Category: Pasta

“I Am A Synonym Bun”

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Intrigued? Mais oui, I pretend to hear you say.

I’m afraid I can’t tell you about this peanut butter chocolate slice that I made (recipe care of Nigella, natch) because…it is appearing in a magazine this month and you should all go out and buy that instead! I am published! Okay, it’s not quite Cuisine, or Gourmet Traveller, but Tearaway is one of the better teen magazine in New Zealand and is particularly brilliant because they genuinely welcome contribution from young writers. I grew up reading Tearaway back when it was a newsprint broadsheet (now it is A4 and distinctly shinier) and even though I’m really not sure if cooking is what the kids are into these days, I’ve managed to get in there with my humble food column. Whether it becomes a regular gig remains to be seen, but still, it’s a foot in the door. As Burns would say, “Patience, Monty, climb the ladder…”

*Update 9/6/08 – Just got sent a copy of the magazine in the mail today with a cheque for $30! I didn’t even realise they were going to pay me so as you can guess this was a more than pleasant surprise. I feel like Anne Shirley, or Jo March, or *implodes suddenly from geekiness* I can put the money into our savings account and as for the magazine…”That’s going straight to the poolroom.”
Here’s something I can actually elaborate on:


Above: Long-time readers should know I am friend of the beetroot, particularly when roasted. I’d never heard of making chips out of them, until I found this post on Adaptations, wherein fine slices of beetroot are baked in a low oven till they sort of dehydrate and crisp up and become SO much more delicious than this description would suggest. Of course it does sound like the sort of too-worthy, unnecessary, overcompensatingly healthy recipe that would have you running for the sour cream and chive Pringles. But these are truly delicious in their own right – and beautiful too, like dried rose petals – with a delicate smoky crunch to them that is very moreish. I only made a small amount, because I wasn’t sure if it would work out or not, but I’d definitely commit to making this with lots of beetroot again. They’d make quite a grown-up nibble with drinks…

To augment this I chopped up some carrot sticks and made a quick dip out of Greek yoghurt, the salvageable remains of a disappointing avocado (and a disappointing avocado really stings), sea salt, lemon juice and sumac. Simple enough, but the creamy tang of the yoghurt and the earthy, lemony sumac provided intriguing flavours as they were scooped up by the vegetables.


Above: To offset that very healthy starter, I did a culinary 180 degree turn and served buttery pasta for dinner…it was something I came up with on the spot but I was impressed with how elegant it all turned out to be. I didn’t really measure anything but you hardly need a recipe for something like this. I put fettucine into a pan of boiling, salted water, and while it was cooking I melted a good amount of butter in another pot, letting a garlic clove brown in it which I binned afterwards (that’s to say: I ate it) allowing the butter to really get dark and nutty. Into this I tumbled some chopped walnuts, then turned off the heat while they gently toasted in the residual warmth. Finally I drained the now-cooked pasta, biffed it in with the butter, and added a handful of shredded beetroot leaves (you could easily use spinach) which wilted instantly. Pa-dah. Very, very delicious.

Above: Speaking of very delicious, I give you Shnecken (gesundheit!) or more literally, cinnamon buns. Now Nigella is generally fairly enthusiastic about food, one of the things I adore in her writing. But when she says uncompromisingly, of these buttery, walnutty, caramelly yeasted buns: “God I love them” – then you know, before even commencing, that you are onto something quite promising.

She speaketh the truth. Schnecken = love. These buns are ridiculously wonderful, as delicious as Nigella says and then some, and come from that fabulous book How To Be A Domestic Goddess. I honestly can’t be bothered typing out the recipe (well, methods involving yeast are just so lengthy) but I found a copy here, unfortunately it’s in American, but if anyone outside the US wants to make it (do!!) you need one sachet of dried yeast, some form of brown sugar for the magical, magical syrup and half a cup of butter (how do you measure butter in a half-cup??) is about 125g. Maybe it would have been quicker to type out…

Above: You know that scene in Spiceworld? Where they are all superheroes with a special power? And then Posh Spice appears and she doesn’t even have a power, she just stands there looking gorgeous? (I think she points and winks too, as was the style of the time) That’s what these buns are like. They just sit there, looking fabulous, and you think it’s almost enough just to look at them, until you take a bite…oh my gosh they are nice. The brioche-like dough, the brown sugar with the cinnamon and walnuts…the butter. These are something special. The title of this post came courtesy of Paul, by the way, and worryingly, I can’t remember the context of our conversation but it made me laugh, and I feel that it’s a succinct description of myself, so what better reason to elect it to head of the post?
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Above: Mmmm, food pr0n.


Speaking of porn, I saw Sex and The City on Thursday, and I’m not talking about the titular sex here (as it were), I’m talking clothes – this film was a veritable orgy of fashion. I’m no Stacey McGill, but by my calculations they changed outfits roughly every 3.5 seconds. I was feeling a little cynical about it beforehand (although 2-for-1 cosmopolitans at the bar helped put me in the mood) but it really is a good movie, if you like the TV show. In spite of myself I was excited about what these women had done with their lives and yes – about what Carrie would be wearing. They looked noticeably older – which is nice, considering how they were actually supposed to have aged in the film – and gorgeous, seriously if I have Kim Cattrall’s body when I’m her age I’m going to become a nudist. Mr Big’s constant, childish “ooh I can’t commit” attitude got wearisome, and it did feel as though some plotlines were skated over, but on the whole, very enjoyable, indulgent montages and all. I realise that I referenced the Spice Girls AND The Baby Sitters Club in this post, (what next, po-mo Power Rangers quotes?) A new low, or indeed, high, depending on your view of pop culture.
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Tim and I are, as you might know, trying to save to get back over to England (where we met, three years ago, on our respective Gap years.) We’ve been saving since 2006, and have a fairly tidy sum considering we really had NO money till last year, but we need so much more and so, have started making some serious decisions in the last month or two. For me, it means having rolled oats for breakfast instead of buttered toast (truly, I have it every day: rolled oats, softened briefly in water, with or without the addition of bran, linseeds, wheatgerm- how am I not size 0?); having miso soup for lunch at work; not buying fun ingredients willy-nilly; less meat and more lentils, being strong around cookbook sales and not getting Anthony Rapp’s autobiography and The Rent Book imported at great expense… For Tim it is not buying fizzy drinks and Instant Kiwi tickets; having porridge instead of eggs on toast for breakfast; putting up with the lentil onslaught; and for both of us it means not going out drinking much and not buying DVDs recklessly. Both our bank accounts have become genuinely plumper with all of these corners cut, and our savings account is impressive for two poor students, but really, the only way we’ll get over to England next year is if we win the lottery (and then hopefully we can pay for Tim’s root canal too…but don’t get me started on that.) Any tips on how to save or make money without resorting to eating Pot Noodles 24/7?

Jamon, Jamon (Ham, Ham!)

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We had fish and chips for dinner tonight. Sometimes I’m too exhausted from you know, going to lectures at 11am or whatever it is that students do, to make dinner so I do something like Tomato Rice or pasta with whatever’s in the freezer biffed in it. Tonight I couldn’t even get that far. As I’ve mentioned before, I get unnattractively grouchy if I can’t cook dinner; let this be an indication of how munted I am from schoolwork. I’m not going to outline the details, they’re not that interesting, but let me tell you this: my brain feels crispy.
Above: This actually is pasta with everything, and is what we had for dinner a few nights ago. Kindly take a moment to really admire the photo, because it took me a squillion goes to get it right, holding the ladle in my right hand, resting the mini-tripod against my bosom, (not, by any means, the most level of surfaces) and using my left hand to adjust the aperture and press the button…the things I’ll do to have a macro shot like the cool kids! I’ll warn you now, my photos aren’t that great this time, but (external validation! Swoon!) my honeycomb picture two posts down was one of the most-hit-upon links on tastespotting.com! People rate me up there with Peanut Butter Green Tea Cupcakes with a Creme Brulee Centre and Vegan Mocha Peppermint Chip Frosting! (Ohhh, I’m not being snarky, but really, those cupcakes! I can haz clarity?)
Back to the pasta, I started off emulating Nigella’s Baked Veal and Ham pasta, (minus the veal of course – can’t afford) from How To Eat. In the end the only thing that the two had in common was ham and a splash of Marsala, and instead I just loaded the dish up with vegetables – capsicum, frozen peas, spinach, carrot, onion…it would have been a fairly healthy dinner had I not stirred a heap of butter into the pasta after draining it. Like a moth to the flame…

Above: Hot dish coming! And he’s carrying pork! Oh go on, force out a chuckle. I got Tim to be the bearer of Sunday night’s dinner because the there were no clean surfaces in the kitchen at the time and I didn’t like the idea of putting it on the floor to take the photo. We hardly ever have pork, because I want quality, happy pig stuff which is even more expensive than your normal variety. But Tim and I saw that per kilo pork was cheaper than mince at the supermarket the other day, which is how we ended up with it. I served it, Italian-style (by which I mean, I don’t know if it bears any relation to Italy) with a bowlful of brown lentils, into which I stirred spinach and tinned tomatoes. This is so easy and makes a proper, big dirty old fashioned roast.
Care of Nigella, via How To Eat.

