Fire and ice: Thai beef salad

Iceberg lettuce is seriously underrated. Eclipsed by fancypants rivals, bitter raddicio and spicy rocquette and sweet mache, iceberg, to paraphrase Dame Edna, is C-O-M-M-O-N. Cheap and ordinary.

It is the lettuce of my childhood, sweet and crisp and watery.

Whilst the cuisine of the West may currently not be on speaking terms with iceberg lettuce, having swapped our childhood salads of cubed cheese and grated carrot for frissee and witlof, Asian cuisine from China to Thailand has no such prejudices.

The crunchy bowl of an iceberg lettuce leaf is irreplaceable in Chinese san choi bao. Vietnamese chả giò are dangerously moreish, crisp deep fried pastries wrapped with mint and basil in iceberg leaves.

And torn chunks of iceberg hearts, tossed with sweet ripe tomatoes and thick slices of cucumber is the perfect cooling counterpoint to the volcanic combination of raw onion and chilli in Thai beef salad.

Thai beef salad

Serves 2

300 gm of the best steak you can get.

½ iceberg lettuce

1 small Lebanese cucumber

1 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved (or 3 medium sized field tomatoes, cut into thin wedges)

½ red onion, thinly sliced

½ cup coriander leaves, torn

½ cup mint leaves, torn (English mint is fine, use Vietnamese mint if available)

½ cup Thai basil (or sweet Italian basil)

1 or 2 hot chillies

1 crushed bulb garlic

1 tsp sesame oil

Juice and rind of 2 limes

1 tbsp palm sugar (or raw sugar)

4 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp soy sauce

Cook the steak to medium rare on a grill pan or barbeque (Make sure your steak is at room temperature when you cook it. For a thickish steak, an inch and half or so thick, cook for 4 minutes on each side).

Set aside to rest for about 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, whisk together the chillies, garlic, oil, sugar, rind, half the lime juice, half the fish sauce and the soy sauce. Taste. Gradually add fish sauce and lime until the flavours balance (you want something that has ‘zing’ and a nice salty finish, without being mouth puckeringly sour or drinking sea-water salty).

Slice the steak into very thin strips. Toss through the dressing to coat and remove.

Add the lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes , onion and herbs to the dressing, toss to coat.

Pile the salad vegetables onto a plate, scatter the beef over the top, and drizzle with the dressing.

Peaches and cream (and chilli and cheese) AKA salsa and saganaki

Peaches are late summer. The tangy sweet-sour of yellow peaches and the fragrant sugariness of white peaches, fuzzy-furry skin and juices dripping down my chin: bliss (albeit sticky bliss).

I grew up on the remnants of a peach farm. I am never short of ideas about what to do with them*. Cut in half, drizzled with honey and scattered with flaked almonds, roasted in the oven for half an hour. Poached in sugar syrup for 30 minutes, then peeled to reveal the transferred pink tinge on the beautifully sweet and yielding fruit. Pureed and turned into sorbet (or better yet, into a Bellini). Sliced and tossed with jamon and buffalo mozzarella and rocquette. Cooked down into jam, like my mum used to make, with walnuts, served with cheddar. Atop a frangipane tart. In tea cake. The classic combination: peaches and cream.

So many temptations. Such a short season.

Cheese is just grown up cream. And peaches are peaches. Classic combination.

* I mean, after you tire of eating them fresh and ripe in the sun. As if you ever would. I bought a kilo and half this evening and ate one on the way home. Even though I knew I was using them for dinner.

Peaches in chilli syrup with fried haloumi*

Serves two for dinner or four as an starter

Drawing inspiration from Australian-Greek chef George Colambaris, who tops saganaki with figs in pepper and honey.

1 ripe yellow peach (score the bottom with a cross)
1 ripe white peach (score the bottom with a cross)
1 very hot red chilli, finely minced, seeds retained
3 tbsp sherry vinegar (or white vinegar)
3 tbsp honey
1 tbsp whole basil leaves
1 tbsp shredded basil leaves
1 small bulb fennel, finely diced
½ small red onion, finely diced
1 roasted red pepper, peeled and cut into small dice (about ¼ inch)
Eight spears asparagus
250 gm haloumi cheese, cut into 1 cm thick slices
2 handfuls rocquette
Olive oil

To poach the peaches: bring a saucepan of water to the boil. Carefully place peaches into the boiling water, simmer for about ten minutes. remove with a slotted spoon. When cool enough to handle, peel off the skin. Dice into small dice (about ¼ inch)

To grill asparagus: heat a grill pan to very hot. Brush asparagus spears with olive oil, grill until tender and char marked (about 5 minutes). Set aside (they don’t need to be hot when you serve the salad).

To make the chilli syrup: in a small saucepan bring the vinegar, honey and chilli to a simmer. Reduce by half. Taste. Add extra dried chilli flakes if not hot enough. Or substitue sweet chilli sauce. It's up to you.

To make the salsa: toss together peaches, basil, fennel, onion, red pepper. Season with a little black pepper and stir through two to three tablespoons of the chilli syrup. Taste. If too sweet, add a little lemon juice.

To fry haloumi. Heat a tbsp oil in a non-stick fry pan (or saganaki, the pan for which the named). When hot, add haloumi slices. Leave to cook until the slices are deeply browned (or until your smoke alarm goes off), then turn over and cook the other side. When cooked, squeeze over some lemon juice.

To serve: place a handful of rocquette on a place. Arrange haloumi slices and asparagus spears, top with peach salsa. Drizzle with a little chilli syrup if at all pretentious.

* Type of cheese. Texture kind of like rubber, but in really, really good, salty way. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloumi. In a pinch you could substitute fetta, if you dusted it with flour before frying (I have done this) – but be very careful as fetta melts much more quickly.

Something light. And healthy. Crunchy Lime and Chilli Chicken Salad

Kitchen Helper, who I love*, has a well-honed and perversely indiscriminate palate. That is, an appreciation, certainly, of extremely tasty and fancy food, but also a willingness to eat just about anything. This makes experimentation, travel to weird and exotic places and my very occasional lack of effort** pretty much risk free, culinary speaking. On the other hand, Kitchen Helper is a rubbish muse. Primary contribution to meal planning? “Something light. And healthy”. Every. Single. Time.

We eat a lot of salad.

In between summer storms the weather is muggy. Of course, talking about the weather is so passé, so ordinary, so boring (a little like my muse's efforts). And yet with flash-floods and cyclones and violent and damaging storms it is impossible not to be hyperaware of the moisture in the air, the colour of the sky, the direction of the wind, flashes of lightening.

And Kitchen Helper is moping because of the weather, like a chocolate Labrador melting in the sun. It is, apparently, too hot today.

