Sometimes you start writing a recipe and the title gets long. Very long. Because you see, in your writer’s mind, where this is heading. It’s Noodle Salad for godsake. We’ve got to make it interesting somehow!

Let’s first establish the ingredient list:

• Noodles (is this necessary to list in a “Noodle Salad” recipe?) (I prefer spirals because the oil and seasonings have a lot of surface area to cling to.)
• Olive Oil (Extra Virgin? Sure. Depends on your level of trust regarding where the olives have been.)
• Onions
• Peppers
• [insert other vegetables you like to eat and want to sear in a searingly hot cast iron skillet]
• Herbs, such as oregano and other “Italian-ey” leaves
• Salt, Pepper, Garlic (the big three!)
• White wine of some variety, preferably about to go off because you forgot a half bottle at the beach that time and had to circle back the next day and remarkably it was still there)

First step, in the spirit of Édouard de Pomian, set a pot of water to boil on the stove. (This reference is specially dedicated to the finest of friends who will know exactly who he is and will know it will have been churlish not to include this essential reference!) The water will, eventually, hold the noodles that you have chosen. So, choose your vessel wisely….

(How much do you salt the water? … Are you kidding me? At this stage in our relationship, you know you can do what you choose; I do what I choose; if you don’t like it, get another cook book (website)!)

Next, while the water boils, begin chopping. Vegetables. Chop the vegetables that is. No fingers. No suey. Just vegetables. Here’s what mine looked like:

You see those zucchini / courgettes in the background? Those came straight from Wombat’s Garden, and if you don’t know what that is, then you’re one of three people from outside the family who is reading this recipe. Keep those in mind as we proceed.

(You see that knife in the foreground? That’s handmade in New Zealand from a recycled band saw blade with a sustainably-sourced American ash handle. It’s carbon steel. It’s the most no-bullshit piece of kit you’ll ever find and the sharpest object I’ve ever held. You should have one. I have two — the santoku knife as well. Food tastes better when chopped with a handmade Nuz knife. (I just wrote that line, and yes, I’m available for hire as a marketing director, content writer, script supervisor, improv comedian, short-order cook, raconteur, party animal, etc….))

Back to the story: Because I’m basically allergic to everything when it’s raw, I sear the living shit out of everything — when it’s raw — until it isn’t raw anymore. Enter the cast iron skillet.

(I recently cleaned out the ol’ Lodge skillet. Heresy you say? Fine. I don’t care. Drop a comment at the bottom if you’re fussed. The problem was all the build-up from two decades of refusing to clean the pan. There was so much shit that there was no longer a smooth surface in the pan, which defeats part of the purpose of the cast iron; you want a smooth and really fucking hot surface to make contact with the food. Why smooth? Well, think about it. If it’s not smooth, the amount of material touching the food is less than it could be; the smoother the better. (As in all things?)

(Since you asked, I cleaned it with oven cleaner. Yes yes, I know there are a thousand ways to restore cast iron. This is what I chose in this instance, largely because it’s quick and easy (like me!) and I didn’t have the patience or space to push for anything more elaborate with two kids jostling about a 80 square metre flat flexing their perpetually poor attitudes toward one another, toward me, toward eggs, toward melted cheese, toward pissing directly in the toilet rather than on the toilet (which I just can’t get my head around), toward (gasp!) noodle salad…. It’s non-stop catastrophe around here folks!)

Anyway, I seared those round green slices of garden-fresh joy like this:

What the fuck else is in that pan???

Well let me tell you. These were leftover from the pizza we did yesterday. I saved them, plus a couple shreds of roasted green pepper. Want to see the pizza? Yeah cool. Me too (maybe someday I’ll do a recipe):

I did those separately because I wanted to ensure that there was sufficient flat cast iron surface to make contact with the faces of the vegetable. That makes them delicious-er. The rest of the vegetables went in after I removed those bits (stored safely in a warm porcelain bowl). The whole scene looked like this:

(It occurs to me in this moment: these are pretty pictures, but inessential to the technique involved in making noodle salad. To put a fine point on it: we’re searing vegetables that we’ll toss with noodles any minute now. Why all these pictures. Yes. I’m loathe to admit it. I’m a food pornographer. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to all the food I’ve exploited to create these recipes. I’m sorry for reaping all the glory and all the honours, when really we should be celebrating the …. Yeah fuck that. I like sexy food pictures. So do you. Let’s proceed…..)

When you’re happy with the state of the vegetables, add some noodles. Remember those? I reckon somewhere in the middle of all this your timer went off and you strained them and tossed them lightly in oil. Yes? You did? Oh thank goodness!

While you’re tossing, ensure that you add some wine. That old weird wine that you were unsure about. Add that. It’ll contribute that je ne sais quoi, or as the Sicilians say: “what the fuck is that extra taste after I swallow?” (I worked for a few years at a Sicilian delicatessen, and I have yet to recreate the magic they created so effortlessly, despite insisting on using the exact same pan they used for almost literally everything that ran through the place. Anyway….)

Here’s how mine looked:

You’ll observe, no doubt, that I’ve added some seasonings. And oil. And everything else I promised. Then I sort of toss-stirred it around. To be honest, then I scraped it into a bowl and toss-stirred more noodles that were left and combined them as well into the big bowl of noodle goodness. Here’s how it looked in the end:

Different lighting? I dunno. This is a mobile phone camera. Do I look like a professional food photographer to you? Do I look like I have a budget and a production team? I have nothing my friend. Nothing but a rather sizeable stock pot of freshly-tossed noodle salad, which I shall bring to some casual barbecue or another, never revealing the deep Sicilian secret to this recipe.

