masters of raw

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Rawr.

So, when I’m not making butter-and-golden-syrup sandwiches or having pancakes for dinner I enjoy the occasional dog-paddle through the chilled, unsalted waters of raw cooking. This isn’t something I’d want to make a lifestyle of but it’s fun to try new recipes. It can hardly be a secret that the less you do to vegetables, the better they are for you and I’m all for including more of them on my plate. I’m not so convinced by recipes that require half a bottle of agave nectar and a kilo of cashews sitting in a dehydrating machine for nine hours till it turns into some kind of cheesecake-esque creation – that doesn’t seem quite right to me.

These raw ‘cookies’ are a particularly lovely example of this sort of carry-on – the ingredients are likely to be in your cupboard already and they’re cheap if you don’t have them. It’s quick but involved enough to make you feel like you’re doing something, and you can eat them as soon as you’ve made them. They’re practical – energy dense and hardy – and also really, really delicious which is, I guess, a requirement rather than an eye-brow raising bonus with healthier recipes these days. I found this fantastic recipe on Gourmeted, but changed it up a tiny bit. The original was composed of dates and raisins but I swapped the altogether sexier dried apricots for the sad pinched little raisins. I added a tiny bit of liquid and included linseeds. You do as you wish.

Date and Apricot ‘Cookies’.


1 cup oats of some form – wholegrain, rolled, raw (I used the big wholegrain ones)
2 tablespoons linseeds, whole or ground
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup dates, pitted, packed
1/2 cup dried apricots

Combine oats, linseeds and cinnamon in food processor and pulse until you get small pieces. Add dates and pulse well. You should have a thick/dense paste, but don’t fear if it is still crumbly. Add a tablespoon of water if it’s really not coming together at all, but the apricots will help. Add apricots and whizz to blend them through. I then just wet my hands, rolled small tablespoonfuls of ‘dough’ and pressed/squeezed them flat into ‘cookies’. I say squeezed for a reason – the texture of this is a little different but they will work, trust me.

As I said, these ‘cookies’ are delicious – in their own right, not just in a “not bad for something without butter in it” kind of way. In fact they really deserve to just be called cookies, rather than being encased in patronising apostrophes. Be free from my sneering punctuation, cookies! They are figgily dense in texture, fragrant with apricot, and fantastically chewy. They make a perfect hurried breakfast, and probably would be brilliant with some roughly chopped dark chocolate included in the mixture. On top of all that they’re a really cheap way of filling the biscuit tin.

Had been feeling a bit grumpy while writing this – waited for a phone call today that never arrived which meant I put off other things, wrangling with all manner of other things in the meantime, and finally ruining dinner – I somehow managed to oversalt the cooking water for the pasta despite every cookbook seeming to imply that no amount of salt can be too much. I persisted in eating it all the same so there wasn’t any waste but feel a bit like a preserved lemon now. Coupled with the inevitable post-Laneways-blahs, it’d be easy to feel sorry for myself and snap at people for the sake of it. Let us instead relive the happiness of Monday’s shenanigans…

Monday was Auckland Anniversary Day, which unfortunately isn’t recognised as an official holiday in Wellington. So it was with a day’s annual leave clutched tightly in my hands that Tim and I attended the inaugural Laneways music Festival at Britomart. The day was exceptionally relaxed, with the intentionally small audience moving like schools of fish between and around the two stages. The brilliance of the lineup became more and more apparent as the day went on. Highlights included…

– the mellow, be-caped stompiness of the Phoenix Foundation.
– seeing Chris Knox emerge from behind a fence to watch the Black Lips with the rest of the audience.
– Daniel Johnston’s entire set, punctuated by a rather joyfully sung-along rendition of You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away. Nearly had wobbly tears in my eyes till I recognised someone with a similar look on their face and checked myself for being an unnecessarily sentimental git.
– Realising I knew more Echo and the Bunnymen songs than I initially thought.
– Florence Welch. She was almost a lowlight – so gorgeous and long-legged, must she have this gloriously swirling voice tucked in her throat as well? I’ve never, ever been into acrobatic female vocalists (Well, I did and still do have a soft spot for Mariah Carey but she’s different) – have always been resolutely unmoved by Beyonce or Christina Aguilira, and any of those dime-a-dozen introspective bores that appear on Grey’s Anatomy – but listening to Florence live made me realise how thrilling seeing someone belt their face off could be. To any of you out there who have seen Idina Menzel or Julia Murney singing live – my envy grew tenfold after Florence.

Above: Chris Knox flanked by the always elegant Shayne Carter. They performed a swift but crunchily powerful set which was, not forgetting the fact that Knox suffered a stroke last year, pretty marvelous.

