Category: Vegetarian

Country Roads…Take Me Home…

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I’m writing from home – not the flat – Tim and I flew up yesterday morning and already it feels like I’ve never left. Funny how quickly you adapt to your surroundings. We had Mum’s vegetable soup last night for dinner and not only was it instantly soul-nourishing and delicious- it was much nicer than mine. Some things are worth traveling miles for…

Tim and I went out for brunch for my birthday on Thursday (it was supposed to be breakfast, but I always take too long to get figure out what to wear.) The weather was cold and miserable and I was half-tempted to stay in and make pancakes or somesuch but we persevered in the name of paying someone else to do it for us. We ended up at Epic Cafe on Willis Street, where the servings are large and the prices aren’t terrifying, and you can briefly feel like a character from Sex and The City for dining so well. Unfortunately the foul weather ruled out any would-be Carrie-style clothing creations, I went for practicality in jeans, hoodie, scarf and Chuck Taylors.


Above: I ordered the savoury French toast with sauteed vegetables and pine nuts, plus a side salad. There weren’t actually any pine nuts on mine…but the combination of their delicious hollandaise, tangy tomato sauce and amazing toast won me over, and, being the pansy that I am, I didn’t complain. The side salad was pleasant enough – for $3 – although I would have preferred some dressing. You’ll have to excuse the badly lit photographs – they were taken rather hurriedly – not only was the waitress looking at us funny but I was far too hungry to make more of an effort.


Above: Tim got the El Rancho Fryup, which featured perfectly cooked eggs and delicious, sweet-salty bite sized corn fritters that I longed to steal off him (I did manage to exchange one for a bit of my French toast.) Not to mention enough beans for one to want to avoid polite company for some time after.

We met up with my aunt who has been child-wrangling at a boarding school in Western Australia, it was fantastic to catch up with her and we spent a leisurely and loquacious afternoon in Smith The Grocer cafe in the Old Bank Arcade. Tim and I were still far too full from brunch to eat anything but I can tell you that their cups of tea come with a deliciously spiced complimentary wafer. She gifted me all sorts of wee foodie goodies including some black food colouring which I am very excited about trying out (she suggested an All Blacks cake – as if!)


Above: This is what I made for my birthday dinner. Because we were leaving for three days the next morning I couldn’t do anything too wildly extravagant – which was probably for the best, considering what it might have cost – but I did splash out and purchase some bacon. I fried and deglazed it with Vermouth, and added it to a vat of pasta along with brocolli, peas, lemon juice and the last of the creme fraiche. It was a lovely combo and also managed to use up a few things loitering sadly in the fridge. Please excuse the low-rent photo (noticing a theme?) the lens kept steaming up and this was my most serviceable shot. Any tips from more seasoned bloggers on how to prevent this?

Other things we have been eating lately…


Above: I made this free-form tart the other day for dinner, and though it really shouldn’t have worked…well, it did. First I made pastry out of 125g each of butter and flour, and bound it with a little buttermilk. I did this by hand, as I couldn’t be bothered dragging out my food processor (and there was anyway no benchspace for it) but I quickly was reminded why it’s worth the effort, as rubbing all that butter into the flour takes forever and strains the wrists substantially. Eventually I had a lump of something resembling pastry, so I rested it in the fridge, rolled it out, and started to freak as it began to almost melt on the tray, which had been heated by the oven underneath. In a blind, twitchy panic I flung my ingredients at it (creme fraiche, tomatoes, capers, pine nuts) and baked it at 200 C.

I expected to see a gooey, floury mess 25 minutes later but miraculously the pastry had come together. The tomatoes became deliciously scorched in places, making them even sweeter, which contrasted rather fabulously with the salty capers. The pastry itself was buttery and flaky, even though it really shouldn’t have been. Not the healthiest dinner, but a delicious one all the same, and something rather more “restaurant-y” than we normally get. Try it yourself – maybe even get out your food processor – and use whatever you have in your pantry that you think would go well together. I can imagine thinly sliced courgettes and parmesan being wonderful, for example…


Above: I don’t really go in for stir-fries that much – they seem kind of overdone and it’s easy to make them claggy and oily (not to mention all that damned fiddly chopping!) However upon seeing a can of water chestnuts gathering dust in our pantry I decided to make something resembling one for dinner the other night. We didn’t have a heck of a lot of vegetables so it comprised of courgette, carrots, garlic, ginger (the real, knobbly, amazingly zingy thing, not the acidy stuff from a jar), sliced water chestnuts, and cashews. A fairly slim meal, yes, but there were only two of us, and once it was banked up against a pile of brown rice and had a few judicious droplets of sesame oil, it was quite substantial. I flavoured it with fish sauce, lemon juice, and a little bit of black bean sauce. Black bean sauce is so slow moving and it is impossible to scoop it out of the narrow bottle with a spoon, so I made the mistake of shaking it over the pan with the lid off…which resulted in salty black streaks all over the wall.

All that aside, the end result was quite lovely, the water chestnuts have an intriguing texture and it was gratifyingly salty. Also, anything accompanied by brown rice makes me feel instantly Zen; a nice payoff for the long time it takes to cook.

On a “happy birthday to me” whim I purchased Jill Dupleix’ Lighten Up from the warm and friendly Unity Books on Willis Street. I have often flicked through this book and thought “eh,” but closer inspection revealed that it was actually full of exciting recipes. I’m quite wild with anticipation about trying her Lentil and Sweet Potato Pie for example… There is something about Dupleix’ authoritative “tone” that can be a bit annoying, even laughable at times, but on the whole her cookbooks make very enjoyable reads. Mum and Dad gave me a $100 grocery voucher for my birthday so I can’t wait to go buy lots of vegetables and get cooking from it. Speaking of purchases, today they bought a shiny shiny new oven (the last one made industrial grinding noises every time you turned it on which was most disconcerting and it never got hot enough). The new oven is self cleaning! What an age we live in…

Just Spent Six Months In A Leaky Blog

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My blog is six months old! In a time where technology moves so eye-wateringly fast, I feel I’m justified in getting a little misty-eyed over the half-year existence of my little blog that could. It feels like just last week that I was getting excited over my 200th hit!

