We like to serve the mac with a peppery salad, maybe with some rocket with pomegranate seeds thrown through and a mustardy vinaigrette. There is a tree in a neighbour’s yard I pass each day, heavy with fruit. They’re so ripe they’re splitting open, revealing their jewelled interiors for anyone to see.

The rye crumb makes a beautiful savoury crust and Sarah and I sometimes make the mac and cheese in little ovenproof dishes (like the one in the photograph) to maximise crunch. Such a good texture contrast to the creamy interior.

Macaroni & Cheese

250g macaroni cooked to ‘al dente’ and rinsed
50g organic good quality unsalted butter
80g plain flour
2 1/2 cups milk
pepper, freshly ground
50g best quality Parmesan cheese, grated finely
50g Fontina or Gruyere or Provolone, grated finely (depending on your favourites)

1/2 loaf of rye bread, blitzed to crumbs in a food processor
2 tbsp Parmesan, grated
1tbsp olive oil
1tsp salt flakes

Preheat your oven at 180C.

Warm the milk to just above room temperature and set aside. Melt the butter in a heavy based saucepan and add the flour.
Stir with a wooden spoon over the heat until in starts to come together in one smooth lump that leaves the sides of the pan. Stir over heat until golden. Add the warm milk to your ‘roux’ (flour and butter mixture) a little at a time and be sure to beat well after each addition. The mixture should be smooth and have no lumps once you have added and stirred through all the milk. If the mix looks too thick, add some more milk. You want it to be of a thick custardy consistency.

Add freshly grated pepper and the 50g of each cheese and stir well until the cheese is melted in to the sauce. Set the cheese sauce aside. Season to taste with salt.

In a bowl, combine the breadcrumbs, additional Parmesan oil and salt and stir until evenly combined.

Pour the cheese sauce over the macaroni, making sure you give it a stir so the macaroni is all covered in sauce. Put the mixture into a shallow ovenproof dish. Sprinkle the macaroni with the crust mixture.

Place your mac n cheese in the oven and cook for 15 minutes or until the crust is golden and crunchy and your mac is warmed through.

The piña colada cake is Sarah’s creation. It captures the tropical taste of pineapple and coconut within a golden brown cake. Fan the pineapple prettily on the top of the cake. The crumb of the cake is flecked with curls of coconut flesh and it’s much lighter than say, a pineapple upside down cake. The piña colada cake is a summery cake for autumnal days.

Ps. My novel Floundering is in the shops. See if you can spot a copy!

piña colada cake

200g self raising flour
150g raw caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
65g shredded coconut
150g butter melted
1tbsp almond meal
3 free-range eggs
3tbsp lemon juice
1tbsp lemon rind finely grated
1/4 of a small pineapple sliced into 5mm thick rounds

Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and flour a round 21cm spring form tin.

In a large bowl place the flour, baking powder, sugar, coconut, almond meal and stir to combine. Add the butter, eggs, lemon juice, lemon rind and mix together well with a hand held mixer or in a processor to make a smooth batter.

Pour the batter into your cake tin and gently place the pineapple slices on top arranging in a fan pattern.

Bake the cake for 50mins or until a skewer placed in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Leave until cool to the touch and then remove from tin to cool completely.

Soba noodles endear me because they only take 4 minutes to cook, they have that wonderful nutty flavour, and the perfect bite to them. I love how the pot froths and nearly boils over when they’re ready and that all they need is a rinse under cold water.

In Japan when you order cold soba noodles (which I have written about here before) they simply come served cold on a little bamboo mat with dipping sauce and pickles and whatever other little morsel they want to give you – with some yaki nori (fried seaweed) on top. The soba noodle salad is a bit of a western bastardisation, so please forgive us.

We normally make it with whatever we have that’s fresh and in-season, but we always throw herbs through the noodles, and we always have a hunk of avocado sprinkled with furikake. I brought a stash of furikake back with me from Japan – but you can make your own, there are some good recipes here. (Just Bento or Just Hungry are great resources in English for Japanese cooking.) Or you could simply toast some sesame seeds and toss with some finely chopped yaki nori and a little salt. The furikake should be salty and it’s normally a little fishy (with bonito or little dried prawns).

The dressing I use is a little sesame oil, a little ponzu sauce (which is citrus flavoured sauce derived from the yuzu, a nobbly Japanese citrus). I buy mine from the Asian grocer but you could make your own, or just fake it with a bit of light soy sauce and some lemon juice. Then I add a little soba dipping sauce, again there is a recipe here if you want to make your own – I just buy mine. When I was in Japan my friend Meigumi showed me how to make a dashi stock (the base to most sauces and stocks) by simmering kombu and adding dried flakes of bonito – but she mostly uses store bought sauces as well. And the thing about the salad is it’s supposed to be so easy – so no point in boiling kombu away on the stove-top unless you’re a committed cook.

