Grown-up fish fingers with caraway dipping sauce.

Love the odd shallow-fried recipe from Ottolenghi.

Roasted parsnips with caper vinaigrette.

This recipe looked and tasted great!

Shredded lamb and sweet potato salad.

 The best meal we've had this year.

Always tasty. Never fails.

Honeyed sweet potato with chickpeas and lemon garlic yoghurt.

 

My presentation wasn't amazing but this was unbelievable!

Got my cooking mojo back.

I hosted Mothers Group last week which gave my Ottolenghi cooking skills a damn fine workout/rejuvenation. Did a couple of trusty old favs + one newie to get the juices flowing. Have never made brioche before so gave these pizzas a good crack and damn fine they were too. This is the 2nd recipe of his that require oven drying tomatoes and i think i now have them down pat. The combo of the sweet onions and the tangy tomatoes was delicious. As per usual, i picked a colourful menu and the most fiddly i could find. 16 hours straight on Monday (thank god for the baby carrier) and another four hours of prep beforehand. I felt alive again!

 

Radish and broad bean salad with green tahini recipe

Green couscous recipe

Brioche pizzas with oven-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives and caramelized onion.
Recipe here.

Roast butternut pumpkin recipe here.

 

Ottolenghi's back in the house.

Having frozen a huge batch of the crumble months ago, these little puppies were a cinch to make. Blueberry Crumble muffins. Looked great. Tasted even better.

Ottolenghi white peppercorn squid.

Delicious, just goes easy on the white pepper. Recipe here.

Warm glass noodles and edamame beans.

Recipe

Ottolenghi Saturday.

 

Quinoa, Fennel and Pomegranate Salad recipe

Wasn't completely happy with the flavor of this one so improvised (shock horror) and added some pomegranate molasses to the dressing. Wasn't bad, but would probably be better with the addition of some shredded chicken. Colours looked good though. 

Sweet and spicy beef and pork pie recipe

This was pretty delicious and looked a treat too. The only bit i couldn't quite nail was getting the egg to cook. It took about 15 minutes as opposed to the recommended 5, which gave the shortcrust pastry a bit of sunburn.

Ottolenghi's green tea noodles with grilled prawns.

Recipe

warm Vietnamese beef salad.

Recipe

Apple and olive oil cake with maple icing.

Ottolenghi - The Cookbook (p.192) Recipe here.

Roast sweet potato with pecan and maple.

 

Ottolenghi - The Cookbook Recipe: P.67

Courgette and cobnut salad.

Plenty - Ottolenghi. P.70

Serves 4

Ingredients

50g shelled cobnuts (if they are not in season you can use hazelnuts)

7 small courgettes

4tbs olive oil

1tbs balsamic vinegar

30g green and purple basil

80g Parmesan broken up or thinly sliced

2tsp hazelnut oil

salt and pepper

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 150 degrees or Gas mark 2.

2. Scatter the cobnuts over a baking sheet and cook for 10-15 minutes. Once cool chop them up roughly.

3. Heat up a griddle and cut the courgettes up on an angle into 1cm thick pieces. Place them in a bowl with half of the olive oil and some salt and pepper. Place the courgettes onto the grillet and cook until you get lovely black char marks.

4. Once cooked transfer to a bowl and toss with the balsamic vinegar, once the courgettes are cool add the remaining olive oil basil and cobnuts. Drizzle over the hazelnut oil and add the Parmesan.

New Ottolenghi recipes from Plenty.

Green bean salad with mustard seeds and tarragon. P.196

Green coucous. P.255

Carrot, Apple & Pecan Muffins

Ottolenghi - The Cookbook (p.212) Recipe here.

Caramel and macadamia cheesecake.

Ottolenghi - The Cookbook P.199

Twitch.

My eye twitch climaxed last week. (I just watched Black Swan and have lesbian sex and self mutilation on my brain). I'd thought it was a work-related stress thing, but given it went berserk on my day off, perusing flower shops on the north side, I suspect it's more serious than i thought. Don thinks I should get a dose of botox, but dad says i might be stuck with a droopy eye for the wedding (Dad also says we could just Photoshop all photos of me). He suggested acupuncture as an alternative. Quite frankly, neither option is particularly appealing. I thought cooking like a crazy Ottolenghi mo-fo would at least distract me for a bit.

Carrot, apple and pecan muffins (p.212)

 

Fennel and feta with pomegranate seeds and sumac (p.17)

 

Radish and broad bean salad (p.16)

Courgette-wrapped lam kebabs (p.108)

Spew bum.

On Friday, Dad was convinced Oscar had an ear infection because he smelled funny. On Saturday, dad sat back in Oscar's bed as he was trying to sort out his down syndrome digital recording box and sat in vomit, confirming that Oscar didn't in fact have an ear infection, but rather a bad belly. I made an Ottolenghi sweet potato maple salad, because it reminded me of the colour and consistency of Oscar's vomit.

Cupcakes 101.

Gab learnt how to bake Ottolenghi's Chocolate Cupcakes and i learnt that you're allowed to try a puff of a cigarette and a beer when you're 18 (but if you drink too much you may become unconscious and die), most kids have fish rather than dogs, and Guy Sebastian's 'Who's that girl?' is hot right now.