Category: Vegetables

"Remember My Name!"

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I had the most enormous craving to watch Fame tonight. I love this movie – how it starts off so great, gets really dark and twisted, and instead of offering the slightest inclination of resolving any of the subplots, it just ends with the main characters singing a song. A great song, admittedly – the soundtrack is fantastic. (Also, am I the only one who thinks that had Irene Cara been born ten or fifteen years later than she was, that she would have made a spectacular Mimi in Rent? Crossover appeal!) Furthermore, did you know that the guy who directed Fame also directed Pink Floyd The Wall? Tim is in Napier tonight, having a boy’s weekend (even though it’s only Wednesday) with Paul and a couple of his colleagues, watching the NZ/England cricket game. I had to work today and although I don’t really enjoy cricket in the slightest I am a bit miffed to be missing out on the fun. Perfect time though, to be watching self-indulgent movies. So I thought. Could not find Fame for love nor money anywhere in Wellington. I didn’t know it was that obscure… Eh, I guess I’ll just watch Rent again, like I usually do.

Speaking of fame, I made up a recipe that I really think is The One. Nay, THE ONE. I don’t like blowing my own trumpet (truly) but this really is something. It is – tentatively titled – Cinnamon-Date Ice Cream. I was going to call it Sticky Date Ice Cream but I thought it didn’t convey the cinnamon aspect so well and also I didn’t want it to seem like an icecream version of a pudding, you know? Anyway, as soon as I tasted a spoonful I said to Tim that if I ever get famous, it will be because of this recipe.
Above: Pity it doesn’t look that great. It was nobody’s fault really; the ice cream was too melty and I just ain’t that great at taking photos.
Above: Even when I did that whole, “close up and dusted with cinnamon” thing it didn’t really mesh. In fact…it kind of looks like hummous.
Nevermind – it tastes brilliant! Brilliant I say! Dense, fudgy, intensely caramelly and warm – somehow amongst the cold – with cinnamon. Really, ridiculously moreish. I meant it when I said that I’m not one to boast, but this really is pretty special. There are a whooooole lot of posts below where I don’t talk myself up like this, if you are a new reader thinking I am some kind of egomaniacal, er, maniac. Honestly, I’m so amazed that I of all people managed to come up with something like this.
The recipe is still in its loose stages but I will write it up soon so you can try it (if you like – I’m pretty bashful about it, in spite of all the shameless self promotion.) I have bought myself a little red notebook to write my recipes in. Who knows what will happen if I get enough of them! “Remember my name…FAME!” Ahem, etc. At the very least, I’ll have a collection of recipes that I made up.
Above: Well…you probably don’t need to see another photo on here of roast veges, least of all beetroot (no cauliflower though!) but I liked the colours of this. I can’t even remember which night we ate this, since I make roast beetroot so regularly.
Above: This is another recipe I made up (I need a more sophisticated term than made-up, I think…) I dubbed it Hearty Lentil and Chickpea Soup, since that’s what was in it (y’all know I’m a fiend for lentils) and to be honest…I wasn’t 100% taken with it. It sort of felt like it was missing something elusive.
Surprisingly though, Tim absolutely flipping loved it, so it might still be going in the notebook. I used red lentils – which I love for their ability to dissolve into mush – and canned chickpeas – along with a selection of vegetables and a can of tomatoes. It was nice, don’t get me wrong, it just didn’t make me want to jump on a couch a la Tom Cruise the way the ice cream above did. More garlic next time, I think…
Above: I went to the public library the other day, having quite forgotten what a treasure trove it is, and found Vatch’s Street Food, written by the same guy (with one heck of a name that I can’t even begin to spell off the top of my head) who did my Healthy Salads of Southeast Asia book. Judging from a quick read, the main difference that street food has over healthy salads is that everything is fried. And it’s pretty seductive reading…Last night I made some pork satay, which was incredibly delicious. I looove satay sauce and this one, coconutty and tangy with tamarind, was amazing, and not the slightest bit throat-catchingly peanut buttery.
Uni starts next Monday so my Thoroughly Modern Millie phase comes to a close. I’m looking forward – yes – to learning, but I’m not looking forward to essays…First term papers are – Renaissance Lit, some media paper I’m doing to make up my major, and – get you this – beginner’s digital photography class! Everyone wins!

Anarchy! Revolution, Justice, Screaming for Solution…(and Buttercream)

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I realise, looking back, that the last post was bordering on being unbearably wordy, so kudos to you if you made it to the end without vowing never to return. As anyone who had received one of my emails from England knows, once I start typing about stuff I’m a bit excited about, I find it hard to stop.
In order to appease you, this post is largely made up of pictures. Soothing pictures. (Especially if there are any Generation-Y kids reading, I’ve seen how, bless you, growing up amongst all this technology has stunted your attention spans!) The reason for this is that the Auckland posts took ages to do but in the meantime, dinner kept happening and needs blogging about.

Before I launch into it though, I have news that is potentially exciting to me only! The Levin Performing Arts Society is putting on a production of Rent! Okay, it’s not the damn Nederlander theatre in New York, but Levin is only an hour from Wellington and if it looks like it won’t be entirely rubbish I kinda want to go. It’s odd though, I’ve passed through Levin on the bus before and it doesn’t look like the sort of place that would take on such a production. Shouldn’t be all judgy though, as I know nothing about the company…I just hope the actors are decent. Because – Rent!! Opportunity!


