Pita meals & marmalade

With the advent of spring or at least rumours of its advent I have been thinking about lighter meals. I bought some spicy lamb sausages from the Island Bay Butchery and made a quick meal on pita breads. Heat the oven to 200 & saute 2 thinly sliced onions in a little olive oil with 2 cloves of garlic, 1/4 tsp each allspice & cinnamon & a handful of pinenuts. Slip the sausages out of their skins - this is quite easy, just slit the skins with scissors & peel them off. Use 1-2 sausages per person. Break the sausages into 1 cm pieces and add to the saute pan breaking then into bite sized pieces as they cook. When they're cooked and lightly coloured add a handful of flat leaf parsley & take off the heat.

Carefully slice pita breads in half so that you have 2 rounds. Allow 1-2 rounds per person depending on greed/ appetite. Put the pita on a baking tray and brush around the edges with olive oil - to coat the bits that won't be covered with topping. Divide the sausage mixture among the pita slices & top with halved cherry tomatoes -about 2 tomatoes per pita. Bake 10 minutes until the edges of the pita are crisp & golden.

Serve topped with a drizzle of Greek yoghurt & a sprinkle of cinnamon. I actually used Cleveland buffalo yoghurt & when I was in Auckland at the weekend I saw the buffalo and was able to thank them. I served this with a salad of cos lettuce, finely sliced spring onions, finely sliced orange pieces (peel a couple of oranges & remove all the pith then halve & slice thinly), black olives & feta slices. Make a vinaigrette with red wine vinegar or lemon juice. Coat the lettuce first with some of the dressing then layer up the orange & feta, scatter over the olives & spring onion & drizzle the remaining dressing. The citrus makes a great foil for the richness of the sausage.

Later in the week I made a vegan version using Antoinette's authentic Lebanese falafel. I have just discovered these and recommend you rush out & get some. The vegans drizzled over hummus instead of yoghurt & I had both. I served this with the orange salad again & our old favourite roasted asparagus, which I eat at least once a week at this time of year.

We went to Auckland for the weekend to help a certain sister celebrate a certain birthday. She had an overburdened grapefruit tree so we took a large bag full home & made some grapefruit. I use Edmunds & made a marmalade with 3 grapefruit, 1 orange & a lemon. Unfortunately it didn't set as well as I would have liked & I suspect the grapefruit were over ripe. I read that if they didn't have many pips they would be over ripe & contain less pectin. Earlier in the week when I was preparing them for breakfast they were very pippy but when I was preparing them for the marmalade we found barely a pip. We needed to wrap the pips in muslin & cook the with the fruit. Phoebe & I wondered if as the fruit ripened it ate its own pips. Can anyone enlighten us. Any way for those of you who have a jar of marmalade I hope it doesn't run off the toast.