call my name through the cream

July 21, 2017March 11, 2020Leave a comment

You know when someone puts something so succinctly and you’re like yes, this articulates something I didn’t even know I needed articulating but I feel so seen having absorbed these words? Yes? Well, yesterday I read a tweet that said “this year I kept feeling like ‘sorry I wasn’t the successful mental health recovery story you wanted'” and I was like…yes. Me. Earlier this year when I got my ADHD diagnosis I was all, my problems are solved! Ritalin helps everything! I’m great now! But in fact, to the surprise of absolutely no one except my wilfully naive self, one success does not equal a nonstop upwards trajectory. By which I mean, I’m in a weird place currently where all my resources are exhausted – my brain is tired, my body is tired, I’m pretty sure my skull is still tired from my wisdom tooth operation even though it was like, a week ago, and the hamster running in the treadmill of my mental health faculties is very, very tired.

All I want to do is sleep for a thousand years, but also all I can do is sleep and it’s the most frustrating thing ever because I can’t get out of my own way – or bed – and get anything done that would help myself – like tidy my room or do yoga or whatever other vague self-care things you’re supposed to tick off on the road to wellbeing. As well as feeling hellaciously lethargic, my anxiety is scratching a sharp, bitten fingernail down the back of my spine more than ever. I’m really hoping I can bust out of this feeling of being suspended in a bowl of jelly, unable to claw my way through and find myself, because being tired is so tiring.

As such I haven’t really cooked for myself in a while – I’m eating regularly, I just don’t have the energy to stand up and put one ingredient inside another. Fortunately my disinclination towards progress has its own shady rewards, as in, here’s one I prepared earlier! But totally missed the boat on blogging about because, like so many small tasks, I just didn’t. For all that I am coming across as TOTALLY MISERABLE the fact that I’m actually here writing this blog post and putting one foot in front of the other and one letter of the alphabet in front of the other is a definite achievement, so – dubiously – yay me.

So let’s get to the less uncomfortable content! Panna cotta is an Italian dessert, comprised more or less of cream heated and set with gelatine – silky, yielding yet firm, immensely ploughable to the spoon, rich yet light, rather fancy yet childishly reminiscent of packet-born pudding. I had this idea that turmeric – as in the whole turmeric root, not the vivid yellow powdered stuff – would go well with vanilla – as in the excoriated black dust from an entire bean, not the essence in a bottle. I was pleasingly correct. It’s all very simple – just heat the vanilla and turmeric with the cream and throw in some sugar and gelatine – but has glorious results. The turmeric tints the cream a pale primrose colour and gives it a slight lemony-carroty freshness (I don’t know if that sounds awful but I promise you it’s good) and the vanilla seeds have a soft, almost chocolatey richness which makes it taste incredibly luxuriant and scented-candle-y. If you can’t get hold of whole turmeric root I imagine a small teaspoon of powdered stuff would work okay but it might be a bit intense and earthy – maybe change tack completely and instead use the grated zest of a lemon or grapefruit.

Generally panna cotta is set in small moulds and then turned out but I was happy to cut out any additional stress by instead pouring it into cute receptacles and eating it straight from them. I recommend you do the same.

turmeric and vanilla panna cotta

a recipe by myself

300ml cream
three leaves of gelatine
three tablespoons of caster sugar
one vanilla bean
one knob/root (lol) of turmeric

Peel the turmeric roughly (I just use a sharp knife to slice the skin off) and roughly chop into pieces. Place it in a saucepan with the cream and then slide a knifepoint down the length of the vanilla bean and scrape, as best you can, the seeds of it into the cream, then just chuck the bean itself into the cream as well.

Heat the cream gently till it’s juuuust starting to wobble on the surface. Meanwhile, soak the gelatine leaves in a bowl of cold water – they’ll turn translucent and soft after a minute or two.

Remove the cream from the heat, and either strain it into a bowl or scoop out the vanilla bean and bits of turmeric. I prefer the latter because…less dishes. Scoop up the soft gelatine leaves – which will feel pretty delightful – and give them a squeeze to remove any clinging water before dropping them into the cream. Add the sugar and give it a stir to dissolve everything.

Pour this mixture carefully between two waiting vessels of around 150ml each. Refrigerate them for a couple of hours and then they’re all yours to eat.

Serves two. I ate both at once.

Leaf gelatine is generally available in supermarkets these days and is much more fun to use than the traditional powdered stuff – it comes in sheets that look like old fashioned glass windows, which soften in cold water and then dissolve in the hot cream. As a result, the texture of this is incredible – so pillowy and satiny, like the feeling of raking your fingers through cool water as it slides across your tongue.

Seriously though, I’m sorry to be so damn glum, it’s like, I’m fine, honestly, I’m just really really really tired in every possible way but also totally fine and don’t worry about me but also someone please pick me up and lay me down on a soft, warm loaf of bread and let me sleep until I finally feel rested, while taking care of all my responsibilities and maybe rewiring my brain while you’re at it, but also I’m fine? I mean, I wouldn’t say I’ve never been better, but I’ve definitely been worse! And I’ve written this blog post, which is absolutely something. And now to try and work on more somethings.

Something!

title from: Soundgarden, Black Hole Sun. The unbelievable sadness about Chris Cornell aside, this song is magnificent and huge and was the first music video to truly terrify me. Like, for real, I’ve linked to a lyrics video here rather than the original one because I honestly still can’t watch it.

music lately:

Sky Ferreira, Everything Is Embarrassing. I mean!

Kesha, Praying. I’m happy she’s back.

next time: well I finally read some of a book about coping with ADHD that has been under my bed, untouched, since February. And I’ve been reading the food blogs and cookbooks that spur on my hunger for cooking the most. It’s something!

hard to be soft, tough to be tender

July 8, 2017March 11, 2020Leave a comment

Ever feel like you’ve lost a part of yourself? Well, I went to sleep on Monday morning in a dentist chair and woke up having lost three wisdom teeth, to be specific. Two of which were total normies, straight up and down and toothy looking, and one massively challenging one (according to the dentist who was extremely proud of themselves for getting through it and I was like yeah, great, for you) whose roots appeared to be doing a leg pop like you see in romantic comedies where a man kisses a woman. Trust me to have a whimsical damn wisdom tooth.

Fittingly, when I got there I didn’t realise that I had to arrive half an hour early if I wanted to be sedated. Yes, there was a form that I signed, but I didn’t like, read it or anything. When it became clear that I was about to get hysterical, they just gave me the sedative anyway. Afterwards Kate heroically came and shuffled a dribbling and confused me out into the street, and Matt picked us up and drove us to her house. I was strapped into the backseat and immediately fell asleep, and next time they turned around to check on me I was keeled over sideways but still strapped in, my head lolling with every slight bump on the road and a trail of blood running out of my mouth. When I fiiiiinally came to, I found this story extremely amusing. Me, the zombie in the backseat, they in the front pretending everything is normal to anyone else passing by and indeed, to each other.

Anyway, to the shock of no one, it’s been nonstop soft food since then. I was taken extremely good care of at Kate and Jason’s house – Matt bought me a jumbo pack of mini popsicles, I was made the most beautiful nourishing vegetable soup, I was given a gigantic tub of KFC potato and gravy all for myself, Ariel the cat repeatedly curled up on the bed with me while I worked my way through the ludicrous-even-for-PLL final season of Pretty Little Liars and Ghost the dog provided extremely good snugs, once he worked out that I was not going to be able to play our usual game of “I’ll chase you and then you chase me” and got over his subsequent passive-aggressive ennui.

