Cauliflower Salad

 

Sometimes it's the little things that make me so happy, like seeing a baby smile, smelling a soft yellow rose, or catching a tram the minute I get to the stop.

Or when I find a way to serve cauliflower that my children like.

Cauliflower has been a hitherto spurned vegetable in our house. I use it only every now and then, aiming for a very gradual sixteen presentations or however long it takes kids to like a vegetable. A year or so ago I did this with broccoli over the course of two weeks, but now I'm slower at these things.

I first made this cauliflower salad a month or so ago, much to my children's disgust. Yet my eight year old has learned that it is easier to eat the small portion required of her than to have a big argument and be made to eat the food anyway, so she looked at the cauliflower, sighed, picked up her fork, and et it – then looked up surprised and had a little more.

But her five year old sister has not yet learned that resistance is futile. As her father placed a small portion of cauliflower on her plate she, as usual, let out a big wail. It sounded like someone had just deliberately dropped an anvil on her foot – there was a clear note of betrayal amongst all the pain and anguish.

We offered our usual measured response ('hush now, just have a bite'), to which she responded with further wails at which point I, lovely mother that I am, snapped 'just eat the damn thing'. She gave one last sob, then took a tiny nibble, looked surprised, and et the lot. 'Delicious,' she said, serving herself some more; then she leapt from the table, ran to the kitchen, grabbed a small container and packed extra for her school lunch the next day while we all looked on speechless. Then she yelled at someone else for polishing the rest of the salad off.

At such a moment I am torn between exasperation and triumph. Why, I wonder, does she need to shriek like a steam train? – especially when it turns out she likes the food!

Anyway, I've made this cauliflower salad once or twice since then, just to consolidate, and each time it has been demolished at dinner, and extras taken for school lunch. It's the sort of salad that sits quite well in the fridge for a few days. You can always add a few more olives and capers, or a dash more vinegar, to sharpen the flavours.

While it's a bit late for cauliflower in Melbourne, there are still a few local ones floating around. See what you can find.

Cauliflower Salad - 1 medium sized cauliflower - 1 decent sized carrot - 3 anchovies - ¼ cup olive oil - 1 tbs red wine vinegar or to taste - 1 tbs capers, drained and rinsed - 1 handful kalamata olives (about 20) - 5 or so stems continental parsley - salt Put the kettle on to boil. Peel the carrot and slice it into rounds about the thickness of an English pound coin, that is about ⅓ cm thick. Break or chop the cauliflower into roughly even sized florets, whatever size feels natural. Pour the boiling water into a saucepan fitted with a steamer. Drop in the cauliflower and the carrot and steam for 6 minutes. Check to see whether they are done: you should be able to slip a knife into the thick part of the vegetable. If not, give them another minute or two. Remove them from the heat. While the vegetables are cooking, chop the anchovies very finely. Now, using the flat of your knife, smoosh those finely chopped anchovies against the board until they are paste. Scrape up the paste and put it into a bowl. Add the olive oil, vinegar and a pinch of salt and mix very well; I use a small whisk. Using the base of an espresso cup, press against each olive until it splits, then slip out the pit. Tear the olive into one or two pieces. Chop the parsley. Scrape the dressing into a shallow platter. Tumble the cauliflower and carrots on top of the dressing along with the olives, capers and parsley. Mix with your hands until the dressing has been well distributed and all is glistening. Freely adapted from a recipe in Insalate: Authentic Italian Salads for All Seasons by Susan Simon. (Local: cauliflower, parsley, olive oil. Not so local: carrot, olives, capers, anchovies, red wine vinegar, salt.)

Dolmades

 

My earliest memory is that of food. When I was a year and a half old, my parents went to Nepal for three months to have a few adventures and visit a few friends, and I tagged along. And if I let my mind slip sideways and approach the memory as I would a skittish stray cat, I can remember sitting on a stone wall, the roughness of the stones pressing into my thighs, and eating a mandarin. The mandarin is large in my baby hands, and beside me I can see the pattern of my beloved friend Gwen’s brown tweed skirt.

