Category: Dairy Free

you know i gave that horse a carrot so he’d break your foot

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So much for my posturing about how unemployment would mean I’d be able to blog all super-regularly, because guess what? I’m still sick. After all this time. And I’ve been too sick to cook. If I don’t cook, I can’t blog. And if I can’t blog, do I exist? I’m kidding, sort of. But yeah. Sick sucks. My cookbook writing didn’t start with the leader-of-the-pack style motorbike revving that I anticipated, but with a more of a sniffle and a wheeze.

I’ve spent the past four days up home at my parents’ place – after a flight to Auckland where I was in such a hazy, groggy daze of weak hopelessness I was terrified that I was going to be pulled aside by security for suspicion of being on and/or carrying multitudes of drugs. I’m not sure ‘it’s just the cough syrup, honest’ or even ‘if I was, surely I’d be having fun than this’ is a defense they’d believe.

I had plans to test a ton of recipes for the cookbook while up home, of writing half the book, of doing a tour of royal proportions of my family in the area…but instead I just spent the whole time on the couch. It was kinda lovely though. Mum giving me old family cookware to use as props in the cookbook (and also to use in real life of course); Dad discussing asset sales with me; my younger brother making me never prouder by bringing up the Bechdel test out of nowhere while we were talking about movies. My nana surprising me by appearing in the car that picked me up from the airport, my godmother dropping in with a gift of lemons and chillis, my old babysitter who’s now a prison warden (no coincidence I’m sure) visiting after years and years away. And me on the couch, wrapped up in a feather duvet, in front of a constantly going fireplace. It was excellent.

I should also mention me discussing how much I loved the cats with the cats themselves. They were fairly impervious to my advancements.

I was, however, rewarded with indescribable happiness when I woke up to find Poppy curled up on my bed. The former Jessica Wakefield/Baby Raptor kitten has mellowed into the softest, cutest cat. Also may I draw attention to the world’s most splendid bedspread? Instagram actually softens its effect somewhat, you really need to see it in person (not that that’s an invite) to appreciate its shiny, synthetic, unforgivably fluoro resplendence.

So I returned to Wellington yesterday afternoon, finally with a flicker of hunger to cook and eat again, which is good, because I have a million recipes to test. It was late afternoon and a snack was needed. Something simple. Something cheap. Something that would remind me that I actually like to cook and eat. Who do I turn to? Nigella of course, always. Nigella and her awesomely named Rainbow Room Carrot and Peanut Salad.

Depending on your tastebuds and their sense of style, this salad might sound weird. Like something that you might have made in the hopes of impressing someone in the late 1970s. Like there’s too much going on, like there’s not nearly enough going on. But it works – the different levels of crunchiness, the nutty sweetness, the salty, oily, sourness – all elements coming together to form something that you won’t be able to eat fast enough, I promise. I normally never peel my carrots by the way, but the ones I found in the fridge were a bit elderly and bendy…you know…so I made an exception. Kindly note the sunny yellow knife, a congratulatory present from Mum for getting the cookbook. And the tea towel came from her too. I told you I had a good time at home.

The Rainbow Room Carrot and Peanut Salad

a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s book Forever Summer.

4 carrots, scrubbed
75g salted peanuts
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)
2 tablespoons peanut oil
A few drops sesame oil

Grate or thinly slice the carrots. Mix with the peanuts. Mix in the vinegar and oil. There you have it.

This also works well with salted roasted cashews, if you’re not peanut-inclined. But there’s something in the carrots’ own nutty sweetness that goes so brilliantly here.

Will I ever tire of framing photos this way? Maybe not till those flowers wilt beyond recognition. And I’ve had them since before Christmas, so I don’t fancy your chances…

I admit, there was one evening in the last two weeks involving Soju and karaoke and red wine. But a dear, dear friend was moving to Japan, so what can you do? I’m pretty sure that the length of this sickness is not due to that one night. Maybe it threw my recovery off-course slightly, but nothing more than that. All I can say is, I’d better be better by the next time I blog here. I don’t want to be sick forever!
 

Title via: The White Stripes, that enigmatic duo with a permanent place in my heart, and Well It’s True That We Love One Another, the final track on their album Elephant.

Music lately:

Frank Ocean, Channel Orange – stream the whole stunner mixtape here.

Vulindlela, by Brenda Fassie. I don’t know what she’s singing, but it’s so full of joy and beauty that it doesn’t matter. I mean, I want to know, but this is enough for now.

Nothing like thinking of those worse off than yourself when you’re sick – Fantine’s big number I Dreamed A Dream from Les Mis made me feel positively healthy every time I listened to it. And anything’s more healthy than Patti LuPone’s wig here.

