The bagel

This is short and sweet, as all good weekend lunches should be. We people need to get out and do things! Smell the roses, walk the dogs, visit our loved ones! Or alternatively, spend it hunched over your camera taking shots of cakes and soups, but with not a skerrick to eat. Enter bagel stage left.

We picked up a couple of bagels from the Coburg Farmers Market on Saturday from (relatively) new bagelers (that's what they're called, right?) Five n Dime. They don't have shopfront as such, but pop up regularly at markets in and around the northern suburbs. I'm no bagel expert, but in my opinionated opinion, these are the cat's pyjamas.

Shallot and goats cheese tart with rough puff pastry

You may know by now, but I love me a farmers market. When a new one kicks off up the road in Coburg, I know how I'll spend my Saturday morning (total rager, right?). Matt and I met up with his sister Sarah, brother in law Tim and gorgeous niece Claudia for a fossick about the Coburg North Primary School for an hour or so. The thing is, I can't trust myself at a farmers market: I see all the gorgeous produce and can't resist. Must. Buy. Food. This one was no exception.

The market is held twice a month (every second and fourth Saturday) and the first event was pretty special. My favourite butter guys were there (yep, I have a favourite butter guy), loads of fresh fruit and vegetables, cheeses, meats, oils and ready made food. I picked up some bagels and, in something of a premonition, I sense you'll be seeing more of them later in the week.

Wandering around, I came across a sweet little bag of shallots and pounced. I had visions of them caramelised whole - roasted? In a pan? No matter - the real question was what would accompany them. A second vision and I was set. I remembered reading about Karen Martini's recipe for a rough puff pastry online. Like a 24 year old guy at a cheap nightclub, I knew a tart was in my future.

Peeling shallots is one of life's more tedious tasks. Peeling baby shallots is a chore sent from the pits of hell. The papery skin either sticks to your fingers or stubbornly stays put on the shallot. Even when you think you've removed all traces, you toss them in olive oil and about thirty pieces suddenly appear out of nowhere. But, as with all things in life, the harder the task, the greater the rewards.

A regular puff pastry is a dough with layers of butter folded carefully in between. It requires hours of effort and an exacting touch to perfect. The rough puff is a simpler beast and results in such a flakey crust, it's hard to see why you'd make the real thing. It still does take a couple of hours, but most of that time is spent chilling the pastry between folds. Plenty of time to peel shallots. Or watch a Jennifer Aniston rom com. Your choice.

The biggest test of this whole recipe is definitely not in the pastry. When you yank the shallots from the oven, you will not be able to resist popping a couple in your mouth. But try as hard as you can: they work so well with the light, flakey pastry it will be worth the wait. Pile them as high as you can and drizzle with a little balsamic reduction. If you've been lucky enough to travel to Modena and snag the real stuff, a teaspoon here is worth the investment.

Shallots and their big cousins, onions, are just starting to come into season. The small shallots are the perfect mix of sweet and savoury and with the salty kick of the goats cheese are as close to perfection as you can achieve with a vegetable. This recipe is a bit of a celebration of the old allium, normally kept in the shadows of his showier recipe counterparts (much like Judy Greer in... every movie she's been in).

The thing with shopping at a farmers market is this: you're never buying out of season. Everything's perfect now because it just wouldn't be sold any other way. I'll admit that I do buy a heap of stuff from supermarkets, but when I look in my fridge on a Sunday night, it's the stuff from the farmers market that's been eaten. Which is a good thing, because there's usually not a stall for Doritos and Barney Bananas and I need all the incentive I can get to ditch that 'food group'.

Ingredients

Rough puff pastry
Adapted from Karen Martini

375g plain flour
300g butter
170ml water
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt

Combine the flour and salt in a food processor. Add the cold butter and pulse until the butter is just combined. Add the lemon juice and half the water. Pulse briefly to incorporate. At this stage, check if more water is necessary - dribble as much in as you need.

Pour the dough onto the bench and knead just to bring it together. Shape into a rectangle and roll out to approximately 40cm x 30cm. Imagining your dough in three equal sections, fold the right third over the middle third. Brush off any excess flour. Fold the left third over the middle and again, brush off the excess flour.  Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Once chilled, remove from the refrigerator and roll out to 40cm x 30 cm. Repeat the folding as above and chill again for 30 minutes. Repeat this step one more time and chill for a further 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200ºC.

Roll the pastry out to 50cm x 30cm (or around 3mm thick). Slice a rectangle around 15cm x 8cm. Chill for 15 minutes in the freezer. Pop in the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until slightly golden on the edges and puffed up nicely.

