Category: Pasta

i’m just a painter and i’m drawing a blank

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lady whom lunch

My dear friends got a beautiful corgi last year, and when they were first doing that thing where you train a dog how to be a nice guy instead of a tiny furry hell-monkey, she would totally resist wearing her walking harness. Like, she’d be scooting around the room happily but as soon as she got the harness on she would stand very still, stiffly refuse to relax or sit down, and just kind of look right through you. For ages. With all due respect to Percy the corgi for me turning her into an analogy; this is what my brain has been doing this whole week. I am all “I have awoken! I’ve had coffee! I’m wearing soft, comfy fabrics! Time to write!” and then I’ll open my laptop and everything pauses in my brain and I just stare at the screen for hours, blankly (admittedly taking breaks to hoon through The OC because if I’m just sitting staring anyway I may as well drink in the sweet, potable waters of nostalgia while I’m at it.) I don’t know why! I’ve done heaps of cool things lately! I’ve made this incredibly delicious recipe! I love writing! So why is there nothing but the hum of white noise every time I open my laptop? Aside from the fact that I was probably listening to a youtube video of white noise at the time, because I am obsessed with it (in fact I have graduated from mere white noise to this thing called Brown Noise which was a frequency discovered by some guy named Robert Brown, it’s the best thing ever.) 
I woke up this morning at a time most would consider brutally early, especially as I’d been at a house party last night. Since I am not blessed with the powerful ability to sleep through anything for hours and hours like some people can (directing this jealously at my gf) I decided to fill up the time by just making myself write whatever came into my head and not stopping till I’d finished this damn blog post. And here I am! Halfway through already. And I haven’t even started talking about the recipe! 

See that’s why it was so frustrating that I couldn’t make myself write this week, because this recipe I made up was so spectacular and deserves more of a showcase than me having to threaten myself with throwing my laptop into a ravine if I don’t write about it soon. So, the recipe: I recently became wise to the fact that you can make risotto but with pasta instead of rice. Curious cat that I am, I wanted to try this, and happened to have some risoni in my pantry (by which I mean my designated food drawer in the flat kitchen) but didn’t really have much else. Luckily restriction can make the most delicious things happen, and I ended up improvising based on the few ingredients I had by gently frying the uncooked risoni in garlicky butter that I then stirred miso paste into. From then all I added was water and it ended up the most lush, creamy, intensely flavoured thing ever. Seriously. Just stupid old water.

Risotto is totally the white noise of food, because it’s almost hypnotically calming to make. You just keep adding water and stirring until it’s pleasingly absorbed into the grains, and then add more and stir again, just moving your wooden spoon around and around the pan repeatedly like you’re actually a gif instead of an IRL person. Like, if ever there was a recipe that encourages you to zone out and be mellow, it’s risotto.

garlic miso butter risoni risotto

a recipe by myself. serves one. 

25g butter
three cloves of garlic
one heaped teaspoon white miso paste
half a cup of risoni pasta
water

Melt the butter in a wide saucepan. Finely but roughly chop the garlic and throw it into the pan, stirring over a medium heat until the garlic is a little golden and it smells amazing. Stir in the miso paste – it won’t amalgamate completely but this will all sort itself out soon.

Tip in the uncooked pasta, and stir it for a minute or so to cover it in the garlicky butter. Add water half a cup at a time, continuing to stir the pasta until most of the water is absorbed before you add any more. Continue in this way until the pasta has absorbed enough water to become tender. Tip onto a plate, strew over some herbs if you like. Thyme is one of my favourite herbs and I happened to have a plant that I hadn’t yet managed to kill so I used some leaves from that, and it worked perfectly. 

I love pasta, I love risotto, so putting them together is like trapping myself in a pincer movement of happiness. So if that sounds like your idea of A Good Time, perhaps consider this recipe next time you need to feed yourself. I know I will. 
Thanks for bearing with me through all that, it’s like…the more time that passes since I last wrote a blog post the more panicky I get, because this blog is the most important thing to me and I don’t want it to have the slightest hint of abandonment or even just falling off the wagon, you know? All of which results in me putting more pressure on myself to write whenever I have the time to, which isn’t that often, which is probably why my brain rebelled on me by being all “nope”. 

                   

the girl with a pearl face
PS last night’s party was themed “Between the Devil and The Deep Blue Sea” and it was a joint birthday party for my dear friends Kate and Tim. I dressed up as a pearl and covered my face in makeup. I wish it was chill to wear this kind of eye makeup all the time, it’s so fun. 

PS PS as a final attempt to convey how delicious and wonderful the risotto is, here is me licking the plate after eating it. As well as outlandish makeup, I wish it was more chill to lick the plate in social settings. The tongue is nature’s spatula! I can’t quite bring myself to finish this blog post with that line, but…at least I managed to bring myself to finish this blog post at all. 

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title from: Fall Out Boy, Don’t You Know Who I Think I Am? Party like it’s 2006.
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music lately:

Ummm, more Fall Out Boy, I’ve Got All This Ringing In My Ears And None On My Fingers is such a tune.

Haim, Don’t Save Me. We danced to this last night, I love it so much, I could listen to it endlessly.
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next time: Well, I refuse to have as much trouble as I had with this one. I refuse!

if you are the ghost of christmas past then won’t you stay the night?

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My own xmas cake recipe. Boozy and nostalgically delicious, just like your, um, favourite food blogger used to make.

Well, I sniffed a pine tree and it did make me feel more Christmassy. I also watched Love Actually and once I’d stopped ranting at how horrible it is to its women characters, many of whom are barely, at best, one-dimensional props who exist only to help a man realise something important about himself (and those things they realise are usually “I like this hot chick rather a lot”) I did notice that in said movie, everyone keeps going on like, “well since it’s Christmas I’ll tell you the truth/finally acknowledge that I love you/run after you in an airport/generally make an enormous sweeping gesture at great risk to my reputation in the name of love.” Far be it from me to suggest that we should be inspired by Love Actually as such, but I am an all or nothing gal who enjoys a good solid enabling every now and then. Since everything is so ridiculous and high-drama and fraught at Christmas, you might as well make things more like this if you’ve got the inclination, y’know? 


 Candy Cane Bark: for those who want to put candy crush where their mouth is
  
Unsure quite where I’m going with this, I guess I just have a lot of feelings about Love Actually and also Grand Gestures. I’m honestly not in a delightful headspace right now, which is just neat because it coincides with me doing little in the way of actual blogging and everything in the way of rounding up for you, curating, if you will, a list of recipes I’ve already put on here that would make great Christmas present ideas. Aren’t I wonderful! I’ve done this for the past few years and logically it grows every time. I happen to be a staunch believer in the joy of giving and receiving edible stuff as a present, and so, if you feel the same this list might be of some use to you. Oh sure, you could go onto Pinterest or Buzzfeed or even go old-school and make a Google search to find a zillion such lists, but none of them are going to be as self-absorbedly devoted entirely to my own content. For…for what it’s worth.

Berry Chia Seed Jam: it’s almost too healthy, and there’s always someone that you have to buy for who digs that kind of description. 

Worth noting that whether or not Christmas is a significant thing for you or passes you by completely, these are obviously all nice recipes for a present for anyone. For any reason, at any time of the year. Just because Christmas is the overwhelmingly unavoidable societal status quo doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy Candy Cane Bark in the middle of April. 

Category One: Things in Jars.

Jars are cute. Jars are everywhere. Jars are gonna save you this Christmas. 

Orange Confit (This is basically just slices of orange in syrup, but is surprisingly applicable to a variety of cake surfaces. And it’s so pretty. And so cheap.) (vg, gf)
Cranberry Sauce (this is stupidly easy and you should make it to go with your main meal anyway) (vg, gf)
Bacon Jam (Best made at the last minute, because it needs refrigerating) (gf)
Cashew Butter (vg, gf) (just don’t drop your wooden spoon into the food processor) 
Red Chilli Nahm Jim (gf)
Cranberry (or any-berry) Curd (it involves a lot of effort but it’s so pretty. Just like me.) (gf)
Rhubarb-Fig Jam (gf)
Salted Caramel Sauce (gf, has a vegan variant) (I knowww, salted caramel is so boringly pervasive these days but a jar of it all for yourself is still the greatest thing ever) 
Apple Cinnamon Granola (vg)

Peach Balsamic Barbecue Sauce: give a fusspot a pot of fussy stuff. And if anyone makes any calls about barbecues being the domain of men, kick them to the curb and enjoy some chargrilled goods in peace with this delicious sauce. 


Category Two: Baked Goods.

Make your house smell glorious, eat some cake batter, wrap the baked things you haven’t eaten in rustic-looking brown paper and tie it all up with string, then toast to your own productivity and excellence.

