There was a time in the beige, doldrums of Noughties vegetarianism when eating meat-free out meant being handed a stuffed pepper, a stuffed mushroom, or, if you’re lucky, a risotto. A handful of cooks dragged the vegetable out of that purgatory, and Helen Graham, across five years as executive chef at Bubala in London, was among the most persuasive of them.
The way people evangelise about Messi’s left foot, the food world holds forth on Graham’s handling of the vegetable. You’ll find restaurant writer Jay Rayner waxing lyrical about her toffied roasted aubergine, and cookbook author Anna Jones reminiscing about her menus at Bubala. Now that she’s left the restaurant, Centrepiece is her next project, which does what it suggests: making vegetables the protagonists, the A-listers.
Centrepiece by Helen Graham is published by Octopus Publishing (£28)
Drawing inspiration from the flavours of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as her Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, Graham’s debut cookbook features 100 inventive, vegetable-centric recipes that will transform your table with accessible ingredients and simple methods.
I was lucky enough to help out on Graham’s launch of her cookbook, and I have rarely watched a room of media professionals descend on a table of vegetables with the single-minded focus of seagulls on an unguarded chip. Graham’s own line puts it best – “treat the vegetable as the star, coax out every last note of flavour, pair it with something playful, and you land on something rather special.”
Courgette skewers with preserved lemon and hot sauce
Ribboned, grilled and slicked in a miso-and-preserved-lemon marinade, these skewers make the case for the courgette as a main event rather than an afterthought
Yuki Sugiura
Serves 8
Preparation time 30 minutes
Cooking time 25 minutes
The courgette is a much-maligned vegetable, usually because people treat it incorrectly. With its high water content, it’s easy to end up with a bland, pulpy mush if you don’t cook it long enough, at high enough heat, or remove the insides. Cook it right, and it earns its place at the table.
“This recipe calls for a fermented hot sauce such as Cholula or sriracha. They all vary in heat, so start with the smallest amount first and see how you go, making these as hot or mild as you like,” says Graham. “The seedy part of courgettes is too brittle to skewer, so keep those for something else, like a soup or stew.”
Ingredients
1kg courgettes
½ tbsp fennel seeds, lightly ground
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
50g white miso
1–2¼ tbsp hot sauce
50g preserved lemon, roughly chopped
3 tbsp agave syrup
¾ tsp fine sea salt
120ml vegetable oil
Method
Place your 18cm wooden skewers in water to soak for at least 20 minutes.
Top and tail the courgettes, then shave them into long strips lengthways using a vegetable peeler. When you get to the seedy centres, stop and keep those for another occasion (or compost them).
Put the fennel seeds, garlic, miso, hot sauce, preserved lemon, agave syrup and salt in a jug and use a stick blender to blitz to a smooth paste. Slowly pour in the oil while continuing to blend. If you don’t have a stick blender, you can use a regular blender to blitz the solids before transferring to a bowl and slowly whisking in the oil until emulsified.
Preheat your grill to its hottest setting.
Thread the courgette strips on to the drained skewers, ribboning them on to create a concertina effect and leaving 2.5cm empty at either end. Transfer to a baking tray lined with foil, topping and tailing them to ensure they fit, and brush liberally all over with the marinade. Place under the grill and grill for 4–6 minutes, then turn with tongs and grill for a further 4–6 minutes on each of the 4 sides until they reach the same colour. Keep checking them, as some will colour quicker than others, so just turn the browned ones until they’re golden on each side.
Transfer to a serving dish to serve.
Marzipan cauliflower with caraway oil
Roasted cauliflower over a silky ajo blanco, finished with yoghurt and a caraway oil – the humble brassica as dinner-party showpiece
Serves 4
Preparation time 25 minutes
Cooking time 40 minutes
Cauliflower is the ideal centrepiece for a dinner-party table: a sturdy brassica that soaks up flavour, chars beautifully and lands with all the drama of a roasted joint. Here it’s tossed with yoghurt and a moreish caraway oil, over an ajo blanco whose almond note lends the dish its marzipan character.
“Believe it or not, this idea came to me in a dream. There is an almondy quality to cauliflower, so I thought it would be fun to envelop it in ground almonds; it sort of melts together,” says Graham. “But that’s where the marzipan similarities end. Make the ajo blanco and caraway oil ahead, stirring the mint through the oil after.”
Ingredients
1 large cauliflower
250g Greek yoghurt, or vegan alternative
½ tsp fine sea salt
2 tbsp olive oil, plus more to cook
50g ground almonds
2 garlic cloves, finely grated
½ tsp almond extract (optional)
For the caraway oil
65ml olive oil
4 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1 tbsp caraway seeds
5 cloves
1 tbsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp Aleppo chilli flakes
¼ tsp fine sea salt
½ tbsp agave syrup
1 tbsp lemon juice
50g blanched almonds, toasted and roughly chopped
15g mint leaves, roughly torn
For the ajo blanco
60g ground almonds
5½ tbsp water
1 garlic clove, finely grated
2 tsp sherry vinegar
50ml olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp fine sea salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C fan (425°F), gas mark 7. Line a roasting tin with nonstick baking paper.
Break the cauliflower into florets and separate the leaves. Put the yoghurt in a large bowl with the salt, olive oil, ground almonds, garlic and almond extract, if using, and whisk to combine. Add the cauliflower florets and leaves and toss thoroughly to coat before transferring them to the lined tin, ensuring it’s all in a single layer. Sprinkle over more oil and roast for 35 minutes, turning the florets halfway through, until evenly golden.
