Zucchini and Tomato Tart

January 30, 2023 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

We’re in the bountiful days of summer right now. And while I’d like to be sitting in a chaise lounge enjoying that bounty all day, someone’s got to pick it and process it. At the moment, the processing mostly involves making pickles and chutneys, but there’s a lot more to come. Then there’s the necessary watering, weeding, tying up of tomatoes, planting of winter crops (because as John Snow says, winter’s coming)…

But at the end of each day, we do get to enjoy the fruits of the season. Last night I made one of my favourite mid-summer meals—zucchini and tomato tart.

The beauty of this tart belies its simplicity—just tomato and zucchini, embellished with a little parmesan cheese, garlic and basil.

Back when I had dairy goats, I’d spread a layer of chevre on the bottom, too, which was divine. It also had the bonus of preventing the crust from getting too soggy. These days, without an unlimited supply of goat cheese, I put up with a soggy crust—the tart is still amazing.

This tart relies on having the best tomato and zucchini possible—it’s not a dish to make with out-of-season vegetables—so if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, hang in there and enjoy this gem in July and August instead.

Download the recipe here.

Black Currant Icing

January 16, 2023 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I made chocolate cupcakes yesterday and wanted to make use of some of the last of the fresh back currants in them. Instead of tossing a handful of black currants into the batter (which would have been lovely), I used the fruit to make a black currant icing—tart, sweet, and shockingly pink!

You could do this with frozen currants, too, and it’s not difficult. The result is worth the bit of extra work.

100 g softened butter
3/4 cup fresh black currants
1 cup icing sugar

Place the black currants in a sauce pan and cook until soft—3-5 minutes. Press them through a sieve to remove seeds and skins. Set the puree aside to cool to room temperature.

Beat the butter until fluffy. Add 3 tablespoons of the black currant puree and beat until uniformly mixed. Sift the sugar over the butter mixture and beat until smooth. Adjust by adding more sugar or puree until the icing is spreading consistency.

Salad Trifecta

December 29, 2022December 27, 2022 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Holiday cooking is always special. And with the holidays falling during the summer here, it’s easy to create stunning meals without a trip to the grocery store.

For Christmas Day, I made homemade linguini, and my husband topped it with a delicious selection of garden vegetables—a fabulous, festive meal.

But Boxing Day’s dinner sort of blew Christmas Day out of the water.

It was a simple meal. Just three salads.

A potato salad made with purple potatoes, sparked up with celery, spring onion, parsley, and homemade pickles.

An Ottolenghi-inspired roasted cauliflower salad made with purple and white cauliflower and toasted walnuts. A dressing of vinegar, oil, maple syrup, cinnamon and allspice added complexity to the flavours, and fresh red currants added crunch and zing.

A fruit salad made with the many fruits gushing from the garden these days.

The overall effect was a riot of colour and flavour. Best of all, nearly everything came from the garden. Holiday meals don’t get much better than that.

Biscuit Stars (a.k.a. Starry Scones)

November 23, 2022November 30, 2022 / Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

It’s been a long time since I blogged about biscuit stars (or Starry Scones, as I call them here in NZ, since ‘biscuits’ are cookies here). It’s been a while since I made them, too.

I was feeling whimsical on Sunday morning, though, and whipped one up for breakfast. As usual, it turned out beautifully and took minimal effort. It struck me as the perfect ‘fancy’ breakfast for the coming busy holiday season.

Try making one of these yourself—everyone will ooh and aah over your amazing culinary skills, and you never have to let on that it’s dead easy (I won’t tell …).

Here’s the recipe. Enjoy!

Accidentally Perfect

November 4, 2022 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I didn’t set out to make a spectacular cake.

I actually set out to whip out something simple and quick—a Covid cake—because I had little energy for baking last week as I recovered from the virus.

So I chose a tried and true recipe. My favourite lemon cake is a recipe I came up with years ago when my daughter asked for a lemon birthday cake. It draws on components of a good lemon scone recipe, an orange cake recipe, and a coconut cake recipe.

It’s a recipe I’ve honed over the years, and one I could probably make in my sleep.

And this iteration of it was one of the best cakes I’ve ever made.

The butter was at the perfect temperature to whip up light and fluffy. And maybe I gave it a little extra time with the mixer, because I was bored of Covid isolation. And because I wasn’t up for much work, I added a little extra liquid to the batter to make the egg whites easier to fold in.

