Cheesy tomato basil quickbread

When I took my first bite of this savoury loaf, I thought I had a complete dud on my hands. However, having promised I’d bring something to work the next day, and it being around 10pm in the evening, I brought it along, hoping everyone would be polite about it. Instead, they were more than polite, so much so that I took this shot on my cellphone so you could see for yourself why my inner foodie had reservations. Basically, my homemade baking powder mixture seems to have lost its nerve, or maybe it just couldn’t rise under the crushing weight of all that melting cheese. Either way, it ended up dense and not fluffy at all. However, this seemed to be what a few people liked about it, since it was super moist, so by all means have a play with the quantities there (see below for recommendations).

Aside from the divisive attitudes about the texture, it had some serious cheesy umaminess going for it, tempered with a sweet/sour tang from the cherry tomatoes and a mild herbaceous-ness from the serious amount of basil in there. Slivered almonds (my new favourite thing to add to just about everything for a bit of perfect crunch) give the impression you’ve gone out and invested in pesto for this, whereas really, you just need a motherload of basil (which my community garden had plenty to supply). The other major bonus is that this is pretty easy overall (I’m trying to use one bowl for most of my baking).

makes quite a lot – I used a deep pyrex 9″ square dish, but you can halve it to make a loaf tin or use the recipe as is for two loaves if that’s all you have tin-wise

• 200ml oil (I used extra virgin olive oil, but milder oils would be fine too)
• 1c water
• about 2c fresh basil
• 1 clove minced garlic (I actually used wild garlic greens, but since most people don’t have that, this is the next best thing)
• 1 T miso paste (or about 20g grated parmesan), or 1/2 T fine sea salt, but it won’t be as cheesy tasting
• 2 eggs
• 3 1/2c flour (pour the flour into the cups)
• 4 tsp baking powder*
• 200g feta, roughly crumbled
• about 1 1/2 c grated cheddar
• optional: handful of slivered almonds
• about 200g cherry tomatoes, halved

*If your baking powder works, then this should be plenty.

Place cherry tomato halves skin side down on a baking tray and pop in your oven, preheat it to 180C. Generously butter your baking dishes and dust with flour, knocking the flour around the pan to coat.

In a large bowl, blitz the first 5 ingredients with an immersion blender (or use a blender or food processor). Beat in eggs.

Sift over flour and baking powder. Scatter feta over top of flour, fold everything together until you get a very wet dough that’s bordering on cake batter (add water or flour to adjust if necessary). Scrape into your prepared baking vessels.

Remove tomatoes from oven, scrape over your batter and arrange evenly(ish). Scatter over grated cheese and then slivered almonds. Bake until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Cool and turn out. Cut into slices if your baking powder was dud too, otherwise cut however you like! Wrap in thick paper bag paper, and eat within 2 days.

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PS. I’ve been enjoying some consistently delicious crusty artisan loaves thanks to Flour Water Salt Yeast (check the link for videos which really help show how easy it is). I’ve always been a lifelong fan of Artisan Bread in 5, however I had no idea why there was such variability in results when I slightly deviated from a recipe. Sure there are plenty of sciencier bread books out there (think Peter Reinhart), but all I wanted were the crucial things that would the make the most difference to me as a home cook. That’s where Flour Water Salt Yeast has really hit the nail on the head – empowering bread bakers to understand the variables that will affect various aspects of their bread without going overboard. I appreciate my digital scales a lot more, have reconceptualised time and temperature as ingredients in their own right, and have applied these new understandings to all breads that I bake, not just the ones in the book. It’s so liberating – I save a lot of anxious uncertainty about how a loaf might turn out if things don’t go exactly to plan.

Magic custard cake with raspberries and caramel sauce

Who can resist a magic custard cake? I found myself trance-like at the supermarket, buying some milk (a rare purchase, since I don’t seem to ever use it), just for this recipe. That’s in italics because I’ve been particularly lazy with following any sort of recipe recently. There is something fascinating about these special cakes which separate into fluffy sponge on top and curd or custard at the bottom. The base of this is admittedly totally different to curd – it’s as solid as the photo suggests but still soft, yet sturdy enough to endure extra gooey things like caramel sauce and raspberries without being overly sloppy. As a base recipe it’s excellent – mildly sweet, although very fragrantly eggy – so really it would work with whatever other desserty condiments you want to play around with.

The only thing I’d add next time are some toasted flaked almonds or crushed toasted hazelnuts for serving, and I think it could be one of those homely looking desserts that end up knocking your socks off. Or if you’re wanting to keep the cake plain like in the original recipe, I’d be inclined to get heavier handed with the vanilla – maybe even scrape the seeds of a whole bean in there, or go in a different direction and add some lemon zest. The cake is your oyster.

