Category: Vegetarian

chain of yules

23 Comments

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I am currently waist-deep in Christmas Dinner preparation, and the cranberry levels are rising…

Let’s not analyze my handwriting too closely…does the fact that I can’t seem to commit to one particular way of writing the letter ‘f’ mean that I’m really, really deep and creative?

So, every year I host a Christmas dinner for our flatmates, (plus any significant others, hangers-on and plus ones) partly to celebrate my ability to insist upon cooking for large numbers of people but also to have some quality togetherness during this busy time. The day before is always a little full-on, but enjoyable, with the anticipation of feeding people and cooking vast quantities of stuff mixed in with the confusion of trying to follow my hopelessly non-linear list.

This is what the menu is shaping up like this time:

Dinner:

2 Roast Chickens
Pear and Cranberry Stuffing
Cornbread and Cranberry Stuffing
Ham in Coca Cola
Roast Potatoes
Roast Capsicums
Roast Kumara
Involtini
Green Salad

Pudding:
Chocolate Pavlova with Raspberries (or maybe strawberries…whatever’s cheaper at the markets tomorrow morning really)
Ginger Crunch Ice Cream
Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream
Maybe some sugar-free jelly if we can find any packets kicking round the place. I had plantain ice cream planned but the plantains I had must have been a little old and tired, because it doesn’t quite taste right. I may panic at the last minute and make another pudding…it happens.

If you’re a long-time reader, you’ll see that I’ve repeated a couple of recipes from last year – for example, both the stuffings and the involtini. The involtini, a recipe from Nigella Bites of seared eggplant slices wrapped around nutty, herbed bulghur wheat and baked in a tomato sauce, is also a repeat from last year, minus the feta this time as a friend of ours is a dairy-free vegetarian. Nigella’s Ham in Coca Cola is already a proven winner but I’ve never done it at Christmas before. But the Coca Cola that the ham is simmered in is cheap as and if nothing else will provide a talking point should conversation run awkwardly dry.

Even though my list specified otherwise, I got started today with the cornbread stuffing. I had to hustle to get this shot – you can see that some of the cranberries have already released their juices in the heat of the pan while others are still clinging to their dusting of ice particles.

Sometimes I wonder if I have heritage arching back to the American south. Or at least, some storybook version of it. I’ve never actually been there but the cuisine considered generally to be from that region seriously appeals to me. I can eat cornbread till the cows come home. Despite having to actually make the cornbread and then humbly crumble it, this stuffing really doesn’t take long to make at all. While it’s mighty fine roasted in the cavity of a chicken, the excess is more than wonderful baked separately in a loaf tin.

You’re taking already golden, buttery cornbread, and then stirring it into cranberries and another 125g of melted butter. This is a concept that either makes sense to you or it doesn’t. Me, everything makes sense with more butter added. If it appeals to you also, please find the recipe HERE. It comes from Nigella Lawson’s book Feast. Like the Spice Girls, all five of whom I was fiercely loyal to as a youngster, I cannot and would not want to choose a favourite Nigella book. But if you fancy an introduction to La Lawson you could do worse than start here with this magnificent, all-encompassing cookbook.

Not quite as visually appealing but still excellent is the Pear and Cranberry stuffing from Nigella Christmas, a book that naturally comes into its own at this time of year. Its combination of fudgey, gritty dried pears, sharp cranberries, and rich pecans (I substituted almonds because that’s what I had) is particularly fantastic, with salt and chopped onion stopping the whole thing from becoming like another pudding.

Pear and Cranberry Stuffing

Nigella Christmas

500g dried pears
175g fresh or defrosted frozen cranberries
100g breadcrumbs (preferably from bread that has gone stale than the dusty packet stuff)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
zest and juice of 1 mandarin
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons maple syrup
125g pecans
1 tablespoon maldon sea salt or a light sprinkling of table salt.

Either soak the pears overnight or cover them with boiling water and leave for a couple of hours. Drain once the water is cool. Place all the ingredients together in a bowl and mix thoroughly – even though it may feel a little spooky, just wading in with your hands is probably the easiest way. Either stuff your bird and bake accordingly or place in a loaf tin and bake at 200 C for about 25 minutes or until golden. Note – dried pears are pretty expensive. I tend to half the pears and up the breadcrumbs, but you could also make up half the weight of the pears in dried apricots.

The chocolate pavlova comes via Forever Summer (with whipped cream on the side, instead of smothered over it this time). I’ve made it before about 2 years ago, and loved it. However something was working against me today because while it rose up promisingly in the oven, it deflated completely once cooled. But what it lacks in height it makes up for in enormity – it spread out heaps. So I’m staying chilled out on that front.

Speaking of chilled, you know I love my ice cream. I’m particularly proud of this one because it’s completely dairy free but also staggeringly good. I’m not implying the two are mutually exclusive, but it’s not always the most straightforward path to deliciousness when you’re restricting particular ingredients.

Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream

6 egg yolks
50g brown sugar
2 tins coconut milk (not low fat)
2 tablespoons good cocoa
200g dark, dark chocolate, chopped

Gently heat the coconut milk in a wide pan, while mixing the egg yolks and sugar together. Once the coconut milk is good and hot, but not in any danger of boiling, pour it over the bowl of egg yolks and sugar, stirring all the while. Wipe out the pan with a paper towel, then pour the egg-coconut milk mixture back into it and keep it on a gentle heat, stirring constantly. It takes a while – at least 10 to 20 minutes – and you need to keep stirring – but it will thicken up into a custard of sorts. Once it is sufficiently thickened, remove from the heat and stir in the cocoa and chocolate, allowing it to melt into the mixture. Let this cool then freeze. Makes around a litre, maybe a little more.

The unfrozen mixture is amazing – the thickest, lightest, softest chocolatey custard ever. Once frozen, it’s even more sublime. The coconut flavour isn’t actually overly noticeable to if you want to amp it up a bit, stir in some toasted dessicated coconut before freezing. This is magical stuff – don’t let the fact that you have to make a custard put you off. I’ve made custard-based ice creams a billion times before without them turning into scrambled eggs, and if laughably clumsy I can do it, trust me, so can you.

I was actually really dithery over this particular post as I am going to be in an article about this blog in the Sunday Star-Times on Sunday, and I had this feeling that whatever I write today might be kind of important. This is the first time this blog has got any proper media attention, and I’m pretty nervous about seeing myself in a national newspaper. What if I look awful? (I had to maintain this half-smile thing, I’m really more of a big-toothed grin person, probably from my years of having to smile convincingly at ballet examiners while trying not to cry at that failed pas de chat.) What if I come across as horribly self-absorbed? (I mean, I am a bit, but still). What if someone, fuelled by Tall Poppy Syndrome, punches me in the street? Although I should mention (did someone say self-absorbed?) that the lovely lovely food blogger Linda is also being featured in this article tomorrow. I’ve never actually met Linda properly but you don’t always need to be face to face with someone to know they’re a fantastic person – I look forward to sharing a page with her. I also must say, massive kudos to the Sunday Star-Times for picking up on the idea of food blogging as a viable story option. I’m not saying that my blog is the most important issue happening to the nation right now, but seriously. I’ve been waiting for this.

If you are new to this blog, led here by your own curiousity after reading the article – cheers! Hopefully this is something you want to read more of – if not, I’m afraid I’m basically like this all the time. Maybe check out this post where I made my own butter which should quickly give you a good idea of whether or not you’re going to want to come back here.

