Category: Gluten-free

tuna or later

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I really don’t eat a lot of kaimoana, which is a bit stupid since I live in a long thin country surrounded by healthy salt water. The fish are plentiful. With the weight of a thousand magazine articles about how Omega-3 will solve all your problems and also a feeling that I was some kind of useless lover-of-food if I wasn’t cooking fish occasionally, I went to the counter at Moore Wilson’s and confidently pointed at a slab of ruby-red tuna.

I was inspired by a recipe that I read on Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness for soba noodles with salad, the particular eye-catcher being the peanut sauce that went with it. The further I read into the list of ingredients the hungrier I became and I felt like the salty, chilli flavours in the sauce, plus its richness, could stand up well against the heavy, oily tuna. After flicking through a couple of my Nigella Lawson cookbooks I decided to coat the tuna in a rubbly mix of roughly crushed peppercorns before searing them in a hot, hot pan, figuring that the sharp heat of the pepper would provide a further contrast to the fish beneath it.

Seared Pepper Crusted Tuna with Soba Noodles and Peanut Sauce

Thanks to Lori for the peanut sauce recipe and inspiration!

Serves 2

200 – 300g fillet of tuna
2 tablespoons mixed peppercorns
Salad leaves and soba noodles for 2 people

Roughly crush the peppercorns in a pestle and mortar. Do this carefully, as the little suckers will ping out all over the place. Sprinkle half of them over one side of the tuna, pressing them in gently. Meanwhile, heat a nonstick pan till it’s good and hot. Slide the tuna, pepper side down, onto the hot pan and let it cook for a couple of minutes. Sprinkle the rest of the pepper on the other side of the tuna. Once you’re satisfied with how cooked it is, carefully flip the tuna over using a couple of spatulas or a fishslice or something, and sear on the other side. Remove to a plate and cover in tinfoil. Cook the soba noodles in plenty of boiling water – this shouldn’t take long.

Sauce

1/2 teaspoon red chilli paste
4 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
3 tablespoons rice bran oil
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons smooth peanut butter
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons Hoisin sauce
1 tsp ginger, finely chopped

Whisk all the ingredients together. This makes quite a lot – I halved it. I also had no Hoisin sauce so I left it out, and added a little garlic instead.

Assembly:

Arrange a bunch of mixed salad leaves on two plates, and top with the soba noodles. Thinly slice the tuna – about 5mm-1cm thick. Arrange the slices on top of the soba noodles, spoon over the peanut sauce, and top with sesame seeds or coriander if you like.

Feeling as though Nigella, across the other side of the world, would instinctively shudder without knowing why if I overcooked the tuna, I made sure to keep it fairly rare. With its red interior and seared crust it may resemble a steak, and certainly has the meatiness, but its texture is a lot softer and it is definitely richer than any of its four-legged counterparts. As I’d hoped, the tuna, the hot pepper, and the nutty sauce all worked together seriously well. The leafy, noodly base gave further, completely welcome textural contrast without competing too much flavourwise.

The sauce was a total revelation – thick, rich, amazingly nutty and spicy and delicious. I imagine it would be amazing poured over any number of other things – beef skewers, tofu, plain noodles, rice, or as a dipping sauce for sliced vegetables, spring rolls, rice paper rolls – seriously, it was wonderful stuff. Thank you Lori! Will I be cooking more fish? I guess I’ll try. The tuna ended up being pretty expensive but it was delicious – light years apart from the stringy, grey chunks of fish that you get in cans which are actually really expensive themselves. What’s with that? Nigella has so many recipes that I want to try, which is a good push in the direction of the fish counter. As long as I don’t have to look at the crayfish in their tank. Call me a hypocrite, I mean I eat meat, but the sight of those knock-kneed, sad-eyed crowded creatures makes me want to fall on the floor and sob. It’s true.

Speaking of, on Wednesday night Tim and I had the massively good fortune to see the Dead Weather live at the Powerstation in Auckland, afterwards I was wanting to fall to the floor and sob at Jack White’s BRILLIANCE. Please don’t expect this to be a definitive review – I feel like the more I talk about this gig the less I really say. What a line up – Queens of the Stone Age’s Dean Fertita, Jack Lawrence of the Raconteurs and Alison Mosshart from the Kills comprise the rest of the band and were, you know, really good. But as the song goes, I only have eyes for yooooooujackwhite. Friends, he was sublime. The Dead Weather’s music – heavy, sludgy, intense and metaphorical – sounded wonderful in the venue, particularly I Cut Like A Buffalo. Tim and I managed to negotiate a patch pretty near the front of the stage, but the crowd wasn’t the most fun to be in, especially these girls on our right who may or may not have been on P, judging by the way they were dancing so aggressively in such a tiny space. Narrowed eyes and a “huh?” expression don’t go very far in the dark. They continued all night, inciting more and more hatred in me as their heads swung round. The girl on the left continuously tried to push in front of me – we were so tightly packed that I have no idea where she thought she might end up. Apologies for getting caught up in the negatives but it was irritating to be in the presence of such an exciting band and for everyone to be so focussed on themselves. Am I secretly a naive yet curmudgeonly old man? Anyway!

 

Stripped of his eyebrow-waggling White Stripes persona, Jack White was as enigmatic as ever and completely amazing as a musician – switching from drums, to guitar and vocals and back to drums again. As I said the crowd was very full-on and afterwards my neck was actually twitching – I think I got carpal spine just from trying to stay upright in the seething mass of overexcited teens. Once it was all over, Tim and I, with no shame whatsoever, waited as close to the stage door as possible (flipping miles away, in case you’re wondering, but the security were nice guys and let us stay) and waved at Jack White as he was driven away in a large white van. He grinned, knocked on the window and waved back. It was a stupidly exciting moment considering what it amounted to really. I know I go on about lots of different things but Tim and I really, really love the White Stripes and all Jack White’s inspired tangents so to get the chance to see him performing again was incredibly special. Hence the dorky photo above outside the Powerstation.

I didn’t waste time while up in Auckland, going to lots of work meetings with plenty of lovely people. Maybe it’s a throwback to my rural upbringing but Auckland always seems a bit exciting no matter how many times I go there. I do love Wellington though and it is great to be back, despite the mountain of work that piled up in my absence. This weekend I am catching up with my best friend from school, we hardly ever see each other so I can’t wait. May even break out the girdlebuster pie which is still sitting quietly in the freezer…

Title brought to you by: Bob Dylan’s song One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later), and yes, sometimes on reflection it feels a little lazy to squeeze awful puns out of his back catalogue but the carpal spine I contracted while trying not to die in the audience for the Dead Weather has prevented me from doing anything cleverer. I didn’t mean to treat you so bad…


Music these days:

Billy Porter, King Of The World, from At the Corner of Broadway and Soul. Unfortunately no youtube video exists of him executing this song but you can listen to it at that link (it’s worth it – the ending is amazing!) I have recently reconnected with the astounding voice this man possesses. Watch him sing Beauty School Drop Out. Seriously. I think he discovered a new octave.

David Dallas, Big Time, the gorgeously mellow single from his album Something Awesome. Along with a whole bunch of other New Zealand artists, Dallas is at SXSW in Austin, Texas, and hopefully his sound resonates with that audience because – for what it’s worth coming from me – it feels like he could go so far. Not just saying this because I had a crush on him back when the remix for Scribe’s Not Many came out years ago.

Electric Blues from the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Hair. I know, would I stop talking about it already? I just keep getting more and more obsessed with this music. Every time I think I’m cool, I’m cool, I’ll see one tweet by Gavin Creel and then I want so bad to go to London to see the Broadway Cast transfer over there.
Next time: I’m not just going to invite my best friend round for dinner so that I can finally eat this girdlebuster pie, but if it does happen, y’all will be the first to know about it. Promise!

to yoga, to yoghurt, to rice and beans and cheese

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Today I spilled boiling hot tea on myself three times (and once on my office chair). I burnt my left hand on a hot pan while cooking dinner and whacked the other hand on the corner of the bench as I walked into it instead of past it. Finally I dropped beetroot on our telephone. Truly. It’s like I’m in a Florence & The Machine song or something. I’m not sure if clumsiness begets more clumsiness – I know from experience that it’s really, really easy to have one thing go wrong in the morning and then not even give the rest of the day a chance to do right by you, when that happens there’s no doubt you’re going to walk into doorframes. But today I woke up feeling relatively optimistic. I guess it just shows…I’m plain clumsy.

Such clumsiness is partially the reason why you’re more likely to see recipes on this blog that don’t involve sugar thermometers or weighing egg whites or…you know, that sort of thing. Rice and Beans involves – at least the way I make it – none of the above. It’s stress-free, one-pan, traditional comfort food. Not traditional to me personally, but sometimes just knowing it’s comfort food to someone is in itself comforting…right? And I always have room for adopting new traditions.

Rice and Beans

I kind of made this up on the fly, inspired by a dish I had at the amazingly good Amigos on Tory Street.

Heat a wide, non-stick pan and toss in a finely chopped onion and plenty of finely chopped garlic. The first time I made this I added a diced carrot, the second time I added a diced zucchini. Once this has softened a little, without browning too much, add a pinch of smoked paprika, a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard, a teaspoon of coriander seeds and 2/3 cup of long grain rice and stir through. Pour in 250mls water, cover, and simmer for five minutes. Add more water, stir, cover – the kind of rice you use affects the amount of water you need and basmati seems to need more water than other kinds. Add a splash of beer, a drained tin of corn kernels and a drained tin of red beans. Add more liquid if the rice still needs it, partially cover and let it simmer over a low heat for a further ten minutes. Serves 2 generously. Maybe cover with feathery, torn coriander leaves or stir grated cheese through if you like.

