Smoked Trout and Fennel salad with Wasabi Mayo dressing

I don't think that I need to convince anyone in Australia that salad or seafood is a good idea at Christmas. One Christmas Eve I attempted to buy fresh fish from the Pyrmont Fish Markets only to be greeted by a scene of utter chaos. Luckily, everyone was in a fairly jolly mood knowing that there was a lot of fish to be bought, although I sensed the mood could have turned ugly had they run out of seafood (Seinfeld Chocolate Babka episode flashback).



Considering our temperatures can reach 40c in December, a salad is always one of the more welcome items on the table. And this salad pairs a fish that you don't need to get from the Fish Markets, indeed it's one you could buy a few weeks ahead of time, with some fresh yet substantial ingredients. Sold? OK the final pitch is the taste: a smoked trout with a scattering of salad leaves, crispy fennel and waxy kipflers and a hint of zing (or a ferocious growl - your choice) with the creamy wasabi mayonnaise.



I found that using a Vslicer was something I was at first trepidatious about, hearing about lost finger tops and cuts. So much was my fear that I asked my husband to supervise me. We removed the VSlicer from the holder (held snugly with a safety catch). What I needed to do was slice the fennel thinly so I spread open the multilingual instructions and followed the directions on which attachment to use. I V-sliced the fennel in two thicknesses: the number 1 producing a gorgeously thin slice whereas number 2 gave it a sturdier slice for frying. Not so bad-although I admit that I am still scared of the julienning attachments which look a bit medieval.



If you've never removed the flesh from a whole Smoked trout, do not fear, it's easy. Using a sharp knife, cut deep all the way along the belly of the smoked trout (which should already have an incision) like you were slicing a burger bun in half to fill, and flip the fish open and remove the head, backbone and tail in one.



There may be smaller bones within the fish itself, look out for those, especially smaller ones like the ones along the top fin that people may not notice. The skin will also slide away easily from the meat.



I had shunned salad spinners for years. Not for lack of wanting one but from hearing from friends that the ones with cords wore out after a while. But the Kuhn Rikon one has a turning lever and a more sturdy construction so I came with an open mind. I also think that if you can’t buy organic all of the time, with the amount of chemicals used, it’s always good to wash salad leaves as much as possible. This one dries the salad beautifully and you should lose patience with watching it spinning (I didn't) you can always press the button down firmly and it will stop spinning. It’s surrprising how much water it does remove from the delicate leaves and you can see this collect at the bottom.



There's no fancy way to present a salad, on a plate is about it but to give it a special touch, the Laguiole Salad Spoons in a Christmassy red would do the trick. I'd first seen Laguiole cutlery when I dined at Gordon Ramsay's Royal Hospital Road Restaurant in London. My sister recognised the trademark Bee symbol on her steak knife and we set about looking for them in the stores in London. I hunted down a lovely set at Waitrose but missed my opportunity to buy them and have pined for them ever since.





Smoked Trout and Fennel salad with Wasabi Mayo dressing


• 3-4 Kipfler potatoes peeled

• 2 tablespoons of olive oil

• 2 fennel bulbs with fronds reserved

• 1.5 tablespoons of flour mixed seasoned with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper

• Grapeseed or olive oil for frying

• Baby Spinach leaves

• 1 avocado

• 1 whole smoked trout, deboned and skin removed

For first dressing

• 1/3 cup of Extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and 3 tablespoons of lemon juice for dressing.



For second dressing

• Wasabi

• 1/3 cup of whole egg mayonnaise (Hellmans, S&W or similar)






1. Boil potatoes for 15 minutes in salted water until done and then drain and slice each potato diagonally into 3-4 pieces. Add the 2 tablespoons of olive oil and some salt and pepper and set aside.




2. Cut off fronds from both the fennel and cut it in half. Using a VSlicer slice one fennel bulb using the number 2 thickness (3mm approximately if cutting by hand). Heat the frypan with some of the 1/2 cup of oil and dredge the fennel slices lightly in the seasoned flour and fry until golden and crispy. Drain on a paper towel.





3. Then slice the other fennel very thinly using the Vslicer on the Number 1 thickness.





4.Using the Kuhn Rikon Salad Spinner, take out the green sieve and wash the thinly sliced fennel, baby spinach leaves, and the fennel fronds (that resemble dill). Spin until dry and place in a large bowl along with the potatoes and half of the trout meat and pour over the first dressing.








5. Make second dressing by combining the two using the amount of wasabi that you prefer.



6. Place 1/2 of this salad mix onto a serving plate or bowl and using a Stockholm avocado slicer place 1/2 of the avocado on top of this layer. Then add the rest of the salad and the rest of the avocado and place remaining smoked trout and crispy fennel on top.





7.Drizzle over second wasabi mayonnaise dressing and season with salt and pepper.

Mango and Cranberry Fruitcake: an Australian Christmas cake

I know that fruit cakes divides people. There are some that find it possibly the vilest cake on earth and others that adore it, soaking their fruit for months and polishing off pennies to put in the cake. I always think of grandmothers as the keepers of the fruit cake. They're the ones I usually see making them although I can't say that either of my grandmothers ever did so, one notoriously preferring to socialise than cook.
So please do allow me to throw another variation into the mix. Something a little more Australian that your traditional English fruit cake. For our Christmases, we have a bounty of fresh fruit and one of the best fruits in season is the Mango. A tray of these juicy, sweet mangoes can be yours for $20 which is one of the best things about Christmas (my husband going so far as to request a tray of these last Christmas).






