Greek Salad with Creamy Feta Dressing and Lavash Crisps

From Market Vegetarian, Ross Dobson, Ryland Peters and Small, 2008.

There are so many variations of a Greek salad that it would be difficult for anyone to say which is the original one. It’s like the fact that so most restaurants you see advertise one or two ‘traditional’ items so you begin to doubt just what ‘traditional’ really means. In most cases I think it just means that the name of the dish is a well-known name but what is served can often be dubious as to its authenticity.

Ross Dobson in Market Vegetarian acknowledges the variety of versions of Greek salad that exist and informs immediately that his is a variation. In his version the feta cheese is not included in the salad but comes in the form of a feta dressing.

This dressing was made by putting feta, garlic, vinegar, dill and oil in a blender and churning them until smooth. Milk was then added and the dressing was blended again until mixed.

Lavash was broken into pieces and crisped in the oven.

The usual vegetables were mixed in a bowl with some olive oil. The crisped lavash was then added and the mix was tossed again. When the salad was served the feta dressing was dolloped on top.

I rather enjoyed the salad with its dressing done in this manner though I think I would have also liked to have some pieces of feta in the salad as well as in the dressing.  I do enjoy feta and the usual Greek salad often suffers from everyone trying to grab a piece of feta from it before it even gets served at the table. I think this was what I missed in this version.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Fettucine with Dried Porcini and Thyme, Tomato and Mascarpone Sauce

From The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver, Michael Joseph, 1999.

Having some of Jamie Oliver’s basic tomato sauce left over I thought this looked like a great opportunity to use it up. It was supposed to be a pappardelle dish but I was a bit tight on time so used some dried fettucine from the pantry.

The recipe called for some dried porcini to be soaked for 15 minutes in boiling water. While it was soaking I chopped some garlic and fried it in olive oil. The porcini was then added, chopped, together with thyme and fried for a little longer.

Some of the water that the porcini was soaked in was added. This was allowed to boil down until nearly evaporated. At this stage the tomato sauce was added. A little mascarpone was also added and seasoning to taste.

The sauce was truly flavoursome. It was amazing how much flavour the few porcini added to the basic sauce.

The fettucine was cooked in boiling water and tossed with the sauce. With parmesan sprinkled over the top this was a truly satisfying dish.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

Summer Sweetcorn Soup

From Market Vegetarian, Ross Dobson, Ryland Peters and Small, 2008.

After having made a salad of winter fruits I went straight ahead and made a summer sweetcorn soup.

This would seem to go right against what Ross Dobson is promoting: using fresh vegetables from the market when they are in season. At least this soup was perfectly in season though, rather than using fresh sweetcorn, I used frozen corn that, of course, could have been picked goodness knows when and from goodness knows where. I unfortunately didn’t read the label of the package. Apologies to Ross Dobson but sometimes there’s a case for using what’s handy and the corn was in the freezer.

For the first part of the soup I had to make the tapenade from red capsicum. It was very like a pesto but substituting the capsicum for the basil. The red capsicum had first to be put under the grill in the oven until the skin had turned black. It then went through the steaming process in a plastic bag until it was cool. It was then easy to peel. Next it went into the food processor with garlic, pine nuts and oil and was puréed. Some grated parmesan was added and it was ready. This was totally amazing to eat and it needed a lot of will power to stop from getting into it straightaway.

For the soup the sweetcorn was tossed into a pan with onion, celery, garlic and butter. It was then cooked over a medium heat for about 10 minutes. The stock was added and heated to boiling. It was then lidded and cooked for another 15 minutes and left to cool.

I then used a stick blender to whip the soup until it was smooth. It was poured through a sieve, cream was added and it was ready to serve when it had been heated through.

The soup was dished into plates and a spoonful of pepper tapenade was placed in the middle.

This is a soup worth going back to again. It was smooth and delicious and that pepper tapenade is wonderful. There was some of it left over and it was soon eaten up on slices of bread the next day.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Salad of Winter Fruit with Blue Cheese and Spinach

From Market Vegetarian, Ross Dobson, Ryland Peters and Small, 2008.

It’s summer so it seems an odd time to make a salad of winter fruit but the winter fruit, apples and pears, are readily available and lately we don’t seem to be eating enough fruit so this salad may help a little in that regard.

It’s an easy salad to make. Just cut the apples and the pears into thin wedges. Wash the radicchio and spinach leaves and add them. Crumble the blue cheese and add it. Now toss them all before adding the dressing.

The dressing is a vinegar and olive oil mix with the vinegar being a tarragon one. I added some dried tarragon to the dressing to make up for not having the vinegar.  This was poured over the salad and it was tossed again and served.

I have usually had success with items I have made from this cookbook. This was no exception. It’s a tasty salad with lots of crunch from the apples. Blue cheese always works well with apple or pear and mixing it in a salad added a pleasing tang throughout.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Mozzarella Ischia (Hot Mozzarella with Basil, Tomatoes, Olives and Red Peppers

From Elisa Celli’s Italian Light Cooking, Elisa Celli, Prentice Hall Press, 1987.

This was little more than a salad plate that you carefully put together. However I was rather intrigued with the idea of hot mozzarella so I got to work and made the dish.

I have made other recipes, mostly pastas, from this particular book. They have usually been worth the effort but there have been large sections of the book that I’ve overlooked so I’ve taken it again from my cookery book shelf to delve into it once more.

Before I did much more with the salad I roasted the red capsicum. Roasted capsicum is one of my favourite salad ingredients. I just dislike the slimy task of skinning the roasted vegetable. It’s not difficult to do but just a little unpleasant. Once done, however, it was sliced into strips.

The dressing was made from tossing together balsamic vinegar, olive oil, crushed garlic, chopped parsley, some Italian herb seasoning and lemon juice. I added salt and pepper and then removed the garlic.

The mozzarella was placed in the oven for 5 minutes then placed on the serving plate. It had warmed through and started to melt a little.

The capsicum strips were placed across the mozzarella and the other ingredients arranged around it: chopped red onions, black olives, tomatoes sliced into sections and basil leaves. The dressing was then drizzled over.

It made an attractive-looking plate that was fun to nibble from. Heating the mozzarella made it a little easier to cut on the plate and it went really well with the capsicum strips.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

As some of these books may be out of print if anyone would like a particular recipe, email me (alfcooksvege@ozemail.com.au) and I’ll send an abbreviated version. Of course, the whole book would be better; it’s loaded with other goodies.

Split Chickpea Curry

From Healthy Asian Vegetarian Dishes, Periplus Editions, 2003.

I’m not sure what split chickpeas are. I suspect that they are not what I know as chickpeas. Anyway to make this recipe I ended up using a split pea.

The peas were simmered in water with turmeric for 20 minutes. They were still a bit on the hard side at this stage.

Vegetables were added next: onion, carrot, eggplant and tomato. After another 15 minutes, chopped green chillies were added for another 5 minutes simmer.

At the next stage coconut milk and tamarind juice were added with seasoning and they were simmered for another 5 minutes. The peas were breaking up well now.

In a pan, mustard seeds and cumin seeds were fried until they began to pop. Dried chillies, curry leaves, shallots and garlic were added and cooked until the shallots had browned. This was mixed into the peas and vegetables and it was ready to eat.

It was a moderately successful meal. I prefer curries with a lot more bite than this one had. I found I was depending upon a mango chutney to give it the tang it seemed to lack.

I have found so far that recipes from this book are generally successful. This one turned out to be just a little below what others had been but it was still worth the making. Possibly my use of the wrong split chickpeas may have been part of the reason.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