Courgettes - marinaded in lemon juice, olive oil, and garlic

Courgettes with lemon and garlic

A few things lately have reminded me that courgettes can be awesome.  In particular, the other day we went to a great pop up restaurant which served pizza with courgettes on top.  

I decided to recreate the courgettes at home as a side dish - they work really well as a light summer side dish and it's also really straightforward to make.

Essentially:  slice courgettes as thinly as possible, put in bowl.  Add olive oil and lemon juice (I like a 1:1 ratio but you may prefer it less lemony), and crush in some garlic (I like lots but you may prefer less).  Add salt and pepper and leave to stand for an hour or so.  Voila!

Lemony garlicky courgettes

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

I've been enjoying Sally Butcher's book Veggiestan which we have out from the library at the moment and am - as regular readers will doubtless be aware - rather easily persuaded into trying any recipe that involves fried aubergines.

There are two things, though, that really irritate me about the book: 

• firstly, that it is randomly patronising at times "if you don't have a lid, you can improvise one with foil", really?  really?! thank you so much for that tip, it's changed my culinary life, I would not at all have figured that out under my own steam... ; and
• secondly, as knowledgeable as the author seems to be about Middle Eastern food, she seems to be almost entirely unaware of its connections to Indian food.  For instance, she has a whole page on how drinking a salty, yoghurty drink is uniquely Iranian, *cough* salted lassi *cough*. Gujarati and Afghani food, especially, have a lot in common.  I learned a while back that there's strong historical evidence that my sub-caste (Lohana) are from Afghanistan originally, which I sometimes ponder when making recipes like this one which clearly are extremely Indian in flavours.

Basically, you fry some aubergines:

Frying aubergine slices

Frying aubergine slices

Add tomatoes, onions, chilli, coriander and tumeric and simmer for about 30 minutes, adding water if you need it:

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander
and chilli after 30 minutes of simmering

Layer it in a dish with the yoghurty sauce (yoghurt, lemon juice, garlic and mint - basically raita *cough* Sally Butcher..) and serve either hot or at room temperature.  Both myself and the lovely spouse thought it tasted even better the next day.

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

I've been working late a lot recently and so my lovely husband has been taking on more of the cooking.  The other day he made a particularly lovely pasta dish involving roasted garlic, creme fraiche, mushrooms, mangetout and spaghetti.  Mmmm.

To make it, he first of all roasted the garlic, which takes around an hour so worth bearing that in mind if you're really hungry!

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

There are a number of ways to roast garlic but he went for the method described here (the bottom of the page, "roasting garlic for cooking purposes") which seemed to produce some pretty tasty roasted garlic. 

Then, he fried up the vegetables - an onion, a selection of mushrooms and some mangetout (though, really, any vegetables would work) - added a good slug of white wine, cooked for a while longer to let that reduce, stirred in the creme fraiche, left it to heat through, then added the roasted garlic and the spaghetti. 

 

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

We decided to pack up the left overs for lunches during the week but, if you wanted to, I bet it would make for a lovely frittata di spaghetti.  That's the Italian way of using up left over spaghetti which - like much Italian cooking - is straightforward but very very good.  All you do is grease a pan (olive oil/butter/as you wish), put the spaghetti in it, crack a couple of eggs in (more if you have loads of left over spaghetti, obviously) and then cook.  Particularly good with a little cheese on top. 

Party food - puff pastry tarts, mushroom & stilton, tomato, garlic & olive, tomato & mozzarella

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tart

One of the things that I find difficult about hosting parties is providing enough food to cater for different preferences - e.g. people who don't like cheese or tomatoes or whatever - while not cooking so many different things that results in kitchen chaos.

At the party we hosted recently, I went for making mini puff pasty tarts with different toppings.  Very easy, can be made small enough that they are finger food, and allow you to have a variety of toppings to appeal to all.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tart

Mushroom and stilton puffy pastry tarts

What you do is:  buy some puff pastry, cut into squares of about 2 1/2 inches square, put on topping, bake for 10-15 mins at 200 degrees C.  It's worth leaving some space around the edges to avoid spillage but you don't need to leave more than about a 1/4 of an inch.  To avoid having to faff in the kitchen too much with guests around, we baked these the morning of the party and served at room temperature but they would be good hot/warm too.

The toppings I went for were:

Mushroom and stilton:  which I made by frying mushrooms in butter and sherry, then melting in some stilton.  These were probably the ones that got eaten fastest at the party.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella:  thin slice of tomato on each with a slice of mozzarella on top.  These looked like mini pizzas.

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tarts

 Tomato, olive and garlic:  slice of tomato, olives and chopped garlic.  Mmmm, garlic!