My second oldest memory is of swinging my legs from the neighbour’s kitchen bench and having olives popped into my mouth. My neighbours were Greek and I spent hours there every week watching George make endless tiny cups of thick black coffee and Tina cook up a storm. For a long time, my parents were puzzled by my birdlike appetite and burgeoning size until they realised quite how much the neighbours fed me.

There’s nothing like fresh Greek food. Eating it takes me right back to George and Tina’s vinyl chairs and seventies brown kitchen, and the view out to their grapevine. Behind the vine was a fire pit, dug into the lawn for the Paschal lamb; thinking of that lamb makes my mouth water even now.

Three decades later, I am drifting through old memories as I cook up a storm in my own kitchen and gaze out into our own grapevine. It’s the time of year when vines go a-roaming. New shoots sprawl abundantly, looking for something to catch on to, and so, before heat burns and fungi attack, it is time to make dolmades.

 

Dolmades are quite simply vine leaves stuffed with rice and other goodies. I fill mine with fresh herbs, and use the leaves from our vines. While you can certainly buy preserved vine leaves, fresh vine leaves are a whole ‘nother thing: they taste light and sweet and clean.

For this recipe, you need about fifty vine leaves the size of a Cornish woman’s hand, that is, my hand – or what is probably about the size of your palm. Obviously if your leaves are larger, you will need less; smaller, you will need more. Don’t strip the leaves off the vine one by one, as this will weaken the vine. Instead, remove a long unwanted shoot, then strip the leaves off that.

If you don’t have a grapevine of your own, there are plenty throwing two and three metre long shoots into the laneways. If you decide to glean such shoots, respect the vine and the owner. Take clippers, and cut a couple of good long stems to the fence line – don’t just shred the leaves off, don’t go over the fence line, and take only what you can use. When I'm out walking, I carry a stout pair of scissors in my bag to collect herbs and greens and no one has ever done anything but smile and nod as they see me carefully snipping fennel tops, parsley, bay leaves and all the other goodies that grow for free.

I may not be Greek, but George and Tina gave me an early education in food and I have taken on the mantle of gleaning and eating great quantities of herbs and bitter greens, vine leaves and fennel tops. And as I do so, I think of my old neighbours with gratitude.

Dolmades - about 50 fresh vine leaves - 150g long grain white rice - about 350g brown onions - ½ cup fennel tops - ⅓ cup parsley, about 10 – 12 stalks - ¼ cup mint - 150ml olive oil - a lemon - salt First, select your vine leaves. For the rolls, choose those which are whole. Reserve any torn leaves for lining the pan. With your thumbnail and forefinger, snip the stem from the base of the leaf. Wash well. Bring a pan of lightly salted water to the boil. (I use the same wide frypan that I will later use to cook the dolmades). In batches, drop in the leaves and hold them under the water for a bare minute, then fish them out and let them drain in a colander. They will change from bright green to khaki in that time. Place the rice in a medium sized bowl and cover with cold water. Let it soak for fifteen minutes, then drain it in a sieve and rinse well. While the rice is soaking, chop the onions very finely. The onions hold the rice grains apart and give the dolmades a delicate lightness, so keep them small but do not grate them or pulverize them in a food processor. You do not want a mush! Chop the fennel, mint and parsley. Mix the rice with the onions, the herbs, 75ml olive oil and half the lemon juice. Line the base of a wide heavy based frypan – you may as well use the same pan as was used for blanching – with vine leaves. Start with the holey ones. Now take a blanched vine leaf and lay it flat. Place a heaped teaspoon of filling at the base of the leaf – and use a bit of common sense here: a large leaf may need more filling; a small one, less – and then form it into a rough tube. Roll the vine leaf once, fold in either side, and continue rolling to the end. Place it in the frypan.   Pack the dolmades tightly together. When you have run out of filling, drizzle the rest of the olive oil and lemon juice over the dolmades. Gently place a plate upside down on top of the dolmades to hold them in place, then pour 250ml hot water into the pan. Cover and cook over very low heat. After 40 minutes, fish one out and test it. If it’s a bit crunchy, give it another five minutes, otherwise turn off the heat. Let them cool a little in the pan. Take the dolmades out and arrange them on a plate. Serve warm or cold with slices of lemon. While they keep in the fridge for several days, they do lose some of their delicate texture and herbal sprightliness. They are best the same day – although even two days later they are far and away better than any commercial dolmades I’ve eaten! Adapted from a recipe in the wonderful book, Greek Food, by Rena Salaman. Every recipe is preceded by a history of the dish and her fond memories of growing up in Greece. This is a lovely read, and the recipes are scrumptious! Sadly, it is out of print – but her later cookbooks may be worth a look. (Backyard or gleaned locally: vine leaves, mint, fennel tops, parsley, lemon. Local: onions, olive oil. Somewhere in Australia: rice, salt.)

