Plantain Love - Garlic and Kale Mofongo

I don’t know a great deal about the various South American cuisines, other than I enjoy eating most of the flavours. So, with an ignorance of the provenance of mofongo and therefore what is and isn’t actually “mofongo” I am calling this a Kale Mofongo. From what I have read, mofongo is fried plantains roughly mashed together with broth, chicharrones (or bacon), with various pepper and onions as the flavouring ingredients. This has the peppers in the form of chile flakes, and instead of salty bacon, it uses salty anchovies. The kale just makes it much more vege based.

This recipe is barely adapted from a recipe for pasta from the New York Times website. The only two real main differences are the substitution of noodles for plantain and the substitution of rum and broth for water. I figure, why wilt with water when you can wilt with more flavour?? Plus, I seem to have a fairly strong habit of cooking with booze. My love affair with plantains is well and truly continuing. Definitely hunt some down if you can find them!

Garlic and Kale Mofongo

2 green plantains, cut into 5cm discs, peeled.

3 tbsp olive oil
4 anchovy filets
½ teaspoon crushed red chili flakes
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons capers, drained and stored on paper towel until ready to use
1 bunch kale, ribs removed, chopped
1 shots (30mL) dark rum, such as Angostura
¼ cup chicken or vegetable stock
Half a lime

Heat the olive oil in a large frypan (preferably one with deepish sides for when you’re tossing everything together) to medium heat. In batches if necessary, fry the plantain pieces until golden on each side, and soft – around 3-5 minutes per side. Transfer to a paper-towel lined plate and set aside.

To the same pan, add a little more oil if the plantains soaked up a lot. You want the bottom of the frypan to be well-coated. Add the anchovies, chili flakes and a fat pinch of salt. Fry, stirring, until the anchovies have dissolved and the chili flakes are toasted, around 3 minutes.

Add the garlic and the capers, cook for 5 minutes. Add kale and rum and cook until kale goes bright green and wilts and about half of the liquid has evaporated. Add the plantains and stir through, mashing as you go with your wooden spoon into the oily, garlicky kale. Everything should be coated with the flavoured oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then squeeze some lime juice over the top just before serving.

Christmas in July - Honeycake

When my brother first started doing Cake Club at his work about three years ago, he talked up this traditional Russian cake that a guy at his work brought in. Honeycake. He said it was lots of layers and one of the best cakes he'd ever had. I googled Russian Honeycake and had a recipe sitting in my "to-try" folder for years. It is a little fiddly, as it's basically a bunch of honey biscuit layers, softened into a more traditional cake texture by a cream filling that soaks into the cake. Before the cream is added, the layers are sort of the texture of gingerbread cookies. Being fiddly, it was pushed to the back of the pile when deciding on what cake to make.

But honeycake started popping up in my Instagram feeds as The Honeycake market stall became more and more popular. People in Perth were becoming obsessed with it. I was tempted to try it at last year's Taste festival, but I'd eaten so much by that point, I knew I wouldn't be doing it justice. Come the Good Food and Wine Festival this year, I finally got my chance. And it was good. Really good. But much more caramelly than I was expecting a Honeycake to taste. Especially as I knew the basic recipe for it.

Enter Google once more for answers! According to The Honeycake folk, they use a traditional Czech Recipe. The recipe I originally sourced was for a traditional Russian cake. So, what's the difference? Essentially, it is the caramel that I wasn't expecting. The Russian cake uses a sweetened sour cream filling. The Czech version uses two fillings, one a caramel cream, one a condensed milk cream. Given I'm less partial to super sweetness, It's still a sweet cake, but the honey is the much more dominant flavour.

I decided to stick to the original Russian version, with a few tweaks. Being Russian, a lot of recipes use vodka, I decided to switch to rum because I think the spicy flavour profile combines with the honey perfectly. Make sure you use a good dark rum, such as Angostura or Captain Morgan and not Bundaberg. The rest of the recipe is mixed and matched from around 7 different "traditional family recipes", and I think it is perfect. Which makes this now my traditional family recipe. Because I am definitely making this again. It is a little time-consuming, rolling and baking all the layers, but it needs to be made ahead of time for the cream filling to soak into the cake layers and soften them which makes it perfect for parties. And the effort is totally worth it. Definitely one of my favourite cakes ever, too! 

The caramel shards are made by melting together 1/2 cup of sugar with 1 tbsp lemon juice, heated over low temperature until the sugar dissolves, then turns caramel in flavour, drizzled onto baking paper to set into hard shards. Add these just before serving, otherwise they will soften too.

