It might seem a little strange to use parsley as the primary ingredient, almost, in fact, the be-all and end-all of the plate I’ve chosen for this month’s recipe, but this salad’s precedent, tabouleh, is probably the most commonly known of all middle eastern salads, so I reckon it’s in good company.

Verdant leaf, the jewel glint of ruby grapefruit, sumac soused red onion, the salt sea punch of sardine and the lingering sweetness of artichoke – perfect fare for summer’s end (I am in acheter viagra Europe) or summer’s start, new love (in my case) or old love mingling with the sunshine.  I know because we ate this, having been living on amour and eau fraiche for a week, my love and I.

Ingredients

50 g flat leafed parsley

10 quarters of artichoke in oil

2 thick slices ciabatta, trimmed and cut into cubes

1 dozen black olives

1/4 red onion finely sliced soused in: 2tsp white balsamic or other sweet vinegar, pinch sea salt, very finely minced garlic clove, teaspoon or so of Sumac

4 walnuts halved, finely sliced

1 ruby red grapefruit

4 – 6 sardines

To serve:

Olive oil

White Balsamic or lime juice

Extra sumac

Method

Allow a handful each (about 50 grams in total) of flat leafed parsley – washed, shaken dry, and the toughest stalk snapped off.

Remove peel from a ruby red grapefruit and use a small, sharp pointed knife to fillet into segments, discarding pith and skin.

Allow to each 4 or 5 artichoke quarters, a half dozen olives, 4 walnut halves, finely sliced(too joyfully distracted for the photograph to remember them), a quarter of a red onion, sliced superfine and a couple slices of ciabatta bread, trimmed of crusts and cut into cubes to fry to golden brown in two tablespoons of hot olive oil.

My sardines were tinned – I don’t have the luxury of the Byron Bay or Ballina fish shops where you – lucky you – can find fresh sardines to lightly fry or throw on the barbie. Two to three per person makes light of your Omega 3 requirements and will make you live as long as a Sicilian.

Assemble the ingredients loosely onto a plate, douse with olive oil and a little balsamic and share.

Warning: the oily fish, the artichokes, the copious fruit and veg make up the legendary mediterranean diet and are by all accounts – including this one – aphrodisiacs. So careful who you serve this to. And when. And where.

Nadine Abensur is the director of the Mullumbimby Art Piece Gallery

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Dear Reader

I’m in Richmond upon Thames, meandering through childhood streets, taking it all very easy, I must say, so allow me please to meander my way into this recipe. You know how I like to prattle on. It’s therapeutic.

I don’t suppose London is the obvious choice for a health kick but here I am moments from the river, surrounded by parkland and it feels like holiday paradise to me. I’m here to visit family and friends and to help clear out my mother’s apartment. In fact, much has already gone, most of the kitchen paraphernalia for a start. So writing a recipe for this column poses challenges. No scales, no measuring jug, spoons, cups.

This wouldn’t bother me in the least but it’s you I worry about.

Still, between us, we’ll get there. I’ll improvise, I’ll talk you through, you’ll hazard a guess, follow your instincts. Here is a recipe as easy as these summer days are long. It’s 9.00 pm and the sun is high. I never would have guessed the visceral pull of this place, nor the depth of the space occupied by its people, but year in, year out, the pull is stronger, the old friendships deeper, more poignant, joyous.

Anyway, coming back to the health bit: I’ve resolved to use these weeks to spend more time on the things that usually bookend work – ballet/ballet barre classes almost every day – bliss – there are dance studios everywhere. I’ve even had classes at Ballet Rambert – can you imagine! And I’m walking, walking, walking. All of this calls for a slightly modified approach to eating because, I can tell you, the temptations are nefarious and many. The much discussed collapse of retail is startlingly evident here. Shop after shop (most of my favourite haunts) have moved or closed down. And in their place – and I can hardly believe the extent of it – are huge eateries. I can’t call them restaurants. Acres of large bakeries and patisseries, all with a continental origin – French (of course), Italian or Danish. Now, I have my food foibles and there are a good many things I avoid but I am no zealot when it comes to exclusions of the culinary kind.  If the health obsession of Byron Bay can make me more than a little wilful, the excess here is nudging me to a wholesome place I’ve been known to deride.

Hence these “brownies”. I came across them sometime ago, sitting – at the hairdresser’s I think – long enough to get the gist, not long enough to take precise notes, so these are made up and not bad at all, you’ll see.

