A few years ago for Christmas I got a mandoline. Not the musical instrument but the kitchen gadget that thinly slices vegetables with razor sharp metal blades. I was a little afraid of it to be honest, so it sat in the drawer til today, when I was motivated to use it by a recipe in Hetty McKinnon's new cookbook Neighbourhood (which is so good I've bought it for two friends' birthdays since it came out in September). I have to say the word "slaw" conjures visions of limp cabbage coated in mayonnaise. A white on white nightmare. But this! This is different. Vibrantly-hued vegetables (plus one piece of fruit) sliced super-fine, doused in sharp/sweet vinegar, offset with liberal dollops of creamy labneh and scattered with crunchy roasted pumpkin seeds. It's bright and beautiful and suitably spring-y. A big reward for a small act of kitchen bravery.
I've never been big on salad. It can't compete with a sandwich in the lunch stakes and I'm too lazy to whip up a whole separate dish to go along with whatever I'm making for dinner. It's not that I don't eat vegetables (though the name and focus of this blog might suggest otherwise), I just incorporate them into whatever I'm cooking - a soup, a pasta, a curry, risotto, thrown under a roast chicken... But! Along come a new breed of salad which is forcing me to reconsider my long-held position. These salads are robust, verging on hearty. They are colourful and crunchy. Best of all, they're the sort of thing you can make on a Sunday and have on hand for the week ahead. They're all about texture and contrasting flavours - soft, salty fetta, sweet dates, crunchy cabbage, toasted sesame seeds, bright lime...
I'd had this recipe bookmarked for months but was prompted to finally make it following the enthusiastic endorsement of my friend Joanna, who extolled its virtues as a store cupboard salad. Red cabbage keeps forever in the fridge, and the other ingredients I usually have on hand, so it can be made at a moment's notice. And only takes moments to make.
You know how all commercially made dips have a vaguely metallic aftertaste? You know how rock hard avocados are when you have a hankering for guacamole? You know how sometimes you can't be bothered roasting eggplants and picking off their blackened skin to make baba ghanouj? Well, the solution to all of your dip dilemmas is probably sitting in your fridge right now and you don't even know it. At least if your fridge is like mine and always contains a tub of Greek yoghurt.
Labneh is a Middle-eastern marvel - the result of pouring some thick yoghurt (with a little salt stirred in) into a cheesecloth or muslin-lined sieve set over a large bowl and left to drain in the fridge for a day or two. It's a soft, spreadable, infinitely adaptable cheese, which works wonderfully on sandwiches (it's delicious with roast vegetables, lamb or smoked salmon), as well as in salads (especially ones made with grains). Topped with lemon zest, sumac, parsley and pistachios, it becomes the most beautiful dip. Bright, tangy and bursting with flavour.
Morning, noon or night, there's something intensely satisfying about eggs. My appreciation for them started early with boiled eggs, which was a regular breakfast growing up. My dad used to draw elaborate faces on them for us, which we'd take ghoulish delight in decapitating. They were a common childhood dinner too, as the oozy yellow centres of cheese-filled jaffles. These days I most often eat my eggs scrambled - especially if I've got a bit of cream or an extra white or yolk to use up - or lately, fried in a hole cut in a single slice of bread, as per this genius blog post, which cooks both toast and egg simultaneously in a cast-iron skillet. But for a crowd, the best way to cook eggs (other than shakshuka, of course, which is equally effortless and delicious) is an omelette.
I'm not talking about delicate,
light, made-to-order numbers that will have you chained to the stovetop
in a flipping frenzy most of the morning but one big,
vegetable-packed, feta-fied, finished-under-the-grill number to cut in
thick wedges and serve with toast.
Packed with green vegetables and herbs, the salty punch of feta and soft sweetness of tomatoes, this is the sort of egg dish that works at any time of day. Have it with toast for breakfast, as a sandwich filling for lunch or with a glass of wine for dinner. If you have an egg, you are fed. If you have six, so are your friends.
Once every four years, I spend a month watching football. A month setting my alarm for the early hours of the morning, staggering up, bleary-eyed, turning the television on and surrendering sleep for the wonder of the World Cup. I love the crowds, I love the personalities (the countries! the haircuts! the celebrations! the heroes! the villains!), I love the drama, I love the football. And I love an excuse to cook for friends, like this Saturday, when Australia took on Chile at the entirely civilised hour of 8am Sydney time. I suppose I should have themed our meal to the cuisine of one of the countries involved, but really what it came down to was something I could make in between matches (Spain v The Netherlands - a cracker of a game - finished around 7am), so as not to miss a second of play. And so, shakshuka: a way to cook eggs for a crowd without being chained to the stove.
A staple of many Middle-eastern cuisines, shakshuka - traditionally made in a cast-iron skillet - consists of eggs poached in a tomato sauce enriched with onion and chilli.
This recipe, from one of my favourite blogs, Smitten Kitchen, adds smoky cumin and spicy paprika to the sauce and scatters fetta and parsley over the top. Served on a slice of toasted sourdough, it's utterly delicious - as satisfying as a Tim Cahill header into the back of the net in the second half... no matter what the final scoreline.
A minor miracle took place while I was away. The herbs in my window box did not die. This probably had less to do with divine intervention than it did the care of the thoughtful people staying in my apartment, the change of season and copious amounts of rain Sydney received in March/April, and (almost certainly) the absence of my black thumb for a month. In any case, to celebrate, I picked a bunch, chopped them up finely, combined them with lemon zest, salt and pepper and used the mixture to coat little balls of cheese I'd made from doing no more than draining yoghurt in the refrigerator overnight. I then ate it smeared on a rye cracker with smoked salmon and it was so good. The cheese is smooth and tart, fresh and light, a lovely counterbalance to the richness of the salmon. Jarred up, submerged in olive oil, they'd make lovely gifts, or a pretty addition to a cheese board.
They'd go well with other meats too I imagine, but particularly nicely with roast pumpkin or spinach or beetroot or anything else that pairs well with goat's cheese, which this quite ressembles - except in its dreamily spreadable consistency, its pricetag (if you too have herbs growing, it's really just the cost of a tub of yoghurt and a lemon) and - of course - in the novelty of having made it yourself.
My friend Gill gives the best presents. For Christmas this year I got a year's subscription to Bon Appétit. And, through the magic of the internet, the latest issue found its way not just to my letterbox in Australia, but onto my iPad here in Denmark. I don't know whether it was overconsumption of kanelsnurre (can there be such a thing?), or the sight of all the green in the markets and on the trees, or that I'd just had the most incredible dish featuring barley (with roasted Jerusalem artichokes and pickled onions) at a local restaurant here, but when I saw this recipe, I headed straight out to get the ingredients.
As an alternative to rice in risotto, barley is a revelation. As much as I love risotto, the heaviness of it is inescapable. I've no idea whether this is true or not - and no interest in my homegrown theory being disproven - but barley feels like it's good for you. It's brown for a start, nicely chewy and has a lovely natural nuttiness. The risotto technique suits it well, the lightly-toasted grains fed slowly with stock til they are plump and bursting with the fresh flavour of the herbs and spinach, bright with lemon, and rich with butter and cheese... and it still feels like it's good for you. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Like barley to your ribs.
