Category: Salad

All The Z’s 3 – All The Zucchini – REPOST

You knew it was coming right?  There was never going to be a showcase of Z recipes without a recipe for zucchini.  Except there’s not just one zucchini recipe…there’s going to be four.  Because it’s midsummer and my zucchini plants have gone berserk. I have been eating zucchini at least once a day for weeks. I have given away dozens of them.  And they just keep coming!  So I have to keep finding things to do with them.  Here is a summary of this summer’s dishes…so far…

This flatbread recipe which is below  came via Australian Gourmet Traveller and it is so good – not to mention almost too pretty to eat!  If you don’t want to make your own bread, you can sub in a flatbread of your choice.  But the bread is pretty easy and gives you a huge dose of smug!

 

Zucchini Flatbread 1
Zucchini Flatbread 1

Zucchini Flatbread 3

 

Seriously three zucchini plants are producing enough to feed a small army!  And they grow so quickly.  One second they are tiny, the next literally as big as my arm!

Zucchini 4

But here’s the thing…up until recently, I wasn’t that big a fan of zucchini.  I recall it from childhood as being a bland soggy mess.  My conversion came when I tasted it raw in a salad one day.  And it was super good!  Zucchini Salad (2)The above salad is so easy to make and became my go-to whilst on holidays – I chopped a heap of carrots, zucchini, celery and cheese and kept them in a container in the fridge.  Whenever I got a bit peckish, I would get out some lettuce, sometimes crumble in some hard-boiled egg,  add a splash of dressing and roll up for a healthy, tasty snack!  The recipe is from my old fave Rosemary Mayne Wilson’s Salads For All Seasons.

Rosemary suggests a mayo dressing for this salad.  I vote no on that.  My preferred dressing for this salad is a vinaigrette with a good dollop of mustard in it.  Try it…you won’t regret it.

Recpe: Raw Zucchini Salad - RMW

Turkey and Zucchini Patties with Cacio e Pepe Zoodles

Okay, here’s one for the meat eaters!  Although I was not very complimentary about a lot of the meals in Pete Evans’ paleo cookbook, Healthy Every Day, these turkey and zucchini patties were an exception.  They are awesome!  I make them all the time (sometimes I even have to buy zucchini to make them!).  I don’t use the egg in this recipe as I find the mixture is already quite wet without it.  (Pete also doesn’t tell you to squeeze the water out of the zucchini which you need to do).

Zucchini Turkey Patties4

And here’s Pete’s recipe:

Turkey & Zucchini Patties – Pete Evans

The eagle-eyed of you may have noticed the fourth dish nestled in below the turkey patties in the photo above.  The last recipe in the zucchini extravaganza is a Zoodle Cacio e Pepe.  (Zucchini noodles which cheese and pepper).  A lot of recipes I have found for this cook the zoodles.  We’re not going there.  I far prefer raw zucchini to cooked so mine is kind of a Cacio e Pepe carpaccio…

 

Print

Zoodle Cacio e Pepe

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 zucchini
  • 2 tbsp Grana Padano or Parmesan cheese
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1/2 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  • 1/2 finely chopped mint (optional)

Instructions

  1. If you have a spiralizer, make noodles out of your zucchini.
  2. If not, use a vegetable peeler to make long thin strips of zucchini.
  3. Place in a bowl and toss through the olive oil, lemon juice, black pepper and cheese.
  4. Top with the mint if using.
  5. Serve straight away

Have a wonderful week!  I’m off to harvest more zucchini!

Before we go though, tell me what is your favourite zucchini recipe?

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Tiny Waldorf Salads

Is there a salad both more famous (and more mangled) than the Waldorf Salad?  I doubt it.  And because, pretty much since it’s inception, people have been mucking around with it, I thought I would put my stamp on it.  As I have a predilection for little food, I shrank my Waldorf Salad into individual serving sizes.

Waldorf Salad1Waldorf Salad – History

The Waldorf Salad was first made at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1896 and was, a huge success.  The original recipe only contained apples, celery and mayonnaise  The grapes and walnuts came later but are now considered integral ingredients.

The Waldorf precedes the other classic “American” salad, the Caesar, by 28 years.

The Waldorf Salad was also immortalised in an episode of Fawlty Towers.  I wonder if this is the only salad to ever have a sit com episode named after it.  If you have not seen this you must.  It is hilarious.  But here’s a taste!

So, celery, apples, walnuts grapes…in a mayonnaise sauce.  Which is pretty much what mine consisted of.

Waldorf Salad2So how did they manage to get it so wrong in the ’60’s?

