Category: Nigella Lawson

20th century soy

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After all those feijoa brownies – which on one particular day served as both my breakfast and dinner, all I can say is that the heart wants what the heart wants – I thought I’d rekindle my relationship with tofu, get some soy back in my bloodstream. The stuff I like to get comes from the vege market on Dixon/Willis Street and is $4 for a generous block of four squares, or fillets if you like, of firm tofu.

We went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D that night and I wanted a fast-moving dinner planned for when we returned home. It all worked out fantastically – crisp slices of matzoh-crumbed tofu resting on a bed, no, a beanbag of chickpea and golden sultana-studded couscous, and a garlicky tahini sauce on top. It was all made very quickly – such is the joy of couscous, instantly puffing itself up into a meal, and tofu, which has no bacteria squatting within its meatless walls to be smoked out in the cooking process, cutting down on pan-time.

Yes, the photos aren’t great but 1) I was tired and hungry and 2) all that beige. What would you do? There’s only so much coriander in my fridge.
Tofu with Garlic Tahini, Couscous and Chickpeas
Half a block of firm tofu
Breadcrumbs
3 fat cloves garlic
2 Tablespoons tahini
Pinch smoked paprika
1/2 cup couscous
Boiling water
1 tin chickpeas
1/3 cup golden sultanas (you could use normal sultanas, or currants, or dried cranberries etc)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Handful almonds (or other nuts)
Tip the couscous into a bowl, pour over boiling water to cover and sit a plate on top while you get on with the tofu. When you return to it, remove the plate and fluff up the couscous with a fork. Stir in the drained can of chickpeas and the sultanas (or whatever you’re using instead), the spices plus salt to taste.

Wrap the tofu in a couple of paper towels and press on it to let some of the moisture absorb away. Bin the paper and slice up the tofu. Put your breadcrumbs (I used matzoh meal) onto a plate and press the tofu slices into them, covering both sides of each slice. Heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil till good and hot, and fry the slices till golden, a couple of minutes each side.

Finally, crush or finely chop the garlic cloves, and fry gently (in the same pan that you did the tofu in is fine). Stir in the tahini and a tablespoon of water and adding as much water as you like till you have a smoothish pale sauce. Add the paprika. Serve the tofu slices on top of the couscous with the sauce drizzled over. Sprinkle with the almonds, chopped, and a handful of torn coriander.
The couscous thing was adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe and was delicious- buttery chickpeas, tender couscous grains and chewy, sweet golden sultanas. I’m always happy to be eating tofu but pressing the crumbs into it provided a bit more texture and welcome crunch. The sauce tied it all together with its garlic smoothness, although undeniably it was a really ugly colour…even with the ‘sprinkle-the-coriander-over’ routine I still couldn’t disguise its utter beige-ity.
We ate this for dinner, as I said, after seeing Alice in Wonderland in 3D. It was my first 3D movie (yeah, so I still haven’t seen Avatar) and once I’d stopped jumping every time a leaf swirled out in front of me off the screen it was really fun. Because I loved the Alice books so much as a youngster I was a bit suspicious about what a film version could offer me, especially since the trailer made it look pretty rubbish but…I absolutely loved it. Not since Step Up 2: The Streets have I been so pleasantly surprised by a film. It was visually gorgeous for a start, but the acting and the fleshed-out characters really made it a wonderful experience. Mia Waisakowska’s Alice is powerful, at first simply reacting to what’s around her then gradually becoming more powerful, overall a highly compelling character. Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter are stunning queens. Apparently Bonham-Carter drew inspiration from Nigella for her role, and yeah, I could see it. And Johnny Depp is as captivating as, you know, he ALWAYS is. It drooped occasionally but the only thing I really didn’t like about it was the Avril Lavigne song that blasts immediately over the ending credits. It’s so bad that it’s like a parody of an awful song rather than just a simply awful song. Disney kindly showed us several fancy trailers for upcoming 3D films prior to Alice in Wonderland starting, including Toy Story 3, something about owls, and yet another Shrek sequel. I wonder if 3D is proving to be an exciting platform for companies to re-thrash already thrashed franchises…
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Title via: That other mad hatter, Marc Bolan, and T-Rex’s 20th Century Boy.
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Music lately:

Martha by Rufus Wainwright from his new album All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu. I love Wainwright’s music, his theatrical imagery and endless voice, so a new album is always a bit of a treat. This is just him and a piano, not sparse in the slightest, I’m not sure he could do ‘sparse’ but utterly beautiful and stripped of any real excess. Martha, presumably named for his sister, is one particularly affecting track on this album, the first he’s put out there since his mother’s death earlier this year.
Night Hawkes from Wellingtonian Red Steer’s latest EP, The Fever Fold. It’s an exciting track with an enviable beat that sneaks in partway through and makes me want to choreograph something. Tim reviewed it at The Corner, an NZ website so awesome that we both write for it, and you can even download the EP for free once you’re done reading up on it (and my review of MGMT’s Congratulations, there’s no free download but I do reference Hair, almost as exciting…)
Sleigh Bells’ Tell Em, crunchier than sandpaper and very fun. Their relentless fuzzity could be hard on the ears but as someone who grew up rural, ears pressed to the radio at night with one finger slowly inching the tuner round to pick up any kind of signal, it all makes sense to me.
Do you know what I’m emphatically not listening to? Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate’s Ali and Toumani, the collaboration that has recently been released, five year’s on from Toure’s death. We walked from the top of Cuba Street to the bottom of Lambton Quay at the other end of town, entering every single music shop we found and not one place had it. I know, I should have bought it sooner…
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Next time: Oh sure we ate tofu but…I also made a pudding of the ice-creamy variety. So you’ll find out about the all sharp change in direction when I next get time to update this.

puttin’ on the grits

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Straightforward question: what’s your favourite food?


Me: ice cream and cornbread.

A while back if you’d asked this I would have frozen up and said “ummm chocolate?” but today I was sitting around daydreaming about how I might answer various questions on the offchance that some cool magazine wanted to interview me, and I managed to narrow it down to those two. Like Kenneth Parcell (“There are only two things I love in this world. Everybody and television”) I am a throw-my-arms-around-the-world kind of foodlover, but where “most edible things” is an adequate answer, cornbread and ice cream is more specific. That said, I’m also happy to call Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness Cake one of my favourite things to make. You would be too.



All this daydreaming about cornbread made me crave a slice of it like crazy. It’s just another cold, dark, early winter Wellington evening and I’ve got a sore throat. Who ya gonna call? Nigella, fool!

On Sunday night I bought a healthy, happy Waitoa Free Range chicken and roasted her up with white wine, lemons, butter and breadcrumbs. The cold leftovers in the fridge got turned into pasta last night with the roasting pan juices and golden sultanas soaked in sherry. Tonight I’m finishing off the chicken by going vaguely Mexican, inspired by a salad recipe from Nigella Express, with her cornbread on the side. Just saying it almost makes my sore throat better.



Mexican Chicken Salad

Adapted from Nigella Express

Dressing:

1 ripe avocado
1/2 cup sour cream (or good mayonnaise, to make this dairy-free)
juice of a lime
1 garlic clove, crushed
salt and pepper to taste

Either whisk the dressing ingredients together or blitz them in a food processor.

Salad:

300g shredded, cooked chicken
1 crisp apple, diced
2 spring onions, chopped
handful chopped coriander
125g shredded cos lettuce (I used cabbage)

Put all the salad ingredients in a bowl, spoon the dressing over the top.



