Category: Dairy Free

brown sugar, how come you taste so good

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I’ve got a bit of that Sunday night ‘blah’ feeling that can happen after a really good weekend. The reason for this weekend going so well was because several family members (Mum, godmother, godmother’s sister) coming from afar to visit, acting as entourage for my godsister who was having her university house ball. Now that they’re gone and my mind has to turn to practical things, like waking up early tomorrow for work…You know how it goes. Of course there are several cures for such feelings: make sure you live in a charming flat on Cuba Street for one thing, listen to the relentlessly sunny revival cast recording of Hair, eat tofu, absorb the happiness of those around you that the Wellington Phoenix football team actually won a game, that sort of thing. I happen to be doing all those things simultaneously right now so there’s barely a moment to feel wibbly.

I spontaneously invited everyone round for dinner on Friday night. We had take-out noodles from my noodle hut of choice: Chow Mein Cube on The Terrace, plus hot chips from the excellent chippie across the road. I made a salad and they bought the wine. Pudding consisted of brown sugar meringues that I’d made that evening after work (I know, how deranged housewife am I) and two different kinds of ice cream, Kohu Road vanilla and Whittaker’s Peanut Slab. It is with some pinkness of cheek that I admit my love for the peanut slab ice cream, since I had so emphatically stated that Kohu Road is the only kind of non-homemade ice cream I’d ever consider buying. Well, now I can add Whittaker’s to the list. It’s flipping lovely stuff.

These meringues have the edge on their paler sisters – I normally find meringues to be a bit too blatantly, in-yer-face sweet, whereas here the brown sugar gives complexity of flavour and a pleasing dark caramel taste. You could of course use something like muscovado sugar for an even more intense experience. I found this recipe in Italian Comfort Food by the Scotto family, a cookbook that persists in changing my previously held perception that all American cookbooks are unusable and ask for incomprehensible ingredients like Bisquick and half-and-half.

Brown Sugar Meringues

Adapted from Italian Comfort Food by the Scotto Family.

4 egg whites
1 cup brown sugar

Preheat oven to 140 C/300 F and line a tray with baking paper. You may need two trays but I managed to squish everything onto one. This recipe is so simple you could fit it into a Twitter update. Whisk egg whites till frothy. Carry on whisking, slowly adding brown sugar till a stiff meringue forms. Drop spoonfuls onto tray, bake for an hour. You should get 16-18 out of this. And I made it with an actual whisk so don’t feel like you can’t either. No need for heavy machinery here.

What’s really, really fun is then to take spoonfuls of ice cream and sandwich it between two meringue halves. This becomes almost impossibly sublime after a day or two when the meringues have softened slightly. It’s so good you practically need to slap yourself back into reality afterwards. The contrast between cold, creamy ice cream and resolutely dry room temperature meringue is surprisingly seductive while the strong caramel of the slowly cooked brown sugar counteracts any excessive sweetness. They’re aesthetically pleasing too, calling to mind those fancy macarons that you see all over the place but in a much simpler, ramshackle fashion.

It’s a little difficult to really paint a picture in words how delicious this is, especially when it seems so simple. I might have to eat another so that I’m inspired into further colourful description.

If your life is like the Tom Wolfe novel Bonfire of the Vanities you might consider making your own ice cream to go with the meringues. It will drive home to your dinner guests that you are an aggressively accomplished cook. Their self esteem will wither and the only way they will be able to jump over this raised bar is by baking individual souffles at their next dinner party. Even if your life is not like a Tom Wolfe novel and does not involve making individual desserts while wearing pearls, and even though we’re all well aware by now that there is perfectly sufficient stuff available on the market, making your own ice cream is not difficult. To paraphrase an argument that I often employ (if the Dire Straits were that good, surely I’d like them?) if ice cream was really that difficult then surely I wouldn’t be able to achieve it.

A while ago I got it in my head that palm sugar might be a delicious ice cream flavouring. It is highly likely that I should have been focussing on spreadsheets at the time which is why the idea was not immediately acted upon. However this time of idea-incubation allowed me to also consider adding kaffir lime leaves to this icecream-in-my-mind.

Last weekend I had a crack at it, making a custard boldly infused with kaffir lime leaves and a syrup of palm sugar. The two were mixed together and frozen and I’ll be honest, it actually worked. The flavours were subtle but intriguing. Not overtly limey and not wildly sugary, but both elements definitely present, cutting through the frozen custard with their unfamiliarity.

I’ll give you the recipe I used – which I made up – but I’m not quite sure it’s the exact final prototype yet. There was something about the texture that I wasn’t entirely sure about. However Tim, with his simple rustic wisdom, said I was overthinking and he couldn’t see anything wrong with it. So feel free to give it a go yourself.

Palm Sugar and Kaffir Lime Leaf Ice Cream

4 egg yolks
3 tablespoons brown sugar
600 mls cream
5 dried kaffir lime leaves
4 lumps of palm sugar (does this make sense? Palm sugar generally comes in rounded lumps. There might be a better way of describing it)

Heat half the cream (300mls) with the kaffir lime leaves in a pan till it’s pretty hot but not boiling, just slightly wobbly. Remove from heat and let it sit for a while to allow the lime leaves to infuse. Whisk the egg yolks and brown sugar together gently, then pour the heated cream into it, still whisking. Rinse and dry the cream pan and then transfer the egg-sugar-cream mix back into the pan and heat it gently, stirring all the while, till it thickens into custard. This isn’t hard at all but it can be good to have a sink full of ice cold water ready to plunge the pan into to stop it cooking. You can choose to remove the lime leaves at any stage here, but I left them in as long as possible.

Put the custard aside to cool while you put the palm sugar into a pan, and add 1/2 cup water. Heat very gently till a syrup forms. Depending on the palm sugar it may take a while to break down. The aim of this excercise is more to melt the sugar into a usable liquid rather than cook it into a caramel, if that makes sense. Once it has dissolved into liquid put it aside to cool for a little bit before whisking it into the custard (with lime leaves removed) and finally, stir in the final 300 mls cream. Sorry if this all sounds a bit complicated.

Pour into a container and freeze, stirring occasionally. It makes around 900mls which is a good, non-threatening quantity for an experimental batch like this.

Anyway it must have been pretty good because Tim and I managed to get through it in less than a week. Largely aided by the fact that it tasted so mind-blowingly smashing sandwiched between meringues. Be not afraid to try it. The instructions may not fit on a Twitter update but they’re pretty straightforward.

Last night the lot of us – Tim, myself, visiting family members went to La Kasbah, a Morrocan restaurant down the Left Bank arcade of Cuba Street. It’s an adorable place with a short but solid menu, gorgeously painted walls and friendly wait staff. We were all very much taken with our meals and in particular I loved the tumeric-yellow bread that came with the breads and dips. Well, I hope it was tumeric that gave it that radioactive tint. I’d love to know their recipe because it’s gorgeously moreish stuff. It was a seriously lovely night and I definitely recommend it if you’re looking for another BYO to add to your inventory.

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The title of this blog is bought to you by: The Rolling Stones
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On Shuffle whilst I type:

Where Do I Go? sung by Gavin Creel and the Tribe from the 2009 revival cast recording of Hair. It’s more thematic than plot-heavy, which makes sense for a show that follows its own rules, but I have the feeling that this is currently among the best ways to spend a few hours on Broadway right now. The current Broadway cast is so full of energy and joy that even a million miles and continents away it is impossible not to love them.

