Category: Easy and/or Fast

just a little too soft, al dente

14 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music lately:

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

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

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

 

tengo de mango, tengo de parcha…

12 Comments

Only ten sleeps till Tim and I go on our massive adventure overseas. And there’s so much to do. Like pack. And suss out the best method of casually running into Angela Lansbury in London so I can tell her she’s one of my heroes. And I’m going away for three days for work on Thursday.

Hence, the mood here is distinctly…squirrelly. Between all that, and keeping an eye on the regrettably escalating disasters both local and international, we haven’t been to bed before midnight once over the last three weeks. I don’t know if that’s gasp-worthy or not compared to your own patterns, but 11-ish used to be the zenith of my awakeness on a regular day. Seems a harder to settle down and relax for its own sake now.

However, I had a day off today, slept in, did some yoga, and fully intended to make this Mango Chutney. Unfortunately, in my absence last weekend the two mangoes had achieved a state of maturity not wanted for that recipe.

So…I thought about sensible ways of using up these heavily ripe mangoes. Because of our trip, it has been on my mind that I need to use up anything perishable. I had a can of condensed milk in the cupboard which took from our work’s emergency survival boxes (because it had reached its best-by date, like, I was allowed to take it). Despite the fact that so many other options would’ve been easier – including just straight eating them – I found myself deciding, trancelike, that the most judicious, pragmatic option would be to use the mangoes in a sauce to go with a chocolate cake using this *clearly dangerous* condensed milk.

See? Makes sense, right? I also kinda love the seventies vibes of the orange sauce against the chocolatey background.

Nigella Lawson has a recipe for chocolate cake which uses condensed milk in it, really easy stuff – one of those melt, mix, bake jobs. I adapted this a little to better serve the coconut-chocolate craving I had, and to make it more of a brownie than a cake. The mango sauce is my own creation and as long as you’ve got a food processor, it’s completely simple. Of course, the mango sauce can easily exist without the brownies and vice-versa, but they do taste blissful together, and I barely had to convince myself that they both needed to be made. And further to this, since I already find baking a calming, endorphin-inducing activity, if you feel this way too it can only have a restorative effect on your nerves…

Some things to keep in mind – with all that condensed milk I wanted to counteract it with some good, heartily dark cocoa and chocolate. The initial melted mixture is unspeakably delicious, but you can kinda feel your teeth wearing away like rocks on the shore with sweetness if you sneak a spoonful, so the higher the cocoa solids the better. The mango sauce tastes really good if it’s freezing cold. And the spoonful of Shott Passionfruit syrup isn’t essential but if you’ve got some, you may well be as flabberghasted as I am about how distinctly passionfruit-esque it tastes. I bought it at the City Market a while back after tasting some – it’s so delicious. Don’t feel like this recipe is pointless if you don’t have any – it’s all about the mangoes, and the syrup just encourages its wild fruitiness. Vanilla extract, while different, would provide a similar and delicious function.

Something about the presence of condensed milk made me want to include it in the title, you do as you please but this is what I’ll be calling them.

Chocolate Coconut Condensed Milk Brownies

Adapted from a recipe of Nigella Lawson’s from How To Eat

  • 100g butter
  • 200g sugar
  • 100g dark chocolate (I use Whittaker’s Dark Ghana 72%)
  • 30g cocoa
  • 1 tin condensed milk
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 2 eggs
  • 200g flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 2 cups long thread coconut OR 1 1/2 cups dessicated coconut

Set your oven to 180 C/370 F. Line a square or rectangle small roasting tin – the sort you’d make brownies in – with baking paper.

In a large pan, melt together the butter, sugar, water, chocolate and condensed milk. Sift in the flour, cocoa and baking powder, mixing carefully. Mix in the coconut and eggs. Tip into the tin, bake for about 30-40 minutes.

This mango sauce is drinkably gorgeous, light, perfumed, zingy and bright orange. You could use it on ‘most anything – pancakes, ice cream, porridge…

Mango Sauce

A recipe by myself. Makes about 1/2 cup sauce. Use more mangoes if you want more.

  • 2 Mangoes, fridge-cold
  • 1 tablespoon Schott passionfruit syrup OR 1 teaspoon good vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon custard powder mixed with a tablespoon water

-Chop as much of the mango fruit off the stone as you can. Place in a food processor with the syrup and blend thoroughly till it’s looking good and liquidised. Tip in the custard powder-water and blend again. Scrape into a jug/container, set aside till you need it.

I never really know what to do with sauces to make them look good – the spoonful that I draped over these brownies looked hopelessly drippy. So when in doubt: distract with a relevant garnish. In food as in life.