Speaking of milestones, our weekend in Hawke’s Bay (for Tim’s grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary) was a fantastic time, a large part of which was spent solidly grazing. We were also able to reap the benefits of one of life’s happiest pairings – someone who has a massive feijoa tree but doesn’t like to eat them. The feijoa is one of my very favourite fruits, and for some reason in my mind they are one of those fruits you don’t actually go out of your way to buy – you should just know someone who has a windfall. When living in a damp city full of apathetic university students though, one can’t expect to find them that easily. While up north we managed to get two shopping bags full of this wonderful fruit, by pillaging a family friend’s trees, and I absolutely can’t wait to do something with them – feijoa ice cream mayhaps – slices perched atop a pavlova – maybe some kind of pork-adorning salsa – or just eaten one after the other after the other after the other, cut in half and scooped out with a teaspoon.

For some odd reason, the feijoa is only really widely known in New Zealand, which seems a nice enough trade-off for all the things we don’t have here (Primark, Minstrel chocolates, access to Neil Young, 12th century cathedrals) It has a dense, gritty, pear-like texture and an elusive fragrance not unlike passionfruit. Heavenly.

Speaking of our weekend away, I completely forgot to post about the gluten free peanut butter biscuits I took up along with the Quince Loaf. This is the third time I’ve made these biscuits and the third time I’ve forgotten to blog about them…and the third time I’ve been solemnly staggered by how quick, easy and delicious they are. The recipe can be found here, from when I made them a few weeks ago.


Above: I ended up with two-tone biscuits, because the ones on the tray on the top shelf of the oven browned faster than those on the bottom shelf. Rigorous testing proved that there was no difference in taste though. Equally fab.

By way of further illustrating why you should always write things down (or is that, why I should write things down), I give you tonight’s dinner. I thought that I could use my creme fraiche in a simple pasta dish loaded with vegetables and garlic, and only realised after eating it that I’d forgotten half the things I was planning to put into it.


Above: There was carrot, courgette, and capsicum, but my brain mislaid the information about adding tomatoes, frozen peas (even though I bought them specially after work!) and pine nuts.
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I began by julienning the carrots and capsicum (all the while imagining I was a sous-chef in New York – inexplicably the words “julienne” and “sous-chef” are intertwined to me), and blanching them in a pan full of water in which I also placed about five cloves of garlic. The garlic simmered away and became soft and mellow, rather than burning and acrid. After fishing out the vegetables, I cooked the pasta in the same water and then drained it, stirring in some creme fraiche and the cooked vegetables. The garlic cloves I chopped roughly and mixed in too. It was certainly good – the creme fraiche made a kind of instant sauce – but all I can think about is what it would have been like had I not forgotten half the components.

This weekend we are flying up home for my best friend’s 21st, and next weekend I hope that we can go to Levin (in all honesty, the first time I’ve used “Levin” and “I hope that we can go to” in the same sentence) to catch a performance of Rent. I can’t find a review online for love nor money so it’s a bit of a gamble, but the idea of finally seeing this show onstage, no matter where, is too exciting to miss out on. In what seems like positively providencial circumstances, Palmerston North will be having their own production of Rent in May. I’m trying to convince Tim that two productions so very close to Wellington means this is a sign that it’s all meant to be but he’s still not quite buying it. Never mind, my birthday is a-pending which means he is obliged to humour me (if only briefly, for his sanity’s sake.) Oh and did I mention that Puccini’s La Boheme, the opera which inspired the very musical of which I speak, is coming to Wellington?

<.twilightzonevoice/.> “Doo-dee-do do, Do-dee-do do”

"In The Cold, Cold Night…"

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Baby, it’s cold outside…in Wellington, at least. Talk about hungry and frozen. I didn’t plan on making vegetable soup this early on in the year but what else can you do in this situation?

Above: Vegetable soup always reminds me of home, of making a large vat of it every weekend in winter, and letting it sit warmly in the crock-pot, only getting better with time.
I don’t follow a recipe, but I think you have to have onions, celery, and carrots – the basis of many a slow-cooked meal – and I like to really let the vegetables cook (I refuse to say sweat!) before adding any liquid. Because I was all out of the classic King’s Soup Mix, I just used some lentils and barley that I found in our pantry. By the way, King’s Soup Mix isn’t nearly as declasse as it sounds – it’s just a prepacked bag of lentils, beans and barley. It is very cheap, and so good for you – I don’t know why people don’t make this all the time.