First of all, my Christmas Cake is amazing. It just is: deal with my lack of coyness. Even if you decide at the last minute to make it on Christmas Day itself, it will still taste so great. 
Cheese Stars (make twelve times the amount you think you need because these are addictive and also great to serve alongside the inevitable copious liquor that happens this time of year)
Coconut Macaroons (gf)
Chocolate Macaroons (gf)
Gingerbread Cut-out Cookies (vg)
Coconut Condensed Milk Brownies
Salted Caramel Slice (hello again Salted Caramel! Your persistence is as admirable as your deliciousness!)
Fancy Tea Cookies
Chocolate Olive Oil Cake
Also, if you click on the link to the Orange Confit above, you’ll see a recipe for the easiest, fastest fruitcake loaf. It makes an excellent present, for the sort of person who’d like to receive fruitcake. And ’tis dairy free.

Mars Bar Cornflake Slice. I have nothing funny to say about this. Its deliciousness requires seriousness.

Category Three: Novelty!

This is mostly either homemade recreations of things you can buy from the corner dairy for fifty cents, or sticky-sweet things where you melt one ready-made thing into another. It’s frankly the best category and you know it. 

Moonshine Biffs (like homemade Milk Bottles!) (gf)
Raw Vegan Chocolate Cookie Dough Truffles Candy (vg, gf)
Lolly Cake
Peppermint Schnapps (vg, gf) (this is some harsh moonshine but also SO FUN. Weirdly, more fun the more you drink of it?)
Candy Cane Chocolate Bark (No effort, vegan – well, I think candy canes are vegan – gluten free, amazingly delicious, just store it carefully so it doesn’t melt)
White Chocolate Coco Pops Slice 

Chocolate Cookie Dough Pretzel Things: I ain’t delivering them to you anymore so make your own! Everyone will love you eternally, and buying peoples’ love with gifts is what Christmas is all about.  

Because I am an actual darling, I also give you a bonus recipe which I made for myself on the hop when some plans I’d had fell through and I’d also had two large craft beers. I had more or less nothing with which to scrape together a meal, and then was all What Would I Do? in that same way that people might ask what Beyonce would do. After all, I wrote a cookbook with a chapter full of food you can make yourself when it’s getting late and you’re feeling seedy. And thus, with only three ingredients, was born the following: 


Spaghetti with Buttery Breadcrumbs.

Cook as much dried spaghetti as you wish to eat in a large pot of boiling water till tender. Meanwhile, take three slices of white bread from the packet and kind of crumble and rough them up in your hands till they have all broken up into irregularly sized crumbs and bits and general bready rubble. Melt around 50g butter in a large pan and once it’s sizzling, throw in the breadcrumbs and stir them around till golden and crisp and fried. Drain the spaghetti, stir in the crumbs, eat.  

I’ve heard of a similar method of topping your pasta dish with breadcrumbs referred to as Poor Man’s Parmesan but that is both ickily classist and misleading. Crunchy, butter-soaked breadcrumbs don’t need to be hidden by pretending to be something else. They’ll make your pasta taste utterly fantastic and so that’s why I’m calling them what they are. Plus all those carbs will both act as blotting paper to anything you’ve had to drink and will zap you into a calming, mellow stupor. Which is so necessary at this time of year and also always. Happy holidays to you all, but also just, like, happiness to ya too. 
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title from: the splendid Regina Spector and her song Ne Me Quitte Pas. It’s French, for don’t leave me! 
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music lately: 

Turkey Lurkey Time. DUDE. No wonder I wasn’t feeling Christmassy, I forgot to watch this! It’s a scene from the 60s musical Promises Promises and features a spectacularly rubber-limbed Donna McKechnie and also just the most stupid lyrics you’ll ever hear. But the dancing is incredible and I don’t quite know why but the end makes me all gaspy and faster of heartbeat every single time. 

Beyonce, XO. It’s a full year since Queen B simultaneously blessed us and messed with the music industry by dropping her actually perfect self-titled visual album. It has been the soundtrack of my year in many ways and this song still gives me that headrush feeling of giddy happiness that it did upon first listen. 

Oh Land, Sleepy Town. I’ve been listening to so much Oh Land lately, her music is so dreamy and yearning and poppy. 

Tove Lo, Habits (Stay High). It just gets to me. 
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next time: I don’t know what I’m gonna make but I will be blogging again before Christmas for sure. Fa la la la la! 

when we walked through little italy i saw my reflection come right off your face

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Ya girl is back. Or at least, ya girl is trying her best to be back. I’m still nowhere near being unpacked (my room somehow gets more embarrassingly messy the harder I try to clean? I dropped out of science early in high school but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in all academic teachings that could explain this phenomenon) but I’m cooking more and attempting to get back on the freelancing stallion and am generally determined to recapture my ambition. For something. I mean, I never lost my ambition of being outstanding in the field of excellence, I just lost my drive due to Extenuating Circumstances and if I’m being scrutinisingly harsh, which I don’t enjoy, I probably got a bit exhaustedly complacent in that position of, well, not even trying to try. I’m not sure I’m quite approaching my old burn-all-candles-at-all-ends level, but I am rewatching a lot of Parks and Recreation to re-absorb all of Leslie Knope’s power (“there’s nothing we can’t do if we work hard, never sleep, and shirk all other responsibilities”) and I am trying to write more and I am going to start doing my chocolate cookie dough pretzel thing deliveries again!

Because ya girl is also somewhat broke. Moving house and being too busy/tired to maintain several sources of incoming cash is an expensive pastime. But also I miss scooting around town and dropping off parcels of deliciousness, like some kind of no-strings-attached moderately profitable fairy godmother. So if you’re in the Wellington CBD region and want some of the good stuff for yourself or for your secret admiree, all the information you need is here.

As I said in my last post, I have started watching The Sopranos, and despite my immediate misgivings at the violence and boring wife-is-a-thankless-harpy outlawish-schlub-husband-is-horrible-and-also-the-beloved-hero tropes, it’s so compelling. And it makes me crave Italian food something fierce. Initially I wanted to make meatballs but mine tend to fall apart and I didn’t have it in me on this particular day to bounce back from that kind of failure, so instead I went for something very easy – pasta all’amatriciana. I was hoping that it would translate to something to do with matriarchy, but it gets its name from being a dish from the region of Amatrice. Which is nice in its own way – this is just pasta with bacon and tomatoes, but calling it by its proper name gives it a more official, elegant vibe, like, oh I’m just casually making myself this traditional recipe from a beautiful town in the Lazio region of Italy, how bout you?

It really is very simple though, and therein lies its charm – gloriously saucy enough to feel like you’re doing yourself a favour, fast enough to not be stressful, familiar enough to serve up to fusspots. I feel like I’ve had several bad versions of this in my time at cafes that weren’t trying very hard, but home made it’s highly glorious. Thick tomato sauce, salty-sweet bacon, barely-melting parmesan – all twirled around ribbons of thick, comforting pasta. (Well, I for one find pasta comforting, it’s probably my favourite food.)

I slightly adapted a recipe from the Scotto Family, whose book Italian Comfort Food I own and adore. Half a cup of olive oil may sound terrifying in these austere times, but it becomes part of the sauce, making it rich and deeply flavoured and delicious and more than otherwise just a can of tomatoes. However, I understand you using less. Olive oil is expensive. Their recipe called for bucatini pasta but I am a heathen and adore pappardelle, and it was on special at the supermarket – however if you can’t find it, my sneaky and ingenious trick is to get sheets of fresh lasagne and slice them into wide lengths. Or use whatever pasta you fancy.

pasta all’amatriciana  

adapted slightly from a recipe by the Scotto family, serves two (or one with leftovers for lunch the next day, aw yeah) 

half a cup olive oil (or less, whatever)
100g pancetta or streaky bacon, diced (I used bacon but pancetta is superior if you can get it)
one onion, diced
one can chopped tomatoes
150g pappardelle pasta (or other pasta)
parmesan cheese, grated

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta according to the packet instructions, or until preeetty tender. 

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a saucepan, and fry the bacon in it till crisp and sizzling. Remove the bacon and set aside – I just put it on the plate I served the pasta on – and tip the onions into the still-hot pan, stirring them and allowing to cook until softened, but not browned. Basically until that harsh onion taste has been cooked out. At this stage, tip in the tomatoes and stir over a high heat till the sauce is thickened somewhat – maybe ten minutes – then tip in the bacon and stir again for another five minutes or so. Drain the pasta and stir it into the sauce, still over a high heat, and then remove from the heat, add as much parmesan as your heart desires, and serve. 

