Category: Salads

strange but not a stranger

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As Liz Lemon, a character from 30 Rock and my kindred spirit would say: “aw, blerg”. It’s a third of the way through July already and I have only just now managed to put pixel to webpage. This is partly because Tim and I have been quietly absorbed with Dexter (brutal but good!) and with rewatching season 2 of 30 Rock (brutal but good!) and, of course, packing all our earthly belongings into boxes and suitcases (merely brutal!) in anticipation of the big move this Friday. Or, as they might say in a Baby Sitters Club book, The Big Move. Unlike bicoastal Dawn or choice-burdened Stacey it’s not really a difficult wrenching decish for us. We’re excited about moving.

I haven’t really been doing a lot of cooking lately, because we are trying to use up what’s in the cupboard and fridge. And not make anything huge that needs to be frozen or eaten over several days. Or use too many pieces of cookware. Which restricts us a schmeer. Last night Tim had spaghetti on toast before choir and I had a pub quiz after work. Monday night we went to Red Tomatoes Pizzeria and Cafe. On Sunday we cooked up 12 sausages at lunchtime that we’d defrosted from the freezer “for space-saving purposes” and…honestly…by nightfall the two of us had eaten them all. Not kidding. 12 sausages, two people, 6 hours. Saturday night was Burger Fuel because we had to be at the Film Archive by 7pm for the showing of my beloved Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps. Friday night was take-out satay noodles from Chow Mein Cube on the Terrace. Tomorrow night we’ll be getting takeaways because everything will be packed away and on Friday we’ll get takeaways because we’ve been moving all day. You get the idea. I’m really not cooking. And I can feel myself occupying more space than I normally do. Which is why next week I’m promising myself to embrace vegetables and shun sugars. But for now, it works. It’s simpler this way.

It doesn’t completely resemble the innermost circles of Hades here though. There has been some cooking – prior to all the non-cooking – occurring mostly because of the divine inspiration I garnered from the latest Cuisine magazine. Despite having a fridge rapidly emptying and a cupboard filled with increasingly disparite spices and condiments, I found myself turning pages of my Cuisine magazine and saying to myself rapturously (and loudly) “I can make this! And I have the ingredients for this! And also this! And still further recipes!”

So I did.

One rather genius dish that I tried was a Fiona Smith recipe of diced vegetables, basted in a salty dressing of miso, mirin, sugar and oil, roasted and mixed gently through sushi rice. Engaging stuff, yes?

Miso Roast Sushi Salad

The vegetables need to be cut into small, equal pieces so that they roast quickly and evenly without scorching the sauce. I found the amount of vegetables, once chopped, to be enormous, so ended up more than halving the amount. I suspect this is a very forgiving, adaptable recipe and can be changed up depending on what you have, more or less. I used a mixture of kumara, carrot, and parsnip. I left out the mushrooms because Tim doesn’t like them and the tofu because we just didn’t have any and it was still, despite this, just right for two people.

2 tablespoons rice vinegar
3 teaspoons caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sushi rice
1 1/4 cups water
4 cm strip kombu (optional)

4 tablespoons miso paste (you could happily sub this for black bean sauce)
2 tablespoons mirin
1 tablespoon peanut oil
2 tablespoons sugar

200g firm tofu, cut into 2cm chunks
4 cups chopped winter vegetables (pumpkin, carrot, kumara, parsnip)
2 cups mushrooms, quartered

Preheat oven to 200 C.

In a small bowl, stir together the first measure of sugar with the vinegar and salt and set aside. Place the rice in a colander, run under cold water then sit to drain while you prepare the vegetables. The draining step is apparently quite important so make sure this is the first thing you do.

Whisk together the miso, mirin, peanut oil and second measure of sugar. Chop all the vegetables into small cubes and mix in with the mushrooms and tofu in a large bowl, adding the sauce and coating thoroughly. Spread onto a paper-lined baking tray and roast for 20-25 minutes till the root vegetables are tender.

While the veges cook, place the rice in a medium saucepan with the seaweed if using, and cover with the 1 1/4 cups water. Bring to the boil, stirring, then clamp a lid on and cook at the lowest heat possible undisturbed for ten minutes. Take off the heat and leave undisturbed for ten minutes. Tip the rice into a large bowl and remove the kombu if used. Pour the vinegar mix over and stir gently, then add the roasted veges and tofu and carefully combine the lot together. Serve in bowls with sesame seeds and coriander with soy sauce and wasabi to serve if desired.

Serves 4.

This is very, very cheap and utterly delicious, the sort of thing you can happily eat by the heaped forkful while sitting cross-legged in front of the heater watching a DVD. It will, without a doubt, become a regular dinner this winter chez nous.

As I mentioned, last Saturday we went to see Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps at the Film Archive, and a very satisfying night it was too. We were part of a bare handful of under-forties whippersnappers present in the audience. It was a wonderful experience – big, beautiful sound, comfy seats, Neil in all his sneery glory on the big screen and of course his songs. Ohhhh the songs. I was tempted, in order to assert my right as a whippersnapper to be there, to state loudly, “I know! I’ve seen him live! It was a moment of spiritual clarity!” Speaking of films, I really, really can’t wait for Away We Go to open here in NZ (about 12 months after it opens in the USA, naturally). It has the most incredible cast and I’m not kidding, the trailer nearly made me tear up. And it has cameos from Catherine O’Hara, who I have a mad crush on (Catherine, call me!) and Broadway’s Allison Janney! Still speaking of films, we have been perusing the NZ Film Festival guide and circling various films we want to see, but mostly trying to find the most delightful foreign name for someone listed as working on one of the films. So far our hard-to-trump favourite is an actor called Knut Berger. Together, we salute you.

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On Shuffle whilst I type feverishly:

Carry That Weight from Abbey Road by The Beatles (I love this song. It’s like launching into the built-up end of an epic, Hey Jude-like song without having to wait for the build-up. It’s like fast-forwarding to the “it’s meeeee!” part of Defying Gravity. It’s instant gratification.)
Welfare Mothers from Rust Never Sleeps by the divine Neil Young (was there e’er a cooler opening line than “people pick up on what I’m putting down”?)
Planet Z from Still I Can’t Be Still by the divine Idina Menzel (Tim actually admits to liking this song. Heavy. Very heavy. Also: buy this album. It’s ridiculous.)
Roadrunner by Modern Lovers from their eponymous album. I think I could listen to this song a squillion times and never tire of it. And I have a mad crush on the ageless Jonathan Richman. Call me, Jonathan!

