Category: Easy and/or Fast

you got it allison. you got it raw!

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It is crunch time. The time is crunchy. There is less than a month till my manuscript is due, and just over a month till Tim and I go to America for a holiday. We’ve been having three photoshoots a week, we’re surrounded by cakes, and it was only as I, with primal instinct, rapidly transferred handfuls of fresh clean spinach leaves by the handful into my mouth while Celine Dion’s Power of Love played in my head, that I realised I haven’t eaten a lot of vegetables lately. I’d like to add that I’m not saying this in a “now I need to go for a jog to work it off!” kind of way. Just that my nutrition has been at the mercy of whatever it is I happen to be preparing for photoshoots on a given day. And: I feel great!

I couldn’t be happier. It’s like being in a montage! Here are some fleeting scenes that have been part of it all lately:

– Did I mention Tim and I are surrounded by cake. At first it was a novelty, and then I felt horrible that it was no longer a novelty, so I’ve been trying hard to make myself feel like it is, by constantly saying “look at all this cake! What a novelty! What is life?”
– I was on the way to the supermarket today to pick up some ingredients, checked the mail on the way, only to find a letter from Mum to find a much needed, much appreciated supermarket voucher.
– I had to make a pavlova at 11pm on Friday while feeling a little queasy. Said pavlova inevitably failed, when I went to check on it the next morning. A  snap decision was made to make another one again, an hour before a photoshoot. It mercifully worked.
– Did I mention I was making said pavlovas with nought but a whisk and a bowl (and ingredients too of course, smarty-pants.) Have been pretty much unable to use my right arm ever since. It’s weird, because I make cakes and whip cream and so on with a whisk all the time. I think the franticness must’ve made my muscles extra tensile.
– I have been paying what feels like obscene amounts of money for out-of-season fruit and vegetables. Since winter is here the only thing actually in season is one sole, limp, rapidly browning parsnip. And it is $7.
-Breaking: a hangover from a ridiculously enormous party is not conducive to wanting to test lots of recipes. And yet still I cooked.
– The kindness of friends continues to bring joy. Jo lent me her mother’s wonderful pottery. Willow lent me some glorious tablecloths. Martha of Wanda Harland gave our plate collection an early boost by loaning us some beautiful stuff. Jason (one of the photographers) bought pretty much the most stunning dessert spoons I’ve ever beheld. And it goes on.
– Since I have been making so, so, sososososososososo much food for photoshoots and general recipe testing, it has been persistently difficult to find time and energy and – importantly – general hunger to make food that I can blog about. There’s just no chance to be hungry. Don’t get me wrong. As far as problems go, this one is pretty wonderful, what with it being because I’m writing a cookbook and all. But still!

This is why these marinated tamarillos are perfect. Sharp, sweet, aromatic, spiced. Small slices with a cracker and some cheese makes for a snack of thrillingly punchy flavour and relief-inducing smallness. Frankly I really just love eating them with a spoon.

Recently I was able to attend a demonstration from Megan at little bird organics. It was a supercool experience, as she took us through making several courses of food – all raw. Their ethos is about food tasting and also making you feel amazing, and this recipe from the evening in particular caught the attention of my tastebuds. Clearly I am not a raw vegan, or even vegetarian, but I enjoy being inspired by people who love food, and being exposed to new ideas. Which is exactly what happened. Thanks so much Megan for allowing me to share this recipe here. Because it is freaking delicious.

Marinated Tamarillos.


With huge thanks again to little bird organics for the recipe, that I have adapted ever-so-slightly. 

8-10 tamarillos
1/4 cup maple syrup or agave nectar
250ml (1 cup) red wine
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
Salt

Slice the tops off the tamarillos and using a sharp knife, slice off the skin. Then slice the newly naked tamarillos lengthwise, or however you please, really. Place them in a bowl. Pour over the syrup and the wine, spear with the cinnamon stick and the cloves, and grind over plenty of salt. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. I don’t have a dehydrator, but the recipe recommends putting them in it if you do. 

There will be a lot of syrup – I just drained it off. I held on to it because I have a feeling it’ll be fantastic topped up with gin and soda.