I haven’t bought parmesan in forever, because every time I pass it in the supermarket I passively-aggressively sigh at myself like some kind of lazily-written thankless shrew wife in nearly any TV show and say “oh…no, no I shouldn’t, that’s expensive,” even though the price is never going to change and I could pay a lot more for something else and have a lot less fun. I really should’ve bought some sooner, a fresh grating of it makes so many pastas and risottos more wonderful, and a little bit goes a long way. As I said a lot when I learned the phrase false economy: that’s not false economy!

title from: PJ Harvey, My Good Fortune. I’ve loved this song since I first heard it in 2000, with its jangling chevron-like melody and satisfyingly ridiculous drawing out of words at the end of each refrain. And PJ Harvey is obviously a goddess. 
 
music lately
Beyonce’s performance of a medley of her entire self-titled album at the VMA awards. This is so important. I cried, I got the chills, I cried again. I’m getting chills just typing about it, thinking about her face when she sings Jealous or the sight of her standing in front of the word FEMINIST in enormous lit up letters or when Blue says “good job mommy”, I mean, just watch it.
Liane La Havas, Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye. This wistful, dreamy Leonard Cohen song is made even more dreamy by her voice.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Maps. Wait.
 
next time: idk! 

late night, come home, work sucks, i know

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I want to be happy, but I’m also always just a little suspicious of it. Just…it seems that so many times lately I’ve been all “I am confidently happy about this particular thing in my life and it is good and wonderful” and then it all immediately falls apart, as if I broke a spell simply by acknowledging it. This is also a suuuper immature way of looking at things because you have to enjoy life and there are always a ton of factors that could make something nice fall to pieces and if you look for patterns you’ll find them and so on. In my defense, I am very immature. Also I guess what I’m describing here is the phrase “pride goes before a fall” but I hate that phrase, like, are we supposed to not take pride in good things? As the queen Cordelia Chase says in Buffy when told she has no shame, “…like shame is something to be proud of?”

So I’ll say it carefully but definitely (am almost tempted to make the font three sizes smaller as if that would make the universe not notice it) thus far, I really love my new job. It’s so fun. I love being charming with lots of people and meeting all the nice staff and making fancy cocktails with increasing competency and damn, there’s even a weird satisfaction to be had from clearing a ton of dishes. Now that I’ve said something nice about washing dishes it’s definitely going to fall apart (okay, admittedly closing up the bar is a bit of a nightmare but even that I’m getting the hang of), but till then: yeah, me!

Now that I’m doing so many late nights (got out at 2.30am on Saturday night, wheeeee) I need to make myself food that can be hoofed down in a hurry on my short break, that will give me energy but also be delicious enough that it makes me happy, stores easily, is filling but without making me immediately fall asleep afterwards…I have no idea if this pasta salad really fulfils any of those ideals because I just liked the thought of it and so decided to make it, but it is seriously delicious. Of course, most anything might seem seriously delicious at 10pm after being on your feet for ages. But trust me. As if I would put a less-than-dazzlingly-spectacular recipe on this blog for you.

pasta salad with broccoli-pumpkin seed pesto, feta, mint and olive oil

oh yeah so it’s not even pesto, it’s just munched up broccoli and pumpkin seeds, but what, you want to make a recipe called ‘broccoli paste’? Nope, pesto it is. 

a recipe by myself

two heads of broccoli 
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
olive oil
salt

100g short pasta like penne, bow ties, rigatoni, that kinda thing
50g feta (or as much as you want) 
a handful of mint leaves
olive oil

Chop the broccoli into small florets. Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan and gently cook the broccoli in it – stirring a bit, you just want to soften it a little and lose that total rawness, you know? However if it gets a little browned in places that’s great too. Tip the broccoli into a food processor, and then briefly toast the pumpkin seeds in the same pan till fragrant and browned slightly. Add them to the food processor too with a pinch of salt, and blitz the heck out of it, scraping down the sides with a spatula occasionally. Continue to process as you pour in olive oil – as much as you like, I probably used about three or four tablespoons. You’ll end up with a kind of nubbly, rubbly green substance which you can then spatula into a container and put in the fridge till you need it next. 

To make the pasta salad – cook the pasta in boiling salted water according to the packet instructions (although cooking it in boiling salted water is all there is to it, really) and then drain it under cold water for a little bit, just to take the immediate heat off. Mix together with two tablespoons – or much more – of the broccoli pumpkin seed pesto, the crumbled feta, and the mint leaves, and then drizzle over some more olive oil. 

Bursts of sharp, creamy feta and sweet, icy mint; life-giving carbs and rich pesto – it’s brilliant stuff to inhale during a brief sit (who doesn’t enjoy a good sit?) but also obviously you can eat this any day, any time, and on a proper plate instead of an old take-out container. The broccoli, pumpkin seeds and olive oil are brilliantly complementary, all the nutty, oily, grassy flavours being smashed together in the food processor. Now that I look at them, “grassy” and “oily” aren’t necessarily the most appealing words but they are the most accurate ones I could find in my tired brain today. It is filling but light and keeps for a while in the fridge but honestly the most defining feature of this pasta salad is that it will get green stuff stuck in your teeth in a major way, so totally clean your teeth afterwards if you have to talk to people and sell them consumable items.

it worked! Here’s me eating the pasta salad for dinner on my break. It literally saved my life. 

Use the leftover pesto in more pasta salad if you like, or…use it wherever else you might use pesto, I guess. It isn’t as liquid as the pesto you buy from the supermarket but it would be terrific stirred through couscous or added to a salad dressing or, you know, whatever.

me before starting my shift, feeling like a ghost. There is no after photo because I was working too diligently to pause for selfies, ha! Actually this could be argued for taking selfies just before work, but…my point stands.

As well as remaining employed for a whole week, another cool thing that I’ve done recently is have another Crush Cake published on monstrously wonderful website The Toast. This crush cake is for the decidedly late but decidedly great Clara Bow and I’m very proud of it. In your face, pride-going-before-a-fall. 
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title from: Blink 182’s still-rad song All The Small Things. Back in 1999 before I was all “nope, definitely a lesbian” I had such a crush on Tom DeLong and this was my favourite song of theirs. Also I really strongly hated boy bands and so loved the music video for this song where they send up lots of famous-at-the-time dudes. I don’t think I could, like, listen to a whole Blink 182 album but damn if they didn’t have some great singles. Oh also disclaimer, my use of this title is ironic. Or sarcastic. Or whatever I have to say to not get in trouble with anyone. 

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music lately:

Kate Nash, She Rules. This song is so sweet and simple and scrappy and I love it.

City Oh Sigh, My Love Has Gone. It’s…just…too dreamy, I guess.

Pixies, Where Is My Mind. This song stays amazing.
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next time: freezing though it is, I’ve been craving ice cream…

fancy plans and pants to match: nautilus estate wine

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Well hello there, and welcome to another instalment of Fancy Plans and Pants to Match. This is where I contritely admit that yeah, sometimes really nice things happen to me as a result of being a food blogger and published cookbook author, but try to do it in a way that isn’t entirely insufferable and doesn’t make you want to hate me. The name of this segment is a quote from Jimmy James, a character from the much slept-on 90s sitcom NewsRadio. It just felt right.

So here’s the thing: Nautilus Estate got in touch with me and asked if I’d like to develop some recipes for them to go with their fancy fancy wines. Oh my gosh yes, said I. I love wine, I love thinking up recipes, I love receiving a butt-tonne of wine in the mail, and honestly it’s just nice to be thought of as someone who could do this, right? And then a whole lot of stuff happened in my life. Finally though, I got around to actually completing my original task. So thanks Nautilus, not only for the wine itself, but for your infinite patience and your “hey it’s cool we can wait the wine will probably be kind of useful right now anyway” attitude.

The pitch: Nautilus Vintage Rose 2011 and Cuvee Marlborough NV Brut. Both fizzy and fizzing with deliciousness. All I have to do is come up with some recipes to complement what they’ve already got going on. Important note: I cannot get a swishy little accent on the ‘e’ in rose/cuvee for some reason so when you read it please pronounce it “rose-ayyyyy” and “coo-vayyyy” in your head.

What happened: Okay, so I really know very little about wine. I am your house-sav, eight-dollar-bottle-of-merlot-from-the-dairy, zero-brand-loyalty-because-I-don’t-know-jack wine drinker. All of which makes me an excellent, ideal candidate for drinking your flashy wines and thinking up recipes for them, because my palate is unjaded. I am an innocent fawn stumbling through a meadow, I am a blank canvas, I am able to talk like this and convince you that it’s a good idea to send me wine even though I don’t have the faintest idea of what I’m talking about. All your wine has to do is make a good impression on me. I don’t know why I can’t get my head around wine, by the way. I also couldn’t get my head around driving a manual car or the cash register at the German bakery I worked at for an entire year.

brunch: it’s the most wonderful time of year

For the rose I wanted to complement the strawberry flavours bursting through each tiny bubble (admittedly, the tasting notes said there were strawberry notes but I honestly did taste them myself independently of this) and also liked the idea of using it in a luxe brunch kind of way rather than just thinking of dinner and pudding recipes. Like, if I’m going to have a mid-morning drink, fizzy glamorous rose is totally on my top five list of ideal drinks. I also felt like pairing it with lemonade. I thought that would be kind of fun since lemonade costs about a dollar, but also to boost the sweet, bubbly lemony fragrant elements of the rose itself. And I wanted to see if I could make pancakes largely composed of lemonade. Okay, so now that you have the story of my life up until this point, did they taste good? You bet your $9.50 corner dairy Shiraz they did!

