Category: Pudding and Dessert

lava you should have come over

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We’ve all been there. Quietly eating your wet polenta, but secretly thinking “Alas! If only this polenta was glutinous and significantly higher in fat and lower in nutritional value. Then I’d know real happiness.” Or maybe not. I have this yearly dalliance with gnocchi where just enough time has passed since I was last traumatised by it that I delude myself into thinking I can make it successfully. But every year, I fail.

For 2009’s attempt my head was turned by a recipe in a magazine for gnocchi which sounded delicious – a basic choux pastry mixture with cottage cheese added. It seemed pretty non-terrifying and so I gave it a go. The gnocchi was pillowy and light and slowly rose to the top of the pan of water. I pinched one out of the pan and tasted it – argh, so good. Smooth and creamy and yet gratifyingly unstodgy.

Then came disaster. I tipped the pan into a large colander and…the gnocchi broke. All completely flattened. Nary a solid pasta nugget to be found. After putting all this effort into it I was determined that the show would go on but seriously…

…that’s not gnocchi. The squashed gnocchi was kind of delicious, with the exact soft, grainy texture of polenta, just, you know, now with a higher GI rating and all the goodness of no cornmeal! After many years of failure, I’ve decided that gnocchi is like haircuts and half-marathons: best done for you by other people.

Let us distract ourselves from this ugliness with a ridiculously flamboyant cake – Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Coffee Volcano.

To mark the occasion of Tim’s birthday we threw a small shindig at our place on Sunday afternoon, inviting all of our closest friends (a very small, but mighty bunch, minus a few exceptions not based in Wellington naturally). I’d only been back in Wellington for an hour, since I spent the weekend up in Auckland for business meetings and the Smokefreerockquest finals (all of which went smooth as failed gnocchi). Instead of my usual post-travel mode, which is to put on my $6 grey trackpants and stare at the TV, I got stuck into making homemade custard and stuffing softened rice paper sheets like some pearl-wearing housewife from Bonfire of the Vanities.

The whole evening was very relaxed once this was out of the way. Let’s face it, no matter how many times you make custard there is still always the nagging fear that you’ll end up with sugary scrambled eggs. Luckily no disasters this time, particularly fortunate considering I’d substituted coconut milk for the stipulated cream, in a bid to make the pudding dairy-free for one of our friends who swings that way. (By the way, the cake uses oil, not butter. Do not consider for a SECOND that I’d stoop to margarine.)

So yeah, marvelous evening all round, good company, good nibbles, and particularly excellent cheese provided by Dr Scotty. Having it on a Sunday evening gave it a chilled out vibe wonderfully conducive to sitting round eating enormous quantities of food and light quantities of alcohol. Tim took over in the kitchen when the sausage rolls needed baking and the pork buns needed steaming (yeah, there was no real unifying theme to our nibbles) and they were pretty exciting, but the cake was the real star. Probably because I would not shut up about it and about how awesome it was that it was dairy free.

Let me describe it for you: a large, deep, undulating chocolate bundt cake (which, thank all that is good in the world, turned out of the tin neatly this time). The hole in the middle is filled with walnuts. Into said hole, over the walnuts, you pour rich custard, caramel brown with espresso (I actually forgot to add the coffee in the heat of the moment but no harm done as there was still plenty going on). Finally you sprinkle over brown sugar and using some kind of fire-producing implement, torch the sugar till it forms a caramelised, speckly creme-brulee surface on top of all the madness, all of which flows like magma once you slice into the cake to share it round.

It should probably be mentioned here that Nigella uses the words “infant-school easy” and “pa-dah!” to describe this cake. She uses these words…slightly carelessly. I wouldn’t be the first to volunteer a two-year old’s services in making a bundt cake which requires separated egg whites beaten to a meringue. Just sayin’ is all. But, if you have a few years’ experience behind you this cake is not impossible, as demonstrated by the fact that I could actually get it happening at all. It just requires a little focus and forward thinking. A kitchen blowtorch helps, I was given one for my birthday this year and was really excited about using it on something so worthy expending a little butane.

It does resemble a volcano, right? Eating it was an intense experience, and the reason the photos look so hastily snapped is because…they were. The cake is light in texture but very dark with cocoa. The caramelised sugar and hidden walnuts provide a crunchy respite against the rich, flowing custard. It’s just…marvelous. It’s the sort of thing that you have one bite of and decide that you want on a weekly basis. I realise it looks and sounds like there’s far too much going on. But it works.

Chocolate Coffee Volcano

Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess

CAKE

300g caster sugar
140g plain flour
80g cocoa
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 large eggs, separated, plus 2 more egg yolks (this is where it gets confusing if, like me, you have trouble counting to ten)
125ml vegetable oil (I used rice bran)
125ml water

Preheat oven to 180 C and lightly oil a 25cm Bundt tin.

In a large bowl mix together 200g of the sugar, all the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and baking soda. In another bowl, beat together the water, oil and 6 egg yolks. Pour over the dry ingredients gradually, whisking to combine.


Take yet another bowl and whisk the 4 egg whites till stiff. Keep whisking and slowly add the sugar spoonful by spoonful. Gently fold this into the chocolate mixture a third at a time. Pour mixture into the oiled Bundt tin and bake for 40 minutes, although it may need a little longer and covering with tinfoil.

CUSTARD

6 egg yolks
225mls double cream
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon instant espresso powder.


Note: I used four egg yolks and 1 tin coconut milk, using the same method. Whisk egg yolks, sugar and espresso powder together lightly. Heat up the cream in a pan but don’t let it boil. Slowly whisk it into the egg yolks. Wipe out the pan and transfer the mixture back into it, cooking over a low heat till it thickens significantly into custard.

Finally, sprinkle Tia Maria over the cake if you’d like to (another thing I forgot), fill the hole with walnuts, pour in the custard, allowing it to overflow and run down the creases of the cake. Sprinkle over about three tablespoons of brown sugar and torch it till it resembles the top of a creme brulee.

See? Infant-school easy! Pa-dah!

To go with I made another coconut milk custard into which I stirred melted dark chocolate and cocoa and froze into ice cream. As guests peeled off we were left with a few hangers on. There was a joyfully primal moment when we all stood round a kitchen countertop digging spoons greedily into the container of ice cream. Things got a little strange after that and, (poor Tim, was it ever even about him?) as some kind of signifier of this, Defying Gravity was played at great volume for Dr Scotty who had hitherto been living half a life and had never heard it before…

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The title of this blog is brought to you by: Jeff Buckley, singing Lover You Should’ve Come Over, okay sure, but maybe a little Eden Espinosa too…Yes, Jeff Buckley was special and all but I’m more of a Tim Buckley gal myself. And let us never forget who was the author of Hallelujah…
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On Shuffle whilst I type:

1: Like a Pen by excellent Swedes The Knife from their album Silent Shout. This song was regularly thrashed chez nous circa 2006/2007 but I heard it again yesterday while streaming George FM and was immediately taken back to those damper times. Had a nostalgic flashback to Alicia the Canadian teasing us for calling it was called “like a pin” with our New Zealand accents.
2: Cars by Gary Numan from The Pleasure Principle. Spurred on by marathon sessions of watching and listening to The Mighty Boosh I really had an urge to listen to this again. It’s blindingly glorious and swirly.
3: Cornerstone from the Arctic Monkeys’ latest, Humbug. It’s really good. Who would have thought back in 2005 that they’d be here now?

