heaven help my heart the day that i find suddenly i’ve run out of secrets…

March 8, 2012March 11, 202012 Comments

“And you may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house…”

Shrewd readers will note that these photos haven’t been taken at my place. Less shrewd readers will note that these photos haven’t been taken at my place after I tell you that they haven’t. Hey, we can’t all be shrewd.

I made these Pineapple Secrets to take round to Kate, Jason, Kim and Brendan’s flat, which is Tim’s and my home away from home these days, to accompany a wild game of Settlers of Catan. For about 15 minutes it looked like I was going to out-strategise everyone and be queen of all I surveyed, but then I unsurprisingly slid back into last place. Fortunately there were Pineapple Secrets to sweeten the deal. I chanced upon them in by beloved Favourite Puddings of America cookbook, a book that keeps astounding me with its amazing recipe titles – like Perfect Divinity, don’t you just want to make that immediately? (It’s some kind of toffee-meringue confection, by the way.) Pineapple Secrets are part of your basic slice genus, being the kind which have half the mixture pressed into a tin, a filling spread across, and the rest of the mixture toppled over before baking the lot.

That’s not baked beans in the yellow chequered bowl, by the way. Tim thought it was. It’s canned pineapple, simmered with a little cornflour and sugar.

Speaking of achingly cool things like playing Catan, on Friday night a party spontaneously formed at Tim’s and my place and – get you this – I managed to dupe everyone into listening to my Chess record, and if memory serves me correctly, it went down a treat. There is no better way to spend a Friday night than rapping to One Night In Bankok for a doubtless un-alarmed crowd, I promise you. I also remember Wuthering Heights being danced to, which feels hardly surprising – our capacity for that song has been tested but never met.

Still on the cooler-than-everyone* thing, on Saturday night we had book group at our place and attempted Literary Karaoke (where you look up songs on YouTube that reference books and then sing along!) Wuthering Heights got played again. Three separate versions. Told you we hadn’t reached capacity. (*When I say ‘cool’ I’m not being ironic*) (*I wasn’t being ironic there either.)

So while this cookbook can be heavy on recipes containing packaged cake mix or “marshmallow creme” whatever that is, when it’s good it’s brilliant, and these Pineapple Secrets are near-on spectacular. Even with all the cake mix I love the naive adventurousness of recipes from that 50s/60s era. Once I’d gotten over the adorable name (wait, that’s never going to happen) I appreciated how the ingredients were all in my cupboard or fridge at a time when both were feeling a little empty. This is just chance of course, but so delicious are the Pineapple Secrets that if you’ve got what it takes, I thoroughly advocate that you try making them yourself.

This slice is crumble-topping-esqe and sturdy, with a sweet, summery pineapple filling. While I love biscuits and cookies, the slice gets the jump on them any day with how easy it is to bring it into existence – no rolling out, or cutting, or cooking in batches. Not much of anything in fact, as this is not in any way a difficult recipe. Indeed what it lacks in difficulty it makes up for in deliciousness. Hooray!

Pineapple Secrets

Adapted slightly from America’s Favourite Puddings cookbook.

1 can crushed or sliced pineapple in juice
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons cornflour

2 cups flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
170g butter

Set the oven to 190 C/400 F. Simmer the pineapple and its juice, 1/4 cup brown sugar and cornflour together till thick and syrupy, stirring often. This shouldn’t take too long. Then, mix together the dry ingredients and rub in the cubed butter till thoroughly incorporated and resembling damp sand.

Take half the butter/flour mixture and tip into a greased, square baking tin. Wet the back of a spoon and use it to press down carefully on the mixture. Tip the pineapple and sauce over the top and spread across. Tip the rest of the flour mixture evenly over the top and use the back of the spoon again to very carefully smooth and press this down again. Bake for 30-40 minutes and allow to cool considerably before slicing.

It’s very simple but deceptively so – all that brown sugar bringing caramel intensity to the otherwise dull oats, the pineapple juicy and sweet and fragrant. I’m not sure how secret it is, since the title of the recipe completely gives it away, but it’s not unwelcome, even if you do see it coming. (Photo taken strategically to include their couch which I love. Alas, this is not my beautiful couch, although lucky for me I get to sit on it at least once a week usually.)
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Title via: Heaven Help My Heart from – how timely – the musical Chess. It’s a beautiful song, but when sung by Idina Menzel? Oh, the devastating.

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Music Lately:

Matthew Pickering: Your Beauty Transforms Every Space. Our friend Brendan was playing in a band with Pickering on Tuesday night at the ASB Gardens Magic series – all for free and featuring some very cool artists, like Ria Hall who was on before Pickering. It was all pretty lovely. Ria Hall’s I Am A Child is so stunning – would love to hear it a capella one day, her voice is just wild.

Audra McDonald: Summertime, from Porgy and Bess. Tim sent me this link the other day. It’s Audra McDonald, so you know it’s going to be special. And also it’s the Colbert Report, so you know it’s going to be…special.
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Next time: I’m away for the weekend so alas it’ll be a while before I can cook something again. Whatever that something is, depends on my exhaustion levels, which depends on a lot of things this weekend…anyone up for a recipe for heavily buttered toast?

banana by the bunch, a box of captain crunch would taste so good

March 4, 2012December 1, 202424 Comments

While there are large-scale diseases with varying degrees of manageability, on the day-to-day level the human body can still be pretty unfair to its inhabitant. I say this with full acknowledgement of my privilege – that is, I am sound enough of body. I mean your intentions going one way and your body going another.

But what’s got me thinking about this, is that it’s currently 5.30am. Not that shocking an hour really. But I’ve been absolutely, no-turning-back awake since 3.45am. Not for want of trying to sleep. My brain started getting stupid anyway. Like I’d be imagining rain on the roof and being all nice and calm, drifting away on a floating bed – suddenly my brain would insert into this lovely scene an enormous insect, a particular insect that terrifies the heck out of me and whose name I’m not even going to utter on this page. My brain did this about five times while I lay there in cold-then-hot discomfort, my normally reliable pillow becoming flat and concrete-like…when I checked my phone and over an hour had passed, I accepted there was not much I could do about it. So here I am.

Alas, this is quite typical. I’m not the best sleeper. Normally it manifests in my taking hours to fall asleep after turning off the light, but this time I had sleeplessness working its way to the middle from both ends of the night. As I sit here typing in the dark, Tim, the minxy hellion, is sleeping like he always does, deeply, unflappably, and with enviable briskness. Meanwhile I’ve been lying thinking “I’m going to be so fragile tomorrow. Does thinking I’m going to be fragile mean I’m going to be more fragile? Aagh, it’s that insect that I hate!”

Luckily I had the foresight yesterday to bake some banana bread, a warm pillowy slice of which I am confident will provide untold comfort.

Especially when that banana bread was spontaneously studded with the roughly chopped remainder of a vanilla-fluttery, buttery block of Whittaker’s white chocolate. (Please scuse the pink stains on my chopping board. Either everything is stained permanently or you never eat beetroot, there is no middle ground in life.)

Banana bread always seems like a rather lovely thing to me, perhaps because I associate it with the banana bread that shy, lonely Charlotte Johanssen brought over for her the Ramsey family in Babysitters Club #13: Hello Mallory, while the majority of Stoneybrook ignored the newcomers, quite racistly. While I didn’t exactly know what banana bread was at the time – we would’ve likely called it loaf cake in New Zealand – something about its compact, sliceable practicality all wrapped in tinfoil and carried over by Charlotte conveyed the sense of neighbourly friendliness better than any other food could’ve.

This is, kinda bafflingly, the FOURTH time I’ve blogged about Banana bread (Nigella’s beautiful recipe in 2008, and then in 2010 a vegan recipe and a highly recommendable Banana-lime Palm Sugar Loaf) and yet this new recipe still has its rightful place. Oh and I say ‘bafflingly’ because I can’t believe I’ve only just now brought up the Babysitters Club connection. Four banana bread recipes itself is not baffling. What’s this one bringing to the table though? It’s simple, it’s strewn with white chocolate, and it has the snuggly scent of cinnamon. It’s also gluten-free, if you want it to be.

Cinnamon White Chocolate Banana Cake

Adapted somewhatish from a recipe in Meat-free Mondays. That book just won’t quit!

125g soft butter
125g sugar (optional – half brown, half white sugar)
2 eggs
3 medium, ripe bananas (or 2 large)
50g roughly chopped white chocolate
170g rice flour, or plain flour
50g cornflour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch salt

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F and beat the butter and sugar together till creamy and light. Beat in the eggs, then fold in the bananas and white chocolate. Finally, sift in all the dry ingredients and fold them in gently. Tip the batter into a paper-lined loaf tin, and bake for about 1 1/4 hours.

