This recipe, found on trove, is a 1947 offering from a Mrs HG Butler of Elliot Avenue, Belair*. It was published in the News on 21 Oct 1947 in the Lend-a-Hand Club section. Apparently a shout-out had been made for almond biscuits and this recipe was deemed the winner.

These are something a little different, as the biscuits have a meringue topping. I was sceptical about how well these might keep but it turns out they keep extremely well – although it was only tested for a couple of days in our house … I liked that the biscuits themselves weren’t too sweet and don’t worry about the apparent plainness of the biscuit, because the topping more than compensates.

Being the 1940s, Mrs Butler naturally uses imperial (gasp!) measures and her recipe writing assumes more about the reader than a modern recipe. To that end, I noted what I did so that I can provide you with a more approachable (I hope!) recipe. These are definitely worth a try and, of course, you could top with any nut of your choosing – whether chopped or flaked (l used flaked almonds as I had some).

The cornflour in the meringue was a new one for me (not for the whole rest of the internet apparently) – it helps stabilise the meringue. If you are using the meringue straight away there may be little point.

Serving Size:

About 15 biscuits

Time:

30 mins + chilling time

Difficulty:

Easy

Ingredients

• 110g caster sugar
• 110g unsalted butter
• 220g plain flour
• 1/4 tsp bicarb
• 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1 extra egg white
• 55g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• almond essence/flavouring
• flaked almonds or chopped/flaked nut of your choice

Directions

1. Cream butter and sugar. This is beating them together to a smooth paste.
2. Sift the flour, bicarb and cream of tartar. If you are making this all by hand, then sift 3x, but if you’re using a stand mixer or food processor you can get away with one sift (or, indeed, one).
3. Beat the dry ingredients with the creamed butter and sugar and add the egg.
4. If the mixture is very stiff, add the milk as needed. The dough should be quite firm though.
5. Wrap the dough in floured cling film and put in the fridge for at least half an hour. You need to tread the fine ground between chilling so the biscuits are easy to cut and not over chilling so the dough is difficult to roll out. A good alternative is to roll into a cylinder as you can then slice off biscuits.
6. Preheat oven to 160C fan bake. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
7. Once the dough is chilled, roll out thinly and cut into biscuits. I cut into roughly 8cm x 5cm biscuits and it made 15. You do want the biscuits to be quite thin.
8. Bake the biscuits for 10-15 minutes. Keep an eye on them – you don’t want them to burn and you need to accept some wriggle room here based on how thinly you’ve rolled them and your oven’s idiosyncrasies.
9. While the biscuits are baking, make the meringue. Whisk the egg white to soft peaks and then slowly whisk in the caster sugar, 1 tbsp at a time, ensuring it is well combined before adding the next. The mixture should be stiff and glossy. Add the cornflour (still whisking) and a little almond extract – no more than a splash! (Almond extract is super potent – so we are literally talking 1/4 tsp no more, otherwise your meringue will taste like marzipan.
10. Turn the oven down to 120C.
11. Spread the meringue on the cooled biscuits and top with the nuts and return to the oven to set the meringue. This may take up to 15 minutes and again, depending on your oven, you might want to keep an eye on things as you don’t want the meringue to pick up much/if any colour.

* If you’re interested, a search of trove for butler “elliot avenue” belair shows that Mr & Mrs HG Butler were married in in 1921 in the Glanville Methodist Church.

The post Almond Biscuits appeared first on Eating Adelaide.

OK … under a year since the last post so I’m not doing too badly but I’ve decided to get back in to writing about food again but keeping it simple. This means that often (like today) I’m not going to walk you step by step through a recipe (yeah – no photos of each ingredient laid out in a perfectly colour coordinated flat lay). Where recipes are online, I’ll link to them and note the changes I’ve made. If warranted, I’ll include the recipe.

So we start today with the Australian Women’s Weekly’s Pasta with Broccoli et al. The AWW tells you to use orechiette (the little ear-shaped pasta) but really – use whatever shape you want. In our case, because I always make the pasta, it is some kind of flattish pasta that comes straight out of the machine with no extra effort (this, despite the teenager suggesting I do stuff like make eleventy-million orechiette by hand …).

