Category: Side Dishes and Snacks

reminds us of our birthdays which we always forget

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As I was eating my dinner and watching Game of Thrones this evening, I thought: I really shouldn’t be doing this. Either eat, or watch Game of Thrones, but don’t do them simultaneously because the onslaught of viscera is decidedly not food-friendly. This has nothing to do with anything, I just wanted to make the point.

Anyway, it’s my birthday tomorrow! But you get the presents! In the form of a recipe for braised lentils. Birthday Eve, I call it, and as such, one’s thoughts turn to reflection. Ha. I live every day like it’s the contemplative lead-up to further aging, and reflect upon everything I’ve ever done so much that, like a long-running TV show, the whole process should be able to go into syndication so I don’t have to come up with new stuff any more. Instead, just looping around without any effort from me, while I take time out to snooze. I got to have a late, long lunch with the fantastically high-achieving and welcoming Marianne Elliot from La Boca Loca on Saturday, and we talked about everything – the names people will call women but not men to bring them down; standing by things you’ve said; tacos; and this sense of constantly running towards the next thing having barely achieved the last thing. The latter was oddly heartening, in that basic way that recognition of something can be. I have recently been getting back into that troubled but utterly addictive musical Chess, and there’s this line that I never even noticed before that Josh Groban doesn’t so much sing as massage into the air with his throat: “Now I’m where I want to be and who I want to be and doing what I always said I would and yet I feel I haven’t won at all – running for my life and never looking back in case there’s someone right behind to shoot me down and say you always knew I’d fall“. Heavy! And yet I was like whoa, Josh Groban, way to pluck words from my brain with your rich vanilla scented-candle of a voice and articulate them perfectly via a convoluted musical that can’t even commit to its own plot.

And yet, and yet. I received some final pdfs for my cookbook that I’m driving you all away from with my angst and lentils; and oh wow. As you know a lot of time has been put into proofing the proofs (if you didn’t know, the proofs are like, here’s what your book will look like but on hundreds of pieces of paper which you will immediately drop, and as they hit the floor they will both papercut the tender vamp of your bare foot and shuffle themselves out of order with the impeccable swiftness of a Vegas croupier.)

The proofs were really beautiful, and I felt every late night and early morning and email back and forth between the publishers and the whipsmart feedback of my friends and team, photographers Kim and Jason and stylist Kate, and every thought Tim had pretty much ever had since he’s good with wisdom-requiring stuff like this…was not only worth it, but completely evident in the soon-to-be real pages of this book. Which is out in September so sure, put a circle round that month on your calendar but also don’t go rushing into bookshops just yet – she says optimistically – because September is still some significant distance away. As I was reading through it I thought to myself: this book is amazing and you’re such a good writer and you deserve this. A surprisingly nice thing to think about one’s self. And also…a nice thing to think about a consumer item that you have to eventually put your name to in the public arena and sell copies of.

The word braised: I first heard it when I spent a couple of years at boarding school. It essentially means roasted but in significant liquid, but when the kitchen said “braised steak” was for dinner, they essentially meant wet beef, boiled cheerlessly in a weakly tomato-based sauce. And so…it’s not a cooking method I go out of my way to use. I’m not sure what I’m even thinking, trying to braise lentils, second only to tofu as far as maligned leguminous foodstuffs go. But word associations can change, and plus, something about the wilful ugliness of it all makes it almost head back round again to appealing? Well, whatever it sounds like to you – and I mean, it does help if you don’t entirely hate lentils in the first place – this is really very delicious. Simple and easy and surprisingly full of rich, bold flavour from the lemon, mustard and herbs, as well as a lot of oil and salt.

A lot of this can be changed for what you have to hand, although while I want to offer options it would be unhelpful not to have some kind of base recipe that I stand by. If you don’t have hazelnuts, almonds would be perfect, something like carrots would be fine instead of parsnips, use more rosemary instead of thyme, and so on and so on. But hazelnuts and thyme – my favourite herb – are rich and resinous, parsnips have a natural caramelised sweetness, and in a dish like this, cardamom is one of those stealth spices that lets you know flavour is present without revealing how or from where. But you could just leave it out.

Braised Lentils and Vegetables with Hazelnuts, Lemon and Thyme

Serves two, with some leftovers. A recipe by myself.

1/2 cup dried brown lentils
2 parsnips
2 courgettes
1 capsicum
1/3 cup olive oil
Juice of one large lemon, or two of those stupid tiny near-juiceless ones that tend to dominate the supermarket
1 tablespoon dijon mustard (or wholegrain. I could eat either with a spoon.)
Pinch of ground cardamom, or seeds from two cardamom pods
1 teaspoon dried rosemary (or “rubbed rosemary” as my packet calls it. Which made me laugh. That said, if you don’t have it, dried oregano, sage or marjoram is also fine.)
Good pinch salt
1/3 cup whole hazelnuts
A couple of stems of fresh thyme, or a couple of teaspoons of dried thyme leaves

Place the lentils in a bowl and cover with freshly boiled water. Leave to sit for an hour – although the longer the better, really. An hour is fine though, and certainly makes the whole thing more feasible straight after work or at the end of a long day.

Drain the lentils, and tip them into the base of a medium sized oven dish. Trim anything inedible from the vegetables and slice them into fairly uniform strips/sticks, then lay them on top of the lentils in the oven dish. Set your oven to 180 C/350 F.

Mix together the olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, cardamom, rosemary, and a generous pinch of salt. Pour this over the vegetables and lentils, then pour over a cup (250ml) of hot water. Place in the oven and cook for an hour. At this stage, taste the lentils – they should be firm, but cooked through. If not, return to the oven for a little longer. Then, turn the oven up to 200 C, scatter the hazelnuts and thyme leaves over the top, and return to the oven for a further ten minutes. Serve, turn the oven off and leave the door open to try and heat your house up.

The firm lentils and softly bulging vegetables slowly taking in all that lemony, oily dressing; the hazelnuts giving luxe and depth and crunch; my beatific smile at all of this being filled with more vitamins than my body can physically process. It’s a quiet, calming dinner after a Saturday night spent drinking cider while ten-pin bowling; grapefruit daquiris while celebrating the third birthday of coolhaunt Monterey, and beer while loitering at a fancy pub as Devon Anna Smith played records I liked (it maybe looks worse on paper, I was fine.)

Some facts about my birthday:

There are ELEVEN notable ice hockey players born on April 17, according to Wikipedia.
I’m the oldest child. I was born at 8.50pm-ish. I frowned a lot and immediately got colic and did not stop screaming for six months. Luckily I made up for it by being a very overachieving preschooler.
While I can’t afford all the trinkets I want I did buy this cool cat (bottom centre), a print from local artist Pinky Fang. It seems to go well with the sinister cat we bought in New Orleans, and my Devon Anna Smith print. Three cats seems like a good number to have around.
Tomorrow is the final reading of the Marriage Act Bill which will decide whether marriage equality is happening in New Zealand or not. Every day it seems more and more unfair that I’m allowed to marry someone just because of the ridiculous coincidence that they happen to be a man. I wrote a long thoughtsy thinkpiece paragraph after this and then deleted it because it’s much simpler to just say: this bill means a lot to me not quite just because I’m a more-or-less decent person who wants equal rights for all, or because Tim and I are engaged but have decided not to marry unless it goes ahead, but also because I’m also…not straight. The Q in LGBTQ. Yes. I won’t say much more about this, apart from that I realised it an awfully long time ago, but only articulated it relatively recently. Articulating all this was like putting on glasses and seeing things just as they are but a little clearer (I use this analogy a lot, sure, but looking at things is just so great since I got my glasses). Doing so is of course a totally private, personal choice for everyone, and this is just my way. While I worried that I’d left it too long -whatever that means – or that I’d somehow express all this horribly wrong, or that braised lentils wasn’t how I wanted to remember it happening in years to come, or that maybe I should say it next time, or next-next time, I also thought I’d just…say it. It’s still a scary thing to do. But every day brings us closer to a time when it will be less and less scary to say it. Armed with the knowledge that you’re all cool and I’ve never once heard anything said against it that made the slightest bit of sense, I figure you all know pretty much everything about me anyway, and this is just another thing to matter-of-factly know.

