As we approach the day of sickening oversentimentality love, it seems fitting to devote a post to the love apple aka the tomato. And just to further add to my bah humbug disdain of the day, I thought I would share another one of my dating disasters from the good old days when I was single (and dinosaurs ruled the Earth). The first which I posted last Valentine’s day can be found here.
But first, tomatoes…..have to be one of my favorite foods. And as much as I love the fancy stuff – if you give me two slices of white bread, spread liberally with butter, some slices of tomato, preferably fresh from the garden some salt and pepper….right there you have a little bit of my idea of heaven.
And speaking of tomato heaven, this salad is one of the best things I have ever eaten. And it’s not just my favourite tomato salad, it is also a mash up of Rosemary Mayne Wilson’s Favourite Tomato Salad and her Superb Blue Cheese Dressing.
Just look at this and tell me it’s not one of the prettiest things you have ever seen? And just to gild that lily? The dressing contains a hefty dose of blue cheese. And a liberal splash of sherry for those of you who, much like myself, like to have a little bit o’ booze with….well pretty much anything.
Best Tomato Salad
So tasty and full of yummy deliciousness. But as we celebrate the love apple, let’s also take a step back into my dark, deep dating history for another disaster story.
So, a few years ago, I was dating a someone who…seemed pretty normal. Until.
STRIKE ONE
Favourite Tomato Salad2
We were due to meet my mum and her partner for dinner one night. And we had to park a little bit away from the restaurant. As we started walking through the car park, he went to spit on the ground.
Favourite Tomato Salad
Which, is pretty disgusting in, and of, itself. But then came
STRIKE TWO.
Best Tomato Salad3
So. He goes to spit on the ground.
Only thing is…he misses.
Misses the ground that is How you ask? How can he miss the ground? Do you live in a land of anti-gravity?
No, He missed the ground because he spat all over his own shoe.
Feel free to insert massive eyeroll at will.
Bad enough, you’re going to spit on the ground. That’s uncouth. Do you need to add uncoordinated onto that as well?
So now we’re half way across the car park. He has a big gob of spit on his right shoe. Which needs to be gotten rid of pronto because we’re about to meet my parents.
And here comes
STRIKE THREE
He chose to get rid of that big gob of spit by lifting up his right leg and wiping it on the back of his jeans on his left leg.
Appalling, I know. But you haven’t even heard the worst.
Because even though I know that technically there’s no such thing as a
STRIKE FOUR
The worst thing?
Let’s just suppose I had accidentally spat on my own foot…it would never happen but you know…in the realms of absolute fantasy….
I would have hopped about shrieking like a banshee for….I don’t know, at least a good ten minutes…
“OMG, I’ve spat on my own shoe…what am I going to do? I need to get it off, how am I going to get it off…where’s the nearest shoe shop? I need to buy new shoes…” etc.
HE did not even break stride. It was like spit, shoe, wipe…all in one fluid motion. Which only meant one thing….
It wasn’t the first time he had done it.
He was a serial spitter and misser.
That relationship didn’t last the carpark….
This tomato salad should become an immediate part of your summer repertoire. It’s so damn good!!!
Favorite Tomato Salad 8
Happy Valentine’s Day!!!! Hope it’s fabulous whatever you do!
OMG. I was downloading some photos from my camera of the Ice Iced Vovo when I found all the photos I had taken of the Orange and Chicken Surprise Salad. I had totally forgotten about it. How, I do not know. I’m sure I didn’t drink THAT much over the holiday period. I’m equally sure you will agree that the Orange Chicken Surprise Salad should be unforgettable (in every way).
Given that I have named January the month of crazy, it seemed fitting to post it here. I totally had something else in mind to close out the month and we may yet get there. But this had to get a mention.
It looks quite pretty. Like a lovely orange jello dessert. But wait! A surprise lurks within.
Surprise Orange and Chicken Salad
Not much of a surprise as the name pretty much gives it away….(There must be some sort of term for that….is it a paradox? A tautology? Someone smarter than me please tell me….) But hiding under that innocent orange jello exterior is a chicken salad. A rather tasty chicken salad to boot.