Pink and white on pink and white.

lemonade pancakes with strawberry sauce

wine match: Nautilus Estate Vintage Rose 2011

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/2 cups lemonade (not diet) although be prepared to add more
  • 2 cups frozen strawberries (or actual strawberries, should it be summer when you read this)
  • 3 tablespoons icing sugar
  • 1/2 cup lemonade (or thereabouts) extra

Place the strawberries in a bowl with the icing sugar and let the former defrost while the latter absorbs into them while you get on with the pancakes.

Whisk together the flour and baking powder, then stir in the egg, and finally slowly add the lemonade, whisking more thoroughly as you go. You should end up with a rather pale, thick-yet-liquidy batter, the consistency of, well, pancake batter.

Heat up a large pan, throw in a tablespoon of butter and let it sizzle, then use a 1/2 or 1/3 cup measure to scoop out quantities of pancake batter to tip into the hot pan. Once bubbles start to appear on the surface, flip the pancake carefully to the other side, making sure it has browned decently, then transfer it to a plate and move onto the next one. Maybe cover the done ones with a paper towel or something to absorb any steam.

Once you’re done with the pancakes, blitz the strawberries and icing sugar in a food processor and slowly pour in the lemonade till it forms a bright, thick, smooth sauce. Pour liberally over your pancakes along with plain Greek yoghurt or whatever else you want, really. Serve with a glass of rose because it’s 11am and you’re a grown woman who can do whatever you want. (You may not actually be a grown woman, this unexpectedly turned into a self-pep-talk. Either way, you can still have rose.)

Um, this doesn’t work as well IRL as it does in cartoons

Despite knowing little about wine I fortunately have a good instinct for flavour and texture and…basically everything except wine. And so. The lemonade made the pancakes light and gently sweet, which, along with the fragrant summery strawberries and thick, tangy yoghurt, was rather perfect with the rose’s fine-textured bubbles and rich-yet-dry vibe.

For the Cuvee I wanted something quite simple yet full of pugnacious flavour, as the wine itself is light and crisp yet not delicate – I felt like it could stand up to quite a lot.

pappardelle with chilli butter, chorizo and feta

wine match: Nautilus Estate Cuvee Marlborough NV Brut

  • 150g dried pappardelle pasta
  • 25g butter
  • a medium-sized firm red chilli, roughly diced
  • a lemon
  • 2 chorizo sausages, preferably good stuff (I mean, not like I’m going to say “preferably the worst chorizo you can find, and then leave it out in the sun for a few days” but basically the quality does make a difference oh wow I sound so patronising I’m going to back away now.)
  • 100g feta, the soft kind, nothing too crumbly or firm (the cheapest stuff is ideal for this, ha!)
  • olive oil
  • sumac

Put on a large pot of salted water to boil and once it is boiling, cook the pasta according to packet instructions – probably about ten minutes. While you’re doing that, melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the chilli and the zest of the lemon. Allow the butter to sizzle and the chilli to soften a little (PS: seeds in or out is up to your level of heat-resistance) and then pour all of this into a small bowl and set aside. Slice the chorizo and fry in the same pan till crisp and browned. Using a fork, mash the feta along with the juice of the lemon you just zested and about a tablespoon of olive oil, stirring harder until it’s quite smooth.

Drain the pasta, schmeer the feta thickly on two plates (I know, fussy, but it’s useful) and then divide the pappardelle between said plates, topping with the chorizo and spoonfuls of the chilli butter. The butter may well have firmed up by this point but the heat of the pasta will slowly melt it. Finally, scatter over a little sumac, and hey ho, let’s go.

you could use any pasta really but things just taste nicer when those things are pappardelle pasta

There’s a lot going on here – sour, spicy, creamy, potentially-mouth-burning – and a lesser wine might’ve been overshadowed, or just taste lousy, against all of that. But the cuvee’s sprightly crisp acidity and full, nutty flavour was not only balanced, it was, I boldly claim, enhanced by the same flavours echoed in the pasta. Also just something about the champagne style of the wine makes anything feel more exciting, and I already get one hell of a kick out of things like pasta and butter and stuff.

the chilli gets a lot more mellow as it sits in the butter, in case you’re nervous

On a scale of 1 to “a whole new world, a new fantastic point of view, no one to tell us no, or where to go, or say we’re only dreaming”: I would say an eight. I got a lot of wine, all of it far more delicious and swanky than I’m used to, and it totally improved my life whenever I had a bottle in my hand.

Would I do this for not-free: Look, it’s more expensive than the wine I usually buy, but not prohibitively so – if I was feeling both flush and celebratory I would most definitely go for a bottle of the cuvee. But also, the prices really are reasonable for what you’re getting, and I suspect that you only have to be marginally less of a dirtbag than me to not flinch at them for casual wine drinking times.

Earnest thanks for making me feel fancy to: Nautilus Estate. They’re damn rad. I’ll be doing another one of these posts in the future sometime too, in case you’re all “wait, Laura, don’t go!”

 

the day the sun turns black and there’s a money tree

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Here’s the thing. (I enjoy saying “here’s the thing” before whatever follows, because it makes me feel cavalierly authoritative.) Tim txts me yesterday afternoon to say that he won a $50 bar tab at a nice place in town. This being New Zealand, that buys us two and a half drinks and one snack, but still – drinks are drinks. I suddenly realise two things: time is passing by quickly, and my motivation for making dinner is waning slightly. Also, I’m wearing high heels that are tormenting my feet with the kind of blisters I haven’t seen since my days en pointe, also I’m trying to ignore the fact that Tim and I still urgently need to wash a lot of teatowels and dishes after our engagement party on Saturday. Also I really just want to get home, eat some good food, and settle in to watching Luther and Orange is the New Black. 
Rather than us spending money on take-out, I thought we could instead go to the supermarket on the way home and pick up some ingredients for fancy pasta, something that was almost more assembly than cooking. It’s Thursday, there has been a smallish protuberance in our bank balance, and we’ve just had some very free liquor. We can afford some packets of stuff. And really, that’s all this is: buying packets of cool things and arranging them on a plate. I call it payday pasta since the ingredients are kind of treats – pistachios, ricotta, and pancetta, oh that Terpsichore of the smallgoods. It has a bonus subtext of being the sort of manageable thing you can make for yourself near-instantly should you have gone out for a drink of an evening. I couldn’t actually find pappardelle, which is my favourite of the pastas, but after some feverish deliberation, I improvised by buying fresh lasagne sheets and slicing them up. 
“Pinenuts! They’re the definitive payday nut!” and “why can’t I bring myself to buy this pancetta even though I set out to buy pancetta…okay we will eat it really reverently” and “why is this dog roll called Wound Dog? No wait, it’s Hound Dog. No wait, why does it have a picture of a cat on it?” and “okay, what’s the second–fanciest nut?” I exclaimed, as we barreled from aisle to aisle, pallid under the fluorescent lights. And once home, I managed to get out of my high heels and dress and into trackpants and a soft old jersey and make this pasta and get it on the table within twenty minutes. 

It goes without saying, except that I’m saying it now, that you don’t have to actually buy pancetta and ricotta and pistachios. You could really sub in ‘most any gaspingly expensive protein and as long as you kept the butter-wine-mustard reduction (or gosh, just drizzle over some olive oil) it’ll be something. Pasta is very forgiving like that.

payday pasta

(apart from the pasta, I measured everything by handfuls or how much felt right, but in the hopes of being more helpful than that, the below measurements are roughly what happened. Don’t feel you have to stick to them to the very last milliliter, though.)

25g butter
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
1/2 cup dry white wine
200g pappardelle or fresh lasagne sheets
5 very thin slices pancetta
5 tablespoons ricotta
3 tablespoons raw pistachios
1 tablespoon capers
thyme leaves

In the same pot that you’ll later cook the pasta in, bring the butter, mustard and wine to a rapid boil, stirring occasionally, till golden, bubbly, and reduced by half. Meanwhile, bring a kettle full of water to the boil, and, if you got lasagne sheets, carefully cut them into slices about 2 1/2 cm wide. Lasagne sheets tend to come folded up, so it’s only a few incisions that you’ll have to make.

Tip the butter-wine mix into a small bowl, then fill up the pot with the freshly boiled water, add plenty of salt, and bring to the boil on the stove top. Add the pasta once it’s bubbling, and cook according to packet instructions. Fresh pasta only takes a couple of minutes.

Drain the pasta, and divide between two plates. Quickly tear up the pancetta and arrange evenly between the two plates, spoon over the ricotta, the pistachios, the capers, and the thyme leaves. Pour the butter-wine sauce over the two plates of pasta, and serve immediately.

