Category: Gluten-free

i fought the slaw and the slaw won

13 Comments

The brain does many strange things, one of which is the way songs can get stuck in it, without reason or end. If stereos were the size of tic tacs, it’d make sense. “Oh, that’s why I keep hearing that song! My boombox got stuck in my ponytail again! Ha ha ha!” But this is not the case. It’s just the brain. For example: last weekend when Tim was away in Taihape, one song got itself persistently in my mind, repeating itself with an alarming stamina.

That song was A Bear Went Over The Mountain.
Sometimes it was like the record had a scratch in it, and I would hear nothing but a sinister refrain of “and all that he could see! And all that he could see! And all that he could see!” Yeah. I don’t know what qualities cause a song to do this, but sometimes I call my brain’s bluff by actually loving the song that gets stuck in my head, like Kiss From A Rose (which I may have played about six times in a row on YouTube recently) or Purea Nei.
Basically I just couldn’t bear that (bear!) alone, but it does lead into my next point: sometimes recipes do this to me too. The ingredients list curls around my inquisitive mental imaging faculties, lodging there fairly permanently till I can find the time to bring the recipe into existence. Luckily for me, the most recent time this happened, I didn’t have to wait too long. On Friday night Tim and I went to the house of of the terrific Kate and Jason for an evening of ceaseless hilarity and sustained deliciousness – homemade cheese, sublime sweet potato pie with a lattice top, polenta, spicy soup, soft dinner rolls filled with fried tomato slices and the crispest bacon – and several of these recipes came from a particular book called Simple Fresh Southern by these guys called The Lee Brothers. I wanted the recipe for the cheese but Kate talked me into taking home the whole book to borrow, and I am so glad, because the moment I flipped it open (wait – the moment the wine wore off and I flipped it open) and made eyes with their Cabbage and Lime Salad with Roasted Peanuts recipe, I knew I had to make it my own. And then all the rest of their recipes. This book is so cool.
I agree with you entirely that a salad based on cabbage might sound severe and unsexy and like the very last sort of thing you want to eat in winter when there are casseroles and puddings to be had. But after a few nights out enjoying abundant food and wine and with more such evenings on the nearing horizon, I honestly do just want to bury my face in a cool, astringent, mustardy salad with bursts of citrus sourness.
Besides, the crisp peppery shredded cabbage, tart lime segments and hot mustard are mellowed out considerably by all the salt, the oil in the dressing, and the creamy bite of the roasted nuts. You could serve it with fish, chicken, a dirty great big steak, with rice noodles under or stirred into it, and so on. Or even on the side of a big slow-cooked casserole with a hearty pudding to follow.
Cabbage and Lime Salad with Roasted Peanuts

From Simple Fresh Southern by the Lee Brothers


1/2 small red cabbage, trimmed, cored, and shredded/finely sliced
1/2 small green cabbage, treated in the same way
1 tablespoon salt
1 bunch fresh baby spinach leaves, finely sliced
1 lime
Juice of 1-2 further limes
1 tablespoon Dijon or similar mustard
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon peanut oil
1/2 cup roasted, unsalted peanuts (or whatever you’ve got!) roughly chopped

The recipe says to toss the cabbage with the salt, then sit it in a colander over a bowl for two hours so that lots of liquid can drain out. But honestly, not a drop of water was in the bowl after two hours. Maybe our cabbages are different here in New Zealand? You do as you please. Otherwise, mix together all the leaves in a large bowl. Trim the ends off the lime and peel it, then carefully slice it into segments, peeling off the membrane where you can, and tear these segments into small pieces. Toss them into the leaves too.
Whisk together the rest of the ingredients to make the dressing, and thoroughly mix this into the salad, and finally stir through the chopped nuts. Serve!
Note to yourself: I used just purple cabbage since I’m only feeding the two of us, I used cavolo nero instead of spinach and almonds instead of peanuts since that’s what I had, and if you get a bit stuck you could use lemons instead of limes and wasabi paste instead of mustard.
This salad is punchily delicious, awakening you from any wintery downtrodden-ness with every drop of lime juice you absorb. It’s also very pretty to look at, with its queenly purple and green gemstone colours.
(I mean fairytale queen, not the actual Queen of England – that would have to be a more pastel-toned salad.) (Also: I got the pretty, pretty bowl in a moment of sale-induced single-mindedness from Swonderful.)
As if Tim and I making friends and eating their food isn’t enough excitement, this afternoon in Wellington it started SNOWING. It hasn’t snowed in Wellington since 1995! Honestly, when I was a kid I didn’t know that it snowed anywhere in New Zealand but that’s because I grew up south of Auckland, not really within cooee of a snow-capped mountain. In the CBD where we live it was more rainy than snowy and it didn’t really settle but there was an unmistakable icing-sugar dusting of snowflakes in the air and it was thrilling.
____________________________________________________________
Title via: yes I’ve used this song before as a title holder but not in this way and besides, I’m very tired (just in case anyone’s watching closely.) I love the Dead Kennedy’s version of this which changes it to “and I won” but it’s hard to go past Buddy Holly and The Crickets’ singing that the Law did in fact win, which must’ve been fairly reassuring to the nervously suspicious adults of the time.
____________________________________________________________
Music lately:
Tim and I saw the stunning movie Pina tonight, which luckily gives as much attention to sound as it does visuals. Shake It is one such example of its glorious music.
Speaking of Tim, being the diamond that he is, he bought me a Judy Garland and Liza Minelli live record and I love it. It’s them at the London Palladium in the early sixties, and they’re quite adorable, given the often distinctly non-adorable circumstances of Garland’s life. Their personalised take on Hello, Dolly is very sweet and shows off how good their similar voices sound together.
______________________________________________________
Next time: Well I’ve loaded up on buttermilk to attempt more of the recipes in the Lee Brothers’ gorgeous book, and at the prompting of excellent lady Jo both via email and in person, since we were fortunate enough to see her twice this week, I’ll most definitely be pondering cupcakes for the SPCA Cupcake Day too…

the suburbs they are sleeping but she’s dressing up tonight

14 Comments

This wasn’t my intention. What I meant to present you with was a layered white chocolate and blackberry cake covered in 100s and 1000s sprinkles. But I left the caking too late in the day, forgetting how much heat their dense crumbs can hold onto, and the cake is still cooling on the bench now. While this Sunday started off sunny, it swiftly descended into greying darkness around 2.00pm, leaving my chances of photographing said cake with pleasing results significantly diminished.



