Fig and Almond Clafouti

 

Evening in Coburg. The back door is open. Someone is singing their prayers; their voice floats in on the night. A train hoots low as it approaches the crossing. The bells ring.

There is a sudden thump, and a shake, and a rustle. The fruit bats are visiting our fig tree. As they lumber through the branches, feasting as they go, they meet each other and voice their claims in outraged squeaks.

Each morning, we wake to a fresh crop of butchered figs littering the ground. Late afternoon, we put up the ladder and fetch our crop for the day, a dozen or so fruit newly ripened by the sun. Each evening, the bats come back and demolish what we could not reach, and so the cycle of life continues.

We have been eating fresh figs, baked figs, figs galore. And for dessert, fig and almond clafouti. The almond meal make this a very moist, very rich dish. If you want a drier, firmer dish, substitute coconut flour for half the almond meal; or, if you have no problem with gluten, white flour. However you make it, it is a truly figgy pudding – and absolutely delish!

Fig and Almond Clafouti - 15 to 20 ripe black figs - butter, to grease the dish - 1 cup milk - 3 large eggs - 1 tsp good vanilla essence - 1/4 cup brown or coconut sugar - 1/2 cup almond meal - a pinch of salt - a handful of flaked almonds Grease a 10” ceramic tart dish or skillet. Behead the figs, then halve or quarter them and lay them in the dish. Mix the milk, eggs, vanilla essence, sugar, almond meal and salt together. You can use a blender or a whisk – either way, aim for frothy. Pour this mixture over the figs. Sprinkle a generous handful of flaked almonds over the top. Slide the dish into the oven, and bake for 40 to 45 minutes. Remove from the oven, and leave to cool and set for at least ten minutes before slicing. Serve warm or cold. Very good for breakfast! (Backyard: figs, eggs. Victoria: almond meal, almonds, milk, butter, salt. Imported, but fair trade and organic: coconut sugar, vanilla essence.)

Plum Clafouti with Almond Meal

 

Ah, the British. We take what we want, we twist it out of all recognition, then we claim it as our own. As genocidal as this pattern has been for other cultures, on the plus side it has led to some great food. Kedgeree is one classic example; chicken tikka masala is quite probably another, although there is some debate over whether it was invented in Glasgow or Delhi.

The recipe which follows is a third. Made with cherries and white flour, we could call it 'clafoutis', or, more commonly in English, 'clafouti'. Made with other fruit and white flour, we'd properly call it a 'flaugnarde'. But gluten intolerant arrogant English bastardiser that I am, I make it with plums and almond meal – and I have no idea what I should call the resultant dish! Yet like a typically imperious colonialist, and because many of you are at least vaguely familiar with clafouti and will get a general idea of the nature of the dish from the use of the word, I will continue to refer to it as such. It certainly sounds better than 'soft eggy plum pudding thingy'.

Whatever it should be called, this dish is perfect for a sunny Sunday breakfast in the early spring when the chickens are back on the lay, and a few bottles of plums remain in the preserves cupboard. I've used much more fruit than is usually indicated because I wanted every bite to drip with plums; the batter does little more than bind the plums together.

Almond meal replaces regular flour, as almonds and plums are a delightful match. Between the extra fruit and the almond meal, the dish is much more moist than a regular clafouti, but the resulting heaviness is very satisfying: it will ward off any winter chills which still wreath through the morning air. If, however, you want a lighter clafouti, reduce the amount of fruit and replace some of the almond meal with coconut flour; click here for a more standard recipe.

Plum Clafouti with Almond Meal - unsalted butter - approximately 2 cups quartered bottled plums, or fresh plums quartered and lightly stewed (this is the equivalent of a Fowlers #20 Jar; for notes on bottling plums, click here - 4 eggs - 1¼ cups almond meal - 1¼ cups milk (low fat is fine) - 1 tbs sugar - 1/2 tsp proper vanilla essence (none of that thin chemical stuff) - a pinch of salt Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease a 24cm porcelain tart dish. Drain the fruit well. Drink the juice if you like; it's rather yummy. Place the other ingredients into a food processor or blender. Whizz until all is light and frothy. Pour the batter into the greased dish, then gently spoon the plums over the batter. Slip into the oven, and bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until it is golden. Serve warm or cold. Adapted from a formula by Mollie Katzen in the now out of print Still Life with Menu. (Local: plums, eggs, milk. Not local: butter, sugar, almond meal, vanilla essence, salt.)

