Category: Vegetables

when someone great is gone

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As February draws to a close, it means one thing and one thing only: we are smack bang in the middle of Pisces Season, people. What does this mean? It means every time I get super irrationally emotional over something, I’m all, “classic Pisces Season.” A leading characteristic of the Pisces star sign, you see, and if you haven’t worked this out already, is emotional-ness.

However, sometimes emotions are entirely reasonable, such as when someone who has become one of the most important people in your life over the past year leaves the country. What can you even do in these situations? Well, you try and spend as much time with them as possible, and on the Monday before they go, you wait until they’ve finished their shift at work and then make a midnight feast for the both of you while you watch Desperate Housewives.

It being Monday, or “Payday Eve”, and me being extremely me, once I’d purchased mushrooms and cream at the guest’s request I essentially tried to forage everything else from what was already in my pantry: some tomatoes leftover from a team barbecue that day which I’d nicked; some black garlic and walnut butter that my mum had sent me; some vaguely elderly beetroot that I’d forgotten I’d bought at the vege market the previous week; some vermouth and bourbon from my brief flirtation with trying to have a decent liquor cabinet; it goes on. 

Mushrooms fried with garlic and cream are hardly revolutionary, but these ones are incredibly delicious: the vermouth hisses and disappears in the heat – relatable – leaving only a lick of winey flavour, and the cream reduces down to the most magnificently savoury sludge. Not necessarily the most appealing words, but you should know that they were the star on Monday and I’ve made this three times since because I love it so much. 

mushrooms with black garlic, vermouth and cream

an extremely vague recipe, but I feel like you can handle it

  • a whole ton of those big flat brown mushrooms that cost slightly more than regular button mushrooms
  • olive oil
  • dry vermouth, such as Noilly Prat
  • a clove or two of black garlic, or regular is fine! 
  • cream
  • freshly grated parmesan, salt and pepper to taste

Brush any dirt off the mushrooms and slice them up. Heat a generous couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan and tip the mushrooms in.

Let them fry in the hot oil till they soften and darken and reduce down somewhat – till they’re fried, basically – then pour in some vermouth, a couple of tablespoons at the most. This will hit the pan in a whoosh of steam and smell incredible. Stir till it’s evaporated, and then either slice or squash the clove of garlic and add it to the pan, followed by the cream – as much as you want, really. Start with a few tablespoons and then just keep pouring till it feels right. Carry on stirring over a high heat till the cream has reduced down somewhat – you want this thick and saucy.

Remove from the heat, pile on some parmesan cheese if you wish, but you don’t have to, and transfer to a bowl. Eat the lot, no matter how much you’ve made. 

The beetroot and tomato dishes were highly opportunistic on-the-spot flights of fancy but they both worked out well so I thought I’d pass on some form of a recipe of them both here. Baking beetroot in cream – leftover from the mushrooms – gives the earthy bitterness of the vegetable a fantastic mellowness, and the walnut butter makes everything almost fudge-like in texture. If you don’t have walnut butter, you could use cashew or almond butter or indeed, just leave it out and you’ll still have a good time. 

The tomatoes got a dash of bourbon on them because it was still there beside the stove from when I made those shallots and radishes last week, but it turns out they go well with these guys too. I just happened to have coconut sugar and its smoky intensity went perfectly with the sweetness of the tomatoes and the bourbon. They were sticky and sweet and bursting with juice and just so good. And I can’t even tell you how amazing the syrupy roasting juices tasted once all the tomatoes had been prised out. 

roasted beetroot with cream and walnut butter

Set your oven to 180C/350F. Chop your beetroot – however many you have – into quarters or chunks or whatever, really, and pile them into an oven dish that will comfortably fit them. Pour over enough cream so they get their feet wet but aren’t entirely submerged, and spoon over some walnut butter. Mix it all together so some of the cream and walnut butter amalgamates, then bung it in the oven and let it cook until the beetroot is extremely tender. Top with parmesan if you like. 

bourbon and coconut sugar roasted tomatoes

Again, set your oven to 180C/350F. Slice a bunch of ripe tomatoes in half and lay them, cut side up. Sprinkle over a little coconut sugar – like just a pinch per tomato. Follow this with a good solid drizzle of olive oil and then drizzle with a little bourbon – it’s easier to pour it into a spoon and then shake this over the tomatoes than trying to pour directly from the bottle. Finally sprinkle over some salt and roast em till they’re, like, roasted. 

So like, because it was at midnight when I was taking these photos I completely concede that they are Not Great and indeed, it was my own vanity that caused me to take more photos once I’d made the mushrooms again in the daylight, just in case a casual reader of this blog saw my night time photos and threw their laptop out the window in horror. But it all tasted so, so good, and it was such a nice night, that honestly: I don’t care. 

Okay I guess I do care since I bookended this blog post with nice photos of the mushrooms but still: I don’t care! (I care so much.) 

On Thursday night I finished my shift at work and then proceeded to not get any sleep until at least 7am, because this particular person had to be at the airport at 4am. I may or may not have got emotionally drunk; I may or may not have cried AND fallen asleep at the airport; I may or may not have written an extremely overwrought letter to this person about what they mean to me and then left it in the car and then had to clamber into the boot through the backseat because I couldn’t work out how to open said boot. However I’ve also come to the conclusion that Melbourne isn’t soooo far away and I could possibly even visit if I ever get my act/and/or savings together. And as they sing in the musical Wicked – and I warn you, it’s about to get disgustingly maudlin for just one second here – because I knew you, I have been changed, for good. 

skal for faen 

skal for faen 

Due to some spectacularly terrible luck or carelessness, this is the third time I’ve written out the blog post after accidentally deleting it, twice. By this point it feels almost surreal, like I’m going round in circles, but I think right here is definitively the end of this blog post. And seriously, it’s been barely a week and I’ve made those mushrooms three more times. They’re good, people. 

title from: LCD Soundsystem, Someone Great. Okay I wasn’t QUITE done with the maudlin. 

music lately: 

I am on a sincere Pink Floyd god damn BUZZ right now and am revisiting Roger Waters’ live album In The Flesh a whole ton. Just try to not fall in love with the immensely sexy yet unsexily named Doyle Bramhall II when he sings the chorus to Comfortably Numb, suckers. 

I saw Trainspotting 2 the other day and it was exactly what I wanted it to be; it also coincided with me being extremely into a genre of music that I like to call “Let’s drink lager and headbutt Liam Gallagher”. To that end, the Prodigy’s remix of Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life is honestly really good. 

next time: I have not made ice cream in FOREVER, friends! And since it’s finally looking like summer in Wellington, it feels entirely appropriate. Watch this space. 

get a little bit of bourbon in ya, get a little bit suburban

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I’ve lived in my current apartment for just over a year now. On Sunday, for the first time since moving in, I went to the vege market which happens weekly and is located exactly one block away. Thank you, Ritalin! I’ve spent a whole year full of good intentions about being a vege market person who gathers up bushels of seasonal produce to nourish my hot bod, but it’s never once happened. Either I cannot spatula myself out of bed with any conviction, or I make it there and am overwhelmed and panicky and can’t make a decision and forget how to breathe and have to leave immediately. 

Not this Sunday though! Instead I strode, with unprecedented purpose, the short distance of one literal block from my apartment to the carpark filled with people and vegetables. And then went on a brief tangent where I saw this tiny, silky dachshund and a voice in my head said Follow That Dog, They Will Lead You To The Vegetable-Related Inspiration You Seek. In a dog-induced fugue state I trailed it, my low-bellied small-snouted muse, until it went and stood by….some cucumbers. I was jolted out of the trance, all like, wow I don’t feel like cucumbers and maybe this dog isn’t my spiritual vegetable guide but in fact just following its owner. 

*clenches fist* so     damn     rustic

*clenches fist* so     damn     rustic

Luckily a more reliable voice said the words “maple bourbon roasted shallots” and suddenly I was inspired anew. This idea expanded out to include radishes (plus some beetroot that I bought for good measure for a later time) and with a bag full of pink-tinged vegetables, I left the market unflustered and happy.

Maple and bourbon are highly compatible bedfellows – the sweetness of both overlapping but also being tempered by the woodsy, smoky autumnal elements of the syrup. I figured that with shallots – mellow and onion-y – and the peppery, crisp radishes, it would make for an extremely delicious addition to say, some couscous or a salad. 

Unfortunately – or not – we’ll never know how these damn things taste in that capacity because, after having let them cool somewhat and idly tasting a few to see how the combination worked…I lifted the roasting dish to my face and somehow – in my second fugue state of the day – demolished the entire lot, frantic forkful by frantic forkful, in about twelve seconds flat. 

