Not deterred by the lack of oven I was still keen to participate in this months Sweet Adventures Blog Hop.  Hosted by JJ from 84th&3rd, the theme for this hop is Cocktail Party.  I love the idea of cocktail party food AKA cute, bite sized morsels. This inspired me to create cute, bite sized dessert, with a dash of alcohol thrown in to further enhance the cocktail theme.

Limoncello is one of my favourite tipples, added to lemon curd it makes for a great lemon meringue tart. Now I would normally make my own pastry but without a reliable oven I had to opt for a bought pastry.  I always find bought pastry a little too thick, but with the amount of curd and meringue in the tarts it was actually a good ratio.

This is a great assembly line dessert.  I made the lemon curd so I could use the Limoncello, but you could use ready made curd, then the only part you need to make is the Italian meringue.

Start by making the Italian meringue, then pipe some lemon curd into the tart cases and pipe the meringue on top.  I finished the meringue with a mini blow torch.  The browning of the meringue isn’t critical as the sugar syrup cooks the egg white when you make the meringue, so it’s perfectly safe to eat as is, but it does make it look nicer and give a slightly caramelised flavour.

Using Limoncello in the curd gives it a grown up kick and certainly makes this a great desert to serve up at a cocktail party. The following recipe makes enough to fill 24 tarts with some left over.

Limoncello Curd

50ml Limoncello
30ml lemon juice
125g caster sugar
80g unsalted butter
2-3 beaten eggs (around 125g)

Put the Limoncello, lemon juice, caster sugar and butter in a heat proof bowl and put over a pan of simmering water (do not allow the water to touch the bottom of the bowl). Stir until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved.

Gradually add the beaten egg to the mixture and continue to stir over the heat until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Do not allow the water to get too hot otherwise the egg will scramble.   The curd should take about ten to twenty minutes to thicken.

Set aside to cool before filling your tart shells. I halved this recipe for Italian meringue and I still had plenty left over to make into meringue kisses.

Salads are the obvious choice for a low calorie dinner but even salads can weigh in at more than 300 calories per serve.  Take the the trusty Caesar Salad, as tasty as it is with it’s crispy croutons, salty bacon, creamy sauce and shaved cheese you would be hard pressed to make a portion for under 500 calories per serve.  I am quite partial to a Caesar Salad though so I’ve had a stab at adapting it to fit the 300 calorie requirement.  No it’s not as good as the real deal, but swapping the cheese and bacon for asparagus significantly reduces those calories. It’s another great option for a fast day dinner and with the quantity of lettuce you can eat, it looks like a generous plate of food!

Chicken, Asparagus and Egg Salad (serves 2, 326 calories per serve)

2 large eggs (55g)
160g asparagus spears (weight after woody ends removed)
200g baby Cos lettuce
200g chicken breast, skin and fat removed
spray oil
salt and pepper
60g reduced fat Greek style yoghurt
3-4 anchovy fillets (8g)
10ml lemon juice
5-10ml water

Start by hard boiling the eggs.  Put the eggs in a small pan and cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Once the water starts to boil time for 4-6 minutes depending on how hard you want the yolk to be.  I was using my mini Frizzle eggs so I boiled them for 2 minutes as they are half the size of a shop bought egg.

Blanch the asparagus in the water with the eggs for the last minute. Once the eggs have been boiling for the required amount of time drain them and cool immediately in cold water.

While the eggs and asparagus are cooling roughly chop the lettuce and place in a large bowl.

Heat a spray of oil in frying pan on medium high heat. Thinly slice the chicken breast and fry for a couple of minutes on each side until cooked through. Set aside while you make the dressing.

To make the dressing put the anchovies, yoghurt and lemon juice into a mini food processor and blend to a smooth sauce.  Season to taste with salt and pepper and a 5-10ml of water to make a dressing consistency.  If you don’t have a mini food processor you can chop the anchovies and stir through the other ingredients, this make a more rustic dressing.