But its stand-in of Fennel with Blue Cheese Buttermilk Dressing can still rightfully incite a little vaingloriousness within me. (Vainglorious! It’s a good word. I think I managed to force it in there validly.)
Nigella Lawson calls this dressing a “fabulously retro US-steakhouse-style starter” when it’s served over sliced iceberg lettuce. I wouldn’t know personally, but I can’t deny it’s a mood I’m happy to try evoke through food. Or anything. Speaking of US-steakhouse-style, last night I went to a cowgirl-themed birthday party which was not only the last word in how to feed a crowd (honestly: cornbread, ribs, fried onions, biscuits and gravy, three different pies for pudding) but also continued so late into the evening that it was suddenly early in the morning. I wouldn’t say I’m hungover as such…now…but I’m definitely trying to pummel weakly against the surprisingly firm and resilient punching bag of exhaustion. Just keep that in mind as you read.
(In case you’re wondering, that stack of books in the background includes a Mahalia Jackson biography, one of the Jason Bourne books, Margaret Atwood’s ‘Dancing Girls’ and ‘Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls’ – an original, not a reprint. Important.)
I didn’t have any iceberg lettuce, and couldn’t find any at the market or in the supermarket that looked satisfactorily perky and crisp. But I figured that fennel is not only in season, it also could provide that necessary water-cooled crunch. Further to that, its clean, aniseed flavour wouldn’t be intimidated by the rich, aggressively blue cheese. The thyme leaves have a dual purpose – firstly, the herbal flavour complements everything else going on and goes well with cheese. Secondly, a pale vegetable, covered in a pale lumpy milky liquid, does need some help in the looks department and the pretty purply-green leaves are pleasing to the eye.
Blue Cheese Buttermilk Dressing

I was simultaneously inspired by Nigella’s recipe from Kitchen and a recipe from an issue of Fine Cooking magazine. Nige’s didn’t need a food processor (considering what happened to it last week, we need some time apart) so she won. I simplified her recipe very slightly.

150g blue cheese, crumbled
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar
100ml buttermilk (or, if you don’t have any, plain unsweetened yoghurt possibly thinned with a little milk)

In a bowl, mash the cheese with a fork or a small whisk. Mix in the Worcestershire sauce and vinegar and then slowly stir in the buttermilk. Taste to see if it needs a pinch of salt. The kind of blue cheese you use will affect consistency of the texture, but it’s all good.

To serve:

2 large bulbs of fennel
Fresh thyme leaves from 2-3 stalks

Trim the base from the fennel, then slice vertically as best you can into uniform chunks and slices. Arrange the slices on a plate, spoon over as much dressing as you like, then tumble over the thyme leaves.

Serves 3-4 as a side dish (depending on the size of your fennel, really)
Keeping in mind that this is a boldly flavoured dish – you might want to run it past those who you’re serving in case they don’t like blue cheese or fennel. On the other hand, you’re putting in time and effort to feed them, so you could contrarily slam the plate in front of them and say “deal with it, fusspants!” (Or however you’d like to finish that sentence.)
Your options for using this dressing are multitudinous. Of course, there’s the original iceberg lettuce concept, and Nigella also recommends it over tomatoes and leftover beef. But its mix of sharp, salty and creamy flavours lends itself to many guises. I think you could also drizzle it over roasted beetroot; as a potato salad dressing; in a bacon sandwich; stirred through cooked, cooled mushrooms; as a sauce/dip for potato wedges; mixed through a coleslaw made of shredded cabbage and grated green apple…See? It’s a highly functional substance.
Lucky me: on Friday I was able to attend a mightily swanky lunch at The White House on Oriental Parade (to wit: Tim gave it an unprecedented five stars to in our Sunday Star-Times review of it a few months ago) as part of the launch of Visa Wellington on a Plate. Among the esteemed guests was Lucy Corry, author of food blog The Kitchen Maid, who presented me with a thyme plant after us talking about thyme back and forth on Twitter. I was already dazedly on a high after the terrifically delicious crab raviolo and crisp-edged snapper with lemon curd (yes it worked, and how) but the unexpected kindness of the plant-gift had me filled with good vibes. And it’s that very thyme plant whose leaves you see in the above recipe.
Later that night, Tim and I saw The Trip at Embassy (as part of the NZ Film Festival). I’d seen some episodes of the TV show version on the plane on the way to the UK earlier this year, and it seems like the film takes the pilot and then adds on an extra hour of action. Hilarity is inevitable when Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are stuck in small spaces together, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how monumentally funny it would be. If you get the chance to see it by some means or another – it’s not one you have to see in a cinema – then do. Something about the poster for this movie reminded me of Tim and I going to review cafes (which character we’re most like probably depends on the day) although we aren’t quite at the stage of competitively imimating Michael Caine…yet. We’re not above imitating Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon imitating Michael Caine though. (“Michael Caine. Talks. Very. Slowly”) My only complaint about the film was that Coogan didn’t mention his powerful performance in the important movie Hamlet 2.
________________________________________________________
Title via: Blur, Stereotypes, from their album 1996 album The Great Escape (significantly, the year my crush on Damon Albarn developed. Significantly for me, not so much for him. Yet.)
________________________________________________________
Music lately:

Francois Hardy, Tous Les Garcons Et les Filles. I can’t work out where I heard this song before – was it used in an ad campaign years ago? Maybe it was in the music from my old jazz dance classes. I don’t know, but it’s definitely familiar. That aside, it’s also really pretty and sad, good Sunday evening music. Which might mean it’s the kind of music you really shouldn’t play on a Sunday evening, come to think of it.
I bought the original London recording of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music from Slow Boat Records yesterday, and while it’s excellent, nothing tops Glynis Johns’ Send In The Clowns in my mind. However, feel free to compare levels of diction crispness between Johns and Judi Dench in her take on this standard.
_________________________________________________________
Next time: That cake, I promise. It will be resplendent.

"she used to say, harlan pepper, if you don’t stop naming nuts…"

17 Comments

Having now made cashew butter for the first time, I can only hope that if you try it too, you don’t experience the same terrifying lows, dizzying highs and creamy middles that I endured to achieve one small bowl of camel-coloured paste. I first heard about cashew butter in a Baby-Sitter’s Club book, Dawn and the We Heart Kids Club, in fact. Who could’ve known that about fifteen years would pass before cashew butter had any further significance in my life?

Please ‘scuse the green stain on the teatowel.

I’ve now relayed this story dramatically on Twitter and Facebook, but for context, and because I’m not good at letting go of things easily, I’ll re-summarise here. I saw on Mrs Cake’s blog that she’d done homemade peanut butter, and breezily so, and I thought her method could be easily transferable to cashew nut butter. The sort of thing I read about – see above – but have never actually eaten.

While pulverising my cashews in the food processor, I saw that a significant amount of cashew-matter had crept up the sides and remaining there, safely away from the whizzing blades. So, unthinkingly, I got my wooden spoon, poked it through the feed tube in the lid of the processor, and waggled it round to scrape down the sides. It worked! But then the blades forced everything back up again. Instead of sensibly turning it off and scraping down the sides with a spatula, I just stuck the wooden spoon back in the tube again. And dropped it. There was an awful noise as the processor was almost jumping around with the exertion of trying to blitz at full speed with a spoon jammed in it, and finally with a crash, the plastic tube broke, pieces of it hurtling into the air, and all this forced the lid off so the food processor finally stopped going. Leaving me with butter dotted with tiny woodchips, a significantly clawed and scraped wooden spoon (it was my favourite!) and a busted food processor lid.

If you follow this method *except* for the wooden spoon bit, I promise you’ll have cashew butter – homemade, wildly delicious, fairly inexpensive if you snap them up on special, non-traumatic cashew butter. Unfortunately there’s no getting around the fact that you need a food processor. I kind of need one now, too.

Homemade Cashew Butter

  • Roasted, salted cashews, as many as you like
  • Plain oil such as rice bran (optional)

I say roasted and salted, because this is how they’re usually presented, but if yours are plain, then just roast and salt them as you wish.

