Beach house

Apologies for my unexplained absence - we disappeared to Jervis Bay for our annual beach holiday, and this year I did not take my computer, making for my first unplugged vacation in a frighteningly long time. I had hoped to put a post up before we left, but between frantically trying to finish up work projects and making sure that I packed enough (but not too much) in the way of kid, reading, and food supplies, I ran out of time.

I also hadn't factored my upcoming vacation into my plans for DIY January, so that sort of went out the window for a week or so. When you're trying to figure out how to work the tiny oven in a strange (and slightly mildewy) kitchen, you can't also start trying to make your own yogurt and expect to have an actual relaxing vacation. Or at least I can't, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. So I shamelessly ate supermarket potato chips and hummus and pickles. (I also brought along supplies to make homemade bread, waffles, popcorn, and salad dressing, so there was still a fair amount of DIY going on.)

And in the spirit of DIY January, I concocted a salad to bring to a friend's bbq on our last night of holiday - using up stuff we still had in the fridge and working around what we had run out of.

Beach house salad
I concocted this salad based around knowing that I had a fair amount of vegetables left in the fridge, but had run out of olive oil to make dressing. The rendered fat from the bacon cooked in the first step stands in for the olive oil.

1. Chop 2 pieces bacon into small pieces and put in a skillet over low-medium heat to cook.

2. Chop half a red onion into small pieces and add to skillet with bacon.

3. Once bacon and onions are more or less cooked, add 2-3 cups chopped greens (I used kale and a mystery green I bought at the greengrocer last week, and promptly forgot the name of. It was kind of spinach-esque) to the skillet to wilt. (At this stage, I also added about a quarter cup of white wine to deglaze the pan and keep the ingredients from sticking.)

4. Thinly slice 1 large carrot (I do this with a vegetable peeler) and add to skillet. (Keep the cores to nibble on while you finish the salad.) Toss with the other ingredients to wilt a bit, then remove the skillet from the heat.

5. Peel and chop a small cucumber, then chop a handful of grape tomatoes, and add to the skillet. Toss with the other ingredients until mixed thoroughly.

6. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and add a teaspoon or so of balsamic vinegar. (I also added a handful of shredded parmigiano reggiano.)

Serve warm or at room temperature. Serves 4+ as a side, or a large group (we had 10 in ours) as part of a bbq spread.

Summer Sundays

When we lived in England, we got into the habit of inviting people over for Sunday lunch. It’s a time-honored and universal tradition there, and is my first choice for hosting. There’s much more time for cooking on Sunday morning than there is on the average weeknight, and there’s much more time on Sunday afternoon for lingering over dessert and a cup of tea. If everything falls into place, you might even get some uninterrupted adult conversation while the assembled children a) wreak havoc or b) watch a video in another part of the house.

Maybe part of the reason Sunday lunch feels like such a natural option for me is that I grew up with it – except we called it Sunday dinner. Whatever the name, most Sunday middays found us gathered around the table, digging in to a traditional roast dinner; an unvarying rotation of roast beef, roast pork, roast chicken, or baked ham; all served with potatoes and peas, and followed by a homemade dessert.

The only time we didn’t follow this pattern was during summer vacation when, every Sunday after church, we would pack up the car with towels, buckets, sandwiches, the scotch cooler, and the eight of us, and head to the beach. My enduring memories of Sunday lunch in the summer are of ham sandwiches and carrot sticks in the car; peaches, chilly from the cooler, on the beach; and ice cream on the way home.

Maybe that’s why I still feel a bit flummoxed when I think about cooking a Sunday lunch in warm weather. My default Sunday lunch option is the typical roast dinner – large hunk of meat, roasted potatoes, starchy, filling dessert – that warms you up on a winter afternoon and leaves you ready to do little besides doze off on the couch. Unless you’re the hearty type that likes to go out for a brisk, chilly walk and work it off. (Full disclosure: I am not that type, despite DP’s best efforts these many years.)

As we enter our second summer in Australia with outdoor eating facilities at our disposal, I think I’ve hit upon a formula that works. I still base the menu around a large hunk of meat, because it’s easy and doesn’t have to be served piping hot. I replace the roast potatoes and vegetables with salads. And the dessert, instead of a crumble or a rich, heavy pudding, is something lighter and more seasonal – preferably a pavlova.

