Category: Vegetarian

who’s gonna keep the coffee sweet with secret recipes

11 Comments

Chocolate is already so good on its own that a cake has to do a lot to really knock a sock or two off. I feel like my eyes have been narrowed and my heart hardened by all the confoundingly-dry-yet-unpalatably-rich wedges of cake stacked in cafe cabinets. Sometimes however a recipe comes along that reminds you not only what’s so exciting about this dark flavour in cake form but also that homemade stuff often tastes nicer. The recipe I found on A Twist Of Spaghetti for Cappucino Chocolate Cake is one such example of this. There’s nothing overtly flashy about this but it tastes good.

This cake very quick to put together – witness the instructions below which aren’t much more than a long-ish sentence – and it also has contains no eggs. Despite never buying anything less than a tray of eggs at a time, they always seem to be the things I run out of first.

Cappucino Chocolate Cake

Recipe care of Chef Aimee at A Twist of Spaghetti

1 1/3 cups plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa (good cocoa – I use Equagold Premium Dutch Cocoa)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup plain yoghurt
3/4 cup strong coffee
1 teaspoon coffee liqueur
1/4 cup flavourless oil, like rice bran

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. Combine wet ingredients then tip in the dry ingredients and stir till well blended. Pour into a 21cm caketin, lined with baking paper, and bake for 35 – 45 minutes.

Glaze (optional)

Melt together 2/3 cup chopped dark chocolate and 2 tablespoons coffee liqueur, and drizzle over the cake. My drizzling kind of failed so I went for the “thickly smear” option instead.

This cake is moist, light, and keeps for days, despite not having an awful lot holding it together. The coffee flavour wasn’t flamboyant but intensifies all that cocoa very pleasingly. It’s the sort of thing that you can whip together in moments for when someone announces they’re dropping by, and according to the recipe source the yoghurt can be replaced with a soy alternative to make it dairy free.

Miracle of miracles, Tim isn’t working at all this weekend. Apart from when he requests the time off months in advance, it’s the first time he’s had a weekend off since roughly…February 2006. What do couples even do on the weekend these days?

Title coming at you via: Finale from Broadway musical In The Heights – the music is so gorgeous, I can only imagine that it’s pretty brilliant live. Lin-Manuel Miranda won a Tony for writing the score when he was only 28! Seriously.

Music lately:

Buffalo, the brand new offering from locals The Phoenix Foundation. Would I like this song as much if it were not sung from the perspective of a buffalo? Probably, because the music itself is fantastic, both driving and twinkly at the same time. They’re offering a (limited) free download of the song on their website so get in there if driving and twinkly sounds like your thing.

Bring Me Coffee Or Tea by wurstrockers CAN from their album Tago Mago… mysteriously good.

Next time: I actually don’t know. Guess I’d better cook or bake something this weekend then…but after all this talk of the Cappuccino Chocolate Cake I’m in the mood to make it again. Which would be nice for me, not so useful for the blog…

rod only knows

7 Comments

___________________________________________________

As I struggled ineffectually to transfer a roasting dish of Nigella’s macaroni cheese into oven, it made me think of that ecclesiastical conundrum, Could God make chilli so spicy that even He couldn’t eat it? I’m not to compare Nigella to any god, but it made me chuckle, and when you’re faced with roughly ten squillion kilos of macaroni cheese what else can you do?

Sunday was an intense day on many levels, as the last home game for the Wellington Phoenix happened to fall upon Rod Stewart Appreciation Day this year. It was a day of such parlour games as “pin the mole on the Rod” (awesomely organised by Anna, with medals for prizes) and listening to his many albums on repeat. I have to admit I’m not really a fan of Rod Stewart but there is definitely plenty of scope for appreciation. The eternal blonde hair. The boundless fertility. The early pout, which became the latter-day leathery smirk. The ludicrous lyrics for You’re In My Heart. The weird chest-swelling feeling you get in spite of yourself during Rhythm of my Heart. The actual fabulousness of Stay With Me, technically a Faces song, so. The leopard print…apparel.

So if a whole bunch of people are descending upon you for soft-rock and pre-football cheer and you’ve insisted on catering, there’s not many other options but to provide kilos of macaroni cheese, Nigella-style.

Three days later, I’m still too full to even think about it for a good long time. I’m so full I can’t even deal with typing out the recipe from Nigella Christmas. Just think of any decent macaroni cheese recipe you know and then increase the ingredients TENFOLD. (It did taste so, so very good by the way, or at least I thought so.)

Perhaps all the dairy products went to my head or something but I found myself making cupcakes at 10:00pm the night before then rising early the next day to ice them with Rod Stewart’s official tartan. Or at least as close as my collection of food colouring could get to it.

Yes, it’s electric pink instead of red but…I feel like it’s what Rod would have wanted. While I was at it I thought I might as well ice the rest of the cupcakes in homage to the mighty Wellington Phoenix (or “The Pheen” as they are known…in my head.)

Okay, simplistic, but what were you expecting? A sensitive and detailed buttercream rendering of the Phoenix crest? A lovingly crafted sculpture of Ricki Herbert’s head made from marzipan? Maybe if they win the league.

Unfortunately everyone left before I got to bring out the pudding…which means we’ve still got an entire girdlebuster pie and ice cream cake sitting in the freezer, awkwardly untouched. In fairness to everyone attending the day was about Rod Steward and the Phoenix, not my ability to make pie for people, PLUS with the macaroni cheese and everything else we ate in the morning (the spread was bolstered by people bringing in fruit, bagels, chicken, buns etc) thoughts of eating even more were most likely the last thing on peoples’ minds. This evening Tim and I finally busted into the ice cream cake, which was amazingly good and perhaps even nicer being eaten with the knowledge that we didn’t have to share it with anyone else.

Please excuse my actually rubbish photo! It was dark and the subject was melting. My peace offering is a recipe for the Peanut Butter Sauce poured over the ice cream cake – you may think that Nigella kind of goes on about it but a mere spoonful of this will assure you that she speaks the truth. And then some.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Sauce

From Nigella Express

175ml cream
100g smooth peanut butter
100g good milk chocolate, chopped (I’d recommend Whittaker’s…I used dark chocolate because that’s what I had)
3 tablespoons golden syrup

Tip the ingredients into a pan and gently melt together over a low heat, stirring occasionally. I used a mini whisk to move it about. It might look a little grainy and non-cohesive at first but if you keep it warm and stir it frequently you will end up with a thick, glossy pool of sauce. Sauce that tastes incredible.

Incidentally, it hardens up when left in the fridge and can be turned back into sauce by sitting the container in a bowl of hot water for a while. But once solidified, it can be eaten by the spoonful and tastes like some kind of ridiculous Reeses Cup-style peanut butter chocolate truffle…I can’t see it lasting now that we’ve started it. And I guess I could always just keep the Girdlebuster Pie in the freezer till next year’s festivities?

In a very happy end to the day, the Pheen won against the Newcastle Jets, making it their 19th consecutive unbeaten game at the stadium and putting them that much closer to the finals. By the game’s thrilling conclusion I was almost teary eyed, but whether it was the game or the missed opportunity to eat Girdlebuster Pie is anyone’s guess. It may have also had something to do with the fact that the young offspring of various Phoenix team members ran onto the field to find their respective parents, and while I always think children are like horses, best admired from a distance and looked after by someone else, it was heart-into-puddle adorable. A draw forced the game into excruciating overtime but the Phoenix scoring two goals in swift succession made it one of the more exciting sports events I’ve seen in my entire life, I know that’s not saying much. But it’s true.
______________________________________________________

Title brought to you by: While I was toying with labelling this Bigmouth Strikes Again instead I lean towards an awful pun courtesy of the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows from Pet Sounds. I know it has been used in far too many romantic comedy soundtracks but it really is a gleaming gem of a song.
______________________________________________________

Music lately:

Freedom 90′ by George Michael from his album Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1. I am truly not a fan of George Michael’s music at all but this song is exempt from anything: it is amazing. The jingle-jangle piano is intoxicating. If someone could make me a mixtape of every song from the 90s featuring that piano sound I would love them forever. (I know for one there’s a Primal Scream song that would make a good starter for this project)

I Ran (sang here by Manoel Felciano) from LaChiusa’s intriguing Little Fish, a musical about quitting smoking but also about the larger things in life around it… I am more or less obsessed with the cast recording but especially with this song. If you can find and listen to Gavin Creel singing this then you are doing well.

