Barking Iguana — Cooking

Crème Anglaise

2026-05-25T18:30:00+08:00

Yield and time

Makes: serves six over crumble or pudding – about 600ml finished
Hands-on: 20 minutes
Total: 30 minutes (with the vanilla infusion)

Ingredients

500ml whole milk (the full-fat one; semi-skim makes a thin custard)
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways and seeds scraped (or 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste)
6 large egg yolks (save the whites for meringues or a financier batter)
50g caster sugar (push to 60g if you’d like it a touch sweeter; don’t go above 70g or it tips into dessert-sauce territory)
A pinch of fine salt

You’ll need a heavy-based saucepan (thin pans scorch the milk on the bottom before the rest catches up), a KitchenAid (or stand mixer) with the whisk attachment, a silicone spatula, and a fine sieve. A digital thermometer is handy but not required.

Method

Warm the milk in a heavy saucepan with the split vanilla pod, the scraped seeds, and the pinch of salt. Bring it just to the point where steam starts to lift off the surface and small bubbles ring the edge – not a simmer, definitely not a boil. Pull it off the heat, lid on, and let it infuse for 10-15 minutes. This is where the custard gets the vanilla flavour.

While the milk infuses, put the egg yolks and 50g of sugar into the mixing bowl. Whisk on medium until the mixture loosens and lightens to the colour of butter. You’re not making sabayon – just dissolving the sugar into the yolks so it doesn’t grain in the pan.

Remove the vanilla pod from the milk. With the KitchenAid running on a low speed, pour the warm milk in a slow stream through a fine sieve into the yolks. This tempers the eggs to prevent instant scrambled eggs in the pan, and the sieve catches anything you don’t want in the finished sauce.

Tip the lot back into the saucepan and put it on the lowest heat your hob will give you. Stir with the spatula, dragging across the base so nothing sits and cooks. The custard will look thin for a while, then – somewhere between 82°C and 84°C on a probe – the consistency shifts. It thickens enough to coat the back of the spatula. Lift it out, run a clean finger across the back, and if the trail you leave stays clear and doesn’t run back together, it’s done. Off the heat the second it’s ready, and pour into a serving jug.

Storage

If you’re not serving straight away, the jug goes into the fridge with cling film touching the surface so a skin doesn’t form. Three days, sealed.

Apple Crumble

2026-05-25T18:30:00+08:00

Crumble is a five-ingredient pudding, better when it’s not assembled ahead of time. Rough-chop the apples in the blender, pulse the topping together in the same jug, and stash the two in separate tubs in the fridge. Tomorrow the apples tip into the dish, the crumble goes over, and it bakes while we eat dinner. Stored apart overnight the topping doesn’t get a chance to soak up the syrup from the fruit, so the crumb stays dry and the bake comes out clean.

Yield and time

Makes: a rectangular dish, six to eight servings
Hands-on: 30 minutes
Total: Monday evening prep, Tuesday evening bake – about an hour of oven time the next day

Ingredients

The fruit

1kg cooking apples (Bramley if you can get them, otherwise Granny Smith; about 6-8 medium fruit), peeled and cored
1 lemon (zest and juice)
80g caster sugar (more if your apples are sharp Bramleys, less if you’re using a sweeter eater)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon plain flour
A pinch of fine salt

The crumble

200g plain flour
100g cold unsalted butter, cubed into 1cm pieces
100g demerara sugar (or 50g demerara, 50g light brown – demerara gives crunch, brown gives caramel)
60g rolled oats
30g flaked almonds (optional but worth it)
½ teaspoon fine salt

You’ll need a Le Creuset stoneware rectangular dish (about 33x21cm, 4-5cm deep) – stoneware holds heat steadily and gives the base a clean bake. A Ninja (or any high-powered jug blender) does both the apple chop and the crumb in under five minutes; pulse, don’t run.

Monday evening: prep

Squeeze the lemon into a large bowl of cold water. Peel and core each apple, quarter it, drop the pieces straight into the lemon water as you work. This stops the cut surfaces browning while you finish the pile.

Drain the apples well – give the colander a good shake. Tip a third at a time into the Ninja and pulse in short bursts until you’ve got rough 1-2cm chunks; six or seven half-second pulses is enough. Don’t run it long enough to puree. Tip into a dry bowl and do the rest. Add the lemon zest, 80g caster sugar, cinnamon, 1 tablespoon flour, and the pinch of salt. Toss with your hands until every piece has a thin coat. Into a lidded tub, into the fridge.

Rinse the blender jug and tip in the 200g flour, the cold cubed butter, and ½ teaspoon salt. Pulse in short bursts until the mix looks like coarse breadcrumbs with a few pea-sized lumps still in it – ten to fifteen seconds of pulsing, not a continuous run. Tip into a second tub, stir through the 100g demerara, 60g oats, and 30g flaked almonds, and into the fridge. Don’t skip the salt; without it the topping tastes flatly sweet against the apples.

The fruit will weep a little in the fridge overnight. Keeping the topping out of that puddle is the point – when the two finally meet in the oven the crumb bakes as a dry crust rather than soaking from below.

Tuesday: bake

Heat the oven to 180°C fan.

Tip the apples (and any syrup that’s pooled in the tub) into the stoneware dish and level the top – about 4cm of fruit, mounded a little in the middle. Scatter the crumble evenly over the fruit. Don’t press it down; you want it sitting loose so the steam can find its way through.

Set the dish on a tray (it will leak syrup, and the tray catches it before it hits the bottom of the oven). Bake on the middle shelf for 40 to 50 minutes, until the top is deep gold, the apple juices are bubbling up through the topping at the edges in dark amber pools, and a skewer slides into the fruit through the crust without resistance.

Pull it out. Let it sit for ten minutes – straight from the oven, the syrup is lava-hot and the apples haven’t reabsorbed any of their juice yet. Ten minutes on the bench gives you a crumble that holds together on the spoon.

To serve

Cold pouring cream, custard, or vanilla ice cream.

Storage

Leftover crumble keeps three days in the fridge, covered. Reheat individual portions in a 160°C fan oven for ten minutes – the topping crisps back up almost completely. Microwaving works but the topping goes soft; the oven is worth the wait.

To get further ahead, freeze the two components separately. The coated apple goes into a freezer bag, flattened so it freezes in a thin slab. The crumb goes into a second bag. Both keep three months. To bake, tip the still-frozen apple into the stoneware dish, scatter the still-frozen crumble over, and bake at 170°C fan for about 70 minutes – foil over the top for the first 40 minutes so the crumb doesn’t burn before the middle thaws. The fresh-fridge version is better; the freezer version is a useful fallback when you’ve over-ordered apples.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

2026-05-20T19:30:00+08:00

Mid-week cooking with a Sunday brain. I want a soup that goes from freezer to bowl in fifteen minutes on a Wednesday night when I cannot face standing at the stove from scratch. So I make the whole pot tonight after work, eat one bowl, portion the rest, and stack it in the freezer ready to pull. The trick that makes this work is keeping the cream out of the freezer entirely – the base freezes cleanly, and the cream goes in when the bowl is on the bench, which is also when it tastes the best.

Why hold the cream back

Cream-thickened soups don’t freeze well as a finished product. The dairy fats and proteins behave differently after a slow freeze and a slow thaw: the emulsion breaks, the cream beads up against the broth, and what comes out of the bag looks faintly curdled even when it isn’t. You can rescue it with a hard whisk and a bit of heat, but it never quite gets back to glossy.

The fix is to freeze the base – mushrooms, stock, aromatics, rouxrouxEqual parts flour and butter cooked together as the base for a sauce or soup – briefly for a pale béchamel, longer for the dark roux of a gumbo. – and add the cream at reheat. The base is a thickened broth with the texture of a thin gravy; it freezes and thaws as cleanly as any stock-based soup, and the cream poured into the hot pot just before serving gives you a fresher, brighter result than a soup that’s been sitting in cream for a week anyway. Same logic for the lemon juice and any fresh herbs: those go in at the bowl, not in the freezer bag.

