Category: Breakfast and Brunch

everybody rise, rise, rise, rise, rise…

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I know I’m always trying to work more ice cream into my life, but bread-making is well up there on the continuum of my favourite things to cook. Plunging your hands into soft dough, their warmth kicking it into life, watching it rise like you’re David Attenborough narrating the time-lapsed life cycle of a rare tree, the intoxicating scent of it as it bakes, the impressed gasps of those around you when you tell them that today, you achieved bread. Bread is wonderful enough as it is, but brioche is like the Baby-Sitters Club Super Special edition of the leavened dough family: richer and sweeter and far more exciting. It tastes just like a croissant but is more solid and grippable. Don’t you hate with croissants how all the best bits crumble off upon impact and end up caught in the fibres of your wooly jumper and worked into your ponytail and embedded in the seams of your jeans? (Just one of the reasons I no longer wear jeans.) No danger of this with brioche. All of the butter and none of the disintegration.

I was recently musing upon the great cafe combinations of the nineties. Now I don’t want to come across as a snob. I mean, I eat cold spaghetti from the tin for fun, and I didn’t try couscous for the first time till well into the new millenium. I am no human barometer of what is good. And yet. When I see a chicken, cranberry and camembert panini or apricot and brie panini or whatever being sold for $8.95, I can’t help but shake my head wearily. Do people really like them? Still? Spinach and feta is slightly later on the timeline, if I remember right, but it was the combination of a certain time. And while eating a spinach and feta scone I got to pondering: What’s the deal? What does the spinach even do? It works in spanakopita: surrounded by crunchy pastry and generations of existence, the spinach shines. But sliced up and baked into limp submission inside a scone, it provides green stripes, at best. At worst, it’s bitter, every last particle of it gets caught in your teeth, and it takes up valuable space where more feta could be.
Now mint, on the other hand. Mint provides that toothpaste-cool hit which works beautifully with feta, giving it that summery light-hearted vibe, lifting the saltiness and butteriness with its pure, sweet flavour. And mint is about a twelfth as likely to get in your teeth, since there’s so much less of it.  
As I said, I love bread baking, but I haven’t done it in ages – and really, late afternoon after flying home from my brother’s 21st birthday up home might not have been the most prudent time to embark upon an invented yeast-based recipe. But my instincts were convincing enough that I went ahead with it anyway. And it worked! Thank goodness, because we only buy feta about once every three months and I didn’t want to waste it on a failed project. Brioche is not that scary – the only annoying thing about it is all the time it needs to rise. Three times it rises! Three! But please persevere. It can have varying degrees of butteriness: I only used 90 grams since…that’s what we had in the fridge. Don’t worry about needing any special tins – I spied the muffin tray and thought (okay, maybe I said it aloud) “You there! You’ll do!” I was right.
Feta and Mint Brioches

Makes 8. An idea by me.

500g flour (plain is fine)
1 sachet active dry yeast
3 tablespoons sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup lukewarm water
80g soft butter
pinch salt
100g feta, chopped roughly and mixed with 2 tablespoons chopped mint

In a large bowl mix the flour, sugar, salt and yeast. Crack in the three eggs, pour in the water, and mix to a sticky dough. Knead till soft and bouncy, then massage in the butter, small pieces at a time. This might take a while. But it’s really fun. Leave covered with clingfilm to let it it rise, for about an hour. Punch it down, right square in the middle, then form into a ball and let it rise again for an hour or two in the fridge. Finally, cut it into eight pieces, force a little pocket in the middle of each piece with your finger, then stuff with a little mint-feta mix. Pinch the edges closed, then sit each one in a buttered muffin tin, pinch side down. Leave again – I’m sorry! – for an hour before baking at 200 C for 25 minutes. Carefully lift a brioche up and tap its base – if it sounds hollow, should be all good.

If at any stage you feel you need a little more liquid or flour, trust your instincts, as different ingredients/temperatures/metres above sea level will produce different results. But only go a tiny bit at a time.

The movie A Mighty Wind is one of my very favourites, and it stands up easily to many a re-watch. I’d say I watched it more times last year than I ate feta, for one thing. Since watching it, I’ve latched on to the phrase “it can’t be overstated”, which is used to describe the kiss between Mitch and Micky in their song (okay, you had to be there.) I might overuse it the way some overuse the word “literally” (am looking at you, Chris Traegar, but it’s literally adorable on you) but I like it, and it’s so applicable: the deliciousness of these brioches frankly just can’t be overstated. See?

The crust is crisp and yet with all the buttery promise of a flaky croissant, without the crumbliness.  Inside is soft, golden-tinted and warm with the sharply salty feta dissolving creamily on the tongue. The mint is not there in large quantities, but absolutely present, cooling and contrasting with everything else. Altogether flipping brilliant.

And, as I said, I managed to make it after flying home from my brother’s 21st in the late afternoon, so you can surely do it anytime. We had such an awesome time up home – the party was music-themed (I don’t know about you but my family has a thing with dress-up 21st parties) and Tim and I dressed up as the White Stripes. My Mum and her best friend were Agnetha and Anni-Frid from ABBA, Dad was a Seargeant Peppers-era Beatle, and my brother made a commendable Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins. It was just one of the best parties I’ve been to. There were streamers, a live band – which Dad used to play with, and which played good music to dance to – not even the sort of music where inside you’re like “Oh my gosh I hate this so much but there are people around that I care about so I’ll pretend to enjoy dancing to it”. Dad – whose birthday it was also, since he’s born on the same day as my brother – got up at one point to do a fairly wild keyboard solo. Later in the evening he and my brother played a rollicking rendition of Saw Her Standing There by the Beatles.

There were alsatians that ran up and down the road and inside the hall. Two giant alsatians! They didn’t seem to be looking for trouble, they could probably just smell the many kilos of ham. Nonetheless, I’d forgotten that that sort of thing just happens at home. And I secretly wanted to confiscate them and make them my pets.

There was a cake that I made and iced to look like a record, at my brother’s request. I may never get the black food colouring off my hands, but with some logistical supervision from Tim and my 9 year old cousin, I think it turned out pretty snazz-tastic.

And there was kilo after kilo of ham. Which we all got to eat the next day after people had arisen from where they fell. I also got to see my long-missed Australian-based Aunty, got to nick the gorgeous – well I think so – bit of fabric that the brioches are sitting on, and…while looking for old schoolbooks of my brothers to festoon the party with, Mum found this that I’d made many years ago:

After the laughter subsided, I realised how little I’ve changed. Obsessive about things and in a super-righteous way; full of dubious ideas that seem great in my head but are a bit awkward on paper; misguidedly entrepreneurial; liable to mix up simple things like AM and PM. But I think I turned out alright in spite of, nay because of it. (Also: if you look closely you’ll see that my signature then did not in anyway resemble my name, but rather a small figure surfing on the back of a swan. This was because I didn’t want to be shackled by the conformity of your signature actually having to look like your name when it could be an artistic expression instead, or SOMETHING. My uncoolness cannot, as they say in A Mighty Wind, be overstated.)
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Title via: The Ladies Who Lunch, a song more salty and sharp than feta from Company, one of my favourite musicals. Sung perfectly by the wonderful Elaine Stritch. Please watch. I’m pretty sure even if you don’t like musicals, there might be something in this for you.
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Music lately:

Radar Love, Golden Earring. This got played at the party. Mum and Dad both like this song – it has some significance, I can’t remember what exactly – Mum? – and there’s something about watching one’s parents dancing away dressed up as pop stars to a song that makes one like it too.