Loin of Pork with Bay Leaves
(I should point out here that I’m not sure if what we had on Sunday was a loin – I’d totally fail at Letterman’s Know Your Cuts of Meat game – but it worked fine anyhow)
6 T extra virgin olive oil (this is 125mls or half a cup, I dare say you could use less, I did)
4 cloves garlic, crushed somewhat
6 peppercorns, also crushed, or “bruised” as Nigella poetically instructs…
6 dried or fresh bay leaves
2 1/2 kilos loin o’ pork, boned derinded and rolled (which will give you 1.8kg oven-ready pork)
1 medium onion
More bay leaves
150mls white wine.
In a large bowl or snaplock plastic bag, marinate the pork in the oil, garlic, and peppercorns (I used mild and beautiful pink ones), for as long as you have, be it one hour or 24 hours. I’d veer towards the latter but my pork only sat around for three and was scrumptious so there you go. I also only used two bay leaves in the marinade. Did you know, we have a bay tree at home, which has been my home for 22 years now, and it was only in April – last month – that I realised that what I thought was the bay tree was actually nothing of the sort, and the innocent bay itself was about three trees over. Goodness knows what I’ve been putting in our corned beef…Heat the oven to 200 C. Make sure the pork is at room temperature before you cook it. Tumble the pork with its marinade into a roasting dish, slice up the onion and add it along with more bay leaves as you wish. Roast for 1 3/4 hours, basting at regular intervals. Once it is done, use the wine to deglaze the pan for delicious gravy. Mm, pork fat. Oh and the onion bits taste incredible. Cook’s treat. I actually used some bacon fat, leftover from flatmate Emma’s morning fryup, to shmeer over the pork, this made the pan juices, and indeed my arteries, marvelously hammy.
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This should serve six, if you follow directions. Our bit of pork had a whacking great bone in the middle, with some judicious carving it might have served four people who are far too polite to pretend how hungry they are. Or two with plenty of leftovers.
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Above: With the leftovers the next night – Monday – I made a sort of salady thing (much to Tim’s quiet dismay, having been cheated out of roast potatoes the night before, and now there were more lentils) comprising of the leftover pork, steamed brocolli, and more brown lentils. The salad was actually delicious, with wonderfully contrasting textures and the earthiness of the lentils and the red wine vinegar I splashed in cutting through the fat pork. I gotta say I have a lot of time for humble brown lentils – cheaper and slightly nuttier than the Puy variety and pleasingly they hold their shape unlike red lentils.
Perhaps one day people will link me with lentils the way that they mention Proust every time they make madelines.
Above: Patatas Bravas, which is Spanish for love. And is the awesomest thing Spain has ever graced us with (apart from, perhaps, Javier Bardem, hence the title of this post) Oh sure, I love roast potatoes (Nigella style, with semolina and buckets of fat) but this stuff is truly transcendant, and is what I made to go with the salad above. I first found it in The Accidental Vegetarian but never consult the recipe; you needn’t either. Simply take lots and lots of floury potatoes, cube them, and while you are doing this heat up some olive oil in a roasting dish in a 200 C oven. Tip your potatoes into the hot roasting dish and let them bake for about 20 minutes till crispy. If you have garlic cloves on you, throw some in. After they’ve baked for a bit, stir in a tin or two of chopped tomatoes (depending on the size of your dish) and some chopped red chilli if you like (I don’t) and put it back in for another 20 minutes or so. Viola, a vat of Patatas Bravas! Not to be particular about it but if you don’t love this you hardly deserve tastebuds.
It’s even better the next day.
Congratulations to Tim’s mother who is graduating on Wednesday (again!) from Massey. Now Tim’s mother is nice and all but when we are getting B’s and whatnot at uni and the powers that be are having to invent new letters for her because A+ isn’t high enough…well, it certainly spurs you on.
In non-food news, and if you’re interested – these aren’t the photos that got ridiculed last week, but in fact a new batch for the next assignment, ready for whatever criticism comes their way in class. I decided to post them because they took forever to do, but are never going to actually get used (they’re basically a draft.) Maybe also to showcase the fact that I got to level 61 Tetris with a score of 980,000. I am a Tetris Savant. Of all things… Please excuse the crudity of my photos, they aren’t finished products. Oh, and the concept itself – the classic tale, boy plays tetris, boy awakes to find tetris pieces floating everywhere, boy nearly crushed by stacking tetris pieces, boy at the mercy of however I figure out the end of the concept, Laura trying to convince everyone she didn’t come up with this on an acid trip. (Am far too meek for that sort of thing; My density brought me here.)
Above: On the one hand, yes, Tim needs a haircut. On the other hand: Fierce!
Above: The red thing there is the roof of our flat (I spake the truth when I said we were wedged into a hill.) I realise the tetris pieces might look a little rough, but once photographed ($2 shop mosaic pieces!) every shape had to be painstakingly resized, the saturation adjusted, rotated, and layered on individually, with the background brushed out. Yeah, I don’t understand Photoshop either.
Above: Model through it. The background shot of Tim wasn’t terribly well lit, but the battery flattened on me and I didn’t have time to take more. However I’m rather fond of this. Am very nervous about how it will all go in class, mind you I’m so tense I’ll probably just burst into sobs when the teacher says hello, let alone actually starts to critique my work.

Better than crying though, would be to boldly inquire “What? Why?Be more constructive with your feedback, please. Why?”

(Passe, I know, to be quoting FOTC now and not in 2002 before they got enormous or something, but still a salient question, I feel.)

“I’ve Said It Once Before But It Bears Repeating”

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To liberally paraphrase Elton John, Saturday night’s alright for writing essays. It has to be. I shouldn’t even be here, but I’ve allowed myself a break from wrangling Renaissance English. It’s not a good sign when I can’t even understand any of the essay questions…I can’t be hating on this though, even when it means I’m stuck behind the computer typing feverishly all weekend. How could you possibly dislike a play (Jonson’s The Alchemist) which contains the phrase: “Thou look’st like Antichrist, in that lewd hat?” (which makes me long to find something fitting the description of a lewd hat.) Of course you couldn’t. But still, 2500 pithy, succinct, brilliant words need to be produced asap.
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Don’t even get me started (truly, I said plenty enough in the last post) on the interim photographs I’m supposed to present on Wednesday for my next photog assignment, which is, just for kicks, worth 20 percent of the final grade of said assignment. Who knows when I’ll have time to do them, between classes, essays and work – perhaps if, Yorkshireman-style, I get up half an hour before I go to bed and work for 29 hours, I might just get it done.

Now, I know using the microwave to actually, y’know, cook, basically means you forfeit your right to consider yourself a decent human being in some circles. Oh, I won’t lie, I don’t think the microwave is that brilliant as a sole means of producing meals. It sure helps though.
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When I was younger – maybe ten? – there was a lengthy stretch of time where we didn’t have an oven for some reason and we cooked all our meals with an electric frypan and the microwave. I still remember this amazingly good “feather pudding” that Mum used to whip up occasionally, golden syrup on the bottom and sponge on top…anyway, snapping out of that radioactive haze of reminiscence, surely a microwave can’t be that bad if it managed to produce something like the chocolate pudding pictured above. This pudding is just stupidly chocolatey and rich. And it cooks in 5 minutes…literally.


Above: The batter is magically delicious too. Don’t lose a finger (or your tongue!) on the processor blades.

