Category: Vegetables

Enchilada y Ensalada

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Tomorrow night is the Muse concert! Excitement! It seems like only yesterday that I got the text at work from Tim saying that he had bought the tickets. Adding to the general sense of anticipation is that Muse seems to have won every “Best Live Act” award up for grabs in the last couple of years. On top of that, Tim and I watched The Aviator yesterday, which featured one Rufus Wainwright in a cameo, singing at the Coconut Grove. Absolutely cannot wait to see him in February! Speaking of The Aviator, isn’t Cate Blanchett amazing? So elegant, I felt dumpy and short-legged just watching her act the pants off anyone else on screen.


Above: Roger, in homage to the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.

I’ve been having a marvelous time cooking dinner at home. It is endlessly gratifying to be eating at a big wooden dining table, with the sun streaming through the French doors, and drinking nice wine (not cheap plonk for once!)

Last night’s dinner:


Above: Free-form enchiladas (much easier than the real thing.) I made a cumin-scented meat sauce, to which we added tomatoes, cucumbers, rice and cheese, and encased the lot in these nifty pesto-flavoured wraps that Mum had bought. I waited till people started to eat before telling them about the secret ingredient – a spoonful of cocoa in the mince. It isn’t some fanciful fusion-style addition, but a classic one, giving depth and warmth and mercifully, not the slightest hint of chocolate flavour. Unfortunately we couldn’t use any avocados as they were still too tensely unripe, like a clenched fist, but I managed to find a softly yielding one for tonight’s dinner.


Above: Since it was so hot today, I decided to make something light that wouldn’t sit heavily in the stomach, or indeed, wouldn’t involve stirring things endlessly over a hot oven. So; I sauteed some diced chicken breasts (oh the luxury! We only ever have thighs and wings, and though I love the flavour of thighs, breasts are so versatile. Just realised how funny that could sound taken out of context…) toasted some walnuts, chopped up the one edible avocado I could find, and tossed it all with half a pack of those wonderfully useful mesclun salad packs and some diced cucumber. To go with I boiled up some potatoes and drizzled them with something else I look forward to when I come home – that mellow, green-gold avocado oil.


Above: The potatoes, and some tomatoes that tasted blissfully of themselves. I think the last time Tim and I bought tomatoes was February – they have been so expensive, not to mention watery and anemic that we gave up on them, but thankfully their season to shine is coming round.

Watched Rent on DVD on the big screen TV today – what a revelation! Haven’t seen it in a while, and had forgotten how knee-quiveringly brilliant it is. I do realise I speak as someone a little biased though. Tim even sat through it (pointing out all of the character Roger’s “Bon Jovi Moments” to my brother Julian) which gives me hope that one day he will like it.

Who knows what we will be having for dinner tomorrow night – probably Burger King or somesuch – but with any luck there will be some Muse photos to post! Hoorah! As Shakespeare would say, “Where art thou, muse?”

Set the Controls For The Tart of The Sun

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Disclaimer – it is getting very late, and I am soo tired, my mind is on the blink…I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink…Hopefully whatever follows is coherent.

It was with the greatest intentions that I swore off cooking pudding for a while, it was also with the greatest of intentions that I started cooking tonight’s pudding. Now, with the benefit of hindsight (she is a cruel mistress!) I can see that something involving homemade pastry, baking blind, separating eggs and using a double boiler probably isn’t the best thing to make when you get home from work. I wish I had some kind of alarm system that would go off whenever I have a fit of deranged domesticity like this, but it does creep up on you. One moment you are craving something sugary, the next you are up to your elbows in temperamental egg yolks.
Firstly, last night’s dinner. It consisted of two salads, which, as unfilling and cold as that sounds, made a lovely meal. Because we are going away for a week on Saturday (home to see my family, the cats, and Muse!) I’m trying to use what we have in the cupboard. Thus, we ended up with this:
Above: This was a mixture of rice vermicelli noodles (the sort that I put in rice paper rolls) with cabbage, beans, brocolli, and one of those fish sauce-and-lime juice dressings. It was a lovely combination of flavours but I have to say vermicelli noodles are a bugger to eat – this might work better with something a little less slippery. A good store cupboard meal.