Something about the magical properties of cornflour make this light, puffy, and with a crisp yet mouth-meltingly tender crust. There might be more to it than that, but I’m pretty sure it’s the cornflour. While I’ll stand up for white chocolate’s deliciousness any day, sometimes being paired with a spice only makes it more delightful, and this is verily the case with the cinnamon. Its warm mellow fragranced-ness against the shards of creamy sweetness is brilliant, and makes me want to pair white chocolate and cinnamon together again in other baking. And soon.

Um, yes, that is a glass bottle with a stripey straw in it. Guess what’s in the bottle? Iced coffee. Part of me is all “but it’s so pretty” and the other half is saying “Ugghh this is so blogger-y”. As always, to prove to myself that form over function could still provide a function, and I wasn’t just using props in my photos for the sake of it, I drank that coffee through the straw. It gave the already fruity, complex brew distinct notes of warm cardboard. But, as Leslie Knope said when she married off two male penguins to each other at the zoo: “I firmly believed it would be cute”. I think I need to stop guilting myself out over this.

And look, here I am at 6.45am! A blog post under my belt, and the day’s hardly begun. I think I’d still take the sleep though. Fingers crossed for tonight. Which is feeling a long, long way away – oh, did I mention it’s Monday? Cruel, cold Monday? Thank goodness for banana bread, hey?

Title via: I feel like there should be like, an airhorn going off or a balloon drop every time I use a song from RENT (which this blog’s named for) in the title of a blog post too. If I keep making banana bread I’m going to run out of title options, but for now kindly revel in the unspeakably glorious joy that is Angel’s big number, Today 4 U, performed with alacrity by Wilson Jermaine Heredia.

Music lately:

My capacity for being obsessed with songs is boundless. Boundless, I tell you. So the fact that I listened to Marina and the Diamonds’ Shampain almost literally a million times this week shouldn’t surprise you.

Monkees, Last Train to Clarksville. RIP Davy Jones, heartthrob.

Next time: whatever it is, let’s hope I’m telling you about it on more than three hours of sleep.

dance on the coral beaches, make a feast of the plums and peaches…

February 23, 2012March 11, 202020 Comments

When I was a kid I used to draw and draw and draw and draw. When you’d get your stationary at the start of the year I’d ask to get an extra “jotter pad” (those A4 notebooks with weak, brownish paper and inevitably a cartoon elephant on the front), one for actual schoolwork and one to draw in. At one point I managed to procure, somehow, one of those enormous notepads for offices that are nearly the size of a table which I hubristically and ostentatiously kept on my desk for drawing on when I was done with my schoolwork. (It gets worse. I also used to also keep a large stack of books on my desk for reading in between being taught stuff. Like, while the teacher was right there still teaching everyone things. OH the conceit! But admit it, it’s a good idea.) There was untold envy and reverence for my best friend at the time, who got her hands on one of those large, seemingly endless rolls of butcher’s paper. Basically my life revolved around obtaining surfaces to draw on. What did I draw? Well…ladies. Initially the Babysitters Club (both scenes from books and those imagined) then Spice Girls (I had a jotter pad expressly for drawing them) and fashion designs and characters from my stories. Like a woman called Stuyvesant who had blue hair and a black belt in karate.

So you could say I liked drawing and did it a lot. Somewhere down the line though, I lost the habit of drawing constantly. Fast forward many years to yesterday, when I casually picked up a pen to doodle away and I just couldn’t. Muscle memory means I can still remember bits of dances I learned over fifteen years ago, but drawing was just not working for me. It wasn’t like getting back on a bicycle in any sense of the word, since…I can’t ride a bike either. (I know. What kind of child of New Zealand am I? Frankly drawing the Babysitters Club was much more fun than cycling looked, which didn’t help with my motivation. Also I could not stay upright.) Has this ever happened to you? Something you were so invested in, which suddenly disappears on you?

Happily, some skills work in the right way, going from fearful to awesome. Like pie! As a food-interested youth, pie seemed so far out of my league that I practically had a Pretty in Pink relationship with it, the out-of-reach Blane to my uncool Andie. These days I’m more like Clare in the Breakfast Club to pie’s…anyway, my point is I’m now really calm about making pie, pastry and all. It is no big deal to me. Even with an florid title like Plum Chocolate Meringue Crumble Pie. Although it sounds like too much detail to take on board, it’s a remarkably cohesive disc of deliciousness, inspired by two things: the many kilos of plums Tim and I bought in Greytown with friends Kim and Brendan, and the beautiful Favourite Recipes of America: Desserts book that I scored in Featherston, which I showed you in my last post.

So instead of showing you the book again, I’ll show you where we got the plums from. See how excited I got with the Instagram filters!

Like we were purchasing plums in a Primal Scream music video!

This Favourite Recipes book I mention was published in the sixties and is full of more delight than I can possibly convey. So I’ll just list a couple of its dishes. Berlin Peach Punch. Miami Beach Birthday Cake. Lime Highbrow. Raspberry Razzle. I should like to make them all. (Especially the Berlin Peach Punch, anyone want to donate me some brandy?) It was, however, very light on plum recipes. So I used another recipe from the book and ended up changing it so much that it doesn’t bear a ton of resemblance to the original. But thanks all the same, Mrs Ivan Kessinger of Morgantown, who submitted the Cherry Crunch that I based the following on.

It’s not as difficult as it sounds – for one thing, there’s no pastry to deal with or filling to mix and heat. There is, admittedly, meringue, but as it’s covered with crumble you don’t have to put too much investment into how good it looks, plus two lonely egg whites’ll whip up before your arm muscles have even had a chance to get sore.

And it is stunningly, well-timed-thwack-to-the-back-of-the-knees-staggeringly delicious.

Plum Chocolate Meringue Crumble Pie

1 packet of plain, cheesecake-bottomish biscuits (I used Budget Vanilla Rounds)
125g butter, melted
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon flour
7 plums (or so)
100g good milk chocolate (I used Whittaker’s, which is mysteriously caramelly and wonderful)
1/2 cup almonds
2 egg whites
1/3 cup sugar + 1 tablespoon

Smash up the biscuits – either in a food processor or with a rolling pin. Mix in the melted butter and cinnamon and try, just try not to eat it all because you’ll need it! If you suspect you will eat lots, then add more biscuits and butter, of course.

Press 3/4 of it into the base of a paper-lined pie tin, to cover the base and about 1cm of the sides. Keep the other 1/4 for later…

Bake at 180 C for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, turn it down to 130 C, and throw in the almonds for a few minutes to roast, if you like – if you can’t be bothered, I understand. Either way, the oven needs to be 130 C. Sprinkle the tablespoon of flour and the extra tablespoon of sugar over the biscuit base, then slice up the plums and roughly chop the chocolate and layer them up on top of the flour and sugar. Try to layer the plums in such a way that they’re fairly smooth, so that you don’t have any trouble layering the meringue over.

In a clean metal bowl, whisk the egg whites till thickened and frothy, then slowly add the sugar while whisking continuously, till thick and shiny and bright white. Carefully spread this across the top of the plums in the pietin. Roughly chop the almonds and mix them into the remaining crumble, scatter this on top of the meringue. Bake the pie for 35 minutes. Allow to cool a little before eating.

It’s honestly not as ridiculously sweet as it sounds. The salty butter and sharp, juicy plums keeps all that in check. You would not believe how brilliant sour plum juice and creamy milk chocolate is when it melts together. Not forgetting the soft solidness of the meringue relinquishing against the crunchy, almond-rich crumble top.

It’s genuflectingly delicious. Really the only problem is, as you can see, it’s not particularly solid. This could possibly be helped by refrigerating the heck out of it, but it’s wonderful at room temperature – all the flavours really shining – so just be prepared to carefully ease it out of the pie tin and eat the broken mess that lands on your plate with a spoon.

The reason I’ve been compelled to pick up a pen and put it to paper is that I’ve been home sick with a sudden sore throat, cough, attack of the phlegm, that kind of thing. As drawing wasn’t a goer – although I will keep trying – I’ve been occupying myself with Never Mind The Buzzcocks on YouTube. Later host Simon Amstell is adorable, and early host Mark Lamarr is so sharp and dry, so it’s win win really, and I’m reminded of late nights when I was living in England, watching it before bed with Hovis Extra-Thick Square Cut toast.
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Title: Warning: I’m going to use the word “obsessed” a lot now. I am obsessed with the song Meadowlark, which this lyric comes from. Liz Callaway’s version is tear-bringingly exquisite, honestly – if you click through please stick past the fairytale-ish opening lyrics, because it gets better, plus you’ll miss Callaway’s awesomely emphasised ‘r’ as she sings “larrrrk”.
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Music lately:

I am also OBSESSED with the song Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart by Julee Cruise, from Twin Peaks – you do not want to know how many times I’ve listened to it this week, since first hearing it in an episode where it’s sung at the Roadhouse. I know the title is awful (I thought it was “right back” and I’d like to pretend it really is and everyone else has been wrong the whole time) but it’s so hypnotic that I don’t really mind.