Next time: I. Will. Not. Be. Sick.

i saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes i saw the sign

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It was Tuesday, May 21 when I got the phone call confirming that I had a cookbook deal. I’ve already talked about how, while waiting for that phone call, I watched clip after clip of inspiring Broadway videos and Leslie Knope achieving stuff. But before all that, I was, to keep myself sane, keeping an eye out for good signs. You know, little things that felt like the universe was giving me a thumbs up. Here’s the list I made on the day:

– I saw Bernie, the magical giant-hound-about-town, on the way to work.
– Barack Obama tweeted “Clear eyes, full hearts” and a photo of himself throwing a football. I mean, c’mon. That’s a good sign any day. 
– Jo tweeted me to let me know the actress who plays Arya on Game of Thrones was photographed wearing very similar bold pants to mine. I really wanted to get this cookbook okay people, and I was going to see good signs where I wanted to see them. 
-Tim and I beat our personal best time at getting to Customs Brew Bar that morning for a pre-work coffee, despite it feeling like we were going to be late.
-There was a man I’ve never seen, before or since, busking underneath my window, playing Beauty and the Beast on the saxophone. Anything that calls to mind the human hug that is Angela Lansbury has to be a good sign.
-And finally, spoilers ahoy, I felt like the way season four of Parks and Rec finished meant I just had to get this. 
Now I’m not super-superstitious – not as much as I used to be, anyway – plenty of life is just horribly, weirdly random. But still, I can’t help taking note of things like that when they come along.
So I was a bit concerned, because this week marked my very first days of writing my cookbook, the days I pictured spending typing furiously, drinking bottomless black coffee and gazing happily out the window, perhaps while an accordion plays somewhere in the background. I would possibly also be wearing a beret. 
And this week, I got sick. Kitten-weak, coughing constantly, aching head, my nasal passages like high pressure hoses jetting forth mucus, brain fuzzy as the ugg boots I wore to stay warm. You could say it’s not the best sign that this cookbook’s going to be amazing.

But I’ve decided to take it as a good sign. First, I’m hoping that being sick now at the start of Winter will mean I’m cool for the rest of it. Secondly, it neatly did away with any first-day-on-the-job awkwardness. Thirdly, after months of burning away on less than six hours sleep a night to put in the work to make myself as cookbook-worthy as possible, some enforced rest is kinda nice.

But yeah, did I mention kitten-weak? I could hardly lift my head yesterday. However there was a small window where hunger, my sense of taste returning, and my ability to stand up straight intersected, and I made good on it by cooking myself up some tomato soup, with sake, chilli, and cinnamon in its cherry-red depths. That aside, this is really just a can of tomatoes and some water, so as well as the fact that it ain’t no thing to make, it also costs little.

Tomato Soup with Sake, Chilli and Cinnamon.

A recipe by myself.

1 can tomatoes in juice (crushed makes your life easier, but sometimes whole are cheaper, so go with what you know.)
1 heaped teaspoon sambal oelek OR 1 red chilli, deseeded and sliced
1 tablespoon semolina
1 shotglass of sake
Cinnamon and salt to taste

Open the can of tomatoes and tip it into a pan. Fill up the can with water and tip that into the pan too. Add the sambal oelek or chilli, bring to the boil then simmer for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. If you’re using whole canned tomatoes, mash them up with your wooden spoon as you go. Sprinkle over the semolina, stir it in quickly, and simmer for another five minutes till the soup is thickened. Finally, stir in the sake and a dusting of cinnamon (not even a quarter of a teaspoon – just shake some into your hand and scatter it in from there) plus salt to taste, and serve. 

Serves 1 – although easily multiplied for more.

Tomato soup is what it is – you either like it or don’t. This is special yet nothing special at the same time, making it a rather perfect lunch. There’s something inimitable about sake’s clean yet buttery taste and the way it mingles with the slow-simmered tomatoes. The semolina swells and thickens the soup superbly, and the chilli and cinnamon add necessary, fragrant warmth, generally distracting you entirely from the metallic beginnings of these tomatoes. If you don’t have sake kicking around, use sherry, and if you don’t have that kicking around, this will still be really nice, so fear not. And if you don’t have semolina you could use polenta, or just have your soup a little more watery. However, there is also something to be said for following my recipe as it is, too.

So I ate it for lunch yesterday with a cup of hot lime and honey – the lime simply a different take on the usual lemon drink that I’ve been having nonstop for the last few days. And it was wonderful.

I had my last day at work on Friday. It’s strange not to be going there anymore after so many years. At this stage it just feels like I’m on sick leave, but there is a persistent sense of having left something big behind – it’s a little sad, but it’s also very, very freeing, and growing more definite. And I left on good terms – the best terms in fact, dancing wildly with everyone at a local bar. Indeed, it’s possibly for the best that no-one has to make eye contact with me immediately following my particular brand of jiving to Tainted Love. I can’t help it, when the music plays I dance big, and I dance freely.

And any lingering feelings of “what have I dooooooone” were dissolved quickly on Saturday night at an amazing potluck dinner at our dear friend Jo’s (the same one who told me about Arya’s pants.) Friends that you feel comfortable enough to have a fullness-induced (slightly mulled wine-induced too, to be fair) lie-down in front of are good friends indeed. Seriously, when I get too full I have to lie down, and there’s really not many places outside the home that I can feasibly follow through with it.

So this is me now – not wearing a cool beret (or even an uncool beret), not having written gazillions of pages of my cookbook, and not feeling particularly well.

But I’ve made a tiny bit of progress and if nothing else there’s no sickness, it seems, that the right filter on instagram can’t fix. The journey has begun. And if it begins with me wearing my teenage-throwback Bjork buns and a blanket my mum crocheted for me and using a handtowel as a handkerchief because a mere handkerchief can’t sustain what my nose is throwing down, then so be it! 
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Title via: Ace of Base, The Sign. You know life like, is demanding, without understanding? 

