An easy homemade 3 hour ciabatta recipe – just 15 minutes to pull together, 2 hours rising and straight in the oven. I’ve also included the recipe for this fast roast beetroot hummus, an earthy, sweet variation on your regular hummus rotation.  Jump to Recipe

I first came to hummus making in a round-a-bout way. It was back when I was largely interested in cooking things containing chocolate – weekend batches of chunky chocolate oat cookies, Grandma’s chocolate peppermint slice, frequently whipped up desserts of gooey chocolate self-saucing pudding – over-generous serving spoonfuls topped with mountains of vanilla ice cream. Hummus just wasn’t on my radar. A specialist from Israel was working with my father for a few months, and he and his family were appalled by the hummus quality available in New Zealand supermarkets. You know, the way-too-small, fairly expensive plastic containers of oily, slightly chunky, chickpea mash in the cheese section, often flavoured with pesto or roast capsicum? It was a far cry from their descriptions of restaurants selling only hummus, huge batches of smooth, mousse-like dip eaten by the bowlful.

So they learnt to make their own instead.

They then taught my parents, who caught onto this very quick, very healthy dip that their kids would demolish, and it became a regular weekend lunch – usually with that supermarket deli rotissserie chicken that feels questionable but keeps you coming back for more. By my last few years of school, I’d have friends over for lunch and serve bowls of hummus, probably untraditionally with avocado and ciabatta bread, followed up with whatever cake I’d been trying out that day. But I didn’t really appreciate how much of an art there could be until I discovered Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem, websites like Food52 and more recently read tales of hummus from Molly Yeh’s book and blog. Thalia and I visited Dizengoff in NYC last year, and their version topped with twice cooked eggplant and served with warm pita, sides of Israeli salad and pickles was my new bench-mark (which I haven’t yet achieved, to be honest!).

So I’ve started to learn and adapt. I learnt from Ottolenghi not to use olive oil in the hummus itself, but merely as a good quality drizzle to pool gently atop the finished product (read HERE). I read about slowly streaming iced water into the food processor for maximal creaminess and emulsification. I admit that I do prefer the hummus produced from dried then painstakingly boiled chickpeas (with a bit of bicarb soda) better – so for a dinner party, that’s what I’d do. But I also love being able to whip up a batch from a can within 10 minutes when I’ve been out at university all day – as a compromise in this scenario, I heat the chickpeas and liquid for a few minutes to warm and soften them before blitzing to achieve that warm finished product and a smoother texture. I’ve become partial to a pinch of cumin along with the requisite tahini, garlic and lemon juice.

However, I hadn’t strayed far from the original until this beetroot version. Roasted until almost caramelised and tender, the beet lends a slightly sweet, earthy undertone to the hummus. Topped with quality olive oil, toasted sesame seeds, dukkah and hazelnuts – it’s a favourite autumnal twist.

The ciabatta is an old favourite-  I think I first teased it way back last year alongside this spicy eggplant shakshuka, and have made it numerous times since. It seems to turn out slightly differently each time, maybe dependent on humidity and how much effort I put into kneading the dough, but never badly. It’s flexible. Low maintenance too – 15 minutes to throw together, 2 hours resting, then it is straight on a tray and into the oven. Maybe not as perfect as a loaf created with a biga and using a preheated baking stone – but it’s pretty perfect with your shakshuka or slow-cooked ragu on a Sunday evening.

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A twist on eggplant caponata, with tangy pomegranate molasses, pine nuts, herbs, capers & anchovies, served on grilled sourdough smeared with labneh. Jump to Recipe 

I’m currently recovering from an enormous weekend spent alternatively eating, walking, shopping, eating and fan-girling over Adele with a few extra coffees and a break between tutorials. (You may already know this, thanks to my instagram story spam!). Mum and Dad visited from Auckland for a few days, and I got to play tourist for a change in a city I’ve grown accustomed to yet still need google-maps frequently, where I have lived for 3+ years but still don’t know like home. It’s funny how you get to see a place in a new light when you’re with people on holiday – you realise how much of the big city you take for granted.

