Category: Easy and/or Fast

i see red i see red i see red

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So every year I do a Christmas dinner thing with my flatmates (which we’ve started having at lunchtime but I still call it Christmas dinner, I don’t know) where we get together for some good eating before going our separate ways. That’s all it was in 2006, the first year, but with my intense love for making feasts, it’s expanded into a bit of a mystique-surrounded juggernaut…I’d like to think. There’s usually some point – in this case, Thursday night – where a bit of frantic cooking happens. Which, by the way, is my idea of a Good Time. In case you were thinking “well she brought this on herself”. That’s right I did. Nigella Lawson’s Redder Than Red Cranberry Sauce was the last thing I made before going to bed.

Nigella seems convinced of how awesome and red her cranberry sauce is, so this year I took her at her word and tried making it for the first time. I feel a couple of decent sauces at Christmas – or any time – can act like a distracting poncho or statement hat to aggressively carved meat or disappointingly ungolden roast potatoes. It’s an easy recipe, to call it child’s play would insult the child. A fairly motivated bunny rabbit could probably manage this. (Of course, no offense to rabbits either. But their massive population indicates they are…fairly motivated by nature.)

While this sauce was made very late at night, the photos were taken very early in the morning. I ended up eating way too many teaspoonfuls of the sauce while taking these photos to try and get it looking right, probably a sign that the ‘soft focus sauce in a teaspoon’ look wasn’t the best choice. Seemed like a decent idea at the time…

Redder Than Red Cranberry Sauce

(her words, not mine. Although I like flourish so will leave it as is)

From Nigella Christmas

  • 350g cranberries (not dried ones, although frozen is perfect, the freezer’s usually the only place you can find them anyway)
  • 200g sugar
  • 45mls cherry brandy, OR Grand Marnier/Cointreau, OR the juice of an orange
  • 1/4 cup water

Throw everything into a pan, bring to the boil and then simmer away for about ten minutes till the berries start to soften or disintegrate and release a lot of juice. Stir occasionally. After about ten minutes, give a final aggressive, berry-breaking stir, then allow to cool slightly before pouring into a jug and refrigerating.

When you get up the next morning (if you made it at 11.30pm like I did) it will have become as solid as jelly – that’s all the pectin in the cranberries’ round red bodies. Give it a good stir before you use it and maybe thin it down with a tablespoon of hot water if you like, but spoonable cranberry sauce is just fine.

Apart from the complete ease of the recipe, it’s gorgeous and tastes fantastic – the lack of ingredients allows the sharp lemony taste of the cranberries to shine, without being too overtly sour. It did occur to me as it was bubbling away on the stove, that a jar of this would make a pretty nice Christmas gift.

Title via: Split Enz, I See Red from their album Frenzy…I accidentally just typed it as “Splut” which is actually kind of appropriate given the NZ accent. When I was a kid this was one of the songs Dad’s band covered so I’ve always been fond of it, it reminds me of Sunday afternoons when they’d have band practice in our garage.

Music lately:

Brian D’arcy James (aka Burrs in The Wild Party…aka you’ve probably seen him in womens’ magazines posing with celebrities during his stint as Shrek on Broadway) A Michigan Christmas from his album From Christmas Eve to Christmas Morn. I was SO happy when I found out he had a Christmas album. This is the only track from it I can find on youtube, but I totally recommend the whole thing. His voice (and eyebrows) astounds.

Nas and Damian Marley, Tribal War ft K’naan from Distant Relatives. Speaking of things that deserve capitalisation, I was SO SO happy when I heard the news they were coming to New Zealand – heard rumours from a reliable source a few months ago, but wasn’t counting on it coming to fruition. Not only are they coming to NZ, they’re doing a Wellington show too! I love it when acts do that – no flights to Auckland, no taking leave, no accommodation costs…Seriously good news all round.

Next time: As I said, this is just a quick post…full rundown of the Christmas party, plus those vegetables I promised last time.

 

sunshine is a friend of mine…

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I’ve got about a squillion things to get done tonight (including “make your own muesli” “watch the rest of The Simpsons season 4” “PACK YOUR BAG ALREADY” and “have an early night so you can get better”) because I’m flying up to Auckland for a conference for the next three days…and I’ve been annoyingly sick for ages now, a rotating cast of germs is using my body as a stage, with coughing, sneezing, headaches, feeling weak and insomnia all starring. So to get it crossed off the list I’m trying to make this post relatively succinct. I don’t even know what the word for this is but I’m also trying to avoid that situation where I’ll write a sentence then delete half of it then rewrite it then delete it all and repeat that over again till I suspect I have actually got no thoughts at all about the soup.

The soup in question, luckily, stirs up heaps of thoughts, even though it’s more or less just corn and capsicums and water. For all that Nigella Lawson barely has to murmer an item’s name to send armies of viewers hunting tirelessly through supermarkets for pomegranates and sugar roses and and tiny whisks (surprisingly useful), hot damn does she have some economically and nutritiously sound recipes.
I love corn in all its various alter egos, from the canned creamed corn on toast that was a regular weekend breakfast as a kid, to the softest polenta (where I’ll amuse myself by feeding it with butter which melts into the grains – both yellow, so it’s deliciously difficult to notice the saturation point). Corn fritters can be stodgy and damp and gross, but done well it’s easy to see how they managed to become as ubiquitous as camembert and cranberry paninis (now that I never liked) in cafe cabinets. I don’t think I’d ever really had corn soup before, but I wish I’d had this recipe a few years back when Tim and I were trying to scrape together an existence while scraping the mould off our student flat’s walls as it’s a cheap, nutritious and satisfying meal (let’s be honest though, we sent ourselves off to university, no-one forced that pennilessness on our relatively comfortable lives). Not to mention this soup is aggressively cheerful to look at, if you subconsciously associate ‘yellow’ with ‘happiness’ like I guess I must do. Well, Nigella does it too, calling this ‘Sunshine Soup’.
Sunshine Soup

From Nigella Lawson’s Kitchen

1 yellow pepper
1 orange pepper
2 teaspoons garlic oil
1 litre vegetable or chicken stock, whether homemade, powder, cube or concentrate, preferably decent stuff
500g frozen sweetcorn kernels

Set your oven to 250 C. Cut out the core and seeds from the peppers and then slice thickly. Lay them on a baking sheet, drizzle with the oil and roast for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring the stock to the boil, add the corn and bring back to the boil again, simmering for about 20 minutes.

