Category: Chocolate

Absolut Pask

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Oh I wish it could be Easter, every day. Friday AND Monday off feels like untold luxury now that I’m dipping my toe into what they call “the real world.” For those of you who have been somewhat alarmed by the increasingly saggy faces of various rockstars gracing this blog over the last couple of days, I offer hot cross buns to soothe you:

Above: My first ever batch of home-made hot cross buns. I used Nigella’s recipe from Feast, and it was a very rewarding process – adding the warm spices, kneading the dough, waiting patiently for it to rise, draping over the flour-water paste to make the crosses, and of course, grabbing the tender buns straight from the oven to be slathered with butter.
Above: As it happened, while arranging my buns I unwittingly created a yeasted tribute to the famous Absolut Vodka ad campaign. Just realised at this point that I should probably let you know that Pask is Swedish for Easter. More Easter Baking:

Above: Gluten Free Choc-Banana Brownies. I can’t tell you how excited I am about these. They were rigorously tested for quality in my flat (ie, they got snarfed within minutes) and were pronounced delicious. Now, I can’t pretend that I truly came up with this myself, in fact it started off as an idea which took shape after a bit of internet research.
First of all, I found this amazing recipe in a woman’s magazine (I forget which) for gluten-free peanut butter cookies. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen this recipe around, but it kicked me into action and I finally made them. They are risibly simple and yet so delicious; I’ve made them three times since and never managed to get a picture because they go so fast. From this sprang forth the brownie idea, but first…
Peanut Butter Cookies: Please, make these. I don’t even go in for peanut butter and I’m a complete fiend for these.
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup sugar (I use half brown half white, but go nuts)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg

Preheat oven to 180 C. This is what I recommend you do because PB can be a tacky mess. Take a half-cup measure, and put your sugar in a bowl. Then, using a spoon, scoop peanut butter into the half-cup, and then scoop this in turn into the bowl with the sugar in it. Repeat. I’m not trying to be patronising, but the first time I made this I ended up using nearly every baking implement in the house trying to deal with the peanut butter and it can truly be so much simpler…

Mix together the sugar and peanut butter. Add the egg, stir again, and sift in the baking soda. On two trays lined with baking paper, place smallish balls of the mixture which you have rolled with your hands. Don’t worry about flattening them, and they don’t spread tooooo much so you don’t have to stress about that either. Bake for 12-15 minutes. These won’t be at all crisp when you take them out of the oven, but don’t fret, they harden up as they cool.

Now eat one, and just try to stop yourself eating the entire batch, cleaning the kitchen scrupulously, and telling everyone you never made any in the first place.
So amazed was I at the magical properties of this peanut butter that I wondered if the same thing could apply to a brownie. Because brownies by nature are supposed to be shallow and dense, it left more room for error. After looking at some ideas on the internet, I came up with this – and it is so much greater than the sum of its slightly troubling parts…
Gluten Free Choc-Banana Brownies.
Each ingredient plays its own special part.


1 cup smooth peanut butter – to do its magical thang.
1 cup sugar – To provide bulk and sweetness
2 eggs – To bind it together
2 small, very ripe bananas – To make it densely moist
5 Tablespoons cocoa – To distract from the other flavours, and provide a deep chocolate taste
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips – To add squidge and more chocolate, of course 🙂
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda – I don’t know what this does, but it’s very important.
As with the biscuits, set the oven to 180 C, beat the peanut butter and sugar together, add the rest of the ingredients and pour into a brownie tin of regular dimensions. (You know, rectangular, not tooo big) What I did was bake it for 1/2 an hour at this temperature and then turn it down to 150 C, and bake for a further 15 minutes. Perfect.
I realise the combo of ingredients sounds kind of vile, but you don’t taste the peanut butter at all. The cocoa sort of covers everything up. But oh the irony – celiac flatmate Emma was in Samoa over the weekend (as one does) so she didn’t even get to participate. Luckily I am so enamoured of these brownies that I’m going to repeat them again very soon.
And if you aren’t sick of brown things by this stage –
Above: Chocolate Pear Pudding, from Nigella Express. It’s basically canned pears with a chocolate flavoured sponge baked overtop, but oh! How wonderful it tastes. For Heaven’s sakes, buy this book! I made this for pudding last night (Nigella’s Vietnamese Chicken Salad for dinner) and it is perfect to eat while watching Boston Legal and procrastinating about, well, everything.
I hope everyone had a lovely, relaxing Easter break.