Something in the salty, wine-deep intensity of these is quite compulsive. I love them. It may look like you’re making tons, but you’ll get through it all easily, I promise. Best of all, tamarillos are actually in season here and reasonably priced. But once they’re gone, I think I’ll try making these with sliced pears, and then next Autumn, perhaps I’ll make it with feijoas. Inbetween times, I predict this would also be a wonderful marinade for sliced plums…all I’m saying is, there are options for you outside the realm of the tamarillo. But it’s a very, very good start.

I saved the best montage scene for last. This afternoon I had to make a [redacted] pudding for tonight’s photoshoot. It felt like it was going to be highly straightforward. Well. I screwed it up royally. It did not cook right at all. So I panic-ate it. I just…ate it all, in a kind of fugue state. It felt oddly logical, so I went with it, because that way it would be gone and the ingredients wouldn’t be wasted and so on and so forth.

My second attempt at making the pudding failed also. Freaking out about wasting ingredients, about wasting precious time, about this stupid, sodding, straightforward pudding just refusing to work, I may have panic-eaten a goodly proportion of the second one, too. Luckily I came to and binned the rest of it, before my insides corroded. A few prickly, selfish tears were shed, I had some rescue remedy, and looked up pictures of Tom Hardy holding a dog. And, weary but sufficiently emboldened, I made a third go of that pudding. I could feel – perhaps a little irrationally – the ingredients not quite coming together the way I intended them to, but shunted it hatefully into the oven all the same. As soon as I could ascertain that it was not entirely successful, but at least relief-inducingly good-enough…I lay down on the ground and drank some vodka.

Lucky for me I have such a brilliant team in Kate, Jason and Kim. They’ve been able to make even the most doubtful dishes look so beauteous, it makes me feel this might all come together and…work. As Jessi says to Kristy in the Baby-sitters Club movie, “Kristy, this brilliant idea might actually be brilliant!” (I’m not sure whether the actor is not so great at her job, or the line is so bad that she couldn’t do anything with it, either way it’s kinda terrible – yet so applicable.)

In the face of all this exciting, tiring, wonderful, stressful, emotional, sugar-soaked, um, stuff, sometimes there is only one response:

A large Campari. If you can’t be fancy, you might as well fancy yourself as fancy.

PS: If you’re in Wellington and feeling able and up for it, there’s a Celebration Rally for Marriage Equality on Wednesday 29 August at noon in Civic Square. This is so important! I’m not sure that I’m going to have time to make a sign or anything, but I’m definitely going to be there. If you’re interested, click the link for details.

Title via: Normally I quote songs but this is a line from a movie – a musical comedy, in fact, but the point is, it is Cry-baby. An over-the-top, hilarious, sweet, wonderfully bizarre movie from John Waters starring a young Johnny Depp who overacts deliciously when saying such quotable lines as the title for this blog post. Also: there is Wanda Woodward. Find it, fast. 

Music lately:

Over at Lani Says I got wise to the ways of Jessie Ware. Her song Wildest Moments is LUSH.

Safety Dance, Men Without Hats. Make of this what you will. I can’t help loving this ridiculousness. And if your friends don’t dance then they really are no friends of mine.

Never not obsessed with the musical Hair. Here’s Flesh Failures/Let The Sun Shine In from the original Broadway cast.

Next time: Next time, I’ll be ever closer to the manuscript due date. And therefore you can look forward to me making even LESS sense than I did in this post. Good times, good times.

how lucky can you get?

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I intended on publishing this on Thursday or Friday, but a ton of other things got in the way, and then Tim and I have spent the last 24 hours driving many, many, many and then some miles to visit his grandparents, having realised we hadn’t done it in a while and it was an important thing to do. I’m all good with family outweighing this blog, just as I’m cool with this blog outweighing my need to sleep and generally function. Let’s go, on with the show.

You know what I love? What really makes me want to hug myself but also not want to draw attention to it for fear of breaking the spell and then it’ll all be over? Spontaneous good times. I just wish I could schedule them into my life more often. Like, “You there! Closest friends of mine! Nothing’s happening this Saturday, so let’s all pretend like we’re going to do other things separately but actually we all secretly understand that we’ll meet at someone’s house at 9pm and then drink lots of whisky and stay up all night talking about our lives and feelings!” Obviously life doesn’t actually work like that, but I think if we all tried to maintain this pretense, it could be quite, quite rewarding.