It started with a 20 course (yes, 20 – they were small, okay!) dinner at Attica – it’s a reservation I’ve tried to get for the last few years only to be disappointed by the booking system, but it was worth the wait. Headed by New Zealand head chef Ben Shewry, it absolutely deserves that spot in the Top 50 Restaurants in the world – inspiring and innovative, and exactly not the type of food you’d make at home! We ate the best croissants in the world (according to the NYT, anyway) from Lune Croissanterie, enjoyed a flower-adorned breakfast at The Kettle Black, tried a bubble cup coffee and coffee-caviar topped french toast at specialty roaster Industry Beans, stuck with the long time favourite sticky pork, fried barramundi and green apple salad at Chin Chin, were wowed by the best creamed corn invented at Embla, and finished off with double scoops of salted coconut and mango gelato at Spring Street Grocer. I don’t think you could fit in much more – and if you’re into food, I couldn’t recommend Melbourne as a city to visit enough.

This eggplant caponata is a last ditch attempt to make use of the summer evenings and produce, and combines some of my favourite ingredients: eggplant (if you’re as into it as me, try this eggplant pasta puttanesca, eggplant shakshuka, and eggplant & mango soba noodles), sourdough bread (I just need to learn to make my own) and the concept of toast – isn’t everything better when sat on top of a warm, crusty piece of bread, itself slathered with melting butter, some form of cheese, or avocado? For me this basically applies to any leftovers ever. Plus a poached egg – lunch = sorted.

It is adapted from a Gjelina recipe – a restaurant we visited earlier this year after being recommended it by too many people to count. Their focus on small vegetable based sharing plates, wood-fired pizzas and the best ginger gelato on sticky date cake I could imagine prompted me to order their cookbook that same evening, and it’s a winner. This caponata has become a blend of the Middle East and more Italian flavours, nuanced and rich. Tangy pomegranate molasses, herbs and labneh are in the mix with salty anchovy, grilled capsicum and the brine of capers. A hint of sweetness comes from tiny currants with crunch from toasted pinenuts and those slabs of garlic toasted sourdough. I ended up baking the diced eggplant rather than frying it – much less oil, much less spatter, and the difference was barely noticeable. And it may look like a long list of ingredients, but you might find you already have most in your cupboard, and once your eggplant and capsicum are roasted, the rest comes together very quickly.

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Rhubarb, Raspberry & Dark Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding cake – rich brioche pudding layered with roasted rhubarb, flaked almonds & dark chocolate chunks. Top with vanilla bean custard for a festive dessert!  Jump to Recipe 

As I type this, I’m sitting on a fold out camping chair with the sun beating down, under a big outdoor umbrella and a wide brimmed straw hat. I burn easily – a jandal tan line is already emerging. But I’m not camping, or looking out at the ocean, or at a barbecue – the view is of a busy suburban street and the chair is on the footpath. Morning traffic crawls past. Red and green buckets line the fences, and even though I’ve just swept the sidewalk, it feels like it is already covered in a carpet of pine-needles again. It’s a Tuesday, so this job is quiet – a few people have stopped by to choose their Christmas tree, and I’ve sold a few dozen homemade fruit mince tarts to bypassers. I wonder sometimes if I look in any way festive to people driving by: face hidden by my hat brim, typing away madly on a laptop, and occasionally donning long sleeves through the heat – scratchy pine tree needles give me a wicked rash!

We get a mix of buyers: my favourite are the families with young children who are dead set on finding a Christmas tree, no matter how pretty it is. They can’t wait to decorate it, and their parents are focused on getting them home as quickly as possible – they’re not picky.  The people on the opposite end of the spectrum are the worst: we have competition down the road, and yesterday someone drove back and forth between the 2 tree sellers about 5 times before finally making a decision. I’m not exaggerating. Let’s be honest, once a tree is covered in baubles and fairy lights, you’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart. It’s a study in human nature – and I think I’d rather be like the easy going folk who make Christmas tree shopping a breeze, than the picky, anxious, fussy people who turn it into an nightmare ordeal in an almost certainly fruitless search for perfection.

At least it’s sunny: I’ve done this for a the past few summers, and sometimes the chair is in the garage as rain buckets down while I’m soaked to the skin from lifting sodden trees. On the other hand, the sun makes the trees droop and gives them a forlorn appearance by late afternoon – so there are downsides to both. It’s a very different job to cafe baking bulk doughnuts last year and accidentally burning huge and expensive batches of biscotti  – much cruisier, really. I just keep reminding myself how much I’m saving for future brunch trips and holidays next year!