I’m turning 27. This is an age where people will still say “so old” but also “so young” at you, depending on the person. I’m not sure when that will stop.

Victoria Beckham is born on April 17. When I was in my deadly-fervent Spice Girls phase, sharing a birthday with one was seen as some kind of ancient sacrosanct blessing. (Seen by me, and me alone.)

 
Title via: Side By Side By Side, from the Sondheim musical Company. The AMAZING Sondheim musical. Please keep having birthdays, Sondheim. 

Music lately: 

Blurred Lines, Robin Thicke with Pharrell and TI. I am addicted to this song like wo. And also reminded of the massive crush I used to have on Pharrell.

Birthday, Sugarcubes. Ones thoughts also turn to songs with the word birthday in the title. Bjork’s soaring, growling belting here is outrageously amazing. Extra fun in Icelandic!
 
Next time: Hoping to have another I Should Tell You interview up on Friday. Who’s it going to be? Why, who do you think I am, some kind of organised person? 

i add two and two, the most simple addition

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It’s fascinating how faltering memory is. My best friend from high school was in town last night and came to visit Tim and I ahead of a one-way trip to South America in June (we never ever see each other so even though that sounds far away, this is, as they say, it.) I lamented how I could go for six months without making a cup of tea but still know how to make one, while remembering language is like trying to grasp the details of a vivid dream. Unless you’re in amongst it, it just slips out from between your fingers the harder you try to grasp onto what you know.

I was also recounting to Tim recently a vague yet arresting memory from my early years: being at the house of a friend of my parents, a supercool sophisticated older girl (probably…nine?) being really nice to me, bawling my eyes out when we had to leave because I liked her so much, and then the girl showing me all her Barbie accessories and saying I could choose any one to take home. Even then at age, oh, six? I was floored by her generosity. In hindsight, it could’ve been a number of things – she’d outgrown the dolls and could afford to be magnanimous, her mother had stage-whispered at her behind my back to give me something to stop me crying, genuine generosity, who knows? All I know is I ended up with a laughably impressive pink Barbie Corvette convertible. I never saw those people again. Or maybe I did, and maybe I remembered this all wrong, y’know? I’m so sure that’s how it went, but memory is tricksy and mercurial like that.

Where am I going with this? Literally nowhere. It’s just this recipe is quicker than a sneeze and I wanted to indulge in some vignette-ery. Wanna make something of it?

This is my blog, and I will have my clunky segue and eat it too. I recently got to have the spoils of this roasted butternut recipe, invented by my friend Brendan and made by my also-friend Kim, and it was so good that I was determined to make it myself as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It’s also so very simple that words haven’t been invented yet to describe how little you have to do to achieve the finished result.

Cinnamon-Golden Syrup Roasted Butternut Squash

Full credit to my friend Brendan for inventing this and letting me blog about it, full credit to Kim for txting me the premise of the recipe after already telling me twice, and for just being great. 

1 butternut squash
2 tablespoons olive oil, or a blasting of cooking oil spray (I didn’t have the latter) 
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons golden syrup or brown sugar
Salt

Note: did I actually use these measurements? Nooo. I just enthusiastically shook the bottle of olive oil over the cut halves, gave it enough of a crop-dusting of cinnamon so that the surface was speckled and brown, and lightly drizzled over golden syrup from a squeezy bottle. But on the other hand, I appreciate that sometimes actual quantities can be useful when you’ve never made a thing before, or if you don’t cook all the time. 

Slice the butternut in half lengthways, sprinkle over all the remaining ingredients – don’t hold back on anything – and roast on a baking paper lined oven tray at about 200 C/400 F (or 180 if your oven is particularly blasty) for about 40 minutes, until it is soft and darkened and almost collapsing in on itself. That is it.

It might sound too simple, it might sound like it’s going to turn into pudding, but butternut’s dense, firm texture can handle a lot of what you’re throwing at it, quietly absorbing all that cinnamon and syrup without turning into creme brulee. The oil and salt are what keep it in check, making it more fulsomely luscious and counteracting the blush of sweetness on the surface, and it smells incredible. Butternut is already a little sweet and rich, and the tickle of cinnamon and stab of salt just points up everything good about it, while slowly roasting it makes it soft and pliant enough that you can plunge a spoon into it. I just dropped a large spoonful of it onto a plate and stirred in butter and more salt, Tim spread his on a slice of baguette and topped it with tomato. The next night I stirred the leftovers into cooked spaghetti with lemon juice, burned butter, capers, toasted almonds and lemon zest. It’s versatile stuff. Thanks, Brendan!

Making something so perfect, and perfectly simple was the ideal activity on Sunday night after throwing our friend Ange a Twin Peaks themed birthday/farewell one-two punch party (I just like saying one-two punch, this party had no pugilism subtheme) and also after attempting to make Ange a birthday cake that was far too ambitious in its scope and doomed to failure. A triple-layer bundt cake, make particularly enormous by being layered up on top of a ring cake. It had no structure, it was sliding sideways, bits of bundt were chipping off, it was not the sophisticated elegant thing I’d vainly pictured. Tim returned home from picking up ice to find me recklessly slinging the top layers of bundt into a bowl while Ange laughed, possibly nervously. The blackberry custard I’d made to sandwich together the layers gave the remaining ring cake a kind of blood-smeared look that we decided we really liked, and so I studded it with cornflake chocolate (melted dark chocolate poured over cornflakes, frozen, broken into irregular pieces) and pierced it with long, thin beeswax candles which make anything look dramatic, and suddenly…it worked. But oh damn. It might be a while before I attempt to make a foot-tall, triple layer vegan bundt cake again. On the other hand I did get to refer to myself as Special Agent Fail Cooper.
Photo by the aforementioned Kim. Whose photos from early in the night you should most definitely check out, because they are stunning and my friends are all such babes that I have no more swoons to give.
Fortunately the party itself went off without a hitch, in fact describing it like that does it a disservice. It went off amazingly. Our clever friends Kate and Jason had sent us a rasterbated image of the waterfall used in the opening credits – rasterbation is when you blow up an image across as many pieces of paper as you want and it’s all pixellated and it looks amazing – and yes, I cannot even deal with the fact that rasterbating is a word – and we all put it up on one of our walls on Thursday night.
As Saturday went on, the place acquired a black and white chevron rug; a red curtain (actually an old duvet cover, but who can tell in the dark?) red and black balloons; the stunning Welcome to Twin Peaks sign painted by Kate pictured above; a slightly crappy RR Diner sign painted by me; a table full of donuts; a cherry pie (made by me and it was so great, in case you’re thinking I’m being self-effacing for the sake of it); lots of coffee; a Wanted sign for BOB; red light bulbs; owls; candles; brie and butter baguettes, and finally: a framed picture of Laura Palmer whose eyes follow you round the room. Even when you uneasily sit it face down on the shelf. 
I went as secret-video-footage Laura Palmer, wearing a turtleneck for the first time since, oh, 2003, a dark green sweater, a tweed skirt, peachy ballet tights and brogues. I sweated myself into a stupor, but it was fun. I had planned to get progressively deader and plastic-wrapped as the night went on, but a guest arrived already wrapped in plastic looking so committed and excellent that I decided – with some small relief – to just stay put. 

Tim was special agent Dale Cooper because who else could he be? We also had a David Lynch, a Bobby Briggs, a swoonful Audrey Horne (that was Ange) a Nadine, a Lucy Moran, a cousin Maddy, a veritable creepy suburb of characters in fact. And because it was a party thrown for someone else, I only knew about half the people in the room and so got to live out my somewhat pitiable fantasy of introducing myself to people and saying one or all of the following: “It’s a little lavish, but we call it home”; “We’re very informal here, as you can see” or “we’re tres liberal“. If you hear a faint whooshing sound, it’s probably the breeze caused from the collective shaking of heads of people reading this. But I care not.

