looking through a glass onion

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It is so, so freezing in Wellington lately, that straight-through-your-clothes harsh chill which makes getting out of bed in the morning that much more aggrieving. I was in Christchurch and Dunedin over the weekend for work which was also an intensely cold experience, not to mention pretty exhausting (can’t say I’ve been sleeping well recently, and sitting in clenched frustration for an hour and a half on a plastic chair in the Dunedin airport where there is nothing to do while waiting for your flight, followed by a further hour and a half’s wait at the Christchurch airport will take it out of you. This is New Zealand, not the mighty plains of Canada, I don’t see why we need flights with stop-overs.) Hence why it has been a while since I’ve blogged.

There’s not much I love doing more in winter than sitting by a roaring heater with a pile of my cookbooks, going through and imagining what shenanigans I could get up to. Cooking in winter is fun – all those long-simmered warming dishes that make the house smell amazing and warm you as you stand over them – unlike the summer heat when all you really want to do for dinner is sit quietly inside the freezer and lick its icy walls. One book that I had a flick through recently was the Supercooks Supersavers Cookbook, which I picked up at the local opshop back home for about a dollar a few years back. I love its season-based chapters, its 1980 style, and its seriously enthusiastic title.
I found this awesome sounding recipe for Onions Smothered with Walnuts. It’s basically onions roasted in a sticky, spicy sauce, and though they’re more “vaguely scattered” than “smothered” with the walnuts it’s a gorgeous combination of flavours.
Onions Smothered with Walnuts
From the Supercook’s Supersavers Cookbook

450g small pickling (pearl) onions, peeled (I didn’t have any, so just used whole onions, quartered)
75g walnuts, chopped
25g melted butter
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon chilli sauce
1/2 cup stock or water
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oven to 170 C. In a bowl, mix everything together and pour into an oven-proof dish. Cover with tinfoil, and bake for around an hour, stirring once or twice. *Use olive oil and balsamic vinegar instead of the butter and worcestershire sauce to easily make this vegan. Yay!
It’s so good that I actually made it two nights in a row. In a weird twist of events, the first night I made it in a silicon dish and the second night I made it in a metal dish, and the second night the onions and sauce turned all black. Made me a little nervous, but not so nervous that I didn’t carry on eating the lot. This recipe has a lot going for it – it has punchy, warm flavours, it’s very cheap to make, it’s versatile, and it just cooks away by itself, not really requiring any attention. The honey, chilli and cinnamon are a brilliant combination and it’s perfect over pasta, which is how I had it, but would also work on couscous, mashed potatoes, rice, or stirred into a stew or roasted vegetables. Thanks, Supercook’s Supersavers Cookbook!
As I said, I’m pretty weary from the weekend, I haven’t been sleeping so well and on top of that I actually wasn’t feeling that great over the weekend. There were some diverting moments – seeing Graeme Downes of The Verlaines, The Dead C’s Bruce Russell and Flying Nun’s Roger Shepherd weighing in on a discussion panel about NZ Music, subsequently sitting behind the Verlaines on the flight to Dunedin, meeting with former flatmate Emma for a jolly catch-up, having an enthusiastic person “help” me by picking up my phone that I’d put on the ground right by my feet so I could take down a poster at an event, only to watch them accidentally drop it down three flights of stairs…
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Title via: The Beatles’ Glass Onion from The White Album. One of their more intriguing contributions…
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Music lately:
A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow, sung by Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy, from the film A Mighty Wind. This is absolutely my favourite film, and having it on my iPod made the four plane trips over the weekend much more bearable. This song is gorgeous even though it’s sending up the folk music genre, and Catherine O’Hara is just…perfect. Makes me want to learn the autoharp. Sincerely.
Bloodbuzz Ohio from The National’s new album High Violet. The album itself didn’t set me on fire but this song is a stunner and really showcases everything that’s good about The National. And you can check out a lengthier review I did of High Violet here at The Corner if you like.

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Next time: I’ll hopefully be a touch more awake. It’s Queen’s Birthday weekend in a day or two, nothing like a Monday off to make you feel unbendingly fond of the monarchy. I found this really cool recipe for pumpkin bread that I’m keen to try, I also am thinking of getting the crock pot out from its hiding place, it’s now definitely cold enough out there…

now let me welcome everybody to the wild wild west

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So, the novelty of a Monday at home is less novelty-ish when I’m coughing like a beast. Typing is a nice distraction from my chapped throat, but I’d sooner just get better. I’ve been downing tea made from lemon and ginger slices, crunching on vitamin C and echinacea, and sippin’ on gees linctus and juice. I’d had plenty of gees linctus when I was younger, but it turns out these days you have to state your intentions and hand over photo ID to get it, and it no longer comes in a pretty flask with a fancy label, but instead a tiny prescription bottle with one of those child-proof lids that are really difficult to remove.

I also have a whole mess of lozenges which are pretty good for noise control when I start coughing heaps. They were definitely useful at Tim’s graduation on Thursday. There were about forty thousand people (well, it felt like at least that many) getting graduated that night and I’m pretty sure not one of them wanted some lady spluttering during their moment of glory. In case you’re wondering, Tim was graduating with Honours in Media Studies which makes him super-qualified to do all sort of interesting things that no-one out there seems to need people to do right now, but fingers crossed that market opens up soon…Either way I’m pretty proud.
Tim’s family came down to be there for the graduation as well and his mum gifted us some bananas. There’s nothing I like more than a little unpremeditated push towards baking. Muffins felt a too obvious, but I couldn’t be bothered with anything too high-concept either. What a quandary. Then I remembered this eye-catchingly named recipe that I found while hopping from blog to blog like a frog on a lily-pad. It’s called Ponderosa Cake. According to the friendly person whose blog I found it on, the cake is named after some regional pine trees. Secretly I hope it was so named because someone wanted to immortalise their passion for Bonanza in baked form.
Ponderosa Cake
Recipe inspired by a recipe found on Chocolate & Chakra. I say inspired because I completely mucked things up as I went along – didn’t have enough butter, added 2 eggs by mistake instead of one, forgot the yoghurt till it was about to go in the oven – so the end result was almost a completely different cake…
100g soft butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
2-3 large, ripe bananas, mashed
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon each of baking powder and baking soda
1/2 cup plain yoghurt or sour cream