Last week I catered a dinner for 12 with chermoula-rubbed butterflied lamb cooked on the barbecue, a lentil pomegranate salad, smoky babaganoush and homemade mottled turkish pide to mop up bowls of the smoothest hummus I’ve ever made. The secret was to make it properly – and by that I mean to soak and boil the chickpeas with baking soda, rather than the quicker option straight from a can. Thank you, Ottolenghi! 

With all that going on, it was a relief to have dessert prepared ahead time with this raspberry, rhubarb & dark chocolate bread & butter pudding cake. It’s a step-up from your traditional casserole pan of pudding, and would make an ideal Christmas day dessert made the night before. Brioche slices (I made my own, but you could buy it) are layered up in a cake tin along with roasted rhubarb, tart raspberries, dark chocolate chunks and almond meal. It’s all soaked in a rich, eggy custard, and then baked until slightly puffy, springy and golden. When cut into, pale pudding is broken up with wavy lines of melted chocolate and raspberries, and the enriched brioche gives a lovely creamy texture, contrasted with the crunchy flaked almond & raspberry topping. Drizzled with a vanilla bean custard, it’s heavenly.

Cook’s notes:

• You need a very tight springform cake tin – mine leaks a little, so I lined it with baking paper that extends underneath the springform rim for a tighter seal, then wrapped the bottom of the tin with foil to catchy any extra drips.
• Brioche is the best bread to use – white bread risks a gluey texture. Make your own, or buy it.
• It’s a big cake , serving 10-15 easily with generous slices.
• Make or buy a vanilla custard, but it is very easy to make a much-better-than-storebought custard ahead of time and keep in the fridge (1-2 days) until ready to use.

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Almond-Crusted French Toast with Cinnamon Apple & Creme Patisserie – golden, eggy slices of bread coated in almonds, with caramelised apple & strawberries.  Jump to Recipe 

French toast, pain perdue. Considering it isn’t certain whether it originated in France at all, the latter does seem fitting – meaning “lost bread”, a way to reclaim stale, or unwanted loaves. As a child, early on Sunday mornings, while the house was gradually waking up (this was before early morning sport training and events), Dad would make us french toast for breakfast – I don’t even know how old I was. It was a weekend treat, a lazy brunch hosted at 8am, because we’re not the best at sleeping in around here. Later, I would duck down the road to the shops, the streets devoid of cars at that hour, to grab a fresh loaf from the local bakers delight. Better that than to not have french toast at all. Then we got busier, and busier – and french toast kind of dropped off the radar. I still loved it though, and it was my favourite after Saturday morning swim training – golden, rich slices of whatever bread was left-over, surrounded by generous pools of sticky maple syrup. But that gradually stopped too – one of those things that you can never put your finger on what changed or when, only that it was no longer there.

I rediscovered it at Melbourne cafes after moving here – french toast with all the bells and whistles, transformed into a sophisticated brunch dish. Twice baked and paired with creme patisserie and poached rhubarb at Three Bags Full, coconut crusted with pineapple, lime curd and coffee caviar at Industry Beans. Banana bread french toast with pears and salted caramel at Sardi. The over-the-top Elvis french toast at Seven Seeds, with banana caramel, whipped peanut butter and house cured bacon. Infinite possibilities, really. It was back on my mind, and back on the breakfast table.

But with all these fancy versions, I must admit – french toast shouldn’t really need a recipe. It’s something that should be pulled together from the basics of egg and milk, left-over day-old bread and whatever else you feel like putting in it on the day or can find in the fridge. It’s a not-recipe, like food52’s latest app. I still don’t really measure my french toast custard mixture – a few eggs, a splash of milk and a pinch of cinnamon, whisked and dunked.

Although this blog is based on the premise of recipes, of making a certain dish in a certain way – with timing and measurements and temperatures – I still believe that it is an essential skill to be able to cook without one. To have some idea of flavours that might work together, to know the basics of sautéing and oven-roasting times, to be able to adapt recipes to what you have on hand, and to be able to make simple recipes like french toast, or scrambled eggs, or a tomato pasta sauce – purely off the top of your head. If everyone left school able to make 10 basic, healthy recipes from scratch, the current global health problems of obesity and diabetes wouldn’t be such an issue.  A spaghetti bolognese, a stir-fry, healthy burgers…they don’t have to be intimidating. I loved a quote that Traci published last week, by Harry Balzer, a prominent food researcher: “Eat anything you want; enjoy all of your food. Anything you want. Have an apple pie, cookies, ice cream… have all you want. I’m just going to ask you to do one thing. Make all of it.”

