February 2, 2008: Gruyere and pecan scones

On Saturday afternoon we had a fairly spontaneous picnic with Mike and Jo-Lyn, Tracy and Lee at Yarra Bend Park. Not so spontaneous that I didn't have time to bake, though! Over banana bread and Video Hits late on Saturday morning, I flicked through a few recipe books and settled on this recipe from Taste Favourites. This book is a compilation of recipes from New Zealand's Taste magazine and I was lucky enough to win my copy in 2006's Menu For Hope campaign, thanks to Barbara of Winos and Foodies.

This modest batch of savoury scones were just the fit for this task. A food processor gets the butter/flour step done speedily and they don't take long to bake; they fit neatly into a plastic container, and then into a backpack; and although the recipe suggests serving them with butter and ham, they are plenty flavoursome enough to eat as they are, straight out of the box with your hands. And that's what we did, the entire batch between six of us. The gruyere cheese had a soft but deep flavour, and the pecans' woodiness bloomed with the scant 15 minutes of baking. I'm sure that any good quality cheddar (mmm... imagine smoked cheddar!) would do well here - just leave off with the Bega, a'ight? Likewise some walnuts or fresh herbs could do very nicely.

It was only after I had them in the oven that Michael pointed out Laurie Black's words across the top of the cookbook page:

"These scones are ideal to serve as part of an afternoon tea with friends."

Damn right they are.


Gruyere and pecan scones

3 cups plain flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
50g butter, cold and diced
1/4 cup pecans, chopped
2 cups gruyere cheese, grated
1 to 1 1/2 cups milk

Preheat the oven to 210 degrees C and lightly grease a baking tray.

In a food processor, briefly pulse the flour, baking powder and salt to combine. Add the butter and process again until it well distributed - the mixture will still be powdery.

Shift the flour into a large mixing bowl, then stir in the pecans and about half of the cheese. Use a butter knife to gradually incorporate the milk. Use only as much milk as you need to form a dough (I needed little more than a cup) and mix until it only just comes together. (Over-mixing makes the dough tough.)

Get yourself a clean, floured surface and turn the dough onto it. Give it a short, gentle knead to bring it all together in a neat blob. With your hands, flatten it out into a rectangle roughly 3cm thick. Use a sharp knife to cleanly slice the dough into twelve scones - don't saw away at it, you'll get dough everywhere!

Place the scones on the tray, leaving about 2cm gap between them, then sprinkle over the remaining cheese. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until firm.

January 31, 2008: Banana bread

The short week it took for Michael and I to finish the tray of bubble slice is embarrassing... particularly when you consider that we were away without access to it for three of those days! Determined that my next round of baking would be less cheeky, I picked out a recipe for whole wheat banana bread from Nicole of Pinch My Salt. At first glance it looked very much like my mum's recipe for banana cake, though closer inspection reveals differing quantities of sugar and rising agents. I'm always keen to incorporate wholemeal flour into my snack baking, but have been concerned about simple substitution leading to dry, leaden results. So with Nicole's recipe already specifying wholemeal flour I was ready to go!

This banana bread does have that wholesome, filling quality but it's not at all leaden. While it's not exactly fluffy, it does retain that cakey consistency I was hoping for. Yes it's a bit plain and unexciting to photograph - I might stretch to throwing in some walnuts next time, but there'll be no chocolate chips or icing for my banana bread. This way, it supplies all the comfort and nourishment I want.

Oh, and one other thing: I was impatient and used ripe, rather than over-ripe bananas. Fifteen minutes in a moderate oven had them perfectly black and squishy for mashing. I got the idea from this much more naughty banana recipe.

Banana bread

125g butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
~3 bananas, mashed (aim for about 1 cup, I had a bit more)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C and grease a small-medium loaf pan.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Beat in the eggs, banana and vanilla.

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt into a separate bowl, then stir them into the butter mix. Add the walnuts, if you're using them.

Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for 45-60 minutes. Nicole specifies the full hour, but I found that mine took a lot less time!

