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Cumquat marmalade, a dream
Pick up a cumquat. Bite into it. That’s it. Now again, with gusto. Bitter? Sour? Both? Think about it for a few minutes. As those original flavours dissipate, what comes through as well. A perfume? An underlying sweetness? What you have done is to work out the sort of flavours you want, and those you [...]
Parmigiano Reggiano
This is the very best of all the Italian cheeses, created under a strict regimen at Parma in the region of Emilia-Ro- magna. This is not the Parmesan that frequents dull plastic packets in supermarkets. This is one of the great cheeses of the world, full of flavour and style, with a marvellous tradition behind [...]
Odds and Ends
On the way through a work like this you come across little odds and ends that, by themselves, might be insufficient to form a recipe, or a tale, but can often lead to little surprises within a dish, on a buffet, or at a barbecue – or these days, as part of a flash antipasto.
Then [...]
Puff pastry and football
There is one sure sign that you have made it as a cook. You not only announce to the world that you are about to make puff pastry, you actually succeed in your attempt. Not that it’s any big deal making the revered mix of butter and flour; all you have to do is bring [...]
Banana cake splashed with passionfruit syrup
One of the first dishes I made successfully when I left home was a banana cake. I had no idea what I was doing, but those were the days when you tossed everything into the whizzer, pressed the button, and presto, there was the batter for a cake.
Nothing had come near to that cake over [...]
Muffins with pears and sultanas
200g plain flour, sifted
100g brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 pear, peeled, cored, cut into cubes, and tossed in lemon juice
zest of 1 lemon
25g sultanas
100g just melted margarine, or butter
1 egg, well beaten
1 cup milk
1
Do all this by hand, in a large bowl. It comes together very quickly, works very well, and there is absolutely no [...]
Passionfruit muffins, given an extra zing with raspberries
Whenever passionfruit are plentiful and cheap, don’t miss any opportunity to try them any way you can or like, or think you like or think you can. Their flavour is so powerful they can even make a pavlova work, and that is saying something.
I was going through this stage of trying passionfruit with all my [...]
Scones, slow and easy
I always wondered why the old and doddery (mums, grans, etc.) always made better scones than I did. Then I started to get older and almost doddery and slower and wiser (the accumulated drip of experience) and started applying those fragments of age to making scones.
Guess what. Now I make scones like the old and [...]
Michele Day’s fruit cake
It was during the fete season, and I was, as usual, picking through the jams and chutneys and cakes, when I picked up a cake labelled ‘wholemeal boiled fruit cake’. It felt heavy, looked full of fruit, and, despite its weight, I felt sure it would be moist. But things aren’t always as they look. [...]
Hot cross buns
I had always believed that hot cross buns had come from our ii. English, Christian roots, and that may be so as far as Australia is concerned, but in the big, wide, wonderful world, ’twas not always so.
In the very old days, it was common to mark a cross on bread or bun dough, not [...]