Hot smoked salmon, labne, snowpea, avocado and sunflower seed salad

A quick salad I made for lunch today with bits and bobs from the fridge and garden. It just looked so pretty and tasted delicious!


1/2 baby cos, leaves picked
a handful of rocket
1/4 cucumber, diced
8 snowpeas, sliced
1/2 cup labne (strained yoghurt)
2 small avocado, diced
1/4 cup sunflower seeds, toasted
1/3 cup sunflower and parsley pesto
juice of a lime or lemon
a few sprigs of dill
black pepper and a little flaky salt

Layer the baby cos and rocket around the plate you wish to serve it on.
Sprinkle over the diced cucumber, the avocado and snowpeas.
Dollop little teaspoons of the labne and the pesto around the plate so every portion gets some.
Flake over the hot smoked salmon, squeeze over the lime or lemon and sprinkle over the seeds.
A few cracks of black pepper and a bit of flaky salt and you're done!

This fed 3 of us for lunch.

Sunflower seed and curly parsley 'pesto'

I always have an abundance of curly parsley. It seems to grow better and faster than its friend Flat leaf or Italian parsley which I also happen to  prefer. You need to cut curly parsley quite fine or it gets stuck in your teeth and it doesn't have a nice texture when roughly chopped. It does have a good flavour so has its place in my kitchen. 

This recipe is great because everything goes in the blender. It makes a good dip or it would be nice with BBQ'd meat or vegetables. Adding rocket or any other soft herbs you have available would make a good variation and you could also thin it out with a bit of water to make a nice dressing.

Sunflower seed and curly parsley pesto

1/2 cup of raw sunflower seeds, soaked in water over night

1 clove garlic

1-2 cups of well packed curly parsley

1/4 -1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 T water

zest of 1 lemon

juice of 1 1/2 lemons

a good tsp of flaky salt

2 tsp honey

black pepper to taste

pinch of chilli flakes

Place soaked sunflower seeds and remaining ingredients in a blender or small food processor and blend until smooth. Check seasoning and serve as you wish.

Been Painting All Day

After painting our architraves, windows and door frames in a matt paint we have decided to repaint them all again in the same colour but in gloss.

The upkeep and cleaning required to keep light coloured matt architraves clean is insane! As much as I hate painting, I hate cleaning more.

The problems with matt, light coloured, architraves (I have learnt all these since the initial painting) are that it marks and stains really easily and with time, if they are white, they fade to yellow. So by painting the architraves with gloss paint they become easier to clean, the dirt doesn't stick to the architraves as much, they don't stain and the paint doesn't fade to yellow. 

Another tip to keep your white from fading to yellow (and this counts for anything you are painting white) put a drop of black paint in it. It won't change the colour but it will stop it fading to yellow.

So moral of the story if you hate cleaning, don't paint your architraves in matt paint.

The end.

Shaved cauliflower and radish salad with caper raisin dressing

I have been going through a bit of a raw vegetable salad faze of late. Keeping the vegetables raw gives them such a great texture and paired with a great dressing it makes for a delicious dinner. I had a brocoflower in the fridge that I picked up from the market and a few radishes. Cauliflower or romesco would also be lovely. You could use red or green cabbage instead of the radish or even both.

This recipe makes enough for a generous 4 as part of a meal.


Shaved cauliflower and radish salad with caper raisin vinaigrette

1/2 cauliflower or brocflower or romesco
4 or so radishes
a handful of chives, finely chopped
a good handful of Italian Parsley, chopped
60g local walnuts, roasted


Dressing

40g raisins
50ml boiling water
2 T capers, chopped
1/2 a small garlic clove, microplaned
2 anchovies, finely chopped
pinch chilli flakes
zest and juice of 1 1/2 lemons
zest and juice of a small orange or a mandarin
1 tsp Dijon
1 T wine vinegar
45ml good olive oil
freshly ground black pepper
flakey salt to taste

Pour the boiling water over the raisins and leave to plump while you sort the vegetables.

Using a mandolin slice the cauliflower so you have thin shavings. It will break and crumble a bit but that doesn't matter. Do the same with the radishes. Place in a bowl and add the herbs and toasted walnuts.




























To make the dressing, strain the plumped raisins reserving the liquid and finely chop. Add to a small bowl with the chopped capers, anchovies, chilli flakes, zest and juice, vinegar, and Dijon. Add the raisin water and the olive oil and mix well. (Alternatively you could blitz everything in a blender to save some time)

Then simply dress the salad and season it with plenty of black pepper and some flaky salt to taste.

I served it with some pan-fried fresh fish and it was banging!

