Cake:

Makes two 20cm cakes or one very large and tall 25cm cake

250g butter, very soft
400g caster sugar
6 large eggs
zest of one large navel orange (use a fine Microplane or don’t attempt cake)
zest of one lemon (use a fine Microplane or don’t attempt cake)
330g SR flour
70g almond meal
400g plain Greek yoghurt

Syrup:

Juice of the aforementioned orange – top up with water to make 1/2 cup of liquid
Juice of half of the aforementioned lemon
1/2 cup of sugar

Topping for one cake:

2/3 cup of roasted almonds, roughly chopped
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup water

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees fan-forced

Line your cake tin/s with baking paper.

1. In a very large bowl, cream the butter, sugar and zest until extremely light, pale, soft and fluffy. This will take 15-20 minutes if you do not have a stand mixer. Don’t try and skimp on the beating.

2. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

3. Gently fold in the flour/almond meal mixture with a large metal spoon.

4. Gently but thoroughly fold in the yoghurt.

5. Gently smooth batter into your prepared cake tin/s. If you are at all concerned about your ability to not to burn the cake, I advise using two cake tins, as the one cake tin method calls for a long baking period and vigilance.

6. Bake the cake/s for 40 minutes -1.5 hours. You may need to cover the top with tin foil if it is browning too deeply. It is cooked when it is firm, and a skewer comes out cleanly.

7. While the cake is baking, make the syrup by boiling all the ingredients together for 6-7 minutes.

8. When the cake is done, poke it all over with a skewer. Pour the syrup over the cake, a little at a time, letting it soak up the syrup in between pours.

9. Let the cake sit for 3-4 hours and cool completely in the tin.

8. Turn out the cake. Leave it upside down on a plate, making the flat bottom of the cake the top of the cake. The cake should have soaked up all the syrup and should be fairly easy to persuade to sit flat.

9. For the topping, put the sugar and the water in a saucepan over a medium heat. Let it boil until it is a light golden brown — the colour of light honey. Then tumble in your almonds and pour over the cake, quickly spreading it over the top of the cake with a knife. WARNING: toffee sticks and burns! DO NOT TOUCH IT.

10. Let the toffee cool for a minute, but while it is still quite warm, oil a knife and score the top of the cake into slices.

11. Let the toffee cool completely. Do not refrigerate this cake. Do not attempt to make this cake during summer, or on very humid days.

12. Ta-da!

13. If you were foolish and scored the cake into LARGE slices, you will now need an extremely sharp knife and lots of courage to cut the cake. Swing the knife at the cake with force and speed, as if you were chopping wood through wrist action alone. You need to crack through the layer of toffee and nuts, like breaking through the top of a crème brûlée.

14. Serve the cake with unsweetened double cream. You should have a very moist, tangy, aromatic slice of cake, with bonus crunchy toffee almonds for contrast.

Chocolate Brownies

Adapted from Complete Perfect Recipes by David Herbet

Equipment:

20 x 30cm baking tray, lined with baking paper
Electric beaters
1 heatproof glass bowl or a double-boiler
1 large non-reactive bowl

Ingredients:

150g of 85% cocoa dark chocolate — Lindt and Green & Black’s both have 100g blocks available in supermarkets for $3-$4.
125g butter (half an Australian stick), roughly cut into chunks

4 x 60g eggs (extra-large eggs)
360g caster sugar (superfine sugar)
2 tsp pure Madagascan vanilla extract
2 tbs dark rum
1 shot of espresso
1 tbs pure maple syrup

150g of plain flour

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160C or 150C fan-forced.
2. Melt the butter and chocolate together, either on low in the microwave or over a double boiler. Cool until no warmer than blood temperature (doesn’t feel warm to your finger).
3. In the large bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar, rum, vanilla, coffee and syrup. Beat on the fastest setting for 4 minutes. The mixture will be thick, pale and glossy. All the sugar should have dissolved — the mixture should not feel gritty between your fingers.
4. Beat in the melted chocolate and butter.
5. Taste it just for fun and deliciousness!
6. Beat in the flour.
7. Pour into prepared baking tray and gently smooth the top.
8. Bake for 30 minutes, until the crust is shiny and pale — and usually cracked, to show the dark fudgey interior.
9. Cool in the tin.
10. Eat! Stores well in an air-tight container (tin or glass please, not plastic) — in fact I think it is more delicious after at least one day.

