tuna or later

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I really don’t eat a lot of kaimoana, which is a bit stupid since I live in a long thin country surrounded by healthy salt water. The fish are plentiful. With the weight of a thousand magazine articles about how Omega-3 will solve all your problems and also a feeling that I was some kind of useless lover-of-food if I wasn’t cooking fish occasionally, I went to the counter at Moore Wilson’s and confidently pointed at a slab of ruby-red tuna.

I was inspired by a recipe that I read on Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness for soba noodles with salad, the particular eye-catcher being the peanut sauce that went with it. The further I read into the list of ingredients the hungrier I became and I felt like the salty, chilli flavours in the sauce, plus its richness, could stand up well against the heavy, oily tuna. After flicking through a couple of my Nigella Lawson cookbooks I decided to coat the tuna in a rubbly mix of roughly crushed peppercorns before searing them in a hot, hot pan, figuring that the sharp heat of the pepper would provide a further contrast to the fish beneath it.

Seared Pepper Crusted Tuna with Soba Noodles and Peanut Sauce

Thanks to Lori for the peanut sauce recipe and inspiration!

Serves 2

200 – 300g fillet of tuna
2 tablespoons mixed peppercorns
Salad leaves and soba noodles for 2 people

Roughly crush the peppercorns in a pestle and mortar. Do this carefully, as the little suckers will ping out all over the place. Sprinkle half of them over one side of the tuna, pressing them in gently. Meanwhile, heat a nonstick pan till it’s good and hot. Slide the tuna, pepper side down, onto the hot pan and let it cook for a couple of minutes. Sprinkle the rest of the pepper on the other side of the tuna. Once you’re satisfied with how cooked it is, carefully flip the tuna over using a couple of spatulas or a fishslice or something, and sear on the other side. Remove to a plate and cover in tinfoil. Cook the soba noodles in plenty of boiling water – this shouldn’t take long.

Sauce

1/2 teaspoon red chilli paste
4 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
3 tablespoons rice bran oil
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons smooth peanut butter
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons Hoisin sauce
1 tsp ginger, finely chopped

Whisk all the ingredients together. This makes quite a lot – I halved it. I also had no Hoisin sauce so I left it out, and added a little garlic instead.

Assembly:

Arrange a bunch of mixed salad leaves on two plates, and top with the soba noodles. Thinly slice the tuna – about 5mm-1cm thick. Arrange the slices on top of the soba noodles, spoon over the peanut sauce, and top with sesame seeds or coriander if you like.

Feeling as though Nigella, across the other side of the world, would instinctively shudder without knowing why if I overcooked the tuna, I made sure to keep it fairly rare. With its red interior and seared crust it may resemble a steak, and certainly has the meatiness, but its texture is a lot softer and it is definitely richer than any of its four-legged counterparts. As I’d hoped, the tuna, the hot pepper, and the nutty sauce all worked together seriously well. The leafy, noodly base gave further, completely welcome textural contrast without competing too much flavourwise.

The sauce was a total revelation – thick, rich, amazingly nutty and spicy and delicious. I imagine it would be amazing poured over any number of other things – beef skewers, tofu, plain noodles, rice, or as a dipping sauce for sliced vegetables, spring rolls, rice paper rolls – seriously, it was wonderful stuff. Thank you Lori! Will I be cooking more fish? I guess I’ll try. The tuna ended up being pretty expensive but it was delicious – light years apart from the stringy, grey chunks of fish that you get in cans which are actually really expensive themselves. What’s with that? Nigella has so many recipes that I want to try, which is a good push in the direction of the fish counter. As long as I don’t have to look at the crayfish in their tank. Call me a hypocrite, I mean I eat meat, but the sight of those knock-kneed, sad-eyed crowded creatures makes me want to fall on the floor and sob. It’s true.

