Anarchy! Revolution, Justice, Screaming for Solution…(and Buttercream)

February 9, 2008March 14, 20203 Comments

I realise, looking back, that the last post was bordering on being unbearably wordy, so kudos to you if you made it to the end without vowing never to return. As anyone who had received one of my emails from England knows, once I start typing about stuff I’m a bit excited about, I find it hard to stop.

In order to appease you, this post is largely made up of pictures. Soothing pictures. (Especially if there are any Generation-Y kids reading, I’ve seen how, bless you, growing up amongst all this technology has stunted your attention spans!) The reason for this is that the Auckland posts took ages to do but in the meantime, dinner kept happening and needs blogging about.

Before I launch into it though, I have news that is potentially exciting to me only! The Levin Performing Arts Society is putting on a production of Rent! Okay, it’s not the damn Nederlander theatre in New York, but Levin is only an hour from Wellington and if it looks like it won’t be entirely rubbish I kinda want to go. It’s odd though, I’ve passed through Levin on the bus before and it doesn’t look like the sort of place that would take on such a production. Shouldn’t be all judgy though, as I know nothing about the company…I just hope the actors are decent. Because – Rent!! Opportunity!

Above: Nuts! When I was up home (for less than 24 hours, can you believe) I made Mum some more of Nigella’s muesli from Feast, which she has taken a real shine to (mercifully, as I gave her some for Christmas. I don’t think she’s just being polite.) It is very plain, simple, and good breakfast fare: Rolled oats and raw nuts, toasted in the oven for a bit, stirred with sultanas and a spoonful of brown sugar. That’s all. You could add whatever dried fruit or seeds you want. It may sound dull, but let me tell you, there is something quietly Zen about making one’s own muesli.

Above: Don’t you feel all warm and wholesome just looking at it?

Above: This may well look like baby food…which is what I suppose risotto is, in a way, baby food for grownups. What I mean, is that it is so mushy and comforting and formless that it is rather like…well I’m not entirely sure what I mean, I just don’t want to insult any Italians that might be roving by. That is, if they aren’t already offended by this dish’s Anglo title of “Cheddar Cheese Risotto.” Now I didn’t actually have any proper cheddar to hand, so I used a pleasantly golden mixture of Emmental, Parmesan, and er…Edam. This came from Nigella Express and we ate it for dinner when we got back from Auckland. Despite some trepidation about whether normal cheese and risotto belonged together, it was seriously fab-o.

Above: While in Auckland, I got a cookbook from Borders by a guy called Vatcharin Bhumichitr, called Healthy Salads From Southeast Asia. It was, apparently, one of Nigella’s top ten books of 1997 – is there indeed a higher recommendation? This book looks stunning, I want to make everything from it. But I started off with this bean salad. Very simple flavours of soy, lime, garlic – not the first things I’d think to pair with beans but simply delicious.

Above: This is a chicken salad from the same book, and let me tell you, this photo doesn’t do it justice (do any of my photos, come to think on it…) This salad was soooo good, I was almost disappointed that I had to share it with Tim.

Above: For some reason, whenever I hear someone say “Ratatouille,” I always want to say “Rata-three-ee” just to be facetious. Anyhow, I had the opportunity to do so when I cooked it for dinner the other night. Tomatoes, capsicums and zuchinni are cheap and plentiful, and after Auckland we really oughta eat some vegetables. So it all worked out rather nicely. I didn’t use a recipe, just kind chopped and stirred and simmered stuff together with tomato passata.

Above: Okay, so there have been salads and the like but I know what people reeeally get excited about is the sweet stuff. It was Waitangi Day on Wednesday, and I don’t know why that equated to butterfly cakes in my mind but that’s what I really wanted to do with my time. I used the recipe from Nigella’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess, it couldn’t be easier. I also used these nifty silicone cupcake-holder thingies that I got for Christmas from my godparents, not only are they useful they also suited my colour scheme!

Above: Now, I’m not one of those girls who is all “Pink pink pink pink! Everything must be pink!” But you know as well as I do that it is the only colour right for the buttercream.

You don’t know how hard it has been not to eat the entire lot in one sitting.

As well as that, I made up a cake recipe. That’s right- I’m actually super excited about it, as I have massive admiration for people who just make recipes out of their heads. Now that I’ve started, I want to make more – it is rather intoxicatingly fun. Or weird, depending on how you look at it.

Above: As you can see, I had a pink icing thang going on that day. This cake doesn’t as yet have a name, although I was inspired to ice it pink with walnuts by a description of a cake I read about in Anne of Avonlea (what is it with me and Canadian cakes? “What’s your business in Canada” indeed!) Anyway, the working title is “Coffee Cinnamon Sour Cream Walnut Cake’ although I concede that it is a schmeer cumbersome. I can’t pretend that this is the only cake in the world with these flavourings, but I haven’t seen one recently, and I didn’t use any recipe books.

More importantly, the cake tastes gooood. I got Ange and Tim to give me harsh feedback, but they had nothing but praise. And good thing too, or it would be a bit of a waste of ingredients. Anyway, I might make it a few more times before I settle on the ur-recipe, but trust me: it’s an exhilarating experience, making up a cake recipe. Do you know how finite and precise baking has to be? Do you realise how imprecise and unmathmatical I am?