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Next time: Well, hopefully the next post will (a) arrive sooner and (2) have better photos. Like I said I’ve been travelling round the place, hence the yawning chasm between the last post and this one, but I got to touch base at home and catch up with all sorts of lovely and important relatives and get lots of important meetings done in the city AND act as sponsor representative at the fantastic finals for Smokefreerockquest. Plus make dairy-free custard after being back in Wellington for nary an hour. You try blogging after all that. Also, hopefully I make something that really succeeds. Either that or it’s time to get a ‘fail’ tag to add to my list.

brown sugar, how come you taste so good

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I’ve got a bit of that Sunday night ‘blah’ feeling that can happen after a really good weekend. The reason for this weekend going so well was because several family members (Mum, godmother, godmother’s sister) coming from afar to visit, acting as entourage for my godsister who was having her university house ball. Now that they’re gone and my mind has to turn to practical things, like waking up early tomorrow for work…You know how it goes. Of course there are several cures for such feelings: make sure you live in a charming flat on Cuba Street for one thing, listen to the relentlessly sunny revival cast recording of Hair, eat tofu, absorb the happiness of those around you that the Wellington Phoenix football team actually won a game, that sort of thing. I happen to be doing all those things simultaneously right now so there’s barely a moment to feel wibbly.

I spontaneously invited everyone round for dinner on Friday night. We had take-out noodles from my noodle hut of choice: Chow Mein Cube on The Terrace, plus hot chips from the excellent chippie across the road. I made a salad and they bought the wine. Pudding consisted of brown sugar meringues that I’d made that evening after work (I know, how deranged housewife am I) and two different kinds of ice cream, Kohu Road vanilla and Whittaker’s Peanut Slab. It is with some pinkness of cheek that I admit my love for the peanut slab ice cream, since I had so emphatically stated that Kohu Road is the only kind of non-homemade ice cream I’d ever consider buying. Well, now I can add Whittaker’s to the list. It’s flipping lovely stuff.

These meringues have the edge on their paler sisters – I normally find meringues to be a bit too blatantly, in-yer-face sweet, whereas here the brown sugar gives complexity of flavour and a pleasing dark caramel taste. You could of course use something like muscovado sugar for an even more intense experience. I found this recipe in Italian Comfort Food by the Scotto family, a cookbook that persists in changing my previously held perception that all American cookbooks are unusable and ask for incomprehensible ingredients like Bisquick and half-and-half.

Brown Sugar Meringues

Adapted from Italian Comfort Food by the Scotto Family.

4 egg whites
1 cup brown sugar

Preheat oven to 140 C/300 F and line a tray with baking paper. You may need two trays but I managed to squish everything onto one. This recipe is so simple you could fit it into a Twitter update. Whisk egg whites till frothy. Carry on whisking, slowly adding brown sugar till a stiff meringue forms. Drop spoonfuls onto tray, bake for an hour. You should get 16-18 out of this. And I made it with an actual whisk so don’t feel like you can’t either. No need for heavy machinery here.

What’s really, really fun is then to take spoonfuls of ice cream and sandwich it between two meringue halves. This becomes almost impossibly sublime after a day or two when the meringues have softened slightly. It’s so good you practically need to slap yourself back into reality afterwards. The contrast between cold, creamy ice cream and resolutely dry room temperature meringue is surprisingly seductive while the strong caramel of the slowly cooked brown sugar counteracts any excessive sweetness. They’re aesthetically pleasing too, calling to mind those fancy macarons that you see all over the place but in a much simpler, ramshackle fashion.

It’s a little difficult to really paint a picture in words how delicious this is, especially when it seems so simple. I might have to eat another so that I’m inspired into further colourful description.

If your life is like the Tom Wolfe novel Bonfire of the Vanities you might consider making your own ice cream to go with the meringues. It will drive home to your dinner guests that you are an aggressively accomplished cook. Their self esteem will wither and the only way they will be able to jump over this raised bar is by baking individual souffles at their next dinner party. Even if your life is not like a Tom Wolfe novel and does not involve making individual desserts while wearing pearls, and even though we’re all well aware by now that there is perfectly sufficient stuff available on the market, making your own ice cream is not difficult. To paraphrase an argument that I often employ (if the Dire Straits were that good, surely I’d like them?) if ice cream was really that difficult then surely I wouldn’t be able to achieve it.

A while ago I got it in my head that palm sugar might be a delicious ice cream flavouring. It is highly likely that I should have been focussing on spreadsheets at the time which is why the idea was not immediately acted upon. However this time of idea-incubation allowed me to also consider adding kaffir lime leaves to this icecream-in-my-mind.

Last weekend I had a crack at it, making a custard boldly infused with kaffir lime leaves and a syrup of palm sugar. The two were mixed together and frozen and I’ll be honest, it actually worked. The flavours were subtle but intriguing. Not overtly limey and not wildly sugary, but both elements definitely present, cutting through the frozen custard with their unfamiliarity.

I’ll give you the recipe I used – which I made up – but I’m not quite sure it’s the exact final prototype yet. There was something about the texture that I wasn’t entirely sure about. However Tim, with his simple rustic wisdom, said I was overthinking and he couldn’t see anything wrong with it. So feel free to give it a go yourself.

Palm Sugar and Kaffir Lime Leaf Ice Cream

4 egg yolks
3 tablespoons brown sugar
600 mls cream
5 dried kaffir lime leaves
4 lumps of palm sugar (does this make sense? Palm sugar generally comes in rounded lumps. There might be a better way of describing it)

Heat half the cream (300mls) with the kaffir lime leaves in a pan till it’s pretty hot but not boiling, just slightly wobbly. Remove from heat and let it sit for a while to allow the lime leaves to infuse. Whisk the egg yolks and brown sugar together gently, then pour the heated cream into it, still whisking. Rinse and dry the cream pan and then transfer the egg-sugar-cream mix back into the pan and heat it gently, stirring all the while, till it thickens into custard. This isn’t hard at all but it can be good to have a sink full of ice cold water ready to plunge the pan into to stop it cooking. You can choose to remove the lime leaves at any stage here, but I left them in as long as possible.

Put the custard aside to cool while you put the palm sugar into a pan, and add 1/2 cup water. Heat very gently till a syrup forms. Depending on the palm sugar it may take a while to break down. The aim of this excercise is more to melt the sugar into a usable liquid rather than cook it into a caramel, if that makes sense. Once it has dissolved into liquid put it aside to cool for a little bit before whisking it into the custard (with lime leaves removed) and finally, stir in the final 300 mls cream. Sorry if this all sounds a bit complicated.

Pour into a container and freeze, stirring occasionally. It makes around 900mls which is a good, non-threatening quantity for an experimental batch like this.

Anyway it must have been pretty good because Tim and I managed to get through it in less than a week. Largely aided by the fact that it tasted so mind-blowingly smashing sandwiched between meringues. Be not afraid to try it. The instructions may not fit on a Twitter update but they’re pretty straightforward.

Last night the lot of us – Tim, myself, visiting family members went to La Kasbah, a Morrocan restaurant down the Left Bank arcade of Cuba Street. It’s an adorable place with a short but solid menu, gorgeously painted walls and friendly wait staff. We were all very much taken with our meals and in particular I loved the tumeric-yellow bread that came with the breads and dips. Well, I hope it was tumeric that gave it that radioactive tint. I’d love to know their recipe because it’s gorgeously moreish stuff. It was a seriously lovely night and I definitely recommend it if you’re looking for another BYO to add to your inventory.

