This is my favourite, quick, main meal salad.

Originally it was composed of only three ingredients – hot smoked ocean trout, cucumber and tomato. In that simple form it is still a delight. This time I’ve tweaked the idea with crumbled Persian fetta and chives.
There should have been finely sliced radish too, but I forgot, so the baby radishes ended up as first class snack food instead. You can try the salad with or without, depending on your fancy for radishes. They seem to polarise people and in this modern world of dumbed down food are not as widely eaten as they were in my grandmother’s day. She loved them, so do I. The traditional way to enjoy radishes, apart from au naturel, is to cut them in half, spread with cultured butter and sprinkle with salt.
So to the salad without radishes… If you have a very good green grocer in your area or are a happy vegetable gardener use yellow or even green tomatoes rather than red. They are very tasty and make the finished dish look light and pretty. On a hot day this is quite soothing. On that theme I sliced the chives into tiny rounds rather than just the casual snip into short lengths. It was a nice touch.
You should be able to buy Persian style fetta (creamier than the usual) at your local deli. It is likely to come in olive oil in a bulk tub. There is also an excellent Yarra Valley Dairy Persian Fetta available in a small tin. Whichever you go for, buy more than you need for the salad and enjoy the best summer breakfast treat – toast thick slices of ciabatta or sourdough and while warm spread with Persian fetta. Top that with some torn basil leaves and then slices of well-seasoned yellow tomatoes.

Enjoy with Argiolas fragrant vermentino 2006 Argiolas Costamolino Vermentino

The Recipe

Ocean trout, cucumber and tomato salad (serves 2-3)
250-300g hot smoked ocean trout, skin removed
1 long Lebanese cucumber, peeled and cut into small chunks
2-3 ripe yellow tomatoes, cut in half and then sliced into half rounds
handful chives, sliced into fine rounds
Persian fetta, crumbled
baby radishes, finely sliced (optional)
For the dressing:
juice of half a large lemon
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Flake the hot smoked ocean trout. Gently toss it with the cucumber, tomatoes and chives in a large bowl. Add the fetta, pour over the dressing and toss lightly again. Arrange on serving plates.

A good sandwich is a joyous thing.

It’s easy to prepare but therein lays the trap, folk are far too blasé about the commitment or conceptual understanding required – the simple sandwich is also easy to get wrong. A mish-mash of ‘salad’ ingredients set between two slices of sticky soft white bread (that ends up stuck around your front teeth) does not constitute a sandwich.
Pull back the number of ingredients but up the flavour component by choosing especially tasty fillings and enhancing those with a well-flavoured dressing or spread. Choose bread that can fulfil its support role with aplomb. I like the plump Italian ‘ciabatta’ that my local French baker makes. It is openly textured and bouncy – thickly cut slices will stand up to being handled without flapping open or squashing unappetisingly into the filling. The bread also has a delicious nutty flavour that adds a nice background note to the other flavours.
Either smoked salmon or ocean trout is good. You could even use flakes of hot-smoked salmon or trout. The dressing is the key to success and the wasabi gives everything an agreeable spiciness. You can easily adjust the amount to suit your taste. I found a tube of grated wasabi which was quite mild, convenient for being able to adjust the spicy kick just so. The tasty dressing has a myriad uses – pop it on prawns, crayfish, grilled fresh salmon, trevalla, even chicken. Enjoy your luncheon with a glass of 2007 Lalla Gully Pinot Gris

The Recipe

Smoked salmon sandwich with wasabi dressing
1 loaf Italian-style bread, cut into generous slices butter for the bread
slices of smoked salmon
spring onions, white and pale green part, finely sliced
1-2 firm but ripe avocado, sliced
Butter the bread slices lightly. Cover half with slices of smoked salmon. Top with a few slices spring onion. Lay some avocado slices over these. Grind over black pepper. Drizzle with the dressing and pop the other slice of bread on top. Cut in half at an oblique angle.

For the dressing:
half cup Bests mayonnaise (blue lid)
half cup King Island crème fraiche (or sour cream)
squeeze lemon
2 tsp (or more to suit your taste) grated wasabi paste
1 tbsp finely chopped chives or dill
salt to taste
Mix everything well together, starting with 1 tsp of wasabi paste and gradually increasing it until you get the right spicy note.

It is worth making this dish just for the experience of dry-roasting the Sichuan peppercorns.

The smoke that emanates is very fragrant, better than any incense.

Sichuan pepper is a component of five spice powder, a mixture that imparts a distinctive flavour to Cantonese food, particularly duck and beef dishes. It adds a special something to the marinade for this lively chicken dish, adapted from one of Madhur Jaffrey’s excellent recipes in Far Eastern Cookery. Her recipe in turn was an adaptation of an ‘uncommonly good’ Shanghai-style dish served at the Shanghai Club in Hong Kong. In the original version a whole chicken (feet, head and beak included) was opened up at the breastbone, marinated, deep fried, cut up and reassembled to look like a bird. Jaffrey uses the much easier to manage chicken pieces but I’ve simplified things even further by using boneless chicken thighs.

