You daft 'nana

No, not nanna, like someone's delightful elderly relative. 'Nana, the bent ones, smoothie sweeteners, tropical pre-packaged baby food. My mother swears calling someone a daft 'nana is a legitimate insult. I rather think that anyone that uses it as an insult deserves to be called it themselves. In honour of Nanna like 'nana insults, here is a lovely little banana cake recipe. It is moist and not overly sweet, the lemon icing gives it a citrus tang that reminds me of lemonade icypoles. I like to let a few little lemon pips escape into the icing... there is something delightfully rustic and homemade about a lemon pip plopped in the middle of a perfectly smooth lake of glistening icing. I like to wonder how the  lemon seed feels about it's fate,  is it naive to its situation as a social pariah, fit only for the company of vagrant olive pips and choking fish bones? Is it proud of it's role as proof that the icing contains nothing but natural ingredients, 'I'm an organic lemon pip and I'm here to tell you that no artificial colourings or flavourings were used in the making of this frosting!' I wonder why the lemon seed has such a deep voice when it's really such a little pip-squeak?

Banana cake with lemon icing, carrot cake with cream cheese, lumberjack with golden coconut; these were the cakes of my childhood. Mum would make huge slabs of them to sell at the bush-market, neatly sliced and packaged into perfect rectangles of cellophane wrapped country love. Whizzing up mountains of butter and sugar into creamy peaks in the biggest bowl in the house. This cake has a little less sugar, a little less wheat, a little more protein in the form of almond meal. I'm not sure that that qualifies it as healthy but it's good enough justification for me. Plus it's fruit, surely that can't be bad.

Banana cake

125g softened and cubed salted butter

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2-3 very ripe bananas, mashed

I vanilla pod, split and scraped

150g spelt flour

100g almond meal

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground allspice

1/2 cup milk mixed with 1tsp lemon juice

1/2 cup icing mix

1 lemon, juiced

Preheat oven to 180°C. Butter a loaf tin and line the base with baking paper.

Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in eggs, banana and seeds from the vanilla pod.

Add dry ingredients to mixture a little at a time, alternating with milk.

Pour batter into the lined tin and bake for 50mins-1hr or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. 

Cool for 5mins in tin and then turn out onto a wire rack. Ice once completely cool.

To make icing, sift sugar into a bowl and add enough lemon juice to bring icing to desired consistency. Spoon onto cake and smooth with a palate knife.

A little on the nose

To be perfectly honest, I'm not too sure about truffles. I think that I was scarred by working in a restaurant that doused everything in an obscene amount of truffle oil. I would go home at the end of the night with my nostrils indelibly imprinted with the unmistakable aroma of truffle. To me, over time, the smell became indistinguishable from that of dirty socks and bad b.o. I thought I had been ruined for truffles forever.

So when my mother presented me with a fresh Australian black truffle I approached it with some trepidation. Luckily this little nugget smelt very little like the abomination that is truffle oil. In fact, most truffle oil does not contain any actual truffle but is a combination of an ether, which is one of numerous organic aromas found in actual truffles, and a base oil such as olive oil. Which explains why the oil lacks the complexity and subtlety of a fresh truffle.

The best risotto I ever ate was at a Paul Bocuse restaurant in Lyon (yes, very la-di-da). It was a ridiculously simple risotto bianco topped with a perfectly fried egg. In such a simple risotto the quality of the ingredients and adequate seasoning is absolutely paramount. The stock must be home made, the rice must be the best risotto rice you can afford and the butter must be salted and organic. Embrace the food snob within, you're cooking with truffle goddammit. My mother opens a bottle of Moët to use as her dry white but I have a sneaking suspicion that this may just serve as a rather good excuse to drink the other 690ml.

Truffle Risotto with Fried Egg

based on a recipe from 'French' by Damien Pignolet

serves 4

1.2L home-made chicken stock

50g butter

1 small brown onion, fine dice

500g risotto rice (Carnaroli or Vialone Nano)

60ml dry white wine

30-50g black truffle

60g cold butter, diced

60g parmesan, finely grated

salt & white pepper, to taste

4 eggs

Place truffle, rice and eggs in an airtight container and refrigerate for around 5 days.

Bring stock to the boil. Shave truffle.

Melt 50g butter in heavy based saucepan and sauté onion over medium heat until soft. Add rice and stir until translucent. Add wine to deglaze and stir until evaporated.

Reduce heat to low and add stock to rice a ladleful at a time. Stir constantly, add more stock once previous ladleful is absorbed. 

Begin to check rice after 15 mins, rice is done when just al dente. Use a little water if you run out of stock.