I have a great deal to learn about Japanese cooking but it is one of my very favourite ways to eat. There is such a commitment to seasonal cooking and reverence for the ingredients.

Soba Noodle Salad

250g soba noodles (I like the 100% buckwheat ones best, but I eat them all.)

for the dressing:
1tsp sesame oil
1tbsp ponzu sauce
2tbsp soba dipping sauce

for the salad:
a handful of fresh herbs
spring onions, finely chopped

tomatoes, chopped into edges
avocado, chopped into hunks and topped with furikake or yaki nori

Cook noodles as per packet instructions, when ready rinse very well under cold water and set aside. I stir through the sesame oil now. Prepare your salad ingredients and stir through the noodles with the rest of the dressing. Top with avocado and tomato and add whatever else salad-y you think is delicious.

Sarah and I haven’t been bottling tomato sauce like my neighbours, but last week we made this clear tomato soup. We made this last Summer too, for a colour themed dinner party, maybe more accurately described as a lack of colour themed dinner party, where everything was clear, or white or pale looking – but vibrant in flavour. This is not a subtle soup and it is surprising. It tastes of the essence of tomato, with the complimentary and summery flavour of basil even though it looks like nothing.

Clear Tomato Soup

This is really just a clear broth that can be eaten cold or slightly warmed. It’s impressive as a starter for a special dinner party. We’ve collated this recipe from a few sources and compared notes. Unfortunately a food processor is essential for this recipe. Otherwise the right consistency is too difficult to achieve. We have also used leftovers of this soup to boost stock or other dishes, it has a really wonderful, concentrated flavour.

3kg ripe but firm tomatoes
1 bunch fresh basil
1tsp icing sugar
1 pinch salt
1 pinch fine white pepper

Roughly chop the basil and tomato. Place a third in a food processor. Add a 1/3 of the icing sugar and pulse only a couple of times. The tomatoes should be chopped well, but still in chunks. The mixture should have white bubbles in it from the aeration and separation of the tomatoes. A little frothy I guess. Set aside the pulsed mixture and repeat until you have used all your tomatoes and basil. Once all your tomatoes are done season to taste with pepper and salt.

Next, over a large bowl secure a clean piece of muslin cloth, which has been doubled over. The easiest way to do this is with a large rubber band. Securing tightly with string can also work, but is a bit clumsy. Place the muslin over the top of the bowl and then stretch the rubber band around the edge.

Carefully ladle the mix onto the muslin. There should be a little dripping through the muslin but don’t press or force the sieving process.

Place the bowl in the fridge for eight hours.

After this time, carefully remove the muslin, bunching it up and around the tomato mixture, being sure not to squeeze the muslin parcel. Be sure not to let the muslin parcel touch the soup. The soup should be clear.

Taste the liquid and if too concentrated add some water, a teaspoon at a time, to taste. Bring the soup to room temperature and serve.

This should make four small bowls of tomato soup.

It is getting awfully cold here, it will snow on the weekend, but by that time I will be home to a sweltering Melbourne. While I’ve been here Sarah has been home, drinking iced eggnog and working hard. Lauren and her put together all the calendars, an extensive endeavor, helped with a little icy, nutmeg, boozy eggnog.

Today is my last day in Kyoto. Yesterday evening when I was heading back to my apartment, along the river, the sky had turned quickly from sunset to night and I watched all the white cranes fly in to roost. They came from all parts of the river, but they flew to the tree together and alighted as a flock. Tomorrow I fly home.

Ps.

It’s been a big year, I finished writing my book! You can see the book cover here and I’m super excited to launch it in April. (Published by Text, distro by Penguin)

There are still a couple of calendars left if you want to give yourself a new years present.

Sarah and I will be having a small hiatus over the holidays, we will be back late January, hopefully covered in sand and salt from beach adventures. See you next year and thanks for everything. Love from Sarah, Romy and Lauren.

Iced EggNog

4 cups of milk (we have been known to use the organic reduced fat milk so it isn’t too rich!)
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 cinnamon quill
12 free-range egg yolks
1 ½ cups of raw caster sugar
brandy (amount as desired, a glug, a cup, or even two)
250ml pure cream
ice cubes
nutmeg, freshly grated

In a saucepan, combine the cinnamon, milk, vanilla and heat on a very low temperature until almost at boiling point (but don’t boil!).

In a separate bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar until fluffy. Transfer the hot milk into a jug you can pour easily from and steadying the bowl with one hand, sometimes it helps to sit the bowl on a teatowel, slowly pour the milk into the yolk mixture whisking continually.