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The title of this blog is bought to you by: The Rolling Stones
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On Shuffle whilst I type:

Where Do I Go? sung by Gavin Creel and the Tribe from the 2009 revival cast recording of Hair. It’s more thematic than plot-heavy, which makes sense for a show that follows its own rules, but I have the feeling that this is currently among the best ways to spend a few hours on Broadway right now. The current Broadway cast is so full of energy and joy that even a million miles and continents away it is impossible not to love them.

Meadowlark by Patti LuPone from Patti LuPone at Les Mouches. Recorded in 1980 this is an utterly gorgeous and occasionally hilarious album.

You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket (live) by the White Stripes from the Blue Orchid single. Thought this song is most excellent on the album, live it just…soars.
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Next time: Nigella Lawson has this chocolate Coca Cola cake in How To Be A Domestic Goddess, and I thought it might be fun to switch the cola for ginger beer. It was flipping lovely, let me assure you, and you’ll be finding out all about it in good time…

let the bun shine in

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Tim whacked his knee on the bedframe yesterday (a common occurrence here, except I’m clumsier and shorter so my thighs are perpetually a fetching dappled shade of purple). I took advantage of his searing agony and got him to agree that we should go to dinner at La Bella Italia. An hour before we are due to leave the house, I remember that La Bella Italia is not open on the weekends. I don’t know if this is karma or just standard issue stupidity on my part. I call stupidity, as I forgot that La Bella Italia is only a Monday-Friday joint and Tim did seem keen in spite of himself. Either way I feel there is some kind of proverb emerging… “Ask not the significant-other in deep pain to take you out to dinner, you don’t need to pay $23 for a bowl of pasta to ‘really communicate’ with each other. The sharp teeth of karma bite ye once more!” But maybe not. I feel like it’s a recurrent theme of my life that I get really, really excited about something and then it doesn’t materialise. You’d think that now that I’m all grown and wise with 23 years under my belt I’d see these situations approaching and tamp myself down accordingly. Not so. I was really flipping disappointed last night that we couldn’t go to La Bella Italia. We ended up having chilaquiles and watching DVDs of 30 Rock and Dexter like every other night which was fun, but still. La Bella Italia. The food just…slays me.

A similar situation has been happening recently. Bearing in mind that we’re moving from up the hill in Kelburn down into the city centre, I said to Tim that we should have a coffee at Cafe Mode down the road and sample their seriously lush scones asap before we leave. Well we’ve been there seventeen thousand times in the last two weeks, and every single time they’ve been out of scones. Every single time. It’s like wanting a baby or something. I’ll start telling people that we’re “trying really hard” for a scone. There’s not a big window of opportunity – the clock is ticking! I need some kind of beeper to let me know when the cafe is scone-ulating!Sometimes random aspects of my existence can be kind of exhausting. But I will get my scones, damnit.

Okay, I’m pretty excited about this particular recipe so I’ll launch straight into it rather than try and offer some kind of esoteric lead-in paragraph. Do you recall, back in April I made hot cross buns only to inadvertently turn them into burnt offerings instead. And if you don’t recall, may this handy url jog your memory for you? Refusing to let this culinary snafu get me down, I sliced off the charred bits and froze the rest of the hot cross buns, relatively inedible as they were, to use down the line in a bread and butter pudding.

As we need to start using up any extraneous stuff lurking icily in our freezer, it occurred to me last week that it might be pertinent to make this bread and butter pudding already. I defrosted the hot cross buns (or cold cross buns if you will, hahahahaha) and while I was being practical, pulled out a massive slab of sheep that Tim’s parents sent us back to Wellington with a while back. I know mutton isn’t all that fashionable (which can only mean it’s due for a wildly fashionable comeback in restaurants) but it really does taste good, especially when the sheep had been fortunate enough to live a happy life on Tim’s parents’ farm, baa-ing merrily with verdant grass nuzzling its hoofs. The idea of having an old-timey roast and bread and butter pudding for a Sunday dinner was hugely pleasing to me.

Carne con carne. All I did to the mutton was put it in the oven for about 5 hours on a very low heat (around 160 C). That’s all. No spices, no oil, no tinfoil, no nothing. And it was beautifully tender, densely meaty and rich, and filled the whole house with the heavy perfume of roasted protein. I didn’t serve it with a gravy, since rendered sheep fat just isn’t that sexy. I did, however, bake some potatoes and other vegetables and it was an absolutely wonderful meal. A roast is so delightfully low-maintenance, you just bung it in the oven and that’s it. The next night I made us shepherd’s pie out of the leftovers, surprisingly quick when you don’t have to actually cook the meat. And really, really good.

But the bread and butter pudding. I swear I could hear angels chorusing when I took a bite. It was exquisite. Considering it started its life as tough, dry buns, it was a makeover of Hollywood film proportions. Actually there isn’t really a Hollywood movie that uses the makeover theme that I can compare this to, as in all those movies – Pretty Woman, The Princess Diaries, She’s All That, My Fair Lady, Miss Congeniality – the “ugly duckling” is always blatantly stunning. What is Hollywood trying to impart to us? That brunettes can never truly be happy unless their eyebrows are brutally waxed to pop music in a montage scene?

Um, anyway, what I’m trying to say is that to look at, these hot cross buns were seriously nothing special, no glimmer of Anne Hathaway or Sandra Bullock beauty within their overcooked exteriors. Because I made the recipe up totally on the fly, I wasn’t even sure if it would work or if I would end up just chalking it up on my list of things-I-got-disproportionately-excited-about-which-then-turned-to-FAIL. But it was an absolute minx of a pudding, the eggy custard giving the buns a soft, burnished, gloriously puffy texture. The spices – cinnamon, cardamom, ginger – were heavenly nestled against the warm, rich Marsala wine that I generously sloshed into the mix. The whole thing was just flipping marvelous. Gather round, my children. And listen:

Hot Cross Bun Bread and Butter Pudding

Obviously, you don’t need to go to the trouble of making your own buns and then overcooking them. Because we live in such a flagrantly heathenish age, I’m sure you can go down to your local supermarket and purchase hot cross buns at any time of year. So, buy some, allow them to go stale, and you’re good to go.

Ingredients:

6-8 shop-bought hot cross buns, allowed to go stale or 10-12 slightly burnt hot cross buns made to the recipe from Nigella Lawson’s Feast
50g very soft butter
75g brown sugar
3 eggs
500mls milk
Marsala wine

Heat up the milk and about 1/3 cup Marsala in a pan. I don’t want you to boil it, but it needs to be hot enough that you really wouldn’t enjoy the whole lot being thrown in your face. Slice up the buns and layer across a loaf tin. Beat the butter and sugar together, add the eggs and whip as though you were making a cake. Slowly whisk in the hot alcoholic milk, then pour this crazy mess over the buns. Let this sit for about 10 minutes to absorb the liquid somewhat, then bake at 170 C (roughly 330 F) for about 40 minutes. Eat. Ice cream would make an ideal partner, as would cream or just plain, cold milk.

Serves 4

Seriously compelling stuff. In hindsight, I probably could have cut off some more of the darkened bits of the buns, but truly this was less alarmingly carginogenic looking in real life as it is in this photo. I’ll just coolly pass it off as “ramshackle” and ignore any dissenting views.
 
