September 2014 - Spaghetti with cherry tomato sauce

Blah to cooking this month. No there has been some done but mostly rather plain stuff or stuff that shouldn't be spoken about, like the Pasta & Sauce sachet that I bought, made and devoured...blergh. 

There were various things in this issue that did look okay but I just could not seem to get interested in making any of it. Coming towards the end of the month and I realised that something had to be done. So I went for something quick and easy. Valli Little's Spaghetti with cherry tomato sauce. It was good. I mean it was spaghetti with a tomato sauce not much can go wrong with that. I didn't have pancetta so I had to leave that out. The resulting meal was very good. 

Spaghetti with Cherry Tomato Sauce 

by Valli Little 

Delicious September 2014 pg 48

1 onion, chopped

125 g pancetta, rind removed, chopped

1 rosemary sprig, leaves picke

1 garlic clove, chopped

2 tbsp evoo

3 anchovy fillets in oil, drained & chopped

400 g can chopped tomatoes 

400 g can cherry tomatoes 

400 g spaghetti

2 cups  basil leaves ( I didn't have any, added dried mixed herbs & baby spinach for green)

80 g grated parmesan

Wizz, onion, pancetta, rosemary and garlic in a processor until finally chopped.

Cook onion mixture over medium heat for 2 -3 minutes. Add anchovy and cook for a further 2 minutes. Add tomatoes, cook 5 - 6 min until slightly reduced. 

Cook pasta as per directions, drain, toss to combine with sauce. 

September 2013 - Peanut Butter & Dark Chocolate Cookies

All of the recipes I wanted to make from this issue were sweet things. I have talked before about limitations on baking since I live on my own. I do give some away to friends but even so I can't give them everything. 

The first thing I really wanted to make was the little strawberry galettes. These look so easy but they had marzipan in them and I just hate marzipan and I wasn't really sure what to replace that with. They are stunning looking and the strawberries are so good at the moment so I might find a way to make something similar. 

I really want to try the Watermelon & rose layer cake. I never would have thought about including watermelon in a cake. It certainly isn't a cake that would keep for any length of time given how wet watermelon is. I think that it would quickly send the cake soggy. It is a very interesting combination though so I hope to get an opportunity to make it some time. 

In the end I decided to make the Peanut butter & dark chocolate cookies. The picture in the magazine they looked really good. The recipe sounded great. I ended up with a very loose dough and it was very difficult to roll into balls. I also found that mine spread out a lot more than the photo in the magazine showed. They still tasted great and everyone I shared them with loved them. Very tasty recipe but I am not sure I would make them again. 

Peanut Butter & Dark Chocolate Cookies 

100 g unsalted butter, chopped

200 g dark chocolate, chopped 

1/3 c (100g) crunchy peanut butter

2/3 c caster sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 1/4 c (185 g) plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarb soda

1 tbsp cocoa powder

2 tbsp roasted unsalted peanuts, chopped 

Pre heat oven - 180 C

Combine butter & 100 g chocolate in a bowl over simmering water and stir until melted. Remove from heat. 

Stir in peanut butter, followed by sugar & egg. Sift over flour, bicarb and cocoa and fold in. Fold half remaining chocolate. 

Combine remaining chocolate and nuts. 

Roll dough into balls, flatten slightly and press on some of the nut mixture. Bake 12 - 15 min or until cooked but still soft in the centre. 

Delicious September 2011 - Moroccan Lamb with Carrot Salad

I can't believe at how quickly this month is passing by. I all of a sudden found myself staring at not having a recipe cooked out of this month's Delicious magazine and I just couldn't let that happen. I kind of lost my cooking mojo lately. I have still been making stuff to eat but certainly nothing worth writing about. In fact not much cooking involved with pre-coated chicken breast schnitzels and frozen veg. I have, of course, had a few exceptions but I just haven't seemed to have gotten around to writing about them yet. I have a bit of catching up to do. 

From this issue I had initially wanted to make Nigella's Chocol-Oat Cookies. Basically a double chocolate oat cookie having both cocoa and chocolate chips. They sounded so good but had already made some other biscuits at the time and didn't really need two different types in the house. 