Meadowlark by Patti LuPone from Patti LuPone at Les Mouches. Recorded in 1980 this is an utterly gorgeous and occasionally hilarious album.

You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket (live) by the White Stripes from the Blue Orchid single. Thought this song is most excellent on the album, live it just…soars.
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Next time: Nigella Lawson has this chocolate Coca Cola cake in How To Be A Domestic Goddess, and I thought it might be fun to switch the cola for ginger beer. It was flipping lovely, let me assure you, and you’ll be finding out all about it in good time…

soy division

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I remember reading the Sunday Star Times at a cafe earlier this year, turning to the Escape section first, and saying to Tim that my blog would be ideal for it. You know, I could be that person they ask to write down what they eat over the course of the day (do people really tell the truth in those things?) or feature as an example of the general excellence available on the web these days. The thought left my mind when I flicked over the the column where Annabelle White compares various brands of organic muesli. That sort of fortunate occurrence only happens to established, famous-enough-to-appear-in-a-local-reality-show kind of people. It was Cafe Cubita on Courtney Place and I had an extremely pleasant lamb salad.

Turns out that, with a frequency just high enough to keep you trusting in mystical forces, if you put it out there, the universe can provide. It worked when I said I wanted Tourettes to come do a gig in Wellington – and lo, it was so. While I always feared it would be unlikely that Idina Menzel would come to New Zealand, the utter randomness of Patti LuPone making a tour stop here reaffirmed my faith in the world.

Oh my gosh, anyway, enough of my chatter: the point is, this blog, this very blog, was mentioned by the editor of the Escape section of the Sunday Star Times, a national newspaper. Favourably. And not just in my head – it really happened! I feel like Mark Cohen in RENT, when his footage of the riot after Maureen’s performance gets on Buzzline. I feel like Elphaba in Wicked when she finds out she’s going to see the Wizard – “he asked for me? Personally?” I feel like Jeff, Hunter, Susan and Heidi in [title of show] when they get a good review in the New York Times. I feel like…I’m so excited and self-pinching right now that all I can do is project my feelings onto pre-existing characters. If there are any new readers who have solely appeared here because they looked me up after reading the lovely things Angela Walker wrote about this place in the Sunday Star Times; Kia ora! Welcome! Kindly stick around.

Just when you thought I couldn’t bring any more excitement, I’d like to announce that I am on a massive soy kick right now. If you’ve been keeping an eye on my twitter (@HungryandFrozen) then this will be no secret, for some reason expressing my love for soy in 140 character bursts is my idea of a good time these days.

I realise tofu is as maligned and practically as unsexy as lentils. Just because it has a bad rep doesn’t make it intrinsically bad though. Like Michael Jackson jokes, I feel that wrinkling one’s nose at tofu is not only easy, it’s lazy. Anyone can do it. Takes temerity of spirit to actually try this surprisingly delicious stuff. (And no, I don’t get a kick out of Michael Jackson jokes. Ooh, make fun of a brilliant but deeply troubled dead man. Aren’t you quite the sparkling wit.)

Tonight I stir-fried a few cloves of chopped garlic in a non-stick pan, sprinkled over fish sauce and mirin, and added a block of firm tofu, which almost braised in the bubbling liquid, slowly taking on colour and absorbing the flavours of the sauce. While dealing with the edamame though, the liquid quickly reduced and the considerable sugars in the mirin caramelised on the spot, creating a thick, dark sauce. In places it actually had reduced down into a kind of brittle or toffee, disturbingly good with its salty, sweet, garlicky crunch. This is what happens when I turn my back – it gets all Heston Blumenthal up in here. I believe this is what the cool kids describe as umami – a deep-toned savoury flavour. The deliciously sauced tofu teamed with the mellow, impossibly buttery edamame made a wholly satisfying dinner, so good that I quickly snapped it and wedged it spontaneously into this blog when I was really going to write about something else altogether.
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Currently on Shuffle whilst I type double time thanks to the power of soy:

Calling All Angels, by Alice Ripley at the Kennedy Centre, 2003. Say what you want about her – I personally adored her speech for winning the Tony – but I think she’s utterly brilliant. And, and, she writes the kind of songs I would want to write if I was a singer-songwriter. This is one such example.

I’m Going Home by the Sacred Harp Singers from the Cold Mountain soundtrack. The only reason we even watched the movie is because Jack White was in it, I don’t recommend it – it’s relentlessly brutal and violent although the joy of Jack White provides some respite. But the soundtrack is pretty wonderful and this particular song is astoundingly beautiful and like no other sound I’ve ever heard before. And you know, this is 2009. We have mash-ups and stuff.

All I Really Want by Alanis Morisette from Jagged Little Pill. Delightfully mid-nineties and talky as heck but still brilliant stuff to throw yourself around the room and sing along to. I actually saw her live at the Supertop in 1996, was possibly the only 10 year old in the audience. She’s always cool to me. If you like this album, it’s not too much of a stretch to hope that you’d like Minuet by Idina Menzel from Still I Can’t Be Still…
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This blog title is bought to you by: Joy Division. And so obviously, this song.
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Next time: I was going to write about ice cream in this one but frankly soy was more exciting right now, not to mention a large chunk of space was occupied by my bragging. As Rufus Wainwright sang in his tribute concert to Judy Garland, “you go to my head”. This week Sunday Star Times, next – who knows. Possibly the same level of mild obscurity. Various whanau members are coming down to Wellington this weekend so I am currently browsing Menumania to narrow down some cool places to take them for lunch and dinner. And definitely going to talk ice cream next time.

bake this longing

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Enamoured with the kitchen in my new house, I have been making all these really interesting, healthy, beautiful dinners lately. Dishes with slow-revealing, layered flavours and more often than not featuring something really quite beautiful, like a whole cinnamon stick or a poached egg draped lovingly across the top, or couscous… But despite all this, I’ve decided to showcase a bit of baking today. It has been too, too long since I’ve baked. (At least ten days.) We’ve finally unpacked all our boxes and the bookshelf is upright and laden with goods and so help me I actually found myself looking almost flirtatiously at all my cookbooks leaning across the shelves. Clearly a sign that (a) the ‘going mad’ process has stepped up a notch, and (b) it was time to connect with some butter.
I bring you two fairly disparite recipes: one for very sober, bran-dense biscuits and the other for flamboyant Italian chocolate puffy meringue things. They both stand together under the broad umbrella of “cookie” and while equally delicious, couldn’t be more different in appearance or method.
Health Biscuits
This recipe is from the wildly successful, and justifiably so, New Zealand cookbook Ladies, A Plate by Alexa Johnston, although my recipe came via the September 2008 issue of Cuisine. Not what they were talking about in the film The September Issue, but beautiful and exciting nonetheless (to me at least.)
These biscuits are calm and unfancy but not in any way boring – they have a gorgeous crisp, snappish texture and are the ideal partner to a cup of tea. They keep well and the syrup used makes them seemingly taste better and better with age. And any recipe that uses this much butter while calling itself “Health biscuits” gets many a bonus point from me.
225g soft butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 tablespoons malt or golden syrup (I used maple)

1 cup bran

1 cup wholemeal flour (I used plain)

1 cup coconut

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup sultanas (I used currants)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 small teaspoon baking powder

extra white flour

Set oven to 180 C/350 F, line two trays with baking paper.

