step by step, on a piece of string

I disappeared for a minute there, in more ways than one. But I'm rematerialising now, molecule by molecule. More slowly than I'd like, but still.

Last year ended with a double-shot of scotch at about two in the morning. This one began with a bowl of oatmeal with apple and blueberries and walnuts. It's a tricky balancing act, life.

I'm spending the first two weeks with those peeps all over the globe who are doing Bon Appétit's annual Food-Lover's Cleanse. You can follow all the almond milk-fuelled action here, or by following me on instagram @lexicooks. Happy New Year, all.x

food lover's cleanse: week two round-up

Life just happens, I guess. The past week has been both chaotic and sad; I became really unwell (not food related, bien sûr) and was stuck at home in bed feeling hopeless as I watched chaos unfold outside on my little television screen. Thousands upon thousands of homes in Queensland disappeared under water, bushfires tore through parts of Western Australia. As humidity here in Melbourne hit record highs, the carpet began to feel sticky to walk on and food in the kitchen began to rot. So I couldn't make borscht, or baked chutney-stuffed fish. Instead I ate muesli with rice milk, leftover lentil soup and crackers. I drank lots of water and a couple of gin and tonics. I really feel like an adult now that I can honestly know and understand that there's no point beating yourself up when plans go awry - for it's taken many years of feeling guilty and disappointed in myself to get to this point. So cheers to that.


So in lieu of my two-day summaries, I thought I'd post today about some of the highlights from the cleanse recipes I did manage to put together. Despite the strangeness of the week, I discovered another handful of recipes that I'd gladly make again. Take that roasted salmon with avocado and pink grapefruit salad pictured above, for instance. This is not the kind of thing I'd usually make for myself at home; single-portion pieces of salmon always seem sort of sad to me, like if I ate one on a Friday evening watching television, I'd be joining hundreds of health-conscious late-20s, early to mid 30s single girls all around the country in this moment of culinary simultaneity that ends with a pregnant and melancholic sigh. Yes, you've done something good for yourself, but YOU. ARE. ALONE. Or maybe that only happens when you serve it on steamed bok choy? Because this was nothing like that; it was bright and punchy and juicy and zingy. It was the kind of thing you might eat before you go out for a night on the town, or while you're crazily typing away, wrapped in the excitement of a new project. The fillets of juicy grapefruit punched through the richness of the roasted fish, while the avocado provided little slivers of luxurious creaminess to balance it all out. I used the citrus shallot vinaigrette to tie the whole lot together and it was excellent. I'm now wishing I had a grapefruit - and a single-portion of salmon - for dinner this evening.


This sweet potato hash with poached egg was gooooood. Another one I didn't expect to enjoy so much, though for less existential reasons: look, sweet potato is just not my favourite thing in the world. I quite like it melted into a curry or smooshed up into a pie filling, but I can't get the knack for roasting or frizzling them into something delicious and I was sure that these home fries were going to be a little bland, annoyingly sweet and lacking... something. But actually, once you carefully place a poached egg on the top of these babies the dish is complete - and completely delicious. I used a golden sweet potato (to trick myself into liking it more) and boiled the cut and peeled chunks until just tender. They were then thrown into the pan with olive oil and red onion, a little brown sugar and some pumpkin pie spice mix. Dear lord! What is this magical stuff? I looked up a recipe online and made my own - and now I can't wait to try it out in other recipes. Anyway, the potatoes went all golden and crispy but a bit sticky and formed the perfect starchy base for the runny egg. It was ace.


Third, here's the soup I mentioned the other day: Molly's (of Orangette) Curried Lentil Soup. I didn't make it for the specified day, but had made a big pot only a couple of weeks ago and so understood the power of its awesomeness already. When things started to go haywire health-wise, I (in a rare moment of clarity and foresight) made another big pot and froze the soup in batches. I've been eating it whenever the weather has allowed since. It's a spicy and creamy-thick soup, but doesn't contain dairy, unless you add the little bit of butter at the end. Instead, it's richness comes from the addition of a can of pureed chickpeas that are stirred through the lentils towards the end, fortifying the soup and lending a comforting density and creaminess to the texture. I LOVE this soup. I hope you'll try it. When I took the picture above, I was eating while reading the latest edition of Gourmet Traveller, planning what to cook in the brighter days ahead.

