Category: Fruit

Block Rockin’ Beets

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It is a fine time to be a Renthead (insofar as I am able to consider myself one) in the greater lower North Island region as of late. I don’t have time to give a full blow-by-blow review of the production of Rent that I saw in Palmerston North on Friday (“oh no! whatever shall we do!” I hear you cry), well, not yet. Briefly though, it was very good, really quite slickly done with nice attention to detail (I’m 99% sure that the girl who played Mimi had been listening carefully to Daphne Rubin Vega in “Goodbye Love,” it matched note for note.) Also I’m happy to report that the photo of the cast that I saw really must have been a bad one – the guy who played Collins was much nicer looking, and Collins-ier in person. The only thing that really annoyed me was that Mark was far too camp and the waiter at the Life Cafe wasn’t nearly camp enough. Mark is awkward, not camp, and that’s that. All told though, an excellent performance.

Frankly, it’s not a bad time to have me cook dinner for you either. I was at the Design campus from 10.30am till 6.15pm yesterday hunched feverishly behind a computer, moving things slowly from left to right on Photoshop. And I’ll be back there before and after class today. I was somewhat tempted just to have the chippie cook dinner for me last night after all that but Tim, bless him, had endured the rain to get me free range eggs, spinach, and beetroot from the vege market, plus I thought a proper dinner might be good for the brain (not to mention the thighs). Unfortunately it just won’t stop raining which means that it’s impossible for me to get my final shots for the assignment due…tomorrow after work. It’s raining right now in fact. If you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s probably because I’ve hightailed it to Tijuana.

I am such a fan of roasting beetroot, and they’re very cheap at the moment. Paired with soft, crumbling, blindingly white feta cheese it enters the realms of “ridiculously delicious.” Seriously, you know how a while ago (perhaps coinciding with the lamentable “cranberry and camembert” trend) it was wildly fashionable to pair spinach and feta together? Well beetroot is feta’s newer, better accessory, as though it had discarded its floor length boho skirt (NB – I loved boho skirts) and picked up…you know I don’t have any clue what is even fashionable these days. A shemagh? Passe already? My point being, beetroot and feta are meant to be together, and you’ll see it everywhere soon, trust me. I’m not even sure if I invented this salad that I made for dinner last night- I mean, I didn’t have a recipe for it but I’m sure I’m not the first to eat it- but here’s what I did, if you’re interested. Shrewdly, Tim bought a LOT of beetroot, so I’m sure they will appear regularly over the next couple of posts (as will carmine splotches over anything I’m wearing while making dinner…)

 

Hey, why not look at it again. I’m tired, and it’s not a great photo, (though I like how you can see the slice mark in the pistachio) so I guess you could consider this filler material.
Roasted Beetroot, Feta and Pistachio Salad with Sumac and Roasted Red Chilli Dressing.
(How cafe does that sound?!)
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2 good-sized beetroot
1 large red chilli, halved and seeded (I used my lovely Orcona chillis)
Feta Cheese (only you know how much you want)
2 or so tablespoons pistachios (I used some from my precious stash that Mum sent me)
Heat oven to 200 C. I never bother to peel or wrap the beetroot, but if this is how you like it then be my guest. I just chop them into chunks, tip them into a roasting dish, (add the chilli here) and leave them in the oven for about 3/4 of an hour. Heating the chilli, funnily enough, seems to take out all the fire but leave behind that magical, smoky flavour. Since I can’t handle much in the way of actual chilli, this suits me perfectly. Once the beetroot is tender, mix together 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon ground sumac, 2 tablespoons of water, and the red chilli, finely chopped. Tip the beetroot into a bowl and pour over the dressing, leave to cool. Finally, tumble over your chopped feta and pistachio nuts. I also biffed in the last of the organic sprouts from the Wellington Food Show. This serves two, although I could, without a doubt, eat the whole thing alone. It is a good recipe if you have bought some Sumac and are thinking “now what?!” There’s also something about the red, green and white of the salad that makes me think it would be nice at Christmas…perhaps with some chopped mint sprinkled over.
Because doing uni work all day makes me feel listless and needy, I decided to indulge in some form of pudding – Jill Dupleix’ Banana Berry Ice Cream with brown-sugared yoghurt and Vanilla Apples with Sweetheart Croutes from Nigella Express.

Above: The flavours actually went marvelously well together. The cold zing of the icecream lifted the buttery apples (literally – you chop them then stew them in butter) and the sweetheart croutes were, if kitchly named, a pleasantly crunchy contrast to everything else. But if you are going to make the ice cream – and I highly recommend you do – you should know it sets rock hard. I guess this is because there’s no fat and barely any sugar to keep things mellow. So, take it out of the freezer a good 25 minutes before you want to serve it or you’ll just have a bright pink slab that you can pick up with your hands and take a bite out of (how do I know this…?)

Above: I don’t tend to go in for that whole “million photos of the same dish from different angles” approach on this blog but I couldn’t help myself with this. It really is quite pretty.
My brain is so tired from all this uni stuff, and I really don’t want to go back to the design campus (located handily in the throbbing heart of Wellington’s red light district!) but I’m going to have to. It has been cold, windy and rainy here and I just want to lie in bed all day, watch DVDs, and bake (simultaneously, natch.) Soon, soon though. At any rate I’m sure I’ve learned some kind of important life lesson from this photog paper. More than I learned from that compulsory school trip in sixth form to the Outdoor Pursuits Centre, which I still bear the mental scars from. Why does everyone insist you have to go abseiling or climb an insurmountable hill in order to grow emotionally as a person?
One thing that has shaken me awake though was the discovery of some more videos of The Wild Party on Youtube, including – oh frabjous day – a clip of Idina Menzel singing The Life Of The Party. Seriously, I nearly fainted when I watched the video. She is incredible! For those of you who can’t be bothered looking on Wikipedia, The Wild Party is – was – an off-Broadway show from 2000 based on the Joseph Moncure March poem, and is set in the 1920s. It bears the dubious distinction of being what got me into Rent (Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs originated roles in both musicals.) And for those of you who like it old-school, I also found an amazing clip of her singing Cornet Man from Funny Girl. Go on, indulge me. I’m feeling fragile. And it was my birthday recently…ish…or something.