I’m back at work now, which is good because I missed it so much – however I’m still eating in a very tentative manner. And I’ve been literally having lucid dreams about crunchy, chewy food. So I was like, what can I make myself that will be so damn seductively delicious and wonderful that I won’t even care that the texture is aggressively uniform and uninterrupted by the slightest bit of, well, texture.

Enter burrata: a cheese that’s extremely exciting even by cheese itself’s standards. I would describe it as a parcel, made of stretched out soft mozzarella, encasing fresh cream and cheese curd off-cuts. It’s a way of using up leftover bits and pieces during the cheese-making process but is entirely wonderful in its own right. I read the words “burrata mousse” briefly a few days back in some companion book to a blender (it’s a boring story, but I feel like giving credit where it’s due) and was like, whatever that is, I NEED TO MAKE IT. For contrast and vitamin content I decided to pair it with some bright orange butternut squash mash – you could of course use kumara or pumpkin instead but I love how easily butternut turns soft in the oven, and its gentle sweetness of flavour.

You don’t have to have these things together by the way – if my tender mouth was more up for it I’d definitely serve the burrata mousse sprinkled with za’atar (a stunning mix of sumac, toasted sesame seeds and dried thyme) or red chilli flakes or some kind of toasted nut situation, and I’d spread it thickly on chewy flatbreads or crunchy sourdough or…anyway, I’ll stop there before I get too flustered. The mashed butternut of course can also be served as a side alongside literally anything. But as is, and considering my limited options, it was an immensely delicious time – the impossibly creamy, silky, ever-so-slightly tangy burrata mousse against the plush, mellow butternut. I would’ve licked the plate clean if it didn’t hurt to open my mouth that wide.

And of course, both components are very, very easy to make.

butternut mash, nutmeg, burrata mousse, olive oil

a recipe by myself. Makes enough for one with solid leftovers.

half a good sized butternut squash
butter (or extra virgin olive oil)
sea salt
whole nutmeg
one tub of burrata
200g mascarpone
one lime
extra virgin olive oil

Set your oven to 240C/450F. Wrap the butternut snugly in tinfoil and place it, cut side up, in the oven and just leave it there for about 40 minutes, or until you can stick a knife in through the tinfoil and it just slides right in without the slightest bit of resistance.

Meanwhile, drain the burrata and pop it in a high speed blender, or a food processor (just be prepared to blend it a bit longer if you’re using the latter.) Spoon in the mascarpone and squeeze in the juice of the lime. Blitz the heck out of it until it’s a smooth, smooth, creamy and thick mixture. Add plenty of sea salt, and spatula into a container or whatever and refrigerate till you need it.

Carefully lift the tinfoil from the cut side of the butternut and scoop out the waiting orange flesh – I just spooned it directly into a container so that I could store anything I wasn’t going to be eating right away – and mash in as much butter as you like with the back of a fork. Or, if you want to make it dairy free, use extra virgin olive oil. Grate over a smattering of fresh nutmeg. I didn’t want to waste any of the butternut so scooped up all the stuff clinging to the seeds and pushed them through a sieve, which created some extra cleaning up but – minimal waste. Once you’re quite sure you’ve fleeced the butternut of its goods, just wrap up the remaining shell and seeds in the tinfoil and bin the lot. Easy! No dishes.

Spread as much butternut as you fancy and as much mousse as you fancy onto a plate, or spoon them into a bowl, or WHATEVER, and sprinkle over more sea salt. Drizzle olive oil across the mousse, and then tuck in.

By the way, if you can’t find burrata – it’s usually at Moore Wilson but otherwise hard to come by – try a block of soft feta or some buffalo mozzarella for a similar effect. Similarly, feel free to use lemon juice instead of lime in the mousse – I just wanted that extreme acid sharpness puncturing the luscious richness of the mascarpone and cheese. Oh, and! I took the leftover butternut squash to work and thinned it down with a little stock and cream in a saucepan and it made an excellent, near-instant, soup. Which is of course, one of the other three things I can eat.

My teeth were not all I lost this week! In a series of events extremely typical of me, I broke the SD card for my camera. So on the day that I made this recipe – literally while the butternut was in the oven – I dashed out and bought myself a new card. I took nice photos. I then put the SD card in my pocket and took my laptop out to go blog at a cafe somewhere. The SD card had disappeared. Luckily I’d taken some photos on my phone, which are what you see here, but like, agh. This is so extremely par for the course for me – pick something up, it disappears into thin air – when I was a teenager and still kept a diary I had a running list of things that I’d misplaced/made disappear somehow, because that’s how often it happened. Unfortunately doctors can’t prescribe antibiotics for that affliction.

So in lieu of further photos of my food, please enjoy instead this photo of Ariel the cat being a total Vermeer babe in the sunlight, shortly before sitting directly on top of my laptop keyboard in the middle of the penultimate episode of Pretty Little Liars and acting extremely confused as to why I wanted her to move.

the girl with the purrrrl earring

title from: Metric, with their me_IRL-as-hell titled song, Help I’m Alive.

music lately:

The Mojo Brothers, Killing Floor. Not as far as I can tell, a cover of the Howlin’ Wolf song, although their vibes are not dissimilar. Anyway this song was playing during a scene in Pretty Little Liars which took place in a diner and was so weird and awesomely Twin Peaksy and no matter how stupid this show became and how many harmful tropes it doubled down on instead of skewering, I can’t deny that it’s been a huge part of my life for the last few years since I first discovered it. Also, good song.

Underworld, Rez. If ten million fireflies were at ten million typewriters there’s a good chance they’d end up writing this song.

next time: I really hope I’ll be able to have more of a variety of textures by the next time I post. At this point I’m craving crunchy food so much that it’ll probably just be like, here’s a recipe for a bowl of gravel for you.

this is no corn-fed day it’s gloomy blue and cold

June 28, 2017March 11, 20201 Comment

Unfortunately my one personality trait right now is “teeth” (wait: “tired bartender” is the sole other facet to this diamond) so this salad that I made was inevitably tooth-related: devised in anticipation of my wisdom teeth being from my mouth untimely ripp’d next Monday (that’s like, a reference to MacBeth there). I know all I’ll be consuming next week is broth, pureed foods, painkillers and my own drool, so I wanted to make myself something crunchy, salty, spicy and acidic – everything my tender mouth will be shunning mere days from now.

That vision ended up taking the form of this blackened corn and tortilla salad – crunchy toasted peanuts, juicy charred corn, shards of tortilla, crisp cos lettuce and plenty of sourness and heat in the form of lime, chilli, salt and cumin. Plus some fairly blameless cherry tomatoes.

Being my generally idiotic heedless self it will come as no surprise when I tell you that I broke my SD card for my camera somehow and so had to instead take the photos of this salad on my phone (other things I’ve broken this week: my Laura necklace, a large glass jar of hot sugar syrup, the will and resilience of everyone around me) so as such the effect is a liiiittle more grainy than I’d like. Also my flatmate of the past year moved out and had the temerity to take his own property with him so I no longer have his immensely sexy slab of a coffee table to take my photos on, and as the next logical place for me to eat is in bed that’s why everything here is pictured against my duvet, giving it something of an eighties glamour shot vibe.