Once desired consistency is reached remove from heat and stir in remaining butter, half the truffle and the parmesan. Stir vigorously to make risotto creamy and oozy. Once butter is well combined, cover pot and rest for 5 mins. Check seasoning and add salt and white pepper to taste.

Meanwhile, heat a little oil in a non stick frypan and fry eggs over low heat until whites are just set.

Serve risotto in warmed bowls, topped with a fried egg and reserved truffle slices.

Jelly Wrestling

About a year ago I spent an extended period of time in a hospital bed. A combination of bad hospital food and high doses of morphine severely curbed my appetite and I could stomach nothing but fruit juice, chicken schnitzels and black tea. My fruit juice cravings transported me into the land of jelly, pretty much the only edible thing that arrived on my hospital tray. So reliant was I on jelly as my primary source of nutrition I burst into inconsolable sobs one evening when the tea ladies failed to deliver the sacred jelly. A year later and with a wisdom tooth extraction or three on the cards I am resurrecting my jelly obsession. But no Aeroplane Jelly for me, I'm going for good old-fashioned fruit juice set with leaf gelatine.

There is a lot to love in jelly land.  There is a certain quality to the wobble of a perfectly set jelly that is undeniably sexual, perfectly mimicking the wobble of a well endowed woman. A wobble that makes the most sensible of us giggle, the most inured of us snicker. A good jelly is smooth and slippery, manna from heaven for the toothless and sore-gummed amongst us. But you don't have to be sick or a child to enjoy a good jelly - although a soupçon of infantilism is indispensable for most adult pursuits. This ridiculously easy jelly is simple Valencia Orange, a good dash of Cointreau would make it a little more grown up but I might leave that 'till I'm off the painkillers.

Orange Jelly

From 'Jelly with Bombas & Parr'

Makes 500ml

Juice from about 4 oranges (to make 300ml)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

100ml sugar syrup

100ml water

5 leaves gold-strength gelatine

Choose a mould that will hold 500ml.

Squeeze oranges, pips and all, into a measuring jug until you have 300ml. Squeeze in the lemon juice.

Add equal quantities of sugar syrup and water to make juice up to 500ml.

Cut leaves of gelatine into a few pieces and place into a heat proof bowl, cover with a few tablespoons juice and leave to soften for 10mins.

Bring a small pot of water to the boil, place bowl of gelatine over simmering water and stir occasionally until completely melted

Pour the remainder of the juice over the gelatine and stir to combine. Pour through a sieve into measuring jug and then carefully fill the mould. Refrigerate until set.

To unmould jelly, dip mould briefly in hot water before turning jelly out.

You little tart

Everyone has their signature dish, their masterpiece, their pièce de résistance. Everyone has an auntie that brings that wombok noodle salad to the BBQ and claims it as her own marvellous invention. We all know that the recipe is on the back of the Chang's fried noodle packet but she insists that if she fails to bring it there'll be a veritable riot clambering for her 'secret' recipe. 

I certainly can not claim this old classic as my own and while I am not saying that this is my signature dish, it has certainly been my 'go to' little number for years. The dish I bring to a pot luck, the fail-safe dessert I serve when I've someone I want to impress. I cooked it the night I first cooked for my boyfriend, the fact that we never got to eat it just goes to show how effective it was. It's so good because it's so familiar,  nothing to challenge, nothing to upset. Perfection in it's simplicity.

Although I am lazy I do make my own pastry because otherwise what would I possibly do with my rather excessive collection of rolling pins? That was a rhetorical question, I am more than capable of using my imagination.

This recipe comes straight from Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion, the only modification I make is to use spelt flour rather than wheat for a nice nut-brown pastry that's a little gentler on the tummy. Like Stephanie I prefer a savoury pastry for this sweet tart, where we differ is in her insistence that the pastry must be made by hand. As far as I am concerned life is far too short not to use a food processor.

Shortcrust pastry

180g butter, cubed, at room temperature

240g white spelt flour

1/4 cup cold water

Whiz butter and flour in a food processor until it resembles bread crumbs.

Add enough water to just bring it together, try not to over process.

Form into a rough disc, wrap in cling film and refrigerate at least 30mins.

Stephanie's Lemon Tart

1 quantity of shortcrust pastry

6 eggs

250g (1cup) caster sugar

zest & juice of 3 large lemons

200ml cream

icing sugar & thick cream to serve

 Line a greased and floured 24cm loose-bottomed deep flan tin with pastry. If you have time you can pop the tart case in the freezer to rest, I like to leave it in there overnight to minimise shrinkage.

Preheat oven to 200°C and bake blind for 20 mins or until pastry is golden brown and firm. Reset oven to 160°C.

Meanwhile, whisk together eggs and sugar, add zest and juice and then cream.

