delicious

fresh nectarine salad

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This salad is simple and sweetly delicious and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I really love salads that are using just one main ingredient. It’s the zen way. Also I have always secretly put vinaigrette on my fruit salad when it’s just for me. So this recipe, which could also use peaches, hits the sweet and savoury thing on the head, if you like that sort of thing. I love the sweetness of the nectarine with the zingy dressing. It’s particularly lovely with my winter slaw. A friend of mine makes it all the time…she’s completely hooked on it.

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caramelised roasted red onions

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These onions are roasted until they are caramelised and sitting in an unctuous balsamic syrupy sauce. This recipe pays tribute to the humble onion as a vegetable in its own right. They are fab with a roast dinner or as a side dish and they are also great at room temperature along side salads and bread. But apart from being delicious, studies  have shown that rosemary has amazing anti ageing properties, ten percent of the population in the town of Acciaroli in Italy are over 100 years and scientists are putting it down to the rosemary in their diet and scientific studies have also shows that rosemary helps maintain and improve brain function and memory. So I’m adding Rosemary to my diet whenever I can, which is easy as I love the taste and smell.

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scorched or roasted sourdough toast

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Toast is one of the best things ever. And this is one of the tastiest way of cooking bread and is so fantastic and crammed with flavour that when I gave it to Ralph to try he was as bowled over as I was. I like it even more than normal toast, which is, of course, a brilliant invention, but if you are going down the non-dairy route and you want your bread to be just as scrumptious as toast with butter, slices of bread roasted or scorched in a dry pan with a light spray of oil and a sprinkling of Maldon sea salt are ruddy marvellous.  If you roast it, it becomes like a giant crunchy crouton, which can be the basis for a tartine or any breakfast where you have toast. (I have also put fried mushrooms on it as a starter) This is also a great way to make bread tasty without adding butter or margarine. So it’s perfect for dairy free and vegan diets. Go on try it, you will still like toast, but not as much.

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cucumber and cashew noodle bowl

~ aplotzi ~ 1 Comment

I love cooking with cucumber. It’s really delicious cooked and I often put it in a stir fry julienned or just chopped into stick shapes and add it to the pan with all the other ingredients. Cooked cucumber has a subtle, delicate taste which works really well with Asian recipes. I have also added crunchy cashews and a bit of coconut so it has my favourite combo of sweet and savoury with smooth and crunchy and is nice and healthy but super tasty. Perfect for a vegetarian or vegan dinner.

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mashed peas on toast with parmesan

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I love peas and always have, and will always be excited if I know they are on the menu, and I try and find any excuse to put them in a recipe. I have wanted to make mashed peas on toast for ages, and now I have knocked one up for the blog. It’s a delicious mix of crunchy bread with the delicate pea mash and the flavours of the Parmesan and balsamic vinegar. Bloody delish and great as a canapé or starter or as a snack.

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sweet and sour okra

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This okra recipe is taken from my first ever Madhur Jaffrey cookbook my then boyfriend was given by someone he worked with because he loved curries and he loved cooking. We often used to argue about who cooked the dinner because we both loved to cook so much. Which led me to realise that theres’s room for only one domestic goddess in a relationship. The book has inspired me ever since then although I change the recipes to contain much less oil, and I use coconut oil instead of ghee. It is one of the most delicious ways to eat okra because it’s full of flavours which are sweet and fragrant and it has the gentle perfume of cumin and coriander. I also replace the sugar in her recipes with maple syrup, but you can use sugar if you prefer. I often serve it with other Indian dishes like dhal or just with plain basmati rice and an Indian pickle. One of reasons Indian food lends itself to vegetarian and vegan cooking so well is because it’s very, very tasty and has great textures and colours. I usually cook Indian food if I’m having my friends over for a vegetarian feast as I know everyone loves it.

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lentil and feta salad

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This salad is just an assembly job and only takes a few minutes to make. It originally comes from a low carb cook book I covet called Easy Low Carb and the recipes are complied by different authors. I think it’s out of print now, but it’s full of recipes to inspire anyone who wants to cook low carb or low G.I. but wants to keep it interesting and delicious. I have tweaked this recipe a bit to suit my tastes. I replaced the vinegar with lemon juice and added a tad of sweetness and lemon zest because lemon zest from organic unwaxed lemons is a really healthy addition to your food as well as super tasty. This salad is perfect with fish or meat or with other salads or just as a snack.

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beetroot pachadi

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I think beetroot rocks and this is my take on beetroot pachadi, a creamy Indian curry dish which is normally served puréed. I prefer it chunky but with the same great flavours, I also love the popping texture of the mustard seeds in your mouth when you eat it. I have added crunchy coconut chips as a garnish, to add even more texture. It’s a great Indian sweet and sour dish which can be a stand alone dish, but is delicious with other curries too, including meat ones, and perfect served with basmati rice and a salad or a paratha. My friends have tested this recipe out for me and they all think it’s brilliant. Thanks friends.

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fennel salad with pistachios and feta

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I had a salad similar to this with my friend Amanda this week in a restaurant. We really liked it and thought it was a great idea, but thought the dressing needed a bit more oomph. Roasted fennel is a fantastic ingredient in a salad, it loses its liquoricey flavour and has a delicious delicate flavour and texture. I’ve also added a few extra ingredients to make it more tasty. This recipe has all the right components for our tastes plus there’s the crunchy and creamy thing going on which we love.

Recipe

Serves 2.

Ingredients:
2 fennel bulbs sliced fairly thinly
100g Feta
A lemon cut into wedges
Some baby salad leaves
A sprinkling of Sumac
A handful of pistachios
2 tablespoons of pomegranate seeds
3 tablespoons olive oil plus a bit more for roasting the fennel
2 teaspoons lime juice
2 tablespoons of pomegranate molasses
Salt and pepper to taste

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midnight spaghetti

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You can never have enough pasta in your life. When I was very young my father used to take me to a smart Italian restaurant in Chelsea called The Meridiana owned by his friend Enzo Apicella.  Enzo sometimes sat with us while we ate and we would discuss our love of pasta. This is a simple recipe, which is incredibly delicious. It’s also called Aglio E Olio in Italian. There are a lot of versions of it, and you can customise it with whatever you have in the cupboard. It’s called midnight spaghetti because it’s a recipe used by tired, busy chefs after they come home late after long day at work. It’s also called ‘after the party’, so you get the drift…it’s quick, easy and very tasty, particularly after one too many drinks and you are ravenous. Check out midnight spaghetti 2 on here, if you fancy trying another version. It would also be a perfect for a vegetarian dinner party with a salad if you wanted to cook something that is economical and very doable.

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