Halloumi, Lime & Rocket Spaghetti

A couple of weeks ago I featured Annabel Crabb & Wendy Sharpe's book Special Guest. I mentioned there were three recipes I wanted to try. This is one of them.

The Recipe:

HALLOUMI, LIME & ROCKET SPAGHETTI
Serves 4

I know it’s shockingly predictable for a non-meat-eater to return so often to halloumi, but it really is such a useful cheese. It’s sort of like the vegetarian peacetime equivalent of pemmican: it keeps for ages and is both tasty and easy to use. This recipe was first made for me in Canberra by my friend Zoe, who used to host viewing sessions of The West Wing for a small group of political staffers (and Jeremy and me). The staffers all loved The West Wing, but did tend to roll their eyes a bit about how unrealistic it was. A decade later, when Aaron Sorkin made The Newsroom, I finally understood their frustration. In any event, this has – ever since – been my go-to weeknight pasta when I’m pushed for time, and a popular last-minute dish for drop-ins. It’s got heat, salt, acid and pepper and a good helping of greens to make you feel a bit less gluggy. Lord, it’s delicious. I feel like a bowl of it right now.

250 g halloumi, cut into 1.5 cm dice
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons small salted capers, rinsed then drained well
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 medium or 2 small red chillies, thinly sliced
1 juicy lime
100 g wild rocket leaves
500 g dried spaghetti

First step: tip the halloumi, olive oil, capers, garlic and the chilli into a bowl and stir about. Using one of those zesters that takes off the zest in long thin strips, add the zest of the lime. (If you don’t have such a contraption, use a potato peeler to take the zest off and then cut it into thin strips, or alternatively you could do whatever you please and ignore my excessively controlling views on the subject.) Squeeze the lime and reserve the juice.

Arrange your rocket in a large serving bowl.

Cook the pasta according to its packet instructions.

Now you’re ready for the final assault. While the pasta is cooking, heat a heavy frying pan over medium heat and tip in the contents of your bowl: the halloumi will become golden, so turn the bits over regularly and keep a sharp eye on it. It’s done when all your halloumi is nicely browned. This should take about 5 minutes, so when it’s done you’ll be ready to drain your pasta. Dump the spaghetti into the pan and swirl it about to mop up every little bit of sauce. Working quickly, dress the rocket with the lime juice, then add the pasta to the bowl and give the whole lot a toss.

Serve straightaway!

My Journey with the Recipe:

I've included Crabb's entire blurb about the recipe so that you get an idea of her style and voice.

The main change I made was to skip the capers. Not a big fan of the caper; happy to eat 1 or 2, but two whole tablespoons full was more than I could cope with. I just added a little more lime (and salt & pepper) to the final dish to give it that zesty flavour.

The rest worked a treat and was a huge hit. I'll be making it again.
The meal also reheats well for lunch the next day, with a little more olive oil to moisten it.

Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to link up anytime over the weekend.

Keeping It Off by Michelle Bridges

Diet books by hosts of reality TV shows are not my usual fare, but in my role as editor for the General Non-Fiction page at The Australian Women Writers challenge, I'm trying to highlight all the possible types of non-fiction books out there.

Michelle Bridge's Keeping It Off has an admirable aim - to help us all be fit and healthy for our entire lives. As her starting point is the sad but true fact that most of us who lose weight while on a diet or get-fit program, will put most of it back on again within two years.

Bridge discusses how her approach to food and fitness has evolved over the years thanks to experience and research. She is no longer a pure 'calories in - calories out' advocate thanks to new research around how we all burn calories differently as well as the way environmental factors influence us. Weight loss, she claims, is a science, but keeping off is all about psychology. Bridge cites the work of Dr Katharine Samaras from St Vincent's Hospital and the Garvan Institute.

The 60-odd pages devoted to Bridge's ideas and thoughts is written in a direct, down to earth, humorous way. Unfortunately most of the photos don't have the same appeal (Mr Seasons accused me of having a 'you women are hard - you eat your own' attitude, before admitting that he also found the photos to be ghastly). Perhaps I'm just showing my age, but all those heavily made-up, photo-shopped images do nothing for me whatsoever. They don't inspire or impress. The more natural photos of Michelle exercising later in the book were better and felt more authentic.

Case studies, food plans and work-outs make up the bulk of the book. The recipes looked simple and tasty. Using the same set of ingredients, the recipes were divided into meal portions for toddlers, teens, mum and dad.

The main message though is one most of already probably know - there is no magic pill or easy fix. Keeping the weight off is a lifelong commitment to eating well and staying fit.

The trick is to find the way that works for you.

Keeping It Off has kick-started my annual spring 'let's get fit and healthy' spree. That's a good thing. Ultimately, though, Bridge's book will probably not inspire me long term. Perhaps it's time for me to read another chapter of Changing Habits Changing Lives?

Out of curiosity - is there a fitness/health guru that inspires you?
I'm quite taken with Michael Pollan and Michael Mosley's approach to food and health as they appeal to my own attitude towards life and their ideas fit into my lifestyle. But is there someone else out there that could tempt me with the right balance of science and practicality?