Remove about half a cupful of corn for later, then blitz the rest, in batches if necessary, along with the peppers in a food processor. Serve with the reserved corn stirred back into it.
Because of the starchy, fibrous nature of corn this will never turn into a velvety puree, but it’s worth digging out the food processor for, otherwise all you’ve really got is corn floating in water. Leaving that visual aside, this is delicious stuff – deep bowls full of golden, fragrant sweet flavour. It is surprisingly hearty despite, as I said, not having much to it.
Speaking of, that’s all there is to this tonight.
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Title via: Baltimore’s sparkily dance-tastic Rye Rye and her MIA-chorussing track Sunshine.
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Music lately that I’m too tired to talk about properly:
Bang Bang, new single from the amazing Ladi6, who has just released her new album The Liberation Of… More on her later, as we’re seeing her live at San Fransisco Bath House on Saturday night. Can’t wait.
While we’re local, Homebrew’s 12” Last Week arrived in the mail today in all its bright blue vinyl glory. I’m not sure if “hard to dislike” is a proper compliment. These are seriously enjoyable sounds from a master of words and familiar stories. Love it.
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Next time: I better be better, I’ll definitely have more time on my hands and words in my head, and after all this dinner it’s probably about time for some baking…

one night in bangkok makes a hard man crumble

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Crumble has got to be some of the the best kind of food in existence, among the comforting-est of all the comfort food. In Nigella Express, there is this very cool idea where you make up some crumble topping in advance and freeze it so if you ever want pudding, but the thought of actually having to cook makes you weepy, you’re still good to go. I mean, there’s a bit of initial effort that goes into it. But that’s the good thing about Nigella – there’s options. Whether you’re in the mood for a seven layer trifle where you make your own sponge and custard by hand, or something more or less instant but not so instant that you’re sitting on the couch ejecting a can of whipped cream into your mouth, she’s got you covered.

That said, I can’t help being suspicious of crumble recipes, and will often think “that’s not nearly enough butter!” as I read the list of ingredients. I definitely trust Nigella Lawson, the woman who taught me that 250g butter in one cake is just fine, but even so when I saw that her recipe was for four servings, it took effort to stick to the 50g she stipulated. Worrying, maybe, but true. No one wants wafer-thin crumble coverage.
Turns out 50g was all good, and there was no need to get so hand-wringingly righteous over it. That said, when you divide 50 between 4 that’s only like…less than 1 tablespoon of butter per person. That’s practically nothing. But go with it, you somehow end up with just the amount of crumble you need. Nigella calls this “Jumbleberry Crumble”, which is just an olde English term for “whatever berries you have”. I had the end of a packet of frozen blackberries, plus some cranberries leftover from last Christmas. While I held back from exaggerating the topping quantities, I did add some dark chocolate chunks to the fruit. It felt right, but then adding chocolate to things usually does…right?
Jumbleberry Crumble

From Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Express

For the Crumble Topping:
50g butter
100g flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons brown sugar

Rub the butter into the flour and baking powder, till it resembles coarse crumbs (with some inevitable floury dustiness). Stir in the sugar, and then tip into a freezer bag till needed.

Assembly:
Set your oven to 220 C. Get some ovenproof ramekins, fill with frozen berries (and a few dark chocolate chunks if you like), sprinkle over 1 teaspoon cornflour, two teaspoons sugar, and a couple of tablespoons (roughly 50-75g) frozen crumble topping. Bake for 15-20mins depending on the size of the ramekin – 125g ones for the lesser time, but 250-300ml ones will take a little longer.
I made these fairly late at night with both low lighting and low camera battery, not giving me a lot of room to move as far as getting quality photos. Next time?
These were delicious – the chocolate melting into the sharp juices released by the frozen berries as they stewed in the oven, creating a thick, rich sauce for the fruit. The crumble topping was highly satisfying despite my earlier nervousness – biscuity, sweet and gratifyingly crisp in places. Plus, because there’s only the two of us, I’ve got some crumble mix in a sandwich bag in the freezer, just waiting to be sprinkled over fruit on another cold evening. For all that I talked about Spring and skipping along in the mild sunshine with armfuls of asparagus bushels in my last post, the weather in Wellington is so variable (and it varies heavily towards the murkier, chillier end of the scale more often than not. This is a pain, but there is an upside when it means you’re more likely to be in the mood to eat crumble.)
Title via: One Night In Bangkok from the musical Chess. Confession: I actually thought that my title was the lyrics but it turns out it’s actually “makes a hard man humble”. Whatever. I love this song – the strange, theatre-plus-rapping that became a chart hit despite having perhaps seriously Top 40-unfriendly lyrics and concept. Adam Pascal’s take is pretty fabulous, from the 2008 concert with Idina Menzel and The Wire’s Clarke Peters, but is cruelly unavailable on Youtube. You’ll just have to buy the DVD…Nevertheless Murray Head’s original has its dubious charms also. I did a jazz dance to this many, many years ago, I can still remember bits of it to this day.
 
Music lately:
The Little Things by TrinityRoots. We saw them on Sunday night at the Opera House on their ‘reunion’ tour. They seemed so comfortable with each other – spinning a tune out for ten minutes and then with a collective nod seamlessly bringing it back down to earth. All three of them are wonderful to watch – Warren Maxwell looking calm and spiritual, Riki Gooch’s boyish face belying his monster talent on the drums and Rio Hemopo providing welcome bass in both guitar and voice. They were supported by Isaac Aesili, who is hugely talented in his own right, and Ria Hall, who I’d met before when she emceed the Smokefree Pacifica Beats, and has an absolutely stunning voice. It was a beautiful night.
What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye, from the album of the same name. Tim got some Marvin Gaye on vinyl and this song is just up there with the very best of all music, like crumble is among the best of all foods.
Next time: As I said last time, I have some options, so it all depends on what I feel like…by the way, I’ve tinkered round and added the option of a Facebook ‘like’ button just below, in case you’re all “I don’t like change!” I don’t even really like Facebook so am a bit unsure about actively letting it invade my blog but wanted to give this ‘like’ thing a whirl. Considering how rubbish the photos are this week it possibly isn’t the best place to start and will probably put any new readers off, but anyway, if you don’t know, now you know…

that one treasure, thick golden crust and a layer of cheese

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As I said in the sign off for my last post, I’m probably going to have to lay off the Nigella Kitchen recipes before I end up recreating the entire book here, because I’m not sure it would go down well with her camp (that said, there are a squillion food blogs out there and I doubt her camp is watching me. If they are…hi Nigella, you’re amazing!).

