Pink grapefruit posset with white chocolate pumpkin seed mendiants

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A sliced pink grapefruit on a green plate next to four coupes of grapefruit posset

There are a few load-bearing moments in my youthful journey towards becoming a food blogger slash person obsessed with cooking; the epiphanic first time ever I saw Nigella Lawson’s face and cooking show in 2001, winning the best cake award at the 1998 Calf Club, my childhood adventures in microwaving (largely borne from the fact that we only had a microwave, but). Another such signpost is the lemon posset recipe from a Cuisine magazine—I want to say it’s from April 2002 but regrettably I lost the hard copy years ago—being my signature dessert at family gatherings for several years in my teens. It’s one of those recipes that feels like magic, and for reasons I can only chalk up to time management and perception of time itself, this is the first time I’ve recreated this dish for my almost eighteen-years-old blog. Except, here I’ve hoisted up the citrus stakes by replacing lemon with bitter pink grapefruit.

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Shawarma-spiced roast vegetables with feta

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A serving spoon in a dish of roasted veges

A tray of roast vegetables is a noble dinner. Huddled low topographically yet covering so much surface area; the magnificent juxtaposition of tender internal cellular structure and crisp-lipped exterior; so much result for so little fuss. If you want to make a modicum of fuss, however—perhaps by borrowing the multiplicity of rich spices present in shawarma—and then crumbling over a genuinely modest quantity of feta—then you’re really in for a good time. The hardest part of these shawarma-spiced roast vegetables with feta, for me at least, is that every time I open up my spice drawer the boxes of spices have re-ordered themselves or got themselves all wedged and bunched up the back like an upwardly-directional pair of underwear; I intend to be the kind of person who has spices neatly contained in small, labelled containers but it never comes to pass, luckily this doesn’t put me off using them.

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Salmon, mango and coriander salad

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Salmon mango salad on a green plate, on a baking tray with a fork below it

Mango? Salad? In these final shrinking vestiges of autumn as it descends, sighing and officially, into winter? First of all, deliciousness knows no practical response to temperature, so jot that down. Secondly, every now and then I dunk my head under the humbling waters of my site analytics and am reminded that a shocking number of my viewership comes from the United States, despite my distinct non-Americanness — to wit, the very nomenclature of this recipe, which, stateside, would be cilantro. While America does enough self-pandering to last us all a lifetime, some of the best and coolest long-term mutuals that I’ve never met are from the US and it does occur to me that this Salmon, Mango and Coriander Salad would be particularly tempting if I lived somewhere with summer rapidly approaching. On the other hand, I’ve had this for dinner three times this week alone here in increasingly frosty New Zealand. Once tasted, you’ll want to make time for this recipe all year round. And with frozen, cubed mango, it’s quite possible to do this. (And, I feel strenuously driven to make clear above the fold, if you hate coriander I have a variation for you.)

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Very easy chocolate-cherry macaroons

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A top down view of evenly-spaced macaroons

Despite it being monumental false economy, not least because the same people who make the butter make the cream, I found myself purchasing a full litre of cream the other day in order to hand-churn my own butter in order to feel some semblance of control over the avaricious and extortionate pricing; and let’s not even think about eggs. This recipe for very easy chocolate-cherry macaroons sidesteps both ingredients, indeed, it sidesteps most ingredients altogether — and before I lose you, you can easily lose the cherries.

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Freeform black bean cobbler

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a dish of black bean cobbler with a serving inside a bowl in front of it

After last week’s rampant whimsy we’re back to something practical with this freeform black bean cobbler; so named because it’s so adaptable that it might veer all the way around to being annoying again — in that sometimes having too many options just means you have to make more decisions, but I shall attempt to make it clear why the main suggested path is worth traversing, culinarily.

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fig leaf ice cream [no-churn]

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a teacup of ice cream sitting on fig leaves

This recipe isn’t practical by anyone’s metrics, aside from perhaps Louis XIV the Sun King’s, but if you so happen to have a fig tree within your vicinity or circle of acquaintances then it’s a fairly delightful and simple way of making an unexpectedly captivating fig leaf ice cream. Getting something out of the part of a tree you don’t usually eat is fun; and arguably prudent, if not practical, plus the method is simple and the texture is stunning.