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Title comes via: the resplendent Aretha Franklin and her absolutely stonking 1967 single Chain of Fools. If you’re new here: I tend to cut off straightforwardness to spite my own face when it comes to titles. But I’ll always explain them to you happily.
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On Shuffle while I’m cooking:

– The Deal (No Deal) from the concert recording of Chess, featuring such luminous talent as Idina Menzel, Josh Groban, Adam Pascal, Kerry Ellis, and the marvelous Clarke Peters of The Wire. Maybe something about the mathmatical precision of the game they’re singing about helped me keep focussed today.
– Speaking of Idina and Adam…while I may have allowed one or two Christmas songs to infiltrate my listening, Christmas Bells from RENT is the seasonal song that works all year long, but is obviously particularly nice at this time of year. The million different storylines being moved forward in this song makes for a listening experience that’s little short of astonishing. You can hear it here but if it all makes no sense then this visual might help unpack that somewhat. I care about this stuff.
– Mis-shapes from Pulp’s obviously amazing Different Class. Tim and I were lucky enough to see ex-Pulper Jarvis Cocker live at the Town Hall on Thursday night, he was utterly utterly wonderful, running through the cream of his solo material before blasting out an unexpectedly perfect cover of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid in honour of Ozzy’s birthday. But after all that I felt a bit of a need to hear some Pulp tunes, like this particularly urgent track.
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Next time: Well, if I haven’t made it onto the Listener’s list of the most influential and powerful New Zealanders for 2009, then it has been a failure of a week. Oh my gosh, I’m just kidding…and that list has already been published. Next time there may well be a recap of the Christmas Dinner and everything that happened. Look out for it – there’s nothing like an exhausted person who has eaten too much trying to make a sparkling, witty blog post.

this post has no title

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It is SO sunny outside. Sure, anyone can talk about the weather, but as Wellington spends 97% of its time shrouded in gale force winds and grey skies, good weather always comes with the element of surprise. This afternoon Tim and I are unfortunately going to be spending several hours of said sunshine on a train to Palmerston North to see his family (the stuck-in-a-train bit is unfortunate, not catching up with whanau which will be awesome). We’re going to be away most of the rest of the week so don’t be alarmed and hold candlelit vigils while singing We Shall Overcome if there’s not a lot going on here or on my Twitter.

While I’m talking about obvious stuff, how about the fact that it’s less than a month till Christmas!? In the words of Mike LaFontaine, “Wha’ happen?”

So, there are cookbooks and then there are, you know, seminal texts that you live your life by. By this I mean any words committed to paper from the pen of (or should that be committed to pixel by the typing hands of?) Nigella Lawson. It has been a little while since I’ve made any specific recipe of hers and I had this real urge to reconnect with her recently. But then at the last minute I had my head turned by this recipe in last weekend’s edition of the Dominion Post. A bit like that flaneur-ish painting where the wife thinks her husband is paying attention to her but doesn’t realise that his eyes are focussed instead on another comely lass. (I’m only describing it in such detail because I couldn’t find the actual painting after a quick Google Image search, if someone knows the name of this painting feel free to speak up.) Actually it wasn’t such a degrading act as that – I just liked the sound of this cake – Nigella remains there for the reconnecting some other time. But what use was that Art History paper I did in 2006 if I can’t make dubious metaphorical connections between Nigella and paintings that I can’t remember the name of?)

It’s a truly simple cake and doesn’t seem to be in any way flouncy or exciting but its uncomplicatednicity is what drew me to it. It’s ideal with a cup of tea, ages well and is a delight to eat – a cake of the old school, buttery and solid.

Sultana Cake

adapted from a recipe by David Burton, found in the Indulgence section of the Dominion Post

225g butter
450g sultanas
3 eggs
145g raw sugar
145g white sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
170g standard flour
170g wholemeal flour

Set the oven to 160 C, and line a square-ish tin of around 20cm square. The size isn’t a deal breaker though so don’t go weeping over your tape measure.

In a saucepan, cover the sultanas with cold water and bring to the boil. Drain off the water and while the sultanas are still hot, cut the butter into pieces over them and allow it to melt.

Whisk the eggs and sugars till thick and creamy, then fold in the baking powder and flours. Finally stir in the sultana-d butter, pour mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Slice when a little cooled.

See? It’s not particularly glamourous, but still rather perfect in its own way. I added a little Boyajian orange oil to the sultanas in the saucepan, which didn’t overpower the cake in any way but added a little heady fragrance to its otherwise matronly aesthetic. I also didn’t use 450g sultanas because I only had about 200g but to be honest it was plenty. I’m not one of life’s gaugers, but 450g does seem like a lot.

As I mentioned last time, we got ourselves tickets to see the Wailers out in Porirua last Friday. It was a brilliant night, with the journey almost as memorable as the gig itself. While heading out to the Te Rauparaha Arena we found $20 which we thought was a good sign. Not so cool was the fact that in our haste to get to the train station, I didn’t bring any ID with me and the gig was strictly R18. There’s something about my face that brings out the skeptic in any bouncer (plus apparently Tim and myself collectively skew very young in the looks factor) and despite pawing through my purse desperately I didn’t have anything on me that identified my age. In the end one of the trawling security police came over, asked me a few questions and radio-d someone who was able to look me up on some kind of citizen database and confirm that I am in fact, 23. Despite the mellow, sunny sounds of Katchafire surrounding us once we finally got inside, it took me a while to chill out.

Katchafire were fantastic though – delivering warm, dynamic sounds and generating an awesome energy. We were under no illusion that the band headlining wasn’t the exact original Wailers but they were still more or less the real deal, featuring original members in their line up, and it was an amazing opportunity for us. Despite seeming to be a bit disjointed – not quite possessing the soul that Katchafire had -they played a fantastic set. Buffalo Soldier was my particular favourite of the night, but the Exodus that they finished with was also an amazing moment. If they’d played Trenchtown Rock or No Woman No Cry I would have also been happy (I don’t know if that’s a really obvious choice of favourite) but there was so much gold in there that it wasn’t until the train ride home, (where a Danish tourist was deeply sick to the point that the train actually stopped and let him out for a bit to alleviate himself) and everyone started singing along together to even more Bob Marley songs that I noticed their absence.

Massive apologies for lacking in lustre (and a proper title) this time round – it has been a busy, busy time and I’ve been completely exhausted! My brain can’t seem to come up with the goods this week. I hate the idea of blogging just for the sake of it but there is also something to be said for discipline and sticking to a schedule. Hopefully next week the blogging part of my brain will have limbered up. Total apologies if you’re a first time reader. This basically happens to me every November – I get tired and panicky. Look forward to it. But be comforted by the fact that no matter how terrible my writing is in this post, the sultana cake is really, really good.

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Title of this post brought to you by: I’m tired and I’ve got a train to catch. I haven’t got time to dither around thinking up cute food-related puns. And I’m sorry. But even in my uselessness, you bet I’m referring to Elton John’s song from Yellow Brick Road, This Song Has No Title. I don’t care how particularly unhip Elton John may be, this album is amazingly good. Not just relatively good compared to other albums of its time, or compared to other Elton John albums – it’s just singularly brilliant.
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On Shuffle these days:

There was a guy at Duke Carvell’s last night with a Marc Kudisch-y mustache going on which inspired me to listen to the amazing Central Park from the also amazing See What I Wanna See. (click the link to listen to it)

To counteract this Broadway fruitiness, I’ve also been listening to Shapeshifter’s new album The System Is A Vampire – they’re back with a vengeance and went to the #1 spot with blinding speed which is a bit of an achievement in this CD-eschewing day and age.
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Next time: It’ll be December! And I’ll be planning the great traditional flat Christmas Dinner which is trucking on again this year. Just because we’ve moved house doesn’t mean I still don’t want to force Christmas food onto people. Check out here for 2008’s offering. Equal madness and then some will surely ensue.

winehouse

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Firstly, consider your attention drawn to the following video, created and deftly edited by my very clever flatmate Jason of Nektar Films, Wellington, as the intro sting for the Rising Star award at the recent 2009 Handle the Jandal awards. Starring my hands. Funnily enough, my hands would be the body part I’m most sensitive about. Instead of being tapered, elegant and expressive, they’re almost aggressively stumpy and charmless, rounded and dimpled like the extremities of some vintage Kewpie doll. “Neither beautiful nor practical”, as a flatmate once aptly pronounced them. Anyway, gosh, there’s a lot to be thankful for and this isn’t supposed to be the Painful Scrutiny Half Hour – let’s just watch the video.
Fun, huh! Get it? Rising cupcake, rising star! It was Nigella’s cupcake recipe, which I don’t need a book to refer to for these days, pumped full of baking powder. That video was filmed in early October but the special cupcake is still sitting in a tupperware container in our fridge – we just can’t say goodbye to it. I’d hazard a guess that it’s not the most edible of products right now. The Handle The Jandal awards were held at the Embassy cinema where Peter Jackson held the premiere of Lord of the Rings years ago. Even though I was really looking forward to seeing all the music videos and seeing who won, it’s no stretch to say that it was hugely exciting seeing myself…well, my hands…moving across the enormous screen in such a gorgeous setting.
To the food! I am a pasta fiend, of Garfield-ian levels of fiendishness, but I’ve never tried cooking it in anything other than boiling, heavily salted water. I’d considered it however – thinking that some kind of broth flavoured with wine or garlic that the pasta absorbs while softening up could be kind of fun. A cursory once-over of Google shows that it already exists, which didn’t bother me in the slightest – it’s not so revolutionary when you think about it.