Anyway, here we are again with Kitchen. While I’m more than happy improvising dinner from what’s around, it’s nice to look at a recipe and realise you actually have everything and you don’t have to make any special trips or put it off or never even consider making it ever (like that cake in How To Be A Domestic Goddess which has about a litre of real maple syrup in it). Nigella’s crustless pizza recipe is a nice example of this as I had everything, even the more expensive cheese and chorizo, within reach. Not that there’s a lot to it. A little flour. One egg. A cup of milk. Somehow it turns into a seriously good dinner. I wish I’d known about this back when I was a hungry student.
Nigella’s description of her Crustless Pizza was a little confusing – I pictured a pile of melted cheese and toppings especially when she says “think of it as a cheese toastie, without the bread”. So…just cheese then? I thought it turned out more like a giant pancake myself, but the main point is, it tastes absolutely amazing and comes together when you think you’ve got nothing in the cupboard.
Crustless Pizza

From Nigella Lawson’s Kitchen

Serves 2 – 4 but I wouldn’t want to share this with more than one other person.

1 egg
100g plain flour
250ml (1 cup) milk
100g grated cheese
Optional – 50g chorizo, sliced finely
1 round ovenproof pie dish, about 20cm diameter

Set your oven to 200 C. Whisk the egg, milk and flour with a little salt to make a smooth batter. Butter the pie dish, pour in the batter, using a spatula to make sure you get it all, and sprinkle over half the grated cheese. Bake for 30 minutes. While it’s baking, get your chorizo ready. Once this time’s up, sprinkle over the chorizo slices and remaining cheese and bake for another couple of minutes till it’s all melted. Cut into four slices.

I was nervous about it sticking to the tin but using a plastic pie-lifter fish slice thing it came away easily. I did butter it pretty generously though, and if you’re worried that you’ve got a sticker of a pan on your hands maybe you could go to the trouble of cutting out a little circle of baking paper. Or, you could just eat the whole thing straight from the pan, digging it out with a fork… it’s what I’d do.
It’s not crustless at all, more like sort-of-crusted, but that just sounds bad… The egg, flour and milk forms a deliciously thick, crisped pancake-like base for the cheese and chorizo. I just loved how simple and fast it was and couldn’t believe that so few ingredients turned into something so delicious and comforting to eat – but then I just love melted cheese. You could probably replace the milk with soymilk and leave out the cheese to make the base dairy-free, but how to replace the egg is a bit beyond my skills, however if you’re a vegan maybe you’ve already got an artillary of egg-replacements up your sleeve and don’t need me to clumsily google them for you. Of course the chorizo doesn’t need to be there – although it is delicious, all oily and spicy – it could be replaced or supplemented by any number of things, the obvious one being tomatoes…
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Title via: Horse The Band’s Crippled By Pizza, just one of their heavy, driven odes to pizza. Even if you don’t like their hardcore sound, there’s something likeable about an EP devoted to pizza.
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Music lately:
Mara TK’s the main vocalist for Electric Wire Hustle who we saw earlier on this year electrifying the packed crowd at San Francisco Bath House. Like many local artists, he doesn’t stick to just one project, and he’s now got some solo stuff happening – check out Run (Away From the Valley of Fear) on his bandcamp site and watch out for more mightiness from him in the form of Taniwhunk, his pending EP.
On Saturday night Tim and I headed to Watusi to check out Eddie Numbers who was down from Auckland. Our flatmates brother was on the decks and while it was well, an intimate set (I guess not many people knew it was happening) it was fun and I’m glad we went. I’d already heard some of his stuff here and there (specifically Cracks In The Evening) and it was cool to see someone talented doing what they love, he even dropped a Wellington-specific freestyle on the spot. I’ve sadly forgotten the name of the guy who was on stage with him but he had a sweet voice too….
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Next time: I made an awesome crumble tonight, the lighting was low and the camera battery ready to fall asleep but I managed to get a few good snaps, I also made this awesome pasta recipe from the Floridita’s cookbook…

bangled tangled spangled and spaghetti-ed

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Firstly, sorry for the lack of blogging over the last week – I’ve been busy all over the place and was basically out of the house every single night. Presuming the lack of updates concerns people, I’ll try not to let it happen too often.

I was very, very lucky to be sent a copy of Nigella Lawson’s brand new book Kitchen which I’ve finally been able to spend some quality time with. The book fell open on the page with a recipe for Spaghetti with Marmite. I know it sounds like a kinda weird combination but as soon as I saw it, I was reminded of the million marmite and cheese sandwiches I must have eaten as a kid before ballet classes. Well, it was either that, or a Big Ben pie, or a 2-minute noodle or one of those dusty pasta snacks – if it could be microwaved, I would eat it. My specialty was stacking up about four pieces of white, heavily buttered toast bread, all spread with marmite and layered with slices of cheese, then microwaving it till the cheese was melted and bubbling fiercely in places. Marmite was my staple but sometimes I’d swap it for tomato sauce to make a kind of low-rent lasagne. With that in mind, the idea of stirring Marmite into pasta doesn’t scare me. Not much could, after that kind of after-school snack.

Anyway, Nigella attributes this recipe to Anna Del Conte and compares it to the Italian practice of spaghetti tossed with butter and a stock cube, so with that in mind this dish is practically high-class cuisine.

Spaghetti with Marmite

From Nigella Lawson’s Kitchen

  • 375g dried spaghetti
  • 50g unsalted butter
  • 1 teaspoon Marmite, or more, to taste
  • Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Cook the spaghetti in plenty of boiling, salted water. When it’s nearly done, melt the butter in a small pan and add the Marmite and a tablespoon of the pasta cooking water, mixing well. I don’t know if NZ Marmite is a bit special but it didn’t blend too easily – I had to use a mini whisk and stir hard to get it mixing. Although I’m sure it doesn’t really matter too much. Drain the pasta, reserving a little of the water, and pour the Marmite mixture over the top, stirring carefully to mix it through and adding a little of the reserved water if needed. Serve topped with plenty of parmesan.

Parmesan is too expensive – or at least, it’s one of those things that I always set out to buy, but then can’t bring myself to pay upwards of $7 for a tiny triangle of yellow matter. So I just grated regular cheese using the smaller holes to make it look fancier.

Tim reckoned I was too cautious with the Marmite but once it’s done it’s done – it’s not like I could smear more on the cooked pasta once the sauce was distributed. So with that in mind, don’t be too nervous with the “antipodean ointment” as Nigella typically and charmingly over-names it.

It tastes fantastic – but then buttery, slightly salty pasta will, right? It was admittedly a bit unusual on the tastebuds but overall fantastic. That savoury, salty-sweetness of Marmite is a perfect match with salty, rich butter (as years of experience have taught me) which is absorbed by the starchy pasta and only enhanced by the topping of cheese. Of course, you’re welcome to use Vegemite in this recipe – I hate the stuff but when you take a step back they’re both pretty freaky, and I can see how it’s just a case of personal taste.