On days like this there is no need to consult (okay, on no days ever is it ever necessary to consult, given the uniformity of response). Because a salad is perfect.

But not just any salad. Oh sure, I love a good Caesar salad or salade Lyonnais or Greek salad, salty with olives and fetta. But tropical conditions call for tropical salads, sour and salty and spicy and so very, very fresh with ginger and lime zest. Bright and colourful and refreshing, just about any crisp vegetables (or fruit) that can be eaten raw can be shredded and tossed in. Snow peas. Green papaya or mango. Carrots. Celery. Just get the dressing perfectly balanced and go to town. The resulting pile is crisp and tangy and hot and pungent with stinky fish sauce and so absolutely right in 90% humidity. And light. And healthy.

* Deeply, passionately, always

** Yes, there are days when I really cannot be bothered. On those days we eat paella. I have no idea how paella became the standby dish of appathetic cookery, but it works out well, because routine as it is for me to cook now, it always tastes amazing.

Vietnamese(ish) chicken salad

Serves four

1 whole chicken, butterflied (with a sharp knife, cut chicken along backbone and open out flat)
Olive oil
Sea salt

Salad
2 medium Lebanese cucumbers, seeds removed and cut into julienne (or your nearest approximation)
2 carrots, peeled and cut into julienne
1 medium red capsicum, cut into julienne
1 small to medium kohlrabi, peeled and cut into julienne
200 gm bean shoots (about two handfuls)
5 long spring onions, cut into 7cm lengths and then strips
¼ cup unsalted roasted peanuts

Dressing
3 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp fish sauce
Juice and zest of 1 lime
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar (or white vinegar, if you must)
1 ½ tbsp castor sugar
2 bulbs garlic, minced
1 inch ginger, crushed
1 hot red chilli, finely sliced
2 tbsp sesame oil

Preheat oven to 200ºc. Rub chicken with olive oil and sprinkle liberally with salt. Place into the oven on a tray, cook for 30-40 minutes (until juices run clear from a knife inserted into the thigh bone joint). Remove from oven and rest for 20 minutes (or do the day before, and have cold instead of just warm). If you like, you can glaze the chicken in equal parts honey and soy sauce before cooking.

When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the carcase and shred with your fingers into smallish strips. Remove the skin if you prefer (this makes it even lighter and healthier).

To make the dressing, whisk together all ingredients. Taste. Does it have a good flavour balance? Adjust – if too salty, add a little extra oil and vinegar, if too sweet, more vinegar and lime. Too oily? More fish sauce (go easy though). Way too spicy? A bit more sugar. The longer you leave the dressing to sit, the more the flavours will infuse and develop.

Toss chicken and all salad ingredients except peanuts through the dressing until coated.

To serve, pile portions onto a plate and scatter with roasted peanuts.

Summer Christmas versus Winter Christmas (what my little brother is missing)

Last Christmas I made (amongst other things) gravlax. A side of salmon, cured in sugar and rock salt and dill and juniper berries and gin. My brother, who shares my affinity for Bombay Saphire, proceded to eat the gin soaked curing paste as I brushed it off, preparing to thinly slice the moist, sweet bright pink fish. Unsurprisingly, it made him ill.

I miss him.

Soon to be professor-doctor-clever-pants in the world's most obscure and impractical discipline, he lives in Oxford, where it is very cold and people ride bicycles. He was here, with me, last year for Christmas. This year is another year when we are not spending Christmas together.

I miss him.

Not that he is much help at Christmas (although his bacon-sandwich making capabilities, possibly his only real culinary triumph, are to be respected on Boxing Day and New Year's Day, when fried breakfast food is generally welcomed). He does have an eye for Christmas decorations (insisting on a real tree last year, and hence improving the Christmassy-ness of the whole occassion). And he does know the words to most carols, even if he doesn't always sing them in tune (an allegation he would no doubt deny).

Last year (for a number of reasons that now seem ridiculous) I experienced a severe case of 'being-overwhelmed-at-Christmas', which manifested in tears about two barbeequed chickens (best not to ask). My brother just being here, in all his goofy, idiotic, and vaguely dada-esque way made it just a bit easier to cope. (How this involved purchasing pale blue silk socks is a mystery). We ate half a kilo of fresh raspberries to help us deal with the whole situation.

I shouldn't worry that he'll be lonely at Christmas (he has more facebook friends than I have recipe clippings, which is to say, a great many). He will be having the white Christmas I can only ever dream about. But he isn't here, and he'll miss all the summer fruit, the cherries, the cold beer and the cricket in the backyard. He'll miss the sunburn and the gin and tonics and the pimms cups and the ice-cream from my new ice-cream machine. He'll miss having people around him who have known him forever. If he mopes unreasonably, I won't be there to tell him to stop being an idiot. He'll miss me.

Merry Christmas.

Christmas Salad: roquette, peaches, buffalo mozzarella and prosciutto

Slice two very ripe yellow peaches into thin wedges. Toss with two cups (ish) of wild roquette. tear six slices of prosciutto and toss through with the peaches and roquette. Arrange on a plate. Break one ball of fresh buffalo mozzarella over the top, drizzle with olive oil and eat in Australia at Christmas time.

Serves 2

What is a waldorf anyway, a walnut that’s gone off?*

New York city: the Waldorf Hotel. Circa 1893-1896. Oscar Tschirky. Swiss. Not a chef.

Apple. Celery. Mayonnaise. Later addition: walnuts.

The Waldorf Salad.

Its genius lies in its simplicity. Like coleslaw, so very, very dependent on the quality of the ingredients. Like coleslaw, so easily and so frequently the victim of grave injustice.

The key is crunch and bite. The crisp clean taste of very, very fresh celery. Inner stalks only, with the tender pale green leaves retained for garnishing. Tart apples, preferably peeled. Granny Smiths are perfect, that hint of sourness to their juicy sweetness. And walnuts. Toasted. Some puritans insist that they are also peeled. I have never found this necessary.

Nothing is more important than using fresh walnuts. Or conversely, nothing is more rank than the taste of rancid nuts, the oils sour and foul. My preference is to purchase mine from a specialist nut-purveyor at the market. I know that they will be correctly stored and have frequent turn over. In a pinch I will buy them in vacuum sealed packets, sold in the supermarket next to the dried herbs and spices and sugars and salts (understandably my favourite aisle in the dreaded supermarket).

And then there is mayonnaise. At which point I give up. I am overly sensitive to what I consider a crime against both condiments and salad dressing: the mayonnaise jar. How a sauce so beautiful has become something so unredeemably fetid I cannot comprehend. I can usually find it in me to be at least a little understanding of food choices that differ from my own, but mayonnaise? Like the ungodly offspring of cream and industrial solvent, industrialised, commercialised, commodofied, squeezy-bottle mayonnaise has no place in the hallowed grounds of the waldorf salad.

