Category: Gluten-free

Just Spent Six Months In A Leaky Blog

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

"In The Cold, Cold Night…"

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Baby, it’s cold outside…in Wellington, at least. Talk about hungry and frozen. I didn’t plan on making vegetable soup this early on in the year but what else can you do in this situation?

Above: Vegetable soup always reminds me of home, of making a large vat of it every weekend in winter, and letting it sit warmly in the crock-pot, only getting better with time.
I don’t follow a recipe, but I think you have to have onions, celery, and carrots – the basis of many a slow-cooked meal – and I like to really let the vegetables cook (I refuse to say sweat!) before adding any liquid. Because I was all out of the classic King’s Soup Mix, I just used some lentils and barley that I found in our pantry. By the way, King’s Soup Mix isn’t nearly as declasse as it sounds – it’s just a prepacked bag of lentils, beans and barley. It is very cheap, and so good for you – I don’t know why people don’t make this all the time.

So that was dinner last night. To go with I made a rather sassy Puy lentil, pea and feta salad. After adding peas to my lentil soup the other day, it struck me that this humble frozen vegetable could be paired with lentils in other ways. The earthy darkness of the Puy lentils, the perky green sweetness of the peas and the creamy saltiness of the feta was surprisingly moreish.
Above: I didn’t actually measure anything so I can’t give you an exact recipe…however I did make a dressing out of three tablespoons each extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar. With so few ingredients it should be easy to recreate it yourself, if you are so inclined.
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Above: Unfortunately I remain intimidated by our new camera, as you can see by this picture where the meal is out of focus and the wooden spoon is in. I tell you, I can’t seem to get it the other way around. I’d like to think there’s something wrong with our camera…but I suspect it’s still me.
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More soul food (if you can see it in that photo, anyway!) tonight in the form of a layered meat and pasta dish from Annabel Cooks, by NZ author Annabel White. It is very basic, a kind of no-effort lasagne – cooked small pasta is mixed with sour cream and cream cheese, and layered with mince that has been cooked in the usual spag-bol kind of way, topped with cheese, and baked. It sounds too simple and seen-it-all-before to be any good, but in fact I think she’s on to something. Much depends on the quality of your meat sauce, I’d recommend using red wine in it, and a tin of tomatoes instead of some premade pasta sauce. It is very comforting bowl-food, and helped to stave off the chilliness of our (inevitably freezing) student flat momentarily.
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As Nigella The Wise says in How To Be A Domestic Goddess, the benefits of colder climes are largely culinary, and I heartily concur. I can’t wait to try out more soups (getting ever-closer to The Lentil Soup), rich casseroles, melting stews, baking more bread in the weekends (proving it by the heater if need be), dusting off my pudding steamer…and, er, my Pilates DVD…

Rainy Day Woman

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

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

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

Absolut Pask

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

My Funny Valentine

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Ah, Valentine’s Day. The day where I say to Tim: “It’s just a commercialised, Americanised cold-hearted event thought up by Hallmark in order to sell more cards” while inside I’m thinking “pleeease do something for me!!” I honestly don’t want much. I meant what I said about it being commercial and tacky. Well Tim, bless him, completely exceeded expectations and not only got me a card but also got me (even though I told him not to) a beautiful bunch of flowers – delivered at work! So, for one of the few times in my life, I got to be that smug gal who walks home clutching a bouquet.

For my part, I made a rather nice dinner last night. Nothing too taxing – a free range bird, some potatoes roasted stickily in garlic, some frozen peas. But also the nicest thing to eat, to be honest – there is nothing so simple but also celebratory as a roast chicken.
Above: The only thing I love more than roast chicken is planning what I’m going to do with the leftover meat. Because chicken breasts are very expensive, having the cooked meat to toy with is rather thrilling.