So, well, at least you know they’re really good. The shallots get all soft and caramelised and sticky, and the bourbon gives this rich depth. Shallots are a total pain to peel, but they look so, so pretty – like bunches of dried dusky pink roses, delicate and papery. If you’ve only ever had radishes raw before, they’re a revelation once some heat is applied, with their peppery bite softened into something quite luscious.

Should you have more restraint than me; here’s some suggestions for what to do with these things other than merely hoofing them in a daze. You could stir them through couscous with some rocket and toasted walnuts to respectively echo that peppery-smoky vibe; you could make a ton more and serve it alongside roast chicken (and consider using a marinade of maple, bourbon and olive oil for the chicken itself); you could boil some lil new potatoes and slice them up and stir the shallots and radishes into them with maybe like, some chives and a vinegary dressing to make a charming potato salad; you could put them in a bowl as part of a tapas-type spread with hummus and chargrilled peppers and flatbreads and whatnot, and finally, you could serve them as a component of a very zen rice bowl. 

maple bourbon roasted shallots and radishes

a (vague) recipe by myself

  • many shallots, like at least nineteen
  • a bunch of radishes, like…five? 
  • extra virgin olive oil
  • a couple of teaspoons of real maple syrup
  • a couple of teaspoons of bourbon
  • sea salt or a similarly fancy sodium

Set your oven to 170C/330F. 

Peel the shallots, which is fiddly and annoying I grant you, but if you press down on them with the flat side of a large knife the skins should split making it easier to slide them out. Chop the radishes into wedges. Place them all in a roasting dish in which they fit snugly. Drizzle over plenty of olive oil, the maple syrup, the bourbon, and a good sized pinch of salt. Give it a stir if you like or just hope for the best. 

Place in the oven and leave for around an hour till everything is lightly browned and tender and looking, y’know, cooked. Use however you like. 

Or you could, honestly, just hoof them in a daze in their entirety, it’s 100% a good time. 

As you can see, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, despite my insistence upon returning to form as quickly as possible. But this is me trying, and I’m pretty pleased with the results. I will absolutely be cooking more and more and more – the other day I made myself GRANOLA – and the fact that I can go to a vege market without having a meltdown is definitely a good sign, even if I get waylaid by an occasional mysterious dachshund voyage. And honestly it’s nice to write a fairly straightforward blog post free of deep confessional angst (even if it’s always there ready to go.) There’s this bit in the Simpsons where Moe is telling Homer that he’s better than dirt, but not that fancy dirt with all the nutrients, and that’s how I’m feeling right now – just a tiny dirt grub, slowly getting better and better.

An good boy, and a dog called Ghost 

An good boy, and a dog called Ghost 

PS: It’s Valentine’s Day today, and if that means something to you then I’m happy for you and not going to rain on your parade. I spent the morning with my work family at an adorable high tea put on by our bosses followed by some intensely loved up messages with my two best friends Kim and Kate and I cannot think of a more lovely way to celebrate the day. And during that high tea I had the most amazing cucumber sandwiches with minty cream cheese and I was like, oh my god, that dachshund was actually trying to tell me something…But whatever you’re doing – whether it’s wallowing in hearts-for-eyes-ness or studiously ignoring it, I hope it’s fun. 

title from: my ultimate valentine Lana Del Rey and her incredible song Cruel World which, ugh, I love so much. 

music lately: 

Calexico, Alone Again Or. So I have been loving the original version of this song, by the band Love, for a long-ass time now, but this cover was recently brought to my attention and it’s so bouncy and ebullient and good and honestly, a very worthy take on a truly brilliant song. Listen. 

Beyonce’s performance at the Grammy Awards. It’s SO IMPORTANT. I”M SOBBING. WATCH IT. 

Blink 182, Always: exposure therapy. 

Next time: whatever I make I’ll like, wait to use it before I eat it mid-process. Or will I?  

 

so this is the new year and I don’t feel any different

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At ten seconds to midnight on the last day of December I led the countdown from behind the bar where I was working. At midnight we yelled Happy New Year and hugged and clinked our glasses of house sparkling wine. Then I yelled an expletive in the direction of 2016. And then, I immediately blasted Careless Whisper over the loudspeaker. (That’s right, “an expletive.” I’ve never sworn before on this blog and for some reason cannot bring myself to do it now after all these years out of some vague fear of being sent to the principal’s office or something even though swearing is harmless and a pretty delightful way to add texture and colour – or is that off-colour – to your words, generally? Why am I so hung up on this?) Anyway there’s no great conclusion to this anecdote, but the crowd went wild and no matter what happens this year I shall at least treasure the memory of standing in front of a lot of people – one of my favourite activities! – and seeing their faces as the glorious and iconic sax riff started playing. Started with a banger, if not a bang. 

Earlier that same day I made myself gazpacho, acting upon a strong craving. I never crave soup. I have barely been feeling passionate about any kind of food lately in fact. But, not wanting to let these rare positive thoughts about liquidised vegetables get skittish and run away, I decided I might as well try and do something about it.

This soup is really, really simple. The only difficult thing is that it’s best made in a blender, if you don’t have one then like…I don’t know. Make something else. You could use a food processor, but a blender is better, something about the centrifugal motion and slicey knifey stuff. The point is, it’s really delicious, which, thank goodness, since I hardly ever have massive soup-adjacent desires in the first place. Soup always has to do everything backwards and in heels in order to impress me at the same level that other food does dancing forward in regular shoes (that’s a Fred and Ginger reference in case I briefly lost you there.) I use cherry tomatoes which, with their youthful sweetness, give a slightly bouncier tomato flavour but very ripe regular tomatoes would be absolutely fine. I also use only red capsicum instead of the usually prescribed red and green, because green ones tend to be unluscious and bitter, whereas the red ones, mellow and riper, echo the sweetness of the little tomatoes. The only other way in which I stray from the traditional is adding a pinch of cumin to lend a little earthy depth. 

aw man, just realised that drizzle of olive oil kind of looks like a dick

aw man, just realised that drizzle of olive oil kind of looks like a dick

This really does get better the next day so if you can forward-plan your cravings, so much the better, but immediately poured from the blender it’s wonderful, all thick and cold and tasting of sunshine, of soft grass under your bare feet, of cloudless skies, endless and blue, of other summer-adjacent imagery designed to inspire a vague sense of nostalgia and longing within you. 

cherry tomato gazpacho

a recipe by myself

  • two punnets of ripe cherry tomatoes
  • one red capsicum (or pepper, if you’re American)
  • one small, soft white bread roll
  • two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, or sherry vinegar if you have it
  • three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, or more to taste (I did more) 
  • a decent pinch of ground cumin
  • salt (ideally sea salt or something fancy) and freshly ground pepper to taste

Tumble the cherry tomatoes into the blender, reserving a couple for garnish if you like, and a couple to just eat for fun because they’re so delicious. Remove the core from the pepper and slice into rough chunks (in all honesty, I just tore it up with my bare hands). Run the bread roll under a cold tap – an unusual and counterintuitive-feeling activity, I grant you – and rip it into soggy pieces, and put all of this in the blender with the tomatoes. Tip two cups of cold water in, followed by the vinegar, olive oil, and cumin. Blend thoroughly till it forms a thickish, uniform looking puree. Taste for salt, and indeed, whether or not you think it needs more cumin, olive oil, vinegar, whatever – and blend again. Let it sit for an hour if you can, which will thicken it up, but you could just eat it right away.

I served it drizzled with more olive oil, scattered with freshly ground black pepper, and strewn with chunks of very ripe avocado and fresh thyme, since it’s what I had and I figured I might as well lean into the untraditional nature of it. I also halved one of the reserved cherry tomatoes and floated them on top, cutely. This makes enough for two servings. 

The weather is actually resolutely unsummery at the moment but this soup nevertheless does its best to make you feel like its sunny, and is an ideal way to use seasonal produce if that’s what you’re into. 

I have no doubt that you absolutely noticed, amongst the hustle and bustle of Christmas, New Years, public holidays, disrupted routines, taking stock of the year’s happenings and mourning celebrity deaths, that it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. This was because my laptop sulkily kept turning off mid-use, eventually giving up on the whole being-a-laptop thing altogether. I’ve also been monstrously depressed and anxious and unable to muster up the slightest inclination to cook for myself. Luckily, it’s all fixed now!

The laptop that is. Haha. 

