Lady Lunchalot

Did you know that the humble ‘nana is the fourth most popular crop in the world, after rice, wheat and maize? That’s a whole lot of banana skins to slip on…
Feel like going bananas? Celebrate Banana Sunday at Chez Lunchalot on Sunday 11 February.

I received a bolt of inspiration from Kitchen Hand yesterday when a comment that mentioned Sachertorte was left on my post about Apricot and Brandy Jam. I’d come across a recipe for Sachertorte a few months ago in the November 06 issue of Gourmet Traveller. It looked amazing - like a very glamorous, grownup kind of chocolate cake - so I decided to make it as dessert for our Australia Day barbecue.

This is fairly complex to make, as far as cakes go. There are a few steps, so it’s certainly not a bung-it-all-in-the-mixer-and-hope-for-the-best kind of a cake.

I started by melting about 150g of good quality dark chocolate over a saucepan filled with water. While this was happening I creamed a heart-stopping amount of butter (which I am too embarrassed to even mention here) with a third of a cup of caster sugar. The melted chocolate and butter/sugar are then mixed together with TEN egg yolks. No, that’s not a typo, there are 10 eggs in this recipe. Dix. Dieci. Diez. Zehn.

This is not a cake for those with cholesterol problems.

Once you’ve mixed the yolks with the chocolate mix, whip the egg whites with the rest of the sugar until stiff peaks form, and then gently fold together with the chocolate mixture. Put in two springform pans and bake for about 40 minutes.

When cooled, spread the top of one cake with apricot and brandy jam and make a jam sandwich by placing the other cake on top. Make a chocolate ganache with the cream and the rest of the chocolate and ooze over the top of the cake and smooth over the sides.

Eat a large slice, with enthusiasm, as illustrated by our little friend below. He did it just right - the evidence is all over his shirt.

The scent of mango has been haunting my kitchen. I bought a couple of exquisite mangos from the Fruiteria in Yarraville. They smelled so tropical and summery, I couldn’t bring myself to put them in the fridge, so I left them in a bowl by the kitchen door and let the scent waft through the house for a day or so.

When I got home from work last night I knew that I either had to eat them or cook them quickly, as they would have been past their prime within the next day or so. They were so lovely, I couldn’t bear to see them vanish (even if it was down my throat) so I decided to preserve them a little longer in a chutney.

Ingredients

• Two very ripe, large mangoes, chopped
• 3 large apples, peeled and chopped
• Half a cup of vinegar
• A couple of cinnamon sticks
• Juice from half a lemon
• Half a red capsicum
• 1.5 cups of sugar
• Some sultanas
• A healthy-sized knob of fresh ginger, grated
• Nutmeg, cinnamon, curry powder, galangal, salt, coriander seeds to taste. (Go easy on the curry powder)

Mix everything except the spices and lemon juice in a pot and simmer for about 20 minutes until the fruit is mushy. Mix in spices. Pour into sterilised jars and seal. Process in a hot water bath for 15 minutes.

I’ve been feeling guilty that everyone at work keeps bringing in their empty jars for me and it’s been a while since I reciprocated with some jam, so I picked up a kilo of apricots on the way home from work tonight.

There’s something so soothing about making a few jars of jam. It’s such an old-fashioned ritual that takes no time at all. Tonight I managed to make a few jars of apricot and brandy jam in about 40 minutes while I pottered around in the kitchen.

Ingredients

• 1kg of apricots. Don’t choose ones that are too ripe - you want some hard ones as they have a good amount of pectin
• 1kg of sugar
• Juice from half a lemon
• A couple of generous slugs of brandy
• A vanilla bean
• A cup of water

Halve the apricots and remove the stones. Put the apricots in a big pot with the water and lemon juice. Simmer for about 15-20 minutes until the apricots are mushy. Keep stirring - otherwise the apricots will catch on the bottom and burn and your jam will be dark brown, not apricot-coloured.

While this is happening, take as many stones as you have jars. Wrap the stones in a tea towel and crack them gently with a hammer. Throw away the shells and keep the kernel - the part that looks like an almond. Put them in a bowl with the brandy and set aside.

Once the apricots are ready, add the sugar and opened vanilla bean (scrape out the seeds and put it all in the pot) and bring it all to a rolling boil. Let it go for about 15-20 minutes until you get a set. Then add in the brandy and kernels.

Pour into sterilised jars and seal, with one kernel going into each jar. The apricot kernel lends an almond tang to the jam which goes very well with the vanilla. Believe it or not, the almond flavour actually comes from cyanide, which is often found in stone fruit pits, so don’t get tempted to sit down and eat a few kilos of kernels!

