Salad days

HEAD TO SUBI FARMERS MARKET TO STOCK UP ON SOME AUTUMNAL STAPLES TO MAKE A DELICIOUS SALAD, PACKED FULL OF FLAVOUR.

Market Essentials

My Saturday morning essentials are fresh milk, bread, pastries and a very good cup of coffee. How about if you could enjoy those while browsing for your everyday essentials?

Shopping at Subi Farmers Market on a Saturday morning ensures you get the freshest of all these and that your money is going directly to support a farmer or small businesses. It’s a win-win!

You can meet your friends, grab a coffee at The Coffee Shack and get some fresh croissants and bread from Wild Bakery, some milk and butter from the Cheeky Cow, add some cookies from Little Dough Dealer, and that’s all before you explore for your meat and vegetables for the week from the plethora of stall options at the market.

Cheeky Cow

Cheeky Cow is a first-generation small scale dairy farm in Busselton with 60% Holstein and 40% Jersey cows. They are passionate about sustainability and invest in alternative packaging and regenerative farm practices.

Cheeky Cow offers a complete range of dairy items manufactured on the farm by the same farmer who milked the cows. You can’t buy that love in a bottle anywhere these days.

They milk their cows in the morning, bottle the same day, and deliver them fresh to the market the next day. Their milk is gaining nostalgic popularity for its creamy flavour, and they also provide yoghurt, butter and ice cream. The flavoured milks are lovely to drink and cool off with while wandering the market too.

Little Dough Dealer

Little Dough Dealer is run by Bahareh Shirvani, who originally worked in disability support and needed a change. Like a lot of people, COVID was a catalyst for change for Bahareh, and a love of feeding people and farmers markets led to the creation of Little Dough Dealer. Little Dough Dealer has developed over 40 flavours of cookies and is still growing. All the products are egg- and dairy-free, with many soy and nut-free options, so they make a great school lunch treat if you’ve got little ones with fragile tums. The cookies are soft and chewy and everything a good bickie should be. There are usually six flavours available at the markets on Saturdays, with the most popular flavours being Chocolate Chip (also my own personal favourite), Cookies and Cream, Maple Pecan, Lemon and Bounty. They are a great match with your market coffee, and bring something to carry some home because you can't stop at one.

Fennel and Orange Salad with Feta, Radish and Mint

The summer heat inspired this issue’s recipe, with a nod to Middle Eastern flavours. I've taken a favourite recipe from Sabrina Ghayour in Persiana Everyday and created a riff on one of her salads.

It’s the kind of salad that looks gorgeous on the table and pairs so well with almost anything, including meats and stews,or a pie or quiche. Mint adds freshness against the soft aniseed taste of the fennel. The best thing is all ingredients should be available in season at the Subi Farmers Market from many of the fresh fruit and vegetable stalls.

Ingredients:

2 oranges

Wild Bakery

Wild Bakery is renowned for baking some of Perth’s best bread and pastries, but that’s just the beginning of what they offer at the markets each Saturday.

Wild Bakery brings bread back to its basics with slow, long fermentation and no additions, helping your guts in a good way when it comes to gluten. There are wholegrain loaves, spelt sourdough, sprouted quinoa and raisin bread. My favourite breakfast is their French pastries, like a pain au chocolate or an almond croissant with my coffee, or one of their cheeky gingerbread men.

One large fennel bulb trimmed and shaved or very thinly sliced, fronds reserved

100g feta cheese

3-4 radishes finely sliced

100g pomegranate seeds

50g pistachio nuts roughly chopped

A few sprigs of mint leaves separated

For serving:

A drizzle of olive oil

Sea salt flakes and fresh pepper Optional: Blend a teaspoon each of paprika and cayenne pepper to serve and sprinkle as desired, or Aleppo pepper if you can find it.

Method:

Using a sharp knife, cut a disc of peel off the top and base of each orange, then working from the top of the fruit downwards, cut away the remaining peel and pith, just enough to expose the orange flesh until it is peeled. Slice the oranges into thin round slices.

Arrange the fennel and radishes on a serving dish or platter, add the oranges, season with salt and pepper.

Crumble over the feta, pistachios and mint leaves. Sprinkle over the pomegranate seeds and reserved fennel fronds here.

Serve the salad with a drizzle of olive oil and little side dish of the spices to sprinkle as you wish.