It was an incomprehensibly fun night, although all the frantic dancing and fun-having and so on merely clouded the fact that I’m going to miss Ange so much when she moves to London. She was the very first person Tim and I met when we moved to Wellington, and while it was no meet-cute (“I guess we’re living together…okay bye”) we nevertheless have stayed firm friends, getting firmer and firmer as the years go on, our friendship near-on calcifying by this point in fact. Sigh. Partying is such sweet sorrow.

(I also love saying that.)
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Title via: The Music That Makes Me Dance, from the musical Funny Girl. I kinda tear up even just typing the name Laurie Beechman, but it’s worth the inevitable sniffles to see her sing this gorgeous song. 
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Music lately:

I liked it just fine at the time, and I wouldn’t necessarily play it for fun on a day-to-day basis, but put R Kelly’s Remix to Ignition on and suddenly there’s ain’t no mountain high enough to keep me from the dancefloor. Verily, this was proven on Saturday night.

I’ve already mentioned it a zillion times on this blog but in case you’ve been hiding under a bushel like some self-effacing person’s light: Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart, from Twin Peaks, sung by Julee Cruise. It gets better with every listen, and not a week goes by that I don’t play it about five times over. So.

Bobby Womack, The Bravest Man In The Universe from the record of the same name. A record that I can keep flipping over and over and not get sick of.
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Next time: Something slightly more complicated, but…not triple layer bundt complicated. 

pass the what? (pass the popcorn)

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Once I’d finished thoroughly kicking myself for the very shamefulness of even uttering out loud the phrase “gosh, all this moving and job-hunting stuff means I’ve really failed to capitalise on the whole Christmas lead-up thing on the blog,” I realised this would be my very last blog post written in our current flat. Aw. And it’s about, uh, popcorn. When I say capitalise, I’m honestly not capitalising on anything (or I’d be blogging about something more grand than popcorn) but let’s face it, it IS December, and this IS a food blog, and at this time of year many a person’s thoughts inevitably turn to food of a particularly Christmassy nature and we’re already nearly halfway through this month and I’ve barely acknowledged it. However, I’m hoping it’s not too late. 
Note the enthusiastic piece of popcorn which popped right out of the pan after I lifted the lid. The escape act was all for naught, as I ate it anyway.

Burned Butter Maple Popcorn; Salt and Vinegar Popcorn. They both looked exactly the same so I sprinkled the maple one with rainbow sugar. Which immediately fell into all the cracks and crevices in the popcorn. So in case you can’t tell, it’s the top bowl. 

I’ve been eating so much popcorn, partly because it’s deeply inexpensive which suits us right now (moving costs, unemployment, bills, and a persistent post-holiday overdrawn credit card) but also because I had forgotten how really truly delicious and easy to make it is. I’ve been fixing up bowls of it all the time, for a pre-dinner snack, for a post-pre-dinner snack, to go with drinks…it might seem a little unconvincing and unsophisticated to serve to your fancy friends, but it really works.

It’s just so crunchy and porously butter-absorbant and flavour-permeable and a tiny quantity of popping corn makes so much fluffy white popcorn and – did I mention – I know I did, no need to be coy – it’s so cheap. Also it’s gluten-free, vegan-friendly if you use oil, and oddly thrilling as you wait for the mysterious dried corn to burst open.

We don’t have a microwave, so I make it on the stovetop, and it’s all very straightforward. I suppose you don’t have to use any fat in it, but it tastes quite bland without it – but it’s all up to your tastebuds. I like to heat up the popping corn kernels with the butter or oil in a lidded pan over a medium heat, wait for it to start popping after a minute or two, and that’s it really. All you need is a large saucepan with a lid, and for that lid to stay on until you’re quite sure the corn is done popping. Otherwise it will shoot out and land in your hair. It just will.

Burned Butter and Maple Popcorn

You don’t have to use maple syrup if you can’t get hold of it, it’s so expensive that I’m always too nervous to actually use it in anything, and honey or golden syrup would be a worthy substitute. I do think the flavour of this benefits from being popped in butter and then having extra butter added, it’s not the slightest bit gratuitous. Don’t worry in the slightest about the state of the butter in the pan either, the more it burns in the hot pan the more wondrous it will taste – all smoky and nutty and incredible. 

30g butter plus another 20g extra
2 teaspoons maple syrup
Salt
1/3 cup popping corn

Place the 30g butter and popping corn in a large pan, cover with a lid, and place over a medium heat. After a few minutes the corn will start to pop, excitingly – hold onto the lid and give it a shake every now and then to ensure that the popped corn itself won’t burn. Place one teaspoon and a grind of salt in the base of a large serving bowl, then tip most of the popcorn in and stir it around. Sprinkle over the remaining teaspoon of maple syrup, tip in the remaining popcorn and continue to stir. Do what you like to mix it all together really, this just seems to ensure maximum maple-coverage. Melt the remaining butter in the still-hot pan and then tip it over the popcorn evenly, giving one last stir. Rainbow sugar…optional. 

Salt and Vinegar Popcorn

Olive oil’s rich, green flavour is perfect with popcorn, and the sharp vinegar and bursts of salt makes you want to pretty much shovel this into your mouth with a cupped hand till there’s none left.  

1 tablespoon olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
salt
1/3 cup popping corn

As above, heat the corn kernels in the tablespoon of oil in a lidded pan, allow them to pop, shaking it occasionally, and pour most of the popped corn into a bowl in which one teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and a grind of salt has been placed. Stir around, drizzle over some olive oil, stir some more, add the rest of the popcorn, sprinkle over the remaining balsamic vinegar, some more oil, and another grind of salt. Stir as best you can without flinging the weightless grains everywhere.  

So: popcorn. It’s easy. It can absorb as much butter as you’re willing to attempt to saturate it with. It’s so cheap. And it’s wildly delicious. 
By the way, guess what guess what? This might be old news if you follow me on Twitter, but I got a job! Some real employment! It’s very exciting. But fear not, this popcorn is so excellent that we’ll continue eating it long after we can afford to eat other stuff. Can I tell you what the job is exactly? Nay. It’s not that I’m particularly important, it’s just that it’s of a governmental nature and requires some discretion – I’m a little overnervous that I’ll say entirely the wrong thing about it. Just know that it has zero overlap with this blog and it’s going to pay the bills and the most you’ll hear about it might be the occasional “what a long day at the office and people who don’t label their yoghurt pottles in the shared staff fridge, amiright?” type of relatably vague exclamation. Maybe even that was too specific. Nerves aside – I start tomorrow! – I’m so, SO PLEASED to be employed again. Things were getting bad-ridiculous. Now they can start to get good-ridiculous. 
I found out at 4.30pm on Friday – seriously, there is no better way to start your weekend than to discover you’re newly employed. I recommend it. That night my old flatmate but always-friend Ange and I had a dance party of two, in which we danced not wisely but too well, to paraphrase Shakespeare – woke up the next morning with one fiercely sore neck from dancing so expressively. But it was worth it for the joy of the dancing, definitely. Now that the weekend’s over Tim and I only have a few more days left in this flat that has been our home for the past three and a half years. I’m going to miss it – it’s incredible! Tim and I could not believe our luck at being able to live in such a beautiful cool place. But I’m really looking forward to starting over – finding places for everything and getting to love a new place. Also, um, to not have to consider flatmates when, um, look: I’m just looking forward to not having to wear pants all the time, okay? They’re just so restrictive! Even drawstring elastic can be burdensomely present in its own way, but with flatmates you’re kinda obliged to not awkward up their days by going pantsless. With that delightful image in mind, I also can’t wait to make the most of the beautiful light for photography and to go wild in the kitchen. All of which you’ll soon see – it’s kind of like you’re moving with me, except without the hassle and the lifting and the barely-suppressed tension! 
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Title via: Pass The Popcorn, from the supercool The Roots’ very first album Organix. It looks like another one coming around…
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Music lately:
ROYALS, BY LORDE. Capitals necessary. She’s from New Zealand. She’s a teenager. She’s elusive. This song is incredible. I love that music can still surprise me like this. (This was danced to repeatedly on Friday night.) (Just LISTEN to it.) (Then to all the rest of her tracks.)

