Category: Easy and/or Fast

so……….now you know

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Hmm. Hmmmmmm.

What to do when something enormous happens, and I’m so used to living my life as publicly as I can, tweeting every vapid-but-it-feels-kinda-deep thought and blogging about every up, down, and diagonal shunt of my life. But this one needs some time, some respect, some quiet. 
But also it would be really impossible to not address it, so in compromise, I’m just gonna talk about it pretty quickly. 
Two things happened recently: One, I realised I’m gay. (…gayer than I initially thought, if you will.) 
Two, well, Tim and I are as a direct result no longer getting married. Or together. A person’s sexuality is entirely their own business, no explanations are owed to anyone, (how can you explain something that just is?) and a relationship is the business of the people in the relationship only. Seriously. But – I offer you the following bullet points.
– Tim and I were together for nearly nine years. Much as it would’ve been convenient if this had all fallen into place when I was, oh, seven years old, I would not trade Tim’s and my time together for any trinket in the world. 
– We started off as best friends, and we’re gonna end up as best friends, whether we’re ninety years old and hanging out together on a porch somewhere drinking whisky or whether we finally work out how to become vampires and live forever and avoid aging and like, just meet up occasionally until infinity. There’s obviously one hell of a journey ahead (not least, we’ve accumulated an intimidating quantity of possessions) but this will never, ever change.
– My brother summed it up the best when he txted me and said something very wonderful to the effect of “I’m sad you two had to end but I’m happy you found yourself.” Those are pretty much the emotions flying round right now, but to the power of five hundred. 
– I’m gay. The gayest. Stone cold gay. Tony award-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden. Things don’t fall into place immediately. Sometimes things are hidden so deep because you don’t want to notice them, sometimes things were there all along. It’s not black and white, it’s not a light switch, it’s…it just is. Again: no-one’s business, but I’d just like to gently point out that all of us are somewhere on a spectrum. Much as we might be taught otherwise, or indeed, have the subject studiously avoided altogether.  
Cool. Okay. Lots of change ahead. Lots of things will never change. 
I haven’t really felt like cooking for a while – truth be told, I’d felt nauseous for days, maybe weeks – but on Monday night I made Tim and I (well, we’re still living together) a roast chicken for dinner and on Tuesday morning I made us breakfast, Breakfast Apple Crumble that is. And it felt good. And then I was like “wow Laura you’re a genius with this recipe from your incredible cookbook you should really make breakfast more often”. Yep, it’s so good that it stopped me being self-deprecating for a whole minute. That’s probably the nicest thing I can say about a recipe, but to be more helpfully specific – the quickly fried, roughly chopped apples topped with toasted oats, chewy with butter and brown sugar, is an actual gift to yourself first thing in the morning. 

This recipe is indeed from my cookbook, Hungry and Frozen: the cookbook. Who among us can say that they don’t like mentioning their cookbook whenever possible? (trick question, not many of us can. Because not many of us have cookbooks. I have one though! Oh man, this got obnoxious.)

Breakfast Apple Crumble

2 apples
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons rolled oats
2 tablespoons whole oats
2 tablespoons sunflower seeds
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Finely dice the apples. It can be roughly done, but the smaller the pieces the faster they’ll cook. Heat a tablespoon of the butter in a frying pan, and tip in the apple. Fry gently, stirring, for five minutes till it is softened slightly. Tip it all into a bowl, then melt the remaining butter and the brown sugar together in the same pan. Once sizzling, tip in the remaining ingredients and stir to toast everything slightly and coat in syrup. Once it’s looking browned and crisp, spatula it over the apples. 

I said it served one person in my book, but to be honest it was plenty for the two of us. Also I didn’t have sunflower seeds so used some almonds instead and it was still grand of course.

Apples and cinnamon together are like eating a hug. A hug. With cream poured over, so much the better. Ideally it would’ve been evaporated milk, which I used to have as a child poured over canned peaches for dessert, but I’m not turning my nose up at actual cream before 8am.

So that’s what’s been going on lately. While this is one hell of a situation, Tim and I have been very lucky that so many people surrounding us have been kind, generous, caring, thoughtful, amazing, and accepting without question. We’ve been able to hang out together, but we’ve also had people surrounding us individually with love and basically being giant ears for whatever we’ve got to say. People are wonderful, Tim is wonderful, I’m really not too bad myself, and I hope I can give that same level of support to someone else if it’s ever, ever needed.

Oh: I apologise if this is not the way you anticipated finding this news out. Tim and I know a lot of people. It’s hard to keep track of who knows things and who doesn’t, how far news has spread…I hate phone calls and scary one-on-ones anyway, and this blog is my home away from home, so this is probably the most personal and hey-you-yes-you way I could say this. So…now you know.
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title from: Queenie Was a Blonde, from Andrew Lippa’s 2000 off-Broadway musical The Wild Party, which was what introduced me to my idol Idina Menzel and another idol Julia Murney, many years ago. Probably worth a listen even if you don’t like musicals, it just goes to so many places from the classic 20s wah-wah opening and is such a cool expositional song. “A fascinating couple, as they go….” (should point out here that Tim joked about how maybe the title should be “my love came crumbling down” because you know, break-up plus apple crumble and I was like HA! PUN! but also um, maybe a little on-the-nose if this is your first time hearing about this news. And I say that as someone who tends to turn to jokes when things get serious. Still: good pun, though, yeah?)
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music lately:

Lana Del Rey, Once Upon a Dream. Del Rey’s cover of the song from Sleeping Beauty is just…dreamy is far too pale a word to describe how dreamy it is. Listening to it is like that feeling where you can just sense yourself falling asleep and you’re still the tiniest bit cognisant and it’s all muted and muffled and a bit sinister but lovely. Or, uh, it’s a nice song, is what I’m saying.

Guess who’s been listening to lots of Green Day? Me, obviously, this is my blog. I just love ’em. Tim and I were actually at the Milton Keynes concert that got recorded for the Bullet in a Bible album/DVD (Truly. We just happened to be in the audience that night. Who would’ve known that the blandest city in England would’ve ended up having a concert recorded live there?) so I’ll always have a thing for that. Brain Stew and Are We The Waiting/St Jimmy and p much the whole thing are really great.

