Ingredients: Method: Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees celsius. Cut the tomatoes, eggplants and garlic in half lengthways. Spray a large roasting tin with olive oil spray, or drizzle with olive oil. Place the tomatoes and eggplants in a single layer in the tin. Place the …
You can happily enjoy Easter without being carnivorous, what with some of the best things about Easter being non-meaty (chocolate and hot cross buns, loaded with butter obviously). But if you fancy Easter roast lamb, then let me convince you that making your own mint …
My parents are amazing gardeners and I couldn’t resist this little scallopini left over from their crop. Mainly because, what a cute vegetable, everyone! How could you not want to take it home? Little and frilly and kind of like a flying saucer. I’ve eaten them before but not prepared them myself; they are not unlike a courgette to deal with but they are sweeter and firmer on the eating side of things. So, if you find courgettes can be a little bitter for your taste, let me recommend the scallopini to you.
If you’ve read my blog before you’ll know I am a fan of providing a little historical background on my food. Writing this post has lead to me to a veritable treasure trove of information on the Louis Bonduelle Foundation website with its vegetable ABC section. I learned from the website that Scallopini are also known as patty pan squash and, along with promising you a “healthy vacation glow,” they from Central America and are a member of the mighty Curcubitaceace family. Their French name is Pâtisson, taken from the name of a cake baked in a scalloped mould. They are suited to numerous preparation styles, including roasting, sautéing and baking with cheese (although what food does that not improve, I’d like to know).
My method here is summery – fresh herbs and lemon, and you could pop this on the BBQ or, like I did, just in a grill pan on the stove top. Good as a side and hearty enough for a small meal with some bread on the side.
For one scallopini (increase according to number of scallopini you are grilling):
1 scallopini, cut into lengthways slices of no more than 1cm thickness
1 T olive oil
1 T fresh mint, chopped
1 t goats cheese (could also use feta)
1/4 lemon
Fresh cracked pepper to taste
Heat the grill to medium hot. While it is warming up, rub the scallopini slices in the oil (I find it easy to use a shallow bowl to do this).
Place the slices onto the heated grill. Turn a few times initially to avoid sticking. Cook for a three to four minutes per side, until grilled to your liking.
Lay the grilled scallopini slices onto a plate or platter. Crumble the goats cheese and scatter over. Add the mint and cracked pepper over the top. Serve with lemon slices to be squeezed over just before eating.
Wheewwww so another nearly two months since my last post with some more drama in between. Two further hospital admissions, including one particularly gripping visit to the emergency room with nurses running, grabbing wheelchairs and shouting ‘code two, code two’ into the PA system, three …
WOAH. That was a month and a half. The first section was pretty damn fine. My husband and I treated ourselves to a week in Rarotonga to celebrate getting through some rather rubbish stuff over the last wee while, and gosh it was bliss. Rarotonga …
It was time to slay the mighty parsley-beasts. I felt a little regretful about this, as they had done me proud by growing all green and bountiful, despite my doing very little to help them. But, many leaves had been picked for many dishes, and now the beasts had gone to seed.
My parsley-beasts looked a little sad all uprooted and laid out on my deck:
My garden likes very much to grown parsley, which has left me with similar questions in the past about what one should do with the crop. This was an unprecedented situation because rather than just a mere glut, I had several large plants’ worth of the stuff. And when I think ‘something that uses an unholy amount of herbs,’ I think ‘pesto.’
As I’m sure you know, traditional pesto is made from basil, pine nuts, olive oil, parmesan and Fiore Sardo, a sheep’s milk cheese. Its name comes from the Genovese word ‘to pound,’ and some even say it lends itself to the English word ‘pestle’, as in ‘mortar and.’
Apparently the Ancient Romans themselves ate a paste called ‘moretum,’ consisting of herbs, cheese and oil. This was of particular interest to me, as my only memories of food and the Ancient Romans, scraped from the dim, dusty part of my brain labelled Third Form Latin Class, were that stuffed field mice were typically on the menu. How unfair of me. I shall be contacting the editors of Ecce Romani forthwith to suggest a showcasing of moretum and pesto.
It seems to me that these days, we are increasingly embracing any number of nut, cheese and herb combinations for our pesto. The parsley pesto I have made here, based on this parsley pesto recipe, contains walnuts, almonds, parmesan and olive oil. I made it like so..
My ingredients (note: I had a HEAP of parsley, so needed a heap of everything else and in turn made a heap of pesto – you could quite easily halve or quarter this and still have a respectable amount):
I toasted the almonds and walnuts of the stove-top in a non-stick frying pan until they were all golden and smelling tasty.
I ripped the parsley into smaller bits with my hands, and added it to the bowl of my food processor, along with the toasted nuts, parmesan, olive oil and plenty of ground black pepper. I processed it until it made a smooth paste, adding a little salt and squeezing in some lemon to taste along the way.
I wound up with 6 jars of roughly 250mls capacity, meaning that a few friends and family members had pesto thrust upon them. Our first meal with the bounty was a salad with roasted potato, shredded poached chicken and plenty of pesto. This pesto is rather tasty slathered on freshly toasted bread, and I am reliably informed it tops pasta quite nicely too.
Happy gardening and eating.
The little rosette in the middle of my bok choy, depicted above, is not something you’d see in an exhibition-standard specimen. It indicates the plant in question has gone to seed. Far from being ashamed, I am absolutely delighted I kept something alive long enough …
Today was an exciting first for me. As you may have read in earlier posts, I have taken to gardening over recent months. Well folks, today was the first time I harvested and ate something I had grown myself (aside from herbs…I’m talking things you …