thepassionatecook

Baked zucchini slices with tomato, scamorza & a rosemary-quinoa crust

Friends are a wonderful thing... especially when they come bearing gifts. My friend Anna is special in very many ways, apart from being a wonderfully caring, supportive and active mother-of-two, she has also founded an amazing support group for parents who want to make sure their kids grow up in the healthiest way possible. This group has become a veritable treasure chest for information and although people mostly know each other only virtually, it has quickly become the one-stop shop in all things children - your child is ill and you look for natural ways of supporting them, you ask your Arnica friends. A doctor is recommending a certain treatment and you want a second opinion, you consult with one of the many doctors, nurses and complementary therapists that are part of the network. You're stuck for ideas of how to keep a 2-year-old occupied on a 20-hour flight, Arnica has the answer.

Another reason to be good friends with Anna is that she has her own allotment - nestled among residential homes at the edges of Richmond Park, she grows as much of her vegetables as possible on that little patch of land she rents from the council. And what a joy it is to have her come round with the fruits of her labour! The other day, when she dropped off her children at mine (during the holidays, we try and take turns in looking after our little ones so that one of us can have a bit of precious me-time... a little breathing space and a much-needed step towards preventing ourselves from going insane, really, instead of parking the kids in front of a TV all day), she came in carrying a zucchino. And not just any, it was the most humungous squash I have ever seen in my life, just shy of a meter in length, almost half a meter at its widest and weighing too much to even register on my kitchen scales...

My first thought was what a wonderful weapon it would make... don't laugh, I bet you have been in a situation where you could positively have killed a given member of your household - and don't you try and make me believe otherwise! Luckily, my husband (despite the fact that he's on leave this week and the opportunities presenting themselves should be plentifold) has been on his absolute best behaviour, so I've decided to use the ginormous zucchino for cooking instead. I chopped some into our weekly Asian soup fix, I made a wonderful cream of courgettes for lunch and last night, I made these lovely little numbers here: a slice of courgette, some thick and onctuous tomato sauce with just the tinest kick of spice, a generous layer of scamorza (smoked mozzarella) and a crispy topping of quinoa laced with garlic oil and rosemary... the best dish yet.

I've still got about half a meter left and am wondering what else I could be making: zucchini chutney? Zucchini muffins? Zucchini burgers? Or maybe I'll just keep this last bit, just in case I need to use it against any intruders, ill-behaved children or a dis-obedient husband...

Fennel, apple & parma salad

My husband is sojourning in New York at the moment (however much he insists that he is there to work, I am still jealous - gone are the days when spouses, children and pets would be invited to travel with them to sweeten up their secondment to any given destination) and I find myself struggling to work up an appetite. This is not dissimilar to when I was studying for my A-levels (or equivalent) and lived on my own in my parents' farmhouse dating back to 1769 where the next shop was a 5 km walk uphill and there was only a wood-fired oven which I found incredibly hard to operate. After about 2 months of self-induced solitary confinement ended up weighing in at just 45kg... not that there's any danger of that right now (three kids later), but eating alone just isn't much fun, I find - I bet you agree.

But eat, I do. More often than not, it'll be a salad of sorts, with anything I can find in my slowly emptying fridge. Today, it spat out some parma ham, fennel and rocket (arugula), which I tossed up with a few slices of apple and a sprinkling of hazelnuts. And boy, despite it leaving nothing to wish for tastewise, I could have thought of nicer company than the latest issue of the Economist...

Quinoa, prawn & asparagus salad with coriander & lime dressing

Super tasty meets super healthy. Not something you read every day, right? This salad has become an absolute favourite in our household - it is inspired by an old clipping out of a magazine supplement, but just as happens with dishes you make over and over again (we have this almost every week), it has been adapted, improved and reached a point where you just sleep-walk your way through the recipe, using some main components but also throwing in whatever you might have left in the fridge.

I normally add some avocado, but as per usual all I could get at the supermarket that day was either so hard you could easily kill someone with it or completely mushy - so I threw in some green asparagus which we're also eating like mad at the moment. I vary the herbs a lot, using dill or basil, always coriander, though, simply because I am addicted to it. The prawns and quinoa are a constant, but it would taste equally nice with some pan-fried or even smoked salmon.