Above: Nuts! When I was up home (for less than 24 hours, can you believe) I made Mum some more of Nigella’s muesli from Feast, which she has taken a real shine to (mercifully, as I gave her some for Christmas. I don’t think she’s just being polite.) It is very plain, simple, and good breakfast fare: Rolled oats and raw nuts, toasted in the oven for a bit, stirred with sultanas and a spoonful of brown sugar. That’s all. You could add whatever dried fruit or seeds you want. It may sound dull, but let me tell you, there is something quietly Zen about making one’s own muesli.


Above: Don’t you feel all warm and wholesome just looking at it?


Above: This may well look like baby food…which is what I suppose risotto is, in a way, baby food for grownups. What I mean, is that it is so mushy and comforting and formless that it is rather like…well I’m not entirely sure what I mean, I just don’t want to insult any Italians that might be roving by. That is, if they aren’t already offended by this dish’s Anglo title of “Cheddar Cheese Risotto.” Now I didn’t actually have any proper cheddar to hand, so I used a pleasantly golden mixture of Emmental, Parmesan, and er…Edam. This came from Nigella Express and we ate it for dinner when we got back from Auckland. Despite some trepidation about whether normal cheese and risotto belonged together, it was seriously fab-o.


Above: While in Auckland, I got a cookbook from Borders by a guy called Vatcharin Bhumichitr, called Healthy Salads From Southeast Asia. It was, apparently, one of Nigella’s top ten books of 1997 – is there indeed a higher recommendation? This book looks stunning, I want to make everything from it. But I started off with this bean salad. Very simple flavours of soy, lime, garlic – not the first things I’d think to pair with beans but simply delicious.


Above: This is a chicken salad from the same book, and let me tell you, this photo doesn’t do it justice (do any of my photos, come to think on it…) This salad was soooo good, I was almost disappointed that I had to share it with Tim.


Above: For some reason, whenever I hear someone say “Ratatouille,” I always want to say “Rata-three-ee” just to be facetious. Anyhow, I had the opportunity to do so when I cooked it for dinner the other night. Tomatoes, capsicums and zuchinni are cheap and plentiful, and after Auckland we really oughta eat some vegetables. So it all worked out rather nicely. I didn’t use a recipe, just kind chopped and stirred and simmered stuff together with tomato passata.

Above: Okay, so there have been salads and the like but I know what people reeeally get excited about is the sweet stuff. It was Waitangi Day on Wednesday, and I don’t know why that equated to butterfly cakes in my mind but that’s what I really wanted to do with my time. I used the recipe from Nigella’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess, it couldn’t be easier. I also used these nifty silicone cupcake-holder thingies that I got for Christmas from my godparents, not only are they useful they also suited my colour scheme!


Above: Now, I’m not one of those girls who is all “Pink pink pink pink! Everything must be pink!” But you know as well as I do that it is the only colour right for the buttercream.

You don’t know how hard it has been not to eat the entire lot in one sitting.

As well as that, I made up a cake recipe. That’s right- I’m actually super excited about it, as I have massive admiration for people who just make recipes out of their heads. Now that I’ve started, I want to make more – it is rather intoxicatingly fun. Or weird, depending on how you look at it.


Above: As you can see, I had a pink icing thang going on that day. This cake doesn’t as yet have a name, although I was inspired to ice it pink with walnuts by a description of a cake I read about in Anne of Avonlea (what is it with me and Canadian cakes? “What’s your business in Canada” indeed!) Anyway, the working title is “Coffee Cinnamon Sour Cream Walnut Cake’ although I concede that it is a schmeer cumbersome. I can’t pretend that this is the only cake in the world with these flavourings, but I haven’t seen one recently, and I didn’t use any recipe books.

More importantly, the cake tastes gooood. I got Ange and Tim to give me harsh feedback, but they had nothing but praise. And good thing too, or it would be a bit of a waste of ingredients. Anyway, I might make it a few more times before I settle on the ur-recipe, but trust me: it’s an exhilarating experience, making up a cake recipe. Do you know how finite and precise baking has to be? Do you realise how imprecise and unmathmatical I am?

Okay, so in the manner of Green Day in the Simpsons Movie – “We’ve been playing for three hours now, but we’d just like to take a minute of your time to talk about the environment!” They were booed, and eventually killed. Please hear me out though- it’s a little serious and political, but to be fair, I am so rarely either of these things. For what it’s worth (as it were):

The country village I grew up in – Otaua (always fun to spell out over the phone) – is being threatened by a company called Waste Petroleum Combustion. They want to put massive oil silos – for more than a million litres of oil – and start a treatment plant. Across the road from my parents’ house. Next to a whole swag of farmland. A stone’s throw from a school. I can’t speak on this with too much authority, but as it would happen, we got on the national news show – you can read the story here – but I wanted to say something, to use my blog as a kind of platform. I realise that this will probably only reach a few foodies in Australia and England, and my mother, but then look what happened with the Rufus Wainwright video below. I have mentioned this here before on my blog (if nothing else, I got a really pleasing Rent analogy out of it) but it seems to be getting serious so I thought I might as well mention it again in order to make people aware. I’m not sure what we are going to do about it but my Dad is now the President of the Otaua Village Preservation Society (“We are the village green preservation society…”) which is a promising start. If nothing else, we could try feeding the people of Waste Petroleum Combustion some pink butterfly cakes – if that can’t win someone over, I’m not sure what could.