Pour mixture into just-baked pastry case and bake for 35-45 mins until just set, still almost wobbly in the centre.

Cool in tin for at least 30mins, dust with icing sugar and serve in wedges with thick cream.

Quince Charming

I find a quince so imbued with it's own heady fragrance it really needs little embellishment. A little sweet, be it sugar or honey, brings out the floral notes so redolent of Arabian evenings, cardamom and rose water sweet. A quince is nothing if not an introvert, hiding her perfumed beauty beneath a downy fur and presenting a hard exterior to the judging world. She certainly requires perseverance, a slow and tender touch. But our patience is rewarded with soft and yielding rosey hued flesh. 

Every year I witnessed the ritualistic production of quince jelly by my mother and father. Like Süskind's Grenouille they worked on a mountain of the yellow fruit. Chopped, boiled, strained, separated and variously adulterated into the pure essence of quince. The alchemy of cloudy juice transformed into liquid gold is a magic of which I will never grow tired. However, in the absence of a muslin bag, a hook to hang it on or a spare weekend I prefer to bake them simply and slowly. Halved and cored, knobs of butter and spoonfuls of honey, nestled in a baking dish with a little water to keep them moist, covered for 3 hours in a low oven, they are perfectly tender and blushingly pink. Served warm with a splodge of sweetened and cardamon flecked yoghurt, drizzled with the syrupy honey juices, nothing could be simpler or more luscious.

A borrowed heritage

I am oft lamenting, to my oft lamented to boyfriend, the incongruence of our respective cultural heritages. And when I say culture I of course am talking about food.

He grew up in an extended Italian family where every occasion centred around food. The tomato harvest meant the entire clan gathering for the making of passata, liquid summer captured in brown beer bottles that were all boiled up in a 44 gallon drum. Pigs were slaughtered, grapes were pressed and olives were cured as social events where every family member had a job and a place in the hierarchy. These people did self-sufficiency before it was cool. He speaks of a large rambling orchard and of grandmothers that rolled pasta by hand. If they had a family motto it would surely be 'Mangia, mangia' at every opportunity. And what impression has this upbringing had on said boyfriend? Nothing but an increased appreciation and capacity for good food and better company. His grasp of the Italian language and food culture is rudimentary at best.

I would kill to have such a food culture running through my veins. Not to say my mother is not the best cook I know. But if we had any food culture in our blood it would be so working class Australiana it would surely clog an artery. Nothin' but mutton and white sauce running through these veins. Any cooking prowess that Mum possesses she gained through reading, travel and, above all, eating. I love having access to the cultural melting pot that is Australia. That I can happily eat and cook countless different cuisines in the one day without a second thought or a glance at a recipe is testament to the gifts that my mother has given me and the gifts that this city gives me every day. But what I wouldn't give to have been born with an Italian accent, a little European chic and have spaghetti do for me what it's done for Sophia Loren.

So, they say you fake it till you make it and until I'm told otherwise my boyfriend's family is as good as mine. What could be more Italian that using the very last of the season's produce, the green tomatoes that would otherwise go to waste to make delicious Pomodori Verdi Sott' Olio? That's Green Tomatoes in Olive Oil for those of you without my rich cultural heritage!

Turn turn turn....

A new house means a new garden and a farewell to hardy established plants and growing cycles. It is exciting to begin a new garden, to learn from past mistakes and triumphs. While winter may be the time to build these new constructions, I see little to do once the soil, straw and compost are layered neatly in their little beds. A pea planted here or there will be nothing to the frenzied planting of a few months time.
I cannot decide if I prefer spring or summer in the garden. Spring is exciting as soil unveils it's tender little offerings into the air, everything shooting and budding and full of promise. All is lime-green potential, crisp mornings and rosy hued sunsets. Summer is, by comparison, showy, obvious, a corner hussy advertising her wares. All is forbidden fruit and broken promises. The ripeness of fruit ready for the picking is somehow tinged with the regret of death, of rotted flesh, of seasons ebb. A flower only blooms for so long. A fruit ripens but a short while before descending into decay. As the parsley bolts to seed I try to prune and prune and prune, somehow delaying the inevitable parsley-free period of the year. Yet at summer's end, who can deny the beauty of Autumn, the last sweet tomatoes off the vine, the figs and quinces asking for a syrupy baking and a  generous splodge of cream. Aahh, comfort food, hello my old friend. Winter is the quiet achiever of the bunch, a severe schoolmarm who forces us to eat our greens. The much maligned brassica is, luck would have it, the friend of bacon and anchovies and there's always dessert if we manage to get through our veg.

So, like the book and the song say, to every thing there is a season, a time to plant, a time to reap. There is beauty and anticipation in every season. But for me, this year, spring has got my name written all over it.