Honeycake

Cake

75g butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3 tbsp honey
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp dark rum (optional, but delicious)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups flour

Syrup

3 tbsp honey
3 tbsp water (room temperature or slightly warm)
2 tbsp dark rum (optional, but delicious)

Filling

500g sour cream
1 tbsp honey
1/2 cup icing sugar
125g walnuts, toasted in a pan and processed until fine

Preheat your oven to 170C

Set up a double boiler situation using a large saucepan of water over a low simmer with a large metal or glass bowl in the top - ensuring the bottom doesn't touch the water.

In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs,and vanilla.

Melt the butter, sugar and honey in the double-boiler. Stir, until the sugar dissolves.Very slowly, add the egg mixture to the butter, whisking as you add it so it incorporates and doesn't scramble. Then whisk in the rum, baking soda and salt.

Switch to a wooden spoon and add about a quarter of the flour, mixing in fully before adding more. It'll turn into a rollable biscuit-type dough and give your mixing arm a good work out. When all of the the flour is added, take the bowl off the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.

Get together your tools for making the cake. You need to decide what plate you are going to serve it on and then find a plate or cake ring just smaller than that so you cut all of the layers the same size and that it fits on the serving plate. Grab as many baking trays as possible, and line them with baking paper. Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces, covering the ones you aren't working on with a clean tea towel so it doesn't dry out. Roll the dough to 2mm thick and slightly larger than the cutter plate. Bake for around 4-5 minutes or golden, then remove from the oven and cut around the cake layer while it's still warm, then leave to cool and crisp up. Keep the offcuts.

Repeat with the remaining dough pieces.

For the syrup, mix all of the ingredients together with a pastry brush.

For the filling, whip the sour cream, sugar and honey together with an electric handbeater until soft and fluffy - it fluffs up almost like normal cream. Mix in the toasted crushed walnuts.

To assemble, place a layer on your serving plate, then brush with the syrup. Top with a few dollops of sour cream filling, spread right to the edges. Repeat the process, then cover the top and sides with the remaining sour cream filling and smooth.

Process the biscuit offcuts into crumbs and gently coat the sour cream layer, pressing in to cover completely. Wrap with plastic and refrigerate at least 4 hours, preferably overnight. Take out of the fridge 30 minutes before serving to take the chill off.

Decorate with caramel shards if desired.

Chicken and Corn Gnocchi with Rum and Green Mango Sauce

Our mango tree that was so incredibly prolific last year, hasn’t been as fruitful this year. There are probably less than a quarter of them than last year, and we lost quite a few of those before they got anywhere near size. So when 4 green but still fairly mature mangoes fell, I decided to use them. I want my mango fix! I haven’t had a great deal of green mango dishes. Here and there there’s been green mango salads accompanying spicy Asian dishes but that’s about it. These salads are usually wonderfully tart and salty. The green mango very sour in comparison to the crazy sweetness of a ripe mango. And the salt tames the sour and brings out more of the fruit flavour.

With that idea in mind, I created this pasta. I was in the mood for gnocchi, not sure why, but I was. And I had half a roast chicken leftover from the night before’s dinner. Summer corn is plentiful and cheap at the moment, so that was going to be added. I thought I’d then round it out with a combination of ginger and coriander as a tip of the hat to the Asian green mango dishes and dark rum as a tip of the hat to the tropical feel of mango. And it worked so well! Salty chicken, sour green mango, sweet corn all working together with the rum to coat the soft pillows of gnocchi.

I only used two of our green mangoes, but I think I’ll use the other two to just repeat this dish!

Chicken and Corn Gnocchi with Rum and Green Mango Sauce

(serves 3-4)
2 tbsp coconut oil

1 brown onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, mince
Thumb size piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
2 green mangoes, flesh cubed
50mL dark rum
100mL water
1 tsp salt
Kernels from 3 corn cobs
½ cooked chicken, meat shredded
½ red capsicum, sliced
1 packet pre-cooked gnocchi
Handful coriander leaves, chopped
Green chilli, sliced into rings

Heat the coconut oil to medium heat in a frypan. Add the onion slices and half the salt. Leave to cook, stirring here and there so they don’t stick for around 10 minutes, or until lightly browned and caramelly. Add the garlic and ginger and cook until the garlic is translucent, around 2 minutes. Add the rum and simmer until reduced by about half and slightly sticky. Add the mango and corn and stir well to coat everything. Simmer until the corn is tender and the rum has reduced to the point where the corn is sticking to the pan in parts.