Above: At the behest of Nigella’s Feast, I chopped potatoes into cubes and roasted them with olive oil and garlic cloves. After a while I threw in some cauliflower, because you all know how I feel about this particular member of the brassic family. I must admit, every time I took the tray out of the oven to have a stir, I ate more and more of the sweet, sweet, crispy bits…we were rather lucky that there was anything left for dinner.

For dessert, however, I put in a bit more grunt. I had a concept, which didn’t entirely materialise as I thought it might…but hey. It’s the thought that counts on Valentine’s Day, right?

Above: Admit it. If you took this photo yourself, you’d be quite proud. I don’t think I’m too forward in thinking it would not look out of place on a much more chi chi food blog. Especially when you take into account the fact that I don’t take particularly good photos in the first place. I like this so much that I’d better actually tell you what it is – Pomegranate Ice Cream. Monumentally easier to make than the name would suggest, you merely stir icing sugar in the juice of a couple of ruby-red pomegranates, add some cream, stir some more, and freeze. It tastes heavenly. Almost unfathomably good. And it comes out a very pretty, Valentine-y pink colour.

Look what happens when you stir it!

Above: Ooooooooh.
To augment this, I made some flourless chocolate brownies, (the recipe for this, along with the ice cream, can be found in Nigella Express) and the Barbados Cream from How To Eat. Barbados Cream is equal quantities of cream and Greek yoghurt stirred together briskly, with dark brown sugar sprinkled over, left in the fridge overnight. It tastes amazing – creamy and tangy and intensely caramelly.

Above: Pa-da! Yes, that is a heart made out of berries. To be frank this didn’t turn out how I’d hoped, visually, I think I was yearning for some kind of Donna Hay style-presentation. Considering I don’t like Donna Hay all that much I guess I shouldn’t try and channel her, especially considering how generally cack-handed I am – it could only end badly. Luckily everything tasted good. According to the flatmates (the night wasn’t toooo romantic) the brownies are amazing, which is always nice to hear about something you have baked. Everything tasted great together, even if it didn’t look so pretty.

I have been making other stuff lately:

Above: I mentioned in my last post about how enamoured I am with my new yoghurt maker. I am LOVING having yoghurt around (like chicken breasts, and, well, everything, yoghurt is pretty expensive) and used some of it in this Greek Yoghurt Cake that I found in Jill Dupleix’ New Food. It is a very easy to make, and bakes into a large, golden, fragrant cake. I was pleased with how the whole ‘dust-icing-sugar-over-cut-out-shapes’ went, but to be honest I was even more pleased with how good it tasted. I made this on Wednesday in order to herald Kieran’s brief returning to Hadfield before he went back to work in Napier.
Above: I made this for dinner the other night. Burmese Salad from the Healthy Salads book, grilled potatoes with tumeric, steamed beet greens (or pinks as they ought rightly to be named), and meatballs flavoured with, inspired by a recipe in New Food, sake. It was pretty great, not to mention totally, smugly healthy.

Above: Our entire flat (which now includes my cousin Paul, hoorah!) got really quite drunk after pudding last night, which means that it was No Fun getting up for work this morning. However it is in complete sobriety that I wish you Happy Valentine’s Day, dear readers (but I love you every day of the year!)

It’s a Lot Better…

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With a lot of butter, to paraphrase the old TV ads. Tim still isn’t back, which makes cooking a little interesting, not because I can’t eat without him (quite the opposite, unfortunately) but because I can’t do a big grocery shop. I’ve moved on from bags of twisties for dinner but am still requiring comfort food it would seem, to wit – starch. Ange and I went to the vege market this morning, and came back via New World Metro, where I purchased about 12 different varieties of carbohydrate (tortillas, egg noodles, arborio rice…okay that’s it really.) I’ll just deviate briefly here to rant about how unbelievably expensive dairy is at the moment! $15 for a kilo of cheese! You could get a kilo of ground almonds for that price (trust me, you can!) In this land of milk and honey, it’s no wonder parents are giving their children coca cola to drink, because the milk is too expensive. Dairy me! (but really.) Don’t even get me started on the insultingly non-summery Wellington weather.

