Warm winter salad
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Serves 4
This salad was one of the first recipes I created for the book and I've been coming back to it time and time again ever since. I just love the mix of flavours and textures here, from the wilted spinach and roasted aubergine to the crunchy pine nuts, sweet sun-dried tomatoes and creamy tahini sauce. It's a pretty filling dish, but if you're feeling really hungry, then try serving it with some brown rice or quinoa with a little lemon drizzled over. It's one of my favourite meals to make for friends when I'm after an easy kitchen supper and it's always such a winner.
4 small aubergines
olive oil
1 tablespoon dried mixed herbs (I love herbes de Provence)
2 bags of spinach (about 500g)
4 tablespoons tahini
juice of 1 lime
2 mugs sun-dried tomatoes (360g)
1 mug pine nuts (100g)
salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 200C (fan 180C). Slice the aubergines into thin strips about 7.5mm thick. Place the strips on a baking tray with a generous amount of olive oil, the dried herbs, salt and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes.
About five minutes before the aubergines finish, place the spinach into a large frying pan with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and allow it to wilt. Once it's wilted, add the tahini, lime juice and sun-dried tomatoes.
In a separate pan, toast the pine nuts for a minute or two, being sure not to let them burn – they don't need any oil to cook as they contain enough of their own oil.
Add the aubergine and pine nuts to the spinach pan and mix well before serving.
Top tip: Watch out for the ingredients of sun-dried tomatoes – they can often contain lots of sugars and preservatives. If you can only find these ones, then rinse them in boiling water before using them.
Sweet potato brownies
Makes 10-12 brownies
These brownies have consistently been the most popular recipe on my blog. They've had more than double the amount of hits than the next most popular recipe and I've seen thousands of my readers' photographs of them on Instagram! There's a good reason for all this love, though – the brownies are divine. I know it sounds strange to put vegetables into sweet dishes, but sweet potatoes taste more like dessert anyway and they create the gooiest consistency!
2 medium-large sweet potatoes (600g)
14 Medjool dates, pitted
⅔ mug ground almonds (80g)
½ mug buckwheat or brown rice flour (100g)
4 tablespoons raw cacao powder
3 tablespoons maple syrup
pinch of salt
Preheat the oven to 180C (fan 160C). Peel the sweet potatoes. Cut them into chunks and place into a steamer for about 20 minutes, until they become really soft.
Once they are perfectly soft and beginning to fall apart, remove them and add them to a food processor with the pitted dates. Blend until a smooth, creamy mix forms.
Put the remaining ingredients into a bowl, before mixing in the sweet potato and date combination. Stir well. Place the mix into a lined baking dish and cook for about 20-30 minutes, until you can pierce the brownie cake with a fork and bring it out dry.
Remove the tray and allow it to cool for about 10 minutes. This is really important, as the brownies need this time to stick together!
Top tip: If you don't have any raw cacao powder, then you can use conventional cocoa powder, but you'll need to at least double the quantity.
Baked apples with coconut cream
Serves 4
These baked apples were the last recipe that I did for this book, but they might well be my favourite. Baking the apples with cinnamon, raisins, coconut sugar and pecans means the apple flesh really absorbs all the incredible flavours from each ingredient, so every bite is bursting with flavour. The apples become so soft and tender too when baked, so they really melt in your mouth. The whole thing is then topped with a drizzle of coconut cream, which adds even more flavour and a lovely smooth texture.
For the apples:
4 red apples (I use Braeburn apples)
⅔ mug raisins (125g)
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 handfuls of pecans (50g)
5 tablespoons coconut palm sugar
For the coconut cream:
100g coconut cream
3 tablespoons date or maple syrup
2 tablespoons coconut palm sugar
2 tablespoons almond butter
For the apples:
Preheat the oven to 200C (fan 180°C). Use an apple corer to take the core out of the apples so that there is a hole from top to bottom. Mix the raisins, cinnamon, pecans and coconut sugar together.
Place the apples on a baking tray and stuff the core with the raisin mix, then sprinkle all of the leftover mix around the apples. Drizzle 6 tablespoons water over the leftovers around the apples.
Place the apples in the oven and allow them to bake for 30 minutes, until they're totally soft .
Put each apple in a bowl to serve with a scoop of the raisin mix from the tray, and then pour the coconut cream over everything.
For the coconut cream:
Just before the apples finish cooking, make the coconut cream. Put the coconut cream in a blender with 10 tablespoons boiling water and all the other ingredients and blend until smooth.
Top tip: If you don't have an apple corer, then cut around the core with a knife and scoop out the core with a spoon.
Deliciously Ella, by Ella Woodward. (Hachette, $24.99.)
