Potato and Cheese Polpettes

Here's an alternative vegetarian barbeque burger to the ubiquitous bean burgers. Not sure I'd want to serve them in a bun: better with a sweet and spicy chutney, some gorgeous steaky portabellas and plenty of black pepper.

Ingredients:
5-6 medium mashing potatoes
250g feta cheese
4 spring onions
4 tbsp chopped fresh dill (or mint, if you prefer)
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp lemon juice


(Peel the potatoes if you like - I don't.) Wash, cube and simmer them until soft, then mash, allowing plenty of steam to escape - for once you want this to be a kind of dry mash. While it cools a little, finely chop the spring onions and herbs, then add them to the potato, season with plenty of black pepper and stir well. Stir in the egg and lemon juice. Finally, crumble in the feta and fold gently to combine. Cover and refrigerate the mixture for an hour or so. Then divide into little balls and flatten them slightly. Brush with olive oil, then barbeque on the grill or hotplate for a few minutes each side, until golden brown and hot through. (We might use a lower heat and more oil next time!)

BBQd Beetroot and Feta

I often roast beetroot in the oven, add some feta at the last minute, and toss it in a salad with leaves and puy lentils. Tonight the SO put the beetroot cubes in foil parcels on the BBQ and they came out splendidly. He perhaps added the feta a tad early, as you can see from its slightly mangled appearance! Cous-cous with raisins and some chopped olives, sundried tomatoes and skinned, roasted red peppers made up the accompaniment. Just in time to eat while playing some turns on the online Race for the Galaxy with friends waking up in Cambridge :)

BBQ Challenge Week: Day 7: Beef Skewers

Another day at home, still a bit ill :-/ Fortunately the super-husband had time to pop to the butcher's and buy some nice honey-glazed beef skewers, which BBQd a treat! They were well-marinaded so plain white rice and a simple cucumber and feta salad were fine accompaniments. (Super-husband is into his Thai-Greek fusion food ;)

Margaret River Tabbouleh

We had an absolutely brilliant time in Margaret River, mostly cooking in the townhouse at the rather excellent resort at which we stayed. There was a shared barbecue next to the pool, which we made full use of, especially BBQing some really tasty steaks. We also made lots of salads, and had big French-style lunches - well, we eat less cheese nowadays! Mum made a great tabbouleh, which we served with roast red peppers, a cabbage and apple salad and a simple green salad.

Ingredients:

• 300g cous-cous (dry weight)
• 100g olives
• a block of feta (~150g)
• a tin of chick peas
• flat-leaf parsley
• juice of a lemon

Cook the cous-cous according to its packet instructions. Stone and halve the olives, and break the feta into small crumbly pieces. Drain the chick peas and finely chop the parsley. Combine the cooked cous-cous and everything else together and serve! Also keeps for a few days in the fridge.

Pumpkin, Feta and Rosemary Pizza

A few weekends ago we were out shopping in Cannington, which we've found a useful place to buy pretty much any and all non-food items. This time we were at a barbecue store, ostensibly to pick up barbecue tools, but as it turned out, mainly to buy random new things like skewers and a pizza stone! We had a little trouble with it at first as the instructions are impossibe: you're supposed to heat it in the oven, and meanwhile make your pizza completely, with toppings etc on top of the raw dough. Then you take the hot stone out of the oven and "with a quick flick of the wrist" transfer the raw pizza to the stone. Or in our case, "with a lot of cursing, and burning, clutching hands, transfer a messy goop of what used to be a pizza to the stone". The first one wasn't worth photographing.

This time we cheated and made the pizza ON the stone, then put the whole thing in the oven. It came out a little soggy on the base, so this isn't the best solution either. I think what we'll do next time is put the stone in the oven, roll out the base and prepare the toppings separately, then bring the hot stone out, put the base on, and THEN add all the toppings. In the meantime here is one of our favourite pizza recipes.