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Music to write a cookbook to:


I already love Janine and the Mixtape’s song Bullets, but if anything’s going to make me listen to a remix of it, it’s the fact that Haz’Beats from Homebrew is behind it. Dreamy as.

Speaking of remixes, listen now to this Scratch 22 remix of Street Chant’s Salad Daze. Holy cow, is all I’ve got.

Was a little tipsy the other night and pulled my typical move of falling into a YouTube black hole of tears-inducing Broadway videos. And there are few more instantly tears-inducing than the late Laurie Beechman. Ugh, just typing it makes me want to cry. Watch her singing On A Clear Day…If you dare.
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Next time: I have the latest Cuisine magazine and am still planning to cook something from that, but whatever it is, hopefully I’ll be well enough to make it something a little more involved than a can of tomatoes and some water. But not too involved, you know me.

and i will be alone again tonight my dear

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I’m not all that good at just cooking stuff for myself to eat when Tim’s not around – which is weird for so many reasons. Like, I love food. And cooking for two people involves only one more person than cooking for one. At best. And I’m not all codependent or anything, honest. But if Tim’s not around, I tend to find myself spending the usual dinner-ing hours eating golden syrup or something. Maybe it’s because I coincidentally feel like eating golden syrup at those times? I don’t know. Sometimes things just happen and there’s no reason for it. If I get famous off this cookbook I request that everyone overanalyses it for me in the comments section.

I’m saying this because I had lunch by myself today and I felt like eating something marginally more diverse to the palate than golden syrup. Having spent last night drinking whisky and sloe gin at Brendan’s birthday party, I also didn’t feel like expending any extraneous energy.

So I made this: Fried Onion Rice with Nuts, Cardamom and Cinnamon. It’s literally just onion, rice, nuts, some water and some spices. And yet so much more vigorously flavoured than that restrained list would suggest. I adapted it from a recipe in Nigella Lawson’s book Feast, a book I’ve read about a squillion times, and yet which can still jolt me from my indolence and make me want to cook something for myself immediately.




You do need to really crisp up the onions for this. You know how you’re normally supposed to focus on the cooking? With this I encourage you to get distracted. I recommend checking twitter and perhaps peruse an aggregator of viral content like buzzfeed.com – whatever their latest list of animals doing cute stuff is, it should use up just the right amount of time to let the heat of the pan really char those onions. Don’t go any further than that though – the onions are for flavour, not just texture – this isn’t the time to go getting lost in a ‘where are they now’ quagmire of looking up 90s actors on Wikipedia or look at every single inexplicably happy photo on someone you used to go to school with’s Facebook. We’re not building a casserole here, people. 


Fried Onion Rice with Nuts, Cardamom and Cinnamon

Adapted from a recipe from Feast, by Nigella Lawson, moon of my life.


3 tablespoons/a handful/whatever of nuts – almonds, cashews or peanuts are good here
1 onion
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup basmati or other long grain white rice
Seeds from 3 cardamom pods (just slice the pods in half and shake out the seeds)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Peel, halve, and finely slice your onion. Heat a large pan and toast the nuts in it till lightly browned. Set them aside. Heat the oil in the same pan and fry the onions in it till good and browned – they should have reduced in size with most of them crisp and darkened. Set aside with the nuts. In your same pan, stir the rice and spices over a low heat for a minute – this just helps with the flavour of things – before tipping in 1 cup/250ml water and a pinch of salt and clamping on the lid. Turn the heat down low and let it simmer away without disturbing it for about ten minutes. At this stage the rice should be completely cooked, but if not let it go a little longer. Remove from the heat, stir in the nuts and onions, and shuffle everything onto your plate. Serves 1.

I have tons of cardamom pods – what, I’m a food blogger – but if you don’t it’s not the end of the world and this is fine with just cinnamon. But cardamom’s particularly lemony-gingery, mildly eucalyptus-y flavour lends a particular elegance to the earthier, oilier flavours. But seriously, fried onions, nuts, rice? Some of the nicest things in the world, making this dish a worthy alternative to golden syrup. Less sticky and prone to getting in my hair, too.

Winter is good for so many things: cooking soup and stews and roasts and such; piling on as many soft cosy clothes as you can; weather complaining as a universal conversation topic; less potential for public sweatiness; whisky tastes better. It goes on. But above all of that, I love spending a lot of time watching TV, like really snuggling into a good TV series. I say that, because I really just wanted to say this:
Tim and I have been rewatching the short but incredible Freaks and Geeks and today I discovered I have the exact same sweater as the character Millie Kentner. I happened to be wearing it while we watched this episode. It’s difficult to photograph one’s self and a screen but trust me: these wooly jumpers are identical. Even in these exciting times, this stands out as a particular milestone.
The last week of June marks the last week of me being at my job – then my main focus in life is going to be bringing this cookbook into existence. It looks like it’s going to be a little nightmarish, logistics-wise – but I’m telling myself that I’ve never been a slave to logic, so everything looks like a logistical nightmare to me. Right? Right. I’ll totally get there though. Somehow.
But: if any fancy people out there are reading, but also staring out the window sighing wistfully because you can’t find the right freelance foodwriter to pay some money to, may I suggest…myself? While the book is going to take a lot of time I’m hoping to pick up some extra opportunities to bolster my soon-to-be-flailing bank balance. I already do lots of freelancing for reassuringly real things like Sunday Star-Times and 3news.co.nz, and I’ll tell you candidly: I think I’m a really good writer. And as another great writer made their awesome character say: thank you for your consideration.
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Title via: Love’s Alone Again Or. One of the most excellent songs I’ve ever heard. So there’s that.
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Music lately:

Azealia Banks, Liquorice. Not as immediately, life-changingly gripping as 212, but still super awesome with a catchy as heck chorus.