Not obsessed with this song, but it is still quite good: St Vincent, Cruel. Delightful and delightfully catchy.
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Next time: I am still really compelled by the Meat-free Monday cookbook and will likely reproduce something from that, unless I get hold of some brandy and get to make the Berlin Peach Punch, of course.

when 2 become 1

February 14, 2012March 11, 202022 Comments

This morning Tim said “Oh yeah, happy…um” and I romantically finished his sentence for him by saying “meh.” We’ve never really done anything particular for it – our first ever Valentine’s Day together years ago involved him saying he’d be working till midnight at his new job at McDonalds and me saying – I kid you not – “Can they do that? Is that even legal?” Oh naive country gal that I was. Anyway, I don’t need a designated day to tell him how much I like him, he’s just that great!

I am quite the sucker for one foodstuff dressed up as another. Like this idea I had: Ginger Crunch Pikelets. That’s what the title of this blog post refers to by the way. Not Valentine’s Day. In case you were wondering. I like you people, but we’re not that familiar.

Straightening your tablecloth is so uh… bourgeois? Un-creative? Something I didn’t spot at the time of taking this photo?

Well let me bring it back to the subject: the pikelets have all the spicy heat and toffeed sweetness of the biscuity slice, but now with the added frivolousness of being a small round shape, fried in oil. If you do want to make the original slice itself, that’s still a sensible and delicious pursuit, and here’s my Ginger Crunch recipe. And while plain pikelets spread with a pikelet-sized dab of butter are perfect as is, they’re not so sacred that they can’t be tutu-ed with.

I’m very pleased with these. To be witheringly honest with myself, they could do with being a little lighter – maybe buttermilk or half milk half yoghurt could take care of that? If need be, I would guess you could use soymilk too – in fact the one time I made pancakes with soymilk they were the most fluffiest, lightest and satin-surfaced I’d ever had.

Ginger Crunch Pikelets

Recipe by me.

1/4 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup milk, buttermilk, yoghurt or a mixture
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 tablespoon plain oil (I used rice brain)
150g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/4 cup demerara/raw sugar
1 egg

Soak the oats in the milk, water and golden syrup while you gather everything else. Whisk in everything except the dry ingredients, then fold them in gently. Fry in heaped tablespoons in a nonstick pan over a lowish heat. When bubbles form on top of the little spheres of cooking batter, use a spatula to ease under their surface and flip them over. Spread with butter if you like, but definitely serve drizzled with more golden syrup. If you don’t have raw sugar regular brown sugar’s fine, but the crunchy nature of it adds a little extra something.

Also note: altitude/number of years they’ve been sitting in your pantry/brand etc will affect your oats – the mixture shouldn’t be too thick, so if it looks more like scone dough, add more milk. Pikelet batter is pretty forgiving, so you should end up with something edible no matter what happens.

The scattering of oats keeps these densely filling, while the sticky golden syrup and granular raw sugar mellows out the ground ginger’s potent heat, which itself spices up the otherwise plain landscape of the pikelet. I made them for pudding, with the plan of having some leftover to reheat for a mid-morning snack the next day, but they would stand in happily for any meal, I think.

And you can make a pikelet golden syrup sandwich!

So, Whitney Houston, huh? I am really saddened by this news of her death. Mariah Carey has always been the diva I connect with most – might be something to do with my age, even – but Whitney’s vocal flawlessness and control and the conveying of emotion in her songs, from the intense joy of I Wanna Dance With Somebody to the intense stoicism of “they can’t take away my dignity” (seriously, who could get away with using the words “my dignity” in a song? Not many, if any) is something I’ve always appreciated. From a distinct but shady-edged memory of everyone singing I Will Always Love You at a family party, to the amount of times I quote “It’s not right but it’s okay”, Whitney: RIP.

What else has been happening? I got my practical, everyday-applicable gold dress fixed, but couldn’t fix my ability to catch the camera at the wrong time:

This was the least awkward of like, 17 photos. On Friday we had a GGG night (that’s Gin and Gossip Girl) which descended into a 90s YouTube video dance party…on Saturday we watched a whole lot of Veronica Mars…on Sunday we played the board game version of Game of Thrones…The whole weekend was essentially a celebration of television. We are clearly the coolest people you will ever meet.
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Title via: Okay, we’ve covered why it’s here. 2 Become 1 was the Spice Girls’ first ballad, a chance to reach out to the fairly lucrative Adult Contemporary, MOR, Easy Listening audience (see how lucrative they are by all these ways of describing them?) but with a subtle yet bold safe-sex message for everybody (“put it on, put it on”) and a sweet yet darkly wintery melody reflected in the AMAZING coats they all wore in the music video. And then that final bit with them all individually swaying and then a deer appears? It’s quite perfect.
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Music lately:

Whitney Houston – as I said on my Facebook page, her take on I Know Him So Well from Chess with her mother, Cissy Houston, is glorious.

Shy Guy, Diana King. This song was one such track that got thoroughly danced to on Friday night. You’ll know it even if you don’t recognise the title – it is glorious.

And something actually from this decade, and yet perhaps even less relevant to many: The Book of Mormon won the Grammy for Broadway cast recording! Yay! Andrew Rannells singing I Believe is adorable! So adorable.
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Next time: I had this really awesome meringue idea but I might save it for a while. I’ve scored the Meat-free Mondays book and it is GORGEOUS, so perhaps it’ll be something from there. Peace!

everybody rise, rise, rise, rise, rise…

February 1, 2012March 11, 202022 Comments

I know I’m always trying to work more ice cream into my life, but bread-making is well up there on the continuum of my favourite things to cook. Plunging your hands into soft dough, their warmth kicking it into life, watching it rise like you’re David Attenborough narrating the time-lapsed life cycle of a rare tree, the intoxicating scent of it as it bakes, the impressed gasps of those around you when you tell them that today, you achieved bread. Bread is wonderful enough as it is, but brioche is like the Baby-Sitters Club Super Special edition of the leavened dough family: richer and sweeter and far more exciting. It tastes just like a croissant but is more solid and grippable. Don’t you hate with croissants how all the best bits crumble off upon impact and end up caught in the fibres of your wooly jumper and worked into your ponytail and embedded in the seams of your jeans? (Just one of the reasons I no longer wear jeans.) No danger of this with brioche. All of the butter and none of the disintegration.

I was recently musing upon the great cafe combinations of the nineties. Now I don’t want to come across as a snob. I mean, I eat cold spaghetti from the tin for fun, and I didn’t try couscous for the first time till well into the new millenium. I am no human barometer of what is good. And yet. When I see a chicken, cranberry and camembert panini or apricot and brie panini or whatever being sold for $8.95, I can’t help but shake my head wearily. Do people really like them? Still? Spinach and feta is slightly later on the timeline, if I remember right, but it was the combination of a certain time. And while eating a spinach and feta scone I got to pondering: What’s the deal? What does the spinach even do? It works in spanakopita: surrounded by crunchy pastry and generations of existence, the spinach shines. But sliced up and baked into limp submission inside a scone, it provides green stripes, at best. At worst, it’s bitter, every last particle of it gets caught in your teeth, and it takes up valuable space where more feta could be.

Now mint, on the other hand. Mint provides that toothpaste-cool hit which works beautifully with feta, giving it that summery light-hearted vibe, lifting the saltiness and butteriness with its pure, sweet flavour. And mint is about a twelfth as likely to get in your teeth, since there’s so much less of it.

As I said, I love bread baking, but I haven’t done it in ages – and really, late afternoon after flying home from my brother’s 21st birthday up home might not have been the most prudent time to embark upon an invented yeast-based recipe. But my instincts were convincing enough that I went ahead with it anyway. And it worked! Thank goodness, because we only buy feta about once every three months and I didn’t want to waste it on a failed project. Brioche is not that scary – the only annoying thing about it is all the time it needs to rise. Three times it rises! Three! But please persevere. It can have varying degrees of butteriness: I only used 90 grams since…that’s what we had in the fridge. Don’t worry about needing any special tins – I spied the muffin tray and thought (okay, maybe I said it aloud) “You there! You’ll do!” I was right.