There are a couple more recipes I wanted to tell you about, but perhaps tomorrow. Right now the sky is blue, pretending that the last week never happened. It's a strange trick that almost works.

food-lover's cleanse days 3 & 4 + bodies in space...

So days 3 & 4 have been filled with more delicious food, but I've been so busy that I ran out of time to take more pictures and update sooner. I also bent the menu significantly on Tuesday and fell off the wagon a little this evening when I finished some writing that had been driving me nuts for the past few weeks and couldn't resist a celebratory beer on a balmy summer evening. So sue me.


Still, there are been highlights I should tell you about! Day 3 was Japanese theme day with a vegan Japanese dinner of Koya-Dofu and Vegetables that looked the epitome of elegant. And I had such good intentions: I went to two Asian grocery stores looking for kombu and burdock root, but had no luck. With the clock ticking on my work deadline I decided that a trip to Fujimart on the other side of town to buy a bit of dried seaweed was going overboard, so I decided to cut my losses and team the leftover (totally delicious) edamame hummus from earlier in the day with fresh slices of cucumber and carrot, a bowl of steamed brown rice with some furikake I had in the cupboard and a miso soup. It was certainly not as pretty, but was clean and light and made me happy enough. Also, edamame "hummus"! Annoying name, awesome stuff. After starting the day with the most delicious leftovers ever - warm and nutty cinnamon quinoa for breakfast and those-beans-I-can't-stop-talking-about-because-they're-so-freaking-ace - I think I had a pretty good day of eats!

Day 4 began with a gorgeous almond-banana smoothie. Banana smoothies always irk me for some reason, but almond milk seems to make everything taste lovely. I skipped the tablespoon of brown sugar as my super-ripe banana was plenty sweet enough and I swapped the pear for a perfectly ripe summer peach. Lunch was meant to be leftover Koya-Dofu, but I ate the last of the magic beans with a green salad and citrus-shallot vinaigrette. The evening meal had a certain formal quality that made my dinner guest and I giggle, but we enjoyed it all the same. On the menu was pan-roasted chicken with persillade, endive, apples and grapes and roasted sweet potatoes. Look, is it just me, or are free-range chicken breasts with skin attached hard to come by here in OZ? Again, no luck. As chicken breast is not my favourite thing anyway, I swapped it out for a couple of super-fancy Otway free range pork cutlets, done quickly in the pan, doused with a grainy mustard, honey and fresh thyme concoction and finished in the oven. The endive became witlof and was caramelised in my "Le Creuset" (ie not a real Le Creuset) with chunks of apple, small clusters of green grapes and a few springs of rosemary. This was pork chops and apple sauce taken to the next level! All this was served alongside a pile of roasted sweet potato slices and more green salad. Whoa! We were full.

And I've got more awesomeness on the way... But let's take this two days at a time.


Also: on New Year's Day I went to the cinema and saw Sofia Coppola's latest film Somewhere (2010). That there's a shot of Elle Fanning at the bottom of a swimming pool having a tea party with her Dad. Leaving the cinema, my friend Yardena and I shrugged and talked about Marc Jacobs, the size of the rooms at Chateau Marmont and the fact that Stephen Dorff still looks pretty, pretty good. But something about that film has got under my skin. It keeps coming to me the moment I stop concentrating on what I'm doing, and this evening on the train I found myself listening to the last Phoenix album - that one I didn't think much of. It's contrived and impossibly hip, but there is something about the way bodies exist in space in that film - so graceful, clean and sad - that has done something to me. Also, there's a nice scene with spaghetti.

food-lover's cleanse days 1 & 2

So I'm doing this thing for my HEALTH, right? But I'm eating the most yum food ever. Really. It must sound like I'm being endorsed by Bon Appetit or something (ha! I wish). I'm two days in and already I've found three great recipes that I'm definitely going to make time and time again.