Wings of a Dragon by the equally glorious husband and wife Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally. Treat yo’self and watch it. As well as being internet-breakingly hilarious, it’s surprisingly catchy.
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Next time: Hmm, well it is February, but no love hearts here (Shmalentines! I say.) Might be something sensible and dinner-related, might be a towering cake or something. 

sit down you’re rocking the oat

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You could say that I was wronged by authority-driven physical education at an early age. Or, that I seriously hated gym, sports, and PE and it all hated me. These days, while I appreciate that a lot of people love and enjoy sports, I don’t feel like I owe it anything.

But, it can’t be denied that the Rugby World Cup is happening in New Zealand right now. It’s going to be hard to avoid. Last night instead of watching the game (Tim did though) I had a charming evening with excellent host Jo Hubris, Sebastian the cat (also a good host; he sat on me) two Chileans and lots of wine.  Here’s some things that could fill the rest of my time while it continues:

– Locate season two of Twin Peaks.
– Bake a Hummingbird Cake (had a really nice one at this cafe in Auckland called Fridge on Monday)
– Attempt bacon ice cream.
– Work more on making the cookbook that I want to write more likely to happen
– Sort out the minutes upon minutes of video footage of Poppy the kitten on my phone.
– Ummm….that’s it really. But this suggestion compilation by Laura McQuillan is a good start, as is The Wellingtonista’s list-a. Plus, Twin Peaks is very consuming. And ostensibly I could use up quite a lot of time thinking up things to use up the time.

To the food! While I love to eat, so much (that also works without the comma) unfortunately my breakfast habits can be a bit shocking. Eating breakfast is one of the best things you can do for yourself, and whenever I miss it, I always end up feeling all light-headed and empty. Like Ron Swanson, I have a lot of time for the foods of this eating genre, as so many of the best things to eat are associated with it: bacon, waffles, pancakes, yoghurt, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, French toast, hash browns…oats.

You can tell just by looking at oats, mealy and dust-like, that they’re going to be cheap and good for you. However, unless you put in some effort, they don’t always taste fun. There’s a fine line between luscious porridge and wallpaper paste, so if you’re looking for a new weapon to add to your artillery of breakfast wholesomeness, then I present to you: Baked Oatmeal. It might not sound that fun, more like regular porridge that just takes way longer, but picturing a cross between fruit crumble, cake, and flapjack might make the argument to try it more powerful.

So yes, there are swifter breakfasts out there. And if there’s a puritan nature within you that you’re trying to keep hidden, it might rise to the surface after reading about the cream and eggs in this. But firstly, they help keep it luscious and tender and puffy and cakey, preventing your breakfast from resembling warmed woodchips mixed with drywall scrapings. Secondly, they make it taste so good. And that’s all the argument I need.

Baked Oatmeal


I found this recipe on a blog called Macheesmo. I’ve adapted it a tiny bit.


1 can apricot halves OR 1 ripe apricot/peach/nectarine (etc) halved.
1 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup cream
1/2 cup milk (I used buttermilk)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup chopped dried fruit – eg dates – or seeds – eg pumpkin (optional)
Pinch salt
Brown sugar for sprinkling
Butter for buttering the dishes.


Mix together everything except the apricots, brown sugar and butter. Leave it for at least 25 minutes, so the oats can absorb some liquid, but if you leave it overnight in the fridge it’ll be even better. 


Set your oven to 180 C/350 F.


Thoroughly butter two ramekins (if you don’t, the oats will be as superglue to their surfaces) and divide the oat mixture between them. Press an apricot half into each dish (and if you like, you can push one below the surface and then put another on top, like I did) sprinkle with brown sugar, and bake for 20-25 minutes. It’ll be really hot at first – sit the ramekins on plates or in bowls and be careful not to touch them!


Serves 2.

This is delicious (well obviously, or I wouldn’t be blogging about it) but in a simple, calming way – the cream-swollen grains becoming richly nutty and yielding to the spoon, the brown sugar on top bubblingly caramelised, the already soft fruit dissolving juicily in your mouth. The oven-time gives a slightly cake-esque solidness to the surface and the egg helps keep it from being challengingly dry. It’s worth putting in some effort the night before, or just getting up earlier than usual, with this as your reward.

Tim and I ran into our much-loved friend Dr Scotty on Thursday night, who has been around since the bad old days of this blog (by which I mean…when this blog started, it was pretty bad. Not that there were elaborate scandals happening, alas) and I said I’d mention him here, there’s mutual benefits though, as he used to leave the nicest comments, and I’m hoping to entice him back to my comments box (not a euphemism.)

On Tuesday night Tim and I went to the launch of the NZ on Screen shipping containers on the waterfront. I think they’ve got one in Auckland too, and there’s going to be a travelling roadshow round the South Island. If you see it, I completely recommend that you take a look inside – it’s dedicated to all things onscreen in New Zealand, past, present and future, and the level of detail and technology involved is stupendous. And there’s this thing where you can green-screenly insert yourself into a famous movie or TV show – so we now have a photo of Tim looking appropriately nervous at Bruno Lawrence during the railway track scene of Smash Palace.

(I feel I should disclose that in 2003 I had a big crush on Doug Howlett and so became very interested in the world cup coverage that year. I think I ended up with three separate copies of that issue of Metro magazine with him and Joe Rokocoko on the cover, sent to me by caring family members. The crush has since cooled down and he’s not in the All Blacks anymore so between that and my aggressive disinterest in watching sport, I don’t have much reason to pursue the games this time round.)
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Title via: Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat from the musical Guys and Dolls. The movie is cool (Marlon Brando, phwoar to the phwoar) and that version is probably the one you’ll have seen if you know this song. However the recent Broadway revival’s version has Mary Testa in it and therefore is also very much worth your time.
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Music lately:

On Wednesday night Tim and I got to go along to see Detroit’s Elzhi, who could both take on Nas’ Illmatic and a capella verses with ease, style, and respect for the original text. And, bless him, it was all over by midnight so I was able to get up the next morning without too much pain. Check out One Love and move around from there.

This morning Radio Active played Garageland’s song Fingerpops which I can’t have heard for at least ten years. Not Empty is my favourite but this is still special stuff.
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Next time: while drinking Old Mout cider last night I thought it’d also make a cool (haaa!) ice cream flavour. So that’s what I’m going to do. 

the french are glad to die for love, they delight in fighting duels

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Having Chocolate French Toast Sandwiches for dinner may sound a little subversive (as far as these things go), but really it’s exactly the same as having scrambled eggs on toast followed by a chocolate bar. Mind you, I was never shocked by the idea of deep-fried Mars Bars. In fact, I loved and welcomed them when I was travelling through Scotland. There’s nothing quite like eating one the morning after a big night out. I’m not saying they make you feel better. If anything, the consumption of one just sharpens any lingering liver-related remorse. For a few moments though all is good, as you eat the salty, crisp, oily battered Mars Bar, with warm chocolate melting onto your fingers.

