Cook the Book Review – Diana Henry
By Rachel Davies
As Cook the Book progresses, I thought I’d write a book review of sorts, both as a reminder of what we’ve made, and also to share the journey. My goal is to cook from some incredible books, and if you are inspired to make something, then that’s wonderful too.
This was the first Cook the Book event, and I was so excited to finally get going with the class that I’d been trying to start for so long.
Everyone arrived and had some wine, while I introduced what we were going to do. We were cooking from Diana Henry’s book, A Change of Appetite, which focuses on food that is good for you, whilst never compromising on flavour. Throughout the book Diana Henry writes about healthy eating, why fad dieting doesn’t work, what fats we should probably be eating, keeping our sugar intake down, and how she came to the realisation that she would rather eat fabulous food that happens to be good for you than following any kind of diet.
From choosing this book, I discovered that this book is my kind of eating – internationally inspired food using seasonal ingredients, bold and punchy, and good for you. Henry is not sanctimonious, and doesn’t demand cutting out all carbs, fat or even sugar. She just gives sensible advice and recipes for good home-cooked food. That’s exactly what I like.
Henry says that of all her books, this is the one that sits next to her cooker, and the one she uses the most. I have to admit to never previously owning any of her books, so I can’t compare this to the others, but I’m now hooked and will be buying the rest of her books – I think she’s wonderful.
The menu was:
Salmon tartare with pickled cucumber and rye crackers
Chicken and fennel with honey, mustard and orange
Roast pumpkin, labneh, walnut gremolata and pomegranates
Greek yoghurt and apricot ice cream
My highlights:
Salmon tartare with pickled cucumber and rye crackers
What an incredible dish! The crackers are homemade and surprisingly easy to make. They are crisp and delicious, the pickled cucumbers are perfect, and the salmon tartare is lightly flavoured, refreshing, and completes this amazing dish. I can’t wait to make this elegant recipe again.
Roast pumpkin, labneh, walnut gremolata and pomegranates
This is another genius recipe. It’s colourful, packed with flavour, and combines lots of great ingredients to make something sublime. This would be a fabulous dish to share when having people over, as it makes a big platter of deliciousness that everyone can help themselves to, and pick over when they’re actually too full to move, but can’t resist another mouthful.
To conclude:
I think that Diana Henry is amazing. The book is full of big, bold flavours influenced from around the world. She clearly knows her stuff, and I love the way she writes as if she’s walking you through the recipe.
This is how I try to eat at home – healthy but incidentally so, and I now need to make the time to work my way through the rest of the book.
Roast pumpkin, labneh, walnut gremolata and pomegranates (from Diana Henry, A Change of Appetite)
Serves 4
FOR THE LABNEH
300 g Greek yoghurt
1 garlic clove, crushed
Good pinch of salt
FOR THE PUMPKIN AND SALAD
1.2kg squash or pumpkin
4 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
5cm root ginger, peeled and finely chopped
Pepper
Juice of ½ a small lemon
125 g baby spinach leaves
Small bunch of coriander leaves
Seeds from ¼ pomegranate
FOR THE GREMOLATA
35 g walnut pieces
Zest of 1 lemon (removed with a zester)
2 garlic cloves, very finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
FOR THE DRESSING
2 teaspoons pomegranate molasses
Smidgen of Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Pinch of caster sugar (optional)
Squeeze of lemon
- Make their labneh the day before you want to serve the dish, using the yoghurt, garlic and salt. Line a sieve with a piece of muslin or a brand new J-cloth. Mix the ingredients together, tip into the cloth, tie it up and refrigerate.
- Preheat the oven to 190°C. Halve the squash and scoop out and discard the seeds and fibres. Cut into slices about 2cm thick at the thickest part. (If you are using a long butternut squash you can halve it horizontally as well as lengthways before cutting the wedges, otherwise you could have very long slices.) Peel each slice if you want, or you can leave the skin on if you don’t mind discarding it when you are eating the dish. (Sometimes it is actually thin enough to eat.)
- In a small saucepan, heat that regular olive oil, cinnamon, cayenne and ginger. Put the wedges of squash into a roasting tin and pour the spicy mixture over them, using your hands to make sure the squash get well coated. Season with salt and pepper.
- Put into the hot oven and roast for 35 minutes, or until tender and slightly caramelized, basting every so often. Put onto a serving dish and squeeze the lemon over.
- Make the gremolata by toasting the walnuts in the oven for five minutes (keep an eye on them as they burn easily). Now simply chop everything for the gremolata together.
- Take that drained labneh out of its muslin or J-cloth and gently break up into nuggets.
- Put the pomegranate molasses, mustard and salt and pepper into a small jug and whisk in the extra virgin oil. Taste and add the sugar (if using) and lemon; you really have to work on this dressing to get a good sweet-sour balance, so use your taste buds.
- Using about three quarters of the dressing, gently toss the spinach, coriander and pumpkin together in a wide shallow bowl.
- Dot nuggets of labneh over this. Scatter on the gremolata and pomegranate seeds, drizzle on the rest of the dressing and serve.
Want to learn how to make more delicious food? Come along to another Cook the Book or to one of Rachel’s classes. You can also sign up to the Rachel’s Kitchen newsletter for news and recipes.
