Category: Salads

Pickled Fried Cauliflower and Marinated Tofu Salad with Creamy Herb Dressing

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What’s in a recipe title? Whether or not it’s obvious (or indeed, warranted) I cogitate over the titles of my recipes with all the eleventh-hour fervency of Tom Wambsgans and Cousin Greg resolving the “We Hear For You” slogan in Succession, analysing my titles in terms of vibe, aesthetic, syntax, proximity, logical and lexical semantics, global political temperature, whether or not it’s stupider than something Tom and Greg would come up with, and uh, actual accuracy. In the case of today’s Pickled Fried Cauliflower and Marinated Tofu Salad with Creamy Herb Dressing the adjectives and nouns were weaving in and out and around like a high-spirited Jane Austen heroine at a Regency ball. I finally settled on the current iteration but need to include the caveat that nothing here is literally long-term preserved, there’s just pickle brine involved and so the cauliflower is experiencing being pickled in the same way that a TV character might use their surname as a verb and proclaim “you just got [surname]-ed” at another unsuspecting character. The tofu is definitely marinated, though! No vagaries there.

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There are three distinct components to this salad: scorched, nutty cauliflower soused in lemon juice with sweet, smoky gochugaru and the rich, fancy taste of toasted fennel seeds; soft chunks of tofu humming with salt and vinegar; and a celadon-hued dressing tinted with the leaves furled around the cauliflower, all held together with flouncy rocket leaves. While it’s not exactly the work of mere moments, this salad in both looks and tastes amply reflects the effort.

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With all that vinegar and lemon and marinating it might seem like this salad has set its pickling sights on the inside of your mouth as you eat it, however, it comes together in a bracing but balanced way: the opaque mellowness of the tofu and the tender cauliflower can ably handle that level of tang, and the tangle of leaves diffuses it further. I drew a little inspiration from Sicilian Cauliflower and the concept of brining tofu to make a kind of vegan feta; however in this case I’m happy for it to simply be marinated tofu — I’m bringing its delicious taste and texture to this salad on purpose as opposed to it being a substitution. That being said, if you wanted to crumble some feta into this I’m sure it would be a fine addition, but I’d use it alongside, not instead of, the tofu.

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Somewhat infuriatingly for a person like me who doesn’t like to plan ahead, the tofu does taste better the longer you leave it in the marinade — on the other hand, if you’re organised you can keep the main components of this salad separately in the fridge and then breezily merge them together at your leisure; the tofu in one container, the cauliflower in another (it will get a little floppy as it sits in its vinegars and spices but I don’t see this as a problem) and the dressing in a third; the rocket should be added right as you’re about to serve. I’m not talking weeks of forethought here, the morning of the dinner you’re planning to eat this salad at would be perfect. With bread for swiping through the dressing and a dessert to happily anticipate, this would be a charmingly light but bolstering dinner for two; it will of course serve more people if you have other dishes on the table. And if you want to make it a salad tasting flight, or if you live in a country where rocket is called arugula and therefore have different ingredients in season, you might also consider my Lentil, Radish, Avocado and Fried Potato Salad; my Tomatoes and Fried Mint; or Nigella’s spectacular Pea, Mint, and Avocado Salad.

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Pickled Fried Cauliflower and Marinated Tofu Salad with Creamy Herb Dressing

A fancy but robust meal of a salad, full of punchy flavour. Prepare the tofu at least a few hours in advance if you can, but it’s still fine if it’s just sitting around while you make the rest of the salad. Recipe by myself.

Marinated Tofu:

  • 300g firm tofu, drained and patted dry with a paper towel
  • 1/4 cup white vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon fresh thyme or oregano leaves
  • 1 fat garlic clove, peeled and chopped roughly
  • 1/2 – 1 teaspoon table salt, or to taste

Cauliflower + Salad:

  • 1/2 a large cauliflower
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
  • 1 teaspoon gochugaru, or chilli flakes of your choice
  • 2 tablespoons pickle brine, from a jar of pickles
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • salt, to taste
  • 3 tablespoons pumpkin seeds
  • 100g rocket leaves

Creamy Herb Dressing:

  • 20g tofu (roughly) from the block for marinating
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons water
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon honey
  • 1 tablespoon fresh thyme or oregano leaves
  • a few of the cauliflower leaves (optional, if they came attached)
  • salt and pepper, to taste

1: First, get the tofu a-marinating by slicing the 300g block of tofu into cubes, reserving about 20g (about 4 cubes of tofu) for the dressing. In an airtight container that is big enough to fit the tofu in, stir together the 1/4 cup of white vinegar, the two tablespoons of lemon juice, the tablespoon each of olive oil and fresh herbs, the sliced garlic clove, and the half teaspoon (or more, to taste) of table salt. Tip in the cubes of tofu, place the lid on the container, give it a gentle shake, and set aside while you complete the rest of the salad. If you’re making this ahead of time, refrigerate the container until needed.

2: Next, the cauliflower — slice your half-cauliflower into small florets, and fry them in the two tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan, letting the florets sit undisturbed for a minute or two to let them brown before turning them. I like to put the lid on the container for a couple of minutes so that they steam as well as frying, but whatever works for you. Once the cauliflower is sufficiently browned and scorched in places, remove the pieces to a large mixing bowl. Turn the heat off the pan, and tip in the fennel seeds, letting them sit for about 30 seconds in the residual heat until fragrant, and then tip the seeds over the cauliflower in the bowl. Repeat with the three tablespoons of pumpkin seeds, clattering them into the still-hot pan and leaving them to toast until fragrant. If your stovetop doesn’t hold its heat forever like mine, you may need to turn up the heat again. Set the pumpkin seeds aside for garnishing later.

3: Add the teaspoon of gochugaru (or chilli flakes) to the bowl of cauliflower, along with the two tablespoons of pickle brine, the tablespoon of lemon juice, and salt to taste. You can cover this bowl and let the cauliflower sit for a couple hours if that’s more convenient than eating it right away.

4: Finally, make the creamy herb dressing and assemble the salad. Place the reserved 20g/few cubes of tofu into a blender along with the two tablespoons of olive oil, three tablespoons of water, the teaspoon each of lemon juice, garlic powder, and honey, the tablespoon of thyme or oregano leaves, the cauliflower leaves (if using) and plenty of salt and pepper. Blitz until you have a smooth, green-tinged puree.

5: Toss the 100g of rocket leaves through the cauliflower. Drain the marinated tofu and gently toss through the salad. Drizzle over a little of the herb dressing, and leave the rest on the table with a spoon for people to add their own. Scatter over the toasted pumpkin seeds, and serve.

Makes two hearty servings. This will serve 3-4 as a side, or more as part of a busy buffet table.

Notes:

  • You can use spinach or mixed leaves instead of the rocket, but the peppery nature of the rocket is preferable here. If you’re not using rocket you could consider adding a handful of watercress to your leaves.
  • Use another garlic clove in the dressing if that’s easier — sometimes raw garlic can be a bit acrid, hence why I used garlic powder instead.
  • If your lemon juice is coming from actual fruit instead of a bottle, you could definitely add the finely grated zest to this, perhaps with the cauliflower.
  • If your cauliflower comes with its leaves already trimmed, you could add a handful of parsley or basil to the blender for the salad dressing instead, bearing in mind that the basil will add a much stronger (but delightful!) flavour.

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music lately:

As by Stevie Wonder, I could no sooner name my favourite Stevie Wonder song than I could identify which particular air particles I enjoy breathing the most. Nonetheless, this is my favourite Stevie Wonder song! The way that chorus shuffles up on you, the way the verses lap in and out like waves, the way it’s really hard to google if you forget what it’s called!

Ridin’ Low by L.A.D. I always assumed, when I’d hear this on the radio back in the day, that the chorus must have been sampled from some 1960s band, as the interpolation of Temptations guitars and Five Satins shoo-be-do-ing would suggest, but after extensive research, it seems that the composers, who I cannot find any credits for, just created one of the most beautiful choruses from scratch for this song and then disappeared into thin air? I need to know more!