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Absolutely nothing chocolate cake (with a cookie variation)

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A square chocolate cake drizzled in melted chocolate

Given these vile economic times that we find ourselves unwilling pawns in, I’ve resurrected this absolutely nothing chocolate cake recipe which uses no eggs, no butter, and no substitutions after a long time between bites. And it really does come together out of various dusts and a bit of tap water to form a cake that isn’t just surprisingly good, it’s just a good — and functional — chocolate cake. Now, the last thing I want to do is bring you a recipe that I’m obliged to damn through faint praise, and I was somewhat uncertain as this baked away in the oven. Yes, it’s based on the recipe that fed my childhood, but given that I also used to make myself tomato ketchup and cheese sandwiches, microwaved until either the cheese or the plastic plate was volcanically bubbling, and pretend it was pizza, I’m not sure my tastebuds’ memories can be trusted in that regard. I then repurposed this recipe for my 2013 cult hit eponymous cookbook, published through Penguin — but that was a long decade ago, and then some.

After a further, and for now, final tutu with this recipe, I am happy to report that it tastes genuinely, beguilingly fantastic. Whether a birthday is looming ominously or a vexing (or celebratory) day requires dessert, you deserve cake, regardless of possessing the means to make one. This can be that cake.

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Butternut, chickpea, and peanut soup

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a spoon resting in a bowl of butternut soup with bread on a plate next to it

I have an old cookbook — as in, it’s from 1980 and I found it in an opshop — called, with brisk disregard for tautology, Supercook’s Supersavers Cookbook. Fascinatingly, it lists milk, cheese, and eggs as three of the most important ingredients for an economical kitchen; meanwhile I remember butter and cheese quadrupling in cost overnight somewhere around the beginning of the recession in 2007 and never, ever lowering or even settling in price ever again. When the consumer cannot control the rapidly-shifting sands underneath our feet nor the repellant deciders who dictate the prices of ingredients, it makes me wary of claiming a recipe to be cheap or budget-friendly. But if you can’t guarantee cost-of-living-crisis-amenability — and it’s hard to guarantee much of anything at all in these trying times — I can at least promise a certain versatility that can meet you where you’re at, in this Butternut, Chickpea, and Peanut Soup.

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Peanut butter chocolate chunk squares

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Sliced peanut butter chocolate chunk squares

As this food blog approaches its eighteenth turn around the sun, it occurred to me to conduct some market research (instagram story polls) to learn more about what on earth people want; especially since I am, if I may be blunt, not in a period of engagement that history books will recall as significant. Whether this blog is flourishing or flopping, I’ll still keep writing it because I genuinely love it — which means it can never truly flop — but there’s no harm in asking questions and selectively heeding their responses. Today’s recipe for peanut butter chocolate chunk squares doesn’t, alas, meet any of the data’s findings, but it is what I had prepared for this week, and even if not data-informed, it is — of course! — delicious.

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pasta with prawns, tomatoes and cream

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A serving spoon in a pan of tomato and prawn pasta

How many tomato pasta recipes does a person need? To me, one of the primary joys of cooking is working out each evening which puzzle pieces need to slot together to assuage that night’s tastebuds. I guess that’s my paid-by-the-word way of saying “what’s for dinner”. I like not knowing what my whims will be and yet knowing myself enough to answer their call accurately; whether it’s the prune-dark fruitiness of ancho chillies and the pre-banked temporal thrill of slow-cooking — anticipating anticipation, if you will — or whether the receptors down the side of my tongue long for the pugilistic sting of vinegar, or whether I want to indulge that strange human need for multi-sensory food that snaps, crackles, and pops. And sometimes I want another tomato pasta, and just the right recipe will feel brand new to me — and today, that recipe is this pasta with prawns, tomatoes and cream.

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