A fast, healthy weeknight pasta tossed with fresh smashed pea, mint and basil pesto and tender poached salmon.  Jump to Recipe 

I’m not sure yet how I feel about my paediatric rotation coming to a close. We have an eight week block as part of our fourth year of medical school, with a range from high acuity wards and emergency department shifts to six week baby check-ups and continence clinics. Though the majority of kids are easy-going and happy to talk about their favourite teacher or best friends, it seems that most of the art is in being able to communicate just as well with worried parents. Paediatricians are pros at explanations and reassurance, even in the most frustrating situations. It’s challenging to figure out what’s wrong with a child who can’t talk yet or says yes to all questions, but rewarding when you’re met with smiles and gurgles. Very unwell children can be incredibly sad and scary, probably more so than adults, but most of the time it’s positive with good outcomes.  It doesn’t hurt that in my experience the paediatric teams have been the friendliest in the hospital – I guess you have to be to work with kids, and feeling included as part of a team does make being a student significantly more enjoyable.

Finishing this rotation also signals another step closer to those looming exams. Life has become a routine of study, sleep, running and eating – it’s a productive one, and necessary, but the eating has to be GOOD to keep me motivated. Something to look forward to in amongst a weekend at my desk. Last weekend was our university ball, which I took as an excuse to practice my Paris picnics with a pre-drinks spread of silky smooth hummus, goats cheese, chorizo and strawberries; there was that batch of Thalia’s chewy, buttery spelt cookies, oozing with pockets of dark chocolate; a quick walk around the botanical gardens and brunch with friends.

There were smaller things too, like our house Game of Thrones rituals on Monday evenings, always accompanied by crumble (we’ve gone through pear-chocolate-walnut, strawberry-rhubarb, and peach-blueberry so far – any more good ideas??). My daily cafe flat white in the sun between clinics. Getting the chance to walk to and from the hospital for once (usually I’m placed a half an hour drive away, so it’s a luxury!). Taking the odd book out from the library for an evening away from my computer. I find noticing and appreciating those moments is so vital for me at times like this – I need things to hold on to and look forward to during those hours spent scrawling flashcards and typing up assignments. What gets you through pressured times in work and study?

With this escalation in study, meals have certainly become less elaborate and more time efficient. I’ve been obsessed with smashed peas lately, as you may have noticed on my instagram story – it is such a cheap and healthy way to bulk up a pesto or avocado smash when bulk herbs and avocado can get pricy. Here I have used them in a pea, mint and poached salmon pasta: a brief blitz of peas with mixed mint and basil, almonds, parmesan and lemon, loosened with fruity olive oil and a splash of pasta water. It’s paired with flaked poached salmon, an easy, mess-free method of cook oily fish that works every time. Enjoy!

The post Pea, Mint and Poached Salmon Pesto Pasta appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.

Homemade pappardelle with pesto, zucchini & goats cheese – fresh, easy pappardelle with a basil-parsley herb oil & blistered cherry tomatoes.  Jump to Recipe 

Pasta is one of my great, giant food loves. I can’t even put a finger on why.  Maybe it’s the way it can hold and showcase any number of flavours and produce – from gently roasted autumnal tomatoes to rich, tender winter ragu or light spring herbs and greens.  Maybe it’s the comfort factor – something about a warm, steaming bowl of pasta screams home. A reminder of family weekend dinners and Mum’s classic ‘roast chicken & vegetable pasta’ – a heaving pot of fresh tortellini, oven roasted vegetables and barbecued chicken thighs, drenched with her go-to tomato sauce of slowly sweated onions and garlic. Maybe it’s the convenience, of coming home tired and throwing together a box of dried pasta with whatever ingredients are on hand and always ending up with a satisfying meal.

Despite all this, I’ve barely entered the realm of homemade pasta. We do have a pasta machine, courtesy of my youngest brother’s kindergarten pasta making day. It left him with the sort of obsession only four year olds have – fleeting but intense – and resulted in a pasta machine birthday present. It was used once, an attempt that left a flour coated kitchen and whole afternoon effort from Mum while he got distracted part way through. Let’s just say it was subsequently relegated to the top shelf of the cupboard with other obsolete appliances. A few years later, the same cycle happened with an ice cream churner, culminating in a couple of batches of mint-choc chip (their favourite flavour, for reasons I still do not understand) and even less cupboard space. Fast forward ten years, and I’m now the main user of both machines – I call that a win, thanks brothers!