Place the cashews in the bowl of the food processor. Put on the lid and blitz them pretty constantly, pausing occasionally to scrape down the sides and give the motor a break.

Eventually – it does take a while – the cashews will go from being crumbly particles, to forming a smooth, solid mass. This might be extremely solid, so feel free to drizzle in a little oil to soften it up a bit.

Transfer to a container and refrigerate.

Really, if you’re not going in for processor-busting shenanigans like me, the only difficult part of this operation is the horrible loud clattery noise that the food processor makes when it first starts chopping up the nuts. It’s like the sound of a massive snarling dog sitting on top of a ride-on lawnmower driving over gravel.

Consider the cashew: it’s a pretty ultimate nut. Classier and less abrasive than the peanut, easier to get at than a pistachio, less fancy than the pinenut, cheaper than macadamias, softer than Brazils, more savoury than the almond, and um…less wrinkly than pecans and walnuts. Its mild, creamy flavour and excellent affinity with sodium makes the cashew so favourably inclined to becoming a spreadable version of itself. The cashew butter has a caramelly richness which just hints at white chocolate (although I maintain that macadamias are the white chocolate of the nut world) but also that recognisable peanut butter quality of coating your throat and choking you if you eat it too fast. (I also maintain that clouds are the whales of the sky, but that’s mostly to annoy Tim.)

In case you’re wondering what to do with your cashew butter, apart from eat it euphorically (it really is good) you might consider these Spicy Cashew Noodles that I brought into being last night for dinner. In a bowl, place three tablespoons of cashew butter, chilli sauce in a make and quantity of your preference (I used 1 tablespoon sambal oelek) and either a little finely chopped fresh ginger or a brief dusting of ground ginger. Now add about 1/2 a cup water. Using a fork or a small whisk, mix this together till it forms a saucy sauce – the cashew butter will magically accommodate the water so add more if you like. The cashews are already salty and sweet but taste and see if you want to add sugar or salt. Finally, mix in a teaspoon of cider vinegar (that’s what I had, I can’t vouch for the taste of other vinegars but I’m sure they’ll work) and stir the sauce through the cooked noodles of your choice. Me, I went for rice sticks. Tip over a little more chilli sauce and some coriander or mint if you like.

And pa-dah. You have dinner, of sweet, spicy nutty sauce which coats each delicious strand of noodle. If cashews are out of your reach right now, you could always make this with peanut butter instead.

The NZ Film Festival has started in Wellington, and Tim and I are filming it up large in response. I particularly can’t wait for Pina and The Trip. Also Visa Wellington on a Plate starts this Friday so if you’re not already – there’s a significant amount of justifiable hype surrounding it like jus surrounds a cutlet – then Get Excited and check out their website for things to do that will bring yourself and food closer together.

Title via: A rare non-music title; the nut-monologue from Best in Show. A movie not quite as rapturously good as A Mighty Wind but still brilliance.

Music lately:

Ali Farka Toure, Beto. Beautiful music.

How To Dress Well, Decisions (Orchestral Mix) it’s actually playing on the radio right now and I like it so much that I had to look it up. Nice work, radio. (Or should I say, Martyn Pepperell on the radio, since he’s the one who played the song)

I know I go on about her a bit, but it’s with good reason. You should see Mariah Carey sing the ever-loving heck out of one of her early hits Emotions in this video. (I mean her awesomely peppy song of that name by the way, not the gross BeeGees one.)

Next time: Strange as it seems, it feels like ages since I’ve done any proper baking so it might be that; I also have some tamarillos up my sleeve….not literally…

 

let me entertain you, and we’ll have a real good time yes sir

14 Comments


Tim and I belong to a book group, which Ange, our ex-flatmate but still-friend started in early 2010. Every month we get together at someone’s house and discuss a book. Last night it was at our place, a commitment that always fills me with joy. Firstly because everyone in the book group is really, really nice and fun to be with, and secondly because I get the opportunity to provide a spread for people. An opportunity I’m always keenly looking for. Normally I do one recipe per blog post, but instead today I’ve serving up three small nibbly recipes; Marteani, Beetroot Hummus and Cannellini Bean Dip; all in the name of playing host.
As I’ve outlined somewhere in my unrestrained ‘About Me’ section, I like to keep the recipes here fairly accessible, but also amazing. Every now and then though, usually under the influence of Nigella, something kind of impractical takes hold of my imagination.
Like Marteani. Which uses lots of Cointreau – quelle expensive – vodka, and Earl Gray Tea (hence its name) to make a cocktail of orange-scented sumptuousness. Cointreau is not the kind of thing I would normally have just knocking around. However. I had about an inch in a 750ml bottle that my step-grandmother had given me, and then I had a further litre bottle that I bought in duty-free on the way back from Tim’s and my trip overseas in March. Both had sat untouched ever since they’d arrived (I think I got that partly-empty bottle in 2009?) and while it’s good not to use up all your expensive things at once, whatever they may be, there’s also a case to be made for actually enjoying what you’ve worked for before you drop it on the floor or something.


A little extravagant, sure…but never ever wasteful.
“I want your spirits to climb, so let me entertain you…”
Unfortunately I didn’t have a better-looking jug to put it all in, but tra la la. That in the background was another duty-free conquest – a strapping 1.75 litre bottle of Absolut. As far as vodka goes (and I don’t mean to sound like that guy from American Psycho, “I told you to keep Finlandia in this place”) I’m very particular. There are just some horrible vodkas out there that I don’t see any point in drinking. On the other hand, vodka is pretty pricey. Generally, I move between Absolut, for mixing (with soda water) and Zubrowka (yes, another duty-free, we really tested its limits) for sipping from a small glass over ice. When I drink at all. As I saw fit to last night, for book group.
If you’ve got a smallish amount of people coming around and the means to make it, I definitely recommend Marteani. It’s a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s book Nigella Christmas, and she suggests it with brunch.
Marteani

I tripled the tea content and halved the Cointreau – well, it was only a Monday, and Cointreau is still expensive. This made it go a lot further, while still maintaining a liqueury thrill. This would probably be ideal served in actual Martini glasses, but not having any, I just poured small amounts into whatever glasses we could find. Including a small glass jar shaped like a beer stein which used to have mustard in it (Tim bagsed that one.)

250mls/1 cup strong, cold Earl Gray Tea
250mls/1 cup vodka
250mls/1 cup Cointreau (or Nigella suggests Grand Marnier or Curacao or Triple Sec.)

Pour all the ingredients together in an ice filled jug. As I said, I used 750mls tea and 125 mls Cointreau. It was still extremely fine stuff.

Also I forgot to make ice ahead of time so I just put it in the fridge till needed: still good.
If you don’t have resiny, syrupy Cointreau then Limoncello would be an excellent substitute – it can be pretty reasonably priced and is in that same juicy, citrussy family of flavours.
Should you be having people around, I also emphatically recommend the following dips. One – the Beetroot Hummus – is kind of involved, and the other – Cannellini Bean Dip – delivers so much disproportionate deliciousness for how simple its recipe is that I could cry happy tears just thinking about it. Alas, you really do need a food processor for these. A stick blender could probably do the trick, otherwise maybe find a friend who’s got one and share some of the resulting dip with them.
Beetroot Hummus

Adapted from a recipe in the 2011 River Cottage Diary, a demonstratively multi-purpose book sent to me by the lovely Lisa at Prime TV.

