creature creature, my own double feature

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Y’know, I will gently snark about the Baby-sitters Club series in a loving way till my dying breath, but sometimes, in hindsight, they really got it wrong: according to the BSC, wearing glasses = The Worst. They kept brightly exclaiming things like “Mallory’s got glasses and braces, but we still like her/she’ll look okay one day/she actually managed to get a sort-of boyfriend!” I guess Karen Brewer of the Little Sister spin-off was glasses-proud but I never did like those books – who wants to read about seven year olds when you could read about the (more or less literally) impossible, sophisticated exploits of that most worldly and cool age group, thirteen year olds? What I’m saying is – I found out recently that I need glasses. And, in your face Ann M Martin and inevitable ghostwriters: I’m really happy about it. I’d been getting headaches and tender, weary eyeballs in front of the computer (which, between this blog and work, I’m attached to at the face for 90% of my life.) It never occurred to me that I had anything other than brilliant eyesight. I may have even boasted, nay, crowed about it on occasion. But the bafflingly crisp, clear world around me when I tried on the right lenses and the utter relaxation of my face in the region from my under-eye rings to my eyebrows convinced me that I actually am pretty long-sighted. Also the optician told me so.

So, in ten working days, these will be my new face. Minus the price sticker. And I can’t wait! Glasses are cool! Speccy is sexy! Frames get the dames! Lenses get the menses! (oh wait god no I didn’t say that one.)

It doesn’t always come together: over the last couple of weeks I’ve been out of the house so much that I’ve hardly cooked dinner at all. Movies. (Jessica Chastain’s magnificent face starring in Zero Dark Thirty). Drinks. Other drinks. Burger rings and snacks and a marathon of the most important cinema franchise of our generation: The Fast and the Furious. Dinners out with friends. Sybaritic weekends. And…bank balance plummeting as a result. It all seemed fairly simple when I got my job – we’d pay off our post-America credit card so soon! We’d get tattoos! We’d put money away for our wedding! Even though we’re waiting for marriage equality laws to pass, weddings are expensive enough that we might as well start saving now.) But no. Things kept happening. Moving costs. Furniture. More furniture. Glasses. Spontaneous good times. Some self-enforced laying low is maybe in order. But I do love good times…

I cook pasta more than anything else already, but it’s what I turn to with vigour when we’re trying to just eat from what’s in the cupboard without spending any extraneous pennies. Pasta can handle being simple – just cook it, stir in a few things, and you have a plausible meal, a meal that looks like it took some care, and like someone cares.

That said, these two recipes are so uninvolved and small that they almost don’t exist. The sort of thing you can really only cook for yourself, or someone you know well enough that you could defame them with the secrets only you keep about them (as others might say, someone you trust.) It’s just, many might be perturbed by how utterly little there is happening on their plate. And so, I worry for your self-esteem. I’m pretty sure these are nay-sayer-deflectingly delicious, but still. I can’t guarantee someone won’t say “where’s the rest of dinner?” or something.

Pasta with Burnt Cream and Basil

A recipe by myself. I made this by cooking the cream in this adorably small, dinky red pot. It boiled over furiously, twice, and made an appalling mess on the stovetop. Use a slightly bigger pot, please. I guess I could just call it Pasta with Cream and Basil, as it’s more scalded and boiled than burnt. But I am fanciful, and I fancy that Burnt Cream sounds fancy. 

200g dried spaghetti
250ml (1 cup) cream
A handful of fresh basil leaves

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Once it’s bubbling away, tip in the pasta and cook according to packet instructions. Probably 10-12 minutes. In another good-sized saucepan, bring the cream to the boil and allow it to simmer away for a good five to ten minutes. Keep an eye on it and stir often. Cream bubbles up fast. Drain the pasta once it’s cooked, pour over the cream and stir it through along with the basil leaves. The sauce will still be very liquid and creamy – as you can see in the photo –  but should have reduced in quantity somewhat. 

Pasta with Tomato, Wine and Butter Sauce

A recipe by myself. Yeah canned tomatoes!

200g dried spaghetti
50g butter
125ml (1/2 cup) leftover white wine – or a little less if that’s all you have. 
1 can cherry tomatoes (or chopped canned tomatoes)
A little olive oil

Cook the pasta according to packet instructions in a large pan of boiling salted water. In a medium sized pot, bring the butter and wine to the boil, then tip in the canned tomatoes and their juice. Allow to simmer for another five minutes – it will be pretty liquid – then pour over the cooked, drained pasta and stir carefully. Pour over some olive oil if you fancy the flavour. 

I didn’t even intend to blog about the second recipe here, as you can probably tell from the last-minute, near-empty, Final Girl cherry tomato nature of the photos of it. But I was also well aware of the fact that I had nothing to blog about, and in fact that it might not be the worst thing in the world to write a post about my regular fallback of pasta-and-stuff. The burnt cream pasta might sound sinister, but all you’re doing is reducing down the cream so that everything incredible about its flavour – that buttery clean richness – is deepened and intensified and more wonderful than ever. I specify leftover white wine in the tomato pasta recipe because that’s what I used – should you find an inch of wine leftover after a party don’t throw it out! Wine seems to add insta-mystique to a meal, giving a elusive elegance and layering of flavour to whatever you add it to. In this case it cuts through the butter, points up the acidic nature of the tomatoes, and is just generally delicious.

Another drawn-on page in the ever-growing flip book that is our new flat: we finally hung up all our posters and prints. I love it.

Speaking of that which I love, I was interviewed recently by Fairfax Media, and it was published in several regional newspapers. If you like, you can read it here (right click on the image, open in new tab, zoom in). I just love being interviewed. More, if you please, world!

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Title via: The White Stripes, White Moon from their album Get Behind Me Satan. This song is beauteous enough as is, but as the closing scene to their documentary Under Great White Northern Lights? Devastasting. So much so that I’m going to dramatically not even link to it because it makes me so stupidly emotional. (It’s really easy to find on YouTube though.) 
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Music lately:

Mary J Blige, Family Affair. Forgot how much I love this song. The beat and melody is kinda addictive to the ear, the lyrics are sternly positive, and the dance routine in the video is awesomely unhinged. And it has the word “hateration” in it.

Willemijn Verkaik is going to be the first person to play Wicked’s Elphaba in three different languages (German, Dutch, English) when she takes to Broadway this month. So very envious of people getting to see her, she’s unbelievable. I mean, you have to be fairly amazing to play the throat-challenging belt-fest that is Elphaba, but she’s one of my favourites. Here she is simply rehearsing No Good Deed (for the Stuttgart production, so in German) but being heart-stoppingly incredible.
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Next time: Another installment of my I Should Tell You interviews, with Dear Time’s Waste. Lucky me! Lucky you! 

i should tell you: flip grater

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Welcome to the third installment of I Should Tell You, the still new-ish segment of my blog where I briefly interview musicians who are both really cool and also reply to my earnest emails, about food. This week it’s supercool Flip Grater, who I discovered years ago while reading an article where she talked about how she was collecting recipes while on tour and I thought: I’m going to like this lady. I own and love her Cookbook Tour cookbook but I’m not sure you can buy it around anymore – luckily there is a second one, The Cookbook Tour: Europe. And of course, her music: I recommend the lovely and cautionary Careful from her album While I’m Awake I’m At War, and This Road Leads Home from her debut, Cage For A Song.

