2 teaspoons icing sugar (optional)
Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4. Line a round 23cm springform cake tin with baking parchment. Combine the polenta, ricotta and citrus zest in a bowl and set aside for about an hour, so the polenta starts to soften.
Beat the butter and sugar together until pale. Beat in the eggs one at a time, making sure that each is well amalgamated. Sift the flour and bicarbonate of soda together and fold them in gently. Then fold in the ricotta and polenta mixture and finally the chopped mango. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven, leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out on to a wire rack to cool completely.
Meanwhile, make the topping. Melt the butter and sugar in a large frying pan over a very gentle heat without stirring at all, at most moving the pan around very gently. Add the mango slices and all the juice and simmer for 8–10 minutes, until the juice is almost completely reduced and the mango soft and gently caramelised. Remove from the heat and set aside.
To make the syrup, put the sugar and water in a heavy-based pan and heat gently, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has melted. Raise the heat and bring to the boil, then add the passion fruit or mango juice. Boil for about 10 minutes, until reduced and thickened, then remove from the heat and stir in the passion fruit pulp. Serve warm or cold and store any remaining syrup in the fridge.
Finally stir the lime zest into the mascarpone cheese, with the sugar if using. You can soften the lime zest first in the same pan as the passion fruit syrup if you like, lifting it out after a minute or so.
Arrange the mango slices over the cake – there should be enough for a couple of layers – and serve with the lime mascarpone and passion fruit syrup by the side.
Pineapple and Ginger Punch
This year my lovely friend Elizabeth made us her grandmother’s special Christmas drink. Later, I made it myself with juice extracted from 2 fresh pineapples. They cost about 2 dollars each where I live, so you can see why. It’s very similar to something we used to make at Cranks and sell by the gallon, but even though I made up the recipe there in the first place I couldn’t for the life of me remember quite how it went. Elizabeth turned up with the ingredients, so it all worked out.
MAKES 3 LITRES
1 litre pineapple juice, freshly juiced if possible
1 litre ginger ale
1 litre sparkling mineral water
a good handful of mint, roughly chopped
a fat knob of fresh ginger, peeled and finely shredded or grated, then squeezed to extract the juice
juice and grated zest of 1 lime
ice
Mix everything together well in a large bowl or jug and drink while it is still very bubbly.
Silken Tofu and Mango Smoothie
I love this in the mornings but sometimes when the recipe testing has got out of hand – nothing but cake for a week – I like to replace lunch with it too. In Australia, where they know about these things, you can go into a supermarket and find about 15 types of tofu and no one turns their nose up at it. The silken tofu really is like silk, delicate and soothing. In the UK you might have to go to a healthfood shop or an Asian one for the best. By the way, this is a fantastic way of making sure you eat plenty of protein.
Use chilled ingredients to make the smoothie. Replace some of the mango with ripe peaches, if you like. A few blueberries or a couple of strawberries whizzed in also make a treat.
SERVES 6
4 medium-sized ripe mangoes
400ml fruit juice, preferably apple and mango
400g silken tofu
Cut a thick slice off each mango from either side of the stone and scoop out the flesh. Peel the rest of the mango and scrape off as much flesh from the stone as you can. Put in a blender with the fruit juice and tofu and blitz until very smooth. Serve at once.
Lime, Lemongrass, Maple Syrup and Chilli Toddy
This is a two-in-one recipe, including not just the toddy but the cordial basis of an ice-cold drink with sparkling mineral water. If you’re a honey person, which I’m not, you could replace the maple syrup with it. Maple syrup, however, has a significantly lower glycaemic index then honey, which is as high as sugar so perhaps not the best thing to kickstart the day. Having said that, I can occasionally be tempted by the complex Tasmanian Leatherwood honey or a lemon myrtle honey, both of which would work here.
MAKES ABOUT 600ML
150g fresh ginger, finely grated
2 limes, sliced
3 lemongrass sticks, smashed
1 litre filtered water
350ml maple syrup
a small piece of red chilli, finely chopped, or lime wedges and a couple of sprigs of mint, to serve
Place the grated ginger, lime slices, smashed lemongrass sticks and water in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer, partly covered, for 45 minutes, then remove from the heat and add the maple syrup. Leave to cool and pour into a sterilised bottle.
To make the toddy, top up with a roughly equal amout of boiling water and add the chilli. Alternatively, dilute the cordial with sparkling mineral water (the ratio of 1:4 seems to work best here) and serve over ice, with lime wedges and sprigs of mint.
Lemongrass and Rosebud Infusion
My favourite shop, Red Ginger (see photo), the Asian food emporium in Byron Bay, sells a mix they make up themselves consisting only of dried lemongrass and tiny, pert, deep red, highly scented rosebuds.
I use fresh lemongrass with the rosebuds to make my own infusion. For each cup or glassful, you need 1 stick of lemongrass, white part only, very finely chopped, and 7–8 dried rosebuds. Pour over boiling water and leave to infuse for a few minutes, then add 2 or 3 more rosebuds and drink at once. You can sweeten with a touch of honey or soft brown sugar, if you like. And you can place a stick of trimmed lemongrass in each glass to stir.
I’d like to propose the outrageous idea of an all-vegetable barbecue. The only reason that it’s hard to imagine is because the veggies are usually reserved until last or squashed into a corner, served undercooked and underdressed as a barely considered afterthought. As you can imagine, this distresses me – all that wasted potential. For a start, there’s all the gorgeous colours and things that just naturally go well together. Aubergines (eggplants), courgettes (zucchini) and peppers (capsicums) are age-old