Enjoy: New veg with dash

To make the hollandaise sauce, gently melt the butter in a pan. Whiz the egg yolks in a blender for 30 seconds or simply whisk well by hand. Transfer them to a bowl and place it over a pan of simmering water, making sure the water doesn’t touch the base of the bowl. Add the lemon myrtle – I sift it in through a tea strainer to stop it going lumpy – or lemon juice and mix well, then slowly drizzle the butter into the eggs a little at a time, whisking all the time with a balloon whisk. When the butter is all incorporated, you should have a bowl of thick, creamy hollandaise. Add a little salt to taste and a touch of white pepper if you wish.

Put the spinach in a pan with the knob of butter, cover and leave over a gentle heat until wilted. Season with the nutmeg and some sea salt and black pepper. Serve the rösti topped with an egg or two, plus a mound of spinach and a coating of Hollandaise.

Buttermilk Pancakes with Caramelised Apples and Brandy Caramel Sauce

I like to serve these for breakfast, brunch or afternoon tea (in which case, think cream or ice cream) to replace my usual crêpes, but not for dessert, where they strike me as just too rich.

If you make the pancakes in a blini pan they don’t look huge, but if you consider that when I tried them a different way, each serving made at least 8 little pancakes – or poffertjes (the Dutch word for them) – you’ll see that one per person is plenty. A couple who do the rounds of the North Coast markets, in New South Wales, in their catering van sell poffertjes in mounds on paper plates, piled high with whipped cream and oodles of maple syrup. There are always queues.

It’s worth noting that you can freeze the cooled pancakes layered with baking parchment or foil, then place them in a steamer over boiling water to bring them back to life.

MAKES 8 PANCAKES OR ABOUT 80 POFFERTJES

250g plain flour

a pinch of salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

100g caster sugar

4 eggs, separated

500ml buttermilk

sunflower oil for frying

Greek yoghurt and finely chopped toasted pecan nuts, to serve

For the caramelised apples:

300g caster sugar

125g unsalted butter

4–5 large apples (I use Pink Ladies), peeled, cored and sliced

For the caramel sauce:

250g caster sugar

60ml water

80ml brandy (or about two-thirds brandy and one-third red wine)

60ml pouring cream

It’s easiest to start by cooking the apples and making the caramel sauce. You can gently reheat both just before serving.

For the apples, put the sugar and butter in a large saucepan or frying pan and cook over a careful heat until golden. Add the apple slices – splutter and sizzle is part of the fun – and cook until they are tender, almost translucent, and oozing with caramel (you may decide that this is enough decadence and forego the caramel sauce!). Remove from the heat and set aside.

For the caramel sauce, combine the sugar and water in a small, heavy-based saucepan and stir over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Raise the heat and boil, without stirring, until the syrup turns a dark caramel colour. Immediately remove from the heat and, very carefully and with a step back, as it will spit rather dramatically, stir in the brandy. Return the pan to a low heat and stir until smooth, then add the cream and bring back to the boil. Remove from the heat and set aside while you make the pancakes. (Stored in the fridge in a sealed jar, this sauce lasts for ages.)

To make the pancakes, sift the flour, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl and stir in the caster sugar. Lightly whisk the egg yolks in a separate bowl, then slowly pour in the buttermilk and continue to whisk gently – I do all this with a hand whisk – until well amalgamated. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the buttermilk mixture. Mix well, by bringing the dry ingredients into the wet a little at a time, until smooth and lump free. Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl until they form stiff peaks, then slide them out of the bowl with a rubber spatula and gently fold them into the pancake mixture.

If you are using a blini pan – two if you can, to make easier work of this (they’re cheap and worth investing in) – lightly dip a piece of crumpled kitchen paper into a saucer of sunflower oil, which you must have by your side. Wipe the pan with it and heat over a moderate heat. Do this before cooking each pancake. Fill the blini pan three-quarters full with the pancake mixture and leave until bubbles appear on the surface – about 1½–2 minutes should do it. Then turn the pancake over carefully, using a palette knife or fish slice, and cook the other side. The pancakes should be golden brown, cooked right through but still light and fluffy. Transfer to a plate, cover lightly with foil and keep in a warm oven while you cook the remaining pancakes.

If you are making the smaller proffitjes, heat a little oil in a large frying pan and drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture into it. They will immediately spread into little round pancakes, which you can help along with the back of a spoon, making them no bigger than 5–6 cm in diameter. These cook quite quickly and will keep you on your toes.

Have warmed plates at the ready. Place 1 large or 8–10 little pancakes on each plate with a mound of richly caramelised apple slices, a generous swirl – make that a pool – of caramel sauce and a dollop of Greek yoghurt (at last, a semblance of sanity!). Stop the world and eat without delay, a smattering of chopped pecans on top.

Blueberry Friands with Warm Blueberries

No cookbook from Australia would be complete without these. It is my fervent hope that they will make it on to the shelves of British coffee bars and cake shops everywhere, the way they do here. And I hope it will be this version, light and moist and eaten still warm or even just warmed. They knock the socks off muffins any day. You can store them in a sealed plastic bag in the fridge for several days, where they keep surprisingly fresh, then reheat them, lightly wrapped in foil.

MAKES 8

200g icing sugar

50g plain flour

130g ground almonds (almond meal)

6 egg whites

grated zest of 1 lemon

170g unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus a little melted butter for greasing

2 punnets (about 300g) blueberries

2 teaspoons caster sugar

crème fraîche, Greek yoghurt, double cream or vanilla ice cream, to serve

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6. Brush 8 oval friand moulds (or a muffin tin) with melted butter and dust with flour, shaking out any excess.

Sift the icing sugar and flour into a bowl and stir in the ground almonds (almond meal). In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Gently fold them into the dry ingredients. Add the lemon zest and then fold in the cooled melted butter.

Fill each friand mould or muffin cup three-quarters full with the mixture and put 3–4 blueberries on top of each one, so that they are lightly embedded but still visible. Bake for 20 minutes or until the friands spring back when touched.

Meanwhile, place the rest of the blueberries in a small pan with the caster sugar. Crush a few of them with the back of a fork, bring to the boil and simmer until quite syrupy.

Place a warm friand in the centre of each plate with a good spoonful of warm blueberries on top and some crème fraîche, Greek yoghurt, double cream or vanilla ice cream.

Mofleta