Damn the man!

“I’m Not Crying…It’s Just Been Raining On My Face”

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I’m sorry to again be bearing tidings of stuff other than joy, but you should probably know that one of our goldfish died yesterday. I’m not sure if it was Laurim or Taura (our flatmates named them, inspired by such amalgams as Bennifer and Brangelina and TomKat and…Speidi) because neither fish had any particularly distinguishing features. Laugh if you want, and I completely understand why, but our goldfish were pretty gorgeous, and I’ll really miss little Laurim-or-Taura. Their bowl is right beside the computer so as I would sit here a-blogging, they would swim around merrily or bob around as though they were saying hi. We got the fish in early September, and despite being unable to hug them, we became very attached to them. So now we are down to one. But really – I’m not crying…“I’ve just been cutting onions…I’m making a lasagne…for one.”

Somewhat callously, this segues into what we had for dinner the other night – Tuna and Beans, or Tonno e Fagioli. (Too soon?)
Above: This is a deceptively simple meal, taken from Nigella Express. (Yeah, again from that book. What can I say, I’m a kid with a new toy.) It barely needs a recipe – some red onion, sliced and steeped in lemon juice, mixed with some canned cannelini beans, canned tuna, olive oil, salt, pepper, and parsely. It is surprisingly substantial yet light at the same time, and would, I suspect, make a lovely filling for pitta pockets or the like. Also, did you know that cannelini beans are an excellent source of complex carbs? For every serving or so, there is something like 23g of carbs but almost no sugars. Result!
Above: To go with, one of my big food addictions (what am I saying, it’s an addiction across the board), roasted cauliflour, which I teamed with some steamed brocolli and capers. To roast cauliflour, simply place florets in an appropriate dish and leave in a very hot oven – I usually go for 220 C – for about 20 minutes or longer. It will look slightly brown in places and somewhat wizened. Don’t fret, this is normal. In fact, this is to be welcomed.


Above: Finally, I grilled some tortillas which I had brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with some za’atar that I got for Christmas. Za’atar is a fragrant mix of thyme, sumac and sesame seeds, and tastes lovely and smoky once it has been under a hot grill. I wanted to say something about how we broke these into shards and ate them with our fingers as a relaxed starter but it sounded so laughable that I think I’ll leave it out.
Above: Another dinner. As you may guess, my Chicken, Bacon, and Mushroom Pie has a little “L” on it. I think this picture nicely demonstrates the cuteness of these wee pies, which also hail from Nigella Express. Despite the extravagant title, this recipe was one of the few I could find on my trawls though cookbooks that seemed to match what we had in the cupboards. It also tasted seriously, seriously good.

Above: Ooh, floor pie! But for real, these pies are SO great, and very simple in execution. I think it is the inclusion of Marsala in the filling that really gives it an edge. Plus I’m a sucker for anything encased in pastry. Which would explain so much.

The green stuff on the side: Cabbage with Cumin Seed, which came from my Jill Dupleix book, New Food. This was a Christmas present from my Nana, one I was super excited to recieve because I have heard really good things about this particular author. Although I still have no idea how to pronounce her surname (I’m guessing it’s not Dew-plee-icks though.) This book was published in 1994, which means it charmingly waxes lyrical about Balsamic Vinegar and how overused sundried tomatoes are (look at me being a food snob, I was eight years old in 1994!) Anyway, Dupleix has a lovely, breezy style of writing, and lots of fab looking recipes. Unfortunately as I read through the book there were pretty much NONE that worked with what ingredients we had, apart from this cabbage recipe. Which was delicious – very simple and healthy, with great flavours. As well as that there was MORE roasted cauliflour, with roasted beetroot, some of the Moonblush tomatoes, and avocado.
This time next week, Tim and I will be in Auckland hotly anticipating the Rufus Wainwright concert which is on Monday the 4th. With any luck I will be able to meet him and convince him to be my future wedding singer. If I was rich enough, I’d just pay him to follow me round everywhere, singing.
R.I.P Laurim-or-Taura. If nothing else, I can be glad that he didn’t look like…
…Blinky, the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons.

Crowded House

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If there was a better way of typing out a sigh, onomatapoeically, rather than saying the word “sigh,” I would use it right now. We learned of actor Heath Ledger’s death today, I’m sure if you are reading it here it won’t be the first time you have heard about it, indeed, this isn’t the sort of blog one would go to for that sort of news. But I can’t let the event pass without giving some kind of recognition to it. For all that people seem to be more shocked at “celebrity” death depending on how good looking the person was and the circumstances surrounding it (I speak as someone who has been trawling gossip blogs in order to find out news and gauge peoples’ responses), and even though say, Fox News will give far more coverage to this than the death of Sir Edmund Hillary…he is no less dead. He was only 28, an exceptionally good actor, of the Johnny Depp school of excellence in my opinion, and he had a two year old daughter. A terribly sad thing to hear. Sigh.