On shuffle whilst I type:

Problems from Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols by The Sex Pistols

Stars and The Moon, a song by Jason Robert Brown sung by Julia Murney and OH MY GOSH it made a small compartment of my life quite complete to hear her sing this beautiful tune.

I Ran from the Original Cast Recording of Little Fish. I am pretty well addicted to this song. Itunes may not have actually ‘shuffled’ on to it every time if you know what I mean.

Next time: July is set to be pretty manic. So as yet, the next post is a mystery to us all. And yes, my title barely makes sense but I don’t care, I’m on a Hair kick right now. Never mind that it doesn’t make sense, the revival cast living it up on Broadway right now are absolutely stunning, listen to it enough and EVERYTHING will make sense.

bachelorette

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I did this training session thing at work on Monday afternoon, where you fill in a questionaire online and from that they ascertain what kind of patterns you follow and which personality aspects affect the way you work. It basically told me that I am a creative, beliefs-driven, spirited hippy who is quite au fait with a lack of structure and can be very relaxed with deadlines. It was rather like a horoscope reading session – and a lot of it rang true with me.

For everything on this earth except graduating. I graduated on Tuesday (with a Bachelor of Arts in Media and English Lit) and was a nervous wreck the whole time. For this one event, I want structure and rules and advance, pertinent information. Which I feel we didn’t receive. Had the “So, You’ve Decided To Graduate” pamphlet told us specifically how the evening was going to be run, I would have been a lot more chillaxed. But all it really conveyed was something to the effect of “you will instinctively, like a spider making its web, know where to walk to and where to be seated.” A little mystery and coyness is fine, but in the proper context, please. Had I known that the whole thing would be quietly run by wonderful attendants stationed every two metres to tell you exactly where you were supposed to be going, in soothing, hushed tones, I wouldn’t have stressed quite so much.

That aside, it was a wonderful day, and I was lucky enough to share it with lots of other people I knew who were graduating, including Tim, a colleague, an old schoolmate, former flatmates, and one of my cousins. Parading through the town was exciting, if a little fraught – the (miraculously rain-free) wind threatening at any point to separate trenchers from heads, and parents constantly yelling out “stop! look over here!” and attempting to take photos while the orderlies barked at us to keep walking and stay within the lines. An old family friend joined us for lunch at the Black Harp (where I had a wonderful mushroom ragout) and after the ceremony itself Tim’s and my families shared a raucous meal at the reliably fantastic BYO Istanbul on Cuba Street. The ceremony itself was something of a blur, my surname being Vincent I was right at the end and so couldn’t properly relax until it was all over. We were priveleged to have speak at the event (after getting an honorary doctorate), author and Victoria University alumni Lloyd Jones, whose book Mr Pip won the Booker Prize. All in all a very exciting, momentous time – swelling string quartet music would not have been out of place at several points – and I miss wearing the robe and swooping through town allowing the excessive fabric to subtly draw attention to my higher education and no doubt superior intellect. I am Laura Vincent, BA. It’s funny how fast those three years went – I remember reading the book of Anne of Green Gables where she’s doing her schooling and thinking “well, LM Montgomery rather skimmed over those three years a little flagrantly”, but no, it really does go pretty briskly.

My parents arrived on Monday night took and Tim and I out to dinner, well actuallywe took them out to dinner as neither really know Wellington well. Wanting to find somewhere near their hotel that wouldn’t require a traumatically lengthy walk, somewhere non-franchisey and something a little “Wellington”, I chose La Bella Italia on The Terrace. I had never been there before but have heard good things about it. It wasn’t full and the atmosphere a little bright and cold for an Italian place but this makes sense as it is a deli as well as a cafe (with significantly more reasonable prices than another visible Italian cafe in Wellington). Our service was prompt, friendly and matter of fact, the waitress being able to talk to us at length (when questioned), about the puffin-eating habits of the people of the Faroe Islands and also able to make a fabulous long black coffee.

The food was fantastic – well thought out combinations simply served and made with beautiful ingredients.

I had the egg tagliatele with tomato bolognaise sauce and parmesan. The pasta was delicious although had just a touch more bite to it than I like. The sauce was excellent – rich, tomatoey and nourishing.

Mum had the most wonderful vegetarian eggplant dish – actually I think we all ended up eating vegetarian that night for some reason – the eggplant was cooked perfectly and the sauce was divine.

As you can tell I basically tasted everyone’s dinners including my own. Tim had the gnocchi which was incredible – smooth and surprisingly light and tasting of the finest, milkiest ricotta cheese. Dad had a different kind of gnocchi, with a tomato sauce, unfortunately the photo didn’t turn out so well but he seemed to enjoy it. Despite being comfortably full we decided to get two desserts and four spoons to share them with.

First up was vanilla gelato with our choice of liqueur. We went for limoncello, which was silky and tangy with a not unpleasant alcoholic kick. The liquid against the smooth, cool gelato was quite wonderful. It came punctuated with two thin, crisp biscuits which were perfect for dipping into the last of the gelato and limoncello as they melted together.

This chocolate and prune terrine with hazelnut meringues was incredible. So often – too often – when we go out for dinner the dessert has blatantly been assembled or unwrapped rather than created. So it’s nice to find a place where it’s quite clearly the opposite. This terrine was incredible – the dark chocolate bitter and smooth against the sweet crunch of the meringues and the soft dark juicy prunes.

Verdict: I will definitely come back here, if not right away for a meal then definitely to check out the deli side of things. I need some of that pasta.

La Bella Italia
101 The Terrace
Wellington City
Open Monday – Friday 7am till late.
Website


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On Shuffle while typing:

These Four Walls, Gavin Creel, from GoodTimeNation
Calliope! The Veils, from Nux Vomica
Modern Love, David Bowie, from Let’s Dance

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Next Time: I make dinner using ingredients bought at the Wellington Food Show, plus…well that’s it. Nevertheless, I remain, Laura Vincent, BA.

Pineapple Express

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A very, very swift post from me – I know my exam is tomorrow, but Tim and I have studied ourselves into a brick wall and can nay do more. We’ve been watching some audio commentaries on The Mighty Boosh DVD (yes, we are earnest commentary-watching folk) and giving our brains a well-needed airing before everything we’ve crammed in there floats lightly out our ears.

Saturday’s weather was beyond awful – gale force winds and pelting rain. Sunday, however, in typical Wellington fashion, was the complete opposite – an unutterably beautiful day. I purchased a pineapple at the vege market for a dollar and imagined I would sprinkle it with chopped mint and fresh ginger and serve it for a sparklingly healthy dinner. Then Tim said “or we could dip it in chocolate?” Brilliant. I was sold.

In fact I went one better, and used a recipe of the blessed Nigella Lawson’s from her gorgeous book Forever Summer .

Caramelised Pineapple with Hot Chocolate Sauce
1 ripe pineapple
demarara sugar (Nigella specifies 250g)
200g dark chocolate
125ml Malibu
125ml cream

Preheat the grill to very hot (or the barbeque!) Slice the skin off the pineapple then chop it into wedges. If you like, thread them onto soaked wooden bamboo skewers or just leave them plain like I did. Lay the pineapple on a layer of tinfoil and sprinkle with the sugar. Pop under the grill till caramelised and deep golden in colour. For the sauce, simply melt the chocolate and stir in the Malibu and cream. Pour into a bowl for people to dip the pineapple in. I resolutely sprinkled the pineapple with mint though and it added its pleasant, reliably perky flavour to the whole thing.

