You might have noticed that it’s been a little quiet around here lately. That’s because Ric and I have been busy revamping and re-launching the MediterrAsian.com blog.

Like this blog, the MediterrAsian.com blog talks about Mediterranean and Asian food and cooking, but we also discuss health and wellbeing issues in a bit more detail. So it’s like a mix between a food blog and a health blog.

If you feel like dropping by, the recipe we’re currently featuring is Self-Saucing One Pot Pasta. This luscious and healthy pasta dish is exceptionally easy to make because everything is cooked together in the same pot. Click here to check it out, and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss out on future updates!

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Just dropping in to let you know that over on MediterrAsian.com we’ve published a sushi hand roll recipe, and we’ve included step-by-step photos to make the rolling process easier. Sushi hand rolls are healthy and very flavorsome, so if you’ve never made them before you’ve got to give it a try.

Here’s the link.

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It’s painful and debilitating when it strikes, and it’s a condition that afflicts millions each year. Yes, I’m talking about RSI, or Risotto Strain Injury.

The constant stirring required when making a traditional risotto can wreak havoc on wrists and hands — and with the growing popularity of home-made risotto I’m afraid it will only be a matter of time before emergency rooms all over the country will become clogged-up with RSI victims.

That’s why Ric and I haven’t stood idly by. We know there’s a crisis brewing, so we’ve spent endless hours in the labs at MediterrAsian Central working on a cure for what some say is an incurable condition.

If you’ve tried one of the risotto recipes on our website, you’ll already know that we’ve cracked the code and developed an RSI-free risotto recipe. How is that possible, you ask? Quite simply, our risotto recipe requires no stirring. None whatsoever. (For those of you who have been bed-ridden in the past with RSI, I know you’re breathing a big sigh of relief right now.)

Instead of adding stock bit by bit while stirring, we add all the stock and other ingredients to the pot at the beginning of the cooking process. Then we reduce the heat to low, and put a lid on the pot. This combination of steaming and boiling releases the creamy starch from the arborio rice in much the same way as laboriously stirring.

And while the risotto sits and cooks by itself, you can put your wrist to better use by pouring out a pre-dinner drink.

Here’s the latest variation of our no-stir risotto recipe, and it includes wonderfully healthy (and convenient) canned red salmon, as well as green peas, zucchini, and a hint of dill and lemon.

I hope you and your wrists enjoy this recipe, and I also hope you have a very happy and healthy 2009!

Salmon Risotto with Dill & Lemon

Serves 2

• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 onion – finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic – finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped lemon zest
• 1 zucchini (courgette) – sliced into rounds
• 1 cup arborio rice
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 2 cups vegetable or chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon roughly chopped fresh dill
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/3 cup frozen green peas-thawed
• 7 oz (210g) canned Alaskan red salmon – bones and skin removed and broken into chunks
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/3 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

HEAT 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat and cook the onion for 5 minutes. ADD the garlic, lemon zest and zucchini and cook for another 3 minutes. ADD the rice and cook for a minute, stirring to coat the rice grains with oil. POUR in the wine and stock, add the dill, salt and pepper and bring to the boil. COVER with a lid, reduce the heat to low and cook for 18 minutes. ADD the peas and salmon on top and cook, covered, for another 2 minutes. STIR in the reserved tablespoon of olive oil, the lemon juice and cheese and mix until well combined.

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Sounds a bit unusual doesn’t it? Pea pesto.

Well it’s actually surprisingly tasty — and it even has a few health benefits that regular pesto doesn’t have. But I’ll talk more about that in a minute. First let me tell you how we came up with the idea in the first place.

I’ve talked previously on this blog about my deep affection for pesto — especially home made pesto. But it’s always nice to mix things up a little, so Trudy and I sometimes make variations of classic pesto by using other types of nuts instead of pine nuts (such as cashews or walnuts), or other herbs instead of basil (such as flat-leaf parsley or cilantro), or by adding other ingredients to the base recipe (such as sun-dried tomatoes or olives).

