Category: Vegan Baking

ba-na-na (nanana!)

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I just ate a giant dinner largely composed of…roast potatoes. I feel so sleepy as a result that I can’t even describe how sleepy I feel, only repeat ineffectually that I feel so sleepy. Apologies if the following bloggery isn’t all that flash.

As I write there’s only a handful of hours left till the All Whites will play Paraguay at the FIFA world cup, oh my. The game’s at 2am and I’m hoping those potatoes will let me get some decent sleep beforehand. There’s this swirling uprising of coverage in the media in New Zealand at the moment and I just hope that, in the likely situation of us losing, there’s no “Black Friday” type headlines tomorrow. Because seriously. Let’s keep sight of things. It’s exciting that we’re there at all, we managed to stop the reigning champions from winning, and we’ve never, ever got this far before in football. I don’t even really like sports AT ALL and this is really exciting.

Speaking of really exciting…cake!




My aunty Lynn gave me Alyson Gofton’s book Flavours as a birthday present a few years back. I’m not sure where I stand on Alyson Gofton but this book would swing anyone in her favour – it’s packed full of innovative but not terrifying recipes, most of which sound incredibly delicious and are a good call to action to rifle through your spice rack and get to grips with how a particular flavouring agent can perk up a meal. The last time I made this recipe for Palm Sugar and Lime Banana Loaf was in 2004 (specifically, for Mum’s high school reunion lunch, if I remember right…?) and I can’t understand why it has taken me so long to return to it, since it’s really, really good. If you think banana cakes are the most obvious thing in the history of obvious things that are cakes, well, think again.

You know how sometimes you make those “cleaning out the fridge” kind of dinners that can never really be replicated because they use up all the bits and half-eaten pieces sitting round on your shelves hoping to be asked to dance? This cake, strangely enough, ended up being a similar exercise. Browning, speckled bananas in the fruit bowl, palm sugar I overenthusiastically bought by the bucketload, that large boxful of limes.

Palm Sugar and Lime Banana Loaf

Bear in mind there is no harder substance on earth than palm sugar. I’m pretty sure palm sugar could penetrate diamonds. The only way I can deal with it is by using a serrated Victorinox knife and scraping/shaving away at it till it’s a pile of gritty golden rubble.

150g soft butter
1/2 cup crushed palm sugar (roughly one circular lump)
1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed, ripe banana
Grated rind of 2 limes
2 and 1/4 cups self-raising flour
2 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons lime juice

Set oven to 180 C and line a loaf tin with baking paper. Beat together the butter and sugars till light and creamy, add the eggs and lime rind. Fold in the bananas, flour, and liquids. It will be a very stiff dough, almost scone-like. Turn it into the loaf tin, and bake for 45 mins to an hour. When cool, drizzle over an icing made from about 1 cup icing sugar and the juice of a lime or two.


Don’t be fooled by the nothing-muchness of the icing – it really pulls the loaf cake together, mobilising all the flavours with its sticky tanginess. This is a moist, dense and easily sliced loaf, and while the palm sugar doesn’t exactly get all up in your face, its delicate fudge-like flavour along with the added lime make this a gently out of the ordinary delicious thing to bake. I photographed it this morning before work (grabbing one of the ‘artistic’ slices for a sneaky breakfast treat) and when I got home there was only a slender-ish chunk of loaf left sheepishly on the bench, as if it was trying to look bigger than it really was. I took it as a compliment.

Incidentally, it’s kind of fun reading over Flavours which is only all of seven years old, and seeing hints that basil pesto can be bought at the supermarket and avocado oil now being “available in two scented varieties.” Hee. How far we’ve come…well as far as pesto is concerned, anyway.

I guess I find out next week some time how the whole CLEO/Wonder Women thing went down. Voting closes tomorrow, Friday 25 June (which is, I guess, Thursday 24 June for all you international readers above the equator). I sort of feel like I’ve wrung dry everything I can from this, but if by chance you haven’t voted for me yet and would like to, firstly read why here and then email cleo@acpmagazines.co.nz with WONDER WOMEN in the subject line and “Voting for blogger: Laura Vincent” in the body of the email. Whatever happens, a mega-enormous thank you to everyone that did vote for me – and you can most definitely call on me to vote for you for anything in return.

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Title via: Look, it’s a skit/interlude from M.I.A’s mad awesome album Arular, and I’m really usually not into skits clogging things up but this is so weirdly catchy that I’ll find “ba…na…naaaa” popping into my head when I least expect it.
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Music lately:

Karen Elson’s The Ghost Who Walks, from the album of the same name. I love this album! It seems to hark back vaguely to ‘another time’ and is rich and full of melodies and warm, pretty Gillian Welch-ish harmonies. (Mum and Dad – I bet you’d love this one.) How lucky is Karen Elson – incredibly beautiful, married to Jack White, and luckiest of all, she can sing.

Big Boi’s new single Shutterbug, I just can’t get enough of it right now. It’s silkier than a silkworm, and the melody behind it reminds me of Grandmaster Flash’s The Message, but in a good way. I’ve always enjoyed Outkast’s take on hip hop and it’s cool that they’re just as capable of working as separate entities as they are together. This song is a diamond, and the man knows how to use the line “cut a rug” properly.

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Next time: By the time “next time” shuffles along, we’ll know what the outcome of the All Whites’ game was, we’ll probably know whether or not I caused my own out-of-nowhere result with the Cleo/Palmolive Wonder Women thing, and…I will have a giant pavlova to share with you (well, words about a giant pavlova, but these words will allow you to make one for yourself and then share it with absolutely no-one at all, if you like).

we sell our souls for bread

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Nothing like a persistently rainy long weekend to really push me back into the grippy arms of the kitchen. I seriously love making bread, but haven’t had a chance in ages so tip of the hat to the Queen for her birthday creating a Monday off this week. If New Zealand ever becomes a republic there’d better be some particularly concrete replacements for any long weekend we’d lose as a result. With extra time on my hands I’ve been making all kinds of things including this Nigella Lawson bread recipe from her flawless book of baking, How To Be A Domestic Goddess.

I was able to use these beautiful walnuts that Mum posted down to me from a family friend’s tree. They’re easy enough to get into, just a light tap from a hammer on the shell and a bit of digging quickly produces a pile of bamboo coloured, wrinkled heart shapes. They were soft and fragrant and tasted amazing – none of that tooth-coating bitterness that you sometimes get with those from a packet which have been sitting round too long.

This bread is fiddly-ish but no real mission to make. I didn’t have any of the wholemeal bread flour that Nigella specified but I did have plenty of half-empty packets of dusty offerings from the health food shop down the road (I don’t know, they’re just so compulsively purchasable) so if you’re in the same boat just do what I did and use 550g white bread flour and make up the rest of the weight with bran, rolled oats, that sort of thing. If you don’t have real maple syrup, use honey or golden syrup instead.


