Thomas Keneally summer cookbook recipe: Ice cream with caramel and cherries
And then the dessert comes... It slides into that part of our experience that is pre-politics, pre-speciality, pre-peculiarity and even pre-sophistication.
Every day this summer, we’ll publish an exclusive recipe from a favourite Australian author, dishes made with affection for family, friends or someone special.
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Sometimes people are reduced to simple admiring organisms. You have been asked to a pre-Christmas lunch at which you know only some of the people. Delighted to see a friendly pair of them on a deck with latticed light through palms falling on their faces, you hope they will quickly make you friends with the others. The woman who has invited us to her house is herself far too busy inside, working on a recipe.
She appears only to tell us the dessert will be a bit rich, and to apologise briefly for that. She is a likeable grandmother who spent her childhood in Northumberland, in sullen terraces under grim skies, by whose light the lunch she is hosting today would be considered a subtropical dream. The web of respect in this company runs through the women, who are all friends of hers. But that means all the grandfatherly men are the strangers in the scene.
You find grounds for companionability though: A tanned granny turns out to have grown up in Homebush and Strathfield, and attended a school whose girls we savages of the boys’ highs found mysterious and desirable. We celebrate our former ignorance of each other in anecdotes of clumsy and old-fashioned longing.
But there are potential conflicts. What political strangeness does that jolly-faced man across the table subscribe to? Is he a man of this generation, or still keeping a candle burning for the limitations of the Menzian suburb? Can he be trusted not to say: “The trouble with young people today…”?
SUMMER COOKBOOK: THE WAY TO THE HEART
Minestrone (Mum’s vegetable soup)
This soup is a message of comfort via comfort food — delicious, nutritious, foolproof, cheap and feeds lots of people.
Tuna with pasta
Maybe I love this dish because it takes me back to when two pots and a black-and-white TV was enough, and there was nothing that could not fixed by a pint and a shared laugh.
Made-in-Minutes Goan Prawn Curry with Spinach
I love curries and this one is simple, with lots of flavour and a wonderful, creamy, coconut base.
Monster mash
My mash consistently makes women moan and gentlemen raise their eyebrows. The secret is simple muscularity.
Slow-cooked rabbit
A couple of decades ago I started to collect rabbit recipes from here and across the world, and ended up with hundreds.
Sri Lankan omelette
This is my favourite meal in the whole world. In particular, Sri Lankan omelette is my go-to comfort food. I can make it quickly and eat it three times a day.
My Humble Pie is the greatest to exit an oven
It may be humble in terms of cost, but it is bold, brash, punchy and delectable with a Stroganoffish zest. It will change your life. Humbly.
Raspberry and elderflower trifle
This dish tells a story of my life. I grew up eating custard, real custard made from cornflour and eggs and milk, along with fools and flummeries.
A roast chicken comfort dish
I love the way the roasting smell fills the house. It reminds me of so many wonderful family dinners.
Beef keema
What I love about keema is how forgiving it is and how easy it is to make. This is the homely dish that introduced my children to their Pakistani side.
Triple ginger bar cake
This is cooked in a loaf tin and is flexible; delicious naked, slathered with butter, or more traditionally iced with a loose glace to become a perfect tea cake.
Peter Craven’s Duck a l’orange
Any kind of duck is grand but duck as the French do it, and especially duck a l’orange, is a joy forever.
Selvie’s chicken curry with curry leaves
When our spice couriers managed to get their contraband through customs, there was much celebrating – usually in the form of Mum’s fragrant chicken curry.
Ice cream with caramel and cherries
And then the dessert comes... It slides into that part of our experience that is pre-politics, pre-speciality, pre-peculiarity and even pre-sophistication.
Lamb scrag end neck chops stew
This is the meal I constantly cook because my husband will live on it quite happily for a week, saving me a lot of bother ... he is not a modern man.
Creme brulee with candied rhubarb
More than 30 years ago, I gave a formal sit-down dinner party for 30 people. Dessert was the piece de resistance, individual creme brulees with candied rhubarb.