I say this because last Saturday, after a five-hour photoshoot for The Cookbook, we had a couple of people round for a game of Game of Thrones. (Yes, it’s a boardgame; no, it’s not just a group of us dressing up and talking all ye olde and calling everything we drink Summerwine or Good Brown Ale; yes I would probably be up for that too though; no there is no alternative to calling the board game ‘Game of Game of Thrones’.) That photoshoot was particularly exhausting – sounds ridiculous, but it takes it out of a person – we were all super low in energy when it was done, and I figured it was going to be a very quiet night. Smash cut to 11:00pm when I tweeted “Everyone in the world is at our house and no-one is allowed to leave until they’ve drank all our alcohol and eaten all our food” (because if I like you, that’s the kind of host I am.) There was a dance party in the kitchen. There was the Game of Thrones TV theme song sung while Brendan played it on the accordion (which is the most magnificent thing to hear – not us singing along with it so much, but the accordion itself – so imposing!). There was, well, pretty much everything the tweet implied.

It was so fun, and I had no idea it was going to happen. So let’s all plan for more spontaneous times, okay everyone?

But what about this chocolate cake already? It’s from Lucky Peach magazine, ‘a quarterly journal of food and writing’, exploring food with a kind of irreverence and fearlessness and coolness that hasn’t quite been done before, which in this everything-has-been-quite-done-before world is impressive. Like: David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme, writes about his father’s love of sodium in this latest issue. By way of shorthand illustration of its coolth. (Also: coolth is a word. Cool huh!)

It’s not pretty, it’s occasionally kinda ugly, but the design is compelling and fun and the writing is generally super brilliant. It’s expensive but it’s only out four times a year and it’ll probably take me a quarter of a year just to read this issue. And it has this cake from pastry chef/musician Brooks Headley. It appealed to me – a plain, but excellent-sounding chocolate cake is what everyone needs up their sleeve (figuratively) and in their mouths (literally). The recipe is all in cups, being American, and in the magazine it was three times bigger than this – all I needed was one cake so I scaled it back. Forty-five minutes later when I finally figured out the mathematics of it all, I can attest that it is a fantastic recipe.

Chocolate Olive-Oil Cake, by Brooks Headley, from Issue 4 of Lucky Peach

Life is strange. I buy really expensive cocoa which actually tastes like chocolate, and used that here, but I couldn’t bring myself to use a full 2/3 cup of also-pricey olive oil, so I went for 1/3 cup olive oil and 1/3 cup plain cooking oil. You do what you like.

  • 1/2 cup cocoa
  • 2/3 cup water
  • 1 1/3 cups flour
  • 1 1/3 cups sugar
  • 1/2 t baking soda
  • 1 t salt
  • 2/3 cup buttermilk (I used unsweetened natural yoghurt)
  • 2/3 cup olive oil
  • 1 egg

Set your oven to 170 C and line a 20 or 21cm cake tin with baking paper.

The hardest thing you’ll have to do is heat the water and cocoa together. So to do that: in a decent-sized pot or pan, since you might as well mix everything else into it, stir the cocoa and the water together and heat gently – continuing to stir so it doesn’t burn – until it just starts to bubble. Remove from the heat and allow to cool down some – I filled the sink with an inch of cold water and whisked the cocoa and water to move this process along – then whisk in the remaining ingredients. Pour into your cake tin and bake for around 30 minutes.

Brooks states that this recipe is “foolproof”. I am wary of this description. Getting your learner driver license is foolproof, they told me. Well this fool just failed, I replied, tearfully. It goes on. But this cake really is very straightforward. And importantly: delicious. Don’t be scared of the olive oil, it has its own nutty, buttery flavours that are perfect for chocolate and it makes for a long-lasting cake with a light crumb. I made this to augment the contents of the ‘snack table’ during some photoshoots this week and the final slice, eaten for breakfast yesterday before driving up to Tim’s grandparents’ place, was every bit as good as the first.

So thanks, Lucky Peach. Long may you be excellent.