Yield and time

Makes: about 8 servings
Hands-on: 1 hour 15 minutes
Total: 2 hours (including porcini soak and simmer)

Ingredients

The base (the part that freezes)

30g dried porcini mushrooms
500ml just-boiled water (for soaking the porcini)
1kg fresh mushrooms (a mix is better than one variety – 600g Swiss browns for body, 400g button or field mushrooms for the broth; if you can get a few oyster or shiitake in there, even better)
75g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 large brown onions, finely diced
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried)
2 bay leaves
30ml whisky (an unpeated, softer one – a bourbon or a Speyside; nothing smoky)
50g plain flour
1.2 litres chicken or vegetable stock (a good shop-bought one is fine; bouillon cubes also fine if that’s what’s open)
salt, pepper
about 1/8 of a whole nutmeg, freshly grated

To finish (per serving, added at reheat)

50-60ml double cream per bowl (so about 400-500ml total if you’re heating the whole pot, which you won’t be – this is per portion)
a squeeze of lemon juice
chopped flat-leaf parsley or chives
optional: a few extra mushroom slices, fried hard in butter, scattered on top

You’ll want a wide heavy-based pan (a 28cm sauté pan or a 26cm casserole), a stick blender, and 6-8 freezer-safe containers or zip-lock bags.

Wednesday evening: soak the porcini

The porcini get tipped into a heatproof jug with the 500ml just-boiled water and left to swell for fifteen minutes while everything else gets going. Two jobs here. The dried mushrooms rehydrate into something I can chop and stir into the pan; the soaking liquid becomes the deepest, most savoury part of the stock. A good cream of mushroom soup leans on dried porcini for the same reason a good beef stock leans on roasted bones – the concentration of flavour you can’t get out of fresh ingredients alone.

When they’re soft, I lift the porcini out with a fork (leaving the grit behind), squeeze them gently, and chop them roughly. The soaking liquid goes through a fine sieve or a coffee filter to catch the grit, and lives in a jug ready for the pot.

Wednesday evening: slice and brown the mushrooms

Mushrooms are 90% water, and the first job in any mushroom-led dish is getting that water out. A pan that’s cool or crowded steams them; what you want is dark, caramelised, concentrated mushroom – almost meaty. So they go in hot, in batches, and they don’t get stirred for a good two minutes at a stretch.

I quarter the Swiss browns and slice the button mushrooms thickly – about 5mm. Don’t go thinner; they shrink to nothing as they cook.

The pan goes on high heat with a tablespoon of the oil and a knob of the butter. When it’s properly hot – the butter foam subsiding and the surface shimmering – in goes a third of the mushrooms in a single layer. Two minutes undisturbed, then a stir, then another two minutes. They should be deeply golden on the cut faces and the pan should smell roasted, not stewed. Out into a bowl, second batch in, repeat. Third batch the same. By the third batch you’re using less fat because the mushrooms are giving up their own.

Don’t season the mushrooms in the pan – salt draws water and you’ll undo the browning you’re trying to build. Salt goes in later, with the stock.

Wednesday evening: aromatics, roux, stock

Heat down to medium-low. The remaining butter into the pan, then the 2 diced onions with a pinch of salt. Twelve minutes, stirring now and then – I want them soft and translucent with a few golden edges, not properly caramelised. Mushroom soup wants the onion in the background, not as a feature.

In go the 4 chopped garlic, the chopped rehydrated porcini, the thyme sprigs, and the 2 bay leaves. A minute, stirring, until the garlic smells cooked.

DeglazedeglazeAdding liquid – wine, stock, spirit, water – to a hot pan to dissolve the browned residue (the fond) clinging to the bottom and lift it into the sauce. with the 30ml whisky – a hard sizzle (and a flash of flame if your hob’s gas and your luck’s in), scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to lift the brown bits, and let it reduce until the pan is almost dry. Two or three minutes – whisky is twice as alcoholic as a fortified wine, and you want every trace of the burn cooked off before the stock goes in. What’s left is the oak and the sweetness, doing the same job a Madeira would: a layer of dark, savoury depth that the stock alone can’t carry.

Sprinkle the 50g flour over the pan and stir for a minute or two, coating everything. The flour going into hot fat is the same roux that thickens a béchamel – cooking it briefly takes the raw-flour taste off and gives the base its body once the stock goes in.

Now the wet stuff. The 1.2 litres of stock and the strained porcini liquid go in slowly, a third at a time, stirring each addition smooth before the next. Tip the browned mushrooms back in along with any juice in the bowl. Up to a simmer, then back down to a steady low one – a few bubbles at the surface, not a rolling boil. Twenty-five minutes, lid off, the odd stir.

By the end the soup should taste deep and savoury and feel slightly thicker than a stock – think gravy, not custard. Pluck out the thyme stems and the bay leaves. Grate the eighth of a nutmeg in. Season with salt and plenty of pepper; taste; adjust. Be a touch under on salt – the cream and the reheat will both concentrate things slightly, and a soup that’s perfect now will be over-seasoned at the bowl.

Wednesday evening: blend, eat one, portion the rest

I use a stick blender straight in the pan and pulse rather than blitz. Mushroom soup is at its best with two textures in it – a silky body and visible pieces. About fifteen seconds of pulsing gets me there: most of the soup goes smooth, the bigger mushroom pieces stay recognisable. If you prefer it completely smooth, blend it longer; if you want it chunky, skip the blender and just press a few mushrooms against the side of the pan with the back of a spoon.

Ladle out one bowl. Stir in 50-60ml of cream, a squeeze of lemon juice, a scatter of parsley. If I’ve got the patience for it, a few extra mushroom slices fried hard in butter for the top – two minutes’ work and they turn a homely bowl into a proper one. Eat.

The rest of the pot cools on the bench for half an hour while I do the washing up. Then into containers – I aim for portions of about 350ml so a single container is one bowl’s worth. Label with the date and contents (the bag of mushroom soup that’s only labelled “soup” is a bag of mushroom soup that gets eaten last). Freeze flat if you’re using zip-lock bags – they stack better and they thaw faster.

The base keeps three months in the freezer comfortably; longer if you double-bag.

Mid-week: from freezer to bowl

The fastest path: tip a frozen portion into a small saucepan with a splash of water (the water stops the bottom catching while the frozen block thaws), lid on, low heat. Eight to ten minutes, stirring once the block has loosened, and it’ll be at a simmer. From the fridge it’s faster – four or five minutes.

Once it’s hot, kill the heat. Stir in 50-60ml of cream, a squeeze of lemon, a grind of pepper. Taste; salt if it needs it; into the bowl. Parsley or chives on top. If the fried mushroom garnish is in play, the slices go on at the last second so they don’t soften.

If the cream goes in over too much heat it can split – the bubbles tear the emulsion. Off the heat, or barely at a simmer, every time.

Honey Soy Chicken Wings

2026-05-18T18:30:00+08:00

Tuesday-night wings. The version that gets dinner on the table inside half an hour without sacrificing the lacquered, sticky-shiny finish that makes wings worth wanting. The trick is to let the wings render in the pan first – skin down, undisturbed, until the underside is a deep gold – and only then add the glaze. Sauce in too early and you steam the skin pale; sauce in at the end and the honey turns to a glossy coat in two minutes flat.

