Category: vegan

hot like fire…take you higher

16 Comments

Given that the spiciest thing I was fed as a kid was Chinese takeaways….and considering chili can burn your face off like flaming magma…and also taking into account that the widespread availability of ready-made Thai curry pastes and the like happened locally well after my formative years…it’s unsurprising that it’s only in the last few years that I’ve got into hot spicy food.

Spooning chillies! Is what I thought when I uploaded this photo to the computer. That third one’s really getting into it. Giving the middle one a right old affectionate nuzzle.

Now, it’s got to the point where I near-on crave chilli – the tingly burn it brings to the corners of my mouth and the back of my throat, the fresh, almost lemony flavour of its crisp flesh. With this big talk I’m surprised I wasn’t crawling into the frame of the photo myself to spoon those chilies. What can I say. I’m a spicy convert. My latest chilli venture was to make Nahm Jim from a page I’d ripped out of a magazine  – unfortunately I missed the author’s name, but I am certainly grateful to them.

What is Nahm Jim? A flavour-ly balanced Thai sauce or dressing, which in this recipe harnesses the bright, colourful flavours of red chilli, coriander and lime, and rides them like a capable mule into the salty intensity of fish sauce and caramel fudge sweetness of palm sugar. It all becomes quite the drinkable finished product, which you can pour over things, mix into things, or use it like I did, to marinate things.

Red Chilli Nahm Jim

  • 1 1/2 long red chillies, seeds removed, finely chopped (I used 3)
  • 1 small red chilli, finely chopped (I didn’t use one)
  • 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
  • 4cm coriander stem with root attached, well washed and finely chopped (note: I just used the stem)
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons palm sugar (note: I ate so much palm sugar, it’s delicious)
  • Juice from about five limes 

Using a mortar and pestle, bash the chili, garlic, coriander and 1 tsp salt to a paste. This really didn’t happen for me, it was more just bashed up stuff, but it still worked. Use a food processor or just chop everything superfine by hand if you don’t have the equipment. Work in the palm sugar, then add the fish sauce and lime juice. Check the flavour balance, add more of something if necessary and refrigerate in an airtight container.

So a chili’s heat depends a lot on its size and colour. Big = mild, and red is milder than green, and therefore if you’re just getting into it, use the biggest red ones you can find, make sure all the heat-packing seeds are scraped out of its lengthy belly, and don’t whatever you do touch your face after dealing with them. I rubbed my nose after chopping up these ones and it was burning away for ages. It was a cold night, so it actually worked in my favour, but in the eyes is not so fun. That said, I wussed out of using the small chilli and upped the big chilli quantity – the sauce was gorgeous, don’t get me wrong – but in the end it wasn’t quite hot enough, so more fool me.

Who just puts noodles on the table? This fool.

I had a very appealing idea for marinating chicken in a mixture of this Nahm Jim and coconut milk, but a look at our bank balance meant it wasn’t really a chicken-buying kind of week. Instead I turned to that full-of-potential and megacheap foodstuff that is tofu, to make Coconut Nahm Jim Tofu and Rice Noodles.

My method went like so: slice up one block of firm tofu as you please (I chopped it into pretty diamond shapes which really just look like crooked squares, defeating the purpose completely) and place it in a small container (like a leftover plastic takeout one) and spoon over about half of your Nahm Jim. Or indeed any chilli sauce you like and have handy. Leave for as long as possible – I marinated mine for over 24 hours, on recommendation of Ally – and then about an hour before you cook it, like say when you come home from work, tip in half a can of coconut milk and let it marinate further. Heat up a little oil in a frying pan, spoon the tofu out of the container and into the pan, and let it sizzle away. I like my tofu to be either crunchily crisp, or super tender, and think this recipe suits it being on the tender side, but you do as you please. The residual coconut milk will bubble up and evaporate, and it’ll smell amazing. Remove from heat when you’re satisfied with the tofu’s level of cooked-ness. Meanwhile cook up some rice noodles, drain them, tip in any leftover marinade from the container, a little more coconut milk from the rest in the can, and some salt. Serve drizzled with sesame oil, the remaining Nahm Jim, coriander and sesame seeds.

I love tofu heaps and this may or may not convince you to also, but it’s a pretty simple dinner that looks and tastes good. Not to mention, doesn’t cost a whole lot. Tofu is so cheap and ridiculously filling, making it a pal to our bank balance. The Nahm Jim and coconut really soaks into its spongy surface during its marinading stage, and the sugars in both elements smell gorgeous when they hit the hot pan and start caramelising. While it’s perfect straight from the hot element, if you let it sit for a while the slippery rice noodles absorb the coconut milk and become even more luscious and silky-textured. Mint would be a nice substitute for coriander if you’ve got it – nothing like a bit of green sprinklage to make a plate of food look more professional. Oh, and you could feel free to spoon the uncooked tofu into a salad or something straight from the marinade – it tastes amazing as is.

Introducing The List:

I’m a very determined and ambitious person. Not that I’m used to things going my way. I am in fact extremely used to things going decidedly not my way. But in order to help me help myself to get more things going my way (if that makes sense) I’ve made a big to-do list, inspired by friends, all outstanding in the field of excellence, who have all previously created their own.

