To market to market

My sister SugaLu, Gabriella and I had been to Brisbane's Farmers Markets on Saturday morning. It is a tradition I have now been following for several years. The markets are on the 2nd and 4th Saturday of every month. I like to get up as early as possible to beat the crowds, which isn't a problem with Gabriella often waking at 5.30am these days. Once there I decided I will have to start getting there by 5.30am as with Spring now here it is much lighter and it is getting busier earlier. I like to buy fresh flowers and beautiful breads, free range eggs, canolies, dips, spices, olives, cheeses, great Mandalong lamb, the freshest asparagus etc. etc. It is a wonderful shopping trip if you are having people over that night for dinner or want to put together a beautiful breakfast or lunch. If we can get out of there without buying an organic brownie (for the kids so SugaLu and I always say to ourselves) made by this lovely french man it is a good exercise in self-restraint.

I ran into my mother-in-law Ros (who might I say is the most aspirational mother-in-law in the world I hope I will be as generous of spirit as she is with my daughter or son-in-law one day) and we ended up buying a large piece of the freshest yellow fin tuna together. We decided to split the tuna - her for lunch with a good friend and mine for dinner with P that evening.

I convinced her to make a nicoise influenced salad to have the tuna with. No potatoes, but fresh long green beans, tomatoes, avocado, boiled eggs, olives, red onion and some very fresh mesclun mix just rocket isn't a bad choice either.

I went around to her place that morning to bring her my flat grill for the tuna and made her a salad dressing based on a coddled egg, dijon mustard, olive oil, lemon juice and capers. The tuna is simply prepared - brush on some olive oil and use some cracked pepper and sea salt. Heat the griddle to quite hot and then cook the tuna on both sides briefly. I like mine quite rare in the middle. Ros decided to cook and serve her tuna in separate slices. I decided to keep our tuna in one triangular piece and cooked it so there was quite a lot of rare pieces for the salad. I served the tuna tossed through the salad and we shared a bottle of Japanese white wine ( a gift from P's brothers in- laws when they were over from Japan). It was a fabulous salad and we are definitely going to do that again. The wine was not particularly fruity and certainly wasn't offensive we thought there was an after taste of saki or rice wine to it in fact!

SugaLu and I ended up splitting some fresh rhubarb which inspired my cooking the next day and is also my next entry.