Yield and time

Makes: serves 2, generously
Hands-on: 30 minutes (rice, glaze, sear, toss)

Ingredients

The wings

900g chicken wings, split into drumettes and flats, wing tips removed (most supermarkets sell them already split; if not, two snips through the joints with kitchen scissors does it)
1 tablespoon neutral oil (rice bran, peanut, or sunflower)
A pinch of fine sea salt

The glaze

4 tablespoons light soy sauce (Kikkoman or a Chinese light soy – not dark soy, not tamari, not “all-purpose”)
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine (dry sherry is the standard sub if you don’t have it)
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
4 garlic cloves, finely grated on a microplane
A 3cm piece of ginger, peeled and finely grated
A pinch of dried chilli flakes (optional)

The rice and finish

1½ cups jasmine rice (300g)
2¼ cups (560ml) cold water
A pinch of salt
2 spring onions, thinly sliced on the diagonal
1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
A wedge of lime, if you have one

Rice on first

Rinse the jasmine rice in a sieve under cold running water, swirling with your fingers, until the water runs clear – about a minute. The cloudy starch on the outside of the grain is what makes a gluey pot.

Tip the rice into a heavy-based pot with a tight lid. Add the water and a pinch of salt. Lid on, bring to the boil over a high heat, then drop to the lowest simmer for 12 minutes. Off the heat, lid still on, rest for 10 minutes. Don’t peek. The steam trapped under the lid is doing the last bit of cooking; lift the lid early and you’ll have wet rice with a hard core.

Mix the glaze

Whisk the soy, honey, Shaoxing, rice vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, and chilli flakes in a small bowl until the honey has dissolved into the soy. Set it next to the stove – you want it ready to go in one pour.

Sear the wings

Pat the wings bone-dry with paper towel. A dry skin sears; a wet skin steams. Season lightly with the pinch of salt – the soy will carry most of the seasoning, so go easy.

Heat the oil in your widest heavy frying pan – a cast-iron skillet or a thick-based non-stick – until it shimmers. Lay the wings skin-side down in a single layer with space between each one. Crowd them and they boil in their own juices instead of browning. If your pan is small, cook them in two batches; the sear matters more than the five minutes saved.

Cook over medium-high for 6-7 minutes without moving them, until the underside is a deep, even gold. Turn each wing with tongs and give them another 5-6 minutes on the second side. They should be cooked through (the meat at the thick end of a drumette should be opaque to the bone) and the skin should crackle audibly when you press on it with a spatula.

Glaze and toss

Tip out most of the fat from the pan, leaving about a tablespoon clinging to the wings and the surface. Pour the glaze in all at once – it’ll erupt and steam violently; stand back. Swirl the pan so the glaze spreads, then drop the heat to medium-low. Roll the wings through the bubbling sauce with tongs for 2-3 minutes, turning often, until the glaze has gone from runny to syrupy and clings to each wing in a glossy lacquer. Pull the pan off the heat the moment they’re shiny and coated. Push past that and the honey starts to scorch – you’ll smell it go from caramel to bitter very quickly.

Plate

Fluff the rice with a fork. Pile a mound into each bowl. Wings on top, then scrape every last drop of glaze from the pan over them with a silicone spatula – that’s the best bit. Scatter the spring onions, then the sesame seeds. A squeeze of lime over the top if you have one; it lifts the soy and the honey and stops the whole bowl from reading as one note.

Eat with your fingers. Have a damp tea towel close by.

Leftovers

Reheat in a 200°C oven on a tray for 7-8 minutes. The skin re-crisps; the glaze re-tackifies. The microwave works in a pinch but the skin goes flabby and the magic is gone. Cold from the fridge for tomorrow’s lunch is, frankly, also fine.

Sourdough Discard Choc Chip Cookies

2026-05-17T20:00:00+08:00

The discarddiscardThe cold, sluggish layer of sourdough starter scooped off before a feed – still alive, with lactic acid and pre-hydrated flour that tenderise cookies, pancakes, and crackers. out of the quiet jar in the fridge does most of its work in the texture, not the flavour. The acid tenderises the gluten, the wet flour keeps the centres soft as they cool, and the wild yeasts add a faint round note you’d miss if it wasn’t there. The other half of the recipe is browned butterbrown butterButter melted past the foaming stage until the milk solids toast amber on the bottom of the pan and the smell turns to hazelnuts – about thirty seconds from perfect to burnt, so pull on the smell, not the colour. and a generous hand with the brown sugar – those are what make the cookies taste like a bakery cookie and not a biscuit. I make the dough on Sunday afternoon, scoop it into balls, and freeze the lot. From there they go straight from the freezer to the oven whenever a cookie is wanted – no thawing, no planning ahead, just pull what you’ll eat from the bag and leave the rest where they are.

Why discard

A cold scoop of starter straight out of the fridge – the part you’d normally throw before a feed – carries three useful things into a cookie dough. First, lactic and acetic acid: enough to tenderise the gluten the way a splash of buttermilk would, so the bake stays soft rather than crisp through. Second, hydrated flour: the discard is half flour and half water by weight, and that pre-hydrated flour holds moisture in the centre as the cookie cools. Third, a faint sour note that sits underneath the brown butter and chocolate. You won’t pick it out as “sourdough” if you didn’t know; you’d notice if it wasn’t there.

Use discard from the fridge, not freshly fed starter at peak rise. Active starter throws air into the dough and the cookies puff and stay puffy. You want the cold sluggish stuff – the layer that’s been quiet under the lid for three or four days.

Yield and time

Makes: 16 cookies, 75g balls
Hands-on: 30 minutes (brown butter, mix, scoop)
Total: about 2 hours 30 minutes to freeze the dough balls; then 14-16 minutes per bake from frozen, whenever a cookie is wanted

Ingredients

The dough

145g unsalted butter
190g soft light brown sugar
95g caster sugar
1 large egg, plus 2 extra yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract (or 1 tsp vanilla bean paste)
125g cold sourdough discard (100% hydration – equal parts flour and water by weight)
275g plain flour (target around 9% protein – a soft biscuit/pastry/cake flour is ideal; high-protein bread flour develops too much gluten and gives a tough cookie)
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3/4 tsp fine sea salt
250g dark chocolate (70%), roughly chopped into chunks the size of your thumbnail – not chips (chips carry stabilisers that hold their shape in the oven; you want chocolate that melts into ribbons and puddles, plus a drift of fine shards from the chopping board that streak through the dough)

To finish

Flaky sea salt (Maldon or similar)

You’ll need a small saucepan for browning the butter, a large mixing bowl, a 75g cookie scoop or just a tablespoon and a guess, a flat tray that fits in your freezer, and a sheet of baking parchment.

Brown the butter

Cut the 145g butter into rough cubes and put it in a small light-coloured pan over medium heat. It melts, foams, the foam subsides, the milk solids drop to the bottom and start to colour. Stir occasionally and watch the colour through the foam: amber on the solids, a smell of toasted hazelnuts, then off the heat. The window from “perfect” to “burnt” is about thirty seconds, so pull it the moment the smell hits, not when the colour does.

Pour the brown butter into a heatproof bowl, scraping every brown speck out of the pan – that’s all flavour. Let it cool.

Mix the dough

If the brown butter has solidified while it cooled, a ten-second blast in the microwave brings it back to liquid – you want it soft and pourable, not hot. Whisk the 190g brown sugar and 95g caster sugar into the cooled brown butter until it looks like wet sand and glossy at the edges. Whisk in the egg, the 2 yolks, and the 1 tsp vanilla, hard, for about a minute – the mixture should pale slightly and ribbon off the whisk. This is the only emulsification step in the recipe; if the butter and sugar and egg don’t come together properly here, the dough never quite catches up.

Stir in the 125g cold discard. It’ll go in as a stiff paste and want a moment to slacken into the batter – a wooden spoon and patience, not a whisk. The mixture turns a shade paler and looser.

Sift the 275g flour, 3/4 tsp bicarb, and 3/4 tsp fine salt over the top. Fold with a spatula until the streaks of dry flour disappear. Stop the moment they do – overworking the dough now is what makes cookies tough.

