This is post number 2 for the Interesting Food Project (IFP)! Unfortunately, I can only give you one of the recipes. The Mediterranean Pasta was a creation of mine and I can’t quite remember the amounts of everything I threw in. However, I can give you a vague list of ingredients and I’m sure you can concoct something tasty. :)
The Interesting Food Project #2
The Mediterranean Pasta was a quick lunch I made. I wanted pasta, but didn’t want a heavy meat and tomatoey one — but nor did I want pesto-from-a-jar pasta (after all this is the IFP). So I took stock of what I had and decided to make a dish using cherry tomatoes, black olives, purple onion, spring onion, garlic, olive oil and fresh lemon juice. Basically, I just sauteed the onion in a bit of olive oil, then added the tomatoes and olives. When the pasta had cooked, I tossed it all together and added a squeeze of lemon juice, a drizzle of olive oil, a dash of black pepper and crumbled some feta cheese on top. Delicious! I thought the lemon was a bit unusual at first, but it definitely makes it a very summery pasta dish. It would probably make a good cold pasta salad as well.
Lemon White Chocolate Cookies
And now for the sweet stuff. Early this week I made a batch of Lemon White Chocolate Cookies. A few weeks ago, I picked up some lemon extract but I had yet to try it out, though I have been keen on the idea of lemon and white chocolate for a while. I found the recipe from a fellow food blog, A Spoonful of Sugar. Although the cookies tasted great, they didn’t exactly turn out how I originally expected them to. Firstly, they spread out quite a bit whilst baking. As a result, I didn’t space them out quite far enough and had a few conjoined cookies that needed some urgent postoven surgery — ie separation with a spatula. I might chill the dough for 30 minutes or so if I make these again, to see if that helps with the spreading out issue. O well. The recipe also says that it makes about 24 cookies. I must have made jumbo cookies because I only got 16 out of the recipe! However, nobody complained that the cookies were too big.
The cookies themselves had a great lemon flavour, without being too tart. I loved the massive chunks of white chocolate and how they were just crispy at the edges but very chewy in the centre.
So without further ado, Lemon White Chocolate Cookies!
Lemon White Chocolate Cookies
makes 24 (or 16 if you like biiig cookies)
Ingredients:
- 110g unsalted butter, softened
- 100g caster sugar
- 55g soft brown sugar
- pinch of salt
- zest of one lemon
- 1 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 170g plain flour
- 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 200g white chocolate, chopped into chunks
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 190C (fan-forced 170C). Line a baking sheet with greased baking parchment.
- Cream butter, caster sugar, soft brown sugar and salt together until fluffy. Beat in the lemon zest and lemon extract. Beat in the egg until well combined.
- Sift together the flour and bicarbonate of soda then add gradually to the creamed mixture. Stir in the chocolate chunks.
- Drop well-spaced heaped teaspoonfuls of cookie dough onto the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 7-8 minutes until the cookies are pale gold and just beginning to brown round the edges. They should be a little puffy, too.
- Cool on the sheet for one minute then transfer to a wire rack to completely cool. ( I put a sheet of grease-proof paper over my metal rack as the cookies were so warm and melty they started to fall through the cracks!)
P.S. Thanks to A Spoonful of Sugar for this great recipe!