125g good chocolate, chopped roughly
1 -2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 cup brown sugar
Set your oven to 180 C/350 F and line a square or rectangular cake tin with baking paper. Cream the butter and sugar together till fluffy, then beat in the eggs. Add the bananas, then fold in the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Finally mix in the yoghurt, plus half the chopped chocolate and cinnamon. Spread it into the cake tin, then sprinkle over the rest of the chocolate and cinnamon, plus the brown sugar. Bake for 25-30 minutes.
I’d rather have a thousand coughs than a blocked nose and lose my sense of taste, because Ponderosa Cake is incredibly good. It’s very light and tender and keeps well. The blast of heat in the oven caramelises the spiced, sugary chocolate topping slightly, providing depth of flavour and a pleasing gritty crunch to the moist, banana-y base. Happily, it used some of the treats I picked up at the recent food show – like The Collective yoghurt and Whittakers chocolate. Despite the fact that I somehow managed to get things wrong every step of the way, this is really a very straightforward cake. It’s ideal for those times where you want something a little out of the ordinary but not so far out of the ordinary that you’re up at 6am measuring the temperature and viscosity of sugar syrups.
I’m not sure if Hoss and Little Joe ever bonded over banana cake, but it’s a nice thought, right? I understand when my mum and her brothers and sisters were growing up, Bonanza was appointment viewing on TV… You know you want to hear that theme song again!
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Title via: 2Pac featuring Dr Dre, California Love. I know, it’s one state over from the Ponderosa. There couldn’t be a more obvious song that springs to mind for the sadly late Tupac Shakur, but no matter how often it’s thrashed it’s still a goodie, and one of those songs I knew all the words to (except for an embarrassingly long time I thought it was “city of corn chips” instead of “Compton”, what can I say, there was no Google back then.)
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Music lately:

The Music and the Mirror from A Chorus Line. This song is actually mostly dancing but the singing that’s there is so gorgeous – the line “I’ll do you proud” slays me a bit. It’s a song about a woman who needs a job, so she’s auditioning for the chorus even though she is good enough to be a star. Well, it seems a bit more dramatic when set to music anyway, and the original Donna McKechnie is pretty incomparable but there’s plenty of fun to be found on youtube of that amazing dance in the red skirt. If you’ve only seen the film version of A Chorus Line, they cut this song – criminal!
The Ali and Toumani album, a recently-released collaboration between the late Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate. It’s…an absolute beauty.
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Next time: well, hopefully I my immune system and I become friends again. I’m down in Christchurch on Friday for Chartfest then Dunedin on Saturday for Smokefreerockquest so I can’t afford to be this germtastic.

there’s no business like show business

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The time has come once more for me to assume the authority (authority that I don’t really have, hence “assume” instead of, say, “gather”) of writing up the Wellington Food Show. You know how some people really get into things like the Superbowl? The Food Show is my Superbowl. And it comes but once a year. Between working full time and growing older the year sweeps by alarmingly quick, the upshot of which is that this year the Food Show approached a lot sooner than I thought it would.
The following is a selection of the foodstuffs we sampled on Sunday. (And the drinkstuffs. At one point I remember telling Tim “I like margaritas. They help me make decisions.”) There are some points you should bear in mind as you scroll purposefully through them.
1) I’m mad useless at composition on the fly. Sorry, companies (and readers).
2) While I only talk about the good stuff, it’s not the definitive list. There were 185 stands, so out of practicality not all of them will be mentioned below.
3) I may or may not be half asleep while I’m writing this. Apologies for any inaccuracies or metaphors that go nowhere.
Firstly a massive “cheers” to The Wright Sprouts who actually sent me a pass to the show, which was both unexpected and very cool. It is entirely without agenda that I reiterate my genuine love for The Wright Sprouts’ products (their sproutput, if you, um, will). A wide range of nutty, crunchy, juicy organic sprouts that you can easily polish off by the handful straight from the bag or use in actual recipes. I know sprouts don’t necessarily spring to mind when you contemplate awesomely delicious food, but friend, let them spring.

The Wright Sprouts
Contact: (the lovely) katrina@wrightsprouts.co.nz

One of the hugely exciting highlights of the day was seeing Ray McVinnie’s cooking demonstration. He’s become a lot more well-known lately as a judge on NZ Masterchef but I was there in the front row simply as a long-time fan of his writing for Cuisine magazine. His Quick Smart column has always been a favourite of mine and it was nice to see he’s every bit as excellent in person as he is in paragraph form.

Total rockstar. Seriously. He made these two stunningly excellent sounding dishes, one a chicken dish sweetened and soured with damson jam, red wine and moscatel vinegar, and the other a chorizo and prawn dish. He was engaging, thorough, sensible of advice and humorous of anecdote. He even quoted Nigella Lawson. I know. He even kind of gestured at Tim and I at one point and asked if we could smell cinnamon, I seriously couldn’t but nodded eagerly all the same, not one to let the truth stand in the way of a good story.
To the food!
Freedom Farms
Harmony
Sunset Free Range

We were so happy to see the SPCA stand back once more to raise awareness of the importance of free range eggs and meat with their mighty omelets. I made the decision a while back to only purchase free range eggs and meat, for all those obvious reasons (like feminism – gotta look out for our feathered sisters and their wellbeing) and the deliciousness of the bacon and omelets we tried at this stand only further backed up my happiness in this decision. I realise it would be even more humane and actually just much better to just not eat eggs or meat at all but…not yet. Just love them too much really, and I’m happy to support people striving to get me those eggs and that meat in the best way possible.
Contact: gregor@freedomfarms.co.nz
Contact: orders@harmony.co.nz
anita@sunsetfreerange.co.nz
Essential Cuisine

There ain’t nothing wrong with a little getting someone else to make your stock. Essential Cuisine has the goods, light years away from the murky, salty, 2-minute noodle sachet type stuff donning a mask and calling itself stock these days. They make mighty fine pesto too and all their products come in these alluringly prod-able, jewel-coloured pouches.
St Andrews Limes


These guys have been around for a year or two now, so it was more of a perfunctory visit to their stand that I made. However I shouldn’t have been so presumptuous as their “Just a Dressing” – the stuff in the ramekin on the right – was so deliciously mustardy and sharp that I wanted to devise an elaborate plan to distract the people in charge of the stall so I could quickly swipe the bottle and drink the lot.
Contact: limes@limes.co.nz
Lisa’s

Lisa’s is another company that has been around for a while, but still shaking up the hummus scene with her ridiculously delicious new range. The above was roast kumara and chickpea hummus topped with glossy pumpkin seeds. It was lusciously silky and nutty, an amazingly good combination. We spent some serious quality time with it.
Contact: info@lhf.net
The Collective Dairy

I LOVE this yoghurt.

What to say. It was wonderful stuff – cold, thick, creamy and swirled with fruit. Their halloumi was so delicious – salty, squeaky, soft but solid. Actually that makes it sound kind of awful, but trust me it was genuinely heavenly. Top ranking stuff all round.
twitter.com/collectivedairy
Contact: ilya@epicdairy.com

Sweet Smart

These guys did sugar-free sour cola bottles that tasted real. Well, as real as actual sour cola bottles could get. They have an awesomely comprehensive range of sugar-free products online and were really friendly. Considering it was day three of the Food Show and all.
Contact: erika@sweetsmart.co.nz
Lindt Chocolate