Tip the 250g chocolate chunks in and fold them through. A few stragglers on the surface are good – they end up on the top of a cookie, melted into puddles when it bakes.

Scoop and freeze

Line your tray with parchment. Scoop the dough in 75g balls (a generous heaping tablespoon if you don’t have a scoop), spacing them on the tray. You’re not baking yet, so they can sit close – just not touching. Sixteen balls fit on two standard trays.

Into the freezer, uncovered, for at least two hours – longer is fine. Once the balls are rock solid, lift them off the parchment and into a freezer bag or container, label with the date, and back into the freezer.

This is the whole point of the recipe. The dough does not need to be baked the same day. Frozen cookie balls mean these make great fresh-baked mid-week treats.

The balls keep eight weeks in the freezer with no loss of quality. After that they start to pick up freezer smells unless they’re double-bagged.

Bake from frozen

Heat the oven to 180°C fan. Push it past that and the gooey middle goes.

Take however many cookies you want straight from the freezer to a parchment-lined baking tray. Space them generously – they spread to roughly twice their diameter, and a cookie that meets its neighbour fuses into an awkward sheet. Four balls on a standard tray is comfortable; six is the upper limit.

Bake for 14 to 16 minutes from frozen. The edges should be set and lightly golden, the tops still pale and slightly glossy in the middle. They look underbaked when you pull them out. That is the point: they finish carrying-over on the tray and the centres set into gooey-not-raw rather than dry-and-crumbly.

The moment they come out of the oven, lift the tray six inches above the bench and drop it. This is a thing – the small impact collapses the puffed centres into the wrinkled, craggy top you want, and pulls the edges in slightly so the cookies look round instead of spread-and-flat. One drop is enough.

A pinch of flaky salt on top of each cookie while they’re hot. Cool on the tray for five minutes – they’re too soft to lift before that – then a wide spatula to a rack or straight to a plate.

Poires Pochées

2026-05-17T19:00:00+08:00

Poaching is the gentlest way to cook a pear. The fruit goes in firm and comes out yielding-but-intact, scented with vanilla and lemon and whatever else went into the pan. The trick isn’t the simmer – thirty minutes at a bare bubble does it – but the cool-down: the pears need to sit in the syrup off the heat for hours, ideally overnight, while the flavour migrates from the surface to the core. A hot poach and a quick drain barely flavours the skin.

Why Beurre Bosc

May in Perth is pear season, and the produce shelves hold Beurre Bosc and Packham side by side. Beurre Bosc holds its shape through a thirty-minute poach where a riper Packham can soften into the syrup.

Packham works – it’s the round green one most Australian supermarkets stock by default – but ripens faster and wants fifteen minutes in the syrup, not thirty. If both are on the shelf, Bosc.

Yield and time

Makes: 1 whole pear – scale up as needed
Hands-on: 15 minutes (peel, core, syrup, turning during the poach)
Total: overnight – 30 minutes on the stove, then cool and rest in the syrup in the fridge for at least eight hours

Ingredients

1 firm Beurre Bosc pear (or Packham, taken off the bench slightly under-ripe)
125ml water
60g caster sugar
1 vanilla pod, split lengthwise (or 2 tsp vanilla bean paste)
1 thin strip lemon peel, pith trimmed
A few drops of lemon juice
1 small cinnamon stick (optional)
1 star anise (optional)

Multiply everything by the number of pears you want, with the vanilla as the only odd one out: one pod per two pears, give or take, since pods don’t divide neatly and a generous hand here is no bad thing. Four pears needs 500ml water, 250g caster sugar, 2 vanilla pods, a generous strip of peel, and a teaspoon of juice.

You’ll need a saucepan deep enough to hold the pear (or pears) upright and snug – a milk pan for one, a small wide saucepan for two to four – a small plate or saucer that fits inside the pan to weigh the fruit down, and overnight fridge space.

The cook

I peel the pear with a vegetable peeler, leaving the stalk on for shape and grip. I core it from the bottom with a melon baller or the tip of a small paring knife, taking the seeds and the woody core, stopping just short of the stalk so the pear stays whole. The cored cavity is what lets the syrup get inside; a solid pear flavours only at the skin.

I drop the peeled pear straight into a bowl of cold water with a squeeze of lemon while I work on the syrup (and on any other pears, if scaling up). Pear flesh oxidises and browns within minutes once peeled, and the acid stops it cold.

The syrup goes into the saucepan: water, sugar, the split vanilla pod and its scraped seeds, the strip of lemon peel, the squeeze of juice, and any spices you’re using. I bring it to a low simmer and stir to dissolve the sugar – a minute or two – then lift the pear out of its lemon water and lower it in. The syrup won’t reach the shoulders – in a snug pot it covers the lower half and not much more – and that’s fine. Topping up to drown the fruit dilutes the syrup more than it helps; a small plate on top to hold it down and a quarter-turn every five or ten minutes handles the exposed half.

Lay the small plate over the pear – something that fits inside the pan and rests on the fruit, weighing it down so it doesn’t bob. Lid off, heat low, a bare simmer – small bubbles around the edge, not a rolling boil. A rolling boil bruises the pear and clouds the syrup. Lift the plate every five or ten minutes and turn the pear a quarter so a new face goes under.

Twenty to thirty minutes for Beurre Bosc, fifteen for Packham. It’s ready when the tip of a small knife slides into the thickest part with no resistance, like cutting butter.

Off the heat, lid on, leave the pear in the syrup. Cool on the bench for an hour, then into the fridge overnight in the saucepan or transferred to a bowl with the plate still weighing it down. The overnight rest is half the recipe.

Storing

In its syrup in a sealed container in the fridge, a poached pear keeps five days. The flavour deepens for the first two – the vanilla and the lemon push further in – then plateaus. The syrup itself, strained, keeps two weeks; reduce it by half on the stove if you want a thicker glaze for plating.

Don’t freeze poached pears. The cell walls take a beating in the freeze-thaw and the texture goes from yielding to spongy.

Cheese Twists

2026-05-17T18:45:00+08:00

The least-fussy thing rough puff can become. No filling, no shaping, no piping – just a sheet of pastry, a generous shower of cheese, a fold, another roll, a twist, and a hot oven. Eats well with crisp sliced apple: the salty fat in the pastry and the sweetness in the fruit balance each other out, and a snack becomes a small ceremony.

Yield and time

Makes: about 20 twists
Hands-on: 15 minutes (assumes the rough puff is already made and rested)
Total: 30 minutes (including the bake)

Ingredients

300g rough puff pastry, rested overnight in the fridge – half a batch
80g hard cheese, finely grated – parmesan is the default; a 50/50 mix with mature cheddar gives more depth
1 large egg, beaten with a teaspoon of water
A generous pinch of smoked paprika or cayenne (optional)
Flaky sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper

You’ll need a rolling pin, a sharp knife or pizza wheel, a baking tray, and a sheet of baking parchment.

The method

Heat the oven to 200°C fan.

Roll the rough puff on a lightly floured bench to a rectangle about 3mm thick and roughly 30cm by 25cm. Brush the surface lightly with the egg wash. Scatter the grated cheese evenly across one half of the rectangle (the long way), with a pinch of paprika if you’re using it and a turn of black pepper. Fold the un-cheesed half over the cheesed half and roll the whole thing gently again – just enough to press the cheese into the dough – back to about 3mm and 30cm by 25cm.

Brush the top lightly with more egg wash, scatter a thinner layer of cheese, and crack pepper over.

Cut the rectangle into strips about 1.5cm wide and 25cm long with the knife or pizza wheel. Lift each strip and twist it three or four times along its length, pinching the ends to hold the twist, and lay it on the parchment-lined tray. Space them generously – they puff sideways as they bake, and twists that touch each other fuse along the seam.