Kate Nash, Mouthwash. I just get in a Kate Nash mood sometimes, like daily.
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next time: yeah nah, who knows. But for your sake hopefully something more relaxed. Well, for my sake too.

no good deed goes unpunished, no act of charity goes unresented

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There’s this bit in the really wonderful Hyperbole and a Half book where the author, Ally Brosh, elaborates via her artwork, about how she’s kind of a bad person. Because when she does good deeds, it’s usually because then she’ll in turn appear to be, and receive the acclaim of, a good person. As opposed to doing a good deed for the sheer bountiful joy of actually being a good person. I can’t impress upon you enough just how aggressively this resonated with me. Well, the reason these cookie dough chocolate pretzel things came about is because someone – local artist Pinky Fang – did a very good deed just because she’s an excellent person. And then someone else (*waggles glasses*) was like “I should make her some really cool cookies to say thanks and then I can blog about them and I need something to blog about so this is great and I’ll look like such a nice person but also it really was nice what she did and this is my small way of sincerely saying hey, thanks.”
The deed in question that merited rad Pinky these edible trinkets: she designed the logo from the kindness of her heart and the talent of her, uh, hands I guess, for the Wounded Gazelles team, who are doing the Round the Bays race later this month and raising money for the Casper organisation. I know a lot of dear-to-me people in this team, but also wouldn’t run ever unless like, it was towards Lucy Liu in a kind of slow-motion-high-emotion scene at an airport to try to stop her leaving town. Otherwise, I do not run. Not for money, certainly not for love – a combination of remembering embarrassment and panic attacks in PE class and sports days at primary school, plus too many vexingly bouncy body parts, plus zero interest. What I can do though, is let you know that Casper is a really important organisation, and that the Wounded Gazelles have so many cool people on their team and if you want to pledge a little money, or buy a branded tshirt, tote, or singlet, why, it’s not that difficult. They’ve raised a thousand dollars so far from so many kind people. 
Also, I am a literal hero, because I made these cookies and blogged about them. Um, but really, I adore Pinky’s work (ocular proof: one of her insolent pink cat prints is on my wall) and it’s so great that she donated her skills to make the super-endearing logo for the Wounded Gazelles. Check out her shop!
Admittedly I initially was going to make some kind of fall-back chocolate chip cookie type thing, but then I thought damn it, this deserves something special. I thought: I’m going to make some Internet Cookies. The type that appears on pinterest and is named something incoherently noun-heavy, as if someone just opened up their pantry and threw darts at things and then put all of those in a recipe together. Chocolate peanut butter brownie stuffed waffles with snickers cronut frosting. Cake batter donut cake donuts cake pops. Or something. 
These, though, these cookie dough chocolate pretzel things, are quite coherent. And coherently delicious, importantly. They’re oddly not too sweet, being more about texture than merely exfoliating your lungs with three kinds of sugar. The crack of the chocolate coating, the crunch of the pretzels, the bulge of cookie dough, the roar of the crowd. 

They are also strangely easy – the dough comes together in minutes, they sandwich easily, and then all you have to do is chill them and then half-assedly dip them in chocolate. I know we don’t quite have the same tradition of eating cookie dough here in New Zealand as America does – more’s the pity – but like, it’s the same ingredients that are in actual cookies, so no need to get nervous. And more objectively, there’s no egg in the recipe. I guess putting pretzels in sweet things isn’t quite as well-known here either but we should really get used to it because it’s the best. Thanks, America!

pretzel cookie dough chocolate things 

Inspired by this recipe. However, maybe don’t actually click through if you don’t like words like “sinful” used to describe your completely non-sinful food that you’re eating because you want to eat it. 

makes many.

125g butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups or so flour
a couple of tablespoons of milk
150g dark chocolate (I’m very partial to milk chocolate, but dark is what I had.)
1 packet of pretzels

soften the butter, and beat together with the brown sugar. Tip in the flour and mix into something that looks like cookie dough – since that’s what it is – and add a little milk as you see fit to make it something that can be easily rolled into balls. Not too soft, not too not-soft, just feel your way. 

Roll a very small ball of the dough with your hands, and sandwich it between two pretzels, squashing it down a little so the dough bulges out through the pretzel holes. Continue with the rest of the dough until it’s finished (or you run out of pretzels) and chill them thoroughly in the fridge for at least half an hour. 

Melt the chocolate and dip the pretzel sandwiches so they’re halfway covered, and then chill them again till you’re ready to eat them. 

I…haven’t actually given these away yet. But I’ve only eaten one. They’re stupidly delicious and I couldn’t exactly blog about them without trying them. But your stash is intact, Pinky, I promise.

It has been a quietish time lately, I’ve either been knitting or…knitting. Or watching very sad movies, while knitting. But on Saturday night I danced my cares away in town and it was very wonderful. (Incidentally, Pinky was one of the DJs that night, sorry if I’m weirding you out by saying your name too many times in this one post, Pinky.)

While I may never ever run anywhere, I can dance for hours in the dark. (Also yeah my lipstick here is mint green, I’m not in the grips of scurvy or something.)

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title from: um, I guess I’m not quite on-theme here but any chance to be like, “hey! look at my idol Idina Menzel! And can we talk about Wicked?” so here she is singing No Good Deed in her role of Elphaba, Wicked Witch of the West. 
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music lately:

Lana del Rey, Born to Die. Sometimes I’m just in a Lana-del-Rey-singing-sad-songs-mood.

The Breeders, Saints. Ughhhhhh so cool.

Selena, Bidi Bidi Bom Bom. Jennifer Lopez was exquisite in the biopic about this tragically killed, amazing singer (I told you I’d been watching sad movies) but this song is nothing but joy.  
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Next time: I discovered that you can buy candy love hearts in 2kg quantities online so upcoming will probably be recipes like “a bowl of candy love hearts” and also “candy lovehearts, served in clenched handfuls”. 

pretty as a peach, she’s so out of reach

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Sometimes, no matter how significant it feels like it ought to be, little changes and developments can tip-toe into your life and establish themselves quietly before you even realise they’re there. By which I mean, it was after having a particularly miserable day recently, that I realised how great this was. My miserable day was caused by things that had happened that day. It had been quite a while since I’d felt really crushingly bleak for no apparent reason. Therefore, I think the medication I’m taking is helping. Since I wrote about it on here back when I started taking it, I thought I’d better, you know, clap my hands since I’m happy and I know it. Not that everything is solved or perfect, I am still reliably not-together, but bodies are such a work in progress at best, that I’m very pleased to have discovered this small but important thing about myself. So there’s that.
There’s also this. I have no idea really, how I come up with recipes so easily – perhaps it’s similar to how I can do the splits easily without ever practicing. The making-recipes part of my brain is as flexible as my hamstrings. (C’mon, being able to do the splits is kind of impressive, allow me to drop it into conversation sometimes.) This morning I woke up and thought about seasonal fruit and the idea for this recipe, which I’m calling peaches and cream, appeared quickly and fully formed. And since today was a Sunday where I’d managed to get my act together and get out of bed and deal with the crowds at the vege market, I decided to just go ahead and try making it. 

Seasonal fruit! Did you know it’s abundant and priced kindly? I really need to get to the vege market more often. 