For all that this is mostly assembly, the moving parts of which were very hastily acquired, it’s still a coherent and, in case you think I’m damning it with faint praise, a gratifyingly delicious dinner. Pappardelle is enormously fun to eat. So wide and cumbersomely floppy, all the cool, milkily plain ricotta cheese pressing into it as you twirl it round your fork, with elegantly salty, tissue-soft pancetta. I will here point out that you mercifully taste every penny of the pancetta. It’s not just overpriced ham. Pistachios add soft crunch, plus pink goes good with green, and the intensely flavoured butter-wine sauce somehow bundles it all together without overshadowing any of the other ingredients on the plate. It’s damn good, and worth waiting till payday for.

Sometimes it’s fun to spend a little money on something you’re just going to make disappear into your mouth as soon as possible. Sometimes that’s not an option. In case this all seems too chest-thumpingly pro-capitalism (to which I say please don’t ask me about capitalism, it’s good, it’s bad, etc, and also ouch, chest-thumping) a couple of payday-eve, or indeed anyday pastas you could consider include spaghetti with chili, lemon and olive oil, macaroni peas, and these two guys. 

What a week, huh. Tim and I finally had our engagement party. Families converging, some of whom hadn’t really converged themselves in a while, friends, us, all in one room – I was nervous. In fact for the first half of the evening I distinctly felt like my head was floating about two feet above my body. But it all went really well. And as Tim and I kept reminding ourselves, we’re not the only nervous ones, this is our house, and this is a happy occasion. In fact, here’s what happened – everyone appeared, there was nonstop talking and laughing and bonding, everyone got a massive laugh at Tim’s and my photoboard of us from 2005 till now, the food was excellent and all appeared on time, and it was just a very happy, fun night. I just wish I’d specifically organised a photo of Tim and myself, not least because my hair was ballin’ and I had an amazing new black velvet jumpsuit with a short floaty skirt (well…skorts) and enormous bow in the back, but because while making the photoboard we realised we didn’t have many recent photos of ourselves together. D’oh. Oh, and I made a FANTASTIC speech. I just did, it’s true, don’t be shocked by my un-New Zealand lack of modesty! Tim was also there to contribute to the speech once I’d had my ten minutes of ad-libbing (including a musical number fake-out which I’m quite proud of inventing on the spot) in case you’re wondering whether I’m getting married to myself, or something. Also, speaking of wondering, we fed everyone (yeah, I like to cater for forty people for kicks) like so:

snacks, chips, hummus-y dips

cornbread-topped chili, vegetarian cornbread-topped chili, paprika-fried tofu, ham in coca-cola, slaw, buns

vegan lemon-raspberry cake, spongebob squarepants candy, nerds, and jelly dinosaurs, dried fruit, grapes and cheeses.

And now we have leftovers upon leftovers (including maybe three thousand bottles of wine) which is the best way to ease yourself out of the inevitable post-event-planning slump. Nervous though entertaining them makes me, because I want everything to be just right, and slightly resentful though I was that they didn’t make good on my request to bring the cats down to visit too, it was really lovely to see my family and to show them a fun time in Wellington. And now that Tim and I have got this stressful thing out of the way, honestly, I’m feeling so casual about the wedding itself. For now.

In light of what a week it has been outside of my small world, I recommend you read this piece by the wonderful Questlove of The Roots, who wrote a response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. I also recommend what David Simon (the person behind The Wire and Treme and have you seen The Wire) wrote in response to it. You could also, counter to what I’d usually say, try reading the comments – there is some fascinating stuff coming out in them. I’d also like to acknowledge what Rob Delaney wrote after the sad, sad news that Glee actor Cory Monteith was found dead. All of them write with far more insight on these subjects than I could, and so I’m happy to just link to them and leave it there.

Finally, let’s all reflect upon my knitting progress. After some almost comically prolonged unpicking, I am onto the final square of my blanket. Ready to tackle a hooded cape next, to give me that mysterious-yet-snug demeanour I’m always going for in the winter.
_____________________________________________________________________________
title via: The Money Tree, a gorgeously mournful Kander and Ebb song made all the more so when syncopated with Cabaret’s Maybe This Time and sung by the wondrous Julia Murney and Heidi Blickenstaff.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Music lately:

On Sunday afternoon, after spending all Saturday evening there, our friends came back to watch Rock of Ages. I know it is, um, imperfect, but I love it, I just love it. And it is entirely perfect for watching after organising a large stressful party. ANYWAY, wow, anyone else feel uncomfortably red-faced while watching a disarmingly sexy Tom Cruise, who has never appealed to me before, singing Dead or Alive? Don’t even get me started on Pour Some Sugar On Me. 

Tim and I went to see local musician Watercolours (who I’ve talked to on here before!) at Puppies bar. Talk about disarming. I may have blurted out to her that her song Pazzida is in my walk-up-the-aisle-song shortlist. She took it well.
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Next time: I had a sudden urge to make a clafoutis on Tuesday. Still haven’t made good on said urge, but maybe this weekend?

take it easy on me, shed some light, shed some light on things

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My fork is the much, much smaller one on the top right.

This is a slight, small recipe, willfully simplistic. But also oddly fancy. I make this a lot, since it’s not very much effort, but is also just the kind of thing I want to eat following a Sunday afternoon of book group, mainlining candy (specifically: Nerds, fizzy Spongebob Squarepants lollies) and drinking just enough cider to feel pleasantly fuzzy. Seriously, we had so many good snacks – kumara chips, hummus that I’d made myself with brown chickpeas and harissa, Turkish bread, manuka smoked butter. I just felt like sugar. Until I didn’t – you know that wall you hit? Well, this is the perfect antidote. It’s intensely savoury, with rich oiliness, sharp saltiness, bursts of citrus and pinchings of smoky heat. Not the slightest bit sweet at all. And you can make it post-cider times, without hurting yourself. At least, I did, and I am so clumsy-prone that it’s a pretty decent test of what the rest of the world is capable of.

The other nice thing about this is that all you need is one pot and one or two small bowls. If you want to make even less dishes, you could soak the dried chili first, then use that same emptied bowl to put the olive oil in. I just used lots of fancy little bowls because sometimes my “how will this look on the blog” aesthetics override my already skewed logic. Also since moving into a house with a dishwasher for the first time, I like casually using as many dishes as I can, safe in the knowledge that some machine is going to do all the work for Tim and me. Hooray for dystopian futures!

spaghetti with chili, lemon, capers and olive oil

200g spaghetti
1 large dried red chili
1 lemon
1 tablespoon of capers, rinsed of any salt if they’re salt-packed
salt
extra virgin olive oil

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil, and cook the pasta according to packet instructions – usually takes between 9-12 minutes. While it’s cooking, put the chili in a small bowl and cover with boiling water for five minutes to allow it to rehydrate. In another small bowl, pour several tablespoons of olive oil – two to three is probably fine, though I go for four-ish mostly – and either grate or use a lemon zester to remove as many curling golden strands of lemon peel that you can. Tip the lemon zest and capers into the olive oil, retrieve the chili carefully from its water bath and roughly chop (removing seeds and stem as you please – and I do, a lot of the burn is in those seeds) into small pieces, adding that to the oil too. Finally, drain the cooked pasta, tip in the oil and all the bits and pieces in it, stir carefully and divide between two plates. I often cut the lemon in half and squeeze its juice over the pasta too, at this point. Pour over more olive oil if you like, sprinkle over more salt if you need it, and eat. Obviously.

Chilis can seem intimidating if you’re not used to them, if at the most you eat sticky, syrupy sweet chili sauce, if all your references are all cartoonishly exaggerated pop culture. Or in fact literally cartoons in pop culture, like Homer Simpson’s viaje mysterioso. Despite seeming that way, chilis are not simply a straightforward delivery method of a burning sensation. They have a whole spectrum of flavour, from smoky like, well, smoke, to fruity like the darkest dried plums, to sweet and lemony…kick the seeds and internal spine out and you might find you can handle a lot more than you thought. The chili I used for this was long, leathery and with a rich wine-dark colour and flavour and just a little prickling heat here and there. Together with the salt of the capers and the bright lemon zest, it’s really something. Even though it sorta looks like nothing.

Now that it’s suddenly July – cue my obligatory yet sincere incredulity at the passing of time, as always – Tim and I are entering crunch time on planning our engagement party, which is partway through this month. Lots of things about it are making us nervous, mostly around disparite groups of people in one room, but we have been having so much fun looking through old photos of ourselves to get printed for a photoboard. The pre-us-getting-together “whoa that chemistry” moments caught on film. Tim’s fluctuatingly enormous hair. The entirety of 2006 when we were each as much of a hipster scene kid as we could muster. Our utterly squalid flats. The six months in 2008 when a neighbourhood cat decided to adopt us (cue some obligatory but deeply sincere howling from my direction at the sorrow of it all now, in that we can’t have a cat.) Our first holiday, finally, to Europe in 2011. All that tequila. “Oh, that’s the time I wore a singlet as a dress”; “Why did I have a permanent spot on my chin for three years”; “ah, the night where everyone had to wear hats and dance to Fall Out Boy”; “why were we obsessed with taking photos of our feet?”; “how on earth did I pass that photography paper?” and so on, and so on. It’s making me want to stop and be a bit more grateful and aware of the good things we have going on right now. Like insulation and personal space and the aforementioned dishwasher. And no photos of our feet. And new-old friends but also old friends from the moment we first lived together (Ange! That’s you!) And each other, still.

