Category: Vegetarian

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.

at sideshow stalls, they throw the balls at coconut fur

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Winter has got me, and not in an epic, sweepingly-caped Game of Thrones kinda way (although, phew, look at that show’s very casual body count) but in the more unremarkable, throat infection kind of way. While I’ve been coughing at intervals during the daytime, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some chemical or hormone that’s released just as you’re about to drift off to sleep (perhaps to dream about being cast as Amy in Company, as my brain somewhat plausibly presented me with recently) which reacts with whatever’s happening in your throat. Because it’s at night when I cough the most. My brain is woozy and dozy, but my throat and lungs are wide awake and on fire.

 

 

So I’ve generously applied a tea made from chopped, carroty-fresh tumeric root and fibrous chunks of fresh ginger. I’ve drunk a lot of water, sipped Gees Linctus, eaten leafy green vegetables, and dissolved so many lozenges on my tongue that my teeth’ll probably corrode before the season is out…and also had some whiskey. Fingers crossed this elixir mix gets the better of my immune system soon.

In the meantime, here are the promised Coconut Macaroons – luckily, as in previous winters, I haven’t got a blocked nose and therefore no sense of taste. Those winters are no fun at all. I’d take a cough and no energy over that any day. I’d never tried these Coconut Macaroons before, despite owning How To Be A Domestic Goddess since 2006. But one of the many manifest joys of Nigella Lawson is that with her massive quantity of recipes, there’s always deliciousness anew to discover and love.

This is how much coconut they use…On the other hand, only two egg whites! These macaroons are less sophisticated than their French macaron counterparts, but they’re significantly less terrifying to make, too.

Coconut Macaroons

From Nigella Lawson’s important book How To Be A Domestic Goddess

  • 2 egg whites
  • 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
  • 100g sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 250g shredded/fancy shred/long thread coconut (if all you have/can find is dessicated, I’m sure it’s fine, but Nigella does make a bit of a point of saying that shredded is better – am just the messenger)
  • 30g ground almonds
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or coconut essence

Set your oven to 170 C/340 F and line a baking tray with baking paper. In a non-plastic bowl, whisk the eggs till just frothy, then add the cream of tarter and whisk some more till you get soft peaks forming.

At this point, carry on whisking – fun! – while gradually adding the sugar a teaspoon at a time. It should eventually be thick and shiny, by the time all the sugar’s used up.

Now plunder all this gorgeous meringue-y hard work by tipping in the coconut, salt, extract and ground almonds, and fold together till you have a sticky mixture. I’ll tell you now: this mixture tastes amaaaazing.

Take a quarter cup measure, and scoop out cups-ful, dumping them down onto the tray. You should get between 8 and 12 out of this mixture. Bake for around 20 minutes, or until lightly golden. If you like, once they’re cool, drizzle them or swirl their bases in melted dark chocolate (around 150-200g should do this lot)

I love them. They’re satisfyingly large, pleasingly occupying both biscuit and cake territory, chewy with the fresh, summery taste of coconut and the bounty bar-echoing delight of their optional chocolate coating. They’re just seriously delicious.

Title via: the very lovely David Bowie’s earlyish song Karma Man, from the album London Boy.

Music lately:

With the lack of sleep that recurrent coughing brings, I’ve not been drawn towards anything with a heavy beat or a heavy meaning to process lately. Which is why Patsy Cline and the serenely beautiful Ali and Toumani album, for example, have been played a lot.

Next time: I found this amazing roast vegetable tart recipe, vegan and gluten free and delicious and everything. Hopefully will be blogging with a non-inflamed throat next time, too.

 

like collard greens and whole eggs I got soul

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Last time I said I was going to be posting a recipe for Snickerdoodles next. Oh, how I lied. Because instead I became distracted by this inconceivably good recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi.