When menu planning for this week I decided to make two recipes from this issue this weekend. The first was Chicken with Shanghai Noodles from the Global Flavours feature. I had just scanned the recipe looking at what was required for it. Finding that I had almost all the ingredients I decided to make it for dinner on Saturday night. I, however, came down with a cold. Saturday morning I still planned on making it however by the afternoon I was starting to feel pretty awful again and on further reading of the recipe there was a lot more to it than I originally thought. So I have stuck the chicken thigh fillets in the freezer and I hope to make this on Wednesday when I have the day off and hopefully will be better. 

The other recipe on my menu plan from this issue is the one that I ended up making tonight, Valli Little's Moroccan Lamb with Carrot Salad which Valli says is inspired by Joanne Weir. This was very good. Although I did have a couple of issues. The first was the "lamb neck fillets" in the recipe, my very good local butcher didn't know what they were. So on my butcher's suggestion I purchased a 400g lamb leg roast portion. It was very lean and looked like it would be perfect. Second issue was that I couldn't get Dutch carrots, so I just used some regular carrots that I quartered. Finally, there was too much salt in the spice mix. I think reducing it by half would be better. I also reduced the amount of pepper. Oh, and very last, the citrus zest in the oven....200C was way too hot. 

Moroccan Lamb with Carrot Salad 

Ingredients: 

2 tbsp finely grated orange zest 

2 tbsp finely grated lemon zest 

2 tsp cumin seeds 

1/2 tsp chilli flakes 

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 

2 x 400 g lamb leg portions 

1 cup whole-egg mayonnaise (I would use yoghurt next time) 

2 tsp harissa (I used more) 

Carrot Salad 

4 large carrots, quartered

2 tbsp honey (I used Leatherwood) 

100 ml extra virgin olive oil 

2 tbsp redcurrant jelly 

Juice of 1 lemon and 1 orange 

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon 

2 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley 

radishes, sliced

sprouts, salad leaves, feta (I used garlic feta), to serve 

Method: 

• Pre-heat oven to 160 C. 
• Bake zest and a tray for 5 - 10 minutes. Watch very carefully as it will burn quickly. 
• Add cumin seeds and bake a further 5 minutes or until zest is crispy. Cool.
• Crush zest, cumin, chilli with 1 tbsp each of salt and black pepper (original recipe was 2 tbsp each). 
• Combine half the spice mix with oil and rub over lamb, cover and chill for 2 -3 hours or overnight. 
• Pre-heat oven to 180 C. 
• Combine carrots, honey and 60 ml oil and roast for 20 minutes or until just soft. 
• Combine jelly and juices in a pan over a medium heat. Reduce by half and then add cinnamon. 
• In a bowl combine parsley, radishes, sprouts, salad leaves, feta and carrots and dress with a small amount of dressing just before serving. 
• Heat an oven-proof fry pan over a high heat. Brown lamb on all sides and them place pan in oven and roast for 15 - 25 minutes (time will depend on how thick your lamb portion is and how well done  you like it). Let rest 10 minutes, covered with foil.
• Combine mayonnaise and harissa and place in a serving bowl. 
• Slice lamb and serve with carrot salad and mayonnaise. 

September 2010 - Homestyle Beef Burger

Final day of the month and final issue for September. Thankfully I have managed to get all the posts done before the month has ended. However it will have to be a post and go as I really need to get some sleep tonight as I have to be up early and head off to a doctor's appointment in another town. I am not normally a morning person so will need to get to bed pretty soon. 

From this lovely issue I decided to make Valli Little's Homestyle beef burger. It was nice but, to be honest, not that different from most burgers. I do like a good burger. Home made are always the best. Although one of our local cafes makes a very good hamburger too. I didn't put capsicum on it. I also didn't have any aioli so I used some of my homemade tomato relish and spread the bun with mild English mustard. I guess that the capsicum and aioli would have added a bit of a twist on a regular burger. Sometimes I just have to compromise or should that be want to compromise.