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In other significant happenings, Tim garnered an A and a B for two respective honours papers at uni which is just backflip-inducingly awesome. This is most likely the last blog entry I’ll post from this flat. Considering this very flat is where I began this blog as a mere blog-ling in the October of 2007, that’s…something. Right? We’d be much obliged if you could think happy, good-weather, box-lifting thoughts for us come Friday. Who was the patron saint of severely pulled muscles due to lifting from the back instead of the legs? We should probably be lighting a big old candle to him or her right now. (Not just being PC here, I wikipedia-d it and there really are a lot of lady saints.)

the memory remains

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It has been a little while now since The Food Show, and I’ve eaten most of the loot I bought therein. There’s a little bit left – some preservative-laced ageless salami, the occasional lonely sprout, half a tub of yoghurt. And the Lindt chocolate is sitting in my wardrobe, waiting for that special chocolate recipe. Most of the good stuff is gone though. However since blogging about eating food is a somewhat slower process than just eating food, it has taken me a little while to get round to discussing how I used my purchases.

Some of the yoghurt and sunflower seeds went into a batch of banana muffins. The bagels got eaten in a matter of hours. The mirin I bought made me wish I’d come across it years ago. And the white chocolate Lindt chocolate balls, the very thought of which are making me a little dizzy with wanting right now, I think I inhaled them accidentally while blinking or something.

I devised this salad in my head on a break at work and was pleased with how it sounded – roasted kumara and radish salad with chorizo, halloumi, brocolli and organic sprouts. I was looking forward to it, imagining peppery radish with the sweet kumara, searing hot halloumi against the cool sweet crunch of sprouts, the paprika-d chorizo whispering an oily hymn to the verdant brocolli.

I presented it triumphantly, sat down smugly, held my fork aloft and then cursed loudly. I’d forgotten to add the chorizo. Even though it was sitting right there in the fridge and was one of the main components of the meal. You’d think I would have learned. Time and time again it is proven that if I have an idea and don’t write it down, I’ll forget half of it. Even if it’s something really fundamental to what I’m doing, I’m reliably unreliable.

Luckily the chorizo-less salad was delicious.
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If you’ve never roasted radishes before – and I don’t blame you if you haven’t, the idea never occured to me until I read it in Jo Seagar’s The Cook School Recipes. Drizzle a little olive oil over the halved radishes, and bake at 220 C for 20-40 minutes till they are slightly darkened and caramelised in places. They retain that familiar peppery tang but softened somehow, which worked marvelously with the buttery, chewy halloumi draped over. Seriously, I love halloumi so much it’s a good thing it’s nosebleed-inducingly expensive or I’d be absentmindedly frying up entire blocks of it to eat while I think about what I’m going to make for dinner.
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The halloumi in question was Canaan, and marvelously wonderful stuff it is too. Tumbled over the salad were organic Wright sprouts, also bought at the Food Show. And as you now know, the bargain chorizo remained quietly in the fridge… I wish I hadn’t used it recklessly in some tossed together dinner this week though because upon reflection, Nigella has a LOT of recipes using chorizo and as we hardly ever have it in the house, well there goes a prime opportunity to try out more of her recipes.
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This following dish – Slow Cooked Lamb with Cumin, Cinnamon and Feijoas – was actually made before the food show but I have never got round to blogging about it, and while it’s very different to the above meal gosh darnit it’s my party and I’ll attempt to dovetail disparite culinary themes if I want to.


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First of all I softened one finely chopped onion and an intimidating amount of garlic in my lovely non-stick pan (not one of those pans that just masquerades as nonstick, this one really doesn’t require oil) then tipped in a hefty pinch of cumin seeds, stirring for a bit before adding cubed lamb shoulder that I’d tossed in a little flour. I stirred quickly to brown the meat on all sides then added two carrots, sliced into batons. In went a can of chopped tomatoes, which I then rinsed out with enough water to just cover the meat. After a sprinkling of ground cinnamon, the pan lid went on and the whole lot simmered away for a good long time on a low heat. After a while I took the lid off to try and allow the liquid to thicken somewhat, before stirring in a slice of finely chopped preserved lemon, and the thickly chopped flesh of about six ripe feijoas. Finally I stirred in some spinach, allowing it to wilt before serving over couscous.

It was a bit of a gamble – I made this up on the fly – and I wasn’t entirely sure if feijoas wouldn’t be a bit too freaky with lamb. But, it makes sense – other stews pair lamb with dates, or dried apricots, or figs, so why not feijoas? Their sweet, tangy, elusive flavour and grainy texture contrasted deliciously, with the preserved lemon’s pronounced salty sourness offsetting the warmth of the cumin and cinnamon. The sweet-and-salty element to the stew made it quite moreish, and it was a perfect lazy Sunday dinner. If you are unfortunate enough to live in a country where feijoas aren’t available, then by all means substitute dates, dried apricots…a diced pear might work deliciously as well. But if you’re in New Zealand, they’re surely not going to get any cheaper at the market: now’s the time, the time is now. I got mine for 99c a kilo which is pretty hard to beat.

Work is a bit on the exhausting side and Wellington remains resolutely arctic which is why this post may or may not be up to my usual luminous standards. Unless you’re stinking rich, New Zealand houses tend not to have airconditioning, but in Wellington flats (and I’m sure elsewhere) just some simple honest building insulation would be appreciated. I feel like I wear more clothes to bed than I do to leave the house. That said, this place is warmer than our old flat, where the ground in our room was – I kid you not – permanently damp (a good way to discourage leaving clothes on the floor), we had a hole in our window covered with newspaper, and on more than one occasion we’d rug up in layer upon layer of clothing only to discover it was warmer outside than in. Anyway, musn’t grumble as we are both very fortunate to (a) have a roof over our head, crumbly like a Weetbix or otherwise, and (b) relatively secure employment.

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On Shuffle while writing this:

Machismo, by Gomez, from the album Machismo

Frei und Schwerelos (Defying Gravity) by Willemijn Verkaik from the Wicked Original German Cast Recording

Basket Case, by Green Day from Bullet In A Bible: Live at the Milton Keynes Bowl

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Next time: I’m not sure, although I feel like I’m about due to revisit Nigella again – it’s one thing to be inspired to create my own recipes but I miss her…

start me up

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First post of the new year! Well, if I can’t be fashionable, I might as well aim for fashionably late. I’ve been largely away from technology while on holiday, and then coming back into full time work has, funnily enough, kept me ridiculously busy. To be honest it was a little liberating being apart from my blog but now I’m ready to spend some quality time with the kitchen and slide back into blogging like a pair of old socks. Hopefully the ‘good writing’ section of my brain gets swiftly awoken, but in the meantime, to make up for all the no-blogging I bring two recipes that are flipping delicious.

Looks like I’m as adept as ever in the kitchen.

I found this recipe for chocolate beetroot cake in a Jill Dupleix book that I got for Christmas from Nanna a couple of years ago. I’ve professed my love for all things roast beetroot in the past, but was completely intrigued, nay, consumed with the idea of using it in a cake. I have to admit I used a drained can of beetroot, which is perhaps not what Dupleix had in mind, but hey ho, the finished product was delicious, without betraying any of its vegetable-y origins. And call me a freak, but butter, sugar, and pureed beetroot mixed together is…bizarrely good.

