One of my latest tangents is sumac. This delicious herb can spice up just about any salad, pasta, tagine or stew and goes great mixed in with a little labneh or feta. Such a great fresh lemony flavour it’s a great accompaniment for any seafood based meal. Plus the ladies in the lebanese shop where I buy it are a hoot.

Crispy skinned ocean trout garnished with home grown dill and lime juice served on a bed of star spelt pasta, olives, grape tomatoes, home grown basil, sumac and a home grown parsley and anchovy infused olive oil dressing.

This recipe serves two

1/2 a cup spelt stars
1/2 cup grape tomatoes – halved
handful of fresh basil leaves – torn
1/3 cup kalamata olives – roughly chopped
1 teaspoon sumac
small handful of finely chopped parsley
2 salty jar anchovies
1-2 tbspn olive oil
a few sprigs of dill – torn
lime or lemon wedges

Boil star spelt pasta until al dente then remove and leave to cool.

Mash anchovies and parsley in a bowl and add olive oil until it becomes a paste. Leave on the side to infuse.

Put grape tomatoes, olives and pasta in a bowl and mix well. Add in town basil leaves, coat with sumak then stir in parsley olive oil.

Meanwhile place ocean trout skin side up in grill drizzled with lime juice for about 5-7 minutes (until done or skin goes crispy). If you have a good grill that heats evenly you won’t have to turn the fish. If your grill is very hot at the top you might want to start with skin side down, flip and finish with skin up so it crisps up.

Serve salad, top with fish then garnish. Love the colour don’t you?

Note: I used spelt flour because I’m a but gluten weird. I also only own patty cake tins so this amount made me 12 muffins. Oh, and I used sheeps yoghurt. Not for any particular reason I just wanted to try it and I would definitely buy it again. I liked the flavour.

1 cup plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
100g butter, melted
2 eggs
1/2 cup natural yoghurt
3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
50g ham, cut into small pieces
12 cherry tomatoes, halved

Preheat oven to 175C. Grease 24 mini muffin tins. Place sifted flour, bicarb and salt in a bowl. Add butter, eggs and yoghurt. Combine well with a spoon. Stir through cheese and ham. Spoon into muffin tins and top each with half a cherry tomato. Bake for about 15 minutes or until cooked and golden. Cool on a rack before serving.

You could whip this up for breakfast in no time. Or, do as I did and make them quickly after dinner for taking into work the next day.

I marinated the chicken for a couple of hours in lime juice, coriander, garlic, finely diced spanish onion and chili.

The tomato salsa is simply finely diced tomato, spanish onion, coriander and lime juice.

Normally we’d top this with a white cheese similar to the style we had on most tacos in Mexico but when all else fails a dollop of yoghurt sufficed.

What can you scrape together out of your cupboard that surprises you with it’s satisfying tastiness?

The recipe he used is this one from Taste.

I’m pretty sure there was some lime juice in there as well. Who can resist twisting a recipe when there is so much great fresh produce at this time of year?

4 green shallots, ends trimmed, thinly sliced diagonally
4cm-piece fresh ginger, peeled, cut into matchsticks
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
1 long fresh red chili, halved, deseeded, thinly sliced
1 1/2 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs rice vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1/4 tsp brown sugar
1 medium whole snapper
1 tbs peanut oil

Combine all the ingredients except the peanut oil and fish in a bowl. Lay the fish on a large piece of foil and lace half the mixture in the fish cavity and half on top. Fold the foil over and seal well around the edges so the fish steams. Cook in the oven for about 20 minutes on 180ºC. Just before the fish is ready bring the peanut oil to smoking point in a small saucepan. Pour over the top once the fish is unwrapped. Serve with asian greens and jasmine rice.

This meal is pretty easy to whip up on a weeknight. I keep batches of boiled black beans in tubs in the freezer just for these occasions. All I need to do is remove them from the freezer and boil on the stove in water for a few minutes, let cool and they are ready for use in salads or sauces.

1 takeaway tub of frozen black beans or 1 can of black beans.
1 avocado chopped into chunks
1 spanish onion finely diced
1 bunch of coriander roughly chopped
1-2 tomatoes roughly chopped
Juice of 1-2 limes
Salt and pepper
1/2 to 1 cup of frozen corn (I put this in the saucepan with the black beans and boil the whole lot for a few minutes then cool. Then it’s ready to make the salad.
a couple of pinches of paprika
2 pieces of ocean trout with the skin on
Kewpie mayonnaise

Simply mix all the salad ingredients together in a bowl then add lime juice, salt and pepper. Meanwhile grill fish drizzled with a little lime juice, skin side up until cooked through and skin goes crispy. This shouldn’t take very long, 5-10 minutes). Serve some salad, sprinkle with paprika, top with fish and garnish with some coriander and serve some mayonnaise on the side.

Enjoy!

Keeping it simple here with a spelt bread, bacon, fresh eggs and BBQ sauce sandwich.

No listed ingredients.

No fuss.

Just make, eat and enjoy because some days simple is best.

It was the dish I had at Pint of Milk that made me itching to get back to my kitchen and give replicating it a go. My version is slightly different as I didn’t have any sumac at home and I really had no idea what the ingredients were but mine looked very similar and tasted fab. First to give you some visuals of the Dutchess. My breakfast was a beautiful creamy scrambled eggs with salmon roe and a flat white in a great little courtyard in the sun. Heavenly start to the day.