Speaking of, on Wednesday night Tim and I had the massively good fortune to see the Dead Weather live at the Powerstation in Auckland, afterwards I was wanting to fall to the floor and sob at Jack White’s BRILLIANCE. Please don’t expect this to be a definitive review – I feel like the more I talk about this gig the less I really say. What a line up – Queens of the Stone Age’s Dean Fertita, Jack Lawrence of the Raconteurs and Alison Mosshart from the Kills comprise the rest of the band and were, you know, really good. But as the song goes, I only have eyes for yooooooujackwhite. Friends, he was sublime. The Dead Weather’s music – heavy, sludgy, intense and metaphorical – sounded wonderful in the venue, particularly I Cut Like A Buffalo. Tim and I managed to negotiate a patch pretty near the front of the stage, but the crowd wasn’t the most fun to be in, especially these girls on our right who may or may not have been on P, judging by the way they were dancing so aggressively in such a tiny space. Narrowed eyes and a “huh?” expression don’t go very far in the dark. They continued all night, inciting more and more hatred in me as their heads swung round. The girl on the left continuously tried to push in front of me – we were so tightly packed that I have no idea where she thought she might end up. Apologies for getting caught up in the negatives but it was irritating to be in the presence of such an exciting band and for everyone to be so focussed on themselves. Am I secretly a naive yet curmudgeonly old man? Anyway!

 

Stripped of his eyebrow-waggling White Stripes persona, Jack White was as enigmatic as ever and completely amazing as a musician – switching from drums, to guitar and vocals and back to drums again. As I said the crowd was very full-on and afterwards my neck was actually twitching – I think I got carpal spine just from trying to stay upright in the seething mass of overexcited teens. Once it was all over, Tim and I, with no shame whatsoever, waited as close to the stage door as possible (flipping miles away, in case you’re wondering, but the security were nice guys and let us stay) and waved at Jack White as he was driven away in a large white van. He grinned, knocked on the window and waved back. It was a stupidly exciting moment considering what it amounted to really. I know I go on about lots of different things but Tim and I really, really love the White Stripes and all Jack White’s inspired tangents so to get the chance to see him performing again was incredibly special. Hence the dorky photo above outside the Powerstation.

I didn’t waste time while up in Auckland, going to lots of work meetings with plenty of lovely people. Maybe it’s a throwback to my rural upbringing but Auckland always seems a bit exciting no matter how many times I go there. I do love Wellington though and it is great to be back, despite the mountain of work that piled up in my absence. This weekend I am catching up with my best friend from school, we hardly ever see each other so I can’t wait. May even break out the girdlebuster pie which is still sitting quietly in the freezer…

Title brought to you by: Bob Dylan’s song One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later), and yes, sometimes on reflection it feels a little lazy to squeeze awful puns out of his back catalogue but the carpal spine I contracted while trying not to die in the audience for the Dead Weather has prevented me from doing anything cleverer. I didn’t mean to treat you so bad…


Music these days:

Billy Porter, King Of The World, from At the Corner of Broadway and Soul. Unfortunately no youtube video exists of him executing this song but you can listen to it at that link (it’s worth it – the ending is amazing!) I have recently reconnected with the astounding voice this man possesses. Watch him sing Beauty School Drop Out. Seriously. I think he discovered a new octave.

David Dallas, Big Time, the gorgeously mellow single from his album Something Awesome. Along with a whole bunch of other New Zealand artists, Dallas is at SXSW in Austin, Texas, and hopefully his sound resonates with that audience because – for what it’s worth coming from me – it feels like he could go so far. Not just saying this because I had a crush on him back when the remix for Scribe’s Not Many came out years ago.

Electric Blues from the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Hair. I know, would I stop talking about it already? I just keep getting more and more obsessed with this music. Every time I think I’m cool, I’m cool, I’ll see one tweet by Gavin Creel and then I want so bad to go to London to see the Broadway Cast transfer over there.
Next time: I’m not just going to invite my best friend round for dinner so that I can finally eat this girdlebuster pie, but if it does happen, y’all will be the first to know about it. Promise!

shiksa goddess i’ve been waiting for someone like you

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More cake! That’s just what it’s like living with me. There will be cake.

Last weekend was a small miracle in that Tim and I had time together. I don’t mean to sound useless. I have friends to spend time with. I also like being alone. I welcome being alone. When I’m alone I can sing hideously to showtunes, eat more cake mixture, do impromptu soft-shoe dancing, and entertain fantasies of winning rap battles with my deft flow and astounding vocabulary. But for once Tim wasn’t making coffee for people on the weekend and so we were able to do all sorts of leisurely things, including finally seeing what’s on the second floor at Moore Wilson’s. Turns out that while there’s groceries and alcohol on the ground floor, upstairs they sell basically everything else in the world. It felt like we spent 7 hours up there browsing, each aisle bringing the fresh wonder that comes when you realise how many different kinds of bowls there are specifically for ice cream.