Homestyle Beef Burger

Makes 4 

Ingredients: 

• 600 g beef mince 
• 1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes 
• 1 onion, finely chopped 
• 1 tsp dried oregano 
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard 
• 1 egg beaten (I didn't worry about beating it) 
• 1/2 c (35 g) fresh breadcrumbs
• 1/3 c (25 g) grated parmesan 
• 2 red capsicums, quartered 
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 4 burger buns, split, toasted 
• Lettuce, tomato, gherkins and aioli, to serve 

Method: 

• Combine first 8 ingredients and mix thoroughly.
• Form into patties and chill. 
• Grill capsicum until skin blackens. Place in plastic bag for a few minutes or until you can slip the skin off. 
• Cook meat patties in a fry pan over a medium heat for 5 minute each side or until cooked through. 
• Place lettuce, tomato, capsicum, gherkin, meat patty and aioli on buns and serve. 

September 2009 - Grilled Chicken Wraps with Chorizo Sauce

Moving right along so that I get these posts squeezed it. I did mean to get this done a lot earlier so that I could get some decent sleep tonight but it just hasn't happened. Although the time does seem to be out on these posts. I know that it wasn't 3 am when I posted last night, more like 11 pm. I should have a look at the settings here on blogger to change my time zone. Although I suppose it doesn't really matter that much. 

There were some nice looking recipes in here. Ben O'Donoghue's Spring pasta looked really good full of spring onions, broad beans and pea with a creamy sauce. Now I could say that I had only just made a creamy pasta so decided not to make another one but the truth is that I cooked from this issue long before I did the Prawn linguine with pea pesto. I am not normally keen on pasta dishes that use cream as I find it a bit rich so even with the lovely vegetables I decided to try something else. 

I was going to make Valli's Little pea felafel with radish & pea shoot salad. It looked really good and I love felafel. I couldn't get any radishes and I wasn't really sure what to replace them with. Plus the recipe wasn't all that different from the one that I usually make so I decided to make something else. 

The recipe that really caught my eye were the Grilled chicken wraps with chorizo sauce (same recipe with a slightly different name on delicious magazine UK website). I love chorizo and this recipe made it into a delicious sauce to go with these terrific wraps. I would recommend threading the chicken onto skewers. I didn't do it, I figured that I would just fry the chicken chunks in a fry pay. It made a whole lot of mess and I think that it would have been less messy with the chicken skewered. Probably even better if I had put them under the griller in the oven to cook. I used one of Mission's garlic and herb wraps instead of a tortilla. I warmed it slightly in a fry pan and served with some lettuce and creme fraiche. It was a wonderful lunch with leftovers for the next day. (Not a very good picture to go with this one, I found it hard to figure out how to photograph a wrap. ) 

September 2008 - Mango Lassi

Woo hoo! Two posts in two days. Ridiculous what I get excited about at times really. Although since it has been a while since I have managed to string posts together then it can only be a good thing. Having a deadline really helps though. It would have been easy to head off to bed tonight without getting another post done but I decided that if I didn't do it tonight then I might end up putting it off for another day and I would end up having to do three posts in one day to get it all done. Actually, unlike all the other issues where I got the actual cooking done quite some time before writing the post I only just made something from this issue tonight. It is a good thing that I have already made something from the 2009 and 2010 issues. 

I had always intended to make Nigella's Maple pecan muffins. They sounded just scrumptious. Lovely little muffins full of nuts, wheatgerm and 125 ml of maple syrup. I love maple syrup. I wonder if that harks back to my Canadian background. Although I don't really remember maple syrup being around my grandparent's house. I remember plenty of other syrups, Aunt Jamima being the main one but plenty of Gramma's homemade ones too. Pincherry being my favourite of the homemade pancake syrups. To be honest I am not even sure what pincherries are but I know that they made a great syrup. For what ever reason I just could not get it together to get these muffins made. I kept putting it off until tomorrow. Unfortunately it got to tonight and there really weren't too many more options for tomorrow and I just didn't feel like baking tonight. It is strange though as it is not like muffins are even difficult.