For what seems like the first time, in Kitchen Nigella acknowledges that not everyone sweats money like her. She talks of cheaper cuts and substitutions and of her luxury of choice. She also seems a little defensive of any sugar content in places, but I think people just like to look for what they want to see – she has a huge variety of recipes in her books. So, it’s interesting charting the development of Nigella through her books, but this one is just as exciting as any of her others – the sort of thing where I flick through and think “I want to cook EVERYTHING! I love you Nigella!” Like the more grown-up equivalent of listening to Mariah Carey and wondering how she manages to put your feelings into song form.

So as I said, it’s been a busy time. Cool for me, this busyness included seeing two musicals and flying home to catch up with my family. Last Tuesday I saw the Toi Whakaari second year students’ production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company. I’ve been listening to this musical on high rotation recently so it was an awesomely awesome coincidence that I suddenly got to see it in real life. Overall, the performance was polished, sharp, clever and beautifully acted and sung – I absolutely loved it and wished they’d had a longer run.

On Saturday morning Tim and I flew up to Auckland to see 42nd Street with my family. Tim and I caught the shuttle into Queen Street then walked to Ponsonby Road to observe. Unfortunately, when Mum, Dad and my brother met up with us we somehow intuitively picked what had to be the worst cafe on the whole road for lunch, but that aside it was awesome to see everyone again, considering I hadn’t been up since RENT in April. 42nd Street was brilliant – although – the plot is definitely not as sharp as it seemed to me when I saw it nearly 20 years ago…the tap dancing and the singing was wonderful though, and it was great to see Derek Metzeger as Julian Marsh when I’d seen him about 15 years ago in Me and My Girl. The music is amazing and has so many brilliant lyrics that it makes me wonder how the dialogue got to be so bad. Fortunately it wasn’t long between tap dances.

It was an awesome 24 hours at home – five seconds in the local supermarket and I’d run into half the whanau, found out that my aunty had got the most votes and was elected to the local council, and had my plans rejigged to take in a dinner quickly organised at my Nana’s. The next day we took my cousin (age 7) round visiting even more people, before zooming back to the airport. I’d been up in Auckland already that week for meetings so I was pretty zonked by the time I got back to Wellington – but nothing that some spaghetti with Marmite can’t fix…

Title from: The musical Hair’s title song. Amazing as revival-star Gavin Creel is in so many ways, I do seriously love the way James Rado says “gimme” in the original Broadway cast recording with such conviction. Thinking about Hair has reminded me of something else I hate about the film adaptation – they cast Annie Golden, who has such a sweet voice, and didn’t get her to sing by herself once

Music lately:

Southside of Bombay, What’s The Time Mr Wolf? Last week news came that Ian Morris had died. His was one of those names I’d seen and heard around a lot but it was admittedly not until people began to share their thoughts that I became fully aware of his contribution to New Zealand music. Originally a member of Th’Dudes, he went on to produce some of our best music, including this song by Southside of Bombay, a band with a name that I’ve always liked because of its geographic relatability to where I grew up. A sunny tune with a questioning chorus that gets stuck in the mind….

Lullaby of Broadway from 42nd Street. Jerry Orbach (aka the dad in Dirty Dancing and the old guy in Law and Order) is typically fantastic originating the role of Julian Marsh on Broadway – this song is the first chance he gets to sing in the musical, at the start of Act 2, and he’s given plenty to work with, till it builds into yet another enormous song-and-dance number.

Next time: Definitely more of the same Nigella book – hard to tear myself away from it.

 

don’t have time for things unsaid, for baking bread

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Stumbled across Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course book recently with the opportunity to take it home – someone was having a cleanout-of-stuff. While I was initially pretty taken with Ms Smith gazing mildly out at the reader from the cover picture while holding an egg aloft (I’m not even exaggerating), a quick flick through didn’t really show me anything hugely exciting (not even her recipe for ox kidneys) and my cookbook-shelf is both narrow and overflowing already – to have a book I wasn’t completely in love with lurking round trying to fit in would just be annoying. So I left it. But not without photocopying one recipe first.

Her Soured Cream Soda Bread made significant eye contact with me – I love the Jilly Cooperish way she calls it ‘soured cream’ which somehow sounds posher and more petulant than regular sour cream (not to mention “bicarbonate” which Nigella often calls it too, is this a British thing? I remember seeing it once in a book when I was younger and didn’t realise it was the same as baking soda, I pronouced it “bicker-bonnet”…anyway). Soda Bread is a traditionally Irish creation, and according to Wikipedia, it all kicked off when baking soda was introduced to Ireland in 1840. It doesn’t indicate who specifically had it in their head that what the Irish really needed in their lives was a boatload of raising agent pulling into their harbour, but nevertheless they ended up with it and this is what they cleverly made of it.


Like a giant scone, soda bread is quickly made and benefits from minimal handling and fast eating. Delia’s recipe is a bit unusual in that it uses sour cream instead of butter, and while I’m normally like “BUTTER WHERE IS IT WHY ISN’T THERE MORE IN FRONT OF ME” I was also a bit interested in what the sour cream would bring to the table.
Soured Cream Soda Bread


450g/1lb wholewheat flour (I used white, it’s all I had)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
150mls sour cream
150mls water (plus maybe a little extra)

Set your oven to 220 C/425 F. Mix the dry ingredients together thoroughly, whisk together the sour cream and water and pour into the dry ingredients. Stir together with a spatula, adding a little more water if needed. Carefully, lightly knead, turn it onto a baking tray lined with paper or a silicon sheet. Slash a cross in the top with a sharp knife and bake for 30 mins. Cover with foil if it darkens too much. Cool a little first before eating – this will help it slice easier.



Delia very coolly tells you to knead the dough. What she doesn’t tell you is that it’s difficult to work with, to the point where you half-expect it to don a feathery leotard and insist Miley Cyrus-like that it can’t be tamed. By the time I’d finished attempting to shape it into something that resembled any shape – let alone the “round ball” with “the surface smooth” that she talks of – there was dough clinging to my arms and hair and I looked like the guy at the end of the Comfortably Numb segment of The Wall. Once you’ve got that out of the way though it’s delicious stuff – the soda and sour cream giving it a distinctively light, slightly tangy tang that goes mighty well with the salty creaminess of butter. It’s quite a dense loaf but – and I don’t know if this was just because I didn’t get the top smooth – quite crumbly round the edges. It goes quick – Tim and I basically ate all but a small remaining shoulder of the loaf for dinner with cheese, hot sauce and gherkins.

The next day a person I work with handed me a recipe they’d photocopied from a newspaper for American-Irish Soda Bread, which is apparently what happened to Soda Bread once people started arriving en masse from Ireland to American and looked distinctively sweeter, eggier and fruitier than its ancestor-recipe. I very unhelpfully left the recipe behind on the day I was determined to make it and managed to cobble together a rough recipe from what I could remember plus a bit of online research. Ended up with a completely different finished result to the previous bread – but still seriously delicious in its own way. Of course I didn’t write down the recipe I came up with so what follows is me trying to remember something I’ve already forgotten once before – you’ve been warned.