Raspberry magic custard cake with caramel sauce

makes one 8×8″ square cake

• 4 eggs, separated
• 150g icing sugar
• 120g unsalted Butter
• 480ml milk
• 1 T (15ml) water
• 115g flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• enough raspberries (fresh or frozen) to cover (I used about 3/4c?)
• 1 Tbs sugar
• 2-3 drops vinegar
• caramel sauce (optional – you will have some left over probably) or more icing sugar to dust

Melt the butter and set aside to slightly cool. Brush the inside of your pan with the melted butter generously, dust with flour to evenly coat. Preheat the oven to 160C (325F). 

Beat the egg whites and vinegar to stiff peaks and set aside.

Warm the milk to lukewarm and set aside. 

While the milk heats, beat the egg yolks and sugar in a medium/large bowl until they pale. Whisk in the melted butter and the tablespoon of water for about until evenly incorporated, then the flour, then the milk and vanilla. Fold in the egg whites a third at a time (a whisk will make this faster) only until no large clumps remain. The batter will be very thin with frothy bits on top.

Place raspberries in your pan and sprinkle with the regular sugar, then pour the batter over. Bake for 30 minutes, if the top is still pale, keep baking and check every 5-10 mins, but if it’s golden brown, test with a skewer, which will come out relatively clean when done. Allow cake to cool before turning upside down onto a plate and cutting. Dust with icing sugar or drizzle with caramel right before you serve.

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Recipe submitted to Sweet New Zealand

Tart basil & white bean dressing, and one way to use it

I’ve only just discovered the deliciousness and versatility of white bean (otherwise known as cannellini bean hummus), which I reckon opens up waaay more opportunities for awesome vegan options in the dip and dressings department. I was lazy lucky enough to pick some up pre-made which makes this dressing (or dip if you use less vinegar/lemon juice) a bit less effort, but of course you’re welcome to make it from scratch too.

Basil from the community garden. Storage tip from Pauline who runs the garden: Pick “stems” of basil like a bunch of flowers and place in a tall glass of water. Makes your basil last over a week!

Basically (and honestly, you don’t need a recipe for this, just willing tastebuds), you blitz the white bean hummus with a generous amount of basil (parsley could work too) and loads of mouth-puckery stuff to thin it – take your pick from lemon juice or vinegars (I used plain old white and a dash of sherry). I also added miso because I’m on a miso-adding craze at the moment (it adds a little umami to everything, and also happens to be crazily good for you and cheap…what’s not to love?!). Or you could add plain yogurt along with some salt to round it all out. Then if you want you can stir in some olive oil at the end. You can of course keep it less tart, but I happened to have lots of whole grainy earthy bitterness in the salad I was using it in, so I wanted plenty of tartness to balance it out. Also I do have a tendency to prefer acidy tasting things. Fair warning has been issued.

Since I had no idea how addictive this dressing was going to be, I don’t *actually* have a picture of it, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying it. Instead I cooked up some bulgur (you could use another small easy-to-cook-grain you like, eg. couscous, millet, quinoa), and added raw shredded carrots and red cabbage for a refreshing crunch. Slivers of green radicchio made it in there, but you couldn’t really taste it in the end (you could use parsley instead, or mint if you like). I then half-smooshed some canned white beans, dumped them into the dressing so it’d niggle into the nooks and crannies of my beans, then mixed it all up with the rest of my salad. It lasted ok for the next day but it’s still nicer the day of making.

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My new cookie go-to recipe, plus walnut & ginger cookies

Every foodie that actually cooks and bakes has a repertoire of go-to recipes that become benchmarks that all subsequent recipes are inevitably compared to. This cookie recipe, adapted by 5 and Spice from Bouchon Bakery*, is now one of those benchmarks. From this point on, I’ll be forever comparing any cookie I eat to the cookie recipe to rule them all. Until now, I’ve made plenty of cookies that I’ve absolutely adored, but none so toe-curlingly magnificent, versatile and simple to make as these. That doesn’t mean I’ll never make my favourite wholewheat chocolate chip cookies, my favourite nutella cookies, or those oatmeal cookies I fell in love with last weekend. But when I want to make something new, this will likely form the new base.

So why the fanfare? There are plenty of cookie recipes that purport to be crispy around the edges and chewy in the middle, but these are crucially denser, which gives them a much more satisfying, almost fudgy centre (while still being soft but not doughy).  That’s thanks to the very small amount of baking soda used, which can’t be tasted at all. Since they’re not as porous, one cookie is so filling and satisfying that you’ll surprise your friends and family with the surplus. My only gripe is that, like most otherwise-otherworldly cookies, the difference between same-day cookies and next-day cookies is stark. They lose their crispy-crunchy edges and do dry out a little, but are still pretty damn delicious. 