One other good thing about moving is that our living space will be big enough for me to try and learn magical Donna McKechnie’s dance from Turkey Lurkey Time. This is how I know it’s Christmas: I’m watching this incredible number from the 1968 Tony Awards. It’s ridiculous and it’s dated and it’s…yeah, really ridiculous, but damn if it doesn’t make my heart race every time it gets to the end.
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Next time: New flat! New flat! Tra la la la la la! And something quite, quite Christmassy will be abounding. 

holy moly, me oh my, you’re the apple of my eye

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There is nothing like the frantic job-hunt to make you consider yourself – not as in the significantly annoying, yet impossible to remove from one’s brain once it’s there song from the musical Oliver! – I mean to consider your personality, and your approach to things, and your skills. Just your general self-ness.
Yes. I, Laura Vincent, am prowling like a jungle panther in search of that elusive, distant gazelle: gainful employment. After three months of being married to the cookbook and a further month traveling in America, there are no more savings and no more distractions. I have learned that even with two significant smarty-pantses proofreading my CV I can still somehow then go and insert the words “data entry” twice into my list of skills. That’s about all I’ve learned so far since I haven’t got a job yet, but I am remaining positive. Six years since I last looked for a job, I’ve been finding it interesting reconciling the difference between talking about my achievements in a non-threateningly corporate manner while at the same time blogging in my usual lavishly verbose way here. Both the CV and this blog are totally honest, but I’m not going to talk here about a recipe being a series of key deliverables, just as I’m not going to mention having a panic attack or eating pastry dough on my CV. My CV says that I work well in a team, while in real life I’m a total non-compromising grump about certain things. Is my inability to compromise on what I feel strongly about a sign of immaturity and a bad attitude, or does it make me a strong person who knows themselves? (Probably both, right?) But see? All this talking myself up is making me self-scrutinise all over the place. Nevertheless, I’m hoping there’s some kind of job out there for me – occasionally belligerent and anxious and over-analysey as I am, if any potential bosses are reading, I’m pretty much definitely employment material, honest.
Now, if inventing new recipes constantly was an employable skill – which I suppose it technically is, what with my writing a cookbook and all – I’m sure I could work my way up to CEO quite fast. Ruling with the enthusiasm and abundant excellence of Leslie Knope, the powerful vintage dresses and street smarts of Joan Holloway, and the cool songs and intimidation abilities of Ursula from the Little Mermaid. Till that day, I’ll just share the most recent recipes I came up with here for you all. Minus the intimidation and so on, although incidentally I am wearing a vintage dress today. (It’s purple!)
Have you ever had Turkish apple tea powder before? It’ll set you back about $7 for a tin, but I can’t apologise because it’s so utterly, spoonful-by-the-spoonful delicious that you’ll be glad to have it around for aimless snacking purposes. It occurred to me, as these things often do, that it might be quite fantastic rubbed into pork which is then slowly, slowly cooked.

Well, speaking of honesty, I’m giving you this recipe with the caveat that I’m not entirely sure it was successful for me, but I’m very confident it could be successful for you. That is, it tasted incredibly good, but I don’t think I quite cooked it long and slow enough. I’m not the Grand High Chancellor of Meat Knowledge (or am I…okay, I’m really not) and every recipe of my own is an experiment that might or might not work. If you just cook this a little slower and longer than what I did, it will undoubtedly be perfection.

Every other time that I’ve made pulled pork with belly-cut shoulder or pork belly, it has quickly become ludicrously, dissolvingly tender. This time with regular shoulder it resisted my fork’s proddings, and its fibres didn’t separate into meaty strands at the tugging of my tongs. I may have panicked a little, I may have contemplated whether or not human tears are an effective meat tenderising condiment, I may have played good cop bad cop with the pork in the oven (mostly bad cop.) At the very last minute it appeared to have gained some tenderness, but wasn’t quite at the falling-to-pieces level I was used to. So I shredded it to bits anyway – surprisingly therapeutic, recklessly hacking at a large piece of meat with little care for aesthetics – and as the ever-pragmatic Tim ever-pragmatically pointed out, two kilos of pork is still two kilos of pork. The point is, it still tasted really, really good. So it’s highly likely this will work for you.

Though the pork unavoidably requires a lot of your time, the accompanying slaw is as swift as swift can be. Its provenance is simply that I had silverbeet and parsley and horseradish in the fridge and not much else. I would’ve wanted a more interesting nut to go with, like almonds or pine nuts, but sunflower seeds are what I had. And with a little toasting they can hold their own. If you have almonds or pine nuts or whatever though, for goodness sakes use them instead. Sorry sunflower seeds, no offense intended.

Apple Tea Pulled Pork

A recipe by myself.

2 kg belly cut pork shoulder, or pork belly, or or or, pork shoulder
2 heaped tablespoons Turkish apple tea powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspooon smoked paprika
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Set your oven to 130 C, and place the pork in an ovenproof dish into which it fits rather snugly. Mix together the apple tea and the spices, taste it if you like, as it’s compellingly weird, then tip it evenly over the pork, turning the meat over to make sure it’s evenly covered. Press the tea powder and spices into any slices in the meat and really rub it into the surface, spooning over any that falls off. 

Bake slowly for as long as you like really, but for at least five or six hours. Turn it over once or twice and spoon over any roasting juices. A couple of hours in, pour the vinegar over the meat, then return to the oven. 

Tear to shreds with a pair of tongs, one in each hand (or however you choose, this is what works for me) discarding any bones and off-puttingly large pieces of fat (I have no idea whether or not you want to eat it, it’s up to you of course) and mix it in its roasting dish with any saucy liquid that has formed during the cooking process. Serve.

Silverbeet, Parsley and Horseradish Slaw

A recipe also by myself.

1 bunch of silverbeet
1 handful curly parsley
1 tablespoon horseradish sauce from a jar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
A pinch of salt
3 tablespoons sunflower seeds (or anything cooler. Almonds would’ve been cooler.)

Wash and drain the silverbeet if you like, then finely slice it into shreds, in the same way that you might with a cabbage if you were making coleslaw. Roughly chop the parsley. Mix the two together in a large bowl, or indeed, the bowl you’re going to serve it in. In a small bowl or cup or whatever, mix together the horseradish, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt, then stir this through the leaves till they’re evenly coated. Finally, toast the sunflower seeds in a pan till fragrant and lightly browned, and stir them through the slaw. 

Pork and apple are an OTP from way back, but this gives a new slant to these classic bedfellows. The apple tea powder soaks into every last filament of the pork, giving the already sweetness-friendly meat a kind of juicy, fresh sugariness. The paprika’s throat-catching smokiness and the cumin’s deep, earthy savouriness counteract any bubblegum tendencies and give it that I’ve-just-been-barbecued vibe even though it was just in my tiny oven for a few hours.

Silverbeet and curly parsley are both a little bulky and bitter and unsexy, but once finely sliced the silverbeet tendrils become light and aerated and the old-timey, boldly verdant flavours of both greens work surprisingly well together. It’s the dressing that makes this memorable though, with the fresh sting of horseradish mellowed by the olive oil and the sweetness of balsamic, giving the potentially dull greenery a much-needed sprucing. The sunflower seeds aren’t actually strictly necessary, but I like my salads crunchy, so what can you do?

I guess this shows my problem solving abilities (even if, like Kristy Thomas from the Baby-sitters Club, it’s perhaps not so much about problem solving, but about seeing no problem, creating a problem, and then fixing it.) Yes, I hate to compromise and do things I don’t want to do, but I’m also willing to put in a whole ton of effort. Um, for the want of pulled pork, but nevertheless: effort. And for all you know, I put data entry twice on my list of skills on purpose because I just really love it…okay I don’t, but what human does? Experience has taught me though, that as long as I’ve got some headphone-funneled source of music, I can more or less shut off my brain and enter data for hours on end. So: still feeling positive about my job prospects, for now at least.

It’s worth noting that the pulled pork is also quite magnificent cold the next day, as I found out while drinking gin with my dear friend Kim as we sat side by side and contentedly, silently blogged. We had nothing to eat it with, but both of us decided simultaneously that heaped into a bowl and eaten with a fork would be fine: it totally was. The caramelised sugars and spices lends the pork a certain beguiling smoky stickiness once cold – it’s worth buying more pork than you feasibly think you can cope with for this reason alone.
 