Okay, so in the manner of Green Day in the Simpsons Movie – “We’ve been playing for three hours now, but we’d just like to take a minute of your time to talk about the environment!” They were booed, and eventually killed. Please hear me out though- it’s a little serious and political, but to be fair, I am so rarely either of these things. For what it’s worth (as it were):

The country village I grew up in – Otaua (always fun to spell out over the phone) – is being threatened by a company called Waste Petroleum Combustion. They want to put massive oil silos – for more than a million litres of oil – and start a treatment plant. Across the road from my parents’ house. Next to a whole swag of farmland. A stone’s throw from a school. I can’t speak on this with too much authority, but as it would happen, we got on the national news show – you can read the story here – but I wanted to say something, to use my blog as a kind of platform. I realise that this will probably only reach a few foodies in Australia and England, and my mother, but then look what happened with the Rufus Wainwright video below. I have mentioned this here before on my blog (if nothing else, I got a really pleasing Rent analogy out of it) but it seems to be getting serious so I thought I might as well mention it again in order to make people aware. I’m not sure what we are going to do about it but my Dad is now the President of the Otaua Village Preservation Society (“We are the village green preservation society…”) which is a promising start. If nothing else, we could try feeding the people of Waste Petroleum Combustion some pink butterfly cakes – if that can’t win someone over, I’m not sure what could.

Damn the man!

“I’ll Cover You” or, “Today It’s Your Birthday, We’re Gonna Have A Good Time!”

January 29, 2008March 22, 20203 Comments

Firstly: HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Dad and my younger brother. They were born on the same day, many years apart (but of course!) If I could, I would be singing “Birthday” by the Sugarcubes (ie, early Bjork) in Icelandic: Once heard, never forgotten.

Today was one of those rare days in Wellington, city of much wind, where you could wear a skirt without fear that your knickers will become fair game for passers-by to gawk at. Unfortunately I gauged it wrongly this morning (gauging has never been one of my skills) and ended up sweltering in jeans at the office all day. It is still warm enough here to have the bedroom windows open at 8.30pm. Oh how I love summer, even though it means I have to be super vigilant about not getting my pale, pale skin burnt.

You may have noticed, O faithful reader, that we seem to have been eating a lot of roast cauliflour lately. Tonight was no exception.

Above: Although roasted cauliflour is seriously dear to my heart, roasted beetroot is a close second. You don’t even need to add any oil, (for those of you who worry about such things, as I do occasionally when my jeans feel tight.) Avocado is the perfect foil for my roasted vegetables – it provides cool, silky contrast in texture, and the colour seems to do something lift-y to the whole operation too. One of the best things about summer is how cheap and consistently edible the avocados are. No matter how often I eat them they still taste exciting.

Above: Tonight’s dinner, as well as the roast vege avocado thing, was also Chicken with Soy and Sherry which was basically an idea I got from the New Zealand Cookbook, and some leftover gratin from last night – she says, realising I haven’t even written about the gratin yet – and…

Above: We probably didn’t need this on top of everything else, but I had all the ingredients and it is really rather light. I used the Simple Tomato Tart recipe from The Accidental Vegetarian, and the title does not lie – a few slices is all it takes. I grated parmesan cheese over and cut some dinky stars out of the leftover pastry. It tasted flipping delicious – summery and buttery and tomatoey. Did you know that tomatoes are actually better for you if you cook them? It increases the lycopene in them. Which makes me feel better about eating them on a mound of pastry…

Above: This is the aforementioned gratin, Potato and Mushroom Gratin, specifically, from Nigella Express, which was last night’s dinner. It was quite easy to make, although I don’t recommend you attempt it if you are doing the dishes – the dish is a complete nightmare to clean afterwards, and requires lengthy soaking. The gratin itself tasted great, the mushrooms were a fantastic addition and the fact that it was only cooked in milk meant I didn’t have to rush out and buy any cream.

Above: I served it with the Bacon and Tomato Hash from Feast. This is so simple – just fried bacon and tomatoes – so simple that I passed it by for a long time (also, bacon is kinda expensive.) But it is seriously good, fast, and well, good again. Since there seems to be a theme tonight of revealing what things are after I’ve mentioned them, I might as well tell you that we mopped up the salty tomato juices with the leftover bread that I had baked the night before.

Above: I made this on Sunday afternoon. It is a recipe from the excellent Brenda, from the food forum I am a member of, and this is not the first time I have made it. Let me just come right out and say this: I LOVE making bread. I love kneading it, watching it rise, the smell of it baking…I can see their use, but I don’t think I could ever own a breadmaker – it just takes all the fun out of the process.

With this I made the Chef’s Salad again – that’s how much I like it.

Above: This one was even better than the first one I made, because I had actual chunks of ham in it, not shaved (“ham ends” were very cheap at New World, perhaps because with a name like that no one would buy!)

And that is basically everything we have eaten up until this point.

Much as I hate how whatever they are calling the generation after me tends to overuse the word “Random,” Tim and I had a very random Sunday night. Tim was doing a shift at Starbucks that afternoon, when some American guys came in. They got to talking, after ordering their Venti Mocha Whatevers, and it conspires that these Americans were in fact, in a band that was playing at the San Fransisco Bath House (an ostentatiously named venue in the city) that night. Their name is Me First and The Gimme Gimmes. Their gig was sold out and Tim had never heard of them before, but he must have absolutely charmed them with his, well, charm, because they told him they’d put his name on the door with a plus-one (that’s me!) and he could go to their gig. Tim was pretty stoked with the whole name on the door thing, and came home and told me. You may be asking who this band is. Basically put, they are a punk rock covers band, which may not sound terribly alluring, but I had a massive thing for these guys in third form and so was pretty excited that we could just waltz in for free. And also the idea of one’s name being on the door of an event makes one feel pretty darn grown up.

They were excellent fun, and played some of my old favourites that I used to listen to on Channel Z – like Leaving on a Jet Plane and Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Amusingly, they would say “Okay, for this next song we’re going to play a cover” before every tune they played. Purists may well sneer at a punked up cover of Blowin In The Wind, but how can you resist when they precede it by saying “Here’s a song we’ve basically stripped of any meaning whatsoever.” After the gig we talked to their sound guy, (I’m sure there is a more technical name for what he does) who was very friendly and gave us the set list. Rock and Roll!