As I said, it’s Sunday today, so what better day to make yourself pudding on, to try fend off any back-to-school blues you may be feeling, and to greet the new week with a sticky, happy smile. (Your smile might not actually be sticky, I just tend to always end up with with food on my face when I eat.) This requires some attention but not a lot of effort. Just peaches, simmered till soft, thickly covered in lemony cream. Through some mysterious augury the combination of cream and sugar heated together with lemon juice added, creates this satiny, smooth, rich, incredibly delicious substance. The method is based on this recipe I used to make all the time in my teens, back when cooking was starting to become “my thing”. So, you don’t actually have to have the peaches underneath, you could just divide the cream between a couple of ramekins (or very adorable teacups) and still be guaranteed a good time. But! Peaches! So peachy!

now you don’t see it…

now you see it. 

Heating the peaches turns up their perfumed, ray-of-sunshine sweetness, which the vanilla and lemon help bring out too, with their respective richness and tartness. I can’t overhype the cream enough, eating it is honestly like the feeling you get when you’re loitering in a fabric shop longer than your brief errand warranted, and nonchalantly but dedicatedly caressing all the rolls of satiny fabric. (Shout out to my people who do this, please be more than just me.)

peaches and cream

a recipe by myself

two large or three small ripe peaches, roughly diced
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or the seeds from a vanilla pod if you’re feeling baller

300ml bottle of cream 
1/3 cup sugar
juice from two lemons (the mean, supermarket kind, that is. If you have a generous, homegrown lemon, you’ll probably only need one.)

Put the peaches, the tablespoon of sugar, and the water in a saucepan and stir over a decent heat, and continue till the water has evaporated and the peaches are very soft. You don’t have to turn this into jam or puree or anything, just break them down a little. The latter would probably be more sophisticated. But here we are. Divide the peaches – a couple of dessertspoons each, I find  – between two or three 125 ml ramekins or similar. Refrigerate.

In the same pan – maybe give it a quick wipe with a paper towel – bring the 300ml cream and the 1/3 cup sugar to a gentle boil, slowly, stirring constantly. Once it’s bubbling, stir for three minutes exactly, then remove from the heat. It’s science, okay? Seriously, watch your phone (or, I guess, your watch, mine tend to have stopped working and become what I call “sculptural bracelets”) and let that surprisingly long three minutes pass in full. Then, remove the cream from the heat, and stir in the lemon juice. With any luck, the cream should mysteriously yet delightfully thicken up as you do this. Divide this mixture between the two or three vessels of peach, bearing in mind that if there’s three, you’re gonna have less…and refrigerate. A couple of hours should thicken it up properly, but feel free to make it the night before.  

Make it for yourself and your significant other/s, eat it all by your significant self, or make someone pay to watch you eat the lot. If you want more, double the quantity. If you don’t have peaches, use something else. Just, um, don’t bother dusting it with icing sugar and sprinkling over lemon zest, because unless you have tons of it the zest just looks messy and the icing sugar absorbs into the surface but also looks dusty, and you’ll be all “but my food blog!” Luckily it tastes brilliant and also my teacups are cute enough to distract somewhat.

Hark! A new knitting project! It’s eventually going to be a very simple short-sleeved top. I’ve never knitted a garment or with two colours before, so it’s all very thrilling. As thrilling as an activity that involves sitting silently and barely moving can be, that is (hint: super damn thrilling.)

One month down, 2014 has already proven to be strange and fascinating and full of promise. Hopefully February will be even better. I, for one, am prepared.

(this was a conversation I had with Kate. I credit her with coining womanifest before my use of it here, and I credit myself with ordering a triple cheeseburger shortly after sending this txt.)
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title from: Jeff the Brotherhood, Leave Me Out. Their scuzzy, gloomy sound suits me.
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music lately:

Tegan and Sara, Drove Me Wild. Well, it does.

Ja Rule and Ashanti, Always On Time. I can listen to early-2000s Ja Rule/Ashanti all day (also quite a lot of J to the L-O and Ja Rule) especially this, with its dreamy, rather timeless chorus.
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next time: I don’t know why I have this next time bit! I never really know! I just want to entice you into coming back again! There, I said it. 

they’re probably drinking coffee, and smoking big cigars

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Some late nights, some perfectly nice food that I ate too fast to photograph or just didn’t care to, a couple of evenings where I didn’t feel well, some nights where I was brain-tired from work, lots of very nondescript things like that are the reason I haven’t blogged in a while. I really wanted to! So badly! If only I could freeze time for a bit so I could get everything done that I need to, then pick up where I left off. But then I’d probably end up making, say, 9pm on a Thursday or 6.30am on a Monday morning last for years, and then no-one would get anything done while I end up all Dorian Grey or something, so it’s probably good that I don’t have this power (this power that’s so improbable that I don’t even know why I’m worrying about it in the first place.)

Now that I’ve torn myself away from repeatedly watching the Beyonce videos that I’d promised myself I’d danced to once I finish this post, I probably oughta try make it good. Like a snake eating its own tail but instagramming the process and taking notes on the taste, I do love blogging so much even though it seems like I never have enough time and energy for it. (I don’t actually know if that allegory quite quite works but I cracked myself up when I thought about it, so.) So: the food. I had a dream the other night about caramel slice with coffee in it, and unlike many of my better dreams, I had a good chance of making this one true.

It tastes excellent, but I mean, it’s low-key stuff. This really is just the same caramel slice that it ever was – biscuit base, condensed milk filling – with some instant coffee added to it. I mixed the base ingredients together in the tin I was baking them in. I sort of burnt the condensed milk. I wasn’t even awake when I thought the recipe up. And yet – so delicious. With that in mind, you can definitely achieve it too.

coffee caramel slice

Did I invent this recipe? In my dreams…

  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar (pack it in, y’know?)
  • 125g melted butter
  • 1 tin condensed milk (if you can, look for the stuff that just has milk and sugar in the ingredients, not milk, sugar, and water)
  • 2 tablespoons golden syrup
  • 50g more butter
  • 2 tablespoons of instant coffee (espresso style gives the best flavour)
  • 1/2 cup white chocolate buttons or similar

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. Mix together the flour, melted butter, and brown sugar and once it comes together in a kind of crumbly, damp, sandy way, press it into the base of a baking tin, the sort you might make brownies in – about 25cm square, or thereabouts. Bake it for fifteen minutes.

Once the base is out of the oven, heat the condensed milk, golden syrup, 60g butter and coffee powder together in a pan until it’s bubbling and thick – stir it lots as it heats to prevent it sticking and burning, and also remove it from the heat as soon as it bubbles. Spread it evenly across the biscuit base, and refrigerate for an hour or two. Melt the white chocolate and drizzle it over the top, refrigerate again till it’s set, and then cut into squares. Or whatever shape you like, don’t let me hold you back from your star-shaped caramel slice fantasies.