3 medium sized beetroots, leafy tops and creepy tails trimmed off
1 piece of white bread, crusts removed
50g walnuts, almonds, brazils (whatever you can find – probably not peanuts though, their texture and flavour isn’t quite what’s needed here)
Ground cumin or Ras-el-hanout
Salt and olive oil to taste

Wrap each beetroot in tinfoil and roast at 180 C/350 F for about an hour and a half – till a fork can easily pierce through. Allow to cool. Toast whatever nuts you’re using – if you like, add them on a small tray to the oven that the beetroot are in once you turn off the heat, if that makes sense.

In a food processor, blitz the nuts and the bread until fairly fine. Remove the beetroot from the tinfoil, rub off their skin – it should happen easily, leaving you with oddly silky-smooth peeled beetroot – and chop them roughly before adding them to the food processor as well. I don’t recommend you wear white for this. Blitz again till a dark, chunky purple-red paste forms. Add a little salt, the spice, and a little olive oil if you like, and blend again. Spatula into bowls and serve.
Note: I completely missed the instruction in the recipe to add a tablespoon of tahini – which I love, but didn’t have any of anyway. It’s still brilliant without it, but it would add a little richness and texture, plus that sesame flavour.
Cannellini Bean Dip

This incredible recipe is one I’ve adapted slightly from the Scotto Family Italian Comfort Food book. It has barely any ingredients and yet is the most ridiculously creamy, luscious thing you can imagine. Especially considering it’s made from beans, not known for being life of the party, food-wise.

2 cans cannelini beans
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (or avocado oil, or some other oil that you don’t mind the taste of)
Salt

Drain the cans of their liquid, pour the beans into the food processor, add a little salt, and blitz to a thick, wheat-coloured paste forms. Pause, scrape down the sides with a spatula, taste to see if it needs more salt. Blend again, pouring in the oil. That’s all.
The beetroot dip excellently plays up the vegetables sweetness and earthiness with the nuts and the cumin respectively. The beetroot becomes rich during its time in the oven yet the finished result – despite the nuts and bread – is very light. The cannellini dip is just all plush and velvety, like the dip version of…a bunny rabbit.
In case you’re wondering, the book I’d chosen was Barbara Anderson’s Long Hot Summer, which we all agreed was fine, but seemed to leave many potentially dark or exciting plot avenues gently unexplored. That said, we’ve been reading things like Therese Raquin and Frankenstein, it’s possible we just weren’t ready for such mildness.
Unfortunately the lurgy that I was labouring under a couple of weeks ago seems to be taunting my immune system once more. The weather in Wellington has been headline-makingly cold, and there has even been moderately unprecedented snow around the place – not in our neck of the woods, unfortunately. When I get the time, I plan on getting the thyme (HA! HA!) to make this restorative sounding brew. Anyone else in NZ had snow?
__________________________________________

Title via: Sondheim’s amazing musical Gypsy. Let Me Entertain You is a thematic tune running through the whole show, starting it off as performed by Baby June in her squeaky voice and eventually developing into what Louise sings during her stripping montage. Gypsy in all its stage and screen forms has starred some seriously stunning women over the years as Rose and Louise – Angela Lansbury, Patti LuPone, Bernadette Peters, Ethel Merman, Bette Midler, Laura Benanti, Natalie Wood…Hopefully I’ll see it live one day with a similarly worthy contender for the roles.
____________________________________________________

Music lately:

I think I’m becoming a bit obsessed with Judy Garland. There, I said it. I might have listened to her Live At Carnegie Hall record three times in a row (which takes up quite a bit of energy, what with it having four sides and all.) I love Lena Horne’s famous version, but when Judy sings “can’t go on, everything I have is gone” in Stormy Weather my eyes can’t help but start pricklingly anticipating tears. (It really doesn’t help to listen to her singing while reading a biography of her.)
Moana and the Moa Hunters: AEIOU, especially as analysed by Robyn Gallagher on her fantastic site 5000 Ways To Say I Love You – wherein she will watch every single NZ On Air funded music video she can find.
_____________________________________________________

Next time:

Well, I saw this and any alternate plans disappeared.

oklahoma, every night my honey lamb and i

10 Comments

Lamb shanks are lots of fun – they simmer away and make your house smell wonderful; the bone is a ready-made grippable handle, depending on how conservative your company is; they’re generally cheaper than other bits of lamb; they’re full of sweet, youthful meaty flavour; and, you can point at your plate and suggestively say “hey, nice shanks“.

Overall though, lamb is not one of those things that fills me with good feelings of “I can afford this regularly” (likewise with All Dairy Products, as I’ve complained about at length recently.) In fact, the last time I had lamb shanks was May 2009 – back when we were in our old flat! – so it was with happiness that I saw them fall into the range of X-per-kilo that I’m comfortable with. They are not so much fun to photograph though. To lull you into a false sense of capable blogging security: their accompaniment, figs!
Actually figs, wrinkled and greying as they are, also aren’t that attractive. Foiled again.
To have lamb shanks slowly becoming tender in a fig-studded broth is about the cheeriest thing you can do on a freezing and rainy day like today. Shank Sunday! As I’ve called it. However if you’ve got the time, this recipe of Nigella Lawson’s is perfect on any cold day of the week. Putting lamb, figs, honey and pumpkin together as she does might sound troublingly sweet. But what I found was that the flavours of the sugary things caramelised together which, with the lamb’s sticky meatiness, made for an outrageously good combination, with partially jam-ified figs, lamb-infused kumara sauce and a little cinnamon to warm things up further. Let’s not be naive though. This is a rich dish. I could hardly finish a whole shank.

Nigella makes this recipe as part of her Rosh Hashana spread in her book Feast, with part of its significance being that sweet foods are consumed at Rosh Hashana in the hope that the year ahead will also be full of such sweetness. However she also offers it as a general dinner recipe – and really, any day that you can is good to be proactively adding some sweetness and hope to your life. Be it literal, symbolic, or in the case of these shanks, both.


Lamb Shanks with Figs and Honey

Adapted – scaled down that is – from Nigella Lawson’s beautiful book Feast. Her recipe serves 10, if you have that many to feed then it’s more like 10 shanks, 1kg onions, 500g figs, 80mls honey and a whole bottle of wine.

3 lamb shanks
Olive oil
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
Either about a teaspoon of fresh rosemary leaves, or leaves from one decent stalk of thyme
1 can pumpkin puree/1 orange kumara
9 dried figs
1 cinnamon stick (or, 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon)
125mls red wine
1 heaped tablespoon (only way it can be done really) of honey
250mls/1 cup water

Finely chop your onions and crush/chop your garlic and – if you don’t live within reach of pumpkin puree – now’s a good time to peel and roughly, but finely, dice your kumara.

Heat a little olive oil in a large saucepan and brown the shanks, in batches if you need to. Set aside, covered with tinfoil if you like.

Add the onions, garlic and herbs to the pan, sprinkling over a little salt, and allow to soften without browning.

