Caponata

Caponata

from Mietta’s Italian Family Recipes, Mietta O’Donnell, Black Inc., 2002.

Eggplant, tomatoes and celery: a great mix. I’ve always been fond of caponata but have never made it before. It was good to find it in this book of Italian family favourites.

It’s an easy dish to make. The eggplant is cooked separately to begin with and put aside. The onion is fried, then tomatoes and celery added. Finally the eggplant goes back into the mix. Capers and olives are added. Then vinegar with sugar is heated and poured onto the mix to be simmered a little longer to ensure all the flavours are blended.

A tasty starter or, with some rice, a nice light meal.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔ 

French Alpine Cheese, Tomato and Onion Soup

French Alpine Cheese, Tomato and Onion Soup

from The Gourmet Vegetarian Slow Cooker, Lynn Alley, Ten Speed Press, 2010.

I’ll always give a soup recipe a try as soups are a favourite meal for me so, despite the fact that I’m uncertain about the benefits of the slow cooker for some vegetable dishes, I got stuck into this one.

First the onions had to be fried until brown. It was then only a matter of tossing the ingredients (onions, tomatoes, wine and water) into the cooker, turning it on and coming back 6–8 hours later. Very easy.

To serve you just add a slice of bread to the bowl and drop diced Gruyère cheese on it. Then pour the soup over.

I found that the Gruyère did not go well with the soup. Its strong flavour was somewhat overpowering. Personally I think I would go with a simple mix of grated Parmesan and mozzarella.

I wonder whether this was really a recipe for a slow cooker. I do find that some of the recipes in this book seem to be added just for the sake of filling the book. It would have been just as easy to fry the onions in a saucepan and then drop in the other ingredients. An hour would then be ample time to cook it. I am not convinced that the extra time really added anything to the flavour of the soup.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔ 

Quinoa and Grilled Sourdough Salad

Quinoa and Grilled Sourdough Salad

from Plenty, Yotam Ottolenghi, Ebury Press, 2010

I’m still a bit uncertain about quinoa. It’s such a fiddly ingredient and seems (when I use it) to get all over the place. It’s flavour is also quite bland and sometimes you feel as though you aren’t really eating anything. Nevertheless, I will keep with it. No doubt I’ll eventually get to like it.

I always trust Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes so this was a good way to practise using this tiny grain.

The recipe was a simple one and a variation on Arab bread salad, fattoush. Basically it was a matter of cut and mix, though the quinoa had to be boiled first and the bread baked until crisp.

The result was reasonable. I’m still not convinced about quinoa though.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔ 

A Simple Thai Salad

Oyster Mushroom Yam

from Thai Vegetarian Cooking, Vatcharin Bhumichitr, Pavilion Books, 1991. 

I always have problems producing what tastes like a genuine Thai sauce. Since I will not accept fish sauces as part of the mix it is difficult to come up with something that tastes right. The sauce for this simple salad came somewhere close.

The salad itself was made up of oyster mushrooms parboiled, then added to lettuce leaves and the sauce poured over. A pleasant salad.

So far this book has always produced a meal that is well worth making. They have been genuinely tasty.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔ 

Beghrir with Honey

Beghrir with Honey

from A Month in Marrakesh, Andy Harris, Hardie Grant Books, 2011.

There are a lot of interesting recipes in this book that I would like to try. The illustration of this one looked as though these particular pancakes would be well worth the effort.

It was a yeast-based recipe and I’m always a little wary of these because I tend not to have much success with them. The mixing was not difficult and it rose wonderfully, the most successful rising I’ve ever managed to achieve.

Then I tried to fry the pancakes. Something was decidedly wrong. They certainly would not pour into the pan and smoothing them out as the instructions said to do was almost impossible. And no bubbles rose on the mixture that I did manage to stretch out on the pan.

Though doughy and thick the flavour of the semolina came through nicely in the finished product. But it was certainly not the pancake described in the recipe.

Oh, and the melted butter and honey for pouring on top was good.

Taste: ✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