Borsch for the busy person
With the right mix of ingredients, borsch is a tangy but sweet and belly warming mouthful of delight.
Virginia Woolf Brittle
The impact of Virginia Woolf Brittle on a current partner or potential mate, particularly when fed by hand and in combination with a reading in the late sun, cannot be overstated.
Wakame beurre blanc
This sauce has become such a staple that I douse all grilled, poached, or pan-fried seafood in it at all times of the year.
Lemon Chicken
When our children were growing and my wife Steph was teaching evening classes, lemon chicken was the go to meal – simple and tasty.
Crispy Latkes
Creamy mashed, crispy smashed, jacket roasted and anointed with butter, pan fried with sliced onions, deep-fried to limpness, over-salted and wrapped in newsprint – however they come, I love potatoes.
Lamb Moussaka Therapy
Imagine a dish as therapeutic to eat as a lasagne, but instead of beef it’s made with lamb and has layers of potato and eggplant as the pasta sheets … Imagine no more, champions!
Odd couple share recipe for great summer reading
They’re one of the less likely duos to be found discussing the filleting of trout or basting of chicken – but Tom Keneally and Nat’s What I Reckon have all bases covered.
Summer Cookbook
Australia’s favourite authors share their most meaningful recipes.
The fact the Northern Beaches are thick with entrepreneurs might mean you could be required to endure an undistinguished but intense lecture on trade unions. On the other hand, he might like cricket and we can lament together the inroads hit-and-giggle T20 has brought to the holiness of the Test! Limited over cricket, you can riff, has brought a new level of fielding and batting expertise to Tests, by phenomenal men such as Ponting and Gilchrist. You’re all ready to slice and dice this topic.
And some men in the know, receiving again an offhand warning about the dessert’s richness from the amiable Northumbrian boss of the table, go easy on seconds.
And then the dessert comes. It slides into that part of our experience that is pre-politics, pre-speciality, pre-peculiarity and even pre-sophistication. It is childlike, it is undogmatic yet makes everyone a cobber and everyone a dreamer. And it bespeaks the old sumptuousness of Christmas.
We get the recipe. Most of us won’t make it.
But if you serve it once to children…
½ cup dried cranberries
75g pitted prunes
175ml port
120g speculaas (or use ginger thins)
15g unsalted butter
600ml pure thin cream
395ml can condensed milk
1 tbsp lemon juice
¾ cup chopped walnuts toasted (or pistachio kernels)
½ cup brown sugar, tightly packed
Caramel sauce
1 cup of brown sugar firmly packed
½ cup pouring cream
100g butter
1 tsp vanilla
1. Line a 12cm x 26cm x 8cm deep terrine with plastic wrap, leaving enough overhang to cover the top completely.
2. Pulse dried fruit in a food processor to roughly chop. Combine in bowl with port and set aside for two hours.
3. Whiz speculaas in food processor to fine crumbs, add melted butter to combine. Whisk two cups cream to soft peaks.
4. In a separate bowl, lightly beat condensed milk and lemon juice together. Fold whipped cream into condensed milk mixture, then fold in drained mixture and nuts.
5. Spread a third of the cream mixture over the base of the lined terrine, then top with half the biscuit mixture. Repeat, finishing with remaining third of the cream mixture. Enclose with plastic wrap, then freeze overnight.
Caramel sauce
1. Stir ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat for 5 minutes or until smooth.
2. To serve, invert terrine onto a serving plate and slide out the ice cream. Spoon cooled caramel over it. Decorate with fresh cherries.
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Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 and his first novel was published in 1964. His latest, published in November 2022, is Fanatic Heart. Earlier works include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler’s Ark (which became the Academy Award-winning movie, Schindler’s List) and The People’s Train. He has won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Prize, the Mondello International Prize and has been made a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, a Fellow of the American Academy, recipient of the University of California gold medal. He’s also been on an Australian stamp, and he’s widely considered a national living treasure.
Fanatic Heart by Thomas Keneally, Vintage Books