Browned butter and rosemary apple cake

I got to sit out summer for two weeks when I spent Christmas with family in the Pacific North-West of the US, and the New Year with friends just over the border in Canada. It's been ten years since I made this birthday cake for a then-seven year old, and all these years later she and I are somehow the same shoe size, and she's surpassed me in the kitchen - making dinner many nights for her parents, who really did hit the kid jackpot. I promised her grandmother we'd make a cake together during my stay. She was keen to try out the Danish dough whisk I'd brought her as a present. Given we'd all had more than our fill of chocolates, and puddings, and candy canes, something a bit less OTT was in order. I had a recipe for browned butter and rosemary apple cake from a Scottish cookbook I'd been given for Christmas, which seemed perfect... but for the fact that there'd been a run on rosemary for holiday roasts, so we had to try a few Vancouver grocery stores before we got lucky. Happily we did, as this cake was a winner. Simple and sophisticated - sweet with apple but with subtle savoury notes from the rosemary and nuttiness of the brown butter. Cosy and comforting. Like being with old friends.

Browned butter and rosemary apple cake
Adapted from Midweek Recipes by Jess Elliott Dennison

If you can't lay your hands on rosemary, thyme or sage would, according to the recipe's author, make a good substitute. 

6 sprigs rosemary

200g salted butter

225g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

225g soft brown sugar

2 eggs

300g apples, peeled, cored, and thickly sliced

50g flaked almonds

Place the butter with the rosemary in a pan and heat on medium for 4-5 minutes, stirring regularly. The butter will foam up and become golden before turning dark brown. This is when to turn off the heat. A few dark specks will appear (probably on the base of the pan) and it will smelly really nutty. Strain this liquid (scraping every bit of it out with a spatula) through a fine-mesh strainer. Discard the rosemary and allow to cool. If some rosemary gets in the butter, that's totally fine.

Preheat the oven to 160 deg C (320 deg F) and grease and line and deep 23cm cake tin.

Combine flour, baking powder, sugar and eggs in a bowl and add the melted, slightly-cooled butter. Mix well until combined into a thick batter.

Spread half the mixture over the base of the cake tin, then scatter over the apples, ensuring most go in the centre. Spoon remaining cake batter over the fruit. Don't panic if you can't get your dollops of batter to join up as it will all even out in the oven. Sprinkle the almonds over the top and bake for 45 minutes to one hour, or until golden and coming away from the sides of the tin.

Beetroot relish

One of my earliest cooking memories is helping my grandmother with morning tea. Technically, what I was delegated to do was not so much cooking as arranging pieces of cheese on Jatz crackers and topping them with gherkin or corn relish. This savoury selection was only part of a lavish feast my grandmother Irene laid out every Sunday for her immediate family. In addition to my grandfather Cec, there would be my (great) auntie Ursula and uncle Ed, and my grandmother's brother Kev and his wife Joan. Sometimes one or more of their children would pop in. With their children. And occasionally my parents, who would be picking my brother and I up from an overnight stay. There were many chairs around the table and the table itself was always groaning with food. My grandmother was renowned for her fruitcake and that was always at the centre of this spread, but on any given Sunday there could also be scones or pikelets, maybe something else sweet too but the Jatz and cheese were a mainstay. So I took my responsibility seriously. 

When it came to entertaining, my grandmother knew her stuff. Cheese and crackers is a winning combination, but made just that bit more special with a little something extra. So when I made this beetroot relish last week and served it up to a friend with some cheddar and crackers, it reminded me of her. In truth, I'm not sure she would have entirely approved, what with beetroot's propensity to stain, but she couldn't argue with the taste: sweet and lightly spicy, perfect with the creamy sharpness of the cheese, and the salty crunch of the cracker. 

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.

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.