Quinoa is a relatively recent discovery of mine, I had tried it on various occasions and always completely overcooked it. Ever since I discovered I could steam it in my Thermomix, which takes all of 20 minutes and doesn't need any attention at all, I make quinoa at least twice a week - a big batch of it, too, so that I can throw some into a tasty salad, add some to a, say, tomato soup and feed the kids with it as well. Perfectly versatile and super healthy: as well as being a comforting carb, it is one of the few non-meat products that contain all your essential amino acids. Plus it contains more protein than beef, balancing out your naughty carb fix niftily!

Baba Ghanouj (Iraqi style)

For me, this recipe represents more than just a way of serving the probably most recognised of Middle Eastern dishes for me... I recently enjoyed my first visit to an Iraqi restaurant and the whole experience was an eye-opener. I was lucky enough not to jump into the cold water all by myself, I was actually guided and pampered by a very good friend of mine who hails from Iraq and therefore knows exactly what to order and can comment on the originality or authenticity of it all, something I would have completely missed had I gone alone.

The place we went to (Masgouf House in Knightsbridge) may be unassuming in terms of decor, the service could be friendlier and more forthcoming, but I enjoyed my visit there tremendously - and not just because of the wonderful spectacle that is the people-watching involved. I had expected the food to be much more exotic or foreign to what I know, but learnt that Iraqi cuisine is a mixed bag, leaning either to the Persian or the Turkish side - and what we enjoyed was decidedly the latter. Lots of grills, succulent pieces of chicken marinaded in saffron and yoghurt, the speciality of the house, Masgouf seabass, was a whole bass butterflied and seasoned with salt, pepper and tamarind, then skewered up and grilled in the wood-fired oven... very nice indeed. For starters we had kibbeh halab (rice balls filled with lamb mince - I am usually not too keen on lamb, but thoroughly enjoyed the taste of this), a "salad" which was basically a plate of big chunks of baby gem lettuce, spring onions, tomatoes and peppers, Khubz baked in the tannur, the most wonderful flatbeard I have ever eaten, and Baba Ghanouj.

Now, this Baba Ghanouj was very different from what I had enjoyed under the same name until then - for me, Baba Ghanouj was a paste of bland-tasting aubergines, seasoned with more or less garlic, always involving yoghurt and a drizzle of lemon juice but definitely nothing worth an entry in my diary, if I had one. The Baba Ghanouj at Masgouf House was an entirely different affair: it had such a wonderful smokiness and was so pleasantly creamy, as opposed to slimey, I also don't think it had much, if any, yoghurt. From what I could find in my internet research, the Iraqi way of making Baba Ghanouj is using tahini - an ingredient you don't find in Turkish Baba Ghanouj if my latest cookbook (turquoise) is to be believed.

So last week I tried my hand at Baba Ghanouj for the first time and boy, it was love at first sight (not sure the sentiment was returned, as I gobbled the whole pot up almost entirely on my own, getting really greedy with my fellow diners). I seriously charred those aubergines under the grill until the skin was hard and brittle, completely black, not just browned - I basically went as far as my smoke-detector would let me... then scooped the flesh out, chopped it up, mixed it with a good measure of tahini, just enough not to be overpowering or sticking to the palate, a good squeeze of lemon juice and just enough garlic. And I was rewarded with what I believe to be the best Baba Ghanouj ever. I could eat the whole pot for lunch without any help at all - Next time my friend Dabia comes over I will let her try my version to see if she, as an Iraqi, approves... if I can get myself to share, that is!

Turkish "Spoon salad"

Finally the time has come to reveal my first experiments with Turkish food. You should think that growing up in Austria, a country which has become a second home to many emigrated Turks, I should be a tad more familiar with the cuisine, but I am not. I have spent years ignoring doner kebab, to be honest, I can't stand the smell and tend to hold my breath when I walk through that part of Vienna's Naschmarkt. When I was pregnant with my second child, I had to walk from the train station to the ad agancy where I worked in Camden and on my way back, I would always walk a side street to avoid the Kebab bar... you get the idea.

I have eaten at a few Turkish restaurants back in Vienna, but it never stuck in my memory, maybe because they just weren't memorable or because I wasn't the foodie I am today and still walking around with my eyes closed when it came to exploring any cuisines that sounded more foreign than Italian or Chinese. Since living in London, I have become more aware, I guess, and more curious - but Turkish food doesn't feature much here compared to other, more exotic temptations.

