Category: Vegetarian

sit down you’re rocking the oat

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You could say that I was wronged by authority-driven physical education at an early age. Or, that I seriously hated gym, sports, and PE and it all hated me. These days, while I appreciate that a lot of people love and enjoy sports, I don’t feel like I owe it anything.

But, it can’t be denied that the Rugby World Cup is happening in New Zealand right now. It’s going to be hard to avoid. Last night instead of watching the game (Tim did though) I had a charming evening with excellent host Jo Hubris, Sebastian the cat (also a good host; he sat on me) two Chileans and lots of wine.  Here’s some things that could fill the rest of my time while it continues:

– Locate season two of Twin Peaks.
– Bake a Hummingbird Cake (had a really nice one at this cafe in Auckland called Fridge on Monday)
– Attempt bacon ice cream.
– Work more on making the cookbook that I want to write more likely to happen
– Sort out the minutes upon minutes of video footage of Poppy the kitten on my phone.
– Ummm….that’s it really. But this suggestion compilation by Laura McQuillan is a good start, as is The Wellingtonista’s list-a. Plus, Twin Peaks is very consuming. And ostensibly I could use up quite a lot of time thinking up things to use up the time.

To the food! While I love to eat, so much (that also works without the comma) unfortunately my breakfast habits can be a bit shocking. Eating breakfast is one of the best things you can do for yourself, and whenever I miss it, I always end up feeling all light-headed and empty. Like Ron Swanson, I have a lot of time for the foods of this eating genre, as so many of the best things to eat are associated with it: bacon, waffles, pancakes, yoghurt, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, French toast, hash browns…oats.

You can tell just by looking at oats, mealy and dust-like, that they’re going to be cheap and good for you. However, unless you put in some effort, they don’t always taste fun. There’s a fine line between luscious porridge and wallpaper paste, so if you’re looking for a new weapon to add to your artillery of breakfast wholesomeness, then I present to you: Baked Oatmeal. It might not sound that fun, more like regular porridge that just takes way longer, but picturing a cross between fruit crumble, cake, and flapjack might make the argument to try it more powerful.

So yes, there are swifter breakfasts out there. And if there’s a puritan nature within you that you’re trying to keep hidden, it might rise to the surface after reading about the cream and eggs in this. But firstly, they help keep it luscious and tender and puffy and cakey, preventing your breakfast from resembling warmed woodchips mixed with drywall scrapings. Secondly, they make it taste so good. And that’s all the argument I need.

Baked Oatmeal


I found this recipe on a blog called Macheesmo. I’ve adapted it a tiny bit.


1 can apricot halves OR 1 ripe apricot/peach/nectarine (etc) halved.
1 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup cream
1/2 cup milk (I used buttermilk)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup chopped dried fruit – eg dates – or seeds – eg pumpkin (optional)
Pinch salt
Brown sugar for sprinkling
Butter for buttering the dishes.


Mix together everything except the apricots, brown sugar and butter. Leave it for at least 25 minutes, so the oats can absorb some liquid, but if you leave it overnight in the fridge it’ll be even better. 


Set your oven to 180 C/350 F.


Thoroughly butter two ramekins (if you don’t, the oats will be as superglue to their surfaces) and divide the oat mixture between them. Press an apricot half into each dish (and if you like, you can push one below the surface and then put another on top, like I did) sprinkle with brown sugar, and bake for 20-25 minutes. It’ll be really hot at first – sit the ramekins on plates or in bowls and be careful not to touch them!


Serves 2.

This is delicious (well obviously, or I wouldn’t be blogging about it) but in a simple, calming way – the cream-swollen grains becoming richly nutty and yielding to the spoon, the brown sugar on top bubblingly caramelised, the already soft fruit dissolving juicily in your mouth. The oven-time gives a slightly cake-esque solidness to the surface and the egg helps keep it from being challengingly dry. It’s worth putting in some effort the night before, or just getting up earlier than usual, with this as your reward.

Tim and I ran into our much-loved friend Dr Scotty on Thursday night, who has been around since the bad old days of this blog (by which I mean…when this blog started, it was pretty bad. Not that there were elaborate scandals happening, alas) and I said I’d mention him here, there’s mutual benefits though, as he used to leave the nicest comments, and I’m hoping to entice him back to my comments box (not a euphemism.)

On Tuesday night Tim and I went to the launch of the NZ on Screen shipping containers on the waterfront. I think they’ve got one in Auckland too, and there’s going to be a travelling roadshow round the South Island. If you see it, I completely recommend that you take a look inside – it’s dedicated to all things onscreen in New Zealand, past, present and future, and the level of detail and technology involved is stupendous. And there’s this thing where you can green-screenly insert yourself into a famous movie or TV show – so we now have a photo of Tim looking appropriately nervous at Bruno Lawrence during the railway track scene of Smash Palace.

(I feel I should disclose that in 2003 I had a big crush on Doug Howlett and so became very interested in the world cup coverage that year. I think I ended up with three separate copies of that issue of Metro magazine with him and Joe Rokocoko on the cover, sent to me by caring family members. The crush has since cooled down and he’s not in the All Blacks anymore so between that and my aggressive disinterest in watching sport, I don’t have much reason to pursue the games this time round.)
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Title via: Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat from the musical Guys and Dolls. The movie is cool (Marlon Brando, phwoar to the phwoar) and that version is probably the one you’ll have seen if you know this song. However the recent Broadway revival’s version has Mary Testa in it and therefore is also very much worth your time.
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Music lately:

On Wednesday night Tim and I got to go along to see Detroit’s Elzhi, who could both take on Nas’ Illmatic and a capella verses with ease, style, and respect for the original text. And, bless him, it was all over by midnight so I was able to get up the next morning without too much pain. Check out One Love and move around from there.

This morning Radio Active played Garageland’s song Fingerpops which I can’t have heard for at least ten years. Not Empty is my favourite but this is still special stuff.
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Next time: while drinking Old Mout cider last night I thought it’d also make a cool (haaa!) ice cream flavour. So that’s what I’m going to do. 

i dug right down to the bottom of my soul, to see how an ice cream felt

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I emerged from the weekend at home with my family looking like I’d got caught up in a knife fight. Luckily this wasn’t the case. It’s just that of the three things that bring Mum and Dad’s new kitten Poppy earthly joy, two of them are clawing and biting. The third is steadily ignoring the heavy disdain of the other cat Roger by chasing after him whenever possible.

So yeah, I’m pretty scraped up. I described Poppy on Twitter as being part Jessica Wakefield, part Bart Simpson, and part baby raptor, and I stand by it. Just when you think you need a tetanus shot and want to swear off small animals altogether, she’ll do something like this:

And then I forget what I was so mad about. The sting of her needle-claws fades away as I gaze into those inquisitive eyes.

It was hard to say goodbye to her, knowing I hardly ever get to go up home (you too, Mum and Dad) but on the other hand, there was Banana Pudding Ice Cream waiting in the freezer for me back in Wellington. The latest in a long, chilly line of ice cream recipes that I love, this takes a bit of work but is worth every single moment of your time, and rewards you tenfold with every spoonful.

Before I get into the recipe though…As I make a lot of ice cream, I thought it’d be nice to mentally spatula my brain for a list of ideas and helpful thoughts in the hopes of converting you all into the level of ice cream love that I have. And if you have any of your own to add, feel free to do so in the comments section.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People Who Make Ice Cream (these aren’t even habits, but I don’t like the word ‘tips’ and “Ice Cream Policy and Guidelines” sounded way harsh.)

1) You don’t need an ice cream maker. That’s just what ice cream maker manufacturers want you to think. It would be really cool to have one, but really, just freeze the stuff in a container, stir it occasionally, and you’ll be sweet as.

2) You do still need equipment. A food processor is essential if you want to make Instant Berry Coconut Ice Cream, otherwise all you need to find is: an average wide saucepan, a spatula, a whisk, and some good-sized tupperware or empty takeaway containers.

