Author: Alex

Roast Eggplant Salad

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I made this lovely, colourful eggplant salad to go with Sunday night’s baked falafels. We have falafel quite a bit but I confess we buy packet mixes and we always fry them. We’ve been meaning to make our own for quite a while but never managed to do so. I found this recipe on taste and decided to give it a go.

The falafels weren’t such a hit: easy to make and quite good flavour, but baking them is just ridiculous. I can’t help but wonder if the person who came up with the recipe had some healthy eating brief to follow. In addition to baking being most unsatisfactory for the falafels, there is no way this serves four people. Well, I suppose it might if they weren’t that hungry and shared our low opinion of the baked falafels!

However, this roast vegetable salad was definitely a hit. You can’t choose to make it on the hottest summer day, because you do need to have the oven on, but cool changes always come around eventually!

Heat your oven to 200°C, and line two trays with baking paper. You may also wish to give them a quick dab of oil. Take some Roma tomatoes (for the two of us, I used 2), quarter them, put them on one tray, and drizzle with olive oil (I actually used an oil spray – whatever works for you). You could always season them here, and the addition of some thyme leaves would work well too. Take one large eggplant, cut into chunks about an inch square and spread out over the other tray. Again, drizzle with oil and season if you wish. Place the trays in the oven for a good 20 minutes – half an hour. You want the eggplant in particular to cook and soften and take up a bit of colour.

While the vegetables are cooking, finely slice half a red onion into your serving bowl. When the vegetables come out of the oven, pop them straight into the bowl, onto the onion. The warmth will help soften the onion a little, both in terms of texture and flavour. Sprinkle over some sumac (to taste, I love the stuff so I use loads!) and add plenty of torn mint. You can see how much I used! Gently toss the salad and you’re ready to serve.

You could gussy this up even further by adding some pomegranate seeds (how gorgeous would that look?), and you could serve it with a lemony yoghurt dressing. I just served it with some plain yoghurt with some more sumac sprinkled over the top for colour. Really delicious and incredibly healthy.

Now I just need to find a great falafel recipe!

Food Trends for 2013

- Alex 1 Comment

San Francisco - SoMa: Blue Bottle Coffee - Siphon Coffee
picture by Wally Gobetz

Last Thursday afternoon I chatted to Peter Godfrey about food trends for 2013. There are plenty of lists and ideas out there on the internet (such as that put together by another Adelaide blogger, George at The Foodologist) so rather than rehash all of those I’m going to focus on an Adelaide-centric few.

The rise of the food truck. Hardly a prediction, because food trucks are already an established part of the Adelaide food scene. We’ll see even more over the next year and we’ll see more diversity and catering to more niche markets. We’ll also see more collaborative efforts like Fork on the Road.

Shrinking of fine dining. Adelaide institution The Manse closed its doors in 2012 and while I hope we say goodbye to no other fine dining establishments in 2013, we’ll see few, if any, new ventures in this vein. I think this is a sad thing because as much as I love the fantastic food and casual experience you can enjoy at many Adelaide restaurants, I do love dressing up for a meal out, sitting in a quiet room and eating great food. Fine dining isn’t doomed – it’s all swings and roundabouts and it will enjoy a resurgence, just not in 2013!

The continued rise of South/Central American (think Mexican) and Korean cuisines. We’ve seen a real boom in Mexican eateries in Adelaide in the last year and the fresh, vibrant flavours and the fact that the food can be relatively healthy will ensure continued popularity. Korean cuisine is yet to really hit its straps in Adelaide but more and more venues are opening and one day Korean restaurants will end up being as ubiquitous as Chinese or Thai!

Niche coffees. This prediction is one on a slow boil. I’m aware of two venues in Adelaide selling siphon coffee (see picture above) and we’re going to see more and more of this. Ordering coffee is going to become more complicated … siphon, Aeropress, pour over, cold drip/brew … By next year we’ll all be well versed in these and more!

The small bar. Changes to SA’s liquor licensing legislation will mean we’ll see more quirky, independent, hole in the wall bars. And this will mean a much greater diversity of drinks available. We’ve already got great venues such as Cork and Udaberri, and there are quite a few lined up to open (as a big fan of Alpha Box & Dice wines, I can’t wait for Cantina Sociale to throw open its doors!). If you want to drink something other than badly kept draught beer or cheap, nondescript “dry white wine”, 2013 is going to be your year!

Am I right? Have I missed out an obvious trend for the coming year? Let us all know in the comments!

Moroccan Couscous Salad

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My apologies for yet another really awful photograph! When this salad looked at its best I was too busy celebrating New Year to be photographing!

Disclaimer: San Remo sent me the wholemeal couscous.

Another couscous recipe. After the success of the 50-50 white/wholemeal couscous combination of my last effort, I decided that the salad I took along to a New Year’s Eve party could be 100% wholemeal couscous. I picked a recipe for a warm couscous salad from Jason Atherton’s book Gordon Ramsay’s Maze. This recipe was considerably less hassle to put together (despite having to rustle up the ras el hanout) and I certainly now have plenty of ideas for my own couscous salad creation (no doubt that recipe coming at some point … though this isn’t a blog about couscous so you might have to wait a little).

As usual, I had to make adjustments to Atherton’s recipe (it had raisins in it – I’m really not a fan of raisins in savoury food).

In a bowl, put 1 cup of couscous, a good pinch of salt, 2 tsp of ras el hanout, and a generous glug of good quality olive oil. Pour over 1 cup of boiling water, cover with cling film and leave to sit for 15 – 20 minutes.

With couscous – remember 1 cup of couscous, 1 cup of water or stock.

While the couscous is sitting, peel, core and then finely dice a Granny Smith apple. Finely chopping an apple is more difficult than it sounds (it’s not a shape that lends itself well to being chopped) so don’t get too hung up on size and evenness. Mix some lemon juice through the apple to stop it from discolouring (err on the side of more lemon juice, rather than less).

When the couscous has absorbed all the water, fork it through to fluff it up and then mix through the apple. Stir through some lemon juice (to taste – this depends a bit on how much you used on the apple), lemon rind, and some chopped coriander and rosemary.

I actually left out the coriander as we didn’t have any to hand, but I’d recommend using either that or parsley because, if nothing else, it will add some vibrant green to an otherwise somewhat yellow coloured salad!

This is a salad that you need to eat either the day you make it or the next as the rosemary flavour gets stronger and stronger and eventually dominates.

This couscous salad got a reasonable tick – I took it to a New Year’s Eve party and people who said they didn’t normally eat couscous politely said they enjoyed it. The quantities are much more reasonable here (it was served at a BBQ of 9 people and there was enough left overs for one meal for Andy and me). Andy and I decided that, while this too needs some tweaking, we’re on our way to the perfect couscous salad!