Of course caramel is wonderful on its own. But instant coffee powder – so flavourless in a cup with hot water! – blasts it with smoky caffeinated depth, making it just a little more fascinating than regular caramel already is. You still get the depth of almost-burnt sugar and the rich butteriness of uh, the butter, but it has a pleasing aggressive roasted and slightly bitter undertone. I’d like to add that until about five years ago instant coffee was all I even made myself at home if I wanted a coffee, so I’m not wanting to sound judgey. It’s just that these days the coffee I drink makes instant taste sort of watery and bleak in comparison. But I give instant espresso powder a gold star for how great it is in flavouring baking. Particularly this sticky candy-sweet confection, full of friendly sugar granules that just can’t wait to make friends with your teeth.

I don’t have any particularly life-changing news to report to you from the time when I last blogged till now, but I am excited about one thing: my friend Tash has opened a second branch of her Holland Road Yarn Company right in town (Wellington right-in-town that is, apologies if you don’t live here) and it’s so lovely and full of beautiful yarn and I already have two new projects lined up to knit and I can occupy myself for a good, oh, twenty minutes by just doing laps of the shop and patting the balls of wool and deciding which ones are my favourite colours.

Oh and I got my sideburns shaved off, having hyped it up to many people beforehand as some kind of “Laura’s summer of rebellious hair and expressing one’s self through stuff” thing, and it turned out so ridiculously subtle and imperceptible that I’m a little red-faced. And now there’s slightly more of my face to get red.

What’s that? Just playing the world’s smallest violin for the world’s smallest buzzcut. (Also: I never understood that “world’s smallest violin” joke until very recently, but it was used at least once in Baby-sitters Club books so I always liked to imagine I could just drop it casually into conversation like I knew what I was talking about. I also feel this way about the phrases “false economy” and “load-bearing wall”.) (Oh and I like my haircut.)

title from: Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues. Voice like thunder, face like thunder, legs like thunder, oh wait sorry I’m describing thunder by mistake. Uh, but for real I love this song and Johnny Cash and his deep voice.

music lately:

Haim, The Wire. Yes. I, too, adore this song.

Laura Marling, Master Hunter. Aggressively dreamy.

Uzo Aduba, By My Side. This wonderful actor from Orange Is The New Black, well she was also on Broadway in Godspell, being incredible while singing this sad, weird song.

next time: I won’t make you wait so long. I’m pretty sure I say this a lot, to be fair. But I always mean it!

 

and after that, we can ketchup like tomato

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Nothing makes me feel like I’m smugly going to avoid scurvy (she says, having only eaten pizza, Nerds, and beer all day) than eating a vegetable one time. Despite my wayward ways, I do actually love vegetables not simply because they keep me more or less alive, but because they’re delicious and abundant and almost all of them taste incredible when they have heat applied to them followed by lots of olive oil. 
I’m one week in back at work, and without casting aspersions on my work ethic (why cast aspersions when you can be frank: my work ethic is usually in the category of “reluctant yet non-existent, at best”) it should be obvious enough that I’d much rather be on holiday. Who among us can say, etc etc. However, as with the chocolate brownies last week, I’m doing my best to improve upon last year’s trend of bleak lunches, month in and out. From days of pot noodles, to seemingly endless bowls of plain couscous with butter and salt, to microwaved cheese sandwich (we’re not allowed a toaster in the work kitchen. Oh, I know) I’ve decided I deserve better. By “better” I guess I mean “not having scurvy” but it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry, or something. 

Simple though the concept is, I’m not always good at remembering to make a large enough dinner to allow for lunch leftovers the following day. That’s where this Ottolenghi recipe for Mejadra, from his book Jerusalem, is useful – it uses such unstressfully-priced ingredients as lentils, rice, and onions, it’s all cooked in one pan, and it makes a metric butt-ton. I hear you, that those ingredients aren’t the first to spring to mind as examples of “whoa, alluring”, but there’s something in the crunchy-crisp fried onions, and the spices which find their way into the earthy lentils and rice, that is really rather wonderful.  

I’m just going to link to Ottolenghi’s recipe for Mejadra rather than write it out in full, because…oh, I’m very lazy. That’s it, really. I told you my work ethic was found wanting.

I shall, however, heroically type out another Ottolenghi recipe that I made to go with the Mejadra – this is properly simple, both of ingredients list and execution, and while it doesn’t sound like much it’s super excellent. Fried slices of tomato, bursting at the seams with sweet ripeness, a little garlic and chili for, well, the flavour of garlic and chili, and plenty of soft, buttery olive oil…when we have tomatoes at such peak being-in-season-ness, there’s not a lot that needs to be done to them. When they’re at their most prolific, I kinda like to eat them like apples. For now, this fast recipe can help bolster up anything from toast, to scrambled eggs, to…to rice and lentils and onions.

fried tomatoes with garlic

from Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Jerusalem.

three garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 a small hot chilli, finely sliced (I just used some sriracha as I was lacking a small hot chilli, or indeed a chilli of any size)
two tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
three large, ripe, firm tomatoes
two tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Mix the garlic, chilli, and parsley together in a small bowl, and set aside. Top and tail the tomatoes and slice thickly vertically – about 1.5cm thick, but like, whatever. Heat the olive oil in a pan and then fry the tomato slices, turning over after a minute or two. I used an enamel roasting dish that can be used on a stove top, but I suppose it’s better the more surface area you have. It’s just that my saucepan was being used for the Mejadra, and…enamel is cute. Add the garlic mixture, fry a little longer, and then serve. 

It’s the sort of thing that you could – and in fact probably already have – come up with yourself quite easily, but nevertheless, sometimes it’s pleasingly comforting to be told what to do when cooking.  

And straightforward as it is, this recipe is pretty spectacular. All sweet and spicy and rich, yet very simple and plain and unfancy.

And very fitting on a table full of potluck brunch. I’m trying something called luxterity (luxe + austerity) this year, where there’s more care with spending (necessarily so) but in as elegant/dramatic/sybaritic a manner as we can manage (also necessarily so, because I like those things.) Having friends over for brunch saves a lot of money, is super fun, and there’s nothing like an air of “pants are barely required because I’m in my own damn house” to add a frisson to your morning repast.

That’s about it, really. This week has been very long yet very fast. Full of hangings-out (out-hangings?) and knitting (a hat) and reading (The Character of Rain/Amelie Nothomb; Are You My Mother?/Alison Bechdel) and watching (Pretty Little Liars and Practical Magic and all the new Beyonce videos again and again) and eating (endless Mejadra – that recipe really makes a lot; plus as many seasonal berries as I can find) and small but joyful things like that.

Also, I got a new beanie that I adore.

