Fml

Sorry for the absence dudes. We travelled to Fiji for a friend's wedding last weekend. It was everything I expected and more: gorgeous beaches, piles of seafood as high as your navel, mango tangos out to yin yang. What I wasn't expecting? Picking up a nasty stomach bug somewhere in Nadi airport on my way back home.

It's nearly a week later and my stomach's still making noises like Predator is lurking somewhere in my lower intestine. I've had a week off work right smack bang in the middle of a huge project. Great timing, belly!

So my silence over the interwaves has been due in part to illness and also because I'm limited to ONLY EATING WHITE FOOD. Kill me now. This couldn't have happened to a more inappropriate person.

For the last few days, I've eaten four things: white rice, potatoes, steamed chicken and the occasional banana. No oil, butter, sugar, vegetables, fruit, grains or, more importantly, bacon. For the love of god, not the bacon!

On a side note, Matt's been spending a lot of time out of the house of late. It might have something to do with my behaviour over dinner last night. We were sitting down to baked potatoes, mine topped with rice and chicken. His? Coleslaw, spicy pancetta, mayo, beans and parsley. As he started tucking in, I leaned and whispered, "Can I watch?" He didn't seem to like that.

So that might explain the situation over here at Casa Del Toilet. No recipes because there's only so many versions of plain rice you can cook. Boiled or absorption method? Oh my! The options are limitless!

Vanilla cupcakes with mandarine curd and vanilla buttercream

My phone's been ringing off the hook this week. Every meeting I have, it rattles away, practically screaming to my colleagues "Meeting's over! Emma's got shit to do!" Emails, text messages and calls non-stop. It's a pity 90% of them weren't for me.

Some dude called Moses has been handing out my number to his pals at Uni. "Hey Moses, do you have notes from class today?" Or "Moses, it's Gary from bible studies. Do you want to get lunch sometime?" Fighting my every urge to mess with these innocent souls, I politely asked them to let Moses know he had the wrong number. Thou shalt not annoy Emma with your boring messages, bitches.

So on the surface, it would appear that this week, I've been quite the popular lady. While most of my messages weren't strictly intended for me, I did do something that would increase my popularity in the office. I've baked on more than one occasion and each time, the treat has been well received. Funny that: people go nutso over baked goods.

We had the chocolate and salted caramel cupcakes Monday, and to add insult the buttery injury, I whipped up these babies on the same day. I figure if I'm going to get the team to indulge, we may as well go the full banana/mandarine.

You'll notice these two recipes go a little further than your average cupcake. Anyone can whip up a batter and flavour some icing. We all know how to ram a tiny teddy or a jaffa on top. But sometimes it's nice to have a new trick up your floury sleeve to impress your pals. Like a citrus curd. Oh yeah.

You've had lemon curd right? Smothered on a scone or some plain old white bread. Pretty sweet and tart and we all know how I love a sweet tart, amiright fellas? Mix it up with mandarine instead of lemon and you're onto a winner.

Mandarine is not quite as tart as lemon, so a single raspberry on top upped those stakes to an appropriate level. Topped off with a rich, buttery icing and this cupcake was a refreshing (albeit indulgent) treat for all to enjoy. Well, the 12 lucky sods who got in first.

Ingredients

1 1/3 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
110g butter
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
1/2 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Line a baking tray with cupcake wrappers.

In an electric mixer, cream the butter until light and fluffy. With the mixer going, add the sugar one tablespoon at a time until it is all incorporated. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly between additions.

Sift together the flour and baking powder. Add half to the butter and mix on low until just incorporated. Add some milk and vanilla, then the remaining flour and finally the last of the milk, mixing between each addition.

Spoon the batter into the cake wrappers until around 3/4 full. Bake for approximately 25 minutes or until a skewer leaves the cake clean. Leave to cool on the tray until ready for assembly.

Vanilla buttercream

110g butter
3 1/2 cups pure icing sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla paste

In an electric mixer, cream butter for around 5 minutes until light and creamy. Add half of the sifted icing sugar and the milk and beat for a further 3 minutes or until all the lumps have disappeared. Add the remaining icing sugar and beat for 2 minutes, whisking in the vanilla in the last stages.