“Some Things I Cannot Change…”

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…”But till I try I’ll never know…” Argh. I mean, I posted those Tetris photos last time breezily saying how I was prepared for them to be criticised. Heck, I even quoted Back To The Future. But secretly I thought they were cool. The teacher absolutely hated them and told me as much in our interim presentation on Wednesday (worth 20% of the assignment’s grade!) I kid you not, I actually started to tear up right there in class. My throat got tight, my nose got prickly, and I could only but sullenly nod at her before racing out of the class to sob in the girls’ loo for 20 minutes. Once again; she was well within her rights to say that, also, they probably were “technically awful,” but how the heck am I supposed to pick up the camera and carry on with the assignment now? On top of that everything negative that she said about the last assignment in class applied directly to what I had done. I felt like I was twelve years old again. I felt like hugging my mother. I felt made of fail.

So yeah, I hit the butter pretty hard.


Above: After watching a performance on youtube of ‘Popular‘ from the musical Wicked, featuring Kristen Chenoweth and the ever-ridiculously-astounding Idina Menzel, (yes, my fangirl-ness extends to youtubing musicals I’ve never even seen), I felt like creating some pink and green iced cupcakes. After all, as Glinda says, “Pink goes good with green.” I don’t know why I thought cupcakes would be a good way of expressing this, or indeed that it needed to be expressed at all, but it certainly filled my baking-as-catharsis brief for the time being…


Above: And looked rather cute to boot, no?
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I’ve made these so many times and in so many forms that I don’t need a recipe, but you might: Take 125g each of soft butter and caster sugar, beat till fluffy with a wooden spoon, add two eggs, (beat beat beat) a little vanilla extract (beat beat) and 125g flour (still beating with your wooden spoon). Finally, you scoop the mixture into a 12-bun muffin tin, (with paper liners in each indentation) or into 12 or so endearingly pretty silicon cupcake holders like mine. Bake at 180 for about 15 minutes. This recipe is courtesy of Nigella, and is actually in every single book she has done, in one guise or another. Double the recipe and add baking powder and it becomes a Victoria Sponge recipe, to be baked for about 30-ish minutes in two paper-lined 20cm springform tins, and sandwiched together with any number of combinations of things…cream, lemon curd, jam, mascarpone, stewed rhubarb, banana slices, dulce de leche…


Above: I’ve made these biscuits/cookies (choose as applicable depending on hemisphere) and seriously loved them. Just to show how versatile the recipe is, in the book they are called chocolate chip fruit and nut cookies. In the ones I made there were none of these components (apart from a certain necessary amount of cookie!) and instead I doubled the oats, loaded in pumkin seeds, and then threw caution to the wind by adding linseeds (some throw caution to the wind by, I don’t know, skydiving. I add linseeds.)

I managed to refrain from eating all the mixture this time.

And yes, I did manage to get some study done yesterday, but I truly had hit a brick wall when it came to the photography assignment and couldn’t bring myself to get started on it again. I’ll need to harden up soon and get on with it, but yesterday I couldn’t help but wallow, walrus-like, in the solace of the kitchen for a little longer…


Above: It just occured to me that if you zoomed in on this picture, maybe upped the saturation somewhat, it might look like an early Pink Floyd record sleeve. This technicolour mix is actually an uber-wholesome combo of ripe bananas and frozen berries, plus a spoonful of brown sugar, which I turned into ice cream. Well, is it ice cream if there is no cream in it? Jill Dupleix thinks so, and I salute her for coming up with such a splendidly delicious recipe, but the finished product has more of a sorbet-like granular, slushy texture. No matter, it tastes pretty incredible and can claim to be gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, almost sugar free (one tablespoon! and it was my idea, not the recipe), and even vegan. Who would have thought I’d ever make something vegan?

This came to be, not only because I had a whole lot of cheaply bought baking bananas that I couldn’t get rid of fast enough, but because Tim and Paul (with a little help from the rest of us) valiantly cleaned out our fridge (well, one of them; we are a two-fridge family in this flat) which was so bung that the ice growth on the back wall had literally grown over some of our food and encased it. Anyway, they found a half-bag of frozen berries that I’d bought and were going to biff them (I know) but luckily thought I might want them. And so, to justify their existense, and to get rid of the scary bananas, I made Jill Dupleix’ icecream from Lighten Up.


Above: I don’t go in for bananas in a huge way, but good grief this is delicious. And not because of all that it lacks, or even because of all the vitamins and potassium it contains (though I believe they do add that extra zing) but because of what it has: a gorgeous, deeply pink hue; an amazing sorbet-like texture, and the intense flavour of fruit, unadulterated and allowed to taste of itself. (I know, I know, I’ve totally been drinking her Kool-Aid)

I think (lazily) that Dupleix’ recipe is a little unnecessarily complicated, so here’s what I did: Take six or so ripe bananas (cut away any brown bits) and chop them very roughly into a bowl. I mean, cutting them in two is fine. Tumble in 150g of frozen raspberries (I had a berry mix which gives a lovely purple tinge to the pink mixture) or more if you like, I didn’t bother to measure what I had but I think it was actually more than that. I also added a tablespoon of brown sugar to add a little sweetness; Dupleix specifies fresh berries which are sweeter. Leave them for twenty or so minutes for the berries to soften. Throw the whole lot in the food processor, blend till thoroughly smooth. Tip back into the bowl, or an icecream container, and freeze, stirring to break up ice particles at some stage of the proceedings. You won’t be sorry.

Whither the dinner in all this?


Above: On Wednesday night I put sausages, potatoes, onions (love roast onions) yellow peppers and beetroot into a couple of roasting dishes, shoved them in the oven, and came back maybe an hour later to find dinner ready. Although Tim likes his sausages fried, they are so much easier done in the oven and I admit I rather like the hard, crispy exoskeleton they acquire after roasting. You probably already know how I feel about roasted beetroot; if not: LOVE IT.

This weekend is going to be instensely busy, what with extended family driving down from home, old-but-not-forgotten flatmate Kieran showing up on our doorstep yesterday with several bottles of hard liquor, creative differences with my photography teacher to sort out, tests to study for, mini-essays to write, and The Food Show. You can guess which of these things I am excited about. I have been practising for the Food Show (Hello, I’m a food blogger in the Wellington region. May I take a photo? Hello, I’m a food blogger….)
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Oh and I booked a ticket to see Rent in Palmerston North next Friday. Am very excited, even if I’m going alone. Tim wouldn’t be tricked by reverse psychology (“didn’t want you to come anyway!”) and there was no pending birthday to use an excuse, in fairness to him he was a very good sport about it last time. As luck would have it our recent flatmate Stefan has moved to The Palm so I have a spare room to crash in. All’s I am saying is, they’d better not kill off Mimi like Levin did…that’s right, I’m still not over it.

Bring Us Some Figgy Pudding…Seriously, Anything!