It still has that Sunday-lunch feel, and still provides opportunities to linger and chat – preferably outside, in the shade, on an afternoon that’s not so warm it’s uncomfortable, but warm enough that no one feels inclined to suggest a brisk walk.

Baked potato salad

I first got the idea of baking potatoes for salad from the fount of useful information and great ideas that is dinner with Julie; I find the texture and taste of salads made this way vastly preferable to the traditional boiled-potato method.

12 small to medium baking potatoes

~3 scallions/spring onions/shallots

2-3 Tbsp Greek yogurt

1 Tbsp mayonnaise

2-3 tsp Dijon mustard

salt

healthy sprinkle of cayenne pepper

Prepare the potatoes as you normally would for baking (ie wash, remove eyes, poke with a fork), then put in a hot oven (~200C/400F or thereabouts) until baked. (Time will vary, depending on size and oven, from 30 minutes to 2 hours; I judge that my potatoes are ready when the skin feels papery and the potato feels soft when I squeeze it.)

Chop the potatoes into bite-sized pieces while hot, and place in a large bowl. Finely chop the scallions into the bowl, then add the yogurt, mayonnaise, and mustard. Gently mix until all ingredients are thoroughly combined. Season with salt and cayenne and mix again, tasting to check seasoning.

Serves 4 adults and 4 children, with a moderate amount of leftovers.

Instant salad

As a parent of a school-age child, I seem to spend a fair amount of time dodging activities that cut into the dinner hour. I consider family dinner more important than most other things, so I prioritize accordingly. Recently, I have been making one exception, though, for a kung-fu class. Miss B really likes it, it ticks a lot of boxes for her physical and skills development, and it's a 2-minute walk from our house. That last part mitigates the fact that it starts at 6:30 pm, since it means I can still cram in a family dinner beforehand. I've been using it as a challenge to myself to see if I can get dinner on the table with 30 minutes or less of prep beforehand; as a result, this is now my go-to kung-fu-night salad. It's delicious, it's nutritious, and it takes even less time to prep this than it does to walk to class. (Cutting an actual salad is enough to send me over the edge in a 30-minute prep window.) And every time I do this, I think fondly of my friend J., who first introduced me to this ridiculously simple concoction.


Retro cool avocado halves
Cut one avocado in half and remove the pit. Place each half on a small plate, and sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper. Fill the pit cavities with balsamic vinegar. Serve as a starter or side.
Serves 2.

(Miss B is not into the avocado, so I chop her up a carrot or cucumber instead.)

Saturday digest

Cooking chocolate from Germany - food souvenirs are the best kind

How can it be the beginning of June already? Here’s the roundup of the latest doings round here.

Work/school Term 2 is nearly half over, and Miss B is trucking along happily. (Bouncing along might be more accurate in her case.) The other week she had her first experience of full-blown standardized testing, taking the NAPLAN along with every other Year 3 student in Australia. Her school did their best to make it a non-stressful experience, but I for one am glad it’s two years until the next round. DP, who promised us his workload would ease up somewhat around this time, has been as good as his word and has been sighted at home on the occasional weekday between the hours of 7am and 6pm. I’ve had a fairly quiet week – not one nighttime conference call! – but my To Do list remains chronically overstuffed. I did record a significant milestone earlier this month: my organization’s Twitter account, which I manage, hit 20,000 followers, a little more than four years (and nearly 3,000 tweets!) since we first joined up. So I’m pretty pleased with that.

Recreation The big news is that this week we booked tickets for our trip to North America later this year, which involved sorting out a fairly complicated itinerary and then spending 2.5 hours working through it with a travel agent (after both DP and I crashed the Qantas website trying to do it ourselves). But it all looked right at the end and we should be good to go (fingers crossed). Other than that, Miss B has been having a steady stream of afterschool playdates, and I’ve been plowing through this month’s book club selection: Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, widely hailed as a ‘modern Australian classic.’ The jury is still out on that, but it’s definitely educational for a non-Australian. More to come when I finish, perhaps.