The day was made easier by the fact that the “Friends and Family” area had much nicer toilets, chairs and shade, plus no queues to get a bottle of water or beer. The only real frown-inducing thing about the day was my uncanny but unfortunate ability to get stuck behind the person in the audience who insists on smoking. I can’t even understand why someone would think everyone directly around them wants to breathe in poisonous smoke as well. All I could think the whole time was “there’s no safe level of exposure to cigarette smoke.” But on the whole the day was utterly smashing and not much apart from that troubled me. Oh wait. There was the crowd of girls behind me who insisted on shriekily singing along with Florence at great volume. Sounds simple enough, even curmudgeonly on my part, but it’s the sort of thing that after a long day makes you want to push someone into a swimming pool. A bit like the smoking thing – what made them think I paid to hear them sing? That aside, am already anticipating what untold joys next year’s lineup could bring. Laneways – I think you really need a round of applause.

The night before Tim and I went relatively spontaneously to “Dig Deep” at Fubar, the proceeds of which went to aid Haiti. It was a very good night, in particular Tourettes’ set; but between that and Laneways I’m now feeling like the pasta we struggled at dinner – limp and overly saline.

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Title brought to you by: Bob Dylan’s Masters of War from The Freewheeling Bob Dylan. The lyrics really bear little resemblence to quietly making cookies, or maybe they do – he’s pretty deep, that Bob Dylan.

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On Shuffle lately:

Dance My Pain Away by Rod Lee from The Wire:…And All The Pieces Matter. There are few soundtracks I’ll seek out (cast recordings, different story) but this is such a perfectly structured gem. We are inordinately excited about the approaching release of Season 5 on DVD. The tourism guide books will tell you that New Zealand is a fabulous place to live and raise a family and it may well be; it’s a terrible place to wait for a DVD to be released. We are always woefully behind.

You Got The Love by Florence and The Machine from her aptly titled album Lungs. When you first hear this cover you might think “hmmm, prosaic enough” but then it gets all swirly and wonderful. Less swirly but no less special is the XX remix which was put over the loudspeakers once the XX finished their set – was great fun watching everyone who’d diligently waited for Daniel Johnston on the other stage getting panicky that Florence was making an unexpected early cameo.

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Next time: I bought some wonton wrappers! They’re much easier to get your hands on than they sound, and made some potstickers which miraculously turned out perfectly and were ridiculously good. It’s Waitangi Day this Saturday, and because it’s a Saturday PLUS a public holiday it’s like, quadruple guaranteed that Tim will be making coffees for people but I’ll probably traipse out to One Love anyway, sounds like it’s going to be an excellent day…

"eggs milk and flour, pancake power"

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Without wanting to sound like Kristy Thomas pitching for the Kid-Kit – do you remember when you were a child, and you went to a friend’s house, and it was so much more of a heightened experience than your own existence at home? Their toys seemed cooler, they had a haybarn, they were allowed to stay up later, they called their parents by their first names… Sometimes there was the disquieting reverse of that where leaving home for someone else’s affirms how comparatively safe you feel in your own space and how you just have to hold on and let the minutes pass until you can return – ah, childhood. I realise of course that I’m looking at this through the fairly privileged gaze of someone who grew up with loving parents and so on.

But anyway, I have this distinct memory of being down the road at my then best friend’s place, and her mum made us pancakes in the middle of the day for lunch. We ate them with sugar, lemon juice, whipped cream and – and this which I remember well over a decade on – leftover chocolate icing. For lunch. Have you seen Scarface? (I’ve been in the same room while it was on, which was plenty.) You know that scene where he’s surrounded by mountains of cocaine? These pancakes-for-lunch with chocolate icing were like the equivalent of that for 9 year old me. But you know, somewhat less alarming.

Living away from home means these childhood thrills can be recreated at your leisure and while it’s obviously not the same, a decision to have pancakes for dinner still comes with a certain satisfaction, a feeling that you’re Pippi Longstocking or something. Whimsy aside, pancakes do make a fantastic unconventional dinner – filling, cheap, easy to eat with the fingers, sociable, not too fussy. Tim and I decided it had been too long, too, too long since we’d seen Thoroughly Modern Millie (possibly I was the stronger force on this decision being made) and we invited our friend Ange over to watch it. For some reason the idea of pancakes for supper seemed amazingly delightful too – so that’s what we had.

I used a recipe of Nigella Lawson’s from Nigella Bites. I replaced the milk in the pancakes with soymilk to make them dairy-free and truly, these were the best pancakes I’ve ever made. I’ve made some sad, rubbery pancakes in my time and these reaffirmed my faith in the practice. They were fluffy, light, well behaved, quick to bubble, and a pleasing even nut-brown. I’d like to think it was the magic of soy that made this happen.