Title via: Home, by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. When I first heard this I dismissed it as designed to manipulate your emotions immediately with its breezy twee-ity. And then I was like, shut up Laura, so is most pop music! And so now I just love it. 
 

Music lately: 

Atlantis, Azealia Banks. This woman is just flinging out singles like she’s the one holding the bag of candy at a lolly scramble. I love the video for this, it reminds me of when my family first had a computer, and the amazingly terrible, but of course amazing-then graphics, but as well as that the song itself is brilliant too.

Another Hundred People, Melanie C. Spice Girls plus Broadway, that Broadway being specifically Sondheim’s Company which I’m quite obsessed with? Oh, my heart. Melanie’s creamy, elastic voice is showcased rather excellently here in this challenging song, too, and I like to think in this case she’s singing about London rather than the intended New York. I like to think about these things, okay?
 
Next time: Still intent on making something from the Momofuku cookbook that I bought in NYC…

blue wind gets so sad, blowing through the thick corn and bales of hay

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I was going to blog yesterday, but instead spent the afternoon nervously clutching a satin-bepillowcased cushion to my fervently beating heart (that is, I hugged a pillow) while watching the US election results unfold. I…should’ve seen that coming, that I wouldn’t get any blogging done. I can’t pretend I entirely saw Obama’s victory coming, but I am so utterly, viscerally relieved that he did get in again. That’s all I’ll say, except – how extremely excellent was his speech? I was punching the air pretty much the entire time, like an animated gif of Bender at the end of The Breakfast Club. 

What a week it has been. From dizzying highs – a Halloween party, purposefully in November so Tim and I could be there with our wondrous friends. Tim dressed as Effie Trinket from Hunger Games and I dressed as the Wicked Witch of the East (complete with a house fascinator and hand-spangled ruby slippers) – to literally dizzying lows, when I had a small panic attack on the street last Friday evening. It’s by no means the first one I’ve had, but it has been a good long while, and it took me completely by surprise. I was of all things, on my way to pick up my engagement ring which was being resized. I assure you, as I assured Tim, that my sudden inability to breath and my burning face and dizzy brain were nothing to do with the act of getting the ring. Tooootally unrelated. Which now makes it sound like I’m being deeply sarcastic, but honestly! It just happened. And it sucks, and it’s not a particularly food-bloggingly-sparkly subject, but what can I say? It’s my life, and though I’m annoyed by the signals my brain sends out occasionally, I shall be not ashamed of them. And in case you’re wondering, yes, almost a week later we are still finding red sequins everywhere that my shoes shed hither and yon.

Back to the dizzying highs: I made an incredibly good dinner and thought I’d share it with you.

Corn and Tomatoes doesn’t sound like much, and I guess it isn’t, but it’s intensely delicious – the corn sort of stews in the tomato juices, which become syrupy-rich with the olive oil. The paprika offers the sweetness of the corn and tomatoes a deep smokiness, and it suddenly seems all a lot greater than the parts of which it sums. I called it corn and tomatoes because that’s what it is, which seemed to justify the slightly fancifully-named Miso Poached Potatoes. It simply occurred to me that cooking new potatoes in miso-enriched water might make them rather magnificent. It did.

Corn and Tomatoes

A recipe by myself.

2 cups frozen corn
3 small, ripe tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon smoked paprika

Mix everything together in a roasting dish. Bake at 220 C for about 25 minutes.

Miso-poached Potatoes with Butter

Also a recipe by myself. I couldn’t possibly guess how many potatoes you can eat, but in case you’re wondering, for the two of us I went with about eight smallish potatoes, a heaped tablespoonful of miso paste, and about 50g butter.

New potatoes
White miso paste
Butter


Quarter the potatoes lengthwise (or really, cut how you please.) Fill the pot you’re going to cook them with half to two-thirds full of water, then add a few spoonfuls of miso paste depending on the quantity of water. Simmer the potatoes till they’re tender, then drain them and stir through as much butter as you please, till it’s melted. Serve.

The miso soup really seeps into every last granule of the potatoes, giving their blandly creaminess a kind of nutty, rich caramelised savouriness, which is only intensified once they’re smothered in fast-melting butter. I’m never particularly enthused over new potatoes (I like my potatoes to be sustaining crispness to 90% of their bodies) but this turns them into something thoroughly exciting. In direct proportion to the quantity of butter you coat them with.

Tim’s and my American holiday has suddenly been sucked into the realm of feeling like a distant, highly vivid dream. It’s over a week since we landed at Auckland at 5.40am. Speaking of things I did not see coming, Mum – my parents live an hour south – had hinted that she might or might not come meet us at the airport. My supposing was on the side of not, since it was so ridiculously early, but I murmured dazedly to Tim as we trudged through customs, “$5 says Mum is here and has turned this into a girls’ adventure with her best friend”. My small wager was in fact, correct, but I had entirely underestimated the crazy capers afoot. My mum and her best friend were indeed there, as was my aunty who I hadn’t seen in over a year. But wait. A small red checked napkin was produced by way of tablecloth. There were wine glasses. And bubbly. And a crystal bowl of strawberries. Right there in the food court at the international airport, to congratulate us on our engagement. Tim and I were slightly dazed, as well you might be at 6am after flying for thirteen hours and then suddenly finding yourself drinking fizzy wine, but we couldn’t have had a nicer, sweeter, more hilarious welcome back home.
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Title via: the adolescent-angst musical Spring Awakening, and its suitably mournful song Blue Wind. 
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Music lately: 

Moon River, as sung utterly plaintively and yet subtly and yet devastatingly as always by Judy Garland.  I mean this song could even render some emotional response from a particularly jaded lab rat, but in Judy’s hands, and lungs, it just slays me.

Baby Says, The Kills. These two are terrifyingly good. We were lucky enough to see them at Third Man Records in Nashville. Luckier still: the concert was being recorded live onto vinyl. Luckiest of all: a copy of that vinyl will eventually be sent to us here in New Zealand.
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Next time: I bought a copy of the Momofuku cookbook while we were in New York. Do you know how badly I want to cook every last thing in it? Quite, quite badly.

could be, who knows, there’s something due any day

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That’s all, folks.

Well, that’s almost all, folks. The very last photoshoot happened on Saturday, meaning this cookbook-writing montage is whirling to a close and the inspirational eighties song accompanying it is in the coda stage. I still have to edit the heck out of it – to make sure that I don’t use the word ‘buttery’ or ‘bodacious’ on every single page, which is…of concerningly high likelihood.

I also still have to test a bulging handful of recipes, which means, and has meant, that I have made more or less nothing in the last couple of weeks that isn’t specifically for this cookbook.

Apart from these nuts. They seem an even less worthy offering for you than the raspberry smoothie I blogged about last time but what can I do? We are overrun with food that I just can’t talk about.

I made these for a birthday party that we had for Tim on Saturday night, along with a cake that I iced to look like Jack White. I was particularly proud of managing to ice some sweaty strands of hair to Cake-Jack’s forehead. We drank some excellent whisky and danced and talked and sang “Happy Birthday” to the tune of the Game of Thrones theme song and everyone wrote nice things about Tim in a giant birthday card which was supposed to be a surprise but I forgot about it till an hour before the party started and had to tell Tim, then run out and buy it while he cleaned the house and the only big cards that were in the shop were either hideous or for a specific age (or both) so I got a card which said “good luck” in glittery letters because at that point it felt like the right sentiment.


The uber-dapper and somewhat long-suffering birthday man. 

Maple Horseradish Cashews

A recipe by myself.

700g cashews
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon horseradish sauce
2 tablespoons maple syrup
Salt, in abundance

Tip the cashews with a clatter into a large saucepan. Toast them, stirring constantly, over a low heat till they start to become fragrant and lightly browned in places. Stir in the oil, the horseradish, the syrup, and plenty of salt, and continue to stir till any liquid is evaporated and the cashews are varying stages of stickily scorched and shiny. You don’t want them actually burnt, as they’ll turn acrid and bitter, but try to get them as close to it as you can.