To go with, I made this, which required a bit more planning.
Above: Where do I start? First of all, I soaked the chickpeas yesterday morning, then cunningly cooked them up with the pearl barley, which meant they were ready at the same time. Meanwhile I chopped up and roasted what was left of the capsicum and fennel, plus a beetroot. While this was happening, I made dressing of the mashed up garlic that was boiling away with the chickpeas, some orange juice, and a little red wine vinegar. Finally I added some chopped up chorizo because Tim was bemoaning the lack of meat present and some linseeds to make it even more virtuous. I realise that the noodle salad’s Asian flavours clash somewhat with the earthier flavours of the chickpea and barley salad but they actually went well together – even on the plate.
Above: Juxtaposition. One of my favourite words when I was studying art in high school – just throw it in conversation, nod sagely, and you will pass.
Both salads tasted great, though probably would have tasted better with bucketloads of oil in the dressing…I think the best way to avoid this is to maximise on flavour and texture which certainly was achieved.
Now to tonight’s dinner:

Pudding technically isn’t essential in the way that carbs are for insulin-packing Tim but my soul was saying, Morrissey-like, “Please, please, please, let me get what I want” and I gave in to its wheedling, by making the Raspberry Curd Tarts from the January 2004 Cuisine magazine. Cuisine is an NZ food magazine and has to be one of the classiest and most elegant food publications in the world. Its recipes aren’t always terribly accessible but this one seemed to be – in that I didn’t have to go out and buy anything – and I really was itching to make some pud.

I started off making the pastry, which then chilled in the fridge while I made the raspberry curd, which involved softly stewing the berries till they collapse in their own juices, before cooking them in a double boiler (or in my case, a bowl suspended over a pan of water) with butter, egg yolks and sugar till thickened. This was an undeniably messy job, and rather disappointingly, the raspberries lost their fabulous scarlet tinge, turning into something that reminded me of a lipstick that Mum used to have.

Above: The curd a-curding. It thickened surprisingly quickly.

What followed was a little nightmarish – draining the curd through a sieve to get rid of the pips. I can’t tell you how many photos I took trying to get an artistic ‘drip’ effect. It would drip like mad and then as soon as the camera flashed the little blighters would disappear!

In between all this I made dinner:

Above: No, I didn’t actually serve dinner festooned with kaffir lime leaves, I just thought the meat patties looks a little…brownly naked without anything on them. I made the patties out of pork mince, garam masala, and some red lentils that I cooked up (you can hardly taste them in the meat!), and had that with some brown rice and the carrots, which I cooked up with fenugreek, vermouth, garlic and paprika following a recipe in the gorgeous Herb Bible that my godparents gave me a while back. Everything tasted great. I’m too tired to think of a fluttery adjective at the moment: this is how it is.

Nearly fainted after dinner when I realised I hadn’t read the bit about blind baking.

Above: The bane of my existence – blind baking, made more excruciating by being executed mini-style. Although there is something satisfying in seeing a crisp, golden pastry shell awaiting its filling.

Finally, I poured the curd into the cooked shells – and was too exhausted to eat anything (also scoffing too much pastry while rolling it out may have contributed to this – hmm, this isn’t the first time I’ve said this…)
Above: Tart, top and sides.
Like I said, I didn’t try any, but Tim and Kieran did, plus Alicia who also works at Starbucks and her mate Vi. The general concensus was that it tasted awesome – thank Heavens is all I can say. Do I recommend this recipe? Hard to say. On the one hand, you could make everything in advance, which would make things a lot easier than hitting the ground running after work. And according to everyone it does taste pretty fantastic, not to mention the fact that the tarts are undeniably cute. On the other hand, I am now a gibbering wreck, not looking forward to going to work tomorrow.
I guess you could call them The Great Gig in The Pie…perhaps a Tart of Gold…okay, okay, I’m going to bed.

Farewell to Feta, But Hopefully Not Jethro…

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Thought I’d better post before Outrageous Fortune as it finishes late and looks like a weepie episode tonight. Will Jethro or Van go to prison? I hope not! It has been raining here but it isn’t dark yet, and the quality of the light is bizarre, almost sepia toned, and all the trees around us in the valley have taken on a hallucinogenic green colour. Yes, it sounds odd. I tried taking a photo to show what I mean, but it didn’t come out so well. And yes, I do live in the city but also adjacent to a verdant valley – welcome to New Zealand.

