'you won't accept a guy's tongue in your mouth and you're gonna eat that?': the brown bag lunch

I'm in love with the idea of bringing lunch from home to work or school or whatever; this is because I hardly ever do it. I think about it lots - I fantasise about what would be wonderful to eat outside under old trees shedding orange/red/golden leaves in the warm Autumn afternoon sun on my lunch break. But I'm hardly ever organised enough to make this dream come true and am invariably left complaining about the fact that there is nothing you can buy worth eating. Every. Day.


This has to stop. So I got to think more seriously about bringing lunch from home, or brown bagging-it, as it's also known. Remember that great scene in John Hughes 1985 film The Breakfast Club where it's lunch time and everyone takes out a lunch that totally cements their character stereotypes? I love that scene. Claire, the princess, pulls out a proper sushi lunch set-up which she proceeds to eat with chopsticks (remember, this was the 1980s). The jock whips out giant bags of sandwiches, coke, chips, milk, fruit and chocolate chip cookies. Bad boy John has no lunch, and 'neo maxi zoom dweebie' Brian's 'standard, regular lunch' consists of soup, apple juice and PB&J with the crusts cut off. And Allison, the basket-case pictured above, in a lunch performance, slurps coke and concocts a sandwich to end all sandwiches. To the horror of her Saturday detention buddies, it begins with (literally) throwing away the baloney that sat between two slices of white bread and replacing this with carefully distributed sherbet from straws and a huge handful of what I guess (as an unenlightened Australian) is Cap'n Crunch cereal.

There is no quiz below to help you work out your neatly-defined lunch personality. Just as the characters in The Breakfast Club come to see their stereotypes as permeable, constructed things that they can all claim membership to, I can see bits of myself in all of these lunches. Sometimes I bring no lunch to work and this leaves me feeling really ace and tough - but unsatisfied. For a princessey treat sometimes I actually do pick up sushi on the way in. Once, in pre-coffee morning haste I packed cool ranch doritos and olives. But maybe nothing is quite as good as a properly packed, yummy but healthy lunch like Brian's. It's a shame he gets teased for it, but we'll let Bender off, because he has problems at home and he's a spunk.


The only thing with brown bag lunches, is that I seem to run out of ideas in double-quick time. So I've decided to start a mini-series of brown bag lunch posts here called 'you won't accept a guy's tongue in your mouth and you're gonna eat that?'. And I've John Hughes to thank for such eternally useful one-liners. I kicked off my new resolution to brown bag it more often the other day with this salad. It's healthy, pretty filling, it travels well and you can make it the night before - and with fruit and PB & choc chip cookie treats, it made a super lunch. I've included the recipe below.

But, do you take your lunch to work? What are your favorites? And, what do you pack it in? I'd really like to know. I need ideas, desperately. Even more than that, I'd like to stereotype you (endearingly) by what you pack. Indulge me?

Potato, tuna and egg salad
Adapted from Woman's Weekly wonder diet book (yes, really. Good lunch recipes to be found here.) The photograph shows the salad before I mixed the dressing through - much prettier, but salad is tastier once this has happened
Serves 1

3 smallish new potatoes
50g green beans, topped and halved crossways
95g tinned tuna, drained (one mini-can)
1 spring/green onion, finely sliced
a spring or two of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 heaped tbls Greek yogurt
a little finely grated lemon rind
1 tsp lemon juice
pinch of salt
1 hard-boiled egg, quartered

1. Boil or steam potatoes and beans separately, until potatoes are tender and beans are cooked but still a little crunchy. Drain and cool.

2. While cooling, make dressing. Combine yogurt, lemon juice, rind and salt and mix well.

3. Quarter potatoes, add beans, onion, tuna and parsley. Add dressing and stir to combine, or drizzle atop. Serve topped with egg.

Scallops with cauliflower purée, fino and gremolata

There’s been quite a bit of talk recently (like, three weeks ago when I started writing this post!) about the television event that is Masterchef and how it might be changing the way Australians are cooking at home. I’ve joked with friends about the new collective silence that can now be observed on the suburban streets of Melbourne at around 7pm, as families sit around waiting for their lamb roast to ‘rest’. This isn’t a bad thing: in fact, it is quite wonderful.