Feta and Mint Brioches

Makes 8. An idea by me.

500g flour (plain is fine)

1 sachet active dry yeast

3 tablespoons sugar

3 eggs

1/2 cup lukewarm water

80g soft butter

pinch salt

100g feta, chopped roughly and mixed with 2 tablespoons chopped mint

In a large bowl mix the flour, sugar, salt and yeast. Crack in the three eggs, pour in the water, and mix to a sticky dough. Knead till soft and bouncy, then massage in the butter, small pieces at a time. This might take a while. But it’s really fun. Leave covered with clingfilm to let it it rise, for about an hour. Punch it down, right square in the middle, then form into a ball and let it rise again for an hour or two in the fridge. Finally, cut it into eight pieces, force a little pocket in the middle of each piece with your finger, then stuff with a little mint-feta mix. Pinch the edges closed, then sit each one in a buttered muffin tin, pinch side down. Leave again – I’m sorry! – for an hour before baking at 200 C for 25 minutes. Carefully lift a brioche up and tap its base – if it sounds hollow, should be all good.

If at any stage you feel you need a little more liquid or flour, trust your instincts, as different ingredients/temperatures/metres above sea level will produce different results. But only go a tiny bit at a time.

The movie A Mighty Wind is one of my very favourites, and it stands up easily to many a re-watch. I’d say I watched it more times last year than I ate feta, for one thing. Since watching it, I’ve latched on to the phrase “it can’t be overstated”, which is used to describe the kiss between Mitch and Micky in their song (okay, you had to be there.) I might overuse it the way some overuse the word “literally” (am looking at you, Chris Traegar, but it’s literally adorable on you) but I like it, and it’s so applicable: the deliciousness of these brioches frankly just can’t be overstated. See?

The crust is crisp and yet with all the buttery promise of a flaky croissant, without the crumbliness. Inside is soft, golden-tinted and warm with the sharply salty feta dissolving creamily on the tongue. The mint is not there in large quantities, but absolutely present, cooling and contrasting with everything else. Altogether flipping brilliant.

And, as I said, I managed to make it after flying home from my brother’s 21st in the late afternoon, so you can surely do it anytime. We had such an awesome time up home – the party was music-themed (I don’t know about you but my family has a thing with dress-up 21st parties) and Tim and I dressed up as the White Stripes. My Mum and her best friend were Agnetha and Anni-Frid from ABBA, Dad was a Seargeant Peppers-era Beatle, and my brother made a commendable Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins. It was just one of the best parties I’ve been to. There were streamers, a live band – which Dad used to play with, and which played good music to dance to – not even the sort of music where inside you’re like “Oh my gosh I hate this so much but there are people around that I care about so I’ll pretend to enjoy dancing to it”. Dad – whose birthday it was also, since he’s born on the same day as my brother – got up at one point to do a fairly wild keyboard solo. Later in the evening he and my brother played a rollicking rendition of Saw Her Standing There by the Beatles.

There were alsatians that ran up and down the road and inside the hall. Two giant alsatians! They didn’t seem to be looking for trouble, they could probably just smell the many kilos of ham. Nonetheless, I’d forgotten that that sort of thing just happens at home. And I secretly wanted to confiscate them and make them my pets.

There was a cake that I made and iced to look like a record, at my brother’s request. I may never get the black food colouring off my hands, but with some logistical supervision from Tim and my 9 year old cousin, I think it turned out pretty snazz-tastic.

And there was kilo after kilo of ham. Which we all got to eat the next day after people had arisen from where they fell. I also got to see my long-missed Australian-based Aunty, got to nick the gorgeous – well I think so – bit of fabric that the brioches are sitting on, and…while looking for old schoolbooks of my brothers to festoon the party with, Mum found this that I’d made many years ago:

After the laughter subsided, I realised how little I’ve changed. Obsessive about things and in a super-righteous way; full of dubious ideas that seem great in my head but are a bit awkward on paper; misguidedly entrepreneurial; liable to mix up simple things like AM and PM. But I think I turned out alright in spite of, nay because of it. (Also: if you look closely you’ll see that my signature then did not in anyway resemble my name, but rather a small figure surfing on the back of a swan. This was because I didn’t want to be shackled by the conformity of your signature actually having to look like your name when it could be an artistic expression instead, or SOMETHING. My uncoolness cannot, as they say in A Mighty Wind, be overstated.)
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Title via: The Ladies Who Lunch, a song more salty and sharp than feta from Company, one of my favourite musicals. Sung perfectly by the wonderful Elaine Stritch. Please watch. I’m pretty sure even if you don’t like musicals, there might be something in this for you.
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Music lately:

Radar Love, Golden Earring. This got played at the party. Mum and Dad both like this song – it has some significance, I can’t remember what exactly – Mum? – and there’s something about watching one’s parents dancing away dressed up as pop stars to a song that makes one like it too.

Wings of a Dragon by the equally glorious husband and wife Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally. Treat yo’self and watch it. As well as being internet-breakingly hilarious, it’s surprisingly catchy.
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Next time: Hmm, well it is February, but no love hearts here (Shmalentines! I say.) Might be something sensible and dinner-related, might be a towering cake or something.

the syrups and shaved ice, i ain’t gotta say it twice

January 26, 2012March 11, 202024 Comments

Did all of you have to write and say a speech in school, as part of the curriculum? Here in New Zealand it’s a long-standing tradition. I wrote a rather excellent think-piece on the Spice Girls (admittedly, there was no Google so I had to glean any knowledge of them from what was written on the side of chupa-chup packets and from analysis of lyrics like “She’s a real lay-dee!”); an award winning speech on well-known cats in literature (I got to the regionals with that speech, and of course I had lots of friends, why do you ask?) and then the next year, I admit, I phoned it in with a speech about chocolate. It was largely put together from quotes found in those “Little Book of Calm” tiny books which were very fashionable at the time. If I remember right, I won the school competition but lost out at the interschool level.

But those books that I quoted, glaze-eyed though they were, had it right. Chocolate is special and no loss at the interschool level for my speech which honestly wasn’t that good will take that away from me. Or any of us! Particularly special, on a national level now, is the compelling output of Whittaker’s, who this year launched their Berry and Biscuit block.

Berry jelly, juiced up with real fruit, and crunchy bits of biscuits punctuating their caramelly milk chocolate. It’s damn good. I should disclose that the reason I’m able to so casually lay pieces of it upon a commemorative plate, and turn it into sorbet like it’s no big thing is this: I wrote – entirely without agenda – very nice things about Whittaker’s Berry and Biscuit in a national paper, they liked what they saw and sent me some so I could really make sure I liked it. So I decided, because I am self-appointed duchess of ice cream (“see her melting crown!”) I would turn some of it into a pure and chilly Berry and Biscuit Sorbet.

But first: some really exciting news from Tim and I. Guess! Guess! Or scan slightly further ahead in the text to where I’ve written it down. Last year Tim and I embarked on our first ever holiday, which we’d saved for five and a half years for (“feels like thirty”, as Jesus commented in Jesus Christ Superstar), and it was glorious. Well there’s nothing like landing back home to make you want to claw your way back to another travel adventure again. We’re not tap dancing happily about our bank balance right now, but we have been saving a bit of a nest-egg and while it might’ve been sensible to wait another year before planning the next trip…we thought…what if we just do it this year? What if we just? We can make it happen somehow! So we’ve put a down payment on flights to America. Specifically: NEW YORK. I need hardly elaborate on how heavily exciting this is. From my first musical I ever saw around age 5 – 42nd Street – to the Big Apple Style and hushed reverence of the city from the Baby Sitters Club’s Stacey McGill, to my heedless love of the musical RENT from which this blog gets its name, to every single cool restaurant there is being there…But wait: we’re also going to New Orleans, the place I’ve had a geographical crush on since about age 14, and Nashville, grand home of many a music-related thing. Thrilling. It’s all happening in October, so this space, be watching it.

Back to the chocolate sorbet. Not ice cream: the various elements of Berry and Biscuit are not blurred by cream or other dairy, instead only water, sugar, and a little cocoa is used to turn them into an icy mass of excellence. Not that I have anything against pouring cream into everything I see: I wanted to try something different here, and let the chocolate itself shine. Also note, I only used 3/4 of the block because it seems excessive to use the whole lot – if you’re shelling out for the good stuff, you might as well have some for fun nibbling times too.

Whittaker’s Berry and Biscuit Sorbet

A recipe by myself.

