Summery Courgette and Ricotta Pasta

A simple and quick pasta dish! I recommend slicing the courgettes thickly so they retain some bite and don't fall apart when mixing into the pasta dish.

Courgette (Zucchini), Asparagus and Feta Cheese Galette

Spring is here at last and so my cooking habits shift from soups and stews to quiches, tarts, and summer pies. I have had a bit of a gallete obsession recently (though unfortunately haven't blogged some of my wonderful creations) and wanted to make one that felt very in season. So I opted for courgettes and asparagus, and added in some feta cheese. Yum!

Mediterranean Vegetable Rice with Cannellini (white kidney) beans

One of mine and Pete's favourite dishes to make is something we call 'blue cheese rice thing' (as in 'what should we have. I've been meaning to blog it for a while, but never got round to it, and now I'm pregnant (32 weeks!) blue cheese has been off the menu for the last seven months. Which makes me very sad, and as soon as I've had the baby (sometime in November) I plan to practically eat my own weight in blue cheese, so expect a lot of recipes containing it then!

Moving on to this recipe, it has a similar base (rice + cannellini beans) but no cheese. It was one of my 'I'll just throw some ingredients together and see how it turns out' recipe. Thankfully, it worked really well. The olives are entirely optional but do really add to the dish, so I'd recommend keeping them in, unless you dislike them, in which case go ahead and omit them. I've found in the past that dill can be a really over powering flavour, so if you want to omit it (or don't have it in your store cupboard) then go ahead; I added only half a teaspoon to add to the flavour of the dish without being too dominant.

The dish is sort of like a risotto but using basmati rice instead of risotto rice because risotto rice is a) expensive and b) a bit too much effort. I cook this using the 'reduction method' of rice cooking which basically means adding twice as much liquid as rice (in volume), putting a lid on the pan and leaving it to cook.

Creamy Mushroom Bake

This dish is essentially like making a cauliflower cheese but using other vegetables instead, and topping with breadcrumbs, herbs and cheese. You could instead substitute the breadcrumbs for a flour and butter mix (like a savory crumble without the sugar); I was going to do this and then realised I had no flour, but the breadcrumbs were a nice alternative. My choice of other vegetables was dictated by those that were reduced in the supermarket, so by all means use other vegetables if you prefer. Essentially you cook all the veg and mix with a cheese sauce, before topping with breadcrumbs and more cheese. Yum. I served this with plain boiled potatoes but you could serve it with a simple side salad or anything else you fancy. I never measure out my butter/flour/milk when making a cheese sauce, so I've estimated it - you might want to keep an eye on how much milk you put in. Note however you can always thicken it up with more flour (just make sure you whisk it in to avoid lumps) or loosen it with milk.

Feta Cheese Summer Frittata

This is my first attempt at making a frittata, and it turned out really well. I used feta cheese in this, but any cheese you fancy will do; goats cheese would also work well, I think.

For best results, you want to use a dish which can be used on the hob as well as in the oven (such as a cast iron ceramic dish), and I've written the instructions with this in mind. Don't panic if you don't though, as I actually didn't have one to hand when I cooked this, so I fried everything in a pan and transferred it to an oven dish. It turned out fine, but the bottom of the frittata was not as well set as I would have liked.

Goats Cheese, Courgette (Zucchini) and Cherry Tomato Pasta

This month will see a drop in the frequency of my blog posts as I wait for my house purchase to go through and live in temporary accommodation for the foreseeable future, but I'm hoping to be back on track with one blog post a week by the time August rolls around...

This is a relatively straightforward and quick pasta recipe; the vegetables are cooked at the same time as the pasta is cooking, so the whole thing only takes around half an hour. Soft goats cheese which has the consistency of cream cheese is best for this as it coats the pasta more evenly than goats cheese with a rind.

Courgette (Zucchini) and Basil Risotto

It's been a long time since I've cooked a proper risotto, as I never buy risotto rice and usually substitute for normal rice (which gives a very different consistency). I came across this recipe in one of my many vegetarian cookbooks and felt like giving it a try. I was worried about the difficulty of making risotto and of having to stir it constantly for 20 minutes, but I found this wasn't necessary and I simply stirred it every few minutes whilst doing other things in the kitchen, and the consistency turned out lovely and creamy. The recipe itself called for dry vermouth, but I didn't have any vermouth or dry white wine (which you could substitute for) so I used half the amount in gin and it turned out well.

Courgette (Zucchini) Pesto Pasta

A very simple recipe today, and one that cooks up rather quickly too. I peeled the courgettes (otherwise known as zucchini) but if you can't be bothered, just slice them. You could also grate them as I have done this before with courgette pasta sauces and it works very well.

Courgette, Rosemary and Goats Cheese Quiche

One of the things I love about quiche is you can put whatever you fancy in it as a filling. For example, my previous quiche recipe involved beetroot and feta, but I mixed things up a bit here by using courgettes, goats cheese, and rosemary. This recipe comes from one of my many generic 'vegetarian kitchen' cookbooks and is a lovely balance of flavours. As ever, if you don't want to make the pastry, just use packaged stuff. 

For some reason I see quiche as very much a spring/summer dish, so this is probably the last quiche I'll feature on the blog for a while, as my attention turns to soup in the coming months.

Vegeree

After a small break from the blog due to moving house, work-related madness, going on holiday and then returning to more work-related madness (it's been an overwhelming three weeks), I present to you: Vegeree. Since becoming vegetarian nearly 5 years ago, I often get asked by my meat eating friends what I miss the most, and I always answer that I don't really miss anything (which often gets a raised eyebrow and a look of disbelief, but there you go). Whilst I don't really miss meat or fish, there are certain dishes which it took me some time to make good 'substitutes' for. I was never a big fan of fish, and kedgeree was pretty much the only fish dish I used to eat, so when I became vegetarian I just assumed there was no substitute and left it at that. Until I got hold of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'Veg Everyday' book that is, which I'm sure I've banged on about in previous blog posts. 

He uses aubergines in his recipe, but they happen to be the one vegetable I cannot stand. I will eat aubergine if necessary (i.e. somebody has cooked it for me), but will never cook it for myself. He suggested complementing the aubergines with courgettes, one of my favourite vegetables, so I just used that instead. I imagine peas would work well too. I also added in the tomatoes because when I used to cook kedgeree I always garnished it with tomatoes and they give a nice contrasting coolness to the spicy rice. The egg is ideally almost hard boiled, but with just a touch of soft yoke - though you can of course do the eggs however you prefer.

A lack of photos in this post I'm afraid, as it was dark in my kitchen and I struggled to get any decent ones. This recipe is very wordy and sounds complicated, but actually it's very straightforward and I'm simply giving you very detailed instructions on how I cook it - you can play around with this recipe how you want until you get the timings right for however you like to do things.