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You know, making your own pasta is no harder than installing an aviary or Olympic-size swimming pool.


Above: I’m not sure if it says more about my skill as a pasta maker or the standard of my machine, but the end justifies the means – thank goodness. It’s hard to see it when you are grinding metres of dough through a squealing machine (why does it squeal so?) and flinging jets of flour over your jeans, but homemade pasta is truly, truly transcendent.

Although difficult in execution, last night’s dinner was very simple – pasta dressed with butter and nutmeg, plus a vast bowlful of steamed brocolli and roasted cauliflower. Tim and I get notoriously tense when making pasta (the flatmates start to get nervous about visitation rights) but last night we were okay, mostly because the pasta maker wasn’t its normal shrieking, squealing self. Considering you have to roll each lump of dough a squillion times, it can be a little jarring on the nerves.


Above: Homemade pasta is lightyears ahead of storebought fresh pasta. I use a very simple recipe of Nigella’s, which isn’t as terrifyingly yolky as Jamie Oliver’s pasta (possibly not as good either, but great for a feasible after-work dinner.) For each person, tip 100g flour into a bowl, followed by an egg. So, for Tim and I, 200g flour and 2 eggs. This stuff is pretty filling but I usually make more than I need per person because it’s so good. Stir to mix, then knead until it forms a cohesive ball. Let it rest for an hour, then roll out in your pasta maker and cut as you wish. You only need to cook it for about ten seconds in boiling, salted water before it’s done, at which stage you should drain it and add whatever sauce you like. This stuff makes particularly good lasagne, as you don’t have to worry about precooking it. Making pasta may be do-able, but taking a photo of it is a pain in the neck. It wouldn’t stop steaming up. I took about forty photos, all the while frantically waving my hands to dispel the fog.


Above: Real figs! In our kitchen! At work my boss’ wife bought in a whole bag of them from her tree. I took a couple for last night’s pudding. It was quick, yes, but pudding nonetheless. Sometimes you just need something more…Aren’t they beautiful? There’s something about figs, they are so exotic and other worldly compared to, I don’t know, bananas. I looked up a couple of Nigella recipes – one from How to Eat and one from Forever Summer and decided to amalgamate the two by putting these pink-and-green beauties in the oven for 15 minutes with cinnamon, cardamom, honey, and a little butter.


Above: Tim didn’t really go in for them – as I suspected – so all the more for me. Delicately perfumed, deliciously spiced, kinda healthy, and ever so pretty to look at.

I should have known. In my last post, I talked about pancakes in the title, even though I hadn’t made any, and then mentioned that should I actually make some, I’d be stuck for a kicky title. Well here I am. My brain still feels like pancake batter, for what it’s worth. Maybe more so…anyhow:


Above: After reading this post on the stunning Use Real Butter blog, I decided to give Chinese Spring Onion Pancakes a go. Very plain ingredients – flour, water, salt, oil, spring onions – are turned into gorgeously moreish flat little parcels. The method is a little fiddly but if you think of it more as “fun” than “labour-intensive” it helps.

First you roll your dough into pancakes, sprinkle with salt, oil and spring onions, then roll up into a cigar. You then twirl this cigar into a coil and then flatten this into a pancake again, which makes a rather satisfying squashy noise.


Above: Roughly, the three stages of the pancake-making. For goodness sakes though, go to Use Real Butter for the recipe and a detailed outline of what to do – my expertise only stretches so far.

Finally you fry the flattened cakes in hot oil, and then serve.


Above: Like I said, there’s not much to these, yet Tim and I didn’t even make it to the table – we just stood there at the kitchen bench, wolfing these down, sprinkling them with sea salt at every bite. They are intensely good, and would, I think, be marvelous served (sliced in half or quarters) with drinks at your next shindig.


Above: For a proper feed after the pancakes, and because I like to keep the intervals between my lentil consumption brief, I made this lentil casserole au gratinee (that is, au grilled cheese) made by simmering diced onion and carrot, tinned tomatoes, red lentils, a bay leaf, and one diced sausage. I added some frozen peas at the end, tipped it into a loaf pan, and sprinkled over some grated cheese before popping it under the grill. I concede that lentil casserole doesn’t sound like much of a good time, but it certainly looks inviting – melted cheese can perk up almost anything. This was pretty delish, and even though there was only one sausage, it tasted surprisingly meaty.

You may be surprised to see me blogging so soon after I professed to have a ton of schoolwork to do. Well, I’m 3/4 of the way through my lamentable Media essay and decided I needed a break. I’ve got plenty to talk about, it just sounds as though it was typed by monkeys (“it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times”) As for the photography assignment, I swear it’s literally taking years off my life, in the manner of The Machine in The Princess Bride. I don’t mean to come off as all “woe is me, I’m a uni student taking exciting specialised papers, now the world owes me a living,” but seriously, if I have a heartattack next week, you’ll know why. Long story short, we have to print and mount six photos for this assignment due on Tuesday. I printed them out, which was fine (although I’m only satisfied with three of them in print, I’ve got no time – or energy – to reshoot them) but the mounting is going to cost $60! And it will end up cutting off the detail in one of the photos…and I have no choice but to hand them in. I don’t want to be a bore and keep going on about it, but seriously, I was nearly in tears after taking the photos to the framing place. Oh, and I have to hand in some photos and a proposal for my next assignment by Monday.


Above: The lack of baking round here has been driving me nutty so once I got home from work yesterday I thought it wouldn’t be so bad if I made a quick batch of biscuits. It’s not like I’m banning myself altogether from baking, it’s just I really don’t have the time. Dinner is necessary, triple layer white chocolate mocha sponges…aren’t quite.
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The recipe for these biscuits came from an Australian Women’s Weekly chocolate cookbook that I’ve had for so long that I forget how I came by it. This recipe for fruit and nut chocolate chip cookies never stood out to me before, but I wish I’d thought about it sooner – it is so easy, and delicious, and quick, and fairly cheap, and can stand all manner of alterations. As it is I didn’t have any chocolate (would most likely have already scoffed it if I had anyway) but I had dates, and pumpkin seeds, and so strew them through the mixture to pleasing effect. I imagine you could add anything you like – nuts, chocolate, chopped dried apricots, cocoa, whatever. I’ll give you the recipe as I made them, because they are seriously good.
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Date and Pumpkin Seed Cookies
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125g soft butter
1/2 cup brown sugar (push it down with a spoon to pack in as much as possible)
1 egg
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
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Heat oven to 180 C. Cream butter and sugar till smooth and fluffy. Stir in the egg, oats, and flour. By the way, the oats seem to melt into the baked cookies- they just disappear. It’s amazing! Stir in 1/2 cup dates, chopped and 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, roll into balls and place on a paper-lined baking tray. Flatten with a fork and bake for 10-15 minutes. Let them sit for a bit before transferring to a plate or something. How many you get out of this depends on how big your balls, erm, are, and how much mixture you eat. I know I mention this a lot, but what can I say. I eat a lot of mixture. But really, yesterday I ate a silly amount of the cookie dough, there would have been a lot more if I hadn’t…
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They were just right – quick to make, so I could get on to writing my essay without feeling like I’d done too much procrastinating – and almost healthy what with the oats and fruit and seeds.
As Homer Simpson says, “I don’t think cookies are gonna make me feel better. Oh, crunch, mmmm, oh god, oh mmmm, they’re delicious. Oh, so happy! Oh, go, they’re … They’re gone.”