To Be Sure, To Be Sure

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Happy Saint Paddy’s! Some of you (cough*mother*cough) may be pleased to know that instead of dressing in green and going out on the slosh like everyone else, I am stuck here, blinking behind the computer working on my photography assignment. I could not be more nervous about handing it in tomorrow, the only thing more sobering than that is the thought of the assignment I have to do after that (first photos in by Friday, if you please!) not to mention all my other essays for English and Media that are looming ominously!

But there is always time for a little seasonal silliness.


Above: Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness Cake from Feast. An obvious – some might say mainstream choice, indeed – I’m sure versions of this will pop up all over the blogosphere – and yet so appropriate. Not to mention unarguably delicious. I’ve made this cake before, and it was every bit as simple as I remember – just melt and mix and pour and bake and then inhale, gratifyingly, the chocolatey, spicy scent it imparts while in the oven. By the way, that is one of Tim’s t-shirts in the background (which he obligingly held up for me). I’ve noticed that photos seem to look better with an uninterrupted wall of colour behind, unfortunately there are no uninterrupted spaces in our flat.

Right, back to the assignment. I made soup last night with THREE different types of lentils in it, but that will have to wait for a time when I am less frazzled and can give such an exciting dish the reverence it deserves.

I DO Like Green Eggs And Ham…

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Above: What a genius idea – crepes, flavoured with pesto, wrapped around slices of ham. Nigella, you magnificent woman. Having said that, I wouldn’t be making this if I hadn’t found some heavily reduced pesto at the supermarket – these days companies will quite coolly charge you $9 for a small tub of flavourless green sludge.

Green Eggs and Ham (from Nigella Express)
– 1 egg
– 75g flour
-75g pesto
– 150mls skimmed milk (I used half full fat and half buttermilk because that’s what we had)

Mix all this together, heat up a pan with a tiny bit of oil (or use non stick) and fry this mixture, in dollops of a quarter of a cup or so. When the top looks dry and the edges are cooked, flip and cook for a little more. This makes about 5 or 6, perfect for two. Delicious, and all the more charming for it’s name being Seussical. I could eat these in a house, I could (“could” meaning I have the ability, not that I want to) eat these with a mouse – our flat is currently plagued by the wee blighters.

This was tonight’s dinner, by the way. I know I normally waffle on before getting to the food part, but I’m tired, and being tired makes me type recklessly, heedless of syntax or flow. Apologies.


Above: This was the rest of tonight’s dinner. In the background on the left you can glimpse the Green Eggs and Ham, and to the right is – surprise – roasted beetroot with avocado. I didn’t make a big deal of it, surely you don’t need to see another photo of this! In front however, is what Marjorie Dawes from Little Britain would call “Summin Else!” Oeuf En Cocotte, also from Nigella Express, could not be simpler or more elegant. I actually used some white truffle oil, that I had bought myself, as Nigella recommends – it was quite exhilarating. The basic premise of this recipe is that into ramekins go plain, but quality ingredients: A free range egg, a spoonful of cream, Maldon sea salt, truffle oil. This is then baked quickly in a bain-marie till softly set. I’m sure this would have been perfectly pleasant on its own, but with the white truffle oil it truly tasted magical. It is difficult to describe the flavour of this stuff (mercifully, it tastes good) but it is sort of rich and savoury and earthy…and gratifyingly, it tastes of expense. We finished off the last of the homemade bread with this, its grainy texture went nicely with the unctuous eggs.


Above: This is the Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake from How To Be A Domestic Goddess, which has the wondrous virtue of being super easy, but also wonderfully intense. I had passed this by for a while, as it only had two eggs and 100g dark chocolate in it – How dense could it be? I scoffed (worryingly…) But yesterday I felt like doing some baking and gosh darn it, we had all the ingredients. The batter is faint-makingly liquidy (250mls boiling water goes into the mix) but all comes right in the end. The texture is incredible – fudgy, warm, somehow almost mocha flavoured (I think it’s the muscovado sugar that does that,) and yet resolutely cakelike – comforting and sliceable, not rich and moussy. If you have this book, it is definitely worth the $3 or so to buy the muscovado sugar, not to mention the fact that the batter tastes out of this world delicious.

