Japanese Pancakes

These used to be our food court staple, until we realised they were so easy to make at home. The secret is buying okonomiyaki sauce, which can be easily found at your nearest Asian grocery store.

To be honest, this is probably not quite the most authentic version of okonomiyaki, but when you drizzle anything in that mayonaise and sauce, it's close enough for us!

1/2 cabbage shredded

1 carrot shredded

2 zucchinis shredded

1 green onion shredded

1 egg

¾ cup of water

1 cup flour

Mayonnaise

Okonomiyaki sauce

Add shredded vegetables to flour, egg and water. Shallow fry in vegetable oil and serve with the mayonnaise and sauce.

Tagine week: Eggplant and Pumpkin Tagine with green chillies

Now that the evenings are much cooler, we have dusted off the tagine and gone a little overboard with it.

This is a hearty vegetarian tagine, prompted by our pile of delicious butternut pumpkins and late season eggplants and zucchinis (although of course we used tromboncino).  This is a bit of a staple recipe in our house whenever we have too much of any of these vegies (usually this time of year).

Eggplant and Pumpkin Tagine with Whole Green Chillies
 

Sauce:

100ml olive oil

2 large onions, finely diced

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1 heaped TBS coriander seeds

1 heaped TBS cumin seeds

1 heaped TBS caraway seeds

1  TSP ground allspice

2 TSP sweet paprika

1 TSP chilli powder

1 TSP ginger powder

2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes

6 long green chillies

1 TBS honey

600ml water

Vegetables:

1 kg pumpkin diced

2 small eggplants

2 small zucchini

100mL olive oil

150g cooked chickpeas

100g black olives

Greek yoghurt (to serve)

Use a mortar and pestle to grind coriander, cumin and caraway seeds to a fine powder. Sieve to remove husks. Mix with other remaining spices.

Heat oil in frying pan, sauté the onions and add the garlic- fry until browned. Add the spice mixture to the frying pan and cook for a further 2 minutes.

Add tomatoes, chilli, honey and water and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer uncovered for 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Bake the pumpkin in the oven for 15 minutes.

Cut the eggplant and zucchini into medium sized chunks. Salt and leave for 20 minutes. Wipe off excess water and sauté in olive oil in batches.

Add all the vegetables, chickpeas and olives to the tomato sauce. Add more water if the sauce is too thick. Bring sauce to the boil, season with salt and pepper. Serve with couscous and plenty of thick Greek yoghurt.

Zucchini, prawn and preserved lemon risotto

This is from Greg Malouf's book Arabesque (incidentally, everything we cook out of this book has been amazing). A great risotto, full of flavour... actually one of our favourite risottos to cook. We have some homemade preserved lemon and of course, home grown zucchini!

Rumour (and Google News) has it that Greg Malouf is leaving Melbourne and MoMo is no more. Very sad day, but at least we'll still have Abla's!

2 large zucchini, cut into small batons

240g raw prawns

60ml olive oil

1 small onion, finely sliced

400g Arborio rice

1L chicken stock

150mL white wine

2 cloves garlic, finely sliced

1 preserved lemon (skin only)

100g butter

2 tbs finely chopped fresh parsley

Cut zucchini into small batons. Clean prawns. Dice the skin of the preserved lemon.

To make the risotto, fry onion and 1 clove of garlic in the olive oil until browned. Add the Arborio rice and stir until all the rice is coated with the oil (a couple of minutes).

Deglaze the pan with 150mL white wine. Cook off the alcohol for a couple of minutes then add warm chicken stock (one ladle at a time.) Once each ladle of stock is absorbed, keep adding another ladle, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. Continue until most of the stock has been absorbed and the rice is nearly cooked. 

Whilst the stock is being absorbed, in a separate frying pan fry the zucchinis in olive oil. Remove when cooked (approximately one minute).

Return the pan to the heat and add the prawns and garlic and season with salt and pepper. Cook until the prawns change colour (less than a minute). Remove from the pan.

Once risotto is nearly ready, add the prawns, zucchini, diced preserved lemon, parsley and the butter with any remaining stock. Season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

Zucchini and feta fritters

So we are eating zucchini like mad now. It's almost like a challenge not to throw one out and find new ways of eating them but not entirely realising you are eating a zucchini at the same time.
This recipe is a winner as it uses a whopping 5 zucchinis in one hit.

These fritters are pretty darn good. In a restuarant they would be deep fried and amazing. For numerous reasons, we will never own a deep fryer, so we shallow fry them instead.

5 medium zucchinis grated

2 eggs, lightly beaten

Fresh parsley, fresh mint

100g feta cheese

2tbs plain flour

2tbs cornflour

Salt and Pepper

1 small onion finely chopped

1 clove garlic finely chopped

Yoghurt to serve

Grate the zucchini and sprinkle with a few teaspoons of salt. Leave for 20 minutes, then give it a rinse and squeeze out any excess water.

Beat the eggs and add to the zucchini. Add the feta, onion, garlic, finely chopped herbs and salt and pepper. Mix together.

Finally add the plain flour and cornflour and combine.

 

Heat some olive oil in a frypan and fry tablespoons of mixture in the oil. 

Serve with some creamy yoghurt and a wedge of lemon.

Zucchini

Time for the annual zucchini glut. We've grown the Romanesco variety- this is an Italian variety that is apparently a favourite of restaurateurs (and Maggie Beer but we were growing it first) because of it's sweetness and flavour. The plants are quite large, very easy to grow and produce for months. You only need 1 or 2 plants per household. Otherwise you end up like us... wishing you didn't have to see another zucchini. Until next year when you get excited again.

We'll try to post some more inventive ways of cooking them (we're constantly trying to come up with new ways to eat them at this time of year). Meanwhile, here's the recipe for our trusty old zucchini slice. Because it's full of bacon you never get sick of it!

 

5 medium sized zucchinis, grated

3 rashers bacon, sliced

1 onion, finely sliced

100g tasty cheese, grated

½ cup plain flour

½ cup vegie oil

4 eggs, lightly beaten.

Salt and pepper

Mix everything- put into a baking dish and bake for 45 mins (until cooked through and brown on top). 

Hope you enjoy- feel free to double the amount of bacon.

Tromboncino and Rick Stein Part One

We were watching Rick Stein travelling (and eating) throughout Sicily and found this recipe for cucuzzo longa. As we didn't grow any this year, we cooked it instead with tromboncino. We normally cook them in a tomato sauce, and have a glut of them every January, so it's nice to find a different way to eat them.

This recipe could all just be substituted with zucchini (especially the sweet white ones) or squash.
 It's simple and extremely tasty.

 

1 tromboncino (or white zucchini or cucuzzo longa)

1 onion

Dried oregano and mint

Olive oil

Pecorino cheese

Slice up tromboncino (or cuccuzo) and dice onion. Place in a saucepan and cover with water. Add dried oregano and mint, salt and pepper. Boil together until the trombocino is soft and water has reduced to make a sauce. Add grated pecorino and drizzle with olive oil.