I can’t say.

Nope.

It’s secret.

…

(OK. The secret is to never overdo the oil. Better that it’s a bit dry than greasy. And, add some butter if you’re into the salty goodness of melted churned milk fat. Doesn’t that sound appealing!) ((When in doubt, more salt.)) (((Too much salt? A dash of lemon juice will cure it.)))

***

Did you enjoy this recipe? Great.

That is all. Our exchange is over.

You can’t leave comments.

I don’t even care if you read the other recipes. Does this look like the monetised site of an influencer? Nope. I don’t think Clarke himself even knows this homage to his existence exists.

Please just enjoy some noodle salad.

You’ve probably guessed that I don’t own a microwave. I have never, personally, owned a microwave, though I’ve lived among them. They are noisy, ineffective, and energy inefficient; they are, in short, the leaf blowers of kitchen appliances. They should all be thwacked relentlessly with rakes and brooms, which are precisely the correct tools to use for assembling leaves into a pile — not a fucking leaf blower. But I digress.

Now, let’s say you’re locked down in a small flat with two children during a pandemic. No reason in particular. Let’s just imagine such a scenario [twitches anxiously]. You need comfort food. And comfort bourbon. But let’s focus on the food in this post, shall we? Great.

First, collect some ingredients:

• Steal two eggs
• Milk
• Butter
• Bread
• Whatever toppings you like in or on your scrambled eggs; I chose salami and spinach because YUM!, and I’ll have no dissent on this point thank you very much

Your pile of ingredients should look something like this:

This is pretty simple (simple enough that I’m not even certain why anyone needs a recipe, given how much information the name of the dish conveys. Perhaps the only information needed is that one cooks the eggs in a pan before placing them over the toast. To be honest, I’m losing my faith in this recipe; let’s see how this progresses….)

First, butter the bread and toast it. In my case, I melted the butter in a hot cast iron skillet (of course), like this:

Because this technique never actually manages to make toast, I put the bread in the oven, partly because the oven is directly under the stove and I was already standing right there. Lazy bastard. (In case you’re wondering about my feelings toward another common kitchen appliance, namely the toaster, I’m comfortable with it. I have one. It’s a middle-range toaster, and surprisingly consistent in the results it pops out. But the toaster was waaaaaay over there at the time.)

(Aside: every time the toaster pops, Raymond, currently nearly four years old, cackles with delight and declares that the “funny totes” is ready. Isn’t that cute? (Don’t be fooled. He’s probably overturning a box of dirt on a carpet somewhere or dumping an expensive bottle of liquor down the toilet as we speak; so much for the comfort bourbon. This is roughly all he otherwise does; he’s a very tiny, very cute wrecking crew. Who won’t eat eggs.))

For fun, I took a picture of the lonely toast in the giant oven (well, it’s not quite toast yet; I believe in this picture it’s still just Modest Bread, which should be the name of a bread brand that isn’t particularly pompous, like Luxury Super-yacht Gluten Free Bread. Nor is it particularly shit, like Assistant Bank Manager Bread [shudder]. It’s just good old Modest Bread that you can count on):

(Holy mother of….! That oven is filthy. Better call a professional oven cleaner. (I just learned this past week that such a thing exists. On a popular social media platform, a member of a group of friendly and optimistic locals inquired for a reference to a reliable professional oven cleaner. A what? Yep. A THAT. That’s a thing. What kind of criminal record do you have to have to end up at THAT dead end? (Apologies to any upstanding professional oven cleaners out there. But how is this a thing?? Who would let a balding white dude with a paunch and a spray bottle of degreaser through their front door, let alone into the sanctity of their kitchen, even if the guy did profess to possess esoteric knowledge of how to release aerosolized oils from metal surfaces? Oh my god I just described myself. Whatever happens, I recommend against letting me clean your oven; I’ll probably disassemble it first and give up half way through. Typical me.)))

With that underway, it was time to SCRAMBLE the eggs. In my case, I used a fork. To achieve this: crack two eggs into a bowl and add a splurt of milk. How much is a splurt? This much:

Then stir vigorously with a fork. You’ll know you’re done when the eggs are all yellow. (Good luck getting that tune out of your head. Hah!)

Next, heat up that skillet and pour some butter in it (“In the name of love!” Sing it with me! “C’mon fire me up!”) (Look how quickly I was able to jettison that other crap song from your head. Yeah, I’m a professional writer. I’m hot. Sticky sweet.):

Pour in a parachute of scrambled egg:

Then whatever stuff you want in the eggs:

Now here’s the thing. As we said at the head: this ain’t no omelet. Or more precisely, this is an omelet for those of us who don’t give a shit. About what? We’re locked down in a pandemic my friends, with two children: we have no shits left to give, as the man says, or as the kids say when they crap on the floor next to the toilet. (This isn’t entirely true; they crap in the toilet fairly successfully. Peeing, however, is a different kettle of fish. They seem utterly unable to pee in the toilet, preferring, inexplicably, to pee on the toilet. The place stinks like a gas station bathroom full of incontinent squatters. Anyway:) Get in there with your spatula (or whatever you call your flipper) and fold or stir the mass of stuff around for roughly a half a minute until it looks like this:

Do you like salt and pepper? Great. Then shake your thang; do what you wanna do. Yep, add any flavour you want. Go ahead; you have my permission. It’s your lunch. Then put the toast on a plate and the eggs ON the toast (see how vivid the name of this dish really is) to make it look a little something like this:

And that’s it.

*

Seriously, that’s all there is. It’s over.

