A lazy ratatouille to rave about

A carrot cake loaf to bake this weekend 🥕

Love this rich ratatouille served with ricotta.

The best recipe I made last month also happened to be the easiest. It’s a lazy ratatouille that bakes on a tray from Jenny Rosenstrach’s five-ingredient dinner column for Cup of Jo. 

It’s the kind of recipe you can shop for in 5 minutes flat, picking up an armful of ingredients that only need a rough chop. The tastiest version I’ve made so far used a jar of Mutti pasta sauce with Parmesan.

It was the dinner I made after we flew home from a weekend away and the first thing I cooked after a recent period of recovery. If it’s not already obvious, this is the recipe to try if you only sample one thing from the newsletter. Everyone should make it!

P.S If you’re new here (maybe you’ve come via my brother

Derrick Gee

’s Instagram!), this is my monthly round-up of the best internet recipes I’ve made recently. I hope it inspires you to cook something new. I have the lucky job of commissioning recipes for work and live in Launceston, lutruwita/Tasmania, Australia, which happens to be one of UNESCO’s City of Gastronomy.

Fluffy ricotta hotcakes with honeycomb butter

When you’ve watched too many private-chef-in-the-Hamptons TikToks and have leftover ricotta from the ratatouille above, you make fluffy ricotta hotcakes on an ordinary Thursday. I even made a little log of honeycomb butter, which has been so nice to have in the fridge for toast and crumpets.

I pulled out one of my oldest cookbooks to make Bill Granger’s ricotta hotcakes, an iconic Sydney dish from the early aughts. They’re a bit more special than your average pancake — the egg whites are whipped to make them extra light. Turns out Granger was way ahead of the souffle pancake trend, which makes sense for someone who was serving avocado toast in 1993! 

The brightest pea and ham soup

I’ve never made traditional pea and ham soup using dried split peas and probably never will because this spring version made with frozen peas is so pretty and fresh.

By Julia Busuttil Nishimura, it’s an easy soup with minimal prep and a long simmer time. It makes heaps (enough for 6-8), so I stashed a container in the freezer and thought about making ham hock and cheddar toasties too.

Aside from being a plentiful and green weeknight dinner, it’s one I’d happily serve to friends.

Carrot cake made easy

There are a bunch of recipes I’ve commissioned for ABC Everyday in this edition, because they’re all genuinely so good! This is another one from Julia Busuttil Nishimura, and it’s everything I love about carrot cake without the fuss of making a layer cake. Instead it’s a carrot cake loaf with thick cream cheese icing that’s mixed in a bowl, no fancy gear needed.

Because it smelled so good coming out of the oven, I frosted and cut into it while it was still warm and have no regrets. Afterwards I went for a long afternoon walk, listening to podcasts and it was a perfect Sunday afternoon. 

There’s just two of us at home so I froze some of the leftover cake, icing and all, and brought it out when my brother and his family came to visit. There’s no greater (or funnier) compliment than watching a toddler push the cake into their mouth enthusiastically, applauding as soon as their hands are free.

Roast a bag of carrots for the week

If you have 15 minutes to prep some food for the week ahead, follow Heidi Sze’s lead and roast a bag of carrots with olive oil, black pepper and turmeric. It’s cheap and easy, plus Heidi’s included a bunch of different ways to remix and enjoy them, whether it’s in a sandwich, quinoa bowl or pasta salad. My mind relaxes thinking about it as a meal base rather than meal prep and it easily powers a week’s worth of work lunches.

Recipe requests!

Here are some fun recipe requests friends have texted lately — email or comment if you have one.

Q: A foolproof cinnamon bun recipe?

I went looking for a pic and realised I’ve been using this recipe since 2017.

A: Violet Bakery’s cinnamon buns by Claire Ptak. Only I regularly mess up step 4 and mix the melted butter into the cinnamon sugar mixture instead of brushing the butter onto the dough and sprinkling the sugar. It still works, it’s just messier!

These are so nice for a low-key brunch with a big pot of coffee and plate of mango cheeks. You can make and roll the dough the day before and store it in the fridge. That leaves slicing and baking for the next morning.

Q: What was that amazing vegan choc chip cookie recipe?

A: Ovenly’s salted choc chip cookies are secretly vegan and so delicious! I once suspected a friend was in labour and mixed up a batch of dough so I could leave freshly baked cookies on her doorstep the night she returned home. A core memory for both of us.

Three sweet things

Highly recommend chasing down the ice cream truck on a Sunday afternoon. 

Big fan of Whittaker’s peanut butter chocolate block.

I’ve been making a night-time maple cacao using this small-batch cacao from lutruwita/Tasmania with the cutest branding.