 

Farinata

 

How delightful it is to discover a new comfort food! I had always thought comfort foods were those carbohydrates first eaten during early childhood, with their deeply familiar flavours and their taste of home, like good bread with salted butter; or really fresh stretchy pita; or burning hot chips, crisp and salty on the outside, soft and mealy within. These are pleasure enough – but one of the joys of being an adult is that I keep finding new foods to add to the list!

I’ve always liked Lebanese pastries, but when I first bit into the spelt version of the haloumi pie at Mankoushe on Lygon Street, I knew I had discovered the perfect dish. Hot, salty, cheesy, with the deep slaty taste of spelt, heat blistered, and brushed with olive oil: this is comfort food at its best – and is, perhaps, why the Mankoushe boys, dishes themselves, wave whenever we go by: we are their best customers.

Even more recently, I discovered farinata. Farinata is a thick chickpea flour pancake flecked with salt and rosemary. It is that perfect combination of hot and crisp at the edges and mealy inside; and it is savoury, filling, and flavourful. Even better, it is so quick and simple to make that it is a wonder it is not more widely known; the only step that takes any time at all is leaving it to soak for a couple of hours.

I’m so enamoured with farinata that I’ve been making it twice a week for dinner, with a couple of hefty salads on the side. It’s best served hot straight from the pan; but even eaten the next day, whether cold or warmed in the microwave, it is still good.

Farinata doesn’t have to be eaten at dinner. According to Skye Gyngell in her lovely book My Favourite Ingredients, farinata is the traditional breakfast food for Genoese fisherman. I, however, struggle to eat breakfast any later than the time it takes me to shuffle down the hall to the kitchen, so I am yet to find out whether it’s good just then. However, like all salty foods farinata cries out for beer, and I’m looking forward to warmer weather and drinkies in our complete mess of a garden with a slice of farinata in one hand, and a cold beer in the other.

The ingredients are not quite local (I am not sure which bit of Australia provides the chickpea flour in the organic shop), but it is so good that I can’t help but include it in this blog. If you need an excuse to cook a non-local food, farinata is gluten free, sugar free, vegan, and economical. And because pricing completely fails to take into account the distance food has travelled, if you use an imported chickpea flour (also known as besan flour, and readily available in Indian and Pakistani shops), it will be even cheaper.

In Liguria, farinata is made in a large zinc lined copper pan. As I am not Ligurian and don’t have a great pile of specialist cooking equipment, I have adapted the recipe for my thick bottomed stainless steel frying pan 30cm (12”) in diameter. Whatever pan you use, make sure it can go into the oven.

Farinata - 150g chickpea flour (also sold as besan flour) - 500ml lukewarm water - a very hefty pinch of sea salt - ¼ cup plus a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil - a long stem of rosemary Place the chickpea flour and a pinch of salt into a large bowl. If the flour is very lumpy, sieve it; otherwise press out any lumps with a whisk. Make a well in the centre. Gradually add the water, whisking constantly as you slowly incorporate the flour; you should end up with a runny yellow batter. Leave it to sit for 2 to 4 hours. (I have eaten farinata under the guise of chickpea fritters at several bars and been left with an unpleasant grainy texture on the back of my teeth, like a scone that lacks the necessary pinch of sugar. Leaving it to sit and very slightly ferment seems to fix this problem.) Pick the leaves from the rosemary. Place an oven rack in the top half of the oven (not the topmost row, but the one below it), and preheat the oven to 225°C (450°F). Stir ¼ cup olive oil into the batter. Place the frying pan on the stovetop, and heat the tablespoon of oil until it is just beginning to smoke. Pour in the batter – it will frill up at the sides like a frittata – and scatter it with rosemary. Gently slide the pan into the oven. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, until the edges are crisp, the top is golden, and the middle is perfectly mealy. Sprinkle with extra salt flakes, and serve immediately. This makes enough for a bunch of people to have a taste, four or five people to eat with other things, or for two hungry greedy people to demolish with gusto. Gyngell recommends eating farinata topped with flecks of sweet gorgonzola... sounds good, but I haven’t tried it! She also has a recipe for farinata, but I prefer the thinner batter used above. From a recipe in the The River Cafe Cook Book Green, adapted to home cooking conditions and equipment. (Backyard: rosemary. Local: olive oil. Somewhere in Australia: chickpea flour. Not so local: salt.)