So what do they taste like? Separately, both recipes shine – the slippery, fragrant, island-paradise taste of mangoes, elusive and slightly peachy and barely tampered with in this sauce. The condensed milk gives the brownies a melting texture punctuated by the strands of coconut, like fibres in a coir mat (Wait! No! That doesn’t sound nice at all!) and the combination of dark chocolate and cocoa gives a broad spectrum of chocolate flavour. Together though, far out they’re good – the cool, fruity sauce cutting through the sweet, throat-filling brownie, the fragrant mango and coconut cosying up together in an extremely delicious manner.

And I’m pretty sure they’ll disappear in a hot minute. So no need to worry about baking lurking round limply while we’re overseas. Speaking of limpness, I nearly fainted from bunchy nerves after booking Tim and I into Ottolenghi’s Islington restaurant for a ‘birthday season’ dinner on the 18th of April (the day after my birthday). So you know, my actual birthday was booked out, over a month in advance. Yotam Ottolenghi is such an exciting, inspirational food-creator – a recent addition to my heroes of cooking, a mighty team that includes Nigella Lawson, Aunt Daisy and Ray McVinnie. To actually eat in one of his restaurants is seriously thrilling. Just…imagine someone whose work you think is really, really awesome. Then imagine you get to experience it. It’s like that.

Title via: I was totally going to quote M.I.A but her line felt more suited to the mango pickle that I never ended up making. If this process is of any interest to you; anyway instead today I quote Piragua, the song about shaved ice from Broadway musical In The Heights, from the pen of the gorgeous and formidably talented Lin-Manuel Miranda – special guest at the inagural White House Poetry Jam, for starters…

Music lately:

Cole Porter’s Anything Goes from the musical of the same title. Thought on its breezy, timeless moxie today while watching a clip of the also formidable star Sutton Foster tap-dancing the heck out of it in rehearsals – seriously, watch this video. I kinda wish songs still had unnecessary preambles and lengthy dance breaks.

Dum Dum Girls, He Gets Me High: makes me want to dance round like this.

Next time: Well, I’ve still got those quinces to use. Anyone got any suggestions, preferably something that doesn’t involve too much sugar?

 

we go in a group, we tour in a troupe, we land in the soup

9 Comments

This minestrone has many, many good things going for it. You can make it up as you go along to suit what you’ve got (that’s what I did). It doesn’t cost much. It’s filling. It’s delicious. It’s vegan. It’s full o’ vitamins. It made me feel better about the increasingly forlorn group of parsnips in the fridge, it might have a similar effect on you. Depending on what you add to it, it can be as summery or as stodgily wintry as you like. And it takes hardly any of whatever effort you’ve got left at the end of the day.


Maybe it’s just me, and I realise being lacklustre isn’t the best way to push a recipe, but the one negative about this soup is…with all that good-for-you worthiness and vegetables-only content it’s not necessarily the most wildly exciting thing to be eating. If you’re up for it, some fresh, buttery scones would be fantastic alongside, or at the least some (also buttered) toast.
However while you wouldn’t think there’d be much to it (for example, because I told you) it’s delicious and sustaining and comforting and, as I said, pretty cheap too. All good things now, and indeed at any time. And while I love stirring chilli and spices into food, what could be seen as holding this soup back is also part of its charm – the simplicity of flavour. Much of it comes from the alchemy of stirring onions over heat and simmering the sweet, starchy parsnips and kumara. They lift it from being a bowl of aimlessly boiled vegetables into something pretty superb.
Undemanding Minestrone
Use whatever related vegetables you have: a combination of leeks, other kumara varieties, potato, frozen peas as well as canned beans/chickpeas/lentils would all work here.
1 onion
4 spindly or 1 fat parsnip
1-2 zucchini
1/2 a big orange kumara
Handful of small pasta like risoni or the bashed up remains of a packet of pasta or a few tablespoons long grain white rice.
Olive oil, salt and pepper. If you don’t have olive oil, use butter instead.

Slice the onion up thin. Heat the oil in a wide pan, and stir the onion slices in it over a gentle till properly cooked and browned slightly but not blackened. Grind in some salt. Chop all the rest of your vegetables into small chunks, add them to the hot pan and stir for about five minutes till they’ve started to become tender and have gained some colour.