 

I didn’t refer to one particular recipe as it seemed we all had the same idea. Although, I also didn’t use a whole bottle of red in cooking my pasta as some have – that felt more extravagant than I could deal with comfortably – but a good 600mls went into the cooking water (and then the rest went into a wine glass) creating a wonderfully heady, plummy fragrance as it bubbled away.
Because the ratio of wine to water wasn’t that heavy, the pasta I used didn’t take on a dramatic amount of colour, but it was definitely a good solid pink. I used an Argentinean pinot noir that I grabbed very cheaply at On Trays in Petone, and bucatini pasta that I got marked down at the Meditteranean Warehouse in Newtown. People, bucatini is seriously cool. It looks outwardly like spaghetti but it actually a hollow tube – like thin, edible straws. In hindsight though, I think something a little denser might have worked better – the pasta is very difficult to slurp up satisfactorally due to the tube shape. Wind drag or something.
Red Wine Spaghetti
500-750 mls red wine (nothing too expensive)
At least 500 mls water
Lots of salt. Never undersalt the pasta water.
200g Spaghetti, Bucatini, or other long pasta
Butter
Bring the water and wine together in a large pan, salting recklessly. Once it’s bubbling away, add the pasta and allow to cook through, stirring occasionally. Drain, adding a tiny dab of butter, and dish out onto two plates. I served this with a little sliced steak, fried in a tiny bit of butter with that heavenly Marsala wine, plus zucchini, capers and mint.

Was a little tempted to up the saturation on Picassa to make this more of a “velvet theatre curtain” colour.

The pasta takes on a rich pinkish tint and holds a deliciously winey flavour. The steak in Marsala and buttery zucchini slices worked excellently with the pasta’s savoury richness while the salty capers and icy mint provided clean, fresh contrast. It’s pretty glam, but not scary or overwhelming to make for your next dinner party.

Tonight Tim and I, along with our flatmate and several other usual suspects, are heading out to Porirua to see The Wailers perform, (as in what were once Bob Marley and The Wailers, yes) supported by Hikoikoi and Katchafire. It’s sure to be a amazing night with all that stunning musical talent, plus the legendary-ness of the Wailers – we’re both seriously looking forward to it. Speaking of things we’re excited about: Jack White’s latest outburst of prolific activity, The Dead Weather, is coming to New Zealand in March! Why they’re playing all the way out of town in the Logan Campbell Centre I can’t fathom but we’ve got our tickets and we’ll get there from Wellington somehow. It’s not the same as a White Stripes tour (soon, please? We love you too Meg) but still very, very exciting stuff. Look them up on Youtube or something if you want to know more.
Title of this show brought to you by: Have you seen Glee’s take on Ms Amy Winehouse’s Rehab? It’s pretty addictive. Although, no video on Youtube? For shame, rights-holders, for shame! How are people going to get into it otherwise?
On Shuffle these days:
Stroke: Songs For Chris Knox, an album benefitting New Zealand musician and artist Chris Knox who had a stroke earlier this year. The album features some seriously excellent talent both local and international, reflecting just what he means to people – The Finn Family, The Verlaines, Yo La Tengo, Lambchop, The Mint Chicks, etc. I can’t pretend like I ever knew much about Knox’s music apart from the persistent Not Given Lightly, but I always loved reading his Max Media cartoons in the NZ Herald while I was growing up, thinking that I understood the content even though it was basically over my head. I also really enjoy his more recent, always vinegar-sharp stuff, often featured in Real Groove magazine. I look forward to exploring more of his music through this particularly good cause.
Also, as alluded to before, I’ve got hold of the music from Glee. I love how Lea Michele sounds so damn happy to be there whenever she sings – I don’t know if it’s the Broadway coming out in her but it’s not a quality you’d hear in most pop stars of the last decade. Nice to see Kristin Chenoweth popping up in there, although I wish they’d given her some better songs…My favourite Kristin Chenoweth-song-from-tv remains Birdhouse In Your Soul with Ellen Greene. It is genius. Anyway, despite not even being a fan of a lot of the material they cover, there’s something so ridiculously exuberant and joyful about the delivery that you can’t help but love anything Glee does. Also do you actually understand what Defying Gravity being sung on New Zealand mainstream TV could mean for, well, everything? Significant stuff, I predict (hope).

icecreamadelica

13 Comments

On the whole I don’t really go in for reviews that compare one thing to another, because it feels as though the author is too bored to find words to describe something on its own terms. Don’t even get me started on those slightly hysterical NME magazine reviews, you know, “This band sounds like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Sonic Youth solemnly making daisy chains and chewing vitamin pills together while Van Halen stand by, clapping slowly.” (That said I haven’t read NME since 2006, maybe things have changed?)

My point is, Tim and I went to a fantastic Latin restaurant/bar called Amigos for dinner the other night, and while I was there I couldn’t help but think it could quite easily be the new Sweet Mother’s Kitchen (another eaterie in Wellington, and enormously popular) if only more people knew about it. And then I felt bad, because Amigos was amazing in its own right and was created completely independently of anything else. But it has a similar vibe going on – funky surroundings, food that’s authentic, inexpensive, and fun, plus delightful staff. Tim and I both wanted this dish that involved french fries covered in four different kinds of meat with egg and cheese (I know, and it was amazingly good, and yes, they do lighter/vegetarian food too) and the waitress said that we could share one dish between the two of us as they’re huge servings. Nice, right? I’m sure most places would try and make you pay the extra money for two dishes without warning you on the size. The food was incredibly good – I’d love to go back and try some of their other dishes. Also on Fridays (and other nights) they apparently have parties and clear the tables and play music and have lots of drink specials. So, lazy writing and all, if you like Sweet Mother’s Kitchen, you’ll probably love Amigos too. It’s right near Moore Wilsons and above Happy at 118 Tory Street (phone 04 385 1222), and open for lunch and dinner all week long. And now you know!

If I ever end up getting offered some kind of mega-million-dollar cookbook deal for this blogging lark, I think I’ll definitely have to have a chapter devoted to ice cream. I love it and I love coming up with new recipes for it. Clicking on the “Ice Cream” tag for this blog will back up that statement with cold, sugary fact. With this in mind, remember that time I made Ginger Crunch Slice? Me too! I can’t stop thinking about it! In fact I’ve made about five more batches since that first one I blogged about. Then I thought how the fudge-like ginger icing would make fantastic…ice cream. Yes. The more brain-space I devoted to it, the more utterly genius it sounded. With a little time up my sleeve today I made a small test batch to see if it would actually work. And it really did.

You know what didn’t work though? Okay, so I made the ice cream, photo-ing as I went, put it in the freezer to freeze, took it out to take a photo, dropped the container on the floor, and it broke. And all of a sudden we’re out of appropriately sized Tupperwear or old takeaway containers. Argh! Fortunately the plantain ice cream from last week had just got finished and so I was able to rinse out its container and transfer the Ginger Crunch Ice Cream into it. By which stage it had softened considerably and I was also considerably covered in it and thus I couldn’t really be bothered trying to get a cute finished product photo – but at least there’s last week’s post with its cute spoonful of plantain ice cream to keep you happy should this gaping hole in my photo essay offend.

It’s not a scary recipe at all, despite having the word “ice cream” in its title. Ice cream, like bread and pastry and chicken stock is one of those things that sound so much harder to make at home than they really are. But this particular ice cream took barely 10 minutes. It’s the easiest of the hard-sounding stuff.

Spillages are unavoidable. Really.

Ginger Crunch Ice Cream

Makes about a pint. I think. Wikipedia’s stance on the pint is a little confusing.

50g butter
2 heaped tablespoons golden syrup
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 cup icing sugar
300mls cream

In a heavy based pan, melt the butter and golden syrup together gently. Once you have a deliciously buttery, caramelly liquid pool, take it off the heat and stir in the icing sugar and ground ginger. Then whisk the cream till it’s significantly thickened but not actually whipped into peaks – it should still have a bit of movement and formlessness to it. Using a spoon, scrape the gingery mixture into the cream and mix it in relatively forcefully, to break up any larger pieces of ginger icing. Pour into a container and freeze. You don’t need to churn this – just let it soften slightly before serving. And don’t drop the container. If you want more of this, as well you might, just use more cream. If you’re getting to the stage where you’re whipping up say, a litre of cream, you might look at doubling the ginger mix ingredients.

This stuff is extremely good. The gingery mixture seeps into the softly whipped cream, countering its richness with a zingy warmth. Larger pieces of the ginger mixture become all chewy and incredibly delicious once frozen. It just works so well. I can imagine this being a really good accompaniment to fruitcake or Christmas pudding, especially in places (like New Zealand!) where Christmas falls in the middle of summer.