Now add everything else (except the waiting shanks) to the pan, and gently bring to the boil. Turn down the heat to as low as possible, add the shanks and cook for an hour and a half – at least – partially covered.
Notes:

– Figs are more expensive than I remember. You could always use dates, which I find stay reasonably priced, or even prunes or dried apricots – whatever works for you.
– As I’ve said, kumara is a decent substitute for canned pumpkin. If no kumara is to hand, butternut pumpkin is good too – it breaks down quickly. And if you’re really having trouble accessing them, Nigella recommends red lentils instead.
– I didn’t have red wine, so – sorry Nigella – just used some white. As I’ve said already, it still tasted amazing.
You may want to make this a day ahead, allow it to cool and then skim off any inevitable fat before reheating. Serve with whatever you like really – rice, mashed potato, more mashed kumara, a salad made of canned cannelini beans or chickpeas or the like, couscous, bulghur wheat – or just bread to scoop up the saucy kumara. Which is what we did.
As they sing and acknowledge in Chess, “these are very dangerous and difficult times“. But sheesh, this week has been quite the cluster of sadness and horror, with famine in the Horn of Africa, killings in Oslo, and Amy Winehouse’s death at age 27. Bad news is bad news, whatever the scale. It’s not a competition, and – as I saw written extremely well on Twitter today – compassion isn’t a finite resource. Something that’s good to keep in mind…as well as being thankful for things while you’ve got ’em to be thankful for.
___________________________________________________

Title via: Oklahoma, the song, from Oklahoma the musical. Which – while I strictly have to actually like the songs I quote here – I am not a huge fan of. I find the characters annoying (as admittedly many find those in RENT) and the whole dream-ballet segment feels awkward and overlong even within the context of when dream-ballets were more the norm. But the music, the music is amazing. One of my favourite renditions of this title song is by Tony Award winner Sutton Foster (who you may also know as Coco from Flight of the Conchords.) Also while you’re at it, it’s always a good time to watch her be triple-threateningly amazing in Drowsy Chaperone.
___________________________________________________

Music lately:

We went to the Bookfair yesterday and picked up so many fun second-hand books, but there were also heaps of really great records there. One such jewel was Marty Robbins’ Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, whose songs like El Paso are as comfort food to the ears.
I was never an avid fan of the now-late Amy Winehouse, but definitely appreciated her talent, and certain songs stood out for me – like Tears Dry On Their Own. Just do yourself a favour and maybe avoid reading the youtube comments. It’s never worth it.
____________________________________________________

Next time: Tomorrow night book group is at my place and I’ve got a few discussion snacks on the make, one or more of which will likely end up here soon.

since folks here to an absurd degree seem fixated on your verdigris

15 Comments

After a brief survey of four people (one of which was myself) I’d like to make the sweeping generalisation that Brussels sprouts are a bit like Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West: green, and misunderstood. So misunderstood. None of us could remember ever eating them in our childhood, but there was definitely the feeling that it was not a vegetable to welcome with open arms. Yes, plenty of people here in New Zealand must’ve eaten them, overboiled and sulphuric balls of punishment on the dinnerplate, but I can only hypothesise, or whatever comes at this stage of a scientific study, that pop culture has influenced a lot of my suspicion. Same reason I made my own earrings out of shells and beads and then wore them, sincerely. The Baby Sitters Club. I’m not saying that series of books is everyone’s reason for disliking on impact the Brussels Sprout, but I’m pretty sure it’s my reason. (Not that I can, admittedly, name a specific example, but I know it’s there.)

Anyway, I saw this recipe in Plenty, my Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook, called “Brussels Sprouts and Tofu”. And I thought, oh really? A plucky move, pitting two generally disliked ingredients against each other in one dish and working to stop the competition between them to see which can make the eater unhappy first. Now I love tofu, but this is not a sexy recipe title. Yet its bold simplicity appealed to me, as did the fact that brussels sprouts were very, very cheap at the vege market.
And if anyone knows how to de-misunderstand brussels sprouts, it’s Yotam Ottolenghi. He who pairs eggs with yoghurt and chilli and garlic with more garlic.
Interestingly the ingredients are very simple – the three main givers of flavour are chilli, sesame oil and soy sauce. For me, what seems important is the cooking methods: for the sprouts, you fry them till they’re browned and scorched in places. For the tofu, you marinate it while you’re getting everything else ready, then fry it up till the marinade is caramelised. You could probably do this to any kind of food and it would taste good, but here the ingredients really open up, come alive, I want to say snuggle into the flavour but that feels wrong…anyway, the sprouts become crunchy and juicy, their peppery flavour amplified by the smoky scorching. The tofu is salty and dense, with a crisp edge, its mildness subverted by the chilli.
This isn’t just ‘not bad…for Brussels sprouts and tofu’, any food would hope to taste this good! I served it on soba noodles, but it would be great on rice or alongside something else, or just as is. If tofu is nay your thing, the sprouts on their own would also make a fantastic side dish to a bigger meal. Seriously, I had to stop myself eating them all before returning them to the saucepan with the tofu. They’re good. At last.
Brussels Sprouts and Tofu

Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty. There are mushrooms in the original recipe but as Tim’s unfortunately not a fan I thought it’d be a bit harsh to leave them in along with everything else.

2 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons sesame oil (I reduced this to 1…sesame oil is expensive!)
1 teaspoon rice vinegar (I didn’t have any, used balsamic vinegar, worked a treat)
1 tablespoon maple syrup (I only had golden syrup, likewise was great)
150g firm tofu
500g Brussel sprouts
Mint, coriander, sesame seeds and (optional) toasted pumpkin seeds to serve

Whisk together the chilli sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar and syrup, then chop the tofu into cubes and add them to the bowl. Set aside while you get on with the next step.

Trim the bases off the brussel sprouts and remove any flappy excess leaves. This’ll probably take a while. I slightly misunderstood the instructions on how to slice them but I don’t think it matters – Ottolenghi requests thick slices from top to bottom but I just sliced them roughly into quarters.


Heat about 2 tablespoons plain oil in a pan, and once it’s properly hot, add half the sprouts and a little salt. It’s good to turn them round so that a flat surface is touching the bottom of the pan, but it’s no biggie. Leave them for a couple of minutes – don’t stir them if you can help it, but they won’t take long to cook through. When the sides touching the pan are a deep brown, set them aside and repeat with the rest of the sprouts. Remove them all from the pan, and carefully – using tongs is good – transfer the pieces of tofu from the bowl of marinade to a single layer in the hot pan. The marinade may splutter and sizzle a little at this point. Reduce the heat, cook the tofu for about two minutes a side till caramelised and crisp.

Remove the pan from the heat and immediately throw in the rest of the marinade, plus the sprouts. You’re supposed to garnish it with coriander, but I had none, and only a tiny bit of mint – so in the interest of visual interest, I toasted some pumpkin seeds and scattered them across – pretty and delicious.
By the way, my parents got a kitten. A tiny, tiny, outrageously cute kitten who they’ve named Poppy. Looook at her with her enormous blue eyes and tiny tail. As you may remember, the recently late Rupert left my parents a one-cat family, and the remaining cat Roger isn’t as impressed by newcomer Poppy as everyone else seems to be. Look, is it morally dubious that I’m suddenly filled with motivation to plan a trip home? I’m narrowing my eyes suspiciously even as I type the question; I think the answer’s yes…but Poppy’s so cute that I can’t feel that bad about it.
__________________________________________________________
Title via: The aforementioned misunderstood character Elphaba, as played by the amazing Idina Menzel in the musical Wicked, singing The Wizard and I. Sigh.
__________________________________________________________
Music lately:
Karaoke, by the Good Fun – it is both good, and fun. I heard this song a long time ago but this official recording has scrubbed it up well. Like the Brussel sprouts recipe, this can rest on its own laurels…it isn’t just ‘not bad, for young guys.’