These nuts, with their burnished, sticky coating combine horseradish’s compellingly back-of-the-throat mustard flavour with the smokily sweet taste of maple. Cashews have their own mild sweetness which complements both but use what you have, I just happened to be hosting more than I knew what to do with in my pantry. If you don’t have horseradish sauce, try a tablespoon of dijon or American mustard, or as much wasabi as you dare – both will provide that hot-mouthed zing.

What else has been happening lately besides all that?
Well, I went to a lovely friend’s place on Sunday with a bevy of other lovely friends for a day we called Princess Camp. There was snuggling and Olympic gymnastics and dance movies and bubbles and cake and gossip and this beautiful cat who can do forward rolls (if only I’d got a video and she could’ve been an internet sensation).

I don’t see cats very often so this was rather thrilling. I should also point out that we watched the Spice Girls part of the Olympics closing ceremony, and I was recounting how ridiculous it was that I started crying when I watched it the first time, and then – I started crying again. I just couldn’t help it, it was all so momentous and the Spice Girls were together again at last, and seemed to be such good friends, and they all looked so happy and beautiful and…there’s really no good way to explain this, so perhaps just gaze upon the adorable cat in the photo.
I also helped start a trending topic on twitter with the highly excellent Sarah-Rose. Here’s what happened: I’d been thinking about the Baby-sitters Club, as is my wont. I spied Sarah-Rose tweeting about what she was wearing to someone else. It occurred to me, and so I tweeteth, that it’d be really cool if people described what they were wearing on Twitter in the manner of Claudia Kishi, who was the total queen of the BSC and always had the most incredible outfits. Sarah-Rose declared that it should definitely be a thing. Emboldened, we both tweeted our outfits with the hashtag #kishi. And then more people did. And more and more and more. 
On day two it trended and then continued to trend. Isn’t that the most, to say the least? I understand entirely if Twitter is a concept that eludes you, and now’s not the place for social media 101, but I LOVE IT. And managing to hoist a fairly niche-interest topic into the realms of trending was immensely thrilling. And it’s such a fun hashtag. Just as I loved reading outfit descriptions in the Baby-sitters Club books, so I do in real life. I love describing my trackpants, should I be wearing them, as lavishly and breathlessly as I would a dress. In short: FUN!
Finally, I made this short video on why I’m proud to support marriage equality.
Finally-finally, Tim and I have somehow been planning our trip to America. Which starts next Friday. We booked tickets to see Wicked on Broadway. What is life. But till that day comes: all the editing and all the feelings! And hopefully all of the blogging, too. I am sorry for not blogging more, and then for barely even coming correct when I do – next time it’ll be something more significant than Johnny-Come-Lately fried cashews, I promise. 
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Title via: Something’s Coming, from the beautiful musical West Side Story. I rather enjoy limber-voiced adorable gem Gavin Creel’s take on this stunning song. 
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Music lately:

Rodriguez, Crucify Your Mind: I don’t normally say things like this, but this man should be a billion times bigger than Dylan. He just should. 
Sky Ferreira, Everything Is Embarrassing. Terribly relatable.
O’Lovely, Bright Lights. I’ve been listening to this a lot lately, it’s so twinkly and dreamy so of course I adore it. 
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Next time: As I said: Sooner! Better than nuts!

too much of something is bad enough

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Did I really hate brussels sprouts while growing up, or did all the American TV shows and movies I watched with feverish fervour make me think I didn’t like them? Well, I’ve already asked that question here when I blogged about Ottolenghi’s Brussels Sprouts with Tofu, and as it does not behoove me to repeat content, I won’t, and will instead just direct you back to that (although the long story short answer is: kinda the former, kinda the latter.) Anyway, where I’m going with this is that it’s no great revelation to announce that people are generally suspicious of brussels sprouts, and I believe this usually stems from people – or more specifically, people’s parents – having zero knowledge of what to do with them. And so they did what you did with all vegetables back in the day: boiled them. Boiled them till they were formless, flavourless, unloveable and interchangeable.

What you should really be doing with brussels sprouts is frying them or roasting them. No longer are they bitter, flappy mini-cabbages of sorrow. Instead when applied to direct heat or when blasted under a hot oven, they become crisp, wonderfully nutty, crunchy, and deeply delicious. Not only nothing to be scared of, but something to eat much of.

The reason I’m currently so pro-sprout, is because I am in the middle of testing a million recipes for my upcoming cookbook (which is, in itself, an intensely delicious thing to say out loud, well on paper, well on this screen, anyway) and the things I’m testing right now are largely within the genre of cake. We are surrounded by cakes. This is fantastic. However, I enjoy a little contrast, and my tastebuds have reacted to all this cake by craving intensely savoury food. Hence why I made myself this for lunch yesterday.

Couscous with Fried Brussels Sprouts, Cardamom and Sesame Seeds

A recipe by myself.

This is more a suggestion than anything. I like cardamom’s eucalytpy-lemony bite, and I just had some cooked couscous in the fridge. You could use whichever spices you please, and mix it with rice, or bulgur wheat, or quinoa, or anything. But let’s suppose you do have these ingredients – here’s what you’d do.

6 brussels sprouts
Olive oil
3 cardamom pods, roughly sliced so that the pods are pierced but not halved entirely.
1/2 cup cooked couscous
1 lemon
1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Trim the bases from the sprouts, then quarter them lengthwise. Heat about 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a pan, and throw in the sprouts and the cardamom seeds once it’s hot. Push them round so that one of the cut sides of each quarter is facing down on the hot pan. Place a lid on top and leave for a couple of minutes. This will allow the sprouts to fry and crisp up slightly, while also steaming them a little too, to actually cook them. Remove the lid and stir around – they should be considerably browned in places. Throw in the couscous and sesame seeds and squeeze in the juice of the lemons. Stir around to combine, then tip onto a plate. 

It might not sound like much but it’s a pretty perfect lunch, full of crunch and warmth and nutty deliciousness. And after eating it, I’m ready to face the cake again.

So guess what? I’m still kinda sick with that stupid head cold/flu/thing. Not nearly as sick, but still blowing my nose and coughing juuuuust enough to not feel entirely done with it. I am, however, well enough to get dressed up as a gold lion for a wild animal-themed party tonight. No doubt there will be amusing tails (haha!) to tell and photos to share once it’s done…in the meantime I’m looking forward to wearing lots of makeup, making my hair enormous (my main motivation for dressing up as a lion, I’ll be honest – I’m all about the big hair) and dancing big.
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Title via: The so important Spice Girls, with their single Too Much from their second album Spiceworld. This song is rather gorgeous and still holds up well. And the video is amongst their most babein-est, and sometimes too much of nothing really is just as tough, you know?
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Music lately:

Bernadette Peters, spookily ageless, always tears-inducingly good, singing No-one Is Alone from Into The Woods. Whether or not it’s true, it’s nice to have her sing it to you at least.

Ini Kamoze, Here Come The Hotstepper. You could play this to me at 4am on a rainy night after I’d been doing a graveyard shift as a bricklayer and I’d still get up and dance to it.
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Next time: I will not be sick, and I might have come round to the idea of sugar again.

you know i gave that horse a carrot so he’d break your foot

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So much for my posturing about how unemployment would mean I’d be able to blog all super-regularly, because guess what? I’m still sick. After all this time. And I’ve been too sick to cook. If I don’t cook, I can’t blog. And if I can’t blog, do I exist? I’m kidding, sort of. But yeah. Sick sucks. My cookbook writing didn’t start with the leader-of-the-pack style motorbike revving that I anticipated, but with a more of a sniffle and a wheeze.

I’ve spent the past four days up home at my parents’ place – after a flight to Auckland where I was in such a hazy, groggy daze of weak hopelessness I was terrified that I was going to be pulled aside by security for suspicion of being on and/or carrying multitudes of drugs. I’m not sure ‘it’s just the cough syrup, honest’ or even ‘if I was, surely I’d be having fun than this’ is a defense they’d believe.