Maple Walnut Bread

Adapted from Maple-Pecan Bread in Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess (ie you can use pecans if you have them)
  • 500g wholemeal bread flour
  • 150g white bread flour
  • 1 sachet instant dry yeast
  • 300-400mls warm water
  • 4 tablespoons maple syrup
  • 50-100g walnuts
  • Walnut oil (if you have it, otherwise use plain eg rice bran)
Mix the flours and yeast together in a large bowl. Pour in the water and syrup and mix to make a sticky dough. Knead for a couple of minutes, then let it sit for 20 minutes. Knead again, sprinkling over the walnuts as you go. It will take a little while to incorporate them, simply because this type of dough is a little tougher than usual. Keep pushing and kneading until the walnuts are more or less dispersed throughout the dough and until it forms a smooth, elastic ball. Pour over a good tablespoon of walnut or other oil, and turn so all surfaces are covered. Cover in clingfilm, and leave for a couple of hours to rise.

At this stage, punch it down to deflate it, then knead it into a loaf shape. Cover with a teatowel and leave it for half an hour, meanwhile setting the oven to 220 C. Bake for 1/4 of an hour before turning down the temperature to 180C and baking for a further 20 or so minutes, covering with a sheet of tinfoil if it starts to get too brown.


The maple syrup isn’t aggressively present in the finished, baked bread, but gives a subtle, layered fragrance and sweet, chewy crust which goes brilliantly with the deliciously toasted walnuts. Last night for dinner, inspired by a Ray McVinnie Quick Smart column in one of my Cuisine magazines, I cooked chunks of butternut pumpkin in boiling water till soft, drained and mashed them with coriander and cumin seeds, fried squares of diced streaky bacon and wafers of haloumi till sizzling, and served all that on top of slices of the freshly baked bread. The sweetness of the pumpkin was echoed in the sweetness of the bread, incredibly good with the contrastingly salty bacon and cheese. Unfortunately that’s the last of the cut-price haloumi I got from The Food Show so it’s unlikely I’ll be able to recreate such a smashing dinner for a while. If however you yourself are in the regular-haloumi-buying demographic then by all means try it.

Other things that happened this mighty fine long weekend include forsaking a long-time-coming sleepin to stagger to the pub to watch the All Whites’ friendly pre-FIFA World Cup game against Slovenia on Saturday morning. Unfortunately we lost, but full marks to Slovenia considering their population is only 2.2 million or so. The upshot of it was that we had a great excuse to go to Customs and order great quantities of beautiful, beautiful filter coffee served by the lovely people there. We don’t get to go very often but they even recognised that Tim had got his hair cut. As well as making me want to cook things, the rain also meant we had a fine excuse to watch The IT Crowd last night. Britain seems to positively fling out these small, side-poppingly funny yet under-the-radar comedies, and while I’d known about The IT Crowd for a while I’ve never pinned it down for a good watch. I really enjoyed Richard Ayoade’s work withThe Mighty Boosh so it’s nice to see him in a leading role in this. Find it if you can – we finished the lot in very quick succession.

Speaking of coffee, and in exciting news for future employers, Tim has left Starbucks after three years. No hard feelings towards the green siren – it helped pay our rent through university and is highly educative coffee-wise. If anyone out there requires a ridiculously great guy with an Honours degree in media studies to do cool stuff like using skills learned in both university and life, then truly look no further than the now-available Tim. You think I deal recommendations lightly? Think again.
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Title via: Electric Blues from the Broadway musical Hair. My preoccupation with its amazing score rides again. This song is so exciting and dynamic, and I presume they use the word ‘bread’ to mean ‘money’ in this context, but then…maybe they’d tried this recipe too. And while lyrics like “we’re all encased in sonic armour, belting out through chrome grenades” make me smile, the next stanza’s “they chain ya and they brainwash ya, when you least expect it, they feed ya mass media” could definitely find relevance at any stage.
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Music lately:
Beth, by localers Voom from their debut album Now I Am Me. I first heard this song years ago on Channel Z and while I can’t say I cried or anything, I certainly felt that good, self-indulgent kind of desolation that you get from wallowing in excellent sad music about situations that you’re not sure if you can relate to but you allow them to reflect whatever it is you’re feeling anyway. Some bright spark put the video onto Youtube so I can now enjoy and wallow all over again as and when necessary.
Janelle Monae’s Tightrope from The Archandroid. There’s already so much being said about her on – dun dun – the internet, but at face value it’s a stonkeringly good tune.
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Next time: Maybe even more exciting than baking bread and watching DVDs on a Friday night, I made my own ricotta cheese yesterday! The recipe is so easy I could almost put it right here as an afterthought. But no. You’ll have to wait for next time, well either that or call my bluff and google “homemade ricotta” and render me completely unnecessary.

like a vegan (hey!)

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Firstly: HOORAY for Easter. It’s one of my favourite times of year. Four no-strings days off, plenty of chocolate, a little religious reflection if that’s your thing, lots of opportunities to bake, and it’s not long till my birthday. I’ve definitely got hot cross buns on the brain, but before that there’s this seriously good vegan apple cake recipe which I want to share. By the way, I hope it doesn’t annoy any people who genuinely shun meat, eggs and dairy when I go into vegan mode and semi-patronisingly claim, like I’m the first person to ever work it out, how good a particular recipe is. I couldn’t go full vegan any more than I could commit to eating nothing but hot buttered toast. I just like finding fun new recipes. Like this one.

I discovered this recipe on Palachinka’s blog. Her version uses grated quince, which sounds mighty alluring, but I decided to go with apples instead to make it an option all year round. It’s the work of minutes (although grating stuff is never fun) and makes a small-ish but really, really good cake.

Apple Cake

Adapted from Palachinka’s Old Fashioned Quince Cake

200g grated unpeeled apple (roughly 2 medium apples)
90mls rice bran oil (or other similar plain oil)
50g sugar
1 teaspoon real vanilla extract or cinnamon
220mls apple juice or similar
200g flour
2 tsps baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. Oil a bundt caketin, sprinkle flour over it, shake it round to coat the inside and then tap out the excess. Mix together the grated apple, oil, sugar, juice and vanilla or cinnamon. Sift in the baking powder, soda and baking powder, mix everything together. Spread into the caketin and bake for about 40 minutes.

That’s all there is to it really – a bit of grating, a bit of stirring, a bit of waiting. I have a pretty large bundt cake tin so the cake was only the size of the top bit of it (as you might be able to see from the photos) but it still worked totally fine. Make sure the baking soda is really well sifted, as it gives the cake the push it needs to rise and you don’t want nasty lumps of it amongst the finished product.