My favourite bit was the cookbook room, where I found myself instinctively drawn somehow to a book entitled The Jewish Princess Cookbook, by Georgie Tarn and Tracey Fine. I didn’t realise that a Jewish Princess was an established thing, but the book entirely dispells that ignorance on my behalf. Some Jewish food I love (Challah at me!) some is a little more challenging, but I definitely see eye-to-eye with the way that food seems so central to everything.

The first recipe I tried from this charming book was a Honey Cake, which rather delightfully contains four different types of sugar. Not in major quantities, but it’s still fun to say it out loud to shock passers-by. The cake filled the house with the warm fragrance of spices and honey, in fact for the duration of its time in the oven it was rather like living inside a giant scented candle. I managed to wait till the evening to enjoy this cake with a large mug of scalding but astringent green tea; it was a perfect combination. This cake is quick to make, dairy-free, and flipping delicious.

Honey Cake

From The Jewish Princess Cookbook

225g plain flour
115g caster sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
50g clear honey
115mls golden syrup (a slightly difficult measurement to come to, roughly 1/3 of a cup plus 2 tablespoons)
50mls oil – I used rice bran
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
80 mls smooth orange juice

Preheat the oven to 170 C/325 F. Grease and flour a 20cm cake tin (I used 21cm, the cake batter didn’t notice) In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, and spices. Pour in the honey, syrup, oil and eggs and beat well to a thick, smooth mixture. In another bowl, dissolve the baking soda in the orange juice, stirring well (it will fizz). Quickly add to the cake mixture, spread the mixture into the cake tin, and bake for 30 – 40 minutes. I ended up baking it for 50 minutes (with tinfoil covering for the last 15 minutes).

It tastes so good – almost chewy on top with moist, dense cake underneath. The honey and golden syrup gently add complexity of sweetness and the spices make it smell incredible. It’s one of those fantastic cakes that gets better after a day or two although naturally it’s a losing battle to make it last that long. This book is awesome for any food lover, especially as it’s an American book which has a UK edition using metric measurements – genius! Don’t doubt for a second that you’ll be seeing it more in this blog.

Fittingly, two of the public figures I most admire in this world – Nigella Lawson and Idina Menzel – are Jewish. Though, Idina famously documents her lack of Bar Mitzvah in haunting song while touring and Nigella, well look at all her pork recipes. She is not a lady who shies away from a cloven hoofed animal.

If I sound a bit all over the place it’s only because we’re heading up to Auckland to see the Dead Weather tomorrow night. I’ve got a whole lot of meetings tomorrow and Thursday but am finding it a little hard to concentrate…I said over dinner tonight that while I love the Dead Weather’s music, what’s really making my heart do a soft-shoe dance of its own is the fact that Jack White is in this band and we’re going to be seeing him. Tim agreed. No offense to the other deeply talented band members, Jack White is just pretty special. We watched White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights last night, it’s a beautiful and thrilling documentary which tracks their journey performing across Canada in 2007. By the end I was even more fascinated by Jack and Meg White and was wishing that they’d spend some time in the studio again. I guess releasing this DVD and their first live album is a step in the right direction.

Title comes to you via: That man with a vatful of talent Jason Robert Brown, and his song Shiksa Goddess from his musical Last 5 Years. It was originally sung by the truly loveable Norbert Leo Butz who here seriously resembles Dexter’s Michael C Hall, yes? Who also spent time as a hoofer on Broadway? Notice you never see them in a room together? Anyway, I don’t elevate myself to the lofty ideals of the song’s title but love it all the same. This musical is pretty heftily emotional and this song is nothing but welcome humour. And I like saying the word “shiksa”. Satisfying.

Music lately:

White Stripes, everything really, but for the sake of neatness let’s pin down one song: Let’s Shake Hands, from their tenth anniversary concert in 2007 in Novia Scotia…I love the way Jack says “let’s be friends, Meg”.