I had plans to test a ton of recipes for the cookbook while up home, of writing half the book, of doing a tour of royal proportions of my family in the area…but instead I just spent the whole time on the couch. It was kinda lovely though. Mum giving me old family cookware to use as props in the cookbook (and also to use in real life of course); Dad discussing asset sales with me; my younger brother making me never prouder by bringing up the Bechdel test out of nowhere while we were talking about movies. My nana surprising me by appearing in the car that picked me up from the airport, my godmother dropping in with a gift of lemons and chillis, my old babysitter who’s now a prison warden (no coincidence I’m sure) visiting after years and years away. And me on the couch, wrapped up in a feather duvet, in front of a constantly going fireplace. It was excellent.

I should also mention me discussing how much I loved the cats with the cats themselves. They were fairly impervious to my advancements.

I was, however, rewarded with indescribable happiness when I woke up to find Poppy curled up on my bed. The former Jessica Wakefield/Baby Raptor kitten has mellowed into the softest, cutest cat. Also may I draw attention to the world’s most splendid bedspread? Instagram actually softens its effect somewhat, you really need to see it in person (not that that’s an invite) to appreciate its shiny, synthetic, unforgivably fluoro resplendence.

So I returned to Wellington yesterday afternoon, finally with a flicker of hunger to cook and eat again, which is good, because I have a million recipes to test. It was late afternoon and a snack was needed. Something simple. Something cheap. Something that would remind me that I actually like to cook and eat. Who do I turn to? Nigella of course, always. Nigella and her awesomely named Rainbow Room Carrot and Peanut Salad.

Depending on your tastebuds and their sense of style, this salad might sound weird. Like something that you might have made in the hopes of impressing someone in the late 1970s. Like there’s too much going on, like there’s not nearly enough going on. But it works – the different levels of crunchiness, the nutty sweetness, the salty, oily, sourness – all elements coming together to form something that you won’t be able to eat fast enough, I promise. I normally never peel my carrots by the way, but the ones I found in the fridge were a bit elderly and bendy…you know…so I made an exception. Kindly note the sunny yellow knife, a congratulatory present from Mum for getting the cookbook. And the tea towel came from her too. I told you I had a good time at home.

The Rainbow Room Carrot and Peanut Salad

a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s book Forever Summer.

4 carrots, scrubbed
75g salted peanuts
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)
2 tablespoons peanut oil
A few drops sesame oil

Grate or thinly slice the carrots. Mix with the peanuts. Mix in the vinegar and oil. There you have it.

This also works well with salted roasted cashews, if you’re not peanut-inclined. But there’s something in the carrots’ own nutty sweetness that goes so brilliantly here.

Will I ever tire of framing photos this way? Maybe not till those flowers wilt beyond recognition. And I’ve had them since before Christmas, so I don’t fancy your chances…

I admit, there was one evening in the last two weeks involving Soju and karaoke and red wine. But a dear, dear friend was moving to Japan, so what can you do? I’m pretty sure that the length of this sickness is not due to that one night. Maybe it threw my recovery off-course slightly, but nothing more than that. All I can say is, I’d better be better by the next time I blog here. I don’t want to be sick forever!
 

Title via: The White Stripes, that enigmatic duo with a permanent place in my heart, and Well It’s True That We Love One Another, the final track on their album Elephant.

Music lately:

Frank Ocean, Channel Orange – stream the whole stunner mixtape here.

Vulindlela, by Brenda Fassie. I don’t know what she’s singing, but it’s so full of joy and beauty that it doesn’t matter. I mean, I want to know, but this is enough for now.

Nothing like thinking of those worse off than yourself when you’re sick – Fantine’s big number I Dreamed A Dream from Les Mis made me feel positively healthy every time I listened to it. And anything’s more healthy than Patti LuPone’s wig here.

Next time: I. Will. Not. Be. Sick.

and i will be alone again tonight my dear

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I’m not all that good at just cooking stuff for myself to eat when Tim’s not around – which is weird for so many reasons. Like, I love food. And cooking for two people involves only one more person than cooking for one. At best. And I’m not all codependent or anything, honest. But if Tim’s not around, I tend to find myself spending the usual dinner-ing hours eating golden syrup or something. Maybe it’s because I coincidentally feel like eating golden syrup at those times? I don’t know. Sometimes things just happen and there’s no reason for it. If I get famous off this cookbook I request that everyone overanalyses it for me in the comments section.

I’m saying this because I had lunch by myself today and I felt like eating something marginally more diverse to the palate than golden syrup. Having spent last night drinking whisky and sloe gin at Brendan’s birthday party, I also didn’t feel like expending any extraneous energy.

So I made this: Fried Onion Rice with Nuts, Cardamom and Cinnamon. It’s literally just onion, rice, nuts, some water and some spices. And yet so much more vigorously flavoured than that restrained list would suggest. I adapted it from a recipe in Nigella Lawson’s book Feast, a book I’ve read about a squillion times, and yet which can still jolt me from my indolence and make me want to cook something for myself immediately.




You do need to really crisp up the onions for this. You know how you’re normally supposed to focus on the cooking? With this I encourage you to get distracted. I recommend checking twitter and perhaps peruse an aggregator of viral content like buzzfeed.com – whatever their latest list of animals doing cute stuff is, it should use up just the right amount of time to let the heat of the pan really char those onions. Don’t go any further than that though – the onions are for flavour, not just texture – this isn’t the time to go getting lost in a ‘where are they now’ quagmire of looking up 90s actors on Wikipedia or look at every single inexplicably happy photo on someone you used to go to school with’s Facebook. We’re not building a casserole here, people. 


Fried Onion Rice with Nuts, Cardamom and Cinnamon

Adapted from a recipe from Feast, by Nigella Lawson, moon of my life.


3 tablespoons/a handful/whatever of nuts – almonds, cashews or peanuts are good here
1 onion
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup basmati or other long grain white rice
Seeds from 3 cardamom pods (just slice the pods in half and shake out the seeds)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Peel, halve, and finely slice your onion. Heat a large pan and toast the nuts in it till lightly browned. Set them aside. Heat the oil in the same pan and fry the onions in it till good and browned – they should have reduced in size with most of them crisp and darkened. Set aside with the nuts. In your same pan, stir the rice and spices over a low heat for a minute – this just helps with the flavour of things – before tipping in 1 cup/250ml water and a pinch of salt and clamping on the lid. Turn the heat down low and let it simmer away without disturbing it for about ten minutes. At this stage the rice should be completely cooked, but if not let it go a little longer. Remove from the heat, stir in the nuts and onions, and shuffle everything onto your plate. Serves 1.

I have tons of cardamom pods – what, I’m a food blogger – but if you don’t it’s not the end of the world and this is fine with just cinnamon. But cardamom’s particularly lemony-gingery, mildly eucalyptus-y flavour lends a particular elegance to the earthier, oilier flavours. But seriously, fried onions, nuts, rice? Some of the nicest things in the world, making this dish a worthy alternative to golden syrup. Less sticky and prone to getting in my hair, too.

Winter is good for so many things: cooking soup and stews and roasts and such; piling on as many soft cosy clothes as you can; weather complaining as a universal conversation topic; less potential for public sweatiness; whisky tastes better. It goes on. But above all of that, I love spending a lot of time watching TV, like really snuggling into a good TV series. I say that, because I really just wanted to say this:
Tim and I have been rewatching the short but incredible Freaks and Geeks and today I discovered I have the exact same sweater as the character Millie Kentner. I happened to be wearing it while we watched this episode. It’s difficult to photograph one’s self and a screen but trust me: these wooly jumpers are identical. Even in these exciting times, this stands out as a particular milestone.
The last week of June marks the last week of me being at my job – then my main focus in life is going to be bringing this cookbook into existence. It looks like it’s going to be a little nightmarish, logistics-wise – but I’m telling myself that I’ve never been a slave to logic, so everything looks like a logistical nightmare to me. Right? Right. I’ll totally get there though. Somehow.
But: if any fancy people out there are reading, but also staring out the window sighing wistfully because you can’t find the right freelance foodwriter to pay some money to, may I suggest…myself? While the book is going to take a lot of time I’m hoping to pick up some extra opportunities to bolster my soon-to-be-flailing bank balance. I already do lots of freelancing for reassuringly real things like Sunday Star-Times and 3news.co.nz, and I’ll tell you candidly: I think I’m a really good writer. And as another great writer made their awesome character say: thank you for your consideration.
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Title via: Love’s Alone Again Or. One of the most excellent songs I’ve ever heard. So there’s that.
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Music lately:

Azealia Banks, Liquorice. Not as immediately, life-changingly gripping as 212, but still super awesome with a catchy as heck chorus.