(Flip Grater’s latest album While I’m Awake I’m At War, released on her own label Maiden Records)


And, say what? Flip’s on tour right now around New Zealand. Yay for us.

Feb 8th – Chicks, Dunedin
Feb 10th – Federal Diner, Wanaka
Feb 14th – The Old Library, Whangarei
Feb 15th – Sawmill, Leigh
Feb 16th – The Whiskey, Auckland

Thanks Flip Grater! The interview starts…now. (PS if you read the very first interview I did with Anna Coddington, there may be some, um, parallels between their answers to question one. Spoiler alert?)

Where’s somewhere you’ve eaten that you kinda like to brag about or drop into conversation? 

This is more embarrassing than impressive but I love to tell this story to see people’s faces. I was entertaining a certain vegetarian Kiwi singer-songwriter in Paris (who is far too horrified by this story to be named) and suggested we go to Alain Passard’s L’Arpege on the left bank. It’s a 3-star restaurant famous for its treatment of vegetables. Most famous places will cost around 100-150 Euros for a degustation, which is a heap of money but we wanted to splash out so we each took 150 Euros out of our fairly empty credit cards, dressed up and wandered down to the basement restaurant. The service was amazing. The food very, very good (although I wouldn’t say it was mind-blowing) and the final bill: almost 700 Euros! We both looked at each other silently contemplating running out but instead tearfully pulled out our credit cards and spent the rest of the week in shock and trying to figure out how I would pay my rent that month.

What do you fix for yourself, or where do you go to eat, when it’s just you on your own?

I’m a little obsessed with soups. I could (and do sometimes) eat soup for every meal. Especially happy noodles. Good Asian food is hard to find in Paris – especially vegetarian Asian, so when I discovered a great noodle soup joint called Happy Nouilles I started referring to all noodle soup dishes as ‘happy noodles.’ It takes me 5 minutes to make a bowl. I use flat rice noodles and make a super sour, super spicy broth with plenty of greens and herbs. If I need some extra happy I add homemade shiitake gyoza.

What’s one of your favourite food memories from your childhood?


Baked bean pizza with a layer of cheese you could peel off.

cause i bake the cake, then take the cake

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Show me a candle and I’ll try and burn both ends of it. In case that phrase and concept is not familiar to you, I feel I should explain that it is not because I’m of a generation that has only grown up with artificial light and therefore is all “what is this waxy tube and how’s it going to help me? Me, of the me-generation?” No, what I mean is that I’ll stay up late but also get up very early in order to do what I need to do. It helps that I’m somehow both a night owl and a morning person. At Tim’s and my old flat of three and half years – which we adored, by the way – this would mean sitting bolt upright in bed when my alarm went off, and slowly becoming slouchier as I typed away on my laptop in bed. No lights but that from the laptop itself and the slowly rising sun.
But here, in our new house, where it’s just us, I can quietly pad out of bed (inevitably locating the one piece of bubble wrap in the house by standing on it, which happened yesterday) fold myself up on one of our couches in a straight-backed manner, turn on the kitchen light, maybe even make myself a cup of tea. This morning there’s delicious rain on the roof. I can’t curb my candle-burning tendencies, but it sure is a lot nicer to do it here. Possibly a literal candle would be nice touch, even. My mum did in fact get me an oil burner as a housewarming gift (with two scented oils, “wellbeing” and “I’m worried about you get some sleep already” if I remember rightly) so it’s not out of the question. Strangely enough receiving that gift took me back to my attempted spell-casting youth. Where for a long time my favourite activity was hanging out at the 100-199 nonfiction section of the library, getting out particular books, and then lighting specifically coloured candles to heat patchouli and ylang ylang oil in the hopes that it would make something happen. (Patchouli and ylang ylang were the only two oils I could afford as an unemployed twelve year old, so basically everything I tried had to use them. As a result, all that really did happen was I was going around smelling like curtains from the seventies that had been stored in a camphor chest.)
Things keep happening to make this still-new place even more of a home. This week, our our new table – well, it’s new to us, but apparently very well loved by the family we bought it off, shadows of whom remain in the grain of the wood. A water stain here, a gouged-out dent from a truculent miscreant there, some glitter embedded in the varnish over in one corner, (which feels like a good sign). All these are things that might’ve happened with me around anyway, so, much as a brand new table would be delightful, it’s nice to have this lived-in one, and to not feel like I have to be nervous around it. Indeed, there’s enough I’m too nervous about already.  
 
A table like this needs a cake on it, I said, being the logical pragmatist that I am. In my mind. In my defense, Tim and four others were playing the boardgame of Game of Thrones on Sunday, and since that game chews through your energy at a surprising rate for a large piece of cardboard with several small plastic game tokens – at one point someone expressed their sincere wish for nerve-calming sedatives because the game was too much of a rollercoaster ride of thrills – providing some sustenance made sense. When it comes to Game of Thrones I’m simply a Watcher (the capital W makes it seem more sinister!) though I have also started reading them as well – much as I’m not sure I love the books, damned if I can put them down once I pick them up. The board game…not my thing. Maybe not enough Khaleesi being all amazing with dragons? On a screen? Who knows, but I’m happy to have a rock-solid cake-excuse (of course, there’s always the most rock-solid reason of all: I want cake.)

It’s high summer so plums are around in abundance and really cheap. If you’re somehow sick of just sitting there eating them while their sticky juice runs down your face in determined rivulets, this chocolate plum cake with sour cream icing is a good diversion – pretty exciting, but also calmingly straightforward to make. There is so little to it that you can have it in and out of the oven and ready to eat – if you leave it uniced – in about forty minutes. The sour cream icing was just something that I thought might be fun. It’s not quite the fluffy creation I envisaged but more of an alarmingly fast-moving icing that helpfully drips over the side of the cooled cake for you – still very, very delicious though.

Chocolate Plum Cake with Sour Cream Icing

I adapted the cake itself from this delightfully simple recipe I found. Otherwise: a recipe by me.

If you leave the icing off, this cake is dairy-free. If you ice it…with sour cream icing…it’s really not.

1/2 cup (125 ml) plain oil like rice bran or sunflower
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 ripe plums
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 cup flour

1 1/2 cups icing sugar
2 tablespoons sour cream (maybe a little more)

Set your oven to 160 C/320 F. Line the base of a 20cm springform caketin with baking paper. 

Mix together the oil, sugar, and eggs till quite thick. Dice the flesh of the plums into 1 or 2cm cubes (just guess) and stir them in. Finally, fold in the cocoa and flour, scrape it into the caketin and bake for 40 minutes (though check at 30 minutes – your oven may be gruntier than mine.) 