This isn’t going to make my knitted hat any less fun of a project, for one thing, I intend to put a pom pom on top of that one. Wellington’s weather has been monumentally horrible lately, so weird as it sounds to be thinking about warm hats in the middle of summer, that’s what we’re dealing with. I couldn’t care less. As long as tomatoes continue being cheap for a while longer…so if nothing else, I can pre-load on vitamins to cover me during my next inevitable stretch of candy and sodium chloride.
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title from:  Mariah Carey, More Than Just Friends. Even when it’s not the mid-nineties any more, Mariah still rules my heart and ears. 
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music lately

City Oh Sigh, Still Let Me In. Dreamy, too dreamy.

Joan Jett, Roadrunner. The original by the Modern Lovers is one of my very, very favourite songs. But hurrah for good covers, like this boisterous one by the babein’ Jett.
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next time: I may have a hat that says “witch” but I don’t know everything. You’ll find out when I do.

one more dawn, one more day, one day more

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I don’t know who even has time to read blogs at the moment (indeed, I hardly have time to write this) with Christmas insisting on being closer and closer every minute. And it’s not just Christmas – there are other festive high days and holy days, people have birthdays, people have work, things still need to happen. So I’ll keep this as succinct as I can manage, which for me means a quick nine paragraph dissertation on my feelings followed by another six paragraphs on my feelings for today’s recipe, followed by an essay on why a particular song I’ve been listening to this week accurately and devastatingly reflects all this. Brevity! It’s the soul of wit. Or the lowest form of wit? Whatever, I guess it’s too late to carry on pretending I’m gonna provide it for you, but I honestly am trying, for what it’s worth. 
So, I’ve mentioned a few times on here about my steady diet of two-minute noodles, microwaved pies, and microwaved marmite and cheese sandwiches as I grew up. But, after getting out a thrillingly American cookbook from the library at the age of, oh, nine or so, I was struck by a rather chic and unusual sandiwich combination: apple and cheese, which it turned out, I loved. So, if I really felt like putting in some effort, like making myself a baller snack, like putting the glam in glamwich (which also puts the glam in sandwich. Portmanteaux! Talk about classy) youthful me would forego the marmite and instead make an apple and cheese microwaved sandwich. I know. You can see how I got a cookbook deal.
(PS: I’ve never actually said the word “glamwich” before and my christmas gift to you is that I’m never going to say it again.)

Nigella, that moon of my life, has an excellently fast recipe in her book Kitchen for something she calls Crustless Pizza. It’s kind of a cross between a yorkshire pudding and cheese on toast, hence its enormous appeal to me. While the original recipe of Nigella’s is perfectly brilliant, I suspected that an apple and cheese variation, spattered with mouth-heating mustard so you know for sure it’s not pudding, would be…equally brilliant.

Apple and cheese together have this bizarrely pleasing salty-sweet, crunchy-melting symbiosis, which isn’t so odd really. I mean, fruit appears in all forms on cheeseboards, and there’s something lovely about the clean, crisp, delicate freshness of the apple slices subverted by the golden, buttery, bubbling cheese. Oh wait, I was supposed to be succinct. It’s just really good, okay?

apple, cheese and mustard pie

Adapted from a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s important book Kitchen. Serves two. Or four, I guess, but I am terribly whiny and reluctant about sharing anything with melted cheese on it. 

1 cup flour
1 egg
1 cup milk
pinch salt
150g cheese, something cheddar-esque, grated
1 apple, I liked Granny Smith here
Dijon mustard

This is very simple. Set your oven to 200 C. Butter a 21cm pie plate or similarly shaped dish. Mix together the flour, egg, milk, salt, and about half the grated cheese. Bake for ten minutes. Meanwhile, slice the apple thinly. Remove the pie from the oven, arrange the apple slices howsoever you please on top, and sprinkle over the remaining cheese. Bake for another ten or so minutes, then drizzle over the mustard. Slice into four, and use a spatula or something to wiggle the slices out – they’ve never stuck once for me, so hopefully they don’t for you either.

And that’s it, really. It would be quite nice with a kind of peppery, crunchy salad of rocket and stuff like that, but there’s no need to play up the sophisticated side of this. It’s just as good eaten with your hands while staring glaze-eyed into space because you’re very tired and just want to deliver carbs to the outstretched, clasping hands of your blood cells with zero distraction.

So, Christmas, huh? It has arrived. Considering it’s Christmas Eve today, I really shouldn’t be too surprised about this. Were I much more flush with cash than I currently am, I would shower myself with the following gifts:

Vogue Knitting magazine
A deposit on another tattoo
At least one really pretty, out-of-my-reach sundress from twenty-seven names
A copy of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Nigella’s book Nigellisima
A supermarket pallet of San Pellegrino Limonata (when I get famous, this is going to be on all my riders. It’s tooth-zappingly lemony and my best friend while mildly hungover. But also I like to drink it other times.)
A bottle of Campari
An intense hand and nail cream
Candles, for lighting and feeling deep and purposeful (and flatteringly lit)
More Devon Smith artwork
A meadowlark trinket of some kind. So out of my reach currently that I’m not even at the stage of choosing one or two to sigh over.
A landlord who will let me have a pet cat. (I don’t know quite how, but I figure being rich makes everything simple.)
A pet cat.

What about you?

Whether or not you celebrate Christmas (even “celebrate” might be a little too enthusiastic, occasionally my mood is more like… “accept stoically” or “admit defeat in the face of”) I of course hope that times are good and people are nice and social situations are fairly stress-free and that your tables are laden with good food. Because stuff like that should be for life, not just for Christmas. (Like a pet cat. Hmph.) I’m flying home today to my parents’ house, and I can’t wait to see them, and the rest of my family, and the cats, who are of course family, but oh man I should really stop talking about cats. I’m planning on knitting myself a beanie, reading books, and taking lots of selfies with the cats.

Also, uh, I suppose it behooves me one last time to remind you that my cookbook Hungry and Frozen is super amazing and makes a majorly excellent present idea. Also if you already have it, there’s a fairly simple Christmas Cake recipe in there which you can make quite last minute and still feel good about.

May the rest of your December be dreamy.
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title from: facing the season with bared teeth and dizzyingly contrapuntal arrangement, One Day More from Les Miserables. The version I’ve linked to is the 25th anniversary concert. Featuring the bafflingly handsome Ramin Karimloo as Enjolras (look him up on Google images if you’re so inclined, I thoroughly recommend it.) I also like Key and Peele’s highly apt take on it. 
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Music lately:

I know I’ve linked to it twelve million times, but this is the only time of year I watch Turkey Lurkey Time from Promises Promises, and marvel at Donna McKechnie’s loose-limbed perfection and the sublimely bonkers choreography leading to a rather shivers-making ending.

Speaking of people worth looking up on google images to marvel at, Zooey Deschanel’s band She and Him made a thoroughly endearing Christmas album. As if Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree wasn’t already massively endearing to begin with, too.

