asian sweet potato soup

 

my chilli and ginger sweet potato soup is one of the recipes on this blog that people have consistently tried since i originally made it back in 2006.

this week i fancied revisiting it but, having not been very well recently i wanted something with gentler flavours. i wanted to keep the asian flavours so it was just a matter of omitting the spices and scaling everything back. the result was really delicious and if you don’t have a taste for spicy food, try this version rather than the original

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summer gnocchi

 

this dish was the result of my need to use up a tub of ricotta before it passed its sell-by date. i had bought it to stuff courgette flowers with but didn’t manage to cook with the flowers before they wilted beyond use, despite my best efforts – they really do need to be used on the day you pick/get them.

so, i turned to dennis cotter and decided to adapt his semolina gnocchi recipe, using ricotta in place of the goats cheese, adding a handful of herbs from garden – sage, oregano and thyme – and topping the gnocchi with a lightly cooked mix of green beans (again from the garden), peas and broad beans. i finished it with a lime cream, having run out of lemons.

the result was delicious – very light, summery and perfect if you want something a bit special, either as a treat or if you are cooking for friends. the gnocchi adapted well to having the ricotta added and was very forgiving of my use of twice as much cheese as the original recipe called for. i also baked it for much longer than the original recipe suggests – 10-15 minutes each side, having turned them over once, rather than the suggested 10 minutes in total. this gave me golden slight crunchy gnocchi which went really well with the lightly cooked vegetables.

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double tomato tuna carpaccio

the accompaniment to my asparagus, green bean and raw mushroom salad was equally delicious and equally summery – double tomato tuna carpaccio.

it was actually the starting point for the meal and was developed from a recipe that i found in a copy of the new zealand magazine cuisine, which a friend from work leant to me. the magazine was full of ideas for delicious summery food and i intend to try out a few of their recipes in the coming weeks.

the tuna was sushi grade and i marinaded it in lime juice for 20 minutes (turning over half way through, sprinkling each side with a bit of sea salt as i went) before slicing it thinly across the grain. this was laid out on a large flat plate and i then mixed the leftover lime juice with chopped tomatoes, thinly sliced sundried tomatoes, a thinly sliced shallot and cubed avocado. this was arranged on top of the tuna, drizzled with olive oil and finished with a sprinkling of chopped coriander.

the flavours worked really well and i particularly liked the contrast between the slightly sweet and chewy sundered tomatoes with the rest of the ingredients. if you try this and are wondering what wine to choose go for something floral – we had a gewürztraminer (torres vina esmeralda) blend which worked wonderfully with the food.

rose-drenched lime and yoghurt cake

 

i’m still craving cake, cake and more cake! after last week’s chocolate fudge cake and given the beautiful sunshine we’ve intermittently been enjoying, i decided that something lighter was needed. a friend recommended diana henry’s rose-drenched lime and yoghurt cake.

this has similar flavours to my much-loved pistachio and orange cake with lemon rosewater icing but is much more delicate, both in flavour and texture, and i was glad that i’d upped the lime zest content of the cake itself. it’s incredibly moist, both because of the yoghurt and the lime and rosewater syrup which is poured over the still-warm cake and would be a lovely cake to serve after meal.

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