In the normal scheme of things, I prefer to go cakeless than settle for an ersatz variety but seeing as sweet potatoes are one of my staples, the idea of turning them into pud appealed, so here goes:

Organic Cocoa for a truly delicious brownie.

Ingredients

4 large sweet potatoes

Jar of crunchy peanut butter

8 tblspns organic cocoa

8 tblspns maple syrup (or more to taste)

1 tspn sea salt

A hanful of chopped toasted walnuts (if you have them)

Cupful of dark chocolate chips (optional)

Method

Take the large sweet potatoes, the pink fleshed variety. Since I can’t weigh them, let me say that they are each about 15 cm long, 5 finger thick wide. Bake them for 35 – 40 minutes at 200 C till the flesh gives way to the touch. Peel off the skins which will come away at the gentlest pull.

Mash the potatoes in a large bowl, till fluffy. Add a whole jar (yup, a whole jar) of crunchy, peanut butter. Mine weighed 340g. Stir through voluptuously. Now add about eight tablespoons of the best, organic cocoa you can lay your hands on. Again, if you’re going to go for chocolate, go for it. Don’t skimp. I’d rather eat a small piece of something that actually does what it sets out to do, then be left hankering, chasing for flavour, satisfaction. Having said that, taste, adjust to your palate. Then pour in the maple syrup – what shall we say? Eight tablespoons? That should do it! Taste and see. You may want less. Or more. Then, because I’m a fashion victim and I doubt that anyone can resist the all rounded appeal of salt and sweet, scrunch in some sea salt.

Sea salt adds a little zesty crunch to the sweetness…

Now, I didn’t have them but if I had, I’d have added a handful of gently toasted walnuts and – don’t tell anyone – probably a handful of dark chocolate chips too. So do me a favour. Try that for me and let me know how it goes.

Either way, line a deep, flat tray  (iPad size, not much bigger) with baking parchment, lightly brushed with oil. Spread the fluffy, nutty, chocalaty mix over and bake for 35 – 40 minutes at 180C. This will have the effect of forming a crust on top, while leaving the insides, soft and moist, characteristics which qualify these for browniedom.

Allow to cool in the tin (although a little warmth is always appealing in a brownie, don’t you think?).

Then if you imagine I’ve gone the whole dairy free, sugar free, grain free hog, think again. I ate mine with a dollop of lactose free yoghurt. But that’s another story.

A word of advice: cut into 16 pieces. That’s all I’m saying.

Lots of love xxx

Nadine…

Nadine Abensur is the owner of Art Piece Gallery in Mullumbimby: artpiecegallery

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If you needed a way of telling the tourists from the locals, it would be to observe their dress code. The locals are wearing jackets and the tourists are still in shorts and spaghetti strap dresses. To them, it’s hot, while those of us who have been willing winter, or at least some drop in temperature, for weeks, can pretend it’s cold. Cold enough for soup even. This one is so easy, it’s almost embarrassing but I know it’s a keeper and I’ll tell you why. When I first came to Australia, I was a columnist for Delicious Magazine and this soup or a version of it was one of my early recipes. To this day, fifteen years later, people still tell me that it’s a recipe they cut out of the magazine and refer to. I guess because it’s soup at its most basic, homely, economical, warming and comforting.

I made a pot of it three nights ago, in the spirit of one feeding a family, except it’s just me, myself and I, so I’ve eaten it, pretty much breakfast, lunch and dinner since. Not complaining. It ages well.

I know it’s tempting to think of a vegetable soup like this as a place to throw in whatever’s at hand but I’m going to ask you to indulge me and make it just as I tell you, at least once. The balance of the recipe rights much that needs to be righted. There are no nightshades, no brassicas, no fungi and no cruciferous vegetables. Everything in it is calming to the senses, and easy in the belly.

This, by the way, serves 4 – 6 depending on your appetite, whether it’s the whole meal or only a part of a meal.

Method

Take two large carrots, peeled, a medium sized sweet potato, peeled, a bulb of fennel, round bottomed and firm (discard any wrinkled parts), the inner heart of a whole celery, (things get a little confusing here, so just to explain – the heart is the paler, younger looking part of celery, the whole of which is called a head and divides into individual ribs – got that?) So you need about four ribs of celery; two leeks, dark green tops discarded or set aside to make stock (the young boy who served me was genuinely excited “hardly anybody ever buys these,” he said) and pretty much a whole head of garlic, 5–6 cloves anyway, a tablespoon or two of olive oil, a litre of chicken stock, shop bought or home made (vegetable stock if you must), a can of butter beans (Fagioli Bianchi Di Spagna – doesn’t that sound a whole lot more exciting?) including its liquid, a hunk of aged Parmesan and handfuls of the fennel fronds and celery leaves of which you should have plenty, plus parsley from the market or your garden. Then salt and pepper and that’s it. No fuggy herbs please, that is no thyme, rosemary or sage, all too potent for this gentle soup.

