Daylight saving starts this Sunday, but the weather has been a bit unpredictable and colder than a couple weeks before this amazing red dust storm hit Sydney.

When I woke up that morning and saw orange light coming through my bedroom windows, my instant thought was that a war had broken out like in the film, War of the Worlds, and the weird orange colour was lights reflected from tanks, fire engines and ambulances passing by to rescue people. Even when I was walking through the city in a red haze, I had no idea what was happening, until I arrived at work and someone told me it was a dust storm. There are amazing photos of Sydney covered in red dust on this website, so check them out if you are interested.

Since I had been away most of the winter here, I hadn’t had many chances to cook, especially, the nice winter comfort food such as risotto, stew and curry. Instead, I had the wonderful experience of being cooked for by my generous French CS hosts. Every single French guy I had come across during my trip was such a gourmet cook and passionate about food.

Delicious food cooked by lovable French men, which not only melted in my mouth but also melted my heart …

Everything was  seriously delicious and they seem to know how to put flavours together. I was especially impressed by their presentation skills and knowledge about pairing food and wine, too. Then I started to wonder where their passion for food comes from and whether there is a national system in France to teach males how to win a girl’s heart through gastronomic competence. The word, gastrosexual, is how I describe French men.

Baking at 2.30am – giving up sleep to make someone happy

It doesn’t matter what time it is. They will cook for a girl any time of the day or night with their charming accent. Cooking is a way of expressing your emotions and it is such a joy to cook for people who you care about and whatever you make for them taste better than when you cook for people who you don’t like.

Now that there is no need to cook for someone every day, which I miss so much since it used to be a great excuse to go shopping and buy lovely fresh produce at the markets, I don’t cook much at home any more, so my poor camera is sitting by my desk collecting dust.

So I decided to treat myself and made two shopping trips. I planned to make something with whitebait, something like a crispy whitebait cup made with the mixture of potato and pecorino cheese, like this…

but the whitebait they had was too big for my recipe. So I had to go for the conventional way of deep frying.

Deep fried Whitebait on the bed of fennel salad

It proved to be an excellent combination; peppery fish with a hint of hot paprika, refreshing fennel salad with fresh garlicky lemon aioli. I threw in some chicory left in the fridge and its bitter flavour happened to be quite a nice contrasting matching with everything else,  just hitting the right spot.

Try wrapping a couple of fish and some salad in radichino. It just tasted heavenly and I could hear my body saying ‘This is what I needed!, calcium!’ I felt my bones getting stronger and the pain in my knee disappearing as I was chewing the little bones and heads. It doesn’t sound very appetising, but whatever it takes to keep my bones healthy.

After the healthy lunch, I prepared for my dinner, which required a hour long simmering in red wine and herbs.

Lamb Stew de Provence with Balsamic&Dijon

I adapted a recipe from a cooking show on TV under the title of French girl’s night in and added balsamic vinegar to give a bit of sweet, tangy flavour. This dish is so aromatic infused with bay leaves, orange zest and rosemary that every one can tell that it is one of the best soul warming food to snuggle with on a cold, lonely night.

It is a very simple dish to make in the sense that you don’t need to keep an eye on the pot or keep stirring and adding things. Once you have sautéed some chopped celery, onion or shallot and garlic, and add any meat of your choice with generous amount of red wine, bay leaves, rosemary or thyme and orange zest, then as soon as it starts to boil, turn the heat to the lowest and go have a bath, watch a DVD or chat with your friends. It will just simmer away for an hour, turning all the ingredients nice and tender, and when you’ve done what you had to do, throw in some vegetables such as carrots, eggplants or potatoes (I didn’t put in potatoes since I have creamy potato mash on the side ) and cook for further 20 mins or so.

I did a bit of an experiment with making potato mash. I wanted something more interesting than just plain potato flavour. I thought about blending it with peas or carrots or pumpkin, then I went for pinto beans, which I always have in the freezer.

Creamy Potato&Bean Mash

I might have infuriated potato mash purists, but we need people like me who are willing to push the boundaries and expand culinary diversity. We never know what you would end up with as there were many iconic food items created by either mistakes or bold attempts such as chocolate, cheese, waffle cones, potato chips, etc.

As far as nutrition goes, my mash has more fibre and other vitamins and minerals than just potatoes on their own. To justify my mix-mash action, a scientific study suggests that eating food rich in fibre, in other words, resistant starch, such as lentils and beans helps to reduce the risk of bowl cancer by helping to grow beneficial bacteria in our gut.

It is more sensible to eat a bit of everything than to avoid things that are said to be bad for health, then let our body do the magic inside.

Home-made Marinated Goat Feta

My dish was missing one thing, which was green; I could have put in some peas if I had had some, then I saw a bunch of beetroot leaves sitting in the corner looking sad. So I figured that the quickest way to whip up the greens was to sauté them with olive oil from my home-made marinated goat feta since the oil already had all the flavours.  Nothing goes to waste in my kitchen. Voila!

Provençal Lamb Stew with Sautéed Beetroot leaves