Fortunately I displayed competency in one area at least: this salad is fantastically delicious. The corn is deliciously sweet and charred and chewy, and the textures of the peanuts, fried tortilla, and lettuce – each crunchy in their own way, the peanuts all soft and (duh) nutty, the tortillas crisp and oily, the lettuce super fresh – is extremely delightful. The chilli and lime gives it a great big high kick of flavour and on top of that it couldn’t be easier to make. By the way you really only need one large tortilla but they taste so good when they’re all fried up that I allowed an extra one to account for you eating them all as you make the salad. Maybe you’re more restrained than me, who knows. That aside, the quantities of each ingredient are pretty much up to you and your personal tastes. If avocados are not housing-market-preventatively-expensive in your neighbourhood they they would be a delicious addition and there’s also nothing stopping you adding some meat, but as it is it’s pretty perfect.

blackened corn and tortilla salad

a recipe by myself

one small cos lettuce
two flour or corn tortillas
a handful of peanuts
one punnet cherry tomatoes
two cups of frozen corn kernels
olive oil
a teaspoon or so of chilli flakes
a pinch of cumin
sea salt
a lime

Heat up a large frying pan over a high heat. Toast the peanuts till they’re lightly browned and tip them into a big mixing bowl. Heat up some butter or olive oil and tear the tortillas into small pieces and fry them in the hot pan till they’re crisp and golden. Add them to the bowl with the peanuts. Next, tip the corn into the pan and let it sit without stirring too much so that it gets slightly charred and browned as it cooks.

While this is happening, wash and tear up the lettuce leaves and add them, with the cherry tomatoes, into the mixing bowl. Once the corn is where it needs to be tip that into the mixing bowl. Squeeze in the juice of a lime, add the chilli flakes and cumin, some sea salt and plenty of olive oil. Give it a good stir and then divide between two bowls. Sprinkle over some more cumin and chilli if ya like.

This honestly makes what I would consider to be two servings, but I ate the entirety in bed (as pictured!) before falling immediately into a deep sleep, I’m not sure if that was related to the ingredients or more to my generally being tired, but I can heartily recommend the two activities together.

As I said in the last blog post, I’m actually really nervous about getting these teeth out – something about the sedation process and the potential recovery time and oh, the IMMENSE PAIN and BRUTAL PRICE TAG but I am going to be taken under the wing of my dear friends Kate and Jason who will be looking after me and making sure I don’t like, run naked through the town while coming out of sedation (or indeed, at any time, no one should rule it out completely.)

title from: Say Anything, Night’s Song. Praise the night, the only time I feel alright.

music lately:

One Direction, Teenage Dirtbag. Oh, these simpler times! Their cover of this song is so perfect, and the way Harry Styles is all “Her name is Noelle” at the start does funny things to my heart.

Oh Land, Sleepy Town. This song is so dreamy and beautiful and it’s not on Spotify which is ruining my entire life!

Chance the Rapper, No Problem. Such! A! Bop!

next time: I probably won’t get the opportunity to write till after my tooth-times so it’ll be wall to wall soft foods.

do you love me ’cause i can mash potato?

June 24, 2017March 11, 20202 Comments

So I spent all of last week extremely bedridden and in unreal amounts of pain while recovering from my wisdom teeth coming through with all the haste and frantic energy of a character entering the room from stage left in a farcical French play about a dinner party gone lightly awry. I’m a very like, impulsive type idiot and so it was almost equally as painful to have to go from living in the moment to living in the bed, and on top of that food bearing any kind of texture whatsoever was out of the question as I could hardly open my mouth and the slightest attempt at chewing caused dagger-stabs of pain right into the very core of my gums. My one solace was that the Tramadol I’d been prescribed, while it didn’t do much whatsoever for the pain, was an extremely good time.

And so, that’s why I’m blogging about mashed potato. Not because I invented it, or think you don’t know how to make it, and not even because I’m labouring under some kind of delusion that my recipe below is particularly revolutionary in any way, but: it’s what I ate last week. My other options include “half a container of yoghurt, consumed tearfully” and “a bowl of strawberry jelly that had ‘serves four’ on the package”.

I think I absorbed this method from Nigella Lawson, which makes sense since for most of the week all I could handle concentrating on was her old TV series on loop on youtube – the pop culture equivalent of mashed potato (and pop culture consumption is almost as important as food consumption to me.) It’s very simple – you just throw whole potatoes in a hot oven and bake them, then scoop out the fluffy interiors and fork through as much cream and butter as you wish. Like seriously, I’m not even giving you quantities in this recipe because only you know how much you both desire and can handle. I much prefer this method to boiling the potatoes on the stove top, as there’s no peeling or waiting for the water to boil or draining and also cooking the potatoes without moisture results in, I believe, a far superior mash.

The only thing I really feel strongly about is that your mashed potato should have some freshly ground nutmeg on it – it gives such a warm, cosy note of spice in the same way cinnamon does on top of, say, porridge, just a tiny hint of subtle depth against the blanketing blandness of the potato. Also my specification for six potatoes is just a guess, really – if you use more potatoes or bigger ones you’ll get more mash, that’s about all there is to it.

mashed potatoes

around six medium sized floury potatoes
cream
butter
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
nutmeg

Set your oven to 220C/450F, and scrub the potatoes if need be, but don’t peel them. Place them directly onto the rack in the oven – like, not on a baking tray or anything – and let them sit for around half an hour or until they’re extremely, 100% tender when you pierce them with a knife.

Halve them lengthwise and scoop the soft flesh out into a bowl. Squash it all about with a fork, stirring in as much butter and cream as you like, but if you’re completely unsure start with a few tablespoons of the former and about 20g of the latter. Obviously I added more. If you heat it up it’ll be easier to add in and won’t lower the temperature of the potato.

Sprinkle over plenty of salt, pepper, and a little freshly grated nutmeg. Dive in.

Don’t throw out the be-scooped potato skins – if you sprinkle them with grated cheese and I don’t know, some smoked paprika or something and blast them under the grill till the cheese is bubbling you are in for a very good time. Unfortunately, as previously discussed, anything even remotely textural was off limits for me so I tearfully and apologetically hoofed them into the bin.

The mashed potato itself though: good god. So soft. Eating it is like the feeling of lying on the carpet and being warmed by sun streaming through the window. Like turning off your alarm clock and being wrapped in a thick duvet. Like coming in from the cold and turning on a fan heater and just shutting your eyes and listening to the gentle humming noise it makes. Cream and butter are a simple conduit to happiness (presuming you like, enjoy the taste of them) and every last granule of potato seems to swell fatly with the richness of these ingredients. Salt and the aforementioned nutmeg stops everything from being too plain, and it’s all just very calming and delicious. I ate the whole bowl in bed and then fell asleep.

Thanks to the magic of antibiotics and bedrest I eventually improved, which means I’ve been back at work this week and I could not be happier about it. My first shift back I honestly got the stupidest grin on my face while making my first cocktail of the night, and all that aside it’s a joy to just be around people again. The errant teeth are going to be pulled out on July 3 though, so we’re not entirely out of the woods yet. My teeth have been so extremely well behaved my whole entire life so I’ve never had any real dentist experiences before – and I apologised to my dentist for being such a cliche but – I’m super nervous about it. So, I’ll probably be revisiting this recipe again many times during that week. Till then, gonna eat so many crispy chewy foods while I can. It’s crunch time!

title from: Liz Phair, Easy Target. It’s grumbly and whiny, like me!

music lately:

Lorde, Writer in the Dark. WHAT IS SHE PLAYING AT ??? How DARE (I’m obsessed with this album if you can’t tell.)