Food Shorter days and colder nights have meant lots of familiar, rib-sticking comfort foods lately: 

• oatmeal for breakfast at least twice a week (savory oatmeal, that is)
  
• the disruptive bolognese sauce continues to prove its worth - and the longer you cook it, the better it gets
  
• lemon-mustard chicken remains a reliable workhorse in my recipe rotation; one of the first things I learned to cook on my own, and still going strong
  
• I found curly kale at the farmers’ market for the first time in nearly a year! So it’s back to a steady supply of kale salad
  
• and an old favorite – Nigella Lawson’s Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake (known around here as Brownie Cake) - which I was reminded of recently and have made twice in the past two weeks in response to demand (apparently it’s the best thing for morning tea ever)

Weather Cold, grey and wet this weekend; described by a fellow transplant to Canberra as ‘fabulously miserable’.

Miss B’s Quote of the Week During a conversation about jellyfish:

Miss B: So why does it hurt when they sting you?

RL: Well, they must release some kind of chemical when they touch you that makes your skin hurt.

Miss B (obviously finding this explanation similar to another one I had provided recently): Oh, so they’re like the onions of the ocean!

How are your onions?

 

Christmas recap

One of the perks of living in the British Commonwealth is that the day after Christmas - Boxing Day - is a holiday in its own right, and the majority of people have it off from work. We went for a walk this afternoon, to get some fresh air and run a couple of errands to a couple of shops we knew would be open. We strolled along deserted streets and 90% of the businesses we passed were closed - some of them just for today, some until after New Year's, and one for the whole of summer vacation (it is scheduled to re-open February 5!). It was pretty much the only serious exertion in a day that included staying in pajamas until almost lunchtime, skyping with various North American relatives, and reminiscing about yesterday's Christmas lunch (while plotting what to do with a fairly enormous stash of leftovers).

There were six of us for lunch, and we ate outside! That's a Christmas first for me. Here's what we had:

Pasta salad

Not being a huge mayonnaise fan (although the homemade version is a much more convincing argument for its merits than the storebought kind), it took me a long time to warm up to the idea of pasta salad. Add in all the people among my family and friends who can't or don't want to eat mayo for various reasons, and it becomes an even less appealing option. But then again, remember that this is pasta we're talking about here - pretty much my single most favorite food item. And then you'll understand why I still remember the day, probably 15 years ago now, when I discovered a recipe for pasta salad that didn't involve mayo; that I could feed to vegans and people with high cholesterol; that I could leave out in the sun at cookouts without fear of giving everyone food poisoning. I've been making variations of it ever since.

Tomato-pasta salad
Adapted from Betty Crocker's 40th Anniversary Cookbook
I haven't looked at the original recipe for this in years, but I knew exactly where to find it. I had never made a pasta salad before I found this; since I have I've made dozens, and passed along the recipe almost every time. When the audience permits, I've added variations such as chopped prosciutto or salami, shredded pecorino romano, or olives. It's very adaptable.

1 450 g/16 oz package short pasta
4 Tbsp olive oil
4 medium tomatoes, chopped
4 green onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 tsp balsamic vinegar3 tsp chopped fresh basil leaves
~10 grinds black pepper

Cook pasta as directed on package in salted boiling water and take off heat while it is still a bit more al dente than you might like. Drain; rinse in cold water to stop cooking; drain again. Dump pasta into a large mixing bowl and mix oil through first, to keep from sticking together. Add in remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate about 2 hours, or until chilled.

Serves 10-12 people as a side.

Kale salad

We have returned to something like a semblance of normality around here, following last week’s invasion of the earth movers. This was the result of our main waste pipe packing it in, and resulted in a total shutdown of our water and gas, our removal a hotel for three days, a backyard that still looks like a natural disaster, and a bill that has not yet arrived but is anticipated with dread.