Mandarine curd

2 egg yolks
30g butter
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 tbsp mandarine peel, finely grated
50ml mandarine juice

Whisk together the yolks and sugar until combined. Pour into a saucepan along with the butter, peel and juice. Over low heat, stir continuously until the curd has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remove from heat and strain into a bowl. Chill until ready to use.

To assemble

Using a melon baller, scoop a hole out of the top of the cupcake. Fill the cupcake hole with the mandarine curd. Fill a piping bag with the vanilla buttercream and pipe on top of the cupcake. Top with a raspberry and serve.

Chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel centres and peanut praline

Life is one big test. A test I've been getting straight 50s on for most of my life. That's not a cue for the violins. At least I've been passing (though, had I lived in the States, I may not have been so lucky. Isn't a 60 a pass mark there? That's about as much as I learnt from Beverley Hills 90210. Morale lessons be damned).

I do alright, don't get me wrong. Job, boyf, buddies and fam are all A-OK. But I've never really looked after myself. I cook the heck out of a cupcake and for a good while, ate the heck out of them as well. I'm trying to lift my pass mark to a credit. So life's big test at the moment is trying to stay away from baked goods. That's a test pretty much destined for failure in my kitchen.

It's RSPCA Cupcake Day today. I promised to bring a dozen of my oven's finest to work. I baked cupcakes, stirred salted caramel, beat together some buttercream and dissolved sugar for a praline I'm pretty sure you'd sell your grandmother for. And I didn't eat one. single. crumb. High fives for my inner fat kid.

When you're trying to look after your health in this way, you expect a few challenges here and there. What you don't expect is your partner to wave it in front of your face. In the last two days he's eaten a bag of Clinkers, two Eskimo Pies (the remaining four are in the freezer practically wailing at me to be eaten) and a milkshake.

When we were driving home from a night out (I was that fun one abstaining from booze) Matt's eyes lit up at the sign of the Colonel in the distance. "KFC", he started whispering. "Let's stop for KFC", he said breathlessly. These were my kind of sweet nothings. He knows that salty, oily business is my achilles heel. "No", I said firmly, speeding up past the beady-eyed saboteur. I looked at Matty's face in the dark and he's got that evil grin on his face. He's not only willing me to fail, but having fun doing it.

For all the crap I'm missing out on, I actually feel a thousand times better than I have before. I'm exercising most days and it's beginning to feel like I'm not being punished for crimes committed in past life. Better than that, I'm actually enjoying it. Don't you just want to vomit? And just the other day, I saw a pile of chips in the bottom of the pantry (another of Matty's cruel traps, I presume), and didn't even consider cracking open a packet.

So the cupcakes will be taken to work without so much of a taste test to verify their deliciousness. But look, I've made the cupcakes, the caramel and the buttercream before. The praline's new, but really, how can you stuff up praline? (When you crystallise your sugar three times, pretty easily).

The thing I'm looking forward to most? Seeing the salted caramel ooze from the chocolatey crumb - a pleasant surprise for even the most hardened cupcake connoisseur. I'll just have to live vicariously through their joy, smug in my little land of whole foods.

Ingredients

1 1/3 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
110g butter
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp cocoa
50g chocolate

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Line a baking tray with cupcake wrappers.

In an electric mixer, cream the butter until light and fluffy. With the mixer going, add the sugar one tablespoon at a time until it is all incorporated. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly between additions.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and the cocoa. Add half to the butter and mix on low until just incorporated. Add some milk and vanilla, then the remaining flour and finally the last of the milk, mixing between each addition. Melt the chocolate in the microwave for 1 minute and add to the cake batter.

Spoon the batter into the cake wrappers until around 3/4 full. Bake for approximately 25 minutes or until a skewer leaves the cake clean. Leave to cool on the tray until ready for assembly.

