Category: Nigella Lawson

Madeleines, Crepes-Canneloni, and…Judi Dench?

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Warning: Long Post Ahead. Anyone reading this who knows me will be used to this…anyone reading this who doesn’t know me…Welcome!

Yesterday was that rare, rare thing in Wellington: A sunny day without wind. Unfortunately it was pretty much wasted on us as Tim had work all day at Starbucks. Nevertheless, we made the most of what time we had and went to the vege market in town to get a tray of free range eggs (definitely worth it, even if you are on a budget – plus we have a strict “happy chicken only” policy in our flat) They were white eggs, which is pretty unusual these days, although contrary to popular belief brown eggs aren’t in any way superior to white ones, it’s just that, (like people I guess) brown hens seem to lay brown eggs and white hens lay white ones.

So, while Tim toiled away making syrup-cinos for people, I went back to the flat, sat out on our sunny courtyard (with sunblock on and with my head in the shade, by the way) and read some Shakespeare. I was so busy basking in the sun and feeling self-satisfied that I almost forgot to read but it was a nice way of studying whilst not missing out on the weather.

I had started making some Proust’s Madeleines from Nigella’s How To Eat before I started studying – this is because they require an hour’s sit in the fridge. I know of the late Proust but not about him; a bit like when you get a word in Pictionary that you know you could easily spell but not draw a description of. A quick Wikipedia search reveals him to be an asthmatic, gay French novelist who expounded the delights of this little cake in his novel, À la recherche du temps perdu. Since I have recently acquired a natty silicone madeline tray (at the same time I got the steamer) I wanted to try them out, and enjoyed the sense of history behind my baking venture.

The recipe is pleasingly simple. I don’t know if anyone out there has a madeleine tray and would appreciate the recipe – let me know if you do. Firstly, one beats a couple of eggs and some sugar till thick. Nigella recommends using electric beaters, and so do I, in hindsight, but I decided to pursure with a mere whisk, not only in the hopes of dovetailing making cakes with excercise, but also to keep in the spirit of Proust himself, whose madeleines most likely preceded the invention of the electric beater.


Above: the whisked eggs and sugar, with How To Eat behind the bowl.

To this one adds sifted flour and some melted butter with a tablespoon of honey mixed in. I used some manuka honey that Mum and Dad had sent in a parcel. This needs to sit in the fridge for an hour, and then out of the fridge for half an hour, to get to room temperature. I don’t know what the reasoning behind this is, but I dutifully did it anyway. This isn’t something one could make spontaneously, but is definitely not taxing if you have the time, a bit like making bread from scratch. So, while it sat patiently, I went and absorbed myself in Shakespeare’s Cybeline. To help out with our learning, Tim and I have been watching lots of movie adaptations of the plays we have been studying – the lavish Branagh Hamlet, the reliable BBC Richard III (both over four hours long.) A particular gem though is a 1960s, avant garde take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream which not only features a young Helen Mirren as Hermia, but also has young Judi Dench as Titania, queen of the fairies, naked but for a few strategic flowers and covered in green and silver paint.

While this was happening, I was defrosting some mince and some frozen raspberries – the one for dinner, the other to go with the madeleines. After I had had enough Shakespeare, I started to make the crepes for the Crepes-Canneloni from Nigella’s Feast. It may seem rather taxingly fiddly – mince rolled up in crepes and baked in a tomato sauce – it couldn’t be simpler. The crepes take all of ten minutes to make and are reliably easy to flip, even for someone as cack-handed as me. I put them on a plate to the side, and used the same pan to brown the mince, which is then rolled up in the crepes and placed in a roasting dish. As for the tomato sauce, it is just a large can of tomatoes mixed with a little sugar and milk. This goes over the top and then you bake it. At any rate, it’s much easier than lasagne…

The madeleines only need about 6 minutes to bake, which meant I had to be hovering round the oven keeping an eye on them. As soon as they look brown on top they are done. The silicone mould meant that they slid out easily and retained their characteristic shell-markings. But first things first: Dinner, which I served with beans and some bulghar wheat (a little pan-European, but it meant extra carbs for Tim, plus it is fast and I couldn’t be bothered cooking rice or pasta.)


Above: Crepes-canneloni – delicious! One is supposed to use buffalo mozzarella on top, which we absolutely didn’t have…so we used colby instead. Still great.

As for the madeleines, they were fantastic! Soft, puffy and redolent of honey. The raspberries, which I had sprinkled a little caster sugar over, had formed their own syrup once defrosted, the tartness of which went beautifully with the cakes.


