A SALAD AND TOMATO TARTE TATIN

Hello there. A quick post I’ve had on hold for a couple of months. There’s been time but somehow it just kept leading away from here to the printed page (check out the recommended reads at the side...). So so late, but worth trying this simple tart if tomatoes are in season in your neck of the woods. But first the salad as Blogger is stuffing with the settings and I’m done fighting it!

Warm Asparagus Salad with Walnuts, Parmesan, Lemon and Olive Oil

from Gourmet Traveller Italian Cookbook

(Serves 4 as a side)

2 bunches asparagus, trimmed and cut diagonally into 5 cm lengths

extra virgin olive oil

80g walnut halves, toasted

100g ricotta*

50g parmesan

basil leaves, to serve

juice of 1 lemon

Cook asparagus in boiling salted water for 1-2 minutes. Drain and transfer to a bowl. Toast the walnuts and then add to the asparagus. Add a lug of olive oil, and season to taste.

Transfer to your serving platter/bowl and scatter with parmesan, ricotta and basil leaves. Drizzle with lemon juice and serve immediately.

If you want this to look picture perfect, the original recipe used firm ricotta, crumbled, and shaved parmesan, of which I had neither on the Saturday afternoon I threw it together from the leftovers in my fridge.

Tomato Tarte Tatin

from Home Beautiful

(Serves 6)

8 roma tomatoes, slice into 1.5 cm slices

30g butter

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp white balsamic vinegar

sea salt and freshly ground pepper to season

2 sheets puff pastry, defrosted

thyme leaves

Preheat oven to 220C. Line 2 oven trays with baking paper. Lay tomato slices flat on trays. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until slightly dry. Allow to cool on trays. Heat butter in a frying pan over a medium heat. Cook onion in the pan for 6-8 minutes, until softened but not coloured. Sprinkle onions with sugar and cook, stirring for 2 minutes until onions are caramelised. Stir in white balsamic vinegar until combined. Remove from heat and turn off element.

Using a 20cm springform cake tin, layer the bottom with tomato slices until completely covered (the side of the tomato that was face up during baking should now be face down on the bottom). Season with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle onion mixture over the tomatoes. Place both sheets of puff pastry directly on top of the tomato and onion and fold in the corners.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until puffed and golden. Stand for 5 minutes. Remove springform part of the cake tin. Place a plate on top and invert. Scatter thyme leaves on top. Cut into wedges and serve.

GOING WITH THE SEASON

2012 ended with a whimper, not a bang, in my house. The world didn’t end (for those who planned for it, you have a lot of tinned food to get through and a bunker to spring clean), and the eating, drinking, xmas party fatigue gave way to slothful holiday behaviour. 

I did manage to pop one eyelid half open to note that the cherry farmers were banging on about the best cherry season EVER. Hard to ignore, particularly given cherries are a must on an Australian Christmas table, and weather conditions are so all over the shop we don’t know when we’ll see a season like it again.

So, seize the day I did, or Boxing Day night to be more calendar precise. This Burnt Butter, Cherry and Almond Torte, went down a treat. According to Karen Martini, it’s just as delicious with raspberries, blackberries or figs, so you adapt it to what’s in season (fig torte in April perhaps?). This cherry-laden version is a fine end to a meal (beef fillet, stuffed onions, pumpkin and macadamia salad, and roast potatoes). *Not too sweet, though the next time I make it, I may leave out the almond essence. I felt it gave it a note of artificiality. 

One word of advice. Make it several hours in advance. A couple of stages of the recipe require you cool the ingredients to room temperature, which threw my timing.

Sorry there’s wasn’t a piece left to show you the glorious flakey cakey base. It was polished off with a lot of red wine, and family stories from the annals. Another holiday season survived, now to the new year healthy eating resolutions... 

Happy 2013. I hope it’s marvellous for one and all.  