Like a warm, buttery yellow mattress. I could actually lie down on top of it and fall asleep quite happily. Tim and I sat on either side of this, slicing off pieces and buttering them. What remains is kind of a wonky Z shaped bit of cornbread

Cornbread

175g cornmeal (or polenta, same diff so look for either)
125g plain flour
45g caster sugar
2 t baking powder
250ml full fat milk
1 egg
45g butter, melted
Set oven to 200 C. Grease whatever you’re using – a muffin tin, a 20cm-ish brownie tin, etc. Melt the butter. Stir in the milk and egg with a fork. Then tip in all the dry ingredients, mix till just combined – don’t worry about lumps – then pour into your tin and bake, for 20-25 minutes. I have made this with superfine cornmeal and the more granular stuff, and a mix of the two, anything is fine really although the granular stuff gives slightly more bite to your finished product.

It was such a good dinner. Even with all the crispness and coolness of the salad it worked in this colder weather, fresh flavours to wake you up on a dark evening. It’s amazingly rewarding to eat for the little effort you need to put in. You could replace the chicken with anything else – beef, tofu, chickpeas…you could leave the sour cream out of the dressing, use mayonnaise or yoghurt, double the quantities and drink it like a savoury green smoothie, whatever, really. The sour cream suits the avocado, their tanginess and richness going head to head like it’s Tekken 2 but instead of a nubile catsuited woman and the panda bear (my favourite character) engaging in combat, the flavours skip off hand in hand towards the sunset, singing in perfect harmony. I have a feeling, having just re-read that, that I gotta lay off the cough syrup before trying to blog, as it messes with my ability to throw down a decent metaphor.

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Title coming atcha via: Puttin’ On The Ritz, a song that I did a choreographed and performed a tap dance to at the 1997 (1996?) Combined Schools Choir Festival. While I may not have been up to the great Fred Astaire I’m sure in my own mind, at the time, I was well on my way.
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Music lately:

What You Know About Baltimore by Ogun feat Phathead from The Wire: “…and all the pieces matter” What do I know about Baltimore? Not much more than I know about, say, Fielding I guess. This song is awesome, the delivery of the titular interrogative somehow both menacing and blase at the same time. First time I heard this song I kept swivelling my head to look out the window – I swear it sounds like someone’s yelling “Laura!” in the background of the song at various points.

Buffalo Gals by the recently late Malcolm McLaren. A prosaic choice, but to be fair, I was never exactly a walking catalogue of his work. This song is sprinkled with all kinds of good things laid over a minimalist beat that was ahead of its time – thinking about how in the mid 2000s there was that trend for songs that were almost not even there at all. It must have been an exciting life he led, and while I can’t say I thought about him on a daily basis, it was sad news – he was in many ways a drop of bright red food colouring in the plain white icing of recent music history.

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Next time: I have some tofu in the fridge that needs using…although if this sore throat doesn’t sort itself out it might be a steady diet of chicken soup and Canadiol expectorant. Hopefully I get better soon because it’s my birthday on Saturday. Any suggestions about what I could do? As always, April appears suddenly and I’m caught short without any cool ideas. I’ll be 24. Hopefully still young enough to be interesting, goodness knows there is probably some seven year old out there who’s writing a blog about making cupcakes while interweaving Clay Davis quotes and referencing some obscure early draft of Evita…any suggestions about how a good birthday is spent are more than welcome.

it’s sweetness that i’m thinking of

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Girdlebuster pie. There’s not much I can say about it that its list of ingredients doesn’t explain better. There really isn’t one positive thing about these ingredients. It’s a menace to society. This pie is as punk as they come.

Tim: We should have this pie before and after dinner.

I made Girdlebuster pie from Nigella Christmas three weeks ago for Rod Stewart Appreciation Day. However, I also made a roasting dish full of macaroni cheese and plenty else besides, and hadn’t banked on how full everyone would be. The pie remained in the freezer. My best friend was visiting Wellington and came over for dinner last week. I planned on serving this pie triumphantly for pudding. However the dinner I made filled us up too much and we were too tired to eat anything else. The pie remained in the freezer. I began to wonder if the pie was cursed.

In hindsight this is kind of stupid, and maybe I just need to stop overfeeding everyone I meet.

Unable to deal with it sitting there sullenly by the tray of ice cubes, I brought it out after dinner last night. Holy cow. It won’t just bust your girdle, it’ll dissolve your teeth. Potentially it will remove years from your life. But people, it tastes incredible.

Girdlebuster Pie

From Nigella Christmas. Who else could this have come from?

  • 375g digestive/superwine/Girl Guide biscuits 
  • 75g soft butter
  • 100g dark or milk chocolate, chopped
  • 1 litre coffee flavoured ice cream
  • 300g golden syrup
  • 100 light muscovado sugar
  • 75g butter
  • 1/4 teaspoon flaky sea salt
  • 2 tablespoons bourbon (I used whisky)
  • 125ml cream

In a food processor, blast the biscuits, the butter and the chocolate pieces till it’s all crumbs. In all frightening honesty I added a little more butter as it seemed too dry. Press into a 23cm pie plate (I had a 25cm one which was sweet as) working carefully to form a ‘lip’ of biscuit higher than the rim of the dish if you can. Took me a while but wasn’t too tough. Freeze, till solid.

Let the ice cream soften, then spread it into the biscuit base carefully. Cover in clingfilm, return to the freezer. Meanwhile, put the sugar, syrup and butter into a saucepan and let it melt over a low to medium heat, then turn it up to boiling for five minutes. It will get darker and bubbly but try and let it stay there as long as you dare. Without it burning fully of course. Remove from the heat and add the bourbon. It will hiss and splutter a bit. Add the cream, stir in thoroughly, then allow the sauce to cool a bit. Pour it over the pie to cover the ice cream layer, and return to the freezer. Serve it straight from the freezer – no need to let it thaw.

I always offer a sneer when a recipe says to cut into small slices because it’s rich. With that in mind, kindly don’t sneer when I ask you to do the same here. This isn’t so much rich as deadly, deadly sweet. Its sweetness is like anaconda venom. Fun at first, but then five minutes later you can’t feel your legs. Maybe I’m mixing my metaphors here. Long story short, don’t wear a high-waisted pencil skirt while you’re eating this (fellas, I’m looking at you too).

Apologies for the terrible photography. For some reason my camera was on a particularly grainy setting…like there was a dusting of sugar across the lens…

Aside from the fact that one slice sent me into a frantic, blinky downward spiral as my blood cells united to try and fight off the caramel sauce, it is rather delicious. It’s not rocket science – chocolatey biscuit base, cold, creamy ice cream centre, and sauce, darkly toffee-d and deepened by the splash of alcohol – but experiencing them all together is something of a revelation, like every single public holiday and birthday and bar mitzvah condensed into one pie dish. It’s delicious, but it’s hardcore. Eat with trepidation.

Tonight I went to a preview of BOY, a film by the exceptionally talented Taika Waititi (of Two Cars, One Night and Eagle vs Shark). Boy is a rather stunning film, with lots of quickly cut light and dark moments, gorgeous visuals (including hand-scrawled animation) and perfect music choices, but what really moves it forward is the beautiful acting performances from everyone on screen. Go see it if you can – it’s pretty easy to love.
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Title brought to you by Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo Stance! Such an excellent song! That it deserves more exclamation marks! The video I link to is her looking amazing while performing at the Smash Hits awards in 1989. I wonder if they still have the Best House/Rap/Dance outfit award? This song is from her album Raw Like Sushi, which is just the sort of simile I’d employ if I was making that album too. Love your work, Neneh.
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Music while I type:

Lazy Line Painter Jane by Belle and Sebastian from their EP of the same name. I wouldn’t say I’m a Belle and Sebastian fan but I do love this song – from it’s purposefully strummed opening chords to the rather glorious coda five minutes later. Worth sitting round for.

