Blood Orange and Haloumi Salad

Crunchy, salty, squeaky and delicious. Not the descriptor you normally hear when describing a Greek salad is it.

 A few months ago when we were in remote WA visiting our son I made a salad for a group dinner in his share house. Boy that brought back memories, a house full of young people and their comings and goings. One thing doesn’t change, hungry tummies. I’d found the recipe in a wrap up email from NY Times food. Always at opposite times of year I often see recipes for the seasons to come and save them convinced I’ll remember and follow through and cook them but as you’d expect, rarely do, such is the nature of these best intentions. This time though I was heading to the warmth of the north Australian sunshine and make it I did. A twist on Greek salad with the addition of another Hellenic ingredient, Haloumi and pasta from across the straits of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas. A true Mediterranean delight. We’ll be enjoying this one on the regular when summer comes. 

 Reading the recipe it caught my attention because of it’s unique twist on a classic dish known the world over. The type of dish we know so well we often don’t even contemplate how you could vary it. A dish that’s reliably easy, enjoyed and takes no brain power. So much so that it doesn’t even occur to you to try and change things up then you come across one like this one blending the base classic combination with some extra ingredients faithfully chosen from the original cuisine.  Evolution.

 Both Nigella and Sophie Hansen have talked about this, the delight and admiration they have seeing their creations take on new guises with new versions. A pinch of something else here, the addition of another ingredient there or pairing with a food not originally imagined, all sparked by the different tastes, and skill sets beyond the original.

 To see recipes reimagined is a delight I myself can attest to. It’s like watching your children grow in a way. The original creation that sprung from your own hands and tastes takes on new characteristics in the hands of a reader in the same way your children go out into the world taking on life’s experiences and their own self takes on new layers of characteristics here and there. From there a recipe is often handed to another with words of praise after serving perhaps at a dinner or party. The new recipient may add their own twist wrapping the dish in a new layer of taste or technique. Each time this happens a recipe evolves becoming the one of the cook who’s hands have reshaped it adding branches to the original recipe’s family tree.

 Often it’s one ingredient that sparks that creativity taking you off on a whole other tangent. The haloumi croutons in the original salad with it’s Greek flair and roots is just that ingredient that sparked this salad. Blood oranges are in season at the moment. Their mottled ruby red and orange flesh both look and taste delicious against the salty crunch of the haloumi cubes with the sweet spicy crunch of the honey roasted walnuts adding a pop of extra flavour to balance out the salty and tangy freshness of the other ingredients. Whilst she sits well next to any protein, especially pork, this one is great to have at a shared table where a vegetarian may joining you. Croutons are best made close to serving for crunch and extra leaves are always a good idea to pad out for extra comers.

Ingredients:

 100 gm walnut halves (a little more is fine if your packet is bigger.)

1 tsp fennel seeds

¼ tsp chilli flakes

¼ tsp salt flakes

1 level tb honey

10 gm butter

 3 generous handfuls of mixed leaves of your choice. Bitter greens are particularly good but whichever is your favourite will be fine

2 blood oranges peeled and filleted or sliced. Blood orange season is short, regular is fine outside the season. Cut over a bowl to catch the juice.

¼ Spanish onion finely sliced or too taste. You can always run sliced onion under cold water to temper it’s sharpness.

150 gm haloumi cut into crouton sized cubes

1 tsp honey dijon mustard or 1 tsp Dijon and ¼ tsp honey combined

3 tsp olive oil

1 tb juice from the orange carcasses

Method:

 Preheat oven to 190c and line a large oven tray.

 Combine fennel seeds, chill and salt flakes in a mortar and pestle and grind roughly. They don’t need to be finely ground just crushed up. If you don’t have one pop in a plastic bag and bang out the days frustrations with a rolling pin.

