Category: Side Dishes and Snacks

give ’em the old double whammy

13 Comments

It’s spring! Which means asparagus! Which means… (sing it with me now)

…increased asparagus photo-taking opportunities!

I don’t know what it is about those spindly fronds with their layered, tapering points that makes me so camera-wieldy. Or perhaps that’s exactly why. That said, things aren’t exactly the springtime wonderland yet. Asparagus is still expensive. Rather than being nauseatingly rapturous about the changing of the seasons like I had anticipated, I frugally but committedly bought one small bunch. I did manage to make that small bunch go quite far over lunch on Sunday, via a one-two high kick of recipes from a favourite magazine of mine, Fine Cooking.

This salad uses shavings of asparagus to make a crisply raw salad. While I can’t deny that scraping off strips of this particular vegetable with a potato peeler is not a job without its frustrations, the light leafiness of it all makes it more or less worth it, with the asparagus showing off its grassy-fresh flavour unfiltered by any cooking process.

I altered this recipe a bit, for example I didn’t have the cheese specified – didn’t have any cheese in fact, because of its fist-shakingly high prices – so I just left it out and upped the nut quotient instead. Either follow Fine Cooking’s original recipe or my adaptation below.
Shaved Asparagus Salad (feel free to change the title too if you think it has unappetisingly hairy connotations for the asparagus)
Dressing:

1 tablespoon rice or cider vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon honey
Salt and pepper to taste

Whisk altogether in a bowl that can hold all the salad and increase quantities of something to taste.

Salad:

As much asparagus as you like – maybe around five spears per person for a side.
As much rocket or fancy lettuce as you like – around a cupped handful per person is good.
1/2 cup toasted nuts such as almonds, hazelnuts or macadamias.

Remove the tips and ends of the asparagus spears, discard the ends and throw the tips them in with the dressing. Using a vegetable peeler, carefully remove thin strips of asparagus from each spear, until you can’t do any further, at which point just chop it finely lengthways. If you aren’t up to peeling, you could just chop the whole lot up finely lengthways. Add to the bowl of dressing along with the leaves, then divide between plates and sprinkle over the nuts.

Despite the fiddly chopping it really is a simple recipe and delicious too, with the lively astringence of the dressing making nice with the toasty almonds that I used here.

What I made while the salad sat around, allowing the dressing to penetrate its pores, was this Asparagus Ravioli with Brown Butter Sauce. I don’t have the mental energy to retype the recipe here so you might as well follow the link, especially since Fine Cooking did such a good job of it in the first place, and I didn’t really deviate (apart from to leave out the anchovy paste and mascarpone and replace them with truffle paste and sour cream, and also to fold the wonton wrappers in half instead of sandwiching two together, and I didn’t have any parmesan. And I just roughly chopped up the asparagus instead of blending it) (Oh, okay. But still.)

Whoever thought up using wonton wrappers to make ravioli deserves a hug and an autographed photo from their top three favourite celebrities, because it’s an absolutely genius plan. A neat stack of ready-made squares, ready to be filled, which magically stick to each other and cook quickly in the boiling water to the extent that even I, the gnocchi-ruiner, can feel confident and calm about them. Yes, gnocchi-ruiner. If this hyphenated phrase intrigues you, then you might like to read the scoop on kitchen disasters and how to cover your tracks, which I wrote for 3news.co.nz.

Once each folded parcel has been quickly boiled up, the wrappers become meltingly silky-soft, their thin surface only barely containing the grassy-green interior. A triumphant combination of textures and flavours, this is rich but light, soft but crunchy, filled with asparagus but dripping with nutty, heat-darkened butter (as was my face after eating these, they’re a bit floppy and ridiculous to wrangle with a fork but I can’t see a better option.)

 People of the internet reading this blog right now, I’d like to introduce to you…Tim’s and my new pet goldfish, Snacks! 

Snacks is calm and sure of hoof, with glinting fins that range from charcoal black to burnished golden. Snacks was donated to us by a person that Tim works with who had a slightly larger abundance of goldfish than was necessary. Snacks is also, not being overly sentient, really difficult to photograph so don’t mind the blurriness here please.
We were also able to drive out to this person’s house in the suburbs to pick up Snacks, now that Tim (a) has his restricted license and (b) is handily ute-sitting his dad’s vehicle while he’s overseas. It’s so much fun driving round with Tim, and opens up a whole new world of what I call “car humour”, that I’d never known before. For example, a really terrible, boring, slow adult contemporary-type song comes on the radio station. Turn it up loud in the middle of Tim’s sentence, make air drums just before the (slow) chorus and yell “Sing it Tim“, point an imaginary microphone at his face (keeping a respectful distance so he can concentrate on the road, of course) and if he does start to sing, interrupt him by yelling “this is such the song of our generation” or if it’s a particularly slow, mid-verse bit of the song: “I love this bit!”. Car humour.
_________________________________________________________
Title via: That initially flopsome musical Chicago, which starred the magnificent and late Jerry Orbach (yes, the dad from Dirty Dancing and the old guy from Law and Order) and its song Razzle Dazzle. While the footage I’ve linked to is incredible, please also watch his hoofer peer, Cabaret and Wicked’s Joel Grey (who, get this, is the literal father of Jennifer Grey who played Baby in Dirty Dancing) singing Razzle Dazzle with the muppets. Okay did you also know that Michael C Hall, aka TV’s Dexter, also played Billy Flynn on Broadway? With awesomeness? So did Chuck Cooper but sadly for us all, but maybe luckily for the succinctness of this paragraph, there’s no footage of that surfaced yet.
_________________________________________________________

Music lately:

Is not Biology by Girls Aloud one of the most amazing and weirdest songs ever by which all other songs should aspire to? When you think about it? And if that isn’t, then what about the Sugababes Freak Like Me mashup of Adina Howard and shiny boy Gary Numan? Which I’m either listening to or I’m not, by which I mean once I start it I have to repeat it about 12 times, I can’t just let it pass me by once.
__________________________________________________________

Next time: While asparagus is still pricey, rhubarb’s become cheap as, so I bought up large on it over the weekend to put it all in a large cake (well that’s my thinking so far) however I also found this super cool and also blisteringly hot chili sauce recipe that I liked the look of. Could go either way.


Also: I went to a Social Cooking class on Sunday and talked to the lovely Chef Philippe Clergue, which I’ll be writing up and likely publishing on my next blog.


Oh, and: I’ve been editing a new HungryandFrozen tutorial video for you! Will upload it to YouTube tonight which will take approximately six weeks and all our bandwidth, once that’s done I’ll let you know about it.

hey world, i yam what i yam

15 Comments


Today: a completely manageable, non-taxing, leisurely recipe and succinct-ish surrounding blog post for you.