The recipe always makes a cake with good texture, but this one was a step up from the usual. Whether it was perfectly whipped butter or a wetter batter, something worked in my favour, and the finished cake’s texture was positively sublime—soft and fluffy, but with body like a good butter cake should have.

When it came time for a topping, I took the lazy way out. I topped and filled the cake with black currant puree I happened to have in the fridge. No measuring, and no additions to it—I simply spread it between the layers and poured it over the top. The puree spread out thickly, dripping down the sides and drying to a shiny, soft, fruity layer. Not only did it look great (and appropriately bloody-looking for Halloween), but the tart, unsugared black currant was the perfect foil for the sweet cake underneath.

It was a cake I could have served to anyone.

Unfortunately, because we were in isolation, only my husband and I got to enjoy this perfect cake, but I’ll definitely be trying to replicate it in the future.

Winter Culinary Adventuring

August 18, 2022 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

One of the best things about winter is the excuse to try unusual foods. During every other season of the year, there are so many vegetables coming out of the garden, it feels wrong to buy any fruits or vegetables. And as a rule, I only buy local produce, even during the winter, but once in a while it’s fun to splurge.

A few weeks ago I bought a can of jackfruit. This tropical tree is related to mulberries and figs, and produces large fruits with stringy flesh. The young fruits (before they ripen and become sweet) are used as a meat substitute, because the texture is somewhat meat-like.

I’ve eaten jackfruit in restaurants, but never cooked with it before, so it seemed like a good winter splurge.

Jackfruit itself has little flavour—its intrigue is in the texture. Most of the jackfruit recipes I found online take advantage of this texture by using it in dishes most commonly made with shredded pork.

After scanning a number of recipes, I decided to make gyro-inspired jackfruit wraps.

I started by making flatbreads based somewhat loosely on a naan recipe I have.

Then I made a hash of shredded jackfruit, mushrooms and onions, heavily spiced with paprika, smoked paprika, and chipotle. A dash or two of vegetarian Worcestershire sauce gave it a little tang, and a handful of fresh cilantro tipped it towards Asian flavours.

Finally, I made a yogurt and tahini sauce to go with it, generously flavoured with fresh mint.

I’m not sure what cuisine the final Greek/Indian/Southeast Asian wraps would fall into, but they were absolutely delicious. The hot and spicy jackfruit hash was balanced beautifully by the yogurt sauce, and the fresh flatbreads, still warm from the oven were everything a good flatbread should be.

It was fun to cook with a new and unusual ingredient, and the results were well worth the effort. I won’t be adding jackfruit to my regular grocery run, as it’s not exactly a local food (the can I bought was imported from Thailand), but I’ll definitely consider it next time I’m looking for a little winter splurge.

Frangipane Frenzy

August 11, 2022 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I don’t often use almonds, because I can’t get them locally grown (they are grown here in NZ, but it’s hard to get hold of them, as demand outstrips supply). Instead, I tend to use locally grown walnuts or hazelnuts when I’m baking.

So when I do splurge on almonds, it’s a real treat.

A few days ago, while I was rummaging around in the freezer for a container of frozen black currants in order to make a pie, I came across some frozen damson plums I’d completely forgotten about. When the fresh plums were given to me mid-summer, there was so much fresh fruit around, I couldn’t possibly use them, so I froze them, dreaming of plum tart.

So instead of black currant pie this week, I opted for a plum tart. The quantity of plums I had was smaller than I would have liked, so I looked for a recipe that would bulk them up a bit. When I came across a recipe for plum frangipane tart, I was hooked.

I had some ground almonds left over from my last almond splurge, so I whipped up some frangipane and spread it in my tart crust, layering plum halves on top, and sprinkling them with just a tablespoon and a half of brown sugar.

The resulting tart is a flavour sensation, the sweet almond filling contrasting with the sharp tang of the plums on top. It’s rich and flavourful enough that you should cut it into thin wedges and savour it slowly, but it’s so delicious, you really want to cut a big slab and gobble it down.

I’m doing my best not to inhale the entire tart. And while I’m contemplating when I can justify another piece, I’m scheming. Could I make the same nutty frangipane by substituting walnuts or hazelnuts for the almonds? Of course I could (I’m sure it’s been done, and probably has a name). How would a walnut frangipane with apple slices on top taste? Or hazelnuts with apricots? What nut frangipane would go best with the black and red currants still in the freezer?