One of their reps was strangely cold-mannered, they didn’t seem to have any business cards to hand and there’s not even an NZ website to speak of. From this cavalierness I would assume Lindt clearly don’t need me to promote them on my blog. Still, I kind of liked this picture. And their chocolate is just so knee-bucklingy delicious, particularly those legendary Lindor balls which are solid on the outside and meltingly truffly on the inside. It sells itself. You can find it in most supermarkets. I ended up buying a bar of 85% dark chocolate which I look forward to eating eventually – I’ve never had chocolate quite that dark before, maybe if it gets any darker it just turns into a charcoal briquette.
Loaf Handcrafted Breads
One of the perils of going to the Food Show on the last day is that some people might run out of food. Like these jammy dodgers from Loaf, whose shelves were nude but for what you see in the photo above when we got there first thing in the morning. While I love to make my own ginger slice, their take on it was pretty darn exquisite – soft, fudgey, and dark with gingery heat. Between the quality of their product and the disarming friendliness of the guys at the stand I’m not surprised at all that they were completely fleeced and ready to go home after our first lap of the stadium.
Contact: daniel@loaf.co.nz
Orcona Chillis’n’Pepper

Just the perfect thing to awaken the tastebuds mid-afternoon. Orcona has a fabulous range of chillis and chilli-related products. We were particularly taken with their harissa and their chilli feijoa relish – strangely sweet and hot at the same time and very moreish. I haven’t got tastebuds that can really stand up to the bullying heat of chillis but if yours can then look these guys up for sure.
Orcona Chillis’n’Peppers
Contact: orcona@xtra.co.nz

Moana Park of Hawkes Bay

This was the wine used in the aforementioned Ray McVinnie cooking demonstration and I felt obliged to show them how their advertising dollars had paid off handsomely in brand recognition. While I drink wine here and there I can’t say I know an awful lot about it in the technical sense, apart from what you pick up from listening to other people and reading and so on, but I really did like their Malbec – it had a good, robust, confident flavour. I then tried something called a “sticky” which frankly isn’t the name I’d choose to classify a wine but again, what know I? It was very good but awfully sweet, the sort of thing that would be nice with stone fruit or perhaps poured over a cake of some kind. The man at the stall was very nice, which is always appreciated when bumbling your way through this sort of thing.
twitter.com/moanaparkwinery
Contact: dan@moanapark.co.nz
Lemon-Z Limoncello
Lemon-Z is first an foremost a fabulous locally made limoncello, smooth, resiny and incredibly lemony. They also make a brilliant ice cream out of such reassuringly familiar things as cream and egg yolks. I felt a bit bad as I made a massive hash of all my photos of their drink, but not toooo bad as they’re doing alright for themselves without my awful photos – their international awards are many and prestigious.
Contact: info@lemon-z.co.nz
Soprano Limoncello

The Soprano limoncello was rich and fragrant, deliciously sour and with a sprightly liqueur-y kick. They’re relatively new to the limoncello party but clearly know exactly what they are doing. I liked it a lot.
Contact: sopranolimoncello@xtra.co.nz
Rejuva
I love it when people do the dinky shot-glass lineup thing, because it looks so pretty in photos. Look at them twinkle! Rejuva’s aloe juice is so strangely delicious that you won’t even think about how scarily spiky the actual aloe vera plant is, or how strangely gluey the sap encased within its spikes. Rejuva’s range of juices include Pomegranate with Aloe and Green Tea with Aloe. The flavour is a little hard to pinpoint – a little cucumbery, a little grapey, but overall light-textured, refreshing and delicious. And really, really good for you.
Contact: aloe@rejuva.co.nz
Lighthouse Gin


There’s a really long and complicated distillation process that makes Lighthouse gin a cut apart from the rest of the gin-peddlers out there, but the one thing I can remember is that they use hand-cut orange rind to flavour their gin, instead of the rather more pith-bitter dried stuff that most other makers use. Which appealed to me, as did their robustly delicious product, full of the evidence of that hand-zested fruit and whole spices.
Contact: james@lighthousegin.co.nz
Honourable mention to the following –
Martinborough’s Coney Wines, from whom I sampled two incredibly good Reislings. Their wines are named after music references and the people at the stand were incredibly friendly. I took advantage of their deliciousness and good value and bought myself a bottle. It was pouring with rain and the endless walk out of the stadium is completely unsheltered. The paper bag that the wine was in grew soggy, broke, and the wine smashed onto the ground. Aaaaaargh. Began to hate whoever designed the walkway out of the stadium (seriously, this walkway it’s about forty kilometres long, no roof at all, in Wellington of all places). Nevertheless, I’ll still be looking out for them in shops, only if it’s not raining.
Coney Wines – contact info@coneywines.co.nz
Las Margarita Restaurante Y Cantina from Lower Hutt, who were serving icy margaritas and wonderful hot-sauce doused, cheese-filled rolls called flautas, and the girl serving margaritas complimented me on my hair.
Contact: 04) 566 2646/bookings@lasmargaritas.co.nz
Piako Gourmet Yoghurt – another incredible NZ dairy product, unfortunately by the time I got round to them I was completely over taking photos. Wonderfully thick, delicious yoghurt in such alluring flavours as coffee walnut and lemon curd. Really, really gorgeous stuff.
Contact: logan@piakoyoghurt.co.nz
Oxfam, who were collecting signatures to petition supermarkets to stock more Fairtrade products. Fair deuce, said I, and signed up happily. Then he gave us a whole block of Whittakers chocolate to say thanks. I could not have been more filled with love for the Food Show at that moment.
And that, good people, is it, more or less. Less, rather than more, as I really only captured a bare sprinkle of the goods on display, but there you go.
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Title via: the formidable, deeply talented Ethel Merman (they don’t name ’em like they used to).
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Music lately:
Notorious B.I.G feat Method Man – The What from Ready To Die You sure don’t need me to tell you why this is good but one day when I’m more awake I might just do it anyway.
Best Coast, When I’m With You. I don’t know much at all about these people but I love this song – its lethargic, foot-dragging guitars and Hole-ish vocals are very appealing.
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Next time: Cheers for reading, everyone, I realise it’s a bit of a hike. So much new food to eat now – can’t wait. Maybe by the time the next one rolls round I’ll have my own cooking demonstration or something. Am secretly tempted to look at flights to Auckland for their leg of the Food Show…

pumpkin, you’re hollow within

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Tonight I was obliged to cook dinner for myself and no one else, because Tim’s in Palmerston North for his mother’s graduation (I understand it’s this new qualification two stages after PhD that they had to hastily invent to accomodate her smartness). Luckily, in case I was thinking of just having toast after lazy piece of toast, spread with fistfuls of butter, there’s Nigella Lawson. In the “One and Two” chapter of that seminal text, How To Eat, she luxuriates in the solitary dinner to the point where it seems alluringly rakish to be so exhausted that all you can do is make yourself pasta, gloss it with olive oil, sprinkle with garlic and chilli, and eat it in bed. I like eating in bed as much as the next person who likes eating in bed but she really makes it rock’n’roll.

Hidden in this One and Two chapter is Butternut and Pasta Soup, a recipe that will never be a calling card for Nigella like the Ham in Coca Cola or Chocolate Guinness Cake, but is certainly no less fantastically worthy of your time. There was a tick beside the recipe in my copy of How To Eat but I can’t remember when I actually last made it. Maybe because it’s not the flashiest combination of flavours on the block. However it’s warm, it’s cheap, it’s easy to make and it’s easy to eat. I had half a butternut pumpkin aging in the fridge (and not aging in the socially applauded way, like Helen Mirren) and an open bag of risoni pasta in the cupboard just waiting to be spilled on the floor, so I thought I’d give this another try.