Not!
But yeah, nah, really. I’m going to make this pretty quick. I’m tired. It’s my own fault, I stayed up late watching Parks and Rec with Tim the other night and now I’m paying for it, partly with exhaustion and efflorescent eyeballs, and partly with faint embarrassment that I’m really tired because of a TV series, not anything involving glamorous shoes or being outside the house. But then I think of Ron Swanson and such dedication all makes sense.
Yams seem to be reasonably priced these days, and what’s rather fantastic about them is that you can just throw them into boiling water, whole and untampered, and their doubtful looking solid red exteriors melt away and will combust into mash at the barest pressure of a fork’s tines. No peeling, no chopping, no trimming. The texture isn’t silky smooth, but as long as you can see that coming, you’re all good.
There is in the yam a light and clean sweetness, with an almost lemony astringence. This makes it entirely ideal to be sullied by rivulets of butter and crunchy fried garlic cloves. When you let the butter go brown in this way, every good thing about it is deepened and accentuated, and it becomes nutty and caramelly and salty and very, very wonderful.
Mashed Yams with Garlicky Browned Butter 

As I made this up on the spot (although am probably not the first person to eat this combination of ingredients) the quantities are really up to you. Go with what you need in your heart. I would suggest more yams than butter, but not to the point where you have to squint to taste it. Maybe 750g yams, 75g butter and 3 cloves garlic would be good for 2-3 people.
Yams
Butter
Garlic Cloves
Optional: buttermilk
Tip your yams, whole, into a good sized pot/pan and top up with water to cover them. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer away energetically. They’ll lighten up considerably. When you can easily plunge a fork into their flesh, they’re ready.
While they’re boiling, roughly chop up some garlic cloves. Heat a decent amount of butter – as much as you feel is necessary at the given time – in a saucepan and throw in the chopped garlic cloves.
Let the butter get properly brown and bubbling. It’ll separate into a kind of rust-red sediment and a nut-coloured liquid, and the garlic cloves will darken considerably. Remove from the heat and set aside.
Drain the cooked yams, and press down on them with a fork, stirring to mash them. Feel free to mash them with a decent splash of buttermilk if you like.
Divide between as many plates as matches your quantity of mash, and spoon over the butter.
This is a decent alternative to mash potato especially since, as I outlined already, you don’t have to peel or trim or chop yams. They take a little while to cook but not nearly as long as their denser-celled tuber friends. It tastes comforting, because it’s soft and buttery and warm, and it’s comforting to make, because you barely have to do anything. Probably the most stressful thing is trying to peel the garlic cloves and having their papery cases cling to you, static-like and persistent. The idea is to properly brown the garlic in the butter, each granule becoming chewy and rich, embiggening even those bitter, burning garlic cloves which I can’t seem to avoid lately.
Please continue to feel free to indulge me by voting for my cake on the Wellington on a Plate Bake Club photo competition. A massive thank you and held-slightly-too-long hug to everyone who has so far and shared it on their own page. Voting closes on the 25th, so after that no need to worry.
_________________________________________
Title via: La Cage Aux Folles, I Am What I Am. Yes, that song on the shampoo (or whatever it was) ad came from a Broadway musical. One in which George Hearn showed off his considerable lungs (and presumably legs, too.)
_________________________________________
Music lately:
Lady Day and John Coltrane from Gil Scott-Heron’s Pieces of a Man record. We found it recently and it has taken a lot for us to play anything else.
MF Doom, Fenugreek. Not sure if I like this best on its own or as sampled in Ghostface Killah’s 9 Milli Bros, but either way it’s a flipping sensational track.
_________________________________________
Next time: I made Salted Caramel Slice from the new Cuisine magazine. Be still my already struggling heart, it is mightily delicious.

i fought the slaw and the slaw won

13 Comments

The brain does many strange things, one of which is the way songs can get stuck in it, without reason or end. If stereos were the size of tic tacs, it’d make sense. “Oh, that’s why I keep hearing that song! My boombox got stuck in my ponytail again! Ha ha ha!” But this is not the case. It’s just the brain. For example: last weekend when Tim was away in Taihape, one song got itself persistently in my mind, repeating itself with an alarming stamina.

That song was A Bear Went Over The Mountain.
Sometimes it was like the record had a scratch in it, and I would hear nothing but a sinister refrain of “and all that he could see! And all that he could see! And all that he could see!” Yeah. I don’t know what qualities cause a song to do this, but sometimes I call my brain’s bluff by actually loving the song that gets stuck in my head, like Kiss From A Rose (which I may have played about six times in a row on YouTube recently) or Purea Nei.
Basically I just couldn’t bear that (bear!) alone, but it does lead into my next point: sometimes recipes do this to me too. The ingredients list curls around my inquisitive mental imaging faculties, lodging there fairly permanently till I can find the time to bring the recipe into existence. Luckily for me, the most recent time this happened, I didn’t have to wait too long. On Friday night Tim and I went to the house of of the terrific Kate and Jason for an evening of ceaseless hilarity and sustained deliciousness – homemade cheese, sublime sweet potato pie with a lattice top, polenta, spicy soup, soft dinner rolls filled with fried tomato slices and the crispest bacon – and several of these recipes came from a particular book called Simple Fresh Southern by these guys called The Lee Brothers. I wanted the recipe for the cheese but Kate talked me into taking home the whole book to borrow, and I am so glad, because the moment I flipped it open (wait – the moment the wine wore off and I flipped it open) and made eyes with their Cabbage and Lime Salad with Roasted Peanuts recipe, I knew I had to make it my own. And then all the rest of their recipes. This book is so cool.
I agree with you entirely that a salad based on cabbage might sound severe and unsexy and like the very last sort of thing you want to eat in winter when there are casseroles and puddings to be had. But after a few nights out enjoying abundant food and wine and with more such evenings on the nearing horizon, I honestly do just want to bury my face in a cool, astringent, mustardy salad with bursts of citrus sourness.
Besides, the crisp peppery shredded cabbage, tart lime segments and hot mustard are mellowed out considerably by all the salt, the oil in the dressing, and the creamy bite of the roasted nuts. You could serve it with fish, chicken, a dirty great big steak, with rice noodles under or stirred into it, and so on. Or even on the side of a big slow-cooked casserole with a hearty pudding to follow.
Cabbage and Lime Salad with Roasted Peanuts

