Happy Halloween

There may not be any trick-or-treating in Australia.

No dressing up in costumes.

No jack'o'lanterns.

No scuffing through piles of autumn leaves in the early, frosty dark.

No bags of sugary loot to gloat over and swap.

(It's the wrong season altogether for that sort of thing here, and it's never really caught on.)

But there will be Halloween cupcakes for one very short, very inquisitive Anglo-American expat who knows there's something special about October 31st.

(Oh, and no, I won't be giving up my day job just yet to become a professional cake decorator…although I don't think my audience will be too critical of the aesthetics.)

If you want to make some of these for your own goblins (large or small), the recipe is here.

Happy Halloween!

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.

Tasty links

I've been back from Singapore for 10 days. Since then I've had the jet lag, the obligatory airplane cold, the last term of preschool activities switch into high gear, another quarterly deadline looming, and DP planning another overseas trip (as of today, he knows when he's leaving, but not how many countries he's going to, or for how long).

So I haven't been doing many ambitious cooking projects. But I have been stealing time to keep up with the ridiculous number of food blogs that I follow, and to make use of some of their brilliant ideas. It's my favorite form of procrastination--speaking as a connoisseur of procrastination.

Here are a few recent goodies to help get you through whatever kind of day you're having:

Breakfast sandwiches: courtesy of Chaos in the Kitchen. Assembly-line breakfast cooking that puts its fast-food counterparts to shame. As Katie says, "if you are going to make one, you might as well make a dozen." I only made a half-dozen, because my freezer is small and already crammed full. I ate one immediately after assembling--just to make sure they were good, you understand. They were, and it's comforting to know that I've got a no-brainer breakfast ready and waiting for those days when I can't even manage to dig out the yogurt.

Ten-minute tartiflette (see picture): I'm always looking for new ways to use up leftovers, and this suggestion, from Just Cook It, is my new favorite way of using up any kind of leftover potatoes. And a perfect hearty lunch for the chilly spring Canberra is having.

Cheesy croutons: I'm just now getting around to exploring Mark Bittman's list of 101 Simple Salads, but I've already lost count of how many times I've used #44, which essentially says to make a grilled cheese sandwich, let it cool, cut it into croutons, and put it on salad. (I've been using mine for soup—see "chilly Canberra spring", above.) He ends it with, "This you will do forever." Yes I will.

Herby chicken: I got the idea for this one from A Year of Slow Cooking's Lemon and Herb CrockPot Roasted Chicken, where you cover the chicken with lemon and herbs and roast it in the slow cooker (surprise!). Except mine ended up being a puree of olive oil, garlic, rosemary and lime juice, which I stuffed under the skin of some chicken breasts. And then cooked in the oven. Oops. But I never would have thought of it if it hadn't been for this recipe.

Chocolate pots: aka Delicious Baked Fudge, from The Pioneer Woman Cooks! I've made several different versions of this, but this one is fast, easy, didn't require a special shopping trip, and was, indeed, absolutely delicious.