Category: Contains Nuts

every time I eat vegetables it makes me think of you

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While I completely welcome, luxuriate in, and devote a lot of time to generating the puddings and soups and casseroles that Winter brings…sometimes it’s nice to interrupt all that, suspend the stodge-production and create something altogether more Spring-like and vegetable-focussed.
Although these are essentially just small pies, their unusual, sesame-studded pastry is light and crisp, and their filling has soft, caramelised vegetables contending with salty, fragrant miso. And I managed to make them while feeling physically dilapidated by a cold, which makes me think that they’re not that fiddly to make, either. (I’ve still got this cough, by the way, but I think as far as the battle goes I’m now winning.)
I found the recipe in the latest CLEO magazine (who, I should add, have been very good to me over the last year or so, if you see my “Attention” tab up the top there) and it’s by a clever lady called Janella Purcell who has a cookbook called Eating For The Seasons. Which, judging by this one excellent recipe, is probably a really good book. Despite what looks like Mistral font used on the cover.
The pastry is gluten-free, which is fun, especially if you can’t eat gluten yourself. I’m pretty sure that these are also vegan, so if you’re wondering what it is that’s even holding them together…read on.

Roast Vegetable Sesame Tarts

Adapted from a recipe by Janella Purcell, found in the July issue of CLEO magazine.

Pastry:

1 1/2 cups brown rice flour, or spelt flour, or whatever flour you’ve got really – even regular flour (which, I hope I don’t have to spell out to you, will mean these are no longer gluten-free)
1/2 cup sesame seeds, toasted if you have the energy (I didn’t)
2 tablespoons olive, rice bran or avocado oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce or Tamari sauce
3/4 cup boiling water

Combine the flour and sesame seeds in a bowl. Tip in the oils, the water, and the soy sauce and mix together. Knead well till it forms a soft ball, then rest for 30 minutes while you get on with everything else.

Filling:

Olive oil
1 onion, finely sliced
1 cup pumpkin or kumara (I used kumara) diced or thinly sliced
1 fennel bulb, sliced
1 tablespoon white miso paste
Toasted seeds to garnish – pumpkin, sunflower, or just more sesame seeds if you like. Pine nuts or almonds would be nice too, but seeds are less expensive and just as delicious.

Heat the olive oil in a pan and slowly cook the onions till caramelised. While this is happening, roast the vegetables on a tray at 200 C/400 F for about 20 minutes.

Once your onions are cooked, but while your veges are still roasting, roll out the pastry fairly thinly and use a cookie cutter or similar (I used one of those ramekins that you might make creme brulee in) to stamp out circles of pastry. It’s a little different to the usual – quite springy and playdough-y, and you’ll need to re-roll it a couple of times. Just bear with it though, it will work. Fit your circles of pastry into a greased and floured/silicon muffin tray, not worrying if you get folds of pastry, it’s all good if it looks a bit ramshackle – and bake them, as is, for 15 minutes.

Once the cases are out of the oven, dab a tiny bit of miso paste on the inside of each, then top with your roast vegetables and a sprinkling of toasted seeds. They should remove easily from the muffin tray – and then eat!

Makes 12.

Note – I made the following changes:

– Halved the recipe (so you can easily double what’s above)
– Used spelt flour instead of brown rice flour, as that’s what I had
– You’re supposed to use all sesame oil in the pastry but as it’s expensive and precious I cut it back and replaced some with other oil, but you do as you like
– I only had black sesame seeds, but it’s all good
– Used soy sauce instead of Tamari as that’s what I had
– Changed the vegetables a little – the original recipe didn’t have fennel and had pumkin instead of kumara
– I think that’s it. One other thing to note is that different flours absorb water at a different rate so don’t be afraid to add more flour if your pastry dough is a sticky mess, or more liquid if it’s not coming together. Just a little at a time though.
So as you can see I adapted this recipe quite a bit, and I think you could continue to do so yourself. Once you’ve got the pastry cases sorted, it’s really all a matter of what’s in your fridge.
For example, the following could be delicious…
– Roast capsicums and tomatoes, with toasted chopped almonds and a little orange zest
– Sliced leeks, softened and caramelised in a pan, with feta
– Roast mushrooms with thyme, then chop them up, fill the tarts and top with pumpkin seeds
– Roasted zucchini with capers
– Raw grated beetroot, coriander leaves and toasted walnuts
– Slices of avocado and raw zucchini, topped with mint…
– Mince and cheese! Yay. Or, like, slow-braised beef ragu and parmesan.
I’m also thinking about removing the soy sauce from the pastry, using a plain oil, and filling the cooked cases with sweet things instead, like berries, or chocolate mousse, or – best of all – nuts and caramel sauce. And beyond that, I’m also wondering if you could just roll out the pastry and stamp out and bake awesome crackers from it.
But all those imaginary tarts aside, how did the actual ones that I made taste?
Amazing.
So delicious. The pastry is all nutty and biscuity, and just a tiny bit salty – a very addictive combination. I personally am glad I added the fennel, its aniseedy freshness and quick-to-caramelise, oniony structure was quite lush against the sweeter softer kumara. And they taste really, really good cold as well, to the point where I was wishing I hadn’t halved the original recipe. Twelve mini tarts between Tim and myself just wasn’t enough.

Hooray for pie!

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Title via: The Ramones, and the song really is called Every Time I Eat Vegetables I Think Of You. I love them (the Ramones, but also vegetables.)
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Music lately:
Ella Fitzgerald, When I Get Low I Get High. I think partly because of its compelling Puttin’ On The Ritz style fast swing, Fitzgerald’s gorgeous voice, and partly the fact that it’s just so short, is why I would’ve listened to this song roughly a squillion times over the last week or two.
Matthew and Son by Cat Stevens, I’ve said it before but I love this song so much that it’s always worth repeating: oh my gosh I love this song so much. The video (if you click through) is also quite incredible. His shoulder-pumping dance, the strangely bland and unaffected expressions on the young people’s faces, the bit around 1.55 where he stares down into the camera while singing *fans self*
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Next time: Billy Crudup’s Grandma’s Chocolate Fudge Pie. It’s wild.

just a little too soft, al dente

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In a triflingly small number of sleeps, Tim and I will not be in New Zealand anymore. For a whole month. So don’t come looking for us. Unless you’re in London, in which case by all means come find us. Unless you’re into knife crime. Even though I never once felt unsafe during my time in London, well, at least up till July 7th 2005, I still can’t help thinking “knife crime!” said like the scene-change ‘dun-dunn!’ on Law and Order. But we’ll be fine. We’re confident, like Maria Von Trapp. Thanks so much to everyone who has emailed in offering ideas and websites and even their roof for us to stay under. And a massive thanks to my godmum and her family who loaned Tim and myself some awesomely functional luggage, especially compared to our sorry, carpal-tunnel-inducing offerings.