Wash your saucepan and pour the mixture back into it, place back on the heat, and cook over a low to moderate heat until thickened. Again, don’t let the mixture boil.

Remove the cinnamon quill and let cool.

Stir in Brandy (or rum if you prefer) and cream.

Refrigerate overnight before serving and serve on ice (if you are in the hot summer like we are) with a generous grating of fresh nutmeg.

My mum slit the mangos down each side of the pip and then criss-crossed the cheek, opening them out so that they looked like the spiny back of an echidna. My brother and I spat cherry pips and our faces would be covered with sticky fruit juice.

For both Sarah and I, summer and Christmas always meant abundant fruit, especially mangos, lychees, cherries and perfectly ripe white flesh peaches. This rich chocolate tart is more sophisticated than a mango cut into the shape of an echidna, or cherries bursting in your mouth, but it is a beautiful way to celebrate the height of the cherry season. The chocolate pastry works so well, it’s velvety. The cherries should be piled indecently over the tart. And indecently, we’ve made them a little boozy with cherry liquor, but leave it out if you want. The cherry red is festive and would look grand as part of a Christmas feast. It could also work beautifully with stone fruit piled atop as well. If you’re making it with the cherries, the best bit is pitting them. I assure you you’ll end up eating as many as are supposed to cover the tart, your face sticky as a little kid’s.

Chocolate Tart with Cherries
(Adapted from the July 2010 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller) Our version of the recipe first appeared on Apartment Therapy – Kitcn Blog Post December 2010)

for the chocolate pastry
200g plain flour
60g pure icing sugar, sieved
70g Dutch-process cocoa powder
110g cold butter, coarsely chopped
3 free-range egg yolks

for the filling
3 free-range eggs
4 free-range egg yolks
175g caster sugar
375g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), finely chopped
250g butter, coarsely chopped

for the cherries
500g cherries, pitted and halved
50ml cherry liquor

For the chocolate pastry, process flour, icing sugar and cocoa in a food processor until combined. Add butter, process until mixture resembles fine crumbs, then add egg yolks, process to combine. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and bring pastry together with the heel of your hand. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate to rest for one hour. Meanwhile, have the pitted, and halved cherries steeping in the cherry liquor.

Preheat oven to 180C. Roll pastry into a 32cm round on a lightly floured surface and line a 24cm-diameter, 4cm-deep buttered and floured tart tin. Refrigerate to rest for one hour. Blind bake until pastry is almost cooked (8-10 minutes), then remove weights and paper and bake until cooked through (8-10 minutes). Meanwhile, whisk eggs, yolks and sugar in an electric mixer until pale (4-5 minutes). Melt chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (4-6 minutes). Fold through egg mixture, then pour into hot tart base and bake until set (15-20 minutes). Set aside to cool to room temperature.

When tart is cool, pile with cherries and serve.

We first ate this ice cream in the Californian desert, at La Quinta, in a beautiful restaurant in the original La Quinta resort, which was built in the twenties and still has the essence of that old school Hollywood glamour. Then, it was quiet hacienda that drew the likes of Greta Garbo up the winding roads from the Californian coast. Now, there is a freeway that cuts right through the mountains, after passing through a valley of wind turbines, the arms lazily turning giant circles in the prevailing winds. La Quinta is surrounded by golf courses, the green green grass and palm trees of Palm Springs resplendent against the red hills that surround it.

We loved it, the desert and canyons are only moments away, the Mexican influence, the margaritas in Mason jars, the modernist houses set up against the craggy rock faces and the green suburbia, surreal as a dream. This ice cream is as strange and compelling as the landscape. I really didn’t expect to love it, or Palm Springs as much as I did.

Buttered Popcorn Ice Cream
(Adapted from a recipe that Jimmy Schmidt, head chef at Morgan’s, was kind enough to share with us at La Quinta Resort, California.)

1/4 cup popping corn
4 tbsp canola oil
1 tbsp butter
1 cup of full cream milk
1 cup of pure cream
5 free-range egg yolks
1/2 cup of caster sugar

In a heavy based saucepan heat the canola oil. It should be hot enough that when you place a popping corn in the oil it sizzles and spins. When the oil is hot pour the popping corn in and place a lid on the pan tightly. Lower the heat to medium. The popcorn should start popping. When the popping slows, turn the heat off. Stir the tablespoon of butter in with the popped corn. Set aside to cool.

Place the milk and cream in a heavy based saucepan, add the cooked popcorn. Warm on a low heat until it reaches 70 degrees (or warm but not boiling - this is important). Meanwhile, whisk the sugar and egg yolks until combined and foamy in a separate bowl.

