it’s not been a very healthy week for me – i’ve had several bugs, one after the other, and am still feeling a bit worn out and run down.

food has been quite low on my list of priorities however this pasta dish really did hit the spot! it’s very simple – a flavoursome tomato sauce with lots garlic, basil and a hint of chilli into which a handful of mozzarella cubes are added just before serving. the cheese slowly melts into the sauce and before you know it you’re twirling mozzarella strands round your fork as well as linguine.

the melting cheese was wonderfully comforting and the fresh tomato flavours made me feel like i was eating my way back to health. and as it was so delicious, i’d like to share this with ruth at once upon a feast for this week’s round of presto pasta nights.

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19-25 may is national vegetarian week here in the uk. as with last year, this is, i think, a perfect excuse to encourage food bloggers to share their favourite vegetarian recipes.

“vegetables, beautiful vegetables” is an annual event where food bloggers around the world are invited to show off their skills at creating fantastic vegetarian dishes.

to participate:

• tell us about a vegetarian dish that you have cooked, complete with recipe. or maybe review a favourite vegetarian restaurant. or take a photo of your weekly vegetable purchases and tell us what you plan to do with them.
• post about this on your blog by 25 may.
• link to this post and send me details (see below)

i’ll then do a summary of all the great ideas out there. please get involved! and hopefully you won’t find it too difficult given most of us eat at least one vegetarian meal each week.

getting involved:

once you’ve posted about something vegetarian send an email with “vegetables, beautiful vegetables” in the subject line to: abby (at) eattherightstuff (dot) com by midnight, 25 may with the following information:

• your name
• your location
• the name of your blog and its url
• a link to your post
• a copy of your main photo (if you use one)

cheesecake confuses me. it’s one of those foods that large numbers of people get incredibly excited about and i’ve no idea why, finding it overly rich and sweet, often bland and never something that lives up to the hype.

i was quite intrigued therefore, to see that this month’s daring bakers challenge, chosen by elle from feeding my enthusiasms and deborah from taste and tell, would require me to bake a cheesecake for the first time.

obviously, because this is a daring bakers challenge, getting us to make a baked cheesecake was not sufficient – instead we were tasked to make cheesecake pops, using a recipe from sticky, chewy, messy, gooey by jill o’connor.

so, how did i get on?

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i had a busy weekend – we had friends round for supper on saturday and then more friends came for lunch on sunday. sunday lunch was ribs but it was preceded by a meze of dips and flatbread, as was supper on saturday.

the reason for choosing dips was the spiced chickpea and sundried tomato purée that aoife from yumbrosia raves about. aoife is my partner in taste and create which is a blogging event organised by nicole, where participants are allocated a partner from whose blog they need to cook something.

as ever, deciding which recipe to choose was tricky but, seeing that aoife has a favourites category for her recipes i knew i needed to choose something from here and it was this which first caught my eye.

i made three dips - in addition to aoife’s spiced chickpea and sundried tomato purée i made beetroot purée and roasted tomato & red pepper purée, both from skye gyngell’s a year in my kitchen. aoife’s purée was far and away my favourite – the sweet sundried tomatoes add a great depth of flavour to the spiced chickpea mix and i liked the freshness that the lemon adds.

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oh dear, it seems that i’m going to have to write about another dish that has shown me that pork is not the bland and tasteless meat that i have previously accused it of being.

nigel slater is responsible for this and, as happened when i cooked his chickpea and pumpkin curry last week, i had the pleasure of eating food that sent me into raptures. 

the dish in question is pork ribs with aniseed and garlic. or, more particularly, it is pork ribs which have been rubbed with chinese five spice and are then slow-roasted with a tomatoey sauce that has been spiked with ginger and garlic.

the result is meltingly tender pork, a piquant finger lickin’ good sauce, sticky fingers, sighs of delight, an ever-growing pile of gnawed-upon ribs, full bellies and smiling faces all round. we ate our ribs with bowls of jasmine rice (there is just enough of the tomatoey sauce to justify this) and barely cooked tenderstem broccoli.

i shall be making this recipe again very soon.

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