Chocolate Beetroot Cake, adapted from New Food by Jill Dupleix

I made quite a few changes – canned instead of fresh pureed beetroot, I used a food processor to make it, and I used 250g melted butter instead of a cup of oil because that’s how I roll.

1 cup cooked beetroot, pureed
1 1/2 cups castor sugar
250g butter, melted
1/2 cup good cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3 eggs

If you’re using canned beetroot, drain it and then puree it in the food processor (which will take a couple of goes, whizzing and spatula-ing) then add all the rest of the ingredients, blitz to a pinkish-brownish batter (once again, scraping down the sides with a spatula occasionally) and pour into a 23cm paper-lined cake tin. Bake at 190 for roughly 45 minutes.

Above: Seriously, there is no hint of beetroot in the finished product, but you’re left with a moist, surprisingly light, unthreateningly plain chocolate cake. It’s delicious. Don’t be afraid…

While wandering aimlessly through the revamped Moore Wilson’s Fresh (off Tory Street in central Wellington) on Sunday, it struck me that I haven’t eaten roast lamb in forever, so I purchased a goodly slab of it and made off home to cook my spoils. I also purchased a bottle of Moore Wilson’s fresh-squeezed orange juice, they literally have a guy there squeezing it for you. Once you’ve tried it, it’s difficult to go back to any other bottled orange juice. It’s so fresh you can practically feel the vitamin C coursing through your veins with every sip.

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Using a suggestion of Nigella’s, I rubbed the lamb in olive oil and ras-el-hanout, that utterly, ridiculously deliciously fragrant spice mix. I roasted it for an hour and a half at 210 C, basting occasionally. To go with, I made a salad from a book I got for Christmas from my godfamily that I’m quite wild to cook my way through: Christelle Le Ru’s French Fare..

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Salade d’Aubergine (I don’t think I need to translate this?)
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1 aubergine
1 shallot
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1 red pepper
1/2 bunch parsely
55g feta cheese


Preheat oven to 210 C (375 F) Prick the aubergine with a fork and wrap it in foil. Bake for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, roll the pepper in foil and bake for about 10 or 15 minutes. Halve the aubergine, remove the flesh (it shouldn’t be too hard to peel at this stage) and press the flesh very firmly in a sieve to remove any juice. Remove seeds from the pepper, and chop both vegetables relatively small. Peel and finely chop the shallot. Mix all the vegetables together with the olive oil and chopped parsely. Finally, season with salt and pepper and crumble over the feta cheese.

This deliciously summery salad, which is quite versatile – I used mint instead of parsely and scattered some chopped walnuts through – went marvelously with the lamb, in a sort of pseudo-Meditterranean way. For tonight’s dinner I stirred the leftover, chopped lamb into the leftover salad, to which I added more feta and walnuts, plus the seeds of half a pomegranate, and served it with some grilled courgettes and wild rice. The lamb itself was tender and pink and pastorally delicious, and maybe even nicer second time round…

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It’s not a bad time to be me lately: tomorrow a whole bunch of us are going to see The Arctic Monkeys, then on Thursday Tim and I fly up to Auckland for the Big Day Out festival on Friday (ie, omgaaaaaah NEIL YOUNG) and then the following Tuesday I am – have mercy – going to see Leonard Cohen. I finally caved and spent a rather frightening amount bidding online for a ticket to his sold out gig; I figured it was only money and a once in a lifetime experience, but don’t even try to ask me how much I purchased it for because I’ll nay tell ye.

Well, that wasn’t so taxing, so hopefully I can keep up this food blogging lark with more regularity than I did over the last couple of weeks. I hope all your 2009s are getting off to a cracking start and I look forward to getting back into reading all the other fab blogs out there!
Edit: Actually, this is taxing. I’ve tried for the last fifteen minutes to split up the paragraphs in this last section but they persist in messily squishing themselves together! Aaargh! *shakes fist furiously at blogspot*

All You Create, And All You Destroy

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Yesterday was going really well. I was offered an opportunity to go on a business trip to the Juice music awards in Auckland at the end of September, I negotiated some work from home, I did a presentation on the song “London’s Burning” by the Clash which went well, I got an A on an essay about The Great Gatsby, Tim had a doctor’s appointment and was told that his blood sugar levels were better than ever, (I bet it’s all the lentils and oats) and we were going to have spare ribs for dinner.

And then I made a batch of terrible muffins. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been looking forward to making them for quite some time now…I’d bought one of those big bags of fancy salad leaves, which I think are worth the price – there’s no waste, and they’re good for perking up all manner of meals. There were some straggly, rapidly aging fronds at the bottom of the bag that I wanted to use up, which is how I came to the idea of slicing the remaining lettuce up and stirring it into a muffin mixture. I thought it would be a witty twist on the ubiquitous spinach and feta muffins of auld. I’m so glad I can’t afford feta right now or it would have been a cruel end for it.


“plans that either come to nought or half a page of scribbled lines”

They may look sorta pretty, but they tasted, to my utter dismay, monumentally feral. Tim diplomatically – and shrewdly – said “you’ve definitely made better,” rather than anything more confrontational. I suspect the lettuce was undisguiseably on the turn, which gave it an unusual, grassy, almost metallic flavour when baked. The spare ribs were fabulous, but I spent dinner clouded over by my failure. Insult to injury- I used up the rest of my 7-grain flour in them too. They were light, moist, soft…but tasted awful. I regret to say they are now “waiting for the worms” in the garden…I might have to bake an enormous cake to counteract the bad vibes the muffins left me with. Call me overdramatic, but anyone who loves to cook should know how it stings when something doesn’t work, not to mention the further, irritating reminder of the wasted ingredients.

Luckily the spare ribs were, as aforementioned, delicious, or I would have had a complete meltdown. I’d frozen them in their marinade a few weeks ago so I could have a quick dinner on hand, and for some reason I think the process of them solidifying and then defrosting in the marinade made them particularly flavoursome. If you’re wondering, the marinade was a not-too-revolutionary mix of soy sauce, sesame oil, a splash of dry sherry, a little dried ginger and cinnamon, several cloves of garlic and a dribble of golden syrup. And apart from that, it was a good day. It just got better and better with one of the most amazing episodes of Outrageous Fortune yet. Tension all over the place, tear-jerking performances from Cheryl, Loretta, Pascal, Munter and Kasey and as for Baby Jane, she’s cuter than a puppy and a duckling sitting in a roller skate.


