Category: Vegetables

Yet another courgette (zucchini) recipe! Why, you ask? It’s too early for garden glut. I have signed up for a veg box delivery service to help us eat more vegetables in the winter. There’s a couple of purple cabbage recipes on the way as well. Guess what there’s a lot of in the veg box – oh yes, courgettes.

This is a quick bread recipe, so raised with baking powder and baking soda, not yeast. I used buttermilk (full fat obvs) for my recipe but any fermented milk product will probably do the trick; Greek yoghurt, creme fraiche, sour cream. There’s no butter or oil in the recipe so it does need the fat from the dairy products to achieve a good texture. Keep an eye on consistency, I found this batter relatively dry. If yours is too dry to spread in the pans, thin it out with milk.

You can also be flexible with the herbs: I used dried basil and dried chives because that’s what I had in the cupboard. You can also try some garlic or add in a handful of finely chopped spring onions.

One ‘must’ with this recipe – use small (1 pound) loaf pans and line them with parchment or purchased paper liners. Otherwise – a sticky mess and possibly new pans in your future. Also, try disposable miniature loaf pans for single portions, reduce the cooking time. My recipe made 3 modest small loaves, you could possibly cram the batter into 2 small pans.

Let’s get cooking.

Recipe

Ingredients

450 grams of courgettes (2 medium)

1 tsp sea salt

125 grams of plain white flour

125 grams of whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)

1/2 tsp sea salt

2 tablespoons dried chives

2 tablespoons dried basil

150 grams cheddar cheese

3 large eggs

170 grams buttermilk (3/4 cup)

Instructions

1. Grate the courgettes, add the teaspoon of sea salt, stir through, put in a colander in the sink and drain out the liquid. Leave for at least 30 minutes. When you’re ready to cook the recipe, put the courgettes in a clean tea towel and squeeze out the remaining liquid. Put to one side.
2. Preheat the over to 180C (350F). Needs a lower temperature and a longer cooking time to bake through.
3. Grate the cheese, put to one side.
4. In a large bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients (flours, baking powder, baking soda, remaining salt) until well combined.
5. Add the shredded courgettes to the dry ingredients, it should look like the individual shreds are coated with flour.
6. Add the basil and chives (and any other spices of your choice) and the grated cheddar, combine with your hands or a baking whisk.
7. Beat together the eggs and buttermilk, in a separate bowl.
8. Fold the buttermilk and eggs into the dry mixture. As with any quick bread – do not beat or overstir, just until its combined. Makes it tough.
9. Using your trigger scoop, fill your prepared pans about 2/3 to 3/4 full. If you’ve gone for fuller pans, line a baking sheet and put them on that. Unless you like cleaning your oven, you’ll be glad you did this.
10. Bake for an hour in the lower part of the oven, if using 1 pound loaf pans, 45 minutes if using smaller loaf casings. It seems like a along time, but it’s a thick batter and needs the time to cook through. If the tops look too brown, cover with a piece of foil but don’t undercook.
11. Cool completely before removing. Lovely with just butter. We also toasted and had with our boiled eggs in the morning.

Thank you for reading the blog and trying the recipes. Let me know how it went in the comments below or on social media @mamadolson on Twitter and Instagram.

I love buffalo wings. I remember eating buffalo wings so hot it burned our lips and made us cry in the snack bar overlooking the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. If food had no consequences for weight or health I’m pretty sure I could live on buffalo wings, chocolate ice cream, deep fried zucchini and champagne. Sadly, this is not the case. I’ve had to seek out an alternative to buffalo wings. And inspired by the buffalo cauliflower (discontinued!) at Smith & Wollensky London, I’ve been trying out various methods for oven baked buffalo cauliflower. I do have a deep fat fryer but I’m afraid to try a deep fried version – it might be irresistible. So baked it must be.

Good news and bad news. Baked buffalo cauliflower tastes fabulous = good news. I cannot make it crunchy = bad news. My recipe below makes it less soggy and less messy but crunchy it is not. Still a great way to make cauliflower interesting (without cheese sauce and macaroni) and it’s relatively healthy.

There is a bit of ‘in and out’ of the oven with this recipe. And some tips to decrease the soggy quotient but it’s fairly simple. I started with a recipe from Cookie&Kate and adapted it for European ingredients, methods, measurements and eliminating garlic.