Sleater-Kinney, One Beat. It’s not allllll carols round here.
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Next time: I might be reunited with this blog before the year is out, and then it really just depends on what I can excavate from my fridge….

there are marshmallow clouds being friendly, in the arms of the evergreen trees

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s’mores pie
I made this over the weekend to take to a Thanksgiving-y housewarming barbeque that some American friends were having. Thanksgiving isn’t my holiday (and let’s not forget that it has a troubling background of colonisation and oppression) but I love the food of America and so figured I’d try to improvise something fittingly flaming-eagle-on-a-clifftop-as-old-glory-waves to bring along. So: s’mores pie. There were some giant marshmallows left in the cupboard from the hallowe’en party, I have this amazing cookie-pie dough recipe that comes together out of almost nothing at all, and I had half a block of Whittaker’s dark dark chocolate to counteract the sugar-pillows of marshmallow with its bitterness. That’s it. cookie, marshmallows, chocolate. I had planned a whole lot more – custardy filling, that sort of thing – but in the end, s’mores really ought to only have those three main components. I’ve seen enough American TV to know that!
By the way, I’ve had no time to blog lately, which is why this has taken a while to get here. But today I woke up feeling horrendous, and inevitably/concerningly thought to myself, “ooh, a sick day! This is my one opportunity to finish that blog post!” So here I finally am, pie in hand, hand on heart, and head in hands, because there’s now pie all over me and in my hair. 

If you don’t like marshmallows, well, this really isn’t going to change anything for you. Since that’s mostly what it is. But I myself, am strange and unusual, and don’t like them that much either. However, when they get gooey and puffy and sticky and smokily browned from the heat of the oven – excellent. Especially with the bursts of dark cocoa-embittered chocolate and the warm cinnamon from the cookie dough. Just don’t overthink it. (As if being told not to overthink something helps you not overthink things! Wouldn’t life be simple if that were the case.)

s’mores pie

a recipe by myself

175g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup golden syrup or honey (or a mix of the two)
1/2 cup plain oil
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of salt

4 large marshmallows or about 12-15 regular sized ones
100g dark, dark chocolate

Stir together the flour, baking soda and powder, the cinnamon and a pinch of salt. Tip in the syrup and oil and stir together to form a rough, crumbly cookie dough (the texture may vary depending on your flour, the humidity, bla bla bla, so add a little more flour if it looks unmanageably damp, otherwise it’ll probably be fine.) 

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F.

Reserving a couple of tablespoons of dough to sprinkle over the marshmallows, roll it out to a circle just larger than your pie plate (use one of around 21cm) and transfer it to said pie plate. I tend to roll out the dough between two sheets of baking paper, and then lift the entire thing up, place it in the pie plate, then remove the top layer of baking paper and press down the dough. That way there’s much less cleaning involved – of both the pie plate and your rolling pin.  

Jab the pastry a few times with a fork, which will help stop it puffing up in the oven, and bake for around ten minutes, till golden and a little crisp. 

If you have giant marshmallows, halve them and arrange evenly within the pie shell – otherwise just cram it with regular marshmallows. Roughly chop or break up the chocolate and tuck pieces of it evenly amongst the marshmallows. Grind over a little salt, and scatter with the reserved crumbs of dough. Bake until the marshmallows are puffy and a little browned  – about ten minutes. 

Surprisingly easy. It was dubbed “s’morestravaganza” at the party, and then “s’morepocalypse” and then I yelled out “s’mored of the rings!” and everyone laughed because you can always count on Lord of the Rings humour to be topical in New Zealand, since they have been making those films here for the last thirty years and will continue to do so for the following thirty years. Or at least that’s how it feels.

Pie aside, I was thinking those “where am I going with my life” thoughts, as I am wont to do every time my heart beats, and I have also been thinking a lot about my girl Nigella Lawson. Because she is so important to me and was one of the key people who shaped how I think about cooking, it seems right that she gets mentioned often when I have interviews about my cookbook and so on. I often bring her up myself, as an influence – but I was also thinking…

While I adore Nigella, I don’t want to be the next Nigella of cooking. There’s only her, and I could only be a diluted, carob-replacement version if that’s what I was trying to be. Nope. I want to be the Kanye West of cookbooks. The One Direction. The Mariah Carey. The Lorde. Kanye – he says some ridiculous things but makes so much sense and is all about his art and believing in his worth and generally being so brilliant that he can shoot down anyone who thinks he should keep quiet or be more humble. One Direction are so connected to their fans and recognise the ridiculousness of their situation and seem to just radiate fun and genuineness and also have a million gifs of themselves on tumblr, which I would love to have happen to me one day. Mariah Carey is flawless. But also very flawed. But also flawless. And Lorde – she’s such a young woman, and her words are different, and she’s not afraid to be clever yet simple, and she has amazing hair. So. Sounds maybe like I’m being toooooo ambitious, but I strongly believe in holding on to your instincts and flinging yourself at big ideas when they are kind enough to appear to you.

I’m sure you all feel so much richer for having read these musings I had about myself while like, washing my hair or painting my nails, but y’know. Look! Pie!

Try though I might, there’s no use fighting how far into December we are already. I’m having my annual flat xmas dinner tomorrow night with some friends so dear I’d make some kind of Rudolph The Red Nosed Rein-dear pun regarding them but I’m too tired to make it work. I’m really excited about it though, especially now that I’ve had my sick day and am feeling more like a human again. So that’s what I’ll be blogging about next time, as well as my annual list of food-related xmas gift ideas. I like saying phrases like “my annual xyz” as it makes me feel very established, like people will say “well if LAURA said that salted caramel bla bla bla this xmas then I will too!”
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title via: Dean Martin, that old so-and-so, singing Marshmallow World. Whether he phones it in or not, I could listen to him sing about the stupidest things, like fornicating trees and candy, for a very long time.
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music lately:

Angel Haze, No Bueno. I adore this person.

Turkey Lurkey Time, from the musical Promises Promises. The best thing ever about this time of year: it’s Turkey Lurkey Time time! Donna McKechnie is literally a goddess.
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Next time: My annual xyz!

honey you are my shining star, don’t you go away

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Guess who has been sleeping through the night for the last couple of days? Actually, that question deserves an interrobang to imply the high stakes at, um, stake here: ME. I know. The universe even rewarded me with a really, really good dream about Pretty Little Liars (hello, obsessed, get in touch if you want to talk about it indepth) but then took that back with a dream about being ignored by friends, but the point is, both of these things were entirely fictional dreams, which took place in my head, while I was asleep. In case you haven’t caught up, or are wondering why I’m about to stage a medal ceremony to myself in honour of doing something that most people manage to get on with calmly and without ceremony…Insomnia. I have been in the thick of it for the last month, and it’s such an immense relief to get back to my usual six hours. I was starting to not feel like myself. It was scary.

