Z is for zucchini (or C is for courgette)

Whether you call them zucchini or courgettes these lovely vegetables are incredibly versatile. This morning I was reading a recipe which included grated zucchini in scrambled eggs. I haven't tried it yet. What I did prepare for lunch today was a lovely fresh zucchini recipe which just gets better with time.

I sliced about 4 small zucchini in 1/2 cm slices, then let them sit on kitchen paper overnight. Then today I sliced a clove of garlic and slowly cooked it in olive oil until it was golden. I removed the garlic from the oil and fried the zucchini in batches. Don't crowd the pan - you need to be able to cook each side until they're a lovely golden brown.

Next up I drained the zucchini on kitchen paper. While that was happening, I finely chopped a clove of garlic and sliced a handful of fresh mint.

To pull the dish together, I put the zucchini in a dish, tossed in the garlic and mint and about a teaspoon of dried red chili (adjust this one to your taste - I enjoy a hit of spice). I then added about 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar and tossed it all together.

This is lovely warm, it's lovely when it's cooled. It's even better the next day - but leave it out of the fridge. If you do refrigerate it, bring it back to room temperature before you eat it.

What to do with Spiced Plums?

I love delicately spiced, stewed plums. I used to stew my plums with just a touch of sugar, but then I discover James Martin’s delicious Spicy Plum Crumble recipe. So plums at my place tend to get the VIP treatment. 

Of course I don’t always have the ingredients I need so I improvise and that’s what happened this week when I bought too many plums and needed to do something with them quickly. Nothing worse than rotting plums ...

I had about 8 small plums which I sliced in half and threw into a saucepan with 2 pieces of star anise, a few drops of vanilla essence, some grated nutmeg, a tablespoon of sugar and about 75 mls or so of water. I then just cooked this until the plums softened, cooled it down and put it in the fridge. 

As I said, I just needed to cook the plums so they didn’t go off but I had no idea what I was going to do with them.

Came Saturday and I decided to make some drop scones. You might call them flap jacks, or pikelets. These were always a treat when I was growing up. There one of my nostalgia foods. My recipe is based on the one in the CWA Cook Book. We called them drop scones and so do they. 

Beat 1 egg with 125 mls of milk (I use skim milk). Add 120 g SR flour (I can’t find that in Prague so I use 10 g baking powder and 110 g plain flour), and a pinch of salt. Mix it all together. The CWA recipe includes 2 Tbsp sugar, but I leave this out because often I like my drop scones with Vegemite (I am an Aussie after all). Drop spoonfuls of the batter into a medium hot fry pan. When the first side is cooked, flip them and cook the other side. I use a non-stick pan. Sometimes it's hard to judge when they're done. One indicator that the first side is done is when you see air bubbles breaking on top of your drop scones. Make sure the heat isn't too fierce because the bottom will be cooked before the inside.

Half way through cooking the drop scones I remembered the spicy plums.  Out of the fridge, remove the star anise and plum stones, and attack with stick blender – result! Delicious, fragrant, spicy plum spread for drop scones. 

Perfect for afternoon tea.

Let me know if you try it …

My favourite kitchen things ...

For me cooking isn't just about the food. It's also about the cooking. Sometimes I like to create something quick and easy. Other times I like to mess around for hours. But whatever I'm doing in the kitchen, I have certain bits of equipment and other things that I love.