Butternut and Pasta Soup

Serves 2 (I halved the liquid, pasta and pumpkin)

From Nigella Lawson’s seminal text How To Eat

  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • 1/2 small onion, chopped very finely
  • 250g butternut pumpkin, or any old pumpkin really, chopped into 1cm dice
  • 60mls vermouth or white wine
  • 600mls stock – chicken or porcini stock would be good here
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 60g small soup pasta, like stelline, ditalini or risoni

Heat the oil in a heavy-based pot and add the onion, stirring till soft, then add the cubes of butternut. Cook for around 2 minutes, stirring often, letting the orange cubes soften slightly. Tip in the wine (it will bubble up) and then the stock and bayleaf. Bring to a simmer and leave for about ten minutes.

Nigella then says to remove a ladleful and puree it before returning to the pan, but I said no, because I wasn’t in the mood to clean the food processor. It was fine. Add the pasta, cook for another 10 minutes till the pasta is tender. Ladle into bowls, serve with parmesan to grate over if you like.

The fact that it’s cheap and no hassle to make shouldn’t be the only thing that draws you to this recipe. Even though I didn’t have any stock cubes to hand and so had to use plain water, it was still flavoursome, filling, comfortingly soft and warm. A little sweet from the pumpkin and savoury from the bay leaf. You could gussy it up with a spoon of pesto, or harissa, or whatever. It was a delicious and serene solo meal on a chilly night. And a good reminder that it’s well worth properly re-reading Nigella’s cookbooks for hidden jewels like this.

On Saturday Tim and I went to Bodega to the launch of local musician Grayson Gilmour’s new album, No Constellation. It’s now a well-documented fact, but Gilmour is the first artist to be signed to the newly minted Flying Nun label, which must be pretty exciting for all parties involved – he’s enormously talented, and Flying Nun carries with it decades of respect. We’ve seen Gilmour perform with band So So Modern about a billion times but none of his elusive solo performances so we were really looking forward to it. We got there in time to see Vaults, who, despite getting a bit Deep Forest in places, were overall enjoyable, good music to wallow in. Gilmour’s music translated beautifully live with the help of the musicians backing him (including So So Modern’s Aidan Leong) particularly one of my favourites from the new album, the sparkling, sprinty Loose Change. He deserves to do well, and I hope it all works out for him so…he can perform this solo material a bit more often.

Title via: Tricky’s Pumpkin from Maxinquaye, assisted ably by the glorious Goldfrapp. It’s woozy, it’s mellow, listening to it is actually like being a grain of pasta, floating around slowly in a large bowl of warm butternut soup.

Music lately:

New Dead Weather album! Called Sea of Cowards, it continues, rather than showing strong progress, from their debut Horehound. But, it is still an exciting listen with its dark dark imagery and sizzling instrumentation. And Jack White.

Odessa, by Caribou from the album Swim. I don’t know anything at all about Caribou so I won’t patronise you with reconstituted Wikipedia factlets. But this song has been on the radio an awful lot lately and…I like it. I might even look up Caribou on Wikipedia.

The great Lena Horne passed away recently. I salute her and all her achievements with the obvious but always beautiful Stormy Weather.

Next time: Hopefully I’ll get a post in before then, but this weekend is OH MY GOSH the Wellington Food Show. I’m so excited. It will be my fifth year attending and my third year blogging it, you’d think by now I’d have my own segment or something. At the least I plan on eating my own body weight (or even a larger person’s body weight) in ‘free’ samples.

 

going back to canada on a journey through the past

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I had this pair of Chuck Taylors that lasted me four years, not bad since I wore them a lot and lived up a hill in Wellington, which wears out a shoe swift-fast. Towards the end of their existence, one had a large hole in the bottom and the tread had been buffed down to the thickness of a wonton wrapper, except for the bits where holes had emerged in the sole. So…I cut out some bubble wrap and slid it inside the shoes. And wore them for at least another 6 months. At the same time, I was also buying, like…gelatine leaves and shallots and cloth-aged cheddar. Priorities?

And yet there were things that even with this food-first shoes-later mindset, that still seemed out of my reach. Like maple syrup. That Canadian elixir. I’m pretty sure that if you look at it in the supermarket, then look away, then look back again, the price tag magically becomes more expensive. In all these years I’ve only ever bought one bottle of it, then been too nervous to even take off the lid in case I wasted a droplet (what with its street value rivalling that of most hard drugs).
Then I was given a bottle of maple syrup for my birthday by my late grandad’s wife, and it was an exciting new opportunity for me. To have some maple syrup. Simple as that. I should have known that someone whose chocolate eclairs I always admired as a child would give such an astute gift.
Ice cream is basically always on my mind so it was an easy decision to showcase the incredible flavour of maple syrup in that format. Nigella Lawson has a whole chapter about ice cream in her book Forever Summer (one day I will too! But it will be an even bigger chapter than hers) and within its pages is a recipe for Honey Semifreddo. It’s a quickly whipped up mixture of egg yolks, cream and honey, frozen once and then cut into slices. Amazingly good as that sounds, I thought I’d switch the honey for maple syrup and go forward from there.
Even though it’s pretty common, I’ve never made ice cream like this before – I tend to take the frozen custard path instead. This semifreddo however, was so exquisitely light-textured and quick to make that I might have to reconsider my methods.
Maple Syrup Semifreddo

Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer

1 egg
4 egg yolks (nice, free range eggs please)
100g real maple syrup
300 mls cream

Place the egg, yolks, and maple syrup in a good-sized bowl, and sit that bowl over a small pot of simmering water. Whisk the mixture thoroughly and constantly until it is thick, creamy and aerated – this won’t take a hugely long time. Set it aside, then in another bowl whisk the cream till thick and floppy but not completely whipped. Carefully fold it into the maple syrup mixture, and pour it into a 1-litre loaf tin, either lined with glad-wrap or plain if it’s a silicon one, and freeze till solid. Dip in hot water before turning out (for some reason it took a while to dislodge) and cut into slices.
The only problem with ice cream is that it’s hard to photograph – it’s all melting in front of you which makes composition and focussing a bit of a non-event. Eating it however is ridiculously easy. As I said, the texture of this is wonderful – light, creamy and not really rich at all. The maple syrup whisked through provides the most incredible flavour – elegantly sweet and smoky. A few walnuts folded through wouldn’t have gone amiss but its uninterrupted cold creaminess was perfect as is with nothing more than an extra drizzle of sticky maple syrup.
Maybe one day, when I’ve gotten all awesomely rich from writing a cookbook, I’ll be able to live like the Canadians on the “Canucks Amuck” episode of Angry Beavers, who crack open cans of cool refreshing maple syrup to quench their thirst. One day!
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Title via: Canada’s other fine export, Neil Young and his song Journey Through the Past. I was fortunate enough to see him live at Big Day Out in January 2009, wild Canadian beavers could not have kept me from that performance.
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Music lately:
Dam Native, Behold My Koolstyle from Kaupapa Driven Rhymes Uplifted…Aotearoa music for the ages. I love mellow melodies like this in hiphop, and I like that it’s so clearly about this place, not of course that all NZ music should be – imagine the awkwardness of every local act trying to create the kiwi equivalent of, say, Down In Albion.
Remote Control, Beastie Boys, from Hello Nasty. I like the Beastie Boys and all, really like some of their songs but this song is in a fantasy baseball league of its own. The bombastic beats, the fuzzyiness, the ambiguity of the chorus, it just slays me. This was one of those songs I heard on the radio late at night and I had no idea how to find out who sung it or where to find it…
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Next time: Dubious. Might crack out the slow cooker, it’s definitely cold enough…on the other hand I really want to make more maple syrupy stuff while I have the chance…

