Lemon Zucchini

I love dill – I know it’s a love-it or hate-it herb, and I’m definitely in the love-it camp. To me, it’s a strong flavour like caraway or fennel or cardamom or anise – all of which I love.

Here’s a simple side dish for when zucchini is in season…..this was inspired by The Intolerant Gourmet, Barbara Kafka’s latest book of gluten-free/lactose-free recipes, and is very lemony. I couldn’t get fresh dill – but of course use it if you can get it – it’s a hit and miss herb for me at my local shops.

Lemon Zucchini

1 tbsp olive oil

1 large zucchini, cut into 0.5 cm slices

1/2 tsp dried dill

2 wedges preserved lemon, chopped

1/4 tsp chilli paste

1/4 cup white wine

salt & pepper, to taste

Heat oil in medium pan; add zucchini, dill, lemon and chilli paste, and saute for 2 minutes.

Add wine, salt & pepper, and saute for 10 minutes, stirring often.

Serves 2-3 as a side dish.

Happy Fooding!

Green Bean Salad

I’m sorry there is no photo of this yummy salad – I DID take photos but they seem to have disappeared into cyberspace somewhere. Take my word for it, this does look great!

I’ve mentioned before that I got a great new cookbook for my birthday, and have shared with you a wonderful barley recipe from it. I’ve also tried a stuffed squid dish, which tasted quite good but to be honest wasn’t tasty enough to warrant the amount of effort that went into preparing it.

This vegie salad is a delight of vibrant colours and zesty fresh flavours. Although the book says it serves 4, it actually makes quite a large amount, so is a great salad to add to your Summer bbq side dish collection.

The recipe calls for flat beans, but hey use whatever fresh beans you like. Same goes for the parsley – curly-leafed would be fine, and you could use walnuts instead of hazelnuts.

Italian Flat Bean Salad

800 gms flat green beans, trimmed

2 lemons

1 orange

1 red onion, thinly sliced

2 bunches of flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

80 gms hazelnuts, finely chopped

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

sea salt & freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Blanch the beans in a large saucepan of rapidly boiling water for 3 minutes or until tender, then cool under running water.

Remove the zest from the lemons and orange with a zester or vegie peeler. Cover with a little boiling water and let stand for 1 minute; drain well.

Remove the remaining pith from the fruit and discard, then cut the flesh into segments.

Toss all ingredients together in a bowl. Refrigerate until serving.

Happy Fooding!

Vegetarian (or Not) Barley Stew

This Barley Stew is something I’ve been making for years, from the Internet somewhere, no idea where. It is true comfort food, perfect bowl food for a chilly Winter’s evening. This time, however I decided to make it as a meat dish, by simply adding a couple of chicken breast fillets to the pan. I was pleasantly surprised at how well this worked – no tweaking of the recipe was needed, I just added them along with the onion etc at the beginning.

So it’s your choice – without chicken as a great vegetarian main dish, or with chicken for the meat eaters.

Barley Stew

2 tbsp olive oil

2 chicken breast fillets, chopped into 2cm cubes (optional)

1 brown onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 red capsicum, chopped

1/2 green capsicum, chopped

300 gms button mushrooms, chopped

1 cup pearl barley

425 gm can chickpeas, drained & rinsed

1 tsp cumin seeds, ground

a few drops Tabasco sauce, to taste

cracked pepper, to taste

1 tbsp soy sauce

4 cups vegetable stock

Heat oil over medium heat. Add chicken (if using), carrot, onion, garlic and capsicum and saute until onions are translucent. Add the mushrooms and saute for 2 minutes.

Add the remaining ingredients, bring to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until barley is tender (about 50 minutes).

Serves 4

Happy Fooding!

1 medium carrot, peeled & finely chopped

Roasted Cauliflower

I subscribe to Rantings of an Amateur Chef, a blog I find inspirational from a blog point of view because the author posts pretty much daily (where does he get the time?!!). Plus the articles/recipes are always interesting to read, with loads of photos.

