Recipes Recipes Recipes

I've been on a bit of an experimental food buzz the last few days.
Discovered how much I love pumpkin, how much I love Bulghur wheat (and how super easy and quick it is to cook) and how much I love zucchini after despising them for my whole life!
I've developed a few tasty recipes which I feel are worthy of sharing, so here goes.


This, my friends, is Mr Butternut.
Just out of the oven after about an hour an a half of roasting away to perfection.

Until recently, I despised Mr Butternut, and all his relatives, Mr Crown, Mrs Buttercup and all other odd bods in between.
When I was growing up, the only ways I can recall having pumpkin was boiled (spew), roasted (which actually is delicious now that I'm an adult) in soup (which none of us 4 kids liked so it hardly ever graced the table to be honest) or in pumpkin pie.
"Pumpkin pie!" you say...
"Pumpkin pie is amazing!" you say....
Sorry, I am just not a fan (though actually thinking about it, its probably actually Mr Nutmeg I don't like.)

So as you can see, I didn't have the best relationship with the pumpkin family.
BUT all of that changed recently. I am a little bit obsessed with Jamie Oliver. He is basically my food God.
I love his philosophy on food, I love the way he supports homegrown, or locally sustainably sourced food, which is free range and/or organic. His rustic approach to food is right up my alley and omg, that accent. Come at me!
Anyway, so my wonderful Mama bear gave me his most recent book (Save with Jamie) and I began instantly testing out the recipes and drinking in all the saving tips and tricks he writes about. One chapter is all vegetable recipes and there was this recipe in there for Roasted Butternut Squash Rotolo.
I thought, you know what, that sounds and looks to die for. Lets give ol Mr pumpkin another chance.
And the rest is history. I am in love with pumpkins!...although just a side note...the nutmeg in that recipe....no...just no....it was all wrong. That being said, it's probably just that I don't like nutmeg as I mentioned earlier. I'm sure if you're into nutmeg, you'll love it in that recipe. Go check it out on Jamie Olivers website here: Butternut Squash Rotolo Recipe it's amaze!

So since then, I have been roasting it up left right and centre!!
My little man Alex is just about a year old and he seriously loves all this pumpkin I've been cooking.
(Leave me a message if you want some great, healthy vegetable packed baby food recipes)

OK so I've been back into my salads again trying to shed a bit more of my pregnancy weight before the wedding ( 5 months to go, omg, it's creeping up way too quickly, I still have so many things to do!). I took a bit of a tangent for a while and the winter comfort foods crept in but I have jolted out of that comfy little rut and have whipped up a few exceptionally tasty salads which are a wee bit different.

1. Zucchini, rocket, bulghur wheat salad with toasted pine nuts, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds sprinkled on top.

Now I could have easily left it as is and enjoyed every last morsel. But I thought, feta and sun-dried tomatoes would go fab in this...and so would roasted pumpkin!
Seeing as I had another zucchini in my fridge I thought I'd use it up before it went off (happens far too often in my house) and I quickly whipped up a batch of my "Anything goes vege fritters".
Which today consisted of 1 grated zucchini and 1 grated carrot, hanful of roughly chopped up baby spinach, bit of grated cheese, self raising flour, salt n pepper, garlic powder and one egg. I don't really know quantities of flour and cheese....just a small handful of cheese and enough tablespoons of flour until it combines together into a doughy consistency...I cook by sight a lot of the time, but I'll endeavor to measure it out next time im making it so I can report back for anyone wanting to know. (These are a great way to get the kids to eat some more veges, anything in a fritter with some kinda dipping sauce looks tastier than a bunch of boiled veges dumped on a plate right?? My man hates zucchini by the way...I told him "I added chopped spinach this time to get more veges into the kids....well I wasn't lying....I did put chopped spinach in...I just failed to mention that most of the green he could see was zucchini....lol! What he doesn't know wont hurt him, he loved them so much he practically inhaled them.)

Right so, fritters made, salad made, ohh yes, that must mean lunch time! 

Come onnnn! Bitta non-fat plain Greek yoghurt and sweet chili sauce over the top, and in the words of my Food God Jamie Oliver... HAPPY DAYS!

Whoops! Just about forgot to add that delishy roast pumpkin! 

Ok so keeping with the "anything goes vege fritter" theme, here are some tasty left over roast pumpkin fritters! Really quick and easy, just some mashed roast pumpkin (skin removed) crumbled feta cheese, salt n pepper and self raising flour. This is what the mixture should look like...thick enough for the fork to stand up on its own in the middle without falling down.

Then spoon onto the fry pan  with a bit of olive oil a bit like pikelets, and cook on medium heat for about 2-3 mins on each side. The self raising flour makes them puff up and go lovely and fluffy when you flip them over the first time.

Yum Yum and Yum!
These are crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside and have little pockets of oozy gooey feta. Even better if you stick a small handful of grated cheddar cheese into the mix. Not so great for the waistline though.

My only tip here is, don't cook ahead of time thinking they will reheat and be as nice as fresh. They seem to loose their air and go flat and stodgy.

I found this out the hard way when I tried to make these with some roast chicken. Thought, yum, shredded roast chicken on top of pumpkin fritters and side salad for dinner!
Welllll I had a bit of an oven malfunction and my chicken took twice as long to cook as it should have. So when I finished making my fritters, and thought yep, get the chook out of the oven to shred now and dinner will be on the table in 5 mins.

Hah! No....I have no idea why, but even tho my chook had been in the oven for 2 hours, it was still oozing out bloody juices, not nice clear ones, so onto plan B. Crack the back bone and butterfly out the chook to try get it to cook faster. 45 mins later it was JUST cooked enough to serve. 

By which time, the kids were grizzling, it was nearly their bed time (Whoops!) and my lovely fluffly melt in the mouth fritters has collapsed, gone stodgy and cold and lost all of their loveliness. Even when I popped them back into the pan to warm them up, it was no good. They were ruined.
 (Soo these aren't the best fritters to make in bulk to freeze and pull out on a lazy night when you can't be bothered cooking. The zucchini ones work fine for that though.)
*Sigh*
Talk about fail...I've never had a roast chook fail before!! I was in such a fowl (haha get it? sorry... :P ) mood after that incident....I don't cope well with cooking fails!

Right that's about as much as I can type today, it's raining and cold the kids are bored out of their minds.
So for now, embrace that lovely pumpkiny goodness, get creative with him and stay beautiful! x