I can’t say that it has really made its way through to my brain properly – that instead of getting up and going to work every day, I’ll be on the other side of the world to where I am right now, for a month. Firstly, there have been some extremely heavy events both locally and overseas filling my mind – natural disasters, disastrous man-made situations…plus I was up in Auckland again on the weekend just been, this time working at ASB Polyfest (amazing but exhausting) so between that and Pasifika the weekend before, there hasn’t been much time to really properly consider it. Somehow it’ll all come together though. As I said. Confident. Like a Von Trapp.

Part of making it all come together is using up any perishable food. This might mean chugging a hefty volume of soymilk, or it might mean lots of thrown-together pasta dishes like the following, where a vegetable that’d otherwise curl up remorsefully in the fridge becomes the star. The star of what I named Sexy Pasta. I just looked at our dinner and the name appeared to me, organically and fully-formed.

Admittedly, it looked a lot sexier in person. Now that we’re further into the year and darkness falls earlier, I need to try and remember how to take decent photos at night.

But look at those ingredients. Hello. You don’t have to use pappardelle – it’s unfairly more expensive than other kinds of pasta, and I’m pretty unlikely to get it again for a long time, after the moment of wacky extravagance that got it in my cupboard in the first place. Regular spaghetti is more than fine, although something with a bit of width, like fettucini, would be great. I use almonds a lot because I bought a kilo from Moore Wilson’s for relatively cheap (much cheaper than buying little packets in the long run, I mean, and also cheaper compared to other bulk nuts) but use what you have – walnuts, pinenuts, pecans, cashews or Brazils would all rule.

Sexy Pasta aka Pappardelle with Roasted Capsicums, Sesame Garlic Toasted Almonds, Capers, Lemon and Mint

  • 160g pappardelle pasta or 200g other pasta
  • 3 capsicums
  • 1/2 cup whole almonds (be generous, this is your protein)
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 tablespoon sesame oil
  • 1 tablespoon capers, rinsed of their salt
  • Half a lemon
    Handful of mint leaves
  • Bring a large pan of water to the boil with plenty of salt, cook the pasta according to packet instructions (around 10 minutes) and then drain.

While this is happening, set your oven to 220 C. Halve the capsicums, remove the core and stem, and place cut-side down on an oven tray with some baking paper on it. Roast for about 20 minutes or until they’re a little blackened. Remove from the oven, tip them into a bowl and cover with gladwrap (this will make it easier to remove the skins later) and turn the oven down to 200 C.

While they’re roasting, finely chop the garlic clove. Once you’ve removed the capsicums from the oven tray – leaving the paper where it is – replace them with the almonds and the garlic. Drizzle with the sesame oil, and use a spatula to get it all mixed well, so each almond is slickly coated with oil and the chopped garlic is well dispersed. Return to the oven for about 5 minutes – make sure you keep an eye on it, burnt nuts are no fun.

Carefully peel the skin from the capsicums – should come away easily enough – and tear them into strips.

Finally – assemble. Divide the pasta between two plates, then divide the strips of roasted capsicum over that (including any syrupy juices that appear in the bottom of the bowl). Tumble over the almonds and the capers, squeeze the lemon’s juice on the top, and then rip the mint into bits and sprinkle over.

Soft, slippery capsicums, tender wide ribbons of pasta, salty capers, the sweetness of the almonds roasted into popcorn-crunchy, sticky nutty garlicky excellence, the fresh hit of the lemon and mint. The flavours and textures plow into each other to create a seriously gorgeous meal.

The next post’ll be the last one before our trip, but I’ll try to jump on here occasionally during our time away, to be all like “here’s a fuzzy picture of a hot chocolate I had” and “look! Me in front of a Krispy Kreme donut shop!” etc…

Title via: PNC’s recent single Murderer off his upcoming album. I love his music and it ably translated live, too, when we caught the end of his set at Homegrown earlier this month. I first heard this song a while ago and when he mentioned both Pad Thai and al dente I thought “huh, I’ll most likely end up using that in a title sometime…”

Music lately:

Gary Numan, Are Friends Electric? Whether they are, not much gets my head swaying dreamily from side to side, Stevie Wonder-styles, like this tune.

While looking for Julie Andrews singing Confidence on youtube I found this clip of her tapping and singing Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious with Gene Kelly. As well as being half adorable, half bewildering, it showcases the incredibly polished, staggeringly professional nature of stars at the time. When in doubt, lightly banter.

Next time: Like I said, last post before we go, and I’ve got a recipe for Chocolate Jam Bars for you. And I’ll maybe require some advice on how to be separated from your blog that you love for a month.

 

better get that dough sister

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

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

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

No-Bake Vegan Cookie Dough Truffles

With thanks to Hannah from Wayfaring Chocolate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music lately:

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

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

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

i’ve bean waiting so long, to be where i’m going

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Have I got a relatively exciting bean salad for you. Bean salad in and of itself isn’t all that thrilling, but compared to other bean salads this one is pretty special. Aaand I think I’ve used up my quota of saying “bean salad” just there. It was never something I sought out as a kid, although it’s not like my tastebuds were all that sophisticated – mind you neither is bean salad. I do remember eying it up at the deli counter of the supermarket. It looked dubious, a pile of small brown and green pebbles bathed generously in a tub of watery vinegar. This recipe is neither dubious nor watery. It’s verging on sexy. Again…relatively.

I found it while searching for something else entirely on Cuisine’s website and was tangentially inspired, thinking it would be an awesome summer dinner – filling, fast, cheap, oven barely required. As I’ve veered well away from the original, you too can muck round with the following recipe. If you want to use cannellini beans or whatever, no worries. If you want to use more than three kinds, be my guest. If you want to use lemon juice instead of cider vinegar because that’s what you’ve got, then you’re more than welcome to. I included the avocado oil and nigella seeds because I got them for Christmas (thanks, Mum and Dad!) but also because I wanted their respective mellow richness and subtle oniony kick. However you use what you like. As long as there’s some form of bean involved, otherwise…you’re not even really making this recipe at all.
Bean Salad with Poppyseed Dressing

Inspired by this recipe by Fiona Smith from Cuisine magazine.

1 can borlotti beans
1 can chickpeas (I found some super intriguing red chickpeas on special, but regular is obviously fine.)
Roughly 1 cup frozen edamame/soybeans (I say frozen because I presume that’s how you got ’em) You could use frozen peas or broad beans instead.
Handful of almonds
Mint, to serve

Cook your soybeans in boiling water – I tend to throw the beans and the water in the pan at the same time so they all heat up together, as I imagine it’ll shave a couple of minutes off the cooking time. Drain and refresh under cold water. In a hot pan – you can use the same one once the beans are drained – briefly toast the almonds, and then slice up roughly.

Dressing:

3 tablespoons decent-tasting oil. I used avocado, but olive or peanut oil would be great.
2 tablespoons cider vinegar (or lemon or lime juice)
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons poppyseeds
1 fat clove garlic, finely chopped
A pinch of nigella seeds OR cumin seeds (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste.