Salted caramel

200ml thickened cream
120g caster sugar
75g liquid glucose
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
50g butter
3g gelatine soaked in 2 tbsp water
1/2 tsp sea salt

Preheat a heavy based frypan over medium-high heat. Bring the glucose, vanilla and cream to the simmer together in a small saucepan. In the heated frypan, sprinkle over the sugar and allow to melt, stirring occasionally to stop it from burning. Once all the sugar has dissolved and the cream is simmering, add the cream to the sugar. Whisk quickly to mix thoroughly - be very careful as the mixture will spit. Cube the butter and add to the caramel, followed by the gelatine, whisking continuously. Remove from heat, add the salt, strain and cool.

Chocolate buttercream

110g butter
3 1/2 cups pure icing sugar
1/4 cup milk
2 tbsp cocoa
50g chocolate

In an electric mixer, cream butter for around 5 minutes until light and creamy. Add half of the sifted icing sugar, cocoa and the milk and beat for a further 3 minutes or until all the lumps have disappeared. Add the remaining icing sugar and beat for 2 minutes. Melt the chocolate in the microwave and add to the mixture, mixing thoroughly to incorporate all the chocolate.

Peanut praline

120g caster sugar
70g water
50g salted peanuts

Combine the water and sugar in a saucepan over low heat. Stir continuously until the sugar melts completely. Bring to the boil and stop stirring. Once the sugar colours to a golden brown, remove from heat and pour over the peanuts. Once the praline has cooled enough to handle, stretch the toffee into long strands with a couple of peanuts at the base.

To assemble

Using a melon baller, scoop a hole out of the top of the cupcake. Fill the cupcake hole with the caramel and top with a tiny sprinkle of salt. Fill a piping bag with the chocolate buttercream and pipe on top of the cupcake. Top with a strand of peanut praline and serve.

Baked cheesecake with chocolate sauce and poached pear

We lived across the road from a lake in our early childhood. Any opportunity and we were in the water, flicking mud in each other's eyes and painting "dork" on our sister's back in sunscreen. OK, so maybe that was Police Academy, but we did spend far too long in that lake.

Mum spent a lot of her time bribing us to get our homework done or keep up with our chores. Ha! Chores! I make it sound like we were four little chimney-sweeps, toiling away in the hot Mallee sun with cardboard sandals and newspaper for bedsheets. Really all we had to do was pick up our clothes and do the dishes every so often. Do you think we could wrap our feeble brains around that?

So the bribes that worked in our house were pretty simple: television, food or the lake. No swims until all homework was done. That way if Mark was faffing about with his Matchbox cars, he knew he'd cop it from the rest of us for lake-blocking (a more age-appropriate and less sexy version of cock-blocking). No dessert until your dinner plate was clean, which instilled a healthy appetite (read: crazy overeating) from that point on. And of course, no telly until the dishes are done. Pretty effective, that one.

So I've pulled a few tricks from the Pauline Bennetto Playbook of Discipline and Motivation. I knew we had a big couple of days at work and needed something to get the team going, and reward them for their hard work. The team nominated cheesecake as their motivator of choice. Bless their cotton socks.

I raced home Wednesday night and whipped up this treat for the guys. It took most of the night but wasn't really too much of an effort. All the effort was expended getting it to work. First up it was hanging in a plastic bag from my handlebars. It sailed through the air and was kicked a few times by my nobbly knees. I ended up balancing it on top of my basket around 6km to work before disaster struck.

I told the story to my colleagues: "Gee, I feel like I've lost loads of weight, I can feel the road beneath my seat." I look down and realise my back tire is flat. Still plenty of padding on my backside, though.

Once I served up the cheesecake, I made the demand. No cake until at least one piece of work was completed by each person. I can't say I was disappointed when they each chose the simplest pieces of work and knocked them over in 5 minutes. Very Bennetto-esque indeed.