To celebrate my gratitude at returning to my beloved domestic routine, I offer a salad that I have made at least once a week for the past year. After years of valiantly trying to feel enthusiastic about having a big, healthy salad for lunch (and failing when the option of a toastie was always just so much more appealing), I have discovered the wonders of a salad made with raw kale. These are threefold:

1. You can make it ahead of time—in fact it’s better that way—and it retains its crunch and snap. For days, even.
2. It actually fills me up. Unlike every other salad I have tried to make into lunch, which, unless I load it with so much cheese that its health benefits are rendered negligible, leaves me ravenous by 3pm.
3. Kale is way cheaper than spinach or most fancy lettuces, and you don’t need as much of it to fill you up.

I know a lot of people are skeptical about the idea of eating raw kale, but I have made this for dozens of guests in the past year, and served it without divulging any details. People go out of their way to compliment this salad, including self-confessed salad haters.

Wayback Wednesday: Steak Salad

Two years ago, I was just back to Canberra from my organization's annual meeting in Singapore, enjoying burgeoning spring weather, and devouring this salad. This week, I'm preparing to head from KC to this year's annual meeting in Madrid, enjoying perfect fall weather...and wondering if I have any steak in the fridge?

April roundup

Like sands through the hourglass, so goes another month, leaving only the last crumbs behind. And, like yesterday’s Royal Wedding tea party, almost consumed before there’s enough time to take a decent picture. Before it slips away completely, here are a few links to commit some of April’s best mouthfuls to memory:

Spinach salad

Aka look: more eggs! Because apparently that’s what I like to eat when the weather shows signs of spring.

Although hard-boiled eggs are not essential to the composition of a spinach salad, they can give it enough nutritional heft to make it count as a meal. And anything I can eat that contains something as healthy as spinach and serves as a vehicle for eggs and bacon? Lead me to it.

January blues

I’m not really being as ascetic as it might appear here, what with the last recipe being for vegetable soup, and now this. I was originally intending to post a cookie recipe today, until I discovered that I’d left the camera, with the memory card containing all the relevant photos, at a friend’s house over the weekend. Of course I made this discovery immediately after I ground up the last of said cookies in the food processor to put out on the snow for the birds. That’s the kind of thing that’ll give you the January blues, all right. Luckily for me, these are first world problems and, let’s face it, who doesn’t benefit from an extra serving of fruit now and again?

Egg salad

I never ate egg salad when I was growing up. Not even once. No one ever offered me any, and I’m sure if they had, I would have declined with disgust.

Even after I emerged from my egg-hating phase, I had no interest, although by then plenty of opportunity. Aside from its starring role in grade-school lunches, egg salad is a perennially popular sandwich filling at the ubiquitous English sandwich shop (under the name egg mayonnaise) where, adoring mayonnaise as they do, a sandwich filling has never yet been found that they didn’t believe couldn’t be enhanced by the addition of copious amounts of butter or mayonnaise. Possibly both. (How about on hummus with roasted vegetables? I kid you not.)

Tomato salad

I haven’t cooked dinner for seven days. I can’t remember the last time that happened. We’re visiting in Boston for a week, and our priorities for the trip were to organize a mini-move of some of our belongings from here out to the new house; to catch up with as many local friends and family as possible; and to squeeze in beach time wherever we could.

Well, the movers have left with six boxes packed full of miscellaneous household items, and as many pieces of furniture. We’ve managed two days at the beach. Dinners have mostly involved visiting favorite local spots with siblings, nieces, parents, and friends in tow.

Square two

If you’ve been following along here the last couple of months, you’ve probably gathered that we’ve been trying to buy a house.

One house in particular, in fact. Since before we got here. We found it on the internet before we left Australia, and went to see it five days after we arrived. Then we spent the next nearly three months dealing with banks (six of them, if you count trying to get the mortgage and trying to get all our funds into one place), organizing inspections, negotiating, and faxing enough documents hither and yon to deforest a small state park. It was that cliché: a roller coaster of emotions: non-stop and, at times, nauseating. My father-in-law, who works in finance, consoled me more than once with the maxim that “Every deal dies a thousand deaths.”