Serve now, or allow to cool completely and then ice. To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl – or it will be obstinately lumpy – then slowly stir in enough sour cream, two tablespoons should do, to make a thick yet quite runny icing. Tip most of it over the cooled cake, letting it run over the edges. Decorate with finely sliced dark chocolate if you’re a food blogger who worries that your drippy cake will look weird in photos but also thinks that the extra chocolate will taste nice. 

The juicy tartness of the plums with the dark backdrop of damp chocolate cake is really something in itself, but it’s made all the more lush by a blanket of sticky sour cream icing (seriously, look at that photo. This icing is going wherever gravity will take it.) Sour cream has enough buttery thickness and tang (so nearly wrote titular tang but that felt wrong, even for me) to see off the icing sugar’s aggressive sweetness, but to also complement the intensity of the plums and chocolate. It’s even better the next day, when the icing has had time to settle in and the cake absorbs some of the plum juice. You could make this with any stone fruit really, but rich plums and earthy cocoa together are specifically wondrous. 

Speaking of things that go well on our new table, and because I have exactly one minute to get ready for work and can’t think of another way to wrap this up: we finally, after living in Wellington since January 2006, spatula-d together enough Fly Buys points to cash them in on something. That something was a waffle iron. WORTH IT.
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Title via: Ummm, because I don’t swear on this blog I can’t actually repeat the title of the song that I’m quoting. But I can tell you it’s by Wu-Tang Clan and it’s reeeeeeally good. 
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Music lately:

Franz Ferdinand, Eleanor Put Your Boots On. Never stopped loving them.

Blind Willie McTell, Come Around To My House Mama. A song of face-fanningly casual sauciness, considering McTell recorded it in 1929. (I know they had bawdy songs and stuff back then, but still: it’s so casual!) 
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Next time: Probably another I Should Tell You interview. Good times!

i should tell you: Tourettes

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Well hello there. This is the next installment of I Should Tell You, my new weekly-ish segment where I interview musicians (criteria: I like them and they respond to my earnest emailing) about food. Now that it’s in its second week it feels like it’s a real thing, not just an awkwardly brief one-off idea. Imagine how insufferable I’ll be by week three. If you’re still all “help, what?” I explained some more about this caper last week.

  

Tourettes is a rapper whose compelling music and poetry and writing I’ve been a huge fan of since I discovered it all in 2009, via a website which I won’t name on here since I tend to keep this thing swearword-free, out of a vague sense that I’ll get in trouble with someone if I don’t. Anyway: a fun mix of alluring and uncomfortable, caustic yet sweet (like a grapefruit?), you can find more of his words of all kinds at filthyandbeautiful.net. For new people, I recommend Out Of Water from his album Who Says You Can’t Dance To Misery (coincidentally, featuring last week’s interviewee, Anna Coddington. Doesn’t that just put the “gee!” in synergy.) He also sent me some photos which is really cool. So here he is and here’s some food he fixed up.

Thanks Tourettes! The interview begins…now:

Where’s somewhere you’ve eaten that you kinda like to brag about or drop into conversation?
when i was in cambodia my friend took me out to diner with his cousin who’s father is high up in the military. the restaurant was at the top story of this 80’s looking sky scraper. on the way in there was a sign at the door that said no machine guns, no drugs , no body guards. even though the restaurant was on the 30th floor you could open he windows. this made me quite nervous. because of Cambodia’s lax laws on prescription medicine i couldn’t tell you what our meal was like but if the rest of the food i ate over there was anything to go by, probably not so flash.

What do you fix for yourself, or where do you go to eat, when it’s just you on your own?
I wish i could say it was something exciting but usually its just sandwiches. when I’m cooking for a living the last thing i want to do is cook some more, and when im not im too poor to aford anything else. I do make good sandwiches though. the trick is two sauces. but never three.

What’s one of your favourite food memories from your childhood? My dad used to make deep fried chicken wings. they were really good. although sometimes they were quite pink inside but he’d always insist this was fine. i now know this isn’t true. 

it’s not for lack of bread, like the greatful dead, darling

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This time of year in New Zealand, with the heat and the sprinkling of public holidays and the lazy stretched out sunny evenings giving way to spontaneous happenings, it’s good to have a few snacky options in your brain should something arise that you want to make food for. I mean, most people are happy with a few bags of chips. But if you want to provide a little something extra now or anytime of year, and you’re into cooking anyway (I presume that’s why you’re here in the first place, although I unsecretly and vainly dream of the day that people who don’t even care about cooking read this because it’s just that damn good) then I suggest this dip. Its credentials are near-flawless: it’s fast. It’s very cheap. It’s vegan. It tastes so, so good. And it has a flashy name. Tarator. Now that is something.

Being the contrary person I am, I kinda hate all this heat – which makes me sweaty and frustrated – and long for the biting cold of winter. Which makes me feel alert and snuggly. Like a cat! But it’s here, and how, particularly in Wellington – today was so punishingly hot I actually started crying a little in the street without really realising it. It was just discombobulatingly, dizzyingly hot. Which was great because then I had to go to the gym to buy a membership from the stunning and charming person who I’ve been consulting with while I’m there. Yes: gym membership. No-one is more surprised than me that I’ve been really enjoying myself. My arms are getting bufty, I have more energy, and most of all – for that one hour that I’m lifting weights or kicking into the air – I am not thinking. This is crucial. I am always overthinking things. I’m overthinking right now. But not while I’m at the gym. So even though it’s a significant expense in our lives, I can, and am happy to, make some space for it in the budget.

So: tarator. It sounds a lot more exciting than it looks. And also it sounds a lot more exciting than the list of ingredients looks. The bulk of this saucy dip, or dippy sauce, is in fact just bread and water. There are also walnuts, which is good, because they taste wonderful but also allow you to explain this as being a Turkish walnut dip, as opposed to blended up bread and water. The mint leaves are also important. Not because they necessarily add to the flavour – although their cooling pep helps lift the richness – but because of the inherent social code that exists which means you don’t have to explain to your guests that this substance is edible. They gaze upon your table of snacks and without even realising it, they think “Aha! That sprinkling of greenery is letting me know that this is not just suspiciously formless brown paste, but in fact imminent deliciousness in which to insert my crisped bread or sliced vegetable of choice!” (See: always overthinking. Even garnish.)

Tarator

This recipe is adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s rather lovely book River Cottage Veg Everyday. I upped the bread a little and lowered the oil, just to make it a little more affordable. Use what you like, as long as it’s a little thick-cut and doesn’t have grains in it – I used Freya’s light rye, hence the colour of the finished product. It’s very forgiving, so add more dampened bread, oil, or lemon juice as you need till it tastes right.

  • 70-100g walnuts
  • 1 large garlic clove
  • 4 slices decent-ish, non-grainy white or light rye bread, either fresh or pre-sliced from a packet.
  • 5 tablespoons olive oil, or more to taste
  • 1/2 a lemon
  • Salt, to taste

Blitz the nuts and the garlic clove in a food processor until fairly finely ground. Run the slices of bread under cold water and squeeze out a little – it will feel weeeeird – then throw them in the food processor and blend to a thick, thick paste. Add the olive oil, the salt, and the juice of the lemon and continue to process, adding more oil or even a little water to thin it down a little if necessary. Taste for salt or lemon juice, then scrape into a serving bowl.