Day 1 had me chowing down on a yummy mushroom, thyme and caramelised onion omelet with toast, an avocado tartine, a vanilla-date smoothie that tasted like heaven, and the dish you see above - the ultimate winter couscous. This vegetable dish is incredible. It is full of perfectly cooked vegetables and layers of flavour that reveal themselves one after the other: sweet butternut pumpkin, the tang of dried apricot, warm cinnamon and cardamon, the heat of harissa and an exotic piquancy courtesy of some finely minced preserved lemon that is thrown in at the end. I switched the star anise (was all out) for a couple of cardamon pods and replaced unavailable parsnip with an extra carrot. Next time I make it, I'll do as the recipe says, but I can't imagine it tasting much better than it did last night. Also included in Day 1 were winter vegetable crudités and an orange salad for dessert, but surprisingly, I couldn't fit either of those in.




Day 2 began with a breakfast I'd been looking forward to: the warm and nutty cinnamon quinoa from 101 cookbooks. I didn't have blueberries or red quinoa, so used raspberries and black quinoa. I forgot to put nuts on top, but I had bought hazelnuts for this purpose. No matter though, as it was a double-batch and I get to eat the leftovers again tomorrow morning - with hazelnuts! Not only is it completely delicious, but it seemed to have like, this super-energising effect and I swam 2 kilometers in the pool today and didn't even feel tired. Another recipe to add to the regular rotation. I skipped the fancy salad at lunch today (celery root and apple salad) in favour of a basic green salad with citrus-shallot vinaigrette, in anticipation of a big dinner. I'm glad I left room to appreciate the glory that was Anjum Anand's black-eyed pea curry. It's what you can see in the little bowl below, beside the (yummy but rich) salmon in Bengali mustard sauce, and I know it doesn't look much there, but please trust and MAKE THIS DISH. Despite my passion for making things from scratch and the fact that I really like Indian food, I've not tried making my own curries much at all. This has got to change! The black-eyed bean dish that sits on my kitchen bench is glorious proof that sauteing whole spices, fresh garlic, ginger and tomato until it melts into a rich, fragrant paste is the BOMB.


So far after only two days I feel a bit lighter than I did after a few weeks of indulgence and loads of (albeit excellent) bread. Do you know how much bread Greeks eat? A menu with less reliance on the staff of life is a good thing for me - at least for a bit. I decided that it was IMPOSSIBLE to live without caffeine as I've loads of work on at the moment and just cannot live with massive headaches, but I've compromised and switched to green and white teas. Still caffeinated, but with lots of antioxidants that my morning coffee doesn't provide. I've also come across a couple of other bloggers, like Meg at Harmonious Belly, who are dedicating posts to the cleanse. It's super-ace to hear what others think of the dishes and to see photos of their versions. Food-geekdom, to the max.

Mackerel Two Ways: Butterflied Baked with Garlic and Paprika & Escabeche

At our house, we have a real thing for cheap kinds of fish like sardines and mackerel. It isn't because they're cheap that we love them, (although this ensures the love affair continues) but because, with a little bit of an idea about how to prepare these babies, they're often the tastiest, meatiest and healthiest fish you could ever eat. 

The Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks and Italians know a lot about cooking these kinds of fish so there are countless tasty ways to prepare them. The texture is meaty and pleasantly oily and the flavour stronger than with your average white fish. Don't be put off though by your experience of the canned variety, because fresh fish is always a different kettle of, fish. Fresh mackerel is not something we find everyday here though, so when I saw them at the market the other day, I snapped up a couple of kilos (for under $12!) and decided that I'd prepare them two ways. Believe it or not, I cleaned, butterflied and filleted these myself, but I'm a sucker for learning about these kinds of things and if you've got a fish monger that is friendly, I'm sure they can take care of this for you. If you're feeling crazy, here are some good instructions for cleaning, and here are some for the rest. Go YouTube! Really, you can learn to do anything. 

