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...
Light and silky, this Lemon Posset is so easy to make that it’s almost like some sleight of hand is at work. Here’s how it works: boil cream and sugar, add lemon juice, pour into some attractive glasses or small bowls and place in the refrigerator for a few hours. Done. Now that’s my definition of magic ….
This recipe for Tandoori-Spiced Grilled Chicken was given to me years ago by friends who knew I liked to cook. It came in a tiny book, and when I say tiny… I mean miniscule. It was about 50mm square. The book itself has disappeared (that’s how small it was) but a version of this quick, easy recipe lives on. The trick is to make the spice paste in advance. Double the batch and you’ll have a good supply to keep in the fridge at the ready ….
We’re yet to meet anyone who doesn’t like Lemon Curd – and what’s not to like about the buttery richness and the sweet ’n’ sour kick it delivers? Even children seem to like the tangy sourness. Most people have a recipe handed down from a Grandmother or favourite cook. There are many methods and slightly varying ingredients so we’re now adding our recipe into the mix ….
We’re calling this a Pot Au Feu but, really, it’s a simple riff on the French classic, in which beef and beef bones full of marrow are poached, along with vegetables, in stock. We have retained the vegetables and delicious home-made stock but have replaced the beef with tasty gluten-free pork sausages and tender duck breasts and have thrown some sake into the stock for good measure ….
These beautiful little Beluga lentils are my new best friends, particularly when they’re part of this School Prawn and Beluga Lentil Salad. Named for their apparent resemblance to caviar (hmm, really?) Beluga lentils have all the advantages of other lentils, in that they’re packed with protein, iron, potassium, polyphenols, folate and fibre, and they’re also low in kilojoules. That’s not bad for a start ….
What is it? A stick? A baton? A long biscuit? Yes, it’s all of those things but we describe it as a cigar shaped, parmesan-flavoured, tasty snack. Eaten without adornment or wrapped in mortadella or dipped in tapenade, our Gluten-free Parmesan Cigars are lovely bites to serve with drinks or as part of an antipasti selection. There’s something very satisfying about nibbling one from end to end! ….
There’s a casual little Japanese eatery not far from us that we used to drop into quite often, where we’d invariably order, along with other favourites, the Nasu Dengaku, miso-glazed eggplant. This is a Japanese classic, a very common dish in Japan. Fortunately for me, the version our local makes is Gluten-free Miso-glazed Eggplant, which is really delicious – so delicious I decided I had to try to replicate it at home ….
This has to be the easiest biscuit you could ever hope to make – even if it did take half a dozen batches to get the recipe just right. (You can never have too many to try!) But while whipping up a batch is simplicity itself, that isn’t the main attraction. The drawcard is the ginger – so if you don’t love ginger stop reading now ….
Once upon a time home cooks across Australia did little to the humble cauliflower other than boiling the florets or occasionally smothering them in gluggy mornay sauce. Understandably, the cauliflower went out of culinary fashion for a while. But recent years have seen a resurgence in popularity as we have learned how to make them tastier and more interesting (due in no small part to the seductive recipes of Yotam Ottolenghi and his love of the blond brassica) ….
A Donburi (meaning ‘bowl’ in Japanese) is a big bowl containing rice topped traditionally with fish, chicken or meat and vegetables simmered in stock. It makes for a hearty meal. In my version I do stick to the big bowl containing rice part of the tradition, and I do top it with fish, chicken or meat and vegetables, I just don’t simmer them in stock, preferring to grill ….
A classic roast has always been a great way to feed a lot of people, but why not try Roasted Barramundi instead the usual lamb or beef. We had our regular gang of ten for a birthday dinner recently and the idea, rather than sweating over a hot stove, was to let the oven do the work. (Okay, confession time, minimal last-minute fuss was the real agenda.) ….
There are many versions of these Cevapi or Cevapcici - Skinless Sausages made throughout the Balkan countries although, since my only connection to these culinary traditions comes from the long-gone waitressing days, there’s no particular claim to authenticity here. What this recipe does promise, though, is very tasty meat, lots of flavour and super-simple preparation ….