I’m sure I’ve told this story a squillion times already and, depending on your mood, it may go some way to illustrate how nauseatingly/adorably (take your pick!) zany/useless (also take your pick here!) Tim and I are, but here goes anyway. In the summer of 2007/2008 we went grocery shopping. At first we looked at the cartons of a dozen eggs. Not enough for us! So we looked at the trays of 20. And there, on a clearance trolley beside the trays, was a plastic wrapped, many layered stack of egg trays. Tim, being handier with mathematics than I am, worked out that even though 80 eggs was kind of a lot to get through, the saving on cost per egg compared to the single tray or dozen carton was so tremendously significant – especially considering they were free range eggs – that we’d be completely unintelligent not to buy the huge tray. Of 80 eggs. Congratulating ourselves on such a bargain, we left the supermarket.
When we got home, a cursory glance at the label revealed the reason this multitude of eggs was so reasonably priced. According to the use by date, we had just under 10 days to eat all 80. Somehow we made it happen and with protein coursing through our veins came out the other side with not one egg wasted. The reason I bring this up is that, on a free weekend, to use up some of said eggs I made Nigella’s Strawberry Ice Cream and Chocolate Mousse Cake from Forever Summer and How To Be A Domestic Goddess respectively. These two recipes saw me successfully separate 18 eggs in a single day.
But while I can coolly part yolk from white eighteen times over and turn them into such delicate treats as mousse and ice cream, I have always been terrible at poaching eggs. It kinda sucks.
Luckily, thanks to this immensely delicious recipe I found in Ottolenghi’s book Plenty, poached eggs can sit down, because these baked eggs eclipse any ambition I have to be a decent poacher.


It’s so gorgeous. The first shamefully conservative thought that crossed my mind was “eggs and yoghurt? AND green stuff?” but I’m glad I squashed that thought down. Here is the recipe to recreate it yourself, even if – maybe especially if – you think you’re not the sort of person who could veer away from plain eggs on toast.

Baked Eggs with Yoghurt and Chilli

Adapted slightly from Ottolenghi’s Plenty

4 eggs
300g rocket (although I’d recommend curly kale)
2 tablespoons olive oil
150g Greek yoghurt
1 garlic clove, crushed
A generous knob butter
1 red chilli, finely sliced, or 1 spoonful sambal oelek
A pinch smoked paprika

Set your oven to 150 C. Heat the oil in a large pan, and gently cook your greens till they wilt a little.

Tip this into a small oven dish – I used an old pie plate – and make four indentations in your greens so that the eggs have a place to go. Carefully crack an egg into each space – being careful not to break the yolk – and bake for about 10 – 15 minutes. Don’t overcook, but make sure the egg whites are no longer translucent. The very low heat means you don’t have to stress about this too much.

While they’re cooking, mix the yoghurt and garlic together and set aside. Melt the butter in a pan (the same one you cooked the greens in if you like) and add the chilli, paprika, and let it cook away till the butter foams a little.

Spoon the yoghurt and the butter over the eggs. Serve on toast or just as is.

The thick, luscious garlicky yoghurt and the almost chewy greens, gorgeously verdant against the golden eggs, which yield to the fork’s prod, the salty-hot butter merging with the rich, slowly spilling yolks and coating the astringent leaves…it’s really something.


Ottolenghi says to use rocket as the green stuff but I definitely recommend curly kale, if you can get hold of it – its crisp leaves stand up to the heat, without getting all limp and watery and gross. While it might be a bit harder to find, it’s no more expensive than spinach, and it’s not one of those stupid leafy green vegetables that perishes floppily in the fridge the day after you buy it. Kale is built to last. If you wanted to make this dairy-free, you could just use olive oil instead of the butter and I bet tahini would be so, so good instead of yoghurt. Assuming you’re more likely to have tahini than yoghurt, that is.