Microwave Chocolate Pudding (from Nigella’s How To Eat)

  • 120g butter
  • 250g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
  • 100g light brown sugar
  • 1t vanilla extract (if it’s essence then don’t bother)
  • 125ml cream (yes, cream)
  • 40g plain flour
  • 1/2 t baking powder
  • 3 eggs

Butter a 1 litre bowl generously. In the food processor, whizz up the chocolate till it is in rubbly, small chunks. I’m warning you, this will make the most unholy sound, so be ready. Don’t make this beside a sleeping baby or in a monastery or something. Add the butter, whizzing again, and the sugar, and then the rest of the ingredients. Scrape into the bowl, cover tightly with microwave safe clingfilm. Cook on high for 5 minutes, or until set – it might take an extra minute or so as ovens vary, don’t put it in for too long though or it could turn to delicious rubber. Remove from the oven, pierce the clingfilm and then cover the bowl with a plate and sit for ten minutes. I don’t know why, this is just what Nigella says. Who am I to argue. Serve. Feel your thighs expanding with every mouthful.

 


Above: Once more, with feeling.

I was obviously seriously frazzled while writing my last post as I didn’t even add a “Lentil Power” tag to it though we had demonstrably consumed lentils. We haven’t had any since, but I did make another dish from Jill Dupleix’ Lighten Up. This book has proven to be very useful, I mean, I wasn’t that fussed when I first flicked through it at the bookshop but I have used it heaps so far.


Above: Not a great photo sorry, but it was getting cold and I couldn’t seem to get rid of my own shadow!

This is a very, very simple lamb tagine. On Thursday morning Tim and I went to the store to spend a grocery voucher I got given for my birthday (thanks Mum and Dad! We’d be eating dust otherwise…”zoom in on my empty wallet.”) We took a calculator to make sure we didn’t go over and were very discerning and frugal, but I found some stewing lamb for very cheap so bought a heap of it to make various slow-cooked things over winter. This recipe involved sauteeing an onion, carrot, and lamb with various spices – ginger, tumeric, paprika, saffron – before stirring in honey, dates and dried apricots. I didn’t have the apricots, and I added some spinach at the very end, but I think it doesn’t matter too much. I served it over an earnest pile of brown rice and it was delicious. Not terribly innovative – I daresay I could have come up with this on my own eventually – but a simple, unfussy combination of flavours that take care of themselves and taste reliably good together.


Above: While we are in vaguely North African mode, I give you Pasta with Sauce A-la-Marrakesh, from The Accidental Vegetarian by Simon Rimmer. I soaked the chickpeas on Thursday night (proactive lady is proactive) and simmered them as soon as I got home from work on Friday. The spaghetti sauce is made up of all sorts of good things – tomatoes, (tinned in my case), a shake of cumin, cinnamon and tumeric – I added a diced carrot but completely forgot the flipping flaked almonds even though I knew that I had some. Welcome to my brain.

So the production of Rent in Palmerston North (two hours from here by bus/train) got a positive if disappointingly vague review, and I gotta say that I feel honour-bound to see it, if only because it’s there, you know? How it will pan out I don’t know. I am a little concerned that from the promotional picture I saw, Collins looks rather old and white and Mark appears to be balding (Levin 1, PN 0) but…maybe it was badly lit or something. “We’ll see, boys!”

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In other news, Paul managed to come within pit-spitting distance of my Tetris score (he got to level 41, I got level 45) proving once again that the Vincent genes are pure, distilled excellence. Tetris has become so entrenched in our routine that I composed WWF-style stage names for us: Paul “The Suth” Sutherland, Laura “Two Hands” Vincent, and Timothy “Tim” Herbert. Aw, I need to get out more. Can’t though, because of all these essays and assignments…which brings me full circle. Have a good weekend!

PS: 10,000 hits! I’m a real blogger!

“And Wednesday, don’t mention Wednesday…”

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Yesterday was a bad day for me. Oh sure, a decent enough day in a global sense but, on my own terms it was pretty rough. .

I had Photography. This was all well and good until we had to display our assignment photos (that we’d handed in on Tuesday) and get critiqued, one at a time, by the teacher. The teacher told me that my photos were completely unsuccessful, in front of the entire class, and now I guess I’m just waiting to see if I failed or not. I wasn’t the only one, she didn’t seem to like anyone’s efforts, which made for an incredibly uncomfortable three hours. After all the time I put into the photos it was all I could do not to burst into tears (which I am wont to do at inopportune moments) and run screaming from the class. Mercifully I held it together, but really what do you say to someone when they tell you that your photos are terrible? Are you supposed to say “thankyou so much for that valuable insight! Now I’m all fired up for the next project!” The point is, she may well have been right – the photos probably weren’t that great – it is a bloody beginner paper after all- but her opinion counts because she’s doing the marking.

Catharsis over! On the upside I was pleased enough with my Media essay that I handed in yesterday (managed to slip in “the subordination of women” although didn’t find a place for “juxtaposed”) and I saw the Magic Dog on my way back to the flat. The magic dog is this snowy white Samoyed that lives down the road from us and Tim and I get a bit worked up when we see it. Trust me, it’s one majestic beast. Tim and I decided this dog was magic and assigned it properties as such – you know, if it sniffs you, you will never die from drowning, where it urinates shall spring forth an ancient oak tree, that sort of thing.

When I was a lot younger I had this nightmare about the Donny and Marie Show, which is odd because I’ve never in my life seen an episode. They starting singing I’m a Little Bit Country and A Little Bit Rock’n’Roll. Marie then sang “I’m a little bit crunchy,” turned into a giant Crunchie bar and Donny bit her head off. It was this that I reminisced still-nervously about as I made homespun Crunchie bars.

By the way – oh the irony! – the above is a very special photo for me because it’s the first one ever where I’ve managed to manually do that sharp-foreground-blurry-background thing that has so long eluded me. Hello macro button! I’ve finally found you! No more complaining about it, I promise. Thanks for all the advice, too 🙂 If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t have known that the macro button was capable of such wizardry.

This recipe is so easy yet so rewarding. First of all, the kitchen smells like caramel while the sugar is cooking. Then you get to watch the mixture whoosh up when you add the baking powder. It’s fun, and stress-releasing, to bash the finished product into shards and chunks with a rolling pin. It tastes amazing. Oh, and there’s only three ingredients…

Cinder Toffee (Nigella’s words, not mine) from How To Be A Domestic Goddess

200g caster sugar (I used regular to no obvious ill effect)
4 T golden syrup
1 T baking soda


Above: does making this for a Type-1 diabetic with sore teeth make me a bad person?

Liberally butter a 21cm square tin, although this will fit into whatever you’ve got around that size to be honest. Mix the golden syrup and sugar to a granular paste in a heavy bottomed saucepan, and then cook it over a low heat. This takes a wee while but it is fun to watch the sugar go all melty and ripply like in the picture above. Simmer gently for about 3 minutes, it will darken but you don’t want it to be too dark. Once it has bubbled away for a while take it off the heat and using a fork or something stir in your tablespoon of baking soda. It’s a bore, but it might pay to sift the soda into a small bowl first so you don’t end up with lumps. The caramel will foam up awesomely. Quickly spread into your tin and leave it to set, which will take at least an hour. Tip out of the tin, bash with a rolling pin (don’t even try to slice it!) and dip or drizzle with chocolate as desired.


Above: It tastes so good, just like proper Crunchie bars. Which I happen to love.

But I had this idea that folding some honeycomb into the batter for one of those self-saucing puddings (or as I knew it as a child, “Chocolate Floating Pudding”) might be kinda cool. It wasn’t, I have to admit, entirely successful – I think I had unnattainable dreams of a butterscotchy sauce with chunks of still-crunchy honeycomb in the finished product – but it still tasted rather good.

Mmm, gooey. I had planned to make a pudding last night as a “Yay Wednesday’s Over For Another Week” kind of thing but was too exhausted in the end. Mayhaps tonight…Oh and just in case you’re worried I’ve been spending the last couple of days cleaning my teeth with muscovado and washing my hair with treacle: We have been having worthy, healthy dinners. Not quite soul food, but definitely brain food.