In an entirely more delightful form of scary, Tim and I had a Hallowe’en party at our house on Saturday night. (I feel compelled to tell you that those are his old Goosebumps books in the above picture, not mine: strictly serialised fiction about Teen Girls Making Their Way In The World for me, thank you. I only read Goosebumps when I was at the reading-the-side-of-the-cereal-box stage of being desperate to consume words. Yep, glad we got that straight.) There was an excellent amount of candy, there was popcorn, and there were other foods that fell into the crispy/salty/crunchy/alcohol absorbing venn diagram, like chips and pretzels and these cheese stars that I made.

Despite being all, hello I’m a cookbook author, I tend to keep this kind of party food low-key. People need feeding, they’re not necessarily going to remember everything that was there unless it was awful, now’s not the time to be stuffing grape halves with tender figs and goat cheese. Lots of candy, lots of carbs. Make like, one thing from scratch so you look like a good person who cares. Me, I not only made these cheese stars, I also made hokey pokey. Because I’m an awesome person who really cares (yes, your level of greatness/compassion grows exponentially like that with each dish.)

Embiggening.

If anyone knows about party food, or in fact anything at all (I’d certainly like to hear her opinion on Pretty Little Liars) it’s Nigella Lawson. I knew I could trust her recipe for cheese stars to be calmly simple, and exactly the sort of thing that people want to eat while clutching a plastic cup of homebrew.

I’m going to say something very serious now: do not eat the dough. You might want to, and I understand that, I live this, but truly, the baked goods are a zillion times more delicious, and you’re going to be resentful of yourself for smiting a morsel of dough that could have become another star.

Cheese Stars

A recipe from Nigella Lawson’s seminal text How To Eat. They can of course be any shape, and I did intend to use all my cookie cutters on this pliant dough. But the thought of all those strange shapes mixed up displeased me, whereas a dish full of little golden stars was endlessly pleasing.

You really, absolutely need a food processor for this one. I’m sorry.

  • 200g grated cheese (Nigella says cheddar, I used the one on special)
  • 50g softish butter
  • 100g flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F and put a sheet of baking paper on an oven tray.

Place all the ingredients in the food processor and blitz till they come together. This will take a while, and it will look like they’re just going to be fine little crumbs forever, but it will suddenly sieze up and spring together in more of a solid mass. Remove the dough, form into a thick, roughly disc-like shape, wrap in glad wrap and refrigerate for fifteen minutes.

Roll it out to a couple of millimeters thick – I find it useful to do this with half the dough at a time – and cut into stars or however you like. The dough will get more and more easy to roll the more you do it, and can be re-rolled plenty. Bake the stars for around ten minutes. Carefully transfer to a rack of some kind – they’ll get crisper as they cool.

They taste like pastry, like the flakiest golden buttery shards of pastry from a croissants underbelly, like the spatters of cheese that bubble and go hard on the toasted sandwich maker and which are almost more delicious than the sandwich itself, and, after a few drinks, like the most rapturously sublime foodstuff in the world, basically. Thanks, Nigella.

I dressed as Myrtha, Queen of the Willis, from the ballet Giselle. Google her, she’s wonderful. But the short explanation is that she’s kind of a misandry ghost queen ballerina. Tim’s costume was split down the middle – a man in a suit on one half, a woman in a dress on the other. It was impressively committed. And spurred on a lot of impassioned conversations about how ridiculous it is that men don’t wear dresses and have makeup marketed to them and so on and so forth. It was a riotously fun party, and it was so great having the house full of excellent people laughing and dancing and mingling with varying levels of aplomb and swapping costumes and everything, really.

A couple of nights of actual sleep hasn’t made up for weeks and weeks of near-sleeplessness, but I’m starting to feel more and more like myself. And as I more or less think myself is amazing (self-doubt and self-importance make strange bedfellows) this is a good thing.

title via: supreme slow jam Shining Star, by The Manhattans.

music lately:

Terribly, terribly sad about Lou Reed now being the late Lou Reed. When I worked in a German bakery when I was 19, I used to play Venus In Furs over and over, very loudly. To the perhaps justifiable concern of my employers whenever they dropped in.

Demi Lovato, Give Your Heart A Break. I love her so much and this song is perfection. So.

Next time: something that doesn’t need a food processor, I promise.

 

oops!…i did it again

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apple butterscotch chip muffins
Initially, I was concerned that I’d been so busy I might not have time to cook anything I could even blog about. All you need is one party here and one catch up there and one overtired unhungry evening and a weekend and…suddenly you realise you’ve eaten naught but candy love hearts and coffee for three days. Or at least, I realise that. 
And then my concern changed into the shape of fear that this recipe would be off-putting, because it has the irritatingly specific butterscotch chips in it. But I figured you could joyfully replace them with white chocolate. 
And then, the biggest concern of the three – I realised, deflating like a sad balloon all the while – I’d already blogged this recipe back in 2010. 
As Homer Simpson once said: It’s like something out of that twilighty show about that zone.
Also more specifically: d’oh! 
Also less specifically: mmm, sacrelicious. 
I just really love Homer Simpson quotes, and relate to him quite a lot. (Him and Lisa.) 
To add to this increasing whirlpool of misadventure was that I then didn’t sleep the entire night – well, I slept for fifteen minutes, around 7am the next morning, but that’s all. Truly. At 3.30am I started writing this blog post obstinately anyway, in the face of all that doubtfulness. It seemed better than the alternative – staring at the walls in the dark. Sure, I’m feeling reproachful of myself for not being able to produce one single thing to blog about, but doubly sure I also have no time or brainspace, and c’mon, I gave you halloumi fries last week. Doesn’t that allow me some beatific laurel-resting till around the year 2017?

So, uh, admittedly the recipe hasn’t changed, but for the butterscotch chips instead of almonds. Said butterscotch chips were purchased from Martha’s Backyard, this amazing American foodstuff and stuff-stuff supply store in Auckland, where I also bought liquid smoke, three large boxes of nerds, and a bunch of fake plastic roses, all in black. For Hallowe’en, or whatever occasion seems fitting sooner. The butterscotch chips are fun, but not essential – they have an oddly artificial smoky caramel flavour and terracotta hue, but work with the juicy chunks of apple and warm cinnamon. 
Muffins are so easy to make – for one thing, you barely have to stir the mixture, in fact the less the better – and also they take hardly any time in the oven. Just enough to make your house smell snugly of cinnamon. They’re a lot smaller than your usual muffins from a shop, but they also have a tenderness that mass-produced ones tend to reject in favour of adopting the texture of a foam shoe insole. For a beige shoe.

These are just really delicious and comforting, and handle being frozen and then microwaved back to life as snacking needs dictate. And in case you missed it, again, the recipe is here. From…2010. At least it was late 2010!

Other life things:

Had a Campari and grapefruit cocktail during a last brunch before dear Kim and Brendan travelled overseas for seven weeks.