Challenge 4.2

Still struggling to find the time and the ingredients to tackle anything major for The Cookbook Challenge; sadly, 30-Minute Meals doesn't have any delicious recipes consisting solely of half a carrot, two cups of brown rice, and a large lump of blue cheese. However, I have come across a very useful tip, that I have immediately made my own, for making your own salad dressing. In the past, to make vinaigrette I have always worked off a basic recipe of 2 Tbsp acid and 5 Tbsp of oil, which involved a lot of mental arithmetic (not one of my favorite leisure activities) if I wanted to reduce or increase the amount. In her recipe for basic vinaigrette, Rachael Ray suggests the following ratio:

1 teaspoon of acid to every 1 tablespoon of oil

Ta da! Perfectly simple; easy to scale up or down; and no math.

Upon reflection, this is so blindingly obvious that I wouldn't be surprised if everyone else in the entire world knew about it besides me. The suggested ratio for making salad dressing is 1 part acid to 3 parts oil, which I knew; and 3 tsp = 1 Tbsp, which I also knew. I had just never put 2 and 2 together (or, in this case, 1 and 3). And in the event that you haven't either, I share this info with you, since it alone has made this whole exercise worthwhile for me--definitely the equivalent of learning a great new recipe.

Building blocks

Canberra has gone from being freezing cold to summer-hot more or less overnight. So I'm thinking about salads again, particularly one that I came up with last year, after reading a post on 5 second rule about a BLT salad. I loved this idea, but decided to take it one step further—just as I always do in restaurants, when I'm offered the choice of a BLT or a club sandwich. Bacon, lettuce, and tomato are pretty fantastic all by themselves, of course, but add some good chicken or turkey and you've made RL's day.

Chicken club salad
Slapdash ranch dressing*
2 Tbsp mayonnaise
1 Tbsp Greek yogurt
1 small clove garlic
2 basil leaves
½ tsp dried oregano

Salad
1-2 pieces bacon
4-6 leaves of romaine
6-8 grape tomatoes
½ chicken breast, cooked and sliced**
salt & freshly ground black pepper
handful of croutons

Put all dressing ingredients in a mini-processor and blend. Thin with a little bit of milk or lemon juice if you think the consistency is too thick. Set aside. ***

Cook the bacon using your preferred method—frying pan, oven, microwave. Chop into thin slices and dump into a bowl big enough to mix the salad. Wash, dry, shred, and add the romaine. Wash, dry, quarter, and add the tomatoes. Add the chicken. Season with salt and pepper.

Add half the dressing and toss thoroughly. Taste and decide if you want more dressing or seasoning, and repeat as necessary. Top with croutons and serve immediately.

Serves 1, accompanied by a very large glass of ice water.

* So called because I didn't have any of the traditional herbs for ranch dressing on hand, so I just improvised. (You could also use bottled ranch dressing, naturally, but I didn't have any of that either.)
** Having leftover cooked chicken is my main impetus for making this salad. You don't want to be cooking chicken specially--then you'll just be getting all hot and bothered, instead of cooling off, as this salad intends.
*** This makes a pretty small amount of dressing, but you can easily double it. For me, a little thick, creamy dressing goes a long way.

Red meat

A month ago I had rarely given beef salad a second thought. Now I seem to be obsessed with it.

It started with lunch at Gus's, a Canberra institution. (Anything that's been around for more than 40 years in Canberra is kind of a phenomenon, and an institution by default, but it's deserved in Gus's case.) It's the kind of place where I know Miss B is going to want pasta or risotto, which I will often split with her, since I'm almost always in the mood for carbs and she can't eat a whole adult portion. But then I saw "chili beef salad" on the specials menu. For some reason, that magical combination of words was enough to make me give carbs the cold shoulder, and cozy up to the red meat and spice and the cool, crunchy salad vegetables. It was such a great contrast, and such a flavorful—and filling!—meal that I couldn't stop thinking about it. Then there it was again, a couple of weeks later, at a different restaurant: this time with peppery beef and shavings of parmesan along with the vegetables. It was offered as a starter, but it was all I wanted for lunch.

Yesterday I made my own. I had some leftover steak in the fridge, along with some marinade-turned-sauce*, which I used to help concoct a weird but tasty dressing.

Carnivore beef salad
This salad provides a lot of scope for improvisation. I used what I had on hand, but just some of the things I thought of adding if I'd had them were: chunks of avocado; slices of red onion (raw or caramelized); toasted nuts (pine, walnut); croutons.