This cauliflower recipe from Simply Recipes, re-posted on Ranting Chef, was very timely for me as I had just bought a HUGE head of cauliflower and was looking for a way to cook it other than just steamed/boiled with cheese sauce.

This was uber easy and tasted great. I upped the garlic (of course) and lemon, omitted the salt, didn’t use a whole head of cauli, and I cut it into larger chunks rather than the small florets in Ranting Chef’s post. I served it with baked chicken drumsticks that I marinated for a few hours in HP sauce, honey, soy sauce and cracked pepper.

Nice and quick and pain-free for a Winter’s evening when you don’t want anything too complicated. And I did extra drumsticks, as I love them cold for lunch.

Roasted Cauliflower

3 cups cauliflower, cut into large chunks

4 cloves garlic, crushed

juice of 1 lemon

olive oil

cracked pepper, to taste

1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 180C.

Toss the cauliflower, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and pepper in a bowl; toss to coat thoroughly.

Place mixture on a baking-paper-lined oven tray. Bake for 25-30 minutes, turning over halfway through cooking.

Remove from oven, place in a heated serving dish and sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Carefully toss with a spoon to coat all of the cauliflower with the cheese as it melts.

Serves 4.

Happy Fooding!

What To Do With A Ginormous Cabbage….

My lovely neighbour gave me a HUGE half cabbage the other week, after a visit to a local vegie market (along with some very juicy fresh lemons, carrots and roma tomatoes – lucky me). It sat in the fridge for a week and then started to go brown along the cut edge, so I knew I needed to do something with it without further delay.

After doing a bit of searching for something different, I ended up making this Scalloped Cabbage recipe from author Cherie Stihler‘s cabbage recipe pages.

I followed the recipe exactly, estimating the cabbage quantity as 1/3 of a large one (which could be more than a 10-ounce package I suspect but it worked out fine), and I used a large oval ovenproof dish with lid. It turned out very well and tasted great, quite oniony and creamy – although as you can tell from the pics, the dish REALLY got disgustingly dirty – thank goodness Robert Gordon pottery is so easy to scrub and always comes perfectly clean. I love that stuff so much.

This dish made enough for about 6 I reckon – so lots of leftovers for me, plus I still only used half of the half a cabbage – it really was that big! I made a bowl of coleslaw today for my lunch, and still have a bit of cabbage left!

Happy Fooding!

Finally…..Celeriac

(sorry for the blurred pic)

Since March when I tried pureed celeriac at a French restaurant, I’ve been really keen to have a go at cooking some myself. This week, my chance came, as finally I found some in my local supermarket.

Now this is a truly ugly looking vegetable! I expected the skin to be very difficult to cut off, sort of like cutting pumpkin skin, but it was actually super easy. The vaguely celery-like, peppery scent came out as soon as I cut it up – a lovely smell to inhale.

I just simmered and mashed the celeriac, as my son (who works part-time as a bar waiter at said French restaurant) told me how to, and it was delightful to taste and simple to cook. I must buy some more before they disappear from the shops – we don’t tend to get some cold season vegetables much here, due to the short and relatively mild Winter (which btw is still WAY too cold for me – I’m really suffering at the moment).

Mashed Celeriac

1 whole celeriac

milk

1/4 tsp vegetable stock powder

cracked pepper, to taste

Peel the celeriac with a knife and chop into 2cm pieces. Place in a small saucepan and just cover with milk. Add stock powder, bring to a boil then turn down heat and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, for 10-15 minutes or until celeriac is tender.

Drain most of the milk but keep a little in the pan. Mash the celeriac (use a hand held blender if you want it really smoothly pureed) with cracked pepper.

Serves 2

Happy Fooding!

Rat-a-Tat-Touille

Layered in a saucepan

With the salmon burgers I shared with you this week, I made a simple ratatouille to complement the fish – no recipe for this, I just layered 1 red onion (thinly sliced), 1 zucchini (thinly sliced) and 3 roma tomatoes (thinly sliced) in a saucepan, with a drizzle of olive oil and some dried basil and cracked pepper.