Now for something completely different. I mentioned in previous posts that I got a Jill Dupleix book from Nana for Christmas, New Food. For the last couple of days I have been making myself her overnight muesli, or “Summer Porridge” as I like to think of it (I forget what the recipe is actually called.) It is very good – not exactly delicious, but it couldn’t be more virtuous than if it was made of lentils, and you know I’m a sucker for that sort of thing. Basically, you get your bowl, put in half a cup of rolled oats and quarter of a cup of water. Leave in the fridge overnight. The next morning, grate in an apple (if you like the misery) or slice in a banana, (much easier) and away you go! I usually dispense with the fruit (because my alloted time for “figuring out what the heck to wear today” almost always runs over into my “dealing with fruit” time.) I stir in some LSA (linseed, sunflower seed and almond meal) and have it with soymilk, which I genuinely enjoy the taste of. You leave the house not only filled with Low-GI goodness but with the absolute smugness that can only come from having a stupidly healthy breakfast.


Above: This is not something I have cooked, but is worth looking at all the same – the sunrise this morning. This photo was taken at Victoria University, where Tim and I expand our minds…While you marvel at the beauty of the photo, spare a thought for Tim, who took the photo at 5.30am while on his way to make Orange Mocha Frappuccinos for about a million people.

In other news, Ange came round last night and we, with Emma, watched my feature length documentary on Jonothan Larson, the late author of Rent (did you know that Rent won a Pulitzer Prize? Tim still doesn’t like it even though I told him that.) Then, as these things happen, we ended up watching the whole movie AGAIN. And Tim sat through the whole thing, completely mocking it. This made me think of when boys in school throw mashed potato at you and trip you up because they secretly like you. (Although I have to agree with him – the “Bon Jovi” moment in Santa Fe is completely overwrought.) Anyway, we ate the chocolate loaf cake throughout (except for Emma, as it wasn’t gluten free) and everyone agreed that it was amazing. If I had the energy I’d type out the recipe for you, but if you really want it let me know and I can do it another day. “Another dayyyyyyyy…”

In OTHER, non-Rent-related news, there is apparently a new Nigella book (I know, already!) coming out in October called “Nigella’s Christmas.” I wonder if we grass-hut dwelling New Zealanders (I kid, we have had electicity since like, 1982) will actually see this book before Christmas arrives. Anyway, excitement!

“Napoleon, Make Yourself A Dang Quesadilla!”

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This Monday is Wellington Anniversary Day; which I can’t honestly say means too much to me except that I get to neatly evade the worst day of the week. Hoorah! The weather has finally sorted itself out, and is actually being summery. For a while there it was both humid and windy, which is the worst of both worlds; you’re sweating like a mule and your hair’s a disaster.

I have been cooking more goodies out of Nigella Express. Witness:
Above: Sesame Peanut Noodles – the dressing has peanut butter and sesame oil in it and is seriously good. Oh and yes, that is a Nigella Mini Whisk, which I bought on a self-indulgent whim recently, and used to make the dressing. Already I’m wondering how I lived without it…like a true Nigellavangelist. You may have noticed that I am trying very hard to work my word into the common vernacular (surely there are endless possibilities for its use?) but Google hasn’t been very useful for information on how to copyright a word.
With these noodles we had Nigella’s cocktail sausages, which is, admittedly, an incongruous pairing, but as they were cooked with similar flavours – sesame, soy, honey – it actually worked. Unlike the photo, which I won’t post because it showcases how filthy our roasting dish looks…

Above:Two of Tim’s friends stayed for the weekend, and I made us all dinner last night. Nigella’s Quesadillas were very well received (there’s nothing like the smell of melting cheese…) which I served with a rice pilaf and a salad of avocado and roasted cauliflower and capsicum.

Above: I got some cheap avocados at Moore Wilsons…I think I could eat an avocado every single day and never get sick of them. They always taste like a treat, you know?
Above: Something completely impractical and yet somehow necessary: DIY chocolate croissants. They are really far too small to bear the name of croissant in my opinion, but they are so easy and lovely and it is such a novel idea. Thankyou, Nigella. Two ingredients: puff pastry and chocolate. The most difficult thing, for a geometry-challenged gal like myself, was cutting the triangles correctly. In case you were concerned, I made them on the washing machine because…it was the only benchspace we had that morning. By the way am I the only one who thinks the rolled up pastries look not unlike the tiny paper creatures that torment and chase Haku in Spirited Away?

Above: Sorry again for the overexposed photos. I am no Annie Leibovitz. Heck, I’m not even Nigel Barker. But you’d think I could figure out how to make photos people can actually look at…

Back to the wee pastries – they were delicious, and fun, and just as easy to eat as they genuinely were to make.