It’s all very well and good to be determined and ambitious, but it’s very very well and good to write stuff down so I don’t forget things, and so I can be accountable to my own brain, which flings around ideas like a pinball machine. I’ve already started writing it (and you can read my list here) and I’ve got till the end of Sunday to finalise it, and from there, till June 30 2012 to complete the tasks. I’m looking for some more things to add to it, so feel free to make suggestions (I’m talking kinda broad thematic things, not like, say, “Oi Peter Gallagher, resolve to pluck your eyebrows!” because that’s just not helpful.) Yes, I’m pretty serious when I say “get a book deal”, I don’t want this to sound like the tagline to a Justin Bieber movie but I dream bigtime big and I think I can make all these things happen, if I work at it. If I could keep our room tidy for a month though, that would honestly (I can’t emphasise my hopelessness) be almost as much of an achievement. And now that it’s written down on this list, I am going to make it happen. Hopefully. Wait, no! DEFINITELY. What would Leslie Knope Do? Is what I’ll remind myself when things look uncertain.

Oh yeah, and Snacks the Goldfish is now nearly two weeks into her new life with us and thriving. I like to amuse her/annoy Tim by singing to her whenever I get home from work and walk in the room. I can tell you with certainty that yelling “who let the dogs out!” and then pointing expectantly will not elicit a response of “who, who, who, who” from either Snacks or Tim.

Title via: the always sadly-late Aaliyah, shortlived R’n’B perfection, with Hot Like Fire.

Music lately:

Who do you love? I love Bo Diddley, you blazer of trails and creator of amazing guitar rhythms.

Nature Boy, Nat King Cole. We found a record of his at the Waiuku Bookfair that turned out to be the same one my grandparents on my dad’s side used to blast all the time. Nice to be able to remember them while listening to his beautiful, restrained singing.

Next time: I still have that poached pear sorbet idea under my skull, but there’s no way that can happen until we eat more of the existing ice cream…

give ’em the old double whammy

13 Comments

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

…increased asparagus photo-taking opportunities!

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

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

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

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

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

Salad:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music lately:

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

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


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


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

everyone jump on the peas train

15 Comments
It was Tim’s birthday last Sunday. We don’t really do presents, but I did get him 25 individually filled out birthday cards. Keep in mind that this came about after about a week of laughing at him and telling him there was no way I was going to get him a birthday card. At the eleventh hour, the idea of not only getting him a birthday card after all, but in fact surprising him with a card for every year of life suddenly gripped me and by the time I’d bought a few, I had to go through with the whole thing. 
(Fluffy couldn’t be contained by any envelope. Fluffy also meowed a disturbingly discordant “Happy birthday to you” when you rubbed her stomach.)
There was a party on Wednesday, where we drank Purple Jesus, ate chocolate dipped potato chips (and mighty delicious they are too), several cheeses, venison salami (who knew it existed?) a whole lot of ice cream, and…speaking of outlandish ideas that I have…a cake I made that looked like Tim. It’s not something I paraded around on Twitter for fear of mass unfollowings but just in case, reassure me, there’s nothing tooooo weird about making a cake that looks like someone for their birthday, is there? It’s worth noting that the cake’s real-life counterpart is better looking, or at least has a more significantly visible chin. Tim was wearing the exact same clothes as the cake (following a conversation about which of his pants would be easiest to recreate in icing) which of course added to the fun. And maybe the weirdness. But mostly the fun.

It was such a fun night, but between one thing and another I’ve been feeling lingeringly seedy since, not helped by a weekend away for work. Having returned to Wellington, all my instincts tonight wailed “get take-out satay”. But instead I hunted out a recipe that not only takes a bare minimum of brain effort to make it work, it’s also delicious, and very good for you. Like taking your brain cells and your tastebuds out for a swim in the kind of cool, artesian mountain stream that you read about on the back of fancy bottled water.

Peas and water, that’s all it is. Peas, water. And a blender. Unfortunately this recipe won’t work without said blender, so if you don’t have access to one, I’d change it up and make some kind of peas and rice combination instead. If you do have one though, and some peas in the freezer, then you’re bare minutes from the foamiest, floamiest, greenest soup in existence. My photos don’t really demonstrate how vigorously green it is, because it was on the dark side when I snapped these. I’ve been on the lookout for some polystyrene to reflect light a bit, but really I’m just lazily hanging out for it to continue getting lighter in the evenings. 

For all that I’m such a crusader for this soup, I was initially suspicious of it. I’ve known about this recipe of Nigella Lawson’s for years, but always thought she was talking it up way too much. It just sounded too simple, and in my mind I pictured, like…water with peas floating in it, not this inconceivably velvety puree. 
Turns out she wasn’t talking it up nearly enough. Should’ve trusted her, since it was Nigella and all.

