Summer corn, nectarine and haloumi salad with fried zucchini, herbs and za-tar: jump to recipe here.

A record low single recipe here in 2023 – at least the bar for improvement is low. It’s not that I didn’t cook, but the cycle of study, exams and work meant time and motivation for recipe development and photos was missing. The rise of Instagram reels and Tiktok has resulted in a decline in traditional food blogging as it was when I started: many of my favourite bloggers have stopped all together, or switched medium to cookbooks, videos or pure social media content. 

I’m not quite ready to give it up yet. Food remains both a huge way to show love (dinner parties and birthday cakes are IN for 2024) and a creative outlet, and combining those here in this format of words + photo + recipe is the only way I can continue to squeeze it into life in a more permanent way than disappearing moments within a deep phone scroll. Maybe an optimistic statement – only time will tell whether this holds me slightly more accountable! 

This is the first of what will (hopefully) be a series of my favourite meals for weeknights or work lunches or dinner parties – mostly, for food with friends. It’s a summer corn, nectarine and haloumi salad, a favourite in the ‘fruit in salad’ category. The most important thing is perfectly ripe, juicy and sweet but not bruised or floury stone fruit. Nectarines or peaches ideally. Gooey haloumi fried at the last minute, smoky charred corn, fried zucchini for heft, lots of herbs and a lemon-y olive dressing make it a salad that can do it all: barbecue, pot luck, work lunch or quick dinner. Variants have been on repeat around here- use peaches and tomatoes if that’s what you’ve got, swap the haloumi for feta or a ball of burrata, use basil and shaved parmesan and add walnuts or pinenuts for a more Italian take.

If you’re looking for more summer recipe inspiration, here are my standouts for 2023: 

• Charred eggplant, tomato, tahini by Eden Grinshpan. Always a hit. See also her incredible roast sweet potatoes with sunflower seed and basil gremolata– we love a whole roast sweet potato moment.
• Ottolenghi’s fusion eggplant caponata with silken tofu – a classic in our lives at least. 
• My work lunches on repeat: lemon-y asparagus risoni salad (skip the salmon and use smoked instead for even more speed), zucchini soba noodles with miso salmon, corn or mango slaw with peanut tofu. 
• Ricotta gnudi with cherry tomato sauce: the friends dinner or date dinner you never knew you needed- mostly for the way you can get all cleaned up while it finishes off in the oven. And the mandatory sourdough for moping it up. 

And just because reading has made a post exam comeback, my favourite reads of 2023:

• Lola in the Mirror, Trent Dalton: the only one that for me has come close to Boy Swallows Universe (or surpassed?!).
• Birnham Wood, Eleanor Catton: writing like The Luminaries, but a environmental thriller set in small town New Zealand. Creepy and I loved it. 
• Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver. 10/10
• Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin: don’t let the initial gaming chapters put you off if you’re not a gaming person!
• Good Material, Dolly Alderton: not my favourite in the first half, but Dolly Alderton realllyyy has a way with words and that second half made it worth it. 
• Crushing, Genevieve Novak: contemporary Melbourne 20s/30s life in a novel. Almost a Sally Rooney-esque feel. 
• Love and Virtue, Diana Reed.

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Ottolenghi’s Lamb Kofta with Corn, Zucchini & Roasted Carrot Salad and Homemade Hummus – easy, vibrant and summery, with pomegranate molasses and feta.  Jump to Recipe 

I type this from the sun-lit, flower-adorned kitchen table of our new place in Melbourne.

Dining chairs remain on the to-do list, so an assorted collection of our desk chairs surround the table, any TV watching is currently from the floor, a few cardboard boxes linger to attempt to squeeze into the recycling, and the walls are freshly blank – but it is home base. For the year, or maybe longer – my first experience at living in a home that is not also my family’s, the first go at renting a house. Being more adult and no longer spoon-fed by the organised life of college and living in a building occupied by 300 other student – the freedom of having more of your own space than the 3 x 2m brick room filled up by a non-descript bed and desk. Don’t get me wrong, college was an incredible experience that I wouldn’t change – but I was definitely ready to move on. College food is finally in the past (a big bonus!) and one of my favourite belongings, my Kenwood, proudly occupies the new kitchen. It all feels very grown up.

(In saying that, I do have matte-grey pineapple wall-paper stickers adorning the wall above my bed – so maybe not quite so grown up yet..)

