Rainbow salad with haloumi

If you are looking for a salad packed with goodness, and full of delicious and colourful ingredients (and there is a saying that the more colourful your meal, the healthier it is) then this is a salad for you. Topped with crispy-on-the-outside, oozy-on-the-inside haloumi it stands on its own as a vegetarian lunch, or a…

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Tomato salad with sumac

As a lover of tomatoes I am always looking for different ways to prepare and serve them that will enhance their already beautiful flavour. This recipe is based on one I read in an Ottolenghi cookbook – it used sumac as an ingredient – a spice I have been experimenting with for some time. Sumac…

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Chinese cabbage and crispy noodle salad, and messing with classic recipes

Mrs. Chang’s Chinese cabbage and crispy noodle salad is a staple at Australian bar-be-ques and family gatherings. It is a very simple salad – wombok, slivered almonds, shallots and crispy noodles – but it has a sweet and tangy dressing that makes it an absolute winner. So why mess with it by adding different ingredients?…

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Super seeds

Seeds are a powerhouse of nutrients and have many benefits to our health. They contain healthy monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats and many important vitamins, minerals and antioxidants and they also taste delicious! I like to use seeds (and also some nuts) to make a treat to sprinkle over salads, or to serve with hummus and…

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Golden beetroot salad with honeyed walnuts

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious. Tom Robbins Serves 4 4 small purple…

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Fennel and blood orange salad

A the beginning of winter this year I planted fennel in my vegetable garden for the first time. It’s been an astounding success and I am harvesting beautiful bulbs every few days. The aroma of the freshly cut young fennel is astonishing – so fresh and sharply aniseed, but also almost sweet in overtone. I…

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Carrots and beets and all the good things

It’s a lot harder to get people to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over beets and carrots than it is to get them to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over artichokes or asparagus, and I enjoy being able to take these humble, ‘lowbrow’ foodstuffs up a few notches and serve them with great exuberance. Charlie Trotter Hear, hear, Mr.…

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Warm potato salad with dill and almonds

It is always wise to make too much potato salad. Even if you are cooking for two, make enough for five. Potato salad improves with age – that is, if you are lucky enough to have any left over. Laurie Colwin My mother was  a proponent of the ‘you can’t have too much’ school of…

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Summer rice salad

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. Lin Yutang A week’s holiday in the middle of summer has been an opportunity to rest and relax before the busy year really begins in earnest. It’s been stiflingly hot in my part of the world, so hot…

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Spicy roasted pumpkin

Now in my part of the world it is hot, hot, hot, and very steamy. It is not the weather for roast dinners, and snuggling beside a fireplace, or eating soup and thick crusty bread. But as I am a fanatical lover of pumpkin, this season is where salads with warm roasted pumpkin come into…

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