This recipe isn’t just novelty or excessiveness for its own sake. Whoever invented it knew exactly what they were doing. It’s respectable, and awesomely so. When I first made this it was for dinner on Wednesday night. I love having breakfast for dinner, and, as noted when I made pancakes for dinner, there’s a Pippi Longstocking-ish thrill to be had about eating what you want when you want. Plus it seems kinda shortsighted to restrict so many good, fast and simple food ideas to the early morning. I made them again for lunch today, which is when I discovered a further point in their favour – they still taste brilliant after sitting round for a several minutes while I photograph them.
Chocolate – French Toast – together – it speaks for itself, really. Except I’m not going to let it, because this wouldn’t be much of a food blog if all I did was post pictures of things with a caption saying the title of the recipe and “Ya-huh?” or “See?” afterwards.
So: The sensory experience of biting into crisp-edged, egg-soft bread and the contrast between its buttery exterior, puffy interior and the tongue-coatingly cocoa-y dark chocolate holding it together, is pretty outstanding. Both in terms of both texture and – surprise – taste.
While I could eat white chocolate all day, every day, I think the darker stuff works best here, because while it’s rich, it’s not too sweet. Any more going on and your veins might not be able to cope from the spike in blood sugar.
If you want to galvanise this basic recipe and make it more debonairly savoury, you could do as I did and slice up some ripe pear and feta cheese and use that inside the sandwich instead. Because juicy pear and soft, creamy, salty cheese nestled in a cocoon of the aforementioned eggy, buttery bread is almost enough to steal its chocolatey counterpart’s glory.
Despite the namechecking of the French, it seems right that I found a recipe of such unrestrainedness in an American magazine. This magazine, called Fine Cooking, is one of the better ones out there – in fact when one of Tim’s co-workers gave him some issues of it to give to me I was surprised at how much I liked them. I’m very particular about food magazines and wasn’t expecting to find an American one, with their differences in measurements and common ingredients and so on, to be so readily fantastic. But the recipes are gorgeous with a good mix of easy and aspirational; the layout is appealing and the writing is genuine and knowledgeable. Which sounds like a pretty simple formula – but several magazines seem to miss one or two of those elements. While I don’t think you can actually find Fine Cooking in shops here in New Zealand, they have a very cool website where you can easily look up recipes. Such as this one here for Chocolate French Toast Sandwiches. Which surely and specifically demonstrates that they know what they’re on about.
Seriously, this recipe is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to me all week. Well, that and the fact that Tim and I have booked tickets to go up home and visit my family (including NEW KITTEN) for a weekend in September. And the fact that I won tickets to the Chocolate Festival next month thanks to the lovely Andrea of So D’lish. Actually…that happened last week…we’re so unexhilarating lately, but I do like it that way most of the time.
Chocolate French Toast Sandwiches

Slightly adapted from this recipe in Fine Cooking.

Four thick slices of white sandwich bread
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
A pinch of salt
40g dark chocolate (I used Whittakers Dark Ghana)
Butter

– Cut the slices of bread in half diagonally, so that you have eight triangles.
– Roughly chop the chocolate.
– Lightly whisk the eggs, then add the milk and the salt and mix again.
– Heat a little butter – as much as you like really, I used about a tablespoon – in a wide saucepan. Quickly dip four of the bread triangles into the egg-milk mixture and fry on both sides in the butter till golden brown.
– Lay two triangles each onto two plates, and divide the chocolate over the top.
– Repeat the dipping and frying with the remaining four triangles of bread, and then put them on top of the pieces on the plate, to complete the sandwiches. The heat of the top and bottom pieces will slowly melt the chocolate.

For a Pear and Feta variation, slice up a pear and some feta, as much as you like, and use that to fill the sandwiches instead.
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Title via: Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend, that evergreen song from Marilyn Monroe’s film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. (Look, I managed not to use the word iconic! Oh, wait…)
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Music lately:

Laura Nyro. I’d heard of her before, but never actually heard her; oh my gosh. Been On A Train is strong stuff. Her voice is amazing. And, I had no idea she wrote the gorgeous Wedding Bell Blues.
Chess – for a musical about a game where the players are almost entirely sedentary, the music itself is – thankfully – extremely dramatic and exciting. While Nobody’s Side is the big power number for the ladies, I found myself on a bit of a Heaven Help My Heart rampage on Youtube today. Predictably, Idina Menzel’s version is my clear favourite, but Broadway original Judy Kuhn’s clear voice and emotional presence also makes for a beautiful rendition. Also Julia Murney’s is routinely amazing. Um, that’s all for now.
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Next time: Not sure. Possibly something from Ottolenghi again, I just can’t quit that cookbook of his.

like collard greens and whole eggs I got soul

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Last time I said I was going to be posting a recipe for Snickerdoodles next. Oh, how I lied. Because instead I became distracted by this inconceivably good recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi.



I’m sure I’ve told this story a squillion times already and, depending on your mood, it may go some way to illustrate how nauseatingly/adorably (take your pick!) zany/useless (also take your pick here!) Tim and I are, but here goes anyway. In the summer of 2007/2008 we went grocery shopping. At first we looked at the cartons of a dozen eggs. Not enough for us! So we looked at the trays of 20. And there, on a clearance trolley beside the trays, was a plastic wrapped, many layered stack of egg trays. Tim, being handier with mathematics than I am, worked out that even though 80 eggs was kind of a lot to get through, the saving on cost per egg compared to the single tray or dozen carton was so tremendously significant – especially considering they were free range eggs – that we’d be completely unintelligent not to buy the huge tray. Of 80 eggs. Congratulating ourselves on such a bargain, we left the supermarket.
When we got home, a cursory glance at the label revealed the reason this multitude of eggs was so reasonably priced. According to the use by date, we had just under 10 days to eat all 80. Somehow we made it happen and with protein coursing through our veins came out the other side with not one egg wasted. The reason I bring this up is that, on a free weekend, to use up some of said eggs I made Nigella’s Strawberry Ice Cream and Chocolate Mousse Cake from Forever Summer and How To Be A Domestic Goddess respectively. These two recipes saw me successfully separate 18 eggs in a single day.
But while I can coolly part yolk from white eighteen times over and turn them into such delicate treats as mousse and ice cream, I have always been terrible at poaching eggs. It kinda sucks.
Luckily, thanks to this immensely delicious recipe I found in Ottolenghi’s book Plenty, poached eggs can sit down, because these baked eggs eclipse any ambition I have to be a decent poacher.


It’s so gorgeous. The first shamefully conservative thought that crossed my mind was “eggs and yoghurt? AND green stuff?” but I’m glad I squashed that thought down. Here is the recipe to recreate it yourself, even if – maybe especially if – you think you’re not the sort of person who could veer away from plain eggs on toast.

Baked Eggs with Yoghurt and Chilli

Adapted slightly from Ottolenghi’s Plenty

4 eggs
300g rocket (although I’d recommend curly kale)
2 tablespoons olive oil
150g Greek yoghurt
1 garlic clove, crushed
A generous knob butter
1 red chilli, finely sliced, or 1 spoonful sambal oelek
A pinch smoked paprika

Set your oven to 150 C. Heat the oil in a large pan, and gently cook your greens till they wilt a little.

Tip this into a small oven dish – I used an old pie plate – and make four indentations in your greens so that the eggs have a place to go. Carefully crack an egg into each space – being careful not to break the yolk – and bake for about 10 – 15 minutes. Don’t overcook, but make sure the egg whites are no longer translucent. The very low heat means you don’t have to stress about this too much.

While they’re cooking, mix the yoghurt and garlic together and set aside. Melt the butter in a pan (the same one you cooked the greens in if you like) and add the chilli, paprika, and let it cook away till the butter foams a little.

Spoon the yoghurt and the butter over the eggs. Serve on toast or just as is.

The thick, luscious garlicky yoghurt and the almost chewy greens, gorgeously verdant against the golden eggs, which yield to the fork’s prod, the salty-hot butter merging with the rich, slowly spilling yolks and coating the astringent leaves…it’s really something.