Dressing
1 Tbsp steak marinade/sauce
2-3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 inch/2 cm knob of fresh ginger, peeled and cut into strips
Pinch brown sugar

Salad
2-3 cups salad greens
8-10 cherry tomatoes, halved
6-8 thin slices cooked steak (about 2 oz/60 g)

Garnishes
Hunk of parmesan/pecorino + vegetable peeler
Black pepper**

Put all dressing ingredients into a mini-processor and blend until smooth. Taste and adjust seasonings. Set aside for a moment.

Assemble greens, tomatoes, and steak in a good-sized bowl. Pour about half of dressing over and mix. Decide if you need more dressing (yes), and add more to taste.

Shave thin slices of cheese and grate pepper all over surface of salad. Either serve as is, or mix in and repeat this step a couple of times.

Serves 1, very satisfyingly.

* I used this marinade from The Pioneer Woman Cooks! (although I substituted red wine for cooking sherry), and reduced it to use as a sauce as Ree suggests.
** Between the soy in the marinade/sauce and the cheese, I didn't feel the need for any extra salt. You may want some, depending on your ingredients.

Aft agley

I continued my asparagus-buying binge through last week, and by Friday I had four bunches sitting in the fridge. We had an invitation for Sunday lunch, and I'd promised to bring some of the food, so I planned to use them for another batch of roasted asparagus. I spoke to our hostess on Friday afternoon, and we sorted out the menu, anticipating an idyllic spring luncheon on her back porch, overlooking the basking garden blooming in the sunshine.

Between Friday and Sunday, a few things happened. First, a weather front moved in that ensured that Sunday, instead of being sunny, breezy, and warm, was grey, raw, and chilly. Second, the number of people coming for lunch doubled. Third, I noticed that four bunches' worth of roasted asparagus doesn't look like it started out as four bunches of asparagus, especially when it's for twice as many people as you thought it would be serving. Fourth, it dawned on me that there wasn't a single thing on the original lunch menu that Miss B was likely to eat.

Happily, doing something about the fourth thing also had a knock-on positive effect on the first three. Yes, pasta even improves bad weather…or at least makes you care about it less.

Antipasto Pasta Salad

Pesto balsamic vinaigrette dressing

1 cube/2 Tbsp pesto

2 Tbsp balsamic vinaigrette

5 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Put all ingredients in an empty jar and shake vigorously to combine. Set aside.

Salad

1 lb/450 g short pasta (penne, farfalle, gemelli, etc.)

2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 batch slow-roasted tomatoes

6 slices prosciutto, chopped

1 oz/30 g pecorino romano, shaved

salt & pepper

Cook pasta al dente in boiling salted water. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop cooking. Dump into a large bowl (or container, if transporting). Drizzle with olive oil and toss; this will keep the pasta from sticking together.

Add tomatoes, prosciutto, and cheese to pasta; toss to mix thoroughly. Shake dressing briefly, then pour half over salad and continue to mix. Taste to see if you think it needs more and add accordingly. Season with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature.

Serves 10-12 as part of a lunch buffet, in any kind of weather.

Scavenger hunt

Ever since I read a post on Under the High Chair that mentioned using a brick to make panini, I’ve been longing for a kitchen brick of my very own. When you live in an apartment, however, bricks aren’t so easy to come by. And when you don’t have a car, it’s hard to get to the nearest big-box DIY store. That’s if they even sell bricks. And assuming they would let you buy just one.

In any case, I decided I would have to scrounge for one, and started keeping my eyes open for any unemployed bricks that might be lying around. I don’t know if it was coincidence, or just that I hadn’t been paying attention, but it wasn’t long before I started seeing them everywhere: a pile outside a house; stacked crookedly inside a fenced-off section of pavement being repaired; even one that had fallen out of someone's front wall.

Each of these presented its own ethical dilemma. After all, there is a difference between salvaging an otherwise unwanted piece of masonry, and plain old stealing. And there never seemed to be anyone around who was connected to the bricks that I could ask.