Stop by Jane’s Addiction, the kind of guitar riffs that make you feel like you’re falling off a bicycle onto gravel; Perry Farrell’s stainless steel voice is a national treasure.

Brotherhood of Man, from the film adaptation of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Robert Morse’s loose-shouldered no-personal-space fidgety physicality! It has to be said!

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours every month. There’s no better time than right now — your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

Lentil, Radish, Avocado and Fried Potato Salad

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The one area in my life where I have a confident surplus of initiative is cooking – when nothing makes sense and the increasingly burdensome administrative tasks involved in being an adult are gleefully multiplying like the broomsticks in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I can still invent a recipe or be delighted by a hypothetical combination of flavours. July has been a taxing month and these reliable instincts fell somewhat dormant, but I was jolted back to life by seeing this Lentil Salad TikTok by food writer Bettina Makalintal – suddenly I felt excited again because making this recipe was in my near future. And besides, I gain as much joy from outside inspiration as I do from coming up with my own ideas (okay, maybe it’s more of a self-satisfied forty/sixty split), and it takes initiative to recognise someone else’s initiative, right? (As you can see, I may lack initiative, but at least I’m constantly worrying about it!)

Lentils and tofu are usually first under the bus when non-vegans discuss vegan food but as I always say, this is an issue with cooking ability, not the meal itself. Unseasoned, poorly cooked food is gross whether the protein source grew in the ground or walked the earth. You have to give the lentils some flavour and texture to cling onto otherwise they’re left stranded and bland. This superb salad – it does right by the lentil.

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My recipe takes key elements of Bettina’s salad – the lentils, obviously, the peppery pink crunch of the radishes and plenty of lemon – along with my own added extras. There’s resiny thyme leaves, a diced avocado since I had one kicking about and it’s impossible to be sad when there’s an avocado involved, a generous quantity of mushroom soy sauce because it’s my current obsession, toasted pine nuts with garlic because to me pine nuts are just so classy – which I realise makes me sound more Kath Day-Knight than Old Money but I know where I’d rather be – and golden cubes of crisply-fried potato. The latter concept was inspired both by Nigella Lawson’s fried potato croutons in her Caesar Salad and a recipe by Rachel Ama for lentils with crispy new potatoes. It truly takes a village to make a salad!

@hungryandfrozen

recipe at hungryandfrozen.com 🤠 inspired by the @bettinamak salad 🤠 #cookingvideo #vegan #lentils #recipe #foodblogger #veganrecipes #fyp #nzfood

♬ Ai Ga Bani – Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté

This lentil salad is so delicious – leaving no adjective behind, it’s a perfect balance of oily, salty, sweet, earthy, peppery, crunchy, creamy, and tender. And it’s pretty, too, something the lentil doesn’t always get to boast – not since Elphaba and Galinda has pink looked so good with green. As is the nature of this kind of recipe you can add or subtract ingredients to your heart’s content, and despite being wedded to the classy pine nut, next time I’d definitely make this with the fried walnuts in Bettina’s recipe for a more pronounced crunch. There’s also lime juice or cherry tomatoes and basil to consider, or fried leeks, or olives, or rosemary, or pecans – the amicable lentil can handle it all. I’m slowly working on a newsletter where I plan to review various fake meats (the slow part is because CMS makes my head cave in on itself) but I enjoyed being reminded of the stalwart legume and its merits. It’s rather shamefully been years since I blogged a lentil recipe, and this salad will keep them on my mind from now on.

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Lentil, Radish, Avocado and Fried Potato Salad

A simple but lush vegan lentil salad, ideal for lunch or dinner in its entirety but also very bring-a-plate friendly. It looks like there’s a lot of steps, but you’re really just mixing a bunch of stuff together, and ingredients are pretty loose, quantity-wise – feel free to add or subtract depending on your taste and needs. Recipe by myself, inspired by this salad by Bettina Makalintal.

  • 1 and 1/2 cups dried brown lentils
  • 8 small radishes, trimmed
  • 1 spring onion
  • 2 lemons
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for frying
  • 2 tablespoons mushroom soy sauce (or Maggi, or light soy sauce)
  • a generous pinch of white pepper, or to taste
  • 1 large floury potato
  • 1/2 cup pine nuts
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 1 ripe but firm avocado
  • 2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

1: Rinse the lentils in cold water, then place in a bowl and cover with cold water and leave them to sit for an hour. You don’t actually need to soak them but it reduces the cooking time and I think there are some health benefits to it in terms of mineral absorption but don’t take my word for it.

2: Drain any water from the soaked lentils and tip them into a large saucepan with enough fresh water to generously cover (about the length of your index finger when prodded into the pan.) Bring the water to the boil then lower the heat and simmer the beans until they’re tender – this shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes. Keeping the heat low prevents the lentils from breaking apart and turning mushy, I was only semi-successful in achieving this but it still tasted fine. Strain the lentils, rinsing briefly in cold water to take some of the heat off, and set aside in a mixing bowl.

3: Cut the radishes into quarters and finely slice the spring onion. Make the dressing by zesting and juicing the lemon and mixing this in a small bowl with the mushroom soy sauce, olive oil and black pepper.

4: Scrub the potato clean if need be and dice it into small cubes. Heat another tablespoon or two of olive oil in a heavy frying pan and fry the potato cubes until golden and crisp – make sure they’re in one layer and give them about five minutes on the first side without moving them before turning over and cooking for another five minutes.

5: Turn off the heat, remove the potatoes from the pan with a slotted spoon and add them to the lentils. Peel and roughly chop the garlic cloves and add them to the pan with the pine nuts, and stir them in the residual heat until the nuts are lightly golden and toasted. Even though this isn’t happening on direct heat be sure to keep a close eye on it as both pine nuts and garlic burn easily.

6: Finally, tip the radishes and spring onions into the bowl of lentils and potatoes, then scrape in all the pine nuts, garlic, and remaining olive oil from the pan. Dice your avocado and add that to the bowl along with the dressing and the thyme leaves. Gently stir everything together and taste to see if needs more salt, pepper, or lemon.

Best served either immediately or after 24 hours in the fridge, by which point the potatoes will have lost their crispness but the overall flavour will have developed fantastically. If you’re making this ahead of time, either accept your uncrisp potatoes or fry them up at the last minute and stir them in. Finally – this is best at room temperature as opposed to fridge-cold.

Serves 4 generously as a light lunch, or 6-8 as a side dish as part of a larger meal.

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music lately:

Son of Birds by Dip In The Pool. The whole Aurorae album from 1991 is a sublime dreamscape from start to finish and that’s how I’d recommend listening to it, but this track, with its watery beat and film noir horns, is a charming entry point.

Don’t Leave Me by Blackstreet. A classic! The silky harmonies! Was there ever anything as poignant as that DeBarge sample! This song makes me feel like I’m wearing a cable knit sweater and slacks and a floor-length coat and pumps with a square toe and a square heel and I’m on the brink of divorce but in an aspirational, cinematic way!

The One by Limp Bizkit. Oh, I could pretend that watching the Woodstock 99 documentary with my brother is what made me nostalgic but the briefest scan of my timeline shows I’ve been enthusiastically listening to Limp Bizkit of my own volition for a long time. And even though this song is genuinely quite glorious with a similar downwards-diagonal intensity that you’d find in Shout by Tears for Fears or In Like The Rose by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and I honestly love it so much and will play it five times in a row, we all know I’m going to play Limp Bizkit’s critically-reviled cover of Faith five times in a row after that – say what you like but I came of age with this band and none of us can deny the way Fred Durst’s voice soars in the bridge.

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours on a monthly basis. There’s no better time than right now – your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

tomatoes and fried mint (vegan)

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Prevailing modern wisdom suggests the best way to cook is by taking the highest-quality seasonal ingredients and doing as little as possible to them. Which is fine, admirable, whatever, but I would go one further and propose that the best thing to do with these seasonal ingredients is to fry them. How better to show your respect to anything than by dousing it in hot fat? Especially if, like the Spanish inquisition, the frying is unexpected! We’ve all heated up a tomato. Have you ever tasted fried mint?

