Originally published by The Clifton Courier, August 11, 2021

I think most people would class crumble as a comfort food. It’s fairly uncontroversial categorisation. It’s sweet. It’s warm. There’s a jumbled homeliness to its construction. And it’s eaten out of a bowl – and it’s pretty hard to not be comforted by eating something out a bowl (not that I’m anti-plate by any means, but scooping something out a bowl just feels more warming and cuddly, even if you’re eating something as cold as ice cream. Like, the fact that the sides of the bowl are there to stop your food from sloshing out affords you a certain sloppiness that you couldn’t get away with when eating off a plate – bowls take you as your are and are typically more casual and forgiving, while plates demand a certain formality). Crumble ticks a lot of comfort food boxes. 

But I haven’t found that I turn to crumble when I’m in the darkest patches of my metaphorical troughs – those are the times when melting cheese into Vegemite toast is the most I can muster up. When it’s really bad, something as delicious and tummy-hugging as crumble seems impossible to stomach.

I’ve made crumble a lot over the past few years. It became my go-to dessert for when friends came over, family got together and I was settlinging in for snuggly nights in with my housemates. It was never anything fancy but was always made with love. It’s a very comforting dessert, but it’s the kind of thing I just can’t make well if I don’t have the heart to make it. It’s a happy food.  

I made it for the first time in what felt like forever when I was staying with some friends up north last week.

I keep trying to jot down the exact ratios of ingredients so I can keep a record of how I make it. But every time I make it, I inevitably end up shaking extra bits and pieces into the mix and it becomes impossible to quantify each ingredient in grams and cups. 

And I know this sounds wanky, but because this is such a hands on recipe – you must mix with your hands – it’s intuitive. Using precise measurements is too clinical for something this… good lord, brace yourself… organic. 

I realise how annoying this must sound. I remember asking Mum how she made her spaghetti bolognese and was infuriated by her inexact measurements and roundabout instructions. So I’ve tried to put together a basic scaffolding of a recipe that, while it won’t get you to your desired destination, it will put you on the right track. Besides, it’s the journey that really matters, right?

Step 1: In a large bowl, mix about a third of a cup of brown sugar, half a cup of flour (wholemeal is probably better because the flakiness offers more crunch options, but whatever you have), a half a teaspoon of ground allspice, a pinch of salt. Fork this together so all the powdery stuff is thoroughly mixed before the chunkier bits go in. 

Step 2: Roughly chop half a cup of walnuts (or almonds or pecans – whatever nuts you’ve got will probably be fine), maybe three quarters of a cup of rolled oats and half a cup of shredded coconut. I don’t want to be demanding, but it really does have to be shredded – desiccated is so fine that it essentially disappears and flaked is overpowering and too aggressive size-wise. Add this to the bowl and stir through. 

Step 3: Chop about 100 grams of cold salted butter into little cubes. Again, it has to be the salted butter in block form – you can use that “spreadable butter” garbage in a pinch, but the humble, salt-of-the-earth butter gives you a better texture. 

Step 4: Using your hands, scrunch the butter into the mixture so it squeezes out through your fingers. Do this over and over until it’s all combined. 

Step 5: Assess. What you’re aiming for here is a bit of a gravel – something between wet sand and a cobbler. You want there to be clumps of mixture nuggets, but only little ones. Sometimes you need to add extra sprinkles of flour, oats and coconut to achieve this goal, so keep adding according to your whims.

Step 6: Dump on top of the stewed fruit of your choosing. I prefer a rhubarb and strawberry mixture but, honestly, the fruit really is incidental here. You could probably just tip it over a slather of jam and it’d be alight. 

Step 7: Bake at 180 degrees for between 15 and 20 minutes, depending on how thick you’ve layered it. 

Step 8: Serve warm, with a generous glob of dollop cream or vanilla ice cream, to the people you love. Make sure you take a second to appreciate it all before diving in. 

End of year update: I gotta tellya, I am far from thriving right now. But I’ve made three crumbles in the past month, so there’s promising signs there.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, July 28, 2021

I’m well aware that most of my comfort foods are carb-heavy and depressing. I’m also quite aware that me chronicling my comfort foods might suggest I am, as they say “going through some stuff”. All this combined with the fact that we’re in the pit of winter during the plateaus and troughs (the “peaks” part of “peaks and troughs” didn’t seem to apply here, hence the “plateaus”) of a pandemic makes this whole series quite grim.  

So, to perk things up a bit, I’ve decided to chuck in a recipe that is significantly less concerning than me trying to convince you that of a mug full of cereal for dinner is not the culinary calling card of someone who has lost their way, but the evening meal for the gal on the go who never says no to a fibre boost. 

This is an actual (well, kinda) recipe. It has more than five ingredients and none of them are butter. There’s more action required than pushing down the lever on the toaster. And this actually requires you to get up, put on shoes and go to the grocery store.

I make varied mutations of this pasta regularly, but I’m going to go off the most recent strain – which came into being after a deep conversation with my townhouseguest that ended in us vowing to spend more time listening to the timeless classics of Simple Plan and Avril Lavigne. She went off into the night and I drank some red wine, made myself some pasta, and settled in to watch The Red Shoes. 

Here’s what I did:

I warmed some garlic infused olive oil in a frypan and added a few anchovy filets from a jar. Now, pop culture would have you believe that anchovies are disgusting, in the same way we’re told that Brussels sprouts and broccoli are disgusting. But, to quote one Darryl Kerrigan, it’s what ya do with it, darl. If you’re given a piece of broccoli that’s had the arse steamed out of it, you’re going to think that all broccoli is a watery mush of misery. And if you’ve only ever had the crusty rust scrapings of anchovies on a soggy pizza, you’re going to assume that all anchovies are bad anchovies. But anchovies are like people – most are intrinsically good, they just need a little love and some gentle guidance.  