Surprise Orange and Chicken Salad2
The idea of mixing sweet jello and savoury items kind of freaks me out. It should not work. It freaks me out even more when, like this, the result is actually pretty tasty. Mind you, I loaded the jello with lemon juice so it was not as sweet as the original recipe dictated which may have helped make it a bit more palateable to my taste. The original recipe is below:
The hardest thing about this recipe is getting the layer of jelly on the top the right thickness. My cup sank way too deep the first few times, requiring some melting and resetting of the jelly. It was still a little bit thin in this version and it kind of fell into a heap when I cut into it.
Orange and Chicken Surprise Salad
But all up, this was a success. The jelly actually added a light tangy touch to the salad which was refreshing both on a hot day and after the heavy meals of Christmas.
My version, which includes cranberries and tarragon is below.
I’ll be spending this week working on my post to celebrate Australia Day….I’m venturing into the best left alone arena of “things people eat when drunk” and, believe me, whether I love it or hate it, it’s going to be a doozy!!!
Combine the jello, fruit juices and boiling water, stirring until the jello melts. Place in fridge to set.
When about half set place a small bowl into the jello and weigh it down (baking beans are ideal if you have them, otherwise use rice or beans or anything else you have to hand).
Chill for several hours until very firm.
Meanwhile combine all the salad ingredients and season to taste.
When the jelly is set, take a sharp knife and dip it in hot water. Dry the knife then ease all around the small bowl. You may need to dip it in the water a couple of times.
Once the bowl is removed pack the chicken salad into the cavity. Put foil or a plate over it and chill until firm.
When ready to serve, place the mould in hot water to loosen the jelly, it only needs to be in there a short time. Then turn it out and garnish with the orange segments, cranberries and mint leaves.
Notes
If your cup sinks too low in your jelly mould like mine did, place the bottom of the mould in hot water. The jelly will melt. Keep the mould in the water until you get the level of jelly you desire then place back in the fridge to reset.
They say the devil will find work for idle hands to do.
And when I say they, I mean Messrs Morrissey, Marr…and….ermmmm…. the other two. AKA The Smiths. I’m not sure where the original quote for that comes from. Shakespeare? The Bible?
Wouldn’t it be fabulous if I had a little box and I could type questions into it and get almost instantaneous answers to questions like who were the other two and where did that quote come from?
But, no time for that sort of sorcery right now….these idle hands built a boat!!!
Not a real boat, I haven’t spent my holidays tinkering around the backyard with a hammer and some hickory barky bark, but a boat nonetheless. A catamaran to be exact!
Remember when I made the Hayman Island Chicken Salad? That post contains this photo amazing photo of a catamaran table.
And now, in the spirit of a Russian Doll, imagine a smaller catamaran. Maybe one that could be placed on the catamaran table, filled with some cheesy balls o’ goodness.
Et voila…
The cucumber catamaran.
Now, I”m not saying she’s the best looking boat in the world. She’s a bit wonky. But she is quite obviously a boat.
In case you need some work for your idle hands, here’s how to make your own:
The paprika carrot balls weren’t bad either…recipe below…
The Smiths are one of my favorite bands ever. I spent countless hours of angsty teenage emotional turmoil locked in my bedroom listening to “How Soon Is Now” and “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”, countered only by and the sheer manic malicious exuberance of “Panic”.
So here’s a little treat for me you!
This week, I’ll be “spending my warm summer days indoors, writing frightening verse to a buck tooth girl in Luxembourg”…
Otherwise known as doing this. Which I guess makes you my bucktooth girl.
But I have a dream. And that dream is to bring the potato salad roll to the world.
Hmm,so I guess I can cross that one off the list and bask in the smugness of a goal for 2015 achieved. And it’s only January 2nd!!!!
But before we get to the Potato Salad Roll…
I’m sure better bloggers than me really think about the messages they want to send when they post their first post of the year…you know, those super organised people who have a theme and a word for the year? And the first post reflects that dream and vision?
I wish I was one of those people. I really do. Because I pretty much know everything I’m going to write about this month and believe me…if we were going to run a theme around January, it would have to be supercalifragilisticexpialidociouslly insane.
Although…maybe getting the crazy out at the start of the year is a good thing. Maybe by the end of the year I’ll be ever so high-brow and Julie and Julia-ing the Larousse Gastronomique…
Yeah, I doubt that too. But you never know…I do own a copy….