I’m ecstatic. The most exciting staple in the world has recently arrived back on Australian shelves after almost a year away.

Yes, it’s that luscious golden fruit - the banana!

Australia spent most of 2006 largely bananaless after a cyclone tiptoed its way through the top end of Australia with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, wiping out 95% of the country’s banana crop. Australia won’t import bananas from other countries, so we saw prices skyrocket up past $16 a kilo. At that price, those sunshine-yellow crescents may as well have been made of gold.

Yes. We had no bananas. (Sorry, couldn’t resist).

‘Nanas are beloved by just about everyone, so we all felt their absence. Old people with no teeth. Teenagers who have just had their braces tightened. Schoolkids who transform their school bags into petri dishes with mushy brown ones leftover from lunch last month. Multi-tasking mums who can mash them with a fork in one hand while strapping a baby into a high chair with the other. Hungover office workers who crave them in a smoothie the morning after a big night out. Ok, maybe that last one is just me.

After Cyclone Larry flexed his muscles up north, bananas disappeared from cafe and restaurant menus around the country. No more banana pancakes, muffins, smoothies or cakes. No banana bread. No banana chips or banana ice cream. No more golden discs of sweet banana to cool a hot mouth after a spoonful of curry.

In short, the banana had split.

But now they’re back! With prices back down to a more palatable $3 per kilo, banana lovers no longer need to sell their first-born to get a bunch of those yellow beauties in their fruit bowl. And what better way to celebrate the return of our favourite fruit than with a Banana Sunday!

On Sunday 11 February I invite banana-lovers from around the world to take part in Banana Sunday and celebrate the return of the prodigal banana to Australian fruit bowls with a banana-fest. Where? Right here at Chez Lunchalot!

How to Take Part in Banana Sunday

1. Prepare your favourite banana recipe and post it on your site.
2. Email me a permalink, your name, a summary of your dish and a photo by Sunday 11 February. You can get me at ladylunchalot at iprimus dot com dot au.
3. I’ll post them all here by Monday morning, when we can all go bananas.

If you haven’t got a blog to post your dish on, just email it to me anyway.

Happy peeling and Go Bananas!

I’ve been on a bit of a mango binge lately, which isn’t unusual for me at Christmas time. For those of you in the northern hemisphere it might seem a little strange, but for me Christmas is all about mango juice dripping off my chin, bowls of gleaming cherries like shiny tree decorations, plums, apricots, peaches and an endless supply of seafood.

Mmmm…

So I decided to make a mango mousse for our New Year’s Eve barbecue. Mango mousse is the ultimate summer dessert. It’s just a mix of pureed mangoes, whipped cream, sugar, egg white and gelatine. Mix it together (being careful to fold the egg whites and whipped cream in - you want to keep those tiny air bubbles intact), pour it into a big bowl and let it set in the fridge for a few hours.

However I messed up my gelatine estimate and my mousse didn’t set, so we had a kind of mango custard instead (if you change the name no one will ever know it didn’t actually work!). As per usual, I’d catered for an army, so there was a huge tub of leftover mousse in the fridge the next morning. The logical place to put it was in the ice cream maker that Za and Thomas gave O and I for a wedding present - thanks guys! I’ve just had a bowl, and I’ve got about a litre of it in the freezer. Leftover mango mousse makes the BEST mango ice cream ever.

I’ve always wanted to make mayonnaise, but my lazy streak had always got the better of me. Deliciously decadent handmade mayo takes A LOT of beating to get right, and if your arm isn’t up to it your mayo will curdle before you can say Fatty Boombah.

I was thinking of mayo as I made a salad for our new years barbecue last night, and I had a bit of time up my sleeve and realised that there is a KitchenAid mixer taking pride of place in our kitchen now, so I don’t need to exhaust my biceps in the quest for the perfect mayonnaise anymore.

I started with three egg yolks, a pinch of salt and a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, and then gradually added in about 300ml of olive oil over the course of about 20 minutes. The KitchenAid did all the work really, I just had to make sure that the egg yolk and olive oil emulsified properly without curdling so I added the oil in very small amounts. Patience, when cooking, is definitely a virtue, and the kitchen is pretty much the only place in which I have the patience of a saint!

The mixture gradually became paler and whiter as it emulsified. Once all the oil was mixed in and accepted by the egg yolks I added some sugar and finely chopped parsley.

The results were drizzled all over my salad, and I still have leftovers in the fridge for sandwiches. Yum!