3) Don’t feel held back by what you can or can’t eat. From cream and butter (see below) to the cleanest of vegan ice creams, there are so many options. Coconut milk or cream is an amazingly versatile substitute for cream, both on its own and in custard-based recipes. Unless you’re adding a pre-prepared ingredient (like a particular chocolate bar) all ice cream should be gluten-free. Check out my recipe index if you’re not convinced, as somehow most of my ice cream recipes have ended up being vegan or dairy-free.

4) Imagine all the ice creams. Once you’ve got a good ‘base’ vanilla ice cream recipe, you can stir any number of cool things into it to make a spectacular pudding for yourself or a crowd. For example: chopped up dark chocolate and/or fudge; walnuts toasted in a little butter and brown sugar; whole raspberries; bashed up chocolate chip cookies; a whole bag of smarties/m’n’ms; it goes on. Your four options in order of most to least easy are: a couple of cans of coconut milk mixed with sugar (for a vegan base); about 500mls/2 cups cream whipped softly with 1/2 cup icing sugar; egg yolks and sugar beaten together with whipped cream then folded in; and finally a full-on homemade custard, which you’ll see in the recipe below. If your own mind is fleeced, be inspired by other people – searching “ice cream” on Tastespotting would be a good start.

5) Keep stirring. If you’re making a custard based ice cream, it may feel like the mixture is taking forever to thicken but the moment you leave it to check Twitter/etc it’ll overheat and you’ll have weird scrambled eggs on your hands. A spatula ensures that all the mixture gets lifted off the wide surface area of the pan and moved around. This also applies to rule 4. Keep stirring…stuff into your ice cream.

6) Accept the differences. The texture of homemade ice cream isn’t going to be exactly the same as the stuff in two litre tubs from the supermarket. The main difference is it’ll likely freeze harder, meaning you just have to let it soften a little on the bench for 15 minutes before you serve it. But you’ll be able to control exactly what goes into yours – no emulsifiers or stabilisers or soya lecithin (what even), it’s very likely to be cheaper than bought stuff, and you can get as creative as you like with the flavouring.

7) Don’t be scared. There’s a lot involved in homemade custard – from separating the eggs to heating the cream to carefully and slowly cooking the two together. However. As long as you keep stirring with your spatula and have a low heat, you will be just fine. Nigella Lawson recommends having a sink filled with ice cold water to sit the pan in quickly if you get nervous, I’ve never had to do that but it might give you peace of mind. I cannot overstate how clumsy I am, and not once in my entire life have I screwed up ice cream. Neither will you. And if you do, just step back a bit and try the more simple methods first.

And then try this. Bananas aren’t my first choice of fruit but this recipe capitalises on all that they have to offer – the quick-to-caramelise sweetness, the creamy texture, and the light, almost lemony flavour. It is SO good.

Banana Pudding Ice Cream


From The Lee Brothers Southern Cookbook.


2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup (tightly packed) brown or muscovado sugar
2 bananas, peeled and sliced
2 tablespoons dark rum (I used Gunpowder Rum)
2 large egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups full fat milk
2 cups cream


(note: I also used 1 cup buttermilk and 2 1/2 cups cream, because that’s what I had. Was fine.)


In a pan over medium heat, melt the butter till it’s frothy, and stir in the brown sugar. This will become a delicious, bubbling caramel in a minute or so, and at this point, stir in the banana and cook till softened. Pour over the rum, allowing it to sizzle and bubble away for a minute or so. Remove from the heat, and spatula everything into a food processor bowl.


In a bowl, beat the egg yolks lightly then add the 1/3 cup sugar. Continue beating til mixture is thick and light. In the same saucepan you cooked the bananas in, gently heat up the milk. Don’t let it boil, but let it get good and hot.


Remove the pan from the heat and take half a cup of milk from it, pouring it into the food processor with the bananas and blending the lot till very smooth.


Pour the rest of the milk carefully over the egg yolks, whisking while you do so. Now spatula all this back into the pan that the milk was just in, and heat very, very gently over a low heat, stirring all the time. It will take a while, but it’ll thicken up into a light custard. At this point, take it off the heat (still stirring) and tip in the contents of the food processor, mixing it all together. Refrigerate till cool. And try not to eat it all at this point, rummy banana custard on its own is extremely delicious.


Finally: whisk the cream till it’s nice and thick, fold it into the banana custard, tip the lot into a container and freeze, stirring occasionally.

According to the Lee Brothers cookbook, banana pudding itself is a bit of a die-hard American thing, but for all that, it’s not necessarily particularly delicious. This ice cream is their take on it – for some reason I do love puddings that are variations on other puddings – and it’s luscious stuff. I really like that there aren’t huge quantities of everything, unlike other ice cream recipes which might ask you coolly for 9 egg yolks. The butter, brown sugar and rum elevate it above the ordinary, their dark caramel flavours not entirely muted by the freezing process. The result is a magnificently flavoured, velvet-textured, pale yellow ice cream. A very good idea would be to make a caramel sauce and add some of the rum in it, or even just do as we did and pile the ice cream into a glass and tip a capful of rum over the top. As you’ll see in a couple of the photos, I dusted it with cocoa – the bitter plain chocolatiness of which was an excellent match.

Here’s where I poured more rum over – the ice cream slowly and saucily melts into the alcohol. The spicy rum gives your mouth a hard-liquor kick which is then cooled by the ice cream. Meant to be.

As well as finally meeting the kitten over the weekend, Tim (who flew up to meet me) and I also caught up with heaps of my family and had a huge number of gifts pressed upon us – a jar of homemade lemon curd, a cake tin, socks, duck and hen eggs, bowls, and mugs. On Saturday night at my request Mum made corned beef, which she does with a level of amazingness I can only attempt to reach. I left feeling very happy and loved, and also nervous about the eggs, but miraculously they didn’t break on the journey back to Wellington.

Thanks heaps to Jason who helped me with the html stuff on this blog. Explaining html difficulties is like explaining dreams, in that they’re both boring to other people and it’s really hard to properly convey the fear and drama. But I assure you, whether or not you find it interesting, he’s the reason that you’re seeing a new font here.
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Title via: One of my favourite musicals, A Chorus Line, and its charmingly conversational and surprisingly twisty song Nothing. I don’t really like the movie (it cut the important Music and The Mirror??) but it luckily doesn’t mess with this song in any way.
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Music lately:

While endlessly gazing at Poppy I realised she was almost identical to the kitten in David Dallas’ very cool new video for Take A Picture (ka-chiiiik! Can’t help it.) The eye colour is a little different, but apart from that…totally twins.

The Real McCoy, Come and Get Your Love. I know the whole omgilovethe90s! thing has lost all impact, but this is unquestionably (in my mind) one of the best songs of the last 20 years.
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Next time: Could be this delicious baked oatmeal recipe I found, or maybe this pea soup recipe which is basically just peas and water. It’s not only extremely financially friendly, it’s also surprisingly fantastic to eat, too.

but if that salt has lost its flavour it ain’t got much in its favour

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There are many things in life to be afraid of. But, being a person who tends rapidly towards non-endearingly sweaty anxiety I can say this with confidence: adding salt to your caramel slice – or your caramel anything – should not be on that list of things you fear.

You know what else isn’t so scary? Buying a DOMAIN NAME! I am now hungryandfrozen.com! It’s really, sincerely thrilling. I know people have been doing it since forever (Tim: “this is truly a special day” Me: “Yes. No one has ever done this before. Surely good things will only come of this”) but whatever. I’m inordinately pleased with myself for finally making it happen – someone might as well be – and surprisingly, that snappy little .com really does make me feel more part of it all. (Note: I really wanted to link through to a song called Part of it All from [title of show] there but inexplicably it’s not on YouTube. I might’ve been the only person who actually listened to it, but it makes me feel better that you know what my intentions were, anyway.)

