Tag: Courgette

A versatile herby courgette pasta

Playing around with portrait mode on my phone for this photo

For a blog titled Courgettes and Limes, I’d realised that there is a dearth of recipes using courgettes or limes. So, I started writing this post in the middle of courgette season in the UK, but have only gotten round to finishing it now when the season is pretty much over. Short story – I was working abroad, got ill and then went on holiday.

This is an easy courgette pasta recipe that I love to make because it is versatile and quick. Over the 10 years that I’ve been making it, there have been so many variations. I’ve listed a few of them at the bottom of the post. I like it because it is tasty and fresh from the herbs and lemon/lime juice, easily counts as one of your portions of vegetables per day and is naturally vegetarian and vegan. Over the summer, I experimented with it once more, substituting extra virgin oil with sesame seed oil, which added a rich nuttiness to the dish. Oh my – for me, it was a game changer.

One tip that I learned recently is for a dish like this is that to prevent burning the garlic when cooking, do not chop the garlic too finely, or crush it.

Simple herby courgette pasta for one. If you want to feed more people, then double, triple, quadruple… the ingredients list and allow a bit more time for cooking.

Ingredients

  • enough dried pasta for you (anything between 60-90g according to the internet) – fusilli, linguine, spaghetti, are some that I’ve used that work well
  • 1 tbsp of vegetable oil
  • 1 medium sized courgette – any colour (or half a large courgette)
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1 red chilli or chilli flakes – as much or as little as you like
  • A large handful of a variety of fresh herbs (parsley, coriander, dill, mint)
  • 1 spring onion (optional)
  • 1 tbsp of sesame seed oil to garnish
  • 1 tbsp of sesame seeds or pine nuts or flaked almonds (toasted)
  • salt and pepper
  • a squeeze of lemon/lime juice

Method

  1. Before you boil the pasta, use the pan to toast the nuts or seeds. Put the nuts or seeds into the pan, heat them up on a medium heat until they turn a brown colour. Tada, they’re toasted. They will also smell glorious. Take out of the pan and set aside to cool.
  2. While they’re toasting, prep the vegetables. Finely slice the courgette, roughly chop the garlic, deseed and finely slice the chilli (if using).
  3. Boil water in the kettle to cook the pasta, and then add the pasta into the pan used to toast the nuts/seeds. Add the boiling water and salt to the pasta and cook according to the instructions on the packet. If you don’t have a kettle, bring enough water to cook the pasta to boil in a pan. Add salt and pasta and then cook.
  4. In a medium sized frying pan, add a tablespoon of vegetable oil and a pinch of salt, fry the courgettes and garlic until the courgettes are translucent and browned.
  5. While the courgettes cook, roughly chop the herbs that you’re using and finely slice the spring onion.
  6. Once the pasta has cooked, reserve half a cup of the starchy pasta water, then drain it and add the pasta to the courgettes (I guess if you quadrupled the recipe, you might want to add the courgettes to the drained pasta).
  7. Add as much or as little of the pasta water to loosen it, then mix in the herbs, spring onion, 1 tablespoon of sesame seed oil, the toasted nuts/seeds and a squeeze of lemon or lime juice. Season with salt and black pepper.
  8. Enjoy!
Mise en place
I really do chop my garlic roughly and it has kept them from cooking so quickly – leading to less charring
Ready for the sesame seed oil, juice and the nuts
A selection of herbs

Variations

  • Use extra virgin olive oil instead of sesame seed oil for a more Mediterranean flavour.
  • Use a mint and basil herb combo.
  • Add a finely sliced shallot in with the courgettes
  • If I only have one herb at hand – I like to use parsley or coriander
  • Other nuts and seeds that I’ve used: hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, mixed seed mix.
  • Instead of salt at the end, season with finely grated parmesan or grana padano, or even a strong cheddar.
  • The chilli, lemon or lime juice is all optional.
Herby courgette pasta

Courgette (or Zucchini) and Walnut Cake: a ‘don’t–have–enough–of, so–how–about–kinda’ cake

2 courgette and walnut cakes

This is a cake recipe that I adapted out of a “not enough of” so “how about” moment. Have you had any of those moments? I had quite a few of those “uh-oh” moments on a summer’s evening last year. Sarah, my then-housemate, and I had a baking evening in the midst of the bumper courgette season. Oh, we laughed A LOT…

and somehow ended up… with a yummy cake.

This is the original List of Ingredients for Zucchini and Walnut Cake. I’ve included it so that you know what the original plan was. If you’d like to, why not try them both out and tell me what the differences you come across. A year on, during another bumper courgette harvest, I’ve finally gotten round to baking the original recipe (below in italics) with a few modifications below. At the end, I’ve written a wee note about the differences I came across between each of the recipes – but the cause of yummy cake is not lost in either one.

