grilled chook and scapes

Today for dinner, I deboned a whole, free-range chook and marinated it with smoked paprika, dried greek oregano (from last year) and orange juice. I tied it up and then grilled it with a bunch of garlic scapes (the flowering stems) over embers on my fire drum. It was sooo good! The orange juice added some acidity and a bit of sweetness. The scapes tasted like a cross between roasted garlic and asparagus. A simple green salad (oak lettuce, mizuna, cucumbers, red tuscan onions) that Briony picked and made was a good accompaniment

malfatti

Malfatti, meaning badly made, are Italian ricotta dumplings. They are really easy to make. Steam a whole lot of spinach (500g to 1kg) and then squeeze ALL the water out. Chop it up finely with a small bunch of fresh basil then mix it into 2 and a 1/2 cups of ricotta. Not the creamy pureed stuff but the real Italian stuff that still has some texture. Mix in 3 eggs, salt, pepper and 1/2 a cup of grated parmesan or pecorino cheese and a cup of homemade breadcrumbs. Form the paste into quenelles with 2 dessertspoons and then roll them in some flour. Shake off the excess and drop them gently into a very large pot of salted boiling water. As soon as they have risen to the surface, scoop them out and serve them them with a really nice tomato sauce that has some basil in it. I used some of our bottled sauce from last summer. These malfatti are really, really delicious and better than any kind of meatball. You can serve them over pasta as you would a meatball sauce. We simply ate them with a green salad.

fresh faba falafels

We are having a glut of broad beans and I wondered if I would be able to use them to make falafels. You can make them with rehydrated dried beans so fresh ones should work. I ground up broad beans with garlic, coriander/cilantro, mint, cumin, chile a bit of flour and salt and pepper. Quenelle shapes were then fried in hot olive oil and served with yoghurt, garlic and tahini sauce and a salad made of cooked pearl barley with red onions, more coriander, mint, olive oil, lemon juice and