Meanwhile, at stately Wayne Manor, I am still cooking for various people, including Tim’s friend, who is still staying with us, and my cousin Paul, who is moving into our flat. But – I like feeding lots of people, so I am not being hard done by in the least.
Above: I like pasta for feeding a crowd. It’s not as austere as rice, but just as quick – and is there anything lovelier, when you are slavering with hunger, than a vat of pasta? It is also about the only thing that is cheap in the supermarkets these days. I’m still not over the price of dairy, (if only there was some way I could protest – but I love butter too much) but we did some groceries today and EVERYTHING was expensive. Even with a $60 voucher, (thanks to Mum and Dad) and minimal purchasing of meat, it came to $130. I kid you not. I was going to buy some raw mixed nuts with which to make Mum another batch of Nigella’s fabulous muesli, and a small bag at the bulk section came to $9.50. I nearly wept. Sorry Mum – the muesli might have to wait a while. What is wrong with New Zealand’s economy?
Above: Pasta Carbonara, recipe courtesy of Nigella’s Feast, has got to be one of my all-time favourite meals. Bacony, creamy, vermouth-y, carbtastic…frankly there’s not much more to say, except that I added some frozen peas at the last minute (not so last minute that they were still frozen while we ate, of course) because the lack of vegetables made me a tiny bit panicky.
Above: Another nice thing about feeding a crowd (ie, when there is more than two of us: we are big eaters) is that you can feel justified in making pudding. Which, in this case, was a sensationally easy Tarte Aux Fine Pommes, from Nigella Express. Okay, so I can’t pretend that the edges of the pastry didn’t get a teeensy bit singed but it still tasted great, and there was something pleasing about the elegant layout of the apple slices.

Above: I didn’t really need to make the Moonblush Tomatoes from Nigella Express in this silicone dish, but I loved the red-on-red vibrancy it produced. Tomatoes were cheap at the market, and this recipe sounded so easy that I thought I’d give it a bash. Basically, you sprinkle tomatoes (supposed to be cherry ones, but big ones were much cheaper) with a tiny bit of salt and sugar, and some dried thyme, put them in a 220 C oven, and then turn it off and leave them overnight. By which stage they should look like this:
Above: This may not look too impressive, but they smell incredible – like the most intensely condensed tomato soup. I’m not sure that I’m selling them well, but really – if tomatoes came with comparitive superlatives, these would be the tomatoeyest things on earth. Good grief. First I’m making up words to describe my feelings for Nigella, then I’m not satisfied with the word ‘sigh’, and now I’m taking sweeping liberties with a noun that was never meant to be used as an adjective. Who do I think I am, butchering the English language like this?

Above: As well as being so fragrant that they drive me to mess with grammatical institutions, the tomatoes go rather excellently in a pasta sauce. I made one up on the spot for dinner the other night; Onions, chopped up pork sausages, a couple of the moonblush tomatoes, a splash of sherry, some capers, a little cream…it tasted deeply flavoursome and delicious. The salad that you can see there was made from radiccio (which I found cheap at Moore Wilsons) roast beetroot and diced avocado. The sweetness of the beetroot and the creamy texture of the avocado seemed to nicely balance the somewhat bitter, yet beautifully purple, radiccio.
I realise I am breaking the cardinal sin of writing for people: Be concise. I am not concise at the best of times…but if you have made it to this point and are thinking, “But how much more can they possibly have eaten?!” fear not – there isn’t much more to go.

Above: Making one’s own chicken nuggets does, on paper, sound absolutely deranged. And I admit, they don’t look that great in the photo (it’s the overexposure?) but these are just so good and not taxing in the slightest. I do, however, recommend you get a buddy to help you with the turning of these in the hot oil or they will burn – the one thing I am likely to do in the kitchen, as you can see from the apple tart above. The recipe comes from Nigella Lawson’s Feast and is all kinds of basic – chicken breasts, cut into goujons, marinated in buttermilk, dipped in cracker crumbs and shallow fried till magically delicious. You’ll never go to McDonalds again…

Above: I’ve heard mixed reviews for Nigella’s Chef’s Salad, but take it from me and my discerning taste buds – this is SO good. I could have snarfed the whole bowl were it not for the fact that it had to go round other people too. It is a mixture of iceberg lettuce, corn kernals, emmental cheese, ham, and avocado, and although it may not sound spectacular it is nigh on addictive.


Above: Despite all my hand-wringing and exclaiming about EVERYTHING above this point, I really think that I have saved the best for last. This is the Caramel Croissant Pudding from Nigella Express, and though I can’t say the recipe looked too exciting at first glance…it is wondrous. I should point out that I have a rather bad habit of going out and buying an expensive main ingredient because I have all the peripheral ingredients, and this is one such instance. I basically made this because Tim was given some bourbon and there are two or so tablespoons in this recipe. Luckily croissants are relatively cheap at the corner shop, and the rest – milk, sugar, etc – are usually close to hand. This was ridiculously fantastic, every bit as good as Nigella says and then some. That’s right. Then some.
From croissants, one’s mind springs to crumpet, and thus, back to Heath Ledger. Hopefully this is the last of such events in this year that has barely started.

I’ll Be Home For Christmas…

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But Tim won’t be. I have just returned from the cable car, where I left Tim who was on his way to get his bus to Palmerston North. I’m catching a flight in an hour to Auckland…I know it’s only a week, but why oh why is Palmerston North so far away from Waiuku? Anyway, no need to be doleful because Christmas is nearly here! Hoorah! Fa la la la la! Today is the 23rd of December, “Little Christmas Eve” as my brother and I call it, and this is my last post from Hadfield for the year – next time it will be from the computer at home, and possibly after Christmas.