For the past few weeks, my couch table has been dominated by a brilliant new tome: "turquoise" by Greg and Lucy Malouf. I am not sure how to classify this book as it is so much more than yet another cookery book - it has tons of recipes, yes, and very tempting ones at that, but also takes you on beautiful journey of discovery. History, architecture, people - you sort of want to jump in there, despite the fact that their whole journey happened in the winter time, so no glossy pictures of tourists lined up like sardines in a tin, roasting on the (no doubt beautiful) beaches, but snapshots of the real people, the real life. No make-up artists or set preppers either. I like that. A lot.

With regards to the food, I'll repeat that I have had virtually no exposure to Turkish food, so I am not one to judge the book by its authenticity. But so far, everything I have made out of it - and believe me, there are still dozens of earmarked pages to go through - was absolutely brilliant. The first time I cooked from it, I decided that rather than spending hours devising a perfect course of dishes from amuse-bouche through to coffees, I would just cook whatever took my fancy and we'd consume it, tapas-style, all at the same time.

This "spoon salad" basically combines all the flavours of a gazpacho: cucumbers, onion, beautifully vine-ripened tomatoes, red peppers, chilli, fresh herbs and some Turkish condiments. As I haven't made it to a Middle Eastern deli yet, I had to play around a little: where "hot Turkish red pepper paste" was required, I used harissa (I was slightly suspicious when I bought a Sainsbury's own-brand, but was pleasantly surprised by the "fruitiness" of it and the fact that it seemed to contain red peppers, which made it perfect for the occasion), I used sherry vinegar instead of red wine vinegar and I didn't have any pomegranate molasses, so just skipped that part... I still very much liked the result, it's a beautifully versatile dish located somewhere between a salad, a dip and a salsa that was equally delicious eaten on its own with some flatbread as well as accompanying a pistachio-crumbed chicken breast (recipe to follow).

Definitely a keeper. And I know I'm sometimes obsessed with authenticity and I wouldn't be seen dead in most Mexican restaurants in Europe or Austrian eateries here, just because it doesn't taste like "home", but if anyone were to tell me that the recipes from turquoise are not authentic, I'll respond that I couldn't care less because they taste pretty darn amazing and that's certainly good enough for me.

Foie gras and pear compote crème brulée spoons - a contribution to WTSIM!

Aren't food blogging events a wonderful thing? Despite the fact that with the sky-rocketing number of foodblogs, there is an ever-increasing number of events being hosted, I always find one that pushes the boat out a bit and challenges me to try something new. Jeanne's recent call to do a sweet/savoury swap for January's WTSIM, ie create a savoury version of a dish that is normally sweet or vice-versa, was one such event. Although many dishes like that have been permeating restaurant menus around the globe (the Fat Duck's snail porridge being a prolific example, but things like cheese soufflés have become very popular over the last few years), this way of turning a dish on its head is far more difficult than one might think. Believe me, I have tried some pretty horrific attempts in top-notch restaurants over the years, one that still makes me gag is Angela Hartnett's attempt of a chocolate soup - no wonder The Connaught is not under her helm anymore.

As I was tossing and turning ideas to challenge established taste experiences, I found myself wondering about the inherent qualities of sweet and savoury and found that, indeed, some traditional ways of cooking cannot be reversed effectively. Aforementioned chocolate soup was lacking the creaminess we connect with chocolate, for example, and was therefore tasting bland and quite odd. Like chocolate custard powder mixed into cold water. Many sweet dishes like custard are not that easily married with vegetables (although a baked jerusalem artichoke cheesecake was one of the things I'd considered giving a try). I had a baked potato chocolate tart at Hibiscus not long ago and felt that, flavours aside, the consistency put me off - it's like your taste buds scream "chocolate", but your tongue feels like it's eating potato mash... sending my brain into a somewhat schizophrenic state I could only bear for a couple of mouthfuls. I am not usually one to push a plate full of dessert away from me, but my fellow diners couldn't help but do the same.

With these past experiences in mind (and remember, the creators of those were professional chefs, not amateurs like me), I discarded each and every idea that came into mind until I remembered something I had wanted to try for ages. I guess choosing foie gras was an easy option, but I found this a very happy marriage indeed. I stewed the pears in sauternes and seasoned them with cardamom, stirred in some prunes for extra sweetness, then arranged a bite-ful each on ceramic spoons. They were then topped with creamy foie gras, smoothed over with a spatula and sprinkled with caster sugar - a quick, but close encounter with the blow torch and voilà: an unusual, yet delicious amuse-gueule that fit Jeanne's stringent rules, but didn't make my taste-buds go ballistic! If anything, they were screaming for more, more, more!!!

