Veggie Summer Recipes For Sharing
Issariya Morgan | 4th August 2015
Summer is the season of picnics and garden parties, bringing in a fresh wave of food ideas. In my view, summer food should be light and healthy, packed with colour and bursting with fresh flavours - think tomato, lemon and lots of olive oil.
Ditch the red meat and explore all the potentially rich combinations that vegetables have to offer - round off with some lovely cheeses and tasty seasonings. This is a great opportunity to be inventive with dressings. These are salad times, and nothing is more important than a fresh and flavoursome dressing to lift a potentially dull medley of leaves into the realm of tasty.
Photo Credit:Flickr /VeganBaking.net /Twitter/Nova
So if you’ve got the day off, why not spend the morning cooking up a feast - get some friends together, grab a bottle (or two+) of wine and a fresh loaf of bread from the shop and take off to enjoy the fruits of your labour in the sunshine.
Here are a few of my favourite summer recipes. They all have flexible quantities depending on how many you’re cooking for, so add as much as you feel is right and adapt them to your own taste.
Spicy chickpea and tomato jam
1 can of chickpeas
Red onion, slice in half moons
Clove of garlic, crush with blade and chop finely
Half a bag of spinach
1 can of chopped tomatoes
Lemon juice, salt, brown sugar, Worcester
sauce and chilli flakes (to taste)
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Add some olive oil to a frying pan over a medium heat. Add the half-moon onions, garlic and spinach, allowing the flavours to become soaked into each other for a couple of minutes.
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Add the chickpeas and chopped tomatoes, turn the heat to medium-low and allow to simmer for about 15 minutes.
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Season as it simmers. This is completely up to you how you do it. I add lots of chilli and lemon juice, some Worcester sauce and a little brown sugar to give it a well-rounded flavour that satisfies every taste: salty, spicy and juicy, but rounded off with a subtle sweetness.
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After it has simmered for a while, turn up the heat so that some of the water evaporates and it develops a jam-like consistency.
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Serve with olive oil and fresh bread.
Photo Credit: Twitter
Warm halloumi salad
A block of halloumi, slice in generous rectangular
chunks
Half a bag of spinach
A generous amount of chestnut
mushrooms, slice in wedges
Red onion, slice in half-moons
A handful of pine nuts
Worcester sauce
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Add olive oil to a frying pan and place over a medium heat. Firstly add the mushrooms. Soak in balsamic vinegar, which gives a lovely deep taste.
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Add the sliced onion and allow it to soak up some of the mushroom juice. After a few minutes, add the spinach. Allow the spinach to start wilting before adding the halloumi chunks and pine nuts. Drizzle with a little Worcester sauce.
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Nestle the halloumi into the wilted leaves and soak in the pan juice. This stops the cheese from crisping too early and allows it to develop a nice light brown colour from the flavours rather than the burnt orange colour you get from frying it in thin slices. The halloumi should be soft with a deep flavour. Allow a subtle crisp to develop ever so slightly before taking the pan off the heat.
Photo Credit: Nova
Feta pearl barley salad
Pearl barley, as much as you feel like
Feta
A generous handful of black olives
A generous amount of chestnut mushrooms, slice in wedges
Cherry tomatoes
A few sprigs of dill
A handful of pine nuts
Lemon juice, olive oil, salt and balsamic vinegar (to taste)
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The pearl barley takes about an hour to cook over a medium-high temperature. Start cooking an hour before working on the rest of the ingredients.
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Cook the mushrooms over a medium heat in olive oil, and soak in balsamic vinegar. Toast the pine nuts until golden brown, then take off the heat.
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Transfer the cooked pearl barley to a bowl. Slice the cherry tomatoes in half or quarters depending on how diffused you want them in the salad.
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Add the tomatoes, olives, cooked mushrooms, pine nuts and any pan juice to the pearl barley.
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Crumble the feta and diffuse generously. The more feta you have, the less salt you need to add because feta is naturally salty.
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Sprinkle chopped dill over the salad, then add lemon juice, lots of olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar, Worcester sauce and salt and pepper to taste.
Photo Credit: Flickr
Pasta salad with homemade green pesto
A pasta of your choice – I like macaroni
Feta cheese
Black olives
Cherry tomatoes
A few basil leaves
For the pesto:
Basil leaves
A little olive oil
Green pepper
A sprinkle of pine nuts
A hard cheese such as parmesan or cheddar
Chilli flakes, salt and pepper to taste
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This pesto is a very simple dressing – all it requires is a blender to chop the ingredients up into a paste. Try not to overdo it otherwise you’ll end up with a puree. ‘Rustic’ is the look.
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Cook the pasta as normal, then transfer to a Tupperware. Add the cherry tomatoes and olives, then crumble in the feta.
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Toss the pasta salad in your homemade pesto, add a little olive oil and garnish with the remaining basil leaves, and you’re good to go!