This cake is seriously beautiful – soft, superlight, and keeps for days. The grated apple kind of dissolves once it’s baked but still provides a bit of body and texture. I first made this cake using water instead of juice as the liquid component but trust me, trust me, you need the juice – the cake is okay but a bit weirdly bland without it. The second time, with juice, it was perfect – fragrant and deeply apple-y without being the slightest bit too sweet. I added a spoonful of vanilla paste to add even more flavour but the obvious addition of cinnamon would also be just right. Next time I make this – because there will definitely be a next time – I’m going to try adding a handful of shredded coconut for a bit more texture and flavour. I also have a feeling that grated carrot instead of – or indeed, with – the apple could be really cool. In the meantime, it’s gorgeous just as it is, great with a cup of tea and full of enough good stuff that you could probably eat it for breakfast.

I don’t have much of an agenda this Easter – which is actually really nice – it just feels so ridiculously good having four days to relax. Especially since, O Easter Miracle, Tim got three of the four days off. We’ve watched lots of DVDs and have nearly finished Season 5 of The Wire, which, without wanting to sound like our lives are pitifully narrow, is a pretty momentous occasion. We bussed out to Lyall Bay today and attempted to walk along the beach, getting exfoliated by the sand whipped along by the brutal wind. That said, the feeling of sand underfoot and the sight of giant seagulls flying sideways is never wrong. We had an amazing late lunch (Tim: salami, cheese, tomato and gherkin sandwich, Me: brocolli, blue cheese and walnut pie) at Queen Sally’s Diamond Deli, and bought cut-price yoghurt from the Reduced to Clear shop. Finished up back on Cuba Street sharing a hokey-pokey flavoured thickshake and playing Go Fish at Offbeat Originals. Tonight I’m making hot cross buns, which will rise overnight in the fridge and go into the oven first thing tomorrow morning. I wish it could be Easter every weekend!
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Title brought to you by: Madonna’s Like A Virgin from her album of the same name, and while there’s nothing wrong with this bouncy classic my favourite version involves Jim Broadbent and Richard Roxburgh getting vampy and campy in Moulin Rouge…can’t be unseen.
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Music lately:

On and On by Erykah Badu from Baduism. Her youthful, liquidy voice and spirituality-infused lyrics make anything she does a total joy but if you’ve never heard anything before this beautiful song is a fine place to start.

Rocky Racoon from The Beatles’ White Album, which is my favourite of theirs…one of my favourites, anyway. It was playing in some shop today and I couldn’t seem to shake it out of my mind (mostly because Tim wouldn’t stop whistling it.) I like how it’s so bizarre yet so old-fashioned sounding, like something you might have heard as a Sunday morning kids’ radio show and yet also rather sinister. And I like songs where animals are the main character.

I just watched an amazing film called The Wrestler – that is, I was blogging while Tim was watching, I don’t know that I could really deal with this film without having something else to look at while the violent stuff is happening – and Guns N’Roses’ Sweet Child Of Mine plays during a fairly pivotal scene. I hadn’t heard this song in a while and it was refreshing to hear it in a new context, removed from its usual setting, straight after Living On A Prayer on the Music to Binge Drink To compilation. Is there a more joyful opening guitar riff than that which this song possesses?
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Next time: Hot cross buns, friend. That said, by the time I get round to blogging about them, Easter will likely have passed, the need the recipe will have gone, and you’ll probably be sick of the sight of them on every single food blog. Well I, for one, am excited.

it’s all so sugarless

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I once read that Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys went through a troubled stage where he ate half a birthday cake every day. With all due respect to Wilson, I’d happily eat a whole birthday cake every day and I’m fortunate enough to not even be feeling particularly troubled at the moment. If only cake had any nutritional value. I know – want, want, want. A solution of sorts – there’s this recipe for vegan banana bread on the gorgeous Savvy Soybean blog which turned my head. Last week, with bananas rapidly browning in my fruitbowl, I got round to making it. Oh yes. It’s another post where I semi-patronisingly assure you that a vegan recipe tastes pretty good, even though it contains no butter.

But really. This banana bread is delicious stuff and you expend hardly any energy while making it. The finished product is really quite good for you especially if you can get your hands on the agave nectar, which somehow manages to be sweeter than sugar but with a much lower glycemic index. What an overachiever. Most important: it tastes so good.

Vegan Banana Bread

Recipe adapted from The Savvy Soybean

3 ripe bananas
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2/3 cup agave nectar or runny honey
2 cups flour
2/3 cup coconut (optional) (but nice)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Set the oven to 180 C and line a loaf tin with baking paper. Then, very simply, mix together the bananas, applesauce and honey, then fold in the dry ingredients. Don’t overmix. Turn the batter into the tin and bake for one hour. Pa-dah! Applesauce can easily be made by simmering one large, diced apple in 1/2 – 1 cup water for about fifteen minutes (keep an eye on it, it may need more water added) before roughly mashing with a fork. The original recipe included 1 cup chocolate chips which I didn’t have, I’m sure they’d be an amazing addition but it was delicious without all the same.

The bananas, applesauce and agave nectar or honey keep this moist and light. Combined with the cinnamon, this will fill your kitchen with a proper, comforting, wish-I-could-bottle-it baking fragrance. It keeps for ages and is very easy to slice. While it’s lovely as is – okay, a little chewy as opposed to straightforwardly cakey – it really comes into its own when toasted in a sandwich press. These warm, crisp slices of banana bread are brilliant with sliced plums and maple syrup any time of day, or with any other fruit really, plums is just what I got right now. It is, in fact, so very good toasted that next time I make this I might just slice it, bag it up and freeze it for whenever I require a slightly puddingy snack (which is often…really often).

I’ve been feeling a bit lethargic and brain-heavy lately – like I need to take a whole day out and just sleep before I can get on with everything properly. At any rate, I’m definitely going to need my energy this month – on the 17th Tim and I will be getting up close and personal with Jack White at the Dead Weather concert at Powerstation in Auckland. It’s been five years since we saw the White Stripes at Alexander Palace in London and while both of us are all “make new music together already, Jack and Meg” the Dead Weather is still a very, very anticipation-worthy engagement. Maybe eating more vegan banana bread will help perk me up?

Title comes to you via: Hole’s Celebrity Skin  Although the Spice Girls had my heart, I wanted to be Courtney Love so badly after MTV Europe came to New Zealand TV for a few brief but heady months. If I’d had a disposable income in 1998, there was not much I’d have wanted more (apart from a Spice Girls polaroid) than to lunge around the place wearing floaty dresses, with flowers in my hair and sparkles stuck on my face, holding a guitar. Actually I still do, let’s be honest. 

Music to cook to:

I found Miss World while trawling through Hole music videos. Forgot how much I love this song. I think I’m going to be buying some Hole albums.

Going to DC from Gavin Creel’s album Goodtimenation. I love love love Gavin Creel but to be honest this album doesn’t get played an awful lot, I just haven’t really connected with it. This song is the exception…I love how it’s all bouncy and adorable and ska-ish. And involves Gavin Creel.

I’m Waiting For the Day by the aforementioned Beach Boys from the incredible Pet Sounds. The drums! The fake ending! I didn’t actually think I even liked the Beach Boys until I heard this album. It’s breathtaking stuff.