In a large bowl, whisk together the oil, the vinegar, and the honey. Tip in the poppyseeds, the garlic, the nigella seeds if using and a pinch of seasalt (or a small pinch of regular salt) plus some pepper if you like. Whisk again. Drain the two cans of beans from their creepy can-liquid, and tip into the bowl of dressing along with the cooked soybeans. Using a spatula or large spoon, carefully fold the lot together so that everything becomes properly covered with the dressing, but none of the canned beans get too crushed.

Transfer into the bowl you’re going to serve it from, and top with the almonds and the mint. Or just add both to the bowl you’ve mixed it in if you want to save on dishes.

This salad is brilliant – light, filling, flavoursome, and kinda pretty as far as bean salads go. There’s something texturally satisfying about the combination of soft canned beans and the bite-ier, nutty green soybeans. The dressing also pleases, with its balance of sweet, sharp, salty, rich, and crunchy, and soaks flavoursomely into the otherwise mild beans. The almonds and mint are really just there to make it seem more exciting (something about a plate of beans doesn’t seem like anyone’s first choice) but contribute in a way that you’d want them there every time.
This made enough for dinner alongside some brown rice and sliced, fried zucchini, with the leftover rice stirred into the beans to take for dinner at the Botanic Gardens. It was night one of the ASB Gardens Magic and we saw the wonderful Nudge (standing in for the Thomas Oliver Band). It started to rain about ten minutes into their show but we stuck around and had a fantastic night, first watching people dance round in the rain and then joining in ourselves.
Speaking of rain, but in more horrifying quantities, the dreadful flooding in Australia has been on my mind a lot. The number of deaths seems to rise like the water itself, and it must be awful to have everything you know just…underwater. For what it’s worth, my heart goes out to everyone affected by it (including all the animals), and I hope this land of extreme weather settles down soon.
Having finished my first week back at work (hitting the ground at a brisk canter, this is a busy time for us) I can only conclude that my heart and brain are both at the beach. Feels like a squillion years ago that the most taxing decision I had was which book to read (answer: Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend, Witi Ihimaera’s Tangi, a tribute to Jennifer Paterson, and half of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock.)
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Title via: Gotta say, when I started typing this up I thought “ha! There must be sooooo many songs that use the word ‘been’ which I can twist for my purposes.” But with my aforementioned brain at the beach, Sunshine of Your Love by Cream was all I could think of. It’s a mighty fine song, but I know there’s something better out there. Hopefully for all of us my brain returns to its rightful location soonish.
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Music lately:
The aforementioned Nudge. They crop up here and there in Wellington and are fantastic live, all three members being fearsomely talented and easily watchable.
Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, Happy Days Are Here Again/Get Happy. Too beautiful.
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Next time: I managed to procure from Giapo, via Twitter, a recipe for Cocoa Sorbet. Yay for Twitter, and yay for you if it turns out decent because I’ll be blogging about it.

flourless, we are flourless

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2011! What? How’d that happen already? Well, it’s here and the changing of another year has passed me by in a non-threatening blur of crosswords, novel-reading, and playing 500 with Mum and Dad at the beach. And being absent from the computer, which really wasn’t so bad at all. We’re back out to the beach tomorrow, using the very last of my leave, but Tim’s back to work tomorrow – he heroically came out to help us erect the tents and then cover them with tarps (couldn’t possibly buy a new tent or anything) which we managed to do without having a family meltdown, maybe some lasting buried tension but no meltdown. In the meantime I’m serving up a recipe that I made for Christmas night, which…seems like an extremely long time ago now. And a mighty fine Christmas it was too, I was lucky enough to get heaps of food-related things which I’m sure will all eventually appear here on the blog when I get back to Wellington.




So, apologies for the now outdated Christmas imagery in the background…should have thought more about this and posed the cake in front of a beachtowel or a picture of a dolphin or something to make it more generally summery.

Ever since I can remember we’ve spent Christmas evening with the family who grew up next door to my Mum’s family, and this year I was asked to bring along a pudding (suspect I would have taken it upon myself to bring one along whether it was asked for or not). The open brief of “bring pudding” is one of my favourites and for some reason, out of all the many many pudding recipes Nigella has (or anyone, but for me Christmas is Nigella’s time to shine more than usual) my heart set itself on her Christmas-Spiced Chocolate Cake. It’s a variation on her flourless chocolate cake, gussied up with the yuledtidish fragrance of cinnamon, cloves and orange.


It’s very easy to make and apart from all the eggs it’s pretty low-key, the quantities of chocolate, ground almonds and butter aren’t terrifying and all you need to do is some melting and mixing. You don’t even have to worry about it sinking – it’s practically supposed to. Altogether a non-stressful Christmas pudding option that wouldn’t be out of place any day of the year. As long as you don’t use the title. Not that I referred to it by its full title at any point. Can you imagine walking into a room and saying “here’s my…

Christmas-Spiced Chocolate Cake

From Nigella Christmas

150g dark chocolate, chopped (I used Whittakers Dark Ghana)
150g butter
6 eggs (at room temperature)
250g sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100g almonds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Zest of 1 clementine/satsuma/just use an orange
4 teaspoons instant coffee (preferably espresso)

Topping:

Juice from the above citrus fruit
15g butter
1 tablespoon sugar
Pinch ground cinnamon
50g flaked almonds (they tend to come in 70g packets, you can use the lot here no worries).

Set your oven to 180 C/450 F, and butter and line a 23cm springform tin. That said, all I had at Mum and Dad’s was a 21cm tin that I’d brought up myself and it was all good.)

Break the eggs into a good sized bowl. In another bowl, gently melt together the chocolate and butter. Mum and Dad have a microwave so that’s what I did, but you can also put it in a metal bowl and sit it over a pan of simmering water…just melt the two together, it’s not complicated.)

While the chocolate is cooling, add the sugar and vanilla to the eggs and whip together till thick and pale and at least doubled in texture. This is easier with an electric beater but not impossible with a whisk. Gently fold in the rest of the ingredients, including the magically delicious chocolate-butter mixture. A big silicon spatula is best for this, and for transferring the mixture into the tin. Bake for about 35-45 minutes, and allow to col completely.

For the topping, simmer all the ingredients together till thick and syrupy and then topple them over the chocolate cake, which may well have dipped significantly in the centre.


This cake is seriously fantastic, chocolatey in an upfront way but without making you feel like you’re eating a damp, cocoa-scented piece of soap, as some flourless chocolate cakes can taste. The spices give it a real Christmassiness, showing that the sort of flavours which might show up in a fruitcake are equally fantastic against the slight grit of the ground almonds and the richness from the chocolate. The sticky, orange-syruped almonds on top make it look beautiful too – I just bunged them on and they somehow looked amazing, like shining golden tiles, so if you even put in the slightest bit of effort you’re guaranteed some gorgeousness.



