Lady Lunchalot

I think I am possessed.

Lately I just haven’t been able to get chocolate cake out of my mind. I recently read an article about The Cake Lady. She describes her sure-fire recipe for career success; bring a cake to the office every Monday morning. This woman has baked 50 cakes for her colleagues over the past year. She’s got to be one of the most popular staff members around.

So with less than four weeks until my wedding and a size ten wedding dress at stake, I’m determined to resist the temptation of baking a cake a week. But ever since I read that damn article I’ve been hallucinating about bundts, mud cakes, flourless cakes, black forest cakes, devil’s food cakes, layer cakes and sachertortes.

My head is spinning worse than Linda Blair’s.

So I got home from work last night and went to my cookbook library to see what my exorcists (Nigella and Stephanie) had to say on the subject. I decided to go with Nigella’s Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake recipe from Feast, one of my favourite recipe books. It looked fairly simple, and it was getting late so I wasn’t up for anything too complicated. Besides, I had a tub of sour cream in the fridge that had nearly expired, and what better way to use it than in a chocolate indulgence.

The cake itself was fairly straightforward; sift flour, bicarb, baking powder, sugar and cocoa. Mix in two eggs, a sinful amount of butter, and a few tablespoons of sour cream. Bake until skewer comes out clean. No rocket science here.

It’s the icing on this cake that is really, well, the icing on the cake. Melt chocolate and another artery-clogging wodge of butter. Mix with more sour cream and icing sugar. Spread all over the cold cake in thick concrete-trowel slathers.

Then decorate. Because I was feeling delicate I chose the undisputed queen of all dessert fruits, the strawberry. There is really no competition when it comes to a cake crowned with fresh strawberries.

By now visions of Disney’s dancing hippos were swimming in my head like warning beacons.

I confess, I ate a slice for breakfast this morning. I know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but I couldn’t help it. So I took the rest of the cake in to work with me to share with my colleagues, gain some brownie points and save my hips from a major blowout. Ok, it was also to appease my guilt. After all, there’s no fun in sinning alone.

The exorcism worked. The itch has been scratched. I’ve eaten two teensy little slices and thankfully I am no longer daydreaming of ganache or bathtubs filled with chocolate frosting.

So now that the devil horns have been replaced with my halo again, I am thinking I might just climb back on the wagon and lightly steam some veggies for dinner. After all, the size ten wedding dress is only three and a half weeks away.

Did you know that when you’re eating an apple, you may be eating more than you bargained for?

The other day one of my work colleagues was scraping an apple with a knife edge to see thick flakes of wax floating off the skin. Now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather pass on the apple wax in my diet.

Supermarket apples are glossy and shiny not necessarily because they are fresh and healthy, but because they are waxed, buffed and polished more than a Vogue covergirl.

Real fresh fruit and vegetables (that is, the stuff grown organically straight off a tree) may not look as perfect as the veg you find in your supermarket, but you can rest assured you won’t be getting a mouthful of surprises with every bite. In fact, the only surprise you will get is the amazing flavour, which is so much more intense and honest than you find in mass produced fruit and veg.

So even if it might cost a little more up front, try getting some organic produce in your diet. The amazing flavour will be worth the extra few cents.

I’d never cooked with rhubarb before. Probably because it wasn’t part of my mum’s repertoire, so having not grown up eating it I’d always treated those slender ruby stems with a degree of suspicion.

But O has told me on many occasions how how his nanna used to grow rhubarb at the back of her old house and how much he loved her rhubarb desserts, so the other night I decided to take a walk on the wild side and play with some rhubarb.

This sunburned celery strikes me as a mysterious ingredient. Parts of it - namely, the leaves - are even poisonous, and should be removed straight away. I felt like I was preparing fugu, that Japanese puffer fish dish which brave diners across the world indulge in when they want to place their lives in the hands of their chef.

Like the gender bending tomato, rhubarb is the true drag queen of the veggie patch. It looks so much like a vegetable but walks, talks and tastes like a fruit.
With the leaves removed and disposed off in the compost bin (is that even safe? How poisonous are we talking here?) I chopped up my rhubarb stalks ready for two dishes. Dish 1: Rhubarb crumble. Dish two: Vanilla Rhubarb Jam.

Rhubarb Crumble
The crumble was easy. Just chop up the rhubarb into small pieces, season with cinnamon and a few spices, sprinkle with sugar, top with a crumble topping (mix rolled oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, butter and a bit of flour) and bake until crunchy, gooey and delicious.

Vanilla Rhubarb Jam
The jam was a little more challenging.