Chop the carrots, not too small, not too big, the size of dice is good, same with the sweet potato and fennel. You can chop the celery and leeks a child’s finger thick. Peel the garlic cloves. Leave them whole.

Fennel bulb – delivers a delicious aroma to this cialisfrance24.com comforting soup.

Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan and add in the vegetables, first the carrots, then the rest, in no particular order, including the whole garlic cloves. Sautee for a couple of minutes – just long enough to release aroma and flavour. Cover with the stock, season with sea salt and black pepper, cover with a lid, bring to the boil, then reduce to a medium heat and let it do its thing for roughly 15 minutes, not more. (Add the can of beans towards the end). You’ll know dinner is ready because the whole kitchen will have filled with sweet notes rising on the steam and you’ll know because there will come a point when you’ll think you can’t wait another moment; your glands will start to salivate and your hunger will turn ravenous and you’ll have a deep, visceral knowledge of how good the simple things of life are. By now the vegetables will be tender but intact, and the garlic will yield soft to the tongue.

Ladle the soup into large bowls (the ones in the picture are by Greg Furney and they are beautiful. You can find them at artpiecegallery.com.au/ Art Piece gallery, (which is a plug for which I make no apology). Garnish each with a fistful of the chopped fronds and leaves, a small mound of finely grated Parmesan, a little black pepper and if you like, a slick of olive oil. Serve at once. The French part of me wants to say with warm bread, sourdough of course, butter for those who want it. And that’s it. Tell me what you think. Or just print and save.

When Nadine Abensur isn’t cooking you will find her at Art Piece Gallery in Mullumbimby artpiecegallery.com.au/

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I sometimes think that my success in the kitchen owes much to my laziness. I like food that punches above its weight.  To meet the criteria, my recipes need to be childishly easy to execute and deliver laughingly good sensual pleasure.

Asian food achieves this with grace. I think it’s the sugar that does it. But it also leaves me with a niggling doubt – really? All that sugar? In a main course? But there’s no denying the fully rounded zing of sweet and sour, saltiness, heat, pungency. And read to the end…..

I’ll leave up to you whether you accompany this delicate fish with the customary rice or do as I do and fill up on extra veggies (quite enough carbs with all that sugar, no?)

Ingredients

4 skinless white fish fillets (such as snapper, blue eyed cod or cobia) 180 – 200g each

1 cup fish broth or stock

1 cup rice wine or ordinary white wine

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Dash soy sauce

5 spring onions, sliced on the slant

1 fat knob ginger, peeled, grated and squeezed to extract juices

2 tbsp soy sauce

3 tbsp peanut oil (in its absence, I used the more delicate, more expensive and more delicious almond oil)

1 punnet best possible cherry tomatoes

2 bunches asparagus, so fresh their snap is audible, cut in half, slit longitudinally, woody ends discarded

3 cloves garlic, finely planed

1 red chilli, scraped of seeds and chopped to a confetti

For the caramel sauce

2 tbsp palm or ordinary brown sugar

2 tbsp reconstituted Tamarind or juice of 1 lime

1 small bunch coriander

Cooked white rice, for serving, optional

Instructions

Rinse the fish under cold water and pat dry, then rub with a teaspoon of salt and a goodly scrunch of black pepper – there’s no getting away from the full blown physicality of the kitchen – squeamishness begone. I am convinced that a barehanded approach to cooking adds nuance and magic and chi. So don’t believe recipes that say ‘sprinkle with salt’. They’re out of touch. Literally.

Scouring my kitchen cupboards for a suitable plate in which to arrange my fillets of fish, I settled on the cross-cultural, bottom half of an earthenware tagine. It has the right resilience to heat, the perfect depth and fits just-so into my large Asian bamboo steamer.  Another aside: if you don’t have said steamer, hot foot it to Red Ginger in Byron Bay and get one. You’ll not regret viagra sans ordonnance it. I digress I know but it’s important to paint a picture here, to set you in the mood, to make this cooking malarkey more than chore and fodder. I want you to come to the kitchen with a sense of adventure, creative zeal, even if – especially if – cooking is another of life’s relentless demands. A big bamboo steamer in your kitchen battery opens doors.