Ingredients

200g butter
100g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp cream
250g flour

500g cream cheese
200g sugar
1 tbsp cornflour
3 eggs
juice of half a lemon
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
400g sour cream

1 green pear
1 stick cinnamon
2 star anise
1 cup sugar
2 cups water

1 cup chocolate pieces
1/2 cup cream
2 tbsp glucose
2 tbsp caster sugar

To make the pastry base, preheat the oven to 180ºC. Place the butter and sugar into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until combined well and add the egg yolk and cream. Mix until the yolk is incorporated and add the flour. Pulse briefly until just combined. Turn out onto a floured bench. Knead briefly to bring together. Roll until around 4mm thick. Cut around the base of a springform pan and roll across. Bake for around 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.

To make the cheese filling, reduce the heat in the oven to 170ºC. Mix the cream cheese and sugar on high until light and creamy. Add the cornflour and mix again until combined. Add the eggs one at a time until each is incorporated well. Add the lemon juice and vanilla and mix briefly. Add the sour cream and whip until combined. Pour into the springform pan on top of the pastry base and bake for around 1 hour or until just wobbly in the centre. Turn off oven and leave for around 30 minutes.

To poach the pear, combine the cinnamon, sugar, water and star anise in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the pear and cover with lid. Poach for around 20 minutes or until pear is cooked through.

To make the chocolate sauce, combine all the remaining ingredients in a saucepan. Cook over a low heat, stirring regularly. Sauce is complete when chocolate has just melted.

To serve, remove the cheesecake from the springform pan. Top with lukewarm chocolate sauce and sliver of poached pear.

Pulled pork

My friend Margaret thinks she can pretty accurately guess my order before I've even opened my mouth. If there’s pork on the menu, I’m rolling up my sleeves, tucking a napkin into my collar and salivating like a husky before the waiter returns to take our order. You better believe I’m all over that porky goodness (unless they’re all out – in which case I spend the evening howling at the moon).

I never realised my obsession with pork until Mags mentioned she wasn’t really into Australian pork. “Smells funny," she explained. Now, I’ve grown up with Australian pongy pork, so hadn’t realised there was a stench until she pointed it out. It’s like being used to your own B.O – kinda embarrassing once it’s brought to your attention. In England (where she’s from), pork is sweet-smelling and divine-tasting. Here in Aus? NQR for her tastes.

Once stinky pork had been brought to my attention, I decided I needed to track down a supplier that wouldn’t offend my delicate friend’s sensibilities. Apparently only 20% of male pigs have the smelly problem, but that risk is higher for the poor little fellows kept in confined conditions. Best excuse to go free range if I ever heard it (besides the thought of a cute little Babe-like fella running free in green pastures, but that’s just the softy in me coming out).

If you’ve ever looked for free-range pork products, you’d know how rare they are: supermarkets don’t commonly stock them, and when they do, it’s pretty limited in range. I’d also question their definition of “free range” in some instances (apparently in recent times the number of chickens allowed per hectare to gain the label in supermarkets increased 6-fold!).

I spied Bundarra Berkshires in my butcher’s cabinet and angels appeared out of nowhere, playing harps and singing in unison “Joy to the world, free range pork has come! Let earth receive her pig!” No more pork stink. Sweet, tender meat and cured products that don’t just hit a home run, they hit the ball out of the park, with bases loaded and win the World Series. And that’s about the extent of my baseball lingo.

I love me a good roast pork. I love a twice cooked pork belly. Bacon is my breakfast’s best friend (but my love-handles’ worst enemy). But my absolute, can’t-go-passed-it, sell-my-soul-to-satan pork dish? Pulled pork. And the best recipe out there? David Chang’s. It’s sweet, sticky, sharp and all other good things rolled into one. You want to keep your accompaniments pretty simple to avoid overkill (apart, of course, from the broccoli coleslaw you will DEMOLISH by the bucketload).

I’m yet to cook up this recipe for Mags and get her seal of approval, but I get the feeling she’ll give it the thumbs up. Provided England’s still winning the Ashes, her winging Pom routine is kept to a dull roar so we’re in with a fighting chance.