I ended up making Jamie Oliver's Mango Lassi and I am so glad that I did. It was the best drink that I have ever had. I guess that it is kind of like a smoothie but so much better. I cannot believe that I have been missing something so good all these years. I had heard of a mango lassi before just never had one, not that I can remember any way and if they are always like this I think I would remember. It was wonderfully tangy and slightly sweet, gloriously thick and smooth. The lime juice and zest in it was just perfect. I didn't add any sugar or honey to it as I thought it was just perfect the way it was. I used mango canned in juice as the fresh mangoes are still too expensive and I couldn't find any frozen ones. I highly recommend this one and will be making it regularly from now on. 

Mango Lassi 

Serves 4 (lol more like 2 or 1 if you are greedy) 

Ingredients

• 2 large ripe mangoes or 4 frozen mango cheeks
• 1 cup (280 g) natural yoghurt
• 100 ml milk 
• Zest and juice of 1 lime 
• Brown sugar or honey, to taste (optional) 
• A sprig of mint, to garnish

Method: 

• Place all ingredients except sugar/honey and mint in a processor or blender and process until smooth. 
• Add sugar or honey to taste. 
• Pour into glasses and serve with a sprig of mint.

September 2007 - Mixed Pea, Mint & Feta Salad

When I posted last I was sure that I would have no problem getting through all the posts for this month with ease and wouldn't, again, be doing my last post at the last minute. Then after a weekend of not feeling well here I am still with several issues to go and doing a new post late before heading off to bed so that I get through all of them. 

Issue # 64 was a relatively clean slate for me as it was one of the issues that I discovered I was missing when packing to move. I managed to obtain this issue on Ebay. The first two that I was missing popped up quickly but this one eluded me for several months. Clearly, I ended up getting it, thankfully these magazines are not big ticket items. LOL 

The Feta, tomato & broad bean tarts on the front cover look really good, lovely spring fare. However, this really needed fresh broad beans. I have grown them in the past but I didn't have a garden this winter so no fresh broad beans for me and I have never seen them in the green grocers or supermarket. I just didn't think that the frozen ones would taste as nice. 

I also considered making Ramy Megalaa's Dukkah-coated baked barramundi. It looked really nice and very easy. However nice barra is hard to come by here and I never seem to get the timing right so that I get to the fish truck while it is here on Thursdays. I am sure that you could use some other fish. Some time when I get a chance I will make it. Although I seem to say that about a lot of fish dishes. They all look so good, and I usually enjoy the ones that I make but I am hesitant to make fish meals regularly. 

I had planned on making Rick Stein's Imam Bayildi (eggplants stuffed with fried onions, tomato, chilli and parsley). I have made Imam Bayildi before, although not Rick's recipe. I used this one from Give Recipe. It is a super recipe and I just love the flavours. Rick's recipe has more onion, more garlic, chilli - fresh and powder, as well as harissa and lemon juice. I really wanted to try his version however I couldn't find any nice eggplants to make this at the time. I bought a nice one a couple of days ago so am planning to make this on Wednesday. Too late for this post though. 

Ultimately my decision was made when I was looking for something to serve with sumac & pomegranate molasses rack of lamb. I marinaded a rack of lamb in garlic olive oil and rubbed with sumac and poured over a couple of tablespoons of pomegranate molasses. I then roasted it in the oven for about 30 minutes. It was very nice. I served it with some herbed couscous and Valli Little's Mixed pea, mint & feta salad. It was the perfect match for the lamb and the couscous. I even spent an outrageous sum of money on the marinated Persian feta in the recipe. It was worth every cent, it was so good and I will definitely purchase again when needed. I only used about half of the mint called for as I thought that it would overpower the dish and I think that it would have but I guess that it is a personal thing. I think that next time I would add some parsley and/or basil as well. This is a really easy and delicious side dish. 