Lash, Take Me Away. This song is from 2001 or something and it really feels like it production-wise, this band went absolutely nowhere but this is such a bop still, like, that chorus!!

Polly Scattergood, Wanderlust. This song is so extremely everything I look for in pop music – fizzy and dreamy and a little melancholic.

next time: something aggressively crunchy before settling back into post-operation pain-fuelled soft foods!!

yes in a dream all my teeth fell out

June 14, 2017March 11, 20208 Comments

I have this weird half-memory of a story on cassette tape that my teacher would sometimes play to the class when I was like, eight years old, about some kids who were cursed or something and they forgot how to sing Happy Birthday and when they tried to it came out as this disturbing, discordant mumble. (I tried googling the premise and can’t find anything about it but I swear I didn’t make this up.) Anyway, that’s kind of how I feel about blogging right now. I’ve apparently forgotten how. All I’ve been doing, and I mean all, is just working and sleeping and working and sleeping and obsessively binge-watching Frasier, and every time I’ve been like “right you idiot time to do some goddamn blogging, that thing that you love” I just sit there and stare at the screen and everything that comes out is all stilted and mumbly.

AND THEN. On Monday night I hauled myself out of bed and forced myself to write, and managed about half of this very blog post, before a WISDOM TOOTH of all things decided to roundhouse kick its way through the left side of my mouth, causing indescribable pain (and like, my idea of fun is describing stuff) not to mention a deeply vanity-denting swelling of the left cheek and an enormous sense of helpless neediness.

Seriously, I did not expect this at all. Firstly, my teeth are so well behaved, and secondly, wisdom teeth were supposed to be an issue like, a decade ago. All I can surmise is that my extreme young-at-heart nature also extends to being young-at-mouth, either way it’s monumentally inconvenient and painful and horrible. I ended up going to hospital at 4am on Tuesday night because I was deranged from the pain, followed by a dentist visit where the dentist was astounded at the speed with which my wisdom tooth barged in unannounced (and I was like “this is so Aries of me.) It’s very likely I’ll have to have the unwelcome guest to my mouth ripped out and I’m extremely nervous about it, but till then I’m hepped up on a grunty cocktail of antibiotics and Tramadol, and have been a charming mixture of intensely dozy and high as a kite all day. I decided that while I’m vaguely lucid I might as well try to finish this stupid blog post, since the stiltedness of my creativity has been a major cause of anxiety to me and if I can both distract my brain from the pain with writing and also tick something off my to-do list I might feel slightly better about how much time this vexatious tooth is wasting.

So uh, last week I made this granola stuff, and it is really good and I’m going to attempt to talk about it here in the manner of, you know, a food blog. (Imagine several elaborate air quote gestures inserted at various points in that sentence.)

By “granola” I really mean a collection of toasted grains and seeds and whatnot masquerading as breakfast cereal. It’s crunchy and nutty and puffy and really weirdly delicious and filling but also extremely light-textured, with not a single oat in sight: instead I round it out with toasted buckwheat which is super nutty and crunchy, and puffed amaranth, which is just devastatingly adorable – when you put the granules of it over a high heat it puffs up like the tiniest popcorn, like popcorn for bees, like, I don’t know why the sight of tiny miniature stuff doing its best makes me emotional, it’s not even the Tramadol that’s making me get worked up about this, but all we can do, collectively across humankind, is try to accept it. Maple syrup glues it together – an expensive ingredient, hence the “lux” of the granola’s name – and makes it pleasingly clumpy and sweet, and the almonds and sesame seeds give further nutty toasty flavour and crunch. Plus simply knowing about all the superfood-on-superfood action happening in the ingredients is extremely good for the soul, and presumably the bod also.

Also please note that while the recipe looks complicated you’re honestly just toasting all the individual ingredients in a pan over a high heat, that’s like, it, I just for some reason cannot explain it in any kind of succinct manner.

lux maple granola

a recipe by myself

one cup amaranth
one cup quinoa
one cup buckwheat
one cup sesame seeds
one cup almonds
four tablespoons maple syrup
pinch of sea salt

Get yourself a large, ideally nonstick frying pan, and a large bowl. Put the pan on a high heat, and then pour in a few tablespoons of the amaranth. After a few seconds it should start popping and puffing up. Keep it moving so it doesn’t burn, and don’t worry if all of it doesn’t puff up – as long as most of it does, you’re all good. Tip it into the bowl and carry on with the rest of the amaranth. Then, tip in some of the quinoa – some of the grains might pop a bit but your aim here is just to gently toast the grains. Once they’re sufficiently browned, tip them into the bowl with the amaranth and continue to toast the rest. Then, toast the buckwheat grains until they smell nutty and are lightly browned, followed by the sesame seeds – which should brown really quickly – and finally the almonds. Roughly chop up the toasted almonds before tipping them into the bowl as well. Finally, add the salt and pour in the maple syrup, give it a good stir and then transfer into an airtight jar or container.

I ate it, as you can see from the pictures, layered up with really thick natural yoghurt and freeze-dried raspberry powder, which was a spectacularly good way to enjoy it. I’m just someone who happens to have a lot of freeze-dried powdered fruits around for some reason, but it would be also wonderful in a bowl drenched in your preferred kind of milk, or just served alongside a heaping spoonful of yoghurt with whatever fruit and accoutrements you fancy. You could also layer it up all cute like I did but use IRL fruit or something – jarred passionfruit syrup or tinned peaches would also be delightful here. You’ve got options, is what I’m saying.

bed granola

All I’ve done today, aside from thrashing about in pain and having extremely dribbly naps, is watch Nigella Lawson re-runs, possibly the most comforting TV I can imagine in these difficult-of-tooth times. At one point I literally dreamed that she put her cool hand on my hot forehead and it was honestly almost worth the entire ordeal just for that dream; but also watching her cooking reminds me that this is what I love to do and it’s something I can do and will do. I’m really hoping that once this useless fang heals up that I’ll be all It’s A Wonderful Life and be completely reinvigorated to write, like, vigorously, but even just feeling something other than nonstop pain would be a real kick right now.

Anyway, I’m feeling the Tramadol pulling me downwards which means it’s time for me to snooze and dribble lavishly on my pillowcase again, but I’m glad I got this done and also I can’t wait for my stupid face to get better so that I can eat the rest of this delicious granola. Currently the simple act of chewing causes black-out levels of pain! Good times.

title from: The Knife, Silent Shout. I love the hook in this song, it’s like the sensation of lemonade bubbles rising and falling in musical form.

music lately:

Anthems for a Seventeen-Year Old Girl, Broken Social Scene. I CANNOT STOP LISTENING TO THIS SONG. The repetitiveness, especially about halfway through when it really kicks in, is so hypnotic and melancholy. I love it.

Animal Nitrate, Suede. I really like this song.