1 1/2 cups brown sugar
3 1/2 cups water
4 tablespoons dark, dark cocoa (around 20% fat content is ideal for flavour and texture. However, use what you have!)
175g Whittaker’s Berry and Biscuit Chocolate

In a decent-sized pan, bring the sugar, cocoa and 1 1/2 cups of the water gently to the boil, stirring often – as much to get cocoa lumps out as anything – until it has been bubbling for a couple of minutes. Remove from the heat, stir in the chocolate till smoothly melted. Stir again, pour into a freezer-proof container. Freeze overnight. Stir halfway through if you like, but frankly I didn’t find that large ice crystals formed with this much.

Note: if you use any of Whittaker’s dark chocolate range, or any dark chocolate that you’re confident has not seen dairy products during its production, then this recipe becomes vegan. If Whittaker’s Berry and Biscuit isn’t available where you are, use a ‘black forest’ style chocolate or really any unfilled chocolate you like.

How I got to this delicious point is a bit chequered; I tried making this sorbet first time round but used too much sugar and the mixture refused to freeze. Because sugar slows down the freezing process. Since this meant I couldn’t feed it to my friends on the date I’d anticipated, before the second feeding opportunity I hastily tried adding more water to it to dilute the sugar and allow it to freeze. In the process dropping a significant, tears-worthy amount of the mixture on the floor. By the time it finally froze sucessfully I had no idea what the actual method and ingredients quantity was. I bravely started again.

Melting chocolate into water might sound a bit weak, but the simple background really allows the beautiful milk chocolate to shine, with the brown sugar and cocoa giving it a helping hand flavour-wise. The biscuit and berry pieces disperse, leaving a hinty trail of crunch and raspberry extract in their wake. Every spoonful dissolves intriguingly in the mouth. It’s not as intensely smooth as the sorbet you might find in a tub at the supermarket, but on the upside it tastes brilliant and is spoonable straight from the freezer. And look how easy it is to make! As long as you’re careful not to drop it on the floor, it really shouldn’t give you any trouble at all.

The only thing that could embiggen this already life-embiggening substance: edible glitter.

Instead of being used to feed friends post-Beirut concert two weeks ago, the fixed-up mixture was taken along to a Gossip Girls and Gin evening, and it actually nearly made someone cry happy tears, it was that good. So even if my words leave you unmoved, let their happy tears be the recommendation you need: this sorbet is just lovely.

We’re heading up home this weekend for my little brother’s 21st! It’s music themed (Tim and I are going to be the White Stripes, my Halloween Elphaba wig getting a reprise here…for both of us) and I’m also making his cake. Can’t wait. All the significance of it being a family member, none of the stress of it being your own party. Not that mine was all that stressful, it was amazing fun. Perhaps my favourite part: the next day mum bought out a kilo of ham which had been hidden in the fridge behind all the other food, forgotten at the party. A bonus kilo of ham! Best birthday ever.

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Title via: In the Heights, a musical set in NEW YORK, CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MAAAADE OF (did I mention we’re going there?) with beautiful music and story by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who rapped for Obama and won many Tonys and is basically one of the most amazing people on earth.

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Music lately:

Anna Calvi, Desire – am sad to be missing her show at Laneway on Monday, there’s something about her rich voice and rumbly music that I really love.

Annie Golden, Hang Up The Phone – such a crime that they went and cast her in the disappointing Hair movie and then didn’t even let her sing! This song’s subject is awesomely redundant in this day of multiple ways to communicate, but even more awesome is how every single second of the video is choreographed. Not one natural movement!

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Next time: *shrugs* we’ll see when I get back on Sunday night what I have the energy to make and whether it’s worth sharing.

super duper, come let’s mix where rockefellers walk with sticks

January 22, 2012March 11, 202022 Comments

I’ve already professed my affection for the sadly late Hudson and Halls (they made a chicken salad and named it after a New Zealand beauty queen!) but it’s the kind of thing that I can easily re-profess without feeling like I’ve exhausted my capacity for…professing stuff. Their cookbooks were so full of enjoyment and playfulness and humour. Which cookbooks often completely lack. They’d write “nothing is more boring to do than pickled onions, but despite this, these are worth doing”, beside a recipe for pickled onions. Cute, right? Always remembering, they were figures of entertainment at a time when being themselves – being gay – was illegal. As I’ve said, we’re not exactly in a progressive wonderland these days, but I wonder what their lives together could’ve been under a somewhat more supportive environment. While your time wouldn’t be misspent just reading through their cookbooks tittering at their formidably late-seventies recipes – Tomato Sorbet, Egg Mayonnaise with Olives, Tripe Fritters, Steak Tartare Balls with Caviar…Coffee…there are also heaps of practical, easy, fun recipes that you could try making.

Recipes like their Super-duper Pancake. I promise you it’s totally deserving of that intensifying “-duper” suffix on the end there. That grammatical flourish was not in vain.

It looks like there’s a benignly smiling bearded face in that pancake, right? Is it just me projecting my loving feelings towards the pancake, onto the pancake? I think yes. And yes. Also please excuse my unpleasingly granular photography, it must’ve been darker than I thought when I took the photos. It’ll make you appreciate it more when they improve, though!

This is really your average Yorkshire Pudding – you could always use it for that – and I love that H&H suggest it as a meal in itself, “with lemon wedges and sugar, or little bits of fried sausage and pickles”…very cool. They recommend using a paella dish but I don’t have one of those, or a frying pan that can go in the oven, but I suspected that my ancient pie plate would do the trick. It did. Which makes me think you could make this in nearly anything ovenproof and round, as long as it has walls – a caketin would probably work just fine.

Such little effort and you end up with this puffy, crisp disc of daffodill-coloured, comforting goodness. Somehow it tastes like french toast, pastry, scrambled eggs and yes, pancake, all at once. That’s some high-level complexity from just eggs, flour, milk and butter. I served it alongside steak and an avocado-spinach salad but on its own it’d be brilliant.

Super-duper Pancake

From Hudson and Halls Gourmet Cookbook.

25g butter

3 eggs

3/4 cup milk

3/4 cup flour

Put the butter in your chosen pan and place it in a 225 C oven to heat up and sizzle away while you mix the batter. Beat the eggs till light and fluffy, then gradually beat in the milk. This is what’s going to make it puff up so try not to be lazy with the whisking effort at this stage. Whisk in the flour, making sure there’s no lumps, then quickly pour the batter into the hot, buttery tin. Place quickly back in the oven, bake for 20-25 minutes and serve immediately in the pan. Just slice it up or rip bits off, as you please.

Two things happened when I made this which might have something to do with the pan I used. First: some of the butter pooled on top in the centre of the pancake. To the uninitiated it might look a little terrifying, I took it within my stride (the only alarming butter situation I can think of is if there is none) and reframed the pancake as ‘considerately self-buttering.’ Also some of the surface coating of the pan flaked off and stuck to the pancake. Slightly disturbing, but…I ate it anyway. Hope it doesn’t happen to you.

The recipe on the page opposite the Super-duper pancake is equally compelling – Scrambled Eggs with Vermouth. How good does that sound? I’d need to actually get some vermouth first, the last time I had it was in 2008 – you can see it in the header photo – before I could even pronounce it properly. They say “As this is rather nice for breakfast, serve it with some chilled champagne and follow with fresh fruit and cream laced with a liqueur.” Wherever you are, Hudson and Halls…cheers.

Talking of luxuriating in food, I recently had my misanthropic tendencies gently sieved out when something really lovely happened: I got invited to try out ‘The Deg’ degustation at Matterhorn, one of the fancy-pantsiest joints in the whole country. Yes, invited. My first degustation. Very exciting. Eventually Tim and I hope to feel like we’re not in some kind of Home Alone 2-esque heist whenever things like this happen. The food was ornately exquisite the whole way through, with matched cocktails – beautifully dry – and wines – nicer than we’ve ever drank – and not in an intimidating way either, but also not so unintimidating that you leave thinking you could’ve done it yourself, you know? The person in charge of us was charming and engaging and gave us plenty of exposition on each course and – this always puts me in a good mood, so keep it in mind – they talked to us about the food and wine as if they thought we knew exactly what they were talking about. Did I explain that right? We weren’t talked down to, is what I’m saying. So if you’re really comfortable with your bank balance I do recommend it because it was an absolutely glorious evening. Fun fact: on our first course we raised a toast. To the internet. For getting us to dinner at the Matterhorn. Truly, we clinked our glasses and said “thank you, Internet.” (It was my suggestion, Tim might not’ve been so enthusiastic or loud.) Also, even though it sometimes feels like one of those things you do to prove you’re having fun, we spent some time making up dialogue for various diners around us, which was all very humourous until this couple opposite us had such gloomy body language that it wasn’t as fun anymore. Where was I? Matterhorn. Delicious.

