And so I bake up a debacle. Last time it was butterfly cakes. It seemed like a good idea – little wings of cake nestled in a pile of cream, glace cherry on top. Premium product, right? The cakes were fine. I was pleased with myself. They had chocolate chips. I had decided to use dairy whip instead of cream. I told myself that this was because it would save me time and mess but really I just wanted an excuse to hide behind the fridge door squirting tinned cream product down my throat. The cakes were duly creamed and taken to school. We literally live across the road from this marvellous institution but by the time the cakes had been delivered the “cream”, which is of course 99% air, had subsided and was flowing across the surface of the cakes in a greasy slurry. Cherries slumped forlornly on the plate. I placed my cakes on the communal table, comfortable in the company of a stack of nuggety offerings that had been crammed into old cereal boxes and strapped up with masking tape. The only person who purchased a fairy cake that day was The Child, bless him.

Scenario 2: I find out at the eleven and half-th hour that the kinder is having a working bee. A BBQ and beer  will be provided (yipee!) but a salad is requested. I never know what is happening at the kinder because my husband is the President of the Kinder Committee. This makes me assume that he will tell me the information I need to know in a timely and helpful fashion and so I don’t bother paying attention to anything the Kinder actually tells me. Therefore, between our mutual failures, I never know anything. But salads? Salads I can do, even at frighteningly late notice. Salads I understand. Salads I can not only happily provide but can actually use to impress and provide subtle indications that maybe, just maybe, I am one of the good mums. This lentil salad is a miracle of cooking, able to be conjured up out of next to nothing from stuff I nearly always have to hand, easy to prepare and so startlingly delicious that every time I make it I am inundated with requests for the recipe for weeks afterwards. Plus, despite being completely free of animal products, it has the remarkable quality of tasting like bacon.

Brown lentil salad

This recipe comes from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion where she describes it as a classic French dish. As such, it should ideally be made with Puy lentils (and they are much better, being nuttier in both texture and flavour). You can now get Puy lentils from major supermarkets but the readily available green or brown lentils (just different names for the same thing) are just fine and I use them 99% of the time. The trick is in the soaking time – they need 2 hours. Less than that and the skins won’t soften, more than that and the salad goes soggy. It is very important to soften the skins so that when salt is added at the beginning of the cooking time, they don’t toughen.

• 375g brown lentils
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 cup chopped flat leaf parsley
• 1 tbsp red-wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (extra)
• Black pepper

Wash the lentils and soak them in plenty of water for 2 hours. Before you drain the water off, reserve a cup of the water – you will need it for cooking. Heat the oil over a moderate heat in a heavy based pan (not non-stick!). I use an enamelled cast iron frying pan and it’s perfect for the job. Add the onions and fry gently until golden. This may take several minutes. Add the garlic and continue to fry for 1 minute. Then add the lentils, reserved soaking water (or tap water, if you forgot) and salt. Cook the lentils for about 25 minutes until the water has evaporated and the lentils are cooked. If the water evaporates too quickly, turn down the heat and add a little more. Don’t let them get mushy – they should still be a bit crunchy. Tip the lentils out of the pan into a bowl and stir in the the remaining ingredients. It’s best to do this while the lentils are still warm to take the edge off the vinegar and allow the flavours to infuse.

Summer 2010 – 2011, in terms of weather, was a complete fizzer: grey, wet and cold and so there has been an absence of the usual signs that the season has turned. The strongest evidence for the arrival of autumn has come from what I have been producing from my Friday Surprise Box: maple-syrup roasted vegetables, soup made from honey roasted carrots etc. My must-have dish of the season though has undoubtedly been an incredibly simple salad made from rocket, pears, walnuts and Parmesan. These ingredients all have a deeply warming and sustaining nature and this dish is a reminder of the joys of cold-season salads when you tend to forget that it is still possible to “eat light”. In Chinese medicine, walnuts support the kidneys which is a fine thing in the cooler months.  With this salad on board, you can make a sensational dinner in 15 minutes and wallow in that glow of smug self-satisfaction that comes with feeding the family something  tasty,  nutritious and cost-effective. Or maybe that’s just me.  You could serve this salad with heaps of different things but it doesn’t get any easier than sausages.  In these parts we are able to get a tray of 6 lovely sausages from Birregurra Farm Foods for a handful of dollars and this feeds the 4 of us just fine. The salad, which is tangy and peppery, really cuts through the fattiness of the sausages. Have it with a glass of stout and swan about in the golden autumn light for guaranteed happy times.

