While we chat over a cup of tea about Joan Bishop's new cookbook, she cuts a slice of tropical cake to try. (It's flavoured with pineapple, banana, cinnamon and star anise and the recipe was published in the ODT last week ). It was the second or third version she'd made. The first didn't have enough spice. This one had a tad too much, she felt, so there was yet another to be made to check she was happy with it before she sent in the finished recipe.
Her latest cookbook, A Southern Woman's Kitchen (Random House) to be released on Friday, includes many recipes that have been published in her monthly ODT food column over the past 25 years. Most have been recently retested and some tweaked, but there's also a new collection of slow-cooker recipes - after all, with several cookbooks on the topic to her name, Mrs Bishop is the queen of slow-cooking.
Those of us who cut her recipes out of the paper then can never find them when we want to make them, will be delighted to have them collected in this book, especially her baking recipes which are delicious, but healthier than many.
She says in the introduction to her recipe for slimline birthday brownies: "I recently read a recipe of Nigella Lawson's in which she extols the merits of chocolate brownies as a birthday cake, piled up in a rough and tumble pyramid spiked with birthday candles. So easy to make and so wonderful to eat. 'Yes', I thought, 'this sounds perfect'.
"Then I cast my eye down the list of ingredients: 375g butter, 375g chocolate, 6 large eggs, 500g sugar ... I very regretfully decided that this cake was not for us. The children would no doubt run off all those extra calories but we adults simply do not need all that fat and sugar."
It's something many of us also feel when we browse through cookbooks and drool at the tempting cakes and puddings.
However, where many would either make it anyway then feel guilty and worry about the extra cholesterol, or others just give up and not make it, Mrs Bishop decided to develop a healthier, fudgy chocolate brownie recipe.
And the same goes for many other cake and biscuit recipes.
One of her most popular is a rich, moist, fat-free Christmas cake which was selected by Helen Leach and Mary Browne as an example of a modern Christmas cake for their book The 12 Cakes of Christmas.
"I regard baking as a challenge, because I think it's much easier to make things taste nice if you can pile in the butter and chocolate and cream, but if you are trying to cut down a bit on some of those things, it's more difficult," she says.
She works on her baking recipes slowly over several months, making numerous versions, changing one thing at a time until they satisfy her.
"I enjoy the challenge of perfecting something that's absolutely scrumptiously delicious and is low-fat, and also I try to use oil instead of butter.
"Sometimes I can't get it right with oil and I have to go to a bit of butter, but about 70g would be my limit on that," she says.
"I have to bear in mind that Tony and I don't need too much cake. But I do like a little sweet something with a cup of tea and I don't buy biscuits because of all those bad fats and bad sugars and things."
Over the years, she and her husband Tony Reay realised that like most people reaching middle age, their blood pressure and cholesterol levels were rising, so she decided to modify their diet to cope with it.
And she finds most other people have similar problems or if they don't yet, it's never too early to start watching what you eat, she says.
But baking and slow-cooked foods are not the only recipes for which Mrs Bishop develops healthier versions. Her chicken liver pate is lightened with apple, but still has enough butter to let it set; her little corncakes are flavoured with green curry paste; her stifado, an aromatic Greek-style stew, has become a favourite of mine; and her golden potage, a delicious soup made with swedes, takes an underrated southern vegetable and makes something special of it.
In this book she has also been inspired by the Mexican use of dark chocolate in stews and casseroles - but it is important to use 70% chocolate or you won't get that extra dimension and the wonderful velvety depth of flavour, she says.
Another unusual combination is coffee in a beef dish, an idea she got from an old American recipe book, and another for cooking corned beef in Coca-Cola.
"I was horrified at myself, but it was delicious. There's half of me that thinks I don't quite approve of this, but it does work so well," she says.
Joan Bishop is proud to be a southern woman, proud of our heritage, our southern produce and the farmers market, and the four distinct seasons we have here - even if they sometimes come all in one day. She grew up here and attended Otago Girls' High School, Dunedin Teachers' College and the University of Otago.
Her mother was a good, plain cook, concerned to feed her family well, but who found her creative outlets as a potter and florist rather than in food.
"When I was about 16 my first boyfriend's parents had lived for many years in Malaysia, and Sunday night dinner at their house was an absolute revelation to me. I ate a proper curry for the first time with rice cooked the correct way and all the side dishes, and I was gobsmacked. Amazed."
She started to cook at home, but refused to let her mother show her how to do it, she says.
Later, as a young full-time mother herself, she attended many cooking classes and lived in California for a short time.
Back in Dunedin she became a demonstrator for Ralta, later Sunbeam, showing people how to use slow-cookers, food processors and electric frypans, all of which she wrote books about.
"I loved demonstrating. In those days you could easily have 100 people in front of you.
"People had bought a food processor and what were they going to do with it?
"They would flock to demonstrations and I realised after a year or so that I actually knew more about these appliances than almost anybody else did so I wrote it down."
When she started writing for the ODT 25 years ago, she puzzled over what she might write about.
"I remember thinking most of us live relatively similar lives, so I thought if we are eating it in our lives other people are probably wanting to eat that as well. And so I really wrote about what we were eating - and I still do."
