Florentines

Nothing says "Christmas" and "eat me" better than biscuits filled with caramel and cherries, and covered in chocolate. In my opinion, any way. Florentines are delicious, and can be made even more festive than usual by using a mixture of red and green glacé cherries, and a pinch of cinnamon.

50g butter

 125ml cream

125g sugar

50g glacé cherries rinsed in hot water and quartered

50 g slivered almonds

1 pinch cinnamon (use your discretion as to the size of your pinch, but remember, the bigger the pinch, the more festive the biscuit)

100g peel

50 g plain flour

250g Whittakers chocolate (preferably at least 60% cocoa solids)

Turn the oven on at 180C and leave to heat up for a while. Maybe treat yourself to a festive tipple while you wait.

Melt the butter, cream and sugar together in a small saucepan over a low heat until it starts to brown and caramelise.

In a large mixing bowl, combine your cherries, almonds and peel. Sprinkle the flour over the top and mix it up.  Pour the melted butter mixture over the top, and give everything a good stir.

Cover a baking tray with non-stick baking paper. Use two dessert spoons to scoop out a spoonful of the mixture and pour onto the baking paper. The florentines will spread, so leave plenty of space in between. You may need to do your florentines in a couple of batches.

Pop your baking tray into the oven, and leave to bake for around 5 minutes. At this point, take them out and use your spoons to push them gently in to circles -the mixture will be quite runny and loose, because of the caramel mixture.

Bake for another 5 minutes or until they start to brown slightly around the edges. Take the florentines out of the oven, and leave to cool for around 3-4 minutes, until you can move them without them falling apart. The biscuits are still quite malleable at this stage, so you can make them into perfect circles if you're a bit of a perfectionist. Pop onto a rack to cool.

Smash the chocolate up into small pieces, and melt gently in a bowl placed over a pan of simmering water. Be gentle with chocolate, it is quite delicate when it comes to heat. Brush the melted chocolate over the smooth sides of the florentines, making sure you get a nice thick layer. If you feel like being super fancy, gently drag a fork through the chocolate to create wavey lines.

Chicken Korma

I would never order a korma in an Indian restaurant - it just seems wimpy - but at home, I'm quite happy to cook a pleasantly mild curry, because that means I can eat more of it. This may look like a long list of ingredients, but it's actually quite easy to put together, and will only take about half an hour to cook. Makes enough for 2 generous portions - which you should scoop up with poppadoms or naan bread, ok?

1 / 2 cup blanched almonds
1 / 2 cup cashews
1 onion
1 tin tomatoes
4 cm ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp fresh chilli
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp cumin
1 / 4 tsp chilli powder
2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp garam masala
1 chicken breast
1 capsicum (any colour is fine, or you could use a mixture of different colours)
1 spring onion
1 cup water
1 handful fresh coriander
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
salt


Right, first of all, the chopping. Finely chop the onion, garlic and fresh chilli, and roughly chop the almonds and cashews. Chop the chicken breast into bite-size chunks, and the capsicum and spring onion into 1cm pieces.

Blitz the almonds, cashews and tin of tomatoes in a food processor or blender until almost smooth - a few chunks is fine.

Mix together the spices - ground coriander, cumin, turmeric, garam masala and chilli powder. Grab a large frying pan, pour in the tablespoon of vegetable oil and put on a high heat to warm up. Once hot, add the onion, garlic and ginger, and cook for 5 minutes or so until everything starts to brown. Pour in the spices, stir, and cook for a minute more.

Add the chicken pieces and cook for 5 minutes or so until they're starting to colour. Pour in the tomato and nut mixture, and a cup of cold water. Add the capsicum, turn the heat down slightly and simmer for 10 minutes. Taste, and add salt.

Stir through the spring onion and coriander, and eat.

Barbecued kumara skins

Barbecues make everything more exciting. Even the humble kumara, when filled with tasty treats, becomes all smoky when treated to 10 minutes on the barbecue grill. The skin on the bottom get blackened, while the inside stays soft and tasty - although if the weather doesn't cooperate with your barbecue plans, these stuffed kumara can also be grilled in the oven, like boring, normal food. In that case, the tops will be crispy instead. Makes enough for 3 - 4 people. 

4 medium kumara

1 tomato

5cm chunk of yellow capsicum

3 heaped teaspoons of sour cream

1 spring onion

salt and pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

Give you kumara a good scrub to clean off any dirt - if the skin looks particularly ugly, you can scrap off the top surface using a spoon, which leaves the skin itself intact. Microwave for 5-6 minutes on high until soft, then leave to cool in the microwave. 

