quinoa, orange and mint salad with pan fried sweet potato, aubergine, feta, and toasted pumpkin seeds

This salad sounds insanely busy in a very unfashionable way doesn’t it? I believe it’s in vogue these days to go minimal. Short lists of ingredients. Simple. So I’m off trend once again. Never-mind, the salad was rather lovely with big fat sausages.

Ingredients

1 cup – 1 mug of quinoa (depending on how many you’re feeding)

1 large or 2 medium sweet potatoes cut into small cubes

1 large aubergine chopped into small cubes and generously salted

1 orange peeled and chopped

1/2 cup of pumpkin seeds toasted

large handful of mint , ripped up

About 40 g of crumbled feta

For the dressing ;

Olive oil (I’m lucky enough to still have a bottle of Moon Over Martinborough)

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 orange (juice)

1 tsp honey

Salt and pepper.

Method

Fry the sweet potato and aubergine cubes in a little butter (or ghee or coconut oil) until really soft and caramalised. I think it took about 30 minutes. Meanwhile cook and drain the quinoa. Mix everything together and dress.

orange, mint, roast pumpkin, super-grain, celery, and feta salad with honey dressing and toasted pumpkin seeds

It’s good with sausages.

jazzed up silverbeet

Silverbeet is abundant at the moment in the Houghton Valley Community Garden. It looks full of excitement and promise, with it’s vibrant red and yellow stalks. But actually, (in my opinion) it takes a bit of jazzing up when you cook it for the flavour to live up to it’s appearance. Alongside the silverbeet grows coriander and mint so I picked some of those as well. Stir fried the silverbeet in a wok with toasted sesame oil, garlic, chilli (cut into quite big chunks so I could pick it out of the little guys) lots of lemon juice and coriander and mint leaves thrown in at the end. Makes a good side dish for any kind of Asian meal.

fresh mint, camomile and cardamon tea

pumpkin, carrot, kumara, ginger, coconut and mint soup

A pre-birthday party soup based on the coconut, carrot, ginger and orange recipe I’ve made a few times this summer .. only without any orange as we didn’t have any so replaced with lots of orange veg – pumpkin and kumara made it pretty filling and autumn-y which suited the weather.

Start by cooking garlic and a heap of grated ginger in coconut oil with tumeric. Add all the other vegs and stock and simmer for an hour or so. Add a tin of coconut milk and some mint just before blending.

sausages with quinoa, orange, mint, zucchini, carrot, cucumber and feta salad (dressed with honey, oil and vinegar)

Quick dinner tonight as full on day and late home. Put the sausages under the grill and some quinoa on to cook then chopped some orange, mint from garden, shaved a zucchini (a little too small to pick really but decided to anyway) carrots, cucumber, crumbled feta. Added the cooked quinoa and dressed it with olive oil mixed with honey and red wine vinegar. Fresh corn on the side.

celery, carrot, ginger, coconut and chili soup with fresh mint

One of the downers of living with a gluten free (almost) hubby is that the old weekend lunch staple of bread n cheese n chutney just isn’t that great anyone – because gluten free toast is just about passable for breakfast with jam but it really can’t replace freshly baked crusty bread … so it makes the weekend lunch a bit harder – unless there are leftovers , which today there weren’t. So not feeling very energetic I looked at the fresh packs of soup but just couldn’t bring myself to pay $6 for a tiny pack knowing I could make a nicer batch, way more so they’d be lunches in the week and way cheaper.

Chopped onion and garlic and grated fresh ginger (couple of spoons), softened in coconut oil, chopped in a couple of sticks of celery and about 500g of organic carrots with skins on. Covered with boiling water and salt / pepper and cooked for half an hour – then added a tin of coconut cream and blended – served the kids then added some fresh mint leaves and a small spoon of chili powder.

honey, orange and mint roast salmon with roast potato chips, brocoli, spinach, fresh corn and toasted almonds

This was going to be lemon roast salmon but I never manage to get everything I mean to at the supermarket and today having all 4 kids in tow didn’t help concerntration. So went to cook and realised no lemons – but there was a big juicy orange looking at me.. so I mixed some orange pulp with some olive oil a few fresh mint leaves and a spoon of runny honey , salt and pepper and poured it over 2 massive salmon fillets. Chucked the remains of the orange halves in the tray with it and roasted it up for about 20 mins. Chopped up a few potatoes into chip shapes and roasted them in olive oil and sea salt also. Then steamed some brocoli, spinach and fresh corn and toasted some almond slivers in a hot pan. Served the salmon with the pan juice and an extra squeeze from the roasted oranges. Tonight’s plate was absolutely gorgeous colours – definitely worthy of a photo.. but come on.. I have 4 kids to feed and get to bed so photographing these creations is a step too far right now!

Fat pork sausages with a salad of quinoa, fresh mint, orange, carrot and toasted sesame seeds

The garden mint is fantastic at the moment – which is all the more impressive for the fact that very little seems to do well in our garden. I must have read something about mint and orange somewhere because I just kept thinking about them together today. Got some great fat pork sausages today in Moore Wilsons and managed not to over cook them which I often do in eagerness to ensure they definitely don’t have any raw spots.  For the salad I cooked a cup of red and black quinoa and rinsed it in cold water, mixed it with a handful of mint leaves and a gorgeous orange cut into chunks. Added some leaves from the garden although not as many as I’d have liked because the cucumber plant has totally taken over the salad barrel and is suffocating the lettuce. Toasted up some sesame seeds in a hot pan and then to give it a bit more crunch added a few carrot sticks. For the dressing I mixed avocado oil with some new pomegranate balsamic and some runny honey.