This is the type of recipe that’s kind of a guideline. It’s for four but I was cooking for two and used a bunch of broccolini (no idea of weight), 2 (maybe 3) anchovies (and these are, of course, entirely optional) and I added lemon zest to the chilli crumb.

Now look – making the crumb (pangrattato if you’re feeling Italian) is an extra step but it’s definitely worth it. To reduce the number of pans used, I made the crumb first and re-used the same pan for the broccolini etc. Of course, I had to put the crumb into a separate bowl so only saved on the type of dishes, not the number! I would advise NOT skipping the chilli and, as always, lemon rind (and definitely the lemon juice) adds extra freshness.

Super easy, almost vegetarian and gets you a healthy dose of greens! You could easily add extra greens (peas, sugar snap peas, asparagus etc) if you wanted.

The post Pasta with Broccoli, Anchovies, Garlic and Chilli Bread Crumbs appeared first on Eating Adelaide.

This from Giuseppe’s Italian Bakes: Over 60 Classic Cakes, Desserts and Savoury Bakes. Giuseppe was fab on Great British Bake Off so I hoped to make far more than the one recipe I managed from this book. Maybe I’ll revisit it again at some time …

The recipe is spread out across multiple pages in the book so to save on space in my recipe folder I (loosely) write out the recipe below. The result was delicious but much thinner and crispier than you will be used to if you buy commercially available focaccia. I’m trying to get to the bottom of this – do I use the wrong size pan? Are commercial focaccia just a pale imitation of the real thing?

I made a half portion.

Dissolve 1/4 tbsp honey in 180g of tepid water in a jug. Put 300g flour and 2 tsp yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer and, with the mixer on a low speed very slowly pour in the honey/water mix. Once all the water is added add 1 tbsp olive oil and mix until the dough comes together. Sprinkle over 1tsp of salt and continue mixing for 10-15 minutes until you have a very smooth dough.

Flour the bench, tip the dough from the bowl onto the bench and cover with the bowl for 15 minutes.

Flatten the dough into a rectangle about 30×15 cm and envelope fold. Oil a 25x40cm tin (shallow is fine) and then push the dough into the tin. It will not, at this stage, cover the base. Cover and allow to prove for 50 minutes.

Now spread it further … you should now be able to cover the surface of the tin. Smooth the top with your hands, sprinkle with 1tsp of salt. Prove for 40 minutes.

In a glass jar, shake together 30g olive oil and 50g water to form an emulsion.

Lightly dust the focaccia with flour then dimple using half the length of your fingers (that is – deep dimples, not little finger tip ones). Pour over the emulsion – spread over with your hands – and leave to prove for another 50 minutes.

Pre-heat oven to 240C (dell’Anno doesn’t specify if this is fan or not … so I went 220C fan) – he does specify a lower shelf, so it may well be a good option to use a pastry bake/pizza option if you have one. Bake for 15 minutes.

When done, place on rack to cool and brush with a little extra olive oil while still hot for extra shine.

Best eaten immediately.

I do like his con cipolle option – he cuts onions into slices 3-4 mm thick, mixes with a little olive oil and microwaves for 1-2 minutes before spreading on focaccia (at the emulsion stage).

Delicious indeed, but not thick and fluffy!

The post Giuseppe dell’Anno’s Focaccia Genovese appeared first on Eating Adelaide.

I guess in some ways this sounds like a somewhat weird book. Is it about making vinegar? Is it about all the tricksy things you can do with vinegar about the house? No … The Vinegar Cupboard is all about different vinegars and uses for them in cooking.

It is a beautiful book to look at and has won its author, Angela Clutton, multiple awards and certainly opened my eyes to just how many different types of vinegar there are. I really wanted to have a crack at Clutton’s soda bread recipe (because – bread) – where a mix of milk and vinegar (cider, in this case) acts as a substitute for buttermilk. (And, if you’re not aware, this mix works perfectly well in all sorts of baking if you find buttermilk is not available). However, the library wanting the book back and some super hot weather has stymied me on that front.