It’s been a simple weekend, but I’ve managed to spend much of it with beloved friends, which is worth more than a billion degustations laid end to end so they reach the sun, or something.
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Title via: Puttin’ On The Ritz, that intriguingly arranged song which hoofer Fred Astaire totally owns – his subtlety and assuredness in this tap dancing number is utterly brilliant. Fun fact: I once ambitiously choreographed, taught and danced in a dance to this for some choir performance thing in primary school, when I was about ten. It wasn’t, er, quite as good as Fred Astaire’s, and our canes were bits of dowelling, but if I remember right it was quite well received.
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Music lately:

Be warned: Will Swenson (erstwhile cast member of erstwhile Broadway show Hair) is one of THE most beautiful people on earth. And in this song Donna from Hair, he’s NOT WEARING PANTS. So. Also he has an amazing voice and we both dance very similarly, which is always something that endears me to people. (A further fun fact!)

R.I.P Etta James.
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Next time: I’ve been working on some sorbet using Whittaker’s Berry and Biscuit chocolate. That is all.

caramel, i’ll love you forever, caramel

January 16, 2012March 11, 202019 Comments

For the first time in a long time on this blog, I found myself writing paragraphs and deleting them, venturing forward with sentences and then frustratedly reeling them back in with the backspace button. I’m not sure what’s more annoying – this whole process, or the fact that what I’m trying to write isn’t even a revelatory thing or big news, it’s just trying to knead it into the right shape that’s annoying me. But because I don’t have time, I’ll just try, and hopefully people pick up on what I’m putting down. I’m pretty sure some version of this question was voiced in an Anastasia Krupnik book, but is there a point in your adult life where you suddenly become a proper grown up? Where things fall into place?

I’m not claiming I’m the only person in the world to be constantly forgetful, concerningly clumsy, bafflingly untidy, bad with important papers/remembering dates/doing tasks by a certain date, constantly turning up to appointments at least a week early and heart-thumpingly anxious (Not to undersell myself, book-deal people. You’re different. I can deliver you a sparkling diamond of a manuscript by like, six weeks ago.) I also am not seeking perfection or anything, I suspect the answer to all of this is “you learn from your mistakes and you make lists and just be tidy already”, and the fact that it doesn’t seem fair that some people are just more developed and self-assured in these areas naturally confirms in my head that I’m just not grown-up yet. It doesn’t help that people always think I look years younger than I am – I’m not quiiiite old enough for it to be a compliment – am I ever going to get it right?

Well, colour me introspective.

If I’m not personally up for it – and my three-ish hours of sleep on Saturday night (admittedly, I was going to have a pretty late night anyway but then I got woken up by a whole lot of noise out of my control at 4pm, so it wasn’t all self-inflicted) at least this duplex of salted caramel sauces can deliver you some sweetness and light. And isn’t angsty person + caramel sauce > annoyingly happy person + no caramel sauce? (Mathematics, finally relevant to me!)

Yes, duplex. One recipe for plain Salted Caramel Sauce and one recipe for Vegan Salted Caramel Sauce. The former is about as perfect as it can get, the latter was an experiment I’m not sure I’ve properly perfected, but it’s still great enough that I’ll share it with you confidently. Salted caramel seems to be quite the bandwagon these days but it’s so uncomplicatedly delicious that I don’t even care. Will it become the pesto of the 2010s? I hope so, because that means it’ll be on everything, everywhere.

Above, vegan, below, not-vegan. Why both? Because I think the trinity of butter, brown sugar, and cream is easily the most unsurpassed in history, a salute to simplicity and the joyfulness of each ingredient. But if you don’t eat dairy products then it’s really not going to be as fun for you. And I want to spread the joy of caramel sauce, not hold it back. (Literally. Look at that sauce dripped on the teatowel. So symbolic.)

Caffeine shakes from downing great quantities of icy fretta coffee at Customs Brew Bar threatened to ruin all these photos but luckily I managed to salvage some non-blurry ones. If you look carefully in the caramel sauce above you can see my reflection looming! Self Portrait As Salted Caramel Sauce…

Salted Caramel Sauce

120g butter
120g brown sugar
500mls cream
Salt – the nice flaky sea salt is good here, but use what you have

Gently melt the butter and sugar together till it forms a cohesive and alluring paste. Raise the heat a little and allow it to bubble up and boil. Remove from the heat and stir in 1/2 the cream (1 cup). It will likely bubble enthusiastically at this point. Stir till smooth, then stir in the second 1/2 of the cream. Once it’s cool enough to taste, try adding 1/2 a teaspoon of salt and then move up from there. It will thicken as it cools.

Vegan Salted Caramel Sauce

This uses the magical properties of cornflour to give smooth texture to the sauce, and a little coconut oil for body. You could use custard powder, but the fake vanilla flavour’s a little intense. Coconut oil can be a bit expensive, but I figure if you’re not buying butter or milk…

1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 tablespoons cornflour
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed in
1 tablespoon golden syrup
500ml (2 cups) water
Salt (as above, soft flaky sea salt is nice here.)

In a large pan, whisk together the sugar and cornflour so that any large lumps in the cornflour are dispersed. Then whisk in the coconut oil – just to mix it in roughly, be aware this is going to look a bit weird for a while. Set the pan over a low heat so that the sugar starts to soften and caramelise a little and the coconut oil melts into everything. It doesn’t need to be anywhere near liquid, just good and hot, when you add the first 250ml (1 cup) of water and the golden syrup. It will hiss and bubble, so stir it well till it’s smooth. Don’t worry about any cornflour lumps, they should disperse eventually.

Add the second 250mls water, bring it to the boil, and then let it bubble away until syrupy and somewhat reduced in volume. Remove from heat, and once it’s cool enough to taste, add salt till you’re happy.

Sauce one: Look, butter is just the best thing in the world, okay? It’s not a competition between the two, but while I’d happily pour the vegan one on my ice cream or other suitable catching nets, I could even more happily drink a pint of the other one. From a pint glass. Every day for a year. For all its simplicity, this sauce bears a deep, aggressive caramel flavour and luscious thickness, with hints of butter’s nuttiness and the brown sugar’s fudginess roughing up the cream’s own clean richness. I didn’t hold back on the salt – any more and it might be a little bit too soy-sauce marinade – but it’s perfect, a slight shock to the tastebuds, stopping it from being too straight-up sweet but delivering the dizzying flavours to you even faster.

Sauce Two: Oh no, I’ve used up all my adjectives for the word caramel describing the last one! This clever sauce has a double life – if you use it hot, straight from the pan, it’s a rich clear syrupy sauce, the kind that soaks well into spongy puddings. Once cooled it’s opaque with more body and a slow-moving texture thanks to the custard-thickening effect of the cornflour. Without the dairy to dilute and enrich it, the sweetness is a little more upfront – but when you’ve got the sticky toffee flavours of brown sugar and golden syrup providing the sweetness, this is no bad thing.

Despite the random acts of uselessness, my weekend was fantastic, and a bit of a reunion with everyone we went on holiday with over summer. The high point was Saturday night, which saw a group of us going to see Beirut, the band that sounds like a place, at the Opera House. They were just wonderful. The show was made even better by having said friends at our house both before and after for snacks and drinks. I had planned on feeding them all this caramel sauce but the chocolate sorbet I made for it to be poured over didn’t turn out as planned…but it’s a decent excuse to orchestrate other fun times. Or to drink the sauce by the pint!

I said last night, and I’ll claim the excuse of sleeplessness-induced clarity, “at least when things go wrong they sometimes don’t always go wrong’. I think I can extract some kind of take-home message out of that. Like running towards a rainbow, I guess the more I flail about not being all cool and on to it, the further I’ll push that state of being away. Just gotta keep running up that hill (only, and I mean only, in one of the following ways: as a metaphor for the journey through life, or as a quote from a Kate Bush song. I will not be running up a hill literally. That would ironically be a step backwards for me.)

Title via: Oh Blur, with your handsome handsome frontman and your song Caramel, so perfectly suited to my blog post.

Music lately:

Laurie Beechman. She died in 1998 so there’ll never be anything new from her, but luckily her incredibly powerful voice was commited to some albums and cast recordings. There’s precious little of her work on youtube but watch her sing On A Clear Day – I cried. If you don’t think you can sit through a Streisand cover, try Seth Rudetsky’s loving deconstruction of why her voice is amazing.

Beirut! And their song Santa Fe. Not all their stuff is geographical (oh gosh, they must get that a lot. Not that they’re reading this.)