Well, the top three reasons of what went wrong in the 60’s in general are:

  1. Charlie Manson
  2. Massive amounts of drug taking
  3. Gelatine

Now,Manson may be all kinds of crazy but I don’t think we can blame him for this:

Retro Waldorf via Bon AppetitOr this (even though this is kind of pretty)

california-waldorf-salad-gelatin-mold via bon appetitOr, Good Lord, even this:

Retro Waldorf SaladNope, the blame for that lies squarely with 3).  Possibly with a large dose of 2) thrown in

After those horrors i totally understand why the poor old Waldorf Salad is not nearly as popular today as the Caesar salad. The graphs below show internet interest in the words as search terms.


Kind of makes me wonder why I am bothering to post on Waldorf when it’s so unpopular.  Next week – Caesar Salad! And hit city!

The thing is, Caesar salad  is often awful and the Waldorf salad tasted good.  It’s crunchy and crisp and sweet and nutty.  Nothing wrong there.  The buttermilk dressing I used adds a little tang without being too cloying.  It’s delicious.  And easy to make.  And healthy.  And it’s fun to wrap up the main ingredients in a lettuce leaf like a salady sang choy bau.

What more do you need?

Go and make one now.  You already know how….it’s celery, apples, walnuts grapes…in a mayonnaise sauce.

Pop it all into a lettuce leaf, wrap it up and enjoy!

Waldorf Salad5

[yumprint-recipe id=’98’] Have a wonderful week!

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Cattle Country Salad for Cowboy Day

Go west they said.  I took their advice and not only went  west but a whole heap north as well to end  up in the UK for this year’s Cowboy Day.  I will be spending the actual day in the most haunted town in Britain! Maybe a ghost cowboy just like this one will appear on the day….

Spooky huh?

Something that is not at  all spooky is the  Cattle Country Beef Salad Salad l made to celebrate Cowboy day.  But first, this is the first time I am writing, editing,  and posting entirely via phone so let’s put any weirdness in this post, beyond the regular  weirdness down to that and I will re-edit, format as required once I get home!

Cattle Country Beef SaladWe don’t have cowboys in Australia.  We have cattlemen.  Who live in cattle country which is where this salad comes from.  Actually, it comes from Rosemary Mayne-Wilson’s Salads for All Seasons but you know what I mean.

So what all goes into a Cattle Country Beef Salad?

  1. Beef of course.  I suspect originally this would have been leftovers from the Sunday roast but I just bought from slices of roast beef from the supermarket. 
  2. Then there’s apples.  Because we all know one a day keeps the doctor away and you don’t want to get sick while you’re out riding the range.  
  3. There’s celery because…I dunno. What use is celery?  I like the taste of it but….oh that’s right.  Celery keeps the cattlemen skinny.  Because no one likes a tubby cowboy.  Specially the horses they ride around on all day.
  4. Spring onions.  To put a spring in their step.  

That was about it for the original ingredients.  I also added some mixed leaves because I had to use them before I left for the UK the following morning.  I also added some chunks of a lovely vintage cheddar.  Which also had to be used but cheese also makes anything taste better and this was no exception.

RMW suggests using a French dressing for this.  Make it really punchy by being HEAVY on the mustard.  The flavours in here are strong enough to deal with it. 

Cattle Country  Beef Salad 2This was yummy!!!! Quick simple delicious.  That’s an all round winner for me!  

Here’s the original recipe:

Okay, I’m trying to keep this short and sweet because posting off the phone is doing my head in.  

Many thanks to Greg from Recipes for Rebels for inviting me to participate in the cookalong again this year.  It is always a so much fun to be a part of something like this.  Plus, he”s one of the most awesome people on the internet so should just be thanked in general 

 I dont have my regular sign off this week but just look what can happen when bloggers get together.  For an explanation of why Battenberg Belle, Jenny Hammerton and I are wearing cowboy hats and clutching a meat cleaver, a melon baller and a hammer respectively, you’ll need to head over to Silver Screen Suppers but in the meantime, have a great Cowboy Day everyone!  

Cowboys, Caviar, Casseroles and Cocktails

Dear readers

I had such high hopes for this post.  Then they were totally dashed by a twist of fate that…well…I guess if I’d seen it coming it wouldn’t be a twist would it?  But I’m jumping ahead of myself.  First, I was totally delighted when Greg from Recipes4Rebels asked if I would join in a cookalong for Cowboy Day!  This event occurs on the fourth Saturday of July each year and is celebrated all over the world!

Cowboy Caviar 1Obviously, this is not the fourth Saturday in July, however, as I will be sunning myself on the beach at Sanur in Bali that day, with Greg’s blessing I am posting my ventures into Cowboy Cookin’ early!  And it’s a three course meal y’all. (Because 1 that’s how cowboy’s talk and 2 cocktails are a course aren’t they?  This one is almost a meal!  But again, getting ahead of myself!)