We have been eating funny meals lately, lots of bits and pieces. We had some bananas growing rapidly decrepit in the fruit bowl, so I thought I’d better make something with them. I ended up making the Banana Muffins from Nigella’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess. I had previously bypassed this recipe because, well, it didn’t really interest me – banana muffins are nice and all, but nothing new, if you know what I mean. Well I should have known that Nige would be able to create something exciting from even the most commonplace thing. The muffins were wonderful – light, spongy, redolent with honey. There is only 2 tablespoons of honey, no actual sugar, only 30g butter (bugger all when shared between 12 cakes) no eggs and no milk. I almost thought there was a typo when I first scanned the page – what on earth held the mixture together, I don’t know, but again, they tasted beautiful.


Above: Nigella’s banana muffins. Eating is believing – these really are special.


Above: Last night’s dinner was effectively the last meal I was going to be cooking for Tim and I before we went our separate ways, and anyone who knows how I feel about cooking dinner will know that this is a big deal. I didn’t want to spend any more money on food, so I followed Nigella’s wonderful pasta recipe, which makes a feast out of bugger all (some flour and a couple of eggs.)

There is a running joke in the flat that Tim and I get very, very tense with each other while trying to wrangle the pasta maker, causing the other flatmates to get nervous at its very presence. Luckily we were mature enough to work out our differences last night, even when I accidentally left the cut pasta in a fast-congealing lump and we had to re-roll the whole lot again. The pasta machine was an impulse buy (as one does) but is worth the effort for the silky, tender, unbelievably delicious pasta it yields.


Above: I tossed the pasta in a little butter and freshly grated nutmeg, and roasted the last of whatever veges we had in the fridge to go with it. Delicious!


Above: Because we are so recklessly impulsive, Kieran, Tim and I decided to go out for breakfast this morning instead of packing. Which is, to be fair, a rather miserable job. We went to Epic again, and it was just as amazing as it was last time. From left – Kieran’s Eggs Montreal, my Vegan big breakfast (“The Herbivore”) and Tim’s Ranch-style cookup. I didn’t feel like anything too heavy, which is why I uncharacteristically went for the vegan feed. It was perfectly filling, the veges were delicious and the grainy bread it was served on was incredible. We sat outside in the sun and sipped spirulinas with our meals. Seriously – go there if you are in Wellington.

Now I have to run round and do that last minute panic thing, as you do, and say goodbye to the goldfish. Not sure when my next post will be but I’m sure everyone’s far too busy to be online anyway. My bags are laden with all the foodie gifts I’ve made for people – I hope like heck that I don’t get fined for overweight luggage at the airport. Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Epic Proportions

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I didn’t realise how long it was since I’ve last posted here, so another long post, sorry! This time of year is pretty busy though, and I can’t believe that there is only one week till I go home for Christmas 🙂 and Kieran leaves our flat 😦 although obviously, he will always be a part of Team Hadfield.

Above: It has been so humid and tropical in Wellington lately that we have been eating our dinner outside a lot. I made this for dinner the other night, using some chops that Tim’s parents gave us when we went to their farm in September to help with docking. After defrosting them (naturally, I hadn’t kept them in the fridge for three months) I baked them with some of the cranberry conserve that Santa gave me last year, mixed with a little dry mustard powder. They were delicious, all sticky and blackened and meaty. To go with I made the Egyptian Tomato Salad from Nigella Bites, using some of the tomatoes we got from the vege market. This recipe is very easy and really summery. You peel the tomatoes, slice them up with some spring onion, pour over a little olive oil, and leave it to sit for a while for the flavours to develop. The potatoes I just parboiled and fried in my non stick pan in cubes, with some cumin seeds and plenty of salt.

On Friday night I didn’t even have dinner (Tim had some toast and leftover lentil soup) because we went to the stadium to see the Phoenix vs Queensland, and by the time I’d got home from work there wasn’t any time to cook. It was a very warm, muggy night, perfect for being outside, and the game was lots of fun. We went with Kieran (flatmate) and Alicia (Canadian who also works at Starbucks) and I have to say that being in a crowd of soccer fans (I think there was just over 9000 people there, pretty good for a non-Beckham game here) is a great way of letting out any repressed anger you might have as you yell and curse and chant along that “All we want is a decent referee.”

Above: I wish I could say I made this! Tim, Kieran, Alicia and I went out to breakfast the next morning (how very Sex and The City! I thought to my unsophisticated self) at Epic, on Willis Street. They serve the most amazingly enormous and imaginative breakfasts, for very reasonable prices. The above – savoury French toast with mushrooms, chorizo, spinach, grilled capsicum, hollandaise and chutney was only $13, and being the glutton that I am, I got a couple of hash browns on the side. It was seriously good and slowed me down too – I hate paying for tiny meals – and everything tasted of quality, not as though it was out of a packet.

Above: Tim ordered the big vegetarian fry up and then, rather idiosyncratically, asked for bacon and kranky on the side. He had started eating this by the time I took a photo of it, but really, it looks pretty good, huh? Tim said his eggs were cooked perfectly.
Above: Kieran had the Mexican Big Breakfast, with corn fritters on the side, and Alicia had the three-egg omelette. Everything was sooo good! We got there bang on 9.00am (quite an achievement on a Saturday morning, especially since we had been drinking the night before) and there were hardly any people there, but it filled up quickly.