Grandmaster Flash, The Message. The other day Tim was singing away, all “Don’t. Push. Me. Cause. I’m. Close. To. The. Edge” while we were doing groceries and kid you not, I told him to stop singing Limp Bizkit. Oops. Either it has been too long since I’ve heard this song or Tim is really bad at his vocal interpretations. Either way we both kind of suck. You have to admit, taken out of context, those lyrics do have a nu-metal tang to them. Unlike us, this song doesn’t suck. Hypnotic beat, relaxed delivery, and completely, completely classic.

Vampire Weekend, Cousins, from their latest album Contra. This is the first song Vampire Weekend has put out there which has really gripped me (not that they care, I’m sure.) It’s so high energy and catchy and over before you know it and all those other good things that a pop song should be.
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Next time: I might make something a little more grown-up. I have two quinces in the fridge, I’m trying to work out how to best celebrate them being in season, I’m thinking sorbet…

rod only knows

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As I struggled ineffectually to transfer a roasting dish of Nigella’s macaroni cheese into oven, it made me think of that ecclesiastical conundrum, Could God make chilli so spicy that even He couldn’t eat it? I’m not to compare Nigella to any god, but it made me chuckle, and when you’re faced with roughly ten squillion kilos of macaroni cheese what else can you do?

Sunday was an intense day on many levels, as the last home game for the Wellington Phoenix happened to fall upon Rod Stewart Appreciation Day this year. It was a day of such parlour games as “pin the mole on the Rod” (awesomely organised by Anna, with medals for prizes) and listening to his many albums on repeat. I have to admit I’m not really a fan of Rod Stewart but there is definitely plenty of scope for appreciation. The eternal blonde hair. The boundless fertility. The early pout, which became the latter-day leathery smirk. The ludicrous lyrics for You’re In My Heart. The weird chest-swelling feeling you get in spite of yourself during Rhythm of my Heart. The actual fabulousness of Stay With Me, technically a Faces song, so. The leopard print…apparel.

So if a whole bunch of people are descending upon you for soft-rock and pre-football cheer and you’ve insisted on catering, there’s not many other options but to provide kilos of macaroni cheese, Nigella-style.

Three days later, I’m still too full to even think about it for a good long time. I’m so full I can’t even deal with typing out the recipe from Nigella Christmas. Just think of any decent macaroni cheese recipe you know and then increase the ingredients TENFOLD. (It did taste so, so very good by the way, or at least I thought so.)

Perhaps all the dairy products went to my head or something but I found myself making cupcakes at 10:00pm the night before then rising early the next day to ice them with Rod Stewart’s official tartan. Or at least as close as my collection of food colouring could get to it.

Yes, it’s electric pink instead of red but…I feel like it’s what Rod would have wanted. While I was at it I thought I might as well ice the rest of the cupcakes in homage to the mighty Wellington Phoenix (or “The Pheen” as they are known…in my head.)

Okay, simplistic, but what were you expecting? A sensitive and detailed buttercream rendering of the Phoenix crest? A lovingly crafted sculpture of Ricki Herbert’s head made from marzipan? Maybe if they win the league.

Unfortunately everyone left before I got to bring out the pudding…which means we’ve still got an entire girdlebuster pie and ice cream cake sitting in the freezer, awkwardly untouched. In fairness to everyone attending the day was about Rod Steward and the Phoenix, not my ability to make pie for people, PLUS with the macaroni cheese and everything else we ate in the morning (the spread was bolstered by people bringing in fruit, bagels, chicken, buns etc) thoughts of eating even more were most likely the last thing on peoples’ minds. This evening Tim and I finally busted into the ice cream cake, which was amazingly good and perhaps even nicer being eaten with the knowledge that we didn’t have to share it with anyone else.

Please excuse my actually rubbish photo! It was dark and the subject was melting. My peace offering is a recipe for the Peanut Butter Sauce poured over the ice cream cake – you may think that Nigella kind of goes on about it but a mere spoonful of this will assure you that she speaks the truth. And then some.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Sauce

From Nigella Express

175ml cream
100g smooth peanut butter
100g good milk chocolate, chopped (I’d recommend Whittaker’s…I used dark chocolate because that’s what I had)
3 tablespoons golden syrup

Tip the ingredients into a pan and gently melt together over a low heat, stirring occasionally. I used a mini whisk to move it about. It might look a little grainy and non-cohesive at first but if you keep it warm and stir it frequently you will end up with a thick, glossy pool of sauce. Sauce that tastes incredible.

Incidentally, it hardens up when left in the fridge and can be turned back into sauce by sitting the container in a bowl of hot water for a while. But once solidified, it can be eaten by the spoonful and tastes like some kind of ridiculous Reeses Cup-style peanut butter chocolate truffle…I can’t see it lasting now that we’ve started it. And I guess I could always just keep the Girdlebuster Pie in the freezer till next year’s festivities?

In a very happy end to the day, the Pheen won against the Newcastle Jets, making it their 19th consecutive unbeaten game at the stadium and putting them that much closer to the finals. By the game’s thrilling conclusion I was almost teary eyed, but whether it was the game or the missed opportunity to eat Girdlebuster Pie is anyone’s guess. It may have also had something to do with the fact that the young offspring of various Phoenix team members ran onto the field to find their respective parents, and while I always think children are like horses, best admired from a distance and looked after by someone else, it was heart-into-puddle adorable. A draw forced the game into excruciating overtime but the Phoenix scoring two goals in swift succession made it one of the more exciting sports events I’ve seen in my entire life, I know that’s not saying much. But it’s true.
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Title brought to you by: While I was toying with labelling this Bigmouth Strikes Again instead I lean towards an awful pun courtesy of the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows from Pet Sounds. I know it has been used in far too many romantic comedy soundtracks but it really is a gleaming gem of a song.
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Music lately:

Freedom 90′ by George Michael from his album Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1. I am truly not a fan of George Michael’s music at all but this song is exempt from anything: it is amazing. The jingle-jangle piano is intoxicating. If someone could make me a mixtape of every song from the 90s featuring that piano sound I would love them forever. (I know for one there’s a Primal Scream song that would make a good starter for this project)

I Ran (sang here by Manoel Felciano) from LaChiusa’s intriguing Little Fish, a musical about quitting smoking but also about the larger things in life around it… I am more or less obsessed with the cast recording but especially with this song. If you can find and listen to Gavin Creel singing this then you are doing well.

Almost Out Of Water from Who Says You Can’t Dance To Misery by Tourettes featuring Anna Coddington. Just because it’s pretty and all doesn’t mean the grittier stuff on this album isn’t equally brilliant, but I do love the way Coddington’s gorgeous vocals float over the airy melody…. Hope he tours down to Wellington again soon.
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Next time: I have Friday off work (time in lieu for working at Homegrown on a Saturday) so I’m looking forward to sleeping in and going for a leisurely morning blog. A while back I made this chocolate cake recipe from the Spaghetti Twists blog that was so fantastic that I’m going to share it with you all…maybe by that stage we will have finished the macaroni cheese leftovers in the fridge. Maybe. Don’t get me wrong, I love leftovers. It’s just that this macaroni cheese seems to be regenerating itself or something.

Oh yeah! And if you are a New Zealander, I totally recommend that you buy this month’s CLEO magazine, because I’m in it! For this blog! (Can’t imagine why else I’d be there) There’s also the rather fantastic Chloe Sevigny on the front plus a Bachelors calendar that comes recommended by my mum AND my Nana.

Peaches En Regalia

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Sometimes when recipes are as simple as Nigella’s directions for Peaches in Muscat, I get suspicious. It almost sounds like Nigella is having a laugh, waiting to see if her legions of yes-people will follow along unquestioningly till some bright young thing says “Hey, she just cut up fruit and put wine on top of it! Is that even a thing?” Admittedly Nigella does claim that it’s a classic example of Italian culinary genius, but, with all due respect to the wonderful cuisine of these people, sometimes it seems like saying The Italians Do It is an excuse for any old combination of foodstuffs to qualify as untouchable.