Almost Out Of Water from Who Says You Can’t Dance To Misery by Tourettes featuring Anna Coddington. Just because it’s pretty and all doesn’t mean the grittier stuff on this album isn’t equally brilliant, but I do love the way Coddington’s gorgeous vocals float over the airy melody…. Hope he tours down to Wellington again soon.
____________________________________________________

Next time: I have Friday off work (time in lieu for working at Homegrown on a Saturday) so I’m looking forward to sleeping in and going for a leisurely morning blog. A while back I made this chocolate cake recipe from the Spaghetti Twists blog that was so fantastic that I’m going to share it with you all…maybe by that stage we will have finished the macaroni cheese leftovers in the fridge. Maybe. Don’t get me wrong, I love leftovers. It’s just that this macaroni cheese seems to be regenerating itself or something.

Oh yeah! And if you are a New Zealander, I totally recommend that you buy this month’s CLEO magazine, because I’m in it! For this blog! (Can’t imagine why else I’d be there) There’s also the rather fantastic Chloe Sevigny on the front plus a Bachelors calendar that comes recommended by my mum AND my Nana.

let’s have a ball girl and take our sweet little time about it

12 Comments
_________________________________________________

My nana is seriously fantastic. She’s the only person in my life who will txt me to say that RENT is on TV and that she’s going to tape it, while also being able to identify buttonholing and stitching on a opshop dress of mine as dating it back to the 1950s. She was one of the very first readers and supporters of this blog back in 2007 and has always been a positive presence in my life. As if all that weren’t enough, a while back she commented on a tofu-centric post on this blog with Tofu “Balls”, a recipe she “used heaps over 20 years ago.”

I guess the title isn’t overly inviting – anything with inverted commas seems a little hesitant. That said, these literally are balls of tofu – just because there’s not any meat doesn’t make these any less, erm, ballsy, so there’s no need for them to cower behind quotation marks. Amusing thought they may be.

All hesitancy aside, they’re really, really delicious. I did kind of tweak the recipe – I love tofu, I love rolled oats, but I don’t think I can face them together. The combination belongs back in the shadows of “over 20 years ago”…for everyone’s sake. That said, if you’re game, then certainly go ahead and use them instead of the breadcrumbs/ground almonds.

Tofu “Balls”

With thanks to Nana for the heads-up.

In a food processor, mix the following till a crumbly mixture forms.

1/2 cup chopped peanuts or cashews
1 finely chopped onion
2/3 cup soft breadcrumbs, or 1/2 cup ground almonds
1 egg (optional – leaving it out makes these vegan)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
2 Tablespoons Shoyu or soy sauce
1 block firm tofu (I used half, or two squares, from those four-packs of firm tofu you get from the vege market)

Roll into balls, not too large – about the size of the old 50c pieces, or a walnut. The second time I made these I rolled them in ground almonds which was rather nice, but the world won’t fall apart if you don’t do it. Heat a little rice bran oil in a wide pan, and cook till the balls are crisp and browned on all sides.

Nana also recommended a sauce made by bringing peanut butter, lemon juice and water to the boil in a pan while stirring with a spatula, although I imagine any kind of dipping sauce you have to hand would work with these – chilli sauce, for example…

Forget your fear of tofu and maybe your further fear of well-meaning vintage recipes involving tofu. These are so good! A crunchy without, nutty and mouthfilling like peanut butter within. The tofu has a really lovely fresh flavour which balances out the richness of the nuts, but the softness of the texture means that they really slow you down – which is why you don’t want to roll them too large. They went brilliantly with a crunchy green salad of sliced cabbage, sugar snap peas and avocado, plus soba noodles, slippery and cool with sesame oil and soy sauce. Because tofu is so awesome and kind of holds everything together you can afford to toy with these as you wish. If you wanted to you could also add into the food processor a number of ingredients…sesame seeds, tahini, sunflower seeds, lemon rind, chopped ginger, garlic…As well as being a very filling main meal, you could make them even smaller – like bonker marble sized – and serve with toothpicks and a variety of dipping sauces at your next soiree.
Busy times lately – Tim and I spent both Thursday and Friday night at the cocoon of body heat that is the San Francisco Bath House firstly to see Brooklyn – as in New York – band Dirty Projectors, then local sensations Mint Chicks last night. Dirty Projectors have this unusual, intriguing sound – kind of minimalistic, with wonky time signatures, chunky drumbeats and flutey harmonies that take the role of instruments in places. Occasionally the sound got a bit repetitive, (and all those “ehhh-ohhhs” make me think of the Tellytubbies) although if I could sing like the gorgeous ladies in the band I’d probably do the same thing over and over too. They all looked really happy though which tends to endear me to performers, and damnit if I haven’t been humming the stunning No Intentions constantly. I’m glad we went and saw them – there’s some extraordinary talent within the band, I just wonder where they’re going to go from here with their sound.
Two of the Dirty Projectors. They looked so young, and for some reason the more the girl on the left – the main female voice – belted, the younger she looked…
The Mint Chicks’ set last night was fantastic although so loud that I occasionally felt nauseous. A compliment? More than any other local band I can think of they always feel like A Big Deal whenever they roll into town. That said, the audience – largely composed of new-in-town or returning students – seemed a little disengaged. Like the couple who spent 90% of the time pashing extensively next to me. Why even leave the house! Hopefully it was a good experience for the Mint Chicks themselves, they all looked completely impassioned while onstage but who could know? The sound quality seemed decent, so the scrawlyness of their music translated really nicely into a live setting and didn’t turn into a incomprehensible blur of noise. Their older songs sounded as brilliant as ever and their newest track Bad Buzz was maybe my favourite moment – it’s such a ridiculously fantastic song as I clumsily tried to explain here. I hadn’t seen them live since 2006 so it was wonderful to catch them again, hopefully they stick around and keep on creating…
________________________________________________________

Title brought to you by: Ball and Biscuit from Elephant, the album you probably own if you’re a casual White Stripes fan. Casual we are not.
________________________________________________________

Music to blog by:

The Dirty Projectors’ No Intentions, as above, from their album Bitte Orca. See? Intriguing! Hummable!

I Cut Like A Buffalo from the Dead Weather’s debut album Horehound. The music video for this is compelling stuff. I hope sincerely that Jack White recreates that dance on stage when we see them live on the 17th. I don’t think I’ll be that functional on the 16th. 2005 seems a long time ago.

Patti LuPone singing Rainbow High – say what you will about Andrew Lloyd Webber, but the music to Evita is stunning, and this cabaret performance from LuPone at Les Mouches in 1980 is particularly ferocious. Makes me want to grab a microphone and snarl “so Christian Dior me!” too. Wish someone would stage a version of it here.
________________________________________________________

Next time: we’re having a combined Wellington Phoenix pre-game get-together/Rod Stewart Appreciation Day thing tomorrow (long story…actually no, that explains it all really) which I’m catering (self-imposedly) and the menu is growing more and more dizzying in proportions…no doubt I’ll have plenty to blog about. Like Nigella’s Girdlebuster Pie. Do you not want to know more with a name like that?

what’s that in the bread it’s gone to my head

17 Comments

That’s right I’m quoting Jesus Christ Superstar at you.

