Stuffed Zucchini Boats with Pine Nut Salsa

 

Zucchinis, Zukes, or Courgettes, same thing, and at the moment they are in season here, so if you have lots of them in your vegetable crisper like I had, this could be the recipe for you. I wanted to do something a bit different with them this time, so why not stuff them? I really like stuffed vegetables, and they transform into a meal in themselves. Serve these as a meal on their own, or if  you are thinking of a banquet, they make a great side dish for hungry people. This recipe is inspired by chef Yotam Ottolenghi, yes I am a fan of his recipes, as you know, and this one has ingredients which you probably have on hand already, if not they are easy to find. I had a lot of fun making this recipe, and it's a cinch to make for Meatless Monday, a Sunday lunch, or just during the week, it's light and easy.

I was preparing the zucchinis, removing the flesh and hollowing them out, having fun and making little canoes, when Mr. HRK came up to me and said I think that might be going a bit far. Mr. HRK has a very quick wit at times, and when I said to him, I need to do this before I can stuff them, which I didn't think was anything too extreme, he said well the Canoe Slalom race is on the TV and Aussie Jessica Fox is racing shortly for a Gold Medal, and you are making canoes? That's really getting into it isn't it? I hadn't even though of that, but we had a good laugh, and then Jessica won the Gold Medal for the Canoe Slalom race which was amazing, she was incredible, and I had my canoes to play with as well:) So Jessica you had  lots of support back here in Australia, and we are so proud of you. So this recipe is an ode to the Slalom Canoe Gold Medal event, and a tribute to Jessica Fox. What a woman.

Cook's Notes:

• Don't be afraid of adding extra herbal flavour to this dish, it will shine through.
• If you love chilli, add a chopped capilano sweet chilli to the stuffing mix.
• Very fresh, organic produce is the key to successful vegetarian cooking. I bought these zucchinis and beautiful cherry tomatoes from a local Mackay farmer, called Sweet As Fresh As, who throughout the Winter sell sweetcorn, tomatoes, zucchinis, cucumbers and whatever else they have in season. Their strawberries are to die for. I rarely manage to cook with those though, as we eat them all too quickly. They set up a stall at the Wednesday City Markets, and sell from their truck which they drive to a North Mackay roadside spot up the road from Bunnings and opposite a S.D.A. school. They can be found there every Thursday and Sunday morning. They are a real Mackay farming success story.
• Keep a tightly sealed bottle of lightly toasted pine nuts in the frig, so that they are ready for dishes like these, saves a lot of time. 
• To save time, the stuffing can be made a day ahead so that the zucchinis are ready to be stuffed and baked.
• A mix of yellow and green zucchinis also looks very attractive on the plate.

Ingredients:

Serves two as a main course, or four as a side

2 large zucchinis, (500 g) halved lengthways

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 large beaten egg

40 g Parmesan cheese (or Pecorino) finely grated

40 g fresh sourdough breadcrumbs (about 1 slice, crusts are fine)

100 g cherry tomatoes, quartered

1 large lemon (finely grate the zest for 2 teaspoons, then juice to get 1 tablespoon)

4 tablespoons finely chopped oregano leaves (a good bunch), plus a few extra leaves for a garnish

A couple of sprigs of lemon thyme, optional ( I used it because I grow it, and love the flavour)

35 g pine nuts, lightly toasted

3 tablespoons olive oil 

salt

Method:

Preheat the oven to 230 deg. C fan forced.

Hollow out the zucchinis with a dessert spoon into the shape of canoes, leaving about 1 cm thickness around the edges. The zucchinis will still hold their shape if scooped out carefully.

Prepare the zucchinis and the tomatoes: 

Transfer the zucchini flesh to a sieve or colander and squeeze out as much moisture as you can. I sprinkled the flesh with a small amount of salt and left them for a little while to encourage the salt to drain off, but my zucchinis didn't release much moisture. You are aiming to be left with about 100 g of drained zucchini flesh. 

Meanwhile in another bowl continue the squeezing and crushing and crush the tomatoes well with your hands.