Irish-American Soda Bread

4 1/2 cups plain flour
3 tablespoons sugar
50g butter
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon caraway seeds (I just happened to have these, but leave them out if you don’t)
70g currants, golden sultanas or just plain sultanas
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

Set your oven to 200 C. In a large bowl, rub the butter into the flour, then stir in the sugar, baking soda, seeds and fruit. Make a well in the centre and crack in the eggs, pour in the liquids and using a spatula, carefully draw it all together without overmixing to create a soft dough. This stuff really can’t be kneaded, so get a baking dish – the sort you’d make brownies in – and either sit a silicon sheet inside it or get put a piece of baking paper in it extending over both sides – and dump the dough into it. Dust the top with excess flour and try cutting a cross in it, although it probably won’t show at the end. Bake for around 30 minutes, although keep an eye on it – might need less or more time.
This is completely different to Delia’s recipe – it spreads out into an enormous loaf with a golden crust. The strangely anise-like caraway seeds pop up occasionally to stick in your teeth but give a sophisticated flavour to the loaf while they’re at it. The relaxed sweetness and dried fruit make it seem like a morning-with-cup-of-tea kind of creation, and it toasts well in a sandwich press or under the grill (and then spread with butter and honey!) which is just as well because it loses its springiness quick.
Tim was out on Tuesday night when I made this, and it wasn’t till a full 24 hours later that he tried it. To be fair, the loaf was most definitely on its way to stale-ville. His reaction was something to the effect of “Mmmm, this isn’t dry at ALL!” and I replied “Well if you hadn’t abandoned me and my unleavened bread,” and wasn’t sure where to go from there and even though neither of us were being overly serious I started laughing anyway because that’s not the sort of thing you get to yell at someone every day of the week.
Speaking of Tim, he and I saw Exit Through The Gift Shop on Friday night at Paramount cinema, it was in the Film Festival earlier this year and as time went by it racked up considerably positive reviews from people whose opinions I take notice of. Luckily Paramount has it on offer because we completely missed it first time round. It’s directed by difficult-to-pin-down artist Bansky and follows Thierry Guetta, a man who feverishly films everything around him, and his attempt to…well I don’t know, just get by and enjoy himself. Naive that I am, it didn’t even occur to me that it would be a hoax but theories are scooting round the internet from various reviewers that it’s all a giant fake. I don’t really care – it’s brilliant to watch whether it’s true or not, and if it comes to a neighbourhood near you I definitely recommend it.
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Title via: the incredible Idina Menzel singing Life of the Party from Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party. It’s hard to talk about this musical without mentioning the rest of the amazing cast (Julia Murney, Taye Diggs, Brian D’arcy James) but this song is a big moment for Idina alone in the show. Feel free to humour me (but benefit yourself greatly!) by listening to the shinier album version as well as viewing footage of her actually performing it hard. The ending is mind-blowing.
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Music lately:

Cold War by Janelle Monae from her album The Archandroid. I love the urgency, and how the words in the chorus are repeated in different ways with emphasis on different parts, and also the whole thing. She’s doing well for herself, but how this lady isn’t the best-selling, most-awarded artist right now (along with Idina Menzel, naturally) is beyond me.

Benny Tones feat Mara TK, Firefly from Chrysalis – silky soulful local goodness.
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Next time: I did not get ANY baking done this weekend. Partly because I ended up being kinda busy. But also for a very stupid reason, which I’ll probably tell you about again next time anyway, but the short version: I got the new Nigella Lawson cookbook, was so excited about my weekend revolving around it, and then I left it at work. D’OH! And next week I have something on every single night so it’s even further out of my reach. But the next thing I make in the kitchen will absolutely be from it.

johnny all she does is lies

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned about cornbread (apart from the fact that I really really love it) it’s this: the only way to take an oven-hot slab of cornbread with a two-by-four sized slice of butter melting quietly on top and make it more fun, is to transform it into pancakes.

The mighty Nigella Lawson has this recipe for Johnnycakes in How To Be A Domestic Goddess, and while Wikipedia reckons the name of this American creation was adapted from ‘journey cakes’ I’d like to think there was an original Johnny, who wanted to blaze trails by combining the golden grittiness of cornbread with the circular fun-ness of a pancake. I was away up in Rotorua over the weekend (plus chasing the hour lost in Daylight Saving) but I managed to cobble these together without any trouble for a late lunch when I landed back in Wellington on Sunday afternoon. This recipe is forgiving – only a few Johnnycakes turned out bung, either buckling or sticking to the pan – the rest obediently slid onto the spatula and flipped over easily.

This one’s for you, generous, possibly non-existent Johnny.

Johnnycakes

From Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess.

  • 150g fine cornmeal/polenta
  • 100g plain flour
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder (gotta admit I was all “really? four?” about this, and put in only three teaspoons)
  • 2 teaspoons sugar
  • pinch salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 300mls milk
  • 30g butter

Stir together the dry ingredients in a bowl, then whisk in everything else till you have a thick, yellow batter (don’t worry about any small lumps.) Heat an oiled griddle or pan and drop tablespoons-ful into it. Once they’re thoroughly bubbled on top, carefully turn them over to cook on the other side. Transfer to a plate and cover with tinfoil till you’re finished.

When I was a kid I always impressed by those Disney movies where a character would have a whole stack of pancakes with butter and maple syrup on top, and then eat the stack all at once with a knife and fork. I’m sure it was Disney movies anyway, it must have happened a lot in order to stick in my brain like that… Johnnycakes are too stubby for this practice, so I unstacked them after these photos and ate them the best way – two sandwiched together with maple syrup.

While there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from making actual cornbread or actual pancakes, both being more practical in their own special ways, Johnnycakes are so good that it’s worth a bit of potentially dubious fusion (fusious?). The cornmeal gives a textural presence to the Johnnycakes which the average pancake sometimes lacks (like chewing through a foam rubber camping mattress if you’re unlucky) and you get a hearty jolt of bright yellow cheeriness without the need for pesky e-numbers, useful if you’re the sort of person who gets nervous around them. Their lightly perforated surface is an ideal conduit for ferrying lots of butter into the mouth. They’re slightly sweet and very light, and work with both savoury and sweet stuff on the plate. How To Be A Domestic Goddess is amazing – the Johnnycake recipe being just one example of the gems to be found within its pages. If you’re casually thinking about getting into baking intensely good food, you couldn’t do much better than finding this book.