Stylo, the new Gorillaz song, featuring Bobby Womack and Mos Def. I’ve always loved this creation right from the start and this meditative, shuffling song is as engaging as anything they’ve ever done. From their new album Plastic Beach.

Megumi The Milky Way Above, from local Connan Mockasin’s album Please Turn Me Into The Snat. I’ve never ever been a real fan of the undoubtedly creative and talented Mockasin – his music almost makes me feel a bit queasy, like I’m spinning round too fast or like the sound is too floaty…or something. But what do you know, I really, really like this song. It’s a bit difficult to describe but it’s pretty lovely.

Next time: Tuna! In a fit of extravagance, coupled with a fear of having no omega-bla-bla-bla in our diet, I bought a juicy, crimson tuna steak and cooked it respectfully. Also you may expect a run-down of how the Dead Weather concert went…

who’s gonna keep the coffee sweet with secret recipes

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

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

Cappucino Chocolate Cake

Recipe care of Chef Aimee at A Twist of Spaghetti

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

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

Glaze (optional)

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

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

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

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

Music lately:

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

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

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

rod only knows

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chocolate Peanut Butter Sauce

From Nigella Express

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

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

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

In a very happy end to the day, the Pheen won against the Newcastle Jets, making it their 19th consecutive unbeaten game at the stadium and putting them that much closer to the finals. By the game’s thrilling conclusion I was almost teary eyed, but whether it was the game or the missed opportunity to eat Girdlebuster Pie is anyone’s guess. It may have also had something to do with the fact that the young offspring of various Phoenix team members ran onto the field to find their respective parents, and while I always think children are like horses, best admired from a distance and looked after by someone else, it was heart-into-puddle adorable. A draw forced the game into excruciating overtime but the Phoenix scoring two goals in swift succession made it one of the more exciting sports events I’ve seen in my entire life, I know that’s not saying much. But it’s true.
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Title brought to you by: While I was toying with labelling this Bigmouth Strikes Again instead I lean towards an awful pun courtesy of the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows from Pet Sounds. I know it has been used in far too many romantic comedy soundtracks but it really is a gleaming gem of a song.
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Music lately:

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

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

Almost Out Of Water from Who Says You Can’t Dance To Misery by Tourettes featuring Anna Coddington. Just because it’s pretty and all doesn’t mean the grittier stuff on this album isn’t equally brilliant, but I do love the way Coddington’s gorgeous vocals float over the airy melody…. Hope he tours down to Wellington again soon.
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Next time: I have Friday off work (time in lieu for working at Homegrown on a Saturday) so I’m looking forward to sleeping in and going for a leisurely morning blog. A while back I made this chocolate cake recipe from the Spaghetti Twists blog that was so fantastic that I’m going to share it with you all…maybe by that stage we will have finished the macaroni cheese leftovers in the fridge. Maybe. Don’t get me wrong, I love leftovers. It’s just that this macaroni cheese seems to be regenerating itself or something.

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

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

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

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

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

Tofu “Balls”

With thanks to Nana for the heads-up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patti LuPone singing Rainbow High – say what you will about Andrew Lloyd Webber, but the music to Evita is stunning, and this cabaret performance from LuPone at Les Mouches in 1980 is particularly ferocious. Makes me want to grab a microphone and snarl “so Christian Dior me!” too. Wish someone would stage a version of it here.
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Next time: we’re having a combined Wellington Phoenix pre-game get-together/Rod Stewart Appreciation Day thing tomorrow (long story…actually no, that explains it all really) which I’m catering (self-imposedly) and the menu is growing more and more dizzying in proportions…no doubt I’ll have plenty to blog about. Like Nigella’s Girdlebuster Pie. Do you not want to know more with a name like that?

it’s all so sugarless

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I once read that Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys went through a troubled stage where he ate half a birthday cake every day. With all due respect to Wilson, I’d happily eat a whole birthday cake every day and I’m fortunate enough to not even be feeling particularly troubled at the moment. If only cake had any nutritional value. I know – want, want, want. A solution of sorts – there’s this recipe for vegan banana bread on the gorgeous Savvy Soybean blog which turned my head. Last week, with bananas rapidly browning in my fruitbowl, I got round to making it. Oh yes. It’s another post where I semi-patronisingly assure you that a vegan recipe tastes pretty good, even though it contains no butter.

