A Rubock family recipe – crumpets

When I was visiting my grandparents in Burnie over the holidays, we called in on my great Uncle Lyal and his lovely wife Heather. I like them both a lot. The Rubock family span the whole political spectrum and Lyal falls at the left end of that spectrum. For some reason, they all got on the memory train and were relaying great stories of shenanigans they’d been up to when they travelled and worked together selling encyclopaedias. It was great fun, and a great revelation! Lyal pulled out the only album he had of old family photos and dared me to call my somewhat gruff great Uncle Bill, ‘Billy’ next time I saw him, as their dear mother had done before she died. I dared not.

For several generations, the Rubocks were bakers. I take great pride in that fact, and relish hearing stories of the bakery. Everyone always said that my Great Pop was the best baker, but the flour had wreacked havoc with his lungs, so he ended up just doing the deliveries. Uncle David was the one in Nan’s generation who continued the baking tradition. Uncle Lyal did deliveries too, but he told me about how he used to cook the crumpets on the hotplate, with the metal rings building up in rows on the spatula. Apparently Auntie Joy used to love to eat them fresh off the hot plate, dunked in sugar that sounds terrible to me. But Uncle Lyal said he thought they were the best crumpets he’s ever eaten. I liked the sound of that and immediately decided to track down the recipe.

Rubock family bakery in Burnie

Uncle David remembered the recipe for me, but having always made it in vast quantities he gave it to me in the bakers’ way, in percentages of the flour by weight. They were all very insistent that they’d always been made with biscuit flour, not the strong flour used for bread. For such a simple recipe, in which the flour mattered so much, I couldn’t resist calling into the Callington Mill in Oatlands to buy some freshly milled, locally grown flour. As he suggested, I’ve played around enough to be confident in this recipe for a small batch, produced by volume. The only thing you’ll have trouble weighing will be the fresh yeast. I calculate mine by dividing up the block of yeast based on the weight given on its label.

Callington Mill

Weighing the flour

Cooking a crumpet

The only other tricky thing is finding a suitable ring to use to hold the batter in the pan. You want something a bit bigger than an egg ring, though that would do if it really was all you had. I had thought to use cookie cutters, but then I remembered I have a tiny cast iron skillet that I use to bake small wheels of cheese. It came from Bruny Island Cheese Co who sell it as an ‘Otto Pan.’ It is absolutely perfect.

Makes about 8 crumpets

4	grams	fresh yeast
2	teaspoons	sugar
1 ½	cups	warm water
1 ½	cups	all purpose flour
1 ½	teaspoon	oil
1	teaspoon	bicarb soda
2	teaspoons	salt flakes

Place the yeast and sugar in a large bowl. Add a little of the water whisking to dissolve the yeast. Set aside for about 10 minutes to allow the yeast to activate.

Add the remaining water to the bowl and whisk in the flour and oil. When it’s well mixed whisk in the bicarb and salt. Cover and leave till it doubles in size. This may be an hour or so, depending on the temperature.

As is the trick with cooking in a cast iron pan, make it hot before adding your food. The pan wants to be hot enough to smoke when add a tiny bit of oil to coat the bottom and sides of the pan, then pour in about half a cup of batter. You may need to experiment with the volume of batter because you want it as thick as possible, but you need it to be able to cook through most of the way on one side, leaving good sized bubbles on top. I aim to keep my batter less than a centimeter thick when I pour it in the pan. Then I turn the heat down very low and let the crumpet cook gently. You will gradually see the characteristic bubbles develop on the surface. If you like, you can gently flip the crumpet to cook the top for a few seconds.

Remove the crumpet to a cooling rack and repeat with the remaining batter. Leave to rest overnight and toast in the morning. Serve with your desired toppings, but I’m a fan of butter and honey.

Dairy free baked rice custard

I rent out my study on Airbnb to help me pay my bills. Occasionally guests leave behind various foodstuffs. Recently, someone left me a liter of almond milk. I had craving for baked custard, but low on milk I thought I could use the almond milk, with some of the delicious koshi rice from Randall Organics to make a baked rice custard. The result is the most delicious rice custard I’ve ever tasted. Now I find myself buying the almond milk especially to bake this dish. I use the unsweetened ‘So Good’ almond milk from the fridge section of the supermarket.