Toss the lettuce, asparagus and chicken with nearly all of the dressing.  Halve the eggs and serve on top of the salad and drizzle with the remainder of the dressing.

I was a bit apprehensive as I’ve never made jam before but it really was very easy.  My only comment is, it was very sweet and I tried eating it with cheese, but it just wasn’t savoury enough for me.  I have strict rules about mixing sweet and savoury, I usually love store bought fig paste with cheese, but I didn’t quite manage to achieve it with this recipe. However, if I called it jam (that conforms to my rules) and put it in a sweet recipe it is delicious.

The second phase of the inspiration for this recipe was from another trip to the Hawkesbury Harvest farmers market.  This time I was lucky enough to chat to Kim and Ian Massingham about their buffalo farm and cheese making.  Once we’d finished talking all things cheese the conversation changed to ice cream and I had the chance to try some of the rich and creamy buffalo milk ice cream that Kim makes, including a fig ice cream made with one of the other producers fig jam.  Bingo! A use for 500 plus grammes of fig paste that needs eating in my fridge.

Here is my recipe for fig jam semifreddo.  If you don’t want to make the fig jam I’m sure you could substitute it with a store bought jam, or even better, some homemade jam from the Hawkesbury Harvest farmers market.  Once made I put half of the mixture into a loaf tin lied with cling film so that I could serve it easily in a slice.  The rest went into my usual ice cream tub to be served with berries and meringue, a recipe I found in the Cumulus cook book.

Fig Ripple Semifreddo (adapted from Gourmet Traveller)

9 egg yolks
250g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
1 tablespoon water
600ml pure cream
200g creme fraiche
200g Fig Jam or Fig Paste

Put egg yolks, caster sugar, vanilla bean paste and the water in a heat proof bowl and whisk until pale and fluffy and tripled in volume. This should take about five minutes.  Once it has reached the right consistency, either transfer to a clean bowl and whisk until cool. This will take about 2 minutes.  Personally, I don’t have enough bowls and don’t like washing up enough to dirty another bowl so I place the hot bowl into the sink partially filled with cold water and continue to whisk until cool.

Meanwhile, in another bowl or stand mixer, whisk the cream and creme fraiche together until soft peaks form.  Fold the cream into the cooled egg mixture, then mix through the fig jam.  The fig jam was very sticky and wanted to stick together in a big sticky ball so in order to try and distribute the flavour evenly I put the jam into a piping bag and piped a spiral of jam then stirred.  I didn’t get the desired ripple affect but the jam is evenly distributed and you get the surprise nuggets of flavour that you would with a commercially made ripple ice cream.

Place the mixture into a tub for freezing or line a loaf tin with cling film and place the mixture in the loaf time for freezing. This means you can remove easily and slice for serving if you prefer that to a scoop.

Alternatively served with mixed berries and meringue.

This recipe for agnolotti makes a nice change from ravioli or tortellini and they are actually easier to make, which means they are a good starting point for anyone who hasn’t made fresh pasta before.  Make sure you find good eggs if you are going to make fresh pasta. My pasta is so orange because of the amazing fresh eggs I collect from my yard each day, it really does make a difference.

In this recipe I use both whole milk ricotta and whey ricotta. The whole milk is firmer so lends itself better to the filling and the creamy, whey ricotta is better for drizzling. It is not necessary to track down both if you are buying its just a great way to use up all my homemade stuff.

Pea, Bacon and Ricotta Agnolotti (serves 2)

For the Pasta:
100g Tipo 00 flour
pinch of salt
1 egg
1 egg yolk

For the Filling:
125g frozen peas
75g Ricotta
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
50g finely chopped smoked bacon
25g grated Parmesan
seasoning to taste

To serve:
50g frozen peas
Whey ricotta
chopped, fresh mint and basil
Parmesan
olive oil

First make the pasta dough. Put the flour and salt in a bowl and make a well in the centre of the flour. Put the egg and the egg yolk in the well in the flour and beat with a fork. Gradually incorporate the flour until it starts to form a dough then knead to make a soft elastic dough. Set aside in the fridge for half an hour while you make the filling.  Depending on the size of your eggs, you may need to add a little extra flour if the dough is too sticky, or a little extra water or olive oil if the dough is too dry.