September 2006 - Prawn Linguine with Pea Pesto

This is going to be a short post for a couple of reasons. The first is that I have to get ready to go out shortly but I wanted to get this done and have just been phaffing about all day. It even took me until 3 pm before I hung out my first load of washing and since it has been cooler with cloud cover today it is unlikely to get dry before I have to go out. The second reason this is going to be a quick one is that I have come to loathe this issue of delicious magazine. 

This sight of its bright yellow cover annoys me. It seems ridiculous but I came very close to not making anything from it at all and admitting defeat. However I decided that I just couldn't do it. There were interesting recipes in it and I am sure that there would have been plenty in it that was tasty. Problem was I just didn't want to make any of it. There was only one recipe that interested me slightly and that was Valli Little's Lamb cutlets with lentil & fried-onion rice. However I have eaten a lot of lamb lately and I really wanted something different. So after much flicking through and flinging of the magazine I decided to make Valli's Prawn linguine with pea pesto. It was fine, as far as seafood pastas go. There wasn't really enough of the creamy sauce, but that could have been my fault. I reduced the recipe down to one serve but I am not great with measuring out pasta I just grab a bit and cook it and hope it is right. I am pretty sure that I ended up with a bit more than 100 g of dried pasta and therefore not enough sauce to go round. I didn't any snow peas either so just didn't bother. To be honest, I probably would bother making this again. The pea pesto was nice though. Maybe with chicken I would have liked it more...I doubt it though.  An okay dish from an annoying issue.

September 2005 - Jamie Oliver's The Best Chorizo Sandwich

Well, I survived confession day at work without any problems. Although I did obsess about it right up until it was out in the open. I had planned to do this post earlier however I ended up having to work today, my day off, so did not get anything that I wanted to do today done. I really missed my day off pottering around in my garden and doing some house work so that I don't have to spend all weekend doing it. Oh well, I guess that the money for the extra day will be nice in my pay packet this week. 

I did consider making Juliette Kellow's Guacamole salad, which was a simple salad of lettuce, tomato, avocado, sun dried tomatoes, (the dreaded) coriander with a simple dressing. I also considered Bill Granger's My dahl recipe which sounded really nice but was also full of the dreaded coriander. I know that I could have left it out of both recipes but I decided that it would just be easier to make something else. 

On one of my days off I was looking for something to have for lunch. It was a bit of a miserable day so was looking for something warm to have. I decided on making Jamie Oliver's The Best Chorizo Sandwich and it really was the best. Although I will admit that it was the only chorizo sandwich that I have ever had. Not every day fare but definitely something to make again. The left over chickpea mixture was very nice with some crackers too. I didn't have any buns so instead served it on toasted bread. It was an easy, full of flavour lunch for a day off.

The Best Chorizo Sandwich 

Serves 4 

Ingredients 

• 4 roma tomatoes, seeded and diced 
• 1 red chilli, seeded and sliced (I didn't have fresh chilli so used a shake of chilli flakes) 
• Extra virgin olive oil 
• 410 g can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• Zest & juice of 1/2 a lemon
• 4 chorizo, sliced on the diagonal 
• 4 bread rolls 
• Rocket (I used pea sprouts) 

Method: 

• Mix tomatoes, chilli & a dash of olive oil. 
• Warm chickpeas in a pan over a medium heat, then season and add lemon zest, juice and a dash of olive oil. Whiz it up in a food processor until finely chopped. (I added some of the tomato mixture to help it whiz up without having to add too much oil.) Stir in tomato mixture.
• Heat pan over a medium-high heat and fry chorizo until warm and starting to crisp on edges.
• Split rolls, spread with the chorizo mix, top with chorizo and rocket. 

September 2004 - French Toast with Banana & Maple Syrup

Goodness it seems to be taking me days to get these posts done. I get one done and have every intention of doing another post the following day but I just don't seem to. Last week was busy at work with the boss away and I was kept on my toes. Plus I made a bit of an error and now owe a favour to one of the other firms in town which I will have to tell my boss about tomorrow when he is back. I have been obsessing about it a bit over the last few days. It is nothing terrible and certainly nothing that would cause me to worry about my position but still upsets me. Once the boss is back and I have "confessed" I will probably feel okay. It is just the anxiety about it all at the moment. The anxiety doesn't really help with writing either. At least I managed to get a bunch of other work done last week. There is plenty more that I wanted to get done however I kept myself pretty busy so I am satisfied. 