*

No more recipe here. Go on. Eat your eggs.

Percentage explained.

From these facts we learn that my chosen childhood soup diet was notably non-nutritious. Survival was never guaranteed; scurvy was likely. Furthermore, that I developed a shred of interest in vaguely healthy cooking — let alone savoury stuff worth cataloguing — is nothing short of a suspension of the laws of nature by the hand of God. Yes, a miracle.

Recently we learned that dried black beans retain better flavour when not soaked prior to simmering. So we did that yesterday, and what they say is true. I promised I’d make a vegetable stock and some soup, but typical me, I forgot to make stock until an hour before dinner time. Plus I forgot to even think about what else to put in the black bean soup. So the pressure was on.

Good news for you: we’ve developed a quick recipe, assuming your black beans are ready to go, as ours were. Here’s the ingredient list:

• Black beans
• Vegetable stock, which if you’re making your own consists of:
  • green wilted shit from your vegetable drawer
  • water
  • salt (I suggest <36% of the recommended daily allowance)
  • pepper
• Salsa, which, if you’re making your own, consists of:
  • tomato sauce
  • finely chopped onion
  • finely chopped peppers (capsicum), to taste
  • cumin
  • garlic
  • salt
  • pepper
• Bacon
• Roux (are you surprised?)
• (Campbell’s uses carrots too, but fuck carrots!)

If you’re making your own stock, then start clearing out the vegetable dregs — the hopelessly wilted and spurned whom you’ve not yet cast to the worm bin. Chop that stuff up a bit, put it in a pot of water, and boil it with salt and pepper. Put a lid on it to speed things up.

In my case, I found a leek that looked like it was about to faint, so I chopped it out of its misery. There was some vaguely useful cabbage in the crisper drawer, so I cut its heart out, dissected the heart carefully, and dumped it into the boiling pot. I assured myself that the remaining cabbage will turn up in something and returned it to safety. We’ll see.

While that was going, I pan fried some hoki for the kids. They’re not like me; they don’t eat bean with bacon soup. This, combined with their occasional willingness to eat fruits and vegetables, means their chance of developing scurvy is significantly lower than mine. Good for them, I say. And more bacon for me.

Tanya wanted fish too — by the way her chances of suffering an easily-avoided nutritional deficiency are also quite low, given that she’s who the kids take after — so I fried her a tarakihi fillet. By the time all that was dusted (with flour!) and done, the stock smelled a delight. Back to the soup.

We stood there looking at the pot of beans. I looked at Tanya. She looked at me. We blinked slowly.

I was reminded of the first time your baby shits and you look at each other utterly confounded. What is this mucky goo? Where to turn? What to do?

Look, it’s just soup. It won’t crop up Freudian discontent and need ages of therapy if you shout or cry over it. So holler and wail as the spirit moves you. Follow your instincts and know that she’ll be right.

“What else goes in black bean soup?”. We let the some random web site guide our instincts, and here’s what worked out:

• Strain the stock into the bean pot, and now it’s officially soup. Do as you please with the vegetable matter from the stock.
• Add some salsa.
• Whip up a roux in a cast iron skillet and add it to the soup. You don’t want to thicken it too terribly. Just take the watery edge off, and give it a buttery tinge.
• Add any other seasonings to taste.

I suggest pairing this with a glass of Wild Turkey.

To keep it vegetarian — note that contrary to all reasonable indications, Wild Turkey is in fact vegetarian — I didn’t add the bacon to the soup. (Fry up the bacon first, of course.) It’s fine to top off with the bacon, as in the featured image. Or to keep the vegetarians satisfied(-ish), try avocado. Like this:

Anyway, there’s the simple answer. To black bean soup, add salsa and bacon. But by all means, make it good bacon. Make it good salsa. And leave the goddamned useless carrots and sodium to Campbell’s.

I first learned about roux when I was working in the kitchen of a horribly pretentious golf course, run by horribly pretentious people, in particular the horribly pretentious chef, who wasn’t trained as a chef in any verifiable way. Consequently, he put on airs, presumably to puff up his otherwise-absent cheffiness. These airs instantly vaporised upon first taste of his ghastly and insipid dishes. (He and I did not get along. Shocking, I know.)

Aside: this golf course was host to a major PGA tour stop, and one year my assignment was to be the on-the-scene omelette cook on the breakfast buffet. One of the golfers — this was thirty years ago, so I can’t remember who, but he was a big name in the game — he had ordered his omelette and I made it and I was serving it when he stopped me and asked, regarding a clump of some other buffet fare: “What is this”? It was the chef’s special crab meat quiche, made with plastic-packaged, frozen crab meat — quite the opposite of pretension on that ingredient list I should say, pip pip.

I told the golfer, and he responded: “Mmm.” Oh, how surprising, I thought. Perhaps he’s savouring this lusciously-textured, freshly-defrosted food product. But then he continued, unfazed by my presence, precisely enunciating each adjective in this trenchant soliloquy:

“That is some nasty, foul-tasting shit.”

I recall bursting out laughing, serving the omelette, and enjoying a sense of vindication for several joyful hours. Come to think of it, I hold on to that vindication to this day. Maybe I’m a tad grudgie? So it goes.

To spin this positively, Mr Chef Guy introduced me to roux, and after I learned how pretentiously he had been fucking it up — he never waited long enough for peanut butter toastiness, for example, but we’ll get to that step in short order — I worked hard to develop my own technique.

Roux is simple. Ingredients are:

• Butter
• Flour
• (No hair)

First release all pretension, because all you truly need are patience and care.

