Rosy

Our parents help shape who we are. Some of their influence comes through genetics (e.g. my bizarre mixture of pale, freckled skin and afro hair) and some through years of successful brainwashing (e.g. my love of all things healthy and green.) I’m not sure which one of these powerful sources has influenced the way I feel about winter…

As we edge further and deeper into the winter months, I worry not so much about the cold, as the dark. I think about the next couple of months less as “the big freeze” and more as “the long dark”. Like my father, I’ve taken to counting the days until we reach the official shortest day of the year, and then breathe a sigh of relief as the days continue to get colder but start brightening a little more each day.



I think the thing is that there’s always a cure for the cold. Crank up the heater or light a fire, throw on an extra jumper, pull out your winter pajamas, wrap yourself in a woolen blanket and read your book. There is no cure for dark mornings, grey days and afternoons like midnight. Or is there? How about something that heats your house as it cooks on the stove at a bare simmer, or in a very low oven for hours? That fills the house with smells of vanilla and spices? And that most importantly splashes cheerful bright pink all over your morning porridge? How about gorgeous ruby red poached quinces!?



Before it’s cooked to pink perfection, the quince is quite an unprepossessing fruit, yellowy-green, lumpy and sporting some sort of unidentified dusty scrofula. (Dave’s choice of word, not mine!) The smell is another thing altogether. Pop a couple of quinces in a bowl in your living room (or along the windowsill for lack of space as we have) and they will reward you with a heavenly slightly apple, slightly tropical altogether other-worldly air-freshener for weeks for before you actually get around to cooking them.

When you do get around to cooking them, it’s a slow and gentle process – that will transform slices of hard, dry apple-like fruit into glorious, fragrant, tender fruit pieces, pink enough to brighten up even the darkest of winter days.

I’ve only really just gotten onto cooking quinces so I’m still in the experimental phases. Below are a couple of different methods for cooking. I’d be happy to hear about any other favourites.

Simple Stove Method

4 cups water
1 cup sugar (most recipes call for much more than this but I find for breakfast quinces once cup is plenty)
½ vanilla bean pod, split
3-4 medium quinces
1 lemon

Gently dissolve the sugar in the water on a low heat.

Peel, core and chop the quinces into about eighths – be sure you get the whole core out, they’re quite deep and very woody.

Pop the vanilla pod and quince slices into the simmering sugar syrup.

Cover and allow the quinces to cook at a bare simmer for about 1 ½ hours until they are soft and slightly apricot in colour. The pink will develop over the next couple of days in the fridge.

Take the quinces off the heat and squeeze in the juice of one lemon.

That’s it – they’ll store in a jar in the fridge for a week or two (if they last that long.)

Slow-baked spices quinces

7 cups water
1 cup sugar
½ cup honey
Mixed spices of your choice – star anise, cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks, cloves, fresh ginger – just don’t go too crazy, you still want the flavour of the quince to be the star
½ vanilla pod
6-8 quinces (they vary a lot in size!)
1 lemon - juiced

Preheat the oven to 150.

Gently dissolve the sugar and honey in the water on the stove in a heavy pot that can be put in the oven.

Add the spices, vanilla, lemon juice and quinces to the pot. Cover tightly and pop in the oven.

Cook for at least 4 and up to 8 hours.

The quinces will come out heavenly and rosy.

So start poaching, and start each deep dark winter morning with a splash of pink.

Breakfast Dessert

Me: So, can I please have the sautéed mushrooms with dukkah and goats cheese and a strong soy cappuccino.

Waitress: Yep

Sister 1: I’ll have the baked beans and a skinny latte please

Waitress: sure, no problem

Sister 2: And I’d also like the baked beans, but with no feta, plus a poached egg and a soy latte thanks

Waitress: Ok

Me: and then for breakfast-dessert we’ll have the gingerbread with poached plums and mascarpone

Waitress(eyebrows raised in judgemental disbelief): huh? Breakfast what now?

...and so it goes, most Saturday mornings.

I’ve never understood why breakfast is the only meal of the day when it’s unacceptable to have dessert. Want a brownie with your post-lunch espresso? Go for it! Scoop of ice-cream on the couch after dinner? By all means! Gingerbread and poached plums after poached eggs? You must be mad!

You see, I never want a full sweet breakfast – the thought of going out and ordering bircher muesli makes me shudder – I can soak my own oats in apple juice thank you very much! But I do like something sweet in the mornings, thus breakfast-dessert was born.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we order a slice of Bailey’s cheesecake each at 9am (urgh, who would ever eat Bailey’s cheesecake, but I digress!) we tend to share one sweet dish off the menu after our eggs. That sweet thing often tends to be banana cake, or bread – if you want to delude yourself that because something is shaped like a loaf it’s not full of butter and sugar.

Banana bread is fairly ubiquitous on breakfast menus in Melbourne – some incarnations with spiced honey labne, pistachios and poached rhubarb (for example) are more adventurous than others, but generally, all are delicious, and make a perfect sweet ending to breakfast.

Banana bread is also incredibly easy, and should by no means be something that is only eaten in cafes. Everyone should have a foolproof, quick and easy banana bread recipe at home for when they don’t quite get through that bunch of bananas before they get overly brown. In fact, to be honest, I usually buy more bananas than we could possibly eat in a week just so I can make banana bread (or choc-banana ice-cream.)

