner, Fergus Henderson and Yotam Ottolenghi - it doesn't get much better than that. I went to the Ottolenghi feast on the Saturday lunchtime, where Yotam was very much in evidence in the kitchen overseeing the communal feasting dishes.

Setting up for Ottolenghi's feast inside the banqueting tent...

Ottolenghi feast at Wilderness...

 The menu read like a greatest hits of Ottolenghi dishes from his two cookbooks and London cafes. I've made this aubergine dish with buttermilk from Plenty many times, but somehow it never tastes quite as sweet yet earthy as this...

Aubergines with buttermilk and pomegranate

There was an incredible dish of tender roasted sirloin with a zesty coriander and mustard topping. And this beautiful, meaty pan-fried bream with a jammy harissa sauce and rose petals...

Ottolenghi's pan-fried sea bream with harissa and rose

Another festival highlight was Future Cinema at Wilderness. Here's the cinema stage by day, opening onto the fields beyond. By night the area was transformed for screenings of Bugsy Malone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and La Haine with a live score by Asian Dub Foundation...

Secret Cinema at Wilderness

 Festival-goers attempted to break the record for the World's Biggest Skinny Dip at the same time as other nuddy bathers around the world. I took this snap from a modesty-preserving distance for the bathers!

Skinny dip world record attempt at Wilderness

There was so much more than food, movies and spontaneous nudity though. One of my favourite things about Wilderness was that everyone there could have the kind of festival they wanted. The food lovers could eat dishes cooked by their chef-heroes. Children could run amok in the family area with storytelling, games and singalongs. And - Daily Mail word alert - revellers could go crazy at The Old Vic Tunnels' Midnight Masked Ball deep in the forest. There was an outdoor spa with hot tubs, music from The Temper Trap and Rodrigo y Gabriella, a 1920s speakeasy where we learnt the Lambeth Walk, talks on everything from the Congo to the art of slow travel, and lots and lots of yoga.

What a weekend.

Sun sets on the beautiful Cornbury Park Estate...

Wilderness Festival

Early-bird tickets are now on sale for Wilderness Festival 2013 from wildernessfestival.com

Strawberry, goat's cheese and pine nut salad with a strawberry, balsamic and soy dressing recipe

Strawberry, goat's cheese and pine nut salad

Now that we finally have a summer in the UK, I've been indulging in one of my favourite activities of the season - sticking fruit in salads.

Strawberries, cherries, peaches, nectarines - if it's in season, then in a salad it goes. If you balance ripe, sweet fruits with salty, savoury ingredients like cheese, include a bit of acidity in the dressing, and add plenty of green leaves, you can't really go wrong.

A few weeks ago, I was sent 11 - yes, 11 - punnets of fat and juicy Sweet Eve strawberries to try...

Sweet Eve strawberries

After blitzing a few punnets for future smoothies, making some mini cheesecakes (recipe to come), eating mounds of strawberries for breakfast with toasted almonds and sheep's yoghurt and palming a few boxes onto friends, I still had enough berries left over to make this delicious and simple salad. The salty soy and sharp balsamic vinegar in the dressing off-set the sweetness of the strawberries beautifully.

Strawberry, goat's cheese and pine nut salad with a strawberry, balsamic and soy dressing

Serves 2 or 4 for a starter

100g strawberries, sliced lengthways
50g baby leaf spinach
25g pine nuts
75g soft goat's cheese
1 x small handful basil, roughly torn

For the dressing:

50ml strawberry juice (bought or made by blitzing a couple of punnets of strawberries with a hand blender or in a food processor)
4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce

Toast the pine nuts in a small frying pan on a medium heat, with a little sea salt for a couple of minutes, until just turning golden. You don't need to use any oil for this. Keep a careful eye on the pine nuts as they can go from golden to burnt very quickly. Leave to cool.

Make the dressing by whisking together the strawberry juice, extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar and soy sauce. Season with a tiny bit of sea salt and black pepper.

Divide the spinach leaves between the plates. Add the strawberries, then crumble over the goat's cheese. Sprinkle over the toasted pine nuts. Drizzle the dressing over the salads then garnish with the torn basil leaves.

Ginger and White, Soho W1: Cafe of the Week

Ginger and White, Soho

Ginger and White in Hampstead was Pinch of Salt's first Cafe of the Week. So when news reached these parts that Ginger and White Soho was open for business, I decided to see how it stacked up against the original, not to mention the stiff competition nearby.

Soho is, of course, blessed with good cafes. Meander the unofficial coffee trail around W1 and you could soon be tripping up to your eyeballs on excellent caffeine and cake. Flat White, Foxcroft and Ginger, Fernandez and Wells, Sacred - all are within a few streets of Ginger and White's new location. Happily, it slots very well into the local cafe scene. Located on Silver Place, a little pedestrian thoroughfare at the eastern end of Beak Street, Ginger and White Soho is something of a sanctuary from the central London bustle.

Homemade peanut butter, Ginger and White

The cafe is small, with stools running along the windows, and a handful of wooden tables tucked behind the counter. On one wall you'll find Ginger and White's now trademark turquoise, orange and brown Union Jack, while the rest of the cafe is an exercise in white-washed minimalism, down to the designer lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling. But there's a friendly, family feel too which recalls the original branch - children are encouraged to leave a drawing on pads of paper by the door.

Flat white, Ginger and White Soho

Coffee compares favourably to the area's best brews. On our visit they were serving Carvetii's Borrowdale blend for black coffees, and Square Mile's Red Brick espresso for milky ones. A long black was rich and nutty, and the first black coffee I've been served in ages where the soy didn't split when I poured it in (a major bugbear - soy chunks are no-one's idea of a good time). A flat white was finished with an intricate rosetta and had just the right balance between espresso-punch and creaminess.

Worcestershire ham and Rosary Ash salad, Ginger and White

The lunch menu isn't huge - there's a small selection of sandwiches on the counter, and a couple of salads. I tried the Worcestershire ham salad with Rosary Ash goat's cheese. It was a lovely combination of colours, textures and flavours - the salty ham, creamy soft cheese, piquant Sunblush tomatoes, bitter Kalamata olives, raddichio and rocket, and vinagery capers. A Gloucestershire Old Spot sandwich featured two pink and intensely piggy bangers sandwiched between farl-style potato sourdough smeared with a tangy relish. Both dishes were delicious but not quite enough to constitute a filling lunch. So we were 'forced' to fill up on cake.

Stem ginger cake with vanilla icing, Ginger and White

The stem ginger cake was addictive stuff. A proper, spicy gingerbread with chunks of stem ginger, topped with a slick of creamy vanilla icing. A gluten-free orange and almond cake was gooey, with a delicate orange flavour intensified by dainty curls of candied orange peel on top. It was also one of several g-f options.

If you're looking for a new place to linger over coffee in central London, head down to Silver Place. Ginger and White is calm, friendly, and the caffeine and cakes are the equal of any of central London's more established coffee spots.

Ginger and White, 1 Silver Place, London W1F 0JW
gingerandwhite.com/