This overachiever of a cake is also gluten-free and keeps for ages.

Hopefully everyone had a decent Christmas/New Years – I don’t really go in for resolutions, preferring to take each day as it comes but also to be receptive to as much positivity, creativity and safe fun as possible. Hope all that comes your way too.

Title via: Something about the panicky nature of Blackout from the fantastic Broadway musical In The Heights makes me feel slightly bad about appropriating their “powerless, we are powerless” line…not so bad that I haven’t done it.

Music lately:

I actually haven’t been listening to a whole lot of music this summer. I brought my ipod up but ignored it, preferring the sound of sea moving slowly across sand and tui calling to each other. Once I’m back in the city on Sunday and this holiday seems unbelievably far away I’m sure I’ll have music coming out my ears (and then going back in my ears again, of course.)

Next time: As I said I got a whole lot of food-stuffs for Christmas and it’s anyone’s guess what I’ll get into first. While part of me never wants to leave the beach, I do miss Wellington and am looking forward to reconnecting with my kitchen…

i’m miss world watch me break

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You just don’t see elaborate dishes created in people’s honour these days. I mean, there are those so established that you forget – Peach Melba, Fettuccine Alfredo, Margherita Pizza, Beef Stroganoff… but nothing like the “Souffle Bowes-Lyon” from the QEII recipe book I once bought from an op shop, very 1980s with its tales of how much champagne they go through weekly and chilled gazpacho and colour plates of extremely tanned people with large hair.

A couple of years back Mum sent me a Hudson and Halls cookbook, and then this year at the library book sale I picked up another of theirs – a plastic-wrapped cookbook called Favourite Recipes from Hudson and Halls. Published in 1985, its black, dustjacketed cover has H & H in tuxedoes gazing solemnly at the reader, positioned in front of various items on a bookshelf and dresser – a clock, a lamp, a trumpet, ‘A Woman of Substance‘. Inside, their forward foreword breaks formalities with its “we have cooked together for nigh on twenty years, some of it good…some of it not so good!” Inside I found a recipe for Chicken Salad Lorraine with Peanut Cream Sauce which they named for 1983’s Miss World, New Zealand’s Lorraine Downes. I love a recipe with a decent backstory like that and I also really love peanut sauce…win win.
An often quoted line of theirs is “are we gay? Well we’re certainly merry”. With hindsight there’s sadness in that while the studio audience of their TV show would drink their wine and laugh at their comic timing, some kind of societal necessity prevented any actual openness at how this was a TV show fronted by two men in love with each other. At the time of the cookbook itself being published, the problematically worded, but comparatively progressive Homosexual Law Reforms were only just coming into effect in New Zealand. We don’t exactly live in a liberal wonderland right now, and I’m no expert on the history of NZ’s gay rights, but certainly leaps and bounds have been made since. As I’m privileged to have the world I live in and the media I consume largely reflect my own life, I can only guess at what it would have been like for H&H back then. I do know they wouldn’t have been the only ones in their position.

I’m not sure if it’s a mid-eighties thing or what, but H&H specified melons (oh my!) in the salad and much as I’m fairly adventurous, I wasn’t quite ready for it covered in peanut sauce…I figured the easier-found cucumber was within the same gene pool and along with some capsicum, would provide colour and juicy crunch. As I switched the required egg noodles for a lighter-textured pile of slippery, soft rice noodles, there’s nothing stopping you swapping the chicken for slices of fresh, firm tofu. And the more I think about it, the more it feels like peanut sauce on melons would have worked just fine…if you try it yourself, let me know!
There is on youtube an opportunity to see H&H in action which, apart from their merry chemistry, is a joy in itself as a slice of New Zealand television at the time – the giant electric frypan, the grey animated opening titles, the pinkly lit background of the studio kitchen. They snap and banter with each other, and burst into laughter. As Hudson spoons ingredients into a pan, listing them aloud, Halls interrupts offscreen with “Garlic?” to which Hudson responds “I haven’t got there yet, could you just mind your own business?” But then Hudson throws out the aside of “very good for the wrist action” while grinding pepper, which, while not as camp as Halls’ crying “Isn’t he wonderful!” while throwing his hands joyfully in the air, is still the sort of thing that continues to raise eyebrows when Nigella says it over 20 years later. I could go on and recreate an entire transcript but you might as well watch it – it’s wonderful stuff.
Chicken Salad Lorraine with Peanut Cream Sauce

With thanks to Hudson and Halls

300g good, free-range chicken thighs
1 stick of carrot, a few peppercorns, a bay leaf, coriander seeds and sprig of thyme if you have it
1/2 a lemon
1/2 a cucumber
1 yellow (or red or orange) capsicum
Peanut or sesame oil
Spring onions (optional)

Dressing

3 heaped tablespoons smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup stock (from poaching the chicken)
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 clove garlic, crushed
small piece of ginger, peeled and grated or finely minced
1 teaspoon sugar
Juice from the other 1/2 a lemon
Tobasco or other hot sauce
About 1/2 cup of cream or thick Greek yoghurt or sour cream.
Egg or rice noodles to serve.

Place chicken thighs in a pan and just cover with water. Add the carrot stick, bay leaf, peppercorns, seeds and thyme (I didn’t have any thyme but it still tasted all good) and turn on the heat, allowing the water to simmer and bubble away gently till the chicken is no longer pink and seems tender – around 15-20 minutes. Remove the chicken to a chopping board and get rid of the spices and things. Bring the remaining liquid to the boil and let it reduce somewhat. Shred the chicken or slice into bite-size chunks. Poached chicken thighs aren’t the sexiest to look at, but there’ll be plenty of distracting colour later on.

Set aside 1/4 cup of the stock for the peanut sauce, and top up the remaining stock in the pan with water, bring to the boil and cook your noodles in it according to packet instructions. Drain the noodles, toss with the peanut or sesame oil, and divide between two plates.
Slice the capsicum and the cucumber into sticks, and arrange on top of the noodles along with the chicken. Finally, whisk together the dressing ingredients (or you could blast them in a food processor) till very smooth. Drizzle the sauce over the two plates of salad, scatter with spring onions or coriander if using.

Note: I didn’t have a lemon or cream, but I did have some amazingly thick, tangy Zany Zeus Greek yoghurt which I figured would cover off both needs. It did, and how. Sour Cream would probably be great as well, or you could just leave out the dairy altogether and replace the stock with water (or vegetable stock).
Serves 2

Lorraine Downes’ name was not taken in vain here – this salad is stunning. Though, it was easier for me to arrange it between two plates rather than put it all in a bowl, so I’m not quite sure if it really even is a salad still. Oh well – the poached chicken is amazingly tender, the peanut sauce is thick but light, blanketing the crunchy vegetables and soft, deliciously bland noodles. I just love peanut sauce but even so, the mix of textures and tastes is wonderful and it’s a great dinner on one of those evenings that is hot, but not so hot that you only want to eat an ice cube for dinner.