On a personal level, three important things have happened since I’ve become hooked on the program: 1) I have started to shop differently (and less expensively) at the markets: rather than buying everything I could possibly feel like eating in a week, I buy a couple of things that look wonderful, fresh and inspirational and think hard about how to showcase their quality; 2) I don’t worry as much about how things might (not) work out. I just go for it and if the worst thing that happens is the steak is medium and not medium-rare, I know that the heavens won’t fall and that it happens even to experienced cooks and chefs; 3) I have developed an intellectual crush on a giant Englishman who wears skinny white pants and a cravat every day.


This scallop entrée is something I made up the other day when scallops looked incredible at the market and I’d promised myself I’d use the cauliflower that was about to go limp in the fridge. They looked so impressive and are an easy starter for when you have people round. The little babies are seared in browned butter until just done and are then finished with a splash of Spanish fino sherry that mixes with the butter to become a sweet, rich sauce. They sit on the shell upon a pillow of velvety cauliflower purée and are finished with a sprinkle of finely chopped parsley, lemon rind and garlic. A bit of a Spanish/Italian hybrid – I realise – but it was delicious. It looked liked something from Masterchef and reminded me that sometimes the best dishes are the ones you discover without a recipe. So in the spirit of this, I am giving only a simple description of how this came about, instead of a detailed recipe.

Some notes: If you can't get fresh scallops on the shell, just get loose ones and serve a few on a nice plate on top of the purée. The fresh ones are sweeter! I like mine with roe attached but you could get the ones without. Spanish fino is a dry sherry, very much unlike what your grandmother used to drink of an evening. It is well worth seeking out! You can read more about it here.

1. For the cauliflower purée, make a velouté soup kind of a thing. Melt a nice knob of butter and stir in a tablespoon or so of flour, mixing to make a roux. When it looks ready (be careful not to burn!), add enough warm vegetable stock to cook a third or a half cauliflower cut into pieces. You don’t want a thick sauce to cook the vegetable in, just something with a bit of body that will make a nice smooth purée. When the cauliflower is tender, whiz the whole lot up in a blender or food processor until velvety and smooth. Season to taste and keep warm.

2. For the gremolata, finely, finely chop some fresh parsley, lemon rind and a garlic clove. The idea is for this to be delicate on the scallop – so no chunks of garlic! Set aside.

3. For scallops, melt another little knob of butter on medium heat in a pan. Season the scallops carefully with salt and pepper on each side. When the pan looks nice and hot, pop the scallops in and be prepared to start turning! They don’t take very long – only 30 seconds or so on each side. When done, transfer to a plate and tent with foil to keep warm. Return the pan to the heat and add a good glug of fino sherry – it should bubble up and smell amazing. Swirl the pan to amalgamate, or stir with a wooden spoon. – there won’t be heaps of sauce, but just enough to drizzle over the scallops. To serve top cauliflower purée with scallops and spoon over the juices in the pan. Sprinkle the tops scantly with gremolata. Time’s up! But you’re plated and done.

Cure for Sunday afternoon Autumn melancholy: Pear and Hazelnut Torta

Autumn Sunday mornings in Melbourne often begin a bit like the opening credits of Douglas Sirk’s 1955 film, All That Heaven Allows, I think. All red and yellow leaves and a gentle wind that stirs them like a warning for what lies ahead. Soft light makes everything glow like Technicolour and the whole scene is so lovely, that if you look for too long your chest begins to feel heavy with the weight of doomed romance or winter’s coming. What you need then, is something to eat that celebrates Autumn. Something wholesome and golden that reminds you how good the present moment can be.


Something with pears, perhaps? This little cure for Autumn melancholy is made from a recipe in this month’s delicious. magazine that I bookmarked right away. And it is everything I wanted it to be on that sort of a Sunday afternoon; it is a toothsome and nutty tart with hits of fragrant roasted pear scattered about on top. Something magic happens to it in the oven and the batter separates into a spongy, cake-like layer on the bottom and a chewy frangipane-like top layer. It comes out looking as if you’ve done something fancy – or time consuming, at the very least. It is shallow and not too sweet and would be delicious with a dollop of mascarpone, although I loved it warm on it’s own with coffee. A piece of this and a bit of Nina Simone on the stereo will sweeten your Autumn Sunday afternoon.



Pear and hazelnut torta
Serves 6

Note: to toast and remove skins from hazelnuts, place on an oven tray and roast for around 10 minutes or until they smell good and toasty. Be careful though – they burn real quick! While hot, put into a clean tea towel and rub vigorously until skins have been removed.