20th century soy

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After all those feijoa brownies – which on one particular day served as both my breakfast and dinner, all I can say is that the heart wants what the heart wants – I thought I’d rekindle my relationship with tofu, get some soy back in my bloodstream. The stuff I like to get comes from the vege market on Dixon/Willis Street and is $4 for a generous block of four squares, or fillets if you like, of firm tofu.

We went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D that night and I wanted a fast-moving dinner planned for when we returned home. It all worked out fantastically – crisp slices of matzoh-crumbed tofu resting on a bed, no, a beanbag of chickpea and golden sultana-studded couscous, and a garlicky tahini sauce on top. It was all made very quickly – such is the joy of couscous, instantly puffing itself up into a meal, and tofu, which has no bacteria squatting within its meatless walls to be smoked out in the cooking process, cutting down on pan-time.

Yes, the photos aren’t great but 1) I was tired and hungry and 2) all that beige. What would you do? There’s only so much coriander in my fridge.
Tofu with Garlic Tahini, Couscous and Chickpeas
Half a block of firm tofu
Breadcrumbs
3 fat cloves garlic
2 Tablespoons tahini
Pinch smoked paprika
1/2 cup couscous
Boiling water
1 tin chickpeas
1/3 cup golden sultanas (you could use normal sultanas, or currants, or dried cranberries etc)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Handful almonds (or other nuts)
Tip the couscous into a bowl, pour over boiling water to cover and sit a plate on top while you get on with the tofu. When you return to it, remove the plate and fluff up the couscous with a fork. Stir in the drained can of chickpeas and the sultanas (or whatever you’re using instead), the spices plus salt to taste.

Wrap the tofu in a couple of paper towels and press on it to let some of the moisture absorb away. Bin the paper and slice up the tofu. Put your breadcrumbs (I used matzoh meal) onto a plate and press the tofu slices into them, covering both sides of each slice. Heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil till good and hot, and fry the slices till golden, a couple of minutes each side.

Finally, crush or finely chop the garlic cloves, and fry gently (in the same pan that you did the tofu in is fine). Stir in the tahini and a tablespoon of water and adding as much water as you like till you have a smoothish pale sauce. Add the paprika. Serve the tofu slices on top of the couscous with the sauce drizzled over. Sprinkle with the almonds, chopped, and a handful of torn coriander.
The couscous thing was adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe and was delicious- buttery chickpeas, tender couscous grains and chewy, sweet golden sultanas. I’m always happy to be eating tofu but pressing the crumbs into it provided a bit more texture and welcome crunch. The sauce tied it all together with its garlic smoothness, although undeniably it was a really ugly colour…even with the ‘sprinkle-the-coriander-over’ routine I still couldn’t disguise its utter beige-ity.
We ate this for dinner, as I said, after seeing Alice in Wonderland in 3D. It was my first 3D movie (yeah, so I still haven’t seen Avatar) and once I’d stopped jumping every time a leaf swirled out in front of me off the screen it was really fun. Because I loved the Alice books so much as a youngster I was a bit suspicious about what a film version could offer me, especially since the trailer made it look pretty rubbish but…I absolutely loved it. Not since Step Up 2: The Streets have I been so pleasantly surprised by a film. It was visually gorgeous for a start, but the acting and the fleshed-out characters really made it a wonderful experience. Mia Waisakowska’s Alice is powerful, at first simply reacting to what’s around her then gradually becoming more powerful, overall a highly compelling character. Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter are stunning queens. Apparently Bonham-Carter drew inspiration from Nigella for her role, and yeah, I could see it. And Johnny Depp is as captivating as, you know, he ALWAYS is. It drooped occasionally but the only thing I really didn’t like about it was the Avril Lavigne song that blasts immediately over the ending credits. It’s so bad that it’s like a parody of an awful song rather than just a simply awful song. Disney kindly showed us several fancy trailers for upcoming 3D films prior to Alice in Wonderland starting, including Toy Story 3, something about owls, and yet another Shrek sequel. I wonder if 3D is proving to be an exciting platform for companies to re-thrash already thrashed franchises…
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Title via: That other mad hatter, Marc Bolan, and T-Rex’s 20th Century Boy.
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Music lately:

Martha by Rufus Wainwright from his new album All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu. I love Wainwright’s music, his theatrical imagery and endless voice, so a new album is always a bit of a treat. This is just him and a piano, not sparse in the slightest, I’m not sure he could do ‘sparse’ but utterly beautiful and stripped of any real excess. Martha, presumably named for his sister, is one particularly affecting track on this album, the first he’s put out there since his mother’s death earlier this year.
Night Hawkes from Wellingtonian Red Steer’s latest EP, The Fever Fold. It’s an exciting track with an enviable beat that sneaks in partway through and makes me want to choreograph something. Tim reviewed it at The Corner, an NZ website so awesome that we both write for it, and you can even download the EP for free once you’re done reading up on it (and my review of MGMT’s Congratulations, there’s no free download but I do reference Hair, almost as exciting…)
Sleigh Bells’ Tell Em, crunchier than sandpaper and very fun. Their relentless fuzzity could be hard on the ears but as someone who grew up rural, ears pressed to the radio at night with one finger slowly inching the tuner round to pick up any kind of signal, it all makes sense to me.
Do you know what I’m emphatically not listening to? Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate’s Ali and Toumani, the collaboration that has recently been released, five year’s on from Toure’s death. We walked from the top of Cuba Street to the bottom of Lambton Quay at the other end of town, entering every single music shop we found and not one place had it. I know, I should have bought it sooner…
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Next time: Oh sure we ate tofu but…I also made a pudding of the ice-creamy variety. So you’ll find out about the all sharp change in direction when I next get time to update this.

to fruits, to no absolutes

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I had a wonderful weekend at home, but I feel a bit talked out on the subject of RENT. All the way up to Auckland in the car my family and Tim politely listened while I talked about it anticipationally, and all the way through dinner afterwards and on the drive home I was generously tolerated during my frame-by-frame debrief of the entire production. But – oh my gosh thank goodness I imagine that I hear you say – I’m not entirely out of steam. For the sake of all involved though, and because I’m probably the only person who cares what I think about this particular production, I’ll keep my review to the following thoughts: (I have more thoughts though! So many more!)