Ingredients

Adapted from David Chang

2kg shoulder pork
½ cup tomato paste
1 tsp paprika
½ tsp cayenne pepper
¼ tsp cloves
¼ tsp allspice
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup sherry vinegar
½ cup white wine vinegar
1 cup tomato sauce
1 tbsp freshly ground coffee
¼ cup molasses
1 cup water

Remove skin from pork, keeping as much fat on the shoulder as possible (you can reserve this for crackling if you’re that way inclined). Heat a heavy-based saucepan over medium-high heat and place in the pork, fat side down, and seal all sides. Remove the pork from the pan.

Add the tomato paste to the pan and stir for a minute or two until it starts to slightly darken. Add the spices and sugar and cook for a further minute. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer. Place the pork back in the pan and cover, cooking over low heat for 4 hours. Stir every so often to ensure the base doesn’t burn.

Once cooked, remove the pork from the sauce and shred the meat with two forks. Add most of the sauce back into the meat and stir to coat evenly. Serve with broccoli coleslaw and buns or tortillas.

Broccoli coleslaw

I'm what you would call a spasmodic exerciser. I run like the clappers every morning, inevitably get a killer injury and retire hurt for a good couple of months. Rinse and repeat. Part of my routine involves buying new gear to beat the excuses every morning. Once, I sauntered into Target and moseyed on over to the running skins. I bet you thought I was going to say the fringed jackets or low heeled cowboy boots with all that sauntering and moseying.

I picked up a pair that looked like the right size. Well, maybe an "aspirational" size. OK, a size smaller than I actually fit. The thing I didn't realise is these skins, they're not all that forgiving. It's not just the cankles top you have to hide. There were bulges where bulges are just not polite to be seen. My new motivational pants had all of a sudden become an offensive-to-the-eye reminder of all those months spent lazing on the couch.

Mumsy's date loaf

Dear Universe,

I'm thankful for a quite a few things in this world. Last night's sleep ranks right up there. In bed at 8.30, asleep in 15 minutes and waking peacefully at 6.30am is pretty tops in my world.

I'm super happy to live in Melbourne, pretty much the best city in the world. We've got creative chefs, a vibrant arts scene and not-too-bad infrastructure (though you can shove it with the East-West super-freakway. What the hell's up with that, Universe?)

I also have a fantabulous Mum. You probably know her from such movies as, "I Tolerated Emma's Teenage Years" and "Bennetto Family Umpire". My favourite of her films to date? "I Taught Emma How to Make Date Loaf".

It's an old recipe of hers, from the Big Brown Book of Burke family recipes. That book has my name written all over it, if the tattered pages actually make it through the various house moves and kitchen throwdowns. It's a treasure trove of pavlovas, curried sausages and blowaway sponges. I'm sure there's also around 35 different versions of fruit cake, each with their different nuances. Fruit cake is not fruit cake in Mum's world.

I used to think dried fruit cakes were a bit passe. Nowadays I'm throwing them down my throat like a 70 year old diabetic in denial. I think our appreciation of dried fruit is relative to our capacity to control our bladders: toddlers in nappies are chowing on sultanas til the cows come home, then we swear them off for a good 30-40 years, and come back around when we're being wheeled into a nursing home, smearing dense slices with butter.

This is potentially the easiest cake in the history of the world. Chop up dates, mix with sugar, flour, butter, water and vanilla. Pour into a pan, bake for 45 and you're done. And seriously? It needs nothing more than a quick swipe of butter. No icing, no dusting of sugar, nothing. It's seriously addictive: it's a mellow sweetness that dates bring to any recipe. Tasty, tasty date loaf.

So Universe, of all the things you've been thanked for in this world, date loaf might be the strangest. Mum's who pass along the recipe is probably a little more understandable.

Yours sweetly,

Emma

Ingredients

1 cup chopped dates
1 cup caster sugar
2 tbsp butter
1 cup boiling water
1 3/4 cup plain flour
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 180º celsius.

Mix dates, sugar, butter and boiling water in a bowl until the butter melts. Stir in the dry ingredients and mix til the flour is incorporated. Add the vanilla and stir until combined. Pour into a well-greased loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out cleanly.