Marvin Gaye, How Sweet It Is. It’s always a good time.
__________________________________________________________
Next time: I found an amazing recipe for black sesame brownies, but I’m not entiiiirely happy with how they turned out – may have to re-try and then report back.

every time I eat vegetables it makes me think of you

9 Comments
While I completely welcome, luxuriate in, and devote a lot of time to generating the puddings and soups and casseroles that Winter brings…sometimes it’s nice to interrupt all that, suspend the stodge-production and create something altogether more Spring-like and vegetable-focussed.
Although these are essentially just small pies, their unusual, sesame-studded pastry is light and crisp, and their filling has soft, caramelised vegetables contending with salty, fragrant miso. And I managed to make them while feeling physically dilapidated by a cold, which makes me think that they’re not that fiddly to make, either. (I’ve still got this cough, by the way, but I think as far as the battle goes I’m now winning.)
I found the recipe in the latest CLEO magazine (who, I should add, have been very good to me over the last year or so, if you see my “Attention” tab up the top there) and it’s by a clever lady called Janella Purcell who has a cookbook called Eating For The Seasons. Which, judging by this one excellent recipe, is probably a really good book. Despite what looks like Mistral font used on the cover.
The pastry is gluten-free, which is fun, especially if you can’t eat gluten yourself. I’m pretty sure that these are also vegan, so if you’re wondering what it is that’s even holding them together…read on.

Roast Vegetable Sesame Tarts

Adapted from a recipe by Janella Purcell, found in the July issue of CLEO magazine.

Pastry:

1 1/2 cups brown rice flour, or spelt flour, or whatever flour you’ve got really – even regular flour (which, I hope I don’t have to spell out to you, will mean these are no longer gluten-free)
1/2 cup sesame seeds, toasted if you have the energy (I didn’t)
2 tablespoons olive, rice bran or avocado oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce or Tamari sauce
3/4 cup boiling water

Combine the flour and sesame seeds in a bowl. Tip in the oils, the water, and the soy sauce and mix together. Knead well till it forms a soft ball, then rest for 30 minutes while you get on with everything else.

Filling:

Olive oil
1 onion, finely sliced
1 cup pumpkin or kumara (I used kumara) diced or thinly sliced
1 fennel bulb, sliced
1 tablespoon white miso paste
Toasted seeds to garnish – pumpkin, sunflower, or just more sesame seeds if you like. Pine nuts or almonds would be nice too, but seeds are less expensive and just as delicious.

Heat the olive oil in a pan and slowly cook the onions till caramelised. While this is happening, roast the vegetables on a tray at 200 C/400 F for about 20 minutes.

Once your onions are cooked, but while your veges are still roasting, roll out the pastry fairly thinly and use a cookie cutter or similar (I used one of those ramekins that you might make creme brulee in) to stamp out circles of pastry. It’s a little different to the usual – quite springy and playdough-y, and you’ll need to re-roll it a couple of times. Just bear with it though, it will work. Fit your circles of pastry into a greased and floured/silicon muffin tray, not worrying if you get folds of pastry, it’s all good if it looks a bit ramshackle – and bake them, as is, for 15 minutes.

Once the cases are out of the oven, dab a tiny bit of miso paste on the inside of each, then top with your roast vegetables and a sprinkling of toasted seeds. They should remove easily from the muffin tray – and then eat!

Makes 12.

Note – I made the following changes:

– Halved the recipe (so you can easily double what’s above)
– Used spelt flour instead of brown rice flour, as that’s what I had
– You’re supposed to use all sesame oil in the pastry but as it’s expensive and precious I cut it back and replaced some with other oil, but you do as you like
– I only had black sesame seeds, but it’s all good
– Used soy sauce instead of Tamari as that’s what I had
– Changed the vegetables a little – the original recipe didn’t have fennel and had pumkin instead of kumara
– I think that’s it. One other thing to note is that different flours absorb water at a different rate so don’t be afraid to add more flour if your pastry dough is a sticky mess, or more liquid if it’s not coming together. Just a little at a time though.
So as you can see I adapted this recipe quite a bit, and I think you could continue to do so yourself. Once you’ve got the pastry cases sorted, it’s really all a matter of what’s in your fridge.
For example, the following could be delicious…
– Roast capsicums and tomatoes, with toasted chopped almonds and a little orange zest
– Sliced leeks, softened and caramelised in a pan, with feta
– Roast mushrooms with thyme, then chop them up, fill the tarts and top with pumpkin seeds
– Roasted zucchini with capers
– Raw grated beetroot, coriander leaves and toasted walnuts
– Slices of avocado and raw zucchini, topped with mint…
– Mince and cheese! Yay. Or, like, slow-braised beef ragu and parmesan.
I’m also thinking about removing the soy sauce from the pastry, using a plain oil, and filling the cooked cases with sweet things instead, like berries, or chocolate mousse, or – best of all – nuts and caramel sauce. And beyond that, I’m also wondering if you could just roll out the pastry and stamp out and bake awesome crackers from it.
But all those imaginary tarts aside, how did the actual ones that I made taste?
Amazing.
So delicious. The pastry is all nutty and biscuity, and just a tiny bit salty – a very addictive combination. I personally am glad I added the fennel, its aniseedy freshness and quick-to-caramelise, oniony structure was quite lush against the sweeter softer kumara. And they taste really, really good cold as well, to the point where I was wishing I hadn’t halved the original recipe. Twelve mini tarts between Tim and myself just wasn’t enough.

Hooray for pie!

_________________________________________________________


Title via: The Ramones, and the song really is called Every Time I Eat Vegetables I Think Of You. I love them (the Ramones, but also vegetables.)
_________________________________________________________

Music lately:
Ella Fitzgerald, When I Get Low I Get High. I think partly because of its compelling Puttin’ On The Ritz style fast swing, Fitzgerald’s gorgeous voice, and partly the fact that it’s just so short, is why I would’ve listened to this song roughly a squillion times over the last week or two.
Matthew and Son by Cat Stevens, I’ve said it before but I love this song so much that it’s always worth repeating: oh my gosh I love this song so much. The video (if you click through) is also quite incredible. His shoulder-pumping dance, the strangely bland and unaffected expressions on the young people’s faces, the bit around 1.55 where he stares down into the camera while singing *fans self*
__________________________________________________________
Next time: Billy Crudup’s Grandma’s Chocolate Fudge Pie. It’s wild.

at sideshow stalls, they throw the balls at coconut fur

14 Comments

Winter has got me, and not in an epic, sweepingly-caped Game of Thrones kinda way (although, phew, look at that show’s very casual body count) but in the more unremarkable, throat infection kind of way. While I’ve been coughing at intervals during the daytime, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some chemical or hormone that’s released just as you’re about to drift off to sleep (perhaps to dream about being cast as Amy in Company, as my brain somewhat plausibly presented me with recently) which reacts with whatever’s happening in your throat. Because it’s at night when I cough the most. My brain is woozy and dozy, but my throat and lungs are wide awake and on fire.

