Pumpkin Ravioli

I think I have mastered making pasta dough. We use 100 g of pasta flour and 1 egg for one person. So I thought I would have a go at making my own ravioli.

The filling was pumpkin (450g) which I roasted for about 25-30 mins at 200 degree C. I then mashed this and added two crushed amaretti biscuits, grated parmesan and some breadcrumbs.


I rolled the pasta out to the thinnest setting. Andrew's mum had given a me a ravioli maker which I used. I don't think that I floured the tray enough as the first batch stuck a bit.

The pasta was cooked for four minutes and served with a sage butter. Butter was melted in frying pan until foaming, sage leaves were added and cooked for a few seconds. This was finished with a squeeze of lemon juice and this was poured over the pasta. We had some steamed chard with the pasta.

All in all I think that my first ravioli making experience went well and I am sure like making the dough, I will get better at it with practice. I am entering this recipe into this weeks Presto Pasta Nights which is being hosted by Nilmandra of Soy and Pepper. Make sure you check out the round up.

Sometimes things just don't go right

Sometimes I try a recipe and it doesn't turn out how I thought it would. Most of the time its something I did or didn't but sometimes it just happens.

Last night I made Delia's pasta with pepper relish. But the chilli I added was very very hot. The dish was fine but would have been a better with a milder chilli. I only used one instead of the two I was supposed to. I have to say I love the recipe and knew that I was going to make it as soon as I saw the two peppers in last weeks box. Its dead simple.

Pasta with pepper relish

• 450g peppers, sliced
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 dessertspoon olive oil
• 5 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 2 medium sized chillies
• 4 medium sized tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste

Dry roast the cumin seeds for a minute then add the oil, peppers, chilli and garlic. Turn the heat down to low and cover. Cook for 40 mins until peppers are soft, stir occasionally.

Add the tomatoes and tomato paste, season and cook for 5 mins until the moisture has reduced.

Stir pasta into sauce and serve.

I'm entering into this weeks Presto Pasta Nights. Which is being hosted by Melissa at The Cooking Diva. Make sure you have a look at the round up.

Pumpkin risotto and biscuits

After the pumpkin pasta, I was thinking of what else to make with it. So I decided to make a risotto. I roasted the pumpkin whilst I was making the risotto. The pumpkin was then stirred in at the end with the cheese and lemon. I saw a recipe for a risotto served with a pesto, I like the idea so I stole it! The basil plants are doing well enough that I can use them to make pesto. Still not bored of the pumpkin!

Pumpkin risotto

• 1 Small onion, chopped
• 200 g risotto rice
• 1 Wine glass of vermouth
  
• Vegetable stock (approx 500 ml)
• 1 Lemon
• Pecorino Cheese, 2tbsps
  
• Enough pumpkin for 2, chopped

Roast the pumpkin @ 180 degrees C for 30 mins.

Meanwhile, soften the onion in a little olive oil in a saucepan. Add the rice and cook for a couple of mins. Then add the vermouth. Once this has been absorbed add the veg stock one ladle at a time. Once the stock has been absorbed, add another ladle until the rice is cooked. Stir in the lemon juice, cheese and pumpkin. Serve with the pesto.

Basil Pesto

• 1 Large handful of basil
• 1 Large handful of pinenuts
• 2 Cloves of garlic
• Lemon juice
• Olive oil

Blitz in a food processor, using the olive oil and lemon juice to taste.

For a few weeks Andrew has been making gingerbread biscuits. So I decided to give Andrew a break and make some biscuits. I saw this recipe when I was having a read through some of Stonehead's older posts. These biscuits were dead easy to make and were very hard to resist when they came out the oven. This photo doesn't do them justice.

A ray of sunshine

Andrew and I are deep into the thesis writing. This means I was in the flat for two and a half days before I ventured outside. Very depressing. The weather has been awful this week, which has made my time spent indoors more bearable. When my veg box arrived it had a suprise vegetable, a pumpkin.

I know that a lot people in the UK don't eat pumpkins, just carve them for halloween. But I love them. When it arrived, I knew what we were going to have for dinner, pasta with roasted pumpkin. We first had this dish when we were staying at Andrew's parents house in Ireland. Thankfully, this is our last year of our PhDs and we will definitely be make a trip there next year.