Spicy tomato and chickpea stack with poached eggs and labneh with paprika, mint and black sesame seeds

(Makes enough for two)

1/2 cup of chick peas (you can use canned but I make up batches in bulk and freeze them)
2-3 medium tomatoes roughly chopped
1/2 a medium yellow onion finely sliced
1 teaspoon paprika
1 pinch of cumin
1 tbspn tomato paste
A dash of verjuice (I am currently using a rose verjuice)
4 eggs
4 tablespoons labneh
extra paprika
black sesame seeds

Sautee onion and tomato in a saucepan then add paprika and cumin and stir well. Add chickpeas, tomato paste and verjuice and simmer until tomato has gone mushy. Spoon ingredients into ramekins and put in the oven to bake for around 10 minutes on 180ºC.

Meanwhile poach or boil and peel eggs and prepare labneh portions on plate. Sprinkle labneh with paprika, mint and black sesame seeds. When the chick peas are ready turn them out onto the plate and top with poached eggs. Wilted spinach would also go well with this (as served at Pint of Milk) and sumac would go well mixed into the labneh (also served at Pint of Milk).

Enjoy!

So Christmas dinner at my house consisted of the following tasty treats. I hope you enjoy reading about them and maybe even trying them for yourself.

Table settings

I put fake holly (would have preferred to use real holly but couldn’t source any in time), a few Christmas Lindt chocolates and a name tag in each wine glass. The family thought it looked a treat.

Christmas coloured canapés.

Baby bocconcini, grape tomatoes, baby basil leaves and balsamic glaze on fresh baguette.

You could use any type of bread for this, or even toast them but I chose to have one soft fresh canapé and one toasty canape and kept this one cold and fresh.

Simply halve the baby bocconcini and grape tomatoes, arrange on the bread with a sprig of baby basil leaves then drizzle with thick sweet balsamic glaze.

Anchovy, parmesan, tomato paste and basil mini bruchetta

Spread a small amount of tomato paste on the bread of choice, place on one anchovy (the nice soft ones in oil, not the hairy salty ones in jars), parmesan and shredded basil.

Lunch

Salads

1. Kipfler potato salad with fresh herbs and whole egg mayonnaise

Peel 1kg of kipfler potatoes, place in cold water and bring to the boil. Boil for about four minutes or until just done then remove from heat and rinse in cold water to stop them from cooking. Leave to cool.

Meanwhile finely chop a handful of parsley, chives and dill. Gently mix through the potato and add whole egg mayonnaise (I use the japanese kewpie mayo because I love it) until potato is coated to your liking. My dad was a big fan of this salad. The kipfler’s are a great potato for salad as they have a beautiful yellow colour and buttery flavour.

2. A simple green salad with baby bocconcini, grape tomatoes, spanish onion and aged balsamic

Basically chop up the ingredients, mix in a bowl, drizzle with a little balsamic and serve. Do get good balsamic. Some people don’t like the tart taste of balsamic and a good quality aged balsamic has a much smoother flavour. So much so that balsamic haters won’t even realise what it is.

Seafood dishes

1. Snapper stuffed with ricotta, basil and spanish onion then wrapped in prosciutto.

Again this is easy. I baked two smallish snapper but you could use one large one or any other type of whole white fish that you like. Last time I made this I used a massive jew fish but snapper is lovely.

I put a generous helping of ricotta into the cavity of the fish with a few basil leaves and some slices of spanish onion. Then I lightly score the flesh of the fish, rub in a little olive oil, salt and pepper then lay strips of prosciutto over the top. It goes in the oven on about 180ºC for about half an hour (or until done for whatever size fish you have).

2. Fresh prawns, oysters and crabs served with seafood sauce and lime wedges

Too easy. Buy good quality seafood and serve.

Cold meats

We’ve never really been big on cooked foods on Christmas Day. It’s always hot in Australia so the climate is more suited to cold meats and seafood which makes serving up guests a nice easy task leaving you more time to spend with them on the day. I served ham and cold roast chicken for those who don’t like seafood and those who are suckers for the Christmas ham. I bought an organic chicken and if you can get a good quality organic chicken I highly recommend. I find the meat to be more tender and whiter. Even the thigh meat was really pale coloured and the juice ran beautifully clear when the roast was done.

I baked it on 200ºC for one and a half hours with a slice of bacon over the breast for the first half of the cooking time. I also made my mum’s awesome stuffing.

Mum’s awesome stuffing

8 slices of stale white bread sliced into 1cm cubes
1 handful of finely chopped herbs
2 tbspns milk
1/2 a large yellow onion finely chopped
1/2 tspn curry powder

You can really use whatever herbs you like for this but my favourite combination is thyme, rosemary, chives and parsley.

Mix bread, herbs, curry powder and onion together in a bowl (with your hands) then add in a little bit of milk at a time until the bread feels soft and ‘like fresh bread’ again and starts to cling together.

Shove the mixture up the chooks bum then close the opening with toothpicks.

Mum’s contribution. Mango, coconut meringue roll.

This is heaven and I don’t currently have the recipe so you’ll just have to drool in wonder.

I hope you had as wonderful a Christmas as I did, spent with loved ones enjoying time together. I’d love to do it all over again. Happy and prosperous 2012 to all.

For the mushrooms I sautéd them in a saucepan with olive oil until soft then added a couple of diced tomatoes, a teaspoon of quince paste and a dash of verjuice and simmered until it was nice a saucy.

Top with cracked pepper and a cheesy sprig of parsley.

Heaven!

Enjoy!