Well, now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s get back to the task at hand.

Pour the stock and wine into the tagine (or whatever pie plate or shallow bowl you have come up with) as well as half the finely sliced garlic, half the spring onions, half the ginger and half the soya sauce. Arrange the four fillets in a single layer. Top with the remaining spring onion, tomato halves, asparagus spears, garlic, ginger, half the coriander and let sit while you fill a wok, a third of the way up with water; bring to a boil.

Now put a large steamer in the wok (the water should not touch the bottom of the steamer). Set the tagine/pie plate/shallow bowl in the steamer, cover and steam until the fish is cooked through, 15 to 20 minutes, the tomato begins to collapse, to inform the juices with its colour and acidity but the asparagus retains snap and lively green.

While the fish gathers heat and the flesh cooks and softens, you’ll have plenty of time to heat the peanut (or almond) oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add the remaining ginger, the garlic, palm or brown sugar, remaining tablespoon of soya sauce, two tablespoons of rice or white wine, pinch of salt and juice of a lime (or tamarind paste), and reduce to a rich bubble for 30 seconds(that’s all it takes for this remarkable transformation). Remove from heat.

And now it’s suppertime!

Ladle a quarter of the collected juices, somewhat reduced by now, into four deep, warmed plates and slide in the fish and its companion tomatoes, asparagus, spring onion. Bring the caramelised sauce back to the boil if necessary and drizzle over, finishing with more coriander and the chilli confetti. Serve at once.

And here’s the final surprise – when a main course has ticked all the sensory boxes like this, there’s no need for pud. The true reason behind the limited desert repertoire of the Asian kitchen.

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Some enjoy the pairing of fruit with savoury, some don’t. In Jeanette Winterson’s latest, Christmas Days, Winterson goes so far as to title one of the chapters: ‘No more fruit in main courses’. I understand the sentiment. She describes Mrs Winterson’s curry, tinned fruit and crystallised ginger, its “exotic” additions. It’s a nauseating note in a book which is otherwise as warm and comforting as an oversized cardigan. She makes you feel that any dream, any flight of fancy, any wicked thought you may have, is just part of the fabulously fashioned cloth of your life – part thread, part breath.

So I think I’ll dedicate this recipe to her and to any of you who are of a similar disposition.

To bring it all home; this week we celebrated Australia Day and whatever else may be said about that, it is my 10th Anniversary as an Australian citizen and so, here goes – my Australia Day Salad of Passionfruit, Cured Salmon, Avocado, Peach and Black Sesame.

First, there’s a passionfruit vine in my garden (grown from a seedling, rather nonchalantly stuck in the ground two years ago and woefully ignored) which now garlands itself around and around the pool. It’s laden with yellow fruit, each bigger than a tennis ball. Then there is a grape vine, also neglected and mostly abandoned to the birds but I’m determined to share the spoils.

I’d planned mango in the salad but the bright skins however, hid pallid, insipid flesh. The peaches on the other hand were amber rich, juices thick as syrup. The avocado yielded just so to gentle touch. Salmon came with a back-story but its provenance is as good as I can manage. There are black sesame seeds in a jar – the recipe composes itself.

Finely sliced and peeled baby cucumbers…

You’ll need 6 humongous passionfruit, or equivalent

A handful of grapes

3 mid-section fillets of salmon, skin removed

3 perfect peaches

1 avocado, pristine, yet yielding

2 baby gem lettuces (or, if you are lucky, watercress)

2 baby cucumbers, peeled (optional)

5 tablespoons of lightish olive or macadamia oil, more if necessary

1 red chilli

2 cloves garlic

A dash of Tamari or light soy sauce

A tablespoon of Brandy

Or

A tablespoon of white vinegar (see recipe for more on the subject)

A small knob of ginger

A tablespoon of black sesame seeds

A handful of coriander

You may approach this as systematically and slowly as you please, because I’m telling you from the get go that the final assemblage will happen at speed, on high heat. Be prepared.

First, peel the cucumbers and with the same peeler, slice them paper thin. (A French peeler is a U shaped, metal gizmo and makes other peelers look as clunky and ineffectual as they are, even if they are prettier colours. The kitchen shop in Brunswick Heads sells them…)

Cut the passionfruit, scoop out the flesh and pass through a sieve to catch the bright juices. Do the same with the grapes. They are there to add sweetness and sugars for the all important caramelisation that’s to come, while doing away with the need for added refined sugar. Unless you think sugar is sugar. In which case, I can’t help you. You’ll have to do it your way.

