Shredded lamb and sweet potato salad.

 The best meal we've had this year.

Always tasty. Never fails.

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.

 

Lemon Quinoa Cilantro Chickpea Salad.

 

Absolutely my new fav salad. Recipe here.

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.

warm Vietnamese beef salad.

Recipe

Watermelon, prawn & haloumi salad.

Gourmet Traveller - 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.

Ottolenghi’s beetroot & avocado salad.

Recipe

Inspired by Jase.

Goats cheese, pear and walnut salad. ABC Delicious - More Please

They were staring at me with their little eyes.

 

Not usually a fan of anything deep-fried but this salad kind of talked to me and i figured how much oil can these suckers really absorb?

We had a small hiccup to start with as green mangoes appeared not to be in season and the perfect replacement the Asian Grocery man so confidently sold us, which resembled a fat, short cucumber with elephantiasis, tasted like bark. Coles saved the day with a bright yellow paw-paw, which although not ideal for julienne-ing, made the salad one of our best yet.

While i was out on the rescue mission, Don took it upon himself to mortar and pestle the dressing ingredients (using his large & in charge biceps to assist our pov mortar and pestle), inadvertently using Thai basil in place of mint. Oh oh. Not cool. I cannot deal with straying from any recipe. So we had a  small disagreement (we only ever have disagreements about over-ambitious cooking when guests are around and being drunk and playing Zombie computer games in the middle of the night), which resulted in Don begrudgingly starting the dressing from scratch because he feared i wouldn't talk to him for the rest of the weekend if he didn't

The flavours were so unbelievable, that after about the second mouthful, i was able to ignore the eyes staring blankly at me and even enjoy the crunch of the deep-fried fishies with their tiny skeletons and funny little guts. And by the end of the course, my resentment of the 1kg pack of Whitebait (smallest size i could find) consuming precious space in our freezer had all but gone.

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)

Prawn, haloumi and watermelon salad.

Recipe

A quick lunch.

 

Camargue Red Rice and Quinoa with Orange and Pistachios (The Cookbook - Ottolenghi)

Brisket burgers in the background (Gourmet Traveller Annual 2008)

Smoked Salmon and Dill Roulades (Delicious Magazine Dec '10/Jan'11)
Chargrilled Cauliflower with Tomato, dill and Capers (The Cookbook - Ottolenghi)

 Jane Lawson Pretzels (Snowflakes and Schnapps)

 Ottolenghi Green Pancakes with Lime Butter (Delicious June '10)

With lime coriander butter

David Lebovitz's Banana Cake with Mocha Frosting and Salted Candied Peanuts
(Ready for Dessert)

Beetroot salad = beetroot poo.

This salad is a guaranteed winner. The candied walnuts are a standout every time. Blanch the walnuts in boiling water. Pat them dry. shake them about in icing sugar. Throw them into a put of extremely hot oil. Take them out when they go golden. At this point you're supposed to blot out the oil with paper towel but this generally causes fluff balls to stick to your nuts. Kinky sounding but not aesthetically pleasing. I generally get a crap tea towel and rub them about. Then, you sprinkle some cayenne pepper over them and boom, you're done. Very tay-stee. Goats curd is also a fabulous invention. It's like goats cheese but is much smoother a softer and you have to dollop it on. I can only find it at Prahran Market in the shop opposite the Olive/Chilli baguette baker. The contrast between the salty cheese and the sweet roast beetroot and pomegranate is to die for. Note the Scotch Fillet psyching itself up in the background. Mr Teriyaki beef is next on the menu.

What a keen sense of colour you have Nickers.

Saturday night's outing required a salad. Not just an ordinary salad. A vegetarian salad. Not so much my forte. I usually sneak some prawn or squid in for good measure but was told a vegetarian would not be so appreciate the effort. This was my offering: Roast beetroot and caramelised walnut salad with goat’s curd, pomegranate and preserved lemon. Although in hindsight i now realise i neglected the lemon. Tut tut.