If you are ever in Wellington, make sure you check this place out. There was also a blackboard menu which I forced myself not to look at for fear of never being able to make a decision. Kieran and Alicia got latte bowls, Tim got a flat white (I think the general concession was ‘good, but not as good as Starbucks’) and I got a lovely spirulina.
Tim had work to go to, but Kieran and Alicia and I made the most of the sun by driving out to Island Bay, which is near to the airport. I’d never been there before – it’s such a jewel of a place on a sunny day, real postcard stuff – blue sky, blue-green sea, the cliffs…we chilled in the sun (and yes, I schmeered myself with copious amounts of sunblock) on the pebbly beach and tried to avoid being bitten by the mosquitos that were as big as 747s.


Above: Island Bay. Unlike many beaches in NZ, this one has sun-warmed pebbles instead of sand.

When I got home I started making a pavlova. I didn’t have any real motivation to do it, in that we weren’t celebrating or something like that, but I had a pomegranate, and I had lots of egg whites in the freezer, and since we are all going home for Christmas soon it’s a nice time to eat that sort of food. So, following the recipe for Pomegranate Pavlova in How To Be A Domestic Goddess, I started whipping those egg whites into shape.

Above: Everything was going fine until I realised I’d ran out of cornflour, and of course in the unstable world of pavlova every ingredient is crucial. So I thought maybe I could substitute it with custard powder, which is mostly cornflour anyway, right? Well, I sifted it in, poured over the vinegar…and it made this funny bubbling noise. So I folded it all together, spread the shiny mixture onto the baking tray, and put it in the oven quickly. Then I looked at the ingredients on the custard powder and it had cream of tartar in it. Uh oh! I thought. And hoped for the best.
Anyway while it was baking I got on with dinner, which was good old spag bol (hey, we are students) I put some of the red wine that I wasn’t drinking in the spaghetti sauce, which made it smell delicious. I also added some red lentils to it, which cooked down into nothing and added texture and of course, added healthiness. But of course you all should be familiar with my lentil obsession by now…


Above: We ate outside again, because it was so warm. The spag bol tasted great – if only cheese wasn’t so expensive, we could have grated some over the top.

We were sitting outside drinking and talking (Tim: beer, Emma: Loud and Lola Cosmopolitan mix, Kieran and I: Red Wine) when the timer went off for the pav. I checked for signs of disaster but apart from being ENORMOUS (it has expanded to take up nearly the whole darn baking tray, which I think the cream of tarter may have had a hand in doing) it seemed to be absolutely fine. I whipped some cream and spread it thickly over, and then came the fun part.
Above: You may or may not know this, but one of the more effective ways of seeding a pomegranate is to hit it repeatedly with a wooden spoon till the ruby seeds rain down. So, here I am, well, smacking the pomegranate.

Above: This pav was soooo delicious, all crisp and sugary without and yieldingly marshmallowy within. The pomegranate also makes a great topping – it looks gorgeous and its fragrantly acidic, crunchy seeds go well with the cream and all the sugar. This is the third pav of Nigella’s that I’ve tried and I have to say they are fantastic recipes.




Above: From the top, the Pomegranate Pav, the Nectarine and Passionfruit Pav, and the Chocolate Raspberry Pav. They make me think of Miss World contestants, all lined up like that. Which do you think looks the prettiest? I sure can’t decide…

In other news: Less than ten days till Christmas! Aaaaahhh!!!

“Nowtro.”

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“The costumes are retro now, but they weren’t retro then. They were ‘nowtro.'” (A Mighty Wind) (one of my favourite films.)

After a retro cooking challenge was issued by an online food forum I frequent (ooh, alliteration!) I had a think about what I consider to actually be retro food. There is the obvious stuff – cheese fondue (which I have made successfully, and yes, it is delicious) or prawn cocktail, Boef en Croute and black forest gateaux – the sort of thing one reads about in a Jilly Cooper novel. And I concluded that as a child of ’86, I was really too young to be thinking about foods as retro – the closest I can get is being snide about that period in the late nineties/early 2000’s, where if it wasn’t drowned in balsamic vinegar it was covered in sweet chilli sauce, and chicken, cranberry and brie was the height of haute cuisine.

So I decided to let what was in our cupboards decide for me, and ended up with two distinctly different ‘retro’ dishes – one being Ratatouille, a dish densely packed with vegetables and, I understand, a classic of the seventies. The other thing I made – little coffee flavoured cakes, inexplicably named “Crybabies,” came from an Aunt Daisy cookbook that belonged to my great grandmother. Its margins are scrawled with notes and it is a piece of family history – indeed, social history- which I am very happy to own. It’s not what I would necessarily call retro, since the book would have been published in the 30’s or 40’s, but still pleasingly seems to go with the notion of cooking from the past.


Above: Ratatouille! The recipe I found in Nigella’s seminal text, How To Eat. It is so easy to make and is, if one entertains friends this way inclined, both vegetarian and gluten free. I had bought most of the ingredients at the vege market, and the only thing I didn’t put in the eggplant-courguette-tomato mix was capsicum because they are really expensive at the moment. It turned out absolutely delicious, by the way, and was a breeze to make in the non-stick pan I got for a 21st birthday present from family friends. (More alliteration, brought to you by the letter F)


Above: The Crybabies (sounds like a bad, coat-tail riding sixties girl group, speaking of retro…) These little cakes were so delicious and easy to make, that I’m going to list the recipe. I halved the original, by the way, but if you have the patience and a ton of golden syrup- be my guest.

