Chocolate goodness

Chocolate Easter Buns

We’ve barely pulled down the Christmas trees before the supermarkets are awash with overpriced chocolate covered in brightly coloured foil, and the truly, truly glorious hot cross bun.

A proper hot cross bun is soft, riddled with spices, encrusted with currants, and lovingly dusted with gritty nibs of sugar. After the carb free, air-eating summer influence of Bondi beach, its nice to enjoy something that can be split, toasted and slathered with butter.

Some consider it sacrilege, but the addition of chocolate makes a hot cross bun festive in the proper sense. The pieces of chocolate are shoved in very imprecisely here – the point is not a perfectly smooth bun but one with ridges, bumps and personality. It’s important so when pulled from the oven, chocolate is oozing from its pores and spreading itself indecently across your plate. It’s the sort of bun that offers pure restoration in both the physical and gastronomic sense. And that’s just the kind of Easter we should all be having.

Ingredients

250ml milk

75g butter, salted

250g strong (bread) flour

200g plain flour

50g potato starch*

85g caster sugar

7g dried yeast

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cardamom

1 large egg, lightly beaten.

100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa)

Beaten egg to glaze

Method

Pour the milk in a saucepan and place over medium heat, bringing the milk almost to boiling point. Remove from heat, add the butter to melt gradually, and allow to cool while you prepare the other ingredients.

Sift the flours, sugar and spices together in a large bowl, add the yeast and stir to combine. Make a well in the middle of the ingredients, then add the egg and the warm milk mixture. Stir together until the mixture starts to come away from the edge of the bowl. Cover tightly with wrap and place in the fridge overnight to ferment.

Preheat the oven to 175C.

Remove from the fridge and bring to room temperature. Roll the dough into a large rectangle, with your width about the length of a 30cm ruler. Using a knife, cut the dough into 15 strips. Pick up a strip and holding at each end, twist in opposite directions so the dough coils. Then coil the strip into itself to make a bun shape, tucking the ends underneath. Gently push pieces of chocolate into the centre of the bun – or anywhere there looks to be a natural gap in your twist. Repeat with the remaining twists and chocolate then place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Cover with wrap and allow to rest for 15 minutes. Brush over the egg wash and bake in the oven for 15 – 20 minutes, or until cooked through and brown on top.

The ultimate wingman

Lemongrass and chilli chicken wings

Chicken lovers tend to unite on certain fronts. Particularly when it comes to the wings – they really are one of the best bits of a bird. I consider myself part of this club although do feel the need to qualify my winged victory – you need good wings.  Not the insipid value packs in the supermarket aisle or sell out specials from b-grade butchers. You need wings that have, well … flown. Wings from a bird that’s led a proper life really do taste that much better for it. This recipe is for those that don’t mind manhandling their food; sweet and spicy they should be nibbled, licked, suckled and chewed. And the best bit of course, other than eating with your hands, is enjoying the grand finale of licking your fingers when the meal is done.

Image by Danny Eastwood

Ingredients

24 chicken wings

Vegetable oil for frying

2 tsp dried chilli flakes

2 tsp finely grated galangal

1 clove garlic

2 tbsp brown sugar

80 ml fish sauce

2 eschallots, finely chopped

Juice of 2 limes

1 stalk of lemongrass, finely chopped

2 tbsp coriander root, finely chopped

3 tbsp hoi sin sauce

1 tbsp plum sauce

Fresh coriander, lime cheeks and fried shallots to serve

Method

Heat oil in a large saucepan or deep-fryer to 190C. Deep-fry chicken in batches until golden and very crisp (10-12 minutes; be careful as hot oil will spit), drain on absorbent paper.

Add the remaining ingredients to a food processor and blitz to combine. Return the sauce to the frying pan and place over high heat. Add the chicken wings and toss quickly to coat. Serve hot.

In the press...

Also here is an article I've had published recently - for the local foodie spectacular SBS Feast. Can't wait to share some great projects that I've been working on - should have some sneak peaks for you soon.

A golden ticket...

Have knives. Will travel.

Very excited about launching the golden ticket competition today. From now until end of May, a select number of golden tickets will be sent with books sold on www.thelittlecrumb.com.au. Each ticket entitles the buyer to a dinner party fully catered by the KC team. It'll be the easiest dinner party/soiree/romantic dinner you'll ever have.Obviously this is Australian based for now, unless someone can sort out a cashed up sugar daddy in which case we'll fly anywhere.