Two days later, I’m still dreaming about the slow-cooked egg on toasted brioche with bone marrow.

My friend and I shared three small dishes in lieu of a main course — the aforementioned egg; wood-fire grilled quail with braised figs and walnuts; and spanner crab with globe artichokes on white polenta and fontina.

For me, it was the perfect way to experience magnificent cooking. For example, the egg and bone marrow were sublimely, sumptuously, memorably rich; it was a dish luxuriant in the mouthfeel of fat. The egg oozed and clung to the chargrilled brioche: the bone marrow melted the instant it hit my mouth. (The flavour reminded me of an illicit pleasure of youth, when I would toast some white bread in the sizzling fat of a roasting joint of beef). After dividing the dish, we had barely two bites each — and two bites was perfection. Consuming the entire dish would have been too rich, too fatty. I would remember it with discomfort rather than pleasure.

The other stand-out taste of the night was my friend’s order of passionfruit marshmallows. Again, one marshmallow was exactly enough for me. More would have ruined the experience.

“It was like eating an angel,” I sighed dreamily to my colleague, the next day.

iTunes will ask to be pointed to an iTunes library. Point it wherever you like!

Step Two:
There is no step two.

Voila, iTunes will open with all the playlists, album art and playcounts of the music library you’ve dropped in.

This comes in particularly handy when moving/changing computer — copy the iTunes folder over in its entirety from the old machine to the new machine and point iTunes at the new location.

It’s also handy for sharing one library between computers — a desktop and a laptop, say. However only one instance of iTunes can be open at once if you do this — the iTunes library file will appear locked to the second computer.

Theoretically, you could load your library onto a USB-powered portable HD and be the life of the party wherever you go!

Shuffle from Genre

Shuffle and Party Shuffle are great, but if you’re like me and have a fairly eclectic music collection, you don’t necessarily want The Texas University Gilgamesh Lectures interspersed with Bach’s Preludes or a Nelly/JT mashup.

Unfortunately iTunes doesn’t do Shuffle from Genre automagically, but it’s seriously easy to set up. Create a smart playlist and set it to automatically update. Some of my suggested smart playlists:

For a playlist containing only classical music – Genre IS Classical
For a playlist for a dinner party – Genre IS NOT Classical, Spoken: Artist DOES NOT CONTAIN Rick Astley

Then set iTunes to shuffle from the playlist.

I had a fabulous chat last night with my friend, who has been helping me nut out my personal style. I grew up in hundred year old houses with antique furniture: beautiful, to be sure, but not really a practical style to emulate for apartment living. I think if I had to categorise my style, it would be Australian Country Style. ACS is actually a monthly magazine, and I would be ecstatic to live in pretty much any of the houses they feature.

I am not cool in any way, so I always come to the conclusion that I should stick with what I actually feel comfortable with: clean uncluttered spaces, white linen, warm timber, fresh flowers, serenity. I am not a shabby chic girl, but neither do I sway toward total minimalism — I like my spaces to look peaceful rather than coolly modern.

The room on the left is quite a bit trendier than I am — for example the giant ampersand (which I love but don’t think I could live with), but what particularly appeals to me are the lovely bones of the room. The moulded ceiling, the shiny dark floorboards, the charming fireplace and jaunty mantelpiece. Green is my favourite colour, so of course I enjoy the beautiful splashes of leaf and pea green.

The bathroom just shows a gorgeous use of green contrasted against white. It looks crisp and clean and peaceful. The tub also look amazing. However the room is a bit chillier than I like.