• My camphor wood chopping board - this is a truly beautiful object - naturally anti-bacterial with a beautiful scent
• My pasta machine - because it's so much fun to roll and re-roll and create beautifully thin, silky pasta sheets
• My microplane grater - it's a fine-tooth one which is perfect for grating parmesan and nutmeg
• My Nespresso Pixie - because whenever I'm cooking (and even when I'm not) I need coffee and this one makes it quickly with minimal effort on my part
• My recipe books - food porn - gotta love it. I have the gloriously heavyweight, outrageously striped tome, The Cook's Companion, by Stephanie Alexander, A couple of books by Greg and Lucy Malouf which are definitely more than cook books, Arabesque and Saraban. Then there's Yotam Ottolenghi's beautiful Plenty and Ottolenghi: The Cook Book.
• My personal recipe collections - recipes pasted in from hundreds of magazines, hand-scribbled notes made at cooking demonstrations, courses and masterclasses, and ideas that I've come up with when I've been messing around (at the moment there are 5 books - sadly I haven't tried all the recipes yet)
• My iPhone - because I use Evernote to store recipes I find on the web, or that people email me and I using an off-line notebook, I can access these wherever I have a phone line or wifi connection
• My chef's knife - a sharp, fine blade that does everything I ask it too, and its complement - a small blade which comes into its own when I'm peeling fruit and veg

Finally, perhaps the most important presence in my kitchen is that of someone to eat the food I prepare. I don't mind cooking for one. I like it really. But just sometimes it's truly delightful to have the opportunity to prepare food for another.

Quinoa

Last night I was wondering what I could do with some quinoa I had in the cupboard that needed using up. One of the things I love about quinoa is that it’s a complete protein – brilliant for vegetarians. Anyway, I found inspiration in the June 2012 issue of Australian Good Taste magazine. Of course, being me, I had to mess around with the original recipe. So Melissa’s Quinoa Cakes have metamorphosed into a quinoa frittata. Hope you enjoy it. 

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked quinoa (about 3/4 cup raw)

100 g feta, crumbled

4 eggs, lightly whisked

1 carrot, peeled, coarsely grated

55 g (1/3 cup) toasted pine nuts

20 g baby spinach, chopped

2 Tbs fresh mint, chopped

2 Tbs sultanas

1 tsp finely grated lemon rind

1 tsp each of ground cumin, coriander, turmeric and paprika

Combine quinoa, feta, egg, carrot, pine nuts, spinach, mint, sultanas, spices, and lemon rind (everything really) in a bowl and mix it all up. Season with salt and pepper.

Heat a small amount of oil in a frypan over a low-medium heat. Pour quinoa mixture into pan and cook until base is cooked – probably about 5 minutes. Place under a hot grill to finish cooking.

This is a great way to use up any quinoa leftovers lurking in your fridge, but seriously, don’t wait until you have left-over quinoa. 

Do what I did and use the recipe for inspiration. Vary the spices, maybe add some chilli. Some fried onion and garlic would be great in it. Or ramp up the fresh flavours with loads of fresh herbs. 

(If you’ve never cooked quinoa before, just put 1 part quinoa in with 3 parts of water and simmer it for about 15 minutes. You can also add flavour by using stock, or some wine.)

Cumin has to be one of my favourite spices

Cumin has to be one of my favourite spices. I love its wonderful flavour that goes with so many things. 

A quick keyword search through my Evernote trove of recipes came up with 68 that include cumin. From carrot fritters to marinated olives, from white bean soup to a spiced chickpea and potato fry-up, it’s found its way into recipes featuring a diverse range of ingredients including mushrooms, avocado, spinach, eggplant and lentils.

Here are just a few of my quick fave ways to use cumin seeds.

Slice up some steamed or roasted butternut pumpkin (butternut squash). Toss some cumin seeds in oil in a fry pan, then throw in the sliced butternut and cook over a medium-high heat until it gets crunchy bit. This is great with leftover steamed or roast potato too – or a mixture of both.

Fry some cumin seeds with onions in oil. Toss in some chopped carrots, a potato and cover with vegetable stock. Simmer until vegies are soft then blitz with a stick-blender. Serve the soup with a spoonful of natural yoghurt.

Or for really special cheese on toast, toast ½ teaspoon of cumin seeds in a dry frypan over a medium heat until it smells gorgeous (chefs and cookbook writers seem to say until it’s ‘fragrant’). Grind the seeds until fine then add to 50 g of grated Emmental cheese. Pile onto toast and whack it under the grill until the cheese melts and goes bubbly. If you want to you could use this on top of soup too. Delish!

