Have a jar or two of Candied Quinces in your larder, some whipped cream or ice cream and you’ll have a delicious dessert on the table in an instant. Or use them, as we’ve done, in our Quince and Almond Cream Cake, or our Candied Quince and Ricotta Cake. Try replacing the rhubarb with Candied Quinces in our Rhubarb, Orange and Almond Tart ….
I make a lovely honey mousse – yes, I know I shouldn’t be saying it myself – but it has a really luscious but melting texture..
n the lead-up to a wedding in the family, (catering for a completely gluten-free reception for 40 people, but more of that later) my husband came home with some shopping, beaming, because he’d managed to score 14 punnets of beautiful strawberries for $7.50...
I’m very lucky to live near the Sydney fish markets. I try to time my shopping to avoid the weekend rush and the madness of the carpark, but in the middle of Chinese New Year...
Some years ago I found an interesting herb garnish on my salad in a Vietnamese restaurant. I didn’t recognise it but my mother, the green thumb in our family who couldn’t identify it either, suggested that I take it home and stick it in a glass of water. I did and roots sprouted. Now, I have a garden that is verdant with perilla ....
Dinner for a very dear friend’s birthday required a bit of thought. I wanted to cook her favourites but with a twist. She loves a corn curry I’ve been making for years but I didn’t want to serve a curry meal and so decided to convert the curry idea into a soup for entrée and make it a bit luxe for the celebration by garnishing with crayfish tails ....
Here are two simple dishes to offer with drinks when you have a crowd of people. Recently I served them instead of a first course before an Indian meal. The radish and cucumber raita can be made well ahead of time and, if all the ingredients are prepared beforehand, the prawn and coriander pakoras can be cooked in just a few minutes ....
We’ve posted a few citrus-based recipes recently but given that lemons, oranges and grapefruits are in season right now we know you’ll allow us to post one more. After all, it is winter in the southern hemisphere and vitamin C is supposed to be good to ward off colds and the flu.
So here is a classic lemon delicious pudding with a touch of lime ....
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 in 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 ....