Funnily enough when I last blogged about cornbread-related issues I was thinking about what my favourite food was in case I got asked in an interview with a cool magazine. A girl can dream, but nothing wrong with dreaming in a hubristically prepared kinda manner, right? Anyway this morning I had the mighty good fortune to have my first ever radio interview over the phone with Charlotte Ryan on 95bFM’s Morning Glory show. With the job I’m in I try to keep relatively non-partisan about NZ media but Morning Glory has most definitely been a favourite of mine for a while now. It was the first time I’d ever been on the radio (although I have this memory of requesting some Nirvana song from the late Channel Z years back) and I was nervous as, but Charlotte was so nice that I rambled away quite happily, sharing this recipe, my tooth-rattling nervousness while the endless intro song played through the phone forgotten. I’ll post a link to the podcast when it’s up so you can listen if you like. Just before I got the call I realised I might be asked what I love about cooking. I had this frenzied moment of panic where my mind blanked and the closest thing to a coherent sentence about why I loved cooking was “there’s so much deliciousness in this world and I like making it happen in front of me”. Luckily that specific question didn’t come up. An enormous thanks to Charlotte and bFM for having me on the show, the excitingness of it all can’t be underplayed, truly.

Title via: Salmonella Dub’s cautionary tale Johnny from their 1998 album Killervision. I have a feeling this was the first song of theirs I ever heard.

Music Lately:

Late Sunday afternoon Tim and I went to Embassy theatre to see a special screening of Hair. Having seen the movie before, I knew it’s pretty painful in places (and cuts out some of my favourite tracks – it’s gratifying to know that the creators of the musical it’s based on hated it) but I love the source music intensely, and I like having the opportunity to see a musical on the big screen. One flawless moment in all the awkwardness is Cheryl Barnes singing Easy To Be Hard. Heartfelt – not just belting for the sake of it (although if I could sing I’d be melisma-ing up a storm, daily) it’s one of my favourite recordings of this track. Apparently she did it in one take.

While we’re down the flawless lady/Hair road, and I’ve probably linked to this before, but here’s Nina Simone singing Ain’t Got No/I’ve Got Life, taking two songs from Hair and sieving them together to create something incredible. Her vibrato-y voice delivers the lyrics in her incomparable way (by incomparable, I mean I haven’t come up with a word to describe how good it is) over a fantastic music arrangement while her dinner-plate sized earrings sway.

Also: while I was up in Rotorua Tim went to see Lil Band O’ Gold at San Francisco Bath House. Apparently they played for two and a half hours and were seriously awesome.

Next time: I’m a Nigella lady to the core, but tried my first ever Delia Smith recipe last week, and that’s probably what I’ll put up next.

 

my mother said i should eat an ice cream cone

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I love ice cream so much. Maybe it’s that extremely cold food is more exciting, maybe it’s that the creamy chillyness is the ideal taxicab to drive a million different flavours to your tastebuds, maybe it’s that particular melty smoothness.

Maybe it’s that ice cream reminds me of good times growing up. So many of my ‘birthday cakes’ were a tub of vanilla ice cream sprinkled with Smarties or jellybeans and spiked with sparklers, which were then set alight for extra glamour. Mum would put a scoop of ice cream in a cup and top it up with Coke or Fanta to make ice cream sodas for everyone which I thought was very cool. (Some kids got lovingly baked cakes but not everyone’s mum has the foresight to combine Tip Top and gunpowder.)

So… I love ice cream. And one of the best, best, and once more best recipes in the world is one that I’m sharing today. I can’t remember where I absorbed it from, it just mysteriously became part of my frozen repertoire. I’d like to say “I absorbed it from my own brilliant mind” but that’s just not true. What I did invent was this particular version – a completely vegan, two-ingredient, relatively instant and completely delicious-ful ice cream.

Confession: I don’t usually serve my ice cream on a bowl-within-a-plate thing. And I never eat it with second-hand commemorative spoons. It was all done so the photos would look nice. Between that and the precisely situated forkful of risotto last week, this blog has become an offal pit of visual lies! To force some honesty into the situation, I made myself eat that bowl of icecream using only the decorative spoon which has a palm-tree embossed cavity of 2cm. It took roughly forty minutes.

Anyway! That’s a lengthy bit of emotional baggage for such a quick recipe. I first made this last year using delicious cream but not only does coconut milk make it vegan-tastic, it also lends a fluttery flavour of its own. How this works is – I think – as the food processor blades reduce the frozen fruit to rubble, the liquid is forced through at great speed, turning it into a kind of instantly frozen puree thing which resembles actual ice cream. It’s not perfect – you have to eat it on the spot as it loses its texture if refrozen – and it’s not overly sweet, so pour in sugar if you like. I chose blackberries because they were cheapest at the time – the seeds to get in your teeth a bit but between friends it’s no biggie, plus their tart berryishness and beautiful colour makes up for any of that.

Blackberry-Coconut Ice Cream

2 1/2 cups frozen blackberries (or other)
250ml/1 cup canned coconut milk (or cream, or yoghurt)


Put everything in a food processor. Add some sugar if you like. Blend. Be warned: it will make a racket. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides and process again till it looks like magical ice cream. Scoop into bowls and sprinkle with coconut if you like (or any kind of sprinkly thing, really).

I’m not sure how many this serves – only you can look inside yourself and find the answer – by which I mean Tim and I finished this but it probably could have been divided between four people. It tastes sparklingly and singularly of the fruit that went into it, with a clean, softening hint of coconut. It comes together in seconds, so if you have a can or two of coconut milk in the cupboard and a bag of frozen fruit in the freezer you’re only ever moments from ice cream. Which is a very good feeling. 


Spontaneous dinner party? Spontaneous children appear? Spontaneous vegan children appear? Spontaneous simple desire for ice cream? Sorted.


On Thursday night Tim and I went to the Whitireia Performing Arts School’s first year performance of Godspell, a musical by Stephen “Defying Gravity” Schwartz, who wrote the bulk of the music when he was only in his early 20s. The cast themselves on Thursday night must have been around 19 and they were brilliant – there were some beautiful voices, sure, but the humour was sharp and the ability to grab props and change character out of nowhere was fairly mind-boggling. I ended up sitting next to this woman who knew my dance teachers from when I was growing up south of Auckland, miles and miles away from Wellington. Small world, isn’t it…It was funny in the intermission, they played a karaoke version of Wicked. You could hear pockets of girls in the audience singing along quietly. In these post-Glee days it’s more cute than anything else but a couple of years back I probably would have gone and introduced myself with a qualifying “Oh my gosh you know who Idina Menzel is”.
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Title via: The philosofly girl Coco Solid in another incarnation as Parallel Dance Ensemble with their song Weight Watchers, which won best video at Handle The Jandal awards last year. I was there – imagine those donuts and psychedelic licorice allsorts writ large across the Embassy cinema screen in psychedelic colours. Lip-smackingly delicious both to watch and listen to.
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Music lately:


Michael Franti and Spearhead, Sometimes, from their 2001 album Stay Human. Nice as this song is, I love the acoustic version, although the fact that I learned a dance to it at a workshop a few years back may have cemented it in my mind – sometimes it’s impossible not to love the music you learn dances to, no matter how bad. Not that this is bad. This is gorgeous.