Chilean Guava Choc Chip Banana Muffins

I hate waste. That's one reason I love my chickens so much: they turn that flabby uneaten lunchtime sandwich, squished into the yogurt container and kept in a warm schoolbag for the last six hours, into fresh eggs. They also eat buckets of compost from our local organic veggie store: outside leaves of cauliflowers, slightly wilted stalks of rainbow chard, bruised avocadoes and other goodies. The veggie store saves on garbage disposal costs, and my chickens stay happy.

My aversion to waste also means that, although we try to eat a significant proportion of food from local sources, when I see squishy brown bananas going cheap at that same veggie store, I buy them. They're terrific for after-school smoothies and, of course, muffins. Unlike Barbara Kingsolver's household, which had a total banana ban during their year of local food (see their fascinating book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), I tell myself that squishy brown bananas are waste to be used up, and I can save them from the trash for only a dollar or two. It's kind of like dumpster diving, only a day earlier and slightly more expensive.

Our latest squishy banana muffin experiment has involved the Chilean guava, also known as the myrtus berry. Here I must admit that, a few years ago, I bought a Chilean guava bush then promptly forgot to water it the first summer; predictably, it died. But Chilean guavas do grow well in Melbourne; we've devoured a few punnets from Coburg, and they pop up at farmer's markets from time to time. You can also buy the less local Tazziberry, which is the Chilean guava carefully bred, and re-named and re-branded as a Tasmanian fruit.

Chilean guavas taste like, well, guavas. That is, they are a bit pineapple-y, a bit apple-y, a bit strawberry-y, with a hint of vanilla. They are headily fragrant, and a punnet will send tendrils of fragrance through your kitchen.

The fruit look like little red blueberries. Because they are so small, Chilean guavas are eaten whole. They can be a bit rough in your mouth, slightly grainy but not unpleasant; however, where they really shine is in muffins. The fruit soften and swell, retaining their scent, so that muffins come out sweetly fragrant and studded with little explosions of juicy fruit.

What follows is a straightforward recipe, very easy and very delicious. As with all baking, muffins come out lightest when the ingredients are at room temperature. If you have a little milk in your fridge starting to go sour, even better; your muffins will come out ethereal. Between sour milk and squishy bananas, what follows is a brilliant way to use up leftovers.

Chilean Guava Choc Chip Banana Muffins - 2 squishy bananas - 125g brown sugar - 1 egg - ¾ cup slightly sour milk, or buttermilk - ¾ cup vegetable oil - 250g self raising flour - pinch salt - 1 punnet Chilean guavas (aka Tazziberry or myrtus berry) - ½ cup choc chips (optional) Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease or line a muffin pan. Mash the bananas with a fork. Mix in the brown sugar. In another bowl, lightly beat the egg, then mix in the milk and oil, and add this to the bananas. Place the flour and salt into a large bowl and whisk them together. Make a well, and add all the banana glop at once. Quickly mix with the fork, then add in the Chilean guavas and the choc chips. Combine quickly but gently. The batter is very wet. Slop it into muffin pans – I get 15 small muffins, but a sensible person with larger children would make 12 big ones. Slip them into the oven for 25 minutes. The muffins are done when their tops are slightly springy to the touch. Incidentally, the photo shows my waste-not muffin on a waste-not plate – discovered on the side of the road during a hard rubbish collection. It leads me to ask what sort of maniac puts eight English willow side plates, dusty but unchipped, out in the rubbish?! You're crazy, whoever you are, but thanks anyway. I think I'll take my muffin and eat it on my waste-not bench. (Local: Chilean guavas, egg. Saved from the bin: squishy bananas, souring milk. Not local but fair trade: choc chips (can you believe it?! I must admit they are not as large nor as deliciously melting as other choc chips, but that's a sacrifice I'm prepared to make for fair trade.). Mysterious provenance: flour, brown sugar, vegetable oil, salt.)