Above: The Madeleines, with the raspberries sitting darkly behind. Proust would have been proud.

Not to be outdone, Emma, who has been making quite a bit of jelly recently, produced this number: Orange jelly with orange pieces suspended within. Last week she made a gorgeous-looking raspberry jelly with raspberries in it, but I never got a photo of it. However, here is the jelly from last night:


Above: Emma’s jelly. Tim unmoulded it a little lopsided, yes, but no-one else can do it.

It tasted really zingy and summery, the orange pieces somehow completely lifting your everyday orange jelly. It was made from a sachet of sugar free jelly to boot – good for diabetics and celiacs alike! Hoorah!

As if all that was not adventure enough, after dinner our entire flat drove to Brooklyn (next ‘burb over from town) where there is a playground, complete with flying fox. It is actually three flying foxes (foxi?) set up next to each other so that three people can go at the same time. We had so much fun whizzing up and down (even I did, and I am intensely suspicious of anything that reminds me of OPC.)

After that we hit the actual playground, and while Emma and I rediscovered the simple joy that a good swing can bring, Kieran, Tim and Stefan (especially Kieran) attempted to garrot themselves on the spiderweb climber. Our downfall was probably jumping on the seated merry-go-round and taking her as fast as she could go. All of us emerged queasy and unable to walk in a straight line. A go on the see-saw seemed to put the internal organs back in place and we drove home happy and tired to watch the DVD of Outrageous Fortune, season 2. (Purchased like this: Tim and I decided to walk past the sales at the CD shop to practice not spending our money on crap. Ten minutes later, we had bought the DVD. We need to work on this.)

From Pig’s Bum to Cowpats…

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Haven’t posted in a wee while on account of studying for an upcoming Shakespeare exam, my only one – hoorah!

Last night’s dinner came via Nigella.com, which has a section where people can post their own recipes. It is indeed fertile ground for food creations, and I found two recipes that suited the ingredients I had to hand. The main was a Turkish dish, very easy, more of a suggestion than a recipe. Into a casserole dish go chicken pieces (I used thighs as that is what we always have) a chopped onion, chopped potatoes, a can of tomatoes, and a sprinkling of cinnamon. Bake till the chicken and potatoes are cooked, and well, that’s it. To go with I made something called Pumpkin Tian, which involves cubing some pumpkin, dusting with a little seasoned flour, sprinkling with grated parmesan and baking.

The end result:

Above: Turkish Chicken with Potatoes and Tomatoes.

There was a photo of the chicken with the pumpkin on the side but the stove looked a bit toooo grimy for my liking – it has since been given a wipe so don’t worry! The chicken tasted great, really warming and hearty, and cooking everything bathed in tomatoes meant that the chicken was super moist and the potatoes flavoursome. I can’t honestly say that I tasted the cinnamon, so I added an extra shake before serving. If I was to make this again I might biff a whole cinnamon quill in while it cooks and fish it out at the end, for extra flavour.

Because it was a day of the week ending in Y, I had a hankering for some pudding. To go with the homestyle dinner, I thought that a chocolate self-saucing pud might be good. I think chocolate self saucing pudding is one of those dishes in the canon of “classic” New Zealand food, I’m not sure how or why this came about though. I remember Mum making it occasionally for pudding when I was younger, in my household it was called, rather poetically, “Chocolate Floating Pudding.” The recipe I used came from Nigella’s Feast, and is not only easy to make but requires the simplest of ingredients – a great one for when you think you have nothing in the cupboard. Nigella’s recipe is a somewhat modern take on the original though, with cinnamon in the mixture and an optional slug of rum in with the water that goes on top. Not having rum, I used some Marsala all’uovo.


Above: Closeup on the Chocolate Floating Pudding. Nigella succinctly notes that the pudding “isn’t the most beauteous creation, there is a touch of the cowpat about it.” I feel that my photo is a direct visual realisation of her description.

No harm done, as it tasted fantastic. The marsala added resiny depth and fullness of flavour and it was as easy to eat (doused liberally with milk) as it was to make.

Pig’s Bum! (Need I say more?)

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As I mentioned in a previous post, I have got myself a big bunch of rhubarb. Happily, tonight’s dessert not only uses this rhubarb to glorious effect, it also fulfils my desire to steam things. To top it off, it is called Pig’s Bum, thus indulging my love of silly names. Ultimate Pudding.