While I was waiting for it to be fixed, Kate very very kindly lent me hers. And rapidly, I decided to write about some things that were going on inside and outside of my head. The words came easily, pressing publish did not, but well, I’ve gone and bloody done it now. I’m not going to say too much more about it since you might as well read it – if you want. My whole thing was not wanting so much to be like, making a dramatic point about how I’m – gasp – going through some stuff, but more to highlight how sucky the system in New Zealand is if you’re trying to ask for help, while also just being like, I’m a human going through some stuff and the more people who talk about it the more it is normalised and I feel like I can do that, I can take a chance on talking about it where maybe other people can’t since I appear to not worry ever about the consequences of what will happen if I write about things going on in my life. On the other hand, it’s something I’d hidden with varying degrees of success for a few months now, so, sometimes acts of what could be called bravery take time to get into.

With all that in mind, my wanting to make myself something, and for that something to be vegetable-based soup, feels like a small victory. Super small, I mean. I still haven’t put sheets on my bed. I got drunk last night and lost my phone and then found it and then immediately lost it again and was like well, fair enough, I guess I’ve lost it. (I was at work, so I’m going to go pick it up, although it occurs to me today that being in a familiar place does not necessarily mean I didn’t somehow drop it in the bin or lose it inside a large glass of water or something.) 

What he said. 

What he said. 

But I’m trying. Well, I’m trying to try. Which is legit another victory.

Happy New Year. Fuck 2016. 

title from: Death Cab For Cutie, The New Year. I am a sucker for an achy-breaky song about this time of year. Amongst other things.  

music lately:

Breezeblocks, alt-j. Wowwwwwwww I like this song a lot. Also wowwww I am late to the party on alt-j. 

Zayn Malik/Taylor Swift, I Don’t Wanna Live Forever. PREDICTABLY GOOD, WHOM COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS, I FEEL LIKE I SHOULD SAY A VARIATION ON THE WORD PREDICTABLE AGAIN NOW 

next time: well hopefully I want to cook for myself more. So I’ll see you in June. JK, I’ll get there somehow. It helps when there are other people to cook for, and luckily there’s a lot of love-to-cook-for-them type people in my life. 

you said i must eat so many lemons, because i am so bitter

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1. I have nothing clever to say about the presidential election, no one comes to this blog for politics, and it was with massive sorrow and anxiety that I watched the livestream chug on endlessly with a friend (we got so stressed that we had to break for ice cream and then we both felt sick immediately after and I was like OH THIS IS THE LAST STRAW U MADE ME BE NEGATIVE ABOUT PRECIOUS, BEAUTIFUL ICE CREAM) and it was with massive sorrow and anxiety that I found out the confirmed results. There’s nothing exciting or able-to-be-romanticised or hilarious about Trump being president elect and it’s not even my battle by any means but if you’re hurting then I’m hurting with you and if you need support I support you and if you need compassion, I love you.

2. It’s possible that it’s really just a conflation of a million different things and feelings but I’m feeling almost overwhelmingly devastated by the death of Leonard Cohen. It’s weird, like…he was so old. People die. As I said, I guess it’s just the timing, really. But his songs have been so important to me ever since I was around 16 and I was introduced to him when my aunty made an offhand comment about how his music was nice to play when you’re going to sleep. That year I went off to boarding school and I would play the CD of his that I got for Christmas every single night when I went to bed. But only when I was home. His music to me feels like safety and warmth and calm; yet of aching and longing and quietly waiting for something that might never arrive. In 2009 I spent an enormous amount of money on a ticket to see him live – years later I would joke that if I’d known he was going to keep touring every year to pay off his debts I would’ve just waited and spent less money – but now I’m glad I did it. Like I said, he was OLD and it’s hardly the most shocking news, but like, spare a thought for the guy at the supermarket checkout who innocently asked how I my day was going and who had to listen to me tearfully talking going on about it (him: “oh that guy, yeah we sang Hallelujah in my primary school” me: “that sounds right” him: “was he really religious?” me: “well he used a lot of religious imagery…he was kind of a bad ass” also me: “I should go now.”)

3. Last week I travelled with friends to Otaki for the wedding of two of our very good also-friends. Gosh, if weddings don’t make you just THINK about your LIFE, you know? But, it was a happy, lovely, full-of-love day from start to finish and I was super grateful that I got to witness it in all its beauty. And that I didn’t fall out of my surprisingly practical strapless jumpsuit. The couple generously gave away little jars of homemade preserved lemons as party favours and I adore preserved lemons so gathered up every spare jar I could find.

On Monday I halved a bunch of tomatoes and smothered them in a mixture of olive oil, spices, some sliced up preserved lemons, and sugar, and roasted them first at a low heat then at a high heat. They were incredible and I accidentally ate all eight tomatoes in one sitting rather than leaving some for future use because they were just that delicious.

Preserved lemons have a compelling lemony (duh) saltiness; and strange though it seems all you need from each soft piece of fruit is the actual yellow skin – slice off as much of the flesh and white pith as you can (and then inevitably eat it to see if it could be that salty: yes it bloody is.) The remaining zest is full of concentrated sourness and salt, yet it’s somehow kind of mellow too – a bit like how garlic can be rich and sweet and make your eyes water at the same time. Stir it into pasta, use it in anything even vaguely Mediterranean, eat on its own out of curiosity, use it to flavour olive oil. Or do what I did: make these gorgeously scorched little roasted tomatoes, warm with cinnamon and caramelised slightly and stir them into pasta or anything vaguely Mediterranean, or just eat them squashed onto a bagel with some thankfully perfect avocado.

fast slow-roasted tomatoes with preserved lemon, cinnamon and garlic

a recipe by myself

  • eight smallish, ripe tomatoes
  • two big garlic cloves
  • about three tablespoons of olive oil, but y’know, whatever
  • half a lemon’s worth of preserved lemon
  • two teaspoons coriander seeds
  • a pinch of ground cinnamon
  • a teaspoon of brown sugar

Set your oven to 150 C/300 F. 

Roughly chop the garlic cloves or mince them if you’ve got one of those contraptions. Rinse the lemon slices (I’m assuming your preserved lemons came sliced into quarters) and slice off as much flesh and pith as you can, leaving you with just the actual skin of the lemons. Now that you’re finally at this point, roughly or finely slice them as you please. Mix the garlic and lemon slices in a small bowl with the coriander seeds, olive oil, cinnamon and sugar. Taste it – if you want a bit more sharpness, add in a dash of the preserving liquid from the jar of lemons or indeed, another quarter lemon’s worth of sliced lemon rind. 

Halve the tomatoes and lay them, cut side up, in a small roasting dish. Spoon the lemon-garlic-oil mixture evenly over them, scraping every last bit of flavoursome oil into the dish. 

Roast them at that low heat for 20 minutes, and then turn up the temperature to 220 C and continue to roast until the tomatoes are slightly scorched.  

The sweetness of the tomatoes is intensified under the heat and the lemon’s bite works beautifully with this. They taste best when they’ve had some time to sit and lose that scalding heat, which means you can put the whole tomato half in your mouth and allow the seeds to burst, pleasurably, full of garlic and cinnamon and salt, without causing yourself any damage. The coriander seeds have a hint of bitter lemon to them as well but if you don’t have them just leave them out or use cumin seeds instead for a different kind of earthy spiciness. I feel like this would be particularly spectacular with mint leaves scattered on top, but alas my mint plant has died from neglect and I was like, I don’t know if I’m actually ready to commit to another one and I shouldn’t reward myself for my bad plant husbandry by just replacing the erstwhile one immediately. But definitely mint or indeed, basil, would be perfect here.

what a beautiful wedding what a beautiful wedding

Thanks Vanessa and Reuben for the sour lemons that provided some definite sweetness this week. And also for playing I Want You by Savage Garden at the reception.

If all of this appeals and you want more, I recommend using preserved lemon in my recipe for Slow Cooked Lamb with Cumin, Cinnamon and Feijoas;  or in this Barley, Lentil, Eggplant, Pomegranate and Mint salad; or get high on your own supply with Nigella’s delicious recipe for preserved limes.

PS: thanks for reading, always.

title from: Kate Nash’s debut single from 2007, Foundations. The whole Made of Bricks album that this comes from makes me feel way too many things, I love upbeat songs about sad things and this is a classic example of that genre. 

music lately: 

I don’t even know where to begin with Leonard Cohen but listen to him singing Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye live at the Isle of Wight in 1970 if you dare.

The Saddest Song, from the musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Not even trying to be funny about the political timing of it all, I just can’t stop listening to this song.