Above: This lentil and pumpkin take on shepherd’s pie came from Jill Dupleix’ Lighten Up, and while it can’t replace the real thing, it was very pleasant and warming and just stupidly healthy. It had five vegetables in it. And if lentils weren’t enough…I’m a little ashamed to admit this…I added a handful of rolled oats to the mixture. Well, they sort of disappear, so it’s not like I was being insanely militant. The good thing about this dish was that between the lentils, the pumpkin, and the oats, there were more than enough long lasting carbs for Tim so I didn’t have to boil up some rice or anything. We had this with roasted cauliflower, just to bring another vegetable to the party.

Speaking of roasted cauliflower, the next night I repeated the Orzotto for dinner – barley being cheap and superhealthy – and managed to cram in spinach, capsicum, and carrots to the mixture. It looked so depressingly earnest that I didn’t even bother to get photographic evidence, but it tasted pretty good.

By the time I got home last night I knew I wanted pasta and had decided on carbonara until I realised we had no cream. So instead I used the rest of the bacon that I splashed out on for my birthday, and fried it in butter till crispy. I then added a generous slosh of Marsala, more butter and served it over spaghetti to which I’d added some peas. Alongside was roasted beetroot and broccoli, and it was…just what I wanted.


Above: I find pasta SO comforting. I suppose nothing beats a bowl of buttery mashed potatoes, but for low effort, quick balm to the soul, pasta is my carb of choice.

It’s not all dire as far as my education goes though. I got an A- for an English essay I did…and if nothing else my photography assignment has introduced me to the awesomeness that is Richard Maxted whose work I was inspired by. Don’t try and google him – he has a lamentably low profile on the internet. In a moment of “why the heck not” I sent him an email using the contact address on his site…and he replied, was incredibly nice, and even answered some questions to provide quotes for my assignment. Seriously, he’s kind of a big deal in the photography world (though he has no Wikipedia page!) so for him to actually reply was very exciting. If you feel like looking at ridiculously good photography go to his website and wait for the red asterisk to turn fuzzy (you then click on it to enter the site.) I had planned on uploading a couple of my own photos here but now I’m far too disillusioned so I’ll leave you with one of Maxted’s rather more reliable works instead.


Above: Guess what this is a photo of.
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Toothpicks. Clever, yes? Hopefully his help can save my grade…*update* 9/5/08 – Thanks for the kind words! but I’d just like to make clear that (having had a sense of the-teacher-is-always-right instilled into me at an early age by my mother, who teaches) it’s not exactly being told I was rubbish that I object to (it sucks! but if they’re technically bad photos then that’s that) it’s the fact that it was done in front of the whole class for three hours. I am sure there was a less heartbreaking way to do it. Didn’t want to make it seem like I was on some kind of woe-is-me, heat-of-the-moment vitriolic rampage (heck, I’d cooled off thoroughly by this stage. Can you imagine how worked up I was at the time?) But yeah, the teacher was of course well within her rights to give me her unadulterated opinion. Cheers 🙂

Bring Us Some Figgy Pudding…Seriously, Anything!

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You know, making your own pasta is no harder than installing an aviary or Olympic-size swimming pool.


Above: I’m not sure if it says more about my skill as a pasta maker or the standard of my machine, but the end justifies the means – thank goodness. It’s hard to see it when you are grinding metres of dough through a squealing machine (why does it squeal so?) and flinging jets of flour over your jeans, but homemade pasta is truly, truly transcendent.

Although difficult in execution, last night’s dinner was very simple – pasta dressed with butter and nutmeg, plus a vast bowlful of steamed brocolli and roasted cauliflower. Tim and I get notoriously tense when making pasta (the flatmates start to get nervous about visitation rights) but last night we were okay, mostly because the pasta maker wasn’t its normal shrieking, squealing self. Considering you have to roll each lump of dough a squillion times, it can be a little jarring on the nerves.


Above: Homemade pasta is lightyears ahead of storebought fresh pasta. I use a very simple recipe of Nigella’s, which isn’t as terrifyingly yolky as Jamie Oliver’s pasta (possibly not as good either, but great for a feasible after-work dinner.) For each person, tip 100g flour into a bowl, followed by an egg. So, for Tim and I, 200g flour and 2 eggs. This stuff is pretty filling but I usually make more than I need per person because it’s so good. Stir to mix, then knead until it forms a cohesive ball. Let it rest for an hour, then roll out in your pasta maker and cut as you wish. You only need to cook it for about ten seconds in boiling, salted water before it’s done, at which stage you should drain it and add whatever sauce you like. This stuff makes particularly good lasagne, as you don’t have to worry about precooking it. Making pasta may be do-able, but taking a photo of it is a pain in the neck. It wouldn’t stop steaming up. I took about forty photos, all the while frantically waving my hands to dispel the fog.


Above: Real figs! In our kitchen! At work my boss’ wife bought in a whole bag of them from her tree. I took a couple for last night’s pudding. It was quick, yes, but pudding nonetheless. Sometimes you just need something more…Aren’t they beautiful? There’s something about figs, they are so exotic and other worldly compared to, I don’t know, bananas. I looked up a couple of Nigella recipes – one from How to Eat and one from Forever Summer and decided to amalgamate the two by putting these pink-and-green beauties in the oven for 15 minutes with cinnamon, cardamom, honey, and a little butter.


Above: Tim didn’t really go in for them – as I suspected – so all the more for me. Delicately perfumed, deliciously spiced, kinda healthy, and ever so pretty to look at.

I should have known. In my last post, I talked about pancakes in the title, even though I hadn’t made any, and then mentioned that should I actually make some, I’d be stuck for a kicky title. Well here I am. My brain still feels like pancake batter, for what it’s worth. Maybe more so…anyhow:


Above: After reading this post on the stunning Use Real Butter blog, I decided to give Chinese Spring Onion Pancakes a go. Very plain ingredients – flour, water, salt, oil, spring onions – are turned into gorgeously moreish flat little parcels. The method is a little fiddly but if you think of it more as “fun” than “labour-intensive” it helps.

First you roll your dough into pancakes, sprinkle with salt, oil and spring onions, then roll up into a cigar. You then twirl this cigar into a coil and then flatten this into a pancake again, which makes a rather satisfying squashy noise.


Above: Roughly, the three stages of the pancake-making. For goodness sakes though, go to Use Real Butter for the recipe and a detailed outline of what to do – my expertise only stretches so far.

Finally you fry the flattened cakes in hot oil, and then serve.


Above: Like I said, there’s not much to these, yet Tim and I didn’t even make it to the table – we just stood there at the kitchen bench, wolfing these down, sprinkling them with sea salt at every bite. They are intensely good, and would, I think, be marvelous served (sliced in half or quarters) with drinks at your next shindig.


Above: For a proper feed after the pancakes, and because I like to keep the intervals between my lentil consumption brief, I made this lentil casserole au gratinee (that is, au grilled cheese) made by simmering diced onion and carrot, tinned tomatoes, red lentils, a bay leaf, and one diced sausage. I added some frozen peas at the end, tipped it into a loaf pan, and sprinkled over some grated cheese before popping it under the grill. I concede that lentil casserole doesn’t sound like much of a good time, but it certainly looks inviting – melted cheese can perk up almost anything. This was pretty delish, and even though there was only one sausage, it tasted surprisingly meaty.

You may be surprised to see me blogging so soon after I professed to have a ton of schoolwork to do. Well, I’m 3/4 of the way through my lamentable Media essay and decided I needed a break. I’ve got plenty to talk about, it just sounds as though it was typed by monkeys (“it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times”) As for the photography assignment, I swear it’s literally taking years off my life, in the manner of The Machine in The Princess Bride. I don’t mean to come off as all “woe is me, I’m a uni student taking exciting specialised papers, now the world owes me a living,” but seriously, if I have a heartattack next week, you’ll know why. Long story short, we have to print and mount six photos for this assignment due on Tuesday. I printed them out, which was fine (although I’m only satisfied with three of them in print, I’ve got no time – or energy – to reshoot them) but the mounting is going to cost $60! And it will end up cutting off the detail in one of the photos…and I have no choice but to hand them in. I don’t want to be a bore and keep going on about it, but seriously, I was nearly in tears after taking the photos to the framing place. Oh, and I have to hand in some photos and a proposal for my next assignment by Monday.