This container no longer exists, and to be honest the ice cream isn’t going to stick round for long either.

That said, if I ever do get offered a squillion-dollar cookbook deal, all my ice cream recipes are here for free on this blog, thus rendering the ice cream chapter kind of pointless. Although I guess there’s no point stressing over something that hasn’t even been in any danger of occurring yet.

Last night Tim and I were fortunate enough to witness the All Whites qualify for the FIFA world cup by winning their game against Bahrain. What’s this? I hear you say. Laura, I thought you hated all sports with a fiery passion that shall smoulder eternally! Well, I kind of do. I appreciate that it makes a lot of people happy, that on the whole it keeps you healthy and that it provides a safe environment for young people to connect with each other and learn skills. I think specifically I dislike how sports are forced upon young people throughout their schooling. Sure, some youngsters can appreciate the joy of chasing a ball with a hockey stick or running from one side of a field to the other, but let them come to it naturally in their own good time. Don’t force them into PE classes when it clearly makes them sick with misery, and what kind of sick minded teachers still get students to pick people for their teams? If my children – should I ever have them – ever want to get out of doing sports at school, you bet I’ll write them notes. (“Yes, young Sebastian does have cramps.”)

All that darkness aside, I don’t mind soccer, and indeed it can be quite exciting, if a little long at 45 minutes a side. I think it was the romance of the situation that I got caught up in – the last time we’ve qualified to have a punt at the World Cup was 1982. Ricki Herbert (I love that deliciously flamboyant “i” on the end of his name) was a member of that soccer team and now he’s come back to coach the Wellington Phoenix, several of whom also play for the All Whites. We were total underdogs, having been not wildly outstanding in the first qualifier in Bahrain, and not exactly being world leaders in this particular sport. Suddenly every single ticket had sold out – there was barely a visible seat in the stadium, which never ever happens – not even when David Beckham came to town. All things that made for a ridiculously exciting game.

It was an amazing night of intense happiness and togetherness from the crowd and there were a lot of people I knew in the audience – like my cousin Paul who flatted with us last year – who had been following this forever and who were deeply invested in the outcome. Like I said, I’m not into sports but blind passion does make sense to me. I’m not actually a very good sports viewer, partially because I get incredibly bored, but also because no matter which side I’m supporting, I always feel bad for the team that loses. The audience occasionally booed Bahrain which I thought was a shame, given that they were trying to achieve exactly what we were but on the other side of the world and with only a handful of supporters in the audience. It’s never fun watching people lose, but all that was quickly forgotten at the sight of the normally deadly calm Ricki Herbert jumping round hugging his team jubilantly. Look him up on Google images – don’t you think Will Ferrell should play him in the movie of his life? Apart from the booing and the sadness of seeing the losing team lose, the only other thing that really annoyed me was the presence of streakers at the end. Firstly, it wasn’t their moment, and secondly, they weren’t even properly nude. At least be committed.
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On Shuffle while I’m typing away:

Tim and I were watching Dazed and Confused the other night (oh hi, young Anthony Rapp, Parker Posey, Adam Goldberg and half of Hollywood) and found myself listening to Peter Frampton’s Do You Feel Like We Do from Frampton Comes Alive! the next day. I’m not even a fan or anything, but there’s something about this song…it’s so slinky and groovy.

The entire cast recording of the 2008 revival of Gypsy, which is one of the most sharp, polished performances I’ve ever heard commited to a compact disc. I hope a good production of this comes to New Zealand sometime soon. Seriously, isn’t Patti thrilling?

Finally – Charlotte Gainsbourg’s new song IRM from her album of the same name is as super-listenable as anything else she’s ever done. I like how it takes its time commiting to a particular direction, and you can really hear Beck’s sound on the production which is no bad thing. Plus she’s gorgeous.

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Title of this post comes to you via the amazingly good Primal Scream album Screamadelica; I’ve said it before but there is never a bad time for this album, incidentally it is particularly good in summer and therefore would also make an ideal accompaniment for ice cream. Find it if you don’t have it!
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Next time: I found more plantains at Moore Wilsons! Rejoice! Not sure how I’m planning to act on this but I think…more ice cream.

slice of heaven

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Marvel at the joy that is butter and sugar mixed together.

When left to my own devices of a weekend I tend to start baking without even thinking. Ginger Crunch or Ginger Slice or even Ginger Crunch Slice if you want to be equal-opportunistic, is something of an example of traditional New Zealand baking and for some reason it has been top of my to-do list for a while…I guess since I last baked something. Sometimes I can be thinking about baking something but also excitedly anticipate the next thing I’ll bake after that – special, huh.

Google Ginger Crunch and you will be met with roughly the same recipe from all the usual reliable channels – Edmonds Cookbook, Alison Holst, Chelsea Sugar (who I am deeply suspicious of now that they’ve released chocolate-flavoured icing sugar – I hate the term ‘nanny state’ but that’s what, of all things, sprang to mind when I saw it on shelves) etc etc. I can now say with confident confidence, that the Ginger Slice I made yesterday improves greatly upon anything you will find on Google. I say ‘improves’ not ‘is vastly superior and practically perfect in every way’ because in all fairness, I simply added a few crucial elements to the various traditional recipes floating round everywhere and would not have come up with it in the first place were it not for what has been set in place by Edmonds et al.

Ginger Crunch Slice

Base:

  • 250g soft butter
  • 1/2 cup dark muscovado sugar (or brown sugar)
  • 2 teaspoons ginger
  • 1/2 cup rolled oats
  • 2 tablespoons bran (optional, I just happened to have some in the cupboard)
  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder

Set the oven to 180 C. Grab a regular sized square or rectangular brownie/slice tin – you know the kind I’m talking about – and tip in the rolled oats. Put this tin in the oven for a couple of minutes while the oven is heating till the oats are nicely toasted but absolutely not burnt.

Using a wooden spoon or spatula or some other kind of utensil that takes your fancy, beat the butter and sugar together till light and creamy. Muscovado sugar is a little dense and crumbly so fear not if some of the sugar remains in lumps. As I said, brown sugar is fine too, and is what I generally use if I see muscovado sugar asked for in a recipe. But muscovado was cheap at the local supermarket…

Tip in the toasted oats (putting a sheet of baking paper into the now-empty brownie tin), bran, flour, ginger and baking powder. Stir together carefully till it looks like biscuit dough, soft and clumpy. Tip this mixture into the brownie tray, pressing down with the back of a spoon. Bake for 15-20 minutes till nicely golden on top.

Icing

  • 100g butter
  • 3 heaped tablespoons golden syrup
  • 2-3 teaspoons ground ginger
  • 2 1/2 cups icing sugar

This is one of the simplest and loveliest icings you can make. While the base is baking, gently melt together the butter, golden syrup and ginger in a small pan over a low heat. Once it comes together in a golden spicy puddle, remove from heat and stir in the icing sugar. As soon as the base is cooked, pour the icing over it, still warm and smooth out if necessary. Refrigerate for 1/2 an hour or so before slicing into fingers.

I lined this photo up all carefully on the benchtop and then realised that I couldn’t see into the viewfinder and that the icing was moving faster than I could take photos and this is why you see the icing being poured from a mysteriously hovering vessel with no-one apparently holding on to it. But the price is right.

Ah, the cutesy things we do with our food for the sake of our food blogs.

Anyway: this stuff is quite ridiculously amazing. Adjectives fail me.

Not to sound like the girl who cried ‘ridiculously amazing’, I admit I say this about lots of things that I blog about, but I guess this means I only cook stuff I really like to eat, right? The base is thick and biscuity, with a slight nutty quality from the toasted oats. The icing is incredible, fudgey and dense and throat-warmingly gingery. So delicious you’ll want to pour it all over your own head. Together? Faintmakingly excellent. There’s something about the caramel qualities of golden syrup and dark brown muscovado that provide the perfect vehicle for ginger’s heat and fragrance. Kindly don’t just take my word on this – make it immediately! It’s so easy and quick and you’ll have people simply falling at your feet with gratitude. If it was physically possible, I would have fallen at my own feet after eating a slice of this slice. As I said earlier though, it was entirely inspired by the original recipe that you will find in the Edmonds Cookbook and other stalwarts of New Zealand food-making that I duly salute here.