To give them a rich, moreish caramel/malt flavour, a little extra molasses is used (or sub greater % of brown sugar). I upped this even more by replacing the salt with miso paste (sounds crazy, but it was a revelation I got from MillieMirepoix…have been sneaking it into cookies ever since!). I also added some bashed walnuts & ground ginger because I’m seemingly incapable of keeping things too simple when it comes to cookies, but feel free to take these in your own preferred direction, keeping in mind they are quite rich.

*I’ve read that the original recipe from Bouchon Bakery is pretty complicated, but I adapted it further below for the lazy baker – using one bowl, one fork and some spoons. I acknowledge that this probably compromises the original recipe somewhat, but I also know that not everyone has a mixer, and hey, why should they miss out on still-amazing cookies? That said the glowing reviews of Bouchon Bakery are incredibly appealing – it’s always so nice to know the whys and hows of professional baking – you save so much time and frustration, plus it empowers you to cook creatively.

One-bowl crispy-chewy cookies

makes about sixteen 8cm-wide cookies

• 167g unsalted butter (or omit salt if using salted butter), warm enough that it’s basically as easy as mixing stiff whipped cream
• 1/2 tsp – 1tsp salt, or 1 tsp white miso paste
• 135g brown sugar
• 2 tsp molasses (I just eyeballed this)
• 104g white sugar
• 1 large egg (size 7-8)
• 238g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• optional: 1c chopped nuts (I used walnuts, and would probably use more next time), dark chocolate or other adornments. I also added about 1 tsp ground ginger for extra warmth

With a fork or beaters, beat first five ingredients (plus any spices you’re using) together until uniform, then beat in the egg. It may look a little coagulated, but as long as it’s uniformly coagulated, you’re all good. Sift over the flour and baking soda, and fold through until there are only a few spots of flour left. Fold through any chopped nuts/chocolate.

Refrigerate for at least half an hour, cover if leaving for more than 2 days, freeze if leaving for longer than that. Preheat oven to 160C/325F, arranging a rack in the top third part of your oven. Grease a baking tray or line with baking paper/reusable baking sheet, and using spoons, place heaping tablespoon-size blobs of cookie dough 5cm/2″ apart on the prepped trays (don’t try and use your hands, as the dough is very sticky and fairly wet). Bake about 10-12 minutes, until the edges are darker than the centre and the tops are no longer wet-looking.

Let cool on trays for a few minutes before removing to a rack to fully cool and crispen up on the bottom. Enjoy with your favourite milk, or just on their own.

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A breakdown of two major alternatives to Google Reader (feedly & bloglovin)

If you breathe blogs as much as I do, or even if you follow just a handful, the discontinuation of Google Reader is sad news. In case you’re wondering what the hell I’m on about, Laura at Hungry and Frozen has a good description of what feed readers like Google Reader do: “reading a lot of blogs can be a little taxing to the modern brain, so Google Reader lets you view them all in one place – a bit like subscribing to a lot of newspapers and magazines which then arrive on your doorstep every morning, rather than having to go to the shops every day to buy them all individually.”

As someone who now follows 380+ blogs from various genres (food, style, other lifestyle, politics), I wasn’t about to make a migration decision lightly! So, here’s my personal breakdown of two bigguns, based on a bit of research I’ve done online and from actually using the two, both on my laptop and on Android tablet (and some phone notes, but I have a Windows phone, so can’t be particularly comprehensive). Hopefully it’ll help you choose one that best suits your personal situation.

Feedly vs Bloglovin

The feedly crew knew about Google Reader’s impending demise, and basically aimed to be the arms that lost GR users would leap into. And boy are they nice arms. As someone who follows what is probably an abnormal number of blogs, I felt spoilt for choice. However, it’s not necessarily for everyone:

Transition

To transition to feedly, install the browser extension, log in to your Google account, and in the blink of an eye, everything is imported and ready to go. However, because it’s a browser extension, it’ll only work with some browsers – Chrome & Firefox are good to go, but if you’re stuck using IE, then stop reading now and use bloglovin or something else.

The bloglovin transition is even easier at first than feedly, because it’s all done without a browser extension. However if you follow lots of blogs, the importing takes significantly longer. No clear winner either way I’d say – it depends on your personal situation.