Ottolenghi says to use rocket as the green stuff but I definitely recommend curly kale, if you can get hold of it – its crisp leaves stand up to the heat, without getting all limp and watery and gross. While it might be a bit harder to find, it’s no more expensive than spinach, and it’s not one of those stupid leafy green vegetables that perishes floppily in the fridge the day after you buy it. Kale is built to last. If you wanted to make this dairy-free, you could just use olive oil instead of the butter and I bet tahini would be so, so good instead of yoghurt. Assuming you’re more likely to have tahini than yoghurt, that is.


On that note, does anyone have any particularly reliable tips for poaching eggs? Mine is to pay someone in a cafe to do it for you.
It was so, so dark when I got out of bed this morning, and the sky had barely lightened its shade to something daylight-resembling when I left for work. I’m surprised at how glum it made me feel. I will have to keep that in check, I mean if I’m feeling this way in early June, the bleak midwinter July mornings will probably be greeted with a howl. Unless I can get up early enough and make myself this for breakfast every morning. Might be time to look for another clearance tray of eggs…
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Title via: Southernplayalistikcadillacmusic by the tremendous Outkast from their album of the same name.
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Music lately:

Honestly…I haven’t had enough time to listen to anything much since my last post, which possibly indicates that time was used badly. I’ve been listening quite a bit to the Godspell soundtrack and cast recording for what it’s worth, which could be seen by some as still a bad way of using time. I’m clearly the only person in New Zealand who likes to listen to it, because whenever I go to a music store there’s usually at least five copies of it in their second-hand clearance section.
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Next time:

Probably definitely the snickerdoodles…and I will endeavour to listen to something other than Godspell. Victor Garber was just so dreamy back then.

just like honey

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While in hindsight I did do quite a lot of baking as I was growing up, it wasn’t to the point where it was really obvious that I’d start blogging fervidly about food a few years later. Like, if ever questioned about food in my childhood you’re not going to hear me recount stories of instinctively rolling out pastry with an empty vermouth bottle found on the floor and studding it with halved plums from the orchard; or learning to handmake pasta while sitting on my great-great-grandmother’s floury knee. I think I’ve read too many interviews with chefs who had romantic-sounding upbringings. Ain’t nothing whimsical about 2-minute noodles and mass-produced “Kids Can Cook” books sponsored by 2-minute noodle companies, but…I seemed to have turned out okay.
There are a few recipes from my childhood which stick with me though, and which occasionally twinge both my heartstrings and tastebuds. Today’s recipe for Honeybuns is dairy free – as promised last week, in horrified reaction to $6 blocks of butter at the supermarket – and it’s one that Mum, and sometimes Mum and myself together, made a lot in my childhood. This isn’t simply nostalgia for its own hackneyed, rose-tinted-in-photoshop sake, these are in fact very very good. I had the urge to make them a while back and asked Mum to email me the recipe from the – if I remember rightly – pink scrapbook with big yellow flowers on it. I have this feeling that these were made so often that I was even nostalgic about them at like, aged 12, although that might be now-me trying to heap extra significance on these plain little cakes. (Which reminds me of that flawless film A Mighty Wind: “to do ‘then’ now would be retro, to do ‘then’ then was very nowtro”. I actually had an extremely vivid dream recently that Tim and I traveled to San Francisco and Fred Willard – who plays Mike LaFontaine in AMW – and Jake Gyllenhaal were shooting a movie on the street – some kind of comedy-Renaissance movie in fact – and I approached Fred and told him that I thought A Mighty Wind was a flawless film and in fact if I had to find a fault with it, it would be that it was too zealously edited and could’ve been longer. Jake was ignored until I asked him to take a photo of me and Fred. It was one of those dreams where you wake up thinking “YUSSS-ohhh wait.”)
Even if you don’t usually read through the recipe itself, I prod at you to sweep your eyes over this one – check out how fast and easy and ingredients-light it is. It’s one of those recipes you can make when you’re out of most cool ingredient-y things.
Honey Buns

I don’t know where the recipe itself is from originally…expect Mum will fill in the blanks in the comments.

125g honey
5 T oil (I use Rice Bran)
Good pinch salt
4 T water
125g wholewheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. If your honey is particularly solid, gently microwave or heat on stove till it’s runny. Whisk in the oil, salt and water, then sift in the flour and baking soda together (I don’t usually sift, but a few bad experiences with baking soda make me sift when it’s included in a recipe) and whisk thoroughly till there aren’t any lumps. Finally, mix in the two eggs. It’ll be quite a liquidy mixture. Spoon into your chosen cases and bake for about 15-20 minutes. Cover with tinfoil if they get too brown. If you don’t have wholewheat flour, plain is fine.
I would recommend if you can, switching the water for orange juice – from a carton/bottle is fine, although if you’ve got enough actual oranges, squeeze away. Its acidy freshness points up the fragrant nature of the honey no end.
These are actually much, much nicer than their squat, monotone appearance suggests. They’re definitely plain to look at (hence the jazzy orange plate!) but the honey gives them surprising depth and a sticky, date-like sweetness kept in check by by the pinch of salt. They keep for quite a long time and even as its crumbs start to clench and become dry, a zap in the microwave and a spreading of butter (well, I can never keep it too far out of arm’s reach) livens them up again. But in honesty, I took a couple to work today and it was only laziness that stopped me going to the microwave and my block of butter, and they really were just perfect without. I don’t say this lightly or anything. And, back to the original issue, as these don’t even gasp out for butter, you could remain $6 richer for a little bit longer.
Tim and I went to Lower Hutt last night to see the Speakeasy Theatre production of RENT at the Little Theatre. Having now racked up four different versions of RENT nationwide, I can easily say it was one of the strongest-voiced, best acted and excellently directed ones I’ve seen. The sound system was a bit shoddy, which was a shame as some nice harmonies were lost, but it really deserves to be seen, so if you’re within cooee of Lower Hutt move fast because its last show is Saturday night. Tim wasn’t exactly euphoric at being there but did concede that the singing was fantastic.
I don’t find it surprising that the whole “Wellywood sign” thing has caught the awareness of so many. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a terrible idea. Putting aside the emphatically negative response from the public, the shuddery feeling that everyone else will think we did want it, the lack of relevance to NZ, the words “bucket list” being used as a reason, and the general marring of the landscape that it will bring…it just feels like an outrageous waste of money at a time like this. Or ever. I hope it doesn’t go ahead.
___________________________________________

Title via: The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Just Like Honey from Psychocandy. I really like this song, even though with those opening drums I always think it’s going to be the Ronettes, and then can’t help being slightly disappointed in spite of myself.
___________________________________________
Music lately:

Typing this word as many times as I have done just now, my thoughts turn to that another excellent song named after that excellent substance, Mariah Carey’s Honey from the album Butterfly.
Walk on By, a fantastic song from local band Diana Rozz. We’d seen them before but not for a long time – then caught their album release show at Happy on Saturday night and they were so much fun, so cool, so noisy…even the people on the door were hilarious.
___________________________________________

Next time: Mum sent me another childhood recipe upon my request the other day, but I might space out all that nostalgia-tripping with a Martin Bosley recipe for pork belly. Also: the Wellington leg of The Food Show is this weekend and I’m SO excited. Hopefully there’s cheap halloumi and generous soymilk samples like last year!

filling up with brandy, killing with a kiss

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That’s brandy pooling round the edge of the bowl, by the way, not melted butter. Wait, which is more concerning first thing in the morning? Don’t think I’d be above adding melted butter to my porridge. It’s only one step removed from apple crumble topping.

