i could make you smile, in the morning i’ll make you breakfast

March 30, 2014March 11, 20207 Comments

First, let me use a lyric from Staind’s damn-that-holds-up-well-there-goes-my-snide-attitude 2001 song It’s Been A While to ruefully acknowledge that I haven’t posted on this blog in some time.

It’s been a while.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, a metaphorical rock that represents your own sufficiently full life with its own things that you are perfectly entitled to focus on instead of me (but hey! Me!) here’s your “Previously, in HungryandFrozen! The Musical: The TV Series” intro before I go any further. In my last blog post I’d already come out and broken up with Tim (a sad side-effect of being gay: really can’t marry that guy. A positive side-effect of being gay: I’m gay!) And now to add to that I’ve moved into a new house and also quit my job.

The last thing happened for a number of reasons (most of which were along the lines of “it’s not you, it’s me”) but really crucially because I want to focus on my writing and my cooking and My Cookbook, which I just haven’t been able to do to even a squillionth of the level that I’d like to be. I say this a lot, but like, having my own cookbook published is one of the most incredible things that has and can ever happen to me, and sometimes I forget I even have it, because I just don’t get to think about it or promote it or talk about it or even just write about food in general. So if anyone out there has some cool part-time work (I’m good at marketing and sassy group emails, bad at lots of things) that they feel like letting me know about, I can’t recommend myself hard enough. Like, my last day is really soon and I have no idea what I’m going to do. It could very well have been a really stupid move, I mean, I need to pay rent and I can’t assume I’m going to just land on my feet, but…it felt right. So that’s where I’m at.

This recipe is really simple and I know people have been talking about Bircher muesli for ages, but I’m not trying to claim any authority on it, more just like…this is what I made for breakfast and the light was all dreamy and it was delicious and you could make it too. The push in this direction came from my sweetness-y friend Charlotte, who in turn got it from her friend Kimberley, and it sounds like it has evolved along the way with each new person’s bowl that it’s made in.

Oats though: so filling, so good for you, in ten minutes I’d undoubtedly eaten more healthy things than I ate all of last week. Hand on heart, it is one undeniable heck of a pain to remember to make it the night before, but if you get into a routine or put a reminder on your phone or tape post-it notes everywhere (Trab Pu Kcip springs to mind) you should get there. I actually made this at 2am and it was totally do-able. I was completely sober, I’d been knitting and watching TV shows and tidying my room and it was all of a sudden really late to be doing such activities. I was just drifting off to sleep when the thought of Bircher Muesli jolted me awake. Eventually I sternly told myself to get up and make it because damn it I’m a food blogger and an adult and as ever, think of how happy you’ll be tomorrow when you get to instagram it in the swoony morning light. And also eat a nice breakfast. So I did.

how i made bircher muesli

3/4 cup rolled oats
grapefruit juice
thick plain yoghurt
an apple (I used a variety called Smitten because damn that’s a cute name)
pumpkin seeds
pinch salt
Any other bits and pieces: coconut, nuts, dried fruit, so on. I used a handful of this preloaded “raw mix” or something from the bulk section at the supermarket, it has coconut and sunflower seeds and like three goji berries per kilo so they can throw an extra two dollars on the price.

Before bed, place the oats in a bowl and cover – just – with the juice. You can honestly use any juice you like here, apple is standard but I both had and like grapefruit. I also mix in a heaped spoonful of yoghurt at this point – I like to think it helps make the oats particularly tender. Grate the apple into the bowl and stir. Go to bed.

The next day, stir in a pinch of salt (if you forget this bit, that’s fine – I just do enjoy my sodium) pile on some more thick yoghurt, sprinkle with whatever bits and pieces you like, and there you have it. Breakfast.

The oats swell and almost dissolve into the liquid, becoming much lighter than you might anticipate. Their mild beige flavour is perked up by the tart yoghurt and bittersweet grapefruit, with little bursts of apple and the soft crunch of nuts making it less like obligation-paste and more like an abundant bowl of serene joy.

Moving out of my old flat was nonstop exhaustion for every particle of my body, and I’m going to miss it. But I love my new space and it has that same happy-to-be-here haven feeling as the old one. And my new flatmate Caroline made donuts from scratch on Friday. I think that’s almost more important a factor than living with someone who pays rent on time.

See? Instagrammable. I was barely even trying with this one.

In case you’re like “yes but Laura say the word gay again and also talk about yourself some more” (I don’t know, I say this to myself a lot, it’s plausible you might too) I was recently lucky enough to have a piece published on The Wireless about coming out. Lots of people said lots of nice things. I felt both brave and like I was hardly worthy of the word, which I guess is actually how many of us feel about small and large things in our life. Mostly just glad though.

So anyway, now that I’m finally 100% completely almost unpacked, you can anticipate, with earnestly shining eyes and earnestly clasped hands, a lot more blogging from me.

PS: Speaking of significant things happening in my life, the Pretty Little Liars season finale, what whaaat? If there are any fans of the show out there who want to talk about theories and character development and representation of women and shiny shiny hair then hit me up. Because I can talk about this for days. Can I put that on my CV?
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title is from: Siren Song by Bat For Lashes. It’s gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous. As per usual with that one.
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music lately:

Donde Quiera Que Estes by Selena featuring Los Barrio Boys. The first 20 seconds are unpromising but then it gets soooo good. And what I’d give for Selena’s fringed leather jacket.

Darlin‘ by Emily Wells. I love her record Mama so much. I got to meet her in New Orleans and we joked about fizzy drink and kombucha (I’d never even tried the latter but was hoping for the best.) The song is still great even without that pointless anecdote.
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Next time: the return of I Should Tell You interviews, alriiiight! With Anika Moa! Double, nay, quadruple alriiiight!

we’d roll and fall in the green

September 9, 2013March 11, 20209 Comments

Today has been a bit of a dick, between one thing and another. I took a sleeping pill last night in the hopes that I’d force myself into actually sleeping. It worked, but then I was like a forlorn jellyfish the rest of the day, somnambulant and dopey and fractious and essentially undoing all the good work I had done by having a good night’s sleep. And I currently feel queasy, although I can’t tell if it’s because of the dinner I just made or something else.

But, as Dave from Happy Endings would say, let’s back up. (PS: Max and Jane are my favourites. Also Brad and Alex. And Penny. Just in case you thought Dave was my favourite.)

Yesterday was pretty wonderful. I woke up just before 6am, lightly hungover from a gathering the night before for dear friend Kate’s birthday. This early start was for a skype date with Ange, erstwhile flatmate and forever friend, who now lives in London. Also because I can’t help waking up hilariously early on the weekend. It all started because Ange and I were emotionally snapchatting about our feelings about Top of the Lake and wanted to discuss them in a less rudimentary fashion, and ended with a “huh, we should probably Skype more often since it’s really convenient and stuff.”

We had brunch with Kate and Jason, which included an excellently bitter Campari and grapefruit juice. This turned into coffee where we ran into other friends, which turned into record shopping, which turned into ice cream sundaes with fixings leftover from the party the night before, which turned into beers at the pub around the corner. We saw a cute dog, we parted ways, and Tim and I went home to play candy crush and knit (respectively) and watch West Wing. And all I really felt like was eating greens, so I made us this.

Just greens on greens on greens, with some butter and lime juice and sesame seeds to make it more of a meal and less of a pile of stuff that happens to be technically edible. I am a firm believer in just eating what you feel like eating at any given moment, without guiltily focussing on whatever the properties of the food are (admittedly it was only roughly last year that I reached this calm conclusion) and so if I feel like eating a dinner composed largely of bits of plant, then that’s what I do. Of course, I could take a hell of a lot better care of myself on a day-to-day basis (my lunch today was basically just coffee and fruit burst lollies, which was down to apathy and stuff rather than actually wanting it) but it’s nice when what you feel like, and what you have, and what you’re able to make, are all the same thing. In this case, I happened to have a few vegetable-y bits and pieces getting wearily limp in the fridge, and they all benefited from this stirfry-steam-cover-in-butter method.

greens with sesame lime butter

A recipe by myself. This mix of greens is a good one, but use what you have – beans, courgettes, etc – in the quantities of your choosing.

broccoli, about half a head thereof
bok choi or pak choi, a bunch
a large handful of baby spinach leaves, or larger spinach leaves, chopped
2 teaspoons sesame oil
25g butter
1 teaspoon kecap manis or soy sauce
1 lime
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1/3 cup cashew nuts

Wash the broccoli and bok choi leaves. Heat up a teaspoon of the sesame oil in a large pan, then throw in the broccoli and bok choi and stir around for a little bit to coat in the oil, then tip in 1/4 cup water and put a lid on the pan, so the water can bubble up and quickly steam everything. Once the water is evaporated, or thereabouts, and the vegetables have softened a little but are still bright green, remove the lid and stir in the spinach. Then remove all of that to a serving dish. Finally, melt the butter in the same pan, stir in the kecap manis, juice and zest of the lime, sesame seeds and cashew nuts. Allow to bubble away until the sesame seeds have browned slightly, then remove from the heat and tip onto the vegetables. Either stir through or take it to the dining table and make everyone wait while you photograph it, because you’re a highly strung food blogger.