If I could urge any fruit cake lover to do anything, it's to make this cake. You will be duly rewarded in your endeavor with an incredibly moist, dark, rich cake that is unusually light too. The darkness comes courtesy of the muscovado sugar and the lightness comes from the method including the bicarb and the rest of it. My husband, a fruit cake enthusiast (read=maniac) claims this is the best fruit cake he has ever eaten.















Viola! All the meat removed from the pip and no stringy mango between your teeth
I used an Oxo Good Grips Mango peeler to help remove the pip from the meat and found that it worked a treat in removing almost every bit of the meat from the pip. Macadamias are also an Australian ingredient and whilst I know that cranberries aren't exactly Australian but they are certainly festive looking. I also found that the Analon Suregrip Square Springform Cake tin was a much easier way of easing out the cake. As it's somewhere in between a heavy fruit cake and a regular cake, I didn't want to risk it using a non springform cake tin.






This won't be one of those cakes that you sit in the living room until Christmas. Like most things around Christmas, making a fruitcake falls to the wayside while you are battling Christmas queues in a last dash attempt to avoid buying Christmas presents from a petrol station. You can make it a week or a few days ahead and it will be good as it's so moist, but you will need to keep it in an airtight container in the fridge.












Mango and cranberry fruitcake
• 500g mixed dried fruit (premium mix)
• 150g dried cranberries
• 100ml rum
• 1 large fresh mango (400-430g)
• 100g chopped macadamias
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 large eggs
• 150g muscovado sugar or dark brown sugar if not available (or 200g if you like your fruit cake quite sweet)
• 1 1/2 cups of self raising flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of bi carb of soda


1. Soak the dried fruit and cranberries with the rum overnight or for as long as you have patience for.
2. Prepare an Analon Suregrips Square Springform 22x22cms baking tin with greaseproof paper. Using a Mango peeler, remove all of the flesh from the mango and chop it up into smallish pieces.


3. Preheat oven to 160c. In a large saucepan, place dried fruit, cranberries, mango, rum liquid and water and bring to the boil and simmer on a low heat for 5 minutes. Cool.
4. Add sifted flour, bicarb and crumbled muscovado sugar.


5. Lightly beat 2 eggs and add them to the mix. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 50-60 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
6. I decorated these simply with blanched almonds although you could continue the theme with some bought honey roasted whole macadamias. To blanche almonds, pour boiling water over almonds and rest for 5 minutes. Then slip the skins off by rubbing them with your fingers. You can also bake them briefly in a low oven to dry them out.

Recipe Christmas Pork Roast Porchetta

A Traditional Christmas Roast-Porchetta

I often find myself torn at Christmas. Torn between wanting something traditional, much like everything that you see on television and at the movies of softly falling snow, bright glowing Christmas lights, huge trees and convivial family scenes indoors where tartan features regularly. And then I'm confronted with the reality. An Australian Christmas where the weather reaches up to 40 degrees and the idea of slaving over a hot oven for hours would make a party pooper and martyr out of the most well intentioned cook.

I usually choose a bit of both in order to satisfy the traditionalists and the modernists. This year what caught my eye was an Italian Roast Porkcalled Porchetta. I ate this once at a London restaurant Arbutus (a place with 1 Michelin star) and it was one of the most delicious entrees I've had, the pork fall apart soft and sliced paper thin.

Which brings me to another point. I hate overeating. I feel uncomfortable when I do it and afterwards all I want to do is curl up and sleep or hide so I don't do it often. Although I feel compelled to do it at Christmas where the spread is so bountiful and delicious. But this is where the Porchetta can actually help. By slicing it paper thin, you eat a much smaller amount of the meat. It's so richly gorgeous and fatty you don't really need to hoe into a thick slab anyway. Not unless your Christmas Wish was an angioplasty.

The advantage of cooking the meat on a low heat for such a long time is that the meat is meltingly tender and the fat melds into the meat perfectly. The lemon zest is the perfect antidote to the fatty meat giving is a zing where it is needed. I usually do like a Pork Roast with an Apple sauce but this one doesn’t need it, although you could certainly pair it with one if you’re missing it terribly.

And if I can offer any advice, save your sanity, don't make everything yourself and instead have everyone bring a plate. I tried making everything myself one Christmas and it was the most miserable Christmas ever for me. The year afterwards, everyone sensed my impending crisis and offered to bring a plate each. And it became a magnificent Christmas where I was only committed to making two dishes and everyone else brought something fantastic and home made which invited even more conversation. And conversation about food and passing on recipes during a family Christmas is much more pleasant than reliving Festivus and the "Airing of Grievances", in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. Trust me, we've done it.

Christmas Pork Roast Porchetta

• 1.8kg large square of pork belly. Ask the butcher to remove with the excess fat and bones but keep the bones to use as a trivet
• 1 tablespoon salt flakes or sea salt plus 2 teaspoons for seasoning after roasting
• 1/2 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 fat garlic cloves skinned and sliced into pieces
• zest of 1/2 a large lemon
• 2 tablespoons rosemary
• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
• 5 fresh sage leaves
• olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 220c or 200c fan forced. Using a large mortar and pestle, pound salt, pepper, garlic, lemon zest, rosemary, fennel seeds and sage leaves until it resembles a rough paste

2. Place bones on the bottom of the baking dish so that the roast can sit on it.

3. With an absolutely dry pork belly place it skin sin down and with your hands rub the herb paste into the pork and then roll meat up into a roll and secure with a few pieces of string (I used 5). Drizzle oil over the skin and sprinkle salt over the top.

4. Place on top of the bones and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 180c/160c fan forced and cook for a further 2hours and 15 minutes.

5. Baste every half an hour using a baster such as the Cuisipro Dual Baster.

6. Throw out bones (tempted as you may be to nibble on them, they will be like deep fried ribs). Rest for 15 minutes before carving thinly.