“several species of small furry animals”
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Just to reassure you that I still can cook: I more or less invented this casserole on Monday, and was smugly pleased with the successful results. It uses lamb neck chops which, I know, sound a little frightening, (the sort of thing that makes one think instantly of Bambi…that deer has a lot to answer for) When you consider it rationally though they are no less a part of the lamb than the fancier cuts. Furthermore, the neck chops are very, very cheap – because no one wants to be eating them – and even though there’s not an awful lot of meat on them, there’s also not a lot of fat. If you had a lot going on, one chop per person would do, indeed I was pretty full after one, but two is probably a decent serving.
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So: I seared the chops and put them aside, before browning a chopped onion and a carrot chopped into batons, in a casserole dish. I used the sort of dish that can usefully go straight from the hob to the oven. I then put those to the side, fitted the meat in snugly, covered it with the vegetables, poured over 1 1/2 cups beef stock, and added a bayleaf, several garlic cloves, a handful of chopped dates and 2 teaspoons ras-el-hanout. I then baked it at 160 C for two hours. It just occured to me that it might make sense to brown the vegetables before the meat. I guess you could skip the browning stage altogether, and just bung everything into a casserole, particularly useful if you don’t have a metal one. Adding the extra step just helps me to feel that I’m really creating something.
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It smelled heavenly while it was slowly cooking and the meat came out meltingly tender. I served it over rice, and for crunch, a salad of shredded cabbage dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, and tumeric. The ras-el-hanout and the slow cooking entirely embiggened the dodgy cuts of meat. Of course, neck chops are probably never going to be your first choice…especially if you can afford a French rack or whatever it’s called – but now you know what to do with them.
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Over the weekend I had the good luck to be spontaneously whisked up home for my mum’s birthday. My dad organised it, (“I have a cunning plan…”) and mum didn’t know I was coming. Let me tell you, it is such an ego boost to be someone’s surprise present. It was amazing to be up home again to see the whanau, when I wasn’t expected to get there till Christmas, and we had a huge birthday brunch on Sunday morning. Mum, who is incapable of letting me go anywhere without food, sent me home with a slab of corned beef, some bacon, enough mince to keep us in meatballs for weeks, a pineapple, a block of butter, a bag of oats, some cheeses (brie and havarti) and some lemons. And she was lamenting that if she’d known I was coming up she’d have organised me a proper food parcel. Speaking of birthdays, a great big “cheers” for all the salutations for Tim’s birthday in my last post! One of the things I love about blogging.
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“I’ve got some bad news for you sunshine…” I found out this morning that Rick Wright, founding member of Pink Floyd, has died. I have long been a fan of Pink Floyd, and was fortunate enough to see the erstwhile Floydian Roger Waters in cracking form at a concert last February. I know from various books that Wright went through some troubled, druggy times…although not as well known as that crazy diamond Syd Barrett…during “The Wall” period Wright was actually fired from the band, although it was clearly a highly tense stage for all involved. A bit like George Harrison of the Beatles, Wright was often overshadowed by the two enigmatic main songwriters, but in fact wrote one of their very best tunes. Great Gig In The Sky is a track that can only be described as ASTONISHING. (Listen to it on youtube by clicking here.) Even if you’re not into what I (probably inaccurately) term dad-rock…and Pink Floyd can dip into pompousness…the sheer spine-chilling effect that this song has can be appreciated in its own right.
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“and if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes…I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon” I love this photo, one of the earlier ones of the band in the sixties. I think it’s the artfully draped neckerchiefs that make it. Rick Wright is on the far left, then Roger Waters, the late Syd Barrett, and Nick Mason. Syd Barrett was replaced by David Gilmour. Gilmour was better looking than Waters and a superior guitar player…but Waters was the better lyricist and has aged much more gracefully. (Silver fox!)

By the way, I refuse to use “great gig in the sky” as some kind of pun/metaphor for wherever Wright may be now because I know that every journalist and would-be journalist will be doing so. I thumb my nose at such laziness and instead my title and captions have all been taken from Pink Floyd lyrics. In case you were wondering what on earth was going on.

“The time is gone, the song is over, Thought I’d something more to say…”

No Presents For Old Men

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Overheard in our kitchen:

Me: I can make you a birthday cake! Anything you want!
Tim: Oka-
Me: I’ll get you all my Nigella books! She has a whole chocolate cake chapter in Feast! I can make anything! Or if you just want to describe an idea and I can make it up! Choose one! CAKE!

Above: Oscar “helping” by promptly falling asleep on my cookbook. I guess if he can doze quite comfortably with his face buried in a duvet, what’s a few papercuts?

Yesterday, being Tim’s 22nd birthday, I was presented with a prime opportunity for a little altruistic cake-bakery. Although technically I kind of forced the whole cake idea upon him…I’ll be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to the birthday itself, partly because I was working all day and I flatter myself that my very presence improves Tim’s life somewhat, but also because I was having massive issues finding him a present. In spite of his sincere protestations that he didn’t want anything, well of course I had to get something. And he’d had the temerity to buy me a thoughtful, not-too-extravagant-but-really-nice birthday present back in April, which set way too high a precedent. Everything that I looked at was either too boring, too impersonal or too expensive. And we have so much stuff already! What was I going to get him? An elephant? A fully-functioning roller coaster? His body weight in ham? On Wednesday night I rather desperately purchased a box of 20 Double Brown and a DVD of Beowulf, which luckily Tim was over the moon about. Funnily enough though, I had a look for the No Country For Old Men DVD, after it has haunted my mind for so long, and it is nigh-on impossible to find in non-Blu Ray format. Go figure.
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Mercifully, after all that disintegration of my sanity, dinner was pretty fabulous and Tim loved it. Inspired by Nigella’s intensely delicious Cambodian Steak Salad from How To Eat, I fashioned a kind of Italian cousin to it, with a dressing made from extra virgin olive oil, excellent balsamic vinegar, (that Tim had got me for my 21st…sigh) roasted garlic, the pan juices from the steak which I’d deglazed with dry sherry…Nigella forgive me for buying a wan, anemic tomato out of season but it’s the one and only time I’ve bought a one that’s not in a can since summer. I padded the sliced steak out with fluffy, voluminous fancy salad leaves, tossed it all together and served it with potato wedges that I’d dusted with lemony, red sumac. Hot damn, it was a good meal. Elegant, flavoursome, meaty, more or less healthy…It had been forever since I’d eaten steak and I had forgotten just how ridiculously, beefily juicily delicious it is.

But the cake was undeniably the real star.

Tim initially, without hesitation, chose the Chocolate Guinness Cake, but after I hinted subtly that I’d like to try something new, he opted for the Butterscotch Cream Sponge from Nigella’s delicious baking book How To Be A Domestic Goddess. It’s a variation on her basic Victoria Sponge, with significant proportions of caramel sauce. For added birthday-ness, I sprinkled the edge of the cake with chopped up crunchie bar (and fear ye not, Tim was armed with extra insulin.) It was incredibly delicious, and despite looking intimidatingly rich, was beyond easy on the palate.

