Category: Side Dishes and Snacks

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

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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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…

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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.
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Title via: Baltimore’s sparkily dance-tastic Rye Rye and her MIA-chorussing track Sunshine.
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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.
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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…

here comes the brand new flava in your ear

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While I’m usually as inspired by Cuisine magazine and its contents as the next person, the July issue that arrived in the mailbox a few days ago seemed to make me want to cook even more than I usually do. Be aware: this is some high-level longing. Inside its pages is an interview with Yotam Ottolenghi, who, apart from having an extremely cool name, has developed a small empire of eateries in the UK (the name Ottolenghi is really built to carry an empire, I’m not sure mine is) and penned a cookbook here and there too. He has a new one out called Plenty, of which a sampling of recipes were featured in Cuisine. From this one alone I think I would, at the very least, go make puppy-dog eyes at Plenty in a bookshop and stroke its elegant cover thoughtfully. (Hello, at $70 – sure, it’s probably worth actually buying, but at this stage the only headway I can afford is to make significant eye contact with it.)

The thing that attracted me to this recipe was not just that I magically had all the ingredients – (except the green chilli but I made up for this by adding a daring spoonful of chilli paste to the sauce; I substituted kumara for butternut because that’s what I had) – but that the combination of flavours seemed so new and yet so obviously meant to be together. I’d never had cardamom like this before or poured tahini over kumara. I wanted to try it, and immediately.

Roasted Kumara with Lime, Yoghurt Tahini Sauce and Chilli

Adapted from a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi from his book Plenty, in the July Cuisine magazine.

2 whole limes
4 Tablespoons olive oil1 large kumara, or enough to make about 900g (or of course, butternut)2 tablespoons cardamom pods
1 teaspoon ground allspice100g plain, Greek-style yoghurt
30g tahini
1 green chilli, thinly slicedcoriander leaves
Sea salt
Preheat oven to 210 C. Trim the tops and tails off the limes, stand on a chopping board and carefully slice off the peel and pith (a bit like this recipe here). Quarter the limes from top to bottom, and cut each quarter into thiin slices (basically – you want really thin slices of lime. The instructions are a little fiddly.) Place the slices in a small bowl, sprinkle with a little sea salt and pour over one tablespoon of the olive oil. If you have a really, really nice olive oil this is the place to use it.

Cut the butternut or kumara into slices about 1cm thick. Lay them on a baking tray. Grind the cardamom pods in a pestle and mortar (or you could probably use a food processor or something) so the seeds are extracted, and then discard the greenish pods (this took forever! The recipe does not mention this fact!) and continue to work them into a rough powder. Add the allspice and remaining oil (I used only about a tablespoon or so) and brush over the slices, sprinkle with a little salt and place in the oven for 15 minutes or until tender. Remove from the oven.
Meanwhile, whisk together the yoghurt, tahini, a tablespoon of lime juice squeezed from one of the slices chopped earlier, 2 tablespoons of water and a pinch of sea salt. To serve, arrange the slightly cooled slices of butternut or kumara on a plate, drizzle with the yoghurt sauce, spoon over the lime slices and scatter the coriander and chilli over the top.

These flavours together were so stunning. After one mouthful I involuntarily cried “Damn this is good!” and defied anyone within my empire (Tim) not to agree with me. Luckily he liked it too.

Here’s what this plate is serving you: the soft, satiny, caramelised slices of sweet kumara, roasted with lemony, tongue-numbing cardamom and cooled with earthy, nutty, tangy yoghurt and tahini sauce. The wince-inducing sharpness of the limes is somehow softened during their brief olive oil and salt spa session, leaving only pure, juicy lime flavour. You know what perky lift the coriander brings, that’s why it’s so popular. The chilli that I added into the sauce brought a little necessary dark heat. We had this with rice and it was a small but perfect dinner for two. You could leave out the yoghurt and make this completely vegan or serve it alongside a gingery roasted chicken or sesame and soy-marinated steak. It’s something special all right. So special I wheeled out alllllll those adjectives.

Speaking of adjectives…

On Monday Tim and I were fortunate enough to see Wanda Jackson performing live at the San Francisco Bath House. At 75 years of age her voice is as menacing as it ever was and she put on an amazing show, revisiting old favourites (Let’s Have A Party – hooo!) and new zingers, with stories of how she got to be where she is. Afterwards she appeared on the floor and waited patiently to sign photos for everyone, Tim and myself included – we got squeezed to the back by some understandably, but undeniably pushy folk so she looked a little dazed by the time our turn rolled round, but was still friendly. She’s often mentioned in conjunction with dating Elvis and for Jack White producing her next album but far from being defined by the men in her life she appeared on stage as who she is – an incredibly talented, powerful, gracious woman.

In my last post I mentioned the All Whites’ exciting trajectory in the FIFA World Cup – Tim and I got up and trudged to the pub in the freezing cold at 2am Thursday night to witness their final game of the tournament against Paraguay. While they didn’t win they definitely didn’t lose either – they remain one of the few unbeaten teams of the whole shebang and truly, when you compare the amount of times that Paraguay could have scored, but didn’t, and our few chances at a goal, it was a fairly astonishing game. ___________________________________________________

Title via: Craig Mack’s superfine Flava In Ya Ear from Project: Funk Da World.
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Music lately:

Wanda Jackson’s devastatingly good Shakin’ All Over, produced by Jack White for Third Man Records. On Monday night Jackson was wearing this white, heavily fringed sweatshirt (it reminded me a little of a pink sweater I used to have as a kid with a giant purple fringed V-shape across the front, I called it my “Barbie Goes West” outfit because I was cool like that) which she used to great effect in performing this song. I love it!

Devo’s new-ish song Fresh from their album Something For Everybody. I do love a song that exercises its right to multiple tempos and both Fresh and Shakin’ All Over do this staggeringly well.
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Next time: I did promise pavlova and it is on its way, but I also made some seriously enticing homespun marshmallows today and they might well jump the queue. In other news Tim and I have embarked on a side-project together, a little site largely devoted to music called 100s and 1000s, check it out if you’d like to…

looking through a glass onion

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It is so, so freezing in Wellington lately, that straight-through-your-clothes harsh chill which makes getting out of bed in the morning that much more aggrieving. I was in Christchurch and Dunedin over the weekend for work which was also an intensely cold experience, not to mention pretty exhausting (can’t say I’ve been sleeping well recently, and sitting in clenched frustration for an hour and a half on a plastic chair in the Dunedin airport where there is nothing to do while waiting for your flight, followed by a further hour and a half’s wait at the Christchurch airport will take it out of you. This is New Zealand, not the mighty plains of Canada, I don’t see why we need flights with stop-overs.) Hence why it has been a while since I’ve blogged.