That said, I am so one of those yes-people. Surprise!

I was all, “I have peaches cheap from the market going nowhere! I have muscat now that I’ve gone specially to Moore Wilson’s to buy muscat so I can have it sitting round for the express purpose of making this ridiculously simple dessert! I think it’s meant to be!”

Peaches In Muscat

From Nigella Express. Serves 2.

1 large ripe peaches
1 bottle sweet muscat
Slice up your peaches and sit them in pretty glasses. I found that one peach did two smallish glasses, but have more ready. Pour over the muscat. Chill for a couple of hours. Nigella says to serve with some pouring cream or vanilla ice cream on the side which would have been lovely but we had neither. Ate the peaches with a fork then drank the muscat. Wonderful.
It’s almost aggressively simple. Yet it works, and I clearly should never have doubted Nigella. The glossy fruitiness of the wine seeps into the grainy peachiness of the peaches most pleasingly. The chilliness plays its part too, the iciness crispening the already crisp flavours, a bit like using the “sharpen” function in photo-editing software.
It was actually gorgeous. We ate this while watching Season 5 of The Wire. Finally. It was a hot city evening with the breeze, for once, going nowhere so this chilly pudding was the perfect end to the evening’s eating. That said, you’d want to be sure of your company that you serve this to. You just know that if you plonk this triumphantly on the table and cry “La dolce!” that at least one person is going to go home and write on Facebook “Where was my chocolate mousse? My cheesecake? That wasn’t pudding, that was wet peaches in a cup!”
Muscat wine always makes me think of Wellington Phoenix player Manny Muscat, a fellow whose name surely cries out for him to abandon A-league football to pursue a career as a drag queen. Manny Muscat has a special place in my heart because of all the chants that we shout from the stands (some witty, some utterly dreary and gender-maligning) my favourite is his, which goes “Manny Manny Manny, MUSCAT!” to the tune of The Apprentice theme (Money money money money…Money!) After working 12 billion hours at Homegrown this weekend I was utterly munted but duty called and I found myself at the Phoenix match on Sunday evening where they played against Perth.

Even though lots of it went like this…

Me: Why is everyone angry?
Tim: Linesman called us offside.
Me: Yeah, is this whole “offside” thing even real? I’m pretty sure they just make it up as they go along for something to do.
Tim: Er, no, it’s real.

…it was still rather thrilling, once we got through the arduous 30 minutes extra time due to a 1-all draw and went to penalty shootouts, where we utterly trounced Perth with our complete diamond of a goalkeeper. The ending was almost poetic when Durante, the captain, who has played every minute of the last 83 games without scoring a goal kicked the winning point for us.
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Title coming at you via: Frank Zappa, whose big loud music has always found a way to wind in and out of my life, and whose tune Peaches In Regalia seems made for this recipe – they’re both surprisingly palatable!
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Music lately:
Dark Brown by Ladi6 from her gorgeous, much-thrashed album Time Is Not Much. One of the nice things about working at Homegrown was that our tent gave us an incredible view of her set at the Dub and Roots stage, plus I got to hang with her for a bit in said tent prior to her going on stage. Not only is she incredible behind the microphone she’s amazing in person…and she completely renewed my interest in finding a pair of Doc Martens.

Keeping it local, I am also much enamoured with/of (shouldn’t use words in sentences that I don’t know how to finish) Bad Buzz, the new sounds from The Mint Chicks. It’s got this eerie, fuzzy, sixties feel to it and I love the graduated melody, like they’re walking down a staircase while singing. It’s really, really good and so exciting to hear new music from these guys. I haven’t seen them live since 2006 (closest I got at Homegrown was hearing their soundcheck at 10am while I was putting up posters) but they’re coming back to Wellington in March so I know I’d better grab my tickets because they will fly.

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Next time: I finally made that vegan banana bread over the weekend and it was really, really good. I guess between that description and the fact that I’m linking to the recipe I don’t really need to tell you any more but this is my blog and I’ll spin it out into an entire post if I want to!

"eggs milk and flour, pancake power"

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Without wanting to sound like Kristy Thomas pitching for the Kid-Kit – do you remember when you were a child, and you went to a friend’s house, and it was so much more of a heightened experience than your own existence at home? Their toys seemed cooler, they had a haybarn, they were allowed to stay up later, they called their parents by their first names… Sometimes there was the disquieting reverse of that where leaving home for someone else’s affirms how comparatively safe you feel in your own space and how you just have to hold on and let the minutes pass until you can return – ah, childhood. I realise of course that I’m looking at this through the fairly privileged gaze of someone who grew up with loving parents and so on.

But anyway, I have this distinct memory of being down the road at my then best friend’s place, and her mum made us pancakes in the middle of the day for lunch. We ate them with sugar, lemon juice, whipped cream and – and this which I remember well over a decade on – leftover chocolate icing. For lunch. Have you seen Scarface? (I’ve been in the same room while it was on, which was plenty.) You know that scene where he’s surrounded by mountains of cocaine? These pancakes-for-lunch with chocolate icing were like the equivalent of that for 9 year old me. But you know, somewhat less alarming.

Living away from home means these childhood thrills can be recreated at your leisure and while it’s obviously not the same, a decision to have pancakes for dinner still comes with a certain satisfaction, a feeling that you’re Pippi Longstocking or something. Whimsy aside, pancakes do make a fantastic unconventional dinner – filling, cheap, easy to eat with the fingers, sociable, not too fussy. Tim and I decided it had been too long, too, too long since we’d seen Thoroughly Modern Millie (possibly I was the stronger force on this decision being made) and we invited our friend Ange over to watch it. For some reason the idea of pancakes for supper seemed amazingly delightful too – so that’s what we had.

I used a recipe of Nigella Lawson’s from Nigella Bites. I replaced the milk in the pancakes with soymilk to make them dairy-free and truly, these were the best pancakes I’ve ever made. I’ve made some sad, rubbery pancakes in my time and these reaffirmed my faith in the practice. They were fluffy, light, well behaved, quick to bubble, and a pleasing even nut-brown. I’d like to think it was the magic of soy that made this happen.

American Pancakes

From Nigella Bites

30g/2 Tablespoons melted butter (I replaced this with 1 T Rice Bran oil)
225g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
300mls full fat milk OR magical soymilk
2 eggs
Butter for frying (again – used a little rice bran oil)

Beat all the ingredients together, or just blitz them in a food processor. Heat a good non-stick frying pan, add a little butter or oil, then get pancaking. You can make these as large or small as you wish – I kept them relatively small but do as you please. When you see bubbles emerging on the surface, flip them over and cook for a minute or so on the other side. I find a silicon spatula useful for this.

I piled them onto a plate covered in tinfoil and they kept perfectly happy until the mixture was used up, so don’t feel you have to feed everyone but remain slavishly chained to the stovetop. Makes enough to thoroughly satiate three hungry people, could probably feed four really. Nigella reckons “25 pancakes the size of jam jar lids”.

To go with I made the blueberry syrup from Nigella Express. Had some bloobs (as I’ve been calling them, not annoying at all!) that I found on special at Moore Wilson’s and it seemed like as good a use of them as any, as well as making the pancake dinner seem like a bit more of an occasion. It took all of five minutes to make but tasted relatively complicated – what more can you ask from a recipe?

Blueberry Syrup

From Nigella Express

Not just for pancakes – this would be brilliant on vanilla ice cream and as Nigella says, it does become rather jammy the next day and is perfect spread on buttery toast.

125ml (1/2 a cup) maple syrup or honey
200g blueberries

Put both ingredients into a pan and bring to the boil. Let it bubble gently for 2-3 minutes then pour into a jug. Like so!