Nina Simone, Here Comes The Sun. Heard some Nina Simone on the radio today and reflected on how she can pretty much do no wrong, and how I wanted to hear more. So why not this video with its slideshow of unrelated artwork?
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Next time: I got the new Cuisine magazine – maybe something from that? Time will tell, better than I am right now. 

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…

little lamb, little lamb, a birthday goes by so fast…

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A big thanks to everyone’s cool responses to my last post. Made me glad I’d shared it.

When I made this dinner last night my camera battery went flat and before it obstinately shut down entirely, I hastily snapped some mediocre photos. The battery in my brain went a little flat too, which is really not the best timing considering after my last post I wanted something more sprightly and upbeat. As always though honesty is what I aim for here. When tired…I write like a tired person.

Surprise! It is my birthday today! Twenty-six. (I know. So old or so young, depending on how you look at it) For the last few years, my birthday has really snuck up on me, and today followed that pattern again. I don’t know exactly what kind of build up I was expecting – perhaps an ad campaign indicating that the nation of New Zealand are all meeting on a hilltop with candles and torches and counting down from 10 while a soft-rock song that got to #3 in the downloads charts plays in the background – but seriously, it properly snuck. I’m both a night owl and an early riser (it’s so great) (it’s really not) and so not only was I awake to see my birthday from the moment the clock ticked over, I’m also here at 6-something AM to greet it again before most other people will. But do you know what I woke up to? A kind and lovely email from the kind and lovely Kate who Tim and I stayed with, sight unseen, along with her husband, in Oxford last year.

I wonder if Redman, Victoria Beckham, Liz Phair and/or Sean Bean, bless his sword and sandals, are also going through this same thought process? Since Wikipedia confirms they too are born on April 17? Back in my day (ooh, just caught myself aging), I wore it as a badge of honour that Victoria had the same birthday as me, but depending on which unauthorised magazine or book you read – you know, the sort that referred to “the Fab Five!” or “Get Spicy with the Girls!” – she was also listed as being born on the 7th. Wikipedia, my eleven-year-old self thanks you for restoring the equilibrium.

This is a very simple recipe that I thought up earlier yesterday. It’s nothing revolutionary – just marinate some chicken and fry it and serve it on rice – but the combination of spices will definitely use up some of the spices just sitting there on your spice rack. They will also imbue the meat with warmth and depth and heat and, of course, spice. Chicken breasts are so boring – thighs all the way! – but Tim and I saw some Waitoa ones on special and so the decision was made. Spices like this embiggen the relatively less flavoursome and tender chicken breast, although if you’ve actually got some thighs to hand then you’re golden. You could always use this marinade for tofu or steak or lamb or whatever, depending on which end of the protein spectrum you’re feeling most like eating. The Coconut Spinach Rice you could always eat by its comforting self, the chicken could be turned into a salad, and so on and so forth, you know how to eat food.

Fried Chicken with Many Spices and Coconut Spinach Rice


A recipe by myself.


350g (or as much as you like) boneless chicken breast
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1 tablespoon sambal oelek (or some other form of chilli sauce)
Juice and zest of a lime (about 2 tablespoons juice)
2 tablespoons sesame oil


1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup long grain rice  
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
Handful spinach leaves


Slice up the chicken into small pieces, mix together the the spices and oil and marinate the chicken in it for about an hour, although you could cook it right away if you like. Fry the chicken pieces, scraping in the leftover marinade, till crisp and slightly darkened. And, of course, fully cooked through. Serve with the rice.


To make the rice – I recommend getting it going before you start frying the chicken – heat up the oil in a pan and tip in the uncooked grains of rice. Stir them around for a minute or two on their own, then add the coconut and mix well. As soon as the coconut starts to brown – it’ll happen fast – tip in 3 cups of water, a decent grind/pinch of salt, and clamp a lid on top of the pan. Allow to simmer for about 10 minutes or until the water is all absorbed and the rice grains cooked. At this point, finely slice up a handful of spinach leaves and stir them into the rice.

(Instagram played the role of my camera in this performance. Next time, more proactive battery charging, I promise.)

This is so easy but so exuberantly and uncompromisingly flavoured – the earthy cinnamon and cumin, the compelling heats of the mustard, ginger and chilli and the necessary sweetness and light of the lime against the calm, simple rice is pretty perfect as far as dinner on a cold Monday night goes.

This is my bedroom. Kidding! It’s at La Boca Loca, where Tim and Jo and I went for the muy rico experience that was tequila tasting and tortilla-making demonstration to celebrate their first birthday. Jo herself wrote about it better than I just did at Wellingtonista.