From Simple Fresh Southern by the Lee Brothers


1/2 small red cabbage, trimmed, cored, and shredded/finely sliced
1/2 small green cabbage, treated in the same way
1 tablespoon salt
1 bunch fresh baby spinach leaves, finely sliced
1 lime
Juice of 1-2 further limes
1 tablespoon Dijon or similar mustard
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon peanut oil
1/2 cup roasted, unsalted peanuts (or whatever you’ve got!) roughly chopped

The recipe says to toss the cabbage with the salt, then sit it in a colander over a bowl for two hours so that lots of liquid can drain out. But honestly, not a drop of water was in the bowl after two hours. Maybe our cabbages are different here in New Zealand? You do as you please. Otherwise, mix together all the leaves in a large bowl. Trim the ends off the lime and peel it, then carefully slice it into segments, peeling off the membrane where you can, and tear these segments into small pieces. Toss them into the leaves too.
Whisk together the rest of the ingredients to make the dressing, and thoroughly mix this into the salad, and finally stir through the chopped nuts. Serve!
Note to yourself: I used just purple cabbage since I’m only feeding the two of us, I used cavolo nero instead of spinach and almonds instead of peanuts since that’s what I had, and if you get a bit stuck you could use lemons instead of limes and wasabi paste instead of mustard.
This salad is punchily delicious, awakening you from any wintery downtrodden-ness with every drop of lime juice you absorb. It’s also very pretty to look at, with its queenly purple and green gemstone colours.
(I mean fairytale queen, not the actual Queen of England – that would have to be a more pastel-toned salad.) (Also: I got the pretty, pretty bowl in a moment of sale-induced single-mindedness from Swonderful.)
As if Tim and I making friends and eating their food isn’t enough excitement, this afternoon in Wellington it started SNOWING. It hasn’t snowed in Wellington since 1995! Honestly, when I was a kid I didn’t know that it snowed anywhere in New Zealand but that’s because I grew up south of Auckland, not really within cooee of a snow-capped mountain. In the CBD where we live it was more rainy than snowy and it didn’t really settle but there was an unmistakable icing-sugar dusting of snowflakes in the air and it was thrilling.
____________________________________________________________
Title via: yes I’ve used this song before as a title holder but not in this way and besides, I’m very tired (just in case anyone’s watching closely.) I love the Dead Kennedy’s version of this which changes it to “and I won” but it’s hard to go past Buddy Holly and The Crickets’ singing that the Law did in fact win, which must’ve been fairly reassuring to the nervously suspicious adults of the time.
____________________________________________________________
Music lately:
Tim and I saw the stunning movie Pina tonight, which luckily gives as much attention to sound as it does visuals. Shake It is one such example of its glorious music.
Speaking of Tim, being the diamond that he is, he bought me a Judy Garland and Liza Minelli live record and I love it. It’s them at the London Palladium in the early sixties, and they’re quite adorable, given the often distinctly non-adorable circumstances of Garland’s life. Their personalised take on Hello, Dolly is very sweet and shows off how good their similar voices sound together.
______________________________________________________
Next time: Well I’ve loaded up on buttermilk to attempt more of the recipes in the Lee Brothers’ gorgeous book, and at the prompting of excellent lady Jo both via email and in person, since we were fortunate enough to see her twice this week, I’ll most definitely be pondering cupcakes for the SPCA Cupcake Day too…

the suburbs they are sleeping but she’s dressing up tonight

14 Comments

This wasn’t my intention. What I meant to present you with was a layered white chocolate and blackberry cake covered in 100s and 1000s sprinkles. But I left the caking too late in the day, forgetting how much heat their dense crumbs can hold onto, and the cake is still cooling on the bench now. While this Sunday started off sunny, it swiftly descended into greying darkness around 2.00pm, leaving my chances of photographing said cake with pleasing results significantly diminished.



But its stand-in of Fennel with Blue Cheese Buttermilk Dressing can still rightfully incite a little vaingloriousness within me. (Vainglorious! It’s a good word. I think I managed to force it in there validly.)
Nigella Lawson calls this dressing a “fabulously retro US-steakhouse-style starter” when it’s served over sliced iceberg lettuce. I wouldn’t know personally, but I can’t deny it’s a mood I’m happy to try evoke through food. Or anything. Speaking of US-steakhouse-style, last night I went to a cowgirl-themed birthday party which was not only the last word in how to feed a crowd (honestly: cornbread, ribs, fried onions, biscuits and gravy, three different pies for pudding) but also continued so late into the evening that it was suddenly early in the morning. I wouldn’t say I’m hungover as such…now…but I’m definitely trying to pummel weakly against the surprisingly firm and resilient punching bag of exhaustion. Just keep that in mind as you read.
(In case you’re wondering, that stack of books in the background includes a Mahalia Jackson biography, one of the Jason Bourne books, Margaret Atwood’s ‘Dancing Girls’ and ‘Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls’ – an original, not a reprint. Important.)
I didn’t have any iceberg lettuce, and couldn’t find any at the market or in the supermarket that looked satisfactorily perky and crisp. But I figured that fennel is not only in season, it also could provide that necessary water-cooled crunch. Further to that, its clean, aniseed flavour wouldn’t be intimidated by the rich, aggressively blue cheese. The thyme leaves have a dual purpose – firstly, the herbal flavour complements everything else going on and goes well with cheese. Secondly, a pale vegetable, covered in a pale lumpy milky liquid, does need some help in the looks department and the pretty purply-green leaves are pleasing to the eye.
Blue Cheese Buttermilk Dressing

I was simultaneously inspired by Nigella’s recipe from Kitchen and a recipe from an issue of Fine Cooking magazine. Nige’s didn’t need a food processor (considering what happened to it last week, we need some time apart) so she won. I simplified her recipe very slightly.

150g blue cheese, crumbled
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar
100ml buttermilk (or, if you don’t have any, plain unsweetened yoghurt possibly thinned with a little milk)

In a bowl, mash the cheese with a fork or a small whisk. Mix in the Worcestershire sauce and vinegar and then slowly stir in the buttermilk. Taste to see if it needs a pinch of salt. The kind of blue cheese you use will affect consistency of the texture, but it’s all good.

To serve:

2 large bulbs of fennel
Fresh thyme leaves from 2-3 stalks

Trim the base from the fennel, then slice vertically as best you can into uniform chunks and slices. Arrange the slices on a plate, spoon over as much dressing as you like, then tumble over the thyme leaves.