The Avalanche, Sufjan Stevens. This is the only song of this that I like and it’s not on Spotify and it’s ruining my life! I also have not listened to any other songs by him.

next time: let us hope that I have my ability to write back and also my ability to have teeth in my mouth in a chill manner.

bruises on the fruit, tender age in bloom

May 15, 2017March 11, 2020Leave a comment

It has taken me what feels like forever to get this blog post done and it’s not because I’ve been doing anything exciting by any means, I’ve just been busy with work and overtired and rinsing and repeating. That’s a lie, I’m not even rinsing. Just grubbily unproductive. But here I am and I’m determined to make this happen because, if nothing else, the recipe I’m talking about involves quince which is in season for about the same length of time as the brief nap I wish I was currently having.

So quinces, yeah, they look like large pears and smell like if an apple was presenting you with a bunch of flowers and blushing nervously. They’re impossible to eat raw and rock hard when you try to cut through them and take forever to cook but once they do, you get blessed with soft, melting texture with just a little of that autumnal fruit grittiness, and intense, perfumed sweetness of flavour.

I bought two, knowing full well I’d probably get too busy to do anything other than occasionally appreciatively sniffing them before ruefully throwing them in the bin once they’d deteriorated beyond the point where I could ignore it; however I surprised myself by actually doing something. And that thing was delicious. I grated the quince – not the easiest task, since they’re so concrete-like, but I managed – and cooked it in plenty of butter with sliced pears, and then just added water slowly, almost risotto like, until everything was cooked and soft. A tiny bit of sugar was all that was needed, no spices or anything – I mean, you absolutely could, I just wanted the fruit to be the undistracted star. If I was going to add something here I’d personally go for cardamom – a tiny bit lemony and gingery and less obvious than cinnamon, or indeed, actual ginger. The butter with the fruit is so lush, and flavour enough, making everything all rich and sweet and juicy and, well, buttery.

buttered quince and pears

a recipe by myself

one large quince
two pears
40g butter
one tablespoon sugar
water

Peel the quince (just use a vege peeler) and carefully grate the flesh, till you’re left with just the solid core. This is a bit of an undertaking because quinces are, as I said, extremely tough. Throw the butter into a large frying pan and over a medium to high heat, melt it and tip in the quince. Finely slice the pears and add them to the pan too. Continue to stir until the pears have softened a bit.

Sprinkle over the sugar, add some more butter if you feel like it, turn the heat up on high and add 125ml/half a cup of water. Continue stirring regularly until the water has evaporated, and then continue in this fashion, adding water and stirring till it’s gone, until the quince has almost dissolved into a nubbly paste coating the pears and everything is very, very tender and golden.

I ate it with extremely thick natural yoghurt, the type you can basically stand a spoon up in, and a mixture of toasted almonds and pumpkin seeds, roughly chopped and mixed with coconut sugar and sea salt. The textures and temperatures and sweet-salty-buttery-fruity thing going on was sensational, but also extremely, calmingly simple. You can do what you like with this nubbly fruity mixture though – put it under crumble, stir it into whipped cream, fold it into a cake batter, eat it with ice cream, and I suspect it would also work with some kind of pork or alongside sharp goat’s cheese.

If you’re up to your neck in quinces right now I also suggest some other recipes that I’ve blogged about – like quince sorbet, quince brandy, quince glaze and quince loaf cake (that last post I linked to is from early 2008 which was literally 84 years ago).

And that’s like, it, really. In fact as soon as I hit publish I’m scooting to work again. I will do my very, very best to get into some wacky anecdote-worthy scrapes and capers for you so that the next blog post has more filler material. Au revoir till next time.

title from: Nirvana’s aggressively bucolic song In Bloom.

music lately:

Gideon, by My Morning Jacket. This song is from 2005 but sounds like it could’ve been written in like, 2015, it’s all soaring and dreamy and wonderful, but above all I’m thankful for this band because of the scene in Happy Endings where Alex is like “There’s my My Morning Jacket jacket!”

Santa Fe, by Beirut. God this song is uplifting from the second it kicks off, it’s just lovely and happy and simple and good.

next time: I made some extremely good polenta with olive oil and roast garlic, I’m also really, really wanting to do some kind of slow cooking with the weather being so freezing. I also promise anecdotes or something.

look into my eyes and tell me girl you know you gotta watch your health

April 30, 2017March 11, 20202 Comments

It’s an analogy that’s brought up a lot, but one of the differences in the way that mental and physical health are treated is that like, if you have a broken leg it’s considered completely reasonable to be seen immediately and have it put in a cast and then get follow-up therapy to strengthen your stupid broken leg. Unlike mental health, which is like…imagine if you broke your leg and you were told you had to wait six weeks to see someone, and then when you saw them you really, really had to convince them that your leg was broken even though you’ve tried meditation, and then you’re told to wait another six weeks and at the end of that you’re finally given, with great reluctance, a plaster and some supermarket paracetamol.

This isn’t exactly relevant, I honestly just wanted to complain. But where I’m going with this is, I’m so used to focussing on the moving target that is my mental health that I’m always completely taken by surprise when I get, y’know, physically unwell in the traditional sense. To me, getting actually sick is kind of not an option, simply because I don’t have time for this and so I refuse to acknowledge it.

And yet, here I am, and this head-cold/flu-adjacent thing that is occupying my bod is refusing to acknowledge my refusal to acknowledge it, and as such, I’ve done the only thing anyone can do – google which foods are the most aggressively able to fight germs and then make a recipe out of as many of them as I can get hold of. Since cabbage came up extremely high on the list of “will make your nose bleed from vitamin overload” I decided to use it as the base of a slaw, adding watercress and fennel, a dressing made from ten cloves of garlic, and a scattering of raw turmeric and almonds.

So yeah, it’s good for you – you can wikipedia the individual ingredients if you want to know specifically how, for me it’s just enough to know that they’re doing something – but it also tastes completely fantastic. Cabbage and watercress are both super peppery and fennel has that aniseed heat, but there’s a ton of olive oil and salt to soften it all, plus the incredibly mellow dressing, made by simmering the garlic cloves till they’re softened, both physically and in terms of eye-watering burn. On top of that the almonds – and I use heaps of them – add a kind of contrasting creamy nuttiness, so it’s not all too astringent and cold and a chore to get through. Finally, raw turmeric has a kind of gingery carrot vibe flavourwise and adds pleasing bursts of chrysanthemum yellow against all the purple and green. And it’s SO good for you, guys.

Did it help? I mean honestly, I’ve never felt less healthy. But does correlation equal causation? Am I mad at this salad for not curing me and indeed, solving all the problems in my life? Can you be mad at a salad? Am I doing a terrible job of selling this recipe to you as something you might want to make? If nothing else it surely didn’t do me any harm and above all it tastes amazing so…that will have to do for now.

Feel free to mix and match ingredients depending on what you’re able to get hold of – you could add kale, or use white cabbage, have walnuts or hazelnuts instead of almonds, use rocket instead of cress, anything at all. But as it is in the recipe below, it’s pretty spectacular – so crunchy, oily, salty, garlicky, crisp, peppery, everything. Also – I feel like I say this a lot, but – the recipe looks really long but it’s truly super simple, I’m just super talky. You’re really just chopping up a bunch of stuff and putting it in a bowl.

healthy af slaw

a recipe by myself

half a purple cabbage
one fennel bulb
two handfuls of watercress
turmeric root, a couple of inches thereof
at least two handful of almonds
ten cloves of garlic, give or take
plenty of extra virgin olive oil
two teaspoons apple cider vinegar
a couple of drops of maple syrup or clear honey or golden syrup or honestly whatever
sea salt

Firstly, put the garlic cloves in a pan and just cover them with water. Bring to the boil and let them simmer away for about five minutes, during which time you can prepare the salad itself.