I find homemade mayonnaise gentler and richer than any store bought jar (and I do grudgingly admit, some are better than others, and indeed almost edible). It is easier too, to tailor one’s dressing to the salad. A hint of mustard, a little walnut oil, thicker rather than pourable, the better to bind the ingredients without drowning them. A good discipline to learn: a basic emulsification, the miracle whipping of eggs yolks and oil. Less recipe and more technique.

And like every canonical recipe, the Waldorf Salad suffers from the non-canonical reinterpretation. So my secret: soak the apples in apple-cider vinegar for 15 minutes to enhance the sweet-and-sour qualities. A hint of cream cheese in the dressing. And slivers of shaved mouse-tailed pink radishes, hot and peppery and a pop of colour.

* Faulty Towers “Waldorf Salad”, 1979



Waldorf-ish Salad

Serves four as a side or light lunch

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1 cm dice.
1 ½ cup celery, cut into 1 cm dice
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
¼ walnuts, toasted (roast in a moderate oven for about 6-8 minutes)
½ cup mayonnaise (approximately)
1 tsp cream cheese (optional)
6 breakfast radishes, thinly sliced or shaved.
1 tbsp small celery leaves
1 tbsp extra toasted walnuts

Mix the apple and celery with the apple cider vinegar in a non-reactive bowl (ie, not metal) and leave sit for about ten to fifteen minutes (meanwhile, make the mayonnaise).

Mix the cream cheese (if using) into a quarter cup of mayonnaise, then toss with the apples, celery shaved radishes and toasted walnuts. If necessary, add extra mayonnaise until the salad is coated but not drowning.

To serve, scatter with extra walnuts and celery leaves.

Great with chicken or turkey.

To make mayonnaise:

2 very fresh egg yolks (keep the eggwhites for macarons or meringue or soufflé or something equally delicious. They freeze well too).
1 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp vinegar (white wine vinegar or tarragon vinegar)
250 ml oil (any kind of oil is fine. I like olive oil, which can have a strong taste. Sunflower oil or canola oil also works just fine)
Sea salt and white pepper, to taste

Make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature.

In a large non reactive bowl (I use pyrex for just about everything) beat the egg yolks with the mustard and 1 teaspoon of vinegar. Beat until smooth and creamy looking.

Drizzle in 1 teaspoon of oil, and beat until fully incorporated. Drizzle other teaspoon, and beat until fully incorporated. Continue this process, drizzling and beating in tiny spoonfuls of oil until about half the oil is combined. Then, drizzle the remaining oil in a very thin steam, beat constantly until the mayonnaise is the desired consistency. Taste, and add salt and white pepper if needed.

Can be made with a wooden spoon or hand whisk or even electric beaters. The trick is the very slow incorporation of the oil into the egg yolks.

Artichoke, pimento, jamon and frozen pea salad. What junk food is not

Just around the corner from me is a fabulous Spanish / Latin grocery store. It is packed with all kinds of goodies imported from Spain, Portugal and South America. Tuna and sardines, anchovies, jars of artichokes in oil and tinned hearts-of-palm. Chorizo and legs of acorn-fed jamon hang from the ceiling. There are bags of arroz and sacks of gabanzo beans. Vats of olives and litres of olive oil. Paella tins and dozens of varieties of dried chillies and spices.

Dried and bottled and salted and cured and frozen and vinegared Iberican abundance. Making dinner a matter of throwing together a random selection of whatever catches the eye.

Is there a difference between my colourful Spanish salad and a Krispy Kreme doughnut or KFC?

When does the act of preparing a meal become home-cooking? When does food become processed? And when does food become junk food? And why junk? Why a word connoting such worthlessness?

‘Junk food’ continually appears as a culprit in public debate. From banning the sale of toys with Happy Meals to government mandated standards for the food in school canteens to lobby groups opposing the advertising of ‘junk food’ during prime-time children’s television to public health studies and nutritionalist advice: junk food is a core concept in the contemporary public debate about food.

Junk food is shorthand. It’s used to describe everything from production to consumption practices, method of processing, readiness of availability, caloric content and nutritional value (or valuelessness), (high) percentage fat/sugar, (un)naturalness, cheapness, and social context. All terms and concepts themselves that themselves are difficult to pin down and already laden with all kinds of assumptions about what is good and bad food.

Beyond this is a debate that too quickly seems to be shorthand for blaming someone. Blaming governments. Blaming the media. Blaming big corporations. Blaming society. Blaming parents. Blaming us. And then judging.

Rather than focusing on an item of food in terms of its health outcomes or nutritional inputs or even consumption context (all of which are important), I think junk food is perhaps something we can think about as our broad relationship to eating. Food does not, inherently, have a quality of junk or not-junk. But our broad approach to eating may turn our consumption practices in ones that are more or less valued by us and valuable to us. That is, the way we eat, the way we think about food, nutrition, sustenance, satisfaction, contentment, fulfilment, pleasure and flavour may position food as worthless and junk-ful or as valuable. So for me, junk food is thoughtless, mindless, directionless, irresponsible eating. It is eating that fails to take into account the singularity of eating this thing, here and now, as a unique and unrepeatable experience.

My salad may have too high a quantity of sodium or oil or fat. It may inhibit or replace my ability or willingness to ensure I have, that day, met my recommended daily intake of certain essential vitamins and minerals, fibres or proteins. It may be primarily pre-prepared.

But it makes me think of Spain. And I shared it with people I love. And I chose the items with a sense of wonder. The act of eating is also an act of ritual: the table was set and the time we ate was time set aside for eating together. It may not be healthy, but it is not junk.



Artichoke, pimento, jamon and frozen pea salad.

Serves 2 as a main meal

1 red onion, finely sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 cup frozen peas, blanched and refreshed (of course, you could blanch fresh ones)
1 jar of roasted pimento in oil, drained, finely sliced, oil reserved (or you could roast your own capsicum – you’ll need two)
1 jar artichoke hearts in oil, drained and quartered
100 gm thinly sliced jamon, torn into strips
1 tbsp Spanish sherry vinegar or lemon juice

Heat a tablespoon of reserved oil in a fry pan. Add garlic and onion and sauté over a medium heat until soft. Add peas and toss until warmed through.

Remove from heat, toss through the remaining ingredients and vinegar.

Serve with crusty bread.

Eating Aesop's Fables: or making a point about dieting through trout salad

"... like those who dine well off the plainest dishes, he made use of humble incidents to teach great truths"*

The girls (Bird and Bean, specifically, but it could be anybody, really) are interested in healthy eating. And in looking fine (which they do). But not in boring eating. And dieting is boring. Health food is not fun.