Above: The lack of baking round here has been driving me nutty so once I got home from work yesterday I thought it wouldn’t be so bad if I made a quick batch of biscuits. It’s not like I’m banning myself altogether from baking, it’s just I really don’t have the time. Dinner is necessary, triple layer white chocolate mocha sponges…aren’t quite.
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The recipe for these biscuits came from an Australian Women’s Weekly chocolate cookbook that I’ve had for so long that I forget how I came by it. This recipe for fruit and nut chocolate chip cookies never stood out to me before, but I wish I’d thought about it sooner – it is so easy, and delicious, and quick, and fairly cheap, and can stand all manner of alterations. As it is I didn’t have any chocolate (would most likely have already scoffed it if I had anyway) but I had dates, and pumpkin seeds, and so strew them through the mixture to pleasing effect. I imagine you could add anything you like – nuts, chocolate, chopped dried apricots, cocoa, whatever. I’ll give you the recipe as I made them, because they are seriously good.
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Date and Pumpkin Seed Cookies
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125g soft butter
1/2 cup brown sugar (push it down with a spoon to pack in as much as possible)
1 egg
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
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Heat oven to 180 C. Cream butter and sugar till smooth and fluffy. Stir in the egg, oats, and flour. By the way, the oats seem to melt into the baked cookies- they just disappear. It’s amazing! Stir in 1/2 cup dates, chopped and 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, roll into balls and place on a paper-lined baking tray. Flatten with a fork and bake for 10-15 minutes. Let them sit for a bit before transferring to a plate or something. How many you get out of this depends on how big your balls, erm, are, and how much mixture you eat. I know I mention this a lot, but what can I say. I eat a lot of mixture. But really, yesterday I ate a silly amount of the cookie dough, there would have been a lot more if I hadn’t…
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They were just right – quick to make, so I could get on to writing my essay without feeling like I’d done too much procrastinating – and almost healthy what with the oats and fruit and seeds.
As Homer Simpson says, “I don’t think cookies are gonna make me feel better. Oh, crunch, mmmm, oh god, oh mmmm, they’re delicious. Oh, so happy! Oh, go, they’re … They’re gone.”

You might not hear from me for a bit, on account of all the schoolwork. Or you might hear from me every five seconds, because of procrastinating…(our room really does need a tidy) Also if you can, spare a thought for Tim, who is currently having mad toothache. The dentist gave him a list of things that need to get done to him, which will cost somewhere in the region of $4000. Which is basically how much we have saved to go over to England. The irony, it makes my teeth hurt. Seriously it’s great that we have free dental care for kids under 18 in New Zealand, but what on earth makes the powers that be think that turning 19 means you are suddenly able to fund a root canal? What makes them think that university students are able to find $4000 down the back of their couches? Really, what?
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Am currently drinking a mug of “Zen” tea (green tea and peppermint blend) but at this stage I’m feeling so un-Zen that I’ll have to start snorting the tea leaves to feel an effect. Nevermind; The Food Show is coming to town in a couple of weeks, the assignments will get handed in, and then I can stop feeling so sorry for myself and bake something ridiculous!

“I Had A Brain That Felt Like Pancake Batter…”

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I couldn’t think of a title for this post. Nothing seemed to work in my head. So, when in doubt, why not quote Jack White? He certainly describes how I currently feel, as you will find out later…Unfortunately I haven’t actually cooked any pancakes. Goodness knows what I’ll use for a title when I do…
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This is my 100th post! How about that! Between this, and my six-month blog anniversary, and my birthday all occuring recently, I hope you don’t think I’m one of those girls who bursts into passive-aggressive tears if my significant other doesn’t buy me a diamond pendant to mark the three weeks that have passed since our first date.
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Above: Picadillo, which ended up focussed backwardly. Depth of field, I do not haz it.

There’s something about those cheerfully forced “midweek meals” that womens’ magazines regularly publish that seem so, well, cheerfully forced. In my line of work I am exposed to a lot of womens’ mags and though I keep a keen eye out, it has been a long time since I’ve been inspired by any of the recipes. They never quite get it sounding right, what with their Thai Pumpkin and Couscous Bake and Sausage Chow Mein with 2-Minute Noodles. I mean, everyone needs those midweek meals, including me, it’s just the ones I see seem to be so…colourless. Although I cook dinner at every possible opportunity (sometimes even at lunch) this week has felt particularly practical and magazine-y. Monday: Picadillo, a Cuban mince dish (done in the slow cooker!). Tuesday: Salmon burgers, even the kids will like them! Wednesday – Spaghetti Puttanesca… which Jill Dupleix coyly describes as pasta for “working girls.” I like to think of it (rather gleefully I’ll admit, but how often do you get a name like this) in its more literal sense – Whores’ Pasta. Suddenly things aren’t looking so dull after all…In fact happily everything has tasted great so far.

On Monday night, spurred on by a recipe on the Tea and Wheaten Bread blog, which in turn was using a recipe from Culinary Travels of A Kitchen Goddess, I chose to make Picadillo. It looked easy to make, very cheap, and a bit out of the ordinary. Even though it has risen so alarmingly in price that it’s not much of a cliched student ingredient anymore, mince would still be what Tim and I eat most of from the meat family. And it is difficult to find new twists on it. So when I saw that this had olives, raisins, and lots of spices in it, not to mention that I could bung it in the Crock Pot and forget about it, I had to try it…unfortunately I forgot to put the raisins in. I always forget one crucial thing it seems, even when the recipe is right in front of me. But it still tasted great. To be honest I didn’t initially think there was much point in doing something like mince in a slow cooker – it’s not like it’s going to get any more tender – but it definitely seemed to enhance the deep, mellow flavour. I’ll be making this again for sure this Winter, and hopefully will remember the raisins next time (well, I’d substitute sultanas. I know they’re practically the same thing, but I can’t stand raisins. Maybe I subconsciously left them out on purpose.)

On Tuesday night I decided that I (rather desperately) needed some brainfood, so attempted to make salmon burgers. Because I was in overachiever mode, I made the buns as well, using a laughably easy recipe from Nigella’s Feast, that I have made so many times I know it off by heart. Well at least I hope I do. It is rather late at night that I’m typing this…


Above: the background necessarily blurred because my hands are “neither beautiful nor practical.” Hopefully it looks a bit upmarket on top of that.

Nigella’s Buns (*titter*)

  • 500g high-grade/bread flour
  • 1 sachet yeast (the sachets come in little cardboard boxes, I can’t deal with any other sort)
  • 375mls milk
  • 25g butter
  • 2t sugar

Place the flour, yeast and sugar in a large bowl. If you use a large enough bowl, you don’t even need to get your bench dirty as you can just knead the dough inside it. Well, it works for me…Warm the milk and butter in a small saucepan till the butter has melted and the milk is tepid. You don’t want it too cool, but neither should it be anywhere in the neighbourhood of ‘hot.’ Tip this into the flour, and using one hand (I find it handy – ha! – to just use one) knead this mixture till smooth, cohesive, and elastic. For some reason this mixture comes together remarkably fast. Once it’s looking good, tip the mound of dough onto a plate, and grease the bowl it was in. Put the dough back in the bowl, turning so that all sides get a little shiny, then cover tightly with gladwrap and leave in a warmish place for an hour or so.

In an hour’s time, punch the now spookily-puffy dough (satisfying!) and then shape into buns. Nigella recommends quite small ones, (these are dinner-roll type thingummies) but because I was using them for burgers I made mine bigger, and therefore got less out of the mix. Now, leave them to sit on a tray, covered with a teatowel, for about 20 minutes. You might as well turn your oven to 200 C and sit the tray on top so as the residual warmth helps them to rise even more. Finally, brush with a beaten egg or melted butter (guess which I plumped for, as it were) and bake for 15-20 minutes. Actual timing is a bit vague, it’s dependant on size of bun and type of oven, but reckon on something like that. These babies smell incredible, and though they don’t have the staying power of shop-bought stuff, can be resuscitated the next day in the microwave.


Above: You’re supposed to tap them on the underside to see if they sound hollow, therefore cooked- but fresh-baked bread is one of the hottest things known to man. Use oven mitts, please…don’t go down the same sorry path I did (on the upside, should I choose to commit a heinous crime, the police can’t fingerprint me!)