It tastes gorgeous – like you’re drinking the very meaning of green in itself (frozen peas have this effect on me sometimes, sorry). But it’s even better if you do like I did and add a spoonful of rich, gritty white miso paste, and a few basil leaves. You could use mint or coriander too, whatever you have, or just nothing at all – but the clean, nutty pea flavour benefited from the herbacious peppery depth of basil. You could also add rocket leaves, spinach leaves, any other green bits you have slinking around in the fridge. 
Easiest Pea Soup

Adapted slightly from a recipe of Nigella Lawson’s from her seminal text How To Eat.

450g frozen peas
1 1/2 cups water

Optional but recommended and awesome:

1 teaspoon white miso paste
Basil leaves
Boil together the peas and the water (plus the miso if you like) in the usual way, as if you were going to serve them just as is. Remove from the heat, carefully tip into a blender and whizz away till very smooth. Add the basil leaves at this point and blitz again. Tip into two bowls and serve.
Thanks so much to everyone for all the nice feedback on my video tutorial on how to to make ice cream! Seriously. I was braced for complete indifference, at best. And now I’m currently working on the second one: a salute to homemade pastry. 
______________________________
Title via: Cat Stevens’ lovely song Peace Train. And let’s all just take a moment to appreciate what a babe young Cat Stevens was.
______________________________
Music lately:

Like I said, I was away this weekend, and when I got home I um…listened to Mariah Carey’s monumentally good MTV Unplugged album at least four times in a row. So, no change since last week, I’m afraid.
______________________________

Next time: I’m not sure, but I’m in the mood to do some proper baking. 

i fought the slaw and the slaw won

13 Comments

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

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

From Simple Fresh Southern by the Lee Brothers


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

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

"she used to say, harlan pepper, if you don’t stop naming nuts…"

17 Comments

Having now made cashew butter for the first time, I can only hope that if you try it too, you don’t experience the same terrifying lows, dizzying highs and creamy middles that I endured to achieve one small bowl of camel-coloured paste. I first heard about cashew butter in a Baby-Sitter’s Club book, Dawn and the We Heart Kids Club, in fact. Who could’ve known that about fifteen years would pass before cashew butter had any further significance in my life?

Please ‘scuse the green stain on the teatowel.

I’ve now relayed this story dramatically on Twitter and Facebook, but for context, and because I’m not good at letting go of things easily, I’ll re-summarise here. I saw on Mrs Cake’s blog that she’d done homemade peanut butter, and breezily so, and I thought her method could be easily transferable to cashew nut butter. The sort of thing I read about – see above – but have never actually eaten.

While pulverising my cashews in the food processor, I saw that a significant amount of cashew-matter had crept up the sides and remaining there, safely away from the whizzing blades. So, unthinkingly, I got my wooden spoon, poked it through the feed tube in the lid of the processor, and waggled it round to scrape down the sides. It worked! But then the blades forced everything back up again. Instead of sensibly turning it off and scraping down the sides with a spatula, I just stuck the wooden spoon back in the tube again. And dropped it. There was an awful noise as the processor was almost jumping around with the exertion of trying to blitz at full speed with a spoon jammed in it, and finally with a crash, the plastic tube broke, pieces of it hurtling into the air, and all this forced the lid off so the food processor finally stopped going. Leaving me with butter dotted with tiny woodchips, a significantly clawed and scraped wooden spoon (it was my favourite!) and a busted food processor lid.

If you follow this method *except* for the wooden spoon bit, I promise you’ll have cashew butter – homemade, wildly delicious, fairly inexpensive if you snap them up on special, non-traumatic cashew butter. Unfortunately there’s no getting around the fact that you need a food processor. I kind of need one now, too.

Homemade Cashew Butter

  • Roasted, salted cashews, as many as you like
  • Plain oil such as rice bran (optional)

I say roasted and salted, because this is how they’re usually presented, but if yours are plain, then just roast and salt them as you wish.

Place the cashews in the bowl of the food processor. Put on the lid and blitz them pretty constantly, pausing occasionally to scrape down the sides and give the motor a break.

Eventually – it does take a while – the cashews will go from being crumbly particles, to forming a smooth, solid mass. This might be extremely solid, so feel free to drizzle in a little oil to soften it up a bit.

Transfer to a container and refrigerate.

Really, if you’re not going in for processor-busting shenanigans like me, the only difficult part of this operation is the horrible loud clattery noise that the food processor makes when it first starts chopping up the nuts. It’s like the sound of a massive snarling dog sitting on top of a ride-on lawnmower driving over gravel.

Consider the cashew: it’s a pretty ultimate nut. Classier and less abrasive than the peanut, easier to get at than a pistachio, less fancy than the pinenut, cheaper than macadamias, softer than Brazils, more savoury than the almond, and um…less wrinkly than pecans and walnuts. Its mild, creamy flavour and excellent affinity with sodium makes the cashew so favourably inclined to becoming a spreadable version of itself. The cashew butter has a caramelly richness which just hints at white chocolate (although I maintain that macadamias are the white chocolate of the nut world) but also that recognisable peanut butter quality of coating your throat and choking you if you eat it too fast. (I also maintain that clouds are the whales of the sky, but that’s mostly to annoy Tim.)