And then my head explodes.

I am suspicious of thinking about losing weight. About how diets are always and necessarily antithetical to ‘normal eating’. About how becoming or being healthy is some kind of mortification of the flesh. About how, especially for women, there is this inherent judgement - self judgement and judgement of others – involved in how we think about ‘losing weight’ that carries a whole lot of unarticulated and often illogical and unfounded assumptions and conclusions – about the value of a person, morally, aesthetically and socially.

There is good food versus bad food and healthy food versus comfort food and lazy and blameworthy and ugly people versus fit and praiseworthy and attractive people.

Again and again we are reminded that in our Western, post industrial countries our problem is obesity: childhood obesity and obesity related diseases, the cost of this epidemic on our health care system, our health insurance. And certain bodies are idealised, not only or even as healthy but as desirable, as objects of desire. And it is easy to mistake a desire to be desirable for a desire to be healthy. And sometimes we use the language of health to disguise our longing to be desirable.** And this is damaging and dangerous: not necessarily or only to our health, but to our ability to see and create beauty and worthiness and desirability in an endless variety of people and bodies.

Bird and Bean recently expressed a certain amount of incredulity and a little bit of lust at the variety of food we eat at home.

What we eat in my kitchen is multiple and ever expanding varieties of food. And it is precisely this variety that makes the way we eat the object of covetousness.

It is mostly healthy – whatever that means. Fresh. Relatively unprocessed. Vegetable focused. But there’s cheese and olive oil and pasta and bread. There’s wine and sugar and butter – sometimes. Desserts (mostly fruit based, but not always). Mostly small meals, sometimes large meals. Occasional almond croissants. Pea and sherry soup. Bangers and mash. And everything changes – with my mood, my abrupt fascination with certain methods or regional cuisines, with the seasons.

It’s not endless possibility, but it is driven by a refusal to be bored and a refusal to be dictated to by routine. A willingness to make mistakes and a complete commitment to the hedonism and carnality of acquiring, preparing, eating – experiencing – food in all its messy, surprising, delicious uniqueness.

So the way I think about food runs alongside how I think about beauty. And diets. And desirability.

So I hesitate to say I eat ‘healthy’. I just eat. And it is all good.



* Attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, 1st century philosopher.

** I must, at this point, extract in full an account of this kind of thinking. Not my own, but sensibly, passionately, articulated by someone else inducing such a sense of familiarity that it must be repeated:

"I thought about this especially this weekend after getting into an intense (and cocktail-fueled) conversation about weight loss and body image with my closest girlfriends. These are precarious topics and my girlfriends all know me as “the feminist” (not that they’re not feminists, but it is not as all-encompassing for them, I think) and so they assume my stances on these things (like that I will be flat-out anti-diet). I tried to find a way to be supportive of what I was hearing while still encouraging them to see their struggle within the larger context of Shit That The World Does To Women. For example, one friend complained about how one reason she’d like to lose weight was so that she could fit into clothing at regular clothing stores. I have been there, and I could totally identify with that feeling, that awful “I’m not invited to the party” feeling. But it killed me to think about how she was turning this all inwards, as a moral failing of her own, rather than identifying the real culprits, i.e. the asshole industry that is so exclusionary, so normative, so hateful. In her language I also heard her equating a lot of very fair and serious concerns about her health with concerns about “fitting in” (see above), and I tried to gently point out that those are not the same things. Reorienting oneself to view things from a feminist angle certainly doesn’t solve the problem, but it does help one stop hating oneself, a goal which I think is pretty damn essential to being a functioning human being. And one that is hard for so many women I love, including myself". From the always amazing A of Accordians and Lace




Steamed trout salad

Serves 2

½ bulb fennel, very thinly sliced
½ red onion, very thinly sliced
½ frissee lettuce
1 cucumber, thinly sliced
½ avocado, cut into small dice
2 tbsp toasted blanched almonds
1 tbsp fresh mint, finely shredded
1 navel orange*
300 g ocean trout fillets (salmon would work equally well)
dressing
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp verjuice (or lemon juice)
Sea salt and cracked pepper to taste


To steam the trout (if like me, you don’t have a steamer, otherwise, just use the steamer). Chose a small deep plate or shallow bowl that can fit inside a lidded wok or large saucepan. Line with a piece of baking paper. Place the trout on the plate. Sit the plate in the wok, then gently pour water into the wok up to just below the level of the plate, taking care not to drown the fish. Cover with the lid and bring the water to a simmer. Once the water is bubbling, steam the fish for about 6 minutes. The fish is done when it flakes away easily.

Peel the orange with a knife, taking care to remove all the white pith. Cut into segments, avoiding the membranes.

Whisk the salad dressing ingredients in a large bowl until combined. Add the salad ingredients except for the trout and toss to coat. Season.

Break the steamed trout into flakes and gently scatter through the salad.

Serve.

* I’ve been buying these insanely good hybrids called Caras – cross between a navel and ruby grapefruit. Slightly salmon coloured and just gorgeous.

Mung beans and whole grains

I recently saw a picture in a magazine of toasted whole wheat with a slow cooked egg yolk. Something about the dark crunchiness of the wheat appealed – I could imagine it’s dense, chewy texture, subtly enhanced with the rich gooeyness of the egg yolk. It looked simple. Basic. Impossible to tell, from the picture, if it was enhanced with something extravagant like truffle oil or handpicked wild micro-herbs. No recipe, just a picture amongst many pictures.

Whole-gains seem the terrain of hippies and health nuts, the food of anaemic and fashionable vegans and ultra-fit protein obsessed gym junkies. It sounds like a diet, or an extreme life-style choice. Which immediately conjures a sense of deprivation. Dieting seems to evoke a sense of loss of more than just weight. A world without sugar and fat and carbs and sweets and treats. A world without flavour. A world of rabbit food and cardboard tasting meal-substitutes.

And in all honesty, at the end of a winter that I dealt with primarily through laziness and comfort food, a reassessment of the healthiness of what I eat is probably called for. Not ‘a diet’, not a fad or a quick fix. Just a subtle realignment, now that my hostility to the season can be set aside for another year.

But there is something about toasted unprocessed whole grains, nutty and caramel, crisp and yielding, with a taste like the smell of cooking toast, that is homey and satisfying and comforting. On close inspection, toasted grains have nothing in common with deprivation. Despite the indisputable health and environmental benefits, whole grains are an unexpected treat, and now, more than a little bit high-end. Hence their appearance in a glossy magazine devoted to the valorisation of the chef’s arts.