Transfer the fruit juices to a large deep dish. Add a red chilli, cleaned of pith and seed and chopped fine as can be. Chop the garlic to minuscule. Last thing you want is bits stuck in your teeth. If you have a knob (a small knob) of ginger, finely grate it and squeeze with your fingers to extract the juice. Again, no fibrous bits please. Finally, add just a dash of Tamari or light soy sauce, just enough to stain, rather than overly darken what’s now become your curing medium.

Use the point of a small, sharp knife to turn the peach to eight even sized segments.

Place them in the dish with the juices and let them sit there while you cut each salmon fillet in half, then slice finger thick. Then while you cut the avocado in half, remove the stone and slice the buttery flesh into fine crescent moons. Leave in their skin for now. Swap the peach for salmon and lightly move it about in the juices. The peach, the salmon are going to stay intact, retain their integrity, while each being gently permeated by the essence of the other. (Note: Jeanette – this is how fruit works in savoury courses.)

Line a large plate with the cucumber slices. Pile with the baby gem lettuce leaves. (I wish I’d found watercress instead. Maybe, you can.)

And now the heat is on.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan until it is very hot, then fractionally lower the heat. Quickly, one after the other, drop in the peach slices. Do not disturb them for at least a minute or two.

They need time to yield all their sweet gifts. If the pan is now any less than very hot, turn up the heat once more. Now you can get under the peach with a metallic spatula, turn over and start again, except this time, you’ll also scatter black sesame seeds over the top – to add bite, a hint of bitter to the sweet. Remove to a waiting plate.

The process – hot oil and peach…

Add a little more oil to the pan if you need to but don’t clean it. Any nubble (one of my favourite kitchen words) left from before is good.

Gently lay the salmon slices in the pan. This time be as quick as you were previously patient. A scant thirty seconds on each side is all. Again remove and set aside. You are almost at the end. Pour in all the juices, add a dram of brandy, if you have it, or a tablespoon of your best white vinegar. (Here I’d like to send you off to the best deli in town for a stupendously expensive but-oh-so-worth-it, bottle of Chardonnay vinegar. Failing that, a bottle of ‘White Condiment’ – – someone was paid to come up with a name like that – Mama Mia! It’s what used to be called White Balsamic by the way, until someone else got their knickers – I mean apron – in a twist about it.)

Anyway, that’s about it. In the time it took to say the last sentence or two, you’ve reduced the juices to a slinky, finger licking sauce and you’re ready to dance, one quickstep at a time.

Go back to your plate and gently lay the salmon, then the peach, the avocado, the dressing drizzled, rather than poured (any extra can served by the side), and the coriander. It’s nuanced and it’s delicious.

Eat it soon.

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“I was brought up with an exceptionally broad food culture that took in the cooking of Morocco and the eastern mediterranean, France, Spain, Italy and more,” says Nadine. “When I became a vegetarian,  it wasn’t a great leap to turn my hand to the kitchen.  (I’m now a born again meat eater but that’s another story). After having taught all over the UK and Europe, Sydney and Melbourne, I’ve been teaching in the shire for about 14 years, usually from home. I teach all sorts of classes – Asian, Italian, French, Christmas gift classes, preserves, gluten and grain free and Contemporary Middle Eastern – you will never see a falafel or a bowl of houmous in my house, that’s for sure.”

Nadine keeps the classes small. “I only take around eight to ten people,” she says. “I like my food to have high impact, so that it looks stunning without being too complicated. I enjoy flavours that are subtle, elusive yet multi-dimensional and intriguing. Rose buds and flower waters add romance and delicacy to otherwise punchy, more earthy notes. Apart from learning all sorts of new tricks and unusual, refined flavours, I find that people love to work as a team and to make new connections. I’m always touched by the warmth and humour of a group  – it can get quite raucous in there.  After the class we all sit down at a long table and have a well deserved feast – I work people quite hard! But you go away with a tool box that will help you add magic to your kitchen, as well as a booklet of impressive recipes that will become family favourites.”

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It’s easy to think of London as a sprawling grey metropolis plagued by poor weather and bad food but that would be a mistake. It’s much better and less daunting to think of it as a series of villages, each with distinct character. Barnes is one of them. It’s on the Thames, nestled on a bend in the river, near Richmond where I grew up. You’ll find some of the oldest riverside housing in London on a road lined with  mansions which runs along the west bend of the river.