But really. This banana bread is delicious stuff and you expend hardly any energy while making it. The finished product is really quite good for you especially if you can get your hands on the agave nectar, which somehow manages to be sweeter than sugar but with a much lower glycemic index. What an overachiever. Most important: it tastes so good.

Vegan Banana Bread

Recipe adapted from The Savvy Soybean

3 ripe bananas
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2/3 cup agave nectar or runny honey
2 cups flour
2/3 cup coconut (optional) (but nice)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Set the oven to 180 C and line a loaf tin with baking paper. Then, very simply, mix together the bananas, applesauce and honey, then fold in the dry ingredients. Don’t overmix. Turn the batter into the tin and bake for one hour. Pa-dah! Applesauce can easily be made by simmering one large, diced apple in 1/2 – 1 cup water for about fifteen minutes (keep an eye on it, it may need more water added) before roughly mashing with a fork. The original recipe included 1 cup chocolate chips which I didn’t have, I’m sure they’d be an amazing addition but it was delicious without all the same.

The bananas, applesauce and agave nectar or honey keep this moist and light. Combined with the cinnamon, this will fill your kitchen with a proper, comforting, wish-I-could-bottle-it baking fragrance. It keeps for ages and is very easy to slice. While it’s lovely as is – okay, a little chewy as opposed to straightforwardly cakey – it really comes into its own when toasted in a sandwich press. These warm, crisp slices of banana bread are brilliant with sliced plums and maple syrup any time of day, or with any other fruit really, plums is just what I got right now. It is, in fact, so very good toasted that next time I make this I might just slice it, bag it up and freeze it for whenever I require a slightly puddingy snack (which is often…really often).

I’ve been feeling a bit lethargic and brain-heavy lately – like I need to take a whole day out and just sleep before I can get on with everything properly. At any rate, I’m definitely going to need my energy this month – on the 17th Tim and I will be getting up close and personal with Jack White at the Dead Weather concert at Powerstation in Auckland. It’s been five years since we saw the White Stripes at Alexander Palace in London and while both of us are all “make new music together already, Jack and Meg” the Dead Weather is still a very, very anticipation-worthy engagement. Maybe eating more vegan banana bread will help perk me up?

Title comes to you via: Hole’s Celebrity Skin  Although the Spice Girls had my heart, I wanted to be Courtney Love so badly after MTV Europe came to New Zealand TV for a few brief but heady months. If I’d had a disposable income in 1998, there was not much I’d have wanted more (apart from a Spice Girls polaroid) than to lunge around the place wearing floaty dresses, with flowers in my hair and sparkles stuck on my face, holding a guitar. Actually I still do, let’s be honest. 

Music to cook to:

I found Miss World while trawling through Hole music videos. Forgot how much I love this song. I think I’m going to be buying some Hole albums.

Going to DC from Gavin Creel’s album Goodtimenation. I love love love Gavin Creel but to be honest this album doesn’t get played an awful lot, I just haven’t really connected with it. This song is the exception…I love how it’s all bouncy and adorable and ska-ish. And involves Gavin Creel.

I’m Waiting For the Day by the aforementioned Beach Boys from the incredible Pet Sounds. The drums! The fake ending! I didn’t actually think I even liked the Beach Boys until I heard this album. It’s breathtaking stuff.

Next time: I made this ‘tofu balls’ recipe of Nana’s which was wackily delicious, and even though it sounds dubious I’m pretty sure I’m going to share it with all of you too. It will either be that or the coffee ice cream that I made this weekend with rapturously good results. Or I’ll be too busy eating cake to post again…

Peaches En Regalia

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Sometimes when recipes are as simple as Nigella’s directions for Peaches in Muscat, I get suspicious. It almost sounds like Nigella is having a laugh, waiting to see if her legions of yes-people will follow along unquestioningly till some bright young thing says “Hey, she just cut up fruit and put wine on top of it! Is that even a thing?” Admittedly Nigella does claim that it’s a classic example of Italian culinary genius, but, with all due respect to the wonderful cuisine of these people, sometimes it seems like saying The Italians Do It is an excuse for any old combination of foodstuffs to qualify as untouchable.