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We’re blessed with several containers of glowing-ripe tomatoes from the garden, which magically refill as soon as they’re emptied, and I kept thinking about these tomatoes with fried mint, about how the leaves would go crisp and crunchy and the oil they’d sizzled in would become infused with their heady scent. It’s very possible, highly likely in fact, that I read about fried mint somewhere and internalised the idea – but it appeared in my head out of nowhere, compellingly, and I had a feeling it would be spectacular. That feeling was confirmed. I hesitated before including this recipe on here – I say recipe, it’s more of a vaguely-realised suggestion, a bullet point in the notes app of your phone at best, but it tasted incredible and it’s been forever since I’ve posted savoury, and as the late, sorely missed Anthony Bourdain said in Kitchen Confidential, “Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.” (For some reason I always misremember that book as being called Secrets and Knives, in fact, I was convinced one of his publications had that title; if there’s a doctor in the house I’d love to know if “constantly getting kneecapped by the Mandela effect” is something I can get a pill for.)

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With a recipe so simple as to be almost nonexistent you need good tomatoes, sweet and pendulous, the kind to make your eyes fly open as you bite into them, perhaps followed by an exclamation of “hell’s bells!” I wouldn’t really recommend making this in the shrivelled dead of winter, but right now is that hemispheric sweet spot where we in New Zealand have the last glorious crops of tomatoes coming through while countries up north are starting to post “hot girl summer” captions thus implying tomatoes are moving back into season.

But what about the fried mint? You’d think, freshly chopped and stirred into tomatoes, it couldn’t be improved upon, but this is exquisite – the leaves grow translucent and as shatteringly crisp as filo pastry, their cool heat deepened and made more savoury, more lush. The leaves and their seasoned oil coat the tomatoes with a glossy slick of darkly fresh flavour – it’s sensational, it’s captivating.

Also – and I’m truly not going to do this every time – I made a little tiktok video to go with this. 

@hungryandfrozen

recipe for ya: tomatoes + fried mint 🍅 super simple and lush 🍃go to hungryandfrozen.com for more 🤠 #vegan #recipe #recipes #foodblog #summer #fyp

♬ Cheree – Suicide

This recipe, as I said, is really, really simple, and I just ate it alongside a short length of baguette – but as with anything tomato-based, it’s amenable to variety. Stir it through hot pasta for an instant sauce, pile it onto couscous and scatter with toasted seeds, add leaves and turn it into a salad, the usual ideas. You could also apply the fried mint and its oil elsewhere – for some reason I’m thinking ice cream, but obviously couscous and so on would benefit – but as it is, the red-and-green symphony (my final hyperbolic adjective I promise) of this recipe is perfect unadorned, eaten standing up in the kitchen because it’s so delicious you’ve forgotten to sit down.

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Tomatoes and Fried Mint

There’s hardly anything to this little salad – but it’s incredibly delicious – so here it is. Recipe by myself.

  • 1-2 handfuls ripe cherry tomatoes, depending on how much you want
  • 1 handful fresh mint leaves (roughly 15 leaves?)
  • 2 tablespoons rice bran oil or something similarly neutral like grapeseed or sunflower
  • 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
  • salt to taste
  • 1/4 teaspoon malt vinegar, optional

1: Halve your tomatoes and place them in a bowl. If they need it, wash the mint leaves and pat them dry with a clean tea towel.

2: Heat the rice bran oil in a large saucepan and once it’s hot, throw in the mint leaves and cook them for a bare minute or so, stirring a little to coat them in the sizzling oil. Try to keep the leaves more or less in a single layer. I lifted a mint leaf from the pan and crumbled it in my fingers, its brittle, crisp texture was how I knew they were done. I don’t expect you to have the same cavalier attitude towards naked heat, but basically, these should be ready somewhere between thirty seconds and a minute in. Turn off the heat.

3: Spoon the mint leaves and their oil over the tomatoes. Add the extra olive oil and salt to taste. Stir. I also like to add a little ground white pepper, I can’t help it, I love the stuff. If you want to add the vinegar, here’s a good time – I like it both with and without, which I appreciate is not helpful for your decision-making.

Serves 1, possibly more, depending on how you’re using it. Don’t forget to drink the minty tomato juice which pools at the base of the bowl.

Notes:

  • If you don’t have access to a mint plant – and why should you – get one of those mini potted ones from the fresh herb section of the supermarket – the sort which are always overpriced and die almost instantly – and rip off every single leaf.
  • In case you’re wondering why there’s two oils, rice bran oil is better for frying, the dash of extra virgin olive oil at the end is for flavour, and not suited to high heat. I free-pour both and encourage you to do the same.

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music lately:

Blank Generation, by Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Is this the best song in the world? No, that’s Roadrunner by Modern Lovers. But also: yes it is. My methodology is watertight.

Bad Religion, Frank Ocean. This song is nearly ten years old (?!!) and yet it’s still too powerful! Like, imagine listening to this while walking down the street to buy toothpaste. There’s those opening church organs and those devastating, late-in-the-piece drums and that sudden falsetto howl, and suddenly you’re sobbing into a courier van, dental hygiene forgotten. Absolute folly.

A Boy Like That/I Have A Love by Chita Rivera and Carol Lawrence from the Original Broadway Cast recording of West Side Story. I’m always listening to Sondheim but since it was his birthday the other day I decided to listen to everything he’s done in chronological order, and twelve hours later I’d made it to…1957. Anyway – the film version of West Side Story is unsurprisingly what everyone thinks of first, but the original is also glorious – I love Chita’s throaty, knowing voice against Carol’s clear soprano, and those harmonies at the end are just stunning.

PS: If you enjoy my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours on a monthly basis.

Vegan Kale, Pecan, and Fried Carrot Salad

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Since my friend Charlotte and I devised the Friend Carrot Noodles last year, not a day has gone by where I don’t think about the fried carrot. Not a single day. This is not me exaggerating to be cute! I know we’re at a crossroads of the word “literally” meaning whatever you want it to mean, and food bloggers insisting every recipe to be the most sandblasting-intensity deliciousness they’ve ever encountered, but even so please believe me when I say that I literally do think about fried carrots all the time. It’s not that we invented the concept, since people have been putting carrots over a heat source for centuries, but I’d never previously considered the carrot to be a main event food. It had been a member of the chorus, a background extra, essential in a sofrito and a useful dip pipeline but not something I relished crunching on raw and unadorned with any great enthusiasm (so much exertion! So punitive!) Fried carrots though – as in, carrots that are left to go caramelised and crisp and collapsing – are incredible, a star, something I’d gladly eat a bowl of on their own.

Having been on a very brief visit to Wellington recently (spurred on by what I thought were cheap flights, which ended up being extremely not-cheap due to numerous hidden fares, causing me once again to curse this ground I was born upon and this country’s terrible public transport) I was able to revisit the Friend Carrot Noodles in their proper setting – with my friend Charlotte. Much as Champagne may only be called such if it’s from the Champagne region of France, these noodles are really at their most exemplary when consumed in their place of origin, otherwise they’re just Fried Carrot Noodles.

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A few things fell into place upon my return home to allow this Kale, Pecan and Fried Carrot Salad come together: first of all, pecans were unexpectedly cheap at the supermarket so I treated myself to a couple packets, secondly, there was not much in the way of ingredients at home other than greens from the garden and a large bag of carrots. Envisioning a wintery salad – more rich and robust than cold and wet – I thought the pecans and the oily sweetness of the carrots would fare well against the substantial, almost leathery kale leaves.

It worked – this salad is so good. The pecans have a real complexity to them, buttery and earthy and dense and just slightly smoky, but if they’re not on special where you are, walnuts or even pine nuts would be a solid back up. The combination of mouthfilling richness and soft crunch is honestly stunning.