Dairy free baked rice custard

My oven is quite unpredictable at low temperatures, and the cooking time for this dish will also vary depending on the nature of your baking dish. I cook this in an oval ceramic baking dish with its own lid. The dish was a gift from one of my favourite people and has proven to be very useful. A thicker dish will increase the cooking time, a thinner dish will reduce the cooking time. You will know when the pudding is cooked when the custard is set and a tested grain of rice and it is cooked through.

Serves 4

½	cup	Koshi or other shortgrained rice
1		free range egg
1/3	cup	raw sugar
1	teaspoon	vanilla paste
2	cups	almond milk
¼	teaspoon	ground nutmeg
½	teaspoon	ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 160^oC.

Combine the rice, sugar, vanilla paste and egg in a baking dish. Mix through the almond milk. Cover and bake for 90 minutes.

Mix the pudding thoroughly and sprinkle with the cinnamon and nutmeg. Return to the oven for another 30-60 minutes.

Chocolate chestnut brownies

Chocolate chestnut brownies

Ever since my favourite pâtissier left the farmers market, I’ve been craving a really good chocolate brownie. I used to always buy mine from Dream Cuisine, and am quite lost without them. One of my favourite things about the winter markets are the chestnuts. I do like to buy a bag of hot, roasted chestnuts to eat while I do my shopping or finish off in Canberra’s warm winter sun while I wait for my market buddy to take me home. Well, this year Featherdale Chestnuts have started selling chestnut flour that they mill with their delicious nuts.

I love an excuse to use chestnut flour. It is high in fibre and is gluten free. It also has a wonderful natural sweetness that I like to play with. I love my chocolate brownies good and fudgy, so I often make them gluten free. Chocolate and chestnuts are such a great combination that it seemed only natural to me to use this local chestnut flour for my home made brownies. I adore the finished product. They are rich, fudgy and not too sweet. They’re also super easy to whip up if you melt your butter in a big enough saucepan, it’s a one ‘bowl’ mix.

Ingredients

125	grams	butter
125	grams	good quality, dark chocolate at least 70% cocoa solids. I always use Fair Trade.
1	pinch	salt
¾	cup	brown sugar
¾	cup	raw sugar
½	taspoon	vanilla paste
3		free range eggs
¼	cup	cocoa powder
1	cup	chestnut flour

 

Preheat the oven to 180^oC.

Melt the butter in a saucepan with the chocolate, mixing well to make sure the chocolate doesn’t stay directly on the saucepan. When they are just melted together, whisk in the salt and sugars, then the vanilla and eggs. Lastly, fold through the cocoa and chestnut flour.

Line a 20cm square baking tin. Pour in the brownie mix and bake at 180^oC for 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out with small crumbs on it.

Allow them to cool completely before removing from the tin. Use a sharp knife to cut into pieces.

Choc chip banana muffins

Choc chip banana muffins

I have been craving choc chip banana muffins for over a week. I don’t quite know why, but there you have it. I bought up big at the banana stall at the farmers market last week and finally got around to making them. I think they’re great; they totally hit the spot. I used good quality chocolate (my favourite, Fair Trade, Green & Black’s) good vanilla and bananas of varying ripeness. I mashed the super ripe bananas almost to a puree and let the firmer ones in big chunks. This way you get the best of both worlds, you get the chunks of banana through your muffin, as well as the general sweetness and moisture of the banana throughout.

Makes 24 large muffins

2	cups	mashed banana
1	cup	raw sugar
2		eggs
1	teaspoon	vanilla extract
100	grams	chocolate
½	cup	melted butter
3	cups	self-raising flour

Preheat the oven to 180^oC.

Mix together the mashed banana and egg. Add the sugar, vanilla, and butter. Sift over the flour and fold through with the chocolate until just combined.