You might not hear from me for a bit, on account of all the schoolwork. Or you might hear from me every five seconds, because of procrastinating…(our room really does need a tidy) Also if you can, spare a thought for Tim, who is currently having mad toothache. The dentist gave him a list of things that need to get done to him, which will cost somewhere in the region of $4000. Which is basically how much we have saved to go over to England. The irony, it makes my teeth hurt. Seriously it’s great that we have free dental care for kids under 18 in New Zealand, but what on earth makes the powers that be think that turning 19 means you are suddenly able to fund a root canal? What makes them think that university students are able to find $4000 down the back of their couches? Really, what?
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Am currently drinking a mug of “Zen” tea (green tea and peppermint blend) but at this stage I’m feeling so un-Zen that I’ll have to start snorting the tea leaves to feel an effect. Nevermind; The Food Show is coming to town in a couple of weeks, the assignments will get handed in, and then I can stop feeling so sorry for myself and bake something ridiculous!

"Today For You, Tomorrow For Me"

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Oh good grief. Why is it that whenever I get to that point in a particular scheme where I can’t back out, things just get more and more difficult?

You may, if you have eyes, have read in previous posts about Rent coming to Levin (or really Levin coming to Rent, it is their local performing arts group doing it.) Well, I booked tickets for Tim and I for tomorrow night. Well it’s Rent, I have to go.

It is times like this that a car would be useful (indeed, a driver’s liscence at all.) Tim has work at 7am on Friday (I know, it’s ANZAC day, way to honour the fallen with frappucinos, Starbucks), and there are no late trains or busses out of Levin on a Thursday night. The Friday night show isn’t an option as Tim has work at 6am the next day, and we have no way of getting to the Saturday night one. We are going to get the commuter train to Levin after I finish work tomorrow, but after the show we have six or so hours to kill until our 5.30am bus back to Wellington. Unfortunately their McDonalds isn’t open 24 hours on a Thursday and I don’t fancy living on the streets for the night so…we have had to book ourselves $90 worth of motel accomodation (the cheapest we could find! There are no hostels!) from after the show till 5.00am.

So, I really, really hope the show is good.

What if the audience is tiny? What if the performers have no chemistry? What if they have an unconvincing Angel? What if nobody starts to moo during Over The Moon?

As you can see I am very nervous about the whole operation especially since I am going to end up spending a week’s pay on it (And Tim’s only there under the “you have to be nice for my birthday” clause.)

On a more culinary note, I have been tagged again! This time by super-blogger Amy, who wants me to post ten of my favourite food photos that I have taken. This is quite good actually because I am far too frazzled to upload the photos of what I made for dinner tonight. Funnily enough, not many come from the fledgeling, badly-lit days of my blog, but if you feel like a chuckle then peruse the archives by all means.


Above: This is actually one of my earlier shots, from October in fact. I made the incredible Rhubarb Vanilla Mincemeat from Nigella’s Feast, and thought a close-up shot would look rather nifty. It kinda does, right? Click *here* to see the link to the original post, and how it all turned out.


Above: This is a vegetable stew – Tunisian if I remember correctly? – again from Feast. Nigella fully opened me up to the magical world of vegetable stews, which are far more delicious than the stringy name would indicate. I made this dish for a family birthday party when Tim and I flew up home for the Muse concert. The light at home seems so much nicer than in the flat. I suspect the fact that our flat is wedged halfway down a valley with a thousand other flats squidged around it might play a part… Click *here* for the original post.


Above: One from our new camera, this home-made Creme Fraiche picture was taken recently (you could scroll down if you like but I’ll give you the link anyway!) This photo is quite important to me as it’s the only photo I’ve managed to get onto Tastespotting, and it ended up being one of the top 25 most popular photos of the week! You would not believe how flipping excited I was about this – well, maybe you would.


Above: This is another one taken with our new camera. I made the Chocolate Guinness Cake from Feast, which has become one of the more popular cakes in the flat. What can I say, it’s an amazing recipe. I liked the light and the colouring in this photo – plus photos of cakes and desserts are always more popular, aren’t they!


Above: This photo is from the Christmas Feast I cooked for the flat last December, and do click *here* for the original post, I’d be most obliged if you’d read about how it unfolded. Because flatmate Emma is celiac, I tried my best to keep the whole meal gluten free but I couldn’t get around Rugelach (again from Feast) which I had been longing to make. Consisting of varying proportions of butter, dough, chocolate and brown sugar, it’s no wonder I loved them. This photo isn’t very well lit but I like the composition and I like that it reminds me of that fun time.

That’s not anywhere near ten photos but it’s all I (and possibly you, dearest reader), have the energy for right now. Isn’t it funny that four of the photos are from Feast? (ooh, try saying that quickly.) I guess it’s just a right place, right time thing. Anyway it’s getting late and I have to pack, and worry, and dither, and all sorts of other time consuming things. As with my previous post, I can’t think of anyone else to tag, but if you feel like having a reconaissance through your favourite photos knock yourself out and say it was at my insistence.

This time tomorrow, we’ll be seeing Rent! I’m nervous, but I’m excited…but I’m nervous…I’m in a glass cage of emotion!

Just Spent Six Months In A Leaky Blog

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My blog is six months old! In a time where technology moves so eye-wateringly fast, I feel I’m justified in getting a little misty-eyed over the half-year existence of my little blog that could. It feels like just last week that I was getting excited over my 200th hit!