But first, dinner. Again, no meat, but we definitely didn’t go hungry. The weather was – you guessed it – rubbish today, and I felt like something bolstering for dinner, so I made a sort of loose minestrone. That is, I didn’t follow any particular recipe, instead, just used what I had kicking round. That happened to be: onion, celery, carrot, pumpkin, potato and later on, asparagus. It must be one of the most virtuous dinners you can eat – a trillion vegetables, bound together by stock and a bit of pasta. It is so healthy that it pretty much obliterates the calorific dessert that follows…right?

Above: Veges for the minestrone – so many that I needed two chopping boards! Healthy!
So, I sweated the veges in a little butter and olive oil for about ten minutes. I then crumbled in a stock cube – Knorr Porcini flavoured cubes brought back for me from Italy by my aunty Lynn. (it’s what Nigella uses!!) I then added water to the pot, brought it to the boil, and let it simmer away while I made the pud.
I wish I had thought to take a photo of the rhubarb (microwaved for a few minutes with a spoonful each of sugar and water) – it was just so pink, it looked as though I had added food colouring. The pudding, which is from Nigella’s How To Eat, is basically a Victoria Sponge batter mixed in with the rhubarb. I have to agree with Nigella when she says how great the batter tastes. I have always been a sucker for eating the mixture though…Anyway, you heap it all into the greased pudding bowl, cover it, and steam for two hours.
Once the pudding was a-steaming, I added some chopped asparagus and a handful of macaroni to the pot of soup. Once the pasta had swelled up and cooked, I ladled it out and grated over some parmesan. It was perfect – warming, comforting, tasty.

Above: Tim’s minestrone (rhymes with pinecone?)

As for the Pig’s Bum, it turned out beautifully, an incredibly light sponge with flecks of pink throughout.
Above: Pig’s Bum!

It tasted amazingly good, especially considering it took all of five minutes to make. Unlike the last couple of things I have steamed, it wasn’t stodgy in the slightest – really very light in fact. So, by the time Tim and I had ploughed through it, and Stefan and Kieran had had some too…there really isn’t much left! Will definitely be making this again at some stage.

You Say Banana

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Went out and bought some more asparagus today, for the express purpose of roasting it for tonight’s dinner. As I mentioned in the previous post, the weather here is rubbish – and it makes you want to EAT. We had a meatless dinner tonight, (A) because I hadn’t defrosted anything and (B) it’s good to make the meat go a little further by ignoring it sometimes. Our dinner comprised of roast asparagus, roast pumpkin, and a curiousity found in the Supersavers book called Cauliflower Bread. I have to admit the name drew me in. This oddity in no way resembles bread (it is in fact, gluten free) and is made of mashed potato, steamed, mashed cauli, eggs, cheese and butter all mixed together and baked in a makeshift bain-marie (ie, sit your dish in a roasting pan filled with boiling water while it bakes.) The result is actually really good, gratifyingly stodgy and almost a complete meal – protein, carbs, and veges in one. Didn’t take a photo because the batteries for the camera needed charging. But, luckily they were charged in time for dessert…

Kieran had bought a packet of puff pastry for some reason ages ago and admitted he was never going to use it. I acquired it, but decided to bake a pudding for everyone (well, everyone except Emma, luckily she was out.) Had a shmooze through some books before deciding upon the Banana Butterscotch Upside Down Tart from Nigella’s Forever Summer. Very simple – slice up bananas and place at the bottom of a pie dish (warning – you need a lot!) Melt butter, and a surprisingly small amount of sugar together, before stirring a scant tablespoon each of golden syrup and cream. Pour this caramelly mixture over the banana, then roll out the pastry, (I got Tim to do this – he actually did all the really hard work for this recipe) tuck over the top of the bananas, bake, et voila!
As you can see below, the pastry puffed up beautifully.
Above – the baked banana tart. Yes, our stove is grimy.
Tim also did the next bit – turning out the boiling hot tart onto a plate. I have to say, he did it without any stress and didn’t burn himself with the caramel as I undoubtedly would have…
Above – the finished product. Am not the most die-hard banana fan, and the idea of warm bananas doesn’t really light my fire but this stuff was super moreish. You probably don’t need me to tell you that it’s nearly gone already…

A Steaming Mishap, and late-night brownies.