I can’t afford maple syrup – not even with my shoes from The Warehouse and op shop sweaters – and I have a feeling that even if I had some I’d be too scared to use it. I’m okay with this, and used honey instead. I wouldn’t recommend using fake maple syrup, as there’s only two ingredients and blueberries are so beautiful that you don’t want to be gumming them up with synthetic flavourings.

Ange provided the lemons from her bountiful tree. The pancakes were, as I said, pretty fabulous. The satiny blueberry syrup was gorgeous – thick and sweet and studded with juice-bursting berries. It was a good night.

Am heading up to Auckland tomorrow for meetings, then going home to see my family, then on Monday Tim and I are back in Auckland for the Laneway music festival. Which would be why it’s 10.36pm and I still haven’t packed yet…I’m getting really pretty hyped up for Laneway, the line up is both ridiculous but manageable which is a kind of a miracle for music festivals these days. It’s going to be an intense day but I’m really, really looking forward to it.

Title brought to you by: the Pancake Crimp from The Mighty Boosh, Series Three. Howard Moon enters Vince Noir’s bloodstream to save him from the Spirit of Jazz, and has to remind his protective white blood cells that they’re friends, reminding them of the good times they had making pancakes. You know?

On Shuffle while I type:

Cornet Man by the superlative-worthy Barbra Streisand, from the Original Broadway Cast recording of Funny Girl. Bought this from Slow Boat the other day, had been meaning to for a long while and did not regret it. Her voice is just gorgeous, all rich and sinuous.

Tender by Blur from their album 13. I love this song so much and have since the moment I saw it for the first time on Video Hits back in 1998…actually I wonder if I saw it on MTV Europe? Maybe it was too late for that. Anyway, I don’t really care if the lyrics are a bit appalling or whatever, it’s such a lovely tune – it almost seems broken up into hooky compartments which come at you one after the other – and every time I hear it I feel all comforted, like I’m wrapped up in a woolly blanket.

Walk on Gilded Splinters, by Paul Weller from the Wire Soundtrack …And All The Pieces Matter. Because the music in The Wire is 99% diegetic, it’s nice to hear the music stretched out comfortably in a compilation like this. I love the guitars in the song and how it shuffles along but not without punch…I just love this song.

Next time: I made these fantastic raw cookies the other day – it’s not often I get enthused about the concept of raw baking but these were not only easy and practical, they were seriously good tasting. Once I get back to Wellington…you’ll be hearing about them.

lime warp

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I have never been a fussy eater. But when I was younger, and I don’t think this classifies me as “fussy”, olives were too salty, ginger was too spicy, and I couldn’t quite see the point of black liquorice. As my tastebuds have aged, and no doubt reduced in numbers, I can suddenly eat olives by the oily handful and, well, the briefest of glances over this blog will show how much I love ginger now. Liquorice I still have no time for. There’s a photo of me on my first birthday showing how I, with quiet resolve, plucked a black jellybean from my birthday cake and chewed on it. The photo shows my immediate distaste upon chewing. I’m very sure that if I ate a black jellybean now I’d pull a pretty similar face. And while my tastes have expanded, I still have that Homer Simpson-like quality of “Ooooh look, food, I’m going to eat it all!” documented at that birthday party long ago.

I first tried preserved lemons last year when my godmother gifted me a jar of them that she’d made herself. I was never exposed to them as a child – Morrocan chic hadn’t quite reached the rural outpost where I lived – but I’m sure they would have seemed aggressively salty and sour to my young self. Right now, to my current collective of tastebuds, they are so, ridiculously good. I’m pretty sure it’s not how they’re supposed to be used, but I love just eating slices of lemon whole, straight from the jar. This Christmas just gone, inspired by the now long-consumed preserved lemons I was given, and hungry for more, I decided to make my own as edible presents for people. Obviously I couldn’t blog about this prior to Christmas, but now that we’re safely in January…it’s on.

Predictably, I turn to Nigella Lawson and her engaging book How To Be A Domestic Goddess. In the final chapter, all about preserves and pickles and jams and other exciting things, she has a recipe called “Edith Afif’s Lime Pickles”. The recipe is a little quirky but seemed straightforward enough, and the end result is exactly like preserved lemons, but with limes in their place. I couldn’t afford as many limes as Nigella asked for so used a mix of limes and lemons and didn’t feel bad about it at all. Limes are expensive but lemons are not, the salt I found for about a dollar at the supermarket and the olive oil doesn’t have to be fancy so all up these are a rather tidily priced gift. As I believe in self-gifting, I set aside my own personal stash as well as divvying up the fruit slices into pretty jars for other people.

Edith Afif’s Lime Pickles

From Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess

10 limes (or a mixture of lemons and limes)
1 kg coarse salt
Approximately 500mls olive oil, not extra virgin
1 tablespoon tumeric
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
3 dried chilli peppers, crumbled.

I have a confession to make. I completely forgot to add the tumeric and am retroactively kicking myself about it as I’m sure it would have looked gorgeous and tasted amazing. But the end result is still fantastic without it so don’t fear or go on a dazed mission to the supermarket if you don’t have any in the cupboard.

  • Cut the fruit into eighths lengthways and cover the bottom of a baking dish with them. Cover the limes in the salt and then put in the freezer overnight. I actually forgot about them for a couple of days and they were perfectly fine.
  • Remove from the freezer and thaw. Rinse under running water in a colander. I saved some of the salt which had absorbed an amazingly citrussy flavour and used it on a poached egg. A worthwhile recycling effort. Shake the lime/lemon slices to remove most of the water, and divide between clean jars (fills roughly 3 x 350ml jars).
  • Mix the oil and spices together in a measuring jug then pour into each jar. Add more oil if the slices aren’t covered.
  • Close the jars, put away in a cool dark cupboard for a week or so – the longer the sit, the more ridiculously good they’ll taste.

Nigella says “you either have a sour tooth or you don’t” (and I maintain that I have a fat tooth, if not several) but I think these have mainstream appeal. The sharp, satiny slices of lime and lemon give this incredibly savoury, mouth-filling citrussyness, not overly salty even though they were blanketed in salt at one point. Sliced or chopped finely they add a softly sour kick to basically anything – salads, couscous, pasta, tagines, anything Mediterranean. As an added bonus the oil surrounding the fruit slices takes on a gorgeous flavour and can be spooned from the jar and used as a useful condiment in its own right. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t use these in something. Even though they sound like something other people do and you don’t, preserved lemons (or limes…or lemons) are completely within reach and not difficult at all. It’s a tired argument but if I can handle making them without any ensuing trauma, basically anyone could.

So, I heard this wacky rumour that food blogs need to have decent photos. Which is a shame because I made this amahzing Feta Bread on Tuesday night and even though it tasted like a dream it didn’t photograph so nice. While I was considering just uploading my ugly photos anyway as good photography isn’t so much a right as a pleasant surprise round these parts, I think I’ll just quickly share the recipe instead.

Feta Bread

From Simon Rimmer’s The Accidental Vegetarian

This makes two large loaves. You could halve the recipe if this scares you, but you will eat all this bread, trust me.

  • 15g (2 sachets) instant dried yeast
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 600mls/1 pint warm water
  • 1 kilo strong bread flour
  • 2 T salt
  • 4 T olive oil
  • 350g firm feta cheese, crumbled – I used Whitestone which was perfect – solid chunks of sharp cheese. If you use a softer variety it will likely disperse into the dough and you won’t get any noticeable bits of feta in the bread, but it’s not the end of the world.
  • Handful of mint leaves

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in a little of the water. This will take about five minutes. Tip in the flour, the rest of the water, and mix to a dough. Knead for 7-10 minutes until it forms a springy, firm dough that isn’t sticky. You may need to add a tiny bit of extra flour or water but go very gently with this. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, leave it to rise for about 2 hours. It will rise to spookily large heights. At this point, punch it down and knead the oil, mint and cheese into the dough. What Simon Rimmer doesn’t tell you is that this is a mission and a half. The dough doesn’t really absorb the cheese at all and you kind of have to prod the bits of cheese in with your fingers and hope for the best. Coax the dough into two loaf shapes on a paper-lined tray, cover with a clean teatowel or a bit of tinfoil and leave at room temperature for 40 minutes. Finally, bake at 180 C/350 F for 30 – 40 minutes, which doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s just right.

