Pasta Pesto

A quick meal of pasta with Mr VST's home made pesto before going to the cinema to see The Inbetweeners which was great, very funny indeed. 

Portobello Mushroom Burgers with Home Made Ciabatta

Back at the beginning of June for Mr VST's birthday we had a barbecue on the beach and I made some delicious portobello mushroom burgers but as we were busy eating and chatting on the beach I forgot to take a photo, I made sure I remembered this time!

Mr VST made some pesto from his own home grown basil plant (which may not recover this time the poor thing!). I mixed this with some mayo to spread on my home made ciabatta....

The homemade ciabatta was especially sloppy this time as you can see, I couldn't exactly get it to the 'slipper' shape it should have been.

I sent Mr VST outside to roast up the mushrooms on the barbecue along with some haloumi, peppers and courgettes.

So I put them all together and made the most delicious burger. I served it with some beetroot coleslaw.

Original recipe here.

Vegetarian Birthday Barbecue

As I'm sure I've already said it is Mr VST's birthday a week on Monday and we were down in Cornwall this weekend for an early celebration as we are off to a wedding next weekend. We met up with our friends on the beach on Saturday for a barbecue.

We usually do the same old things on a barbecue but I decided as it was a birthday barbecue and I fancied something different I would have a go at some of the recipes I had found. I did the usual quorn burgers and some of the new Linda McCartney Italian style sausages.

I got together the ingredients for these portobello mushroom burgers too. I used my home made ciabatta as the bun, Mr VST cooked the mushrooms on the barbecue with some chunks of yellow pepper and some haloumi cheese rather than provolone. We put them all together with some pesto mayo and they were delicious if a bit messy to eat on the beach. The mushrooms cook really well on the barbecue and the combination of ingredients was mouthwatering. I will definitely be making them again. Unfortunately I don't have a photo, although I had every intention of getting the camera I didn't actually manage to. I think hunger, busyness and alcohol might have something to do with it!

Pesto Mayo

Inspired by another recipe from Ezra Pound Cake I made a huge batch of salad. I used the same dressing but a can of mixed beans instead of black beans and added some diced cucumber to the mix as well. I didn't have any left over cornbread but I did have some left over spelt bread in the freezer so decided to toast that to use for crutons instead of cornbread. It's a really easy, tasty salad. 

Mixed bean salad with spelt croutons

For dessert we had birthday cake which was carrot cake as Mr VST had requested. I will post separately about that.

Pasta Pesto

Mr VST's pasta pesto for dinner this evening made with home grown basil and served with home grown salad leaves. It was delicious. He used this recipe but with only 100ml of oil.

Gylly Beach Cafe, Falmouth

Mr VST and I are on holiday this week. We came down to stay with some friends in Falmouth on Wednesday evening. We went out for dinner to the Gylly Beach Cafe for dinner. There were two vegetarian main options, a spinach and mushroom lasagne served with garlic ciabatta and salad and Pan-Fried Primavera Risotto 

Cakes with helford blue cheese served with salad and rocket & walnut pesto. Neither of us are keen on blue cheese but Mr VST can't stand it. I didn't want to have the same thing as him so I chanced it!

There wasn't a strong blue cheese flavour at all and the risotto cakes were lovely. I'm not sure they needed to be pan-fried though. It just made the outer layer chewy. The insides were creamy rice with the 'primavera' consisting mostly of peas. The salad and rocket and walnut pesto were a great accompaniment.

I had a bite of Mr VST's lasagne. The mushrooms were delicious, the garlic ciabatta was very garlic-y as was the rest of both of our meals. It worked well on the bread but I'm not so keen on waking up with garlic mouth the next day which I did. I think maybe a little less garlic would have been better. The cafe was lovely though with a great atmosphere. We shared puddings with our hosts and went for a chocolate amaretto torte with poached orange segments and an apple and rhubarb crumble with elderflower custard.

As you can see the chocolate torte was beautifully presented. It was thick, creamy and chocolatey as you would expect and the poached oranges were delicious.

The crumble can also be recommended. There didn't seem to be an awful lot of ginger in the crumble itself but it is one of my favourite puddings and the elderflower custard was sweet and light.

Not strictly food but I thought these pasty toys were great! They were in a shop window in Falmouth. They seem to be dressed up to celebrate the royal wedding. We got a couple of real ones for lunch a bit later on.

Pasta pesto

I wasn't going to bother with dinner tonight. My digestive system is letting me know that I've eaten far too much and far too much junk over the last week. Mr VST suggested we finish off his home made pesto and it sounded like a good idea. If it is possible I think it was even more delicious this time round.

Pasta, pesto and roasted veggies

I didn't end up having Mr VST's pasta and pesto for lunch today because I didn't cook myself any pasta and also because it is quite garlic-y and I didn't want to make my clients or work colleagues suffer my garlic breath all afternoon!

As we are going away for Christmas I am trying to use up all the food in the fridge and to avoid buying anymore as it will just go off. Somehow I ended up with lots of green peppers so I roasted them with some red onions and mixed them into some pasta with lovely home made pesto.

I then decided to use up the bananas in a banana bread but that's another story.....