Grease or line your muffin pan. Fill the muffin cavities so the mixture is mounded a little over the height of the cavity.

Bake in a preheated oven for 30 minutes or until golden on top and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Smaller muffins will take less time to cook.

Rhubarb slice

This recipe is based on my Nan’s raspberry shortcake. That recipe is from her CWA cookbook and includes a layer of raspberry jam. I’ve swapped it out for fresh rhubarb and replaced the coconut in the topping with almond meal. The result is a moorish rhubarb treat. The tart rhubarb is sandwiched between sweet gluten free shortcrust and crisp meringue topping.

I developed the recipe for the Children’s Week activity at the Lyneham Commons. I wanted the spread to include things made from ingredients growing at the Commons. When we put the call out for rhubarb crowns to be planted in the winter, we were blessed with abundance so we should have quite a rhubarb patch when the weather warms. I bought the rhubarb for this batch from the Capital Region Farmers Market.

Rhubarb slice

Rhubarb sprouting at the Lyneham Commons

Nan’s CWA cookbook

Base

250	grams	butter
1	cup	caster sugar
4		egg yolks
3	cups	gluten free flour blend*

*I use White Wings

Topping

1	bunch	rhubarb
1		orange, zest only
4		egg whites
2	cups	caster sugar
2	cups	almond meal

Preheat the oven to 170^oC and line a 31 x 21 cm slice tin.

To make the base, beat the butter and sugar together then add the egg yolks. Fold in the flour till well combined. Press the mixture into the prepared slice tin.

Arrange the rhubarb in rows atop the shortcrust and grate over the zest of the orange.

Combine the egg whites and caster sugar, then fold in the almond meal. Spread over the base.

Bake in a preheated oven for 30 minutes. Turn off the oven and leave the slice to cool. Cut the slice into fingers and store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Blackberry leaf tea

Blackberry shoots

Blackberry leaf tea

Blackberry leaf tea

When I first started foraging, I was on the look out for all sorts of things I could do with the goodies I picked. I was staying with my grandparents in Tasmania, and was tending Pop’s berry patch. He had strawberries and raspberries. Having heard about raspberry leaf tea, it got me wondering about blackberry leaf tea. I did some googling and found people who made fresh blackberry leaf tea, but it didn’t sound too exciting to me. It was only when I discovered you could ferment the leaves, in the same process used for black tea, that I thought we’d be talking about some flavours that were worth delving into. I had, in fact, heard it was the herbal tea which most tasted like black tea.

Last year, I fermented my blackberry leaves for two weeks and found the resulting tea tasted much like Oolong. It is very pleasant indeed. This year, I’ve fermented the leaves for much longer, wondering if the tea will have a deeper flavour. It does indeed. After up to six weeks fermenting, it has more developed tannins and is much more like black tea. Making the blackberry leaf tea is a very simple process. I like to pick and prepare enough to last me the year. The best time to go foraging for blackberry shoots is in spring, before the berries have started to form. There will be many young shoots on the plants at this time of year, and they will be tender enough, that you may not even need gloves to break them off. You can however, find young shoots on the plants year ’round.

There are records of blackberry leaf being used medicinally in ancient Greece. Hippocrates, Dioscorides and Pliny recommended them as herbal medicine. Two thousand years ago, the roman army doctor Galenos had his soldiers chew blackberry leaves to strengthen gums and build up physical resistance; today, we know it was the vitamin C and tannins in the leaves that he was counting on to boost immunity and heal wounds. The young shoots are incredibly high in antioxidants. Indeed, the USDA has shown blackberry shoots have more antioxidants than the berries.

Blackberry leaf tea is most commonly used as a herbal medicine to treat diarrhea, sore throats, and wounds. It is used to treat inflammation of the mouth and throat, mouth ulcers, gum inflammation and sore throat. Traditional uses also include the treatment of illnesses and ailments such as bleeding, slow healing wounds, fever, inflammation, cystitis, gout, infertility, vaginal discharge, flu, colds and cough. Because blackberry leaf tea is so high in tannins, it should not be consumed in large volumes because it can then lead to gastrointestinal upset, affect liver functioning and some nutrient absorption.