 

 

So I’ve generously applied a tea made from chopped, carroty-fresh tumeric root and fibrous chunks of fresh ginger. I’ve drunk a lot of water, sipped Gees Linctus, eaten leafy green vegetables, and dissolved so many lozenges on my tongue that my teeth’ll probably corrode before the season is out…and also had some whiskey. Fingers crossed this elixir mix gets the better of my immune system soon.

In the meantime, here are the promised Coconut Macaroons – luckily, as in previous winters, I haven’t got a blocked nose and therefore no sense of taste. Those winters are no fun at all. I’d take a cough and no energy over that any day. I’d never tried these Coconut Macaroons before, despite owning How To Be A Domestic Goddess since 2006. But one of the many manifest joys of Nigella Lawson is that with her massive quantity of recipes, there’s always deliciousness anew to discover and love.

This is how much coconut they use…On the other hand, only two egg whites! These macaroons are less sophisticated than their French macaron counterparts, but they’re significantly less terrifying to make, too.

Coconut Macaroons

From Nigella Lawson’s important book How To Be A Domestic Goddess

  • 2 egg whites
  • 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
  • 100g sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 250g shredded/fancy shred/long thread coconut (if all you have/can find is dessicated, I’m sure it’s fine, but Nigella does make a bit of a point of saying that shredded is better – am just the messenger)
  • 30g ground almonds
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or coconut essence

Set your oven to 170 C/340 F and line a baking tray with baking paper. In a non-plastic bowl, whisk the eggs till just frothy, then add the cream of tarter and whisk some more till you get soft peaks forming.

At this point, carry on whisking – fun! – while gradually adding the sugar a teaspoon at a time. It should eventually be thick and shiny, by the time all the sugar’s used up.

Now plunder all this gorgeous meringue-y hard work by tipping in the coconut, salt, extract and ground almonds, and fold together till you have a sticky mixture. I’ll tell you now: this mixture tastes amaaaazing.

Take a quarter cup measure, and scoop out cups-ful, dumping them down onto the tray. You should get between 8 and 12 out of this mixture. Bake for around 20 minutes, or until lightly golden. If you like, once they’re cool, drizzle them or swirl their bases in melted dark chocolate (around 150-200g should do this lot)

I love them. They’re satisfyingly large, pleasingly occupying both biscuit and cake territory, chewy with the fresh, summery taste of coconut and the bounty bar-echoing delight of their optional chocolate coating. They’re just seriously delicious.

Title via: the very lovely David Bowie’s earlyish song Karma Man, from the album London Boy.

Music lately:

With the lack of sleep that recurrent coughing brings, I’ve not been drawn towards anything with a heavy beat or a heavy meaning to process lately. Which is why Patsy Cline and the serenely beautiful Ali and Toumani album, for example, have been played a lot.

Next time: I found this amazing roast vegetable tart recipe, vegan and gluten free and delicious and everything. Hopefully will be blogging with a non-inflamed throat next time, too.

 

clean clear crisp, we got a love like this water

12 Comments

I don’t want to come across all “Oh hi old friend, haven’t seen you in so long, oh wait I’ll just put my shiny new iPhone on the table there for everyone to see while opening up the FriendPal app, which I paid $3 for, it takes a photo of the person in front of you so you can talk to them while looking at a picture of them on your phone” etc. But I really, really love the FoodGawker app, which is where I found this recipe for Chocolate Mousse. While all the food that I blog about here makes me happy, sometimes I find an exciting recipe that just fills my thoughts constantly, because I’m so curious about it. A recipe that makes people’s voices slower, plane trips delayed, busses late and traffic more congested because they’re all standing between me and my kitchen.

 
 
 
Foodgawker is a site with page after page of thumbnails of stunning food photography, each photo linking to the recipe it depicts on the blog it came from. You’ve got to self-submit, and you’ve got to be good. Possibly related: they’ve consistently rejected all my submissions over the last year or so. But still I return, using it like Google for recipes. Their iPhone app condenses all this into a format that fits on your phone, and it’s a grand way to fill in spare time – although it helps to have some free Wi-Fi, I bet all those high-res pictures chew through the megabytes.
 
The reason this recipe caught my attention, while browsing through the app in an airport recently, was its ingredients. Or lack of.
 
 
 
 
Chocolate, water, juice, honey. (The honey was a total pain to scrape off the baking paper, by the way, and I didn’t even achieve visually what I was hoping for! Hopefully I learn from this.)
 
You get chocolate mousse out of hardly anything at all. I wish I’d known about this recipe a few years ago as a student – a little chocolate, turn on the tap, and you’ve got pudding. No eggs, no cream, no nothing. It’s amazing. As the German man on Tim’s and my train to Warsaw said when he found out we were from New Zealand: “Oh my gosh, that is further away than I could ever have imagined!” As they say in [title of show], “For anyone who’s ever dreamed, it’s time to believe in dreaming again….It’s time. Dream. Believe.” (Oh come on, it more or less applies to awesome chocolate mousse. Also: [title of show]!)
 
 
Water Chocolate Mousse
 
With a huge thanks to the Mess In The Kitchen blog where I found this recipe. I’ve adapted it slightly.
 
100g dark chocolate (I used Whittaker’s Dark Ghana)
1/4 cup juice (any flavour, I used more of that strawberry juice)
1/3 cup water
2 teaspoons honey
 
Bring the liquids and the honey to the boil in a pan, then remove from the heat and tip into a bowl. Break up the chocolate and add it to the bowl, stirring till the heat of the liquid melts it and you’ve got a shiny chocolate puddle.
 
Refrigerate for 10 minutes or so. Just before you take it out, fill your sink with a couple of centimeters of cold water, and add a handful of ice cubes.
 
Sit the bowl of chocolate in the water, and whisk. Whisk and whisk and whisk and eventually it will aerate, turning paler and thickened and – pa-dah – into chocolate mousse. If you end up with what looks like overbeaten whipped cream, just whisk in a little hot water till you get the consistency you want. Divide amongst two smallish bowls/glasses and serve.
 
Serves 2
 
 
Most recipes involving chocolate will stress that you can’t let any water get into it or it’ll seize up and turn all gross. So, it was with slight consternation that I mixed the two together. Through some miracle of science, the melted chocolate, rapidly cooling with every flick of your whisk, absorbs the liquid and becomes a soft, velvety pillowy pile of mousse, with the clean, unsullying water making the dark cocoa flavour so definite it’s like every single one of your tastebuds is wearing 3D glasses.
 
 
 
 
In terms of excitement-causing, second only to the astonishing minimalism of the ingredients is this recipe’s versatility. With no eggs or dairy or gluten, this could also serve as icing on a cake, the filling in a pie shell, or as a base for whatever flavour you want to push upon it – use orange juice, add vanilla or peppermint extract or cinnamon. If you don’t have juice or honey, I think you could use water for the entire liquid content, and just use two teaspoons of sugar.
 
 
 
 
And for interest’s sake, I tried it with white chocolate instead of dark. Apart from the sort of muddy colour (from the strawberry juice) and a softer-set texture, it worked amazingly well and now calls me, siren like, from the fridge.
 