Anyway, what we have been eating lately:


Above: Nigella’s Greekish Lamb Pasta from Forever Summer, with some of its ingredients behind. This is truly delicious, and comfortingly reminiscent of spag bol for Tim (okay, he’s not hard done by in the food stakes but I know he appreciates something recognisable.) It was not, however, the last of the scenery-chewing feta…


Above: Parsnip and Brocolli Soup, which was tonight’s dinner. I didn’t use a recipe for this, just sweated the veges for a bit (such an unpalatable term!) simmered them in some stock and whizzed it up in my food processor with the last chunk of feta. In hindsight I probably should have crumbled it over the soup, I don’t know what I was expecting but whizzed up the flavour just disappeared. Nevertheless the soup was lovely, but really would have benefited from a bucketload of cream. Sigh. Afterwards we had pasta dressed simply with butter and nutmeg so it’s most likely a good thing the soup was relatively austere.

I am by no means on a diet, but after breaking a nail trying on some jeans at a shop the other day I figure it wouldn’t hurt to up the veges and lessen the butter. I’m always reminded, whenever I have moments like these, of that scene from the Simpsons –

Homer: “Marge, how could you let me get so fat?”
Marge: “I’m not the one who put butter in your coffee!!”

Somehow I think Homer and I are kindred spirits.

On a different note, I got an A for my Writ paper (bask!) for which one of my assignments was to write a review of something in the media. I chose Nigella’s How To Eat, which got an A-!! She did not fail me – and more importantly, neither did my lecturer.

Update: Outrageous Fortune has just finished and Jethro is okay! Phew! It is HOSING down here, and the sky is erupting with thunder and lightening. It is nice to go to sleep to though. I used to worry when Tim did midnight shifts at McDonalds in weather like this…I hope it has stopped raining by 5.30am tomorrow when he has to go to work at Starbucks!

"To Huevos Rancheros, and Maya Angelou"

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Yes, I realise referencing Rent in the title of my blog, at the bottom of my blog, and in the latest post of my blog may seem a little excessive, but let me tell you, I didn’t just make Huevos Rancheros for dinner tonight because they appear in a song from this musical. It is the reason why I made it the first time though…

After our weekend of excess I felt like something quick, but packed full of vegetables. I first made Huevos Rancheros from a recipe in The Accidental Vegetarian, which turned out wonderfully, indeed, exactly like the sort of dish you might sing about while doing scissor-kicks on a tabletop in a show of defiance against the “yuppie scum.” (What better way?)

Tonight I made it without a recipe, as I think it is open to interpretation depending what you have in the fridge. My salsa was made of capsicum, onion, fennel, celery, and chili, all of which I simmered together. Once it looks hot enough, carefully break in a couple of eggs, clamp on a lid, and leave a couple of minutes till the hot sauce has cooked the eggs. Genius!

Above: You can’t actually see the softly poached egg under all that salsa but it’s there. I sprinkled chopped coriander over because I think the flavours suit. When we last had this, I made a batch of Nigella’s cornbread to go with which Tim and I ate, buttering each slice as we went and dipping it into the tomato-ey sauce. It was a fantastic, and natural combination but I was looking for something faster and less likely to be ending up buttered. I couldn’t find any rice, so used my usual fall-back-carb of bulghur wheat, which couldn’t be easier, if somewhat unusual paired with this!

From tomorrow I enter my Thoroughly Modern Millie phase as a working girl, however unlike Millie I am not working simply to find a husband. Our student loan payments end this week so from now on I’ll be working 9-5 (what a way to make a living) and paying things like rent (oh how we have come full circle tonight) solely from whatever I earn. I realise that for many, many people this is just life, but for a uni student it is a comparitively big step…

For once: not Nigella.

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Apologies in advance if this post is a little lacklustre – have just watched a lot of telly and am pretty tired.

I have a difficult time staying consistently ‘healthy’ in my eating habits. I’ll do pilates, have some soymilk, and then follow it up with a buttered chocolate bar. Okay, I’m joking…barely. Last night’s dinner was a good enough example of this – salad and lentil soup (healthy) with homemade mince pies (unhealthy.) However, in my opinion, as long as there are lots of vegetables and other good things present, it can’t be too bad.

The lentil soup came from Alison Holst’s Dollars And Sense cookbook. I have no snarky comments to make – it was great soup, very easy and made from stuff I had in the cupboard. Yet another reminder of why this book is worth reading over.
Above: Lentils, vegetables, spices, water – this pretty much cancels out buttery pastry…right?