I use Frank’s Red Hot Sauce in my wings, feel free to use your favourite. Here’s a great article on hot sauce from Spruce Eats. Make it vegan by using your favourite butter substitute.

Recipe

• 1 large head of cauliflower (kilo or more)
• 15 grams or 2 tablespoons of corn flour (corn starch for Americans)
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon of ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 to 4 tablespoons of your favourite hot sauce, to taste (see above for choices)
• 30 grams unsalted butter, melted

Equipment

Four things can help with this recipe – it’s all about more crisp and less soggy.

• Use a Ziplock bag to coat the florets with corn flour and spices.
• Put parchment paper on your baking sheet(s)
• Try using a fine mesh rack over the baking parchment
• Use the fan oven

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 200C fan oven (220C no fan)(425F) with racks in the bottom half of the oven.
2. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper to prevent the cauliflower from sticking. If you have fine mesh racks (say for cookie cooling or similar use those as well)
3. Cut the cauliflower into florets no more than 5 cms (2 inches) in size.
4. Put the cornstarch, cumin and pepper in a Ziplock. Shake to mix. Add the cauliflower florets and shake until well coated.
5. Drizzle in the olive oil and toss again until lightly and evenly coated.
6. Arrange the florets evenly across the prepared baking sheets. Space them out well – they would fit on a single baking sheet but spaced out gives a better result.
7. Roast the cauliflower for 20 minutes on the lower rack, then gently toss. Return the pan to the lower rack and bake until the cauliflower is tender and golden, about 10 more minutes. 
8. Meanwhile combine the hot sauce and melted butter. Whisk to combine. Taste, and stir in another tablespoon of hot sauce if desired. Once the cauliflower is golden, transfer it to the bowl and gently toss until the cauliflower is well coated. 
9. Arrange the cauliflower on the pan in a single layer once again. Return the pan to the oven and bake until the cauliflower is blistered in spots, about 10 more minutes. Serve as desired with blue cheese or Ranch style dressing.

Thank you for reading the blog and cooking the recipes. Tag me @mamadolson on Instagram or Twitter if you’ve got photos. Leave your comments and ask your questions below.

I stumbled across this ‘recipe’ the other day and it’s so simple and so good that you wonder where has it been all your life. Let me sum up – baste slices of courgette (zucchini you Americans) or aubergine (eggplant again for los Americanos) with olive oil and herbs and spices of your choice, throw on a hot grill, turn over, remove and eat.

I had tried different ways to cook courgettes on the grill as we (well the Davinator) often cooks over naked flame in the summer time. We have actually had a summer this year, some warm dry weather, rising to high 30s (38 = 100C) for two days. I tried courgette kebabs, making courgettes into ribbons and threading on kebabs – producing okay outcomes but nothing as lovely and simple grilling them.

We served these to some family members (2 of our grown children and their partners) and they gobbled them up so I’m claiming universal appeal. Five minutes of prep, 10 minutes on the grill and you’re ready to eat. Surprisingly – these did not stick to the grill either. ‘Cook until soft’ says the Davinator.

Recipe – generous for two people

Ingredients

• Olive oil (use the good stuff)
• salt
• pepper
• a small bunch fresh parsley or coriander (cilantro)
• substitute any herbs that you like, fresh or dried
• one large or two medium courgettes

Method

1. Find a flat bottomed dish, coat the bottom generously with oil, add salt, pepper and your choice of fresh or dried herbs and stir in.
2. Top and tail the courgettes. Slice lengthwise, about 1/2 to 1 cm thick. As you slice them, lay them in the dish, turn over and stack to one side. When all sliced and in, turn them all over a couple of times, cover the dish with cling film and carry it out to the grill.
3. Place on a hot barbecue, give them approximately 5 minutes per side on the high heat. You might want to pick them up and move them to keep them from burning. When they are soft and golden, they are ready to eat.

You can do the same with aubergine and if you have some beefy tomatoes, slice those and try them alongside.

Thank you for reading the blog and cooking the recipes. Leave comments and tag me if you’re cooking them, @mamadolson on Instagram & Twitter.