I could have gone out and bought some farro, the oh so cool grain of the moment, some kind of ancient and original variety of wheat. Or whole wheat kernals. Or mixed red and black quinoa with onions and garlic and spinach. But I have barley in the pantry, set aside for adding to rustic soups. And what better to match it with than mung beans, that other shared bastion of the hug-the-earth-cum-health-kick movement?

There is something so terribly retro about mung beans. Reserved for the super-health conscious and hippies, they’ve hung around in health food shops and food co-ops with an endless seventies vibe, kind of overlooked and forgotten.

With English mint and plenty of salt, this was fresh and earthy, and a little bit pretty. And ridiculously healthy.

Toasted barley and mung bean salad

Serves two

½ cup pearl barley
1 cup mixed bean shoots (ie, mung beans, pea shoots, chickpea shoots)
¼ cup fresh peas
½ cup torn mint leaves
½ cup snow pea shoots (green part only)
2 tbsp toasted pine nuts
1 tsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
Sea salt
Pepper


In a large non stick fry pan heat the barley over a medium heat, shaking the pan or stirring to prevent the barley from burning. When the barely is a deep golden colour, add two cups of water or stock and lower the heat. Simmer for about half an hour, until the barley is soft and chewy (and most of the liquid is evaporated. Strain and add to a large bowl.

Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil, add peas and cook for about 5 minutes. In the last minute of cooking, add the mixed mung beans, just to soften a little. Add to the bowl with the barley and remaining ingredients and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper.

Feeling crabby

Crabs. Sweet, succulent, tender. There is not enough food-porn terminology to describe just how groin-grabbingly good fresh crab is*.

From crab and corn dumplings at yum cha to deep fried soft shell crab in Far North Queensland to chilli mud crab in Singapore: crab is irresistible on any menu. Why then, despite buying octopus and squid, mussels and sardines and Moreton Bay bugs, have I never purchase whole crab? Jewel coloured and art-like, I have always overlooked them. Not overlooked: avoided.

Little return for too much hard work. A disparity between effort and reward.

Cooking crabs is as simple as any other seafood. Despite the bad reputation, seafood is relatively easy and relatively forgiving. It is better to undercook than overcook. I have found that seafood never suffers from being returned to the heat. The theory behind cooking crab is just like any other shellfish: plunge into boiling water, return to the boil, cook for a ‘bit’ (that’s the part that is a little tricky**), refresh in cool water***.

There the simplicity ends.

It took me, with kitchen-helper assistance, 45 minutes to extract the flesh from the claws and body. Whole blue swimmer crab yields about a third of its weight in meat (this is pretty standard for all whole crab). So my three little crabs gave us merely a handful of crab meat. Paltry would be an accurate assessment.

And messy. Very messy. It is not exaggeration that we flicked crab all over each other, the bench and the floor. We missed the ceiling. Probably. I had to have a shower before I returned to the kitchen. “Crabby” would be an apt description.

After the harrowing 45 minutes flesh-extraction process, we wound up with a small pile of wobbly undercooked meat.

Luckily, I remembered that Thomas Keller deliberately does this with lobster, finishing off the cooking process by poaching the undercooked meat in beurre monte just prior to serving. Situation saved. This does make the meat a little richer, but the butter enhances the flavour and keeps the flesh soft.

Delicate and rich, I needed something to cut through the butter and yet not over-power the crab. Salad: a dressing made with the juice and rind of home grown limes. Peppery rocquette. Shaved fennel and cucumber. Avocado and green onions. But something extra. Experimenting with a Belinda Tuckwell recipe, I finished the salad with green-tea salt.

In all honesty, given the time, effort and resultant scrubbing of self and kitchen, crab is indeed more work than it is pleasure.

On the other hand, the kitchen-helper gave it seven thumbs up. Even after the industrial clean up.

* The Simpsons, “Guess who’s coming to criticize dinner”, 1999 (Season 11, Episode 3)
** Which is fine, once you have a good idea of how long it takes to cook a crab (this thing is, it differs from crab to crab depending on variety and size). Boil a 300 g crab about five minutes is a good rule of thumb. I got this wrong.
*** All things keep cooking with residual heat even after you take them away from the heat source. With shell fish this is even more pronounced as the shell retains the heat. Plunging into ice water stops the cooking process.

Crab and green-tea salt salad

Serves 2

1 tbsp sea salt flakes
1 tbsp green tea leaves
Finely grated rind of two limes
4 blue swimmer crabs
50 gm chilled butter, cut into 1 cm cubes
2 tbsp olive oil
Juice of two limes
2 long green onions, finely sliced
1 bulb fennel, quartered and shaved
1 cucumber, thinly sliced into rounds
1 avocado, diced
150 gm rocquette (three large handfuls)

For the salt: finely grind salt, tea and rind in a mortar and pestle until a fine powder. Spread on foil and place in a moderate oven for 5-10 minutes to dry. Remove and set aside.

For the crab: bring a large saucepan of water to the boil. Add 4 tbsp salt. Plunge crabs into the boiling water. Return to the boil. Cook crabs for 5 minutes, then plunge into iced water. To extract meat: press down on the ‘tail’ and peel the carapace from the crab (the hard shell of the body). This will strip away icky internal organs. Rinse under cold water. Extract the meat. Tricky, and messy. The body will have some meat, as will the large legs and claws. Crack the shell and gently pull the flesh from the shell. (Alternatively, use prawns or grilled fish or buy the meat already stripped).

If the crab is not fully cooked, or to enhance the flavour, make buerre monte. Heat 3 tbps water in a saucepan. With a whisk, incorporate the butter piece by piece until all melted and combined. Add the crab and heat through for three to four minutes, until opaque and cooked. Turn off the heat (the crab can rest in this mixture for around 15 minutes without losing heat or over cooking). Just before serving, strain the crab.

For the salad: Whisk the oil and lime juice together until emulsified. Add the spring onions, fennel, cucumber and avocado. Just before serving, toss through the rocquette.

To serve: Pile the salad onto a plate. Top with crab meat and sprinkle with green-tea salt.

To market, to market

I do this all year round. In summer, when it’s sometimes like a sauna, even at seven in the morning. In winter when it’s still dark when I leave home and I wear a ski jacket and gloves and a hat and boots and a scarf. On days when we’re lucky enough to have rain and I get soaked and have to dry off and change when I’m done.

Before work. On the weekend. Sometimes I sneak out in my lunch break, for a quick fix.

The market* is both familiar and unexpected. Predicable in its seasonal rhythm, the static location of the Meat, Fish and Rabbit Building, the Deli Hall and the open air fruit and vegetable aisles, the familiar faces of the regular stall holders and providores**. Unpredictable in so far as the seasons are a little unpredictable – blink and I’ll miss the five week season of the cox’s orange pippin, my favourite apple in the whole world. Fickle in that stall holders will carry hot-housed out-of-season produce (oh the horror of mid-winter tomatoes). Surprising: the unusual and uncommon – salsify and purple Congo potatoes and fresh pistachios and rabbit and guinea fowl. Pine mushrooms and slippery jacks. Red wine washed manchego. Rabbit and prune ravioli.