Blueberry Clafouti

This week some forty-odd years ago a child was born. He was one of those boys who played fair, and who looked out for the kids on the margins. A natural leader, he captained teams and ran youth groups; still in his teens, a baby boy was named after him.

While at uni, he lived with his grandparents. After his grandmother died, he spent an evening with his grandfather every week and talked about the racing results. Even now, at the helm of a law firm and with three kids of his own, he finds time for the lonely and marginalised. He balances commercial work with advocacy work, and stays in touch with all sorts of difficult people, seeing them not as problems, but as human.

At home, he loves to host and will find any excuse for bubbles. He remembers what people like to drink, and always has the right bottle in the house. A natural conservative, he's nevertheless open to madcap ideas and big adventures; every few years he drags his wife and young children across the world to catch up with old friends or to see something new.

He's the sort of man who gets up in the night with a crying baby; who changes nappies and packs the nappy bag; and who leaves his wife to sleep while he gives the kids breakfast. As much as he likes a girl in frilly knickers and high heels, he married a birkie wearing cotton tailed short haired feminist. Like my relatives, I'm not sure why. Perhaps it was my jokes, perhaps it was the cooking; whatever it was, it seems to work.

In gratitude to my gentle, thoughtful, generous, compassionate, kind and loving husband, I got up early on his birthday to make him breakfast. It had to be easy, because a morning person I am certainly not. I staggered into the kitchen, threw a few ingredients into a food processor and banged them in the oven; half an hour later, we celebrated with blueberry clafouti.

My husband's qualities are myriad; he was even born during blueberry season. Although clafouti is delicious with other berries, pitted cherries, quartered plums or other stone fruit, it is absolutely marvellous with blueberries. May he have many happy returns!

Blueberry Clafouti - enough unsalted butter to grease the dish - 2 punnets blueberries, or 1 cup berries or quartered stone fruit - 4 eggs - 1¼ cups plus 1 tsp plain flour - 1¼ cups low fat milk - 1 tbs sugar - 1/2 tsp vanilla Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease a 24cm porcelain tart dish. Place the fruit in a bowl, and gently toss it with 1 tsp flour. Place the other ingredients into a food processor or blender. Whizz until all is light and frothy. Pour the batter into the greased dish, then scatter with the blueberries or other fruit. Slip into the oven, and bake for 30 minutes or until it is puffed and golden. Serve immediately. Tweaked from a recipe by Mollie Katzen in Still Life with Menu. (Local: blueberries, eggs, milk. Not local: butter, sugar, flour, vanilla essence.)

Hollandaise Sauce

Some couples come back from their tenth wedding anniversary pregnant. Us, we came home with an assignation. And a couple of weeks later, as arranged, my four-year-old and I headed up country and met with an eccentric man wearing a gaudy apron; we came home with four chickens.

Now these ladies are pecking and preening their way around our garden. They gobble up slugs with relish; they eye off the weed seeds and strip them clean; they endlessly turn over the compost heap; they peer in our windows and check what we're up to; they follow us around as we work in the garden. And they lay eggs.

We are totally smitten. My four-year-old spends hours each day carrying one chook or the other, or sitting on a little wooden chair in the run and chatting with them as they peck around her ankles. My six-year-old came home from school yesterday. 'I'm tired and cross,' she announced, then went and read with the chickens. She came in an hour later much refreshed. And I stand at the kitchen sink, looking out and laughing at the little heads peeking out from behind a flowerpot or popping up from a clump of grass.

All of us, young and old, crow with delight when we find an egg. It's like finding treasure two or three times a day. And I find myself wondering, what took me so long?

I can castigate myself for putting it off. Or, better, I can celebrate that we have an abundance of fresh eggs just as asparagus comes into season. Between asparagus, eggs, and a lemon from the neighbour's tree, we're most of the way to poached eggs and asparagus with hollandaise sauce.