  • I was very, very happy to be given the opportunity to see the songs I love so much performed live, and the Auckland Music Theatre did a great job.
  • The vocal sound was a bit restrained which didn’t do them any favours, because in RENT if you miss one throwaway line, well there goes an entire subplot.
  • The choreography for Out Tonight wasn’t overly satisfying, and I was a little disappointed Mimi wasn’t wearing blue tights, but this seems typical of all local productions I’ve seen.
  • Some of the songs – including the difficult Contact (“Mum, there’s this giant, metaphorical…sex scene”) in which Cameron Clayton as Angel just stunned and La Vie Boheme were staged and choreographed absolutely brilliantly.
  • I didn’t like what they did with Over The Moon – while it was clever to have it more dynamic with the cast-as-audience it lost the actual audience participation. And the cowbell.
  • While the cast was overall brilliant, and it’s not fair to compare them to the original Broadway stars, occasionally a singer’s range didn’t stack up to what you expected to hear.
  • I really liked Kristian Lavercombe as Mark, he brought this narrow-hipped Buddy Holly feel to the role and led the show well.
  • The much-publicised Annie Crummer (let’s face it, there are no real main characters but if there were, Joanne wouldn’t be one) looked stunning and sounded great but her distinct vocals coupled with the slightly quiet mic made most of her lines hard to hear. If you didn’t know them off by heart already that is.
  • Go see it if you can – it’s running till May the 7th and frankly, I’d go back again if I could. We saw the Saturday matinee and I would have happily stuck around and seen the night show. I don’t say that lightly.
Oh yeah… and it was fun hearing the name of my blog in the title song.
We’re so countrified that we spent five traffic light cycles taking a photo of me in front of the Civic theatre on Queen Street. I guess since our community is now shunted into the Waikato we can officially qualify as tourists in Auckland supercity. Imagine if I ever made it to New York – but then there are probably thousands of people who take photos of the “look at me standing by this distinctive structure” variety over there.
I was also home for Anzac Day and after watching the amazing and moving coverage on Maori TV (I could have done with someone a little drier in delivery than Judy Bailey, that said, I wish I had her legs), we went to the local wreath-laying ceremony, catching up with plenty of whanau in the process. A large bag of feijoas was pressed upon us by old family friends and I managed to carefully transport them back on the plane to Wellington. Feijoas are a fairly localised fruit, I think they mostly pop up in NZ and Australian cooking but not necessarily many other places in the world. I would describe them as being similar to passionfruit in fragrance, a little like a strawberry mixed with pineapple in flavour and not unlike guava in texture. They’re basically the greatest thing on earth.
Unfortunately their relative rarity and short season (they’re one of the best things about the colder autumn days) means that recipes are few and far between. So I decided to improvise, and made Feijoa Coconut Brownies. If you aren’t within reaching distance of a feijoa I’d substitute equal weight of banana or applesauce.
Improvised on the spot though these may be, they tasted like they’d been prophesied about to come and save the world by some holy sage a thousand years ago. I’m trying to say they were really good.
Feijoa Coconut Brownies

200g butter
100g good dark chocolate
150-200g feijoa flesh (just cut them in half, scoop out the flesh with a teaspoon and mash with a fork. The weight here refers to the flesh only, not the whole fruit)
100g sugar
3 eggs
2 tablespoons good cocoa (like the Fairtrade stuff Mum gave me! Yay!)
50g thread coconut (or dessicated, the longer thread stuff gives good texture)
200g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
100g good dark chocolate, chopped (optional)

Set oven to 180 C/350 F. Melt the chocolate and butter together gently, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pot of simmering water. Stir to combine. Tip in the rest of the ingredients apart from the flour and baking powder, and mix thoroughly. Fold in the flour, baking powder and chopped chocolate if using, and spread the mixture into a baking paper lined 20x30cm-ish tin. Bake for 20-25 minutes (no less – this is a supermoist mixture, it can handle the slightly longer oven time). Allow to cool a bit, then slice into bars.
Notice my new favourite toy – a cakestand from my godmother and family. I love how clean and elegant it is – makes me feel very Scandinavian. Or at least what I think being Scandinavian might feel like. (Other characteristics: writing excellent electro-pop and sprinkling dill on everything)
These brownies were, and I don’t care that I’m saying so myself because look at them, gorgeous. The feijoa gave an acidy kick to the chocolate’s embroidered velvet pants, while the softly textured coconut buffered against the feijoa’s grittiness and provided a delicate richness of its own. They are super moist, cocoa-y and dense. They’re damn good brownies.
I had one for breakfast this morning and it felt good.
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Title coming your way via: surprise! RENT! I’m confident that feijoas aren’t the kind of fruits that Mark sings about in La Vie Boheme…and yet feijoas are undeniably one of the fruitier brothers in existence, so it all kind of works out.
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Music lately:
Just one more – Santa Fe from RENT. I don’t have a favourite, but this mellow beauty still thrills with every listen despite not being one of the huge showstoppers. I was a bit let down by the staging/arrangement of this song in the production we saw, but funnily enough Mum thought it was going to be the end of Act I, like Act II would be all about this group of bohemians and their attempt to start a restaurant out west. Looking back to when I first heard this song, I have to admit I didn’t quiiiiite pick up on the hypothetical nature right away either.
The amazing M.I.A’s new Suicide-sampling song Born Free. Watch the video if you dare (if you can find it) it’s definitely…an eye-widener.
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Next time: I’ve been given so many cool food-related things for my birthday (cake tins, maple syrup, limoncello, etc) that I’m going to have fun working out how to use them all, hopefully managing to incorporate my new cakestand in the process…

crouton, crouton, crunchy friend in a liquid broth

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We had a power outage this afternoon in Wellington. I’m glad I wasn’t stuck in an elevator when it struck, or halfway through roasting a chicken, because that would not have been fun at all. No drama for me though – all it meant was sitting round in the foyer at work reading up on policies and then scooting home early. When I got there the new Cuisine magazine had arrived in the mail, like a warm gamma ray of electricity in an otherwise dimly lit afternoon. We’re heading up to Auckland tomorrow so I didn’t want to make anything huge for dinner that would leave us with piles of leftovers. I found this soup recipe within the pages of Cuisine – and yes, it has been cold enough lately in Wellington to start getting all soupy again – and something about the complete simplicity of the ingredients appealed to me.
The recipe was a bit oddly vague in places so the following is slightly adapted. This recipe is boxfresh – only Cuisine subscribers will have seen it so far so…scoop!
Roast Garlic, White Bean, and Bread Soup

From the May issue of Cuisine (one day they’ll interview me, one day!)

20 cloves garlic (try to get really good stuff that will actually taste like garlic)
2 large onions
1 teaspoon thyme leaves
1 teaspoon sweet smoked paprika
1 litre chicken, vegetable, or (my favourite) porcini stock
400g tin butter beans or cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
Parsely and chervil to serve (I used basil, it’s what I had)
1 cup sourdough croutons

Peel the garlic cloves and roast them in a little olive oil at 180 C/350 F for about half an hour till soft. I did this by wrapping them into a pouch of tinfoil and then wrapping that in another layer of tinfoil – keeps them soft and saves on dishes.