Speaking of milestones, our weekend in Hawke’s Bay (for Tim’s grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary) was a fantastic time, a large part of which was spent solidly grazing. We were also able to reap the benefits of one of life’s happiest pairings – someone who has a massive feijoa tree but doesn’t like to eat them. The feijoa is one of my very favourite fruits, and for some reason in my mind they are one of those fruits you don’t actually go out of your way to buy – you should just know someone who has a windfall. When living in a damp city full of apathetic university students though, one can’t expect to find them that easily. While up north we managed to get two shopping bags full of this wonderful fruit, by pillaging a family friend’s trees, and I absolutely can’t wait to do something with them – feijoa ice cream mayhaps – slices perched atop a pavlova – maybe some kind of pork-adorning salsa – or just eaten one after the other after the other after the other, cut in half and scooped out with a teaspoon.

For some odd reason, the feijoa is only really widely known in New Zealand, which seems a nice enough trade-off for all the things we don’t have here (Primark, Minstrel chocolates, access to Neil Young, 12th century cathedrals) It has a dense, gritty, pear-like texture and an elusive fragrance not unlike passionfruit. Heavenly.

Speaking of our weekend away, I completely forgot to post about the gluten free peanut butter biscuits I took up along with the Quince Loaf. This is the third time I’ve made these biscuits and the third time I’ve forgotten to blog about them…and the third time I’ve been solemnly staggered by how quick, easy and delicious they are. The recipe can be found here, from when I made them a few weeks ago.


Above: I ended up with two-tone biscuits, because the ones on the tray on the top shelf of the oven browned faster than those on the bottom shelf. Rigorous testing proved that there was no difference in taste though. Equally fab.

By way of further illustrating why you should always write things down (or is that, why I should write things down), I give you tonight’s dinner. I thought that I could use my creme fraiche in a simple pasta dish loaded with vegetables and garlic, and only realised after eating it that I’d forgotten half the things I was planning to put into it.


Above: There was carrot, courgette, and capsicum, but my brain mislaid the information about adding tomatoes, frozen peas (even though I bought them specially after work!) and pine nuts.
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I began by julienning the carrots and capsicum (all the while imagining I was a sous-chef in New York – inexplicably the words “julienne” and “sous-chef” are intertwined to me), and blanching them in a pan full of water in which I also placed about five cloves of garlic. The garlic simmered away and became soft and mellow, rather than burning and acrid. After fishing out the vegetables, I cooked the pasta in the same water and then drained it, stirring in some creme fraiche and the cooked vegetables. The garlic cloves I chopped roughly and mixed in too. It was certainly good – the creme fraiche made a kind of instant sauce – but all I can think about is what it would have been like had I not forgotten half the components.

This weekend we are flying up home for my best friend’s 21st, and next weekend I hope that we can go to Levin (in all honesty, the first time I’ve used “Levin” and “I hope that we can go to” in the same sentence) to catch a performance of Rent. I can’t find a review online for love nor money so it’s a bit of a gamble, but the idea of finally seeing this show onstage, no matter where, is too exciting to miss out on. In what seems like positively providencial circumstances, Palmerston North will be having their own production of Rent in May. I’m trying to convince Tim that two productions so very close to Wellington means this is a sign that it’s all meant to be but he’s still not quite buying it. Never mind, my birthday is a-pending which means he is obliged to humour me (if only briefly, for his sanity’s sake.) Oh and did I mention that Puccini’s La Boheme, the opera which inspired the very musical of which I speak, is coming to Wellington?

<.twilightzonevoice/.> “Doo-dee-do do, Do-dee-do do”

Jonesing For Quinces

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I am taking off to Hawkes Bay for a few days but have an inordinately long post to compensate for my absence (should my absence bother you…)

We have been feasting rather decadently of late. On Tuesday, spurred on by Tim’s loud hints that we hadn’t eaten any meat lately, I defrosted some sausages and used them to fill Piroshki, which are small yeasted buns baked around a filling. They look and sound a lot harder than they are to make, something I always rather like in a recipe. I adapted this from the AWW Meals From The Freezer book, which my brother Julian got me for Christmas a few years ago. I halved it – there is only Tim and I to feed, after all – but it would be quite easy to double back to their original proportions.

Piroshki

Dough:
450g plain flour
1/2 sachet dry yeast
2 T sugar
1 egg yolk
250ml milk, warmed
125g butter, melted

Combine all the dry ingredients, mix in the wet ingredients thoroughly, scrape down the sides of the bowl, cover and stand in a warm place for an hour or so. Oh, and don’t do what I did, which was eat rather a lot of the surprisingly moreish dough…

Filling: (this is the bit I came up with)
1 onion, finely diced
3 fat cloves garlic, minced
3 proper pork sausages (ie, not those greying pre-cooked things that shall not darken my door!)
1 t paprika
1 t ground cumin
1 t dried oregano
1 T slivered almonds (or whole almonds, roughly chopped
1 T red wine

Heat a knob of butter in a pan, and sautee the onion and garlic till softened but not browned. Add the spices, and then – this job is either amusing or vile depending on what kind of person you are – squeeze the sausagemeat out of its casing into the pan. Let it cook through, stirring regularly, then add the red wine (I used Marsala though) and the almonds. Put it aside to cool for a bit, while you deal with the now-risen dough.

Assembly:
Heat oven to 210 C. Divide dough into balls – I got about nine, I think – and flatten each into about 12-15cm rounds. Put a small spoonful of sausagey filling into one of the rounds, and gently pinch the edges together to enclose. You don’t have to be too gentle with these, just be careful not to let the filling break the dough. Place your piroshki onto a baking tray, brush with a beaten egg, and let sit for 15 minutes (I just pop the tray on top of the heating oven, the warmth of which helps them to prove.) Bake for 15 minutes. Eat.
Although I haven’t managed to use the quinces yet, I have made good use (ironically) of the quince glaze I made from last year’s season. A recipe of Nigella’s, this jammy stuff had been hidden in the back of the fridge for too long. I might try freezing my current bunch, as the things I want to make with them are the sort of things I would make in the lead-up to Christmas…

Anyway, I tried marinating some chicken wings in this quince glaze, (two tablespoons) with cumin, garlic, and lemon juice. The alluring sweetness of the glaze became slightly scorched in places which was, of course, completely delicious. They needed a bit of salt to counteract the sugar, but otherwise…rather perfect.

Above: For the less Antipodean amongst my readers, for whom quince season is still months away, I should think that marmalade or honey would make a decent substitute. I served the sticky wings with potatoes that I’d cut into wedges and mixed with olive oil and za’atar – I make this heaps these days, because it is so simple but delicious. Za’atar is a heady mix of sumac, sesame seeds, and thyme, and lends its distinct flavour well to the crispy potatoes. The bowls that these are pictured in were given to me by the very generous Linda, who is always full of surprises!