Pumpkin, caramelised onion and feta pasta:

• 1 Onion, cut into thin wedges
• Pumpkin, peeled and diced
• Olives
• Feta
• Pasta
• 1 Lemon, zested and halved
  
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Dried chilli flakes
  

Put the diced pumpkin into a roasting dish. Coat with olive oil, salt, pepper and some dried chilli flakes. Place the lemon in a corner of the dish and cook at 200 degrees C for 30 mins until soft.

Meanwhile cook the onion in saucepan with some oil, on a low heat until caramelised (about 30 mins)

Stir the pasta and lemon zest into the onions. Then add the pumpkin, olives and feta. Squeeze in the lemon juice.

I am entering this dish into this weeks Presto Pasta Nights which is hosted by Kitchenetta at Got No Milk. Make sure you have a look at this weeks roundup.

This week in the veg box we got:

• Pumpkin
• Courgettes
• Beetroot
• Kohl Rabi
• Lettuce
• Carrots
• Onions
• Potatoes
  

Green veg cannelloni

One of my favourite pasta dishes is spinach and ricotta cannelloni. On Monday we still had a lot of green vegetables leftover from our box. So I decided to substitute the spinach for the other veg we had. We used cannelloni tubes but these could easily be substituted with fresh lasagne sheets, which you could roll with the filling to make tubes.

Green veg cannelloni
(Serves 2 greedy people or four with some bread and salad)

• Broad beans
• 1 Courgette, grated
• Broccoli
• Ricotta cheese, 250g
• Pecorino cheese, 3 tbsps
• Cannelloni tubes
• Tomato pasta sauce (we made our own, but you could use shop bought)
  
• Cheddar cheese
  

For the filling: boil the broccoli for 5 mins and beans for about 3 mins. Remove the beans from their skins. In a boil mash up the broccoli. To the broccoli add the beans, courgette, ricotta, pecorino cheese, salt and pepper.

Fill the tubes with the mixture.

Put a tablespoon or so of the tomato sauce on the base of a oven proof dish, they place the tubes in the dish. Cover the tubes with the rest of the sauce. Top with the cheddar cheese.

Bake at gas mark 6 for 20-30 mins, until cheese is golden and tubes are soft.

This dish made a great alternative to the spinach and ricotta classic and helped us use up the green veg left. The change also meant that we packed roughly 4 portions of veg into one meal (counting the tomatoes in the sauce, which do count by the way).

I am entering this into this week Presto Pasta Nights which this week is held by Ruth at Once Upon a Feast, make sure you check out the round up.

Broccoli Pesto

I went to Paperinos for dinner last night with some work collegues. I had a bowl of pasta but it was awful, greasy and not at all nice. So tonight I thought I would have a decent bowl of pasta. After the success of the cabbage pesto, I thought that I would try another green veg based pesto. So when broccoli was in our veg box this week I thought I would give it ago.

The first thing I noticed was it wasn't as dark green as the cabbage pesto, a much lighter green. The pesto was very light almost like mousse. The best thing about making pesto that it is so quick. I have a little handblender which has a small processor attachment, which is great for making pastes. I think next time I would like try using almonds instead of pinenuts. I always see so many different pestos, some using rocket, others using lime.

Broccoli pesto:
Boil the broccoli for 4 mins, drain and rinse with cool water to stop it cooking any further. Into my blender, I put the broccoli and a couple of handfuls of toasted pinenuts, 1 tbsp grated pecorino, zest of 1 lemon, lemon juice (to taste) and olive oil. I then blitzed until it was smoothish! This was stirred into cooked pasta, with some chopped tomatoes and olives. It was topped with a few toasted pinenuts and more pecorino.


I'm entering this dish into this weeks Presto Pasta Nights which this week is being held by Katie @ Thyme for Cooking . Make sure you have a look at her blog on Friday when the roundup should be up!

This week in the box we got:

• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Broad beans
• Courgettes
• Lettuce
• Turnips
• Potatoes
• Onions
  
• Carrots
  

Like that but not that.

A lot of the food I cook comes from reading recipes on the web and changing them in some way. Even more after we got the veg box, as we don't always have what the recipe states. It reminds me of a Mitchell and Webb sketch:



This is something that Andrew and I quote a lot. When we get the veg box, we get a newsletter which comes with recipe. This week's recipe was a courgette and broad bean pasta dish. So on Wednesday I decided to make this dish using gnocchi. We have a lot of potatoes, so gnocchi is a good way to use them up. For the sauce I fried onion and garlic until soft. I then added a sliced courgette again cooked it until soft. Some chopped tomatoes, olives and cooked broad beans. I then stirred in the gnocchi and put it an ovenproof dish. This was topped with mozzarella and pecorino and grilled until browned.


