Mike van de Elzen: Christmas sides and salads for the holiday season

This week, we continue with part two of our four-part lead-up to Christmas, focusing on sides and salads.

Mike van de Elzen has chosen two of his favourite classic salads ahead of the festive season, and runs Francesca Rudkin through the recipe as well as a few tips on the key to a great salad.

Ember charred cauliflower with grated ginger, parsley and parmesan

Cook time: 10 minutes

Prep time: 10 minutes

Serves: 6

• 1 head of cauliflower oil for cooking 
• Flaky seasalt and cracked pepper 
• 1 large knob ginger, peeled and mircoplaned
• 1/2 flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• 1 cup parmesan, finely grated 
• 4 tbsp Extra virgin olive oil (this would have to be a first!)

Cut the cauliflower into long florets. You should look at getting around 15-20 florets. 

Bring a large pot ofof salted water to the boil and plunge in the cauliflower. Cook until just under. This will take about 3 minutes. Remove and plunge into iced water to stop the cooking.

Drain once cold and place the cauliflower into a large bowl, drizzle with oil and season with salt. Char-grill over embers or on a hot BBQ until coloured. 

Place back into a clean bowl, toss through the fresh ginger, parsley, parmesan and the remaining olive oil. Check seasoning, you may need more salt. 

Toss and serve

Roasted carrots w mint emulsion & spiced chickpeas

Cook time: 45 minutes

Prep time: 20 minutes

Serves: 12

• 20 carrots cut in half 
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil 
• flaky seasalt
• Miso emulsion 
• 2 soft boiled eggs 
• 1 tbsp miso paste 
• Juice of 1 orange 
• Juice of 2 lemon 
• 1 cup coriander leaves and stalks 
• 10 mint leaves 
• 2 tbsp brown sugar 
• 1 clove garlic 
• 1 tbsp ginger, peeled 
• 300ml sunflower oil
• Spiced chickpeas 
• 1/4 cup sunflower seeds, roasted 
• 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, roasted 
• 1 can drained chickpeas 
• 1 tsp paprika 
• 1 tsp ground cumin 
• 1 tsp ground coriander 
• 1/2 tsp crushed farm chilli
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil

Pre heat the oven to 180*c. 

Cut the carrots in half and drizzle with oil and sprinkle with some salt. Place into the oven and roast until tender. 

Combine all the ingredients for the spiced chickpeas in a bowl and toss, lay out onto a roasting tray and place in the oven along with the carrots. Cooked for 30 minutes stiring every 10 until crispy. Allow to cool

Make up the mint emo

Bring a pot of water to the boil and carefully drop in your eggs. Time them for 5 minutes before removing and placing into iced water till cold. Carefully roll the eggs breaking the shell before peeling. (good luck!) 

Place all the ingredients apart from the oil into the blender and turning on slowly before turning up and slowy drizzle in the oil. Season with salt and pepper if required. 

Spoon a couple tbsp of mint emo onto a platter and stack the roasted carrots on top and finish with the spiced chickpeas.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News talks 'b.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Mike vander Allison, our resident chef, is with us.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Now.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Good morning, Mike, Good morning, and we're going to keep
the Christmas inspiration going with some great ideas for the
Christmas menu, and we're going to talk about sides and
salads today.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Yeah, well, it's it's pretty crucial and particularly you know,
like if you think of daylight today, measure of Christmas
Day is twenty eight degrees lights today, you know it's
going to be total.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm up in the Hawks Bay, it probably will be.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
It's toasting. And so that the sides are crucial to
any sort of weather you're serving turkey whatever. The protein
and the sides are probably the most important part I
think of a Christmas Day, even more so than dessert.
And that's that's saying something. So when it comes to side,
what are we what are we looking for in regards
to sides and salads? So I think balance is probably

(01:04):
a big thing that would come to my mind. So
you're going sweet versus tart, You're going heavy and creamy
versus light and crispy, So you know, what you don't
want to be doing is serving up everything that's say,
mayonnaise based or cream based. So if you've got a
potato salad and then you're serving that alongside a heavy
mayonnaise based cold saw, and then you're serving that alongside

(01:27):
some heavy grutt and potatoes that are cooked and cream.
You know, all these things are going to end up
with all your guests and your family lying in the
corner asleep by three o'clock in the afternoon. So think
of the classic potato salad and then match that up
with a crispy lettuce salad, you know, with a simple
dressing like go lemon juice, mustard, a little bit of

