Category: Salads

Chicken, red grape, pecan and brie salad

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A top-down shot of a leaf-shaped bowl of salad with a fork on a dark wooden board

Now that my debut novel Hoods Landing is past-tense launched in Wellington and Auckland, normal transmission must resume, and yet! Every time I blink an hour has passed and it’s next Thursday and a certain flat the-party’s-over malaise threatens.

Nonetheless I’m clambering onwards like a self-absorbed and energetic goat with a food blog, and bring you a salad of such glad tidings that it could only be inspired by a hedonistically carefree Silver Palate cookbook, whose authors address the reader as if we all have holiday homes in Portugal and the Hamptons, and let’s face it, the government still hasn’t worked out a way to privatise and flog off one’s personal vicarious thrills so you might as well get them while you can. And although it has a lot of words in the title, this chicken, red grape, pecan and brie salad is more or less practical, and can make quite a lot out of a little lux-ness.

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Peach, prawn and corn salad

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A blue-rimmed plate of corn, peach and prawn salad on a background of blue and white fabric

I would never describe my food blog as particularly data-driven—more data-damned, than anything—but I could not help noticing that of late, American and British readers not only outnumber those from New Zealand, it’s at a proportionate size that I could only describe as comparing the hair height of a Dolly Parton wig to that of a person wearing a swimming cap. Some of that is the old per capita thing, in that there’s only so many New Zealanders to go around and our entire population could fit into a slight yet undeniably gerrymandered county on the Eastern Seaboard. Between the metric measurements and the highly locale-specific hatred of the supermarket duopoly (and referring to cilantro as coriander) I’m not sure what’s in it for the Americans specifically, but can only assume the ones reading this are cool as I am and as horrified by the same things as I am. This isn’t the first time I’ve noted this palpable attention; nonetheless, upon taking in this persistent data point I feel cheerfully obliged to throw the northern hemisphere another culinary bone acknowledging your being right in the middle of summer, with this utterly stunning Peach, Prawn and Corn Salad.

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23 Bean Recipes for you

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Hummus with pomegranate seeds and pine nuts.


To paraphrase Robert Altman: Beans, now more than ever! Real ones know beans shouldn’t be introduced with an apologetic tone—yes they’re cheap and nutritious, but they’re also elegant, buttery, robust, with the axis of history contained within their stout little bodies. If you’re after further inspiration, here’s a round-up of 23 recipes from my back catalogue for all the bean lovers out there, from Palestinian Msabaha to salt and vinegar beans, to freeform black bean cobbler. I’ve broadly included a few lentils in there, too.

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Salmon, mango and coriander salad

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Salmon mango salad on a green plate, on a baking tray with a fork below it

Mango? Salad? In these final shrinking vestiges of autumn as it descends, sighing and officially, into winter? First of all, deliciousness knows no practical response to temperature, so jot that down. Secondly, every now and then I dunk my head under the humbling waters of my site analytics and am reminded that a shocking number of my viewership comes from the United States, despite my distinct non-Americanness — to wit, the very nomenclature of this recipe, which, stateside, would be cilantro. While America does enough self-pandering to last us all a lifetime, some of the best and coolest long-term mutuals that I’ve never met are from the US and it does occur to me that this Salmon, Mango and Coriander Salad would be particularly tempting if I lived somewhere with summer rapidly approaching. On the other hand, I’ve had this for dinner three times this week alone here in increasingly frosty New Zealand. Once tasted, you’ll want to make time for this recipe all year round. And with frozen, cubed mango, it’s quite possible to do this. (And, I feel strenuously driven to make clear above the fold, if you hate coriander I have a variation for you.)

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Roasted green beans, fennel, potato, and feta

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Green beans and fennel on a roasting tray

If brunch can be defined as not quite breakfast and not quite lunch, occasionally you require a similar framework applied to your dinner, whether through heat, haste, exhaustion or the lingering memory of prior repletion. I shall not wring a cramped portmanteau out of ‘dinner’ and ‘lunch’ — though others have tried — but I shall offer you this recipe for roasted green beans, potatoes, fennel and feta, which occupies that nebulous yet necessary space.

