Courgette and feta fritters

Courgette and feta fritters, a photo by La belle dame sans souci on Flickr.

This is a lovely Summery dish.

You grate courgettes into a colander, about one large one per person, and salt them. Put a side plate on top of them and keep on pushing down to press the water out from them. You need to leave them for around 30-45 minutes to give the salt a chance to draw out the water.

Then you put them in a large mixing bowl with a crumbled block of feta cheese and add enough flour to make a thick paste with a couple of beaten eggs. Then add in chopped herbs, I like dill and parsley, a finely chopped chilli, salt and pepper.

Next heat up your oil in a deep pan, a wok or a deep-fat fryer to 180C.

Then, using a table spoon, take balls of the mixture and drop them carefully into the hot oil in batches of five or six. Don’t crowd the pan, because you need room to turn them.

When they are done, remove them with a slotted spoon and drain them on kitchen paper while you cook the rest.

They are lovely with salad and a chilli sauce or a thinned yoghurt and tahini sauce, a tzatziki-type sauce or in a wrap with some salad.

Cod loin with Puy lentils and chorizo

Cod loin with Puy lentils and chorizo, a photo by La belle dame sans souci on Flickr.

I really like Puy lentils, they have a lovely earthy flavour and like most pulses and legumes they absorb flavours really well.

Chicken ballotine with courgettes and sweet potato

Chicken ballotine with courgettes and sweet potato, a photo by La belle dame sans souci on Flickr.

The chicken was breasts, battered out with a mallet and smeared with tapenade. These were then rolled in cling film to form sausage shapes and poached for about 10-12 minutes in boiling water.

Once cooled they were sautéed in butter and sliced into three pieces.

The sweet potatoes were smeared with olive oil and roasted in a 180C/Mark 6 oven until soft and golden and the courgettes were simply sautéed in olive oil.

The sauce was made by frying some red peppers with a diced shallot, crushed garlic, some parsley stems and a dried chipotle pepper.

This was then simmered with chicken stock until the vegetables were soft and then blitzed to a smooth purée.

The sauce was finished off by being seasoned and then simmered in a saucepan with some crème fraiche.

The dish was garnished with some parsley once plated up.

Shoulder of lamb with rice and a Mediterrnean vegetable stew

Shoulder of lamb with rice and a Mediterrnean vegetable stew, a photo by La belle dame sans souci on Flickr.

Now that 2012 is here, I wanted a meal that didn’t have any festive associations.

A quick weekly round-up

Last week, we were eating lots of things I’ve blogged about in the past, so it will just be pictures plus a few comments.

Chicken breast stuffed with chorizo, with courgettes and tomatoes and chips

Chicken breast stuffed with chorizo, with courgettes and tomatoes and chips, a photo by La belle dame sans souci on Flickr.

A dead easy but tasty dinner.

The chips were Charlotte potatoes, cut fairly chunky and washed and dried. Then they were blanched in oil at 160C and then finished off at 180C.

The courgette and tomato dish was courgettes sautéed in olive oil with chopped tomatoes and seasoned with salt, pepper and shredded basil.

The chicken breasts were cut lengthways, stuffed with some thinly sliced chorizo (the sort that doesn’t need cooking) and then roasted in olive oil with some seasoning.

That was it.

Hardly any work and really nice for a Friday evening with a glass or two of wine.

Another kind of moussaka

This one doesn’t have potato in it, uses courgettes instead of aubergines, minced beef instead of lamb and has a cheesy bechamel sauce as the topping, instead of the yoghurt and feta cheese”custard” of my other version.

Rack of lamb with courgettes and tomatoes

I love lamb and this recipe is tasty and looks good too.

The lamb is easy to do, you sear the meat in a hot pan with some olive oil, then spread the loin side with Dijon mustard and press and breadcrumb and herb (I used rosemary and parsley) mixture into the mustard.

Then you roast in in a hot oven for around 20-25 minutes, removing it to rest before carving it into individual chops.

The accompaniments to this were some boiled new potatoes and some cubed courgettes sautéed with onion, garlic and baby tomatoes in more olive oil and seasoned with salt, pepper, herbes de Provence and chopped parsley. If you wanted, you could add some chopped black olives to this too, but this might overpower the delicate lamb.

Any good red will work with this, we had a 2006 red Bordeaux from the Entre-Deux-Mers, Château Labourdette 2006, from Laithwaites. This was a slightly austere wine, with a definite edge of Cabernet Sauvignon to give a backbone to the Merlot. I would say that this represents the older style of Bordeaux rather than the in-your-face style that is popular with the likes of Robert Parker and, for me, that is a good thing. It worked well with the sweetness of the lamb and the tomatoes and didn’t dominate the food. I think that another year in bottle will see this developing nicely.

Vegetable pasta bake

A nice simple mid-week evening meal.

Onions, garlic, carrot, chopped green chilli and celery made a soffritto softened in olive oil, to which I added a chopped courgette, chopped red and green peppers, some sliced mushrooms, chopped parsley, salt and pepper and a carton of tomato passata.

This was simmered until the vegetables were starting to soften and then some cooked pasta shapes were added and the dish was topped with grated Cheddar and Parmesan cheeses.

This was then baked until the top was golden and bubbling and eaten with some slices of garlic baguette.

A quick and simple comfort food supper, ready in about 40 minutes.

Bavette with mustard mash and courgette gratin

I’ve written about bavette before, but because it is my favourite cut of steak, I make no apologies for writing about it again.

It was brushed with olive oil and peppered lightly and then griddled so that the inside was still rare.

To go with it, I made some mashed potatoes, to which I stirred in a couple of spoonfuls of Maille wholegrain mustard, and made a simple courgette gratin.

The courgettes were lightly sautéed in olive oil with some chopped parsley, salt and pepper and then baked in the oven with a topping of breadcrumbs and grated Comté cheese.

To accompany this, we drank claret. Red Bordeaux and steak is a bit of a cliché but it works, so I see no reason not to perpetuate it. The wine was Château Capbern-Gasqueton 2007, a St Estèphe. It is made by the same team as the classic Château Calon-Ségur, a Troisième Cru Classé or 3rd Growth in the 1855 classification.

A nice wine, I thought. Obviously not up to 3rd Growth standard but definitely a cut about the various petits châteaux wines that are around. A predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon-based wine, it was probably not as obvious a wine as some people might like, mainly because I think it needs maybe another year in the bottle. However, it has classic Bordeaux richness with some restraint. It isn’t an in-your-face crowd pleaser and it really benefited from an hour or so in the decanter. The wine was from Laithwaites but unfortunately, they aren’t listing it any more.