I came across a version of this recipe in the Silver Palate ‘New Basics’ Cookbook. The Silver Palate was a gourmet take out food store on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, opened in 1977 by two women, Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins. It was a novel concept for its time and they eventually wrote 3 cookbooks. They are all good cookbooks and mine have fallen apart over the years from usage. Their ethos; great ingredients cooked with care make good food. Good food shared with friends makes great meals.

I’ve adapted this recipe over time, eliminating garlic, adding more vegetables and a mustard coating for the lamb. This is a great meal, with reasonably quick prep and not much fuss. One big dish to wash up. Eight generous servings. It’s a family style food with gourmet level taste. I recently cooked this dish in a self catering holiday let – notoriously short on speciality cooking implements. The only thing I really missed was my handheld mandolin but I had a great sous chef in my friend Lisa. She’s an artist (see her work here) and her nimble fingers made short work of the repeated ‘slice thin’ instructions below. Sharp knives and a sous chef or a mandolin highly recommended. You’ll also need a little rack or some skewers to hold the lamb slightly above the level of the vegetable gratin.

Time to get cooking.

Ingredients

• 1 kilo of good quality potatoes, well scrubbed, thinly sliced
• salt and pepper
• 2 large onions thinly sliced
• 2 medium courgettes, thinly sliced
• 5 medium tomatoes cored and thinly sliced
• 100 mls dry white wine
• 100 mls olive oil
• 1 leg of lamb, with bone in (approximately 2 – 3 kilos)
• 3 tablespoons of grainy mustard
• Several sprigs of fresh rosemary

Method

• Strip the leaves of the rosemary and chop small. Reserve half for the mustard coating.
• Preheat oven to 200°C (180C if fan)
• Pour a slug of olive oil in a gratin pan or roasting tin.
• Arrange potato slices in bottom of pan.
• Season with salt, pepper, some of the rosemary.
• Add a layer of courgettes and seasoning.
• Add a layer of onions and seasoning.
• Add a layer of tomatoes and seasoning on top.
• Drizzle with wine and oil.
• Trim the thicker portions of fat from the leg of lamb.
• Mix the remaining rosemary with the mustard and just enough olive oil to make a thick paste.
• Cut several shallow cuts in the lamb fat.
• Place lamb on a sturdy rack directly on top of gratin pan so the lovely fat and juices run into the vegetables.
• Season the lamb with salt & pepper, then cover well with mustard paste.
• Roast, uncovered, for about 1 hour and 15 minutes for rare lamb (1 hour and 45 minutes for well-done); no need to turn the lamb or baste.
• Remove from oven and allow to sit for 20 minutes before carving.

If you’re feeling the need, you can include a green vegetable or a salad with the lamb and gratin. (We didn’t). The Davinator suggests a Grignan-Les Adehemar as the perfect wine accompaniment. Or, another mid-Rhone syrah based red wine.

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It’s that time of year – the garden plot is producing in abundance. Courgettes (zucchini) are always reliable, productive and seemingly disease resistant, at least in my garden. Here’s a link to 50 Ways to Use Your Squashes for ways to deal with the glut that that often results. One of the easiest is to oven roast them. Roasting has the benefit of helping you use up what ever excess you have in the garden or the refrigerator, it’s low calorie and vegan.

The roast vegetables in the photo include two yellow courgettes, some cavolo nero, two slightly aged shallots and the last handful of cherry tomatoes. I always use courgettes in this dish and usually an onion or two. But I’ve also included broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, peppers, aubergines (eggplant) and kale as well. This dish is very flexible. I wouldn’t use crunchy root vegetables like carrots, celery and radishes but otherwise most vegetables will blend nicely. I hate beets (beetroot) so never put them in any thing.

I’ve included a recipe below but it’s for illustrative purposes. Improvisation is your friend with this recipe. Change up any or all of the ingredients and the spices.

