Tag: vegetarian

Pasta with courgettes, lemon, and pine nuts

Veronica 4 Comments

Summery pasta and vegetables

Serendipity rules! I’ve long liked Patricia Scarpin’s Technicolor Kitchen, but an incompatibility with my feed reader meant I didn’t follow it regularly (if a site isn’t in my reader, it doesn’t get read!). Then today I discovered the magic switch to make it work, and her last 25 posts whizzed into view. I spent a happy half hour browsing them while simultaneously wondering what I was going to cook tonight, because it’s the end of the week and I haven’t been shopping.

What luck! I had all the ingredients for this recipe to hand, and it took barely longer to make than the time needed to boil the pasta. It’s very adaptable, and I loved the fresh flavour imparted by the lemon zest and juice. A new default dinner to rival tagliatelle carbonara! Picture taken hastily just before we dived in.

Note:the original recipe is credited to the late Sher, who sadly died unexpectedly a month ago, and whose blog I didn’t know about till today.
Read More

Salad soup

Veronica 4 Comments

From this:

The raw materials: salad

to this:

The end result: salad soup

This bold experiment is the result of a discussion about what to do with left-over dressed salad. Normally it just gets thrown away, but I remembered reading about someone using it to make gazpacho. I though this sounded disgusting. But last night we had 14 people for dinner, and we made a huge fattoush salad: lettuce, onions, yellow pepper, tomatoes, cucumber, and mint, with toasted diced pitta bread thrown in at the last minute.There was so much I didn’t have a bowl big enough, so I made it in my huge stockpot, and although we ate a lot there was a lot left over.

Given that it was in the stockpot, why not try it? So here is … left-over salad soup!

Read More

Pear and gorgonzola risotto

Veronica 1 Comment

Thank you, Rossella of Ma che ti sei mangiato! I cooked Rossella’s leek risotto for Taste & Create, and she told me about this recipe. She said it was divine, and it is. Creamy, rich, with the perfect combination of pears and gorgonzola, and walnuts to add crunch. One of the best risotti I’ve ever had. Vegetarian too! No photo, because I already know risotto isn’t photogenic.

Even if you’ve never cooked risotto in your life, you owe it to yourself to try this. Don’t be scared — risotto is really easy. But you must use proper Italian risotto rice, otherwise it will be a travesty.

Read More

Ratatouille

Veronica 4 Comments

Ratatouille makes it a real pleasure to be vegetarian. Don’t get me wrong; far too often, “ratatouille” is a mushy, tomatoey mess swimming in red, slightly sour juices. Sometimes it even has carrots in it. That is not the dish I’m talking about. The real thing is a lot more work, but well worth the effort –especially as it’s even better when left overnight. It’s equally good hot or at room temperature, as a main course or as an accompaniment to grilled or roast lamb for confirmed carnivores.

I learned to do it decades ago from that holy bible of French cuisine, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Beck, Bertholle, and Child. Even Julia and her friends, who are no strangers to hard work, admit it’s a lot of effort. But my very first attempt at their recipe proved how worthwhile the extra work was and now I never do it any other way. As with moussaka and lasagne, I do generally make more than we intend to eat, and either eat the leftovers the following day, or freeze them.

Read More

Leek Risotto

Veronica 6 Comments

risotto1

Taste & Create has come round again already, and I haven’t even posted anything since last time! This time it’s a different kind of challenge: Nicole emailed me to say my partner’s blog is entirely in Italian! I should have guessed from the title … Ma che ti sei mangiato.

Still, since I know French, Latin, and a smidgin of Spanish, and I’ve been to Italy a couple of times, how difficult could it be? I love Italian food, so I have a pretty good vocabulary of food items, and I can usually understand the gist of what Italians are saying to me once I’m fortified with a couple of glasses of wine. So I set forth to explore.

Honestly, with the aid of the photos there were loads of recipes that appealed to me enough to make the effort to understand them (a little Babelfish was required here and there). But I decided to start with a really simple one for which I fortuitously had all the ingredients: leek risotto. It was simplicity itself to make, and I liked the result, even if Steve wasn’t so keen (he thought it was too sweet, but I think I reduced the wine a bit too much). Sorry about the photos, risotto just isn’t photogenic, but it tasted good! Look for at least a couple more recipes from Rosella soon, and thank you Nicole for the introduction!

Read More

Ribollita

Veronica 1 Comment

I love real Italian cooking and don’t do nearly enough of it. Many traditional Italian recipes not only taste good but have the benefit of being vegetarian or nearly so, and not too fattening.

I expect there are as many versions of the Tuscan soup ribollita (reheated soup) as there are cooks. This is based on Ursula Ferrigno’s recipe in Bringing Italy Home, and I like it because it’s vegetarian. If you are a confirmed carnivore, you could easily add a ham hock or some bacon. As the name suggests, it’s best reheated the day after you make it.

Vegetables can be varied according to taste and availability. I’m sure in Tuscany it always has cavolo nero in it, but you can’t get that here, so I always use dark green Savoy cabbage.

Oil: you must use the best you can get for drizzling over the top; you can get away with slightly less good for the cooking, but it should be extra-virgin.

Read More

Rocket mousselines

Veronica Leave a comment

These come out a brilliant green, with an unusual tangy flavour. The original recipe specified ricotta, but I used fresh, mild goat’s cheese from a nearby farm which I think gave them some extra oomph. Any similar soft cheese would do. If you are not worried about calories they could be served with hollandaise sauce; otherwise, maybe a few salad leaves or sliced avocado and some lemony vinaigrette would be nice. This quantity will make about 6 depending on the size of your tins.

Read More