Mushroom soup

The weather has been somewhat unpredictable around here (for example, 34 degrees on Friday, expected to be 18 degrees tomorrow) so we have been alternating between salads and almost wintry food, like the delicious mushroom soup from Bill's Food.

Of course, a mushroom soup is not the most attractive thing you can imagine - a kind of grey, brown liquid...  But if like mushrooms then you know that they are not always super attractive!

 The soup is simply mushrooms and potatoes, with stock and herbs, cooked then pureed.

Crispy skinned salmon

The salmon was absolutely delicious - super crispy skin and just a little rare in the centre, topped with a super yum sauce over the noodles and vegetables!

The dressing for 4 serves:
2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 1/2 tbs balsamoc vinegar
2 tbs caster sugar
1/4 cup lime juice
2 finely chopped chillis

Shake together until the sugar dissolves.

It looks a lot like Bill's did and you know how I love it when my recipes look like the recipes do in the book.

Zucchini fritters

These were not as successful as the delicious corn fritters I made recently.  The recipe was much wetter, despite the draining and squeezing, and as a result the fritters were quite limp.

To try and remove some liquid I first salted and drained grated zucchini for 30 minutes.

 Served with lamb sausages and Bill's yoghurt sauce.

Spagettini with lemon, chilli and proscuitto

Another delicious and simple meal from Bill Granger.

Pretty easy really - mix together olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest and chilli.  Let that sit.  Cook the spagettini.  Chop up the proscuitto and cook that, throw in the rocket to wilt, the spagettini to warm through and the olive oil mix over the top!

It even looks very similar to the book.

Parmesan crusted blue eye

Another successful Bill dinner - just for me (G was away, so he missed out).  A side note, I wouldn't recommend turning grainy bread into breadcrumbs for this dish - that is why there are darker brown spots on the crust!

There are a couple of things that make me sad about this dish.

1. The fish still had scales on it and it ended up being easier to mangle the fish and get the skin off rather than try and get the scales off. 
2. Why doesn't it look as pretty as Bill's???

Corn fritters and (fish) with olive relish.

I was pretty excited to make these corn fritters, having had the pleasure of eating these in Bill's restaurant in Surry Hills, Sydney.

Strangely, the fritters are in the dinner section of Bill's Food - so I made them for dinner one night and then cooked the other half of the batter for breakfast the next morning (because I really believe these are delicious for breakfast!)

My interpretation of the fritters involved combining them with salmon with olive relish (supposed to be tuna, another recipe from Bill's Food).

The salmon? Well the only tuna available was super amazing sashimi grade tuna which was exorbitantly expennsive - in fact, too expensive to cook so I cooked salmon.

The corn fritters in the fry pan for breakfast the next morning.  I served these with some pan fried tomatoes and herbs.  YUM!

Baked risotto

As I have mentioned, I don't cook risotto.  In fact, I recently had a job interview where we discussed my inexplicable inability to cook a risotto.  I seriously have no idea why - I am good at following a recipe and I have enough patience to do most kinds of cake decorating.  Anyway, it falls to G to make the risottos in our house - even the baked ones.  It was also an excuse to break out the paella pan, because I don't have a casserole dish.

This tomato and zucchini baked risotto covered in herbs and parmesan was just scrumptious.