Tomato, Basil and Zucchini Soup

From Hungry, Guy Mirabella, Plum, 2011.

Suddenly the weather turned cold. We had had several days of heat and then down we dropped to 17ºC. I needed a warming soup.

I chopped an onion, a carrot and a celery stalk and added them to a large saucepan to cook slowly in olive oil until softened. I now added 2 chopped garlic cloves, 2 red chillies deseeded and sliced and a teaspoon of fennel seeds. These were cooked for another 2 minutes.

It was now time for the zucchini to go in. The recipe called for 1kg; I only had 800g and this seemed heaps to me. Anyway, I roughly cut them in pieces and added them to the saucepan and let them cook for a few more minutes. Two cans of chopped tomatoes now went in the saucepan with two cans of water. It was brought to the boil, then reduced to a simmer and let cook for an hour.

The soup now was taken from the heat and a large handful of torn basil leaves were added. A stick blender was used to churn the ingredients. The soup was tasted for seasoning and needed salt, but had heaps of heat from the chillies that seemed to be nice and hot.

When served a dribble of extra virgin olive oil was added and a sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

This was just what I wanted and satisfied my need. It was hot and very spicy, quite thick from all those zucchini and tangy from the tomatoes and basil.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔ 

Watermelon and Bread Salad

From Hungry, Guy Mirabella, Plum, 2011.

With summer in full swing and watermelons in all the shops it seemed time to try another watermelon salad.

Two thick slices of bread had their crusts removed and were torn into bite-sized pieces. They were sprinkled with olive oil and a lot of freshly ground black pepper before being placed in a hot oven for a few minutes until they had turned golden and become crisp. They tasted wonderfully crunchy and peppery at this stage.

Watermelon was now cut into pieces. A layer of it was placed on a platter. It was sprinkled with lime juice and covered with a layer of bread. Another layer of watermelon went on, then more lime juice and then more bread. Onto this lot went some chopped walnuts freshly roasted, some baby salad leaves, a few olives (Kalamata in this case rather than Ligurian as suggested) and a few chopped mint leaves. Pomegranate seeds, as listed in the recipe, were left out.

I like a good watermelon salad but I found this one—even without the pomegranate seeds—was a bit too overloaded with ingredients and, while a pleasant one, was not the best I have eaten. For me, the best part was the peppery bread bits. The watermelon seemed to become a little lost and its sweet flavour didn’t come through as well as it should.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Banana, Blueberry and Almond Cake

From Hungry, Guy Mirabella, Pan Macmillan Australia, 2011.

When you have one slightly overripe banana, what do you do? I inevitably think of banana smoothie or banana cake, with a strong leaning towards cake. A hunt through Hungry soon found this recipe which sounded pretty good—while the photograph of the cake did the final convincing.

It was the usual cake mix procedure: cream butter and sugar, then add the eggs one at a time. After this the banana was added together with port and vanilla. Finally came the flour with bicarb. soda and olive oil. The oil was, for me, an unexpected ingredient.

The topping was made by mixing together blueberries, flaked almonds and brown sugar. This was sprinkled over the cake mixture when it was placed in a cake tin. It was then baked.

This turned out to be a moist flavoursome cake. The almonds added a crunch and the blueberries were little juicy morsels. Worth making again.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔ 

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