Toblerone mud cakes & raspberry compote

In my mind, any good menu ends in chocolate.  I can barely go 24 hours without a hit of the dark stuff and I am continually perplexed as to why someone hasn’t turned the chocolate advent calendar into a year round phenomenon. That’s not to say I’m not fussy when it comes to how I take my chocolate. Sometimes I want a bit of cake that is moist rather than sticky, tender rather than oozing, and a chocolate content that is restrained rather than I-must-lie-down-on-the-couch.

I use the term "mud" loosely here – the consistency is denser than sponge but more forgiving than your typical mudcake. The addition of Toblerone sees it riddled with lovely bits and blobs of nougat. And served warm, little rivulets of cream, raspberry compote, and chocolate crumbs gather at the bottom of your plate, acting like some kind of hedonistic grand finale.

Toblerone mud cakes

Ingredients

375g caster sugar

180ml milk

100ml thin cream

250g butter, room temperature, coarsely chopped

290g Toblerone, finely chopped

260g plain flour, sifted

50g cocoa powder, sifted

Pinch baking powder, sifted

2 eggs, lightly whisked

Raspberry compote

250g raspberries

80g icing sugar

1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped

Thickened cream to serve

Method

Preheat the oven to 175C. Butter and line 10 x 250ml capacity moulds and set aside.

Combine the sugar, milk, cream, butter and chocolate in a bowl and place the bowl over a pot of simmering water and stir until smooth. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature. Add the sifted flour, cocoa and baking powder to the chocolate mixture and whisk to combine. Add the eggs and stir to combine. Pour the mixture into the moulds, filling them three-quarters full and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Cool in the moulds before turning out.

For the raspberry compote, plop the raspberries, sugar and vanilla seeds in a saucepan. Place on low heat and gently break up with a fork. You want to release the juices and get a sticky jam kind of consistency, being careful not to break up the fruit too much.

Serve warm with a dollop of cream and a drizzle of the raspberry compote.

New Frontiers...

I swore I would not use this blog as a venting playground but today is all about new frontiers and I really feel the need to get something off my chest.

A weird thing happens when you put yourself in a public forum. People seek you out. That sounds frightfully arrogant and I didn’t mean it that way, I am well aware my book reviews are lining bird-cages across this fine nation. It’s more the surreal idea that people feel they know you enough to seek you out at all and make contact. Random people. Just like the delight I received today from a gentleman who decided his Tuesday morning was best spent crafting me an email to congratulate me on my ability to embrace my curves. WTF?

I find it strange that he could have even seen me, let alone find me to provide comment on my grand derriere. And what’s with the tone? Yes the email definitely had tone and it definitely intonated that he was actually surprised I left the house at all given my ‘voluptuous state’. My husband doesn’t seem to mind whatever I’ve got going on, well I’m still married so I figure that’s safe to presume...

Hang on, Tom was the email from you?

I digress, back to my issue with the curve commentary. What gives me the right royal irrits, is that this guy thinks I did nothing for it; that I just smashed a couple of cheeseburgers, skipped the personal trainer and weights sessions and then let my female hormones do the rest.

Here is the thing champ, I eat for a living. My career depends on it. Now if I worked in Hollywood, obviously the opposite would apply. I would eat air, get lypo-suction, faint dramatically on movie sets then run home to see if anyone had emailed me to tell me how delightfully skinny I was looking.

Given how well I eat, my ass is some serious a-grade, top-of-the-range fat. There’s wagyu in there, pork crackling, fondue, triple cream brie and all of his mates, the odd incidental bit of fois gras, chocolate –light and dark - as I hate to discriminate, and if I am being honest an obscene amount of butter. There is consistent, concentrated grazing in the top paddock. And I like to think the sort of 9+ marbling that Kobe and his brethren might hold a deep admiration for.

Yes I have an ass. We all do. (Quelle horreur) So I’m not sure why any of it deserves comment.  Should the day come where I choose to channel a bit more Hollywood and a little less feeding frenzy (I doubt it) I can guarantee you random emailer that the ass would still be there, probably just a little saggier,  significantly unhappier, and as equally unworthy of any kind of comment. So until you’ve put in the hours, the groundwork of some serious fork to mouth training, please refrain from commenting on my ass or anyone else’s for that matter. It makes you sound weird. Like you might need to get out more, perhaps go and get a bite to eat. Low blood sugar and hunger pains can bring on the crazy in anyone and I’m hoping that’s all that happened to you today.