There’s plenty to love in this book, especially the descriptions before each dish – some of it practical, some hilarious (“once met someone who was on a diet and was drinking rum essence in diet cola…it tasted abysmal.”) When you turn to the back cover, they’re on a farm, Hudson is wearing a bucket hat and sunglasses and leaning on a spade, while Halls wears tiny shorts and has a rifle casually swung over his shoulder while lunging against a fence – two large black dogs sit beside them. Hudson died of cancer in 1992 and Halls left pretty soon after him. Their books aren’t so easy to track down – while they might be due for a reprint sometime soon, it’s worth hunting next time you’re in an op shop or at a book fair. They’re a lesser known chapter of New Zealand history, not to mention there aren’t many other places these days you’ll find a salad named after a 1983 beauty queen.
Tim and I were at Wellington’s opening night of Rocky Horror Show at the St James tonight – it was an absolutely incredible show, I seriously recommend you go along if you’re even halfway curious. The staging, the quality of the acting and singing, and the sheer energy is all turned up to eleven and besides, watching an audience so joyfully receive music – it’s a beautiful thing. Obviously it was exciting to see the strangely ageless Richard O’Brien who created the show, star as narrator (the round of applause on his entrance brought the performance to a halt) and you gotta hand it to Kristian Lavercombe playing O’Brien’s original role of Riff Raff with such wicked aplomb. Special mention must go to Juan Jackson who played Frank’n’Furter; he barely needed acting ability with his charismatic muscle structure, but luckily he could emote realistically, sing like the great-grandchild of Paul Robeson, and skip carelessly in platform heels. Being a rock opera it maintains a cracking pace – it’s easy to forget just how many incredible songs are crammed into this one wonderful show.
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Title via: Hole’s Miss World from Live Through This. Have much love for Courtney.
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Music lately:
I’ve been trying to avoid Christmas songs but seeing as it’s December 1st (eeeeek!) I’ve indulged myself with the sublimely ridiculous Turkey Lurkey Time from Promises Promises. Seriously, just watch it.

As well as the seasonal stuff I’ve been listening to a fair few John Peel compilations lately – which means Buzzcocks, What Do I Get/Lion Rock by Culture etc etc…
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Next time: For some reason this blog post took me forever to get done, and I guess things are only going to get busier from here on in…but hopefully I’ll get another blog post in before the end of the week, it’ll either be something vegetable-based (woo!) or this amazing cake recipe I found which has mayonnaise (what!) in it.

honey to the bee that’s you for me

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Note: As mentioned in my last blog post, I’ve been nominated for a Wellingtonista award, and while it’s seriously exciting and happiness-inducing to be amongst some distinctly high-profile nominees, it’s also quite nice to be voted for, so I can hype myself up into thinking I might win. As well as myself, you can also vote for other Wellington-related things you like, or nothing at all – the only compulsory fields are your name and email address. What I’m trying to say is that if you do vote (here here here) it’d be really great and I’d appreciate it heaps and heaps.

I recently got sent some honey – two jars – from the astute folk at Airborne. I was caught off-guard when they contacted me, am not sure where I stand on “accepting then blogging about free stuff” because it hasn’t really happened till now. Some people are hardline about this, refusing to accept anything, and I suspect I’d want to avoid it too – this is my blog and I’ll talk about what I want when I want – but damnit, I liked the idea of free honey and was 99% sure it would taste good and not compromise some kind of policy I haven’t even got the kind of clout to be developing in the first place. To find out more about Airborne, by the way, their “Why Choose Us” page is a reassuring read – these people treat their bees and their honey well.
So, two jars arrived – a large jar of thick, creamy Kamahi and a smaller jar of liquid, clear Tawari. And, thought I, here’s the chance to try all those recipes with lots of honey in them! But for some reason I either couldn’t find anything, or the stuff I could find, I was all “eh” about, so I decided to just make up my own stuff instead. (That said, Mum, if get the time could you please email me the recipe for those honey buns we used to make? From that handwritten recipe book I think?) (Edit: Thanks heaps Mum!)
At the vege market down the road there’s this amazingly good tofu at $4 for a large block, scored into four ‘fillets’ as I call them. However no matter how much I try, I can never quite finish it before it starts to go all orange and creepy. There’s only so much dense, filling firm tofu I can get through in a couple of days. On top of that we somehow ended up with three heads of brocolli, because I forgot that we had it and then bought some more. I hate wasting food but I’m also very forgetful, so this just sometimes happens. This following recipe however takes some neglected brocolli, some teacher’s pet asparagus, and some tofu that was somewhat past its best (not at the ‘unsafe’ stage or anything, just not looking so happy to see me when I opened the fridge) and turns it into a feast.
Honey Miso Roast Vegetables

I used a square of firm tofu, a head of broccoli, and a handful of asparagus. Use what you have – the veges need to be able to withstand some roasting. Cauliflower and kumara would be pretty perfect here too.

Whisk together:
  • 2 teaspoons white miso paste

  • 1 tablespoon clear honey (I used Airbourne’s Tawari)

  • 1 teaspoon (or more) sambal oelek or other red chilli paste

  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil

  • 1 teaspoon wholegrain mustard

Set your oven to 200 C. Chop your vegetables and tofu into fairly similar sized smallish pieces. lay the chopped vegetables on a baking-paper lined tray and spoon over the miso-honey mixture. You could also pour the mixture into a big bowl and toss the veges through it, but I couldn’t be bothered with the extra dishes. Roast for about 20 minutes or until everything looks burnished and cooked through. Eat over rice or noodles or just as is.
Don’t be alarmed by the dark, miso-toffee bits that appear (strangely delicious too, I couldn’t help peeling it off the baking paper and eating it) as whatever clings to the vegetables and tofu will taste incredible – sticky, savoury and full of complex, fragrant flavour. The tightly clenched branches of brocolli stretch out under the heat and become deliciously crisp, while their stems remain juicy and tender. The flavour of the asparagus intensifies under the caramelly, hot honey and the tofu becomes…totally passable.
Obviously with honey some kind of pudding or baking attempt is only right. It was relatively recently that I learned about frangipane, a buttery, almondy mix for filling pies and tarts and so on. I had an idea that honey could be a good exchange for the sugar. So I did it.
Honey, Almond and Dried Apricot Tart

1 square of bought puff pastry (I guess you should try and get good quality all-butter stuff. The ingredients on my Edmond’s ready-rolled sheets said “butter” but I have heard terrifying rumours of some awful sounding substance called “baker’s margarine”.)
1 egg
2 tablespoons creamy honey – I used Airborne’s Kamahi
Heaped 1/3 cup ground almonds
40g butter, melted
About 20 soft dried apricots

Set your oven to 220 C, and place the square of pastry onto a baking paper-lined tray. Lightly score a 1cm border around the edge with a sharp knife (don’t cut right through). Once in the oven, this will puff up and look really pretty.