Put the drained zucchini flesh into a bowl, add the crushed tomatoes, and add the egg, garlic, breadcrumbs and Parmesan, 1/4 teaspoon of salt and a grinding of black pepper. Give a stir and set aside.

Pine Nut Salsa

In a separate bowl mix the lemon zest, pine nuts, and oregano. Take half of this mixture, and mix into the zucchini mixture. Place the remaining half of the mixture to the side for later, to finish making the salsa.

Place the zucchini canoes on your baking tray, with the hollowed sides facing upwards. 

Drizzle 1 tablespoon of olive oil over the zucchini halves and season them with 1/8 teaspoon of salt.

Fill the zucchinis with the zucchini filling mixture,and bake for 15 minutes, until they are beautifully golden-brown and set. Be careful to check after exactly 15 minutes.

Finish making the Pine Nut Salsa while the zucchinis are baking.

Add the lemon juice, the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and 1/8 teaspoon of salt to the bowl of oregano, zest, and pine nuts. 

When the zucchinis have cooled slightly, spread the salsa on each of them, and sprinkle with a garnish of oregano leaves for further flavour and presentation, and serve.

If the zucchinis are being served as a main, serve with a salad and whatever carbohydrate you might prefer. But that is your choice and optional.

We've had moderate success with growing zucchinis, and at the moment we have about 6 volunteer plants in our garden, self seeded from our compost heap, plants with large leaves, which could be zucchinis, could be pumpkins, could be another kind of squash, time will tell, and that's the fun of it. Meanwhile I'll keep shopping for this healthy produce at the markets.

Congratulations to all of the amazing athletes from all nations competing at the Tokyo Olympics. Some of the stories bring tears to our eyes, others fill us with joy and pride. They have all worked so hard to be there.

Warm wishes,  

Pauline

French-style Braised Chicken with Leek and Mushroom - Poulet a l'etoufee aux poireaux et aux champignons

French cooking doesn't need to be fancy, it can be quite simple, with the subtle flavours being achieved by layering the ingredients in one pot.

Cooking this entire French dish in one stove top pan is an easy way to cook, saving time and effort, and it is also incredibly delicious. 

Lemon and Ricotta Mini-Bundt Cakes

These cakes are a celebration of citrus fruits in season, a tangy theme running through my sweets baking this Winter. 

Fill these little lovelies with lemon or lime curd, dust with some sifted icing sugar, garnish with a slice of dehydrated cumquat, (optional of course) and sit back and enjoy with fresh cream or yoghurt, depending on the time of day. Lemons and limes have been abundant this Winter, and quite interchangeable when cooking sweets.

Self-saucing Sticky Date Pudding Traybake

 

Winter  in the Southern Hemisphere is the time to treat yourself to an indulgent style pudding. However it is still delicious in Summer.

Roasted Cauliflower Curry with Lime and Coriander

 

The pure white cauliflower loves being the hero in vegetarian dishes, and in this curry all we need is cauliflower, curry leaves, a few spices and tomatoes and we have a delicious midweek dish. Browning the cauliflower thoroughly under the grill at the beginning of your preparations gives the curry great depth of flavour. I cooked up some rich homemade chicken stock yesterday,  so I used that as the liquid base, however use vegetable stock for a real vegetarian dish, or using coconut milk would make this dish even more filling, but it definitely doesn't need it. "Did you miss the meat in the curry?" "Not at all," replied Mr. HRK,  "and I loved the Mango chutney you put with it". 

 We have a curry tree, fresh chillies, and fresh ginger growing in our garden, and ground coriander seeds and turmeric root which we have dehydrated and ground ourselves so I already had a lot of the ingredients on hand for this curry. I also used some locally grown organic garlic from Eungella, which is an hour west of Mackay and 686 metres above sea level making it perfect for garlic growing. If you visit Mackay, travelling up to the picturesque township of Eungella through the fertile Pioneer Valley is a must.

This recipe is from Gourmet Traveller magazine, and I urge you to try this dish. It is more aromatic than spicy and I think it is suited to most palates.