I have finished reading Nigella Express, and despite being a trifle apprehensive at first (it has recieved a mixed reception) I am in love. What a fantastic, practical book, positively brimming with recipe after recipe, perfect for midweek dinner. Everything looks so inspiring and fresh and delicious. There has been a bit of brouhaha (or fooforah?) over her use of canned foods and prepackaged things; I think this is rediculous. Firstly, she explains that she does this because it saves time, secondly she stipulates that you use excellent quality canned stuff, thirdly, she does it so self-deprecatingly that you know she hasn’t completely turned into some kind of person shilling for microwaved meals. Again, this book is so practical I could see myself using it every day of the week. I still haven’t cooked anything from it though – I’m waiting till Tim gets back, whenever that may be.


Above: Sorry the photo of my mushroom risotto is a little psychedelic; I had to borrow Stephan’s camera and for some reason the flash was very intense.

For dinner tonight I made myself Nigella’s Restrained Mushroom Risotto from How To Eat. I had some button mushrooms from the market, some dried porcini and Knorr porcini stock cubes from my aunty Lynn, and some Porcini powder from the lovely Linda. A ‘shroom extravaganza, you could say. I decided in the end to leave out the whole porcini, I thought it might be a little strong, and opted for a more mellow triple-shroom combo of buttons, stock, and powder. Indeed, this risotto would have been titularly restrained, healthful even, were it not for…the mountains of butter I kept stirring through it. I can’t even blame this on Tim’s absense, I am just pathologically drawn towards the stuff it would seem. The risotto tasted incredible though – definitely something I will make again. It was rich, creamy, and intensely flavoursome, and the porcini powder – although essentially glorified dust – gave it a genuine, woodsy kick.

I made a cake yesterday: The Damp Apple and Almond cake from Feast, which is presented as a pudding option for a Passover feast. There were no such celebrations at Casa Hadfield, but the cake was enjoyed all the same. It is gluten-free, incredibly moist, and very easy to make. Not a cheap cake – 8 eggs and 300g ground almonds – but as I’d bought a kilo of them from Moore Wilsons before Christmas (telling myself it was cheaper in the long run) I figured I was halfway there.


Above: Told you it was eggy…Wooden spoon courtesy of my younger brother who got me a bunch for Christmas – I can never have enough wooden spoons. Like I said, this is a very easy cake to make – all you do is cook some apples to mush, then the rest is light stirring. The mixture is very dense, as you could imagine with all those almonds.


Above: The cake was delicious, very grown up tasting and quite filling – it’s not often you’ll see me stopping at one slice.

In other news, Ange and I watched Rent the other day and…she loved it. I could not be happier with this turn of events, indeed it gives me hope that one day Tim will like it too. I also like this movie better than ever – some movies grow worse for repeat viewings but this one actually gets better every time.

Benny: “And The Owner Of That Lot Next Door Has A Right To Do With It As He Pleases” Collins: “Happy Birthday, Jesus.”

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As the above quote shows, Rent, though written in the nineties and set in the eighties, can still be relevant to people today. Well, me, at least. My parents’ house – the place I grew up in – is mere pit-spitting distance from what used to be the local tavern, back when tiny country villages patronised such premises. It has long been closed down, but now a company wants to turn it into an enormous, chugging oil-rerefinery, which will mean that as we look out our windows the spectre of sky-high silos will greet us. So, the small community is doing its Erin Brockovich Darn’dest to oppose this, but unfortunately, like Maureen’s laboured protest in Rent, we don’t have all that much to fight with.

Meanwhile, camping is blissful, and I am spending a brief hiatus at home in order to pick up Tim, who is travelling up to join us today. I realise Christmas is old news now, but because I have been a trifle busy/lazy, I haven’t got around to posting the pictures till now. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were both a complete flurry of mad cooking in the midday sun.