Serves 3-4 as a side dish (depending on the size of your fennel, really)
Keeping in mind that this is a boldly flavoured dish – you might want to run it past those who you’re serving in case they don’t like blue cheese or fennel. On the other hand, you’re putting in time and effort to feed them, so you could contrarily slam the plate in front of them and say “deal with it, fusspants!” (Or however you’d like to finish that sentence.)
Your options for using this dressing are multitudinous. Of course, there’s the original iceberg lettuce concept, and Nigella also recommends it over tomatoes and leftover beef. But its mix of sharp, salty and creamy flavours lends itself to many guises. I think you could also drizzle it over roasted beetroot; as a potato salad dressing; in a bacon sandwich; stirred through cooked, cooled mushrooms; as a sauce/dip for potato wedges; mixed through a coleslaw made of shredded cabbage and grated green apple…See? It’s a highly functional substance.
Lucky me: on Friday I was able to attend a mightily swanky lunch at The White House on Oriental Parade (to wit: Tim gave it an unprecedented five stars to in our Sunday Star-Times review of it a few months ago) as part of the launch of Visa Wellington on a Plate. Among the esteemed guests was Lucy Corry, author of food blog The Kitchen Maid, who presented me with a thyme plant after us talking about thyme back and forth on Twitter. I was already dazedly on a high after the terrifically delicious crab raviolo and crisp-edged snapper with lemon curd (yes it worked, and how) but the unexpected kindness of the plant-gift had me filled with good vibes. And it’s that very thyme plant whose leaves you see in the above recipe.
Later that night, Tim and I saw The Trip at Embassy (as part of the NZ Film Festival). I’d seen some episodes of the TV show version on the plane on the way to the UK earlier this year, and it seems like the film takes the pilot and then adds on an extra hour of action. Hilarity is inevitable when Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are stuck in small spaces together, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how monumentally funny it would be. If you get the chance to see it by some means or another – it’s not one you have to see in a cinema – then do. Something about the poster for this movie reminded me of Tim and I going to review cafes (which character we’re most like probably depends on the day) although we aren’t quite at the stage of competitively imimating Michael Caine…yet. We’re not above imitating Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon imitating Michael Caine though. (“Michael Caine. Talks. Very. Slowly”) My only complaint about the film was that Coogan didn’t mention his powerful performance in the important movie Hamlet 2.
________________________________________________________
Title via: Blur, Stereotypes, from their album 1996 album The Great Escape (significantly, the year my crush on Damon Albarn developed. Significantly for me, not so much for him. Yet.)
________________________________________________________
Music lately:

Francois Hardy, Tous Les Garcons Et les Filles. I can’t work out where I heard this song before – was it used in an ad campaign years ago? Maybe it was in the music from my old jazz dance classes. I don’t know, but it’s definitely familiar. That aside, it’s also really pretty and sad, good Sunday evening music. Which might mean it’s the kind of music you really shouldn’t play on a Sunday evening, come to think of it.
I bought the original London recording of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music from Slow Boat Records yesterday, and while it’s excellent, nothing tops Glynis Johns’ Send In The Clowns in my mind. However, feel free to compare levels of diction crispness between Johns and Judi Dench in her take on this standard.
_________________________________________________________
Next time: That cake, I promise. It will be resplendent.

since folks here to an absurd degree seem fixated on your verdigris

15 Comments

After a brief survey of four people (one of which was myself) I’d like to make the sweeping generalisation that Brussels sprouts are a bit like Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West: green, and misunderstood. So misunderstood. None of us could remember ever eating them in our childhood, but there was definitely the feeling that it was not a vegetable to welcome with open arms. Yes, plenty of people here in New Zealand must’ve eaten them, overboiled and sulphuric balls of punishment on the dinnerplate, but I can only hypothesise, or whatever comes at this stage of a scientific study, that pop culture has influenced a lot of my suspicion. Same reason I made my own earrings out of shells and beads and then wore them, sincerely. The Baby Sitters Club. I’m not saying that series of books is everyone’s reason for disliking on impact the Brussels Sprout, but I’m pretty sure it’s my reason. (Not that I can, admittedly, name a specific example, but I know it’s there.)

Anyway, I saw this recipe in Plenty, my Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook, called “Brussels Sprouts and Tofu”. And I thought, oh really? A plucky move, pitting two generally disliked ingredients against each other in one dish and working to stop the competition between them to see which can make the eater unhappy first. Now I love tofu, but this is not a sexy recipe title. Yet its bold simplicity appealed to me, as did the fact that brussels sprouts were very, very cheap at the vege market.
And if anyone knows how to de-misunderstand brussels sprouts, it’s Yotam Ottolenghi. He who pairs eggs with yoghurt and chilli and garlic with more garlic.
Interestingly the ingredients are very simple – the three main givers of flavour are chilli, sesame oil and soy sauce. For me, what seems important is the cooking methods: for the sprouts, you fry them till they’re browned and scorched in places. For the tofu, you marinate it while you’re getting everything else ready, then fry it up till the marinade is caramelised. You could probably do this to any kind of food and it would taste good, but here the ingredients really open up, come alive, I want to say snuggle into the flavour but that feels wrong…anyway, the sprouts become crunchy and juicy, their peppery flavour amplified by the smoky scorching. The tofu is salty and dense, with a crisp edge, its mildness subverted by the chilli.
This isn’t just ‘not bad…for Brussels sprouts and tofu’, any food would hope to taste this good! I served it on soba noodles, but it would be great on rice or alongside something else, or just as is. If tofu is nay your thing, the sprouts on their own would also make a fantastic side dish to a bigger meal. Seriously, I had to stop myself eating them all before returning them to the saucepan with the tofu. They’re good. At last.
Brussels Sprouts and Tofu

Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty. There are mushrooms in the original recipe but as Tim’s unfortunately not a fan I thought it’d be a bit harsh to leave them in along with everything else.

2 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons sesame oil (I reduced this to 1…sesame oil is expensive!)
1 teaspoon rice vinegar (I didn’t have any, used balsamic vinegar, worked a treat)
1 tablespoon maple syrup (I only had golden syrup, likewise was great)
150g firm tofu
500g Brussel sprouts
Mint, coriander, sesame seeds and (optional) toasted pumpkin seeds to serve

Whisk together the chilli sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar and syrup, then chop the tofu into cubes and add them to the bowl. Set aside while you get on with the next step.

Trim the bases off the brussel sprouts and remove any flappy excess leaves. This’ll probably take a while. I slightly misunderstood the instructions on how to slice them but I don’t think it matters – Ottolenghi requests thick slices from top to bottom but I just sliced them roughly into quarters.


Heat about 2 tablespoons plain oil in a pan, and once it’s properly hot, add half the sprouts and a little salt. It’s good to turn them round so that a flat surface is touching the bottom of the pan, but it’s no biggie. Leave them for a couple of minutes – don’t stir them if you can help it, but they won’t take long to cook through. When the sides touching the pan are a deep brown, set them aside and repeat with the rest of the sprouts. Remove them all from the pan, and carefully – using tongs is good – transfer the pieces of tofu from the bowl of marinade to a single layer in the hot pan. The marinade may splutter and sizzle a little at this point. Reduce the heat, cook the tofu for about two minutes a side till caramelised and crisp.

