Baked spinach and ricotta gnudi in roast tomato eggplant sauce. Jump to recipe.

Gnudi: Tuscan dumplings, akin to extra large ricotta gnocchi without the shaping and boiling steps. It often takes people aback when you say it, like they might have just heard you suggest nudes of some variety (gnudi does literally mean naked in Italian). The name apparently comes from the fact that they are similar to ravioli filling, only disrobed without their surrounding pasta. The term gnudi is more commonly used in areas near Florence, whereas they are also known as malfatti (meaning badly made) in Siena. This version were born of a day during COVID isolation when a friend dropped off a care package including ricotta, cherry tomatoes and a sourdough baguette (a friend that knew me well, clearly). True comfort food in a bubbling dish, and much easier than either ravioli or gnocchi – less potential for mishap.

As a sidenote, friends dropping off coffee and treats really got us through that home isolation period and I would highly recommend it to anyone else (especially New Zealanders right now who are in the midst of a COVID outbreak). Who knew how exciting a door knock would become when you weren’t allowed to leave the house – our days were bookmarked by what might come through it.

These baked gnudi are soft and pillowy, reliant on good ricotta with wrung out spinach, lemon and parmesan then nestled in a simple roast cherry tomato and eggplant sauce and baked for half an hour. They can be prepped ahead right up until the baking step (just keep covered in the fridge in the baking dish) if you’re short on time later. It’s the sort of meal where you end up having done all the dishes by the time you’re ready to serve it straight from the oven, ideal for both weeknights and easy entertaining. 

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Better ricotta gnocchi with kale & pangrattato. Jump to recipe.

Ricotta gnocchi are easily the superior gnocchi. Maybe I’m biased, but I wouldn’t even bother with the potato version – the risk is far greater than the reward. Who wants to boil and peel and mash potatoes only to increase your chances of ending up with a stodgy end product? (That being said, Ottolenghi’s swede gnocchi with miso butter remain on my to-make list, but only because any recipe he touches turns to gold). Ricotta, on the other hand, are the light, delicate, easy but casual gnocchi. The throw-together-for-friends-on-a-weeknight gnocchi (when we can finally have friends over again – I’m READY). 

This version is slightly different to the recipe I’ve previously published – it has the addition of parmesan and an extra egg yolk with a little less flour, which I think gives a lighter, slightly more decadent end result. The main thing with ricotta gnocchi is the type of ricotta you buy, because all ricotta is not one and the same. Some are very wet and creamy, others quite hard and crumbly – I like to buy something in between, but the main thing is that you want it to be quite dry, so if it is very damp, drain it in a sieve and lay it between a few layers of paper towels to squidge some of that extra liquid out. Usually the regular supermarket ricotta is fine for this recipe. 

We’ve gone with a vibrantly green tuscan kale sauce (blanch the kale and use your favourite food processor/blender situation to turn it into a nutty lemony pesto) and crunchy sourdough pangrattato to top (toast with a decent slug of olive oil until golden and crispy, no store-bought breadcrumbs allowed). These crunchy bits also keep extremely well in the fridge to be repurposed wherever you see fit and texture is required – on top of salad, eggs, a shakshuka. Pinenuts, lemon zest and a hefty dose of extra parmesan and black pepper finish it off. You can practice it in lockdown to one day impress your friends, or just for yourself. Cooking gnocchi has to be an act of love. 

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Zucchini ginger udon noodles with maple tofu: a simple 30 minute dinner with lots of veg, herbs and crispy bits. Jump to recipe

We are back with a new recipe and a new lockdown!! Two things that seem to go hand in hand these days – apparently the only moments I have available to cook/test/photograph are when forced to stay home. It’s lockdown V5 in Melbourne (just to recap, here we have lockdown one (passionfruit meringue bars), two (pear miso galette; rhubarb custard brûlée tarts), three (pannacotta lamington cake) and four (tiramisu tart) for a bit of viewing nostalgia/PTSD). Not much to say about it that has not already been said before: just feeling particularly stagnant this time around. So much for those dinners out! Those holidays! Seeing friends! Seeing more than the four walls of our house! (Great four walls, to be fair). 

Anyway. Zucchini ginger udon noodles with maple tofu. It’s a mouthful but I couldn’t work out how to describe it better (let me know if you come up with an alternative). First we have LOTS of thinly sliced zucchini, cooked down low and slow a la @ottolenghi. No browning allowed. Cook gently with oil, salt, ginger and garlic for 15-20 minutes, stirring whenever you remember, until it’s soft, almost translucent and very fragrant. Meanwhile you soak the tofu in a sesame, maple and soy combination, chop some herbs, throw together the lime/fish sauce dressing and cook the udon. Careful with the latter or it’ll end up soft and soggy, opposite of al dente, not what we want. Stir it all together and adorn with your favourite crispy bits – fried shallots, togarashi, extra herbs and the tofu you’ve just pan fried. It might make you feel better about lockdown. It might not either (that would be too much to promise). 

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Grilled corn, cucumber & peanut soba salad with crispy tofu and a creamy chilli, lime & tahini dressing. Jump to recipe.