Sometimes I get really behind with what’s hot in food blogging. I mean this sincerely, not in some kind of “oh, aren’t I above it all” manner. I’m really just a bit useless. I’ve completely missed the waka with matcha-flavoured-everything, have never been brave enough to make macarons, I may never get an SLR lens, and I’ve only once used the word “umami” with any confidence. And only this weekend did I get around to paying any attention to the no-knead bread trend care of the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day crew. Seriously, people have been going nuts about this posse since about 2007 which is tantamount to forever in blog years. For whatever I lack though, I bet there’s not many food bloggers who could keep you abreast of both the local music scene and the non-local musical scene, even if you have no interest in either!

Witness my incredibly complicated bread plaiting skills. I’m not sure if it’s even really challah if there’s only three strands to your braid. Like mine.

So, the credo of these breadmakers is that you can easily incorporate breadmaking into your everyday life, using their relatively revolutionary no-knead method. It seems so simple that one wonders why we’re always told to knead bread in the first place, an almost wilfully difficult move. I came across them while hunting for a recipe for challah, that soft, sweet Jewish bread. Let it be known that I generally ignore Valentine’s Day – apart from the fact that it’s a bit nauseating and awkward, it seems disloyal to my aggrieved, unvalentined younger self to pretend like I’m accustomed to it now. But I do enjoy surprising Tim with a bit of dramatic baking now and then and blaming Valentine’s Day for covering the kitchen and myself in flour seems reasonable. I also anticipated that we could have any leftovers as French Toast for dinner on Monday night. Challah – the non-gift that keeps on giving.

Nigella Lawson, the person I usually turn to like a flower leaning towards the sun, despite repeatedly exclaiming her love of challah has never included a recipe in her books for it. For shame, Nidge. A quick search through Foodgawker and Tastespotting revealed how many, many bloggers were raving about the no-knead method. Now, I actually like kneading. I like the entire bread process. But I also am all for innovation and was curious to see if all this talk was justified. Plus this recipe included a hearty amount of butter, so my trust increased.

Isn’t it mountainous? Don’t you just want to climb it?

The no-knead method removes the very part of the process that most people aren’t keen on. All you do is stir together ingredients, leave them for two hours, shape, leave, and bake. No kneading whatsoever. It felt a little bizarre not plunging my hands into the soft dough but it rose rapidly, was very easy to shape into traditional-ish plaits, and rose almost alarmingly on its second sitting.

No-Knead Challah

Recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, via Mise en Place

To be fair, recipe probably chosen because of the high butter content, not the no-knead concept.

1 1/2 tablespoons (or sachets) instant yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons salt
1 3/4 cups lukewarm water
125g melted butter
1/2 cup honey
4 eggs
7 cups all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, mix together everything except the flour. Then add the flour and stir to make a stiff, soft dough. Cover loosely (don’t seal it off) and leave for 2 hours at room temperature till risen and flattened on top. At this point, divide the dough in half and divide each of these halves into three balls. With one set of three dough balls, roll them between your hands to make longer strands and plait them together on a tray lined with a sheet of baking paper. Repeat with the other three doughballs. Cover loosely with foil and leave to rise for a further hour and a half. Brush your loaves with a beaten egg and sprinkle with poppyseeds or sesame seeds if you wish, and bake at 180 C/350 F for 40 minutes.

 

Seriously, I think I’ve made breakfast cereal more complex than this. It’s every bit as simple as they claim. In terms of deliciousness this bread is off the chain. No mere sweetness pervades this flaky, moist bread – it has a honeyed, layered flavour that somehow cries out for even more butter to be spread across its feathery-soft cut slices. It’s just unbelievably good, especially considering the complete lack of effort that went into it.

Oh, baby do you know what that’s worth? Ooh heaven is a place on earth.

So, despite the fact that this bread already basically tastes like French Toast, I decided to do the whole breakfast-for-dinner thing again tonight. Slices of challah were dipped into cinnamon-warm, whisked eggs. A couple of precious rashers of bacon were fried in butter and set aside. Into that resiny, salty butter went the eggy bread. Once that was done, the whole lot was drizzled with the tiniest capful of actual maple syrup. It’s not something we could afford to eat every day, on too many levels, but it makes for one heck of a special dinner. We hardly ever have bacon (having lofty ideals of purchasing only “happy pig” products is also very expensive) and this is the first time I’ve ever bought real maple syrup. It was certainly a heady experience – salty, darkly sweet, bacony, eggy, buttery…pretty magical stuff.

The only problem with this bread is that it makes me incredibly drowsy. I can actually feel my body growing heavy and tired after eating it. While growing sleepier I imagine baking a giant challah so I can just slumber on top of it, chewing pinched handfuls when I require sustenance…

Title brought to you by: The Last Supper from Jesus Christ Superstar. I saw this musical in 1994 with all manner of well-known New Zealanders in it – Jay Laga’ia, Margaret Urlich, Frankie Stevens, Tim Beveridge… It affected me greatly – I was into fashion design at the time and can still remember drawing countless, perhaps slightly misguided pictures of Mary Magdalene sitting on a donkey, wearing a plunging burgundy velvet dress, multicoloured shawl, and Janet Jackson-style microphone. if you ever hunt down the cast recording it’s so rewarding. By which I mean it’s like crack for the ears.

Music these days:

Electric Wire Hustle, They Don’t Want. We saw this super smooth local trio at San Francisco Bath House on Saturday night, and they were very cool. Like, they launched into their encore with a five minute drum solo. Mesmerising stuff.

Lullaby of Broadway from the original cast recording of 42nd Street, which I found at Slow Boat Records this weekend – I think this might have been the first musical I ever saw, in about 1991 with most the fabulous Australian cast – Nancye Hayes, Leonie Page (who I’d go on to see in West Side Story and Me and My Girl), and so on. I distinctly remember Mum saying she wouldn’t buy the cast recording it if it didn’t have the tap dance sounds on it, luckily for me it did. That cassette got absolutely thrashed, but I can’t imagine how they recorded it all. Listening to it again, in all its old-Broadway pomp and circumstance reminds me why I loved this so much in the first place – revival, anyone?

Next time: This week is very busy as we’re gearing up for Homegrown this weekend, it’s likely to be pretty enormous. I’m going to be working there all day till it’s done and it will be exhausting but hopefully pretty rewarding and enjoyable also. But exhausting. So I’d better steer clear of the challah if I don’t want to end up fast asleep, snoring softly in a guitar case somewhere. And I will make that vegan banana cake!

to yoga, to yoghurt, to rice and beans and cheese

5 Comments

____________________________________________________

Today I spilled boiling hot tea on myself three times (and once on my office chair). I burnt my left hand on a hot pan while cooking dinner and whacked the other hand on the corner of the bench as I walked into it instead of past it. Finally I dropped beetroot on our telephone. Truly. It’s like I’m in a Florence & The Machine song or something. I’m not sure if clumsiness begets more clumsiness – I know from experience that it’s really, really easy to have one thing go wrong in the morning and then not even give the rest of the day a chance to do right by you, when that happens there’s no doubt you’re going to walk into doorframes. But today I woke up feeling relatively optimistic. I guess it just shows…I’m plain clumsy.

Such clumsiness is partially the reason why you’re more likely to see recipes on this blog that don’t involve sugar thermometers or weighing egg whites or…you know, that sort of thing. Rice and Beans involves – at least the way I make it – none of the above. It’s stress-free, one-pan, traditional comfort food. Not traditional to me personally, but sometimes just knowing it’s comfort food to someone is in itself comforting…right? And I always have room for adopting new traditions.

Rice and Beans

I kind of made this up on the fly, inspired by a dish I had at the amazingly good Amigos on Tory Street.

Heat a wide, non-stick pan and toss in a finely chopped onion and plenty of finely chopped garlic. The first time I made this I added a diced carrot, the second time I added a diced zucchini. Once this has softened a little, without browning too much, add a pinch of smoked paprika, a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard, a teaspoon of coriander seeds and 2/3 cup of long grain rice and stir through. Pour in 250mls water, cover, and simmer for five minutes. Add more water, stir, cover – the kind of rice you use affects the amount of water you need and basmati seems to need more water than other kinds. Add a splash of beer, a drained tin of corn kernels and a drained tin of red beans. Add more liquid if the rice still needs it, partially cover and let it simmer over a low heat for a further ten minutes. Serves 2 generously. Maybe cover with feathery, torn coriander leaves or stir grated cheese through if you like.

