How to make Lara Lee's tamarind caramel brownies — and an easy family dinner recipe
Chef Lara Lee on getting her food mojo back after having a baby
Even professional chefs can sometimes lose their mojo – and that’s something Lara Lee discovered after having a baby.
Her son, Jonah, is now three, but back when he was six months old, the chef and caterer admits: “My everyday cooking kind of sucked.
“I was tired, I’d lost inspiration. It was fish fingers from the freezer, ready meals from the supermarket, takeaways – I wasn’t living my best food life. I felt I’d lost my mojo a little bit.” She even remembers a “real rock bottom” moment when she bought a quiche you’re meant to heat up in the oven, and just ate it straight from the packet in a haze of tiredness.
“It was a turning point for me, where I was like: ‘That’s it, I’m getting back in the kitchen’,” the 39-year-old remembers. “So, on goes the apron and I’m like, ‘Right, what am I going to cook?'” The food she was immediately drawn to were simple meals that packed a punch, and these form the basis for her second cookbook, A Splash Of Soy.
She says this book is “for not just tired mums, but for anyone who wants a quick and easy meal at the end of the working day”.
Lee is based in Australia and her father is Indonesian, and she adds: “Leaning into my Asian heritage, I wanted it to be really full of those beautiful sweet, sour, spicy, fragrant flavours that I love – really punchy, bold and the kind of food that wakes you up in the morning and gives you a skip in your step.
“But I also wanted it to be simple as well. I had this criteria, which was trying not to write recipes with more than 12 ingredients, or no more than two dirty pots and pans.” Recipes range from kimchi, spring onion and Sriracha cheese toasties and spicy cumin lamb skewers, to prawn and tofu pad thai and tamarind caramel brownies. Most ingredients are those you can get in your local supermarket – if it’s something you might need to go further afield for, Lee makes sure it’s worth your time.
Take instant tom yum paste, which “can transform your meal in seconds”, she says. “You have tom yum soup in 15 minutes, you can make a marinade for a chicken in five minutes – literally whack it on the chicken, roast it in the oven and make a tom yum chicken – or make a tom yum Bloody Mary. There are so many things you can do with that special ingredient.” Lee says she “had lost the joy in cooking a little bit”, and writing the cookbook helped her “rediscover that again”.
While her first cookbook, Coconut & Sambal, published in 2020, was all about the Indonesian flavours of her family, for this one Lee has widened her net to capture recipes from across Southeast and East Asia.
Halfway through writing the book, she moved from London back home to Sydney, and this helped with her inspiration.
“Australia has the most magnificent food scene, particularly around Asian cuisine – across all kinds of budgets, across all types of regions,” she notes.
“Having access into the Australian hype and Asian food scene gave me lots of inspiration, because I think Asian Australians really pride themselves on doing that little bit of fusion – in terms of a slight modernisation on a very traditional technique or recipe.”
Lee says it also gave her the “freedom” to explore her own ideas – particularly when she’s eating out and trying dishes such as Vegemite curry with roti.
“It’s mind-blowing – you eat things like that, and it takes your mind into different places of what’s possible with food.
“It reminds you that traditional is wonderful – which is my first book – but fusion, which I think people used to think was a dirty word back in the day, is quite an exciting thing as well.”
That’s not to say every recipe Lee tested made it into the book. There were some dishes she wanted to honour in their traditional form, and that didn’t always fit into the timeframe she set for herself.
“I realised, I can’t rush this. To rush it and to change it so much, it’s going to lose the essence of what it is. So, there’s a point where you have to say, I’m stepping away from this – even though I love you Thai green curry, and I really want you to be in there.” There are plenty of other dishes to make up for the absence – including a colourful sections on salads.
In the book, Lee proudly proclaims herself “a salad person” – but her father refuses to eat it, unless it’s an Asian version.
So, what sets Asian salads apart?
“I find that an Asian salad is a hearty meal,” Lee muses. “Not in a stodgy way, but it feels like a complete meal in itself. This is a generalisation, but quite often the mixed leaf salad is the side dish when we go to restaurants, whereas in Asia it can quite often be as much of a main event.
“Examples I might give would be laab from Thailand or Laos – a beautiful minced meat salad. Or gado gado, which is full of proteins – you’ve got lovely boiiled eggs, potatoes, lots of lovely green vegetables and a really delicious, sweet peanut sauce – it’s really filling, it’s also very textural.” Lee’s favourite salad to eat at the moment – although she’s still a bit iffy on whether it technically is a salad – is san choy bau – Chinese pork mince in crispy lettuce cups.
“It takes you on this journey of fragrance, but it’s really easy to cook – you just chuck it in the pan.
“I’m at the point now with my cooking – which I feel like on Australian MasterChef, they would probably go, ‘Don’t do it!’ – but garlic paste, ginger paste. I’m living for it right now.”