Pour over enough water to come an inch above the vegetables, bring to a good bubbling simmer and tip in the pasta (or rice). Allow to simmer gently for another ten minutes or so, until the pasta is cooked through.
At this point you can leave it covered until you need to reheat and eat it – if this is any longer than a couple of hours then put it in the fridge.
As I said, one of the cool things about this minestrone is that you can add what you like to it depending on what you have. Its simplicity is great, but don’t let that stop you. Tomatoes. Canned beans. Finely chopped cabbage. Barley. Carrots. Pesto. Chilli sauce. Whatever you’ve got, this minestrone can probably accommodate it. It’s magic as is though, the pasta grains swelling up and absorbing the liquid flavoured by its vegetable inhabitants, the sweetness of the starchier ingredients stared down by the bolder onion and zucchini.
Meals like this are our thing at the moment. I’m away this weekend and next weekend for work and then the weekend after that, Tim and I take off on our Massive Exciting Overseas Trip so as well as wanting to eat things that don’t cost much, it’s good to get through whatever’s in the fridge. That said, I did run into Millie Mirepoix at the supermarket today and was convinced (okay, convinced myself, but she was an enabler) to buy a couple of gorgeous, perfumed quinces, which will need some fairy immediate attention.
I haven’t even thought that much about what I’ll do with this blog while I’m away – I think I’ll try to get a post done as close to our leaving time as possible and then just leave it as is, hoping for the best that you’ll all be there when I get back. As Christine Ebersole as Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale in Grey Gardens said, “when violets return in Spring, will you?” I’m not sure it’s all that relevant really considering New Zealand’ll be heading towards winter come April, but this song makes me buckle at the knees with its beauty and I just like a chance to link to it semi-gratuitously.
___________________________________________
Title via: Together, Wherever from the always quotable, always listenable Gypsy, a musical I would really love to see for real one day, till then making do with a couple of different cast recordings and my DVD of Bette Midler’s made for TV movie version of it. I also found this amazing clip of Liza and Judy singing an abridged version of this song…I love you youtube.
___________________________________________

Music lately

Till Tomorrow by David Dallas, I love this new video of his by Special Problems with its constantly moving, animated wandering hotdog and mustachioed donut visuals. Plus the bouncing, offbeat rhyming calling to mind, in a really good way, Can I Kick It?

Thunder On The Mountain by Wanda Jackson. Another of her tracks that sound both fresh and ancient, with a fast beat, full-on horns, and Jackson’s deliciously roguish voice.
________________________________________
Next time: either way probably something in a jar because I’ve still got to make that mango chutney, plus I’m halfway through making this recipe for dried fig and rhubarb jam from my Aunt Daisy cookbook.

better get that dough sister

14 Comments

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

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

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

No-Bake Vegan Cookie Dough Truffles

With thanks to Hannah from Wayfaring Chocolate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music lately:

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

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

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

a custard pirate lost at sea

11 Comments

In the middle of writing this, there was a small but hefty-feeling earthquake in Wellington. At first it felt like a truck backed into our flat. Then the bottles on top of our fridge started clinking together and everything shook. I dove under the table which holds up the computer that I’m typing on, clutching my phone – just like I’ve imagined doing a million times over the past week actually. I’m normally over-scared of earthquakes as it is, but hot on the heels of last week’s disaster in Christchurch a jolt like this, even though it was forty km deep and only went for about 10 seconds, had me unable to stop my hands from shaking while I tried to text mum to let her know. And then Christchurch got some aftershocks themselves. Ugh. Am looking very respectfully at the ground, at the hills in the distance (well, what I can see over the high rise apartments) and at the sky and asking them all to just…keep still.

First of March today, meaning it’s only about three weeks till Tim and I head off on our massive-for-us trip to London, Berlin, Warsaw and LA. It has also been a week since the earthquake in Christchurch, which is hard to believe – time goes fast enough as it is, but that was really a blur. And we’re not even in it.
After the fantastic time I had on Saturday baking and selling it for Christchurch at Grow From Here with Millie Mirepoix I got to thinking even more about comfort food. As I said in my last post, on Tuesday night when I got home, I made Tim and I a risotto. Since then we’ve eaten soup, curry, more soup, rice and beans…there’s something about food that’s hot and soft and bowl-confined, and I don’t want to overthink it, which administers delicious psychological aid when times are tough.
One good reason not to overthink it is that I’m lucky to be in a position to choose what is my opinion of comfort food at all in this time, when plenty in Christchurch are eating whatever’s in their rapidly warming freezer, whatever they can reach or whatever they’re given.
Nevertheless, if you need comfort food, then the zenith of yieldingly soft bowl-food is probably this coconut custard semolina, which I invented fairly successfully this evening. It’s hot, it’s fast, you eat it with a spoon. Another example of how I’m really not doing so badly is I fully struggled with what to call it. On the one hand, it’s really just custard flavoured semolina made with coconut milk, why I’ve named it thus. On the other hand I hate the word semolina but to call it coconut custard would be misleading given its ingredients. Yeah, this is how I think sometimes.
Of course the food that brings you peace might be some seriously spicy prawns or a giant steak or something (both of which appeal right now to be honest). Just in case you were considering it, don’t let me tell you what your comfort food is, or that you should buy into the concept at all. However, the very act of making what is considered comfort food can be comforting in itself, a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The stirring, the heat, the slow thickening of textures, the minimum of chewing required.
At best you’ve cooked yourself something and have the attitude of: Look at me being inevitably comforted by this so-called comfort food against my better judgement! Looook at me! Oh my, I feel a sense of calm. At the very least you’ve cooked yourself something that will stop you feeling hungry for a bit, and which costs hardly anything.
Instant Coconut Custard Semolina