Sydney Seafood School Cookbook by Roberta Muir

I love it when Mr Seasons and I have the time to cook up a storm together. Just before Christmas we visited the new fish markets in Drummoyne and came home with a whole snapper.

My copy of the Sydney Seafood School Cookbook came to the rescue in how to prepare it and cook it.

"For more than 20 years, Sydney Seafood School has been teaching us how to prepare and cook the wonderful array of seafood found in our oceans and rivers. Now, for the first time, the School shares its wealth of tips and techniques, along with more than 80 outstanding recipes from Australia's leading chefs.

 There's also expert advice on choosing and storing seafood, plus step-by-step photos of essential techniques, including filleting and butterflying fish, shucking oysters, cleaning squid and octopus, and preparing crabs, prawns, and bugs. With beautiful photos of all the recipes to help you decide what to make, and illustrations of the various species so you know what to look for at the fishmonger, Sydney Seafood School Cookbook will give you the know-how and confidence to prepare seafood at home—with delicious results every time."

 It was so yummy scrummy I forgot to take a photo of the finish product - we were too busy eating it!
However the picture in the book above was pretty close to our first effort.

The whole baked snapper was so tasty and so easy, I can't wait to try out more of these recipes - watch this space!

 Weekend Cooking with Beth Fish Reads

Secrets of the Red Lantern by Pauline Nguyen

Secrets of the Red Lantern was one of the books I tracked down after my Easter visit to Vietnam. Mr Books and I loved the food whilst in Vietnam - so fresh, so tasty and so much variety. We loved the casual, shared style of cooking and eating.

We have eaten at the Red Lantern restaurant in Surrey Hills before with great pleasure, but when I spotted that Pauline had a cookbook memoir, I knew I had to give it a try. I wanted to create some of their famous healthy, delicious dishes myself.

Preparations

I have been dipping in and out of Pauline's story ever since, but have failed to try any of the recipes.

Curiously, it has been #AusReadingMonth and #nonficnov that finally got me to have a go at one. On Thursday evening I made Cha Ca - ling fillets marinated with dill and tumeric - with great success.

I love any chance to use my granite mortar and pestle, so I was delighted to crush the garlic, spring onions, tumeric and curry into a smooth paste.

The aromas that wafted around the house were so sublime they drew Mr Books down from his office to partake of the process!

The recipe was easy to follow, easy to recreate and very, very easy to enjoy.

Dinner!

Secrets of the Red Lantern is much more than a cookbook with great recipes though. It is also a substantial family memoir.

Generously littered with family photos and stories, we follow Pauline's immigration to Australia at a young age with her family after the war in Vietnam, to her early life in Australia, the importance of food in maintaining family connections and the opening of the first Red Lantern restaurant with her brother Luke and (now) partner Mark Jensen.

The book is sumptuously put together.

Each chapter begins with another part of Pauline's life story and a few family photos. Beautiful, simple photos of the food follow with one recipe per page. Brief chef suggestions by Luke and Mark accompany each recipe.

It really is an aesthetic delight from start to finish.

This post is part of #AusReadingMonth, #nonficnov and #weekendcooking.

Five Bells by Kenneth Slessor

Kenneth Slessor (1901 - 1971)

Australian poet, journalist & war correspondant. 

Born in Orange, NSW.

Moved to Sydney with his family when he was two.

Five Bells (1939) is his most famous poem.

About his artist friend and colleague Joe Lynch, who drowned, Five Bells is an ode to Sydney Harbour, time, memory and the past (wikipedia).

Australian writer Hal Porter described Slessor as: 

 "...a city lover, fastidious and excessively courteous, in those qualities resembles Baudelaire, as he does in being incapable of sentimentalizing over vegetation, in finding in nature something cruel, something bordering on effrontery. He prefers chiselled stone to the disorganization of grass."

If you would like to read the entire poem, please click here.

For now, I have selected the final stanza (below), as my own homage to Sydney and it's beautiful, dangerous waterways.

I looked out my window in the dark
At waves with diamond quills and combs of light
That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand
In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze,
And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys
Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each,
And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard
Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal
Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells,
Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out.
Five bells. 

 

 This post is part of Saturday Snapshot & AusReading Month.

My Country by Dorothea Mackellar

The love of field and coppice

Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

Capertee Valley, NSW

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

Broome coastline, WA

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

North Haven, NSW

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Mudgee, NSW

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

The Olga's, NT

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Weethalie, NSW

The poem is Dorothea Mackellar's; the photo's all mine!

Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar was born July 1st 1885 in Point Piper, Sydney.

Her father was a noted doctor & parliamentarian. 

They had family property in the Hunter region and around Gunnedah. 

The Mackellar family travelled the world extensively and Dorothea became fluent in several languages (French, German, Spanish & Italian).

My Country was written during a visit to England when Dorothea was 19.

She was obviously feeling homesick.

Dorothea never married & died 14th January 1968.

Her ashes are buried in Waverley Cemetery.

 This post is part of Saturday Snapshot & AusReading Month.