Over medium heat, in a pan of some sort, melt the butter. Then, add as much flour. They say to use equal portions, by weight, of butter and flour. Actually, it doesn’t have to be butter; it can be any kind of fat or oil. And you don’t have to measure precisely — I never do, even when you’re meant to, which is among the primary reasons I’m not a chemist, a baker, or a crystal meth maker (isn’t that a nursery rhyme? Should be.)

Your task now is to keep the substance moving. I prefer to use a whisk. You can use a fork. Or whatever you like really (though I don’t recommend fingers). Just keep the stuff moving.

At first, it will be clumpy. After about ten minutes — yes, be patient — the mixture will really loosen up and turn liquid. At this point, watch closely for the colour to change. When it’s a pale-peanut-butter colour, it’s done.

What do you do with this substance, you ask? Good question. 1) Don’t eat it. 2) Use it to thicken things, especially soups, gravies, and cheese sauce. Generally, when you need something thickened, use roux. It’s smooth, toasty, and damned effective — three adjectives you’d love to see on any epitaph.

“Here lies Brian. He was smooth, toasty, and damned effective.”

Beautiful, isn’t it. See the roux. Live the roux. Unlock the good life.

Skip forward to New Zealand and I soon learned that there’s a different butcher book that uses different names from the North American book. Lucky us, the skirt is treated much the same in both books — though there are other cuts that will do the trick for this recipe, including rump and topside. Let the lowest cost guide you.

Let me emphasise, this is cheap stuff. And it’s cheap stuff largely because so remarkably few people use cast iron and sharp knives.

The secret to cheap steak is in the preparation, the searing, the resting, and some well-placed strokes of a blade at the end of it all.

First, get the steak. Got it? Great.

Now, violate all health and safety codes by leaving the steak out in the big scary world for a few hours. Here’s what I do (as derived from an excellent chapter on Meat in J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Food Lab): On a cooking sheet, sprinkle some salt — seasoned or whatever — and some pepper. Lay the cow slab on the sheet and rub it around a bit. Then, sprinkle further salty seasonings across the top. If it’s summer and you’re pestered by swarms of flies, a sheet of baking paper over the top keeps them out.

Here’s what happens as the meat sits:

• The salt draws out water.
• It warms and it reabsorbs the water more evenly.

Importantly, warm meat cooks more evenly, and it doesn’t severely affect the temperature of the pan when you put it in.

Let the steak go for three or four hours. If it’s down to room temperature, all the better. In the meantime, consider the appropriate beverage choice. (Recently I stumbled across Buffalo Trace bourbon, which I reckon enhances the taste of all food, along with the humour of all jokes, the adorableness of all puppies, and the general fecundity of all conversations. Highly recommended in this instance.)

Note: if you buy skirt steak at my local butcher (who wields knives with respectable still and gusto, I dare say), there will be a little sticker on it that says “slow cook”. That, my friend, is bullshit. Do not destroy the greatness of this beautifully cheap meat in a slow cooker; to do so will wreck the strong and gorgeous flavour of the meat.

Here’s the thing about cheap meat: it has flavour. Expensive stuff, like the eye fillet / filet mignon (depending on the butcher book you’re following), have very little taste. They’re tender no matter how stupidly you cut them at the end of it all, but they need help from a glace or sauce of some sort. (Expensive restaurants regularly push their expensive meats coupled with fancy cherry burgundy reductions or whatnot. This is the reason. Avoid this. Get a fucking rump steak, cut it right, and enjoy the taste of pure, unadulterated cow. Mmm(oo).)

Here’s the technique:

Heat up some butter in your cast iron skillet until it smokes.

Lay the warm, salted steak in the skillet.

When you see the meat changing colour along the sides, flip it. Now, here’s a contentious point: you can flip it as often as you like. Kenji Lopez-Alt did the research for us, and it turns out you lose nothing with extra flips. Leave single flip pedantry for wanking data haters and their eye fillet nonsense. It’s all balderdash, poppycock, and twaddle.

It will take practice with your setup to know when the meat is cooked to your preference. The featured picture here is after about five minutes of cooking — then another five to ten minutes of resting.

DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP. Let the steak rest. You can let it rest in the skillet, but be aware that it will continue to cook in there. (I’ve been having good luck with this technique lately by slightly under-cooking before shutting off the flame.) By letting the steak rest, the juices redistribute themselves evenly back into the steak. When you cut into it, then, it doesn’t leak out all the goodness. Aim for this.

Now, like wood, steak has grain. You want to cut the meat into strips ACROSS the grain. If you cut with the grain, it will end up stringy and inedible. If you cut perpendicular to the grain, it will literally fall apart in your mouth. Note also in the featured image how little juice has leaked out of the steak after I cut it, because: RESTING!

There you have it. Keep it cheap and get some rest. You’ve earned it.

Written in 1948, it’s full of words and drawings — not photographs — and so the writing is as vivid as it is stark, and what would you expect from post-war France? It’s also funny. This book is, essentially, an extremely compact and effective version of what I plan to write here — which is to say that you can probably stop reading my ramblings, pick up Pomiane’s book, and abandon the hopelessness of my B-list cooking techniques.

Choose your level of involvement. I won’t be offended.

…

… ah, you’re still here. Lovely.

Pomiane’s onion soup recipe caught my eye because I both have and like onions. He suggests serving a scoop over a slice of bread, and I happened to have an artisan loaf kicking around. Win win on the ingredient list.

You’ll see immediately why I like his recipes so much; what I write here will be a long paraphrase of his impeccably honed hundred word version.