Fresh figs with dolcelatte cream and spicy, caramelised nuts

Large dinner parties can be a tricky thing when you are on your own in the kitchen and still want to enjoy your guests. Careful planning and lots of advance preparation are the only way to succeed. This starter is so simple that you could be catering for a state banquet and still keep your cool: the essential thing is to get the main ingredient right.

And before you start rolling your eyes like a teenager reluctant to do the dishes (believe me, I know a thing or two about THAT!), give them a chance. If you have never tried figs fresh, they have nothing to do with the dried variety... just as dried banana or mango don't taste anything like the real thing or beef jerky doesn't taste like steak!
I never knew why some people dread figs so much until I was served a pretty bad specimen at a restaurant - it tasted like it had never seen a tree in its life, but was grown in a lab somewhere. If the taste of your figs is reminiscent of cardboard or concrete, you've got to find a new greengrocer!

Good figs are hard to come buy, they need to be just the right side of ripe and not have been picked too early - and autumn is the best time to get good quality figs. They're very delicate and if allowed to spend a maximum time on the tree, enormous care must be taken in harvesting and shipping. I like to buy figs grown in Southern Europe - Turkey, Greece, Spain), which in my case are the most likely to be harvested at their prime, wrapped individually in thin tissue paper and immediately shipped to a market near me.

When buying figs, always look carefully at what your market stall has to offer: more often than not at this time of the year there will be numerous crates with 3-for-£1 figs that are imported from further afield and therefore picked before they could develop their full potential... at the current rate, a good fig will go for £1.50 easily, so don't be stingy, you will notice the difference in flavour! Search out the ones which look like they're just about to burst open and if there is a cut one on display, you want the white flesh to be very thin (even thinner than on my picture, those could have done with a few more days on the tree) and the inside to look juicy. If they're not open, have a sniff - if they smell slightly sour, they've started to ferment already... put them back, you want sweet, plump and juicy!

Although figs have powerful meat-tenderising qualities due to the enzymes they contain, I prefer to enjoy them fresh. They are a wonderful treat as a no-fuss dessert (and yes, you CAN eat the skin!), but they are also a great addition to any cheese plate, blue cheese being a match made in heaven. And that's exactly what this starter is all about: a perfectly ripe fig, cut in half and topped with a creamy mousse of dolcelatte and mascarpone. If you have time to prepare some caramel, these nuts sprinkled with cayenne pepper offer a wonderful contrast, being crunchy and lightly spicy - and they can be prepared days in advance! So all you need to do is assemble everything neatly on a plate and you've got a starter fit for a king...

Home-cured gravadlax

We're breakfast addicts around here - and I DO NOT mean a sluggish piece of toast with a meagre smearing of margerine... I mean PROPER breakfast! I could do without breakfast any day during the week, in fact, I lived completely without breakfast for many years, convinced that my stomach would take even longer to wake up than I did. So I discovered the joys of breakfast only very late, but (and maybe just because of it) I now indulge in it with allthemore passion.

Of course, I am talking about doing it in style, which is something I can only allow myself to do on weekends. Mid-week, I usually settle for home-made granola and a freshly cut fruit salad. Come Saturday, though, it's time to pull out all the stops: cooked eggs in all shapes and sizes (e.g. my speciality of eggs florendict, oeufs cocotte, huevos a a mexicana, etc), freshly baked bread (more on this as soon as I manage to take a half-decent picture), pastrami or BLT bagels and/or some salmon. And again, we don't settle for second best: the most glorious salmon ever is smoked at my local fishmongers and he is a super hero for shaving off the thinnest slices... no chewy bits that stick between your teeth, just the tenderest, melt-in-the-mouth fish you could ever imagine. Recently, he's taken to also making gravadlax - but I thought, hang on, I might not be able to build a smoker in my house, but I can surely cure my own salmon? And so I did.