So that was dinner last night. To go with I made a rather sassy Puy lentil, pea and feta salad. After adding peas to my lentil soup the other day, it struck me that this humble frozen vegetable could be paired with lentils in other ways. The earthy darkness of the Puy lentils, the perky green sweetness of the peas and the creamy saltiness of the feta was surprisingly moreish.
Above: I didn’t actually measure anything so I can’t give you an exact recipe…however I did make a dressing out of three tablespoons each extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar. With so few ingredients it should be easy to recreate it yourself, if you are so inclined.
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Above: Unfortunately I remain intimidated by our new camera, as you can see by this picture where the meal is out of focus and the wooden spoon is in. I tell you, I can’t seem to get it the other way around. I’d like to think there’s something wrong with our camera…but I suspect it’s still me.
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More soul food (if you can see it in that photo, anyway!) tonight in the form of a layered meat and pasta dish from Annabel Cooks, by NZ author Annabel White. It is very basic, a kind of no-effort lasagne – cooked small pasta is mixed with sour cream and cream cheese, and layered with mince that has been cooked in the usual spag-bol kind of way, topped with cheese, and baked. It sounds too simple and seen-it-all-before to be any good, but in fact I think she’s on to something. Much depends on the quality of your meat sauce, I’d recommend using red wine in it, and a tin of tomatoes instead of some premade pasta sauce. It is very comforting bowl-food, and helped to stave off the chilliness of our (inevitably freezing) student flat momentarily.
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As Nigella The Wise says in How To Be A Domestic Goddess, the benefits of colder climes are largely culinary, and I heartily concur. I can’t wait to try out more soups (getting ever-closer to The Lentil Soup), rich casseroles, melting stews, baking more bread in the weekends (proving it by the heater if need be), dusting off my pudding steamer…and, er, my Pilates DVD…

Rainy Day Woman

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Today – Saturday – was just as wet and miserable as last weekend. Luckily I love rainy weekends – cosying up with a blanket, becoming engrossed in a book, lazily browsing the internet…However with breakfast and lunch lamentably comprising only of Chocolate Guinness Cake, I forced myself to leave the house to get some fresh air, and found myself at Moore Wilson’s. Wherein I bought some organic buttermilk, some feta, a tub of white miso paste, and two quinces.

Above: Oh! You pretty things. I love quinces. In New Zealand now is the time for them, so grab one if you can. They are impossible to find year-round, absolutely rock hard and have to be cooked very slowly but their incredible fragrance and sweetness makes it worth the effort. Nigella has a whole swag of recipes for this particular fruit so I look forward to trying something new.
I got back to the flat in an advanced state of saturation. My $4 Kmart white canvas sandshoes (that are now rather fashionable and you can’t get them cheaply anymore) are on their last legs, and were completely filled with water. So, after getting out of my miserably drenched clothes I decided to make a warming curry for dinner, filled with vegetables and even some soul-soothing lentils to counteract the day’s cake-eating. (That’s a little misleading actually – I assure you, I did put some more clothes on before starting on the curry. I think the world only needs one Naked Chef…)
Pumpkin Curry For a Rainy Saturday

This is a very gentle and mild – no chilli at all, come to think of it – so if your tastebuds are made of stronger stuff than mine, by all means add as much chilli as you dare.
1/2 a pumpkin, chopped into large dice
1 T butter
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
1 red capsicum, diced
2 tomatoes, diced
2 T tomato paste
1 t ground cinnamon
2 t cumin seeds
1 t ground ginger
1/4 cup red lentils
1/2 cup coconut milk
1/2 t garam masala
Melt the butter in a decent sized saucepan. Stir the onion, garlic, cinnamon, cumin seeds, and ginger together over a gentle heat till the onion is soft, but not browned. Add the tomatoes and paste (or if this is too much of a pain, just half a tin of chopped tomatoes) and the capsicum, and let this cook for a bit. Tip in your orange chunks of pumpkin, and then add 250mls water to the pan. You might need more depending on the size of your pan, you want the pumpkin pieces half-submerged in the water. Bring this to the boil then lower the heat and simmer till the pumpkin is nearly tender. At this stage add the lentils, and a bit more water – about half a cup. Simmer till the lentils have disappeared into the sauce. Finally add the coconut milk and the garam masala. Don’t let it boil at this stage. Serve over rice. This will feed 2 or three people. Just add a bit more of everything if you have more people over.
Above: I served it over brown rice, which is not so hard to cook as people think. This is the method I use: bring a pot of water to the boil, tip in a cup of brown rice, boil the living heck out of it for about 15 minutes or till it’s soft but firm, then drain. It barely takes longer than white rice. The curry itself was warm and inviting, the perfect thing to be eating by the greedy bowlful with this inhospitable rain beating against the windows.
Above: I made this quick pizza for dinner the other night, using a recipe of my paternal grandmother’s that I found whilst browsing through a folder of recipe clippings that I compiled as a teenager. I don’t think she was that much of a ‘foodie’ – for all I know she may never have actually made this recipe – but it is still meaningful to me that I got her cookbooks and bits and pieces. This particular recipe involves melting butter and frying in it garlic, diced tomato and sliced courgettes, and I assume it is supposed to be a side dish. Well I made it one night, and was so taken with the simple but delicious flavours, that I had to make it again, and soon. On Thursday night, having made it for the second time, I spread it thickly over a scone dough base (the recipe of which I found in Alison Holst’s Dollars and Sense, which my brother got me for Christmas) topped it frugally with cheese, baked it, and ate it whilst watching Coronation Street on telly, which Katie has got me back into. I see that Gail Platt is as depressing as she was last time I was into this show -rather comfortingly, some things never change.
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We are having something of a David Bowie Renaissance in the flat – his songs are just so densely brilliant that they don’t lose any gloss with repeat (and I mean repeat) listenings. Just try not to hug the next person on the street you see after listening to Modern Love – possibly the greatest song of all time (along with all the other greatest songs of all time.)
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It is just Tim and I in the flat tonight – Paul is in town, Katie and Stefan are in Napier, and Emma has trotted down to Dunedin. I’m trying to convince Tim that watching Rent would be the perfect way to end a rainy Saturday…but I think we might end up compromising with Green Wing, Season 1. Eh, either way I win!
Update: We actually watched some Black Books instead. Whenever I watch this show…I sort of wish I actually was Bernard Black, just for a bit.

“Run For Your Life…”

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Can you believe the final day of March is upon us already? My body clock is still ticking along as though it is late February, when in fact a whole quarter of 2008 has passed.

