This bright orange-red African soup is rich enough to eat as a simple main course and so easy to make you can knock it together in around half an hour. Fresh peanuts give this dish the best flavour, but you can also use two tablespoons of peanut butter rather than grinding your own if you want to make things simpler for yourself.
1 large sweet potato
1 large onion
3 carrots
150 grams shelled roasted peanuts
4 tomatoes
600 ml vegetable or chicken stock
1 green chilli
1 teaspoonful chopped ginger
2 cloves garlic
4 whole cloves
1½ tablespoons oil
Salt and pepper
First, chop the peeled vegetables into small dice and chop the chilli, ginger and garlic into a fine hash. Score a cross on each tomato with a knife, drop them into a bowl of boiling water for 30 seconds then peel and chop them. In a saucepan, sweat the onions, carrots and flavourings very gently in the oil, until the onions become slightly translucent. Add the chopped tomatoes and cook briefly until their juice starts to run, then throw in the stock and sweet potato. Bring to the boil and simmer gently until the sweet potato and carrot can be broken apart with a fork. While it is cooking, put the peanuts into a blender and pulse until you have a soft but still slightly crunchy paste. If you prefer, you can also mash the nuts with a mortar and pestle - it only takes three or four minutes. Once the vegetables have softened, stir in the peanut butter, correct the seasoning and cook for a minute or so more. You can now either blend the soup until smooth or just break up the vegetables with a potato masher and leave it lumpy. Serves four.
This South East Asian salad with peanut sauce is perfect hot weather food, with a refreshing mix of intense, rich spices and fresh crunchy vegetables. The sauce on its own is also great dolloped on top of grilled chicken or oily fish. The tangy, slightly soapy flavour of galangal root gives this dish a lift, but if you can't get hold of it, ginger is also a nice addition (though the flavour is quite different).
For the sauce
250 grams shelled raw peanuts
150 ml coconut milk
400 ml water
2 cloves garlic
4 shallots
2 red chillies
1 teaspoon tamarind pulp
½ teaspoon grated galangal root
½ teaspoon brown sugar (ideally palm sugar)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
Vegetable oil
For the salad
300 grams new potatoes
3 handfuls green beans
4 hard boiled eggs
¼ cauliflower
3 handfuls beansprouts
½ head white cabbage
4 carrots
½ a cucumber
1 round lettuce heart
1 heaped tablespoon coriander leaf, chopped
For the sauce
Fry the peanuts for five minutes in a few centimetres of oil in a large frying pan, then remove them with a slotted spoon. Once they have cooled completely, blend them to a paste in a blender or mortar. Chop the chillies, garlic, galangal root and shallots finely and fry them in a tablespoon of the oil you have used for the peanuts for a few minutes, until pale brown. Add the coconut milk, tamarind pulp, sugar, soy sauce and water to the pan and bring to the boil. Stir in the peanuts and simmer for 10 minutes.
For the salad
Boil the potatoes in their skins until cooked, then peel off their skins and cut into small chunks. Cut the carrots and cucumber into thin strips, break the cauliflower into small florets and shred the cabbage finely. Bring a large pan of water to the boil, then throw in the carrots and cauliflower and return to the boil. A minute later add the cabbage. Another minute later stir in the beansprouts and cook for one last minute. Drain the pan and run the contents under the cold tap to stop them cooking further (some people may prefer them cooked a little softer). Shake the salad as dry as possible, then place in a dish, adding the lettuce heart roughly torn into pieces. Place the hard boiled eggs, peeled and quartered lengthways on top, and pour over the hot peanut sauce. Sprinkle over the chopped coriander and serve immediately. Serves four to six.
jbrennan@thenational.ae