Das's Chickpea Salad

 

I never meant to threaten my housemate with a knife.

I was living at the time with a couple of Anglo women who studied too hard, and a Pakistani man named Das. Das had very regular habits. Every morning, he left for work in his little white car; every evening, he came home, parked in the driveway, stayed for an hour or two then, while we women headed back to our desks, he went to put in a few hours at a friend’s restaurant. On weekends, if we were lucky, he cooked.

One weekday I came home to what should have been an empty house. The driveway was empty, but to my alarm the front door was swinging open. I peeked in, and called ‘hello?’. There was no answer, so I called louder. Again, silence. Heart pounding, I stepped softly into the hallway, tiptoed to the kitchen and, being a silly young thing, grabbed a long knife. Then I crept around the house, checking each and every room – behind the doors, under the beds, the works – until I came, at last, to Das’s room. He wasn’t home; his car wasn’t in the driveway; he was at work.

But I thought I heard the sound of breathing.

So I crept in, knife raised high, only to find Das dozing on the bed. I shrieked, he opened his eyes and yelled, and I collapsed in hysterical giggles.

It turned out he’d felt sick at work. He’d left in a daze early, parked his car randomly up the street, staggered in the front door, and collapsed into bed, only to be woken by the knife wielding maniac that was me.

These days I’m older and wiser; I figure I’m the only person likely to be injured in a knife fight. So I keep my kitchen knives where they belong, and use them to chop vegetables and think of Das.

He was a terrific cook. I particularly remember eating industrial quantities of his chickpea salad, served warm. I still dream of it; mine, sadly, is never as good.

Chickpea salad is very simple, but it depends on two things. For one, I have never eaten a canned chickpea that hasn’t tasted tinny, so I cook my own from dried. If you don’t mind the tinny taste, you are welcome to use canned chickpeas, but for mealy chickpea perfection, cook them yourself.

The other is to chop the other vegetables neatly, chickpea sized or smaller. It makes the salad visually appealing, and it means that each mouthful is an explosion of different flavours.

Chaat masala is a spice mix for salads. Dried green mango and asafoetida give it sourness; and then about a dozen other spices just make it taste good! You can buy it at any Indian or Pakistani grocery store. It’s worth having a packet in your pantry just for this salad; I certainly do.

Das’s Chickpea Salad (Very Easily Multiplied!) - 1 cup cooked chickpeas. If they are warm, so much the better. - 2 medium carrots, diced small - 1 celery heart, or 2 stalks celery - 1 long cucumber - a small bunch of coriander, chopped - a hefty pinch of chaat masala - the juice of a lemon If you are using the celery heart, shred it crossways right up into the yellow leaves. If you are using celery stalks, dice them as small as the carrot. Peel the cucumber entirely if the skin is coarse. Halve it lengthways. Cut out the seeds by slicing a shallow V and scraping them out. Dice the remaining flesh nice and small. Chop the coriander coarsely. Combine the chickpeas with the vegetables and the coriander. Dress with a generous amount of lemon juice, and sprinkle with a little chaat masala to taste. Mix well. This makes enough for two or three lunches. In lieu of my mother’s chappatis – how I miss them! – I eat it with homemade unleavened bread made with buckwheat flour and sprinkled with nigella, or with fresh pita. (Localish: chickpeas from Horsham area; carrots, coriander, lemons. Not so local: celery, salt, chaat masala.)