This recipe is from Stephanie Alexander’s bible The Cook’s Companion which I love, love, love! (Did I mention I love it?!) I have tinkered with the recipe a bit – largely health-ing it up a tad, using much less sugar, substituting some of the flour for wholemeal and reducing the butter a bit to make it a more versatile, every day cake. In my humble opinion, this is one of the best versions of banana bread out there - it’s not only the perfect breakfast-dessert, it’s also a delicious afternoon snack with a cup of tea, a breakfast in itself toasted and topped with a blob of greek yogurt or even a bit of a sneaky light lunch smeared with some ricotta and sprinkled with extra cinnamon – the possibilities are endless!

So head out, buy some bananas, twiddle your fingers while they go nice and brown and mushy, then make yourself some breakfast-dessert at home, and avoid the judgemental raised eyebrows of the waitress at a cafe near you.

Breakfast dessert banana bread

100g softened unsalted butter

1 cup of raw sugar (normal sugar would work fine too)

2 eggs

3 medium overripe bananas mashed

1/2tsp pure vanilla

1 cup plain flour

1 cup wholemeal flour (you could just as easily use 2 cups plain - but not 2 cups wholemeal)

1 tsp bicarb soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground ginger(you could also use allspice or a tiny pinch of nutmeg)

1/2 cup of plain yogurt or buttermilk (you can make buttermilk easily by putting 1Tbs lemon juice in 1 cup of milk and leaving for 10mins)



Preheat oven to 180c and butter and flour your chosen baking tin. I used a 25cm loaf tin.

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy and pale - if you're using raw sugar it won't get as pale as normal sugar.

Beat in banana, vanilla and eggs, one at a time.

Sift dry ingredients and add to mixture alternately with yogurt/buttermilk.

Stir until combined.

Pour into your tin you are using and bake for 45 minutes to an hour or until cake tests clean when skewered. My oven leaves a lot to be desired and it usually takes my cake at least an hour.

The top should be nice and brown and a bit cracked - you can always tent with foil if the top is getting too brown.

Cool in the tin for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

Cool completely before storing in an airtight container - alternatively, you can slice it up and freeze it for easy long term access!


P.S. I realise I owe you a photo, but it's been a month since I last posted and banana bread waits for no one. I promise next post will have at least 2 photos to make up for the omission

Holey crumpet!

I know I promised salad recipes, and salad you will get, but let’s be honest, who wants salad when you can have crumpets?! Yes, you heard me – moist, fluffy, crunchy, buttery, melty HOMEMADE crumpets. Oh yeah.

I don’t know if you’ve bought crumpets recently, but it seems like the only ones available at the supermarket are made by Tip Top (urgh) and have that slightly sour, smelly chemical taste that characterises all highly processed supermarket bread – no wonder I never really liked crumpets and always picked an English Muffin over its holey cousin the crumpet. My years of crumpet-avoiding is a shame, because crumpets should be a delicious thing, and if you take a little time and effort and follow this recipe you too can be converted, or even better, if you already like crumpets, you’ll be in soft crumpety heaven.

These delightful little jam and butter vessels (because let’s be honest – the reason a crumpet has holes in it is so it can suck up more butter and jam than toast ever could) are not your everyday sort of breakfast food, not just because of aforementioned butter-sucking, but also because they use yeast, and therefore, take a serious time commitment.

Being uncharacteristically well organised and forward thinking – these crumpets were started the night before, and instead of leaving the mixture to rise in a warm place for 1 to 2 hours, it was stuck in the fridge overnight for about 12 (we were on holidays and doing a lot of sleeping, ok!?) and then pulled out in the morning, finished off and cooked. Unless you want to be eating breakfast at least 2 hours after you start cooking, I can highly recommend this overnight method.

These crumpets were enjoyed in the perfect setting, on my parents’ deck, watching the sea, where, like the crumpet, life is slow, and watching a container ship move across the horizon is sufficient for a morning’s entertainment.

Crumpets
1tbs caster sugar
7g/1 sachet dried yeast
250ml warm milk
250ml warm water
2 cups plain flour
1 cup wholemeal flour (I ran out of plain flour and substituted wholemeal – I think it really added something to the crumpets, but it’s totally optional)
1tsp salt
250ml water
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
Butter to grease
Butter, honey, jam etc to serve

Combine warm milk and water in a medium sized bowl.

Dissolve sugar and yeast into the liquid – put aside for about 10mins until the mixture starts to bubble and froth.

In a separate bowl, combine flour and salt.

Make a well in the center and gradually add the milk/yeast mixture – stir until well combined.

Cover with plastic wrap and either a) leave for 1 hour or until doubled in size or b) chuck it in the fridge and go to bed – when you get up, pull it out of the fridge, let it warm up to room temperature and then continue with the recipe.

Combine extra water and bicarb soda in a jug and slowly add to the mixture, beating well until smooth. The mixture should be pourable - if not, add some extra water.

Cover batter and leave to rest for 30mins.

Heat a large non-stick fry pan and melt in a knob of butter over medium heat.

Grease as many egg rings as you have and place them in a pan.

Turn down heat to medium-low and pour about ¼ cup of mixture into each ring.

Allow each crumpet to cook for about 7mins or until it looks dry and bubbled on the top.

Use tongs to remove the egg rings and flip the crumpets.

Cook an extra 30secs to 1min on to brown up the other side.

Enjoy a well deserved breakfast of butter-sucking fresh crumpets.