 In a small saucepan combine crushed spices, honey and butter. Warm gently over medium heat until thoroughly combined, we don’t want it too hot as it’s about ot go in the oven. Remove from heat, tip in walnuts, stir to completely coat and tip nuts out onto prepared tray. Spread out to one layer with nuts spaced apart, pop tray in the oven and cook for 8 minutes. Stir once at 4 minutes, don’t allow to burn so keep a close eye on them. Remove from oven, and cool completely. I like to lift the baking paper with nuts still on them off the tray and place it on a cool bench to speed up the cooling.

 To fillet oranges, using a paring knife, slice off top and bottom exposing flesh then slice peel and pith off top to bottom until you have a whole naked orange. Now over a bowl run the knife down along the membrane that separates each section from the outside to the centre of your first segment. Repeat on the other side of that segment, it should slip out from the whole orange. Now repeat on the next segment and all the way around releasing each segment. You’ll be left with a handful or skeleton of the orange. Gibe the is one last squeeze over the bowl you’ve been working over to extract the last of the juice, set aside.

In the bowl of juice combine it with the mustard and olive oil and whisk with a pinch of salt and good grind of black pepper to emulsify, set aside.

On a platter spread your leaves, sprinkle over sliced onion, walnuts and orange segments or slices, set aside.

In a medium pan cover the base with olive oil and warm over a medium-high heat. In the pan cook the haloumi croutons until golden brown and crisp all over. You’ll need to keep them moving the whole time. Sprinkle over assembled salad and drizzle over dressing. Enjoy!

Pea and Cheese Salad

As we got out of the car, dusk settling on the snowy landscape, faces whipped by icy winds our host reminded us to stamp our feet at the door before entering, “we don’t want to bring the snow in,” he told us. Not a consideration we were used to making. Inside we were met by joyous greetings, our coats taken and hung as we were welcomed to our friend’s home and invited to warm ourselves by the fire. The room was filled with conversation flying in all directions to the soundtrack of wind whistling through the trees outside reminding us of the day we’d just experienced on our journey to rural Michigan. A day spent watching snowstorms repeatedly engulf our small commuter aircraft at Toronto airport each one ending in a layer of anti-freeze to no avail until finally we were able to take off and continue to our destination and a visit with friends.

Earlier in that year we’d travelled to Sydney to a family wedding. On a perfect weekend of endless sunshine, a large, lovely group of friends and family celebrating love and friendship in all the ways we all hope for. It was one of those happy celebratory weekends everyone remembers for a long time and becomes a benchmark for such gatherings. The kind of weekend when strangers walk away as friends, exchanging phone numbers and addresses and promises to stay in touch (it was 1989, no socials or emails). We also on this occasion walked away with an invitation of hospitality on an already planned upcoming holiday to the United States. Thirty-five years ago this was a fairly normal and happily accepted invitation, perhaps not so much in today’s society, perhaps sadly. I don’t actually remember how we managed to squeeze in an extra week’s time in the middle of a carefully planned itinerary but glad we did.

Always intrigued by traditions, especially those with food attached, I was excited to arrive days after thanksgiving, a celebration obviously not observed in Australia. After settling into our friend’s home and having watched the sun setting on the snowy landscape outside Sharon, our hostess, proceeded to the kitchen and began directing traffic to prepare dinner. Her husband was sent to the garage to retrieve the turkey, and ham. And her daughter and I commandeered to assist in the kitchen. Curious as I am in other people’s kitchens I was instructed to cut two types of cheese into small cubes, one cheddar and one a mozzarella style. ‘Wait what the?!’ I’ve never seen anything with cheese on a thanksgiving table in any of the hallmark festive movies I’d watched. But chop I did, then was handed more ingredients with further instructions slowly building a salad I was becoming excited to eat.

Bringing everything to a heaving table everyone was called to dinner.  In the middle of the table was warmed turkey, gravy and something reminiscent of stuffing called dressing consisting of torn bread, fruit and herbs, a dish I’d never heard of though possibly one of my favourite parts of the meal. A collection of vegetable dishes was also on offer alongside the fluffiest bread rolls I’d ever eaten. But something I was most keen for was the salad in which those cheese cubes were engulfed.