Ingredients:

1 cauliflower (about 1.5 kg), cut into 3 cm florets

4 tablespoons rice bran or olive oil (or use ghee if you wish, about 75 grams)

1/2 cup fresh curry leaves (loosely packed)

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

4 long green chillies, thinly sliced (I used a red one as well)

30 cm fresh ginger, finely grated

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground turmeric

1 tsp garam masala

400 grams cherry tomatoes, fresh or tinned

400 ml of liquid, try chicken stock, vegetable stock, water, or coconut milk

To serve, there are many options that you can use:

Steamed basmati rice and coarsely chopped red onion tossed in lime juice (the traditional Indian way)

Lime wedges and Greek-style yoghurt

Fresh coriander

Mango chutney, which I always serve with a curry as I have many bottles of my homemade mango chutney in the pantry. Making chutney is an annual event at the end of the year when the mangoes are still green.

Method:

Chargrill the cauliflower. Turn your oven grill onto high. Toss the cauliflower in  half of the oil or ghee in a bowl, season to taste, and spread the florets onto a lightly greased oven tray. Grill, turning occasionally, until slightly charred. Leave to rest while you make the curry sauce.

Heat the remaining oil in a large frying pan with a lid over a medium heat, I use my Scanpan for this. Add the curry leaves, garlic, onion, and ginger and season to taste. Stir occasionally to prevent burning until the onions and other ingredients are softened and golden. Add spices, and stir until aromatic (1 minute), then add the tomatoes and 400 ml of vegetable or chicken stock, or coconut milk, and simmer until reduced by about a quarter allowing the flavours to develop (8 minutes.) 

Add the chargrilled cauliflower  and stir through the sauce for a couple of minutes until all heated through. Taste to check if any more seasoning is needed and serve.

Cook's observations:

1. The cauliflower could be browned in advance and refrigerated in a container for a day to cut down on the cooking time later on.
2. Frozen cauliflower pieces could be used if you have trouble buying fresh produce.
3. It is well worth buying a can of organic cherry tomatoes for this dish. They bring a lovely flavour to it, or use homegrown ones if you are lucky to have some growing
4. Grind your own coriander seeds in a pestle and mortar for superior flavour and garnish with fresh coriander leaves.
5. If you like eating curries often, buy a curry tree and grow it in a pot, you will use the leaves over and over and they are fast growing and the pot can move with you if you relocate. Ours is really big now, but grows in the ground and is also a good screen tree. Ask around as friends are often growing them and they send out suckers which can be repotted.
6. Use ground ginger if you don't have the fresh stuff.
7. Add a can of chick peas to this dish for some protein and to stretch it even further.
8. Leftovers are delicious for lunch, or for serving with a salad.

The weather here has been magnificent, cold nights, and beautiful sunny mornings so we took Locky to the beach for a walk and a run and he loved it. Bucasia Beach only 15 minutes drive from our home is one of our favourite beaches, dog friendly, only a few other people on the beach with their dogs, and even more importantly  there is a nice little beachshack style cafe across the road from the beach to enjoy a coffee or breakfast, or even dinner after a late afternoon walk. No photos of the cafe this time, but brekkie was delicious. This is Winter in paradise.

Locky loves the Beach

A fisherman trying his luck, not my fisherman though.

Early morning serenity on Bucasia Beach

Thanks for dropping by, 

Warm wishes

Pauline

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Golden Syrup Dumplings, a comforting dessert

The night time temperatures have plummeted here so it's time to indulge with a warming dessert. I am often asked to make this dish for dessert when I am cooking for the whole family. However last time when we were away and I wanted to make them, I found it difficult to find a recipe that I liked online. So here is my favourite Golden Syrup Dumpling recipe which I recently rediscovered in an old school recipe book of mine, which was a relief as I thought I had lost the recipe forever. The whole story about this lost recipe was in my last post. This is comfort food in a bowl.  

The recipe was originally given to me by Theresa, a former work colleague, who was a qualified and talented book binder in a library where I worked, many moons ago. I really hope book binding hasn't become a lost craft in this digital age.

I like to make the dough for the dumplings in advance, and place them on a lightly floured plate, cover and refrigerate. them. This can be done a couple of hours before cooking them.. Place all of the syrup ingredients in a wide saucepan, ready to boil.