100g toasted hazelnuts with skins removed
½ cup (110g) caster sugar, plus 2 tsp extra to top
1/3 cup (50g) plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
2 eggs
¼ cup (60ml) milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
80g unsalted butter, melted & cooled
20g extra butter, chilled and chopped
2 ripe but firm pears
icing sugar, to dust

Preheat oven to 170°C (or 190° in my slow old thing). Grease a 26sm round tart pan or quiche dish.

Place hazelnuts, caster sugar and 1 tablespoon of flour in food processor and whiz until the nuts are ground. Stop before they become too fine and form a paste. Tip this mixture into a large bowl. Sift in remaining flour, baking powder and salt. Whisk until thoroughly combined.

In a separate bowl, whisk eggs until slightly frothy, then add milk, vanilla and cooled butter, whisking to combine. Pour this into the dry ingredients and stir with a rubber spatula until well combined. The mixture might be runnier than what you’d expect of a regular cake batter. Scrape this into your prepared pan.

Peel, quarter and core pears then cut each quarter into 3 or 4 thin slices. If you’re neat and fussy, fan these by pressing gently on the quarter and transfer with a palette knife to the top of the batter. If you’re like me (lazy), do the best you can using only your fingers until it looks a bit like the picture. Repeat for both pears. Sprinkle top of the torta with extra caster sugar, concentrating on the pear fans and finally, dot fruit with chilled chopped butter.

Bake for 25 – 30 minutes, or until tart is golden and has puffed slightly (mine took 5 minutes longer even). Transfer to a wire rack and sift over a good layer of icing sugar. Allow to cool to warm then add another finer layer of icing sugar. Serve warm with cream or marscapone or at room temperature with coffee.

(Cheat's) Ricotta Cannoli

This week I learnt that even when things are so busy that you can't find time to do your washing, there's still enough time to make cannoli. Amazing, huh? So I thought I'd better share, pronto.


The trick is, of course, to buy ready-made cannoli shells from the Italian grocery store and pipe them full of a light mixture of fresh ricotta, chocolate, pistachios and dried sour cherries. This means that these delicious Italian afternoon coffee-time treats are ready in only ten minutes. I served them the other evening as the dessert course of a late Friday night supper and they were a perfectly light conclusion to a lovely evening of wine and small bites.

I love all kinds of cannoli (including those stuffed with chocolate Italian pastry cream), but the ricotta versions are genius, I think. You could make them without the cherries or use cranberries instead, or just use nuts and cinnamon. Just tailor them to your preference and you can't really go wrong. If you've got 15 minutes to spare, you're set: 10 minutes to make, 5 minutes to enjoy with a strong espresso. And then maybe you can put the washing on.

Note: For Melbourne readers, I bought these cannoli shells at Mediterranean Wholesalers on Sydney Rd, Brunswick (a must-visit if you've never been). They are made in Italy and come in a pack of 10 and keep well in an air-tight container. Otherwise, try Italian grocery stores and bakeries.

(Cheat's) Ricotta Cannoli

6 large ready-made cannoli shells

About 400g fresh ricotta
4 tbsp icing (confectioners) sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
finely grated zest of one lemon
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
50g chopped pistachio nuts
50g dark or bittersweet chocolate, chopped or grated
1/3 cup dried sour cherries, pitted and chopped

Break ricotta into a medium bowl and sift sugar over. Add vanilla, lemon zest and cinnamon and beat with a handheld electric beater until smooth and well combined. Fold in remaining ingredients.

Place mixture into a piping bag with a large nozzle (or a strong freezer bag with a corner cut off) and pipe into shells. Cannoli are ready but keep quite well for a day covered in the fridge.

Soft White Dinner Rolls

Finally things are getting back to normal around here after a few weeks of (what must have been) alien interference with our electrical appliances. What have I been doing all this time without my computer (and my hairdryer)? Why, I've been baking, of course!


I feel like a bit of a phony admitting this, but I'm pretty crap at making bread. Which is so sad! Especially when, one Autumn afternoon, you cook up a big pot of sweet butternut pumpkin soup and realise that nothing would go better with a big bowl than a warm, freshly baked dinner roll.

Funny, right? I mean: 'dinner roll'. I hadn't thought about them in years until we had lunch the other week at our wonderful local French restaurant Libertine and they served up the tiniest, most dense and delicious warm dinner rolls (with real French butter) and I remembered how great those little rolls could be. So elegant! And then I remembered a clipping I'd clipped many moons ago in which Nigella Lawson gave instructions for an easy milk-bread dinner roll that she promised anyone could make. And yes, my friends, I can confirm that anyone can make these delicious little...dinner rolls.