Butterscotch Cream Sponge

Adapted from How To Be A Domestic Goddess

For the caramel, dissolve 250g caster sugar in 125mls water over a low heat. Never stir, if you must do something then pick up the pot and give it a swirl. Once it has dissolved, turn up the heat for about ten minutes till it turns a deep golden. I think I may have sliiightly over-heated mine but it gave the caramel a pleasing complexity of flavour. (Not a burnt taste). Pour in 250mls cream, slowly, whisking all the while. Don’t freak out if it whooshes up and siezes, because you are going to put it back on the low heat and stir till it’s smooth. Leave to cool.

Sponge:

250g very soft butter
100g brown sugar
150g caster sugar
250g flour
4 eggs
2 T cream
2 t baking powder

Whizz the whole lot to a creamy pulp in the food processor (or make by hand, which is what I did, armed with my trusty wooden spoon). Bake in two 20cm, lined springform tins for 25mins at 180 C. Cool.

Finally, beat 400g cream cheese till soft, fold in 250 mls of the caramel, and use this to sandwich and ice the two cakes. Drizzle the rest of the caramel over liberally.

Et voila! Dentists across the nation weep with joy.

Above: Make a wish! (it better have been a good one)

A whole gang of us are going to Genghis Khan tonight to further celebrate Tim’s day o’ birth, it’s an all you can eat place where you can consume all the stir-fry noodles your arteries can handle. Like Homer Simpson, I do appreciate a decent AYCE joint. I shall spend this weekend researching The Clash for a presentation for Media, and perhaps waiting for Tim to finish watching Beowulf so I can catch Idina Menzel’s song in the credits…and no, that’s not the reason I bought the DVD…it’s one of Tim’s favourite movies. Far too violent for mine eyes!

And finally, a very sincere-to-the-point-of-earnest thank you to those who took the time to read my post on RENT and comment. I know musical theatre isn’t everyone’s thing, (don’t even get me started on ballet) and that this is supposed to be a food blog, so your generosity of spirit was most appreciated! But really, the day I start only talking about food, plain and straightforwardly – because it’s not just the end result that matters, it’s the getting there too – is the day that I have ceased to have interest in this blog. As you can see by all the self-indulgent chatter today, that isn’t going to happen any time soon…

Pink Goes Good With Grain

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If anyone can tell me what is behind the (admittedly forced) pun in my title you win a million dollars.

Not. But, I would be kinda tickled if anyone can work it out.

Mum got me a bag of quinoa – something which I have, nerdily, been quite wild to try for some time now. I never thought I’d come across something more virtuous than lentils, but here I am. Life sure can take you on some interesting journeys. The Incans called quinoa the “mother of all grains” and are you going to argue with that recommendation? It contains forty squillion different vitamins and minerals and has more protein than any other non-meat product, and with all this you’d expect it to be kind of high maintenance, right? But no, a two year old could cook it. All you have to do is let it simmer for ten minutes, no pre-soaking or anything. As if all that weren’t thrilling enough, it actually tastes really good. Closest in texture to couscous, but much lighter, it has a somewhat nutty flavour which lends itself nicely to having chunks of roasted vegetables folded through…


Of course, adding roasted beetroot instantly turned the entire bowl of quinoa bright pink. Also in the mix was roasted carrot, walnuts, chopped spinach, and a perhaps-slightly-toooo-generous spoonful of ras-el-hanout. I thought about drizzling in some olive oil but the quinoa is so light and fluffy that I didn’t want it to be bogged down with gluggy oil.


Above: I did something very similar with some wholewheat pasta – more roasted beetroot, spinach, etc, but this time I included some mashed cloves of roasted garlic. The sweet nuttiness of the beetroot complemented the nuttiness of the pasta (I really need a new synonym to describe nuttiness huh?) and the garlic was a perfect addition. Again, as soon as I gave it a stir, the whole lot turned irrevocably, gaudily…pink.

Above: Once more – with organic burghal wheat. You probably don’t need me to point it out, but this inexplicably became tinted the pinkest of them all, which contrasted pleasingly with the snowy feta (added at the VERY last minute here for photographic purposes.) After that I kind of cooled it on the beetroot front but look, they’re really cheap and good for you, okay? And sometimes you have to take what you can get.

So it has been a bit of a wholegrain orgy in my kitchen lately. I know I’m smitten with them, but trust me, they’re more alluring than their earnest, hessian-weave image would suggest. And it’s not all roasted beetroot, for example, witness rolled oats cleverly disguised as pancakes…

I made these following an old recipe of Alison Holsts’s. It doesn’t make a lot, so is suited nicely to a cosy, lazy Sunday breakfast for two. They are surprisingly filling, but aren’t stodgy or lumpen at all.

Oaty Pancakes

3/4 cup rolled oats

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup flour

1 t baking powder

1 egg

2 T sugar

2 T butter, melted

Pour the milk over the rolled oats in a good sized bowl, and leave to sit for 5-10 minutes, perhaps while you potter round getting the rest of the ingredients. Stir in the rest of the ingredients without overmixing, and add a little more milk to slacken if the batter looks too stiff. I did. I also melted the butter in the pan I planned on cooking the pancakes in, before tipping it into the batter (thus saving on dishes! Like a true student.) These work best as smallish cakes, about the size of one of Jennifer Lopez’ hoop earrings circa 2002 (meow!) and need flipping once bubbles appear. Don’t leave them for too long though as the bubbles aren’t as obvious with all those oats in the way. Eat however you want, with butter, with golden syrup, whatever.

All these various foods – oats, quinoa, burghal wheat, wholewheat pasta – are not only delicious they are also incredibly good for you. They are filling – when I used to have toast for breakfast I would not only be intensely hungry at lunch, I would also have that horrible empty-head-empty-stomach feeling. This is why I eat so much of them: So that I don’t end up buying chocolate bars at 10.00am, and so that I don’t feel bad about the big ol’ chocolate cake that I made this afternoon (and will blog about soon…)

In other news, I’m really enjoying all my papers so far this term. I may not feel that way when I’m wading neck-deep through assignments but so far, so enjoyable…however I am being positively haunted by advertising for Wicked in Melbourne, even long-suffering Tim pointed out a poster in excitement to me before – “oh” – realising it’s an Australian performance. Nevermind, these things all happen when they’re supposed to and it wouldn’t be so bad to see it in the West End even if I have to wait a while…Speaking of Broadway I am currently in love with the Spring Awakening soundtrack, if you don’t mind a little salty language and teenage angst the songs are utterly gorgeous.