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add the egg and the syrup. Add all the rest of the ingredients and knead together adding extra white flour till a good stiff-soft biscuity dough is achieved.

Roll out sections of the dough pretty thin and slice into squares or rectangles, transferring to the baking trays with a spatula. They don’t spread much so put them close together. The recipe says to prick them with a fork; I totally forgot but I’m sure it helps. Bake for about 20 minutes, no longer, and they should be a lovely deep golden brown and smell heavenly. Cool on a rack and then store in a tin.

The original writer of the recipe suggests that these biscuits be served buttered; I suggest she is a genius.
The next baking adventure was one of a different nature, involving copious amounts of egg whites. And you know, egg whites are so the diva of the cooking world. The Barbra Streisand, the Mariah Carey, the Elizabeth Taylor. Egg whites are difficult to get hold of, and once you’ve managed to get some face time with them there’s still massive room for error. They’re all, “I only respond to a copper bowl. If there is any yolk present I’ll just refuse to work. Where is my assistant! Also, I want the kitchen repainted to match my eyes, and I will only work by candlelight. By that I mean candles imported from Belgium at great cost to you.” And it goes on.
That said, you can get some pretty exciting results from egg whites, once you’ve coaxed them out of their shell without disturbing the yolk, got them in the correct bowl, used the right utensil, and worked quickly so they don’t get huffy and deflate or separate. The following recipe is one such example. I saw it in my gorgeous Scotto family cookbook and was intrigued, and the time seemed right, as after making vanilla ice cream I had egg whites sitting in the fridge waiting to be used.
I kid you not, the quantities I specify below are half what the original recipe asked for.
Brutti Ma Buoni
This is Italian for “ugly but good.” I can think of many things that are ugly but good, but these meringue-like, matte-brown, light-as-air puffs are quite lovely in my eyes. So with these standards in mind I’d rather not be coolly appraised by an Italian any time soon. I wonder what their word is for “neither beautiful nor practical?” Or, “could stand to wash the cake batter out of her hair?”

 5 egg whites

400g icing sugar (or 1/2 pound powdered sugar – this is an American book after all)

1/2 cup good cocoa

1/2 cup walnuts or almonds, roughly chopped

Set the oven to 150 C/300 F. Measure out your cocoa and icing sugar. Place the egg whites in a large metal bowl and whisk continuously till foamy. Gradually, slowly, add the icing sugar, whisking till a stiff meringue is formed. I should warn you that my meringue was very thick and shiny by the end but not so stiff that it would stay still; it continued to form ribbons no matter how vigorously I whisked. To elaborate further, it takes quite a bit of shampoo to get meringue out of one’s hairline. Fold in the cocoa and nuts, and I added a bit of finely chopped good quality chocolate for good measure.
Line a tray with baking paper and measure out medium sized spoonfuls. Bake for 35 minutes. As I said I wasn’t sure if my mix was a total disaster but it worked beautifully so fear not. You can even make it in batches – the mixture that waited round for 35 minutes was in no way inferior. Carefully peel the cooked Brutti ma Buoni off the baking tray and leave to cool before eating.
These are wonderful, definitely worth the jumping through hoops that egg whites make you perform. Light but dense at the same time, crisp on the outside and melting on the inside, and, despite a wince-inducing amount of icing sugar, they’re not painfully sweet. Give them a go if you end up with some egg whites – they’re a step up on meringues and go well with a dark coffee at the end of the night.
On Saturday night Tim and I went to see Dimmer at bar Bodega. They were beautiful. Even though they started at 11:50pm. At night. According to Wikipedia the erstwhile Straitjacket Fits frontman Shayne Carter is pushing 45, (and looking fabulous still) so there you go. I’m clearly not very rock’n’roll. As I said though it was a wonderful, wonderful gig. Find their albums. But then I look on fishpond.co.nz and all their albums are currently unavailable or discontinued. Good one, fishpond.
Speaking of music, if you suspect that the words “Jack/Meg White have my babies” apply to you, then you may want to check out this preposterously interesting blog, Every Jack White Song. I’m notorious for being late to jump on a bandwagon so I hope, not just for the author’s sake but for my own smug-ity, that this becomes huge. It certainly deserves to, anyone who devotes so much time critically analysing Jack White songs should go far, no argument.
Still speaking of music, on Shuffle whilst I type:
You Are Not Real from the original cast recording of The Apple Tree. This song has a ridiculously moreish waltzing melody and a delightful, singalong chorus. Did you know that MASH‘s Alan Alda was in the original cast? However I find the eye-popping revival cast, namely the magnificently eyebrowed Brian D’arcy James, the magnificently moustachioed Marc Kudisch, and the generally magnificent Kristin Chenoweth even more exciting…
Idioteque from Kid A by Radiohead. I like this album better than OK Computer. There. I said it.
Next time: I totally go on business this week, but will endeavour gallantly to get in another blog post before I leave. Because I really have been making some nice, blog-worthy dinners lately…Among other things, I’ve made lentil salad with poached egg and feta, beetroot risotto with rice and barley, and roasted vegetables with Israeli couscous. That kind of thing.

strange but not a stranger

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As Liz Lemon, a character from 30 Rock and my kindred spirit would say: “aw, blerg”. It’s a third of the way through July already and I have only just now managed to put pixel to webpage. This is partly because Tim and I have been quietly absorbed with Dexter (brutal but good!) and with rewatching season 2 of 30 Rock (brutal but good!) and, of course, packing all our earthly belongings into boxes and suitcases (merely brutal!) in anticipation of the big move this Friday. Or, as they might say in a Baby Sitters Club book, The Big Move. Unlike bicoastal Dawn or choice-burdened Stacey it’s not really a difficult wrenching decish for us. We’re excited about moving.

I haven’t really been doing a lot of cooking lately, because we are trying to use up what’s in the cupboard and fridge. And not make anything huge that needs to be frozen or eaten over several days. Or use too many pieces of cookware. Which restricts us a schmeer. Last night Tim had spaghetti on toast before choir and I had a pub quiz after work. Monday night we went to Red Tomatoes Pizzeria and Cafe. On Sunday we cooked up 12 sausages at lunchtime that we’d defrosted from the freezer “for space-saving purposes” and…honestly…by nightfall the two of us had eaten them all. Not kidding. 12 sausages, two people, 6 hours. Saturday night was Burger Fuel because we had to be at the Film Archive by 7pm for the showing of my beloved Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps. Friday night was take-out satay noodles from Chow Mein Cube on the Terrace. Tomorrow night we’ll be getting takeaways because everything will be packed away and on Friday we’ll get takeaways because we’ve been moving all day. You get the idea. I’m really not cooking. And I can feel myself occupying more space than I normally do. Which is why next week I’m promising myself to embrace vegetables and shun sugars. But for now, it works. It’s simpler this way.

It doesn’t completely resemble the innermost circles of Hades here though. There has been some cooking – prior to all the non-cooking – occurring mostly because of the divine inspiration I garnered from the latest Cuisine magazine. Despite having a fridge rapidly emptying and a cupboard filled with increasingly disparite spices and condiments, I found myself turning pages of my Cuisine magazine and saying to myself rapturously (and loudly) “I can make this! And I have the ingredients for this! And also this! And still further recipes!”

So I did.

One rather genius dish that I tried was a Fiona Smith recipe of diced vegetables, basted in a salty dressing of miso, mirin, sugar and oil, roasted and mixed gently through sushi rice. Engaging stuff, yes?