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and the honey. Stir in the ground almonds and melted butter. This will make enough for the tart plus a generous amount for you to taste (it’s delicious!) Spoon carefully over the centre of the pastry, spreading a thin layer across to meet the edge of the margin you’ve scored (as per the picture.) Carefully pull or slice the apricots in half or – if you’ve got lots of apricots, just leave them whole – and arrange on top of the pastry. Paint a little melted butter or egg yolk round the margin if you like. Bake for about 15-20 minutes – as long as you can leave it in without burning.
The first time I made it, I was doing the dishes and forgot to check on the oven. All the sugars in the honey and apricots couldn’t take being ignored, and the tart was a blackened mess (did this stop us eating it? Erm, no). It was late at night, the kitchen was covered in frangipane-smeared implements (myself included), and the ingredients aren’t the cheapest, so I may have yelled “I’m never doing the dishes again! It’s a sign! I hate everything!” Or something to that effect.
The second time I made this tart earlier in the evening and with new enthusiasm, I watched it like I was judging gymnastics at the Olympics – focussed, scrutineering, coldly assessing for any stepping outside the lines. I can’t have eaten nearly enough delicious frangipane mixture though because there was too much on the pastry – it billowed up and spilled over. I quickly turned the oven off to halt the frangipane pilgrimage to the edge of the oven tray, but this meant that the centre of the pastry sheet didn’t have time to get light and flaky. It wasn’t uncooked, just sadly damp, floppy and uncrisp.

While this was happening Tim was watching footage of the Pike River chief executive Peter Whittall, who can’t have slept in the past week, showing a map of where the 29 miners were thought to be, deep in the stomach of the earth. The projector cast shadows across Whittall’s face, and I looked at the tart and thought “oh well”. So we ate it, and it was fine – delicious in fact, with what I considered a bonus breadth of cakey frangipane to pull off the tray contemplatively. Yes, the underside needed longer in the heat, but the soft dried apricots were warmed to an heady, jammy perfumedness, while the fruity, creamy Kamahi honey somehow amplified the fresh, Christmassy flavour of the often dull ground almonds.

While it may need some tweaking here and there, you can feel free to go ahead and make this recipe. Although, while I ended up with deliciousness I’ve only made this recipe twice and it was somewhat fail-y both times…don’t blame me if you get frangipane all over your oven/walls/hair.
For any international readers, the Pike River mine explosion last Friday caused the disappearance, followed by confirmed death after a second explosion on Wednesday, of 29 miners on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island. I was a bit naive and was saying “I hope they’re staying calm” to which people would reply, “if they’re alive”. The sickening sadness that their families, friends, colleagues and community went through, and continue to go through, makes the heart ache. If you read the newspaper (and it’s usually the narrow columns to the left and right of the page that relay the saddest stories in the briefest of paragraphs) you’ll see that tragedy happens everywhere and every day. The scale and public nature of this disaster means it has particular resonance across the country though. With that in mind – with anything in mind really – a burnt or awkward tart is something I can shrug at.
On Thursday morning, the Kamahi honey was spread thickly across hot toast, cut from a loaf of Rewena, the honey slowly filling the pools of butter that gathered in the bread’s crevices. The simplest solution of all, and it was so good. And, at a stretch, a kind of an early prototype version of the above tart. Actually I bet honey and apricot jam on toast (just spontaneously riffing here) would be amazing.
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Title via: YES, quoting Billie Piper’s Honey To The Bee here. It’s strange how, while not one note of the rest of her music appeals to me, I have an intense and unapologetic love for this one song. The swooning rapturousness with which the bizarre lyrics are delivered, the slow-dripping melody, and the late-nineties technological charm of its video make for quite the experience.
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Music lately:
Mariah Carey, Emotions from her album of the same name. Listening to her non-stop brings me no closer to the secret of what makes her so flawless.
The Damned, Eloise. Excellence!
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Next time: most definitely the Chicken Salad Lorraine, plus we’re off to Tiger Translate tonight so there’ll probably be a breathless account of that too.

and if you don’t want to be down with me, you don’t want to pick from my apple tree

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I made these Apple and Cinnamon muffins ages ago – they were the second thing I tried from Nigella Lawson’s book Kitchen after the Spaghetti with Marmite (which got slated in a column in the local paper – any Dominion Post readers out there, don’t disregard its deliciousness! I guess that was one opinion, and mine is merely another, but still.) I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to blog about them, but…here they are.
I do agree with Nigella’s emphatic and continued suspicion of the muffins you run into in many cafes and supermarkets. What they lack in tenderness and flavour, they make up for in height and overpricedness. It could be easy to dislike the concept of muffins altogether if your main experience of them is handing over $4.50 for a mountain of foam mattress sprinkled in chocolate chips, somehow dry and oily simulataneously. Maybe you like this, or your experience of shop muffins is better than mine. All good.
However home-made muffins, while less uniform in shape, are very easy to make and as long as you don’t over-mix them, pretty well guaranteed to be extremely delicious. I realise apple and cinnamon muffins might sound like the obvious-est of the obvious but this recipe of Nigella’s is incredibly good – dense and sweet with honey and yoghurt and textured with chunks of apple and almonds. And it probably costs less to make a whole dozen than it would to buy just one from the supermarket.
Nigella uses spelt flour in this recipe instead of regular flour, which makes them more acceptable for some people who eat wheat-free, but not necessarily those who are gluten-free – it’s a little complicated but go with what you know is best for you, I guess. I bought a bag of spelt flour a year ago and never ended up using it so it was nice to have the opportunity to try it out. These muffins are so full of flavour that I couldn’t say they were distinctively spelt-ish, they just came out looking and tasting like muffins should. You could definitely just use regular plain flour rather than rushing out to find spelt.
Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

From Nigella Lawson’s Kitchen

2 apples
250g spelt flour (or just plain flour)
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
125g brown sugar
125ml honey (1/2 a cup)
60ml (1/4 cup) natural yoghurt
125 ml oil (1/2 a cup – and I use Rice Bran oil)
2 eggs
75g natural almonds, roughly chopped.

Set your oven to 200 C and line your muffin tin with papers.

Chop the apples into small dice, leaving out the core of course, and put to one side. Whisk together the brown sugar, honey, yoghurt, oil and eggs in a bowl.

Tip in the apples, flour, baking powder, half the almonds, and one teaspoon of the cinnamon into this and gently fold it together with a spatula. Try not to overmix – I tend to lift and shift the batter rather than do a full on stirring motion, if that makes any sense at all.