Saute for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally until it is all cooked and mushy!

Yum!

Happy Fooding!

Vegie Pies

In a different twist to the yummy egg-in-pastry basket that I had the other day, last week my mum sent me the above photo of vegie pies that she made.

The recipe is from the Coles free recipe magazine. Looks pretty yummy, hey? And certainly easy.

Roast Vegie Free-Form Pies

2 zucchini,, halved lengthways and cut into 3cm pieces
about 700g small pumpkin, cut into 3cm pieces
1  red onion, cut into 3cm pieces
Olive oil spray
3 sheets frozen shortcurst pastry, thawed
100g fetta cheese
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten with 2tsp. water
Fresh thyme leaves to garnish (if desired)

Preheat oven to 190C or 170C for fan forced.  Line a baking tray with baking paper.  Spread vegetables on tray in  a single layer and spray with oil.  Roast for 25 mins. turning once, until tender.  Cool.

Line 2 baking trays with baking paper.  Using a bowl as a guide, cut 6 x 13cm circles from pastry.  Crumble fetta into middle of each pastry round, and top with vegetables, leaving a 3cm border around the edge. Fold pastry up over vegetables, pleating edges with fingers so it stays in place.  Transfer to prepared trays and brush pastry with egg wash.

Bake pies for 25-30 mins until pastry is golden brown. Place on serving platter and sprinkle with thyme.

Happy Fooding!

Spicy Potato & Lentil Curry

This warming vegetable curry is super easy and quick, and makes a great side dish as well as a main vegetarian dish. If serving as a main, have some naan bread and raita or Greek yoghurt on the side, and you won’t be disappointed. The potatoes will break up easily when it’s done, and in fact you could squish them up quite a bit and make this a great filling for roti or tortillas.

And don’t worry, despite the 2 chillies, it is actually NOT high in heat.

Spicy Potato & Lentil Curry

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion (any kind), finely chopped

2 red or green chillies, finely chopped

5 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tbsp coriander seeds, ground

1 tbsp turmeric

6 medium potatoes, cut into 5mm slices

2 x 400 gm cans lentils, drained & rinsed

2 cups vegetable stock

100 gms baby spinach leaves

cracked pepper, to taste

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, and saute the onion, chill and garlic for 3-4 minutes, stirring often. Add coriander, turmeric and potatoes, and saute for 5 minutes.

Add lentils, stock and cracked pepper, and simmer for 20 minutes or until potatoes are very soft. Add the baby spinach and fold through for about a minute until it has wilted.

Serves 6-8 as a side dish or 3-4 as a main.

Happy Fooding!

Restaurant Review

I’ve been in Melbourne for a few days, to celebrate my son’s 21st birthday. I took he and my daughter to Counting House, a French restaurant in Mornington, for a birthday lunch. The restaurant is a heritage-listed, huge old weatherboard house – room upon room with hallways and a big front verandah/decking. The weather was lovely so we were able to sit out the front, very pleasant indeed.

We chose the $30 per head, 2 course + glass of wine option. I went for an entree and a main, and both of the kids had a main and a dessert. My entree (duck liver parfait) was delicious, a light and creamy pate with homemade brioche slices and a very rich caramelised onion chutney.

For main I had the Moroccan vegetable tagine – it looked small but was super filling – carrot, pumpkin, onion, parsnip, on top of a bed of couscous.

Both of the children (I say children, but they’re 21 and 24!) had the steak, and pronounced them to be perfectly cooked and tender. I tasted the celeriac puree (doesn’t it look great – full marks for presentation!) and it was divine. Celeriac is something I’ve never really used in my cooking, but I am going to try it out after this tasting.

Dessert chosen was the cheese platter x 2 – small but elegant and apparently the French triple brie was delightful.

I didn’t have a dessert but I did have a second glass of wine…..it was a special occasion, after all.

Happy Fooding!