As I was saying, don’t feel held back by the salt component of this caramel slice. The recipe is in the new issue of the excellent Cuisine magazine, and even though it’s one of those hand-it-to-you-on-a-plate kind of recipes where you can tell immediately by the title that it’s going to be really good, I was not prepared for just how amazingly amazing it’d taste.

As with browning butter in last week’s recipe, salt sharpens up every good thing about caramel. It becomes more roundedly toffeed, more intensely buttery, and less straightforwardly sugary. Lay that salt on. I can’t lie that it helps if it’s the kind of nice, flaky sea salt that costs twelve times more than the regular stuff.

This recipe is pretty uncomplicated, with just melting and stirring and then more melting and stirring involved. However, there’s a few elements that make it not your average supersweet chocolate-topped caramel slice. Not that I’m anti the regular stuff, I struggle, and always have, to choose anything else when I go to bakeries. First, there’s the salt. Then, fine cornmeal is added to the base, giving a little contrasting grit and crispness, and echoing the sweetness of the contents more than just plain flour would. Finally, the sweetened condensed milk feels more heat than usual, boiled away in the pan and then further blasted in the oven, reducing its liquid and making it as spreadable and roof-of-mouth coating as peanut butter. That’s a good thing, by the way. All told, it’s one heck of a recipe.

Salted Caramel Slice

Adapted from a recipe by Fiona Smith, from the September/October issue of Cuisine. For example, I didn’t have a tin small enough and so increased some ingredients.

  • 115g brown sugar
  • 100g fine cornmeal
  • 100g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 150g butter
  • 3 tablespoons golden syrup
  • A 395g can of sweetened condensed milk
  • 2 teaspoons flaky sea salt

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F and butter and line an average sized slice tin. Mix the brown sugar, cornmeal, flour and baking powder together in a bowl.

In a pan, melt 120g of the butter. Pour it into the dry ingredients, mix together well and press into the base of the tin, flattening out carefully with the back of a spoon. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes.

In the same pot/pan, melt the rest of the butter, tip in the condensed milk and the golden syrup, and cook over a low heat for six minutes or so, stirring plenty. The caramel should darken slightly and thicken up. Spread it carefully and evenly – it’ll only be a thin layer – over the base, sprinkle with the salt, and return to the oven for another 10-12 minutes.

Allow to cool, then slice how you like.

It is without hyperbole that I tell you that this is intensely dazzlingly delicious. Real special stuff. The sort of thing you should definitely make for your friends, or even people that you’re hoping to be friends with, because it’s so good and no-one could hate you after eating it, no matter how bad a first impression you made (unless they’re allergic to dairy or something, in which case this would be a really, really bad first impression). And for all that it has three different kinds of sugar in it, it’s not scarily sweet.

Speaking of things not scarily sweet, and for the sake of variety: a salad so healthy I served it in a plate shaped like a leaf. Because none of us will ever have the same ingredients as each other it would be unfair to tell you to stick exactly to this, but it was very good and served to clear out some packets of things that had been guiltily neglected for a while; quinoa, edamame, peas, torn up cavolo nero leaves, toasted almonds and pumpkin seeds, black sesame seeds, and a weird but good dressing involving peanut butter, cider vinegar, nigella seeds, ground cumin, lemon-infused olive oil and…something else that I forget. My rule for dinner salads is that there needs to be nuts or seeds involved, and an amazing dressing, and the rest will all fall into place – just use whatever’s in the fridge, freezer, and cupboard.

Saturday was awesome – rapturous sunshine, a Petone food mission with Kate, Jason, Kim and Brendan; putting salmon and pork ribs into Kate and Jason’s smoker; eating said food with heaps and heaps of cider. Later that evening Tim and I went to Kayu Manis – having had such a good time there the week before with Chef Wan – and I laughed both with and at Tim while he struggled with the chilli content of his curry. Finally we went home and watched Parks and Recreation. It was so fun that Sunday couldn’t help but be slightly mopey in contrast (but really: you go grocery shopping late on a Sunday afternoon, hear that really weird “Give me the Beach Boys” song playing over the loudspeaker and just try not to cry dismally.)

Title via: Light of the Earth from Godspell, a musical that I love unashamedly (although loving musicals in the first place could be cause of shame for some, but not I!) This isn’t even the best song from it. But it does use the word salt.

Music lately: I really recommend listening to Judy Garland’s You Made Me Love You followed by Sherie Rene Scott’s hilarious version from her musical Everyday Rapture. Which does not appear to be on Youtube. But if all you can manage to locate is just Judy’s original or anything by Judy and/or something that Sherie Rene Scott has sung, things are still looking up for you. All Your Love, John Mayall’s Blues Breakers – Tim bought this record on Saturday and I was all “Eric Clapton? Boring!” but actually that was a bit of an unfair call.

Next time: While I was at Kate and Jason’s I took stock of their other Lee Brothers book, and from it will be making Banana Pudding Ice Cream. I can’t wait, haven’t done any ice cream in aaaages. Also, If you’re in Wellington, look out for people selling cupcakes for the SPCA on Monday 29, and if you like, be kindly towards them and buy said cupcakes. It’s possibly too late to make some yourself now, although having spent many a midnight frantically baking I wouldn’t rule it out entirely.

hey world, i yam what i yam

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Today: a completely manageable, non-taxing, leisurely recipe and succinct-ish surrounding blog post for you.

Not!
But yeah, nah, really. I’m going to make this pretty quick. I’m tired. It’s my own fault, I stayed up late watching Parks and Rec with Tim the other night and now I’m paying for it, partly with exhaustion and efflorescent eyeballs, and partly with faint embarrassment that I’m really tired because of a TV series, not anything involving glamorous shoes or being outside the house. But then I think of Ron Swanson and such dedication all makes sense.
Yams seem to be reasonably priced these days, and what’s rather fantastic about them is that you can just throw them into boiling water, whole and untampered, and their doubtful looking solid red exteriors melt away and will combust into mash at the barest pressure of a fork’s tines. No peeling, no chopping, no trimming. The texture isn’t silky smooth, but as long as you can see that coming, you’re all good.
There is in the yam a light and clean sweetness, with an almost lemony astringence. This makes it entirely ideal to be sullied by rivulets of butter and crunchy fried garlic cloves. When you let the butter go brown in this way, every good thing about it is deepened and accentuated, and it becomes nutty and caramelly and salty and very, very wonderful.
Mashed Yams with Garlicky Browned Butter 

As I made this up on the spot (although am probably not the first person to eat this combination of ingredients) the quantities are really up to you. Go with what you need in your heart. I would suggest more yams than butter, but not to the point where you have to squint to taste it. Maybe 750g yams, 75g butter and 3 cloves garlic would be good for 2-3 people.
Yams
Butter
Garlic Cloves
Optional: buttermilk
Tip your yams, whole, into a good sized pot/pan and top up with water to cover them. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer away energetically. They’ll lighten up considerably. When you can easily plunge a fork into their flesh, they’re ready.
While they’re boiling, roughly chop up some garlic cloves. Heat a decent amount of butter – as much as you feel is necessary at the given time – in a saucepan and throw in the chopped garlic cloves.
Let the butter get properly brown and bubbling. It’ll separate into a kind of rust-red sediment and a nut-coloured liquid, and the garlic cloves will darken considerably. Remove from the heat and set aside.
Drain the cooked yams, and press down on them with a fork, stirring to mash them. Feel free to mash them with a decent splash of buttermilk if you like.
Divide between as many plates as matches your quantity of mash, and spoon over the butter.
This is a decent alternative to mash potato especially since, as I outlined already, you don’t have to peel or trim or chop yams. They take a little while to cook but not nearly as long as their denser-celled tuber friends. It tastes comforting, because it’s soft and buttery and warm, and it’s comforting to make, because you barely have to do anything. Probably the most stressful thing is trying to peel the garlic cloves and having their papery cases cling to you, static-like and persistent. The idea is to properly brown the garlic in the butter, each granule becoming chewy and rich, embiggening even those bitter, burning garlic cloves which I can’t seem to avoid lately.
Please continue to feel free to indulge me by voting for my cake on the Wellington on a Plate Bake Club photo competition. A massive thank you and held-slightly-too-long hug to everyone who has so far and shared it on their own page. Voting closes on the 25th, so after that no need to worry.
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Title via: La Cage Aux Folles, I Am What I Am. Yes, that song on the shampoo (or whatever it was) ad came from a Broadway musical. One in which George Hearn showed off his considerable lungs (and presumably legs, too.)
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Music lately:
Lady Day and John Coltrane from Gil Scott-Heron’s Pieces of a Man record. We found it recently and it has taken a lot for us to play anything else.
MF Doom, Fenugreek. Not sure if I like this best on its own or as sampled in Ghostface Killah’s 9 Milli Bros, but either way it’s a flipping sensational track.
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Next time: I made Salted Caramel Slice from the new Cuisine magazine. Be still my already struggling heart, it is mightily delicious.