In case you’re wondering what to do with your cashew butter, apart from eat it euphorically (it really is good) you might consider these Spicy Cashew Noodles that I brought into being last night for dinner. In a bowl, place three tablespoons of cashew butter, chilli sauce in a make and quantity of your preference (I used 1 tablespoon sambal oelek) and either a little finely chopped fresh ginger or a brief dusting of ground ginger. Now add about 1/2 a cup water. Using a fork or a small whisk, mix this together till it forms a saucy sauce – the cashew butter will magically accommodate the water so add more if you like. The cashews are already salty and sweet but taste and see if you want to add sugar or salt. Finally, mix in a teaspoon of cider vinegar (that’s what I had, I can’t vouch for the taste of other vinegars but I’m sure they’ll work) and stir the sauce through the cooked noodles of your choice. Me, I went for rice sticks. Tip over a little more chilli sauce and some coriander or mint if you like.

And pa-dah. You have dinner, of sweet, spicy nutty sauce which coats each delicious strand of noodle. If cashews are out of your reach right now, you could always make this with peanut butter instead.

The NZ Film Festival has started in Wellington, and Tim and I are filming it up large in response. I particularly can’t wait for Pina and The Trip. Also Visa Wellington on a Plate starts this Friday so if you’re not already – there’s a significant amount of justifiable hype surrounding it like jus surrounds a cutlet – then Get Excited and check out their website for things to do that will bring yourself and food closer together.

Title via: A rare non-music title; the nut-monologue from Best in Show. A movie not quite as rapturously good as A Mighty Wind but still brilliance.

Music lately:

Ali Farka Toure, Beto. Beautiful music.

How To Dress Well, Decisions (Orchestral Mix) it’s actually playing on the radio right now and I like it so much that I had to look it up. Nice work, radio. (Or should I say, Martyn Pepperell on the radio, since he’s the one who played the song)

I know I go on about her a bit, but it’s with good reason. You should see Mariah Carey sing the ever-loving heck out of one of her early hits Emotions in this video. (I mean her awesomely peppy song of that name by the way, not the gross BeeGees one.)

Next time: Strange as it seems, it feels like ages since I’ve done any proper baking so it might be that; I also have some tamarillos up my sleeve….not literally…

 

let me entertain you, and we’ll have a real good time yes sir

14 Comments


Tim and I belong to a book group, which Ange, our ex-flatmate but still-friend started in early 2010. Every month we get together at someone’s house and discuss a book. Last night it was at our place, a commitment that always fills me with joy. Firstly because everyone in the book group is really, really nice and fun to be with, and secondly because I get the opportunity to provide a spread for people. An opportunity I’m always keenly looking for. Normally I do one recipe per blog post, but instead today I’ve serving up three small nibbly recipes; Marteani, Beetroot Hummus and Cannellini Bean Dip; all in the name of playing host.
As I’ve outlined somewhere in my unrestrained ‘About Me’ section, I like to keep the recipes here fairly accessible, but also amazing. Every now and then though, usually under the influence of Nigella, something kind of impractical takes hold of my imagination.
Like Marteani. Which uses lots of Cointreau – quelle expensive – vodka, and Earl Gray Tea (hence its name) to make a cocktail of orange-scented sumptuousness. Cointreau is not the kind of thing I would normally have just knocking around. However. I had about an inch in a 750ml bottle that my step-grandmother had given me, and then I had a further litre bottle that I bought in duty-free on the way back from Tim’s and my trip overseas in March. Both had sat untouched ever since they’d arrived (I think I got that partly-empty bottle in 2009?) and while it’s good not to use up all your expensive things at once, whatever they may be, there’s also a case to be made for actually enjoying what you’ve worked for before you drop it on the floor or something.


A little extravagant, sure…but never ever wasteful.
“I want your spirits to climb, so let me entertain you…”
Unfortunately I didn’t have a better-looking jug to put it all in, but tra la la. That in the background was another duty-free conquest – a strapping 1.75 litre bottle of Absolut. As far as vodka goes (and I don’t mean to sound like that guy from American Psycho, “I told you to keep Finlandia in this place”) I’m very particular. There are just some horrible vodkas out there that I don’t see any point in drinking. On the other hand, vodka is pretty pricey. Generally, I move between Absolut, for mixing (with soda water) and Zubrowka (yes, another duty-free, we really tested its limits) for sipping from a small glass over ice. When I drink at all. As I saw fit to last night, for book group.
If you’ve got a smallish amount of people coming around and the means to make it, I definitely recommend Marteani. It’s a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s book Nigella Christmas, and she suggests it with brunch.
Marteani

I tripled the tea content and halved the Cointreau – well, it was only a Monday, and Cointreau is still expensive. This made it go a lot further, while still maintaining a liqueury thrill. This would probably be ideal served in actual Martini glasses, but not having any, I just poured small amounts into whatever glasses we could find. Including a small glass jar shaped like a beer stein which used to have mustard in it (Tim bagsed that one.)

250mls/1 cup strong, cold Earl Gray Tea
250mls/1 cup vodka
250mls/1 cup Cointreau (or Nigella suggests Grand Marnier or Curacao or Triple Sec.)