But … never fear as quite a few months ago I had a go at the whole roasted onions. It’s a simple recipe – you take onions, top and tail them (so they are stable) but leave the skin on. Make crosses in the tops of the onions, then, into a pan. Stuff the tops with some fresh time, drizzle over olive oil and balsamic vinegar, season and then carefully add some vermouth or cider to the pan (but this time not over the onions). Cover with foil and bake for about 45 minutes. Then, baste with the pan juices, dot butter on the onions and bake for a further 45 uncovered.

We didn’t nail this first time around – the cooking times were a bit short (maybe we had massive onions) so the centres of our onions were a bit firm. Also – one onion per person is a LOT (maybe those massive onions again!) so I think that it might be a good idea that once they’re cooked, you remove the skins, break the onions down and serve as a side dish rather than a whole entity.

This book is full of interesting recipes and don’t worry about sourcing the more esoteric vinegars, as Clutton provides alternatives.

The post Book Review: The Vinegar Cupboard appeared first on Eating Adelaide.

A gem of a book, written by the impossibly glamorous Rawia Bishara who is famed for Tanoreen, a middle eastern restaurant in Brooklyn, NY.

The book is absolutely beautifully photographed – it’s one of those where every single page you find yourself thinking “oh, that looks delicious”, “oh, I could make that for x, y, z occasion”, “oh, we should have that for dinner next week”. You get the idea. And then you see a photo of Rawia cooking, perfectly made up, bejewelled and wearing glittery clothing and you think … “yeah, but not like that!”

We made two recipes from the book and both were delicious and, in the case of the beans, her suggested ‘cheat’ worked perfectly well.

First up we made the “autumn fattoush” – although as we weren’t making it in autumn, we found radicchio tricky to come by (or was that just my lack of commitment) and substituted witlof instead, figuring it would have the same leafy texture and bitter flavour profile. Of course, it did mean that our finished dish wasn’t quite as colourful as that in the book but it was still delicious. And, of course, with this kind of salad, the bulk of the effort is in making the pita chips. She suggests cooking them in the oven but the Ottolenghi option of pan frying them will also work well.

Later in the piece, we tried the coriander green beans with toasted almonds. Another very simple dish although the recipe does suggest deep frying the green beans, with the option for roasting them. We went the roasting route and Andy felt we took the beans a bit far (I thought they were fine). As we now have an air fryer, it would be interesting to cook the beans in that and see how they turn out. It would be essential to use fresh green beans for this – yes, I know that topping & tailing them is more work than grabbing a bag of frozen, but you really want the crunch that you only properly get with a fresh bean.

Some recipes in the book do have a very hefty list of ingredients (although, quite often, if you have a well-stocked spice drawer you’ll be fine) but there is something for everyone in this book – from quick, simple side-dishes to more elaborate, heavily spiced mains. Not every recipe is illustrated, so you will have to use your imagination now and then, but you should definitely not let that put you off.

The post Book Review: Levant – New Middle Eastern Flavours appeared first on Eating Adelaide.

On Wednesday we went to lunch with some friends who asked us to bring bread. We had an early start anyway, so I knocked up a batch of milk rolls. I was thinking that at least some would come home with me but apparently that was not to be the case … Fortunately, on Wednesday night, we watched SBS Snacks (otherwise known by its more boring name, SBS Food) and saw Colloca put together a focaccia pugliese. I was actually going to make a different bread, but Andy liked the look of this AND we had some potatoes hanging about in the cupboard.

Yes, potatoes. Focaccia Pugliese (as in, ‘focaccia from Puglia’ or ‘Puglian focaccia’ – from the region of Puglia, the heel of Italy’s boot) is distinguished from other focaccias by the inclusion of mashed potato in the dough. If you’ve done some bread making, you’ll know that including potato is a good way of adding moisture into the bread, and while the dough is softer, the crumb is slightly tighter. The topping is (apparently) traditionally tomatoes and oregano, which is what I stuck with – however, we discussed this and felt that sundried tomatoes & some red onion (and maybe some olives) would also work admirably. To be honest – just whack what you want on top unless you’re serving to bread purists or Italian food purists.