That said, I am so one of those yes-people. Surprise!

I was all, “I have peaches cheap from the market going nowhere! I have muscat now that I’ve gone specially to Moore Wilson’s to buy muscat so I can have it sitting round for the express purpose of making this ridiculously simple dessert! I think it’s meant to be!”

Peaches In Muscat

From Nigella Express. Serves 2.

1 large ripe peaches
1 bottle sweet muscat
Slice up your peaches and sit them in pretty glasses. I found that one peach did two smallish glasses, but have more ready. Pour over the muscat. Chill for a couple of hours. Nigella says to serve with some pouring cream or vanilla ice cream on the side which would have been lovely but we had neither. Ate the peaches with a fork then drank the muscat. Wonderful.
It’s almost aggressively simple. Yet it works, and I clearly should never have doubted Nigella. The glossy fruitiness of the wine seeps into the grainy peachiness of the peaches most pleasingly. The chilliness plays its part too, the iciness crispening the already crisp flavours, a bit like using the “sharpen” function in photo-editing software.
It was actually gorgeous. We ate this while watching Season 5 of The Wire. Finally. It was a hot city evening with the breeze, for once, going nowhere so this chilly pudding was the perfect end to the evening’s eating. That said, you’d want to be sure of your company that you serve this to. You just know that if you plonk this triumphantly on the table and cry “La dolce!” that at least one person is going to go home and write on Facebook “Where was my chocolate mousse? My cheesecake? That wasn’t pudding, that was wet peaches in a cup!”
Muscat wine always makes me think of Wellington Phoenix player Manny Muscat, a fellow whose name surely cries out for him to abandon A-league football to pursue a career as a drag queen. Manny Muscat has a special place in my heart because of all the chants that we shout from the stands (some witty, some utterly dreary and gender-maligning) my favourite is his, which goes “Manny Manny Manny, MUSCAT!” to the tune of The Apprentice theme (Money money money money…Money!) After working 12 billion hours at Homegrown this weekend I was utterly munted but duty called and I found myself at the Phoenix match on Sunday evening where they played against Perth.

Even though lots of it went like this…

Me: Why is everyone angry?
Tim: Linesman called us offside.
Me: Yeah, is this whole “offside” thing even real? I’m pretty sure they just make it up as they go along for something to do.
Tim: Er, no, it’s real.

…it was still rather thrilling, once we got through the arduous 30 minutes extra time due to a 1-all draw and went to penalty shootouts, where we utterly trounced Perth with our complete diamond of a goalkeeper. The ending was almost poetic when Durante, the captain, who has played every minute of the last 83 games without scoring a goal kicked the winning point for us.
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Title coming at you via: Frank Zappa, whose big loud music has always found a way to wind in and out of my life, and whose tune Peaches In Regalia seems made for this recipe – they’re both surprisingly palatable!
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Music lately:
Dark Brown by Ladi6 from her gorgeous, much-thrashed album Time Is Not Much. One of the nice things about working at Homegrown was that our tent gave us an incredible view of her set at the Dub and Roots stage, plus I got to hang with her for a bit in said tent prior to her going on stage. Not only is she incredible behind the microphone she’s amazing in person…and she completely renewed my interest in finding a pair of Doc Martens.

Keeping it local, I am also much enamoured with/of (shouldn’t use words in sentences that I don’t know how to finish) Bad Buzz, the new sounds from The Mint Chicks. It’s got this eerie, fuzzy, sixties feel to it and I love the graduated melody, like they’re walking down a staircase while singing. It’s really, really good and so exciting to hear new music from these guys. I haven’t seen them live since 2006 (closest I got at Homegrown was hearing their soundcheck at 10am while I was putting up posters) but they’re coming back to Wellington in March so I know I’d better grab my tickets because they will fly.