Above: Breakage.
While all this was happening, I set about making my Krabby Patties, using a tin of salmon, some bran (hey, why not? You can’t even taste it but it’s doing you good) an egg, two grated, parboiled potatoes, and a few spoonfuls of Za’atar. I think the lack of flour was what made them a pain to cook – you had to be insanely delicate with the spatula or they’d break. I had two casualties, and four proper ones. Not too bad. You could quite easily have one patty per bun, but I am a greedy, greedy person so Tim and I had two each.


Above: Ooh they were good. The combination of tender, still-warm buns and slightly crunchy salmon was awesome. Worth the effort, I assure you.
Finally, my pasta a la doxy. This came from Jill Dupleix’ Lighten Up and was a very easy (ha!) meal. You barely have to think while making it. Unfortunately I didn’t have any anchovies to hand, (couldn’t justify spending $4 on a tiny tin of them, yes, I know they’re good) so I just pretended that I was vegetarian for the moment and meant for it to happen that way. I also used pitted black olives, which I know are basically the devil’s snack as far as food purists go, but again, they were much, much, much cheaper than the lovely real thing, and I figured that by roughly squashing them they might look more like something Jamie Oliver would approve of.


Above: Unfortunately this was the best shot I could get, the lens kept steaming up and none of my twirly-fork tricks were working and anyhow pasta seems to get cold and claggy very fast, so I just snapped and served it. Tasted much nicer than the photo looks though. I love how the olives and capers provide an addictive saltiness that is so much more complex than just salt itself.
I am not good at many things – mathmatics, tidiness, committing to a healthy eating and excercise plan – but I am very, very good at Tetris. To paraphrase Stacey from The Baby Sitters Club, it’s true, I’m not being conceited! One of my many addictions is online tetris – if you feel like immersing yourself into this heady underworld, go to freetetris.org– and nearly everyone in the flat is quite into it. Basically it is fairly cruisy until level 9, where it gets a lot quicker, and by level 10 it is quicker again. Everyone was amazed when I got to Level 19 while they were floundering round 8. Now most of the flatmates can make it to about 14, but then on Monday night I managed to get to…Level 31. We didn’t even know it existed. It was insane. And then guess what happened on Tuesday night. I said to Tim, “If I get a score of quarter of a million will you watch Rent with me?” He said only if I got half a million.
Above: The only way this could have been more triumphant was if I’d managed to get a score of 525,600. Don’t worry, I won’t force the poor lad to watch the movie again…but there is that production opening in Palmerston North soon…
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I apologise if this post has been a little lacking in my usual lustre, but with all these essays and photos bearing down on my head like the sword of Damocles I’m feeling pretty weary. (*googles sword of Damocles* – okay it’s not really a pertinent simile.) I got some not-very-good results back today on a test I did in Photography about aperture and stuff – apparently the test was “too easy” and anyone who got under 75% was very disappointing. I got 65% and felt those disapproval rays loud and clear! Seriously though, there are so many numbers involved in digital photography, and that sort of thing makes my head swim. However I have had some fun taking photos for my current assignment. If I get a decent mark I’ll upload a couple for your viewing pleasure, if I don’t, I’ll just go to sleep until next semester. By the way, to those of you who have noticed out loud my improved photography skillz – mostly due to Picassa and my nifty wee tripod – thank you, it means a lot that you comment on it 🙂
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And finally, because I like to talk about the weather even though no-one cares about it, by gum it is rainy here in Wellington. I’m talking get yer ark pronto.

A Sentimental Journey…

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For those of you lurching on tenterhooks (I know you’re out there…right?) you can breathe a sweet, sweet sigh of relief. Tim and I went to Levin, got back safely, and the show was excellent- well worth the enormous effort it took to get there. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to finally see Rent on stage – truly, I can’t express it. Some blogger I am. Unbelievably, this performance has no review (at least online) so I shall offer my own thoughts on it – at the end of this post. It’s very long, it’s repetitive (there are only so many adjectives for “nice”) and it’s only my opinion, but for what it’s worth, keep reading. For those of you who are sick of my fangirl dribblings, you can just read the foodie bits that follow tout de suite.


Above: Today is ANZAC day in New Zealand and Australia, which commemmorates the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who fought in WWI. I won’t give you a massive rundown of what it is about, as I’ll just be pasting large chunks from Wikipedia, but it is quite a special day for New Zealand. In 2005 I spent some time exploring the battlefields of Northern France and Belgium, and I was struck with the rows upon rows of white crosses or gravestones everywhere we went. There were enormous memorials enscribed with unfathomable lists of names of the fallen soldiers. Not only was it sobering, it was chilling, horrifying even – what on earth is worth that much loss? And of course, it didn’t stop at WWI…

We left Levin at 5.30am today, and once I got back to the flat (after leaving Tim at Starbucks to start work) and fortified myself with a cup of tea, I decided to make ANZAC biscuits. Oaty, golden syrupy, and chewy with tradition, these biscuits have been made for generations in New Zealand but were first shipped out to the troops in battle by caring mothers because they were economical and travelled well. I used a recipe of the redoubtable, late aunt-of-the-nation Aunt Daisy’s, bolstered by comparisons with Alison Holst’s (because I was too lazy to translate from old fashioned ounces and such into metric.)

ANZAC Biscuits

100g butter
2 T golden syrup
1 cup sugar
1 3/4 cups flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup dessicated coconut
1 t baking soda, dissolved in 1 T boiling water.

Melt the butter and golden syrup gently together. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir carefully till it coheres. Roll into balls and place onto baking paper lined trays, allowing for some spreading. Bake at 170 C for 10-15 minutes. I got two trays out of this, there would have been more but I have to admit I did eat an awful lot of the mixture. It’s pretty seductive in its oaty way…


Above: Now for something completely different: pasta salad. From the same Meditteranean Vegetarian cookbook as the baked tomato pasta, and entirely addictive, in spite of – perhaps because of – the unorthodox (well, to me) inclusion of chopped dates in the recipe. I didn’t have all the ingredients but I did have dates, so I improvised on the rest and this is what I came up with.

Meditteranean Pasta Salad

250g penne or short pasta
3 T pine nuts
2 T pumpkin seeds
2 T salt-packed capers, rinsed
1 red capsicum, diced finely
1/3 cup dates (I didn’t really measure this, just grabbed a small handful) chopped
2 T olive oil
1 T lemon juice

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta till tender. While this is happening, dry-fry the nuts and seeds carefully in a pan till browned and waftingly fragrant. Drain the pasta and run cold water over it. Toss with all the other ingredients, and blanket with chopped mint and parsely. I couldn’t get this effect because I only have a few valiant shoots of each respective herb, but I think it would be good with more, frankly. Also more nuts wouldn’t go amiss – the recipe in the book recommends pecans, which I think would be delish. This serves two generously, but simply increase proportions to feed more.


Above: I was going to make some rice paper rolls using a recipe from my new Jill Dupleix book, but I had almost none of the required ingredients (apart from, of course, rice paper sheets themselves.) So I kinda improvised with carrot, cucumber and grapefruit. The grapefruit was a schmeer bitter for my liking, but once they had been liberally doused in dipping sauce (fish sauce, lemon juice, palm sugar, sesame oil, maybe something else, it was a couple of days ago now) they tasted lovely, fresh and healthy. Which I’ve learned can be a good thing…


Above: Our giant bag of feijoas from Hawkes Bay was starting to get all bruisy and soft so, after checking out Linda’s blog, I swiped her recipe for Chocolate Feijoa Cake. If you have a glut of this marvelous fruit, by all means see the recipe on her page.

This cake has an intriguing flavour, and the chocolate really complements the feijoas, the inclusion of which keeps everything dense and moist. I can imagine this being really, really good with vanilla ice cream…

Tonight’s dinner – fish and chips from the new chippy down the road. Tim’s reward for going to see Rent. Well, not “reward” as such, he’s not four years old (thank goodness) but an incentive to make nice, anyway – we never get take-out (not because I’m a miser, but because I get really grumpy if my dinner-cooking duties are usurped.)

Which leads us into – my thoughts on last night’s show, put on by the Levin Performing Arts Society. Anyone truly not interested, this is your cue to exit (perhaps stopping by the comments box to spit irately “I thought this was a food blog!”) First of all I’d like to point out that Tim did enjoy himself, and not only did he concede that the character of Collins gets to sing “wicked” parts, he even mooed during “Over The Moon”! (the audience is supposed to moo, so this was a good sign, O uninitiated ones.) However when asked today what he thought of it, he only cagily said that it was “exponentially beneficial” to his wellbeing. Hmph. I think he enjoyed it more than he’d like to admit.