Spoon evenly amongst the muffin tin, and sprinkle with the remaining cinnamon and almonds, plus a little more brown sugar if you like. Bake for 20 minutes. Let them stand 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.
While the comfort-food element of cinnamon and apple obviously works, the almonds, growing smokily nutty under the oven’s heat, and honey, complementing the diced apple’s clean but layered sweetness, keep these muffins from being predictable. They take minutes to throw together but stay good for ages in a sealed container, if anything becoming even more delicious with time (although that could be a product of imagination and anticipation, waking up thinking “OHBOY a delicious muffin for a mid-morning snack.”)
In fact, one of the excellent things about muffins is that they’re really just cake, but you can eat them any time of day including breakfast, without getting strange looks – in the sort of way that a pavlova or ice cream might. Not that avoiding strange looks should be your main motivation in life, not at all! It’s just a nice thought…breakfast cake.
Tim and I went out to Petone yesterday and at the record shop partway down Jackson Street, I found the original Broadway cast recording of Company on vinyl. I didn’t even think it existed in New Zealand – considering the juggernaut that is Amazon.com only has about 6 copies, one for US$90…and now for relative pennies I’ve got Elaine Stritch barking “she’s tall enough to be your mother” as people originally heard her the first time round in 1970. I had to keep taking it out of the bag and looking at it on the bus back into the city in case I’d just done a really good job of imagining it. But it exists. It’s damn exciting.

Speaking of, I am seriously anticipational about Tiger Translate on the 26th of November, if you’re in Wellington around this time you should most definitely give it your time of day. Even though I feel like I don’t quite have a grip on what it is, there’s a whole lot of creativity that’ll go down and there will be some amazing locals performing. We’ve been lucky to witness many of them in action already over the last year or so, with their powers combined who knows what kind of fresh mayhem will occur. TrinityRoots’ stunner drummer Riki Gooch, Julien Dyne and Parks who we saw just last week onstage with Ladi6, Homebrew, whose lyric-memorising male fans still astound months after we saw them with David Dallas at Watusi, Adi Dick who despite being in a squillion different music projects we’ve never actually seen live, the mighty intriguing Orchestra of Spheres, the amazing Electric Wire Hustle who we saw back in February and have since been galloping round the globe, Tommy Ill, Alphabethead whose happy style we love, Scratch 22, Fried Chicken Sound System, The Jewel School plus particularly special guest DJ Zooloo from Mongolia. Tim and I are going to be there and if you get a move on the first 500 people to register online get free tickets – not sure if this has filled up but either way check out their website for more info.
While I’m talking to Wellington, can anyone tell me where to get decent garlic? It seems like even the expensive stuff from the supermarket, with the pretty purple-tinged papery casing is all chomped and denty, gets green shoots quickly, and burns the tongue like raw onion. I guess people selling garlic have no way of knowing what’s underneath the stuff you peel off, but I’m also guessing you can’t return a bulb once you’ve bought it. Sure, there’s the mulched up stuff in jars, but for those times you want whole cloves…?
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Title via: Erykah Badu and her song Appletree from the beautiful album Baduizm. Such an amazing woman – I wish she’d tour on down to New Zealand.
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Music lately:
I Learned The Hard Way, by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, from the album of the same title. Now there’s an amazing woman who is coming to New Zealand, and luckily for us we were able to buy tickets. Can’t wait.
Obviously, have got Company doing many revolutions right now. Can’t get enough no.
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Next time: I am on a prawn high right now, watch out.

swallow my pride, oh yeah

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The nice thing about Mum’s (circa 1971) copy of the “De Luxe Edition” of Edmonds Cookbook that she sent me as a birthday present back in April is…that while there are great recipes and all, just reading through it can be pretty fun in its own right. Beautiful and useful as many of the newer cookbooks celebrating old-time New Zealand cooking are, I like the unromantic straightforwardness of the original text itself.

I like how it informs you that Edmonds is manufacturer of such time-saving, of-the-era items as “Instant Chopped Onions”, “Start” (what even is that?) and “Pronto Instant Beef Tea” (with that kind of title, I can hardly fathom its speed of assembly.) How it coolly gives a recipe for “Grated Nut Cakes” when neither the act of grating nor presence of nuts are involved in the method.


On page 37 is a recipe called Walnut Pride and even though reading through it didn’t reveal anything fist-raisingly representative of being proud, I felt instantly and strongly drawn to making it. Probably so that if people came over and went to the cake tin to look inside (and they do) and asked what it was, I could say “Walnut Pride. Want some?”

Really, it’s just your average cakey slice, with some nuts thrown in. As it was, I used Brazil nuts because they were cheaper than walnuts, as a bonus Brazil nuts have a prouder sound to them than walnuts…right? There’s nothing outrageous about this recipe but it’s tasty, and easy to make, and non-threateningly good-looking, and as far as baking goes, sometimes there’s not much more you could ask for.



If anyone does actually know where the name came from, feel free to share. Without being overly simplistic, according to Wikipedia the first gay pride events in New Zealand were in the 1970s, so maybe this cake is what people ate to give them energy and to share amongst friends while marching..?

Brazil Nut Pride

Adapted from The Edmonds Cookbook.

120g butter
250g brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1/3 cup milk

250g plain flour
1 moderate teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup Brazil nuts (or, of course, the original walnuts)
1/2 cup sultanas

Set your oven to 180 C/370 F, and line a baking tin – not too big, not too small – with baking paper. Cream butter and sugar, then add the vanilla. Beat in the egg, then alternatively mix in the milk with the dry ingredients. Stir in the Brazil nuts and fruit. Bake for 40 minutes, then ice with lemon icing when cool and cut into squares. I mixed up some lemon juice with icing sugar till it was a thick enough to drizzle off a spoon onto the cake, but feel free to smear it with lemon butter icing as the recipe suggests.


It tastes just fine – not faint-makingly delicious, but good and cakey, a bit flutteringly caramelly from the brown sugar, with the occasional creamy nutty crunch from the Brazil nuts lodged throughout. And in case you’re wondering what a “moderate teaspoon of baking powder” is, well so am I. My interpretation involved casually swiping a spoon into the box of baking powder while squinting with my head tilted to the side, then tapping the spoon slightly to remove any excess. You…you do what feels right.

I was home from work sick today with what I’ve called the proto-flu – my throat was all constricted and I felt shivery and very sensitive to the touch last night, but after a good sleep and lots of tea and water, I’m back to just having a sore throat again. So I’m basically fine. The fact that I felt like three bits of marmite and cheese on toast for lunch was a good indication. If I don’t want to eat, it usually means I’m sick. Sometimes when I get really crook, I end up sadly telling Tim, usually from the foetal position, “I guess I’ll just have to stop the food blog, I can’t even imagine why I wanted to talk about food in the first place”. As soon as it passes I start thinking about cheesecake and fried chicken and spaghetti that sort of thing again.

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Title via: To those of you who thought I might quote U2’s (Pride) In The Name Of Love…pshh. They’re all very talented people. I just don’t like their music enough to use a lyric as a post title. Now, the Ramones – I love their song Swallow My Pride, especially the way the chorus lurches surprisingly-but-pleasantly upwards. And it is they who bring us today’s title.
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Music lately:

Tim put on some Smiths this evening, haven’t listened to them in aaaaages. A favourite of mine is Shoplifters of the World Unite from Louder Than Bombs. The beginning always catches me off-guard with its directness, and Morrissey sounds typically wonderful.