This bread is off the scale good – softly chewy, almost buttery in flavour which is odd considering there’s none in there, crusty, and punctuated by chunks of gorgeous feta cheese and cool mint leaves. You could actually leave out the feta and still have wonderful bread – it’s not exactly a recipe I can afford to make every week for that very reason. But it does make a lot of bread, and amazing stuff it is – shoved in a sandwich press for a minute or so, it makes the most incredible toast. The first loaf didn’t last long but we sliced up the second, bagged it and froze it, toasting slices straight from the freezer. We finished the last of it yesterday and I’m actually feeling a bit fragile knowing that it’s no longer in our lives. The feta aside, there’s nothing unusual or different about the method so, putting aside the possibility that I am a bread whisperer, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher why it turned out tasting so outrageously delicious.

I’m feeling much better than I was at the start of this week, which is good of course. On Thursday we attended an awesomely elegant book club initiated by our ex-flatmate, but not ex-friend Ange, and last night we finished Season 4 of The Wire. Gruelling? I felt like how a potato must feel after being mashed. Absolutely mind-blowingly good though, but now I’m torn about whether to recommend it or not – it’s utterly brilliant but you get emotionally invested in characters against your will and none of them are really ‘safe’. That’s all I’ll say…Tomorrow is that rare delight – a public holiday. (Wellington Anniversary Day) This year’s a bit desperate as two of the usual public holidays have the useless bad timing to fall on a Saturday so I’ll have to enjoy tomorrow even more. I’m sure I’ll be able to entertain myself, if nothing else the fact that it’s a Monday and I get a sleep in will be pretty fantastic.

Title comes to you via: Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Show…those of you who wanted to have probably already seen the film so instead I link you to a clip of the utterly lovely Raul Esparza of the 2000 Broadway revival cast vibrato-ing his lungs off. I love the music from Rocky Horror, it reminds me of the score to Hair in some ways because it’s so joyful and all over the place and the lyrics and melody don’t flow in the way you might expect it to. “It’s just a jump to the left…”

On Shuffle while I type:

We’re going to Laneway music festival next Monday so in honour of that fact we’ve been refresher-coursing the acts that are going to be there including…

Katrina by the Black Lips, I love their scrappy, poppy sound and can’t wait to see them live.

I Had Lost My Mind by the deeply intriguing Daniel Johnston. 

Dog Days Are Over by Florence and the Machine. It would be easy to narrow one’s eyes in dislike at Florence Welch, what with her unattainably long legs and doe eyes and tendency towards music videos where she canters about with flowers in her hair and floaty capes and no trousers. But her music is gorgeous and this song in particular is pretty astounding – she’s closing the festival and I’m very excited about hearing her sing it live.

Next time: Last week we invited Ange over for pancakes and Thoroughly Modern Millie (ie the second greatest film in existence, after A Mighty Wind, and that is truth.) The pancakes were flipping marvelous and I think I got a decent photo or two out of them so…that’s what you’re likely to be seeing.

such a little thing makes such a big difference

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There comes a point, when you’ve absent-mindedly eaten half a bowl of raspberry flavoured buttercream icing while spooning it ungracefully into an icing bag and are starting to feel a touch queasy, where you start to question the rationality of embarking on cupcakes at all. Luckily cupcakes are pretty things and the sight of them makes you remember why.

Can you tell where I started getting ideas above my station?

I’ve spent the last two days prepping for and working at the Big Day Out music festival in Auckland and partway through all the madness it seemed like a brilliant idea to make cupcakes when I returned to Wellington. It was a fantastic, and I think successful day, but also very very long and draining, and I haven’t been feeling so well this week. For some reason my brain delivered me “cupcakes” as the comedown cure for all this. Who am I to argue with myself? It has been a long time since I’ve made any- the last time would have been when my flatmate was filming the intro to the Rising Star award for Handle The Jandal and needed my assistance.

I use a recipe of Nigella Lawson’s, and variations or repeats of it appear in every last one of her books. I often wonder about cupcakes, (especially given what I guess you could call their pop-culture status) whether they were invented by some entrepreneurial type who hooked their thumbs thoughtfully into their belt-loops, rocked back and forward and then said in an auspicious manner, “Team: today we sell sponge cakes. Tomorrow we’re going to make them one twelfth of the size but sell them for six times the price. Trust me. People will blog exclusively about them, replace their wedding cakes for them, and consume them in an influential manner on shows about sassy New York women in high heels.” I mean I wonder, but not enough to actually google the history of the cupcake in case my well-rounded theory gets shattered. I’m tired. Let me have this.

The making of these cupcakes meant I got to try out two of my Christmas presents – a jar of vanilla paste and an icing kit. The vanilla paste is summin’ else, its intensely vanilla fragrance rising up and curling round your head as soon as you open the jar lid. It’s a thick syrup, dark and gritty with vanilla seeds and smells so heavenly that I sincerely want to smear myself with it and run down the streets flinging it at people by the spoonful. Luckily for the good folk of Wellington, it’s too expensive for that kind of behaviour. The cupcakes were gratifyingly studded with vanilla seeds, almost as though someone had dropped iron filings into the batter (not entirely implausible, knowing how clumsy I am.) You can find some mighty tempting and elaborately iced cupcakes in shops, but these are a humble and relaxed version. And they’re not audaciously priced.



Spot the vanilla seeds!


Cupcakes

From every single Nigella book in existence.

  • 125g soft butter
  • 125g sugar
  • 125g self raising flour
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 Tablespoon milk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla paste or vanilla extract, optional

Set your oven to 200 C or 390 F and line a muffin tray with paper cases. Or in my case, use the very nifty silicone cupcake liners gifted by family members a year or two back. Put all the ingredients in the food processor and blitz till it’s looking good and batter-y; or do as I do and cream the butter and sugar, and once they’re light and airy beat in the eggs. Add the flour, the milk and the vanilla and beat together. Drop spoonfuls into the paper liners and bake for 15 – 20 minutes till golden and puffy. Allow to cool before icing however you like.

These are wonderfully buttery, tender, spongy little cakes, and the vanilla flavour really shone, through the simplicity of the ingredients. Topped with pink, raspberry flavoured icing they’re quite the delightful mouthful. They’re not exactly useful, but they do taste fantastic and I feel distinctly soothed and defrazzled now that I’ve made them, like someone has taken a GHD straightening iron to my life. That said, I’m still not 100% unsick. These cupcakes are more palliative than completely restorative in nature but it’s a start.
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Title comes at you via: Morrissey’s song Such A Little Thing Makes Such A Big Difference, which you can find on his gem of a live album Beethoven Was Deaf. a typically cumbersome-of-title tune. Like the cupcakes, it’s been a while since I’ve quoted Morrissey and it’s so rainy and cold here in Wellington even though it’s supposed to be the middle of summer that it just felt right to put him in here.
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On Shuffle while I type/sneeze

Downtime by locals Kidz In Space from their EP Episode 001: Chasing Hayley, who were seriously fantastic while occupying our stage at BDO. A head-nodder if ever I heard one.