By My Side from the aforementioned Godspell. We used to sing this in choir sometimes, it’s satisfying for an alto like me. Such a beautiful, beautiful song, I can’t believe it was the pretty but abrasively earnest Day By Day that instead made it onto the Billboard charts when Godspell came out in the 70s. The video I linked to is the film version featuring an astonishingly good-looking young Victor Garber as Jesus. (FYI, he’s in the Superman tshirt). The harmonies aren’t as clear as I’d like but it’s one of the better versions available on Youtube. Plus, Victor Garber, hello!
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Next time: I think this is the third time I’ve put off the Grumble Pie. With a name like that I can’t keep denying it a blog post…

give peas a chance

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So long since my last update – sorry you were stuck with that badly-exposed brisket for ages. I was in Hamilton over the weekend for the Smokefreerockquest finals and arrived back in Wellington on Sunday afternoon feeling very tired and still a bit blah that I’d missed Tim’s birthday on Saturday. I really wanted to stumble into bed, but dinner needed sorting and after a weekend of hastily grabbed dinner (specifically: pineapple lumps and a packet of ready salted chips) I didn’t want to get take-out. Tired, uninspired, and with not much in the cupboard, I turned to Nigella’s seminal text How To Eat, feeling instinctively (and maybe a little overdramatically) that it would provide the answer.

 
Sure enough, after some aimless page-flipping her Pea Risotto stopped me. Rice. Frozen peas. Got them both. Not to mention, Nigella quite often bangs on about the soothingly zen properties of exhaustedly stirring a risotto into starchy submission, which significantly adds to the glamour of making dinner while half asleep.
 
I didn’t have any of the required parmesan cheese, so instead I added a few strips of lemon zest and a handful of peppery rocket to provide a similar kick. I normally feed my risottos with butter, but with the lack of parmesan I decided instead to use extra virgin olive oil instead and make the whole thing vegan. I’m pretty sure the fact that I met an incredibly good looking vegan on the weekend has nothing to do with it – but who knows what decisions are secretly made by our subconscious.
 
 
My subconscious is reminding me that I can’t lie: these photos was taken the next morning before I went to work. Once I’d finished snapping I scraped all the cold rice into an empty Tupperware container and took it to work for lunch. I even placed that pea deliberately on the fork. It’s just that we were watching a documentary when I was making the risotto the night before and the lights were all off – not healthy photography settings. So the next day I recreated our dinner from the leftovers. If my photography can’t be honest, at least I am, right?
 
This is a very simple dinner but devastatingly good – creamy rice, bright green peas bursting with their pea-flavour (can anyone effectively describe the flavour of a pea? At this stage: not I). Yes, there’s a lot of stirring but think like Nigella and wallow in the romance of it all.
 
As well as removing the dairy aspect of this risotto, I also made a few other slight tweaks. I had no fresh nutmeg so left it out. Instead of heating up stock, I crumbled in half a porcini stock cube (my favourite, all-purpose flavour) and had a pan of hot water simmering next to the pan of rice. Rather than pureeing the peas I just divided them into two small bowls, mashing one half with a fork while leaving the other plain. I had no vermouth or white wine so went daringly cross-country and splashed in some Sake instead, which worked perfectly – its warm, ricey depth of flavour naturally complementing the rice it was absorbed into. I can’t pretend like I don’t think good carnaroli rice tastes a million times nicer than the bland gluggy Sun Rice arborio from the supermarket but I’m also lucky enough to be in a position to choose between rices (don’t get me wrong – good rice isn’t cheap, but there are other areas I don’t spend my money…so.) You do what works for you.
 
 
Pea Risotto
 
Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How To Eat
 
60g butter (or more! Or olive oil)
150g frozen peas
Approximately 1 litre stock
Freshly grated nutmeg
1 small onion or shallot
200g arborio or Carnaroli rice
80mls white wine or vermouth
lemon zest and rocket, to serve 
Melt half the butter in a pan and add the peas, cooking for a couple of minutes. Remove half the peas, and to the pan add about half a cup of stock. Simmer till the peas are very soft, remove and puree along with a tablespoon each of parmesan and butter and a pinch of nutmeg, or if you don’t have the energy, mash roughly with a fork. You should now have an empty pan and two small bowls of peas, one solid, one not.
 
Finely chop the onion and melt some more butter in the pan. Cook the onion, stirring occasionally, till golden and soft. Add the rice and stir “till every grain glistens with the oniony fat” as Nigella says. Pour in your wine – or sake! – and allow it to absorb. Now here comes the commitment. Add a ladleful of hot stock (or hot water if you’ve crumbled in a good stock cube like me) and continue to stir till absorbed. Repeat. And again. And then some more. You can’t rush it, you can’t walk away. Just keep stirring, watching the rice slowly expand and absorb all the liquid. After about ten minutes, return the whole peas to the pan and continue to slowly add hot liquid. When you’re satisfied that it’s done (taste as you go) stir through the pea puree and as much butter or extra virgin olive oil as you want. Divide between two plates and sprinkle with parmesan if you like, or lemon zest and rocket as I did. 
 
 
As I said, this is simple food, but very, very good – soft, dense granules of rice studded with Elphaba-green peas. Very easy to eat curled up in a chair, feeling better about the world with every mouthful. The scent of sake hitting a hot pan is something else – I can almost taste its savoury, buttery aroma just thinking about it. The porcini stock cubes add a subtly earthy flavour and the peas have their green sweetness. And it’s all absorbed by the rice. Positively meditative stuff. 
Title via: John Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance, I know it’s a sorry pun but I’ve got the “I’m tired” card and I’m putting it on the table right here. Plus, you really should give peas a chance. They’re awesome as far as vegetables go.
Music lately:
 
Spotted a tweet from the mighty DJ Sirvere on Sunday inviting people to share their favourite Jay Z guest spot. Not an expert on this but my mind immediately presented me with his appearance in Mariah Carey’s Heartbreaker. Which then spiralled into hours of unproductive inactivity. Oh sure I blame the tiredness, but I haven’t listened to Mariah in years and with one click of the mouse I was riding the Mariah Carey Love Train all the way through youtube. Highlights included the delicious Can’t Let Go, Honey (Bad Boy Remix) this reminds me of when MTV Europe was briefly on our TVs, One Sweet Day with Boyz II Men (slathers you with emotion like I slather butter on toast) and Thank God I Found You with Nas and Joe. I don’t often like power ballads, and endless impressing upon the listener about how in love they are isn’t usually my thing either but what can I say. Mariah is flawless.
 