Because this is Wellington, and not say, Connecticut, we have no discernible Autumn to speak of – no crunch of fallen leaves underfoot, no crispening of the evening air – instead, Winter seems to have launched with a whoosh, and before you know it the drains are blocked with mulchy leaves and your shoes get soaked when you merely leave to check the mail. The upside of this grey, damp onslaught?

Soup.


Above: Tim and I bought the biggest pumpkin we (*cough* he *cough*) could carry at the vegetable market, and I used it to make soup last night. I have actually never made pumpkin soup before – I guess I am too busy faffing with lentils – but it has always been a favourite. I wanted to roast the pumpkin though, rather than do the usual method of simmering it in stock. I developed this recipe after making the Pumpkin Puree from Nigella’s How To Eat, and…I think it is pretty awesome. It is intensely creamy without the addition of any milk or cream, plus, you don’t need a blender to make it. I love my blender but dragging it out from under our computer table in our bedroom (hey, our flat has almost no storage space) and cleaning it after can seem like way too much effort sometimes.

Roast Pumpkin Soup

Preheat oven to 200 C. Take half a large pumpkin, and chop that half into eight chunks (or just four, if your pumpkin is not that big.) Encase each pumpkin chunk loosely in tinfoil, pinching the edges together. If you want to add a teaspoonful of butter with each piece, feel free (I certainly did.) Place in a roasting dish and bake for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size. Test the pieces with a skewer after this time has passed – you want it very soft, with no resistance.

Carefully open the tinfoil parcels and one by one, scoop the orange flesh into a pot. This is a tiny bit messy. The flesh should be highly yielding, but give it a go with the potato masher to get rid of any lumps anyway, adding more butter if you wish. At this stage you have yourself a perfectly serviceable bowl of pumpkin puree, which you can place with pride at your dinner table. For soup however, pour in four cups of stock (I used porcini), stirring with a wooden spoon after every cup of liquid. If you need more liquid, by all means add more. It should be thick and not too watery. Now, merely heat it over a low flame – don’t let it bubble – and before you want to serve, grate over some fresh nutmeg and add a tiny pinch of ground cumin.

You could make this Thai, by adding curry paste, fish sauce and coriander, or serve it Morrocan-style by upping the cumin and adding cinnamon, tumeric and tomato paste. Just don’t try and take a photo of it because the camera lens steam up something crazy, as you can tell by the above picture. This soup won’t be quite as velvet-textured as something blended, so knock yourself out, but even in its rough and ready state it still looks like distilled sunshine and tastes warm and fabulous.

On Saturday night, Emma, Ange, Paul, Tim and I went to the Relay For Life. I have to say I have very mixed feelings about the night. Because Emma works with the ANZ Bank, we were signed up with their team and given the 10 till midnight slot. The fact that it was raining very heavily didn’t help with the enthusiasm, but when we got to the event and the ANZ tent was absolutely soaked through, with no lighting but for some glowsticks and rapidly-fading police-style blue revolving lights, with some frozen hash browns that Paul was asked to cook, and some bowls of (admittedly pleasant) salad lying on the ground with dripping people stepping over them…I wondered what the heck we’d gotten ourselves into. Since ANZ is apparently one of the most wealthy corporations in New Zealand, I expected at least a table to put our gear on and some slightly more welcoming digs. And some light. On top of all that, the woman in charge of the tent was incredibly unpleasant to us, even though we had volunteered our time and money to help out her business. She seriously made us feel uncomfortable and unwanted and frankly, I am glad I don’t hold any accounts with ANZ if this is their representation. Paul had to leave early to go to a party, and the rain made Emma’s elbow sore, so it fell upon Ange, Tim and I to keep the alarmingly phallic ANZ baton aloft.

I am very proud to say that I didn’t stop moving for our entire 2 hour segment, even though my shoes were filled with water and the persistent showers meant that I was beyond saturated. I walked most of the time, but I did manage to run a whole lap, which I was pleased with. And yes, that is Iron Maiden that I quoted in the title, the song was running, if you will, through my head as I circumnavigated the track! I truly am no runner – I have actually never in my life owned a pair of running shoes and spent Saturday night in an old pair of Converse – so this was quite an achievement. To be frank though, the ANZ tent was so hostile and dank and horrible that it was something of an incentive to stay on the track.

At 8.30pm there was a candle ceremony, which was very moving despite the fact that it was held in an underground carpark. It made me realise how many people – and a few cats – I know that have died from cancer. I also thought briefly of Nigella Lawson, who lost her mother, her sister, and her first husband to cancer. Even though walking for hours round and round a circuit in the rain is not my first idea of fun, it was a surprisingly contemplative time for me. Tim ran for a bit, and Ange, who has amazing stamina, managed to get ANZ’s fastest lap. We live in a time of such incredible leaps and bounds in knowledge, technology, science, everything – who knows that one day we won’t have a cancer-free world. I certainly hope so.

We got given a goodie bag beforehand, and in said bag was an RFL tshirt, a blue ANZ hat which leaked its dye onto my forehead, and a few other bits and pieces, including these small bags of rather classy scroggin (or scrottage, as it is forever called to me). I decided to use this yesterday to make some muffins, slightly adapting Nigella’s Muesli Muffin recipe from Feast.


Above: After removing the vile dried banana pieces, I chopped this all with my mezzaluna, and added some rolled oats and bran to make up the 250g required for the recipe. I am so in love with these positively healthy muffins that once our ex-microwave gets replaced, I plan on making lots and freezing them, to be nuked as required throughout Winter.

