Category Archives: Vegetarian

Courgettes 2018 – Recipe for courgette fritters

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COURGETTE SEASON 2018

So the 2018 courgette season has arrived and I’m enjoying trying out new recipes to find different ways of preparing them. I prefer to pick them when they are still quite small. That way you can use several at a time when they are at their best for a side dish rather than waiting until they are the size of marrows. There are always some that get away but I’ll slice these lengthways and give them to the chickens so that they can peck out the seeds.

FAVOURITE COURGETTE RECIPE

My all-time favourite way of preparing courgettes is to slice the small courgettes into 2cm slices. Fry them in a covered pan with some extra virgin olive oil. Turn every so often so that they lose their liquid and catch a bit of colour on each side. After 10 minutes or so, toss in a knob of butter, grind over some black pepper and squeeze over some lemon juice. Delicious.

DIFFERENT RECIPES

My challenge each year is to find some new and interesting recipes to use up the abundant crop.

The first recipe I tried didn’t salt the courgettes first which proved to be a messy mistake. In the second one I salted the grated courgette and left for an hour before squeezing the water out.

This recipe is adapted from Felicity Cloake’s “How to cook …” column in the Guardian “How to cook the perfect courgette fritters“.

The second recipe worked a lot better and I’d use this technique again in the future.

Here is the recipe.

Courgette fritters
Serves 2
A simple recipe for courgette fritters
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Ingredients
  1. 2 medium-sized courgettes, coarsely grated
  2. 1 small salad onion, finely chopped
  3. 2 handfuls of grated cheese
  4. 2 tablespoons self-raising flour
  5. 2 tablespoons polenta
  6. 1 egg
  7. 1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
  1. Put the courgette in a bowl, sprinkle over the salt and mix well.
  2. Leave for about an hour and then transfer to a colander and squeeze out the water.
  3. Add the onion, flour, polenta and egg and mix well.
  4. Season with salt and pepper.
  5. Heat some oil in a frying pan.
  6. Put in spoonfuls of the courgette mixture and fry on a high heat for 3 minutes.
  7. Flip the fritters and fry for a further 3 minutes on the other side.
Cortijo de la Plata https://cortijoblog.com/

Nut roast

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Nut roast
To celebrate finishing the olive harvest before Christmas, we normally have a roast meal cooked in the bread oven. As this year (2017) we had Aida a vegetarian working with us, I decided to cook the traditional roast plus a nut roast. This recipe is an adaptation of Felicity Cloake's post in the Guardian
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Ingredients
  1. 1 large sweet potato, peeled and chopped into chunks
  2. 1 medium-sized red cabbage
  3. 150g almonds
  4. 150g walnuts
  5. 40g butter
  6. 1 large onion, finely chopped
  7. 150g mushrooms, finely chopped
  8. 100g Manchego cheese, grated
  9. 100g brown breadcrumbs
  10. 2 tablespoons fresh sage, roughly chopped
  11. 1 large egg, beaten
  12. Extra virgin olive oil
  13. Salt
  14. Pepper
Instructions
  1. Cook the sweet potato in boiling, salted water until soft and mash.
  2. Oil a loaf tin approximately, line with foil and oil again.
  3. Blanch the cabbage leaves in boiling, salted water for 2 minutes. Run under cold water and then dry. Remove the central stalk so that they lie flat.
  4. Heat a frying pan and gently toast the chopped walnuts and almonds until they start to colour and transfer to a plate.
  5. Turn the heat down and add the butter. Fry the chopped onion and fry gently.
  6. Add the mushrooms and fry for another couple of minutes until they are concentrated.
  7. In a bowl, mix the nuts, onion, cheese, breadcrumbs, mushrooms, sweet potato, beaten egg and chopped sage. Season and stir well.
  8. Line the tin with the cabbage leaves, and spoon in the mixture, pressing it down well.
  9. Fold any overhanging cabbage leaves back over the top.
  10. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 45 minutes.
  11. Remove the foil from the top and put the loaf back in the oven for another 10 minutes.
Cortijo de la Plata https://cortijoblog.com/