It might not be quiiiite as cool as the time the guy who plays “Hands” on Boston Legal went to Tim’s work, but it is giving me half a mind to quit my job and work at Starbucks if only for the occasional celeb sighting. Yes, “You can take the girl out of Hicksville” etc etc.

Crowded House

January 23, 2008March 14, 20202 Comments

If there was a better way of typing out a sigh, onomatapoeically, rather than saying the word “sigh,” I would use it right now. We learned of actor Heath Ledger’s death today, I’m sure if you are reading it here it won’t be the first time you have heard about it, indeed, this isn’t the sort of blog one would go to for that sort of news. But I can’t let the event pass without giving some kind of recognition to it. For all that people seem to be more shocked at “celebrity” death depending on how good looking the person was and the circumstances surrounding it (I speak as someone who has been trawling gossip blogs in order to find out news and gauge peoples’ responses), and even though say, Fox News will give far more coverage to this than the death of Sir Edmund Hillary…he is no less dead. He was only 28, an exceptionally good actor, of the Johnny Depp school of excellence in my opinion, and he had a two year old daughter. A terribly sad thing to hear. Sigh.

Meanwhile, at stately Wayne Manor, I am still cooking for various people, including Tim’s friend, who is still staying with us, and my cousin Paul, who is moving into our flat. But – I like feeding lots of people, so I am not being hard done by in the least.

Above: I like pasta for feeding a crowd. It’s not as austere as rice, but just as quick – and is there anything lovelier, when you are slavering with hunger, than a vat of pasta? It is also about the only thing that is cheap in the supermarkets these days. I’m still not over the price of dairy, (if only there was some way I could protest – but I love butter too much) but we did some groceries today and EVERYTHING was expensive. Even with a $60 voucher, (thanks to Mum and Dad) and minimal purchasing of meat, it came to $130. I kid you not. I was going to buy some raw mixed nuts with which to make Mum another batch of Nigella’s fabulous muesli, and a small bag at the bulk section came to $9.50. I nearly wept. Sorry Mum – the muesli might have to wait a while. What is wrong with New Zealand’s economy?

Above: Pasta Carbonara, recipe courtesy of Nigella’s Feast, has got to be one of my all-time favourite meals. Bacony, creamy, vermouth-y, carbtastic…frankly there’s not much more to say, except that I added some frozen peas at the last minute (not so last minute that they were still frozen while we ate, of course) because the lack of vegetables made me a tiny bit panicky.

Above: Another nice thing about feeding a crowd (ie, when there is more than two of us: we are big eaters) is that you can feel justified in making pudding. Which, in this case, was a sensationally easy Tarte Aux Fine Pommes, from Nigella Express. Okay, so I can’t pretend that the edges of the pastry didn’t get a teeensy bit singed but it still tasted great, and there was something pleasing about the elegant layout of the apple slices.

Above: I didn’t really need to make the Moonblush Tomatoes from Nigella Express in this silicone dish, but I loved the red-on-red vibrancy it produced. Tomatoes were cheap at the market, and this recipe sounded so easy that I thought I’d give it a bash. Basically, you sprinkle tomatoes (supposed to be cherry ones, but big ones were much cheaper) with a tiny bit of salt and sugar, and some dried thyme, put them in a 220 C oven, and then turn it off and leave them overnight. By which stage they should look like this:

Above: This may not look too impressive, but they smell incredible – like the most intensely condensed tomato soup. I’m not sure that I’m selling them well, but really – if tomatoes came with comparitive superlatives, these would be the tomatoeyest things on earth. Good grief. First I’m making up words to describe my feelings for Nigella, then I’m not satisfied with the word ‘sigh’, and now I’m taking sweeping liberties with a noun that was never meant to be used as an adjective. Who do I think I am, butchering the English language like this?

Above: As well as being so fragrant that they drive me to mess with grammatical institutions, the tomatoes go rather excellently in a pasta sauce. I made one up on the spot for dinner the other night; Onions, chopped up pork sausages, a couple of the moonblush tomatoes, a splash of sherry, some capers, a little cream…it tasted deeply flavoursome and delicious. The salad that you can see there was made from radiccio (which I found cheap at Moore Wilsons) roast beetroot and diced avocado. The sweetness of the beetroot and the creamy texture of the avocado seemed to nicely balance the somewhat bitter, yet beautifully purple, radiccio.

I realise I am breaking the cardinal sin of writing for people: Be concise. I am not concise at the best of times…but if you have made it to this point and are thinking, “But how much more can they possibly have eaten?!” fear not – there isn’t much more to go.

Above: Making one’s own chicken nuggets does, on paper, sound absolutely deranged. And I admit, they don’t look that great in the photo (it’s the overexposure?) but these are just so good and not taxing in the slightest. I do, however, recommend you get a buddy to help you with the turning of these in the hot oil or they will burn – the one thing I am likely to do in the kitchen, as you can see from the apple tart above. The recipe comes from Nigella Lawson’s Feast and is all kinds of basic – chicken breasts, cut into goujons, marinated in buttermilk, dipped in cracker crumbs and shallow fried till magically delicious. You’ll never go to McDonalds again…

Above: I’ve heard mixed reviews for Nigella’s Chef’s Salad, but take it from me and my discerning taste buds – this is SO good. I could have snarfed the whole bowl were it not for the fact that it had to go round other people too. It is a mixture of iceberg lettuce, corn kernals, emmental cheese, ham, and avocado, and although it may not sound spectacular it is nigh on addictive.