On Friday we (Tim, myself, all our friends) went to an amazing under the sea themed party (specifically, it was named Atlantis to Interzone – not Alanis to Interzone as I initially misread) I was a jellyfish and Tim was a dashing Titanic zombie. I danced wildly with friends and then danced some more. I did wake up with that “oh no, I danced like that” feeling but have decided that there’s no changing who I am and people are going to have to deal with the fact that I’m either standing still or dancing for my life, taking my passion and making it happen, etc. Speaking of aging, the bouncer didn’t believe I was of age, but let me in anyway, probably based on shrewdness and the fact that everyone else in our group was mid to late 20s. “You don’t look 25” he said. “But I do look like a jellyfish,” I coolly replied. I know you’re supposed to love having to pull out ID all the time by this point in life but Tim and I, in the eyes of every gatekeeper in the nation, would seem to resemble a couple of cherubic toddlers dressed humourously in grown-ups’ clothing. So I wouldn’t mind eventually visually growing into my age. I also wouldn’t mind dressing up as a jellyfish again, it was so much fun.

Round of applause to Jo, Jo and Thomas for not so much throwing the party as hurtling it into space to watch it gently fall to earth showering everyone with meteors (I’m trying to say ‘it was good fun’); thanks to Kate who took the above photo.

On Saturday Tim and I paid a near-insurmountable sum ($25! For a movie! But I wanted to see it five times!) to see the filmed production of Company, one of my very favourite Broadway shows. Its cast had so many ridiculously great people in it that I was nearly crying the whole time, even though it was just a movie. Christina Hendricks as self-confessed dullard April had this kind of Marilyn Monroe quality, playing a ditzy character with intimidatingly good comic timing and realness. Anika Noni Rose was glorious and delivered one of my favourite lines in the show better than I’ve ever seen it done (which is once on YouTube and once in a student production of Company, so.) Stephen Colbert and Martha Plimpton had incredible chemistry and Colbert was plain cheek-pinchingly adorable in his turtleneck. Kate Finneran was perfect as Amy. Patti LuPone – who I’ve actually seen in concert – won me over as Joanne with her final flourish in Ladies Who Lunch. And I was so happy they kept the complicated Donna McKechnie dance in it from the original Broadway production, with the neatly full-circle move of casting Chryssie Whitehead who starred in the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line. If none of that made any sense, this movie trailer might help.

And now, to get used to how very twenty-six I’m going to be.
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Title via: Little Lamb from the musical Gypsy. Initially this was a song I always skipped for the more thrilling If Mama Was Married, or Rose’s Turn, but Laura Benanti’s thrilling soprano made me actually listen to it. It’s slow, but rewarding (especially the last bit.)
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Music lately:


Janine and the Mixtape, Bullets. This is a new song – the debut single, I think? – from local singer Janine, whose voice is super prowess-ful and whose enviable cheekbones deserve a round of applause of their own. The video’s an equal match for the song.

The Kills’ cover of Crazy. While part of me is all “Patsy Cline forever!” It’d be remiss of me to deny how deliciously cover-able this song it and how fantastically Alison Mosshart does it.

HOLOGRAM 2PAC.
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Next time: Fejoa. Ice. Cream. 

i’ve got caviar for breakfast, champagne every night

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I was never excited by breakfast as a kid. Breakfast meant having to go to school, inevitably sitting round all day with wet shoes because there was this puddle right by the steps to my first classroom which never dried up, not even in the middle of summer (as far as my dramatic memory goes, anyway.) Later at boarding school, it meant not knowing where to sit, day after day of dry loveless cereals dampened with milk and choked down or eyeing up masses of pale, bulky margarine to be spread over pale, barely warmed toast. But: I appreciate that I’ve been lucky that whatever the financial situation was around me, not one single day has gone by that I haven’t been assured breakfast. Even when Tim and I were first living together there was always bread for toast (a diabetic needs their carbs! And hey, thank goodness Tim isn’t kept alive by like, caviar or truffle oil. Just simple, cheap carbs.)

There’s good memories of breakfast too. Dad suggesting and then making canned corn on toast on a Saturday morning. Nana guiding me from the white sugar to over to the more thrillingly caramelly brown sugar to pour over my porridge when I was staying with her. And now I love it – going out for brunch with Tim (well, we have to as cafe reviewers, so bully for us) or slouching round together in the kitchen in the early hours with a cup of tea or coffee pretending for a while we don’t actually have to leave the house and earn money. With this in mind, if you’ve got some time handy, nothing makes breakfast nicer than – of course – actually having something good to eat. Granola is an elegant solution. Robust and filling, but importantly delicious – depending on what you put in it – and the recipe’s flexible. And best of all, once you’ve made it, you’ve got breakfast in five seconds, and all you have to wash up is a bowl and a spoon. No dishes at all if you just curl up with the jar and eat it by the handful till you’re ready to carry on with your day.

I’d been meaning to make granola literally forever. Okay, just a month or two, but whatever, sometimes I find it fun to use words that make people huffy about correct usage. I don’t mean harmful words that you say while also yelling “PC gone mad! PC gone mad!” as if it’s some kind of shield that lets you be an awful person…I just mean acting the fool. Also contributing to this might be the Parks and Recreation character Chris Traegar who reminded me how satisfyingly useless the word “literally” is.