245g walnuts (separated into 185g walnut pieces / 60g walnut halves)
500g zucchini – grated (500g is about 2 medium sized courgettes)
250ml canola oil – I couldn’t find this in Sainsburys so used sunflower oil
330g raw sugar – I halved it to 170g demerara sugar
3 eggs
310g self-raising flour, sifted
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg

I mean, who normally has canola oil, and what is raw sugar? I had no idea until I saw it in this recipe. My google search tells me that demerara sugar is one type. Ah… a sigh of relief. I have some of that. But not enough walnuts, or self-raising flour… ho hum.

So, here’s my List of Ingredients for my ‘Don’t-have-enough-of-so-how-about’ Courgette and Walnut Cake. Oh, I might as well write courgette instead of zucchini, since I’ve changed so many of the ingredients already.

245g mixture of walnuts, pecans, brazil nuts and hazelnuts
500g courgette, grated
250ml vegetable oil (lighter than olive oil)
170g demerara sugar
3 eggs
310g wholemeal self-raising flour, sifted
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
a splash of milk, if necessary

Method

  • Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas Mark 3
  • Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin.
  • Weigh out 185g of the nuts, saving 60g of the other nuts to decorate on top of the cake mixture later.
  • I grated the courgettes in a food processor that had the grater option and finished the end bits by hand. It’s the easiest way to get through 500g.
  • Mix together courgettes, oil, sugar, eggs so they look like this
courgette and walnut cake mix1
  • Add the chopped nuts.
  • Gradually add the flour, cinnamon and nutmeg to this mixture.
  • Add a splash of milk to the mixture to add a bit more wetness to the mixture. If the mixture looks and feels gloopy once you’ve mixed it, then it’s right.
gloopy courgette and walnut cake mixture
  • Pour the mixture into the tin and use the remaining nuts to decorate the top of the cake.
  • Bake in the middle of the oven for about 1 hour 10 minutes, until a cake tester (or knife) comes out clean when inserted into the middle of the cake.
    NB. If you bake them as muffins, then they need 30-35 minutes, but check them with a skewer to ensure that they are done.)

    Top Tip: Check on the cake at 55 minutes. If the nuts look very brown as if they’re likely to burn, then cover the top with a sheet of baking or greaseproof paper.

  • Let the cake cool in the tin.
  • Enjoy and smile as you ask those around you to guess the mystery ingredient 🙂

So, what are the differences?
When I was used white flour, I had too much mixture for my 2lb loaf tin. Therefore, I also made 5 muffins, which I then decorated with chocolate frosting and finished it off with a walnut. I’ll be enjoying them as a treat with my mum later. As for the verdict on the flavour? Both cakes have a lovely nutty, spiced taste because of the nutmeg, cinnamon and nuts. The wholemeal version somehow, just tastes… more wholesome. I like it. My photos of the wholemeal cake are currently stored on Sarah’s camera, so I’ll add them on at a later date.

p.s. I discovered that this cake freezes well. This is entering a new territory in baking for me because I had never frozen a cake before. What I did was double wrap it with foil, once the cake had completely cooled down. Then wrapped it again in a plastic bag before popping it into the freezer. I defrosted it simply by putting it out on the side. The cake was yummy to eat.

Happy Courgette Season!

The Baking of Flora’s Famous Courgette and Lime Cake

Flora

So, there’s an overabundance of courgettes growing in our garden at the moment. Before baking this cake, we’d eaten courgette lasagne, lemon and courgette risotto, pasta with courgettes, boiled courgettes… (we’re still eating our daily portion of courgettes). I was desperate to do some baking – so why not a courgette cake? One of my housemates has Nigella’s ‘Domestic Goddess’ cookbook and I’d seen this cake before but I’d been put off by it because it looked a bit tricky and… well… it’s a courgette cake! It caused a bit of controversy when I facebooked it. Some people really don’t like the idea of mixing vegetables in cakes!

So, in my desperation to do something creative with the courgettes, I read Mouthful’s of Heaven’s entry about Courgette and Lime Cake, was encouraged by how replicable it looked, dug out Nigella Lawson’s ‘How to be a Domestic Goddess’ and started grating the darling courgettes…
So, this is Flora’s famous Courgette Cake adapted by yours truly.

You’ll need to pre-heat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4 and grease and line 2 cake tins.

Ingredients

courgettes

Weigh 250g of courgettes (250g doesn’t really make much of a dent in the courgette harvest) – weigh them before you grate them and if you go a bit over then that’s fine.
60g sultanas (soaked in warm water)
2 large eggs
125ml vegetable oil
75g caster sugar (the original recipe says 150g but I halved the sugar because recipes generally don’t need so much sugar as it says)
225g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
Method
1. Actually the sultanas are optional but I love them so I put them in to soak in warm water to make them lovely and juicy.
2. Grate the courgettes using a normal cheese grater and then put them in a sieve over the sink to remove excess water.
3. Cream the eggs, sugar and oil together in a bowl.
4. Sieve the flour, bicarb of soda and baking powder together in another bowl and then add to the creamed mixture.