Above: Despite all my hand-wringing and exclaiming about EVERYTHING above this point, I really think that I have saved the best for last. This is the Caramel Croissant Pudding from Nigella Express, and though I can’t say the recipe looked too exciting at first glance…it is wondrous. I should point out that I have a rather bad habit of going out and buying an expensive main ingredient because I have all the peripheral ingredients, and this is one such instance. I basically made this because Tim was given some bourbon and there are two or so tablespoons in this recipe. Luckily croissants are relatively cheap at the corner shop, and the rest – milk, sugar, etc – are usually close to hand. This was ridiculously fantastic, every bit as good as Nigella says and then some. That’s right. Then some.

From croissants, one’s mind springs to crumpet, and thus, back to Heath Ledger. Hopefully this is the last of such events in this year that has barely started.

Get Behind Me, Santa!

December 12, 2007March 14, 20202 Comments

Yes, I am excited about Christmas, but December seems to be going too fast. It’s difficult to focus on each day as it goes by, when you do that get up-go to work-come home-get up for work again thing too often. I realise this sounds horribly patronising coming from a student, but as Jamie Cullum said in his eponymous song, “blame it on my youth,” because uni in no way prepares you for the “real world.” I guess what I am try to say, in my bungling way, is that I don’t want to suddenly wake up and it’s Christmas and I have completely forgotten to enjoy the buildup. And go shopping.

By the way – and I can’t think of any better place to say it than here – it is one of my greatest regrets in life that I can’t sing. It’s not like something you can work for in a New Year’s Resolution kind of way – you either have it or you don’t. You may wonder why I begin my post like this, but I was singing loudly along to the Rent soundtrack today while doing the dishes and as I listened to myself caterwaul it struck me that no matter how much I love to sing, no one would ever hire me to star in a Broadway show. Sigh.

Anyway, enough grumbling! There is lots to catch up on! And I sent Tim on a mission to find tinsel after work, so I can feel more seasonal. The $2 Shop mini tree on top of the microwave just isn’t cutting it.

Above: Tomato Rice, a recipe from Nigella’s How To Eat, which I made for dinner the other night. This is a perfect example of Nigella’s genius. Seriously – please make it!

Tomato Rice (The title is thusly because I can’t decide if this is more of a soup or a risotto.)

Take a jar of tomato pasta sauce. Empty into a pot, then half fill the jar with water, put the lid on, give it a shake and tip the contents into a pot. Biff a teacup or so of long grain rice into the sauce, and add more water if there doesn’t seem to be enough liquid. Cook at a lowish heat for 20 or so minutes, stirring so it doesn’t stick, until the rice is cooked. Pa-dah!

It is warm, and comforting, and transports even the most low-rent jar of pasta sauce into something seriously delicious.

To go with this I made Nigella’s potato and onion hash, from Feast. It is basically cubed potato, fried till crispy with onion, topped with a fried egg. The perfect supper.

Above: Ahem. You don’t need me to point out that I’m not so good at cracking eggs into a pan. But still – it tasted great and is easy as to make. I recommend microwaving the potatoes for about 5 minutes first though, otherwise they take forever to cook in the pan.

Another dinner we had recently was a chicken curry. It was probably more Indian than Thai, despite the presence of a kaffir lime leaf. It’s funny, we hardly ever have chicken breasts – they are just so expensive, and thighs taste much better – but they are versatile. So, I thought that I’d have it made when I found some drastically reduced in price the other day (their best before date was looming.) But I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything to do with them. Anyway, I ended up making a kind of free-form curry. I fried an onion, and added cumin seeds, ground coriander, tumeric, garlic, and a spoonful of coconut cream, to make a kind of paste. To this I added the diced chicken, a tinful of chopped tomatoes, and a kaffir lime leaf. This simmered away and then I swirled in some more coconut cream and frozen beans before serving over rice. To be honest I was rather impressed with myself – it tasted really good!

Above: The curry bubbling away.

That night (Monday, by the way) I decided to make the Canadian Cake, from my great grandmother’s Aunt Daisy cookbook. This title amused me endlessly, I suppose because there is no explanation given for its nomenclature, and because we had a Canadian friend around who was equally amused (it doesn’t even have maple syrup in it!) I really had no excuse not to make it.

I made the whole thing in the food processor, which helped for the slightly unusual aspect of this cake – it had a whole orange biffed in it. I should have put the orange in sooner though, instead of at the end once the flour had been incorporated, as it took a while for the chopper blades to wear it down. Nonetheless, it was very easy to make, and despite the fact that we spontaneously decided to drink a lot of red wine on our courtyard outside I managed not to botch it up in any way.

Above: If you were wondering, this is what a Canadian Cake looks like. Tastes good too – a light, moist sponge with a distinct orange flavour and sultanas strewn throughout. Another winner from Aunt Daisy!

Last night’s dinner was something altogether different, the Spaghettini Al Sugo Crudo from Nigella’s Forever Summer. In layman’s terms, it is pasta with a sauce made from chopped tomatoes, steeped in olive oil and garlic. The only difficult thing about this recipe is actually finding decent inexpensive tomatoes. Luckily they are starting to fall in price – I can’t remember the last time Tim and I bought some – and we got a bushel of healthy looking ones at the vege market on Sunday. You have to peel them for this recipe but it’s really a doddle – just pour over boiling water and let them sit for a bit.

Above: This pasta is so delicious – very simple flavours, but elegant and summery. In a move that Aunt Daisy surely would have approved of, I used the water that I’d poured over the tomatoes to blanch the brocolli and cauliflour, and then used the same water to cook the pasta in. Could I be any more environmental right now?

Finally – I swear, this is the last thing – I made the Blackberry and Apple Kuchen from Nigella Bites. Nigella’s version is a sweetened slab of bread which has apple, blackberries, and crumble tumbled over before baking. I had found a punnet of blackberries at the local Four Square for $2.50, and so taken was I with how cheap they were that I had to buy them. This recipe is very easy, the dough is silkily easy to knead and roll out into its tin, and then all you have to do is dice the apple and make the cinnamony crumble. It’s a miracle that I didn’t muck it up somehow, as the final of Outrageous Fortune was starting when I put it in.