It’s astonishingly, intriguingly rich – in that same plumply smooth way that pate is. It’s intensely savoury and yet oddly light and creamy. It just tastes like good times, okay? I feel like it lends itself to being more than a dip – a sauce for pasta salad, for example – but for now, while this weather insists on being so infuriatingly pleasant, it’s perfect just heaped into a bowl and speared with slices of cucumber and carrot.

Important-ish: Tim and I saw the Les Miserables movie with our friends Kim and Brendan last week. I’ve grown up with the original London cast recording ever since I used to dance around to Castle on a Cloud as a child, and have seen the musical several times, so was prepared to scrutinise it sharply. Well. A few details aside, (Russell Crowe, who was like, fine, but no Norm Lewis) Tim and pretty much adored it. If nothing else, we certainly had a lot of feelings about it. We analysed it all the way home. We then watched the 25th anniversary DVD. We then discussed it on and off for the entire following week. While no-one really is clamouring for the notes from our two-person roundtable, I will say this. If you hate musicals, nothing, least of all the bombastic and earnest Les Mis, will win you over. But it’s so monumental and enormous and beautiful that it’s pretty delightful to be sucked into it, to let those emotionally manipulative refrains draw hot tears from your eyes, and to daydream about wearing red coats with epaulettes.

Finally: our friends Kate and Jason are back from Europe after two months away! I was so heart-poundingly overexcited when Kate txted me on Saturday morning to ask if we wanted to come along to brunch that I ended up doing this:

Says it all, I believe.

PS: Thanks for the super cool response to my new segment, I Should Tell You! I am nothing if not punt-taking but it’s still always an utter relief when it doesn’t fall over flat.
Title via: The titular song from the musical Hair. Hot damn I love musicals.

Music lately:

Tim and I have been playing the new Cat Power record Sun over, and over, and over. The songs are so new but feel like they’re already worn in and familiar, like the softest flannel sheets. I love Manhattan.

All these epic musicals with convoluted storylines are naturally making me re-obsessed with Chess. Idina Menzel singing Nobody’s Side is too, too much.

Even after watching it a squillion times, Frank Ocean singing Bad Religion live on Jimmy Fallon still makes my heart explode but also melt at the same time.

Next time: Might be another I Should Tell You! Dun dun dunnnn.

 

i should tell you: Anna Coddington

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Welcome to this new segment of my blog! What?
  • Weekly, or fortnightly if I can’t get my act together, I’m interviewing musicians who I like but who also respond to my very earnest emails (it’s a genre unto itself) about food.
  • Each person gets the same three questions. 
  • I post their responses verbatim here. 
  • We all learn a little something about the musician, and maybe even ourselves.
  • My usual recipes and finding-myself will still continue as reassuringly weekly-ish as ever. 
But why? Well, I thought it up one evening and wanted to see if I could make it happen, plus I thought it might make this blog a little bit more sparkly and new after five years. In case you’re hissing “so off-brand” in a stage whisper, hungryandfrozen.com has always been full of music, plus I find interesting people talking about food to be doubly interesting – so maybe you will too. Just like this blog itself, I’ve named this thing after a quote from the musical RENT. The quote appears in several different numbers. My naive hope is that you’ll go listen to the whole thing and fall in love like I did. 
I am super happy to be starting it all with the bodacious and talented Anna Coddington. If you’re after a bio the one on her website is plenty comprehensive. What I will add is that I love her music – it’s breezy and gorgeous and snappy and as a starting point I recommend Little Islands from her latest album Cat and Bird, and Never Change from her 2008 debut The Lake. 

Thanks Anna! And now the interview will begin…now.
Where’s somewhere you’ve eaten that you kinda like to brag about or drop into conversation? 
This story started out as one I didn’t want anyone to know- ever- but now that I have enough time between me and the event, looking back at it the hilarity finally outweighs the horror. Just. 
I was staying with my friend in Paris. She’s a fellow musician, a big time foodie, and a vegan, and she was excited that a vegetarian (me) was in town because she’d been wanting to try this fancy pants restaurant called L’Arpege that apparently specialised in vegan degustation. I thought, “treat yourself”, and mentally prepared to spend maybe 100Euro on a nice Parisian dinner. Outrageous. 
My friend went online, entered her credit card details to get a reservation, and we taxied there in the evening. We were seated and as I looked around I immediately got the sense that someone like me didn’t belong somewhere like that. My friend ordered two vegan degustations and we were served course after course of ummm… vegetables. Some delicious. Some meh. Here’s some turnip. Here’s like 3 beans. Here’s one tiny beetroot. Etc. Couldn’t eat the last couple coz I was too full. Finally they brought us the bill: 600Euro. (That’s 300Euro each aka about NZD$500.) I wanted to spew. I glared at my friend across the table- had she known it would cost this much? She didn’t even flinch. 
The waiter told us we got to keep the knife we ate our meals with and I felt like saying “how about you keep the fricken knife and knock 50Euro off my bill?”. Didn’t though. We paid (it hurt my feelings so bad), left, and held each other as we shrieked in disbelief along the streets of Paris at how lolz and silly we were. She’d had no idea. Luckily coz I would’ve killed her if she did. My friend’s solution to her feelings was to go drink whiskey that night and we stayed up till 4am talking about money management and general musician things (musicians always talk about their careers, you see). 
My solution was to go running the next morning which I made us do despite the hangovers and we found a pretty flower park that made everything seem slightly better. We found out that day that L’Arpege has 3 of them Michelin star things. 
The knife from that restaurant is still hiding in my sock drawer as my secret shame. 
What do you fix for yourself, or where do you go to eat, when it’s just you on your own?
I make “Make-do special” when it’s just me because it’s a good way to try use all the food that need using and doesn’t matter if it doesn’t quite work out coz only you have to eat it. Usually it’s some kind of stir-fry or salad or hot-pot type thing, and usually it’s pretty good. Also at the moment it would incorporate something from my garden which is going nuts. Cooking something from my garden makes me feel like a real human in the world of nature. 
What’s one of your favourite food memories from your childhood? 
Our parents used to give us Pelion kalamata olives in our christmas stockings. I still love them. Have a can in my fridge right now in fact.
Thanks Anna Coddington! You rule. 