American Pancakes

From Nigella Bites

30g/2 Tablespoons melted butter (I replaced this with 1 T Rice Bran oil)
225g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
300mls full fat milk OR magical soymilk
2 eggs
Butter for frying (again – used a little rice bran oil)

Beat all the ingredients together, or just blitz them in a food processor. Heat a good non-stick frying pan, add a little butter or oil, then get pancaking. You can make these as large or small as you wish – I kept them relatively small but do as you please. When you see bubbles emerging on the surface, flip them over and cook for a minute or so on the other side. I find a silicon spatula useful for this.

I piled them onto a plate covered in tinfoil and they kept perfectly happy until the mixture was used up, so don’t feel you have to feed everyone but remain slavishly chained to the stovetop. Makes enough to thoroughly satiate three hungry people, could probably feed four really. Nigella reckons “25 pancakes the size of jam jar lids”.

To go with I made the blueberry syrup from Nigella Express. Had some bloobs (as I’ve been calling them, not annoying at all!) that I found on special at Moore Wilson’s and it seemed like as good a use of them as any, as well as making the pancake dinner seem like a bit more of an occasion. It took all of five minutes to make but tasted relatively complicated – what more can you ask from a recipe?

Blueberry Syrup

From Nigella Express

Not just for pancakes – this would be brilliant on vanilla ice cream and as Nigella says, it does become rather jammy the next day and is perfect spread on buttery toast.

125ml (1/2 a cup) maple syrup or honey
200g blueberries

Put both ingredients into a pan and bring to the boil. Let it bubble gently for 2-3 minutes then pour into a jug. Like so!

I can’t afford maple syrup – not even with my shoes from The Warehouse and op shop sweaters – and I have a feeling that even if I had some I’d be too scared to use it. I’m okay with this, and used honey instead. I wouldn’t recommend using fake maple syrup, as there’s only two ingredients and blueberries are so beautiful that you don’t want to be gumming them up with synthetic flavourings.

Ange provided the lemons from her bountiful tree. The pancakes were, as I said, pretty fabulous. The satiny blueberry syrup was gorgeous – thick and sweet and studded with juice-bursting berries. It was a good night.

Am heading up to Auckland tomorrow for meetings, then going home to see my family, then on Monday Tim and I are back in Auckland for the Laneway music festival. Which would be why it’s 10.36pm and I still haven’t packed yet…I’m getting really pretty hyped up for Laneway, the line up is both ridiculous but manageable which is a kind of a miracle for music festivals these days. It’s going to be an intense day but I’m really, really looking forward to it.

Title brought to you by: the Pancake Crimp from The Mighty Boosh, Series Three. Howard Moon enters Vince Noir’s bloodstream to save him from the Spirit of Jazz, and has to remind his protective white blood cells that they’re friends, reminding them of the good times they had making pancakes. You know?

On Shuffle while I type:

Cornet Man by the superlative-worthy Barbra Streisand, from the Original Broadway Cast recording of Funny Girl. Bought this from Slow Boat the other day, had been meaning to for a long while and did not regret it. Her voice is just gorgeous, all rich and sinuous.

Tender by Blur from their album 13. I love this song so much and have since the moment I saw it for the first time on Video Hits back in 1998…actually I wonder if I saw it on MTV Europe? Maybe it was too late for that. Anyway, I don’t really care if the lyrics are a bit appalling or whatever, it’s such a lovely tune – it almost seems broken up into hooky compartments which come at you one after the other – and every time I hear it I feel all comforted, like I’m wrapped up in a woolly blanket.

Walk on Gilded Splinters, by Paul Weller from the Wire Soundtrack …And All The Pieces Matter. Because the music in The Wire is 99% diegetic, it’s nice to hear the music stretched out comfortably in a compilation like this. I love the guitars in the song and how it shuffles along but not without punch…I just love this song.

Next time: I made these fantastic raw cookies the other day – it’s not often I get enthused about the concept of raw baking but these were not only easy and practical, they were seriously good tasting. Once I get back to Wellington…you’ll be hearing about them.

lime warp

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I have never been a fussy eater. But when I was younger, and I don’t think this classifies me as “fussy”, olives were too salty, ginger was too spicy, and I couldn’t quite see the point of black liquorice. As my tastebuds have aged, and no doubt reduced in numbers, I can suddenly eat olives by the oily handful and, well, the briefest of glances over this blog will show how much I love ginger now. Liquorice I still have no time for. There’s a photo of me on my first birthday showing how I, with quiet resolve, plucked a black jellybean from my birthday cake and chewed on it. The photo shows my immediate distaste upon chewing. I’m very sure that if I ate a black jellybean now I’d pull a pretty similar face. And while my tastes have expanded, I still have that Homer Simpson-like quality of “Ooooh look, food, I’m going to eat it all!” documented at that birthday party long ago.