So taken was I with the beetroot and feta tarts that I thought I would make the pastry shells again and fill them with (much cheaper) mince to make a kind of homespun Big Ben pie, if you will. As you can see I got a little excited with the leftover pastry scraps…

Above: Twinkle, twinkle little pie…These were not just a pretty picture, they tasted rather lovely too. I could only manage one (my pie tin makes four) probably because I’d eaten too much pastry while making them, but Tim snarfed his down. He had my second one for breakfast this morning and said it was the best he’d ever had. Well, I guess anything beats Weet-bix (to which I have a particular aversion.)

Finally, balancing this out was a salad of beans, cucumber, and our old friends feta and walnuts. I didn’t have cucumber so replaced it with fennel, quelle surprise! This recipe comes from the New Zealand cookbook, and is a fabulous combination with a lovely lemony dressing. Tim and I hoovered it up in about ten seconds – it’s very more-ish.
Above: Hopefully everyone isn’t sick of seeing things scattered in feta and walnuts…

Dinner tonight was something I’ve been craving all day- a vast pot of pasta. I don’t know if there is Italian blood coursing through my veins somewhere but few things make me happier than pasta. Of course, creamy cheese-laden pasta dishes are a lot easier to love than the more austere tomato sauce that we had tonight, yet it was still richly flavoured and filling and all those other good things. I based the sauce on a Moroccan recipe in The Accidental Vegetarian, which adds cinnamon, cumin and tumeric to give aromatic depth. I biffed in a handful of red lentils and let them simmer away into nothing. It was delicious! I suppose it didn’t help that I ate half a packet of wine gums while watching America’s Next Top Model (oh the irony!)

Above: Made with canned tomatoes for 60c from Kmart! Tip for the wise: never buy your canned tomatoes from the supermarket, they are much cheaper at Kmart or the Warehouse. By the way…I crumbled some feta over the pasta, as you can probably see, but hastily stirred it through so it wouldn’t be a focal point of this picture.
Right, am off to bed now: being crosseyed and dozy does not make for a sparklingly witty blog.

Is This A Beetroot I See Before Me…

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After handling the stalks and leaves of a bunch of beetroot yesterday, I came to the conclusion that Shakespeare is trying to tell me something from beyond the grave…Hamlet style! Or perhaps more in the style of Richard III, after all…okay, I’ll stop, I mean I have finished my exam and everything.


Above: Out, damned spot! I guess it makes sense that if beetroot make your hands red, so will their stalks. If there is one thing I enjoy more than a pun it is a visual pun, and as soon as I saw my hands turn so “incarnadine” I knew that somewhere out there, Shakespeare was endorsing my continued delight in misusing his words.
Anyway –

Above:These are the intensely pink stalks of beetroot, which, with the leaves, went into my intensely healthy lunch yesterday: Noodles with Beet Greens from Nigella’s How To Eat. I made this because I had noticed that our beetroot from the market was so, erm, well endowed with stalks, and didn’t want to waste them, even though it had never occured to me to eat them before. A word of caution – apart from the obvious, that they stain – only use the very thin stalks, anything too thick will taste unsurmountably fibrous and woody. So: into boiled soba noodles go the steamed and wilted beet bits, followed by a few Asian flavourings.

Above: Once I got over the fact that like a panda, I was eating shoots and leaves, I really liked this. The greens (and pinks) had a strong silverbeet flavour which went well with the soy sauce I’d put in, and it was satisfyingly filling.
For dinner we had leftover pork, which I augmented with some Beetroot (waste not, want not) and Feta tarts from The Accidental Vegetarian. Well. They are incredible. I simplified the recipe somewhat, making my own pastry – smugly, I didn’t even use a recipe. Well, I think pastry is justifiable to be smug about, but then maybe it’s not – all you do is use flour, half its weight in butter, whizz it up, add a little water…and that’s it!
I got to use some awesome little tart tins that I bought impulsively at the Food Show earlier this year (all the while telling Tim “of course I’ll use them!!”) The very cool thing about them is that the base lifts out of each little indentation to make it easier to lift them out.