As children, we would stand right there on the riverbank to cheer the Oxford and Cambridge boats as they competed their way down to the finishing line. So it was something of a nostalgic trip, a few weeks ago, to visit again with my two brothers, our farewell lunch before my flying back to Australia.

Sonny’s is a “Modern European” restaurant owned by Phil Howard, a two Michelin star chef. I think it would be cruel for me to describe the sublime lunch without giving you any of the recipes, so I’ll cut to the chase and jump straight to dessert which in my case is a pistachio cake with pistachio ice cream and wild and local blackberries.

It comes as three inch sized little cubes, a small scoop of the ice cream and a scattering of the ripe berries. (A review said the dessert portion sizes were aimed at ‘ladies who lunch’, which suited me just fine). It is perfectly light, not too sweet, a perfect mouthful or three.

Here’s the cake, tweaked and made very Northern Rivers – gluten free, coconut sugar to replace refined cane sugar, maple syrup for the glaze, mulberries from my garden. But of all the potential health claims, my version could make, it is the portion size that makes the real difference. A little of what you fancy does indeed do you good, ‘little’ being the operative word – a message I wish we (I) would learn.

Pistachio Lime and Rose Water Cake with Mulberries

Ingredients

230g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing

180g coconut sugar

4 tsp rose water

4 large eggs, beaten

150g ground almonds

150g ground pistachios

20g potato starch or gluten free flour

½ tsp baking powder

zest of one lime

For the glaze

3 tbs maple syrup

2 tbs coconut sugar

Juice of 1 lime

1 tbs rose water

To garnish – a few chopped, toasted pistachios and a berry of your choice.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line the base and sides of the cake tin with baking parchment. In a mixer or with a hand-held whisk, cream the butter, sugar, rosewater and lime zest until light and fluffy.

Gradually add the egg yolks, beating well between each addition. If it looks like the mixture is curdling, add a spoonful or two of the flour or potato starch and it will come together again.

Sift the potato starch or flour, baking powder, ground nuts over and fold in gently, then whisk the egg whites till soft peaks form and fold in, leaving no lumps. Scoop into the prepared tin and gently level the surface.

Bake for 25 – 30 minutes, till a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Meanwhile warm the maple syrup and sugar together, adding the lime juice and rose water at the end. Remove from heat. When cake is cool, pierce all over with a skewer and pour the syrup over.

Scatter the chopped and toasted pistachios.

Eat in small doses. Or not.

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Lasagna – the word conjures up all sorts of ignominy, especially for someone with a long vegetarian history, like me. Normally I shudder to think of it. But this – light, sweet from the delicate crab, bound with cream – dispels all past issues. There is nothing stodgy about it.

Some of you will not shy from the expense of fresh crab meat; the sheer preparation time if nothing else…for those of us of somewhat more modest means, I mix it with fresh, peeled chilli prawns, straight from the Byron Bay fish shop.

I didn’t make a song and dance of it but note: the cream, the butter, the spinach, the garlic are all organic, the lasagna sheets gluten free. The rocket salad came spray free from the garden. Just saying.

Seafood Lasagna

Preheat the oven to 190C

500g peeled prawns and crab meat, equal weight of each or as you please

300g Semi Dried Tomatoes

200 ml double cream

100 ml fish stock or water

450g baby spinach

6 sheets lasagna, Latina, by the way make a brilliant, brilliant gluten free version and it’s fresh

30g butter

1 clove garlic

Pinch freshly grated nutmeg

1 tbs brandy or white wine

Basil – a couple of leaves

120g Gruyere or Jarlsberg, grated to a fine thread

Salt and pepper

Preparation

Thouroughly rinse the spinach, even if you are told that it is ready washed. Shake dry.

Melt half the butter in a large pan and add the spinach together with a light grating of fresh nutmeg, a small crushed garlic clove, a few turns of the pepper mill and on a moderate heat, wilt till soft, adding a scrunch of salt to season at the end. Set aside.

If you are using prawns, in a mini food processor, blitz them in 2 or 3 batches, or just take a knife to them and roughly chop – you want to retain texture, some discernible prawn.

In a frying pan, heat the remaining butter to a gentle bubble and add the seafood meat. Toss in the pan for a minute, not more, adding a wee dram of brandy if you have it or a splash of white wine, or just stock if you prefer. Also set this aside.