That said, this might not literally be granola. It’s more muesli with granola aspirations. But aren’t we all? Allegories aside, what I mean is: it’s a little more free-flowing and not quite as tooth-challengingly clumpy as proper granola, but on the other hand it’s nicer and cheaper than the stuff at the supermarket. If your cupboard is bare you’ll need to spend a bit of money to get the ingredients, but fortunately most of them are fairly cheap and this batch will last you for ages.

This one has a one-two punch of grated apple and apple juice to impart crisp juicy flavour, cinnamon to make you feel warm and safe inside with every mouthful, and cashew butter for a bit of much-needed lusciousness. Ugh, I know, who has cashew butter? Well, I do – a Christmas present from my brother – and I wanted to use it in something specific. If you’re given to making your own granola maybe it’s not so difficult a pantry item after all, but if you don’t have it within reach, you could use tahini of course, or even peanut butter, which will affect the flavour a little but only in a “made on a production line that also processes peanuts” kind of way, I presume. Or just leave it out!

Apple Cinnamon Granola

This makes HEAPS. Initially I just had to leave it in the roasting dish until I’d eaten some, because we didn’t have a container big enough for it. Even now, several meals down, it’s divided between two big containers.

  • 3 cups rolled oats
  • 2 cups wholegrain or “whole” oats
  • 1 cup quinoa flakes
  • 1 cup linseeds
  • 1 cup sunflower seeds
  • 1 1/2 cups dessicated coconut
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 2 large apples, grated (including skin)
  • 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon (to taste)
  • Pinch salt
  • 2 heaped tablespoons cashew butter
  • 2 heaped tablespoons golden syrup
  • 1/2 cup apple juice

Set your oven to 100 C. Line your biggest roasting dish with a big sheet of baking paper. Mix together all the ingredients from rolled oats to salt directly in the mixing bowl itself, then place in the oven, stopping to stir about every ten minutes or so, for thirty to forty minutes.

Then, just when you think you’ve got away with not having to do any dishes, mix together the cashew butter, golden syrup, and apple juice till relatively smooth, and drizzle it over the roasting dish of oats. Don’t worry about covering it all – just mix it through. This is going to create some cluster action. Return to the oven for ten minutes, then turn the oven off and leave it in there to cool. If this isn’t an option – flatmate wants to roast a chicken or something – then just carrying on baking for another ten minutes after stirring it again.

The apple flavour is surprisingly subtle after all that, but the harmonious pairing with cinnamon brings it out further than it would be on its own. This has crunch and warmth and sweetness and is generally a beautiful way to start the day. Or have it for dinner. And use what you can find – add sesame seeds or pumpkin seeds if you have them, use demerara or white sugar, leave out the quinoa and add wheatgerm, whatever. It won’t fail. It’ll give you sunshine on a cloudy day.

We had a charming weekend away in Greytown, which I won’t tell you much about since I’m going to be writing about it for the newspaper, but for now – just look at this kokako. All I knew about these glossy birds was gleaned from educational videos in school, where the main take-home message was: they are monumentally endangered. So to actually be able to see one at Pukaha Mt Bruce was pretty wonderful. We’re gazing at this rare, precious bird quietly and respectfully through the mesh fence that protected it from the outside world, taking in the moment. Then it starts flirting with Tim. Yes. Tim got openly hit on by an endangered native bird. It shadowed him as he walked the perimeter of the enclosure, continually jumping up to cling onto the mesh by Tim’s face and squawk at him plaintively. I was ignored entirely apart from this brief moment of eye contact between us in the photo above. Recognising a rival? Can’t blame the kokako, really.

Oh yeah, and if you’ve got it, enjoy the Easter break! May I non-coyly recommend these Hot Cross Buns if you’re in the market for making them this year?

Title via: Aretha Franklin’s Evil Gal Blues, a cautionary tale where she not only belts it out, but also accompanies herself on piano. Formidable.

Music lately:

Under by Watercolours. Warming and chilling at the same time. Beautiful.

Sherie Rene Scott, the Broadway star who is on my list of “people who have made me cry even though they’re only on a grainy YouTube video”. One of my favourites is of her singing I Miss The Mountains in a very early workshop of what would become the musical Next To Normal. Maybe quite specifically because of her vibrato on “mountains” at 1:54 and the way she says “meeeeeeh-iss” at 2:25.

I’ve also been listening to a TON of podcasts (yeah, those things, I know, I only just got into Google Reader this year too) lately, if anyone has any they can recommend me then please go right ahead.

Next time: I am right in the middle of making pulled pork for the first time, and if it tastes even one tenth as good as it smells, I’ll be one happy person. And therefore more likely to blog about it. 

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…

we’ll buy you the rice, if only this once, you wouldn’t think twice

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For something so simple – just rice that you biff into a pan, cover with water and ignore for a bit – pilaf goes by many names. Some call it pilaff with the sneaky double f. Some call it pilau. Still others call it ‘polo’ if you look in a cookbook old enough, or the delightful ‘plov’ if you look on Wikipedia. It’s not unlike a risotto, but while less ritzy, it’s a billion times easier, and the very thought of how easy it is can nudge me into actually cooking it for dinner rather than lying on the couch sleepily eating spoonfuls of peanut butter. Which isn’t a bad thing. What it is, is a self-fulfilling prophesy, since peanuts have some chemical in them that makes you sleepy. So like a snake eating its own tail, I shall…mix my metaphors.