So now onto my foiled grand plans.  My idea was that I would find a cocktail called a Bali Cowboy – possibly a more tropical version of this cowboy cocktail and I would make it for my post and then, on the day itself, I would tweet another picture of me in Bali with with my Bali Cowboy and it would in a glass as big as my head and it would be blue and loaded with umbrellas and pineapple wedges and all the other tropical cocktail paraphenalia.

Cowboy Caviar 2A quick google soon showed me that there is such a thing as a Bali Cowboy.  It is NOT a cocktail.  Turns out that a Bali Cowboy is a male prostitute who hangs around Kuta Beach willing to sell his services to any rich (ie all) Western women who care to pay for them. So, whilst I’m not 100% ruling out a photo of me with a Bali Cowboy on Cowboy Day, the likelihood of it happening has dropped significantly!

So, new ideas had to be found.  Starting with some caviar.  Because we’re classy cowboys!  It’s Cowboy Caviar of courseCowboy Caviar 4Where has this salad / dip been all my life?  If this is what cowboys eat, then I want to be a cowboy.  It’s all kinds of beans and corn and tomatoes and avocado . Truly delicious!  I loved this!

So, for the second course, I went straight to the top.  And by that I mean Mr John Wayne himself.

John wayne casserole recipeTurns out The Duke and I share a love of eggs, cheese and chillies.  Now, just one thing about the John Wayne casserole…. To my mind, when you combine egg yolks to beaten egg whites with other stuff, in this instance cheese and chilli and you them put that in an oven and cook until it’s all puffed up and golden, that’s not so much a casserole as a soufflé.

You be the judge:

John wayne casserole1I’ll sit quietly over here and let my case speak for itself.

By the way, cooking this for an hour would be way too much.  You are seeing about 35 minutes and I think it was over.  I would cook this…half an hour max.  Also, the tomato didn’t do much.  I would actually leave it out and cook this for 20 minutes total.

John Wayne casserole2The soufflé casserole was good but I think I was so blown away by the Cowboy Caviar that it kind of paled by comparison.  I will definitely make it again though!

John Wayne casserole3And now for my grand Cowboy finale, I am turning to to person who started all of this, yep, Greg.  This cocktail /dessert  is A-MAZING!  So, so good.  Cowboys and cowgirls, can I present, the Giant Martini!

Giant Martini2There is no other word for this but absolutely divine! The giant in the Giant Martini doesn’t refer t to it’s size (but you could scale it up very easily)  but to the fact that it was created on the set of Giant by Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson.

Git along little doggie, this cocktail is all mine!

Giant MartiniAnd you too!

Giant Martini3jpgAh yes, Greg’s site on the PC, a cocktail in front of me and The A-Z of Cooking behind it.  Just a regular day round these parts!

Many, many thanks to Greg, this was so much fun!  Thank you so much for including me!  I always say this but you hear so much about the internet being a a horrible vicious place, I am always delighted and totally honoured to make new friends, like Greg, on here.

Ok, I’ve gotta go, 5:30am start tomorrow!  But I’m loving and leaving you with some some super rhinestone cowboy singing!

Find out all about the Cowboy Day Cook A Long here.  Hopefully my attempts will inspire you to bigger and better things on the day!

The recipe for Cowboy Caviar I used came from Cookie and Kate.

The Giant Martini recipe is here.

Kiss me and smile for me, I’ll be back here in a couple of weeks but if you can’t smile without me, I’ll be tweeting and instagramming from Bali throughout.

Loving you, leaving you, now!

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REPOST -Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout & Orange Salad

Hello Friends!

Today we are celebrating Lunar New Year, and the Year of the Monkey with a delicious belly stuffed rainbow trout.  Lunar New Year, often called Chinese New Year  is celebrated all over Asia, and all over the world via the Asian diaspora.  It is a time for families to get to together, for the exchanging of gifts and of course food.

Chinese Lantern Banner

I read this article in Serious Eats recently and as soon as  I read that whole fish was a common item at Lunar New Year dinners I knew exactly what I wanted to cook.  I have been waiting for an occasion to make Sabrina Ghayour’s Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout for AGES and this seemed like a perfect opportunity.   Fish is considered lucky for New Year, particularly at the Reunion (New Year’s Eve) Feast because the word for carp sounds like the words for good luck and gift.

Belly Stuffed Rainbow TrouNow I know some of you might be a bit freaked out by cooking / serving a whole fish.  And believe me, I used to be right there with you.  If you do not like the idea of a whole fish, you could certainly pan fry or bake fillets of rainbow trout and serve with the stuffing mixture.  However, in Chinese symbolism a whole fish represents togetherness and abundance.