Usability, design & customisability

The first thing that hits you with both is that they’re much prettier than Google Reader. I’d argue though that feedly is better designed, and certainly MUCH more customisable, than bloglovin. Here’s what feedly looks like without me editing any of the fonts or colours, on both tablet and laptop:

Feedly’s Magazine View

…and zoomed into how content is displayed, here are the four options you get:

Feedly title view

Feedly magazine view

Feedly full article view

Feedly cards view

Venturing into “themes” and “preferences,” you’re all of a sudden presented with a huge array of options you never even thought were possible or important, until they become essentials and you feel like a feed reader snob.

One thing I personally prefer too is that feedly maximises the space on your screen, but others might find that a little too cluttered. Just comes down to personal preference. If you follow a lot of visually-oriented blogs, feedly also seems to do a better job of showing you a sample image. I’m adoring the magazine view, which lets me skim through lots of blog posts in a much more visually captivating way than Google Reader ever let me do.

If you want to skim quickly, feedly also has an option where articles are marked as read as you scroll past them, which you can turn on or off. On bloglovin, you have to manually mark each as read, or mark everything as read (whether you’re viewing by blog or date).

All that said, bloglovin is ideal if you don’t follow lots of blogs, don’t have major preferences about customising, and have a serious aversion to tinkering with settings. On a desktop/laptop, you get one view, and that’s it. Sometimes it doesn’t pull the image very well either (see below – the image is portrait oriented, but instead of grabbing the centre of the image, you get the top half). If you use a tablet or phone, you can only view as a list of the blogs you follow (pictured below) or a feed of unread items, with a small thumbnail to the left and title/excerpt on the right.

Bloglovin on tablet and laptop

Sharing

Picking a winner in this department depends on what kind of blogs and social networks you participate in. Facebook and Twitter sharing is easy on both feedly and bloglovin, but feedly doesn’t have a pinterest button. Not a big deal for me personally, but it might be a write off for serious pinners.

One thing both reader lack is the ability to share entire feeds with your friends. Just above my Creative Commons garble in my right hand sidebar, you’ll see a link to my food feed, which is pretty cool. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get these urls for either feedly or bloglovin, which is a shame, because I’m not about to manually put hundreds of links to my favourite blogs on my sidebar.

Other downsides and upsides

There are still a few things that annoy me about feedly. I can’t turn off “featured” articles in magazine view, use feedly on my Windows phone, or seem to be able to determine if reads in feedly count towards a blog’s readership/stats. Also, this didn’t happen at first, but now I’m being prompted to log in almost every day, which is ok since I don’t have to enter a password or anything, but it’s still a bit irritating.

Bloglovin on the other hand stays logged in, and because you can “visit” it like any other webpage, it doesn’t matter what operating system or browser you use, you’ll be able to access it. Major thumbs up for this. On the other hand, I personally find the way they have kept things so simple is a bit dumbed down, making it hard to optimise your reading experience.

The verdict

Personally, I can only recommend bloglovin if you for some reason can’t use anything but Internet Explorer, don’t follow lots of blogs, don’t have preferences about customisation, and have a serious aversion to tinkering with settings. Even so, there’s no harm or major investment in trying feedly. Their magazine layout has drastically increased my use of my feed reader, and has really helped me keep on top of the hundreds of blog I follow. Ultimately though, it all depends on your personal circumstances.

Is there a major feed reader I’ve missed that’s also free and blows both feedly and bloglovin out of the water? Or have I missed something with these two? Let me know in the comments! In the mean time, if you’re not convinced about either of these, check out the comments section of The Kitchn’s post that includes a whole lot of other suggestions.

Foraging for pine mushrooms

Last weekend, I joined the wonderful Diego Bonetto of Wild Stories and several other mushroom hunters for a beautiful journey into the pine forests of New South Wales. As well as enjoying delightful scenes of the countryside rush past lit in golden sunrise light, everyone went home with bulging bags of foodie treasure, with plenty left for anyone who followed in our footsteps. At $40 a kilo, I was pretty keen to learn the art of pine mushroom stalking and squishing them tightly into my backpack.

As much as it’s tempting to sound far more knowledgeable than I actually am, I don’t want to give much away, because you really do benefit from going with an experienced mushroomer. It’s not only safer, but far more relaxing and enjoyable than trying to nut it out on your own based on a blog post! If you happen to be in the Sydney area, Wild Stories is running one last outing on April 20th at the end of the season after the last two sold out. It’s all very safe – there were even signs and brochures erected at both the locations we went to, declaring the treasures to be found amongst the trees.