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I got home from work a bit early yesterday, and convinced myself that it was cold enough to use my steamer (it was quite mild outside really.) In my Supersavers book, there is a recipe for what looks like steamed, deconstructed, spag bol. That is, you cook some short pasta (I did macaroni, as the book recommended) add mince, canned tomatoes, frozen beans, dried thyme, garlic and an egg. Put it in your pudding steamer and steam for two hours. I was smitten not only because I got to steam something again, but also because miraculously, we had the exact ingredients required. So, two episodes of Season 1 Outrageous Fortune later, (did I mention that we bought the DVD and are rapturously pleased with it?) it was ready. I served it with the remaining asparagus, which I roasted, as per a suggestion of Nigella’s in How To Eat. If you are a fan of asparagus, PLEASE try this! It is wonderful! Just a 220 C oven, a tablespoon of olive oil, 15 minutes, and then sprinkle it with a little salt. It is nutty and slightly crispy and absolutely fantastic. Second only to asparagus rolls (on white bread with canned asparagus) for my favourite way of eating it.

Anyway…maybe I didn’t grease the pudding bowl enough (didn’t grease it at all, come to think of it) but the steamed mince thingy really didn’t unmould well – only half of it, as you can see below, came out. No matter – it’s not what you would call a ‘photogenic’ dish and I’m sure that it would have looked ugly even if it had turned out properly!
Above – Half of our dinner. The other half is still in the steamer…

Well, it tasted good, which was the important thing, but I don’t see how a combination of its ingredients could really go wrong. And it did seem like the exact sort of recipe you could expect to find in a book called “Supersaver’s.” It benefited from salt, and it could have definitely been improved with some cheese. But, cheese is expensive and grating is a pain, so we don’t often eat it frivolously. As you know, the asparagus was amazing.
Emma was babysitting last night, and Kieran, Stefan, Tim and I were all watching Outrageous Fortune. (pausing only to switch off the DVD and turn to Prime for Flight of the Conchords) Somewhere in the middle of this, I got a real hankering for some kind of pudding. Problem was, time was ticking on. Suddenly I decided to make something I used to do a lot as a youngster – Alison Holst’s chocolate brownies. Now, I’m not teeerribly fond of La Holst (she does seem to take the fun out of cooking) but as I said, I am very familiar with these brownies and knew they’d do the trick. I used the Dollars And Sense cookbook that Mum gave me some years back (a book filled with many gems actually) and got Tim to help me round up ingredients so as to get it going faster.
It is very easy, one of those wonderful one-pot melt and mix recipes that leave you with a minimum of washing up! No fancy ingredients required, but I added some chopped dark chocolate (had a bit lying round in the cupboard.) We put it in the oven, and halfway through another episode of Outrageous Fortune, they were ready. Not as densely squidgy and delicious as Nigella’s, but good for a quick fix, and much cheaper. You can see below what was left of them!
Above: Brownies, made in a silicone tin (can it still be called a tin if it’s made of silicone?) that Tim’s parents gave me.

Recurring Steam

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There was a half price sale at Briscoes last Saturday. Tim, Kieran and I trooped down there to idly have a look at any bargains…and walked out an hour later groaning with bags. One of my purchases was a pudding steamer, something I have been looking on Trademe for for a while now. I made Nigella’s Golden Syrup Steamed Pudding, from How To Be A Domestic Goddess which was unbelievably delicious and very easy. You mix up a fairly basic sponge batter, grease the pudding bowl and lid, put golden syrup and lemon juice in the bottom of the bowl, dollop over the batter and clip on the lid. Lower this into a pan of boiling water, cover, and let steam for about two hours. Couldn’t be easier and seriously, couldn’t be more yum. Unfortunately, there aren’t really that many recipes these days that call for a pudding steamer and oh, how I long to steam something…

Above: Golden Syrup Steamed Pud. Perfect for when it’s raining…which is every bloody day at the moment in Wellington!
I can’t remember what I actually cooked for dinner that night, (ie, the meat component) but I do remember what I made on the side – a wonderful, wonderful thing called Pan Haggerty which comes from The Accidental Vegetarian. I know that some blogs post recipes but I’m not sure whether or not you need permission or something so you don’t get sued. So, I won’t give you the recipe but I will say this: (slowly) You thinly slice up potatoes and an onion, layer it in an oven dish, dot with butter, bake, then top with cheese and grill. Pa-dah! So good…I might make it again tonight. The photo below is a bit rubbish (especially in the context of the standards of the rest of the photos) but I thought I’d include it as it seems to convey the golden warmth of the potato-ey, cheesey dish.
Above: Pan Haggerty. With a name like that, how could you resist?
By the way, this is what happened to the pudding. (not just Tim and me eating it though!Everyone except Emma – who is celiac- had some.)