Laura, by Girls, which contains everything I love: surfy sound, sad sad sad lyrics set to upbeat music, my name in the title.

next time: well I still have a lot of jars of preserved lemons, guys. 

i wish i had a river, that i could skate away on, but it don’t snow here, it stays pretty green

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Avocados are like a metaphor for life, right? You have all this hope and anticipation that it’s going to be perfect and it’s really expensive but you do it anyway because it’s an avocado and you’d give up everything for this avocado and you feel, gently, from the outside that it’s going to be a good one this time! You’ve been burned before but damn it, you just know this avocado is the one. And you carry it home, imagining all the good times you’re going to have together – will you spread it on toast? Eat it in its entirety with a teaspoon, sprinkled with salt? Roughly mash it into guacamole? You could do anything! The taste is almost in your mouth, your teeth can almost feel that sensation of crushing through its soft, soft flesh. And then you finally slice into it and it turns out that despite your very best efforts, it was not ready to be cut open and exposed to the world; it was underripe and cold at its core. Or it had been left for too long and could not be saved no matter how you try to disguise it – greying and sulphuric and with no way to make you happy. Even though you wanted it so, so bad and you paid so much for it. 

Or sometimes you just randomly buy an avocado because it’s on special and like, slice into it and it’s perfect and you’re like “phewf, don’t know what I would’ve done for lunch otherwise” and that’s kind of that. 

pretty, green 

pretty, green 

I was not particularly in the mood for metaphors when I made myself lunch the other day: the avocado was green and unblemished and yielding and that was enough for me. I used it in a simple, beautiful pea, mint and avocado salad from Nigella Lawson’s seminal text How To Eat. A book I turn to again and again when I forget how to eat: it’s the most trustworthy manual I know. Her tone is gently bossy yet undone and dishevelled at the same time and it’s ever so comforting. 

Yeah, it’s Spring, so eating sprightly green stuff feels obvious, but no matter what time of year it is this salad is gorgeously delicious. Especially because all you really need to worry about is the state of your avocado – the peas can be frozen and the salad leaves are highly interchangeable for whatever’s seasonal. You can basically make the entire thing in the bowl you’re planning to serve it in, which appeals to my utter laziness, and while it’s meant to be a side salad it makes a thoroughly satisfying meal all on its own, depending on your appetite I suppose. It’s also vegan, which is nice. 

oh wow, here's the salad from this angle 

oh wow, here’s the salad from this angle 

The flavours here are so wonderful – the green-green-greenness (yes) of the peas, the bitterness of the leaves, the sweet, ice cold mint, the buttery avocado. Then you’ve got crunch and softness and oiliness and saltiness and honestly, all I want is a whole bowlful of this and nothing else. I do think it would be a good vehicle for some roasted asparagus if you’ve got the inclination – I mean, it is Spring! – and you could always add some chopped nuts to add further crunch. But it’s truly perfect just as Nigella stipulates it. As per usual though I have given lots of alternatives and notes because I get helpfully nervous about being too specific in case people feel like they can’t make something because they don’t have the exact right thing. 

pea, mint, and avocado salad

recipe by nigella lawson from her important book How To Eat, below is the vague quantitiy I made though which doesn’t quite match her specs

  • three quarters of a cup of frozen peas, or thereabouts
  • half a bag of baby spinach
  • one perfect, beautiful avocado
  • one whitloof, radicchio, or other bitter lettuce, or just something else crunchy – heck, half a regular iceberg lettuce would be chill here
  • several tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, at least three but definitely more
  • a pinch of sugar
  • one tablespoon of white wine vinegar; you could always use apple cider vinegar though
  • a handful of mint leaves, plus more to serve
  • sea salt

Briefly cook the peas in a pan of boiling water and then strain under cold running water.  If you’ve just bought them from the supermarket and they’re not super frozen you can probably get away with just letting them defrost in a bowl, maybe filled with warm water to hasten the process. Basically: get your frozen peas to be unfrozen, please. 

Put the olive oil, vinegar and sugar in the bowl you’re planning to serve the salad in. You can always add more oil later. Rip up some mint leaves and stir them in. Tip in the drained peas and the baby spinach. Tear in the whitloof leaves, or whichever crunchy leaves you’re adding in, and then halve your avocado and scoop out rough spoonfuls, letting them fall into the same bowl. Use a large spoon to carefully mix all this together, adding a little sea salt and more oil if you like. Throw over a few more mint leaves. You’re done. 

oh wow here's the salad from THIS angle now

oh wow here’s the salad from THIS angle now

As I said, this recipe is given by Nigella as a side dish, but I quite contentedly polished off the entire thing by myself and didn’t feel inclined to need anything else for a long time after; avocados and olive oil are good like that, making you all shiny-haired and full. 

stock image #58639 woman laughing with salad

stock image #58639 woman laughing with salad

And it’s surprisingly practical when eaten lying down: I honestly didn’t expect that. 

title from: Joni Mitchell, River. Lol…………………….this song is so sad. 

music lately: 

The Damned, New Rose. I made a kind of surfy punky playlist for work and it turns out I am a sucker for pretty much anything with big drums, this song included. 

New Editions, Something About You. If you haven’t heard this song from 1996 do yourself an enormous favour, it’s so great. 

next time: more acknowledgements of Spring, I guess? I haven’t actually eaten any asparagus since last year so should get on to that, what with uh, being a food blogger and all. 

you’ve got eggs in the same basket, writing the check

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I’ve been trying to write this blog post for a week and a half now and every time I’ve laid my fingertips on the keyboard I’ve almost immediately fallen asleep. Including one point on Wednesday where I determinedly took my laptop to a cafe to write, and suddenly felt almost ill with tiredness and had to go home to body slam my bed for some aggressive napping. This afternoon, finally with some time to myself, I went to write in an “I’m tying this laptop to my head until I’ve finished a blog post” kind of way and then my laptop died and refused to charge for forty minutes. 

If it wasn’t for the fact that this sundried tomato scramble is so delicious, I’d be thoroughly tempted to throw both my laptop and myself into a bin, as it seems to be the most productive course of action right now. The issue is not that I’m working even later nights than I used to as a bartender, the issue is that my idiot body insists on waking up at 7.30am every day, even if I didn’t get home till 5.00am. 

a candid photo of me blogging today

a candid photo of me blogging today

All of this has been just creating layers and layers of frustration, a lasagne, if you will, of inactivity: I have this weird guilt about sleeping in because I feel like I should be working during that time, but because I’m so underslept the hours pass this zombie by; and the more I don’t get this blog done the more irritated I am with myself but also the harder it is to make any progress because I’m just looking at the same thing over and over. 

But here we are finally! I’ve acquired some Valley of the Dolls brand sleeping pills, the kind I used to rely on during periods of intense insomnia, and I’ve also got, for the first time in forever, after two years sleeping on a couple of mattresses stacked on top of each other on the floor: a real, grown up, incredibly comfortable and supportive bed. Did you know that having a nice bed is nice? I’m as astounded as you are! My butt feels so calm just sitting on it, when I lie down it’s like being held aloft by a friendly cloud. So this is definitely something I’m working on. 

Back to this scramble though: it was in the middle of an up-ludicrously-early fugue state that I invented it, the recipe somehow building up before me as I went along, like the landscape in an old school racing computer game. It’s so simple that it can’t help but work though – roughly chopped sundried tomatoes become soft and fattened in a pan of butter and olive oil, before turning almost jammy with the addition of a little tomato paste and water. You then stir through eggs which become gently, softly scrambled. Put some feta and thyme on top mostly to make it look less unsightly, add some buttered bread and you have yourself a perfect little meal, be you hungover, in rudely good health, or 92% asleep. 

The sundried tomatoes have such intensity of flavour – almost bacon-like with their salty-sweet-savoury vibes – that the eggs provide the ideal backdrop, all creamy and mild in comparison. The sundried tomatoes I had were a particularly sandblastingly salty kind, so if you suspect yours are similar maybe reduce the quantity somewhat, the ones from the supermarket deli or sold in jars are generally a bit more mellow though. 

As I said, the feta and herbs and capers are mostly aesthetic, and I had a small handful of each in the fridge waiting patiently to be asked to dance so I figured I might as well use them up – you certainly don’t have to though. You could add parmesan, or toasted pine nuts or walnuts, or parsley, or oregano, whatever! Thyme is one of my favourites though and I will put it on top of anything (like, I would make a crown out of it for my own head if I could get it to hold its shape) and feta can do no wrong. At the other end of the scale, leave the cheese off and use olive oil only and this is easily dairy free. As per usual with my recipes, a sentiment of “whatever works” prevails. 

sundried tomato scramble

a recipe by myself

  • half a cup of sundried tomatoes, roughly diced
  • about a tablespoon each of olive oil and butter
  • one tablespoon tomato paste, or puree/pasta sauce if it’s all you’ve got
  • half a cup of water
  • two eggs
  • thyme and feta or similar and some capers to serve

Heat the olive oil and butter in a good sized frying pan. Add the sundried tomatoes and stir them till they’re softened and warmed through. Add the tomato paste and water, and more butter or olive oil if you like, and stir over a high heat till it has formed a thick sauce. Lower the heat significantly and add the two eggs, stirring slowly to incorporate them into the tomato sauce till they thicken and gently scramble. Gentle is the key word here – you don’t want to overheat or overmix this stuff, or the eggs will be all tough instead of creamy and soft. Remove from the heat altogether, scatter with feta, herbs and capers and serve with toast or fresh bread if ya like. 