Pour all the ingredients together in an ice filled jug. As I said, I used 750mls tea and 125 mls Cointreau. It was still extremely fine stuff.

Also I forgot to make ice ahead of time so I just put it in the fridge till needed: still good.
If you don’t have resiny, syrupy Cointreau then Limoncello would be an excellent substitute – it can be pretty reasonably priced and is in that same juicy, citrussy family of flavours.
Should you be having people around, I also emphatically recommend the following dips. One – the Beetroot Hummus – is kind of involved, and the other – Cannellini Bean Dip – delivers so much disproportionate deliciousness for how simple its recipe is that I could cry happy tears just thinking about it. Alas, you really do need a food processor for these. A stick blender could probably do the trick, otherwise maybe find a friend who’s got one and share some of the resulting dip with them.
Beetroot Hummus

Adapted from a recipe in the 2011 River Cottage Diary, a demonstratively multi-purpose book sent to me by the lovely Lisa at Prime TV.

3 medium sized beetroots, leafy tops and creepy tails trimmed off
1 piece of white bread, crusts removed
50g walnuts, almonds, brazils (whatever you can find – probably not peanuts though, their texture and flavour isn’t quite what’s needed here)
Ground cumin or Ras-el-hanout
Salt and olive oil to taste

Wrap each beetroot in tinfoil and roast at 180 C/350 F for about an hour and a half – till a fork can easily pierce through. Allow to cool. Toast whatever nuts you’re using – if you like, add them on a small tray to the oven that the beetroot are in once you turn off the heat, if that makes sense.

In a food processor, blitz the nuts and the bread until fairly fine. Remove the beetroot from the tinfoil, rub off their skin – it should happen easily, leaving you with oddly silky-smooth peeled beetroot – and chop them roughly before adding them to the food processor as well. I don’t recommend you wear white for this. Blitz again till a dark, chunky purple-red paste forms. Add a little salt, the spice, and a little olive oil if you like, and blend again. Spatula into bowls and serve.
Note: I completely missed the instruction in the recipe to add a tablespoon of tahini – which I love, but didn’t have any of anyway. It’s still brilliant without it, but it would add a little richness and texture, plus that sesame flavour.
Cannellini Bean Dip

This incredible recipe is one I’ve adapted slightly from the Scotto Family Italian Comfort Food book. It has barely any ingredients and yet is the most ridiculously creamy, luscious thing you can imagine. Especially considering it’s made from beans, not known for being life of the party, food-wise.

2 cans cannelini beans
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (or avocado oil, or some other oil that you don’t mind the taste of)
Salt

Drain the cans of their liquid, pour the beans into the food processor, add a little salt, and blitz to a thick, wheat-coloured paste forms. Pause, scrape down the sides with a spatula, taste to see if it needs more salt. Blend again, pouring in the oil. That’s all.
The beetroot dip excellently plays up the vegetables sweetness and earthiness with the nuts and the cumin respectively. The beetroot becomes rich during its time in the oven yet the finished result – despite the nuts and bread – is very light. The cannellini dip is just all plush and velvety, like the dip version of…a bunny rabbit.
In case you’re wondering, the book I’d chosen was Barbara Anderson’s Long Hot Summer, which we all agreed was fine, but seemed to leave many potentially dark or exciting plot avenues gently unexplored. That said, we’ve been reading things like Therese Raquin and Frankenstein, it’s possible we just weren’t ready for such mildness.
Unfortunately the lurgy that I was labouring under a couple of weeks ago seems to be taunting my immune system once more. The weather in Wellington has been headline-makingly cold, and there has even been moderately unprecedented snow around the place – not in our neck of the woods, unfortunately. When I get the time, I plan on getting the thyme (HA! HA!) to make this restorative sounding brew. Anyone else in NZ had snow?
__________________________________________

Title via: Sondheim’s amazing musical Gypsy. Let Me Entertain You is a thematic tune running through the whole show, starting it off as performed by Baby June in her squeaky voice and eventually developing into what Louise sings during her stripping montage. Gypsy in all its stage and screen forms has starred some seriously stunning women over the years as Rose and Louise – Angela Lansbury, Patti LuPone, Bernadette Peters, Ethel Merman, Bette Midler, Laura Benanti, Natalie Wood…Hopefully I’ll see it live one day with a similarly worthy contender for the roles.
____________________________________________________

Music lately:

I think I’m becoming a bit obsessed with Judy Garland. There, I said it. I might have listened to her Live At Carnegie Hall record three times in a row (which takes up quite a bit of energy, what with it having four sides and all.) I love Lena Horne’s famous version, but when Judy sings “can’t go on, everything I have is gone” in Stormy Weather my eyes can’t help but start pricklingly anticipating tears. (It really doesn’t help to listen to her singing while reading a biography of her.)
Moana and the Moa Hunters: AEIOU, especially as analysed by Robyn Gallagher on her fantastic site 5000 Ways To Say I Love You – wherein she will watch every single NZ On Air funded music video she can find.
_____________________________________________________

Next time:

Well, I saw this and any alternate plans disappeared.