January 30, 2008: Strawberry and spinach salad

The use of fruit in salads is a bit controversial. Yes, I know that tomatoes and cucumbers are fruits, strictly speaking, but I'm thinking more about oranges, nectarines or apples. I've been quite a skeptic myself but I'm gradually coming around. I've long reconciled myself to salads of bitter green leaves, pear and cheese; this sandwich wouldn't be the same without apple; and grapes give a new dimension to a haloumi salad. Even so, adding strawberries to a green leaf salad seemed a step up - don't those red heart-shaped fruits belong with chocolate or cream?

I took a chance on Molly's spinach strawberry salad anyway, and I'm glad I did. This unlikely pair get along surprisingly well, and the almonds add another deliciously confusing element - I felt as if a mouthful of strawberry and almond should be followed by sweet pastry! The accompanying pomegranate viniagrette is rather nice too. I made a couple of changes to suit my tastes, completely omitting the salad onion and dry-roasting chopped whole almonds rather than using raw slivered ones. The deeper roasted flavour was fantastic and I'd recommend that anyone else trying this recipe do it too!

To bulk the salad up into dinner territory, we added Helen's Kitchen brand Vegetarian Chicken Tofu Steaks. Knowing it pairs well with strawberries, I brushed a little balsamic vinegar on the steaks as they cooked. To be honest, these didn't do much for us. They were rather tough, and that may be my fault for overcooking them. However they didn't have much flavour of their own, and I reckon I'd do just as well slicing up a block of extra-firm tofu instead. This didn't mar the overall experience at all, and I do plan to invite that eccentric couple spinach and strawberry over for dinner again.

To try this salad for yourself, refer to the recipe over at Molly's blog, Batter-Splattered.

January 25-28, 2008: Sorrento - a tale of two breakfasts, two slices and too little Indian

Michael and I took advantage of the long weekend to make our first visit to the Mornington Peninsula, nabbing an overpriced room in Sorrento. There were walks and swims and ferry trips but we're all here for the food, right? Without anything more than a kettle in our room we were eating every meal out. Here are some highlights.

(Update 31/12/2014: Sunny Side Up is now closed)

Breakfast number 1 was at Sunny Side Up. This cafe was just our style - casual and beachy with smiling, friendly waitresses. Michael gobbled down a plate of rustic beans with parmesan cheese, basil and poached eggs ($15), while I kicked off the weekend with Bircher muesli (~$10). It was a great Bircher, with finely diced fresh apple and orange to lighten up the oats and strawberries and almonds sprinkled liberally on top.

It became quickly apparent that the Continental Hotel had a meal for every occasion, should we want it. We first visited for a lunch of bread, dips and salad and also returned for our final Sorrento breakfast. The menu was a bit meat-heavy, but there were no problems altering the standard dishes to our preferences. Michael's green eggs and ham omelette ($17) was a cast-iron pan of cheesy spinach-y eggs; I ordered my Danish waffle stack ($14) without bacon. The "what the...?" moment of the weekend arrived with my waffles, which were garnished with chives. I guess they were supposed to enhance the original sweet/savoury combination of maple syrup and bacon - I'm not convinced that that'd work, and it was downright weird with just the fruit and syrup. I didn't think the mashing of the banana was really necessary either, what with me still having teeth. Oddities aside, the waffles themselves were fantastic, and avoiding the chives was a small price to pay.

(Update 18/06/2023: Just Fine Foods is now closed.)

Next door to the Continental Hotel, Just Fine Foods has a reputation for excellent vanilla slice (pictured on the right). We snagged a table, a slice and a coffee on Sunday afternoon for $10.50 and watched roughly 60 serves fetched from the display cabinet while we ate. The pastry was golden and flaky, and the flavour was pleasant, but the custard texture was, dare I say it, a little too mucous-y for me. (Well, it's called a snot block after all!) But the inside story from Dromana semi-resident Purple Goddess is that the Continental Hotel does a fairly mean vanilla slice of its own (pictured left). In a head-to-head battle, I'd pick it too. While the pastry wasn't as flaky, the firm flavourful custard really won me over, and the squeeze of berry coulis was the perfect tangy garnish to offset it. I'm not going to deem it Sorrento's best - for starters, I don't want to tread on anybody else's turf. Besides, there are one or two other untested bakeries on Ocean Beach Road that do their own version.