Crybabies

Mix together the following: 1/2 cup hot, very strong coffee, 125 g soft butter, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup golden syrup (or, 6 tablespoons if this helps) 1 t each ground ginger and nutmeg. Stir in enough plain flour till it has a thick, cake batter dropping consistency. Pour 1/2 a teaspoon vinegar over one teaspoon baking soda, let it foam up and stir thoroughly into the batter. Drop spoonfuls onto a baking tray and bake at 180 for 20-25 minutes.

These are so good – spicy and doughy and treacly and perfect for dipping into a hot drink, or, as we ate them, to accompany a good movie. In our case, the amazing animated film Spirited Away, which we watched last night.

So; that was my retro project. I have a small problem now – I am going to be cooking lots of presents for Christmas – if this makes sense – but I can’t blog about it because a large proportion of my readers (ie my family) are to be the recipients for said food-gifts and I don’t want to ruin the surprise. So, although I have a lot of exciting stuff planned for the rest of the fast-speeding away time before Christmas, you probably won’t hear about it!

"The Brain, The Brain, The Centre of The Chain."

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The title doesn’t have much to do with anything except for the fact that I am very excited, in a sniffly, boffinish way, to have discovered a Baby Sitters Club blog wherein a 20-something woman goes back and re-reads the books and then writes up all the glaring logistical errors and continuity flaws. The quote is taken from the BSC movie, something I had forgotten about until recently. Yesterday’s obsession is todays’ charmingly kitsch retro-pop-culture…so watch out. And by that, I mean that I have been on Trademe for BSC books. Shh!

We don’t have a heck of a lot of food in our cupboards at the moment. After the massive spree that was shopping for the Christmas dinner, I didn’t want to spend any more money on actual groceries. Let me tell you, I am looking forward to the vege market tomorrow.

Above: This here is the very last of the leftovers, and indeed, the last of most of our vegetables. I’m not so good at ‘making up’ salads, but I was proud of this concoction – the rest of the roast chicken, with roasted cauliflower and red peppers, avocado, and capers. It was so unbelievably delicious! We had this dumped on top of rice, and it was surprisingly filling (you know, for a salad.)

Above: Fish Pie. It is actually a kind of low-rent fish pie that I make a lot in Winter, and since the weather was jarringly cold and wet the other day I decided to have another go at it. Basically it is a can of tuna stirred into white sauce with anything else you have in the fridge – in my case, frozen peas and beans – and topped with breadcrumbs made from crushing toasted bread in your hands. It was inspired by a recipe in the NZ Cookbook, which uses a splash of sherry in the white sauce. I used the sherry Mum gave me recently – its first outing! – and the sauce smelled divine, all winey and warming and delicious. We had this with rice too, some Basmati that Mum sent us (and yes, it does taste a lot nicer than Budget Long Grain.)
Above: Lentil and Potato Pie…you may or may not know that I have a slight obsession with lentils, I think it’s just because they are so good for you that I find their very presence in my meal soothing. This was such an easy dish to make, and came from the NZ Cookbook also. Just layers of onion, potatoes, and brown lentils (I biffed a handful of red lentils in too just for kicks) and then pour in some stock and bake for an hour. I used the Knorr porcini stock cubes (that Nigella uses!) that my aunt brought back for me from Italy, which are so intensely savoury and almost fudgily dense with flavour that they make any bland combination of flavours taste wonderful. This was even better the next day, cold for breakfast, as unappetising as it sounds.
Above: I served the potato-lentil amalgam with mince. Just mince. Sometimes I try so hard to make mince exciting and different to what we had the night before (ie, Bobotie, anyone?) that I forget how nice it can be on it’s own, just fried with some onion and a splash of soy sauce (for Alison Holst Chic!) It reminds me of this time when I was much younger and Mum was away for the week somewhere. Dad cooked us mince and mashed potatoes, (and no doubt some veges too, knowing Dad) plain as anything, and suggested that the two were nice mixed together. It was so delicious I can remember this meal over ten years later. So, simple can be your friend.

I didn’t post last night (Mum, I’m talking to you, here) because of the stonkering fabulous Friday night line up on UKTV. After America’s Next Top Model on 3, there is the genius Green Wing on UKTV, followed by Little Britain, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and Shameless. The only thing missing is the old Men Behaving Badly, which I always had a soft spot for. But for real, what a night! How is anyone supposed to move from the telly to go out and do Friday night-type things?
Anyway had better go and cobble together a meal before Tim gets home from making syrup-cinos, so…

Good Bive!

Above: I know, I said no more kittens and music and non-food stuff but…I didn’t mean it. Got this photo off a colleague of mine who was also at the game and could nay resist.

Everybody Must Get Sconed

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Before you ask, I didn’t make scones just so I could use that as a title. I am not like the oily Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice, who stored up delicate compliments and witticisms in the hopes of being able to drop them in the conversation at some stage…Ah, who am I kidding.

