Mushroom ragu on chickpea pancakes

If you're anything like me, a new dietary restriction can send your whole life into a tailspin. No cheese? But what goes on my crackers? Vegetarian? Those steaks won't eat themselves! A few months ago, gluten free would have driven me 'round the twist. But ever since Mum's gone gluten and dairy free, I've managed to wrap my tiny brain around it and honestly, it's not so bad.

We tend to eat a lot of rice based dishes, and use different kinds of flours. Recently, we had a rolled roast of pork belly, stuffed with wild rice and quince. Out of this world and totally devoid of gluten. And potato flour is an absolute revelation. It thickens liquids without clouding it and results in a smooth, silky sauce.

Food at events are a different story. Totally gluten-heavy. Sandwiches, spring rolls, pastries upon pastries, mini burgers (guilty!)? Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty gluten-obsessed. I buy at least a kilogram of flour each week. But when considering dishes for those of us not so tolerant of the bad stuff at our engagement party, I needed to get creative.

These chickpea pancakes pop up in both Italian and French cuisine. Socca in Nice, Farinata in Italy, whatever you want to call it, they're incredibly moreish and, even better, incredibly simple to make. They just taste savoury. You can serve them super crisp or a little softer, as I did with this mushroom ragu. I remember my brother Paul made these for us one evening. They were intended as a light snack, but I made my way through about a kilogram of the stuff. I'm delicate like that.

The ragu is the more complex component of this dish. The fungi need to be chopped as finely as you can manage. They should be sauteed for a good while - they should release their liquid and then cook off a while. Eventually, they'll begin to brown. It's at that point you take the mushroom flavour up a notch by adding some dried porcinis softened in hot water. This takes the intensity from "ho hum" to "ooh ah" in a matter of moments. Cook for an hour or so, and you're good to go.

So this dish is not only gluten free, but vegetarian. If your red wine is animal product-free, it's also vegan. And I gotta tell you, you'd be wise to save some for the guests they're actually intended for - these will be inhaled in a matter of moments. People who have a serious aversion to mushrooms also begrudgingly admitted they were delicious. A people-pleaser if I've ever dished one up.

Ingredients

1 kg assorted mushrooms, finely diced
1 brown onion, finely diced
3 tbsp olive oil
3 sprigs thyme
15g dried porcini mushrooms, or other dried mushrooms such as chanterelles or trumpets
1 cup red wine
1 litre vegetable stock (make sure it's gluten free)
salt and pepper

1 cup chickpea flour (also known as besan flour)
1 cup water
2 tbsp olive oil

Heat the olive oil in a heavy based saucepan. Add the onion and saute for 10 minutes over low heat. Add the mushrooms and increase the heat. Cook, stirring regularly, for around 30 minutes, or until mushrooms begin to brown. Meanwhile, soak the porcinis in 1 cup of hot water for around 10 minutes.

Remove the porcinis from the water, retaining the liquid. Chop the porcinis finely and add to the mushrooms. Add the red wine and reduce for around 3 minutes. Add the stock, thyme and the reserved liquid from the porcinis. Cook over low heat for around an hour or until most of the liquid has evaporated. Season as required.

To make the socca, whisk the flour with the water briefly. Refrigerate for around an hour. Preheat oven to 180ºC. Grease some flat-bottomed patty pans and pour in a thin layer of batter. Bake for around 10 minutes or until set. Place the pancakes under the grill and grill until crispy. Repeat with remaining batter.

Top each pancake with a spoonful of mushroom ragu. Garnish with some snipped chives and serve.

Mini burgers: a modern classic appetiser

At our work Christmas party, we had the best seats in the house. Not front row to hear the speeches. Not even the seats overlooking the dance floor, ready to criticise the first person who dared to dance in front of their colleagues. If you can't tell, I'm a hopelessly uncoordinated dancer who reacts with pathetic jealousy every time she sees someone in their own world, happily dancing as if no one is watching. I'm watching alright. I'm watching and judging. Totes well-adjusted.

Nope, our Christmas party posse was next to the kitchen door. As soon as any food left the pass we would appear out of nowhere with our hands out. Tiny buckets of fish and chips, sushi, little dumplings and of course, mini burgers all made it no more that five metres from the kitchen before we'd decimated the platters.

It seems you can't go to a function these days without the ol' mini burger being rolled out. The problem is it's normally dry and mealy - overcooked into oblivion. Really, a good burger should be cooked to medium, medium-rare. But with a patty that small, it's really hard to keep them moist.

Strawberry and custard tartlette

The final tartlette to round out our trio of pastry treats.

This is simplicity, tartified.

More suited to summer but we all need a bit of fresh zing in our lives, even in the depths of winter. By the way, did I mention my tulips are peaking their noses out of the soil? I musta looked crazy, staring nose to dirt squealing and clapping my hands at the ground. But it may explain my obsession with warmer seasons.

These little strawberries were shipped down from Queensland - the season's first. I opened the lid and that distinctive strawberry smell started floating out. My guilt about buying strawberries completely out of season was beginning to subside. But then, guilt over fruit purchases has never really kept me up at night.

Chocolate rhubarb tart

Winter always seems so depressing: it goes on forever, dark and gloomy, and I can never seem to get warm. The other night, I hopped into bed and it was so freezing, the one side of my body not touching the electric blanket ached the whole night through. It didn't help I'd been krumping half the night and left the window open in our bedroom for the midnight chill to settle in.

But I actually love winter. By the time summer has petered out in Melbourne, I'm well and truly ready for a bit of cool relief. Our summers are a slow burn, and culminate to a three to four week stint of stupidly hot weather that is just unrelenting. Autumn rolls in and we're instantly drinking red wine and making stews.

I love getting home, turning up the heater full bore and snuggling under the blanket until Matty gets home. Dinner is baked (often accompanied by a healthy glass of red) and we watch telly or read. (Who am I kidding? The only thing I'm reading after dinner is celebrity gossip websites. Britney's daily grocery shops won't perve on themselves.) Then it's time to make the made dash to the cold half of the house and warm up all over again.

Quince and pistachio tartlette

My friend Lesley and I have at least one thing in common: a very inappropriate sense of humour. We laugh as hard and as often as possible, quite often at the most inopportune moments.

Once, in a free meditation session at work designed to de-stress, we were doing neck stretches, turning our heads slowly side to side. We managed to face each other only once and as soon as we made eye contact we were away. We were asked more than once to stop laughing, but it was useless - I couldn't get the picture of her suppressed laughter out of my head. The snorts were unstoppable.

The 'out of order' attitude extends to our nicknames for each other: she's the Old Tart, and I'm the Tartlette. Some might be offended by these name tags, but I guess we're pretty assured of our affection for each other (either that, or we've both accepted the fact we're tarts and have moved on).