Recipe

Ingredients

2 medium sized courgettes (zucchini) 300 to 500 grams

1 bunch of cavolo nero or kale

2 large shallots or 1 onion

10 cherry tomatoes

Toasted sesame oil or olive oil

1 teaspoon of chilli flakes

2 teaspoons of dried chives

Salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 160C. Prep a shallow flat roasting pan – I use glass because it cleans well. Put a tablespoon of oil in the bottom of the pan.
2. Strip the cavolo nero off the stems and chop the leaves into 2 to 3 inch pieces. Place in the roasting pan.
3. Top and tail the courgettes. Cut in half, then split the halves. Cut courgettes into chunks and place in the roasting pan.
4. Peel the shallots or onions and slice into rounds. Throw into the pan on top of the courgettes.
5. Take the tomatoes off the stems and put in the roasting pan.
6. Drizzle another tablespoon of oil over the top of the vegetables. Sprinkle the chilli flakes and chives over the vegetables and top off with a twist of salt and pepper.
7. Place in the oven for 30 minutes. Give it a stir about half way through the roasting time.
8. Remove from the oven and serve. If you make extra, they are lovely cold or reheated.

Thanks for reading the blog, making the recipes and your comments and feedback.

Stuffed mushrooms are usually too fiddly and labour intensive for me; but big flat Portobello mushrooms are game changers for me. These are described as ‘stuffed’ but really these are layered with a savoury tomato mix, a layer of lightly sautéed spinach and topped with cheesy breadcrumbs. It satisfies my (perennial) craving for pizza.

The quantities in the recipe are flexible, if you’re keen on tomatoes and spice, go for it. Likewise spinach and the toppings. I used cherry tomatoes, you can substitute any fresh tomatoes, but I would core and seed larger tomatoes. Don’t use tinned tomatoes – too much liquid.

It’s easy to make this as a vegan dish – use olive oil and a vegan cheese substitute. Or omit the cheese altogether.

Key to success of this recipe is to sauté the ingredients for the stuffing and topping separately and combine or layer as per the instructions.

Let’s get cooking.

Recipe

Ingredients

• 4 large flat mushrooms, often called Portobello
• 250 grams cherry tomatoes
• 250 grams chestnut or white mushrooms
• Teaspoon of dried chilli flakes
• teaspoon of herbes de Provence
• butter or oil to sautè
• 500 grams fresh spinach (optional)
• 50 grams of high quality breadcrumbs
• 50 grams of Parmesan cheese, finely grated
• tablespoon of chopped chives

Instructions

1. Prepare a shallow flat baking dish, coat lightly with oil. Remove the stems from the mushrooms (often sold without them or with very short stems). Place the mushrooms, gill side up, in the baking dish.
2. Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan).
3. Remove the stems from chestnut mushrooms, chop fine. Sauté the chopped mushroom in butter or olive oil. Put to one side, wipe out the frying pan.
4. Halve or quarter the cherry tomatoes. Sauté in oil or butter until soft, crush with a potato masher, stir in the chili flakes and herbes de Provence. Combine with the chopped sautéed mushrooms, spoon the mixture over the Portobello mushrooms. Wipe out the frying pan (again).
5. Quickly and very briefly sauté the spinach. Spoon over the tomatoes and mushrooms.
6. Combine breadcrumbs, cheese and chives and top the mushrooms.
7. Cook for 20 minutes, check for doneness. Might need another 5 minutes.

Enjoy!

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I fail spectacularly at absolutes. ‘Janu-dry’ in our household has lasted – once – until 20 January. Now we practice ‘Janu-less’ and only have wine with our meals twice a week. Same with ‘veganuary’. I’m happy that I got the Davinator to embrace ‘meat free Monday’, essentially by not telling him it was happening. One of the kids ratted me out but now he rolls with it. So vegananuary is not going to work in our house. But I wanted to get more vegetables into our diet.

I’m a fan of positives and my January resolution is to have more fun with vegetables. There’s a long back story about my love hate relationship with vegetables. Netting it out – I grew up in farm country and we had a large kitchen garden. I was used to eating what had just come out of the garden or had been preserved (frozen, canned, stored) within hours of harvest. That was my experience of how vegetables should taste. That was not what I encountered in the wider world and I ate vegetables but didn’t enjoy them.

So, I’m trying to make vegetables interesting and exciting without breading and deep frying them (the Italian method) or shredding them into cake. Ironically, this recipe is an onion tart mimicking tarte tatin. It uses the same technique to make onions into an exquisite savory dish. Here’s a link to my tarte tatin recipe if you really want to make a dessert.