I Fought The Raw And The Raw Won

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So. Raw, Vegan Food. Doesn’t exactly inspire lusty salivation. Especially not in the middle of a cold, sharp winter. I have nothing against shunning meat – why, some of my best friends are vegetarian! But I feel it’s a bit like deep-frying and haircuts and hiking: better done by other people. And I suppose I can see the thought process behind veganism, you know, don’t harm animals, sustainability, etc. But two crucial words: no butter. It just seems so strident, so militant, so charmless. And is there anything more unloveable than forced-smile cupcakes made with a cup of mollasses and powdered egg replacement?

I’m hoping here that the vegan community doesn’t rise up with fists and come to bludgeon me with a sustainably produced baseball bat. What I’m trying to say is, while I don’t think a life without butter (don’t get me started on cheese) is really a life lived, I do, despite appearances, love diversity and finding new recipes and being healthy. Some of the best places to look for these are vegetarian and vegan cookbooks, because of what they lack a certain fresh inventiveness is inherantly required. And this is where my raw, vegan stint came in.

It’s not difficult to imagine the benefits of a raw vegan diet. No nutrients lost, no consumption of anything even vaguely guilt-inducing, no animal fats. I also absolutely could not live off it. For one thing, how would Tim get his carbohydrates? Raw potato, methinks, is not that appetising. And I have no desire to create “cakes” using a dehydrator. But there is a wealth of interesting stuff out there, a particular favourite of mine being the above salad. It was ambitiously labelled a “tagine” on the original site I found it on but…it’s a salad. It’s filling and delicious though, and almost indecently healthy, which is something I always appreciate. I give you my adapted recipe.

Raw Cauliflower Salad

1/2 a good sized head of cauli
1 beetroot
2 carrots
a small handful each of dried apricots and dates
1/4 cup nuts – pistachios are good, as are brazils
Poppy seeds

Basically, you need to chop everything Very Small. That’s all. It’s a bit of a pain, but try to enjoy it as part of the cooking process. Mix everything along with the poppy seeds in a large bowl and pour over the dressing. This is better the next day and makes quite a lot.

Dressing:

1 T tamarind paste, soaked in 1/2 cup water for 30 mins
1 T olive oil
1 T ground tumeric
2 t cumin seeds
1 t coriander seeds


Using a pestle and mortar, bash up the seeds with the olive oil. You could of course, use ground spices and a fork. Add the tamarind water and tumeric, and carefully pour over the salad, mixing it thoroughly (I find a spatula useful here, for scraping out the dressing from the pestle and mortar and mixing the salad without flinging.) Add salt, you’ll probably want a good amount, plus lashings of coriander and mint, which really make this work.
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Seriously, this is very good stuff. I happily ate it as dinner in its entirety (along with some rice for Tim) and…it also goes surprisingly well with proper pork sausages. Another recipe I tried but photographed badly was merely a large beetroot, topped, chopped, and blitzed in the food processor. I stirred in lots of sea salt and coriander and served it as is – we both loved it. Beetroot is so good for you and so cheap this time of year.


Above: This is, of course, Nigella’s classically brilliant Thai Cole Slaw, which I’ve made about a squillion times. You can find a rough guide to the recipe here in one of my much-older posts. And, also composed entirely of raw vegetables and various flavourings.

This is not something I could stick to – as you can tell by my posts about ice cream – but I’ve had fun finding recipes and there’s nothing wrong with eating things as fresh and untampered with as possible. I imagine that the cauliflower salad would be fabulous at a buffet dinner, or as an unorthodox inclusion on the Christmas table (perhaps more applicable to a sunny New Zealand Yuletide though) or just in the fridge for picking at when peckish as one inevitably is 24/7.

I gotta say though, there are some…interesting raw folk out there on the internet. Reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons, where Lisa has the crush on the hardcore vegetarian, who doesn’t eat “anything that casts a shadow.” Hee!

Back to the real world. These are of course, cooked, but quite healthy…I like to keep a stash of muffins in the freezer for if Tim gets low blood sugar or needs a boost. Freezing them is a good way of making sure they don’t get absent-mindedly inhaled (you know how that happens) and it is a good excuse for me to happily potter round the kitchen with butter and sugar without feeling as though I’m contributing to Tim going blind or gangrenous one day (diabetes is a slow but harsh mistress.)

I somehow over the years acquired a few copies of the New World Essentially Food magazine, which, I have to say, can be a little hit and miss with its recipes. Some of them read like packet instructions, and some are just plain undelicious sounding, but it would be hugely uncharitable to say that I don’t enjoy this magazine and haven’t used it. Anyway, within its pages I found this Pumpkin Muffin recipe and loved the sound of it – not least because pumpkins are one of the few very cheap vegetables these days. I added some also-cheap carrot to the mix too. I’d give you the recipe, but Tim and I tidied our bedroom and as is so often the case, I am beggared if I can locate anything, including that particular magazine. If anyone’s really champing at the bit for these though, email me and I’ll see if I can hunt it down and reply. The muffins were so good (sorry!) – hearty and moist and cinnamony.

Above: So good. So good they get the Italicisation of Approval. And yes, I really did look for that rogue magazine.
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Well, I’m now off to watch Outrageous Fortune. Thrilling! The only thing on telly really worth watching (apart from Nigella of course) and the best thing New Zealand has done in my 22 years at least.
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Next time on Hungry and Frozen: I have no clue at this stage. But at least you won’t have your expectations dashed!

“Sell Out, With Me Oh Yeah!”

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I never thought I’d have reason to quote the one-hit ska-punk band Reel Big Fish on my blog but life takes you to some funny places. You may have noticed a new feature of my sidebar, if not, may I subtly direct your attention to it? I’ve been aware for a long time that it’s possible to advertise stuff on one’s blog, but I resisted, because of some would-be righteous “it ain’t me” attitude I suppose, (although the idea of being submerged Daltrey-style in a bathtub of baked beans is engaging)…however I figured if I can gain some revenue off this site then I have no reason not to try at least.

I admit, Fishpond is a little expensive but let me state my case; for kiwis, most things are cheaper on Trademe, but this site has access to all sorts of difficult-to-find texts (including Idina Menzel’s gorgeous but not-released-here album I Stand – if you like slightly overproduced MOR, buy it and she might finally come tour New Zealand!*) which you could never find in Whitcoulls let alone on Trademe, and if you are from America or Britain or elsewhere, as I know several of my readers are, why not give Amazon a miss for once and play the Fun Exchange Rate Game? Buy a book for NZ$50 and it will only cost you about three pounds or ten US dollars! Minutes of pleasure to be gained, I tells ye. And to cap it off any moolah I gain is going towards Tim’s and my savings fund. Like I said, there’s no harm in trying…and watch out for subliminal messages throughout the post…

BUY STUFF OFF FISHPOND BY CLICKING THE ICON ON THE RIGHT

Okay, that was veering on the side of super-liminal. I don’t want to coerce people in any way, this is a place of food, and Nigella-worship, and self-indulgent pop culture references, not some kind of mercenary avaricious…um, I’m losing steam here. What I’m saying is, no pressure, nothing ventured nothing gained, and time for ham.