You could consider hiffing this salad through some short pasta to make a real meal of it, or add other bits and pieces – peas could work, fresh mint leaves would be wonderful, roasted beetroot is an obvious addition, super bitter leaves like chicory would hold their own. If life is really in your favour, why not add some avocado, or indeed, double the pecans. The worst thing about this salad is also its greatest feature – there’s nothing fun about chopping up that many carrots. But they reward your efforts significantly. In fact, the best thing you could do for this salad would be to add more carrots.

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Kale, Pecan and Fried Carrot Salad

A recipe by myself. Serves 4 as a side.

  • 70g/half a cup pecans
  • 1 spring onion
  • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon Maggi seasoning (or, 1 teaspoon soy sauce or a pinch of salt)
  • Juice and zest of one lemon
  • 4 medium-large carrots
  • Rice bran oil, or similar, for frying
  • 2 cups loosely packed kale leaves, or a mixture of robust leafy greens eg cavolo nero, spinach – roughly a handful of greens per person is a good starting point, use more or less as you please.
  1. Roughly break up the pecans into smaller pieces – you can chop them up but I find it easer to break them along their central lines. Toast them gently in a frying pan for a couple of minutes until they are warmed through and fragrant – being careful not to let them burn. Remove from the heat and set aside.
  2. Finely slice the spring onion. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the olive oil, Maggi seasoning, lemon zest and lemon juice, and add the spring onions and pecans.
  3. Slice the carrots lengthwise into sticks, not worrying if they’re particularly uniform thickness. It will look like there’s an alarmingly large quantity of carrots but they do reduce down in the pan. Heat a little rice brain oil in a large frying pan and in smallish batches, fry the carrots till they’re browned and caramelised on both sides. The best way to do this is to let them sit in one layer, without stirring, for a few minutes, then use tongs to turn them over. A bit of a faff, but much quicker than constantly stirring them. Remove the carrots as they’re browned and drop them into the mixing bowl with the pecans, and continue frying the remaining carrots, adding a little more oil to the pan each time. Don’t be tempted to skip the oil – it really helps the process and the flavour.
  4. Wash the kale leaves and gently pat or shake them dry, then tear the leaves into small pieces and add to the mixing bowl. Use tongs to mix the ingredients all together, and taste to see if the seasoning needs anything. Transfer to a serving bowl.

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music lately:

Cyclical by Cassowary feat Tyler Cole. This is one song of twenty-nine featured on my latest playlist for Tenderly which I recommend you both read and listen to, especially this song – that opening is funkier than a bottle of Smith and Cross Pot Still Navy Strength rum.

Washington On Your Side from the musical Hamilton, performed by Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan and Leslie Odom Jr. I know there’s all sorts of Hamilton discourse going on and it’s a corny show but it’s my cross to bear that I’m obsessed with musical theatre and if someone’s going to release an incredibly well-produced filmed production of a Broadway show, well it’s probably the only opportunity I’ll ever have to see it, so of course I’m going to watch it with joy in my heart! And this is a really great song! Those decisive strings! The famed breath control from Diggs! That insolent little casiotone melody at the start!

Bo Diddley, by Bo Diddley. Probably one of the most exciting and important pieces of music ever written? You can hear this in so many songs, and if you can’t hear it in a song, then honestly what’s the point?

Next time: I used the cacao butter to make vegan white chocolate and it was amazing and you will be hearing about it.

PS: If you enjoy my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours on a monthly basis.

bonfires burning bright, pumpkin faces in the night

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I’ve read seventeen books in the last two months which is more than I read in the last year, in fact I could say with neither hesitation nor exaggeration that it’s more than I read in the past four years combined. One of these books was The Idiot by Elif Batuman, I call upon it because partway through this novel there was a passage that absolutely kneecapped me:

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Though I tempered the immediate butter knife that this drove through me by reminding myself that I’d been writing this very blog for eleven years now and have in fact had a cookbook published before; the precision is nevertheless really something, isn’t it, and probably applicable to any vocation that you hold out of your own reach while insisting it’s really external forces standing in the way?

And though this quote dangles in my head like a spider’s legs I’ve done a robust quantity of writing this week to helpfully back up my claim of wanting to write, including the following:

  • I updated my Frasier food blog, covering Episode 18 of Season 1 and a recipe for the Pink Lady Cocktail
  • I updated my Frasier food blog AGAIN, covering Episode 19 and a recipe for homemade Butterfingers

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And I’m writing this, aren’t I! The recipe I made this week – Sticky Roast Balsamic Sumac Butternut Pumpkin and Cashews – came about simply because I was craving those precise qualities – sticky and caramelised and crisp and roasted and a little sour and salty and rich, you know what I mean? To be perfectly honest with you the sumac component came in at the last minute – after having taken the photos of this recipe I finally got to consume a bowlful, and while it was delicious it was lacking a certain top note, sort of like if you listen to a stereo and you’ve accidentally turned down the treble dial, so it’s recognisable but a little lifeless? That was when I thought to add the sumac: it dovetails with the balsamic vinegar, it imparts a kind of lemony ebullience and lightens up the rich, oily heft of the roasted butternut pumpkin and all those cashews.

This combination is just smashingly delicious: the butternut gets all crunchy and almost adhesive to itself in the hot olive oil, the cashews with their brief blast of heat get their mild creamy flavour and crunch deepened, and the drizzle of golden syrup and balsamic vinegar intensifies everything else and ramps up the caramelisation. And the sumac demonstrably saves the day. If you don’t have any of the sour red powder that is sumac, and this is entirely reasonable, I would just squeeze over the juice of a lemon or a lime and furthermore sprinkle over its zest for good measure. Pomegranate molasses or tamarind would have a similar energy but I feel like if you have those you probably also have sumac already and therefore do not require my dupes. On that note; I chose the butternut pumpkin on purpose: it’s buttery and rich, and not only cooks quicker than regular pumpkin it’s also much easier to slice. But consider them fairly interchangeable if you only have the latter.

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Sticky Roast Balsamic Sumac Butternut Pumpkin and Cashews

a recipe by myself

  • 1/2 a large butternut pumpkin
  • (optional) 2 tablespoons plain flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 4 tablespoons or so olive oil
  • 1 cup raw cashews
  • 1/4 cup raw peanuts (or just more cashews if you like)
  • 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, plus extra for drizzling
  • 2 teaspoons golden syrup or similar
  • 2 teaspoons sumac
  • coriander leaves to serve, optional
  • lots of salt and pepper

Set your oven to 220C/450F. Pour the oil into a large roasting tray and put the tray into the oven to heat up while you get everything else sorted.

Carefully slice the skin off the pumpkin and dice the flesh into pieces of roughly one inch. Sprinkle the flour over the cubes of pumpkin if you want, this will make it all the more crispy when it roasts but you can leave it out if you want for gluten-avoidance reasons.

Tip the cubes of pumpkin into the roasting dish that’s been heating up and spread them out so they’re all on one layer. Sprinkle over the cumin and drizzle over more oil if it looks like it needs it. Roast for roughly twenty minutes, stirring halfway through – the amount of time will depend on your oven, but don’t be afraid to leave it in there for a while so the pumpkin gets really crispy and browned.

While the butternut pumpkin is in the oven, pile the cashews and peanuts onto your chopping board and roughly chop them into rubble. In a small cup or bowl mix together the golden syrup and balsamic vinegar.

When you’re quite satisfied with the crisp and brown-ness of the cubes of butternut, remove the tray from the oven and drizzle over the balsamic/syrup mixture – it doesn’t have to coat everything evenly – and sprinkle over the chopped nuts. Return the tray to the oven for literally one minute, then turn the oven off. Leave the tray in there for about ten minutes (although check occasionally to make sure the cashews haven’t burnt). Remove the tray from the oven, sprinkle over the sumac and plenty of salt and pepper, and then serve with the coriander leaves sprinkled on top and an extra drizzle of balsamic vinegar for good measure.