The chair on the left is a discontinued Anthropologie model. The fabric is amazing in texture, print and colour. The chair looks substantial and comfortable — teamed with an ottoman or footstool, the perfect place to kick back with a drink.

The chaise on the right is by a local Australian makers Pierre and Charlotte. I love the simplicity and the way it seems to ooze comfort and respectability. The perfect place to retire with a bunch of Austen novels and some new season Fuji apples.

I am bonkers about recycled materials (recycled timber and bricks especially) because the resulting products always have oodles of character. I’m not exactly sure of the correct furniture terminology — I call this a refectory table, and it’s a style I’ve loved since I was a child. This one is by John Najjar.

I’ve never been able to make my mind up about burr wood. On the one hand, it’s undeniably interesting. On the other hand, it sometimes looks diseased. I like this cabinet, though, it reminds me of the Chinese cabinets of my youth.

The dining room chair is a fairly famous design — the Hans Wegner Wishbone Chair. I think it is charming and interesting and little out of the ordinary.

To be updated regularly.

Stars out of five indicate how desperate I am to try the food.

Chinese:

** Dainty Szechuan : 26 Corrs Lane, Melbourne, 03 9663 8861

***** Hu Tong Dumpling Bar: 14-16 Market Lane, Melbourne, 03 9650 8128

*** Yum Cha Cafe: 193-195 Exhibition Street (cnr Little Bourke St/Chinatown), Melbourne, 03 9662 9668

** Shark Fin House: 131 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, 03 9663 1555

Vietnamese:

** Van Mai: 372 Victoria St, Richmond, 03 9428 7948

**** N Lee Bakery: 220 Smith St, Collingwood, 03 94199732

Thai:

Japanese:

*** Izakaya Chuji: 165 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, 03 9663 8118

Lebanese:

*** Rumi: 116 Lygon St, Melbourne, 3057, 03 9388 8255

Greek/Turkish:

* Cafe Zum Zum: 645 Rathdowne Street, Carlton North, 03 9348 0455

Vegetarian:

*** Fo Guang Yuan Art Gallery Vegetarian Restaurant: 141 Queen Street, Melbourne, 03 9642 2388. Open for lunch only, Monday to Friday, 12 to 2:30pm

*** Vegie Hut: (vegan dim sum) 984 Whitehorse Road, Box Hill, 03 9898 2287

Modern Australian:

**** The Commoner: (Anchovies, potato cakes) 122 Johnston St, Fitzroy, 03 9415 6876

Last week I served this pasta with a side salad of roasted sweet potato and baby English spinach; dessert was strawberry tartlets from the patisserie.

Smoked salmon linguini

Dried thin linguini or thin spaghetti, enough for two exceedingly greedy or three regularly hungry people.

1 red onion
extra virgin olive oil
heaped tablespoon of capers (brined, not salted)
heaped tablespoon of wholegrain mustard
juice of one lemon
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 -1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/3 cup dry white wine if you’re drinking it, else omit
bunch of fresh dill
large handful of fresh rocket/arugula
100g smoked salmon slices
1/4 cup cream

Finely dice the onion, and gently fry in olive oil (do not let it burn/brown). Roughly chop capers and add to pan. Add mustard, not quite all the lemon juice, wine, sugar, pepper. Let it bubble briefly and taste for seasoning — add more sugar/salt/lemon juice if needed. Turn off the heat and throw in lots of roughly chopped dill (I used a big handful) and the roughly chopped rocket.

Tear the smoked salmon into largish pieces. Set aside.

All the work bar boiling the pasta is now done. When ready to serve, cook the pasta, drain well. Stir the cream into the sauce then stir the pasta into the sauce, making sure it is all coated. Let the pasta suck up the sauce. Then gently distribute the salmon through the pasta.

Serve!