now everything’s a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped

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Last week I disclosed the tormented hours I’d spent with “A Bear Went Over The Mountain” stuck in my head. I think I managed to top that this morning, when I got Hail Holy Queen from Sister Act stuck in my brain, on repeat. Specifically, the alto part, which I learned for the Waiuku Combined Schools Choir Festival in…1994? Which is a whole other story, involving creaky, unsafe bench seats and droningly earnest songs about dying sparrows, but that aside, isn’t memory a strange thing? I can remember the vocal parts (including Latin breakdown!) of a song I learned in primary school but frequently struggle to count things or do simple addition or return a movie to the rental place on time.

Luckily the part of my brain that has been reserved for that alto part (and a meaty one it was too, considering the rest of our songs were sung in monotonous unison) hasn’t edged out the part of my brain that likes inventing cakes. It’s possible that those two segments are right next to each other, sneering at the small part of my brain that’s responsible for mathmatics. And then the mathematics segment says “Won’t you let me play? I’m useful for recipes!” And then the recipe inventing bit says “Oh alright, but I’m only using you”, and then –

Actually…I think that’s run its course.

Upside Down Caramel Nut Cake is what my occasionally crafty brain came up with. Something in their very upside-downness is what makes these kind of cakes so come-hither. Whatever you put on the base becomes stewed and caramelised under its blanket of cake batter, and then when you turn it out you have an instantly good looking cake without having to faff around with making an icing.

I don’t want to present you with this recipe and then make it sound like it’s not all that special. It is indeed special just the way it is. However. It is very likely that you could use your own go-to cake recipe on top of the upside-down nuts, for example to make it gluten-free or dairy-free. In the meantime though, the cake I’ve created is sturdy and delicious, exactly suiting a gleaming, sugar-coated crown of toasty almonds. Don’t be shy with the golden syrup, it’s one of the best flavours in the world.

Upside Down Caramel Nut Cake

  • 1 cup whole almonds
  • 25g butter
  • 3 tablespoons golden syrup
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 125g butter
  • 125g sugar
  • 1 tablespoon golden syrup
  • 2 eggs
  • 125 ml (1/2 cup) buttermilk
  • 250g flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda

Firstly, set your oven to 180 C, and put a double layer of baking paper in the base of a 22cm springform cake tin. The double layer is to stop the nuts burning. Heee.

Melt the first measure of butter gently in a pan with the golden syrup and cinnamon. Pour it carefully over the base of the springform tin and pour in the almonds, spreading them out so they’re evenly spread in a single layer.

In the same pan (if you like!) melt the second measure of butter, then remove it from the heat and stir in the sugar and golden syrup. Once it’s cooled a little, whisk in the eggs, buttermilk, and then the dry ingredients. Scrape this carefully over the nuts in the tin, smoothing it out.

Bake for around 40 minutes, or until golden. If necessary and it’s risen up heaps, carefully trim a little off the top so it’s flat, before clapping a plate on it and turning it upside down. Carefully peel away the layers of paper and – ta-da! Upside-down cake.

Possibly because I took these photographs early in the morning, but I was suddenly inspired to stick the plate on a small upside down bowl.

The nuts themselves get all candy-sweet and delicious, getting just enough heat to develop the toasty edge of their flavour, but not so much that they become bitter. The cake underneath is a triumph of balance: delicious in its own right, but not so amazing that it overshadows the nuts; robust enough to actually handle a topping but soft and light from the buttermilk.

It’s possible that the makeshift cake stand was a little off-centre…

On Monday, something cool happened: I saw Stephen Fry! We had a moment! Well, it was a one-way moment – he didn’t actually see me, but nonetheless, we were in the same room together. The room that brought us together for said imaginary moment was Hippopotamus, where I’d been happily sent to a Cocktails and Canapes evening for Visa Wellington on a Plate. Holy smokes it was good. It’s a pretty pricey place to hang out (possibly why Fry was there) but everything is executed with both precision and panache, and it is one of those places that makes you feel like you’re an important person just by being there. If that makes sense. It’s occasionally a nice thing to feel. Tim was there too, but I was at the bar and Tim was down at a table, staring intently at a menu or something. My sincere attempts at telepathy didn’t work, so in the end I had to try and throw my voice and say “TIM” through clenched teeth, then do that “over there” gesture with my head. So I guess all three of us had a moment, two out of three people actively feeling something in that moment isn’t too bad I guess. Let me have my moment!

Title via: There’s really only so much Bob Dylan I can handle, and predictably, this tends to be his 60s and 70s stuff. Idiot Wind is what gives us todays title and comes from the excellent album Blood On The Tracks.

Music lately:

Stevie Wonder, As. I have a bit of a thing for songs which feature minor keys in this fashion. It can make things very confusing when it’s a song I don’t actually like, but luckily here it’s an extremely good song, too.

TLC’s deliciously languid yet darkly cautionary Waterfalls from CrazySexyCool. All of a sudden enough time has passed so now it’s one of those oldie-but-a-goodie songs. I actually heard it on an easy listening station recently…although alas, they used an edit without Left Eye’s rap 😦 anyway, thanks to Peter McLennan of DubDotDash for reminding me of this song via the power of Twitter today.

Next time: I thought up this seriously cool pudding idea. Now…I just have to find time to actually try it out. Also, there’s still a whole lot of buttermilk in my fridge and a whole lot of buttermilky Lee Brothers recipes to try…

 

take back the cake, burn the shoes and boil the rice

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While frantically making royal icing at 7.00am yesterday, sending clouds of icing sugar into both the air and my eyebrows with each rotation my whisk made around the bowl; spreading it over layers of cake and massaging sprinkles into a uniform layer across its still-wet surface, it was hard to imagine that soon there’d be events that would require more attention than the one at hand.