In case this was getting all too sentimental, I got another tattoo! Ain’t nothing sentimental about being stabbed with needles for an hour and a half. It’s at the aren’t-bodies-fascinating scabbed healing stage right now, but once it’s fully there I’ll take a photo, in case you’re interested. In the meantime, here’s me excitedly pointing at it. The super great Nursey at Dr Morse did the design, and also the stabbing itself. Which was oddly enjoyable – it burned, but there’s something about sitting through that pain and knowing you can just do it and you’ll get something you adore forever is kinda powerful. Or at least do-able.

It’s a crescent moon with clouds drifting over it and the lupus (wolf) constellation over the top. It’s very soft and dreamy and a little ancient. And it’s forty centimetres long! Kidding, it’s a couple of inches. I’m very, very happy with it. In a week where people have fought so hard for other people’s rights to simply have autonomy over their own bodies (particularly the brave Senator Wendy Davis who filibustered into the night, on her feet, without water or food, for this very idea) it’s – and not to tenuously link between myself and Davis, because seriously – but it’s nice to be able to make this small decision.

title via: Feist, My Moon My Man. It’s grand. I love the sneaky Tainted Love-esque beat.

music lately:

Lorde, Tennis Court. Yeah Lorde! Still being astonishing!

Blur, Beetlebum. Oh, sexy sexy Damon Albarn.

Connie Converse, How Sad How Lovely. Occasionally I return to this sorrowful, beautiful song from the mysterious Converse. I should return to it more.

Next time: I Should Tell You is back, with Delaney Davidson, which is really exciting. For me. And hopefully you too. His music is excellent.

 

is this the comfort of being afraid

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I believe comfort food is subjective, and what brings solace to me might leave others completely unmoved. Also, all food is comforting in some way, really. But I do love curling up with a significant quantity of the food which warms my soul – generally anything yielding and hot and salty, like very buttery mashed potatoes, or spaghetti with lots of butter and nutmeg, or cheese on toast, or really creamy risotto. Or this thing: pasta, covered in sauce made from minced beef and canned tomatoes, covered in white sauce made with milk and cream, covered in cheese. (PS: I deleted this way enormous preamble about anxiety and the difference between comfort food we seek in times of crisis compared to just eating it because we feel like it and wow are you lucky I edited it out, it because it went on for miles.)

Something I got to thinking about recently is comfort food for the mind: feel-better, everything’s-going-to-be-alright pop culture. Food can only do so much, and sometimes you want to take your nervous brain and transport it somewhere else for a while. If your brain is processing something soothing while your stomach is eating something particularly heartwarming? So much the better. In that way that similarities occasionally cluster in your life to make it feel like you’re in a TV show with an overarching theme in each week’s episode, I’d ended up explaining on several different occasions why I loved a particular thing so much: because when I watched/listened/read etc it, it felt like everything was going to be okay. Since that’s not a feeling any of us can take for granted, I decided to investigate it further. (Weirdly, I also had FOUR separate occasions last week of getting frustrated at not being able to find something because it was written on paper rather than being in my inbox. Bet Ray Bradbury’s out there somewhere smugly nodding.)

Here’s my (whim-based, non-exhaustive, non-alphabetical) list of comfort food pop culture.

– Pop Culture Happy Hour, the nicest, happiest, snappiest podcast I’ve ever, ever heard. And it’s about pop culture, which I evidently have a general thing for.

– The Hour

– Nashville (Connie Britton’s mere existence is weirdly comforting, I don’t know how she does it.)

– Parks and Recreation (I want to say “you don’t understand” but that’s unfair. It’s just that it’s possibly bordering on concerning how much this show means to me.)

– NewsRadio (Caveat: Actor Phil Hartman was murdered between the fourth and fifth season and I cannot physically bring myself to watch anything past the penultimate episode of season four. Just can’t do it. Luckily the previous episodes all stand up to being rewatched a million times.)

– Maeve Binchy’s book Circle of Friends. (I’ve never been moved by anything else written by The Binch, but I reread this book every summer and couldn’t be happier while it’s happening.)

– Marty Robbins’ record Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. Mmmhmm. Also more or less anything by the Rat Pack. Frankly, if it’s from a time where singers were likely to have praised the rich smooth tar of their cigarette company sponsors for keeping their crooning voices shipshape (lookin’ at you, Nat King Cole), I’ll probably be hugging myself while listening to it.

– Wet Hot American Summer (Or as I call it, “Nothing bad can happen when Wet Hot American Summer is on.”)

– The Big Chill (obvious choices are sometimes obvious for a reason)

– Audra McDonald singing more or less anything.

– Nina Simone singing more or less anything except the sinister Everyone’s Gone To The Moon

– My Drunk Kitchen

– Pride and Prejudice, the 1995 adaptation (Although Colin Firth’s smoldering and Jennifer Ehle’s heavily loaded politeness are almost too hot)

– Much Ado About Nothing, the Kenneth Branagh adaptation (There was a point in my life where I was watching this…literally…daily. I may have also had a small notebook filled with my favourite quotes from it which I carried everywhere)

– Side By Side By Susan Blackwell

– Baby-sitters Club books (I regret nothing)

– Leonard Cohen, the youthful-voice years.

– Wikipedia. Okay. I mean, it can be a little bleak (especially if you’re aimlessly searching along the lines of “whatever happened to…”) but there’s not much I love more than reading about the minutia of various TV shows or one-hit wonders or people’s lives or finding out how many towns are called Taft, or just looking up things like “kissing”.

There’ll be more that I haven’t mentioned, there’ll indubitably be things that look really good on paper that I’ve completely forgotten, but if you’re feeling all tense and twisty and in need of something to take your mind off bad things and zoom it to a land of delightful, I recommend all and any of the above. The list may look long, but it’s carefully chosen – it’s not just a case of something being really, really good. I predictably exult The Wire, I do not find it comforting. I am obsessed with many musicals, but listening to, say, Wicked or Grey Gardens will usually leave me more emotionally drained than at ease with life. No, to fall within the soft, inflatable bouncy castle walls of comforting pop culture it has to really make my heart kind of clench and release with happiness at the very thought of consuming it, and give you that rain-on-the-roof, snuggled in a blanket feeling that everything’s okay, even if the material itself isn’t that uplifting (I see you, Leonard Cohen.) (Admittedly, wikipedia is more what I read when I can’t sleep rather than like, a joyous occasion, but I stand by my inclusion.)

On Monday night I made this layered up, just-bordering-on lasagne dish for dinner and Tim and I ate it while sitting on the couch watching The Hour. Comfort food plus comfort pop culture? I nearly dissolved from contentedness. Even if it’s only a relatively quick fix, it’s a delicious one on all levels while it lasts. I’m not saying this recipe is particularly impressive, or even original – in the same way that various brands will assure you that one of their product is sold every seven seconds worldwide, I’m pretty sure recipes resembling this one are made every single night somewhere. But still, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth your time.

To clarify some things about the recipe: Yeah, I like my white sauce that buttery, although I can’t even tell anymore what is a reasonable amount of butter to the average person, since I eat so much of it. I didn’t specify any particular herbs because something about this reminded me of when I was first learning to cook, and adding any dried herbs at all – including those generic Dried Mixed Herbs packets – felt really knowledgeable and sophisticated. Plus, after a certain point on your shelf, most dried herbs start to lose their flavour anyway, so marjoram is just as friendly as basil or oregano or whatever. Finally, I really like adding a little cream or milk to a tomato-beef pasta sauce. It just rounds it out and lusciouses it up stops it just being a recently-frozen lump of mince and an ancient can of tomatoes.

Demi-lasagne (Aw c’mon, let me have that cute name. I know it’s still fairly inaccurate. But I hate any recipe that sounds like “pasta bake” and listing the main components fancy cafe-style – Pasta, Mince, Cheese Sauce – won’t do this any favours. And it is kinda lasagna-y.)

A recipe by myself. Serves two with leftovers for at least one lucky person the next day. The recipe looks long and complicated but it’s just me being talky, promise.

250g short pasta of some kind. Penne would look better in photos, but spirals is what I had.
1 tablespoon olive oil or butter
300g beef mince
1 tin of tomatoes
2 teaspoons dried herbs of some kind (I went for dried oregano, so old you had to actually plunge your nose inside the package to detect any scent!
2 tablespoons cream
50g butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1/2 cup cream, extra
As much cheese as you can deal with grating in whatever state you’re in while making this

Bring a pot of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta according to packet instructions – usually 10-12 minutes makes it edible. Tip the cooked, drained pasta into the base of an oven dish, you know the kind, like big enough that a cat would attempt to fall asleep in it but small enough to stack neatly in your cupboard. Just a typical oven dish.