Now wiz the semi dried tomatoes to a smooth paste and transfer to a jug. Add the double cream, also the fish stock or water and mix to an easily pourable sauce. Season with extra salt, if needed, some freshly ground black pepper, a roughly torn leaf of basil or two. Set aside two ladles worth and add the rest to the seafood.

That’s pretty much it for prep. The rest is assembly.

Take a dish – mine is a round 24 cm earthenware thing – any close approximation will do.

Take the two reserved ladles of the tomato and cream “Bisque” and pour into the dish. Then place two sheets of lasagna, side by side, cutting up half of a third to fill the gaps. Spread half the spinach over, then a third of the seafood sauce, another layer of pasta and on till you are done, making sure you end on a layer of seafood and its tomato sauce.

Generously cover with the finely shredded cheese, place in the oven and bake on 190c for 35 minutes, to a soft gold.

Remove from oven and set aside for five minutes, before serving with lightly dressed rocket; a little mustard in the dressing is good.

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Many of my favourite recipes are born out of disappointment and failure. Sounds a bit dramatic but it’s true.

One of the would be highlights of my recent visit to London had been a booking, made six weeks in advance for dinner at NOPI, the most sophisticated of Yotam Ottolenghi’s many restaurants. Volumes have been written about the superlatively good food, its originality and multi cultural marriage of ingredients. If anyone could produce something new and scintillating, it would be Ottolenghi, especially in association with Ramael Scully, the cooking of the Far East merging to excellence with that of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. But on the awaited day, my son, in whose birthday honour the dinner had been planned, took ill, took to his bed in fact.

“No, no darling, it’s absolutely fine,” I said, masking my disappointment in the face of his green – tinged contrition, “another time.”

I munched on an apple as I jealously perused the missed menu.

Twice cooked chicken – simple but tempting – left tracks in my brains. Despite other plans, when came the time to write this article, twice cooked chicken it had to be.

The Ottolenghi/Scully offering is extraordinarily Antipodean, lemon myrtle its primary aromatic. But my love affair with Ottolenghi has its genesis in his affinity with my own culinary roots and so in a gesture of fraternity, my recipe refers to the Harissa and cumin, the lemon and garlic, the saffron and olive oil we both enjoy so much. And to the fragrance of roses. Pounded into the paste, they release soft notes into the kitchen and delicacy to an otherwise potent mix.

I am more than a little grain phobic – is anyone not these days – but today, I decided to experiment with Freekeh (the phonetic spelling of an Arabic word), a green wheat whose middle eastern origins lend it well to the chicken.

Served in garnish like quantities – nothing more than a scattering in other words – it felt benign enough. But not before having been cooked considerably longer than any recipe suggested. I cooked it for 50 minutes though if I hadn’t needed to get this to the printer’s, so to speak, I would have given it longer still. This modestly sized bird fed four. Doubling the recipe is easy to do and works.

Stage One

Pre heat the oven to 180C

Ingredients

1 smallish chicken, about 1.2 kg, organic

1 litre chicken stock, home made or shop bought

Juice of 2 lemons, plus one whole

3 – 4 fat cloves of garlic

1 knob of ginger, peeled

1 tbs Seasalt, a fat pinch of cracked black pepper and 6 rose buds pounded together

1 whole banana chilli cut in half and seeds removed (Keep a little aside for garnish)

Stage Two

Ingredients

1 scant tbs Harissa

1 tbs maple syrup or honey

1

tbs ground cumin

6 cardamom pods, seeds scraped out

1 tbs olive oil

A fat pinch

of saffron

6 -7 blood red, dried rose buds( Red Ginger in Byron Bay and Bangalow sell these)

1tsp freshly grated cinnamon

1 tsp Sea salt

Garnish

150g Frikeh

8 ladles of chicken stock

1 garlic clove

150g baby spinach

Handful parsley and coriander, tough stalk removed

1 tbs toasted pine nuts, optional

Pound the cumin, grated cinnamon, saffron filaments, cardamom seeds and sea salt together. Add the rose buds and pound, till crushed to a flake. Add the maple syrup and olive oil and bind the lot to a fiery paste. Set aside. Place the chicken in a bowl, pour the lemon juice over it and rub it well into the skin. Then rub chicken with the seasalt, rose buds and black pepper. Cut the remaining whole lemon into quarters and stuff into the cavity, together with the knob of ginger and the chilli.