You should probably know that we lowly (soon-to-be-ex) students don’t carry anything as highfalutin’ as actual Malibu. Instead I used a harsh splash of this Malibu doppelganger stuff of Katie’s called – charmingly – “Wipeout.” The look of Malibu in the same white bottle, minus the smooth rumminess.

Above: Cool mirror effect on the shiny dipping sauce. It’s probably the aluminium in the Wipeout liquor that makes the chocolate so reflecty.

We ate dinner (a quick feast of steamed red potatoes, proper beef sausages, roasted capsicum and carrot sticks) outside because it was so glorious, and at 7.30pm we were still able to be comfortably al fresco with our pineapple. It is a wonderful pudding – the taste of scorched fructose and smooth, smooth chocolate mingling very pleasantly with each other, people leaning over each other sociably to access the fruit and sauce – heck, I’d go for two pineapples next time.

I haven’t mentioned this so far because I’ve been so busy promoting the Otaua video (and in case you’re wondering, the case is going on hiatus for three weeks so no proper conclusion yet) but if you like, clickety click HERE to witness a rather amazing thing. You may remember that I went on a plugging spree for the late Broadway musical [title of show]. Well it’s over now, but some spry fans organised – and just let me try to explain this properly – a music video to ‘9 Peoples’ Favourite Things’, one of the songs from [title of show], using fans of the show holding up pictures of the lyrics. As in, one word per person. If all this makes no sense, watch the video anyway because Tim and I are both in it! Yayyy! Participation from miles afar! But actually, don’t even try to look out for us because we zoom by in a flash and your retinae will chaff with the strain of it all. But there’s still something for everyone. For Broadway fans, there’s Jonathan Groff *swoons*, Patti LuPone, Shoshana Bean, Amy Spanger, Seth Rudetsky, Betty Buckley and Cheyenne Jackson *swoons again* amongst others. For the average punter, have fun trying to spot America Ferrera, Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Kimmel, TR Knight from Grey’s Anatomy and for those who like to dip your toe on either side of the fence, check out the spunky Bebe “Lillith” Neuwirth. Follow the link in the grey box for stills and names, and you’ll actually get to see me.

See, there was no need to flinch, I didn’t even try and make you watch the Otaua video again. But if you’re on youtube anyway with nothing else to do…As it is we are on a rollicking 1900 views, which is flipping amazing. Hopefully in three weeks we can make the change we want. In fantastic news, Otaua and the video itself were on the TV1 national news show here in New Zealand, they gave us a good two minutes and showed lots of clips of Otaua looking clean and lovely and untainted by oil plants. Hilariously though, they showed a clip of the mayor of Franklin, Mark Ball, and said that it was my dad. Not sure what the mayor thinks of this…

Speaking of change, in a day or two I’m guessing things are going to go absolutely nuts in America. Even a bare plot summary of my beloved RENT which this blog is named for should indicate that I’m pretty left leaning. (Hint: lesbians ahoy!) I couldn’t be more hopeful that Barack Obama gets in as president, and that Sarah Palin fades quietly into obscurity (I know, I know, I’m not American, but let’s put it this way, I’ve heard many, many women say that she in no way speaks for them by virtue of her gender). It’s times like these that I get a particular song stuck in my head…’Louder Than Words’,a stunning ditty from one of Jonathan Larson’s earlier works, Tick, Tick…Boom! If the words look a little cheesy on paper, click here for a somewhat poor quality vid of the final Broadway cast singing it to get the full effect.
Why should we
Blaze a trail
When the well worn path
Seems safe and so inviting?

How, as we travel
Can we see the dismay
And keep from fighting?

Cages or wings
Which do you prefer? Ask the birds
Fear or love, baby
Don’t say the answer
Actions speak louder than words!

What does it take
To wake up a generation?
How can you make someone
Take off and fly?

If we don’t wake up
And shake up the nation
We’ll leave the dust
Of the world wondering why

Why do we stay with lovers
Who we know, down deep
Just aren’t right?
Why would we rather
Put ourselves through hell
Than sleep alone at night?

Why do we follow leaders who never lead?
Why does it take catastrophe to start a revolution
If we’re so free? Tell me why – someone tell me why
So many people bleed

Cages or wings
Which do you prefer? Ask the birds
Fear or love, baby
Don’t say the answer
Actions speak louder than words!

Gelatine-age Kicks

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What a kerfuffle. I apologise heartily for neglecting the blogs I normally peruse loyally. If it’s any consolation, between studying for my exam next Tuesday, stressing about WPC Ltd’s attempt to bring their ‘environmentally friendly’ waste oil treatment plant to my hometown, vigorously promoting the protest video on youtube, and working, I’ve barely managed to attend to this blog. What can I say, it’s rather difficult to type when you’re shaking your fist at people. It makes me so furious that the WPC and members of the Franklin District Council that support them can go to bed at night, placidly untroubled about what they’re doing to an entire community, while I find myself reading the same page of Kerouac’s On The Road seven times because I’m so distracted with worry (perhaps also due to this book not being nearly as good as everyone claims it to be, perhaps not.) The hearing to decide the fate of Otaua is happening today and tomorrow, so you understand that I’m a little jittery. I’d like to say now that it was four years to the day on the 29th that my maternal grandfather died. He spent most of his final years living just up the road from us, and I imagine him watching over the proceedings, perhaps also with a fist held angrily aloft.

To the food: There is something about recipes involving gelatine that fills me with trepidation, I think it stems back to an incident involving Neenish Tarts when I was a child. The recipe called for the filling to be set with the dreaded stuff, which formed stringy, gummy strands the moment it hit the mixture. As people politely bit into the finished tarts, their teeth would meet with clumps of it, the texture of chopped up erasers marring the otherwise smooth and creamy filling. My gelatine experiences since then have been few and far between. Earlier this year though I spontaneously purchased some gelatine leaves from Kirkcaldie and Staines and decided to use them the other day to make Apple Tea Jelly, a recipe from the September 2005 Cuisine magazine that has held my attention ever since I read it. The weather is finally warming the shoulders enough to make this sort of thing even worth thinking about.

Above: Gelatine leaves. Nigella Lawson raves about them, which is enough to get me to hand over significant amounts of coin for something. But don’t they look like some kind of ethereally golden church window? Hold them towards the sun and the Hallelujah chorus practically starts playing. Of course, those with a delicate constition may want to ignore the sole ingredient in these fairy-like sheets: pig skin. Moving along!

Powdered Turkish apple tea can be found in most supermarkets, but I happened to acquire a half-full box from my aunt after a comprehensive cleanout of her well-stocked pantry (which, up until said cleanout, was always something of a mystical haven for me, my version of Narnia). I never knew what to do with the stuff – it’s too sugary to actually drink (I prefer a stiff black tea or something a bit more minty and natural, thankyou), and although the powder is intensely delicious eaten by the spoonful – like the best sour apple sweets you’ve ever tasted, dissolving ascerbically on the tongue – the idea of eating the whole lot makes me wince. So when I found this recipe, which uses a good amount of the stuff, I verily leapt with joy.

Above: The apple tea powder. Seriously, if you have some kicking around, try eating it with a spoon. It’s intensely yummy, especially if you have what Nigella refers to as a sour tooth, rather than a sweet one. I have what I call a “fat tooth.”