Thanks to Erin’s quick and mess-free food processor pasta dough recipe, I’m now a pasta making convert. This excludes week nights when the point of making pasta is an extra quick meal, or when I’m feeding my three brothers and don’t want to spend years rolling pasta sheets – simply because they eat a stupid amount of food, and then ask for seconds. Last time I tried it I needed 10 eggs worth of dough to serve us all! The rest of the time, it’s strangely meditative – the process of rolling and folding, rolling and folding, rolling progressively thinner widths and finally cutting noodles to dry. I personally favour thick widths of parpadelle over thin spaghetti strings – all the better for catching your sauce – and there’s nothing as human and homely as slightly uneven handcut noodles.

This pappardelle with pesto, zucchini & goats cheese is made for the long, warm evenings of February. It’s an ode to summer vegetables – vibrant green zucchini and multi-coloured cherry tomatoes with handfuls of garden basil and parsley, brightened up with lemon and briny capers. The tomatoes are quickly blistered whole over a high heat, skin loosened and scorched, while the zucchini takes a few minutes in a hot pan with generous salt and pepper. The herbs are blitzed to make a pesto-like herb oil, and it’s all combined in the cooking pot just before serving. Hints of creamy, tangy goats cheese finish it off.

Unfortunately I don’t have my own vegetable garden here in Melbourne, though back in Auckland my youngest brother’s newest interest is his little vegetable plot. It’s absolutely flourished this summer and produced bags of the biggest tomatoes I’ve ever seen!

The post Homemade Pappardelle with Pesto, Zucchini & Goats Cheese appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.

Slow Braised Beef Cheek Ragu with Parpadelle – tender, falling apart chunks of beef cheek in a rich, red wine tomato sauce tossed with parpadelle.  Jump to Recipe 

Leaving Auckland never seems to get any easier. The packing, the goodbyes, the solo flight back to Melbourne. It always takes a few days to adjust to the university routine – a few days of feeling slightly out-of-sorts, a little misplaced and harried and disorganised, like the sudden uprooting and transplant from home leaves my mind hanging somewhere in the middle. This time was particularly challenging – jetlag and a stomach bug followed me home from Vietnam for five blurred days of catch-ups, appointments and baking, and the trip back to the airport came all too quickly. Walking away into the departures hall after the final drawn out hug, tugging on an overfilled suitcase and sporadically turning around for a final glimpse and wave, is the toughest part.

It isn’t always like that – I’m not awfully homesick, or wishing I wasn’t in Melbourne – I love it, and feel like I am in the exactly the right place at the moment. But those goodbyes are always so unapologetically difficult, especially when you’re the one walking away. It gets drummed into us that from age eighteen, we should be ready, ecstatic to “leave the nest” – make a break, ditch the parents and siblings and start our “adult” lives. A quick, clean separation, a smooth transition from childhood homes to reality. And maybe some people pull this off.

I manage for the most part – and on Sunday night it was the absolute best to walk in the door to the smell of dinner cooking and a house dinner with the girls I live with. But there are still times where I don’t feel quite grown up enough, or a little lost, and just wish we could rewind a couple of years, though those occasions occur less and less often. I can’t imagine I will ever stop missing home a little. That’s the other thing – I’ve started slipping out “home” when I talk about Melbourne, but usually refer to Auckland as “home” as well. Maybe I just need the two to coexist – one where I study and live most of the time, and the other which is always always just home to me.

This slow braised beef cheek ragu with parpadelle is a home meal. If there is anything good about winter, it is getting out that well-used cast iron pot to simmer away for hours on the stove, filling the house with a rich, comforting fragrance while rain pelts down outside. I made it last week for a family dinner, with my brother also home for university break and all six of us for once at the same table (and not just on a phone loudspeaker!).

Something about the chemistry of transforming a cheap, tough, working cut of meat into tender, falling apart chunks is incredibly satisfying. The simple pasta sauce of tomatoes, red wine and beef stock is rich and complex, thanks to the hours of slow cooking and the quick soffrito base. Soffrito underpins most Italian sauces – it’s that sauteed mixture of onion and carrot, cooked in a bit of oil until translucent and tender, sticking golden bits of flavour to the bottom of your pan that become the deep flavour foundations of your sauce later on. It’s worth the extra 10 minutes cooking time and final deglaze with a splash of red wine before you add the rest of your ingredients.

That rich sauce and melting chunks of beef cheek coats thick, al dente parpadelle – a wide pasta which gives a large surface area for the sauce to cover, dipping into the hollows between the strands. Bowls are sprinkled with a sharp grated parmesan and bright italian parsley, and I served it with a fresh loaf of crusty ciabatta, smeared with fresh melting butter, and oven roasted winter broccolini and brussel sprouts. Winter + home comfort in a steaming bowl, seriously.