Place the stock in a pan large enough to also hold the whole chicken and bring them both to the boil. Cover with a lid and continue to cook for 25 minutes, or till the chicken is cooked through. Remove and drain, reserving the stock, then transfer to an oven tray. Brush (use your fingers, if you’re game) with the Harissa mix, top, bottom, breast, insides, behind the thighs, into the fold of the wings. Be generous.

Pour a ladle of the remaining stock all around and place in the oven for 35 – 40 minutes, until crisp and golden, basting throughout with pan juices and small additions of stock if necessary.

To serve

While the chicken is on the boil heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large frying pan, add in a crushed clove of garlic, sautéed until translucent, add 150g Frikeh and stir till well coated. Add eight (more if absorbed before the grain is quite soft), ladles of the stock, bring to the boil, reduce the heat, cover with a lid and simmer for at least 50 minutes till swollen to tenderness, only a little liquid remaining.

Remove the chicken from the oven, add what should now be the last ladle or so of stock and the spinach. Return to the oven for a final minute or two. The spinach will have wilted, and there will be a generous jus in the pan.

Scatter the Frikeh and its juice onto a large plate. Lift the chicken onto it. Garnish with little mounds of wilted spinach. Pour the pan juices over, also the softened garlic cloves, the lemon wedges, the crisp, caramelised knubble,(the word is not in the dictionary), sticking to the pan.

Scatter with the toasted pine nuts and the fresh herbs.

Serve. Eat. Enjoy.

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The passion fruit vine that garlands my fence is heavy with great big, ovoid fruit, slowly ripening in the sun and rain. The orange tree is bowed down with fruit, branches practically sweeping the ground (and no, I’m not a very good gardener). There are lemons at the market and limes are bright and plump with juice.

So I decide to make curd. Which should be plain sailing. Except that it isn’t. The first batch, made to the letter, according to the doyenne of Australian cookery writer’s instruction, is disappointingly opaque, grainy, dense. It omits the additional egg yolks that add silken gloss and translucency – vital measures of a good curd – to the whisk of egg, sugar, butter, juice.

All my instincts tell me the recipe is flawed but in characteristically dogged fashion, I battle on. It’s no use. In the end it is salvaged by a friend’s effort, still all of a warm wobble, brought to the dinner at which she is a guest. Sandwiched between disks of meringue, and a swathe of whipped cream, there is a gasp of joyful anticipation when I set the whole teetering construction on the table (after what I must say has already been a stupendously extravagant meal). Everyone, but everyone, even the “I don’t eat sugar” brigade, delve into it, spoonful after spoonful. The company is cheerful, warm-hearted, full of goodwill, and dessert slides down accompanied by laughter, that most powerful of digestifs.

It doesn’t end here this little tale.

I freeze the excess to prevent further excess. Ha! The next morning, out it comes – semifreddo – part ice, part not. It makes the most glorious of breakfasts.

Three days later, I pick enough passionfruit – turned at last to lemon yellow, the flesh neon bright – and make a big fat jar of it, to keep, to share, to give away. This time the recipe is mine and it works!

Passionfruit Curd

 120g unsalted, organic butter, cut into cubes,

245g caster sugar

1 cup passion fruit juice (8 – 10 passion fruit), strained, seeds reserved

3 large eggs

3 egg yolks

Beat together the eggs and yolks. Because I am a pedant about such things, I strain the egg through a sieve and discard the stringy bits. Place the butter, caster sugar and strained juice in a medium sized saucepan. Put the seeds in a sieve and stir them with a spoon to loosen the fibrous flesh. Return the seeds to the pan. Set onto a gentle flame and stir gently (gently does it) till the caster sugar has dissolved and the butter melted. Do not on any account, allow to boil, or your eggs will curdle when you add them in. Remove from the heat and stir in the beaten eggs and yolks, until well incorporated.

Then on a very low heat, stir continuously with a flat edged wooden spoon or a large metal one, moving the amalgamating curd away from the sides and bottom of the pan, so there is no risk at all of it catching. I hover my pan 10cm above the flame for almost the entire nine minutes it takes for the curd to coalesce. I like to take every precaution.

It fills a small, round-bottomed, sterilised preserving jar to the brim with a little left over. Breakfast anyone?

There’s more too: alternate teaspoons of curd and yoghurt into tea glasses and serve, a little zest atop.

Make a simple trifle with limoncello soaked finger biscuits, curd of any zesty persuasion, a whip of cream.

Then there are the usual curd filled sponge cakes, buttery tarts and curd-topped brioche.

You can find Nadine at Art Piece Gallery in Mullumbimby on artpiecegallery

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