james test

June 24-25, 2017 I've had these chocolate & sesame yo-yos from Ottolenghi's  Guardian column  bookmarked for 18 months, just waiting for the seasons and our Ottolenghi club dates to align. They come under the apt heading Rich pickings , sandwiching biscuits dense with chocolate and sesame seeds with layers of chocolate ganache and  tahini cheesecake spread.  Unfortunately, the instructions weren't quite what I needed to get the job done, and I've adjusted my instructions to reflect what's more workable in my kitchen. For example, the ambient heat from the boiled cream wasn't enough to melt all of the chocolate and butter in my ganache, and I had to set up a makeshift double boiler. The rest of my butter was too firm for hand-beating, yet the biscuit dough was too soft for rolling! What is the temperature in Ottolenghi's test kitchen, I wonder? In retrospect, I reckon it's worth refrigerating the biscuit dough before forming the cookies. They spread ...

June 18, 2017 My Twin Peaks  cherry pie was so unforgettably good that only a month later I rolled up my sleeves to try making a vegan version. There's just one ingredient that needs substitution: butter. Following discussion on our facebook page , I replaced the butter with the same weight of Nuttelex and set my food processor a-whirring. It melded with the flour, forming a dough without need of any of the water listed as the final ingredient. Then came the tough part. This vegan crust was easy to roll but impossible to pick up without extensive tearing. I rolled it twice, cursed the heavens a hundred times, and patched it up as best I could. Forming the lattice wasn't much better, with all of my pastry ribbons breaking in one, if not three, spots. For all that angst, my pie was a flawed beauty, just as sweet and juicy and sour and crumbly as the original. (If anything it was even more Twin Peaks -appropriate, with the filling gorily spilling from one side.) So, what to do fr...

June 12, 2017 I came back from overseas raring to get back into the kitchen and cook up a storm. Cindy and I settled on this paneer butter masala for Monday night. It's the perfect public holiday project - not super complicated, although the constant pausing/playing of  Mallika Basu 's video recipe slowed us down a bit. The paneer was fantastic - coated in a mix of turmeric, salt and chilli and charred up in the frying pan - but the sauce was the real star. It's rich, spicy and a gorgeous turmeric-y orange. We served it up with a side of spiced coconut spinach and some store-bought paratha and it was the best goddamn dinner I've had in ages. The curry worked just as well for leftovers - there was a depth of flavour to it that beat just about any curry we've made before. This will definitely end up in our regular rotation. Paneer butter masala (slightly adapted from a recipe by  Mallika Basu ) 1/2 cup cashews 400g paneer, chopped into bite-sized cubes 1 teaspoon tur...

May 19, 2017 I've really let cult classic Twin Peaks  pass me by for the 25+ years since it first screened. I've been so oblivious that I visited Snoqualmie Falls while in Washington last year , soaking up the scenery without any awareness that it's the most iconic landmark in the show. But some friends have brought me into the TP  fold in the lead-up to series' highly anticipated third season - we've been meeting up to watch each season's premiere, studiously working through subsequent episodes at home, then reconvening for each finale. Our meet-ups are the perfect opportunity for some themed food. One of the more prominent foods in Twin Peaks  is the cherry pie at the Double R Diner. Agent Dale Cooper urges every town visitor he encounters that it's "worth a stop". We're long past cherry season here, but I've always been partial to tangy jarred Morello cherries and there are plenty of recipes online that use them. I picked this one from  ...

May 8, 2017 This soup recipe has waited more than eight years to have its moment in our home. I bookmarked it in 2008 soon after it was posted by Jac on Tinned Tomatoes , and this month it was the perfect thing for bringing together the onion, potatoes, spinach and pear that arrived in our vege box. With garlic already in the cupboard and some home-made stock in the freezer, all we had to buy was the blue cheese. It's a simple formula that I made my tweaks to. I took my time cooking the onions down to soft caramelisation, Michael left the skin on the potatoes when he chopped them, and I retained the spinach stems too. It would all fall prey to the stick blender, after all! When that time came, my soup wasn't as gloriously green as Jac's, and I needed an extra cup of water to smooth its way. In our khaki soup, I was surprised how easily I could pick out the pear's sweetness from the pungency of the blue cheese, and the thick carbohydrate comfort of the potatoes. It was a...