This is one of the cheapest, nicest, heartiest dinners you can make for yourself. It’s quicker if you use canned beans but cheaper if you take the time to cook up dried – up to you. The savoury warmth of the spices and the beer against the soft, grainy beans and rice is simple but incredible. And, as you will know once I’m done telling you, rice and beans are quoted in La Vie Boheme which put the idea in my head in the first place. (Truly. Was listening to it, thought, “huh, am now hungry for rice and beans”. Power of suggestion, right there.)

Sunny Santa Fe would be…nice

While you’re buying red beans for the above recipe, you might as well stock up good and proper for this Santa Fe Ceasar Salad. The recipe comes from Simon Rimmer’s The Accidental Vegetarian, and the first hundred times I flicked past it I was all “hmm, bit random” but all of a sudden on flick-through #101 it seemed like a something I wanted to try. Allow me to fast-track this process for you and just tell you to make it already.

Santa Fe Ceasar Salad

I didn’t use any chillies. I had some pita bread that I used instead of tortillas, and I didn’t have any parmesan to hand so just left it out. Still so good.

1 Cos lettuce, trimmed
2 soft corn tortillas
1 tin pinto or kidney beans, drained
2 red chillies, deseeded and chopped
1 ripe avocado, chopped
fresh coriander leaves

Dressing:

125mls good mayonnaise
125mls plain unsweetened yoghurt
1 garlic clove, crushed
Juice of 1 lime or lemon
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
100g freshly grated parmesan cheese

Whisk dressing ingredients together, set aside. Break up the corn tortillas, dry-fry in a hot pan till a little charred. Tear up the lettuce leaves, place in a bowl with the cooked tortillas, drained beans, avocado and chillies. Fold through the dressing, top with coriander leaves and sprinkle with parmesan to serve.




Clearly, the dressing is sublime, what with the eggy, oily mayonnaise, rich garlic and sharp vinegar coming together. The crunch of tortilla croutons against those grainy red beans and the crisp lettuce is marvelous. It’s surprisingly filling and while not entirely healthy, you could certainly do worse. You could have an actual ceasar salad.

_____________________________________________________

Title comes to you via: Surprise! La Vie Boheme from RENT, the musical that inspired the title of this blog and also inspired me to go to both Levin and Palmerston North to see local productions of it. I love this bit of the musical so much that I’m going to direct lucky you to both a stealthy clip of the Original Broadway Cast in 1996 and the altogether shinier 2005 film version where most of the still-stunning original cast reprised their roles. Oh sure, you could be snide about a bunch of self-titled bohemians prancing about shouting out their carefully chosen influences, I say this is laziness and it’s much better to look beyond that and actually love it for the joyfulness, the inclusiveness, the catchiness, and the awesomeness of rhyming “German wine, turpentine, Gertrude Stein”…
_____________________________________________________

Music while I type:

Laurie Anderson’s O Superman which you can find on the album Big Science. Breathy but direct, strangely meditative, this song made itself known to me via a few different channels – a John Peel compilation, an American Lit paper with a delightfully passionate teacher (“Language! It’s a virus!”) and RENT (as in, all roads lead to) with Idina Menzel’s character Maureen being clearly something of an homage to Anderson as witnessed in the sublime Over The Moon. Seeing The Groove Guide twitter about this song today, plus hearing another of her songs on Radio Active this evening made it feel like I’d be lying if I didn’t put it down here.

Bucky Done Gun by M.I.A from her album Arular. I first saw the music video to this song in a hotel room in Germany in 2005, it’s as acid-bright as her hand-penned album artwork. It was about the most exciting thing I’d heard in a year clogged with Razorlight et al. Five years on it still thrills and I still wish I could handle a jumpsuit like her.

Matthew and Son. It’s my absolute favourite Cat Stevens song. You know I could tell you why, but I’ll let Mr Cat Steven’s snake hips in this video do the talking for me.

__________________________________________________

Next time: I found this highly do-able recipe for vegan banana cake on the Savvy Soybean’s blog and long to try it. I appreciate both savviness and soybeans in a person so have no doubt this recipe will be good.

"eggs milk and flour, pancake power"

12 Comments

Without wanting to sound like Kristy Thomas pitching for the Kid-Kit – do you remember when you were a child, and you went to a friend’s house, and it was so much more of a heightened experience than your own existence at home? Their toys seemed cooler, they had a haybarn, they were allowed to stay up later, they called their parents by their first names… Sometimes there was the disquieting reverse of that where leaving home for someone else’s affirms how comparatively safe you feel in your own space and how you just have to hold on and let the minutes pass until you can return – ah, childhood. I realise of course that I’m looking at this through the fairly privileged gaze of someone who grew up with loving parents and so on.

But anyway, I have this distinct memory of being down the road at my then best friend’s place, and her mum made us pancakes in the middle of the day for lunch. We ate them with sugar, lemon juice, whipped cream and – and this which I remember well over a decade on – leftover chocolate icing. For lunch. Have you seen Scarface? (I’ve been in the same room while it was on, which was plenty.) You know that scene where he’s surrounded by mountains of cocaine? These pancakes-for-lunch with chocolate icing were like the equivalent of that for 9 year old me. But you know, somewhat less alarming.

Living away from home means these childhood thrills can be recreated at your leisure and while it’s obviously not the same, a decision to have pancakes for dinner still comes with a certain satisfaction, a feeling that you’re Pippi Longstocking or something. Whimsy aside, pancakes do make a fantastic unconventional dinner – filling, cheap, easy to eat with the fingers, sociable, not too fussy. Tim and I decided it had been too long, too, too long since we’d seen Thoroughly Modern Millie (possibly I was the stronger force on this decision being made) and we invited our friend Ange over to watch it. For some reason the idea of pancakes for supper seemed amazingly delightful too – so that’s what we had.

I used a recipe of Nigella Lawson’s from Nigella Bites. I replaced the milk in the pancakes with soymilk to make them dairy-free and truly, these were the best pancakes I’ve ever made. I’ve made some sad, rubbery pancakes in my time and these reaffirmed my faith in the practice. They were fluffy, light, well behaved, quick to bubble, and a pleasing even nut-brown. I’d like to think it was the magic of soy that made this happen.

American Pancakes

From Nigella Bites

30g/2 Tablespoons melted butter (I replaced this with 1 T Rice Bran oil)
225g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
300mls full fat milk OR magical soymilk
2 eggs
Butter for frying (again – used a little rice bran oil)

Beat all the ingredients together, or just blitz them in a food processor. Heat a good non-stick frying pan, add a little butter or oil, then get pancaking. You can make these as large or small as you wish – I kept them relatively small but do as you please. When you see bubbles emerging on the surface, flip them over and cook for a minute or so on the other side. I find a silicon spatula useful for this.

I piled them onto a plate covered in tinfoil and they kept perfectly happy until the mixture was used up, so don’t feel you have to feed everyone but remain slavishly chained to the stovetop. Makes enough to thoroughly satiate three hungry people, could probably feed four really. Nigella reckons “25 pancakes the size of jam jar lids”.

To go with I made the blueberry syrup from Nigella Express. Had some bloobs (as I’ve been calling them, not annoying at all!) that I found on special at Moore Wilson’s and it seemed like as good a use of them as any, as well as making the pancake dinner seem like a bit more of an occasion. It took all of five minutes to make but tasted relatively complicated – what more can you ask from a recipe?

Blueberry Syrup

From Nigella Express

Not just for pancakes – this would be brilliant on vanilla ice cream and as Nigella says, it does become rather jammy the next day and is perfect spread on buttery toast.