I first tried preserved lemons last year when my godmother gifted me a jar of them that she’d made herself. I was never exposed to them as a child – Morrocan chic hadn’t quite reached the rural outpost where I lived – but I’m sure they would have seemed aggressively salty and sour to my young self. Right now, to my current collective of tastebuds, they are so, ridiculously good. I’m pretty sure it’s not how they’re supposed to be used, but I love just eating slices of lemon whole, straight from the jar. This Christmas just gone, inspired by the now long-consumed preserved lemons I was given, and hungry for more, I decided to make my own as edible presents for people. Obviously I couldn’t blog about this prior to Christmas, but now that we’re safely in January…it’s on.

Predictably, I turn to Nigella Lawson and her engaging book How To Be A Domestic Goddess. In the final chapter, all about preserves and pickles and jams and other exciting things, she has a recipe called “Edith Afif’s Lime Pickles”. The recipe is a little quirky but seemed straightforward enough, and the end result is exactly like preserved lemons, but with limes in their place. I couldn’t afford as many limes as Nigella asked for so used a mix of limes and lemons and didn’t feel bad about it at all. Limes are expensive but lemons are not, the salt I found for about a dollar at the supermarket and the olive oil doesn’t have to be fancy so all up these are a rather tidily priced gift. As I believe in self-gifting, I set aside my own personal stash as well as divvying up the fruit slices into pretty jars for other people.

Edith Afif’s Lime Pickles

From Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess

10 limes (or a mixture of lemons and limes)
1 kg coarse salt
Approximately 500mls olive oil, not extra virgin
1 tablespoon tumeric
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
3 dried chilli peppers, crumbled.

I have a confession to make. I completely forgot to add the tumeric and am retroactively kicking myself about it as I’m sure it would have looked gorgeous and tasted amazing. But the end result is still fantastic without it so don’t fear or go on a dazed mission to the supermarket if you don’t have any in the cupboard.

  • Cut the fruit into eighths lengthways and cover the bottom of a baking dish with them. Cover the limes in the salt and then put in the freezer overnight. I actually forgot about them for a couple of days and they were perfectly fine.
  • Remove from the freezer and thaw. Rinse under running water in a colander. I saved some of the salt which had absorbed an amazingly citrussy flavour and used it on a poached egg. A worthwhile recycling effort. Shake the lime/lemon slices to remove most of the water, and divide between clean jars (fills roughly 3 x 350ml jars).
  • Mix the oil and spices together in a measuring jug then pour into each jar. Add more oil if the slices aren’t covered.
  • Close the jars, put away in a cool dark cupboard for a week or so – the longer the sit, the more ridiculously good they’ll taste.

Nigella says “you either have a sour tooth or you don’t” (and I maintain that I have a fat tooth, if not several) but I think these have mainstream appeal. The sharp, satiny slices of lime and lemon give this incredibly savoury, mouth-filling citrussyness, not overly salty even though they were blanketed in salt at one point. Sliced or chopped finely they add a softly sour kick to basically anything – salads, couscous, pasta, tagines, anything Mediterranean. As an added bonus the oil surrounding the fruit slices takes on a gorgeous flavour and can be spooned from the jar and used as a useful condiment in its own right. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t use these in something. Even though they sound like something other people do and you don’t, preserved lemons (or limes…or lemons) are completely within reach and not difficult at all. It’s a tired argument but if I can handle making them without any ensuing trauma, basically anyone could.

So, I heard this wacky rumour that food blogs need to have decent photos. Which is a shame because I made this amahzing Feta Bread on Tuesday night and even though it tasted like a dream it didn’t photograph so nice. While I was considering just uploading my ugly photos anyway as good photography isn’t so much a right as a pleasant surprise round these parts, I think I’ll just quickly share the recipe instead.

Feta Bread

From Simon Rimmer’s The Accidental Vegetarian

This makes two large loaves. You could halve the recipe if this scares you, but you will eat all this bread, trust me.

  • 15g (2 sachets) instant dried yeast
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 600mls/1 pint warm water
  • 1 kilo strong bread flour
  • 2 T salt
  • 4 T olive oil
  • 350g firm feta cheese, crumbled – I used Whitestone which was perfect – solid chunks of sharp cheese. If you use a softer variety it will likely disperse into the dough and you won’t get any noticeable bits of feta in the bread, but it’s not the end of the world.
  • Handful of mint leaves

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in a little of the water. This will take about five minutes. Tip in the flour, the rest of the water, and mix to a dough. Knead for 7-10 minutes until it forms a springy, firm dough that isn’t sticky. You may need to add a tiny bit of extra flour or water but go very gently with this. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, leave it to rise for about 2 hours. It will rise to spookily large heights. At this point, punch it down and knead the oil, mint and cheese into the dough. What Simon Rimmer doesn’t tell you is that this is a mission and a half. The dough doesn’t really absorb the cheese at all and you kind of have to prod the bits of cheese in with your fingers and hope for the best. Coax the dough into two loaf shapes on a paper-lined tray, cover with a clean teatowel or a bit of tinfoil and leave at room temperature for 40 minutes. Finally, bake at 180 C/350 F for 30 – 40 minutes, which doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s just right.