love is just a dialogue, you can’t survive on ice cream

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Who am I, anyway? Asks Paul in the opening number of the wondrous musical A Chorus Line. I’ve been wondering the same this week. I guess it’s not surprising that lots of people go to the gym in January – if headlines in certain women’s magazines are anything to go by, there is literally no other choice of resolution for your new year – but for me it’s not so straightforward. As I said in my last blog post, I want bufty arms this year. I want to be able to lift things without making an involuntary “nghghghhh” noise and straining my neck. A month’s free trial gym membership came to my attention. It all made sense to sign up and try some classes and so on. 
Without going too deeply into my long and complicated history of just being myself, I will say this: until very recently it was difficult for me to reconcile doing exercise with general enjoyment and feeling good. Exercise to me was either compulsory institutionalised punishment (PE class ahoy!) or self-enforced to burn maximum calories for as long as I could stand it. (I completely understand and appreciate that PE/gym class is really enjoyed by lots of people, and also that wanting to lose weight is a personal choice and exercise is a way of doing that.) To me, exercise was all tied up in unhappiness and distress. It was all very black and white. Interestingly, my years of dancing sat outside of exercise in my mind – that was to music, and telling a story, and using expression and emotion and acting. And fun. That running or cycling or punching a boxing bag or playing, I don’t know, football, could fulfill that same function for someone else – I couldn’t make that leap of understanding. 
So anyway, as a result I was nervous about going to the gym, having never been to one before – what if I’m useless? What if I get panicky? What if it’s really cliquey and my pants are wrong? And…what if I forget that I’m just here for enjoyment and to get strong? Does that make sense? But in fact, it was fun challenging myself, and I had friends there beside me, and I felt comfortable pausing when my legs simply refused to lunge once more. And this morning my muscles were constricted and sore, but in a good way – reminding me of all the effort I put in yesterday and how bufty they’re going to be soon. Nevertheless, I found myself tweeting things along the lines of “going to the gym, who am I?” as if to reassure myself…that I was still myself. But who else could I possibly be. 

If you’re seeking a small challenge yourself, maybe this ice cream could be it. A calm, easy recipe which makes just enough for one or two people, depending on whether or not you want to share. (I don’t really like to share, but Tim lives riiiiight here in the same house and it would’ve been a bit weird not to. Plus, sharing leads to compliments on your cooking abilities! Which is probably not the main reason you should be sharing things.) This is good if you’ve never made ice cream before and want to start small in case it all goes horribly wrong (it won’t, though.) Or if you have made ice cream before but have a tiny tiny freezer. Or if you only have a small amount of ingredients to hand and don’t want to go to the shop. Strange as it seems, there are a number of situations where a small quantity of ice cream can be just as advantageous as a large quantity.

Small Chocolate Ice Cream

A recipe by myself.

Makes around 300ml. Am not very sure how well it would double – maybe if you’re feeling more ice-cream-confident, search through all my recipes on this blog for one to make, hey hey?

250ml (1 cup) cream
50g dark chocolate (I use Whittaker’s. Because I love its flavour like no other.)
1 tablespoon cocoa
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg

Gently melt the chocolate and cream together in a pan on the stovetop, or gently microwave the chocolate in the microwave and then stir in the cream. Either way, go slow, because chocolate burns quickly and will go all gritty if it happens. The ice cream will still be fine, but…gritty.

Remove from the heat and stir in the cocoa and sugar. Which give it a further depth of chocolate flavour, and a little bitterness-counteracting sweetness. 

Break the egg into a bowl and mix it up with a fork, so that the yolk and white are all incorporated. Stir in a tablespoon or two of the slightly cooled chocolate mixture, mixing briskly. Doing this allows the egg to absorb some of the heat of the chocolate mixture and blend with it thoroughly – if you pour in the entire pan of chocolate, you might not be able to mix it fast enough to stop the egg being cooked by the heat of the liquid. And that would taste nasty. Anyway: pour in the rest of the mixture, mixing continuously. Then divide into two freezer-proof bowls, or one small container. Freeze till quite solid. If you freeze it overnight, it’ll need to stand on the bench for five minutes or so to soften a little. Being so small, it does freeze quite quickly though. Yay!

The path to success here is very short and simple: this chocolate ice cream just tastes like chocolate ice cream. A little cocoa-bitter, a little sweet, creamy and very cold. And, as I found out this morning, it makes a really good breakfast.


Who am I, anyway? Am I my resume? sings Paul in A Chorus Line. As well as getting used to the fact that I am now a person who goes to the gym because it makes me feel good and strong and stuff, I’m also trying to settle my brain down from racing at a hundred miles an hour. Because my brain does this cool thing where it simultaneously tells me I’m amazing at what I do but also not achieving anything much at all and no wonder. And I tell Tim this and he says “You have a cookbook coming out later this year!” and I say “yeah…but…” It’s like the opposite of resting on your laurels. Instead I run towards my laurels really hard and then leap over them and keep running for the next one so fast that the last one seems like it’s miles behind me in the dust. Resting on your laurels is a phrase that tends to be thrown around in a negative way, but to me it sounds kind of delightful – like, I achieved something good so I’m going to relax now and take a nap and maybe remind people about the thing I achieved occasionally. Does anyone else do this? Also, I guess, if anyone has any laurels they want me to not rest upon, let me know!

Boy, has this blog post ever got personal and intense. But that is often how life is. Till I figure it all out, if anyone has any tips for how to deal with tense muscles, shocked from their first go-round at the gym, I’d be super obliged.
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Title via: The Kills, always skittishly thrilling, with Cheap and Cheerful.
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Music lately: 

Ella Fitzgerald, Mack the Knife. Specifically, when she sang it in Berlin and forgot half the words, but elegantly and sorta adorably improvised over the top of the melody with her usual breezily gorgeous voice. What a champ.

Sherie Rene Scott, Goodbye Until Tomorrow, from The Last 5 Years musical. This song always makes me feel pretty emotional. I adore SRS, but absolutely cannot wait to see what Anna Kendrick does with this when the film version of this show comes out.

Faith Evans, Love Like This. Modern classic.
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Next time: I made this pasta dish that I kinda like. I will probably write about that.