Once this is on its way, slice the onions into half-moons and gently fry in a little olive oil till soft and golden. This will take a while, so by the time they’re good and soft the garlic should be ready. Mash the cloves with a fork (including the oil they were roasted in) and add them to the pan along with the thyme and the paprika. Pour in the stock, bring to a simmer, and tip in the beans. Simmer till the beans are well heated through and season well. Serve with the parsley, chervil and croutons (I didn’t have sourdough so just used some regular bread, cut into cubes and tossed with a little olive oil, and chucked them in the oven which I’d just turned off, the remaining heat turned them into croutons.)

Serves about 6. Nice with a bread roll or scone on the side.
This made for a seriously perfect chilly-evening dinner, the ingredients coming together to make a hearty but still elegant soup that seemed awesomely European, even though I have no real clue if this has any actual continental background or if the author just made it up on the spot. Sometimes just feeling European is enough. The softly flavoured beans, the fantastically garlicky broth, and the still-crisp croutons sinking into it were a rather stunning combination. Worth mucking round with bits of garlic for. This recipe reminded me why soup is so brilliant, even if it’s not as sexy as some other dinner options.
So, like I said, we’re heading up to Auckland tomorrow. I can’t wait to catch up with the whanau – I haven’t been home since Laneways and it’s really not very often that I get to go up to Auckland just to see family without any work agenda. We’re going to see the Auckland Music Theatre production of RENT – and when I say we, I mean my whole family and Tim – and I am so excited about seeing it on a big stage by such a renowned company. I don’t need to outline how much I love RENT here, you know I’ve done it enough before, and I don’t need anyone to outline its shortcomings to me – I’m well aware of them too. I’m a little trepidatious about how this cast is going to work out but I think overall it will be a very, very good time. And I’m just really happy to see RENT being performed on such a visible scale in New Zealand. Between this, and Idina Menzel appearing on Glee, it feels like it’s all starting to come together…
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Title coming your way via: The Mighty Boosh‘s small but very excellent soup song.
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Music lately:

I’ve actually been avoiding RENT for a little while now so it can be particularly impacty when I see it on Saturday. Other than that…
Love of My Life by Erykah Badu featuring Common from the Brown Sugar soundtrack…a sweet ode to hip hop music, this video is just as gold as the song itself (not least because of the clips of Idina Menzel’s husband, the lovely Taye Diggs). Watching Erykah Badu makes me never want to cut my hair ever again. Found out today that Common is doing a couple of shows in Auckland in June, quiiite keen to go along…
Superboy and the Invisible Girl from the Broadway cast recording of Next To Normal. This was the very first song from this musical that I ever heard, and it had been a long time since I’d heard lyrics this beautiful and innovative and poetic in any genre of music, not to mention a guitar riff as alluring. OH how I’d love to see this show, Alice Ripley and the rest of the stunning cast will have to amaze me from afar till such time as I do…
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Next time: You can safely bet that I’ll be quoting RENT at you.

a girl has to celebrate what passes by

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I had a seriously nice 24th birthday on Saturday – my aunty visited with my very awesome young cousin (I recognise my own ardent admiration for Nigella Lawson reflected in his deep commitment to various superheroes), Dr Scotty dropped by with jaw-droppingly real champagne, Himalayan pink salt and vanilla pods, (I love how Scotty comes to our house and quotes my blog back to me, if that’s wrong I don’t want to be right) and I got more txt messages than I usually get in a whole month.

Tim was all, “I could make you a birthday cake if you want” and I was like, “the cuss you will! Don’t do me out of an opportunity to bake!” but what I made wasn’t a birthday cake, just a cake that happened to be hanging round on my birthday. Like a girl that’s just a friend, not a girlfriend…you know.


I know it seems like I say this about every cake here, and let’s be honest, I do know a lot of awesome cakes, but this cake was truly incredibly delicious. I say “was”, not “is”, because 24 hours after it was first sliced into, only a slender wedge remains.

I found this recipe for Torta Caprese on a blog called A Forkful of Spaghetti a while back, and my birthday seemed like as good a time as any to try it out. It’s one of those Italian cakes which manages to be terrifyingly elegant and artlessly down-home at the same time, but delicious either way you see it.

Sophie Grigson’s Torta Caprese


200g butter, melted and cooled a little (do this before you get anything else ready to give it time to cool down)
200g dark chocolate, in pieces
4 large eggs
170g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g ground almonds

Line the base of a 24cm cake tin (although I used 22cm just fine) with baking paper and grease the sides. Preheat oven to 180 C/350 F.

Either blitz the chocolate pieces in the food processor or chop them roughly with a large knife till you have a rubbly pile of chocolate shards and dust.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture has expanded a little. Mix in the chocolate, ground almonds, and tepid melted butter until evenly combined. Spatula the mixture into your caketin.


Bake for 50-60 mins, until the cake is just firm to the touch. If it gets too dark towards the end, cover with tinfoil. I found it was quite perfect after 50 minutes. Leave it to cool in the tin, then turn it out and dust with icing sugar if you like.


I love how no-nonsense the method is – no separating of eggs, no whisking till your arms ache, just a bit of chopping and mixing but you end up with this incredibly good-looking cake as a result. It’s solid but light and amazingly buttery. Some of the chocolate melts into the cake as it cooks and the rest remain whole, as darkly rich chunks that contrast with the soft grittiness of the almonds. It’s amazing, and a bit like a really, really sophisticated chocolate chip cookie. And it’s gluten free for those of you who swing that way.


Yesterday after our visitors left Tim and I went to engage in Independent Record Store Day. By the time we left the house most of the shenanigans were over but we still enjoyed perusing the wares at Real Groovy. I was pretty rapturous to find the original Broadway Cast recordings of A Chorus Line and Hair, as well as the Original West End cast recording of Chess (ie the one everyone knows) on vinyl for an enchantingly cheap price. Mercifully the guy behind the counter didn’t ask us about what kind of turntable we have, because at this stage the answer would be “a hypothetical one”. Hoping to change that to an actual one in the near future. We browsed at Slow Boat Records but didn’t find anything in particular to commit to. There’s also the enticing Samurai Store on Willis Street but by that stage, probably desperate for more cake, we were starting to flag and headed back home.

That night we went to see the Wellington Musical Theatre production of Miss Saigon. It’s a cleverly staged production with a very talented cast, I recommend it if you’re in the capital. I’d never seen Miss Saigon before and only had a basic understanding of the story. The music isn’t necessarily super-catchy, and sometimes it feels like it could do with a couple more high-energy numbers, but on the whole I really loved it and there were plenty of those moments where your heart jumps around the place. It made me realise how few musicals I’ve seen in the last couple of years, for all that I go on about them, and it really made me want to see more. Unfortunately, that involves overseas travel…I swear I see well-known New Zealanders sent across the world all the time in the name of travel writing for various publications, if anyone out there wants to pay for me (and Tim!) to do the same, don’t hold back…

Before the show we had some curly fries at Sweet Mother’s Kitchen, that stalwart of Courtney Place, and afterwards we went to Matterhorn for some late night snacks (I don’t know why, but I feel really cool ordering food late at night). The place was full of people who had a “oh, it’s so great to be back at Matterhorn, I’m such a regular here” look about them but I think we acquitted ourselves okay, ordering a bunch of tapas and a couple of drinks without any awkwardness. It’s a very expensive place, but the food is perfectly executed, the service excellent and the setting rather gorgeous…maybe I’ll go back for dinner for my next birthday.

