Insalata di rinforzo Recipe | 4Food

Date Published:: 09/10/2007

This Nigella recipe is taken from the Christmas Special of her Channel 4 programme Nigella Bites. These recipes are simple and stress-free. As Nigella Says: "Christmas food is the best sort of food because it's about proper, unpretentious home cooking. Feasting isn't about formality: it's about providing friends and family with good things to eat."

Ingredients

Insalata di rinforzo

4 tablespoons Maldon salt
1 head cauliflower cut into florets
700ml white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
4 cloves garlic peeled and left whole
3 stalks celery cut on a diagonal into 2cm pieces
300g pickling onions peeled after soaking in hot water
2 yellow peppers, seeded and cut into 2cm thick strips
2 red peppers, seeded and cut into 2cm thick strips
1 fennel bulb, sliced
6 red chillies left whole
200g pitted olives, black, green or a mixture
2 tablespoons capers
bunch of flat leaf parsley chopped

To dress as a salad

50ml white wine vinegar
100ml extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

To preserve as a pickle

bottle of white wine vinegar
bottle of olive oil (not extra virgin)

Method: How to cook insalata di rinforzo

1.Boil 4 litres of water in a large saucepan.

2.Add 2 tablespoons of salt and the cauliflower florets and cook for 5-8 minutes.

3.Remove florets and plunge into bowl of iced water.

4.Pour out half of the boiling water, then add 700ml of white wine vinegar, remaining salt, the teaspoon of fennel seeds and the garlic cloves.

5.Bring the pan back to the boil and add the celery, onions, peppers, fennel, and whole chillies and cook everything for about 10 minutes until tender.

6.Refresh the vegetables in the same way, plunging them into iced water. When they are cold drain them along with the cauliflower florets.

7.In a large bowl, mix the cauliflower and other vegetables along with the garlic, olives and capers.

8.Whisk together the oil and vinegar and pour over the pickled salad, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle over the chopped parsley. Combine everything really well (use your hands).

9.At this point you have a pickled vegetable salad which serves 8 generously. Or you can stuff everything into 4 x 1 litre wide necked sterilised Kilner jars and pour in a 50/50 mixture of olive oil and vinegar to cover the vegetables.