Perfect beach lunch

We spent the last four days at Railay in coastal Thailand. After 2 days of patchy rain and one hell of a storm (as we should expect, as it is rainy season in the region) the sun came out and I had the opportunity to tan my Melbourne-winter pale legs.

Altering between the beach, our beautiful pool and the bar we managed to find what I thought was the perfect beach goer lunch.


A spicy som tam salad (green papaya bashed with dried prawns, fish sauce, chilli, lime, garlic, peanuts, snake beans and tomato... no doubt more and more as well), served on the same plate with some marinated and fried chicken thigh and some of my favourite sticky rice. Lengths of more snake beans and cucumber where the textural garnish.

Pretty healthy, really speedy and bloody amazing flavours. No doubt I will be recreating this at home in Melbourne come summer.

My Tuna and Bean Salad

Amnesty Post

I make this salad quite often but it has been maing a more regular appearance at my house, as PDC is training like a mad man for up coming half marathons. Lots of healthy protein, low GI, fresh and tastes amazing. All the boxes are ticked.

My Tuna and Bean Salad

1 tin sliced (or at least chunky) tuna - the fancy bottled preserved tuna I brought last week at Mediterranean Wholesalers is at the highest end of the pantry tuna scale

1 tin Edgel 4 bean mix - the other mixed bean brands are too stodgy

1 handful of raw green beans

2 handfuls cherry tomatoes

2 stems spring onions

1 hot red chilli

EVOO

Sherry vinegar

S+P

Rinse and drain the tinned beans

Chop the cherry tomatoes and finely slice the green beans, spring onion and chilli

Toss together the beans, tomato, green beans, spring onion, chilli and tuna

Add a splash of EVOO, sherry vinegar and season well

Eat immediately but leave a small bowl in the fridge for a loved one to munch on later.

A 'hot' salad

So what to cook when you don't want to cook?

What about a hot smoked trout salad.

This is some of my 'lazy' cooking, a bit of an assembly job really but done with a balanced, kick your taste buds into gear flavours. A just can't bear to eat dull, boring food. Life's too short.

Whole foods are an important part of what I eat day to day but like all other normal people I have a soft spot (visible at bad angles! ;)) for dark chocolate Tim tams or those kettle potato chips.

Note to self: must find a smart way to convince Mr Run Half Marathons, aka PDC, that we don't need them in the pantry, especially since I have been making a concerted effort for our 'Fancy Party' in a couple of months.

Any way we are actually here for the hot salad, and god Melbourne was hot today and this salad made it feel a whole lot saner!

Hot smoked trout salad with taramasalata, baby pink eyes and fennel

About 100g smoked trout, flake straight off the fish skeleton

1 tbsp taramasalata

1/4 avocado, chunky bits

1/3 lebanese cucumber, sliced

1/3 baby fennel, shaved with your vegie peeler, tips reserved for the salad

A bit of spanish onion, sliced as fine as possible

1/2 a baby cos, rough shred

splash of sherry vinegar

larger splash of EVOO

S+P

A squeeze of lemon

Extras

A soft boiled egg

Baby potatoes (baby pink eyes rock), steamed

sugar snaps, steamed

Smear the taramasalata on your plate

Toss the salad together with the dressing ingredients and season

Serve over half the smeared taramasalata, add the other seasoned bits

Eat with a glass of 'far-too-cold-to-be-kosher' Beaujolais

Bring on tomorrow, 43C again!

Eclectic produce this week

Fresh nuts are one of the most beautiful things, just like the almonds a few months ago, the flavours are delicate and colours bright. I am usually also surprised at how inexpensive they are, perhaps people don't understand how much of a special delicacy they are and how little time they are around for. These are brand named kiwi berries, essentially just that, mini kiwis with no fury skin, just pop them straight in your month, oh and incredibly cute!
The erratic weather has made my watercress go crazy, it's now trying to grow out of the base of the bay tree pot and into the wild of my untamed garden. Not enough yet for a salad, but a very pretty garnish or a grazing nibble while watering the herbs.
Enjoy the weather while it lasts!

