Marrow Me

I have this thing about marrows. I find them irresistably appealing even though they are just giant courgettes and don't taste of much. I suppose they say Summer to me. When I see them in the shops I just have to but one, only that one, for the year, and I think, 'I'll do something with that' and it sits around looking giant for a while before being invariably baked in a lovely rich tomato sauce or maybe filled with a  herby ricey stuffing.......the Moro book has a marrow recipe, unsurprisingly, as all allotment growers seem to speak of gluts of overgrown courgettes nestling under the leaves that need turning into something, and we've all gasped at a prize marrow.

So I made Fried Marrow with Caremelised Butter, Mint and Yoghurt. It's basically what it says, marrow fried in unsalted butter (anything fried in butter is fine by me) but what was really lovely was the yoghurt sauce to accompany it: a few cumin seeds toasted and then crushed to a puree with a little garlic and salt, stirred into watered down Greek yoghurt with lots of mint. The marrow needs to be really HOT for this to be really good, but the yummy sauce could be served with loads of things......fried aubergine, or hot green beans, or as a salad dressing....nice. We also had a simple salad from the book, of Grilled Onion, Peppers and Lentils. I have never grilled spring onions before (I got an extortionately priced bunch of those nice giant ones from Waitrose) and when you grill them until they are black, they go nice and squidgy inside and have a lovely soft smoky flavour. A nice red wine vinegar dressing: I have some Shiraz vinegar from Australia that worked really well. We threw in a bunch of grilled asparagus, plenty of nice cold white wine and had a rather splendid tea.