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

15 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

clean clear crisp, we got a love like this water

12 Comments

I don’t want to come across all “Oh hi old friend, haven’t seen you in so long, oh wait I’ll just put my shiny new iPhone on the table there for everyone to see while opening up the FriendPal app, which I paid $3 for, it takes a photo of the person in front of you so you can talk to them while looking at a picture of them on your phone” etc. But I really, really love the FoodGawker app, which is where I found this recipe for Chocolate Mousse. While all the food that I blog about here makes me happy, sometimes I find an exciting recipe that just fills my thoughts constantly, because I’m so curious about it. A recipe that makes people’s voices slower, plane trips delayed, busses late and traffic more congested because they’re all standing between me and my kitchen.

 
 
 
Foodgawker is a site with page after page of thumbnails of stunning food photography, each photo linking to the recipe it depicts on the blog it came from. You’ve got to self-submit, and you’ve got to be good. Possibly related: they’ve consistently rejected all my submissions over the last year or so. But still I return, using it like Google for recipes. Their iPhone app condenses all this into a format that fits on your phone, and it’s a grand way to fill in spare time – although it helps to have some free Wi-Fi, I bet all those high-res pictures chew through the megabytes.
 
The reason this recipe caught my attention, while browsing through the app in an airport recently, was its ingredients. Or lack of.
 
 
 
 
Chocolate, water, juice, honey. (The honey was a total pain to scrape off the baking paper, by the way, and I didn’t even achieve visually what I was hoping for! Hopefully I learn from this.)
 
You get chocolate mousse out of hardly anything at all. I wish I’d known about this recipe a few years ago as a student – a little chocolate, turn on the tap, and you’ve got pudding. No eggs, no cream, no nothing. It’s amazing. As the German man on Tim’s and my train to Warsaw said when he found out we were from New Zealand: “Oh my gosh, that is further away than I could ever have imagined!” As they say in [title of show], “For anyone who’s ever dreamed, it’s time to believe in dreaming again….It’s time. Dream. Believe.” (Oh come on, it more or less applies to awesome chocolate mousse. Also: [title of show]!)
 
 
Water Chocolate Mousse
 
With a huge thanks to the Mess In The Kitchen blog where I found this recipe. I’ve adapted it slightly.
 
100g dark chocolate (I used Whittaker’s Dark Ghana)
1/4 cup juice (any flavour, I used more of that strawberry juice)
1/3 cup water
2 teaspoons honey
 
Bring the liquids and the honey to the boil in a pan, then remove from the heat and tip into a bowl. Break up the chocolate and add it to the bowl, stirring till the heat of the liquid melts it and you’ve got a shiny chocolate puddle.
 
Refrigerate for 10 minutes or so. Just before you take it out, fill your sink with a couple of centimeters of cold water, and add a handful of ice cubes.
 
Sit the bowl of chocolate in the water, and whisk. Whisk and whisk and whisk and eventually it will aerate, turning paler and thickened and – pa-dah – into chocolate mousse. If you end up with what looks like overbeaten whipped cream, just whisk in a little hot water till you get the consistency you want. Divide amongst two smallish bowls/glasses and serve.
 
Serves 2
 
 
Most recipes involving chocolate will stress that you can’t let any water get into it or it’ll seize up and turn all gross. So, it was with slight consternation that I mixed the two together. Through some miracle of science, the melted chocolate, rapidly cooling with every flick of your whisk, absorbs the liquid and becomes a soft, velvety pillowy pile of mousse, with the clean, unsullying water making the dark cocoa flavour so definite it’s like every single one of your tastebuds is wearing 3D glasses.
 
 
 
 
In terms of excitement-causing, second only to the astonishing minimalism of the ingredients is this recipe’s versatility. With no eggs or dairy or gluten, this could also serve as icing on a cake, the filling in a pie shell, or as a base for whatever flavour you want to push upon it – use orange juice, add vanilla or peppermint extract or cinnamon. If you don’t have juice or honey, I think you could use water for the entire liquid content, and just use two teaspoons of sugar.
 
 
 
 
And for interest’s sake, I tried it with white chocolate instead of dark. Apart from the sort of muddy colour (from the strawberry juice) and a softer-set texture, it worked amazingly well and now calls me, siren like, from the fridge.
 
 
 
Title via: Ladi6’s high-achieving single Like Water from her beautiful album The Liberation of…
 
 
 
Music lately:
 
Kiss From a Rose, Seal. OMG this song is good. Although it’s really hard to blog when you’re singing along to it. It requires all your concentration.
 
HAIR. While I appreciate that I’ve mentioned it a million times, it’s only because it’s really, really good. And I’m obsessed anew thanks to the arrival from America of the Actors Fund of America Benefit recording and the vinyl record of the 2009 revival cast. “All the clouds are cumuloft, walking in spaaaace”
 
Unknown Mortal Orchestra, How Can You Love Me. As commenter Pete20Pedro on Youtube says, “what a jam!” And their album came with a free tshirt, one of those nice ones with really soft fabric, even.
 