125ml (1/2 a cup) maple syrup or honey
200g blueberries

Put both ingredients into a pan and bring to the boil. Let it bubble gently for 2-3 minutes then pour into a jug. Like so!

I can’t afford maple syrup – not even with my shoes from The Warehouse and op shop sweaters – and I have a feeling that even if I had some I’d be too scared to use it. I’m okay with this, and used honey instead. I wouldn’t recommend using fake maple syrup, as there’s only two ingredients and blueberries are so beautiful that you don’t want to be gumming them up with synthetic flavourings.

Ange provided the lemons from her bountiful tree. The pancakes were, as I said, pretty fabulous. The satiny blueberry syrup was gorgeous – thick and sweet and studded with juice-bursting berries. It was a good night.

Am heading up to Auckland tomorrow for meetings, then going home to see my family, then on Monday Tim and I are back in Auckland for the Laneway music festival. Which would be why it’s 10.36pm and I still haven’t packed yet…I’m getting really pretty hyped up for Laneway, the line up is both ridiculous but manageable which is a kind of a miracle for music festivals these days. It’s going to be an intense day but I’m really, really looking forward to it.

Title brought to you by: the Pancake Crimp from The Mighty Boosh, Series Three. Howard Moon enters Vince Noir’s bloodstream to save him from the Spirit of Jazz, and has to remind his protective white blood cells that they’re friends, reminding them of the good times they had making pancakes. You know?

On Shuffle while I type:

Cornet Man by the superlative-worthy Barbra Streisand, from the Original Broadway Cast recording of Funny Girl. Bought this from Slow Boat the other day, had been meaning to for a long while and did not regret it. Her voice is just gorgeous, all rich and sinuous.

Tender by Blur from their album 13. I love this song so much and have since the moment I saw it for the first time on Video Hits back in 1998…actually I wonder if I saw it on MTV Europe? Maybe it was too late for that. Anyway, I don’t really care if the lyrics are a bit appalling or whatever, it’s such a lovely tune – it almost seems broken up into hooky compartments which come at you one after the other – and every time I hear it I feel all comforted, like I’m wrapped up in a woolly blanket.

Walk on Gilded Splinters, by Paul Weller from the Wire Soundtrack …And All The Pieces Matter. Because the music in The Wire is 99% diegetic, it’s nice to hear the music stretched out comfortably in a compilation like this. I love the guitars in the song and how it shuffles along but not without punch…I just love this song.

Next time: I made these fantastic raw cookies the other day – it’s not often I get enthused about the concept of raw baking but these were not only easy and practical, they were seriously good tasting. Once I get back to Wellington…you’ll be hearing about them.

lime warp

18 Comments

I have never been a fussy eater. But when I was younger, and I don’t think this classifies me as “fussy”, olives were too salty, ginger was too spicy, and I couldn’t quite see the point of black liquorice. As my tastebuds have aged, and no doubt reduced in numbers, I can suddenly eat olives by the oily handful and, well, the briefest of glances over this blog will show how much I love ginger now. Liquorice I still have no time for. There’s a photo of me on my first birthday showing how I, with quiet resolve, plucked a black jellybean from my birthday cake and chewed on it. The photo shows my immediate distaste upon chewing. I’m very sure that if I ate a black jellybean now I’d pull a pretty similar face. And while my tastes have expanded, I still have that Homer Simpson-like quality of “Ooooh look, food, I’m going to eat it all!” documented at that birthday party long ago.

I first tried preserved lemons last year when my godmother gifted me a jar of them that she’d made herself. I was never exposed to them as a child – Morrocan chic hadn’t quite reached the rural outpost where I lived – but I’m sure they would have seemed aggressively salty and sour to my young self. Right now, to my current collective of tastebuds, they are so, ridiculously good. I’m pretty sure it’s not how they’re supposed to be used, but I love just eating slices of lemon whole, straight from the jar. This Christmas just gone, inspired by the now long-consumed preserved lemons I was given, and hungry for more, I decided to make my own as edible presents for people. Obviously I couldn’t blog about this prior to Christmas, but now that we’re safely in January…it’s on.

Predictably, I turn to Nigella Lawson and her engaging book How To Be A Domestic Goddess. In the final chapter, all about preserves and pickles and jams and other exciting things, she has a recipe called “Edith Afif’s Lime Pickles”. The recipe is a little quirky but seemed straightforward enough, and the end result is exactly like preserved lemons, but with limes in their place. I couldn’t afford as many limes as Nigella asked for so used a mix of limes and lemons and didn’t feel bad about it at all. Limes are expensive but lemons are not, the salt I found for about a dollar at the supermarket and the olive oil doesn’t have to be fancy so all up these are a rather tidily priced gift. As I believe in self-gifting, I set aside my own personal stash as well as divvying up the fruit slices into pretty jars for other people.

Edith Afif’s Lime Pickles

From Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess

10 limes (or a mixture of lemons and limes)
1 kg coarse salt
Approximately 500mls olive oil, not extra virgin
1 tablespoon tumeric
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
3 dried chilli peppers, crumbled.

I have a confession to make. I completely forgot to add the tumeric and am retroactively kicking myself about it as I’m sure it would have looked gorgeous and tasted amazing. But the end result is still fantastic without it so don’t fear or go on a dazed mission to the supermarket if you don’t have any in the cupboard.

  • Cut the fruit into eighths lengthways and cover the bottom of a baking dish with them. Cover the limes in the salt and then put in the freezer overnight. I actually forgot about them for a couple of days and they were perfectly fine.
  • Remove from the freezer and thaw. Rinse under running water in a colander. I saved some of the salt which had absorbed an amazingly citrussy flavour and used it on a poached egg. A worthwhile recycling effort. Shake the lime/lemon slices to remove most of the water, and divide between clean jars (fills roughly 3 x 350ml jars).
  • Mix the oil and spices together in a measuring jug then pour into each jar. Add more oil if the slices aren’t covered.
  • Close the jars, put away in a cool dark cupboard for a week or so – the longer the sit, the more ridiculously good they’ll taste.

Nigella says “you either have a sour tooth or you don’t” (and I maintain that I have a fat tooth, if not several) but I think these have mainstream appeal. The sharp, satiny slices of lime and lemon give this incredibly savoury, mouth-filling citrussyness, not overly salty even though they were blanketed in salt at one point. Sliced or chopped finely they add a softly sour kick to basically anything – salads, couscous, pasta, tagines, anything Mediterranean. As an added bonus the oil surrounding the fruit slices takes on a gorgeous flavour and can be spooned from the jar and used as a useful condiment in its own right. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t use these in something. Even though they sound like something other people do and you don’t, preserved lemons (or limes…or lemons) are completely within reach and not difficult at all. It’s a tired argument but if I can handle making them without any ensuing trauma, basically anyone could.

So, I heard this wacky rumour that food blogs need to have decent photos. Which is a shame because I made this amahzing Feta Bread on Tuesday night and even though it tasted like a dream it didn’t photograph so nice. While I was considering just uploading my ugly photos anyway as good photography isn’t so much a right as a pleasant surprise round these parts, I think I’ll just quickly share the recipe instead.

Feta Bread

From Simon Rimmer’s The Accidental Vegetarian

This makes two large loaves. You could halve the recipe if this scares you, but you will eat all this bread, trust me.