The Levin Performing Arts Centre is seriously charming – instead of being in cold rows of fold-down seats, we were sat at tables, cafe-style. Tim and I had a table for two near the front, and there was quite a decent crowd, you know, for a Thursday night showing of Rent in Levin. Tim and I admired their dedication- there were “eviction” notices plastered on the walls, along with “Roger Davis at CBGBs” posters everywhere. Someone obviously knew what they were doing. All the front-of-house people were very friendly and welcoming, and the wine and beer was laughably cheap.

They began the musical with “Seasons of Love,” as the film version does, which is quite a good idea in my opinion – it is such a wonderful song, everyone is on stage and it sets up various themes, as well as making you think “holy heck this is going to be amazing if the rest of the musical is anything like this song.” The ensemble sounded incredible together – really beautifully harmonised, with excellent soloists. Seriously, my heart did a big damned flutter at hearing and seeing this song live.

The characters: Thank goodness, nobody was balding.

Mark Cohen: Nick O’Brien did a great job of evoking Mark and his awkwardness. He had a decent voice (though I’m hardly in a position to judge) and was likable but not smarmy – there’s nothing worse than a smarmy Mark (I’m looking at you, Joey Fatone! Don’t ask me how that got past the powers that be.) According to the programme it was his first time on stage – what a debut! My only real gripe – and it is a picky one – I think they could have got a better scarf for him. There, I said it. I didn’t like his scarf.

Roger: Well with his throaty, Jon Bon Jovi-esque voice, (and I hope I’m not insulting him with the comparison) it’s clear how Aaron James Henry got the role of Roger. Although he didn’t seem to hit all the notes he looked great and played the part with real depth. He was highly impressive in the more emotional songs (which seem to be everything that Roger is in come to think of it!) I was impressed with his guitar playing, too, but then I have two left hands…

Mimi: Sera Devcich performed this role with aplomb, and had a wonderfully sweet voice which contrasted well with Roger’s more gritty one. I personally think that “Out Tonight” could have benefited from using more of the original stage choreography, at times it seemed like what she was singing about and what she was doing were heading in two different directions…She definitely had energy though, and in slower songs like “Without You” her voice really shone and the fragility of the character came through.

Collins: Tim and I both agreed that Jordan Hudson was a really, really good Collins. He was likeable, which is important, and he had a fantastic voice. Great chemistry with Angel – with everyone in fact, and of course I am always impressed by that pole-twirly move in “Santa Fe.” In “I’ll Cover You” (the reprise) – he was amazing – seriously moving.

Angel: Obviously a challenging role – to be a believable drag queen – but Cliff Thompson was not only charming and hilarious, he could sing beautifully, too, and made the character more than just a camp characature. As soon as “You Okay Honey?” began I was relieved that they had cast someone that was going to do the part well. He was also very impressive in “Contact” although I was intrigued as to why everyone else had a backing track…

Maureen: As soon as Darlene Mohekey began singing “Over The Moon,” I was like, well of course people will moo. She’s brilliant! Seriously, the girl has got lungs. Anyone doing a role of Idina Menzel’s has enormous shoes to fill, but she was fantastic, seemed to be having heaps of fun, and “Take Me Or Leave Me” with Joanne was dynamite…Lucky Levin to have her on their team.

Joanne: Fleur Cameron played Joanne and boy does she have a gorgeous voice. Her solo in “Seasons of Love” was just…okay I’m running outta adjectives but you know, it sounded really good. She was fun in numbers like “Tango:Maureen” and “We’re Okay” but also did wonderfully in emotional songs like “I’ll Cover You” (Reprise).

Benny: Mark Peni as Benjamin Coffin III looked fantastic – all smooth and imposing in his trenchcoat – but didn’t seem to have the strongest voice. He did a very convincing job as Benny though, providing a polished and composed contrast to the rest of the characters. I thought he was particularly good in “Happy New Year B,” which has pretty wordy lyrics, he carried it off well and it didn’t lose any impact.

The rest of the company were excellent, always staying in character, clearly enjoying themselves, and filling the minor roles brilliantly. Considering how small Levin is, there is a heck of a lot of talent in this company. Everyone seemed to be having a great time on stage and looked to have researched their roles. The set was effective – I liked the use of shadows for the phone messages and the moving staircases – and the whole shebang was seriously impressive.

There only things I think they could consider improving – bit late now that it’s nearly finished its run – I thought that though the chorus looked great in their coats and hats, but once they were in “La Vie Boheme” there could have been some more effort with the costumes to make them look a bit more Late 80s New York Boho (or whatever…just not halter tops and white skate shoes, you know?) It was fantastic to see “Christmas Bells” on stage – it’s such an amazing song, full of syncopated and contrapuntal singing and while it was good it got a bit muddied towards the end which was disappointing. The programme definitely needed a detailed synopsis – the story can be confusing and not everyone is as sweatily obsessed as I am.

My real beef is – they killed off Mimi at the end! She’s supposed to live! I was so surprised I nearly fell off my chair! I mean, if you went to see Romeo and Juliet and they both lived at the end, what would you think? Now the whole (non Renthead) audience will think that this is the actual story. I’d like to know their reasons for this decision…

Clearly it was a very momentous night for me and the Levin Performing Arts Society did a seriously brilliant job. But oh, how jealous I am of those lucky people who got to see it first time round with the original Broadway cast… Finally, I can wholeheartedly recommend the lovely, friendly Totara Lodge Motel if you ever find yourself needing accommodation in Levin (hey, it happened to me!)

Tag, You’re It!

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I always used to lose when we played tag at school (don’t even get me started on piggy in the middle!) Any long-term readers of this blog don’t need another vitriolic diatribe on how PE scarred me for life, but what I’m trying to blunderingly say is that not all forms of tag are bad. Particularly the sort you can play from the comfort of your own computer.

To the point, the lovely Erica (she of the delightfully named Oh my! Apple Pie! blog) has ‘tagged’ me to describe myself in six words. She did it herself, lots of others have, suddenly it’s my turn.

But first, while I deliberate – roasted cauliflower.


Above: I would never turn down cauliflower blanketed in cheese sauce, but secretly (okay, not so secretly at all, would I stop talking about it already) I think this is my favourite way of eating it. Roast florets at 200 C (give or take) until charred and smoky and slightly crispy in places and more delicious than you could believe possible from looking at this innocent white vegetable.


Above: This monumentally comforting dish comes from a Vegetarian Mediterranean cookbook that I got for Christmas from a family friend, and is a lot more delicious than its innocuous ingredients would suggest. When Tim and I got back to the flat yesterday – our trip home what very whistle-stoppish in nature – I made this for dinner. Already a simple recipe, I’ve simplified it further, because I’m lazy as heck and want to wash as few dishes as possible.

Baked Tomato Pasta (for 2)

300g spaghetti or fettuccine
400g can crushed tomatoes, or the same weight of passata (superior, but more difficult to find)
4 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 or 2 tablespoons salt-packed capers, rinsed
grated cheese to top

Bring a large, ovenproof pan of salted water to the boil. Once bubbling merrily, add the pasta, and let it cook away till relatively tender – about 12 minutes does it usually. While this is happening, set your oven to 180 C. Drain the cooked pasta, and return it to the pan (off the heat), while you stir in the garlic, tomatoes, and capers. Sprinkle over as much grated cheese as you like, and bake for about 25 minutes or until burnished and golden and…well, you should be able to tell by looking at it that it’s done. Maybe serve with a salad on the side if you are doing the “proper dinner” thing, otherwise I like it eaten out of a bowl with no accompaniments.