When the mixture reaches the correct temperature strain the liquid into a bowl, discarding the popcorn. Add the egg yolks to the milk mixture. Wash your saucepan and place the mixture back on a low heat. Stir the mixture constantly and when the custard is thickening and covering the back of your wooden spoon, remove from heat and place in a container suitable for the freezer. Place the mixture in the freezer and stir every hour or so, making sure to scrape the icy bits from the side of the bowl, until it reaches an ice cream consistency. This should take a few hours depending on your freezer. Alternatively, churn in an ice cream maker until it reaches the desired consistency.

As for the granita, it’s incredibly easy to make, it’s a frosted musk colour and it’s perfect for summer. Make it, it tastes as pretty as it looks.

Strawberry Champagne Granita

a punnet of strawberries, green tops removed, washed and chopped in halves
1 cup sugar
1 cup of water
1/2 a bottle of champagne

In a little saucepan simmer the strawberries, water and sugar for about 20 minutes. The strawberries should be very soft. Set aside to cool.

Drain the strawberries through some muslin, into a bowl. Squeeze the strawberries so that all the flavour makes it through. You should then have a hot pink syrup. Add the champagne to this and pour into a flat freezer-sized-tray. Put the tray in the freezer and every 20 minutes or so give the granita a stir until the mix is icy, hard and frosted pink. Serve in a pretty glass.

(Recipe originally published in Yen #47)

Sarah is selling little jars of granola as part of the CHRISTMAS DESIGN MINI MARKET that is running out of the Kuwaii shop on Glenlyon Road in Brunswick, Melbourne (this Saturday 26th of November). Apart from granola – I am hankering for one of Imogen’s Pullar’s beautiful leather bags. Sarah is making other giftable edibles as well as things to nibble on the day, maybe some lamingtons with rosewater jam and toasted coconut?

The granola is so wholesome and crunchy with that yum sesame flavour. We use rice syrup and not too much sugar (I use even less than what’s in the recipe, hell leave it out even). Eating granola makes me feel like a 70s idealists – living in a commune, weaving macramé and eating granola for breakfast with thinly sliced banana. And I’m a child of 70s idealists – so no sugar for me, for breakfast anyway.

Granola
(This had its beginnings in a Nigella Lawson recipe.)

dry ingredients:
5 cups rolled oats
2 to 3 cups raw almonds
3/4 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp. salt

wet ingredients:
3/4 cup unsweetened puree apple
1/3 cup rice syrup
1/4 cup honey
2 tbsp pomegranate syrup (from a good middle eastern grocer)
2 tbsp vegetable oil, such as canola

Preheat the oven to 180C.

In a large bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients. Mix well with a wooden spoon. In a small bowl, combine all of the wet ingredients. Mix well. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry, and stir together.

Spread the mixture evenly on two rimmed baking sheets. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until evenly golden brown. Stir the granola every ten minutes, and rotate the pans. This helps it cook evenly. When it’s golden brown, remove from the oven and stir well again, to prevent it cooling into a solid sheet. Set aside. The granola will still feel slightly soft when it comes out of the oven, but it crisps as it cools.

Store in an airtight container indefinitely. Makes about 10 cups, quite a large batch!

This recipe for blueberry and ricotta pancakes is a good one – especially with some Wisconsin ma and pa maple syrup. Colin Trechter can you get Sarah and I each a pint when you go home for Christmas? I have serious cravings for that maple syrup. The pancakes are rich and fluffy with bursts of blueberries throughout. Frozen blueberries are fine, but you should be able to find fresh this time of year.

A friend of Colin’s, Amory, from his rural hometown of River Falls came and visited us this year. Amory’s family has an organic farm and at the end of the blueberry season they freeze kilos and kilos of blueberries. (In the kind of freezer that in my experience has always been filled with butchered cow that at one point would have had a name and been fed bananas over the fence.) But Amory’s dad made blueberry pancakes all year with these frozen berries, and he has a secret recipe that even Amory doesn’t know. Amory made us his version, and we used up the last of the Wisconsin maple syrup.

In other news our 2012 calendar is ready. Sarah, Lauren and I are so excited. It’s lovely to have something tangible in our hands after a year of hard work and dedicated eating (maybe it wasn’t such hard work …) You can purchase them here.

Blueberry Ricotta Pancakes

1 cup fresh ricotta
3/4 cup organic milk
4 free-range eggs separated into yolks and whites
1 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 pinch salt
knob of butter
1 cup of blueberries

Place the egg yolks, ricotta and milk in a bowl and fold til just combined. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl and set aside.

Combine the ricotta mixture and the flour mixture and stir gently til just combined. Add the blueberries. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold into the mixture with a light hand.

Place the batter by the tablespoonful into a buttered pan and cook for about 2mins or golden and then turn over and cook for another couple of mins til cooked through.

Serve with cream and maple syrup!