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

Roasted aubergine with fried onion and chopped lemon - Ottolenghi recipe

Roasted aubergine with fried onion and chopped lemon

So, I've got Ottolenghi's Jerusalem cookbook out from the library at the moment - it is awesome, by the way  - and, inevitably, an aubergine recipe caught my eye..  It's funny, I clearly named this blog after aubergines but, honestly, I didn't realise just how much I cooked with them until I started posting and "aubergines" started looming so large in the tags list.  They are amazing, though - so versatile!  Anyway.  Anything that includes fried onions and lemon and aubergine is good for me..  

Ottolenghi has helpfully put the whole recipe in a Guardian article here so I won't bore you with the details but basically, you cut crosses in aubergines and roast them with olive oil, salt and black pepper on top:

The sacrificial aubergines with their flesh cut open

The sacrificial aubergines with their flesh cut open

I slid some garlic into the slits because it is tasty and I could (Ottolenghi refrains):

Black peppery aubergines with stealthy garlic slipped in

You then fry some onion with chilli and sumac and tasty things of this nature:

For a minute at the end you add in the feta:

And then you mix the chopped lemon flesh, chilli and garlic in with the onions and feta mixture and put on top of the roasted aubergines:  voila!  You can eat warm or at room temperature as you prefer.  It is quite an intense dish, so I recommend something relatively bland to go with it - some nice bread, perhaps.

Roasted aubergine with fried onion and chopped lemon

This may sound obvious but you really do have to like lemon for this dish to work for you.  Lots of recipes with lemon call for just a little twist of it but this one - with the whole chopped lemon in it - really requires you to love your lemons.  Luckily, I do.  I've always loved sour flavours, I was always That Child who stole the citrus slices from everyone's drinks.

Roasted aubergine with fried onion and chopped lemon

Lemon curd ice cream

Yummy lemon curd ice cream

We have a terrific ice cream maker and are always on the hunt for ice cream recipes to make in it.  We ran across this one for lemon curd ice cream that seemed almost too simple to be true - buy lemon curd, double cream and a lemon, insert into ice cream maker and then eat delicious ice cream?  OK, then!  It really is that simple and it is very tasty.*  Next up for us, using the same recipe with lime curd.  What could possibly go wrong?

*It is very rich, though, I think it would probably work best as one scoop with another dessert (apple pie perhaps?  or ginger cake?) rather than on its own as we had it.

capri lemon pasta - Maria Elia recipe

capri lemon pasta

Have been eyeing up the recipe for capri lemon pasta in Maria Elia's The Modern Vegetarian for a little while and, since I had both leftover lemons and leftover double cream, I thought the universe was trying to tell me something.

I decided to skip the asparagus as no English asparagus was available and I'm rather of the opinion that bad asparagus is worse than no asparagus. So just podded broad beans, peas and the double cream and lemon sauce. And some parsley because I had some parsley and a handful of chopped parsley never hurts anything.

I usually like her recipes but I thought this one wasn't written quite right - her suggested ordering leaves you with no time to pod the broad beans which is the most time consuming bit of the whole dish - and, if I'd followed her directions to the letter, I think the sauce would have ended up too liquidy. I skipped the cooking water she directs you to add and, even then, had to let it all simmer together for a couple of minutes to get the sauce thick enough.

 The resulting dish is lovely, though, like a lemon posset with added yummyness. My husband thought it was too lemoney, though, and would have preferred it as a side dish. It occurs to me that it would be a lovely way to serve broad beans and/or peas as a side dish. Mmmm.