Mediterranean Couscous Salad

Great for a hot summer's day.

Ingredients:

A punnet of baby tomatoes

A big aubergine / egg plant / brinjal sliced & chopped

A yellow pepper, sliced

Half a cup of dry couscous

3 leaves of sage

5 leaves of mint

3 leaves of rocket

Olive oil

Flax Seeds

Greek yoghurt

Salt

Pepper

Method:

Get out a nice big roasting pan and put all your veggies in there. Sprinkle over the herbs (chopped), a bit of salt and pepper. And coat with olive oil (stir it up).

Roast this on 180 degress Celcius for 45 minutes.

While that is roasting, just cover your couscous with water and let it soak it up. You can also lightly salt it.

Add flax seeds to your couscous.

Serve the hot veggies around the couscous and top with Greek yoghurt and garnish with a spring of mint.

Sweet Potato Chips

Or if you want to be, like, American, just call them "fries". But I refuse (I'm not American).

If you haven't made vegetable chips before, now's a good time to start. It's quite simple and not too time consuming. It's worth the bit of effort, definitely. You can flavour them however you want which means that each time you make them, you can add a new twist. My ingredient list is completely variable, except for the potatoes, salt, pepper and the oil.

Ingredients:
2 medium / small sweet potatoes
Olive oil to coat
1 tsp pepper
A sprinkle of salt
1 tsp dhania / coriander powdered
1 tsp jeera / cumin whole or powdered
1/2 tsp chilli flakes

Method:
Chop the sweet potatoes into any size from 1/2 - 1 cm wide with a depth of up to 2cm - depending on how crunchy you want them. Leave the skin on for a more chewy effect, but wash them well if you are leaving the skin on - perhaps with a vegetable brush if you have one.

Toss all the ingredients with your chopped vegetables and coat with olive oil. Lay out your pieces on a baking tray without them touching if possible - if they touch don't worry, but they probably won't be as crunchy.

Bake at 200'C for 15 minutes, then check them, turn them if required and keep an eye on them until lightly browned.

Tip: The more even the width of your potatoes are, the less they taper at the ends of the slices, the less likely the tips will be to burn.

For supper tonight, I just made vegetable chips with carrots (I flavoured them with chilli, garlic and pepper - yum).

Sweet Tomato Soup

Unfortunately my memory on how I made this is now quite rusty, having been starved of the Internet at home for more than a month, I'm only getting back to updates now.

Ingredients (as I remember)
1 onion, roughly chopped
1kg tomatoes halved
5 cloves of garlic
1 red pepper, roughly chopped
Olive oil
Honey 
Some milk
Basil
Pickled jalapenos

Method:
Roast the onion, tomatoes, garlic and pepper drizzled with a generous tablespoon of honey and some olive oil until soft (just over an hour at 180 degrees Celsius). Blend the vegetables with some milk to make it creamier and add some salt and pepper if required.

Tear up a handful of basil leaves and stir them in. Serve chilled and garnish with some basil leaves and pickled jalapenos for some spice. A massive blob of sour cream would have been the ideal addition.