Compost cookies

I didn't make it to the east coast on this latest trip to the US, but I transported myself there in a California kitchen by making Christina Tosi's famous compost cookies. Tosi is chef and owner of Milk Bar, Momofuku's bakery offshoot in New York City (and now scattered all over the country... and Canada). Her creations include crack pie - which is as advertised - and these similarly addictive cookies.

Potato chips, butterscotch, pretzels, graham crackers, oats, ground coffee... more is more here - sweet, salty, chewy, crunchy... These have it all. The name is deceptive, implying something just thrown together without much thought but there's a science to these, a precision that speaks to the process Tosi goes through to create. She's an alchemist, engineering quite possibly the perfect cookie. They don't look like much but believe me, they're memorable, and appeal to adults and kids alike. They're especially fun to make with kids as they get to crush up potato chips and pretzels, and sample all the sweet stuff along the way - shout out to Linus, my able apprentice, and his mum for the beautiful photos.

Granola

I took a break. I took a plane. I took granola. Easy to make, possible to pack, granola is a simple breakfast that seems a little more luxurious than the everyday. There are a million recipes out there, but this one came recommended by a friend I trust in all things cooking. I'd made it before, for another friend just home from hospital, but never for myself. While many such cereals are overwhelmingly sweet, this one skews almost savoury, the maple syrup providing the sugar balanced with an almost equal amount of olive oil. There's shredded coconut and oats for chewing, nuts for crunching, and a fat dollop of Greek yoghurt to smooth it all out. It's breakfast to make you feel like you're on holidays, no matter where you are - a good start to any day.

Gingernut rhubarb crumb bars

I grew up in a house without store-bought biscuits. Before you start to feel too sorry for me, I should qualify by saying that my mother made any biscuits we ate. With maybe one exception. The only packet of biscuits that could ever be found in our pantry were gingernuts - dark, spicy and rock hard... and as such, totally uninteresting to children. I only started to appreciate gingernuts when I began drinking tea - they're ideal partners, especially if you're partial to dunking. And this weekend, I discovered something else they're brilliant with: rhubarb. 

Sydney's been out of sync seasonally the last few months. The summer sun has barely receded and my winter coat has languished in my wardrobe. You could be forgiven for thinking it's spring, not autumn. Especially by the look of the rhubarb - rich red fat stalks, bundled in bunches and impossible to resist. This recipe sandwiches wonderfully pink fruit between a layer of dense, spicy biscuit crumb and a comforting, cinnamon-flecked oat and almond crumble. It's pretty near perfect as far as bar cookies go: sweet and tart and crunchy, with the gingernuts providing a peppery punch. Another reason to keep a packet in the pantry. And the first slice for the cook.

Crack pie

It all began innocently enough. I asked my friend Susan, who was down visiting for the weekend, to pick something for me to cook her from the long list of recipes I'd bookmarked to try. She sat there listening patiently, unexpressive, maybe even a little bored, as I reeled off about six or seven things before her eyes widened and she sat up a little straighter in her chair. "That one." I looked back at my list for clarification. "Crack pie?" 

Where to start? Maybe with a warning. Do NOT make this pie unless you have six or seven people coming over to eat it. Maybe eight. Because once you start, I'm not kidding, you will not stop. You will not be able to eat without examining the sticky beauty of every forkful and quietly mouthing "oh my god". You will not be able to put said forkful in your mouth without reaching for another. You will not be able to rest until... It. Is. All. Gone.

This genius recipe comes from Christina Tosi, the maverick baker behind Momofuku Milk Bar in New York. She makes ice-cream from cereal milk, cake from candy bars and gives as much careful consideration to the naming of her creations as she does their development. When I was there, a couple of years ago, I sampled one of her compost cookies - a crazy composite of oats, potato chips, chocolate, butterscotch, pretzels and coffee, that defies description... in the best possible way. Tosi clearly specialises in highly-addictive sweets that are near impossible to pin down in taste. The best Susan and I could come up with for the crack pie was that it was like a cross between an Anzac biscuit and the coveted corner piece in a tray of caramel slice - chewy, gooey, caramelised, and... dangerous. 

Given my proclivity for sweet stuff, it's kind of amazing it took me so long to make this. The reason was the recipe called for just one tablespoon of non-fat milk powder and my local supermarket only sold the stuff in 1 kilo packets. I sent Susan back to Brisbane with a ziplock bag filled with white powder which looks suspicious enough without having to explain to an airport security screener it's for crack pie. Six pies worth to be exact. Obviously, I still have quite a bit left. To say the least. So if you want some, come on by, I'll be your dealer.

Rhubarb crumble

This week, I've been craving summer fruit. Or more specifically, baked summer fruit, topped with nutty, buttery crumble and liberally dolloped with Greek yoghurt. I discovered Nigel Slater's recipe for baked peaches through my friend Elizabeth's blog The Backyard Lemon Tree earlier this year and was reminded of it recently when the same recipe was published on Smitten Kitchen at the height of northern hemisphere summer. With stone fruit out of my reach for a good few months yet, I needed a way to satisfy my craving for a juicy, crunchy, throw-together fruit dessert... at the tail end of Sydney winter. Apples and pears I love but I wanted something a bit more punchy in both colour and taste... and found it in rhubarb.  

I really wasn't prepared for how good this turned out to be. I'm not saying it's better than the Nigel Slater peaches - that would be blasphemy - but put it this way, in summer, when I've got stone fruit coming out my ears (so to speak) I'll likely be craving this: rhubarb, tossed in sugar and orange zest, baked til it slumps into a sweet, tart ruby red tangle, and covered in a blanket of crisp, caramelised oats. As with its summer counterpart I like it best with a spoonful of plain yoghurt, not out of any sense of restraint, but because the smooth sharpness of the yoghurt beautifully complements the crunch of the crumble and the sweet juiciness of the fruit. And, as an added bonus, it justifies eating any leftovers (in the unlikely event there are any) for breakfast.

Oatcakes

I had always loved oatcakes but I had never thought to make them myself until my friend Emily, an American writer then living in the Blue Mountains, just west of Sydney, met a Scottish novelist visiting Australia and began a long distance love affair not only with him, but this one particular specialty of his homeland.  She’d return from Glasgow bemoaning the high cost of this Scottish standard in Australian supermarkets.  I turned, as you do, to Nigella Lawson.  Of course she had the solution.  It’s amazing just how easy they are to make and how few ingredients you need, all of which are probably already in your pantry.    

Oatcakes aren’t cakes per se, but dense, chewy, savoury crackers on which to pile all manner of good things.  I favour cheese, whether a wedge of soft brie or camembert, a sharp cheddar or a stinky blue, ideally embellished with a smear of quince paste.  There’s something pleasantly austere about these very plain biscuits.  Something straight-forward, no-nonsense.  They’re not so much moreish, as satisfyingly substantial, like a bowl of porridge.  My grandmother was Scottish and though she never made these for me, they remind me of her in some small way.  And now Emily too, since she married the Scot and lived happily ever after on a loch, far, far away.