Before you go wrongly thinking of me as some kind of queen of organisation, the pilaf was tucked under a packet paneer tikka masala and bought hot lemon pickle. But even on its own, it’s emphatically good stuff. Why was I even so tired that I could hardly handle harmless grains of rice? Nothing important, oh wait, WEBSTOCK. I’ve already told you all about the glumness that I get when fun times are over, but gosh was it ever hard to let go of this amazing experience. It left me unbelievably inspired, full of scribbled notes and ideas, more enamoured of my friends than ever while surprised by how many cool new people I managed to meet. And caffeinated enough to charge up a fancy-brand touchscreen tablet just by pointing at it with eyes narrowed.

Trying to describe Webstock to people who weren’t there but are a bit interested, is a bit like that scene in the Simpsons where Bart’s not allowed to go to the Itchy and Scratchy movie and Lisa comes home and says “It wasn’t that great” and Bart says “Be honest” and she says “it was the GREATEST MOVIE I’VE EVERY SEEN IN MY LIFE! And you wouldn’t believe the celebrities who did cameos: Dustin Hoffman, Michael Jackson – of course they didn’t use their real names, but you can tell it was them.”

But the organisers put on such an amazing show that comparing it to the Itchy and Scratchy Movie is the best compliment I can pay it right now. Especially because my brain was worked so hard that all I’ve got room for is the aforementioned pilaf. It’s inspired by a recipe in the beautiful Meat-free Mondays cookbook which I’ve recently acquired. Although Tim did point out that we should start a Meatful Mondays movement just for us, since we hardly ever eat meat anyway. And when I say inspired I really mean…lazily appropriated with great laziness. They used whole spices, mine were mostly ground. I threw in some bits of other vegetables I had. I didn’t wait for things to boil. You get the idea.

Easy Lazy Sunday Night Pilaf with Cinnamon, Turmeric and Vegetables

  • 1 teaspoon each cumin seeds, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, turmeric. Or really, whatever you’ve got that you feel instinctively could work (garam masala, ground coriander, etc.)
  • 1 tablespoon oil and 1 knob of butter. (In butter but not as in life, it can be as large as you please) or, leave the butter out to make this dairy-free. 
  • 1 cup basmati rice
  • 1 cup frozen peas
  • Any other bits of green vegetables, chopped up small – I used zucchini and three green beans that had sadly got left behind.

    Heat the oil and butter together in a pan and add the spices, gently stirring over a low heat. Tip in the rice granules. While they’re totally uncooked, a generous amount of time over the heat does something delicious to their flavour. Tip in 2 1/4 cups of water, which should hiss up a bit on impact with the hot pan. Bring to the boil, then cover and lower the heat. Simmer gently for about ten minutes, add the vegetables and simmer a little longer. Add salt to taste, and serve. This makes enough for two people plus leftovers for one person.
Another reason I was so tired – Tim and I and Brendan and Kim went to the Wairarapa! I’d never been to Martinborough before and as a lover of food this was apparently a bit of an oversight. The Rimutakas were delightfully foggy and eerily atmospheric, once I’d added some filters in Instagram to the photo above I snapped out of the window of the moving ute. Martinborough and Greytown were super cute, and at last count there were roughly a billion antique shops for us to carefully explore.

 

I found some serious treasures, including the amazing book above, and the beautiful plate below from Vintage Treasures NZ. Its use is gratuitous at best – like, I didn’t really need the cumin seeds on a plate while making the recipe and they were such a pain to tip cleanly back into the packet but…look how pretty the plate is!

 

Barely gratuitous at all, the more I look at it.

 

Speaking of gratuitous, the necessary diagonal teatowel. One day I’ll get the ratio of fold:fabric angle at an optimal, most-likely-to-be-shared-by-users angle! The lovely teatowel was given to me by my Mum and godmum Vivienne, by the way.

Earthy with turmeric and calming with cinnamon, this pilaf shows that the simplest foods can be among the nicest. Left to its own devices, the rice absorbs the butter and the spices and whatever flavour the vegetables have left to give up. It’s a comforting and tastes grand, and its speed, cheapness and total lack of brainpower required only serve to augment said factors. As long as you’ve got a bit of salt and some butter or oil handy, you could leave out everything else that the rice cooks in and still be guaranteed much deliciousness, no matter how sleepy you are.
Title via: The King Lear of musicals, Gypsy. The song If Momma Was Married is most exquisitely harmonizing, I think, in the hands and throats of the 2008 cast with Laura Benanti as Louise and Leigh Ann Larkin as Baby June. (If you’re committed, they start singing 3 minutes into the video.)
Music lately:
Anna Coddington, Bolt. With one thing and another and many a “d’oh!” I missed her recent show in Wellington. But I can still listen to her awesome music! Phew.
TLC, Diggin’ On You. Flawless.
Next time: That book above of American puddings is making me want to make cake and pie nonstop, plus we got many kilos of plums in Greytown while on our Wairarapa daytrip, so expect the two to intersect or appear independently. I’m thinking plum pie and plum liqueur…