Cherry and Almond Burnt-Butter Torte

from Karen Martini’s Feasting

(Serves 8)

cooking spray

180g butter

1 1/2 vanilla beans, split, seeds scraped and cut into fine splinters

5 egg whites

pinch of salt

340g icing sugar, sifted, plus extra for dusting

110g plain flour

100g ground almonds

1/2 teaspoon almond essence*

2 tbsp flaked or slivered almonds

300g cherries, pitted and halved

creme fraiche, to serve

ice-cream (an optional extra for those who can’t live without)

Preheat the oven to 160C if fan-forced, if conventional set it at 180C. Line a 24x5 cm fluted tin (with a loose base) with baking paper and spray with cooking spray. 

Melt butter in a small saucepan. Add the vanilla beans and seeds and cook over medium heat for 4-5 minutes or until the mixture darkens and smells nutty. Pour into a bowl and cool to room temperature. Remove some of the vanilla splinters and set aside for garnish.

Whisk egg whites with a pinch of salt in a large bowl until soft peaks form. Add half the icing sugar and combine, then fold in the remaining icing sugar, flour and ground almonds. Stir through the burnt vanilla butter and almond essence. 

Pour mixture into the tin and scatter over almonds and cherries (reserving a few for garnish). Bake for 1 hour or until the tart is puffed and just set. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature, making sure to remove the fluted tin once it’s cool enough to touch (you can do this by placing it on an elevated base, and loosening the fluted part slowly and gently).

Dust with icing sugar and garnish with reserved cherries and, if you like, vanilla-bean splinters. Serve with creme fraiche, and if you must, ice-cream! 

SUNDAY MORNING SPECIALS

After visiting New York City last year, I came back completely enamoured with the ritual of Sunday brunch, but so rarely do I stray from the weekend morning routine of a couple of eggs on toast, that it has taken an entire year to build this post... Scrambled eggs and Bloody Mary's just don't look that blog-able, even though they're delicious. However, all that cream and vodka before midday just doesn't seem like a routine one should endorse publicly (ahem), so here's something completely different.    

I busted out the bread-less brekkie this past weekend. No recipe needed, just some roasted rhubarb (sprinkled with sugar, in a 180C oven in a baking dish covered with foil, cooked for 15-25 minutes: it is ready when the knife slips through easily.) Cool the rhubarb, layer with toasted rolled oats, Greek yoghurt, and some toasted slivered almonds. Wakes up the palette in three seconds flat, even if coffee is still needed to put my brain into first gear...

Bill Granger's Coconut Bread from his first cookbook Sydney Food needs a bit more preparation, but it is easy to freeze slices of it, and have it at the ready for the occasional treat. Just defrost, toast and serve it with butter. 

Coconut Bread

(Makes 8-10 slices)

2 eggs

300ml milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 1/2 cups plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

1 cup caster sugar

150g dessicated coconut

75g unsalted butter

to serve

butter

icing sugar

Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly whisk eggs, milk and vanilla together.

Sift flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a bowl, add sugar and coconut, and stir to combine. Make a well in the centre and gradually stir in the egg mixture until just combined. Add melted butter and stir until the mixture is just smooth. Don't overmix.

Pour into a greased and floured 21x10cm loaf tin and bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour, or until bread is cooked when tested with a skewer.

Leave in the tin to cool for 5 minutes, and remove to cool further on a wire rack. Serve in thick slices, toasted, buttered and dusted with icing sugar.

Poached egg, Asparagus and Smoked Salmon

Another favourite when I've jumped on the carb-free wagon for short-lived attempts at virtue, is a poached egg, smoked salmon and asparagus. 

I thought this might be a good change of habit, having just spent a week in LA eating a lot of pizza (more on that later). The West coast didn't disappoint in the brunch stakes either. This is 3 Square's twist on Eggs Florentine (which I'm such a sucker for it is all I ever order). The snow peas and spinach cover some fairly sinful brioche beneath, but as you can see they don't smother their eggs in hollandaise sauce. 

Ideally, I would eat this every Sunday, which is why I haven't skilled up to make a good hollandaise, or that Bloody Mary. Some things are best left to the experts, and to really special Sunday brunch dates. And to New Yorkers, who I hope will return to their routines soon.  

