This isn’t much of a home-cooking site, but here’s a little something I prepared earlier that rates a mention:

Inspiration and initial recipe via Katie at Local Sprouts, this is a fun dish to play with because it involves a few fast cooking techniques including a quick pickling of red onions which can be trotted out on a weeknight so long as one doesn’t mind eating at 8:30. The only thing that really needs to be organised earlier is the duck confit which in a pinch can be purchased or, if one has a sous-vide set-up, can or should always be found sacked up in pairs in a corner of the fridge. I am also not sure I would have bothered blanching the radishes; next time I’ll preserve their crunch and shave them into oh-so-fashionable discs.

We also turned the original recipe, which was more of a duck salad, into of a duck dinner by knocking up a quick Jerusalem artichoke puree (pro tip: lemon juice and the tiniest hint of curry powder really brings up the flavour).

A friend the other day, commenting on her misery having picked the wrong outfit Sydney’s hot today, cold tomorrow weather, noted philosophically that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. We played with this idea a bit and decided that the same goes for food: food tastes different depending on the weather, and on a cold day a lamb shoulder will do what a gazpacho can’t. An elementary point, but when the mercury is swinging 15 degrees C from lunchtime to dinner, it can make planning the evening meal a bit tough. This dish fit our present winter-into-spring climate perfectly.