Add the water and remaining salt and stir to pick up any brown bits stuck to the pan and create a more cohesive sauce. Add in the chicken, capsicum and gnocchi, stirring well to coat in the sticky sauce and veges. Cook 5 minutes until the chicken and gnocchi are warmed through. Just before serving, stir through the coriander leaves and garnish with chilli slices.

Friend Inspiration - White Chocolate Mojito Fondue

 

Despite being told on more than one occasion that I talk too much, I often find myself lost for words. If there’s something I’m passionate about, and have limited scope to get out all of that passion, I end up not knowing where to start or what to say at all. So I just don’t. It’s with a little bit of embarrassment that I finally do this post. I took this photoswith Jen to post over a year ago, but I wasn’t sure exactly where to go with the story, so I just didn’t do anything with them.

My whole life, most of my family holidays have been to the South West region of WA. Just a few short hours’ drive south of the city, the air changes, the scenery changes and you just automatically start to relax. Even knowing I’m going ‘down south’ soon makes me feel calmer. As I have grown, my appreciation of the area has too. And nothing more so than the food and wine. There are so many amazing local produce-driven restaurants in the area now. And, of course, there’s the wine. I’ve grown from being a nothing-but-sweet-whites drinker to a heavy reds drinker and everything in between through my south-west education. And the Margaret River wine region provides them all. I’ve lost count of how many wineries I’ve visited down south, but my absolute favourite of all time is Cape Naturaliste Vineyard. The wines here are absolutely phenomenal. And then there’s the owner and frequent cellar door host, Jen.

I first met Jen when I was on honeymoon. Lance proposed to me in the most epic and romantic way possible on Molloy Island, so when it came time to choose our honeymoon destination, it was pretty obvious that we should spend it there as well. We spent just over a month chilling out down south, and it was on a limousine wine tour that we were introduced to Cape Naturaliste Vineyard. We just clicked with Jen the instant we met her, she’s so warm and open. We chatted about everything under the sun and the topic of food came up, as it often does with me. She’s quite the foodie herself (her winery is even hosting a Gourmet Escape Event!) and she told me about her go-to dinner party dessert - White Chocolate Mojito Cheesecakes. Something easy and decadent all at once. She even left us at the cellar door and ran up to her house to find the cookbook the recipe was in and brought it back down to photocopy for me. So it makes sense for this post to go back to where it all began.
You can find the recipe for the original cheesecake recipe on the taste.com.au website. Here, I’ve simplified it even more and made the texture runnier so that it is no longer a cheesecake, but a delicious sweet dip. As with most fondues, you can change the dipping items to suit what you have at home. I always like to use some form of ginger biscuit, because it goes really well and as a nod to the original cheesecake base. Lightly salted tortilla chips work well, as does most fruit sturdy enough to dip. Unlike most fondues, this one is actually served cold. And so is perfect for entertaining as the weather becomes decidedly more Spring! I like to serve it alongside a normal cheese platter and with a glass of white.

Check out Cape Naturaliste next time you're in the Margaret River Region, I promise you won't be disappointed!

White Chocolate Mojito Fondue

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 cup packed mint leaves
zest and juice of 4 limes
1/4 cup Bacardi (or other white rum)
100g white chocolate
500g Philadelphia Cream Cheese (2 blocks)
to serve
strawberries
gingerbread
apple or pear slices

In a small pot, stir together the sugar and water over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Leave for 5-10 minutes until the mixture becomes syrupy. Add the mint leaves, lime zest, lime juice and rum. Stir well, then set aside to cool to room temperature. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve, pressing down with a spoon to get all of the minty limey goodness out.

Chop the white chocolate roughly and place in a glass bowl. Microwave in 30 second bursts until melted, stirring between each go. You'll probably only need to do it twice. Set aside to cool for around 5 minutes.

In a food processor, pulse the cream cheese to break up. Then blend for 30 seconds until smooth and soft. Add the white chocolate and blend to combine. Lastly, blend in the minty lime syrup. Mix on a high speed for 2 minutes or until completely smooth and combined. 

Pour into the serving bowl and refrigerate for 2 hours to chill and set slightly.

Serve with fresh fruit slices and gingerbread biscuits for dipping!

 

 *Disclaimer - whilst I might be biased because I love Jen, her wines have won a bunch of awards