The customer is sometimes very right

Restaurant Rules;
If you are right, make sure the waiter doesn’t treat you like an idiot.

Out for a casual dinner on Boxing Day evening, I ate at Pizza e Birra in St Kilda. Having dined there also a few months back I was looking forward to an alternate to my usual i Carusi pizza joint.
Every thing was going fine, apart from my warm Campari soda on arrival, (not enough ice combined with warm mixers, don’t make a very refreshing aperitif), but I coped.
After some usual Italian inspired entrees, bresaola, prosciutto and crumbed mozzarella, our pizza and salad were delivered. The pizza was as ordered, and served with a crisp base and generous toppings, yet the salad, something along the lines of Insalata Verde; baby spinach, beans, asparagus, peas and goats cheese, just didn’t look right.
First impressions were that it was overdressed and wilted, so I dug into the pizza until I felt the need for some greens.
Upon picking up the bowl, it was really warm, I stuck in the service cutlery and it wilted further in front of me. After a glance at PDC for reassurance, I gave the eye to our waiter.
“I don’t think our salad looks right and …”, as he took it out of my hand he finished “and the bowls warm”. He took it back to the kitchen.
The thing about this is I am a pretty easy going customer, I rarely return food or complain, unless it is a serious oversight (like a small metal nail in a scallop sashimi dish at Tetsuyas a few years back!), so I was seriously surprised when the waiter came back to our table a few minutes later with the same salad and a story that he was new and didn’t know that it was a warm salad and that’s how it was meant to be…
Well, my restaurant experience flared in me now, “okay sure, but the menu said, spinach and this is rocket (pointing at the leaves), it also said, asparagus which is missing and we have zucchini and no peas”, “So I’ll bring a new salad them?” he asked, I nodded with a polite smile. A good waiter could have saved this situation, yet ours didn’t stand a chance, with one of the lamest stories in the book, I’m new. I really just didn’t care; I just wanted a salad that didn’t look like it had been under the salamander.
As we finished our pizza, our new salad was delivered, to my silent amusement, the chef had stood his/her ground and the vegetables were all warm, the rocket was now spinach and all the right bits were there.

It’s a shame because as PDC summed up, it sounded such a promising combination, yet it was so wrong. Overdressed salad leaves, in a hot bowl with hot vegetables and soft goats curd dolloped over the top, inviting it was not.
And an idiot I am not, especially when I have to tell the waiter that he forgot to put our wine on the bill, along side the $11 they charged us for the salad. (Of which I don’t mind as we did technically eat it, but again a good waiter would not charge for something that they even noticed was not ‘right’.)

Restaurant Rules; if it is wrong make sure you let them know why, sometimes it’s a mistake, sometimes it’s just a wrong chef.
Jack

Insalata Caprese instead of coffee?

Shopping in the city with all the other crazys, just before Christmas, I was washed out by a sideways thrusting tropical style storm. The car was at least a kilometre away and definitely too far away to be bothered about the possible parking ticket in the torrential down fall. So I slipped into the side of the GPO and to a table at the Federal Coffee Palace.

I know they have great coffee here and that was my intention until I remembered seeing a gorgeous Caprese style salad in someone elses bowl a few months back. I had food envy at the time and decided that today, despite the very coffee friendly weather, I wanted to eat the FCP version of the Italian flag for myself.

Insalata Caprese is all about produce, the best fresh mozzarella, ripe tomatoes and basil with generous seasoning and grassy extra virgin olive oil.
This version at FCP was true to the tradition, it had all the characteristics and was so pretty I just had to share with you. I don't think they had a chef in the kitchen that day, they had a food stylist, I just could not pick a thing in the elegant presentation of this dish. I've recently seen less care put into the presentation of three hat restaurant food (sorry, yes, and I will post on it!)