If you are very well organised with plating up your main course, the dumplings can be placed in the saucepan to simmer on a low heat and will be cooking as the main course is being eaten. Let the steam do the work. Dessert is then ready to be served following the main course. It's that easy. However it is important that your wide saucepan can maintain a low simmer for 10 minutes. I had trouble with that this time, as the thermostat on my stove top has decided to cause problems, and I can only maintain a low heat on the small hotplates, the large hotplates only work  at a high heat. I found a way around it, however it looks like we will be purchasing a new stove top in the near future. 

Let's start cooking:

Golden Syrup Dumplings: 4 servings

The Syrup

Syrup Ingredients:

1 1/3 cups water
1/2 cup white or lightly packed brown sugar (I use white)
2 tablespoons golden syrup
30 g butter

Dumplings: 

Makes approx 20 small dumplings

Ingredients:

1 cup self-raising flour
30 g butter
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup milk

Serves 4

Let's cook:

1. Prepare the syrup first so that you are ready for cooking the dumplings. Place water, sugar, golden syrup, and butter in a wide, shallow saucepan with a lid. Stir occasionally over low heat to dissolve sugar, and rest the sauce while you make the dumplings.
2. To make the dumplings, sift the flour into a mixing bowl. Rub in the butter to form crumbs with your fingers, then make a well in the centre of the mixture and add egg and milk. Mix gently so that ingredients are just combined. (Don't over mix). Add more flour if necessary until you have a dough which forms a ball. The consistency should be similar to a scone mixture.
3. Bring the prepared syrup to the boil. With floured hands, form dough into little balls and place, one at a time into the syrup. Alternatively, drop portions of dough from a spoon into the boiling syrup. Or prepare the dumplings in advance and keep them covered and refrigerated until ready to use.
4. Cover the saucepan immediately with a lid, and let the steam do it's work to create light, fluffy dumplings. Reduce heat and simmer until dumplings are cooked and well risen (about 6-10 minutes, depending on size). Don't overcook or they will be tough.

Preparing the syrup

Mix the flour and butter together to a crumbly mixture, I use my fingers

Add beaten egg and milk to dry ingredients

Mix to form a dough

Shape the dough into beautiful little dumplings

Simmer away

Serve immediately with warm vanilla custard, whipped cream or ice cream and enjoy.

I made a fresh  healthy tuna salad to eat as our main course, which we ate while the dumplings were cooking. This is a layered salad, using whatever I have on hand, and I love adding green peas and thinly sliced red onion for flavour, a sprinkle of parmesan cheese, a few olives, and then I just added a small can of tuna to each plate but any protein on hand would do. I topped it off with a dollop of homemade mayonnaise which is always delicious with salad. Making your own mayonnaise is so fast and easy and saves having to go and buy it. Here's the link to my recipe for home made mayonnaise.

It'll be a late night for us tonight. Mr. HRK and I love our tennis, and you may have heard that our very own Australian female tennis player, Ash Barty, is playing in the women's singles final at Wimbledon tonight. Ash is also a Queenslander as we both are, which makes it extra special. We are so proud of her and wish her all the best. She is the first Australian woman for 20 years  to play in a Wimbledon final. We plan to stay up and watch it live on TV and support Ash, and the match should start in about 30 minutes time at 11 pm. Hopefully it will only go to two sets, I'm not sure how I will stay up if it goes to three sets, but it will be so exciting, and I will give it my best shot. I can hear Mr. HRK making noises in the kitchen as I write this, so he will be preparing some sustenance for us to make it through the match, even though we had dumplings for dessert ha, ha.

Also, warmest wishes go out to everyone in lockdown in Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast and Wollongong where the Covid Delta variant seems to be spreading. It is such a worry. Hoping you are coping ok in your homes, and managing to stay healthy and happy. Mr. HRK and I send you our best wishes, let's hope this will be over soon. Keep safe.

Thanks so much for dropping by.

Best wishes

Pauline

Armenian Nutmeg Cake

 

This is a rustic style cake, with the warm and sweet Middle Eastern flavours of freshly ground nutmeg exciting the senses, and the soft, moist crumb making it a joy to eat. It's a very clever cake, as a crusty base is created by half of the dry mixture, and then the rest of the wet cake mixture when added to the cake tin is topped with chopped walnuts. 