To make the filling, fry the bacon until crisp and set aside to cool. Put the peas in a bowl and blanch them with boiling water for a couple of minutes until defrosted then transfer to a mini food processor with the olive oil, mint and basil. Blend until pureed then transfer to a bowl with the ricotta, lemon juice, Parmesan and bacon. Stir gently to combine and season to taste.

To make the agnolotti, roll the pasta dough out to the thinnest setting on the pasta machine. Working in batches, cut out circles of dough using a 5cm cookie cutter.  You have to work quite quickly to fill the pasta before it dries out too much, so I always find this is easier as a two man job, you can set up a bit of a production line then.

Place a teaspoon of the filling in the centre of the pasta disc. Brush a little water around the edge of the pasta then fold in half to enclose the filling.  Pinch shut to seal, making sure the pasta is firmly pressed together. I like to squeeze it flat to make the edge nice and thin. There’s nothing worse than fat pasta.  Repeat until you run out of pasta or filling.

The pasta shapes can now be covered and kept in the fridge until you are ready to eat them. They’ll be fine in the fridge for a couple of hours as long as you dust them in flour or semolina so they don’t stick together. Alternatively they freeze well, and can be boiled from frozen to cook when ready.

When you are ready to cook them, boil a large pan of salted water and cook for 2-3 minutes until the pasta shapes rise to the surface and are cooked to your liking. I like mine al dente so 2 minutes is usually plenty.

To serve, it is also nice to cook some peas with the pasta, then sprinkle with chopped, fresh mint, basil, Parmesan and a little more ricotta if you have some.  I also like a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

This dish makes a great light lunch or large entree.

When I first started writing my food blog and reading other food blogs I got a silly idea in my head that I couldn’t be a ‘real’ food blogger without mastering the art of the macaron.  When I decided this, I had never even eaten one, I was just seduced by all of the beautiful photos on the blogs I was reading.  In particular, the photos by Mardi at Eat.Live.Travel.Write and Stella from Brave Tart.  I had numerous attempts that you can read about here, here and here. If nothing else it is worth a look for the photos of the absolutely disastrous first batch that couldn’t even be scraped off the baking paper!

Having had a rest from my quest to make a successful batch of macarons I won a copy of Mad About Macarons by Jill Colonna and have finally plucked up the courage to give it one last go.  This was one last go because if they didn’t work this time, that was it, I was done with macarons.

Armed with a whole book dedicated to the little blighters the challenge was set.  As with all the other attempts I felt like I followed the recipe to the letter.  I knew some of my past mistakes, which included under mixing the batter, so I threw in a couple of extra stirs for good measure.

Once the egg whites have been whipped with the caster sugar and the almond meal and icing sugar have been added and thoroughly mixed through it is time to pipe.  I’m not well practiced in the art of piping so I drew circles on the baking paper so I could gauge the size. Despite this, the macarons still varied wildly in size.

The macarons were baked for 10-12 minutes without the fan on in the oven, so one tray were a little darker than the other.  I turned the fan off because I have had baked goods resembling the famous tower of Pisa due to the vicious strength of my fan.

When I eventually opened the oven I think the whole neighbourhood heard my squeals of delight when I discovered I had feet!  The macarons had risen to the perfect height to give the little lip at the bottom known as ‘feet’ in the world or macarons.

So the macaron shells aren’t strictly the lemon part of this dish, although I did colour them yellow to give the eater the impression of lemon.  The lemon flavour comes from the filling.  The recipe suggested a lemon butter cream or lemon curd filling.  With my new found love of curd, it had to be the lemon curd.  I followed the recipe I posted in February, but replaced the lime juice with lemon juice.

