Ottolenghi’s Bulgur with Tomato, Aubergine & Preserved Lemon Yoghurt from his book Simple has become one of the family’s favourite dishes and we cook it often – to serve with lamb, chicken, sausages. I’ve been making it so often lately that the other day I thought I should take another look through Simple and see what other recipes I’d like to try. The Hazelnut, Peach & Raspberry Cake has already become a favourite too but I was keen to find another ‘side dish’. And that’s when I spied Butterbean Mash with Muhammara (the book editor in me has had to change ‘butterbean’ to its correct two words in my own title!). Muhammara is ‘a spicy Levantine dip made from red peppers and walnuts’. It sounded great and looked delicious in the accompanying photo in the book and so I decided to give it a try.

‘Ottolenghi’ and ‘simple’ are not two words that generally sit together. Ottolenghi’s recipes are famously complicated with measurements so finely tuned that you may be required to measure out a 6¼ teaspoons of something. I don’t cook like that, but I much admire Ottolenghi’s cooking and the food I’ve enjoyed at his flagship restaurant in Islington a few times over the years (click here), is amongst the best food I’ve ever eaten. The butter bean dish did sound simple but of course, while it’s not difficult, it is a good deal more time consuming that it first appears. That said, it turned out to be so gorgeous that it’s without doubt about to become a new favourite in the Travel Gourmet family!

Ottolenghi suggests the dish goes well with grilled meat and I can see it will be great to serve with salads and other side dishes as part of a barbecue meal, but in the end I decided to make some kofte. I made the spicy ones I wrote about here before so please go to that post for the recipe: click here. As for the butter bean mash and pepper sauce, I pretty much followed Ottolenghi’s recipe but tweaked it a little along the way. I made half the quantity and I didn’t put in nearly as much garlic (he uses 8 cloves in the sauce). I also skinned the roasted peppers as once they’d blackened I didn’t want too strong a flavour from the black bits and the skins easily came off. I’d usually skin roasted peppers. Neither did I use a food processor to blend either the mash or sauce, but a hand blender instead. This was partly because of the smaller quantity, partly because Ottolenghi says to leave the sauce a ‘rough paste’ … and, because it’s easier! But essentially, it’s Ottolenghi’s recipe, so a big thank you to him!

Lamb Kofte with a Butter Bean Mash & Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

• for lamb kofte please see this recipe – click here

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

• 2 red peppers (I used Romano peppers but bell peppers are good too)
• about ½ tablespoon olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves
• about ½ tablespoon fresh thyme leaves (remove from stalk)
• ½ teaspoon sweet smoked paprika
• good pinch of chilli flakes
• 30g walnut halves, lightly roasted and roughly chopped
• 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Butter Bean Mash

• 50ml olive oil
• 1 garlic clove with skin on, crushed
• 1 sprig of fresh thyme
• 1 x 400g butter beans, drained and rinsed

First make the kofte. I made half of my original recipe – so using 400g lamb mince. Once the mix was made, I weighed it, found it was 460g and I divided it into 10 equal parts, weighing out as I went. I find that the best thing to do, despite my free and easy tendencies when cooking, so they will cook evenly and also you don’t get left with an odd amount at the end. Once made, keep in fridge until ready to cook.

   

Next made the pepper sauce. Preheat the oven to 220C fan.

Cut the stalk out of the peppers and deseed. Cut into quarters. Put in a bowl, pour over the olive oil and mix with your hands to coat each piece.

   

Lay the pieces of pepper, skin side up, on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Put into the oven for 15 minutes. Then add the garlic (Ottolenghi would have put 4 in but I added just 2) and cook for another 15 minutes until the skin is blackening a bit and the peppers soft. I found, because I used Romano peppers which are a bit thinner, they didn’t need quite this long, so do keep an eye on them so they don’t burn and blacken too much.

 

While the peppers are cooking, prepare the other ingredients. Put the thyme leaves, paprika and chilli flakes in a bowl. Lightly dry roast the walnuts in a small frying pan and then chop roughly. Add to the bowl but keep a few pieces for garnishing at the end.

 

When the peppers are cooked, remove from oven and carefully peel off the skins. They should come off very easily. Put the flesh in a bowl and add the other ingredients with a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Also add the garlic – I decided to put just one clove in. Blend to a rough paste with a hand blender.

Now prepare the mash. Put the olive oil in a pan and gently heat. When it’s hot add the thyme sprig and crushed garlic clove. Cook gently for 2-3 minutes so the oil takes up the flavours of the thyme and garlic. Then remove them and turn off the heat, and reserve a teaspoon of the oil and the thyme. Add the drained butter beans and using a hand blender, blend until nicely smooth. Add a little water if necessary so it’s not too thick. Then season with a little salt and pepper to taste. Ottolenghi doesn’t add pepper but I wanted to.

 

Lay the mash on a plate and spread out. Then spoon the sauce on top and spread this out too, but not right to the edges. Sprinkle over the reserved walnut pieces and lay the sprig of thyme across the middle. Drizzle over the reserved oil and a little extra olive oil if you want. Voilà! What a great looking side dish.

I decided to serve with some pitta bread and the yoghurt and preserved lemon from the bulgur recipe (click here). Son had come to supper and cooked the kofte on the griddle. When all was ready, I laid the dishes on the table and we were ready to go.

It was all very good but the mash and peppers were exceptionally wonderful. We decided we’d be making this a lot in the coming months as a brilliant accompaniment to a barbecue meal during the summer.