Vegetable Fiesta as promised!

Well, true to my word, I did in fact cook a meal last night! Amazing! It took a while to decide what I was going to do, and I started by listing all the lovely fresh veges I had in the fridge, then chose 5 and finally composed an idea of what to do with them in my head! Although I must confess the end result saw me use only 3 of the 5 veges I orginally selected.

I have been finding my copy of 'Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book' absolutely invaluable of late! I bought this while I was in London in 1999. With a name so very close to my own I simply had to have it as a souvenir! So last night's meal featured some variations on ideas in her book. (Simon is always a little pertubed by the way I cook - whereby a recipe is simply a source of inspiration, NEVER a list of instructions. Hehe.)

My masterpiece! (Sorry about the hideous quality of the photograph - I really ought to use our camera more often and stop using my camera phone, better than nothing though).

The beautiful creamy looking dollop on the left is my rendition of skordalia. Kahla's mum introduced me to this years ago and she had made it with (as I recall) potatoes, garlic and almonds. So I was quite suprised to discover (from Jane G) that the traditional recipe doesn't have a potato near it! But rather is made with old bread, soaked in water! Well, needless to say, I took her recipe and the memory of Lynn's Skordalia and came up with my own rendition - which I might add I was really pleased with. It consisted of potato, almond flour, garlic (loads of garlic!), olive oil (thank you village press), maldon salt and white wine vinegar.

The Brocolli is warm (intentionally) and served with (again, my take on an inspiration from Jane G) a greek dressing called Lemonolatha. This had olive oil, dill, spring onions, white wine vinegar (this was mean to be the lemon - but I couldn't find any - until I opened the fridge after I'd made this! Bother! Next time). More garlic and the judicious use of my trusty blender. Again, I was quite pleased with the result on this one too - and I have a little pottle of the dressing left over in the fridge for later in the week. Apparently this is a dressing which is traditionally served over warm vegetables.

The salad is simply rocket, spring onions, lentil sprouts and homegrown (a la me!) mung bean and alfalfa sprouts.

Predictably Simon wondered where the meat was. :-) But I still think he enjoyed it. Or so he told me. Wise man really. :)

I'm still puzzling over what to do with the swedes. All ideas welcomed! I'm contemplating gnocchi at the moment, although I don't know if they'd be starchy enough (or if it would taste that good).

Wine and Food Society meeting tomorrow night, so no cooking. Oh, and tonight I took the opportunity to cook steak and kidney while Simon was out. The cats thought it smelt pretty good!