a sunday kind of love

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I haven’t blogged all year! (Sorry, bad joke is bad.) This is my sixth first-post-of-the-year since I started hungryandfrozen.com and it comes with no less thoughtful reflection than any blog post on any day of any month ever, since that’s just the kind of self-absorbed person I am. I did, however, make some new years resolutions. I intend to stick to them, too – I mean, in 2011 I vowed I’d get a book deal somehow, and then 19 days later a publishing company emailed me to say they’d like me to write a cookbook. I’m not saying I’m a witch. But I’m pretty sure if you send out waves of furrow-browed determinism, something has to happen, even if that something is just the people around you inwardly sighing oh no, not this rant again. (Related: I’m not saying I’m a witch, but I did manage to roll the dice while playing Trivial Pursuits recently and have it land on the exact number my team were hoping for, several times in a row.)  
New Years Resolutions for 2013:
1: Be intensely successful in everything to do with this blog and my foodwriting and most of all, my upcoming cookbook. I don’t think this is particularly surprising, but still.
2: Get bufty arms. It came to my attention recently, when Tim and I moved house, that I am essentially useless in the upper arm region. I’d like to be able to lift stuff with dignity. I’d like to be able to lift stuff at all. So some gentle weight-lifting will ensue. 
3: Eat more vegetables. Moving house, and therefore trying to get rid of all our perishables, plus not having a job, meant for a while there we were doing things like having scrambled eggs on buttered toast, or just plain buttered toast, (or buttered popcorn) for nearly every single meal. I love them, but I don’t want scurvy. This year: some snipped chives on my scrambled eggs on buttered toast, at least.
4: Envy: deal with it. Try not to compare my success to that of others. Look, I’ve been a snappishly jealous person since the beginning – why, in the movie of the story of my life you could have a montage of scenes from little me to right now. Not just general success – relationships and experiences and any old thing, really. It’s just not a particularly good item to have in my inventory of personality traits. I can’t deny it, but I can work on reigning it in.
5: Add many, many new words to my vocabulary. I love words. Want to win my heart? Use fancy language (or flatter me, I guess – see points 1 and 4). I’ve got a bit lazy recently, relying on the same old adjectives. I want to know more. Why, I used to read the dictionary for fun as a kid! I want to do that again. 
Will I achieve all of this? Hopefully a devastatingly successful, firm-of-bicep-region, robustly healthy, beatifically mellow Laura will be able to reply “indubitably!” in one year’s time. 
It’s Sunday night, the new years break is well and truly over and I go back to work tomorrow. I am attempting to keep myself in check from being too petulant about this, since I spent so much time and effort finding a job in the first place. But holidays are just so lovely and they do go by so fast, no matter how hard I try to be aware of every moment as it happens, to cling on to the days with clenched fists and to stay up as late as possible. Especially when these holidays are spent with deliciously wonderful people in an old mansion out in the countryside. 
But anyway, before we all forget that this is even a food blog, here’s some food: I decided to meet the back-to-school blues head on by baking up delicious things to be eaten at 10:30am and 3:30pm – when your ebbs are usually at their lowest, right? Katrina Meynink’s gorgeous book Kitchen Coquette offered up Pumpkin, Chili and Feta Loaf, which is just the sort of thing I want to look forward to during a working day. It’s very fast and easy to make, and has just the kind of ingredients which feel like you’re treating yourself to a good time (admittedly, my idea of a good time is relatively low-expectational) but without requiring you to spend lots of money or go hunting endlessly for obscure foodstuffs. And – start as you mean to go on – it has vegetables in it! Peachy! 
Kumara, Chili, and Feta Loaf

Adapted ever-so-hardly-at-all from Katrina Meynink’s book Kitchen Coquette. I only used kumara because that’s what I could find – it’s an unsurprisingly worthy substitute for the original. The recipe also called for a chopped onion and some basil, both of which I left out because I didn’t have them.

400g chopped golden kumara (or butternut pumpkin)
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 small red chillies, deseeded and finely sliced
Salt and pepper
1 cup buttermilk (note – I just used milk, also I increased it slightly from what the book specified as it looked to need it)
2 eggs
2 teaspoons sugar
450g self raising flour (I used regular flour and 3 teaspoons baking powder)
200g feta cheese

Set your oven to 160 C/315 F and butter a loaf tin. 

Place the chopped kumara on a baking tray, sprinkle with oil, the sliced chilli and salt and pepper. Roast for about 15 minutes, till tender and a little darkened at the edges. 

Mix together the buttermilk (or milk), eggs, sugar, and flour, to form a very thick dough. Crumble in the feta and tip in the kumara and gently mix. Inevitably, some of the kumara will kind of smush into the dough. But whatever. Scrape it into the loaf tin and bake for an hour. Turn out of the tin and allow to cool completely before slicing thickly.
As with the pear cake I blogged about last time, I had to have a slice of this before its intended eating time, in order to be able to describe it on this blog. That might sound a little like my life is being ruled by this blog or something, but hey, I got to eat some delicious baking. And I can tell you authoritatively that it really is delicious. The kumara is sweet and a little nutty, the creamy saltiness of the feta is pleasingly addictive against the occasional bursts of fiendishly hot chilli on the tongue. It has the comforting carb-slab nature of a scone, but is also a bit fancy. And I bet a few days down the track, zapped in the microwave in the office kitchen and buttered abundantly, it’ll still be good. 

This is where we stayed over new years. Swoon, right? It’s the sort of place where your very existence makes it feel like you’re in a gorgeous dreamy novel or movie or something (the point is: dreamy.) I read books, I painted my nails, I gossiped on a four-poster bed, I watched movies, I made a huge vat of mac and cheese and ate many feasts made by others (including woodfired pizza in the shape of a cat), I patted a wayward hund, I drank plenty of gin, and generally had a wonderful time with wonderful friends. 
Tim and me! Me and Tim! Was there ever a dapper-er babe than he? My opinion says nay!

 So engaged right now.
Speaking of dreamy and swoon, the two above photos were taken by the uncommonly talented Sarah-Rose, who, if you’re interested in creeping on our holiday, took so many beautiful/hilarious photos during our time away. 

Finally, apropos of nothing: Tim and I bought some furniture. Our new flat is feeling more and more like a home every day. I would like to point out that the Garfield picture was drawn by Tim when he was a kid, and he just put it there as a joke – it’s not like, our most treasured, look-at-this piece of artwork. That said, I totally respect Garfield’s attitude towards both pasta and Mondays. Also that faux-fur on the daybed (daybed! It’s a bed you sit on during the day! Dreamy!) is leftover from when I made myself a lion costume for a party last year. Judge us for buying stuff with “would it look good on instagram?” as a dealbreaker, but not for that furry throw! (I was kind of joking about the instagram thing, by the way.)
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Title via: the sadly late Etta James, Sunday Kind of Love. A song that makes Sunday feel like a day to look forward to, not shun. 

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Music lately:

Lana Del Rey, Summertime Sadness. Hey, it’s still Sunday. Predictably dreamy.

Flat Duo Jets, You Belong To Me. A sexy, languid song, I might never have heard it had their album Go Go Harlem Baby not been rereleased by Third Man Records. Which we then took a chance on and bought when we were at Third Man Records in Nashville. This is a really good song, I’m not just using it as an opportunity to drop in that we went traveling recently or anything.
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Next time: at least one vegetable.

isn’t it rich? are we a pear?

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I know, everyone’s on holiday and I said I wasn’t blogging till next year, but as Britney sang in her cover of the song My Prerogative, it’s my prerogative. Plus, cake! Cake.
 
 
 
The thing with traditions – they’re wonderful. They give you something to cling to in this strange, scary world, a sense of where you’ve been and where you might go – they give you stories to relay and build upon and argue over the precise order of; they give you something to pass on to other people. 
 
They’re also damn vexatious, because once you get sucked into a tradition it’s very difficult to break it. I have done roughly the same thing for Christmas every single year of my life, and as such the idea of being anywhere else during that time is un-contemplatable. (Admittedly: am not particularly good at compromising. Sure, Eartha Kitt romanticises it for me, but compromise does go some way to making other people happy.) As such, Tim and I have only spent one Christmas together in the past seven years…and that was when he came to my family’s place.
 