I Aint Mad At Cha by Tupac, from All Eyez On Me. Yesterday was 14 years since Tupac was shot. There’s no right age to have someone take your life…but he was only 25.
 
So, The Good Fun were the winners of the Smokefreerockquest on Saturday night – check out footage of them performing their song Karaoke for the sell-out crowd. I liked all the finalists in their own way but The Good Fun definitely have an out-of-nowhere zany awesomeness – I hope they go far.
Next time: It’ll be the Grumble Pie that I promised for this time round. Photographed at night right before it was eaten, even. Also, right now: Happy birthday, Mum! 

let’s have a ball girl and take our sweet little time about it

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My nana is seriously fantastic. She’s the only person in my life who will txt me to say that RENT is on TV and that she’s going to tape it, while also being able to identify buttonholing and stitching on a opshop dress of mine as dating it back to the 1950s. She was one of the very first readers and supporters of this blog back in 2007 and has always been a positive presence in my life. As if all that weren’t enough, a while back she commented on a tofu-centric post on this blog with Tofu “Balls”, a recipe she “used heaps over 20 years ago.”

I guess the title isn’t overly inviting – anything with inverted commas seems a little hesitant. That said, these literally are balls of tofu – just because there’s not any meat doesn’t make these any less, erm, ballsy, so there’s no need for them to cower behind quotation marks. Amusing thought they may be.

All hesitancy aside, they’re really, really delicious. I did kind of tweak the recipe – I love tofu, I love rolled oats, but I don’t think I can face them together. The combination belongs back in the shadows of “over 20 years ago”…for everyone’s sake. That said, if you’re game, then certainly go ahead and use them instead of the breadcrumbs/ground almonds.

Tofu “Balls”

With thanks to Nana for the heads-up.

In a food processor, mix the following till a crumbly mixture forms.

1/2 cup chopped peanuts or cashews
1 finely chopped onion
2/3 cup soft breadcrumbs, or 1/2 cup ground almonds
1 egg (optional – leaving it out makes these vegan)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
2 Tablespoons Shoyu or soy sauce
1 block firm tofu (I used half, or two squares, from those four-packs of firm tofu you get from the vege market)

Roll into balls, not too large – about the size of the old 50c pieces, or a walnut. The second time I made these I rolled them in ground almonds which was rather nice, but the world won’t fall apart if you don’t do it. Heat a little rice bran oil in a wide pan, and cook till the balls are crisp and browned on all sides.

Nana also recommended a sauce made by bringing peanut butter, lemon juice and water to the boil in a pan while stirring with a spatula, although I imagine any kind of dipping sauce you have to hand would work with these – chilli sauce, for example…

Forget your fear of tofu and maybe your further fear of well-meaning vintage recipes involving tofu. These are so good! A crunchy without, nutty and mouthfilling like peanut butter within. The tofu has a really lovely fresh flavour which balances out the richness of the nuts, but the softness of the texture means that they really slow you down – which is why you don’t want to roll them too large. They went brilliantly with a crunchy green salad of sliced cabbage, sugar snap peas and avocado, plus soba noodles, slippery and cool with sesame oil and soy sauce. Because tofu is so awesome and kind of holds everything together you can afford to toy with these as you wish. If you wanted to you could also add into the food processor a number of ingredients…sesame seeds, tahini, sunflower seeds, lemon rind, chopped ginger, garlic…As well as being a very filling main meal, you could make them even smaller – like bonker marble sized – and serve with toothpicks and a variety of dipping sauces at your next soiree.
Busy times lately – Tim and I spent both Thursday and Friday night at the cocoon of body heat that is the San Francisco Bath House firstly to see Brooklyn – as in New York – band Dirty Projectors, then local sensations Mint Chicks last night. Dirty Projectors have this unusual, intriguing sound – kind of minimalistic, with wonky time signatures, chunky drumbeats and flutey harmonies that take the role of instruments in places. Occasionally the sound got a bit repetitive, (and all those “ehhh-ohhhs” make me think of the Tellytubbies) although if I could sing like the gorgeous ladies in the band I’d probably do the same thing over and over too. They all looked really happy though which tends to endear me to performers, and damnit if I haven’t been humming the stunning No Intentions constantly. I’m glad we went and saw them – there’s some extraordinary talent within the band, I just wonder where they’re going to go from here with their sound.
Two of the Dirty Projectors. They looked so young, and for some reason the more the girl on the left – the main female voice – belted, the younger she looked…
The Mint Chicks’ set last night was fantastic although so loud that I occasionally felt nauseous. A compliment? More than any other local band I can think of they always feel like A Big Deal whenever they roll into town. That said, the audience – largely composed of new-in-town or returning students – seemed a little disengaged. Like the couple who spent 90% of the time pashing extensively next to me. Why even leave the house! Hopefully it was a good experience for the Mint Chicks themselves, they all looked completely impassioned while onstage but who could know? The sound quality seemed decent, so the scrawlyness of their music translated really nicely into a live setting and didn’t turn into a incomprehensible blur of noise. Their older songs sounded as brilliant as ever and their newest track Bad Buzz was maybe my favourite moment – it’s such a ridiculously fantastic song as I clumsily tried to explain here. I hadn’t seen them live since 2006 so it was wonderful to catch them again, hopefully they stick around and keep on creating…
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Title brought to you by: Ball and Biscuit from Elephant, the album you probably own if you’re a casual White Stripes fan. Casual we are not.
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Music to blog by:

The Dirty Projectors’ No Intentions, as above, from their album Bitte Orca. See? Intriguing! Hummable!

I Cut Like A Buffalo from the Dead Weather’s debut album Horehound. The music video for this is compelling stuff. I hope sincerely that Jack White recreates that dance on stage when we see them live on the 17th. I don’t think I’ll be that functional on the 16th. 2005 seems a long time ago.

Patti LuPone singing Rainbow High – say what you will about Andrew Lloyd Webber, but the music to Evita is stunning, and this cabaret performance from LuPone at Les Mouches in 1980 is particularly ferocious. Makes me want to grab a microphone and snarl “so Christian Dior me!” too. Wish someone would stage a version of it here.
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Next time: we’re having a combined Wellington Phoenix pre-game get-together/Rod Stewart Appreciation Day thing tomorrow (long story…actually no, that explains it all really) which I’m catering (self-imposedly) and the menu is growing more and more dizzying in proportions…no doubt I’ll have plenty to blog about. Like Nigella’s Girdlebuster Pie. Do you not want to know more with a name like that?