Above: Sticking with the chocolate theme, I decided to make a cake, for general picking at over the weekend. I used a Nigella recipe from How To Eat which is a fantastic, one-pot melt and mix sort of thing which produces a luscious, moist cake with very little fuss. Note the mini-whisk again, which did a stirling job of amalgamating this darkly rich mixture.
Above: Caution: I baked the mix in two 20cm tins, with the hopes of sandwiching it together with custard buttercream…but they turned out super flat, like chocolate pancakes. Delicious chocolate pancakes, but nonetheless, I recommend just using one tin, like she says in the recipe. It still tasted great though and the buttercream filling that I made plumped it up somewhat.
I have to say we have been eating a lot of what some might call junk over the weekend…which may have something to do with going into town last night…and not going to bed till 4am…

“Bring Me Flesh And Bring Me Wine”

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“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.

"Victoria, What Do You Want From Him?"

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Above: Doesn’t that question kinda answer itself?

I got this photo off the stuff.co.nz website (wherein you can also see a photo from last night with Emma’s head in it – we were sitting in front of some very dressed up girls whose photo got onto this site) Since Tim’s camera is broken we used Emma’s – she has the same model – but it is very slow and has terrible zoom. Therefore none of our photos are worth writing home about, unlike the above… When the game finished massive fireworks went off, which was all very thrilling, and Becks waited for ages before taking off his shirt. Everyone cheered when he did – he must have known that’s what half the crowd was there for. He played for the whole game, which was fantastic, because he was only contracted to play a minimum of 55 minutes. What a guy!


Above: Becks in action – as Cheeky Hobson would say, “It’s so physical!” Becks is in the dark blue, by the way.

All semi-nudity aside though, it was an amazing game and Beckham was all kinds of classy. Even though we lost, the crowd got on their feet and cheered when he scored a goal. It was unbelievably exciting to watch him in action – I don’t know much about soccer (Me:”who is that guy in yellow, Tim?” Tim:”The ref.”) but whenever he had the ball it looked effortless and graceful. Every now and then I would turn to Tim and say “I can’t believe we are watching Beckham!!” Alright, the gushing is over already!

Because the weather was so exemplary yesterday – one of those days that come along just often enough in Wellington to remind you why on earth you live there – it was very difficult not to join Tim, my cousin, and his mates outside to drink in the sun. But there were most definitely things to be done!!

Above: The chocolate malteaser slice from Nigella.com. Except it has chopped up Crunchie bars in it instead. Who knew that malteasers were heavily glutinous? Not I! Crunchies are a more than worthy substitute in this gloriously tacky slice, which comprises a heady mix of biscuit crumbs (gluten free of course) melted chocolate, golden syrup, crushed Crunchies, and, ahem, butter. I am going to chop it into elegant triangles and serve it with coffee alongside the truffles and rugelach, but if you make this for a five year old I guarantee they will be your best friend for life.


Above: Tim, helpfully stirring the stuffing for me. Frankly, with all the bacon in it the stuffing didn’t look so wonderful in close up…unlike Tim!

The recipe is from Nigella’s Feast, and is slightly unusual but intriguingly delicious. Three onions and two green apples, blitzed in the food processor followed by a ton of bacon (the idea of finely chopping it all makes me want to weep – hoorah for food processors! Unfortunately the onions made me sob like a baby anyway) which is fried up in butter with the zest of an orange. When it is cool, crumble in a loaf of gingerbread – the unusual bit – and add some eggs before cooking. It tastes and smells incredible and is also made with gluten free gingerbread (the stuff that comes in the green plastic packet at the supermarket – expensive but really really edible.)

After this I made the chocolate truffle mixture, which came up looking too unattractively brown in the photos, so I thought I’d wait for the finished product before commiting it to film. Then I got Tim to help me peel vast amounts of potatoes, which I was parboiling in advance (Nigella says it’s okay!) for roasting them tonight. I only have one stockpot, you see, which will be occupied with the ham.


Above: Potatoes, tiddly tee! But really – that is a Big Pot.

After that I sat down in the sun for a while, with another Nigella creation, from Forever Summer, a cocktail that goes by the joyfully camp name of “Pomme Pomme.”It is a combination of Apple Schnapps and apple juice and is seriously a delight to imbibe. So delightful that I forgot to take a photo of it. So I had another one. And forgot to take a photo of that. So I had another one…and decided that since a drink that is largely apple juice doesn’t make the most exciting photo subject I’d just leave it.

I also made the Lemon Prosset, which doesn’t come with a photo, (would you believe I forgot again?) but it does come with a recipe as it is so flipping fantastic. The recipe is from an old edition of Cuisine Magazine, and is child’s play to make. In fact the only hard thing about it is trying to measure 600mls and 100mls, both are rather awkward amounts.