This is one of the cheapest, nicest, heartiest dinners you can make for yourself. It’s quicker if you use canned beans but cheaper if you take the time to cook up dried – up to you. The savoury warmth of the spices and the beer against the soft, grainy beans and rice is simple but incredible. And, as you will know once I’m done telling you, rice and beans are quoted in La Vie Boheme which put the idea in my head in the first place. (Truly. Was listening to it, thought, “huh, am now hungry for rice and beans”. Power of suggestion, right there.)

Sunny Santa Fe would be…nice

While you’re buying red beans for the above recipe, you might as well stock up good and proper for this Santa Fe Ceasar Salad. The recipe comes from Simon Rimmer’s The Accidental Vegetarian, and the first hundred times I flicked past it I was all “hmm, bit random” but all of a sudden on flick-through #101 it seemed like a something I wanted to try. Allow me to fast-track this process for you and just tell you to make it already.

Santa Fe Ceasar Salad

I didn’t use any chillies. I had some pita bread that I used instead of tortillas, and I didn’t have any parmesan to hand so just left it out. Still so good.

1 Cos lettuce, trimmed
2 soft corn tortillas
1 tin pinto or kidney beans, drained
2 red chillies, deseeded and chopped
1 ripe avocado, chopped
fresh coriander leaves

Dressing:

125mls good mayonnaise
125mls plain unsweetened yoghurt
1 garlic clove, crushed
Juice of 1 lime or lemon
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
100g freshly grated parmesan cheese

Whisk dressing ingredients together, set aside. Break up the corn tortillas, dry-fry in a hot pan till a little charred. Tear up the lettuce leaves, place in a bowl with the cooked tortillas, drained beans, avocado and chillies. Fold through the dressing, top with coriander leaves and sprinkle with parmesan to serve.




Clearly, the dressing is sublime, what with the eggy, oily mayonnaise, rich garlic and sharp vinegar coming together. The crunch of tortilla croutons against those grainy red beans and the crisp lettuce is marvelous. It’s surprisingly filling and while not entirely healthy, you could certainly do worse. You could have an actual ceasar salad.

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Title comes to you via: Surprise! La Vie Boheme from RENT, the musical that inspired the title of this blog and also inspired me to go to both Levin and Palmerston North to see local productions of it. I love this bit of the musical so much that I’m going to direct lucky you to both a stealthy clip of the Original Broadway Cast in 1996 and the altogether shinier 2005 film version where most of the still-stunning original cast reprised their roles. Oh sure, you could be snide about a bunch of self-titled bohemians prancing about shouting out their carefully chosen influences, I say this is laziness and it’s much better to look beyond that and actually love it for the joyfulness, the inclusiveness, the catchiness, and the awesomeness of rhyming “German wine, turpentine, Gertrude Stein”…
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Music while I type:

Laurie Anderson’s O Superman which you can find on the album Big Science. Breathy but direct, strangely meditative, this song made itself known to me via a few different channels – a John Peel compilation, an American Lit paper with a delightfully passionate teacher (“Language! It’s a virus!”) and RENT (as in, all roads lead to) with Idina Menzel’s character Maureen being clearly something of an homage to Anderson as witnessed in the sublime Over The Moon. Seeing The Groove Guide twitter about this song today, plus hearing another of her songs on Radio Active this evening made it feel like I’d be lying if I didn’t put it down here.

Bucky Done Gun by M.I.A from her album Arular. I first saw the music video to this song in a hotel room in Germany in 2005, it’s as acid-bright as her hand-penned album artwork. It was about the most exciting thing I’d heard in a year clogged with Razorlight et al. Five years on it still thrills and I still wish I could handle a jumpsuit like her.

Matthew and Son. It’s my absolute favourite Cat Stevens song. You know I could tell you why, but I’ll let Mr Cat Steven’s snake hips in this video do the talking for me.

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Next time: I found this highly do-able recipe for vegan banana cake on the Savvy Soybean’s blog and long to try it. I appreciate both savviness and soybeans in a person so have no doubt this recipe will be good.

masters of raw

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Rawr.

So, when I’m not making butter-and-golden-syrup sandwiches or having pancakes for dinner I enjoy the occasional dog-paddle through the chilled, unsalted waters of raw cooking. This isn’t something I’d want to make a lifestyle of but it’s fun to try new recipes. It can hardly be a secret that the less you do to vegetables, the better they are for you and I’m all for including more of them on my plate. I’m not so convinced by recipes that require half a bottle of agave nectar and a kilo of cashews sitting in a dehydrating machine for nine hours till it turns into some kind of cheesecake-esque creation – that doesn’t seem quite right to me.

These raw ‘cookies’ are a particularly lovely example of this sort of carry-on – the ingredients are likely to be in your cupboard already and they’re cheap if you don’t have them. It’s quick but involved enough to make you feel like you’re doing something, and you can eat them as soon as you’ve made them. They’re practical – energy dense and hardy – and also really, really delicious which is, I guess, a requirement rather than an eye-brow raising bonus with healthier recipes these days. I found this fantastic recipe on Gourmeted, but changed it up a tiny bit. The original was composed of dates and raisins but I swapped the altogether sexier dried apricots for the sad pinched little raisins. I added a tiny bit of liquid and included linseeds. You do as you wish.

Date and Apricot ‘Cookies’.


1 cup oats of some form – wholegrain, rolled, raw (I used the big wholegrain ones)
2 tablespoons linseeds, whole or ground
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup dates, pitted, packed
1/2 cup dried apricots

Combine oats, linseeds and cinnamon in food processor and pulse until you get small pieces. Add dates and pulse well. You should have a thick/dense paste, but don’t fear if it is still crumbly. Add a tablespoon of water if it’s really not coming together at all, but the apricots will help. Add apricots and whizz to blend them through. I then just wet my hands, rolled small tablespoonfuls of ‘dough’ and pressed/squeezed them flat into ‘cookies’. I say squeezed for a reason – the texture of this is a little different but they will work, trust me.

As I said, these ‘cookies’ are delicious – in their own right, not just in a “not bad for something without butter in it” kind of way. In fact they really deserve to just be called cookies, rather than being encased in patronising apostrophes. Be free from my sneering punctuation, cookies! They are figgily dense in texture, fragrant with apricot, and fantastically chewy. They make a perfect hurried breakfast, and probably would be brilliant with some roughly chopped dark chocolate included in the mixture. On top of all that they’re a really cheap way of filling the biscuit tin.

Had been feeling a bit grumpy while writing this – waited for a phone call today that never arrived which meant I put off other things, wrangling with all manner of other things in the meantime, and finally ruining dinner – I somehow managed to oversalt the cooking water for the pasta despite every cookbook seeming to imply that no amount of salt can be too much. I persisted in eating it all the same so there wasn’t any waste but feel a bit like a preserved lemon now. Coupled with the inevitable post-Laneways-blahs, it’d be easy to feel sorry for myself and snap at people for the sake of it. Let us instead relive the happiness of Monday’s shenanigans…

Monday was Auckland Anniversary Day, which unfortunately isn’t recognised as an official holiday in Wellington. So it was with a day’s annual leave clutched tightly in my hands that Tim and I attended the inaugural Laneways music Festival at Britomart. The day was exceptionally relaxed, with the intentionally small audience moving like schools of fish between and around the two stages. The brilliance of the lineup became more and more apparent as the day went on. Highlights included…

– the mellow, be-caped stompiness of the Phoenix Foundation.
– seeing Chris Knox emerge from behind a fence to watch the Black Lips with the rest of the audience.
– Daniel Johnston’s entire set, punctuated by a rather joyfully sung-along rendition of You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away. Nearly had wobbly tears in my eyes till I recognised someone with a similar look on their face and checked myself for being an unnecessarily sentimental git.
– Realising I knew more Echo and the Bunnymen songs than I initially thought.
– Florence Welch. She was almost a lowlight – so gorgeous and long-legged, must she have this gloriously swirling voice tucked in her throat as well? I’ve never, ever been into acrobatic female vocalists (Well, I did and still do have a soft spot for Mariah Carey but she’s different) – have always been resolutely unmoved by Beyonce or Christina Aguilira, and any of those dime-a-dozen introspective bores that appear on Grey’s Anatomy – but listening to Florence live made me realise how thrilling seeing someone belt their face off could be. To any of you out there who have seen Idina Menzel or Julia Murney singing live – my envy grew tenfold after Florence.

Above: Chris Knox flanked by the always elegant Shayne Carter. They performed a swift but crunchily powerful set which was, not forgetting the fact that Knox suffered a stroke last year, pretty marvelous.

The day was made easier by the fact that the “Friends and Family” area had much nicer toilets, chairs and shade, plus no queues to get a bottle of water or beer. The only real frown-inducing thing about the day was my uncanny but unfortunate ability to get stuck behind the person in the audience who insists on smoking. I can’t even understand why someone would think everyone directly around them wants to breathe in poisonous smoke as well. All I could think the whole time was “there’s no safe level of exposure to cigarette smoke.” But on the whole the day was utterly smashing and not much apart from that troubled me. Oh wait. There was the crowd of girls behind me who insisted on shriekily singing along with Florence at great volume. Sounds simple enough, even curmudgeonly on my part, but it’s the sort of thing that after a long day makes you want to push someone into a swimming pool. A bit like the smoking thing – what made them think I paid to hear them sing? That aside, am already anticipating what untold joys next year’s lineup could bring. Laneways – I think you really need a round of applause.