A bag of blackberry shoots

Bruised blackberry shoots ready for fermentation

Fermented blackberry leaves

1. Pick the blackberry shoots. You want young, tender leaves that will be bright green. You can take the stalks too, if they are bright and tender enough.
2. Gently wash them under the tap.
3. Bruise all the leaves. Last year I used a rolling pin; it was great fun. You may want to use a meat mallet, or whatever you have lying around. This year, I passed the shoots through my pasta machine, which did a superb job.
4. Tightly pack the bruised shoots into a sterilised glass jar. Close the lid
5. Leave the leaves to ferment for at least two weeks. You can just forget about them. I’m told the best place to leave them is on the dash board of the car. Being that I don’t drive, I don’t leave them in a car. I just leave them in the kitchen. The leaves will turn black and the fragrance will change from the smell of cut grass, to something more fruity and floral.
6. When you think they’ve fermented long enough, take them out of the jar, pull the leaves apart and dry them out. I do mine in the dehydrator, but you could lay them on a wire rack or put them in a paper or calico bag in a closet to dry.
7. Chop or crush up the larger pieces and transfer to a tea caddy for storage.

I use about the same volume of blackberry leaf tea as I would black tea, to make a cup. I do not add milk or sugar.

I hope you like this trick as much as I do!

Wild brassica and potato gnocchi

Wild brassica and potato gnocchi with burnt butter lemon and almonds

With all this summer rain, the edible weeds are going gangbusters. At this time of year the wild brassica is usually quite peppery. I simply adore the taste of wild brassica flowers during winter, when they taste just like broccoli. But the summer pepperiness doesn’t usually do it for me. I have a feeling though, that with all the cool rain and fast growth, the greens are not as peppery as they would otherwise be at this time of year. When I picked a good bunch for my three weed pie, they were beautiful, and it got me wondering what else I could be doing with them. I realised I’d like to make a gluten free gnocchi. I don’t often make gnocchi, but these were a great success. The green, slightly peppery, addition of the wild brassica really makes this simple dish something quite special.

I initially planned to serve the gnocchi with a rich and creamy goat cheese sauce. But I’ve decided they actually want something very simple, like brown butter and lemon juice. You can serve them how you like though.

You’ll want quite a good sized bunch of wild brassica leaves, thoroughly washed, in order to fill 2 cup when they’re finely chopped. My bunch filled the colander when I bought it home.

Foraging for wild brassica

Washed wild brassica

Making gnocchi

Making gnocchi

Serves 2-3 people

500	grams	floury potatoes
2	cups	finely chopped wild brassica leaves
¼	teaspoon	salt
¼	teaspoon	pepper
1		free range egg
¼ – ½	cup	gluten free flour blend**

**I use White Wings

Cook the potatoes in their skins, till they’re tender all the way through. I baked mine, but you can microwave them or boil them. If you boil them, leave the skins on and don’t over boil them; you don’t want waterlogged potatoes for this. Remove the skins of the potatoes, mash the flesh and pass through a fine sieve into a medium sized mixing bowl.

Meanwhile, drop the chopped brassica leaves into a pot of rapidly boiling water and cook for five minutes. Remove from the water and strain in a sieve, pressing down on the leaves to remove all water.

Add the brassica leaves, salt and pepper to a small food processor or mortar and pestle and process till some of the greens have liquefied, but you still have some small pieces. You can add some of the egg to aid the process, but you don’t want to let the egg get fluffy, so only add a bit, and it’s best done at the end, so you don’t over mix it.

Make a well in the middle of the potato and tip in your brassica and egg. Gently combine the mixture. Add half the flour first, stirring to combine. Add more flour as needed, but being careful not to overmix. You need to add enough flour to bring the mixture together in a soft dough, that can be shaped into a sausage. It should feel softer than play dough. If you don’t add enough flour, the gnocchi will fall apart in the water when you cook it; too much and the gnocchi will be tough.