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This recipe is one of those neither-here-nor-there ones, but in a really good way – you can serve it as a side during a larger hearty meal; you could stir it through couscous or bulghur wheat (perhaps with some capers and sultanas); or pile it on rice with some other components; you could fold it through some robust salad leaves, I’m thinking a mixture of rocket and cos lettuce; or you could mix it into spaghetti or other long pasta; or you can do what I did and just eat a bowlful of it on its own. The dish shone at any temperature as well: straight from the oven dish before I’d even decamped it to a serving bowl to photograph; at room temperature once it had finished modelling for me; even fridge-cold, the next-day leftovers were spectacularly good, the balsamic sweetness really coming through the wonderfully oily cubes of butternut pumpkin.

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(A Ghost sighting in the wild) (Ghost is the name of the dog by the way)

I’m currently staying with my parents for a bit, and have spent the last two days on the road in a car with my mother and her best friend getting from Wellington to Waiuku (including a three-hour and one-minute journey between the capital and Otaki due to post-Eminem concert-goer traffic – it should normally take around an hour at the most, but it’s all part of the road trip adventure as we optimistically surmised: if there’s one thing Mum and her best friend know how to do, it’s executing a cunning plan and being optimistic about it at every step of the way.) If you remember when I mentioned in my first blog post of the year that Mum suggested I could come home for a bit and frame it as a writer’s retreat, well, like foreshadowing in a prestige television show, that chicken has come home to roost.

title from: Halloween, by Misfits. I love the anxious guitar riff and the abrupt energy and the way lead singer Glenn Danzig slides over his consonants in a muffled, careless manner, much like a young Patti LuPone in, for example, the 1988 Broadway revival of Anything Goes. Let the bodies hit the floor!

music lately:

Survive It, by Ghostpoet. Really beautiful and, well, poetic.

(I Want To See) The Bright Lights, by Julie Covington. She was the first person to record the breakout song Don’t Cry For Me Argentina in the concept album that preceded the musical Evita (when the concept materialised into a musical on the West End the role went to the unsinkable Elaine Paige, and upon its transfer to Broadway the following year, it was none other than the aforementioned Patti LuPone who sang the famous number.) This is from one of her solo albums and is a cover of a Richard and Linda Thompson song, she sounds just gorgeous and the jingle-jangle production is somehow not too dated, and it captures that very British oil-and-water quality of being plaintively melancholy and resiliently upbeat simultaneously.

Sound of Rain, by Solange. She dropped a new album all at once and everything about it, the musicality and her voice and the writing and the production is stunning and she just seems to be in top form. At 39 minutes, When I Get Home is easy to listen to in its entirety but I love this track in particular at the moment.

i set out to disappear and out there i found a new home

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Since we last talked a lot has happened, so let’s recap! I loved many things about my job as a bartender but I was also like, I could accidentally carry on working round the clock for another year and a half and not actually confront myself with any real life decisions, and so my final shift was last Sunday; as for the moving house bit, well my lease was coming up for renewal and the rent was hiked upwards to a height so dizzying even in this current economic climate that it would give you a nosebleed just to countenance it, and I was like honestly I can’t condone this behaviour from the landlords so I bowed out and am now temporarily but delightedly mucking in at the house of my lovely friends Kate and Jason.

I spent roughly five days in the lead-up to moving house entirely consumed by fretting about packing, and doing packing (in that order), aided considerably by my stalwart pal Charlotte who managed to briskly pare my enormous wardrobe down to the point where the pile of clothes I was getting rid of was bigger than that which I kept (and to her credit sat gamely through such dialogue from me as “it’s, you know, just an everyday classic practical seethrough top, a real wardrobe staple” and “this coathanger has been in my family for generations.”) This is the first time I’ve moved house since acquiring an ADHD diagnosis, by which I really mean, this is the first time I’ve moved house with the aid of Ritalin and months of hard work on being slightly less of a liability, and I must say while it was a novelty being so relatively organised in advance I was also hit like a fleet of bicycles by anxiety about how disorganised I’d been in every single moving-of-house hitherto. But — I managed to send the movers that I’d booked to the wrong address in case you were concerned that I’d made too much progress.

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So now I live in Newtown! I made dinner for Kate and Jason and also our friend Jen on Wednesday night — cooking dinner is something I can easily do in order to be a good houseguest, but also something I haven’t done with any great sense of routine in absolute years; on top of which I’ve been feeling a bit detached and weird and nonplussed and whiplashed since leaving my job and moving house and getting rid of 2/3 of my precious, practical, seethrough clothes which is of course totally normal for such circumstances but I’m trying to get a grip on myself and on my sleep cycle and on my use of time and on, well, everything really, and just when I was feeling like none of this was going to happen, I was flicking through one of Kate and Jason’s Ottolenghi cookbooks and saw this recipe and felt filled with inspiration to make it and I was like, well, this is a start.

Ottolenghi is so talented at making any old pile of vegetables feel exciting and exuberant, this is because his recipes are really good as opposed to any deeper level of witchcraft than that; but I mean he’s just such a great read if you’re feeling a bit culinarily blank and it’s also the middle of summer and you want the kind of meal that holds at least two components that are in danger of getting stuck in between your two front teeth, by which I mean, greens.

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The salad recipe I present to you is a lazy version of the original one in his book, Plenty More. The key components all have their place: the dense granular mildness of the chickpeas, the oily and caramelised fried cauliflower, the sweet summer brightness of the mango, and it’s all just very delicious and simple and straightforward. The curry powder has such a nostalgic quality to it, and its sweet earthiness against both the vibrant and the calmer ingredients is so good, don’t overlook it. Mangoes just sing of summertime, don’t they? I urge you to seek out a pertly bulging specimen, ripe but not fermentingly soft, you want it to be al dente for want of a better word. (Also? I love mangoes but their flavour is so elusive, like trying to move towards a rainbow, that I feel as though I need to eat twelve mangoes in order to experience the power of one actual mango’s flavour? But also matching them with all these savoury elements really makes them come to life?)

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Ottolenghi’s Chickpea, Mango, and Fried Cauliflower Salad

adapted slightly from a recipe in Plenty More

  • 2 cans of chickpeas in brine
  • 2 teaspoons ground cumin
  • 2 teaspoons curry powder
  • 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 large onion, peeled and thinly sliced
  • indiscriminate quantities of olive oil (not extra virgin) or other neutral oil for frying
  • 1 small cauliflower, broken and sliced into small(er) florets
  • 2 large, firm, ripe mangoes
  • sea salt and pepper
  • 2 tablespoons lime juice
  • 50g baby spinach leaves
  • a handful coriander leaves, roughly chopped

Drain the chickpeas and place them in a large serving bowl with the cumin, curry powder, mustard seeds, and sugar, and stir well.

Heat up a tablespoon of oil in a saucepan and fry the onion till softened and golden, then stir into the chickpeas.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to the boil and cook the cauliflower in it for one minute, then drain thoroughly.

Heat more oil in the same saucepan that the onion was fried in – a couple of tablespoons will do – and once it’s really hot, fry the cauliflower in it in small batches. Don’t overcrowd the pan, and let the cauliflower sit for a few minutes before turning it over, to allow it to get golden and brown. Transfer the browned cauliflower to the bowl of chickpeas and continue till all the cauliflower is done.

Chop the mango into chunks and stir into the chickpeas along with the lime juice, the spinach, the coriander, a good drizzle of olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

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I liked this even better the next day when the spices and lime juice had soaked into everything, it didn’t look as good but it tasted more intense.

In case you didn’t see my last blog post, my reason for making all these drastic life changes at the expense of all involved is that I am going to write, just like, so much stuff, with this in mind and also my unemployedness — not that it’s anyone else’s responsibility but my own, but it could be yours if you wanted! — I direct you confidently towards my Patreon where you could get in at the ground floor on supporting what I do and receive exclusive content in return. And that really is my plan, to recover from the whiplash of this all-change and to write, well, that and to be as good a house guest as I can possibly be. (I just realised as I type that there’s a double meaning to “write, well” — wow I’m doing great already.)

title from: Baltimore Blues No. 1, Deer Tick. Moody.

music lately:

Walk Away, Sisters of Mercy, they sound, as I described to the long-suffering Charlotte, as though someone is trying to convey jauntiness while trapped underwater (by which I mean, obviously, I love it)

Morning Terrors and Nights of Dread, Shilpa Ray, it starts off surfy (good) and ends up surfy and howl-y (very good!)