Pear and parmesan salad

• 1 -2 pears and/or apples, cored and thinly sliced
• Few handfuls of rocket or other peppery greens
• A handful of walnuts, very roughly broken up (I just crumble them into the bowl with my hands)
• Freshly shaved Parmesan
• Finely sliced fennel bulb and fennel leaves (optional)
• Couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of wine vinegar
• Salt and pepper

Mix the rocket, pears or apples, fennel and walnuts in a bowl. Make a dressing by mixing the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper well. Dress the salad and then add as much shaved Parmesan as you like. It may not surprise you to know that I like a lot of Parmesan. Eat it with meat, eat it with pies, eat it with frittata. Eat it on its own. It will please you.

Palm sugar causes turns me into Hannibal Lecter, all tongue flicking and eye-rolling ecstacy. I love it in salads and stir frys. I love it in hot chocolate made with Balinese cocoa. I love making bujang dalam selimut (green pancakes with coconut and palm sugar filling). I love to mix it with grated lime rind and just eat it by the spoonful. And I love to use a cleaver shave off huge, crumbling sheets of the stuff for the sole purpose of letting it dissolve slowly on my tongue.

Got you interested? Now here’s a recipe for a simple, tasty but otherwise unremarkable family meal the best part of which is that you get to roll around in your palm sugar. This is just one of those throw-it-together-on-a- hot- night kind of meals: all wet and sweet and easy. It requires no real cooking skills, it won’t make you fat, it won’t break the bank and your kids will probably eat all or part of it. I dressed the salad before I added the herbs as my kids have been known to feel the need to scrape every bit of chopped mint and coriander off a salad. I then just put a herb-free portion aside for them. I also cooked some rice for them ( just to bulk it out a bit) but for myself I just had a pile of salad and calamari.

Coriander rubbed calamari with pineapple salad

For the calamari:

• 2 calamari hoods
• 2 teaspoons of finely chopped coriander roots and stalks
• 1 teaspoon grated palm sugar
• about half a teaspoon of salt
• splash of light soy sauce
• 4 cloves finely chopped garlic
• tablespoon of olive oil

Open up the calamari hoods and gently score them diagonally to make a criss-cross pattern then cut into strips. Pound all other ingredients with a mortar and pestle (or give them a quick blast in a processor, or just chop them vey finely). Rub this paste into the calamari strip and set aside. Just before cooking, slop the oil over it. When the salad is ready (see below), throw the calamari onto a hot griddle or BBQ, cook just a couple of minutes on each side. Not too long, or it will become tough.

For the salad:

• half a pinepple, quartered, peeled, cored and cut into bite sized pieces
• 2 carrots, julienned
• 4 green apples cut into thin slices
• 2 diced cucumbers
• splash of rice vinegar, splash of fish sauce, juice of 1 lime, 2 teaspoons grated palm sugar mixed together to make a dressing
• 1 tablespoon each of finely chopped mint and coriander leaves

Surely I don’t need to explain this? I mean, you just make a salad.

My dad and I learnt this recipe at a cooking class we took at Laka Leke. It’s a great addition to a special banquet style dinner as you can prepare the chicken and dressing in advance and toss them together just before serving. If you can’t get the fresh tumeric (promise me you’ll try), you can substitute 1 tsp of powdered tumeric and half a teaspoon of saffron. To toast the shrimp paste, wrap it in a single layer of foil and dry toast in a hot pan until you can’t stand the stink any longer, then pound it into a fine powder .

Ayam Panggang Sambal Matah (Balinese Chicken Salad)

• 2oo gm chicken breasts
• thumb sized piece of fresh tumeric, finely grated
• 1 tablespoon coriander seed, toasted and ground
• Salt and white pepper
• 6 tablespoons light olive oil (or other lightly flavoured salad oil)
• 4 shallots, peeled and finely sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic (peeled and finely sliced)
• Half a teaspoon of toasted shrimp paste, ground to a powder
• Juice of one lime
• Inner white part of a stem of lemongrass finely chopped
• Finely sliced hot red chillies to taste

Place the chicken between two sheets of cling film and pound flat with a rolling pin. They need to cook quickly or the marinade will blacken so you want them not more than a centimetre thick. Combine the grated tumeric, ground coriander, salt and pepper and three tablespoons of the oil and coat the chicken. Marinate for 1 hour and then grill or BBQ the chicken and leave to cool. Combine the remaining oil and ingredients to make the salad dressing. When the chicken is cool, shred it with your fingers and then toss it together with the salad dressing. I like to serve it piled high on a plate garnished with extra chili, finely sliced kaffir lime leaves and some grated kaffir lime rind.