There’s not much I love doing more in winter than sitting by a roaring heater with a pile of my cookbooks, going through and imagining what shenanigans I could get up to. Cooking in winter is fun – all those long-simmered warming dishes that make the house smell amazing and warm you as you stand over them – unlike the summer heat when all you really want to do for dinner is sit quietly inside the freezer and lick its icy walls. One book that I had a flick through recently was the Supercooks Supersavers Cookbook, which I picked up at the local opshop back home for about a dollar a few years back. I love its season-based chapters, its 1980 style, and its seriously enthusiastic title.
I found this awesome sounding recipe for Onions Smothered with Walnuts. It’s basically onions roasted in a sticky, spicy sauce, and though they’re more “vaguely scattered” than “smothered” with the walnuts it’s a gorgeous combination of flavours.
Onions Smothered with Walnuts
From the Supercook’s Supersavers Cookbook

450g small pickling (pearl) onions, peeled (I didn’t have any, so just used whole onions, quartered)
75g walnuts, chopped
25g melted butter
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon chilli sauce
1/2 cup stock or water
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oven to 170 C. In a bowl, mix everything together and pour into an oven-proof dish. Cover with tinfoil, and bake for around an hour, stirring once or twice. *Use olive oil and balsamic vinegar instead of the butter and worcestershire sauce to easily make this vegan. Yay!
It’s so good that I actually made it two nights in a row. In a weird twist of events, the first night I made it in a silicon dish and the second night I made it in a metal dish, and the second night the onions and sauce turned all black. Made me a little nervous, but not so nervous that I didn’t carry on eating the lot. This recipe has a lot going for it – it has punchy, warm flavours, it’s very cheap to make, it’s versatile, and it just cooks away by itself, not really requiring any attention. The honey, chilli and cinnamon are a brilliant combination and it’s perfect over pasta, which is how I had it, but would also work on couscous, mashed potatoes, rice, or stirred into a stew or roasted vegetables. Thanks, Supercook’s Supersavers Cookbook!
As I said, I’m pretty weary from the weekend, I haven’t been sleeping so well and on top of that I actually wasn’t feeling that great over the weekend. There were some diverting moments – seeing Graeme Downes of The Verlaines, The Dead C’s Bruce Russell and Flying Nun’s Roger Shepherd weighing in on a discussion panel about NZ Music, subsequently sitting behind the Verlaines on the flight to Dunedin, meeting with former flatmate Emma for a jolly catch-up, having an enthusiastic person “help” me by picking up my phone that I’d put on the ground right by my feet so I could take down a poster at an event, only to watch them accidentally drop it down three flights of stairs…
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Title via: The Beatles’ Glass Onion from The White Album. One of their more intriguing contributions…
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Music lately:
A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow, sung by Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy, from the film A Mighty Wind. This is absolutely my favourite film, and having it on my iPod made the four plane trips over the weekend much more bearable. This song is gorgeous even though it’s sending up the folk music genre, and Catherine O’Hara is just…perfect. Makes me want to learn the autoharp. Sincerely.
Bloodbuzz Ohio from The National’s new album High Violet. The album itself didn’t set me on fire but this song is a stunner and really showcases everything that’s good about The National. And you can check out a lengthier review I did of High Violet here at The Corner if you like.

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Next time: I’ll hopefully be a touch more awake. It’s Queen’s Birthday weekend in a day or two, nothing like a Monday off to make you feel unbendingly fond of the monarchy. I found this really cool recipe for pumpkin bread that I’m keen to try, I also am thinking of getting the crock pot out from its hiding place, it’s now definitely cold enough out there…

crouton, crouton, crunchy friend in a liquid broth

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We had a power outage this afternoon in Wellington. I’m glad I wasn’t stuck in an elevator when it struck, or halfway through roasting a chicken, because that would not have been fun at all. No drama for me though – all it meant was sitting round in the foyer at work reading up on policies and then scooting home early. When I got there the new Cuisine magazine had arrived in the mail, like a warm gamma ray of electricity in an otherwise dimly lit afternoon. We’re heading up to Auckland tomorrow so I didn’t want to make anything huge for dinner that would leave us with piles of leftovers. I found this soup recipe within the pages of Cuisine – and yes, it has been cold enough lately in Wellington to start getting all soupy again – and something about the complete simplicity of the ingredients appealed to me.
The recipe was a bit oddly vague in places so the following is slightly adapted. This recipe is boxfresh – only Cuisine subscribers will have seen it so far so…scoop!
Roast Garlic, White Bean, and Bread Soup

From the May issue of Cuisine (one day they’ll interview me, one day!)

20 cloves garlic (try to get really good stuff that will actually taste like garlic)
2 large onions
1 teaspoon thyme leaves
1 teaspoon sweet smoked paprika
1 litre chicken, vegetable, or (my favourite) porcini stock
400g tin butter beans or cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
Parsely and chervil to serve (I used basil, it’s what I had)
1 cup sourdough croutons

Peel the garlic cloves and roast them in a little olive oil at 180 C/350 F for about half an hour till soft. I did this by wrapping them into a pouch of tinfoil and then wrapping that in another layer of tinfoil – keeps them soft and saves on dishes.

Once this is on its way, slice the onions into half-moons and gently fry in a little olive oil till soft and golden. This will take a while, so by the time they’re good and soft the garlic should be ready. Mash the cloves with a fork (including the oil they were roasted in) and add them to the pan along with the thyme and the paprika. Pour in the stock, bring to a simmer, and tip in the beans. Simmer till the beans are well heated through and season well. Serve with the parsley, chervil and croutons (I didn’t have sourdough so just used some regular bread, cut into cubes and tossed with a little olive oil, and chucked them in the oven which I’d just turned off, the remaining heat turned them into croutons.)