Blue by Rico Nasty. She is incredible!

forever green, I know she’s here

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Wednesday was so momentous in a way that I’m not sure I can accurately convey other than to hope that as you’re reading this you’re trying to understand what it means to me: I met Nigella Lawson. I was always into food in an opportunistic way but it was seeing her TV show in 2001 that showed me for the first time that food could be a cause of real happiness for not just the eater but also the cook. Without a doubt I would not have started food blogging if not for her, I probably would not have achieved much of anything in fact. If you’ve been reading this blog for even a minute you’ll already know this, but again, it’s just so big for me! This has got magnitude! It needs big mise-en-scène!

How it came together, and I still can scarcely believe that it did, was that Nigella has been on a tour where she will sit in front of an audience and be cushily interviewed and receive questions (not, as I kept accidentally calling it, “in concert”) and Mum and Dad displayed the most absolutely incredible parenting skills in getting me a ticket to her Wellington date for Christmas.

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Ever since I was a child I’ve always been comfortably and righteously convinced that whatever I’m obsessed with, there is none more so than I in possession of said obsession, and I am afraid to say that I was in this same frame of mind when I sat in the audience, selfishly feeling that my very presence there was so tightly packed with intensity that there should be a secondary audience watching me being in the audience in a Marina Ambracoviç-esque performance art piece. I’m not afraid to admit that I genuinely started crying when Nigella Lawson walked out on stage, before she’d even said a word. And once she did, she was — of course — wonderful. So generous, so clever, so good at making the least of the questions appear to inspire these witty and expansive answers, so warm and lovely and confident and just everything a person could hope for in someone so long idolised.

A couple of days ago I took a plate of food to a potluck dinner at a friend’s house and we spent much of the night staring off their thirteenth-floor balcony, beholding the Super Blood Wolf Moon scooting across the night sky. Now, I love the moon (I have no less than three tattoos of the moon on me and at one point was like “I hope the moon is impressed by this” and didn’t even stop to qualify that I was being humorous or whatever because honestly, I think was being sincere) and without wanting to sound like a dick it genuinely felt quite momentous to be in its presence on this night, the moon so swollen and golden, and we so relatively insignificant.

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I had this same feeling in the presence of Nigella Lawson, like I was somehow gaining power and energy from her, and while it was probably a combination of hype and restless energy and also lack of sleep — does it make sense to you though? Do you ever see someone and suddenly think “I could achieve anything I want, I need never stand for anything less than what I deserve, and what I deserve is good things, and I could kick a hole in the sky?” If not, have you ever tried standing in front of Nigella Lawson? Is it a coincidence that I saw her in the same week that I saw the Super Blood Wolf Moon? Do coincidences even exist? Will I ever sleep? (I should’ve probably mentioned this sooner but, I wrote this in the middle of the night so please bear with me, or continue to at this point.)

Just in case I threaten to float away like a vainglorious novelty balloon, I share with you the following photo which cracks me up but at the time was just seconds away from ruining everything: so, when you line up to get your book signed by Nigella Lawson (as you can see below, that I did), there was a guy standing there to take your phone so he could photograph the moment. But the guy in charge of this important yet straightforward job, somehow thought that the person standing in front of me was my friend, and started to take a photo on their phone. And I was like no, wait, here is my phone, but also don’t you dare distract me from my brief moment with Nigella Lawson don’t you understand my entire life has been mere prelude to this point you actual imbecile — but I didn’t say any of this verbally, not wanting to cause a scene, instead, as you can see below, it was just kind of written on my face instead.

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A beautiful moment.

Luckily I managed to put my own phone in his hands and captured a more sanguine shot of Nigella Lawson and I talking, and for all this talk of being charged with power I was honestly so overwhelmed by being face-to-face with her that all I managed to do was murmur “you’ll never know how much you mean to me” which to her credit, probably from years and years and years of this sort of carry-on, she received cheerfully, before being hustled away from her glowing, tide-pulling presence.

I brought this week’s recipe with me to the aforementioned potluck dinner; the green beans are but a delicious conduit and the sauce is the real point of the exercise here: you could use said sauce on noodles (udon, I reckon), you could pour it over roast vegetables, you could employ it as a dip, you could mix it with rice, you could use it in a potato salad — but before we get too carried away with its potential, what actually is it? Well, it’s a sauce, that’s green, hence the name Green Sauce. I initially considered it to be both a coriander and peanut pesto and a green satay sauce but also surmised quickly that that would be simultaneously wildly insulting to both Italian and Malaysian cuisine. So: Green Sauce. It does hinge entirely upon your feelings towards coriander, admittedly — I love the stuff, its fragrance somehow earthy yet citrussy at the same time with so much grassy flavour from the stalks. Blitzed into a puree with nutty (of course) peanuts; plenty of rich olive oil, and the caramelly saltiness of miso, this makes for a compellingly punchy and near-instant sauce.

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Green Beans in Green Sauce

a recipe by myself

Green Sauce

  • leaves and stalks from one of those supermarket coriander plants, or from a large bunch of coriander
  • half a cup, ish, baby spinach leaves
  • 1 cup unsalted peanuts
  • 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil (though be prepared to add more)
  • 1 heaped teaspoon white miso paste
  • 1 heaped teaspoon nutritional yeast
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice (or lemon if you don’t have lime)
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon maple syrup or similar
  • 1 tablespoon cold water
  • Plenty of salt and pepper to taste

To serve

  • 2 cups frozen shelled edamame beans
  • 1 cup long green beans, topped and tailed and halved

Place all the sauce ingredients in a blender and blitz till it forms a thick green paste. Add a little extra olive oil or water (or both) and blend again if it needs to be more liquid. Taste and see if it needs more salt or lime juice.

Steam the edamame and green beans (I put them in a colander balanced on some chopsticks over a pan of boiling water but in fact, feel free to simply simmer them in the water itself) and don’t worry about defrosting the edamame. Once the beans are lightly tender, remove them from the heat and run them briefly under cold water, allowing them to drain thoroughly.

Tip the beans into a serving bowl, stir through the sauce, and that’s it really. Garnish with a few extra peanuts or reserved coriander leaves if you wish.

As discussed it has plenty of applications but the way I used it — with a double-billing of edamame and long green beans — is delicious, not only do you get the pleasing dovetailing of colour, but the bright, buttery soft crunch of the beans against the fulsomeness of the sauce is wonderful.

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So long in the making, so important.

title from: Velouria by Pixies. What a lovely song.

music lately:

I Wanna Sleep In Your Arms by Modern Lovers. Title says it all, really.

The Angel of Death by Hank Williams, its calming waltz time signature belied by the lyrics’ gentle yet sinister persistence.

The Look, by Roxette, a song that is deeply silly and that I also find intoxicating. I remember first hearing it when I was really young and something in the minor key progression and harmonies in the chorus made me feel almost queasy but in a very good way? You know how music does that to you sometimes? (I can’t quite put my finger on why, other than maybe the minor key just genuinely messes with me, but like, for example, Shampain by Marina and the Diamonds has a similar buzz for me.)

PS as I mentioned in my last post I have started a Patreon page where you can have the distinct honour of supporting this blog in as small or as large a capacity as you feel like and in return I will create even more content just for you and you’ll be genuinely helping me get by!

this is no corn-fed day it’s gloomy blue and cold

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Unfortunately my one personality trait right now is “teeth” (wait: “tired bartender” is the sole other facet to this diamond) so this salad that I made was inevitably tooth-related: devised in anticipation of my wisdom teeth being from my mouth untimely ripp’d next Monday (that’s like, a reference to MacBeth there). I know all I’ll be consuming next week is broth, pureed foods, painkillers and my own drool, so I wanted to make myself something crunchy, salty, spicy and acidic – everything my tender mouth will be shunning mere days from now. 