On that note, does anyone have any particularly reliable tips for poaching eggs? Mine is to pay someone in a cafe to do it for you.
It was so, so dark when I got out of bed this morning, and the sky had barely lightened its shade to something daylight-resembling when I left for work. I’m surprised at how glum it made me feel. I will have to keep that in check, I mean if I’m feeling this way in early June, the bleak midwinter July mornings will probably be greeted with a howl. Unless I can get up early enough and make myself this for breakfast every morning. Might be time to look for another clearance tray of eggs…
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Title via: Southernplayalistikcadillacmusic by the tremendous Outkast from their album of the same name.
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Music lately:

Honestly…I haven’t had enough time to listen to anything much since my last post, which possibly indicates that time was used badly. I’ve been listening quite a bit to the Godspell soundtrack and cast recording for what it’s worth, which could be seen by some as still a bad way of using time. I’m clearly the only person in New Zealand who likes to listen to it, because whenever I go to a music store there’s usually at least five copies of it in their second-hand clearance section.
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Next time:

Probably definitely the snickerdoodles…and I will endeavour to listen to something other than Godspell. Victor Garber was just so dreamy back then.

just like honey

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While in hindsight I did do quite a lot of baking as I was growing up, it wasn’t to the point where it was really obvious that I’d start blogging fervidly about food a few years later. Like, if ever questioned about food in my childhood you’re not going to hear me recount stories of instinctively rolling out pastry with an empty vermouth bottle found on the floor and studding it with halved plums from the orchard; or learning to handmake pasta while sitting on my great-great-grandmother’s floury knee. I think I’ve read too many interviews with chefs who had romantic-sounding upbringings. Ain’t nothing whimsical about 2-minute noodles and mass-produced “Kids Can Cook” books sponsored by 2-minute noodle companies, but…I seemed to have turned out okay.
There are a few recipes from my childhood which stick with me though, and which occasionally twinge both my heartstrings and tastebuds. Today’s recipe for Honeybuns is dairy free – as promised last week, in horrified reaction to $6 blocks of butter at the supermarket – and it’s one that Mum, and sometimes Mum and myself together, made a lot in my childhood. This isn’t simply nostalgia for its own hackneyed, rose-tinted-in-photoshop sake, these are in fact very very good. I had the urge to make them a while back and asked Mum to email me the recipe from the – if I remember rightly – pink scrapbook with big yellow flowers on it. I have this feeling that these were made so often that I was even nostalgic about them at like, aged 12, although that might be now-me trying to heap extra significance on these plain little cakes. (Which reminds me of that flawless film A Mighty Wind: “to do ‘then’ now would be retro, to do ‘then’ then was very nowtro”. I actually had an extremely vivid dream recently that Tim and I traveled to San Francisco and Fred Willard – who plays Mike LaFontaine in AMW – and Jake Gyllenhaal were shooting a movie on the street – some kind of comedy-Renaissance movie in fact – and I approached Fred and told him that I thought A Mighty Wind was a flawless film and in fact if I had to find a fault with it, it would be that it was too zealously edited and could’ve been longer. Jake was ignored until I asked him to take a photo of me and Fred. It was one of those dreams where you wake up thinking “YUSSS-ohhh wait.”)
Even if you don’t usually read through the recipe itself, I prod at you to sweep your eyes over this one – check out how fast and easy and ingredients-light it is. It’s one of those recipes you can make when you’re out of most cool ingredient-y things.
Honey Buns

I don’t know where the recipe itself is from originally…expect Mum will fill in the blanks in the comments.