  • 15g (2 sachets) instant dried yeast
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 600mls/1 pint warm water
  • 1 kilo strong bread flour
  • 2 T salt
  • 4 T olive oil
  • 350g firm feta cheese, crumbled – I used Whitestone which was perfect – solid chunks of sharp cheese. If you use a softer variety it will likely disperse into the dough and you won’t get any noticeable bits of feta in the bread, but it’s not the end of the world.
  • Handful of mint leaves

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in a little of the water. This will take about five minutes. Tip in the flour, the rest of the water, and mix to a dough. Knead for 7-10 minutes until it forms a springy, firm dough that isn’t sticky. You may need to add a tiny bit of extra flour or water but go very gently with this. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, leave it to rise for about 2 hours. It will rise to spookily large heights. At this point, punch it down and knead the oil, mint and cheese into the dough. What Simon Rimmer doesn’t tell you is that this is a mission and a half. The dough doesn’t really absorb the cheese at all and you kind of have to prod the bits of cheese in with your fingers and hope for the best. Coax the dough into two loaf shapes on a paper-lined tray, cover with a clean teatowel or a bit of tinfoil and leave at room temperature for 40 minutes. Finally, bake at 180 C/350 F for 30 – 40 minutes, which doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s just right.

This bread is off the scale good – softly chewy, almost buttery in flavour which is odd considering there’s none in there, crusty, and punctuated by chunks of gorgeous feta cheese and cool mint leaves. You could actually leave out the feta and still have wonderful bread – it’s not exactly a recipe I can afford to make every week for that very reason. But it does make a lot of bread, and amazing stuff it is – shoved in a sandwich press for a minute or so, it makes the most incredible toast. The first loaf didn’t last long but we sliced up the second, bagged it and froze it, toasting slices straight from the freezer. We finished the last of it yesterday and I’m actually feeling a bit fragile knowing that it’s no longer in our lives. The feta aside, there’s nothing unusual or different about the method so, putting aside the possibility that I am a bread whisperer, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher why it turned out tasting so outrageously delicious.

I’m feeling much better than I was at the start of this week, which is good of course. On Thursday we attended an awesomely elegant book club initiated by our ex-flatmate, but not ex-friend Ange, and last night we finished Season 4 of The Wire. Gruelling? I felt like how a potato must feel after being mashed. Absolutely mind-blowingly good though, but now I’m torn about whether to recommend it or not – it’s utterly brilliant but you get emotionally invested in characters against your will and none of them are really ‘safe’. That’s all I’ll say…Tomorrow is that rare delight – a public holiday. (Wellington Anniversary Day) This year’s a bit desperate as two of the usual public holidays have the useless bad timing to fall on a Saturday so I’ll have to enjoy tomorrow even more. I’m sure I’ll be able to entertain myself, if nothing else the fact that it’s a Monday and I get a sleep in will be pretty fantastic.

Title comes to you via: Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Show…those of you who wanted to have probably already seen the film so instead I link you to a clip of the utterly lovely Raul Esparza of the 2000 Broadway revival cast vibrato-ing his lungs off. I love the music from Rocky Horror, it reminds me of the score to Hair in some ways because it’s so joyful and all over the place and the lyrics and melody don’t flow in the way you might expect it to. “It’s just a jump to the left…”

On Shuffle while I type:

We’re going to Laneway music festival next Monday so in honour of that fact we’ve been refresher-coursing the acts that are going to be there including…

Katrina by the Black Lips, I love their scrappy, poppy sound and can’t wait to see them live.

I Had Lost My Mind by the deeply intriguing Daniel Johnston. 

Dog Days Are Over by Florence and the Machine. It would be easy to narrow one’s eyes in dislike at Florence Welch, what with her unattainably long legs and doe eyes and tendency towards music videos where she canters about with flowers in her hair and floaty capes and no trousers. But her music is gorgeous and this song in particular is pretty astounding – she’s closing the festival and I’m very excited about hearing her sing it live.

Next time: Last week we invited Ange over for pancakes and Thoroughly Modern Millie (ie the second greatest film in existence, after A Mighty Wind, and that is truth.) The pancakes were flipping marvelous and I think I got a decent photo or two out of them so…that’s what you’re likely to be seeing.

such a little thing makes such a big difference

11 Comments

There comes a point, when you’ve absent-mindedly eaten half a bowl of raspberry flavoured buttercream icing while spooning it ungracefully into an icing bag and are starting to feel a touch queasy, where you start to question the rationality of embarking on cupcakes at all. Luckily cupcakes are pretty things and the sight of them makes you remember why.

Can you tell where I started getting ideas above my station?

I’ve spent the last two days prepping for and working at the Big Day Out music festival in Auckland and partway through all the madness it seemed like a brilliant idea to make cupcakes when I returned to Wellington. It was a fantastic, and I think successful day, but also very very long and draining, and I haven’t been feeling so well this week. For some reason my brain delivered me “cupcakes” as the comedown cure for all this. Who am I to argue with myself? It has been a long time since I’ve made any- the last time would have been when my flatmate was filming the intro to the Rising Star award for Handle The Jandal and needed my assistance.

I use a recipe of Nigella Lawson’s, and variations or repeats of it appear in every last one of her books. I often wonder about cupcakes, (especially given what I guess you could call their pop-culture status) whether they were invented by some entrepreneurial type who hooked their thumbs thoughtfully into their belt-loops, rocked back and forward and then said in an auspicious manner, “Team: today we sell sponge cakes. Tomorrow we’re going to make them one twelfth of the size but sell them for six times the price. Trust me. People will blog exclusively about them, replace their wedding cakes for them, and consume them in an influential manner on shows about sassy New York women in high heels.” I mean I wonder, but not enough to actually google the history of the cupcake in case my well-rounded theory gets shattered. I’m tired. Let me have this.

The making of these cupcakes meant I got to try out two of my Christmas presents – a jar of vanilla paste and an icing kit. The vanilla paste is summin’ else, its intensely vanilla fragrance rising up and curling round your head as soon as you open the jar lid. It’s a thick syrup, dark and gritty with vanilla seeds and smells so heavenly that I sincerely want to smear myself with it and run down the streets flinging it at people by the spoonful. Luckily for the good folk of Wellington, it’s too expensive for that kind of behaviour. The cupcakes were gratifyingly studded with vanilla seeds, almost as though someone had dropped iron filings into the batter (not entirely implausible, knowing how clumsy I am.) You can find some mighty tempting and elaborately iced cupcakes in shops, but these are a humble and relaxed version. And they’re not audaciously priced.



Spot the vanilla seeds!


Cupcakes

From every single Nigella book in existence.

  • 125g soft butter
  • 125g sugar
  • 125g self raising flour
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 Tablespoon milk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla paste or vanilla extract, optional

Set your oven to 200 C or 390 F and line a muffin tray with paper cases. Or in my case, use the very nifty silicone cupcake liners gifted by family members a year or two back. Put all the ingredients in the food processor and blitz till it’s looking good and batter-y; or do as I do and cream the butter and sugar, and once they’re light and airy beat in the eggs. Add the flour, the milk and the vanilla and beat together. Drop spoonfuls into the paper liners and bake for 15 – 20 minutes till golden and puffy. Allow to cool before icing however you like.

These are wonderfully buttery, tender, spongy little cakes, and the vanilla flavour really shone, through the simplicity of the ingredients. Topped with pink, raspberry flavoured icing they’re quite the delightful mouthful. They’re not exactly useful, but they do taste fantastic and I feel distinctly soothed and defrazzled now that I’ve made them, like someone has taken a GHD straightening iron to my life. That said, I’m still not 100% unsick. These cupcakes are more palliative than completely restorative in nature but it’s a start.
_______________________________________________________________________

Title comes at you via: Morrissey’s song Such A Little Thing Makes Such A Big Difference, which you can find on his gem of a live album Beethoven Was Deaf. a typically cumbersome-of-title tune. Like the cupcakes, it’s been a while since I’ve quoted Morrissey and it’s so rainy and cold here in Wellington even though it’s supposed to be the middle of summer that it just felt right to put him in here.
________________________________________________________________________

On Shuffle while I type/sneeze

Downtime by locals Kidz In Space from their EP Episode 001: Chasing Hayley, who were seriously fantastic while occupying our stage at BDO. A head-nodder if ever I heard one.