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tart

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tarts

Fattoush Greek salad

I spotted this recipe a few days ago for fattoush salad which reminded me that fried pitta bread on salad is generally a good thing.  As happens to me not infrequently, it did strike me that the recipe could be improved by the addition of garlic.  So, I crushed some garlic into the oil that I fried the pitta bread in.  And some chilli flakes.  Because, why not?  Worked well on top of Greek salad with some hummus on the side.

Mushrooms stuffed with stilton and garlicky breadcrumbs

Mushrooms ready for stuffing

For some reason, this past month has been the month of the mushroom in our house. I seem to have cooked a lot of mushroom dishes. For instance, recently, I tried to recreate the mushrooms stuffed with stilton that we had atThe Vaults a little while ago.

I took 14 small mushrooms, took out the stalks and put them into a buttered oven dish. Then scattered 250g of stilton, the sliced mushroom stalks (waste not, want not!), 300g of crème fraiche on top, in that order.

With added stilton

Mmmm, stilton

With mushroom stalks added on top

With creme fraiche added on top

Musing on what I thought was missing from The Vaults' version, I realised that it was the obvious: garlic! So, I crushed in three cloves of garlic into two slices of bread's worth of breadcrumbs along with olive oil, salt and black pepper. 

The missing ingredient!

Breadcrumbs tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic

Having sprinkled the mushrooms with the breadcrumbs, I then baked at 180 degrees for 25 minutes. 

The finished product

Verdict: tasty but some of the mushrooms were a little undercooked. I think, next time, I'd be tempted to roast them on their own for 10 minutes or so before adding the crème fraiche and breadcrumbs and baking for a further 25 mins or so. I think, also, it would have helped to have melted the stilton into the crème fraiche as then that element would have been hot before it went into the oven.

One to experiment with more another time.

Garlic fried potatoes

Ta da!

My life is pretty good so I don't have many problems.  There are, however, two that I have been wrestling with for a little while:  my lovely husband doesn't much like potatoes but I do; and what the right side dish for Ottolenghi's stuffed onions is.


The answer to both of these questions seems to be garlic fried potatoes.  I've been messing around with these for a while and I think I now have it right.  What I do is: 

Frying potatoes

• take eight or nine new potatoes
• slice them up roughly into quarters or thirds depending on the size of them
• heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan
• fry the potatoes for about 10 minutes - until they start to give out some juice
• then crush 4-5 cloves of garlic in

Almost at the garlic stage

• continue to fry until they go crispy and golden brown on the outside (this stage usually takes another 20 minutes)
• add salt and black pepper a couple of minutes before I take them off the heat

And then eat!  I suspect that frying them in butter might make them tastier but, for health reasons, I prefer not to.  A word of warning:  these are really quite garlicky!  

Roasted tomatoes, inspired by Nigel Slater

Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries has a couple of recipes that involve halving then baking tomatoes with olive oil, a bit of garlic, and chopped fresh herbs on top.  All well and good, I thought, but not enough garlic.  This is quite a frequent thought, I have.  I love garlic and so do tomatoes.  How to get more garlic into this dish?  I decided that the way forward was to try slicing some garlic and then sliding it into the tomatoes.  It works rather well and you end up with lovely roasted tomatoes with little bits of roasted garlic inside them.  I recommend having some bread to mop up the juice with.

Mmm, tomatoes

Putting garlic into tomatoes

Putting garlic into tomatoes

Tomatoes ready to go into the oven

Recipe:  slice tomatoes in half, slide bits of garlic into tomatoes, drizzle with olive oil, fresh herbs (I think parsley and/or rosemary stand up better to baking than basil, myself, but it's up to you - I've also used coriander before as I am more likely to have it in the house and that also works), a little bit of balsamic vinegar, salt and lots of black pepper, bake for about half an hour or until they look tasty.

Barley, tomato, feta and garlic risotto - Ottolenghi recipe

This is how much garlic goes in!

I've been meaning to try pearl barley risotto for a while now and, last week, the bag of barley that I bought started guilt tripping me with its forlorn stare so I had a quick google for a recipe and came up with this one from Ottolenghi whose recipes I generally enjoy.  Any recipe that starts with two whole heads of garlic is good with me.

Seriously, you actually put this much in!

It was amazing.  I can see why Ottolenghi initially intended it to be a stuffing as it's extremely intense.  It kind of tastes more like tomatoes than actual tomatoes do.  Admittedly, some of its intensity may have been down to the fact that I put three times the amount of a little more paprika, chilli and black pepper that was suggested.  I am totally making this again.  Once I've stocked up on garlic.

Tomatoes!

Once everything has been added in

Tomatoes, garlic, feta, coriander, what is not to like?!