Today I got lucky. Miss B and I were walking home from preschool when I noticed some large, white bricks scattered on the grass verge outside one of the classic old Canberra houses that we regularly admire. As I was examining the bricks, trying to decide if they had been abandoned or what, I heard the sounds of someone doing stonework nearby. I peered over the high hedge and saw a man kneeling in the garden, obviously engaged in laying a brick path. I decided to rebel against my Bostonian training, and engage a stranger in conversation.

“Excuse me,” I said timidly. The man looked up from his work, realized that I was addressing him, and raised his eyebrows inquiringly. “Are these bricks out here available for the taking…?”

He got up hurriedly and came towards the gate. “No, no, they’re not. They were out there to weigh something down, I hadn’t realized they were still out there.” Noticing my crestfallen expression, he said, “I’m sorry, but they’re special fire bricks….”

“Oh, no, that’s okay,” I said. “I wasn’t interested in any particular bricks. I’m just on the hunt for a brick….I only need one.”

Tactfully refraining from asking what anyone needs only one brick for, he said, “Well, if you just need a brick, you can have one of these,” and, leading the way back through the gate, picked up a brick that was sitting near the wall of the house. “It’s a real old Canberra brick…from 1927.”

So it turns out he was the owner of this beautiful old house (not a contractor, as I had originally thought), and he cheerfully gave me an antique brick. Miss B, having none of my reticence about conversations with strangers, told him why I wanted the brick, admired the brick path that led out back (which I’m sure he had also built), and generally charmed him into giving us a tour of his garden, which was as wonderful as the house. She particularly admired the collection of pottery, ceramic, and metal ducks scattered around; I was more interested in his plantings, particularly the line of flourishing citrus trees (tangelo, lime, grapefruit and more) growing along the sunny north wall of the house.

Eventually we let him get back to his work, with many thanks, and continued on our way. We’d had an adventure, met a neighbor, and acquired a brick. Thus proving that virtue is in fact its own reward.

Things to do in the kitchen with a brick
- Weight down your cabbage for Croatian cole slaw
- Make a very flat tuna melt
- Cook chicken under a brick (I haven’t done this yet, but I’ve been wanting to for ages and now I can!)

Luxury lunch

After I made the lunch pictured here for the second time in four days, I thought I should come clean and admit it: this combination was pretty much my sole motivation for last week’s foray into bagel-making.

I came up with it sometime last year, when I was looking at packages of smoked salmon in the supermarket and fondly remembering a smoked-salmon-and-bagel spread unexpectedly encountered at a cousin’s bridal shower a few years earlier. (Yes, I’ve said it before and now you know it's true: basically, all I ever think about is food.) Pretty much everyone there gave the salmon a wide berth, preferring the usual offerings of baked ziti, cold cuts and such…except my mother, my sisters and me. We ate so much of it that I don’t think the caterers even noticed that it had not been a smashing success with the vast majority of the guests. (So you see we were really being charitable, as opposed to just piggy.)

Anyway, as well as wishing something like that would happen again so I wouldn't have to shell out for my own smoked salmon, I was thinking of the accompaniments that you usually find alongside a smoked salmon spread—cream cheese and bagels, of course, but also lemons, chopped red onions, tomatoes, capers—and realized that I already regularly made a salad that included many of those things. I thought it might make a good accompaniment to a smoked salmon/cream cheese bagel. Then I had to buy the smoked salmon so I could try it out.

I was not wrong. In fact, I love this lunch so much that I wish I could afford to eat it about every other day. Luckily, once you have invested in and opened a package of smoked salmon you can’t leave it sitting around for too long, which means you actually have an excuse to eat it about every other day, at least for a little while.

Smoked Salmon Spread Lunch
Sandwich
1 bagel
A few good shmears of cream cheese
1-2 slices smoked salmon
Lemon juice

Salad
8-10 grape or cherry tomatoes
¼ of a red onion
2-3 basil leaves
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Extra virgin olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Slice the bagel in half and toast. While the bagel is toasting, quarter the tomatoes in a salad bowl. Dice the onions and shred the basil leaves. Season with salt and black pepper, then drizzle the olive oil and vinegar evenly over everything. Toss briefly to combine.

When the bagel is toasted, spread liberally with cream cheese and top with smoked salmon. Sprinkle lemon juice over.

Serves 1.