Christmas in July - Mulled Wine Chocolate Cake

Another July come and gone, which means another Christmas in July come and gone! This year has just flown by! And in some exciting news, at Christmas in July whilst there was already bubbles flowing, we also got to toast my new job! I am really happy and can’t wait to start!

As usual, our Christmas in July is a bring-a-dish affair. Lance smoked a leg of pork and I made two cakes. This was the spread – how good does it look? I can assure you that it tasted even better!

This is the first of the two cakes and wanting to use Christmassy flavours, I decided to spice up the Boston Blackout Cake from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. Quite literally. Red wine, wintery spices and citrus add a depth to the already rich chocolatey cake. It is made of three layers of cake held together by a mulled wine chocolate “custard” which is then covered in cake crumbs. It needs at least a few hours in the fridge to “set” the filling and cake, which makes it perfect for entertaining as it can all be made beforehand. Keeping with the wine theme, I’ve decorated it with some grapes for a fun look! Being a rich cake, this is best served with whipped cream, or even crème fraiche.

Mulled Wine Chocolate Cake

Cake

100g butter

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 cup cocoa

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarb soda

½ tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ginger

¼ tsp cloves

¼ tsp nutmeg

1 1/3 cups plain flour

1/3 cup milk

1/3 cup red wine (I used Shiraz)

Custard

2 ½ cups sugar

1 tbsp light corn syrup

½ cup cocoa

60g dark chocolate

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ginger

Pinch nutmeg

Pinch cloves

1 cup red wine (I used Shiraz)

1 ½ cups water

1 ½ cups cornflour

¾ cup water (extra to the above)

80g butter

1 tsp vanilla

Zest of an orange

Start by making the custard so it can chill and set in the fridge. In a small bowl, mix the cornflour and ¾ cup of water together to make a slurry. Set aside.

In a large saucepan, add the sugar, light corn syrup, cocoa, dark chocolate, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. Pour the red wine and water over the top and over a medium heat, stir to combine and bring to the boil.

When boiling, add the cornflour slurry and stir constantly to combine. When it starts to thicken, add the butter, vanilla and zest and mix well until it’s fully incorporated. Pour into a baking dish, cover the surface with cling wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

For the cake, preheat the oven to 170C. Grease and flour three cake tins of (preferably) equal size.

the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy on a medium speed. Add the eggs, one at a time, and keep beating until fully incorporated. Scraping down the sides if necessary. Turn the mixer down to low and add the vanilla, spices, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb soda and salt. When combined, add half of the flour and turn the mixer up to medium again to mix well. Add the red wine. When fully combined, add the milk. Finally, add the second half of the flour.

Pour the cake mix evenly amongst the three cake tins and bake for 25 minutes, or until it springs back when touched and a cake tester comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes in the tins, then turn out to cool completely on racks.

To assemble, pile the three cakes carefully, and cut a small ring around the outside. Blitz the offcuts in a food processor to get cake crumbs. Place on ring on your serving plate, then smear a layer of custard over it. Top with cake, then more custard, then the last layer of cake. Smother the whole thing in a layer of custard, smoothing the sides and top as best as possible. Gently pour and press the crumbs into the custard so they stick.

Refrigerate for 4 hours (or the day before), then remove from the fridge half an hour before serving.

Decorate with grapes if desired. Serve with whipped cream.

Idea Obsessions - Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao

Sometimes I get hit by a random food idea that I simply can’t shake. Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao was one of those. In my head, I could taste the combination. Beautiful fatty duck slices, sticky sweet jam, a spicy peanut sauce rounding it out. I wanted it so bad! Cooking complicated meals during the week is a bonus of being made redundant. Ordinarily, it’d be months before I had a spare weekend to cook something like this, but now I can (almost) any time! So on a Friday without plans, I decided to make dinner and the couch Date Night, by making something a little fancier than the norm. Right from the get-go you should know that this is a very involved meal, if you want to do things right and get the full richness of flavours in your jelly and the best fluffiness in homemade steam buns. Good things sometimes really do take time. It is worth it, I promise you that. BUT…if you are time poor, but still love the idea of these PB&J Duck Bao, I won’t complain too much if you simplify things..

So, onto my complicated, enhanced version. I always use the Momofuku Steam Buns recipe for making bao, but I find I always need at least ½ cup more flour than their recipe. But use their amount first, and add more if the dough is too sticky. In this instance, instead of rendered pork fat, I used rendered duck fat.