2 tablespoons semolina
1 heaped tablespoon custard powder
1 can (400mls?) coconut milk or coconut cream
Brown sugar

A little whisk is one of the best tools here but if not a wooden spoon or a silicon spatula is more than fine. In a small pan, mix together the semolina and custard powder so there’s no lumps. Mix in enough of the coconut milk to make a smooth paste, then tip in the rest. Don’t worry if it’s a grey-ish colour from the coconut milk, it goes more golden as it heats up. Stir over a low heat for about five minutes.

It thickens quickly – at first like white sauce, before stiffening up significantly, like really thick cake batter. At this point take it off the heat, spatula it into a bowl or two, and pour over as much brown sugar as you like.
Initially I would’ve said this just serves one but it probably wouldn’t be silly to divide this generous bowlful between two people. Looking back, one can of coconut milk is maybe a lot for one person. But it’s delicious, so if you want to eat the lot yourself you have my blessing and my example to follow.
Until you add the brown sugar it’s a formless, hot bowl of gently-flavoured mush. Which is more or less what I was aiming for. The grains of semolina swell and disappear, muting the coconut flavour somewhat. The milky vanilla of the custard powder is subtle in all ways except for the yellow food colouring. It’s incredibly easy to eat, a thick, smooth, coconut scented paste untroubled by any semblance of texture. And then with the sweetness of the brown sugar it all makes sense somehow, the flavours immediately enhanced. The coconut, vanilla custard and melting caramelly sugar are all gorgeous without overpowering each other, but feel free to add a shake of cinnamon, which is one of the most comforting flavours I can think of, or some vanilla extract if you like.
Back to where I started, I can’t believe we’re actually going to be going on our holiday so soon. I’m a bit nervous (as I am about all things) but I also seriously can’t wait. As I’ve said before, if anyone has been to London, Berlin or Warsaw recently and knows something good, your shared knowledge would be hugely appreciated. It’s a different world now to back in 2005 when we were there. No more sequined boho skirts (as was the style at the time) for one thing.
____________________________________________
Title via: local maven of tunes, Sam Flynn Scott. Mostly a member of the Phoenix Foundation, but also does his own delightful solo stuff occasionally too, like this song Llewellyn from his album Straight Answer Machine. He’s also pretty fantastic on Twitter, one of those types where you nod and shout “me too” after everything you read.
____________________________________________
Music lately:

I’ve been listening to the music of Michael John LaChiusa, both startling and awesome in its time signatures, pastiche of styles, and subject matters. Not much of it is on youtube, but Gloryday from See What I Wanna See, which I did track down, still gives me thrill-shivers every time I listen to it.
________________________________________
Next time: Again, one day at a time. Got some raw vegan chocolate truffles that I made which may end up being next in line though…

see these ice cubes, see these ice creams

11 Comments

More ice cream! Am I obsessed with this stuff or what? Look: I had a can of lychees stashed in the freezer in the hopes of recreating this drink I had a Thai restaurant in Panmure. Without warning, in the middle of the day, the idea of lychee and cucumber sorbet manifested in my mind, eclipsed the previous idea, got the jump on anything else I’d been planning to blog about, and left me more or less unable to concentrate from then on till I could make it happen.

Saturday was spent catching up with close friends and family in fast succession (amazingly fun and good for the soul) but today, Sunday, stretched ahead with no real agenda. It was one of those monumentally rare, still blue-skied days in Wellington and rather than nuking myself in the afternoon heat, the cool shade of indoors was the ideal environment to make this fragrant, juicy sorbet. Because of the high water content it’s icier than most which is why – sorry – I recommend the double-blitzing in the food processor. That said it’s barely hard work to make, and if you do it all on one day, you can get away with washing the processor just the once. (We don’t have a dishwasher so most decisions that don’t revolve around how I can work more ice cream into my life tend to revolve around how I can minimise potential dishwashing.) All you’re doing is freezing then blending then freezing then blending. Then eating.

Yes, you’re putting a salad vegetable into your pudding, but something about cucumber’s chilled, melon-ish texture and the lychee’s perfumed slippery softness makes them ideal buddies to share a loving and iced existence together.

Lychee and Cucumber Sorbet

  • 1 can lychees in syrup (they only seem to come in syrup, so that’s what I used)
  • 1 decent-sized cucumber

Now, I’m guessing you don’t actually have to freeze the lychees beforehand, it really doesn’t add anything to the recipe, but as I said I started off thinking this was going to be something else.