The mashed potato step does add time to the process so actually what I’d recommend is that next time you’re making mash, boil up loads of potato and separate out 300g of mash before you add your butter/cream/milk to the remainder. Or, in my case, boil up potatoes specifically, separate out your 300g of mash and then make the remainder into lunch for the starving child roving the house …

Pro tips … don’t be shy with the salt (either in the dough or on top) and definitely don’t be shy with the oregano. Also – I used my standard bread flour (I actually had 00 flour but read that part of the recipe too late and also wasn’t sure I had 500g). And, as the potato does mean a tighter crumb don’t be expecting a focaccia full of big airy holes!

Colloca’s original focaccia pugliese recipe is over on SBS.

The post Sylvia Colloca’s Focaccia Pugliese appeared first on Eating Adelaide.

# we paid for this meal

Date of Visit: Tuesday 20 September 2022

With the smallest member of the Eating Adelaide team away for a school trip, Andy and I got overly excited about the prospect of a week of eating out and generally whoopying it up. Due to other commitments, Monday night was a quiet night in and then due to sickness, so was the rest of the week … so our Tuesday night visit to the Morphett Arms Hotel was it!

We went through what seemed like a million dinner options before making our decision – as it was a wet and gloomy night we wanted something close by, we thought we should eat something the child doesn’t like (which left us with one option – pizza), we decided we didn’t want anything too fancy (because of all those ‘later in the week’ plans that didn’t come to fruition) and I, of course, wanted to try somewhere new. We also wanted a relatively early dinner which turned out to be a god-send as it forced us to make a decision.

Thus – the Morphett Arms. Now, we’d actually visited the Morphett Arms some time ago (2011, apparently) – and that visit had also been fraught with excitement (I’d thought I’d booked a different pub altogether) and WOW have things changed in the ten+ years since that visit. The hotel has had a refurb and has the sparkling look that, well, let’s face it, all suburban pubs have. Because it had changed so much, we wandered in to the lounge and had to be directed to the dining room (there is now also a fancy courtyard area) – it’s the absolute opposite of how it was 10 years ago.

No booking this time around but we were early and a table for two wasn’t a problem. Clearly, the staff were dealing with some exciting last minute changes for a large booking, with a lot of discussion on the phone about a table for a cake followed by a lot of reconfiguration of the seating in the dining room (as an aside – please, people – don’t do this – if you’ve got a large booking the venue wants to do the right thing by you and ensure you have a good time, while looking after other patrons – get everything lined up well in advance!). This means I’m not going to comment too much on service because it wouldn’t be fair to say anything negative. I will say the staff were all lovely, helpful and also very cheery!

Now – the crazy crazy toppings of 2011 have disappeared by the wayside (which is a shame – maybe consider bringing back a ‘crazy topping of the week’ or something!) so I went for a chicken parmi ($24+3 – slightly cheaper in the front bar) & Andy a beef schnitzel with gravy. Half schnitties are not an option here.

As you an see from the photo, the schnitzel was not on the chips (plus points!) and there was a nice, fresh salad (too much dressing, but I always think that). At first I worried that it could have done with a minute or two more under the grill, but it was very tasty – the schnitzel was thick and juicy, the crumb was crispy and the topping to meat ratio was good. The beef schnitzel with gravy was also received well.

While the wine list wasn’t overly exciting, the table talkers suggested some Eden Hall wines (I chose the Cabernet Franc – proof table-talkers work!), which were definitely a point of difference.

Instagram also promised ‘Spicy September’ but these dishes were only available in the Lounge Bar. Maybe this is where the option for the creative schnitzel topping comes in !

All in all – recommended, but make sure you go in the right door for the dining room!

Morphett Arms Hotel, 138 Morphett Road, Glengowrie, SA, 5044, ph: (08) 8295 8371.

The post Review: Morphett Arms Hotel appeared first on Eating Adelaide.

