This summer I’ve managed to enjoy a good balance of London heatwave and Mediterranean coastal sea wind. It was perfect because as soon as the heatwave kicked in in London we coincidentally had plans to go to the seaside somewhere in Europe or Morocco. Now it’s back to school season, we’ve been in London for a couple of weeks and I am just starting to feel reacquainted with my alarm and snooze button. And talking about back to school, our baby girl Laelia – who’s no longer a baby! – started preschool this week. We dropped her off and left her for the first time ever and she couldn’t be happier about it. When we left, her answer was “bye bye”, I am not going to bother you with how it made me feel and how am still wondering why she’s not missing us just *a little* bit.

This recipe! A few weeks (or was it few months?) ago, I visited Belazu’s Pembury Kitchen in London and cooked a feast with their development chef Henry Russell. It was so much fun to brainstorm together and to create super tasty dishes inspired by Morocco and Belazu’s products. By the end of the morning we had cooked some serious deliciousness including this artichoke, green peas and preserved lemon salad.

This recipe is a sort of “cooked salad” version of the Artichoke, baby potato & preserved lemon tagine that’s in my cookbook Casablanca. We intended to make the whole tagine but then decided to make a quick and easy version of it (minus the potatoes) and the salad form tastes just as good as the tagine one! Once you have all the ingredients prepped, the salad is ready in no-time, super comforting and fragrant.

Artichoke, green peas, purple olives and preserved lemon salad

INGREDIENTS

3 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 small preserved lemons, flesh and rind finely chopped
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
½ teaspoon ground ginger
200g frozen green peas
2 tablespoons finely chopped coriander
¼ teaspoon salt, or more to taste
Generous pinch ground black pepper
200g drained precooked artichokes, roughly chopped
60g drained red-brown olives, such as Kalamata, pitted and roughly chopped

METHOD

• Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Mix in the garlic, preserved lemon, ground turmeric and ground ginger and fry for a minute until the oil is fragrant.

• Stir in the green peas, coriander, salt and pepper and give a good stir to the content of the pan. Cover the pan and leave until the green peas are fully cooked, about 4 minutes. Mix in the artichokes and Kalamata olives, taste and adjust the seasoning with salt if necessary. Serve warm or cold, as desired.

Photos by Belazu & Jose Laborda Ubiria.