Above: Nigella’s Frangipane Christmas Mince Tarts. Any smugness I felt at actually making my own fruit mince to put in the pastry cases was swiftly obliterated as I grappled with the nightmare that was the pastry. My parents don’t own a food processor (they do have a blender, so they aren’t complete heathens) so I had to make it by hand, which in the oppressive heat doesn’t make for cooperative pastry. I ended up patching bits onto each other, praying that it wouldn’t stick to the tins, and couldn’t roll it out for love nor money so I only got to make a half batch.


Above: Luckily the sodding things were delicious…all smugness returned.


Above: I made two of the Marzipan Fruit Cakes from How To Be A Domestic Goddess, to give away as presents. They are very easy to make, and the mixture is delicious, all orange scented and rummy. The only difficult thing was lining the sides of the tins with baking paper. Nearly ended up throwing the whole thing out the window.


Above: The baked cake, paper lining and all. Chunks of real marzipan and dried pears make this rather different and luxe, but also make it a mission to stir without flinging chunks of batter into one’s hair.

I don’t seem to have any photos of the Christmas lunch itself, which must have been on a different camera. It was a very relaxed, joyfully low-key affair, and we feasted upon roasted lamb with Za’tar (Christmas present!!), roast chicken, new potatoes, and roasted capsicum, beetroot, and zucchini .


Above: Nigella’s Pomegranate Jewel Cake, from Feast. The perfect cake for (a) a family with members dabbling in Gluten-free, and (b) a family whose members uncharacteristically do not want anything tooo rich for pudding. It is also perfect for Rosh Hashana, for that is the chapter in Feast it came from. It is not, however, a cake to make when you are stressed and have fifty thousand other things that need baking too and you suspect your oven is on the blink. Miraculously everything got cooked in the end, and I even managed to turn this slightly fragile cake out onto its own plate (not having the right-sized springform tin.) Pomegranates are expensive in Waiuku so I only used one, not the two that the recipe stipulated, but I think this still looks gorgeously rubied and very, (although not obviously intentionally), Christmassy.

So that was Christmas Day, and we did the whole shebang again on Christmas Night with a family who have been our neighbours, one way or another, for many many generations, and who are exactly the sort of people you would want to have second pudding of the day with. Now that we are out camping we are still eating very well; I would be able to show you photos as evidence but Blogger won’t upload for some reason. We have been camping there for 21 years now, and each year it gets better and better, but also more crowded unfortunately. I have already read four-and-a-half books – what more could one want for their summer?

Let The Good Times Roll

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It is hard to contemplate (A) that it is exactly one week till Christmas and (B) that Outrageous Fortune has really finished- it just doesn’t feel like a Tuesday without it. Tim and I are getting up super early tomorrow to go Christmas shopping, so hopefully there is nice weather for it – there were massive wintry rainfalls today which was a bit worrisome.

I’ve been trying to make sure we eat relatively healthily this week. It doesn’t always work.

Above: I always thought that rice paper rolls were a bit like haircuts – best done by professionals. But the recipe in Nigella’s Forever Summer showed me that they were in fact, incredibly do-able. A little fiddly, yes, but nevertheless a simple, impressive, and healthy nibble. We even made them while camping last year, if that is any indication of their non-threateningness (should such a word exist.) I made very simple rolls on Sunday night – just grated carrot, sliced avocado and mint, no noodles or anything. I think they were in fact the nicest ones I have ever made. Once you get into a rhythm of dunking the rice paper, laying the filling on their softened surfaces, and rolling them up, there’s not much to it at all.
Above: The rice paper rolls were a precursor to our actual dinner, which consisted of roasted vegetables, boiled potatoes, and my usual fall-back when I have no idea what to cook for dinner but Tim wants some kind of meat component to the meal – mince spiced with cumin, cinnamon, etc. I added some cooked down red lentils to the mince, just to make it all the more sparklingly healthy, and grated in some carrot. All in all a model dinner…until…