Above: After marinating the chicken wings in it, I thought the quince glaze might also work well in a loaf cake. What can I say? It was buttery, fragrant and – phew! – delicious. I am taking the cake up to Tim’s parent’s place tonight but had to have a slice myself (just to make sure it had worked out okay…)

Quince Loaf Cake

150g butter, softened
3 T quince glaze
85g sugar
2 eggs
250g flour
2 t baking powder
1/3 cup buttermilk (or milk with a squeeze of lemon juice in it)

Preheat oven to 180 C. Cream butter, quince glaze and sugar together till creamy and fragrant. Add the rest of the ingredients, tip into a well greased and lined loaf tin (I used a silicone one so didn’t have to worry) and bake for 45 minutes. You might consider covering it with tinfoil after 30 minutes, so as it doesn’t over-brown, but ovens do vary. Once it’s out of the oven, brush with a few teaspoonsful of warmed quince glaze.
As with the chicken wings, any number of jams would make a decent replacement. Although I thought it would be rather mean not to give you the recipe from which sprang forth all this inspiration…from Nigella’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess.

Quince Glaze
1 quince
750 mls water
750g caster sugar

Roughly chop the quince, (they are blooming rock hard so use a good knife) and put the pieces – peel, pips and all – into a medium sized pan with the water and sugar. Bring to the boil, then let it simmer away for a good hour or so, till gloriously pink and reduced by half. Strain into a prepared 350ml jar, store in the fridge.

It is wonderful with anything apple-centric – a spoonful to glaze an apple pie or mixed in a crumble – and it goes marvelously with ham.

Finally – I made Creme Fraiche. Look how casual I am about it! You can be, too! It is so expensive that I have never actually purchased it but there is many a foodwriter who will try and convince you that you are positively heathenish if there isn’t a pouch of the stuff in your refrigerator. Luckily the bare ingredients – cream and buttermilk – aren’t too taxing on the pocket, and even if they are a bit splurgy, you do get a lot of creme fraiche out of this.

Above: Creme Fraiche!
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Inspired by this blog I decided to have a crack at it quietly just in case it didn’t work out. Well, it did, and now I want everyone to do it. It’s so easy! Simply find some cream – I used 600mls – and a few tablespoons of buttermilk – heat gently in a pan but do not boil – sit in a jar or tub in a warmish place overnight – stir – and pa-dah! Creme Fraiche, to be stirred into mashed potatoes, to add luxury to a pasta sauce, to serve with baked plums…it goes on. Now, our flat is very, very cold these days so after a couple of days I decided to sit it in my yoghurt maker, which did the trick. But I assume most of you aren’t living in digs as derelict as mine, so this shouldn’t be a problem. All the same, see what works for you – this is a surprisingly forgiving recipe.
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Now, because the internet froze up at the eleventh hour, I have to absolutely zoom to pack my clothes (Tim of course, was packed long ago) and run to the train station…I will keep an eye out for Rent posters as we chug through Levin…

Rainy Day Woman

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Today – Saturday – was just as wet and miserable as last weekend. Luckily I love rainy weekends – cosying up with a blanket, becoming engrossed in a book, lazily browsing the internet…However with breakfast and lunch lamentably comprising only of Chocolate Guinness Cake, I forced myself to leave the house to get some fresh air, and found myself at Moore Wilson’s. Wherein I bought some organic buttermilk, some feta, a tub of white miso paste, and two quinces.

Above: Oh! You pretty things. I love quinces. In New Zealand now is the time for them, so grab one if you can. They are impossible to find year-round, absolutely rock hard and have to be cooked very slowly but their incredible fragrance and sweetness makes it worth the effort. Nigella has a whole swag of recipes for this particular fruit so I look forward to trying something new.
I got back to the flat in an advanced state of saturation. My $4 Kmart white canvas sandshoes (that are now rather fashionable and you can’t get them cheaply anymore) are on their last legs, and were completely filled with water. So, after getting out of my miserably drenched clothes I decided to make a warming curry for dinner, filled with vegetables and even some soul-soothing lentils to counteract the day’s cake-eating. (That’s a little misleading actually – I assure you, I did put some more clothes on before starting on the curry. I think the world only needs one Naked Chef…)
Pumpkin Curry For a Rainy Saturday

This is a very gentle and mild – no chilli at all, come to think of it – so if your tastebuds are made of stronger stuff than mine, by all means add as much chilli as you dare.
1/2 a pumpkin, chopped into large dice
1 T butter
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
1 red capsicum, diced
2 tomatoes, diced
2 T tomato paste
1 t ground cinnamon
2 t cumin seeds
1 t ground ginger
1/4 cup red lentils
1/2 cup coconut milk
1/2 t garam masala
Melt the butter in a decent sized saucepan. Stir the onion, garlic, cinnamon, cumin seeds, and ginger together over a gentle heat till the onion is soft, but not browned. Add the tomatoes and paste (or if this is too much of a pain, just half a tin of chopped tomatoes) and the capsicum, and let this cook for a bit. Tip in your orange chunks of pumpkin, and then add 250mls water to the pan. You might need more depending on the size of your pan, you want the pumpkin pieces half-submerged in the water. Bring this to the boil then lower the heat and simmer till the pumpkin is nearly tender. At this stage add the lentils, and a bit more water – about half a cup. Simmer till the lentils have disappeared into the sauce. Finally add the coconut milk and the garam masala. Don’t let it boil at this stage. Serve over rice. This will feed 2 or three people. Just add a bit more of everything if you have more people over.
Above: I served it over brown rice, which is not so hard to cook as people think. This is the method I use: bring a pot of water to the boil, tip in a cup of brown rice, boil the living heck out of it for about 15 minutes or till it’s soft but firm, then drain. It barely takes longer than white rice. The curry itself was warm and inviting, the perfect thing to be eating by the greedy bowlful with this inhospitable rain beating against the windows.
Above: I made this quick pizza for dinner the other night, using a recipe of my paternal grandmother’s that I found whilst browsing through a folder of recipe clippings that I compiled as a teenager. I don’t think she was that much of a ‘foodie’ – for all I know she may never have actually made this recipe – but it is still meaningful to me that I got her cookbooks and bits and pieces. This particular recipe involves melting butter and frying in it garlic, diced tomato and sliced courgettes, and I assume it is supposed to be a side dish. Well I made it one night, and was so taken with the simple but delicious flavours, that I had to make it again, and soon. On Thursday night, having made it for the second time, I spread it thickly over a scone dough base (the recipe of which I found in Alison Holst’s Dollars and Sense, which my brother got me for Christmas) topped it frugally with cheese, baked it, and ate it whilst watching Coronation Street on telly, which Katie has got me back into. I see that Gail Platt is as depressing as she was last time I was into this show -rather comfortingly, some things never change.
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We are having something of a David Bowie Renaissance in the flat – his songs are just so densely brilliant that they don’t lose any gloss with repeat (and I mean repeat) listenings. Just try not to hug the next person on the street you see after listening to Modern Love – possibly the greatest song of all time (along with all the other greatest songs of all time.)
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It is just Tim and I in the flat tonight – Paul is in town, Katie and Stefan are in Napier, and Emma has trotted down to Dunedin. I’m trying to convince Tim that watching Rent would be the perfect way to end a rainy Saturday…but I think we might end up compromising with Green Wing, Season 1. Eh, either way I win!
Update: We actually watched some Black Books instead. Whenever I watch this show…I sort of wish I actually was Bernard Black, just for a bit.