The best part is that it isn’t that difficult – it takes half an hour to put the sauce together, and from then on there is very little work involved. Just leave it on a low heat for 2 and a half to 3 hours, then take the lid off and reduce the sauce for a bit, shred the beef and put it all together it again. It is so low maintenance that I had no qualms leaving for a haircut and getting my brother to set a timer and turn the pot off at the beep.

Also going on at the moment are nominations for the 2016 Saveur Blog awards, and I would love it if you could take a minute to nominate The Brick Kitchen for the awards in any categories you think best fit (click here). You can nominate as many blogs as often as you like, and in as many categories you like too. They are open until July 18th. Thank you so much for your support! 

Cook’s notes:

• I used beef cheeks here – a cheap, lean cut laced with tough connective tissue which becomes meltingly tender with a few hours braising. They are available in supermarkets in Auckland, but if you can’t find them there your butcher should be able to supply them for you. Beef shin would be a good alternative.
• Sear the beef first to keep in all those juices during the slow braise. Depending on the size of your beef cheeks, it will take 2.5 – 3.5 hours to get them tender, including 30 minutes with the lid off to reduce the sauce. Once you remove the beef, you can bring the sauce to a boil to reduce it further before you return the beef to the pot.
• The recipe makes about 8 cups of sauce, which is enough to serve about 12 people, depending on hunger levels and how much sauce you like. You can always freeze half to use at a later date!

The post Slow Braised Beef Cheek Ragu with Parpadelle appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.

Roasted Tomato & Eggplant Pasta Puttanesca: fast, fiery and intensely tomato flavoured, with golden roasted eggplant, capers, olives, basil and parmesan.  Jump to Recipe 

Life deals in unexpected roadblocks. Detours and speed bumps.

Never at the right time – not that there ever is a right time – and sometimes completely out of the blue. I didn’t know I would be writing this post a few days ago, and I apologize for the slight negativity around here today – I hope you can bear with me! The year before last, in September 2014, I was diagnosed with a sacral stress fracture (right at the bottom of my spine), clean through the bone. A straight-forward run suddenly became painful, walking was a challenge, and after an MRI I was restricted to crutches for a few months. The October Melbourne half-marathon that I had been training for was over – impossible.

Okay, I thought. It too will pass. I focused on exams, swam and biked (possible as non-weight-bearing exercise). Walking, then running, was gradually reintroduced. By October 2015, I ran the Melbourne half-marathon. I loved it: set goals for next year and kept running – mainly on beaches and off-road to reduce the surface impact. I assumed I was fully recovered.

A gnawing pain in my lower back and leg made itself known last weekend. That afternoon I was hobbling, subconsciously aware that this was an all-too-familiar feeling, scarily reminiscent of my months on crutches, and absolutely dreading the result. An MRI has shown the same old fracture line still sitting there – perhaps with less oedema/inflammation than last time, but not resolved. I was gutted.

And I know that this will also get better with time, and rest, and patience. I will finally kick it – ensure it is fully gone for good. I will get over it. Despite that, I can’t deny that it remains incredibly disappointing: only a few days later, it still feels raw. Like I’m a little bit broken, and my bones just don’t want to work for me.

But unexpected challenges and mishaps are part of what make us us. I only hope that I can learn from it, become more mentally resilient, perhaps even be a more understanding human being and doctor in future. Having at least a little more insight into a patient’s pain when they walk through the door, or lie in a hospital bed. The utter shittiness of not being able to what you can normally do, restricted by your own body’s human limitations, your very cells. And I know many, many people have it a million times worse than me – I can hardly imagine it. The emotional pain of losing someone must be incomparably debilitating – a scar that never heals at all.

“You may not control life’s circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them.” – Atul Gawande. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

I just need to remind myself of this over the coming months.

Times like these do require a bit of comfort food, however. And I truly believe that comfort food is a real thing. Take this pasta puttanesca. The actions of preparation – in cutting tomatoes, roasting them until wrinkly, sweet and charred-edged, their juices running hot along the baking paper. Eggplant, tender and golden, the saltiness of capers and olives, the slight mouth-warming heat of chilli and anchovies sizzling together in a skillet. Ribbons of spaghetti transformed by boiling water, the dish elevated by sharp leaves of fresh basil, a sun-shower of parmesan. The time spent cooking is unique – a kind of connection with your own mind, undistracted by the news, a book, Facebook or the TV. It is difficult to day dream or plan what you have to do next without making mistakes, so we are forced to exercise some level of focus. Every nagging task that needs to be done has to be put on hold for a period – we have to eat, after all. I find it hard to be grumpy when I’m cooking!