Above: The real Canadian cake! Alicia’s friend sent her a box of Betty Crocker cake mix, complete with a TUB OF ICING and we made it after dinner. Although I am generally vehemently opposed to cakes made from boxes, I was intrigued to say the least. You might not be able to see it in the photo but everything on the packaging is charmingly translated into French as well as English. Anyway, we mixed this up and baked it while watching the Simpsons movie on DVD. How do I put this – the cake was appallingly fabulous. It had this spookily puffy, moist texture, like something not found in nature, and the icing tasted like butter. It also had little clumps of e-numbers, I mean sprinkles, clustered throughout. It tasted pretty amazing, but left me rolling around groaning afterwards, filled with too much sugar.

Above: This was last night’s dinner and I have to say, all self-congratulatory, that it was an absolute stonker of a feed. Tim and I went to New World Metro in town to grab some milk after work and ended up spontaneously buying some steak for dinner. I followed a recipe from the New Zealand cookbook, which basically involves frying it and deglazing the pan with sherry and cream. I used the sherry Mum gave me, and the little bit of cream that I had leftover from the pav. Well. It tasted INCREDIBLE, like restaurant food or something. The smell, when the sherry hits the hot pan and starts sizzling, is sensational.
To go with I made a salad of raw, sliced beetroot, blanched brocolli, and cashews, which was very fresh and crisp tasting, and roasted some potatoes. What a feast.

Above: Tonight I kept it fairly simple. Penne pasta, with avocado and roasted beetroot, capsicum, and courgette. I drizzled over a little of the basil oil that Mum and Dad got me when they went to Australia earlier this year, and it was the perfect foil for the mix of flavours on the plate. The beetroot inevitably stained the pasta, but I thought the combo looked rather festive.
Above: Well, I kept it simple until I started to make baked cheesecake, that is…Apparently we are having some kind of flat barbeque tomorrow, I say apparently because it is Emma that is organising it and I’m not quite sure on the particulars. As long as it doesn’t rain like it did today we should have a jolly old time. Either way I’m always up for feeding people and so volunteered to make the Chocolate Lime Cheesecake from Nigella Bites, using gluten free cookies for the base. It is largely a case of bunging all the ingredients in the processor, the difficult bit is baking it in a waterbath, but not much is difficult in the kitchen when you have Tim to lift things for you. It is cooling on the bench now and smells pretty amazing. I’ll let you know tomorrow night what the general consensus is. I’ve never made a cheesecake before so it’s all a bit exciting.
Alright, it’s now past midnight and I have to brave a shopping mall tomorrow, so I need my sleep.

Epic Proportions

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I didn’t realise how long it was since I’ve last posted here, so another long post, sorry! This time of year is pretty busy though, and I can’t believe that there is only one week till I go home for Christmas 🙂 and Kieran leaves our flat 😦 although obviously, he will always be a part of Team Hadfield.

Above: It has been so humid and tropical in Wellington lately that we have been eating our dinner outside a lot. I made this for dinner the other night, using some chops that Tim’s parents gave us when we went to their farm in September to help with docking. After defrosting them (naturally, I hadn’t kept them in the fridge for three months) I baked them with some of the cranberry conserve that Santa gave me last year, mixed with a little dry mustard powder. They were delicious, all sticky and blackened and meaty. To go with I made the Egyptian Tomato Salad from Nigella Bites, using some of the tomatoes we got from the vege market. This recipe is very easy and really summery. You peel the tomatoes, slice them up with some spring onion, pour over a little olive oil, and leave it to sit for a while for the flavours to develop. The potatoes I just parboiled and fried in my non stick pan in cubes, with some cumin seeds and plenty of salt.

On Friday night I didn’t even have dinner (Tim had some toast and leftover lentil soup) because we went to the stadium to see the Phoenix vs Queensland, and by the time I’d got home from work there wasn’t any time to cook. It was a very warm, muggy night, perfect for being outside, and the game was lots of fun. We went with Kieran (flatmate) and Alicia (Canadian who also works at Starbucks) and I have to say that being in a crowd of soccer fans (I think there was just over 9000 people there, pretty good for a non-Beckham game here) is a great way of letting out any repressed anger you might have as you yell and curse and chant along that “All we want is a decent referee.”

