Chef Georgina Hayden offers a selection of Mediterranean-inspired recipes designed to bring holiday vibes to home cooking. The collection, featured in her book "MEDesque," includes a variety of dishes suitable for different occasions, from quick weeknight meals to picnic snacks.
One of the highlighted recipes is a quick sea bass dish with grapes and ajo blanco. This dish is described as a restaurant-worthy showstopper that can be prepared in just ten minutes. The ajo blanco, a chilled soup typically made with bread, almonds, garlic, and olive oil, is presented as a sauce. The recipe involves pan-searing sea bass fillets until the skin is crisp and golden, served alongside blistered green grapes and the creamy ajo blanco sauce.
For a more substantial offering, lamb, apricot, and feta sausage rolls are presented as an ideal picnic snack. These feature minced lamb seasoned with spices, apricots for sweetness, and feta for a salty tang, all encased in puff pastry. The recipe calls for preheating the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6, preparing the lamb mixture, assembling the sausage rolls, and baking them until golden brown.
Another featured recipe is "Dirty Rice," inspired by a Majorcan dish called arroz brut. This one-pan meal combines chicken thighs, chorizo, onions, peppers, and paella rice, cooked in chicken stock with spices like cinnamon, oregano, and paprika. It is baked in the oven until the chicken is cooked through and the rice has a crispy top. The dish is finished with cherry tomatoes and fresh parsley, served with lemon wedges.
Hayden also shares a recipe for charred corn, chorizo, and avocado. This dish is suitable for making ahead and can be served as a starter or side. It involves charring corn kernels, cooking chorizo until crisp, and then combining them with garlic, sherry vinegar, honey, parsley, spring onions, and avocado.
Sweet options include a cardamom frappé ice cream, inspired by summer drinks in Greece. The recipe involves warming milk with cardamom and salt, whisking egg yolks with sugar, and then combining the mixtures before churning into ice cream. A spiced patata fil-forn, a lighter alternative to potato gratin, is also included, featuring thinly sliced potatoes baked with onions, garlic, and a blend of spices like fennel, cumin, chili powder, and turmeric.
Rounding out the collection is a tomato, herb, and Gruyère cake salé, a savory loaf that can be made ahead and frozen. It combines sundried tomatoes, herbs, and two types of cheese within a savory cake batter, suitable for toasting or enjoying as is.
The recipes are from "MEDesque" by Georgina Hayden, with photographs by Laura Edwards, published by Bloomsbury.