Broccoli is already a little nutty and sweet, so adding sesame oil and sweet kecap manis only but embiggens everything good about it already. Astringent pak choi and fast-wilting, metallic spinach are helped by the rich butter and crunchy seeds and cashews, and the lime simply brightens everything up with its citrus intensity. It’s very simple and plain, but not to the point of nondescript, where you forget that you’ve eaten immediately after you put your fork down. Nope, this is delicious stuff. And a terrific end to my Sunday.

And then today happened and undid all the good work of yesterday. But I have high hopes for tomorrow, even if Tuesdays are often the worst. If nothing else, there is more knitting (my current project: a black hooded cape) and reading (have finished NW by Zadie Smith, am halfway through Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, am upping my weights at the gym so I can pick up The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton) and more Orphan Black to watch, and I have a list of recommendations of other sleeping pills that won’t make me feel like a baffled sock the next day.

PS…I still have a cookbook! It’s still strange and exciting and amazing and a lot to take on! If you like, you can listen to a very fun interview I did with Charlotte Ryan at Kiwi FM, where I got to pick some songs as well. I started off making a consciously careful, everything-rests-on-this list of tunes to play, but luckily ended up going with whatever I felt like at the time. What were the songs? You’ll have to listen to the interview! Or just ask me, I’m a total pushover.
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Title via: Wuthering Heights, a very important song by Kate Bush. If I had a dollar for every high kick I’ve done to this song, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting a good night’s sleep for work tomorrow, that’s for sure.
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Music lately:

Dear Time’s Waste, These Words Stick Me To You. Dreamy.

ASAP Rocky, Problems. Effective, and effectively stuck in my brain.

Had the house to myself for most of Saturday, so naturally played some crowd-unpleasing Broadway and danced out my feelings, or at least some of them. Did some particularly bold pirouettes and leaps to Age of Aquarius from Hair and Heaven Help My Heart from Chess. (musicals with an arbitrary noun for a name, huh?)
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Next time: Whatever I feel like, evidently.

everything i love is on the table, everything i love is out to sea

July 22, 2013March 11, 20207 Comments

Here are some things that happened over the weekend.

Tim and I drank a lot of coffee and started planning our wedding. We went to see Unknown Mortal Orchestra live at Bodega. They were amazing. A guy collapsed in front of me while we were there, which sent a shot of adrenaline to my heart like the “a shot of adrenaline to the heart” scene in Pulp Fiction, but by the time I ran to tell the bar staff his friend had taken him outside. I made burnt butter madeleines for friends Kate and Jason as a small token of my gratitude for giving us this beautiful formica table that they no longer needed. I’ve always loved formica, but it’s near-impossible to get hold of in Wellington, since every cafe and their mother seems to love it, too.

And I spent three hours – three whole hours to the minute – huddled under the dining table, with Tim, and our friends Kim and Brendan, during a big earthquake, and through aftershock-after-aftershock. So, uh, yeah. The aftershocks continued throughout the night, when Tim and I (I dazedly, Tim pragmatically) gathered medication and a jacket and bottled water and then went to bed. I slept somewhere between midnight and 3.00am, and that was…it. There have been aftershocks all morning. The table that this laptop is sitting on wobbled just before, and it probably will again. Right now my legs and hands are shaking and my head is sort of spacey and my butt and heart are twitching in a syncopated motion and I sincerely can’t tell what is tiny aftershock and what is me.

I’d like to acknowledge a ton of things: everything rattled fearsomely but nothing broke, we weren’t hurt, and Christchurch has dealt with this kind of thing x a million. Three hours is a long time to spend under a table, and admittedly we probably could’ve come out after an hour? Maybe even twenty minutes. But not only did it feel marginally safe under there, it was distracting. We had an instant world to focus our energies in. After the first big, terrifying quake finally subsided, we grabbed a bottle of whisky. Incidentally, the bottle Kim and Brendan gave us for an engagement present, and which we promised we’d drink with them sometime. This wasn’t what we’d pictured.

a whole new world.

Soon it acquired chips, pretzels, diet lift, dried fruit, knitting, the laptop that I’m typing this on, soothing music, cushions and blankets, and, as I joked weakly on Twitter, “a French Quarter”. While we were all varying degrees of scared, there was some bleak comedy happening under the table as well – like the shrieks of people excitedly playing Candy Crush on their phones jolting the rest of us, or when I elected to play Walk the Line instead of God’s Gonna Cut You Down (even if I don’t believe, Johnny Cash sounds like he means it), or our various Tetris-like attempts to fit comfortably under there. And just the fact that this was our house, and we had invited our friends there, gave me this unusual ability to channel general we-can-get-through-this Julie Andrews levels of brisk practicality. I mean, I was still kind of a mess, but honestly, relatively Andrews-esque. No one can brisk like her. After we’d dropped Kim and Brendan off at their house, I ended up having to ask Tim to pull over because I was having a small panic attack, I think my brain finally exhaled and stopped putting on a show. Later that night, after trying to lull myself into a false sense of security with Parks and Recreation, which is a surefire way to make myself feel like the world is a better place, I lay in bed absolutely awake, every particle of my body alert and unwilling to sleep. Tim, meanwhile, happy-go-lucky bastard that he is, was clearly half asleep already. And then he was all “we could just talk about stuff if you want, like the wedding” and so we did, even though I knew both of us were only trying to distract me. And it was so damn sweet I nearly cried. Oh no, wait, I did.

We’re both home today, partly because of my barely-slept NOPE in response to the world, but mostly legitimately – lots of CBD workers have been sent home or advised not to come in at all – trying to stay calm and ride out the aftershocks. My nerves are coming to pieces like the frayed end of a ribbon and everything feels very weird. A mix of “is this even that bad?” and “is this our life now? Waiting for earthquakes?”

In the middle of all that, I found a madeleine that didn’t make it to the container for Kate and Jason, and ate it. Still good.

Sweetly ruffled surface and palm-friendly shape aside, these madeleines may look a little dryly unpromising from the outside. However each bite rewards your mouth with dense, buttery sponge, made rich with almonds and the purposeful, necessary burning of the butter. Madeleine tins aren’t the hardest thing to come by, or else I wouldn’t have one, but I’m sure you could try making this in cupcake liners and something delicious would still happen. These do take a bit of effort and musclework, but sheesh, your friends just gave you a whole table!

burnt butter madeleines

recipe from issue 148 of that favourite magazine of mine, Cuisine. I doubled this, and used a whole 70g packet of ground almonds, because I just did.

150g butter

75g sugar

2 eggs

30g ground almonds

75g flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Firstly, get your madeleine tin ready and set your oven to 180C/350F. In a small pot, melt the butter over a high heat, and then let it continue to bubble away scarily until it goes from a bright yellow frothy mixture to a darker, more burnished gold. Sit it in a sink of cold water, or tip into a cold bowl, so it quickly cools down. Whisk the eggs and sugar together for about five minutes, till pale and thick, then continue to whisk in the ground almonds. Sift in the flour and baking powder, alternating with pouring in the butter, and fold it all together gently. Let it sit for fifteen minutes, by which stage it should have thickened up quite a bit. Brush the madeleine tin with melted butter or a neutral oil (or some of the residual burned butter in the pan) and spoon small dollops of the mixture into the tin. Bake for ten minutes, then repeat with remaining mixture, allowing the cooked madeleines to cool on a rack as you go.

Am fresh out of adjectives, to the point of narrow-eyedly using the Thesaurus app on this laptop for the word ‘good’. I can advise, therefore, that these are outstanding, sterling, and simply ace. Like many foodstuffs I like, these are a pleasing melange (that was the thesaurus too) of fancy and plain, soft and spongy and sweet and yet calmly straightforward of flavour – despite the burned butter’s richness that I mentioned, they really just taste like sublime (that adjective was mine!) cake.

And I’d like to just mention again that I love the table. Formica is a little nostalgic, a lot practical, and looks damn sweet in photos.

Today, despite my nerves, brittle and fragile like a crisp meringue, I am enjoying just spending time with Tim and consuming more Orange is the New Black and knitting. It’s a bummer we’re here under these strange, nerve-wracking circumstances, but we might as well try to enjoy it while we’re here and be thankful for what we’ve got. It’s so odd going from being anxious about vague nothingness, to suddenly having that plus anxiety about potential reality, but on the other hand this affliction means I’m pretty much always fight-or-flight ready anyway? It’s not right, but it’s okay, as the great Whitney Houston once sang. I’m also super grateful for Twitter – the importance of that instant feeling of not being alone can’t be overstated. Stay safe everyone, pals, suspicious non-pals, the indifferent. And if someone works out how to, I don’t know, throw an earthquake in jail, I’d be open to listening. Especially if there’s a robust rehabilitation programme and preventative societal change involved.

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title via: Don’t Swallow the Cap, from The National’s marvelously dour new album, Trouble Will Find Me.

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music lately:

UMO’s song So Good At Being In Trouble. Bliss. And what a title.

Frank Sinatra, New York, New York. Rat Pack = soothing to me.

This isn’t music, but Tim and I listen to Bob Ducca’s list of ailments at least weekly, and did again on purpose last night. Makes me helpless with laughter every time.
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Next time: Um. No more quakes, please. Seriously.

the day the sun turns black and there’s a money tree

July 18, 2013March 11, 202013 Comments

Here’s the thing. (I enjoy saying “here’s the thing” before whatever follows, because it makes me feel cavalierly authoritative.) Tim txts me yesterday afternoon to say that he won a $50 bar tab at a nice place in town. This being New Zealand, that buys us two and a half drinks and one snack, but still – drinks are drinks. I suddenly realise two things: time is passing by quickly, and my motivation for making dinner is waning slightly. Also, I’m wearing high heels that are tormenting my feet with the kind of blisters I haven’t seen since my days en pointe, also I’m trying to ignore the fact that Tim and I still urgently need to wash a lot of teatowels and dishes after our engagement party on Saturday. Also I really just want to get home, eat some good food, and settle in to watching Luther and Orange is the New Black.

Rather than us spending money on take-out, I thought we could instead go to the supermarket on the way home and pick up some ingredients for fancy pasta, something that was almost more assembly than cooking. It’s Thursday, there has been a smallish protuberance in our bank balance, and we’ve just had some very free liquor. We can afford some packets of stuff. And really, that’s all this is: buying packets of cool things and arranging them on a plate. I call it payday pasta since the ingredients are kind of treats – pistachios, ricotta, and pancetta, oh that Terpsichore of the smallgoods. It has a bonus subtext of being the sort of manageable thing you can make for yourself near-instantly should you have gone out for a drink of an evening. I couldn’t actually find pappardelle, which is my favourite of the pastas, but after some feverish deliberation, I improvised by buying fresh lasagne sheets and slicing them up.

“Pinenuts! They’re the definitive payday nut!” and “why can’t I bring myself to buy this pancetta even though I set out to buy pancetta…okay we will eat it really reverently” and “why is this dog roll called Wound Dog? No wait, it’s Hound Dog. No wait, why does it have a picture of a cat on it?” and “okay, what’s the second–fanciest nut?” I exclaimed, as we barreled from aisle to aisle, pallid under the fluorescent lights. And once home, I managed to get out of my high heels and dress and into trackpants and a soft old jersey and make this pasta and get it on the table within twenty minutes.

It goes without saying, except that I’m saying it now, that you don’t have to actually buy pancetta and ricotta and pistachios. You could really sub in ‘most any gaspingly expensive protein and as long as you kept the butter-wine-mustard reduction (or gosh, just drizzle over some olive oil) it’ll be something. Pasta is very forgiving like that.

payday pasta

(apart from the pasta, I measured everything by handfuls or how much felt right, but in the hopes of being more helpful than that, the below measurements are roughly what happened. Don’t feel you have to stick to them to the very last milliliter, though.)

25g butter
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
1/2 cup dry white wine
200g pappardelle or fresh lasagne sheets
5 very thin slices pancetta
5 tablespoons ricotta
3 tablespoons raw pistachios
1 tablespoon capers
thyme leaves

In the same pot that you’ll later cook the pasta in, bring the butter, mustard and wine to a rapid boil, stirring occasionally, till golden, bubbly, and reduced by half. Meanwhile, bring a kettle full of water to the boil, and, if you got lasagne sheets, carefully cut them into slices about 2 1/2 cm wide. Lasagne sheets tend to come folded up, so it’s only a few incisions that you’ll have to make.

Tip the butter-wine mix into a small bowl, then fill up the pot with the freshly boiled water, add plenty of salt, and bring to the boil on the stove top. Add the pasta once it’s bubbling, and cook according to packet instructions. Fresh pasta only takes a couple of minutes.

Drain the pasta, and divide between two plates. Quickly tear up the pancetta and arrange evenly between the two plates, spoon over the ricotta, the pistachios, the capers, and the thyme leaves. Pour the butter-wine sauce over the two plates of pasta, and serve immediately.

For all that this is mostly assembly, the moving parts of which were very hastily acquired, it’s still a coherent and, in case you think I’m damning it with faint praise, a gratifyingly delicious dinner. Pappardelle is enormously fun to eat. So wide and cumbersomely floppy, all the cool, milkily plain ricotta cheese pressing into it as you twirl it round your fork, with elegantly salty, tissue-soft pancetta. I will here point out that you mercifully taste every penny of the pancetta. It’s not just overpriced ham. Pistachios add soft crunch, plus pink goes good with green, and the intensely flavoured butter-wine sauce somehow bundles it all together without overshadowing any of the other ingredients on the plate. It’s damn good, and worth waiting till payday for.

Sometimes it’s fun to spend a little money on something you’re just going to make disappear into your mouth as soon as possible. Sometimes that’s not an option. In case this all seems too chest-thumpingly pro-capitalism (to which I say please don’t ask me about capitalism, it’s good, it’s bad, etc, and also ouch, chest-thumping) a couple of payday-eve, or indeed anyday pastas you could consider include spaghetti with chili, lemon and olive oil, macaroni peas, and these two guys.

What a week, huh. Tim and I finally had our engagement party. Families converging, some of whom hadn’t really converged themselves in a while, friends, us, all in one room – I was nervous. In fact for the first half of the evening I distinctly felt like my head was floating about two feet above my body. But it all went really well. And as Tim and I kept reminding ourselves, we’re not the only nervous ones, this is our house, and this is a happy occasion. In fact, here’s what happened – everyone appeared, there was nonstop talking and laughing and bonding, everyone got a massive laugh at Tim’s and my photoboard of us from 2005 till now, the food was excellent and all appeared on time, and it was just a very happy, fun night. I just wish I’d specifically organised a photo of Tim and myself, not least because my hair was ballin’ and I had an amazing new black velvet jumpsuit with a short floaty skirt (well…skorts) and enormous bow in the back, but because while making the photoboard we realised we didn’t have many recent photos of ourselves together. D’oh. Oh, and I made a FANTASTIC speech. I just did, it’s true, don’t be shocked by my un-New Zealand lack of modesty! Tim was also there to contribute to the speech once I’d had my ten minutes of ad-libbing (including a musical number fake-out which I’m quite proud of inventing on the spot) in case you’re wondering whether I’m getting married to myself, or something. Also, speaking of wondering, we fed everyone (yeah, I like to cater for forty people for kicks) like so:

snacks, chips, hummus-y dips

cornbread-topped chili, vegetarian cornbread-topped chili, paprika-fried tofu, ham in coca-cola, slaw, buns

vegan lemon-raspberry cake, spongebob squarepants candy, nerds, and jelly dinosaurs, dried fruit, grapes and cheeses.

And now we have leftovers upon leftovers (including maybe three thousand bottles of wine) which is the best way to ease yourself out of the inevitable post-event-planning slump. Nervous though entertaining them makes me, because I want everything to be just right, and slightly resentful though I was that they didn’t make good on my request to bring the cats down to visit too, it was really lovely to see my family and to show them a fun time in Wellington. And now that Tim and I have got this stressful thing out of the way, honestly, I’m feeling so casual about the wedding itself. For now.

In light of what a week it has been outside of my small world, I recommend you read this piece by the wonderful Questlove of The Roots, who wrote a response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. I also recommend what David Simon (the person behind The Wire and Treme and have you seen The Wire) wrote in response to it. You could also, counter to what I’d usually say, try reading the comments – there is some fascinating stuff coming out in them. I’d also like to acknowledge what Rob Delaney wrote after the sad, sad news that Glee actor Cory Monteith was found dead. All of them write with far more insight on these subjects than I could, and so I’m happy to just link to them and leave it there.

Finally, let’s all reflect upon my knitting progress. After some almost comically prolonged unpicking, I am onto the final square of my blanket. Ready to tackle a hooded cape next, to give me that mysterious-yet-snug demeanour I’m always going for in the winter.
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title via: The Money Tree, a gorgeously mournful Kander and Ebb song made all the more so when syncopated with Cabaret’s Maybe This Time and sung by the wondrous Julia Murney and Heidi Blickenstaff.
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Music lately:

On Sunday afternoon, after spending all Saturday evening there, our friends came back to watch Rock of Ages. I know it is, um, imperfect, but I love it, I just love it. And it is entirely perfect for watching after organising a large stressful party. ANYWAY, wow, anyone else feel uncomfortably red-faced while watching a disarmingly sexy Tom Cruise, who has never appealed to me before, singing Dead or Alive? Don’t even get me started on Pour Some Sugar On Me.

Tim and I went to see local musician Watercolours (who I’ve talked to on here before!) at Puppies bar. Talk about disarming. I may have blurted out to her that her song Pazzida is in my walk-up-the-aisle-song shortlist. She took it well.
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Next time: I had a sudden urge to make a clafoutis on Tuesday. Still haven’t made good on said urge, but maybe this weekend?

you like tomato and i like tomahto

June 4, 2013March 11, 20204 Comments

It’s nice to have a happy little rut of recipes that are easy enough that you can make them while mentally and emotionally exhausted, not to mention physically exhausted (for example: from merely existing, or from watching the latest Game of Thrones, amiright? Spoiler alert: omg.) But they’re also adjustable and reliably versatile, like an old comfortable bra, that you can really throw them into anything and you’ll feel like you’ve done something nice for yourself of an evening. Somehow, this Tomato, Almond and Smoked Paprika sauce has become that to me. I think it’s based on a sauce I saw on a cooking show one time – seriously, those are the only details that I can remember – and occasionally I add other things to it. But it manages to be utterly simple, vaguely nutrient-adjacent (considering the nutritional value of my lunchtime pot noodles is akin to that of their polystyrene containers) and yet a little flashy and sexy and interesting. One of my very favourite things to do with it is to very slowly fry eggs in about five tablespoons of olive oil, then use that olive oil in the sauce itself, then serve all of that over couscous. But on Monday – Queen’s birthday, oh that joyous occasion…of a Monday off! – I made it to have roasted vegetables dipped into it or blanketed under it, while my friend Kim and I watched The Craft.

I was curious to see if The Craft was still the piece of important, flawless filmmaking that it seemed to be to me in 1996. It um, wasn’t quite. But it was also still really fantastic in some ways, most of them fashion-related, and I still appreciate what it meant to me back in the day. A film about women, into witchcraft, who said “we are the weirdos, mister?” Thumbs up.

(The red candle in front melted rapidly and spilled over onto the floor. Which we only noticed after the movie finished. I admit, at first my brain thought “gasp! It’s an evil thing like the thing from the thing in the movie!” But really…it was just spilled wax. Phew.)

This sauce is just ridiculously delicious, although frankly I think the batch I made for myself and Kim was my weakest so far. Possibly because I used multigrain bread, which meant the sauce had linseeds dispersed through it, which…yeah. Not quite what I was going for. Generally though, this sauce is rich and luscious and a little smoky from the paprika and brilliant with all sorts of things – the aforementioned fried eggs, stirred through pasta, poured over cubed roasted potatoes for a patatas bravas effect, tipped onto polenta…it just goes with all things. Particularly these crisp, collapsing and slightly charred vegetables.

Roast Cauliflower and Parsnip with Tomato, Almond and Smoked Paprika Sauce

A recipe by myself.

As much cauliflower and as many parsnips as you please. I found about half of the former and two of the latter fit comfortably on one oven tray and will feed 2-3.

Olive oil

2 slices thick white bread (I used seeded this time round. Uh…don’t.)

1/2 cup whole almonds

1 can tomatoes

1 heaped teaspoon smoked paprika

Salt

Set your oven to 220 C and line a baking tray with baking paper. Slice the parsnip and cauliflower up however you like, but the more flat/thin you go, the better likelihood of crisp-ity there is. Arrange in one layer on the tray, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and roast for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, blast the bread and almonds together in the food processor till the almonds are good and nubbly and small. This may take some time. If your bread is quite stale, soak it in a little cold water for a while. Then drain the can of tomatoes of its liquid – I know, this seems kind of wasteful. I don’t know, drink the liquid if you feel bad about it (actually don’t, it’s weird and metallic and horrible on its own from the tin) and tip the tomatoes into the food processor with the bread-almond stuff and continue to process till it looks saucy and incorporated. Finally, add the paprika, a good pinch of salt, and plenty of olive oil – about three tablespoons – and process again. Taste to see if it wants any more salt or paprika, then either serve cold or heated gently in a saucepan in a bowl on the side of the vegetables.

Dip the vegetables in the sauce or pile them into small bowls and spoon the sauce over.

In case you’re wondering, the reason these are sitting on a cardboard box is because our one small table has our projector sitting on a chair on top of it. It’s kind of an awkward fixture to have in the house, but then we keep wanting to use the projector, so perhaps this is our life now. It’s not a bad life, considering how fun it is watching things projected in large scale onto the wall.

What else happened on the long weekend? Why, plenty.

We went to our friend Craig’s 30th. It was a very fun night (less fun the next morning) especially bedizening ourselves with fake tattoos of Craig’s face (tattoo locations of Craig’s face include Tim’s actual face) and “Tattoos are for losers”.

First new duvet cover since 2006. As per, “is it instagrammable” guilelessly affected the decision-making process. It’s so crisp and clean and whenever I wake up I feel like I’ve been sleeping inside a bed of white chocolate ganache, I love it.

Amazing burritos occurred.

Hello.

And finally I got an email telling me an advance copy of my cookbook (which isn’t due out till September so don’t try asking your bookstore about it yet, unless you think it will build up major h y p e) which I received in the mail today and nearly cried and threw up everywhere when I saw it because every emotion in the world suddenly played out in my brain. I mean, I’m really happy with it of course, but there was just such a rush of feelings when I held it in my hands for the first time, so much more intense than just seeing the printouts of the design and the manuscript and so on. I will have to work on this so I don’t black out every time I walk into a bookshop in September. It’s just very exciting and terrifying and strange and happy all at the same time. Cookbook!

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Title via: Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, a song about a couple who say words differently sometimes. Adorable! Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong do a reliably snappy version.

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Music lately:

Mariah Carey feat Miguel, Beautiful. This dreamy, warm song feels like a return to form for my favourite singer ever who’s non-returns to form I’d totally justify anyway. Have listened to it many, many, many times.

The final few episodes of Nashville just slew me. I shed human tears and couldn’t move for half an hour after the season finale. A joyful highlight though, was Clare Bowen as Scarlett O’Conner, singing the hugely pretty Looking For A Place To Shine.

Polly Scattergood, Wanderlust. Cannot. Stop. Listening. To. This song.

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Next time: Umm. I know not of any specifics yet. Will see where my brain takes me. Could probably do with a better weekday lunch than pot noodles, that could be a thing.

running through the whisker wheat chasing some prize down

May 15, 2013March 11, 20207 Comments

I have been so damn verbose lately (verbose, fittingly, has so many delicious synonyms – pleonastic, circumlocutory, prolix) and more than a little negative (in fairness, there is much to be negative about out there. Maybe I’m just being myself) that I’m aiming for this post to be snappier and sunnier.

So, here are some succinct, happy things, before I get to the food (note: an insuccinctly massive list of succinct things)

Slowly but actually diminishing credit card debt // Getting home from work, forcing my slatternly self to immediately hang up my coat and put away my clothes, and chaging into one of my softest, oldest tshirts and underwear right away. The winter auxiliary mode includes options like adding thick fluffy socks, or not adding socks and sitting right by the heater, or rolling yourself in a blanket like you’re a cinnamon bun // a healed tattoo and oh so specific daydreams about more // Yoga // Dusky grey and pastel coloured nailpolish // A letter from dear Ange in London, the breathless opening and reading of which had distinct Pride-and-Prejudice-era thrills to it // Coffee, always coffee // Carefully planned spontaneous dance parties (also just spontaneous ones) // Looking after myself a bit, in various ways // Game of Thrones has had a lot of scenes featuring amazing butts lately // Buying a very cheap and probably utterly useless trenchcoat I bought online, in the hopes of looking like Bel Rowley from The Hour (I also want to look like Lix, with her high-waisted trousers and gorgeous blouses, all the better to drink whisky in. Marnie’s party dresses, less so, but I just wanted to mention Marnie. Um.) // Balancing imminent cookbook panic with flights of fancy about pretty much charming the world in interviews and being a cool person and stuff plus reminding myself that panicing about a cookbook means I’ve still written a cookbook // txts from friends that are mostly encouraging emoji // Watching episode after episode of Elementary with Tim, we’re pretty obsessed (also: Bob’s Burgers) // Parks and Rec renewed for a sixth season // The warm tofu at Tatsushi, it’s celestial // Google imaging lop-eared bunnies // Kissing // Laughing so hard with friends at Rose Matafeo’s brill comedy show, also saying hi to her afterwards and not screwing it up in my usual socially awkward manner // Going to a doctor who actually listened to me about my anxiety and other bits and pieces, unlike the last one who I paid $60 to be dismissive // Spontaneous and swoonful cherry pie at Six Barrel Soda.

Also: The Carb on Carb Agenda.

Remorse hit as soon as I started heaping this upon the large white dish. Like, it’s not even a plate, I think it’s more for putting cakes on. Who do I think I am. Some kind of…food blogger? Well, okay. But tiny grains and a flat surface are not practical for extracting spoonfuls of. It looked dramatic and pretty though, and what price that? Anyway, stepping back a little, what you are looking at here is golden, fried tiny cubes of potato, stirred into soft, spiced burghal wheat, jeweled with walnuts and nigella seeds and rocket. Carbohydrates, be they bread or pasta or rice or noodles or couscous, or, in this case, wheat and potatoes, have this “everything’s gonna be alright” filling warmth to them, and so it goes that carb-on-carb is doubly comforting. Potato pizza. Marmite and crisps sandwiches. Spaghetti on toast. Dipping hot chips into potato and gravy. And this. Which I thought up myself, although I’m sure I must have seen it somewhere before – I’m good, but not that good.

Really, you can just fry the potatoes and stir them into burghal wheat and you’ll still have a meal fit for a Khaleesi. But the extra bits and pieces make it superlative-worthy.

Fried Potato Burghal Wheat with Walnuts and Rocket

A recipe by myself. Serves two, with some left over for just one person for lunch the next day.

Two medium or three small potatoes. Or however many feels right. In your heart.
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup burghal wheat (this is also known as bulghur wheat.)
1 teaspoon ras-el-hanout (or a mixture of ground cinnamon, cumin, and cardamom)
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 handful walnuts
1 handful rocket leaves
1 teaspoon nigella seeds, or sesame seeds, or anything small and garnishy, really.

Slice the potatoes into very, very small squares – a few millimeters to 1cm wide. Don’t actually bother to measure them or make them uniform, or even square. It’s the smallness that matters.

Heat the oil in your largest saucepan, and tip in the pieces of potato. Spread out so they’re roughly in one even layer, and cover with a lid for five minutes – the steam will help cook the potato through. Then remove the lid, turn up the heat to high, and simply let the potato fry for about ten – fifteen minutes, stirring only occasionally, till the cubes are largely golden and crisp. It really doesn’t take too long but at the same time, does require some patience.

Meanwhile, tip the burghal wheat into a bowl, and add the ras-el-hanout and coriander seeds. Bring a jug of water to the boil, and once it’s done, pour into the bowl so it’s about 1cm above the level of the burghal, and then sit a dinner plate on top of the bowl – a plate bigger than the bowl, obvs – for about five minutes.

Once the potatoes are good and crisp, lift the dinner plate off the bowl to reveal fluffy, enfluffened, fluffed up (yes) burghal. Remove the potatoes from the heat, tip in the burghal, stir it all around, tip that into a serving bowl, and sprinkle over the rocket leaves, the walnuts, and the nigella seeds.

I can see how this might sound a little nose-wrinklingly odd, but the crouton-crunch of the potatoes against the fluffy, nutty, spicily warm burghal is AMAZING. Predictably, I dug for more crispy potato bits with the spoon, but both elements work so beautifully together. Also, on a distinctly lazy note, it’s nice to eat something with potatoes in it, but to not have to wait at least forty-five minutes for them to cook. This is surprisingly fast. And monumentally delicious.

On Sunday afternoon I had this sudden, intense notion that we should cut loose and go somewhere and do something. I sort of hate Sunday evenings, with their muffled, melancholic anticipation of the Monday to come, and their post-Friday/Saturday comedown, but sometimes it’s oddly pleasing to sort of bask in it, drive as far as you can go and stare listlessly at the sinking light in the sky and the landscape skidding by. And so we did. (Okay for all my romantic talk, it was more like this. Tim: why are we going to the beach? What? Me: I ‘unno, we could instagram the skyline, try to take photos of me jumping in the air by the shore like I’m a happy carefree person. Tim: Well, okay.) So we drove, and drove, and drove, out to Wainuiomata Beach.

The beach was isolated, and empty of all other people. The sky was mauve and orange, the colours fading into each other like a beautiful eyeshadow compact that I would look at admiringly but probably never wear.

And then the sky got darker and the beautiful moon appeared. And we drove home. Completely ruining the moodiness with our laughter.

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Title via: Joni Mitchell, Coyote. Complicated and stunning. Like a coyote. Okay, not really. But I stand by the first bit. Plus, coyotes might have hidden depths we just don’t know about.

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Music lately:

Janine and the Mixtape, Hold Me. Brand new. Beautiful. One to watch, this one.

Dave Brubeck, Take Five. The jauntiest damn tune there ever was.

Rachel Stevens, Some Girls. Mmmhmm. The odds were possibly against it, Stevens being an ex S Club 7 and all, but it’s so, so, sosososo good.

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Next time: I have the feeling I’ll be in the mood to bake this weekend. So you might see some of that.

if I rap soup my beats is stock

April 30, 2013March 11, 202012 Comments

In a wearily unsurprising turn of events, I undercooked the cornbread in the photo above. I then returned it to the oven and overcooked it. Then tonight I took the crumbly leftovers and mixed them together with eggs and milk and cheese and butter – and then undercooked that. Well of course.

Of all the things I could be queen of, it’s not what I’d choose, but if Game of Thrones has taught me anything (apart from don’t watch it while eating dinner) it’s that sometimes the crown finds you. And I seem to be the queen of false starts. It’s not simply just a case of when it rains it pours (by the way, Shakespeare invented that phrase, along with all other phrases and words and probably food blogging) it’s more like…getting in my own way, constantly being underprepared for basic things and the general game of good luck roulette that is life not offering any help. I’m not saying I’m cursed or beleaguered or miserable. I mean, good things happen. Life is pretty alright. I just have a lot of cause to say things like “well of course this happened, because I am me.”

Like, I sometimes really struggle to leave the house in a hurry. It sounds strange, but time will speed up while my movements slow down, everything feels weird, I can’t find anything, I’ll drop things, my heart will start racing and I’ll feel like I need a shower and a lie-down. Often. But surely pretty much everyone has had that feeling where you’re trying to achieve something small and the more you try the more you push it away and break it apart. Oh my gosh, this has turned into the most negative start to this blog post. I was just trying to muse. To ponder. What a damn false start!

Luckily the parsnip soup I made turned out so good, so velvety and creamy and wonderful that I wanted to not so much eat it as to fall asleep on a li-lo drifting around in a large bowl of it, one hand idly trailing into the soup as I float on by. By li-lo I mean inflatable mattress thing for a swimming pool, not the actress Lindsay Lohan. Actually in this day and age I can’t tell which reference is less up-to-date and likely to be squinted at in confusion by young people. Perhaps a better solution is an undignified but sensible inflatable ring around my waist, keeping me safely bouyant. Or just eating the soup.

I don’t even go for soup all that often, it doesn’t seem as exciting as other significantly less formless foods. It’s not crisp, it’s not chewy, it’s not crunchy, it’s not deep-fried, all those good things, you know? And yet, whenever I actually get over that and have soup, I’m always like “…oh yeah. Soup.” And that’s the eloquent response I had to this parsnip soup after making it. It certainly helped me get over the cornbread a little bit.

Dead roses: I really like them.

The texture is cloud-like, aerated and foam-light, yet rich and plushly creamy. Despite not having cream or in fact any dairy in it whatsoever. Which is really good if you’re at that days-before-payday stage where there’s no money still and there’s not the option of running down the road to pick up extra ingredients from the dairy. This is more or less parsnips and water. You do absolutely need a blender though, that’s what allows the luxuriant texture to happen, but I’m pretty sure a food processor or stick blender will still be absolutely fine. Without one of those…I’m sorry, maybe make a different soup. Or something deep-fried.

It might look like there’s a lot of oil in this – or it might not, I can’t even tell anymore – but it’s there for the rich buttery olive oil flavour, as well as the way it turns vegetables and water into something with a little more body and soul. So, if you don’t have olive oil on you, I’d use actual butter which will provide similar flavour. If not…different soup? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be pushing you away. But c’mon.

Velveteen Parsnip Soup (I don’t know how I feel about adjectives in front of recipe names. But I really like the word velveteen. And this soup really is all soft and fleecy and wondrous.)

A recipe by myself.

4 medium sized parsnips
3 cloves garlic
4 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
Tiny pinch of ground cinnamon
3 cups water

Roughly dice the parsnips, and peel and trim the garlic cloves. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and fry the parsnips and garlic over a high heat for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Lower the heat, very low, sprinkle with a pinch of salt, cover with the lid and allow to slowly cook for about ten minutes. At this stage the parsnip pieces should be all soft and golden. Stir in the mustard and cinnamon and pour over the water and simmer gently for another ten minutes, or until the parsnip is completely tender. Blend the hell out of it – it’s a pain to get the stuff into the blender, but it’s worth the nervousness – until not one single lump of parsnip remains.

Optional caramelised nuts, for sprinkling over, optional since I’m not 100% sure about them

1 handful nuts, eg hazelnuts, almonds, a mix of whatever, whatever. I do have this feeling that peanuts are a no here, though.
30-ish grams butter
1/4 teaspoon/a few drops soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon/small pinch mustard powder
1 teaspoon brown sugar

Very roughly chop the nuts, then melt the butter in a pan – I used the same one I’d cooked the soup in, no need to wash – until it’s bubbling and hot. Tip in the nuts, and stir around till they’re lightly toasted. Stir in the soy sauce, mustard powder and sugar until it becomes a little clumpy and caramelised. Tip the lot, butter and gritty caramelised bits of sugar and all, into a small bowl and spoon it over your soup as you please.

(Me: sorry Tim. It’s going to be that kind of blog post where I photograph your spookily headless body while you pause mid-spoonful.)

Parsnips have a natural mild sweetness and butteriness that you wouldn’t think was there if you just bit into a raw one (have done, not…unpleasant) and which benefits from the slow frying, from the warm rounding out of cinnamon and mustard, and from lots of salt. And what this soup lacks in deep-fried-ness, it makes up for in baffling silkiness, and caramelly parsnip deliciousness. As I hinted at in the recipe, I’m not quite sure about the caramelised nuts that I made to sprinkle over the top – the soy sauce almost made them a little too rich, if such a thing is possible. I think I would’ve been better off just toasting them in butter rather than trying to be too fancy. And of course, there is the cornbread, all undercooked and stupid. But the thing I thought most of all was not going to work – the soup that I made up on the spot – was pretty perfect.

Talk about false starts, I took the day after a public holiday off on Friday with the intention of getting a lot of writing and blog admin done. I spent the day on the floor, frustrated and sick (when I wasn’t throwing up, that is. I always instinctively end up on the floor at times like this.) Oh, and I made some cookies to blog about (I mean, I made them to eat, which is my primary reason for cooking anything, just I thought they’d be good to blog about.) And they really didn’t turn out right. Not terrible or inedible, just not what I’d intended and not particularly fantastic. I dubbed them shame-cookies, because drama is its own reward.

Saturday was glorious though, in that I watched The Hour for the, uh, fourth time in about six months. And made another convert to its swooning, heart-punching gorgeousness (Kate.) And made this cake. I know I talk about it a lot, but I can’t overstate my love for this show. Fly, don’t run or walk, to find it.

PS wanna see my tattoo? Here is a peek of the sneaky kind. I just wanted to hold onto it for a while before I posted a picture of it online, and then of course as I mentioned in my last post, it went a bit gross while healing, which is to be expected.

It’s now more or less healed, which means I can wear pants again. But I don’t even want to. (No pants are better than pants, as I always think.) But really: I just want to keep gazing at it. You can too, right here.

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title via: Beastie Boys, Intergalactic. Sigh, poor Beastie Boys with only the two of them now.
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Music lately:

Let’s Get Ready to Crumble, Russian Futurists. I haven’t listened to these guys in so long! Literally not since, oh, 2009. And I really like them still. It’s hard to explain what they sound like, a little vague and dreamy but also quite punchy. I don’t know, it sounds like all that music that you like.

Fear No Pain, Willy Mason. It feels like if he’d released this now, in these post-Mumford times, he’d be intergalactic huge. But then maybe I’d instantly dislike him (I really don’t like Mumford and Sons, however I try to just let my ears tell me what music I like rather than letting taste dictate. Otherwise, let’s face it, I might not have named this blog after a line from RENT.) Anyway, it’s a gorgeous, sunny, Americana-y tune that comfortably lived-in and yet is only about five years old.

The Wayward Wind, Patsy Cline. A beautiful voice, singing one of the most beautiful songs.
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Next time: I don’t know, but I really hope whatever it is I make it on the weekend and there’s decent lighting for taking photos. And that I don’t under or over-cook the thing I make.

reminds us of our birthdays which we always forget

April 16, 2013June 11, 202019 Comments

As I was eating my dinner and watching Game of Thrones this evening, I thought: I really shouldn’t be doing this. Either eat, or watch Game of Thrones, but don’t do them simultaneously because the onslaught of viscera is decidedly not food-friendly. This has nothing to do with anything, I just wanted to make the point.

Anyway, it’s my birthday tomorrow! But you get the presents! In the form of a recipe for braised lentils. Birthday Eve, I call it, and as such, one’s thoughts turn to reflection. Ha. I live every day like it’s the contemplative lead-up to further aging, and reflect upon everything I’ve ever done so much that, like a long-running TV show, the whole process should be able to go into syndication so I don’t have to come up with new stuff any more. Instead, just looping around without any effort from me, while I take time out to snooze. I got to have a late, long lunch with the fantastically high-achieving and welcoming Marianne Elliot from La Boca Loca on Saturday, and we talked about everything – the names people will call women but not men to bring them down; standing by things you’ve said; tacos; and this sense of constantly running towards the next thing having barely achieved the last thing. The latter was oddly heartening, in that basic way that recognition of something can be. I have recently been getting back into that troubled but utterly addictive musical Chess, and there’s this line that I never even noticed before that Josh Groban doesn’t so much sing as massage into the air with his throat: “Now I’m where I want to be and who I want to be and doing what I always said I would and yet I feel I haven’t won at all – running for my life and never looking back in case there’s someone right behind to shoot me down and say you always knew I’d fall“. Heavy! And yet I was like whoa, Josh Groban, way to pluck words from my brain with your rich vanilla scented-candle of a voice and articulate them perfectly via a convoluted musical that can’t even commit to its own plot.

And yet, and yet. I received some final pdfs for my cookbook that I’m driving you all away from with my angst and lentils; and oh wow. As you know a lot of time has been put into proofing the proofs (if you didn’t know, the proofs are like, here’s what your book will look like but on hundreds of pieces of paper which you will immediately drop, and as they hit the floor they will both papercut the tender vamp of your bare foot and shuffle themselves out of order with the impeccable swiftness of a Vegas croupier.)

The proofs were really beautiful, and I felt every late night and early morning and email back and forth between the publishers and the whipsmart feedback of my friends and team, photographers Kim and Jason and stylist Kate, and every thought Tim had pretty much ever had since he’s good with wisdom-requiring stuff like this…was not only worth it, but completely evident in the soon-to-be real pages of this book. Which is out in September so sure, put a circle round that month on your calendar but also don’t go rushing into bookshops just yet – she says optimistically – because September is still some significant distance away. As I was reading through it I thought to myself: this book is amazing and you’re such a good writer and you deserve this. A surprisingly nice thing to think about one’s self. And also…a nice thing to think about a consumer item that you have to eventually put your name to in the public arena and sell copies of.

The word braised: I first heard it when I spent a couple of years at boarding school. It essentially means roasted but in significant liquid, but when the kitchen said “braised steak” was for dinner, they essentially meant wet beef, boiled cheerlessly in a weakly tomato-based sauce. And so…it’s not a cooking method I go out of my way to use. I’m not sure what I’m even thinking, trying to braise lentils, second only to tofu as far as maligned leguminous foodstuffs go. But word associations can change, and plus, something about the wilful ugliness of it all makes it almost head back round again to appealing? Well, whatever it sounds like to you – and I mean, it does help if you don’t entirely hate lentils in the first place – this is really very delicious. Simple and easy and surprisingly full of rich, bold flavour from the lemon, mustard and herbs, as well as a lot of oil and salt.

A lot of this can be changed for what you have to hand, although while I want to offer options it would be unhelpful not to have some kind of base recipe that I stand by. If you don’t have hazelnuts, almonds would be perfect, something like carrots would be fine instead of parsnips, use more rosemary instead of thyme, and so on and so on. But hazelnuts and thyme – my favourite herb – are rich and resinous, parsnips have a natural caramelised sweetness, and in a dish like this, cardamom is one of those stealth spices that lets you know flavour is present without revealing how or from where. But you could just leave it out.

Braised Lentils and Vegetables with Hazelnuts, Lemon and Thyme

Serves two, with some leftovers. A recipe by myself.

1/2 cup dried brown lentils
2 parsnips
2 courgettes
1 capsicum
1/3 cup olive oil
Juice of one large lemon, or two of those stupid tiny near-juiceless ones that tend to dominate the supermarket
1 tablespoon dijon mustard (or wholegrain. I could eat either with a spoon.)
Pinch of ground cardamom, or seeds from two cardamom pods
1 teaspoon dried rosemary (or “rubbed rosemary” as my packet calls it. Which made me laugh. That said, if you don’t have it, dried oregano, sage or marjoram is also fine.)
Good pinch salt
1/3 cup whole hazelnuts
A couple of stems of fresh thyme, or a couple of teaspoons of dried thyme leaves

Place the lentils in a bowl and cover with freshly boiled water. Leave to sit for an hour – although the longer the better, really. An hour is fine though, and certainly makes the whole thing more feasible straight after work or at the end of a long day.

Drain the lentils, and tip them into the base of a medium sized oven dish. Trim anything inedible from the vegetables and slice them into fairly uniform strips/sticks, then lay them on top of the lentils in the oven dish. Set your oven to 180 C/350 F.

Mix together the olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, cardamom, rosemary, and a generous pinch of salt. Pour this over the vegetables and lentils, then pour over a cup (250ml) of hot water. Place in the oven and cook for an hour. At this stage, taste the lentils – they should be firm, but cooked through. If not, return to the oven for a little longer. Then, turn the oven up to 200 C, scatter the hazelnuts and thyme leaves over the top, and return to the oven for a further ten minutes. Serve, turn the oven off and leave the door open to try and heat your house up.

The firm lentils and softly bulging vegetables slowly taking in all that lemony, oily dressing; the hazelnuts giving luxe and depth and crunch; my beatific smile at all of this being filled with more vitamins than my body can physically process. It’s a quiet, calming dinner after a Saturday night spent drinking cider while ten-pin bowling; grapefruit daquiris while celebrating the third birthday of coolhaunt Monterey, and beer while loitering at a fancy pub as Devon Anna Smith played records I liked (it maybe looks worse on paper, I was fine.)

Some facts about my birthday:

There are ELEVEN notable ice hockey players born on April 17, according to Wikipedia.

I’m the oldest child. I was born at 8.50pm-ish. I frowned a lot and immediately got colic and did not stop screaming for six months. Luckily I made up for it by being a very overachieving preschooler.

While I can’t afford all the trinkets I want I did buy this cool cat (bottom centre), a print from local artist Pinky Fang. It seems to go well with the sinister cat we bought in New Orleans, and my Devon Anna Smith print. Three cats seems like a good number to have around.

Tomorrow is the final reading of the Marriage Act Bill which will decide whether marriage equality is happening in New Zealand or not. Every day it seems more and more unfair that I’m allowed to marry someone just because of the ridiculous coincidence that they happen to be a man. I wrote a long thoughtsy thinkpiece paragraph after this and then deleted it because it’s much simpler to just say: this bill means a lot to me not quite just because I’m a more-or-less decent person who wants equal rights for all, or because Tim and I are engaged but have decided not to marry unless it goes ahead, but also because I’m also…not straight. The Q in LGBTQ. Yes. I won’t say much more about this, apart from that I realised it an awfully long time ago, but only articulated it relatively recently. Articulating all this was like putting on glasses and seeing things just as they are but a little clearer (I use this analogy a lot, sure, but looking at things is just so great since I got my glasses). Doing so is of course a totally private, personal choice for everyone, and this is just my way. While I worried that I’d left it too long -whatever that means – or that I’d somehow express all this horribly wrong, or that braised lentils wasn’t how I wanted to remember it happening in years to come, or that maybe I should say it next time, or next-next time, I also thought I’d just…say it. It’s still a scary thing to do. But every day brings us closer to a time when it will be less and less scary to say it. Armed with the knowledge that you’re all cool and I’ve never once heard anything said against it that made the slightest bit of sense, I figure you all know pretty much everything about me anyway, and this is just another thing to matter-of-factly know.

I’m turning 27. This is an age where people will still say “so old” but also “so young” at you, depending on the person. I’m not sure when that will stop.

Victoria Beckham is born on April 17. When I was in my deadly-fervent Spice Girls phase, sharing a birthday with one was seen as some kind of ancient sacrosanct blessing. (Seen by me, and me alone.)

Title via: Side By Side By Side, from the Sondheim musical Company. The AMAZING Sondheim musical. Please keep having birthdays, Sondheim.

Music lately:

Blurred Lines, Robin Thicke with Pharrell and TI. I am addicted to this song like wo. And also reminded of the massive crush I used to have on Pharrell.

Birthday, Sugarcubes. Ones thoughts also turn to songs with the word birthday in the title. Bjork’s soaring, growling belting here is outrageously amazing. Extra fun in Icelandic!

Next time: Hoping to have another I Should Tell You interview up on Friday. Who’s it going to be? Why, who do you think I am, some kind of organised person?

it’s not for lack of bread, like the greatful dead, darling

January 29, 2013March 11, 202011 Comments

This time of year in New Zealand, with the heat and the sprinkling of public holidays and the lazy stretched out sunny evenings giving way to spontaneous happenings, it’s good to have a few snacky options in your brain should something arise that you want to make food for. I mean, most people are happy with a few bags of chips. But if you want to provide a little something extra now or anytime of year, and you’re into cooking anyway (I presume that’s why you’re here in the first place, although I unsecretly and vainly dream of the day that people who don’t even care about cooking read this because it’s just that damn good) then I suggest this dip. Its credentials are near-flawless: it’s fast. It’s very cheap. It’s vegan. It tastes so, so good. And it has a flashy name. Tarator. Now that is something.

Being the contrary person I am, I kinda hate all this heat – which makes me sweaty and frustrated – and long for the biting cold of winter. Which makes me feel alert and snuggly. Like a cat! But it’s here, and how, particularly in Wellington – today was so punishingly hot I actually started crying a little in the street without really realising it. It was just discombobulatingly, dizzyingly hot. Which was great because then I had to go to the gym to buy a membership from the stunning and charming person who I’ve been consulting with while I’m there. Yes: gym membership. No-one is more surprised than me that I’ve been really enjoying myself. My arms are getting bufty, I have more energy, and most of all – for that one hour that I’m lifting weights or kicking into the air – I am not thinking. This is crucial. I am always overthinking things. I’m overthinking right now. But not while I’m at the gym. So even though it’s a significant expense in our lives, I can, and am happy to, make some space for it in the budget.

So: tarator. It sounds a lot more exciting than it looks. And also it sounds a lot more exciting than the list of ingredients looks. The bulk of this saucy dip, or dippy sauce, is in fact just bread and water. There are also walnuts, which is good, because they taste wonderful but also allow you to explain this as being a Turkish walnut dip, as opposed to blended up bread and water. The mint leaves are also important. Not because they necessarily add to the flavour – although their cooling pep helps lift the richness – but because of the inherent social code that exists which means you don’t have to explain to your guests that this substance is edible. They gaze upon your table of snacks and without even realising it, they think “Aha! That sprinkling of greenery is letting me know that this is not just suspiciously formless brown paste, but in fact imminent deliciousness in which to insert my crisped bread or sliced vegetable of choice!” (See: always overthinking. Even garnish.)

Tarator

This recipe is adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s rather lovely book River Cottage Veg Everyday. I upped the bread a little and lowered the oil, just to make it a little more affordable. Use what you like, as long as it’s a little thick-cut and doesn’t have grains in it – I used Freya’s light rye, hence the colour of the finished product. It’s very forgiving, so add more dampened bread, oil, or lemon juice as you need till it tastes right.

70-100g walnuts
1 large garlic clove
4 slices decent-ish, non-grainy white or light rye bread, either fresh or pre-sliced from a packet.
5 tablespoons olive oil, or more to taste
1/2 a lemon
Salt, to taste

Blitz the nuts and the garlic clove in a food processor until fairly finely ground. Run the slices of bread under cold water and squeeze out a little – it will feel weeeeird – then throw them in the food processor and blend to a thick, thick paste. Add the olive oil, the salt, and the juice of the lemon and continue to process, adding more oil or even a little water to thin it down a little if necessary. Taste for salt or lemon juice, then scrape into a serving bowl.

It’s astonishingly, intriguingly rich – in that same plumply smooth way that pate is. It’s intensely savoury and yet oddly light and creamy. It just tastes like good times, okay? I feel like it lends itself to being more than a dip – a sauce for pasta salad, for example – but for now, while this weather insists on being so infuriatingly pleasant, it’s perfect just heaped into a bowl and speared with slices of cucumber and carrot.

Important-ish: Tim and I saw the Les Miserables movie with our friends Kim and Brendan last week. I’ve grown up with the original London cast recording ever since I used to dance around to Castle on a Cloud as a child, and have seen the musical several times, so was prepared to scrutinise it sharply. Well. A few details aside, (Russell Crowe, who was like, fine, but no Norm Lewis) Tim and pretty much adored it. If nothing else, we certainly had a lot of feelings about it. We analysed it all the way home. We then watched the 25th anniversary DVD. We then discussed it on and off for the entire following week. While no-one really is clamouring for the notes from our two-person roundtable, I will say this. If you hate musicals, nothing, least of all the bombastic and earnest Les Mis, will win you over. But it’s so monumental and enormous and beautiful that it’s pretty delightful to be sucked into it, to let those emotionally manipulative refrains draw hot tears from your eyes, and to daydream about wearing red coats with epaulettes.

Finally: our friends Kate and Jason are back from Europe after two months away! I was so heart-poundingly overexcited when Kate txted me on Saturday morning to ask if we wanted to come along to brunch that I ended up doing this:

Says it all, I believe.

PS: Thanks for the super cool response to my new segment, I Should Tell You! I am nothing if not punt-taking but it’s still always an utter relief when it doesn’t fall over flat.
Title via: The titular song from the musical Hair. Hot damn I love musicals.

Music lately:

Tim and I have been playing the new Cat Power record Sun over, and over, and over. The songs are so new but feel like they’re already worn in and familiar, like the softest flannel sheets. I love Manhattan.

All these epic musicals with convoluted storylines are naturally making me re-obsessed with Chess. Idina Menzel singing Nobody’s Side is too, too much.

Even after watching it a squillion times, Frank Ocean singing Bad Religion live on Jimmy Fallon still makes my heart explode but also melt at the same time.

Next time: Might be another I Should Tell You! Dun dun dunnnn.

isn’t it rich? are we a pear?

December 28, 2012September 30, 202116 Comments

I know, everyone’s on holiday and I said I wasn’t blogging till next year, but as Britney sang in her cover of the song My Prerogative, it’s my prerogative. Plus, cake! Cake.

The thing with traditions – they’re wonderful. They give you something to cling to in this strange, scary world, a sense of where you’ve been and where you might go – they give you stories to relay and build upon and argue over the precise order of; they give you something to pass on to other people.

They’re also damn vexatious, because once you get sucked into a tradition it’s very difficult to break it. I have done roughly the same thing for Christmas every single year of my life, and as such the idea of being anywhere else during that time is un-contemplatable. (Admittedly: am not particularly good at compromising. Sure, Eartha Kitt romanticises it for me, but compromise does go some way to making other people happy.) As such, Tim and I have only spent one Christmas together in the past seven years…and that was when he came to my family’s place.

My family (in the very extended sense of the word) has been camping at this one particular beach every single year since I was born. I’m still pretty young, but that’s a lot of years. This year, for the first time, owing to a lack of money and time in equal measure, I’m not going along with them. I know I vocally dislike nature, but this place is magical and special and all we really do anyway is sit around and drink gin and play cards. Sigh.

And finally, the flat Christmas Dinner that I have had every year since 2006, when Tim and I moved in together, was not able to happen this year again due to a lack of time and funds – and also moving house on the 15th of December.

Damn you, traditions, getting me all emotionally attached to things and being so difficult to extricate myself from and making my heart hurt a bit! Is this what being a grown up is about? If so, then I stamp my feet petulantly in response. But also get on with it. Damn you too, grownuphoodity.

Before this gets all too, too hand-wringingly lachrymose, let us focus on a cake! Tim and I are spending New Years with a tangle of our best friends. I’m bringing novels of a worthy (Muriel Sparks) and trashy (Jilly Cooper) nature; plenty of whisky; languid-friendly dresses, and this cake.

I adapted it from a recipe that I found in the Meat Free Mondays book by Paul McCartney. I don’t eat a ton of meat as it is, let alone on Mondays, but there is many a brilliant and inspiring recipe for any day of the week to be found within its pages. This has ended up being really quite different to their recipe, but it’s what spurned on the idea, so a tip of the hat to them all the same. (PS: I would just like to say though, the caramel pear sauce was all my idea.) (I guess I’m not that grown-up yet.)

Pear and Almond Cake with Caramel Pear Sauce

PS: this needs a food processor to make it sorry – though if you don’t have one, I’d make sure the butter was quite soft, cream it with the sugar first, then the egg, then fold everything else in. So: still do-able, for sure.

1 x 70g packet ground almonds

150g flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

150g sugar

170g butter, cubed

1 egg

1 can of pears

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon golden syrup

2 teaspoons cornflour

30g butter

Set your oven to 160 C/320 F and line a 20cm springform caketin with baking paper.

Tip the ground almonds, flour, and baking powder into your food processor bowl and process for a bit to mix them together. Then add the sugar and butter and process thoroughly till it forms a thick dough. Tip in the egg and blitz briefly to mix it in. Spread this thick, luscious mixture into your caketin – it won’t be very high – and then drain your can of pears, reserving the liquid (important!) and arrange them, cut-side-up on top of the batter.

Bake for about an hour, or till the cake feels springy and firm in the centre.

Meanwhile, in a small pot or pan, mix the brown sugar, golden syrup and cornflour to an unlikely paste. Slowly mix in the reserved pear juice from the can, and then continue stirring it over a low heat. Allow it to simmer but not quite boil till it all becomes quite syrupy and thick and dark. When it reaches this stage, remove it from the heat and stir in the butter.

Note: You have a choice when the cake is cooked – either do as I did, and leave it in its tin, spike several times with a skewer, pour over the hot caramel pear sauce and then allow it to cool completely. OR – unclip the cake from the tin, slice up, and serve the caramel pear sauce on the side to be poured over in quantities of each slice-eater’s choosing.

So uh, even though I made this for other people to eat, I had to judiciously remove a small sliver and eat it, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to blog about it. Or I could, but the most conclusive thing I’d be able to say about it is that it’s very instagrammable.

Luckily for us all, I heroically ate said sliver of cake. And it’s rather wondrous. The caramel sauce absorbs into its surface, making it a sticky confection of a thing, and the pear juice really does make itself known, flavourwise – giving the sauce a floral fragrance which elevates it above mere sugariness (though I do love mere sugariness too, to be fair.) The cake itself is dense and buttery and the almonds give it a slightly nubbly texture which echoes that of the pears. It’s damn good stuff.

Due to obstinate fog in Wellington canceling my flight and delaying my departure by 24 hours, my time up home was sadly briefer than I thought it’d be. But all the same it was a lovely time, seeing my family again and spending Christmas day with them. Everyone loved the gifts I got them and I loved the trinkets I received.

Cleaning out one of the cupboards stuffed with my old schoolbooks and things was surprisingly diverting. I was reminded how utterly, utterly righteous I was as a child. Seriously, almost all of my schoolbooks are filled with firmly written opinions like “why must we do maths? Why aren’t Spice Girls more integrated into the curriculum? UGH SPORTS WHY”.

I relayed this to Tim, who astutely pointed out that I could’ve believably expressed that same opinion yesterday.

I also adored hanging out with the cats. Or at least attempting to. Roger was largely disinterested, but at least sat still long enough that I could situate myself very close to him and pretend like we were friends. Poppy, ever the baby raptor, decided she hated me and tried to shred my face off every time we approached. I did manage to pick her up for a quick minute though, and even caught the brief affair on camera. Me, thrilled to the bone, Poppy, at least displaying only ennui, instead of her claws. A Christmas Miracle!

Title via: Yes, I elect to end the year on a truly atrocious pun. And I’ll probably start next year with one too, as is my wont. I was always a bit terrified of the song Send In The Clowns from A Little Night Music when I was young, because frankly clowns are scary as hell. But after listening to it properly, I came to realise it’s one of Sondheim’s most quietly devastating tunes, and I rather love it. Especially when Dame Judi Dench absolutely kills it.

Music lately:

The Smiths, How Soon Is Now? We saw Morrissey in concert the night before we moved house. I know he can be horrible, but his music just turns my insides to melted butter and I love his voice and it was just amazing times a billion. It doesn’t excuse any of his horribleness, but I was glad we had the opportunity to see him. Before the show, we each picked three songs we really hoped he’d sing – cutely, or maybe grossly, we both picked the same three – and he did! He sang all three. This was one of them – a song from his erstwhile band which is so good I hardly ever listen to it, because it makes me feel all queasy inside. Not the best recommendation, but if you’ve never heard it before…just try.

Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Blank Generation. Since being lent speakers by some friends, Tim and I have been ploughing through all the vinyl we bought over in America. This album of the same name is so utterly great, and I love this song, and Richard Hell is impossibly dreamy. Which maybe helps make the song sound better, who knows?

Next time: This really is the last post I’m doing for 2012 – have a joyous relaxed happiness-filled time, and I’ll see you on the other side.