The fact that we’ve suddenly catapulted into September has not exactly aided with my chillness; but I’m doing my best to be all like, mindful and peaceful and accepting that I need sleep sometimes and that sleeping is not a morally wrong activity to partake in now and then. Plus: exciting new bed. Plus, my horoscope this month was all “maybe kinda look after yourself and try to get into a good routine or something you dingus” so you know it’s meant to be. 

Oh, and if eggs are your thing, kindly also consider my recipes for miso scrambled eggs and Spanish potato omelette.  

title from: brat-pop artist Uffie and her really, really good 2010 song Difficult

music lately: 

Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj, Side to Side. It’s a great track and visually it’s like, everything, but as per Nicki completely makes it. 

The Internet, Girl. God this song is so dreamy and I shall never be sick of it. 

Alien Ant Farm, Movies. There’s something so heartfelt about this song that makes me love it a billion years on.

next time: good grief, I’m going to try to not lose so much sleep over it but also sleep so much on it simultaneously, also I found this recipe for homemade matcha spaghetti which sounds amazing.  

these girls fall like dominoes

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I would describe my demeanour this week as Literal Zombie But With Slightly Worse Hygiene. The reason I have not blogged up until the very moment that you’re reading this is that I have been working on an enormous freelance project with a big company, it was a brilliant opportunity that I would’ve been an idiot to turn down, it did however take up every waking moment when I was not at work. Okay, I’m exaggerating, on Wednesday I took 30 minutes to eat a sandwich and do some thoroughly decent selfies. As I said, I’ve been working my usual hours too and on top of that am also attempting to deal with my personal life in that unspecial everyone-has-their-own-struggle way that we all are, so as a result my brain is FORLORN. But I got the project done and I’m proud of myself for it and I’m delighted that I was considered to do it: something had to give though and alas it was writing this blog post. 

I’m already a bit daft at the best of times – I interpret stuff in a verrrry face value way (April Fool’s Day is honestly so embarrassing for me) and also sometimes forget a simple term and can only elaborately describe my way around it. I’m Occam’s Razor on Opposite Day, basically. This week it has been amplified x a squillion, for example: the recipe below involves cutting potatoes into a particular shape and I could not, just could not recall what the name of that shape was. I googled it, all I got was talk of shapes with names like decadocadecoflipagon which was all too spooky. I took to Facebook to ask: it turns out out the shape I was trying to name was…a cube. I forgot what a cube was. What about a long-ass cube though? I asked. A brick? Suggested my friend Charlotte. Reader, I hung my head. 

 

Later this week I happened to look at my hand and was noticed, idly, that I had got something blue on it. I was wearing blue eyeshadow and it’s no surprise for the makeup on my face to migrate to the rest of my body in streaky patches as I go scruffily about my day. When it wouldn’t wash off however, I started silently freaking out. I messaged my two best friends Kim and Kate to say I was highly nervous because a vein on my hand had grown wide like pappardelle pasta and were the rest of my veins going to follow in this fashion and bust out of my stupid body, and as if I have time for this right now because I have this massive freelance project to finish. Kim was like “it sounds like a bruise” and Kate was like “yep it’s a bruise” and I was like “ohhh yeah. Bruises.” 

Amongst all this one needs to feed one’s self, and also to stop referring to one’s self as “one”, probably. Ever since reading about them on Food52 I’ve been completely entranced by Potato Dominoes, a method of roasting potatoes where you cut all the rounded edges off and then slice the remaining potato verrrry thinly in a brick shape (or a long-ass cube, if you will, this is also the point where I got into a spot of bother with mathematical terms) and push them over slightly – hence the domino name. It all sounds like a lot of faff for very little result but kindly believe my hype. Slicing them all thin creates a ton of surface area and edge bits to get almost hilariously crunchy and crisp, whilst providing a solid base to get all creamy and soft and lush. Is it worth it? Let me work it. Also yes, yes it is worth it. 

Even if they fall apart they are still wonderful (the title of my new pop punk album?) but I nevertheless suggest making them for yourself a few times to get the hang of it before you feed them to, I don’t know, an ambassador’s husband. They’re not difficult, just a tiny bit fiddly. Before you get het up about the utter wastefulness of slicing all the rounded edges off the potatoes, I’m not suggesting you throw them out the window or anything. You can keep em to add to stews or soups or stocks, or do the obvious thing: roast them alongside the potato dominoes and eat them too, as a kind of sneaky chef’s treat. 

Here I’ve used a ton of butter, which melts over the potatoes under the blasting heat of the oven, however I made them again with olive oil in the interests of vegan possibilities and simple curiosity. They were, unsurprisingly, equally excellent. If you don’t have any in the house, the thyme and capers aren’t crucial to the proceedings, but! Thyme’s resiny, sweet herbal flavour is beautiful with the buttery, nutty potatoes, and capers are so salty and good and get as crunchy as the edges of the potatoes that they’re adorning. 

potato dominoes with thyme and capers

adapted gently from a Food52 recipe, which probably has way more helpful instructions than mine. 

  • two big, evenly sized potatoes
  • butter, around 75g OR a plenty of extra virgin olive oil
  • a tablespoon of capers
  • a few sprigs of fresh thyme

Set your oven to 220C/450F. Slice all the rounded sides off the potatoes so you end up with a potato brick/cuboid thing. Slice crosswise (I think that’s the word? Not lengthwise, basically) through the potatoes, as thinly as you can muster. Push them into place so they hold their brick shape even when all sliced up. Use a spatula or pancake flipper to transfer them to a baking tray, and push them over slightly so they are like a pile of tipped-over dominoes, or a spread of cards, or a pile of books on a lean, that kind of thing. Surround them with the off cuts of potato if you like. Generously layer slices of the butter across the top of each potato, and use any remaining butter to dot on top of the off cuts, if you’re using them. 

Roast for around 20 minutes, although much will depend upon your oven and the type of potatoes you’ve got. The more waxy and watery the potato, the longer it will take. Scatter with the thyme and capers, eating a few offcuts on the way to test for done-ness, and return to the oven till the capers are crisp and the potatoes are cooked through and thoroughly golden on the outside. 

I fear I have not emphasised enough how delicious these are. They’re SO CRISP. But SO SOFT underneath. It’s SO NOT a huge deal to have to slice them up all funny. All I could find was stupid waxy potatoes that seemed to be filled with water and they STILL turned out gorgeously browned and crisp. I have SO MORE CAPITALISATION where that came from. Anyway I was eating a big plateful of these the other day and my brain was at a particularly low ebb, like the tide carrying any knowledge had washed away out to sea and I was too tired to chase it, or indeed, to come up with a better metaphor, and I was looking at these beautiful, golden and brown, crunchy crisp potatoes, and I got the theme song from Friends in my head and for one rather silly second I attributed the qualities of being there for you when the rain starts to pour and like they’ve been there before to these potatoes and felt comforted. It’s like the potatoes gave me the supportive words I needed but it turns out those words were in my heart all along. 

Omg this beautiful woman! Lucky London. 

Omg this beautiful woman! Lucky London. 

Speaking of words that were in one’s heart all along, I found myself doing karaoke last night for the second Saturday in a row and it’s amazing how good for the soul it is (apart from wondering, injuriously, why there is no audience out there who wants to hear a moderately terrible singer and thus I can never become a pop star.) All my emotions were slammed around anyway because it was the leaving party for my dear, beautiful friend Charlotte who is bereaving us of her presence but blessing the lesbians of London by moving there for good; on the other hand my angel friend Kate had just returned after a month overseas. Considering I was already at the point of feeling like I was receiving bolstering messages from a bowl of potatoes, you can imagine the near-hysteria in the air last night. Why not add lusty singing into the mix? It was a wonderful night though, so full of support from actual humans and hugs and laughter and new friends and bottles of Rose wine which kept appearing out of nowhere and – once I’ve finished my shift at work that I’m about to head off and do – I made it through this week. Thanks, potatoes.  

If you, too, are on a potatoes vibe then may I also suggest checking out my recipes for Quite Fast Garlic and Parmesan Potatoes, Baked Potato Salad, and/or Halloumi, Fried Potato and Raw Fennel Salad. 

title from: Nicki Minaj’s wonderfully sweet and pro-woman song, Girls Fall Like Dominoes. We are so lucky to have her. 

music lately: 

I don’t know if it’s indicative of where my head’s at but I’m all “no time like the present to develop an odd obsession with Roxette”, specifically the song The Look which I’ve listened to at least fifty times this week, conservatively estimating. It’s horrifyingly intoxicating. I’m listening to it right now. 