I trim the asparagus and simmer it for a few minutes in a wide skillet until just cooked – not squishy, but not crisp either; meanwhile, I poach eggs in another skillet. And in a breathtaking feat of kitchen management, while the asparagus and eggs are cooking I whip up this hollandaise sauce ready to blanket the lot.

For more on how to poach an egg, click here.

Hollandaise Sauce - 2 egg yolks (freeze the whites for meringue) - 2 tbs cream or top milk (that is, the first bit of a bottle of unhomogenized unshaken milk) - 1 tbs lemon juice, or to taste - 4 tbs unsalted butter - salt, pepper Put the 4 tbs butter somewhere in easy reach. Place the yolks, cream, lemon juice and salt into a deep pan. Whisk together. Heat over a medium flame. Holding the saucepan with one hand, whisk rapidly and continuously with the other. Make sure you whisk right to the edges of the pan. The instant it thickens, take the saucepan off the stove – keep whisking – and walk to the butter. Throw it in, and whisk and stir until it is combined. Serve. Precautions: Do not stop whisking or you'll end up with scrambled egg yolks. If you are timid, you can make it over a double boiler (or a bowl resting over a saucepan of simmering water), but the double boiler method usually results in a thin undercooked sauce. Using direct heat is riskier, but as long as you remain observant it is easy and quick. Adapted from a recipe in Robert Farrar Capon's The Supper of the Lamb, reviewed here. (Local: eggs, cream, lemon, asparagus. Not local: butter, salt.)

Poached Eggs, Haloumi and Spinach

Many years BC*, when dinosaurs walked the earth, Saturday morning often meant meeting friends for brunch. I'd order poached eggs with hollandaise, and for just a moment heaven and earth would collide. But now we're up at 6 with the kids, we need breakfast at 7 and the whole concept of brunch feels slightly silly.

Yet I missed those poached eggs. I tried every technique under the sun – lots of water, less water, still water, swirling water, vinegar water, salt water, fresh eggs, stale eggs, bigger pots, skillets – but I cannot master those soft little balls that you get in a cafe. After too many attempts, ending in too many pots of swirling egg whites, I gave up on cafe style poached eggs. Now I do them my way. As long as the eggs are very fresh, I get a soft dome of egg, distributed like a bell curve, with a golden runny raised yolk. It may not be as neat as cafe eggs, but once you plunge the knife into the yolk who cares? It tastes fantastic, and I'm happy.

And this morning when I picked up our veggie box just before lunch, I saw a bundle of baby spinach leaves, a carton of eggs, and a package of soft, salty haloumi lying on top. Inspiration struck! I carted it home, fired up the stove, and we had brunch for lunch.

*BC: before children.

PS: For an amusing account of one man's attempt to poach an egg, click here.

Poached Eggs, Haloumi and Spinach - some very fresh eggs - haloumi, perhaps 150g or a bit more for 2 adults - a handful of baby spinach leaves each - the juice of a lemon - extra virgin olive oil - dukkah (we used Wartaka dukkah; the lemon myrtle flavour goes beautifully with the haloumi.) Arrange the spinach on dinner plates. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice. Heat a little olive oil in a wide skillet. Slice the haloumi into thick large bite-size pieces, then place in the skillet and cook until golden. Turn, and cook the other side. When it is done, drizzle with lemon juice, then place the cheese and any juices onto the spinach. Meanwhile, boil the kettle. Pour the water into a wide skillet on the hottest burner of your stove and heat until it is barely simmering. Just the occasional tiny bubble should float up. Break an egg into a teacup, then ease the egg into the pan. You should be able to fit five or so eggs in a ring around your pan. Leave, barely simmering, until the white is just cooked; this takes three to four minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon or egg slide, press the base of the spoon gently on a folded tea towel to remove any excess water, and slip onto the haloumi and spinach. Sprinkle with dukkah, and serve immediately. A thick bit of grilled sourdough on the side rounds it out nicely. Developed from an idea in Feast: Food that celebrates life by Nigella Lawson. (Local: eggs, haloumi, spinach, lemon, olive oil. Made locally: dukkah.)