Okay, so I just like saying that. Dinner rolls. But really, these are wonderful - like something a country town bakery might make. Soft and super-white and torn open while still warm, all they need is a scrape of butter to become perfect. If you've got any left later on, they're brilliant with jam for breakfast. And if you've still got some left, you can freeze them to whip out at a moment's notice when friends drop by. And then you can show off because, yes - you baked your own bread.

Soft White Dinner Rolls
From Delicious. magazine

31/2 cups plain flour, plus extra for dusting
3 tsp dried instant yeast
1 tbs caster sugar
11/2 cups milk
25g unsalted butter

For topping:
1 egg, beaten
1 tbs milk
1 tbs sesame seeds

Combine flour with yeast, sugar and 1 tbsp of salt in a large mixing bowl.

Warm milk and butter over medium heat until butter begins to melt (around 2 minutes). Pour butter and milk mixture into dry ingredients and mix with a fork to make a rough dough. If it seems too sticky, add a little more flour. Using a machine with a dough hook or your hands, knead with until the dough is smooth and silky. This should take around 5 minutes.

Put the ball of dough into a greased bowl and turn to coat.. Cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place to rise for around 1 hour or until doubled in size.

Grease a baking sheet. Punch down the dough and turn out onto a floured surface. Pull off golf-ball sized pieces of dough and form into little balls, forming them into five rows of six rolls. Place them around 5mm apart on all sides to ensure that they meet once risen. Cover the rolls with a tea towel and leave to rise for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 225 C.

When rolls have re-puffed, beat together egg, milk and a pinch of salt to make the glaze. Brush the rolls tops with this mixture and sprinkle tops with sesame seeds (or poppy, if you're so inclined). Bake the rolls for around 15 minutes until they are golden brown. Serve immediately or transfer to a wire rack to cool.

To freeze rolls (best done same day of baking) cool, double-wrap with cling film and pop into freezer.

Mussels with Loukanika and Saffron

About an hour and half drive from Melbourne, along the Bellarine Peninsula, there's this little place called Portarlington. We love it there. It's not the fanciest place to visit, or the most idyllic beach you'll ever come to, but this small town has something calming about it - a slower sense of time passing. It's the kind of place that is still dominated by summer houses built in the 1950s and has parks with big old trees and electric barbecues right behind the sand. There's a couple of small bakeries and a mini-supermarket and a pub and there's an excellent fish and chip shop that serves South Melbourne Market dim sims. And on the end of their pier you can buy fresh mussels right off the boat for very, very cheap.


A big bowl of steaming hot mussels is so impressive; it always seems to me like a seafood banquet we somehow acquire, fortuitously, for only $10. But really, they're always that price and they're so easy to cook. You can poke them into a paella-like rice dish right at the end, pop on the lid and let them steam until they open, or smoke them on a barbecue like Jamie did in his Jamie at Home series. I like them best simply steamed with a fragrant, white wine broth that you can tailor to whatever you feel like or have on hand. And, lucky for us, loukanika is what I had on hand last week when we got back from Portarlington.

Loukanika is a Greek sausage that is used a lot like a chorizo, although it is typically flavoured with wine, orange or leeks. They're delicious sliced and fried with a squeeze of lemon served as a meze, or sliced into a pan and browned before adding beaten eggs to make a heart-stopping/heart-winning scramble. Here, a spicy orange loukanika is sliced and fried, before adding chopped onion, garlic and fresh tomato to make a robust and heady base for the mussels. The whole sticky lot is then deglazed with dry white wine and a good pinch of saffron, delicate and luxurious, is thrown in to bring the whole lot together. After this, it is simply a matter of throwing in the scrubbed mussels, giving the whole lot a big stir and popping on the lid until the shells open and release their delicious sea juices. In winter you could serve this with potatoes, roasted or mashed, but in summer I like a big piece of toasted sour dough to mop up all that flavour.

Mussels with Loukanika and Saffron
1kg fresh mussels
1 tbsp olive oil
1 Greek loukanika sausage, sliced
1 medium white onion, chopped
1 large garlic clove, chopped finely
2 large tomatoes
1/2 cup white wine
3/4 cup fish stock, or vegetable stock
A good pinch of saffron threads
A good handful of continental parsley, roughly chopped

At least an hour before cooking, pour mussels into a bowl or sink of cold water to soak and release any sand or grit. When ready to begin, scrub mussels with a stiff brush and if necessary, debeard. For detailed instructions on preparing mussels, look here.