Mr Big, To Be With You. Lol, idk. 

next time:  I made AMAZING white chocolate and burnt butter ice cream and I’m very excited about it. I just have to get photos of it before I eat it all, thus far a losing battle. 

this town’s a different town to what it was last night, you couldn’t have done that on a sunday

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I swear I ate and cooked best in my second and third year of university, weird though that seems – I mean, my first year was definitely full of lukewarm toast and trying to stay alive in a flat made of damp breakfast cereal held together with cobwebs (if it weren’t for that vigilant spider army my flat probably would’ve fallen down. Thank you spider army, I respect and fear you still) – but by second year I’d hit my stride. Living in a marginally less cold and damp flat felt like occupying a palace and importantly, I had both the time and the means in winter to make a ton of stews and casseroles and soups and slow-cooked things. Going into the office-job life obliterated that, because there’s no time during the day and when you get home you want feeding immediately, and going into hospo means I just eat when I can, and that might be 3am. But as a student: goddamn. All that free time during the day between lectures, searching out super cheap cuts of meat or soaking dried chickpeas because it cost less than canned, baking a cake so we’d be warmed by the oven’s heat – I’m totally not nostalgic for that time, or anything, but I also don’t want another winter to pass me by without somehow making the most of food that suits the icy weather.

(I went back to my very early days of writing this blog post just to make sure I wasn’t making this all up and glorifying the past and if anything, I undersold it. I used to make pudding every night! In one of my blog posts from November 2007 I talk about how sick I am of blind-baking pastry for pies! That’s how often I was making pastry by hand for homemade pies and tarts! Last year I literally did a blog post about cinnamon sugar on toast and a McDonalds burger. It was a difficult time, sure, but still.)

bread! stuffed! with three! different types! of! cheese! 

I believe it’s without even the slightest bit of hyperbole that I say my life would be unmitigated and incomparable garbage without Kim and Kate, the two earth-angels whom I call my best friends. Remember that Because You Loved Me song by Celine Dion? “You were my strength when I was weak, you were my voice when I couldn’t speak, you were my eyes when I couldn’t see, you saw the best there was in me” etc? I never understood that song when it was first on the radio and/or everyone’s mum by law had a copy of that cassette so it was perpetually in the background. I was like…is she singing to her boyfriend? Or is she a pet rock singing to their owner? Seriously, if you imagine a small rock with googly eyes stuck on it singing this song to someone it makes so much sense than a human singing it, so utterly codependent and clingy and bodily needy it is. It’s definitely sung by a small rock.

At least that’s what I thought, until my aggressively supportive and beautiful friendship with Kim and Kate. Then, at last, did I understand the lyrics to Because You Loved Me. (“You’ve been my inspiration! Through the lies you were the truth!”) I’m like, ah, this song is chill and not at all hysterical. The lyrics are calm and normal.

So between all that and me wanting to get back into slow-ass cooking and, monumentally, Kate being very close to travelling through the UK and Europe for a month (excitingly for her, tear-stainedly fraught for the rest of us) I decided to make the three of us a lavishly rustic, simple lunch before my shift at work on Sunday. It all came together despite attempting a recipe I’ve never tried before, the upshot of which is, if I can manage to throw this together in the middle of three ten hour shifts then all you need is a passing interest in cooking and a small amount of motivation and you can definitely achieve some version of this yourself with massive ease.

Nigella Lawson’s magical cookbook Feast inspired both the recipes I made – firstly, a red and gold root vegetable stew with turmeric and saffron from which I used a Tunisian meatball dish as a starting point. Kate is vegetarian and Kim can’t do garlic or onions so my result ended up having about two ingredients in common with what was on the page, but that’s how inspiration works, yeah? The second recipe, a Georgian cheese-stuffed bread called Nana’s Hatchapuri, was more direct – I just fiddled with the quantities a little to make it more affordable. Speaking of affordable, feel free to leave the saffron out of the stew – I just have a ton of it around because I’m the kind of person who gets given food by people for my birthday etc (which I love) but in all honesty the turmeric completely does the trick as far as flavour and colour. I don’t care about the tautological goldenness though, the doubling down was a pleasingly luxuriant note in an otherwise, let’s face it, highly plain stew.

Anyway, both were SO GOOD. And somehow so do-able. The vegetable stew I made more or less effortlessly the day before and just left it on the hob, ready to reheat. The cheesebread – despite the lengthy looking recipe below – was made very quickly before Kim and Kate got to mine, and once I’d let them in – my hands covered in flour – I just shoved it in the oven while we joyfully mixed orange juice and Lindaeur that Kate had both bought and brought from the nearest dairy.

nana’s hatchapuri (georgian cheesebread) 

my gently adapted version of Nigella’s (who had already adapted it from a woman named Nana, so) from her book Feast. 

six cups plain flour
two cups thick, plain yoghurt
two eggs
50g very soft butter
one teaspoon baking soda
one teaspoon sea salt, or a pinch of regular table salt
one 250g tub of ricotta cheese
two large handfuls of grated mozzarella, like, the super cheap stuff 
150g feta cheese
one more egg

Set your oven to 220 C/450 F and place a baking tray in the oven to heat up. Put the flour in a large bowl, and mix in the yoghurt, eggs, and butter till a soft, sticky dough forms. I used a wooden spoon to stir in the yoghurt and eggs and then my hands to work in the butter; you end up looking like your hands belong to zombies, but it’s very effective! Otherwise just keep on stirring. Add a little extra flour if it’s toooo sticky and knead this in with the baking soda and salt, which should leave you with a springy, soft ball of dough. Cover and leave it for 20 minutes. 

Slice the dough in half and roll out both pieces into a rough oval shape around 1.5cm thick, although it’s up to you, really. Circle, square, Mickey Mouse ears, whatever works. I recommend rolling them out on two large pieces of baking paper, that way it doesn’t mess up your bench top and you can then slide it straight onto the baking tray when it’s ready to cook. 

In the same bowl that you mixed the dough in – because, why not – roughly mash together the ricotta, the feta, and the mozzarella with the remaining egg. Spread this golden mixture thickly across one of the rolled out pieces of dough, leaving a few centimetres border around the edge. Carefully lay the second rolled out dough across the top of this – if a few holes appear, just patch them up, the dough is pretty forgiving – and roll over the edges or pinch them together securely with the prongs of a fork. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until it’s puffy and golden and bready on top. Give it a few minutes before slicing into it. 

root vegetable stew with saffron, cinnamon, and turmeric

a recipe by myself, inspired loosely by Nigella’s Tunisian stew in Feast. This recipe is vegan and gluten-free.  

olive oil
about four sticks of celery
three carrots
two parsnips
half a butternut squash, or one small crown pumpkin, or that quantity of similar
two tins of tomatoes
one cinnamon stick
two heaped teaspoons turmeric
a pinch of ground cumin
three tablespoons golden sultanas (or dried apricots, chopped roughly)
a handful of sundried tomatoes, chopped roughly
pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds, to garnish, plus any green herb you like – flat leaf parsley or coriander would be great here 

Using a large knife, finely chop the celery sticks and two of the carrots into small dice – it doesn’t have to be neat, just keep chopping till you have a pile of formless orange and green. 

Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large saucepan and tip in the carrot and celery. Sprinkle over some salt and allow to cook gently over a medium heat until softened. Meanwhile, chop the remaining carrot into thick cubes or half-moons or whatever you like; slice the parsnip into short sticks, and peel and cube the pumpkin. Throw all these vegetables into the pan and stir them, then add the two tins of tomatoes, the cinnamon stick, the turmeric, cumin, sultanas and dried tomatoes.

Add some salt and pepper, and bring all of this to the boil. Reduce the heat back to low, and then let it simmer for about an hour, adding a little water or stock if it looks a bit too dry. You’re basically done at this point, but you could carry on simmering it for several more hours if you like, or let it to sit and then reheat it the next day – essentially, nothing can hurt this dish. Add more spice or salt and pepper if you see fit. Once you’re ready to serve it, simply scatter it with pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds, and bring it to the table. More olive oil to drizzle over would be nice. 

Obviously softly sweet pumpkin and parsnip with earthy turmeric and saffron and richly tomato-y sauce is going to be wonderful, all hearty and spiced and twinkling with jewel-like green pumpkin seeds and golden sultanas, but the main attraction was obviously the cheese bread. Three different kinds of cheese? In this economy?