First, heat up some butter in a skillet until it smokes. (Sound familiar?)

While it heats, chop an onion. For mine, I decided to dice an entire medium-sized onion. This seemed a bit much later, so next time I’ll try a half onion cut into strips.

When the butter smokes, add the onion. Let it brown for a few minutes.

Add a tablespoon of flour. (Roux anyone?)

Stir that around for a minute, then begin adding a bit less than a pint of water. Measure this based upon your experience with beer, obviously. Keep the mixture moving.

After you’ve added the beer water, transfer to a sauce pan and boil for a few minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve over bread.

That’s it. Done (though I bet a few strips of bacon wouldn’t ruin it!). I served it with a floured and pan fried tarakihi — otherwise known as the jackass morwong, I just learned — and they paired delightfully. (Why on Earth would anyone liken a fish to a jackass, which doesn’t. even. breathe. underwater. Ridiculous I say.)

Reluctantly, I’ll add the one picture I took of the boiling soup. It’s a horrible photo, to be honest; it does absolutely no justice to the flavour, texture, or simplicity of the dish. Are you ready for this dreadful photograph? Here, let’s get it over with:

Ugh. It’s awful isn’t it? In any case, this at least documents the fact that I do have cookery equipment other than cast iron skillets. Shocking as that might sound.

In hindsight, I should have taken a picture of the soup poured over the bread, because it looked precisely like an onion splat, which is precisely why we’ve decided to title this recipe as we did. And when I say “we”, I mean Tanya, who said why don’t you call this “onion splat”. That’s all she needed to say for me to grasp the importance and necessity of doing a quick write-up.

Why, you might be asking, continue calling this “onion splat” if you have no documented evidence of said splat? Well let’s remember that Pomiane has no pictures in his book — only drawings, so this is in keeping with the spirit of the original.

In the spirit of the internet, I shall leave you with an ASCII drawing of the final product. Let us call this the ASCII splat of onion splat soup on bread:

~
|=*=|

Fin.

Yes, for the uninitiated, halloumi is cheese. The intrepid among us will make their own halloumi, as it is entirely possible to whip up a batch in a couple of hours. I know this because Tanya took a cheese-making class where they made this stuff, and with some of the residue of the process, made ricotta. Even as a professional, full-time carnivore, I confess that I was positively dazzled by such dairy-centric wizardry.

Let’s dive straight into the ingredients, shall we:

• a block of halloumi (save trouble and just get some at the supermarket)
• a head of lettuce
• onion
• pepper (capsicum)
• broccoli

To point out the obvious: you don’t have to use exactly these vegetables. These are simply vegetables I’m willing to tolerate when I feel the need to impress vegetarians. (This is not particularly often, and I note that this recipe will absolutely NOT impress vegans — who are as close as you can get to un-impress-able, without actually being soulless holograms pretending to require nutrients for survival.)

((I’m fairly certain my vegan readership just plummeted to zero. Can you hear the rage-fuelled clicks of closing browser tabs? They must be fuelled by rage; they’re sure as hell not fuelled by cheeseburgers!))

Anyway, as often is the case around here, technique is key.

First, deal with the vegetables. Because I’m actually allergic to lots of raw foods, (seriously, I am — Pollen-Food Allergy, which is incredibly annoying), in my kitchen we tend to cook everything. Given the ingredients I’ve listed here, I prepare the broccoli as usual in a cast iron skillet. Then I lightly sauté the onion and pepper in — you guessed it — a cast iron skillet. (Ten points if you can guess what I’ll cook the halloumi in.)

Chop the lettuce into salad-sized bits, and by all means wash it. Wash it not only for the possibility of dirt, but for the sake of the slugs. Seriously. I found a slug in a salad (at least) once. The salad was, therefore, not vegan. And imagine the catastrophe of a salty dressing. Good heavens, please by all means wash the lettuce!

Halloumi is excellent pan fried. (What isn’t, except ice cream??) To accomplish this, lightly oil your cast iron skillet, and heat it until the pan smokes. Chuck the chunk of halloumi in and let one side crisp up, then flip it and let the other side crisp up. This is very quick, mind you. And to be honest, I don’t know why I do this first, prior to cutting the halloumi block into salad-sized morsels.

As far as size goes — and it doesn’t really matter in this case — I prefer rectangles about a centimetre deep. A block of halloumi is usually a couple centimetres thick, so I leave that dimension alone and hack a grid into it with an extremely sharp chef’s knife. This part just feels meaty, and it’s immensely satisfying.

Then, dump these pieces back into the skillet, which should be quite hot by now.

The trick is this: get the pan hot enough to sear the outside of the cheese without burning it. And, when you dump all the bits in, separate them immediately so that they don’t melt back together into a clump.

Give them half a minute or so, and flip them all. They’ll start to develop browned faces, but inevitably a few faces will never see the surface of the pan. Let it be. This is vegetarian; it doesn’t need to be perfect.

Once you’re satisfied with the look of the cheese, remove it from the skillet. If you leave it in the skillet, it will melt back together into a disgusting clump resembling a salted slug, and then even the vegetarians will turn their noses. Avoid this.

Fried halloumi is best served when hot, so don’t wait around. Peel your guests away from their chatter about organic pumpkin basil hummus and cow farts, and assemble the salads. I take it as obvious how to assemble the salad. Seriously, when you break it down, a salad is, as I said at the top and I still believe it, a bunch of shit piled on garden clippings. A handful of green stuff from the mower bag creates your base, then plop a few broccoli stalks here and there, sprinkle some onion and pepper across the surface, and top it off with that warm halloumi. Mmm.