The recipe is very simple and specifies six 100ml dariole moulds, but since I was only feeding Tim and myself, I poured the whole lot into a little 600ml, old-fashioned Tala tin – also from that same aunt come to think of it. (Cheers, Lynn!)

Apple Tea Jelly

600mls boiling water
6 leaves gelatine
6 Tablespoons powdered apple tea

I funked it up a little by adding an apple-friendly chamomile teabag to the boiling water for a spell, and strewing some finely-chopped mint through the mixture once it was nearly set. But first: dissolve the apple tea in the boiling water. While that’s happening, soak the gelatine leaves in a large lasagne-style dish filled with cold water for about a minute. They will soften slightly, and then, one at a time, pick them out of the water, squeeze them – which is rather squelchily pleasurable – and stir into the boiling apple tea, whereupon they will dissolve instantly. Pour the gelatined apple tea into your chosen receptacle, and then refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.

Above: The unminted jelly, ready for refrigeration.

When you’re ready to eat it, find a likely looking person (in my case, Tim) to dip the tin briefly in hot water and turn it out onto a plate. I refuse to do such things myself, I know it will only result in tears – not necessarily mine – and jelly in my ears.

And what a beauty it is! Shivery, diaphanous, and with a subtle, fragrant apple flavour that is a million miles from whatever lurid, food-colouring flavoured stuff you can get out of a packet. I love packet jelly, but this is just absolutely gorgeous stuff, alluringly wobbly and very impressive to the casual passer-by (“you made jelly? Not out of a packet? Ooooh.“) I imagine it would be wonderful on a hot summer night, after some kind of spice-heavy dinner.

Like I said, I have been attempting to study for my English exam next Tuesday. In fairness to WPC Ltd, there has been one other thing distracting me from my books: The Mighty Boosh. I’ve been a fan for a while now but Tim and I got ourselves a DVD of Season Two and watched all six episodes in one sitting. I laughed so much I nearly pulled a muscle. It’s sheer brilliance, a little like Flight of The Conchords only British and surreal and even funnier (I realise I seem to compare everything to FOTC but that’s because people are generally afraid to try new things unless they can relate it to something they already know. Gelatine – it’s like Flight of the Conchords, only it dissolves in hot water!) More loveable than Little Britain, more endearing than Mr Bean, more surreal than Green Wing, and almost as sharp as Blackadder. Actually I’d put it on a par with Black Books. Hath there existed greater praise for comedy?

The other exciting thing going on – okay, so you already know about Neil Young coming to town, but guess who else is going to be here in January. You’ll never guess. Okay: Leonard Cohen. The gravel-and-maple-syrup voiced lothario himself. Since Tim and I were lucky enough to witness Rufus Wainwright earlier this year, that will be my entire Canadian Music Tripartite that I’ve managed to see in concert and I’m only 22! I honestly never thought I’d get to see Mr Cohen, at least not in New Zealand of all places. I couldn’t be more excited than if Idina Menzel herself decided “what the heck” and booked a tour of New Zealand even though you can’t actually buy her albums in shops here (are you listening, Warner Brothers Records?) Although there have been whispers over the ether that Morrissey himself *faints* might be paying a trip to New Zealand in January. As you can imagine, what with one thing and another, I’ve been having a lot of mood swings lately. Thanks awfully for sticking it out with me.

Finally, further proof that the cat is secretly on quaaludes:

Above: “I’m under your bed, befriending your dust bunnies…” He just sat there, with enough of him sticking out so we could see him. A desperate cry for attention (as if he doesn’t rule our lives already) or something more sinister?

Wait, what’s that you say, Oscar?

If the above makes no sense, visit I Can Has Cheezburger? for further info (it still may not make sense, but you should get a laugh out of it.)

Next time: Not sure, though I’ll try to keep it coherent. I did buy myself (with the aid of a voucher) the Wagamama Noodle cookbook which I’ve been getting lots of use out of, so mayhaps something from that. The video on youtube has hit a mighty 1800 views, words can’t express my gratitude to those of you who have been watching it. For further information, keep checking the Otaua Village Blog for updates.

Strange Brew

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So, (she says casually), I made mascarpone. There’s something about creating one’s own dairy product that is monumentally pleasing, and makes me feel like a one-woman, fully functional, to-scale fromagerie. I’ve made creme fraiche before and mascarpone isn’t too far removed in terms of method. I heated a litre of cream, till small bubbles appeared round the edge, then stirred in just under 1/2 a teaspoon of cream of tartar, and let it bubble away merrily for about 5 minutes. I then allowed it to cool, and lined a sieve with a couple of coffee filters that Tim had mysteriously acquired for me from Starbucks. This bit is a little cumbersome but not complicated: Sit the lined sieve over a bowl, then pour the cream mixture carefully into the sieve, and leave overnight in the fridge to slowly drain. Or, if your abode is as cold as my flat, you can leave it on the bench.

Seriously, our kitchen is so cold that the olive oil on the shelf by the window has solidified in its bottle. Which is what happens if you put it in the fridge.

Et voila! Mascarpone!

Above: The mound of mascarpone, with the strainer, coffee filters, and drained liquid.

I love how the mascarpone took on the folds and curves of the filters and sieve so it resembles a plump, billowy pillow.

As I said in my last post, I planned on making tiramisu this weekend. I realise this Italian specialty is fairly unexciting and run-of-the-mill these days, but – gasp – I’ve never tasted it in my life. Let alone made one in my own kitchen. I used a recipe from Cuisine.co.nz but just realised there was a perfectly serviceable one in my Claudia Roden “Food of Italy” book. The two recipes are very similar though, and it would seem that the greatest discrepancy between any of the various recipes I’ve seen for this occurs in the number of eggs used. The Cuisine recipe only used three eggs, which was a nice, small, non-frightening amount.

Above: Making the zabaglione, rich with Marsala wine.

I am, if nothing else, forever indebted to Nigella for introducing me to the heavenly liquor that is Marsala, and I was very pleased to see that the Cuisine recipe called for it. The whole process of making tiramisu isn’t terribly difficult, and I did the whole thing in about an hour. The fiddliest thing is the zabaglione part, which involves all sorts of things that I tend to avoid – separating eggs, fitting a bowl over a pan of simmering water (don’t let the base of the bowl touch the water or a kitten dies!) and endless whisking. Despite the pain, it is pleasing to watch the eggy, sugary mixture come together. Into this, I folded the mascarpone, and whisked-till-stiff eggwhites (another thing I dislike – recipes that use lots of bowls. Such is life though.)

Above: Freshly brewed coffee, made capably by Tim, plus the Savoiardi biscuits and the Marsala (I added a splash to the coffee as well. It belongs in everything.)

Slightly untraditionally, I put a layer of grated chocolate in each layer, basically because I had some bitter dark chocolate that needed using up. I also ended up – aided by some judicious spatula work – with three layers of biscuits, which used up exactly one packet, in a regular sized loaf tin.

Above: The biscuits soaked up the coffee very quickly – a deft hand is required. I usually err on the side of undeft, but it’s not difficult or anything. The only thing I found taxing was trying not to get crumbs of the biscuits caught up in the cream mixture.

