Happy Australia Day! We trust your Australia Day BBQ's were full of heart healthy options??? If not, do yourself (and your health) a favour and buy one of the Heart Foundation's BBQ Cookbooks or have a look at some of the fantastic recipes available for free on our Healthy Eating site.
Wrapping up the shameless plugs and before I go any further - I need to confess two things. Firstly, I am not the wonderful Kathy Bell. My name is Suzanne Ridley and I work for Kathy at the Heart Foundation. The second thing I need to confess is that I am a vegetarian. Before you start rolling your eyes and groaning I want to assure you I am not here to ram some ethical, greeny vegetarian message down your throats!!! Quite the opposite. As the token vego in the group, Kathy asked me to road test some of the fabulous vegetarian recipes in the BBQ Cookbook to show that a meatless BBQ can be achieved and it can be tasty. Since turning vego I have not taken much pleasure in the good old Aussie barbie but with great recipe ideas such as these and beautiful fresh ingredients we can all enjoy this great Australian tradition.
The recipe that I road tested on Australia Day was the Roast beet pizza with goat's cheese (pg. 20)
You may have guessed from the photo above that I made a slightly different version of the pizza than in the cookbook. My husband and I got a wood fired pizza oven for Christmas so I just had to try this pizza cooked over hot coals. To ensure accurate reportage, I did cook the cookbook version too – but had eaten most of it before I remembered my boss’s mantra "Make sure you take some photos!" This dereliction of duty will probably be raised at my performance review in a couple of weeks time but for now I hope you are all happy with me describing my experience of making the cookbook version.
Arguably, beetroot is the quintessential Australian vegetable. Who else but us Aussies feel a hamburger (vegie burger??) is not complete without a slice of beetroot? Tinned ones are great, but there is nothing better than roasting fresh beetroot as required by this recipe and it is really simple. Get a bunch of fresh beetroot, trim off the stalks then I wrap each beetroot individually in tin foil. No need to peel or fuss about. Cook for 30-40mins then cool. Simply top and tail the beetroot and the skin should just slip off. Yummo. I cooked my beetroot in the oven a couple of days before hand to save some time. This really the most complicated bit of the recipe. All you have to do on the day is chop up all of your ingredients, cook your pita then assemble. I found that I needed to put a little olive oil spray on the pita bread to help it crisp and mine took about 3 minutes to get that golden brown colour. The only other change I would make is to ditch the dried thyme I used in favour of the fresh stuff the recipe calls for. The intense flavour of the fresh herb would have completed the pizza.
This really is a great recipe - the beautiful rich beetroot is complimented by the smooth goat’s cheese and the bite of the spring onions. Fresh, tasty and healthy.
I hear what you saying ..."One vegie pizza does not a BBQ make!" Well stay tuned, over the next few days there will be a flurry of posts about some other meals that the team will be cooking up, including some more vegetarian options.
You may have guessed from the photo above that I made a slightly different version of the pizza than in the cookbook. My husband and I got a wood fired pizza oven for Christmas so I just had to try this pizza cooked over hot coals. To ensure accurate reportage, I did cook the cookbook version too – but had eaten most of it before I remembered my boss’s mantra "Make sure you take some photos!" This dereliction of duty will probably be raised at my performance review in a couple of weeks time but for now I hope you are all happy with me describing my experience of making the cookbook version.
Arguably, beetroot is the quintessential Australian vegetable. Who else but us Aussies feel a hamburger (vegie burger??) is not complete without a slice of beetroot? Tinned ones are great, but there is nothing better than roasting fresh beetroot as required by this recipe and it is really simple. Get a bunch of fresh beetroot, trim off the stalks then I wrap each beetroot individually in tin foil. No need to peel or fuss about. Cook for 30-40mins then cool. Simply top and tail the beetroot and the skin should just slip off. Yummo. I cooked my beetroot in the oven a couple of days before hand to save some time. This really the most complicated bit of the recipe. All you have to do on the day is chop up all of your ingredients, cook your pita then assemble. I found that I needed to put a little olive oil spray on the pita bread to help it crisp and mine took about 3 minutes to get that golden brown colour. The only other change I would make is to ditch the dried thyme I used in favour of the fresh stuff the recipe calls for. The intense flavour of the fresh herb would have completed the pizza.
This really is a great recipe - the beautiful rich beetroot is complimented by the smooth goat’s cheese and the bite of the spring onions. Fresh, tasty and healthy.
I hear what you saying ..."One vegie pizza does not a BBQ make!" Well stay tuned, over the next few days there will be a flurry of posts about some other meals that the team will be cooking up, including some more vegetarian options.
Thankyou letting a vegetarian loose on a BBQ Blog! Happy BBQs to all and here is hoping you add a few vego options to your next get together.
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