Gershwin’s Stairway To Paradise as sung by Rufus Wainwright. Tim and I, (both feeling under the weather) were watching a Broadway documentary and it occurred to me that I hadn’t listened to any Gershwin in too, too long. A difficult choice but I think Stairway To Paradise is my favourite song of theirs. So optimistic…so beautiful.
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Next time: well, hopefully I’ll not be feeling so seedy. I really don’t like being sick in the middle of summer (admittedly, the weather here in Wellington is hopeless) but unfortunately my immune system is unmoved by the stern telling off I’m giving it. I’m usually fairly robust so I’ll surely bounce back from whatever this creeping malaise is. I’ve also bought what’s probably the last of the season’s asparagus to make what Nigella calls Pasta Salad Primavera…which is making me feel perkier just typing it out.

the air, the air is everywhere

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I got back to Wellington yesterday evening, after a week’s camping at the same beach my family and I have camped at since 1986. This constant bookend to each year of my life means I fall into a pleasingly familiar pattern once in the camping frame of mind…read books, dip toe doubtfully in water at the beach, drink gin, observe fat woodpigeons in wonder, go for walks, read more books etc… While letting all that go isn’t fun, I’m very, very happy to be back in the city where mosquitos don’t seem to exist. I got so ridiculously bitten this time round, my legs resemble a topographical map of the Hunua Ranges.

All awkward itching aside, I had a seriously wonderful break. Lazy breakfasts merged into lazy lunches, books were read, long conversations were had with family, that sort of thing. For some reason the birdlife this year was particularly bold, but in a cute, Disney-esque way that makes you want to stride through the forest while singing scales and engaging in dialogue with squirrels. Or something. I managed to catch up with lots of family and also with one of my very best friends who I don’t see very often, which was fantastic. Unfortunately Tim wasn’t able to come to the beach because Starbucks stops for no man (and to be fair, he needed the money) and I suspect my family was even more disappointed than I was that he couldn’t make it along. …

Since we weren’t going to be seeing each other for a while, on the night before I flew up to Auckland to go camping I thought I’d make us a decent dinner, of souffle and chocolate mousse. I didn’t plan to have such a glam dinner menu – it was more a case of “what on earth is in the cupboard”. I guess I wouldn’t be much of a food blogger if my scraped-together meal didn’t involve separating eggs and dark chocolate.

Both recipes came from that most seminal of all seminal texts, How To Eat by Nigella Lawson. I love coming back to this book – I bought it back in my first year of flatting when I hardly had any money for rent and bills, let alone enormous fancy cookbooks. But it has more than paid for itself since then. Actually that’s a lie, between the pomegranates and the vermouth and the endless variations on homemade custard this book may well have financially crippled me and could be the reason Tim and I haven’t been on a holiday since we started living together this time four years ago.

Both recipes are both easier than they sound, even though there’s some egg-white whisking involved. Yeah, separating eggs is never fun, but there’s something about the word ‘souffle’ that still equates to ‘death-defying act of cookery’ in many people’s minds. You can choose to capitalise on this and win their gasps of admiration when you casually place a souffle in front of them, or you can just own up that they’re not difficult at all. Doesn’t bother me.

Notice the nice salad servers in the background – Christmas gift from Tim’s parents.

So, I altered this recipe a tiny bit in that it was originally a pea souffle but all I had was soybeans and goat’s cheese…yeah, I know. It should really be the other way round.

Goat’s Cheese and Soybean Souffle

Although soybeans (or edamame) aren’t normally paired with cheese, their soft nutty flavour makes them seem like they should. If you want to make the original pea souffle, and it’s really really good, just replace the soybeans and cheese with 120g frozen peas and 85g gruyere or something similar.

150g frozen soybeans
30g butter, plus more for greasing
15g flour
125mls (1/2 a cup) full fat milk
pinch of nutmeg
50-100g goat’s cheese or feta cheese, roughly chopped
2 eggs

Set the oven to 200 C, putting in a baking tray when you do this, and butter 2 x 250ml ramekins. Melt 15g butter in a pan and cook the soybeans till they are softened. Set aside. A souffle is basically white sauce with eggs and other things stirred in, so you need your white sauce first. Melt the second 15g of butter, and stir in the flour, letting it bubble away slightly before tipping in the milk and stirring constantly over a low heat till smooth. Remove from heat.

Separate the eggs, and stir the yolks into the white sauce, then add the soybeans, goat’s cheese and nutmeg. In a metal bowl, whisk the egg whites with a small pinch of salt till frothy and standing up in soft peaks. This is fairly important as it’s the air bubbles trapped in the egg whites that are going to give the souffle the push it needs. Using a metal spoon, put a good dollop of egg whites into the yolk mixture and stir it in to ‘lighten’ the mixture. Then fold the rest of the egg whites in, not beating it toooooo vigorously but not too fearfully either. Divide all this between the two ramekins, place them on the baking tray and shut the door carefully. Immediately turn the heat down to 180 C. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, and serve immediately while they’re still risen and gorgeous – they will deflate, it doesn’t make you a bad person.

Mine rose higher than this, I swear! Taking photos just gave them time to get all…deflatey.

These taste SO good. Intensely puffy in texture. Strangely it’s the soybeans providing a buttery, creamy flavour while the rich goat’s cheese gives a lemony sharpness, rather than the other way round. Definitely worth the little bit of effort that goes into it – these look and taste gorgeous.

The chocolate mousse we had while watching Season 4 of The Wire. Don’t worry, we actually talked to each other while eating the souffle. The Wire time is quality time. The recipe comes from Nigella’s chapter on children’s food (which is possibly my most-used chapter in How To Eat, whatever that says about my eating.)

Nigella’s recipe uses milk chocolate and golden syrup. I only had dark chocolate and honey so I used this instead. If you keep the dark chocolate instead of her originally specified milk, it makes this mousse dairy free.

Chocolate Mousse

100g dark chocolate
1 1/2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon clear honey
2 eggs, separated. Obviously because of the uncooked-egg thing, you want these to be nice eggs.

Over a very low heat (or in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water if you’re nervous), melt together the chocolate, the honey, and the water. Remove from heat. In a separate clean metal bowl, whisk the egg whites till stiff peaks form. Nigella says it’ll be easier if you wipe the surface of a cut lemon half over the bowl before you start; I believe her. Beat the egg yolks into the slightly cooled chocolate mixture. Take a dollop of egg white and stir it briskly into the chocolate/yolk mixture which will, as with the souffle, lighten it up a bit. Then gently but firmly fold the rest of the egg white mixture in with a metal spoon. Divide between two smallish ramekins, around 250 ml capacity. Nigella says to chill it for 6 hours, I’d say you could get away with an hour or two. Eat.

Possibly because of the lack of cream, this mousse was a little different in texture to what I expected – it had settled into almost a chocolate pudding rather than anything light and fluffy. No harm done, it was still completely amazing. Silkily rich but not overly heavy, this mousse tasted of nothing but chocolate, so don’t be put off by the slim list of ingredients.
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Title comes to you from: The song Air sung by the gorgeous Kacie Sheik, from the Broadway cast recording of Hair, as a salute to the significant reliance on air bubbles in the recipes I gave you. I am legit obsessed with this album. You may have noticed it popping up occasionally here. So it must be good, right? It has indeedy been getting a lot of repeat visits, this album of the current Broadway revival cast, starring the lovely Gavin Creel who bears the heavy crown of being one of the few stars of Broadway that Tim likes. Today I also started listening to the original Broadway cast recording (ie, the 1968 one) and fell in love with that too. Everyone sounds like Joan Baez! So you might as well try the original like me while you’re at it.
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On Shuffle these days:

Well, I’ve been away from technology for seven days and didn’t really have my iPod on while out camping – it was mostly birdcalls and the sound of tent zippers for me as far as music went. But today I bought the soundtrack to The Wackness, which is a very enjoyable listen, with the same warm, eyes-half-closed summer vibe the movie has. I don’t normally go in for soundtracks but this one is the reason why…I occasionally do. Right now Sam Cooke is providing a mellow background to my Sunday night.
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Next time: My summer holiday is officially over – I’m back in the office tomorrow. This week is going to be busy however as I’m flying up to Auckland to work with the Big Day Out music festival. But there will be cooking! I’ve been to the vege market for the first time in weeks and feeling good about connecting with the kitchen again. In the meantime, if anyone has any remedies for speedy healing of mosquito bites I’d be most grateful…

here i go again on my own

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According to Nigella Lawson, asparagus with a fried egg on top is “Asparagus Holstein.” A hamburger with the top half of the bun removed and a fried egg laid on top is a “Hamburger Holstein.” Riddle me this, Nigella. If I were to wear a fried egg as a protein-enriched hat, would that make me a Laura Holstein? Sorry everyone…Tim has gone to Palmerston North for the rest of the week and so this blog is basically the only outlet I have for my countless inanities. Countless.