Above: I can’t believe something that dinky sprang forth from my hands.
I filled them with a mixture of roast beetroot, parboiled brocolli, feta and walnuts. Ooooooh they were good.
Above: Ooooooh. Words fail me.
I guess it goes without saying that after dinner we watched Outrageous Fortune…

Gentlemen Prefer Blondies

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I bought some more pork. I wasn’t going to, but I thought – My public needs me. However, I made a different recipe to the last, semi-disastrous time, mostly because Marsala is relatively pricey and the Roast Pork Cinghiale uses rather a lot of it. I turned instead to the much simpler Slow Cooked Pork from Nigella Bites, actually a recipe for 12 people (with 9 1/2 kilos of pork!!) so I had to scale it down…a lot. You are supposed to cook it in a low oven overnight, after smearing it with a chilli-garlic-ginger paste, but I just left our comparitively meagre 1.6kg in for about 5, while Tim and I went off to do our exam. Still tender as a woman’s kiss. I presume.

Above: An actual photo of pork! Look, you guys didn’t miss out on much last time because…I still haven’t figured out how to make pork look good on camera. I believe studio lighting and some photoshop might help.
To go with, I made a dish I’ve been eyeing for some time, from The Accidental Vegetarian: Fennel, Asparagus and Roast Potato salad. I fiddled with it slightly, in that I didn’t add the Italian dressing or rocket leaves, but it was amaaaazingly good. The roasted potato gave crunch, the asparagus gave its own brand of magical deliciousness, and the crisp shards of fennel gave cool, fresh contrast, not only to the slight oiliness of the other veges but also to the rich pork.

Above: The reason I am thankful for the vege market.
We ate this while watching The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, which is a pretty amusing film, though I think I prefer the book. I particularly like how the doors on the spaceship open and close with a sigh – and how we caught a glimpse of New Zealand at the end when they are zooming all over the world. Then, as you know, we went and watched the spectacular fireworks, from the top of the Cable Car lookout, which is a 5-10 minute walk from our place. It was a very clear, still night – miraculously – so perfect for such an occasion.
When we got back I was going to make something for dessert but didn’t have the energy. The idea of having to measure flour made me want to weep like a bairn, so I left it till this morning to make…White Chocolate Brownies (or Blondies, if you will.) These come from Nigella’s How to Be A Domestic Goddess and are child’s play to make.
Speaking of which, I found the following amusing:
Above: Zoom in – gorgeous white chocolate.
Above: Zoom Out – Why yes, that is a pack of loo roll and half a roast chicken on our dining table.
Anyway, melted white chocolate and butter goes into beaten eggs and sugar (I used half brown to give it extra fudginess) and flour gets folded in (or flung, in my case – I can never keep the stuff in one place.)

Above: photo by Tim, who is as adept at capturing slow-moving batter as he is with fireworks. Even though you can only see about 1/18 of my hands (okay, 1/3, they’re pretty small) what is visible is very floury and smeary. Imagine That!

Above: The finished blondies. These are great, in that they are no effort to make and yet repay you with such gratifying squidginess. The only thing that I think would improve these is a handful of white chocolate chips or the like in the batter but…I just really like white chocolate (even though there is a vogue for claiming to love the intensely bitter 300% cocoa solids dark chocolate these days.)

No pudding again? Souper…

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First post of November! Wait, it’s November already? Aaargh! Tim and I spent 4 hours at the library today, watching the BBC production of Richard III, which although erring on the side of endless, is really very enjoyable, with lots of fantastic lines. But still: Four Hours. I am drained…

I have restrained myself from making pudding lately, because, well, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to lay off the sugar a little. And boy, do I miss making pudding…sometimes a quartered orange just doesn’t cut it, but it is, as Nigella accurately notes in How To Eat, “something to stave off that moment of loneliness and despondency that always threatens to settle when you realise eating is over for the day.” Though it pains me a little to quote Meatloaf, she took the words right outta my mouth. The words were no doubt covered in butter.

Last night I made another recipe from Nigella.com, Tomato, Red Lentil and Chorizo Soup. I realise that chorizo probably isn’t the thing to eat if one is worrying about having too much pudding, but I figure the inclusion of red lentils and canned tomatoes instantly squashes any of that…At any rate, it was flavoursome and full of veges (and lentils!) and was very easy to make.


Above: Everything looks good in the bowls Ange left at our flat. Thanks, Ange.

