Never too late Christmas cake
Are you a Christmas cake procrastinator? Do you start every festive season intending to make a gloriously boozy, fruit-packed cake, the kind that you make on Labour Day and put away to beautifully age? Only to realise it's nearly December already and you don’t have so much as a single raisin in the house or the correct sized tin…
Nonya chicken curry
Yes, a curry paste from scratch, but hear us out. This curry is delicious, but not if you shortcut things. It’s our take on a Nonya curry; the Nonyas (also called the Peranakans) are communities descended from Chinese immigrants who settled in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, intermarried with locals, and blended their heritage with Malay influences. Their food is a true fusion cuisine…
Morning glory breakfast bread
We’re always looking for ways to level up our breakfast routine because it’s easy to get bored with toast and jam, no matter how artisanal and generally amazing they both are. In our quest for a More Exciting Breakfast, we came across a recipe for Morning Glory Muffins, invented in…
Budget-beating stuffed baked onions
These are so satisfying to make. You simmer onions whole until they turn tender, carefully scoop out the innards, chop them up, mix them into a cheesy, bread-based stuffing, then pile this into the outer onion shells and bake until they’re deep golden and crusty on top. Yum. This is the kind of dish that comes from the Italian cucina povera tradition…
Chicken and sweet potato noodles with shiitake mushrooms
It’s the weather for making stocks, no? TBH we make stocks year ‘round because they’re easy, and you can portion and freeze them so you’ve always got some on hand. Nothing beats the flavour of a home made stock and because they’re made by simmering…
Tourtière - It’s a pie
If you’re on the prowl for a weekend cooking project, how about making a pie? From scratch? Including pastry? And not just any old pie but a Canadian Christmas one. Meet tourtière, a trad dish from Quebec, whose name comes from the type of deep dish used to bake it…
Slow cooker beef rendang
‘Proper’ rendang is a dry curry from the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra in Indonesia and it’s a touch labour-intensive to make. Once you’ve toasted coconut, ground a spice paste, then braised the beef with all of this goodness in a rich coconut gravy, you simmer until the liquid pretty much evaporates and the beef chunks fry…
Stuffed meatloaf (Polpettone)
If you’re going to make a meatloaf, you may as well make one with knobs on, no? That’s our philosophy anyway and the Sicilians, bless ‘em, agree; this dish is based on a homey Sicilian dish called polpettone. Which is simply Italian for ‘meatloaf’…
Pickled oranges
Yeah. It’s actually Christmas time. So no need to panic or anything. How is it here already? What happened to 2023? Who pushed the accelerator button on the year? WDK. But one thing we do know is it’s not too late to make these sweet, citrus pickles to go with your…
Drowned soy sauce chook
Want to teach your kid to cook a main course dish they can’t really eff up? Soy Sauce Chicken. Out of inspo and don’t know what to cook? Soy Sauce Chicken. Need a dish that everyone will shut the heck up about and not whine “… but I don't like it”? Soy Sauce Chicken…
Fruit and tea loaf
If you had to bake for a Zombie apocalypse, this would be the thing to make. It keeps f-o-r-e-v-e-r.. This classic, hefty, long-keeping loaf is based on a traditional Welsh bread called bara brith (which means ‘speckled bread’); some versions use yeast for the rising…
Plum (or whatever you like) upside down cake
This is an oldie but a goodie recipe – it’s not fancy, but we don't really do fancy anything. Certainly not cake. It’s easy and tastes great and isn’t that enough? Use pear wedges, banana slices or even canned pineapple rings (retro!) if you’ve missed the plums already…