Today I watched the 1993 film of Gypsy, one of the greatest musicals ever written, starring the awesome Bette Midler as Madame Rose. Also awesome was Mad Men‘s Elizabeth Moss in a small role as Baby Louise, and Tony Award winner Christine Ebersole playing burlesque stripper Dressy Tessy Tura. This movie is criminally under-represented on youtube, but check out Midler’s brassy and sassy Everything’s Coming Up Roses. I can’t even imagine how extremely amazing the recent Broadway production (with Patti LuPone, Laura Benanti, Boyd Gaines and Leigh-Ann Larkin) must have been.

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Next time: The brisket!

we sell our souls for bread

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Nothing like a persistently rainy long weekend to really push me back into the grippy arms of the kitchen. I seriously love making bread, but haven’t had a chance in ages so tip of the hat to the Queen for her birthday creating a Monday off this week. If New Zealand ever becomes a republic there’d better be some particularly concrete replacements for any long weekend we’d lose as a result. With extra time on my hands I’ve been making all kinds of things including this Nigella Lawson bread recipe from her flawless book of baking, How To Be A Domestic Goddess.

I was able to use these beautiful walnuts that Mum posted down to me from a family friend’s tree. They’re easy enough to get into, just a light tap from a hammer on the shell and a bit of digging quickly produces a pile of bamboo coloured, wrinkled heart shapes. They were soft and fragrant and tasted amazing – none of that tooth-coating bitterness that you sometimes get with those from a packet which have been sitting round too long.

This bread is fiddly-ish but no real mission to make. I didn’t have any of the wholemeal bread flour that Nigella specified but I did have plenty of half-empty packets of dusty offerings from the health food shop down the road (I don’t know, they’re just so compulsively purchasable) so if you’re in the same boat just do what I did and use 550g white bread flour and make up the rest of the weight with bran, rolled oats, that sort of thing. If you don’t have real maple syrup, use honey or golden syrup instead.


Maple Walnut Bread

Adapted from Maple-Pecan Bread in Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess (ie you can use pecans if you have them)
  • 500g wholemeal bread flour
  • 150g white bread flour
  • 1 sachet instant dry yeast
  • 300-400mls warm water
  • 4 tablespoons maple syrup
  • 50-100g walnuts
  • Walnut oil (if you have it, otherwise use plain eg rice bran)
Mix the flours and yeast together in a large bowl. Pour in the water and syrup and mix to make a sticky dough. Knead for a couple of minutes, then let it sit for 20 minutes. Knead again, sprinkling over the walnuts as you go. It will take a little while to incorporate them, simply because this type of dough is a little tougher than usual. Keep pushing and kneading until the walnuts are more or less dispersed throughout the dough and until it forms a smooth, elastic ball. Pour over a good tablespoon of walnut or other oil, and turn so all surfaces are covered. Cover in clingfilm, and leave for a couple of hours to rise.

At this stage, punch it down to deflate it, then knead it into a loaf shape. Cover with a teatowel and leave it for half an hour, meanwhile setting the oven to 220 C. Bake for 1/4 of an hour before turning down the temperature to 180C and baking for a further 20 or so minutes, covering with a sheet of tinfoil if it starts to get too brown.


The maple syrup isn’t aggressively present in the finished, baked bread, but gives a subtle, layered fragrance and sweet, chewy crust which goes brilliantly with the deliciously toasted walnuts. Last night for dinner, inspired by a Ray McVinnie Quick Smart column in one of my Cuisine magazines, I cooked chunks of butternut pumpkin in boiling water till soft, drained and mashed them with coriander and cumin seeds, fried squares of diced streaky bacon and wafers of haloumi till sizzling, and served all that on top of slices of the freshly baked bread. The sweetness of the pumpkin was echoed in the sweetness of the bread, incredibly good with the contrastingly salty bacon and cheese. Unfortunately that’s the last of the cut-price haloumi I got from The Food Show so it’s unlikely I’ll be able to recreate such a smashing dinner for a while. If however you yourself are in the regular-haloumi-buying demographic then by all means try it.

Other things that happened this mighty fine long weekend include forsaking a long-time-coming sleepin to stagger to the pub to watch the All Whites’ friendly pre-FIFA World Cup game against Slovenia on Saturday morning. Unfortunately we lost, but full marks to Slovenia considering their population is only 2.2 million or so. The upshot of it was that we had a great excuse to go to Customs and order great quantities of beautiful, beautiful filter coffee served by the lovely people there. We don’t get to go very often but they even recognised that Tim had got his hair cut. As well as making me want to cook things, the rain also meant we had a fine excuse to watch The IT Crowd last night. Britain seems to positively fling out these small, side-poppingly funny yet under-the-radar comedies, and while I’d known about The IT Crowd for a while I’ve never pinned it down for a good watch. I really enjoyed Richard Ayoade’s work withThe Mighty Boosh so it’s nice to see him in a leading role in this. Find it if you can – we finished the lot in very quick succession.

Speaking of coffee, and in exciting news for future employers, Tim has left Starbucks after three years. No hard feelings towards the green siren – it helped pay our rent through university and is highly educative coffee-wise. If anyone out there requires a ridiculously great guy with an Honours degree in media studies to do cool stuff like using skills learned in both university and life, then truly look no further than the now-available Tim. You think I deal recommendations lightly? Think again.
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Title via: Electric Blues from the Broadway musical Hair. My preoccupation with its amazing score rides again. This song is so exciting and dynamic, and I presume they use the word ‘bread’ to mean ‘money’ in this context, but then…maybe they’d tried this recipe too. And while lyrics like “we’re all encased in sonic armour, belting out through chrome grenades” make me smile, the next stanza’s “they chain ya and they brainwash ya, when you least expect it, they feed ya mass media” could definitely find relevance at any stage.
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Music lately:
Beth, by localers Voom from their debut album Now I Am Me. I first heard this song years ago on Channel Z and while I can’t say I cried or anything, I certainly felt that good, self-indulgent kind of desolation that you get from wallowing in excellent sad music about situations that you’re not sure if you can relate to but you allow them to reflect whatever it is you’re feeling anyway. Some bright spark put the video onto Youtube so I can now enjoy and wallow all over again as and when necessary.
Janelle Monae’s Tightrope from The Archandroid. There’s already so much being said about her on – dun dun – the internet, but at face value it’s a stonkeringly good tune.
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Next time: Maybe even more exciting than baking bread and watching DVDs on a Friday night, I made my own ricotta cheese yesterday! The recipe is so easy I could almost put it right here as an afterthought. But no. You’ll have to wait for next time, well either that or call my bluff and google “homemade ricotta” and render me completely unnecessary.