Courgettes Pacifico (and Rosti)

A girl I've met at my current hostel, C, and I cooked together last night. I have not properly cooked something in ages, and not at all since I turned vegetarian. We went to the library and had a look at some vegetarian cookbooks. I am SO looking forward to getting my own place and buying loads of vegetarian cookbooks! Since there is no oven at most hostels we had to take that into consideration. Do you have any idea how hard it is sometimes to find a recipe that doesn't require an oven? And that you actually want to cook? We did find one in the end, for something called Courgettes Pacifico, and to go with it we cooked Rosti, and also bought a nice baguette. The recipe is also Vegan, so if you're looking for a nice Vegetarian or Vegan recipe, here you go!

I love trying new foods. When I go out I will usually just buy what I know I like because I don’t want to risk not liking something and wasting my money, but when I’m just cooking at home I love trying new things, at least I know that if I don’t like it I usually have something else I can eat.

We were a little bit worried because we didn’t have a picture to see what it was supposed to look like when it was finished, but to be honest I might not have wanted to cook it then as I’m not usually big on things with sauce on them. But it turned out really nice actually! We both liked it and ate everything on our plates. I was SO full afterwards.

The Courgettes Pacifico recipe was originally for 4 people, but the one below is for 2 as I halved if while copying it from the book. We did not use any ginger as it seemed silly to buy it just for this one meal as neither of us is normally keen on it. I would also suggest that if you make it you use SMALL courgettes! For us it would have probably been enough with 3 small courgettes or 2 big ones (but then again we didn’t actually weigh them). We also put the Courgette mix into a saucepan before we added the passionfruit, papaya and coconut milk because we didn’t have a lid for the frying pan, but it seemed to work just fine that way.

 

Courgettes Pacifico

15ml (1tbs) olive oil

350g (0.75lb) or 4 courgettes/squash

1 garlic clove, skinned and chopped

1,25cm (1/2 inch) gingerroot grated or shredded

2 ripe (wrinkled) passionfruit, halved

½ ripe pawpaw (papaya) skinned, seeded and sliced

65ml (2fl oz) coconut milk (we used a whole 165ml can, which worked fine)

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Heat the oil in a (big)frying pan until very hot.

Slice lengthways and add, cut face downwards, the courgettes without crowding the pan.

Cook until browned.

Carefully turn over the browned courgettes, add the garlic and ginger and continue to cook for 1-2 minutes (we had to do this in batches as out frying pan was quite small, but it still worked out)

Scoop the pulp and seeds from the passion fruit and add to the pan with the papaya slices in an even layer. Add the coconut milk, cover, reduce heat and cook for 15 minutes, season to taste.

Rosti

450g/1lb potatoes

Small bunch of spring onions

Salt

4tbs oil

Add cold water and potatoes to a pan, bring to a boil and boil for about 5 minutes or until the potatoes are just tender on the outside.

Trim and chop the spring onions then cut into long thin pieces (we just chopped it “normal”)

Drain and cool the potatoes, not completely cool, just cool enough for you to work with. Then peel them using a knife and your fingers.

Grate the potatoes coarsely, season with a little salt (and pepper if you wish) and add the spring onions.

Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the potato mixture and use a spatula to press it down to fill the frying pan so it’s a nice circle.

Fry over moderate heat for 7 minutes then turn it over by using a plate (I am rubbish at turning things over, and especially rosti falls apart very easily so be careful).

Cook until the second side is brown and crisp (if your rosti is thick, taste it to make sure it’s cooked all the way through).

Drain it on some kitchen paper and cut into quarters (or halves).