Above: Kuchen in the kitchen. This stuff is sooo good!

Am now off to make a list (and check it twice, I know) of ingredients for all the Christmas presents I’m going to be cooking over the next two weeks. Am also hoping that I get paid soon -eek!

"The Brain, The Brain, The Centre of The Chain."

December 8, 20075 Comments

The title doesn’t have much to do with anything except for the fact that I am very excited, in a sniffly, boffinish way, to have discovered a Baby Sitters Club blog wherein a 20-something woman goes back and re-reads the books and then writes up all the glaring logistical errors and continuity flaws. The quote is taken from the BSC movie, something I had forgotten about until recently. Yesterday’s obsession is todays’ charmingly kitsch retro-pop-culture…so watch out. And by that, I mean that I have been on Trademe for BSC books. Shh!

We don’t have a heck of a lot of food in our cupboards at the moment. After the massive spree that was shopping for the Christmas dinner, I didn’t want to spend any more money on actual groceries. Let me tell you, I am looking forward to the vege market tomorrow.

Above: This here is the very last of the leftovers, and indeed, the last of most of our vegetables. I’m not so good at ‘making up’ salads, but I was proud of this concoction – the rest of the roast chicken, with roasted cauliflower and red peppers, avocado, and capers. It was so unbelievably delicious! We had this dumped on top of rice, and it was surprisingly filling (you know, for a salad.)

Above: Fish Pie. It is actually a kind of low-rent fish pie that I make a lot in Winter, and since the weather was jarringly cold and wet the other day I decided to have another go at it. Basically it is a can of tuna stirred into white sauce with anything else you have in the fridge – in my case, frozen peas and beans – and topped with breadcrumbs made from crushing toasted bread in your hands. It was inspired by a recipe in the NZ Cookbook, which uses a splash of sherry in the white sauce. I used the sherry Mum gave me recently – its first outing! – and the sauce smelled divine, all winey and warming and delicious. We had this with rice too, some Basmati that Mum sent us (and yes, it does taste a lot nicer than Budget Long Grain.)

Above: Lentil and Potato Pie…you may or may not know that I have a slight obsession with lentils, I think it’s just because they are so good for you that I find their very presence in my meal soothing. This was such an easy dish to make, and came from the NZ Cookbook also. Just layers of onion, potatoes, and brown lentils (I biffed a handful of red lentils in too just for kicks) and then pour in some stock and bake for an hour. I used the Knorr porcini stock cubes (that Nigella uses!) that my aunt brought back for me from Italy, which are so intensely savoury and almost fudgily dense with flavour that they make any bland combination of flavours taste wonderful. This was even better the next day, cold for breakfast, as unappetising as it sounds.

Above: I served the potato-lentil amalgam with mince. Just mince. Sometimes I try so hard to make mince exciting and different to what we had the night before (ie, Bobotie, anyone?) that I forget how nice it can be on it’s own, just fried with some onion and a splash of soy sauce (for Alison Holst Chic!) It reminds me of this time when I was much younger and Mum was away for the week somewhere. Dad cooked us mince and mashed potatoes, (and no doubt some veges too, knowing Dad) plain as anything, and suggested that the two were nice mixed together. It was so delicious I can remember this meal over ten years later. So, simple can be your friend.

I didn’t post last night (Mum, I’m talking to you, here) because of the stonkering fabulous Friday night line up on UKTV. After America’s Next Top Model on 3, there is the genius Green Wing on UKTV, followed by Little Britain, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and Shameless. The only thing missing is the old Men Behaving Badly, which I always had a soft spot for. But for real, what a night! How is anyone supposed to move from the telly to go out and do Friday night-type things?

Anyway had better go and cobble together a meal before Tim gets home from making syrup-cinos, so…

Good Bive!

Above: I know, I said no more kittens and music and non-food stuff but…I didn’t mean it. Got this photo off a colleague of mine who was also at the game and could nay resist.

We’ll Meat Again

December 4, 20074 Comments

“I don’t feel a house is a home until there are leftovers in the fridge, and Christmas leftovers are my all-time favourite.”

-Nigella Lawson

At times like these Nigella is highly reliable for a quote about food that doesn’t get eaten. She is possibly the only person I can pluck out of the air that fits this description. Having said that, and not surprisingly in a house of five voracious people, there really isn’t that much food left after The Christmas Dinner, so my visions of playing what Jade from ANTM 6 would have called “Leftover Lady” have been somewhat quashed. Nevertheless:

Above: Paprikasburgonya! Although it sounds as though it should be followed by the word Gesundheit, this is actually the name of what I made for Tim and I on Monday night to go with the rest of the sweet, sweet ham, and comes from my lovely Jewish Cooking for Pleasure book. And no, I didn’t pair the kosher with the pointedly non-kosher just to be funny…the opportunity merely presented itself when I discovered I had all the ingredients.

The title doesn’t lie: it was indeed a pleasure to make. Whole, boiled potatoes are cubed and fried till crisp, with capsicum and onions, sprinkled with paprika and swirled with sour cream. Although it sounds stodgy it tasted surprisingly light and used up the rest of the sour cream that went into the rugelach pastry. Pleasingly circular, no?

Last night I thought I’d better use up some of the chicken, which was stirred into penne pasta along with some of the cream cheese (it sort of melts into a sauce), peas, tomatoes, capers, feta and walnuts. Not sure what I was going for, but it certainly tasted alright.

