Light and Fresh

Crispy Falafel with Homemade Pita and Lemon-Garlic Tahini Sauce

by

Falafel – crispy fried nuggets of ground chickpeas, flavored with herbs and spices – are an essential Middle Eastern dish. Serve them as a meze appetizer with Lemon-Garlic Tahini Sauce, or stuff them into home-made Pita Bread with a veggie salad.

Tahini Sauce With Lemon and Garlic

by

Tahini Sauce With Lemon and Garlic

Silky smooth and packed with flavor, Tahini Sauce with Lemon and Garlic is absolutely essential on falafel but delicious on so much else. It’s bright and tangy and as creamy as sauce with no cream (or any dairy) can be. 

Pretty much now considered an essential recipe, our Tahini Sauce is based on the version in Michael Solomonov’s wonderful cookbook, Zahav. Don’t be alarmed by the whole head of garlic used in the sauce; like some kind of magic trick, blending the whole, unpeeled cloves with lemon juice neutralizes the formation of allicin, which is the chemical responsible for garlic’s harsher flavors. The resulting sauce is delicately garlicky, with almost no pungency.

Read more

Vietnamese Summer Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce

by

Vietnamese Summer Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce Fresh, light and delicious, Vietnamese summer rolls are a great appetizer or light meal any time of the year. Crisp vegetables, bright herbs and shrimp are rolled in a rice paper wrapper, with a side of sweet and salty peanut sauce for dipping. 

If you’ve ever eaten at a Vietnamese restaurant (or had the pleasure of traveling to the country, you adventurer), you’ve probably had summer rolls. They’re sometimes called “fresh spring rolls” or “salad rolls”, but not to be confused with traditional spring rolls, which are often smaller, fried, and filled with cooked vegetables and pork. These are the epitome of fresh and light, filled with finely shredded raw vegetables (we used purple cabbage, carrots, cucumber & scallions, as well as butter lettuce), lots of bright herbs like mint, cilantro and basil, rice vermicelli noodles and poached shrimp, all wrapped up like a translucent burrito in a rice paper wrapper.

We love the flavors of Vietnamese cooking (as you can tell by some of our previous recipes: Vietnamese-style baked chicken and Vietnamese Grilled Pork Chops (Thit Heo Nuong Xa). I first made Vietnamese Summer Rolls over a decade ago and I’ve been wanting to make them again ever since. When we found out we were going to have a weekend houseguest, our 12-year-old niece Charlotte, who is an adventurous eater and a great cook in her own right, we thought these would be a fun dish to make together.

Vietnamese Summer Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce
Charlotte making a Summer Roll

Read more

Blueberry-Lemon Curd Tartlets with Almond Crust

by
Blueberry-Lemon Curd Tartlets with Almond Crust

The perfect use for our gorgeous pink blueberry lemon curd, these pastry tartlets are flavored and decorated with almonds. Each tartlet is a miniature delight, yet sufficient to share with a loved one (or keep to yourself, of course, you gannet).

When we saw how striking our blueberry lemon curd turned out, we knew it wouldn’t be enough simply to slather it on some toast (as delicious as that might be). Something that gorgeous and cheeky deserved to be showcased – and this was our solution: adorable little blueberry lemon curd tartlets. A shortcrust base generously flavored with ground almonds and a little fresh rosemary, pre-baked, cooled, and filled with the curd, which we decorated wth more ground and sliced almonds, some fresh blueberries and a few flowering mint sprigs.

Blueberry-Lemon Curd Tartlets with Almond Crust

Read more

Blueberry Lemon Curd

by

Blueberry lemon curd

Don’t you hate it when your favorite site or publication has a “special takeover issue”, when they change the title and mess with the format purely for the purposes of advertising or to big up their latest feature? I didn’t like it when Whizzer and Chips did a “Chips and Whizzer” edition in 1979, and I don’t like it now. That’s the reason why we’re not temporarily changing the name of the site to “Curds with Knives” because, frankly, otherwise, that’s exactly the sort of thing we’d do. I don’t know if it’s the fact that lemon prices have dipped lately, I know it’s not because we have a glut of eggs (because out of seven chickens, only one of them is laying) but for some reason, we’re getting rather obsessed with making lemon curd and variations thereof.

Read more

Cheesy Zucchini and Corn Fritters with Herb Sour Cream

by

If you grow your own summer squash, or belong to a CSA, the weekly glut of produce can be overwhelming. Our solution? Shred it, squeeze it, mix into a cheesy batter and fritter it away. Literally. 

If you grow your own summer squash, zucchini can sometimes feel like a plot device in a horror sci-fi movie. At the beginning of the season, you carefully harvest the first zucchini, cradle it like an infant and rest it with pride on the cutting board. The next day, you have two more, and with the proud thrill of the backyard farmer, you slice and grill your summer bounty. The next day you have two more, and two more the following day. By the end of the first week of peak zucchini, you’re nervously eyeing the stack of squash that has built up on the kitchen counter, wondering how many more friends you can gift your harvest to before even they stop answering the door.

And woe betide you if you skip checking for a few days – when you return to the garden and lift up the lowest squash leaf, you’ll inevitably find one monster marrow lurking like a squat green fiend.

Note: We originally blogged zucchini fritters back in 2013, when we were all a little more fresher of face and bouncier of step. We make these fritters all the time in the summer, and we’ve adapted the recipe by adding fresh corn and cheese, so we’ve been meaning to re-blog this recipe ever since. So finally, here is the updated article.

This recipe is part of our ongoing series with Serious Eats. 

Read more