Serves about 6. Nice with a bread roll or scone on the side.
This made for a seriously perfect chilly-evening dinner, the ingredients coming together to make a hearty but still elegant soup that seemed awesomely European, even though I have no real clue if this has any actual continental background or if the author just made it up on the spot. Sometimes just feeling European is enough. The softly flavoured beans, the fantastically garlicky broth, and the still-crisp croutons sinking into it were a rather stunning combination. Worth mucking round with bits of garlic for. This recipe reminded me why soup is so brilliant, even if it’s not as sexy as some other dinner options.
So, like I said, we’re heading up to Auckland tomorrow. I can’t wait to catch up with the whanau – I haven’t been home since Laneways and it’s really not very often that I get to go up to Auckland just to see family without any work agenda. We’re going to see the Auckland Music Theatre production of RENT – and when I say we, I mean my whole family and Tim – and I am so excited about seeing it on a big stage by such a renowned company. I don’t need to outline how much I love RENT here, you know I’ve done it enough before, and I don’t need anyone to outline its shortcomings to me – I’m well aware of them too. I’m a little trepidatious about how this cast is going to work out but I think overall it will be a very, very good time. And I’m just really happy to see RENT being performed on such a visible scale in New Zealand. Between this, and Idina Menzel appearing on Glee, it feels like it’s all starting to come together…
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Title coming your way via: The Mighty Boosh‘s small but very excellent soup song.
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Music lately:

I’ve actually been avoiding RENT for a little while now so it can be particularly impacty when I see it on Saturday. Other than that…
Love of My Life by Erykah Badu featuring Common from the Brown Sugar soundtrack…a sweet ode to hip hop music, this video is just as gold as the song itself (not least because of the clips of Idina Menzel’s husband, the lovely Taye Diggs). Watching Erykah Badu makes me never want to cut my hair ever again. Found out today that Common is doing a couple of shows in Auckland in June, quiiite keen to go along…
Superboy and the Invisible Girl from the Broadway cast recording of Next To Normal. This was the very first song from this musical that I ever heard, and it had been a long time since I’d heard lyrics this beautiful and innovative and poetic in any genre of music, not to mention a guitar riff as alluring. OH how I’d love to see this show, Alice Ripley and the rest of the stunning cast will have to amaze me from afar till such time as I do…
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Next time: You can safely bet that I’ll be quoting RENT at you.

stick with me honey and we’ll go far

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Saturday, February 6th was Waitangi Day here in New Zealand. This is a day that means different things to different people but 170 years have passed since the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, for better or for worse. It means a lot to me as my ancestors on mum’s side kicked things off around that very time when a woman named Pourewa and a man named Charles Cossill were married in Mangonui by the pragmatically named Bishop William Williams. February 6th also marked twenty years since my first ballet lesson. Talk about significant times for the nation. I was a rotund three year old who couldn’t skip and didn’t have a pushy mother with misguided ambitions for me – and even at that age you register differences in ability and atmosphere like that – but I was the only kid in that class who could touch my head with my toes.

Potstickers are perhaps the – or at least, a – culinary equivalent of getting your feet and your head to do a high-five. The process sounds a little painful. A lot of people don’t even try it in the first place. But the finished result elicits “oohs” and “aahs” at those who attempt it successfully. Actually this metaphor is a bit useless as you really need a decent set of hamstrings to do anything flexible while potstickers just require patience…but I needed a segue into the recipe and I’m damned if I’ll retreat now.

I saw this recipe in Ray McVinnie’s column in Sunday magazine a while back (the very magazine which put me on the cover! What, like I wasn’t going to mention it?) and even though I’ve seen recipes around for potstickers for years now for some reason it was this one that prompted me into action. I have to say, the Sunday magazine this week was ridiculously intuitive – it had a “Whatever happened to JTT?” piece which answered the very question I wondered as Tim and I watched a Home Improvement omnibus at 3am after getting home from Fubar last Sunday. There’s not much in this world that comforts like this – we didn’t watch a lot of TV when I was young but Home Improvement was family time). There was also an article about the man who wrote most of the jingles on the radio, when I’d just been explaining to Tim about the nostalgia I feel when I hear the ancient Auckland radio jingles (“Giltrap city, Toyota – we’re the one!”) on 1ZB after being in Wellington for so long.

I don’t love McVinnie’s column in Sunday as much as I adore his regular Quick Smart feature in Cuisine magazine but it’s still pretty engaging reading. The way he described potstickers made them seem not just do-able but necessary. I found myself lingering by the open freezers at the Asian grocery up the road, hoping wonton wrappers would be cheap – and they were. That, and the fact that there was a rapidly aging block of tofu in the fridge poured cement over the foundations of the idea in my mind. I didn’t follow his actual recipe so much as the directions but I have a feeling that as long as you keep to the method the filling is really up to you.



Potstickers (recipe via Ray McVinnie’s column in Sunday magazine)
If you want, you can take out the beef and up the tofu and cabbage a bit.

  • 150-200g beef mince
  • 200g firm tofu, diced
  • 1/4 white cabbage, finely sliced
  • Fresh ginger – about an inch, peeled and finely chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon soy sauce
  • 2 teaspoons sesame oil
  • 2 tablespoons Chinese cooking wine, or sake if you prefer
  • Wonton wrappers
  • Rice bran oil, for frying

Stir fry the mince, tofu, and cabbage together with the seasonings until the mince is browned, the cabbage is reduced, and everything is good and fragrant. There’s no real artfulness to this – you just need it all cooked up.

This is great if you can get a friend to help you, if not it will just take a lot longer. Get your stack of wonton wrappers, a small bowl of water, a couple of plates and a couple of teaspoons. Grab a wonton wrapper, dip your fingers in the water and wet the edges of the wrapper. Get a teaspoonful of mince and tofu, place it in the centre of the wonton wrapper, fold it over to make a parcel and press the edges together. I folded the edges over each other and pressed down firmly. Put it onto a plate and start again, till you have as many as you think you’ll want.

Then! Heat a little rice bran oil in a good, wide pan which has a lid. Once it’s sizzling, fill the pan with your potstickers, all facing the same way. Don’t overcrowd the pan. Let them fry for a minute or two on that side, then flip them over and fry them for a minute or two on the other side. Pour over about a centimetre of water, clamp on the lid, and let them steam away till the water is evaporated. You want them over a good solid heat to aid the evaporation. Once the water is gone they should unstick themselves from the pan. Quickly use a silicon spatula or fish slice to lever the finished potstickers onto a plate, and eat them while the next batch is cooking.

One or two potstickers may well fall apart or stick obstinately while you try and remove them from the pan. This is not cause to get dramatic and throw the pan across the room screaming “Enough! I tried and I failed!” It’s just par for the course. They’re called potstickers for a reason. Eat them and move on to the next batch.

One bite, and you’ll likely forget the extensive effort it takes to bring these potstickers into existence. The frying-then-steaming method, while fiddly, makes the wonton wrappers crisp but silkily tender, encasing juicy savouryness. I made a quick dipping sauce out of soy, lemon juice, sesame oil, chilli oil and a little sugar which was an excellently zingy foil to the rich filling. Make plenty of these – we ate forty between the two of us – not comfortably, to be fair, but we did it. Maybe bank on about 10 to 15 per person, as they are so, so good. I heard from a relatively reliable source just this evening that if you leave the lid off the pan they get super-crispy – I may have to try this way of doing things next time. Because there will be a next time.

