I know I’ve written about tomatoes before for WHB, but I thought I’d revisit this fruit to share with you my attempts at growing them in a pot on our balcony.

The Grosse Lisse tomato is apparently a very popular cultivar in Australia. It usually yields medium to large fruit and is said to be a very reliable plant. The one we purchased from a nursery started off really well. We were advised to house it in a fairly large pot and to stake it once it started growing taller. In the following weeks it shot up in leaps and bounds and soon little yellow flowers were making an appearance. Exciting times. It wasn’t long before the first fruit started appearing. The very first was also the largest. At this point, it seemed to take forever but it grew and grew and eventually started to form a blush of red on it’s skin.

Then one morning, I got up, peered out the window to say hello to the Big T and it was gone. All that was left was a bit of stalk and a dangly bit of red flesh; an early bird’s breakfast. The horror. I, and the plant, never recovered fully from that event. The fruit and flowers that sprang willingly from the branches seemed to dwindle to a bundle of dried brown twigs and finally, we were left with a small fruit that we harvested early and allowed to ripen quietly on the kitchen counter.

Factoring in the costs involved such as buying the pot, potting mix, fertiliser etc. and including the amount of love poured over the plant (which was priceless, like MasterCard would say), I’ve calculated that this little tomato, weighing in at 30g, had cost us $50 to create. In other words, if you were to get it from the store, it would have been going for $1666/kg! Like the $100 hamburger and the $1000 brownie, this singular and only tomato to eventuate from the plant we nurtured has become a luxury item in it’s own right.

So I’ve told B that after this, we’re not attempting to grow our own tomatoes anymore. The very poor return, and emotional cost involved, means we should stick to the easier stuff.. like parsley. In the meantime, there are several ways to enjoy a $50 tomato. The most obvious way would be to slice it and sprinkle it with a good olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a little seasoning. You could also cut it in half, season it well and dry the halves in the oven. You never know when you might need two pieces of oven dried tomatoes for a dish. Or you could eat it the Spanish way. Take a toasted piece of bread (it’d have to be a rather small piece, considering the size of the tomato), rub the toasted surface with garlic, then rub the tomato into the bread. Season with olive oil and salt, and what you have is effectively similar to a bruschetta, except it’s called Pan con Tomate or Pan amb Tomaquet. Top your Pan with thin slices of Serrano (or Iberico) ham if you have any, for that extra touch of luxury.

This month’s WTSIM revolves around all things gloriously yeasty. My contribution is my first attempt at a British treat, the humble Chelsea bun.

Like Harold Crick, the familiar taste of a Chelsea bun, sticky with sugar and plump with dried fruit, can sometimes feel like a life saver. Not to be giving too much importance to baked goods in the day to day tribulations of life, but it’s good to stop and smell the cinnamon every once in awhile.

When B and I watched Stranger than Fiction, I marvelled at the fact that it wasn’t just a movie that exceeded my expectations due to the clever writing and wonderful acting, but here was a character, Ana Pascal, whom I kind of also identified with. Having dropped out of college, she goes about life the only way she knows how : following her passion for baking and feeding people; bringing cookie-crumbed smiles to their faces. (And is it just me who thinks that it’s incredibly romantic to receive a bunch of ‘flours’ from a guy?)

People sometimes ask me how I got into the whole cooking thing. To be honest, there was no direct path or eureka moment. No blinding bright light; no bag of sugar that rained down from the sky. And no big plan, I’m afraid. Give me a simple life and a peaceful death, as the Sundays might say. I’d always loved to cook and bake, for others. When I graduated from uni, I fell into it on a full time basis and thought I would see where it could lead from there. Several years down the track and I’m still enjoying it. There are some aspects of the industry I don’t completely agree with but I’m sure everyone gets a bit of that, in whatever job they’re in. And occasionally you will taste the bitter sting of someone’s angry words when mistakes are made, but all you can do is try the best you can even if that’s not always considered good enough.

So yesterday, I found myself cracking 130 eggs, to be mixed with 5.6kg of sugar and the juice of too many hand-squeezed lemons for some tarts. I also used about 9.3kg of Valrhona chocolate in preparation for a special dessert – and that’s barely 50% of the task completed thus far! It’s currently an adventure of calculator-driven proportions.

Despite this, crazily enough, I can still come home after a long week and feel like doing a bit of baking on my days off. Hence my blog, and these buns. I didn’t grow up with Chelsea buns, but I did have quite a few glazed hot cross buns and raisined snails as a kid, and Chelsea buns seem to be a combination of these. According to Sue Lawrence, whose recipe I used, these buns originate from The Chelsea Bun House in Chelsea (hence the name), and were so popular during the eighteenth century that there were often long queues of people waiting to buy these buns.

They are pretty easy to whip up. All you really need is a bit of time to let the dough prove. The result is not so much life changing, rather life affirming, which should be a good enough reason to try making these at least once 🙂

For this week’s WHB which Anh of Food Lover’s Journey is hosting, I thought of making something with lemon verbena. There is a thriving pot of the herb on the balcony that hasn’t truly been utilised yet. But somehow when I went to the grocery store for inspiration, I ended up with a selection of pears instead. Being Autumn, it seems quite appropriate to be making something pear related. The William and Beurre Bosc pears are my favourites to use when baking.. or snacking. B’s mom always has a few Beurre Bosc pears in a fruit basket in her kitchen. I love them when they are still crisp, but they’re also great when very ripe and you can sink your teeth into them like you would a peach. The Red D’Anjou on the other hand is a bit of a poser. It has a gorgeous deep red coloured skin, and is just as juicy, but doesn’t quite have the depth of flavour as say, the William pear.

These pears, being quite ripe, were diced and scattered on top of a buttery cake batter, which was then topped with almond meal and a cinnamon butter coating, then baked. Sounds utterly butterly, I know, but it really doesn’t taste like it’s all that bad for you! This recipe is an adaptation of one by chef Daniel Alps. He recommends having the cake warm, with custard or whipped cream… that is, if you can wait that long for the cakes to cool down to ‘warm’, before attacking one with a fork 🙂

Mini Pear and Cinnamon Cakes :

275g + 65g unsalted butter, softened
250g + 50g caster sugar
50g brown sugar
200g plain flour, sifted
5 eggs, at room temperature
100ml milk
2-3 small pears, peeled, cored, cut into large dice
80g almond meal
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Grease and line the bases of a 12-hole muffin tray. Preheat the oven to 180’C.

Beat together 275g butter and 250g of the sugar until pale and creamy. Add 3 of the eggs one by one, beating well to combine. Fold in the flour and then stir in the milk to achieve a smooth batter. Spoon the batter into the muffin tray, and top with the pear pieces. Sprinkle the almond meal on top of this.

Heat the 65g butter with the remaining caster and brown sugars in a pan until the butter melts. Whisk in the 2 eggs to combine. Spread this evenly over each mini cake mixture and bake in the oven for approximately 25 minutes, or until the cakes are cooked.