 
Next time: Nigella’s recipe for coconut macaroons…unless anything dinner-y overtakes my interest before then. That’s if I’m not asleep in every spare moment. Had another weekend away for work – fortunately, didn’t hit my head again, but I did have a weird sleepless night in my motel, which I’m still catching up on now.

red enough it could burn you…

7 Comments

I was away in Auckland for work over the weekend, but very happily, I got to fit a night at home with the family in around it. During my 18-hour stint at home I somehow managed to catch up with huge amounts of family, both extended and immediate. Well, the family minus one cat (Rupert, who died in May). Roger, the remaining feline, seemed to enjoy the extra attention but didn’t go so far as to actually sit on my lap for an extended time period or sleep on my bed that night.
While packing up on Sunday in my Auckland motel to head to the airport, I bent down to check if I’d left anything under the bed (I always do this, even if I hardly bring anything with me – I once found twenty cents!) and on the way down my right temple connected hard and swift with the wooden back of a desk chair. It hurt so bad, and I wailed really loudly. And then kind of laughed at the fact that there was no-one to hear me saying “owwww”, which…actually sounds fairly sinister now on paper. Anyway, if this blog is completely non-inspiring to read, blame it on my sore, impacted head.
The new Cuisine magazine arrived in our mailbox the day before I left to go up to Auckland, giving me just enough time to read it, but not enough time to cook any of its content. I did daydream about one particular recipe while away, which I then made pretty well immediately after returning home to Wellington. Rote Grutz, or its supercool translation Red Grits (I find it hard not to spell it Gritz) is a German recipe that Ray McVinnie, one of my very, very favourite local food writers, discovered while researching food in Berlin. I’m not even going to pretend to *cough* when I say: “Luckyyyy”.
It doesn’t look like there’s much to this recipe, and it’s true, but the ingredients come together to form something that’s a gorgeous merging of jam and custard. The ‘grits’ part of the name come from the berries’ seeds, at least that’s my guess. They’re certainly gritty. The cornflour and juice cooks together and becomes satiny and light (apart from that one lump of unstirred cornflour stirring in my glass), stunningly red, not too sweet. In fact, the sour-sugary aspect makes it compelling eating. I even sneaked back to the fridge in a bit of a trance while it was cooling to eat some more spoonfuls, then accidentally dropped a steak right into the bowl of berries. Luckily the steak was wrapped and on a tray and I removed it fast.
I didn’t have the exact ingredients that Ray McVinnie specified, but I’d like to think what I had worked just as well. There’s something nice about the red-on-red of the juices but I’m sure you could use orange or apple juice if that’s what’s most accessible to you.
Rote Grutze/Red Grits

From the June/July 2011 issue of Cuisine magazine.

250mls cranberry juice
150g sugar
800g frozen raspberries
50g cornflour mixed with 4 tablespoons water

Or, my appropriation based on what was in the fridge and the amount of people it was feeding:

125ml (1/2 cup) strawberry juice (I know! I bought it at the food show, the brand is NJoy but I can’t find anything about them online. Anyway, this seemed like a practical use for it.)
75g sugar
400g frozen cranberries and blackberries
25g cornflour mixed with 2 tablespoons water

Bring the sugar and juice to a boil in a saucepan. Add the berries, bring to the boil again and carefully stir in the cornflour mixture, stirring really well so you don’t end up with lumps of cornflour. Remove from the heat, cool, then pour into glasses. Out of mine I got enough for the two glasses you saw plus a couple of tablespoons left over to be saved for making future breakfasts more exciting.


The Red Grits are pretty to look at, dark as garnets and just as light-catching. While they’d taste gorgeous with a cascade of fresh cream plunging into their red depths, they were satisfactorily delicious as is. As well as served in glasses, I imagine these saucy berries could be spooned over ice cream, tucked under a crumble topping, or used to fill a pie shell.


And extremely easy to make. Tim and I never actually saw these on a menu in Berlin, but it does feel nice to be eating something Germanic, so that our holiday doesn’t feel quite so far away in the past.
Last week I had the extremely cool opportunity to go to the launch of Visa Wellington on a Plate. Which I’m really excited about. Particularly the set menus which allows me to briefly feel like a Lady Who Lunches. At last year’s launch I met Mika of Millie Mirepoix for the first time, and also the magnificent Ray McVinnie himself. He wasn’t there this year, but I re-met Delaney of Heartbreak Pie and Rosa of Mrs Cake, and met for the first time Joanna from Wellingtonista, etc. We ploughed through beautiful nibbles, ended up at Cuckoo round the corner for wine (I will pay you back Delaney and Rosa) and then Tim appeared and he and I ended up having a wild dinner at Foxglove with Jo and her friend Heather. It all happened really spontaneously which is a word that I don’t usually use to describe activities that I participate in. It was so fun, and several bonus points to the staff at Foxglove who dealt with our increasing raucousness. But as well as making real-life friends of people that also seem cool online, Wellington on a Plate has plenty to offer people who just want to eat stuff: check em out.
_______________________________________

Title via: Linda Clifford, Red Light, from the Fame soundtrack. I love this song so much. It’s also an amazing moment in the film itself – obviously Leroy is a total babe and it’s supposed to be humourous but I always felt so sad for Shirley Mulholland. When she says “who wants to go to a…school and learn to dance anyway” a bit of my heart chips off (this is why I can’t watch this film too often) because I know how she feels.
_______________________________________

Music lately:

Arctic Monkeys, Don’t Sit Down Because I’ve Moved Your Chair. Some of the music I was really wild about six years ago really hasn’t aged too well, or successive output has downright deteriorated. So it’s nice to see the Arctic Monkeys continuing to be awesome.