To peel tomatoes, cut a small X into the base of each fruit and put into a bowl. Pour over boiling water until covered and leave to stand for a few minutes. Drain and when cool enough to handle, peel. Skins should slide off easily. Chop peeled tomatoes into a rough dice, reserving juices.

Heat the olive oil on medium heat in a pot large enough to hold all the mussels. Add sliced loukanika and fry until crispy and golden on both sides. Remove from pot, set aside and fry onions in all the goodness from the sausages until they become soft and a bit sticky (turn down the heat if they seem to be cooking too quickly). Add garlic and fry for a minute or so. Add chopped, peeled tomatoes and juices, stirring to combine. Fry for around 5 minutes until the mixture thickens, then add wine. As it bubbles up, scrape the bottom of the pan with your spoon to collect all the brown goodness. Put the loukanika back in and add the stock. Pop the lid on, turn the heat up slightly and let the whole lot come to a boil. Taste for salt, remembering that the mussel shells will impart a sea water saltiness - I usually leave salt out.

When the pot seems excited and ready, add the drained mussels and give the whole lot a big stir. Replace the lid and steam for about 8 minutes. Give the pot a good shake a couple of times to give all the mussels a chance! Take a peek - they're ready when open. If not, give them a few extra minutes. When ready, ladle into bowls with some of the juices. Add parsley to each.

Orecchiette with Broccoli, Anchovy and Chilli

Good-quality dried pasta can change the way you eat forever, especially if you’ve always bought the $0.69 stuff. I’m not talking here, necessarily, about those artisanal $14 brown paper bags sold at packaging-obsessed gourmet food stores (although some of these are devastatingly good). Rather, I mean pasta that performs consistently – and one that has a good flavour before you add anything to it. This means it will hold up to al dente cooking when many of the cheapest ones don’t. One general rule of thumb is to look for pasta that seems more opaque than others on offer – this means that it has been dried for longer at a lower temperature, significantly improving the flavour. The beauty of this is, that the better your pasta is, the less you need to add to it to make a wonderfully satisfying meal. And this phenomenon is your best friend on a Friday night after a long week.

Which brings me to this excellent pasta that is made often here on a Friday night – or whenever we feel we’d rather not spend too much time at the stove. It is simple and yet, when made well, quite sophisticated and is perfection with a glass or two of crisp white. If anchovies are not your favourite thing, this dish could still be, because as the fillets melt into the olive oil with garlic and chilli, their flavour mellows and they impart only a hint of complex saltiness that is perfect with the broccoli and chewy pasta. Traditionally from Puglia, orecchiette (little ears!) is dense and robust pasta that takes a little longer to cook than spaghetti or penne, but its rough texture and cupped shape means that it picks up simple sauces like no other. In this recipe, the pasta is cooked in the same water as the broccoli to capitalise on the flavour of the vegetable. Smart thinking. Traditionally, this dish is served not with parmesan, but ricotta salata: a dried, salted ricotta that is firm, white and perfect for grating finely. If you don’t have this on hand, parmesan is good too – after all, rushing to shops for one ingredient on a Friday night? I don’t think so.

Orecchiette with Broccoli, Anchovy and Chilli
Adapted from Tessa Kiros’ Twelve.

500g broccoli
5 tbsp olive oil
1 large or 1 smaller garlic cloves, crushed
1tsp dried chilli flakes (more or less to taste)
about 5 Italian anchovy fillets in oil, chopped roughly
200g dried orecchiette
grated ricotta salata or parmesan to taste

Trim the tough outer stem of the broccoli and cook whole pieces in a large saucepan of boiling salted water until tender, but not soft. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a bowl or colander, reserving water. When cool enough to handle, cut the broccoli stem from the head, roughly chop into smaller pieces and return to boiling water. Add orecchiette and give the pot a stir. Cook pasta until al dente, following instructions on your packet (these will vary according to brand, thickness etc). When ready, drain pasta and broccoli stems, reserving half a cup or so of the cooking water.

Meanwhile, separate the heads into smaller florets. Heat olive oil in a medium frying pan. Add garlic, chilli and chopped anchovy fillets and stir with a wooden spoon, mashing the anchovy up a bit as you go until they melt into a sauce. Add the florets and toss through so that they pick up the lovely sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste, remembering the anchovies might already be salty enough. After a few minutes, add the orecchiette and stems along with the reserved water. Toss through gently until it is glistening and smells delicious. Serve with cheese atop, or mixed through to melt a little.

Serves two with a bit left over, or two very hungry people.