Title via: How Lucky Can You Get, the Kander and Ebb song from Funny Lady, the sequel to Funny Girl. I love Barbra, but Julia Murney interprets it deliciously. As she does with everything.

Music Lately:

Frank Ocean, Bad Religion. OBSESSED.

It’s not music, but I have been watching this video lots and crying nearly every time, which is what I tend to do with music anyway. Nadia Comaneci in 1976, getting – spoiler alert – a perfect 10 for her floor routine. I used to be so (here comes that word again) obsessed with her as a kid, and youtube has helped me remember just why.

Next time: Whatever it is, I’ll blog about it sooner this time, promise!

 

too much of something is bad enough

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Did I really hate brussels sprouts while growing up, or did all the American TV shows and movies I watched with feverish fervour make me think I didn’t like them? Well, I’ve already asked that question here when I blogged about Ottolenghi’s Brussels Sprouts with Tofu, and as it does not behoove me to repeat content, I won’t, and will instead just direct you back to that (although the long story short answer is: kinda the former, kinda the latter.) Anyway, where I’m going with this is that it’s no great revelation to announce that people are generally suspicious of brussels sprouts, and I believe this usually stems from people – or more specifically, people’s parents – having zero knowledge of what to do with them. And so they did what you did with all vegetables back in the day: boiled them. Boiled them till they were formless, flavourless, unloveable and interchangeable.

What you should really be doing with brussels sprouts is frying them or roasting them. No longer are they bitter, flappy mini-cabbages of sorrow. Instead when applied to direct heat or when blasted under a hot oven, they become crisp, wonderfully nutty, crunchy, and deeply delicious. Not only nothing to be scared of, but something to eat much of.

The reason I’m currently so pro-sprout, is because I am in the middle of testing a million recipes for my upcoming cookbook (which is, in itself, an intensely delicious thing to say out loud, well on paper, well on this screen, anyway) and the things I’m testing right now are largely within the genre of cake. We are surrounded by cakes. This is fantastic. However, I enjoy a little contrast, and my tastebuds have reacted to all this cake by craving intensely savoury food. Hence why I made myself this for lunch yesterday.

Couscous with Fried Brussels Sprouts, Cardamom and Sesame Seeds

A recipe by myself.

This is more a suggestion than anything. I like cardamom’s eucalytpy-lemony bite, and I just had some cooked couscous in the fridge. You could use whichever spices you please, and mix it with rice, or bulgur wheat, or quinoa, or anything. But let’s suppose you do have these ingredients – here’s what you’d do.

6 brussels sprouts
Olive oil
3 cardamom pods, roughly sliced so that the pods are pierced but not halved entirely.
1/2 cup cooked couscous
1 lemon
1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Trim the bases from the sprouts, then quarter them lengthwise. Heat about 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a pan, and throw in the sprouts and the cardamom seeds once it’s hot. Push them round so that one of the cut sides of each quarter is facing down on the hot pan. Place a lid on top and leave for a couple of minutes. This will allow the sprouts to fry and crisp up slightly, while also steaming them a little too, to actually cook them. Remove the lid and stir around – they should be considerably browned in places. Throw in the couscous and sesame seeds and squeeze in the juice of the lemons. Stir around to combine, then tip onto a plate. 

It might not sound like much but it’s a pretty perfect lunch, full of crunch and warmth and nutty deliciousness. And after eating it, I’m ready to face the cake again.

So guess what? I’m still kinda sick with that stupid head cold/flu/thing. Not nearly as sick, but still blowing my nose and coughing juuuuust enough to not feel entirely done with it. I am, however, well enough to get dressed up as a gold lion for a wild animal-themed party tonight. No doubt there will be amusing tails (haha!) to tell and photos to share once it’s done…in the meantime I’m looking forward to wearing lots of makeup, making my hair enormous (my main motivation for dressing up as a lion, I’ll be honest – I’m all about the big hair) and dancing big.
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Title via: The so important Spice Girls, with their single Too Much from their second album Spiceworld. This song is rather gorgeous and still holds up well. And the video is amongst their most babein-est, and sometimes too much of nothing really is just as tough, you know?
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Music lately:

Bernadette Peters, spookily ageless, always tears-inducingly good, singing No-one Is Alone from Into The Woods. Whether or not it’s true, it’s nice to have her sing it to you at least.