But never before have we added peas to our pesto. What actually gave me the idea was that years ago Trudy had shown me a guacamole recipe in a food magazine that used a mixture of peas and avocado to reduce the calories and up the protein and fiber content. Even though we didn’t end up making the recipe, for some reason the whole idea of using peas this way stuck in my head.

Anyway fast forward to last week, and we were making a decision about what to have for dinner. We often have our meals for the week planned out in advance, but sometimes we just fly by the seat of our pants and rely on whatever ingredients we’ve got on hand in the pantry and refrigerator. (Luckily we’ve always got a well-stocked MediterrAsian pantry.)

We were both really in the mood for pesto, and we had most of the ingredients needed: pine nuts, Parmesan, garlic and extra virgin olive oil. But we didn’t have any fresh basil.

However, as I mentioned, it’s easy to make tasty variations of pesto by using different herbs — and we’ve found that flat-leaf parsley works especially well as a replacement for basil. Luckily, flat-leaf parsley grows like a weed in our garden, so it was no problem just picking some and using that.

But we’d done that a few times before, so we really wanted to try something different. That’s when the whole pea and avocado guacamole idea came into my head. “If peas can be used in a green sauce like guacamole,” I thought, “why couldn’t they be used the same way in pesto?”

Green peas are sweet and juicy as well, so I thought they’d add a unique character to the pesto. When I also worked out in my head that this concoction could be called “peasto” (pronounced pee-stow), the deal was sealed — we had to make it!

So we decided we’d use a combination of green peas and parsley, and also a little bit of mint (which also grows profusely in our garden) because it goes so naturally well with peas.

After we blended it up we were impressed with how vibrantly green it looked. Then we tossed it with fusilli pasta, chunks of canned tuna and some roasted red pepper. It tasted really good, although fairly different in texture and consistency compared to regular pesto because of the high water content of the peas. But we actually quite liked that. In fact we had the rest of the pesto the next night tossed with spaghetti, zucchini and a little diced bacon. (The smokiness of the bacon worked particularly well with the peas.)

The peas don’t just reduce the amount of calories in this pesto (1 cup of peasto contains around a third less calories than a cup of regular pesto), they also add a whole lot of nutrients. Peas are a terrific source of plant protein, and contain many healthy-giving vitamins and minerals including vitamin C, folate, iron and potassium. And peas are a very good source of dietary fiber, which helps keep you regular, reduces the risk of heart disease and some forms of cancer, and also fills you up without filling you out.

Peasto

Makes 1 1/4 cups (enough to serve 4)

• 1 cup frozen green peas
• 1/2 cup packed flat-leaf parsley
• 4 fresh mint leaves
• 1/3 cup pine nuts – lightly toasted
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 1/2 cloves garlic — roughly chopped
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

POUR boiling water over the peas and stand for 2 minutes, then drain. PLACE the peas, parsley, mint, pine nuts, parmesan, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a food processor and drizzle in the olive oil as you blend until well combined.

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It’s the beginning of spring here in New Zealand, and I thought that the worst of the weather was behind us until I woke up the other morning and there was a layer of frost on our deck, which also carpeted the lawn like snow. Thankfully the weekend weather was far less gloomy, so we decided to make the most of the sunny weather and dust off the barbecue for a bit of grilling.

When I was growing up in Australia barbecues were very meat-centric. In fact our family barbecues were practically a meat lovefest! To accompany all this meat we’d typically have heavily buttered bread rolls and a basic salad. Not exactly the most balanced of meals, that’s for sure.

The sort of barbecue food Ric and I typically enjoy these days is still steak — except it’s tuna and salmon steaks instead of beef steaks, and shrimp and scallops instead of sausages. This isn’t simply a health decision though, we actually enjoy the taste and texture of these foods much more than meat.

Vegetables also play a much more prominent role compared to the barbecues of my childhood. We always save plenty of room on the grill for vegetables like bell peppers, onion, eggplant, mushrooms and zucchini. And salads aren’t an afterthought, they’re an integral part of the barbecue for us. In fact we always make up at least two salads to go a long with the grilled foods.