(01:49):
olive or salt, pepper done, you know. So it's it's
finding that balance in your sides.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Okay, give me something to think, you know, You're give
me quite a lot to think about that. I don't
put that much ef and I go, I want, I eat.
I love that salad. I like that one. I'll do this,
this and this, but no, a little bit more thought
would be very.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
A little bit. So you think raw raw salads versus
cook salads, so you know you're going you beetroot, carrot
pumpkin seeds. I'm going to match that with a ready
tart sort of lime yogurt dressing, and then go I'm
going to have a cook salad, which might be your
potato salad, and I'm going to keep that quite light,
so I'm just going to make a pesto. I'm just
going to dress it with a pesto. So try and

(02:27):
keep things as light as you can, because bear in mind,
after your your main course, you are diving into probably
Pavlovas and green.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Gotta leave room for that. You've got a couple of
recipes for us today, and we'll make sure that we
get all those up on our website. Which one would
you like to take us through?

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Probably the charred cauliflower, just because cauliflower will be still
looking reasonably good come Christmas.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Excellent.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
So this is called an Emberg charred culiflower. And I
have spoken about this before and it's probably is. It
would have to be in my top five salads to
serve it anytime, no matter what the occasion. So go
ahead of cauliflower. Bring a large pot of board, more
water to the boil, heavily season that with some salt.
Take your whole cauliflower drop that, and or you can

(03:12):
if you want to speed that, you can cut your
cauliflower into large florettes. Drop that and this will take
two minutes. Two to three minutes after that time, take
it out, plunge it into ice water to stop that
cooking and overcooking instantly. And then once it's called pull
it out, drain it, drizzle it with a little bit
of olive oil and a little bit of salt, a
little bit of pepper, and then fire that onto a barbecue.

(03:34):
So this is called ember fire char char charred couliflower.
So think of an open fire, think of a raging
hot barbecue. You need maximum heat for this, So take
your cauliflower put onto that barbecue and get it really
charred so the outside has got those nice bits of
darkness to them. And then once that's done, pulling mack

(03:56):
in into a large bowl, and then comes all the
important other ingredients that makes a salad so special, and
there's not a lot to them. So one knob of
like a large knob of ginger, peel that, and then
finally micro playing that flat leaf parsi. You want about
a cup to a half maybe a cup of actual
chopped flat leaf parsi, and then a cup of palms in.

(04:18):
So think of a good palmsan for this, Regina palmsano
granted pedando. Finally grate that on your microplane. Add that
in and this would probably be the only time in
a lot of recipes that I actually want you to
use extra virgion olive bill for this because I want
that business. I want the flavor of the oil. So
about four tablespoons and extra virgion olive bill. Maybe season
it up a little bit more, a bit more crack pepper,

(04:39):
a little bit more flaky salt. Give that a toss
if you want. You could swee some fresh lemon juice
over that and then serve that straight away. And it's
the most simple but really flavorsome salad with that charred coliflower,
the ginger and the palmsan and the parsley all kind
of coming together in a in a pretty cool marriage, both.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
These salads that you've also got roasted carrots with mint
emulsion and spice chickpeas. These it be my meal, I'd
make these, had that it's not my meal.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, oien is maybe a but turkey or a little
sliced ham and Bob's your auntie, You're all done.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
It's always important. I like, We've got members of our household,
some like meat, some don't. So you know, if you
often the salad becomes the main meal and then there
might be a bit of protein on the side. If
somebody can't, you couldn't, couldn't possibly survive without a little
bit of it.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
So next week I'm actually talking about the protein. So
I can't ever think about what I'm gonna which protein
I'm actually gonna do a recipe for, because I can't
do a rest before all the No.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Do do you always have a turkey a Christmas?

Speaker 3 (05:39):
We don't. Our tradition is a Dutch dish called cow scottle,
and it's it's braised beef served with cold potato, pickles,
gurkins and those real tiny little pickled white onions with mayonnaise,
tomatoes and lettuce for scottle.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Just imagine how the afternoon is going to play out
at your place. I love it.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, delicious, Thank you so much, Mike.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
For more from Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen live
to News Talks at b from nine am Sunday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.