Remove the pan from the heat and immediately throw in the rest of the marinade, plus the sprouts. You’re supposed to garnish it with coriander, but I had none, and only a tiny bit of mint – so in the interest of visual interest, I toasted some pumpkin seeds and scattered them across – pretty and delicious.
By the way, my parents got a kitten. A tiny, tiny, outrageously cute kitten who they’ve named Poppy. Looook at her with her enormous blue eyes and tiny tail. As you may remember, the recently late Rupert left my parents a one-cat family, and the remaining cat Roger isn’t as impressed by newcomer Poppy as everyone else seems to be. Look, is it morally dubious that I’m suddenly filled with motivation to plan a trip home? I’m narrowing my eyes suspiciously even as I type the question; I think the answer’s yes…but Poppy’s so cute that I can’t feel that bad about it.
__________________________________________________________
Title via: The aforementioned misunderstood character Elphaba, as played by the amazing Idina Menzel in the musical Wicked, singing The Wizard and I. Sigh.
__________________________________________________________
Music lately:
Karaoke, by the Good Fun – it is both good, and fun. I heard this song a long time ago but this official recording has scrubbed it up well. Like the Brussel sprouts recipe, this can rest on its own laurels…it isn’t just ‘not bad, for young guys.’

Marvin Gaye, How Sweet It Is. It’s always a good time.
__________________________________________________________
Next time: I found an amazing recipe for black sesame brownies, but I’m not entiiiirely happy with how they turned out – may have to re-try and then report back.

every time I eat vegetables it makes me think of you

9 Comments
While I completely welcome, luxuriate in, and devote a lot of time to generating the puddings and soups and casseroles that Winter brings…sometimes it’s nice to interrupt all that, suspend the stodge-production and create something altogether more Spring-like and vegetable-focussed.
Although these are essentially just small pies, their unusual, sesame-studded pastry is light and crisp, and their filling has soft, caramelised vegetables contending with salty, fragrant miso. And I managed to make them while feeling physically dilapidated by a cold, which makes me think that they’re not that fiddly to make, either. (I’ve still got this cough, by the way, but I think as far as the battle goes I’m now winning.)
I found the recipe in the latest CLEO magazine (who, I should add, have been very good to me over the last year or so, if you see my “Attention” tab up the top there) and it’s by a clever lady called Janella Purcell who has a cookbook called Eating For The Seasons. Which, judging by this one excellent recipe, is probably a really good book. Despite what looks like Mistral font used on the cover.
The pastry is gluten-free, which is fun, especially if you can’t eat gluten yourself. I’m pretty sure that these are also vegan, so if you’re wondering what it is that’s even holding them together…read on.

Roast Vegetable Sesame Tarts

Adapted from a recipe by Janella Purcell, found in the July issue of CLEO magazine.

Pastry:

1 1/2 cups brown rice flour, or spelt flour, or whatever flour you’ve got really – even regular flour (which, I hope I don’t have to spell out to you, will mean these are no longer gluten-free)
1/2 cup sesame seeds, toasted if you have the energy (I didn’t)
2 tablespoons olive, rice bran or avocado oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce or Tamari sauce
3/4 cup boiling water

Combine the flour and sesame seeds in a bowl. Tip in the oils, the water, and the soy sauce and mix together. Knead well till it forms a soft ball, then rest for 30 minutes while you get on with everything else.

Filling:

Olive oil
1 onion, finely sliced
1 cup pumpkin or kumara (I used kumara) diced or thinly sliced
1 fennel bulb, sliced
1 tablespoon white miso paste
Toasted seeds to garnish – pumpkin, sunflower, or just more sesame seeds if you like. Pine nuts or almonds would be nice too, but seeds are less expensive and just as delicious.

Heat the olive oil in a pan and slowly cook the onions till caramelised. While this is happening, roast the vegetables on a tray at 200 C/400 F for about 20 minutes.

Once your onions are cooked, but while your veges are still roasting, roll out the pastry fairly thinly and use a cookie cutter or similar (I used one of those ramekins that you might make creme brulee in) to stamp out circles of pastry. It’s a little different to the usual – quite springy and playdough-y, and you’ll need to re-roll it a couple of times. Just bear with it though, it will work. Fit your circles of pastry into a greased and floured/silicon muffin tray, not worrying if you get folds of pastry, it’s all good if it looks a bit ramshackle – and bake them, as is, for 15 minutes.

Once the cases are out of the oven, dab a tiny bit of miso paste on the inside of each, then top with your roast vegetables and a sprinkling of toasted seeds. They should remove easily from the muffin tray – and then eat!

Makes 12.

Note – I made the following changes:

– Halved the recipe (so you can easily double what’s above)
– Used spelt flour instead of brown rice flour, as that’s what I had
– You’re supposed to use all sesame oil in the pastry but as it’s expensive and precious I cut it back and replaced some with other oil, but you do as you like
– I only had black sesame seeds, but it’s all good
– Used soy sauce instead of Tamari as that’s what I had
– Changed the vegetables a little – the original recipe didn’t have fennel and had pumkin instead of kumara
– I think that’s it. One other thing to note is that different flours absorb water at a different rate so don’t be afraid to add more flour if your pastry dough is a sticky mess, or more liquid if it’s not coming together. Just a little at a time though.
So as you can see I adapted this recipe quite a bit, and I think you could continue to do so yourself. Once you’ve got the pastry cases sorted, it’s really all a matter of what’s in your fridge.
For example, the following could be delicious…
– Roast capsicums and tomatoes, with toasted chopped almonds and a little orange zest
– Sliced leeks, softened and caramelised in a pan, with feta
– Roast mushrooms with thyme, then chop them up, fill the tarts and top with pumpkin seeds
– Roasted zucchini with capers
– Raw grated beetroot, coriander leaves and toasted walnuts
– Slices of avocado and raw zucchini, topped with mint…
– Mince and cheese! Yay. Or, like, slow-braised beef ragu and parmesan.
I’m also thinking about removing the soy sauce from the pastry, using a plain oil, and filling the cooked cases with sweet things instead, like berries, or chocolate mousse, or – best of all – nuts and caramel sauce. And beyond that, I’m also wondering if you could just roll out the pastry and stamp out and bake awesome crackers from it.
But all those imaginary tarts aside, how did the actual ones that I made taste?
Amazing.
So delicious. The pastry is all nutty and biscuity, and just a tiny bit salty – a very addictive combination. I personally am glad I added the fennel, its aniseedy freshness and quick-to-caramelise, oniony structure was quite lush against the sweeter softer kumara. And they taste really, really good cold as well, to the point where I was wishing I hadn’t halved the original recipe. Twelve mini tarts between Tim and myself just wasn’t enough.