And the highly observant of you will notice that it is also still in it’s plastic wrap….
So…the potato salad roll. Hands up how many of you thought this would be potato salad in a bread roll?
Yep, that would be about all of you. Because that would make sense. But remember when I said this month was going to be all about the crazy stupid? I don’t even know where to start with this but they say a picture paints a thousand words so, world, here is the potato salad roll…
Potato Salad Roll
Yeh, it’s kind of a Swiss Roll of Potato Salad. Except without the jam. Not even I’m that weird.
Potato Salad Roll
Basically, it just a potato salad rolled into a log with the dressing on the outside.
Which in no way explains the absolute spontaneous hatred my family felt for it when I brought it for Christmas. The comments ranged from “What the fuck is that? ” to “Who laid the big white poo in the middle of the table?”
I tried to explain that it was potato salad. Comments ranged from
“Not in my world”
To:
“No. It’s not. Potato salad looks and is, delicious. That looks like a big white poo”.
And then there was:
“Why can’t you make normal potato salad? Are you on drugs? I saw a documentary on people taking ice…do you have a problem with methamphetamines?”
I saw the exact same documentary.
There was a man injecting himself in his penis because “it was the only good vein he had left”. ‘
I made a slightly off beat potato salad.
I’m struggling to find the connection.
I was the only person who ate the potato salad roll on Christmas day which was a real shame because despite it’s rather unconventional appearance it was a damn good and tasty potato salad.
Potato Salad Roll 3
On Boxing Day, I made a roll within a roll by wrapping part of the original roll in prosciutto and the same people who has scoffed at the original roll could not wolf it down fast enough.
Go figure….
Potato Salad Prosciutto Rolls
It was kind of nice to end the year with a badly written retro recipe. It’s been a long time between drinks for one of them.
Potato Salad Roll Recipe
First line. Prepare the gherkins, parsley, pimento, eggs and onion…
Onion? What onion? Would that be one of those special invisible onions that don’t appear in the ingredient list? And what I am I supposed to do with my half a cup of diced celery? Use it to pelt my ungrateful family to death?
Despite the shortcomings of the recipe, I am utterly obsessed with the idea of the potato salad roll. I already have two more versions in my head which I will make and post some time in the future. Maybe I will make 2015 the year of the Potato Salad Roll….huh…maybe I am, albeit unwittingly, one of those people who have a theme. And a vision.
I mean, yeah, I totally am. This was all planned. Months in advance….
I will be spending my week preparing my potato salad roll vision board.
A few of the recipes in Salads For All Seasons have odd names that have little bearing on the contents. Take the Sportsman’s Saturday Salad I made a few weeks ago. This one however is exactly what it says on the box. With it’s gorgeous shades of green and red, it’s very festive. It’s duck. And it’s salad.
And it’s deeeelicious!!!
Festive Duck Salad2
I have a weird issue with duck. I love to eat it. Really love to eat it. But I find it very hard to cook correctly. I also have an issue in that we live very close to a lake. The ducks there are so tame; when they see you coming they come racing all the way across the lake because you might have food for them. Which we never do. Because we already have two walking, barking dustbins that are more than ready to consume any scraps. But seeing them and particularly the ever so cute ducklings in Spring does make me feel a bit guilty about eating them. Also I’m sure I heard somewhere that ducks mate for life and it always makes me sad that somewhere out there is a lonely duck who has lost the love of it’s life and will spend the rest of his or her life alone.
Ok, so now that I’ve put you off eating my yummy salad, let’s talk about something else for a while so we forget the lonely ducks.
Oscar also has a complicated relationship with the birds on the lake. The swans more than the ducks though. A swan at Williamstown beach had a go at Lulu when she was younger. She keeps her distance. He is just fascinated…. And now feels like a good time to tell you the Oscar story because it is our personal Christmas miracle.
December 2012, I was working at a place that I hated and was day by day destroying my will to live. Seriously. One of the few days of joy in those last 6 months was that, as a team, we worked with the RSPCA on Santa Paws. Santa Paws is a fabulous initiative where people bring in their pets for a photo with Santa that then gets printed onto Christmas cards, keyrings etc. It’s pretty cool. And not just dogs, people were bringing in goats and kittens and goldfish. It was awesome.