That vision ended up taking the form of this blackened corn and tortilla salad – crunchy toasted peanuts, juicy charred corn, shards of tortilla, crisp cos lettuce and plenty of sourness and heat in the form of lime, chilli, salt and cumin. Plus some fairly blameless cherry tomatoes. 

Being my generally idiotic heedless self it will come as no surprise when I tell you that I broke my SD card for my camera somehow and so had to instead take the photos of this salad on my phone (other things I’ve broken this week: my Laura necklace, a large glass jar of hot sugar syrup, the will and resilience of everyone around me) so as such the effect is a liiiittle more grainy than I’d like. Also my flatmate of the past year moved out and had the temerity to take his own property with him so I no longer have his immensely sexy slab of a coffee table to take my photos on, and as the next logical place for me to eat is in bed that’s why everything here is pictured against my duvet, giving it something of an eighties glamour shot vibe.

Fortunately I displayed competency in one area at least: this salad is fantastically delicious. The corn is deliciously sweet and charred and chewy, and the textures of the peanuts, fried tortilla, and lettuce – each crunchy in their own way, the peanuts all soft and (duh) nutty, the tortillas crisp and oily, the lettuce super fresh – is extremely delightful. The chilli and lime gives it a great big high kick of flavour and on top of that it couldn’t be easier to make. By the way you really only need one large tortilla but they taste so good when they’re all fried up that I allowed an extra one to account for you eating them all as you make the salad. Maybe you’re more restrained than me, who knows. That aside, the quantities of each ingredient are pretty much up to you and your personal tastes. If avocados are not housing-market-preventatively-expensive in your neighbourhood they they would be a delicious addition and there’s also nothing stopping you adding some meat, but as it is it’s pretty perfect. 

blackened corn and tortilla salad

a recipe by myself

  • one small cos lettuce
  • two flour or corn tortillas
  • a handful of peanuts
  • one punnet cherry tomatoes
  • two cups of frozen corn kernels
  • olive oil
  • a teaspoon or so of chilli flakes
  • a pinch of cumin
  • sea salt
  • a lime

Heat up a large frying pan over a high heat. Toast the peanuts till they’re lightly browned and tip them into a big mixing bowl. Heat up some butter or olive oil and tear the tortillas into small pieces and fry them in the hot pan till they’re crisp and golden. Add them to the bowl with the peanuts. Next, tip the corn into the pan and let it sit without stirring too much so that it gets slightly charred and browned as it cooks.

While this is happening, wash and tear up the lettuce leaves and add them, with the cherry tomatoes, into the mixing bowl. Once the corn is where it needs to be tip that into the mixing bowl. Squeeze in the juice of a lime, add the chilli flakes and cumin, some sea salt and plenty of olive oil. Give it a good stir and then divide between two bowls. Sprinkle over some more cumin and chilli if ya like. 

This honestly makes what I would consider to be two servings, but I ate the entirety in bed (as pictured!) before falling immediately into a deep sleep, I’m not sure if that was related to the ingredients or more to my generally being tired, but I can heartily recommend the two activities together. 

As I said in the last blog post, I’m actually really nervous about getting these teeth out – something about the sedation process and the potential recovery time and oh, the IMMENSE PAIN and BRUTAL PRICE TAG but I am going to be taken under the wing of my dear friends Kate and Jason who will be looking after me and making sure I don’t like, run naked through the town while coming out of sedation (or indeed, at any time, no one should rule it out completely.)

title from: Say Anything, Night’s Song. Praise the night, the only time I feel alright.  

music lately:

One Direction, Teenage Dirtbag. Oh, these simpler times! Their cover of this song is so perfect, and the way Harry Styles is all “Her name is Noelle” at the start does funny things to my heart. 

Oh Land, Sleepy Town. This song is so dreamy and beautiful and it’s not on Spotify which is ruining my entire life! 

Chance the Rapper, No Problem. Such! A! Bop! 

next time: I probably won’t get the opportunity to write till after my tooth-times so it’ll be wall to wall soft foods. 

look into my eyes and tell me girl you know you gotta watch your health

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It’s an analogy that’s brought up a lot, but one of the differences in the way that mental and physical health are treated is that like, if you have a broken leg it’s considered completely reasonable to be seen immediately and have it put in a cast and then get follow-up therapy to strengthen your stupid broken leg. Unlike mental health, which is like…imagine if you broke your leg and you were told you had to wait six weeks to see someone, and then when you saw them you really, really had to convince them that your leg was broken even though you’ve tried meditation, and then you’re told to wait another six weeks and at the end of that you’re finally given, with great reluctance, a plaster and some supermarket paracetamol.

This isn’t exactly relevant, I honestly just wanted to complain. But where I’m going with this is, I’m so used to focussing on the moving target that is my mental health that I’m always completely taken by surprise when I get, y’know, physically unwell in the traditional sense. To me, getting actually sick is kind of not an option, simply because I don’t have time for this and so I refuse to acknowledge it.

And yet, here I am, and this head-cold/flu-adjacent thing that is occupying my bod is refusing to acknowledge my refusal to acknowledge it, and as such, I’ve done the only thing anyone can do – google which foods are the most aggressively able to fight germs and then make a recipe out of as many of them as I can get hold of. Since cabbage came up extremely high on the list of “will make your nose bleed from vitamin overload” I decided to use it as the base of a slaw, adding watercress and fennel, a dressing made from ten cloves of garlic, and a scattering of raw turmeric and almonds.

So yeah, it’s good for you – you can wikipedia the individual ingredients if you want to know specifically how, for me it’s just enough to know that they’re doing something – but it also tastes completely fantastic. Cabbage and watercress are both super peppery and fennel has that aniseed heat, but there’s a ton of olive oil and salt to soften it all, plus the incredibly mellow dressing, made by simmering the garlic cloves till they’re softened, both physically and in terms of eye-watering burn. On top of that the almonds – and I use heaps of them – add a kind of contrasting creamy nuttiness, so it’s not all too astringent and cold and a chore to get through. Finally, raw turmeric has a kind of gingery carrot vibe flavourwise and adds pleasing bursts of chrysanthemum yellow against all the purple and green. And it’s SO good for you, guys.

Did it help? I mean honestly, I’ve never felt less healthy. But does correlation equal causation? Am I mad at this salad for not curing me and indeed, solving all the problems in my life? Can you be mad at a salad? Am I doing a terrible job of selling this recipe to you as something you might want to make? If nothing else it surely didn’t do me any harm and above all it tastes amazing so…that will have to do for now.

Feel free to mix and match ingredients depending on what you’re able to get hold of – you could add kale, or use white cabbage, have walnuts or hazelnuts instead of almonds, use rocket instead of cress, anything at all. But as it is in the recipe below, it’s pretty spectacular – so crunchy, oily, salty, garlicky, crisp, peppery, everything. Also – I feel like I say this a lot, but – the recipe looks really long but it’s truly super simple, I’m just super talky. You’re really just chopping up a bunch of stuff and putting it in a bowl.

healthy af slaw

a recipe by myself

  • half a purple cabbage
  • one fennel bulb
  • two handfuls of watercress
  • turmeric root, a couple of inches thereof
  • at least two handful of almonds
  • ten cloves of garlic, give or take
  • plenty of extra virgin olive oil
  • two teaspoons apple cider vinegar
  • a couple of drops of maple syrup or clear honey or golden syrup or honestly whatever
  • sea salt

Firstly, put the garlic cloves in a pan and just cover them with water. Bring to the boil and let them simmer away for about five minutes, during which time you can prepare the salad itself. 

Get an enormous serving bowl ready. Peel the thick outer leaves from the cabbage and slice the rest as finely as you can manage, transferring it all into the serving bowl once you’re done. Repeat with the fennel (slightly more difficult due to the unwieldy shape of the bulb.) Then, and this might sound stupid, but drizzle over some olive oil and scatter over some salt and use your hands to vigorously lift and scrunch the cabbage and fennel. This will mix it together but also kind of soften and relax the aggressively stiff purple and white shreds a little. Just do it. 