(Update, 31/12/2014: Let's Go Greek is now closed)

I failed to set the VCR before we left home, and on Sunday night it was time to again make a song and dance about Bollywood on SBS. Unfortunately we couldn't locate any nearby Indian restaurants for dinner. International dining was limited to the Chinaman's Hat and Let's Go Greek so we went Greek. Actually, we first visited the Continental Hotel yet again for a cocktail. Strangely the bar that'll give you breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert isn't actually that interested in cocktails, though one of their lovely ladies whipped up something berry-flavoured and potent for $15 apiece. If only we'd known that Let's Go Greek had a cocktail menu, and it was a lot cheaper! Nevertheless, we took advantage of their Vegetarian Feast ($20.50). The spanakopita was cheesy-delicious and I don't want to, but I'm gonna say it: these lemon potatoes kicked the arse of the bowlful we received at the Press Club. Tender inside, caramelised and super-tangy on the out. So good!

Sorrento wasn't a perfect fit for us. (Sorrento's perfect fit seems to be a couple of empty nesters in a silver 4WD with a penchant for seafood and designer chutney.) Nevertheless, there was plenty for us to enjoy over our few days there. Best of all, the beach walks don't cost a cent.

January 24, 2008: Leftover makeover - Bubble slice

After my baking disaster on Wednesday night, I called for my Mum. But it wasn't quite the desperate and childish plea you might think - I just wanted the no-bake slice recipe that I so enjoyed as a kid. I figured it'd salve my sore ego, fill the snacking void left by the muffins, and use up some of the rice bubbles I recently bought.

What I've made here only bears a passing resemblance to my Mum's version, which itself bore only a passing resemblance to the original recipe that she emailed to me. It began as some kind of muesli bar slice, with toasted muesli and seeds. I think the toasted muesli may have been phased out of Mum's, and I don't ever remember encountering seeds. For my texture-intolerant brother, there was the bare-basics version: just rice bubbles bound together with the molten butter/peanut butter/honey/sugar mixture. I liked dried apricots in mine, and for an occasional after-dinner treat, it would be spread with a top layer of dark cooking chocolate.

My updated version retains the dried apricots and bring almonds into the mix. The binding mixture is hardly the stuff of nutritionists' meal plans, so I buckled completely and put some chocolate chips in. Those things are designed to hold their shape when chucked into a 200 degree oven but funnily enough melt all over the place here, so rather than than having golden bubbles with fruit, nut and chocolate dots, it's a more uniform caramel colour.

Rather than being a healthy afternoon alternative to the vending machine, I think of these as a slightly less guilt-inducing way of satisfying a genuine chocolate craving. The rice bubbles add some bulk, the dried fruit and honey extend the sweetness, and the peanut butter and nuts bring some richness so that only a small amount of chocolate is required. You could also make these vegan by replacing the butter with Nuttlelex, and the honey with another sweetener - maple syrup, rice syrup, golden syrup... maybe I need to taste the golden syrup version for myself! There are still a few more rice bubbles left...

Last minute edit: Heidi of 101 Cookbooks just posted a power bar recipe with a similar style. I would never have thought to add coffee to this but now I can't wait to try it!


Bubble slice

3/4 cup almonds, chopped
3 cups rice bubbles
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup dried apricots, diced
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
125g butter
4 tablespoons honey
4 tablespoons peanut butter
1/2 cup brown sugar

Grease a medium-large tray. In a large bowl, stir together the first six ingredients.

Melt the remaining ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat, bring to the boil and then simmer for 5 minutes.

Pour the sweet butter mixture over the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Press the mixture into the tray and refrigerate for at least an hour. Slice into squares and serve.