Easy. Fresh. Satisfying. Chunky.

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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on linen. Making use of the square brush technique I talked about in my previous post, a summery rendition of this jewel studded dish all plated up and ready to gormandise. The real meal is pretty much as colourful as the painting is.

Did you know that all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store?  If you want to get your mitts on the original, it is drying and awaiting it's professional photoshoot before being allowed in the shop.

To be kept updated on available paintings, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.

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The meatless meals recipe

I enjoy the freshness of salads but often find them not filling enough. And so I have a tendency to tinker with them until they become full main meals. This is one of those tinkerings. One hot London evening (an oxymoron most of the time), I felt inspired to feast on the well known Italian tricolore or caprese salad of fresh tomato slices, fresh basil leaves and fresh mozzarella slices. Lacking those ingredients, and being hungry enough for a full meal, this is basically what I came up with. It's been refined over the years into a jewel studded crown of a summer meal.

Big thanks to Mari and Catriona in helping me give this recipe an appropriate name!

200-250g haloumi or paneer cheese, in slices about 1/2cm thick (both of these cheeses can be fried without melting out of shape)
around 310g zucchini, in slices about 1/2cm thick (using a long diagonal works well)
around 240g eggplant, in slices about 1/2cm thick
1 clove garlic
around 260g fresh tomato in slices about 1/2cm thick (about 3 medium tomatoes)
plenty of butter for frying

125g / 3/4 cup couscous
zest of 1/2 lemon
chopped parsley, about 25g
1 cup / 250ml boiling water
slosh of olive oil
optional 'clean out the fridge' veg, diced really fine - 1/2 cup

juice of 1/2 lemon

If you are using haloumi for this dish do not salt anything as it is frying. I repeat -DO NOT ADD SALT- Haloumi is very salty itself and any extra salt will make your tongue weep. Paneer, on the other hand, is usually not salty at all, so taste it first and go for your life.

Fry the zucchini slices in butter.
Fry the eggplant slices in butter. Mince the garlic and add to the frying eggplant. Once you have a bit of browning on the eggplant add some water to the pan. This speeds up the cooking time significantly and ensures the cooked eggplant is lovely and soft.
Fry the haloumi slices. It doesn't need much, just enough to be golden brown on the outside and heated through.
Meanwhile, put the couscous, lemon zest, parsley, olive oil, optional minced veg and boiling water in a container with a lid, cover and leave for 10 minutes. Your couscous is now cooked!
To serve, I like to make a ring (the crown!) around the outside of the plate with the zucchini, eggplant, haloumi and fresh tomato slices all alternating. Then I fill the middle with the couscous mix.
A squeeze of lemon juice all over finishes this off.


This makes a meal for two. Unless you are using a BBQ to fry the ingredients it's not really practical from a cooking space point of view to make this for more than two people.