February 6th was also the date that the late Bob Marley was born in 1945. It seems fitting that someone who is loved by so many New Zealanders was born on the closest thing we have to a national day. Leaving Tim to make coffee on yet another public holiday, Ange and I went out to Hataitai velodrome to RadioActive One Love, the long-running event that commemorates Marley’s birthday while acknowledging Waitangi Day in a peaceful, musical fashion. The day was unnaturally warm – we really don’t get a lot of sun here in Wellington – and it was the perfect antithesis to the crowds of costumed people staggering drunkenly through town for the NZ International rugby Sevens tournament.

There was constant music, there were people everywhere of all ages and stages, there were amazing food and merchandise stalls, and in an act that seemed to sum up the happiness of the day, Liptons were giving out free iced tea. We saw Don McGlashan, The Midnights, Sola Rosa, Art Official and MC Silva (who gave my peanut butter cookies the thumbs up that very morning, to which I say look out for her album dropping later this year), watched people skanking merrily, ate glorious vegetarian curry, nodded approvingly at the host responsibility announcements, enviously gazed at children on the bouncy castle, bought insence-scented scarves, thought nice things about Bob Marley…magic. I didn’t love all the bottles littering the path on the way out, but other than that it was a seriously ideal way to spend the day. However, I think I’ll be airing out my scarves as I don’t feel quite so positive about the smell of incence as I did when I was 12. Tim and I headed to the Southern Cross later that night for an excellent time watching the Newtown Rocksteady also paying homage to Bob Marley through polished but joyful interpretations of his music, rounding off Waitangi day most satisfactorily.
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Title brought to you by: Freshmint! the charmingly fey song from Brisbane’s Regurgitator. “Stick with me honey and we’ll go far” feels like a line spoken over and over but slides rather nicely into the celebrity-weary lyrics of this song. I don’t like this band’s name and to be honest this is one of two songs of their I love. I remember hearing this for the first time on Channel Z, being deeply intrigued, but not knowing for months what it was called or who sang it, until the magic of lyrics websites threw me a bone.
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On Shuffle while I type:

While pondering Regurgitator my thoughts wandered to another elusive Australian song that I used to wait round for, never actually knowing what it was called till years later – Shazam by Spiderbait. It’s all fuzzy and whingy and sounds like a collection of chorusses – great fun, even if the band’s name is also bit gross.

Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley – just such a great tune. I do enjoy a good bridge and this song enjoys one of the coolest out there.

The Juggernaut, from Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party, featuring Julia Murney, Taye Diggs, and the teeth-grittingly good use of Idina Menzel’s singing ability towards the end. This musical never made it to Broadway and could perhaps – who knows? – benefit from some tweaks. But it remains special to me for a number of reasons, and the original cast recording ten years on shines with jaw-dropping, brutal talent.
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Next time: It’s clearly been far too long since I’ve dealt you a heavy-handed reference to RENT in a food-related way, so look out for that next time when, inspired by a culinary lyric in La Vie Boheme, I make rice and beans…

the air, the air is everywhere

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I got back to Wellington yesterday evening, after a week’s camping at the same beach my family and I have camped at since 1986. This constant bookend to each year of my life means I fall into a pleasingly familiar pattern once in the camping frame of mind…read books, dip toe doubtfully in water at the beach, drink gin, observe fat woodpigeons in wonder, go for walks, read more books etc… While letting all that go isn’t fun, I’m very, very happy to be back in the city where mosquitos don’t seem to exist. I got so ridiculously bitten this time round, my legs resemble a topographical map of the Hunua Ranges.

All awkward itching aside, I had a seriously wonderful break. Lazy breakfasts merged into lazy lunches, books were read, long conversations were had with family, that sort of thing. For some reason the birdlife this year was particularly bold, but in a cute, Disney-esque way that makes you want to stride through the forest while singing scales and engaging in dialogue with squirrels. Or something. I managed to catch up with lots of family and also with one of my very best friends who I don’t see very often, which was fantastic. Unfortunately Tim wasn’t able to come to the beach because Starbucks stops for no man (and to be fair, he needed the money) and I suspect my family was even more disappointed than I was that he couldn’t make it along. …

Since we weren’t going to be seeing each other for a while, on the night before I flew up to Auckland to go camping I thought I’d make us a decent dinner, of souffle and chocolate mousse. I didn’t plan to have such a glam dinner menu – it was more a case of “what on earth is in the cupboard”. I guess I wouldn’t be much of a food blogger if my scraped-together meal didn’t involve separating eggs and dark chocolate.

Both recipes came from that most seminal of all seminal texts, How To Eat by Nigella Lawson. I love coming back to this book – I bought it back in my first year of flatting when I hardly had any money for rent and bills, let alone enormous fancy cookbooks. But it has more than paid for itself since then. Actually that’s a lie, between the pomegranates and the vermouth and the endless variations on homemade custard this book may well have financially crippled me and could be the reason Tim and I haven’t been on a holiday since we started living together this time four years ago.

Both recipes are both easier than they sound, even though there’s some egg-white whisking involved. Yeah, separating eggs is never fun, but there’s something about the word ‘souffle’ that still equates to ‘death-defying act of cookery’ in many people’s minds. You can choose to capitalise on this and win their gasps of admiration when you casually place a souffle in front of them, or you can just own up that they’re not difficult at all. Doesn’t bother me.

Notice the nice salad servers in the background – Christmas gift from Tim’s parents.

So, I altered this recipe a tiny bit in that it was originally a pea souffle but all I had was soybeans and goat’s cheese…yeah, I know. It should really be the other way round.

Goat’s Cheese and Soybean Souffle

Although soybeans (or edamame) aren’t normally paired with cheese, their soft nutty flavour makes them seem like they should. If you want to make the original pea souffle, and it’s really really good, just replace the soybeans and cheese with 120g frozen peas and 85g gruyere or something similar.

150g frozen soybeans
30g butter, plus more for greasing
15g flour
125mls (1/2 a cup) full fat milk
pinch of nutmeg
50-100g goat’s cheese or feta cheese, roughly chopped
2 eggs

Set the oven to 200 C, putting in a baking tray when you do this, and butter 2 x 250ml ramekins. Melt 15g butter in a pan and cook the soybeans till they are softened. Set aside. A souffle is basically white sauce with eggs and other things stirred in, so you need your white sauce first. Melt the second 15g of butter, and stir in the flour, letting it bubble away slightly before tipping in the milk and stirring constantly over a low heat till smooth. Remove from heat.