Vin d’ Orange

A few weeks ago I got married. (Yay!) For my Hens Party I decided to have a ladies lunch, good company good food and a nice afternoon in the sun. The weather pulled through and it was a wonderful day. I had seen in a few cookbooks and online and aperitif called Vin d’ Orange and thought it would be perfect for my ladies lunch. This recipe takes a bit of forethought as you leave it for 40 days but  it makes plenty! You can of course cut the recipe back and make as much as you like. I used a mix of Blood orange and Navel but you can do whatever split you like. Traditionally you would use Seville Oranges.  I couldn’t help adding some Campari for an extra bitter hit.

I ended up adapting this recipe here

Vin d’ Orange

Makes about 8 Litres                                                                                    

7 bottles of Rosé

1 litre of vodka

750g to  1kg organic cane sugar

2 vanilla beans

2 cinnamon quill

6 Navel oranges – thinly sliced

8 blood oranges – thinly sliced

1 Meyer lemon – thinly sliced

Half a bottle or more of Campari to taste

Place all the ingredients together in a large clean bucket or glass jar with a fitted lid. Stir to dissolve sugar.  Cover and leave in a cool place for 40 days.

After 40 or so days, strain the liquid through a coffee filter or a piece of muslin. You don’t have to do this step but it makes for a beautiful clear liquid. Pour into sterilised bottles and keep in the fridge for up to a year.

Serve straight with plenty of ice or topped up with soda. Perfect for a hot day.

There are plenty of things to do with the orange slices too… Marmalade for one or dip them in sugar syrup and dehydrate them and then dip them in dark chocolate. My mother in law this this one and they were delish! Yum! I ended up cooking them slowly in sugar syrup covered in the oven for 1-2 hours and serving them with a Valrhona chocolate tart and whipped cream. They were also delicious in croissants!

Broad Bean Hummus

We have had a decent crop of broad beans this year and so every broad bean recipe known to man has been tried in our household.

After a day at work I got home to a note saying 'harvested the broad beans today and made some hummus' and a couple of containers of the broad bean hummus were waiting for me in the fridge.

So far this is definitely the winner of the broad bean recipe participants! Its made just the same as regular hummus but you replace the chickpeas with blanched, de-skined broad beans instead. Make sure you add lots of lemon juice as it really enhances the broad beaniness. Its delicious on everything!

The Wall!

We have recently been renovating our dining room. When we shifted into our house we had two of the most ugliest brick bars attached to the back wall of the dining room. Needless to say we were pretty quick to rip them out. However, this left us with another issue - a big, boring wall. The wall needed to have something exciting on it to bring the room to life.

So off I went to the shops and searched the Internet for this mysterious exciting ‘thing’ that was going to bring this room to life. So after searching high and low what did I find… WALLPAPER.

And not just any old wallpaper - $500 a roll wallpaper. Now there were 3 problems with this.

1 – the glaringly obvious – its $500 a roll! Well and truly out of our budget!

2 – I have never hung wallpaper before and I didn’t think the time to start was with $500 a roll wallpaper.

And lastly,

3 – the intricate pattern means that I would have to line up the wallpaper, creating lots of wastage, and that meant buying 2 if not 3 rolls of wallpaper – definitely out of the budget!

Being in the ‘I must have it’ type mood I had to think of some way of getting this wallpaper. Eventually the thought popped right into my head – I’ll paint it! And so began ‘The Wall’. I was going to attempt to recreate the geometric pattern found on the wallpaper with paint.

Off I trotted to Bunnings and brought up all their painters tape – about 8 rolls. I have attempted something similar before and I can give you good advice that it is most definitely worth spending a few extra dollars and getting the painter’s tape rather than plain masking tape. It will save a lot of tantrums when you are trying to peel the tape off.

Back home I went, prepped the wall for painting and painted 2 coats of the base coat colour – white on white by Dulux. Then the ‘fun’ began.

I marked out with pencil marks where the tape needed to intersect and run horizontally and vertically. Then I began to tape…

About half a days work later I discovered that this wasn’t going to work and so the tape came off and went in the bin with my efforts.

Take 2 – I rejigged the markings and so the taping began again. I started with the vertical and horizontal lines.

Then carried on the diagonal/intersecting lines.

2 days later and we were done … well with the taping at least.

Next it is very important to paint overtop of all your hard work with the base colour again. This creates a seal and stops the colour coat from seeping through the edges. It gives you a nice clean line.

Once dry pain 2 coats of your chosen colour – ours is ½ white duck by Dulux. You must then wait until the topcoat is well and truly dry. Then take a big breath and start to pull the masking tape off. It’s very very nerve-racking!

But after 2 days of taping, 5 coats of paint and lots of tantrums I can now present you The Wall (undressed).