Clove Scented Onions

 

My two favourite restaurant names are the New Wind, which serves Thai and Vietnamese food to its lucky patrons in Windsor; and the Sha Tin, serving up quality Chinese takeaway in Heathmont. Lately, after a spate of particularly bad cooking, I thought of the latter; it felt like more than one meal originated in the Sha Tin kitchen.

I admit this only because three people who really should know better have told me recently that they think cooking for me is intimidating. So I'd like to share some home truths.

I started this blog partly because churning out countless meals day after day for largely ungrateful small children had robbed me of any joy in the act of cooking. I thought that writing about the good things we ate might help sustain me through the infuriating claim I hear most days: 'no like it'.

There are still many times when I am careless, misguided or just plain uninspired in the kitchen. Last week was particularly bad, like something out of a fairy tale. I suspect I offended an evil spirit, because everything I touched turned to sand.

One night, dinner was well underway. The kids were bickering and generally so annoying that I hid in the laundry with the laptop and checked my emails while dinner cooked. I was returned to earth by the smell of burning. I managed to salvage a third of the beans, which I served as 'smoky'; but all the vegies, even the mustard greens I had picked earlier from the garden, had to go to the great compost heap in the sky.

A day or two later, I bought 'cheap' bananas to make smoothies. We had some rice milk in the fridge, so I whizzed it up with the bananas, some cocoa and a little almond meal, and poured each child a lovely foaming cup. Each child took a great gulp... each angelic face contorted demonically, and each pair of legs hotfooted it to the bathroom where I heard a frenzy of spitting, gargling, and tooth brushing. And that is how I learned that rice milk doesn't last more than three days in the refrigerator, and when it goes off, it seems to smell fine. It just tastes absolutely mouth-searingly gut-wrenchingly disgusting.

I also served up mouldy hommus; chicory so bitter it turned my stomach; and rocks of undercooked beetroot. Even the meals that weren't unmitigated disasters were largely uninspired, consisting of, for the most part, what one friend calls 'adulterated beans'.

Yet there have been glimmers of hope. The other day I had potatoes and sweet red onions from a local farm in the pantry. So I decided on an easy meal: baked potatoes and caramelized onions, with salad and adulterated beans on the side.

I wanted the onions to be rich, so I cooked them in a good slosh of olive oil and flavoured them with cloves. The result was unctuous and deeply flavoured, a perfect match for the mealy potatoes.

How is it that something so absolutely simple can be so incredibly delicious?, I wondered – and it was so easy, even I didn't stuff it up.

And yet in the spirit of full disclosure I must admit that, in the long run, even this meal wasn't entirely successful. It may have been delicious; it may have been easy; it may have been economical, but eating a multitude of fried onions has some after effects: this is not the thing for date night. Rather, it's a meal to be enjoyed in the privacy of one's own home, without guests, and preferably when you're happy to leave a few windows open. While it's not Sha Tin, New Wind just about covers it.

Potatoes Stuffed with Clove Scented Onions - 4 baking potatoes - 4 large red onions - ½ tsp ground cloves, or more to taste - 4 tbs olive oil - good salt Heat the oven to 200°C. Scrub the potatoes, dry them and prick them with a fork. Place them directly onto the oven rack. Leave to bake for 1 to 1½ hours, or until the skins are papery and the insides perfectly cooked. Halve the onions stem to stern, then slice them into half moons ½ cm wide. Warm the oil in a wide heavy based skillet set over medium heat. Add the cloves, the onions, and a hefty pinch of salt and stir well to ensure the onions are evenly coated. Turn down the heat and leave them to cook for thirty minutes or so, until they are a dark golden brown. Do not let them dry out. You may need to shove them around with a wooden spoon from time to time to prevent them from sticking. Serve piled into the baked potatoes, or tossed through pasta, draped over steak or anywhere else you can think of. A tangle of peppery rocket on the side is a nice complement. (Local: potatoes, onions, olive oil. Not so local: cloves, salt.)

Grilled Chicken with Lavender Herbs

 

Our across-the-road neighbour is good Wimmera stock. As a little girl, she rode five miles every morning with her siblings to the neighbour's house. He drove them another ten miles to meet the town taxi; and the taxi took them the last leg to school. In the afternoon they'd do it all in reverse. She tells the story with a twinkle and a grin; to her credit, she has never used it against me and my soft daughters when we grizzle about the walk to school.

