Bill's Sydney Food

Slight change for my blog this year. I will continue to make at least one recipe (hopefully more) out off each new delicious. magazine that comes out. However, my project for this year is Bill's Sydney Food. I bought this fantastic book a couple of months ago now and I am in love with it. It is a gorgeous book with wonderful photos of both food and Sydney. The recipes are all from the menu of Bill Granger's bills cafe. On my first reading of the book I could see myself making almost everything from the book. So for this year I plan to make every recipe from this book. There are a number of seafood recipes but I decided early this year that I really want to include more seafood in my diet. Some of the recipes, especially the seafood ones, will be difficult to source the fresh ingredients for but I will do my best.

I have started off with the first recipe in the book, Ricotta Hotcakes with Honeycomb Butter, however I didn't follow it exactly. It was kind of a spur of the moment decision to make the recipe so I didn't have time, or the ingredients, to make the honeycomb butter. Instead I made a blueberry compote with a punnet of frozen blueberries, a sprinkle of sugar and a drizzle of vanilla. I cooked them over a low-medium heat, squashing some of the berries as it cooked. I thickened it very slightly with a touch of cornflour in a little bit of water. It was the perfect accompaniment to the wonderfully light, fluffy and delicious hotcakes. I just love pancakes/hotcakes. They evoke a raft of childhood memories. My overseas grandparents used to make pancakes every Sunday morning. My memories are of my grampa cooking the pancakes on the amazing electric flat plate griddle that they had. ( I would love to own one like it but have never seen anything like it) My gramma would cook the bacon and fry the eggs. Plenty of homemade butter, home made jams, jellies and syrups were on the table to eat it all with. If you weren't up for the first cooking, then everything was there for you to cook your own later on. Hmmm....I might just make myself some pancakes for breakfast tomorrow. 

Ricotta Hotcakes with Honeycomb Butter 

Ingredients 
 

Hotcakes

• 1 1/3 cups Ricotta
• 3/4 cup Milk
• 4 Eggs separated
• 1 cup Plain Flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking powder
• 1 Pinch of Salt
• 50 g Butter
• fresh strawberry halved
• icing sugar for dusting

Honeycomb Butter

• 250 g unsalted Butter softened
• 100 g sugar honeycomb crushed with a rolling pin or a Crunchie bar
• 2 tablespoons Honey

Method 

Hotcakes

1. Place ricotta, milk and egg yolks in a mixing bowl and mix to combine.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.
3. Add to the ricotta mixture and mix until just combined.
4. Place egg whites in a clean dry bowl and beat until stiff peaks form.
5. Fold egg whites through batter in two batches, with a large metal spoon.
6. Lightly grease a large non-stick frying pan with a small portion of the butter and drop 2 tablespoons of batter per hotcake into the pan (don't cook more than 3 per batch).
7. Cook over a low to medium heat for 2 minutes, or until hotcakes have golden undersides.
8. Turn hotcakes and cook on the other side until golden and cooked through.
9. Transfer to a plate and quickly assemble with other ingredients.
10. Stack 3 hotcakes on a plate and top with strawberries and a slice of honeycomb butter.
11. Dust with icing sugar.

Honeycomb Butter

1. Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth.
2. Shape into a log on plastic wrap, roll, seal and chill in a refrigerator for 2 hours.
3. Store leftover honeycomb butter in the fridge for up to 24 hours, or in the freezer - it's great on toast.