Above: I wish I could say I made this! Tim, Kieran, Alicia and I went out to breakfast the next morning (how very Sex and The City! I thought to my unsophisticated self) at Epic, on Willis Street. They serve the most amazingly enormous and imaginative breakfasts, for very reasonable prices. The above – savoury French toast with mushrooms, chorizo, spinach, grilled capsicum, hollandaise and chutney was only $13, and being the glutton that I am, I got a couple of hash browns on the side. It was seriously good and slowed me down too – I hate paying for tiny meals – and everything tasted of quality, not as though it was out of a packet.

Above: Tim ordered the big vegetarian fry up and then, rather idiosyncratically, asked for bacon and kranky on the side. He had started eating this by the time I took a photo of it, but really, it looks pretty good, huh? Tim said his eggs were cooked perfectly.
Above: Kieran had the Mexican Big Breakfast, with corn fritters on the side, and Alicia had the three-egg omelette. Everything was sooo good! We got there bang on 9.00am (quite an achievement on a Saturday morning, especially since we had been drinking the night before) and there were hardly any people there, but it filled up quickly.

If you are ever in Wellington, make sure you check this place out. There was also a blackboard menu which I forced myself not to look at for fear of never being able to make a decision. Kieran and Alicia got latte bowls, Tim got a flat white (I think the general concession was ‘good, but not as good as Starbucks’) and I got a lovely spirulina.
Tim had work to go to, but Kieran and Alicia and I made the most of the sun by driving out to Island Bay, which is near to the airport. I’d never been there before – it’s such a jewel of a place on a sunny day, real postcard stuff – blue sky, blue-green sea, the cliffs…we chilled in the sun (and yes, I schmeered myself with copious amounts of sunblock) on the pebbly beach and tried to avoid being bitten by the mosquitos that were as big as 747s.


Above: Island Bay. Unlike many beaches in NZ, this one has sun-warmed pebbles instead of sand.

When I got home I started making a pavlova. I didn’t have any real motivation to do it, in that we weren’t celebrating or something like that, but I had a pomegranate, and I had lots of egg whites in the freezer, and since we are all going home for Christmas soon it’s a nice time to eat that sort of food. So, following the recipe for Pomegranate Pavlova in How To Be A Domestic Goddess, I started whipping those egg whites into shape.

Above: Everything was going fine until I realised I’d ran out of cornflour, and of course in the unstable world of pavlova every ingredient is crucial. So I thought maybe I could substitute it with custard powder, which is mostly cornflour anyway, right? Well, I sifted it in, poured over the vinegar…and it made this funny bubbling noise. So I folded it all together, spread the shiny mixture onto the baking tray, and put it in the oven quickly. Then I looked at the ingredients on the custard powder and it had cream of tartar in it. Uh oh! I thought. And hoped for the best.
Anyway while it was baking I got on with dinner, which was good old spag bol (hey, we are students) I put some of the red wine that I wasn’t drinking in the spaghetti sauce, which made it smell delicious. I also added some red lentils to it, which cooked down into nothing and added texture and of course, added healthiness. But of course you all should be familiar with my lentil obsession by now…


Above: We ate outside again, because it was so warm. The spag bol tasted great – if only cheese wasn’t so expensive, we could have grated some over the top.

We were sitting outside drinking and talking (Tim: beer, Emma: Loud and Lola Cosmopolitan mix, Kieran and I: Red Wine) when the timer went off for the pav. I checked for signs of disaster but apart from being ENORMOUS (it has expanded to take up nearly the whole darn baking tray, which I think the cream of tarter may have had a hand in doing) it seemed to be absolutely fine. I whipped some cream and spread it thickly over, and then came the fun part.
Above: You may or may not know this, but one of the more effective ways of seeding a pomegranate is to hit it repeatedly with a wooden spoon till the ruby seeds rain down. So, here I am, well, smacking the pomegranate.

