Audrey Gordon and the Roast Vegetable Salad

I love comedy. I love books. It is my personal belief that there's nothing better than when the two are combined.

I was made aware recently that the hilarious team from Working Dog Productions had taken a potshot at the foodie culture by creating their own celebrity chef, and in turn had her create a cookbook. Now I like my wit drier than a desert, and when a satirical publication is passed off as legitimate, (hello The Onion), I am especially impressed. Particularly if it leaves people a little unsure if they're being had or not.

Working Dog have amused me over the years with The Castle, The Panel, and Thank God You're Here, and are made up of members of the D-Generation and The Late Show (seriously funny Australian comedy that I still watch today), and their creation of Audrey Gordon does not disappoint. As she moves to Tuscany to immerse herself in the culture, customs and cuisine, Audrey's impertinent attitude (she was voted Britain's Sternest Chef for three consecutive years) makes for compelling reading. There was a joke on just about every page that I found genuinely funny ("The Piazza Pallazzio has genuine period charm. Each of its 66 rooms boasts antiques such as Etruscan rugs, four-poster beds, vases and dial-up internet"), and I am an exacting comedy consumer. I'm a tough nut to crack.

Complete with recipes I want to try marked...

All the recipes included in the book are real, and actually quite delicious. I'm told the book is "a practical guide that will help you carry off everything from a lazy Sunday brunch with friends to a formal sit-down banquet for 300 lactose-intolerant, diabetic vegans with severe peanut allergies". You can't get more helpful than that.

I decided to put the roast vegetable salad to the test - something easy I could throw together, but still be delicious. Given that it is getting into cooler weather too, a salad sort of needs to be a bit hotter and heartier to go with your meals This will do the trick!

Ingredients:
10 new potatoes, halved
2 white onions, sliced
2 large carrots, cut large chunks
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1 zucchini, thickly sliced
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
olive oil
salt
1 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved
50g pine nuts
150g flat-leaf parsley, washed
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar.

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200C.

2. Place the potatoes in a saucepan of water and bring to the boil for 5 minutes until they're just turning soft, but not cooked.

3. Put the potatoes in a large bowl along with the sliced onion, carrot, garlic cloves and zucchini. Sprinkle with rosemary, thyme and a good slug of olive oil. Toss to coat the vegetables with the olive oil then season with salt to taste.

3. Spread the vegetables on an oiled baking tray and bake about 35 minutes until they begin to brown around the edges.

4. Stir in the cherry tomatoes, and continue cooking for a further 15 minutes.

6. Toss the roast vegetables in a large bowl with the pine nuts, parsley and balsamic vinegar.


Audrey's Tip:
Heat is the very essence of cooking. It's what causes individual ingredients to lower their barriers and intermingle with each other, eventually yielding to the moment, rather like vodka at a dinner party. That said, it's imperative that you use no more and no less heat than is needed. The last thing one wants is to startle the garlic or flummox your onion.

Mediterranean Roasted Tomato Pasta

Who doesn't love a good pasta? It's easy, it tastes amazing, and you really need a side dish for your garlic bread, right?

So today, as part of my work, I got to tour the Gourmet Garden factory in Palmwoods, on the Sunshine Coast.

You've all seen those squeezy tubes of herbs and things in the refrigerated fruit and veggie section of the supermarket... garlic, basil, lemongrass (my favourite... no hard bits!), etc, and their new Fresh Blends.

The factory was amazing, and Dominique Rizzo (of Ready, Steady, Cook! fame) served up some delicious treats using Gourmet Garden products.

So, obviously, I had to try it too. They make it look so easy.....

My herb/blend of choice was the Mediterranean blend that is made of oregano, basil, garlic, bell peppers and olive oil.

Ingredients


5 Roma tomatoes, cut in half and roasted with olive oil, sea salt and cracked black pepper until very soft
2 zucchinis... as above
1 onion, diced
about 1/2 tube Gourmet Garden Fresh Blends Mediterranean
Wholewheat penne 


(Yup, that's really it. Well, besides the parmesan we added later!)


Method


1. Boil your pasta in boiling salted water until tender. Not sure how? Instructions are on the pack :)


2. Saute your onion in olive oil and half a tube of Mediterranean Blend. It's about two tablespoons. Saute until cooked, about 5-6 minutes at medium heat.


3. Put tomatoes and zucchini in a bowl and mash. Mmmmmm!

4. Add onion to sauce, check for seasoning. Stir through pasta and voila! Easy peasy pasta.


5. Don't forget the crusty bread.




I was not paid or in any way sponsored for this post... I was just curious, is all!

