I (lovingly) complained to my son last week when he said he’s in charge to bring 4 ingredients to food tech.  Seriously, these main ingredients – lamb, mint, wild rockets and basil pesto, are pricey but proud and excited mom I am I bought and packed them all yesterday morning for him to bring to school.  At about 2pm he emailed me the photos of the dish they cooked.  Holy cow!  I mean… sheep!  The lamb salad looks fabulous, don’t you agree?  Below is one of the photos.

The gorgeous smell of pesto greeted me as I opened the container he took home. “Let’s have it for dinner tonight, Nanay,” he said. Well he’s the boss. But before all that, I arrange the dish in a platter for a photo-op.

This warm Greek lamb salad adapted from a recipe by Annabel Langbein is the main course from the boys’ set of dishes to cook.

Ingredients:
400g lamb rumps
2 tsp finely chopped rosemary
1 lemon
Salt
Ground black pepper
Olive oil
3 tomatoes, deseeded and cut into wedges
1 red onion, chopped coarsely
12 mint leaves, roughly torn
100g wild rocket leaves
1/2 capsicum, peeled and cut thinly
100g feta cheese
Basil pesto

Preheat oven 220 deg C.  Line a baking tray with baking paper and set aside.

Combine rosemary and finely-grated lemon zest with salt and pepper.  Rub this mixture all over lamb and set aside.

Heat 2 tbsp of olive oil in a pan on medium to high heat.  Add lamb and brown for approximately 3 minutes each side.  Scoop out and arrange on the lined baking tray.  Bake for 10 minutes for medium rare.  Remove from oven.  Cover the tray with tin foil and towel to rest for at least 10 minutes.

To make the pesto dressing, combine 1 part olive oil, 1 part lemon juice and 1 part pesto.  Add the lamb juices from the baking tray.  Season with salt and pepper.  Set aside.

Combine onion, tomatoes and mint leaves in a mixing bowl.  Arrange these on top of wild rockets on a serving platter.

When ready, slice the lamb thinly across the grain and place on top of the salad platter.  Add the crumbled feta cheese and capsicums and drizzle with pesto dressing.

It’s a very delicious, refreshing salad. I prepped more pesto dressing for dinner. Yum.

Iska

I am not a professional cook. My only claim to having a culinary background is a short stint as my dad’s teen ‘sous chef’ in his carinderia ages ago. Dad ran small eateries since I was a young kid - serving standard ‘turo-turo’ food ranging from the likes of menudo, adobo, pritong isda, dinuguan, binagoongan, bopis, munggo, pinakbet and giniling to merienda fares like goto, ginataan, pancit bihon, halu-halo and saging con yelo.

My father, a farmer in his hometown before working his way to becoming an accountant, definitely influenced my cooking in a lot of ways than I thought. My siblings and I were raised in a backyard full of fruit trees and vegetable garden. We spent weekends and the summer breaks running around with ducks, chickens, goats and pigs. I had wonderful memories of gathering eggs, butchering chickens, selling vegetables and the sweet aroma of preserved fruits. But my love for art led me to a degree in Architecture. Just few months after getting my license, I went abroad and lived independently at age 23. Definitely no maid, no cook, and a totally different food culture. Along the way I met lots of friends and spent what seemed a lifetime learning new tricks and recipes.

Now living in Auckland, I am a work-from-home mum who juggles time between work, fun and family - in pursuit of work-life balance. No matter how busy I am, I love the idea of cooking for my family. My blog chronicles home cooking greatly influenced by life outside my home country from Southeast Asia to Beijing and Auckland. And most of the time, being busy also means easy (sometimes quick), affordable meals.