I’m not a salad fan, so when I’m asked to bring a salad to a function, I try to make it as tasty for me as possible. Eating a bunch of greens just doesn’t do it for me.

This is the salad that I came up with for Christmas day with my favourite ingredients, feta and pumpkin. I love the salty-sweet combo. We actually didn’t use pine nuts in the end as they were way too expensive and we were coming close to blowing our budget, so I substituted toasted slivered almonds instead. I think pine nuts would have been better. Also, the only rocket I could find was pre-packaged rubbish, so I skipped that too, but the peppery taste of the rocket would be a nice balance to the sweetness of the pumpkin and dressing.

The salad dressing was a honey balsamic dressing.

I made this the day before, so the pumpkin was cold. I just put everything in separate containers and built the salad just before serving, in order to keep the flavours separate. Don’t dress the salad until the last minute as it will make the salad soggy.

The only downside: putting the oven on to make a salad. The pumpkin roasted: we roasted.

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When it comes to comfort food we often think of mashed potato or pasta, but soft polenta would definitely have to be my favourite comfort food. I love its soft, carby, creamy, buttery goodness.

You can get instant polenta which cooks in only a few minutes, or regular polenta that takes about 40 minutes to cook. I’ve only used regular polenta so I can’t compare, but I’m told that it is better than instant.

When making polenta a skin kind of cooks to the bottom of the pot. To clean, soak in water overnight and this skin just peels right off.

Of course, it’s the real cream, the real butter and the real parmesan that make this dish so good.

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I don’t know why, but up until a few months ago, I’ve always been scared off from making fried rice, I thought it was too hard. Well I couldn’t be more wrong. It’s easy. Last time I made an easy lemon chicken and fried rice. It was like having Chinese takeaway only better, healthier and cheaper!

Assuming that the rice is already cooked (great for leftovers!) I can have this on the table in less than 20 minutes, including chopping time. An excellent quick and tasty meal. Occasionally we serve it with a few oven baked spring rolls.

I don’t follow a recipe just throw in whatever I have so everything is approximate. Add whatever ingredients that you like in your fried rice, or whatever is lurking in the crisper.

Method

1. Place the frozen peas and corn in a bowl and pour boiling water from the kettle over to defrost (or use fresh!)
2. Heat oil in a wok or frypan and add the egg swirling to get a thin coating. Cook and set aside. If you like, add a couple of drops of sesame oil to the eggs before cooking for extra flavour.
3. Add the bacon to the wok, and after a minute or two add the onion. Once the onion is becoming soft, add the capsicum and mushroom and cook for a minute or two.
4. Add the rice and drained peas and corn and spring onions, and cook tossing the rice so all gets nice and fried and cooked through.
5. Add soy sauce to taste and the chopped fried egg, heat and serve alone or as an accompaniment.