Speaking of which, this soup would, I’m sure, be fine if you wanted to take it in a vegetarian direction and leave out the chorizo, or indeed you could replace the chorizo with bacon or somesuch to make it gluten-free. Now that I’ve talked it up, I feel I should provide the recipe, which is…here! Note – I halved it, used canned tomatoes, and didn’t have any capsicums. Still great!
To go with, I used a recipe from Annabel Cooks, a book by a very pleasant NZ cook, which I haven’t really used much because of the…expensive…nature of many of her recipes. I realise that someone so devoted to Nigella can’t throw stones but it’s different with her!! Anyway, Annabel Cooks is all “feta cheese” and “creme fraiche” this and “pine nuts” and “boneless skinless chicken breast” that. I did however find a recipe containing things I had in my cupboard, which was her variation on a dish that I consider to be a Kiwi ”classic” – potato bake.

The main difference in this one is that the potatoes are grated (kindly done by Tim.) It bakes slowly in the oven, ensconced in a mixture of eggs, milk and cheese, and comes out almost like a giant baked rosti, with lots of delicious crunchy bits on top and creamy yielding potato below.

Above: Looks good, right? Also vegetarian and gluten-free…oh what a world we live in.

Tonight’s dinner was a bit dull because I was pretty drained after all that Richard III and hadn’t planned anything exciting (and obv there was no pudding.) More soup though – something from Alyson Gofton’s Flavours cookbook, which is a million times superior to her schilling Watties products for Food in a Minute. Flavours has a good concept, too – each recipe is dedicated to a different flavouring, some familiar, like cocoa, vanilla pods, and ginger, some a little more interesting, like sherry, tumeric, and walnut oil, and some are those “I bought this on a whim and now what?” flavourings like saffron, verjuice and tamarind. I made the Garlic Soup, which although worryingly flatulent in title is nothing more taxing than onion soup with garlic in it. It is easy to make, with a lovely creamy texture – despite no cream – and is good for when you don’t think you have anything in the cupboards.
Above: Someone else: “Why is that photo cut off…let me adjust it a…” Me: “It’s supposed to be creative!” Just as some people can strew throw-pillows about their houses without looking messy, while others just look like they dumped cushions everywhere, well…you guess which category I fall into.
PS: Without wanting to sound like I’m asking for them…Don’t be shy with comments!

A Simple Tart…

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When I bought the rhubarb that has graced many of my posts here, I also grabbed a big bag of apples for $2. As they sat on our kitchen table, threatening to fester at any moment, I realised I’d better do something with them. Apple Crumble was the first thing that popped into my head, but although I love it immensly I felt like something a little more challenging. Nigella’s butterscotch tart from How To Eat called my name, especially after reading about its success on this lovely blog.

With that in mind, I thought I ought to have something relatively healthy for dinner. And so I turned to someone who would never replace butter with a low-fat margarine – Nigella. Her Vietnamese Coleslaw from Nigella Bites is so good, it would be one of her recipes that I make the most. It is basically a shredded cabbage, carrot, and chicken salad with Vietnamese dressing, but I hardly ever put chicken in it as it is wondrous and cheaper without. I’ll give you my adapted recipe for the dressing as no one needs to be told how to chop carrots and cabbage (mind you, it is infinitely easier and quicker whizzed up in the food processor)
Mix together:
-1 1/2 t rice vinegar
-1 1/2 tablespoons each of lime juice, fish sauce, vegetable oil, and sugar.
With this goes a crushed garlic clove and as much chilli as you can handle. I suppose you could replace the sugar and chilli with a spoonful of sweet chilli sauce. I usually have lemons, not limes, to hand, which works fine, and I quite often leave out the oil and replace it with a few shakes of sesame oil. Anyway, mix all this into the vegetables, along with chopped mint, which gives it an incredible freshness. Seriously, I could eat this by the bucketload. It even looks quite beautiful, so one can revel smugly in their healthy dinner –

Above: World’s. Best. Coleslaw.
With that I made the Chicken with Soy and Sherry from the New Zealand cookbook. Except…we don’t have sherry, so I replaced it, a little recklessly, with Sake, ie Japanese rice wine, a substance that I looooove to cook with. This recipe (which I deviated from slightly) is a very simple combination of great flavours. Basically, in a roasting dish I put chicken pieces, ginger, soy sauce, garlic, onions, Sake, and sesame seeds for crunch. I realise that putting Japanese and Vietnamese flavours together may seem a little dismissive of the respective nations’ cuisines but…if food tastes good, eat it!