When I first moved here, a little over four years ago, the market was first place I saw that little flash of recognition in someone’s eye. In an unfamiliar city full of strangers and new things, in a new house without even a coffee table, I felt at home at the trestle tables stacked with green things and the glass cases full of cheese and olives. The day my kitchen ceiling fell in, after the bathtub exploded (it was a serious leak) I went to the market before I called a plumber.

Shopping at the market makes some things easier. We hear about ‘eat local’ and ‘organic is better’ and ‘think about food miles’. Sure, not everything sold in markets is local or organic or ethically produced. And I’m not a slave to these principles. But if and when I do think about these things, the personal interaction between me and the stall owners makes it easier to make informed choices. I can ask where the tomato / cheese / garlic / lettuce is from and the person behind the cash box can tell me because they know. Chances are they bought it from the person who grew it. Unlike at the supermarket, where the person behind the cash register often can’t even identify the vegetables for the purpose of scanning it for price***.

Occasionally I go with an idea of what I want to make only to be completely flummoxed when whatever it is I want isn’t available (what, no watercress? But it was here last week! No zucchini flowers? Only on Saturdays? Dill? Just sold out...). But mostly I go without a shopping list, without an idea of what I’m going to cook. I’m really not a very methodical person. I walk there, I browse, I connect, relax, unwind and find inspiration. I buy enough food for the next few days, knitting together in my head a menu, mentally adding up the cost (much cheaper than the supermarket. And so fresh!)

When I get home from the market, I spread everything out on the bench, and survey my horde.

Today: a bunch of radishes, smallish and red; Italian flat leaf parsley and dill and mint; five very small zucchini; lemons; navel oranges; two bulbs of fennel; shallots; red pepper; small cucumbers; sheep’s milk feta cheese; a small chicken; natural yoghurt; unripe pears; six ripe tomatoes; mixed olives.

Ideas:

1. Finely slice zucchini into rounds. Pour over boiling water and then refresh in ice water. Drain. Finely chop parsley, dill and mint – about 1/3 cup in total. Toss zucchini with herbs, sea salt and a dash of olive oil and lemon juice. Pile into a shallow bowl and crumble over a little feta cheese.

2. Shave fennel, radishes and pears with a mandolin. Toss with olive oil and finely chopped dill. Season to taste and serve scattered with shaved parmesan or pecorino cheese and poached chicken.

3. Make Greek salad. Roughly chop into similar sized pieces: cucumber, tomatoes, capsicum and red onion. Toss with torn parsley, mint, dill, olives and crumbled feta. Drizzle with lemon juice and olive oil. Season. Eat.

And in a few days time, when the fridge and the fruit bowl are empty, I’ll walk back over and do it all again.

* It is always the market. I do live in a city of many open air and covered markets, but this particular market is my market, the closest and most familiar to me, therefore it is ‘the market’. I have been to other markets, including the giant pan-Asian markets that are half an hour away by bus and the posh more expensive ones south of the river. When I have serious cravings for Vietnamese food in particular I will stock up on dried lotus beans and Thai and Vietnamese herbs and green pawpaw and mango, banana flowers and other bits and pieces less easy to find at the market.

** I have a poulterer. I love that I have a poulterer. I have a cheesemonger. Cheesemonger is such an old fashioned word. Is it because there are hardly any cheesemongers anymore? Is there a better word that I have just forgotten?

*** I’m told I can be a little snipey with the checkout staff sometimes. But it’s not like the things they sell in supermarkets are even that exotic. It’s broccoli for goodness sake. BROCOLLI.

Pear and fennel salad

2 just-ripe Williams pears
1 1/2 bulbs fennel
4 small salad onions
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp verjuice (verjuice is a bit sweeter than vinegar and lemon juice)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup frozen peas
1 tbsp finely chopped dill
1 tbsp finely chopped parsley
2 poached chicken breasts (I poached a whole chicken the day before*)
Pinch sea salt
Shaved parmesan cheese

Quarter pears , remove core and finely slice lengthways. Quarter fennel , remove core and finely slice lengthways (if you find the taste of raw fennel a little strong, blanch by pouring boiling water over and then drain). Halve onions and finely slice length ways. Toss in a large bowl with vinegar, verjuice and oil.

Cook frozen peas, drain and add to salad, along with the sliced poached chicken.

Toss through herbs and sea salt.

Serve, scattered with shaved parmesan. I finished mine off with a little parsley oil.

* To poach whole chicken, place chicken in a large saucepan and cover with water (you can add chopped onion, carrots, celery etc if you like, but not necessary. Do not add salt). Bring to the boil, and then lower to a slow simmer. Cook for about 20-25 minutes, then turn off heat and cover with lid. Cool until just warmer than room temperature – remove flesh from chicken. I retain the cooking liquid and carcass to make stock. Or just poach chicken breasts – simmer in water or stock until cooked, about 10 minutes.

Love in the time of borage

I'm not into doing things because some consumerist zeitgeist dictates it.

For me Valentine's Day is just one of those days when I experience a general resentment of consumerism gone mad. I hate feeling like I’m expressing my deepest care and desire because a Hallmark marketing drive says so.

I ignore it, I dismiss it, and then am vaguely surprised when someone else suggests we do something a little bit special.

The suggestion was too, too seductive: no presents, not a candlelit restaurant table or a snugly little weekend away (I love all those things, I just get ridiculously resentful when it’s expected). Just a simple dinner at home. But a special one. Details were up to me.

So I went to market on Sunday to buy ingredients for the unplanned / hastily planned Valentine’s Day dinner. In my head (and indeed, requested of me) was an entré of chervil and Moreton Bay Bug salad (so sweet. so cheap).

But when you leave things until the last minute, and don't turn up to the market until closing time, your options are limited.

No bugs. No chervil. Some frozen crayfish tails, at $65 per kg. Not going to happen. At least I got hold of a couple of duck breasts for main course.

But what there was, at my favourite grocery stall which was packing up, was a $2 table. Including the last little box of borage flowers.

Sure it's a bit twee, a floral entre for St Valentine's Day. But also intriguing - I've never used borage before. You don't see it every day. And sometimes things that look a bit romantic are a bit romantic. And sometimes there's nothing wrong with being a bit romantic.

I’d seen a recipe that had borage flowers as a garnish for bug salad. Bugs weren’t on offer, but I thought maybe another kind of sea creature might marry well. The offerings were limited, but a mountain of tiny little whitebait caught my eye, much, much smaller than I’d ever seen. Each was half an inch long at best. So. Bait and weedy looking flowers for the day of love. It is, I guess, what you make of it that matters.