I was inspired by a recipe I found at Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once. I made some changes to the original recipe as I was a little worried about the set of the jam, not knowing how much pectin rhubarb contained. So to boost the pectin levels just in case, I tossed in half a punnet of underripe strawberries that I picked up in the supermarket (sadly, the price of strawberries has gone back up now, so my strawberry binge is drawing to a close).

I also peeled a few apples and chopped those up to give the jam a little body. This was about a kilo of fruit altogether, so I mixed it with a kilo of caster sugar and a big long sliced vanilla bean split down the middle.

I looooooooove cooking with vanilla beans. I get so happy when I am served a dessert and see those telltale darkly sweet perfumed specks. I just know it’s going to taste good.

Anyway, the jam cooked on low for about an hour. I was having trouble getting a set and was bracing myself for a few litres of fruity syrup, when I finally got to a set. (To test whether your jam has set, place a small saucer in the freezer until cold, then place a blob of jam on the saucer. Push it with your finger - if it wrinkles and looks “jammy”, it’s done. If it stays runny like icecream topping, it’s not ready yet.)

I’ve been collecting jars for a while now, and had a few different ones on hand, sterilised and ready to go. I wear white cotton gloves from the supermarket when I am dealing with hot jars for preserving so I don’t burn my fingers. It makes the whole thing sooo much easier.

The next morning O and I enjoyed some fresh croissants with home made rhubarb jam! I did have brave ambitions of making some croissants, but that will have to wait until another weekend.

This jam would also be great served in a jam tart. The tartness of the rhubarb (excuse the pun) is a great foil against the vanilla. This jam would be perfect for a grown-up version of that childhood favourite!

Ok, I’ve been feeling pretty tarty lately. And there’s no better time to feel a bit tarty than spring when the strawberries are plentiful, ridiculously perfect and unbelievably cheap.

Don’t you just love it when one of your favourite foods is in season?!

O bought a lamb back from Horsham on Friday. Not, not a cute fluffy Mary-had-a-little-lamb, but a chopped up lamb ready for the freezer. It was kind of a new one for me because I’ve never had that much meat in my kitchen at one time. He paid $75 for the whole lamb (about 20kg) cut up and ready to be frozen, which is a bit of a bargain considering that you’d pay $20 for just a single leg of lamb.

Anyway, he gave one of the legs away, but the other leg was ABSOLUTELY ENORMOUS! There was no way we could eat that on our own, and it was so huge it would have taken an eternity to defrost if I had frozen it. So there was only one thing we could possibly do. Lamb roast for Sunday lunch with eight friends.

With so many bellies to feed, I could feel the culinary juices starting to flow. I’d planned to do the roast on the rotisserie in my beautiful Ilve, but it was too heavy and the spit wouldn’t turn, so instead I studded it with rosemary, garlic and preserved lemon, basted it in olive oil and lemon juice, and roasted it straight on the oven rack. Carve it up and present it on a platter sprinkled with preserved lemon and rosemary. Deelish!

Dessert needed to be tended to as well. I’d bought four punnets of strawberries on Friday, intending to make some strawberry jam at some point over the weekend. The strawberry jam never materialised, so I thought I’d test my patisserie skills and make a strawberry tart and a strawberry pavlova.

The shortcrust pastry for the tart was basically flour and butter rubbed together with a bit of water, and chilled before blind baking in a quiche dish. While it was baking I made a custard for the filling and halved the strawberries for the topping.

Next came the pav. Ever since I was a kid I have always LOVED pavlova. My dad used to take us to the races at Randwick when we were kids and I remember they had the tallest, fluffiest, crunchiest, crispiest pavlovas imaginable. I’ve always wondered how they got them that tall. Today was the day I was going to build my very own sky-scraping tower o’ pav.

It was your standard meringue - egg whites, caster sugar, a dash of vinegar and vanilla essence, and a litle cornflour for some added structure. I also added a few drops of rosewater to give it that fresh flowery springtime flavour. (I am always a little heavy-handed with the rosewater, and this time was no different.) I piled it high and baked it, turning off the oven and leaving the pav in there to crisp up after the roast was finished and the oven had been nice and hot for a few hours.

Topped with cream and strawberries, this is a dessert that really can’t be beat, and the meringue is so light and fluffy it’s perfect after a heavy meal like roast lamb. It wasn’t as high as the pavlovas in the member’s dining room at Randwick during the 80s, but it was up there. Next time I’ll try and add on a few extra levels and a penthouse by baking it in a springform pan.

Strawberry tart filling

This is a custardy filling that you can use for any kind of fruit tart. If you want to tone down the eggyness (which I think is delicious) fold in some whipped cream. This is not really the kind of dish I should be eating 5 weeks before my wedding (dress fitting this Thursday - ergh!) but I’ve been so good lately I couldn’t resist.