125g honey
5 T oil (I use Rice Bran)
Good pinch salt
4 T water
125g wholewheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. If your honey is particularly solid, gently microwave or heat on stove till it’s runny. Whisk in the oil, salt and water, then sift in the flour and baking soda together (I don’t usually sift, but a few bad experiences with baking soda make me sift when it’s included in a recipe) and whisk thoroughly till there aren’t any lumps. Finally, mix in the two eggs. It’ll be quite a liquidy mixture. Spoon into your chosen cases and bake for about 15-20 minutes. Cover with tinfoil if they get too brown. If you don’t have wholewheat flour, plain is fine.
I would recommend if you can, switching the water for orange juice – from a carton/bottle is fine, although if you’ve got enough actual oranges, squeeze away. Its acidy freshness points up the fragrant nature of the honey no end.
These are actually much, much nicer than their squat, monotone appearance suggests. They’re definitely plain to look at (hence the jazzy orange plate!) but the honey gives them surprising depth and a sticky, date-like sweetness kept in check by by the pinch of salt. They keep for quite a long time and even as its crumbs start to clench and become dry, a zap in the microwave and a spreading of butter (well, I can never keep it too far out of arm’s reach) livens them up again. But in honesty, I took a couple to work today and it was only laziness that stopped me going to the microwave and my block of butter, and they really were just perfect without. I don’t say this lightly or anything. And, back to the original issue, as these don’t even gasp out for butter, you could remain $6 richer for a little bit longer.
Tim and I went to Lower Hutt last night to see the Speakeasy Theatre production of RENT at the Little Theatre. Having now racked up four different versions of RENT nationwide, I can easily say it was one of the strongest-voiced, best acted and excellently directed ones I’ve seen. The sound system was a bit shoddy, which was a shame as some nice harmonies were lost, but it really deserves to be seen, so if you’re within cooee of Lower Hutt move fast because its last show is Saturday night. Tim wasn’t exactly euphoric at being there but did concede that the singing was fantastic.
I don’t find it surprising that the whole “Wellywood sign” thing has caught the awareness of so many. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a terrible idea. Putting aside the emphatically negative response from the public, the shuddery feeling that everyone else will think we did want it, the lack of relevance to NZ, the words “bucket list” being used as a reason, and the general marring of the landscape that it will bring…it just feels like an outrageous waste of money at a time like this. Or ever. I hope it doesn’t go ahead.
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Title via: The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Just Like Honey from Psychocandy. I really like this song, even though with those opening drums I always think it’s going to be the Ronettes, and then can’t help being slightly disappointed in spite of myself.
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Music lately:

Typing this word as many times as I have done just now, my thoughts turn to that another excellent song named after that excellent substance, Mariah Carey’s Honey from the album Butterfly.
Walk on By, a fantastic song from local band Diana Rozz. We’d seen them before but not for a long time – then caught their album release show at Happy on Saturday night and they were so much fun, so cool, so noisy…even the people on the door were hilarious.
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Next time: Mum sent me another childhood recipe upon my request the other day, but I might space out all that nostalgia-tripping with a Martin Bosley recipe for pork belly. Also: the Wellington leg of The Food Show is this weekend and I’m SO excited. Hopefully there’s cheap halloumi and generous soymilk samples like last year!

who is all ginger and jazz, who is as glamourous as?

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As I said on Twitter earlier this week, I both realise and acknowledge that if I’m serious about wanting to write a cookbook, I can’t just earnestly hope someone will say “hey, I’d like to offer you a book deal” while I’m walking down the street, like how some models are discovered. I’ve got to arm myself with a ton of recipes, and work hard on developing them. There’s no cookbook without recipes. Maybe when I’ve got a whole bunch written I could take a week’s annual leave and test them all, and you could all come round and sample them! A bit of a fantasy, sure, but a person can dream. Prepared-ly.
I didn’t invent lemonade scones, and I don’t know who did, but it’s a fairly well-known recipe – the premise being that you mix a can of lemonade, a bottle of cream and a whole lot of self-raising flour and it magically turns into scones when you bake it. I had a wave of the brain one day that gingerbeer instead of lemonade might make for awesomely flavoured scones. I’m not trying to winkle out of making any original thoughts here, but this is one of the most fun things about cooking – taking an existing recipe, adapting and evolving it out of necessity – not having the right ingredients – or inspiration, and just seeing what happens.
My idea was more or less successful. Really delicious, light-textured, golden scones. But not exactly the ginger wonderland I predicted. Turns out that the gingerbeer became completely muffled by the blanket of flour and diluted by the cream. There was, if you concentrated and ate with your eyes shut, a fluttery subtext of flavour, but…yeah.
I liked them so much though, that I tried them again, with a different gingerbeer brand and a handful of chopped crystallised ginger. The latter of which you could definitely taste in the finished product. We loved both versions, so feel free to try them yourself:
Gingerbeer Scones

