Thai pumpkin soup

This recipe was adapted from My Table by Pete Evans, which is another great cookbook with a wide variety of great recipes. This soup is full of flavour and contains lots of good things to help fight off winter colds.

Ingredients:
1 tbs oil
3/4 cup diced leek
3 tbs finely diced lemongrass
1 red chilli, finely diced
1 tbs ginger, finely diced
1 kaffir lime leaf, julienned
1 bunch of coriander, stems and roots chopped, leaves reserved
4 garlic cloves, finely diced
1kg pumpkin, peeled and cubed
1 tin (400ml) coconut milk
500ml vegetable stock
zest of one orange

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat.
Add the leek, lemongrass, chilli, ginger, lime leaf, coriander stems and roots and garlic.
Fry until fragrant, but don't allow it to brown.
Add the pumpkin, coconut milk, stock and orange zest plus 150ml water and bring to the boil.
Reduce heat slightly and cook for about 30 minutes or until the pumpkin has softened.
Blend the soup with a stick mixer (or blender or food processor).
Season with salt and pepper and serve with a sprinkle of coriander and chilli flakes, and a dollop of cream, sour cream or even yoghurt (whatever you have handy!)

Green pancakes

My new favourite cookbook is Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty. I've been reading lots about this vegetarian book on blogs such as Where's the Beef? and Cook Almost Anything, and read his posts on The Guardian website and knew that I had to get my hands on a copy. It's an amazing book that I'm sure even the most dedicated meateater would find it hard to resist. It's not full of lentil/chickpea/bean recipes, rather it puts all sorts of vegetables to amazing and delicious-sounding uses. Once a Waitress has a great post about it.

This is the first recipe that I've cooked from the book, and it definitely won't be the last! I adapted it slightly by using silverbeet instead of spinach, halving the recipe, leaving out the whisked egg white at the end, and I didn't serve it witht the suggested lime butter. The pancakes were very fast and easy to prepare and tasted simply fantastic. The recipe is completely adaptable to any leafy vegetables that you have handy.

Ingredients:
125g silverbeet, washed
55g self-raising flour
1/2 tbs baking powder
1 egg
25g butter, melted
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
75ml milk
50g spring onions, finely sliced
1 green chilli, finely diced
olive oil for frying

Wilt the silverbeet in a frypan with a splash of water.
Remove to drain in a sieve, and when cool, squeeze out as much water as you can with your hands then finely chop.
Put the flour, baking powder, egg, butter, salt, cumin and milk into a bowl and whisk until smooth.
Add the spring onions, chillies and silverbeet and mix in.
Add a dash of olive oil to a non-stick frypan and turn on to medium-high.
Spoon ~2 tablespoons of batter into the frypan and shape into a circle around 1cm thick.
Cook for about 2 mins each side, until golden.
Continue making and cooking pancakes until the batter is all used (I made 3 pancakes, more than enough for one person for dinner)

Random eats

A few recent (and not-so recent!) eats from around Hobart.

The Fat Boy roti at Machine Laundry Cafe in Salamanca. Delicious! Covered in satay sauce and stuffed with chicken and bacon.



Machine's soup of the day, I think it was pumpkin and lentil:






Red Velvet Lounge's baked eggs. Nice flavours and fantastic bread, I would have been really happy if the yolk had still been a bit runny though.



Sawak Cafe's nasi goreng. A gooey fried egg with lots of tasty prawns hidden underneath:



Little India: not the prettiest of lunches but it filled a hole! I find most of their curries are too sweet and generic but some are alright. This was a goat curry and a chicken curry.



J had lamb korma and mango chicken.



A couple of treats that my mumma got from Sweet Envy: peanut biscuits sandwiching a torte cream-style choc/coffee icing, and what I would guess is their interpretation of the classic Iced Vovo. Both were delicious!



Dumpling World's seafood fried rice:



And their chicken stirfry noodles:



Onba's mixed grill, from back in November last year. This is a terrible picture and doesn't do the dish justice. It had sausages, quail and a lamb cutlet with ratatouille, mint pesto and polenta. It was great... I especially loved the polenta.



My dining buddy's oven-roasted chicken breast filled with Tasmanian scallops and spinach on potato mash with red capsicum essence.