Get an enormous serving bowl ready. Peel the thick outer leaves from the cabbage and slice the rest as finely as you can manage, transferring it all into the serving bowl once you’re done. Repeat with the fennel (slightly more difficult due to the unwieldy shape of the bulb.) Then, and this might sound stupid, but drizzle over some olive oil and scatter over some salt and use your hands to vigorously lift and scrunch the cabbage and fennel. This will mix it together but also kind of soften and relax the aggressively stiff purple and white shreds a little. Just do it.

Roughly chop the almonds and throw them in, and then give the watercress a brief chop before adding them to the salad as well. Use a small sharp knife to slice off the outer peel of the turmeric root and very finely chop up the bright orange flesh underneath, scattering that over the vegetables.

Remove the garlic from the heat (if you haven’t already) and, if necessary, give the cloves a quick rinse under cold water so you don’t burn yourself on them. Remove the papery casing – they’ll be so soft that you just need to give them a squeeze and they should pop out – and either mash them with a fork, blitz them in a food processor, or pulverise them in a pestle and mortar (I chose the latter because my flatmate owns this amazing huge one that I’ve always wanted to use.) Add the cider vinegar, the maple syrup, a good pinch of sea salt, and like, heaps of olive oil, at least three tablespoons but honestly way more than that. Drizzle it over the salad and mix it all together and add more olive oil and salt if you think you need it, plus perhaps more chopped almonds – and then serve.

It’s – she says, in a Justin Timberlake voice – gonna be May, and the rapid change of one month to another is as good a time as any to look at my life and where I’m at and generally take stock of things/panic wildly about the disproportionate size of the passage of time compared to the Stuff I Have Achieved. On January 1 of this year I published a thing about my struggle with the mental health system and the mental health of my own self. Since then things have zig-zagged wildly but most definitely on an upwards trajectory, and as such I’d like to draw your attention to this podcast I recorded with Ollie, this magical guy who, as well as being the doorman at work, also has his own podcast where he talks to people from all walks of life about, well, their walks of life. I feel like it’s a natural post-script to my original piece. I mean, so many things are still a monumental struggle and I congratulate myself for every day that I get through, but it’s kind of amazing looking at the difference between the me of that podcast and the me of the January 1 article.

Meanwhile, I’ve still got this damn head cold thing, but at least I know it’ll get some attention from the doctors if I tell them about it. And, I’m full of vitamins.

PS: If you’re feeling this slaw, you may well want to check out some other recipes I have along these lines, such as the Lee Brothers’ Cabbage and Lime Salad with Roasted Peanuts, my Silverbeet, Parsley and Horseradish Slaw, or my Aggressively Healthy Bowl with Matcha Mayonnaise (and there’s nothing stopping you making the mayonnaise to dress the slaw in this blog post, it would certainly fit the context.)

title from: Grimes’ amaaaaaaazing song Oblivion, which I will never ever get sick of.

music lately:

Harry Styles, Sign of the Times. NO BIGGIE I”M JUST SOBBING SO HARD I HAVE A BLOOD NOSE anyway I quite like this song is what I’m saying.

Chelsea Jade, Life of the Party. I love this gal and everything she does is gold.

next time: I bought some quinces! So I’m super keen to do something with them!

when someone great is gone

February 28, 2017March 11, 2020Leave a comment

As February draws to a close, it means one thing and one thing only: we are smack bang in the middle of Pisces Season, people. What does this mean? It means every time I get super irrationally emotional over something, I’m all, “classic Pisces Season.” A leading characteristic of the Pisces star sign, you see, and if you haven’t worked this out already, is emotional-ness.

However, sometimes emotions are entirely reasonable, such as when someone who has become one of the most important people in your life over the past year leaves the country. What can you even do in these situations? Well, you try and spend as much time with them as possible, and on the Monday before they go, you wait until they’ve finished their shift at work and then make a midnight feast for the both of you while you watch Desperate Housewives.

It being Monday, or “Payday Eve”, and me being extremely me, once I’d purchased mushrooms and cream at the guest’s request I essentially tried to forage everything else from what was already in my pantry: some tomatoes leftover from a team barbecue that day which I’d nicked; some black garlic and walnut butter that my mum had sent me; some vaguely elderly beetroot that I’d forgotten I’d bought at the vege market the previous week; some vermouth and bourbon from my brief flirtation with trying to have a decent liquor cabinet; it goes on.

Mushrooms fried with garlic and cream are hardly revolutionary, but these ones are incredibly delicious: the vermouth hisses and disappears in the heat – relatable – leaving only a lick of winey flavour, and the cream reduces down to the most magnificently savoury sludge. Not necessarily the most appealing words, but you should know that they were the star on Monday and I’ve made this three times since because I love it so much.

mushrooms with black garlic, vermouth and cream

an extremely vague recipe, but I feel like you can handle it

a whole ton of those big flat brown mushrooms that cost slightly more than regular button mushrooms
olive oil
dry vermouth, such as Noilly Prat
a clove or two of black garlic, or regular is fine!
cream
freshly grated parmesan, salt and pepper to taste

Brush any dirt off the mushrooms and slice them up. Heat a generous couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan and tip the mushrooms in.

Let them fry in the hot oil till they soften and darken and reduce down somewhat – till they’re fried, basically – then pour in some vermouth, a couple of tablespoons at the most. This will hit the pan in a whoosh of steam and smell incredible. Stir till it’s evaporated, and then either slice or squash the clove of garlic and add it to the pan, followed by the cream – as much as you want, really. Start with a few tablespoons and then just keep pouring till it feels right. Carry on stirring over a high heat till the cream has reduced down somewhat – you want this thick and saucy.

Remove from the heat, pile on some parmesan cheese if you wish, but you don’t have to, and transfer to a bowl. Eat the lot, no matter how much you’ve made.

The beetroot and tomato dishes were highly opportunistic on-the-spot flights of fancy but they both worked out well so I thought I’d pass on some form of a recipe of them both here. Baking beetroot in cream – leftover from the mushrooms – gives the earthy bitterness of the vegetable a fantastic mellowness, and the walnut butter makes everything almost fudge-like in texture. If you don’t have walnut butter, you could use cashew or almond butter or indeed, just leave it out and you’ll still have a good time.

The tomatoes got a dash of bourbon on them because it was still there beside the stove from when I made those shallots and radishes last week, but it turns out they go well with these guys too. I just happened to have coconut sugar and its smoky intensity went perfectly with the sweetness of the tomatoes and the bourbon. They were sticky and sweet and bursting with juice and just so good. And I can’t even tell you how amazing the syrupy roasting juices tasted once all the tomatoes had been prised out.

roasted beetroot with cream and walnut butter

Set your oven to 180C/350F. Chop your beetroot – however many you have – into quarters or chunks or whatever, really, and pile them into an oven dish that will comfortably fit them. Pour over enough cream so they get their feet wet but aren’t entirely submerged, and spoon over some walnut butter. Mix it all together so some of the cream and walnut butter amalgamates, then bung it in the oven and let it cook until the beetroot is extremely tender. Top with parmesan if you like.

bourbon and coconut sugar roasted tomatoes

Again, set your oven to 180C/350F. Slice a bunch of ripe tomatoes in half and lay them, cut side up. Sprinkle over a little coconut sugar – like just a pinch per tomato. Follow this with a good solid drizzle of olive oil and then drizzle with a little bourbon – it’s easier to pour it into a spoon and then shake this over the tomatoes than trying to pour directly from the bottle. Finally sprinkle over some salt and roast em till they’re, like, roasted.