Above: So I made Nigella’s Ham in Coca Cola the other night, and it was behaving worse than the most petulant hamster on ANTM, that is, it was very difficult to get a decent shot. I had to resort to using the flash button to get any kind of photo at all. Much to Tim’s horror, I professed my love of the the cola/pork simmering liquid, and only dug myself further into a hole of shame when I tried to explain how I wasn’t eating the pork fat, just the pork attached to the fat…Oh dear. Before I put you off forever, this is a truly delicious recipe, the Coca Cola imbuing the ham with a beguiling, addictive spicy sweetness. In England, you would buy gammon, in New Zealand, pickled pork, and it is merely simmered in a potful of sinisterly bubbling fizz (with a bobbing onion for added flavour) before being briefly flashed in the oven with a treacly, mustardy glaze. Trashy as it sounds, this is one of the very nicest things you could possibly have the good fortune to eat…


Above: A slightly more sedate, less carnal-tastic photo. We managed to make this last THREE meals, even though we could have happily snarfed the entire 1.5kilos by the fistful on day one. I made a surprisingly lovely parsnip orzotto the next day, into which I stirred some diced leftover ham, and then we finished the ham, sliced as above, with a salad the day after that.


Above: This is one of those meals that comes about after scanning your cupboards and fridge and trying to make things fit together coherently…I roasted diced pumpkin, a whole red chilli, a bulb (yes, a whole bulb, what can I say, I like it) of garlic and once everything was done I left the pumpkin to cool a little while I vented any frustrations I might have had on the garlic and chilli in my pestle and mortar, adding cinnamon, sea salt, and olive oil. I don’t know what made me go for cinnamon, I was thinking nutmegnutmegnutmeg as you often do when dealing with pumpkin but made the last minute switch and it was really good – the warmth of the cinnamon reflected the muted heat of the roasted chilli rather pleasingly. So, where was I…I poured the dressing over the pumpkin and added a drained can of borlotti beans, mixing it gently, and finally sprinkled over gorgeously nutty poppy seeds. The only real bad thing about this was…I got the wrong beans. Cannelini beans are great for diabetics, lots of slow-release carbs and little sugar. Borlotti beans have about as much carbs as a steak. So Tim had to have some toast after this. This salad could, if you ate enough of it, make a decent lunch in its entirety as well as being an out-of-the-ordinary side dish which is how we had it. And as you can imagine, it’s even better the next day when the dressing has really steeped into everything.


Above: And of course, there have been noodles. I have eaten so much noodle-based stuff lately, mostly soba or udon floating snakily in broth, but there was also this marvelous stirfry, inspired by a post on the stunning stunning stunning Use Real Butter blog. Sometimes I don’t even photograph the noodle-food (foodle?) we eat in case you become weary of overexposure towards it…actually, and I digress violently and suddenly, I have noticed on my travels that I am one of the only bloggers who talks about more than one meal per post. I don’t see many other bloggers attempting to fashion their titles out of song lyrics or obscure puns either. I don’t know how you do it, to be honest. I salute you for your ability to be concise, regular with your posting, and lucid with your titles. Hopefully my method isn’t too confusing.


Above: Back to the noodles. For all that the stir fry conjures up images of a swift, healthy, crisp dinner, I find that it’s very easy to get wrong, greasy, over and undercooked at the same time, and boring. Somehow though, in my hamfisted way, I cobbled together a really nearly perfect one and true to form, didn’t write down what I did. There were lots of capsicums, and I simmered the carrots and parsnips in with the noodles. The oyster sauce that I added was the thing that made it special I think, along with the miso in the ginger-carrot emulsion (adapted from the recipe on Use Real Butter) that I stirred through. Not just plain salty, but complex and savoury and richly flavoursome. The ginger-carrot thing was supposed to be a salad dressing but something about the combination of ingredients made me think they’d work in a stir fry, and oh, how they did.

It just occured to me recently that I should give credit to Marc, he of the elegant No Recipes blog, for the idea of using green tea as a broth for noodles, he mentioned it on his blog and I tried (and loved) it and wrote about it a post or two ago, and should have known I couldn’t have come up with something as nifty as that on my own…Perfect for after sweating it out after a Bikram Yoga class (and inevitably one gets stuck next to the hairy, flatulent guy who wants to get in touch with more than just his chakras) or indeed any time you want your comfort food to be light but nourishing. I have this quite often, but as I mentioned just before, have spared you many bog-standard shots of it in my white soup bowls…




New Zealand is such a funny little country. I had been working at my current job for about a year when I found out that the receptionist, Kerry, is related to me. In hindsight it makes so much sense, despite our differences there is a kinship between us – fostered, I believe, by a love of the ridiculous and the beautiful – that makes me think “well how could I not have known that he and I were family.” Ah, New Zealand. Probably the only place where your mother taught the guy you just met at the bar, or your gyneacologist lived down the road from you and paid you to mow their lawns as a child, or your dentist is Peter Jackson’s aunty. Possibly even the Garden of Eden had more degrees of separation.

Where am I going with this? Nowhere, to be honest. But anyway, across the road from where we work is a small, but perfectly formed, Belgian chocolate shop. I had resisted it for some time, for the obvious reasons – money – but Kerry one day surprised me with THREE chocolates from this shop – Melting Perfection – and I was utterly smitten with them. In the picture above is the White Chocolate Champagne Truffle, the Maple Cream, and the Poire William, which I bought on a whim today after nearly going insane – you think I’m exaggerating – from hours of dealing with invoices. These chocolates are some of the very, very best I’ve ever tasted. The Champagne Truffle was just ridiculous – the touch of alcohol providing that elusive note of flavour that somehow made the white chocolate taste butterier, creamier, but also lighter and not in any way cloying or over-sweet. The chocolates are beautiful, handmade, and taste like they were made by someone who knows what they were doing. If you are ever in Wellington you should absolutely go to their Featherston Street shop (#109, on the way to the railway station) and if you are not in Wellington, then friend, it’s worth the pilgrimage. For loving photography and a list of the imaginative chocolates they sell (and yes, there’s even something there for the sea-salt and caramel kids out there) visit their website: Melting Perfection. Mention my name when you visit their store and recieve a bewildered look!