The first step is to half fill your sink with cold water in case you need to plunge the saucepan in there if things are getting too hot and out of hand and you need to cool it quickly. Make sure you have some dishes or something on hand to wash afterwards so you can reuse the water instead of wasting it. (For international readers, Australia is in the midst of its worse drought in 100 years, so water is a very precious resource here. We can’t afford to waste a drop.)

In a largish bowl, beat 6 egg yolks with 2/3 cup caster sugar and a healthy tablespoon of cornflour. Over the stove heat half a litre of milk, a generous blob of cream and a vanilla bean split in half until it just starts to boil. The second it starts boiling, remove from the heat and mix it in with the egg mixture until it’s fairly smooth and creamy. You have to be really quick about this - you don’t want the heat of the milk to start cooking the egg before it’s mixed.

Pour the lot into the saucepan (through a strainer to remove the vanilla bean) and stir constantly over a medium heat until it’s thick and just about to boil. Pour into a bowl and put into the fridge to cool. You might want to put a piece of foil or cling wrap over the top of the custard to stop any yucky custard skin from forming as it cools.

Seeing as spring is here and I can’t eat anything fun at the moment, I thought I’d take you for a bit of a tour in my garden.

My ANZAC peach tree. She is having a little bout of peach leaf curl right now and isn’t looking her best. But she’s already got about a dozen peach buds on her that won’t be lasting long once they ripen.

This is the first strawberry of the season!

I bought this bay tree as a tiny seedling last year. It’s still no giant, but is growing strong. I love putting fresh bay leaves in bolognese, or any hearty sauce.

Most of my herbs grow in a half wine barrel by the kitchen door. I haven’t managed to get any new herbs in the soil yet this spring, but the rosemary, sage and dill from last year is still going strong.

Kalamata olives! Well, no olives yet, but one day maybe.

My lemon tree is almost as old as the house. This grand old dame just keeps pumping out these beautiful golden gems month after month.

This is the first ever blossom on my pink lady apple tree. I can’t wait until she grows up and starts producing some gorgeous apples.

Just over five weeks until D-day. I’ve managed to drop a few kilos, but five weeks is just enough time for me to billow back up to my usual size before the wedding, so culinary fun is still severely curtailed. I’m now surviving on a diet of rice cakes and cottage cheese.

However I have enjoyed one shining star in the dark night of dieting. The other night Zoeball, my bridesmaid, friend of 28 years, and partner in gastronomic crime, made a beeyootiful tom yum soup and mango salsa salad. I had given in to a curry at lunch, so was feeling suitably restrained in her amazing dinner.

Zoeball is a master of Asian cuisine, which definitely belies her Polish/Russian heritage! With just a few deft flicks of the wrist she can toss together incredible combinations of chilli, ginger, coriander, mint and whatever else is at hand to make some amazingly light, tasty, summery treats.

Like our personalities, our cooking styles are polar opposites. I love European food, she loves Asian. I cook wintery dishes, she does summer. I’m a meatlover, Zoeball is vegaquarian. I do pasta, she does rice. I am herby, she is spicy. Come to think of it, it’s amazing we can even agree on anywhere to eat, let alone remain friends since we were two years old. I guess opposites attract.

Thank you, Zoeball, for making me such a yummy dinner that was so considerate of my waistline!

Zoeball’s “favourite person”/significant-other-but-not-really (long story) is an expert in the field of marine biology. He was telling her about the real reason that we should buy Australian grown prawns rather than the cheaper imports from South East Asia. It’s not just to support the Australian prawn farmers - apparently prawns from Vietnam, Thailand etc are often farmed in vats of… well… let’s just say that it’s the same brown smelly stuff that used to be pumped into the ocean off Bondi a few years ago. The prawns are then stuffed full of antibiotics, processed and sold.

I don’t know about you, but I like to keep my toilet business completely separate from my dinner plate, and I will definitely be paying the extra few dollars for home-grown prawns from now on.

There’s now just over six weeks until my wedding. This (unfortunately) means that my culinary adventures are on hold until I have a size ten waistline or a “Mrs” in front of my name – whichever happens first.

So the time I usually spend pottering away happily in my kitchen is now spent on a treadmill, a cross trainer or lifting weights. Gastronomically speaking, there’s not much interesting stuff happening. I have been reduced to tuna salad for lunch… day after day after day…

*Sigh*

So while I can’t write about interesting things I have been cooking and eating, I thought I’d post some of the search terms that people have been using in the past few days to find my blog. Google can give us a strange insight into humanity’s consciousness…

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