Next time: I’ve been re-reading my glorious Hudson and Halls cookbooks so there might be something illuminated from within their pages…

and what’s more baby, I can cook

December 18, 2011March 11, 202013 Comments

Christmas christmas christmas christmas christmas christmas christmas!

Christmas christmas christm- I’m just kidding. But it is upon us once more. Which means it’s time for our 6th Annual Christmas Dinner and follow-up blog post! Back in 2006 there were five of us, I wasn’t on Twitter and I didn’t have my blog. What did I even do with my time? Six years later, there were at least fifteen people, the party went for 10 hours and there were intermittent twitter updates from nearly all involved, because that’s just how life is these days. In every sense: I never thought those years ago that we’d have a veritable family of so many good people. I’m not the best out there at making and keeping friends – to the point where getting referred to by someone as part of “my ladies” nearly brought me to tears the other day.

But anyway, let the bumper Christmas Dinner edition blog post commence! The day goes like this: I cook a huge feast, everyone turns up and eats it. This is my idea of fun, so don’t imagine me crying in the kitchen while everyone else is whooping it up. Alas, not everyone that we love could be there on Saturday but on the whole it was pretty astounding that we got so many people in the room this close to Christmas. Or anytime.

Involtini. I make this every year. It’s Nigella Lawson’s recipe, which for me has evolved and simplified into slices of eggplant, grilled four at a time in the sandwich press, with a spoonful of herbed, almond-studded quinoa rolled messily in each, covered in tomato sauce and baked. You’re welcome to feta it up or use bulghur wheat but I had some well-meaning half packets of quinoa that needed using up, resulting in this being not only entirely vegan but also gluten free. Hey-oh!

Keeping it Nigella I simmered vast quantities of pickled pork, or gammon as it’s known in the UK, in liquids till they turned into ham – in the foreground is the one I cooked in Old Mout Cranberry Cider, and in the hindquarter is one I cooked in Budget Cola. Both wonderful. Cola has a smoky cinnamon kinda flavour while cider has that distinctive musky fermented-fruit thing going on, both of which are excellent when absorbed into the fibres of sweet, salty pink ham. Pickled pork can be a bit of a misson to find but it’s worth it – I got mine from Preston’s butchers (near Yan’s on Torrens Terrace in Wellington city) and the people there were so friendly and it was so reasonably priced and I totally recommend them.

Didn’t have the mental capacity for gravy, so instead I made up a batch of the wondrous balm that is Bacon Jam, and then – as you might be able to make out here – sprinkled over some edible glitter. Christmas christmas christmas! Honestly, this is one of my favourite discoveries of 2011 – nay, my life. It’s jam, but instead of raspberries or whatever, there is bacon. It’s perfect, it tastes as dazzlingly sticky and sweet and salty as it sounds, and it gives the feast an insouciant Ron Swansonish air.

This Hazelnut, Cranberry and Mushroom Stuffing was a new recipe from Fine Cooking magazine – entirely vegan, with the ingredients being both Christmassy but also ideally suited to each other. I simplified it to suit my needs and budget. For a recreation of my appropriation (across the nation!) roughly cube a large loaf of sourdough or similarly intense bread, drizzle with oil and toast in a hot oven. Meanwhile, fry up a diced onion and a whole bunch o’ mushrooms – the fancier the better, but I used regular button types – the real important thing here is quantity, as they reduce down. Mix together the whole lot, add a large handful of toasted hazelnuts and dried cranberries. Pour over 1 cup of stock (I used miso soup – it’s what I had) and bake for about 40 minutes at 190 C/350 F. The rich, sweet hazelnuts and savoury aggro of the mushrooms plus the occasional burst of cranberry against the croutonesque bread is some kind of taste revelation, I assure you.

I make this cornbread stuffing every year. Cornbread’s one of my favourite foods as is, but mixing it in with eggs, butter, and cranberries then baking it again is perfection achieved. There was a bit of trouble in making it this time though, and I’m going to write it in tiny, tiny letters so you don’t all go green around the gills and start crying instead of my intention of making you salivate like hungry Alsatians. (Three rotten eggs in a row. THREE. They had weeks before the “use by” date and I even did the thing where you check it in a glass of water. The utter depressingness of that dull, formless thud with which the contents of the shell hit the bowl combined with the smell which hits you straight in the back of the throat takes you to a dark place when people are turning up in an hour, but with some reassurance, some rescue remedy and some hastily opened windows we got through it.) Also, spot the peas – I heedlessly bought 2kg of them going cheap at Moore Wilson a while back and so their presence on this table, in order to cut down on my freezer’s crowded infrastructure, was non-negotiable.

Butter in cubes on a small plate with a proper knife: because I am turning into my mother more and more every day. I love that my friends who stayed for ages and required a late-night snack asked where this butter was so they could spread it on the leftover cold potatoes.

“FLIRTINIS ALL ROUND”. Because of a few lines in The Mighty Boosh, and because increasingly it seems everything I consume has to have a pop culture reference attached to it, I made this drink. Increasingly come-hither was that Nigella Lawson herself recently put a recipe for it online, giving me even more assurance that it was meant to be. Flirtinis are fairly hardcore but divided amongst many guests and with lots of food as blotting paper it’s all good. In a large jug, mix one cup (250ml) vodka and one cup fizzy white wine (eg, Lindauer) and top up with pineapple juice – about a litre, depending on the size of your vessel of course. Stir with a wooden spoon like you’re Betty Draper and serve in plastic cups so you don’t have to do so many dishes.

Oh, this pie. Coffee Toffee Salted Cashew Pie, to use its full title. Another revelation from Fine Cooking, which I adapted quite easily to make necessarily dairy-free. And, with all due respect to Fine Cooking, to be less sugary and to include cashews. I think American palates have a different capacity for sugar than ours, and also cashews make a cheaper – but still exciting – substitute for their choice of pecans.

Into a pie plate lined with a half-batch of this cookie dough, (minus the spices, and you don’t need to blind bake it) tumble 1 cup of salted roasted cashews and pour over a whisked up mixture of 1 cup golden syrup, 3/4 cup dark brown sugar, 2 tablespoons rum (I used Smoke and Oakum’s Gunpowder Rum), 2 tablespoons instant espresso powder – yes instant, it’s useful for baking and it smells weirdly alluring, okay? Look for the blue packet by Greggs – 2 tablespoons rice bran oil and three eggs. Bake at 190 C/375 F for 45 minutes to an hour, covering with tinfoil if need be. You then need to let it cool completely. I didn’t see this instruction and it would’ve saved me a reckless moment of “We’ll just eat it now and if it’s not set it can just be sauce for the ice cream, dammit!” Fortunately everyone managed to talk me down in a chorus of soothing voices while we stashed it precariously in the freezer, and it really was better for a good chilling, especially as the cold went some way to soften the intense sugar hit. It’s an incredible pie, with salty creamy cashews in their pool of intensely dark caramel-caffiene filling.

And finally, some ice cream, since that’s my kneejerk culinary response to the promise of people in our house. This is the only photo I got of said ice cream, but in the back is my own Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream – which I’ve made many times now since Christmas 2009. It’s beautiful and it’s dairy-free and I can now make it in my sleep almost literally, but should you be awake and trying it for the first time it’s not overly taxing either. In the front is Lemonade Sorbet (with a hard ‘t’) which started life as failed jelly; it was a little weird but refreshing, and the price was right.

There were also two roast chickens – but no-one wants me to try and take a decent photo of their sorry hides, and beautiful canapes from Jo, and homemade bread rolls brought by Piona (that’s Pia and Fiona but don’t their names condense perfectly?) There was a moment where everyone became anxious and queasy during Barbra Streisand’s Jingle Bells (you think I’m exaggerating! Not this time!) there was a psychological skirmish during supercool boardgame Apples to Apples; there was an incredible reveal from Pia whose orange dress looked cool enough under her coat, but upon removal of that coat it turned out the dress sleeves were layered and ruffly like a flamenco skirt on each arm; there was candy cane whittling; there was imaginary Christmas cracker pulling; there was semi-unpremeditated singing of Total Eclipse of the Heart; there was a portrait of me etched in a pudding bowl; there were at least ten candy canes per capita, especially once I got changed into my candy cane-esque dress; and there was so much food brought to donate to the Downtown Community Ministry Foodbank that Tim and I will have to drive it down in our ute because it’s too much to lug down in our collection of environmentally conscious yet aesthetically designed shopping carry bags. We love our friends.