Next time: I made this ‘tofu balls’ recipe of Nana’s which was wackily delicious, and even though it sounds dubious I’m pretty sure I’m going to share it with all of you too. It will either be that or the coffee ice cream that I made this weekend with rapturously good results. Or I’ll be too busy eating cake to post again…

you can’t stop the beet

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Do you know what you were doing 525,600 minutes ago? This time one year ago, RENT closed on Broadway after 12 years running. I won’t carry on too much about that though, this blog can be confusing enough as it is, but if you want to relive that tear-stained day then by all means read my blog post from September 7th 2008. Or watch THIS. Okay, am now feeling slightly wibbly so will press on.

I guess if there are any other food bloggers out there you too may well be familiar with the regular tango that is attempting to get photos accepted on such blog-sharing galleries as Tastespotting and Foodgawker. It won’t be any surprise that they’ve turned down my dance card many a time for the more shinier blogs out there. No criticism, I mean, it’s what they do. They accept really nice photos. But oh my, it can be twofold disillusioning – when you get rejected yet again, and then when you take a peek at what’s been accepted and realise that because your kitchen is not a photo studio with giant reflectors and diffusers and you need to get dinner out now, there’s little chance you can compete. Anyway, from this it’s easy to become a little peevish. It’s not really not right to take it out on Tastespotting or Foodgawker for not accepting me when my photo probably wasn’t that great in the first place and, more tellingly, if (and occasionally when) I did get accepted I’d bear no such vocal ill-will.

Anyway with all this in mind it’s easy to forget that they can actually provide inspiration and lead you to some fantastic new blogs. This serves as a reminder that one can’t slag off everyone for one’s own uselessness and that it is possible to take lovely photos without compromising reality. So, I somewhat sheepishly relinquish my hard-nosed opinion. For now. Because, while browsing Tastespotting I found this rather smashing blog which has a recipe for Beetroot Bread – combining two of my favourite things, roasted beetroot and homemade bread. How could I hate Tastespotting after that? (Does anyone remember that dark time after Tastespotting crashed but before Foodgawker was set up? Me too!)

Important things to note in this recipe:

-Americans call them beets, we in New Zealand call them beetroot. Either way it’s an ugly word so neither of us need feel any more special than the other.
-You can probably substitute the beetroot for other veges. I imagine roasted carrot would work, as would kumara.
-You have to start the night before. But it takes all of three seconds so don’t for goodness sake let this get you down and prevent you from making this.

With that in mind…

Beetroot Bread

The night before – make like Mickey from In The Night Kitchen…

In a large bowl, mix together 1 cup bread flour, 1/4 teaspoon active dried yeast, and 1 cup lukewarm water. Cover in plastic wrap, or indeed just pop the whole bowl into a plastic grocery bag, and leave overnight. While you do whatever it is you do at night it will grow spongy and puffy in a slow, sinister, but ultimately delicious way.

But sinister.

The next day:

Set your oven to 200 C/400 F and wrap four small or two large trimmed beetroot in tinfoil and roast for about an hour or until soft – when a cake tester can be plunged into them without any resistance. Allow them to cool slightly and then puree in a food processor.

Uncover your spongy night-before mixture and stir in the following.

  • Pureed beetroot
  • 1/2 cup wholewheat flour
  • 1/4 cup lukewarm water
  • 3/4 teaspoon instant dried yeast.
  • 1 teaspoon good salt

Leave it to sit, uncovered for 10 minutes. Then massage some olive oil into your hands (helps prevent the flour from sticking, a little trick that I can’t remember who I picked it up from but thank you, forgotten benefactor) and slowly knead in 2 and 3/4 cups plain bread flour. It will take a litte time but the mixture should eventually sproing together to form a cohesive dough.

Like this one!

Put the dough in an oiled bowl and cover it in plastic wrap, or indeed pop the bowl back into a plastic bag. Leave somewhere to rise for about an hour and a half.

At which point it should look like this, all puffy and giant and pink. I just typed ‘piffy’ instead of puffy. Hee. I think I’ve invented another word (remember Nigellevangelism?)

Grab the dough and divide it into two loaves, and sit them on a baking paper lined tray. Sprinkle with flour or cornmeal or some such if you like (I didn’t), cover in a sheet of plastic wrap and let them sit for another hour (I know. This bread actually sits round forever. It refuses to get out of bed for less than $10,000.) While they’re sitting round, set your oven to 200 C/400 F.

Finally, remove the plastic wrap and bake your loaves for half an hour.

Then EAT.

This bread is fantastic. The blog that I got the recipe from asserts that it doesn’t actually taste like beetroot at all but I disagree. It’s downright beet-y. It’s Warren Beattie. It’s Beattie Johnson. It’s Beethoven. It’s…that’s exhausted my list of people with the word ‘beet’ in their name. The sweet and earthy beetroot definitely lends its enigmatic flavour to the bread, as well as its garish colour. With that in mind, the soft breadiness softens any overriding unusualness of the flavour combination, and the texture is superb – a soft, dense crumb (I think? That’s what you’re supposed to say about bread anyway) with a toothsomely crisp crust. Make this.

Many thanks to Kirby Von Scrumptious for the recipe.

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On Shuffle whilst I type:

Slip Inside This House by Primal Scream from their album Screamadelica. People, there is never a bad time for this album

Dogs from erstwhile Pink Floyd founder and silver fox Roger Water’s live album In The Flesh. It’s 16 minutes and 27 seconds of dark, strange goodness.

Seasons of Love from both the OBC recording and the film soundtrack of RENT. Ah, what did you expect.

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The title of this post is brought to you by: The Broadway musical Hairspray! With its ridiculously gorgeous talent-dense original cast!
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Next time: It’s Tim’s birthday on Friday – he’s turning 23 (finally! Took him long enough!) At his request there will be Guinness Cake. Which means you’ll probably get to check it out also.

tortilla queen (guaranteed to blow your mind)

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The month of June is a fast dame. August is lapping at my heels like a rising tide. July is more packed with commitments than a half-cup of brown sugar. Kindly excuse my ramblings, I found a nice notebook to write my thoughts in and am suddenly convinced I am an artiste, like almost all those people who carry notebooks to write thoughts in. I’ve been traipsing hither and yon across the country (well, I went to Dunedin for two days and a pub quiz last night) and haven’t really had any meaningful eye-contact with the blog lately, but the month of June isn’t really helping matters by going so darn swiftly.

I usually save my food-blog browsing for after I’ve finished a blog post of my own, because I’m in the right frame of mind and have the time to do it. I’ve occasionally wondered if it comes across as a little self-interested (oh hi, that looks delish, I haven’t been here since the last time I updated my blog and wanted comments ohwhatacoincidence) but that’s just how I roll. I roll without agenda or ulterior motive. Anyway while on such a blog-perusing journey after finishing my last post, I found on Thursday Night Smackdown a most enticing missive dedicated to chilaquiles. Mexican food here in New Zealand for the most part runs to bland, pre-packaged DIY enchilada kits, with dry, curling flatbreads and pre-spiced cans of watery beans. Not so bad, just I feel it’s not a cuisine that has been thoroughly probed here. Which could be why I’ve never heard of chilaquiles before. They’re sort of like huevos rancheros, only a bit more deconstructed and a lot less healthy.