It’s actually currently Labour Day weekend here in New Zealand, which means that drearly melancholy Sunday afternoon feeling that can sometimes set in is bypassed by a happy Monday off work. My weekend is a mellow one but I’ve got a few ailments that I’m trying to fight off so it’s nice to just have time to chill out. On Friday night Tim and I had the immense joy of seeing Little Bushman combining their considerable talents with that of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the Town Hall, for an evening of incredible, incredible music. The sound ranged from the deepest psychedelic rock to the most hushed of gentle ballads, amplified by the full-on orchestra surrounding them. Our tickets were a bit of a last minute acquisition but I’m so glad we went.

No thanks whatsoever to Ticketek though, who made us pay $8 extra for “venue pickup”. After waiting 20 minutes in line at the venue we were told that we had to go to the Ticketek office down the road to get the tickets. While I’ve got my ranty hat on, can someone who falls under the category of ‘powers that be’ please enlighten me – why on EARTH are theatres built with seats from which you may be hidden behind an enormous pillar or can’t actually see the stage? And then tell me why companies like Ticketek can charge enormous amounts for “restricted view” seats? It makes no sense. By the way, we’re going to see Elaine Paige. Or at least, we’re going to hear Elaine Paige while seeing an enormous pillar’s dramatic interpretation of Elaine Paige. Maybe we can stick a cutout of her face on the pillar? (I don’t actually know if we’re literally behind a pillar, and it is admittedly my fault for not buying tickets sooner, but my point stands: why? Also: I hope she does Nobody’s Side! Am currently listening to Chess like there’s no tomorrow.)

Title of this post brought to you by: That perennially sunny song from Dave Dobbyn and Herbs, Slice of Heaven, from the Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tale soundtrack. We had it on video (taped off the telly) when I was young and it was completely thrashed. I could probably act it out for you from start to finish I watched it so often as a wee nipper. After the movie was done it would fade into Mr Bean’s Christmas special which funnily enough we were also happy to watch year-round. I dunno if this song has also been thrashed – though not as much as some of Dobbyn’s tunes – but listening to it now still makes me feel happy

On Shuffle While I Type:

– Nature of Man from Little Bushman’s album Pendulum

– Welfare Mothers from Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps – was on a complete Neil Young kick today and while I’m not someone who chooses favourites, this amazingly good track is definitely up there with the other thousand favourite songs I have.

–Minuet by Idina Menzel from her debut album Still I Can’t Be Still. You won’t find this in shops but it’s a gem worth tracking down…seldom have I heard an album so full of personality, depth, honesty, so full of self as this, plus the mid-to-late 90s overproduction is adorable. It’s ideal for blasting loudly on a weekend morning.

Hope all the New Zealand readers have a peaceful, restful, generally super Labour Day break. And that everyone makes this ginger slice. It’s marvelous! Feel free to pronounce it ‘slee-che’, people will think you’re really sophisticated if you do.

 

cinnamon girl

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Even though I’m usually about as rock’n’roll as Rod and/or Todd Flanders today I make an exception: I wrote this operating on about three hours’ sleep, having danced merrily till 5am on Saturday night at San Francisco Bath House to the enchanting stylings of the UK’s DJ Skitz and Deadly Hunta (who charmingly professed a liking for my peanut butter cookies and therefore I’ll not hear a word against him.) However other members of our entourage returned home around 10.30 on Sunday morning which gave me some perspective. Anyway, you have been warned: coherency at this stage is likely to be a joke, at best.

It was also at 10.30 yesterday morn when I quietly photographed this Kumara (sweet potato) Spice Cake, making the most of the crisp, chilly Sunday light. I pilfered the recipe from the lovely lovely Hayley’s blog, knowing as soon as I read her post that I’d have to recreate it as soon as possible, because it sounded so fantastic.

I adapted the recipe slightly. I added some cinnamon. I didn’t have any white chocolate in the house so dark chocolate was drizzled over instead. Now, I love me some white chocolate – I’d spread it daily on hot buttered toast. But I do think that the dark chocolate I substituted contrasted so awesomely with the sweet earthiness of the cake and its spices that it would be hard to use anything else. It’s a complete breeze to make and happily requires a bundt cake tin, thus justifying me actually owning one.

Kumara Spice Cake.

The title is a bit dubious, so if you know you have fussy people to feed I’d just refer to it as spice cake or something. The rest of the world knows the secret ingredient as Sweet Potato but here in New Zealand we call it by its Maori name, kumara. Your word is more universally explanatory but I like ours better.


Ingredients

1 large Kumara/Sweet Potato, peeled and chopped
125g soft butter
75ml Maple syrup (I used mostly golden syrup and a little maple flavoured syrup because I am a bad person and real maple syrup is ridiculously expensive. Unfortunately maple flavoured syrup doesn’t give a lot of flavour so it was a slightly pointless excercise.)
75ml Golden Syrup
1/2 cup tightly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 and 3/4 cups plain flour
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp bicarb soda

White chocolate icing

2 T cream
100g white chocolate (or dark!)

Cook sweet potato in a saucepan of lightly salted water for 15-20 min until tender and drain well, running cold water over the colander to cool it down faster. You should be able to mash it with a spoon but feel free to puree it in a blender, either way it needs to be smooth with no lumps.

Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly grease and flour a 6 cup bundt cake tin.

In a bowl, beat the butter, maple syrup, golden syrup, and sugar together until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time beating well after each addition. Fold in sweet potato puree. Sift flour, ginger, bicarb soda into the bowl and fold in gently till combined. Spoon batter into prepared pan, smoothing top. Bake for 45 min until cake pulls away from sides and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean and dry. Cool in the pan for 10 min or so.

This is just our kitchen bench. It’s wide enough that it creates a kind of limitless visual space on film, ideal for when I want to attempt fancy-looking photos. I am still in wonder at how decent our new kitchen is.

Meanwhile, melt the chocolate and add the cream then drizzle over the cooled cake. Watch out for the chocolate running down the wavy dents in the cake – fun! Using a silicon spatula, scrape out the bowl with the icing in it and eat the rest once you’re done. Magical stuff.



Not a bad job considering I was drizzling chocolate, taking photos and trying to remain standing on two feet this whole time.

There is something strangely alluring – to me at least – about cakes which have vegetables in them. It’s fun to tell people after they’ve had a bite, and to think about cake offering nutrients (the actual kind that a food nutritionist would recognise. Not emotional nutrients.) It also opens a new world of texture and flavour possibilities. This cake is amazingly good so don’t be scared of the vege content. The kumara keeps it amazingly moist, offering a subtle but particular flavour, and an absorbent, softly sweet carrier for the more strident ginger and cinnamon.
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The title of this post is brought to you by everyone’s favourite model train enthusiast: Neil Young and his song Cinnamon Girl off the crunchier-than-cornflakes album Rust Never Sleeps._____________________________________________________

On Shuffle Whilst I Type:

A dirty great ton of RENT.

I’ve been watching the RENT final performance DVD. It’s beautiful and beautifully done. It should be required viewing for everyone in the world. In the words of Lars Olfen, it’s a mitzvah. I’m so glad someone decided to make this happen. I say this now because I’m on a dirty great RENT high, give me a few days to calm down and get cynical.
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If you are in Auckland and get the chance to go to the I Love The Islands benefit tonight, do it! There’s a lot of horror in the world but the earthquakes that deeply damaged Samoa and American Samoa recently have stuck with me, I guess because New Zealand has not so much close ties with Samoa but a total overlap, a weaving of the fibres of our fabric that make up some metaphor of what we are or…something. Basically, it’s completely terrible what’s happened, the line up for I Love The Islands is amazing and it’s for a really good cause. Do it if you can.

it looks like you’ll stay, as the days go by

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On the 13th my blog will be two years old. Considering the blinding speed in which the internet turns around, in which networks are signed up to enthusiastically and then never updated, and also the fecklessness of youth (well, I’m only 23 and therefore highly likely to be lacking in feck) it’s a pretty tidy achievement all round. Two seems like such a tiny number to measure the amount of time that this blog has been existing. But I guess it’s likely to be a lot more significant to myself than, say, anyone else on the planet. I also guess that this gives me a free pass to bake something ridiculous and unnecessary in the name of celebrating my blog’s anniversary.

Funnily enough I used a recipe the other night that I last used exactly a year ago – Rendang Asparagus and Shallot Curry, from Simon Rimmer’s pretty awesome book The Accidental Vegetarian. Incidentally the photos I took last year were much better than the photos you’re going to see today, which shows that no matter where I live, there is always potential for uselessness. Asparagus is one of the few things I’m happy to wait around for. Well, it would be choice if it was available for the eatin’ all year round, but it’s not, and it’s usually worth the wait. If I’m eating asparagus it means that the weather is getting better and Summer’s on the way.