The night before Tim and I went relatively spontaneously to “Dig Deep” at Fubar, the proceeds of which went to aid Haiti. It was a very good night, in particular Tourettes’ set; but between that and Laneways I’m now feeling like the pasta we struggled at dinner – limp and overly saline.

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Title brought to you by: Bob Dylan’s Masters of War from The Freewheeling Bob Dylan. The lyrics really bear little resemblence to quietly making cookies, or maybe they do – he’s pretty deep, that Bob Dylan.

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On Shuffle lately:

Dance My Pain Away by Rod Lee from The Wire:…And All The Pieces Matter. There are few soundtracks I’ll seek out (cast recordings, different story) but this is such a perfectly structured gem. We are inordinately excited about the approaching release of Season 5 on DVD. The tourism guide books will tell you that New Zealand is a fabulous place to live and raise a family and it may well be; it’s a terrible place to wait for a DVD to be released. We are always woefully behind.

You Got The Love by Florence and The Machine from her aptly titled album Lungs. When you first hear this cover you might think “hmmm, prosaic enough” but then it gets all swirly and wonderful. Less swirly but no less special is the XX remix which was put over the loudspeakers once the XX finished their set – was great fun watching everyone who’d diligently waited for Daniel Johnston on the other stage getting panicky that Florence was making an unexpected early cameo.

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Next time: I bought some wonton wrappers! They’re much easier to get your hands on than they sound, and made some potstickers which miraculously turned out perfectly and were ridiculously good. It’s Waitangi Day this Saturday, and because it’s a Saturday PLUS a public holiday it’s like, quadruple guaranteed that Tim will be making coffees for people but I’ll probably traipse out to One Love anyway, sounds like it’s going to be an excellent day…

california tuber alles

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On Friday we had our Office Christmas Party. Capital letters because it feels like some kind of social institution…articles, columns and entire pull-out sections of glossy women’s magazines emerge at this time of year offering advice on office parties and how to organise/survive/acquit yourself with dignity/deflect awkward photographic evidence from said shindig. Ours was largely without incident and I had a marvelously pleasant time. I only mention it because I bonded particularly with a colleague while eating our lunch about how much we loved leftovers, in particular barbequed sausages, eaten cold for breakfast early the next morning while standing at the open-doored fridge. That moment of connection achieved more than a thousand team-building activities involving blindfolds and ‘trust’ games, I promise you.

And no, I’m not just saying how much I love leftovers because Nigella goes on about them too. Although I will allow that she kind of makes it easier to admit to such activities…like picking at a chilled roast chicken while standing at the fridge, perhaps alternating with a spoonful of raspberry jelly or trifle from its bowl that you’ve surruptitiously peeled the clingfilm back on…

As you can imagine we definitely had leftovers after last Sunday’s flat Christmas dinner. Some things got demolished, like the ham in Coca Cola. But it turns out that I made enough potatoes to service another three Christmas dinners. Not that this is any kind of problem…On Monday night I used some of those potatoes in a Spanish Omelette, from Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Express.

A golden, eggy crust containing hot chunks of new potatoes and juicy capsicums. It’s quick and it’s fabulous. We don’t eat potatoes that much and I forget how good they taste. There’s a simple evolutionary reason – Tim is usually working when I go to the vege market on a Sunday, and there’s really only so much I can deal with toting back to the flat. Having a glut of leftover potatoes this week has been no burden whatsoever – cold with gherkins, sauteed with coriander and cumin seeds and cinnamon, simmered in a vegetable curry – delicious. I love them.

Spanish Omelette

From Nigella Express

225g boiled new potatoes
4 eggs
75g chopped roasted capsicums
3 spring onions, finely chopped
75g grated Manchego or Cheddar Cheese
1 teaspoon butter
drop of oil

Turn on the grill and let it heat up. If the potatoes aren’t already cooked, halve and boil them until tender then drain. Whisk the eggs in a bowl, then add the capsicums, spring onions, cheese, and potatoes. Heat the butter and oil in a small, oven-proof frying pan and when hot, tip in the omelette mix and cook gently for five minutes. Eventually, the base of the omelette should begin to feel ‘set’ and rather than trying to flip it, instead sit the pan under the grill for a few minutes to set the top. Turn the omelette out onto a plate to cool. Even if it’s slightly wobbly it should carry on cooking as it cools. Slice into wedges. Note – I left out the cheese and used a lot more potatoes.

I’m not sure if this a great photo to display the merits of this dish, but it really does taste good. My omelette kind of fell apart as I attempted to slide it onto the chopping board and a bit of it stuck to the pan because SOMEONE had a huge fry-up one weekend when I wasn’t there and damaged the nonstick finish. The fact that it was non free-range eggs and those permanently soggy supermarket hash browns made it not so much insult to injury as an offense worthy of a punch to the face. (Don’t worry, Tim only got a verbal facepunch. I am pretty anti-violence, even when it is involving the nonstick finish of my good pan.)

A week has now passed since I was in the Sunday Star-Times Sunday magazine. So far, no movie deals or cookbook offers but I have had some interesting, and often completely lovely, correspondence. I don’t mean to keep going on about it, but be nice, this is the first time anything like this has happened. I was once in an ad for Camera House when I was three years old, but at the time I didn’t have a food blog to promote and thus it was just a one-off opportunity. These days, who knows? A three year old blogger could well be my biggest competition, and they’ve probably got more Twitter followers than me too.

Speaking of the passage of time, it’s now ten days till I go home for Christmas. To which I say: aaaaargh. It feels like I have a lot to achieve and not much time to achieve it in, which would be…accurate. However, I Skyped with Mum yesterday and managed to get some thoughts in order (my thoughts previously were: Christmassdkfhsdfwph). I’ve spent today serenely making edible Christmas presents for people which has been great fun. All will be revealed recipe-wise after Christmas to make it fair on those actually receiving these gifts. Tim is hunting for our little $2 shop Christmas tree and I’ve been playing my traditional Christmas playlist, (entitled “Hark! Merry Christmas from Laura!”), where I’ve gathered together seasonal tunes by artists I love (you can hardly claim to have lived till you’ve heard Johnny Cash and Neil Young duetting on The Little Drummer Boy) and artists that I’m dubious about at all other times but Christmas (you can hardly claim to have lived till you’ve heard Twisted Sister’s aggressively upbeat take on O Come All Ye Faithful.) Every year I scour the internet for more tunes to add to this increasingly ridiculous list and I look forward to doing it again this year. All that and I’m going to tape some tinsel to our bookcase. Fa la la la la. Bring it on.

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Title comes to you via: The Dead Kennedys song California Uber Alles. I know it’s barely significant but I really find it very hard to pass up something that amuses me like this. I like to think the title tranlates to “Potatoes above all”. Or something.
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On Shuffle lately:

Obviously some Hark! selections, including…

O Holy Night, sung by the ever-ridiculously-astounding Julia Murney and also Max von Essen, who I don’t feel quite so strongly about. I do like how it remains gently but firmly secular in its delivery. And how Julia Murney sounds incredible.

And then…The Avenue by Roll Deep, from their album In at the Deep End. Rediscovered it recently – takes me back to the summer of 2005 when I was in England and it still holds up as an ideal happy summer tune.

Out of the Blue by Julian Casablancas (if you thought I was going to say Julia Murney again, then ten points to you) from his solo debut, Phrazes for the Young. I like his album but it does have a lot of awkward song titles…Though really, as I’m a Pink Floyd fan I can hardly judge him. Anyway, this song chugs along merrily and has a joyfully sing-along chorus. And every time you listen you can think of Mr Casablancas and his lovely eyes and floppy hair which is no bad thing at all.

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Next time: I may cook even more potatoes, since Tim miraculously had the day off today and was thus able to be my pack-mule at the vege market. I may also provide even more Christmas music ridiculousity…

chain of yules

23 Comments

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I am currently waist-deep in Christmas Dinner preparation, and the cranberry levels are rising…

Let’s not analyze my handwriting too closely…does the fact that I can’t seem to commit to one particular way of writing the letter ‘f’ mean that I’m really, really deep and creative?

So, every year I host a Christmas dinner for our flatmates, (plus any significant others, hangers-on and plus ones) partly to celebrate my ability to insist upon cooking for large numbers of people but also to have some quality togetherness during this busy time. The day before is always a little full-on, but enjoyable, with the anticipation of feeding people and cooking vast quantities of stuff mixed in with the confusion of trying to follow my hopelessly non-linear list.

This is what the menu is shaping up like this time:

Dinner:

2 Roast Chickens
Pear and Cranberry Stuffing
Cornbread and Cranberry Stuffing
Ham in Coca Cola
Roast Potatoes
Roast Capsicums
Roast Kumara
Involtini
Green Salad

Pudding:
Chocolate Pavlova with Raspberries (or maybe strawberries…whatever’s cheaper at the markets tomorrow morning really)
Ginger Crunch Ice Cream
Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream
Maybe some sugar-free jelly if we can find any packets kicking round the place. I had plantain ice cream planned but the plantains I had must have been a little old and tired, because it doesn’t quite taste right. I may panic at the last minute and make another pudding…it happens.

If you’re a long-time reader, you’ll see that I’ve repeated a couple of recipes from last year – for example, both the stuffings and the involtini. The involtini, a recipe from Nigella Bites of seared eggplant slices wrapped around nutty, herbed bulghur wheat and baked in a tomato sauce, is also a repeat from last year, minus the feta this time as a friend of ours is a dairy-free vegetarian. Nigella’s Ham in Coca Cola is already a proven winner but I’ve never done it at Christmas before. But the Coca Cola that the ham is simmered in is cheap as and if nothing else will provide a talking point should conversation run awkwardly dry.

