Roasted Capsicum and Beetroot Salad

From Moroccan, The Australian Women’s Weekley, ACP Books, 2011.

Despite the cold weather, a salad is always a good accompaniment for a meal.

For this salad I wrapped some beetroot in foil and placed them in a 200ªC oven. On the same baking dish I placed a red capsicum and two yellow bullnose chillies. After about half an hour the capsicum and chillies had softened sufficiently to be taken out and placed in a plastic bag until cool. The beetroot had another half hour before they were cooked.

When the peppers had cooled they were skinned and seeded and cut into edible portions. The beetroot when cool were topped and tailed and the skin removed. The beetroot were cut into eighths.

Now I placed some rocket on a serving plate. This was not called for in the recipe but I like to have a few greens with a salad. The capsicum, chillies and beetroot were placed on the rocket base then sprinkled with some chopped red onion, parsley and the rind of preserved lemon.  I sprinkled on some salt and freshly ground black pepper. Over it all was drizzled some olive oil and a little lemon juice.

A salad always goes down well and this one looked good and tasted to match. The little touches of preserved lemon peel were especially good.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

Roasted Beetroot and Capsicum Salad

From Moroccan, The Australian Women’s Weekly, ACP Books, 2011.

I wrapped some beetroot in foil and placed them in a 220ºC oven with a red capsicum and a yellow capsicum. After half an hour they were ready. 

The beetroot, peeled and sliced into quarters, and the capsicum, peeled, seeded and sliced, went into a bowl. On top of these were sprinkled a little red onion finely chopped, some chopped parsley and about a tablespoon of chopped preserved lemon peel. 

The juice of half a lemon went over this and, with a little dribble of olive oil, it was ready to eat.

Sometimes it’s good to get away from the salads that have lots of greens. This salad worked well. The sweetness of the beetroot and the capsicums was contrasted against the sourness of the lemon and the crunch of the onion.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔✔

Citrus Sparkler

From Moroccan, The Australian Women’s Weekly, ACP Books, 2011.

This was a simple and refreshing fruit drink.

I squeezed juice from one lemon, one orange and one grapefruit. About a quarter of a cup of caster sugar was stirred in until it had dissolved. A half teaspoon of orange blossom water was added together with a handful of mint leaves and some sliced ruby red grapefruit. Sparkling mineral water was then added at serving time.

Easy to make and a healthy change from cordial.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Roasted Vegetable Couscous

From Moroccan, The Australian Women’s Weekly, ACP Books, 2011.

This sounded like an easy and different vegetable dish. Vegetables had to be roasted (zucchini, red onion and carrots). Couscous had to be prepared. The vegetables were then mixed into the couscous, together with some thyme and bottled sliced red capsicum. After seasoning it was ready.

This would seem to be a good way to use leftover vegetables from a roast. Any vegetables could work well and adding bottled vegetables to it adds that extra bit of flavour.

I did find that it was a little on the dry side. I am not sure whether I am doing something wrong when I make couscous but it does tend to end up a dish which is slightly on the dry side.

We had this with tempeh burgers. They went well together though both were a bit dry so I should have made a sauce of some sort to go with them.

This small book from Women’s Weekly does prove itself to be a good buy. It’s not expensive and it does have a goodly range of different and usually fairly easy to prepare recipes. It is not a vegetarian book but there’s a large enough variety of dishes that are suitable for vegetarians.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Cucumber Salad

Cucumber and Feta Salad with Za’atar

from Moroccan, ACP Books, 2011.

My love of food from the Middle East continues and I was browsing through Moroccan when I came across this simple salad.

Moroccan is a reasonably cheap, small size book with heaps of recipes. Though small in dimension it is large in the number of pages: 400. Every double page sports a recipe on one side and a full colour photograph on the other. So far I have been well satisfied with the results from the recipes I have used.

The cucumber and feta salad was simple to make. I only had to cut the cucumber and place it in a plate. The feta was crumbed and mixed with chopped mint. Lemon juice and olive oil was drizzled over this. To finish up za’atar was sprinkled over the top.

This was a very refreshing salad. The crunchy cool cucumber went so well with the creamy, salty feta and the mint. And the musty, herby flavour of the za’atar made it a very moreish salad.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔ 

Pistachio and Rosewater Palmiers with Spiced Coffee

Honey-coated Pistachio and Rosewater Palmiers

from Moroccan, The Australian Women’s Weekly, ACP Books, 2011. 

I don’t often cook cakes or biscuits but, when I looked at the illustration of these palmiers in Moroccan, I was tempted. I also had some pistachios in the cupboard and puff pastry in the fridge.

I had bought this book for the vegetarian tagines in it: it has more than you usually find in other Moroccan cookbooks. The tagine I cooked, Spicy Pumpkin Tagine with Harissa, was very successful so I was hoping that the palmiers would also work out well. I have found that recipes from The Australian Women’s Weekly are usually good ones.

The palmiers were fun to make. All that had to be done was to make a paste from the ingredients, spread this onto the puff pastry sheets and then fold them in the precise manner which was described in the recipe.  The folding was the secret to making the particular shapes of the palmiers. They then only had to be sliced and baked. Dipping them into a honey mixture was the final process.

Tasty and moreish (not intended as a pun). The batch did not last very long at all.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Spiced Coffee with Rosewater Cream

from Moroccan, The Australian Women’s Weekly, ACP Books, 2011.

To go with the palmiers I made spiced coffee from the same Moroccan cookery book. It was made with instant coffee and I thought this would be a good way to improve it.

The spices flavoured the coffee really well but it was very strong, too strong for both of us. The heart was pumping at a furious pace when I finished.

Taste: ✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