But if you want, and if you have the time – this almond-crusted french toast with cinnamon apple & creme patisserie is my current favourite. The almonds add a nuttiness and a crunch to the french toast that is otherwise missing, the creme patisserie a creamy, not-too-sweet layer soaking into the golden, egg soaked bread. Apple is sizzled in butter, brown sugar and cinnamon until tender and just caramelizing, and it’s all topped with fresh strawberries and another drizzling pool of maple syrup (treat yourself with top quality, it’s worth it.) Breakfast of champions, right?

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Lemon Curd & Raspberry Brioche – pillowy overnight brioche, cream cheese, tangy lemon curd and juicy berries – no kitchen equipment required!  Jump to Recipe 

Photographs are powerful things. Those coloured pixels on the screen had us in hysterics last night after stumbling across images from past holidays, captured moments both candid and posed. You don’t notice how much your family changes until you see pictures – I guess because those changes are gradual and subtle. Although now my brother’s haircuts are better and they have all surpassed me in height, some things don’t change – they still automatically contort their faces when a camera comes out, and whether age 5 or age 15, the same cheeky grins remain. Some of those photos definitely warrant saving for 21st birthday parties!

I write this back on another airplane, the end of a spur of the moment trip to a surf town for the long weekend to meet up with the rest of my family. This time I didn’t manage to take many photos, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t quite capture the power and beauty of the eastern-most point of Australia. The two metre high swells rolling steadily around the headland were diminished by an iPhone screen, and the fury and strength of foaming white water rebounding off rocky outcrops seemed more tame behind a lens. It couldn’t convey the power of the wind gusts and salt spray pushing and pulling at hair and clothes, almost forcing us off the narrow paths, or the deep rumble of huge breakers out at sea.

I’m not sure it is possible to photograph the experience in the water. Cold, but warm enough to get used to with the sun beating down on your shoulders, until an oncoming wave suddenly splashes and chills your midriff. The next forces you to dive underneath, gripping onto handfuls of sand, stomach pressing against the ocean bottom in an attempt not to be swept backwards. The wave curls and crashes over, rolling and churning the water above your head. The water blocking your ears muffles the world, silent and gurgling, until you push off and up, back to the surface to gasp in another breath, moving forward a few strokes until another wave forces you underneath again. Out past the break, out past the surfers, hundreds of them like a black neoprene-suited sea colony waiting for the wave.

Coming back in, the waves are our transport. Kicking hard on its smooth surface, moments before it breaks, and accelerating forward, picked up by the wave itself. Sliding down the wave face, hand-outstretched and skimming the water, getting in a last mouthful of oxygen. BOOM, and the white water engulfs your head as the heavy tons of water crash down in a shifting, boiling mass. But you’re out the front again, breathing and moving forward, streamlined and one with the wave. Fast, until suddenly sand grates your stomach, and it deposits you on the beach. Sometimes it goes wrong, and it churns you up and flips you round, arms and legs in every direction, water stinging up your nose – until choking and flailing you make it back to the surface, the wave carrying on as if you never encountered it.

These brioche were the perfect beach holiday treat. And I know, I know – probably not many people are willing to make brioche while on holiday. These are relatively simple, however – I managed to make and photograph them in a ramshackle bach/apartment with a oven that kept cutting out, no rolling pin (I used a coconut milk can..) and no stand mixer (my brothers pitched in for the arm work).

The brioche dough is mixed up the evening before you plan to make them. A loose, non-fussy dough, it requires 6-8 minutes of firm stirring (waaay to sticky to knead, trust me) before being plonked in the fridge to prove overnight. In the morning, divide it into rounds, roll them out and let rest for 15 minutes. Then go crazy – smear on vanilla cream cheese and tangy lemon curd, sprinkle with raspberries and flaked almonds, and throw them in the oven. 20 minutes later you have puffy, pillowy brioche, creamy and lemony and fragrant. Best holiday brunch ever.

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