Then of course, the moment of truth – the eating. Not that I flatter myself that my own personal tiramisu is the definitive article, the ur-pudding, but I followed the recipe and everything went to plan, so I’m guessing what I created is more or less what it should have been. And it was delicious. The texture is just…mad. Damp biscuits which crunch hollowly against the most voluptuous, rich cream…oh yum. More please.

The snap of the darkest dark chocolate against the cream is, I think, my favourite part. Oh, and the coffee was perfect – of course!


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Yesterday afternoon Tim, Paul and I went to see the Wellington Phoenix play some Melbourne team. We got trounced resoundedly, and to add insult to injury it utterly, without reservation, bucketed with rain on the walk home. I was glad that I’d had the foresight to bake a casserole earlier in the day – using a recipe from my delightful Supercooks Supersavers Cookbook from 1980 – and it was basically the nicest thing in the world to come home to. I had the crock pot ticking away overnight making vegetable soup into which I biffed a lamb shank, it smells heavenly and we are going to have it for dinner tonight along with the leftover casserole (made very cheaply with gravy beef)…much as I absolutely cannot wait for summer to arrive, I do love winter comfort food wholeheartedly.

After eating our delicious casserole last night, Tim and I managed to stay up till 1.30am to watch the closing ceremony of the Olympics. I guess it’s really saying something if, comparitively at least – it seemed fairly low-key. The reason we persisted in staying bleary-eyedly awake is because Jimmy Page of Led Zep was supposed to be playing, little did we know it was going to be alongside British songstress Leona Lewis, she of the particularly awful song “Bleeding Love.” We could not, however, deny that she has an excellent voice…nor that Page seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself as she gyrated beside him. The whole London bit seemed altogether bizarre – here’s a bus! And a celebration of our awful weather! And a child descended of multiple ethnicities! And now the bus is turning into a…hey, there’s David Beckham!

I’ll definitely miss the Olympics, it’s astounding to think of all that buildup just for two short weeks. The New Zealand team certainly were amazing, I will not, however, at all miss the pitiful New Zealand reporting/commentating team. Finally, and speaking of rock music, my title refers to the 1967 Cream song, but you know, brew…coffee…cream…tiramisu…a little forced, I know, but it made me chuckle.

“Some Things I Cannot Change…”

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…”But till I try I’ll never know…” Argh. I mean, I posted those Tetris photos last time breezily saying how I was prepared for them to be criticised. Heck, I even quoted Back To The Future. But secretly I thought they were cool. The teacher absolutely hated them and told me as much in our interim presentation on Wednesday (worth 20% of the assignment’s grade!) I kid you not, I actually started to tear up right there in class. My throat got tight, my nose got prickly, and I could only but sullenly nod at her before racing out of the class to sob in the girls’ loo for 20 minutes. Once again; she was well within her rights to say that, also, they probably were “technically awful,” but how the heck am I supposed to pick up the camera and carry on with the assignment now? On top of that everything negative that she said about the last assignment in class applied directly to what I had done. I felt like I was twelve years old again. I felt like hugging my mother. I felt made of fail.

So yeah, I hit the butter pretty hard.


Above: After watching a performance on youtube of ‘Popular‘ from the musical Wicked, featuring Kristen Chenoweth and the ever-ridiculously-astounding Idina Menzel, (yes, my fangirl-ness extends to youtubing musicals I’ve never even seen), I felt like creating some pink and green iced cupcakes. After all, as Glinda says, “Pink goes good with green.” I don’t know why I thought cupcakes would be a good way of expressing this, or indeed that it needed to be expressed at all, but it certainly filled my baking-as-catharsis brief for the time being…


Above: And looked rather cute to boot, no?
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I’ve made these so many times and in so many forms that I don’t need a recipe, but you might: Take 125g each of soft butter and caster sugar, beat till fluffy with a wooden spoon, add two eggs, (beat beat beat) a little vanilla extract (beat beat) and 125g flour (still beating with your wooden spoon). Finally, you scoop the mixture into a 12-bun muffin tin, (with paper liners in each indentation) or into 12 or so endearingly pretty silicon cupcake holders like mine. Bake at 180 for about 15 minutes. This recipe is courtesy of Nigella, and is actually in every single book she has done, in one guise or another. Double the recipe and add baking powder and it becomes a Victoria Sponge recipe, to be baked for about 30-ish minutes in two paper-lined 20cm springform tins, and sandwiched together with any number of combinations of things…cream, lemon curd, jam, mascarpone, stewed rhubarb, banana slices, dulce de leche…


Above: I’ve made these biscuits/cookies (choose as applicable depending on hemisphere) and seriously loved them. Just to show how versatile the recipe is, in the book they are called chocolate chip fruit and nut cookies. In the ones I made there were none of these components (apart from a certain necessary amount of cookie!) and instead I doubled the oats, loaded in pumkin seeds, and then threw caution to the wind by adding linseeds (some throw caution to the wind by, I don’t know, skydiving. I add linseeds.)

I managed to refrain from eating all the mixture this time.

And yes, I did manage to get some study done yesterday, but I truly had hit a brick wall when it came to the photography assignment and couldn’t bring myself to get started on it again. I’ll need to harden up soon and get on with it, but yesterday I couldn’t help but wallow, walrus-like, in the solace of the kitchen for a little longer…


Above: It just occured to me that if you zoomed in on this picture, maybe upped the saturation somewhat, it might look like an early Pink Floyd record sleeve. This technicolour mix is actually an uber-wholesome combo of ripe bananas and frozen berries, plus a spoonful of brown sugar, which I turned into ice cream. Well, is it ice cream if there is no cream in it? Jill Dupleix thinks so, and I salute her for coming up with such a splendidly delicious recipe, but the finished product has more of a sorbet-like granular, slushy texture. No matter, it tastes pretty incredible and can claim to be gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, almost sugar free (one tablespoon! and it was my idea, not the recipe), and even vegan. Who would have thought I’d ever make something vegan?

This came to be, not only because I had a whole lot of cheaply bought baking bananas that I couldn’t get rid of fast enough, but because Tim and Paul (with a little help from the rest of us) valiantly cleaned out our fridge (well, one of them; we are a two-fridge family in this flat) which was so bung that the ice growth on the back wall had literally grown over some of our food and encased it. Anyway, they found a half-bag of frozen berries that I’d bought and were going to biff them (I know) but luckily thought I might want them. And so, to justify their existense, and to get rid of the scary bananas, I made Jill Dupleix’ icecream from Lighten Up.


Above: I don’t go in for bananas in a huge way, but good grief this is delicious. And not because of all that it lacks, or even because of all the vitamins and potassium it contains (though I believe they do add that extra zing) but because of what it has: a gorgeous, deeply pink hue; an amazing sorbet-like texture, and the intense flavour of fruit, unadulterated and allowed to taste of itself. (I know, I know, I’ve totally been drinking her Kool-Aid)

I think (lazily) that Dupleix’ recipe is a little unnecessarily complicated, so here’s what I did: Take six or so ripe bananas (cut away any brown bits) and chop them very roughly into a bowl. I mean, cutting them in two is fine. Tumble in 150g of frozen raspberries (I had a berry mix which gives a lovely purple tinge to the pink mixture) or more if you like, I didn’t bother to measure what I had but I think it was actually more than that. I also added a tablespoon of brown sugar to add a little sweetness; Dupleix specifies fresh berries which are sweeter. Leave them for twenty or so minutes for the berries to soften. Throw the whole lot in the food processor, blend till thoroughly smooth. Tip back into the bowl, or an icecream container, and freeze, stirring to break up ice particles at some stage of the proceedings. You won’t be sorry.