Roasted Cauliflower Penne with Rosemary Cream

Poor cauliflower. A much-maligned vegetable. That is, of course unless it's covered in cheese sauce, or wallowing in glorious creaminess as soup.

I never knew roasting it could be so damn good.

Unfortunately its white-on-whiteness doesn't photograph well, but it IS delicious.

Ingredients

1 large clove garlic, halved

1 cup cream

3 sprigs rosemary, 1 sprig finely chopped

A pinch of ground nutmeg

Salt and pepper

1 pound whole wheat penne pasta

1 head cauliflower, roasted

1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese, plus more to pass around the table

1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

To roast the cauliflower, preheat your oven to 220 C. toss bite-size florets in olive oil, add salt and pepper. bake for 30 minutes. Oh so sweet and uber-delicious.

Method

1. Rub the inside of a small saucepan all over with the garlic. Add the cream, the two whole rosemary sprigs and the nutmeg; season with pepper and cook over medium-low heat until reduced by half, about 10 minutes. Discard the rosemary.

2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, salt it, add the pasta and cook until al dente. Drain and transfer the pasta to a serving bowl. Add the rosemary cream, cauliflower and Pecorino Romano cheese; toss to coat.

3. Season with salt and pepper and top with the walnuts and chopped rosemary. Pass more cheese around the table. Easy peasy.

It's almost Rachael Ray week on Veggie Mama... haha. Recipe here.

Roasted Vegetable Lasagna

Welcome to my first kitchen fail.

Well, not ever, of course. There’s been plenty of those!

So I had the lasagna in the oven, and everything was smelling good.
The veggies had roasted perfectly, the sauce was lovely and rich, and the bechamel was thick and just right. Everything fit in the pan, and the cheese on top was just getting to that golden melty stage. Perfection!

It wasn’t until about ten minutes later that I realised all the gloriously roasted vegetables were still sitting on a tray in the griller, keeping warm, and NOT in my fabulously constructed lasagna, bubbling merrily away in the oven. Where they should be. Oops.

So with the help of a barbecue flip, a handy plate and a bemused Veggie Husband looking on and more making fun of me than helping, I peeled back the first layer, jammed the veggies in all nice and snug, layered the now-mixed saucy, cheesy, pasta layers back over, dumped some cheese on top and voila! Nobody need know.
see how pretty it looks? mmmm

Anything can be saved in my kitchen!

Ok so for the recipe. I actually tried to pay attention to this, as I never normally measure anything. All veggie strips should be about 1cm thick.

Ingredients
1 large eggplant, cut into strips
1 medium sweet potato, cut into strips
2 zucchinis, cut into strips (I only used one today)
Instant lasagna sheets
TOMATO SAUCE:
2 onions, diced,
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 small capsicum/bell pepper, diced
2 400g cans diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon sambal oelek (you can omit this if you want, I just like mine with a kick)
1/4 cup chicken stock (mine is vegetarian)
1 teaspoon of sugar… don’t forget this! very important.
salt, pepper
1 teaspoon each of dried oregano and basil. you can also layer fresh basil in with your veggies. Yum!
BECHAMEL SAUCE:
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups milk
a pinch of salt and pepper
the smallest amount possible of nutmeg. you can add more but i’m a tiny bit afeared of it.
ok.

Method
1. Preheat oven to 220 C. place all veggies onto baking trays, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Bake about 30-40 minutes, turning halfway, until golden and soft.

Sauce: In a saucepan, saute onion and capsicum in 1 tablespoon olive oil for three or four minutes over medium-high heat. Add garlic and saute one minute more.
add all other sauce ingredients, bring to the boil, then cover and simmer 20 minutes.

Bechamel Sauce: Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and cook, stirring for one minute, to cook all the raw taste out of the flour.
Add the milk, stirring all the time.

bring to the boil, stirring often. It should be lovely, thick and lump free after about 10 minutes.

Assembly: spray a lasagna pan and ladle some tomato sauce on the bottom. Make a layer of pasta, tomato sauce, vegetables, then bechamel. DON’T melt and forget the vegetables here, like I did.
Keep alternating, ending with bechamel and a good sprinkling of cheese.

See? Ultimate lasagna betrayal. It looked so good I had no idea roasted vegetable lasagna could be so devoid of roasted vegetables.

Bake in 200 C oven about 30-40 minutes.

omnomnom.