blossom syrup:
225ml orange juice
225ml water
225g caster sugar
4 cardamom pods, crushed
3–4 black peppercorns
¼ teaspoon orange blossom water
a sprig of coriander
a dash of lemon juice
Put the orange juice and water in a pan and add the figs. Bring to the boil and simmer for 3–4 minutes, then remove the figs from the pan and set aside. Add the sugar, cardamom pods and black peppercorns to the pan and stir over a low heat to dissolve the sugar. Return to the boil and simmer, without stirring, until syrupy. Then return the figs to the pan for a couple of minutes with the orange blossom water, coriander sprig and lemon juice.
Lift the figs out and allow them to cool completely. Mix together the mascarpone, icing sugar and orange blossom water and put them in a piping bag fitted with a nozzle pointy enough to pierce the figs easily. Fill each fig so it balloons out, almost fit to burst – a little of the filling gently oozing out will tempt all the more. Transfer to a large bowl or cake stand and pour the cooled syrup over. Serve in long-stemmed cocktail glasses with a little of the syrup drizzled over.
Black Rice Pudding with Coconut Cream and Mango
A favourite breakfast at home, this recipe was given to me by my friend Lesley, who co-owns Red Ginger, a gorgeous Asian food and homewares emporium in Byron Bay. Lesley is one of the most effortlessly elegant women I know and this rice pudding, traditional though it is, bears her hallmark.
SERVES 4–6
200g black rice
100g palm sugar
about 1 litre water
a pinch of salt
seeds from 4 cardamom pods, or 4 pandanus leaves
grated zest of 1 lemon or lime
300ml coconut cream
3 ripe mangoes, peeled, stoned and neatly sliced
Put the rice, sugar, water, salt and cardamom or pandanus leaves in a large pan and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat right down to a whisper, cover with a lid and let the rice simmer away for 45 minutes, stirring regularly. Then turn the heat up and, stirring continuously, cook for another 15 minutes at least, until it’s a lovely, sloppy, creamy mixture with separate grains. Stir in the lemon or lime zest and transfer to serving bowls. Top with the coconut cream and the mango, sliced out of the 2 plump, juicy cheeks that you have cut from either side of the stone.
An Israeli Breakfast Platter
As someone who finds breakfast the hardest meal of the day – I never know whether to go for savoury or sweet, and carbohydrate in the morning seems to disagree – I consider this a marvellous way to start the day and I’m sure that any dietician would approve.
In my teens I spent several weeks on a kibbutz. My job was picking pears and sorting them according to size, from the crack of dawn until lunchtime, with a break at 9 o’clock for a breakfast of the fruit and vegetables we had picked. I’d never seen anything like it. Piles of tomatoes, red peppers (capsicums), cucumbers, spring onions (shallots), olives, the best cottage cheese I have ever tasted, soft and sweet with huge curds, simple cheeses, hard-boiled eggs, houmous, nuts in their shells, fresh fruit, including dates and watermelon, and fresh juices. Home-made bread and fruit compotes. You should read Claudia Roden’s account of kibbutz food in The Book of Jewish Food (Viking, 1997).
And another idea with an aesthetic equally different from the Western norm is the Japanese breakfast of miso and vegetable broth, silken tofu, softened arame seaweed, pickled vegetables and steamed rice. Again, it’s easy to stomach first thing in the morning. Because there are so many visitors from Japan to the Gold Coast, many of the hotels serve this for breakfast as a matter of course. These are all habits I have introduced into my kitchen and slowly, slowly to the people around me.
Polenta and Ricotta Cake with Mango, Passion Fruit Syrup and Lime Mascarpone
A light-textured cake that you could make with Greek yoghurt instead of the ricotta, if you prefer – or, indeed, a mix of the two, which is what I often end up doing. The passion fruit syrup makes a dessert of this but it’s also good as a breakfast or afternoon tea sort of cake. An average passion fruit yields a mere 2 teaspoons of juice, so although passion fruit grow prolifically in Australia and are very cheap (the equivalent of about 3 pence each), I know 25 passion fruit can seem an exorbitant luxury in the UK. So I have suggested mango juice as an alternative, as it is a more accessible option despite its equally distant origins.
The mango topping is especially abundant, not just sparsely placed slices but more of a generous heap.
SERVES 8–10
100g polenta (not the quick-cook variety)
300g ricotta cheese
grated zest of 1 orange
grated zest of 1 lemon
grated zest of 1 lime
120g softened unsalted butter
220g caster sugar
3 eggs
200g self-raising flour
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1–2 mangoes, peeled, stoned and cut into smallish cubes
For the topping:
50g butter
2 tablespoons caster sugar
3–4 ripe but firm mangoes, peeled, stoned and sliced
juice of 1 orange
juice of 1 lemon
500ml orange or mango juice
For the passion fruit syrup:
300g caster sugar
100ml water
250ml strained passion fruit juice or mango juice
the pulp of 6 passion fruit
For the lime mascarpone:
grated zest of 1 lime
200g mascarpone cheese