Lemon Prosset:

Bring to the boil, stirring all the time: 600 mls of cream and 2/3 cup sugar. As soon as it starts to boil, turn the heat way down and stir for exactly three minutes. Once the time is up, take it off the heat, and stir in 100mls of lemon juice. Chill overnight, in about 6 ramekins or one bowl, and serve to your rapturous guests.

By the time all this had been achieved, it was time to head into town for the game, and you all know how that went. Tonight’s the night, as Neil Young would say, and I have so far made some orange ice cream (surprise! A new addition to the menu, because I can) and started on the rugelach. So, a lot to get done…better get to it then! Next time I post I may or may not be ten kilos heavier…

The Air Near My Fish Fingers

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Have just done The Grocery Shop for the Christmas Dinner, which is breathing down my neck…wait that doesn’t sound so positive. It’s looming – wait, that sounds too shadowy and dark. The Christmas Dinner approacheth! I won’t lie, I’m feeling a little frazzled but I really don’t want to turn into one of those people who insist on doing everything themselves and then complain that they have so much to do. But look at it this way: The dinner is on Sunday. I am working all day tomorrow, then we are going to the Phoenix/Australia soccer game. On Saturday night is the Beckham/Phoenix game. I will be very, very busy. I was going to get the truffles started tonight, but of course the only (so far) thing I forgot to buy was bloody icing sugar and the stuff we have has gluten in it which kiboshes that. Never mind, I feel that making truffles after 10.00pm can only end with a tearful breakdown, followed by eating All The Truffle Mixture.

In other news, the USB cord for the camera arrived today, so I can stop borrowing Kieran’s (extremely flash!) camera. It also means I can show you the finished Chocolate Guinness Cake – yes, him again! (I don’t know why I think of this cake as having masculine properties, it is clearly far too late at night for this sort of thing.)
Above: A tip for ye, don’t for goodness sake ever use lite cream cheese for the icing of this cake. It is runny as heck and no amount of refrigeration would thicken it. So I abandoned the idea of emulating the froth on top of a pint and went for the artistic drizzle look instead…still tasted like a dream – this is a seriously special cake.

Anyway, we spent an inordinate amount of dollars at the supermarket tonight. It was partly covered by a generous donation from an anonymous fan of the blog cough*mother*coughcough* which helped immensely. I was too exhausted after all that to think about food so this was our dinner, and a fine one it was too:

Above: Fish fingers (or fish sticks as our Canadian friend calls them) and chips from Aro Valley (it’s a place near where we live, not a magical valley where fried foods grow on trees.) Had a sudden craving for fish fingers after thinking about retro food, prompted by a cooking forum I frequent. Now I am feeling full and cranky, but after salad for lunch I think it balances out…plus I drank sooo much green tea at the office after reading about how good it is for you.
So yes: tomorrow night and the next night will be spent watching football so I have to plan this out somehow. I will leave you with a maths problem, because not only is any maths a problem in my books but…well, that’s it really.
2 stuffed Chickens need about an hour and a half at 220 C
Potatoes need to be at 200-220 C for an hour or so.
Challah needs to be at 180 C for about 40 minutes and apparently starts going stale instantly so can’t be made ahead.
The ham can be baked at either 200 C for 20 minutes or at 180 C for about 40 minutes…
The Challah shouldn’t sit round for long, the meat can handle sitting for a bit covered in foil, and the potatoes need to be hot. If my brain explodes from crunching these numbers, what time will the 3.45 train get to London and exactly how many apples will Sally have left?

Guinness Gracious Me

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Another day, another disorganised camera drama. This one isn’t on the scale of The Pork Debacle or the day the biscuit photos disappeared…but it is nonetheless a pain. This means I can’t show you a photo of my new pride and joy, a large bottle of sherry – a present from Mum – which I am super excited about using, or all the cookbooks that Tim lugged back for me from home, which I also can’t wait to try out, or – more’s the pity – the finished Chocolate Guinness Cake, which deserves every bit of its capitalisation – it is enormous, dense, and dark, a king amongst cakes.

Don’t fret though, as I do have some photos which I uploaded to the hard drive before leaving home. I organise with one hand, and disorganise with the other. And, as all you can do is step back in time, here are some things from the weekend, when I was still at home.