The first lot we ate for lunch on the day I bought them (so fresh!), butterflied and baked very quickly, then dressed with extra virgin olive oil, finely chopped garlic, parsley and a generous sprinkle of Spanish smoked sweet paprika. With a delicious crunchy kind-of Greek salad and great bread for juices, it was delicious. If you're into these kinds of flavours - Spanish/Moorish/Middle Eastern - I can't recommend highly enough Sam and Samantha Clarke's book Moro, from which I stole this idea. It is one of the cookbooks I use most often. 

The second preparation, escabeche, is entirely different, in that the fish is gently pickled or marinated overnight in the refrigerator and served cold or at room temperature. The recipe was adapted (very slightly) from Frank Camorra's book Movida - a book that shares some of the  secrets of my favorite Melbourne restaurant. Note that owning this book, and even cooking from it, will not cure you of insane desire to eat there, all the time. But the fish - it keeps for a few days wrapped in the fridge: we pulled it out as a little tapa before dinner or light lunch over two or three days. The marinade made with wine and sherry vinegar, bay leaves and saffron is neither too vinegary or strong, but is deeply fragrant and kind of refreshing. It is a perfect dish for summer. 

In case you needed another reason to head to the market, mackerel is really a super-fish: it has lots of omega-3 (good fats) and vitamin B12 - good for your skin and just about everything else. Sometimes, at this time of the year (just after Christmas), those promises of healthfulness really get to me. But this, I'd eat anyway.  

Butterflied Baked Mackerel with Paprika and Garlic

From Sam and Sam Clarke's Moro

Serves 4 as a light lunch or first course. 

Notes: this fish could also be cooked on in a grill pan or or heavy frying pan. Also, a good substitute for mackerel here would be fresh, fat sardines.

3 tbsp olive oil

4 mackerel, cleaned and butterflied

3 small or 2 large garlic cloves, very finely chopped

A big handful of fresh parsley, chopped

2 tsp sweet smoked Spanish paprika (ahumado)

1 lemon

salt and pepper

Take a roasting tray big enough to hold your fish and pop it in the oven, while you preheat to 220˚C. When nice and hot, carefully pull it out and drizzle half the oil into the hot tray. Slide in the fish, skin side down (it will sizzle and begin to crisp up right away) and pop back in the oven for about 10 minutes, or until cooked through. 

Remove from the oven and immediately sprinkle with garlic, parsley and paprika. Drizzle with remaining olive oil and serve. So easy!

Mackerel Escabeche

Adapted from Frank Camora's Movida

Note: this could also be made with fresh, fat sardines

For the fish:

Around half a kilo of mackerel fillets

seasoned plain flour (to coat fish)

olive oil to shallow fry fish

fine sea salt

For the escabeche:

2 red onions

60ml extra virgin olive oil

4 bay leaves, preferably fresh

2 garlic cloves, finely sliced

pinch of saffron threads

2 large-ish carrots, julienned

125ml white wine vinegar

125ml Spanish sherry vinegar

250ml white wine

1 tbsp black peppercorns

1 large handful of flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped

To serve:

small handful of chopped continental parsley

extra olive oil to drizzle

Lightly coat fish fillets in seasoned flour. In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil and fry fillets until golden brown on both sides (Frank says around 3 minutes). Season each side with salt. Remove and drain on paper towel to absorb excess oil. 

To make the escabeche, cut onions into thinnish wedges. Heat olive oil into a heavy frying pan over low heat and add onion, bay leaves, garlic and saffron. Stir to combine, then cover and cook for around 15 minutes. The onions should not colour, but turn transluscent and sticky. Add the carrot, stir and cover again for another 15 minutes. When the carrot has slightly softened, add the vinegars, wine, peppercorns, 1 cup of water and 1 tsp of salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the marinade it fragrant and doesn't smell of alcohol - about 20 minutes. Remove from heat, cool and add parsley. 

Place fried fillets in a single layer in a large, non-metal dish (metal will react with marinade). Pour over the escabeche. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. Serve the fillets the following day with a spoonful or two of the marinade and some vegetables on each. Sprinkle with fresh parsley and drizzle with extra oil.