This bread is off the scale good – softly chewy, almost buttery in flavour which is odd considering there’s none in there, crusty, and punctuated by chunks of gorgeous feta cheese and cool mint leaves. You could actually leave out the feta and still have wonderful bread – it’s not exactly a recipe I can afford to make every week for that very reason. But it does make a lot of bread, and amazing stuff it is – shoved in a sandwich press for a minute or so, it makes the most incredible toast. The first loaf didn’t last long but we sliced up the second, bagged it and froze it, toasting slices straight from the freezer. We finished the last of it yesterday and I’m actually feeling a bit fragile knowing that it’s no longer in our lives. The feta aside, there’s nothing unusual or different about the method so, putting aside the possibility that I am a bread whisperer, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher why it turned out tasting so outrageously delicious.

I’m feeling much better than I was at the start of this week, which is good of course. On Thursday we attended an awesomely elegant book club initiated by our ex-flatmate, but not ex-friend Ange, and last night we finished Season 4 of The Wire. Gruelling? I felt like how a potato must feel after being mashed. Absolutely mind-blowingly good though, but now I’m torn about whether to recommend it or not – it’s utterly brilliant but you get emotionally invested in characters against your will and none of them are really ‘safe’. That’s all I’ll say…Tomorrow is that rare delight – a public holiday. (Wellington Anniversary Day) This year’s a bit desperate as two of the usual public holidays have the useless bad timing to fall on a Saturday so I’ll have to enjoy tomorrow even more. I’m sure I’ll be able to entertain myself, if nothing else the fact that it’s a Monday and I get a sleep in will be pretty fantastic.

Title comes to you via: Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Show…those of you who wanted to have probably already seen the film so instead I link you to a clip of the utterly lovely Raul Esparza of the 2000 Broadway revival cast vibrato-ing his lungs off. I love the music from Rocky Horror, it reminds me of the score to Hair in some ways because it’s so joyful and all over the place and the lyrics and melody don’t flow in the way you might expect it to. “It’s just a jump to the left…”

On Shuffle while I type:

We’re going to Laneway music festival next Monday so in honour of that fact we’ve been refresher-coursing the acts that are going to be there including…

Katrina by the Black Lips, I love their scrappy, poppy sound and can’t wait to see them live.

I Had Lost My Mind by the deeply intriguing Daniel Johnston. 

Dog Days Are Over by Florence and the Machine. It would be easy to narrow one’s eyes in dislike at Florence Welch, what with her unattainably long legs and doe eyes and tendency towards music videos where she canters about with flowers in her hair and floaty capes and no trousers. But her music is gorgeous and this song in particular is pretty astounding – she’s closing the festival and I’m very excited about hearing her sing it live.

Next time: Last week we invited Ange over for pancakes and Thoroughly Modern Millie (ie the second greatest film in existence, after A Mighty Wind, and that is truth.) The pancakes were flipping marvelous and I think I got a decent photo or two out of them so…that’s what you’re likely to be seeing.

such a little thing makes such a big difference

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There comes a point, when you’ve absent-mindedly eaten half a bowl of raspberry flavoured buttercream icing while spooning it ungracefully into an icing bag and are starting to feel a touch queasy, where you start to question the rationality of embarking on cupcakes at all. Luckily cupcakes are pretty things and the sight of them makes you remember why.

Can you tell where I started getting ideas above my station?

I’ve spent the last two days prepping for and working at the Big Day Out music festival in Auckland and partway through all the madness it seemed like a brilliant idea to make cupcakes when I returned to Wellington. It was a fantastic, and I think successful day, but also very very long and draining, and I haven’t been feeling so well this week. For some reason my brain delivered me “cupcakes” as the comedown cure for all this. Who am I to argue with myself? It has been a long time since I’ve made any- the last time would have been when my flatmate was filming the intro to the Rising Star award for Handle The Jandal and needed my assistance.

I use a recipe of Nigella Lawson’s, and variations or repeats of it appear in every last one of her books. I often wonder about cupcakes, (especially given what I guess you could call their pop-culture status) whether they were invented by some entrepreneurial type who hooked their thumbs thoughtfully into their belt-loops, rocked back and forward and then said in an auspicious manner, “Team: today we sell sponge cakes. Tomorrow we’re going to make them one twelfth of the size but sell them for six times the price. Trust me. People will blog exclusively about them, replace their wedding cakes for them, and consume them in an influential manner on shows about sassy New York women in high heels.” I mean I wonder, but not enough to actually google the history of the cupcake in case my well-rounded theory gets shattered. I’m tired. Let me have this.