300mls cream (I use Zoorganic)
330ml can ginger beer
4 cups self raising flour; OR 4 cups flour plus 2 teaspoons cream of tartar and 1 tsp baking soda
Optional: a handful of chopped crystallised ginger, a handful of chopped dates

Set oven to 200 C. Mix all in a bowl together, as briefly as you can. Pays to sift the flour first. Turn out onto a baking paper-lined tray, pat gently into a rectangle. Using a knife, or better yet, a dough-cutter, slice into 12, keeping them very close together – helps them rise. Bake for about 25 minutes. Best served warm from the oven, but they keep surprisingly well.
So, the first time I made these I used Phoenix Organic Ginger Beer and added a handful of dates. For my second batch I was recommended Pam’s ginger beer by Plum Kitchen, so I asked Tim to get some on his way home from work. He txts to ask if I was sure, because apparently “Bundaberg = best-a-berg!” I replied something along the lines of “Pam’s = insur-pams-able!” but he came home with Bundaberg anyway, because there wasn’t any Pam’s at the supermarket.
It’s not really fair to compare the two batches since the second had actual ginger in it, so my hypothesis notes are as follows:
1) It doesn’t really matter what brand you use. From Budget all the way up to the most artisinal and elegantly-labelled product.
2) If you’re not going to add crystallised ginger, these will still be really nice, but you might as well just use lemonade.
3) I’d like to think that a mix of gingerbeer and crystallised ginger mutually benefit and augment each other’s flavours, rather than all the flavour coming from the crystallised ginger. Because then my initial idea would still be kind of right. Please humour me by agreeing?
4) On the other hand, that kind of coddling will get me nowhere in the cut-throat world of cookbook publishery! Humour me not!
Either way, these are a slightly more charismatic take on your regular scone. Something in the bubbles of the fizzy drink and the oleaginous properties of the cream bestows on the scones a charming lightness and softness of texture. I will make them again. Also, while typing right now, I had this idea that instead of lemonade, you could use a bottle of dry cider, add a pinch of mustard powder and some grated cheese, and how good would that be? A bit like a Welsh rarebit, but in scone form! On the other hand, maybe scones have been plain for centuries for a reason…
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Title via: Barbra Streisand, she of muscular voice and enormous back catalogue, singing I’m The Greatest Star, a song about self-belief if ever there was one, from the excellent musical Funny Girl.
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Music lately:

Gloryday from See What I Wanna See. Felt appropriate, given the rapture-baiting mood. Not to mention, Idina Menzel is always appropriate listening.

Never Can Say Goodbye, Gloria Gaynor. Isn’t this song just amazing?
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Next time: I went to the supermarket the other day and it was $6 for a block of butter! Is this real life? (translation: it’ll probably be dairy-free recipes for a while now.)

o souperman

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This soup actually cured my cold. Either that or my cold was on its way out and the bold quantities of garlic, ginger, and chilli in this soup merely opened the door for it, put its hand in the small of its back (the soup’s hand, the cold’s back…I think) and kindly but firmly steered it outwards.

Soup isn’t always the most exciting thing to have for dinner – it’s generally never fried, crispy, crunchy, chocolate dipped, or any of those things that can be so, so good about eating. However this recipe is courtesy of Yotam Ottolenghi, whose way with food is always exciting. That said, you’ve got to make sure you really read the ingredient list, simple as it looks, and don’t miss anything out. Each thing, from the sticks of celery to the bay leaves play their important part, allowing the soup to neatly dodge the whole “wait, what? This is just bits of herbs floating in warm water” vibe.
Unfortunately I can’t avoid my “awful low-lighting and also prosaic soup composition photos” vibe. First comes the better control of photography on a Winter’s night, then comes the better composition. I promise you I’m reading…well, looking for, my camera’s instruction manual.
Garlic Soup

From Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty

Serves 4

4 shallots (or an onion) finely sliced
3 celery sticks, finely chopped
40g butter (optional – just use the oil if you like)
2 T olive oil
25 garlic cloves, finely sliced (yes, peeled and sliced, sorry)
2 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger root
1 tsp finely chopped thyme leaves
200ml white wine
generous pinch saffron threads (optional…because I accidentally left it out)
4 bay leaves
1 litre good-quality vegetable stock
1/2 tsp sea salt
Parsely, coriander and Greek yoghurt and harissa to serve.

