Gazpacio of red capsicum with prawns

It's hard not to get inspired in Provence. Sometimes I replicate what I eat to the best of my ability, sometimes I ask the chef for the recipe, and others, I take pieces of inspiration from the dish and create something a little more me. This is the first kind, replicated from an incredible gazpacio de poivron avec gambas from La Bastide de Gordes to the best of my ability. 

 

The rest of my post on Gordes can be found here - the recipe resides below. 

 

Ingredients:

For the soup:

• 4 ripe tomatoes, deseeded and chopped
• 2 red capsicums (peppers)
• 1 medium continental cucumber (or 2 small lebanese), peeled, deseeded and chopped
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 small salad onion, chopped
• 1 tbsp creme fraiche
• salt, pepper, brown sugar and tabasco to taste

Shakshouka

Shakshouka (or shakshuka) is a dish I first tried at Baker and Spice, Dubai. It hails from Northern Africa, but other areas over the middle east, and the Ottoman empire also lay a claim to it's invention. Simply, it is baked eggs in a rich sauce. This is fairly close to the version found in Baker and Spice, and now at least once a month at my own table - either for breakfast, or an easy dinner.

Ingredients:

• 500g Tomatoes (chopped) either tinned or fresh (a mixture works best)
• 1 red capsicum (diced)
• 1 onion (diced)
• 3 cloves of garlic (crushed) or to taste
• 2 tsp ground coriander (I like to toast mine from seed and crush)
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp sweet paprika
• 1 tsp crushed chilli
• 1 tbsp sugar
• salt and pepper to taste
• a handful of fresh coriander (chopped)
• 4 eggs

Twisted Ratatouille

With multi-hued farm-fresh capsicums as my inspiration, I set off to make one of my all-time comfort foods, ratatouille. Now, there are a million recipes out there for ratatouille, and probably 90% of them would offend the historically correct die-hard ratatouillans, but general consencus is that it has to be a tomato based dish with onions and garlic, herbes de Provence, and vegetables such as courgette and aubergine. 


So you will all be shocked to find that my recipe below does not contain aubergine. It's not because I dislike aubergine, but because I find the recipe far easier to make, more flexible in its use, and more delicate in flavour without it. I also have a couple of illicit ingredients that I think make my ratatouille better than everyone elses (no false modesty around here).

Rainbow Stir-fried Vegetables

Stir-fries didn't exist when I was a child in Australia. My vegetables were served up in steamed to the devil gray mounds in unidentifiable varieties - probably a good thing, because quite often they contained broad beans, cabbage and brussel sprouts. I remember rejoicing when my Mother took a six week Thai Cookery course, and she came home at the end of it with stuff like coconut milk, ginger, lemongrass and chili. Until then curry had meant a bechamel sauce with Keens Curry powder stirred into it.

The wok became the most desired piece of kitchen equipment. Not only did it make a wonderful hat, shield or striking implement in war games with my younger brother, but it also meant that if Mum got it out of the cupboard it meant we were eating colour for dinner.

Tips with cooking veggies in the wok. Cut all the vegetables into slices that will cook in the same amount of time. Snow peas only take two minutes, so make sure you cut the carrot thin enough so it's not raw when you take it out. Secondly, you want cooked, but crisp - otherwise the colour and moisture leaves the vegetable and ends up in the bottom of the wok.