I was recently asked what Imeant by saying I look for "drama in the mouth" when eating. Icertainly don't want every mouthful to make astatement, but I am always on the lookout for bursts of pronounced flavour and mouthfuls that surprise and delight. These can come in many guises: currants soaked in vinegar, preserved lemon skin, a spoonful of fresh green chilli paste, thin slices of stem ginger in syrup… Give any of them a mellow background, and they'll shine.
Sorrel is another ingredient with an inbuilt "wow" factor. This startlingly sour leaf, if paired with more evenly balanced flavours, can turn even the most frugal of meals into something very special. As with lemon juice, the more sorrel you use, the more it has to be balanced with something sweet, starchy or creamy – it's a yin-yang approach to cooking that I find rather calming. For sorrel to shine in a spring soup, say, the onions must be softened slowly, so their natural sweetness comes out, while you need the addition of potatoes or haricot beans to cushion the sorrel's kick (red lentil and sorrel soup works for much the same reason).
Used raw in a salad, this lemony leaf works best against soft herbs such as chives or parsley, with a few bitter leaves and dressed simply in olive oil. And if you've shredded it into an omelette, sorrel needs only some grated, creamy cheese or a few snipped chives for company.
One of my favourite seasonal sauces is to whizz up equal weights of fresh sorrel and Greek yoghurt with a garlic clove, some olive oil and a little Dijon mustard. It takes seconds to make, and Idrizzle it over just about anything – roasted root veg, lentils, chicken or potato salad, red meat, oily fish, turkey burgers, Swiss chard fritters. Another simple sorrel treat is to soften the leaves in a little butter and mix inadash of cream: poured over afried salmon steak, fishcakes or poachedeggs, this is another low-maintenance but brilliantly effective way of getting some action into an otherwise mellow mouthful.
Please don't be off put by sorrel's loss of colour when it's cooked: that vibrant green may turn to a more killjoy khaki, but the punchy flavour doesn't get similarly tempered. Also, the colour loss can be reversed a bit by stirring through some freshly chopped sorrel just before serving.
And sorrel's pleasures don't end there. It makes a glorious pesto that goes brilliantly with grilled mackerel – put 75g of sorrel, 15g parsley, 50g pistachios, two peeled garlic cloves, a teaspoon of cider vinegar, half a teaspoon of maple syrup, three tablespoons of olive oil and apinch of salt in a food processor and blitz.
Tempting? I hope so. But the trouble with sorrel is, it's all too rare that you'll find it on the supermarket shelves (although a few do stock it when it'sin season). Instead, you've got to hunt it down at good grocers and farmers' markets, or forage for ityourself (no great hardship on a sunny spring day). Still, with the salad offerings at our supermarkets becoming less and less hom*ogenous by the year, with any luck it'll only be amatter of time before we get moreof the dramatic sorrel and less of the anaemic iceberg and co.
Rhubarb, celery and sorrel salad
This crunchy, crisp, sharp salad is ideal for spring and early summer. The addition of raw rhubarb is a wonderful way to add even more vigour to an already hyper-punchy combination. Serves four.
50g red quinoa
40g radishes (about 3 small ones), cut into 3mm slices (I use a mandoline)
130g rhubarb (about 1½ stalks), cut diagonally into 3mm slices
100g celery (about 2 stalks), cut diagonally into 3mm slices
50g parmesan (or vegetarian alternative), finely shaved
1 granny smith apple, cored, quartered and cut into 3mm wedges
80g watercress
For the dressing
90g sorrel leaves
5 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp white-wine vinegar
1½ tbsp soured cream
Salt
Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Add the quinoa and gently simmer for about 12 minutes, until cooked but still al dente. Strain, refresh and drain.
Put all the dressing ingredients bar one tablespoon of oil into the small bowl of a food processor, add three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt and blitz smooth.
Put all the salad ingredients in a large bowl. Pour over the dressing, add the remaining tablespoon of oil, mix together gently and serve.
Crisp prawns with celeriac and coriander remoulade
Celeriac benefits from a soaking in cold water, so get this started a day ahead (even an hour ahead is better than nothing). Because there are so many other flavours going on, Ithink it's fine to use a good commercial mayonnaise here, ratherthan making your own. The rémoulade is a wonderful match for the meaty prawns, but if you want less work, the sorrel dressing in this week's rhubarb salad also makes agood dipping sauce for the prawns. Servesfour, as a first course.
4 tbsp mayonnaise
15g chopped fresh coriander
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
1½ tsp lemon juice
1 tsp sweet chilli sauce
10g capers, roughly chopped
Salt and white pepper
⅓ celeriac (250g gross), peeled, cutinto thin julienne matchsticks and soaked overnight iniced water
30g panko breadcrumbs
1 tbsp coriander seeds, lightlycrushed
1½ tsp black sesame seeds (if you can't find those, use white instead)
20g hazelnuts, skin on, toasted and finely chopped
30g cornflour
1 large egg, lightly beaten
Sunflower oil, for frying
12 raw tiger prawns (or 20 king prawns), cleaned and shelled, though leaving the tails on
4 lemon wedges, to serve
Put the mayonnaise, coriander, garlic, lemon juice, chilli sauce, capers, a quarter-teaspoon of salt and some white pepper in a large bowl and mix well. Drain the celeriac, pat dry with kitchen towel, stir into the mix and set aside.
Put the breadcrumbs in a shallow bowl and stir in a teaspoon of white pepper, the coriander and sesame seeds, the hazelnuts and three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt. Put the cornflour and egg in two separate shallow bowls.
Pour enough oil – 500ml or so – into a medium saucepan so that it comes 1.5cm up the sides and, on a medium to high heat, bring it up to frying temperature. It's hot enough when a pinch of the crust sizzles nicely but doesn't burn quickly.
Dip the prawns first in the cornflour, then in the egg and finally in the panko mix, so they have a nice even coating. Fry in batches for about 90 seconds, until the crust islightly golden and the prawns are cooked through. Use a slotted spoonto transfer them to a plate lined with kitchen paper and keep warm while you cook the rest.
Divide the rémoulade between four plates, perch the prawns on top andserve with a wedge of lemon.