This looks to be a (slick) self-published effort, written by Danny Moisan who was head chef (patron etc etc) at Danny’s at the Harbour View, St Aubin, Jersey. The restaurant seems to be no longer extant, which I guess is what happens if you take the best part of 10 years to use a cookbook. My in-laws pre-pre-covid used to visit Jersey for an annual holiday and, I believe had eaten at the restaurant.

On to the recipe … obviously bread baking being the order of the day (although I do like the look of the ‘wasabi potatoes’ recipe on the next page). This bread, unlike the brioche, is short work which I made even shorter work of by using the stand mixer. You’ll spend more time prepping the bits and bobs than doing anything else.

But here is where we hit a problem. The recipe (for 8 servings) uses a WHOPPING 2.5kg of flour. If you make bread as often as I do … some bells start ringing. One loaf is normally around 500g of flour … maybe the good people of Jersey really really like their bread.

We reduced the recipe by 5 to work with the more familiar 500g of flour. But then we hit weird things like 2/5 of a carrot and TWO (I kid you not) olives. So then I took the base recipe and took some liberties. As it was, I felt the flavour was still underpowered. In terms of general bread qualities, it was fine. It had a nice even crumb that was tight enough to make a sandwich out of, and it toasted well. But after the variety of ingredients that went into it I was left thinking … shouldn’t there be something more?!

Will I make this again? No. Will I make loaves of bread that incorporate rosemary, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and olives (in varying combinations)? Definitely. Even though this was pretty good bread (and absolutely out-performed the brioche), the number of inclusions means I won’t revisit it as a plain bread because it would be just too hard.

Which leads me to conclude that it’s a good recipe but something got messed up in the translation from restaurant volumes to home volumes …

Perhaps if you make it & bump the up flavours you can let us all know.

Danny’s Bread – heavily adapted

Serving Size:

8

Time:

1.5-2 hours

Difficulty:

Easy (but faffy)

Ingredients

• 1.5 tsp dried yeast
• 200mL water
• 5g sugar
• half a carrot – peeled & grated
• 20g sun-dried tomatoes, cut into strips
• 1 clove of garlic, crushed
• 10 black olives, sliced
• 1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
• 1/2 tsp salt
• olive oil

Directions

1. Mix the water, dried yeast and a bit of sugar in a small bowl (ramekin, cup …) and leave to activate.
2. Put all the dry ingredients plus a healthy splash of the olive oil (so basically everything bar the yeast/water mix) in the bowl of a stand mixer and lightly mix together.
3. Add the yeast & water mix and mix to a dough. You may need a little extra water.
4. Knead the dough by hand for five or so minutes – until you have a springy, elastic dough.
5. Return to the stand mixer bowl, cover and leave to prove for 30 minutes. It should roughly double in size.
6. Tip the dough out, knock back, lightly knead and shape into a ball.
7. Place the loaf on a non-stick tray (I use a silpain mat) and prove for another 30 minutes.
8. Pre-heat oven to 160C (fan bake) and cook the bread for about 40-45 minutes.
9. Cool on a rack.

The post Danny’s Cookbook: Danny’s Bread appeared first on Eating Adelaide.

The first book on the shelf of choice is The Conran Cookbook by Sir Terence & Caroline Conran & Simon Hopkinson – a chef turned food writer for whom I have a great deal of time. My copy, published in 1997, was purchased at Cheshire Oaks, a factory outlet in Cheshire (England), in 2001. My ex-boyfriend’s mother somewhat patronisingly remarked that it was a good choice for someone ‘starting out’ (at the time I was in my twenties and had quite a few years of good cooking under my belt … the comment rankled at the time and rankles still …).

Anyway – this is a solid book if you have limited bookshelf space or budget, because it covers almost EVERYTHING. Each section has an introduction which takes you through skills, glossary and ingredients before offering a range of recipes. It’s the type of book that I find almost always has a recipe for your ingredient or dish of choice. It is quite densely packed and there is not an illustration for every recipe. If you want beautifully laid out and designed and photographed … then you do need to look elsewhere!

Naturally, it does have a bread section and a recipe for brioche which is always a winner in our house and, to be honest, is not something I’ve yet found an entirely satisfactory recipe for. Spoiler alert: the search continues!