Optionally, you can drizzle a favourite dressing. Balsamic Vinaigrette can be lovely.

OK, we’re done.

But I have to tell you: all of this reminds me of a time in California when some of the lettuce in Tanya’s vegetable garden went to seed. The seeds flew around the back yard (as Californians would call the back garden), and after I neglected my mowing duties for a couple weeks, we had what I can only describe as lettuce-lawn. When I finally did get around to mowing it, I essentially chopped the world’s largest salad. The scent that wafted through the air could have brought a smile to a vegan’s face….

Anyway. Enjoy this, a rare foray into the world of food that neither walks, swims, nor breaks wind.

More often than not, we have enough stuff in the house to make tacos of some sort. We’re never out of rice. I keep at least one can of refried black beans in stock at all times, in case of emergency. And Tanya’s got the ingredients for tortillas any time, anywhere.

Here’s the thing about refried beans: they’re deliciously amazingly delicious and amazing, but damned hard to make from scratch. To really go the distance, you’d need to soak beans overnight, boil them for several hours, fry them, mash them, refry them — all of which takes nearly as long as the first fifth of a cricket test, which is an insanely long time to invest in a spectator sport beans that you can easily obtain canned. (The idea of canned cricket makes me giggle. Imagine the directions on the side of the can: open tin, wait five days, heat over low to medium flame.)

Anyway, for tortillas, you need:

• flour
• salt
• water
• oil, or lard (but chances are you don’t have lard kicking around in the cupboard, though who knows in times like these)

I had to watch Tanya to get the gist of this, because I have never been able to make homemade tortillas. Now, even though making tortillas by hand is a long process (though nowhere near as long as making refried beans or slogging through a seemingly interminable cricket test), it’s worth it.

First, mix the flour salt and water in the right proportions. Tanya says it’s roughly three to one flour to water. Then knead it. This is tortilla dough. How simple is that? (How can I be so incompetent you ask? It’s a gift. Seriously, it’s astonishing some of the things I can’t do, such as skateboarding, small talk, and floating. Sink like a stone, I do.)

Next: Cut off a chunk. Roll it into a ball, then roll it out with a pin. Alternatively, you might have your very own tortilla press, which is an altogether worthwhile investment, not only for the superior tortillas you’ll make with it, but your own tortilla press scores you some major street cred. I guarantee your street-boasts will not go unnoticed!

How big is the chunk? Depends on how big you want your tortilla, or the size of your tortilla press, or the size of your skillet. So in the end, unsurprisingly and as in life, actual size matters more than desires and delusions.

Next: Heat up oil / lard / whatever in your cast iron skillet, and fry the rolled-out dough. These are tortillas.

You’ll also need some Toasted (Californian/Mexican) Rice. Best get that started. And heat up that can of refried beans while you’re at it. (Remove the beans from the can first; don’t literally heat the can.)

For this recipe, let’s do the traditional beef mince (ground beef for our American friends) filling. This resembles what you’d find at classic Mexican-American fast food taco joints such as [various corporate entities who would never sponsor me, therefore shall remain as nameless as their beef mince filling is tasteless. Oooh BURN!!]

(Alternatively, you could do a skirt steak or Julienne chicken breast or even (gasp!) fish.)

For the beef mince filling, you’ll need:

• beef mince
• onion
• seasonings
• (optional) taco sauce

As usual, a couple of simple techniques will set your taco filling off from all others.

First, heat up some butter or oil in your cast iron skillet until it smokes. Then, add the beef mince. It’ll sizzle and begin browning instantly. As it does so, start chopping it with the edge of your spatula (or turner or fish slice or whatever you call it). You want the pieces the size of peas or slightly smaller.

When the beef mince is nearly completely cooked, add diced onion. (Did I mention that you should dice the onion? Well, you should. I’m not really a planner-aheadder.)

Add seasonings. What seasonings? This matter is up for tremendous debate. You can simply use a packet of taco seasoning and be done with it. I do exactly this quite often because it’s incredibly easy — though I only ever use about half a packet, to be honest, so not exactly this. Exactly half this. Note: Avoid over-seasoning, in general; you want to taste actual meat.

If pre-mixed packets aren’t up your street, then cumin, chilli powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper will mostly do the job. You could chuck in some paprika if you like. Follow your nose. Trust your nose. Let your nose take you to wondrous places you’ve never imagined!

I find it nice to add a bit of thick fluid at this point (keep your mind out of the gutter!), just to get the stuff slightly goopy (*sigh*). If the meat’s too brittle, it falls out of the taco too easily. Though if it’s too watery, it drips out through your fingers, down your hand and arm and settles at your elbow, which makes a horribly embarrassing stain on your shirt. Avoid the worst of this by wearing black shirts.

What thick fluid should you use? Taco sauce! Or tip in part of a beer (drink the rest, obviously) plus a couple tablespoons of plain tomato sauce. Be inventive. Be bold. See the taco in your mind; be the taco in your world.

In addition to these components, I recommend:

• shredded lettuce (sliced thinly with a kitchen knife will do)
• grated cheese (whatever variety appeals to you)
• (optional) hard taco shells

I know I made a big deal about making your own tortillas here, because it’s a very cool thing to do, and way way way way better than store-bought hard shells. But look, kids love hard shells. I love hard shells. If a hard shell makes you feel like you’re treating yourself right, then by all means, use a hard shell! You deserve it. (The featured image here uses hard shells, because I’m a hypocrite. “Brian the hypocritical cook.” Has a nice ring to it.)