Cut the kumara in half lengthways. Scoop out the inside using a teaspoon, being careful not to break the skin. Put the kumara flesh into a mixing bowl, and mash until smooth. 

Add the paprika and sour cream. Finely dice the capsicum and spring onion, and add to the mixture. 

Cut the tomato in half, and squeeze over the kumara mixture so the seeds squirt out. This will add plenty of moisture to the kumara, and keep everything soft when you cook them. Finely dice the rest of the tomato, add to the bowl, and give everything a good mix. Season with salt and pepper.

Fill your kumara skins with the mixture - you might need to press down slightly on the skins to make sure they sit flat on the chopping board. Cook on a hot barbecue plate for 10 minutes, until the skin becomes crispy and the filling is warmed through. You can also grill indoors for 10 minutes if the weather gods aren't on your side. We had ours with chorizo sausages and salad - very summery!

Gremolata

While it may not be the most fashionable of herbs, I have a secret soft spot for flat-leaf parsley. It's always cheap, and it's easy to grow - even in Wellington, my parsley plant has survived for four years, in some of the most unlikely growing conditions, including snow. 

Gremolata is a mixture of parsley, lemon zest and garlic, and when loosened with a little bit of lemon juice, it makes an amazing sauce for summer food - we had it with barbecued mackerel and asparagus.

2 cups of finely chopped flat leaf parsley, stalks and all

zest of 1 lemon

juice of 1 lemon

1 clove of garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon olive oil

salt and pepper

No tricks, here, just mix everything together, and leave to mingle for about half an hour. Pour over everything. 

Dukkah

Dukkah has approximately a million different uses. Hmm, I may have exaggerated that slightly but it is really versatile. It's great with bread dipped in oil, sprinkled over chicken and fish then baked, or over roast vegetables. Or mixed with lemon juice and oil to make a salad dressing, or sprinkled on top of bread rolls before you bake them. Or stirred through yoghurt and used as a marinade for chicken. So what I'm saying is, make dukkah, and you will not regret it. This recipe makes a jam-jar's worth of dukkah. Most recipes call for hazelnuts, but the bulk bin store only had walnuts, so walnuts it is!


2/3 cup walnuts
1/2 cup sesame seeds
2 tablespoons coriander seeds
2 tablespoons cumin seeds
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon salt


Toast the walnuts, sesame, coriander and cumin seeds one at a time in a dry frying pan over a medium-high heat. Shake the pan every 30 seconds or so, and be careful - the sesame seeds especially will burn very quickly if you don't watch them. You want to just colour each batch, so they're golden but not burnt. The walnuts will take about 3- 4 minutes, the rest slightly shorter. 

After each batch is cooked, pop them into a mortar and pestle or food processor. Once everything is nicely coloured, grind the walnuts and seeds together. You're not aiming to make them into a powder, more to just break up the large seeds so everything is roughly the same size as the sesame seeds. Add the pepper and salt to taste, then store in an air-tight jar. 

Tortillas

This recipe is stolen from the Christmas issue of Cuisine magazine. As I only cook for 2 people, rather than an enormous dinner party, the quantities however have been adjusted - although to be honest, the tortillas were so good I could have eaten enough for about 12 people. 


You can cook these tortillas in a dry frying pan, but they're best when done on the barbecue, because you get amazing charred edges. They're nothing like the plasticky, soft tortillas out of a packet, and after making them, I don't think I want to eat bought ones ever again...until I'm too tired to make them from scratch. Makes enough for 6 tortillas. 

1/2 cup milk

1 and a 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 and a 1/2 cups plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat the milk and oil in the microwave until just warm. Mix the flour, salt and baking powder together in a bowl, then pour in the milk and oil. Mix together with your hands until it comes together in a soft dough, then knead for 3 minutes. Cover and leave to rest for 15 minutes, while you prepare your fillings.

Divide the incredibly soft dough into 6 pieces, and flour a chopping board or your counter. With your trusty rolling pin, roll out the dough as thinly as possible. Roll away from yourself, and give your tortilla a slight turn after every 2 or 3 rolls, so they have a nice rounded shape. They need to be paper thin, but the dough is very forgiving, so it should be too difficult!

Cook on a hot barbecue or in a dry frying pan for about 30 seconds on each side, then eat straight away!