After our shift finished I asked if I could go have a look in the kennels. There was a very cute beagle but it was going to Beagle rescue the next day. In the next cage was a big lolloping gangly boy who came running over and as soon as I patted him fell over for a belly rub. And he was lovely and an incredibly weird combination of a Greyhound and a Staffordshire Bull Terrier.
Which seems like a combination that doesn’t work however you play it.
But there he was.
Oscar Sleeping
And then I read the sign on his cage. It said something like “I have been here for nearly 100 days and lots of people have looked at me; then they leave with their new puppy. I just want a home with a family who loves me as much as I will love them.”
OMG, it makes me cry even now.
The poor little fucker was two years old and it was his third time at the RSPCA. He had been born there; the last owners had brought him back because they could no longer afford to feed him. We also strongly suspect he has been massively ill-treated because even now, he will cringe at any loud noise, like a door slamming for the wind, he is pretty much scared of his own shadow.
So I went home and Mark was “So how was it, did you have a great time?”
And I started to tell him. And I got as far as “There was a dog and he had a sign…” and then I cried. For hours. And when he could finally get the story out of me, he cried. And then he sighed and said “So, when do we go get him?” Bear in mind at this time, we were living in a one bedroom apartment, and we already had one dog. A second dog was also going to be a stretch and a real life changer, and not in a good way, for us. But we reasoned, it would only be a couple of months until we moved into the house we were building so we all had a bit more room to breathe. That couple of months turned out to be nearly a year….
But who could resist that face?
The next morning we took Lulu and we went to get him. Our get-out card was that if Lulu hated him he couldn’t come. She is so bossy that we couldn’t have another dog that challenged her authority and fought with her all the time.
So we drove for an hour in a huge rainstorm where you couldn’t even see ten metres in front of the car and I was really scared driving in such bad weather but I did it because I was so happy that we could take him home. When we got there he came running up but then he turned away. He was really disinterested in us – as if he was sick of investing in people who weren’t going to take him.
Mark liked him and Lulu didn’t kill him. So it was pretty much a done deal that we were taking him.
Until they told us that we couldn’t.
Lulu and Oscar Front Door
Their dog psychologist had deemed he was food possessive and could not be in a house with another dog.
We argued and argued the point. We said Lulu is such a dominant dog she would NEVER let anyone come between her and her food but they stood firm. We could not take him.
I cried all the way home.
Oscar Lulu 2
About four days later, I got a call from the RSPCA. “Are you the girl who wanted to buy Thor?” Oh, yeh, his former name was Thor….we didn’t want a dog called Thor so we renamed him. Anyway, yes that was me. “Well the psychologist has reevaluated him. He’s all yours.”
Two years on, I can’t imagine life without him. He is the sweetest, most gentle, most affectionate boy in the world. With an increasing cheekiness as his confidence grows. He knows this is his home and I hope he knows we will never abandon him. I am confident we have given him the best life he has ever had. We love him to death and, yes, the sign was true, he absolutely loves us in return.
If you’re wondering why so many of the photos show Osky sleeping or in some type of bed, it’s because greyhounds are surprisingly, incredibly lazy. He and Lulu get walked for about an hour every day and we are lucky enough to have an off leash park close by where, ideally, he can run with another dog. Ten minutes of flat out running during the walk and that’s him done for the day. He’ll snooze for most of the rest of the day, waking up only to eat. And there’s always time for a cuddle…
And then, it’s time for a bit more snoozing….
Oscar in his PJ’s
We might be good to get back to the salad now. The original recipe is here if you want it. I wasn’t taken by the idea of orange and egg so I omitted the egg and added some cranberries to my version. Also, I used homemade mayo, also from Salads from All Seasons but you can use store bought if you wish. Having said that, this one is super easy and tasty!
I cooked my duck according to the Gordon Ramsay recipe here and it worked pretty well. It was certainly the most successful I have been with duck.
Festive Duck Salad
You could also make this with some leftover turkey post-Christmas. It will lack some of the richness of the duck but will still be pretty good!
I”m going to try to get one more post in before the big day but just in case life gets in the way, Merry Christmas to you all from me and a special Christmas Angel.