Bake for 14 to 16 minutes until deep gold and crisp through. A pale twist is a soft twist; push them to the colour your oven gives. Sprinkle with flaky salt the moment they come out.

Eat warm, or within a few hours. They stay crisp in an airtight tin for two days but soften after that.

Variants

Cheese and seed: scatter sesame, poppy, or nigella seeds with the cheese before folding.
Anchovy: a fine dice of anchovy or a thin scrape of anchovy paste across the dough before the cheese – vanishes into umami in the bake.
Sweet twists: skip the cheese, brush with melted butter and cinnamon sugar, fold, roll, twist. Palmier-adjacent but rougher.

Where the twists go

Straight on the table with sliced apple and a drink – the canonical afternoon use
Alongside a bowl of soup as a savoury crouton
Broken into a salad of leaves, walnut, and pear for crunch
Pre-dinner snack with olives, cured meat, a sharp cheese

Crème Pâtissière

2026-05-17T18:30:00+08:00

Pastry cream is custard with a backbone. The cornflour stops the eggs scrambling and gives the mix a thick set that holds its shape under pastry without weeping. Once you can make it, an enormous amount of pâtisserie opens up – the same cream, piped or spread or folded or layered, sits inside éclairs, choux buns, fruit tarts, religieuses, Saint-Honoré, and the mille-feuille this one’s headed for.

Yield and time

Makes: about 600g
Hands-on: 20 minutes
Total: about 2 hours 30 minutes (including the vanilla infusion and a minimum two-hour fridge set; overnight is best)

Ingredients

500ml whole milk
1 vanilla pod, split and scraped (or 2 tsp vanilla bean paste)
5 large egg yolks
100g caster sugar
50g cornflour
30g cold unsalted butter, cubed

You’ll need a medium saucepan, a heatproof bowl, a balloon whisk, a fine sieve, and cling film. A probe thermometer is useful but not essential – the cream tells you when it’s done.

The cook

I pour the 500ml milk into the saucepan with the split vanilla pod and its scraped seeds, and warm it slowly to just below a simmer – small bubbles around the edge, no rolling boil. Off the heat, lid on, let it infuse for ten minutes. The vanilla wants the heat and the time; a quick warm-and-go doesn’t extract much.

While the milk infuses I whisk the 5 yolks and 100g sugar in a heatproof bowl until pale and ribbonedribbon stageWhen whisked sugar and egg yolks thicken enough to fall back on themselves in a slow trailing ribbon that holds its shape for a few seconds before sinking. , then whisk in the 50g cornflour until the mixture is smooth – no lumps. The cornflour is the difference between custard and pastry cream; whisk it in cold so it dissolves. 50g per 500ml is the firm end of the French ratio – enough to hold a pipe rather than flow off the spoon.

I bring the infused milk back to just under a simmer, then pour the lot through a fine sieve straight into the egg-yolk mixture in one go, whisking hard. The sieve catches the vanilla pod in the same move, and the cornflour-protected yolks take the full pour without scrambling. The temperedtemperWarming whisked eggs or yolks gently with a hot liquid before adding them to the pot, so the proteins don’t scramble from the shock. mix goes back into the saucepan, I switch to a wooden spoon, and bring it up over a medium heat, stirring constantly, scraping the corners of the pan.

The mix thickens suddenly around 80°C – the cornflour swells and grabs everything at once. Don’t stop there. Thickening isn’t the finish line; it’s the halfway point. Keep stirring and bring the cream all the way to a proper boil, then let it bubble hard for a full minute – thick, slow, lava-style bloops breaking the surface. That’s where the starch fully gelatinises and the cream sets firm enough to pipe. Pull it off at first-thicken and you get a gorgeous custard that flows when you scoop it – delicious as a sauce, useless in a piping bag. By feel: it should plop heavily off the spoon and a track drawn through it should hold for a count of three before closing. With a probe: 94-96°C, held for a clean minute.

Off the heat, I beat in the 30g cold butter cube by cube until glossy. The butter drops the temperature and gives the cream its final shine. Straight into a clean bowl, cling film pressed against the surface (touching the cream, not floating above), and into the fridge to set. Minimum two hours; overnight is best.

Loosening it smooth

Pastry cream sets firm in the fridge – almost a panna-cotta wobble. Before piping or spreading, scrape the chilled cream into a bowl and stir for ten seconds with a spatula (or a balloon whisk) until it loosens into a glossy, spoonable cream. Stop the moment it’s smooth. Starch-thickened cream is a mechanical gel – keep working it and you shear the gel structure past where it can re-knit, and a firm cream turns to liquid that won’t come back.

If you’re spooning rather than piping, you can skip this step entirely – a confident dollop straight from the fridge looks intentional. The loosening is for piping cleanly through a nozzle.

If the cream is going under a fruit tart shell that wants the absolute glossiest finish, fold in a splash of double cream once it’s loosened – the dairy fat smooths everything out.

Storing

Pastry cream keeps three days in the fridge, covered. Don’t freeze it – the cornflour goes grainy on defrost and the eggs weep. Make on the day or the day before; that’s the cost of a custard-based cream.

If the cream weeps a little in the fridge (a thin layer of liquid on top), just whisk it back in. If it sets soft enough to flow when scooped, the starch didn’t fully gelatinise – next time, push past first-thicken and hold a full minute of hard boil.

Variants

Chocolate pâtissière (crème pâtissière au chocolat): whisk 100g dark chocolate, chopped, into the hot cream off the heat, before the butter.
Coffee pâtissière: dissolve 2 tbsp instant espresso into the warm milk, or infuse 20g whole coffee beans during the vanilla step and strain.
Praline pâtissière: fold 80g praline paste into the cooled cream before whisking smooth.
Lighter pastry cream (crème diplomate): fold 200ml of whipped double cream through the loosened pastry cream just before using. Softer mouthfeel, lighter under pastry, especially good in mille-feuille if you want more cloud and less custard.

Where the cream goes

The mille-feuille aux framboises – piped between layers of rough puff
Inside choux buns, éclairs, religieuses, Paris-Brest
Under fresh strawberries, raspberries, or grapes in a blind-baked tart shell
Folded with whipped cream into a Saint-Honoré
Spooned into a trifle in place of the custard layer
Sandwiched between sponge halves for a more pâtissière-style Victoria

Rough Puff Pastry

2026-05-17T18:00:00+08:00

Classic puff pastry asks for a slab of butter folded and turned and rested through most of a day. Rough puff cheats. The butter goes in as cubes, rolled flat by the pin, lengthened by the turns. The layers are less even than the laminated kind, which is exactly what you want when you’re going to slice the bake into rectangles and stack them with cream – shaggy puff catches and holds.

Yield and time

Makes: one large rectangle, about 600g
Hands-on: 30 minutes across the four turns
Total: about 3 hours 30 minutes (or overnight) – 30 minutes initial chill, four turns with two fridge rests, then at least one more hour resting before use

Ingredients

250g plain flour (target around 11% protein – T55 if you have it, or blend a low-protein cake flour with a high-protein bread flour to land near 11%)
5g fine salt
250g cold unsalted butter, cubed into 1cm pieces
125ml ice-cold water
1 teaspoon lemon juice or white vinegar

You’ll need a rolling pin, a clean bench, a bench scraper, cling film, and a fridge with at least three hours free across the afternoon. Don’t try to do this in a hot kitchen – the butter needs to stay cold.

The method

I weigh the 250g flour and 5g salt into a wide bowl and tip in the 250g cubed butter. I toss the cubes through the flour with my fingertips so every face is coated, then press each cube flat between thumb and forefinger – a quick squash, not a rub. The cubes go from dice to flat flakes the size of a fifty-cent piece, still distinct, still cold. This is the whole trick. Classic puff uses a single butter block; rough puff uses a thousand small ones, and the flakes do the same job once they roll out.