So: freeze the can of lychees overnight, or longer if you’re like me and forget about it. Peel your cucumber, then halve it lengthwise and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon (I just ate them, felt a bit wasteful otherwise) before chopping into chunks.

Open up your frozen can of lychees and tip into a food processor (it’ll probably take some gouging and digging with a knife like mine, but it’s possible it could come out clean) along with the cucumber chunks. Process the heck out of it, pausing to spatula down the sides occasionally – this will take a while to get rid of any errant solid bits.

Pour into a container and freeze for a couple of hours before – I’m sorry – processing again till very smooth. You can leave out this step but it’ll be all chunky and icy and rough. Refreeze and then serve as and when you wish.

Making up new ice cream is one of my favourite ways to use my brain (and I know this is a sorbet, but I give the umbrella heading because “iced dessert” sounds way too corporate) and luckily for everyone around who has to deal with me, this worked out exactly as I’d hoped. There’s only so many ways of saying fragrant without sounding weird/awkward, so to be straightforward, this stuff smells sooo good and tastes just as wonderful: juicy and hydrating and sweet. The second blitzing gives it more of a frozen coke consistency, rather than a granular, tooth-fissuring grittiness.

Scraped by the frosty spoonful, its diaphanous minty green colour barely hints at the strength of summery flavour it brings. These photos were totally taken on my bed by the way. I try to keep my food photography as real-life as possible without too much tutu-ing round but that’s where the light was, and it’s really not implausible that I’d eat ice cream in bed.

Title via: That exercise in then-exciting minimalism, Drop It Like It’s Hot by Snoop Dogg and my then-crush Pharrell (the song’s still good and of course he’s still good looking, but I don’t have a poster of him on the wall or anything).

Music lately: 

We had such an amazing time at Nas and Damian Marley’s Distant Relatives concert on Wednesday night. Might’ve just been the atmosphere but every song felt really important and significant…like this one. 

The sadly gone-early Patsy Cline with Stop the World – this is a gorgeous live recording of her singing this song. She was what I guess you’d call a consummate performer, filling every word with genuine but not excessive emotion. 

Next time: I feel like it has basically been nonstop pudding lately so I’m hoping the next one will involve vegetables a-plenty, and not by putting them into a sorbet, either.</p>

i look like a woman but i cut like a buffalo

10 Comments

I kinda love it when celebrities that I already like turn out to be really into their food, I guess because it makes them more relatable to me – why else do we want to find out about what they do in their spare time? Little did I know that Alicia Silverstone of important film Clueless is now a website-wielding vegan, letting recipes and tips and stories fall for whoever wants to catch them. The recipe on her site The Kind Life which caught my eyes wasn’t actually from her, but a site member. However, Silverstone herself is evidently no slump in the kitchen. Her recipes are not only extremely legit and delicious looking, some also appear hastily flash-photographed in a kind of charming, regular-people way.

I’d been looking for a decent cut-out cookie recipe since I got some seriously awesome tiny cutters from my godfamily for Christmas, including a tiny star, a tiny ace of spades, and a tiny teardrop. I actually got my little brother some excellent cookie cutters for that same Christmas – now he can make ninjabread men. I also got him Street Chant’s album Means. I’m a good sis. So Julian, if you’re reading this…then keep reading.

The recipe I found was from Madeline Tuthill and because it’s vegan, as per Silverstone’s ethos, you don’t have to stress about the fact that butter is now upwards of $5 a block (whyyyyyy) or anything like that. All the ingredients are of the comfortingly within-reach variety – some oil, some flour, some syrup – and all you have to do is mix and roll. (“Rolling with the homies“…oh Brittany Murphy. So amazing in Clueless.) The dough is pliant and stands up to many a re-roll, lifting easily from its cut-out indentations to leave behind your shapes. However, I had to add more flour because it was initially too soft to cut properly – this could be due to anything, ingredients, height above sea level, the weather – so if you’re making these, pay attention to your dough and see if you need to add more flour or if it’s all good as is. And though it asks for wholemeal flour, you could just use all plain. I did, with some quinoa flakes added because they were sitting round, looking awkwardly unused.

Gingerbread Cut-Out Cookies

Adapted from a recipe of Madeline Tuthill’s, from The Kind Life.

  • 1 and 1/2 cups wholemeal flour
  • 1 and 1/2 cups regular flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon each cinnamon and nutmeg
  • 2 teaspoons ground ginger
  • 1 cup golden syrup, maple syrup, or honey, or agave nectar, or cough syrup (kidding!) or a mix of whatever you’ve got.
  • 1/2 cup oil, I use rice bran oil because it doesn’t taste too oily.

Set your oven to 190 C/375 F and lay some baking paper on an oven tray.

Mix together all the dry ingredients, making sure the baking soda and baking powder are well incorporated. Make a well in the centre, pour in the syrup and oil and whisk together before mixing the lot together. Or you could whisk the wet ingredients separately, but this saves on dishes.

