Honey and Mustard Pumpkin Soup

From Vegetarian Bible, Margaret Barca, Penguin Books, 2008.

To make this soup I fried a chopped onion in a large saucepan until it had softened. I then added a teaspoon ground cumin and stirred it around for a minute or two. I now added a half butternut pumpkin, peeled and cut into pieces. I poured in 4 cups of vegetable stock and brought it all to the boil, then reduced it to a simmer for half an hour. I now used a stick blender to puree the soup. I brought the soup back to a simmer and let it continue until it had reached the consistency that I wanted.

The soup now waited until serving time when a tablespoon honey and a tablespoon Dijon mustard were added and stirred in. It was tasted and seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

The soup was served with a dollop of yoghurt with cumin sprinkled over the top.

Pumpkin soup is always acceptable. The sweetness of the butternut pumpkin was increased slightly with the addition of the honey but then modified by the sharpness of the mustard. A pleasant soup from a recipe book that I always enjoy using.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Raw Cauliflower Salad with Watercress

From Salades, Damien Pignolet, Lantern, 2010.

Raw cauliflower is not exactly a favourite of mine. I do enjoy it cooked but I find that raw it is a bland, rather tedious vegetable to eat. Nevertheless, I thought I’d give it another try in this salad.

The cauliflower, sufficient for the two of us, was broken into florets and soaked for about 10 minutes in cold water. After this they went into a pot of boiling salted water. The recipe says for 30 seconds; I left it there for a minute to make sure and because of my edginess about it raw. It then went into cold water again to halt the cooking.

An apple was peeled, cored, thinly sliced and mixed with the juice of a half a lemon.

Two stalks of celery from the centre of the bunch were sliced. Two spring onions were sliced thinly. Two eggs were boiled until hard.

The cauliflower, apple, celery and spring onions were placed in a bowl with some chopped parsley.

A dressing was made with a teaspoon Dijon mustard, salt and pepper, cider vinegar, extra virgin olive oil and a little walnut oil. This was not the dressing from the recipe, which had a coddled egg beaten into it; I decided against the egg.

The dressing was poured over the vegetables that were then gently tossed. When served, watercress leaves and rocket leaves were added.  The boiled eggs were shelled, quartered and added on top. A little smoked paprika was sprinkled over.

The crunch in this salad was really evident—it was all crunch that had to be chewed and chewed.  The flavours were there, though somewhat delicate. I am still not totally convinced about cauliflower eaten raw.

Taste: ✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

Spiced Crumbed Fennel with Aioli

From Coles Magazine, April 2013.

To make the aioli I squeezed out of a commercial mayonnaise sufficient for my needs and added to it a crushed garlic clove. The aioli was ready. It was covered and kept in the refrigerator until needed.

Now a fennel bulb was sliced reasonably thinly. Much of it fell apart but enough held for my purposes. Some flour was now placed in a bowl and some spices added: ground coriander, ground cumin and ground chilli, together with salt and pepper. The fennel was now dipped in the flour, then into beaten egg and finally in breadcrumbs. The fennel was fried until crisp on both sides.

A tasty way to eat this aniseed-flavoured vegetable. The recipe was found in a free magazine picked up in a Coles store.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Linguine with Tomato Pesto

From Pasta: 222 Easy Recipes, Academia Barilla, VMB Publishers, 2012.

This recipe was for bavette with tomato pesto but with no bavette on hand I decided to use linguine instead.

Three tomatoes were skinned and deseeded. They went into the blender with 15g each of pine nuts, almonds and walnuts, 3 mint leaves, about 30g grated parmesan cheese, salt and pepper and about 2 tablespoons olive oil. These were pureed. The tomato pesto was now ready.

The linguine was cooked until al dente, drained and mixed with the pesto. Some halved cherry tomatoes were added to the plate.

This was a pleasing pasta. There was a grainy texture to the pesto from the nuts but it was quite acceptable. It’s possibly one to keep in mind because it is quick to make and there is no cooking apart from that of the pasta itself.

This is the first recipe I have made from this book from the Academia Barilla, a centre with the purpose of promoting and developing Italian cuisine. Basically the book is in two sections: dried pasta and fresh pasta. In the fresh section instructions are given on how to create the particular shapes of the different forms of pasta. Within these two sections there is a great variety of pastas including baked, pasta salads, non-pasta pasta (gnocchi, etc) and stuffed pasta. I can see the book will get a lot of use from me.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔✔

Beetroot, Orange and Black Olive Salad

From Plenty, Yotam Ottolenghi, Ebury Press, 2010.

This is an unusual and delicious salad and it is an easy one to prepare.

I cooked three beetroot and sliced them into wedges.

I took two oranges and peeled them then sliced along the membranes to separate the segments.

I separated leaves from half a witlof.

A dressing was made from the saved juice from the orange slicing, about two tablespoons red wine vinegar, three tablespoons vegetable oil, a teaspoon orange blossom water and plenty of salt and black pepper.

The salad ingredients were all placed in a bowl with a handful of black olives that had been sliced in half, the dressing was poured on and the salad gently tossed.

This was such a refreshing salad. The sweetness of the beetroot and the sweet orange tang went so well against the salty olives and the bitter witlof. I must have this more often.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