My family (in the very extended sense of the word) has been camping at this one particular beach every single year since I was born. I’m still pretty young, but that’s a lot of years. This year, for the first time, owing to a lack of money and time in equal measure, I’m not going along with them. I know I vocally dislike nature, but this place is magical and special and all we really do anyway is sit around and drink gin and play cards. Sigh.
 
And finally, the flat Christmas Dinner that I have had every year since 2006, when Tim and I moved in together, was not able to happen this year again due to a lack of time and funds – and also moving house on the 15th of December.
 
Damn you, traditions, getting me all emotionally attached to things and being so difficult to extricate myself from and making my heart hurt a bit! Is this what being a grown up is about? If so, then I stamp my feet petulantly in response. But also get on with it. Damn you too, grownuphoodity.
 
 
 
Before this gets all too, too hand-wringingly lachrymose, let us focus on a cake! Tim and I are spending New Years with a tangle of our best friends. I’m bringing novels of a worthy (Muriel Sparks) and trashy (Jilly Cooper) nature; plenty of whisky; languid-friendly dresses, and this cake.
 
I adapted it from a recipe that I found in the Meat Free Mondays book by Paul McCartney. I don’t eat a ton of meat as it is, let alone on Mondays, but there is many a brilliant and inspiring recipe for any day of the week to be found within its pages. This has ended up being really quite different to their recipe, but it’s what spurned on the idea, so a tip of the hat to them all the same. (PS: I would just like to say though, the caramel pear sauce was all my idea.) (I guess I’m not that grown-up yet.)
 
Pear and Almond Cake with Caramel Pear Sauce
 
PS: this needs a food processor to make it sorry – though if you don’t have one, I’d make sure the butter was quite soft, cream it with the sugar first, then the egg, then fold everything else in. So: still do-able, for sure.
 
1 x 70g packet ground almonds
150g flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
150g sugar
170g butter, cubed
1 egg
1 can of pears
 
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
2 teaspoons cornflour
30g butter
 
Set your oven to 160 C/320 F and line a 20cm springform caketin with baking paper.
 
Tip the ground almonds, flour, and baking powder into your food processor bowl and process for a bit to mix them together. Then add the sugar and butter and process thoroughly till it forms a thick dough. Tip in the egg and blitz briefly to mix it in. Spread this thick, luscious mixture into your caketin – it won’t be very high – and then drain your can of pears, reserving the liquid (important!) and arrange them, cut-side-up on top of the batter. 
 
Bake for about an hour, or till the cake feels springy and firm in the centre. 
 
Meanwhile, in a small pot or pan, mix the brown sugar, golden syrup and cornflour to an unlikely paste. Slowly mix in the reserved pear juice from the can, and then continue stirring it over a low heat. Allow it to simmer but not quite boil till it all becomes quite syrupy and thick and dark. When it reaches this stage, remove it from the heat and stir in the butter. 
 
Note: You have a choice when the cake is cooked – either do as I did, and leave it in its tin, spike several times with a skewer, pour over the hot caramel pear sauce and then allow it to cool completely. OR – unclip the cake from the tin, slice up, and serve the caramel pear sauce on the side to be poured over in quantities of each slice-eater’s choosing. 
 
 
So uh, even though I made this for other people to eat, I had to judiciously remove a small sliver and eat it, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to blog about it. Or I could, but the most conclusive thing I’d be able to say about it is that it’s very instagrammable. 
 
Luckily for us all, I heroically ate said sliver of cake. And it’s rather wondrous. The caramel sauce absorbs into its surface, making it a sticky confection of a thing, and the pear juice really does make itself known, flavourwise – giving the sauce a floral fragrance which elevates it above mere sugariness (though I do love mere sugariness too, to be fair.) The cake itself is dense and buttery and the almonds give it a slightly nubbly texture which echoes that of the pears. It’s damn good stuff.
 

Due to obstinate fog in Wellington canceling my flight and delaying my departure by 24 hours, my time up home was sadly briefer than I thought it’d be. But all the same it was a lovely time, seeing my family again and spending Christmas day with them. Everyone loved the gifts I got them and I loved the trinkets I received.

Cleaning out one of the cupboards stuffed with my old schoolbooks and things was surprisingly diverting. I was reminded how utterly, utterly righteous I was as a child. Seriously, almost all of my schoolbooks are filled with firmly written opinions like “why must we do maths? Why aren’t Spice Girls more integrated into the curriculum? UGH SPORTS WHY”.

I relayed this to Tim, who astutely pointed out that I could’ve believably expressed that same opinion yesterday.

 
I also adored hanging out with the cats. Or at least attempting to. Roger was largely disinterested, but at least sat still long enough that I could situate myself very close to him and pretend like we were friends. Poppy, ever the baby raptor, decided she hated me and tried to shred my face off every time we approached. I did manage to pick her up for a quick minute though, and even caught the brief affair on camera. Me, thrilled to the bone, Poppy, at least displaying only ennui, instead of her claws. A Christmas Miracle! 
 

Title via: Yes, I elect to end the year on a truly atrocious pun. And I’ll probably start next year with one too, as is my wont. I was always a bit terrified of the song Send In The Clowns from A Little Night Music when I was young, because frankly clowns are scary as hell. But after listening to it properly, I came to realise it’s one of Sondheim’s most quietly devastating tunes, and I rather love it. Especially when Dame Judi Dench absolutely kills it.

Music lately:

The Smiths, How Soon Is Now? We saw Morrissey in concert the night before we moved house. I know he can be horrible, but his music just turns my insides to melted butter and I love his voice and it was just amazing times a billion. It doesn’t excuse any of his horribleness, but I was glad we had the opportunity to see him. Before the show, we each picked three songs we really hoped he’d sing – cutely, or maybe grossly, we both picked the same three – and he did! He sang all three. This was one of them – a song from his erstwhile band which is so good I hardly ever listen to it, because it makes me feel all queasy inside. Not the best recommendation, but if you’ve never heard it before…just try.

Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Blank Generation. Since being lent speakers by some friends, Tim and I have been ploughing through all the vinyl we bought over in America. This album of the same name is so utterly great, and I love this song, and Richard Hell is impossibly dreamy. Which maybe helps make the song sound better, who knows?

Next time: This really is the last post I’m doing for 2012 – have a joyous relaxed happiness-filled time, and I’ll see you on the other side. 

have a cool yule and a frantic first!

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I suppose this will be my final post for 2012. So I’d better make it a good one. 

*crickets, galloping endlessly on spinning tumbleweeds as though they are hamsters in a wheel, whilst making their cricket noise that signifies on reality television that someone has nothing of consequence to say*
I actually do have plenty to say, I just really like imagining crickets traveling across the land by scooting inside rolling tumbleweeds, conveying concentrated nothingness.  