The combination of salty feta, the barging-into-your-mouth melty nature of mozzarella, and mild, milky ricotta is superb, and when surrounded by soft, warm, scone-like bread, leavened only by eggs and baking soda, it’s celestially – almost stressfully – good. Make this, I implore you. My only other proviso is to grind over plenty of black pepper once you’ve sliced into it – the cacio e pepe vibes make it spring to life.

The three of us sat on the floor around my flatmate’s amazing coffee table, toasted to ourselves with the world’s cheapest mimosas, ate heartily, and cackled with laughter at ourselves, half in the funny-haha way and in the oh-my-god-what-is-life-I’m-breaking-the-fourth-wall-to-ruefully-shrug-at-the-studio-audience-haha way. And then I staggered to work, full of cheese and good feelings (one and the same, really) and safe in the knowledge that when I got home there was a billion tons of leftovers.

Extra delightfully, I got to dance with my two best girls last night at Dirtbag Disco, the fundraiser dance party for Ballet is For Everyone. If you’ve ever considered supporting a cause, this is a super nice one. Please keep Kim and I in your prayers and candlelit vigils during Kate’s absence, although having consumed a large quantity of this hatchapuri already this week I see it filling the void that her presence leaves more or less adequately.

PS: If slow-cooked vegetable food appeals, then maybe consider similar blog posts I’ve done, about Penang Tofu Curry and Slow Roasted Eggplant and Butternut with Fried Cauliflower.
 

title from: Arctic Monkeys, From the Ritz to the Rubble from their amaaaazing first album
 

music lately: Dirtbag Disco edition

A$AP Rocky/Drake/2Chainz/Kendrick Lamar, F***in’ Problems. This song remains so addictive and the best thing to dance to.

M.I.A, Bad Girls. This song remains so addictive and the best thing to dance to.

Rihanna, We Found Love. This song remaings so addictive and the best thing to dance to.

next time: all I’ve been eating is leftovers from this! But I will make something happen. 

 

garlic springs up where you walk, bells ring out baby when you talk

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a pile of battered, fried garlic cloves

I started this blog nine years ago and – five thousand percent understatement – it was a very different landscape. No Pinterest, no Instagram, the barest hint of twitter and facebook, all that obvious stuff. However, comments were everything. Everything! I used to be all like “oh nooo this blog post only has thirty/fourteen/ten etc comments on it, what can I do?” And mate, you could absolutely tell when bloggers didn’t care a wit about you and were just trying to get clicks through to their own page, because you’d write a long post about how your only goldfish, who had also raised you like a parent through childhood and worked so hard to put you through medical school, had just died, and they’d be all “great post! Looks delicious! Check out my chocolate malteaser cupcakes photographed sterilely against a baby blue background!” It was 2007, okay. We’d just discovered cupcakes and polka dots. Bacon was as yet a distant fever dream. We commented, it was what we had. 
These days, I don’t need blog comments to know people are reading – I get most of my feedback on Twitter and Instagram and occasionally Facebook and sometimes by holding my palms towards the sunset and closing my eyes intently and whispering my URL backwards three times. The comments I do get are usually something nice from a dear friend or a generally lovely message from a reader. The lack of volume means I really pay attention to them whenever they happen. 
And last week I received a comment that really got to me. Before I go any further, I hear what you’re saying – be the bigger person! Be a literal grown up! Ignore it and move on! Well you don’t need to worry, I did that. For five days. And now having got that out of the way, I’m allowing myself a brief foray into being petty. 
Dear Anonymous: 
I do have life happenings that have distracted me from this blog. It’s called a job. It’s called duh. I work around a billion hours and have a hilariously big rent and bills to pay, as do many people. To my great disgust I have to sleep at some point of each day so that doesn’t leave me a lot of time or energy to buy food and cook for myself and photograph it and then write thoughtfully about it. And yet still I manage to get a blog post out every week. Because this blog means so much to me. You think I’m better than scone dough pizza? Do you know how delicious that pizza was? Do you know how exhausted and unhappy I was when I made it because I’d slept through my entire day off and hadn’t blogged yet and felt worthless because I tie my up my value in the work I do for some reason and how pleased I was that I managed to accomplish that one small thing? Do you know how much I think about this blog and worry about what I’m achieving with it? Did you read the bit where the recipe was adapted from one I wrote for my literal published cookbook? Which should thus validate it somewhat for you? Did you read the bit where my goldfish toiled day and night to put me through medical school? Did you appreciate me trying to lighten the mood a bit here? 
Anyway, my main question for you, Anonymous, is: when are you going to get your act together? By giving me money? If you give me money then I’ll be able to have more time to cook and write for this blog and pitch writing to other sites and finally redesign the hilariously outdated yet hopefully loveable look of this thing. I don’t know who you are and thanks for saying that I have a lovely way with words. But ya hurt my damn feelings, Anonymous. I try really, really, really hard here, okay. That’s all. If you’re that worried about my priorities then maybe you should prioritise funding my life so I can write the blog you want from me. This is all I’ve got right now. 


Wow, awkward! Now that I’ve done railing misguidedly against late capitalism, let me caveat that (a) I adore my job and have never been happier than I am now in a position of employment except I wish I had more money but so does everyone so that’s not a controversial stance, (b) I’M SO SICK right now with some kind of queasy-making, energy-sapping coughing-fit head cold so while I’m totally accountable for my actions, I’m not like, that accountable. 


Which is why I ate two whole bulbs of garlic yesterday for lunch. That may sound like a lot, even by a garlic lover’s standard! But once you’ve individually battered and deep fried each clove, it suddenly becomes the most insurmountable task and you’re all, why didn’t I do this with five bulbs of garlic. I guess it’s the same as potato crisps: if you said “I just ate forty slices of potato” you might raise some eyebrows but if you said “I just hooned a can of Pringles, salt and vinegar flavour” you’ll receive nothing but envious sighs and sage nods of understanding.

It’s hard to explain exactly but I’m always trying to undo layers when when I think up recipes: with this one I didn’t have the appetite for a big meal and simply wanted a ton of garlic, rather than having to eat something else that had been annointed with garlic, if that makes sense. What if I fried the garlic cloves themselves so they became crunchy little morsels, like fries? This proved to be surprisingly easy. And monumentally delicious. A quick simmer in water to soften the garlic and remove its harsh, burning edge, a very quickly made batter, and a quick fry in a little oil. That’s it! And in a charming piece of serendipity, the leftover batter itself, when fried, makes delicious little garlic-tinted pancakes, so you don’t have to waste anything if you don’t want.

But the garlic is the star: bite through the hot, crisp exterior and the centre is pure, soft, sweet dissolving garlic. You could argue that they’re kind of pointless (you could do a number of things) but you could increase the number of bulbs and make a bowlful as a Netflix-and-chill type snack or scatter them through a salad or pasta or combine them with some other small fried thing like halloumi, or indeed, just use them to ward off your own sickness. I’m not going to lie: I totally drank the water that the bulbs had simmered in, in the vain hope of gaining every last bit of garlicky goodness. It was honestly delicious in a broth-y type way and there’s no reason you can’t save it for a risotto or soup or similar. The turmeric isn’t exactly crucial but it gives a gorgeous golden colour and is also full of cold-fighting skills so you might as well include it, yeah?

crunchy golden fried garlic cloves and crispy garlic pancakes

a recipe by myself. 

two garlic bulbs (or more! You won’t regret it.)
three tablespoons of tapioca flour (or regular flour) 
three tablespoons of fine cornmeal
one heaped teaspoon of turmeric
three tablespoons or so of cold water
salt and pepper
plain oil, such as rice bran, for frying

Place the whole garlic bulbs in a good-sized saucepan and cover, just, with water. Bring to the boil, and place a lid on top slightly askew so you let out some steam. Let them briskly simmer away for about ten minutes or until a knife stabbed at them suggests they’re pretty soft. Remove from the water and put them in a sieve under cold running water for a bit so they’re cool enough to handle. Slice the base off – it should come off fairly easily. 

In a bowl, mix together the tapioca flour, cornmeal, turmeric, salt, pepper, and water, to form a thickish batter. Add a little more water or a little more cornmeal if it needs thinning or thickening. 

Heat about a centimetre of oil in a wide pan over a high heat. Gently coax the garlic cloves out of their casings – this shouldn’t be too hard although allow for the occasional delicious casualty – and drop them in the batter. Once coated, drop them in the oil and allow them to fry for roughly a minute each side or until golden brown and crisp. Repeat with the remaining garlic. If some cloves bust into pieces while you’re trying to extract them from their casings just throw them in the batter and fry them anyway, it’s all good. Remove the fried cloves to a paper towel or similar till you’ve done all of them, then, if you wish, fry spoonfuls of the remaining batter until crisp and dark golden. EAT THE LOT. 