Outrageous Fortune is about to start and I’m blatantly not going to finish this by 9:30 – I guess I will have to dash back in the ads. If Judd doesn’t come back, or worse, if Cheryl pashes Gary I wouldn’t even try reading any further because it probaby won’t be coherent.
There is much to be excited about this week: David Beckham, old Goldenballs himself, is gracing our fair shores and the entire Team Hadfield (plus some ring-ins) are going to see him and LA Galaxy playing the Phoenix team this Saturday. Then on Sunday is the annual Hadfield Christmas Dinner (well, we had one last year, which is as good as a tradition to us fickle youth.)
The menu will run thusly, and you will be finding out about all this later on in the week.
Dinner:
Fully Festive Ham (From Nigella’s Feast)
2 Roast Chickens
Roast potatoes, pumpkin (if I can find someone to chop it for me) and kumara
A big green salad
Boiled peas.
I may attempt bread sauce. Am also toying with the idea of making challah, but don’t want to end up a gibbering wreck and not enjoying myself at all.
Dessert:
Lemon Prosset
Platter of Chocolate Truffles, Rugelach (a Hanukkah treat also from Feast) and Malteaser traybake, a recipe I found on Nigella.com which I am quite wild to try out.
I have already booked my slab o’ piggy from the butcher and will be picking it up on Saturday morning. I need to do a big grocery shop though – especially since Tim and I are still living off what was in our cupboards before we went up home last week. Like Santa, I will be making a list, and checking it twice. Last night’s dinner, by the way, was a vegetable curry with brown rice – the curry consisted of cauliflour, carrot, and parsnip, and although it tasted good the parsnip gave it an odd sweetness.
Above: Vege curry, brown rice, retro plate! To beef it up (ironically), I added some baked cauliflour on the side – it is a Nigella suggestion to dust them with ground cumin, which I didn’t have, so I used some garam masala instead. I prefer cumin, but it is a fine substitution. I realise the word ‘cauliflour’ doesn’t exactly make one’s knees quiver with excitement, but this is a great way of cooking it.

Above: It wasn’t Salute to Cauliflour Day or anything…I just had a lot of the stuff. Just bake florets, dusted in cumin, in a hot oven for about 20 minutes.
The scones I made quickly, without a recipe in fact, not because of some smug sense of self-importance, but because I wanted it done quickly. I do realise that a recipe gives you more chance of success, but I’ve never been one to roll out the dough and stamp out rounds – I prefer it more free-form, which also means you don’t handle the dough so much.
Above: “They’ll scone you when you’re at the breakfast table…” Once baked, the warm scones were eaten while we watched Knocked Up on DVD, a movie which is not for the faint-hearted but seriously, intensely funny.

Outrageous Fortune update: Loretta, don’t give away your baby! Cheryl, don’t go near Gary! And once more, Judd! Come back! Only two more episodes till the season ends which means only two things: things will get even more fraught on the show, and there will be a black hole in our Tuesday evenings till Season 4 starts.

Guinness Gracious Me

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Another day, another disorganised camera drama. This one isn’t on the scale of The Pork Debacle or the day the biscuit photos disappeared…but it is nonetheless a pain. This means I can’t show you a photo of my new pride and joy, a large bottle of sherry – a present from Mum – which I am super excited about using, or all the cookbooks that Tim lugged back for me from home, which I also can’t wait to try out, or – more’s the pity – the finished Chocolate Guinness Cake, which deserves every bit of its capitalisation – it is enormous, dense, and dark, a king amongst cakes.

Don’t fret though, as I do have some photos which I uploaded to the hard drive before leaving home. I organise with one hand, and disorganise with the other. And, as all you can do is step back in time, here are some things from the weekend, when I was still at home.

Above: The veges for the Tunisian vegetable stew from Nigella’s Feast! Look at them all! I made this, and the Chocolate Guinness Cake also from Feast, to take along to a family party on Saturday. Tim helped me chop everything, otherwise it would have taken hours. I have often made the meatballs – just the other day we had them, in fact – and have made the vege stew before, but haven’t had them together yet, as per Nigella’s suggestion. Well, it is a fab combo, and great to take to potluck dinners. We didn’t have any harissa, so I just added a bit more cumin to the mix, which didn’t matter as there were going to be people of all ages eating this who might not like chilli!


Above: The meatballed stew in its toureen, with Feast in the background…never realised how useful those cookbook holders are for preventing your books from getting mucky – haven’t seen one in shops for ages though! This stew is not only easy, it is delicious, very good for you, and adaptable as heck.


Above: Butter and Beer, together at last. Mine and Tim’s favourite things, respectively… Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer asks Apu if he has any of that beer with candy floating in it, “You know, Skittlebrau?” Apu says Homer must have dreamt it. So Homer buys a dozen beer and a packet of skittles. By the way, the above picture is for the Chocolate Guinness cake. We could only find packs of 4x440ml cans and the cake needed a mere 250mls so Tim manfully dealt with the rest…


Above: This is the biggest one-tin cake I have ever made! I don’t know what makes it so enormous – perhaps the Guinness bubbles?

Mum is posting me the usb cord for the camera, so you won’t be able to see what the iced cake looks like till then. Let me tell you this though: It tasted intensely gooood. And, I suspect, it would taste even better the next day. Now, I’m off to work, which is a little jarring after a week of gallivanting and watching movies I’ll admit…