As Strong As Soup

It's that happy time of year again when courgettes are growing in the garden and appearing in the shops faster than a politician thinking up excuses. Here are two simple recipes to make use of the bounty that are just a little bit different. ( Slow-cooked courgettes are also well worth trying, if you haven't already). Courgette, Olive and Basil Sauce If you take a look at the ingredients, I'm sure it won't come as a surprise when I say that this is a Southern French sauce, or, at least, my interpretation of one. It's a way of producing a creamy sauce with no cream (or anything like it) and plenty of flavour. Admittedly, the colour of the sauce isn't quite as exciting as the taste, but it will seriously liven up simply-cooked chicken, roasted veg (squash, for instance) or, as I fancied eating this time, flash-fried prawns. If you want to vary the amount of basil or olives, or add a little chilli, then I'm confident that the sauce will still come up smiling. ...

Recently I heard someone happily reminiscing about the recipes and styles of cooking that represented the different stages of their life. This blog has been going since 2009 and has close to 300 recipes and I imagined that it would fulfil that function for me. But when I looked back through the blog I realised that there are quite a few gaps. So, before I admit that enough is enough with this blogging malarkey, I've decided that my project for this year should be to try to fill at least some of those gaps. Yes, I know this is self-regarding nonsense, but I'm too old to care.  This isn't a history lesson, though, and I wouldn't necessarily want to recreate dishes from the past in their original form. I'd rather offer versions that I really want to eat today. I suppose that I should present these recipes in chronological order but I'm afraid that my mind doesn't work that way. So I'm starting in the 1990s for no very good reason at all. This recipe is a ri...

I recently promised that I'd post a low-fat frozen yogurt recipe, so here goes. On a warm summer's day when the need for cooling refreshment comes upon me like a thing that comes upon you, then that’s the time that I want something made with limes. I’ve recently seen a number of ices that combine lime with basil and I’m happy to confirm that it’s a combination that works. If you have an ice-cream maker, then this recipe is really simple but very refreshing. But first, a short digression on basil. There’s a temptation when writing down recipes to say something like “add two or three leaves of basil”. Well this year I've been growing Neapolitan basil and the leaves are huge as the following picture of an average-sized leaf reveals. I'll never specify the number of basil leaves in a recipe again (possibly). And now, finally, the recipe.... Zest of 1 lime Zest of ½ lemon 500 ml low-fat Greek yogurt (around 2%-3% fat, ideally) 110 ml agave nectar 2 tbsp lime juic...