There wasn't a lot of different recipes that I had marked in issue 31 as a possibility to make. The first one was Baby cos & beetroot salad with soft-boiled egg. It was a nice easy salad recipe, although since cooked, diced beets were required not necessarily quick to make. Although if you already had some cooked beets it would be very quick. It was my intention to cook the beets one evening while making dinner and then use them for the salad for lunch the next day. I am not a huge fan of soft-boiled eggs to eat on their own. However here it would help form part of the dressing even though there is also mayonnaise too. I just didn't get around to cooking the beets when I had planned to do it. In fact they are still sitting in my crisper waiting to be used. I was just looking at them this morning when I was getting something else out. They are still fine but I really will need to use them soon.

I also considered making Ben O'Donoghue's Raspberry soufflé. I don't think that I have ever made a soufflé before. At least not that I can recall and I think that I would remember something like that. I have eaten and enjoyed them before. I also adore raspberries and pretty much everything that has raspberries in it. The absolute best thing with raspberries is my Gramma's raspberry freezer jam though and any thing that it is put on or used in. I just love it. Plus it was always made with raspberries freshly picked from her garden. There is nothing like fresh raspberries. Unfortunately, fresh raspberries are incredibly expensive here. It is rare to find them below $6.00 for a 125 g punnet. That is way too much money to be spending such a small amount of fruit. I don't have the space to grow them either really. Not that I grew them when I was living somewhere that I had the space. I had always planned to but just never got around to putting in a bed of raspberry canes. Not that there is anything fun about picking raspberries but there certainly is joy in eating them. If you ever have enough for a pie my Gramma had the best recipe for a fresh raspberry pie. Oh, the main reason I didn't make these soufflés, the recipe makes six. I am on my own and don't need six. Plus I think it would be one of those recipes that you don't screw around with and even halving could effect the outcome. A lot of desserts you could make and have left overs for several days, certainly not possible here. Oh well, maybe I will make them one day.

So one morning I was trying to decide what to have for breakfast and remembered that there was a nice looking recipe in this issue and so I decided to make Valli Little's French toast with banana and maple syrup. The recipe used brioche. I didn't have any and I certainly wasn't going to make it first...lol. I did, however, have a loaf of the new Scone Toast from Tip Top which I bought on a whim when shopping. I had never had it before so decided to give it a try. It made a very nice French toast, although I think that the cream in Valli's recipe also contributed to it being a lot nicer than how I normally make French toast. This is not every day breakfast fare, nor do I think the scone toast is something that would be for every day but it was nice for a change and worked well here. I didn't have any bananas to put on top but I did have some strawberries and I poured a bit of cream over instead of the suggested creme fraiche. I just loved it and will make it again. 

September 2003 - Pork Cutlets with Sherry Vinegar

I was looking for something to make with the Spicy roast pumpkin, feta & olive salad from the 2002 issue so decided that it would help to get through the recipes to make something to go with it from issue #20. I had marked a lot of recipes that interested me in this issue so was sure that I could find something that would work with it. 

Jill Dupleix's Steak Diane is absolutely to die for. I have made this a number of times. I remember making it when this issue first came out and it was a revelation. Made, unlike most recipes that I know of, without cream. It has a brilliant tang to it and I would choose this recipe over a more traditional one any day. However, since I have already made this one more than once I had to move on to something else. 

Another favourite in the issue is Valli Little's Quick chicken & tomato casserole. It is a rich and full of flavour dish. I have modified the cooking method slightly though. I use thigh fillets and let the dish simmer for around 15 - 20 minutes. Remove the chicken and shred it and then return to the sauce to warm through and serve with pasta. The longer cooking time helps to develop the flavour and, I think, makes it a richer sauce. This is a fantastic quick weekday meal and wonderful served with a nice green salad.