To assemble a taco, keep it simple. In the shell or tortilla, put a dab of the mince**, and cover it with lettuce and cheese. Too much mince makes it difficult to eat the taco, so I err on the side of too little. Plus, if there’s less than you expect, you’ll surely eat yet another taco. What could be better?

** Tanya adds: “You’ve got the assembly wrong! You need to lay down a smear of refried beans first to act as a glue for the other ingredients.” I don’t expect you, fair reader, to take sides in a marital / cooking dispute, but I think it’s obvious who’s on the right side of history here. Right?

At this point, you’re done!

Well, not entirely done, maybe. You may want a couple squirts of hot sauce, or possibly some salsa verde, or straight up taco sauce. Anything goes (within reason).

(What’s not within reason? Ketchup. Despite what my dear eight year old Charlie believes (incorrectly), ketchup DOES NOT GO ON EVERYTHING. This kid puts ketchup on mustard, he’s so crazy. Kill the ketchup my friends. Kill the bloody ketchup!)

I get it: Technically, to toast is to heat and brown by exposure to radiant heat (at least that’s what the all-wise internet says). Here we’re not going to use radiant heat, which suggests that this title is horribly misleading, but that’s not the worst of it. Wait until you see the ingredient list!

This rice goes well in tacos, in burritos, dished off to the side covered in cheese next to a splat of refried beans — if you’re preparing something even vaguely Mexican, it’ll do the job.

Note well: Mexican-style rice is utterly bereft of pretension, which is good news given my rather sloppy cooking methods. It also has the virtue of making the ingredient list quite a bit cheaper than other ingredient lists.

Gather the following:

• White rice (lately I use some kind of basmati that’s often on special, where “on special” is the key to finding the best rice available)
• A packet of taco seasoning
• A jar of salsa
• (Garlic)salt+pepper

If you’re looking for a highfalutin recipe, this ain’t it. This falutes pretty damned low, but honestly it’s pretty damned good, because, as is often the case around here, technique is everything.

If you’re allergic to buying packets of prepared taco seasoning, then gather together the following additional unnecessarily expensive ingredients: chilli powder, cumin, onion powder, garlic powder, salt — and do please continue wanking on about how you insist on the finest blah blah blah seasonings. Harrumph harrumph!

If you read the previous paragraph and still think you’re above buying a jar of salsa, then by all means dice your favourite home-grown organic spray free heirloom tomatoes, capsicums, and allium cepa in a delightfully fresh melange of — GACK! Save your sanity and shell out for a fucking jar.

Let’s be clear: regardless of how much effort you put into a succulent salsa of the finest herbs and légumes, it will be utterly annihilated in a pot of boiling rice water. Annihilated. Reduced to a quivering jelly of vaguely vegetable-ish matter. Go jarred. Just sayin’.

Now, in a stock pot over medium heat, drizzle a couple tablespoons of oil. Add a known quantity of uncooked rice. When I say a “known quantity” I mean it doesn’t matter how much, as long as you can replicate that amount times two, which is how much water you’ll need later. I typically measure out a small tin camp-coffee cup of rice because, for some reason I cannot articulate and surely wouldn’t try here, there’s always a small tin camp-coffee cup close at hand in my kitchen. At some point I probably I thought it was an extremely clever scheme to improve kitchen efficiency, but now it’s there. Always. Weirdly.

Anyway, move the rice around fairly continuously so that it doesn’t burn. Note (for the pedants among us), this process is not “toasting”, but it’s what I was thinking of when I typed the title of this recipe using the word “Toasted” first. Oil in a pan sounds a hell of a lot like frying to me, now that I think of it, so please do add a comment or two about my incorrect use of the word “toast”. Oh wait. I shut off the commenting system. So *something* will remain incorrect on the internet! (Shudder.) Such is life.

Soon, the rice will begin to look whiter and crispier. It might even turn a bit toasty brown — hah! There’s where I got the idea for “toasted”! Just don’t overdo this step.

When it looks sufficiently toasty, sprinkle in some seasonings. How much? Like I said: Some. Again, overdoing is bad. You don’t want the rice to overpower other flavours in whatever else you’re serving it with (what a horrible sentence this is).

Next, add some salsa. I typically chuck in about a third to half the stock standard jar that’s occasionally on special at the supermarket, which is, to be honest, the only reason I buy it; the individual ingredients are insanely expensive, especially in Winter, which is when I’m writing this. So. There.

Add water. Twice as much as the rice. That is, two tin camp-coffee cups of water, if you’re in my kitchen. (What the hell are you people doing in my kitchen??!!)

Cover.

Bring to a boil.

Transfer to low heat until the water has boiled off.

There isn’t much else to do but wait. Rather than fill the boiling time with more recipe-words, I’ll leave you in peace. After the water has boiled off, return here. To make it easier to find your place, I’ll add this splat:

*

Hi. Welcome back.

Now that the water has boiled off, turn off the heat — or remove the pan from the heat if you’re not (for some inexplicable reason) using gas. Wait five or so minutes.

**

Hi again. Welcome back.

Remove the lid. (Please tell me you hadn’t removed the lid already.) Fluff the rice with a fork.

“Fluff” sounded an odd action to me when I first read it in a recipe. Here’s roughly what it means: gently scrape the top layer of rice to expose a lower layer. There aren’t really layers, of course, but pretend. The idea is to give the rice time to dry off. Toasted (Californian/Mexican) Rice isn’t sticky. It’s fluffy.

Continue fluffing gently until all the rice is fluffy.

Fluffy.

Fluffy rice.

Now that I think of it, “Fluffy (Californian/Mexican) Rice” would be an excellent title. Damn.

