Got my cooking mojo back.

I hosted Mothers Group last week which gave my Ottolenghi cooking skills a damn fine workout/rejuvenation. Did a couple of trusty old favs + one newie to get the juices flowing. Have never made brioche before so gave these pizzas a good crack and damn fine they were too. This is the 2nd recipe of his that require oven drying tomatoes and i think i now have them down pat. The combo of the sweet onions and the tangy tomatoes was delicious. As per usual, i picked a colourful menu and the most fiddly i could find. 16 hours straight on Monday (thank god for the baby carrier) and another four hours of prep beforehand. I felt alive again!

 

Radish and broad bean salad with green tahini recipe

Green couscous recipe

Brioche pizzas with oven-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives and caramelized onion.
Recipe here.

Roast butternut pumpkin recipe here.

 

The sacrificial tail.

Sydney from Brisbane, who was holidays in Melbourne, popped in for a bite to eat on Wednesday night. Given she's currently not so into meat, i decided to have a crack at a fish.

The plan was to do 'Tom's lemon snapper swimming in a chilli and ginger sea', from the Master Chef cookbook. The recipe called for four 375g baby snappers, however South Melbourne market only had 2kg Snappers, the toothpicks i had on hand weren't robust enough to hold open this monster's gut flaps (to make him look like he was swimming) and the thing wouldn't fit into all the fry pans I owned, even if i cut him up, so I had to improvise.

Instead, we stuffed his insides with wedges of lemon, chopped spring onions, julienned ginger, chilli, sliced garlic, olive oil, lemon juice and light soy and popped the bad boy into the oven for 45 mins. We had to bend his tail back and slide it up the side of the oven as he was too big to fit flat! Abracadabra. We had dinner.   

Brendan didn't like my shoes. Or my toe cleavage.

And the next day, when i had my less dainty GI-Jo outfit on, he had the nerve to tell me i looked butch.

It's hard being a fashion nomad. I get taunted regularly.