Roughly chop the almonds and throw them in, and then give the watercress a brief chop before adding them to the salad as well. Use a small sharp knife to slice off the outer peel of the turmeric root and very finely chop up the bright orange flesh underneath, scattering that over the vegetables.

Remove the garlic from the heat (if you haven’t already) and, if necessary, give the cloves a quick rinse under cold water so you don’t burn yourself on them. Remove the papery casing – they’ll be so soft that you just need to give them a squeeze and they should pop out – and either mash them with a fork, blitz them in a food processor, or pulverise them in a pestle and mortar (I chose the latter because my flatmate owns this amazing huge one that I’ve always wanted to use.) Add the cider vinegar, the maple syrup, a good pinch of sea salt, and like, heaps of olive oil, at least three tablespoons but honestly way more than that. Drizzle it over the salad and mix it all together and add more olive oil and salt if you think you need it, plus perhaps more chopped almonds – and then serve. 

It’s – she says, in a Justin Timberlake voice – gonna be May, and the rapid change of one month to another is as good a time as any to look at my life and where I’m at and generally take stock of things/panic wildly about the disproportionate size of the passage of time compared to the Stuff I Have Achieved. On January 1 of this year I published a thing about my struggle with the mental health system and the mental health of my own self. Since then things have zig-zagged wildly but most definitely on an upwards trajectory, and as such I’d like to draw your attention to this podcast I recorded with Ollie, this magical guy who, as well as being the doorman at work, also has his own podcast where he talks to people from all walks of life about, well, their walks of life. I feel like it’s a natural post-script to my original piece. I mean, so many things are still a monumental struggle and I congratulate myself for every day that I get through, but it’s kind of amazing looking at the difference between the me of that podcast and the me of the January 1 article.

Meanwhile, I’ve still got this damn head cold thing, but at least I know it’ll get some attention from the doctors if I tell them about it. And, I’m full of vitamins.

PS: If you’re feeling this slaw, you may well want to check out some other recipes I have along these lines, such as the Lee Brothers’ Cabbage and Lime Salad with Roasted Peanuts, my Silverbeet, Parsley and Horseradish Slaw, or my Aggressively Healthy Bowl with Matcha Mayonnaise (and there’s nothing stopping you making the mayonnaise to dress the slaw in this blog post, it would certainly fit the context.)

title from: Grimes’ amaaaaaaazing song Oblivion, which I will never ever get sick of.

music lately:

Harry Styles, Sign of the Times. NO BIGGIE I”M JUST SOBBING SO HARD I HAVE A BLOOD NOSE anyway I quite like this song is what I’m saying.

Chelsea Jade, Life of the Party. I love this gal and everything she does is gold.

next time: I bought some quinces! So I’m super keen to do something with them! 

i wish i had a river, that i could skate away on, but it don’t snow here, it stays pretty green

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Avocados are like a metaphor for life, right? You have all this hope and anticipation that it’s going to be perfect and it’s really expensive but you do it anyway because it’s an avocado and you’d give up everything for this avocado and you feel, gently, from the outside that it’s going to be a good one this time! You’ve been burned before but damn it, you just know this avocado is the one. And you carry it home, imagining all the good times you’re going to have together – will you spread it on toast? Eat it in its entirety with a teaspoon, sprinkled with salt? Roughly mash it into guacamole? You could do anything! The taste is almost in your mouth, your teeth can almost feel that sensation of crushing through its soft, soft flesh. And then you finally slice into it and it turns out that despite your very best efforts, it was not ready to be cut open and exposed to the world; it was underripe and cold at its core. Or it had been left for too long and could not be saved no matter how you try to disguise it – greying and sulphuric and with no way to make you happy. Even though you wanted it so, so bad and you paid so much for it. 

Or sometimes you just randomly buy an avocado because it’s on special and like, slice into it and it’s perfect and you’re like “phewf, don’t know what I would’ve done for lunch otherwise” and that’s kind of that. 

pretty, green 

pretty, green 

I was not particularly in the mood for metaphors when I made myself lunch the other day: the avocado was green and unblemished and yielding and that was enough for me. I used it in a simple, beautiful pea, mint and avocado salad from Nigella Lawson’s seminal text How To Eat. A book I turn to again and again when I forget how to eat: it’s the most trustworthy manual I know. Her tone is gently bossy yet undone and dishevelled at the same time and it’s ever so comforting. 

Yeah, it’s Spring, so eating sprightly green stuff feels obvious, but no matter what time of year it is this salad is gorgeously delicious. Especially because all you really need to worry about is the state of your avocado – the peas can be frozen and the salad leaves are highly interchangeable for whatever’s seasonal. You can basically make the entire thing in the bowl you’re planning to serve it in, which appeals to my utter laziness, and while it’s meant to be a side salad it makes a thoroughly satisfying meal all on its own, depending on your appetite I suppose. It’s also vegan, which is nice. 

oh wow, here's the salad from this angle 

oh wow, here’s the salad from this angle 

The flavours here are so wonderful – the green-green-greenness (yes) of the peas, the bitterness of the leaves, the sweet, ice cold mint, the buttery avocado. Then you’ve got crunch and softness and oiliness and saltiness and honestly, all I want is a whole bowlful of this and nothing else. I do think it would be a good vehicle for some roasted asparagus if you’ve got the inclination – I mean, it is Spring! – and you could always add some chopped nuts to add further crunch. But it’s truly perfect just as Nigella stipulates it. As per usual though I have given lots of alternatives and notes because I get helpfully nervous about being too specific in case people feel like they can’t make something because they don’t have the exact right thing. 

pea, mint, and avocado salad

recipe by nigella lawson from her important book How To Eat, below is the vague quantitiy I made though which doesn’t quite match her specs

  • three quarters of a cup of frozen peas, or thereabouts
  • half a bag of baby spinach
  • one perfect, beautiful avocado
  • one whitloof, radicchio, or other bitter lettuce, or just something else crunchy – heck, half a regular iceberg lettuce would be chill here
  • several tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, at least three but definitely more
  • a pinch of sugar
  • one tablespoon of white wine vinegar; you could always use apple cider vinegar though
  • a handful of mint leaves, plus more to serve
  • sea salt

Briefly cook the peas in a pan of boiling water and then strain under cold running water.  If you’ve just bought them from the supermarket and they’re not super frozen you can probably get away with just letting them defrost in a bowl, maybe filled with warm water to hasten the process. Basically: get your frozen peas to be unfrozen, please. 

Put the olive oil, vinegar and sugar in the bowl you’re planning to serve the salad in. You can always add more oil later. Rip up some mint leaves and stir them in. Tip in the drained peas and the baby spinach. Tear in the whitloof leaves, or whichever crunchy leaves you’re adding in, and then halve your avocado and scoop out rough spoonfuls, letting them fall into the same bowl. Use a large spoon to carefully mix all this together, adding a little sea salt and more oil if you like. Throw over a few more mint leaves. You’re done. 

oh wow here's the salad from THIS angle now

oh wow here’s the salad from THIS angle now

As I said, this recipe is given by Nigella as a side dish, but I quite contentedly polished off the entire thing by myself and didn’t feel inclined to need anything else for a long time after; avocados and olive oil are good like that, making you all shiny-haired and full. 

stock image #58639 woman laughing with salad

stock image #58639 woman laughing with salad

And it’s surprisingly practical when eaten lying down: I honestly didn’t expect that. 

title from: Joni Mitchell, River. Lol…………………….this song is so sad. 

music lately: 

The Damned, New Rose. I made a kind of surfy punky playlist for work and it turns out I am a sucker for pretty much anything with big drums, this song included. 

New Editions, Something About You. If you haven’t heard this song from 1996 do yourself an enormous favour, it’s so great. 

next time: more acknowledgements of Spring, I guess? I haven’t actually eaten any asparagus since last year so should get on to that, what with uh, being a food blogger and all.