I roughly matched up the shells so I had even sized tops and bottoms.  I was super pleased with the results, but they weren’t perfect and I was left with a little point on each one from the piping.  I took my worries to the Twitterverse and sure enough, when the reply came, I should have mixed the batter even further, meaing when piped the pointy bit would disappear as the the mixture is slightly more fluid. Oh well. The results were good enough to bring me joy and encouragement for more macaron adventures. But here is my first confession, in order to photograph these little beauties I did have to slice off the pointy bit of half of the macarons so all of the bottoms had holes.

More practice for my piping skills. once I’d shaved the bottoms of half of the shells I piped some lemon curd into the centre of each one.  The instructions were not to pipe right to the edge so that when you press the shells together the filling doesn’t gush out of the sides but I may have erred on the side of caution and under filled.

Now for the magic. As instructed I resisted trying one immediately, carefully placing the finished macarons in an airtight container in the fridge.  According to the author of Mad About Macarons they need to be rested so that the flavour of the filling can infuse into the shell and the correct texture can be achieved.

Who can refuse a macaron for breakfast? Success. Not only was I pretty pleased with the look of the lemon macarons I even liked the taste and texture. Winner. I will be making macarons again.

This recipe makes a great picnic dish or light summer supper served with a nice salad. It also keeps well, so the leftovers (if there are any) make a great lunch the next day, although if you like your filo pastry crispy, it is best eaten straight out of the oven.

Potato and Artichoke Tart (serves 4- 6)

2 medium sized waxy potatoes (about 250g)
3 large eggs
275ml thickened cream
small handful thyme, leaves picked and finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
5 sheets filo pastry, halved
50ml olive oil
75g grated Jarlsberg cheese
280g jar artichoke hearts, drained and halved

Preheat the oven to 180C

Peel the potatoes and slice thickly (about 1/2 cm) and boil in salted water until just cooked, but not falling apart (about 3 minutes), set aside to cool. Beat the eggs then mix in the thickened cream, thyme and salt and pepper to taste.

Have all the filling items ready to go as you have to work quickly with the filo pastry.  Brush an 18cm loose bottom cake tin with olive oil and sit on a baking tray.  Place the first half sheet of filo pastry in the bottom of the oiled tin, ensuring there is some pastry draped over the edge of the tin then brush with olive oil. Turn the tin 90 degrees then place the next half sheet of filo pastry on top, again ensuring there is pastry draped over the edge and brush with olive oil. Turn the tin 90 degrees and continue this process until all ten pieces of filo pastry have been used and the pastry is overhanging all around the tin to make the edges of the pastry case. Brush the top layer with oil to help the layers stick ensuring the edges of the pastry that overhang are brushed in oil as well.

Place the sliced potatoes in a layer on the bottom of the pan and top with a layer of the grated cheese.  Pour the egg and cream mixture into the pastry case, on top of the potato and cheese. It should almost come to the top of the tin.  Carefully dot the artichoke heart halves into the cream mixture and press down gently so the artichokes are just covered by the cream.

Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes until the centre of the egg mixture is just set.  You may need to turn the tart around half way through cooking so the pastry browns evenly.

Serve warm from the oven or allow to cool and eat cold.

For this curd recipe, I have adjusted the quantities to suit the 6 small limes I had in the fruit bowl, but if you’d like to make more or do have a genuine glut of limes you could easily double the recipe.  This quantity does however make more than enough for us.  I like the homemade curd, but I’m not the sort of person who can spread it on toast or crumpets like most people seem to enjoy. The whole sweet and savoury thing just doesn’t work for me.  I have started to develop a sweet tooth though (my waistline is not thanking me), so with some leftover pastry from the freezer I made some lime and dark chocolate tarts.  You could also buy some ready made pastry shells from the supermarket, but I find the pastry in the shop bought version too thick for my taste, so prefer to make my own.