Chorizo and feta muffins
Makes 12 large muffins or 24 mini muffins
I often make a batch or two for the freezer, to have on hand for unexpected guests.
Sometimes I make mini muffins, which are an ideal size to serve as a nibble with drinks before dinner. The larger size muffins are perfect to have with mid-morning coffee or as an accompaniment to lunch or brunch - a treat with soup or salad.
Ingredients
280g self-raising flour
½ tsp baking soda
100g feta cheese, crumbled or chopped
75g cured chorizo sausage (approximately 1½ sausages, chopped)
½ cup snipped chives or spring onions
½cup standard milk
¾ cup plain, unsweetened yoghurt
⅓ cup neutral oil (like rice bran)
2 large eggs, size 7, lightly beaten
Method
Preheat the oven to 190degC. Grease or spray 12 large 100ml-capacity muffin pans or 24 mini-muffin pans.
Sift the flour and baking soda into a bowl. Stir in the feta, chorizo and chives or spring onions. In another bowl, beat together the milk, yoghurt, oil and eggs. Stir this into the dry ingredients, taking care not to overmix. The batter should be lumpy.
Spoon the mixture into the muffin pans, filling each nearly to the top.
Bake for 30-35 minutes (a little less for mini muffins) until lightly golden.
Remove from the oven and stand in the muffin pans for 4-5 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack.
Serve split and buttered.
Chicken with cannellini beans and capsicumsin red wine
Serves 8
Ingredients
¼ cup flour
1kg skinless, boneless chicken thighs (approximately 10), trimmed of excess fat
cooking oil spray
1 large onion, thinly sliced
400g red capsicums (2 large), deseeded and thinly sliced lengthways
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 x 400g can diced tomatoes in juice
¼ cup tomato paste
¾ cup red wine
1 Tbsp fresh thyme leaves or 1 tsp dried
1 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 x 400g can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (or 1½ cups cooked dried beans)
½ cup breadcrumbs
30g Parmesan cheese, finely grated
Method
Preheat the oven to 180degC.
Place the flour in a plastic bag, add the chicken pieces two at a time and shake to coat the chicken evenly. Shake off any excess.
Heat a large non-stick frypan, spray lightly with the cooking oil and fry the chicken in batches until lightly brown.
Place the chicken pieces in a flattish, ovenproof dish, 18cm x 30cm works well.
Spray the frypan lightly with the oil spray and add the onion and stir-fry for 2-3 minutes. Add the red capsicum and garlic and stir-fry for another 2-3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, wine, thyme, brown sugar and balsamic vinegar to the frypan, stir well and simmer for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour the sauce over the chicken. (The chicken can be refrigerated at this stage for up to 2 days.)
Gently stir the cannellini beans into the sauce surrounding the chicken. Cover the casserole dish with a lid or foil and place into the preheated oven for 50 minutes. If reheating chicken from the refrigerator, bring to room temperature and allow an extra 15 minutes.
Increase the oven temperature to 200degC.
Combine the breadcrumbs and the Parmesan cheese, remove the lid or foil and sprinkle the cheese mixture over the top. Return to the oven for 10 minutes until the topping is golden.
Rhubarb and strawberry cake
Cuts into 18-20 slices
Little chunks of rhubarb and strawberry studded throughout keep the cake moist and wonderfully fruity. This is a versatile cake. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature with morning coffee or as a dessert with yoghurt or whipped cream.
For this recipe, I use finely ground imported Italian polenta. Look for it in the international foods section of your supermarket. Crystallised strawberries are also available at supermarkets, usually in the bulk bins.
Ingredients
420g rhubarb stalks (prepared weight), trimmed, any thick stalks split lengthways, and sliced into ½cm lengths
160g standard flour
130g fine polenta (not instant)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 large eggs, size 7
cup vegetable oil
200g brown sugar
1 cup Greek-style yoghurt
50g caster sugar
80g crystallised strawberries, chopped
Method
Preheat the oven to 180degC. Line the base of a 23cm round cake tin with non-stick baking paper and lightly oil the sides.
Place the prepared rhubarb in a bowl and set aside.
Sift the flour, polenta, baking soda and cinnamon into a large bowl.
In another bowl, beat the eggs, oil, brown sugar and yoghurt together until thick and creamy. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
Sprinkle the caster sugar over the chopped rhubarb, add the chopped strawberries and toss all together. (Don't combine the sugar with the fruit any earlier as too much juice will seep from the rhubarb.) Gently fold the rhubarb and strawberries into the mixture.
Pour the batter into the prepared tin and smooth the top. Bake in the preheated oven for approximately 1 hour 10 minutes until the top is golden brown and firm to the touch and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. You may need to cover the cake with baking paper after about 50 minutes so that the top doesn't brown too much.
Remove the cake from the oven and cool in the tin on a wire rack for about half an hour.
Use a knife to loosen the sides then carefully invert on to the rack. Remove the paper and turn right side up. Leave to cool.
This is a moist cake so I suggest you store it covered in the fridge. It will keep for 4-5 days. Stand at room temperature for about half an hour before serving.
• These recipes are from A southern Woman's Kitchen (Random House).