The making of these cupcakes meant I got to try out two of my Christmas presents – a jar of vanilla paste and an icing kit. The vanilla paste is summin’ else, its intensely vanilla fragrance rising up and curling round your head as soon as you open the jar lid. It’s a thick syrup, dark and gritty with vanilla seeds and smells so heavenly that I sincerely want to smear myself with it and run down the streets flinging it at people by the spoonful. Luckily for the good folk of Wellington, it’s too expensive for that kind of behaviour. The cupcakes were gratifyingly studded with vanilla seeds, almost as though someone had dropped iron filings into the batter (not entirely implausible, knowing how clumsy I am.) You can find some mighty tempting and elaborately iced cupcakes in shops, but these are a humble and relaxed version. And they’re not audaciously priced.



Spot the vanilla seeds!


Cupcakes

From every single Nigella book in existence.

  • 125g soft butter
  • 125g sugar
  • 125g self raising flour
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 Tablespoon milk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla paste or vanilla extract, optional

Set your oven to 200 C or 390 F and line a muffin tray with paper cases. Or in my case, use the very nifty silicone cupcake liners gifted by family members a year or two back. Put all the ingredients in the food processor and blitz till it’s looking good and batter-y; or do as I do and cream the butter and sugar, and once they’re light and airy beat in the eggs. Add the flour, the milk and the vanilla and beat together. Drop spoonfuls into the paper liners and bake for 15 – 20 minutes till golden and puffy. Allow to cool before icing however you like.

These are wonderfully buttery, tender, spongy little cakes, and the vanilla flavour really shone, through the simplicity of the ingredients. Topped with pink, raspberry flavoured icing they’re quite the delightful mouthful. They’re not exactly useful, but they do taste fantastic and I feel distinctly soothed and defrazzled now that I’ve made them, like someone has taken a GHD straightening iron to my life. That said, I’m still not 100% unsick. These cupcakes are more palliative than completely restorative in nature but it’s a start.
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Title comes at you via: Morrissey’s song Such A Little Thing Makes Such A Big Difference, which you can find on his gem of a live album Beethoven Was Deaf. a typically cumbersome-of-title tune. Like the cupcakes, it’s been a while since I’ve quoted Morrissey and it’s so rainy and cold here in Wellington even though it’s supposed to be the middle of summer that it just felt right to put him in here.
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On Shuffle while I type/sneeze

Downtime by locals Kidz In Space from their EP Episode 001: Chasing Hayley, who were seriously fantastic while occupying our stage at BDO. A head-nodder if ever I heard one.

Gershwin’s Stairway To Paradise as sung by Rufus Wainwright. Tim and I, (both feeling under the weather) were watching a Broadway documentary and it occurred to me that I hadn’t listened to any Gershwin in too, too long. A difficult choice but I think Stairway To Paradise is my favourite song of theirs. So optimistic…so beautiful.
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Next time: well, hopefully I’ll not be feeling so seedy. I really don’t like being sick in the middle of summer (admittedly, the weather here in Wellington is hopeless) but unfortunately my immune system is unmoved by the stern telling off I’m giving it. I’m usually fairly robust so I’ll surely bounce back from whatever this creeping malaise is. I’ve also bought what’s probably the last of the season’s asparagus to make what Nigella calls Pasta Salad Primavera…which is making me feel perkier just typing it out.

the air, the air is everywhere

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I got back to Wellington yesterday evening, after a week’s camping at the same beach my family and I have camped at since 1986. This constant bookend to each year of my life means I fall into a pleasingly familiar pattern once in the camping frame of mind…read books, dip toe doubtfully in water at the beach, drink gin, observe fat woodpigeons in wonder, go for walks, read more books etc… While letting all that go isn’t fun, I’m very, very happy to be back in the city where mosquitos don’t seem to exist. I got so ridiculously bitten this time round, my legs resemble a topographical map of the Hunua Ranges.

All awkward itching aside, I had a seriously wonderful break. Lazy breakfasts merged into lazy lunches, books were read, long conversations were had with family, that sort of thing. For some reason the birdlife this year was particularly bold, but in a cute, Disney-esque way that makes you want to stride through the forest while singing scales and engaging in dialogue with squirrels. Or something. I managed to catch up with lots of family and also with one of my very best friends who I don’t see very often, which was fantastic. Unfortunately Tim wasn’t able to come to the beach because Starbucks stops for no man (and to be fair, he needed the money) and I suspect my family was even more disappointed than I was that he couldn’t make it along. …

Since we weren’t going to be seeing each other for a while, on the night before I flew up to Auckland to go camping I thought I’d make us a decent dinner, of souffle and chocolate mousse. I didn’t plan to have such a glam dinner menu – it was more a case of “what on earth is in the cupboard”. I guess I wouldn’t be much of a food blogger if my scraped-together meal didn’t involve separating eggs and dark chocolate.