Tamarind caramel brownies
Serve straight from the oven with a scoop of ice cream for a decadent dessert
Servings
24Preparation Time
25 minsCooking Time
30 minsTotal Time
55 minsCourse
MainIngredients
100g macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
250g unsalted butter, cubed, plus extra for greasing
275g dark chocolate, preferably 70% cocoa, chopped into small pieces
250g caster sugar
¼tsp flaky sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling
4 eggs, at room temperature, beaten
165g plain flour, sifted
1tsp espresso powder, or instant coffee granules dissolved in 1tsp hot water
For the tamarind caramel:
50g golden syrup (or maple syrup)
70g caster sugar
50ml double cream
20g unsalted butter
Large pinch of flaky sea salt
25ml tamarind paste
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan and set up the middle shelf for baking. Roast the macadamia nuts for six to eight minutes, or until golden brown, then remove and set aside.
To make the caramel, melt the golden syrup and sugar together in a small heavy-based saucepan on a medium-low heat. Swirl the ingredients in the pan together, rather than stirring them. Once the sugar has dissolved and the caramel starts bubbling, continue cooking on a gentle simmer until it begins to bubble and foam, about three to five minutes in total.
Remove from the heat, then stir in the cream and butter until melted and combined. Finally, add the salt and tamarind and stir well. Transfer to a wide bowl (this will help it cool faster), cover and leave to cool in the freezer for 20 minutes, or in the fridge for around 30 minutes, until thick and gooey.
Grease and line a 20 x 30cm tin with baking parchment, ensuring there is some overhang of paper over the edges, so you can easily lift the brownies out of the tin later.
Begin making the brownie batter. Gently melt the butter in a small saucepan. Once melted, remove from the heat, add the chocolate and leave to sit for two minutes, without stirring it.
Stir the chocolate and butter together after two minutes; they should have melted together. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and combine with the sugar and salt.
After the chocolate has cooled down for two to three minutes, add the room-temperature beaten eggs gradually, a little at a time, mixing well in between additions by hand. Fold in the sifted flour, macadamia nuts and espresso powder (or instant coffee and water mixture) until well combined.
Pour half the brownie mixture into the prepared tin. Remove the tamarind caramel from the freezer or fridge, and drizzle half of the caramel over the brownie mixture in the tin. Cover with the remaining brownie mixture and smooth the surface with a spatula. Drizzle with the remaining caramel, covering the surface as evenly as possible.
Using the end of a dessert spoon, gently ripple the caramel through the brownie mixture. To do so, dip the end of the spoon about 1cm deep into the mixture and draw squiggly lines and figure-of-eight shapes all over the surface until the caramel is evenly distributed.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until cooked but gooey in the middle. Test with a skewer; there should still be a few moist crumbs on the skewer when inserted into the centre of the brownie, or a very slight smear of brown goo, but you don’t want wet batter. Sprinkle over a large pinch of sea salt while the brownie is still hot from the oven.
Leave in the tin until completely cool. Lift the brownie out of the tin using the baking parchment and transfer to a chopping board, then cut into squares and serve.
Sambal prawns with coconut and cashews
Make this dish vegan by swapping out prawns for tofu or tempeh
Servings
4Cooking Time
12 minsTotal Time
12 minsCourse
MainIngredients
- 25g desiccated coconut
Flavourless cooking oil (such as sunflower or grapeseed) or coconut oil
20 medium raw prawns, peeled, tails on, defrosted if frozen
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed, or 2tsp garlic paste
4 long red chillies, deseeded and finely diced
200g green beans, trimmed and cut into 5cm lengths diagonally
1tbsp kecap manis
½tsp coconut sugar or brown sugar
Large pinch of fine sea salt
60g roasted salted cashews
Method
Toast the coconut in a wok or large frying pan over a medium heat for about two minutes, shaking the pan frequently, until golden. Transfer the coconut to a plate.
Wipe out the pan and heat one tablespoon of oil. Add the prawns in a single layer and cook for one to two minutes each side, or until they are just cooked through. Remove and set aside on a plate lined with kitchen paper.
Heat another tablespoon of oil in the wok or pan, still over a medium heat. Add the garlic and chillies and cook, stirring continuously, for three to four minutes, until the chillies have softened and are starting to wrinkle.
Add the green beans along with one tablespoon of water, the kecap manis, sugar and salt. Cook for another three minutes or so, stirring regularly, until the green beans are just cooked through with a crunchy bite.
Stir in most of the toasted coconut and cashews, reserving a little of each for garnish, and return the prawns to the pan. Toss everything together. Transfer to a serving plate and sprinkle with the remaining coconut and cashews.
- A Splash Of Soy: Everyday Food From Asia by Lara Lee is published by Bloomsbury Publishing on April 27. Photography by Louise Hagger.