Roast butternut squash with cous cous and vegetables

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Roast butternut squash with cous cous and vegetables
Serves 6
In this recipe, the flesh is removed from the roasted butternut squash halves and mixed with fried vegetables and cous cous.
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Ingredients
  1. 3 butternut squash, halved and seeds removed
  2. 1 1/2 cups of cous cous
  3. 3 cups of boiling water
  4. 1 onion, finely chopped
  5. 1 red pepper, finely chopped
  6. 1 green pepper, finely chopped
  7. 6 tablespoons fried tomato
  8. grated cheese
  9. oregano
  10. salt
  11. pepper
  12. chopped parsley
Instructions
  1. Heat the oven to 180ºC-200ºC.
  2. Sprinkle the squash halves with oregano and season with salt and pepper and roast until soft.
  3. Meanwhile, heat some oil in a frying pan and gently fry the onions until soft.
  4. Add the chopped red and green pepper and continue frying gently.
  5. Boil some water.
  6. Put the cous cous in a bowl. Season with salt and drizzle over some olive oil. Mix well. Pour over the boiling water. Cover with a plate.
  7. When the squash is cooked, remove from the oven and scoop out the flesh into a bowl.
  8. Add the cous cous, fried tomato and fried vegetables.
  9. Mix well and check for seasoning.
  10. Fill the squash halves with the squash mixture.
  11. Sprinkle over the grated cheese.
  12. Put back in the oven and turn up the oven to 220ºC.
  13. Roast for 20-30 minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbling.
  14. Sprinkle over the parsley.
Cortijo de la Plata https://cortijoblog.com/

Quick and Easy Pumpkin Soup

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cortijoblog butternut squash soup

QUICK AND EASY BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP

We generally harvest our butternut squashes in September and then leave them out in the sun for several days to ripen. It is important to treat them with care so that they don’t bruise and leave about 10cm of stalk on each one so that they don’t go off. We then store them upright in crates with a single layer in each one. They will happily keep for 5 or 6 months like that but you shoUld check them every so often just to be on the safe side. If you find that any of the stalks have fallen off, it is a good idea to peel and process them. Bags of grated squash or pieces can be frozen and later used in soups, stews or for bhajis or fritters.

cortijoblog butternut squash soup

Quick and Easy Butternut Squash Soup

This is a really quick and easy soup to prepare in the pressure cooker and only takes 20 minutes to make.

 

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 butternut squash
  • 1 potato, roughly chopped
  • 1 litre vegetable stock
  • 2 spoons of Greek yoghurt
  • salt and pepper

METHOD

  1. Peel the butternut squash, remove the seeds and cut into chunks.
  2. Put all the ingredients in the pressure cooker and pour over the vegetable stock.
  3. Season with salt and pepper.
  4. Stir well.
  5. Cover the pressure cooker and bring to pressure.
  6. Turn down the heat and cook for 20 minutes.
  7. Turn off the heat and leave the pressure cooker for 5 minutes before releasing the pressure.
  8. Blend with a stick blender.
  9. Check for seasoning and then serve.

Onion and potato soup

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Onion and potato soup
Serves 6
Until our own onions are ready, we need to buy them in and the other day I bought a sack of massive Spanish onions. Normally, I would use four large onions but with these ones, three were enough.
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Ingredients
  1. 3 extra large onions or 4 large onions, halved, quartered and then sliced
  2. 2 large potatoes, quartered
  3. 1 litre vegetable stock
  4. 2 teaspoons dried thyme
  5. 2 dessertspoons Greek yoghurt
  6. salt and plenty of pepper
  7. extra virgin olive oil
Instructions
  1. Heat some oil in a pressure cooker and vigorously fry the onions for 10-15 minutes.
  2. Add the potatoes, stock and salt. Put the lid on and bring up to pressure.
  3. Cook for 15 minutes and then quick release the pressure by placing the pressure cooker under the cold tap.
  4. Transfer the potato into a 1-litre measuring jug with some of the onions and stock.
  5. Blend with a stick blender.
  6. Stir in the Greek Yoghurt.
  7. Season with pepper.
Cortijo de la Plata https://cortijoblog.com/