Author: Alex

Cherry Clafouti

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Cherry Clafoutis

It’s cherry time here in Australia and that means … cherry clafouti. Of course, with Adelaide enjoying a few days with temperatures the wrong side of 40, it’s not quite the right time to be turning on the oven but it will be a little cooler next week and, if you’re in the northern hemisphere, there’s nothing wrong with using tinned cherries in a clafouti.

Normally I use Gordon Ramsay’s recipe from Just Desserts* (you read about that here) but for a change I opted for the much more store cupboard version from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking**. I had to do a little fiddling with proportions to account for the fact that I had two cups of cherries, not three.

Begin by preheating your oven to 180°C (350°F).

In a bowl (or blender) mix just over 2/3 cup of milk (whole milk, obviously), just over 1/4 cup of caster sugar, 2 eggs, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, a pinch of salt and 1/3 cup of plain flour. Beat well – if doing so by hand take care to whisk out any floury lumps. Child suggests straining the batter if you make it by hand but I find that a bit of effort while beating gets rid of lumps just as well.

As with all batters, if you can let this rest overnight (in the fridge) so much the better, but you can use it straight away.

Using some unsalted butter, grease well a baking dish (or baking dishes) which will hold your 2 cups of cherries snugly, and pour over the batter. Place in the hot oven and bake for about an hour – until the batter is puffed and golden and a skewer comes out clean.

Serve warm, dusted with icing sugar if you want. Absolutely essential is a ton of fresh cream!

* Just Desserts also available from Amazon UK, Amazon US and internationally through the Book Depository.
** Mastering the Art of French Cooking also available through Amazon UK, Amazon US and internationally through the Book Depository.

Another Chocolate Fudge Cake

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chocolate cake

The last chocolate fudge cake has already had a couple of outings which is enough … time to look for another.

Having a couple of recipes up your sleeve is useful so you don’t bore people with the same cake all the time … and you never know, the next recipe may be better. This recipe comes from James Martin’s Desserts*. James Martin’s cake recipes rarely disappoint but my first attempt at this little number was not entirely successful – the chocolate fudge topping ended up rock hard, unspreadable and, frankly, pretty tasteless. I suspect the problem was with me and my handling of the hot sugar and evaporated milk mix. One day when I’m feeling brave I’ll have another go. In the meantime, the cake itself is still good and I came up with a clever work around for filling and topping.

The cake itself contains wholemeal flour so you can even pretend it’s healthy.

Grease and baseline a 20cm springform tin and preheat the oven to 170°C bake (not fan).

Cream 175g of unsalted butter with 175g of soft brown sugar. Measure out 175g of wholemeal self raising flour and remove one heaped tbsp of flour. Replace with 1 heaped tbsp of good quality cocoa and add 1 heaped tsp of baking powder before mixing with the butter and sugar. Add 3 large eggs.

The mixture is likely to be a little stiff so add a splash of water … Martin doesn’t give any exact quantities here but you are aiming for a mixture that plops off a spoon knocked against the edge of the bowl or mixer. Not too stiff but not a runny batter either … Of course, add extra water slowly and carefully because you can’t undo it if you add too much!

Bake the cake for 40 – 45 minutes (in my oven, 40 minutes is perfect) – until a skewer comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for a few minutes and then tip out on to a rack.

To finish the cake, cut in half and fill with jam (raspberry, of course!) and whipped cream and top with ganache. We used the ganache from the earlier chocolate fudge cake recipe, but made in half quantity – so about 100g of dark chocolate, 50g of butter (melted together) with about 70mL of thick cream beaten through.

Ganache suffers from the heat so you may have to refrigerate the cake, but if you can avoid it it is better left at room temperature.

*Also available from Amazon UK, Amazon US and worldwide from The Book Depository.

Rose Revolution

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Onfalos BBQ and some very tasty meat

There are plenty of internet based wine ‘initiatives’ around this summer … I’ve already written about the Great South Australian Wine Adventure and, in addition to this, we have the Summer of Riesling and SC Pannell’s All for One, to encourage us to drink Australian wine between the start of the new year and Australia Day.

I guess it’s the warm weather that makes us thirsty …

To add to this, we also have the Rosé Revolution which is all about recognising that rosé can be a serious wine for serious wine lovers. All too often rosés are made to appeal to a market segment that doesn’t normally drink wine – and this can leave them a little too sweet and unbalanced for those of us more used to sipping wines like Sauvignon Blanc or Shiraz.

Last night, Wine Australia hosted the Adelaide Rosé Revolution Live Event at Homestyle Solutions and I was lucky enough to go along and mingle with Adelaide’s twitterati while tasting a variety of rosés, served in Reidel glasses no less, and enjoying some very tasty food provided by Feast! Fine Foods.

The rosés that were poured came from a mix of local and interstate wineries and many were tied in with those being tasted by the Qwoff Boys and their live twitter tasting from the Yarra Valley. The heavy social media element meant that a lot of time was spent with noses buried in phones (when not in the glasses!) but we all managed to fit in a lot of normal socialising along with the serious wine talk.

Of the wines tasted last night (I tasted about eight, but had a serious pen malfunction part way through the evening) there was a huge range of colour and degrees of dryness. There’s been some chat about whether or not winemakers should strive to make dry rosés pale and the sweeter styles darker/pinker in colour … personally, I think that’s a terrible idea. If you think about all the work that has been done to persuade people away from the “white wine with fish and white meat” style of thinking, such a simplistic aim has to be a bad thing, not to mention the constraints it puts on winemakers.* Everyone perceives sweetness slightly differently (and sometimes a wine can have so many fruit flavours it can seem sweet when it’s actually dry!) that the best way to navigate a new rosé is to try it. If you can’t do that – read the back label or have a chat to your wine merchant. A good wine store will have employees who can tell you this type of thing (or they’ll be honest if they don’t know!).

So … my personal highlights of last night were the (sparkling) De Bortoli Rococo Rosé – bone dry and an absolutely delicious wine to serve as an aperitif. The retail price looks to be around $22 which makes it good value for money too (often sparkling rosés are a little more expensive than their white counterparts).

In the still rosés my favourite was the Longview Boat Shed Nebbiolo Rosé. Although some punters may find it ever so slightly off dry that’s definitely balanced by some good acidity and it’s tasty to boot. Not only that, it comes from our own Adelaide Hills. It retails just under $20 and would pair well with food that has a bit of weight and even a bit of spice – think a meaty fish with a slightly spicy marinade that’s been grilled.

My faves from the night

It was a great evening and really showcased the diversity that can be found in Australian rosés and certainly means that I for one will be giving rosé a little more consideration this summer.

If you’ve been involved in a Rosé Revolution event, or just have a favourite rosé the rest of us must know about, please do leave a comment!

* If you care … the colour in a rosé comes from the time the wine spends on the grape skins, but sweetness (or otherwise) comes from fermentation and how much sugar is fermented out of the wine. To try to connect two really unconnected things seems like a bad idea to me!