“Crumb By Crumb…”

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I like to spend my Thursdays doing everything I shouldn’t – browsing the internet, reading non-uni literature, (*ahem* Baby Sitters Club books) and baking frivolously. Today was a fairly exemplary Thursday, in that I baked two cakes (one of which I made up!)


Above: Remember this one? At the requests of Tim and Paul, and because there was – surprisingly – an errant can of the stuff in the fridge, I made the Chocolate Guinness Cake from Nigella’s Feast again, after only just having made it a couple of weeks ago for St Patrick’s Day. I have to say, if I were Homer Simpson the sight of the mixture for this cake, which begins as butter melted into the Guinness, would make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Indeed, if I was a beer drinker, Guinness with chunks of butter floating in it would probably be my beverage of choice.

You think I’m bluffing, don’t you?


Above: It was as good as ever. Dark, dense, moist, complex, fabulous. What can I say? Go buy Feast! You won’t be sorry!


Above: I had an idea for a Pear and Nutmeg Custard Sponge in the middle of photography class yesterday. I quickly jotted down a rough recipe in my excercise book (and went back to paying attention straight away, don’t worry!) and tried it out today.

Mercifully, it worked! I don’t have the money to triple-test my recipes a la the Australian Woman’s Weekly (obviously I make a special exception for lentil soup) so I need things to work first time round.


Above: It tasted lovely, too – grandmotherly, somehow, with the pear and the nutmeg and the custard-softened crumb of the cake going marvelously well together. As I ate I mentally patted myself on the back for this burst of inspiration.

If you feel like being my test kitchen, I would not mind in the slightest 🙂 the idea of someone actually making my recipe would in fact make me seriously happy.

Pear and Nutmeg Custard Sponge

150g soft butter
150g sugar
2 eggs
3 Tablespoons custard powder
200g flour
2 t baking powder
1 t ground nutmeg
1 pear, diced
3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 180 C and butter and line a 21cm springform tin with baking paper. Beat the butter and sugar together till pale and fluffy. Add the eggs and custard powder at the same time, and beat till incorporated together. At this point, sift in the flour and baking powder, and add the nutmeg, diced pear, and milk, folding together gently. Spread into your prepared tin, and if you like, arrange some pear slices across the top like I did. Bake for 50 or so minutes, depending on your oven, till a skewer comes out clean. I found it took an hour in our oven, but they do vary. You may want to put some foil over the top for the last 20, if it is getting too brown. Finally, grate some fresh nutmeg over, or sprinkle over a little pre-ground. Slice into fat, golden wedges and eat with a cup of tea.

It is great fun thinking up recipes. I don’t know how people like Nigella end up with over 100 for their books though. I’ve only come up with about 15 max, and no one is going to want to buy a cookbook that woefully slim!

Today in the paper (in the ‘Life’ section) there was an article about Nigella, entitled “Curvy Goddess or Dumpy Frump: Too Much of A Good Thing?” The article ended up, characteristically, being about nothing much at all. Shame on you, Dominion Post, for having such a tabloid-style title, and for intimating that someone with Nigella’s hourglass figure is “dumpy.” However, thanks for the delicious picture of her. This picture is supposed to be showing how much larger Nigella has become in the last ten or so years, however I say she looks incredible. The article is poorly researched, describing her as a “celebrity chef” and then saying she has had no formal training as a cook. It makes much of her high calorie recipes and ignores the fact that much of her food is packed with vegetables (as I found out when I went through her books, armed with post-it notes)…

In music news (insofar as I can call my opinion news), two gals I am monumentally obsessed with at the moment are April March and Joan As Police Woman. This is all courtesy of Ange who is remarkably commited to ferrying excellent music from her computer to mine and Tim’s via memory sticks.

Check out “Eternal Flame” on Youtube by Joan As Police Woman – this song is seriously beautiful. And April March’s delightfully kooky Chick Habit, an English song off her largely French language album, can be found here – no music video though.

And if you reeeeeeally feel like indulging me, this video from eight years ago of Idina Menzel singing a song from The Wild Party musical, is one of the reasons that I truly love Youtube.

PS – I’m pretty sure I was joking about the butter and beer…but then as I said, I’m not a beer drinker, so who knows? 😉

Pride Goeth Before A Fall…(Unless You Have Whipped Cream)

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As if 5000 hits wasn’t exciting enough, I got 10 comments to boot! (And only TWO of them were from my mother!) I felt like a ‘real’ blogger, the kind who quite coolly amasses double figure comments on a daily basis and has an RSS feed and takes beautifully lit photos…okay I’m still genuinely struggling on the photography front and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to install an email subscription enabler thingy but…

Thanks everyone for making it happen 🙂

I couldn’t spend too much time on my high horse though. Last night I tried making the Lemon Meringue Cake from Nigella’s Feast (although it first appeared in Forever Summer) with the idea of putting fresh passionfruit in the middle instead…and nothing would go right. Crucially, I got a tiny bit of yolk in the egg whites – the first time that has ever happened – and true to form, they just would not hold shape. Recklessly, and I admit, a little maniacally, I just biffed the whole lot in the oven anyway where…it got burnt.
However, all was not lost. Luckily the chargrilled stage gave it more of a caramelised, rather than carcinogenic flavour, and with lashings of cream and the airbrushing effect of lots of icing sugar it went from this:


Above: Yes, that is the top layer of the cake in the background. Anyway, here’s the ‘after’ snap:
Above: I would have loved to have taken one of those photos where everything in the background is blurry – it’s such a pretty cake – but despite repeated attempts I can’t figure out how. Shutter speed or aperture or something…any tips? Anyway, I guess the lesson here is actually: when in doubt, smother it in cream. Despite the odds, this cake tasted wonderfully good – the textures really define it, as you sink your spoon softly into meringue, then sponge, then cream, then fruit, then sponge, then meringue again. There is something truly exquisite about the elusive fragrance of fresh passionfruit and it proved an excellent contrast for all that sweetness. All I can say is, if it tasted this good, imagine how delicious it would have been had I not cocked it up at every step of the way.
In case you thought we’d only been having pudding for breakfast lunch, and dinner (which incidentally, is how I imagined living my life by now when I was a child), you would be sorely mistaken, my friend. (Surprise! It’s lentils!)
Above: Another step in my increasingly arduous quest to find the ultimate lentil soup. I think the triumverate of brown, red, and French lentils is pretty essential, as is plenty of garlic and coriander. As well as chopping garlic into it, I’ll biff in a couple of whole cloves to gently impart flavour as they simmer. For something so robust, this flavour seems to get lost easily here. Coriander gives the almost too-earthy pulses a kick. I tried making it with spring onions instead of plain ones, but it definitely is better with the latter – spring onions are too delicate in flavour.

Above: The addition of frozen peas worked, giving it a slight sweetness, more texture variation, and they were also aesthetically pleasing (oooh I sound very serious now). Finally, taking a tip from Nigella, I splashed in a little dry sherry. I am getting ever closer, and when I find the prototype you can be sure I post the recipe here.
I realise I am sounding a little Gollum-esque (heck, even I can picture myself hunched over, hissing “pressciousssss“) but what can I say. I like lentils. I’m not sure they will ever be ‘sexy’ in the manner of chocolate and the like – perhaps unless Kate Moss decides that she’s into them – but they are not without their charms.

Relay for Life this weekend. I have a deep, deep hatred of relays after PE being compulsory in my schoolgirl years, but this is for a very good cause and I understand that the popular kids won’t be choosing the teams. And more importantly, it’s about being there, not actually running (finally! A concept that works!)

Absolut Pask

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Oh I wish it could be Easter, every day. Friday AND Monday off feels like untold luxury now that I’m dipping my toe into what they call “the real world.” For those of you who have been somewhat alarmed by the increasingly saggy faces of various rockstars gracing this blog over the last couple of days, I offer hot cross buns to soothe you:

Above: My first ever batch of home-made hot cross buns. I used Nigella’s recipe from Feast, and it was a very rewarding process – adding the warm spices, kneading the dough, waiting patiently for it to rise, draping over the flour-water paste to make the crosses, and of course, grabbing the tender buns straight from the oven to be slathered with butter.
Above: As it happened, while arranging my buns I unwittingly created a yeasted tribute to the famous Absolut Vodka ad campaign. Just realised at this point that I should probably let you know that Pask is Swedish for Easter. More Easter Baking:

Above: Gluten Free Choc-Banana Brownies. I can’t tell you how excited I am about these. They were rigorously tested for quality in my flat (ie, they got snarfed within minutes) and were pronounced delicious. Now, I can’t pretend that I truly came up with this myself, in fact it started off as an idea which took shape after a bit of internet research.
First of all, I found this amazing recipe in a woman’s magazine (I forget which) for gluten-free peanut butter cookies. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen this recipe around, but it kicked me into action and I finally made them. They are risibly simple and yet so delicious; I’ve made them three times since and never managed to get a picture because they go so fast. From this sprang forth the brownie idea, but first…
Peanut Butter Cookies: Please, make these. I don’t even go in for peanut butter and I’m a complete fiend for these.
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup sugar (I use half brown half white, but go nuts)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg

Preheat oven to 180 C. This is what I recommend you do because PB can be a tacky mess. Take a half-cup measure, and put your sugar in a bowl. Then, using a spoon, scoop peanut butter into the half-cup, and then scoop this in turn into the bowl with the sugar in it. Repeat. I’m not trying to be patronising, but the first time I made this I ended up using nearly every baking implement in the house trying to deal with the peanut butter and it can truly be so much simpler…

Mix together the sugar and peanut butter. Add the egg, stir again, and sift in the baking soda. On two trays lined with baking paper, place smallish balls of the mixture which you have rolled with your hands. Don’t worry about flattening them, and they don’t spread tooooo much so you don’t have to stress about that either. Bake for 12-15 minutes. These won’t be at all crisp when you take them out of the oven, but don’t fret, they harden up as they cool.

Now eat one, and just try to stop yourself eating the entire batch, cleaning the kitchen scrupulously, and telling everyone you never made any in the first place.
So amazed was I at the magical properties of this peanut butter that I wondered if the same thing could apply to a brownie. Because brownies by nature are supposed to be shallow and dense, it left more room for error. After looking at some ideas on the internet, I came up with this – and it is so much greater than the sum of its slightly troubling parts…
Gluten Free Choc-Banana Brownies.
Each ingredient plays its own special part.


1 cup smooth peanut butter – to do its magical thang.
1 cup sugar – To provide bulk and sweetness
2 eggs – To bind it together
2 small, very ripe bananas – To make it densely moist
5 Tablespoons cocoa – To distract from the other flavours, and provide a deep chocolate taste
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips – To add squidge and more chocolate, of course 🙂
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda – I don’t know what this does, but it’s very important.
As with the biscuits, set the oven to 180 C, beat the peanut butter and sugar together, add the rest of the ingredients and pour into a brownie tin of regular dimensions. (You know, rectangular, not tooo big) What I did was bake it for 1/2 an hour at this temperature and then turn it down to 150 C, and bake for a further 15 minutes. Perfect.
I realise the combo of ingredients sounds kind of vile, but you don’t taste the peanut butter at all. The cocoa sort of covers everything up. But oh the irony – celiac flatmate Emma was in Samoa over the weekend (as one does) so she didn’t even get to participate. Luckily I am so enamoured of these brownies that I’m going to repeat them again very soon.
And if you aren’t sick of brown things by this stage –
Above: Chocolate Pear Pudding, from Nigella Express. It’s basically canned pears with a chocolate flavoured sponge baked overtop, but oh! How wonderful it tastes. For Heaven’s sakes, buy this book! I made this for pudding last night (Nigella’s Vietnamese Chicken Salad for dinner) and it is perfect to eat while watching Boston Legal and procrastinating about, well, everything.
I hope everyone had a lovely, relaxing Easter break.