Despite being shackled with a dull, greyish-beige colour and a name that implies the theme of Coronation Street tolls for ye (or indeed, the theme of the eponymous prison-set show) there is a lot to love about porridge. It’s cheap. It sustains. It’s warm. You can cook it pretty quickly. It contains such good things as – according to Wikipedia – fibre, protein, iron and magnesium. And I also have this thing where, if I make porridge, I feel like I don’t have to do the dishes right away – just fill the oaty pot with water and leave it sitting in the sink for the rest of the day.

One way to make your morning porridge distinctly less greyish-beige is to topple spoonfuls of sultanas soaked in a syrup of sugar and liquor over it. What pushed me towards such sybaritic early-morning behaviour is a recipe in the Floriditas cookbook, Morning Noon and Night. Floriditas is a beautiful cafe in Wellington. Tim and I would eat there all the time if we could afford it. Till that time comes, we can eat like them whenever I make recipes from their cookbook. Morning Noon and Night’s recipe calls for Pedro Ximinez sherry to soak your dried fruit in, and not having any of that, I used quince brandy. I realise quince brandy itself is a fairly specialised ingredient, but I believe regular sherry or brandy, Marsala, Cointreau or Grand Marnier, probably some whiskys or bourbons, or nigh on any liqueur or fortified wine (maybe not Midori though) would be lush as a substitute.

If you’re wanting to make quince brandy, because if you move fast you should still be able to get hold of some, all you have to do is chop up the fruit (don’t bother to peel or anything) and tip into a kilner jar or similar. Add a cinnamon stick and top up with brandy (as cheap as you like) then leave in a cupboard for about 6 weeks. It tastes and smells amazing, and the recipe comes from Nigella Lawson’s significant book How To Be A Domestic Goddess.

Porridge with Pedro Ximinez (or whatever) Raisins (or sultanas)

Adapted slightly from Morning Noon and Night, the Floriditas cookbook.

Note: I used sultanas, because, even though they look exactly the same as raisins, I just prefer them. But, showing what being a Nigella acolyte can do to you, I also included some golden raisins, which for some reason I can deal with because they look so pretty. I get mine from Ontrays in Petone, but please don’t feel your breakfast is a failure if you only use regular ones.

  • 250g raisins or sultanas
  • 190mls Pedro Ximinez sherry; or more or less whatever you like, I used Quince Brandy
  • 50g sugar
  • 50ml water

Dissolve the sugar and water in a small pan, then boil for about 5 minutes till thick and slightly golden. Watch carefully. Place the raisins in a bowl, pour over the syrup and refrigerate till cool. Then add the alcohol, mix well, and either transfer to jars or a container and refrigerate again. Leave as long as you can – these just get better with time.

Porridge

  • 1 cup porridge oats soaked overnight in 1/2 a cup water (soaking optional)
  • At least 3/4 cup water
  • Good pinch salt
  • Good pinch cinnamon

Place the oats, water, salt and cinnamon in a saucepan and bring to the boil, continuing to cook (stirring continuously) till thick and creamy. Please use this amount of water as a guide only – depending on your oats and your preference, you may need way more.

Pour into two bowls, top with spoonfuls of the raisins and a little syrup.

This is so delicious – the soaking makes the oats soft and creamy despite only water being used, the cinnamon brings warmth of flavour to the potential dullness of the oats, and the soft, swollen fruit releasing a small burst of gently alcoholic syrup into your mouth with every bite. And as long as you’re a bit prepared the night before with the syrup and the soaking and everything, it comes together in bare minutes. If you’re not down with ingesting a tiny bit of alcohol first thing in the morning – and that’s completely up to you – some equally excellent options could include replacing the sherry with orange juice, or doing away with it entirely, doubling the sugar and water, and adding a good spoonful of vanilla extract or a generous dusting of ground cinnamon.

The sultanas would probably make decent gift for someone – they can be employed in many different ways, in cakes, on yoghurt, in puddings, or as we did last night, over ice cream. Mum, my godmother and my godmother’s sister (that sounds complicated and austere, think of them as aunties) came down to Wellington for the weekend and Tim and I had them over for dinner last night. Mum turned up with a purple cauliflower and a block of butter, which some people might not think is a very good gift, but most people aren’t me. Both were received with much excitement. It has been a really lovely time catching up with them and seeing Mum again although her visit came with some sad news – Rupert, the cat we got in 1997 from my Mum’s sister who wasn’t allowed cats at her then-house, had been put down after a his longterm nose cancer got the better of him. I loved that cat so much and in his fourteen year stay with us he outlived so many other co-pets that it almost seemed like he’d just carry on living forever. His surprising appetite, his ability to warm a lap, and his look that suggests that he can understand how much you love him but he doesn’t care anyway because he’s a cat and that’s how he does, will all be missed hugely by me.

RIP Rupert. This is our last photo together, when we got back from our holiday overseas two weeks ago (yes, I added the black and white to make it more dramatic, but still. Look at the disparity between our enjoyment of this moment. That’s classic Rupert.)

Title via: How Did We Come To This, the final song in Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party, the musical which has the heavy honour of introducing me to both Idina Menzel and Julia Murney back in 2005. If you ever suspect you could be into musical theatre, this might well be the cast recording that confirms that for you.

Music lately:

Treme Song by John Boutte – it’s a rare, rare soundtrack that I make the effort to find, but a few – like the music from the TV show Treme – are better than your average unnecessary cash-in attempt. This song is just so good, and I was reminded of that when we had book group on Friday at the lovely Kate’s house and it accompanied our discussion of Confederacy of Dunces (and other things).

Next time: Mum brought down a massive box of feijoas from Nana’s tree (thanks Nana! And your tree!) and my godmum Viv told me about how she replaced the dates in a sticky date pudding with feijoas…and I think I have to try replicate that immediately. Either that, or something featuring purple cauliflower.

 

i hope you like jammin’ too

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Firstly – got unexpectedly mentioned in the Sunday Star-Times newspaper today in the Focus section, very exciting. With the title of Comfort Food even, something I feel strongly about (well, that food comforts, at least). So if you’re here because of that, you clearly overcame the hurdle of some funny printing on the photo, making me resemble a hyperactive 12-year old who’s just eaten a pineapple Fruju. I guess I look like that in real life plenty to be fair. The generous comparison to Nigella Lawson made me smile and do a self high-five although I did wonder about the mention of “skinnier” – is that positive/negative/true/necessary? Anyway, I hope sincerely (and unsurprisingly) that you like what you read and stick around.

Given the events of the past few days making jam might sound misguidedly whimsical, but my intentions were practical. I had a whole lot of rhubarb in my fridge from a lady at work who has an enthusiastic plant, and it needed using. This jam recipe keeps for ages in the fridge and involves not much more than a little time, a bit of stirring, and a few thousand granules of sugar.

But first: a non-jam related preamble. I flew back to Wellington from Auckland today. I’d been working at Pasifika festival at Western Springs. Ate some awesome chop suey and a massive steamed pork bun from the Samoa village for lunch. Then immediately regretted it because my already indecent sweatiness from the fiery sun was compounded by the heat of the food. Cooled my insides with this juice from the Niue village called Tropical Crush – banana, apple, pineapple and coconut blended together.

Had a run-in that I thought was pretty funny.

I was talking to this kid who mentioned she was going back to Wairoa after the festival.

“My boyfriend’s from Wairoa” I said.

She asked what his name was.

He doesn’t live there anymore, I said, but I mention his mum’s family’s name.