Muesli Muffins

  • 225g plain flour
  • 1 t baking soda
  • 250mls buttermilk *I had none so used plain milk with some lemon juice added
  • 1 egg
  • 175g brown sugar
  • 80 mls vegetable oil
  • 250g good muesli

If you don’t actually have muesli, I recommend a mixture of rolled oats, bran, and whatever seeds, nuts and dried fruit you like. This is very simple: Heat the oven to 200 Celcius, and grease or line a muffin tray. Combine the flour, baking soda and sugar in a large bowl, then stir through the muesli. Pour in your egg, buttermilk and oil, and using a wooden spoon, mix gently till barely combined. As with all muffins, you do not want to overstir this, so go easy. Divide the mixture between the twelve holes in the muffin tin and bake for 25 minutes.


Above: The muffins. They are so full of goodness and health that I didn’t feel too bad about smothering them with butter before eating…

April is going to be a busy month. I have about forty squillion assignments due, I am flying up home for my best friend’s 21st, going with Tim’s family to his grandparents’ wedding anniversary party, hopefully taking in a performance of Rent in Levin, and turning 22 somewhere in the middle there. I’m exhausted just thinking about it…

Pride Goeth Before A Fall…(Unless You Have Whipped Cream)

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As if 5000 hits wasn’t exciting enough, I got 10 comments to boot! (And only TWO of them were from my mother!) I felt like a ‘real’ blogger, the kind who quite coolly amasses double figure comments on a daily basis and has an RSS feed and takes beautifully lit photos…okay I’m still genuinely struggling on the photography front and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to install an email subscription enabler thingy but…

Thanks everyone for making it happen 🙂

I couldn’t spend too much time on my high horse though. Last night I tried making the Lemon Meringue Cake from Nigella’s Feast (although it first appeared in Forever Summer) with the idea of putting fresh passionfruit in the middle instead…and nothing would go right. Crucially, I got a tiny bit of yolk in the egg whites – the first time that has ever happened – and true to form, they just would not hold shape. Recklessly, and I admit, a little maniacally, I just biffed the whole lot in the oven anyway where…it got burnt.
However, all was not lost. Luckily the chargrilled stage gave it more of a caramelised, rather than carcinogenic flavour, and with lashings of cream and the airbrushing effect of lots of icing sugar it went from this:


Above: Yes, that is the top layer of the cake in the background. Anyway, here’s the ‘after’ snap:
Above: I would have loved to have taken one of those photos where everything in the background is blurry – it’s such a pretty cake – but despite repeated attempts I can’t figure out how. Shutter speed or aperture or something…any tips? Anyway, I guess the lesson here is actually: when in doubt, smother it in cream. Despite the odds, this cake tasted wonderfully good – the textures really define it, as you sink your spoon softly into meringue, then sponge, then cream, then fruit, then sponge, then meringue again. There is something truly exquisite about the elusive fragrance of fresh passionfruit and it proved an excellent contrast for all that sweetness. All I can say is, if it tasted this good, imagine how delicious it would have been had I not cocked it up at every step of the way.
In case you thought we’d only been having pudding for breakfast lunch, and dinner (which incidentally, is how I imagined living my life by now when I was a child), you would be sorely mistaken, my friend. (Surprise! It’s lentils!)
Above: Another step in my increasingly arduous quest to find the ultimate lentil soup. I think the triumverate of brown, red, and French lentils is pretty essential, as is plenty of garlic and coriander. As well as chopping garlic into it, I’ll biff in a couple of whole cloves to gently impart flavour as they simmer. For something so robust, this flavour seems to get lost easily here. Coriander gives the almost too-earthy pulses a kick. I tried making it with spring onions instead of plain ones, but it definitely is better with the latter – spring onions are too delicate in flavour.

Above: The addition of frozen peas worked, giving it a slight sweetness, more texture variation, and they were also aesthetically pleasing (oooh I sound very serious now). Finally, taking a tip from Nigella, I splashed in a little dry sherry. I am getting ever closer, and when I find the prototype you can be sure I post the recipe here.
I realise I am sounding a little Gollum-esque (heck, even I can picture myself hunched over, hissing “pressciousssss“) but what can I say. I like lentils. I’m not sure they will ever be ‘sexy’ in the manner of chocolate and the like – perhaps unless Kate Moss decides that she’s into them – but they are not without their charms.

Relay for Life this weekend. I have a deep, deep hatred of relays after PE being compulsory in my schoolgirl years, but this is for a very good cause and I understand that the popular kids won’t be choosing the teams. And more importantly, it’s about being there, not actually running (finally! A concept that works!)

Absolut Pask

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Oh I wish it could be Easter, every day. Friday AND Monday off feels like untold luxury now that I’m dipping my toe into what they call “the real world.” For those of you who have been somewhat alarmed by the increasingly saggy faces of various rockstars gracing this blog over the last couple of days, I offer hot cross buns to soothe you:

Above: My first ever batch of home-made hot cross buns. I used Nigella’s recipe from Feast, and it was a very rewarding process – adding the warm spices, kneading the dough, waiting patiently for it to rise, draping over the flour-water paste to make the crosses, and of course, grabbing the tender buns straight from the oven to be slathered with butter.
Above: As it happened, while arranging my buns I unwittingly created a yeasted tribute to the famous Absolut Vodka ad campaign. Just realised at this point that I should probably let you know that Pask is Swedish for Easter. More Easter Baking:

Above: Gluten Free Choc-Banana Brownies. I can’t tell you how excited I am about these. They were rigorously tested for quality in my flat (ie, they got snarfed within minutes) and were pronounced delicious. Now, I can’t pretend that I truly came up with this myself, in fact it started off as an idea which took shape after a bit of internet research.
First of all, I found this amazing recipe in a woman’s magazine (I forget which) for gluten-free peanut butter cookies. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen this recipe around, but it kicked me into action and I finally made them. They are risibly simple and yet so delicious; I’ve made them three times since and never managed to get a picture because they go so fast. From this sprang forth the brownie idea, but first…
Peanut Butter Cookies: Please, make these. I don’t even go in for peanut butter and I’m a complete fiend for these.
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup sugar (I use half brown half white, but go nuts)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg

Preheat oven to 180 C. This is what I recommend you do because PB can be a tacky mess. Take a half-cup measure, and put your sugar in a bowl. Then, using a spoon, scoop peanut butter into the half-cup, and then scoop this in turn into the bowl with the sugar in it. Repeat. I’m not trying to be patronising, but the first time I made this I ended up using nearly every baking implement in the house trying to deal with the peanut butter and it can truly be so much simpler…

Mix together the sugar and peanut butter. Add the egg, stir again, and sift in the baking soda. On two trays lined with baking paper, place smallish balls of the mixture which you have rolled with your hands. Don’t worry about flattening them, and they don’t spread tooooo much so you don’t have to stress about that either. Bake for 12-15 minutes. These won’t be at all crisp when you take them out of the oven, but don’t fret, they harden up as they cool.

Now eat one, and just try to stop yourself eating the entire batch, cleaning the kitchen scrupulously, and telling everyone you never made any in the first place.
So amazed was I at the magical properties of this peanut butter that I wondered if the same thing could apply to a brownie. Because brownies by nature are supposed to be shallow and dense, it left more room for error. After looking at some ideas on the internet, I came up with this – and it is so much greater than the sum of its slightly troubling parts…
Gluten Free Choc-Banana Brownies.
Each ingredient plays its own special part.


1 cup smooth peanut butter – to do its magical thang.
1 cup sugar – To provide bulk and sweetness
2 eggs – To bind it together
2 small, very ripe bananas – To make it densely moist
5 Tablespoons cocoa – To distract from the other flavours, and provide a deep chocolate taste
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips – To add squidge and more chocolate, of course 🙂
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda – I don’t know what this does, but it’s very important.
As with the biscuits, set the oven to 180 C, beat the peanut butter and sugar together, add the rest of the ingredients and pour into a brownie tin of regular dimensions. (You know, rectangular, not tooo big) What I did was bake it for 1/2 an hour at this temperature and then turn it down to 150 C, and bake for a further 15 minutes. Perfect.
I realise the combo of ingredients sounds kind of vile, but you don’t taste the peanut butter at all. The cocoa sort of covers everything up. But oh the irony – celiac flatmate Emma was in Samoa over the weekend (as one does) so she didn’t even get to participate. Luckily I am so enamoured of these brownies that I’m going to repeat them again very soon.
And if you aren’t sick of brown things by this stage –
Above: Chocolate Pear Pudding, from Nigella Express. It’s basically canned pears with a chocolate flavoured sponge baked overtop, but oh! How wonderful it tastes. For Heaven’s sakes, buy this book! I made this for pudding last night (Nigella’s Vietnamese Chicken Salad for dinner) and it is perfect to eat while watching Boston Legal and procrastinating about, well, everything.
I hope everyone had a lovely, relaxing Easter break.

Lentil As Anything

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Turns out that the Guinness cake is “the nicest cake in the world” according to Paul. He’s not wrong. Like a good casserole, fine cheese, or Helen Mirren, it just gets better with age. On Tuesday I ate three pieces of the damn thing. Small pieces (evening things up, you know) but nonetheless: three. So there have been lentils aplenty to atone.

But you don’t need me to tell you that the oft-maligned, unsexy lentil is actually seriously awesome. Or do you?

Above: This was Sunday night’s dinner. I must admit that I ate a whole ton of jellybeans that were supposed to be for Tim -should his blood sugar go low- while he was at work. I figured the only way to undo this would to make lentil soup. Now, I don’t have a hard and fast recipe for this, as I am still experimenting in the hopes of finding the perfect prototype. I think this could be close. I sauteed two onions, and added lots of garlic, some ginger, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, and turmeric. While this was softening and becoming headily aromatic, I tipped in half a cup each of organic Puy lentils, organic brown lentils, and red lentils from the bulk section at Pak’n’Save. Into this went a tin of chopped tomatoes, enough water to cover everything, plenty of salt…and that was it. It was pretty magical. Almost more of a curry than a soup, deeply flavoured with a marvelously thick texture. I thoroughly recommend you try it, especially if you find yourself crouching at the freezer with a spoon, surreptitiously eating your way through a tub of ice cream, or accidentally eating a whole loaf’s worth of overbuttered toast. Hey, we’ve all been there. Well, I have at least…

Above: This is what we had for dinner on St Patrick’s Day. Somehow it conspired that we had all the ingredients for that Autobahn classic, wedges with cheese, bacon, and sour cream. Even though there are probably far better uses for the bacon, at the time I couldn’t think of a better one. I served this with roasted capsicum and beetroot, which I drizzled with balsamic vinegar.

Above: Larb, with Cambodian Cucumber Salad from my Healthy Salads of Southeast Asia book, which was Tuesday night’s dinner. Larb is a bit of an in-joke for Tim and me – I guess we’re odd like that – we were playing Scrabble this one time (by the way, for someone who read the dictionary for kicks as a child, I am awful at Scrabble), and I used the word Larb. Tim said it wasn’t real, I told him he was uneducated, and he asked if I could use it in a sentence. All I could think of was “this is my larb.” Anyway, we found this kind of hysterical (I don’t expect you to, that’s why it’s an in-joke) but finally wikipedia proved me right. I still didn’t win that game. The cucumber salad is a great use of this particular vegetable, crunchy with cashews and dressed with fish sauce, garlic, and other such good things. I liked it a lot, and Tim said “yes” when asked if it was nice so you might be seeing this again. I’ll only tell you larb story this once though, promise.