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Next time: I finally made that vegan banana bread over the weekend and it was really, really good. I guess between that description and the fact that I’m linking to the recipe I don’t really need to tell you any more but this is my blog and I’ll spin it out into an entire post if I want to!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No-Knead Challah

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Music these days:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rice and Beans

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

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

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

Sunny Santa Fe would be…nice

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

Santa Fe Ceasar Salad

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

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

Dressing:

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

stick with me honey and we’ll go far

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Saturday, February 6th was Waitangi Day here in New Zealand. This is a day that means different things to different people but 170 years have passed since the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, for better or for worse. It means a lot to me as my ancestors on mum’s side kicked things off around that very time when a woman named Pourewa and a man named Charles Cossill were married in Mangonui by the pragmatically named Bishop William Williams. February 6th also marked twenty years since my first ballet lesson. Talk about significant times for the nation. I was a rotund three year old who couldn’t skip and didn’t have a pushy mother with misguided ambitions for me – and even at that age you register differences in ability and atmosphere like that – but I was the only kid in that class who could touch my head with my toes.

Potstickers are perhaps the – or at least, a – culinary equivalent of getting your feet and your head to do a high-five. The process sounds a little painful. A lot of people don’t even try it in the first place. But the finished result elicits “oohs” and “aahs” at those who attempt it successfully. Actually this metaphor is a bit useless as you really need a decent set of hamstrings to do anything flexible while potstickers just require patience…but I needed a segue into the recipe and I’m damned if I’ll retreat now.

I saw this recipe in Ray McVinnie’s column in Sunday magazine a while back (the very magazine which put me on the cover! What, like I wasn’t going to mention it?) and even though I’ve seen recipes around for potstickers for years now for some reason it was this one that prompted me into action. I have to say, the Sunday magazine this week was ridiculously intuitive – it had a “Whatever happened to JTT?” piece which answered the very question I wondered as Tim and I watched a Home Improvement omnibus at 3am after getting home from Fubar last Sunday. There’s not much in this world that comforts like this – we didn’t watch a lot of TV when I was young but Home Improvement was family time). There was also an article about the man who wrote most of the jingles on the radio, when I’d just been explaining to Tim about the nostalgia I feel when I hear the ancient Auckland radio jingles (“Giltrap city, Toyota – we’re the one!”) on 1ZB after being in Wellington for so long.

I don’t love McVinnie’s column in Sunday as much as I adore his regular Quick Smart feature in Cuisine magazine but it’s still pretty engaging reading. The way he described potstickers made them seem not just do-able but necessary. I found myself lingering by the open freezers at the Asian grocery up the road, hoping wonton wrappers would be cheap – and they were. That, and the fact that there was a rapidly aging block of tofu in the fridge poured cement over the foundations of the idea in my mind. I didn’t follow his actual recipe so much as the directions but I have a feeling that as long as you keep to the method the filling is really up to you.



Potstickers (recipe via Ray McVinnie’s column in Sunday magazine)
If you want, you can take out the beef and up the tofu and cabbage a bit.

  • 150-200g beef mince
  • 200g firm tofu, diced
  • 1/4 white cabbage, finely sliced
  • Fresh ginger – about an inch, peeled and finely chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon soy sauce
  • 2 teaspoons sesame oil
  • 2 tablespoons Chinese cooking wine, or sake if you prefer
  • Wonton wrappers
  • Rice bran oil, for frying

Stir fry the mince, tofu, and cabbage together with the seasonings until the mince is browned, the cabbage is reduced, and everything is good and fragrant. There’s no real artfulness to this – you just need it all cooked up.

This is great if you can get a friend to help you, if not it will just take a lot longer. Get your stack of wonton wrappers, a small bowl of water, a couple of plates and a couple of teaspoons. Grab a wonton wrapper, dip your fingers in the water and wet the edges of the wrapper. Get a teaspoonful of mince and tofu, place it in the centre of the wonton wrapper, fold it over to make a parcel and press the edges together. I folded the edges over each other and pressed down firmly. Put it onto a plate and start again, till you have as many as you think you’ll want.

Then! Heat a little rice bran oil in a good, wide pan which has a lid. Once it’s sizzling, fill the pan with your potstickers, all facing the same way. Don’t overcrowd the pan. Let them fry for a minute or two on that side, then flip them over and fry them for a minute or two on the other side. Pour over about a centimetre of water, clamp on the lid, and let them steam away till the water is evaporated. You want them over a good solid heat to aid the evaporation. Once the water is gone they should unstick themselves from the pan. Quickly use a silicon spatula or fish slice to lever the finished potstickers onto a plate, and eat them while the next batch is cooking.

