Perfect pastry for the tropics © Clare Richards 2009 - 2010
Pastry can easily be a very ordinary thing. Too hard, too soft, too stodgy, too thick when cooked; the dough too sticky and wet when mixed, or too liable to melt on you when rolled out. Add to that the very different cooking conditions of tropical climates, with long periods of the year with consistent heat and humidity, and it becomes even more difficult.
So I’ve been trialling and researching, and have come up with a recipe that is dead easy to prepare, works consistently, works on a hot or humid day, and produces a pastry that can be rolled thin, that melts in your mouth, and yet holds firm when filled and when cut.
It’s so good that you’ll have to wait until my cookbook Tropical Cuisine: Cooking in Clare’s Kitchen comes out mid 2010 to get the recipe. For now, here’s a photo of a durian tart I made with the perfect pastry for the tropics.
© Clare Richards 2009 – 2010
Moreton Bay bugs and lobster, then this © Clare Richards 2009
It is a quiet, still, warm Boxing Day morning. The fridge is a lot emptier than yesterday with only some ham, a little turkey, 1/2 a tropical rocklobster and a succulent slice of local wild barramundi in there awaiting further munching. I’ll probably play with making a champagne jelly with some of the leftover booze. Other leftovers of BBQ’ed squid, prawns, barra and tropical sago pudding went home with family.
Mum is with me for Christmas, and today and tomorrow we bake for a High Tea photo shoot of some biscuits, cakes and desserts. But before that we’ll be having a swim and a leisurely breakfast prior to launching back into work mode.
After the bake-off I’ll list a few recipes here, but for today I’m just here to say hello, and hope that your Christmas and New Year is unfolding as a relaxed and lovely time.
Our family has been munching this banana bread since I remember, and like the rest of my family I’ve never been an immaculate cake maker. More often than not they end up like this one, so I have no interest in entering the Rosy Levy Berenbaum league. But it tastes great, and lasts well.
If you want to add some extra moisture and decadence, serve slices topped with butter or the lime cream cheese topping.
This recipe will be in my cookbook Tropical Cuisine: Cooking in Clare’s Kitchen.
- © Clare Richards 2009 Family banana bread
Family banana bread recipe
6 medium or 4 large bananas
60g butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp bicarb soda mixed into 1/2 cup milk
2 cups self-raising flour
pinch salt
Mix all ingredients together except flour until well incorporated. Sift flour then mix through batter. Pour into a greased medium sized bread or cake tin and cook in a preheated oven at 180oC for 40 minutes. Check with skewer to see if batter is set, and if not cover with foil and cook for up to another 20 minutes. If using fan forced oven the banana bread may be ready within 40-45 minutes. Serve with butter or lime cream cheese topping.
© Clare Richards 2009
- © Clare Richards 2009 Lime cream cheese topping
Lime cream cheese topping
250g cream cheese
juice of 2 limes
grated rind of 3 limes
1/3 to 1/2 cup of castor sugar
Mix above 4 ingredients together in a food processor until the mixture is smooth and light. Keep aside as much as you think you’ll need for this cake, and place the rest into portion sized containers and into the freezer for the next cake that comes along.
© Clare Richards 2009
- © Clare Richards 2009 Sweet potato, papaya, lime & passionfruit salad
I love papaya for breakfast, but it is not very sustaining on its own. Sweet potato is amazing in its capacity to keep you going for hours and hours, but can be a bit on the heavy side to eat on its own for breakfast. This recipe combines them along with lime juice and passionfruit, and makes for a great breakfast. Soaking the sweet potato in lime juice and cubing them small into 1cm pieces makes it creamy and light, a great mix with the succulence of ripe papaya.
This recipe will be published in my cookbook Tropical Cuisine: Cooking in Clare’s Kitchen.
Sweet potato, papaya, lime and passionfruit salad
For two serves allow:
1 medium purple-veined white sweet potato
1/2 medium ripe red papaya (I like the Papua New Guinea and Hawaiian varieties best)
2 limes
4 passionfruit
yoghurt to serve if you wish
The night before while making dinner, peel and cube the sweet potato into 1cm pieces. The white flesh will oxidise and brown quickly so if you want to avoid this, rub the slices with a cut lime as you go. Place the cubes into a steamer over already boiling water and steam for about 15 minutes until the cubes are cooked through.
Take off heat and place sweet potato into a container and squeeze the lime juice over and toss through well. Leave to marinate for about 1/2 hour, tossing occaisionally if you can. After that, pour off any excess lime juice and place sweet potato in the fridge. This mix will keep happily for several days, so you can increase the amount you cook at one time and have enough prepared for several days breakfasts.
At breakfast, for each person place the cubes of 1/2 a sweet potato into a bowl and cube a 1/4 of a papaya over them, then the pulp of 2 passionfruit. Serve with yoghurt if you like, but I love the clean flavours of this salad on their own.
© Clare Richards 2009

- © Catseye Productions
I don’t know what this process has been like for others, but one side effect of recipe testing is that I don’t always have the time or energy to make myself a really good meal through the day, as I’m distracted with researching and testing ingredients and recipes.
Not often being in the mood to eat cake for lunch ( I know that would be fine for some, but I’m a savoury gal by nature) I turn to quick combinations from my larder to feed me while I continue on.
Today it was 4 luscious wedges of roast jap pumpkin from 2 nights ago, with their crunchy skin on, with a light swipe of sambal ulek on each. Sweet, caramels from the roasting, and the saltiness and heat of the chilli sambal satisfied my hunger and my culinary sensibilities. Now I’ll get on with cooking!
© Clare Richards 2009
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