Serve with a smear of butter.

Savoury porridge with pancetta and poached eggs

For a long time, my only interests in travel were to Europe. Soak up the western European culture, feel all fancy-like with my croissants, cacio e pepe and jamon iberico and head back home to Melbourne to pay off my severely depleted credit card. Not a bad life, but not exactly adventurous when it comes to travel.

Don't get me wrong, my visits were amazing and a great eye-opener. But it was not exactly the greatest test to visit countries with similar food, accessible transport and a fairly decent grasp of the English language to fall back on. I needed a bigger challenge. Flights were cheap to Vietnam, so guess where this tightarse chose to travel next?

I was the most immersed in a culture I have ever been in my life. The people were beautiful, the streets were loud and pungent and the food crazy, crazy, crazy good. Everything was so fresh and full of amped up flavour.

The one area I really struggled to throw myself into their culture was breakfast. Instead of a giant bowl of pho or the odd bowl of congee I'd see around the traps, I did as many tourists did and ate the banana pancakes. It was a little embarrassing for a food-obsessed person, but I stopped short of buying a "Same Same but different" muscle top to cement my shame.

On my last day in Saigon, I decided to throw caution to the wind and dig into a bowl of pho. Beefy, soupy, noodley, amazingy. Herbs, chilli and lime were added according to your own tastes. It's no wonder Bill Clinton had eaten three bowls (or so said almost every pho shop in our quarter).

It's only recently I've gotten into the savoury soupy breakfast. I woke one recent weekend and decided this was it: my days of sweet porridge were coming to an end. It's the kind of revelation truly deep people have these days. I'd begun my transition with a visit to St Ali trying their salted butter porridge with brown sugar: kinda half and half sweet and savoury. Good, but not whole savoury cigar.

I definitely had my savoury pants on this day. That doesn't sound appetising does it? This was a rich, deep, meaty porridge. It was almost like a risotto made with oats - and the pancetta gave it the smokey kick up the backside it so deserved. The drizzle of egg yolk through the mix on served to enrich the sauce even further.

When I decided it couldn't possibly get any more rich, I decided to shallow fry some truffle polenta to enjoy on the side. Subtlety is certainly not my strong suit. Actually, I don't think I own that suit. If I do, it's crumpled up in the bottom of my wardrobe. Or left at the cleaners for the past 6 months.

I'll be perfectly honest: I couldn't eat a whole serving of this dish. It was filling and intense and I enjoyed every mouthful. But I know my limits and this one defeated me. No matter. More for Ron.

So while it's not Vietnamese in style, this breakfast was a definite break in tradition for me. It wasn't porridge with bananas and it wasn't eggs on toast. And it was totes delicious. Bill Clinton would have eaten four servings, I know this much for sure.

Ingredients

1/3 cup oats
1 tsp olive oil
3 thick cut rashers of pancetta, cut into lardons
1 shallot, finely diced
1/2 carrot, finely diced
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
1 cup kale, finely sliced
2 tbsp dried mushrooms
1/2 cup hot water
1 egg
1 tbsp white vinegar

Soak mushrooms in the hot water and cover for at least 10 minutes. Remove from the water and slice finely.

Heat olive oil in a frypan and saute pancetta until just colouring. Add the shallots and carrots and saute further until the vegetables have softened. Add the oats and toast for a couple of minutes, stirring regularly to ensure they don't burn.

Add the stock and simmer, stirring occasionally, for around 5 minutes. Add the kale and cook for another 3 minutes.

To poach egg, bring water to boil in a saucepan. Reduce to a simmer and add the vinegar. Crack the egg carefully into a mug and lower into the water, tipping the egg out gently. Cook for around 3 minutes, or until the white has set but the yolk is still runny. If you like the yolk firm, I'm not sure we can be friends anymore.

To serve, spoon the porridge into a shallow bowl and top with the poached egg. Season well and serve with some crusty bread or fried polenta on the side.

