Deconstructed ratatouille

To go along with the leg of lamb we decided to make ratatouille, but I wanted to use the barbecue to roast the vegetables rather than cooking them on the stove, so stopping me from slaving over a hot stove on a very hot day. I bought the mini peppers which are so prevalent here at the moment, they are so sweet and full of flavour, and I wanted to serve them whole. So we came up with the idea of just combining the ingredients that usually make up ratatouille and calling it deconstructed, which is very trendy these days.  Never let it be said that I am not on the cutting edge of food trends.

To feed 13

2 bags of mini peppers
1 large eggplant sliced
4 zucchini sliced
20 small tomatoes halved

First I roasted the mini peppers whole, until they were slightly charred but not too much.

Almost ratatouille

We came home from a hard day's shopping in Watford looking forward to moules marinier and french fries, a quick easy dinner to make, especially as Jacky's husband was making the fries.  So we did not really start thinking about cooking until very close to dinner time.  The fries were cut and soaking in water time to prepare the mussels.  Horrors the mussels were past their due date and not looking as healthy as they should and none of us wanted to take a chance, so plan b it was.

Jacky produced some chicken breasts and assorted vegetables from the cellar, we perused the ingredients and we came up with roasted ratatouille (substituting the eggplant with mushroom) chicken in home made barbecue sauce, green salad with warm balsamic dressing and of course french fries.

Jacky took on the chicken and salad, Howard the fries and I was responsible for the roasted vegetables.  I had

• 2 portabello mushrooms, 
• 2 red peppers, 
• 2 zucchini (courgettes), 
• 2 small red onions 
• a box of cherry tomatoes

I quickly chopped all the vegetables up through them in a roasting tin added the tomatoes and drizzled on some olive oil, and threw them in a 400 oven.  These cooked for just over half an hour which was the time it took to prepare the remainder of the meal. The vegetables were soft and just turning black on the edges, absolutely perfect.

Chicken Tagine

The theme on Sunday Evening's get together was Moroccan, so I had to use my tagine.  Tagine is the name of a type of cooking dish and the name of all the dishes that are cooked in it.  I first discovered these years ago in New York and dragged one back on the plane, this was before the stringent luggage rules of today.  Then my husband and I went to Morocco 5 years ago, which renewed my interest again.

Tagine

Tagines are traditionally made of clay and have a large conical lid. They are used on top of the stove and so to stop the clay from cracking you soak the bottom in water for an hour or so before using.  I think that gas is actually easier on them, my first tagine cracked after a few uses on my electric stove, but I can not remember now if I had read the trick about soaking them. Anyway this one is still going strong after many uses.  You can use a frying pan with a lid, but frankly for some reason cooking in the tagine really does add something.

I often make chicken with preserved lemon tagine, but on Sunday afternoon I did not have any preserved lemons and they take 3 weeks to make, so I had to come up with another idea.

1 chicken cut up or equivelant in pieces
1 onion sliced
1 red pepper and 1 yellow pepper both cut in large pieces
1/2 cup of chicken stock or water

Impromptu dinner for 18 - barbecued chicken and salads

After the the Boat Festival, the executive and volunteers repaired back to Nancy's house for a swim, a debriefing and of course dinner.  This had not been planned so a quick assessment of fridge contents and a trip to the local IGA was in order.

Nancy had a large bag of frozen tail on shrimps in the freezer so we ran them under cold water in a sieve to partially defrost, and pan fried quickly in olive oil and garlic.

This made a great nibble to assuage everyone's hunger along with some homemade salsa, chips, vegetable platter, hummus and foccacia bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar brought by some of the guests.

After considering the possibilities, it was decided to barbecue some chicken and serve it with assorted salads.

For the chicken I used Moroccan spice rub that I had used before, but added a little smoked paprika.  After rubbing the chicken all over I cooked the chicken pieces over indirect heat on the barbecue, putting the chicken on one side of the barbecue and the heat on the other.

Piedmont Peppers

Finally summer appears to have arrived to the West Coast of Canada and the barbecue is back in action, this is a side dish that is one of my favourite side dishes in the summer (though I have been known to make it in the winter too).  It is a good foil to a barbecued steak, which is what we had it with on the long weekend.

The recipe is originally from Delia Smith's cook book "Summer"  there is another book called "Winter" and they are great books to go to for ideas and I like the fact that they are seasonal.

1/2 pepper per person
1/2 clove of garlic per person
1 tomato per person
optional 1/2 anchovy fillet per person
1 tablespoon of chopped fresh basil per per pepper.
Olive oil to drizzle over

Cut the peppers in half and take the stalk off and all the seeds then lay in a single layer in a roasting tin cut side up. In the cavity of each pepper place sliced garlic cut up tomato anchovy fillet if you are using them add freshly ground black pepper and salt.

Sprinkle with the chopped basil and drizzle olive oil over the whole thing.

Roasted vegetables

Roast vegetables is a an old standby of mine that I cook on a very regular basis, in the winter they go well roasted in the oven along with a roast meat or poultry of any kind, and in the summer they are a regular on my barbecue.

My favourite vegetables to roast are Bell peppers, eggplant, onions, zucchini, fennel, mushrooms.

Fridge dinner - stuffed peppers

One of my absolute favourite things is to be given a challenge of making dinner from what you can find in the fridge and pantry. Friday night I arrived at my friends house laden with all kinds of wonderful produce from Granville Island, she arrived from Costco also laden with purchases.  All this food was for her husbands retirement party on Saturday and neither of us had given any thought as to what we would have for dinner.

Open fridge what is there to use and what did she need using up? 1lb of lean hamburger, an open can of tomato paste, 1/2 can of chopped tomatoes, 4 rather sad looking bell peppers.

Stuffed peppers it would be.

I have no pictures of the making of this, as it wasn't until we were ready to put it in the oven that Nancy said "you should blog this".  Any way here is what we did

Comfort food Chicken Paprika

It was the second day of fall yesterday, a cool dull rainy day here in Vancouver, The Cottager and his wife were coming for dinner, comfort food was called for.  Nobody does comfort food quite like the middle Europeans, it must be something to do with their long cold winters. Anyway the only thing to cook was chicken paprika, you can only cook it at this time of year when the Hungarian peppers are plentiful.

To Cook this  for 6 you will need:-

10 Hungarian peppers
1 onion
3 tablespoons of Hungarian paprika
12 chicken thighs

Make sure you get sweet Hungarian peppers or the round "apple peppers" I used both

Hungarian and apple peppers

Chop the peppers in to fairly small cubes