However life, in the way it does to everyone every day, presented me with a whole lot of other things to take in.
Yesterday I found out that Nancy Wake had died, aged 98. I grew up with the proud knowledge that I was related to her down the line, but also with a more general respect for all that she’d achieved. I won’t pass wikipedia content off as my own here, instead I definitely recommend reading a summary of her life during WWII here. Where it says she was descended from Pourewa and Charles Cossell – those are my same ancestors, just a few generations back, of course.
A significant day in my life was when I met Nancy Wake in London in 2005 – sort of by chance, although you don’t just run into someone in the Royal Star and Garter Home for the ex-Service Community. It was very lucky that I was able to go in and visit her, as I was told at reception that they have a no-visitors policy unless Wake herself had cleared it first. However, my sincere story (from New Zealand, related, happy to leave if it doesn’t suit, just thought since this was my one chance, etc) randomly got the thumbs up and suddenly I was wearing a visitor’s sticker and being escorted down a hallway to her room. I hardly remember what happened to be honest, apart from small details – she was wearing red lipstick and red nailpolish, there was a handwritten Christmas card from Prince Charles and his sons pinned to the wall, and I’d (a little naively) brought her a gift of homemade fudge, to which she said sharply “I can’t eat any of that stuff.” Tim was there too – it was right when we first started ‘going out’ or whatever, he loitered outside but with her permission snapped a photo of the two of us together. Nancy Wake was a hugely inspirational person (quoted as saying “I’ve never been afraid in my life”, something that seems to have failed to reach my share of our DNA, as has her bicycling ability) and I was very sad to hear of her death. But, I also feel lucky to have had moment, though a slightly surreal moment, with her.
I’ve also been reading heaps of accounts of the rioting in London via Twitter and news websites. Hope everyone I know over there – and the list does grow the more I think about it – is doing okay and staying safe. Actually I just hope everyone is staying safe and that it somehow stops really soon. Scary, sad times.
It’s almost like my body or soul, whichever is responsible for this kind of carry-on, instinctively knew I’d need cake at some point. I made this on Sunday, not for any particular reason but just because it felt like something I needed to do, in my heart. Maybe not so much for my heart, some might say, but I tend to believe my body’s food-related instincts are always accurate. Firstly, I knew I wanted to make a big cake, secondly, I had a vision of a cake entirely covered in hundreds and thousands – this turned out to be way too difficult and so I compromised with just a rainbow-dotted top – and thirdly, I wanted the juicy acerbic squish of blackberries, which I already had in my freezer, against the buttery richness of vanilla and white chocolate.
Sometimes cakes and such will spring into my mind, fully-formed like this – in which case if I’ve got the means I just go with it. I’m glad I did, because this isn’t so much a cake as an accomplishment, the sort of thing you want to put on your CV. (Actually, this cake should go on your CV, the one I’ve made here one only looks complicated.)
White Chocolate Layer Cake with Blackberries and Hundreds and Thousands

Adapted liberally from a basic cake recipe of Nigella Lawson’s that appears in some form in nearly all her books.

Cake:
225g soft, soft butter
225g sugar
4 eggs
200g plain flour
25g cornflour (or just 225g plain flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla extract/paste
100g good white chocolate (I used Whittakers) chopped roughly

Filling:
Jam
Lots of blackberries (frozen is fine, but thaw them in a sieve over a bowl – they have SO much juice in them)
Royal icing:
2 egg whites
Icing sugar
vanilla extract/paste
Hundreds and Thousands (about a small container full, depending on your capacity)
  • Set your oven to 180 C/350 F and grease and line a 21 or 20cm springform caketin, or two if you have them.
  • Your two options for the cake are: Blitz the butter and sugar in the food processor, then the eggs, then everything else, scrape half the mixture into each of the cake tins and bake for 25-30 mins.
  • Or, do as I did, and beat the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon, then beat in the eggs, then fold in everything else and proceed as above. If you only have one tin (like me), just cook them one at a time, and when the first one’s done, carefully remove it from the tin and leave it aside to cool, while you put more baking paper into the tin and scrape the rest of the batter into it and bake.
  • Once the two layers are cooled, put one onto a plate and spread the top thinly with the jam of your choice. Then, arrange the blackberries over the top of the jam, and top with the second layer of cake. Quantities are a little hazy here, but I didn’t have nearly enough and had to top it up with some nearby scooped out tamarillo flesh, because the blackberries studded thinly across the cake looked ridiculous. Prepare more than you think you’ll need, you can always eat the leftovers.
  • To make your icing, whisk the egg whites a little then slowly stir in icing sugar. This is an instinctive recipe, sorry, I don’t have measurements, but probably 2 cups or so. When you’ve stirred in enough icing sugar that the mixture is thick and white, whisk it hard for a couple of minutes and add more icing sugar if it’s too soft and runny. It needs to be thick and spreadable. Stir in your vanilla.
  • Spread the icing carefully across the top and sides of the cake, and tip over as many 100s and 1000s as you like.
  • Serve with heaps of pride.
This cake recipe is reliable and easy, although admittedly my layers didn’t rise very high, I think this is because the wooden spoon I used to make them didn’t beat as much air in as a cake mixer would. No matter. It’s tender and buttery and good on its own; when paired with sharp berries, thick sweet icing steeped in vanilla, welcome lumps of white chocolate and the rainbow crunch of hundreds and thousands, not to mention more cake, it’s pretty damn flabbergasting.
Luckily for you, there are many, many options if the stars don’t align for you ingredients-wise.
Here’s a few of them! (Tell us, Susan!)
  • If you don’t have the energy/cake tins, just halve the recipe and possibly leave out the chocolate, for a small vanilla sponge cake.
  • Royal icing is practical, but also a little dull – hence why I vanilla-d it up to round off its sweetness. You could always use something else – buttercream or ganache, for example.
  • Fill with different fruits – whatever frozen berries are on special, canned pears, etc.
  • Pains me to say it, but the sprinkles are not essential. Or you could use different ones!
  • Use dark or milk chocolate instead of white
  • Add cocoa to the batter
  • And so on. Use your instincts, have fun. Add nuts, leave ’em out. Use fruit to join the layers, or more icing, or have no layers at all. Cake!
Be warned: sprinkles only need the barest encouragement to bounce all over the place and off your slice of cake and onto the floor.
I would finally like to send a quick “Hey!” and “Cheers” to Curd Nerd who snaffled me into the Beervana on Saturday, where I had a very fun time tasting tasty beers hither and thither, and sitting in on presentations by local prizewinning brewers and the redoubtable Martin Bosley.
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Title via: Getting Married Today, from a musical that I just can’t get sick of, not that I’m trying, Stephen Sondheim’s Company. I once had a dream that I was performing this song most adequately in a local theatre production, if someone would like to make this happen in real life, that would be grand. I recommend first, original Broadway cast member Beth Howland; then 2006 revival cast member Heather Laws’ admirable version, and finally the always wonderful Alice Ripley performing it with her usual commitment in Washington in 2002.
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Music lately:
New music from Tourettes is always good news to me.
The Go! Team, Ladyflash. This song is so cheery that some of it’s gotta rub off if you listen to it enough.
(Reach Out) I’ll Be There, The Four Tops. There is so much good stuff in this song that it’s only right to listen to it while thinking about the above cake. It’s so upbeat it’s almost on its way to being melancholic again, with all those minor keys and stuff (I really have no technical knowledge of what makes music sound the way it does…evidently.)
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Next time: something a little more erring on the side of sensible. But not too sensible. It probably won’t be very sensible at all, let’s face it.

the suburbs they are sleeping but she’s dressing up tonight

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This wasn’t my intention. What I meant to present you with was a layered white chocolate and blackberry cake covered in 100s and 1000s sprinkles. But I left the caking too late in the day, forgetting how much heat their dense crumbs can hold onto, and the cake is still cooling on the bench now. While this Sunday started off sunny, it swiftly descended into greying darkness around 2.00pm, leaving my chances of photographing said cake with pleasing results significantly diminished.