Ingredients:

• One pizza base
• 250g tasty eating pumpkin
• 2-3 sprigs of rosemary
• a fat clove of garlic
• 2-3 tomatoes
• 1 tsp oregano
• 150g feta cheese

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Peel and chop the pumpkin into smallish dice (about 1cm on a side). Place in a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil and tuck in the sprigs of rosemary. Roast for 20 minutes or until golden and tender. Meanwhile, finely dice the tomatoes, then crush the garlic into a frying pan with some olive oil and fry for one minute, then add the tomatoes, and the oregano. Sautee until the tomatoes have collapsed and most of the liquid has evaporated; about 7 minutes. Dice the feta cheese into the same cube size as the pumpkin. Roll out your pizza dough, place on the stone, spread over the tomato sauce, then add the pumpkin and feta. Bake for 20 minutes or until the crust is risen and golden and the toppings are beginning to crisp.

Potato, Feta and Rosemary Frittata

Last night we popped over to Teri-aki with some friends; it's almost our default restaurant in Cambridge, with a nice range of sushi, sides and big noodle plates when you have an appetite. It once had a sister restaurant called Aki-teri, which served more Korean-style dishes including my favourite dolsot bibimbap. Unfortunately the owners converted it into a bar, which I think is a shame. On the plus side I can get my kimchi fix at Little Seoul.

Tonight we needed to pack for a five-day Easter weekend seeing my family in Edinburgh, so as usual there were a few things to use up before we departed. A couple of potatoes, yet more cheese from the SO's dairy-based shopping spree, some sad carrots and spring onions from the bottom of the fridge, juice that would certainly ferment if we left it, and of course somehow we'd accumulated two dozen eggs. So I thought for a bit, browsed the internet, thought some more, popped out and filched some rosemary from a neighbour's front garden (well, it overhangs the pavement!) and created this! Serves four - preferably outdoors with a glass of white wine.

Ingredients:

• 2 large or 3 medium new potatoes
• 3 fat sprigs of rosemary
• a bunch of spring onions
• 200g feta cheese
• 8 eggs

Scrub the potatoes, then cut into large even chunks, and simmer for 15 minutes until tender but not falling apart. Run under cold water until cool, then slice into half-cm-thick slices. If some parts are overcooked and show signs of falling apart, just slice them a bit thicker. In a heavy based stainless-steel pan that is safe under a grill, fry the potatoes in hot olive oil for 3-4 minutes on each side, until golden brown and crisp-edged. These don't need to be perfect, like sautéed potatoes; it's fine if they break up a little or aren't perfectly evenly toasted. It's still a good idea not to crowd the pan; I found I needed to cook them in two batches. Remove to a plate when they're done, turn the heat off, and add a little more oil to the pan if it has all been absorbed.

Cut or break the feta cheese into small pieces. Strip and finely chop the rosemary leaves, and roughly chop the spring onions, separating the layers so they're not in big pieces. Fry the spring onions and rosemary in the pan you used for the potatoes, tossing about for a couple of minutes so they become green and fragrant. Crumble in the feta and return the potatoes to the pan; combine gently until the components are mixed but not broken up.

Break the eggs into a large bowl and use a fork to break the yolks and combine them somewhat with the whites. Season well with black pepper; you won't need salt if your feta is fairly salty, as it usually is. Pour the egg mixture into the warm pan over the other ingredients and resist the urge to stir or flatten it out. Turn the heat back on to a low setting, and cook for 15 minutes, until it's only the top that is still runny. Preheat your grill to a moderately high setting, then move the pan under it and grill for 3-4 minutes, until puffed and golden. Allow to rest for a minute or two before serving.

We ate this tonight with a side of sliced carrots cooked in orange juice (use just enough to cover and simmer with a tsp of tarragon for 15 minutes), and a few stalks of chard cooked in their own juices for a couple of minutes, seasoned with toasted caraway seeds and lemon juice. All the better for being eaten outside in the garden. And the leftovers will keep us going during the long drive tomorrow.