Even though my list specified otherwise, I got started today with the cornbread stuffing. I had to hustle to get this shot – you can see that some of the cranberries have already released their juices in the heat of the pan while others are still clinging to their dusting of ice particles.

Sometimes I wonder if I have heritage arching back to the American south. Or at least, some storybook version of it. I’ve never actually been there but the cuisine considered generally to be from that region seriously appeals to me. I can eat cornbread till the cows come home. Despite having to actually make the cornbread and then humbly crumble it, this stuffing really doesn’t take long to make at all. While it’s mighty fine roasted in the cavity of a chicken, the excess is more than wonderful baked separately in a loaf tin.

You’re taking already golden, buttery cornbread, and then stirring it into cranberries and another 125g of melted butter. This is a concept that either makes sense to you or it doesn’t. Me, everything makes sense with more butter added. If it appeals to you also, please find the recipe HERE. It comes from Nigella Lawson’s book Feast. Like the Spice Girls, all five of whom I was fiercely loyal to as a youngster, I cannot and would not want to choose a favourite Nigella book. But if you fancy an introduction to La Lawson you could do worse than start here with this magnificent, all-encompassing cookbook.

Not quite as visually appealing but still excellent is the Pear and Cranberry stuffing from Nigella Christmas, a book that naturally comes into its own at this time of year. Its combination of fudgey, gritty dried pears, sharp cranberries, and rich pecans (I substituted almonds because that’s what I had) is particularly fantastic, with salt and chopped onion stopping the whole thing from becoming like another pudding.

Pear and Cranberry Stuffing

Nigella Christmas

500g dried pears
175g fresh or defrosted frozen cranberries
100g breadcrumbs (preferably from bread that has gone stale than the dusty packet stuff)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
zest and juice of 1 mandarin
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons maple syrup
125g pecans
1 tablespoon maldon sea salt or a light sprinkling of table salt.

Either soak the pears overnight or cover them with boiling water and leave for a couple of hours. Drain once the water is cool. Place all the ingredients together in a bowl and mix thoroughly – even though it may feel a little spooky, just wading in with your hands is probably the easiest way. Either stuff your bird and bake accordingly or place in a loaf tin and bake at 200 C for about 25 minutes or until golden. Note – dried pears are pretty expensive. I tend to half the pears and up the breadcrumbs, but you could also make up half the weight of the pears in dried apricots.

The chocolate pavlova comes via Forever Summer (with whipped cream on the side, instead of smothered over it this time). I’ve made it before about 2 years ago, and loved it. However something was working against me today because while it rose up promisingly in the oven, it deflated completely once cooled. But what it lacks in height it makes up for in enormity – it spread out heaps. So I’m staying chilled out on that front.

Speaking of chilled, you know I love my ice cream. I’m particularly proud of this one because it’s completely dairy free but also staggeringly good. I’m not implying the two are mutually exclusive, but it’s not always the most straightforward path to deliciousness when you’re restricting particular ingredients.

Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream

6 egg yolks
50g brown sugar
2 tins coconut milk (not low fat)
2 tablespoons good cocoa
200g dark, dark chocolate, chopped

Gently heat the coconut milk in a wide pan, while mixing the egg yolks and sugar together. Once the coconut milk is good and hot, but not in any danger of boiling, pour it over the bowl of egg yolks and sugar, stirring all the while. Wipe out the pan with a paper towel, then pour the egg-coconut milk mixture back into it and keep it on a gentle heat, stirring constantly. It takes a while – at least 10 to 20 minutes – and you need to keep stirring – but it will thicken up into a custard of sorts. Once it is sufficiently thickened, remove from the heat and stir in the cocoa and chocolate, allowing it to melt into the mixture. Let this cool then freeze. Makes around a litre, maybe a little more.

The unfrozen mixture is amazing – the thickest, lightest, softest chocolatey custard ever. Once frozen, it’s even more sublime. The coconut flavour isn’t actually overly noticeable to if you want to amp it up a bit, stir in some toasted dessicated coconut before freezing. This is magical stuff – don’t let the fact that you have to make a custard put you off. I’ve made custard-based ice creams a billion times before without them turning into scrambled eggs, and if laughably clumsy I can do it, trust me, so can you.

I was actually really dithery over this particular post as I am going to be in an article about this blog in the Sunday Star-Times on Sunday, and I had this feeling that whatever I write today might be kind of important. This is the first time this blog has got any proper media attention, and I’m pretty nervous about seeing myself in a national newspaper. What if I look awful? (I had to maintain this half-smile thing, I’m really more of a big-toothed grin person, probably from my years of having to smile convincingly at ballet examiners while trying not to cry at that failed pas de chat.) What if I come across as horribly self-absorbed? (I mean, I am a bit, but still). What if someone, fuelled by Tall Poppy Syndrome, punches me in the street? Although I should mention (did someone say self-absorbed?) that the lovely lovely food blogger Linda is also being featured in this article tomorrow. I’ve never actually met Linda properly but you don’t always need to be face to face with someone to know they’re a fantastic person – I look forward to sharing a page with her. I also must say, massive kudos to the Sunday Star-Times for picking up on the idea of food blogging as a viable story option. I’m not saying that my blog is the most important issue happening to the nation right now, but seriously. I’ve been waiting for this.

If you are new to this blog, led here by your own curiousity after reading the article – cheers! Hopefully this is something you want to read more of – if not, I’m afraid I’m basically like this all the time. Maybe check out this post where I made my own butter which should quickly give you a good idea of whether or not you’re going to want to come back here.

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Title comes via: the resplendent Aretha Franklin and her absolutely stonking 1967 single Chain of Fools. If you’re new here: I tend to cut off straightforwardness to spite my own face when it comes to titles. But I’ll always explain them to you happily.
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On Shuffle while I’m cooking:

– The Deal (No Deal) from the concert recording of Chess, featuring such luminous talent as Idina Menzel, Josh Groban, Adam Pascal, Kerry Ellis, and the marvelous Clarke Peters of The Wire. Maybe something about the mathmatical precision of the game they’re singing about helped me keep focussed today.
– Speaking of Idina and Adam…while I may have allowed one or two Christmas songs to infiltrate my listening, Christmas Bells from RENT is the seasonal song that works all year long, but is obviously particularly nice at this time of year. The million different storylines being moved forward in this song makes for a listening experience that’s little short of astonishing. You can hear it here but if it all makes no sense then this visual might help unpack that somewhat. I care about this stuff.
– Mis-shapes from Pulp’s obviously amazing Different Class. Tim and I were lucky enough to see ex-Pulper Jarvis Cocker live at the Town Hall on Thursday night, he was utterly utterly wonderful, running through the cream of his solo material before blasting out an unexpectedly perfect cover of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid in honour of Ozzy’s birthday. But after all that I felt a bit of a need to hear some Pulp tunes, like this particularly urgent track.
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Next time: Well, if I haven’t made it onto the Listener’s list of the most influential and powerful New Zealanders for 2009, then it has been a failure of a week. Oh my gosh, I’m just kidding…and that list has already been published. Next time there may well be a recap of the Christmas Dinner and everything that happened. Look out for it – there’s nothing like an exhausted person who has eaten too much trying to make a sparkling, witty blog post.

riding on the avo-lanche

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Gotta admit, I wasn’t feeling entirely joyful about it being the 1st of December today. At all. But after watching the 30 Rock season 3 Christmas special with Elaine Stritch and Alec Baldwin singing together I’m starting to feel a bit more welcoming towards this whole yuletide thing. I get a little panicky every year about things like presents, and finding time to buy them, but on the whole I like Christmas – how could I not? So much eating and cooking, so many songs to sing lustily, and a good time to connect with the whanau or whoever has come to represent family in your life.

This Sunday the official traditional flat Christmas Dinner will be happening once more – it’s something I’ve put on at my flat every year for whoever lives there and any plus-ones since 2006, and as I said in the invitation, just because we’ve moved into a nicer place with a better kitchen there’s no reason it can’t happen again. I’m really excited about getting all the food organised, not so much about the logistics…It’s partly an excuse for me to feed a lot of people but also for everyone we like to get together and enjoy each other’s company before everyone takes off home. Not that I’m going home any time soon – I’m working up until noon on the 23rd. That said I’m very glad to have a job at all these days, unlike Tim who isn’t exactly rolling in shifts at Starbucks. If there’s any Wellington-based media-type folk out there reading this, give him a job! I like him, so he must be worth taking on. Isn’t that reference enough?

Anyway, with all the intense food pending, I’m trying to keep the dinners a little light and chilled out here this week. Hence this quick, vegan-as-anything but also seriously flavoursome and hearty Thai salad of rice stick noodles, tofu and green vegetables. It’s not perfect (tahini is eye-wideningly fat-laden, like, avoid reading the nutritional information if you don’t want to cry) and I’m not even sure if it’s actually Thai at all, more like “a dish with fish sauce in it” but let’s not get hung up on semantics. What would Nigella say? “It’s authentically good.” There is a lot of avocado in this which makes it much sexier than it would be otherwise, so don’t be tempted to leave it out. Avocados are getting cheaper and cheaper here in New Zealand which is a mitzvah as you can buy lots of them and luxuriate in spreading it on toast, adding them to salads, placing slices alongside dinner, or simply sprinkling a cut half with good salt and maybe a little vinegar and eating the lot with a teaspoon.