Miso Roast Sushi Salad

The vegetables need to be cut into small, equal pieces so that they roast quickly and evenly without scorching the sauce. I found the amount of vegetables, once chopped, to be enormous, so ended up more than halving the amount. I suspect this is a very forgiving, adaptable recipe and can be changed up depending on what you have, more or less. I used a mixture of kumara, carrot, and parsnip. I left out the mushrooms because Tim doesn’t like them and the tofu because we just didn’t have any and it was still, despite this, just right for two people.

2 tablespoons rice vinegar
3 teaspoons caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sushi rice
1 1/4 cups water
4 cm strip kombu (optional)

4 tablespoons miso paste (you could happily sub this for black bean sauce)
2 tablespoons mirin
1 tablespoon peanut oil
2 tablespoons sugar

200g firm tofu, cut into 2cm chunks
4 cups chopped winter vegetables (pumpkin, carrot, kumara, parsnip)
2 cups mushrooms, quartered

Preheat oven to 200 C.

In a small bowl, stir together the first measure of sugar with the vinegar and salt and set aside. Place the rice in a colander, run under cold water then sit to drain while you prepare the vegetables. The draining step is apparently quite important so make sure this is the first thing you do.

Whisk together the miso, mirin, peanut oil and second measure of sugar. Chop all the vegetables into small cubes and mix in with the mushrooms and tofu in a large bowl, adding the sauce and coating thoroughly. Spread onto a paper-lined baking tray and roast for 20-25 minutes till the root vegetables are tender.

While the veges cook, place the rice in a medium saucepan with the seaweed if using, and cover with the 1 1/4 cups water. Bring to the boil, stirring, then clamp a lid on and cook at the lowest heat possible undisturbed for ten minutes. Take off the heat and leave undisturbed for ten minutes. Tip the rice into a large bowl and remove the kombu if used. Pour the vinegar mix over and stir gently, then add the roasted veges and tofu and carefully combine the lot together. Serve in bowls with sesame seeds and coriander with soy sauce and wasabi to serve if desired.

Serves 4.

This is very, very cheap and utterly delicious, the sort of thing you can happily eat by the heaped forkful while sitting cross-legged in front of the heater watching a DVD. It will, without a doubt, become a regular dinner this winter chez nous.

As I mentioned, last Saturday we went to see Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps at the Film Archive, and a very satisfying night it was too. We were part of a bare handful of under-forties whippersnappers present in the audience. It was a wonderful experience – big, beautiful sound, comfy seats, Neil in all his sneery glory on the big screen and of course his songs. Ohhhh the songs. I was tempted, in order to assert my right as a whippersnapper to be there, to state loudly, “I know! I’ve seen him live! It was a moment of spiritual clarity!” Speaking of films, I really, really can’t wait for Away We Go to open here in NZ (about 12 months after it opens in the USA, naturally). It has the most incredible cast and I’m not kidding, the trailer nearly made me tear up. And it has cameos from Catherine O’Hara, who I have a mad crush on (Catherine, call me!) and Broadway’s Allison Janney! Still speaking of films, we have been perusing the NZ Film Festival guide and circling various films we want to see, but mostly trying to find the most delightful foreign name for someone listed as working on one of the films. So far our hard-to-trump favourite is an actor called Knut Berger. Together, we salute you.

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On Shuffle whilst I type feverishly:

Carry That Weight from Abbey Road by The Beatles (I love this song. It’s like launching into the built-up end of an epic, Hey Jude-like song without having to wait for the build-up. It’s like fast-forwarding to the “it’s meeeee!” part of Defying Gravity. It’s instant gratification.)
Welfare Mothers from Rust Never Sleeps by the divine Neil Young (was there e’er a cooler opening line than “people pick up on what I’m putting down”?)
Planet Z from Still I Can’t Be Still by the divine Idina Menzel (Tim actually admits to liking this song. Heavy. Very heavy. Also: buy this album. It’s ridiculous.)
Roadrunner by Modern Lovers from their eponymous album. I think I could listen to this song a squillion times and never tire of it. And I have a mad crush on the ageless Jonathan Richman. Call me, Jonathan!

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In other significant happenings, Tim garnered an A and a B for two respective honours papers at uni which is just backflip-inducingly awesome. This is most likely the last blog entry I’ll post from this flat. Considering this very flat is where I began this blog as a mere blog-ling in the October of 2007, that’s…something. Right? We’d be much obliged if you could think happy, good-weather, box-lifting thoughts for us come Friday. Who was the patron saint of severely pulled muscles due to lifting from the back instead of the legs? We should probably be lighting a big old candle to him or her right now. (Not just being PC here, I wikipedia-d it and there really are a lot of lady saints.)

tortilla queen (guaranteed to blow your mind)

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The month of June is a fast dame. August is lapping at my heels like a rising tide. July is more packed with commitments than a half-cup of brown sugar. Kindly excuse my ramblings, I found a nice notebook to write my thoughts in and am suddenly convinced I am an artiste, like almost all those people who carry notebooks to write thoughts in. I’ve been traipsing hither and yon across the country (well, I went to Dunedin for two days and a pub quiz last night) and haven’t really had any meaningful eye-contact with the blog lately, but the month of June isn’t really helping matters by going so darn swiftly.

I usually save my food-blog browsing for after I’ve finished a blog post of my own, because I’m in the right frame of mind and have the time to do it. I’ve occasionally wondered if it comes across as a little self-interested (oh hi, that looks delish, I haven’t been here since the last time I updated my blog and wanted comments ohwhatacoincidence) but that’s just how I roll. I roll without agenda or ulterior motive. Anyway while on such a blog-perusing journey after finishing my last post, I found on Thursday Night Smackdown a most enticing missive dedicated to chilaquiles. Mexican food here in New Zealand for the most part runs to bland, pre-packaged DIY enchilada kits, with dry, curling flatbreads and pre-spiced cans of watery beans. Not so bad, just I feel it’s not a cuisine that has been thoroughly probed here. Which could be why I’ve never heard of chilaquiles before. They’re sort of like huevos rancheros, only a bit more deconstructed and a lot less healthy.

I gotta say, there was something about Michelle’s post on Thursday Night Smackdown that really sold this idea to me. I was genuinely excited about making this recipe, which more or less comprises a spicy tomato sauce, tortilla chips, and a fried egg. By the time I got halfway through it making it all though I was starting to have my doubts. Why would anyone want to soak tortilla chips in tomato sauce? Would a fried egg on top of tortilla chips taste freaky at best? Why have I never realised how much fat is embedded into tortilla chips?

Despite the fact that my version was hugely low-rent – and despite the fact that my tastebuds were shuffling their feet dubiously – this is beautiful. Incredible stuff. There’s something about the spicy sauce and the way it softens some of the crunch of the chips, and then the savoury fried taste of the egg kind of drips all over everything. Again, I hasten to add the disclaimer that my chilaquiles were seriously inauthentic, but they were fast and also used what I had in the cupboard. For those of you playing at home, I sauteed a finely chopped onion, several cloves of chopped garlic, a chopped capsicum and a diced carrot in a large pan. Once all that was soft, I poured over half a jar of spaghetti sauce and added a little minced chilli from a jar. After allowing that to bubble and thicken, I poured it over two substantial bowls of tortilla chips (chilli lime flavour, now with extra trans-fats!) and quickly fried two eggs in the pan, not really bothering to wipe it clean or anything. Once done to done-ness, the bowls had an egg each draped overtop and a generous bump’n’grind of salt and pepper. Obviously coriander would be ideal, but I just didn’t have any and remain fairly unscarred by this omission.