Above: The veges for the Tunisian vegetable stew from Nigella’s Feast! Look at them all! I made this, and the Chocolate Guinness Cake also from Feast, to take along to a family party on Saturday. Tim helped me chop everything, otherwise it would have taken hours. I have often made the meatballs – just the other day we had them, in fact – and have made the vege stew before, but haven’t had them together yet, as per Nigella’s suggestion. Well, it is a fab combo, and great to take to potluck dinners. We didn’t have any harissa, so I just added a bit more cumin to the mix, which didn’t matter as there were going to be people of all ages eating this who might not like chilli!


Above: The meatballed stew in its toureen, with Feast in the background…never realised how useful those cookbook holders are for preventing your books from getting mucky – haven’t seen one in shops for ages though! This stew is not only easy, it is delicious, very good for you, and adaptable as heck.


Above: Butter and Beer, together at last. Mine and Tim’s favourite things, respectively… Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer asks Apu if he has any of that beer with candy floating in it, “You know, Skittlebrau?” Apu says Homer must have dreamt it. So Homer buys a dozen beer and a packet of skittles. By the way, the above picture is for the Chocolate Guinness cake. We could only find packs of 4x440ml cans and the cake needed a mere 250mls so Tim manfully dealt with the rest…


Above: This is the biggest one-tin cake I have ever made! I don’t know what makes it so enormous – perhaps the Guinness bubbles?

Mum is posting me the usb cord for the camera, so you won’t be able to see what the iced cake looks like till then. Let me tell you this though: It tasted intensely gooood. And, I suspect, it would taste even better the next day. Now, I’m off to work, which is a little jarring after a week of gallivanting and watching movies I’ll admit…

Gentlemen Prefer Blondies

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I bought some more pork. I wasn’t going to, but I thought – My public needs me. However, I made a different recipe to the last, semi-disastrous time, mostly because Marsala is relatively pricey and the Roast Pork Cinghiale uses rather a lot of it. I turned instead to the much simpler Slow Cooked Pork from Nigella Bites, actually a recipe for 12 people (with 9 1/2 kilos of pork!!) so I had to scale it down…a lot. You are supposed to cook it in a low oven overnight, after smearing it with a chilli-garlic-ginger paste, but I just left our comparitively meagre 1.6kg in for about 5, while Tim and I went off to do our exam. Still tender as a woman’s kiss. I presume.

Above: An actual photo of pork! Look, you guys didn’t miss out on much last time because…I still haven’t figured out how to make pork look good on camera. I believe studio lighting and some photoshop might help.
To go with, I made a dish I’ve been eyeing for some time, from The Accidental Vegetarian: Fennel, Asparagus and Roast Potato salad. I fiddled with it slightly, in that I didn’t add the Italian dressing or rocket leaves, but it was amaaaazingly good. The roasted potato gave crunch, the asparagus gave its own brand of magical deliciousness, and the crisp shards of fennel gave cool, fresh contrast, not only to the slight oiliness of the other veges but also to the rich pork.

Above: The reason I am thankful for the vege market.
We ate this while watching The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, which is a pretty amusing film, though I think I prefer the book. I particularly like how the doors on the spaceship open and close with a sigh – and how we caught a glimpse of New Zealand at the end when they are zooming all over the world. Then, as you know, we went and watched the spectacular fireworks, from the top of the Cable Car lookout, which is a 5-10 minute walk from our place. It was a very clear, still night – miraculously – so perfect for such an occasion.
When we got back I was going to make something for dessert but didn’t have the energy. The idea of having to measure flour made me want to weep like a bairn, so I left it till this morning to make…White Chocolate Brownies (or Blondies, if you will.) These come from Nigella’s How to Be A Domestic Goddess and are child’s play to make.
Speaking of which, I found the following amusing:
Above: Zoom in – gorgeous white chocolate.
Above: Zoom Out – Why yes, that is a pack of loo roll and half a roast chicken on our dining table.
Anyway, melted white chocolate and butter goes into beaten eggs and sugar (I used half brown to give it extra fudginess) and flour gets folded in (or flung, in my case – I can never keep the stuff in one place.)

Above: photo by Tim, who is as adept at capturing slow-moving batter as he is with fireworks. Even though you can only see about 1/18 of my hands (okay, 1/3, they’re pretty small) what is visible is very floury and smeary. Imagine That!

Above: The finished blondies. These are great, in that they are no effort to make and yet repay you with such gratifying squidginess. The only thing that I think would improve these is a handful of white chocolate chips or the like in the batter but…I just really like white chocolate (even though there is a vogue for claiming to love the intensely bitter 300% cocoa solids dark chocolate these days.)

Chickpeas in unexpected places…

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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!