This recipe is so good, even if the original is a little deranged in terms of volume of sugar, coconut and chilli. Simon Rimmer writes an excellent recipe, but we don’t see eye to eye on what ‘mild’ is. Simon Rimmer thinks nothing of flinging eight chillies into a recipe for general consumption. His tastebuds must be made of asbestos-reinforced concrete roofing tiles. This is truly delicious though, and the combination of soft, caramelised buttery onions and juicy green asparagus is pretty fabulous. I’d go a little easy on the amount of brown sugar you use, between that and the coconut milk it can be almost like eating pudding if you’re not careful.

Rendang Shallot and Asparagus Curry

50g butter
75g brown sugar (I used less)
20 banana shallots
400g asparagus
400ml tin coconut milk
3 T toasted dessicated coconut
Coriander to serve

Melt the butter in a pan, add the sugar and when it starts to dissolve throw in the shallots, peeled but left whole. Turn down the heat and cook slowly for at least 20 minutes, (he recommends 45 but they were more than fine with less). Blanch the asparagus and refresh in cold water. I sliced them into two-inch lengths.

Curry Paste:

1 onion, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
3 red chillies, or however much you desire
1 tsp ground coriander
1 T tamarind paste (or substitute lemon juice)
1 t tumeric
1 t curry powder
1 stalk of lemon grass
pinch of salt

Whizz the lot together in a food processor, or chop and mix everything well like I did using my mezzaluna. This results in a chunkier but no less flavoursome paste. Heat a little oil in a pan and gently fry the paste, carefully, and stir in the coconut milk, letting it bubble away and thicken slightly. Add the now magically caramelly shallots and the blanched asparagus, letting it simmer for about ten minutes. Finish by stirring through the toasted coconut and chopped coriander. If you like, add a handful of frozen peas or soybeans to beef it up (as it were). Serve over rice. This should feed four easily.

On Thursday I realised I hadn’t cooked any chicken in a long, long time. In fact that I hadn’t really eaten meat in ages. A trip to Moore Wilson’s quickly changed this, and I had a go at Nigella Lawson’s Slow Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken from Forever Summer.

I’d bought a couple of Maryland pieces (ie thigh and drum attached together) because it was cheaper than buying just thighs. I figured I could cleave them in half, capable-modern-lady style with one of the many enormous knives we have in our kitchen. But, could not cut them for the life of me, even using this ridiculously sharp knife and putting all my body weight on it. They remained uncloven. Strains of Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner singing I Will Never Leave You from Side Show ran through my head.

Resigned to the fact that we were going to be eating enormous pieces of chicken for dinner, I arranged the ingredients artfully in this fancy schmancy roasting tin I bought from Briscoes that made me feel very Nigella – it’s one of those deep, rectangular dishes with metal handles that she’s always flinging about. It was also about 20cm too wide for our oven. Aaaaargh. By this stage I was tempted to biff the lot out the window. But, I patiently transferred the contents into a smaller dish and left it to roast for the requisite two hours – one of the nicest things about this recipe. You have a large window of time to chill out.

Ever more and always, we’ll be one though we’re two (Seriously, watch the clip. It may well blow your mind.)

This is a really simple recipe but what’s there works wonders. Soft cloves of garlic and chunks of lemon, a slosh of wine and some olive oil all relax into a deliciously juicy sauce, and the slow, slow cooking of the chicken renders it ridiculously tender.

Slow-Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken

From Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer.
This is Nigella’s recipe with her proportions – scale it down or up as you like.

1 chicken cut into 10 pieces
1 head garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
2 unwaxed lemons, cut into chunky eighths
Small handful fresh thyme
3 tablespoons olive oil
150mls white wine

Preheat oven to 160 C.

Put everything into a roasting tin. A roasting tin that you know will fit into your oven. Make sure the chicken is skin side up. Cover with tinfoil fairly tightly, place in the oven and leave for 2 hours. Once this is up, remove the foil, raise the heat to 200C, and cook uncovered for another 30 or so minutes till everything is nicely browned and crisp. Serve straight from the roasting tin. Serves 4-6.

Not having eaten meat for a while, particularly roasted chicken, I had completely forgotten how strong it is, how that oiliness can be really heavy in your stomach. I’d also forgotten how amazing it smells as it roasts and how good the pan juices taste drizzled liberally over rice. So there you go. I can see how people could go vegetarian, but then I could also happily eat a steak on a daily basis.

Speaking of things ornithologian, on Saturday I had the privelege of seeing the Imperial Russian Ballet performing Swan Lake at the Opera House. I went with Tim and my godsister, Hannah, and we had fantastic seats. There were a LOT of children in the audience, which I don’t have a problem with – I’m all for encouraging nippers to go to the theatre – in fact it was the adults in the audience who were more fury-inducing. Some idiot behind me decided to rustle a wrapper or chip packet of some sort right in the middle of the swans’ dancing. For about 45 seconds. I have no idea what was so important in their life right at that moment that they had to rustle this plastic so incessantly. Meanwhile, another person behind me was keeping time to the music by tapping the floor heavily with their foot and slapping their knees. Why? What can tiy possibly add to the experience? The only other negative I have to get out of the way is that the Opera House isn’t the nicest location. It looks like a shadow of its former grandeur. The fact that the sound came from speakers, not an orchestra, dulled the majesty somewhat.

The dancers, however, were absolutely stunning. Swan Lake, Nutcracker and Romeo and Juliet are three ballets which don’t so much tug at my heartstrings, as blow them up and make a balloon animal out of them. The music is just so achingly beautiful and it was beautifully captured by the dancers. The girl playing Odette/Odile had a mournful featheriness with a steely reserve that showed exactly why she was chosen as the leader. The prince was leggy and leapy and could express pain and happiness and that’s all you really need. The costumes were gorgeous and the whole thing was just intensely riveting. I know I go on about Broadway a lot but while I was brought up on a fairly equal diet of musicals and ballets, dance was my first love and it’s always a pleasure to see it live.

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On Shuffle whilst I type:

Saturday Getaway from Rookie Card by PNC featuring Awa from Nesian Mystik. This guy is probably the best thing to come out of Palmerston North since Tim.

Nobody’s Side from the recording of Chess In Concert by Idina Menzel. I bought this today at Real Groovy and the very sight of it was so unexpected and so exciting that I proceeded to tell the lady behind the counter how awesome it was and how ridiculously excited I was about it. Probably should have played it a little more cool. But seriously though, Chess is a nightmare to follow but the music is ridiculously good and Idina tears this song to shreds.

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The roundabout, kind of oblique (eh, it’s 10.30pm on a Sunday night) title for this post is brought to you by: Stephen Sondheim and his song Not A Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along. Bernadette Peters sings it and can’t be argued with, but predictably I’d like to offer Idina’s one-off take on it, worth it for the hatey youtube comments alone.

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Next time: Well, I probably will end up baking something frivolous in the name of celebrating my blog’s two-year existence.

america is not the world…

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…but they do know a thing or two about peanut butter.

Though we’ll enthusiastically spread it on our toast, I’m pretty sure I can confidently say, without sweepingly rewriting our heritage, that here in New Zealand we’ve never had a history of using peanut butter like America does. In fact, we’re probably more likely to spread Marmite or Vegemite on our toast (The former owned by Seventh Day Adventists, the latter by Philip Morris and Australians, so choose whichever you find easier to swallow.)

Which is possibly why, when faced with an emptying jar of peanut butter approaching its use-by date, none of my New Zealand cookbooks offered any solutions for what to do with it. All I wanted was a simple peanut butter cookie, and even Nigella Lawson with her love of Americana didn’t have a specific example. I’ve only got one American cookbook and it’s all about Italian cooking so I finally turned to the internet. Had a flick through the search functions of Tastespotting and Foodgawker and found a recipe at Erin’s Food Files, which highlighted a product gratifyingly American – maple flavoured peanut butter (oh the rich tapestry of life!) I thank Erin for the recipe, which I fiddled with only slightly. However you may like to refer to her website if you are already more comfortable with measuring butter in cups and baking with Fahrenheit.

Maple Peanut Butter Cookies

Adapted from a recipe on Erin’s Food Files.

125g soft butter
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup peanut butter
2 teaspoons maple syrup (or golden syrup if you don’t have maple to hand)
1 cup plain flour
1/3 cup rolled oats
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
75g good dark chocolate (milk also would be nice), chopped roughly into chunks and shards.

Set oven to 160 C/325 F.