She knew someone with that name in Wairoa, turns out it’s Tim’s cousin.

“Is [Tim’s cousin] your boyfriend?” the girl asked, suddenly confused.

“Nooo” says I jokingly, “he’s a bit young for me!”

The girl still looks thoughtfully at me, squints and says “nah…he’s in Year 12 isn’t he?”

Year 12 is 6th Form, FYI, or just under a decade younger than myself. Refrained from asking “so just how old do I look to you?” because I remember having a skewed idea of what age was and what constituted being a legitimate grownup and that sort of thing. So instead I smiled and said “small world huh”.

I also caught up briefly with Mum and my godmum Vivienne who were at a Spanish course in town (received a txt saying “Talofa y Hola”) which was very, very lovely. But it was hard to maintain that relentlessly upbeat work-mode in the face of the incomprehensible disastrousness continuing to unfold in Japan. The footage was both numbing and terrifying. I really hope you all quickly get in touch with anyone you know over there.

So again I turn to Aunt Daisy, whose quantity of recipes, old-timey resourcefulness (there’s a lot of things that weren’t great ‘back then’ but hot damn they knew how to be resourceful) and her resolutely authoritative tone brings me comfort always, but especially now. I’m not sure if Aunt Daisy was super kindly, or more of the snapping-turtle variety of older lady, but when she drops lines like “Cut bread into 1 inch cubes. Roll in condensed milk (sweetened). Fry in hot deep fat” I feel like I’m posthumously sinking into her blouse-clad bosom for a big hug.

This jam recipe is very simple, even though it’s not instant. Nevertheless I managed to burn it while – haha! – tweeting about how great my jam was. I acted fast – removed the pan from the heat, chucked it in the sink which I started filling with cold water, and then grabbed a spatula and transferred the jam to a bowl. I slid a cautious spoon into the bowl of jam half an hour later, tasted it and…all was forgiven. It tasted amazing. The sugars of the rhubarb had become toffee-intense during their brief scorching, and apart from the general texture being a little sticky instead of jammy (nothing that adding a bit of water while reheating couldn’t fix) the jam was completely salvageable. Still, it’s probably better if you manage not to burn it at all. So save the self-congratulatory tweeting till after it’s off the heat.

Rhubarb and Dried Fig Jam

Recipe from Aunt Daisy’s Favourite Cookery Book

Aunt Daisy asks for 6 pounds of rhubarb and 6 pounds of sugar and 1 1/2 pounds dried figs. This means you need roughly 2.5 kilos of rhubarb. Different times back then. I’ve adapted it a bit to suit my needs, the good thing is the method works for however much rhubarb you have.

  • Rhubarb (at least 400g)
  • Sugar
  • Dried Figs

Weigh your rhubarb and then measure out the same weight in sugar. Trim and chop up your rhubarb, place in a non-metallic bowl, layering with sugar from your measured amount. Reserve any excess sugar. Cover the rhubarb and leave overnight, or some similar length of time (like, if you do this in the morning you could come back to it late afternoon or in the evening).

An incredibly awesome pink syrup should have formed in the bowl of rhubarb, and everything should be all soft and shiny from the sugar. Drain off the syrup (reserve for adding to soda water or vodka or whatever you like, really) and tip the rhubarb slices into a pan with the remaining, reserved sugar from your initial measurement.

Bring to a simmer and don’t go tweeting about how cool you are, because the sugar heats up fast. Instead, keep stirring. The fruit should collapse fairly quickly and start to smell amazing. Time will vary depending on your quantities, but if you’re feeling like it’s going to turn into a blackened mess, just tip in a little water or better yet, some of the syrup. Aim for ten minutes or so stirring over a low heat.

Chop up as many dried figs as you like, I’d go about a cupful or a decent handful per 500g. Add them to the rhubarb mix and simmer till the fruit softens and disappears.

Pour into hot, sterilised jars.

Rhubarb and figs aren’t as sexy as raspberries or peaches or anything. Rhubarb’s sweetness is austerely astringent and dried figs have a kind of medicinal, camphor-chest sugariness to them. Simmered slowly together though, they bring out the best of each other, giving you jam of rich, honeyed, fructose-deep flavour, interspersed with the unmistakable grit of fig seeds. It sets good and thick and can handle a little overheating. Cheers, Aunt Daisy.

In case you’re thinking “great, now I have a sodding great pile of jam to use up”, you could consider making it into these steamily delicious Germknodel, using it in this loaf cake, spreading it on top of hot homemade bread…or on buttered toast using whatever you’ve got.

One thing about making your own jam – it gives you time to be grateful that you’ve got the time, resources and ability to make jam.

Title via: another late-great, Bob Marley and his song which of course isn’t about homemade preserves at all….Jamming from his album with the Wailers, Exodus.

Music lately:

Been so busy but…we were flicking through radio frequencies on the way to the airport this morning, and Sinead O’ Conner’s Nothing Compares 2 U came on. Something about the upward direction of her “Nuuuuthing” on the the chorus always gives me shivers.

Next time: Your guess as good as mine – I’m heading back up to Auckland again for work on Thursday, and so my dream of making that mango pickle is now fading a bit with my distinct lack of time…

better get that dough sister

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Not all food blogs are created equal. Some get abandoned, their last update around the May 2009 mark, often saying something like “I’ve been so busy lately…” Some have light pink text on a dark pink background, briskly searing the eyeballs like marinated tofu laid in a hot pan. Some get book deals (pick me!) And some are resources that continuously inspire with their fresh perspective, genuine wordsmithery, love of food, and crack up humour. Like Hannah’s blog, Wayfaring Chocolate. Here’s yet another recipe via her writing that I’ve appropriated cuz it looked so good.

Although maybe I should say sounded so good. Vegan Cookie Dough Truffles sounds wildly delicious, at least to me. But. Because I gave my almonds and brazils a once-over in a hot pan, and they hold their heat, the chocolate melted and dispersed through the mixture in the food processor. Instead of bordering-on-adorable chocolate studded balls of cookie dough like Hannah’s, mine were…uniformly brown. After eating one I moved on pretty fast though. They really have a cookie dough flavour, but in a rich, textured way as opposed to the more instantaneous sugar rush of that which this imitates. If you were feeling up for it (and possibly if you’re serving them to guests) you could actually dip these or drizzle them with dark chocolate. And if you’re feeling super up for it, you could probably chop these up and stir them through vanilla ice cream. But they taste mighty amazing unadorned, whether or not you find them attractive.

I actually tried dusting them with this vanilla sugar I got given for Christmas but by the time I got the camera sorted the sugar had kind of absorbed into the surface. So I moved on.

No-Bake Vegan Cookie Dough Truffles

With thanks to Hannah from Wayfaring Chocolate

  • 2/3 cup almonds
  • 2/3 cup cashews (I used brazil nuts which I figured gave a similar texture)
  • 2/3 cup oatbran (blitz oats in the blender to make this if you haven’t got it)
  • 1/4 teaspoon (or more) ground cinnamon
  • Pinch salt
  • 1/4 cup agave nectar (I used golden syrup)
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • About 50 grams dark chocolate (has to be dark stuff to make this vegan, but do as you please) roughly chopped

Toast the nuts in a pan over a low heat if you like – gives intensity of flavour, although definitely makes this ‘not raw’ if that’s what you’re going for.

Process everything up until the syrup into a fine-ish rubble.

Add the syrup, vanilla and chocolate and process again till the mixture comes together. If it’s looking super dry, add a tablespoon or so more syrup.

