Jade O’Donahoo’s Eat This, My Friend is a collection of recipes for the foodie-to-be. As the market become saturated with artfully shot star-chef recipes books, O’Donahoo’s mission is to offer what she calls a moment of authenticity and calm. Eat This, My Friend is a compendium of hand-lettered and hand-illustrated recipes, all created by O’Donahoo.
The 60 recipes are presented across five chapters (breakfast and brunch, lunch, sides, dinner, and sweets). All are meat free and represent the way O’Donahoo likes to cook and eat; prioritizing vegetables, using whole foods, and avoiding refined sugar, without the need for searching high and low for obscure ingredients. It is simple food that nourishes you and tastes great.
Eat this, my friend: Everyday vegetarian recipes for sharing is available at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.
LEMON, YOGHURT + POLENTA MUFFINS
We have a lemon tree in our backyard, but it is no ordinary lemon tree. It grows the biggest, juiciest, sweetest lemons and is always so laden with fruit that the branches hang almost to the ground. No one leaves my house without a bag full of lemons – we couldn’t possibly get through them all, no matter how many batches of these muffins I bake.
* Makes 12 muffins.
150 g (5½ oz/1 cup) plain (all‑purpose) flour
110 g (4 oz/¾ cup) polenta
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
230 g (8 oz/1 cup) raw (demerara) caster (superfine) sugar
2 eggs
185 g (6½ oz/¾ cup) full-cream (whole) plain yoghurt
125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) mild olive oil
finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
Icing
60 g (2 oz/½ cup) icing (confectioners’) sugar
1 tablespoon full-cream (whole) plain yoghurt
Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F).
Combine the flour, polenta, baking powder, salt and sugar in a mixing bowl by whisking lightly, then set aside. In another bowl, combine the eggs, yoghurt, oil, lemon juice and zest and mix on high speed for a minute using an electric mixer. Pour in the flour polenta mix and fold through gently until just combined.
Spoon the batter into a 12-hole muffin tin lined with paper cases.
Bake for 25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
Make the icing (frosting) by whisking the yoghurt and sugar with a fork, until smooth. If it is not runny enough, add a little bit more yoghurt. Conversely, if the mix is a bit runny, add more sugar, or cornflour (cornstarch), to thicken it up.
Use a spoon to drizzle the icing onto the cooled cakes, and leave to set for an hour.
The muffins will keep for up to 3 days when stored in an airtight container at room temperature.
Recipe reprinted with permission from Hardie Grant Books.