Today whilst I was looking for something to do with marrow. I came across a forum when someone said that they used marrow instead of aubergine in moussaka. So I started to look around for vegetarian moussaka recipes. What I made wasn't an authentic moussaka, nothing like it but it tasted great.

I fried an finely diced onion and crushed garlic in some olive oil. Once they were soft I added some chopped garlic and carrot. After 5 mins I added a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tinful of water, a pinch of sugar, dried crush chillies. A few handfuls of red lentils were added and this was simmered for 20 mins, until the lentils were cooked. I then added a tin of green lentils. I put a layer of sliced marrow (which were steamed for a couple of mins) in a greased ovenproof dish. Then I put a half of the lentil mixture, then another layer of the marrow, then lentil again. This was topped with sliced potato (which was also cooked). The potato was covered with a white sauce. This was finished with mozzarella and cheddar. Not at all authentic, but it tasted really great.

This week in the box we got:

• Marrow
• Courgette
• Broad beans
• Tomatoes
• Red Kale
• Cabbage
• Celery
• Potatoes
  
• Onion
• Carrots

I broke the rules . .

I have a silly rule, I think it comes from my Mum. We never have the same carbohydrate for dinner twice in a row. But this week I broke the rules. Andrew is away working this week, so I have spent most of my time writing up. And cooking is just the excuse I need to leave my thesis for long periods of time, so I have been cooking quick and easy things to resist temptation. Which means for the last two days pasta! In my defence they were at least different shaped pasta.

On Monday, another person in the lab passed their viva. We had a nice spread of food and champagne to celebrate. There were loads of leftover olives, so we all took some home.

On Tuesday I made a tapenade (olives, capers and olive oil) and then stir this into pasta put it into an ovenproof dish. I then added some tomatoes, topped with grated pecorino and pine nuts. I cooked it on gas mark 6 for 20 mins, until the cheese had melted.

Today I had spaghetti. Again with olives, there were quite a lot. I still have some left. So whilst the pasta was cooking. I heated some olive oil in a frying added some sliced garlic, then add some chopped tomatoes, capers, olives, pinch of dried chilli flakes, couple of spoonfuls of the pasta cooking water and a splash of red wine vinegar. When the pasta is cooked and to the sauce. I topped this with grated pecorino and griddled courgettes.

I am entering this pasta dish into this week's Presto Pasta Nights roundup, which this week is hosted by Gay at A Scientist in the Kitchen. The roundup should be up on Friday.

Cabbage Pesto

I have been wanting to make pesto for ages, but with amount of Basil needed for a traditional pesto made it quite pricey. The last time we were visiting Andrew's folks we were given 3 basil seedlings. As you can see for the photo they are doing well but not well enough to make pesto from.


I have seen loads of recipes for pesto made with rocket, spinach and watercress. So with spring cabbage in our box this week I decided to give a cabbage pesto a go.

I suppose pesto is a bit like Thai Green Curry paste everyone has there own recipe with different ratios of ingredients. SoI gave it a go. I used 2 tbsp of pecorino cheese, a handful of pine kernels, 1 garlic cloves, lemon zest, juice of half a lemon, cabbage leaves which had been cooked for 4 mins in boiling water and olive oil to loosen.

Andrew had gone climbing so I prepared everything beforehand. Its the scientist in me!


So when Andrew came back, I fried a courgette. I then added the tomatoes until they had soften slightly. The pesto was added, as was a pinch of chilli flakes. Finally cooked penne and a handful of black olives was added.

I didn't tell Andrew what the pesto was made with and he thought that it was made from parsley, so the cabbage taste obviously wasn't over-powering. I did put a lot of cheese in it though.

For the third week in row I will be entering this into this weeks Presto Pasta Night which this week is hosted by Hillary of Chew On That. Have a look at the round, which should on Hillary's site on Friday.

Broad Beans

After the runner beans in last weeks box, this week we had broad beans. I wanted to put them with some pasta, so I started hunting around my book collection. I came across a recipe for broad bean and ricotta pasta in Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries. I only made a couple of changes.

I podded the beans and boiled them until they were cooked about 8 mins. I then skinned the beans. I then gently fried some sliced garlic cloves, without browning, in some olive oil. After a minute, I added the beans and a handful of spinach. Then I added 25o g of ricotta and the juice of a lemon. The cooked pasta was added to this mixture.