The possibilities are tantalising. I’d better finish off this plum tart quickly so I can try something new …

A Trifle Broken

July 19, 2022 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Last night’s baking was going well until it came time to remove the cake from the pan.

I made a chocolate cake—a wholegrain recipe I’ve made a dozen times. Usually I’d bake it up as cupcakes, but I decided to go all out and make a layer cake instead. I also decided to mix in some frozen raspberries, because there’s still a ton of summer’s bountiful fruit in the freezer.

The recipe calls for greasing and flouring the pans, which I did generously.

Unfortunately, I should have lined the pans with baking paper instead. The raspberries made the cake extra fragile, and both layers broke dramatically when I tried to take them out of the pans.

There went my vision of a beautiful chocolate and raspberry layer cake, filled with black currant jam and covered in a chocolate ganache.

But cake is cake, and it tastes great whether it’s whole or broken into jagged pieces.

Enter the trifle—a dish that was no doubt invented by a hapless baker whose cake had disintegrated upon being turned out of the pan, an hour before the arrival of twenty guests.

I didn’t have the eggs necessary to make the traditional custard for my trifle, so I went with whipped cream, layering cake with cream, the remaining frozen raspberries and the chocolate ganache (which was left over from oreo cookie making last week).

As it turns out, I didn’t have enough cream to do the trifle justice, so even my trifle wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be.

But let’s face it: chocolate cake + whipped cream + raspberries + chocolate ganache = YUM! No matter what it looks like.

And thankfully, I don’t have twenty guests coming … I get to eat more of it that way.

Winter Baking

June 17, 2022 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Anytime of year is a good time for baking, as far as I’m concerned. But winter baking is probably my favourite.

Chocolate raspberry cupcakes — Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes

First, it’s dark out. I can start baking after dinner on a weeknight and not feel like I’m missing out on valuable garden time, because it’s pitch black out.

Second, who doesn’t feel the need for a few extra calories on those cold winter days? We can all justify eating that extra cupcake in order to stay warm.

Third, with the house closed up, the glorious smells of cinnamon, chocolate and butter linger in the house. If you bake on Monday evening, you can still smell those delicious cookies the next morning. You don’t lose those scents out the open windows.

But possibly the best thing about winter baking is the opportunity to revisit the other seasons by using the fruit stored up during the rest of the year.

Monday night I made chocolate raspberry cupcakes using the last of the raspberries frozen at the height of summer—that fresh taste is so welcome in mid-winter when berry fruits are little more than a memory.

Last week I made apple pie with apples frozen during autumn. The aroma of fruit and cinnamon evoked those marvellous days of plenty.

Next week, for the solstice and Matariki, I’ll pull out the frozen currents and make my very favourite winter treat—current pie. Its tart flavour is the taste of summer. It reminds me that the long days of December are only six months away.

So I will bake my way through June, July and August, dreaming of warmer days past and planning for warmer days to come.

Lemony Currant and Rosemary Cake

May 23, 2022 / Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

I can’t come home from the library without at least one cookbook. This week’s gem was Snacking Cakes by Yossey Arefi. The general premise of the book is cakes you can whip up with a whisk and one bowl. How could I resist?

There are 50 recipes in this book, and they’re not all just the same recipe with one ingredient changed. Along with standards like pineapple upside down cake and several different chocolate cakes, there are some intriguing and unusual ones.

My first foray into the book was Lemony Currant and Rosemary Cake. There are four teaspoons of chopped fresh rosemary in the cake (along with the obvious lemon and currants), and the top is sprinkled with sugar and coarse salt. The result is a delightful sweet/savoury combination that invites me to snitch a bit every time I walk through the kitchen.

I’d invest serious time in making a cake that tastes this good, and yet this cake mixed up in just a few minutes. The return on investment is huge!

I can’t wait to try some of the other cakes—Salty Caramel Peanut Butter, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, Powdered Donut, Buttered Walnut, Grapefruit White Chocolate, and Coconut Lime Cake all sound fabulous. The speed at which these cake can be made, I could make a different one every day after work!

Never mind dinner—I’ll just have cake 🙂