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

Giving veggies a hiding

My mum used to make me eat brussel sprouts. Not the tiny little gourmet buttered brussel sprouts with roasted chestnuts that you find on a lavish European Christmas table. Oh no - these were 1970s Australian versions - bitter, olivey-grey, egg-sized, boiled monsters of torture that would keep me sitting at the table twisting my fork idly over my plate until bedtime. One day I refused to eat them, and I got them back again for breakfast.

In my house, the monsters are not on the plate - they're eating off it. Or, more truthfully, they are running around the living room avoiding what is on the plate. I have absolutely no control of my children. They eat what they want, when they want, in the manner they want. I have no idea how my mother managed to handle me - I was far from perfect myself. 

So, with an utter lack of a firm parental hand or the juvenile respect for authority, the only way for me to get kids to eat healthy food is to disguise it in yummy form. I have hundreds of ways - they involve all manner of slicing, dicing, pureeing, grating, mixing, stuffing and coating. One of the favourites is the meatballs below. Bear in mind, these are for children (or grown men who won't eat their veggies), so are appropriately bland. I also make them for us, but with plenty of extra spice.

Fattoush - the salad for non-salad lovers

I hate salads that taste like a pile of grass. I'm more of a caesar salad person - sure, I like some leaves, but I prefer them crunchy, and then I want a whole heap of non-salad items in there, like bacon, eggs, bread and cheese. Or maybe a complete lack of leaves, like in a greek salad - again, with the cheese, and something tangy like olives. But just don't serve me weeds - ugh.

This region has a famous salad, and I'd never heard of it before I arrived - but now I order it everywhere. I'm on my own special mission to find the best Fattoush (also fatoush, fattush and probably a myriad of other spellings) that can be found in Dubai. So far, it's a war between Bayt al Wakeel on the Bur Dubai side of the creek in the middle of the Old Souk, and Tagine, at the One and Only Royal Mirage.

Fattoush's wonderful addition is fried bread. It's like an arabic crouton, but better, and I make mine in the oven and they taste just as good. These croutons are so awesome, I eat half of them before I even make the salad. But the salad is pretty good too - it's fresh, aromatic, colourful and crunchy. 

Putontha Puttanesca

When I was living in Melbourne, I used to get acupuncture once a fortnight after work. I would look forward to this day for thirteen days before it - not because I was going to get stuck with needles, sucked with cups and given a revolting tea decoction by Marina, but because Simon Johnson Fine Foods was underneath her parlour of mini-pain. After every session, I would buy a 560g jar of his Puttanesca sauce, and bring it home to make the easiest dinner ever - boil and drain pasta, add jar, chilli and one tin of drained tuna, stir and heat, and serve with stacks of piquant pecorino. And despite being the least difficult of all meals to prepare, it was always the household favourite, even when young Lion came along (minus the chilli).

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).