What I’ve been up to lately…

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I have taken a lot of photos of things I have been cooking over the last week or so to build up a collection for this blog. In order to get up to speed, I thought I’d post a few below. Hopefully it doesn’t take too long for y’all to load the pictures…

Chicken Gougere: from the Supersavers book. I made this for dinner last Friday. It consists of a circle of choux pastry in which you put sauteed chicken and vegetables (the sauce of which is mysteriously addictive – I’m amazed there was enough left by the time I’d finished “tasting it to check the seasoning”) I guess choux pastry does seem a little deranged for Friday night dinner after work, but, well, I love what Nigella calls “putskying” round in the kitchen and if you are gonna make pastry, choux surely looks the most impressive for the limp stirring it requires to make. This was really delicious, and supposed to serve 6 – worryingly, Tim and I polished it all off while watching the Simpsons.


Above: Chicken Gougere, darl.

Gingerbread Muffins: from Nigella’s Feast. I had a bad head cold a couple of weeks ago (which I haven’t quiiiite managed to shake off) and as a result lost my sense of smell. I mean, I had my nose in the Rawleighs, in my bag of star anise that Mum and Dad got me, in the jar of crushed garlic (which I really don’t like actually) and I couldn’t smell anything. Nada. Not a sausage. Hence the fact that I cooked a lot of chilli and curry that week. I also made these wondrous muffins of Nigella’s, because I had a hankering to bake and thought that the heavily spiced ingredients might break through my nasal passages of steel. They didn’t but they had, er, a lovely texture. Tim and flatmate Kieran raved about them though, so when I got my sense of smell and thus my sense of taste back, I made another batch. Oh boy, was it worth the wait. Heady with cinnamon, cloves, and ginger (naturally) and made dense with golden syrup, these are fantastic. Will have to make some next time I’m up home. By the way the photo below isn’t so much to show you the muffins as to show our kitchen table in a very, very rare state of cleanliness.


Above – Gingerbread muffins…on a clean table!

Pasta with Asparagus, Lemon, Garlic and Parsely – Nigella’s Forever Summer. Made this because asparagus was going cheap at 4 Square down the road, and asparagus is one of those foods that seems to herald the arrival of warmer weather. It was hosing down the night that I made this, but whatever. I served it with some chorizo that I had bought ridiculously cheap at the Food Show earlier this year (well, we wouldn’t have chorizo otherwise) You may notice that it is made with macaroni, which I’m pretty sure isn’t exactly what Nigella had in mind…but we were out of penne. Either way it tasted lovely, but didn’t look as nice as it would have had it been made with something more upmarket…


Above: Note the flash salt! As Kieran would say, “What is this, France?”

Also, just thought that I should point out that I made a South African mince dish for dinner the other night, from the New Zealand Cookbook, called Bobotie. Now, this recipe was an adaptation, and I adapted it further, so I wouldn’t want to serve it to the ambassador of South Africa or anything but…it was delicious! Quite unusual, with the inclusion of curry powder, worcester sauce, sultanas, turmeric, vinegar, apricot jam (I used some quince jam I’d made earlier this year) and milk-soaked bread. You then put it in a loaf dish, cover with beaten eggs, and bake. The thing is…it looks kind of gross. It tastes good but…the camera doesn’t love it. Hence the description sans picture. I was very pleased with this on the whole though, as I am always on the lookout for ‘new’ interesting mince recipes.

Do You Remember The First Time?

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Asked Jarvis Cocker of Pulp in their song of the same name. I thought it would be rather pleasing for my first post here (not counting the long winded introduction below!) to be about the first ever Nigella recipe I made, which I recreated for dinner the other night. I was about 14 or 15 when I first saw her TV show Nigella Bites and while I didn’t quite have an epiphany involving God-beams, I was pretty enthralled and had never really come across what we might now call a “celebrity chef” with such passion and such a way with words. Jamie Oliver was the big thing at the time and I found him interesting but too…frantic. Nigella was different.

Anyway, one of the things she made was this gorgeous looking creation called lemon linguine which I attempted for dinner that night using (cringe!) a can of reduced cream instead of the real thing, as it was all we had. It still tasted fantastic and since then I guess Nigella was destined to be part of my life. So, in the interest of having a nice starting point for my blog, and because I had all the ingredients to hand, I made it for dinner the other night. Was going to serve as is before remembering that well-meaning relatives would see the picture and so hastily boiled up some brocolli that our flatmate Stefan brought back for us from his parents’ orchard in Hawkes Bay.


Lemon Linguine with brocolli!