And now, mere singular days from Christmas I am typically underslept, however I managed to finally get a tiny bit of Christmas shopping done, including a small gift for myself of a flower hairclip. It’s amazing how when your personality and brainpower has evaporated due to lack of sleep, put a big flower in your hair and you can trick yourself into thinking you’re still an interesting person.

It makes me feel like this: Look at how zany and witty I am! There’s a flower in my hair! I have such a personality!
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Title via: Lea Delaria singing I Can Cook Too from On The Town. This challenging and excellently subject-ed song is especially good in her brassy growl of a voice.

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Music lately:

Still Haven’t Got My Gift by The Goodfun. Hilarious. But also a really nice tune.

O Holy Night, Liz Callaway and her sister Ann Hampton Callaway. You may think you’re over this son but Liz’s silvery voice against Ann’s rich golden one is pure joy for the ear canals.

Julien Dyne, Fallin’ Down – the mellow, slinky antithesis to my Broadway dalliances.
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Next time: I was really convinced I’d have time to blog about the roast tomato-stuffed roast capsicums, but it just didn’t work out, no matter how I tried. So I guess I’ll change up that aim to see if I can get them done before Christmas now…

"and altogether quite impossible to describe…." "blonde".

December 4, 2011March 11, 202012 Comments

First: you have till the eighth to vote for HungryandFrozen/me in the Concrete Playground blogger awards! Please and thank you, with as much sincerity as words on a screen can convey. (Edit: please note the competition is now totally closed. Did not win. Am writing a new blog post though!)

I wonder what it’s like having a significant effect upon people? From afar, not even realising any responsibility, Nigella Lawson influences me constantly. Having thrown the word “girlcrush” around with friends a lot recently, I realised for me the line between “celebrity crush” and “general celebrity obsession” is a fine one, and can mean anything from “I want to kiss you on the mouth, sooner the better” to “Oh how I want to hang out with you and learn from you and develop injokes and hilarious photos of us having fun times together”. Tim tends to occupy the crushy segment of my brain the most, but in lieu of hanging out – or anything! – with Nigella, you could do worse than bake like her. (What Would Nigella Do?) I started off with a sandwich bag filled with cream cheese icing leftover from another cake, which I’d stashed in the freezer, La Lawson-styles – and it works really well as long as it’s airtight – and thought I’d capitalise on my pretend organised-ness by actually using it up. This motivation transformed itself into an idea: white chocolate brownies, the sweetness roughened up a little by a hint of bitter coffee, then resweetened in the form of cream cheese icing.

Being fairly confident these days with inventing recipes, I ploughed ahead and made them happen. Okay, there’s not actually any dark chocolate in them, so they’re more blondies than brownies. And then, my sneaky secret ingredient of one small teaspoon ground coffee – which I pictured ever so subtly rounding out the white chocolate – somehow tinted the whole mixture a deep, sludgy brown. After tasting the mixture liberally, the coffee flavour was highly apparent. Okay, cool, so they’re mocha blondies now or something. Nervous about overbaking them into boring, cakey submission, I took them out of the oven after a conservative 20 minutes, allowed them to cool, then proudly cross-hatched them with said cream cheese icing.

All was well, my Blondies complete and another new recipe successfully created. And then I tried to slice into them. I know brownies and their blonde pals are supposed to be squishy but this was liquidy and entirely raw batter, hidden under a thin veneer of properly cooked stuff. And all that icing. After some deliberation (ie, me going like this) I just threw them in the oven, icing and all.

Blondies II. We’ve lost the pretty blinding white icing, but in fact I felt triumphant – that it was meant to be, even! – because baking means the icing isn’t nearly as viciously sugary. And then I looked closer. The damn thing still wasn’t cooked properly. It was still too gooey to slice properly. Generations to come will speak in hushed tones of the batter they could not bake!

By this stage, with a savage case of the sugar-sweats not helped by the cruelly increasing humidity, I recklessly threw it back in the oven, not so much hoping for the best as much as crossing my fingers that this wasn’t a shameful waste of ingredients, time, and brain cells.

And then they came right. Finally.

How little did I know, when taking this photo of Whittaker’s White Chocolate, how much stress this recipe would cause.

At the time, my only issue was “are close-up photos of the whisk dripping with batter a little overdone? Do I even care, because I personally find them awesome?” Simple, naive times.

“Can it be that it was all so simple then?”

I give you the recipe, but cautiously. I know I could just call them Mocha Blondies but I prefer the lipsmacking Nigella-ness of “Coffee-tinted” (see: influence) and as the coffee ended up overstepping the white chocolate element it feels necessary to properly warn you.

White Chocolate Brownies With Cream Cheese Icing

Which turned into Coffee-tinted Blondies with Cream Cheese Icing

Which turned into The Blondies That Could Not Be Baked: Witness The Incredibleness!

Which finally settled into Coffee-tinted Blondies With Baked Cream Cheese Icing.

200g butter

300g white chocolate (I use Whittakers…the best white chocolate around, I reckon)

3 eggs

150g brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground coffee beans

1/2 teaspoon cocoa

Decent grind of salt

200g flour

Carefully melt 100g of the white chocolate together with the butter. Allow it to cool a little – otherwise the eggs’ll scramble upon impact – then beat in the sugar and the eggs. Stir in the cocoa and coffee then fold in everything else. Tip into a paper-lined baking tray, then bake for about 30 – 40 minutes. If it still feels wobbly on top, bake for another 10 to 15.

Optional: beat together softened cream cheese and icing sugar, then spoon into a small plastic sandwich bag, snip a small hole in the corner, then use it to pipe out the icing on top of the brownies. You could then bake it again for ten minutes, or not, depending on your sweetness capacity and how cooked your blondies are…

This one’s for you, Nigella!

Speaking of inspirational women, I went to my first ever Roller Derby game on Saturday, with Tim, Kim and Brendan. It was so fun – the speed and the skill and the community feel and the amazing clothes. About halfway through our seats felt wobbly, but I barely noticed since we were on the stands and not overly stable. As soon as this had registered in my mind, an enormous clattering noise appeared and the building shook. Earthquake. It went on long enough that I ducked down so I was covered by the chair in front of me, and for bits of debris for fall from the ceiling. Then suddenly it was over and I was so thankful – while essentially it wasn’t much of anything, I think you still react in the same way that you would if it was going to be a bigger quake, and the comedown from that adrenalin rush is still significant. It was large enough – 5.7 in Picton! – that mentally I started into dignity-free survival mode. And then it was over. After the game, seeking emotional refuge, we all descended upon our friend Jo and watched TV and ate dumplings and drank cider and the whole thing was unbelievably comforting.

But what do the blondies taste like, finally? Distinctly white chocolatey, with a melt-on-the-tongue texture and a smooth coffee flavour – even the slightest threat of bitterness is seen off by the rich, sweet batter. The cream cheese icing, once baked, doesn’t have the same soft sharpness as the regular stuff, but on the other hand it’s not nearly as sweet. Although these took three goes in the oven and multiple direction changes, they’re so delicious and I’m still calling them a success.

Finally, a further reminder, yes, twice in one blog, that you can feel free to vote for this blog if you feel strongly enough about it, in the Concrete Playground blogger awards. You have until Thursday. Am optimistically picturing the kind of last-minute triumph that you might have seen in Sister Act II, Remember The Titans, and/or A Mighty Wind. Involving a montage scene where the votes climb and there’s emotional, swelling music and my face looking like this. Underneath all that optimism is also some resignation that I might be the only one that feels this way about my blog. But if nothing else, that’s a good lesson to have learned. Maybe.

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Title via: The highly-tense-in-all-the-right-ways song What Is This Feeling from the magical musical Wicked. Somehow this musical, however ridiculous, affects me emotionally now as much as it did four years ago.

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Music lately:

Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate’s masterpiece album. Can listen to this constantly and never get sick of it. So beautiful.

King Kapisi’s new track Can’t Stop Won’t Stop – awesome tune, awesome video. Love Rapley’s singing over the chorus.

Barbra Streisand. I thought Jenna Maroney’s Jingle Bells was intense and unhinged, but Barbra’s – a non-parody, even – wins the prize.

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Next time:

Hungry and Frozen

possibly the best food blog in the world, since 2007

Category: Vegetarian

heaven help my heart the day that i find suddenly i’ve run out of secrets…

banana by the bunch, a box of captain crunch would taste so good

dance on the coral beaches, make a feast of the plums and peaches…

when 2 become 1

everybody rise, rise, rise, rise, rise…

the syrups and shaved ice, i ain’t gotta say it twice

super duper, come let’s mix where rockefellers walk with sticks

caramel, i’ll love you forever, caramel

and what’s more baby, I can cook

"and altogether quite impossible to describe…." "blonde".