I must confess – I love this onion tart. Even the first attempt was excellent and I’m going to work on a couple of refinements. I started with a recipe from Delia Smith’s Winter Collection and there are many fabulous recipes there. Perfect for Lockdown 3.0

Equipment for this recipe: you need a round 9 inch pan that can go from the stove top to the oven and back again. I love my le Creuset pans. They are expensive and you might look for good quality clones ( enamel covered cast iron – still will be pricey) but I’ve got le Creuset pots and pans that are older than my children. You can do this with a sturdy cake or pie tin but it will be more difficult to handle. A pastry blender also comes in handy or you can use your food processor.

This a great recipe to brush up your onion cutting technique. You’ll find a lot of advice on how to cut onions without serious crying and honestly not many of them work that well. I use a combination of techniques: peel the onions but don’t cut them until you’re ready to use them, turn the extractor fan on high and cut nearby, throw the waste into a compost caddy with a lid after each cut and rinse your knife and cutting board from time to time. Also, I keep a candle burning nearby – but this is probably just superstition.

There’s an easy vegan flex for this one – use your hard fat of choice (should be firm at room temperature) to substitute the butter. Vegan cheese for the crust.

Time to make ourselves cry……

Recipe

Ingredients – tart

• 1 kg onions (red or white) of fairly uniform size, mine were on average smaller than a tennis ball
• 50 grams of butter
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• Fresh thyme if you have some but dried also works fine
• 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar (use the good stuff but sparingly)
• salt and pepper

For the pastry:

• 75 grams wholemeal flour
• 50 grams plain white flour
• 50 grams chilled butter (grated)
• 25 grams (grated)
• 1 teaspoon chopped thyme

Instructions – onions

1. Prep your onions. Remove the outer skin. Trim any roots very close to the body of the onions. Put to one side. We will cut them just before we place them in the pan. Turn your oven on to about 180C (160C fan).
2. Place the pan over a medium heat melt the butter. Add the sugar to the melted butter.
3. When the sugar is blended and the mixture is bubbling, scatter six sprigs of thyme (if fresh) or a tablespoon of dried.
4. Begin cutting your onions in half and arrange them cut side down on the base of the pan. Think about doing a jigsaw puzzle as you place the onions. Once you have can put anymore halves in, start cutting wedges to fill in the gaps and the sides. The cut sides will be showing when you flip the tart so this is the moment to make it pretty.
5. Seasons the onions with salt and pepper and then sprinkle in the balsamic vinegar. Turn the heat down under the pan and let the onions cook very gently for about 10 minutes.
6. Put the lid on the pan or cover it with foil. Place it on the middle shelf in the oven and leave it cook for an hour.

Instructions – pastry & assembly

1. Combine the flours, butter, cheese in a bowl with a pastry blender or in your food processor. Pulse or blend until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Add cold water, a tablespoon at a time until it forms a soft dough.
2. Gather the dough and place it between two sheets of cling film. Roll into a 10 inch round. Tuck the cling film around the dough and put it in fridge to chill. egradually add enough cold water – about 2-3 tablespoons – to make a soft dough.
3. Test the onions with a skewer at the end of the cooking time. They should be cooked through but still have texture and shape.
4. Move the pan to the stove top, turn up the oven to 200C.
5. Cook the pan on the stove top to reduce the onion butter juice. Try medium heat, keeping a close eye on the onions so that they don’t scorch. You’re aiming to reduce the juice to a syrup. This might take ten minutes.
6. Take your dough round out of the fridge. Take the pan off the heat and carefully fit the pastry over and around the onions. Tuck in the edges around the inside of the pan.
7. Put the tart back in the oven on top shelf and bake it for another 30 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden. Remove from the oven and allow it to cool for 20 minutes before flipping it. Loosen the dough around the edges if it’s stuck.
8. Find a flat plate or a cutting board. Get your oven mitts or other protection for your hands. Place the plate over the tart, take a deep breath, hold it firmly and flip it over. Be bold!
9. Some of the onions might stick to the pan or become disarranged when flipping. Just pick them up with tongs or a spoon and fit them back into your tart.
10. Voila – Red Onion Tarte Tatin!

I’m going to work on some flexes for this recipe – I fancy using concentrated beef stock instead of balsamic vinegar. Also, changing the spices. I’ve been enjoying this tarte cold as snacks and with some cheese on the side as a meal. There are no Davinator remarks because – he’s very sensitive to onions and so this one is just for me.

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