While the pasta is boiling, heat the oil in a saucepan and fry the beef mince. Once it’s getting to the more-brown-than-pink stage, tip in the canned tomatoes (breaking them up with your wooden spoon if they’re the whole variety) and sprinkle over your herbs of choice. Allow it to bubble away merrily over a medium heat till the tomato liquid is reduced slightly, then tip in the cream, allow it to come to the boil again, and spatula the lot evenly over the pasta in the oven dish.

At this point, set your oven to 200 C. Finally, in the same pan (don’t bother washing it out, but at least make sure you gave it a decent spatula-ing) melt the butter, tip in the flour, and continue to stir constantly till it forms a thick, magically delicious paste. Once very thick, and a little darkened, slowly tip in half the milk, stirring continuously. Don’t worry about lumps – the milk will absorb into the flour and butter eventually. Slowly add the remaining milk, and then the cream, continuing to stir. Stir the lot for a bit longer over a low heat till thick and smooth, then pour this evenly over the tomato-beef mixture in the oven dish. Then, sprinkle grated cheese over evenly, and bake the lot for ten minutes. If you like, flick the oven over to grill for a few minutes to allow the cheese to get all bubbling and amazing.

It’s almost willfully unimpressive, but also tastes so good and needs nothing more. The joy of eating it is twofold – first of all the texture, in that you barely have to exert yourself, hardly need move your jaw, to eat this layering of the soft and the minced, and secondly in the unthreatening, familiar-to-me, sustaining and rich flavours of the beef and tomatoes with the melted cheese and bubbling sauce. Plus it’s all – well, some – of the fun of lasagne without most of the faffing around.

Last Wednesday night the Marriage Equality Bill passed its second reading. By a sound, impressive, prouder-than-I-thought-I’d-be majority. I had a good feeling about it but I also tend to quietly expect the worst as a kind of emotional safeguard. Perhaps related, I occasionally unhelpfully troll myself by reading the letters to the editor of local nationwide newspapers, and gee, will they ever give you a sad outlook on the world. But I won’t give any further time to such odium, because it did get voted to the next stage, and there were some incredible, hope-spurring speeches from all sides of the political spectrum.

Which means, amongst so many things, that Tim and I are one step closer to being able to marry! This isn’t the only reason this is incredibly important to us, but immediately after getting engaged we gave ourselves this goal – of not marrying unless Marriage Equality went through – and it’s pretty thrillsy to be a little nearer to it happening. I’m not quite sure when the next, possibly final reading is. But am cautiously allowing myself to continue to have good feelings about it.

Title via: I love those moments when you hear a song for the first time and it pushes aside everything else you’ve heard before then because you can’t believe music can sound like that. And I don’t think having that feeling when you’re relatively young makes it any less valid. Aaaand I still love the song One Armed Scissor by At the Drive-In as much as I did when I heard it thirteen years ago.

Music lately:

Metallica, Whisky In The Jar. St Patrick’s day did not pass us by unobserved this year.

A few of us went to see Rodriguez on Saturday night. I most definitely recommend Searching for Sugarman, the beautiful documentary about him (although, spoiler alert: reports of his death were greatly exaggerated.) Seeing him in person was astounding. Seventy years old, being helped up to the stage, and yet playing with all the vigor in the world and his voice sounding just as it does on his 1970 record. This Is Not a Song, It’s an Outburst, or: Establishment Blues sounded like it could’ve been written yesterday.

Next time: Another I Should Tell You interview. Whoop!

a cottage on cape cod for two, please – two peas in a pod

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Me, snugging it up yesterday.
I kind of adore it when I get sick because it means I get to drop responsibilities, and be all snug, and watch TV (I love TV so much) and lie down (I love that too) both things I don’t get to do enough of while I’m out there earning money to pay rent. Could you say I look forward to getting sick? As long as it’s something manageable, then yeah I do. However, it also probably affected the snappishly creative part of my brain, because I spent last night undoing all the delightfulness of my day off by just staring at this very screen that you read, getting angrier and angrier at my inability to put fingertips to keyboard and write something. Quietly seething frustration didn’t prove a reliable model for getting stuff done, and in the end I went to bed. So here I am the following morning at 6.24am having spent 24 minutes slowly, lumpenly writing the second half of this opening paragraph. Maybe I’m still sick? Maybe my brain has given me all it can give ever? Are food blog paragraphs a finite resource? Best not be.
Macaroni Peas

I was very young – maybe five, maybe younger? I was an advanced reader – when I discovered the concept of meta, breaking-the-fourth-wall humour. Of course, smart as I was, I would not have used the word meta then. Why, I didn’t even eat couscous for the first time till I was seventeen! “Meta” I probably only used confidently for the first time in 2009. The conduit for this knowledge was important text, The Monster At The End of This Book, featuring Sesame Street’s Grover. When he flails and dramatically cries “You turned the page!” after I’d just turned the page? Well. There was a particular deliciousness, a certain “oh wow this is the height of wit and I just feel so clever”, which is something the Sesame Street/Muppets empire was very good at – not talking down to children, but building them up. So it was something of a disappointment to be told later in primary school by a teacher that writing a story in class about how hard it was to write a story in class was in fact not the height of wit: just lazy and unfunny. Meanwhile I was all “you know who broke the fourth wall? Shakespeare. In fact I still can’t shake that oh-so-in-on-the-joke satisfaction of the wink to camera. You should’ve seen me laugh in the 2011 Muppets Movie when they’re all “oh, okay we’ll pick up the rest of the Muppets via montage” and “we’ll travel by map!” Even though it was kind of heavy handed, it still just feels like the damn funniest thing for a character to acknowledge that they can see you seeing them.

But using it on this blog, when there isn’t even a fourth wall anyway? Okay, pretty blah. But look: here I am! Vaulted paragraphs ahead, and I didn’t even (quite) write a blog post about writing a blog post.

I’m not going to try and turn this recipe into some kind of theme-reflecting metaphor: it’s just macaroni and peas. It’s a recipe I saw in a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall cookbook, River Cottage Veg Every Day, and while I loved it I believed I could make it simpler. Some measures I took were practical: his recipe used about seven different saucepans whereas I managed to pare it back to one. Some were just circumstantial: the macaroni was surprisingly fast-moving and I ended up accidentally tipping 3/4 of the bag into the pan of boiling water – to which I responded, well I guess that’s how much pasta we’re having.

It really is just that simple though – macaroni, boiled peas blitzed in the food processor with my good friend butter and a little cheese, stirred back through the pasta – and while what I’m describing sounds tantamount to upmarket baby food – suddenly it tastes incredible. I think it’s the fact that it’s blended up – instead of being all these separate ingredients bumping round uncomfortably in your bowl, peas sliding off your fork as they are wont to do, it’s instead all amalgamated and bound together and ever so slightly sophisticated. But still very much not so. Ultimately as long as you like peas and pasta in the first place, it’s wackily delicious. And so, so easy.

It’s also not the prettiest. But it’s going to get all chewed up anyway?

Macaroni Peas

Adapted lazily from a recipe in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall’s book River Cottage Veg Every Day. I apologise if you don’t have a food processor – this recipe really needs it. You could try one of those blender sticks for soup, or a blender itself, otherwise maybe go hang with a friend who has one and offer to cook them dinner.

200g macaroni
2 1/2 cups frozen peas (or thereabouts)
75g butter
50g cheese, cubed. Like parmesan or colby or something, whatever you can manage.

You have two options. You can either boil the pasta and peas in two separate pans, or you can cook them one after the other in the same pan. It all depends on your dishwashing capabilities. Either way, cook the pasta in boiling salted water till tender, then drain and place in a large bowl with about 25g of the butter. Cook the peas in boiling water, then remove about 3/4 of them (really, don’t worry about the measurements here) and blitz in a food processor with the remaining butter and the cheese, till smooth-ish but still a bit nubbly from the peas. Mix this into the pasta with the remaining whole peas and divide between two bowls. 

Pasta and butter is one of my fallback, can’t-hardly-think self-feeding options anyway, and this is barely more effort. The processed peas still have their bright green flavour, but the cheese and butter, swiftly encorporated into them by their heat, bring luxe richness and savoury depth. If you don’t have cheese, frankly just double the butter. And vice versa, I guess. It’s also weirdly good cold the next day, but I think I might’ve just been convincing myself that because I couldn’t be bothered microwaving it. Which might make me the worst person in the world.