GREEN DAYS

My northern hemisphere friends scoff when I moan about Sydney winters. If it doesn’t snow, then it’s not really cold, and if you haven’t been caught in a blizzard, then you really don’t know what cold is, and I’m just a big girl’s blouse, or something like that. But I guess the thing is, Sydneysiders, come winter, go into denial. We don’t dress for it, heat the house for it, or believe in it. And then suddenly, bam, it’s cold, it’s dark, and we’re left wondering, what happened?

Some of us go into a funk by about July. Somewhat pathetic I know, given there’s still sun, oh, about 10 hours of the day, but, actually, it’s just SAD: Seasonal Affective Disorder. Yes, it actually happens here. Or maybe it’s better renamed, the long slow maddening wait for the first hint of spring!

Asparagus comes up just as the days lengthen a little, and winds with a hint of summer arrive. Spring breaks, and sweet relief, there’s a whole new outlook and a whole new menu. Try as I might to eat seasonally (and often fail), this is one vegetable I set the clock by, mainly because it’s become a marker of a shift out of the dark.

I must have needed the ritual a little more this year. After months of braises, rich pastas, roasts, root vegetables, I was hanging out for broad beans, and snow peas, and all things green. Here I’ve tried to use just about every item of produce listed as springing: parsley, mint, garlic, peas, broad beans, beetroot, goat’s cheese, and, of course, asparagus.

This salad, adapted from a Gourmet Traveller recipe in the September 2012 issue, just about covers it.

Poached Chicken, Broad Beans and Radish Salad, with Garlic Dressing

Servers 2 for a light lunch, with leftovers

Poached chicken

2 chicken breasts

500ml chicken stock (or enough to cover the chicken in a saucepan)

2 spring onions halved

Garlic dressing

3 garlic cloves, peeled

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 egg yolk

1 anchovy fillet, finely chopped

200 ml olive oil

lemon juice, to taste

Salad

1 bunch baby asparagus

4 radishes, quartered

2 handfuls of sugarsnap peas

300g broad beans (frozen)

1/2 cup each of mint and parsley, torn

2 tbsp chervil

The chicken needs to be poached in advance, at least 3 hours before assembling the rest of the recipe. For the basics on poaching chicken please refer to the Kitchn’s method. In this case I've used chicken stock and spring onions as the poaching liquid.

For the dressing, blanch and refresh the garlic cloves. Add garlic, vinegar, mustard, egg yolk and anchovy to a food processor and blend smooth. With the motor still running, add oil in a thin, steady stream until combined. Add lemon juice to taste, and season.

Blanch asparagus (2-3mins) and refresh, peas (1 min), and broad beans (boil until they rise to the surface, and remove progressively with a slotted spoon). Pod the broad beans.

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, herbs and radishes included, and toss with the dressing.

Serve with crusty bread and a white wine, such as riesling.

 And this from Neil Perry.

Roast Beetroot Salad with Goat’s Curd

Serves 4 as a starter and two as a light lunch

4 beetroot, washed

extra virgin olive oil

3 tbsp red wine vinegar

see salt and pepper

1 oak leaf lettuce (or baby cos), washed and dried

1/2 cup walnuts roasted and broken into pieces

250g goat’s curd

Preheat the oven to 180C. Put the unpeeled beetroot in a roasting tin, with 250ml (1 cup) of water. Cover the tin with foil and bake for an hour or until a knife passes easily through the beetroot. Remove from the oven and cool.

When cool enough rub the skin off the beetroot. Quarter each beetroot and place in a bowl. Drizzle with 1 tbsp of red wine vinegar and some olive oil. Season.

Arrange the lettuce over the plates. Divide the beetroot equally. Sprinkle with walnuts and place a few dollops of goat’s curd about. Drizzle a little more oil and red wine vinegar. Season and serve.

If you have leftover chicken and dressing, it is almost the consistency of a mayonnaise and will keep in the fridge for a day or two. I used it in a chicken sandwich the next day with some of the oak leaf lettuce. Mighty fine. Eat with gusto.

