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An EASY Mediterranean Weekend Lunch
When I was growing up I thought that twenty-four hours was the perfect length for a day. With age, this has changed: I’d now like thirty-six at least so that, among other things, I’d have more time to cook delicious things which take ages to prepare. As it is, I am your typical time-poor, full-time, professional woman with limited stamina and a pile of ironing that I’m never quite on top of. In spite of this, I’m ready meal-averse so at the end of most workdays, I cook. Sometimes I get so tired that by the end of it, I have no energy left to eat. Ironic, I know, but apparently quite common among my ilk.
Roll on the weekend – that blissful ideal of rest over two whole days, which seldom happens by the time housework, paperwork, special occasions and familial duties are taken into account. For just those times when hunger pangs hit but there’s little time to spare, I’ve got just the thing: a quick and easy lunch that can be thrown together in a jiffy.
Fill a bowl with cherry tomatoes cut in half, cubes of feta cheese, plenty of chopped parsley, a drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice to taste. Toss and spoon onto your plate. Leftovers can be added to another meal later. Put slices of mozzarella onto slices of beef tomato, season and heat in the oven until just melted (just a few minutes at 150C). Add a few of these to the plate and garnish each with a basil leaf. That’s the hard part. Now just add anything vaguely Mediterranean you might have to your lunch: slices of prosciutto or salami, a handful of olives, some lettuce leaves topped with emergency artichokes (from the jar that dwells in the pantry) – their preserving juice creates an immediate dressing so no vinaigrette-concocting required.
For the above example I grabbed some herby ciabatta from our local deli and warmed it through while I was heating the tomatoes. Other additions might include marinated anchovies, leftover grilled vegetables, a spoonful of couscous drizzled with lime juice and coriander, a few slices of grilled halloumi tossed in lemon juice and parsley, marinated peppers, some burrata (if you’re lucky enough to have it in the fridge) sprinkled with a handful of sliced green grapes.
One last point: if you have visitors and don’t want to spend too much time wearing your trusty oven gloves, just set out all of the Mediterranean foods that you have to hand, give them each a plate and tell them to help themselves, buffet-style. Couldn’t be easier! This is a seriously low-maintenance lunch that’s tasty, healthy and just as easy to make for a crowd as it is for one person.
If you have guests and want to show that some sort of effort was made in the feeding of them, you can even tailor this lunch to a specific Mediterranean country with a minimum of hassle. For instance, if you want to put the emphasis on things Italian, drinks might include San Pellegrino with a slice of lemon, prosecco, a glass of Pinot Grigio or a chilled Nastro Azzuro. Don’t fuss over dessert: just put out some fresh fruit or have a scoop of gelato. A really snazzy ice cream trick is to serve lemon gelato with a shot of limoncello poured over the top, but don’t plan on finishing the laundry afterwards! It works just as well with strawberry gelato and fragolino… divinISSimo! Finish with espresso. If you have a machine, all well and good, but if not, there are some really good instant espresso grounds on the market nowadays - trust me, I’m über- fussy about my coffee. Serve it with a bacio or two and get everyone to read out the love messages wrapped inside. Now, that’s what I call la dolce vita.
Buon appetito a tutti!
What’s in/on your refrigerator
Pat Coakley of Singleforareason fame, has issued a couple of interesting blog challenges recently. There was the ‘What’s on your refrigerator?’ challenge, and now there’s the revealing ‘What’s in your refrigerator?’
Here’s why I didn’t participate in the first fridge challenge:
See? There’s nothing ON my fridge. Usually I love weird and whacky magnets, but we currently have wood covering our refrigerator, so nothing sticks to it apart from post-it notes and I’m working hard to stem my addiction to those. What’s NEXT to the fridge is a calendar of beautiful French scenery, including lots of inspiration in the form of market stall pictures. Less interesting is that vertical group of white pipes to the right. It’s some sort of ancient radiator which we leave turned off because, when it’s on, it has a habit of making sounds like a UFO landing on the roof, which can be somewhat disconcerting when it happens at 3 in the morning.
Here’s the fun part. What’s IN our fridge:
On the top shelf we have orange juice, San Pellegrino (our favourite water), a couple of Coronas for post-work feet-up time and wine. This is NOT a tee-total flat, as is immediately obvious.
On the next shelf down is some Bonne Maman jam for tartines at the weekend, butter, garlic pulp for moments when the fresh bulbs are too dry to use, rouille for soupe de poissons and that nasty lemon juice that comes in a plastic lemon bottle. I prefer the real deal, but somehow this plasticky thing found its way here so there it stays until it expires.
Third shelf down is parmesan cheese which we use on everything from Caesar salads to pasta sauces, more milk (semi-skimmed), croutons for salads, coffee for Monsieur’s utter madam of a coffee machine (highly temperamental and sees me coming every time), feta cheese for Greek salads, salad onions, free-range eggs and a wicked raclette platter of charcuterie and cheese.
At the bottom we have Dijon mustard, more butter (has to be Président, a mild French brand, for Monsieur), half a cucumber, prosciutto and a bag full of raclette cheese from the French farmers’ market that tempts me out of the office whenever they come to town.
Hidden away in the drawers are lots of salad ingredients, fresh herbs (dill, basil, parsley, chives) tuna steaks, chicken breasts and a selection of French dried sausage in three varieties: duck, wild boar and tomme de chevre (goat’s milk cheese). I still haven’t tried the tomme de chevre type, but am curious to see how cheese works in a dried sausage. Hmmm. Intriguing.
I think you can probably now understand why Monsieur and I are destined never, ever to be size zero.