Ini Kamoze, Here Come The Hotstepper. You could play this to me at 4am on a rainy night after I’d been doing a graveyard shift as a bricklayer and I’d still get up and dance to it.
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Next time: I will not be sick, and I might have come round to the idea of sugar again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rainbow Room Carrot and Peanut Salad

a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s book Forever Summer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music lately:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomato Soup with Sake, Chilli and Cinnamon.

A recipe by myself.

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

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

Serves 1 – although easily multiplied for more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Music to write a cookbook to:


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

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

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

and i will be alone again tonight my dear

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

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

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




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


Fried Onion Rice with Nuts, Cardamom and Cinnamon

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

a dip in the butter and a flutter with what meets my eye

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Aren’t hormones just the darnedest things? I was thinking about the Spice Girls the other day and started crying a little. While on a public street in Wellington, walking to work. I know, what is life. It was pretty innocuous – something along the lines of ‘they were so pretty but accessible and they really did seem like the best of friends” and then I just got a bit teary, out of nowhere. Last time I cried while thinking about the Spice Girls was back in 1998 when Geri Halliwell left and I couldn’t listen to Viva Forever without my heart crumbling like a Spice Girls-branded Chupa Chup under someone’s back molars.

That really has nothing to do with anything (apart from everything) but it was an anecdote too large for Twitter and too strange for Facebook, and an anecdote nonetheless. I don’t exist on this many online formats to not be able to share awkward public tearfulness at the hands of a largely non-credible 90s pop group somewhere.

It has been a week of big decisions. The biggest being that with this cookbook looming ever closer, I’m leaving my full-time job to devote myself to writing. Writing the book, writing this blog (I don’t want to ever be too busy for it) and hopefully doing some more freelance writing too, in order to keep myself and Tim in butter. It’s not something I’ve decided to do lightly – money doesn’t come from nothing, I’ve gained a lot of opportunities from my current workplace, and honestly it still feels so recently that KFC and several supermarkets never called me back. But the book needs to come first, and so the end of June will also be the end of my office life for a while.

I almost wasn’t going to blog tonight – I did a lot of sleep-ignoring in the leadup to getting confirmation of the book deal and I can’t quite convince my body to carry on at that same hyper level now I’ve got it. However I conceded that I should blog, and could easily upload an instagram of dinner. Then I figured I might as well use my actual proper camera. By the time I started thinking “By gosh, this photo could use a loosely folded teatowel” I knew I was committed. This is just something I came up with tonight, a response to the brutally cold wet weather and to what I had in the fridge. I’m not the best at cooking polenta but this method, while not traditional, tends to work for me. Polenta will absorb pretty much whatever you throw at it, so if you don’t have cream, just use more water or milk and maybe add some butter, or you could use tomato juice, or well flavoured stock. There are options out there, this is but one.

Garlicky Polenta with Greens and Browned Butter


A recipe by myself.


1 cup fine polenta/cornmeal (they’re the same thing, but make sure it’s the finer, not coarser stuff.)
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup milk
2 cups water
Salt
As many green vegetables as you like – I used broccoli, spinach, and avocado. Also good would be beans, peas, Savoy cabbage, rocket, edamame, etc…
Butter


First, slice up any of your vegetables that need it and have them ready. 


Then, in a medium sized pan, carefully whisk together the polenta, garlic, cream, milk and 1 cup of the water till smooth. Bring to the boil, continuing to stir, and adding the extra water if it gets too thick. It will bubble a little – big, slow-moving bubbles – but just continue to stir it, till, when you carefully taste it, the grains are soft and not the slightest bit gritty, with a texture verging on mashed potato-like. 


Set aside while you quickly deal to the vegetables – heat up the pan and add any non-leafy, non-avocado greens to it. Tip in 1/2 cup of water and let it bubble away. Then add your spinach or other leaves, and continue to cook till the water has evaporated and the leaves have wilted. 


Finally – spoon the polenta onto two plates, put the greens (including your avocado if you’ve got it) on top, and then finally heat up the same pan you cooked the veges in and throw in about 30g butter. Let it sizzle over a high heat till darkened, with golden bubbles appearing. Remove from heat and spoon it over the vegetables and polenta. Serve.