Later x

WINTER WEEKENDS

This is my special place. Killcare, up on the central coast of New South Wales. Surrounded by national park, the beach is still wild and untouched, an Australian beach of yesteryear.  

On one side of the escarpment is Putty Beach, the other the serene village of Hardy’s Bay. I’m a dog person so one of the enduring appeals of this place is the four legged are allowed off the leash once on the sand. It makes for great for Sunday morning entertainment. 

Killcare had receded into the past for me. Another time and place. For 10 years a group of us would come here every summer. Marriages, kids, mortgages brought that era to a close, but a couple of weekends ago one of our posse celebrated her 40th by returning.

It’s winter here, but when the skies are clear and the wind slaps, the brave still take a dip in the ocean. Killcare is my favourite kind of weekend: a hectic schedule of eat, beach, swim, followed by eat, nap, drink, and then more eating.

Radicchio is in season, and I’m always on the lookout for recipes that make use of its bitter flavour. I once sat in on a cooking demonstration by Alex Herbert of Bird Cow Fish fame. She crisped it up and served it with quail. Here Karen Martini matches it with calamari. 

Calamari with Potato, Radicchio and Fried Breadcrumbs

check out the recipe on Karen's website

This salad isn’t for the faint hearted. The aniseed taste from the fennel, the bitter leaves of the radicchio, and the intense hit of garlic and chilli, make for big flavours. I love it though. Served with champagne, it is a perfect winter lunch by the sea... Followed by dessert down at the Killcare General Store!

PS It’s been a restaurant month rather than a cooking month at ToM and the highlight was the discovery of the Three Blue Ducks cafe in Bronte, Sydney. They focus on seasonal produce and have their own veggie patch out the back of the restaurant.

This was lunch. Check out their menu here. Can’t wait for their cookbook. 

Calamari with pearl barley, parsley, spicy chorizo and almond gazpacho

Crispy skin ocean trout with wakame & cucumber salad and a wasabi mayo

AN ENGLISH MINI-BREAK

Recently, I had four days to kill at the end of a London work trip, and someone recommended the wilds of the north Norfolk coast as the perfect mini-break. Hiring a car, I headed for Cambridge for a dose of uni nostalgia and history, 

beer, and a bit of a punt. 

I snuck in the back of St John’s College, 

to see how it’s really done, 

before wandering through the town centre. Above is the famous Bridge of Sighs.

But my real destination was Norfolk’s Holkham, a tiny village clustered around a large estate home, 

with the added lure of its famous beach (cue last scene of Shakespeare in Love, Gwyneth roaming across said sand) and big reputation as a foodie mecca.

The Victoria is the culinary destination of the region, and serves a pretty mean fish pie. But it is The Globe Inn in Wells-next-the-Sea, that dishes up effortlessly lovely fare. Though the region is famous for Cromer crab, it wasn’t on the menu that day. There was seafood risotto though... 

... followed by a gorgeous lemon poppyseed cake, which I was inspired to recreate here, now I’m home on the other side of the world. 

Lemon Poppyseed Cake

125g butter, with extra for greasing tin

1 1/4 cup caster sugar

2 tbsp poppyseeds
1 lemon, zested
3 tbsp lemon juice

2 eggs, beaten

1 1/4 cup plain flour

1 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a 20cm diameter cake tin. Cream the butter and sugar with electric beaters until light and fluffy. Add poppyseeds, lemon zest and juice and mix well. Add eggs and mix well. Sift flour and baking powder and add in batches alternately with the milk. Pour mixture into tin and smooth the top. Bake for 10 minutes, then turn down oven to 170C and cook for a further 55 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Remove and cool cake on a rack.

If you want icing, use 1 lemon (zest and juice) and mix with 225g icing sugar until smooth, or dust with icing sugar and serve with cream.

Back to normal (read: more regular) programming in the next couple of weeks. Looking forward to hunkering down, and cooking some hearty winter fare.