April 25, 2017 I like the Serious Eats approach to vegan cookery. Other comparable food websites have a tendency to roll out one post a year about how 'it's not all tofu and mung beans anymore!', then go back to their barbecued briskets. Serious Eats does barbecued briskets, too, but they explore vegan cookery more often and with more curiosity, figuring out plant-based ways to capture popular omni flavours. I liked their treatment of vegan   icecreams , and they've also tried their hand at veganising ramen , chorizo , and carbonara . Their joyous, experimental style even convinced me to try stuffing tofu and rice into my waffle iron . So when their twitter account teased us with pics of a vegan saag paneer a couple of months ago, I was excited . We waited weeks for the big reveal : it's a recipe where tofu cubes are baked in a miso-lemon marinade to form 'paneer', and the saag base gets its creaminess from cauliflower that's simmered and blended into ...

March 25, 2017 I made these little fancies because it's fig season, and because I had a few egg whites in the freezer. It's a friand recipe that makes just six serves, and it was a nice spontaneous weekend project. Enough to eat warm, just the two of us on the couch that day, and to pack into our lunchboxes a day or two after, and then be happily done before the cakes turned mushy or stale. I expect friands to be based on almond meal, but these ones use ground walnuts instead. It makes for a darker, toastier cake that I think complements the figs very well; a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg pushes the effect even further. The original recipe uses fewer, thinly sliced figs but I set a bulbous half into each of my friands. Baking concentrates the figs' sweetness, but they stay quite fresh and juicy. That's probably why the friands deteriorate after just a few days - they're a fleeting pleasure, like fig season itself. Fig & walnut friands (slightly adapted from a reci...

March 12, 2017 We don't eat them a lot, but I have a soft spot for baked potatoes. This is an unusually glamorous and slightly labour-intensive version from The First Mess . Laura Wright's photos capture waxy white potatoes piled high with bright-orange cauliflower and chickpeas, spattered with spicy hot sauce. Mine don't have quite the same show-stopping qualities, but they're quite the comfort food nonetheless. We correctly deduced that this recipe is a weekend project, so we set about it on a Sunday and doubled the filling recipe to ensure some leftovers (I've just left it at a single quantity in the recipe below). My pot-full of cauliflower and chickpeas never quite took on the saucy consistency of Wright's, most likely due to the combination of constrained hot sauce and chopped roasted tomatoes I used, and I added some extra tomato paste to try to thicken it all up. It helped a bit. We loved these hearty carb-boats of spiced stew, but I'm not sure in wh...

March 5, 2017 I made this slice specifically for slouching on the couch and sharing with a friend on a Sunday afternoon, and I can't imagine a better setting for it. It's got a biscuity almond & oat base, jammy berry filling, and messy swirls of peanut butter and peanut polka dots on top. Even for those of us who didn't grow up with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, it's a charmingly childish and comforting snack. I suspect a lot of ingredients here could get swapped for convenience: rolled oats and almonds could sub out for flours and other nuts, any frozen or fresh berries would do, and what about other nut butters? There is one component that's a bit sensitive, though! I thought keeping my base almonds chunky would be fun, but it just rendered the base greasy with oil and too crumbly to support the slice in our hands. I'll blend all those base ingredients much more thoroughly in future. No matter - little spoons and plates just enhanced the cocoon we cr...

February 25, 2017 I was travelling for my job during the week leading up February Ottolenghi club, which meant I wouldn't have time to make icecream. Instead I made posset! I've tried my hand at posset once before 5 years ago , funnily enough for the same reason; I guess a dish of refrigerated cream and sugar is the next obvious choice after a dish of freeze-churned cream and sugar. I've since learned that curdling the cream is another essential part of posset. This allows the dessert to set to a velvety self-supporting consistency in the fridge. Ottolenghi's version uses lime zest and leaves to infuse the cream, then lime juice for the curdling. He'd have us pile it up with papaya for serving, but I preferred to use mango. The overall effect is both rich and refreshing, sweet and sour - a beauty in its own right, and not simply an icecream understudy. Mango-lime posset (slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's Guardian column ) 900mL double cream 18 fresh or fr...