I ended up making something a long a similar line to the steak diane in Valli Little's Pork cutlets with sherry vinegar. This was very enjoyable. I have a nice large bottle of sherry vinegar that I acquired from an online providore that was closing down. It is a wonderful vinegar that I have been using sparingly as I have no idea when or where I will be able to obtain more. I find that it is very smooth vinegar that has a bit of a kick but nothing like the raw kick from white vinegar. I even find it better than the good red vinegar that I have. However, since I am using it sparingly, I dutifully had to cut the recipe down so that I wasn't using 150 ml of my precious sherry vinegar however I may have cut it down too far as I was wanting more of this delicious sauce. I didn't have tarragon so I just left it out. I didn't have any creme fraiche so I left it out too. This was a rich and luscious sauce for the pork and all the vinegar and alcohol did a wonderful job of tenderising the pork cutlet which was just melt in the mouth. I personally think that creme fraiche would have spoilt it but that is just my personal tastes. I would definitely recommend making this one. The sweet, salty and spicy salad of pumpkin, feta and olives was a perfect accompaniment to this dish. 

September 2002 - Spicy Roast Pumpkin, Feta and Olive Salad

Goodness me it has taken a while to get started posting this month. It is almost half gone and I am just doing my first one. At least it is just the posting that I am behind with and not both posting and cooking. I have been cooking my way through another stack of back issues of delicious. magazine. Spring is well and truly the theme running through all of the September issues, even if it doesn't always feel so spring-like outside. There are some wonderfully light, fresh and tasty meals on offer. 

I have to admit that I struggled with something to make from this issue. Not because there wasn't much that I wanted to make but because I had already made so much from it already. Jill Dupleix's Scotch egg recipe is a winner. She uses a muffin pan to pack the mince mixture around the boiled eggs and then bakes in the oven. I really enjoyed them when I first made then and have made them several times since.

The "a-z ingredients" feature in this issue is iceberg lettuce. I had already made the San choy bau, which was lovely, Nasi goreng, which was terrific, and the Marinated lettuce salad, which seems rather old fashioned but was very nice. The only other option in this feature was iceberg wedges with blue cheese dressing. I have made something similar in the past so decided not to go with that one. 

I did consider making Nigella's Chocolate Raspberry Pavlova. I love pavlova and it sounds so luscious. Nigella's description of it makes it sound wonderfully rich and crisp with a chewy centre. I was having my grandparents around for father's day on the first Sunday of this month so thought that I could make it for that. However the prohibitive cost of berries at that time made me hesitate. With raspberries being $9 for a 125g punnet it is rather crazy. Blueberries were about the same price. Strawberries were much cheaper but I thought that the sweetness of strawberries might make the whole thing a bit cloying. There was, of course, the option of frozen raspberries but they would not look near as nice. Instead I decided to make a pumpkin pie for Father's day dessert and make something else from this issue. 

Since I had the pumpkin, butternut pumpkin, for the pie I decided to make Bill Granger's Spicy roast pumpkin, feta & olive salad. It was very good. Although a little bit more cumin and cayenne pepper would have been good as it wasn't quite as spicy as I was expected. I didn't have any spinach so used iceberg lettuce. I didn't use as much oil in the dressing either. I probably used 1/2 to 1 tbsp and I didn't bother with the shallot. I would definitely make this one again. 

Spicy Roast Pumpkin, Feta and Olive Salad

Serves 2

Ingredients: 

• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper 
• sea salt
• black pepper
• 800g pumpkin, cut into 2cm cubes
• 100g baby English spinach leaves
• 150g marinated feta
• 20 kalamata olives, pitted

Dressing:

• 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 Tbsp chopped  shallots (optional)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 220C. 
• Place oil, cumin, cayenne, salt and freshly ground black pepper in a bag, add pumpkin cubes, hold closed tightly and shake to cover evenly. 
• Transfer to a roasting tray and bake 30mins or until tender and caramelised. 
• Combine dressing ingredients an a jar and shake until combined.
• Divide the spinach leaves among 2 plates and scatter pumpkin, feta and olives over the top. 
• Drizzle with dressing.