This isn't a pretty cake to photograph, but it's a cinch to make and absolutely delicious to eat with a cup of espresso coffee or a pot of tea. I urge you to give it a try. It's a real keeper.

I found this cake recipe in The Mackay Whitsunday Anglican School Recipe book called "Tastebud Ticklers", collated by teachers, parents and students of the school, and published back in 1994. There are so many great recipes in this book, and this one has stood the test of time. The recipe book was assembled as a fund raiser as they generally are, and the Principal of the school at the time, Mr. Ron Bourne, famously said that if the book was published and actually raised some money he would walk to Sarina, just an hour by car down the road from Mackay and back again. Well none of us remember him actually doing that, but it was a successful project, and some of the parents still refer to it and cook from it as I just have.

 I hadn't looked at this book for quite a while before I made this cake, but just now as I was flicking through the pages again, I found my original Golden Syrup Dumplings  recipe in there. I had forgotten that this was the recipe I contributed to the book, and I had since lost the original of this recipe, true story. In 1994, I started a new job, so I am pretty amazed that I found the time to even contribute to this recipe book let alone remember that I did. Wow, what a find, because Golden Syrup Dumplings are a favourite of ours in Winter, and I have since used other recipes which Mr. HRK and I have humbly thought weren't as good as my original. My lost recipe has been found, and I have to tell you I am pretty excited. So needless to say dear readers, this dumpling dessert will be back on the menu again at home, and will hopefully be published on the blog, one cold wintry day, so watch this space.

For now though this story is really about the Armenian Nutmeg cake, originally contributed to the book by Norelle  Millen. Thanks Norelle. 

Ingredients:

2 cups brown sugar

1 cup milk

2 cups self raising flour or ( 2 cups plain flour and 4 teaspoons of baking powder)

1 egg at room temperature

1 teaspoon grated nutmeg

4 oz butter (113 grams) chopped into pieces

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

METHOD:

Combine the sugar, sifted flour and nutmeg, and rub in butter. Place half the mixture into a well greased 20 cm or 8 inch spring form tin.

Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in warm milk and pour this into the remaining mixture. Add beaten egg and mix well.

Pour the wet mixture over base in the cake tin evenly and sprinkle with walnuts.

Bake for 50-60 minutes in a moderate oven. Mine cooked in 40 minutes and is very moist. Each oven is different in cooking time.

There's plenty for every body.

It's balmy Winter weather here after a cool start of 9 degrees, so as soon as I made this cake first thing this morning, I started gardening. Mr. HRK was in the garden all morning, working on a garden at the side of our house which had become overgrown, so we are starting again with that one. It's always exciting starting a garden from scratch again.

The very original recipe.

Warm wishes to you all, and hoping your week is progressing well.

Pauline

In My Kitchen, July 2021

There's no place like home, as we say. We have been home from holidaying in Cairns for a week now, and although it was a very lovely break, and we had a wonderful time with our family and very special times with our daughter, it's nice to be safely home. The Bruce Highway is very busy to drive on at this time of year, people are travelling North to Cairns and the Cape, in caravans and campers, often in convoys, and so the secret is to leave very early in the morning before the caravanners pull out from their free roadside parks and caravan parks. Many of the new In My Kitchen pieces this month are from holiday shopping. This post is part of the monthly In My Kitchen series, a global event,  hosted by the lovely Sherry from Sherry's Pickings. I hope you enjoy it.

I came home to the flowering Sunny Chief. Rth. Chief Sunny Dragon is her/his simple name and I am always thrilled when this orchid is in bloom. I love being able to look at the flowers from my kitchen when I am cooking in there.

I took this photo of the Chief from another angle on my kitchen bench next to a vase of nasturtiums and a lovely golden double gerbera from our garden, a combination of some of my favourite colours to brighten up the kitchen. I love to have fresh flowers in the house, don't you? 