Polenta becomes quilt-soft and gently creamy in flavour – incredible comfort food, the likes of which I never even knew existed a few years back. Browning the butter means burning it, but if you’re wary of such brazen actions just know that it becomes more darkly rich and nutty and – oh, glorious new word! – pinguid than you dreamed possible. And hot browned butter on top of cool firm avocado is quite the revelation. It won’t be the last you’ll see this combination here, I assure you.

Pinguid pinguid pinguid. As satisfying to say as it is to think about things that are pinguid.

It has also been a week of podcast fraught-ness. If your original file never recorded properly, your laptop wall charger stopped working, you accidentally uploaded entirely the wrong file to iTunes and in a panic accidentally not only delete it entirely from your podcast website rather than calmly editing it, but also delete the first episode…would you feel like the universe was trying to say “stop trying to make fetch happen!“? It wasn’t just any wrong file I uploaded to iTunes, but a video. Yes, if you can’t tell by the crisp, stellar sound on my podcast, I just record myself talking on Photo Booth, then convert it to mp3, then upload it as a podcast. Except I forgot to convert it, so had you casually found my podcast on iTunes, you would’ve been greeted by my pale, unwashed face talking away in the semi-dark while I was wrapped in a wooly blanket, followed by me in an old tshirt with the angle of the camera directly up my nose, followed by me wearing the outfit I describe in the podcast, but still not at my best angle (I assume I have one.) iTunes does not make it easy for you to delete something in a hurry either. Awkward.

Again I’d like to throw some huge love in the direction of my friend Kate, who came and recorded twice after the first file was busted, whose husband volunteered me their own laptop wall charger after mine stopped working, and who is such a brilliant podcast guest that I was, while editing it, continually smiling and nodding and turning to Tim and yelling “I think it’s going to be good!” because I forgot that I always shout when I’m trying to talk with headphones on.

So if you want to listen to The HungryandFrozen #soimportant Podcast Episode 2, you finally can, on the website or here in iTunes.

It has also been a time of parties! I was going for queen of the dinosaurs here, but despite my hastily cobbled-together garland of dinos, I somehow ended up looking like I was selling Pears soap or something. (Photo by Kate – I guess it’s been a time of Kate too!) Still, it’s a much better look than what I saved you all from in the accidentally-uploaded-video-podcast horrorshow. I wish there were more opportunities to wear dinosaur garlands, I guess since I’m not going to be in the office for much longer I can make my own opportunities, right? This imminent lack of job is paying for itself!
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Title via: The Miller’s Son from Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Sara Ramirez (as in Grey’s Anatomy’s Callie, or as in Tony Award winning Sara Ramirez) is so, so magnificent here.
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Music lately:

Liane La Halvas, Age. She’s gorgeous, the song’s gorgeous. Yay for her.

This isn’t a song as such, but if you have even the slightest interest in hearing people sing nicely (not to back you into a corner here) this Seth Rudetsky ‘Obsessed’ video with Morgan James of Godspell has me, well, obsessed. Her voice is incredible. Worth it entirely for the bit at the end, although everything leading up to it’s great as well – I must’ve watched this a zillion times.
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Next time: I can’t get enough brown butter at the moment, and Brown Butter Ice Cream keeps appearing in my head, but we’ll see, we’ll see.

some are born to rise above sleepless nights and sloe gin love love love

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If you wouldn’t mind indulging me for a moment:

I’ve become slightly infatuated with Cinemagram, this app on my phone. It lets you create little gif-like moving images that can border from the barely mediocre (ahem) to the breathtakingly gorgeous. If you can’t view the above, what’s there is a bowl of ice cream ingredients and a bottle of cream, the former eternally emptying its delicious contents into the grateful latter.

I won’t, however, use this as a segue into talking about indulging in ice cream, because I refuse to buy into that. Ice cream is just what I eat when I feel like ice cream, no need be stacking on the guilt when you could stacking on the chocolate sauce instead. Right? Right.

And I feel like eating ice cream a LOT. Good thing my ability to think up ice cream recipes can keep up with desire to eat ice cream.