Above: We ate this while watching Coro…which was really just something to occupy our time until Outrageous Fortune. We were all lulled into a soft fug of warm-fuzziness at Loretta being nice and sisterly to Pascalle, and at how adorable Van was being, when we were slapped in the face with Munter’s arrest! Not kind, wise Munter! Not to mention the inevitable fireworks that will ensue at Wolf’s return – oooh he makes me nervous…

I have the day off work today, which means I can have a leisurely breakfast rather than the usual hastily snatched feed before dashing off. Although breakfast isn’t usually my thing – I mean, Weet Bix, those overpriced sawdust-cakes, barely deserve the title of food, and who has time to make stacks of pancakes or blueberry waffles on weekdays, like the supermom in Sweet Valley High “who is often mistaken for the twins’ older sister.” I suppose this attitude stems somewhat from my years at boarding school, where the only options for breakfast were depressing cereal or cold toast with margarine, not butter. They fed us well there, it wasn’t some kind of Dickensian institution, but the breakfasts left a heck of a lot to be desired.

What a rant! Never realised how I felt about the first meal of the day, when all I was trying to say was that I had something nice to eat this morning.

Above: Toast with the most:Nine grain bread, toasted and spread with avocado, linseeds and Maldon sea salt. Worth getting out of bed for!

I have noticed that tons of food bloggers lately are cooking from La Lawson’s new book, Nigella Express. If I were a character in a comic book, there would be wiggly lines above my head surrounding the word COVET!! I had a quick look at it in a bookshop in town the other day, and it looks seriously gorgeous. There aren’t many things in this world that get me all anticipational like the idea of new Nigella material. But, it is also a lesson in restraint (she says, having cooked a million kilos of meat this week) in that I could probably afford to buy it but need to keep money in the bank for rent and bills and the like.

Also, while I am musing indulgently, you may have noticed a new addition to my Pet Sounds – Loveless, the album by My Bloody Valentine. I got this from my younger brother, a guy with relatively impeccable taste in music (he does like some rubbish stuff, but hey, I like Rent) This is my New. Favourite. Album. I listened to it on my iPod at work yesterday, and as soon as it was finished I listened to it again. It is seriously dreamy, and lush, and swirly, and shuffling, and all those other nice words, and slightly Cocteau Twins-esque, and a little difficult to listen to with all the layered guitar- I like music that doesn’t just hand it to you on a plate. I played it for Tim and he didn’t really like it. Now, I am always trying to get Tim to like stuff (haven’t succeeded yet with Rent, but finally managed to convince him that a life without Neil Young is a life wasted) but I had to admit it did sound a bit rough coming out of the computer. Then I tried listening to it this morning through these really good headphones that we have, and it sounded incredible. So, I have concluded that this is an album to listen to by yourself, with headphones, unless you have high class speakers, otherwise it will just sound jarringly messy.

By the way, I seriously apologise for the massively chunky paragraph above, I have tried a million times to enter a break between the separate points, but for some reason Blogger isn’t having a bar of it. It stings the eyes!

“Bring Me Flesh And Bring Me Wine”

December 3, 2007March 22, 20202 Comments

“lalalalalala….deep and crisp and even…” Thanks to Mum for the idea for the title by the way. And the donation – we would be eating bread dipped in water were it not for her kind, unexpected cash injection. And – just try and act surprised – this is a lengthy post, so don’t read it if you have to be somewhere in the next hour.

SO, the Team Hadfield Annual Christmas Dinner is officially over. I am officially all kinds of shattered after Tim and I spent over an hour doing the dishes (I washed, he dried, I felt like the sorcerer’s apprentice with the neverending plates appearing) but I can’t really complain since I’m the reason all the dishes were there in the first place. The dinner was a massive success, so much fun, and left us all groaningly full. Here it is – no pictures of Beckham, no kittens, no music reviews. Just FOOD.

As you know from the previous post (that’s if you actually read it and didn’t just pause on the David Beckham picture) I had been making things in advance, and the same pattern continued on Sunday. Tim had work at Starbucks at 7.30am, so I was awake fairly early. That is, my body was awake, my brain was a little on the fuzzy side.

First thing I did was make the ice cream. Sound a little madcap, I know, but I thought the Lemon Prosset would look rather stingy in bowls on its own and this is the easiest ice cream recipe I know. Nigella (who else!) has variations of it in a few of her books, the version I used was the Bitter Orange Ice Cream from Nigella Bites. It defies everything one is taught about making ice cream and shouldn’t work, but oh, how it does. Simply dissolve icing sugar – about 150g – in the juice of a couple of oranges, add 600mls cream, whisk till softly whipped and…freeze. You are supposed to add lime juice to this but I didn’t have any, so I upped the orange hit with a teaspoon of my beloved Boyajian Orange Oil (Nigella actually namechecked it in her books!) which made it headily…you know it’s difficult to find a synonym for “orange” so I’ll stop talking about it.

Above: The Orange Blossom Special…I used a whisk, rather than the electric beaters, because I figured that any extra activity would be beneficial. Considering all the cream.

While the ice cream was a-freezing I got on with the Rugelach. Now, I’m not one to appropriate other cultures – she says – but I think that there is nothing wrong with enjoying the many foods that the world has to offer. I say this because of a photo I saw of Justin Timberlake poking out his tongue in imitation while receiving a powhiri – Maori welcome – on his recent visit to New Zealand. I’m not quite sure why this annoyed me, but I had a bit of a think and concluded that it was one thing for me to make Jewish food, but it would be another thing entirely to say, wear a yarmulke while doing so. Anyway, I was getting so philosophical you could call me Anne of Green Gables and I nearly forgot to actually make the blooming things. Luckily they are a doddle.

Above: Doesn’t the sight of this make you want to convert…just a schmeer? Rugelach is pastry (which has butter, sour cream AND cream cheese in it, making it very sticky but easy to roll out) brushed with melted butter and, for artery thickening effect, rolled around chocolate and brown sugar. It is glutinous, but it was the only glutinous thing on the menu and frankly I’m not a miracle worker. This recipe comes from Nigella’s Feast and is, she says, a Hannukah treat. Nigella herself is actually Jewish, although not a practising one, hence the fact that I used her recipe for ham as well!