I gotta say, there was something about Michelle’s post on Thursday Night Smackdown that really sold this idea to me. I was genuinely excited about making this recipe, which more or less comprises a spicy tomato sauce, tortilla chips, and a fried egg. By the time I got halfway through it making it all though I was starting to have my doubts. Why would anyone want to soak tortilla chips in tomato sauce? Would a fried egg on top of tortilla chips taste freaky at best? Why have I never realised how much fat is embedded into tortilla chips?

Despite the fact that my version was hugely low-rent – and despite the fact that my tastebuds were shuffling their feet dubiously – this is beautiful. Incredible stuff. There’s something about the spicy sauce and the way it softens some of the crunch of the chips, and then the savoury fried taste of the egg kind of drips all over everything. Again, I hasten to add the disclaimer that my chilaquiles were seriously inauthentic, but they were fast and also used what I had in the cupboard. For those of you playing at home, I sauteed a finely chopped onion, several cloves of chopped garlic, a chopped capsicum and a diced carrot in a large pan. Once all that was soft, I poured over half a jar of spaghetti sauce and added a little minced chilli from a jar. After allowing that to bubble and thicken, I poured it over two substantial bowls of tortilla chips (chilli lime flavour, now with extra trans-fats!) and quickly fried two eggs in the pan, not really bothering to wipe it clean or anything. Once done to done-ness, the bowls had an egg each draped overtop and a generous bump’n’grind of salt and pepper. Obviously coriander would be ideal, but I just didn’t have any and remain fairly unscarred by this omission.

The eggs really make it though. You have to buy good eggs. On a whim I purchased some GlenPark Woodland Free Range Eggs, thinking they were quite the bargain. Turns out my mathmatical prowess is exponentially deteriorating with each year because according to Tim I am wrong and they’re actually bordering on heinously expensive. That said, they are, and I do not say this lightly, the single most delicious eggs I have ever eaten. I know, I know, I wax enthusiastic about everything but these eggs truly are exquisite. It’s like the moment you first smell vanilla beans after a lifetime of using synthetic vanilla essence. It’s heady stuff. Find them. Buy them. Eat. I will definitely be buying these again.

The flat we’re living in is blooming ancient, and, as I’ve often whined, freezing cold. One of its particular idiosyncracies is having, at best, one powerpoint per room. This is 2009. We plug in a lot of stuff. Including a heater, without which one might as well go recline under a tree in the rain and read a book of an evening because inside really isn’t much balmier than outside. What all this exposition is leading up to is that the other night – an hour shy of the premier of Outrageous Fortune – we blew a fuse. All four bedrooms and the lounge were unusable. And freezing. In a mad, generation-Y frenzy fuelled by lack of technology I dovetailed my two main interests at that point – staying warm/alive and blogging – by utilising the one room that still had power – the kitchen. I made banana muffins. And then got all up in the oven’s personal space to try and defrost. If I could have, I would have curled up in the warming drawer.

I’ve made these muffins before (recipe here and, after re-reading my old post I’m not sure if I could improve upon the description of them) and they’re fantastic for when you feel as though there’s nothing in the cupboard, because the batter is essentially tiny. Don’t go eating any (I don’t know if this is a warning necessary for sane people, but as you know I tend to eat a lot of mixture) because there’s not a lot there. What is there though makes beautifully tender, cinnamon-warm muffins, the sort you’d never see in a cafe because those bulbous, dry, sandy $3.90 cakes (the sort that especially frequent airports and chain coffee shops) are de rigeur instead.

Tim got home at this point and with a mere manly flick of a switch on the powerboard restored the soothing hum of electricity to our flat. Just in time for Outrageous Fortune. Phew. Last night Scotty graced us with his presence to watch the second episode, and I didn’t know which was more mesmerising – Kasey’s magnificent bosom or the welcome presence of some character development in Judd. Scott and I also both agreed that an episode should be devoted to little more than the character of Van holding baby Jane. Clearly, Season 5 is going to be good.

Finally: The Tonys happened. Not here in New Zealand on TV of course, because basically no-one knows about them over here (that said, we have some bizarre programme placement choices made here, and why?) but importantly: Alice Ripley won best actress in a musical. Some say her speech is weird, some are getting strangely angry over it, I think she was truly magnificent. I wish I could speak in public like that. For what it’s worth though, Brett from Poison’s untimely collision with a piece of scenery could have been the best thing to happen to the already awesome show Rock of Ages – the clip of him getting smacked upside the head by a giant sign has been zooming round youtube and was actually on the news here. I admit to being wildly excited that the word “Tony’s” was used on mainstream TV news.

On Shuffle whilst I type:
Black Tambourine, Beck, from the album Guero (because Tim’s currently obsessed with him)
Flume, Bon Iver, from For Emma, Forever Ago
Birdhouse In Your Soul, Kristin Chenoweth and Ellen Greene, from the Pushing Daisies soundtrack (it uses the word “filibuster!”)

Next time: I realise the photography has been a bit up and down lately, that’s because if I photograph stuff at night it looks awful, during the day, not so much. I’m not sure what I’ve got on the upcoming food agenda but I’m hoping for something a little more friendly on the eye.

pie fidelity

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Do you ever get to that stage in a recipe, when perhaps the walls of your kitchen are schmeered with sugary paste and there’s butter in your hair and a light dusting of flour coats all surfaces and you kind of think to yourself “Why did I attempt something this ambitious?” You’ve decided to make a braised dish involving seven wine-based reductions that weren’t immediately apparent the first time you scanned the recipe, or maybe it occured to you that a poached meringue topped with toffee sculptures would be the perfect follow up to a meal, when suddenly it’s 10.30pm and you’ve used every pan in the house and have internal bruising from trying to whisk egg whites to stiff peaks.

Maybe I paint a slightly dramatic picture, but the pie I made on Wednesday night more or less fell into this category. Luckily, this high-maintenance girlfriend of a recipe was worth it eventually because it tasted incredibly good, despite my ham-fisted tendencies threatening to ruin it at every step of the way…

Based on a recipe I found in Cuisine magazine (and you can find the original recipe here) the idea is to roll a mixture of grated eggplant, crumbled feta, eggs, mint and dill up into sausages with buttered filo pastry then coil them round in a pie plate, to create a pie with a difference. I’ll be the first to admit that my own wobbly, bulging pie didn’t quite match the neat-edged vortex of filo of the picture in Cuisine. This could be due to filo pastry being incredibly fiddly – I seemed to tear it every time I set my pastry brush down. Also, I replaced the eggplant with grated zucchini but didn’t bother to let them drain in a colander and – getting what was coming to me – the mixture was quite liquid and difficult to wrangle.
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I very nearly considered biffing it all and ordering in a curry, especially when the filled rolls of filo kept breaking as I laid them in the pie dish. I also didn’t factor in how long it would actually take to bake (my advice to you all: factor in the time something will actually take to bake) so we had a relatively late dinner by the time it was done. Finally, it was a nightmare to slice up neatly. But luckily it tasted amazing, and how could it not, with all the good things in life like butter and pastry and feta appearing in such proportions. Would I try it again? Yes, and next time I’d be more careful in reading the instructions. And maybe renovate my kitchen so I have enough benchspace to deal with all the filo pastry. At present our benchspace falls into the “laughable to non-existant” end of the scale.