So December Dish of the Month
Caprese salad - Federal Coffee Palace

I did also have a coffee, quickly as the rain had finished and I was sure the intuitive parking inspectors were on their way to my car, and I was glad I did, the perfect Melbourne experience.
Jackie

Good food karma salad

This salad means a different kind of good food karma to me, than the topical SOLE food concept. It means that I have found a way to make a satisfying dinner from bits that may well have died in my fridge in the next few days. Now for some this can be easy or this can be hard, for me it's easy and hard in the same breath, unfortunately for me, I'm a bit fussier than the next...

Tonight's dinner started with some wild mushroom and chicken liver pate that was left over from dinner with PDC last night, he laughed when I decided to keep the small wedge. So the challenge was set!

What else was on hand to use up?
Watercress that was already picked and washed, just waiting for me to use it
Boudin Blanc, one of the highlights also from dinner last night

Next, I knew that these bits needed a sweet component, I instantly dreamt of figs, yet they are still a while out of season so fig vincotto would have to do.

I decided to play around with a way to incorporate these bits, so the base of the salad became the smeared pate, napped with the fig vincotto.

On top got piled the salad, and then after a quick couple of shots in the daylight saving twilight I devoured my rich and somewhat French inspired salad while still slightly warm.

Truffled boudin blanc, mushroom pate and fig vincotto salad
Boudin blanc, blanched
Mushroom and chicken liver pate
Baby pink eye potatoes
White zucchini
Watercress, washed and picked
Sugar snap peas
Du Puy style lentils, cooked in chicken stock until soft
Pullet free range eggs, soft boiled and peeled

Dressing
1/4 extra virgin olive oil
Dash white truffle oil
1/4 fig vincotto
1/2 verjus
S+P

Boil the baby potatoes and remove when just cooked, in the same water blanch the sugar snaps and then drain well.
Cut the zucchini into half moons and pan fry until golden, keep warm in the oven.
Build into a mixing bowl; watercress, warm zucchini, halved baby potatoes, quartered eggs, sugar snaps and some lentils. Add dressing components and toss gently.

Pan fry some slices of boudin blanc until golden on both sides.

Smear the plate with the pate and drizzle some more fig vincotto, top with the warm salad and then the hot boudin blanc.

Enjoy with good karma...
Jack

Rocket from my garden

The possums have not cottoned on to this tasty addition to my garden. They manage to eat everything else but I think have not (yet) worked out how spicy and fresh this is, perhaps they prefer the young leaves out of the center of my succulents :(

I sprinkled a few seeds onto the soil outside my kitchen door a month ago and now I have a dark green, peppery spiced hedge.

I made a lazy salad tonight from the rocket and a few other bits in the fridge. A big day in regards to work so I felt I deserved the decadence of some cooked king prawns from a local fish monger. The highlight of the salad was a fresh nam prik style Thai dressing. Balancing the richness of the prawns and avocado the dressing livened up what would otherwise be a boring, if perfect warm weather salad, especially with a glass of Eden valley riesling.
When I think about this salad though, I realise what an Aussie salad it is ... smart fusion, no confusion, just great simple produce served fresh and alive on the palate.
Jack

Seasonal salad

I love this time of year. Some winter foods are still around and yet some Spring produce is becoming available.
This salad is inspired by what produce is beautiful in Melbourne at the moment.

Baby cos, blood orange, avocado and pistachio salad
I was in a rush when I made this salad to accompany a bowl of meaty spaghetti, so I just built it into the bowl.
~Torn baby cos leaves, then
~1/4 avocado, chopped
~1/2 blood orange, flesh cut from the skin and pith and a
~sprinkling of chopped pistachios (I brought them out of the shell, very dangerous for quick grazing, so they don't last long!)

I dressed this salad in my usual cheeky way, a spray of extra virgin olive oil (you can get EVOO sprays in the oil section of the supermarket) and then a spray of sherry vinegar (I think mine was from Essential Ingredient, but it has lasted so long I can't remember) and then some salt and pepper.
I know its VERY cheating but I find the salad dressing sorts itself out and seeps through the leaves as you eat.
Apart from a celebration of all the seasonally good things this salad offers some beautiful contrasts of flavours and textures and is particularly pretty in the colour palate it offers.
Arrrhhhh, ...Spring!
Jack