My cousin Paul came over at this stage and I realised that (a) I needed more chocolate to dip the truffles in and (b) I really wanted a drink. Luckily I managed to juggle both without detrimental effect, but I will say this – vanilla Galliano is sickly. I tend to enjoy a drier drop. There was a funny limbo time in the afternoon, because I didn’t want to get started on the meat and veges too soon, but of course everything would need quite a long time cooking.

The Fully Festive Ham, also from Feast, is a complete joy to make. It is worth pointing out that what I used was not what New Zealanders would know as ham – here we tend to get ours precooked, which we then just glaze and cook on Christmas day. The stuff Nigella uses – which is easier to find in England than here – is uncooked ham, called gammon, or here, pickled pork. Don’t be put off by the ‘pickled’ bit, it’s truly just uncooked ham. This means you can simmer it in whatever you want. Like coca cola. But that’s another story…

Above: The ham, submerged in a litre each of apple and cranberry juice, plus onion, cinnamon sticks, pink peppercorns and a star anise. You are supposed to use allspice berries but I didn’t have any. Anyhow I thought the star anise looked rather pretty bobbing round and the pink peppercorns would add the necessary earthiness. This simmers away for a couple of hours so it doesn’t really require too much effort.

I stuffed the chickens, which was about as undesirable a job as I remember it to be (and the cavities are strangely cold.) I scrapped the idea of challah, and bought some bread rolls, as well as a gluten-free loaf instead – didn’t have the psychological space in my head for dealing with more dough – so luckily I didn’t have to worry about faffing about with oven temperatures.

The potatoes went in the oven and the kumara and parsnips were chopped up to go in Tim’s electric frypan that he got for his 21st. It is worth knowing that you can quite effectively “roast” vegetables in this machine, if you are feeding a crowd. I made a quick salad, to offer crisp contrast, out of a packet of fancy salad mix and half a block of feta. Ooooh I love feta. I made a quick dressing out of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and that was it – simple is best sometimes (ha!)

Above: The ensalada. The “green stuff” that saved our arteries from all the chicken and ham and chocolate…

As we were setting the table, Emma said “weren’t you going to do some peas?” Bugger! Quickly biffed them in the microwave, and then thought, heck, I might as well make some gravy too. So I poured the chicken roasting juices into a pot, with a spoonful of the cranberry sauce that I used to glaze the ham (which was in the oven at this point) and even though it ultimately makes things gluggy, a spoonful of gluten-free cornflour. While this was boiling up I added a slosh of Marsala, quarter of a porcini stock cube and a cup or so of water and let it bubble away.

Above: “They call it riding the gravy train…” I’m something of a gravy novice, and gluten-free is probably not the best way to start, but it was pretty good stuff. Behind you can see the remainder of the stuffing which I cooked in my silicone muffin tray for people.

And then, it was time to eat.

Above: The groaning board (which handily extends out.) Far left is the ham, then the chickens, and the salad on the right. Of course the chickens were free range, they taste so much better, and as the ham came from our delightful local butchers I was reassured it was a happy pig in life.

Above: Tim’s plateful. I’m full just looking at it.

Mercifully, everyone liked it. The stuffing was very well received, the ham was unbelievably tender (hey, it’s a good recipe) and we all just ate and ate and ate and ate. We had a brief pause between courses, just enough to try and locate a nook into which pudding could fit.

Above: Psychocandy – from front to back, the Rugelach, the Crunchie Bar Slice, and the Chocolate Truffles. For some reason I never got a photo of the ice cream or the Lemon Prosset, but here – one looks pale and slightly orange, the other looks pale and slightly yellow. As Jack White opined, “Sugar never tasted so good.” I’m so glad I decided to do heaps of things- I honestly can’t decide which I like more. By the way, the sweeties above are resting in none other than my Nigella Lawson Living Kitchen platter, which is ENORMOUS. I got it ridiculously cheap on Trademe and didn’t realise how huge it was when I bought it. It is gorgeous though and the perfect vessel for the dessert. Again, a giant “phew” that everyone loved the desserts. I knew the Lemon Prosset wouldn’t fail me!

Now that I have been cooking for two days, washing up for over an hour and typing for two hours…well I don’t know how to finish that sentence but my brain is tired and I’m not looking forward to work tomorrow. It was a seriously rewarding weekend (not least because of all the eating) and I had such a great time cooking up The Feast and feeding people who are important to me. It doesn’t feel that long ago that we had ours last year, and I who knows where we will be this time next year…

By the way if anyone is here at this point -thanks for reading so far and sorry if it is a little uninspired…but to be fair, my sinuses are packed with ham and my lungs are filled with truffle mixture which may have contributed to the syntactical errors and glaring ommissions above…To finish, it has to be said that the only thing that is better than having an enormous Christmas dinner…is roast potatoes for breakfast the next day. Note to self – rekindle your relationship with Pontious Pilates.

Chickpeas in unexpected places…

November 4, 20071 Comment

Shakespeare Exam tomorrow! Forsooth! I actually reeeally enjoy Shakespeare and will miss incorporating him into my blog in the vague hope that everything-is-learning (in the same way that Mum and I watched Amelie when I was studying for French in high school.)

Boring as it is to begin with weather, it needs to be said that it has been horrible lately in Wellington – humid and windy, (so your hair goes both frizzy and knotty) blustery, damp and generally miserable. What happened to the sunny days of last week, and the week before? In spite of this, Tim, Kieran and I schlepped down to the vege market and I ended up with all sorts of cheering goodies – another tray of free range eggs, a fennel bulb, rhubarb, beetroot, brocolli, coriander, chillies, kaffir lime leaves, strawbs ($1.50 a punnet!) bananas, celery, and red capsicums, all for very cheap.