I mix the 125ml ice water with the 1 tsp lemon juice and pour it in, working it through with a bench scraper until the dough just holds. It’ll look shaggy and dry in patches – that’s right. A wetter dough is harder to turn. I gather it onto the bench, press it into a rough rectangle, wrap, and into the fridge for thirty minutes.

The turns

Four turns total: two turns, fridge, two turns, fridge. That’s the whole shape. One turn is a letter foldletter foldFolding a rolled-out laminated dough in thirds, bottom-up and top-down like a letter into an envelope – one turn, multiplying the layer count by three. : roll the dough out long, fold the bottom third up, fold the top third down (like a letter into an envelope), rotate 90 degrees. The rotate is part of the turn, not a separate step.

Four turns gives 81 layers, which is the rough-puff number. Classic puff gets six (729 layers); the extra two turns build counts that get lost in rough puff anyway. Past six and the butter merges into the dough and you lose flake altogether – so if you lose count partway through, stop. Four is the target, five is fine, six is the absolute ceiling. Don’t be tempted to add more.

Turn one. I roll the chilled dough on a lightly floured bench into a long rectangle, roughly 20cm by 50cm, the short edge facing me. Don’t worry about ragged edges or the odd butter flake escaping – patch with a smear of flour and keep rolling. I fold the bottom third up and the top third down like a letter into an envelope, then rotate the folded block 90 degrees so the folded edges sit on my left and right and the open layered edges face me and away. That puts the seams perpendicular to the next roll, so the pin lengthens the layers instead of sliding them.

Turn two. Roll out long again, fold bottom third up, fold top third down, rotate 90 degrees. Wrap and back to the fridge for thirty minutes.

Turn three. Out of the fridge. Roll long, fold bottom up, fold top down, rotate 90 degrees.

Turn four. Roll long again, fold bottom up, fold top down, rotate 90 degrees. Wrap.

The dough firms up between rests and rolls out more cleanly each time; by turn four the butter has disappeared into thin sheets between thin sheets of dough.

Rest the wrapped block for at least one more hour before use – overnight is better. The pastry needs that final rest as much as the turns; without it the gluten fights back and the layers contract in the oven.

Rolling and baking

Roll the rested block on lightly floured parchment to the thickness the recipe wants – 3mm is common for layered bakes, a touch thicker for vol-au-vents – and chill on the paper for fifteen minutes once it’s at thickness so the gluten settles. Cold dough into a hot oven: 200°C is the workhorse temperature. Dock the surface with a fork for flat slabs that stack; leave it un-docked for full puff. For free puff – palmiers, jalousies, vol-au-vents – brush with egg wash and bake until deeply golden.

Storage

The block keeps in the fridge for three days and freezes for three months. Defrost overnight in the fridge before rolling. Don’t refreeze after rolling out.

Where the pastry goes

The mille-feuille aux framboises – its showcase job, baked flat between trays
Palmiers – sugared, rolled into double scrolls, sliced and baked
Cheese twists, sausage rolls, vol-au-vents
A jalousie or pithivier with frangipane and stone fruit
Tarte fine: rolled thin, topped with sliced apple or pear, baked free
A lid for any pie that wants something fancier than shortcrust

A Weekend in the Kitchen

2026-05-17T17:30:00+08:00

A weekend where the kitchen kept opening up. Saturday morning was a batch of rough puff and a pan of poached pears; Sunday was the bakes themselves, plus a tray of cookie dough scooped and shoved into the freezer for whenever the urge hits. Three recipe cards worth of work for two days of cooking, and a fridge and freezer that’ll feed us back across the week.

Cheese twists, with sliced apple

Rolled-out rough puff, grated parmesan pressed into it, folded once and rolled again, sliced into strips and twisted. Into a hot oven until gold and shattery. We had them warm with thin slices of crisp apple – the saltiness of the cheese and the sweetness of the apple play off each other, and an afternoon snack turns into a small ceremony.

The full method, with the rough-puff base it leans on, is in the cheese twists card.

Poached pears in vanilla-lemon syrup

Four whole Beurre Bosc peeled and cored, simmered gently in a syrup of water, sugar, vanilla, and lemon peel, then left to cool overnight in the same pot. The overnight rest is half the recipe – it’s what gets the vanilla all the way to the core. They come out scented through, pale gold, holding their shape. Two went warm with cream; the other two live in their syrup in the fridge for the week, headed for ice cream or porridge or eaten cold over the sink.

The full method, with variants and a list of things to do with the leftover syrup, is in poires pochées.

A batch of brown-butter chocolate chunk cookies with cold sourdough discard worked through the dough – chewy edges, soft centres, a faint sour note under the chocolate. The whole batch goes raw into the freezer as 75g balls and bakes from frozen, four at a time, in fourteen to sixteen minutes. A tray of these in the freezer is the kind of small luxury that costs nothing in the moment a cookie is wanted on a Tuesday evening.

The full method is in the sourdough discard choc chip cookies card.

Sweet-Orange Marmalade

2026-05-13T17:00:00+08:00

Sevilles barely turn up in Australian shops – if at all – and a marmalade craving doesn’t wait for an import. This is the fast version: sweet oranges and a couple of lemons blended whole instead of hand-cut, out of the pan in an hour. Adapted from the Tastes Better From Scratch orange marmalade.

Yield and time

Makes: Batch 1 – roughly 4kg of marmalade from 3kg of fruit
Hands-on: 30 minutes (blender prep, jarring)
Total: about 2 hours (including the hour-long simmer and 20-minute rest)

Ingredients

3kg sweet oranges
2 lemons
500g jam sugar (the kind with added pectin)
1.6kg white granulated sugar
160g water

You’ll need a jug blender, a wide heavy-based pan, a probe thermometer or a freezer-cold saucer for the set test, and sterilised glass jars with lids.

Why the sugar split. 500g jam sugar carries the pectin so sweet oranges set without a separate pectin bag of seeds and pith. 1.6kg plain sugar rounds out the sweetness without overloading the pectin into rubbery territory. The lemons add the rest of the acid.

Prep: blender, not knife

These oranges came off a mate’s tree – a 30kg haul, we took about 6kg – so I skipped the wax scrub a supermarket skin would need. A rinse under hot water and they were ready. I cut each orange and each lemon into eighths and picked out as many pips as I could from the cut faces. A few hide-outs always slip through, but the bulk come out easily once the wedges are open. The jam sugar carries the pectin, so the pips aren’t doing work here – they’re just gritty bits to bite into later.

I tip the wedges into the jug blender in batches and pulse on rough chop until the peel is in small pieces but not pulverised – I want texture in the jar, not citrus puree. Half a dozen pulses per batch is about right. More than that and it turns to mush.

This is the trick that shaves the recipe from two days to one. A traditional Seville marmalade asks you to slice the peel by hand and steep it overnight; the blender does both jobs in a few minutes, and the long simmer that follows softens the peel anyway.

Cook: an hour, gentle simmer

I tip everything – chopped citrus, both sugars, 160g water – into the pan and give it a quick stir. The water is just enough to wet the bottom; the fruit releases its own juice in the first few minutes.

Medium heat, the odd lazy stir, up to a boil, then back down to a steady simmer just shy of a rolling boil. I let it go like that for about an hour, stirring every five or ten minutes so the bottom doesn’t catch.

Two ways to call the set:

The thermometer. Marmalade sets at 104.5°C (220°F). My instant-read has a wired steel probe, so I parked it in the pan and watched the climb the whole way up rather than dipping in and out. If yours is a handheld, start checking at fifty minutes.
The wrinkle test. A teaspoon onto a freezer-cold saucer; wait thirty seconds; push it gently with a finger. If the surface wrinkles, it’s set. If it slides, give it five more minutes.

The wrinkle is the truth; the thermometer tells you when to start checking. With jam sugar in the mix, the set tends to come a few minutes earlier than a pure-sugar batch would.

