Cooking with Fruit Leather

Well now this is a fun thing for your Easter kitchen. We’ve been playing with lavashak over on our new book website – but its applications extend far wider than the borders of Veggiestan. It works well with meat and fish too. In fact, as we are very faddy, we’ve been pretty much trying it with everything. So far the winning ideas are:

• using fruit leather as the outer layer of a meatloaf/terrine (choose apricot);
• wrapping it around regular stuffing/forcemeat before stuffing a leg of lamb/chicken/pork (sour cherry flavour works best);
• try wrapping chipolatas in fruit leather (plum is good), and then wrapping the fruit leather with bacon: serve as appetisers or with liver and onions. Serious nom nom nom;
• wrapping it around seasoned salmon fillets before baking the fish in foil parcels (sour grape or barberry flavour).

But this is our favourite. Gammon Steaks with Fruit Leather and Labneh You will need (to serve 4) 4 gammon steaks 125g creamy labneh spread (a mix of plain yoghurt and cream cheese would do the job as well) 150g labneh balls (or substitute Caerphilly cheese), crumbled generous handful of fresh breadcrumbs (about 4 slices of stale bread should do it) generous handful of fresh parsley, chopped coarse ground black pepper 4 good strips of fruit leather (pomegranate or apple) Snip the edges of each steak to prevent curling, and then grill them for around 4 minutes either side. In the meantime, mix the labneh spread with the crumbled labneh, breadcrumbs, parsley and black pepper. Place a strip of fruit leather to cover one side of each steak, and spread the cheesey mixture on top. Pop the gammon under the grill again, this time for around 3 minutes or until the top is bubbling and golden. Serve with sautes and spinach.