This probably serves more than two, to be honest, but what can I say. We are growing lads. Plus, without leftovers, you can’t discover the charms of a pasta omelet…something I always dismissed as some kind of over-fangled modern cafe-style horror, but actually it turns out to be rather delicious…


Above: This was the best photo I could get, as the rising steam kept fogging up the lens and I was too hungry to let it cool into eggy rubber. For some reason though ,when I see this picture I think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which Tim and I saw for the first time last week (truly bizarre, but nice to see the so-often parodied scenes in their original context). I don’t know why, there is just something planetary about the look of it. Anyway, it tasted out of this world (ba-doom boom!) and meant that the pasta didn’t go to waste. The recipe comes from Nigella’s Feast, and makes for a very simple, cosy supper served with warm buttered toast. (I know, so much for lightening up.) All you do is let a knob of butter sizzle in an ovenproof pan, add the pasta and some eggs and a splash of milk – I used four eggs because the pan was rather large – let it cook a bit before flashing under the grill to cook the top. I sprinkled it with a little grated cheese, too.
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Right, me in six words. For what it’s worth…
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Passionate – I’m not talking your everyday passion, I’m talking passionate to the point of one-eyed bloody-mindedness. I’m passionate about things I love, I’m passionate about things I hate. As I say to Tim, (often!) “I’m not exaggerating, I just feel very strongly about things!”

Bendy – I could do the splits at age three, I can do the splits now, and I plan on being able to do the splits when I’m eighty. If that doesn’t define me, what does?

Nervous – As with being passionate, I’m not fooling around here. I’m a very nervous person. There is so much that I’m afraid of. Examples…praying mantises (even cartoon ones, heck, even the words make me shudder), natural disasters, and brain aneurysms have all kept me awake in clammy fear at night. All too often. Which segues nicely into –

Imaginative – I have a very, very vivid imagination. In fact I tend to overthink situations regularly (which makes for more nervousness as I imagine every possible eventuality to a situation.) It does make for some nifty dreams though. Have you ever dreamt you were a white rabbit, chasing through a forest after an orca whale, in the name of unrequited love?

Silly – I am very, very, very silly. But never just for its own sake – it always (unfortunately or otherwise) comes from a place of real silliness.

Self-absorbed – yeah, I am a bit. Frankly, I enjoy talking about myself. Why else would I tell you what I cooked last night? Or indeed, how self-absorbed I am?

I’m pretty sure anyone who would be interested has already been tagged by now, but in lieu of this, why not check out the other food blogs on my blogroll to the right. Reading them is always inspirational, whether to cook or to take better photos or just to eat and eat and eat some more. Or click on the links of the people who comment me (although I’d say comment #11 on my last post looks distinctly spammy, maybe give that one a miss.) I may not be any good at tag, but leapfrog isn’t so hard – jumping from blog to blog is a great way to discover amazing writing. But don’t you forget about me!

Country Roads…Take Me Home…

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I’m writing from home – not the flat – Tim and I flew up yesterday morning and already it feels like I’ve never left. Funny how quickly you adapt to your surroundings. We had Mum’s vegetable soup last night for dinner and not only was it instantly soul-nourishing and delicious- it was much nicer than mine. Some things are worth traveling miles for…

Tim and I went out for brunch for my birthday on Thursday (it was supposed to be breakfast, but I always take too long to get figure out what to wear.) The weather was cold and miserable and I was half-tempted to stay in and make pancakes or somesuch but we persevered in the name of paying someone else to do it for us. We ended up at Epic Cafe on Willis Street, where the servings are large and the prices aren’t terrifying, and you can briefly feel like a character from Sex and The City for dining so well. Unfortunately the foul weather ruled out any would-be Carrie-style clothing creations, I went for practicality in jeans, hoodie, scarf and Chuck Taylors.


Above: I ordered the savoury French toast with sauteed vegetables and pine nuts, plus a side salad. There weren’t actually any pine nuts on mine…but the combination of their delicious hollandaise, tangy tomato sauce and amazing toast won me over, and, being the pansy that I am, I didn’t complain. The side salad was pleasant enough – for $3 – although I would have preferred some dressing. You’ll have to excuse the badly lit photographs – they were taken rather hurriedly – not only was the waitress looking at us funny but I was far too hungry to make more of an effort.


Above: Tim got the El Rancho Fryup, which featured perfectly cooked eggs and delicious, sweet-salty bite sized corn fritters that I longed to steal off him (I did manage to exchange one for a bit of my French toast.) Not to mention enough beans for one to want to avoid polite company for some time after.

We met up with my aunt who has been child-wrangling at a boarding school in Western Australia, it was fantastic to catch up with her and we spent a leisurely and loquacious afternoon in Smith The Grocer cafe in the Old Bank Arcade. Tim and I were still far too full from brunch to eat anything but I can tell you that their cups of tea come with a deliciously spiced complimentary wafer. She gifted me all sorts of wee foodie goodies including some black food colouring which I am very excited about trying out (she suggested an All Blacks cake – as if!)


Above: This is what I made for my birthday dinner. Because we were leaving for three days the next morning I couldn’t do anything too wildly extravagant – which was probably for the best, considering what it might have cost – but I did splash out and purchase some bacon. I fried and deglazed it with Vermouth, and added it to a vat of pasta along with brocolli, peas, lemon juice and the last of the creme fraiche. It was a lovely combo and also managed to use up a few things loitering sadly in the fridge. Please excuse the low-rent photo (noticing a theme?) the lens kept steaming up and this was my most serviceable shot. Any tips from more seasoned bloggers on how to prevent this?

Other things we have been eating lately…


Above: I made this free-form tart the other day for dinner, and though it really shouldn’t have worked…well, it did. First I made pastry out of 125g each of butter and flour, and bound it with a little buttermilk. I did this by hand, as I couldn’t be bothered dragging out my food processor (and there was anyway no benchspace for it) but I quickly was reminded why it’s worth the effort, as rubbing all that butter into the flour takes forever and strains the wrists substantially. Eventually I had a lump of something resembling pastry, so I rested it in the fridge, rolled it out, and started to freak as it began to almost melt on the tray, which had been heated by the oven underneath. In a blind, twitchy panic I flung my ingredients at it (creme fraiche, tomatoes, capers, pine nuts) and baked it at 200 C.

I expected to see a gooey, floury mess 25 minutes later but miraculously the pastry had come together. The tomatoes became deliciously scorched in places, making them even sweeter, which contrasted rather fabulously with the salty capers. The pastry itself was buttery and flaky, even though it really shouldn’t have been. Not the healthiest dinner, but a delicious one all the same, and something rather more “restaurant-y” than we normally get. Try it yourself – maybe even get out your food processor – and use whatever you have in your pantry that you think would go well together. I can imagine thinly sliced courgettes and parmesan being wonderful, for example…


Above: I don’t really go in for stir-fries that much – they seem kind of overdone and it’s easy to make them claggy and oily (not to mention all that damned fiddly chopping!) However upon seeing a can of water chestnuts gathering dust in our pantry I decided to make something resembling one for dinner the other night. We didn’t have a heck of a lot of vegetables so it comprised of courgette, carrots, garlic, ginger (the real, knobbly, amazingly zingy thing, not the acidy stuff from a jar), sliced water chestnuts, and cashews. A fairly slim meal, yes, but there were only two of us, and once it was banked up against a pile of brown rice and had a few judicious droplets of sesame oil, it was quite substantial. I flavoured it with fish sauce, lemon juice, and a little bit of black bean sauce. Black bean sauce is so slow moving and it is impossible to scoop it out of the narrow bottle with a spoon, so I made the mistake of shaking it over the pan with the lid off…which resulted in salty black streaks all over the wall.

All that aside, the end result was quite lovely, the water chestnuts have an intriguing texture and it was gratifyingly salty. Also, anything accompanied by brown rice makes me feel instantly Zen; a nice payoff for the long time it takes to cook.

On a “happy birthday to me” whim I purchased Jill Dupleix’ Lighten Up from the warm and friendly Unity Books on Willis Street. I have often flicked through this book and thought “eh,” but closer inspection revealed that it was actually full of exciting recipes. I’m quite wild with anticipation about trying her Lentil and Sweet Potato Pie for example… There is something about Dupleix’ authoritative “tone” that can be a bit annoying, even laughable at times, but on the whole her cookbooks make very enjoyable reads. Mum and Dad gave me a $100 grocery voucher for my birthday so I can’t wait to go buy lots of vegetables and get cooking from it. Speaking of purchases, today they bought a shiny shiny new oven (the last one made industrial grinding noises every time you turned it on which was most disconcerting and it never got hot enough). The new oven is self cleaning! What an age we live in…

Just Spent Six Months In A Leaky Blog

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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