What I Cooked Last Night

Everyone's doing beurre blanc, so let's give it a try. Reduce 100ml each of white wine and vinegar in a pot with a sprig of tarragon, a bay leaf, ten black peppercorns and a chopped shallot. Cool and strain. Place two tablespoons of this reduction into a pot with a tablespoon of cream. Reduce this by half and then gradually whisk in 200g cold diced, butter until thickened slightly. Add the juice of half a lemon, salt and pepper. Fold in a slew of capers, maybe a dozen. Meanwhile, cut four peeled waxy potatoes (those red ones that seem to change their names every week or so - Pontiac? Red Devil? Red Russet? - will be fine) into half-centimetre slices, boil until yielding but not quite mashable. Drain. Meanwhile, cook salmon fillets gently in a pan with a little lemon juice, lime juice or orange juice; or a little of all three. Layer potatoes on serving plates, salmon on top, beurre blanc over.

And now the sun is a red ball falling down behind the thirty foot lilly pilly* and the last of the chili peanut sauce has been swiped with a spring onion and there's steam coming from the grill on the barbecue. This is something I've taken to doing because it's easy and easy is what I like to do at this stage of my life. Wait, we've had three children in five years. Yeah. Maybe that's why other things are easing up. I never stress about having people over any more and what to cook and what the house looks like and if the lawn's mown and the hedge trimmed and the right music going. The hell with it all. I find a gin and tonic cleans up the house magically and two even better. Tracy, on the other hand, being a woman, cleans the house from top to bottom if there's any chance of a human being outside the immediate family entering the house. The steam was coming from the cast iron frypan on the grill and it smelled great. It's the easiest way to cook pota...