Nina Simone, Here Comes The Sun. Heard some Nina Simone on the radio today and reflected on how she can pretty much do no wrong, and how I wanted to hear more. So why not this video with its slideshow of unrelated artwork?
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Next time: I got the new Cuisine magazine – maybe something from that? Time will tell, better than I am right now. 

little lamb, little lamb, a birthday goes by so fast…

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A big thanks to everyone’s cool responses to my last post. Made me glad I’d shared it.

When I made this dinner last night my camera battery went flat and before it obstinately shut down entirely, I hastily snapped some mediocre photos. The battery in my brain went a little flat too, which is really not the best timing considering after my last post I wanted something more sprightly and upbeat. As always though honesty is what I aim for here. When tired…I write like a tired person.

Surprise! It is my birthday today! Twenty-six. (I know. So old or so young, depending on how you look at it) For the last few years, my birthday has really snuck up on me, and today followed that pattern again. I don’t know exactly what kind of build up I was expecting – perhaps an ad campaign indicating that the nation of New Zealand are all meeting on a hilltop with candles and torches and counting down from 10 while a soft-rock song that got to #3 in the downloads charts plays in the background – but seriously, it properly snuck. I’m both a night owl and an early riser (it’s so great) (it’s really not) and so not only was I awake to see my birthday from the moment the clock ticked over, I’m also here at 6-something AM to greet it again before most other people will. But do you know what I woke up to? A kind and lovely email from the kind and lovely Kate who Tim and I stayed with, sight unseen, along with her husband, in Oxford last year.

I wonder if Redman, Victoria Beckham, Liz Phair and/or Sean Bean, bless his sword and sandals, are also going through this same thought process? Since Wikipedia confirms they too are born on April 17? Back in my day (ooh, just caught myself aging), I wore it as a badge of honour that Victoria had the same birthday as me, but depending on which unauthorised magazine or book you read – you know, the sort that referred to “the Fab Five!” or “Get Spicy with the Girls!” – she was also listed as being born on the 7th. Wikipedia, my eleven-year-old self thanks you for restoring the equilibrium.

This is a very simple recipe that I thought up earlier yesterday. It’s nothing revolutionary – just marinate some chicken and fry it and serve it on rice – but the combination of spices will definitely use up some of the spices just sitting there on your spice rack. They will also imbue the meat with warmth and depth and heat and, of course, spice. Chicken breasts are so boring – thighs all the way! – but Tim and I saw some Waitoa ones on special and so the decision was made. Spices like this embiggen the relatively less flavoursome and tender chicken breast, although if you’ve actually got some thighs to hand then you’re golden. You could always use this marinade for tofu or steak or lamb or whatever, depending on which end of the protein spectrum you’re feeling most like eating. The Coconut Spinach Rice you could always eat by its comforting self, the chicken could be turned into a salad, and so on and so forth, you know how to eat food.

Fried Chicken with Many Spices and Coconut Spinach Rice


A recipe by myself.


350g (or as much as you like) boneless chicken breast
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1 tablespoon sambal oelek (or some other form of chilli sauce)
Juice and zest of a lime (about 2 tablespoons juice)
2 tablespoons sesame oil


1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup long grain rice  
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
Handful spinach leaves


Slice up the chicken into small pieces, mix together the the spices and oil and marinate the chicken in it for about an hour, although you could cook it right away if you like. Fry the chicken pieces, scraping in the leftover marinade, till crisp and slightly darkened. And, of course, fully cooked through. Serve with the rice.


To make the rice – I recommend getting it going before you start frying the chicken – heat up the oil in a pan and tip in the uncooked grains of rice. Stir them around for a minute or two on their own, then add the coconut and mix well. As soon as the coconut starts to brown – it’ll happen fast – tip in 3 cups of water, a decent grind/pinch of salt, and clamp a lid on top of the pan. Allow to simmer for about 10 minutes or until the water is all absorbed and the rice grains cooked. At this point, finely slice up a handful of spinach leaves and stir them into the rice.

(Instagram played the role of my camera in this performance. Next time, more proactive battery charging, I promise.)

This is so easy but so exuberantly and uncompromisingly flavoured – the earthy cinnamon and cumin, the compelling heats of the mustard, ginger and chilli and the necessary sweetness and light of the lime against the calm, simple rice is pretty perfect as far as dinner on a cold Monday night goes.

This is my bedroom. Kidding! It’s at La Boca Loca, where Tim and Jo and I went for the muy rico experience that was tequila tasting and tortilla-making demonstration to celebrate their first birthday. Jo herself wrote about it better than I just did at Wellingtonista.

On Friday we (Tim, myself, all our friends) went to an amazing under the sea themed party (specifically, it was named Atlantis to Interzone – not Alanis to Interzone as I initially misread) I was a jellyfish and Tim was a dashing Titanic zombie. I danced wildly with friends and then danced some more. I did wake up with that “oh no, I danced like that” feeling but have decided that there’s no changing who I am and people are going to have to deal with the fact that I’m either standing still or dancing for my life, taking my passion and making it happen, etc. Speaking of aging, the bouncer didn’t believe I was of age, but let me in anyway, probably based on shrewdness and the fact that everyone else in our group was mid to late 20s. “You don’t look 25” he said. “But I do look like a jellyfish,” I coolly replied. I know you’re supposed to love having to pull out ID all the time by this point in life but Tim and I, in the eyes of every gatekeeper in the nation, would seem to resemble a couple of cherubic toddlers dressed humourously in grown-ups’ clothing. So I wouldn’t mind eventually visually growing into my age. I also wouldn’t mind dressing up as a jellyfish again, it was so much fun.

Round of applause to Jo, Jo and Thomas for not so much throwing the party as hurtling it into space to watch it gently fall to earth showering everyone with meteors (I’m trying to say ‘it was good fun’); thanks to Kate who took the above photo.

On Saturday Tim and I paid a near-insurmountable sum ($25! For a movie! But I wanted to see it five times!) to see the filmed production of Company, one of my very favourite Broadway shows. Its cast had so many ridiculously great people in it that I was nearly crying the whole time, even though it was just a movie. Christina Hendricks as self-confessed dullard April had this kind of Marilyn Monroe quality, playing a ditzy character with intimidatingly good comic timing and realness. Anika Noni Rose was glorious and delivered one of my favourite lines in the show better than I’ve ever seen it done (which is once on YouTube and once in a student production of Company, so.) Stephen Colbert and Martha Plimpton had incredible chemistry and Colbert was plain cheek-pinchingly adorable in his turtleneck. Kate Finneran was perfect as Amy. Patti LuPone – who I’ve actually seen in concert – won me over as Joanne with her final flourish in Ladies Who Lunch. And I was so happy they kept the complicated Donna McKechnie dance in it from the original Broadway production, with the neatly full-circle move of casting Chryssie Whitehead who starred in the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line. If none of that made any sense, this movie trailer might help.

And now, to get used to how very twenty-six I’m going to be.
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Title via: Little Lamb from the musical Gypsy. Initially this was a song I always skipped for the more thrilling If Mama Was Married, or Rose’s Turn, but Laura Benanti’s thrilling soprano made me actually listen to it. It’s slow, but rewarding (especially the last bit.)
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Music lately:


Janine and the Mixtape, Bullets. This is a new song – the debut single, I think? – from local singer Janine, whose voice is super prowess-ful and whose enviable cheekbones deserve a round of applause of their own. The video’s an equal match for the song.

The Kills’ cover of Crazy. While part of me is all “Patsy Cline forever!” It’d be remiss of me to deny how deliciously cover-able this song it and how fantastically Alison Mosshart does it.

HOLOGRAM 2PAC.
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Next time: Fejoa. Ice. Cream.