Given we aren’t in stone fruit season, I decided to make my plum jam with prunes, instead of fresh plums. Given how classic a combination duck and plums are, I didn’t want to deviate for my jam. I always have prunes in the house because I’m a bit of a nanna and love them on my porridge. Finish it off with a simple spicy peanut butter sauce and you have gold! I was going to make my own pickles to go with these, but time got away from me.

Serve with buns, pickle and parsley and coriander leaves and you have a perfectly balanced but rich PB&J Duck Bao.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck Bao

½ duck (if you are making a simpler version, 1 large duck breast, skin on)

1 red onion, peeled and roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic, peeled

1 bay leaf

1 tbsp salt

2 litres water

1/2tsp freshly cracked black pepper

Prune and Onion Jelly

1 red onion, thinly sliced

½ tsp salt

2 cups red wine (such as Shiraz or Cab Sauv)

200g prunes, roughly chopped

1L duck stock (included in recipe)

½ cup brown sugar

Spicy Peanut Sauce

½ cup peanut butter

½ tbsp. freshly grated ginger

3 tbsp rice wine vinegar

1 tbsp kecap manis

2 tbsp sriracha (or to taste)

Fillet the breast and thigh piece of the duck, keeping the skin intact. Cover and place in the fridge until later. Remove the fat and skin from the rest of the duck. In a frypan over medium heat, fry the excess skin and fat until the fat renders out. Drain from pan and allow to cool to room temperature. Start making the steam buns, if you are. Read the instructions fully, to understand how much rising time you’ll need all up.

Using a big sharp knife, carefully cut the duck bones up at the joints and fry them off in a stock pot until brown. Add 2 litres of water, the onion, bay leaf, garlic cloves, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then simmer for an hour, skimming the foam off the top from time to time. Leave to cool half an hour, then pass through a sieve. You can remove and shred any meat from the duck pieces and reserve for another use – or just discard along with the vegetables and bones.

In a saucepan, heat 1 tbsp olive oil over a medium-low heat and cook the onion slices until translucent, around 5 minutes. Add the salt to allow them to sweat, and cook for a further 10 minutes. They should soften even more, but not colour. Add the prunes, duck stock and brown sugar. Bring to the boil, stirring well, then cover and reduce to a simmer, and leave to cook for around an hour and a half, or until reduced by half. Alternatively, skip the stock making step and use good chicken stock - or just use a good store-bought plum jam or plum sauce.

While this cooks, remove the duck from the fridge to take the chill off, and preheat the oven to 150C. Should take about half an hour.

When the oven is ready, heat a frypan to high. Season the duck on both sides with salt and pepper and place skin side down on the heat. Leave to cook for 5-6 minutes, until the skin is crispy and the fat has rendered. Flip over and cook a further 5 minutes. Spoon some prune jelly over the top of the duck breast and place in the oven to finish cooking for 15 minutes. Take the lid off the prune jelly and keep cooking to reduce to a sticky, jamlike consistency.

Meanwhile, start steaming your buns and make the peanut butter sauce. Add all of the spicy peanut butter sauce ingredients to a small saucepan and place over low heat, stir here and there until smooth and all of the ingredients are fully incorporated. Should be about 5 minutes. Take off the heat and set aside.

Remove the duck breast, cover with a piece of foil and rest for 5 minutes. Slice into thin strips and serve with the prune and onion jelly, peanut butter sauce, pickles, herbs and steam buns.

Simple Sides - Muscat Butternut Pumpkin

Winter is the weather for drinking ports and muscats and Pedro Ximenex. There’s nothing better than a small glass in front of the fireplace after a good meal. It’s also fabulous to cook with. This is a simple side dish that tastes so good on these cold nights. This is a fairly sweet side dish, the onions, pumpkin and muscat all combining to a sticky yumness. This pairs well with beef or lamb. It's also fabulous with some goat's cheese or gorgonzola dotted on top.

I’ve used Monte’s Fine Old Muscat from Cape Naturaliste – my favourite winery. Partly because I always have a bottle of it, because it’s fabulous. Partly because it is the perfect match. Sweet, without being too cloying, a tad gingerbready. Add a little onion and thyme and you're onto a winner.

Speaking of winning, this pumpkin was one that Lance grew for me! Getting fresh produce feels like such a prize!

Muscat Butternut Pumpkin

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

2 red onions, sliced into thin half moons

1 tsp salt

2 tsp thyme leaves

½ tsp fresh black pepper

½ cup muscat (such as Monte’s Fine Old Muscat)

1 small butternut pumpkin (around 750g), peeled, de-seeded and finely sliced into half moons

1 tbsp each pepitas and pine nuts for garnish

In a frypan over low heat, warm the olive oil and butter together until the butter has melted. Add the red onions and cook for 10 minutes, stirring here and there. Add the salt, thyme and pepper, mix through the onions well and cook a further 10 minutes, until the onions are golden.