Started knitting a beanie with the leftover yarn from my cape. I just found a pattern online and worked out how to ‘read’ it, and started knitting. I’m very proud of myself for this progress.


Ate floor pizza and wine for Sarah-Rose’s birthday. Strewed nerds candy hither and yon, but luckily mostly into my own mouth.
Went to my first ever No Lights No Lycra. Just dancing around in the dark for an hour: it was euphoric.
In most pressing news, changed my usual eyeliner from flicky to overloaded and smudgy (this is probably the most important thing I’ve ever said on this blog.)

AND: I’ve been in cahoots with Delaney to plan my Auckland cookbook launch next Tuesday! The venue is only wee so if you’d like an invite for yourself or someone else, just email it and I’ll send it your way. I’m really excited – I get to make another speech! Come along! It will be fancy! If I have to say the word fancy once every five seconds!

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title via: Britney. I still remember the dance from the chorus to this song.
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music lately: 
Every now and then I listen to a lot of Kate Nash and howl at the moon from all the feelings it produces within me. We Get On does this in particular. So do all the rest of her songs.
Super Rich Kids, Frank Ocean. I adore this man. 
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next time: I will have had a sleep, I promise. And I also will have made some food that I can blog about. That I didn’t post about in 2010 (late 2010, at least!) 

this is my idea of fun

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Halloumi fries: they’re not just A Thing, they’re really something.
For all that I go on at length, such length, about how my brain can make my life difficult, occasionally it serves up an idea of distinct majesty that almost makes everything else worth it. Most recently: it was a frustrating, and frustratingly typical sleepless night when I had the idea for halloumi fries. What if you slice halloumi into thin rectangles, dust them with flour and deep-fry them? Would they be crunchy on the outside and melting on the inside with the stability of fries and the yielding salty tumescence of cheese? Or would they dissolve into puddles the instant they hit the hot pan, melting messily everywhere and absorbing half the oil and being generally horrific, in terms of taste, texture and money squandered?
Happily – rapturously, in fact, mere happiness doesn’t quite convey the um, rapture of the situation: it worked. I’m pretty used to things going disastrously wrong in the kitchen. Sometimes ingredients just don’t do what I assume of them, sometimes I am very clumsy, sometimes an idea is misguided or, like athletics and mathematics and haircuts, simply better done by a professional that isn’t me.
But these were perfect. Really, really, sorta bafflingly exceptional. Given the propensity for things to go wrong – halloumi is expensive, hot oil is intimidating, I am me, I couldn’t believe how breathtakingly straightforward the path to deliciousness was.

Simply coating these in flour before frying makes them so spontaneous-fist-in-the-air crisp and crunchy, yet the insides still have that soft, buttery halloumi bulginess. They are delicious, so delicious that you will eat them with brows furrowed in wonderment at how you’ve hit the one of the (hopefully many) high points of your very own existence.

(I don’t know, I kinda like this recipe, I guess.)

an unattractive but necessarily informative picture for you of the cheese frying. So now you know that this is what the cheese looks like when it’s frying. 
 
They are sufficiently sublime on their own, but if you want some kind of accompaniment, I’d suggest a tomato relish of some form, or a mix of wholegrain mustard and mayonnaise, or maybe aioli if you’re able to handle the rich-rich-rich of it all, or perhaps even just a dish of balsamic vinegar, which takes me back to pairing fish and chips with vinegar as a child.
 
halloumi fries
 
a recipe by myself. I considered adding chili powder or paprika to the flour but minimal is best here, to show off the excellence of the cheese and the frying process. My one main caution here is make sure you use a brand of halloumi that you know is firm and holds its shape. Some brands are more melty than others. I used Axelos since it was all the no-good supermarket had, and it worked fantastically.
 
serves two, but only if you really like the person and can manage to huffily, begrudgingly sacrifice some of these fries to them (I’m such a dick, I know.) 
 

1 block – 200g or so – of halloumi
1/2 cup plain flour (I initially wanted to use polenta but I only had flour, so: flour.) 
Plain oil, such as rice bran or grapeseed, for frying

Slice the halloumi into relatively even rectangles. I can’t tell whether I like these better as slightly wider, flatter shapes or thinner, more french-fry esque, so tend to do a bit of both. Any bits that crumble or fall off can still be used as a mid-frying snack for yourself. 

Heat up around an inch and a half of oil in a saucepan – really, that’s all you need – using a little offcut of halloumi to work out when it’s ready to go – put it in the pan and there should be rapid bubbles moving around it. Then eat it, of course.  

Place the flour on a plate and put about half the halloumi on it, turning over each slice to thoroughly coat it. Spoon each slice carefully into the pan – they might slowly float towards each other but they shouldn’t stick or anything. Also I just used a regular metal serving spoon for this, tongs might be easier but I didn’t want to dent or break the cheese slices. Allow the oil to bubble away and turn the slices over after a minute or so, once they’re golden brown on the underside (obviously you will have to check this, I don’t expect you to just know somehow.) Remove with the spoon to a plate with a couple of pieces of paper towel on it, and continue with the rest of the halloumi. The second batch tends to cook a lot faster, because the oil has really hit its stride in terms of being blastingly hot. 

Seriously. Thanks, brain. When I was eating these, I thought “this might actually be the most significant and valuable discovery of 2013“. I think I was being pretty sincere, too. Which is a little concerning. But you eat these, and then try telling me I’m exaggerating. Presuming you both like and can eat cheese in the first place, of course. I know hybrid foods – the cronut, the…um, cronut, it’s all I can think of right now – can be both overwrought and overdone till they’ve lost all sense of context and of being an actual food. These may speak of gimmick and wilful excess, neither of which I really have a problem with, but I promise you, in a fairly confident and calm manner, that these are simply incredibly good.

Also maybe some kind of potential phenomenon, if only in my brain. Which is not such a bad place all the time, after all.

Also: I finished my latest knitting project, a hooded cape. I am so proud of myself about this – it’s a large garment, it involved hours of stitching, I learned so many new moves, and…now I have a witchy cape which is hugely warm but also practical but also makes me feel a bit like Little Edie Beale in Grey Gardens. Not that she had an easy life, but she sure knew how to dress cunningly.
Finally, I had a lovely, super-fun interview about my cookbook in Canta, the Canterbury Uni student magazine. You can see a pdf of it here, and I’m on page fourteen. Yay interviews, I love them!
Finally-finally, I am still trying to organise an Auckland launch party for the cookbook so if you have any perspicacious thoughts regarding that, get in touch.

title via: Lana Del Rey, Video Games. She knows a thing or two about a thing or two. 
music lately:

Little Mix, Move. If you liked Girls Aloud’s Biology, that kind of twenty-two-pop-songs-whisked-into-one sound, then this should appeal.

Kanye West, Mercy. I love Kanye more every time he does something. Literally, almost anything he does, I’m like “yeah, Kanye!”