Mixing in grated courgettes

5. Stir in the courgettes, then add the drained sultanas.
6. Pour the mixture into the cake tins.
7. Bake for about 30 mins (test it with a skewer and it should come out clean – I use a metal chopstick)
8. Let it cool in the cake tin for about 10 mins, find a cooling rack then take the cakes out to cool on the racks.

limes

Next up is the filling and icing. I’ve never made lime curd, or any curd for that matter, before and had a jar of the shop-bought stuff waiting in the fridge. However, this is what I loved about reading Mouthful’s of Heaven’s blog – she said that it was easy to make lime curd, so i took her at her word and gave it a shot. Indeed it is easy peasy limey squeasy! On another tangent, one of my friend’s mum washes fruit with fairy liquid before she eats them and I laughed when I heard it. Then I found myself doing it when I wanted to use lime for this cake recipe. Funny that… (but it really does work in getting the wax off.)

So for lime curd, melt 75g of butter on a low heat, add in
3 large eggs
75g of caster sugar
125ml lime juice (use the real deal, if you can)
zest of 1 lime

Keep whisking it all until it starts thickening into a custard. Let it cool and fill up a jar with it. It makes more than enough for the cake filling. Mouthfuls of Heaven said that she was wierded out by the slightly cooked whites, so would only use the egg yolks next time. I think its worth a go – not tried egg yolk only yet. I did want a more intense lime taste so would probably add more zest. I’d also advise keeping in the refrigerator and eating it asap (or at least within 3 weeks).

Han-Na

As you can see, my attempt at cream cheese icing was really, really runny. It was somewhat comforting that the same thing happened when a colleague of mine made it too. The one thing that we both did differently from the recipe was to use reduced fat cream cheese. I’m not convinced that this makes the world of difference… but the results would say otherwise! I even put the icing in the fridge for a few hours to firm up (does this work?) but to no avail. I have to admit though that this lime cream cheese icing kicks ass!

So, cream cheese icing with attitude!
Beat 200g of cream cheese until smooth,
Add 100g of sieved icing sugar and combine really well,
Add in juice of one lime.

So the final bit is in the assembling. I left the cakes and lime curd overnight to cool completely. Spread plenty of lime curd on top of one cake, place the second cake on top and then I poured the icing on top and finished it off by sprinkling chopped pistachio nuts on top. I had leftover icing, which my friends used as extra cream 🙂

The verdict? Fingerlinkin’ delish!

Flora

A Courgettini’s Career Ambitions

On Friday I was inspired by the garden and Edward Monkton to write something about this season of plentiful courgettes and the recipes that I’ve been trying out. This is the first piece of poetry that I’ve attempted to write in 8 years and somehow it’s making it’s way onto my blog as the first entry. Perhaps, it’s a good thing. This way, I’ll be far more relaxed about what I’m posting…

A Courgettini’s Career Ambitions

One courgette says to a marrow,
“Tomorrow
When I grow up, there’ll be no end
To the flavours I can be.
Pick – Sweet or Savoury.
Dress me up as a
Nutty courgette loaf
And I’ll impress.
Let famous Flora matchmake me
In a cake, with lime curd.
Tad controversial, I’ve heard.
Chop me, slice me, grate me,
Chutney me, pizza me, stirfry me,
Deep fry my bright, yellow flowers stuffed with cheese.
Or, I can always be a French ratatouille.”

Marrow replies, “Skinny Zucchini,
Do you feel sorry for me?
If, perhaps, and very likely so,
In a season of plentiful marrow,
Your ambitions are not realized,
Take care of your insides.
It does look like I’ve been woefully forgotten, neglected.
My friends got picked. I’ve been rejected.
And I got lazy, fat and bloated.
Indeed, in private I cried tears of frustration.
(Did you see my pitiful expression?)
Listen. Skinny Zucchini –
They say that inside me
When the knife cuts deeply, cleanly,
I will flaunt succulent, white flesh.
Imagine. Me. Baked, stuffed with rice, lamb, mint.
Matured marrow. Mmmm…. Meaty.
Sunny seeds have replaced my tears.
Fruitful and reproducing.
Listen. Cracking noises. Teeth
Eat, bite into my big seeds.”

Courgette and Marrow.
Zucchini and Squash.
You could confuse one for the other.
Pick us when its right.

Ps. But there is one more neglected – courgette leaves
Don’t forget to steam them please!”