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: ✔✔✔✔

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: ✔✔✔✔✔

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: ✔✔✔✔

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: ✔✔✔