As an adult, she trained as a midwife and spent years delivering babies under palm trees in the Middle East. After that, she came back to work as a nurse on the children's hospital helicopter ambulance. Nothing fazes her.

Now actively retired, she lives in urban Brunswick and loves it. But every now and then, even after so many years and adventures, the country girl peeps out.

The other night she was leaning against the doorjamb, gazing at our pet hens and reminiscing about the taste of roast chicken. 'It's been years,' she said, 'since I had a proper roast chicken. Let me know when one of them stops laying and I'll show you how to kill it properly.'

My daughters looked at her, eyes and mouths rounded in shock, as she went on to explain how to chop right through the neck and hold the body down until it had stopped twitching, how to gut and pluck it, and how to let it rest a day before roasting. 'There's nothing like it,' she said. 'Except maybe rabbit – have you ever thought of keeping rabbits in your front garden? They're easy to keep, good breeders of course, and absolutely delicious.'

I thought of her lush green lawn across the street, untouched by rabbits or chickens or any other livestock except the multitude of young children who come to visit, and thought to myself, You keep rabbits, then! – and I grinned as I reflected how my grumpier neighbours would respond if I turned the garden into a slaughterhouse. Tempting, yes.

As delicious as roast chicken and rabbit casserole may be, we rarely cook meat; and when we do, it's on the grill alongside slabs of marinated tofu for the vegetarians. A cast-iron grill is a fantastic piece of kitchen equipment and should be at the top of your Christmas list. There is a certain sort of man who buys fancy kitchen equipment for his wife to emphasise that she should continue to cook for him. Well, I turned that one on its head: I bought a grill for my husband's birthday several years ago. He loves the taste of grilled fish and sourdough, and it was a promise that I would make them at home for him – and so I have.

A grill is very easy to use. Heat it over a medium flame until it is evenly hot (sudden high heat can crack it). Brush your food with a little oil and pop it on. Don't fiddle, but leave the food to develop those no doubt carcinogenic char lines. If you fancy neat diagonals, rotate it 90° once and once only; any more, and you'll just have a brown mess. When the food looks halfway cooked, flip it and let it cook through. The time it takes will of course depend on the thickness and type of food and how hot you have set the burners under the grill – use your eyes, your nose and your brain.

Serve bruschetta or grilled cheese sandwiches as soon as they are cooked. Grilled vegetables are best tepid; and meat particularly benefits from a short rest so place it on a board, wipe down the grill with a paper towel or a more sustainable alternative, then serve.

Don't ever scrub the grill. The blackening seasons the metal and stops food from sticking. If you feel you absolutely must clean it – say, you cooked salmon on it then didn't wipe it down properly and you don't want your grilled cheese sandwich to taste of fish – wash the grill gently, not vigorously, in hot soapy water to remove the smell, replace it on the stove, warm it until it is absolutely dry, then rub it with a little oil before putting it away.

It may not be freshly slaughtered and roasted, but chicken on the grill is very good: tender, juicy and richly flavoured. It's one of our simple standbys when we have visitors. The easiest way is to marinate it with lemon juice, garlic, marjoram and olive oil, but I also love to herb it up.

The second marinade, with lavender, rosemary and lemon thyme, is spectacularly good. The lavender gives it a floral sweetness, the thyme provides an earthy base note, and the lemon zest sings. One bite of this is like a little party in your mouth: absolutely delicious.