Thai Rice Stick, Tofu and Green Vegetable Salad

From a little cookbook I like to call “Laura’s Mind”.

100g rice stick noodles
2 ‘fillets’ of firm tofu, diced (those 8cm-ish square blocks that come in packs of four at the vege market is what I’m talking about)
1/3 cup natural peanuts
8-10 spears asparagus, chopped into 2cm lengths
Small bunch bok choi, washed and chopped roughly
1-2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons tahini
Handful sugar snap peas
1 perfectly ripe avocado
Small bunch fresh mint

Boil the rice stick noodles in salted water till they’re opaque and slippery. I’m not sure if this is the accurate way to get them cooked, please let me know if you have a better method. While they’re cooking away, heat a nonstick pan to good and sizzling, and add the tofu, stirring with a spatula to let it turn golden but not burn. Next tip in the peanuts and asparagus, stirring as you go. Sprinkle over the fish sauce and drizzle over the tahini, mixing thoroughly. Add the bok choi and a tiny splash of water, allowing it to quickly wilt in the heat. Turn off the heat – it doesn’t matter if the asparagus isn’t totally cooked, some crunch is good here.

When the noodles are done, drain them under running cold water for about 10 seconds. Finally, chop up the avocado, sugar snap peas and mint. Divide the lukewarm noodles between two plates, top with the tofu-asparagus-peanut-bokchoi mix and finally cover them with green chunks of avocado and crisp sugar snaps, adding a sprinkling of mint to each plate.

The mix of textures makes this salad amazingly enjoyable to tuck into, plus the creaminess of the avocado with the protein-rich peanuts and densely grained tofu means you’re hardly going to go hungry. The fresh, cool mint and the pungent saltiness of the fish sauce see off any over-richness that all that texture could cause when partying together on the plate. As you can see it’s pretty seasonal in nature, but as long as you keep the avocado in you could substitute other green vegetables – brocolli, beans, edamame – and you could of course use cashews or sesame seeds instead of the peanuts and peanut butter instead of tahini. As this is a little something I’ve made up, I’d completely love to know if anyone has actually tried it themselves. Let me know what you think!

So, another reason to be thankful that it’s December already, instead of going into shock because your mind still secretly thinks it’s mid-August, is that Tim and I are going to see Mr Jarvis Cocker on Thursday night, supported by lovely lovely Wellingtonians The Phoenix Foundation. If you don’t know who Jarvis Cocker is, he’s the erstwhile frontman of the band Pulp, maker of pop songs that sound amazingly upbeat but are actually yearningly painful, and rather gorgeous in his own elbowy way. I’m really excited. I love his solo work which is good as I don’t think he’s known for performing songs from his Pulp heyday. Not that I was overly caught up in the whole 90s thing, being a year or so too young and deeply occupied being solemnly and obstinately passionate about the Spice Girls. But for what it’s worth I do remember disdainfully ignoring all boy bands and having an unrequited crush on Blur’s Damon Albarn, writing in my diary that I hated his then girlfriend Justine Frischman of Elastica even though I really had no idea who she was. Rock’n’Roll!

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Title of this show brought to you by: Sufjan Stevens’ ridiculously pretty, light-as-a-macaron song Avalanche. Listen and love, even if you think you don’t like modern music. Fun facts: 1) I actually kinda hate when people call avocados “avos” but what can you do? and 2) For about a year I genuinely thought Sufjan’s name was ‘Surfjan’.
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On Shuffle these days:

No Intention by Dirty Projectors from their album Bitte Orca. This song winkles its way into your consciousness so gently that if it hadn’t been completely thrashed on one of the radio stations I occasionally stream I almost could have missed it altogether. Unusual and entirely engaging stuff.

Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time from Jarvis Cocker’s eponymous solo album, a song featuring horns pleasantly reminiscent of that other Cocker from Sheffield and typically fantastic lyrics. Fingers crossed he sings this one on Thursday.

I had a fantastic weekend going up north for Tim’s cousin’s wedding, but after many hours in a van with non-stop inoffensive crowd-pleasing music, I’ve had the urge to listen to something slightly more – although relatively – polarising. Therefore plenty of Richard Hell, Tourettes, early White Stripes, and, um, Alice Ripley (whose solo stuff is near-impossible to find on youtube, that’s how underground she is) have also been featuring heavily on my iPod this week. Also memorable was the discussion Tim and I had in the van on the way home about how we should buy a bouncy castle and put it on the roof, although I think I can pinpoint the epicentre of my overtiredness to the conversation we had about whether you could domesticate a calf and get it to fetch things and curl up at your feet while you watch TV. I said yes, Tim wasn’t so sure. I was all, “Tim, I grew up next door to a farm. I think I’d know.”
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Next time: this week will be largely given over to preparing for the mighty Christmas Dinner. Menu to be confirmed along with a progress report next time and you can bet that with our biggest guest list yet, it’s going to be a feast of health-compromising proportions. Bring it on!

icecreamadelica

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On the whole I don’t really go in for reviews that compare one thing to another, because it feels as though the author is too bored to find words to describe something on its own terms. Don’t even get me started on those slightly hysterical NME magazine reviews, you know, “This band sounds like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Sonic Youth solemnly making daisy chains and chewing vitamin pills together while Van Halen stand by, clapping slowly.” (That said I haven’t read NME since 2006, maybe things have changed?)

My point is, Tim and I went to a fantastic Latin restaurant/bar called Amigos for dinner the other night, and while I was there I couldn’t help but think it could quite easily be the new Sweet Mother’s Kitchen (another eaterie in Wellington, and enormously popular) if only more people knew about it. And then I felt bad, because Amigos was amazing in its own right and was created completely independently of anything else. But it has a similar vibe going on – funky surroundings, food that’s authentic, inexpensive, and fun, plus delightful staff. Tim and I both wanted this dish that involved french fries covered in four different kinds of meat with egg and cheese (I know, and it was amazingly good, and yes, they do lighter/vegetarian food too) and the waitress said that we could share one dish between the two of us as they’re huge servings. Nice, right? I’m sure most places would try and make you pay the extra money for two dishes without warning you on the size. The food was incredibly good – I’d love to go back and try some of their other dishes. Also on Fridays (and other nights) they apparently have parties and clear the tables and play music and have lots of drink specials. So, lazy writing and all, if you like Sweet Mother’s Kitchen, you’ll probably love Amigos too. It’s right near Moore Wilsons and above Happy at 118 Tory Street (phone 04 385 1222), and open for lunch and dinner all week long. And now you know!

If I ever end up getting offered some kind of mega-million-dollar cookbook deal for this blogging lark, I think I’ll definitely have to have a chapter devoted to ice cream. I love it and I love coming up with new recipes for it. Clicking on the “Ice Cream” tag for this blog will back up that statement with cold, sugary fact. With this in mind, remember that time I made Ginger Crunch Slice? Me too! I can’t stop thinking about it! In fact I’ve made about five more batches since that first one I blogged about. Then I thought how the fudge-like ginger icing would make fantastic…ice cream. Yes. The more brain-space I devoted to it, the more utterly genius it sounded. With a little time up my sleeve today I made a small test batch to see if it would actually work. And it really did.

You know what didn’t work though? Okay, so I made the ice cream, photo-ing as I went, put it in the freezer to freeze, took it out to take a photo, dropped the container on the floor, and it broke. And all of a sudden we’re out of appropriately sized Tupperwear or old takeaway containers. Argh! Fortunately the plantain ice cream from last week had just got finished and so I was able to rinse out its container and transfer the Ginger Crunch Ice Cream into it. By which stage it had softened considerably and I was also considerably covered in it and thus I couldn’t really be bothered trying to get a cute finished product photo – but at least there’s last week’s post with its cute spoonful of plantain ice cream to keep you happy should this gaping hole in my photo essay offend.

It’s not a scary recipe at all, despite having the word “ice cream” in its title. Ice cream, like bread and pastry and chicken stock is one of those things that sound so much harder to make at home than they really are. But this particular ice cream took barely 10 minutes. It’s the easiest of the hard-sounding stuff.

Spillages are unavoidable. Really.

Ginger Crunch Ice Cream

Makes about a pint. I think. Wikipedia’s stance on the pint is a little confusing.

50g butter
2 heaped tablespoons golden syrup
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 cup icing sugar
300mls cream

In a heavy based pan, melt the butter and golden syrup together gently. Once you have a deliciously buttery, caramelly liquid pool, take it off the heat and stir in the icing sugar and ground ginger. Then whisk the cream till it’s significantly thickened but not actually whipped into peaks – it should still have a bit of movement and formlessness to it. Using a spoon, scrape the gingery mixture into the cream and mix it in relatively forcefully, to break up any larger pieces of ginger icing. Pour into a container and freeze. You don’t need to churn this – just let it soften slightly before serving. And don’t drop the container. If you want more of this, as well you might, just use more cream. If you’re getting to the stage where you’re whipping up say, a litre of cream, you might look at doubling the ginger mix ingredients.

This stuff is extremely good. The gingery mixture seeps into the softly whipped cream, countering its richness with a zingy warmth. Larger pieces of the ginger mixture become all chewy and incredibly delicious once frozen. It just works so well. I can imagine this being a really good accompaniment to fruitcake or Christmas pudding, especially in places (like New Zealand!) where Christmas falls in the middle of summer.

This container no longer exists, and to be honest the ice cream isn’t going to stick round for long either.