This pasta puttanesca is a slight departure from the original. It was apparently named after prostitutes in Italy (hence the translation to ‘slut’s spaghetti’) as it was a meal easily thrown together from left-over cans in the pantry: tinned tomatoes, anchovies, olives, capers, chilli flakes, olive oil, pasta. Fiery, salty and with an intense tomato flavour- it is a satisfying sauce. However, in the midst of  summer I couldn’t ignore the cheap bags of tomatoes in the shops, the best quality we will get all year. Fresh tomatoes by themselves have nowhere near the magnitude of flavour of the canned variety except after a really long, slow roast – which in some ways defeats the purpose of a fast pasta puttanesca dish. In the end, to boost the flavour I tossed the fresh tomatoes in a mixture of crushed garlic, olive oil and tomato paste before roasting them, resulting in a richness light years better than canned. I also added eggplant – but that is easily skipped over if you are not an aubergine lover.

Cook’s notes

• If you want more of a sauce, like I did, rather than disparate pieces of tomato, puree half of the roasted tomatoes and leave the other half whole – the best of both worlds. Another option if tomatoes aren’t as freely available would be to use half fresh tomatoes, roasting them in half the garlic/tomato paste mixture (and NOT pureeing any), and then add a 400g can of chopped tomatoes in puree as the remaining half of the tomatoes.
• I used a mix of colourful cherry tomatoes and whole tomatoes, but whatever is available will work fine.
• This recipe makes enough for 6-8, depending on how much pasta you eat, but is easily halved.
• I often serve it with panko-crumbed white fish (usually gurnard or tarakihi), or grilled chicken thighs. Beans, broccoli or zucchini if you want more greens. Always crusty oven-heated ciabatta and olive oil.

The post Roasted Tomato & Eggplant Pasta Puttanesca appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.

Green kale & walnut pesto pasta with crispy-edged roasted broccoli and brussel sprouts – healthy, easy and very green!  Jump to Recipe 

So happy right now.

A week of hectic studying for our mid-semester exam has finally culminated in the exam (this morning) being over – such a relief. Intensive studying can’t be good for anyone, although it has instigated my new found love of coffee (small double shot flat white, extra hot please!).

I never thought I would be a coffee person: although I have grown up around it (with Dad drinking five or six coffees a day and roasting his own green bean blends in his 1kg coffee roaster downstairs), as a child I associated the smell with long car trips (obviously, we always had to take a coffee machine and roasted beans with us!), and therefore carsickness (yes, I am that person..), and even in the last few years I have resisted, thinking that I don’t want to spend my money on coffee (oops). I also have never liked milk, and a big milky drink like a hot chocolate made me feel slightly ill. However, being a bit sick, rundown and tired in the cold Melbourne winter in the past few weeks has led to more than a few coffee runs from St Ali’s over at uni – and I have quickly discovered that I love it, and am unsure how I have dealt with being tired in the past – like, so much alertness going on here. Seriously.

The weather is also a part of my mood: spring seemed to arrive here in Melbourne today (as it should, seeing as it is now September) – sunny and almost 20 degrees for the first time in months. Plus we went out for lunch to celebrate a birthday (hello, turmeric goats cheese, pesto freekah grains, roasted truss tomatoes & poached eggs on sourdough with smoked salmon at District Brewer). Yes, I love Melbourne cafes.

BUT I also haven’t posted for a week, so here is a go-to quick, healthy dinner that can be on the table in half an hour – kale & walnut pesto pasta with roasted greens. If you make the pesto ahead, it could be even less. The pesto is nutty, lemony and fragrant, spiked with garlic and basil, and super healthy with all that kale (it seems like a huge amount when you make the pesto, but trust me, it does shrink down when you cook it), and pairs perfectly with steaming hot pasta and crispy-edged roasted broccoli. I never realised how good roasted greens were until recently – SO much more flavour than steamed. And, yes those are brussel sprouts, transformed into crisp and flaky bites by their oven time (hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!). And if you wanted to make it even healthier and greener, you could replace some of the spaghetti with zucchini zoodles. Up to you.

Your pasta to pesto and vegetable ratio will depend on the number of people you are serving, how much pasta everyone eats (for example, my brothers eat enough for 2 people each!) and if they like lots of vegetables. The pesto makes enough for around 8 servings, so you may have some left over, which can be stored in an airtight container or jar for 1-2 weeks in the fridge (or frozen for longer). It can be used in many other ways too – toss it through a salad dressing, spread it on toast or in your sandwich, eat it with eggs, use it to marinade meat, pop a tablespoon on top of your tomato soup… you name it!

The post Kale & Walnut Pesto Pasta with Crispy Roasted Greens appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.