I took a slice to work the next day for lunch and waited hopefully for people to say “my stars that looks like a complicated, deliciously gourmet pie…what – you made it? What an asset you are to this company” But no-one did. Tasted good second time round though.

I had a day off in lieu from work on Friday. Tim and I went back to the Maranui Cafe thinking that at 2pm on a weekday it might be quiet. We thought wrong. It was packed, we had the choice of only two tables, and there was a steady stream of customers entering. I must say, my nerves were feeling a little jangled by the time we got there. You see – and I should perhaps warn you about the x-rated content here – on our way to the bus stop, I noticed a cicada resting casually – leisurely even – on my chest. I sort of froze up and flapped my arms ineffectually at Tim, who gallantly came to my rescue and flicked it away. Somehow it went down my top and decided to it quite apparent that my cleavage was not where it wanted to make a permanent home. At this stage I had no other option but to more or less remove my top. I’m quite thankful that ours is a quiet road. Because of this hair-raising incident we missed our bus – luckily they are fairly frequent – and between that, and the fact that the bus we did catch managed to break down twice on the way, I had a dark feeling that the whole thing just wasn’t meant to be.

But it was. We finally arrived in Lyall Bay, climbed the stairs up to the cafe, and were seated immediately near (but not right in front of) the picture window. I ordered the vegetarian big breakfast and the very act of doing so made me feel a little more calm. By the time it was ferried to me by the charming, friendly waiter, I’d graciously made my peace with the world (but not that wretched cicada.)

Above: The vegetarian big breakfast, called the “Victory Breakfast” on the menu. It’s dangerously good. I’d walk barefoot to Lyall Bay to taste those tomatoes again. Notice the generous dollop of pesto, and the size of the dark, glossy ‘shrooms. The 5-grain bread (from Pandoro) was so delicious I nearly fainted with every bite.

Above: As you can probably surmise from the vast quantities of meat, Tim ordered the non-vegetarian “Big Bay Breakfast”. He said the bacon was delicious and I can vouch for the quality of the kransky, as I audaciously stole a piece. The waiter who brought us our dish said there had been some kind of stuff-up out back with the poached eggs and said we were more than welcome to order fresh ones, but neither Tim nor I – fairly discerning when it comes to our eggs – had a problem with them.

Obviously this alone just won’t do. We were going to buy cake to share afterwards but we were both so visibly unenthusiastic about how it would reduce the actual cake-per-person ratio that we quickly decided to do the logical thing, which was to get two cakes to share.

Above: A plum and coconut tart with a chocolate pastry base and yoghurt. It was lovely – the coconut gave the tart a delightfully dense, moist texture which contrasted with the smooth, ascerbic slices of plum dotted throughout. The pastry gave a further contrast in flavours without being too sweet. The yoghurt was nice as an accompaniment but we mostly chose it because it was offered for free and we like to squeeze out every last drop of value-juice.

Above: The caramel star cookie had the most wonderful filling. I may be a little biased since I have an intense love of caramel flavours, but nevertheless it was a nice cookie. The biscuits themselves sandwiching the filling were pleasant enough and not overly sweet which I think was a good choice.

As with last time, the Maranui Cafe has earned my whole-hearted recommendations. It’s very easy to find as well – just jump on a number 3 bus to Lyall Bay. Although I have no idea what day of the week is best in terms of being relaxed about finding a table. I’ll be honest, I was more impressed by the savoury options than the sweet, although I will stress that they didn’t taste bought in and probably weren’t. I do find it rare that a cake or pudding in cafes will knock me off my feet with its deliciousness. This could be that I’m not eating at places that are super-expensive, but I don’t think it’s that big an ask.
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Now, I don’t run a cafe or restaurant, but is it that hard to make your own cakes and desserts? Surely you are running such an establishment because you actually like making food? I hate it when I go out to dinner and the meal itself has been amazing but then the blah, blatantly bought in pudding disappoints. Don’t even get me started on the state of the abysmal muffins you get served everywhere these days (especially at airport cafes – it’s a kind of fatalistic instinct I have that whenever I’m stuck in an airport I get the urge to spend money on overpriced cakes…) What companies out there are purposefully making these challengingly dry, unloveable muffins?Isn’t that appallingly wasteful, when their time and resources could be spent making quality cakes instead? I realise I’m talking about several things at once here but…any thoughts? Am I expecting way too much? I think not.

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In other news, Mum is still in Argentina and I’m loving reading about her escapades on her blog. Daylight savings has started here and while it means that it will be darker earlier in the day, I’m adoring this transition stage where you wake up in the morning and realise it’s earlier than your body thinks it is and you can go back to sleep – bliss! Finally, Tim and I are currently very, very into 30 Rock. I don’t tend to get into TV shows when they’re actually on TV as we have no reception and I prefer to just buy seasons on DVD where there are no ads, which is why we’re so late to this particular party. But it’s brilliant and densely so, with about 7 one-liners per humorous minute and Tina Fey has created a highly endearing main character in Liz Lemon.
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Next time: Not sure…although I suppose since Easter is a-coming I’ll probably try my hand at hot cross buns again.

won’t get fooled again

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Two things that cause within me a sense of intense anticipation and upon which there is much potential for happiness or dismay – a new cookbook, and a new avocado. You know what they are when you go into the shop, you know that they can be awesome, you might even pick them up appraisingly to gauge whether it’s worth your time and money. But it’s not till you get them home, open them up and try them out that you really know what they are like inside.

