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.

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.

Lemon delicious

Winter has been downright summery in Sydney this year. If I hadn't been to the Blue Mountains (for a holiday in June) or Melbourne (for work last week), I doubt my scarf would have seen any action at all. As I type this, it's sunny and 25 degrees outside. That's Celcius for any of you northern hemisphere folk, which translates as 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Really, the only sign of the season so far has been the cold I came down with over the weekend, the hordes of people in football jerseys on buses I've been on, and my craving for lemon delicious.

Lemon delicious - or lemon pudding - is a dessert my mother used to make regularly when I was growing up. Comprised of pantry, fridge and fruit bowl staples, it came together quickly, looked after itself in the oven while we were having dinner, and was ready to eat before it was time to do the washing up. A self-saucing pudding, it's baked in a deep-sided dish set within another shallower dish filled with warm water, a technique that produces a golden, sponge-like top, and a pale yellow custardy sauce below. 

Sweet and tart in equal measures, with custard and cake in perfect proportion, this is an intensely satisfying winter dessert (even if the winter in question is a little wanting). And there's enough citrus (and therefore Vitamin C) involved to allow you to overlook the significant dairy component and convince yourself that eating it is actively helping you get over your cold. The name says it all. How could you resist?

Nanaimo bars

Canada is responsible for so many of my favourite things - maple syrup, Neil Young, Alice Munro, Anne of Green Gables... it's got the best flag, wonderful place names (Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland...), two languages and these biscuity-cheesecakey-chocolatey squares, named after a town in British Columbia.

Traditionally, Nanaimo bars are a no-bake affair but this recipe, which I discovered on a Canadian food blog, calls for a tiny bit of oven time and takes a few liberties with ingredients. The end result is well worth it - a chewy, nutty biscuit-base wrapped in the aroma of toasted coconut, a robust, lightly sweet cheesecake filling and a rich, skating-rink-smooth layer of dark chocolate ganache to top it all off. What else is there to say? O Canada.

Braised fennel wedges with saffron and tomato

It may come as a shock to anyone reading this blog regularly that I don't subsist entirely on cake, or pulled pork or pie. From time to time I have been known to eat the odd vegetable... and no vegetable is odder than fennel - a pale, squat, decidedly hardy bulb with delicate green fronds. Last Sunday I was looking down the barrel of an unusually busy week. I knew I'd get to the end of each day and not feel much like cooking. I'd be hungry though and want something warm and hearty to sustain me after a long day and propel me into the next. Fennel wouldn't have been the obvious choice but I had a new recipe I was keen to try out and because of this, had all the ingredients to hand. 

For a non-meat dish, I have to say this was one of the messiest I'd ever cooked. The splatter factor with the fennel (when frying it prior to adding the stock) was on par with bacon, but the end result every bit as delicious. And there was something thoroughly satisfying about hoeing into a fat wedge of fennel as you would a steak, pinning it down with your fork as you sawed into it with a knife. Apologies to non-carnivores for the constant mention of meat in what is an entirely vegetarian - vegan even! - recipe. No comparison is necessary. This dish stands on its own - rich, robust, salty, sweet and so, so good. 

Tarte Tatin

Apples are often overlooked. They're a humble fruit - not as delicate as berries, not as fleeting or full-bodied as stone fruit, not as exotic as mangoes, as bright in colour or flavour as citrus, as quirky as quinces or watermelon or lychees... Here's what they are though. They're versatile - as wonderful with pork as they are baked in a pie or tossed raw through a salad or a slaw. They're inexpensive and available year-round in markets and supermarkets. They're crisp, they're tart, they're sweet and - in the hands of the French - they transform from a humble fruit into a sleek, sophisticated star attraction.

Tarte Tatin is an upside-down apple tart. Cooked first on the stove-top, then baked in the oven til the fruit is caramelised and the pastry that forms its base golden brown. As fancy as it looks, let me tell you, it's not hard. Really, it all comes down to confidence. Here's what you need to know: you don't need specialised equipment, just a cast-iron skillet or a frypan with an oven-proof handle, the kind as readily available in army disposal stores as kitchen emporiums. Don't fret about how dark the caramel should be, or whether the apples are going to stick to the bottom. The truth is that butter + sugar + apples is never going to disappoint and, if something does happen to stick to the bottom, you can always patch it back together and no-one will ever know the difference. When you come to invert the tart, use two hands to clamp pan and serving plate together, rather than flipping the pan with one hand on the handle and the other flat on the base of the plate. When you serve it, resist the temptation to gussy it up with accompaniments. It doesn't need them. Just some cream or ice-cream. And finally - perhaps most importantly of all - when passing round the pieces, make sure you get the biggest slice.

Chocolate orange cake

Last week it was my friend Joanna's birthday. So I made her a cake. When I'm cooking for Joanna, the stakes are high. She's an excellent cook...  and an adventurous one. She has a piping bag and a blow torch - for brûlée not welding - and the ability and patience (and need with two small daughters) to make cakes in the shape of barnyard animals and geometrically difficult numerals involving multiple tins and creative assembly. I can't compete with that. So I went the other way, with my limited craft skills and a fail-safe recipe.

This cake - a variation on the Middle-Eastern orange cake - couldn't be more simple... or delicious. Here, cocoa is added to the traditional mix of boiled orange, eggs, sugar and almond meal, resulting in a stunningly light chocolate cake - nutty, citrussy and incredibly moreish. It's brilliant as a light dessert at a dinner party (when you've probably already overfed your guests), as something decadent for those who don't eat gluten or dairy, a treat to take camping (it's so moist it keeps for days), or with a cup of tea on a sunny Saturday morning to celebrate a birthday of a friend... who liked it so much she asked for the recipe. Here it is!