After blind baking the pastry shells leave them to cool.  Then put half of the curd into a piping bag and pipe into the cooled pastry shells, to fill two thirds of the shell.  Allow this to set, while you make a chocolate ganache, with cream and dark chocolate (there are loads of recipes online, I just picked one and made a small quantity).  Pipe the ganache on top of the tarts, and if you can wait long enough, allow the chocolate to set before eating. Delicious.

About half of this curd was also used to top by lime and ginger cheesecake. I’m pretty sure any kind of citrus could be substituted, just adjust the quantity of sugar to suit your own taste.

Lime Curd

160ml lime juice (from about 4-6 limes)
zest of 2 limes (removed before you juice!)
250g caster sugar
160g unsalted butter, cubed
5 eggs, beaten

Steralise some small jars if you are not going to use the curd immediately.  Boil the jars in a pan of boiling water for ten minutes then dry in a oven heated to 100 degrees Celcius.

Put the lime juice, rind, sugar and butter in a heat proof bowl and put over a pan of simmering water (do not allow the water to touch the bottom of the bowl). Stir until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved.

Gradually add the beaten egg to the mixture and continue to stir over the heat until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Do not allow the water to get too hot otherwise the egg will scramble.   The curd should take about ten to twenty minutes to thicken.

Once ready use as directed in the recipe or store in a jar for later.  Pour the curd into the sterilised jars. While the jars are still hot, seal the jars and allow to cool.  The lime curd will keep for about a month in the fridge as long as the seal isn’t broken. Alternatively the curd will keep in a bowl with cling film over the top.  Ensure the cling film touches the top of the curd so a skin doesn’t form.

Weekend breakfasts were one of the great things we discovered when we moved to Oz. The Poms aren’t very adventurous when it comes to breakfast and they certainly don’t make an event of it. The full English breakfast is basically a fry up of eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato, mushroom and possibly black pudding and also maybe some hash browns, baked beans and fried bread, also known as a heart attack on a plate.

I’d never been out for breakfast prior to 2006 so moving to Oz opened up a whole new world of breakfasts for me. Nowadays I’m quite partial to sweetcorn fritters, and the odd eggs Benedict, but my real favorite is baked eggs. So enough of the waffle, if you would like to recreate this at home here’s how I do it, and unless you get up really early I would suggest you make the tomato sauce on Friday night.

Baked Eggs (serves 2)

1/2 onion finely diced
1 tin plum tomatoes
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
4 eggs

Gently fry the onions in a medium saucepan until soft. Add the tin of tomatoes and simmer until reduces to a thick sauce, about 20-30 minutes. once thickened allow the sauce to cool, then place in the bottom of 4 small ramekins or two larger ones.  The sauce can be kept in the fridge until the next morning if you are being organised.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Make a small well in the centre of the tomato sauce so that the egg will sit nicely on top of the sauce. I crack each egg into a cup before I put it onto the sauce so that I make sure I get it in the right place without breaking the yolk. Pour the eggs onto the tomato sauce in each ramekin then bake in the preheated oven until the white is cooked but the yolk is still goey – about 12 minutes, unless you like your yolk firmer, in which case I would go for about 15 minutes.

Serve with crusty bread and butter or toast soldiers and enjoy your lazy weekend breakfast.

If you are eating breakfast closer to lunch time you might also want to fry some chorizo and add it to the tomato sauce making it a more substantial dish.  Great for brunch, but even I struggle with chorizo and its strong garlic flavour first thing in the morning!

I’ve had the Bentley cook book for a while now, but it’s not the easiest book in my collection to cook from. It is more of an experimental coffee table book. As I was browsing the pages recently, I noticed a recipe for a slow cooked egg. I was seduced by the glossy picture, with a yolk that looked like it would glug out on first cut, and with so many eggs to spare, it didn’t really matter if it didn’t quite work out.

So this recipe is not technically difficult, but it involves a bit of time and love.  As it turns out the yolk doesn’t glug with the first cut, but it is an amazing texture half way between hard boiled and soft boiled that I don’t think could be achieved in any other way.  So before you dismiss me as crazy, grab a thermometer and some fresh eggs and give it a go.