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Title via: The Miller’s Son from Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, currently revived on Broadway with the supremely wonderful Angela Lansbury. This song is a stunner, all womanly and bolshy, and musically complex. One of my favourite versions is performed by Sara Ramirez, most people know her as Callie from Grey’s Anatomy, but hi there, the lady has a Tony Award too and can sing her face off.
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Music lately:

It’s not a tradition or anything, and it’s a completely obvious thing to do, but two songs in particular always get bandied about if one of us is aging another year…

Birthday by The Sugarcubes, ie the rock band that Bjork used to be in. It’s most famous in English but the original Icelandic sounds so beautiful. And really it doesn’t matter what language it’s in when the chorus is as wordlessly spectacular as this. I have to admit, after hearing Defying Gravity for the first time I thought “ooh, I’d love to hear Idina Menzel sing Birthday“. Maybe that’s what Stephen Schwartz was listening to when he wrote the ending?

Happy Birthday by Altered Images from their EP of the same name. It’s sweeter than birthday cake icing but I love the way it flits along noncommittally before launching into those guitars….

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Next time: I’ve been given so many exciting food-related birthday presents, including…a bottle of real maple syrup from my step-grandmother, two loaf tins from ex-flatmate Ange, a beauty of a cake stand from my godmother and family, a recipe collection from the Ashburton Fuchsia Society from Nana, and more fruit puffs from Mum…for starters. So you’ll be seeing these things all used and blogged about in the near future, no doubt.

puttin’ on the grits

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Straightforward question: what’s your favourite food?


Me: ice cream and cornbread.

A while back if you’d asked this I would have frozen up and said “ummm chocolate?” but today I was sitting around daydreaming about how I might answer various questions on the offchance that some cool magazine wanted to interview me, and I managed to narrow it down to those two. Like Kenneth Parcell (“There are only two things I love in this world. Everybody and television”) I am a throw-my-arms-around-the-world kind of foodlover, but where “most edible things” is an adequate answer, cornbread and ice cream is more specific. That said, I’m also happy to call Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness Cake one of my favourite things to make. You would be too.



All this daydreaming about cornbread made me crave a slice of it like crazy. It’s just another cold, dark, early winter Wellington evening and I’ve got a sore throat. Who ya gonna call? Nigella, fool!

On Sunday night I bought a healthy, happy Waitoa Free Range chicken and roasted her up with white wine, lemons, butter and breadcrumbs. The cold leftovers in the fridge got turned into pasta last night with the roasting pan juices and golden sultanas soaked in sherry. Tonight I’m finishing off the chicken by going vaguely Mexican, inspired by a salad recipe from Nigella Express, with her cornbread on the side. Just saying it almost makes my sore throat better.



Mexican Chicken Salad

Adapted from Nigella Express

Dressing:

1 ripe avocado
1/2 cup sour cream (or good mayonnaise, to make this dairy-free)
juice of a lime
1 garlic clove, crushed
salt and pepper to taste

Either whisk the dressing ingredients together or blitz them in a food processor.

Salad:

300g shredded, cooked chicken
1 crisp apple, diced
2 spring onions, chopped
handful chopped coriander
125g shredded cos lettuce (I used cabbage)

Put all the salad ingredients in a bowl, spoon the dressing over the top.



Like a warm, buttery yellow mattress. I could actually lie down on top of it and fall asleep quite happily. Tim and I sat on either side of this, slicing off pieces and buttering them. What remains is kind of a wonky Z shaped bit of cornbread

Cornbread

175g cornmeal (or polenta, same diff so look for either)
125g plain flour
45g caster sugar
2 t baking powder
250ml full fat milk
1 egg
45g butter, melted
Set oven to 200 C. Grease whatever you’re using – a muffin tin, a 20cm-ish brownie tin, etc. Melt the butter. Stir in the milk and egg with a fork. Then tip in all the dry ingredients, mix till just combined – don’t worry about lumps – then pour into your tin and bake, for 20-25 minutes. I have made this with superfine cornmeal and the more granular stuff, and a mix of the two, anything is fine really although the granular stuff gives slightly more bite to your finished product.

It was such a good dinner. Even with all the crispness and coolness of the salad it worked in this colder weather, fresh flavours to wake you up on a dark evening. It’s amazingly rewarding to eat for the little effort you need to put in. You could replace the chicken with anything else – beef, tofu, chickpeas…you could leave the sour cream out of the dressing, use mayonnaise or yoghurt, double the quantities and drink it like a savoury green smoothie, whatever, really. The sour cream suits the avocado, their tanginess and richness going head to head like it’s Tekken 2 but instead of a nubile catsuited woman and the panda bear (my favourite character) engaging in combat, the flavours skip off hand in hand towards the sunset, singing in perfect harmony. I have a feeling, having just re-read that, that I gotta lay off the cough syrup before trying to blog, as it messes with my ability to throw down a decent metaphor.

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Title coming atcha via: Puttin’ On The Ritz, a song that I did a choreographed and performed a tap dance to at the 1997 (1996?) Combined Schools Choir Festival. While I may not have been up to the great Fred Astaire I’m sure in my own mind, at the time, I was well on my way.
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Music lately:

What You Know About Baltimore by Ogun feat Phathead from The Wire: “…and all the pieces matter” What do I know about Baltimore? Not much more than I know about, say, Fielding I guess. This song is awesome, the delivery of the titular interrogative somehow both menacing and blase at the same time. First time I heard this song I kept swivelling my head to look out the window – I swear it sounds like someone’s yelling “Laura!” in the background of the song at various points.

Buffalo Gals by the recently late Malcolm McLaren. A prosaic choice, but to be fair, I was never exactly a walking catalogue of his work. This song is sprinkled with all kinds of good things laid over a minimalist beat that was ahead of its time – thinking about how in the mid 2000s there was that trend for songs that were almost not even there at all. It must have been an exciting life he led, and while I can’t say I thought about him on a daily basis, it was sad news – he was in many ways a drop of bright red food colouring in the plain white icing of recent music history.

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Next time: I have some tofu in the fridge that needs using…although if this sore throat doesn’t sort itself out it might be a steady diet of chicken soup and Canadiol expectorant. Hopefully I get better soon because it’s my birthday on Saturday. Any suggestions about what I could do? As always, April appears suddenly and I’m caught short without any cool ideas. I’ll be 24. Hopefully still young enough to be interesting, goodness knows there is probably some seven year old out there who’s writing a blog about making cupcakes while interweaving Clay Davis quotes and referencing some obscure early draft of Evita…any suggestions about how a good birthday is spent are more than welcome.