I came home and consulted the archives.

According to my herb and spice compendium*, the “whole plant is covered with fine bristly hairs, conjuring a ‘don’t touch me’ demeanour”. A nice irony for Valentine’s Day for the hostile.

The Welsh name for borage is ‘llanwenlys’ which means ‘herb of gladness’, and Pliny wrote that it eliminates sadness and makes a person glad to be alive. And it really is very pretty.

The book say it has a sweet slightly cucumber-like flavour. A quick rethink resulted in cucumber and borage flower salad with little crispy whitebait fritters**.

Sous vide duck breast with creamed corn and mushroom duck sauce***.

And dessert was a variation on a mille feuille - a stack a puff pastry with hazelnut, pistachio and almond cream and fresh raspberries.

With champagne of course.

* Spice Notes by Ian Hempill
** The whitebait fritters are simple (from February Australian Gourmet Traveller) - lemon rind, 50 corn flour, 250 g fresh whitebait. Mix. Smoosh into fritter shapes. Shallow fry in hot olive oil.
*** The duck was a recipe straight out of The French Laundry Cookbook (I substituted Swiss brown mushrooms for morels, morels being both unavailable and prohibitively expensive). Page 172 if you are interested.

Borage Salad

Julienne three very small whole cucumbers. Toss with salt, and a teaspoon each of olive oil and champagne vinegar, and half a tablespoon each of finely minced salad onion and finely chopped chives. Just before serving, toss through the borage flowers (about 1/4 cup).

Panzanella, past and present

I am not very good at following recipes

I like ideas. I tend to treat recipes as a general guideline. Often I buy cookbooks just to look at the pictures. It’s an approach that has some draw backs when it comes to anything involving gelatine.

I struggle with the concept of ‘authentic’ food. That is, with the argument that unless a recipe is executed in a certain way it isn’t ‘really’ that food at all. I get very confused very quickly when I start down this line of thought.

It’s not that I dispute that certain foods have traditional execution, nor that certain foods have specific historical origins.

It’s more that I am uncomfortable with any tendency to essentialise culture. When we try to fix a food, really pin it down, deny change or innovation or variation, we are starting too, to essentialise the culture the food is connected to. In making the food absolute, we also start to separate the food from its immediate current cultural context (which changes), and fix it at a point in time, somewhere in that culture’s past. We are making all kinds of assumptions about what is real about a culture, about then being more real (and maybe even better) than now.

We may eat the same food our grandparents ate, but we eat it for a different reason, in a different time, sometimes in a different place.

Take this too far, however, and we run the risk of losing what is special and meaningful about food and its place in our cultures. We risk making what we eat empty of any symbolism at all – a thing completely independent of any context, other than flavour.

I think of recipes as being an expression of concept: the way of living in a certain culture, a certain time and place. To me, what is important about a recipe is the motivation, the story behind the ingredients and method, not the ingredients and the method themselves.

Some of my favourite ‘recipes’ originated as a direct response to the immediate local environment. Most are grounded in seasonality, availability and practicality. Abundant, fresh and diverse seafood? Make bouillabaisse. It doesn’t matter to me that I don’t have scorpion fish (the local fish of the port of Marseille, where the recipe originated). It will still be bouillabaisse for me. You prefer hard boiled eggs to poached eggs and don’t like anchovies? I think we can still make Caesar salad.

Yesterday’s bread and a basket full of ripe tomatoes? It can only be Panzanella, regardless of whether I have basil (I don’t), whether I toast and/or soak the bread or whether we’re in Tuscany (although this last one would certainly improve matters).

The recipe represents the past and the timeless. The act of cooking expresses the practical reality of what it is in the fridge right now. Somewhere in between the two we are creating, maintaining and continuing the cultures within which we eat.

In the following and the not following of a recipe we have an opportunity to remember the past and another place, and at the same time tell a story about how we, here and now, actively bring that past with us into the present.

Panzanella, as made for lunch today*

Serves 2

1/3 loaf left over bread. In this case, a green olive white flour loaf.
250 g cherry tomatoes
½ red onion, sliced into very thin wedges
½ bulb fennel, very thinly sliced
1 cucumber, peeled, de-seeded and thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, crushed
Juice ½ lemon
3 tbsp finely chopped parsley
Good slurp oil oil
About 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Sea salt

Tear the bread into largish chunks (about 1 ½ inch cubes). In a large fry pan, toast bread with a little olive oil until a bit crunchy on the outside but still soft-ish on the inside. Set aside.

Cut the cherry tomatoes in half, and squeeze the juice and the seeds of each half into a bowl. Throw the squished tomatoes into the (now empty) frypan and turn off the heat (I find the residual heat is enough to bring out the sugars of the tomatoes a bit more).

Add balsamic vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, garlic, onions, cucumber and fennel to the tomato juices and season with sea salt, allow to marinate for about 5 minutes. Toss the tomatoes and bread through and serve.

* Recipe may change next time I make it.

Cycles of Cool

Like fashion, food has a varying cool factor. Giant plates, towering constructions, tiny servings, set menus, no menus, share plates. Like acid-wash denim and shoulder pads, what is ‘in’ comes and goes. Sun-dried tomatoes were the new black, then semi-dried, then fresh, then heirloom*. Tomato sorbet, tomato powder, tomato foam.

My aunt recently complained that you rarely see cheesecake for dessert in restaurants anymore. Sure, it’s in cafes and supermarket freezers, but somehow it’s just not cool enough for places with tablecloths. On the other hand, once considered the domain of the children’s table, selections of ice-creams and gelati are appearing back on menus, at adult prices.

The prosciutto melon antipasto staple of, well, Italy since the Roman Empire, and the early 1980s everywhere else, has experienced a long and unjustified exile from the tables of the cool. More justifiably shunned is the shrimp/mango combination of the 90s, pineapple and ham in any combination (yes, including on pizza), fish with passionfruit sauce. Possibly the direst example of this is any salad featuring tinned fruit and/or tinned fish/meat. Like acid wash denim and leggings, some things will never, ever be cool in my book. Pairing fruit with meat is a risky and slightly naff thing to do.

And then, resurgence – the Moroccan tagine (my favourite combinations include lamb with both dried and fresh pears), Vietnamese green papaya salad with mackerel, Indian curries with pickle and Thai green mango salad with prawns or pork or chicken. Never really on the agenda, and therefore never really off it, are the placeholders like roast pork and applesauce, turkey with cranberry, ham and chutney.