So here’s what I have to say: I started my new job last week, only to find myself on holiday all of a sudden. To Tim’s and my endless relief, I got paid for the small quantity of hours I managed to get under my belt before the year ended. And piling further relief on top of that, the Christmas Pulled Pork recipe that I’d had rolling around my brain since about June was made today, and worked. Because…Tim did some noodling around with our incoming and outgoing funds over the next few weeks and it would’ve been way painful had this experiment not worked out. I like to think I have something of a knack for inventing recipes that work the first time (I mean I wrote a damn cookbook) but I did have a play with this a few months ago and it really didn’t turn out well. So I was wary. Nervous. Apprehensive. And other such synonyms.

Check that out though. That’s no failure. It is being photographed on the floor (floorpork!), but we’ve only got one tiny table that friends have donated to us and it became immediately covered in stuff, the kind of stuff that you just don’t know where to put, and I really couldn’t be bothered clearing any of it. Also the wooden floor against the brick wall kinda aesthetically appealed, and this is, after all, a food blog.

I know pulled pork isn’t necessarily what springs to mind for a traditional Christmas meal – in fact it’s probably pretty far down the food chain after turkeys and chickens and so on and so forth. However. I have endeavoured to imbue this tender, shredded pork with so much Decemberific flavour that you can’t help but wonder why we ever even bother with turkey in the first place. So – why not just make it this year?

Firstly, it’s SO DELICIOUS and that argument alone should have some significant weight.  Secondly, it involves very little effort. It does admittedly take over the oven for a long time, and needs a low temperature, but you really hardly have to do anything to it. Thirdly, wow your guests with your unapologetic, tradition-flouting now-ness! For what it’s worth. Fourthly: vegetarians aside, I’ve never met anyone who isn’t tearfully, seraphically happy while eating pulled pork. Fifthly: In case you were concerned about the oven being occupied for so long, just make a coleslaw (out of red and green cabbage if you like, for seasonal tonality) and provide a pile of soft, fresh bread rolls, plus an array of condiments – mustard, mayonaise, etc – and you have yourself one hellish heck of a festive meal.

If Christmas isn’t part of your life, you could of course change the title and just call it like, Cranberry Cinnamon Pulled Pork (which somehow sounds even christmassier? Sorry.)

Christmas Pulled Pork

A recipe by myself. 

2kg (or thereabouts – depending on how many you’re serving, and you’ll want leftovers) of belly-cut pork shoulder, or just plain pork shoulder. I used belly-cut here. Because it’s what I could find.
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
3 or 4 cloves – or 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon dried mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar
A pinch of salt

1/4 cup strong, black coffee
2 tablespoons Cointreau (or similar orange liqueur, or the zest and juice of an orange)
2 tablespoons tomato-based chutney, or tomato paste
A handful of dried cranberries

Turn your oven to 140 C (280-ish Fahrenheit) and place the slab o’ pork in an oven dish. I have this theory that ceramic or glass ones are good for slow cooking as they don’t conduct heat so well as say, metal or enamel. But really, just an oven dish of some description is what you want. 

Mix together the spices, sugar and salt in a small bowl and spoon nearly all of it over the cut side of the pork. Then turn this over and rub the remaining into the fat. Cook it, fat side up, for four hours. 

Mix together the coffee, Cointreau, and chutney. Tip this into the roasting dish once the four hours are up, sprinkle over the cranberries, and cover the dish tightly with tinfoil. Reduce the heat to 130 C, and cook it for another half hour or so. 

Once this time is up, remove the tinfoil and carefully shred the pork to pieces – including the crackling, although discard some of it if it makes you feel squicky – I use a fork and a pair of tongs. Stir it through all the sauce and fattened cranberries, and then serve, with masses of pride.

I know the mix of coffee, orange liqueur, and tomato chutney sounds all kinds of odious, but please, trust me. The coffee just mellows and melts into the background, providing dark depth of flavour and a kind of general punchy undertone to the rich pork, without tasting like you’ve inadvertently dropped ham into your flat white. Both orange and tomato work oddly well with said coffee, while pointing up the pork’s sweetness and bringing strident Christmas flavour to echo that of the cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. The coffee needn’t be anything flash, as long as it’s strong and black – even just some instant granules stirred into water will be fine. The dried cranberries are there because sometimes restriction causes solutions – I wanted to include cranberry juice in the liquid, but was wary of adding too much sugar – which could burn – and also of the fact that I would then have to go out and spend money on said juice. I then found dried cranberries in the back of my wardrobe (as you do) while we moved house, and thought they’d be even better – they become swollen with the meaty juices in the oven, and then provide bursts of sour-sweetness once dispersed through the torn apart pork. And they make it look a bit more twinkly and festive.

So whether or not I’ve convinced you to do it, I believe I will be making this on Christmas day for my family.

Our tree keeps on tree-ing!
Christmas is, of course, a time for thinking about consumer items you’d really like. Trinkets that I have my heart set upon this year (and don’t take this to heart Santa, this is more like stuff I’ll buy myself once my earnings buffer up my bank account again) include Pinky Fang’s teeth barrette (just the word barrette fills me with Claudia Kishi thrills); Nigella Lawson’s new book (I don’t even care if it’s good or not, I just love her so much); Devon Anna Smith’s witchy Kittens and Oak print (obsessed); a really good thesaurus (I’d like to become even more wordy!); the dvd of Sondheim’s Company (impossibly thrilling) some new pots and pans that are both photogenic but also really, really good (realised during the move that I have hardly any, and what I have is rubbish); a pet cat and a fleet of Alsatian dogs. Nothing less than a fleet will do. What about you? What’s making you drop heavy hints around the nearest gift-giver in your life these days?
And of course, it’s a time for being around as many people as you love as possible. Well, that’s what they say in the Hallmark cards. I am truly looking forward to seeing my family again, to listening to our old tapes and CDs that are wheeled out every year (favourites: the Tin Lids “Hey Rudolph” tape and this jazzy, blatty, high-sheen Disney CD), to hanging out with the indifferent cats, and to making this pulled pork for everyone and seeing what happens. Since it’s high summer, it’ll likely be grey and insufferably humid – I can’t wait.
(PS: not to make it all about me, except actually to make it all about me since I have this weird – endearing? – tendency to do that anyway, I do believe this strawberry ice cream cake would make the perfect pudding to follow this up.)
See you, yes you, in 2013! Fa la la la la! 
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Title via: The so important Wanda Woodward in the John Waters movie Cry-baby. Inexplicably, I could not find a screencap or gif of her saying this, but just know that she is the most. To say the least. The very least.
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Music lately: 

Watercolours, Pazzida. Brand new, and so very cool. Not least because she does this dreamy old-timey tap dance halfway through. I miss tapdancing.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Christine Ebersole. Voice like crystal, and fulfills my need for  Broadway stars singing seasonal songs.
Jessie Ware, Wildest Moments. This song is just so swoonful, o! how I wish I was seeing her at Laneway next year.
And one for luck: Johnny Cash and Neil Young, The Little Drummer Boy. A little strange, a lot wonderful. Their voices are like photo negatives of each other.
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Next time: It’ll be 2013! I look forward to blogging all often-like and stuff. And till then, I wish you all a Sensible Night, Appropriate Night. Function with relative ease!