Hazelnut cake for breakfast and a soba noodle salad for any time of day

Three fun pavlova toppings 🍓

I had breakfast at Walrus in Naarm/Melbourne last month, which was the nicest place to land after an early flight. They serve classic diner fare like cinnamon-heavy French toast, pancakes and crispy bacon. Also on the menu: mini fruit plates you can order as a side. I’ve been making them for breakfast with summer fruits and they’re so colourful and cheery.

There’s a bunch of salads in this edition, plus fun pavlova toppings for Christmas (including pet-nat soaked strawberries!). As always, you’ll find a bunch of trusty dinner ideas too.

Crispy rice bites with salmon and avocado

This is such a nice looking meal, which you can mostly prep ahead of time. By Ali Slagle (NYT Cooking gift link) it uses a small amount of sashimi-grade salmon along with pantry ingredients, like sushi rice, butter and avocado. Every bite is crunchy, creamy and refreshing. It’s a great summer meal that I’ll be sure to eat outside next time!

Lemony potato salad

This potato salad is the first thing I made from Molly Baz’s most recent cookbook. The potatoes are doused in olive oil (rather than mayo) and topped with fresh herbs and red onions that have been marinated in lemon juice. We may have 100+ lemons on our tree, so I made this for a weekend lunch. It would be so nice alongside sausages, glazed ham, anything really.

Soba noodle salad with cucumber and avocado

Another salad that’s excellent on a Christmas plate is Hetty Lui McKinnon’s chilled soba noodle salad. The cucumbers are marinated in a Japanese-inspired dressing before soba noodles and avocado chunks are gently mixed through.

It’s also great as a packed lunch, for picnics and to accompany my favourite baked salmon (NYT Cooking gift link) for dinner.

Coconut saag

I bookmarked this Priya Krishna recipe (NYT Cooking gift link) after I saw it on Instagram. You can make it with tofu or paneer (I chose cheese) and it’s so green, creamy and delicious! The sauce is blended, which makes it easy to prep, as the ingredients only need a rough chop. It uses way more baby spinach than you think possible. We ate it with rice one night and roti another and I’ll definitely be making it again.

Hazelnut cake for breakfast

I went looking for a not-too-sweet cake recipe after a friend shared a photo of multiple cakes at a hotel breakfast buffet in Italy. My search led me to Torta di Nocciole, a beautiful hazelnut cake by Emiko Davies. Her recipe includes whipped egg-whites, so the cake is nutty yet light. Hazelnut and coffee go so well together and I highly recommend eating cake for breakfast, on tough weeks or just because it’s Friday.

Pavlova time

Pavlova is my favourite summer/Christmas dessert and I still feel new to baking them (I made my first in 2019!). I’ve only ever used Julia Busuttil Nishimurra’s recipe and it works so well, I’m often baking another within the week.

Some fun topping ideas:

We had a late dinner at Ogee in nipaluna/Hobart last month and ordered the pavlova for dessert. It came with whipped cream and sliced strawberries that tasted so good — turns out they’d been soaked in pet nat!

Last year a favourite bakery in town sold pavlovas at the start of summer, with lemon curd, cream, blueberries and edible flowers.

My fallback is always whipped cream, mango, raspberries and toasted coconut flakes.

Recipe requests!

Send me your recipe requests via the comments or email.

Q: What sourdough recipe are you using at the moment?

A: I am obsessed with Mary Grace Bread’s seed bomb loaf. It has sunflower, pumpkin and flaxseeds, which give it a very satisfying crunch.

Because it’s been genuinely warm (even in lutruwita/Tasmania!) I’ve been able to use the abandonment method, where you mix up all the ingredients, maybe do one lot of stretch and folds before going to work or bed for the night. Then the bread can be shaped and put in the fridge, ready to bake after a little rest. This ‘backwards’ or abandonment method only works if when my starter is super strong, when I’m feeding it once or twice per week.

Q: What was the key lime pie recipe you were making a few years ago?

A: It was from Alison Roman and I bought the exact pyrex pie dish she uses in the video so it would work perfectly. Mine looked just like the picture until I missed the plate while serving.

A food book I loved

I saw Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa on a Bon Appetit list of great books about food. It’s a cosy read with depth and one of my favourite books of the year. It could be a contemplative book to read between the Christmas and New Year period.

In the meantime, have a lovely summer break and I’ll catch you in January with my most-made recipes from 2023.