I think that one of the things I find difficult about fruit and meat combination is that the sweetness of fruit, especially when cooked, can be cloying – far too sugary for my tastebuds’ savoury expectations. So the sweetness would need to balance with salt and sour and sharp – which is what the Thai and Moroccan and Indian fruit/meat combinations achieve so well. Something also achieved so perfectly with the Italian melon wrapped in prosciutto served with dry prosecco. The problem is – whilst it tastes great, it still sounds so uncool**.

Which completes the cycle – can it ever be cool? Modern, European inspired cooking that features fruit alongside protein? The answer is yes - in the hands of the masters. One example – Thomas Keller, genius behind the French Laundry, includes on the current tasting menu combinations including foie gras with apple relish; clams with pomegranate and rabbit with apricots***.

So I think maybe it’s ok to experiment a little with meat and fruit (if Thomas Keller is doing it, it must be cool). Besides which, I adore fruit. Especially summer fruit. Especially stone fruit. I have a theory that if you stick to what is in season, then pretty much everything you pick will go with everything else (this is also kind of like my approach to fashion, which is: providing everything in your wardrobe would be worn by Audrey Hepburn, then everything will go with everything. Frequently not on trend, but always approaching stylish).

And since I’m rushing headlong into what might be the kitchen equivalent of being a fashion tragic, I might as well add the culinary leg-warmers to my ra-ra skirt, in the form of roasted red capsicum. The cycle is complete.

* on this, I have a theory that people in Italy laughed at us the whole way through this experience – sun-dried and semi dried tomatoes traditionally being a way to preserve the abundance of summer over winter. Necessity and commonsense, not a fad.

** Also, devils on horseback. Dried prunes, wrapped in bacon (bacon, not something fancy like jamon) and then grilled until crispy. I recently went to friend’s place to play cluedo and consumed an entire plate of these. Which probably firmly establishes once and for all where I sit on the cool-uncool scale.

*** The fruit / seafood combination is one that I expected would never, ever, be made to work (except in limited, Asian inspired combinations, where I think the presence of ginger and/or chilli makes everything magical). However, a restaurant I am remarkable fond of serves an entré of smoked trout and thinly sliced nectarine and salmon roe, which is sweet and salty and altogether lovely.


Turkey and peach salad with roasted red peppers*

Peaches and capsicums are abundant in the market at the moment – the fennel is
not properly in season yet, but I craved the aniseed crunch to complete this flavour combination. On reflection, finely shaved celery tossed with toasted fennel seeds would be an excellent substitute and would keep the ingredients to fruit and vegetables at the height of their summer perfection.

2 for main course or 4 as an appetiser

2 yellow peaches (note that slip-stone peaches will be easier)
2 white peaches
1 red onion
1 red capsicum
1 small bulb fennel
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil
1 ½ cups shredded cooked turkey (I slowly braised a 1 kg rolled turkey breast in the oven in white wine and verjuice for about 45 minutes, then rested it for 15 minutes. Smoked chicken or roast duck would also work)

Cut the peaches in half, slip out the stone, and then slice finely. Finely mince half the red onion. Combine with the peaches, gently toss with olive oil and balsamic vinegar until coated, season with sea salt. Set aside to marinate.



Roast the capsicum whole at 180ºC for about half and hour, until the skin is starting to blacken. Remove and allow to cool. When cool enough to touch, pull out the stalk and slip the skin off. This is very messy. Finely slice the capsicum.

Finely mince the remaining ½ onion, toss with strips of capsicum, olive oil and balsamic vinegar and sea salt.

Finely slice the fennel (you could use a mandolin). Toss with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and sea salt.

Arrange the peach slices on a plate, lay strips of capsicum on top, then place shredded turkey and carefully pile shaved fennel on top.

* With much drawn from Thomas Keller’s ‘Salad of Black Mission Figs with Roasted Sweet Peppers and Shaved Fennel’ in the French Laundry Cookbook

First Impressions

I was dressed as a pirate the first time I met the person I hope to spend the rest of my life with. It was not a fancy dress party.

I did not fall in love that night. Or on any of the half dozen dates we went on over the next few months. In fact, not long after we met I fell in love with someone else.

Over a year later, heart-broken, defeated, deflated and no longer dressed as a pirate, I did fall in love. With that person who always made me laugh, made me think, made me look forward to the next phone call or email or text message.

Despite the oddness of our first meeting, it is our second first date that is the more powerful memory. Drinking cava*, eating churros, deciding, on the spur of the moment to take a holiday to Ireland**, realising a comfort and comfortableness in just being my silly, off-beat, opinionated, passionate, intelligent self. I fell in love on our second first date.

Two moments, two chances.

I recently met my brother’s ‘new’ girlfriend for the first time.***

It turns out she is allergic to onions.

My brother, who has been dating her for nearly 18 months, forgot to tell me.

I have friends who are celiac and lactose intolerant. Who have nut allergies and egg allergies. Who are diabetic. Who get migraines from the moulds in blue cheeses. Vegetarian and vegan. Who eat kosher or halal.

It is not hard to cook for any of these people. It is a pleasure, maybe even more of a pleasure, because there is a challenge to creating beautiful food within restrictions. In not just preparing a ‘normal’ meal, minus some element, but in preparing something delicious, whole in itself, with nothing lacking.

It’s not hard, as long as you know. So the smoked salmon entre, laced with finely minced Spanish onion (not just large dice, able to be easily and politely picked out and set aside), could not have been a worse first impression for either of us. She, embarrassed and subtly scaping off the offending poison, and me, mortified that I should have served something so inedible.

It’s a beautiful salad, delicate and balanced (and very easy, a bonus for a working girl rushing to impress at a mid-week dinner party). Salmon, red onion, cucumber, avocado, lemon juice, pepper.

And it would have been just as easy to replace the onion. Coriander leaves. Torn basil leaves. Red chilli. Preserved lemon. Shaved fennel. Ruby grapefruit segments. The list goes on.

The meal wasn’t a complete disaster. Luckily, the main course was entirely allium-free, and I restrained myself from creating a delicious onion-y dessert.

* Spanish sparkling wine – like champagne. Just Spanish.
** We went, nine months later.
*** He’s been seeing her for a while. But on the other side of the world.

Poisson Salad*

Serves 4 as an entre

100 g smoked salmon, cut or torn into small pieces
½ avocado, diced into 1 cm cubes
1 Lebanese cucumber, peeled, de-seeded and diced into 1 cm cubes
Juice of 1 lemon
½ Spanish onion, very finely minced. Or non-poisonous ingredient of your choosing.
Crisp baby cos lettuce leaves, to serve.

Lightly toss all ingredients except the lettuce in a large bowl, with a splash of olive oil and a dash of cracked black pepper.
Spoon into lettuce leaves and serve.

* It’s a pun.