It felt odd to eat a salad in the depths of winter, as snow blew sideways across the windows and a fire warmed the house. Somewhat cautiously I served myself a scoop of salad and had a small taste. Bright fresh flavours floated on my palette, with little pops of sweetness from emerald, green baby peas, dotted with sharp savoury twangs of salad onion and the perfect foil of salty cheeses with a slight bite and chew all encased in a creamy dressing of mayo and sour cream. Every time I reminisce about this salad, I can almost vividly taste it in my memory. Obviously I went back for seconds and thirds, enjoying its vegetal lightness against the richness of the gravy gilded meat and warm roast vegetables.

So many of our memories are wrapped around food and indeed food and its flavours and aromas wrap inspire our memories. This recipe perhaps has it’s own memories attached to it for the family who first served it to my family and I. For me it’s one that always takes me back to that wintery stormy night, the laughter, the many conversations flying across a table oozing hospitality from relatively new friends across the miles and the delight of a collection of new flavours and food traditions.

While this is a dish that makes a wonderful side to a plethora of main courses one of my favourites is to offer it alongside lamb, leaning into the tradition of peas and mint accompanying the rich meat. It’s also lovely with fish but as always you do you and see what delicious combinations you come up with.

Ingredients:

 2 ½ c frozen baby peas blanched** and well drained.

1 Tb Spanish onion very finely diced

60 gm sharp cheddar either crumbled into small pieces or diced into small cubes

60 gm baby bocconcini halved

2 Tb mint leaves finely chopped

2 Tb dill leaves finely chopped

25 ml mayonnaise or aioli (I use Kewpie)

15 ml sour cream

 Method:

 Whisk mayo and sour cream together with a pinch of salt and a few salt flakes, set aside. Combine all other ingredients and fold through dressing. And you’re done. It’s really that simple. You could replace the sour cream with Greek yoghurt if you want to lighten the flavour but either are delicious.

 **To blanch peas, if you’ve never done so before, bring a small-medium pot of salted water to the boil. Add peas to the boiling pot and bring back to the boil. Whilst waiting for the peas to resume boiling prepare a bowl of cold water with a few ice cubes added. As soon as the peas have resumed boiling remove from heat immediately and drain tipping the peas into the ice water. This will immediately arrest the cooking process and retain the emerald green colour.

Lamb Shaslicks and Saffron Cous Cous

I’m sorry I missed writing to you last week, my eldest was visiting from Western Australia. That in itself wasn’t the main barrier to writing this, rather the insomnia that savaged me was. You see his flight back to the west was a dreaded early morning departure. He’d asked me to drive which I relished, looking forward to the last half hour alone chatting and soaking up his company. To do this I needed to rise at 5.15 which with a reasonable bedtime wasn’t at all awful but alas sleep alluded me, as it so often has in recent years.

 All these hormone fluctuations have both unsettled my sleep and myself belief in myself in so many ways. Significantly my belief to drive in the mornings and through traffic or great distances. Ridiculous and absurd in the extreme. I’ve never had a car accident in such circumstances (in others yes, embarrassed to say). I used to drive to the city every day in peak hour traffic, lucky to always find myself jobs with the added bonus of a parking space. I loved driving distances to country locales, music loud views as far as the eye could see and actually found a level of self-worth in my independence and ability to do so, but all that seems to have evaporated at the bottom of the drought ridden bucket from whence hormones are manufactured.

With my ability to sleep with anything on my mind, and sometimes without anything on my mind, gone so too is my youthful belief of time’s infinitesimal path before me. It’s both alarming and motivating to know that time is marching seemingly faster with every passing day. Alarming for all the obvious reasons. Reminders of being on the other side of the hill greet me most days in the mirror, thankfully though I seem to still be on a shallow gradient, a green or blue run in skiing parlance if you will. And motivating in it’s passing reminding me to live large, soak up each day, plan big, execute those plans and never let a moment pass without trying to create a smile and memory.