Deep frying is not my favourite pastime, especially in summer months. To speed things up and reduce the amount of oil used I shallow fried the marinated and cornflour-coated chicken pieces in a large frypan. I kept the heat relatively high while cooking the pieces in batches. The crisped chicken then went into the oven on a large metal tray to finish cooking through and keep warm before being doused with the sauce. This worked very well. The sauce is divine. Soy sauce, ketchup (a standard Chinese ingredient!), vinegar and sesame oil are basic but it is the combination with ultra finely chopped vegetables – spring onion, celery, garlic, parsley stems and ginger – which elevates it into something out of the ordinary.
A juicy, sweetly fruited pinot like the 2005 ‘Ese would match up with the spiciness of the chicken.

The Recipe

Fried chicken with spring onion sauce
8-10 boned chicken thighs
cornflour
oil, peanut or vegetable
Marinade:
2.5cm cube ginger, peeled and very finely grated
1 spring onion (white and some green part) very finely sliced into half rounds
3 tsp Sichuan peppercorns, dry roasted in a pan until aromatic and rich mahogany in colour, ground
2 tbsp Chinese Light Soy Sauce
½ tsp sugar
Place the chicken thighs in a large bowl. Spike them here and there with the point of a small sharp knife. Sprinkle over the ginger, spring onion, 2 tsp (generous) ground Sichuan pepper, the soy sauce and sugar. Rub the marinade in well with your hands. Leave the chicken in the fridge to marinate for at least 2 hours.
Take the chicken from the marinade and dredge in cornflour. In a large frypan heat the oil. Over moderate to high heat cook the chicken (in batches to avoid overcrowding) for a few minutes each side until they are crispy and nicely brown. Pop on a tray in a moderate oven to cook through for another 8 minutes.
Steam or boil a selection of green vegetables.
For the Sauce:
2 tbsp Chinese Light Soy Sauce
2 tsp white wine vinegar
4 tbsp chicken stock (not too salty)
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
3 tsp sesame oil
½ tsp sugar
3 cloves garlic, very finely chopped
2 spring onions (white and green part) very finely sliced into rounds
half stick celery, cut into fine julienne and then cut across into fine dice
3-4 long stems flat leaf parsley or coriander, chopped across into tiny pieces
2.5cm ginger, peeled, grated and then chopped very fine
In one bowl mix together all the liquid ingredients and sugar. In another bowl mix together all the vegetables and aromatics.

To serve:
Place the green vegetables on a platter. Cut the cooked chicken into smaller serving pieces. Arrange these on the vegetables. Mix the two bowls of sauce ingredients together and pour over the warm chicken and vegetables. Serve at once with plain rice.

Michele Round January 2008

A well made spring roll is as perfect a snack as has ever been created.

The shape is just right – a long, fat cigar that can easily be held between forefinger and thumb and bitten off in neat little amounts. The crispy, crunchy wrapping conceals a moist and supremely savoury interior. Altogether it’s a scrumptious package that goes brilliantly with the crisp freshness of Tigress Sparkling

What gives a Chinese spring roll its distinctive flavour? The combination of soy sauce and sesame oil is part of it. Add in spring onion and the seemingly unusual combo of pork and prawn and we’re starting to get there. A little finely chopped ginger is a personal touch. It goes well with the pork, prawn and spring onion combo. While not entirely traditional it would be unusual for me to ever leave it out. Five spice powder is an optional extra but does add that intriguing taste of the Orient.

You can find Pampas spring roll wrappers in the frozen foods section of the supermarket.

The Recipe

Pork & prawn spring Rolls (makes about 18)
250g green prawn meat – buy prawn ‘cutlets’ and pull the tails off
220g pork fillet
1 tsp fresh ginger, very finely chopped
2 tbsp (generous) chopped spring onions, white and green part
2 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
ground white pepper
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cornflour
1 egg, beaten (reserve 2 tsp for sealing the rolls)
Pampas Spring Roll wrappers

Mince the pork fillet or chop into small pieces and pulse once or twice in a food processor. Chop the prawns coarsely. Mix together the pork mince, prawns, ginger, spring onions, soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, pepper and cornflour. Mix well until the cornflour is no longer visible. Pour in about two-thirds of the beaten egg. Keep the rest for sealing the rolls.
Lay a wrapper on a flat surface. Take a tablespoon of mixture and lay it in a slim sausage shape diagonally across one corner of the wrapper. Fold the corner over, roll a little way, fold in each end and continue to roll up. Secure the end with a little egg.
Deep fry the rolls in hot oil for about three minutes or until they are golden brown. Lower the temperature of the oil if they are browning too quickly.