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Nigel Slater's cheese and radish recipes

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Nigel Slater’s cheese and radish recipes

I really should cook more often with the mildly salty, snow-white sheep and goat’s cheeses of which I am so fond. I did so twice this week – first in some little tartlets of thyme and cream, and then whipped up into a herb cream to accompany some grilled lamb cutlets. The first, a crusty goat’s cheese, cream and grey with mould outside, white as chalk within, was crumbled into cream and egg for some goat’s cheese tartlets. Seasoned with thyme leaves cut from the pot on the back porch, the biscuit-sized tarts were in the oven in a matter of minutes.

The low fat content of many goat’s cheeses means they are good for adding to a tart or a quiche. The flavours are clean and fresh, unlike the fattier cheeses that add luxury, but also a certain blandness. Using a goat’s cheese, especially one with a bit of lactic bite, is a way of keeping the weight of cheese down and the flavour up. More piquant than most of the cow’s milk cheeses, a little goes a long way. I made a dozen little tarts (you need two per person) with just 150g of cheese. Sounds on the wrong side of frugal, but it worked.

The sheep’s cheese was a lump of good old feta, as easy to find as a newspaper. It packs quite a bit of flavour for its weight and price – so much so that I used it a couple of days ago as a dip for grilled cutlets, whipped with a little yogurt to give it a creamy texture. The mint simply compounded the bright character and gave a wonderful contrast to the nicely charred edges of the cutlet bones. Feta is worth keeping in the fridge. It has a good shelf life and can get you out of a jam – feta with pesto in pastry; grilled feta with spring onions; baked in foil with chopped chillies; crumbled in a salad of spinach, grapes and garlicky croutons. I could go on.

The goat’s cheese tarts weren’t served on the plate alone. They came with a little salad. I can never resist those first white-tipped bunches of summer radishes. I usually buy two at a time in the hope they will keep me from reaching for the biscuit jar, but a healthy crunch is about the only thing they have in common, and the salad bowl is probably a better place. It was an early-summer salad of crisp, cold cucumber, lightly peeled so its green colour shines through, then tossed with pea shoots, the salad leaf du jour, watercress for spice and a simple dressing of fairly bland olive oil and salt. (A radish should never go unsalted.) Pretty as a picture, the salad ended up alongside the warm goat’s cheese tarts. But the salad would have been just as good with the lamb and feta. Cucumber is a good friend to any salty ingredient from smoked salmon to green olives.

And if chops aren’t your thing, the creamed feta and mint would be a sensational accompaniment to a grilled aubergine. It’s something I might do at home before the barbecue season is over.

Goat’s cheese and lemon thyme tartlets

Makes 12

For the pastry:
Plain flour 200g
Butter 100g
Egg yolk 1
Milk or water a little

For the filling:
goat’s cheese 150g
egg yolk 1
double cream 225ml
lemon thyme a few sprigs

You will also need a 12-hole tartlet tin. Put the flour and butter, cut into pieces, into the bowl of a food processor. Add a pinch of salt and blitz to fine breadcrumbs or rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips. Add the egg yolk and enough milk or water to bring the dough to a firm ball. The less liquid you add the better, as too much will cause your pastry cases to shrink in the oven.

Pat the pastry into a flat round on a floured surface then roll it out fairly thinly. Cut 12 discs from the pastry using a large pastry cutter or saucer as a template, then push the pastry into the tartlet tins. Chill thoroughly for at least 30 minutes.

Bake the tartlet cases at 200C/gas mark 6 for about 15 minutes, until they are pale biscuit coloured. Remove from the oven and turn the heat down to 180C/gas mark 4.

Crumble the goat’s cheese into small pieces and drop into the pastry cases, leaving room for a little of the custard. Mix the egg yolk and the cream in a measuring jug and season. Tear the thyme leaves from the stems and add to the custard mixture. Pour the mixture into the tartlet cases then bake for about 20 minutes until the filling is lightly set and serve with the salad below.

Radish and cucumber salad

radishes 200g
cucumber 275g
pea shoots a couple of handfuls
watercress a couple of handfuls
dill 6 bushy sprigs
olive oil

Wash, trim and slice the radishes thickly. Put them in a mixing bowl. Peel the cucumber, removing only the thinnest amount of peel. Halve lengthways, and scoop out and discard the seeds and watery pulp. Cut the cucumber into thick chunks and add them to the radish. Rinse the pea shoots and watercress and shake them dry. Add them to the cucumber with a trickle of olive oil and season with salt only – the radish and watercress are pepper enough.

Grilled lamb with minted feta

large salad onions 4
lamb cutlets 6

For the marinade:
olive oil 6 tbsp
garlic 1 medium clove

For the creamed feta:
feta 200g
yogurt 4 tbsp
mint leaves 10

To make the creamed feta, put the cheese into the bowl of a food processor, then blitz briefly. Add the yogurt, mint leaves and some black pepper, then blitz again for a few seconds until you have a thick cream. Scoop into a bowl with a rubber spatula and refrigerate until needed.

Put the olive oil in a shallow dish, peel and crush the garlic and stir into the olive oil with a grinding of salt and pepper. Turn the cutlets in the seasoned olive oil. Leave in a cool place for an hour or longer.

Cook the chops under or over a hot grill until the outside is golden brown, the inside rose pink. Remove the chops from the grill and place in warm plates with large spoonfuls of the feta cream and serve.

Email Nigel at [email protected] or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/nigelslater for all his recipes in one place


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