We took it a bit slower driving to Cairns this time, and stayed overnight in Ingham, about 5 hours drive from Mackay, to break the drive. Because we then had a whole day to drive to Cairns and it should only take four and a half hours at the most, we indulged by stopping in Innisfail, a little further North, and visited an amazing little Italian deli called Oliveris which has been on my list to explore for a few years now. It is an institution in Innisfail, and to walk through the  front door is to step back in time and explore an authentic Italian owned business, catering to a a proud and food loving predominantly Italian population. 

Oliveri's is a food lovers destination and has the best selection of olives, salamis, packaged Italian goods, and noughat,  and will also make visitors a delicious lunch. What impressed me is that the staff behind the counter are really interested in each customer and take plenty of time to answer any questions. They really know their stuff.

Next time we pass through we will hopefully have our car refrigerator on board, and then I can really shop to my heart's content.

This is my kind of relish, and it's not too hot.

This was delicious on our salad last night.

While I was inside shopping at Oliveri's, Mr. HRK and Locky mingled with the locals, and walked the main street of Innisfail. They found another shop which he said stocked everything, and my hubby who usually doesn't like shopping,  lashed out and bought me a very solid grater, with a beautiful wooden handle. He knows I have a hazardous relationship with graters, but this one will hopefully be a lot safer to use. I love it. In a future post, I'll write more about our road trip to Cairns, but for now I am aware that this event is about what's actually In My Kitchen, and everything I am writing here is my opinion.

My new heavy duty Grater

I also plan to make a pillow slip for my little grandson out of the beautiful new tea towel the grater is sitting on. It is designed in Australia and has colourful images of sea creatures, corals etc, perhaps it replicates out great Barrier Reef. Hugo is obsessed with sea creatures. 

When we are in Cairns, we go out for coffee most mornings which is a holiday treat for us as we don't tend to do it here at home, as Mr. HRK makes a delicious espresso coffee for us each day, every bit as good as anything we can buy. One of the coffee shops we like to visit up there is the Sipping Duck, which is near Freshwater on the Northern side, and has now branched out into making coffee based products. I thought the Coffee Spice Rub and the Dukkah looked very interesting. The staff at Sipping Duck are very good at imaginative coffee art, and a clever Sipping Duck often decorates the coffees.

We drove up to the Atherton Tablelands from Cairns for the day, and visited the Nerada Tea Plantation. This business is owned by the Russell Family, 3rd generation tea producers., who celebrated 50 years of tea production in 2021. The family started out in Britain, before heading to Malaya in 1880, and then later started their tea plantation in Australia when they realised the conditions on the Tablelands were perfect for growing tea.  An Australian owned business during an era of foreign ownership is something to be celebrated and supported.

Photos of the Nerada tea plantation

I have a new Bread Proofing basket, this one is oblong, which I am looking forward to using. Another locally owned business that we like to visit in Cairns is Chef Link, a large kitchen warehouse, which caters for the local restaurant and cafe business but is also open to the public. The staff there are very knowledgeable and I suspect they were chefs in a previous life. I never fail to find something I need to bring home from there.

I was given some very juicy backyard limes last week by a generous neighbour, and made a couple of batches of Lime Curd with them, always delicious,  using exactly the same technique and quantities as my Lemon Curd recipe. You can find my microwave lemon curd recipe here. I had some tart shells in the freezer,  which were a perfect size for these tartlets.

Here are some of my Lime Curd Tartlets that I garnished for a bit of fun with dried mandarin slices using mandarins from our mandarin tree, cinnamon spice, and golden kiwi fruit, and lots of fresh cream. Yum,they were delicious. You can also read the story on how we dehydrated our mandarins here if you missed it last time.

I bought these sweet pastry shells recently at a local deli, they don't require any cooking, and would also be perfect for making fast and easy tartlets.

My heartfelt thoughts are with those of you still in lock down. I hope you are managing to enjoy the simple things in life, including some delicious homemade meals. We aren't in lock down here but need to sign in with our Queensland phone app at supermarkets and restaurants etc. However we still need to be fastidious with hygiene and I am quite happy to avoid crowds these days, thankfully I love being at home. Until next time, thanks for stopping by.

Warmest wishes

Pauline