Roasted shallots

1 small bag of shallots (around 200g)
2 tbsp olive oil
3 sprigs of rosemary
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Peel the shallots and place on a roasting pan. Remove the leaves from the rosemary and chop roughly. Thrown in the with shallots. Pour over the olive oil and add the salt and pepper. Toss to cover the shallots with the other ingredients. Roast for 45 minutes to an hour or until the shallots are golden and soft.

Assembly

2 tbsp goats cheese
Roasted shallots
Rough puff pastry
1 tsp balsamic vinegar, or a balsamic reduction

Place the puff pastry on a baking sheet. Crumble the goats cheese over the pastry lightly. Place the roasted shallots on top. Bake at 180ºC for around 15 minutes or until the edges of the pastry are golden brown.

Remove from the oven and drizzle with the balsamic vinegar.

Anzac caramel ripple cake

So the Anzac is a simple biscuit. Oats, coconut, flour, sugar etc etc. It's to be enjoyed with a cup of tea or an instant coffee. It's not fancy or ostentatious. Until I went and did this.

Have you ever enjoyed a chocolate ripple cake? Chocolate ripple biscuits sandwiched together with cream, then slathered with even more cream? That always seemed so indulgent to me, but then I had a brainwave. I could out-indulge the over-indulgent. Mega indulgent, so to speak.

This idea must be credited to a lovely lady I worked with a few jobs ago. Pat was such a gem: reliable, great bawdy sense of humour and totally calm in very stressful situations (she may have been my exact opposite, except for the bawdy part). She was even more beloved when she brought a gingernut caramel ripple cake to work. It was out of this world: soft, a little spicey and so, so creamy.

Anzac biscuits

How could I not? It's Anzac Day here in Australia, the public holiday to commemorate the landing of the troops in Gallipoli. I honestly was going to have a blog break today (as you'll find I normally do on public holidays and weekends). I had my biscuit bonanza recently, but failed to include Anzacs in that rotation. It was only fair I pulled up my socks today and whipped up a batch of Australia's national biscuit.

These biscuits find their origins in World War I. Anzac (or Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, the group of soldiers that landed in Gallipoli) were, it's safe to say, pretty far from the creature comforts of home while fighting in Turkey during the war. The women knew little food sent over would remain edible after around two months in a ship at sea. So rather than using eggs or milk, they bound the biscuits with golden syrup. Oats and coconut were fairly nutritious and flour and sugar would not spoil.

The Challenge: Passionfruit slice

I like a physical challenge. I might be the slowest cyclist, a shuffling runner and swim with my head above water, but as soon as someone suggests a competition, I get all hot blooded. I'm kinda the same with food. Someone asks, "Have you tried this restaurant yet?". I get all high-pitched and crazy if I have to answer in the negative. I can't bring myself to lie. Yes, I know it's not rational. No, I'm not seeing a professional about my issues.

Back a few months ago, I posted a recipe for passionfruit yoyos. My buddy Hilary commented she'd been trying to perfect a recipe for passionfruit slice, but it wasn't passionfruity enough. I didn't have a recipe as such, but thought I could cobble together a good rendition. It may be my competitive nature, but I think I hit the jackpot.

All the passionfruit slice recipes I could find very fairly generic: coconut base, passionfruit icing, or maybe a jelly if they were feeling crazy. I knew I wanted a crunchy base, a smooth passionfruit cream and a sharp jelly topping - kinda the best of both worlds, but less about condensed milk (as genius as that stuff is) and more about the light mousse. You may have guessed by now, but I'm a bit gaga for a good mousse. A mousse mentalist, so to speak.

My sweet friend Kaye took us to Le Petite Gateaux for lunch the other day. I should really say dessert, except cake was our totally decadent alternative to the midday meal. I chose a peanut butter and chocolate gateaux - out of this world. I may try to reverse engineer it one of these days. But the most amazing thing for me? The biscuity base was crunchy - almost crackly. I was intrigued.

My first thoughts were some kind of a rice puff - but nothing was visibly obvious. Nuts? Nope, these were sharper than the crunch nuts give (amiright fellas?) (last smutty joke of the post, I swear). Toffee shards were my conclusion. Crispy-crunchy and sweet. I had hit the jackpot; regardless of whether I was right, they were a sweet crackly addition to the base.

I knew immediately my mousse would be based on the passionfruit butter I used in the tropical coconut pie. Hilary wanted a distinct passionfruit taste, and I knew that curd would deliver. But to make sure it didn't overwhelm, I lightened it with whipped cream and some gelatine to help it set.