I have followed the cooking technique from the Bentley cook book, but have my friend at degustation voyage to thank for the accompaniment. I suggested the very obvious asparagus and truffle oil, but he suggested corn, bacon and Asian crispy anchovies. I have to confess I doubted the combination on the inside but I respected him enough to go with it, and I’m big enough to say it worked and I loved it. So thanks Keen, your recipe idea was awesome and I will be cooking it time and time again.

Not only was I lucky enough to cook with Keen, he also took me shopping and de-mystified some of the goods on the shelves of the Asian supermarket.  I now know where to go to buy some of the more unusual herbs and spices, such as cassia bark and some more exotic ingredients that I had never seen before such as dried squid and the dried anchovies that we used for this dish.

Here you have it, a recipe for slow cooked egg, inspired by Brent Savage at Bentley and a salad inspired by Keen at degustation voyage.  I have called the egg a poached egg because I don’t really have another name for it, but it’s not really poached, I’ve never experienced anything like it. You cook the egg in its shell like a boiled egg, but you cook it at a low temperature like sous vide cooking but without the bag.  The temperature is critical as 63C is apparently the temperature that cooks the white and yolk at the same time/rate without over cooking.

Slow Cooked Poached Egg with Corn Salad serves 4

4 fresh, free range eggs
1/4 red onion, finely diced
50g bacon lardons
1 large corn cob, kernels removed
1tsp capers
olive oil for frying
salt and pepper to taste
small handful of Asian dried anchovies, crushed in a mortar and pestle

Heat a pan of water to 63 degrees Celsius and maintain, measuring the temperature with a thermometer. Once the water has been heated to the correct temperature I can usually maintain it by turning the cook top down to the lowest setting. This would be more difficult if I had gas. I then increase heat gradually as it cools and add more cold water to the pan if it gets too hot.  So sadly you can’t really walk away from this but you don’t have to watch every second of the cooking time. Carefully place the eggs in the heated water and monitor for an hour and a half.

Meanwhile, make the salad.  Gently fry the diced onion and bacon, until the onion is translucent and the bacon is cooked through, then add the corn and continue to fry for a few minutes. Add the capers then season to taste.

To serve, divide the sweetcorn salad between four plates then carefully peel the eggs. The easiest way I found to peel the eggs was to gently crack the fatter end open, peel that half of the shelf off then gently tip the egg out onto the salad. The white should be set, but moist enough to slide out of the shell. Sprinkle with the crushed anchovies.

When I say one of his restaurants, what I actually mean is a branch of one of the Italian restaurant franchise that Jamie Oliver has put his name to.  Sadly, I don’t think Jamie will ever put in an appearance in the kitchen in Sydney, but you can’t say he hasn’t left his cheeky-chappy mark.

So what did I think? Well, I’m going to get it all out there from the get go.  This is what Jamie’s Italian is not:

1. a fine dining restaurant.
2. a place for a quiet, romantic meal for two.
3. somewhere to enjoy a long, lazy lunch.
4. a place to showcase amazing Italian food.

With that one out of the way, where there aspects that I liked? Of course there were, or I wouldn’t be writing this post. I am not one for writing negative posts for the sake of writing something. If I don’t like somewhere I just don’t write about it.

The highlight? I loved the mozzarella, in fact I might go as far as saying it is the best mozzarella I’ve eaten outside Italy.  It was rich and creamy and actually had flavour, unlike most of the mozzarella I buy here.  We ate the mozzarella as part of the vegetable antipasto plate, but if I went again I would order the mozzarella as a dish in its own right.

We also tried the meat antipasto platter. After my year of making meat, this was the obvious choice for me, so was my suggestion for the shared entree.  I’m sorry to write that I was a little underwhelmed by the cold meats.  Don’t get me wrong, there was nothing wrong with it, I just expect a little more from cured meats these days.

