Ligurian foccacia

 

My dad is BIG into bread. So his recent visit seemed a good excuse to try out a recipe I'd seen on the wonderfully engaging Samin Nosrat's Netflix series Salt Fat Acid Heat (based on her cookbook of the same name). In Italy, in the first episode, she'd made a foccacia bathed in a salty brine and baked til golden brown. The dough was dimpled with indents made from the three middle fingers of her hand, little wells for the olive oil drizzled on top when it's out of the oven. The oil does double duty - making the inside of the foccacia pillowy and soft and the base crisp. It couldn't be easier and this is coming from someone with a terrible track record with yeast. Begun the night before you want to bake, you simply combine dry ingredients with wet - no kneading - and leave to proof. The next day you gently stretch out the dough - now doubled in size - onto an oiled oven tray. Then dimple and brine (this just means pour over some salty water), proof again while the oven is heating and then slide in. Half an hour later out comes lunch. For an army. Or just your dad who really, REALLY loves bread.

Polenta loaf with rosemary, parmesan and olive oil

A quick bread is just that - something you can pull together in no time to put out for drinks with some relish or chutney, or to serve with lunch or dinner to sop up sauces and stews. Toasted and buttered it makes a good base for baked beans at breakfast, and goes beautifully with bacon and/or eggs, particularly the sort with a nice runny yolk. It's grainy, lightly sweet, fragrant with rosemary, and excellent for using up the odd bit of sour cream in your fridge. There's no yeast to fret over, no dough to knead, or rising time to wait, and it's a shade of yellow so cheerful it will put you in a good mood without even tasting it. A little lift for midweek.

Apple brown betty

 

If Hans Christian Andersen's right and to travel is to live, then I've been doing a lot of living lately. This Easter long weekend, I was in Tasmania, where my friends have a lovely kitchen with a view of the Hobart city skyline, a backyard full of apple trees (four different varieties!) and a twelve year old who makes the most incredible vanilla bean ice-cream. And on Sunday, these three things came together for dessert.

Though I love bread, I've never been terribly excited by its dessert possibilities, which are usually variations of soggy-sounding puddings. But this - the superlative brown betty - is made with fresh crumbs (rather than stale slices) tossed with (rather than soaked in) butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. When they're popped into the oven atop of a layer of fat apple slices, they crisp. While cooking, they crackle, and, when bitten into, crunch - a lovely contrast with the tender apples beneath, and the silkiness of the ice-cream melting into a milky pool beside it.

There are many different recipes out there - the brown betty dates back to the 1800s - but this one uses a combination of apple slices and puréed apple, which gives the filling a nice body and added texture. And the layer of crumbs on the bottom of the dish handily soak up any excess water from the fruit. It's best eaten with Edie's vanilla bean ice-cream but if you don't have the very good fortune to know Edie, then the stuff you buy at the supermarket (or make yourself!) will do nicely.
 

Rosemary flatbread

Let's get things straight. I am not one of those people who twist themselves into knots making absolutely everything from scratch. I'm much happier spending my time making one or two impressive things for guests and then supplementing with store-bought stuff. I'll make a curry and buy roti, I'll make a pie and buy the ice-cream... Crackers fall into the category of things I'd usually buy but when it's this easy, I make an exception. 

 
Flatbread is not so much bread as it is one enormous cracker. And in this case, a crisp, flaky, herb-infused cracker, sprinkled with salt and studded with fat sprigs of rosemary. The time it spends in the oven - barely 10 minutes - is by far the longest part of the cooking process. The dough is assembled in about as much time as it takes to throw the few ingredients together, and rolling it out is similarly speedy as you're not trying to conform to a particular shape - the more rustic the better. I like to put it out whole and let people break off pieces to suit their particular grazing needs. Somehow it feels very friendly, as you're really sharing food... I suppose the very definition of breaking bread. Just make sure you break off enough. As quickly as it's made, it disappears just as fast.

Cornbread

In the United States, a Civil War still rages over cornbread. You’re either from the north, and like it sweet, light and cake-like in appearance, or from the south, where you prefer yours savoury, crumbly and (more often than not) served up in a cast-iron skillet.  As an Australian, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I simply made the first recipe I came across, loved it, and haven’t bothered to look for another. This particular cornbread is, in many ways, a fusion of the two styles – the cornmeal grit and minimal sugar favoured by the south, but leavened with flour and baked in a loaf tin to look more like the cake common to the north. 

 
All I know is that at four in the afternoon, when I'm feeling peckish and standing in the kitchen, paralysed with indecision, trying to decide whether I feel like something sweet or something savoury, this cornbread neatly fulfills both cravings - its subtle sweetness undercut with a chilli kick. It may not please the purists, but it certainly pleases me - whether served up alongside a meaty stew, freshly cut with a dollop of chutney, or simply toasted with butter.