Above: This pav was soooo delicious, all crisp and sugary without and yieldingly marshmallowy within. The pomegranate also makes a great topping – it looks gorgeous and its fragrantly acidic, crunchy seeds go well with the cream and all the sugar. This is the third pav of Nigella’s that I’ve tried and I have to say they are fantastic recipes.




Above: From the top, the Pomegranate Pav, the Nectarine and Passionfruit Pav, and the Chocolate Raspberry Pav. They make me think of Miss World contestants, all lined up like that. Which do you think looks the prettiest? I sure can’t decide…

In other news: Less than ten days till Christmas! Aaaaahhh!!!

“Nowtro.”

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“The costumes are retro now, but they weren’t retro then. They were ‘nowtro.'” (A Mighty Wind) (one of my favourite films.)

After a retro cooking challenge was issued by an online food forum I frequent (ooh, alliteration!) I had a think about what I consider to actually be retro food. There is the obvious stuff – cheese fondue (which I have made successfully, and yes, it is delicious) or prawn cocktail, Boef en Croute and black forest gateaux – the sort of thing one reads about in a Jilly Cooper novel. And I concluded that as a child of ’86, I was really too young to be thinking about foods as retro – the closest I can get is being snide about that period in the late nineties/early 2000’s, where if it wasn’t drowned in balsamic vinegar it was covered in sweet chilli sauce, and chicken, cranberry and brie was the height of haute cuisine.

So I decided to let what was in our cupboards decide for me, and ended up with two distinctly different ‘retro’ dishes – one being Ratatouille, a dish densely packed with vegetables and, I understand, a classic of the seventies. The other thing I made – little coffee flavoured cakes, inexplicably named “Crybabies,” came from an Aunt Daisy cookbook that belonged to my great grandmother. Its margins are scrawled with notes and it is a piece of family history – indeed, social history- which I am very happy to own. It’s not what I would necessarily call retro, since the book would have been published in the 30’s or 40’s, but still pleasingly seems to go with the notion of cooking from the past.


Above: Ratatouille! The recipe I found in Nigella’s seminal text, How To Eat. It is so easy to make and is, if one entertains friends this way inclined, both vegetarian and gluten free. I had bought most of the ingredients at the vege market, and the only thing I didn’t put in the eggplant-courguette-tomato mix was capsicum because they are really expensive at the moment. It turned out absolutely delicious, by the way, and was a breeze to make in the non-stick pan I got for a 21st birthday present from family friends. (More alliteration, brought to you by the letter F)


Above: The Crybabies (sounds like a bad, coat-tail riding sixties girl group, speaking of retro…) These little cakes were so delicious and easy to make, that I’m going to list the recipe. I halved the original, by the way, but if you have the patience and a ton of golden syrup- be my guest.

Crybabies

Mix together the following: 1/2 cup hot, very strong coffee, 125 g soft butter, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup golden syrup (or, 6 tablespoons if this helps) 1 t each ground ginger and nutmeg. Stir in enough plain flour till it has a thick, cake batter dropping consistency. Pour 1/2 a teaspoon vinegar over one teaspoon baking soda, let it foam up and stir thoroughly into the batter. Drop spoonfuls onto a baking tray and bake at 180 for 20-25 minutes.

These are so good – spicy and doughy and treacly and perfect for dipping into a hot drink, or, as we ate them, to accompany a good movie. In our case, the amazing animated film Spirited Away, which we watched last night.

So; that was my retro project. I have a small problem now – I am going to be cooking lots of presents for Christmas – if this makes sense – but I can’t blog about it because a large proportion of my readers (ie my family) are to be the recipients for said food-gifts and I don’t want to ruin the surprise. So, although I have a lot of exciting stuff planned for the rest of the fast-speeding away time before Christmas, you probably won’t hear about it!