Despite having to wait half an hour for a table (you cannot book unless you have a party of 6 or more) the number of people in the restaurant did not slow the service down.  The food came quickly, in fact, perhaps a little too quickly and the waiter didn’t really have time to stop and answer my questions.  I also know from all the reading I have done that we were meant to receive a complimentary serve of bread, sadly this didn’t arrive, but by the time I remembered the moment had passed.

There were plenty of options on the menu to keep everyone happy for the mains.  There is a large choice of pastas, salads and other dishes.  We sampled the mussel linguine, buffalo ricotta ravioli and the prosciutto, pear and pecorino salad.  The pasta comes in an entree or main size.  I chose the entree size as I normally find restaurant pasta is served in very generous portions and I wanted to save room for dessert. However, the entree sized ravioli was very small and I think I could have had the main portion size and dessert. Thankfully the salad was completely the opposite; an extraordinarily generous portion, especially as the person ordering it was expecting something a little lighter.  I was happy to assist with a small plateful to help them out.

If I’m also going to critique this dinner properly I am also going to have to mention that technically the ravioli was not ravioli but actually agnolotti.  I believe ravioli is usually square or circular filled pasta, whereas this was semi circles of filled pasta, or agnolotti.  I understand why they do it; all the pasta is handmade on the premises so making agnolotti is much faster than ravioli, and I’m sure every second counts when you are feeding this many people on a daily basis.

I’m not usually a dessert girl, but on this occasion I was seduced by the dessert on the next table.  I had to try the chocolate ice cream with honeycomb.  There is  a daily selection of ice cream to choose from and you can choose up to three flavours. I went for chocolate and salted caramel. I passed on the white chocolate and chilli and doubled up on the chocolate instead.  The chocolate was delicious, the salted caramel was subtle.

The rest of the table didn’t need asking twice so we also sampled the Italian Bakewell tart and the creamy panacotta.  Not being a dessert aficionado I’m not sure how an Italian Bakewell tart differs from the traditional English dessert, so I will just have to take Jamie’s word for it on this occasion.

The overall experience made for a pleasant Saturday lunch.  There is a buzz of excitement in the atmosphere, and if you venture to the toilets you can see the chef’s at work on the way to the amenities.  The food is reasonably priced. For the three of us we paid $150 for three courses, including a bottle of wine. If you go with what it’s not in mind, you will probably have a good time.

Would I go back? Maybe if I was shopping in the city and wanted a quick bite to eat in somewhere a little nicer than the numerous shopping centre food halls. I guess price wise it is comparable to pub food, so a pub alternative in the city.  Will it stay this busy? I’m guessing yes. I don’t think there will be many regulars who go back time and time again, but there will be plenty of passing trade, especially from the tourists who want a recognisable, international destination.

If nothing else, Jamie’s Italian has inspired me to make some more ice cream at home. Following the success of my Christmas semifreddo, I decided to give chocolate semifreddo a go.  Again, it isn’t ice cream, because I don’t have an ice cream maker, but I reckon this comes a very close second.  It was so soft and creamy it felt very indulgent especially with the honeycomb that I made from a recipe on Citrus and Candy’s blog.  I also added a little rum to the semifreddo which made it feel a bit more grown up and good enough to serve for dessert at my last dinner party.

Chocolate Semifreddo

6 egg yolks
25ml dark rum
150g caster sugar
600ml pouring cream
200g dark chocolate

Whip the cream until soft peaks form and set aside.

Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar and rum, over a pan of hot water until the sugar is dissolved and the the egg yolks start to thicken. Do not allow the water to boil as you don’t want the eggs to scramble.  Transfer to a cold bowl, or set over ice and continue to whisk until cool.

Meanwhile melt the chocolate in a bowl over hot water and allow to cool.

Combine the cooled chocolate with the cooled egg mixture. The mixture is likely to stiffen, so stir in a couple of spoonfuls of the whipped cream to loosen the mixture then fold in the rest of the whipped cream. Put in a container and freeze for a minimum of six hours or overnight.

Serve with honeycomb.