Grilled Chicken with Lavender Herbs - some boned chicken pieces. Thigh fillets are my preference as they are much thinner than the breast, so they absorb the marinade better; also, they are slightly and deliciously fattier. However, breast pieces grill well, look prettier and may be sliced very elegantly along the grain which makes it easy to serve small people who want only a sliver or two. - olive oil - good salt And either: - a squeeze of lemon juice - a few cloves of garlic, bashed with the side of a knife and the papery bits flicked off - a handful of fresh marjoram or thyme or whichever herb that takes your fancy, leaves picked and coarsely chopped Or: - equal quantities of lavender blossoms, rosemary needles and thyme (lemon thyme for preference but any thyme is good), about 1 tablespoon of each - the zest and juice of a lemon - ¼ cup olive oil - a good pinch of salt If you are using the first marinade, just toss the ingredients in with the chicken pieces, cover and refrigerate. If you are using the lavender herbs, chop the lavender, rosemary, thyme and lemon zest, then combine them with the salt, the olive oil, and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Remove a tablespoon of the marinade, squeeze in an extra tablespoon of lemon juice, and reserve. Toss the rest of the marinade with the chicken pieces and refrigerate for many hours. I usually put this together after breakfast, so it sits all day; the longer the meat marinates, the better it tastes. Close to dinnertime, heat the grill. Place the chicken on the grill and cook for five minutes or so, then rotate it by 90°; chicken looks best with diagonals. Cook without fiddling again until the flesh has whitened halfway up the piece. Flip the chicken and repeat the process until it's cooked, which can take up to 15 minutes. To check, slip a knife into the thickest part and ensure there is no sign of pink. Place the meat on a board to rest while you wipe down the grill. Drizzle the reserved marinade – or some extra herbs – over the chicken, and serve. You might continue the floral theme and serve it alongside a blossom salad, sans tuna! Adapted from a recipe by Jerry Traunfeld in The Herbal Kitchen. (Local: olive oil, all the herbs, and occasionally even the chicken. Not so local: salt.)

Pear and Almond Cake

Last week started out so well. I spent the weekend away with a group of women performing a rite of passage for a cherished thirteen year old; I found a snakes head fritillary at a country market; I bought the most beautiful tea cosy in the world; then I came home.

And the world went to pieces. I learned that a friend’s mother died; she needs her mother more than most people need their mothers; this death is appalling and not to be borne; and yet it must be borne. Meanwhile, it was the anniversary of my own mother’s death; I heard some difficult news from an old friend; the kids had threadworm; and a few other things went so deeply, sharply wrong that I was given Veuve Cliquot and sent flowers from Berlin. The extraordinary extravagance of these actions suggests just how pear-shaped my week turned: believe me, I am not in the habit of drinking French champagne nor of indulging in massive bunches of tulips.

But I’m tired of illness and death and worry and care; I’ve had too much of it. So instead of wallowing, I shed a few tears then turned my attention to cake. When life feels impossible, I figure one may as well have something decent to nibble on.

I needed an easy cake that could be whizzed in the food processor with very little effort from me. Preferably it would use up more than a few eggs since our chooks just won’t stop laying (do Isa Browns ever moult?!), and possibly too the pears from our tree that I stewed back in January with a good shake of cinnamon and which have been gathering permafrost in our freezer ever since.

So I went to the recipe books and flicked until I found what I was hoping for. And what a beauty it is! I varied Nigella's recipe for damp apple and almond cake, itself a variation on Claudia Roden’s classic orange and almond cake, by changing the fruit once more from apples to pears. And when I took a bite I realised instantly that it was quite possibly the best cake I have made in a long lifetime of baking. All this for a new recipe on a Tuesday afternoon, shoved carelessly in the oven while I crooked a phone on my shoulder and wept.

Tulips and champagne; pear cake and pain; and a bucketload of tears. What a week.

Pear and Almond Cake - 8 eggs - 325g ground almonds - 375g or so stewed pears with cinnamon - 275g golden caster sugar - a squeeze of lemon - 40g flaked almonds Grease and line a 25cm spring form pan. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place everything bar the flaked almonds into a food processor, and whizz until you have a batter. Pour the resulting goop into the pan. Sprinkle with flaked almonds. Slip into the oven. Bake for 40 minutes or until golden and a cake tester comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin on a baking rack. Eat plain for afternoon tea or any time you need; it is also lovely with double cream. Adapted from a recipe by Nigella Lawson in her terrific book, Feast: Food that celebrates life, itself a variation on Claudia Roden’s orange and almond cake in her classic, The Book of Middle Eastern Food. Incidentally, between eggs, pears and almonds from our garden, and lemons from over the road, this could be a very economical cake; sadly, I was too lazy to grind my own almonds. (Local: almonds, pears, eggs, lemon. Not so local: cinnamon, sugar (fair trade).)