After a dash to the fish co-op one afternoon we produced this delicious dinner of a Barbecued Snapper served with Spicy Mango and Avocado Salsa and accompanied it with the best friend of white fleshed fish - potatoes - simply steamed and tossed in butter. It was spectacularly simple and delicious ….
Inspired by my favourite, old, French cookbook, I prepared this mussel dish. It is very simple to make, the quality of the result relying upon the use of the very best produce you can lay your hands on. And aren’t we fortunate in Australia to have such ingredients to indulge our appetites and fantasies? ….
This is a recipe for XO Sauce with a difference. It is gluten-free, of course, which is the first difference. The next is that XO sauces usually include dried scallops and seafood but we use readily available bacon and mushroom to create the savoury complexity expected in an XO sauce ….
Versions of moussaka have been made in the Levant and the Balkans, in Egypt and Turkey and Greece for who knows how long. Proof of its popularity. But do we need another one? Well, this Mushroom and Lentil Moussaka has no gluten. It has no meat. It has no potato. The eggplant is grilled not fried ….
Deliciously succulent pasta tubes filled with aubergine, ricotta, spinach, parmesan and smoked Fior di Latte, topped and bottomed with home made tomato sauce ….. salivating yet? This week’s recipe is a home-cook’s dream as it can be prepared well ahead of time and gently reheated to serve topped with fresh basil leaves. It can be made in very large quantities for parties and freezes well ....
This one ticks all the boxes. Gluten-free, organic, sustainable, low food miles, seasonal, community-minded, delicious and free. I’m referring to a bag of limes and avocados given to me by Rosie. The avocados came from a tree overhanging her backyard and the limes from one of her green-fingered friends ....
My beautiful grandmother, Dot, had a lovely tradition of always noting the name of the person who passed a recipe on to her. I still have her old hand written recipe book with its solid wooden cover. It is full of recipes with lovely names like Chocolate Cake Rene and Aunty Nellie Lambert’s Rock Cakes, Muriel’s Caramel Marlow and Elsie T’s Coffee Crystal Biscuits as well as many of Dot’s own recipes ....
This update on the old Pease Pudding of Northern England is a very loose riff on the original. Instead of dried yellow split peas, soaked and boiled in the stock of a ham hock, this version takes bright green peas, aromatics and spices and turns them into beautifully light but very tasty semi-souffles ....
Over the years Rosie, Caren and I, between us, have accumulated lots of wonderful gluten-free cake recipes, many of which are already included in the Sweet Baking category here on our blog. A chance conversation we had recently highlighted the fact that it’s often nut flours that make the best substitute for wheat flour in cake-baking. But what if you want to avoid gluten and nuts? Well, this one’s for you. Or anyone else who doesn’t mind a moist, citrusy cake with a nice texture and a moreish flavour. Anyone? ....
I’d been at a conference all day. He’d been at home, in the studio. We met in the city and wandered down to the newish Barangaroo precinct on Sydney Harbour. We decided to try a few different restaurants on the strip so he chose the Spanish Bórn, where for our first course we had delicious little morsels and sampled for the first time a gluten-free beer and a chardonnay from Spain ....
Chocolate Almond Rochers are lovely, sweet, crunchy treats which, if the chocolate is tempered (melted) correctly, will stay in perfect condition for several weeks. The almonds are very simply candied in the oven and then tossed in dark, milk or white chocolate, or all three. They key to success is the tempering of the chocolate ....
Traditionally hoisin sauce is made with fermented wheat and soy beans. It is flavoured with five spice powder and is robust, sweet and garlicky. While gluten-free versions are available, we prefer to make our own and use black bean sauce as the base for our hoisin sauce. Once you have your gluten-free black bean sauce, home made or purchased, then making our Hoisin is a ten minute exercise ....
I was inspired to convert to gluten-free some of Kylie Kwong's recipes from her cook book 'Simple Chinese Cooking' but as most coeliacs and gluten-intolerants will know it’s often not so easy. Many common Asian ingredients such as soy sauce and even rice wine can contain gluten and while gluten-free versions of a lot of these ingredients do exist, often they’re not readily available resulting in a trip to a specialty shop at the expense of spontaneity ....
Semi freddo (the Italian for half cold) is considered a half frozen dessert and is made from egg yolks, cream, sugar and any flavouring you fancy. It is a good alternative to home made ice cream, if you don’t have an ice cream machine, as you don’t have to churn the semi freddo mixture. You can freeze it in individual moulds or in one piece as we’ve done here to serve as a birthday cake ....
Anzac Biscuits started out in life as a staple in soldiers’ rations – a very (very) hard, nutritious but unpalatable alternative to bread. In Gallipoli, they became known as Anzac Tiles, and creative ways were found to get them down. They were grated and turned into porridge, or soaked in water with jam, and baked over a fire to make ‘jam tarts.’ (Sounds like seriously wishful thinking.) ....
I recently bought some king prawns because they looked so very fresh, with bright colour and long perky antennae. I took them home and looked in the fridge and pantry for something to go with them. I found tinned tomatoes and some feta. A memory of a tasty Greek meal from years ago flooded in and I had my dish. Baked prawns, tomatoes and feta. Not trendily innovative but a true classic and a delicious combination of seafood and cheese ....
Finding an excellent gluten-free Hot Crossed Bun can be almost as daunting as the thought of producing a batch at home so this Easter we’re baking Hot Crossed Muffins instead. They make a very easy alternative with all the spicy flavour and dried fruit plumpness of a traditional Hot Crossed Bun, without all the fuss ....
The most common melon in Spain is the Sapo de Piel, literally ‘toad skin’ melon, but it’s often called Christmas melon too because it keeps so well. It’s deliciously sweet when ripe, which is when the skin turns bright yellow between the characteristic dark green markings. It’s fairly freely available these days here too, although it’s most often simply called Spanish melon ....
Ever since seeing the movie ‘Amadeus’ many years ago, I have lusted after the large and rather provocative looking chocolates which were offerred to Mozart’s wife by the composer, Salieri. My memory is that he tells her in a rather seductive way that these delicious looking morsels are called Nipples of Venus and that she promptly wraps her plump lips around one of these generously proportioned items, wide eyed and giggly ....
Jan’s daughter-in-law, Zoe, came up with these fabulous Walnut Crispbreads. They are quite rich and make a delicious base for all sorts of canapés. We’ve topped one with goats’ cheese and tobiko (flying fish roe) and the other with gravalax, pickled cucumber and dill and mustard sauce but the toppings will only be limited by imagination and what’s on hand in the fridge ....