That said, if I ever do get offered a squillion-dollar cookbook deal, all my ice cream recipes are here for free on this blog, thus rendering the ice cream chapter kind of pointless. Although I guess there’s no point stressing over something that hasn’t even been in any danger of occurring yet.

Last night Tim and I were fortunate enough to witness the All Whites qualify for the FIFA world cup by winning their game against Bahrain. What’s this? I hear you say. Laura, I thought you hated all sports with a fiery passion that shall smoulder eternally! Well, I kind of do. I appreciate that it makes a lot of people happy, that on the whole it keeps you healthy and that it provides a safe environment for young people to connect with each other and learn skills. I think specifically I dislike how sports are forced upon young people throughout their schooling. Sure, some youngsters can appreciate the joy of chasing a ball with a hockey stick or running from one side of a field to the other, but let them come to it naturally in their own good time. Don’t force them into PE classes when it clearly makes them sick with misery, and what kind of sick minded teachers still get students to pick people for their teams? If my children – should I ever have them – ever want to get out of doing sports at school, you bet I’ll write them notes. (“Yes, young Sebastian does have cramps.”)

All that darkness aside, I don’t mind soccer, and indeed it can be quite exciting, if a little long at 45 minutes a side. I think it was the romance of the situation that I got caught up in – the last time we’ve qualified to have a punt at the World Cup was 1982. Ricki Herbert (I love that deliciously flamboyant “i” on the end of his name) was a member of that soccer team and now he’s come back to coach the Wellington Phoenix, several of whom also play for the All Whites. We were total underdogs, having been not wildly outstanding in the first qualifier in Bahrain, and not exactly being world leaders in this particular sport. Suddenly every single ticket had sold out – there was barely a visible seat in the stadium, which never ever happens – not even when David Beckham came to town. All things that made for a ridiculously exciting game.

It was an amazing night of intense happiness and togetherness from the crowd and there were a lot of people I knew in the audience – like my cousin Paul who flatted with us last year – who had been following this forever and who were deeply invested in the outcome. Like I said, I’m not into sports but blind passion does make sense to me. I’m not actually a very good sports viewer, partially because I get incredibly bored, but also because no matter which side I’m supporting, I always feel bad for the team that loses. The audience occasionally booed Bahrain which I thought was a shame, given that they were trying to achieve exactly what we were but on the other side of the world and with only a handful of supporters in the audience. It’s never fun watching people lose, but all that was quickly forgotten at the sight of the normally deadly calm Ricki Herbert jumping round hugging his team jubilantly. Look him up on Google images – don’t you think Will Ferrell should play him in the movie of his life? Apart from the booing and the sadness of seeing the losing team lose, the only other thing that really annoyed me was the presence of streakers at the end. Firstly, it wasn’t their moment, and secondly, they weren’t even properly nude. At least be committed.
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On Shuffle while I’m typing away:

Tim and I were watching Dazed and Confused the other night (oh hi, young Anthony Rapp, Parker Posey, Adam Goldberg and half of Hollywood) and found myself listening to Peter Frampton’s Do You Feel Like We Do from Frampton Comes Alive! the next day. I’m not even a fan or anything, but there’s something about this song…it’s so slinky and groovy.

The entire cast recording of the 2008 revival of Gypsy, which is one of the most sharp, polished performances I’ve ever heard commited to a compact disc. I hope a good production of this comes to New Zealand sometime soon. Seriously, isn’t Patti thrilling?

Finally – Charlotte Gainsbourg’s new song IRM from her album of the same name is as super-listenable as anything else she’s ever done. I like how it takes its time commiting to a particular direction, and you can really hear Beck’s sound on the production which is no bad thing. Plus she’s gorgeous.

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Title of this post comes to you via the amazingly good Primal Scream album Screamadelica; I’ve said it before but there is never a bad time for this album, incidentally it is particularly good in summer and therefore would also make an ideal accompaniment for ice cream. Find it if you don’t have it!
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Next time: I found more plantains at Moore Wilsons! Rejoice! Not sure how I’m planning to act on this but I think…more ice cream.

it looks like you’ll stay, as the days go by

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On the 13th my blog will be two years old. Considering the blinding speed in which the internet turns around, in which networks are signed up to enthusiastically and then never updated, and also the fecklessness of youth (well, I’m only 23 and therefore highly likely to be lacking in feck) it’s a pretty tidy achievement all round. Two seems like such a tiny number to measure the amount of time that this blog has been existing. But I guess it’s likely to be a lot more significant to myself than, say, anyone else on the planet. I also guess that this gives me a free pass to bake something ridiculous and unnecessary in the name of celebrating my blog’s anniversary.

Funnily enough I used a recipe the other night that I last used exactly a year ago – Rendang Asparagus and Shallot Curry, from Simon Rimmer’s pretty awesome book The Accidental Vegetarian. Incidentally the photos I took last year were much better than the photos you’re going to see today, which shows that no matter where I live, there is always potential for uselessness. Asparagus is one of the few things I’m happy to wait around for. Well, it would be choice if it was available for the eatin’ all year round, but it’s not, and it’s usually worth the wait. If I’m eating asparagus it means that the weather is getting better and Summer’s on the way.

This recipe is so good, even if the original is a little deranged in terms of volume of sugar, coconut and chilli. Simon Rimmer writes an excellent recipe, but we don’t see eye to eye on what ‘mild’ is. Simon Rimmer thinks nothing of flinging eight chillies into a recipe for general consumption. His tastebuds must be made of asbestos-reinforced concrete roofing tiles. This is truly delicious though, and the combination of soft, caramelised buttery onions and juicy green asparagus is pretty fabulous. I’d go a little easy on the amount of brown sugar you use, between that and the coconut milk it can be almost like eating pudding if you’re not careful.

Rendang Shallot and Asparagus Curry

50g butter
75g brown sugar (I used less)
20 banana shallots
400g asparagus
400ml tin coconut milk
3 T toasted dessicated coconut
Coriander to serve

Melt the butter in a pan, add the sugar and when it starts to dissolve throw in the shallots, peeled but left whole. Turn down the heat and cook slowly for at least 20 minutes, (he recommends 45 but they were more than fine with less). Blanch the asparagus and refresh in cold water. I sliced them into two-inch lengths.

Curry Paste:

1 onion, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
3 red chillies, or however much you desire
1 tsp ground coriander
1 T tamarind paste (or substitute lemon juice)
1 t tumeric
1 t curry powder
1 stalk of lemon grass
pinch of salt

Whizz the lot together in a food processor, or chop and mix everything well like I did using my mezzaluna. This results in a chunkier but no less flavoursome paste. Heat a little oil in a pan and gently fry the paste, carefully, and stir in the coconut milk, letting it bubble away and thicken slightly. Add the now magically caramelly shallots and the blanched asparagus, letting it simmer for about ten minutes. Finish by stirring through the toasted coconut and chopped coriander. If you like, add a handful of frozen peas or soybeans to beef it up (as it were). Serve over rice. This should feed four easily.

On Thursday I realised I hadn’t cooked any chicken in a long, long time. In fact that I hadn’t really eaten meat in ages. A trip to Moore Wilson’s quickly changed this, and I had a go at Nigella Lawson’s Slow Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken from Forever Summer.

I’d bought a couple of Maryland pieces (ie thigh and drum attached together) because it was cheaper than buying just thighs. I figured I could cleave them in half, capable-modern-lady style with one of the many enormous knives we have in our kitchen. But, could not cut them for the life of me, even using this ridiculously sharp knife and putting all my body weight on it. They remained uncloven. Strains of Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner singing I Will Never Leave You from Side Show ran through my head.

Resigned to the fact that we were going to be eating enormous pieces of chicken for dinner, I arranged the ingredients artfully in this fancy schmancy roasting tin I bought from Briscoes that made me feel very Nigella – it’s one of those deep, rectangular dishes with metal handles that she’s always flinging about. It was also about 20cm too wide for our oven. Aaaaargh. By this stage I was tempted to biff the lot out the window. But, I patiently transferred the contents into a smaller dish and left it to roast for the requisite two hours – one of the nicest things about this recipe. You have a large window of time to chill out.

Ever more and always, we’ll be one though we’re two (Seriously, watch the clip. It may well blow your mind.)

This is a really simple recipe but what’s there works wonders. Soft cloves of garlic and chunks of lemon, a slosh of wine and some olive oil all relax into a deliciously juicy sauce, and the slow, slow cooking of the chicken renders it ridiculously tender.

Slow-Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken

From Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer.
This is Nigella’s recipe with her proportions – scale it down or up as you like.

1 chicken cut into 10 pieces
1 head garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
2 unwaxed lemons, cut into chunky eighths
Small handful fresh thyme
3 tablespoons olive oil
150mls white wine

Preheat oven to 160 C.

Put everything into a roasting tin. A roasting tin that you know will fit into your oven. Make sure the chicken is skin side up. Cover with tinfoil fairly tightly, place in the oven and leave for 2 hours. Once this is up, remove the foil, raise the heat to 200C, and cook uncovered for another 30 or so minutes till everything is nicely browned and crisp. Serve straight from the roasting tin. Serves 4-6.

Not having eaten meat for a while, particularly roasted chicken, I had completely forgotten how strong it is, how that oiliness can be really heavy in your stomach. I’d also forgotten how amazing it smells as it roasts and how good the pan juices taste drizzled liberally over rice. So there you go. I can see how people could go vegetarian, but then I could also happily eat a steak on a daily basis.

