What to Eat

When you spend most of your days in the office and takeout over your desk happens more often than not, you sometimes miss out on trying new dishes. From our Women in Business Newsletter, we pick out seasonal recommendations for you to test each month.

Pink Radicchio Salad

You would think nothing was in season in January, but pink radicchio is!. The salad heads look like giant, fluffy flowers, so you can’t help but become happy when you see them on your plate. Use them as a base for a salad with a sweet dressing, since the leaves can be bitter on their own. They also pair well with orange flesh and toasted pine nuts.

At the Holy Carrot in London

If you’re not based in London, I’ll have to apologise in advance for recommending this, but there’s always weekend trips. Holy Carrot in Knightsbridge serves up delicious drinks and vegan food, and not the type you want to send back to the kitchen. When you can’t stop stuffing your face with purple carrot sorbet, you know someone has done something brilliant. I’ll be having my veggies like that from now on, please.

Purple Carrot Ice Cream

In the March Newsletter, I bragged about one of the desserts at Holy Carrot in Knightsbridge, now we’ve made our own version at home. Freeze chunks of super-ripe bananas (300g) and purple carrots (275g). When frozen, put them into a blender. Add 75g pitted dates, 100g cashew butter and 30g lemon including the skin and a pinch of salt. Blend on high speed for up to 2 minutes using a tamper to push the ingredients down. Spoon in small amounts of milk or water if it’s difficult to blend. Pour the soft serve in a freeze-safe dish and put back in the freezer again for 4 to 6 hours. It’s pink, it’s delicious, and smoother than you had ever thought a carrot could be.

Edible flowers

Forget the traditional flowers that have been used to decorate things like wedding cakes. Flowers can be used for many more dishes than this! What you want to use them for really depends on the flowers you pick. Flowers from garlic and leek can be intensely satisfying to put as a topping on a pizza after it comes out of the oven. While zucchini flowers traditionally are deep-fried. Try some peppery borage as a topping on your salad or with hummus, or put some milder pansies to brighten up a boring glass of ice water. Oh, and make sure you buy flowers that have actually been grown for eating so you don’t end up with a pesticide salad.

Hand-crushed pesto

It sounds like a lot more hassle than it actually is, but can it actually be that much better than what comes ready in a jar or what you get your blender to swirl through? The act of crushing raw garlic with the rest of the ingredients makes sure it imparts its flavour evenly everywhere and the difference is quite intense. Start by crushing 1 clove of raw garlic with a pestle and squeeze the juice of 1/2 lemon over. Roughly cut 100g of basil leaves with a pair of scissors and crush a bit at a time. Then add 60g of toasted pine nuts and choose between 2 tsp white miso and 2 tbsp of nutritional yeast or the same amount in Parmesan.

Lavender & Oat Ice Cream

We’re in lavender season and want lavender everything. And if you ever grew up being told to finish all your porridge, this is a great way to repurpose it. Start by microwaving or boiling 100 g oats and 300 ml water in the morning or the day before you want ice cream, and throw 3 ripe bananas in the freezer. Infuse dried food-grade lavender into 300 ml of any kind of milk over low heat for 10 minutes and cool down with the porridge. When the time comes to mix it, add all the ingredients to a blender along with a pinch of salt, 200 g cashew butter and 100 g dates. Blend on high speed for up to two minutes. Pour into an ice cream machine or put it in the freezer and stir it every hour until frozen.