“your wife is sighing, crying, and your olive tree is dying”

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As I say every year, I don’t dig Valentine’s Day (val-meh-ntines?) partly as a “whatever” to corporate pushers of expensive heteronormative cards and presents, but also as a fist bump of solidarity to the Dolly magazine reading full o’ sighs younger me. Waitangi Day is a much more important date to circle on the calendar for me.
However, should you want to impress someone in a woo-ing manner, say it with tofu! If they reply with “NONE OF THAT EXOTIC FOREIGN RABBIT FOOD MUCK FOR ME”, then they’ll be really surprised and impressed with the deliciousness of this and they’ve handily let you know how small-minded they are so you don’t have to hang out with them anymore. If they’re a nice person who’s either “I love tofu!” or “huh, tofu, haven’t tried that before but this sounds nice” then you’re good to go. A further option: I just made this for myself, and it was wonderful. Indubitably!

Would I ever shut up about the price of dairy in this country? Not till its price ceases to make me wince like lemon juice swiftly applied to a papercut. With this in mind, I recently got this strange idea – what if I could make tofu taste like haloumi? They’re the same shape, for a start. I was trying to analyze exactly what flavour haloumi is closest to, and settled upon black olives. Think about it. Oily, salty, intense…Then it turned out so delicious I decided to just call it what it is. Tofu pride!

Black Olive Marinated Fried Tofu Salad

Recipe by me.

1 block of firm tofu (250g-ish)
1/2 cup black olives, stones in
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 big cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 heaped tablespoon fine cornmeal 
1 tablespoon sherry
1 big handful green beans
1 big handful clean spinach leaves

Sometimes I suggest substitutions but please don’t undermine your own tastebuds by getting those pre-sliced olives – they’re so gross and vinegary and bland. Olives with the stones in them are a bit more work, but the oily fullness of flavour will reward you tenfold. Also, if you don’t have sherry, try sake, Marsala, or a little white wine. 

Squeeze the stones out of the olives (seriously, just squeezing them is the easiest way) and mash the olive flesh with a fork in a bowl with the oil and garlic cloves. Slice the tofu into cubes and mix with the olives – pour over a little more olive oil if it looks like it needs it. Leave it while you slice the ends off the beans and simmer them in a pan of water. Once you’ve got that sorted, add the cornmeal to the olive mixture and stir it round so every bit of tofu has some grains clinging to it.

Heat a frying pan up, and lift out all the tofu cubes (sorry, also fiddly) and drop them in it. Fry over a decent heat on all sides, till excellently crisp. Tip into a bowl. By this time the beans’ll be where you need them to be – drain and add them to the tofu. Roughly slice the spinach and add that to the bowl. Finally, heat up the frying pan again, tip in the remaining marinade, including all the squashed olives, add the sherry and fry for about ten seconds. Mix into the tofu and serve! 

It is wildly good. The olives have this soft, mellow intensity and a rich saltiness, which absorbs quickly into the tofu’s usefully porous surface. The cornmeal is subtly sweet yet unsubtly crunchy, and the flavour from the sherry hitting the hot pan is basically indescribably good, but generally adds to the whole savoury, buttery, lusciousness of it all. The juicy crunch of the beans are improved by a slick of oily marinade, and the spinach is…present. And makes the salad go further. Thanks spinach!

I am proud of my brain. It did right by me with this. And I can tell you it’s very, very good the next day too. Tofu doesn’t always last so well once it has seen the light of day, but if anything, this got even nicer. It almost tastes like cold fried chicken. Indubitably! (I like that word.)

The weekend was a full and busy one, where the hobnobbing was non-stopping. Caught up with my wise and awesome aunty who has been living in Australia for years, plus her son (my cousin) and his son (who I’m also calling my cousin…I don’t need it to be more complicated than that.) We visited our dear friend Ange at her tiny, tidy flat which is really close to ours (so we can be the Kimmie Gibbler to her Tannerino!) We also went to superlovely cafe Arthur’s with Kim and Brendan and met up with Perth-based blogger Emma of Lick My Cupcakes, whose blog I just love. She was really sweet and I love that her photos of Wellington show the city in different way how I usually see it. Finally, Tim and I reflected upon Waitangi Day, shook our heads sadly at a few people and nodded them agree-antly with other, and watched some more of Season 2 of Twin Peaks. SO CREEPY. So important. “Mares eat oats and does eat oats…”
 
Title via: All For The Best, a song from just one in a very long list of musicals with which I’m well obsessed: Godspell. I learned a tap dance to this song once, but muscle memory didn’t see fit to hold on to that one. Even if musicals aren’t your thing, a young Victor Garber was surprisingly babein‘ as Jesus. 
Music lately: 

Ten seconds in, all I could think was ‘this is a bit weak and makes no sense’ but as it goes on it becomes an intoxicatingly catchy song and I love it, indubitably. M.I.A Bad Girls.

Eclipsed only in catchy goodness by Kei Konei Ra by Ahomairangi. They’re young, they’re talented, they’ll make you want to press repeat over and over on this song.

Next time: Aforementioned aunty got me some ceramic pastry weights for baking blind. If that makes no sense at all: it has to do with making pie. PIE! So I might do that. Or it might be something slightly simpler but still cake-tatious.