Whither the dinner in all this?


Above: On Wednesday night I put sausages, potatoes, onions (love roast onions) yellow peppers and beetroot into a couple of roasting dishes, shoved them in the oven, and came back maybe an hour later to find dinner ready. Although Tim likes his sausages fried, they are so much easier done in the oven and I admit I rather like the hard, crispy exoskeleton they acquire after roasting. You probably already know how I feel about roasted beetroot; if not: LOVE IT.

This weekend is going to be instensely busy, what with extended family driving down from home, old-but-not-forgotten flatmate Kieran showing up on our doorstep yesterday with several bottles of hard liquor, creative differences with my photography teacher to sort out, tests to study for, mini-essays to write, and The Food Show. You can guess which of these things I am excited about. I have been practising for the Food Show (Hello, I’m a food blogger in the Wellington region. May I take a photo? Hello, I’m a food blogger….)
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Oh and I booked a ticket to see Rent in Palmerston North next Friday. Am very excited, even if I’m going alone. Tim wouldn’t be tricked by reverse psychology (“didn’t want you to come anyway!”) and there was no pending birthday to use an excuse, in fairness to him he was a very good sport about it last time. As luck would have it our recent flatmate Stefan has moved to The Palm so I have a spare room to crash in. All’s I am saying is, they’d better not kill off Mimi like Levin did…that’s right, I’m still not over it.

“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!

Camera Obscura

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A warning: Tim and I have a new camera. It is very shiny and cool and high tech, but I just can’t take any decent photos. Please stick with me though. Hopefully these are just teething problems, and not a chilling vision of things to come for this blog.

I was planning to go to a Bikram Yoga class with Ange after work today, but we decided it took up altogether too much brain-space and so we went for an equally zen peppermint tea and soy chai respectively. On the way home, at the library, I got myself the River Cafe Two Easy Book, and the first Barefoot Contessa book. No offense to my American constituency, (or constichensy if you will; rewatched O Brother Where Art Thou last night and had forgotten how wondrous it is), but a lot of American chefs don’t really appeal to me, particularly – gasp! – Martha Stewart, who I just don’t get. (Fear not though, I can’t see the charm in Delia either.) Ina Garten, however, or the Barefoot Contessa as she grandly entitles herself, I really like. There is something so wonderfully, bosomly comforting about her, and all her recipes seem warm and delicious and inspiring. I can’t wait to peruse this book.
Above: You are still going to get the same old Laura-calibre photos until I figure out how to make the camera heed me. Seriously, I thought it would be instant Donna Hay up in here, but I guess there’s more to it than that. The food, by the way, in the above photo is of a casserole I made from Nigella’s How To Eat – the first casserole of the year. I absolutely love stews and the like though, so I was secretly excited when the weather was cold enough on Monday to warrant such a dinner. Notice the elegant bowl, Christmas present from the parents. Another stew I have made this week comes from the Hudson and Halls cookbook that Mum sent me. It was supposed to be Chicken Marengo, but I had no button mushrooms, so I suppose it is only Chicken Marengo-esque. Nevertheless, this is a seriously moreish dish, I couldn’t believe how great it tasted. It must be the inclusion of the magical elixer that is Marsala – but more on that later…
Could someone – perhaps American or well-travelled – explain what the deal is with Santa Fe? Does it possess some kind of mystical properties that I am not aware of? I only ask because it is mentioned quite a bit in Rent- there is a whole song devoted to how they want to run away to this place, plus numerous other references – and then on the Fame soundtrack, Montgomery also sings about his longing to escape to Santa Fe. I wikipedia’d it (as I am wont to do with this sort of thing) and although it certainly seems very pleasant, the site didn’t really offer much info. Anyone? Interestingly, these two songs are some of my favourites on the respective soundtracks (who am I kidding, I can’t choose)…perhaps Santa Fe has got to me, too.
Above: Amazingly, this photo is even worse than the above. This picture shows an apricot crumble I made the other day, using some fruit that Stefan had bought back from the Hawkes Bay. You don’t want to know how much crumble mix I ate…the finished product got generally glowing reviews from the flatmates, but I can’t pretend that the oat bran I put in the topping made it healthy.
Above: Un-hummoused Chickpeas…(which is to say, chickpeas with cumin, olive oil, sesame seeds, and lemon juice) and –

Above: Morrocan Vegetable Stew. Guess what we served it on? Couscous! I have to say, if there is one thing Nigella has taught me, it is how to make a good vegetable stew. I am forever in her debt. Onion, garlic, carrot, parsnips, canned tomatoes, red lentils…a pinch of cinnamon and tumeric…beyond easy. This was dinner for Tim, Paul and myself on Wednesday (I took pity on Paul who couldn’t be bothered cooking dinner.)
Above: The photo may not be so fab, but let me tell you friend, this tasted LUSH. I had been nursing a small idea for this very creation for some time now, and it came to glorious, calorific fruition yesterday. In case you thought I was doing nothing but lentils these days.
White Chocolate Macadamia Ice Cream with Marsala-Butterscotch Sauce. Does this sound good to you? I got Ange, Paul, Tim and Emma to test-drive it for me, and they loved it, Emma said it was even better than the Cinnamon Date ice cream. This is definitely a grownup dessert – the Marsala gives the sauce a seriously delicious flavour.
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White Chocolate Macadamia Ice Cream with Marsala-Butterscotch Sauce
Ice Cream:
-4 egg yolks
-50g plain sugar
-50g light brown sugar
-500mls cream
-125mls full fat milk.
-200g White Chocolate with Macadamias (can I just mention here that I got this chocolate by mistake and decided to pretend that I meant it to be that way, and it ended up being really good. So, I’m sure plain white chocolate will suffice just fine.)
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Being the cream and milk to the boil in a pot. While this is happening, gently whisk together the egg yolks and sugar till combined. As soon as the cream and milk starts to bubble, take it straight off the heat, pour it over the yolks and sugar and whisk thoroughly. Then, transfer this mixture back into the pot (which you have rinsed and dried) and stir constantly over a very low heat. You are making custard, so you don’t want to overcook it at all, but for heaven’s sake don’t stress. If I can do it, so can you. Keep stirring till it is well, the consistency of custard, then remove completely from heat. Melt the white chocolate, stir it into the custard thoroughly, let it cool and then freeze. Try not to drink it as it’s chilling.
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Marsala-Butterscotch Sauce
-50g butter
-50g muscovado sugar
-200mls cream
-1 T Marsala (I used my All’uovo, which is sweeter, but I’m sure dry would still be wonderful)
-1 T custard powder mixed with a little water.
Melt the butter and sugar together in a pot. When the sugar has dissolved into the butter, add the cream, and let it simmer for a bit. Pour in the Marsala, and finally the moistened custard powder, allowing it to thicken gently. It will thicken more on standing. If it sits for long. I’m just saying…
Above: Ah, the soothing balm of lentils. After all that sugar I needed something intensely healthy to calm me down and this soup had two different types of lentils in it. Oooh…I know I’ve said it before, but I have a theory that eating lentils just immediately cancels out anything. I long for a scientist to prove me right.
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It’s flipping chilly in Wellington at the moment – and not chilly in the BSC sense, but really very cold. “Sunny Santa Fe would be nice…”