Separate the eggs, and stir the yolks into the white sauce, then add the soybeans, goat’s cheese and nutmeg. In a metal bowl, whisk the egg whites with a small pinch of salt till frothy and standing up in soft peaks. This is fairly important as it’s the air bubbles trapped in the egg whites that are going to give the souffle the push it needs. Using a metal spoon, put a good dollop of egg whites into the yolk mixture and stir it in to ‘lighten’ the mixture. Then fold the rest of the egg whites in, not beating it toooooo vigorously but not too fearfully either. Divide all this between the two ramekins, place them on the baking tray and shut the door carefully. Immediately turn the heat down to 180 C. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, and serve immediately while they’re still risen and gorgeous – they will deflate, it doesn’t make you a bad person.

Mine rose higher than this, I swear! Taking photos just gave them time to get all…deflatey.

These taste SO good. Intensely puffy in texture. Strangely it’s the soybeans providing a buttery, creamy flavour while the rich goat’s cheese gives a lemony sharpness, rather than the other way round. Definitely worth the little bit of effort that goes into it – these look and taste gorgeous.

The chocolate mousse we had while watching Season 4 of The Wire. Don’t worry, we actually talked to each other while eating the souffle. The Wire time is quality time. The recipe comes from Nigella’s chapter on children’s food (which is possibly my most-used chapter in How To Eat, whatever that says about my eating.)

Nigella’s recipe uses milk chocolate and golden syrup. I only had dark chocolate and honey so I used this instead. If you keep the dark chocolate instead of her originally specified milk, it makes this mousse dairy free.

Chocolate Mousse

100g dark chocolate
1 1/2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon clear honey
2 eggs, separated. Obviously because of the uncooked-egg thing, you want these to be nice eggs.

Over a very low heat (or in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water if you’re nervous), melt together the chocolate, the honey, and the water. Remove from heat. In a separate clean metal bowl, whisk the egg whites till stiff peaks form. Nigella says it’ll be easier if you wipe the surface of a cut lemon half over the bowl before you start; I believe her. Beat the egg yolks into the slightly cooled chocolate mixture. Take a dollop of egg white and stir it briskly into the chocolate/yolk mixture which will, as with the souffle, lighten it up a bit. Then gently but firmly fold the rest of the egg white mixture in with a metal spoon. Divide between two smallish ramekins, around 250 ml capacity. Nigella says to chill it for 6 hours, I’d say you could get away with an hour or two. Eat.

Possibly because of the lack of cream, this mousse was a little different in texture to what I expected – it had settled into almost a chocolate pudding rather than anything light and fluffy. No harm done, it was still completely amazing. Silkily rich but not overly heavy, this mousse tasted of nothing but chocolate, so don’t be put off by the slim list of ingredients.
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Title comes to you from: The song Air sung by the gorgeous Kacie Sheik, from the Broadway cast recording of Hair, as a salute to the significant reliance on air bubbles in the recipes I gave you. I am legit obsessed with this album. You may have noticed it popping up occasionally here. So it must be good, right? It has indeedy been getting a lot of repeat visits, this album of the current Broadway revival cast, starring the lovely Gavin Creel who bears the heavy crown of being one of the few stars of Broadway that Tim likes. Today I also started listening to the original Broadway cast recording (ie, the 1968 one) and fell in love with that too. Everyone sounds like Joan Baez! So you might as well try the original like me while you’re at it.
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On Shuffle these days:

Well, I’ve been away from technology for seven days and didn’t really have my iPod on while out camping – it was mostly birdcalls and the sound of tent zippers for me as far as music went. But today I bought the soundtrack to The Wackness, which is a very enjoyable listen, with the same warm, eyes-half-closed summer vibe the movie has. I don’t normally go in for soundtracks but this one is the reason why…I occasionally do. Right now Sam Cooke is providing a mellow background to my Sunday night.
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Next time: My summer holiday is officially over – I’m back in the office tomorrow. This week is going to be busy however as I’m flying up to Auckland to work with the Big Day Out music festival. But there will be cooking! I’ve been to the vege market for the first time in weeks and feeling good about connecting with the kitchen again. In the meantime, if anyone has any remedies for speedy healing of mosquito bites I’d be most grateful…

here i go again on my own

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According to Nigella Lawson, asparagus with a fried egg on top is “Asparagus Holstein.” A hamburger with the top half of the bun removed and a fried egg laid on top is a “Hamburger Holstein.” Riddle me this, Nigella. If I were to wear a fried egg as a protein-enriched hat, would that make me a Laura Holstein? Sorry everyone…Tim has gone to Palmerston North for the rest of the week and so this blog is basically the only outlet I have for my countless inanities. Countless.

I will not lie: yesterday at work was pretty stressful. It didn’t even start off well, what with me getting a particle of something unidentifiable stuck in my eye for about an hour first thing in the morning. The shining respite in the middle of it all was a client lunch – specifically, bringing themselves and an enormous feast over to our office – which culminated in some really bloody good blue cheese and perky chocolate topped eclairs. Between eating three helpings of everything there, and then the unexpectedly hot weather, I wasn’t all that hungry when I got home from work. Not that a lack of committed hunger would normally, unfortunately, stop me from eating large. I actually respected my appetite though, and made a serene meal of lightly steamed asparagus and soft boiled egg, as per a suggestion in Nigella’s seminal text How To Eat. I’m pretty hopeless at boiling and poaching eggs, normally Tim’s job, so it was lucky that Nigella had a recipe for boiled egg in Feast…otherwise it would have been asparagus Holstein for me.

It might sound a bit poncy and not like actual eating, but it’s truly delicious and a perfect solo meal if you can get the boiled egg just perfectly soft and then dip the asparagus spears into it before eating them. Plenty of salt, naturally – I used sparkly and flavoursome pink Himalayan salt, a Christmas gift last year.

To recreate it for yourself, should you find yourself coming home after a hot and stressful day interrupted by overeating, completely alone and in need of something calming, light and not too taxing on the arteries:

Asparagus and Boiled Egg

Inspired by a suggestion in How To Eat

One or two good, free range eggs. Every time you eat a caged egg, a tiny kitten cries. This is an actual fact. Kittens…they care.
A handful of slim asparagus spears.
Salt, and while we’re at it, might as well not be that bitter table salt but sea salt or rock salt in a grinder at least.

Steam or boil your asparagus till tender, but not floppy and losing its colour.

While this is happening, bring a small pan of water to the boil. If your eggs are fridge cold, put them in with the cold water and allow them to come to the boil with it. If they’re at room temperature, simply lower them into the boiling water once it’s started. Nigella recommend putting a match in with the water because her great-aunt always did, others recommend a splash of vinegar or sprinkling of salt in the water. Let it bubble for about four minutes, maybe a little less. Have another pan of cold water handy so that you can plunge the eggs into it once you think they’re done, this will stop them cooking further. Lay your asparagus on a plate, sprinkle with salt, put the egg into an eggcup and whack the top off with a spoon.

