Pork Belly and Mango Salad

The way I see it, if you have a piece of pork belly lying around, the only option you have is to cook it and to eat it. More often than not, the pork belly I cook is turned into some variation on the Sunday roast - hearty, filling and warming.

But there are people in the world who take this fatty, rich cut of meat and give it the summertime treatment, a la pork belly salad. I've seen it done with green papaya and green mango. This is my "you can't buy a green mango in the Southern Highlands" version using the last of the ripe summer fruit. Green herby leaves and a sweet, sour dressing make you feel virtuous and true. Crunchy crackling and sumptuous meat bring you right back down to earth, sighing smugly as you go.

You can find my full recipe here.

Maple Bacon Pumpkin Oh!

Can you call it a salad if it's got a great big slab of bacon in the middle? I say yes, especially as the weather cools and sliced cucumber just won't cut it anymore. I hear the maple syrup/bacon combo is big in North America. After putting this hearty little dish together, I can see why.

I used to make a yummy salad of diced pumpkin, spinach, red onion and pine nuts. This is like the no-nonsense version of that one. The pumpkin is roasted in wedges with the skin on. Onion is roasted too, all rustic-like with the nubby ends still attached. There's maple syrup in the dressing and on the grilled, glazed bacon. And crunchy pumpkin seeds finish it all off wonderfully.

The perfect autumn salad for the week after the clocks go back.

My recipe can be found here.

Brown Rice

I know, I know, the brown/wholemeal/unprocessed version of everything is infinitely better. I know. That doesn't always mean I like it better. My weakness for squishy soft white bread has been documented. And I've never been able to get into wholegrain pasta or wholemeal pancakes. But rice, well, brown rice I love. And I love it not as the healthy alternative to white rice but entirely in its own right. Nutty, chewy, delicious brown rice.

Once upon a time I enjoyed my brown rice plain with steamed broccoli and maybe some sauteed mushrooms - not every night, mind you, but when I was feeling virtuous or in need of something easy and fresh. This past summer I've been enjoying this brown rice salad at least once a week. Warm or at room temperature, it always hits the spot. The cooked rice is tossed in an easy dressing of yoghurt and olive oil, and then shredded baby spinach and mint leaves are stirred through with some finely sliced Spanish onion that's been calming down in a little vinegar. And while you could happily omit it (and I often do), it's delicious with some shredded cooked chicken. The whole thing is served with a big handful of chopped toasted almonds for extra crunch.

You can find the full recipe here.

You Say Pissaladiere...

Is it right to call something something even if it's not exactly the something, but takes that lovely something as its inspiration? This is definitely not a pizza. In fact, it's really just a tart. And a pissaladiere is also just a tart. A tart at heart. With no tomato sauce or cheese in sight, it's more tart than pizza. But they put tandoori chicken on pizzas these days, so...

A traditional Provencal pissaladiere is topped with caramelised onions and decoratively placed anchovies and olives. I used the onions, but added sauted mushrooms and goats cheese.

I've seen a lot of pissaladiere recipes that use puff pastry, but I think it's meant to be a bread or pizza dough. This is an olive oil shortcrust - the first time I've made one - and I was delighted with how beautifully it handled and tasted. I also liked how virtuous I felt to skip the butter.

I love caramelised onions. Making this recipe reinvigorated my love for them, slow-cooked in a little oil over the lowest temperature, helped along towards the end with a dash of balsamic and a sprinkling of brown sugar. I made them again a week later, adding some to a frittata and turning the rest into onion soup. 

French onion soup, perhaps? Perhaps no more French than this pissaladiere. But entirely delicious and entirely worth making for lunch this weekend.

You can find my recipe for this tart here.

Bits and Pieces

Weaving in and out of all of that kid crazy, a lot has been going on here. Perhaps that's part of the problem - trying to do too much with too little. I'm not a perfectionist. I don't strive to have everything just so and I've always been able to live with good enough. But the big thing hovering over all of my thinking and doing in the years since I had babies is the great ticking clock. I wish I'd known this, or felt this, back when I was single and fancy-free, with ludicrous amounts of spare hours on my hands. But only now, with time at such a premium, am I aware of how quickly it goes, how little there is left, how much there is to be done, and how foolish it would be to waste it.

So I've been pushing towards finding work doing what I love, rather than spending all of those precious hours earning money but feeling empty. And there's a lot of exciting stuff slowly coming into focus. My ever-so-softly announced Etsy shop selling handknits is getting closer. There are a few bits and pieces to sort out, and the plan is to launch it as soon as I return from our holiday in early November. Watch this space.

And on the food front, I recently contributed a handful of my recipes and photos to Kidspot Kitchen, with the happy result that I've been asked to do it on a regular basis. Great, huh?

To celebrate, here's one of them - a reworking of the cakes I baked during my Very Bloggy Morning Tea back in May. These little pear and raspberry cakes look and feel like spring, even though pears are decidedly an autumn fruit. The Kidspot recipe used tinned pears, but I like to poach mine, peeled, cored and quartered, in a light sugar syrup (4 cups water to 1 cup sugar) with some sliced lemons and a scraped vanilla bean. The vanilla flavour infuses the whole cake and it's so good. Of course, you could always substitute with tinned pears and a teaspoon of vanilla essence, and I reckon, with summer approaching, any type of berry or stone fruit would be lovely too.

Little Pear and Raspberry Cakes

160 g unsalted butter
1 cup natural yoghurt
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 cup poached pears, cut into small pieces
3/4 cup raspberries, frozen or fresh

Preheat oven to 190 degrees C. Line a 12-hole muffin pan with paper cases. 

Melt butter and allow to cool. Whisk in yoghurt and eggs. Place flour, baking powder and sugar in a large bowl and whisk to combine. Pour in the butter mixture and whisk until smooth. Stir through pears.  

Spoon mixture into lined muffin pan, and dot each one with a few raspberries, pushing them into the batter. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until lightly brown and cooked through.

If you've made it this far, be sure to check back tomorrow. I'm giving away a beautiful knitting book. And everyone needs knitting books.

Business, and the Taking Care of It

Today I've been taking care of some business. Mostly boring business that's been lurking on the backburner for too long. I've had a phone meeting with the boss, I've paid bills, sent invoices to people who owe me money, finished a little photo project (this one wasn't boring) and typed up official sounding letters to our tenants. That feels good.

So while I'm on a roll, I'll tie up a few loose ends here in blogland. Firstly, the vintage sheet swap. I signed up a little while ago, which gave me an excuse to seek out and purchase another dozen or so old sheets from the oppy. Oops. But there were some lovely finds in there. I reckon I've pulled together about 25 fat quarters to send off to Kellie, keeping back plenty of goodness for myself, of course.

I also thought I'd send big thanksies out to lovely Colette, who has passed on the Liebster Award to me. I'll be sure to send it on to some other nice folks when I get a chance in the next few days. And also thanks to Tahnee from Milk Please Mum for tagging me. I'll add this to my to-do list as well!

And lastly, today one of my little projects went up on the Kidspot site. You can check it out here. This sling bag was really fun to make. Come to think of it, I used a vintage sheet for the lining. Go have a look. That's my lovely friend Sophia modelling for me. 

Alright, that's business taken care of. How good is that lairy orange floral number there? It's my absolute favourite (my sister found it and gave it to me - thanks, Gig).

Now I might go and plan some sewing projects with the leftovers from all this old-fashioned floral loveliness.