Chickpeas with saltfish, tomatoes, garlic and kale

Assemblages. They are the business. Not quite salads, stews or anything else, assemblages are the pragmatists' favourite - a type of mixed dish which can take everything from fridge skulking vegetables to the finest of treat produce. With something filling and carbohydrate based in the mix they constitute an entire, discrete meal. Beautiful.

This cracking dish is from a small River Cafe fish book and centres around three central earthy ingredients: saltfish, chickpeas and kale.

• saltfish
• chickpeas
• kale
• tomatoes
• garlic, dried chilli, olive oil

The night before you cook put the chickpeas in a bowl of boiling water. They are so central to this dish that it's worth the bother of soaking your own. When the cooking has started in earnest put the chickpeas on to boil - they'll need about forty minutes. Put your saltfish through three boils of cold water and see how salty it is. It may need one more.

Chop loads of garlic and and slowly cook in plenty of olive oil with a handful of sweet cherry tomatoes. After ten minutes add the chilli to taste. When the saltfish is satisfactorily de-desalinated push the tomatoes to one side of the pan and briefly fry the fish in the flavoured oil. Meantime, cook your kale down in some water until tender; ready your chickpeas. Combine everything in something big and add a splash of sherry vinegar and another of olive oil. I also chucked in some nice, sharp rocket. Lashings of pepper also advisable.

A wonderful mix. In turn resistant and giving - taste sweet and salt, iron and pepper. One might easily make it vegetarian compatible by using some nice grilled halloumi instead of the fish. On a similar tip the St John cookbook has an assemblage of tomatoes, boiled potatoes, roast garlic, roast tomatoes, saltfish, chopped boiled egg and parsley which is also amazing and probably next on my list as I bought three packs of saltfish for a fiver.

enjoy

Saltfish gratin and a quince and chocolate squidge cake

The wet weather of winter demands potato and cream, amongst other things. This dish is extremely simple and recalls the Scandinavian dish of baked sliced potato with cream and anchovy whose name now escapes my head if it ever lodged there at all.

Ingredients

• five - seven potato
• saltfish amounting to roughly a quarter the mass of potato
• spinach (the proper stuff not namby-pamby baby nonsense)
• cream, butter and garlic
  

 

Boil the saltfish in three changes of water from a cold start to get rid of the salt. Slice the potato thin and put a layer in an oven-proof dish. Scatter over the saltfish (flaked), some bits of butter and plenty of pepper. Go easy with the salt on account of the preserved fish as the seasoning can be corrected easily later. Add a layer of spinach and repeat till everything is used up. Pour an amount of cream you feel comfortable ingesting over the dish and add pepper and a little butter to the top. We had a fish free version also. They will need around forty five minutes - keep an eye on the top spud slices to prevent over crisping. Foil can be used here.

In my one Euro bargain pyrex bowl from Brussels we made a chocolate squidge cake with an impromptu addition of some quince.

Ingredients

• four eggs
• the same weight on dark choc, butter and caster sugar
• eighty five grammes ground almonds
• one tablespoon cornflour
  

This comes out like a less chewy brownie. Firstly the chocolate is melted in a bain-marie then butter whisked in followed by sugar, egg yolks, ground almonds and cornflour. The egg whites are beaten till stiff, then folded in. It needs about forty minutes at 190C. I put some of the poached soft quince in small cubes in here but you could use whatever you fancy.

We had it with quince poached with sugar and a little spice and creme fraiche.

Peppers stuffed with saltfish and chorizo

Saltfish. What other un-tinned fish can just sit in your cupboard waiting for a chill evening and a keen hand to remove and ready it for the pot? Nocturnally hydrated it is ready to lend its bounce to soups, salads, patties and pastes. Cookbooks sometimes stress how expensive saltcod is and how its availability is limited to Spanish and Italian delis. There is a simple way to get around both problems that they never seem to mention - get down to a local market with a Caribbean stall and fill your boots. I got three packets of saltfish (it's pollock but I guess we shouldn't be eating cod anyway right?) for five pounds.

There is a recipe in the second Moro book suggesting stuffing spicy peppers with saltfish and I admit that it was the idea for this combination. But nothing was taken so so I'm claiming this one as a SD, ON (near) original!

Ingredients

• 400g saltfish
• six spring onions or a similar amount of onion or shallots
• 100g chorizo
• 2 medium cooked potatos
• five peppers
• dried chilli, garlic, cumin

 

Hydrate and desalinate the saltfish either by soaking overnight or boiling from a coldwater start a couple of times or until it tastes acceptably (un)salty. In the last boil put the potatoes in to cook cut into small chunks. When fish and potato are ready mash together in a bowl.

Meanwhile soften the onions with plenty of garlic in a pan and add the chroizo to colour. Add chilli flakes, cumin  and black pepper to taste. Allow all to cook for a couple of minutes and lubricate with plenty of olive oil. When this mixture is ready combine with the saltfish and potatos and correct seasoning. Stuff this into the peppers and bake for forty-five minutes in a moderate oven until the peppers have started to break down and blacken on top. I had a few tomatoes in the mix too.

For a salad I made a lovely Moro one - blanched cauliflower, chickpeas and preserved lemons dressed with olive oil thick with cumin seed and chopped coriander. This is a wonderful salad that should be made as often as possible.

We had it with pittas.