Divide the dough in two pieces. Cover the unused dough. Working in batches, roll the dough into a log two centromeres thick. Use a lightly floured knife to cut into 2cm pieces. Place each piece in the palm of your hand and roll it with a fork to shape and leave an imprint. Set aside on floured board or tray lined with baking paper. Repeat with remaining dough portions.

Bring a large pot of well salted water to a rolling boil. Drop the gnocchi into the boiling water, stirring gently to make sure they don’t stick to each other or the bottom. When the gnocchi rise to the surface, remove them with a slotted spoon and drop straight into you preferred sauce.

Buckwheat banana bread

Buckwheat banana bread with malt butter spread

I recently had an overripe banana on my kitchen counter, frowning at me the browner it got. It was quite late by the time I summoned the energy to do something about said banana. I think I was inspired by a visit from my grandparents. My Nan is an excellent housekeeper and my Pop loves banana bread. So go figure, I wanted the banana gone, and into banana bread. A medical specialist I’ve been seeing lately has asked me to drop gluten from my diet. So I’m trying my best at that. When I realised I still had a whole tub of buckwheat flour a friend gave to me before she moved to England, I thought I’d try my hand at a gluten-free buckwheat banana bread.

I figured the flavour of buckwheat would lend itself well to banana bread and did a bunch of research into gluten free baking and different types of flours. This recipe is what I came up with adapted from the banana bread with malt butter that I made for Pop when I was staying in Tasmania. I’ve increased the liquid, adding yoghurt and honey. I’ve also added chia seeds to help with the structure of the bread and added additional rising agent.

I added a little acid to my malt butter spread. I have come to love apple cider vinegar. I make my own with a natural fermentation process. It’s so good for you that I try to find ways to include it in things. It adds a lovely sharpness to the malt butter spread. If you wanted, you could use lemon juice for this instead.

Banana bread

75	grams	butter
¾	cup	Rapadura sugar
1		egg
1	tablespoon	honey
2-3		overripe bananas, mashed
¼	cup	yoghurt
¼	cup	milk
2	tablespoons	chia seeds
½	teaspoon	cinnamon
1 ½	cups	buckwheat flour
½	teaspoon	bi-carb soda
½	teaspoon	baking powder
1	cup	walnuts, roughly broken

Malt butter spread

½	teaspoon	cider vinegar or lemon juice
¼	cup	malt extract*
¼	cup	butter

*You’ll find tins of malt extract in the honey aisle of the supermarket.

To make the banana bread: Grease a loaf tine and preheat the oven to 180^oC. Combine the chia seeds and milk and leave to rest for 5-10 minutes.

Cream the butter and sugar. Mix in the egg. Add the honey, chia, milk, yoghurt and mashed banana. Sift over the cinnamon, flour, baking powder and bi-carb soda. Mix to combine and fold through the walnuts. Tip the batter into the greased loaf tin and spread the batter evenly. You can make it higher on the edges than in the middle. Bake in a preheated oven for an hour or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Store in an airtight container.

To make the malt butter spread: mix together the cider vinegar or lemon juice and malt extract. Beat this together with the softened butter and spoon into a small ramekin for serving; cover and store at room temperature until desired. The malt butter will keep at room temperature for a week, or longer in the fridge.

Serve slices of banana bread fresh or toasted, spread with malt butter spread.

Buckwheat banana bread

Treacle tart

A slice of treacle tart at my Potter Picnic Party

I made my first treacle tart for my Potter Picnic Party. I made it because it’s Harry’s favourite. I couldn’t, therefore not have it at my party. But I have to tell you, I was quite sceptical about the whole concept. You see, in Australia, we know treacle only has the dark, quite bitter syrup. But it turns out that treacle has traditionally come in two types: dark treacle and light treacle. Light treacle is what we know as golden syrup. This glorious nectar, is what most treacle tarts are made with.