Your children flying the nest and spreading their wings is one of the biggest sign posts and turning points of time’s relentless march. Sad and exhilarating all at once, the emptying of the nest can present you with opportunities you don’t consider when you first ponder their absence. There’s the obvious money savings, hello grocery bills at 50% less, the lack of late-night Mum’s taxi runs, though if you’re awake why not, and of course the quieter lifestyle. Some of those, whilst a blessing, can also feel like a void. Whilst I bury the ‘void’ in the twigs of my nest and manage to focus on the positives when they come to visit I’m reminded that when they return to their adventures after the visit the void returns. Strangely that’s the win!! The reminder that while you have them embrace every moment with them.

In the nearly 18 months since our boys took flight there’s been a few visits home, so I’ve become somewhat practiced at the hellos and goodbyes. I’ve learnt to love every conversation and relish each meal together. When one or both of the boys are home we, for the most part, clear our calendars. A fleeting coffee in the morning before they head out or dinner at the table together suddenly has all new meaning.

Whilst I always ask if there’s any family faves they’d like me to cook while they’re visiting I also love to keep it simple and not commit too much time in the kitchen. During Boy 1’s most recent visit it was unseasonably hot. Very hot and humid and stifling for March so we barbecued a bit. He’s an adventurous eater so always up for something new. Inspired by a completely unrelated post I’d seen on socials and the memory of a tasty purchase from a country butcher on our road trip last year I had a hankering for old school shaslicks. Not the kind from the supermarket made with the tough leftovers of beef offcuts but something tender, flavourful and delicious. So here I offer you a meal for when you have dwindling time or  motivation or just the need to be organised. You can chop and marinate the meat and freeze in the bag for storage when you unpack the shopping if you’re suitably organised or throw it together when time is marching. Choose your own adventure but they’re promised to deliver.

Feeds 4

Lamb Shaslicks and Saffron Cous Cous

500 gm lamb loin fillets cut into 4-5 pieces each.

2 Tb extra virgin olive oil

2 tsp smoked sweet paprika

1 tsp garlic powder (not fresh as it will burn when cooking and taste quite different. As a dried product it sort of dissolves and doesn’t burn)

1 tsp onion powder (see above)

1 ½ tsp dried oregano leaves

½ tsp salt flakes

Good grind of black pepper

1 capsicum cut into biggish cubes similar size to the meat pieces, any colour you choose

1 Spanish onion cut into wedges similar size to capsicum pieces.

2/3 c water

½ chicken stock cube or ½ tsp of stock powder (you can replace water and stock with ready-made stock if you wish)

2 pinches of saffron

1 ½ Tb olive oil

10 gm of butter

**If using bamboo disposable skewers remember to soak them in water when you decide to have these for dinner. This is only necessary if you’re cooking them on the BBQ, if cooking in a pan on the stove they shouldn’t burn.

Mix oil spices, salt, pepper and oregano in a small bowl and whisk together. Place marinade mix and meat in a snap lock bag or bowl and mix and massage until thoroughly coated, refrigerate until needed, at least 1 hour. You can freeze at this point for another day if you need to be organised.

Remove meat from fridge when you decide to start dinner, this will allow it to lose it’s chill and cook more evenly. It’s a small piece of meat so wont need the usual hour like a steak or the like. Drain and dry soaking skewers. With prepared veg, thread meat and veg pieces alternately. This amount makes roughly 8 sticks.

To cook meat preheat your BBQ on high. When ready turn down to med-low heat and cook to your liking turning frequently.

To cook cous cous, place water, stock cube/powder, saffron and olive oil and gently bring to a boil stirring frequently. Once it’s come up to the boil turn heat off, tip in cous cous, stir and place lid. Allow to sit for 3-4 minutes, time this it can go south quickly. Remove lid and stir through butter and check seasoning. I prefer a sprinkle of white pepper rather than black here but you do you.

A fresh little salad of herbs and leaves is perfect here or perhaps a tangy slaw.