Macaroni and cheese is one of those delightful dishes named after its main ingredients. But, don’t be fooled! You don’t need to use macaroni. And you might choose to jeuge up the fromage well beyond your stock standard processed American food clump.

First, when considering what kind of noodle to use, you can always simply go with what’s on hand. Or, if you have actually planned ahead (and by all means give yourself ten points if you have, and keep track of these points because in the end they matter!) then choose a noodle with a lot of surface area. The more surface area, the more cheese (substance) will attach to each bite. And the more cheese in each bite, the yummier — and the quicker the kids will fill up and you can get on with the joyous task of eating your own lonely bowl of cold mac and cheese amid a stack of crusty dishes. Welcome to parenting.

My noodle preference: those twisty twirly noodles whose name escapes me. You’ll know them when you see them.

And when considering cheese, you can go with a traditional colby or edam — or for our American readers, a block of plastic — but here we’ll be adding some secret ingredients that will set your classic noodle clump apart from all others.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Butter and flour (we’re making roux again!)
• Your preferred noodle
• Your preferred traditional cheese
• Milk
• Bourbon (or white wine if you’re not all that fond of the kids)
• Broccoli
• Spinach
• Bacon
• Salt+pepper+your preferred seasonings

I like to minimise the size of the dish pile, so I do things in the following order:

• Boil the noodles
• While boiling, sauté the broccoli and fry the bacon
• Whip up the cheese sauce
• Combine

In this order, you can use one stock pot for the noodle boil and the cheese sauce, and one skillet for the broccoli and bacon. One-less-pot to clean can make or break an evening; trust me on this.

So first, boil some water, then add the noodles. Most noodles take eight to ten minutes; check the specific instructions which may vary slightly.

Now, heat up your cast iron skillet and sauté the broccoli. The way you chop the broccoli matters. You don’t want trees: you want half trees with one flat side. That flat side will fry against the cast iron. Briefly (in case you haven’t studied the technique):

• Add a drop of oil to the cast iron and heat until it smokes.
• Add the broccoli and flip the pieces flat side down.
• Add your preferred seasonings. I favour a garlic salt, in particular a brand called Lawry’s, which I get from “The American Store”, which also sells nuclear weapons and questionable statesmanship.
• Add a shot of water, which will loosen up the seasonings and simultaneously steam the broccoli. It will turn bright green, and that’s it!

Don’t ever steam broccoli to a boiled-worm texture; if you (mistakenly) think you prefer broccoli prepared this way, you might as well cut costs and throw in a few slices of discarded garden hose instead. Mmm. Hose.

By this point, the noodles should be boiled. Drain them in a colander.

Next, fry the bacon in the cast iron skillet (after removing the broccoli, right?), and while you fry the bacon, make a roux in the stock pot you used for the noodles.

The thing is, whenever I make anything that is meant to be thick, I make a roux. The key is to keep the stuff moving, and in this case, the stuff is butter and flour. Now, there are about eleventy hundredish roux recipes out there, and to each his own. I’m not about to tell anyone what they ought prefer (even though I’m writing a cookbook?). After a while you develop your own style, and that’s perfectly fine. My style is butter and flour, and I don’t measure — though they say to use equal portions, by weight, of flour and whatever fat you choose. Whatever. Ignore instructions (and embrace irony).

Over low to medium heat, melt the butter (fat), then add the flour. Keep the substance moving (by whisking) so it doesn’t burn, and don’t worry if it looks a bit sticky at first. After ten minutes or so — yes, be patient — the stuff will really loosen up and begin to brown. You want it about the same colour as peanut butter, and it’ll smell toasty.

I should have mentioned that you need to grate the cheese. If you’re following along without having read this whole narrative first, then now is the time to panic and scramble around to shred your carefully considered fromage while keeping the roux from burning to death. Sorry about that.

(I’ll see if I can get the editor to add a paragraph about the need to shred the cheese earlier in this piece, but to be honest, I don’t foresee it. I’m the editor and I don’t pay myself well enough to ghost-write for myself — plus ghost-writing is far outside my editorial scope. I might have to put out a request for proposal for an editor willing to contribute minor additions as necessa——)

With your roux all nice and peanut butter toasty, add your shredded cheese and some milk to keep the cheese from sticking to the pan. Whisk. Everything will start to melt together and start to look like a sauce. Yay! Cheese sauce!

If the sauce is a bit thick, add some milk. Keep doing this until it’s a consistency that looks right. You’ll know. If it gets too watery, you’re doomed and will have to start over, which would be tragic (O, the tragedy of the cheese that runneth!) given all the effort you’ve already expent. (“Expent” is a word. I’m sure of it.) Avoid this.

Add seasonings to taste, and, here’s the big thing that sets your cheese sauce apart from all others: a shot of bourbon.

Stir it all together, verify the consistency, and remove from the heat.

If your noodles have stuck to each other a bit, then loosen them up with hot water. Some claim that oil in the boil-water prevents this, but to be honest, I’ve never had luck with this technique. More importantly, only a self-righteous prat would ever complain about the consistency of cheese-covered noodles. They’re covered in cheese for chrissake! Enjoy them!

To finish it off, add the broccoli, some chopped spinach, and some chopped bacon. Stir it all around, gather the children, pour a personal bourbon, and enjoy a healthy helping of Kids Love Macaroni and Cheese.

(Note, the feature picture is from the last time I made M&C, and I used noodles that were on hand (for which I did not receive ten points). They were delightful. And I hadn’t added the bacon into the mix so to keep it vegetarian. Don’t ask.)