And that’s all you need for dinner, really. If you’ve got someone else around who hasn’t taken off to Palmerston North just before Christmas to work on his parents’ farm because the job situation in Wellington is so hopeless right now (ahoy cool media people!) then I would double the proportions, get someone who really knows how to boil eggs in charge, and add some bread and butter.

The first egg was successful – soft, golden and yolky within. For some reason the second one I did was a bit more solid, but not bad considering it’s a job I always delegate out.

We watched the final of Glee the other day – it was intense, and intensely wonderful stuff. I was disappointed to see in the Dominion Post today that the music reviewers would like to see less of Glee in 2010, I was even more disappointed to see that they lumped it in with High School Musical. Yes, the HSM comparison is a quick and easy way to basically illustrate the tropes used in Glee to readers but it’s also flawed and lazy, in the same way that it feels as though the “barbeque reggae” tag is a box certain albums are unable to break out of because reviewers keep putting them in that box before they’ve even listened to their review copy. (That said, if you ever want to do a spotlight on my blog, Dominion Post…call me!)

Now that Glee is riding the tidal wave of Twitter trending topics, glossy magazine spreads, and young-person love, it’s highly likely there’ll be some kind of anti-hype backlash. To which I say: eh. I know I go on about this show a lot, but I’ve been excited about it since July and it’s so, I don’t know, emotionally fulfilling to see Broadway stars, Broadway tunes, and in fact the idea of breaking out into any tune altogether being legitimised on mainstream TV and in such deliciously sharp fashion. I remember when the film Centre Stage was released (there was also Billy Elliot but obviously it’s a bit of a different kettle) and hopelessly bad as the dialogue was – although Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows speak eloquent volumes with one silent, bristly twitch – I was elated to see ballet and dance brought to the big screen in a way that would, I hoped, make people see what it was that I loved about it and how ridiculously wonderful it was. Not that I need any of this. Indeed there’s always something nice about knowing that 99% of the world is missing out on this particular song or whatever that you love, but it’s just…really nice to see it get out there on people’s radars.

Speaking of things that you insist you liked long before the film adaptation of it ever came out: we also saw Where the Wild Things Are on Tuesday night. I really liked it, I liked how the Wild Things were slightly human but mostly monster and everything that happened in their own world seemed right. Max Records, the kid playing Max, was gorgeous, and it was notably, but not surprisingly, pretty dark. The only thing I was a little frowny over in hindsight was that – spoilers – Max runs away and sails off to an island of monsters, rather than having the forest grow up around him in his room. Maybe they had to spin it out more, I don’t know. Apart from that I thought it was fantastic so if the line “please don’t go, we’ll eat you up we love you so” makes you a little tearily nostalgic for something you can’t even quite remember and you’ve got a DVD compilation of cool music videos by cool directors then you’re probably the right audience for this.

Eight more days till Christmas! Good grief! And six more days till my last day at work for the year. I’m flying home on the evening of the 23rd. This means, once more, my annual and highly dramatic attempt to pack my bags and get them weighing under the requisite amount you need to get from A to B in New Zealand. I’m looking forward to bonding with the cats again, and family members, and the kitchen. Still trying to finalise a Christmas Day menu in my head…

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Title brought to you by: Yes, I quoted Whitesnake in the title. Did I do it ironically? I don’t even know anymore. The musical Rock of Ages will do that to ya. I do know what it means to walk along that lonely street of dreams. Check out the original Broadway cast’s exuberant take on it here, and just be thankful I didn’t call this thing “here I go egg-ain.”
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On Shuffle these days:

The Reading of the Story of The Magi/Silent Night by The White Stripes. It’s strange but I love it. To you it may be just…strange. But I love it.

Don’t Rain On My Parade by Barbra Streisand from Funny Girl. After the final of Glee, and being gently reminded that this song has perhaps the jauntiest, most purposeful opening notes in the history of all song, Tim and I ended up comparing, unfairly but predictably, Idina Menzel’s live’n’mesmerising take on the song with Lea Michele’s also brilliant but super clean version. Which naturally, brought me back to the fantastic original again. And the notion that Glee is taking us to some strange places.

Watching The Planets by the Flaming Lips from their latest album Embryonic. It’s all heavy and fuzzy and amaaaazing.
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Next time: Hopefully by the time “next time” rolls around I’ll be miraculously organised. Apparently a colleague and I are going halvesies in a wheel of goat’s cheese from Moore Wilsons – so that may appear a lot. I’m pretty sure, organisation or not, that I can manage to wrangle one more blog post into existence before I leave for Christmas. It may mean completely alienating all people who aren’t whisks or bags of sugar though.

california tuber alles

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On Friday we had our Office Christmas Party. Capital letters because it feels like some kind of social institution…articles, columns and entire pull-out sections of glossy women’s magazines emerge at this time of year offering advice on office parties and how to organise/survive/acquit yourself with dignity/deflect awkward photographic evidence from said shindig. Ours was largely without incident and I had a marvelously pleasant time. I only mention it because I bonded particularly with a colleague while eating our lunch about how much we loved leftovers, in particular barbequed sausages, eaten cold for breakfast early the next morning while standing at the open-doored fridge. That moment of connection achieved more than a thousand team-building activities involving blindfolds and ‘trust’ games, I promise you.

And no, I’m not just saying how much I love leftovers because Nigella goes on about them too. Although I will allow that she kind of makes it easier to admit to such activities…like picking at a chilled roast chicken while standing at the fridge, perhaps alternating with a spoonful of raspberry jelly or trifle from its bowl that you’ve surruptitiously peeled the clingfilm back on…

As you can imagine we definitely had leftovers after last Sunday’s flat Christmas dinner. Some things got demolished, like the ham in Coca Cola. But it turns out that I made enough potatoes to service another three Christmas dinners. Not that this is any kind of problem…On Monday night I used some of those potatoes in a Spanish Omelette, from Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Express.

A golden, eggy crust containing hot chunks of new potatoes and juicy capsicums. It’s quick and it’s fabulous. We don’t eat potatoes that much and I forget how good they taste. There’s a simple evolutionary reason – Tim is usually working when I go to the vege market on a Sunday, and there’s really only so much I can deal with toting back to the flat. Having a glut of leftover potatoes this week has been no burden whatsoever – cold with gherkins, sauteed with coriander and cumin seeds and cinnamon, simmered in a vegetable curry – delicious. I love them.