And after spending a lot of time with Nigella Lawson (which is to say, after obsessively reading her books and watching her reruns) I’ve learned you can use anchovies as a salty base for a pasta sauce. 

All you do is warm it gently in oil and squish it around with a spatula and eventually the fillets will start to disintegrate into a paste-like, flavourful substance. Then you can add in more of the good stuff. 

At this particular juncture in my life, I had an obscene amount of sundried tomatoes, given to me by a friend. I could estimate the weight, but I think it’s more accurate to say that I have a couch cushion case full of sundried tomatoes that need to be used, so I chucked a handful in. Then I added about a teaspoon of dried chilli flakes and half a tin of diced tomatoes and the thick goo in which they’re suspended. 

Then, because the garlic oil wasn’t enough, I grated a fat clove of garlic into the mix and added a splash of red wine, just for fun. 

I then realised I hadn’t cooked the pasta, so I had to turn the frypan off, hastily heat a pot of water and boil the pasta. I used pappardelle, which is probably my favourite form of pasta because it allows you slurp it up like spaghetti, while having the comforting flat wideness of a lasagne sheet. 

During this time, the sauce I’d made had solidified into a thick paste, which looked like a failed attempt at gravy (a sight I am very, very familiar with). But I’d had enough wine by this point not to mind so much. 

I tipped in the pasta with a splash of the cooking water into the frypan, then threw in about three quarters of a bunch of flat leaf parsley, grated the sharpest cheese I had in the fridge over the top and added the zest of a lemon I had sitting on my counter for decorative “oh yes, I often cook with fresh lemons!” purposes. 

I mixed it up in the frypan then tipped the whole thing onto a single plate, earnestly believing I could eat it all in one sitting. 

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, July 21, 2021

I’m on a bit of a comfort food journey right now. 

And thanks to a combination of These Uncertain Times and the usual crushing realities life, I’ve not been getting out and about all that much lately. So I don’t have any vomiting at Splendour in the Grass stories to regale you with. And, come to think of it, I don’t even have any grass in my backyard so I can’t give you any stories about anything in the grass right now. 

So, with the absence of anything to rant about or retell, you’re going on this comfort food journey with me too. We’re going to churn through the starchy, sad meals that I turn to when I’m in need. And I can’t go down this road without touching on the spaghetti and bacon muffin. 

Obviously this is not a recipe. This, if anything, is a justification for my choices. An explanation, of sorts.

Because I could sum up this dish in one sentence: bacon and tinned spaghetti on a buttered English muffin. 

But it’s like I always say: why simplify things when you can over-complicate them with trivial anecdotes and unnecessary, self-explanatory instructions? Why say something in nine words when you can do it in more than 600? What else have I got to do with my spare time?

And so, let me take you on a culinary journey into my childhood. 

Baked beans, while a much-loved staple in my cultured, grown up townhousehold, was not something I got around as a child. I mean, perhaps it was because the “beans” element was too vegetable-y for my seven-year-old palate. But I think much of my aversion to the tinned treat was related to Dennis The Menace. I have very strong memories of the robber in that movie – who I think we can all agree is the most terrifying villain in any film ever made – heating and eating tinned beans over a fire which clearly left some mental scars. So spaghetti was the tinned food of choice. 

Tinned spaghetti is extremely soggy with quite a mushy texture. You don’t have to chew the stuff; it just kind of disintegrates in your mouth. In fact, it’s so soft that you could probably chug it like a liquid, but I certainly hope I don’t hit that level of rock bottom. And I suppose this is comforting. Because if I can be in this deep of a trough and the idea of skolling spaghetti straight out the tin feels beneath me, it’s clear I still have some standards and, god willing, some hope. 

Here’s what you need:

·      While I’m not usually one to promote certain brands, I think it’s important to get the Heinz tinned spaghetti here – it has a better flavour than the generic brands and when you’re turning to this as an adult, you need to hold on to the faint glint of glamour that a name brand brings to the table (however, purchasing a tin marked “spaghetti for one” does take the shine out of it).

·      Olive oil

·      English muffins – because the real joy of this ‘recipe’ is in the squishy, sponginess of the muff, something you can’t get with just toasted bread or even a bread roll. You need that almost crumpet-like texture to achieve the effect I’m going for here

·      Bacon, preferably the shot cut kind so you don’t even have to waste time cutting your bacon to size – you just want the circular-ish bit to cover the surface of the muffin and nothing more

·      Salted butter

Here’s how to assemble:

·      Warm a drizzle of olive oil in a frypan over a medium heat, placing the bacon in when the oil gets warm enough to run freely when you tilt the frypan. You don’t want the bacon to sizzle – we’re not going for crunch here. This is about warmth and easy chewing.

·      Once the bacon is warmed on one side, put two heaped tablespoons of spaghetti into the frypan. You could microwave this, but that’s another dish to wash and you’re not up for extra washing up right now. Plus, the frypan cooking means the excess “sauce” from the tin thickens. I’m not sure what the “sauce” is, but I assume it’s somewhat tomato based. Also: you might not think this is enough spaghetti, but it is. You don’t want too much, otherwise it all leaks out as you bite into it and it burns your hands. Trust me. I’ve been there. 

·      Now’s the time to pop the muffins in the toaster – by the time they’re done cooking, your bacon and spaghetti will be ready. What you’re aiming for is warm, soft bacon and a thick spaghetti mash.

·      Slather a thick layer of butter on each muffin half, spooning the thickened spaghetti on one side of the muffin, balance the bacon on top the bright orange mush and then close the whole thing off with the second muffin half.

·      Eat carefully, gently squishing it together so you can hear the delicious squelch of butter and vaguely tomato-y goo.