I’ve had a pretty fortunate run of things lately with my avocado buying – every last one of them has been firm but yielding, nuttily rich and buttery and as chartreuse as a satin blouse from 1995. I was able to take advantage of the fact that Tim was out one night last week and made myself a solitary dinner of grilled mushrooms (one of Tim’s least favourite vegetables), spinach, and a whole avocado. A private pleasure, is the avocado – I’m loathe to share once I’ve found a good one. If you ask me for a bite of mine I’ll probably sigh and roll my eyes and make you feel bad that you even suggested it. But after this particular dinner, even someone as elephantine of appetite as I had to admit that a whole avocado is way too rich for one person.
It was a pretty fabulous meal though, one that I think will definitely go in my little notebook of potential recipes that will pay off my student loan. I clamped two large, flat field mushrooms in the George Forman grill, and while they were stewing away I used my mezzaluna to make quick work of roasted peanuts, capers, and a slice of preserved lemon. This was spooned over the outstretched palm-like cavity of the mushrooms and grilled again for another couple of minutes until wonderfully fragrant. I crumbled feta on top of them and sat them on a bed of spinach leaves, and then chopped up my triumphantly green, whole avocado.
For something containing no carbohydrates and bugger all protein it was hugely filling. I don’t know if this is a well documented problem – The Foodie’s Dillema perhaps – or just a personal quirk, but does anyone else ever find themselves in that position where they are becoming uncomfortably full, but can’t stop eating because (in this case) the avocado is so delicious and I can’t waste the opportunity for this perfect avocado over something as trifling as my waning appetite? I’m not sure if I explained it well, but it’s a bit like how I always eat lots of food if it’s there for free, even if I’m not hungry…Don’t even get me started on the caveman-style, eating for the next six years that I do at buffet tables.
Anyway, please do try the mushrooms because they were amazing. There’s no point being modest and coy, they really were delicious. They’re gluten free and vegetarian to boot, although I guess you could leave off the feta and call them vegan and dairy free as well.
As I mentioned earlier, avocados and cookbooks have many similarities. I tried out a recipe from a new cookbook of mine recently, Jo Seagar’s The Cook School Recipes. It was my first recipe from this book and I was really excited and it went DRAMATICALLY WRONG. Is there a disappointment as disappointing as gathering together ingredients and time and excitement and ending up with a gluey, sticky, doughy mass instead of a cake? I don’t want this to stop you from rushing out and buying Jo Seagar’s book – the culinary version of getting back onto a pretty horse that bucks you I suppose.
But riddle me this: does the idea of a cake, made solely from 2 cans of crushed pineapple, 4 cups self-raising flour, 1 1/2 cups sugar and 3/4 cups dessicated coconut, mixed together and baked for 45 minutes not sound somewhat unlikely? I mean, I can handle the fact that there are cakes out there that don’t have butter in them, and not everything is leavened with eggs. And I really wanted this to be amazing, because I loved the idea of such a store-cupboard, economic-climate friendly, and delicious sounding cake. Unfortunately it was awful. Even baking it for a further hour and a half couldn’t turn it into anything resembling a cake and it was far too gluey to serve as some kind of exotic trifle base. But with the hat of resourcefulness upon my head I turned to the woman who will never let me down – Nigella Lawson – and found a way to at least turn the non-cake into something useable.
In her book Nigella Christmas, La Lawson has a recipe for these little truffly bonbon things made from crumbled fruitcake, melted chocolate, liqueur, and golden syrup, which are then rolled into balls and festooned with white chocolate and cherries to look like miniature Christmas puddings.
So I thought why the heck can’t I create pina colada truffles using the crumbled up pineapple cake instead of fruitcake? I used melted white chocolate (125g) and a splash of Cointreau along with the golden syrup (3 tablespoons) and using my increasingly sticky hands rolled this challengingly viscous mixture into small balls. Tim and I then set to with toothpicks spearing the chilled truffles and rolling them in melted white chocolate. A fun job, but truly, you need more melted chocolate than is humanly fathomable to coat these truffles. Ours started off luxuriously blanketed, but the ones towards the end were only kind of smattered in chocolate. The main thing is that they tasted curiously…wonderful. A fine example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
I am of course predisposed to like these since I’m a mad fiend for the white chocolate, but there is something appealing in the combination of chewy, fragrant interior and crisp smooth exterior. And I love not wasting food. Although a small voice in my head says that I would have saved more money had I just thrown the cheap cake in the bin rather than adding expensive chocolate, liqueur and more chocolate to it. But whatevs.
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Of course if you wanted to recreate these without damaging your nerves, go out and buy a sponge cake, allow it to go stale, adding a little pineapple juice and coconut as you go. But like me, you needn’t be restricted by Nigella’s recipe. I’m sure there are truffles just begging to be made out of anything – stale blueberry muffins, a chocolate cake that didn’t rise, the last of a lemon and poppyseed loaf (which would probably be equally sensational coated with dark chocolate as it would white). Let your imagination run wild. And as for Jo Seagar’s book, like I said I’m not put off and I’ll definitely be trying something else out of it soon. It would be fantastic to hear from any other kiwis out there that have had success with this cake though. Surely the recipe must work or it wouldn’t have made it into the book at all, yes?
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Like Julia Murney (and Patti LuPone before her) in Evita, my mother will be able to say “What’s new, Buenos Aires,” as she is now officially in South America. I look forward to using this newfangled invention they call Skype to keep in touch with all her exciting news. My younger brother is heading to Australia next week to help out a dear family friend of ours at the motel she owns, and my dad, keeping it local, is working hard with the help of others on maintaining momentum in the fight against the intensely dislikeable Pukekohe Waste Petroleum Combustion Ltd who, as I’ve said time and again, are trying to render Otaua Village a lifeless vacuum by thwacking an unwanted waste oil plant there, regardless of the children, livestock and history that the place is teeming with and with full knowledge of the fact that we don’t have a lot of money or resources to fight them with. Very admiral stuff.

The reason that Otaua Village is so present in my mind is because I was just there on the weekend – which also accounts for my rejuvenated vigour in trying to promote and defend our cause. The reason I was up home is because Tim and I were fortunate enough to be able to go to see The Who with Dad and my brother Julian. Well, what’s left of the Who. People of a certain age and perhaps background (like the man who owns the chip shop down the road) will scoff and say “that’s not the real Who,” well, that’s what they’re calling themselves and I’ll take it, especially as I’m only 22 and it’s the only way I’ll ever come close to experiencing this sort of zeitgeist-embodying, era-defining music, the sort of music that many people of my generation listen to on their iPods with a yearning nostalgia for an age they never even born in. I could describe the evening for you but instead I’ve gathered my thoughts together in the form of a bad poem.

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The Who
Saturday, 21st of March
Our seats are excellent
If I had a dollar for every mullet haircut
Hello Sailor are the opening band and hearing Gutter Black live is a joy
Then the Counting Crows, who play…competently
Feelings of mild ambivalence towards them
turn into feelings of “Why are you here and why are you not the Who already”
The man sitting next to me eats slice after slice after slice of plastic-wrapped, processed cheese
the scariest cheese of all
Finally The Who appear
Roger Daltrey dapper and youthful of face, Pete Townshend wearing a hat
They are wonderful
Both in good voice
Nearly faint from the brilliance of Baba O’Riley
The knowledge that my godfather, a longtime Wholigan and fan to end all fans is in the audience makes me even happier
Forgot how fab the guitar riff from My Generation is
Their background videos rival Roger Waters’ for dizzying intensity
Hey! Ringo Starr’s son is on drums!
Feel benevolent towards the world, even the horrible tall people in front of me
A bittersweet feeling at the end with just Daltrey and Townshend onstage together…
Praise mercy our dubiously parked car was not towed away
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Next time: I just got a bunch of second hand Cuisine magazines and I’m in one of those I-want-to-cook-and-bake-everything moods but I haven’t really got anything specific planned yet.

start me up

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

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

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

Chocolate Beetroot Cake, adapted from New Food by Jill Dupleix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Spring Awakening

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Momentous times: Next week will be my very last week ever of university classes. On the 13th, it shall be my one year blogoversary. On the 23rd, Tim and I have been ‘going steady’ (or whatever other mildly nauseating term you want to apply to it) for three years. Stick around, folks because where we’re going, we don’t need roads.