Roll into balls in the palm of your hand – it will feel like it won’t stick but keep rolling, it works.  Freeze…then eat.

They taste absolutely wonderful, which is why I present them to you without any fear of what they look like. The nuts themselves give the truffles luscious body and softness (and in fact they’ll probably do the same for your hair) their texture giving an almost-chocolatey bite to complement the actual chocolate. I know oatbran doesn’t sound so fun but it gives general bulk to the truffle mix and whatever dusty oat-ness is there disappears into the rest of the ingredients, as well as adding to the general, but genuine, cookie dough stylings of this recipe. Don’t leave out the salt, it means whatever flavour’s there hits you that much faster, as well as hinting at that salted-caramel thing by bringing out the best of whatever form of syrup you end up using.

These are fantastic when you arrive home seriously hungry (or as a hasty breakfast on the run if it comes to it – all those oats and nuts keep you going for a while) and obviously keep just fine for ages, stashed in the freezer. If you’re the kind of person who makes and freezes meatballs for a later date (and I am, very occasionally, that person) then…make sure you label things correctly. Biting into a frozen meatball while simmering these beauties in tomato sauce would be a grim outcome for such efficiency.

At this point in three weeks, Tim and I will be in London! We’ve still got a few nights’ accommodation to book there but apart from that we’re suspiciously organised. And, loving the sugary sweet names of the hostels we’re staying at in Berlin and Warsaw respectively: The Helter Skelter and Oki Doki. A bit like how I like to make stupid words like “ham” when I’m playing Scrabble rather than trying to win, I can’t lie that their respective names influenced me to want to stay there.

Yesterday Tim and I spent most of the day on the waterfront at the Homegrown festival, the first one I’ve ever attended instead of working at, and the first time it has rained on the day. Wasn’t a thing though, as the bands were performing in big sturdy tents, and we mostly loitered between two in particular. Took in such excellence as Coco Solid, PNC, The Phoenix Foundation, The Clean, Nesian Mystik (I’m pretty sure It’s On could’ve been released yesterday instead of 2002 and still be as smooth as freshly churned butter) ending the festival with a loud, aggressively athletic and seriously fun set from Die!Die!Die!.

Title via: Even though I never actually once really liked the music of Pink, Mya, or Christina Aguilera (Lil Kim, you’re fine by me) somehow the whole was greater than the sum of its parts and I still have a fondness for their melisma-tastic take on Lady Marmalade for the film Moulin Rouge (possibly because at one point in time I watched this film at least once a week. Possibly also the amazing Missy Elliot’s work on it – I distinctly remember driving somewhere with Dad one time, and him turning it up on the radio and telling me to listen to the production values.) And let’s take some time to appreciate the original by Labelle, who wore costumes no less astonishing.

Music lately:

After Homegrown we went back out to Happy to catch the back end of a quadruple bill raising money for Christchurch, namely Brains and Mammal Airlines. We’d never seen Brains before but liked them a lot, lots of dark moodiness and full-on drums and I’m very tired so that’s as far as I’ll try to go describing what we saw. Go listen and make up your own mind here.

Defying Gravity, from the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Wicked, which belongs to the wonderful Idina Menzel. I hadn’t listened to this song in so long, and I know it’s prosaic, but for want of a better decision I’ve set my ringtone to the vertigo inducing coda of this song (if you can’t deal with sung dialogue, maybe skip to the final minute and a half or so.) Everyone call me!

Next time: saw this recipe for mango chutney after it was linked to on Twitter, and as luck would have it, mangoes were going reasonably cheap at the market today and as such, I’m pretty sure this is up next.

rise up, rise in the morning

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Aunt Daisy’s Favourite Cookery Book might appear fairly unpromising at first – a narrow, yellowing fliptop book with no pictures apart from the occasional persuasively worded ad. But it’s an absolute diamond, a paragon of everything you’d hope a cookbook from 1956 to be. Zillions of recipes, roughly 140 of which are for jam, and several of which come with the word “Mock” before or “(Good)” afterwards. It’s funny, there’s this idealisation of your grandma’s era as being so natural and the way to be, but in this book there’s plenty of urging you to set things in gelatine and to add synthetic flavourings to your food. There’s one chapter on vegetables, half of which is devoted to salads made of egg, cheese and potato, while baking and puddings are luxuriated in across several lengthy chapters. It’s fun.

It’s hard to tell if the hilarity is intentional or just of the time. I suspect the latter. It’s partly because of Aunt Daisy’s blunt delivery (“bake in the usual way”) partly because of the things we don’t tend to eat these days – salads set in gelatine, boiled offal as recuperation food for the unfortunate convalescent, and partly her delicious titles – “Matrimony Jam” made of marrow and gooseberries, pudding “(from a man)” and “Lady Windemere Salad”.

My dad’s mother Zelda died in 2002 and I ended up with her Aunt Daisy cookbook in the above photo, as well as a notebook of handwritten recipes and clippings. As far as I know she wasn’t much of a cook (I remember Dad looking doubtfully through the notebook saying “well she never made that“) and to be honest the only food-related memories I have from staying with her are 2-minute noodles and marmite on toasted North’s wheatmeal bread – one of the most hole-prone and flavourless slices around, although I always thought of her when I saw it and was sad when they gussied up their branding recently. Mini kit-kats, and orange juice mixed with lemonade was a very special treat. I really did love 2-minute noodles and Marmite on toast, so these are good memories, by the way.

The fact that she may not have used this Aunt Daisy book doesn’t bother me, the fact that I actually have it is enough. And I’d like to think that since she held onto it at all, for all those years, it must have had some value to her. Over Christmas Mum had the book beautifully rebound for me by this woman in Waiuku and in its new, hardcover, less fragile incarnation I’ve been moved to not just read through it in wonder, but actually cook something from it for the first time in ages.

As soon as I discovered the following recipe I knew that it and I were meant to be in each other’s lives. Because it’s a recipe for bread with condensed milk in it, and that kind of idea and the concept that I could bake it is what gets me out of bed in the morning. It distills into a paragraph everything that was good about the time it was written. I’d been thinking about that soft, sweet bakery bread recently thanks to this conversation, and I wondered if this ingredient would kinda replicate that – it didn’t – but it was still wildly good stuff. And easy as to make – stir, rise, stir-knead-rise, shape, rise, bake. Apart from the kneading – because of the hefty amount of dough the mixture will seem all shaggy and reluctant at first, but it does eventually come together.

White Bread (or “condensed milk bread” as I’ve been referring to it as)

Adapted from Aunt Daisy’s Favourite Cookery Book, 1956 edition

  • 4 dessertspoons sweetened condensed milk
  • 2 1/2 cups lukewarm water
  • 1 sachet dried yeast
  • 7 cups high grade/bread flour
  • salt

Mix together the condensed milk, water and yeast till a little frothy, then stir in 1 cup of the flour and leave, covered, for 15 minutes till somewhat puffy and bubbly.

Stir in the remaining 6 cups flour and a generous amount of salt – Aunt Daisy reckons a dessertspoon – and knead till springy and supple.

Cover and leave to rise for 3/4 of an hour.

At this point, Aunt Daisy says to roll it out to around an inch thick, quarter it squares, then shape and place two pieces each into two loaf tins. I found this slightly confusing, but figured she knew what she was doing, so rolled each piece up and tucked them in pairs into two loaf tins.

Set your oven to 220 C/440 F and leave the loaves for about 15 minutes to become puffy and further risen. I brushed them with melted butter at this point. Bake at this temperature for around 8 minutes and then lower it to 180 to bake them for 45 minutes.

