Chickpea, Goat’s Cheese and Zucchini Fritters

From Hungry: Food from my heart, Guy Mirabella, Plum, 2011.

This was a mix-it-all-together-and-then-cook-it type of recipe. The ingredients all sounded as though they would make a tasty fritter: chickpeas, grated zucchini, feta (I used goat’s cheese because I had run out of feta), herbs (parsley, coriander, mint, oregano), garlic, eggs, flour (I was concerned that there was too much flour but followed the instructions), red chilli and seasonings. Once mixed, the ingredients were dropped into the frying pan, a spoonful at a time and fried.

A dip was made of yoghurt, chopped capers, chopped garlic, chopped green chilli and chopped parsley. The recipe called for dill but I had none so substituted with parsley and a little dried dill.

The fritters cooked well and went down equally well though I felt that my concern over the amount of flour was justified because the flour had given them a slightly heavy texture and the taste of the uncooked flour did come through somewhat. Nevertheless this was a quick and tasty light meal.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Three-cheese Omelette

From Hungry: Food from my Heart, Guy Mirabella, Plum, 2011.

I think this is the most delicious omelette that I can remember ever having eaten. It was heavenly.

Three eggs were beaten with a little cream and a touch of melted butter. I then heated some butter and olive oil in the pan. Grated Parmesan cheese was sprinkled across it, three pieces of Camembert were placed as also were several dollops of ricotta cheese. As the omelette cooked the edges of it were raised to allow the uncooked eggs to run underneath. When cooked it was folded and served.

This was a delight to eat. It was soft and basically self-sauced with the butter it was cooked in and bit by bit as it was eaten you met with the different cheeses, especially the Camembert lumps now melted and runny. An amazing dish to be made more often.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔✔

Strawberry and Passionfruit Roulade

 From Hungry: Food from my heart, Guy Mirabella, Pan Macmillan Australia, 2011. 

Just the name of this cookery book intrigued me. When I flipped through the pages the inside had me somewhat puzzled and intrigued even more. There are groups of full colour pages, some of them half pages, and there’s actually a couple of fold out pages. This is not like the usual cookery book.

It’s really handsomely produced with its hard covers, intricately designed inside, double ribbon markers and arty photographic pages. It caught me in. I had to have it. Which also meant I had to cook from it. But will the recipes turn out as good as the layout?

Once I had worked out the complicated layout, which I much appreciated, I was ready to choose something to cook. There were left over egg whites in the fridge so I decided on the strawberry and passionfruit roulade—though I was somewhat uncertain about attempting it.

Actually it was not that difficult—even though mine went terribly astray somewhere along the way.  A lamington tin had to be prepared with backing paper, greased and sprinkled with caster sugar.

The cake itself was basically only a meringue and this is where mine started to go wrong. The egg whites did not seem to want to beat up totally. They went most of the way but didn’t fully fluff. Anyway I went ahead and cooked it.

The most difficult part was rolling it out onto the plate once you had put strawberries and cream on it. And, somehow, carefully following the clear instructions about how to fold back the paper and how to lift the cake off, it turned into a roulade-looking dessert.

While it looked reasonably good it wasn’t that good to eat. Something had gone wrong with the meringue mix and there was a layer of jelly-like egg white that was not at all pleasant. After a few tries we had to abandon the dessert. Pity. It looked better than it ended up tasting. My fault I’m sure, not the recipe’s.

Taste: ✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