There are a number of recipes on high rotation which I continue to make variations of, based on the season and *mostly* the contents of my fridge. This is one. The formula goes: soba noodles, lots of herbs and veg, some riff on a usually lime and tahini based dressing, protein source (gooey egg, peanut tofu, miso salmon etc etc), crunchy bits (crispy shallots, chopped nuts and seeds, spring onion). Despite the fact that the instagram algorithm would have you think we are all sugar fiends and only a elaborate cake or a cookie (melted pool of dark chocolate and flaky sea salt for maximum impact) is worth the anyone’s time/eyes, it’s actually these weeknight recipes that far more of you actually cook. I guess dinner is a (somewhat) compulsory meal of the day, whereas cakes are a fun bonus (no less important or necessary though). Although I love making new recipes, 90% of the time currently I can’t face the mental energy associated with trying anything other than what I know will take me no more than half an hour, is guaranteed to turn out well and will give me work leftovers to look forward to – so here we are. 

It’s also my final recipe in collaboration with Prahran Market, and inspired by the late summer stacks of local sweetcorn and bunches of fresh herbs currently available. Helpfully, the market also is home to a number of specialty food stores which means you can pretty much buy every single ingredient you might possible need – from the chilli oil, tahini and soba noodles used in this recipe to the black limes and preserved lemons I’ve been using for our Ottolenghi dinner nights. 

The easiest way I’ve found to make the smoky grilled sweetcorn is directly over a gas element (if you have one) or on a barbecue. While you occasionally rotate the cobs over the flame (don’t worry if it pops and spits madly), make the chilli lime dressing and pour a 1/3 or so over the cucumber batons for maximum flavour. Peanuts go in the oven to toast, as does the crispy salt and pepper baked tofu. Toss together the cold soba with spiced thai basil and coriander, finely chopped peanuts and the remaining dressing (with a little tahini added for creaminess) and top with crisp cucumber, grilled corn, lots of tofu and extra chilli oil, depending on much heat you can tolerate. 

*Side note – crispy tofu is very delicious right from the oven, and slightly less delicious and definitely not crispy on subsequent days. I don’t mind it, but you might also prefer this peanut tofu if you’re making it for a few meals. If you want to read everything you might want to know about oven baked crispy tofu, I would direct you to this blog post by my friend Georgia  (who also has innumerable other veg recipes you should check out).

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Brown butter, pomegranate, almond & dill roast salmon – easy yet impressive. Jump to recipe.

It’s December! How, I’m not entirely sure. I’ve been MIA here since those cardamom buns in October, having dived both into the life-consuming hours of a surgical rotation and the joy of the re-emergence of a social life outside of a facetime screen. It was strange, that release into relative freedom – like we’d almost developed a form of Stockholm syndrome to staying within the cocooning safety of our own homes. What was a Friday night if not movies and pizza in bed? Yes, I did adjust to 9+ hours of sleep, time to procrastinate on the couch and move jigsaw pieces on the table, to attempt croissants and baby a sourdough starter and simultaneously watch the news in horror/fascination. When you do something long enough, it becomes habit  – isn’t that what they say? Time stretched out slow, but looking back the year has blurred into a haze of lockdown – nothing to distinguish one weekend and its failed zoom party from the next. Honestly, I owe my survival through the quietness to being able to see other humans at work everyday – I can’t imagine the isolation of living alone and working from home that many people have experienced. 

This week’s brown butter, pomegranate, almond and dill roast salmon is ideal for your new forays into dinner parties – easy yet impressive, the sort of recipe you can pull off in the chaotic half hour between walking in from the shops and when people arrive and still have time to change clothes, or the centre piece of a Christmas spread when you don’t want to be that host who sweats in the kitchen all afternoon. Being outside gin and tonic in hand is much more fun than roasting a turkey, promise.  

It’s also the first of a series of recipes I’m developing in collaboration with Prahran Market – a Melbourne food and produce market local to me that specialises in high quality, sustainable and ethically sourced specialty ingredients. It’s the sort of market I’ll happily wander through most weekends, flat white from Market Lane in hand, picking up everything from sourdough and kouign amann from Q le Baker, to fresh herbs, cheeses, za’atar and pomegranate molasses from the many delis and produce traders, or a new pastry brush, cookbook or cake tin from Essential Ingredient. The cheese toasties from Maker & Monger are also surely the best in Melbourne .

This salmon is much easier than it looks, and you can use either one large fillet like I have to serve a crowd, or a number of smaller pieces to suit. The 30 minutes brining step is optional, but it reduces the amount of white fat that rises to the surface during roasting. It’s topped with nutty and fragrant brown butter with toasted crisp almonds and almost caramelised red onion, salty capers and a tangy, sweet edge thanks to the pomegranate molasses. It takes just 10-15 minutes in the oven, depending on the size of your fillet and desired doneness (I’d always ere on the side of less, especially when it is good quality fish), and finished with handfuls of fresh herbs and pomegranate seeds to serve. Would recommend pairing it with Ottolenghi’s easy smashed pea new potatoes and grilled spring asparagus or broccolini on the side. 

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