Then pasta was dished with a drizzle of olive oil and some grated pecorino.

I am entering this into this weeks Presto Pasta Nights, which this week is hosted by Ruth @ Once Up A Feast. Make sure you have a look at the round up.

With the decent weather we have been having the veg box is getting a bit more exciting:

• Purple Kohl Rabi
• Spring Cabbage
• Spinach
• Broad Beans
• Lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Onions
• Carrots
• Potatoes

Actually quite nice!

I remember the first time I had gnocchi, it was in Carluccio's Caffe at Bluewater Shopping Centre. I know that not everyone likes gnocchi. But I love it, light and fluffy potato dumplings. They are so simple to make too.

Potato Gnocchi (Serves 2)

• 400g potatoes
• 100g flour
• 1 egg yolk

Boil the potatoes for 8-10 mins until soft. Drain and put them back in the pan on the heat to drive off as much water as possible. Mash the potatoes, then add the egg yolk and flour. Mix, until it comes together. Then knead on a well floured surface. Take a handful of the mix and roll into a sausage. Then cut into 2 inch pieces and place on a well floured tray. Repeat with the rest. Press a fork into the gnocchi. Bring a pan of water to the boil. Cook the gnocchi in batches, they are ready when the float to the surface. Drain onto kitchen roll.


This week in the box we got some spring greens. I thought about making a pesto with it but I chose to do this instead.

I chopped an onion and lightly fried it in olive oil. I then added the spring greens which were finely sliced, after a couple of minutes I added some vermouth and let it reduce a little. At this point I would have added some creme fraiche but I didn't have any, so I substitute it with some yoghurt. Then stirred in some pecorino.

I put the gnocchi in an ovenproof dish and put the spring green mixture over the top and finally some mozzarella. This was then grilled until golden.


Andrew was a bit worried cause there wasn't a sauce as such but apparently it was actually quite nice!

In the box this week:

• Spring greens
• Lettuce
• Rocket
• Celery
• Tomatoes
• Carrots
• Onions
• Potatoes
• Rhubarb

Asparagus risotto

After picking our own asparagus last weekend and watching the first episode of River Cottage Spring. I now had a taste for it. So for dinner tonight we had Nigel Slater's asparagus and lemon risotto from The Kitchen Diaries book. Its very simple just add asparagus (which have been prepared and chopped into bite sized pieces) after adding the first couple of ladles of stock. When the rice is cooked, stir in some parmesan and the juice and rind of a lemon.


As the asparagus season is so short you really need to make the most of it. I am sure that I will post more asparagus recipes before the season is over.

Dhal Wars

This week in Veg Box we got:

• Lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Celery
• Spring greens
• Spinach
• Rhubarb
• Carrots
• Onion
• Potatoes

Andrew suggested that we had lentil dhal. I prefer to make mine with red lentils whereas Andrew prefers to use brown lentils. So here is my recipe, I am sure that Andrew will put his recipe on later.

• 200 g red lentils
• 1 onion, finely sliced
  
• 1 red chilli, finely sliced
• 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, sliced
  
• 1/2 tsp tumeric
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 2 tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 1 handful of spinach
• 1 lemon

Put lentils, onion, red chilli, ginger, spices and tomatoes into a saucepan. Top with water, bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 mins or until lentils are soft. Then add the spinach and lemon juice, stir. Make sure the spinach has wilted and serve.

Andrew prefers the brown lentils as they keep their shape better. My dhal has a much softer texture.

We had it topped with yoghurt, served with rice and Andrew's flatbread.

Pasta, rice or potatoes . . .

This is the usual thoughts that go through my mind when thinking about dinner. However, I had been browsing through one of my favourite vegetarian books, The Cranks Bible. There was a recipe that jumped out at me which was puy lentils with roasted veg. I always forget lentils! There are two versions of this recipe, a winter and summer one. On Wednesday, I made the winter one with swede, carrots and beetroot. The Puy lentils are cooked with lemon, onion and herbs, with spinach stirred in at the end to just wilt it. It was a great recipe. Easy and perfect for a summer day.

For dessert we had some rhubarb compote with yoghurt, yum.

I also made a potato and spinach frittata for lunch the next day which was also great.


The Veg Box arrived and this week we got:

• Spinach
• Spring cabbage
  
• Beetroot
• Cauliflower
• Purple sprouting broccoli
• Rhubarb
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Onions