Life & Style
Peachy Keen
Celebrated for her modern vegan and vegetarian recipes, chef and restaurateur Ravinder Bhogal was born in Kenya to Indian parents. Her latest cookbook, Comfort & Joy, is an ode to her plant-based culinary heritage, boasting everything from fragrant stews and curries to sumptuous salads, such as this peach-packed delight…
A note from Ravinder
“The scent of ripe peaches is so nostalgic, smelling of languid summer afternoons. In England, peachy perfection is hard to come by because imported fruit is generally picked before it’s ripe to prevent it from bruising. As a result, it often goes from hard as a rock to rotten and misses out on that sublime middle stage of ripe sumptuousness. Still, griddling the peaches as I have done for this salad ekes out their natural sweetness, while the aniseed notes in the Thai-basil and lime-leaf gremolata magically makes them taste all the peachier!”
Grilled Peaches with Silken Tofu and Thai-Basil and Lime-Leaf Gremolata
Ingredients for the grilled peaches and silken tofu
300-350g block of silken soft tofu
1 tbsp cold-pressed rapeseed oil, plus extra for drizzling
6 peaches, stoned and cut into wedges
Sea salt
1 long red chilli, sliced thinly on the diagonal, to serve
Ingredients for the Thai-basil and lime-leaf gremolata
Small bunch of coriander, including stalks, roughly chopped
Bunch of Thai basil, leaves torn
8 lime leaves, stalks removed, leaves roughly chopped
1 bird’s eye chilli, roughly chopped
Grated zest and juice of 1 lime
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp soft brown sugar
60ml cold-pressed rapeseed oil
Cooking instructions
Begin by making the tofu cream. Pat away the excess liquid from the tofu using kitchen paper. Break it up and place it in a food processor with the rapeseed oil and some sea salt, and blend till smooth. Empty into a bowl and set aside.
Clean out the food processor and use it to make the gremolata by simply whizzing together all the ingredients until you have a thick dressing. Heat a griddle pan over high heat. Drizzle the peaches with a little oil then grill them cut-side down in the griddle pan, turning them after 30 seconds or until they have char marks.
To serve the salad, spoon the tofu cream over a plate then lay over the griddled peaches. Drizzle over the gremolata and finally scatter over the red chilli. Serve immediately.