February 25, 2017 We had such a great time at January's Ottolenghi-club, that we reconvened just a month later for Febru-lenghi, another celebration of Yotam's ridiculously good recipes. You'd think it would be getting hard to keep standards high, but this felt like one of the best club-meetings ever - you can get a full run-down over on our facebook page .  I was home alone for the week and got a bit carried away, committing to three different dips - butternut and tahini spread , avocado and broad bean dip and this butterbean hummus with red pepper and walnut paste. This was all a fairly significant time commitment, although a lot of it was spent just waiting for things to roast or cool. The end result was amazing though - each one of these dips was somebody's favourite around the table. The beautifully fresh avocado and broad bean dip was the most summery, while the sweet and nutty pumpkin dip was a bit heartier.  The fanciest of all was the butterbean hummus, which ...

February 7-11, 2017 This Chinese New Year, I graduated from peanut cookies to pineapple tarts. Thankfully I had our host Steph 's guidance in the process; she'd already veganised this delicacy and blogged it in three parts . I spliced these with another non-vegan recipe for open tarts to try something that worked for me. I perceived all my challenges as being about textures: was the jam too runny to hold itself up? what thickness and how crispy or tender should the pastry be? I haven't eaten quite enough pineapple tarts in my life to know exactly what I should be aiming for. (For the to-do list: eat diverse and numerous pineapple tarts !) The materials to hand made some of those decisions for me. My pastry dough was quite soft and sticky, even from the fridge, so spreading it thinly wasn't really an option. I rolled some of it into 'thumbprint cookie' balls to support the maybe-too-runny jam, and then pressed others with a fork for more decorative, flatter t...

February 11, 2017 Steph has developed a semi-annual potluck tradition to celebrate Chinese New Year - we've had a lot of fun trying out thematically appropriate recipes like peanut cookies , turnip cake , (failed) dumplings , orange szechuan ice cream and more . Cindy was organised this year and had pineapple tarts on the go early in the week (recipe to follow soon), but I left myself only a small window on Saturday afternoon to pull something together.  Luckily, I had just the thing - this recipe  by Andrew McConnell caught my eye in The Saturday Paper way back in October and it seemed like the perfect contribution to our potluck feast. I'm not super experienced at making my own dough-based products, so I was a bit apprehensive that I'd make a mess of it, but McConnell's instructions are clear and easy to follow and these worked out an absolute treat. Cindy insisted they were as good as versions she's had in restaurants and they were met with universal acclaim at...

January 22, 2017 We've been having a fabulous summer of picnics... of dips and chips, and rolls and salads, noodles and cakes and fruit. (And we can always trust Steph to bring one-to-three flavours of iced tea). For this one in late January I did something new and got a public barbecue involved. It opened us up to veggie sausages, marinated tofu, 'pulled' jackfruit and seitan ribs. The fellows flipping meat on the adjacent grill hadn't seen anything like it in their lives. This simple dessert is handy with a hotplate, too. It's just peaches, barbecued until they're juicy and lightly charred, served with a spoonful of sauce. It's too bad the sauce looks like Clag glue, because it's an actually-rather-fetching mix of coconut milk, minced ginger and caramelised sugar. Once I'd persuaded two people to dig in, their enthusiastic murmurs lured in a few more, and so on. By the time I got back from the playground with the kids there was just one warm peach...

January 21, 2017 It's becoming a fairly predictable cross-over for me: Ottolenghi club x ice cream. I've done chocolate halva sundaes , strawberry-rose sundaes  and even green herb sundaes ; for the latest club gathering I dialed back to a more accessible Turkish delight-&-chocolate theme. This recipe has a rocky road feel too it - chocolate icecream with a touch of rosewater, studded with toasted walnuts and biscuit pieces, scattered prettily with Turkish delight cubes and rose petals. (I'm always happy for an excuse to use up some of my  rose petals .) It seemed impossible to mess up, though I tried my darnedest. Usually I'd pop my icecream maker in the freezer 24-48 hours before serving time.... this time I forgot until 6 short hours before the event. My freezer raced against the clock, and managed to turn up something near-solid and scoopable. No-one need have known. The original recipe includes a chocolate sauce (actually the same one from the  chocolate halva...