The eggs really make it though. You have to buy good eggs. On a whim I purchased some GlenPark Woodland Free Range Eggs, thinking they were quite the bargain. Turns out my mathmatical prowess is exponentially deteriorating with each year because according to Tim I am wrong and they’re actually bordering on heinously expensive. That said, they are, and I do not say this lightly, the single most delicious eggs I have ever eaten. I know, I know, I wax enthusiastic about everything but these eggs truly are exquisite. It’s like the moment you first smell vanilla beans after a lifetime of using synthetic vanilla essence. It’s heady stuff. Find them. Buy them. Eat. I will definitely be buying these again.

The flat we’re living in is blooming ancient, and, as I’ve often whined, freezing cold. One of its particular idiosyncracies is having, at best, one powerpoint per room. This is 2009. We plug in a lot of stuff. Including a heater, without which one might as well go recline under a tree in the rain and read a book of an evening because inside really isn’t much balmier than outside. What all this exposition is leading up to is that the other night – an hour shy of the premier of Outrageous Fortune – we blew a fuse. All four bedrooms and the lounge were unusable. And freezing. In a mad, generation-Y frenzy fuelled by lack of technology I dovetailed my two main interests at that point – staying warm/alive and blogging – by utilising the one room that still had power – the kitchen. I made banana muffins. And then got all up in the oven’s personal space to try and defrost. If I could have, I would have curled up in the warming drawer.

I’ve made these muffins before (recipe here and, after re-reading my old post I’m not sure if I could improve upon the description of them) and they’re fantastic for when you feel as though there’s nothing in the cupboard, because the batter is essentially tiny. Don’t go eating any (I don’t know if this is a warning necessary for sane people, but as you know I tend to eat a lot of mixture) because there’s not a lot there. What is there though makes beautifully tender, cinnamon-warm muffins, the sort you’d never see in a cafe because those bulbous, dry, sandy $3.90 cakes (the sort that especially frequent airports and chain coffee shops) are de rigeur instead.

Tim got home at this point and with a mere manly flick of a switch on the powerboard restored the soothing hum of electricity to our flat. Just in time for Outrageous Fortune. Phew. Last night Scotty graced us with his presence to watch the second episode, and I didn’t know which was more mesmerising – Kasey’s magnificent bosom or the welcome presence of some character development in Judd. Scott and I also both agreed that an episode should be devoted to little more than the character of Van holding baby Jane. Clearly, Season 5 is going to be good.

Finally: The Tonys happened. Not here in New Zealand on TV of course, because basically no-one knows about them over here (that said, we have some bizarre programme placement choices made here, and why?) but importantly: Alice Ripley won best actress in a musical. Some say her speech is weird, some are getting strangely angry over it, I think she was truly magnificent. I wish I could speak in public like that. For what it’s worth though, Brett from Poison’s untimely collision with a piece of scenery could have been the best thing to happen to the already awesome show Rock of Ages – the clip of him getting smacked upside the head by a giant sign has been zooming round youtube and was actually on the news here. I admit to being wildly excited that the word “Tony’s” was used on mainstream TV news.

On Shuffle whilst I type:
Black Tambourine, Beck, from the album Guero (because Tim’s currently obsessed with him)
Flume, Bon Iver, from For Emma, Forever Ago
Birdhouse In Your Soul, Kristin Chenoweth and Ellen Greene, from the Pushing Daisies soundtrack (it uses the word “filibuster!”)

Next time: I realise the photography has been a bit up and down lately, that’s because if I photograph stuff at night it looks awful, during the day, not so much. I’m not sure what I’ve got on the upcoming food agenda but I’m hoping for something a little more friendly on the eye.

smoke on the water(melon)

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For all that I adore summer, and the lighter, crisper, juicier sort of cooking that comes with it, the whole thing can quickly become a little fraught. I mean, there’s the overbearing heat, which can swiftly turn me from sassy cookstress into wilted puddle, unable to eat anything other than frozen peas. Also, and I guess this is because I am an overthinker, I get really dithery – do I go rice-papery and Japanese or mezze-bowley Greek salad-y or maybe some kind of Moroccan influenced flatbread wrap thing and I can’t choose so would it be weird to go Italo-Thai? There’s nothing like indecision to make you sweaty. Finally, I sometimes find myself unable to focus on anything approaching practicality, and instead become obsessed with making something sweet….

This was one of those times.

It was, I believe, back in October when I first felt the stirring desire to make watermelon sorbet. Unfortunately watermelons just weren’t around. Luckily I am emotionally study enough to wait patiently. They have finally become cheap at the markets and my wish is not only attainable, it’s much more seasonally appropriate.

I didn’t have a recipe to follow so I scoured the internet, and finally ended up with the following, a pastiche inspired by several sources.

Watermelon Sorbet

1 large watermelon
1 cup sugar
500mls water
1 egg white

Scoop out all the flesh from inside the watermelon and puree it in a food processor (I had to do it in batches since my watermelon was so huge). A lot of recipes said to strain the juice and discard the flesh but I thought that was kind of a waste of flavour and texture. Unfortunately that meant I had the relatively nightmarish task of picking out the black seeds. You choose what you’re up for. Meanwhile, bring the sugar and water to the boil in a pan on the stove, without stirring, and let it bubble away till reduced by half (but not burnt). Once this is cooled, pour it into the watermelon puree, stir, and then tip the lot into an appropriate container and freeze till solid. What you want to do now – and again, not the simplest of tasks – is puree the now-frozen watermelon and syrup in the food processor, which breaks down any inevitable ice crystals. Finally, whisk the egg white till stiff and carefully fold it through the pureed sorbet, then pop it back in the freezer. Don’t be put off by the egg white step, you can’t taste it at all and it gives the sorbet a great texture. Plus you won’t need an ice-pick to scrape out a bowl of sorbet.

Et voila. Sunset-coloured summery goodness in a bowl is only 24 hours, six bowls, and a sticky food processor away. Don’t let that put you off though. Not only is this delicious, it’s also very pretty, and not entirely unhealthy. I imagine it would be fairly awesome if you blended it with vodka and quaffed it from margarita glasses. For those of you paddling through winter on the other side of the hemisphere, it is worth waiting for, although this stuff is so good that you might as well pay $16 for a watermelon flown in from Madagascar to make it. Indeed, you might think watermelon in its unadulterated state is quite refreshing enough, thank you, and to a certain -extent it is – the stuff is like solidified vitamin water. But for those times when you just can’t leave well alone…

I actually bought two watermelons from the market. Well, I bought them, Tim brought them home…a fair transaction, I feel. For my next trick, I used a sizeable portion of the second one to make this incredible salad from Forever Summer by my (unwitting) muse Nigella Lawson. The combination may sound a little unusual but it works. As if I was going to question Nigella.

Watermelon, Feta, and Black Olive Salad (serves 8)

1 small red onion (which I left out because I didn’t have one)
2-4 limes depending on juiciness
1.5 kilos ripe watermelon
250g feta cheese
a bunch each of fresh flat-leaf parsely and mint
3-4 T extra virgin olive oil
100g pitted black olives

Peel and halve the red onion and slice finely. Put the slices in a small bowl with the lime juice. Meanwhile, remove the rind from the watermelon and cut into smallish triangular chunks. Either slice or crumble the feta and put them both into a wide shallow serving bowl. Tear up the parsely and chop the mint and sprinkle both over, followed by the onions and their juice, the oil, and the olives. Mix it gently and season with black pepper if desired.