If it looks too soft and sticky to roll and cut out, then add a little more flour. I had to, so you might too. Grab a chunk and roll it out, I used two bits of greaseproof paper and rolled it between them, because that saves washing the bench and the rolling pin. If you don’t have a rolling pin, a bottle of wine or something similar shaped will do just fine.

Cut out however you like – if you don’t have any cookie cutters, just use a glass with the rim dipped in flour, or just cut them into squares with a knife. Lay the shapes onto the tray and reroll the scraps, before grabbing another chunk of dough and repeating. Once the tray’s full, bake for 10 minutes only – then carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool, and continue like this till you run out of dough.

Makes plenty – depends on how big your cutters are.

I love how these cookies turned out – a little chewy from the syrup but still crisp and biscuity. I used golden syrup because I have a massive tin of it, and it makes an ideal carrier for spicy flavours with its caramelly depth and darkness. All that syrup means these keep for ages as well, to be eaten by the contemplative handful as and when you desire.

I did consider icing them but their small surface area would’ve made it a complete mission. However bigger cookies lend themselves to all kind of sugary artistic notions. Especially if you’re making this with kids (or, not to be narrow-minded, yourself) – make faces or swirls or squiggles or Jackson Pollock drips with different colours, sandwich ’em together, stick lollies to them, whatever makes you happy. Plain, they were still perfect – the gingery intensity of flavour was all the embellishment these tiny shapes needed.

Title via: Dead Weather’s I Cut Like A Buffalo from their album Horehound. It’s a total pity that buffalo mozzarella is so expensive, because there are heaps of good songs with the word buffalo in their title for me to exploit. Shuffle off to Buffalo, Buffalo Gals, Buffalo by the Phoenix Foundation, Buffalo Soldier, Buffalo Stance…what’s the deal?

Music lately:

Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson’s Winter In America, bluesy and beautiful. Love the of-the-timely H20gate Blues.

PJ Harvey’s new, extremely magnificent song The Words That Maketh Murder. New PJ Harvey!!

Next time: I’ve reconnected with my Aunt Daisy cookbook and it feels like every page throws up something I really, really want to make. So you can expect something from her next time for sure.

 

when tomatoes are flying, duck, but smile

10 Comments

First: Happy Waitangi Day, everyone. As I said on this day last year, it is important to me for many reasons. Firstly, the reason it exists at all: in 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed at Waitangi, near Paihia in the Bay of Islands, a place where my ancestors on both sides have strong links to. Read up on the treaty if you like, it’s one of the more interesting and game-changing events in New Zealand history. Secondly: It marks the date that I had my first ballet lesson, 21 years ago. Evidently ballet waits for no public holiday. A tough business, had I lingered till the next day I could’ve been considered “past my prime” (FYI: this probably isn’t true, and also, I was three years old)

 
Anyway, yikes, February already, so there’s only one month left of summer. And in Wellington it feels like winter’s cutting ahead of autumn in the tuckshop line. One month ago it was all sand and sunscreen and deliciously dizzying heat, now it’s all sporadic sun, pushy gale-force wind, greying clouds and woolly jumpers. Either that or knuckle-dragging humidity. What gives?
One way to remind myself that it is still in fact summer is to immerse myself culinarily in seasonal food, which – bonus – is generally cheaper, easier to get hold of, and tasting its best. Like the tomato, currently at its richest red of colour, fullest of cheek and glut-est of availability.
I read a recipe of the much-googled and widely lauded Martin Bosley’s in his food column for The Listener magazine recently which completely took my fancy: a sauce of raw, chopped tomatoes, steeped in good things and tumbled over pasta. I stupidly didn’t actually copy it down anywhere, and unfortunately The Listener doesn’t seem to have an up-to-date online recipe database in the same way that, say, Cuisine magazine does. (Not that they’re obliged to provide me recipes for free. But gee, if the internet hasn’t half conditioned my brain to expect it!)
I knew there was something particularly impact-y about this recipe which made me want to recreate it, but I just couldn’t remember what. So, with a bowl of rapidly deflating, perfectly ripe tomatoes bought on the cheap, I decided to just be inspired, and improvise.
Raw Tomato Pasta Sauce with Avocado Oil and Cinnamon
 
Inspired by a recipe of Martin Bosley‘s
 
3 ripe tomatoes
Avocado oil (but of course, olive oil is so welcome here instead)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon sugar
Salt, flaky sea salt if possible – tastes nicer, and you need less.
1 T Balsamic Vinegar and/or the juice of a lemon
1 clove garlic, crushed
Around 180g to 200g spaghetti or other long pasta, to serve
 
Roughly chop the tomatoes, fairly small, and pile them into a non-metallic bowl (apparently metal does very bad things when it reacts to the acidic tomatoes.) Pour over as much avocado or olive oil as you like, but around 2 tablespoons is what I used.
 