Hooray for pie!

_________________________________________________________


Title via: The Ramones, and the song really is called Every Time I Eat Vegetables I Think Of You. I love them (the Ramones, but also vegetables.)
_________________________________________________________

Music lately:
Ella Fitzgerald, When I Get Low I Get High. I think partly because of its compelling Puttin’ On The Ritz style fast swing, Fitzgerald’s gorgeous voice, and partly the fact that it’s just so short, is why I would’ve listened to this song roughly a squillion times over the last week or two.
Matthew and Son by Cat Stevens, I’ve said it before but I love this song so much that it’s always worth repeating: oh my gosh I love this song so much. The video (if you click through) is also quite incredible. His shoulder-pumping dance, the strangely bland and unaffected expressions on the young people’s faces, the bit around 1.55 where he stares down into the camera while singing *fans self*
__________________________________________________________
Next time: Billy Crudup’s Grandma’s Chocolate Fudge Pie. It’s wild.

o souperman

11 Comments

This soup actually cured my cold. Either that or my cold was on its way out and the bold quantities of garlic, ginger, and chilli in this soup merely opened the door for it, put its hand in the small of its back (the soup’s hand, the cold’s back…I think) and kindly but firmly steered it outwards.

Soup isn’t always the most exciting thing to have for dinner – it’s generally never fried, crispy, crunchy, chocolate dipped, or any of those things that can be so, so good about eating. However this recipe is courtesy of Yotam Ottolenghi, whose way with food is always exciting. That said, you’ve got to make sure you really read the ingredient list, simple as it looks, and don’t miss anything out. Each thing, from the sticks of celery to the bay leaves play their important part, allowing the soup to neatly dodge the whole “wait, what? This is just bits of herbs floating in warm water” vibe.
Unfortunately I can’t avoid my “awful low-lighting and also prosaic soup composition photos” vibe. First comes the better control of photography on a Winter’s night, then comes the better composition. I promise you I’m reading…well, looking for, my camera’s instruction manual.
Garlic Soup

From Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty

Serves 4

4 shallots (or an onion) finely sliced
3 celery sticks, finely chopped
40g butter (optional – just use the oil if you like)
2 T olive oil
25 garlic cloves, finely sliced (yes, peeled and sliced, sorry)
2 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger root
1 tsp finely chopped thyme leaves
200ml white wine
generous pinch saffron threads (optional…because I accidentally left it out)
4 bay leaves
1 litre good-quality vegetable stock
1/2 tsp sea salt
Parsely, coriander and Greek yoghurt and harissa to serve.

Fry your shallots or onions and celery in the butter and oil till soft and translucent – keep an eye on them, don’t let them turn brown. Add the garlic and continue to cook over a low heat, then stir in the ginger and thyme, followed by the wine which will bubble up and reduce down a bit. Then add the saffron, bay leaves, salt and stock and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Note: I acknowledge peeling and slicing all that garlic is a big pain, but it’s worth it in terms of flavour. Maybe a buddy you can enlist, in exchange for feeding them soup?
Ottolenghi says to blitz with a hand blender or in a food processor but I didn’t have the energy for that – all the lifting and the assembling and the cleaning on a cold dark night…and it seemed just fine as it was.
As I said, every ingredient is important – the wine against the hot pan, evaporating into concentrated savoury goodness, the vigorous burst of ginger heat, the softened, traditional flavours of the onion and celery. The heavy spoonful of yoghurt isn’t exactly essential but I would definitely not leave out the green garnishy things on top – coriander’s fresh taste goes well with the rest of the soup, but it also makes it look a bit more presentable. If you don’t have harissa (I did) you’ve got a number of options – stir in some sambal oelek, chopped red chilies, or replace the olive oil with chili oil. Or, of course, ignore the chili altogether.
I realise I’ve spent nearly this whole thing saying how not-fun soup is, but this stuff is truly gorgeous (not-not-fun?), a broth of flavours unfurling like flannel sheets grabbed straight from the dryer – warming, comforting, lightly textured.
Work took me down to Christchurch on Saturday, and I was fortunately able to have a quick catch up with Mika of the mighty fine Millie Mirepoix blog who coincidentally was also down from Wellington. The chilling rubble of half-formed houses and the constant road-blocking cordons, the cracks in the road and the buildings that you had to look at twice to register that they were leaning on an angle or sunken in the middle made me feel a bit queasy and sad inside and it would’ve been easy to get stuck focussing on that. Not that it shouldn’t be focussed on (it should! But in a “now what” kind of way, maybe? Not really my place to say) but what I mean is, it was really good to see a friendly face amongst it all, and to contribute in a small way to the local economy by getting coffee and a really, really good Cherry Ripe Slice at Beat Street Cafe and another fantastic coffee from Black Betty’s. If you’re heading to Christchurch I totally recommend these places – they’re open, they’re friendly and they’re serving up seriously good food.
________________________________________
Title via: Laurie Anderson’s intriguing, staccato yet tranquil O Superman. Admittedly I don’t know a lot of her stuff (only really this and Language Is A Virus), and it can be, to someone attuned to songs being a bit verse-chorus-verse-chorus and so on, a bit challenging, but I do like it a lot, and not just because Idina Menzel cites Anderson as someone she studied for her character of Maureen in RENT (I heard Anderson first, so!)
________________________________________
Music lately:
Lena Horne – who died just over a year ago now – and her beautiful version of I Got Rhythm from the Lovely and Alive record.
Joy Division, Love Will Tear Us Apart. Heard it this morning for the first time in ages on the radio. It’s a bit obvious, but it’s always good. (Speaking for the original only, not cover versions…)
____________________________________
Next time: My invention of gingerbeer scones possibly hasn’t been thought of before because they weren’t as wildly gingery as I thought they’d be…but they were still delicious, and I took photos of them anyway.

we go in a group, we tour in a troupe, we land in the soup

9 Comments

This minestrone has many, many good things going for it. You can make it up as you go along to suit what you’ve got (that’s what I did). It doesn’t cost much. It’s filling. It’s delicious. It’s vegan. It’s full o’ vitamins. It made me feel better about the increasingly forlorn group of parsnips in the fridge, it might have a similar effect on you. Depending on what you add to it, it can be as summery or as stodgily wintry as you like. And it takes hardly any of whatever effort you’ve got left at the end of the day.