So like, because it was at midnight when I was taking these photos I completely concede that they are Not Great and indeed, it was my own vanity that caused me to take more photos once I’d made the mushrooms again in the daylight, just in case a casual reader of this blog saw my night time photos and threw their laptop out the window in horror. But it all tasted so, so good, and it was such a nice night, that honestly: I don’t care.

Okay I guess I do care since I bookended this blog post with nice photos of the mushrooms but still: I don’t care! (I care so much.)

On Thursday night I finished my shift at work and then proceeded to not get any sleep until at least 7am, because this particular person had to be at the airport at 4am. I may or may not have got emotionally drunk; I may or may not have cried AND fallen asleep at the airport; I may or may not have written an extremely overwrought letter to this person about what they mean to me and then left it in the car and then had to clamber into the boot through the backseat because I couldn’t work out how to open said boot. However I’ve also come to the conclusion that Melbourne isn’t soooo far away and I could possibly even visit if I ever get my act/and/or savings together. And as they sing in the musical Wicked – and I warn you, it’s about to get disgustingly maudlin for just one second here – because I knew you, I have been changed, for good.

skal for faen

Due to some spectacularly terrible luck or carelessness, this is the third time I’ve written out the blog post after accidentally deleting it, twice. By this point it feels almost surreal, like I’m going round in circles, but I think right here is definitively the end of this blog post. And seriously, it’s been barely a week and I’ve made those mushrooms three more times. They’re good, people.

title from: LCD Soundsystem, Someone Great. Okay I wasn’t QUITE done with the maudlin.

music lately:

I am on a sincere Pink Floyd god damn BUZZ right now and am revisiting Roger Waters’ live album In The Flesh a whole ton. Just try to not fall in love with the immensely sexy yet unsexily named Doyle Bramhall II when he sings the chorus to Comfortably Numb, suckers.

I saw Trainspotting 2 the other day and it was exactly what I wanted it to be; it also coincided with me being extremely into a genre of music that I like to call “Let’s drink lager and headbutt Liam Gallagher”. To that end, the Prodigy’s remix of Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life is honestly really good.

next time: I have not made ice cream in FOREVER, friends! And since it’s finally looking like summer in Wellington, it feels entirely appropriate. Watch this space.

get a little bit of bourbon in ya, get a little bit suburban

February 14, 2017March 11, 2020Leave a comment

I’ve lived in my current apartment for just over a year now. On Sunday, for the first time since moving in, I went to the vege market which happens weekly and is located exactly one block away. Thank you, Ritalin! I’ve spent a whole year full of good intentions about being a vege market person who gathers up bushels of seasonal produce to nourish my hot bod, but it’s never once happened. Either I cannot spatula myself out of bed with any conviction, or I make it there and am overwhelmed and panicky and can’t make a decision and forget how to breathe and have to leave immediately.

Not this Sunday though! Instead I strode, with unprecedented purpose, the short distance of one literal block from my apartment to the carpark filled with people and vegetables. And then went on a brief tangent where I saw this tiny, silky dachshund and a voice in my head said Follow That Dog, They Will Lead You To The Vegetable-Related Inspiration You Seek. In a dog-induced fugue state I trailed it, my low-bellied small-snouted muse, until it went and stood by….some cucumbers. I was jolted out of the trance, all like, wow I don’t feel like cucumbers and maybe this dog isn’t my spiritual vegetable guide but in fact just following its owner.

*clenches fist* so damn rustic

Luckily a more reliable voice said the words “maple bourbon roasted shallots” and suddenly I was inspired anew. This idea expanded out to include radishes (plus some beetroot that I bought for good measure for a later time) and with a bag full of pink-tinged vegetables, I left the market unflustered and happy.

Maple and bourbon are highly compatible bedfellows – the sweetness of both overlapping but also being tempered by the woodsy, smoky autumnal elements of the syrup. I figured that with shallots – mellow and onion-y – and the peppery, crisp radishes, it would make for an extremely delicious addition to say, some couscous or a salad.

Unfortunately – or not – we’ll never know how these damn things taste in that capacity because, after having let them cool somewhat and idly tasting a few to see how the combination worked…I lifted the roasting dish to my face and somehow – in my second fugue state of the day – demolished the entire lot, frantic forkful by frantic forkful, in about twelve seconds flat.

So, well, at least you know they’re really good. The shallots get all soft and caramelised and sticky, and the bourbon gives this rich depth. Shallots are a total pain to peel, but they look so, so pretty – like bunches of dried dusky pink roses, delicate and papery. If you’ve only ever had radishes raw before, they’re a revelation once some heat is applied, with their peppery bite softened into something quite luscious.

Should you have more restraint than me; here’s some suggestions for what to do with these things other than merely hoofing them in a daze. You could stir them through couscous with some rocket and toasted walnuts to respectively echo that peppery-smoky vibe; you could make a ton more and serve it alongside roast chicken (and consider using a marinade of maple, bourbon and olive oil for the chicken itself); you could boil some lil new potatoes and slice them up and stir the shallots and radishes into them with maybe like, some chives and a vinegary dressing to make a charming potato salad; you could put them in a bowl as part of a tapas-type spread with hummus and chargrilled peppers and flatbreads and whatnot, and finally, you could serve them as a component of a very zen rice bowl.

maple bourbon roasted shallots and radishes

a (vague) recipe by myself

many shallots, like at least nineteen
a bunch of radishes, like…five?
extra virgin olive oil
a couple of teaspoons of real maple syrup
a couple of teaspoons of bourbon
sea salt or a similarly fancy sodium

Set your oven to 170C/330F.

Peel the shallots, which is fiddly and annoying I grant you, but if you press down on them with the flat side of a large knife the skins should split making it easier to slide them out. Chop the radishes into wedges. Place them all in a roasting dish in which they fit snugly. Drizzle over plenty of olive oil, the maple syrup, the bourbon, and a good sized pinch of salt. Give it a stir if you like or just hope for the best.

Place in the oven and leave for around an hour till everything is lightly browned and tender and looking, y’know, cooked. Use however you like.

Or you could, honestly, just hoof them in a daze in their entirety, it’s 100% a good time.

As you can see, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, despite my insistence upon returning to form as quickly as possible. But this is me trying, and I’m pretty pleased with the results. I will absolutely be cooking more and more and more – the other day I made myself GRANOLA – and the fact that I can go to a vege market without having a meltdown is definitely a good sign, even if I get waylaid by an occasional mysterious dachshund voyage. And honestly it’s nice to write a fairly straightforward blog post free of deep confessional angst (even if it’s always there ready to go.) There’s this bit in the Simpsons where Moe is telling Homer that he’s better than dirt, but not that fancy dirt with all the nutrients, and that’s how I’m feeling right now – just a tiny dirt grub, slowly getting better and better.

