GO NUTS FOR THIS PECAN DELIGHT
SELF-SAUCING PECAN BROWNIE PUDDING INGREDIENTS
185g unsalted butter, chopped
90g (⅔ cup) pecans, halved lengthways, plus 70g (½ cup), extra, toasted, coarsely chopped 80ml (⅓ cup) golden syrup
125g Nestle Bakers’ Choice dark chocolate chunks
2 eggs, lightly whisked
110g (½ cup) white sugar
150g (1 cup) plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder, extra to dust
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
125ml (½ cup) milk
Large pinch of salt
TOPPING
225g (1 cup) white sugar 2 tablespoons cocoa powder 250ml (1 cup) cold water
METHOD
Step 1:
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan forced. Grease a 2L (8 cup) baking dish.
Step 2:
Melt 30g of the butter in a small frying pan over medium heat. Add the pecans and golden syrup. Cook, stirring, for 2-4 minutes or until toasted and glazed. Set aside.
Step 3:
Place the chocolate and remaining butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (don’t let the bowl touch the water). Stir with a metal spoon until melted. Remove from heat. Quickly stir in the egg, sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, milk and salt until just combined. Fold through the extra chopped pecans. Pour into the prepared dish.
Step 4:
For the topping, whisk together the sugar and cocoa. Sprinkle the cocoa mixture evenly over the pudding. Carefully pour the water into the dish around the edges of the pudding.
Step 5:
Bake for 40 minutes or until the top is firm. Set aside for 5 minutes to settle. Dust with extra cocoa and top with the candied pecans.
NOMADLAND (M) A FULL-TIME LIFE OF PART-TIME JOBS, US, 106 MIN
A quiet woman named Fern (Frances McDormand) bumps into old friends. One of them inadvertently refers to Fern as “homeless.” Unerringly polite, yet unfailingly blunt,
Fern immediately issues a correction : “Not homeless. Houseless. I am houseless.” What does she mean by that, you may well ask? Well, Fern is a member of a rapidly swelling class of people in America who now refer to themselves as ‘nomads’ : people who live year-round in campervans, travelling to the places where seasonal work is plentiful enough to draw a basic wage. If this makes Nomadland sound too grey and bleak as a movie experience, you are wrong. The many
colours and singular feeling coursing out of Frances McDormand’s commanding portrayal of Fern is acting of the highest order. Particularly once you learn McDormand is (with a minor exception or two) virtually the only actor in the movie. Almost everybody she is interacts in Nomadland is a real-life nomad, and what McDormand draws from these people is something so authentic and true, it is almost has no business being in a movie at all.