Moving house is strange: trying to find your feet in unfamiliar rooms, and with people who are your friends – but not your siblings or parents. I was lucky to have the best house-mate ever help me out with furniture shopping and IKEA flat-pack assembly, which would have been a major challenge on crutches. Flat-packing isn’t my biggest strength, I quickly discovered. Although reading the instruction manuals wasn’t a challenge, the big arrows pointing to which screw should go where, and which side should face each way, I kept trying to do everything too quickly, assuming I knew it all – and then would come to a grinding halt when I missed essential points in the assembly of my bed, or bedside table – only realising when it didn’t fit together properly, or was extremely asymmetric.

Fortunately, most of my mistakes were reversible – or at least, nothing has collapsed on me yet.

Much of my cooking is going to need to become significantly more budget friendly as well. So far it has gone well: cheap summer roasted tomato pasta with grilled zucchini, a vietnamese ginger chilli chicken with soba noodles, a quick leftovers shakshuka. It is made easier simply by the fact that I am no longer cooking for effectively 8 people as at home – by the time the insane appetite of my three brothers is taken into account, anything becomes expensive. Cooking for three girls is far more managable.

These middle-eastern lamb kofta with corn, zucchini & roasted carrot salad and homemade hummus were on the table last week. The salad relies on seasonal fresh ears of corn and zucchini, pan-fried or grilled, tossed with caramelised, warm roasted carrot and brightened with coriander, feta and a pomegranate molasses dressing. Ottolenghi’s spiced lamb kofta are brilliant – a middle-eastern version of a meatball, sweetly scented with cinnamon and all-spice and given a kick with fresh chilli and herbs. Pinenuts are an optional extra – they taste amazing if they fit your budget, but if not – take them or leave them. Homemade hummus, lemon and garlicy, rounds it all off, and it only takes a few minutes to transform your humble can of chickpeas (or dried, if you are a purist) in your food processor.

Cook’s notes (and budget tips):

• For faster evening assembly, make the kofta mixture the morning of or earlier whenever you have time and store in the fridge uncooked until just before meal-time.
• Hummus can also be made in advance.
• New tip from one of the girls in my house: buying feta for a few is MUCH cheaper (at least in Australia) when bought from the supermarket deli, rather than the prepackaged brands. It might not be quite so fancy, but enough for this meal might only cost $2. For other meals, the same goes with chicken.
• The lamb kofta are more easily cooked on a barbecue flat plate for ease, space and heat – but can be cooked in a pan if necessary. The zucchini can also be grilled on the barbecue rather than a pan.

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Spicy Fish Tacos with Grilled Corn Slaw & Avocado-Coriander-Lime Sauce – summery and healthy with fresh, vibrant flavours. Put together in half an hour!  Jump to Recipe 

Today was my last day of university for the semester!

I can’t decide whether that is a good or a bad thing. On the negative side, it signals that exams are just a short week of studying away, said week of studying is hardly ever a fun place to be, and I have a WHOLE lot of material to cover in that timeframe. It feels like the end of the year is rushing upon us like a tsunami that you can’t escape from – end of year functions are starting, schools and universities are winding down, and Christmas decorations are already appearing in shops (I’m sure every year they seem to arrive earlier!). It is one of the times that I would appreciate a ‘pause’ button on life. A chance to not feel like a hamster on a treadmill of increasing speed for a few days, to regather my thoughts and senses. I guess that is what our mid-semester break last month was for – but it already seems like the distant past.

But there are also a whole lot of reasons for it to be a good thing. The portend of summer is one: those long, stretched out, warm days filled with beach trips and, knowing me, being supremely busy but not actually having many responsibilities or things that have to be done (though I do need to find a job. ASAP.). Moving out of college (for the final time!) and having a kitchen again is another reason – I am already dreaming of ice cream concoctions (thoughts on vanilla bean ice cream with raspberries, passionfruit curd swirl and meringue shards?) and layer cake combinations (lemon, coconut & berries need to find themselves together somehow).

These spicy fish tacos with grilled corn slaw & avocado-coriander-lime sauce remind me of those lazy summer days, though they would be perfect for a busy weeknight too. Flaking white fish is coated in a warm spice mix, full of paprika, garlic, a hint of chili and brown sugar, and paired with a grilled corn slaw – crunchy and fresh, the slightly charred and caramelized sweetcorn kernels hold up against the sharp coriander and lime dressing. On top goes a vibrantly green avocado sauce, creamy and tangy with lime, a smidge of buttermilk (seriously, it works), coriander and garlic. The hands-on aspect of tacos is the best part – all the fillings are piled inside fresh corn or flour tortillas and everyone can get messy!