The jelly topping is another story entirely. I'd figured it out nicely: fresh passionfruit, sugar syrup and gelatine. But when I cracked open the wrinkly little blighters, they didn't have the distinct sunshine colour I was after. I had a brainwave: a little bit of orange and yellow food colouring can't hurt. But this lady was a total loose canon in the kitchen that day: I gave the bottle a bit harder squeeze that I would have liked. The jelly ended up the colour of a workman's vest rather than a delicate sunset. Teaches me for trying to tart up a perfectly good dish.

I had intended this slice to go to my Mum's sister's house as a little treat for my aunties and uncles. Unfortunately I was a little delayed and it was no way near set when Mum left for Geelong. She will have to settle for photos. And Hilary will have to take my word for it: this was a cracker of a passionfruit slice.

Ingredients

Biscuit base

1 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 cup sugar
100g butter
1 cup sugar, for toffee

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Prepare a 20cm square cake tin by greasing and lining with butter and baking paper.

To make toffee shards, prepare a baking sheet with baking paper. Heat a heavy bottom saucepan over a medium heat. Pour sugar in and allow to melt, stirring occasionally. Once the sugar starts colouring on the edges, stir consistently to ensure it does not take on too much colour or burn. Once all the sugar has dissolved, remove from heat and pour immediately onto your prepared baking sheet. Allow to cool and harden. Once the toffee has hardened, break up roughly and place in the bowl of your food processor. Process until it has broken into very small pieces, but not to dust.

To make the base, place all ingredients, except for toffee shards, into the food processor. Blend until a rough dough comes together. Turn out into your tin and need in the toffee. Bake at 180ºC for around 15 minutes. Remove and cool in the tin until room temperature.

Passionfruit mousse

1 tsp gelatine
2 tbsp water
1/2 cup passionfruit juice
1/4 cup lemon juice
4 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
125g butter
1 1/2 tsp gelatine, extra
1 cup cream
1/4 cup cream, extra

To make passionfruit butter, soften gelatine in water. Place remaining ingredients in a double boiler (saucepan of water with heatproof bowl on top). Stir with wooden spoon until mixture thickens. Add the gelatine and stir until dissolved. Cool to room temperature, covered with plastic wrap.

Whip the first portion of cream until soft peaks form. Soften the gelatine in 2 tablespoons of water. Heat the remaining cream until just simmering, add the gelatine and remove from heat. Once the cream has cooled, fold through the whipped cream. Add to the passionfruit butter and fold through gently until it is completely incorporated. Sieve the mousse to remove the seeds.

Add on top of the biscuit base and smooth the top. Refrigerate until the mousse is set, around 3 hours.

Jelly topping

10 passionfruit
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup water
1 tsp gelatine
2 tbsp water

Soften gelatine in cold water. Heat the sugar and water over a low heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. bring to the boil for around 3 minutes. Halve the passionfruit and remove all the pulp. Add the pulp to the sugar syrup and add the gelatine. I removed around half the seeds by sieving the mixture  - not necessary if you don't mind the crunchy top.

Add to the top of the passionfruit mousse and leave to set in the refrigerator for around 2 hours.

Broccoli soup with crispy bacon

There are some weekends where you know you've done yourself some damage. Waking up Sunday morning is the ultimate punishment for a night of excess. This weekend was particularly bad for me. I woke up with a severe case of cotton mouth and a splitting, thumping, brain-bending headache. But for once, these symptoms weren't also accompanied by the "hangover regrets".

My Saturday was not spent holding up a bar or or praying to the porcelain gods. Nope, it was spent on the couch with my main lady (Mumsy Bennetto) watching The Holiday. A bit of cheesy rom-com does wonders for the soul.

Quinoa porridge with berries and hazelnuts

Matt thinks I'm a "soft Melburnian". The other night, after riding home in the rain and wind, I seriously considered turning on the heater. It would have been the first time since early spring last year, but I was drenched and miserable. Matt must be hot blooded - he never feels the cold - but strangely, never perspires. Vampire maybe? Growing up in the Bennetto household has armed me with the the nerves to withstand a pretty brutal assault of ribbing and name-calling. I don't mind being called soft if it means I can be warm. Besides, warm and soft reminds me of chocolate pudding. I'm down with that.

And so begins our journey into winter food. I swore I'd never use the word 'journey' in the same sentence as 'food'. Masterchef this ain't (besides, I have hardly any tanties in the kitchen these days). We had soup for dinner (you'll see it later this week - sorry to leave you in suspenders) and porridge is doing it's job getting me going in the morning. But I can't spend six months of the year eating bran and the remainder porridge. I mixed it up winter-style this weekend with quinoa flakes.