We do need comfort food though. Despite the fact that it has officially been Spring for a whole month now, the weather is still regularly chilly (punctuated by brief, teasing bursts of sunshine) and so my northern hemisphere readers may well get the same kick out of this food as I did down here in New Zealand.

I have oft sung the praises of NZ food magazine Cuisine, which I believe is the classiest one on the market. Elegant yet functional, inspiring but attainable. Also kind of expensive for the average student, which I why I source out back copies at second hand book stores. I found this interesting sounding meatball recipe in the September 2004 edition, and I know, meatballs are meatballs are meatballs but this is utterly fabulous – warming, softly spicy, saucy and comforting. Here is my adapted version, although I’ll cite the original proportions of ingredients. As I have a well-stocked spice collection and mince is always in my freezer, this was a very cheap meal. Not to mention that I got a sizeable bag of gorgeous wee new potatoes from the vege market for a cool dollar…

Oven Baked Meatballs and Potatoes

Don’t be put off by the list of ingredients, this is so easy and mercifully doesn’t use as many pots and pans as you might think. Also, the original recipe specified a jar of artichoke hearts as an ingredient, if you have some, be my guest.

Serves 6

800g minced pork (although I used beef, lamb would be fab too)
1 onion, finely diced
2 t ground cumin or whole seeds
2 t ground coriander
a pinch sweet smoked paprika if you’re lucky enough to own some
1 cup finely sliced, washed spinach leaves
a handful of chopped coriander leaves
1 egg, beaten
2 T plain flour, plus extra
6 or 7 waxy new potatoes…as many as you fancy really, chopped into smallish chunks.
2 T tomato puree
1 litre chicken or beef stock

Heat oven to 190 C. Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan, then add the onion and spices, stirring till the onions are soft and becoming fragrant. Add the spinach, cooking briefly till it wilts. Tip all this into a bowl with the mince, egg, and coriander. Squeeze it all together with your hands, roll the mixture into meatballs, and toss them in the flour. Using the same pan that you fried the onions in, brown the meatballs in batches, transferring them to a shallow oven dish as you go. In that same pan, cook the potatoes gently for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Add a spoonful of flour and let it absorb all the residual pan juices, then add the tomato puree and stock, bringing to a robust simmer. Carefully pour this over the meatballs, cover with foil (I admit I forgot to though) and cook for at least half an hour.

With spring comes asparagus, that wonderful vegetable that I’ve been waiting for since, well, since last October. A stroke of luck led me to find a generous bundle of it for a staggeringly cheap $1 at the vege market last week, and so we were able to have roast asparagus – one of my favourite things – twice with dinner this week. If you have not yet experienced the joys of this then amigo, read on and learn.

This is something I picked up from Nigella Lawson’s marvellousmarvellousmarvellous How To Eat, but it’s barely even a recipe. Heat your oven to 200 C, and place your asparagus spears on a foil-lined oven tray. Roll them in a little olive oil, then bake for 25 or so minutes till slightly crispened. If you have asparagus of the tough, stringier variety, you may need to trim an inch or so off the bottom. Serve sprinkled with a little good salt. This is near on perfect, but imagine rolling the spears in basil pesto before roasting would appeal also…

And of course, when the weather is cold I crave some kind of pudding. Also when the weather is fine. Either way, we haven’t had a proper pudding in a while and after dinner on Thursday I didn’t quiiiite feel ready to finish eating for the night. I played with the Chocolate Pear Pudding from Nigella Express, I’ve made it before but it’s quite adaptable. Here it takes the form of Chocolate Banana Surprise Pudding, (the surprise being the unexpected square of chocolate that is nestled within the batter!) It is beyond simple to whip up. What I did was cream 150g soft butter with 125g brown sugar. I added an egg, 1 overripe banana, 125g flour, 25g cocoa and 1 t baking powder. You may need to add a little milk if the mixture is too stiff. This went into three 250ml ramekins – although I’m sure you could play with proportions – and I pushed a couple of squares of dark chocolate under the batter of each. These were baked for 25 minutes at 200 C. The tops are cakey and delicious while a spoon, plunged into the heart of the pudding reveals stickily saucy chocolately depths. Perfect with a spoonful of Banana, Pear and Dark Chocolate Sorbet melting into it…

Last week I was fortunate enough to embark on my first business trip. I was taken up to Auckland because Smokefree, who I work with, were one of the sponsors of the Juice TV music awards, and there was a swag of signage that needed to be erected. I got to stay in a lovely hotel, meet some fantastic people, and attend the event. Here are some things I learned…

-Wellington is a nicer city than Auckland. Hands down.

-The people that work at Juice TV are awesome, friendly and welcoming.

-The NZ musicians present at the event seemed to think they were somehow above it all. I’m looking at you, Mr young blonde whippersnapper, late of Zed and now playing guitar with The Feelers. Hardly a career trajectory, so why are you so lacklustre on stage? Look alive! Furthermore, many of them chose to hang languidly outside the performance room hobnobbing with each other rather than actively support the bands on stage. I mean really. You’re not Mick Jagger.

-Boh Runga, younger sister of NZ wonderkind Bic Runga, is really, really pretty in person.

-Just because you are impossibly leggy and have doe-eyes does not mean you make a good TV presenter. It does still make you impossibly leggy though, to which I say *sigh*. Would I take good legs over a personality though? Well, perhaps not.

You may be pleased or disappointed to know that my night finished quite early, not with me snorting cocaine off a dolphin, but with a cup of tea and a good night’s sleep. It was an interesting time though, and great fun, and I may be repeating the experience again come mid-November for the SouthernAmp festival…

Speaking of music, once more shall I plug dad’s protest video on youtube because, well, it’s still important to me. If you’ve watched it already, if you’re curious, if you pretended that you watched it last time but didn’t actually, help out our cause and please, see it by clicking here. If you have a youtube account, any comments of support would be wonderful! We are currently on 879 views which is flipping AMAZING for a video from the tiny tininess that is Otaua. While I’m plugging things I might as well give you the link again to this amazingly hilarious [title of show] video. Once again, if you are lucky enough to live in New York city, go see this sparklingly brilliant musical before it sadly closes. If you are like me and don’t live in NYC, then watch the video because it’s ridiculously funny. Even Tim laughed, which, given his weary suspicion of most of the Broadway shows I’m into, is quite the endorsement.

Next time: I make my own ravioli.