For the caraway oil, put the oil, star anise, cinnamon stick, caraway seeds, cloves and fennel seeds in a small saucepan and bring to a very gentle simmer (not to the boil). Simmer for 5 minutes or until the spices are aromatic. Turn off the heat and let the oil cool. Put the Aleppo chilli in a small bowl with the salt, syrup and lemon juice, setting a sieve over the top, then strain over the infused oil and discard the spices. Once the oil is completely cold, add the chopped almonds. Add the mint only just before serving so that it doesn’t wilt.
For the ajo blanco, put the almonds, measured water, garlic and sherry vinegar in a jug and use a stick blender to blitz it into a smooth paste. With the blender still running, slowly trickle in the olive oil in a steady stream until thoroughly combined and you have a thick, emulsified sauce. Add the lemon juice and salt and briefly blitz.
Spoon the ajo blanco over a dish and top with the cauliflower. Add the mint to the caraway oil, stir, then spoon it over to serve
Miso-roasted sweet potato with lime pickle
Fudgy roasted sweet potato, a miso glaze and cooling lime-pickle yoghurt – a snaffable side that’ll have guests fighting over the last spud
Yuki Sugiura
Serves 4
Preparation time 20 minutes
Cooking time 35 minutes
Vegetable sides needn’t be an afterthought. Here, the humble sweet potato is roasted until caramelised and fudgy, served with a cooling, lime-pickle-spiked yoghurt and sticky miso glaze. It’s a snaffable side that’s perfect for an al fresco spread with pals.
“The perfect sweet potato side dish, brought alive by a few store-cupboard staples. It looks very unassuming, like plain roast potato,” says Graham. “But that’s a big part of what makes this dish so joyful: the complete surprise about the level of flavour it’s secretly packing.”
Ingredients
3 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 2.5cm chunks
2 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp fine sea salt
For the miso glaze
2 tbsp lime pickle
2 tbsp agave syrup, or honey, or maple syrup
1 tbsp miso (white or red both work)
1 garlic clove, finely grated
1½ tbsp water
For the lime pickle yoghurt
1 tbsp lime pickle
150g Greek yoghurt, or vegan alternative
For the sesame-dressed coriander
2 tsp toasted sesame oil
juice of 1 lime
15g coriander, roughly chopped
⅙ tsp fine sea salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C fan (400°F), gas mark 6. Line a baking tray with nonstick baking paper.
Place the sweet potatoes on the lined tray and toss with the olive oil and salt, then spread out in a single layer and roast for 25 minutes until cooked through and beginning to colour. Remove from the oven.
Increase the oven temperature to 200°C fan (425°F), gas mark 7.
Blitz all the ingredients for the glaze in a blender, ideally a high-powered bullet blender, until completely smooth. Add to the sweet potatoes and toss to coat, then return to the oven for a further 10 minutes until bubbly and caramelised. Transfer to a serving dish.
Gently ripple the lime pickle into the yoghurt and spoon into a separate serving bowl.
Stir the ingredients for the sesame-dressed coriander together in a bowl, then scatter this over the roasted sweet potatoes and serve, with the yoghurt on the side
Ice cream with soy caramel and maple chilli oil
No churning, no blind-baking – just good shop-bought ice cream, dolled up with soy caramel and a maple-chilli oil. It’s the perfect make-ahead dessert that does all the work before the guests arrive
Yuki Sugiura
Serves 4
Preparation time 10 minutes
Cooking time 15 minutes
Having people over is enough of a job without the pudding turning into a second one – nobody wants to be churning custard or blind-baking pastry while the guests are already through the door. Graham’s answer is a good shop-bought ice cream, tarted up with soy caramel and a maple-chilli oil that tips it into that addictive sweet-salty-hot territory.
“This is my low-effort entertaining dessert. All you need to do is make the two sauces ahead of time, then just buy the best ice cream you can find. I go for vanilla, but this oil works equally well with strawberry or chocolate,” says Graham. “The chilli oil is not overly spicy, so feel free to use more Aleppo chilli and hot paprika, if you’d like.”
Ingredients
460ml tub of shop-bought ice cream (see recipe introduction)
For the soy caramel
50g caster sugar
50g unsalted butter, chopped
100ml double cream
4 tsp soy sauce
Pinch of sea salt flakes
For the maple chilli oil
5 tbsp olive oil
2 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1 tbsp black sesame seeds
1 tbsp toasted white sesame seeds
¼ tsp hot smoked paprika
½ tbsp Aleppo chilli flakes
2 tbsp maple syrup
Pinch of sea salt flakes
Method
To make the soy caramel, place the sugar in a small saucepan and set over a low heat, swirling the pan occasionally so that the sugar catches evenly and resisting the urge to go in there with a spoon until it’s fully melted.
At this point, grab a rubber spatula (wooden spoons are too hard to clean of the caramel) and stir it. Remove from the heat, add the butter and cream and stir rapidly until the butter is fully melted and combined. Return the mixture to the heat and stir continuously until it begins to bubble. Turn off the heat and stir in the soy and salt, then decant into a heatproof container and allow to cool.
For the maple-chilli oil, put the oil into a saucepan along with the star anise and cinnamon and bring to a gentle simmer over a low heat for 4–5 minutes until
