Category: Easy and/or Fast

a custard pirate lost at sea

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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

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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

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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

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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…

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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

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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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.

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…