This recipe as based loosely on Mary Berry’s recipe. But I’ve upped the filling quantities and played around with them a bit. I was concerned about the overwhelming sweetness of a tart made primarily with golden syrup, so I added a little dark treacle for bitterness, and used far more citrus than Mary does. Because you don’t blind bake the pastry, it’s important to bake the tart on a pre-heated baking tray. I put my enamel cast iron tray in the oven while it was heating up, and placed the flan tin on top of that. It worked a treat, and the pastry cooked perfectly.

Anyway, I now absolutely understand why treacle tart is Harry Potter’s favourite dessert. My birthday guests were not stinting in their praise. One said, ‘while everything has been delicious… this tart is life changing.’ That certainly did the trick for me and I’ll be glad to bake this again at the next opportunity.

Makes 1, 26 cm tart

Pastry

250	grams	plain flour
130	grams	butter
3	tablespoons	ice cold water

Filling

700	grams	golden syrup
100	grams	dark treacle
3		lemons, zest of (finely grated)
¾	cup	lemon juice
300	grams	fresh, sourdough breadcrumbs

To make the pastry, measure the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter with your fingertips. You want it to look like fine breadcrumbs. Add the ice cold water and mix to a firm dough. Cover the dough in cling film and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200^oC and place a heavy baking tray in the oven to heat up. Grease a deep 26 centimetre loose bottomed fluted flan tin with butter.

Roll the pastry out thinly on a lightly floured work surface. Line the prepared tin with the pastry. Prick the base with a fork to stop it rising during baking and return it to the fridge to cool again.

To make the filling, heat the syrups gently, but do not let them boil. Once they’ve melted, add the breadcrumbs, lemon juice and lemon zest. If the mixture looks runny, add a few more breadcrumbs. Pour the syrup into the pastry lined tin and level the surface.

Bake the tart on the pre-heated baking tray for ten minutes until the pastry has started to colour, then turn the oven down to 180^oC and bake for a further 25-30 minutes until the filling is set. Remove the tart from the oven. Leave it in the tin to set.

Serve the tart warm, at room temperature or cold. I like to serve it with whipped cream, but the super decedent can serve it with clotted cream.

‘Treacle Tart’ by Erin-Claire Illustrations

Treacle tart before baking

Treacle tart after baking

Canberra plum sauce

We are blessed in Canberra, town planners included many wonderful fruit bearing trees when they planned those that would line the suburban streets. There is one street in Braddon planted entirely with walnuts. There are several streets planted with plums. I am most interested in one particular plum. For the purposes of this post, I will call it the ‘Canberra’ plum. It grows on an attractive tree with dark burgundy leaves. The fruit is small, the same colour as those leaves, and dark all the way through. It has a deep, rich flavour but has a bitterness on the skin and seed.

@SusansOpine-something luckier than a four leaf clover? Wild sorrel and other foraged fabulousness on @666canberra pic.twitter.com/zJDZRCk4pT

— Lish Fejer (@lishfejer) January 24, 2016

I was recently on Canberra’s 666 ABC radio talking about preserving these and other, wild foods. I had a great time with Lish Fejer. I took her in a few wild greens, as well as some of my preserved wild fruits. It made me realise it’s about time I posted the recipe for my plum and ginger sauce, made with those abundant dark cherry plums. You can pick these plums before they’re ripe. If the plums are still firm, they’ll add a lovely tartness to the sauce and will still be full of rich flavour. You don’t need to pit them for this recipe; you’ll push the fruit pulp through a sieve and discard the seeds and skins later. The plums ripen at vastly different times across Canberra. Those in Braddon can be picked in early December, but those on the south side are fine well into January.

800	grams	‘Canberra’ plums
450	millilitres	white vinegar
500	grams	raw sugar
100	grams	fresh ginger

Wash the plums. Place them in a large saucepan with the vinegar. Slice the ginger and add it to the pot. Bring the contents to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes, or till the plums fall apart.

Pour the contents of the pan through a fine sieve, pushing through the plum pulp. When you have only seeds, skins and ginger left in the sieve, discard the solids.

Add the sugar to the plum pulp and bring to a boil.

Pour into sterilised bottles and process in a water bath for 30 minutes.