Above: A sliiightly blurry photo of the chicken. Despite having no added fat (oh alright, a few shakes of sesame oil) it was crispy and toothsome.
While the chicken was in the oven, I got started on the pastry. I have to say, pastry makes me nervous, but Nigella does have it pretty sorted. As with the cole slaw, life is much, much easier if you use a food processor. Okay, so cleaning it is a bit of a pain, but it knocks so much time off the making process. I am suspicious of anything labelled ‘fool proof’ (ie, my learners driving liscence…”any fool can pass it,” they said…not this one) but Nigella’s pastry pretty much is. The crucial thing is to freeze the flour, and half its weight in fat, for a bit in the actual processor bowl. Cold= good, warm=bad for pastry, and the less you handle it the better. Whizz the two together, add a little cold, lemony water, refrigerate for a bit, and then roll out. It actually is remarkably do-able, even for someone like me who gets flour everywhere.

Above: the pastry, which was a dream to roll out waiting to be pressed into my silicone pie-tin.

One of the BEST things about this pie, no, THE BEST thing about it, is that it doesn’t need baking blind. Oh, how I hate baking blind. I can never manage to escape from burning myself while removing the weights.

Above: I did manage to use quite a few apples in this and thus justified my desire to make pie!

This doesn’t really further the plot but I thought this looked pretty, which I am not always capable of in cooking. Looking capable isn’t always my forte either, come to think of it…
All that happens now is a dense mixture of brown sugar, cream, eggs and flour is poured over, and the pie is baked.
Above: The finished product. Isn’t this wholesome and comforting to look at, with its monochrome butterscotch colours and bits of apple peeking out from the toffee flavoured filling. That’s a statement, not a question.
This was so, so yum, the filling had a texture similar to frangipane and contrasted delightfully with the sour apples, while the pastry was feather-light and crisp.
In other news, Tim and I have been studying hard for our exam next Monday, so things may be a trifle slower round here…I had a dream about Shakespear’s Cymbeline last night in which I altered the ending, I don’t know if this a good thing or not!

From Pig’s Bum to Cowpats…

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Haven’t posted in a wee while on account of studying for an upcoming Shakespeare exam, my only one – hoorah!

Last night’s dinner came via Nigella.com, which has a section where people can post their own recipes. It is indeed fertile ground for food creations, and I found two recipes that suited the ingredients I had to hand. The main was a Turkish dish, very easy, more of a suggestion than a recipe. Into a casserole dish go chicken pieces (I used thighs as that is what we always have) a chopped onion, chopped potatoes, a can of tomatoes, and a sprinkling of cinnamon. Bake till the chicken and potatoes are cooked, and well, that’s it. To go with I made something called Pumpkin Tian, which involves cubing some pumpkin, dusting with a little seasoned flour, sprinkling with grated parmesan and baking.

The end result:

Above: Turkish Chicken with Potatoes and Tomatoes.

There was a photo of the chicken with the pumpkin on the side but the stove looked a bit toooo grimy for my liking – it has since been given a wipe so don’t worry! The chicken tasted great, really warming and hearty, and cooking everything bathed in tomatoes meant that the chicken was super moist and the potatoes flavoursome. I can’t honestly say that I tasted the cinnamon, so I added an extra shake before serving. If I was to make this again I might biff a whole cinnamon quill in while it cooks and fish it out at the end, for extra flavour.

Because it was a day of the week ending in Y, I had a hankering for some pudding. To go with the homestyle dinner, I thought that a chocolate self-saucing pud might be good. I think chocolate self saucing pudding is one of those dishes in the canon of “classic” New Zealand food, I’m not sure how or why this came about though. I remember Mum making it occasionally for pudding when I was younger, in my household it was called, rather poetically, “Chocolate Floating Pudding.” The recipe I used came from Nigella’s Feast, and is not only easy to make but requires the simplest of ingredients – a great one for when you think you have nothing in the cupboard. Nigella’s recipe is a somewhat modern take on the original though, with cinnamon in the mixture and an optional slug of rum in with the water that goes on top. Not having rum, I used some Marsala all’uovo.


Above: Closeup on the Chocolate Floating Pudding. Nigella succinctly notes that the pudding “isn’t the most beauteous creation, there is a touch of the cowpat about it.” I feel that my photo is a direct visual realisation of her description.

No harm done, as it tasted fantastic. The marsala added resiny depth and fullness of flavour and it was as easy to eat (doused liberally with milk) as it was to make.