But its stand-in of Fennel with Blue Cheese Buttermilk Dressing can still rightfully incite a little vaingloriousness within me. (Vainglorious! It’s a good word. I think I managed to force it in there validly.)
Nigella Lawson calls this dressing a “fabulously retro US-steakhouse-style starter” when it’s served over sliced iceberg lettuce. I wouldn’t know personally, but I can’t deny it’s a mood I’m happy to try evoke through food. Or anything. Speaking of US-steakhouse-style, last night I went to a cowgirl-themed birthday party which was not only the last word in how to feed a crowd (honestly: cornbread, ribs, fried onions, biscuits and gravy, three different pies for pudding) but also continued so late into the evening that it was suddenly early in the morning. I wouldn’t say I’m hungover as such…now…but I’m definitely trying to pummel weakly against the surprisingly firm and resilient punching bag of exhaustion. Just keep that in mind as you read.
(In case you’re wondering, that stack of books in the background includes a Mahalia Jackson biography, one of the Jason Bourne books, Margaret Atwood’s ‘Dancing Girls’ and ‘Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls’ – an original, not a reprint. Important.)
I didn’t have any iceberg lettuce, and couldn’t find any at the market or in the supermarket that looked satisfactorily perky and crisp. But I figured that fennel is not only in season, it also could provide that necessary water-cooled crunch. Further to that, its clean, aniseed flavour wouldn’t be intimidated by the rich, aggressively blue cheese. The thyme leaves have a dual purpose – firstly, the herbal flavour complements everything else going on and goes well with cheese. Secondly, a pale vegetable, covered in a pale lumpy milky liquid, does need some help in the looks department and the pretty purply-green leaves are pleasing to the eye.
Blue Cheese Buttermilk Dressing

I was simultaneously inspired by Nigella’s recipe from Kitchen and a recipe from an issue of Fine Cooking magazine. Nige’s didn’t need a food processor (considering what happened to it last week, we need some time apart) so she won. I simplified her recipe very slightly.

150g blue cheese, crumbled
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar
100ml buttermilk (or, if you don’t have any, plain unsweetened yoghurt possibly thinned with a little milk)

In a bowl, mash the cheese with a fork or a small whisk. Mix in the Worcestershire sauce and vinegar and then slowly stir in the buttermilk. Taste to see if it needs a pinch of salt. The kind of blue cheese you use will affect consistency of the texture, but it’s all good.

To serve:

2 large bulbs of fennel
Fresh thyme leaves from 2-3 stalks

Trim the base from the fennel, then slice vertically as best you can into uniform chunks and slices. Arrange the slices on a plate, spoon over as much dressing as you like, then tumble over the thyme leaves.

Serves 3-4 as a side dish (depending on the size of your fennel, really)
Keeping in mind that this is a boldly flavoured dish – you might want to run it past those who you’re serving in case they don’t like blue cheese or fennel. On the other hand, you’re putting in time and effort to feed them, so you could contrarily slam the plate in front of them and say “deal with it, fusspants!” (Or however you’d like to finish that sentence.)
Your options for using this dressing are multitudinous. Of course, there’s the original iceberg lettuce concept, and Nigella also recommends it over tomatoes and leftover beef. But its mix of sharp, salty and creamy flavours lends itself to many guises. I think you could also drizzle it over roasted beetroot; as a potato salad dressing; in a bacon sandwich; stirred through cooked, cooled mushrooms; as a sauce/dip for potato wedges; mixed through a coleslaw made of shredded cabbage and grated green apple…See? It’s a highly functional substance.
Lucky me: on Friday I was able to attend a mightily swanky lunch at The White House on Oriental Parade (to wit: Tim gave it an unprecedented five stars to in our Sunday Star-Times review of it a few months ago) as part of the launch of Visa Wellington on a Plate. Among the esteemed guests was Lucy Corry, author of food blog The Kitchen Maid, who presented me with a thyme plant after us talking about thyme back and forth on Twitter. I was already dazedly on a high after the terrifically delicious crab raviolo and crisp-edged snapper with lemon curd (yes it worked, and how) but the unexpected kindness of the plant-gift had me filled with good vibes. And it’s that very thyme plant whose leaves you see in the above recipe.
Later that night, Tim and I saw The Trip at Embassy (as part of the NZ Film Festival). I’d seen some episodes of the TV show version on the plane on the way to the UK earlier this year, and it seems like the film takes the pilot and then adds on an extra hour of action. Hilarity is inevitable when Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are stuck in small spaces together, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how monumentally funny it would be. If you get the chance to see it by some means or another – it’s not one you have to see in a cinema – then do. Something about the poster for this movie reminded me of Tim and I going to review cafes (which character we’re most like probably depends on the day) although we aren’t quite at the stage of competitively imimating Michael Caine…yet. We’re not above imitating Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon imitating Michael Caine though. (“Michael Caine. Talks. Very. Slowly”) My only complaint about the film was that Coogan didn’t mention his powerful performance in the important movie Hamlet 2.
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Title via: Blur, Stereotypes, from their album 1996 album The Great Escape (significantly, the year my crush on Damon Albarn developed. Significantly for me, not so much for him. Yet.)
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Music lately:

Francois Hardy, Tous Les Garcons Et les Filles. I can’t work out where I heard this song before – was it used in an ad campaign years ago? Maybe it was in the music from my old jazz dance classes. I don’t know, but it’s definitely familiar. That aside, it’s also really pretty and sad, good Sunday evening music. Which might mean it’s the kind of music you really shouldn’t play on a Sunday evening, come to think of it.
I bought the original London recording of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music from Slow Boat Records yesterday, and while it’s excellent, nothing tops Glynis Johns’ Send In The Clowns in my mind. However, feel free to compare levels of diction crispness between Johns and Judi Dench in her take on this standard.
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Next time: That cake, I promise. It will be resplendent.

the french are glad to die for love, they delight in fighting duels

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Having Chocolate French Toast Sandwiches for dinner may sound a little subversive (as far as these things go), but really it’s exactly the same as having scrambled eggs on toast followed by a chocolate bar. Mind you, I was never shocked by the idea of deep-fried Mars Bars. In fact, I loved and welcomed them when I was travelling through Scotland. There’s nothing quite like eating one the morning after a big night out. I’m not saying they make you feel better. If anything, the consumption of one just sharpens any lingering liver-related remorse. For a few moments though all is good, as you eat the salty, crisp, oily battered Mars Bar, with warm chocolate melting onto your fingers.

This recipe isn’t just novelty or excessiveness for its own sake. Whoever invented it knew exactly what they were doing. It’s respectable, and awesomely so. When I first made this it was for dinner on Wednesday night. I love having breakfast for dinner, and, as noted when I made pancakes for dinner, there’s a Pippi Longstocking-ish thrill to be had about eating what you want when you want. Plus it seems kinda shortsighted to restrict so many good, fast and simple food ideas to the early morning. I made them again for lunch today, which is when I discovered a further point in their favour – they still taste brilliant after sitting round for a several minutes while I photograph them.
Chocolate – French Toast – together – it speaks for itself, really. Except I’m not going to let it, because this wouldn’t be much of a food blog if all I did was post pictures of things with a caption saying the title of the recipe and “Ya-huh?” or “See?” afterwards.
So: The sensory experience of biting into crisp-edged, egg-soft bread and the contrast between its buttery exterior, puffy interior and the tongue-coatingly cocoa-y dark chocolate holding it together, is pretty outstanding. Both in terms of both texture and – surprise – taste.
While I could eat white chocolate all day, every day, I think the darker stuff works best here, because while it’s rich, it’s not too sweet. Any more going on and your veins might not be able to cope from the spike in blood sugar.
If you want to galvanise this basic recipe and make it more debonairly savoury, you could do as I did and slice up some ripe pear and feta cheese and use that inside the sandwich instead. Because juicy pear and soft, creamy, salty cheese nestled in a cocoon of the aforementioned eggy, buttery bread is almost enough to steal its chocolatey counterpart’s glory.
Despite the namechecking of the French, it seems right that I found a recipe of such unrestrainedness in an American magazine. This magazine, called Fine Cooking, is one of the better ones out there – in fact when one of Tim’s co-workers gave him some issues of it to give to me I was surprised at how much I liked them. I’m very particular about food magazines and wasn’t expecting to find an American one, with their differences in measurements and common ingredients and so on, to be so readily fantastic. But the recipes are gorgeous with a good mix of easy and aspirational; the layout is appealing and the writing is genuine and knowledgeable. Which sounds like a pretty simple formula – but several magazines seem to miss one or two of those elements. While I don’t think you can actually find Fine Cooking in shops here in New Zealand, they have a very cool website where you can easily look up recipes. Such as this one here for Chocolate French Toast Sandwiches. Which surely and specifically demonstrates that they know what they’re on about.
Seriously, this recipe is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to me all week. Well, that and the fact that Tim and I have booked tickets to go up home and visit my family (including NEW KITTEN) for a weekend in September. And the fact that I won tickets to the Chocolate Festival next month thanks to the lovely Andrea of So D’lish. Actually…that happened last week…we’re so unexhilarating lately, but I do like it that way most of the time.
Chocolate French Toast Sandwiches

Slightly adapted from this recipe in Fine Cooking.

