The Green Barbecue by Rukmini Iyer: Can I cook the whole book? Part 2

Ricotta with griddled squash, chard, honey and hazelnuts

This was a really beautiful colourful dish and contains everything that I love, including a cheese element. If I have said it once I’ll say it over and over again – I don’t feel the need to buy any special ingredients for my vegetarian meals and this is what I love most about this cookery book. It just focusses on good fresh vegetables. Cooking a dish like this one with the squash and chard I do feel works particularly well later in the season when we are past the season of wanting to cook outdoors.

I served this with the Yuzu Mushrooms with coriander and cashews. I somehow failed to get a decent photo of this dish, so apologies for this. I was intrigued to try the yuzu juice, which was a lovely different citrus taste. I now have a handy bottle of this to use in other dressings.

Leek and Cheddar Glamorgan Sausages

This dish I failed to include in my first part of this ‘Cook the whole book’ challenge. I made a point of preparing this dish on holiday as we were in Wales so it seemed rather apt. We even went to a small deli/cheese shop in Camarthen to buy some interesting Welsh cheese, rather than using the cheddar suggested in the recipe. I cannot remember if I have ever made Glamorgan sausages before; I have certainly intended to and recommended them to others. I was very pleased with the way that these turned out, particularly as this was a recipe which required a little precision and I’d normally have weighed the cheese and the breadcrumbs. However there were no scales in our holiday cottage. I liked the way that these ‘sausages’ held well together, which is not always the case with vegetable sausages and burgers. I can imagine that they would indeed work well on the barbecue. I cannot now remember what I served them with, but a spicy tomato sauce and some potato salad would work well. I did make too many, so we had the remaining two as part of a cooked breakfast a couple of days later.

Griddled Courgettes with parmesan, almonds and lemon

Sadly we did not have enough courgettes in the garden to make this dish, but for any good gardener it would be a lovely use of a glut. I like courgettes cooked almost any way, as long as they are kept away from water. These were very thinly sliced and the colours and textures worked well. I cooked mine on a cast iron griddle pan. In fact I cooked the potato dish on the griddle pan too, which made me think that cooking these dishes outdoors would have been a much better idea. My kitchen is small and gets smoky and smelly even with two fans on and the door open.

I served this with the dish you can see below:

Simply barbecued new potatoes with tarragon, peanuts and chipotle

Here I have to apologise for not having any tarragon at the right time of the week. It is not a herb that I grow in my garden (clearly I should!) so I bought a pack for this dish but it had wilted and gone brown by the time I came to cook this meal. I thus used some fresh leaves from the garden instead. Maybe this is one to do again next year when I shall hopefully have some tarragon growing! Anyway, it was all worth it even without the correct herbs.

I have spent far too long updating this blog, so I am going to leave this here and include my next recipes in part 3.

A reminder that Rukmini Iyer’s wonderful book can be bought at all good bookshops, including https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/cookery-books-i-love which supports independent bookshops