Using a wooden spoon (because it’s better that way), cream together the butter and two sugars until the mixture is lightened and fluffy. Then beat in the peanut butter, followed by the egg and syrup. Stir in the flour, oats, baking powder and baking soda and finally the chocolate. It will be a relatively soft mixture.

Drop heaping tablespoons of the mixture onto a lined tray – no need to flatten – and bake for about 15 minutes, no more. They may still be soft when you take them out of the oven but will continue to cook as they cool. Transfer them carefully by spatula to a rack or just another tray while you bake the second batch.

Delicious from this angle…

…and also this angle.

These cookies are really, really good. I can’t say that the maple flavour is terribly strong, so don’t fret if you haven’t got any. The oats don’t make themselves stridently felt either, almost melting into the mixture as it bakes to provide an overall satisfying chewiness. You want to make sure your butter is really good and soft, and it’s a bit of a faff to get the peanut butter out of the bottom of the jar without covering yourself head to toe in the stuff, but apart from that these cookies are very little hassle to make and surprisingly quickly done.

Elaine Paige is coming to Wellington to do a show which is really rather cool. If you don’t know who she is, here’s a good way to find out. Take a dart, and throw it at any West End production cast recording since 1970-something and it’s likely she played a starring role in it. Seriously, I’m surprised she wasn’t cast as Elphaba when Wicked opened in London. You may not have her in your memory, but trust me, you know her so well. (Okay, sorry for the tenuous puns.) She’s been all over theatre in Britain (and Broadway) since forever and it’s really exciting to have the opportunity to see her. Tickets are a little on the jaw-droppingly expensive side, but I think I’ll file it under “Merry Christmas to me” and deal with it.

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The title of this post is brought to you by: Morrissey. All you need to know about him you can probably find in the youtube comments.
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On Shuffle whilst I type:

Not specifically on my computer, but on the shuffle of my mind if you will, is the Newtown Rocksteady, a band of many people, copious facial hair, several hats, and much skill. Caught them at the Southern Cross last night as one of the members is a friend of our flatmates. Their joyful sound whipped the audience into a frenzy of dancing (and may well have been what inspired the couple directly in front of me to kiss passionately and at great length.)

To be honest I’ve been to busy at work this week to listen to an awful lot of music (apart from the usual Broadway-on-my-way-to-and-from-the-office) but I have been streaming a lot of George FM and 95bFM. Both great channels, and although bFM can be ludicrously Auckland-centric, as they are primarily an Auckland-based channel it would be remiss to shake my fist at them for that. Especially when there is such great music and dialogue abounding.

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Next time: I was gifted a healthy bunch of asparagus today from my flatmate’s friend (the one in the band…such a kind act would I suppose now make him my friend now too). Plus I bought, on a whim, some whole wheat – also known rather charmingly as wheat berries. Am looking forward to using both tonight and documenting it…

I’d be surprisingly good for you

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First lovingly assemble your ingredients on a wooden board

I’ve had the weekend to myself, as Tim has been away in the South Island touring with his choir. I haven’t taken advantage of this absense to cook anything particularly idiosyncratic for myself (ie, mushroom-heavy). It’s all too easy these days to be tempted by grabbing cheap take-out from the squillion eateries dotting the landscape and twinkling in my peripheral vision. I tell myself it’s all in the name of keeping the economy alive. For lunch on Saturday I simmered some elderly tofu in half a jar of spaghetti sauce that had also seen better days as some way of counteracting the excessive time spent not in the kitchen.


Yesterday morning I bussed out to Brooklyn, one of the ‘burbs that huddle round the central city of Wellington, to see Every Little Step at the Penthouse Cinema. Every Little Step weaves two stories together – the inception of ground-breaking musical A Chorus Line in 1974, and the audition process for the revival of the same musical in 2006. A documentary about people auditioning for a musical about people auditioning for a musical. It was fascinating to see some more established Broadway names (oh hi, Amy Spanger, Yuka Takara, Charlotte D’Amboise, etc) learning choreography, waiting for phone calls, pacing back and forward, being told to repeat songs…The dancing was eye-popping and I was actually tearful in one audition scene where this beautiful young guy just nailed a ‘difficult’ monologue to the wall with his intensity. If you get a chance to see this, please do – I don’t think you need to be versed in musical theatre or dance to get a (ha!) kick out of it.

Seeing it really, really made me want to dance again. As I mentioned on Twitter, I was once told by some grand dame in a pashmina at a ballet workshop, that all passion and no talent can only get you so far – and all talent and no passion will get you even less. Unfortch I always erred on the side of “all passion”. That said, after ballet productions and recitals I would often get told by complete strangers that they loved watching me dance, perhaps because I looked so utterly happy to be twirling round on stage or something. It’s unlikely that there is an audience out there for an enthusiastic, past-a-prime-she-never-really-had dancer but I’ll keep my ear to the ground (which I can do surprisingly deftly, having maintained my dancer’s flexibility if nothing else).

With Tim’s impending return and the cake tin empty I thought a lazy Sunday afternoon would be as good a time as any to do some baking. Not that I’m some kind of 1950s housewifely type. No ma’am. To pluck an example from the air, I still can’t work a washing machine (just this evening my red sheets dyed yet another white tshirt pink) and Tim does 99% of the cleaning and dishes. But I’ll be damned if he ever has to cook himself a meal in his life. I guess it kind of balances out into something healthy-ish.

Speaking of healthy-ish, what I ended up making was a recipe that caught my eye from this Australian Women’s Weekly chocolate cookbook that I’ve had for a year or two now. I’ve been pretty good lately at not eating half the cake mix as I go but for this I really couldn’t stop myself. Cast your eyes over the ingredient list and nod in agreement with me. It’s marvelous stuff. It’s full of oats which I’m not even going to try and brightly joke makes it good for you, but it certainly can’t hurt. And chocolate is healthy in that spiritual way, so.

Chocolate Oat Slice

Adapted from Sweet and Simple: Chocolate, an Australian Women’s Weekly book.

90g butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup or condensed milk
100g milk chocolate
2 tablespoons good cocoa
2 cups rolled oats, lightly toasted
1/2 cup pistachios, toasted and chopped (I used walnuts)
1/2 cup dessicated coconut

Resist where I couldn’t, my children!

In a good sized, heavy based pan, melt together the butter, chocolate and golden syrup/condensed milk. Resist the urge to grab a spatula and chaperone it directly into your mouth. Stir in the cocoa, oats, nuts and coconut. Spread this mixture into a lined 20cm springform tin and refrigerate. It should set fairly quickly, and once it has, ice with chocolate buttercream if you want (and I did, as the song goes) and slice into triangles or whatever takes your fancy.

Might sound a bit strange, all those uncooked rolled oats just sitting there. But the oats soften up with all that butter and chocolate, and provide a fantastic chewy bite that makes it difficult to stop at one ‘test’ piece. The oats also soften up the sweetness somewhat. It’s not overwhelming, but this slice would be really good with a cup of thick black tea or strong black coffee to temper all the sugar. The Australian Women’s Weekly is renowned for triple-testing all their recipes, I can only imagine the sublime happiness emanating from the test kitchen during the writing of this particular book.

Did you know I’ve been asked three times in the last week if I’m still in high school? For fear of making myself sound even younger I’ll try not to rant about it too much, but really. I’m 23. I have a degree. I have a job where I make important decisions for the greater good of the nation. I’ve traveled. I’m legitimately grown-up. (Except I can’t drive or operate a washing machine.) Yes, I am generally more ‘clunky pun-dropper’ than ‘intimidating sophisticate’ but the idea that I carry myself like a high school student, that I don’t exude worldly-traveledy-employedyness…is not so fun. But enough personality dialysis! Let us focus on the positive: living in New Zealand under a gaping ozone hole has not left me a withered crone older than my years. Also, in a few years I’ll no doubt look back on myself with and dismissively think “Oh, 23 year olds. So annoying,” as I overheard someone on the bus once saying. I thought 23 was a pretty decent age to achieve, but the lesson is there’s always someone older than you who will greet your every action with disdain. Unless you’re 90, in which case you can drink whisky and eat cake and talk disdainfully about anyone you like.

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On Shuffle whilst I type: (the other day, Tim said “I’m sure you just put whatever song you feel like talking about on here, not actually what’s on Shuffle. To which I sigh and say, “Oh 23 year olds. So annoying.”)

You Got The Love by Chaka Khan and Rufus, from Rags To Rufus. Chaka Khan. It’s always the right time.


Connection by Elastica from their eponymous album. This song is…very cool.