Four thick slices of white sandwich bread
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
A pinch of salt
40g dark chocolate (I used Whittakers Dark Ghana)
Butter

– Cut the slices of bread in half diagonally, so that you have eight triangles.
– Roughly chop the chocolate.
– Lightly whisk the eggs, then add the milk and the salt and mix again.
– Heat a little butter – as much as you like really, I used about a tablespoon – in a wide saucepan. Quickly dip four of the bread triangles into the egg-milk mixture and fry on both sides in the butter till golden brown.
– Lay two triangles each onto two plates, and divide the chocolate over the top.
– Repeat the dipping and frying with the remaining four triangles of bread, and then put them on top of the pieces on the plate, to complete the sandwiches. The heat of the top and bottom pieces will slowly melt the chocolate.

For a Pear and Feta variation, slice up a pear and some feta, as much as you like, and use that to fill the sandwiches instead.
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Title via: Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend, that evergreen song from Marilyn Monroe’s film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. (Look, I managed not to use the word iconic! Oh, wait…)
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Music lately:

Laura Nyro. I’d heard of her before, but never actually heard her; oh my gosh. Been On A Train is strong stuff. Her voice is amazing. And, I had no idea she wrote the gorgeous Wedding Bell Blues.
Chess – for a musical about a game where the players are almost entirely sedentary, the music itself is – thankfully – extremely dramatic and exciting. While Nobody’s Side is the big power number for the ladies, I found myself on a bit of a Heaven Help My Heart rampage on Youtube today. Predictably, Idina Menzel’s version is my clear favourite, but Broadway original Judy Kuhn’s clear voice and emotional presence also makes for a beautiful rendition. Also Julia Murney’s is routinely amazing. Um, that’s all for now.
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Next time: Not sure. Possibly something from Ottolenghi again, I just can’t quit that cookbook of his.

like a dream I’m flowing with no stopping, sweeter than a cherry pie with ready whip topping

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Telling people you love a particular TV show can be a bit like telling them about a dream you had last night. They think, Great. I’m really pleased that I’m hearing about something fictitious which happened while you were entirely sedentary. With my weekend, I sculpted the concept “love” out of clay*, bought an adorable classic car, went to three different concerts, and took a mini-break to the seaside with my many, many friends. I do find it hard not to talk plenty to whoever’ll listen about TV shows that I love. In case you’re wondering, it’s all the obvious ones – Mad Men (I want a pencil skirt!) Game of Thrones (I want a dragon!) The Wire (I want Stringer Bell!) But recently Ange, our ex-flatmate but current friend, gave Tim and I something we’d been after for a long time – the TV-est TV show of all: Twin Peaks. A show that gave water coolers a dual reason for existence. A show that has basically one piece of music for 97% of its entire score. A show that straddles horror and hilarity. A show with a feature-length pilot episode that was sold off to Europe as a stand-alone movie.

 
 
And a show – this is where I’m hoping it’ll start to make sense – a show that talks about pie a lot. Also doughnuts, but the cherry pie is a big damn deal to Kyle McLachlan’s character Dale Cooper, and I swear nearly every time he mentions it, he uses some kind of reference to death. As one of my old uni tutors would say, while slapping a copy of In Cold Blood in time to each syllable, it’s all in the text. To illustrate the dramatic-ness of how we feel about it, last Saturday night Tim and I had planned to go out and do Saturday night things. We thought we’d casually watch a bit of TV till the point of the evening where it feels acceptably late enough to leave the house. At 1.30am, five episodes into Twin Peaks, we realised we weren’t going to be leaving the house that night at all. And I realised the time had come, after Dale Cooper’s boundless and influential enthusiasm, for me to make a cherry pie.
 
 
Above: If Dale Cooper was here, he’d zoom in on this picture of cherries and see my reflection in them. (+10 points for referencing something from the show while referencing something from the show!)
 
 
Lucky for me, I had a jar of morello cherries that my nana had given me as a present a while back sitting in the cupboard. If you’re not blessed with such a cool and shrewd nan as I, the jars seem to be fairly easy to get hold of and not very expensive – plus their syrupy habitat means you can turn this out any time of year. While cherry pie is as American as apple pie (or pecan pie, or blueberry pie – what a lucky country!) I somewhat predictably turned to Nigella Lawson and a recipe from her seminal text How To Eat. While you can make pastry completely by hand, and I’ve done it, it’s definitely a squillion times easier with a food processor. Either way, the significant upside is that this recipe doesn’t need blind baking – you just roll it out, line the pie plate, fill it up, put a pastry lid on it and bake.
 
 
This pie is a joy, both in the making and the eating. Rolling out the pastry and carefully arranging the light-catching cherries. The scent of them jammily cooking away, and of butter and flour coming together as one to form rich, crisp pastry in the oven. The feeling of grabbing it out of the oven with teatowel-shielded hands, setting it down on the bench and vaingloriously roaring “I MADE PIE”.
 
And how. The pastry is biscuity and buttery and miraculously not prone to soggy-ness (unlike the endearing but mysteriously Deputy Sheriff Andy Brennan in Twin Peaks who cries constantly.) The filling is an appealing mix of tart and sugary. And due to the minimal ingredients, the peerless, fragrantly sweet cherry flavour is allowed to shine.
 
 
Above: Dale Cooper really liked black coffee. And that’s actual coffee in there, which I drank after taking this photo. Not just an empty-cup-as-prop. I keep it real for this blog, even while engaging in flights of baking-fantasy as inspired by an ancient television show.
 
 
Dale Cooper: “They’ve got a cherry pie there that’ll kill you!”
 
*Just when you thought I couldn’t get any cooler, I should probably own up that this is a reference to Ashley Wyeth, a character from Baby Sitters Club #12, Claudia and the New Girl. That is all.
 
 
Cherry Pie
 
Recipe from How To Eat, by Nigella Lawson
 
Pastry:
 
240g self-raising flour (or, plain plus a heaped teaspoon baking powder)
120g cold diced butter
2 egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch salt
2 tablespoons water
 
Filling:
 
1 jar – around 700g – of morello cherries in syrup
30g melted butter
90g sugar
1 heaped tablespoon plain flour
1 tablespoon of juice from the jar of drained cherries
 
Set your oven to 200 C/400 F, and put in a baking tray to heat up while this is happening. This helps to properly cook the bottom of the pastry shell.
 
Put your butter and flour into the freezer for a few minutes, before briefly whizzing in a food processor to the point where there are no large pieces of butter and it looks like damp sand.
Mix the liquid pastry ingredients together and add to the food processor, briefly processing again till it comes together in larger clumps, and if you pinch together some of the crumbs they stick together. Tip out this crumbly mixture, push it together into a large lump, and refrigerate for about 20 minutes.
 
Then, divide into two discs, roll out both, and use one to line a fairly shallow 20cm pie plate.
 
Filling: Drain the cherries of their juices. Mix the butter, sugar, flour and reserved tablespoon of cherry juice to make a pinkish paste and spread this across the inside of the pastry lining the pastry place. Dot the cherries evenly across the pie plate until it’s covered, then drape the other disc of pastry across the top, trimming the edges and crimping them if you’re good at that (I’m not!)
 