I made them for the first time on holiday, which is probably why they aren’t as complex as some recipes that appear on here. With an ingredient list that isn’t too tricky, the tacos are easy to throw together in the half hour before dinner, or double or triple for an outdoor barbecue.  I can’t imagine the fresh, zingy flavours and the crunchy slaw contrast with smooth avocado sauce without getting visuals of summer, freshly caught fish and lengthly day-light savings evenings – those warm memories that make me smile stupidly at the computer screen as I type this.

AND they are one of the rare fish recipes (the only other is these Vietnamese Cha Ca bowls) that my youngest brother will consume without a second thought – which means they must be pretty freaking good. He is not a fish person, so anything that gets it eaten is an achievement in our house. The mahi mahi was bought at the markets in Noosa, almost as fresh as it gets, but any other white fish would work well too. I couldn’t help but break out the camera to capture the colourful stalls of fresh produce, which were our source of avocados and corn for this recipe.

Whether you are in the northern hemisphere heading into winter and need a final reminder of summer, or are getting ready to welcome it with open arms and need recipe ideas, you need to give these tacos a try! PLUS they are healthy, so #noregrets when you eat them all, I swear.

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Bill Granger’s Corn Fritters with avocado salsa, crispy bacon, and roasted cherry tomatoes – perfect for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or any meal in between.  Jump to Recipe 

These corn fritters are what I wish I could have eaten for dinner tonight. However, I am now back in Melbourne, having just finished my second day of university for 2015. Is it a bad sign that I am already feeling a little swamped? Don’t get me wrong, I am loving being back at college: catching up with people I haven’t seen for the past three months and getting my first car (!!) and the extra freedom that comes with it have been particular highlights. But my room is still a bit of a mess from my hasty unpack over the weekend after flying in late Saturday night, we had an 8 hour day of uni on Monday where we were inundated with a huge amount of respiratory anatomy and physiology, I have started an extra Diploma in International Studies (which although seriously interesting, does add to the workload), and am trying to fit in maintaining this blog, keeping fit, and being involved in college life (hello, late night Wednesday and Thursday!) – hopefully easier done than said. I am sure I will adjust pretty quickly to the hectic lifestyle here, but for tonight I will keep this short and leave you with this drool-worthy recipe, courtesy of my favourite Australian chef, Bill Granger.

I first ate these at one of Bill Granger’s Sydney cafes and immediately decided that I needed to track down the recipe for myself. This was on the Brick family menu frequently this summer – quick and easy, healthy, fresh, utilising seasonal ingredients and tasting amazing (it even received the seal of approval from my notoriously picky younger brothers) – it ticks all the boxes. Perfect for breakfast, lunch, brunch, or any meal in between. To keep them light, the corn fritters use just enough batter to hold them together, resulting in the hot juicy corn kernels, flavoured with fresh coriander and parsley, just popping open in your mouth, contrasting perfectly with the lime and chilli avocado salsa, crispy bacon and slow roasted cherry tomatoes. If there is one more meal you make before corn leaves our shelves for another year, this is it.

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Right now it is hot. Extremely hot. Like, sticky, sweaty, way-too-hot-to-turn-an-oven-on-just-need-water hot. Days like this have been frequent since Christmas – unusual for Auckland, where they ordinarily seem (to me, anyway) to occur only a few times a year. This summer has definitely outdone itself. However, I clearly have not been looking at the forecast and taking my own advice: bread dough was made last night, is currently rising in the fridge, and will be made this evening into pizzas. Though I am sure they will be delicious, all I can think about is that I will need to crank up the oven as hot as possible – SO not ideal. Days like today call for these instead – beautiful, cool, no-oven-required, corn, avocado and salmon tortillas.
I got my planning wrong and made these tacos two nights ago, on an evening with wind chill cold enough to force our outdoor dinner inside – perfect pizza weather, in other words. Anyway, you should try these tonight. Or tomorrow. Or any other day, to be perfectly honest. The perfect mix of rich and crispy blackened salmon, creamy avocado and juicy summer corn, all offset by a chilli lime tomato salsa on homemade barbecue tortillas – what is not to love?!
The tomato salsa can be made ahead, as can the corn salad. The tortillas are much easier than they look, and will thoroughly impress with how much better they are than any store bought tortilla ever was, while the salmon is coated with cajun spices and barbecued briefly to crisp the outside while remaining meltingly tender on the inside.
The recipe is inspired from various sources: the tomato salsa adapted from an Anyway, after all these photos and trying desperately to describe its deliciousness (which I think is impossible and I am starting to gush so will stop now), all I can say is MAKE THESE. You will not regret it.

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