Both recipes came from that most seminal of all seminal texts, How To Eat by Nigella Lawson. I love coming back to this book – I bought it back in my first year of flatting when I hardly had any money for rent and bills, let alone enormous fancy cookbooks. But it has more than paid for itself since then. Actually that’s a lie, between the pomegranates and the vermouth and the endless variations on homemade custard this book may well have financially crippled me and could be the reason Tim and I haven’t been on a holiday since we started living together this time four years ago.

Both recipes are both easier than they sound, even though there’s some egg-white whisking involved. Yeah, separating eggs is never fun, but there’s something about the word ‘souffle’ that still equates to ‘death-defying act of cookery’ in many people’s minds. You can choose to capitalise on this and win their gasps of admiration when you casually place a souffle in front of them, or you can just own up that they’re not difficult at all. Doesn’t bother me.

Notice the nice salad servers in the background – Christmas gift from Tim’s parents.

So, I altered this recipe a tiny bit in that it was originally a pea souffle but all I had was soybeans and goat’s cheese…yeah, I know. It should really be the other way round.

Goat’s Cheese and Soybean Souffle

Although soybeans (or edamame) aren’t normally paired with cheese, their soft nutty flavour makes them seem like they should. If you want to make the original pea souffle, and it’s really really good, just replace the soybeans and cheese with 120g frozen peas and 85g gruyere or something similar.

150g frozen soybeans
30g butter, plus more for greasing
15g flour
125mls (1/2 a cup) full fat milk
pinch of nutmeg
50-100g goat’s cheese or feta cheese, roughly chopped
2 eggs

Set the oven to 200 C, putting in a baking tray when you do this, and butter 2 x 250ml ramekins. Melt 15g butter in a pan and cook the soybeans till they are softened. Set aside. A souffle is basically white sauce with eggs and other things stirred in, so you need your white sauce first. Melt the second 15g of butter, and stir in the flour, letting it bubble away slightly before tipping in the milk and stirring constantly over a low heat till smooth. Remove from heat.

Separate the eggs, and stir the yolks into the white sauce, then add the soybeans, goat’s cheese and nutmeg. In a metal bowl, whisk the egg whites with a small pinch of salt till frothy and standing up in soft peaks. This is fairly important as it’s the air bubbles trapped in the egg whites that are going to give the souffle the push it needs. Using a metal spoon, put a good dollop of egg whites into the yolk mixture and stir it in to ‘lighten’ the mixture. Then fold the rest of the egg whites in, not beating it toooooo vigorously but not too fearfully either. Divide all this between the two ramekins, place them on the baking tray and shut the door carefully. Immediately turn the heat down to 180 C. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, and serve immediately while they’re still risen and gorgeous – they will deflate, it doesn’t make you a bad person.

Mine rose higher than this, I swear! Taking photos just gave them time to get all…deflatey.

These taste SO good. Intensely puffy in texture. Strangely it’s the soybeans providing a buttery, creamy flavour while the rich goat’s cheese gives a lemony sharpness, rather than the other way round. Definitely worth the little bit of effort that goes into it – these look and taste gorgeous.

The chocolate mousse we had while watching Season 4 of The Wire. Don’t worry, we actually talked to each other while eating the souffle. The Wire time is quality time. The recipe comes from Nigella’s chapter on children’s food (which is possibly my most-used chapter in How To Eat, whatever that says about my eating.)

Nigella’s recipe uses milk chocolate and golden syrup. I only had dark chocolate and honey so I used this instead. If you keep the dark chocolate instead of her originally specified milk, it makes this mousse dairy free.

Chocolate Mousse

100g dark chocolate
1 1/2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon clear honey
2 eggs, separated. Obviously because of the uncooked-egg thing, you want these to be nice eggs.

Over a very low heat (or in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water if you’re nervous), melt together the chocolate, the honey, and the water. Remove from heat. In a separate clean metal bowl, whisk the egg whites till stiff peaks form. Nigella says it’ll be easier if you wipe the surface of a cut lemon half over the bowl before you start; I believe her. Beat the egg yolks into the slightly cooled chocolate mixture. Take a dollop of egg white and stir it briskly into the chocolate/yolk mixture which will, as with the souffle, lighten it up a bit. Then gently but firmly fold the rest of the egg white mixture in with a metal spoon. Divide between two smallish ramekins, around 250 ml capacity. Nigella says to chill it for 6 hours, I’d say you could get away with an hour or two. Eat.

