Instant lunch

You know what it’s like, you come home, hungry, scroll down through Facebook, see a dish and have to have it? Yes, me, today. Back from a walk in the sunshine with the dogs and starving. I saw a plate of grilled courgette, and thought, I have to have those. In the salad drawer of the fridge I have a couple of those little round ones, no idea what the difference is, besides shape,  but if you know, do enlighten me.

Wherever I go I pick up some spice, a taste of an enjoyed adventure.

A recent trip to Ireland saw an addition to the ever growing spice shelf – Lebanese Baharat, a subtle mix of Middle-Eastern flavours. Not so Irish, eh?! Dublin is such a cosmopolitan place, there’s every kind of food to be sampled and enjoyed. I picked up that spice from Fresh ‘n’ Fruity, the amazing little greengrocer shop that is just steps from my mother’s house in Lucan.

So, today I coated the sliced courgette with olive oil, salt and the spice mix.

Grilled on the Weber for a couple of minutes each side for nice charred stripes, and enjoyed with a simple salad, fresh tomato, celery and lettuce – more oil, a splash of rice wine vinegar. The spice mix made all the difference, a subtle, aromatic taste.

Yes, the sunshine helps 🙂

A Full Larder

Pretty good at the moment, eh?  Vegetables and fruit as cheap as chips – cheaper actually. A carrier bag of this or that for a single € down at the market.

Even if you have a sneaking suspicion some sellers might scavenge from the greenhouse skips on the coast…no,no, put that thought right out of your head.

The garden is looking good, growing stuff in sunny Spain is so easy, and leaves you with a crop or twenty of HUGE vegetables  – of a size to inflict lilliputian hallucinations.

No Mad Hatters to spoil the crop, just the odd wild Boar armed with a bottle of salad cream, we’re lucky as our borrowed plot is protected by a deep barranco, so unless they also have carabiners we’re fairly safe.

I’m currently the proud possessor of 200+ cookbooks, mostly middle eastern and Spanish related, collected over the last 7+ years here. Also, spices to rival a street market in Delhi – which have outgrown their 6ft wooden rack, I need to think about re-homing them soon…

Newly discovered Kindle downloads mean a whole new world of recipes, but I have to admit they’ll never replace the much loved printed matter with their delicious and drool-able photographs.

So, pondering web pages and flicking through the books, our imaginations fired and tastebuds tantalized….what did we whip up for the weekend?

Fish finger sandwiches.

 

Photo By Rotget (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons