Category: Contains Nuts

who’d come through with lentils and to get the fundamentals

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There are so many things that are not delightful about life in New Zealand in 2012 but I’ll tell you one thing – and it doesn’t just apply to me here in my homeland – the internet is really on form. I remember when I first heard about the internet – I guess in the mid-nineties – marveling at how much information was on it. I remember specifically saying to someone (possibly one of the cats) “so you could find a website about anything, if you want a website about bottle caps then you could probably find it”. (Little did I know I predicted the zoomed-in nature of tumblr, where there probably is at least one dedicated to bottle caps.) Little did I know just how much ridiculously specific information this thing they call the internet could hold.

Where I’m going with this is, after a particularly wearying day of clumsy mishaps, I got into my usual grumble-rut of lamenting that women in comedy movies (TV sometimes too) often seem to be portrayed in a way that clumsiness is their only personality trait. You know. She fell over in a public place. And that’s how you know she’s nice and relatable and you want her to continue on this inevitably heteronormative path towards boy-meets-girlness, maybe falling over just once more in public just to remind you how ‘zany’ she is. Oh, I could ineffectually whinge further, but I suddenly thought, you know I just bet there’s something on the internet that demonstrates what I’m talking about. And I was right. We’re at the stage where information saturation means if you want a supercut of badly written female characters in rom-coms falling over, you can find it with the half-heartedest of Googlings. Sure there are the endless trolls, but still. For that I say 2012, you’re okay.
(If you’re wondering what it was that I did that got me thinking in such a vague manner about romcoms and clumsiness, it was the following:
Pulled on stockings in a hurry and in doing so dug a massive, red scratch with my thumbnail along…the side of my right buttock. Mmmhmm.
Took a drink of water, dribbled it all over myself, I can’t even think why.
Brought it all home with my masterstroke of weirdness: I walked into my bedroom swiftly and nearly got whiplash from being yanked backwards again because the doorhandle had got stuck in a buttonhole on my coat.)

Luckily, for those of us inclined towards ungainliness, the pear-shaped butternut squash is a squillion times easier than the pumpkin to slice into. Its tender flesh accepts the knife blade swiftly, as opposed to pumpkins which scare the heck out of me – every time I approach them with a knife it seems the stupid tough pumpkin shoots off in the opposite direction. Good to know for anything you require pumpkin for – butternut squash rules. Especially in this extremely simple soup I thought up. If you’re not blessed with a food processor there’s nothing to stop you taking the pesto ingredients and just adding them to the soup at the end – and there’s also nothing to stop you not calling this un-Italian paste ‘pesto’, I just can’t think of a better name for it.

Butternut, Lentil and Coconut Soup with Peanut, Rocket and Lime Pesto
 
A recipe by myself.
 
1 medium butternut squash, roughly diced and skin removed. (About two heaped cups)
1/2 cup red lentils
3 cups water
1/2 cup coconut milk or coconut cream
 
1/2 cup peanuts
2 handfuls rocket leaves
Juice of a lime
3 tablespoons sesame oil
Pinch salt
 
Place the diced butternut, red lentils and water in a saucepan, bring to the boil and then simmer slowly with the lid on for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add a little more water if you feel it needs it. At this point use your spoon/spatula/etc to mash up the bits of butternut as you wish – this is a fairly chunky soup, although there’s nothing stopping you from blending it all up, I suppose. Sprinkle in a little salt and stir in the coconut milk. Ladle into bowls and serve with as much of the pesto as you please and a swirl of coconut milk if you like.
 
Meanwhile, toast the peanuts lightly in a hot pan (I actually did this first, and then used that same pan to make the soup in. Minimising dishes for all!) and then throw them into a food processor with the rocket leaves and lime juice. Blend up, scraping down the sides as you need to, then add the salt and oil and blend again. 
 
This makes about enough for two people with some leftovers.
 
You’d think the soup would be a little boring but the mild, creamy sweetness of the butternut and coconut and the earthiness of the lentils bring their own excitement. The lentils melt into the butternut and the small amount of coconut makes it surprisingly rich. But even so, there’s the pesto – lentils and peanuts aren’t a million miles removed flavourwise, with peppery rocket and sour lime to stop it being too oily, but then plenty of sesame oil…in case it’s not oily enough.
I don’t always get all that enthusiastic about soup, but this is worthy of my time, a nice mix of familiarly comforting and compellingly stimulating. Perfect for those nights when you can see your breath puffing cloudily in front of you. While you’re sitting on the couch.
Title via: I was hoping to get Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner’s sprightly version of Little Me from the Broadway musical of the same name, but do you think I could find it on youtube? I could nay. And just when I was talking about how great the internet is. Luckily there’s Faith Prince singing it on the New Broadway Cast Recording.

 

Music lately:

I was saddened to hear of the death of Donna Summer. You know I love to obsess over a song and I Feel Love was one that stood up to two or three or seventeen repeat listens in a row. A huge talent lost.

Louie the ZU with Leroy Clampitt, I Want You To Know: dreamy goodness. I love it.

Next time: Apologies for being this cryptic on a Monday, but knowing what I know, hopefully I’ll have some interesting news for you.

sugar, she’s refined, for a small price she blows my mind

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I grew up with some fully-formed ideas about, of all things, Toblerone chocolate bars. Firstly, as a kid I convinced myself that the droning chorus-y bit to Heavenly Pop Hit by the Chills was them singing “Toblerone, toblerone” over and over again. I know, what? A slight stretch of the imagination, but I was young, and there was no Google, and possibly I liked the idea of a band singing about a chocolate bar more than I enjoyed fact-checking, so I let my ears believe what they wanted. Less bizarrely, but closer to the truth, this chocolate bar was indelibly associated with other people going overseas. Yes, Mum and I went to Melbourne once when I was five to see her best friend, but that aside we weren’t given to big holidays at the drop of a pay packet. However someone at school must’ve been, because I distinctly remember talk of Toblerones upon their return, and associating them with fancy-pants overseas trips. These days you can just buy this particular chocolate bar from your corner dairy, but back in the day, when it spoke of air travel and rock’n’roll, the very idea of just having one felt unspeakably sophisticated.

I’d like to posit myself as bearing no ill-will towards the Toblerone. They’re really, really nice if you manage to get your hands on one, there’s no attitude here of “the world needs urgently a new version of the Toblerone and I charge myself with the noble duty of providing an inconvenient and slightly inferior appropriation!” Nooo.

I just like crunchy toffee nutty chocolatey stuff, and why should Toblerone be the only thing that gets to monopolise that combination?

So I made this stuff, inspired by that chocolate bar. It’s kind of a slice, kind of just melted chocolate with more sugar added, but it’s simple and seriously wonderful to eat with its crystals of toffee and bashed up toasted almonds. Fine as is, broken into rough shards, particularly effective when chopped up and sprinkled over icecream.

Toffee Brittle Chocolate


1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup almonds
1/2 cup salt (jokes! A small pinch of salt, that’s all)
250g dark chocolate, broken into pieces (I used Whittaker’s Dark Cacao)


Firstly, toast the almonds in a saucepan over a low heat till lightly browned. Tip them into either a silicon baking dish, or a medium-sized baking dish (the sort you could fit a roast chicken into, but not two, or use a pie dish) lined with baking paper. In the same saucepan, slowly melt the sugars and the water over a low heat, and bring to the boil without stirring. Stirring causes bigger crystals to form which isn’t what we’re after here. Allow it to bubble away merrily for about five minutes until it smells like caramel and the syrup under the silvery bubbles appears to be dark brown. At this point, carefully but quickly pour it over the almonds, getting as much as you can out with the help of a spatula. Sprinkle over the salt and allow to set.


Once set, chop it all up very roughly and then transfer it all back into the baking dish. Then slowly melt the chocolate and tip it over the chopped up almond toffee, stirring to mix. It’ll look rough and like the chocolate’s not going to cover everything, but that’s all good. Pop in the freezer for a bit to set properly, then break into small pieces and serve as you wish.

Bubbling sugar and water is kind of beautiful, am I right? Just don’t get close, it’ll burn you faster than an insult from Blackadder.
It’s also quite pretty once all chopped up but before getting covered in chocolate – all golden and sparkly. I guess food blogging has conditioned my brain to think such things, but I swear it looked pretty in real life.

I’ve been keeping it in a container in the freezer, and something about the icecold chocolate makes the delicate almond crunchiness even more excellent. It’s perfect for a sweet thing after a big dinner but also, as I said, completely delicious chopped up over ice cream.

On Saturday night I went to see Rose Matafeo’s show Scout’s Honour as part of the Comedy Festival. I didn’t know tooooo much about her apart from she’s on TV and on Twitter seems like my kind of person, but in real life, on stage, she is a scream. Hilarious. She’s got some shows coming up in Auckland so if that’s where you’re from, I most definitely recommend attending. Not least because her show had tea and biscuits, and super-nice audience members. I was by myself and appreciated the rolling-with-the-punches niceness of the people either side of me. In that when I asked “can I sit here?” they said “sure” and smiled, rather than blankly staring at me, or saying no. But also: about halfway through her show she worked in a Babysitters Club joke, so, you know, free pass for life.

Luckily everyone can join in basking in the tiny, adorable splendour of Rory the kitten, one of our friend Jo’s foster cats. (Speaking of Jo, kindly check out this write-up she did of an incredible dinner we had at Hummingbird. Includes a panna cotta gif!) I can’t adequately express how tiny and sweet Rory is, but I’ll tell you this: he’s truly much the same size as he appears to be in this picture. Spent significant time adoring him inbetween episodes of Veronica Mars. So important.
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Title via: tick, tick…BOOM! the musical by a young Jonathan Larson, who would go on to write RENT, which this blog is named for. The song really is about sugar, in case you’re wondering, and it is good, especially with Raul Esparza wrapping his sweet, sweet vocal cords around it. 
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Music lately:
Woke up Saturday morning to the news that Adam Yauch, MCA from Beastie Boys had died. This is such sad news – Beastie Boys have been together longer than I’ve been alive and consistently putting out music that I love. Honestly part of the soundtrack of my life. Remote Control is one of my favourite songs of theirs. However I’d also like to call attention to this glorious rhyme from the glorious Sure Shot: “I want to say a little something that’s long overdue/ the disrespect to women has got to be through.”

Finally listened to some Lana Del Rey, and uh, have become mildly obsessed with her music. It’s just so utterly melancholy, I can’t help but love it.

It’s not actually him singing, but a young Johnny Depp with an also-young Amy Locane in John Waters’ Crybaby on Please Mr Jailer is worth suspending reality for. As is the heavily crushable Wanda Woodward, thanks to Kate for the necessary reminder!
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Next time: I was thinking about Gin and Tonic Ice Cream. First to catch my gin…

just twist your hip and do the dip

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You know how you learn something and then find you see it everywhere? Like you’ll learn a new word and then hear it in a song and read it in an article and hear someone say it in passing. I recently read a book – The Sense of an Ending – which has a whammy moment when you realise one character had been repressing, or at least not divulging, a particularly significant memory. No sooner had I read this book, when I’m flipping aimlessly, and I do mean aimlessly, through a weekly magazine. And I am confronted with an advertisement bearing the blankly content face of a commemorative Kate Middleton porcelain doll in a wedding dress. And it reminded me of something I haven’t thought about in years and years: that I used to be a little obsessed with those Franklin Mint porcelain dolls and would rip the advertisements out of aunties’ and nanna’s magazines and catalogue them in a folder in alphabetical order (well they all had names, Heather and Rosa and so on) and dream of the day I could own them all. Luckily for my now utter horror at the idea of walking into a room full of expressionless doll eyes staring back at you, I had no disposable income at the age of eight or so, and as such the folder was as far as it went. But isn’t it strange what you forget and remember again – not the traumatic things – but these vivid little slices of your life that remind you exactly who you were and are?

Leaving behind the “I Was an Awkward Awkward” chapters for now, I’d like to bring your attention to hummus. I know, hummus, that ubiquitous but excellent beige lotion, how can it have still more surprises up its sleeve? Well who more reliable to elicit such surprises than my idol Nigella Lawson, who only goes and replaces the tahini (sesame seed paste) with Peanut Butter. Peanut butter has a somewhat brash flavour, but against the mild chickpeas and smoothing yoghurt it mellows out and provides this sweet, nutty, oleaginously compulsive edge to your hummus. I really love tahini – sesame being one of my favourite flavours, but peanut butter doesn’t so much deliver the goods as urgent courier them while wearing appealingly fitted shorts and saying in a warm voice, “I’ve got a big package for you”.

Peanut Butter Hummus

Recipe from Nigella Lawson’s book Kitchen, I’ve simplified it slightly. Really, just play with quantities of the ingredients as they please you. If you’re not able to eat dairy, I’d add an extra tablespoon of water and lemon juice and peanut butter and it’ll be all good.

1 can chickpeas, drained
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons peanut butter
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons Greek yoghurt
1 teaspoon cumin
Salt

 Blend all together thoroughly till smooth. Add a little more yoghurt or water if it’s not spreadable enough.

Because I feel that hummus alone isn’t quite enough to bolster this blog post, a second recipe for you. I’m really sorry that both of these require a blender/food processor – I hate when recipes give directions for making cake batter in a cake mixer when said cake mixers cost many hundred dollars, or when an ice cream recipe finishes with “and then put it in your ice cream maker and follow their instructions” or whatever. I’m sorry. You could effectively crush up the chickpeas with a fork or a potato masher, but the strawberries really need the swift action that only an electric rotating blade can provide. 

What, you don’t have a dedicated hummus knife commemorating the Parihaka War Memorial in Whangarei? Look I’m not saying your party is “ruined” as such…

If you do have a blender though, there aren’t many happier foodstuffs in this world than pink lemonade. I first tried making it with raspberries, and that was great, but strawberries are even more delicious, which is brilliant because they’re also half the price.

Pink Lemonade

A recipe by myself

2 1/2 cups frozen strawberries (bully for you if you’ve got real ones, but it’s winter in NZ right now. And frozen strawberries are really pretty cheap any time of year)
2 1/2 litres of lemonade
Optional: passionfruit syrup, mint leaves

Place the strawberries in a blender and allow them to defrost somewhat. Add 1/2 cup of water and blend till smooth and gloriously pink, adding more water if your blender can’t deal with it. Spatula into a jug and slowly top up with lemonade. The bubbles and the strawberry puree will form scuzzy bubbles on top, just stir it with a wooden spoon to break it up.

And lo, a joyful jugful of deeply pink, wondrously delicious lemonade shot through with the fresh taste of strawberry. A little passionfruit syrup helps sharpen up this berry flavour, and mint leaves are just delicious with nearly anything, but simply strawberries and lemonade on their own are more than fine.
I served both these delights over the weekend at my inaugural Ice Cream Demonstration Party (that’s not necessarily what it’s called but the capital letters make it seem official) where in front of a small group of lovely people I demonstrated and imparted pretty much every particle of knowledge I have about ice cream, taking them through recipes for said ice cream and sauces to go on top, then we all built our own ice cream sundaes and then they went home with a goodie bag. It was super fun and you can check out photos from the night (one of the guests was also a great photographer) on my Facebook page, if you please.
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Title via Rock the House by Gorillaz. Tim and I were lucky enough to see them in 2010 and it was so brilliant that my brain starts melting every time I think about it. Like, there’s Damon Albarn, one of the first people who got me realising that I could have a crush on another person. Also present: Bobby freaking Womack.
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Music lately:
Lee Fields, Faithful Man. Tim insisted we buy this record. He insisted accurately. Fields is just really, really good.

Madeline Kahn, Getting Married Today. Mixing my obsession for the musical Company with my new fascination for the hilarious, babely, and sadly late Kahn, she does well with this horrendously challenging song.
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Next time: Still have some quinces lying there looking at me reproachfully. The time has come to do more than just sniff them rapturously, any suggestions?

ain’t it a shame that at the top they serve peanut butter and jam

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Lessons I was reminded about this week: just because you refresh and refresh your inbox it doesn’t mean a particular person is going to email you. And then a little (1) will appear but it’s just a newsletter that you’ve signed up to and now suddenly feel particularly hateful towards. Learn that one well. Another thing: respect deeply those people that can make a room look good. I tried sticking a bunch of images to one of our bedroom walls yesterday. Stood back to survey my room-embiggening skills – a picture fell off the wall, breaking the frame. Everything else was on at least a 45 degree angle. It looked so good in the pictures of other people’s houses! However, Tim and I gave our room a much overdue, much procrastinated clean on Monday – needed since January – and the unfamiliar feeling of just being able to walk in a straight line across the floor makes me feel like we should be featured on an interior design blog or something.

What else was I re-reminded of? That you should never read the comments (or, increasingly, the opinion columns, ammiright?) on news websites unless you feel like playing fast and loose with your blood pressure; that we LOVE Sam Cooke; that other people have actually heard of musicals and I shouldn’t be so surprised every time someone says they *gasp* like one; that people can be surprisingly generous and being generous can be fun; the simple joy of finding 20 cents on the ground; how supersonically fast I get anxious; how I can’t turn my brain off even when I’m having an amazing, wonderful, delicious massage from a professional. And importantly (or at least, relevantly) how much I LOVE making ice cream. I know I didn’t invent peanut butter chocolate ice cream, why it’s as old as the hills themselves, but the recent release of Whittaker’s new peanut butter chocolate block inspired me quickly to tackle this mighty combination for the first time. And it had been a significant while since I’d made ice cream – like our bedroom being tidy, the last occurence was back in January. Not sure how I got through, but I’m pretty brave.

I appreciate that your local supermarket might have gleefully marked up the price of the chocolate, which is why I didn’t use the whole block in the recipe – instead I made sure to leave some for judicious nibbling. I also completely appreciate that you might not be able to get hold of such chocolate at all, which is why I provided a more analogue alternative. I also wanted the making of this to be as easy as possible – this is an ideal one for a newcomer to ice cream to try. It practically makes itself. Whatever effort you have to put in though, will reward you at least tenfold in pure deliciousness.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream


Recipe by me.


200g Peanut Butter Chocolate, such as Whittakers OR 1/2 cup peanut butter and 150g milk or dark chocolate, depending on your preference, plus about 1/2 cup sugar.
250mls (1 cup) milk
Salt
300ml cream


In a pan over a low heat, melt the chocolate (or other things), milk, and a generous pinch of salt together, stirring occasionally until smooth. Chill till thickened significantly – might help to put it in the freezer for a while. Taste some. It’s wonderful. Once it has the texture of whipped cream, whip up your actual cream till fairly firm and thickened, but not verging on changing into butter, and then whisk the two together to form a soft, airy pale chocolatey mixture. Transfer into a freezerproof container then freeze. Allow to sit out of the freezer for about ten minutes before you want to eat it so you can scoop it easier.

The unfrozen mixture is like the best peanut butter smoothie of your life in the whole world, so with that in mind I’m not quite sure on the quantities this makes, but I’d say just under a litre, which I wouldn’t want to feed any more than four people with. As I said, the method is winningly uncomplicated, so it wouldn’t be too taxing to double all quantities. The salt is important – it really helps intensify the flavour and make everything taste more of itself. Don’t worry about stirring this as it freezes – the useful fat content keeps the texture hovering round the ‘perfection’ level even when completely untampered with. The ice cream itself is pale but the chocolate presence is definite, shot through with the cream’s light butteriness. Being ice cold softens any of peanut butter’s rougher flavour undertones and hanging out with chocolate brings out its earthy sweetness. It’s wackily delicious stuff.

Still other lessons present themselves to me: that whole “you can’t go back” thing, which I was reminded of when I realised it had been a whole year since Tim and I went on our first ever holiday, the holiday that we’d been saving six years for. Naturally, I re-read our entire travel blog and got a bit weirdly sniffly, not that the writing on our blog was particularly geared towards heartstring-pluckery, but I guess because we were so happy and optimistic and overseas and the whole thing is such a nice memory, but also as far away and untouchable as the first time we were over there in 2005. Anyway, we’ve got our trip to The America in just over six months to anticipate hotly and save frantically for, so no use looking backwards too much. A bit of backwards-wallowing every now and then though is pretty harmless.

Your lesson: make this ice cream, it’s truly not difficult, and even if you’re all “Aagh! Ice cream! The second-most intimidating foodstuff! (After souffles of course)” then be happily reassured that your opinion is wrong. As far as this recipe is concerned, at least.

But seriously, when I said I couldn’t turn my brain off during the massage, I did decide that I love what was happening to me and I want to have another one at some point this year. So I ask of you, other overthinkers out there (I see you!) if I accept that my brain won’t turn off no matter what fragrant oils and unguents are applied with firm capable hands to my less-firm exterior, what should I think about which will at least be calming? I suspect brainstorming new recipes will be too involving, planning the week ahead too counterproductive, remembering every regretful thing you’ve ever said and done too intuitively obvious…As a former dancer, I could just imagine someone dancing to the twinkly piano music that constantly plays in the room. Ideas?
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Title via: Rufus Wainwright’s California, so breezy and fun but he couldn’t have known that peanut butter used this way is exactly what you’d want to be served at the top. Or at any stage…
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Music lately:

Like I said, Sam Cooke. Ain’t That Good News subverts the usual “I got a letter this morning and my baby is dead/run off with someone else/etc and is simply a snappily fantastic song.

Ultravox, Vienna. I am easily manipulated by music, this is one such song that does it so well.
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Next time: I still have a couple of quinces staring at me as they get all saggy and old. But I also bought on special some pork shoulder. PULLED PORK TIME. Unless there’s some ye-olde style pork and quince slow-cooked thing out there that can tempt me with its magical deliciousness, that is.

i am the definite feast delight

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Apropos of nothing: If – although let’s go with when – I get famous, I should like to do many things. I’d like to start a trend for not having to wear a bra if you don’t want to. Not that I can necessarily “get away” without one, but sometimes on a humid day they just feel so punishing and unfair. And really, if someone pulls you aside and says “look, you’re not wearing a bra and it’s making me really uncomfortable”, I’d wager it says more about them than you, right? Second order of business: try and wangle an OPI HungryandFrozen nailpolish range. Am thinking matte rainbow-coloured dots which look like hundreds and thousands sprinkles, a rich yellow butter colour, perhaps a sophisticated, buff-tinted “Cake Batter”, and something else which still hasn’t fully formed in my brain yet. Nigella-Cardigan-Pink? The colour of those heavy velvet curtains that sweep across a stage before and after a show? Something Claudia Kishi-inspired? The third thing I’ve been thinking about is just buying a huge warehouse somewhere with a huge speaker system, so anytime you want to dance around a room like this, you can hire it for an hour from me. Apart from the high likelihood that my dancing moves and I are occupying it already, that is.

Apropos of nothing, I really enjoy saying apropos of nothing! Indubitably!

Anyway here I am. Can’t hurt to daydream about everything in such minute detail that it can never possibly happen the way I want it to and I end up disillusioned and sad when it doesn’t, right? Right!

In the meantime I am rich in friends and famous in my brain, which is a good start. You know friends are good friends when you see them practically every day but it still feels like something exciting’s going to happen every time you do. As a few of us were coincidentally all going to see the band Bon Iver on the same night I suggested that I cook us all dinner beforehand. Which was perhaps an even more exciting prospect than the concert itself at the time. I just love orchestrating situations where I get to cook for people I like. The finished menu was a logical middle point between maximising on what I had on hand already, what recipes I liked the look of, and what would actually be delicious to eat.

It somehow, despite being entirely created in the space of an hour and a half, all came together to form a spectacular vegan feast. Which I liked so much that I’m going to share with you. All three of these recipes are very loosely based on actual recipes – the first two from the Meat-free Mondays book and the third from Katrina Meynink’s gorgeous Kitchen Coquette book. It’s not that the original recipes didn’t sound perfect as they were, it was all about minimising time taken and money spent. And yes, I did just happen to have pomegranate seeds lying round. In a container in the freezer no less. But if it’s any consolation they were over a year old. So I can be smug, but not that smug.

Lentils are just alright with me, but this is lifted from its admittedly beige earnestness by the juicy pomegranate seeds and smoky, tender eggplant.

Barley, Lentil, and Eggplant with Pomegranate and Mint


1/2 cup brown lentils
1/2 cup barley
1 eggplant
1 onion
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tomato, chopped roughly
2 tablespoons chopped preserved lemon or hot lemon pickle (or just some lemon juice)
Seeds of a pomegranate and a handful of mint leaves

Optional – and I did – 1 can cannellini beans or chickpeas to beef (heh) it out. 


Soaking the barley and lentils at least a few hours before you get started will make the cooking process quicker. Boil them together in a pan with plenty of water till tender. Drain, set aside. Slice up the eggplant into chunks, fry in a little oil  – in batches is easier – till browned and softened. Tip them into the lentils and barley. Slice the onion up and in the same frying pan brown it with the garlic. Add the tomato, chilli sauce and lemon, and continue to cook for a little longer. Return the eggplant, lentil and barley to the pan, stir to warm through and season to taste. Serve scattered with pomegranate seeds and shredded mint leaves.

Feel free to just use barley OR lentils. But this is a great way to use up those stupid tail-end packets of things which inevitably sit round for guilty years in your pantry. Free your lentils, and your mind will follow. Actually the whole thing with these recipes is that since I’ve already messed around with them to suit my needs, feel free to do the same. They are very low stress. No watercress? Use rocket. No almonds? Use any other nut. No pomegranate? Sprinkle over feta or just use more mint or something!

Something about blackening the corn and partnering it with toasty-sweet almonds and peppery watercress in this salad is surprisingly spectacular.

Rice, Charred Corn, Avocado, Watercress and Almond Salad


1 cup rice – I used basmati but brown rice would be really good here.
1 cup frozen corn kernels (or you know, however YOU get hold of them)
1/2 cup rice bran oil plus extra for frying
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons chili sauce
1/2 cup whole almonds
1 tablespoon icing sugar
1 teaspoon ground cumin
A handful of watercress leaves, rinsed and chopped
1 avocado, diced


Cook the rice as you usually would, and allow to cool a little. Stir the 1/2 cup oil, the cinnamon and the chili sauce through it, plus plenty of salt. Taste to see if you think it needs any more of anything in particular. Set aside and heat up a frying pan. Mix together the almonds, sugar and cumin and then heat them in the pan till fragrant and toasted. Set aside. Rinse the pan – or don’t – and heat up a tablespoon or two of oil. Throw in the corn kernels and let them fry till some are slightly darkened and scorched in places. They might start to ‘pop’ and jump around a little so watch out. Stir occasionally. Tip them into the rice along with the watercress, almonds, and avocado and mix thoroughly. 

These are just edamame beans and regular green beans cooked in boiling water and stirred through a dressing made of 1 tablespoon shiro miso paste, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, 1 teaspoon honey and a little chopped fresh ginger and garlic. Miso’s intense, fermented flavour is strangely addictive and even more strangely versatile. Here it’s nutted up with sesame and used to coat creamy edamame and crunchy green beans.

Cheers to Kate and Jason and Ange and Ricky for indulging me. And cheers to Bon Iver for putting on a seriously good show.

I was almost as happy with my dress as I was with anything else. If only there was an Instagram filter called “Cheekbone Finder” or something. But yes, the show, wow. From listening to Bon Iver’s music, I was expecting one guy, one microphone, and maybe a mandolin and a few handkerchiefs. But there was a many-peopled band all outstanding in the field of excellence, a glittering light show, and the singer, Justin, seemed so happy to be here! Which is always an endearing trait in someone you’ve paid a lot of money to see. This might sound weird, but I think my favourite bit was an unsettlingly brilliant saxophone solo, which brought to mind the eeriness of the dinosaur sequence in Fantasia.

And…apropos of something, recently Tim and I were in line for another gig, in front of three guys. From their clothes and piercings and so on, they looked like interesting-enough, open-minded people. And then they started talking. And Tim and I wanted to vomit. I wanted to say something – especially since several of my friends have felt able to speak up to people to tell them what they think recently – but it was late, and there were three of them and two of us, all those kinds of reasons. Tim and I just had to stand there in line and listen. And while I wasn’t up to doing anything that night, I’m able to pass on to you my convictions instead. Please. If you ever hear people saying things so casually like “they aren’t saying yes but they weren’t saying no” and “if they’re that drunk they’re asking for it” or worse – please understand how terrible this is. How it builds. Keeps a particular victim-blaming attitude accepted. I’m not saying this very well but I feel really strongly about it so I’m going to let some other people say it better than I can. If you like pithy analogies, this one might help open your eyes a little. This might make you think about the conflicting messages women are constantly given, and this is the flipside which is told all too little. And this is Derailment Bingo. Many thanks to the Wellington Young Feminists Collective site for resources. If I was more confident in the results I could’ve talked to those people, if I was Veronica Mars I could’ve somehow sassed the bouncer into not letting them in, but all I can do is pass on some excellent links to people who, I would guess, might know all this already. I know it’s not usually the direction I go in on here, but this blog is where I write about what’s important to me…
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Title via: Sugarhill Gang, Rappers Delight. The song is 14 minutes long so I don’t really feel the need to add anything further to the conversation.
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Music lately:

Eileen Jewell, Shaking All Over. Her voice is deliciously mellow and relaxed and after hearing Wanda Jackson’s version so many times, I like the calmer but still dirty arrangement of this classic.

Christine Ebersole’s voice goes from crystal-clear to shrieky in a matter of seconds while she’s acting her face off in Grey Gardens the musical. Will You is one of the more crystalline moments in the show, and while the song was only written a few years ago it sounds like a lost track from the forties. Beautiful.

This is probably a decent Bon Iver song to listen to if you’ve never heard them before. It was way souped up live!
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Next time: It’s nearly midnight and I feel like chocolate. And I don’t see any reason why that want would be inconsistent when I’m next in the kitchen cooking something…

i salt and pepper my mango

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Story time.

The weather in Wellington has been particularly extreme over the last couple of days. It’s no time for skirts or dresses. Luckily I’ve got a super awesome bright red jumpsuit with power shoulders, gold buttons and palazzo pant legs. Don’t try and construct an image of what that might look like, just believe me on the “super awesome” claim. Especially when it’s worn with a turquoise scarf. Said jumpsuit has all the delightful flippiness of a skirt, with all the reassuring practicality of pants. On most days. Today the breeze rendered the crotchal-region fabric near-pointless as it continuously inflated my trouser legs so they looked like spooning hot air balloons. No major biggie though, were it not for my rapidly-sinking stockings. They would not stay up. There came a point where they were making their way towards my ankles just as my pant-legs were flying upwards. Taking advantage of the quiet side street I was walking through, I hiked up my stockings back to where they belong, around my waist. Doing the job properly, I was getting quite into it – lunging and wiggling and really luxuriating in the hoisting action till they were back up on my hips again. Finished, I look up, and see an elderly person, holding a video camera. Pointing straight at me.

The camera wasn’t sinister; I got the impression they were optimistically filming the nearby thoroughfare in case the wind caused anything strange to happen, so they could then pass it on to the humourous segment of a late-night news show so they could gain fame and riches. I…could well be that segment filler. Needless to say, my tights started sagging again immediately, but I didn’t hike them up till I was round the corner. I have my dignity.

I have come to the conclusion that I’ll never be intimidatingly cool, or even just intimidating and/or cool (either of which would’ve come in handy SO MANY TIMES in my life) but on the other hand…at least I’ve got some stories to tell. And you never need feel nervous about saying hello to me. Unless you’ve got a video camera and I’ve been lavishly adjusting my undergarments.

Also not intimidating: the recipes I have for you today. One, a simplified version of a beautiful Yotam Ottolenghi recipe – rice, mangoes, coconut, peanuts, chilli, mint – and the other, a little dish I came up with involving roasted cauliflower and whole spices and almonds.

I say simplified because I had so many moments of “well I can’t find that so I’ll use this” and “that’s a bit expensive, I’ll use this instead” and also I’m in bed and don’t have the mental capacity to get out of bed and find the Plenty cookbook. So this is my adaptation. A truly lazy dinner. You’re essentially cooking some rice and stirring stuff into it. But, as with any recipe of that tricksy and handsome man Ottolenghi, there’s so much beauty and freshness and bold flavour that it’s only you who need know how easy it really is.

Rice Salad with Mango, Coconut and Peanuts

Adapted from Ottolenghi’s Plenty.

  • 1/2 cup basmati rice
  • 1/2 cup long grain brown rice (OR just one cup basmati)
  • 1 tablespoon rice bran or peanut oil
  • 1/2 a ripe, but firm mango
  • 1 red capsicum
  • 1/3 cup peanuts
  • 1 red onion or a bunch of spring onions, finely sliced
  • 1 red chilli, finely sliced, or 2 teaspoons sambal oelek (which is what I used)
  • 1/2 cup shredded coconut or dessicated (but preferably shredded) (but I only had dessicated, so)
  • A handful each of mint and coriander

In a large pan with a lid, heat the rice grains in the oil for a minute or two, stirring a little to stop it burning. Tip in 2 1/2 cups water and a pinch of salt, bring to the boil then lower the heat, clamp on the lid, and leave slowly cooking away for about 15 minutes (although check for done-ness at 10). Allow to cool a little and tip into a bowl.

Roast the peanuts till darkened in the oven – it takes a little while but don’t ignore them. Fry the spring onions or red onion till crispy, thinly slice the capsicum and dice the mango flesh. Toast the coconut in a pan or spread it out on a baking sheet and use the same heat of the oven that you cooked the peanuts in, either way you want it to be light brown in colour.

Mix everything into the rice – carefully – and divide between two plates. Top with the herbs.

The right mix of raw and hot here – you’ve got the cooling, slippery, elusively fragrant mango and crisp juicy capsicum rubbing shoulders with almost-crunchy coconut, nutty (duh!) peanuts and the red chilli’s bite. Rice itself tastes beautiful – I don’t really appreciate it enough being a pasta fiend – but it really suits hanging out with these ingredients. Obviously it’s better if you can find shredded coconut but I promise the cheapest dessicated stuff will have its place once you toast the heck out of it. Cheers, Ottolenghi.

As for my recipe, Roasted Cauliflower with Toasted Whole Spices and Almonds it’s even lazier. Stick as many cauliflower florets as you like on a baking tray and roast them at a high heat – I went for 230 C, which is 450 F, till tinged thoroughly with brown. Towards the end – or even immediately after you turn off the heat on the oven – roast 1/4 cup whole almonds for five – ten minutes, till slightly darkened. In a pan, heat 1 teaspoon each of cumin seeds, coriander seeds, nigella seeds, and fennel seeds if you’ve got them. The two essentials are coriander and cumin, so play round if you like. Only do it for a minute or so, then remove from heat, stir in a shake of ground cinnamon and a pinch of salt, and tip onto a chopping board along with the almonds. Chop everything roughly (I’m not expecting much to happen here with the spices, just agitate them a little with the blade, it’s the nuts getting chopped that’s the main thing.) Arrange the cauliflower florets on a plate, drizzle with sesame oil, and sprinkle over all the nuts and seeds. Eat.

Viewed in close up, the seeds and nuts look all earthy and magical and like they should have the words “GAME OF THRONES” superimposed over the top (maybe just in my mind. How often can I use “it’s so late at night and I’m tired” as an excuse? All the times!)

More importantly, it’s delicious – all that heating and roasting and toasting brings out everything good about the ingredients. Coriander seeds have this addicting lemony-bitter-numbing quality while cumin seeds are more pungent and warm (it’s also possible my spices are ancient) while cauliflower cooked in this way is nut-ular and crisp and its flavours are echoed pleasingly in the chopped almonds.

The weekend happened, it was good in places and intense in others. Had people over spontaneously on Friday night to farewell some lovely but impermanent Swedes that we’d become friends with, on Saturday Tim and I had a necessary coffee at Customs and exercised our democratic right to vote; later in the day we gathered with the sort of people you need round when the outcome of lots of people exercising said right unfolds. The night became the morning but somehow we had the energy to plough on with weekend-y activities, buying vegetables and having cider with Kate and one of us witnessing a much needed win from the Wellington Phoenix (clue: it was Tim) all finishing up by making the meal that I’m presenting to you now.

Title via: I’ve read sneering things about her, I’ve read hyperbolic things about her, but when Arular was released it was one of the most exciting albums ever to interest my ears and I’ve been into M.I.A’s music ever since. Sunshowers from that album is where today’s title gets itself from.

Music lately:

Over at The Corner there’s a two-part post on favourite Flying Nun songs (Flying Nun being an important New Zealand record label) which not only presented me with some brilliant writing but also plenty of unheard new-old goodness to listen to. Including Garageland’s Struck.

The Marvelettes, Mr Postman; I love how chilled and restrained and yet disciplined and sharp the singing is on this track.

Next time: Whatever it is, I haven’t made it yet. It could be another practical dinner, it could be a link to a video of “frowning girl adjusts pantyhose in public: The remix!” which could possibly do considerably more for my hopes to write a cookbook than actually working on developing recipes and so on.

 

no boy, don’t speak now you just drive

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Last time I promised a Christmas Cake – and recklessly did I make one, at 11pm after an evening of Viognier (where I learned both how to pronounce “Viognier” and also that I like Coopers Creek’s stuff). But even more reckless was my thinking that I could blog about the cake before this weekend just gone, where Tim and I drove up to Waiuku for an important family party, when we’ve had stuff on every night of the week. Perhaps reckless-est of all, on Sunday night after nine hours of travelling, I tried to blog. I didn’t achieve the state of sleeplessness-fueled focussed intensity I was hoping for. I just fell asleep. So finally, here we are.

And instead of Christmas Cake, today’s subject is Road Trip Snacks. I’ve never been on a road trip before – I know, what kind of friendless, half-hearted Kiwi am I – and this was really just a long trip which occurred via road but I’m claiming it and you can’t take it away from me. I’ve learned that writing on a laptop while in a car with barely-existent suspension and handling isn’t the easiest; the slightest tension is magnified by your ability to stare endlessly into the ever-approaching horizon (except Tim was all “yeah, nah, I didn’t notice that” so clearly whatever I was tense over was so subtly conveyed he didn’t notice it, meanwhile I thought I was being totally, point-makingly huffy.) Another thing I noticed is that when I’m in Wellington I put some effort into my clothes, but as soon as I get out of town I’m happy to shuffle round in trackpants, jandals and a saggy old singlet. And let us not forget the proliferation of roadside shops selling local crafts. I swear there’s more sheepskin shops per capita than there are both sheep and capita.

And snacks are of great importance. I started off trying to think of something healthy, veered towards “morale boosting” instead. When you’re several hours in and the countryside around you really isn’t providing much variety, a snack is as good as a holiday, not to mention if you actually have no driving skills, it allows you to feel smugly like you’re also bringing something to the table. Snack #1 is from one of my favourite new cookbooks, the brilliant Kitchen Coquette, and involved white chocolate, coco pops, and peppermint essence. Yes. That’s right. I’m a devotee of the white chocolate so I was expecting to like it and all, but I wasn’t anticipating this: it’s one of the more perfect things I’ve ever eaten. Honest.

If you can, try to get decent white chocolate since the taste of it is so prominent here. I use Whittakers because it’s extremely delicious. But also relatively affordable. White chocolate is a little fiddly to get right, and some stuff out there is loaded up with weird oils and flavourings in lieu of whatever it actually is that gets it to taste so magical. But not Whittakers. On the other hand, use the cheapest coco pops you can find, as they’re all much of a muchness and breakfast cereal is expensive than perfume. The nearest supermarket to me gatekeepingly only had the proper stuff, but the finished recipe was so good it was worth every cent.

White Chocolate Coco Pops Slice

(It’s called Peppermint Crispies in the book but with ingredients like this I really want to list them in the title.)

From Kitchen Coquette, by Katrina Meynink. I highly recommend it.

250g good white chocolate.
1 cup cocoa pops, puffs, snaps, or whatever you call them.
2 teaspoons peppermint essence (unless your pants are fancy and you have Boyajian Peppermint Oil, in which case use a couple of drops.)

Carefully melt the chocolate on the stovetop in a metal bowl sitting on top of a small pot of water that is half-full of simmering water. Throw the essence in and stir it round, which may make it sieze up a little – inexplicably – but persevere, tip in the coco pops and stir as best as you can.

Tip out onto a sheet of baking paper, flatten as best you can – try pressing down on it with another sheet of baking paper over the top – and don’t worry about rough edges or anything. Allow to set, then slice up. It will break naturally into rough jigsaw pieces instead of neat bars – all part of the charm.

Note: I feel the white chocolate + peppermint aspect of this is crucial, but if you’re unable to eat dairy, this would still be super alluring made with dark chocolate.

While I am not normally one to reach for the peppermint essence – it always makes me feel like toothpaste has fallen into my food – here it works stunningly, its icy heat cutting through the vanilla richness of the white chocolate and yet somehow, each mint-cooled inhale also enhances its buttery, melting-textured wonderfulness. The airy crunch of the coco pops amongst the surrounding white chocolate is surprisingly habit-forming, like edible bubble wrap. Something about the peppermint actually does wake up the brain a little as you trundle along. All told, a superior snack, and one that I feel truly lucky to know of.

Over on the other end of the snack horizon are these stunning Sesame Garlic Roast Almonds which I invented myself first to use in the Sexy Pasta back in March, but have adapted for more specific nut-eating purposes. Because they’re too good to just scatter over pasta. Scatter ’em over your tastebuds too (but not the floor of your car because the scents of garlic and sesame are persistant.)

.

Sesame Garlic Roast Almonds

You could of course use any nut here, but almonds have a sweet edge and a popcorn-crisp texture once roasted and they’re very reasonably priced in bulk at Moore Wilson – which is why they’re my go-to fancy nut.

2 cups whole almonds, labelled “Dessert Almonds” on my bag.
1 tablespoon sesame oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 heaped teaspoon brown sugar
Generous pinch salt

Set your oven to 200 C/400 F. Mix everything together in a bowl before tipping it out onto an oven tray. Putting a sheet of baking paper on it before doing this will save you a lot of dishes hassle. Roast the nuts for as long as you dare, until they’re darkened somewhat and smell amazing. Keep an eye on them though because it’s a fine line between roast and burnt. Allow to cool then tip into a container.

Also rivetingly good with their snappish texture and Inception-like nuttiness within nuttiness. And garlic, with its rich, rounded oniony flavour, is a far more suitable friend of the nut than chili, in my opinion. In case you’re wondering what the stuff in the photo is, I just threw the sugar over without mixing it in properly, which meant that lumps of it bubbled up under the oven’s heat and turned into a kind of garlickly brittle – strangely good. While the White Chocolate Coco Puff Peppermint slice has the edge in terms of immediate appeal, every time we brought these out to snack on we ended up grabbing them by the handful.

All that aside, we did have a terrific time up home – I got to hang out with my dear Nana a lot; see Tim dressed up as a Disney prince (veered between calling him Prince XYZ since they were never that interesting in the movies anyway, and calling him Prince Floribund which I just thought was funny) for the party we went to, which was a cartoon-themed dress-up one, in case you’re wondering what brought this alarming behavior on. I was Sleeping Beauty, Mum and Dad were an Ugly Sister and Dick Dastardly respectively, and my brother went as Jack Skillington. There was also a massive supper, a pudding buffet, beautiful speeches and a very cool birthday lady dressed as Sailor Moon. Absolutely worth the harrowingly long drive there and back!

Finally, and importantly, I saw Poppy the Kitten again who has grown just a tiny bit and has mellowed out slightly – she’s less of a baby raptor now, and will actually let you hold her without trying to claw out your nostrils. I did wake up with an ominous paw resting on my neck, but it turned out she was just using me as an overbridge so she could have a punch-up with the curtains. At 3am.
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Title via: Bic Runga, lady of big achievements, with her early song Drive. I’ve loved this quiet, thoughtful song ever since Dad made me watch it on Video Hits or Max TV or something, saying “she’s going to be huge one day.” Shrewd, Dad.
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Music lately:

I didn’t have time to make any kind of iPod playlist, and Tim’s sister’s car, which we swapped for on the way up as our ute drinks up petrol like it’s coming from one of those refill cups at Burger King, didn’t have anything to plug the ipod into. We ended up listening to National Radio and learning a thing or two, because we couldn’t find anything music-wise despite flicking obsessively through the stations.

On the last stretch of road home, having swapped back to the ute where we could plug in the ipod, we listened to Gil Scott-Heron’s Winter In America and I’m New Here – ideal music for anytime, not just cars. But it felt particularly right just then.
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Next time: the Christmas cake! That said, I have to taste it first to make sure it’s okay. But I also want to ice it. Dilemma. 

am I ever gonna see my wedding day?

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To sleep, perchance to dream, that is the question…is not actually what Hamlet said, but I’ve helpfully paraphrased. It seems I’m either pursuing or avoiding sleep, but hardly ever actually just having it when I should be. Damn you elusive sleep you! (and that definitely wasn’t Shakespeare, although it’s fun to imagine Hamlet saying it while shaking his fist so hard his pantaloons start to flap around.) Luckily this recipe for Cambodian Wedding Day Dip is so easy you could make it in while sleep deprived, but equally it’s so loaded with aggressive flavours that it wakes you up fast like one of those dreams where you’re walking along and then all of a sudden you trip over and slide into your own bed like an elaborate home-run in that sport with the home runs. (I’m just playing, I know it’s softball – I was so dedicated to the Baby Sitters Club that I never once skipped the boring chapters about Kristy’s team that she coached.)

The knife really doesn’t have any purpose here but I’m so not good at these exposition type shots and it just felt right to put it there, okay?

My current state of sleepiness is self-inflicted though – last night Tim and I met up with our friends Pia and Fiona (Piona!) and went to this park on Mt Vic to have a picnic and watch the fireworks. They’re two of the nicest, funnest people we know and excellent hosts – Pia was all “we made a fancy salad” and I was all “I know, I can see it” while having their beetroot and chickpea salad and then she was all “no, this!” and pulled out another amazing salad with sliced oranges and black olives. After the fireworks (which were spectacular, although not quite as exciting as Pia running from flames like an action hero when one of her own fireworks fell over after being lit) they then invited us to play Cranium with Fiona’s sister and their friends, which went on till 2am. It may not sound so cool, but correctly identify Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat song after your teammate hums three bars of it and see how cool you feel.

Despite this ongoing feeling that I’m running towards something that keeps moving further away, this week has, upon reflection, been full of really good things. I’m going to try to keep this succinct: Broadway Bites is the blog set up by these actual Broadway stars like Adam Chanler-Berat of Next to Normal and Andy Senor Jr from a million different casts of RENT, including the international tour with Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp, and Matt Shingledecker from Spring Awakening. And all three of them are in RENT’s off-Broadway revival. And they ran this competition on their blog where you email in your favourite breakfast recipe and so I did (these two) not even thinking I’d hear anything from it, and then – to take us back to the start of the story – I got this tweet from them saying I’d won, and it linked to this video of them having made the recipe and talking about it and making a porridge recipe I sent them and performing in the musical that this blog was named for. And tweeting me. To sum up: Ha-whaaa? While there’s no reason people on Broadway should be interested in this blog just because I talk about Broadway musicals in relation to food, I’ve also always dreamed of this happening, ever since I started writing it four years ago. Now if the amazing Julia Murney could just check out my recipe for pancakes… (that’s a Broadway injoke, sorry everyone.)

Then I get this parcel from Kate, who Tim and I stayed with in Oxford earlier this year – remember, her and her husband were complete strangers to us but they were from New Zealand and she liked my blog? We had a fantastic time and they were lovely of course, and when she emailed asking for my address because she had something to send me for my blog’s fourth birthday, I was expecting, say, a novelty keyring, but it was in fact a cookbook almost but not quite as gigantic as author Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall’s name, and entirely dedicated to vegetarian recipes, which I love.

This recipe comes from that cookbook and as I said, it’s called Cambodian Wedding Day Dip, which is a pretty romantic name because it’s not only a food but it also sounds like a cool dance. The ingredients are the kind that I float towards like a moth to a light source – peanut butter, coconut milk, chili – plus plenty of chopped up mushrooms – all of which politely resist overpowering each other and instead all let each other shine gently as they roll over your tastebuds. Creamy, nutty sweetness respectfully busting a move with spicy, earthy smoky flavours.

It’s next-level delicious, somehow showcasing the richness of the peanut butter and coconut milk without tasting like you’re eating satay sauce (not a bad thing, I love satay sauce – it’s just different) and you don’t even need to be having a wedding to dip sliced up vegetables in it. It’s worth keeping in mind that the finished product is essentially a pale brown paste, hence my liberal carpeting of coriander leaves in the photos. Coriander is like the icing sugar of the savoury world: makes everything look all good again. Tonight Tim had it over rice for dinner, I’d eaten so much of it during the cooking process, that I was too full for that kind of commitment. But not to the point where I couldn’t sneak out later and eat some dip and then cry “Agh! So Full! What Hath I Wrought!” like Hamlet totally would.

Truly. That stack of crackers – with which this Cambodian Wedding Day Dip is ideal – was much, much higher when I started taking these photos. Kate – thanks so much again for sending this to me and I totally recommend this recipe.

Cambodian Wedding Day Dip

500g chestnut mushrooms (confession: used plain old button mushrooms. All I could find)
1 tablespoon oil (I use rice bran)
1 small red chilli, finely chopped (I used a tablespoon of sambal oelek, it’s what I had)
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tablespoon curry powder or mild curry paste (further confession: the vagueness of this direction and my lack of any curry paste whatsoever led me to leave this out and shake in a little cinnamon and ground cumin, some weird instinct kicking in I guess.)
2 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter (confession: I followed this step exactly)
1 x 400ml can coconut milk
Juice of half a lime (used a lemon, had no lime)
Dash of soy sauce
Coriander leaves (optional, but used them because I actually had them).


Finely dice the mushrooms, or blitz them in the food processor. Not toooo fine – you want them to be the size of, say…I can’t actually think but you want them bigger than grains of rice, okay? Like 4mm square, ish. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the mushrooms, stirring while the liquid in them appears and then evaporates. Add the chili and the garlic, and cook a little further, before adding the peanut butter and curry paste (if you’ve got it) and stirring through the mushrooms. Tip in the coconut milk, and then let it bubble away, stirring often so it doesn’t burn, till it reduces down and is much thicker.

Those weren’t the only good things that happened this week though, I know, what kind of happy-go-lucky weirdos are we? Not that happy-go-lucky, I promise you. I for one, am more like clumsy-go-anxious. But sometimes you can actually force happy-go-luckiness to come your way, like when you throw a Simpsons party and invite your friends round and make a giant donut and floor-pie and an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet and nuts’n’gum. And your friends bring twinkies and rib-wiches and candy. And you all drink Skittlebrau. It was amazing fun. I’m going to be writing about it for 3news.co.nz’s National News section (just kidding, it’s under lifestyle) so if you ever get the urge to throw yourself a similar party, you’ll know how. So many people came along even though it was a very last-minute thing, the sort of people that are so good for your soul that all you can hope is that you provide some kind of similar function in return.

Title via: Wedding Bell Blues by the late Laura Nyro. Her voice is stunning, this song is all sad and poignant, and when you put the two together, my stars it is something. Props for the cool name too, Nyro.

Music lately:

SWV, It’s All About U. Some 90s R’n’B is so gold that while you’re listening to it, it feels better than any music of any other genre ever. Not that it’s a competition, you can like more than one thing. What I’m saying is, I love this song.

Erykah Badu is coming to New Zealand! That’s good. But it’s to a festival that’s far, far away from Wellington. That’s not so good. Might have to get my vicarious and much cheaper thrills by just playing more of her amazing music.

Next time: I made some frozen yoghurt! But I also made more things from this book. I think frozen yoghurt will win though.

"and one pasta with meatless balls (ew)"

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It hasn’t been all that long since I’ve blogged last but it feels like it – to me at least – and for a while I just stared at the photos of the quinoa I made feeling a bit “meh” and disconnected from it. Then the more I looked at the photos, the more I remembered how delicious it was and now I’m feeling all enthusiastic about this recipe again.

So why’s it been a while since I’ve blogged? On Friday afternoon, Tim and I left the city to stay in Wairoa with his grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins, sisters, mother…and some awesomely cute canaries that his grandad has been keeping. One of them honestly looks like its mum gave it a bowlcut, the feathers on top of its head all sprayed out flat give it the most adorably vexed expression. I tried to get a photo but it didn’t work. I did, however, get a photo of one of their cats, an enormous thing that would come and lean heavily on you like a dog does, and which would luxuriate in the sun like so – in the sort of way that makes your own lazing around seem inelegant and stiff-ankled in comparison.

But, back to stuff that I ate ages ago. After a cool lady that I work with mentioned that she’d successfully imitated a particular dish from Deluxe cafe using quinoa, I was inspired to try it myself, only making it completely vegan – why not? You’re already using quinoa, might as well go all out. And then I wanted to modify it further, to make a kind of meatballs-type recipe. I didn’t like the name “quinoa balls” and couldn’t think of what to call these nubbly orbs – something about “BALLS” in a food title to me indicates it’s only imitating something else, plus, you know, the anatomical description does the dish no favours. (“Groin!”) Strangely, meatballs themselves manage to safely avoid both connotations.

The quinoa ended up solving this issue for me, even though I didn’t see it as a good thing at first. See, the quinoa would not be balled. See the above picture? You can spot the granules already escaping at the edges, unwilling to maintain sphericality, but I can’t even express the amount of coaxing and spooning and rolling that it took just to get them to that shoddy, crumbling state. Nonetheless, I persevered and baked them, thinking that the heat might bind them together. It didn’t. They got even more crumbly and reluctant. In fact, of the sixteen balls that I put my heart, soul, and flavoursome sweat into rolling, but one survived the journey.

So now it’s just Baked Quinoa with Miso Tomato Sauce, and I don’t have to worry about the whole “balls” naming issue. It took me some time to get to this calm place of acceptance, though. One ball. Out of sixteen.

The tomato sauce is particularly magical, with a secret ingredient. And that ingredient is Peanut Butter. Yes. It thickens the sauce up a treat, and gives it an ever-so-slight nutty richness without tasting like a piece of toast fell in your sauce by mistake. Don’t leave it out! Unless you’re allergic to nuts, but you didn’t need me to tell you that.

Baked Quinoa With Miso Tomato Sauce (The M in Miso is also for “Magically Delicious”) 

1 cup quinoa
3 tablespoons sesame seeds
3 tablespoons poppy seeds
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
3 tablespoons tahini, or hummus if you have it
1 teaspoon ground cumin

Sauce 

1 can tomatoes, preferably the chopped kind
1 teaspoon dijon mustard (or grainy, if that’s all you’ve got)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon hot sauce (or more or none at all if you like)
1 tablespoon white miso paste
1-2 tablespoons peanut butter (or tahini, if you prefer)
A few tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

Rocket and almonds to serve.

Set your oven to 200 C.

Rinse the quinoa in a sieve under cold water – helps get the inevitable dust off – and tip into a pan which has about three cups of water in it. Bring to the boil and cook till the grains are tender, pale and fluffy. Drain, back in that same sieve if you like, and tip into a bowl. Mix in the rest of the ingredients, season to taste, and spread across the base of a small roasting dish. (Line the dish with baking paper if you like – easy cleanup, hey-ohh!) Bake for 15 minutes.

Empty the can of tomatoes into a pan, then fill it halfway up again with water and tip that in the pan too. Add all the sauce ingredients except the thyme – using your wooden spoon to break up the peanut butter and miso and get it mixed in – then bring to the boil and allow to bubble away for a couple of minutes while stirring, till thickened some. 

Take the quinoa out of the oven, pour over the sauce, then return to the oven for another ten minutes. Strew with rocket leaves and almonds, and serve with pride.

Despite causing me some trouble initially, this is exceptionally good-tasting stuff. The quinoa’s weightless texture and nutty flavour is emphasised with the addition of poppyseeds and sesame seeds, the sauce covering the deliciousness spectrum from salty to rich to sweet. Pour it over pasta or rice or even over real meatballs, it’s supremely lovely.

And yeah, the rugby world cup final happened and we won. My disinterest in the game remains, but as everyone else was watching it on Sunday night at Tim’s grandparents’ it would’ve been rude not to play along. So I offered some ideas for the drinking game: 1) have a sip every time the commentators indulge in outrageous hyperbole like “a nation at a standstill”, and 2) every time the word “groin” is mentioned we all cry “GROIN!” and sip our drink. I’m not actually big on drinking games, preferring to just drink in my own time, but fear not – it was more about coming up with rules than anything else, and we only had one drink each. I also, with not unnoticed irony, was the one of the whole rugby-interested crowd who managed to get the closest prediction of when the first try scored would be and what the final score would be. Flummoxedly baffled doesn’t even cover it.
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Title via: the Broadway musical RENT – again! – and the Act 1 closer La Vie Boheme. Not to write an essay – I could – but I like this bit in the song, because it really does swirl round in a flurry of earnestness but then the waiter appears talking about their orders for miso soup and seaweed salad and tofu and so on, as if to say just the sort of thing you’d expect from them, thus subverting the earnestness somewhat. Anyway. That’s a story for another (hotly-anticipated, no doubt) essay. As always with RENT, I direct you towards both the movie version and the original Broadway version from opening night, 1996.
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Music lately:

One of the fun thing about long car journeys is playing DJ. I didn’t have the time to make an actual playlist (just another thing I didn’t have time for!) so instead I went through the songs alphabetically and just chose one when it took my fancy. There’s not much more fun when you’ve been going round winding roads and the driver’s feeling weary, to put on Orinocco Flow and yell “Best Car Song Ever! SAIL AWAY SAIL AWAY SAIL AWAY!” It’s always appreciated.

I also love this song Best of Me by local singer Ria Hall. Love that there’s a mix of English and Te Reo in there and also that the station I listen to is thrashing it at the moment.
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Next time: I’m making a pavlova, and if it works out alright, you’ll be seeing it here. 

girls would turn the color of the avocado when he would drive down their street in his el dorado

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Magical things, avocados.

But first a BIG thank you, as big as the words Thank You made out of colourful rubber and inflated to the size of a forty-foot building, with a noble capybara balancing on top of it looking thoughtfully into the distance, for all the nice comments and emails about my last blog post. From the bottom of my chocolate-iced heart.

Back to avocados; aren’t they exciting? Like nature’s version of rich creamery butter, kept in an endearingly curvaceous, bumpy casing. Nutty and smooth and yes, buttery, I love it mashed into guacamole to be scooped up with corn chips, spread on toast for a breakfast treat anytime of day, or sliced into a bowl of salad so that you can try and surreptitiously dig for it all with the spoons when serving yourself.

But to turn them into pudding? Inconceivable!

Conceive of this. I know I go on about Hannah at Wayfaring Chocolate a fair bit, so I’ll try and squash down the enthusiasm a little here so I don’t sound like some kind of creepy person who waits outside your window and cries “the hunter has become the hunted!” No, it’s not like that. It’s just that she’s got one of my favourite food blogs in the world, is all. And while I’ve heard of using avocados in non-savoury recipes, it was she who prised open my eyes to how delicious and non-threatening it could be. Through the medium of raw vegan brownies. Regular baked brownies have their place (and that place is a table marked “DELICIOUS THINGS HERE, PLEASE”) but it’s fun to push the limits of creativity in the kitchen sometimes by restricting your parameters. Which is what Hannah did with this amazingly delicious recipe.

Yes, those are useless-ish stripy novelty straws: they make my heart soar, and what price soaring? Occasionally I buy into pretty things, and occasionally…I literally buy them. Treat yo’self.
A daring mixture of dates and nuts are whizzed up in a food processor with cocoa to form the base, and then the power of a whole avocado is harnessed to create the icing. It’s amazing – you add golden syrup and cocoa and suddenly it turns into this creamy, darkly chocolatey, shiny ganache-like substance.
Unfortunately when I busted anticipationally into the avocado it wasn’t entirely usable – instead of two bowl-like halves offering up smooth, unbroken greenness, there were significant portions that were bruised and horribly stringy. I scooped out what was salvageable, and this is why the layer of icing on my brownies is sadly thin. But another time, another avocado. 
Raw Vegan Chocolate Brownies with Spectacular Avocado Icing

Adapted slightly, and respectfully, from Hannah’s recipe which she adapted from another recipe of her own anyway: inception! Feel free however to just click through to hers.

2 cups nuts: I used a mixture of almonds and pecans, but near-on anything would suit. 
2 cups dates, roughly sliced
1/3 cup cocoa powder

Blend the living heck out of these ingredients in a food processor. It may take some time to come together. Eventually it will be a fine-ish, crumbly mixture of tiny ingredient particles. Turn it out into a baking dish, roughly 20cm square or a little bigger or smaller. Press down on it with a spoon, freeze while you make the icing.

1 ripe, perfect avocado
2 tablespoons golden syrup 
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (optional, by which I mean I forgot)
Small pinch of salt

Thoroughly clean out your food processor, then blend all of the above till smooth and shiny and amazing. Add more of anything to taste, then spread evenly across the base. Return to the freezer, slice once ‘set’.

I admit: I had issues making this. I increased the base quantities a bit from Hannah’s recipe and I don’t know if it was because of that, but the food processor just Would. Not. Break. Them. Down. Rather than being sliced up, it was like the blades were some kind of carnival ride for the dates and nuts to scoot round on. I’d be processing the heck out of it, take the lid off, look in: perfect, whole almonds and dates. Stir it round, repeat. Look in: perfect, unblemished nuts and dates. So confusing. I’m not sure if I should’ve soaked the dates first or something but eventually, eventually, they started to break down. This is why I recommend you chop them first.

But despite that, as long as you own a food processor these are a complete breeze to make, and even though I’ve only eaten a few pieces I know I’m going to make this again, and often. For one thing, to get a better quantity of icing. For another thing, to try out all the different flavours (except carob, I can’t go for that) like having maple syrup in the icing or walnuts in the base. This is incredibly delicious stuff – a little crumbly, although I suspect that’s my own fault – but caramelly and dark and biscuity and cold and wonderful. Something about the texture of the dates and the intensity of the cocoa makes it taste and feel almost like solid chocolate. And the icing – oh my. Even with the mean scraping of it across the top it’s almost aggressively luscious, showing how avocados in sweet things makes total sense – the buttery flavour, its yielding texture, and whipped-cream body. And they’re vegan and gluten-free! (Well I’m not sure if golden syrup is strictly vegan, but it seems to be…if not, just use maple syrup as per her recipe.)

Thanks Hannah – and I urge you to run, not walk, to her blog and read through all the other good things she’s come up with.

What have we been up to lately, apart from eating all this brownie? Went to the SPCA to drop off some newspapers but also to hang out with the beautiful cats and dogs there for a bit – seriously, I want them all. Baddddd. Words can only hint at how cool the cats were and at the depths of love in the dogs’ eyes. I just wish we had the space! We were a little slow-moving that day though because what started off as a spontaneous BYO dinner to toast Jo’s job success on the previous night had escalated into a spontaneous-er wingding at our place. On Sunday I went with Tim to the Wellington Phoenix’s first football game of the season (The Pheen, as I call them, but it doesn’t seem to be catching on). It almost didn’t happen – the internet cafe I usually go to was inexplicably full, then when I finally found another one my e-ticket refused to print for ages. The upshot of it was that arriving late to the stadium meant I didn’t suffer that mid-point slump – as I really don’t like sports in the first place, my attention span is not cut out for ninety minutes of people running round kicking a ball. Anyway, they won, which was super pleasant. Hooray for weekends.
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Title via: The laconic and shambling but nonetheless exciting Pablo Picasso, by the Modern Lovers. LOVE this band. Not least for the fact that they use the word avocado in this song.
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Music lately: 

Shout, Isley Brothers. I know I say this about so many songs, but this has just got to be one of the best songs in the world. It’s beautiful.

Badd Energy, Third Eye – am a huge Coco Solid (she who makes up part of this act) fan so clicked through the moment I saw a link to this. While it stands up easily on its own, if you can watch the video you’re in for some fun times. Fun cats-wearing-robes-and-shooting-at-you times.
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Next time: I tried making quinoa balls tonight, kinda like meatballs, and while they predictably fell to bits what was there tasted SO SO good and so that’ll likely be my next blog post.