For dinner tonight I made Nigella’s Chicken Stew with Chickpeas and Harissa from How To Eat. I wish I’d thought to make it sooner on in the year because it is very easy and relatively inexpensive. It does require forward planning; the chickpeas I soaked, earth-motherlike, in a bowl overnight, and the harissa I made this afternoon.

Above: The ingredients for the harissa, which I arranged artfully on this board before realising that now I had to veeery carefully chop the chillies and garlic without disturbing the mound of salt.

Harissa is – from experience – a sort of paste of chillies, garlic, salt, cumin, coriander, caraway, vinegar and olive oil. I personally can’t deal with much chilli but find this mixture completely addictive. I only used one chilli, and made the whole thing in my pestle and mortar that I got from Mum and Dad for Christmas a few years back. I dry-fried a teaspoon each of cumin, coriander and caraway seeds, then ground them into dust in the P&M. In this goes the chopped chilli, garlic, and sea salt, plus a little vinegar and enough olive oil to amalgamate the lot.

Above: Harissa. I can eat it by the spoonful…

It is worth pointing out that I cooked the chickpeas while this was happening. I then assembled the chicken stew which involved nothing more arduous than putting a whole lot of stuff in a pan, covering it with water, and bringing it to the boil. The harissa gets stirred in too, which is why it needs making first. You can, of course, buy harissa, but I guess it is in my nature to want to make this sort of thing from scratch.

Above: The chicken was so tender after its hour or so simmering away that it fell to pieces at the mere prod of a wooden spoon. Considering it was freezer-burned chicken that I’d found buried under the frozen peas and forty half-bags of mixed veges, I was Very Impressed. I served this with bulghur wheat, and it was really, seriously delicious and comforting.

The rest of the chickpeas that I’d cooked up went into – of all things – a chocolate cake. I found a recipe from Nigella.com for this gluten-free creation, based on chickpeas as opposed to the usual ground almonds. Intrigued by its simplicity and the positive review that the person who posted it gave, I decided to make it.

Above: Good grief! It’s fantastic! It is chocolately, moist, and has a somehow puffy yet dense texture.

Emma, our resident gluten-shunner is happy as most cakes suitable for her involve hundreds of dollars worth of ground almonds, or are seriously rich – it has to be said that celiac cakes tend to be very puddingy, rather than tasting of homespun baking. In fact I’m so taken with it that here is the recipe. I used orange juice squeezed from oranges that Stefan’s dad sent him from the Hawke’s Bay – acerbic and heavy with juice.

Gluten Free Chocolate Chick Pea Cake (okay, that title is awful, sorry)

300 -400g chickpeas (I had about 350g freshly cooked, otherwise I would use a well-drained can.)
2/3 cup orange juice
2/3 cup cocoa
1 cup sugar
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
4 eggs

Whizz up the chickpeas in a food processor, till very smooth. Add the other ingredients, whizz till incorporated, pour into a baking paper lined tin (I used 22cm) and bake at 180 for 50 minutes till a skewer comes out clean. If there are any remaining lumps of chickpea in the cooked cake – just tell people its walnuts.

PS – sorry bout the squint-making incongruity in paragraph size/spacing etc – try as I might, I haven’t managed to figure out how to make it uniform. In other words, it’s the computer, not me!

From Pig’s Bum to Cowpats…

October 21, 20072 Comments

Haven’t posted in a wee while on account of studying for an upcoming Shakespeare exam, my only one – hoorah!

Last night’s dinner came via Nigella.com, which has a section where people can post their own recipes. It is indeed fertile ground for food creations, and I found two recipes that suited the ingredients I had to hand. The main was a Turkish dish, very easy, more of a suggestion than a recipe. Into a casserole dish go chicken pieces (I used thighs as that is what we always have) a chopped onion, chopped potatoes, a can of tomatoes, and a sprinkling of cinnamon. Bake till the chicken and potatoes are cooked, and well, that’s it. To go with I made something called Pumpkin Tian, which involves cubing some pumpkin, dusting with a little seasoned flour, sprinkling with grated parmesan and baking.

The end result:

Above: Turkish Chicken with Potatoes and Tomatoes.

There was a photo of the chicken with the pumpkin on the side but the stove looked a bit toooo grimy for my liking – it has since been given a wipe so don’t worry! The chicken tasted great, really warming and hearty, and cooking everything bathed in tomatoes meant that the chicken was super moist and the potatoes flavoursome. I can’t honestly say that I tasted the cinnamon, so I added an extra shake before serving. If I was to make this again I might biff a whole cinnamon quill in while it cooks and fish it out at the end, for extra flavour.

Because it was a day of the week ending in Y, I had a hankering for some pudding. To go with the homestyle dinner, I thought that a chocolate self-saucing pud might be good. I think chocolate self saucing pudding is one of those dishes in the canon of “classic” New Zealand food, I’m not sure how or why this came about though. I remember Mum making it occasionally for pudding when I was younger, in my household it was called, rather poetically, “Chocolate Floating Pudding.” The recipe I used came from Nigella’s Feast, and is not only easy to make but requires the simplest of ingredients – a great one for when you think you have nothing in the cupboard. Nigella’s recipe is a somewhat modern take on the original though, with cinnamon in the mixture and an optional slug of rum in with the water that goes on top. Not having rum, I used some Marsala all’uovo.

Above: Closeup on the Chocolate Floating Pudding. Nigella succinctly notes that the pudding “isn’t the most beauteous creation, there is a touch of the cowpat about it.” I feel that my photo is a direct visual realisation of her description.

No harm done, as it tasted fantastic. The marsala added resiny depth and fullness of flavour and it was as easy to eat (doused liberally with milk) as it was to make.