 

*To clarify – from what I’ve managed to hear online I actually really like Idina Menzel’s new album (of course I do!) but it definitely falls into the realms of that category I dread – Adult Contemporary. It is a lot more polished and less kooky than her earlier pop efforts, probably because she wants to you know, shift some actual units, but is also a heck of a lot better and more real than any other misery-inducing music being put out these days in that bracket. Obviously her personality helps, as well as her unmistakeable voice, but the songs absolutely grew on me, and truly, I don’t listen to any music that I don’t genuinely love (life’s far too short.) I hope she collaborates with Jamie Cullum for the next one, they both have that confessional style of writing, and he knows his way round a likeable tune. Anyway, this album isn’t released for sale in New Zealand, (I’ve recieved many a funny look by asking for it at the counter at CD shops) and so if enough people buy it off a New Zealand site mayhaps her record company will want to send her out here for some kind of promotional tour (probably after I’ve scraped together just enough money from shilling her album to head overseas…)

Block Rockin’ Beets

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It is a fine time to be a Renthead (insofar as I am able to consider myself one) in the greater lower North Island region as of late. I don’t have time to give a full blow-by-blow review of the production of Rent that I saw in Palmerston North on Friday (“oh no! whatever shall we do!” I hear you cry), well, not yet. Briefly though, it was very good, really quite slickly done with nice attention to detail (I’m 99% sure that the girl who played Mimi had been listening carefully to Daphne Rubin Vega in “Goodbye Love,” it matched note for note.) Also I’m happy to report that the photo of the cast that I saw really must have been a bad one – the guy who played Collins was much nicer looking, and Collins-ier in person. The only thing that really annoyed me was that Mark was far too camp and the waiter at the Life Cafe wasn’t nearly camp enough. Mark is awkward, not camp, and that’s that. All told though, an excellent performance.

Frankly, it’s not a bad time to have me cook dinner for you either. I was at the Design campus from 10.30am till 6.15pm yesterday hunched feverishly behind a computer, moving things slowly from left to right on Photoshop. And I’ll be back there before and after class today. I was somewhat tempted just to have the chippie cook dinner for me last night after all that but Tim, bless him, had endured the rain to get me free range eggs, spinach, and beetroot from the vege market, plus I thought a proper dinner might be good for the brain (not to mention the thighs). Unfortunately it just won’t stop raining which means that it’s impossible for me to get my final shots for the assignment due…tomorrow after work. It’s raining right now in fact. If you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s probably because I’ve hightailed it to Tijuana.

I am such a fan of roasting beetroot, and they’re very cheap at the moment. Paired with soft, crumbling, blindingly white feta cheese it enters the realms of “ridiculously delicious.” Seriously, you know how a while ago (perhaps coinciding with the lamentable “cranberry and camembert” trend) it was wildly fashionable to pair spinach and feta together? Well beetroot is feta’s newer, better accessory, as though it had discarded its floor length boho skirt (NB – I loved boho skirts) and picked up…you know I don’t have any clue what is even fashionable these days. A shemagh? Passe already? My point being, beetroot and feta are meant to be together, and you’ll see it everywhere soon, trust me. I’m not even sure if I invented this salad that I made for dinner last night- I mean, I didn’t have a recipe for it but I’m sure I’m not the first to eat it- but here’s what I did, if you’re interested. Shrewdly, Tim bought a LOT of beetroot, so I’m sure they will appear regularly over the next couple of posts (as will carmine splotches over anything I’m wearing while making dinner…)

 

Hey, why not look at it again. I’m tired, and it’s not a great photo, (though I like how you can see the slice mark in the pistachio) so I guess you could consider this filler material.
Roasted Beetroot, Feta and Pistachio Salad with Sumac and Roasted Red Chilli Dressing.
(How cafe does that sound?!)
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2 good-sized beetroot
1 large red chilli, halved and seeded (I used my lovely Orcona chillis)
Feta Cheese (only you know how much you want)
2 or so tablespoons pistachios (I used some from my precious stash that Mum sent me)
Heat oven to 200 C. I never bother to peel or wrap the beetroot, but if this is how you like it then be my guest. I just chop them into chunks, tip them into a roasting dish, (add the chilli here) and leave them in the oven for about 3/4 of an hour. Heating the chilli, funnily enough, seems to take out all the fire but leave behind that magical, smoky flavour. Since I can’t handle much in the way of actual chilli, this suits me perfectly. Once the beetroot is tender, mix together 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon ground sumac, 2 tablespoons of water, and the red chilli, finely chopped. Tip the beetroot into a bowl and pour over the dressing, leave to cool. Finally, tumble over your chopped feta and pistachio nuts. I also biffed in the last of the organic sprouts from the Wellington Food Show. This serves two, although I could, without a doubt, eat the whole thing alone. It is a good recipe if you have bought some Sumac and are thinking “now what?!” There’s also something about the red, green and white of the salad that makes me think it would be nice at Christmas…perhaps with some chopped mint sprinkled over.
Because doing uni work all day makes me feel listless and needy, I decided to indulge in some form of pudding – Jill Dupleix’ Banana Berry Ice Cream with brown-sugared yoghurt and Vanilla Apples with Sweetheart Croutes from Nigella Express.

Above: The flavours actually went marvelously well together. The cold zing of the icecream lifted the buttery apples (literally – you chop them then stew them in butter) and the sweetheart croutes were, if kitchly named, a pleasantly crunchy contrast to everything else. But if you are going to make the ice cream – and I highly recommend you do – you should know it sets rock hard. I guess this is because there’s no fat and barely any sugar to keep things mellow. So, take it out of the freezer a good 25 minutes before you want to serve it or you’ll just have a bright pink slab that you can pick up with your hands and take a bite out of (how do I know this…?)

Above: I don’t tend to go in for that whole “million photos of the same dish from different angles” approach on this blog but I couldn’t help myself with this. It really is quite pretty.
My brain is so tired from all this uni stuff, and I really don’t want to go back to the design campus (located handily in the throbbing heart of Wellington’s red light district!) but I’m going to have to. It has been cold, windy and rainy here and I just want to lie in bed all day, watch DVDs, and bake (simultaneously, natch.) Soon, soon though. At any rate I’m sure I’ve learned some kind of important life lesson from this photog paper. More than I learned from that compulsory school trip in sixth form to the Outdoor Pursuits Centre, which I still bear the mental scars from. Why does everyone insist you have to go abseiling or climb an insurmountable hill in order to grow emotionally as a person?
One thing that has shaken me awake though was the discovery of some more videos of The Wild Party on Youtube, including – oh frabjous day – a clip of Idina Menzel singing The Life Of The Party. Seriously, I nearly fainted when I watched the video. She is incredible! For those of you who can’t be bothered looking on Wikipedia, The Wild Party is – was – an off-Broadway show from 2000 based on the Joseph Moncure March poem, and is set in the 1920s. It bears the dubious distinction of being what got me into Rent (Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs originated roles in both musicals.) And for those of you who like it old-school, I also found an amazing clip of her singing Cornet Man from Funny Girl. Go on, indulge me. I’m feeling fragile. And it was my birthday recently…ish…or something.

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.)