Make a few small slices in the top with a knife to allow steam to escape, and then place on the hot baking tray in the oven. After 15 minutes, cover loosely with tin foil and reduce the temperature to 180 C. Bake for another 18 minutes. Allow to cool a bit before eating – it’ll collapse if you try to slice it too soon.
 
Title via: The Beastie Boys, Whatcha Want – very likely my favourite song of theirs after Remote Control, and fortuitously referencing cherry pie. Not that ready whip topping was involved in the making of this, but it wouldn’t be out of context if you’ve got some handy…
 
 
Music lately:
 
I know she has so many hits that even ten years ago it required a double CD package to release a compilation of them all – but some of Mariah Carey’s early album tracks are absolutely glorious in their own right, too. Like And You Don’t Remember from her second album Emotions which could’ve easily been a single alongside the rest of the outrageously good ones from that album.
 
From Slow Boat Records today I snapped up the 1987 revival cast recording of Anything Goes on vinyl. Patti LuPone was in sublime form (and wears very cool blue and white tap shoes) and gets so many good songs it’s hard to know where to start. But of course the title track is as good a place as any.
 
Falling, aka the Twin Peaks theme. Someone kindly made a montage of of images of waterfalls for you while you listen to it on youtube.
 
 
Next time: Not pie. Probably something from my Ottolenghi cookbook, since I flicked through it this morning and thought “oh, that’s right! I want to cook every single recipe in this!” Also: my parents adopted a kitten. There might be photos, accompanied by captions deeply imbued with longing.

as if to say he doesn’t like chocolate, he’s born a liar

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Self Portrait With Chocolate Fudge Pie.
I have many many people that I look up to in this world. For example: Susan Blackwell. She is extremely funny and clever, she has a very cool job and she’s aspirational – despite (I’m sorry Susan Blackwell, if you’re reading this – and if you are, hiii!) not having the most bankable voice, she starred in the Tony-nominated musical [title of show]. As herself. I love that she has created basically the only role I could ever hope to play in a musical (apart from maybe the girl from A Chorus Line who can’t sing), for having one of the few songs that I can absentmindedly sing along to without stopping mid-note and saying “oh forget it” which is what happened when I was singing (yes, lustily) along to Aquarius from the musical Hair the other day. These days, among other things, she has her own joyful online show where she interviews Broadway stars in an array of locations. It’s called Side By Side By Susan Blackwell. I basically would like to model my life upon her career trajectory. Except with the addition of authoring an extremely excellent cookbook. Perhaps if my (still hypothetical) cookbook becomes exceptionally popular, I’ll just be able to command that someone puts on a local production of [title of show] and casts me as Susan. That’s quite the “if” though…
Anyway, the point of all this is that in one of her recent segments of SBSBSB, she interviews stage and screen actor Billy Crudup, and, in the process, they make his grandma’s recipe, Chocolate Fudge Pie. I was captivated by this; its name, its provenance, its promise of chocolate, fudge, and pie in one handy substance…and vowed to make it pronto.
Obligatory pouring-of-mixture into receptacle shot, which I can never quite get right.
I adapted this very American recipe into metric (hello, cups of butter, what?) but the only thing I had trouble with was the original request for “six squares of bittersweet chocolate”. Figuring that because “this America, man,” these squares are probably fairly large. Even taking into account that I’m halving the recipe presented on the show, 70g of chocolate felt about right. Enough for plenty of flavour plus a little bit of mixture-tasting.
Billy Crudup’s Grandma’s Chocolate Fudge Pie
With thanks to Billy Crudup, Billy Crudup’s Grandma, Susan Blackwell, and whoever hired Billy Crudup on Broadway so that he’d be a legitimate interview subject for Susan Blackwell thus creating the opportunity for him to share this recipe in a place that I was likely to find it.
70g dark, dark chocolate (I used Whittaker’s Dark Ghana)
180g butter
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup plain flour
pinch of salt

Set your oven to 160 C/325 F. Grease a 20-22cm pie plate (like the one in my picture. You could also use one of those throwaway tinfoil tins that are very, very cheap at the supermarket) I also cut a circle of baking paper for the base, because I’m nervous like that.

Carefully – either in the microwave, in a double-boiler contraption (rest one heatproof bowl over a small pan of simmering water, not letting the water touch the bottom of the bowl) or just in a pan over a low heat, melt the butter and chocolate together. Set aside. Whisk the living daylights out of the eggs and sugar, pour in the chocolatey butter, the flour (good to sift it to prevent lumps) and the salt.

Bake for around 45 minutes until no longer super wobbly in the middle. I found 45 minutes perfect for me but you may want to check it at 35, in case your oven is a bit enthusiastic.
This pie rules. Like brownies, but somehow superior, because here in every single slice there is an ideal and just plain nice ratio of cakey exterior to melting, squidgy centre. It’s not off-puttingly rich, and the relatively scanty quantity of chocolate somehow flourishes while baking to create a result of astonishing chocolatey depth. It’d be completely fantastic with some ice cream on the side, slowly liquefying into its pliant, satiny centre – but is still practical and cake-resembling enough for me to take a clingfilm-wrapped slice to work in my handbag for lunch.
My attempt at prettying up this brown spongey savannah with icing sugar was patchy to middlingly successful, at best.
I’m not just saying this because the recipe came to me via someone that I think is really, really really cool (I’m talking about Susan Blackwell, not Billy Crudup by the way, hence the ‘via’) but this recipe is amazing and will most definitely become a regular fixture on my circuit. Speshly because it gives me a legitimate excuse to bore people about [title of show], as my knife hovers with maddening endlessness over the pie and they wait for me to serve them a slice. “It’s about two guys writing a musical about two guys writing a musical about two guys writing a musical!”
By the way, I did three really clumsy things on the day of making this Chocolate Fudge Pie. Firstly, I dropped my phone into a bowl of salad. Secondly, I dropped and smashed my Kilner jar, at least half full of homemade quince brandy (oh, the swearing and endless vacuuming that ensued) and finally, I dropped a full, open, king-sized box of weetbix (not actual weetbix, but those “weeta-brix” knockoff type ones) down the back of the pantry. Yet I managed to make this entire pie, chocolatey and eggy and rich, in a white shirt, without getting one particle of it on myself. At this point, I was really expecting to get covered in mixture, somehow it didn’t happen. I’m not sure what my message is here, apart from: enjoy life/your nice alcohol/applicable consumable item now, rather than saving it for an appropriate occasion, because you never know when it might slip out of your hands and smash to pieces. On carpet. Even as the jar of brandy fell I remember thinking “wheeee-ew, it’s landing on carpet, it’ll bounc-ohhhh no.”
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Title via: Bloc Party’s Helicopter. I really like these guys, although it’s hard to know if my view of them is softened because they really remind me of living in the UK in 2005. Although I spose any music can be affected by the circumstances that you hear it in, I’m pretty sure this is still a good song with or without my contexty lens over it.
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Music lately:

Probably said it before, but while the movie adaptation of the musical Hair is pretty awful, they got one thing right in the casting of Cheryl Barnes to sing the song Easy To Be Hard; it’s so beautiful. Even then, I hate that the camera cuts away from her so much.

@Peace, a new creation from Homebrew’s Tom Scott and Nothing To Nobody’s Lui Tuiasau. You can stream it, or you can buy it – and in a cool but bold move from its makers – pay what you like for it, right here. It’s all excellent, with silky as production from Benny Tones, and if you’re not sure, the title track is a good place to start (although so is the opening song, “this goes out to all walks, living in this village that we call Aucks”)
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Next time: Completing the completely coincidental trifecta (pie-fecta?) of blog posts about pies, and entirely inspired by Twin Peaks, which Tim and I have been obsessively watching lately: Cherry Pie.