NOW AND THEN

I made Melting Moments last weekend. If you don’t know what they are, they’re a butter kiss – or kiss of death – in a biscuit, stuck together with lemon butter cream. In this case, though, I used peppermint spiked pink icing, because it’s the way I used to make them as a teenager, bored in the suburbs, just wanting to grow up quickly, please...

To pass the time I taught myself to bake. I made these a lot, along with anything deliberately fanciful like marble cake, and coconut ice, and toffee... it was an area of the kitchen I could own while my mum made all the grown-up things like breakfast, lunch, dinner, round the clock, day in, day out.

Old enough to learn to cook, and try on one of the aprons we were implicitly told were the uniform of womanhood. Young enough to turn up my nose at lemon cream and choose peppermint instead. You’re in luck. In the old days I used green food colouring for the icing. 

Melting Moments

Makes 15 biscuits

250g butter

1/3 cup icing sugar

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1/2 cup cornflour

Icing

60g butter

1/2 cup icing sugar

1/4 tsp peppermint flavouring, or to taste

1-2 drops of red food colouring

Heat oven to 180C. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add sifted flours, mix well. Roll into balls the size of 20 cent pieces, place on a greased biscuit tray, and press with a fork. Bake for 12-16 minutes or until golden. Cool on a wire rack, and then sandwich with peppermint icing.

Icing: Beat butter until smooth, and gradually add sifted icing sugar, beat until mixture is light and creamy. Add peppermint flavouring and food colouring.

At some point baking got replaced by things like boys and beaches, P plates, parties and all the tomorrows my girlfriends and I spent plotting together... Then the world, and all there was to conquer. And suddenly it’s 25 years since I last made a batch of these.

I went to an all-girl’s school that told us we could be anything. We were kind of ladylike in our pleated skirts, but really we were warriors with our bow and arrows hidden in our hockey bag. Our female teachers, however, forgot the qualifier: yes, you can do anything, but only within reason because you can’t do it all at once.   

Being in touch with those old school friends over these years – many of them mothers now – some are rueful, some grateful that we were never told then we couldn’t do it all. We didn’t even know what that meant, but in our neck of the woods it has come to look like the career, or family, or the freedom to have a room of one’s own. Hardly a new discovery, but only because it’s turned out to be so common, and suddenly we understand our mothers more than we ever anticipated when we were slamming the door in their faces.   

Meeting up with the amazing women I once knew as girls at our 20 year reunion last year, that fierce determination looks more like stamina choreographed into an intricate ballet of grace. Most of us have been lucky, no matter the road. Not just because in Australia being a girl does not make you a second class citizen, but also because of the gift of education and self belief we were given as girls: You can do anything. You can be anything. That is our bow and arrow.

Not so for all girls. Check out this, I Am A Girl, and pass it on.

And to close, a taste of summer, just around the corner. 

Prawn Salad with Omelette, Peanuts and Honey Basil Dressing

 Angasi in Binalong Bay, Tasmania

Serves 6

3 eggs

2 tbsp pouring cream

1 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped

1/4 cup peanut oil

30 green prawns, peeled, deveined with tails intact

2 cups mixed baby salad leaves

3/4 cup roasted (unsalted) peanuts

Honey basil dressing

1 1/2 cups basil leaves

2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

1/3 cup olive oil

Place eggs, cream, and parsley in a bowl, season with sea salt and black pepper and whisk to combine. Heat 1 tbsp of peanut oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat and pour in the egg mixture, ensuring it coats the entire base of the pan. Cook for 4-5 minutes or until the underside of the omelette is golden and the egg is set. Remove from the pan and drain on paper towel. Roll up and slice into thin strips.

For the dressing combine the honey, vinegar and oil. Stir until the honey is dissolved, and then add 1 cup of basil leaves, finely sliced. Season and set aside.

Heat the remaining oil in a large fry pan over medium high heat. Cook the prawns in 2 batches, stirring until just cooked through.

In a large bowl combine salad leaves, nuts, omelette, prawns and 1/2 cup basil leaves. Toss with the dressing and serve immediately.  

WINTER COMFORT

It’s at this time of year I start making the gratitude list that gets you through to spring – you know the one. The daily reminder of a small pleasure or small measure of beauty here and there to cheer the soul when a weak sun goes down by 5 in the afternoon, you get caught in a perfect storm and the walls are closing in. This past week in Sydney town the sky has weeped for six days and nights. Non stop. So I come back to this 

and this

and this...

I always associated poppies with remembrance, but learnt recently that in the Victorian language of flowers, they communicate fantastic extravagance. I like the sentiment. Right now when the trees are bare, this blooms.

The upside of the dead of winter is all that comfort food lavishly laid out in food mags, tempting with their medieval banquet-sized feasts of puddings and pies, pastas with rich ragus and roasts, roasts, roasts finally has the opportunity to intersect with the reality of freezing your arse off, and the body clocks shift into carbing up for survival. Hibernate, eat!

I love the word cassoulet, almost as much as I love eating it. But as duck confit is involved in this classic dish and its richness not advisable on a daily basis, I have a far more pared back imitation on standby which is virtuously good for you. Leeks, beans, tomatoes, herbs and a bit of chorizo sausage. It’s simple, the oven warms my apartment and the meal warms my soul. It’s honest, rustic, comfort food without the comfort padding.

Sausage and bean stew

From marie claire fresh

Serves 4

2x400g tins cannellini beans, rinsed

5 ripe Roma (plum) tomatoes, roughly chopped

400g tin chopped tomatoes

1 leek, roughly chopped

8 garlic cloves, peeled

1 tbsp picked thyme leaves

250ml (1 cup) white wine 

350g chorizo sausage

1/2 cup roughly chopped parsley

Preheat the oven to 180C. Put the beans, tomatoes, leeks, garlic, thyme and white wine into an ovenproof casserole dish.

Prick the skins of the sausages and sear in a frying pan over high heat until they are browned on all sides. Cut the sausages into pieces and throw in to the casserole dish. Stir together, then cover the dish with a lid or foil and put in the oven for 1 hour.

Sprinkle with the parsley and serve with warm bread.

And then dessert. The combination of gingerbread – texturally and taste wise, with the sweetened rhubarb always says July to me.

Rhubarb gingerbread sponge pudding

from cuisine.com.au

Serves 8

500g rhubarb

125g caster sugar

1/3 cup golden syrup

185g plain flour

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp cinnamon

a pinch of nutmeg

pinch salt

125g butter

3 tbsp brown sugar

1 egg

2 tbsp milk

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Cut the rhubarb into 3cm pieces and put in the bottom of a well buttered 1 litre ovenproof dish, with the caster sugar.

Measure the golden syrup and stand measuring cup in hot water so that the syrup will run freely.

Sift the flour, spices and salt together.

Cream the butter and brown sugar until pale and fluffy, then beat in the syrup.

Beat in the egg. Fold in the spiced flour.

Heat the milk, stirring in the bicarbonate of soda until completely dissolved. Add to the batter. Mix well and spoon the batter over the rhubarb ad bake for about 35 minutes until pudding is well browned and when skewered the rhubarb is soft.

Serve with thick cream or mascarpone.

Have a great week.