I can’t remember what I served this with, but it really was lovely – cold, crisp watermelon against soft, salty cheese and tangy olives.

So, if cultural experience was a cup of soymilk, mine would be running over right now. Firstly, I am so excited because the Wellington Fringe Festival has started and would you believe it – someone is putting on a production of Jonathan Larson’s (ie, he who penned RENT) incredible musical Tick…tick…BOOM! This is pretty big stuff for me. Remember, I’m the one who travelled at (surprisingly) great expense to both Levin and Palmerston North to see their local theatre groups’ respective productions of RENT. As well as that, I’m seeing the band ‘of Montreal’ later this month, then in March Tim and I are going to see painfully hip band The Kills (one of them is dating Kate Moss…yes, they’re that hip), and as previously mentioned last time, The Kings of Leon and The Who.
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Finally, and this is where it gets really silly, we are going to see Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin in their showcase for the Auckland International Arts Season in July. I mean, this is huge. LuPone is so legendary on Broadway that it hurts. Just Wikipedia her. She originated the role of Eva Peron in Evita and Fantine in Les Miserables, and was most recently making people weep with joy as Rose in the Gypsy revival. She has Tony awards coming out the wahzoo. She’s a diva of the first water. I really have no idea what she is doing coming to New Zealand to be honest, but what an opportunity. I’m so all a-flutter it’s no wonder I can barely decide what to make for dinner. Oh yeah, and Mandy Patinkin is pretty awesome too. He has been all over Broadway – including starring with Toni Collette and the late Eartha Kitt in Michael John LaChiusa’s short-lived but intense The Wild Party – but y’all will probably mostly know him for his role as Inigo “you killed my father, prepare to die” Montoya in The Princess Bride.

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It is pretty busy in Wellington this weekend. It was Waitangi Day on Friday, and because it was a public holiday Tim was working at Starbucks. Because it is a weekend Tim was also working yesterday and today. Not to make your frappuccino tangy with the taste of guilt or anything, work is good in these uncertain times and I’m happy with my own company…every weekend… Further to this there was the Rugby 7s, an international rugby thing (seriously, that’s about as specific as I can make it) which is, I understand, 3% about rugby and 97% an excuse for drunken men to dress up as Borat and beer wenches and invade town at great speed.
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Next time: will probably be something involving my new favourite toy – a small container of proper sweet smoked paprika. I’ve been meaning to buy it for ages but price put me off. Luckily for me there was a sale at Kirkcaldie and Staines and I got a tin for a song. Unfortunately the reason it was so cheap was because its best-before date is April. Whatevs, at the rate I’m going I don’t think it will be a problem. This stuff is addictive and leaves normal paprika in the dust in terms of flavour. Actually, what is normal paprika but red coloured dust? How have spice companies got away with misleading us so flagrantly for so long?

Macaroon-age Daydream

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Apologies for the long gap between posts but I’m sure everyone else is just as busy as me if not wildly more so, what with the approaching Christmas and economy and global warming to worry about. Not helping is the fact that my computer has been monstrously slow of late. It took about five goes to upload my photos without the entire thing having a nervous breakdown, and you don’t even want to know how many frustrating minutes it took to even get to the point where I can type here. Using that same excuse, I apologise deeply if I haven’t been reading as many blogs as I should – I wish I could keep up with them all but my computer would require smelling salts and a cold compress. Now, seeing how this is the time of year that office parties and such become more prevalent, why not gaze upon this bowl of antioxidants as inspiration for what to do should you wish to engage in a little, um, oxidanting?

Above: You know that fruit that you get at markets sometimes that they sell for reeeally cheap because it needed to be eated ten minutes ago? Well I bought myself a bushel of the stuff on Sunday and using Nigella’s Antioxidant Fruit Salad from Nigella Christmas as a starting point, made myself an incredibly gorgeous breakfast. A slightly wilting mango was sliced into a bowl – the whole thing – followed by some strawberries, sliced and tumbled over, chopped mint from the garden and a handful of pomegranate seeds, lovingly harvested from a tupperware container in the freezer. Not pictured, but unbelievably essential, is a sprinkling of pistachio nuts, which gave the most fabulous contrast in textures and tastes, their waxy, almost chocolatey creaminess next to the zingy acidity of all that fruit. I added them at the last minute as an afterthought, but they completely made the salad.
Such are my mad domestic goddess skillz that I managed to whip up these chocolate macaroons while making the Christmas Dinner last week, obviously they aren’t the echt article from Pierre Hermes, you know, faint-makingly light, requires 19 egg whites, only 3 people worldwide know the recipe – these are rather unchic, stumpy little biscuits, but no less delicious.
I guess it’s fitting that such a quick and untaxing recipe comes from Nigella Express. I took them into the office the next day for a colleague’s birthday morning tea and they were, I’m immodestly proud to say, enormously popular. Of course, maybe people were just saying they like them because I was sitting right there. Who knows, they’re certainly easy enough to make so why not find out for yourself (although rigorous quality control in my kitchen proved that they were in fact fantastically good.)
Chocolate Macaroons
2 egg whites
200g ground almonds
30g cocoa powder
175g icing sugar
Heat oven to 200g C, and line a baking tray with paper or a silicone sheet. Mix the egg whites in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients till you have a sticky chocolatey mixture. As I said, this is very easy – no intrepid egg-white beating here. Roll the mixture into small balls and arrange on the baking tray. Bake for about 11 minutes although I took them straight out of the oven at about 8 or 9 minutes, that’s just because I get a bit nervous around biscuits – they always carry on cooking even when removed from the heat. They will be solidly chewy and densely chocolatey once cool, if you can wait that long, and are marvelous with coffee, ice cream, anything at all really.
On Monday, Tim and I went to the local Italian restaurant, Red Tomatoes, because with us both working full time and travelling round the place we’ve hardly seen each other. Red Tomatoes was recently on a New Zealand version of that Gordon Ramsey TV show where he goes into restaurants and swears a lot and then sorts out their problems. I’ve been to this place before a couple of times and it has definitely improved, in terms of decor, clarity of menu and staff attentiveness. The menu itself is not terribly adventurous, but this is not a bad thing, what is there is familiar and done well. The meals are still a little on the slow side, so don’t go there on an awkward first date. With Tim and I nattering away we barely noticed.
And the pizza is divine.

Thin, crisp, slightly chewy base…generous, piping hot toppings…lots of cheese…brilliant. Tim got the Meditteranean chicken and I got the Puttanesca and we swapped pieces as we went.

Can’t bond and connect emotionally, too busy eating own body weight in cheese.

As if cheese wasn’t exciting enough in its own right, the current economical crisis which had resulted in astronomically high prices for dairy means that eating cheese is now a hedonistic, decadently luxurious experience. They do say absense makes the heart grow fonder (and probably less clogged too, in this case.)
Next time: Who knows. Christmas is hot on my heels and I’ve barely done the dreaded but necessary shopping at all. I need a buffer month between November and December – who do you go to see about getting this sort of thing organised? And what could we call it – Lauratober?

Do You Hear The People Sing?

