Late Summer Meals in Ten Minutes or Less

This post should be labelled Very Late Recipes for Summer... I've been thinking about it for weeks now... Does your day-to-day cooking need a shake-up? Mine really does, I feel like I have started to rely on a few recipes for my weekday family food and I am getting bored and stuck in a rut. I've spent the last couple of weeks combing my notebooks, scraps of paper with ideas written on, cookbooks with yellow sticky notes popping out the top and have tried to come up with a week of fresh new ideas.

This blog is less formal recipe - more a bit of inspiration and some fresh ideas to bounce around the kitchen. There is a big myth about eating well that it has to take a lot of thought to shop for and ages to prepare... This is my next week's worth of dinners: I'll add some salad and crusty bread and hopefully these will feed a famished family after a day in the late summer sun.

• Tomato Bread Salad (pictured above) - sprinkle some cubes of day old crusty bread with a few glugs of olive oil and put them in the oven to crisp while you throw a salad together of fresh tomatoes, cucumber, red onions, basil and feta cheese. Top with the croutons and toss with a vinegarette of olive oil, salt and pepper and red wine vinegar. Defininitely substantial enough for a main course. You can also throw everything but the feta in a blender and make a mean gazpacho, top it with the crumbled feta to make it a little more filling.

• Take a bag of fresh mussels, throw in a big pot with a glass of white wine, two chopped fresh tomatoes and a pinch of chilli flakes. Bring to the boil and steam until the mussels are open. Sprinkle with parsley and serve over spaghetti.

• Open up some good quality sausage skins (I used spicy pork) with scissors, stir-fry the meat a couple of minutes till cooked through. Add a glug of cream, a tablespoon of mustard and bubble for a minute or two. Serve over a baked potato with a green salad on the side. 

• Cook up a big pan of scrambled eggs, season with salt and pepper. While they are cooking, chop a salad of  fresh tomato, feta or grated cheddar cheese and fresh chilli. Serve the eggs and salad on a wrap topped with a little sour cream and coriander. 

• Take some giant Portabello mushrooms, top with blue cheese and a drizzle of cream. Grill for a few minutes until golden and served ontop thick toast to soak up the lovely juices.

• Open a tin of cannelinni beans, toss with some crushed garlic, the juice of a lemon, a glug of olive oil and some freshly chopped parsley...  then dollop on some crusty bread and top with a little smoked salmon.

• Cook pasta bows and toss with with good pesto, peas and parmesan... ooh and you can add some cooked prawns for added protein.

• Mackerel pate - blitz in a blender a pack of cooked peppered mackerel fillets, a 250g tub of cream cheese and the juice of a lemon. Spread the pate on toast and serve with cornichons, pickled onions and a side salad. 

• In a pan, throw a packet of instant noodles, cook for a few minutes in chicken or vegetable stock then stir in a tablespoon of Tom Yam paste (Thai spicy soup paste) and half a bag of baby spinach leaves then bubble for a minute or two until the leaves have wilted. Toss in a handful of cooked chicken or prawns if you have some lying around.

Mango Lime Coleslaw

What makes coleslaw coleslaw? I think its the cabbage because otherwise this recipe would just be a stunning little salsa. Instead, with the addition of some shredded cabbage, it transforms into a fresh take on traditional coleslaw. The dressing is lighter, healthier and zestier, the vegetables sweet and summery.

How on earth did we live before Google. I saw a recipe for mango coleslaw on Smitten Kitchen's site and wanted to try it immediately but didn't have all the ingredients so googled mango coleslaw and discovered a whole new world of fruity coleslaws that will be starring in my kitchen all summer. 

This gorgeous version is based on Smitten Kitchen's recipe with a few tweaks according to what I had in the cupboard. We ate it served on flatbreads with smoked mackerel. Gorgeous.

Mango Coleslaw
1 mango, sliced thinly
1 head chinese cabbage, chopped finely
1 red onion, thinly sliced into half moons
2 roasted red peppers sliced thinly
1 handful salted peanuts, roughly chopped 

Dressing:
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp fresh lime juice
Grated zest of 1 lime
1 hot red chilli, finely chopped
3cm of root ginger, grated

Throw all the fruit and vegetables in a large bowl and stir well.
Whisk together the dressing ingredients and pour over.
Leave an hour or two to allow the dressing flavours to mix.
Just before serving, sprinkle with the peanuts.

Beetroot Coleslaw

I love American cookbooks. I spend too many late night hours online searching Amazon.com for the latest cook books or reading the freshest, most vibrant new food writing in blogs from Texas, San Francisco and New York. What I love most about American food writers is how they do the littlest things so very differently than we do here in Britain.

During this week's (very) short spell of Indian summer weather, we broke out the barbecue one last time. In Scotland when we have a long barbecue summer, its easy to find the time to experiment with grilled leg of lamb in Indian spices and yogurt, paella on the griddle and whole baked fish. This year however, when we've only managed a scant few barbies - all I want is burgers, sausages, potato salad and coleslaw.

Once you eat this beetroot coleslaw, you'll never go back to the pallid traditional version. In America, confident cooks mess around with their food far more than we do here in Britain. They don't make plain or fruit scones, they have maple syrup and oatmeal, or dried strawberry and vanilla. Coleslaw isn't cabbage and carrot in mayonnaise, its could be made with celeriac, fennel, apple, horseradish, any crackling and crunchy food you can imagine will make it into a coleslaw somewhere. They don't stop at mayonnaise, instead jazzing it up with cider vinegar dressing, or sour cream, perhaps throwing in some golden raisins or chillis, curry powder or nuts.

Of the variations constantly being tried out in my kitchen, (in summer: to complement the usual grilled chicken and chargrilled burgers, in winter: to liven up our Scottish seasonal staples- root vegetables) the best and my favourite so far is this glossy barbie pink almost childish concoction.

Beetroot Coleslaw
1/2 head white cabbage
1/2 red onion
2 large carrots
3 small beetroot
4 tbsp mayonnaise
1 small packet salted peanuts, chopped roughly

Grate the cabbage, carrot, onion and beetroot on a coarse grater.
Toss with mayonnaise.
The whole dish of coleslaw will turn a lurid but strangely appealing pink colour.
Scatter chopped peanuts over the top for seasoning and crunch.

The most beautiful salad I've had all summer

I went to my gorgeous niece's very fabulous wedding in a stunning castle in Scotland last month. A 14th century castle backdrop, historic graveyards, glorious scenery, imposing views and unexpectedly good food, all in one day. 

Despite the wonderful produce available at this time of year, we're not known in Scotland (at any time of year) for our love of healthy, light, seasonal food - a Glasgow salad being slang for a bag of chips - yet here, I unexpectedly found myself in front of the prettiest plate of salad I've seen in a long time.

This is not so much a recipe really, more of an attempt to recreate a memory and distill the flavours of late summer into one dish by throwing together the most aromatic, fresh, ripe ingredients I could find.

Watermelon and Feta Salad with pumkin seed and olive dressing
2 big handfuls of rocket

1 extra ripe galia melon

1 small sweet watermelon

2 blocks of feta cheese (around 400g)

100g packet of pumpkin seeds

100g black olives, chopped finely

4 tbsp olive oil

Scatter the rocket over a large (preferably white) platter. Chop both  melons into equally sized cubes and scatter artfully on top. Crumble the feta over the top. Stand back and enjoy just how lovely the colours look against together. Then toast the pumpkin seeds in a dry pan till they are just turning golden brown, allow to cool then throw on top of the salad.

Mix the olive oil with the chopped olives and drizzle over the whole salad.