What a week it has been. On Thursday morning I read the news and punched the air joyously at Obama vocalising his support of marriage equality. On Friday night Tim and I went to Queer the Night, a march against homophobia and transphobia, with friends of ours. We ran into more friends along the way, and walking the streets of Wellington on a clear night chanting “two, four, six, eight, don’t be sure your kids are straight” felt right and good. Hearing heart-clenchingly sad stories from those who spoke was a reminder that there’s no place for complacency. An impromptu-ish party followed, from which my fondest memories include so many hugs, spreading crackers with butter and sprinkling them with salt, doing a highkick and landing in the splits (at the encouragement of others, not of my own volition, although I hardly require arm-twisting) and gasping over the staggering beauty, and utter importance of the Parks and Recreation final. I freely admit I’ve been inordinately affected by this half hour comedy show, and that there was a whole lot of crying and shaking going on. I may or may not have (or actually did) tweeted “Leslie Knope, moon of my life.” Make of this what you will.

And on top of all that, I thought that Gin and Tonic Ice Cream would be nice. Gin and tonic go together so excellently well. Why wouldn’t they excel together in ice cream form? Well, it wasn’t so much “nice” as “high-kick-then-landing-in-the-splits-ingly rapturous”, but you be the judge.

You no more need an ice cream machine for this than you need to know how to do the splits. It really couldn’t be easier. Or more unconditionally delicious. Seriously, this is one of my finest creations, and I say that as someone who says that every time they create something, so…who can you trust? Only your own tastebuds, once you’ve made this for yourself.

Gin and Tonic Ice Cream

A recipe by myself.

  • 1 cup sugar
  • Juice of a lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
  • 3 tablespoons gin
  • 125 ml tonic water
  • 600ml cream

Tip the sugar into a bowl and add the lemon juice, gin, and tonic water. Stir to dissolve a little, then pour in the cream. Whisk till thickened. You’re not looking for whipped cream here, just something that has the texture of, say, a good thickshake. Transfer to a freezer-proof container (like – haha! – an old actual ice cream container) and allow to freeze, of course.

Whilst vodka and soda water with no lime is my very favourite I have much room in my heart for gin. Gin comes with a sense of occasion and history. It calls to mind high summer, when I knew I was cool because mum and her friends let me have a G&T with them when we were camping. (Okay, ‘cool’ and ‘hanging out with one’s mum’ can be mutually exclusive, but hey.) It speaks of nights spent watching Gossip Girl with dear friends. And…I just really like the taste. What you end up with here is an ice cream bearing a delicate yet absolutely present hit of gin’s citrussy bitterness, which the inclusion of tonic, the arch older cousin to lemonade, only helps with.

The proportion of liquor to cream gives you the most ridiculous texture – it’s like soft-serve ice cream, straight from the freezer. Alcohol slows down the freezing process, but you don’t want too much or you’ll never actually get to the point of ice cream. It’ll be sludge. Exquisite sludge, but still. For all its simplicity, this is one of the most delicious ice creams I’ve ever tasted. Creamy and aerated, yet with a lemon sorbet-lightness. And importantly, it’s on just the right side of boozy, so you don’t make this face when you eat a spoonful.

And, if you’re given to flights of dinkiness and frivolity, which I often am, you might as well garnish it with a slice of lemon.

Title via the Lowdown-down from the other version of The Wild Party musical, both equally as exciting as each other, really. This one had Eartha Kitt, Mandy Patinkin, and a swell Toni Collette as Queenie, who sings this glorious song.

Music lately:

Frail Girls/Salad Daze, the double A-side single from Street Chant. Will likely form some more comprehensive thoughts around this soon, but for now: I really, really, REALLY like these songs.

Ghostface Killah ft Raekwon, Kilo. He’s coming to NZ! And not just NZ, but Wellington. If I had a nickel for every act that just went to Auckland, probably entirely justifiably, but still, I’d be able to afford to fly up there more often.

Next time: Not sure, should probably do an actual dinner recipe or something as a bit of a contrast though, I guess….

 

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

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

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

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

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

Toffee Brittle Chocolate


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

just twist your hip and do the dip

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

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

Peanut Butter Hummus

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pink Lemonade

A recipe by myself

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

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

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

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