Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for apple, brown butter and oat loaf | The sweet spot

I adore a good loaf cake. There’s something about them that’s just inherently cosy and wholesome, and this one in particular is perfect for the colder months, not least because it’s simple and sturdy in the very best way. It’d be right at home with a coffee for breakfast, as well as gently warmed in a pan with butter and served with hot custard on a rainy evening. A real all-rounder.Prep 5 min Cook 1 hr 25 min Serves 8180g unsalted butter 200g light muscovado sugar 2 large eggs 50g soured cream 210g plain flour ½ tsp cinnamon 40g porridge oats, plus extra to finish1½ tsp baking powder ¼ tsp salt 2 eating apples 2 tbsp demerara sugarHeat the oven to 180C (160C fan)/350F/gas 4 and grease and line a 2lb loaf tin

Polpa position: budget tinned tomatoes score well in Choice taste test

Consumer advocacy group Choice has taste-tested 18 brands of chopped and diced tomatoes, finding three cheaper cans outranked many more expensive brands.Four judges ranked tinned tomatoes from Australian supermarkets and retailers, assessing them on flavour, texture, appearance and aroma – with flavour accounting for the biggest percentage of overall scores.Italian brand Mutti’s Polpa Organic chopped tomatoes, costing $2.95 for a 400g tin, was awarded the highest score of 80%. It was the most expensive product tested, described by judge Fiona Mair (who also judges at the Sydney Royal Fine Food Show) as having “an earthy fresh tomato aroma, really rich juice and flesh”

Don’t pour that olive brine down the drain – it’s a flavour bomb | Waste not

When I taste-tested olives for the food filter column a few months ago, it reminded me that the brine is an ingredient in its own right. This intensely savoury liquid adds umami depth to whatever it touches, and, beyond seasoning soups and stews, it can also be used to make salamoia, the aromatic brine that’s traditionally used to top focaccia and create that perfect salty crust.Pouring olive brine down the sink is like washing pure flavour down the drain. Instead, save it to supercharge your focaccia, creating a beautifully flavoured, salted crust that elevates an ordinary loaf into something extraordinary. While I’m partial to rosemary and olives as toppings, this focaccia delivers heaps of flavour even when kept completely plain and simple

Australian supermarket wheat crackers taste test: ‘All the reviewers knew which one was the real deal’

Nicholas Jordan risks it for the biscuits, sampling 19 wheat crackers in the driest taste test yetIf you value our independent journalism, we hope you’ll consider supporting us todayGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailI’ve been wanting to write this article for over a year but I’ve been too intimidated and confused to start. There are several hundred supermarket products that could be called a cracker. Imagine a taste test with 100 versions of the same thing. Do I have the stomach space or mental bandwidth to process that much? Otherwise, how do I decide what’s in or out? Even if I did, how do I rule what is a cracker or not? How do you determine the criteria for tasting something rarely eaten on its own? Do you rate the crackers for deliciousness or compatibility? Are those two things even that different?Then there’s the anxiety of spending several days agonising over all that, and conducting a taste test only to arrive at the conclusion that Jatz are great. Do people want to read an article about why Sir Donald Bradman is better than whoever the second-best-ever cricketer is?Instead of answering all those questions, I could just have a lovely afternoon making my way through 17 kinds of chocolate or many iced coffees

Jimi Famurewa’s recipe for Marmite and leek homity pie

The first time I encountered homity pie was in a disused train carriage. It was Deptford market in the late 2000s: a reliably chaotic, noisy morass of jostling bodies, the wafted smell of sweating burger onions and a vast section where the “stalls” generally comprised gatherings of orphaned trainers, boxy VHS players and other random house-clearance items dumped on to lengths of tarpaulin. I was an eager but gastronomically green 25-year-old in my first proper flatshare and this ragtag locus of trade became an early site of core dining memories. I thoughtfully appraised very ordinary vegetables, channelling Rick Stein in Gascony; bought warm, hectically seeded granary loaves from the Percy Ingle bakery; ate average pub Thai, better kerbside rotisserie chicken; and generally tried, with limited success, to ignore the creeping sense that I had settled in a part of town that wanted for some structure or culinary vitality.It was this atmosphere of cultural nascence into which the Deptford Project trundled

$1.50 mangoes: Australia’s best-value fruit and veg for November

Kensington Pride, Calypso and Honey Gold mangoes are the juiciest of the crop right now – but avoid potatoes until prices come back downGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailHot weather in the Northern Territory has been favourable for summer’s golden child.“Everyone should be eating mangoes right now,” says Josh Flamminio, co-owner of Galluzzo Fruiterers in Sydney.The mango abundance will continue throughout the month and will only get better as supply from Queensland increases. Flamminio is selling larger premium mangoes for $2.50 to $3 each, and smaller-sized ones for $1