November 26, 2016 We had the pleasure of joining in on our American friend's Thanksgiving tradition again this year. Our contributions to the table were an unconscious echo of the green bean salad and pie we prepared previously. First, I chose  Isa Chandra Moskowitz's new veganisation of the traditional green bean casserole. To this uninitiated Aussie, it's far preferable to the traditional concoction of canned green beans and cream of mushroom soup. Moskowitz has us make our own tasty gravy of blended cashews, vege stock and nooch. It thickens to bind sauteed green beans, mushrooms and onions. For me, the only misfortune is that the mushrooms infuse the casserole with a dull grey-brown colour that's not exactly appetising. With my host's approval, I sprinkled the top with Malaysian fried shallots - their golden hue helped spruce things up. For dessert, Michael and I teamed up to make our favourite apple pie . For the one vegan guest in the gang, I tried my hand ...

November 14-15, 2016 Granola, fruit and yoghurt has been my default breakfast for quite a while. I usually bake this granola , but I was ready to try something new when I saw a peanut butter granola recipe on stonesoup  earlier this month. Like most of the recipes on that blog it's grain-free, with peanuts, flaked coconut and flaked almonds taking the place of my usual rolled oats. I'm unsure whether my granola had the intended texture. Nuts don't absorb liquids like rolled oats do, so my granola didn't dry out or become more crunchy as it baked (the peanuts and almond were pretty crunchy, nevertheless). A slick of peanut butter and coconut oil remained on the nuts and in the baking tray even as I worried about overbaking it all. I liked teaming this granola with bananas and almond milk. I learned that peanuts aren't my favourite granola ingredient, but I'll definitely be bringing the peanut butter-binder and coconut flake elements into my granola-baking habits....

November 12, 2016 After a premature start , some gorgeous, lounge-for-hours picnic weather has finally arrived. A couple of my work colleagues made use of it to celebrate the upcoming birth of their first child. Rather than a more conventional baby shower, a huge group of all genders and ages gathered in a park for a potluck. We didn't have a lot of time to prepare and cook but it turned out that I had all the ingredients for this date & orange crumble slice posted last year on Lunch Lady . It's the kind of simple, hearty snack that's perfect for the weekday lunchbox. It translated well to the picnic blanket too, since it sliced up easily and could withstand sitting in the sun without melting or going bad. I made pantry substitutions that also rendered the slice vegan, changing out the honey for golden syrup and the butter for margarine. The oaty base comes together in the food processor and was a little fiddly to press into my baking tray, but it handily doubles as a c...

November 2, 2016 Michael received some good career news recently! He was out of town at the time, so it was a few days before we could celebrate together. I used that time to plan and bake this congratulatory cake. This recipe's been tucked among my bookmarks for more than five years, and I picked it out because Michael's fond of rum and raisins in desserts. It might be the least vegan thing I've ever made: there's three kinds of dairy, white chocolate, eggs and honey all whipped in. It's a cheesecake, but it's different to the cheesecakes I'm accustomed to. Instead of a crushed-biscuit base there's a thin layer of plain white breadcrumbs to give the cake some structure. The filling's flavour and texture come mostly from the ricotta; it has that velvetty density of a baked cheesecake but perhaps a little less sweetness. That comes more from boozy raisin bursts. The cake batter filled my springform pan right up to its rim. As it baked it rose further,...

October 30, 2016 My mate Natalie hosted a Sunday potluck lunch, for which I attempted to make peppermint patties. I knew there'd be heaps of food and I imagined these as small bites of sweetness we could still enjoy nibbling on after a big meal. They didn't work out quite as planned. Even though I'd tagged the recipe as vegan, it wasn't at all - still, it was easy enough to replace butter and cream with a small can of coconut milk. This rendered the peppermint fondant much runnier than it should have been. There was no way I could roll, refrigerate and slice it into neat little discs. Instead I pulled out my cupcake pan and layered these out as soft-centred chocolates. So far so good! They looked cute in green mint-coded papers, with a couple of sprinkles on top. And on first bite they were a heavenly contrast of crackling bittersweet chocolate and oozing sweet peppermint. But they were hefty , a bit too much to take on after burgers and mac'n'cheese (and just a...