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24 Valentine’s Day Recipes for you

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Marble heart cookies


Valentine’s Day doesn’t inspire within me great frenzied levels of interest, but I do care about (a) drawing attention to myself and (b) encouraging you to make delicious food. If you haven’t got plans already, avoid perching side-by-side with all the other awkward couples like toothpicked cubes of cheese and pickled onions stuck into a halved grapefruit and stay in, instead (then go out to dinner the next night — let it not be said that I’m not here for the restaurant industry). This round-up is much simpler than fiendish beast that is my annual Christmas Gift Guide, but there’s plenty to choose from and I’ve tried to select a few unsung heroes from my back catalogue.

Whether your dance card is full this Valentine’s Day with multiple mouths to feed or it’s single servings — this one goes out to all the lovers.

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Broccoli coriander salad

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a white and pink plate of broccoli salad on a white tablecloth

Unlike the unfortunate sector of society with the OR6A2 gene that makes coriander taste like soap, my ancestors blessed me with a hearty hyper-tolerance for the herb, and I can happily consume buckets of it like a blithe drayhorse in a meadow. That being said, I didn’t come to this broccoli coriander salad on purpose — it was the happiest and most serendipitous of accidents based on that humble yet potent activity; the fridge-raid dinner. Put it this way, I expected this to (a) taste fine and (b) use up exactly what I had at hand and no more. I did not expect it to blow my hair back so thoroughly, and I’ve had it for or with dinner repeatedly ever since. So, now I’m sharing it with you.

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Got lemons? Get 18 lemon recipes.

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I’ve intended to photograph and write about food for the entirety of July thus far and have either been too tired, too busy, too tired from being busy, or not blessed with photography daylight to achieve anything (other than being incredibly grumpy about my lack of blogging). After lugging a spirit-liftingly full bag of lemons back to town with me following my last visit home, it occurred to me that a jaunty interstitial in the form of a round-up of lemon recipes could temporarily countermand this issue. Naturally, it immediately created a new burden of chaotic formatting and link-hunting; after all that I’m not sure if the lemon recipes I’ve gathered are that useful, but they are at least mildly out of the ordinary to anyone expecting a lemon meringue pie here.

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Kimchi Tagliata

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Though I celebrate culinary simplicity in theory — a crystalline yet oleaginous broth, a salted ripe tomato wreathed in basil, a steamed new-season potato — I am, in practice and in soul, a meddler who often mistakes more for superior. You know, “this recipe or menu item must be the best (and best value for money) because it has the most components”. And, in all honesty, I only desire a plain steamed potato, no matter how lovingly and organically grown, about zero point seven five times a year. Getting a firm grip on my maximalist tendencies doesn’t mean sacrificing flamboyance: see my café brûlot ice cream, which I accepted was significantly better with less condensed milk while still retaining both richness of flavour and component frequency. And so, this kimchi tagliata — a supremely simple recipe — has only been meddled with marginally, walking back my initial excess aspirations to great effect.

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Banadora Wa Sumac — Tomato, Mint and Sumac Salad

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It’s a new year! To paraphrase Dorothy Parker — out of indolence, not because she needs editing — another one? How? 2024 feels too far into the future for my taste, we all know too much but we’ve learned nothing and Google doesn’t work anymore and the date of my birth is shrinking in the distance to the point where it’s improbable that I existed both now and then. But, here we are, now, and based upon experience I approach the early days of January 2024 cautiously — like I’m throwing a steak to distract and appease a pugnacious neighbourhood dog — but not without hope.

On that somewhat discordant note, I’m beginning the year with Banadora Wa Sumac, an ebullient salad from Palestine on a Plate by Joudie Kalla that echoes the nation’s flag colours and cools the brain while delighting the palate.

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