Spanish Omelette

From Nigella Express

225g boiled new potatoes
4 eggs
75g chopped roasted capsicums
3 spring onions, finely chopped
75g grated Manchego or Cheddar Cheese
1 teaspoon butter
drop of oil

Turn on the grill and let it heat up. If the potatoes aren’t already cooked, halve and boil them until tender then drain. Whisk the eggs in a bowl, then add the capsicums, spring onions, cheese, and potatoes. Heat the butter and oil in a small, oven-proof frying pan and when hot, tip in the omelette mix and cook gently for five minutes. Eventually, the base of the omelette should begin to feel ‘set’ and rather than trying to flip it, instead sit the pan under the grill for a few minutes to set the top. Turn the omelette out onto a plate to cool. Even if it’s slightly wobbly it should carry on cooking as it cools. Slice into wedges. Note – I left out the cheese and used a lot more potatoes.

I’m not sure if this a great photo to display the merits of this dish, but it really does taste good. My omelette kind of fell apart as I attempted to slide it onto the chopping board and a bit of it stuck to the pan because SOMEONE had a huge fry-up one weekend when I wasn’t there and damaged the nonstick finish. The fact that it was non free-range eggs and those permanently soggy supermarket hash browns made it not so much insult to injury as an offense worthy of a punch to the face. (Don’t worry, Tim only got a verbal facepunch. I am pretty anti-violence, even when it is involving the nonstick finish of my good pan.)

A week has now passed since I was in the Sunday Star-Times Sunday magazine. So far, no movie deals or cookbook offers but I have had some interesting, and often completely lovely, correspondence. I don’t mean to keep going on about it, but be nice, this is the first time anything like this has happened. I was once in an ad for Camera House when I was three years old, but at the time I didn’t have a food blog to promote and thus it was just a one-off opportunity. These days, who knows? A three year old blogger could well be my biggest competition, and they’ve probably got more Twitter followers than me too.

Speaking of the passage of time, it’s now ten days till I go home for Christmas. To which I say: aaaaargh. It feels like I have a lot to achieve and not much time to achieve it in, which would be…accurate. However, I Skyped with Mum yesterday and managed to get some thoughts in order (my thoughts previously were: Christmassdkfhsdfwph). I’ve spent today serenely making edible Christmas presents for people which has been great fun. All will be revealed recipe-wise after Christmas to make it fair on those actually receiving these gifts. Tim is hunting for our little $2 shop Christmas tree and I’ve been playing my traditional Christmas playlist, (entitled “Hark! Merry Christmas from Laura!”), where I’ve gathered together seasonal tunes by artists I love (you can hardly claim to have lived till you’ve heard Johnny Cash and Neil Young duetting on The Little Drummer Boy) and artists that I’m dubious about at all other times but Christmas (you can hardly claim to have lived till you’ve heard Twisted Sister’s aggressively upbeat take on O Come All Ye Faithful.) Every year I scour the internet for more tunes to add to this increasingly ridiculous list and I look forward to doing it again this year. All that and I’m going to tape some tinsel to our bookcase. Fa la la la la. Bring it on.

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Title comes to you via: The Dead Kennedys song California Uber Alles. I know it’s barely significant but I really find it very hard to pass up something that amuses me like this. I like to think the title tranlates to “Potatoes above all”. Or something.
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On Shuffle lately:

Obviously some Hark! selections, including…

O Holy Night, sung by the ever-ridiculously-astounding Julia Murney and also Max von Essen, who I don’t feel quite so strongly about. I do like how it remains gently but firmly secular in its delivery. And how Julia Murney sounds incredible.

And then…The Avenue by Roll Deep, from their album In at the Deep End. Rediscovered it recently – takes me back to the summer of 2005 when I was in England and it still holds up as an ideal happy summer tune.

Out of the Blue by Julian Casablancas (if you thought I was going to say Julia Murney again, then ten points to you) from his solo debut, Phrazes for the Young. I like his album but it does have a lot of awkward song titles…Though really, as I’m a Pink Floyd fan I can hardly judge him. Anyway, this song chugs along merrily and has a joyfully sing-along chorus. And every time you listen you can think of Mr Casablancas and his lovely eyes and floppy hair which is no bad thing at all.

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Next time: I may cook even more potatoes, since Tim miraculously had the day off today and was thus able to be my pack-mule at the vege market. I may also provide even more Christmas music ridiculousity…

chain of yules

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I am currently waist-deep in Christmas Dinner preparation, and the cranberry levels are rising…

Let’s not analyze my handwriting too closely…does the fact that I can’t seem to commit to one particular way of writing the letter ‘f’ mean that I’m really, really deep and creative?

So, every year I host a Christmas dinner for our flatmates, (plus any significant others, hangers-on and plus ones) partly to celebrate my ability to insist upon cooking for large numbers of people but also to have some quality togetherness during this busy time. The day before is always a little full-on, but enjoyable, with the anticipation of feeding people and cooking vast quantities of stuff mixed in with the confusion of trying to follow my hopelessly non-linear list.

This is what the menu is shaping up like this time:

Dinner:

2 Roast Chickens
Pear and Cranberry Stuffing
Cornbread and Cranberry Stuffing
Ham in Coca Cola
Roast Potatoes
Roast Capsicums
Roast Kumara
Involtini
Green Salad

Pudding:
Chocolate Pavlova with Raspberries (or maybe strawberries…whatever’s cheaper at the markets tomorrow morning really)
Ginger Crunch Ice Cream
Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream
Maybe some sugar-free jelly if we can find any packets kicking round the place. I had plantain ice cream planned but the plantains I had must have been a little old and tired, because it doesn’t quite taste right. I may panic at the last minute and make another pudding…it happens.

If you’re a long-time reader, you’ll see that I’ve repeated a couple of recipes from last year – for example, both the stuffings and the involtini. The involtini, a recipe from Nigella Bites of seared eggplant slices wrapped around nutty, herbed bulghur wheat and baked in a tomato sauce, is also a repeat from last year, minus the feta this time as a friend of ours is a dairy-free vegetarian. Nigella’s Ham in Coca Cola is already a proven winner but I’ve never done it at Christmas before. But the Coca Cola that the ham is simmered in is cheap as and if nothing else will provide a talking point should conversation run awkwardly dry.

Even though my list specified otherwise, I got started today with the cornbread stuffing. I had to hustle to get this shot – you can see that some of the cranberries have already released their juices in the heat of the pan while others are still clinging to their dusting of ice particles.

Sometimes I wonder if I have heritage arching back to the American south. Or at least, some storybook version of it. I’ve never actually been there but the cuisine considered generally to be from that region seriously appeals to me. I can eat cornbread till the cows come home. Despite having to actually make the cornbread and then humbly crumble it, this stuffing really doesn’t take long to make at all. While it’s mighty fine roasted in the cavity of a chicken, the excess is more than wonderful baked separately in a loaf tin.

