Wasabi raw courgette salad

Due to my recent diet of cinnamon bagels, pasta, bread and cheese, my body has been craving vitamins. It's not that I've been completely unhealthy. I am still doing my kundalini kriya every day, in fact I have now built up my upper body strength enough to double the dosage, I go running when it's not too cold, dancing when the mood takes me, and I do try to keep my diet reasonably balanced. Unfortunately, I also have an addiction to cinnamon and raisin bagels, taken with sweet coffee. In the grand scale of things, I think this is pretty minor, but I do have to work harder to balance out this small indiscretion. Hence, when the need for something fresh took hold yesterday, I put together this little number, which, rather predictably, I became addicted to

Since making this salad for the first time yesterday, I have eaten it again two more times - I can't get enough of it! The wasabi oil adds this amazing kick, if you can't or won't get that stuff up there, then just combine some good quality olive oil with a little bit of wasabi paste instead and shake it around in the jam jar with the other vinaigrette ingredients. The cheese is some green herb, hard goat's cheese my mum brought from Holland - bloody delicious - but I would recommend any tangy, hard goat's cheese as a replacement for this. Use a vegetable peeler to get the strips paper thin. Making this salad in advance, allowing it to stand in the fridge for a while and giving it time to marinate wouldn't hurt either

Ingredients

1 courgette
Handful of capers
Chunk of goat's cheese, cubed

Vinaigrette

Wasabi olive oil
or extra virgin olive oil and 1/3 teaspoon of wasabi
Garlic salt
Black pepper
Tablespoon lemon juice

Baby courgettes, with flowers, in chickpea and beer batter

Talking of being the least green fingered person you're ever likely to meet, I tried to move some courgette leaves off the grass the other day and completely pulled out the whole bunch, with roots and everything. I don't know how it happened. Either I'm superwoman, or courgettes are much more delicate than they look. Those massive prickly leaves and thick stalks are deceptive. And you'd think that I'd get loads of little baby courgettes out of the mishap at least, but all I got was this

Still, I managed to make that into the tastiest handful of baby courgettes I've ever eaten. The flowers themselves taste gorgeous and this dish would be nowhere near as tasty without them. I used the chickpea batter, that I was using to make la socca, except with a tiny bit of water and a lot of beer. Then I fried them for about 5min in sesame oil, turning over half-way, and seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper when serving. For some reason, I didn't expect them to be very nice, coming from my unkempt garden, but they really, really were. So, the moral of the story is: if I can grow these, then so can anyone with a pair of hands. And some seeds. And earth and water

Pearl barley, courgette, creme fraiche, bit of lemon juice...

In a strange way, being completely broke can be quite fulfilling. You sort out your living space rather than going out and getting drunk, you sell stuff that you don't need or use on ebay rather than buying more clutter, and you use up all the random ingredients in your kitchen cupboards. It can be quite fun being creative with what you have. It's a good job that I have started to see the positives of being broke really, because now that I own a flat, the end of each month is pretty dire, financially speaking. Yet, somehow this doesn't affect my level of happiness, and that's a valuable lesson to learn

Ingredients

Pearl barley

Vegetable stock

Courgette

Lemon juice

Creme fraiche

Garlic salt

Pepper

Olive oil

Hot pepper sauce to serve

I get so much satisfaction from cooking a meal like this - it's rustic, simple and totally delicious, while costing next to nothing. I cooked the pearl barley in the vegetable stock and grilled the courgette slices with olive oil, garlic salt and pepper until crispy. When the pearl barley is cooked (after about half an hour), you just add all the other ingredients, and warm it all up together, until it has the consistency of a risotto. I feel like I'm on a bit of quest for simplicity and purity, in every area of my life right now - sometimes this goes tragically wrong, as with the infamous chocolate mousse incident - but on the whole, I feel healthier for it. I can't wait to go to Greece next week, the food there is exactly like the sort of things I feel like eating at this time of year and in this state of mind - fresh and fuss free

Bucatini with courgette/zucchini

I discovered this dish when reading an article about various local dishes in different parts of Europe - it is the only part of the article that stuck with me for some reason. Apparently, it is a very common dish for fisherman in a certain part of southern Italy (presumably on days when they don't have fresh fish). I don't know what pasta they use, but I do know that it works well with both bucatini (which I am slightly obsessed with at the moment) and ordinary spaghetti

Ingredients

Bucatini pasta (aprox 100g per person)

Courgette (1 per person) - thinly sliced

Garlic clove

Juice of half a lemon (per person)

Some garlic salt

Olive oil

Black pepper

Sometimes, you don't want to spend ages in the kitchen - you need to do some work, or the cleaning, or whatever, and need something simple, tasty and light. This is the dish for those kind of moments. You cook the pasta in plenty of water, and on a frying pan fry the courgette slices until they get slightly burnt. Then add the garlic, and squeeze the lemon in. Finally, add the pasta to the frying pan and mix together really well, adding garlic salt and black pepper. I am off to Poland tomorrow, therefore have lots of loose ends to tie up, and no time to cook. Whilst there I will cook as many summery Polish dishes I can - I get annoyed about how Polish restaurants always serve pierogi and bigos in the summer, because I don't know anyone in Poland who would eat that kind of food at this time of year - and report back next week

And here's another courgette recipe