Gershwin’s Stairway To Paradise as sung by Rufus Wainwright. Tim and I, (both feeling under the weather) were watching a Broadway documentary and it occurred to me that I hadn’t listened to any Gershwin in too, too long. A difficult choice but I think Stairway To Paradise is my favourite song of theirs. So optimistic…so beautiful.
________________________________________________________________________

Next time: well, hopefully I’ll not be feeling so seedy. I really don’t like being sick in the middle of summer (admittedly, the weather here in Wellington is hopeless) but unfortunately my immune system is unmoved by the stern telling off I’m giving it. I’m usually fairly robust so I’ll surely bounce back from whatever this creeping malaise is. I’ve also bought what’s probably the last of the season’s asparagus to make what Nigella calls Pasta Salad Primavera…which is making me feel perkier just typing it out.

the air, the air is everywhere

12 Comments

__________________________________________________

I got back to Wellington yesterday evening, after a week’s camping at the same beach my family and I have camped at since 1986. This constant bookend to each year of my life means I fall into a pleasingly familiar pattern once in the camping frame of mind…read books, dip toe doubtfully in water at the beach, drink gin, observe fat woodpigeons in wonder, go for walks, read more books etc… While letting all that go isn’t fun, I’m very, very happy to be back in the city where mosquitos don’t seem to exist. I got so ridiculously bitten this time round, my legs resemble a topographical map of the Hunua Ranges.

All awkward itching aside, I had a seriously wonderful break. Lazy breakfasts merged into lazy lunches, books were read, long conversations were had with family, that sort of thing. For some reason the birdlife this year was particularly bold, but in a cute, Disney-esque way that makes you want to stride through the forest while singing scales and engaging in dialogue with squirrels. Or something. I managed to catch up with lots of family and also with one of my very best friends who I don’t see very often, which was fantastic. Unfortunately Tim wasn’t able to come to the beach because Starbucks stops for no man (and to be fair, he needed the money) and I suspect my family was even more disappointed than I was that he couldn’t make it along. …

Since we weren’t going to be seeing each other for a while, on the night before I flew up to Auckland to go camping I thought I’d make us a decent dinner, of souffle and chocolate mousse. I didn’t plan to have such a glam dinner menu – it was more a case of “what on earth is in the cupboard”. I guess I wouldn’t be much of a food blogger if my scraped-together meal didn’t involve separating eggs and dark chocolate.

Both recipes came from that most seminal of all seminal texts, How To Eat by Nigella Lawson. I love coming back to this book – I bought it back in my first year of flatting when I hardly had any money for rent and bills, let alone enormous fancy cookbooks. But it has more than paid for itself since then. Actually that’s a lie, between the pomegranates and the vermouth and the endless variations on homemade custard this book may well have financially crippled me and could be the reason Tim and I haven’t been on a holiday since we started living together this time four years ago.

Both recipes are both easier than they sound, even though there’s some egg-white whisking involved. Yeah, separating eggs is never fun, but there’s something about the word ‘souffle’ that still equates to ‘death-defying act of cookery’ in many people’s minds. You can choose to capitalise on this and win their gasps of admiration when you casually place a souffle in front of them, or you can just own up that they’re not difficult at all. Doesn’t bother me.

Notice the nice salad servers in the background – Christmas gift from Tim’s parents.

So, I altered this recipe a tiny bit in that it was originally a pea souffle but all I had was soybeans and goat’s cheese…yeah, I know. It should really be the other way round.

Goat’s Cheese and Soybean Souffle

Although soybeans (or edamame) aren’t normally paired with cheese, their soft nutty flavour makes them seem like they should. If you want to make the original pea souffle, and it’s really really good, just replace the soybeans and cheese with 120g frozen peas and 85g gruyere or something similar.

150g frozen soybeans
30g butter, plus more for greasing
15g flour
125mls (1/2 a cup) full fat milk
pinch of nutmeg
50-100g goat’s cheese or feta cheese, roughly chopped
2 eggs

Set the oven to 200 C, putting in a baking tray when you do this, and butter 2 x 250ml ramekins. Melt 15g butter in a pan and cook the soybeans till they are softened. Set aside. A souffle is basically white sauce with eggs and other things stirred in, so you need your white sauce first. Melt the second 15g of butter, and stir in the flour, letting it bubble away slightly before tipping in the milk and stirring constantly over a low heat till smooth. Remove from heat.

Separate the eggs, and stir the yolks into the white sauce, then add the soybeans, goat’s cheese and nutmeg. In a metal bowl, whisk the egg whites with a small pinch of salt till frothy and standing up in soft peaks. This is fairly important as it’s the air bubbles trapped in the egg whites that are going to give the souffle the push it needs. Using a metal spoon, put a good dollop of egg whites into the yolk mixture and stir it in to ‘lighten’ the mixture. Then fold the rest of the egg whites in, not beating it toooooo vigorously but not too fearfully either. Divide all this between the two ramekins, place them on the baking tray and shut the door carefully. Immediately turn the heat down to 180 C. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, and serve immediately while they’re still risen and gorgeous – they will deflate, it doesn’t make you a bad person.

Mine rose higher than this, I swear! Taking photos just gave them time to get all…deflatey.

These taste SO good. Intensely puffy in texture. Strangely it’s the soybeans providing a buttery, creamy flavour while the rich goat’s cheese gives a lemony sharpness, rather than the other way round. Definitely worth the little bit of effort that goes into it – these look and taste gorgeous.

The chocolate mousse we had while watching Season 4 of The Wire. Don’t worry, we actually talked to each other while eating the souffle. The Wire time is quality time. The recipe comes from Nigella’s chapter on children’s food (which is possibly my most-used chapter in How To Eat, whatever that says about my eating.)

Nigella’s recipe uses milk chocolate and golden syrup. I only had dark chocolate and honey so I used this instead. If you keep the dark chocolate instead of her originally specified milk, it makes this mousse dairy free.

Chocolate Mousse

100g dark chocolate
1 1/2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon clear honey
2 eggs, separated. Obviously because of the uncooked-egg thing, you want these to be nice eggs.

Over a very low heat (or in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water if you’re nervous), melt together the chocolate, the honey, and the water. Remove from heat. In a separate clean metal bowl, whisk the egg whites till stiff peaks form. Nigella says it’ll be easier if you wipe the surface of a cut lemon half over the bowl before you start; I believe her. Beat the egg yolks into the slightly cooled chocolate mixture. Take a dollop of egg white and stir it briskly into the chocolate/yolk mixture which will, as with the souffle, lighten it up a bit. Then gently but firmly fold the rest of the egg white mixture in with a metal spoon. Divide between two smallish ramekins, around 250 ml capacity. Nigella says to chill it for 6 hours, I’d say you could get away with an hour or two. Eat.

Possibly because of the lack of cream, this mousse was a little different in texture to what I expected – it had settled into almost a chocolate pudding rather than anything light and fluffy. No harm done, it was still completely amazing. Silkily rich but not overly heavy, this mousse tasted of nothing but chocolate, so don’t be put off by the slim list of ingredients.
__________________________________________________

Title comes to you from: The song Air sung by the gorgeous Kacie Sheik, from the Broadway cast recording of Hair, as a salute to the significant reliance on air bubbles in the recipes I gave you. I am legit obsessed with this album. You may have noticed it popping up occasionally here. So it must be good, right? It has indeedy been getting a lot of repeat visits, this album of the current Broadway revival cast, starring the lovely Gavin Creel who bears the heavy crown of being one of the few stars of Broadway that Tim likes. Today I also started listening to the original Broadway cast recording (ie, the 1968 one) and fell in love with that too. Everyone sounds like Joan Baez! So you might as well try the original like me while you’re at it.
__________________________________________________

On Shuffle these days:

Well, I’ve been away from technology for seven days and didn’t really have my iPod on while out camping – it was mostly birdcalls and the sound of tent zippers for me as far as music went. But today I bought the soundtrack to The Wackness, which is a very enjoyable listen, with the same warm, eyes-half-closed summer vibe the movie has. I don’t normally go in for soundtracks but this one is the reason why…I occasionally do. Right now Sam Cooke is providing a mellow background to my Sunday night.
__________________________________________________

Next time: My summer holiday is officially over – I’m back in the office tomorrow. This week is going to be busy however as I’m flying up to Auckland to work with the Big Day Out music festival. But there will be cooking! I’ve been to the vege market for the first time in weeks and feeling good about connecting with the kitchen again. In the meantime, if anyone has any remedies for speedy healing of mosquito bites I’d be most grateful…

here i go again on my own

12 Comments

_________________________________________________

According to Nigella Lawson, asparagus with a fried egg on top is “Asparagus Holstein.” A hamburger with the top half of the bun removed and a fried egg laid on top is a “Hamburger Holstein.” Riddle me this, Nigella. If I were to wear a fried egg as a protein-enriched hat, would that make me a Laura Holstein? Sorry everyone…Tim has gone to Palmerston North for the rest of the week and so this blog is basically the only outlet I have for my countless inanities. Countless.