You’re taking already golden, buttery cornbread, and then stirring it into cranberries and another 125g of melted butter. This is a concept that either makes sense to you or it doesn’t. Me, everything makes sense with more butter added. If it appeals to you also, please find the recipe HERE. It comes from Nigella Lawson’s book Feast. Like the Spice Girls, all five of whom I was fiercely loyal to as a youngster, I cannot and would not want to choose a favourite Nigella book. But if you fancy an introduction to La Lawson you could do worse than start here with this magnificent, all-encompassing cookbook.

Not quite as visually appealing but still excellent is the Pear and Cranberry stuffing from Nigella Christmas, a book that naturally comes into its own at this time of year. Its combination of fudgey, gritty dried pears, sharp cranberries, and rich pecans (I substituted almonds because that’s what I had) is particularly fantastic, with salt and chopped onion stopping the whole thing from becoming like another pudding.

Pear and Cranberry Stuffing

Nigella Christmas

500g dried pears
175g fresh or defrosted frozen cranberries
100g breadcrumbs (preferably from bread that has gone stale than the dusty packet stuff)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
zest and juice of 1 mandarin
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons maple syrup
125g pecans
1 tablespoon maldon sea salt or a light sprinkling of table salt.

Either soak the pears overnight or cover them with boiling water and leave for a couple of hours. Drain once the water is cool. Place all the ingredients together in a bowl and mix thoroughly – even though it may feel a little spooky, just wading in with your hands is probably the easiest way. Either stuff your bird and bake accordingly or place in a loaf tin and bake at 200 C for about 25 minutes or until golden. Note – dried pears are pretty expensive. I tend to half the pears and up the breadcrumbs, but you could also make up half the weight of the pears in dried apricots.

The chocolate pavlova comes via Forever Summer (with whipped cream on the side, instead of smothered over it this time). I’ve made it before about 2 years ago, and loved it. However something was working against me today because while it rose up promisingly in the oven, it deflated completely once cooled. But what it lacks in height it makes up for in enormity – it spread out heaps. So I’m staying chilled out on that front.

Speaking of chilled, you know I love my ice cream. I’m particularly proud of this one because it’s completely dairy free but also staggeringly good. I’m not implying the two are mutually exclusive, but it’s not always the most straightforward path to deliciousness when you’re restricting particular ingredients.

Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream

6 egg yolks
50g brown sugar
2 tins coconut milk (not low fat)
2 tablespoons good cocoa
200g dark, dark chocolate, chopped

Gently heat the coconut milk in a wide pan, while mixing the egg yolks and sugar together. Once the coconut milk is good and hot, but not in any danger of boiling, pour it over the bowl of egg yolks and sugar, stirring all the while. Wipe out the pan with a paper towel, then pour the egg-coconut milk mixture back into it and keep it on a gentle heat, stirring constantly. It takes a while – at least 10 to 20 minutes – and you need to keep stirring – but it will thicken up into a custard of sorts. Once it is sufficiently thickened, remove from the heat and stir in the cocoa and chocolate, allowing it to melt into the mixture. Let this cool then freeze. Makes around a litre, maybe a little more.

The unfrozen mixture is amazing – the thickest, lightest, softest chocolatey custard ever. Once frozen, it’s even more sublime. The coconut flavour isn’t actually overly noticeable to if you want to amp it up a bit, stir in some toasted dessicated coconut before freezing. This is magical stuff – don’t let the fact that you have to make a custard put you off. I’ve made custard-based ice creams a billion times before without them turning into scrambled eggs, and if laughably clumsy I can do it, trust me, so can you.

I was actually really dithery over this particular post as I am going to be in an article about this blog in the Sunday Star-Times on Sunday, and I had this feeling that whatever I write today might be kind of important. This is the first time this blog has got any proper media attention, and I’m pretty nervous about seeing myself in a national newspaper. What if I look awful? (I had to maintain this half-smile thing, I’m really more of a big-toothed grin person, probably from my years of having to smile convincingly at ballet examiners while trying not to cry at that failed pas de chat.) What if I come across as horribly self-absorbed? (I mean, I am a bit, but still). What if someone, fuelled by Tall Poppy Syndrome, punches me in the street? Although I should mention (did someone say self-absorbed?) that the lovely lovely food blogger Linda is also being featured in this article tomorrow. I’ve never actually met Linda properly but you don’t always need to be face to face with someone to know they’re a fantastic person – I look forward to sharing a page with her. I also must say, massive kudos to the Sunday Star-Times for picking up on the idea of food blogging as a viable story option. I’m not saying that my blog is the most important issue happening to the nation right now, but seriously. I’ve been waiting for this.

If you are new to this blog, led here by your own curiousity after reading the article – cheers! Hopefully this is something you want to read more of – if not, I’m afraid I’m basically like this all the time. Maybe check out this post where I made my own butter which should quickly give you a good idea of whether or not you’re going to want to come back here.

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Title comes via: the resplendent Aretha Franklin and her absolutely stonking 1967 single Chain of Fools. If you’re new here: I tend to cut off straightforwardness to spite my own face when it comes to titles. But I’ll always explain them to you happily.
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On Shuffle while I’m cooking:

– The Deal (No Deal) from the concert recording of Chess, featuring such luminous talent as Idina Menzel, Josh Groban, Adam Pascal, Kerry Ellis, and the marvelous Clarke Peters of The Wire. Maybe something about the mathmatical precision of the game they’re singing about helped me keep focussed today.
– Speaking of Idina and Adam…while I may have allowed one or two Christmas songs to infiltrate my listening, Christmas Bells from RENT is the seasonal song that works all year long, but is obviously particularly nice at this time of year. The million different storylines being moved forward in this song makes for a listening experience that’s little short of astonishing. You can hear it here but if it all makes no sense then this visual might help unpack that somewhat. I care about this stuff.
– Mis-shapes from Pulp’s obviously amazing Different Class. Tim and I were lucky enough to see ex-Pulper Jarvis Cocker live at the Town Hall on Thursday night, he was utterly utterly wonderful, running through the cream of his solo material before blasting out an unexpectedly perfect cover of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid in honour of Ozzy’s birthday. But after all that I felt a bit of a need to hear some Pulp tunes, like this particularly urgent track.
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Next time: Well, if I haven’t made it onto the Listener’s list of the most influential and powerful New Zealanders for 2009, then it has been a failure of a week. Oh my gosh, I’m just kidding…and that list has already been published. Next time there may well be a recap of the Christmas Dinner and everything that happened. Look out for it – there’s nothing like an exhausted person who has eaten too much trying to make a sparkling, witty blog post.