Fry your shallots or onions and celery in the butter and oil till soft and translucent – keep an eye on them, don’t let them turn brown. Add the garlic and continue to cook over a low heat, then stir in the ginger and thyme, followed by the wine which will bubble up and reduce down a bit. Then add the saffron, bay leaves, salt and stock and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Note: I acknowledge peeling and slicing all that garlic is a big pain, but it’s worth it in terms of flavour. Maybe a buddy you can enlist, in exchange for feeding them soup?
Ottolenghi says to blitz with a hand blender or in a food processor but I didn’t have the energy for that – all the lifting and the assembling and the cleaning on a cold dark night…and it seemed just fine as it was.
As I said, every ingredient is important – the wine against the hot pan, evaporating into concentrated savoury goodness, the vigorous burst of ginger heat, the softened, traditional flavours of the onion and celery. The heavy spoonful of yoghurt isn’t exactly essential but I would definitely not leave out the green garnishy things on top – coriander’s fresh taste goes well with the rest of the soup, but it also makes it look a bit more presentable. If you don’t have harissa (I did) you’ve got a number of options – stir in some sambal oelek, chopped red chilies, or replace the olive oil with chili oil. Or, of course, ignore the chili altogether.
I realise I’ve spent nearly this whole thing saying how not-fun soup is, but this stuff is truly gorgeous (not-not-fun?), a broth of flavours unfurling like flannel sheets grabbed straight from the dryer – warming, comforting, lightly textured.
Work took me down to Christchurch on Saturday, and I was fortunately able to have a quick catch up with Mika of the mighty fine Millie Mirepoix blog who coincidentally was also down from Wellington. The chilling rubble of half-formed houses and the constant road-blocking cordons, the cracks in the road and the buildings that you had to look at twice to register that they were leaning on an angle or sunken in the middle made me feel a bit queasy and sad inside and it would’ve been easy to get stuck focussing on that. Not that it shouldn’t be focussed on (it should! But in a “now what” kind of way, maybe? Not really my place to say) but what I mean is, it was really good to see a friendly face amongst it all, and to contribute in a small way to the local economy by getting coffee and a really, really good Cherry Ripe Slice at Beat Street Cafe and another fantastic coffee from Black Betty’s. If you’re heading to Christchurch I totally recommend these places – they’re open, they’re friendly and they’re serving up seriously good food.
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Title via: Laurie Anderson’s intriguing, staccato yet tranquil O Superman. Admittedly I don’t know a lot of her stuff (only really this and Language Is A Virus), and it can be, to someone attuned to songs being a bit verse-chorus-verse-chorus and so on, a bit challenging, but I do like it a lot, and not just because Idina Menzel cites Anderson as someone she studied for her character of Maureen in RENT (I heard Anderson first, so!)
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Music lately:
Lena Horne – who died just over a year ago now – and her beautiful version of I Got Rhythm from the Lovely and Alive record.
Joy Division, Love Will Tear Us Apart. Heard it this morning for the first time in ages on the radio. It’s a bit obvious, but it’s always good. (Speaking for the original only, not cover versions…)
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Next time: My invention of gingerbeer scones possibly hasn’t been thought of before because they weren’t as wildly gingery as I thought they’d be…but they were still delicious, and I took photos of them anyway.

i want to be the girl with the most cake

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I’m sure if someone made a perfume based on the feijoas, it’d sell heaps. Right? But then I’d happily wear perfume that smelled like bread baking, if only such a necessary thing existed. So far the only way I can scope that you could recreate that incredible scent is to tie a fresh-baked loaf to your head (or to any bit of you, really) and that’s not a particularly practical option (no matter which bit of yourself you tie it to).