Above: Lentil Cashew Cakes! (I’m not actually quite sure what to dub them; ‘patty’ sounds too earnest and I find something suspicious sounding about the word ‘fritter’ so ‘cakes’ will have to do.) I saw this recipe in the recipe column of the Sunday Star magazine section. It was written by the wonderful Ray McVinnie, whose column in Cuisine is always outstandingly inspiring, so I should have known these would be nothing less than brilliant. Cooked up brown lentils are mashed with cumin, garlic, coriander, eggs, chopped cashews and a little flour, and fried till cooked through (I used my awesome non-stick pan that I got for my 21st.) These chubby little cakes are fantastic – the soft crunch of the cashews provides the perfect foil for the unfamiliarly grainy texture of the lentils. To go with, I chopped some cucumber up, tossed it in some Greek yoghurt with ginger and garlic (adapting another recipe from this column) and steamed some brocolli. Oh, and there were more wedges:
Above: Wedges!
Easter is just around the corner and though I’m not looking forward to doing assignments instead of flying home, I am very, very excited about making my first ever batch of Hot Cross Buns (Nigella, of course!)
Oh yeah – we went to the cricket on Saturday. Technically we got a good deal: we paid $25 for a ticket to the cricket, (which I don’t like), a tshirt (which I’ll never wear), a beer (which I don’t drink), and a piece of toast with (excellent) bacon and (watery, curiously fishy) eggs at the Loaded Hog before the game. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think Sports=Bullying (at least when I have to be involved, anyway) so it begs the question, what on earth was I doing there? Well, I was more than prepared to stay at home but I got told that it would be fun and that I should come and that it was a great way to spend nine hours of your life. So with this in mind it would be facetious (but not out of character) for me to slate cricket entirely; just because I hate something doesn’t always make it morally abhorrent. But for real: It is intensely tedious. At about 2pm I almost became frantic, panicky even , with boredom and no forseeable conclusion to this charmless game. There were many times when I turned to Tim and asked him – genuinely – if they were still playing or just having an hour-long team talk, because that’s what it looked like. There is literally nothing to see, and nothing to do but sit. I can’t emphasise this enough. On a positive note, we were sitting amongst the Barmy Army, who are truly a delightful bunch, convivial and entertaining and ready with a song for every possible eventuality. They chanted “Micheal Vaughan’s Barmy Army” for a full eleven minutes. Their insanity kept me sane. So, no more cricket. At least I know for sure now that I don’t like it. Does anyone want a free tshirt?

Camera Obscura

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A warning: Tim and I have a new camera. It is very shiny and cool and high tech, but I just can’t take any decent photos. Please stick with me though. Hopefully these are just teething problems, and not a chilling vision of things to come for this blog.

I was planning to go to a Bikram Yoga class with Ange after work today, but we decided it took up altogether too much brain-space and so we went for an equally zen peppermint tea and soy chai respectively. On the way home, at the library, I got myself the River Cafe Two Easy Book, and the first Barefoot Contessa book. No offense to my American constituency, (or constichensy if you will; rewatched O Brother Where Art Thou last night and had forgotten how wondrous it is), but a lot of American chefs don’t really appeal to me, particularly – gasp! – Martha Stewart, who I just don’t get. (Fear not though, I can’t see the charm in Delia either.) Ina Garten, however, or the Barefoot Contessa as she grandly entitles herself, I really like. There is something so wonderfully, bosomly comforting about her, and all her recipes seem warm and delicious and inspiring. I can’t wait to peruse this book.
Above: You are still going to get the same old Laura-calibre photos until I figure out how to make the camera heed me. Seriously, I thought it would be instant Donna Hay up in here, but I guess there’s more to it than that. The food, by the way, in the above photo is of a casserole I made from Nigella’s How To Eat – the first casserole of the year. I absolutely love stews and the like though, so I was secretly excited when the weather was cold enough on Monday to warrant such a dinner. Notice the elegant bowl, Christmas present from the parents. Another stew I have made this week comes from the Hudson and Halls cookbook that Mum sent me. It was supposed to be Chicken Marengo, but I had no button mushrooms, so I suppose it is only Chicken Marengo-esque. Nevertheless, this is a seriously moreish dish, I couldn’t believe how great it tasted. It must be the inclusion of the magical elixer that is Marsala – but more on that later…
Could someone – perhaps American or well-travelled – explain what the deal is with Santa Fe? Does it possess some kind of mystical properties that I am not aware of? I only ask because it is mentioned quite a bit in Rent- there is a whole song devoted to how they want to run away to this place, plus numerous other references – and then on the Fame soundtrack, Montgomery also sings about his longing to escape to Santa Fe. I wikipedia’d it (as I am wont to do with this sort of thing) and although it certainly seems very pleasant, the site didn’t really offer much info. Anyone? Interestingly, these two songs are some of my favourites on the respective soundtracks (who am I kidding, I can’t choose)…perhaps Santa Fe has got to me, too.
Above: Amazingly, this photo is even worse than the above. This picture shows an apricot crumble I made the other day, using some fruit that Stefan had bought back from the Hawkes Bay. You don’t want to know how much crumble mix I ate…the finished product got generally glowing reviews from the flatmates, but I can’t pretend that the oat bran I put in the topping made it healthy.
Above: Un-hummoused Chickpeas…(which is to say, chickpeas with cumin, olive oil, sesame seeds, and lemon juice) and –