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I know I’ve plugged the Otaua video incessantly, in fact you are perhaps thinking “Gee, I know already Laura, you might get a waste oil refinery right by your house, I’ve watched the video three times, what more do you want from me?!” Firstly, a massive thankyou to those who have watched the video and especially to those who have commented with words of support. The thing is, the Franklin District Council actually…doesn’t care. They think that right in the middle of residential Otaua village is a fine home for this oily oil plant. I’m guessing that if it was their home and hometown poised to be ruined forever it would be a wee bit different. Basically, it’s not looking terribly positive for us, but the more support we have the more likely it is that the council will wake up to the fact that it can’t happen. If nothing else, knowing the eyes of the world are upon them will annoy the council and the WPC Ltd. If you’re wondering what else you can do apart from watch the video, well…there’s not a lot. But you can visit the brand, spanking new Otaua Village blog, read an article and look at the lyrics to the song on the video. Hopefully there will be more to read soon. I know I keep talking about it but it’s all I can offer in the way of help for the cause. Frankly I’m scared about what’s going to happen. And angry.

So, Tim bought a barbeque yesterday. A $40 barbeque. It’s pretty flimsy, and has all the power of an electric toothbrush, but he and Paul were monumentally excited in a primal, alpha-male kind of way. What is it about barbeques? (Or is that barbequi?) I look at them and think “oooh, griddled eggplant and Japanese marinades and stone-fruit kebabs!” while Tim and Paul de-evolve back to Cro-Magnon Man.

Above: Cro-Magnon Man is, however, modern enough to buy free-range organic chicken nibbles rather than woolly mammoth steaks.

Above: Fell in love with a grill…

The chicken nibbles were pre-marinated (*clutches pearls*) but still delicious, because there’s little better than that smoky, outdoorsy, slightly charred taste that comes from barbeque-ing. It wasn’t even particularly sunny yesterday (and it’s downright icy today) but sitting round “Big Red” as it has been dubbed, with a glass of wine and the smell of protein coagulating over a hot flame, well it felt as though we were in the middle of some endless summer. I can’t wait to think of things to cook on it…

Above: Beef – (a) the meat from an adult bovine (b) inf. gripe, objection, grudge. We got both.

Last time I went up home, Mum bought a healthy slab of corned beef for Tim and I which flew back to Wellington with me (much to the chortles of the guy scanning my backpack at the airport). It was sufficiently chilly over the weekend for me to defrost it and shunning the normal slow-cook way of cooking it, submerged in liquid, I instead adapted a recipe from the Best of Cooking for New Zealanders by Lynn Bedford Hall. I made several incisions in the flesh and pushed in a mixture of butter, white miso paste, garlic and parsely. I know, miso and corned beef, sounds hideously fusion-y, but think of it as a slightly more mysterious version of worcester sauce or marmite. Its mild, complex saltiness makes it good for more than just straightforward soup. The beef was then braised slowly on the stovetop with onions, Stones Green Ginger Wine (also courtesy of Mum), a little stock, some tomato puree, a squeeze of golden syrup and a dried bay leaf. This created a marvelously flavoursome, surprisingly moist corned beef, which we ate with mashed potatoes on day one…

Above: And on day 2, cold and sliced with soup.

I made a version of Nigella’s South Beach Black Bean Soup – by that I mean I was too lazy to actually find the book with the recipe in it for fear that I’d be mising half the necessary ingredients and just souped it on the fly. First of all you need to simmer your black beans, I think I did about a cupful but I don’t actually remember, I don’t think it really matters though. Bring them to the boil in a large pot then turn it down to a simmer for about half an hour or until you can bite into a bean without breaking a tooth. Drain them, and (in the same pot if you like) slowly fry an onion, a diced capsicum, a teaspoon of cumin seeds, a diced, seeded red chilli if desired, and a a teaspoon of ground coriander. Then I added a slosh of dry sherry, the black beans, and plenty of chicken stock, and let it simmer away. It’s so simple but also something a little out of the ordinary to add interest to cold leftovers.

The flavours are perfectly complemented by the earthy-yet-perky taste of coriander. And…the feathery green leaves prevent your soup looking like a bowl of swamp water. I mean, let’s not lie here.

A few months ago I installed Google Analytics on my blog, which allows me to find out how people are accessing my blog. For high-powered business websites it’s an asset, for the casual blogger it’s merely a source of occasional interest. It comes into its own, however, when it lets you see how people have found you through Google. I haven’t checked it in a while, and there are some intriguing paths being trekked to my kitchen door.

Firstly, I must be a veritable guru, nay, a shaman of burghal wheat because there is a staggering number of searches for it that resulted in people viewing my blog.

To the people who googled “Otaua WPC” and found my blog, well now you know to visit the Otaua Village site. If it was anyone from the council or indeed, WPC Ltd, I hope you were intimidated by my special brand of intimidation. Many food bloggers across the world now have contempt for your policies! Be uneasy!

To the person who googled “Bit on the side roast pork Allison Gofton Watties“, you won’t find any of that Food-In-A-Minute, cover-it-all-in-Watties-Sauce-and-potato-pompoms business here. I said good day!

To the person who googled “oat fritters” – oh dear. Even I, patron of the oat, wouldn’t go that far.

To the many, many people who googled “the brain, the brain, the centre of the chain” from the Baby Sitters Club movie and ended up here – you are not alone. Re-reading your old BSC books is kitschy nostalgia, not worrying behaviour.

To the person who googled “Idina Menzel” and ended up here, I salute your dedication. Out of curiosity, I went and googled “Idina Menzel” and, thirty pages in, still had no sign of my blog. Clearly, our paths were destined to cross. But to the person who googled “Ina Menzel” and found me – I hope I set you on the right track. It’s Idina. And it’s not pronounced “eye-dina” because you strike me as the type. Also googled was “how many units of Idina Menzel’s ‘I Stand’ have sold“. Because a food blog is the obvious place to find out. But it’s a nice thought that such queries would lead a person here.

To those who googled quotes pertaining to Rent, Wicked, Spring Awakening, The White Stripes, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Billy Bragg, Flight of The Conchords, and Neil Young and ended up reading my blog, it proves that quoting pop culture is nothing if not beneficial to your hit count.

And finally, to the person or people (please don’t let there be more than one of you) who asked “why can’t we eat polar bear liver” and inquired after the “polar bear liver iron count” – what you do in your own time is your business, but don’t go dragging me into it. (also – Sarah Palin, is that you?)

To finish on a mildly amusing note, I found this carton of buttermilk in the fridge. I bought it a while ago, but haven’t found the right use for it yet. Turns out I can take my sweet little time about deciding what to do with it.

Above: hey, if we can have adorable lolcats, why not lolkitchns also? According to this audacious little carton of buttermilk, I have till the year 2023 to use it. Now, I’m no dairy maven, but that strikes me as a little…optimistic. You better believe though, that if in ten years time I go to make a batch of muffins and this very buttermilk has disintegrated into dangerous spores, I will be complaining. ‘Disgruntled of Wellington’ demands a year’s supply of buttermilk…or at least a voucher.

