Salads and sun!

I love that time in spring when the weather starts to warm up and you can move away from eating all those heavy winter dishes. Don't get me wrong, I love a slow cooked casserole and rich pudding, but it is nice to have lighter flavours, which don't leave you just wanting to have a snooze on the couch.

Melbourne has recently turned on the weather, and my thoughts have turned to stuffing vegetables with tasty combinations of mince and fresh herbs. Lots of herbs and lemon juice sing spring and summer to me.

This week I was inspired by one of my favourite foodie blogs, Delicieux. Jen always makes the most amazing looking food and her photos are fantastic. Her recent post for Moroccan Chickpea Salad started me thinking about all the possibilities with this great legume.

I had some haloumi left over from the blood orange and chicken salad, so thought I'd use that too, along with some middle eastern flavours. An abundance of mint and parsley in the garden, a lemon tree heavy with fruit and some spices in the cupboard, and I was set.

Now that the salad was organised, I needed something light, but tasty to go with it. I love the flavour of roasted capsicum and thought that the sweetness of the capsicum would work perfectly with a meaty stuffing, again with middle eastern flavours. 

We are lucky enough to live in an area with loads of middle eastern grocers and butchers, so finding the right ingredients is never hard. We eat a lot of goat, and this was the perfect choice to go with the capsicum.

I pre-browned the goat mince with the spices, onion and garlic, so it was sure to be cooked when the capsicums were roasted. I also pre-roasted the capsicums for 10 minutes to start softening them and releasing their juices.  You could have everything prepared the day before, or in the morning, so the final roasting is quick and easy.

Depending on the size of your capsicums, it's likely that you'll have some of the filling left over. Not at all a bad thing. For a simple and easy lunch, heat the left over meat and eat san choy bau style, wrapped up in crisp lettuce leaves. Another option is to make quesadillas by putting some of the filling and grated cheese between two tortillas and frying it up in a dry pan to crisp the outside and melt the cheese. I went with this option for the kids dinner and they devoured it in no time!

Chickpea, Sumac and Haloumi salad

1 400g tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/4 small red onion, finely diced
1/2 cup parsley, finely chopped
1/2 cup mint, finely chopped
2 tsp sumac (or to your liking)
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil (I used the lemon infused from Cobram Estate)
1 Tbs verjuice
Salt and pepper
100g haloumi, sliced into 1/2cm slices
Olive oil for frying

Combine all the ingredients, except haloumi, in a bowl.
Adjust the seasoning or sumac to your taste. Allow to sit for an hour, if you can, for the flavours to infuse.
When ready to eat, heat a fry pan on moderate heat with a thin layer of olive oil. Fry the haloumi slices until browned, then flip and brown the other side.
Gently toss the hot haloumi into the salad and serve.

Goat Stuffed Roasted Capsicums

2 red capsicums
1/2 a red onion, finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, finely diced
500g goat mince (or lamb if you prefer)
1/2 cup fresh coriander, chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp chilli flakes (optional)
juice of half a lemon
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
Cut capsicums in half and scoop out the seeds and membrane. Place them on an oven tray sprayed with oil spray and roast for 10 to 15 minutes, until they are just starting to soften, but not fall apart.
While the capsicums are roasting, prepare the filling.
Heat a drizzle of oil in a fry pan and cook mince until just starting to brown, breaking up the big pieces with a wooden spoon. Drain the fat off and set aside.
In the same pan, cook onion and garlic until starting to soften. Add the browned mince, ground cumin and coriander, chilli flakes, salt and pepper to taste.
When combined and you are happy with the flavours, take the pan off the heat and add the fresh coriander and lemon juice.
Take the capsicums out of the oven and fill with the mince mixture. Put left overs in the fridge for tomorrows lunch!
Return tray to the oven for another 20 mins or until the filling is cooked and the capsicum is nicely roasted and softened.

Serve with the chickpea salad.

Chickpea salad with goat roasted capsicum

The Perfect Drop

Even though this was a nice light dish, it still had pretty strong flavours with all those middle eastern spices and the sweetness of the goat and roasted capsicum. We love a nice big red in this house, so a Barossa Shiraz from one of our favourite wineries, Kellermeister, was perfect. This big red, the Dry Grown Barossa Shiraz, was actually under the Trevor Jones label but they went their separate ways a few years ago.It was full of berry and plummy flavours with a good amount of tannin. 

We recently went to the Kellermeister annual tasting in Melbourne and stocked up on some of their amazing premium red wines. They do also make wonderful white wines and a very quaffable rose, which are perfect for summer. It's well worth checking out the wines that these guys make. They are a talented bunch!

Trevor Jones Dry Grown Barossa Shiraz