Maybe it’s just me, and I realise being lacklustre isn’t the best way to push a recipe, but the one negative about this soup is…with all that good-for-you worthiness and vegetables-only content it’s not necessarily the most wildly exciting thing to be eating. If you’re up for it, some fresh, buttery scones would be fantastic alongside, or at the least some (also buttered) toast.
However while you wouldn’t think there’d be much to it (for example, because I told you) it’s delicious and sustaining and comforting and, as I said, pretty cheap too. All good things now, and indeed at any time. And while I love stirring chilli and spices into food, what could be seen as holding this soup back is also part of its charm – the simplicity of flavour. Much of it comes from the alchemy of stirring onions over heat and simmering the sweet, starchy parsnips and kumara. They lift it from being a bowl of aimlessly boiled vegetables into something pretty superb.
Undemanding Minestrone
Use whatever related vegetables you have: a combination of leeks, other kumara varieties, potato, frozen peas as well as canned beans/chickpeas/lentils would all work here.
1 onion
4 spindly or 1 fat parsnip
1-2 zucchini
1/2 a big orange kumara
Handful of small pasta like risoni or the bashed up remains of a packet of pasta or a few tablespoons long grain white rice.
Olive oil, salt and pepper. If you don’t have olive oil, use butter instead.

Slice the onion up thin. Heat the oil in a wide pan, and stir the onion slices in it over a gentle till properly cooked and browned slightly but not blackened. Grind in some salt. Chop all the rest of your vegetables into small chunks, add them to the hot pan and stir for about five minutes till they’ve started to become tender and have gained some colour.

Pour over enough water to come an inch above the vegetables, bring to a good bubbling simmer and tip in the pasta (or rice). Allow to simmer gently for another ten minutes or so, until the pasta is cooked through.
At this point you can leave it covered until you need to reheat and eat it – if this is any longer than a couple of hours then put it in the fridge.
As I said, one of the cool things about this minestrone is that you can add what you like to it depending on what you have. Its simplicity is great, but don’t let that stop you. Tomatoes. Canned beans. Finely chopped cabbage. Barley. Carrots. Pesto. Chilli sauce. Whatever you’ve got, this minestrone can probably accommodate it. It’s magic as is though, the pasta grains swelling up and absorbing the liquid flavoured by its vegetable inhabitants, the sweetness of the starchier ingredients stared down by the bolder onion and zucchini.
Meals like this are our thing at the moment. I’m away this weekend and next weekend for work and then the weekend after that, Tim and I take off on our Massive Exciting Overseas Trip so as well as wanting to eat things that don’t cost much, it’s good to get through whatever’s in the fridge. That said, I did run into Millie Mirepoix at the supermarket today and was convinced (okay, convinced myself, but she was an enabler) to buy a couple of gorgeous, perfumed quinces, which will need some fairy immediate attention.
I haven’t even thought that much about what I’ll do with this blog while I’m away – I think I’ll try to get a post done as close to our leaving time as possible and then just leave it as is, hoping for the best that you’ll all be there when I get back. As Christine Ebersole as Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale in Grey Gardens said, “when violets return in Spring, will you?” I’m not sure it’s all that relevant really considering New Zealand’ll be heading towards winter come April, but this song makes me buckle at the knees with its beauty and I just like a chance to link to it semi-gratuitously.
___________________________________________
Title via: Together, Wherever from the always quotable, always listenable Gypsy, a musical I would really love to see for real one day, till then making do with a couple of different cast recordings and my DVD of Bette Midler’s made for TV movie version of it. I also found this amazing clip of Liza and Judy singing an abridged version of this song…I love you youtube.
___________________________________________

Music lately

Till Tomorrow by David Dallas, I love this new video of his by Special Problems with its constantly moving, animated wandering hotdog and mustachioed donut visuals. Plus the bouncing, offbeat rhyming calling to mind, in a really good way, Can I Kick It?

Thunder On The Mountain by Wanda Jackson. Another of her tracks that sound both fresh and ancient, with a fast beat, full-on horns, and Jackson’s deliciously roguish voice.
________________________________________
Next time: either way probably something in a jar because I’ve still got to make that mango chutney, plus I’m halfway through making this recipe for dried fig and rhubarb jam from my Aunt Daisy cookbook.

i’ve bean waiting so long, to be where i’m going

6 Comments

Have I got a relatively exciting bean salad for you. Bean salad in and of itself isn’t all that thrilling, but compared to other bean salads this one is pretty special. Aaand I think I’ve used up my quota of saying “bean salad” just there. It was never something I sought out as a kid, although it’s not like my tastebuds were all that sophisticated – mind you neither is bean salad. I do remember eying it up at the deli counter of the supermarket. It looked dubious, a pile of small brown and green pebbles bathed generously in a tub of watery vinegar. This recipe is neither dubious nor watery. It’s verging on sexy. Again…relatively.

I found it while searching for something else entirely on Cuisine’s website and was tangentially inspired, thinking it would be an awesome summer dinner – filling, fast, cheap, oven barely required. As I’ve veered well away from the original, you too can muck round with the following recipe. If you want to use cannellini beans or whatever, no worries. If you want to use more than three kinds, be my guest. If you want to use lemon juice instead of cider vinegar because that’s what you’ve got, then you’re more than welcome to. I included the avocado oil and nigella seeds because I got them for Christmas (thanks, Mum and Dad!) but also because I wanted their respective mellow richness and subtle oniony kick. However you use what you like. As long as there’s some form of bean involved, otherwise…you’re not even really making this recipe at all.
Bean Salad with Poppyseed Dressing

Inspired by this recipe by Fiona Smith from Cuisine magazine.

1 can borlotti beans
1 can chickpeas (I found some super intriguing red chickpeas on special, but regular is obviously fine.)
Roughly 1 cup frozen edamame/soybeans (I say frozen because I presume that’s how you got ’em) You could use frozen peas or broad beans instead.
Handful of almonds
Mint, to serve

Cook your soybeans in boiling water – I tend to throw the beans and the water in the pan at the same time so they all heat up together, as I imagine it’ll shave a couple of minutes off the cooking time. Drain and refresh under cold water. In a hot pan – you can use the same one once the beans are drained – briefly toast the almonds, and then slice up roughly.

Dressing:

3 tablespoons decent-tasting oil. I used avocado, but olive or peanut oil would be great.
2 tablespoons cider vinegar (or lemon or lime juice)
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons poppyseeds
1 fat clove garlic, finely chopped
A pinch of nigella seeds OR cumin seeds (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste.