An good boy, and a dog called Ghost

PS: It’s Valentine’s Day today, and if that means something to you then I’m happy for you and not going to rain on your parade. I spent the morning with my work family at an adorable high tea put on by our bosses followed by some intensely loved up messages with my two best friends Kim and Kate and I cannot think of a more lovely way to celebrate the day. And during that high tea I had the most amazing cucumber sandwiches with minty cream cheese and I was like, oh my god, that dachshund was actually trying to tell me something…But whatever you’re doing – whether it’s wallowing in hearts-for-eyes-ness or studiously ignoring it, I hope it’s fun.

title from: my ultimate valentine Lana Del Rey and her incredible song Cruel World which, ugh, I love so much.

music lately:

Calexico, Alone Again Or. So I have been loving the original version of this song, by the band Love, for a long-ass time now, but this cover was recently brought to my attention and it’s so bouncy and ebullient and good and honestly, a very worthy take on a truly brilliant song. Listen.

Beyonce’s performance at the Grammy Awards. It’s SO IMPORTANT. I”M SOBBING. WATCH IT.

Blink 182, Always: exposure therapy.

Next time: whatever I make I’ll like, wait to use it before I eat it mid-process. Or will I?

and if i recover, will you be my comfort

November 30, 2016March 11, 2020Leave a comment

My first recollection of the song One Night in Bangkok, from the troubled yet oddly compelling musical Chess (especially since it’s like two and a half hours of people singing about literal games of chess, it’s really punching up in the compelling stakes) was when I did a dance to it for one of my jazz dance exams, probably around 1994-ish timeline-wise. I can still remember quite a few of the steps, because muscle memory is funny about what it holds on to.

The track that I danced to had been dubbed to cut out what I later realised was there: this long, rather indulgent overture that goes on and on and on rather endlessly until the musical phrasing spins around and all of a sudden the beat drops and there’s a white guy rapping, kind of.

At 4.20 (nice) this morning as I drove in a taxi to the airport with this French guy who I used to work at Library with nearly every single day to farewell him as he moves overseas forever, it made me think of the overture of this song. I was with his flatmate and dear friend, and we were like…we knew this was coming ages ago but how is it so suddenly this very moment? Obviously I’m going to miss this guy heaps but it made me think about missing people in general. You’re going along, in the overture, everything feels fine, its repetitive nature lulls you into thinking well, I guess this is the song. And then suddenly there’s a tailspin and the beat drops and everything is completely different and you’re like, oh man. This is the song now. And the new bit of the song is so different to the overture that you’re like…why can’t I hear that overture right now, how is it so impossibly different to right now, how did it used to be all that there was.

comfort, food

Anyway, the passage of time, wow, it’s a thing, I’m soooooo deep for noticing it. Whether or not the earth turning as it usually does has got you caught up or not, there’s really not much else to do right now but eat comfort food, and in the case of this recipe it’s a foodstuff I turn to often in times of need. Risotto.

I’ve talked about risotto so much On Here that there’s almost nothing new I can come up with about it; I think calling it “white noise in food form” was my highest apex of descriptiveness. It comforts in the making as well as the eating – obviously it’s soft, warm, creamy rice, as bland or as punchy as you want it to be, as close as you can get to actually eating a large fluffy blanket (okay, eating a freshly baked loaf of bread does challenge this notion) but the power of the calming, soothing, endless go-round of stirring hot liquid into the grains of rice and transfixedly watching them swell up slowly cannot be overstated.

A friend and coworker recently told me they were vegan now and I was like “wow, vegan, huh? That makes me think of…the word vegan.” And so I wanted to try and make a creamy as heck risotto without adding any animal products (specifically: my usual butt-tonne of cream and butter); I also wanted it to be fairly gentle and simple and non-aggressive.

It’s olive oil that gives this risotto its magical texture and richness; apart from that there’s just some pistachios and orange interrupting the soft grains. It may be non-threatening but it’s by no means bland though. The olive oil gives this intensity of buttery flavour and merges with the starch released by the rice, emulsifying into the most creamy and pleasingly gluggy finished product. The pistachios add soft crunch and their own almost-buttery flavour, and the orange brightens it all up but in a mellow way. It’s truly delicious, the flavour unfolding in this elusive way that makes you want to chase it with mouthful after mouthful.

This makes a large batch but the leftovers are strangely good cold from the fridge and if you roll them into tiny balls and dunk them in breadcrumbs before frying in some quantity of hot oil, you can get some highly serviceable arancini; crispy on the outside and creamy within.

orange, pistachio and olive oil risotto

a recipe by myself

one onion
plenty of extra virgin olive oil (soz to be vague, you just need plenty, okay)
one and a half cups of arborio rice (the cheapest stuff is fine here)
three quarters of a cup of white wine or dry vermouth (sorry this is a lot, but it makes a lot of risotto)
one tablespoon dijon mustard
one vegetable stock cube or a tablespoon of white miso paste
70g pistachios, roughly chopped
one large orange, zest grated off
salt and pepper

Heat a generous tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil in a large pan. Finely dice the onion and tip it into the pan, and fry the pieces gently until they’re a little translucent and soft but not brown. Now tip in the uncooked rice grains and stir them in the oily onion for a minute or two. Pour in the wine or vermouth – it should bubble up merrily for a bit before settling down. This is where the stirring starts. Stir and stir over a medium heat (although I tend to impatiently turn it up high) till the rice has absorbed almost all the wine. Now add the stock or miso and the mustard, plus two tablespoons of the pistachios, and the orange zest, and continue adding water from a recently boiled kettle, about a cupful at a time, stirring and stirring till it’s absorbed and you can add the next one. Every time you add more water, also drizzle in a little more olive oil, about a teaspoon or so. Sorry I don’t have specific measures here, you just add liquid till it’s done, you know?

Once it’s done it should be creamy and thick, with no granular bite when you taste the rice. Just yielding softness. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste – and indeed, more mustard if you like. Serve drizzled with more olive oil, and squeeze over some of the orange’s juice. More salt and pepper is good here – and finish with a scattering of cheerfully green pistachios.

It maybe sounds like there’s a nervous-making amount of olive oil in this but there’s not much of anything else, and you’re only adding a little at a time. Some of the cheapest extra virgin olive oils still have massive flavour, so don’t feel like you have to go high end here. Don’t skip out on the salt and pepper either, it ties everything together – salt makes everything taste more of itself, and I never used to like black pepper but it was just what I felt like having here – plus its dull heat helps stop the whole thing being too sleepy.

I know I bang on about comfort food and like, it’s not going to solve everything, but whatever’s going on you still need feeding and honestly, risotto is just the best, I can’t recommend it enough. If you can’t breathe, if you can’t think, if you can’t stand up, I believe that you can make it. The risotto I mean, but like, in general too.

As I said, I have five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred risotto recipes, but continuing in this vein, if you want more maybe try my take on Nigella’s Pea Risotto (which can be made vegan) or this oven-baked risotto if standing and stirring is beyond you right now (and if it is: I get it.)

title from: CHVRCHES affecting-like-whoa song Recover.

music lately:

My song that I can’t stop listening to this week is Montaigne, Lonely, but beautiful as it is I’m trying to counteract it with taking Love Myself by Hailee Steinfeld repeatedly like it’s medicine.

Muse, Plug In Baby. Emostalgia.

next time: well it’s DECEMBER THE DAMN FIRST tomorrow and I’m NOT prepared in ANY way but maybe I’ll start thinking about xmas food.