Recently, Graham O'Loghlin of Yarralumla made a loaf of coconut bread to serve to friends at afternoon tea. He asked if I had ever eaten at bill's cafe in Darlinghurst and, because I had, he gave me a takeaway slice before the guests arrived. The recipe came from a weekend magazine for which Bill Granger was guest chef.
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At a cafe lunch for nine of us a fortnight later, Graham generously brought another loaf sliced for everyone to take home and toast it.
In The Canberra Times on November 19, a news report stated "Mr Morrison presented Mr Suga [the Japanese Prime Minister] with a Bill Granger cookbook ... Mr Suga, who enjoys the ricotta pancakes served at Granger's cafe in Tokyo's Ginza district, is understood to have loved the gifts."
The scrumptious recipe for the coconut bread is published in Bill Granger's latest book Australian Food (photography by Mikkel Vang, Murdoch Books, $49.99) and we have been given permission to share it with you. As Granger explains, when they opened in Darlinghurst in 1993 he wanted to bake a daily loaf to serve as a variation on banana bread. "This foolproof coconut bread came from one of our cooks, who learnt it from a Sri Lankan chef."
Bill Granger's coconut bread
Ingredients
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
300ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
375g plain flour, sifted
3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
150g caster sugar
150g shredded or desiccated coconut
75g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
To serve:
unsalted butter
icing sugar
Method
1. Grease the sides and line the base of a 21x10cm loaf tin with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan).
2. Mix together the eggs, milk and vanilla. Stir together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar and coconut in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre, gradually stir in the egg mixture until just combined. Add the melted butter and stir until just smooth, being careful not to overmix.
3. Pour into the loaf tin and bake for one hour, or until a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean. Leave in the tin to cool for five minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool before slicing.
4. Butter and sprinkle with icing sugar to serve.
Tip: The coconut bread is easily frozen. Cut into slices first and slip a piece of baking paper between each slice. Store in an airtight container in the freezer and toast straight from frozen.
Makes 8-10 thick slices.
Power of the avocado
Lots of readers sent emails about the food their worms most enjoyed (Kitchen Garden, November 10). Bananas were top but many said rockmelon so a friend gave me a couple of chunks leftover from his fruit salad and I placed them on the compost pile. They disappeared overnight.
It is reported that honeydew melons were grown (with difficulty and at great expense) in Tudor England but Charles Darwin in 1881 did not record melons as a favourite worm food.
My favourite response came from Christine Lancaster of Lyneham who wrote, "The earthworms in my two farms totally devour avocado. Within 30 minutes they clump around it and in no time it is all gone. So when I get an off avo at least I know there will be happy worms."
Beware of "avocado hand" a knife injury recorded widely in Great Britain and the United States from people trying to remove the stone.
As you eat your breakfast, note that Bill Granger was apparently the first person to put avocado on toast on a cafe menu. A good read as you munch is A cultural history of the avocado by Guy Kelly (July, 2018, BBC Three online) with great illustrations by editorial cartoonist Rebecca Hendin of a Spanish conquistador, a flapper and a cyclist with avocado bodies - the latter, in lycra, is holding a bike above his head.
Jammed
Following a delivery by me to a front porch, a friend emailed to say, "Found the fig jam ... many thanks! We were just on our way to nursery for anti-snail stuff. Just read about Nigella saying she had bought some in Oz to take back to London!".
I was mystified. Surely snail pellets were sold in London and, anyway, would they be allowed on a plane?
Foolish Susan: of course she meant the burnt fig jam and I found the article by Latika Bourke which said that Nigella Lawson brought back to London six jars of Maggie Beer's burnt fig jam which she uses in her Christmas bread-and-butter pudding recipe. Nigella had been a guest judge on MasterChef Australia.
Bemused, my friend bought another jar of Maggie Beer's burnt fig jam and delivered it to my door. It is rather like a paste.