In a large bowl, whisk together the oil, the vinegar, and the honey. Tip in the poppyseeds, the garlic, the nigella seeds if using and a pinch of seasalt (or a small pinch of regular salt) plus some pepper if you like. Whisk again. Drain the two cans of beans from their creepy can-liquid, and tip into the bowl of dressing along with the cooked soybeans. Using a spatula or large spoon, carefully fold the lot together so that everything becomes properly covered with the dressing, but none of the canned beans get too crushed.

Transfer into the bowl you’re going to serve it from, and top with the almonds and the mint. Or just add both to the bowl you’ve mixed it in if you want to save on dishes.

This salad is brilliant – light, filling, flavoursome, and kinda pretty as far as bean salads go. There’s something texturally satisfying about the combination of soft canned beans and the bite-ier, nutty green soybeans. The dressing also pleases, with its balance of sweet, sharp, salty, rich, and crunchy, and soaks flavoursomely into the otherwise mild beans. The almonds and mint are really just there to make it seem more exciting (something about a plate of beans doesn’t seem like anyone’s first choice) but contribute in a way that you’d want them there every time.
This made enough for dinner alongside some brown rice and sliced, fried zucchini, with the leftover rice stirred into the beans to take for dinner at the Botanic Gardens. It was night one of the ASB Gardens Magic and we saw the wonderful Nudge (standing in for the Thomas Oliver Band). It started to rain about ten minutes into their show but we stuck around and had a fantastic night, first watching people dance round in the rain and then joining in ourselves.
Speaking of rain, but in more horrifying quantities, the dreadful flooding in Australia has been on my mind a lot. The number of deaths seems to rise like the water itself, and it must be awful to have everything you know just…underwater. For what it’s worth, my heart goes out to everyone affected by it (including all the animals), and I hope this land of extreme weather settles down soon.
Having finished my first week back at work (hitting the ground at a brisk canter, this is a busy time for us) I can only conclude that my heart and brain are both at the beach. Feels like a squillion years ago that the most taxing decision I had was which book to read (answer: Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend, Witi Ihimaera’s Tangi, a tribute to Jennifer Paterson, and half of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock.)
__________________________________________
Title via: Gotta say, when I started typing this up I thought “ha! There must be sooooo many songs that use the word ‘been’ which I can twist for my purposes.” But with my aforementioned brain at the beach, Sunshine of Your Love by Cream was all I could think of. It’s a mighty fine song, but I know there’s something better out there. Hopefully for all of us my brain returns to its rightful location soonish.
__________________________________________
Music lately:
The aforementioned Nudge. They crop up here and there in Wellington and are fantastic live, all three members being fearsomely talented and easily watchable.
Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, Happy Days Are Here Again/Get Happy. Too beautiful.
__________________________________________
Next time: I managed to procure from Giapo, via Twitter, a recipe for Cocoa Sorbet. Yay for Twitter, and yay for you if it turns out decent because I’ll be blogging about it.

sunshine is a friend of mine…

7 Comments
I’ve got about a squillion things to get done tonight (including “make your own muesli” “watch the rest of The Simpsons season 4” “PACK YOUR BAG ALREADY” and “have an early night so you can get better”) because I’m flying up to Auckland for a conference for the next three days…and I’ve been annoyingly sick for ages now, a rotating cast of germs is using my body as a stage, with coughing, sneezing, headaches, feeling weak and insomnia all starring. So to get it crossed off the list I’m trying to make this post relatively succinct. I don’t even know what the word for this is but I’m also trying to avoid that situation where I’ll write a sentence then delete half of it then rewrite it then delete it all and repeat that over again till I suspect I have actually got no thoughts at all about the soup.

The soup in question, luckily, stirs up heaps of thoughts, even though it’s more or less just corn and capsicums and water. For all that Nigella Lawson barely has to murmer an item’s name to send armies of viewers hunting tirelessly through supermarkets for pomegranates and sugar roses and and tiny whisks (surprisingly useful), hot damn does she have some economically and nutritiously sound recipes.
I love corn in all its various alter egos, from the canned creamed corn on toast that was a regular weekend breakfast as a kid, to the softest polenta (where I’ll amuse myself by feeding it with butter which melts into the grains – both yellow, so it’s deliciously difficult to notice the saturation point). Corn fritters can be stodgy and damp and gross, but done well it’s easy to see how they managed to become as ubiquitous as camembert and cranberry paninis (now that I never liked) in cafe cabinets. I don’t think I’d ever really had corn soup before, but I wish I’d had this recipe a few years back when Tim and I were trying to scrape together an existence while scraping the mould off our student flat’s walls as it’s a cheap, nutritious and satisfying meal (let’s be honest though, we sent ourselves off to university, no-one forced that pennilessness on our relatively comfortable lives). Not to mention this soup is aggressively cheerful to look at, if you subconsciously associate ‘yellow’ with ‘happiness’ like I guess I must do. Well, Nigella does it too, calling this ‘Sunshine Soup’.
Sunshine Soup

From Nigella Lawson’s Kitchen

1 yellow pepper
1 orange pepper
2 teaspoons garlic oil
1 litre vegetable or chicken stock, whether homemade, powder, cube or concentrate, preferably decent stuff
500g frozen sweetcorn kernels

Set your oven to 250 C. Cut out the core and seeds from the peppers and then slice thickly. Lay them on a baking sheet, drizzle with the oil and roast for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring the stock to the boil, add the corn and bring back to the boil again, simmering for about 20 minutes.

Remove about half a cupful of corn for later, then blitz the rest, in batches if necessary, along with the peppers in a food processor. Serve with the reserved corn stirred back into it.
Because of the starchy, fibrous nature of corn this will never turn into a velvety puree, but it’s worth digging out the food processor for, otherwise all you’ve really got is corn floating in water. Leaving that visual aside, this is delicious stuff – deep bowls full of golden, fragrant sweet flavour. It is surprisingly hearty despite, as I said, not having much to it.
Speaking of, that’s all there is to this tonight.
_______________________________________________
Title via: Baltimore’s sparkily dance-tastic Rye Rye and her MIA-chorussing track Sunshine.
_______________________________________________
Music lately that I’m too tired to talk about properly:
Bang Bang, new single from the amazing Ladi6, who has just released her new album The Liberation Of… More on her later, as we’re seeing her live at San Fransisco Bath House on Saturday night. Can’t wait.
While we’re local, Homebrew’s 12” Last Week arrived in the mail today in all its bright blue vinyl glory. I’m not sure if “hard to dislike” is a proper compliment. These are seriously enjoyable sounds from a master of words and familiar stories. Love it.
_______________________________________________
Next time: I better be better, I’ll definitely have more time on my hands and words in my head, and after all this dinner it’s probably about time for some baking…