Chinese Lantern Banner

But first, let’s talk Chinese Astrology.  We are about to enter the Year of The Monkey.  Famous people born in Monkey years include Leonardo Da Vinci, Elizabeth Taylor, George Lucas, Charles Dickens, and Lord Byron.  Gillian Anderson is also a Monkey.  Dragging that list down a notch or two from the great and the good,  other monkeys are Miley Cyrus and me!

 

What can you expect in the Year of The Monkey?

It is a year to act, to innovate and to take your destiny into your own hands.  However, the recklessness of the monkey also cautions us to think before we act so do not be  too hasty in making decisions.  Setting clear goals is important this year.  The monkey is also a sociable creature so this is a good year to nurture and expand your relationships with those around you.

Chinese Lantern Banner

Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout

I guess I should have made something a bit more Asian to celebrate however Sabrina Ghayour’s recipe for belly stuffed rainbow trout is delicious at any time of the year!  Incidentally a rainbow trout is the only fish I have ever actually caught for myself.

The fussiest eater in the world is a keen fisherman (yet curiously cannot eat anything he catches; he just throws them back).  A few years ago we rented a holiday house in the mountains and one afternoon set out to go berry picking.  Well the berry farm was closed but the trout farm was open.  He went to the most difficult area and started catching fish left, right and centre.  I was content to read my book but, seeing how easy it looked said that I would have a go.  Well.  We slowly moved from the most difficult to the next most difficult to the next most difficult,  ending up in what was basically a wading pool.  The four year olds (who were the only other people using this pond) and I eventually caught our fish.  Then I cried because I felt bad about killing something.  But my rationale was “If I’m going to kill something then I ‘m damn well going to eat it” so we stopped on the way home and bought some almonds and I made us a lovely Trout Almandine for dinner.

He refused to eat it.  Which resulted in a blazing row where the phrase “I killed a fish for you.  How can you not eat it?” and variations there of were thrown around the room.  Miraculously his piece of trout stayed in the pan and not over his head!

Lesson learned.  This time, we bought a trout.

Rainbow TroutThe stuffing is a very tasty and gorgeously colourful mix of spring onions, pine nuts, garlic, chilli, coriander and preserved lemons.

Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout2Sabrina’s recipe from the wonderful book Persiana is below:

Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout

 

 

My notes on this recipe were that even though I halved the stuffing ingredients because I was only cooking one trout I still had a lot of it left over.

This is not really an issue as it is totally delicious and I had the following ideas for the remainder:

  • Scatter over cooked vegetables
  • Add a little olive oil and toss through pasta, maybe with some crispy breadcrumbs
  • Serve on flatbread crisps with a dob of hummus as an appetizer
  • Stir through rice for a pilaf effect
  • Sprinkle onto mushrooms and grill.

Or you could just do what I did and just eat it by the spoonful while waiting for the fish to cook!

Chinese Lantern BannerBelly Stuffed Rainbow Trout3

Orange & Arugula Salad

To serve with my Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout, I made a very simple orange, black olive and rocket (arugula) salad.  Citrus fruits are a symbol of prosperity, good luck and abundance and lettuce symbolises spring.  So, despite not having Asian flavours my salad has come celebratory significance.

It’s almost too easy to call a recipe but here we go:

Print

Orange, Olive and Arugula Salad

A delicious, fresh and simple salad that is a perfect accompaniment to seafood.

Ingredients

Scale
  • 100g rocket / arugula
  • 1 orange
  • handful of black olives
  • 1 tbsp orange juice
  • 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • S&P

Instructions

  1. Place the rocket in a salad bowl.
  2. Segment the orange removing all peel and pith. Do this over a bowl so you catch the juice – this can be used for the dressing
  3. Toss in a handful of black olives

For The Dressing

  1. Mix the orange juice, lemon juice, olive oil and seasoning to taste.
  2. When ready to serve pour over the salad

Notes

You can fancy up this salad with any //all of the following

  • Chopped toasted walnuts or pistachios
  • Toasted pinenuts
  • Pomegranate seeds
  • Thinly sliced fennel
  • Thinly sliced red onion
  • A smattering of feta
  • Some tarragon leaves

 

Chinese Lantern BannerSome other lucky foods to serve at Lunar New Year include:

  • Spring rolls represent gold bars
  • Celery for wisdom
  • Plums for mental acuity
  • Dumplings for wealth
  • Long Noodles for a long life.

My work is celebrating tomorrow with a yum-cha lunch.  Bring on the dumplings!

Lunar New Festivals will continue until 22 February so you have plenty of time to join in the celebrations.

Just for fun, I took some fortune cookies to a family dinner and we all chose one to pick our fortune for lunar new year.  This was mine:

Fortune cookieIf you are celebrating Lunar New Year, or even if you are not, you are all my garden of roses and I wish you all a year of joy and abundance!

Have a wonderful week.  I’m off to eat my weight in dumplings!

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