Off we went, feeling very hunter-gathery but also politely not elbowing anyone out of the way when we spotted one – not that we had to, especially at the second place we went to! When I spotted my first mushroom I felt like I had struck gold – literally. The rich “saffron milk” that gives pine mushrooms its distinct golden colour is delightfully vibrant.

My favourite are still the small day-old babies, which aren’t as delicate as their older three-to-four-day cousins so they last longer and don’t get smooshed so much when you try to clean them. Texture wise they’re also more like button mushrooms as opposed to their larger counterparts – tighter and firmer. That said, the larger ones are nothing like the large mushrooms in texture once cooked – the skin is much more discernible when you bite into them.

Diego also gave us some important identification lessons, in a valiant attempt to ensure we all survived our mushroom feasts. Given that the same type of mushroom can vary in appearance due to the less controllable conditions in the forest and the various bits and pieces on the forest floor that bend the mushrooms into different shapes, it was important to know multiple characteristics to look out for. He also imparted some invaluable wisdom about the context of picking them, such as the effect of the weather and type of forest.

Here were some of our rejects that we collected and were unsure of, mixed in with a few edibles too. Just like recycling, if in doubt, leave it out!

To end our morning, we were treated to the fruits of our forage, with garlic, salt and olive oil, finished with a bit of parsley. My jeans still smell smokey from slicing mushrooms by the fire and it makes me drool a little every time I catch a whiff. The mushrooms themselves pack some gorgeous umami and earthy woodiness, with the slightest bitterness to offset their richness. They were not slimy at all, but nice and toothsome without being leathery.

When I got home with my greedy backpack full of mushrooms, I got lazy and cleaned them with water (you’re meant to just brush them clean), but the skins were a lot less absorbent than regular mushrooms, so the water just kind of slid off. Still, they didn’t turn out soggy at all – a bit of a miracle really. A little kiss of butter made them even more sublime. My freezer is now heartily bursting with boxes of precooked sliced mushrooms, waiting to be used in a killer risotto or creamy pasta. I think these would work best in something with a decent amount of moisture, as their intensity and firm, non-slimy texture would lift a silky sauce and help flavour a silky sauce or soup nicely.

So…any suggestions?

So far I’ve enjoyed them with goats cheese over polenta chips (waaaay too rich), and in a grilled cheese with basil oil (yeah, I didn’t learn my lesson…).

Cream & jam scookies

Here’s yet another experiment that I thought went terribly wrong, but ended up being wonderful. Now I know what the inventors of the tarte tatin must have felt like. These were meant to be cream scones, but instead of sugar I used some neglected jam.* Despite totally collapsing into cookie shapes, they were a marvel of a failure – crunchy on the outside, delightfully cakey in the middle, with a buttery-fruity note to add a little interest. They soften after a while, but if you get them in the still-crunchy window, they are so much better than scones! No extra jam or cream needed either, because these are nice and moist in the middle without too much sweetness (although by all means go ahead and ice them or something).

The added bonus of using jam means you have pre-basically-candied fruit pieces distributed throughout, without the fruit making your scookie fall apart, or making any bits of it soggy or too tart. Using only whipped cream (and no butter), these come together in the time it takes to preheat your oven, and only need 15 minutes in the oven after that. Plus they’re a lot more interesting than plain scones, which, let’s be honest, never get a whole lot of love because they usually taste like baking powder and not much else.

*In case you’re wondering, it was a strawberry rhubarb vanilla orange zest jam. I don’t know how it got neglected either, but there you go.

makes 9 

• 300ml whipping cream
• 1/3 c jam of your choice (just eyeball, as measuring jam in cups is annoying) – don’t use any with added pectin – your jam shouldn’t be jelly-like
• 225g self raising flour, or plain all-purpose flour with 1 Tbs taken out and replaced with baking powder. Don’t use high-gluten/high grade flour for this.
• pinch salt
• optional: vanilla extract, citrus zest, raw sugar for sprinkling. Chopped nuts would also work nicely.

Preheat your oven to 200C (400F). Grease or line with baking paper/reusable baking sheet.

Whip cream and jam (plus optional stuff if using, except if you’re using nuts – add those in with the flour) until they just hold stiffish peaks. Sift over flour and “cut” through with a fork until the flour looks wettened and starts to clump together. You want to be able to *just* make mounds of mixture on the baking sheet, they might look a bit clumpy. Avoid overmixing.

Make 9 same sized clumps (use your fingers later to tidy into tall mounds) spaced over an inch apart on your lined/grease baking tray. Sprinkle raw sugar over and bake for 15 minutes on the top third rack in your oven until the tops are golden. As soon as they are cool, eat! EDIT: Much like scones, they aren’t marvelous the next day, but really very endearing fresh.

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