Help came in the form of Marcus Wareing's new book One Perfect Ingredient, Three Ways to Cook It. Now, lets forget for the moment that, as anyone who has known me for a few years will be able to testify, he has blatantly stolen my idea for a cookbook, he again has some great treats on offer - I didn't actually get past the gravadlax, but this recipe worked really well. In the future, I will probably stick to my other recipe, as I found that the acidity of the orange juice toughens the fish unnecessarily around the edges... my other version just uses sugar, sea salt, spices and citrus peel, so you get all the seasoning you want, but lose nothing of the flavour of the fish.

So there you go, a lovely, home-made treat for you to try this weekend - incredibly easy to make and a perfect way to impress your guests: "You did what? You cured your own salmon?" "Oh yesss!"

Black bean soup with crab and chilli

I have had an outspoken love affair with black beans ever since I lived in Mexico, but lately it's been more of a long distance relationship. They're one of a few main factors contributing to my most excessive weight gain ever (not even in any of my three pregnancies did I carry as much weight as I put on over there), but usually they tend to get all the blame. I conveniently ignore that I was also addicted to a certain starter labelled Mexican rice (which is nothing but a very attractive name for a gruesome concoction of rice with a sliced banana and a generous helping of mayo), made sneaky trips to the kitchen at least once an hour to indulge in a naughty snack of tortilla toasted directly over the gas stove, spread with (again!) mayo and about half a mashed avocado, and just generally was far too liberal with my daily calorie allowance under the pretext that I am not going to be able to enjoy this food forever and must take advantage of it while I can. I can always lose weight when I am dead, right?

If black beans weren't so hard to come by, I would probably still nurse a few extra pounds (read: stone) from way back when, but they are elusive little fellows. For years and years I imported frijoles negros refritos from a Mexican store in Austria, who actually got them from a wholesaler in Barcelona, who in turn... every attempt to make my own has ended in disaster because the beans I was searching for high and low must have been centuries old and never softened, not even after days of pre-soaking and cooking. But I decided to give it another go for Jeanne's edition of "Waiter! There's something in my... PULSES" and tried a frijoles kit from Cool Chile that had been sitting in my cupboard for a few months now, always too nervous to try it out.

And this time, I was rewarded. For once, I didn't actually give into my craving of frijoles refritos with tone of melted cheese on top and opted for a recipe of a young Austrian chef who's finding fame in New York (see a previously tested recipe for scallop ceviche with strawberries and green chile). As usual, I have liberally adapted the recipe, but the essence remains the same: a gloriously comforting soup of black beans with some crab meat and and hint of spice, a sprinkle of lime and some flatbread. And if you (like a certain friend of ours) are afraid that beans might give you flatulence, use a favourite trick of mine I learnt in Mexico: cook the beans with epazote, a dried herb that is also available through Cool Chile - the taste is similar to marjoram and it will spare you any embarrassing moments, allowing you to enjoy your favourite indulgence AND you get to keep all your friends close ;-)

Warm salad of steamed baby leeks & deconstructed eggs mimosa

It's Easter again and with the festivities comes that age-old problem of what to do with those hard-boiled eggs... or at least around here, it does! Easter traditions in Europe command that everyone be given (or, if they're kids, find somewhere hidden around the house) a hard-boiled, died egg. Since our equivalent of Santa Clause comes on Christmas Eve already, Easter is the one festivity in the year where the kids are up at the crack of dawn, turning the whole house upside down to find their Easter nests - with a fair amount of hard-boiled eggs. At breakfast, more eggs. At mass, a traditional nest of brioche with a hard-boiled egg in the centre. After church, off to visit the grandparents and extended family and at every house we would get more... eggs! (and chocolate, but that wasn't really that much of a problem for me). And not just that - they would also be cracked already, since there wasn't an egg to be had without an egg fight ensuing with some cousin or other ;-)
And for the following two weeks, all we would eat was... eggs! I had them coming out of my ears and I didn't really like them that much anyway! So, in case you are facing the same problem right now, here's an idea for using up those eggs (I don't know why I don't just throw them in the bin, to be honest, it's not like they're from Faberge or anything...) - eggs mimosa (or devilled eggs) are a common sight this time of the year, but in this case we're only using their essence: the eggs chopped finely with some capers, parsley and fresh anchovies (optional) and sprinkled over some steamed baby leeks (or indeed, asparagus, beans or whichever vegetable seems to be in season in your neck of the woods), finished off with a simple French dressing. The perfect dish to get your stomach back in gear after a weekend or over-indulgence...