This dough was super super tight (more like pastry) and the finished product had a very close crumb. It tasted good but it was a bit dry (and dried out very quickly – thanks humid weather and fans going non-stop) and had a tendency to be a bit flaky. Doing the first part by hand was a mistake because of the nastiness of the dough. If I were to use this recipe again (I won’t be) I would start off in the stand mixer and add water to get a sensible consistency.

Brioche

Serving Size:

1 large or 2 smaller

Time:

3+ hours (including proving)

Difficulty:

Moderate

Ingredients

• 1 tsp dried yeast
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 4 eggs
• 5 tbsp milk (room temperature)
• 2 tsp salt
• 565g flour (white bread flour – strong)
• 115g unsalted butter – room temperature (a warm day serves you well!)
• beaten egg to glaze

Directions

1. Mix yeast with 5 tbsp luke warm water and 1/2 tsp of the sugar. Leave to become active.
2. Beat the eggs with milk, salt and sugar in another bowl.
3. Put the flour in a large bowl, make a well in the centre and add egg mixture and yeast mixture. Mix to a rough dough. The issue I found here is that this is a VERY dry dough – in hindsight it would have been better to add more water at this point to bring everything together. In future, I would also do this stage in the stand mixer.
4. Once you have a smooth dough, cover and rest for a few minutes.
5. Now – incorporate the butter. This is messy and takes a while – you definitely need soft, room temperature butter. Flatten the dough out into a rough rectangle, put a few dobs of butter over the surface, then fold up (I tried to use an envelope fold but it doesn’t matter) and then knead to incorporate the butter. Once the butter is incorporated, rinse and repeat, until all butter is incorporated and you have a smooth dough.
6. At this point, I cracked out the stand mixer to try to bring everything together and get it smooth. For me, this was more like springy pastry than a dough.
7. Set aside for 1.5 hours.
8. Knock back and knead. At this point, things were looking better but the dough was still super right.
9. Set aside for 1.5 hours.
10. Grease your brioche tin (if you have one) or loaf tin(s). If using a brioche tin, then divide the dough in two unequal part so that you have the little top knot. Shape, pop in tin, cover and leave to prove again (maybe half an hour or so).
11. Preheat oven to fan bake 180C.
12. Use the beaten egg for glaze to affix the top knot to the brioche, and to glaze the entire brioche.
13. Bake for 30-35 minutes, and allow to cool on a rack.

The post The Conran Cookbook: Brioche appeared first on Eating Adelaide.

Master 10 has recently upped his pastry game. The ‘game’ being the eating of pastry, not the making of it. After years of solid allegiance to the sausage roll he is branching out … thanks to a trip to the pool and a Mrs Mac’s Famous Meat Pie. This then triggered a request for a classic meat pie for dinner so we borrowed some pie tins from my parents and I searched the web for a recipe. For his first birthday party I’d actually made party pies but didn’t save the recipe and also recalled them being a little dry, so it was useful to take the opportunity to revisit.

I based my recipe on this one from bestrecipes but baulked at the idea of adding tomato sauce so substituted in tomato paste.

Classic Meat Pie Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 500g mince (beef, obviously!)
• 1 cup (ish) of beef stock – substitute stock cube & water if you prefer
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• salt & pepper
• corn flour
• pastry – I used puff on both top & bottom

Method:

1. Heat some oil in a pan and sweat down the onion.
2. Ensure the pan is hot and add the mince. Break it up and ensure you brown it.
3. Add stock, tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce, stir well and then bring to the boil.
4. Cook well – keeping an eye on the liquid level. Taste and season with salt & pepper.
5. Create a slurry of the corn flour & some water and stir in to the meat – this will thicken the gravy.
6. Allow filling to cool. 
7. When ready to assemble the pie, preheat your oven to fan 180C and beat an egg to use as the glaze. Line your prepped pie tins, fill and top. Glaze with egg & decorative pastry. Cook for about 20 minutes or until pastry is golden.

For a different take on a pie using beef, check out the beef & stout pie.

The post A Classic Australian Meat Pie appeared first on Eating Adelaide.