Patience is a conquering virtue. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales This is food at its most basic. Flour, water, salt, and time. The flour and water are mixed and then natural air-borne yeasts and good bacteria develop a culture, or starter, over several days. When combined with more flour and made into dough, this culture…
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“Oh my dear. When has cake ever been for hunger? It’s for flavor, and, in this case, comfort.” Meena van Praag This cake is very dark and rich, spicy and sweet, and with a slight undercurrent of bitterness from the use of treacle and rapadura sugar, a dark brown, unrefined sugar from Sri Lanka. The blood…
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“The measuring and mixing always smoothed out her thinking processes – nothing was as calming as creaming butter – and when the kitchen was warm from the oven overheating and the smell of baking chocolate, she took final stock of where she’d been and where she was going. Everything was fine.” Jennifer Crusie It is…
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Sweet and tender and crumbly, these sugar cookies are based on what I think is a traditional American recipe – although there seems to be an almost endless variety of sugar cookie recipes available, both in recipe books and online. It is hard to say for certain the true provenance,…
Chocolate is a serious thing. Deanna Troi (Star Trek:The Next Generation) Those who know me well are aware that since December last year I have been on a medically supervised diet to improve my health and lose weight. Nothing, but nothing in this recipe is on the plan! But, dear readers, an intervention is not required. I was simply wanting…
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Oh, where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? Oh, where have you been, charming Billy? I have been to seek a wife, she’s the joy of my life, She’s a young thing and cannot leave her mother. Can she make a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? Can she make a cherry pie, charming Billy? She…
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“I don’t know why, but the meals we have on picnics always taste so much nicer than the ones we have indoors.” – Five Go Off in a Caravan This is a perfect springtime cake. It is buttery and deliciously citrus-sy, but it’s not a fragile edifice that can’t travel in a picnic basket to…
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No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life…
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I was going to call this recipe “Rustic ricotta and raspberry tarts” but that seemed a little too alliterative, even to provide an excuse for pastry that did not turn out quite as it should. However, it was very delicious and a perfect vehicle for my latest obsession – home made ricotta. It was a revelation to…
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Anzac Day (25th April) was a special occasion this year for many Australians and New Zealanders because it was the centenary of the landing at Gallipoli in Turkey during the First World War, a defining campaign, although ultimately unsuccessful. My working life has been closely tied to commemorative activities related to the First World War, and…
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