I will not lie: yesterday at work was pretty stressful. It didn’t even start off well, what with me getting a particle of something unidentifiable stuck in my eye for about an hour first thing in the morning. The shining respite in the middle of it all was a client lunch – specifically, bringing themselves and an enormous feast over to our office – which culminated in some really bloody good blue cheese and perky chocolate topped eclairs. Between eating three helpings of everything there, and then the unexpectedly hot weather, I wasn’t all that hungry when I got home from work. Not that a lack of committed hunger would normally, unfortunately, stop me from eating large. I actually respected my appetite though, and made a serene meal of lightly steamed asparagus and soft boiled egg, as per a suggestion in Nigella’s seminal text How To Eat. I’m pretty hopeless at boiling and poaching eggs, normally Tim’s job, so it was lucky that Nigella had a recipe for boiled egg in Feast…otherwise it would have been asparagus Holstein for me.

It might sound a bit poncy and not like actual eating, but it’s truly delicious and a perfect solo meal if you can get the boiled egg just perfectly soft and then dip the asparagus spears into it before eating them. Plenty of salt, naturally – I used sparkly and flavoursome pink Himalayan salt, a Christmas gift last year.

To recreate it for yourself, should you find yourself coming home after a hot and stressful day interrupted by overeating, completely alone and in need of something calming, light and not too taxing on the arteries:

Asparagus and Boiled Egg

Inspired by a suggestion in How To Eat

One or two good, free range eggs. Every time you eat a caged egg, a tiny kitten cries. This is an actual fact. Kittens…they care.
A handful of slim asparagus spears.
Salt, and while we’re at it, might as well not be that bitter table salt but sea salt or rock salt in a grinder at least.

Steam or boil your asparagus till tender, but not floppy and losing its colour.

While this is happening, bring a small pan of water to the boil. If your eggs are fridge cold, put them in with the cold water and allow them to come to the boil with it. If they’re at room temperature, simply lower them into the boiling water once it’s started. Nigella recommend putting a match in with the water because her great-aunt always did, others recommend a splash of vinegar or sprinkling of salt in the water. Let it bubble for about four minutes, maybe a little less. Have another pan of cold water handy so that you can plunge the eggs into it once you think they’re done, this will stop them cooking further. Lay your asparagus on a plate, sprinkle with salt, put the egg into an eggcup and whack the top off with a spoon.

And that’s all you need for dinner, really. If you’ve got someone else around who hasn’t taken off to Palmerston North just before Christmas to work on his parents’ farm because the job situation in Wellington is so hopeless right now (ahoy cool media people!) then I would double the proportions, get someone who really knows how to boil eggs in charge, and add some bread and butter.

The first egg was successful – soft, golden and yolky within. For some reason the second one I did was a bit more solid, but not bad considering it’s a job I always delegate out.

We watched the final of Glee the other day – it was intense, and intensely wonderful stuff. I was disappointed to see in the Dominion Post today that the music reviewers would like to see less of Glee in 2010, I was even more disappointed to see that they lumped it in with High School Musical. Yes, the HSM comparison is a quick and easy way to basically illustrate the tropes used in Glee to readers but it’s also flawed and lazy, in the same way that it feels as though the “barbeque reggae” tag is a box certain albums are unable to break out of because reviewers keep putting them in that box before they’ve even listened to their review copy. (That said, if you ever want to do a spotlight on my blog, Dominion Post…call me!)

Now that Glee is riding the tidal wave of Twitter trending topics, glossy magazine spreads, and young-person love, it’s highly likely there’ll be some kind of anti-hype backlash. To which I say: eh. I know I go on about this show a lot, but I’ve been excited about it since July and it’s so, I don’t know, emotionally fulfilling to see Broadway stars, Broadway tunes, and in fact the idea of breaking out into any tune altogether being legitimised on mainstream TV and in such deliciously sharp fashion. I remember when the film Centre Stage was released (there was also Billy Elliot but obviously it’s a bit of a different kettle) and hopelessly bad as the dialogue was – although Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows speak eloquent volumes with one silent, bristly twitch – I was elated to see ballet and dance brought to the big screen in a way that would, I hoped, make people see what it was that I loved about it and how ridiculously wonderful it was. Not that I need any of this. Indeed there’s always something nice about knowing that 99% of the world is missing out on this particular song or whatever that you love, but it’s just…really nice to see it get out there on people’s radars.

Speaking of things that you insist you liked long before the film adaptation of it ever came out: we also saw Where the Wild Things Are on Tuesday night. I really liked it, I liked how the Wild Things were slightly human but mostly monster and everything that happened in their own world seemed right. Max Records, the kid playing Max, was gorgeous, and it was notably, but not surprisingly, pretty dark. The only thing I was a little frowny over in hindsight was that – spoilers – Max runs away and sails off to an island of monsters, rather than having the forest grow up around him in his room. Maybe they had to spin it out more, I don’t know. Apart from that I thought it was fantastic so if the line “please don’t go, we’ll eat you up we love you so” makes you a little tearily nostalgic for something you can’t even quite remember and you’ve got a DVD compilation of cool music videos by cool directors then you’re probably the right audience for this.

Eight more days till Christmas! Good grief! And six more days till my last day at work for the year. I’m flying home on the evening of the 23rd. This means, once more, my annual and highly dramatic attempt to pack my bags and get them weighing under the requisite amount you need to get from A to B in New Zealand. I’m looking forward to bonding with the cats again, and family members, and the kitchen. Still trying to finalise a Christmas Day menu in my head…

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Title brought to you by: Yes, I quoted Whitesnake in the title. Did I do it ironically? I don’t even know anymore. The musical Rock of Ages will do that to ya. I do know what it means to walk along that lonely street of dreams. Check out the original Broadway cast’s exuberant take on it here, and just be thankful I didn’t call this thing “here I go egg-ain.”
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On Shuffle these days:

The Reading of the Story of The Magi/Silent Night by The White Stripes. It’s strange but I love it. To you it may be just…strange. But I love it.

Don’t Rain On My Parade by Barbra Streisand from Funny Girl. After the final of Glee, and being gently reminded that this song has perhaps the jauntiest, most purposeful opening notes in the history of all song, Tim and I ended up comparing, unfairly but predictably, Idina Menzel’s live’n’mesmerising take on the song with Lea Michele’s also brilliant but super clean version. Which naturally, brought me back to the fantastic original again. And the notion that Glee is taking us to some strange places.

Watching The Planets by the Flaming Lips from their latest album Embryonic. It’s all heavy and fuzzy and amaaaazing.
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Next time: Hopefully by the time “next time” rolls around I’ll be miraculously organised. Apparently a colleague and I are going halvesies in a wheel of goat’s cheese from Moore Wilsons – so that may appear a lot. I’m pretty sure, organisation or not, that I can manage to wrangle one more blog post into existence before I leave for Christmas. It may mean completely alienating all people who aren’t whisks or bags of sugar though.