Roasted sweet potato salad — line a baking tray with baking paper, peel and slice sweet potatoes into chunks the size of two fingers, toss sweet potato in olive oil, salt, pepper, mixed herbs. Roast in a hot oven for 18-22 minutes. Rinse a bag of baby spinach and line a salad plate with it. Drizzle over a dressing made from lemon juice, wholegrain mustard, salt, pepper and olive oil. Strew the sweet potatoes over the spinach.

The coconut bread has an incredible golden, crunchy crust and a soft yet dense white crumb interior. It goes stale overnight, but is delicious re-warmed or toasted in the oven. I bake mine in muffin tins (one recipe exactly fills a 12 cup tray) to have a greater ratio of golden crunchy outside to inside.

Four ingredients, if you don’t count a pinch of salt. It literally takes less than five minutes to prepare for the oven.

Coconut bread

2 cups self raising flour
2 cups dessicated or shredded coconut
3/4 cup of sugar (or a bit more, if you prefer your bread sweeter)
A pinch of salt
1.5 cups of milk (cow, soy, rice, coconut)

Preheat oven to 180 Celsius or 356 Fahrenheit (160C/320F if your oven is fan-forced) . Line a loaf tin or butter a muffin pan.

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Stir in the milk well. You may need a splash more milk to get a stiff, dropping consistency. Pour into tin or spoon into muffin pans. Bake for about 30 minutes (muffins) or 45 minutes (loaf), you may need to turn the oven down at the end. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool for maximum crunchiness.

Lovely to eat plain, but also extremely good with lemon curd, salted butter, or preserves.

The quality of the meat obviously determines the quality of the final product, but the marinade is delicious enough to redeem supermarket meat.

A note on quantity: greedy people will easily manage to eat a kilogram (two pounds) of ribs each.

Spicy pork ribs

For one measure of marinade:

1 tb Thai sweet chilli sauce
1 tb grated ginger
2 cloves grated garlic
1 tb honey, warmed until runny
1 tb soy sauce
1 tb tomato sauce
1 tb hoisin sauce
1 tb Worcestershire sauce
2 tb Stone’s Green ginger wine
1 tspn salt to taste

Combine all ingredients in a jug or bowl.

You’ll need x + 1 measures of marinade, where x is the number of kilograms of pork ribs you’re cooking. Basically you need one measure of “clean” marinade, for basting the ribs with near the end of cooking time — you don’t want to baste with marinade that has had raw meat touching it if the ribs are only going to be cooking for another 10-15 minutes.

Cut your racks of ribs up into single ribs. Arrange them in a non-reactive dish of some kind — I use a very large plastic bread bin. Pour over all the marinade except one measure. Stir the ribs around until well coated. Let the ribs marinate for between 1-3 hours.

Pre-heat a fan-forced oven to 180C. Line your (large!) baking trays well with baking paper. Arrange the ribs fat side up on the baking trays.

The marinade left in the bottom of the container you used to marinade the meat in is your “dirty” marinade. The measure of marinade that you reserved is your “clean” marinade: it may need thickening up a bit with some more hoisin sauce.

Bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes, turning and basting the ribs at the half hour mark, and basting again at the 40 minute mark, with the “dirty” marinade.

When the ribs are done, take them out and turn the oven up to 200C.

Now baste the ribs with your “clean” marinade, and put them back in the oven to get completely browned, sticky and glossy. You may need to do this one tray at a time, as most ovens are not capable of browning two full baking trays of ribs at once (the bottom tray does not brown).

I received my new iPhone case from Miniot about five weeks ago, and I’m really in love with it. The craftsmanship is impeccable, and I love the precision with which they have made the buttons and holes.

It’s not really a protective case so much as a decorative one; I imagine that dropping the phone from any height would result in the wooden case shattering.

Anyone who owns any of Apple’s PMPs will know how quickly fingerprints and skin oils smear the case and screen. The mahogany case on the other hand needs oils, and just becomes more beautiful the more you touch it. So at any given time, you’re likely to find me gently stroking my iPhone, as if it were a smooth river stone. It’s very zen.