One or two potstickers may well fall apart or stick obstinately while you try and remove them from the pan. This is not cause to get dramatic and throw the pan across the room screaming “Enough! I tried and I failed!” It’s just par for the course. They’re called potstickers for a reason. Eat them and move on to the next batch.

One bite, and you’ll likely forget the extensive effort it takes to bring these potstickers into existence. The frying-then-steaming method, while fiddly, makes the wonton wrappers crisp but silkily tender, encasing juicy savouryness. I made a quick dipping sauce out of soy, lemon juice, sesame oil, chilli oil and a little sugar which was an excellently zingy foil to the rich filling. Make plenty of these – we ate forty between the two of us – not comfortably, to be fair, but we did it. Maybe bank on about 10 to 15 per person, as they are so, so good. I heard from a relatively reliable source just this evening that if you leave the lid off the pan they get super-crispy – I may have to try this way of doing things next time. Because there will be a next time.

February 6th was also the date that the late Bob Marley was born in 1945. It seems fitting that someone who is loved by so many New Zealanders was born on the closest thing we have to a national day. Leaving Tim to make coffee on yet another public holiday, Ange and I went out to Hataitai velodrome to RadioActive One Love, the long-running event that commemorates Marley’s birthday while acknowledging Waitangi Day in a peaceful, musical fashion. The day was unnaturally warm – we really don’t get a lot of sun here in Wellington – and it was the perfect antithesis to the crowds of costumed people staggering drunkenly through town for the NZ International rugby Sevens tournament.

There was constant music, there were people everywhere of all ages and stages, there were amazing food and merchandise stalls, and in an act that seemed to sum up the happiness of the day, Liptons were giving out free iced tea. We saw Don McGlashan, The Midnights, Sola Rosa, Art Official and MC Silva (who gave my peanut butter cookies the thumbs up that very morning, to which I say look out for her album dropping later this year), watched people skanking merrily, ate glorious vegetarian curry, nodded approvingly at the host responsibility announcements, enviously gazed at children on the bouncy castle, bought insence-scented scarves, thought nice things about Bob Marley…magic. I didn’t love all the bottles littering the path on the way out, but other than that it was a seriously ideal way to spend the day. However, I think I’ll be airing out my scarves as I don’t feel quite so positive about the smell of incence as I did when I was 12. Tim and I headed to the Southern Cross later that night for an excellent time watching the Newtown Rocksteady also paying homage to Bob Marley through polished but joyful interpretations of his music, rounding off Waitangi day most satisfactorily.
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Title brought to you by: Freshmint! the charmingly fey song from Brisbane’s Regurgitator. “Stick with me honey and we’ll go far” feels like a line spoken over and over but slides rather nicely into the celebrity-weary lyrics of this song. I don’t like this band’s name and to be honest this is one of two songs of their I love. I remember hearing this for the first time on Channel Z, being deeply intrigued, but not knowing for months what it was called or who sang it, until the magic of lyrics websites threw me a bone.
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On Shuffle while I type:

While pondering Regurgitator my thoughts wandered to another elusive Australian song that I used to wait round for, never actually knowing what it was called till years later – Shazam by Spiderbait. It’s all fuzzy and whingy and sounds like a collection of chorusses – great fun, even if the band’s name is also bit gross.

Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley – just such a great tune. I do enjoy a good bridge and this song enjoys one of the coolest out there.

The Juggernaut, from Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party, featuring Julia Murney, Taye Diggs, and the teeth-grittingly good use of Idina Menzel’s singing ability towards the end. This musical never made it to Broadway and could perhaps – who knows? – benefit from some tweaks. But it remains special to me for a number of reasons, and the original cast recording ten years on shines with jaw-dropping, brutal talent.
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Next time: It’s clearly been far too long since I’ve dealt you a heavy-handed reference to RENT in a food-related way, so look out for that next time when, inspired by a culinary lyric in La Vie Boheme, I make rice and beans…