Above: Morrocan Vegetable Stew. Guess what we served it on? Couscous! I have to say, if there is one thing Nigella has taught me, it is how to make a good vegetable stew. I am forever in her debt. Onion, garlic, carrot, parsnips, canned tomatoes, red lentils…a pinch of cinnamon and tumeric…beyond easy. This was dinner for Tim, Paul and myself on Wednesday (I took pity on Paul who couldn’t be bothered cooking dinner.)
Above: The photo may not be so fab, but let me tell you friend, this tasted LUSH. I had been nursing a small idea for this very creation for some time now, and it came to glorious, calorific fruition yesterday. In case you thought I was doing nothing but lentils these days.
White Chocolate Macadamia Ice Cream with Marsala-Butterscotch Sauce. Does this sound good to you? I got Ange, Paul, Tim and Emma to test-drive it for me, and they loved it, Emma said it was even better than the Cinnamon Date ice cream. This is definitely a grownup dessert – the Marsala gives the sauce a seriously delicious flavour.
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White Chocolate Macadamia Ice Cream with Marsala-Butterscotch Sauce
Ice Cream:
-4 egg yolks
-50g plain sugar
-50g light brown sugar
-500mls cream
-125mls full fat milk.
-200g White Chocolate with Macadamias (can I just mention here that I got this chocolate by mistake and decided to pretend that I meant it to be that way, and it ended up being really good. So, I’m sure plain white chocolate will suffice just fine.)
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Being the cream and milk to the boil in a pot. While this is happening, gently whisk together the egg yolks and sugar till combined. As soon as the cream and milk starts to bubble, take it straight off the heat, pour it over the yolks and sugar and whisk thoroughly. Then, transfer this mixture back into the pot (which you have rinsed and dried) and stir constantly over a very low heat. You are making custard, so you don’t want to overcook it at all, but for heaven’s sake don’t stress. If I can do it, so can you. Keep stirring till it is well, the consistency of custard, then remove completely from heat. Melt the white chocolate, stir it into the custard thoroughly, let it cool and then freeze. Try not to drink it as it’s chilling.
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Marsala-Butterscotch Sauce
-50g butter
-50g muscovado sugar
-200mls cream
-1 T Marsala (I used my All’uovo, which is sweeter, but I’m sure dry would still be wonderful)
-1 T custard powder mixed with a little water.
Melt the butter and sugar together in a pot. When the sugar has dissolved into the butter, add the cream, and let it simmer for a bit. Pour in the Marsala, and finally the moistened custard powder, allowing it to thicken gently. It will thicken more on standing. If it sits for long. I’m just saying…
Above: Ah, the soothing balm of lentils. After all that sugar I needed something intensely healthy to calm me down and this soup had two different types of lentils in it. Oooh…I know I’ve said it before, but I have a theory that eating lentils just immediately cancels out anything. I long for a scientist to prove me right.
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It’s flipping chilly in Wellington at the moment – and not chilly in the BSC sense, but really very cold. “Sunny Santa Fe would be nice…”

Across The Universe-ity

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No more Shakespearian quotes for a spell, as I am instead to consume myself with The Duchess of Malfi. And not avoid it to have Tetris Tournaments with Tim and Paul (I’m winning!) So far uni is going well, although my skirt blew over my head yesterday just as a bus was pulling into the campus and I couldn’t for the life of me explain the concept of “number eight wire” during my media lecture…

Above: On Saturday night I made this quick pizza, using a scone-base recipe from Alison Holst’s Dollars and Sense cookbook. This is a great stand-by recipe, very fast to make. I couldn’t live from this cookbook alone but, well, someone could.

Quick Scone Dough Pizza Base

2 cups flour
2 t baking powder
1 T oil
1/2 cup (125mls) milk

Sift dry ingredients into a bowl, stir in oil and milk, and mix to form a dough. Roll out onto a greased tray, (this rolls out very easily), cover with your desired toppings (tomato paste and cheese in my case) and bake at 220 C for 15-20 minutes.

That night Tim and I got very drunk, and met up with Emma, her friend Scott, and Paul in town. Sunday morning, natch, was a complete write-off. By Sunday afternoon though, I was feeling up for something cultural and so trekked across the waterfront to see the Philharmonic Orchestra give a free performance of famous film scores (You know, Harry Potter, Psycho, that movie with swords in it, etc.) It was thoroughly enjoyable but after a while it started to rain heavily which brought things to a halt. And made for an awful walk home. Yeh I was wearing a skirt again. I think that’s how the weather knows when to be rainy and windy.

Above: By the time Sunday evening rolled gently around, I wanted to eat something healthy, in order to pretend that it would erase the previous night’s excesses (and okay, we had McDonalds for breakfast.) So I came up with this Thai Beef Salad. It’s not entirely original, in that anyone probably could have thought of it, but I wanted to do something different with mince – use it in a more elegant way. This is basically mince, onion, capsicum, fish sauce, lemon juice and sesame oil, cooked together and tossed with some of those pre-packed salad leaves that make EVERYTHING look like you’ve made an effort.

Above: Pasta with Beurre Rouge. Last night, our vegetarian ex-flatmate Ange came round to watch Fame (which I finally found, for $10 at Real Groovy! Kapow!) and I cooked her some dinner as well. In a self-absorbed kinda way, the entire meal was based around my recipes – the Miso-Honey Roasted Parsnips, the Carrot and Zucchini Salad, and something new – Spaghetti with Beurre Rouge. Now it’s not actually an authentic French dish, it’s just something I had an idea for, (as I was about to fall asleep the other night), a kind of tomato-flavoured Beurre Blanc. Hence the name.

I reduced Vermouth with some garlic, simmered it with tomato passata, and whisked in some butter, pouring it over cooked pasta. Here’s the flummoxing thing though. I absolutely LOVED it, thought it was the best thing I’ve ever come up with (I know I say this every time) while Tim just thought it was…nice. Which totally confused me. Had I actually come up with something good? So I’m going to make it again tonight, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining how great it was…or that Tim is completely demented. Ange loved it, which helped my bruised ego somewhat.