Our barbecues generally have a cultural theme as well. We’ll either base the grilled foods and salads on a particular Mediterranean or Asian cuisine (such as Italian, Greek, Spanish, Japanese or Chinese), or have a combination of Mediterranean and Asian grilled foods and salads.

Over the weekend we decided to have a pan-Asian theme for our barbecue. The centerpiece was delicately-spiced Thai shrimp and vegetable skewers, which we accompanied with a Chinese-style noodle salad (made with transparent bean thread noodles) and a simple Vietnamese-style coleslaw. We washed this down with ice cold Tiger beer from Singapore. So our taste buds certainly got to enjoy a trip around Asia.

Here’s the recipe for the skewers, and I’ll post the salad recipes in the near future. Also I quickly wanted to let you know that I was interviewed by Lovelyn from The Art of Balanced Living blog recently, and if you want to check it out here’s the link.

Thai Shrimp & Vegetable Skewers

Shrimp, red bell pepper and zucchini skewers marinated in a Thai green curry sauce and grilled until tender and succulent.

• 6 bamboo or wooden skewers – soaked for 5 minutes in cold water
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 2 teaspoons Thai green curry paste
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 2 cloves garlic – minced
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro (fresh coriander)
• 24 large shrimp – peeled and deveined
• 2 zucchinis – cut into thick rounds
• 1 red pepper – cut into small pieces

IN a small bowl dissolve the curry paste with 1 tablespoon of boiling water. ADD the coconut milk, fish sauce, brown sugar, garlic, lemon juice, salt and cilantro, and mix to combine. THREAD alternating shrimp and vegetables onto the skewers, then marinate them in the mixture, covered, in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. COOK the skewers on a hot grill for 10 minutes, turning and brushing regularly with the marinade. SERVE with lemon or lime wedges for squeezing.

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One of the happiest memories of this summer (and every summer) has been the sight of bright yellow zucchini and squash blossoms, in the farmer’s markets, in neighbors’ backyard gardens, and on the menus of local eateries.

Of course, summer’s almost over, and the season is pretty fleeting for zucchini blossoms (I really should have posted about this earlier), but if you’re lucky enough to get hold of a few, you should definitely seize the opportunity. I especially love the stuffed blossoms that you find at Italian restaurants (or even better, from Italian grandmothers)…the juxtaposition of delicate flower petals and savory filling is just so intriguing.

While zucchini blossoms may seem exotic to some, they’re actually quite easy to prepare at home and are wonderful as an elegant appetizer or perhaps a little something to garnish a pasta dish. Here’s a simple recipe, for savoring that last golden taste of summer.

Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms

Ingredients:

• Zucchini blossoms, pistils/stamens removed

Coating:

• One egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Filling:

• 4 oz goat cheese
• 2 or 3 sun dried tomatoes
• Squeeze of fresh lemon juice

Soak the sun dried tomatoes in a small cup of hot water for 30 minutes. Remove from the water and roughly chop. Place tomatoes and lemon juice a bit at a time in a food processor with the goat cheese, pulsing until well blended and the flavor is satisfactory to you. (A good alternative filling: Start with Guilherme’s easy spinach ricotta pâté as a base, using additional ricotta to thicken mixture as necessary.)

Combine the flour with a few good shakes of salt and pepper and blend well. Pour out some of the flour mixture onto a clean dry plate.

Gently rinse and dry the zucchini blossoms, removing the stamens and pistils carefully (You may find that using tweezers helps, otherwise just be patient). Spread petals slightly and spoon a small amount of filling mixture into each blossom, or squeeze from a plastic bag with a corner snipped off if it is easier for you to fill it that way. Leave enough room at the top of each blossom to twist it closed (See above photo). Once blossoms are filled and sealed, dip each flower into beaten egg and roll gently in the flour mixture until lightly coated (If you find you’ve made too much filling, just save it to toss with pasta or spread on bread or crackers). Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to a large pan to heat (medium high). When the oil is hot enough, carefully place blossoms in the oil a few at a time with a slotted spoon, turning until each is golden and just lightly crispy. Drain on paper towels and serve. Enjoy!

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