SWEET COUSCOUS WITH PINK GRAPEFRUIT AND PINK PEPPER - Retro alla HotM

When I was thinking about which retro dish I would create for this month HotM, I obviously had to think backwards and that lead me to consider the strange habit we have to divide our past into decades and even manage to fit it into descriptive schemes. Time doesn't exist or rather, time is a way to measure that we have invented, it is not inherent in our universe. Or at least I don't think so but the infinite rejects any measures by its own definition so it cannot really exist as we see it so on the whole it seems a bit silly to do these decennial divisions but what can I do, they are there and they help you when you have to come up with a retro dish so what am I rambling about really.



Another thing that I couldn't help noticing when I had decided what to do and was about to shoot it, was that I see these decades tinged in certain colours, to me the 70's are very much about the colours in the photos below. Brown, olive green and orange are the first colours to come to my mind and I have to confess that it took me until this decade to reconcile myself to the colour orange. One reason to it was that it was my youngest daughter's favourite colour for many years and it thus gained a positive quality for the first time in my life. Nowadays I find it a beautiful colour even though it is not my favourite one. Yet. See how the persimmons and the orange tinged leaves stand out in their beauty, they light up any grey autumn-winter day and all the old leaves, showing an array of yellows and orange, line street and paths, showing us the way.



BUT I am supposed to post a recipe here, not go on about time and colours. For some reason grapefruit came to my mind when I thought about doing something from the 70's, maybe I am wrong but I remember it being very much in vogue then, at least in Sweden. Unfortunately I don't own a ordinary cookbook from that decade, earlier and later ones yes but not a 70's cookbook so I cannot verify this but retro is a state of mind anyway so I will go for it.
If you want to know more about how to submit an entry to the HotM, please take a look here.






SWEET COUSCOUS WITH PINK GRAPEFRUIT AND PINK PEPPER
4 servings

3-4 pink grapefruits, it depend on how big they are
1 tblsp honey for each grapefruit (3 tblsp if you use 3 grapefruits and so on)
1-2 tsp pink pepper corns
200 ml/ 0,85 cup couscous, the fast type

- Cut out the flesh of the grapefruit and put it in a small bowl.
- Squeeze all the remaining juices over it and add the honey and the crushed pink pepper corns. Stir and leave it to marinate for 30-60 minutes.
- Strain the grapefruit of the juice that you measure, if it reaches 225 ml/ 1 cup pour it into a small pan, if not-add water until it does and then pour it into that pan.
- Heat up the juice and when it begins to simmer, take the pan off the heat, add the couscous, put on a lid and leave it to get absorbed for 5-10 minutes.
- Fluff up the couscous, divide it in the bowls you want to serve it in and top with the grapefruit.

SMALL LASAGNE STARTERS WITH MUSHROOMS AND RICOTTA

The other day when I was listening to a radio programme on my mp3 while stumbling along a path in the woods with my dog, I was suddenly struck by how lucky I am, as a woman, to have been born when I was, obviously I intend the Western part of the world and maybe even only Europe. I realize that it has been building up over the last couple of weeks because for some strange reason I have been listening to a lot of programmes where they have talked about the fights that women had to go through in order to be where we are now and even though we all know that there are still a lot of gender discrimination (and that includes men as well), the courage of these women of the past who fought for our rights make me quite grateful to them. And I am not only talking about the suffragettes fighting for voting rights and more fundamental rights, I also include the fight for the right to have short hair, not to wear corsets and figure enhancing contraptions, the right to further studies, paid maternal - leave well the list would never end if I mentioned them all so I let you fill in the rest and hope that you will send a thought to these incredible women, known and unknown.



So let us celebrate them with this starter (or primo if you feel like it but they are a bit small), instead of one big dish of lasagne, I have turned it into small servings that are perfect to begin a meal with now when the chill winds are blowing.





SMALL LASAGNE STARTERS WITH MUSHROOMS AND RICOTTA
4 servings

fresh pasta in sheets, enough to make 8 small and 8 bigger circles. You can also use dried ons and cut the circles after cooking them.
250 g/ 8,8 oz mushrooms, I used pioppini mushrooms
1 small onion
1 tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
3 tblsp (heaped) fresh ricotta
3 tblsp fresh cream or milk if you want
parmesan cheese, freshly grated
salt
extra-virgin olive oil

- Take a muffin pan or use double paper cup cake forms and then you need to find one glass that fit the lower part and one that fits the upper part/opening of the forms. Cut out 8 smaller circles and 8 bigger ones and put aside.
- Chop the onion and the mushrooms and fry them gently in a little olive oil together with the rosemary. If you want, put aside a few mushrooms to use as garnish later on.
- Mix ricotta, 2-3 tblsp parmesan and cream, add a little salt and stir well.
- Cook the pasta circles.
- Grease the forms and start layering the lasagne: put a small pasta circle in the bottom and then cover it with a layer of mushrooms. Put a small amount of ricotta on top and sprinkle with parmesan. Put another small circle on top of that and press gently, now repeat the layers until you have filled the forms with 4 layers.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven (200°C/390°F) for 10-15 minutes.
- Let them cool down a little before you gently take them out of the forms.

Sunday links and photos

I haven't done a Sunday's link for quite some time now so it is about time now. I will begin with the non-food ones.

If you follow me on a more regular basis you might have noticed that I have a certain fondness for the outer space and that I often include a link to some astronomy related site. So it is this week too, these space sounds makes me happy and they conjure up lots of different images to my mind when I listen to them, try it yourself and see what they mean to you!

Not long ago I talked about blogging and then I found this link over on Andrea's blog colouring outside the lines (excellent blog by the way) that led me to a not that new post over at 11D that analyses how blogging has changed since she started blogging 6 years ago, I cannot but agree even though I have only blogged for 4. And despite it deals with another type of blogs, I think it can be applied to food blogs as well.

Now here I have a link to link to the food related section of this post, a bit silly maybe but I have to say that if this is how solid potato salad makes you move, I would eat it every day! The action starts about one minute in!



Now first out here has to be the BloggerAid - Changing the Face of Famine Cook Book that you can read more about over at Cook Sister! where Jeanne writes about it in more detail but I can quickly tell you that 130 food bloggers have contributed with recipes and that 100% of the proceeds will go to a project that feeds 22 million children each year. Buy it!

I love meatballs, I think they are great and definitely should get a higher status because there are few meat dishes that can be varied as much as meatballs can! Over at 80 Breakfasts, Jo gives us the recipe to her version of Asian style meatballs, they look and sound incredible I have to say.

If you love food and photography you must read Eating Asia, I know I have said this before but I could say it every day actually so just be grateful I just do it now and then.

And to conclude on a light note but still useful, have a good time over at Science of Cooking!