Speaking of things ornithologian, on Saturday I had the privelege of seeing the Imperial Russian Ballet performing Swan Lake at the Opera House. I went with Tim and my godsister, Hannah, and we had fantastic seats. There were a LOT of children in the audience, which I don’t have a problem with – I’m all for encouraging nippers to go to the theatre – in fact it was the adults in the audience who were more fury-inducing. Some idiot behind me decided to rustle a wrapper or chip packet of some sort right in the middle of the swans’ dancing. For about 45 seconds. I have no idea what was so important in their life right at that moment that they had to rustle this plastic so incessantly. Meanwhile, another person behind me was keeping time to the music by tapping the floor heavily with their foot and slapping their knees. Why? What can tiy possibly add to the experience? The only other negative I have to get out of the way is that the Opera House isn’t the nicest location. It looks like a shadow of its former grandeur. The fact that the sound came from speakers, not an orchestra, dulled the majesty somewhat.

The dancers, however, were absolutely stunning. Swan Lake, Nutcracker and Romeo and Juliet are three ballets which don’t so much tug at my heartstrings, as blow them up and make a balloon animal out of them. The music is just so achingly beautiful and it was beautifully captured by the dancers. The girl playing Odette/Odile had a mournful featheriness with a steely reserve that showed exactly why she was chosen as the leader. The prince was leggy and leapy and could express pain and happiness and that’s all you really need. The costumes were gorgeous and the whole thing was just intensely riveting. I know I go on about Broadway a lot but while I was brought up on a fairly equal diet of musicals and ballets, dance was my first love and it’s always a pleasure to see it live.

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On Shuffle whilst I type:

Saturday Getaway from Rookie Card by PNC featuring Awa from Nesian Mystik. This guy is probably the best thing to come out of Palmerston North since Tim.

Nobody’s Side from the recording of Chess In Concert by Idina Menzel. I bought this today at Real Groovy and the very sight of it was so unexpected and so exciting that I proceeded to tell the lady behind the counter how awesome it was and how ridiculously excited I was about it. Probably should have played it a little more cool. But seriously though, Chess is a nightmare to follow but the music is ridiculously good and Idina tears this song to shreds.

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The roundabout, kind of oblique (eh, it’s 10.30pm on a Sunday night) title for this post is brought to you by: Stephen Sondheim and his song Not A Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along. Bernadette Peters sings it and can’t be argued with, but predictably I’d like to offer Idina’s one-off take on it, worth it for the hatey youtube comments alone.

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Next time: Well, I probably will end up baking something frivolous in the name of celebrating my blog’s two-year existence.

it’s all grand and it’s all green

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So the best place to buy tofu as far as I can ascertain is the vege market on a Sunday. I branched out this week and went for soft tofu instead of firm; the name doesn’t lie. It near on falls to pieces if you look at it sideways. I guess it’s kind of the minced beef to firm tofu’s rump steak.

I ended up with a whole lot of root vegetables that needed eating on Sunday night. Usually my fallback option in this situation is some kind of pseudo-Moroccan would-be tagine-esque thing, which is seriously what I thought I was cooking last night until I realised it had actually shifted direction altogether into a curry. It’s a fine line – all that cumin, tumeric, coriander… suddenly I found myself wondering whether I should add more tomatoes and feta cheese or biff in a can of coconut milk. Coconut milk won out and I suddenly had this rather gorgeous vegan curry on my hands.

I defrosted some unshelled soybeans (I go through bags of them these days) and popped the beans within into the stew for a little colour contrast…to stop it being overwhelmingly like a braised curtain from the 70s (or, in fact, the curtains I remember us having at home while I was growing up – I have distinct memories of some yellow and brown floral motif…Mum?) The soybeans were awesomely elphaba-green against the earthy vegetables, their colour softened by the coconut milk.

While licking the lid of the coconut milk tin, to catch the sneaky extraneous cream that gathers there, it occurred to me that chocolate ice cream made with coconut milk could potentially be mindblowingly nice. Especially with chunks of milk chocolate and toasted coconut shreds, like a posh version of the Choc Bar ice creams of my youth (and occasional nights in town – for some reason I always crave ice cream if I’m out and about of an evening, you can keep your kebabs and pies thank you). If you haven’t had a Choc Bar it’s basically the above but in a $2.50 icecream-on-a-stick form and laced with palm oil (yeah, I went there. And while I was there, through rigorous testing, discovered that Whittaker’s white chocolate is comparitively amazing.)

The recipe for this suddenly-curry is chilled out, the only thing I measured out with any strict attention to detail was the rice. Nevertheless I’ll tell you exactly what I did in case the idea takes your fancy. It made a fantastic relaxed Sunday dinner. Warming and hearty, the creaminess of the coconut milk soaking into the ridiculous amount of vegetables (seven veges – eight if you count the tofu, which you might as well.) You basically can’t get it wrong which is also nice.

Root Vegetable Curry with Tofu and Soybeans

1 Onion
3 garlic cloves
1 swede (is Swede a root vegetable?)* diced
1 carrot, diced
1 parsnip, chopped
1 kumara, diced thickly
1/2 a cauliflower, chopped into small florets
Good handful soybeans

2 teaspoons cumin seeds
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
2 teaspoons tumeric
1 teaspoon ginger
1 red chilli, seeded and chopped (optional if it’s not your thing)
Zest and juice of a lime
1-2 teaspoons of honey

1 tin crushed tomatoes
1 tin coconut milk
As much tofu as you like

Chop onion and garlic finely and gently saute in a wide pan. Once it has softened a little, add the spices, chilli, honey and lime juice. This will caramelise the onions slightly, you want to keep stirring it so the spices don’t char.

Add the vegetables at this point and stir thoroughly to coat them in the spicy onion mixture which by now will be quite dry. Tip in the tin of tomatoes, half fill the tin with water and swish it into the pan. Stir, cover and allow to simmer till the veges are tender (the swedes are the slowest to kick into action I’ve found).

Stir in the podded soybeans, tofu, and as much coconut milk as you like. Allow to simmer for ten minutes or so. Serve over rice (or ree-cheh if you will)

Serves 4

This was delicious. The vegetables (and inevitably, my entire face) all stained yellow by tumeric, the coriander seeds providing bursts of subtle citrus to complement the lime, the strident warmth of the spices cutting through the creamy coconut…the emerald-bright soybeans doing no wrong as per usual…
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overheard in our kitchen
Me: Do fish bleed?
Tim: …………………..Yes.
Me: Yeah, but when you cut into them…there’s no arteries…they’re not like, say, sheep, which are basically built like humans in that they’ve got leg bones and muscles and…
Tim: They’re just like sheep. They bleed.
Me: Yeah, but you cut open a fish and there’s the skeleton, but it’s just…surrounded by fish fillets.
Tim: I was thinking more like fish fingers.
Me: Yeah. Tightly woven fish fingers.

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Tim and I went to see Wizard of Oz at Embassy cinema yesterday afternoon. It was wonderful seeing it on a big screen, partying like it was 1939. The technicolour made me gasp and the Wicked Witch was still as terrifying as I remember from my youth. But, this is the first time I’ve watched this film since reading the jaw-dropping Wicked and making a connection with the musical of the same name. And it was impossible to remove that context, to view it without that lens. Why does no one show sympathy when the Wicked Witch’s sister has died? Why did the Wizard get away with lying like that? How is Glinda so ‘good’ when, let’s face it, she appears to be on valium? She can hardly connect with Dorothy’s feelings of fear – although let’s also face the fact that the film wouldn’t have been so satisfying if, 23 minutes in, Dorothy was safely assisted back to Kansas.)

I actually cried during Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Judy Garland – so tragic! And it’s a beautiful song). And again when the Witch dies – it’s an emotionally fraught moment! I couldn’t help but imagine Glinda somewhere behind a curtain or pillar watching it happen a la the musical. Or the Witch being frantic by lack of sleep and an inability to communicate effectively a la the book. And I might have cried again when Dorothy said goodbye to the Tin Woodsman, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion. (Who, in retrospect, are deeply camp, yes? Also: Fiyeeeeeeeroooooo!) I really never cry in films or books or things like that so I’m always a bit interested to note when I do. And…I really want to see Wicked now. I know, it’s so done by all the cool people already but as I’ve said many times, it’s not as easy when you’re in New Zealand.
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On Shuffle whilst I type:

Die, Vampire, Die by Susan Blackwell and the rest of the cast of [title of show] from the cast recording of [title of show]. Had a slight epiphany Monday morning while unable to sleep (I woke up at 5:00am! And remained awake! It’s not fair!) that I could so do the role of Susan Blackwell. It’s like it was made for me (except it was made for the real Susan Blackwell. Confused? Maybe you should be. But if you’ve made it to this segment of the blog unsullied by confusion then you’re doing pretty well, all things considered. Also, Wikipedia it, my children.)

Rez, by Underworld. It’s on this compilation from the nineties that I found. I wish I’d had this compilation back in the actual 90s because it would have made life a lot easier. Instead I lay awake at night with my ear pressed to the radio and its hopelessly crackly signal, waiting for Flagpole Sitta – back in the days before the internet when I didn’t even know what the song was called, but the lyrics “the agony and the irony they’re killing me” seemed so meaningful to a 13 year old – or something by Radiohead to come on. Anyway Rez by Underworld is incredible – like what I imagine the fairies from Shirley Barber’s beautiful picture books would dance to if they went to a rave on a lily pad. See?

Galang by MIA from Arular. Have been a fan of hers since I saw the video for Bucky Done Gun in a hotel room in Germany in the summer of 2005. Didn’t realise music was capable of sounding like that.

Is it bad that I have this urge to make some kind of dish (probably ice cream, my default flavour-carrier) heavily featuring galangal so that I can use galangalangalang as my blog post title?