Sprinkle over the salt and sugar, the vinegar, and the garlic, and mix thoroughly. Leave for as long as you like at room temperature, but at least do it before you get started on the pasta, so it gets a decent sit.
 
Bring a large pan of water to the boil, salt it, and cook the pasta in it, till it’s done to your liking. Drain and divide between two plates. Spoon over the chopped tomato ‘sauce’, pouring over any juices that have collected, and drizzle over more avocado or olive oil if you like.
 
Serves 2.
Great as this is, I had a massive head-desk when I eventually located the original recipe of Bosley’s – it had almonds and chilli in it. How could I not have remembered something that deliciously significant? My invention was cool, but almonds and chilli. I want that in a sauce.
Still, mine had its own cinnamony charm, with the tomatoes soft and cool and luscious on the hot pasta, the avocado oil’s mellow nuttiness against the sweetly sharp balsamic vinegar and almost lemony-fragrant tomato juices dripping into the depths of the tangle of pasta. Because of how I chopped my tomatoes it was less a sauce and more of a…pile of stuff. But I liked it.
To go with I boiled some peas and edamame and once they were cool sprinkled over a little sesame oil, and chopped in what I could salvage from a disappointing avocado. It was delicious, and pleasingly reflective of the avocado oil with the tomatoes. The reason I used avocado oil is because I got some for Christmas (cheers Dad!) and it’s really delicious, furthermore I’ve run out of olive oil and every time I go to buy some more it just feels too expensive. However if you’re the other way round, as I said in the recipe, of course olive oil is great to use here too.
Poor Tim had to pause here for a minute because I looked across the table and suddenly felt like what I saw (alas, minus his pleasant above-shoulder region) needed to be photographed. It wasn’t posed, he was about to feed himself and I wailed “don’t move!” and grabbed the camera. But still, nice to shake up the usual one-aerial one-closeup-fuzzy shot routine.
So: as long as you can handle, or at least sell to the people you’re feeding, the idea of pasta and a chopped up vegetable being your dinner, then this is one truly summery and seriously unpricey recipe which not only requires hardly any effort, it’s also extremely delicious and not so heavy and stodgy that you need to lie down immediately with a cold compress after eating it. Cheers, Martin Bosley for the inspiration. As I said, he’s heralded wide and far but I’ve never actually tried a recipe of his, and I guess…this doesn’t really count. While some of his recipes, though delicious, seem a bit inaccessible to my time, skills, and cupboard contents, I can’t fault the blueprint which inspired this blog post – a simple, sexy and delicious-sounding tomato sauce. And he also gets a free pass for life because when I approached him to say hi at the City Markets one time, he said “Oh, you’re Hungry and Frozen” which, let’s face it, is a fast way into my heart.
Title via: the King Lear of Broadway musicals, Sondheim’s Gypsy – you’d think that Smile, Girls could at least be found on youtube. But no. So…smugness from those who have cast recordings. Although I think you can listen to its sage advice – or at least some of it – here (click on “girls”.)
Music lately:
Beach House, Walk In The Park from Teen Dream – gosh this is a pretty song, like the catchiest bits of Where Is My Mind and, um, Eyes Without A Face combined…at last. We were lucky enough to see Beach House at Laneway Presents: Wellington on Tuesday night, and this song was an early and beautifully delivered highlight of the evening.
Mum sent my iPod back along with a whole bunch of other goodies (lentils, pasta, Whittaker’s Chocolate and so on) and having been without it for three weeks, it’s quite the sensory overload to have music and so much of it again while I walk around. I’ve been reconnecting seriously with the cast recording of Hair (Original Broadway and 2009 Revival Broadway cast recording, thank you).
Lively Up Yourself – Happy birthday, Bob (the other important thing about February 6)
 
Next time: It was going to be ginger cut-out cookies, and lovely as they are, I made this morning a batch of Nigella’s Norwegian cinnamon buns and they were so astoundingly good that they’re overtaking the cookies…
 
*speaking of disappointing avocados, feel free to read the guest post I did for the blog about Diamond Dogs, a play that’s going to occur in Wellington on the 15th, 16th and 17th of February.

you’re not into making choices, wicked witches, poppy fields…

18 Comments

So, I recently became in possession of 1kg of poppyseeds.

From Moore Wilson‘s grocery store of course, and while they’re not all-bulk, I guess they’ve seen enough people come and go to only stock their poppyseeds writ large and behind the counter. Ask for them by name. I only wanted some to make the dressing for this bean salad, and assumed rakishly that I could use up the rest with ease. But, like some cruel, curve-of-the-earth perspective trick, whenever I walked towards the bag it seemed to grow bigger and bigger, poppyseeds regenerating themselves when removed by the incremental spoonful.