Don’t Think Ice, It’s Alright

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I understand the prevailing trend these days is to profess adoration for dark chocolate, the higher in cocoa mass and the more intensely bitter the better, preferably savoured by candlelight with a perfectly aged red wine. Me, I could take it or leave it. I love it for cooking – rarely use anything else – but in terms of eating, I am the fiendiest fiend for white chocolate. I know, it’s not even “real” chocolate, and it’s nothing but sugar, and doesn’t even have any cocoa mass by which to measure its superiority against other chocolates…but I LOVE it. If I know there’s some in the house I can barely concentrate, and find myself blindly standing by the cupboard, stolidly chewing away at whatever’s left of my white chocolate resources. Whereas dark chocolate – well, it’s pretty telling that I have four blocks of the stuff sitting in my wardrobe (because (a) I stock up if it’s on sale and (b) we don’t have a lot of cupboard space in the kitchen), and haven’t touched the stuff.

But I’m only human. I see chocolate, unwrapped and vulnerable in front of me and I gotta take a bite. This particular stuff – Donovan’s 80% cocoa dark chocolate, has its own cromulent gratification, in spite of not being my first choice. Smooth, sharp, with an uncannily refreshing, rather than rich finish, it was the perfect thing to embiggen my otherwise low-rent sorbet…

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I got the idea for this from a Jill Dupleix recipe for “ice cream” made of only two ingredients – bananas and raspberries. Berries being expensive, I thought I could make another version using canned pears. I poshed it up by adding some shards of the aforementioned dark chocolate and changing the name…

Banana, Pear, and Bitter Dark Chocolate Sorbet (see, doesn’t sound like something out of a can at all when you put it like that)

3 very ripe, large bananas
1 large or 2 regular sized cans of pears, well drained
45g dark chocolate, chopped roughly

Ideally you should do this in a food processor. But I was feeling lazy…or ecologically minded if you will…and used a fork. Mash the bananas and pears together till they are uniformly smooth. Fold in the chocolate. Freeze, stirring occasionally. This makes about 750mls…I think. If you want more, all you have to do is add more bananas or another can of pears. It could probably do with a blast in the food processor after a certain amount of freezing, but once again, I was being serenely carbon neutral with my fork. I’m sure it would be far superior made in the food processor, but it really depends on whether you want to serve it to people or just eat it by yourself.

It’s so healthy you could practically have it for breakfast. Even with the chocolate because you know, antioxidants! If you want to serve it to polite company though you need to leave it on the bench for a while to soften. Because it has no added fat it freezes rock solid and you will get fissures in your teeth trying to eat it. I think I got elbow fissures trying to scrape up a spoonful for this photo. But when I left it out of the fridge (for ages actually, I’d forgotten about it but our kitchen is so arctic that it hadn’t melted in the slightest) to soften, I was pleasantly greeted by a delicious flavour combination. The delicate flavour of the pears, the texture of the bananas, the occasional surprise of dark chocolate made for an excellent mouthful. Better yet it cost me diddly squat to make. Supermarkets will sell overripe bananas for a song, canned pears are always cheap, and okay, chocolate is expensive but if you can get it on special it’s not too bad. Which is why, when Tim and I trekked to Pak’n’Save to do our groceries and I saw 250g blocks of chocolate for $2 compared to the usual $6, I stocked up.
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When I was up home last weekend, my mother – ever the teacher – gently brought my attention to some misplaced apostrophes in my blog. As I want to be a sub-editor one day…and consider myself pretty au fait with grammatical concepts…I apologise sincerely. By the time I’ve written and edited these posts and grappled with the screen freezing up and photos uploading I tend to miss a few things. I’ll think twice next time I sneer at someone else’s poor punctuation. And indeed, feel free to tell me if there is an apostrophe out of place somewhere causing you offense.
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Next time: I attempt to make Peanut Butter and Chocolate Popcorn from the Hot Garlic blog. With not a little trepidation I must admit, as I wasn’t born with American tastebuds but the way everyone raved over it…and I do love my popcorn maker…well, my curiosity was piqued.
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Your daily kitty cuteness update:
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He’s still doing it.

Solid Gold Easy Action

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These potatoes are neither radioactive nor laced with the sort of E-numbers that will keep a three year old awake for a week. It is in fact, my new friend tumeric, which I’m sneaking into everything these days. It has a squillion medicinal properties (and Mum, according to Wikipedia it repels ants if you sprinkle it in the garden), a delightfully earthy sweet flavour, and stains your food pleasingly, eye-scorchingly yellow.

Panchphoran Aloo, or potatoes with whole spices, comes from Nigella’s seminal text How To Eat and is what I made for dinner tonight. HTE is so densely packed full of wonderful recipes that with initial reads it is impossible to take everything in. It took me a while to pick up on this fabulous potato dish but now I’ve made it so many times that I don’t even use the (tumeric-smudged) book anymore. What you want to do: Get lots of floury potatoes, scrub them and then parboil for five-ten minutes. Nigella doesn’t instruct you to do this, but it makes them a lot easier to cook. Drain and dice the potatoes, then toss them into a hot, non-stick pan, stirring occasionally still somewhat golden. Add a spoonful or so of the following and stir: cumin seeds, coriander seeds, fenugreek, fennel seeds, mustard seeds…tumeric. There’s a bit of standing and stirring involved but it’s really simple to make and tastes marvelous, especially with plenty of sea salt.

This is a very cheap meal for me because I have all those spices to hand (including a 500g catering-sized pack of cumin seeds that I’ve made surprising headway with) but I can see why the lesser-stocked amongst you might freak out at an ingredients list like that. I find health food stores really handy for cheap bags of spices and things if you want to start somewhere. There’s one on Cuba Street which has all manner of enticing wee bags of things…that I am quite embarrassingly addicted to purchasing. Last time I was there (on the way to The Dark Knight) I walked out clutching 2 bags of quinoa flakes, a bag of kibbled rye, a bag of ground linseeds and a bag of bran. It’s addictive I tells ye.

By the way, I apologise for the harsh photography. I’m having ongoing camera issues, which, coupled with the total lack of natural light here (it has rained for about 3 weeks straight) does not good food porn maketh. I also apologise if this post is lacklustre…these assignments are keeping me stressed and busy, instead of stressed and stationary.

With the rain and the sleet and the damp and the cold comes a couple of benefits. For example: steamed pudding. I first bought my pudding steamer in the infant days of this blog (back when I had permanent poor exposure and no depth of field, ah, circularity) and it occurred to me that it hadn’t gotten any use in a while. A casual flick through Nigella’s delicious How To Be A Domestic Goddess (while I should have been doing something more productive) had me longing suddenly to introduce butter to its amigos sugar and flour. You have to get going in advance – the whole two hours steaming thing – but apart from that these things practically make themselves. And they’re so delicious, not stodgy at all, but miraculously light. And I love the way a fat, golden jammy slice of this pudding slowly soaks up the milk pooling in the base of the bowl…I highly recommend you look up all your very old cookbooks, you know, the sort that have recipes for salads set with gelatine, and make yourself a darned steamed pudding. Unless you’re in the northern hemisphere in which case maybe wait a few months. It’s one of the best things about this weather.

If I can’t be perky, nothing livens things up like the neighbourhood cat – seriously, I defy you to view this and not feel the slightest stirrings of mirth in your soul.


Above: This isn’t our cat. If the landlord is reading, this isn’t even a cat, it’s…a teddy bear (ceci n’est pas un chat?) But seriously, it’s this kitteh that hangs round our ‘hood and occasionally stands by the door looking cute and vulnerable and what would you do? Turns out that its most natural, ideal sleeping position is…face-planted. Did you know cats can breathe out their ears?

Next time: I’m not sure, again, so I’m also not sure why I persist with this “next time” feature. I bought some brisket though, with a view to cooking it slowly somehow…any suggestions?