I will not lie: yesterday at work was pretty stressful. It didn’t even start off well, what with me getting a particle of something unidentifiable stuck in my eye for about an hour first thing in the morning. The shining respite in the middle of it all was a client lunch – specifically, bringing themselves and an enormous feast over to our office – which culminated in some really bloody good blue cheese and perky chocolate topped eclairs. Between eating three helpings of everything there, and then the unexpectedly hot weather, I wasn’t all that hungry when I got home from work. Not that a lack of committed hunger would normally, unfortunately, stop me from eating large. I actually respected my appetite though, and made a serene meal of lightly steamed asparagus and soft boiled egg, as per a suggestion in Nigella’s seminal text How To Eat. I’m pretty hopeless at boiling and poaching eggs, normally Tim’s job, so it was lucky that Nigella had a recipe for boiled egg in Feast…otherwise it would have been asparagus Holstein for me.

It might sound a bit poncy and not like actual eating, but it’s truly delicious and a perfect solo meal if you can get the boiled egg just perfectly soft and then dip the asparagus spears into it before eating them. Plenty of salt, naturally – I used sparkly and flavoursome pink Himalayan salt, a Christmas gift last year.

To recreate it for yourself, should you find yourself coming home after a hot and stressful day interrupted by overeating, completely alone and in need of something calming, light and not too taxing on the arteries:

Asparagus and Boiled Egg

Inspired by a suggestion in How To Eat

One or two good, free range eggs. Every time you eat a caged egg, a tiny kitten cries. This is an actual fact. Kittens…they care.
A handful of slim asparagus spears.
Salt, and while we’re at it, might as well not be that bitter table salt but sea salt or rock salt in a grinder at least.

Steam or boil your asparagus till tender, but not floppy and losing its colour.

While this is happening, bring a small pan of water to the boil. If your eggs are fridge cold, put them in with the cold water and allow them to come to the boil with it. If they’re at room temperature, simply lower them into the boiling water once it’s started. Nigella recommend putting a match in with the water because her great-aunt always did, others recommend a splash of vinegar or sprinkling of salt in the water. Let it bubble for about four minutes, maybe a little less. Have another pan of cold water handy so that you can plunge the eggs into it once you think they’re done, this will stop them cooking further. Lay your asparagus on a plate, sprinkle with salt, put the egg into an eggcup and whack the top off with a spoon.

And that’s all you need for dinner, really. If you’ve got someone else around who hasn’t taken off to Palmerston North just before Christmas to work on his parents’ farm because the job situation in Wellington is so hopeless right now (ahoy cool media people!) then I would double the proportions, get someone who really knows how to boil eggs in charge, and add some bread and butter.

The first egg was successful – soft, golden and yolky within. For some reason the second one I did was a bit more solid, but not bad considering it’s a job I always delegate out.

We watched the final of Glee the other day – it was intense, and intensely wonderful stuff. I was disappointed to see in the Dominion Post today that the music reviewers would like to see less of Glee in 2010, I was even more disappointed to see that they lumped it in with High School Musical. Yes, the HSM comparison is a quick and easy way to basically illustrate the tropes used in Glee to readers but it’s also flawed and lazy, in the same way that it feels as though the “barbeque reggae” tag is a box certain albums are unable to break out of because reviewers keep putting them in that box before they’ve even listened to their review copy. (That said, if you ever want to do a spotlight on my blog, Dominion Post…call me!)

Now that Glee is riding the tidal wave of Twitter trending topics, glossy magazine spreads, and young-person love, it’s highly likely there’ll be some kind of anti-hype backlash. To which I say: eh. I know I go on about this show a lot, but I’ve been excited about it since July and it’s so, I don’t know, emotionally fulfilling to see Broadway stars, Broadway tunes, and in fact the idea of breaking out into any tune altogether being legitimised on mainstream TV and in such deliciously sharp fashion. I remember when the film Centre Stage was released (there was also Billy Elliot but obviously it’s a bit of a different kettle) and hopelessly bad as the dialogue was – although Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows speak eloquent volumes with one silent, bristly twitch – I was elated to see ballet and dance brought to the big screen in a way that would, I hoped, make people see what it was that I loved about it and how ridiculously wonderful it was. Not that I need any of this. Indeed there’s always something nice about knowing that 99% of the world is missing out on this particular song or whatever that you love, but it’s just…really nice to see it get out there on people’s radars.

Speaking of things that you insist you liked long before the film adaptation of it ever came out: we also saw Where the Wild Things Are on Tuesday night. I really liked it, I liked how the Wild Things were slightly human but mostly monster and everything that happened in their own world seemed right. Max Records, the kid playing Max, was gorgeous, and it was notably, but not surprisingly, pretty dark. The only thing I was a little frowny over in hindsight was that – spoilers – Max runs away and sails off to an island of monsters, rather than having the forest grow up around him in his room. Maybe they had to spin it out more, I don’t know. Apart from that I thought it was fantastic so if the line “please don’t go, we’ll eat you up we love you so” makes you a little tearily nostalgic for something you can’t even quite remember and you’ve got a DVD compilation of cool music videos by cool directors then you’re probably the right audience for this.

Eight more days till Christmas! Good grief! And six more days till my last day at work for the year. I’m flying home on the evening of the 23rd. This means, once more, my annual and highly dramatic attempt to pack my bags and get them weighing under the requisite amount you need to get from A to B in New Zealand. I’m looking forward to bonding with the cats again, and family members, and the kitchen. Still trying to finalise a Christmas Day menu in my head…

__________________________________________________

Title brought to you by: Yes, I quoted Whitesnake in the title. Did I do it ironically? I don’t even know anymore. The musical Rock of Ages will do that to ya. I do know what it means to walk along that lonely street of dreams. Check out the original Broadway cast’s exuberant take on it here, and just be thankful I didn’t call this thing “here I go egg-ain.”
__________________________________________________

On Shuffle these days:

The Reading of the Story of The Magi/Silent Night by The White Stripes. It’s strange but I love it. To you it may be just…strange. But I love it.

Don’t Rain On My Parade by Barbra Streisand from Funny Girl. After the final of Glee, and being gently reminded that this song has perhaps the jauntiest, most purposeful opening notes in the history of all song, Tim and I ended up comparing, unfairly but predictably, Idina Menzel’s live’n’mesmerising take on the song with Lea Michele’s also brilliant but super clean version. Which naturally, brought me back to the fantastic original again. And the notion that Glee is taking us to some strange places.

Watching The Planets by the Flaming Lips from their latest album Embryonic. It’s all heavy and fuzzy and amaaaazing.
__________________________________________________

Next time: Hopefully by the time “next time” rolls around I’ll be miraculously organised. Apparently a colleague and I are going halvesies in a wheel of goat’s cheese from Moore Wilsons – so that may appear a lot. I’m pretty sure, organisation or not, that I can manage to wrangle one more blog post into existence before I leave for Christmas. It may mean completely alienating all people who aren’t whisks or bags of sugar though.