Actually it’s not as dramatic as that. There is in fact…no drama. The bag of poppyseeds can sit pretty much forever on the shelf waiting to be used. It’s just that their plentiful existence has caused me to consider them pretty closely, and what I could do with at least some of them.

Unfortunately a perfunctory search of recipes didn’t serve up anything too inspiring. And then I wondered, as I always wonder, if they’d make a decent ice cream, especially since I had some lemons lurking round that Tim’s mum had given us. Should I do a custard based ice cream? A semifreddo thing? That would’ve meant buying ingredients, and we’re trying to save money by using up things we have in the cupboard. What I did have however, as always, was canned coconut milk. And so…that’s all I used. I didn’t even make a coconut milk custard, like I do for my Chocolate Ice Cream recipe. I guess it’s a slight stretch to call this ice cream now, but it’s a stretch I’m going to make. It sets so solid that all you can do is cut it with a knife like that’s what you meant to do in the first place, and it’s truly delicious.

I still have a little Cocoa Sorbet left in the freezer but decided that two ice creams on the hop would be practical. I can’t remember how I justified it, I think it was something like “I love ice cream!”

Lemon Poppyseed Ice Cream

  •  2 x 400ml cans plain, full-fat coconut milk
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • Juice and zest of 2-3 lemons (depending on the juiciness)
  • 3 tablespoons poppyseeds

In a large pan, gently heat the coconut milk and sugar, stirring, till the sugar has dissolved. Continue to gently heat and stir for another five minutes then remove from the heat and allow to cool a bit.

Stir in the lemon juice and zest, and pour the mixture into a loaf tin (depending on how much lemon juice you used and the size of your loaf tin there may be a bit too much mixture) Carefully – don’t spill it like I did – place in the freezer. Allow to partially freeze, then stir it briskly with a fork or small whisk, then stir in the poppyseeds (at this stage, so they don’t all sink to the bottom) and return it to the freezer. To serve, cut thick slices.

I love this ice cream. Firstly it’s so easy to make. Just stir and pour. It has a popsicle-fresh, clean sweet lemony goodness, a thick and icy but still pleasing texture, and the nuttishly flavoursome poppyseeds delivered lovingly to your mouth in each spoonful. The coconut flavour isn’t overly pronounced, but whatever you do recognise will only be enhanced by the other ingredients. And if you have poppyseeds around already, and you’re lucky enough to either have a lemon tree or a lemon benefactor, then it’s a very, very inexpensive recipe. You could always leave the poppyseeds out and use a mix of lemon and orange juice and zest. Toasted coconut stirred through instead of the poppyseeds might work too. Play round and see what you like, although I do recommend first just trying this recipe itself – the summery, zingy lemon with the poppyseeds is pretty lovely.

My poppyseed adventuring didn’t end there, as, deciding on ‘both’ instead of ‘which’, I also made a lemon poppyseed cake (using this recipe here). Was it overkill? Most definitely not.

The very opposite of the ice cream, this cake is soft, buttery, and lush, the lemon flavour absorbed into the golden grit of the polenta and almonds to produce something wildly good. Pictured here is, sadly, the last piece.

Tim and I had an amazing night at Aloe Blacc’s concert on Thursday – he was an absolute diamond performer with a stupefyingly lovely voice and hugely comfortable stage presence. We took some photos, which you can see here and here. Tonight we’re going to the Wellington Laneway show which should be fun as, and if you’re in Wellington and want tickets they’re available for purchase here.

In our travel plan developments…we bought tickets to see Wicked in London! It sorta feels like the only appropriate response is a youthful OMG.

Title from: the song of the same name from the late Jonathan Larson’s musical 30/90, which I was able to see performed by a local theatre group a couple of years ago. It was fairly thrilling then, so one can only speculate what the Lear Jet-voiced Raul Esparza would have been like in the lead role in his day.

Music lately:

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Round and Round from Before Today, strangely alluring with its “na na naaah” opening deceptively evoking the sort of music that plays when you’re put on hold on the phone, swirling into something uplifting and exciting and…swirly. He’ll be at Laneway too, so.

Sadly not at Laneway or anywhere near my line of vision, is Idina Menzel, whose album I Stand – which still feels recent-ish – became three years old the other day. You go, Idina. While her debut Still I Can’t Be Still remains a flawless highpoint for me, I Stand is fantastic and I hope she continues to write music. And that I actually see her sing one day for real.

Next time: I made some gingerbread cut-out cookies but it has been heavy on the sweet things lately so I might instead do the pasta I made tonight with a raw tomato sauce. Either way: delicious.

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

6 Comments

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

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

Inspired by this recipe by Fiona Smith from Cuisine magazine.

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

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

Dressing:

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

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

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

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