Something 4 the Weekend by Super Furry Animals from their album Fuzzy Logic. It’s a great song, I like that they’re connected to the Welsh language so strongly and their name always makes me think of bunnies and kittens and such. What a package.

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Title brought to you by: I’d Be Surprisingly Good For You from Evita, by the exquisite Patti LuPone. If you’ve got the time, you must check out this promotional TV ad for Evita. The voiceover! The fervour! The sass! Patti’s eyes at the end!
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Next time: Signs of Spring are popping up everywhere but I’m still yet to see asparagus at a satisfactory price. When I do you can be sure this blog will be overflowing with the stuff.

lava you should have come over

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We’ve all been there. Quietly eating your wet polenta, but secretly thinking “Alas! If only this polenta was glutinous and significantly higher in fat and lower in nutritional value. Then I’d know real happiness.” Or maybe not. I have this yearly dalliance with gnocchi where just enough time has passed since I was last traumatised by it that I delude myself into thinking I can make it successfully. But every year, I fail.

For 2009’s attempt my head was turned by a recipe in a magazine for gnocchi which sounded delicious – a basic choux pastry mixture with cottage cheese added. It seemed pretty non-terrifying and so I gave it a go. The gnocchi was pillowy and light and slowly rose to the top of the pan of water. I pinched one out of the pan and tasted it – argh, so good. Smooth and creamy and yet gratifyingly unstodgy.

Then came disaster. I tipped the pan into a large colander and…the gnocchi broke. All completely flattened. Nary a solid pasta nugget to be found. After putting all this effort into it I was determined that the show would go on but seriously…

…that’s not gnocchi. The squashed gnocchi was kind of delicious, with the exact soft, grainy texture of polenta, just, you know, now with a higher GI rating and all the goodness of no cornmeal! After many years of failure, I’ve decided that gnocchi is like haircuts and half-marathons: best done for you by other people.

Let us distract ourselves from this ugliness with a ridiculously flamboyant cake – Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Coffee Volcano.

To mark the occasion of Tim’s birthday we threw a small shindig at our place on Sunday afternoon, inviting all of our closest friends (a very small, but mighty bunch, minus a few exceptions not based in Wellington naturally). I’d only been back in Wellington for an hour, since I spent the weekend up in Auckland for business meetings and the Smokefreerockquest finals (all of which went smooth as failed gnocchi). Instead of my usual post-travel mode, which is to put on my $6 grey trackpants and stare at the TV, I got stuck into making homemade custard and stuffing softened rice paper sheets like some pearl-wearing housewife from Bonfire of the Vanities.

The whole evening was very relaxed once this was out of the way. Let’s face it, no matter how many times you make custard there is still always the nagging fear that you’ll end up with sugary scrambled eggs. Luckily no disasters this time, particularly fortunate considering I’d substituted coconut milk for the stipulated cream, in a bid to make the pudding dairy-free for one of our friends who swings that way. (By the way, the cake uses oil, not butter. Do not consider for a SECOND that I’d stoop to margarine.)

So yeah, marvelous evening all round, good company, good nibbles, and particularly excellent cheese provided by Dr Scotty. Having it on a Sunday evening gave it a chilled out vibe wonderfully conducive to sitting round eating enormous quantities of food and light quantities of alcohol. Tim took over in the kitchen when the sausage rolls needed baking and the pork buns needed steaming (yeah, there was no real unifying theme to our nibbles) and they were pretty exciting, but the cake was the real star. Probably because I would not shut up about it and about how awesome it was that it was dairy free.

Let me describe it for you: a large, deep, undulating chocolate bundt cake (which, thank all that is good in the world, turned out of the tin neatly this time). The hole in the middle is filled with walnuts. Into said hole, over the walnuts, you pour rich custard, caramel brown with espresso (I actually forgot to add the coffee in the heat of the moment but no harm done as there was still plenty going on). Finally you sprinkle over brown sugar and using some kind of fire-producing implement, torch the sugar till it forms a caramelised, speckly creme-brulee surface on top of all the madness, all of which flows like magma once you slice into the cake to share it round.

It should probably be mentioned here that Nigella uses the words “infant-school easy” and “pa-dah!” to describe this cake. She uses these words…slightly carelessly. I wouldn’t be the first to volunteer a two-year old’s services in making a bundt cake which requires separated egg whites beaten to a meringue. Just sayin’ is all. But, if you have a few years’ experience behind you this cake is not impossible, as demonstrated by the fact that I could actually get it happening at all. It just requires a little focus and forward thinking. A kitchen blowtorch helps, I was given one for my birthday this year and was really excited about using it on something so worthy expending a little butane.

It does resemble a volcano, right? Eating it was an intense experience, and the reason the photos look so hastily snapped is because…they were. The cake is light in texture but very dark with cocoa. The caramelised sugar and hidden walnuts provide a crunchy respite against the rich, flowing custard. It’s just…marvelous. It’s the sort of thing that you have one bite of and decide that you want on a weekly basis. I realise it looks and sounds like there’s far too much going on. But it works.

Chocolate Coffee Volcano

Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess

CAKE

300g caster sugar
140g plain flour
80g cocoa
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 large eggs, separated, plus 2 more egg yolks (this is where it gets confusing if, like me, you have trouble counting to ten)
125ml vegetable oil (I used rice bran)
125ml water

Preheat oven to 180 C and lightly oil a 25cm Bundt tin.

In a large bowl mix together 200g of the sugar, all the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and baking soda. In another bowl, beat together the water, oil and 6 egg yolks. Pour over the dry ingredients gradually, whisking to combine.


Take yet another bowl and whisk the 4 egg whites till stiff. Keep whisking and slowly add the sugar spoonful by spoonful. Gently fold this into the chocolate mixture a third at a time. Pour mixture into the oiled Bundt tin and bake for 40 minutes, although it may need a little longer and covering with tinfoil.

CUSTARD

6 egg yolks
225mls double cream
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon instant espresso powder.


Note: I used four egg yolks and 1 tin coconut milk, using the same method. Whisk egg yolks, sugar and espresso powder together lightly. Heat up the cream in a pan but don’t let it boil. Slowly whisk it into the egg yolks. Wipe out the pan and transfer the mixture back into it, cooking over a low heat till it thickens significantly into custard.

Finally, sprinkle Tia Maria over the cake if you’d like to (another thing I forgot), fill the hole with walnuts, pour in the custard, allowing it to overflow and run down the creases of the cake. Sprinkle over about three tablespoons of brown sugar and torch it till it resembles the top of a creme brulee.

See? Infant-school easy! Pa-dah!

To go with I made another coconut milk custard into which I stirred melted dark chocolate and cocoa and froze into ice cream. As guests peeled off we were left with a few hangers on. There was a joyfully primal moment when we all stood round a kitchen countertop digging spoons greedily into the container of ice cream. Things got a little strange after that and, (poor Tim, was it ever even about him?) as some kind of signifier of this, Defying Gravity was played at great volume for Dr Scotty who had hitherto been living half a life and had never heard it before…

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The title of this blog is brought to you by: Jeff Buckley, singing Lover You Should’ve Come Over, okay sure, but maybe a little Eden Espinosa too…Yes, Jeff Buckley was special and all but I’m more of a Tim Buckley gal myself. And let us never forget who was the author of Hallelujah…
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On Shuffle whilst I type:

1: Like a Pen by excellent Swedes The Knife from their album Silent Shout. This song was regularly thrashed chez nous circa 2006/2007 but I heard it again yesterday while streaming George FM and was immediately taken back to those damper times. Had a nostalgic flashback to Alicia the Canadian teasing us for calling it was called “like a pin” with our New Zealand accents.
2: Cars by Gary Numan from The Pleasure Principle. Spurred on by marathon sessions of watching and listening to The Mighty Boosh I really had an urge to listen to this again. It’s blindingly glorious and swirly.
3: Cornerstone from the Arctic Monkeys’ latest, Humbug. It’s really good. Who would have thought back in 2005 that they’d be here now?

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Next time: Well, hopefully the next post will (a) arrive sooner and (2) have better photos. Like I said I’ve been travelling round the place, hence the yawning chasm between the last post and this one, but I got to touch base at home and catch up with all sorts of lovely and important relatives and get lots of important meetings done in the city AND act as sponsor representative at the fantastic finals for Smokefreerockquest. Plus make dairy-free custard after being back in Wellington for nary an hour. You try blogging after all that. Also, hopefully I make something that really succeeds. Either that or it’s time to get a ‘fail’ tag to add to my list.