When Mum came down to Wellington last weekend, she brought with her a large box of feijoas, from my Nana’s tree. (Thanks Nana!) At first it was enough just to let them be. Feijoas, like avocados, are objectionably expensive here in the capital, and so just having the option of grabbing one, slicing its thick green skin open and winkling out the contents with a teaspoon to be swallowed happily, was a pleasingly luxuriant act.


But being myself, I was looking for something to bake them into. Two people I work with helped me out, one by emailing me a recipe she thought I might like (thanks Alex!) and one by supplying a first-come-first-served bag of Granny Smith apples from his tree in Gisborne (cheers Tane!) which the intriguing recipe for cake required. From the East Coast, Waiuku and the desk across the office, many people have made it possible for this cake to exist.
So, it’s a good thing it tastes extremely amazing.


The apples sort of dissolve into the mixture, while small chunks of hot, sugary crystalised ginger and grainy feijoa flesh give it texture and intense fruitiness. The sticky, buttery, chewy coconutty topping works better than any icing could (that said, I’m imagining a cream cheese icing with extra chopped crystallised ginger on top…)


Feijoa, Apple and Ginger Cake

Recipe from this site.

1 cup feijoa pulp
1 cup finely chopped apple (depending on size this may be one or two apples)
1/4 cup chopped crystallised ginger
1 tsp baking soda
125 mls (1/2 cup) boiling water
125g soft butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour

Topping:

50g melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup thread coconut (or dessicated, if it’s what you’ve got)

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. Butter and paper a 20-22cm springform caketin.

Combine the feijoa, apple, ginger, baking soda and boiling water in a bowl, and set aside while you make the cake batter.

In a good sized bowl, cream the butter and sugar till fluffy, then beat in the egg, and stir in the flour. The mixture will be quite thick at this point – almost like scone dough. Fear not! Fold in the fruit mixture, stirring well, then tip this now significantly liquid-er mixture into your prepared caketin.

Bake for 40 minutes or until golden and not wobbling in the centre. Meanwhile, combine your topping ingredients and spread carefully over the cooked cake, returning to the oven for about 8-10 minutes till the coconut is golden.


I suspect it would be very difficult to overcook this cake, which adds to its appeal, and everything going on – the coconut topping, the ginger – are a fitting showcase for this seasonal and gorgeous fruit. However, I reckon you could very easily substitute the same amount of mashed banana when feijoa is out of season or unavailable (like if you live overseas). Or soft, ripe pears…or a drained can of apricots…so much potential for deliciousness.
Thanks for all the kindness on my last post in regards to Rupert the ex-cat. I guess it won’t properly sink in till I next go home.
I’m sure Rupert would be entirely indifferent if he could know that he is remembered extremely solemnly round here…
Me: *wistful face*
Tim: Are you imagining a montage of the good times you and Rupert had together?
Me: Actually…..yes.
Tim: I’m sorry.
Me: (singing quietly) thankyou for the music, the songs we’re singing, thanks for all the joy– (at this point a straight face could no longer be maintained, extreme laughter ensued.)
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Title via: the excellent Doll Parts by Hole. I love the contrast between the gentle strumming and pretty harmonies against the sad lyrics.
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Music lately:
Happy Birthday, by Altered Images. Maybe it has been done already, but the light, twinkly intro would be really good sampled in something. I think so, anyway.

(Version) For The Love Of It by Salmonella Dub, back in their Tiki-fronted days. A really, really good song. Something about the methodical rhythm and drawn-out chorus…I was happily reminded of it while reading this article from the archives on DubDotDash.
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Next time: Don’t know! Should possibly do something veering away from the puddingy side of things, just for a bit of contrast or something…