Patrick Wolf, The Magic Position. I had a bad headache today from the aforementioned head-hitting moment and so was feeling a bit grim. This song came on my ipod and, with its carousel-ride sound and Bolero-baiting violins, it was about halfway through before I realised I was happily swaying my head side to side like Stevie Wonder.
_______________________________________

Next time: I’ve been tutu-ing with the idea of making a Facebook page for this blog. On the one hand…it might be a good way for people to latch ever further onto this blog. A lot of people like Facebook. On the other hand, I don’t really like Facebook (it’s true! You have to scrape me away from Twitter with a silicon spatula but I can’t spend more than a minute on Facebook) and I wouldn’t know what to say on there, and research would suggest that you actually have to have an engaging Facebook page to keep people around. On a further, auxiliary hand, what if I built a Facebook page and nobody turned up? Any thoughts’d be appreciated.

just slip on a banana peel, the world’s at your feet…

14 Comments

_____________________________________


I said this recently to someone on Twitter which is roughly as public as it gets – as recent international political situations might attest – so I think I can repeat it without shame here: whenever I can’t sleep because I’m feeling nervous about something, (and there is a lot to be nervous about in life and I’m not the best sleeper), I imagine cakes. Pies. Ice cream. Not just sitting in front of me waiting to be eaten, and not muffins jumping sheep-like over a fence to be counted, but things that I could make in future, new flavours to combine. Recipes I haven’t tried before, or new recipes made up on the spot.

It, ah, does require a certain predilection towards baking in the first place, but you’re welcome to try it. It’s surprising how well “would nutmeg and coconut go together in icecream” can squash thoughts like “was that the beginning of an earthquake or just the muscles in my leg twitching”. On that note…hope everyone in Christchurch is holding it down right now, after yesterday’s aftershocks of unfair size and frequency.


This banana cake is one such recipe, invented in the night and fortunately remembered in the morning, and even more fortunately, pretty delicious. Yes, banana cake is one of the more common cakes you might learn to make, and so you may not feel the need to pay much attention to this one…but I’d like to think it’s a sidestep to the left of your usual recipe.

Also, I appreciate that it’s a pain to weigh out bananas like I’ve asked, but a cake recipe calls for accuracy. This isn’t a bowl of cereal we’re making here. That said, it’s roughly three small bananas or two and a half good-sized bananas (oo-er) (sorry.)


Banana Cake with Golden Syrup Icing

250g ripe bananas
3 tablespoons oil (I use rice bran)
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla paste/extract
200g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F and line a 20cm springform caketin with baking paper.

In a large bowl, mash the bananas with a fork till they’re good and smooth. If you like, you can switch to a whisk to mash them up – it’s okay if there’s lumps of bananas, but a decent liquidy texture is what you’re after here.

Whisk in the oil, sugar and vanilla, and then sift in the flour, baking soda and baking powder. Carefully fold together with a spatula, then scrape into the prepared caketin.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, and allow to cool.

Icing:

Mix 1 tablespoon of golden syrup, about 1/2 cup icing sugar, and a tablespoon of water together. Add a tiny pinch of salt. If you’re using a whisk you might be able to get out all the lumps, otherwise it’d probably pay to sift your icing sugar. If you need more icing sugar, add more. Pour over the cake.
I had to have a slice before I committed to icing it and taking photos and writing about how nice it is – just in case my cake was delicious in the mind alone – so it’s lucky that it actually does taste gratifyingly good.
It’s tender and light, with a slightly chewy crust and a fresh banana flavour. There’s also a soft fluttering hint of vanilla, like someone’s eyelashes brushing against your cheek. The golden syrup, with its dark stickiness, and its buddy the pinch of salt, manage to temper the aggressively bland sweetness of the icing sugar. Altogether, it’s a bit of a masterpiece for something thought up in the middle of the night to ward off other bad thoughts.
__________________________________________________
Title via: Donald O’Conner’s Make ‘Em Laugh, from one of the best films on this earth, Singing In The Rain.
__________________________________________________
Music lately:

Tiny Ruins, Little Notes. It’s pretty, but not just pretty.

Neil Patrick Harris’ opening song from the Tony Awards yesterday. I love a good song and dance number as it is, but this is particularly excellent. I’m slowly working my way through this show on youtube.
__________________________________________________

Next time: possibly (finally) those snickerdoodles, however I also have found the most amazing tofu recipe. Hopefully, whatever it is, there won’t be such a huge gap inbetween posts like there has been this month.