Loving the Leftovers

Do your leftovers pine away at the back of the fridge, forgotten and unloved, and then get thrown out? Finding new things to do with leftovers not only helps reduce your food bills because you’re not wasting so much, but it’s kinder to the planet. Not to mention that it can be great fun to experiment.

I love roast vegetables. A plate piled high with roasted potatoes, pumpkin, carrots and beetroots is truly delicious. Add some greens – beans, peas, broccoli, broccolini – for a veritable feast.

Thing is, when I roast veggies somehow I always seem to cook too much. Especially with the pumpkin.

Not wanting to waste it, I’ve been messing about and have discovered delicious ways to use any leftover roasted pumpkin. These taste so good that now I deliberately cook too much. I have been using what in Australia is called “butternut pumpkin”. In other places it’s referred to as “butternut squash”. But I figure these recipes should work pretty well with any kind of pumpkin. Sorry I can’t give you accurate quantities. Part of the fun of leftovers is experimenting … if you get really stuck, drop me a line and I’ll help you out.

Roasted Pumpkin Soup

Fry up diced onion and finely chopped garlic in olive oil. Throw in a teaspoon of cumin seeds and cook until onion is soft and cumin smells lovely. Toss in the roasted pumpkin and some vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Simmer for a couple of minutes. Blitz with a stick blender. Check seasoning and serve with a swirl of natural yoghurt.

(For this recipe I used about 5 pieces of roasted pumpkin with one medium sized onion and 2 cloves of garlic.)

Roast Pumpkin Sauce for Pasta

Years ago I ate pumpkin filled ravioli with pumpkin sauce at a restaurant in Venice. Rather too much pumpkin was my thought at the time, but I did like the idea. So I serve this pumpkin sauce with spinach and ricotta filled ravioli.

Mash pumpkin. Add enough white wine to make a fairly thick sauce. If you think the mix needs too much wine, or if you prefer not to use wine, use vegetable stock or a combination of both. Warm through and season with salt and pepper.

I like the sauce to be quite thick and put it in the bottom of a large bowl. Then arrange pasta on top. When I want a meal to be extra special, and feel that I can survive the additional calories, I serve it with a sage and butter sauce, and grated Parmesan. If you’re not using the sage butter, why not add some chopped sage to the pumpkin mix? The flavours go together wonderfully.

Sage and Butter Sauce

Melt butter in fry pan with sage leaves. When butter starts to turn brown remove from heat and quickly add lemon juice. Make sure your butter doesn't burn.

Divine Dessert - with Chocolate, of course

Some years back I enjoyed a fabulous foodie holiday at Cascina Papaveri in Italy. Not only did I get to cook fabulous food every day in a magnificent kitchen, but I also discovered Pilates. 

Poppies at the Poppy Farmhouse - Cascina Papaveri

 Anyway, I thought I’d share the recipe for one of the delightful, decadent, delicious, divine desserts that we made. Chef Gino called it a Chocolate Soufflé. Most of us now would recognise it if it were called a Chocolate Fondant. You know, the ones with the gooey middle ...

Chocolate Fondant

Prep and Cooking time – about 45 minutes

Serves 6

4 eggs

100 g caster sugar

100 g butter

100 g flour

100 g dark chocolate (Chef Gino used 79%)

1.      Melt butter and sugar in a bowl over a saucepan of hot water. Make sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water. You want indirect heat.

2.      Beat the sugar and eggs together until light and fluffy.

3.      Fold in the flour.

4.      Add the melted chocolate and butter.

5.      Place into small moulds (grease with butter).

6.      Bake in oven at 170-180 C for 7 – 8 minutes.

7.      Serve with crème anglaise, whipped cream or a delicious, real vanilla icecream.

A9RBCNCXWZ35