You end up with two brown, somewhat gloriously buttock-like swelling loaves of soft white bread, which are – for all that there are those saucy dessertspoons of sticky-sweet condensed milk – barely sugary. In fact this recipe is pretty austere, with no quantities of milk, no butter, no oil, none of the usual things I’m used to massaging into dough. It has a tense, tight texture which makes it perfect for slicing into adorably small sandwiches and toasts up beautifully, with the slight, fluttery caramel taste of the condensed milk just making itself known. I actually reckon you could comfortably double or even triple the amount of condensed milk in this – but for now I’m extremely happy with these loaves as they are.

I love making bread so much. I realise it comes across as a total mission and it kinda is, but if you’ve never made bread before and you’re curious as to what the fuss is about then this isn’t a bad place to start. I took some slices to work today for lunch, toasted them and spread em with butter and Marmite – still one of my favourite things to eat.

Question + Preamble: Tim and I are stepping up the pace on the glacial path to our trip overseas in March/April and have booked a few important things…we still have a ton more things to book but we wanted some advice: who here has travelled overseas and bought vinyl? What’s the best way to pack it so that you don’t get to your local airport, pick up your bags and discover that your precious records have been smashed into jigsaw puzzle pieces stored in an attractive sleeve?

Title via: The extremely excellent Idina Menzel and her song Rise Up, she’s never actually recorded it but for a while it was an integral part of her live shows and eventually came to have the title it does. Dedicated to her sister, for a few years there was one version which she updated around 2008 to include a punchy chorus. Of course I recommend you listen to both the emotion-soaked original, and the slicker, but still beautiful recent rewrite.

Music lately:

Tim and I went to see the play Diamond Dogs at Bats tonight – apart from the fact that we totally recommend it because it’s fantastic, it also does a decent job of getting Bowie in your head. While I’m not sure it’s really his finest moment, Modern Love is easily one of our favourite Bowie songs and the recurrent nature of its chorus allows it to all the more easily be stuck in your mind.

By the Throat from the (late) Eyedea and Abilities. Amazingly good.

Next time: Possibly Brian O’Brian’s Bran Biscuits, from the same book, if I’m up for it…I have so many things to blog about, just no time to do it in so it depends what I feel like on the day I guess.

 

give ya some some some of this cinnabon

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These Norwegian cinnamon buns went straight to my head.

Not like I wore one of them as a dapper, yeasted fascinator. I mean that for a short time I got really up myself, alarmingly egotistical from my own excellence at having brought something of this level of deliciousness into the world. However, I have to acknowledge that in fact I was just conduit, a mere flume for someone else’s excellence. It was Nigella Lawson who actually provided me with this recipe (via her book How To Be A Domestic Goddess, not via her own velveteen voice during a cheery, injokes-aplenty tea drinking date, alas). Should probably also acknowledge Tim for not sneering when I’d say things like “I can’t believe how delicious these are. Why aren’t you showing more outward amazement? Do you feel about me like I feel about myself right now?” If you think you can handle this potential vaingloriousness, plus a little light kneading and rolling, then please feel free to give them a go yourself, too.
It’s just that the smell of them baking was so intoxicating, and then on top of that they absolutely delivered on flavour, providing a heady one-two punch of buttery crumb and sweet, spiced centre which left me almost woozy with happiness after eating one, still warm from the oven. Hence the spiralling vanity to match the spiralling dough.
I really love making bread and have worked my way through most of Nigella’s yeast-related recipes, but this one was new to me. Something about creating cinnamon buns en masse like this pleases me and despite having a few steps, the recipe itself is actually surprisingly straightforward – there’s no long rising time, the dough comes together quickly and all the yeast makes it stretchy and pliable – and the rolling and cutting can’t be that difficult otherwise I would’ve mucked it up somehow. Important to note is that you’ll probably need more than 600g flour, and also that I’ve lowered the baking heat a little and cooked them for slightly longer instead.

Norwegian Cinnamon Buns
From Nigella Lawson’s floury tome of essential-ness, How To Be A Domestic Goddess
Dough:

600g flour (you’ll need more, so bring more)
100g sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
21g – as in three, yes three sachets – of dried yeast
100g butter
400mls milk
2 eggs

Filling:

150g soft butter
150g sugar – I used a mix of white and dark brown
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 roasting tin approx 33cm x 24cm, lined with a big piece of baking paper that extends over both ends of the tin.

Place your flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a large bowl. Melt the butter and whisk into it the milk and eggs, and then stir this into the flour. However, you can save on dishes by melting the butter in one large bowl (either in the microwave or set over a small pan of simmering water), stirring in the eggs and milk, and then measuring in the flour-etc ingredients. Mix to combine, and then knead until smooth. I found that I needed to add quite a bit more flour at this point – the dough was just far too soft to knead successfully otherwise. Just sprinkle and push as you go till the dough feels springy and soft, but with solidness to it.

Cover with clingfilm and leave to rise for 25 minutes. Which it will do with gusto, having so much yeast within it. Then: take 1/3 of the dough and stretch/roll it to fit the base of your tin, which will in turn become the base of each bun. It will fit, but if you’re having trouble, let it rest for a bit before continuing to stretch it.
Above: Like this.
Roll the rest of the dough across your bench till it’s roughly 50cm x 25cm. Beat together the filling ingredients – oh deliciousness – and then paint this across the top of this dough, trying to get it even and right to the edges. I used a spatula, it was great fun. Roll this up carefully from the longest end, so you get a very long, thinnish coiled of dough. Carefully slice this roll into 2cm slices, and sit them on top of the dough in the tin. They will rise, so don’t worry if it’s not quite full.
Above: I considerably overestimated what 50cm was, hence the fold in the dough above. A measuring tape is pretty handy here.
Above: arghdelicious


Above: rolled up, ready for slicing.
Above: proving.
Nigella uses egg but I just brushed them with a little milk, and then while your oven heats to 220 C/430 F, allow the buns to sit there and prove for 15 minutes. Pop them in the oven for 25-30 minutes, keeping an eye on them as they can burn easily with all that sugar. Cover loosely with tinfoil if necessary. Allow to cool slightly before eating by tearing off each bun as you need it.


They are seriously, so extremely good. The dough is buttery with a soft, flaky crust and smells like croissants. Its filling retains a little pleasing sugar-grit, without being tooth-dissolvingly sweet. They remain tenderly delicious days later, and as I said, smell absolutely incredible. When I was a kid one of my favourite meals was buttered toast with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on it, and this is, in a way, like a much fancier version of that, the comforting heat of the cinnamon dispersed through every bun.

Seriously. Smug-ity justified. In my mind at least.
If you’re in Wellington this week, on Thursday and Saturday Tim’s going to be in this opera called Mozart’s School For Lovers at Mighty Mighty, it’s like a cool, funky reworking of Cosi Fan Tutte (just click the link, I always make it sound awful when I try and explain it) and it’s only $5 a ticket, yay! Opera for all!
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Title via: inspiring brilliance-generator Missy Elliot and her 2002 song Work It from Under Construction.
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Music lately:

Mayer Hawthorne, Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out, as well as being a modern soul man with a gorgeous voice (whose Wellington show we’re unfortunately missing because we’re saving for our trip, but still: bigger picture) he is also apparently also something of a food blogger, logging videos of his adventures with/during food – swoon.

Tony Award winner Alice Ripley’s song of praise to mysterious Suburbia from her album Everything’s Fine. This woman is amazing.
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Next time: the ginger cut-out cookies get their day in the sun.