We’re doing a new menu at the moment. Very exciting. We’re doing a salsa verde and some roast peppers. Actually, we’re gonna start off with the courgettes. So my co-star today is none other than Carlos. He’s gonna griddle those off, and then we’re gonna add a bit of olive oil to them, and they’re gonna form the outer of our ballantine.
I’m going to roast off a red pepper, the best way of doing this is really just to cover it in a bit of olive oil. These days you’re only allowed to use groundnut oil if you wanna be super trendy, which we strive to be. So that goes in the oven. It’s a bit like watching Saturday Kitchen now. That goes in. Oh yes, picked up a thing or two from that James Martin. What we’re gonna do is take off the outer skin, which we don’t need. Fantastic, thank you. And then open it out. So this is quite good, because now you know how to prepare a red pepper. I’m only gonna use part of it for today. I’ve got some strips there or Julian. We’ll use those in a minute.
The next thing I wanted to show you is onions. I’m gonna put my groundnut oil in there, and whilst I do that just get my red peppers, which I’ll come back to later. That oil’s coming up to a nice temperature, so I can throw some onions in. Happy with that. And I’ve got some chilli powder. A little goes a long way. And I’ve also got some coriander. Yeah, coriander. And I’m gonna give that a little mix around. I wanna create a bit of a paste to this, just by giving those a bit of a shake. Thank you old boy. I’m gonna mash them up a bit. And the idea behind the haricot beans is just to get as much flavour as we possibly can in those, and the reason why Carlos is doing that is because they will dry out.
Now there’s another product I want to introduce you to which I think you might be interested in, particularly the vegetarians among you. It could look better, but it tastes fantastic, and it really gives vegetarians an extra layer of flavour. It’s corn bacon. I’m just gonna pan fry that off. Probably just add a little bit of oil to it. I’m gonna add these actually in with the corn. All I did is I took a shelled-off potato, boiled them and I’m going to just sauté them off in this pan. So over here I’m just gonna cut . . . I don’t need that many potatoes. Olive oil, I’m just gonna cover those. And with that I’m just gonna sauté these potatoes at the same time. So in they go. Just give them a bit of colour. We’re gonna use these as the base of what Matthew Fort [SP] would call a very contemporary plate of looking food. I met Matthew Fort once. He was selling crisps at the food fare in Olympia. What a nice man.
Right, those can come off. I’m happy with all of that. All we really need to do now is the salsa verde. We’re gonna do what’s known as a chiffonade. Just gonna slice the basil, a little bit of mint. So we’ve got the mint, the basil, flat leaf parsley. Parsley goes in. I’m gonna do a couple of cornichon, not many. Texture is quite important, so we’ll get that right. So I’ve just diced up some cornichon. The smaller the better I think. I’m gonna dice some garlic, here we go. Move that over there. Then an anchovy, same sort of thing, slice length-ways. Cut that into fine dice. That goes in. Got a green chilli. If you ever wonder why you never get any heat in the chilli, it’s probably because you’re never putting any of the seeds in. Mustard Dijon goes in. A little bit of lime juice. That can go in. White wine vinegar, quite in love with that actually. And then finally, extra virgin olive oil, and that’s it. So that’s our salsa verde.
The one thing I forgot to tell you Stew, is how to cook spinach, which we have covered in other videos, but just for completeness I’m gonna do it again. A bit of groundnut oil and onion. Let that sizzle away and then, it’s so I don’t need much spinach. That’s it. So that’s gonna carry on cooking down. Now we’re going to prepare the main part of the dish. So I’m gonna lay our courgettes along here like that. And it is a bit like sushi what we’re doing, because we’re going to lay different layers of filling in. And I finally get the spinach in straight away all to the . . . so much for the good, I can just go along.
I’m then gonna use a couple of bits of the beacon, the corn bacon. Then our bean goes along like that. You can toast the pine-nuts if you like. I think it’s quite nice to have a crunch to go with it. We’re gonna roll this up just to give it a roulade type feel to it. Now, once it’s rolled, ideally what you want to do is maybe keep it in the fridge for half an hour. What you can then do is lay it on a tray once you’ve got the shape that you require and just cook it off a couple of minutes in the oven. What we’re gonna do is just cut that into various tubes as it were.
Right, now I’m gonna plate up. Right, so the sauté potatoes form the base of the dish, and then I’m gonna put these on top. The salsa verde we then use. There we go. The micro-herbs on top. There you have a ballantine of, I guess it would be spicy bean vegetarian bake and red pepper with salsa verde.
Right, what we’re gonna do next time. I’ve got a masala potato dish with a coconut curry sauce. So hopefully that will wet your appetite. Thanks for watching. See you next time.