Not so vegetarian cannelloni

I love vegetarian food. Pizzas with roasted vegetables, layered capsicum and zucchini lasagne, maybe even a mushroom risotto. But my confession of the week? I almost always add some kind of cured meat to the recipe. I can't help it. I look at a perfectly delicious veggie and grain based recipe and decide it could be made delicious-er by adding a piece of old pig.

Once, at a joint birthday picnic in the park with my friend Anik, I cooked up a feast of food for our mutual friends. My gorgeous roast spuds, glistening, crispy and redolent of duck fat were pretty tempting. Unfortunately, these potatoes were also appealing to the only vegan at the picnic, and I didn't react fast enough to tell him they were not safe for his consumption. It might be my forte: meat disguised as vegetables. Delicious, offensive, animally vegetables.

I'm not sure why, but to me, vegetarian lasagne tastes better with a spicy salami snuck in between the layers. I've also been known to slather a zucchini pizza with prosciutto just after it slides out of the oven. That's why when whipping up a spinach and ricotta cannelloni dish, I knew my smokey prosciutto would end up in there somewhere. I decided not to fight it: as with most of my addictions, I knew it would only get worse if I tried to fight it (I'm looking at you, online-Anthropologie-shopping).

Cannelloni has always played second fiddle to lasagne in the baked pasta stakes. It's super tasty, but has less bang for your pasta-buck. When I'm eating pasta, I like to eat pasta, mountains of the stuff. It's my Everest, and I normally conquer it, leaving my sherpas shuddering in my wake with altitude sickness. It's never pretty.

But I've cracked the code. The ricotta and spinach filling was always good, but never outstanding. The topping was also kinda meh. The filling here is laced with garlic, parmigiano reggiano and a few anchovies. The tomato sauce was peppered with smokey pancetta and really, what's better than that?

This is a total winter dish. It's warm, filling and will likely send you to the couch with your nanna rug for a three hour nap. Not necessarily Everest, but Kozciuszko at the very least.

Ingredients

15-18 cannelloni tubes (depending on their size)
400g ricotta cheese
200g spinach (frozen is fine)
100g parmigiano reggiano cheese, grated
3 anchovies
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
olive oil
200g smokey pancetta, cut into lardons
800g canned tomatoes
50g unsalted butter
50g flour
1 1/2 cups milk
5 balls of bocconcini
parmigiano reggiano, extra
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180º celsius.

To make the filling, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a heavy based saucepan and saute one garlic clove and the anchovies until just turning golden. Add the spinach and cooked until it has wilted. Pop into a bowl with the ricotta and parmesan. Season well and mix to combine. Fill a piping bag with the mixture and pipe into the tubes.

To make the sauce, saute the other garlic clove in olive oil. Add the lardons of pancetta and cook until golden. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes, or until reduced and thickened slightly. Pour over the cannelloni.

To make the white sauce, melt the butter over low heat and add the flour. Cook for a couple of minutes until the roux starts to go a little white on the sides. Add the milk slowly, whisking to ensure to lumps form. Season well and pour over the sauce. Top with torn bocconcini and extra grated parmesan. Bake in the oven for 35 minutes or until the cheese is golden and bubbly.

Smoked chicken, cheddar and salsa verde sandwich

We used to have sandwiches in our lunch boxes every day at school. Vegemite when we were tiny, then, as a sign of our growing maturity, ham and salad when we moved to secondary school. White bread, margarine, sliced on the diagonal, wrapped in glad wrap. Sandwiches day in, day out.

There are no complaints here - it was a relatively healthy meal and it was kind of dependable. If everything was going wrong in your nine year old life (long division sucked and they'd run out of cheese popcorn in the canteen), you knew you'd be able to reach into your blue plastic lunch carrier and unwrap some of the salty black tar in between two white slices. Strange thing to look forward to, but I've never claimed to be the most normal child.

Every morning, we'd get dressed and the four of us would rush frantically out the door to chase the school bus down the road. On our way out, we'd grab our lunchbox from the bench and scoot. Paul's little lunchbox was blue. So was the container Mum used to keep the cheese.