Pot

Off the heat, twenty minutes’ rest. Resting lets the peel disperse evenly so it doesn’t all float to the top of the jars as syrup-with-a-cap-of-zest.

While it rests, I sterilise the jars: hot soapy wash, rinse, into a 140°C oven for ten minutes. Lids: in a pan of simmering water for five.

Ladle hot marmalade into hot jars to within a centimetre of the rim. Wipe any drips off the rim with a clean damp cloth – sticky rims under the lid mean broken seals later. Lid on tight while still hot; as the jars cool, the air inside contracts and pulls the lid into a vacuum seal. You’ll hear them ping over the next half hour.

Cool overnight on the bench, then label and shelf. Sealed jars keep two years in a cool dark cupboard. Once opened, into the fridge, eaten within a month.

Notes for next time

Marmalade 1 is on the shelf, dated for comparison. A few things worth tracking for the next batch:

Lemon ratio. 2 lemons for 3kg of oranges came out nice – if anything, a shade bitter rather than sweet. Hold the ratio next time, or drop to a single lemon if the bitterness sticks.
Sugar split. 500/1600 jam-to-plain worked but the set was on the gentle side. Push the jam sugar to 750g and hold the plain at 1.5kg.
Peel size. The blender’s rough chop gave a fine, slightly cloudy marmalade rather than the classic ribbons of peel. For a chunkier cut, slice by hand instead – but the blender saves the better part of a morning.
Whisky stirred in off the heat (a couple of tablespoons for the whole batch) adds a warm, faintly smoky edge under the citrus – the grown-up version of the same jar. Didn’t add it to this one; might to the next.

Lemon Meringue Pie

2026-05-10T19:30:00+08:00

Three layers, three textures, three ten-minute jobs at the bench. Short pastry under bright lemon curd under glossy meringue, the peaks blowtorched gold. The patience between each step is what makes the pie.

Yield and time

Makes: one 23cm pie
Hands-on: about 1 hour 30 minutes across the weekend (pastry, blind bake, curd, meringue, blowtorch)
Total: Saturday evening to Sunday lunch (the curd needs at least four hours to set; overnight is best)

Ingredients

The pie is the assembly of two component recipes plus an Italian meringue made fresh on the day. For pastry and curd, the methods, swap-outs, and storage notes live in their own posts:

Pastry: Pâte Sucrée – one 23cm tart shell. Make a double batch and freeze the spare disc.
Curd: Lemon Curd – about 600g. The pie wants the whole batch.

For the Italian meringue topping (made fresh on Sunday)

5 egg whites, room temperature (the curd uses 4 yolks; separate all five eggs together and the whites land here)
1g cream of tartar (about ¼ teaspoon), or a squeeze of lemon juice
250g caster sugar
100ml water

You’ll also want a 23cm tart tin with a removable base, baking beans or rice for blind baking, a sugar thermometer, a stand mixer (or hand whisk and patience), and a small kitchen blowtorch.

Saturday evening: pâte sucrée

Make the pâte sucrée: blender pastry, scented with the zest of two lemons, into a flat disc and into the fridge for at least an hour. The shell uses one 23cm-tin’s worth.

I roll the chilled pastry out between two sheets of cling film to about 3mm thick, ease it into the tart tin, and trim. Prick the base, line with parchment and baking beans, and blind bake at 180°C for 15 minutes – baking the empty shell first so the wet curd doesn’t make the bottom soggy. I pull the parchment, brush the inside with a little egg white (it seals the pastry against the curd), and put it back for another 8 minutes until the base is golden and dry. Cool completely.

While the shell cools, make the lemon curd (the recipe makes about 600g, the right amount for this shell). Strain it warm through a sieve straight into the cooled tart shell.

Into the fridge to set. Minimum four hours; overnight is best. I press a sheet of cling film against the curd’s surface (not floating above it) so a skin doesn’t form. Before topping with meringue tomorrow, I check the curd is properly set: a finger pressed gently into the surface should resist and spring back, with no curd sticking. Soft curd under meringue collapses; if it isn’t there yet, leave it longer.

Sunday morning: Italian meringue, blowtorch

I weigh the 250g sugar and 100ml water into a small saucepan and warm it gently. Italian meringue is the most stable of the three meringues – a hot sugar syrup poured into whipping egg whites – and it holds its shape under a blowtorch without weeping.

While the syrup is climbing toward 118°C (soft-ball stage on a sugar thermometer), I whip the 5 egg whites with the 1g cream of tartar to soft peaks. The moment the syrup hits 118 I take it off the heat and pour it down the side of the bowl in a slow steady stream, the mixer running. I keep whipping until the bowl is cool to the touch and the meringue is glossy, stiff, and holds a peak that curls over on itself.

I scoop the meringue onto the cold tart and style the top with the back of a fork – a few sweeping drags from the centre out, enough to give the flame something to catch.

Then the blowtorch in short passes, painting the high points gold and leaving the valleys pale. Blowtorching in bursts gives the contrast: dark on the peaks, cream in the troughs. Don’t dwell. Meringue goes from unblemished snowfield to apocalyptic burned hellscape in about two microseconds – short bursts, keep the flame moving, stop a beat before you think you should.

When serving

A warm wet blade. A properly set curd cuts cleanly with a long sharp knife dipped in hot water and wiped dry. The heat melts a thin layer of curd and butter against the blade so the slice goes through without dragging or smudging the layers. Run the knife under the hot tap, wipe with a tea towel, cut. Repeat between every slice – residual curd from the previous cut will smear the next.

Fish Pie

2026-05-10T19:15:00+08:00

Charlotte asked for fish pie.

Yield and time

Makes: serves 6
Hands-on: 45 minutes
Total: about 1 hour 30 minutes (including the bake and rest)

Ingredients

The pie

500g firm white fish (Rankin cod, snapper, or blue-eye trevalla), skinned, cut into 3-4cm chunks
250g hot-smoked fish (hot-smoked cod, smoked trout, or smoked trevally), skin off, broken into chunks
200g raw prawns, peeled and deveined, thawed if frozen (green tiger, banana, or supermarket “large prawns”)
600ml full-cream milk
1 bay leaf, a few peppercorns
75g unsalted butter
50g plain flour
100ml double cream
3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and quartered (the Food Lab method – straight from the fridge into rolling-boiling water for 11 minutes, then into ice water – gives perfect easy-peel eggs every time)
4 spring onions, finely sliced
salt, pepper
about 1/8 to 1/6 of a whole nutmeg, freshly grated

The mash

1.2kg brushed potatoes (the dirt-on whites from Woolworths), peeled and chunked
100g unsalted butter
100ml warm milk
salt

The crust finish

30g Parmesan, finely grated
pink flakey salt

Sunday morning: poach, sauce, fold

The whole cook – poach, sauce, bake, serve – happens in a shallow Le Creuset casserole. One vessel, no transfers, straight to the table.

I put the 500g white fish into the casserole with the 600ml cold milk, the bay leaf, and peppercorns. I bring it to a simmer and cook until the fish is almost set, turning halfway. Poaching in milk seasons the milk and gentles the fish; the milk becomes the base of the sauce so nothing’s wasted.

I lift the white fish out with a slotted spoon into a bowl, cutting any oversized pieces roughly with the edge of the spoon – I don’t flake it; I want chunks that hold their shape in the pie. The 250g hot-smoked fish is already cooked, so it goes straight into the bowl in chunks alongside the cod. The 200g raw prawns join the pile too – they’ll cook through in the oven. I strain the warm poaching milk into a jug and wipe the casserole.