It’s like fried chicken, but it’s garlic. It’s like those mozarella sticks you can sometimes get from BK, but it’s garlic. I wish there was another word instead of garlic that I could use to describe these but, uh, it’s garlic. Garlic is so good. 
serendipity-licious

I’m so sick that I had to actually have a lie down after walking twenty metres to the fruit and vege mart around the corner from my apartment to get this garlic, so hopefully that is some indicator of the relative ease of this recipe that I was able to make it at all.

Okay, I do feel a tiny bit weird about that rant that I went on – I usually respond to that sort of thing a lot more privately by complaining about it to friends in real life or something. And I’m really lucky that the amount of bother I encounter online is relatively small compared to the tremendous amount that many people, including several friends of mine, put up with. But if you’re supposed to be the bigger person and ignore everything that hurts you, does that mean people get to just hurt your feelings forever and ever and that’s it? Seriously? You can’t sell me on that. And I’m very easily sold on stuff. So you know it’s a bad concept. You know what’s a great concept? Individually battering and frying every last clove in a bulb of garlic, twice, and then eating the lot, and then lying down and binge-watching Miss Fisher’s Charming Murder Mysteries on Netflix. Period procedural dramas are the paracetamol of television, and television is the paracetamol of life, and garlic is nature’s paracetamol. Then have some actual paracetamol, which is the real paracetamol of life, and you’re momentarily set, until the next coughing fit at least.

PS Some other recipes that I’ve done that I feel convey this unpacking of layers of flavour and texture that I’m really into but not good at explaining are: Garnish Salad and Browned Butter Ice Cream. Basically I just lie there and I’m like “yes but what do I want?” until the idea simplifies down to its purest form. Being massively sick clouds that vision somewhat but I came through!
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title from: Thee Oh Sees and their charmingly scuzzy song Grease. 
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music lately: 

Laura Lee, Dreamers. The bae Laura Lee is back at it again with her moody, swoony style of music and I’m so happy about it.

Craig Mack, Flava In Ya Ear. One of the most perfect songs ever, indubitably.
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next time: More scone pizza? I’m kidding Anonymous, we’re good? Either way, if I’m still sick I’ll be so mad! 

i fell asleep in tuscany and dreamed, the one thing missing was you

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If I sound hysterical and shrill, like a man, at any point in this blog post it’s because my old flatmate and always-friend Charlotte and I took our gay selves off to see the heavily acclaimed film Carol, starring Cate Blanchett’s Aggressive Feline Charisma and Rooney Mara’s Quiet Strength and Vulnerability. Basically it’s an Important Lesbian Film and each frame of it is so beautiful that you could print the lot out and pin them sequentially to your bedroom walls and spin around forever and ever watching the story unfold as you get dizzier and dizzier from happiness and, well, spinning around. Honestly, go see it. Even if you’re like, “sounds a bit gay to me, and I’d prefer that kind of thing kept behind closed doors thank you kindly,” (in which case I really don’t know why you’re reading this blog anyway) just know that the performances are so entrancing and the costumes and sets and cinematography are so artful and the music is exquisite and it’s nominated for a zillion Oscars, which means even a bunch of conservative dull old men thought it was worth watching.

Anyway: any money I used to get through tips at work (which is never much, as New Zealanders tend to be incredibly reluctant to tip hospo workers, but that’s a story for another day – actually, that’s the whole story) used to go towards bus money to get me in and out of Newtown. Now that I’m no longer beholden to those busses, all expensive and stuffily overheated and so slow they were definitely going backwards at several stages during the journey, I can spend my tip money on other things. Like vegetables at the market! I have not been to the vegetable market since, I can confidently estimate, around May 2014. Luckily that’s not the last time I actually ate a vegetable, but it’s certainly the last time I felt any sense of ecstasy from buying one. Two taut-skinned, richly purple eggplants for four stupid tiny dollars! A huge bunch of cavolo nero for one and a half dollars! A perfect avocado for eighty cents! (Ah yes, there’s the hysteria.)

With great quantities of vegetables comes great quantities of searching through pinterest and marvelling at the superior lives being led by everyone in America with a blog. I found this incredible-looking recipe for cavolo nero cooked in a carbonara type sauce; and so that became my lunch yesterday within a matter of minutes.

I’m still 100% enamoured with my new house by the way, not least because of its proximity to the vege market making it easier for me to achieve non-scurvy.

putting up some artwork always makes a place feel like it’s mine, all mine. 

My bedroom is feeling more and more like a haven every day, and I’m thoroughly enjoying getting to know the kitchen better, not least because my roommate has a ton of sexy-and-functional cookware that I can play with. And it was one such item – a rather gorgeous shiny saucepan – which I used to swiftly make this recipe. I love cavolo nero, or Tuscan Kale as it’s also known – its leaves are so mutedly dark green and thick, holding their shape under heat while full of almost meaty, rich flavour. Obviously you could fry socks with bacon and cream and they’d be fairly palatable, but throw these heavy leaves into such a mixture and the result is incredible. The recipe I found online wasn’t quite carbonara-y enough for me, so I shaved in slivers of fresh nutmeg, warm and delicate, and added plenty of sharp, crumbly parmesan. I really didn’t measure any of the quantities, which is why the recipe is a tiny bit vague, but if you follow your instincts (essentially: as much cavolo nero as you can be bothered slicing and washing, as much bacon as you can be bothered slicing, and so on, will be as much as you need.)

tuscan kale carbonara

adapted a bit from this recipe at the stone soup. 

several large cavolo nero leaves – around half a bunch
two rashers streaky bacon
butter or olive oil for frying
four tablespoons of cream
fresh nutmeg
parmesan cheese
freshly ground salt and pepper

slice and discard the stems from the cavolo nero leaves (or brew into a nutritious tea or something if that makes you feel guilty), and either keep the leaves as they are or slice them into ribbons. Slice the bacon into small pieces and fry in butter or olive oil till sizzling and crisp. Remove from the pan – I just put them onto the serving plate I was planning to use – and throw the leaves into the pan. Sprinkle a little water over if you like, and just stir and lift them over a high heat till they soften and darken a little. Return the bacon to the pan, and pour over the cream, allowing it to bubble and thicken, which it should do rather quickly. Remove it from the heat, and use a vegetable peeler or small grater to scrape a little fresh nutmeg into the pan, followed by as much parmesan as you feel like. Finish with as much salt and pepper as would make you happy. 

Honestly, this is such a perfect lunch for one – I rakishly deglazed the pan with more cream just to make sure I was able to scrape up all the bacon juices, and recommend you do the same. If you want there to be more to it there’s nothing stopping you serving it with thick slices of bread or stirred through a tangle of pasta, but untampered with, this is total excellence. The only thing I’d do if I owned some was to pour in a little dry white vermouth with the bacon (which is Nigella’s influence: she says “I use this ingredient” and I say “how high”.)

As well as tasting wondrous it’s also very beautiful in its own way – those dark, wrinkly leaves flopping about artlessly with the pink of the bacon and the gold of the cream. This is absolutely going to winkle its way into my regular rotation of recipes – especially because you could always use regular kale, or indeed, silverbeet or spinach – just with the latter two, make sure you add the leaves right at the end because spinach, especially, will wilt into nothingness soon as look at you.

If you’ve got to this point in my blog post and are still totally endeared by me (in which case: well done on your accurate opinion) then I would like to direct you to my new recipe index that I’ve been working on. I’m super proud of it on account of it took a lot of html code copy-pasting and a TON of URL copy-pasting to make it happen, and it’s still a mere work in progress, but it’s already so gratifyingly pretty and useful! (Oh yeah, and as soon as I posted this I brazenly went to update the recipe index and made all the html disappear somehow and now it looks rubbish, so uh, bear with me please.)

PS: even if you never eat another vegetable in your life, just make sure you go watch Carol. And then come shriek with me.
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title from: the important Janet Jackson and her beautiful song Runaway. 
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music lately:

I cannot stop listening to Rihanna’s new album Anti, especially the dreamydreamydreamy Work featuring Drake and the oh-no-now-I’m-sobbing-forever waltz that is Love on the Brain. (The waltz: a totally underrated time signature.)

I also cannot stop listening to Modern Lovers, something about Jonathan Richman’s voice makes me feel in full teenage dirtbag mode. Obviously I have two ears and a heart and so am obsessed with the song Roadrunner, but maaaaan, Hospital and the early-Who-y I Wanna Sleep In Your Arms are so worth a re-tread.
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next time: I was given a copy of Nigella’s new cookbook and it’s very beautiful and exciting and I cannot wait to cook my way through it…