 
 
Title via: Ladi6’s high-achieving single Like Water from her beautiful album The Liberation of…
 
 
 
Music lately:
 
Kiss From a Rose, Seal. OMG this song is good. Although it’s really hard to blog when you’re singing along to it. It requires all your concentration.
 
HAIR. While I appreciate that I’ve mentioned it a million times, it’s only because it’s really, really good. And I’m obsessed anew thanks to the arrival from America of the Actors Fund of America Benefit recording and the vinyl record of the 2009 revival cast. “All the clouds are cumuloft, walking in spaaaace”
 
Unknown Mortal Orchestra, How Can You Love Me. As commenter Pete20Pedro on Youtube says, “what a jam!” And their album came with a free tshirt, one of those nice ones with really soft fabric, even.
 
 
Next time: Nigella’s recipe for coconut macaroons…unless anything dinner-y overtakes my interest before then. That’s if I’m not asleep in every spare moment. Had another weekend away for work – fortunately, didn’t hit my head again, but I did have a weird sleepless night in my motel, which I’m still catching up on now.

red enough it could burn you…

7 Comments

I was away in Auckland for work over the weekend, but very happily, I got to fit a night at home with the family in around it. During my 18-hour stint at home I somehow managed to catch up with huge amounts of family, both extended and immediate. Well, the family minus one cat (Rupert, who died in May). Roger, the remaining feline, seemed to enjoy the extra attention but didn’t go so far as to actually sit on my lap for an extended time period or sleep on my bed that night.
While packing up on Sunday in my Auckland motel to head to the airport, I bent down to check if I’d left anything under the bed (I always do this, even if I hardly bring anything with me – I once found twenty cents!) and on the way down my right temple connected hard and swift with the wooden back of a desk chair. It hurt so bad, and I wailed really loudly. And then kind of laughed at the fact that there was no-one to hear me saying “owwww”, which…actually sounds fairly sinister now on paper. Anyway, if this blog is completely non-inspiring to read, blame it on my sore, impacted head.
The new Cuisine magazine arrived in our mailbox the day before I left to go up to Auckland, giving me just enough time to read it, but not enough time to cook any of its content. I did daydream about one particular recipe while away, which I then made pretty well immediately after returning home to Wellington. Rote Grutz, or its supercool translation Red Grits (I find it hard not to spell it Gritz) is a German recipe that Ray McVinnie, one of my very, very favourite local food writers, discovered while researching food in Berlin. I’m not even going to pretend to *cough* when I say: “Luckyyyy”.
It doesn’t look like there’s much to this recipe, and it’s true, but the ingredients come together to form something that’s a gorgeous merging of jam and custard. The ‘grits’ part of the name come from the berries’ seeds, at least that’s my guess. They’re certainly gritty. The cornflour and juice cooks together and becomes satiny and light (apart from that one lump of unstirred cornflour stirring in my glass), stunningly red, not too sweet. In fact, the sour-sugary aspect makes it compelling eating. I even sneaked back to the fridge in a bit of a trance while it was cooling to eat some more spoonfuls, then accidentally dropped a steak right into the bowl of berries. Luckily the steak was wrapped and on a tray and I removed it fast.
I didn’t have the exact ingredients that Ray McVinnie specified, but I’d like to think what I had worked just as well. There’s something nice about the red-on-red of the juices but I’m sure you could use orange or apple juice if that’s what’s most accessible to you.
Rote Grutze/Red Grits

From the June/July 2011 issue of Cuisine magazine.

250mls cranberry juice
150g sugar
800g frozen raspberries
50g cornflour mixed with 4 tablespoons water

Or, my appropriation based on what was in the fridge and the amount of people it was feeding:

125ml (1/2 cup) strawberry juice (I know! I bought it at the food show, the brand is NJoy but I can’t find anything about them online. Anyway, this seemed like a practical use for it.)
75g sugar
400g frozen cranberries and blackberries
25g cornflour mixed with 2 tablespoons water

Bring the sugar and juice to a boil in a saucepan. Add the berries, bring to the boil again and carefully stir in the cornflour mixture, stirring really well so you don’t end up with lumps of cornflour. Remove from the heat, cool, then pour into glasses. Out of mine I got enough for the two glasses you saw plus a couple of tablespoons left over to be saved for making future breakfasts more exciting.


The Red Grits are pretty to look at, dark as garnets and just as light-catching. While they’d taste gorgeous with a cascade of fresh cream plunging into their red depths, they were satisfactorily delicious as is. As well as served in glasses, I imagine these saucy berries could be spooned over ice cream, tucked under a crumble topping, or used to fill a pie shell.


And extremely easy to make. Tim and I never actually saw these on a menu in Berlin, but it does feel nice to be eating something Germanic, so that our holiday doesn’t feel quite so far away in the past.
Last week I had the extremely cool opportunity to go to the launch of Visa Wellington on a Plate. Which I’m really excited about. Particularly the set menus which allows me to briefly feel like a Lady Who Lunches. At last year’s launch I met Mika of Millie Mirepoix for the first time, and also the magnificent Ray McVinnie himself. He wasn’t there this year, but I re-met Delaney of Heartbreak Pie and Rosa of Mrs Cake, and met for the first time Joanna from Wellingtonista, etc. We ploughed through beautiful nibbles, ended up at Cuckoo round the corner for wine (I will pay you back Delaney and Rosa) and then Tim appeared and he and I ended up having a wild dinner at Foxglove with Jo and her friend Heather. It all happened really spontaneously which is a word that I don’t usually use to describe activities that I participate in. It was so fun, and several bonus points to the staff at Foxglove who dealt with our increasing raucousness. But as well as making real-life friends of people that also seem cool online, Wellington on a Plate has plenty to offer people who just want to eat stuff: check em out.
_______________________________________

Title via: Linda Clifford, Red Light, from the Fame soundtrack. I love this song so much. It’s also an amazing moment in the film itself – obviously Leroy is a total babe and it’s supposed to be humourous but I always felt so sad for Shirley Mulholland. When she says “who wants to go to a…school and learn to dance anyway” a bit of my heart chips off (this is why I can’t watch this film too often) because I know how she feels.
_______________________________________

Music lately:

Arctic Monkeys, Don’t Sit Down Because I’ve Moved Your Chair. Some of the music I was really wild about six years ago really hasn’t aged too well, or successive output has downright deteriorated. So it’s nice to see the Arctic Monkeys continuing to be awesome.

Patrick Wolf, The Magic Position. I had a bad headache today from the aforementioned head-hitting moment and so was feeling a bit grim. This song came on my ipod and, with its carousel-ride sound and Bolero-baiting violins, it was about halfway through before I realised I was happily swaying my head side to side like Stevie Wonder.
_______________________________________

Next time: I’ve been tutu-ing with the idea of making a Facebook page for this blog. On the one hand…it might be a good way for people to latch ever further onto this blog. A lot of people like Facebook. On the other hand, I don’t really like Facebook (it’s true! You have to scrape me away from Twitter with a silicon spatula but I can’t spend more than a minute on Facebook) and I wouldn’t know what to say on there, and research would suggest that you actually have to have an engaging Facebook page to keep people around. On a further, auxiliary hand, what if I built a Facebook page and nobody turned up? Any thoughts’d be appreciated.