Back in the casserole I melt 75g butter, sprinkle in the 50g flour, and stir for a minute or two. The roux is cooked starch – this is what will thicken the sauce; cooking it briefly takes the raw-flour taste off. I pour in the warm strained milk a third at a time, whisking each addition smooth before the next. When all the milk’s in I let it bubble for two minutes, then add the 100ml cream, an eighth of a nutmeg grated fresh, plenty of pepper, and a pinch of salt. The smoked fish will salt the pie further so I keep the seasoning modest.

Off the heat, I tip the pile of fish and prawns into the sauce, scatter in the 4 spring onions, and fold gently. Last in are the 3 quartered eggs – a softer fold so they don’t smash. Smooth the top so it’s level under the mash.

Sunday morning: mash

I boil the 1.2kg potatoes in well-salted water until tender, drain, and return them to the pan over a low heat to steam off any excess water – a watery mash is a crime. Then I mash until smooth, beat in the 100g butter and 100ml warm milk until silky, and season with salt.

I spoon the mash over the filling, smooth it, then drag the tines of a fork across in long lines – the ridges crisp first under the heat.

Sunday lunch: bake

The pie bakes at 200°C for 30-35 minutes – bubbling at the edges, the mash crust deeply golden, the prawns just cooked through. With about ten minutes left I pull it out, scatter the 30g Parmesan over the crust, and finish with a pinch of pink flakey salt: the cheese crisps under the dry heat in the last stretch and the salt sits glassy on the ridges.

Out of the oven, ten minutes’ rest before serving so the sauce settles back into the fish.

Serve

A green vegetable on the side – we had snow peas, lightly blanched. To drink, a Singlefile SSB went nicely with it. The Sémillon brings enough weight to sit with the cream sauce and the smoked fish; the Sauvignon Blanc brings the cut that keeps every forkful feeling fresh, and the mineral edge lifts the palate between bites. The smoked fish is what makes this “yum, fish pie” rather than a bland waste of beautiful produce.

Pâte Sucrée

2026-05-10T18:30:00+08:00

The standalone pastry recipe used in Lemon Meringue Pie, but worth the post on its own. Make it once, freeze the disc, and you’ve got a tart shell ready for whatever the week brings – fruit tarts, custard tarts, mince pies, dessert cases.

Yield and time

Makes: one 23cm tart shell, or 8-10 tartlets
Hands-on: 15 minutes (plus another 25 minutes to roll, line, and blind bake)
Total: about 2 hours (including the one-hour fridge rest and the blind bake)

Ingredients

250g plain flour
100g icing sugar
pinch of salt
zest of 2 lemons (or 1 orange, or 1 vanilla pod’s worth of seeds)
150g cold unsalted butter, cubed
1 large egg yolk
2 tablespoons ice-cold water

You’ll need a food processor, cling film, and a fridge with at least an hour to spare.

The cook

I drop the 250g flour, 100g icing sugar, the pinch of salt, and the zest of 2 lemons into the food processor and pulse for a few seconds to combine. Blender pastry is an excellent shortcut: blitzing keeps the butter cold and stops my hands warming the dough.

I add the 150g cold butter and pulse until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs, then the egg yolk and the 2 tbsp cold water and pulse a few times more. The mixture won’t actually clump in the processor – it’ll go from breadcrumbs to slightly soft and just-tacky and that’s the moment to stop. Going further turns it into a tough ball.

I tip the soft, loose mixture onto the bench, gather it with my hands and press it together into a rough ball, then flatten that into a disc. Two or three movements only – the less I work it, the shorter the bite. Wrap and into the fridge for at least an hour. Resting lets the gluten relax so the pastry doesn’t shrink in the oven, and gives whatever zest you’ve used time to perfume the dough.

Rolling and lining

This is short pastry, so it’ll feel short – crumbly when rolling, prone to cracking, more like a slab than a sheet. That’s the high butter ratio doing its job, and it’s what gives the bake its delicate snap; the trade-off is that the dough takes faith to handle. Believe in it. The patches and cracks bake back together into a single smooth shell.

I roll the chilled pastry out between two sheets of cling film to about 3mm thick (the cling film stops it sticking and means no extra flour, which would toughen it). I peel the top sheet off, flip the pastry into the tart tin, peel off the second sheet, and ease it into the corners. Trim the overhang with the rolling pin rolled across the top of the tin – a clean cut without scraps.

If the pastry tears, patch with a scrap; warmth from your fingers makes it pliable enough to mend. A short dough always tears somewhere; the patches disappear in the bake.

I prick the base with a fork (stops it ballooning), line with parchment and baking beans, and blind bake at 180°C for 15 minutes – baking the empty shell first so a wet filling doesn’t make the bottom soggy. I pull the parchment, brush the inside with a little egg white (it seals the pastry against any wet filling), and put it back for another 8 minutes until the base is golden and dry.

Cool completely before filling.

Variants and storage

Orange or vanilla instead of lemon zest – match the zest to the filling that’s coming.
Almond pâte sucrée – replace 50g of the flour with ground almonds. Lovely with stone-fruit fillings.
Cocoa sucrée – replace 25g of the flour with cocoa powder. Works under chocolate ganache or a cherry filling.

The disc keeps in the fridge three days, and freezes well for three months – defrost overnight in the fridge before rolling.

Where the pastry goes

The lemon meringue pie – its most demanding job
Custard tart, treacle tart, fruit tarts, mince pies
Tartlets baked blind, then filled with crème pâtissière and topped with whatever’s in season
Lined into a buttered cake tin and used as a sweet base under a cheesecake mix

Lemon Curd

2026-05-10T18:00:00+08:00

Curd is the right name for it – somewhere between a custard and a jam, all yolk-and-citrus richness with sharp acidity to keep it from cloying. The standalone recipe used in Lemon Meringue Pie but worth making in its own right: in jars on the shelf, on toast, swirled into yoghurt, layered between sponges, dolloped on scones.

Yield and time

Makes: about 600g, fills two 300ml jars
Hands-on: 20 minutes
Total: 30 minutes (including jarring)

Ingredients

4 large egg yolks
150g caster sugar
zest of 2 lemons
120ml lemon juice (3-4 lemons)
100g cold unsalted butter, cubed

You’ll need a heatproof bowl that sits over a saucepan without touching the water (a stainless or glass mixing bowl is ideal), a probe thermometer, a fine sieve, and clean glass jars with lids.

The cook

I whisk the 4 yolks, 150g sugar, zest of 2 lemons, and 120ml lemon juice in a heatproof bowl and set it over a pan of barely-simmering water – the bottom of the bowl shouldn’t touch the water. Bain-marie gives gentle, even heat so the eggs cook into a custard rather than scrambling.

I whisk constantly for ten or twelve minutes; the curd is ready at 82°C on a probe thermometer – the thermometer is what stops a runny curd. By feel: it coats the back of a spoon thickly and a finger drawn through it leaves a clean track that doesn’t fill back in. Pull early and the eggs haven’t set the mixture; the curd will weep. Push past 85°C and you risk the eggs splitting.

Off the heat, I whisk in the 100g cold butter cube by cube until glossy. The cold butter drops the temperature and gives a final round of thickening as it emulsifies in. I strain through a sieve into a clean bowl or straight into the jars – the sieve catches any cooked egg and leaves the texture smooth.

Storing

For a tart shell, pour the warm strained curd into the cooled blind-baked shell, press cling film against the surface (not floating above), and chill at least four hours – overnight is best.

For jars, ladle the warm curd into clean glass jars, lid on tight, cool on the bench, then into the fridge. Keeps a week in the fridge, two months frozen. Lemon curd doesn’t preserve at room temperature like jam does – the eggs and butter mean it must stay cold.

Where the curd goes

The lemon meringue pie – its first job
Spooned over hot buttered toast or a fresh scone
Swirled through Greek yoghurt with a spoonful of granola
Layered between sponge halves with whipped cream (the original Victoria-sponge upgrade)
Folded into double cream and frozen for an instant lemon ice
Stirred into porridge for a brighter morning

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Yield and time