Add the pumpkin slices and stir through well, coating them in the onion mixture. Pour the muscat over the top and cook for 20 minutes, or until the pumpkin has softened and the liquid has been absorbed.

Scatter with pepitas and pine nuts and serve.

Dining with the Skamp - Supernormal, Melbourne

When people ask us what our favourite restaurants in Melbourne were, Supernormal is one of the first places that spring to mind. We left quite a few restaurants in Melbourne promising ourselves we’d go back. But then we got super engaged in crossing the Top 100 restaurants off the list and we never did. Except for Supernormal. We hit it first off for lunch on the second day of our trip, and the first day staying in the city. It’s a relatively large restaurant on Flinders Lane, with a large glass window and a cheery cherry neon sign welcoming you. We were offered a seat at the bar, as the dining area was full. No worries. We soon learnt that being a couple in Melbourne means you eat at the bar, or wait a long time. But if you are normally against this sort of thing, at least do it at Supernormal. Trust me, they’re the best seats in the house. Especially if you sit on the kitchen side, rather than the bar side. We not only received the best service from the bar staff and wait staff, we also watched the chefs at work, and chatted to them about what they were doing, and the best dishes to order. It was so incredibly fun, and we left feeling part of the Supernormal family.

The only downside of watching the food being cooked is that you get food envy, even though what you are eating is amazing. Which, apart from feeling like family (a sentiment backed up by the warm greeting we received on our second visit), was probably a large part of why this was the only restaurant we revisited. We were stuffed full, but so entranced by some dishes being plated, we had to try them!

As with the majority of restaurants in Melbourne (and Perth!), the dish style here is share plates. A form of meal Lance and I revel in. We started with the sea urchin crackers, a special of the day. The look of the sea urchin was a little off-putting (I think the term ‘manky vagina’ might have come up), but the dish itself was anything but manky. Raw, thinly sliced sea urchin, on a housemade seaweed cracker with pickled onion. The ocean flavour of the urchin was strong, the texture slightly chewy, slightly silky. The seaweed cracker snapped, crackled and dissolved as you ate it, like a thin prawn cracker, and the pickled onion set everything off.

The white cut chicken salad was ordered on a recommendation by Rob Broadfield at the reviewers lunch I attended, and it didn’t disappoint. The soba noodles, seaweed and spring onions the perfect base for the perfectly poached then chilled chicken and spicy sauce. The chicken was so tender and clean, not the slimy texture you can get with cold cooked chook.

We then went the bao route. Given my love of duck, that was a given, so we grabbed a duck leg seeing as there was just the two of us, and the pork bao. The pork was braised, crumbed and fried, and served with a tamarind sauce. This sauce was spicy, rather than the sticky sweet style of tamarind sauce I’m more used to. The spice and tartness of the sauce balancing the fluffy white mantou bun and rich fried pork well. The duck came DIY style. A plate of buns, a plate with the duck and cucumber, and a couple of sauce dishes. At first glance, the duck leg looked dusted in cocoa, but it was a dark, thin crispy shell created from the deep frying. It cracked open satisfyingly to reveal moist flesh that fell easily off the bone. The plum sauce and vinaigrette complimented it perfectly.

We wanted to keep eating at this point, but simply could not. So we ordered dessert. We shared the green tea and plum soft serve – playful in it’s colourful swirl, and texturally spot-on. The tart plum soft serve, compote and freeze dried pieces playing well against the grassy matcha. The peanut butter parfait was pure sweet heaven. A peanutty mousse on a macaron base with that wonderful chewiness macarons get. Salted caramel sauce, peanuts scattered about the place and a ball of chocolate ganache mousse finishing off the sweetness overload. Lance got this the second visit too.

Our second visit was our last dinner in Melbourne and made the perfect finish to the trip. We ordered three dishes, only one of which is still on the menu a few months later – the New England Lobster rolls. These were sweet and delicate parcels of lobster in a soft buttery bun. And my dessert was the baked ginger pudding. Straight from the oven in a cast iron pan, this dense gingerbread style pudding was everything Christmas dreams are made of. Realistically, this was big enough to be a share pudding – but after two weeks of doing nothing but eating, I greedily fit in the whole thing! Lance was too busy eating a peanut butter parfait to care too much!

Definitely deserves it's spot on our top 3 "normal" restaurant list. (Vue de Monde is in a class of it's own!!)