I don’t know if you have them overseas, but here in New Zealand, every bunch of years or so we fill out what is called the Census, which is supposed to provide super-accurate data and a snapshot of the nation at a certain point and so on. I was really excited to fill mine out, since I irrationally love filling out forms about myself, and also because several details about myself have changed since I last filled one out. But it ended up being a little vague, and over quickly, and in the end I wasn’t sure that I’d really contributed much of a picture of who I am. Apart from the religion-related question, there didn’t seem to be anything particularly specific or illuminating in most of the questions. For example, it asked if you were living in a same sex relationship but not if you were actually gay. It gave “walked/jogged” as an example of how you got to work on a particular day – when I would do the former all the time, but never the latter. It did, I concede, ask if you have a fax machine. So we will have some very specific knowledge about faxing capabilities in New Zealand. But still: Tim and I are in there, skewing up the data with our facts. A tiny bit like voting in an election, I feel like a granule of sugar in the sugar bowl, but still satisfied that I’ve made a small difference.

Oh and speaking of doing stuff about doing stuff: Tim and I recently went to see a local production of [title of show] a musical about two guys writing a musical about two guys writing a musical. We both wrote a review about it on the Wellingtonista. Mine unsurprisingly had a lot of feelings.

And finally…I submitted a video to Hannah Hart’s Pitchin’ Kitchen thing for her My Drunk Kitchen tour to New Zealand. Because I really, really want her to come cook at our house. I think it would be so great. Oh wow, every time I try to talk about it I come over all inarticulate. I’m not actually quite sure what I’m supposed to do now but wait for inevitable disappointment (or….joy? But probably disappointment. But maybe joy? Shut up, heart of mine) but in the meantime feel free to watch the video if you like. Better yet, ignore my video and go straight to the My Drunk Kitchen channel, because good times ahoy!
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title via: Two Peas In A Pod from the terrifyingly good musical Grey Gardens. Or, Grey Gahhhhhdens as I can’t help but call it. This song, like several songs in the musical, is like an old-timey song you’re sure you’ve heard before but you actually haven’t. True story.
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Music lately:

Solange, Losing You. My friend Kate got me on to this song. It is allllll too dreamy. Just how I like it.

I’m Alive, Aaron Tveit, from the musical Next To Normal. I know he’s the totally obvious, don’t even have to go looking for it kind of handsome, but oh wow. And how. Some might say too babein’.
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Next time: got it in my head that an Earl Grey and Maple Syrup cake would be fun (possibly because it was the last day of summer recently and now I’m ready to go FULL AUTUMN.) 

creature creature, my own double feature

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Y’know, I will gently snark about the Baby-sitters Club series in a loving way till my dying breath, but sometimes, in hindsight, they really got it wrong: according to the BSC, wearing glasses = The Worst. They kept brightly exclaiming things like “Mallory’s got glasses and braces, but we still like her/she’ll look okay one day/she actually managed to get a sort-of boyfriend!” I guess Karen Brewer of the Little Sister spin-off was glasses-proud but I never did like those books – who wants to read about seven year olds when you could read about the (more or less literally) impossible, sophisticated exploits of that most worldly and cool age group, thirteen year olds? What I’m saying is – I found out recently that I need glasses. And, in your face Ann M Martin and inevitable ghostwriters: I’m really happy about it. I’d been getting headaches and tender, weary eyeballs in front of the computer (which, between this blog and work, I’m attached to at the face for 90% of my life.) It never occurred to me that I had anything other than brilliant eyesight. I may have even boasted, nay, crowed about it on occasion. But the bafflingly crisp, clear world around me when I tried on the right lenses and the utter relaxation of my face in the region from my under-eye rings to my eyebrows convinced me that I actually am pretty long-sighted. Also the optician told me so.

So, in ten working days, these will be my new face. Minus the price sticker. And I can’t wait! Glasses are cool! Speccy is sexy! Frames get the dames! Lenses get the menses! (oh wait god no I didn’t say that one.)

It doesn’t always come together: over the last couple of weeks I’ve been out of the house so much that I’ve hardly cooked dinner at all. Movies. (Jessica Chastain’s magnificent face starring in Zero Dark Thirty). Drinks. Other drinks. Burger rings and snacks and a marathon of the most important cinema franchise of our generation: The Fast and the Furious. Dinners out with friends. Sybaritic weekends. And…bank balance plummeting as a result. It all seemed fairly simple when I got my job – we’d pay off our post-America credit card so soon! We’d get tattoos! We’d put money away for our wedding! Even though we’re waiting for marriage equality laws to pass, weddings are expensive enough that we might as well start saving now.) But no. Things kept happening. Moving costs. Furniture. More furniture. Glasses. Spontaneous good times. Some self-enforced laying low is maybe in order. But I do love good times…

I cook pasta more than anything else already, but it’s what I turn to with vigour when we’re trying to just eat from what’s in the cupboard without spending any extraneous pennies. Pasta can handle being simple – just cook it, stir in a few things, and you have a plausible meal, a meal that looks like it took some care, and like someone cares.

That said, these two recipes are so uninvolved and small that they almost don’t exist. The sort of thing you can really only cook for yourself, or someone you know well enough that you could defame them with the secrets only you keep about them (as others might say, someone you trust.) It’s just, many might be perturbed by how utterly little there is happening on their plate. And so, I worry for your self-esteem. I’m pretty sure these are nay-sayer-deflectingly delicious, but still. I can’t guarantee someone won’t say “where’s the rest of dinner?” or something.

Pasta with Burnt Cream and Basil

A recipe by myself. I made this by cooking the cream in this adorably small, dinky red pot. It boiled over furiously, twice, and made an appalling mess on the stovetop. Use a slightly bigger pot, please. I guess I could just call it Pasta with Cream and Basil, as it’s more scalded and boiled than burnt. But I am fanciful, and I fancy that Burnt Cream sounds fancy. 

200g dried spaghetti
250ml (1 cup) cream
A handful of fresh basil leaves

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Once it’s bubbling away, tip in the pasta and cook according to packet instructions. Probably 10-12 minutes. In another good-sized saucepan, bring the cream to the boil and allow it to simmer away for a good five to ten minutes. Keep an eye on it and stir often. Cream bubbles up fast. Drain the pasta once it’s cooked, pour over the cream and stir it through along with the basil leaves. The sauce will still be very liquid and creamy – as you can see in the photo –  but should have reduced in quantity somewhat. 

Pasta with Tomato, Wine and Butter Sauce

A recipe by myself. Yeah canned tomatoes!

200g dried spaghetti
50g butter
125ml (1/2 cup) leftover white wine – or a little less if that’s all you have. 
1 can cherry tomatoes (or chopped canned tomatoes)
A little olive oil

Cook the pasta according to packet instructions in a large pan of boiling salted water. In a medium sized pot, bring the butter and wine to the boil, then tip in the canned tomatoes and their juice. Allow to simmer for another five minutes – it will be pretty liquid – then pour over the cooked, drained pasta and stir carefully. Pour over some olive oil if you fancy the flavour. 

I didn’t even intend to blog about the second recipe here, as you can probably tell from the last-minute, near-empty, Final Girl cherry tomato nature of the photos of it. But I was also well aware of the fact that I had nothing to blog about, and in fact that it might not be the worst thing in the world to write a post about my regular fallback of pasta-and-stuff. The burnt cream pasta might sound sinister, but all you’re doing is reducing down the cream so that everything incredible about its flavour – that buttery clean richness – is deepened and intensified and more wonderful than ever. I specify leftover white wine in the tomato pasta recipe because that’s what I used – should you find an inch of wine leftover after a party don’t throw it out! Wine seems to add insta-mystique to a meal, giving a elusive elegance and layering of flavour to whatever you add it to. In this case it cuts through the butter, points up the acidic nature of the tomatoes, and is just generally delicious.

Another drawn-on page in the ever-growing flip book that is our new flat: we finally hung up all our posters and prints. I love it.

Speaking of that which I love, I was interviewed recently by Fairfax Media, and it was published in several regional newspapers. If you like, you can read it here (right click on the image, open in new tab, zoom in). I just love being interviewed. More, if you please, world!

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Title via: The White Stripes, White Moon from their album Get Behind Me Satan. This song is beauteous enough as is, but as the closing scene to their documentary Under Great White Northern Lights? Devastasting. So much so that I’m going to dramatically not even link to it because it makes me so stupidly emotional. (It’s really easy to find on YouTube though.) 
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Music lately:

Mary J Blige, Family Affair. Forgot how much I love this song. The beat and melody is kinda addictive to the ear, the lyrics are sternly positive, and the dance routine in the video is awesomely unhinged. And it has the word “hateration” in it.

Willemijn Verkaik is going to be the first person to play Wicked’s Elphaba in three different languages (German, Dutch, English) when she takes to Broadway this month. So very envious of people getting to see her, she’s unbelievable. I mean, you have to be fairly amazing to play the throat-challenging belt-fest that is Elphaba, but she’s one of my favourites. Here she is simply rehearsing No Good Deed (for the Stuttgart production, so in German) but being heart-stoppingly incredible.
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Next time: Another installment of my I Should Tell You interviews, with Dear Time’s Waste. Lucky me! Lucky you!