Canberra Art

During my recent holiday in Canberra I had a chance to pop into the National Portrait Gallery.

It only opened in Dec 2008, & this was my first opportunity to explore it thoroughly.

It feels like the very young space that it is.

It's light, open and airy.

There is a room devoted to early colonial statues and paintings, however, the rest of the portraits feel young and fresh and modern.

David Chalmers by Nick Mourtzakis
Chalmers is a philosopher and I think this depiction of the mind & consciousness
by Mourtzakis was my favourite portrait on the day.

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
by Guy Maestri

 If you'd like to see Gurrumul singing check out this link...

Nick Cave by Howard Arkley

Kate (Kate Grenville)
by Jenny Sages

Hugo at home (Hugo Weaving)
by Nicholas Harding

Robert Drewe (in the swell)
by Nicholas Harding

Robert Dessaix
by Robert Hannaford 

Self portrait
by Sidney Nolan
Sidney Nolan is particularly famous for his series of Ned Kelly paintings (below).

At the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery there is a Nolan Collection Gallery that features the works of Sidney Nolan...including many of the Ned Kelly series.

The photos I took are a little shiny thanks to the light reflecting off the glass, but you get the general idea!

This post is part of Saturday Snapshot.

Where the Forest Meets the Sea by Jeannie Baker

Over the Easter holiday break we took the kids to Far North Queensland for a sun and surf holiday.

On one of the days we did a road trip north to the Daintree and Cape Tribulation.

As we were wandering around I felt like I was in familiar territory, yet I knew I had never been there before.

It took the walk onto the beach at Cape Tribulation for me to realise why I thought I knew this area so well.

And it's all thanks to a children's picture book by Jeannie Baker called Where The Forest Meets the Sea.

Baker wrote her book back in 1987 - I fell in love with her collages instantly.

The blurb at the end of the book says...

"The place, the people, and the predicament are real. This forest is part of the the wilderness between Daintree River and Bloomfield in North Queensland. There remain at the making of this book only 296,000 acres of wet tropical rain forest wilderness that meet the ocean waters of the Great Barrier Reef. Small as it is, this is the largest pristine area of rain forest left in Australia.

The artist made two extensive field trips to the Daintree Wilderness to research and collect materials.

These relief collages are constructed from a multitude of materials, including modeling clay, papers, textured materials, preserved natural materials and paints.

The collages are mostly the same size as the reproductions."

Much of the Daintree Rainforest is part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Site listed by UNESCO in recognition of its universal natural values.

Below I have included a few pictures that I took whilst in Cape Tribulation.

I'm not sure I would walk through a creek or the mangroves like the boy in the book though.

Beware of croc signs are everywhere, especially along the Daintree River itself!

There are a few roads and townships along the southern end of the Daintree National Park. To see the park, visitors are encouraged to take organised tours through designated areas only.

Cape Tribulation is the last town on the coast road north. A basic dirt road meanders north from here, otherwise, a big loop road around the back of the National Park will eventually take you north to Cooktown. 

Cyclone Ida had been through this area just last week, and it was still looking fairly windswept and very wet!

Art Gallery of NSW

Tuesday 

I'd been having a dud day. It was my day off work, caught up doing the dreaded domestics. Nothing felt right; I felt irritable and out of sorts. On the spur of the moment I decided to take myself off to the art gallery to see the new America exhibition.

I figured I needed some beauty to soothe my savage soul!

And I was right. As soon as the bus went past the gallery & I saw the big brash America sign out the front, I smiled and knew I'd done the right thing.

The exhibition itself was fine & interesting, although not particularly outstanding. Whilst browsing through the gift shop at the end though I spotted something new.


Icon Magazine is a new mag celebrating the art world in Australia. The first edition came out this month. It's bright, Ned Kelly cover stood out a mile in the gallery shop, tempting me to buy one.

It has some fascinating articles detailing the various exhibitions on around the country at the moment as well as the Australia exhibition currently on in London. Each article is accompanied by big, lovely, glossy pictures of some of the works.

I'll be looking out for the next edition in the New Year.

However, I was still feeling rather flat and at odds with the world.

So I took myself off to the permanent galleries & The European and Australian rooms to see some of my old friends.

As soon as I saw The Sea Hath Its Pearls (1897) a huge wave of relief and release washed over me. For the first time in weeks I felt calm, serene and at peace with the world.
The name of the painting comes from a poem by Heinrich Heine. Call me a romantic, but I love both to pieces!

The sea hath its pearls,
The heaven hath its stars;
But my heart, my heart,
My heart hath its love.

Great are the sea, and the heaven;
Yet greater is my heart,
And fairer than pearls or stars
Flashes and beams my love.

Thou little, youthful maiden,
Come unto my great heart;
My heart, and the sea and the heaven
Are melting away with love!

Below are details from some of my other favourites - all Australian paintings. 

I love how easy it is take photo's these days with my mobile phone.

I can now use these shots as my screen or lock window and see them every day -

so that I can have a little bit of peace, calm & serenity in my handbag wherever I go :-)

This post is part of Saturday Snapshot & AusReading Month.