The title for this post is bought to you by: One Short Day from the musical Wicked, where Glinda and Elphaba travel to the emerald city for the first, fateful time…pausing only for a kicky song-and-dance number.

Next time: Considering this post bears little resemblance to what I promised would be happening I’m not sure if it matters what I write here. Truth be told I’m a bit terrible at snappily rounding things off so this is like an ‘out’ for me. Like on Whose Line Is It Anyway when Colin Mochrie would pretend to faint so that he didn’t have to come up with a verse in an impromptu hoedown. Does anyone remember the vastly superior British version of that show? Whatever happened to it?

don’t dream it, be it

12 Comments

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Do you ever think up something new only to find out that this something already exists? Recently I was mildly amused by some of the artists on offer while flicking through the blues section at Slow Boat Records, and thought it would be kinda fun if there was some kind of “Blues Name Generator.” A website where you enter your name and it in turn spat out out something that would ostensibly be your blues artist name, something like Stumblin’ Tuscaloosa Mary or Three Fingered Lowell Pickering or Pork Cracklin’ McDooley. But yeah, the internet is already home to multiple blues name generators. Multiple. Shoulda known. Moving on.

It must be the nature of existing in the world we do though, right? There are millions and millions of people wandering round and it’s only inevitable that some of our ideas will overlap and occur without connection to each other. Sometimes it can be a positive thing though, this doubling up of concepts. It can act as a kind of reinforcement that the idea was a good thing in the first place. (Not that people can’t have collectively terrible ideas, where to start with examples…)

To wit: I had it in my head that lentils topped with a poached egg might be cool. This developed further when I thought about padding it out with what else was in my kitchen – butter-fried leeks, a sprinkling of almonds and feta… Then I completely second-guessed myself. Is lentils and egg together both freaky and depressing? At best? Leeks – are they still hip? Would the whole thing be too earthy and aggressively sulphuric? Would the brown, yellow and green shades call to mind a polyester blouse from the 70s instead of effortless culinary elegance?

Then, reading a copy of esteemed local publication the Listener, I found in Martin Bosley’s food column a recipe that more or less mirrored what I came up with. Since Mr Bosley himself is such an estimable and celebrated local foodsmith, like a passive fairy godmother saying “you shall go to the ball,” I gained from his similar idea the confidence to proceed with my own.

Not saying you shouldn’t be afraid to experiment. Not at all. But seriously. Lentils. Sometimes a little positive reinforcement helps. And this definitely leans more towards modern elegance than 70s polyester in food form. I should have had more faith in myself – after all, it seems these days you can drape a poached egg over practically anything and it suddenly becomes chic.

To have this happen in your own life, bring a large pan of water to the boil and once it is at a merry rolling bubble, pour in 150g brown lentils. (I added the rest of a near-empty packet of tiny stelline pasta for no other reason than it was annoying me) The lentils should cook through in about 20-25 minutes. Meanwhile, wash and thinly slice a leek. Melt a generous knob of butter in a pan and once it’s sizzling gently add the leeks and stir continuously till they collapse and become slightly caramelised. I added a splash of very good balsamic vinegar because I’m lucky enough to have some. Once the lentils have cooked through, drain them thoroughly and transfer them to the pan of soft, buttery leeks (now off-heat) and stir through. Finally, poach four free range eggs. Divide the lentils between two plates, place two eggs on each, and sprinkle with sliced almonds, feta cheese, and smoked paprika.

Serves 2.

This dish is pretty delightful. The softened, slightly fuzzy lentils against the silky egg yolk, the nutty bite of the almonds against the slippery leeks and sharp, creamy cheese all tastes brilliant together. The range of flavours and textures made it way more interesting to eat than it could initially sound. Thanks Martin Bosley for unwittingly providing the affirmation that I needed.

It’s not being precious or, I don’t know, elitist to say that you need really good free range eggs for this. It’s pretty simple. Surely Jamie Oliver has put out enough TV shows for this to be obvious now. Granted, laying eggs is what hens do, but it surely isn’t the most dignified way to make a living and I’m pretty sure these hens aren’t supposed to be laying eggs on command every single day while being underfed and cramped in a tiny cage with no room to move, alongside thousands of their similarly oppressed sisters like a nightmarish scene from a dystopian novel from the 1950s. Hens deserve better than that. Why, buying free range eggs is positively an action of female empowerment. Support your feathered sisterhood. I think I’m on to something here. Free range is a feminist issue. Unless it has already been written about by the lovely Bust magazine or somesuch… At the rate I’m going I wouldn’t really be surprised. Ooh I’ve thought of something. No. It already exists.
So there’s all that. But also, importantly, free range eggs taste comparitively amazing to the super cheap, sinister battery cage eggs. They really do. If you think otherwise, I’m afraid your opinion is wrong. Choose free range: not only are you getting a better tasting egg, you’re helping hens break through the glass ceiling! Or something.

This next dish comes without any such quasi-political fist-shaking attached to it. This was dinner a week or so ago.

Roasted Kumara with Roasted Beetroot Risotto. Seriously good stuff. I wrapped a large kumara and a large beetroot in tinfoil and roasted the pair for about an hour in a hot oven. I made a risotto of half arborio rice, half pearl barley (any excuse to use an unsexy grain, me) and once the vegetables were roasted I roughly chopped the beetroot and stirred it through the risotto. The kumara I cut in half and divided between two plates along with the risotto and sprinkled it with coriander seeds – my latest obsession, their dusky lemony flavour is delicious – and also actual coriander which I discovered quietly floundering in the fridge in dire need of use. It’s funny, I always feel like I need coriander but then whenever I buy it, it tends to get forgotten about.

A pretty fabulous dinner this was, and unlike the last dish, a Bollywood-bright plateful of gorgeous colour. The earthy sweetness of the beetroot and kumara, emphasised by the long roasting time, went really nicely together and I’ve always loved the texture of pearl barley which lends itself easily to a risotto.
Had a smashing time up in Auckland (I was up there for six days, hence the rolling tumbleweed/chirping crickets nature of the blog lately). I met some fantastic people and ventured into the oft-talked of ‘burb of Ponsonby, wherein I felt often felt pretty Wellington and occasionally…very rural. I was naively excited to patronise such classy places as SPQR and Prego, that I’d previously only read about in Cuisine magazine. You’re not in Otaua now, Laura.
Words can barely, barely express the joy that was Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin in concert. I read an adequate review of the night from the NZ Herald newspaper but I think what the author missed out on was how exciting it is that these two people are in New Zealand at all. This sort of thing just does not happen. Broadway stars don’t come here. Whoever at The Edge organised it, I salute you and hope this sets a prescedent for other performers that there is, in fact, an audience for them in New Zealand.
Anyway, words clouding issue here. They were both spectacular. For those of you who don’t know, I usually found it easiest to describe Mandy Patinkin to people as the guy who played “My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die” in The Princess Bride. Patti LuPone probably graces a lot of peoples’ CD collections without them realising it – Wikipedia her. She should need no introduction but it’s not really our fault here in New Zealand, at the bottom of the world, that we’re not exposed to people like her very often. When she sang that intensely dynamic opening line, “I had a dream, a dream about you baby” from Everything’s Coming Up Roses, from the show Gypsy that she won a Tony for last year…it was surreal. And incredible. Tim was there with me, and Mum and Dad at the last minute bought cheaper rush tickets so it was nice to have people around to share the excitement with. I could go on about how fantastic they both were – wait, I already have – but it’s not really necessary, it kind of goes without saying. They were both so comfortable on stage and a serious joy to watch. And I got a photo afterwards with Mandy. Woohoo!

Also: saw It Might Get Loud, which only served to make Tim and I each fall more in love with Jack White (Meg is awesome too, but he was the focus of the film, so). Jimmy Page was a complete gem and of course the Edge is a talented guy. It’s not his problem that U2 isn’t really my thing, I’m sure. On Thursday night I saw a fab local band called Alex The Kid who play super fun music with a scientific bent; due to their name they’re a bit hard to google so why not click here for their Myspace? The following night, after It Might Get Loud we went to see Auckland rapper Tourettes, who I’ve been enamoured with for some time now. The opener was this guy called Tommy Ill, when he came onto the stage I totally judged him on his Where-the-wild-things-are style furry hat but he was adorable and fun and I’d easily pay money to see him again. Tourettes was just seriously fantastic, and I was beyond stoked that he did two spoken word segments during the gig. I can’t pretend I’m a huge listener of rap, I like a bit of De La Soul (specifically: Ooh), Wu Tang Clan and Beastie Boys, but it’s not really my first choice. So maybe that amplifies how much I like this guy’s stuff.

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On Shuffle Whilst I Type Feverishly

Farewell Ride, from Guero by Beck. It’s funny, I never think of myself as being a massive Beck fan but every time something of his comes on Shuffle I’m all, hmm, yeah, I like that.

La Ville Inconnue from L’Immortelle by Edith Piaf. She continues to amaze.

Thank You For Sending Me An Angel from More Songs About Buildings and Food by Talking Heads. Imagine if Talking Heads and Velvet Underground never existed. What on earth would cool people these days be influenced by?

Honourable mention: The chords G and C. Tim bought a guitar! We’re gonna be rockstars!

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Next time: I made my first bundt cake using my new silicone tin. I was predictably excited. The results were unfortunate. All the gritty details for you… Hopefully I’ll have something that actually worked to display as well since I’m pretty sure food blogs don’t blossom on fail. Hence why I didn’t even bold out the text in this segment.