Possibly because of the lack of cream, this mousse was a little different in texture to what I expected – it had settled into almost a chocolate pudding rather than anything light and fluffy. No harm done, it was still completely amazing. Silkily rich but not overly heavy, this mousse tasted of nothing but chocolate, so don’t be put off by the slim list of ingredients.
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Title comes to you from: The song Air sung by the gorgeous Kacie Sheik, from the Broadway cast recording of Hair, as a salute to the significant reliance on air bubbles in the recipes I gave you. I am legit obsessed with this album. You may have noticed it popping up occasionally here. So it must be good, right? It has indeedy been getting a lot of repeat visits, this album of the current Broadway revival cast, starring the lovely Gavin Creel who bears the heavy crown of being one of the few stars of Broadway that Tim likes. Today I also started listening to the original Broadway cast recording (ie, the 1968 one) and fell in love with that too. Everyone sounds like Joan Baez! So you might as well try the original like me while you’re at it.
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On Shuffle these days:

Well, I’ve been away from technology for seven days and didn’t really have my iPod on while out camping – it was mostly birdcalls and the sound of tent zippers for me as far as music went. But today I bought the soundtrack to The Wackness, which is a very enjoyable listen, with the same warm, eyes-half-closed summer vibe the movie has. I don’t normally go in for soundtracks but this one is the reason why…I occasionally do. Right now Sam Cooke is providing a mellow background to my Sunday night.
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Next time: My summer holiday is officially over – I’m back in the office tomorrow. This week is going to be busy however as I’m flying up to Auckland to work with the Big Day Out music festival. But there will be cooking! I’ve been to the vege market for the first time in weeks and feeling good about connecting with the kitchen again. In the meantime, if anyone has any remedies for speedy healing of mosquito bites I’d be most grateful…

ten years gone

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Last post for 2009! Might as well end the year with something horrendously bad for you. There is not one single particle of nutrients in the recipe I’ve got for you today. But isn’t that what half-hearted New Year’s resolutions are exist for? Hope everyone had a smashing Christmas. Even though it can be a time where looming tensions rub up against each other, I was spared most of that – the closest we got was a bit of stress over getting lunch out all at the same temperature on Christmas Day. As our life is not an episode of Mad Men, there was no social failure involved with having to wait for the gravy to heat. It was wonderful to spend a whole week with my family doing not much in particular, especially since I’ve barely been home at all this past year. We did quizzes, drank tea, ate leftovers, went through cupboards and looked at old trinkets and schoolbooks, and my parents even indulged me by letting me watch Chess on the big TV with surround sound. Woke up the next morning to hear Don’t Rain On My Parade – Dad was looking up Idina Menzel on Youtube. Felt as though it was some kind of small achievement.

New Year’s will be a low-key one for me – lots of food, some drink, and Tim, myself and our friend and ex-flatmate Ange eating and drinking the lot over the course of the evening. The weather is looking typically dubious, so my fantasies of swanning about on the rooftop deck in a flowing dress while eating prawns (I don’t know, I’ve clearly read one too many Australian Women’s Weeklys or something) are fading but with good company, good food and no agenda I think we’re quite safe from the evening descending into some kind of awkward Rupert-and-Hubert Mr Bean situation. I’m perfectly happy (she says defensively) being low-key this time of year.

Part of the evening’s feastings is that artery-solidifying stalwart of the birthday party, Calf Club and school gala days, Lolly Cake. Also known in some circles as lolly log, quickly googling it would suggest that it is a concept more or less exclusive to New Zealand. Once you’ve tried it I’m sure you’ll agree that whoever the bright spark that invented it was should surely have their face on the back of a coin or at the very least, have a commemorative stamp made in their honour.

Lolly Cake

Recipe from the back of the fruit puffs packet.

100g butter
200g (1/2 a tin) sweetened condensed milk
250g (1 packet) malt biscuits, crushed
150g (1 packed) fruit puffs, roughly chopped
Dessicated coconut

Melt butter, stir in condensed milk, biscuits and lollies. Shape mixture into a log, roll in coconut, and refrigerate till solid, whereupon you cut it into slices.

For those of you not in New Zealand, fruit puffs are like a solid, ovoid fruit flavoured marshmallow. Marshmallows themselves would be too soft, but what with America being the leaders of the free world or something surely you must have something similar to this in the sweets aisle of your supermarket? When Tim and I were in the UK we made this for a charity bake sale at the school we were working at (they’d never had lolly cake before) and used Dolly mixture quite successfully (picking out and eating the jellies first, though).

As you can imagine, Lolly Cake is the most delicious thing upon this earth.

It tastes a little like the base of a cheesecake, and is surprisingly sophisticated texturally – dense, cool biscuit crumbs nestled around almost sherbetty fruit puffs with the occasional damp, fibrous burst of coconut. Even though I completely avoids shop-bought biscuits (hey, ‘hydrogenated palm oil’ freaks me out a little) here the ingredients just make sense. Oh, how they make sense.

Title via: Ten Years Gone by Led Zep. 

On Shuffle while I type:

I would be completely lying if I didn’t own up to the fact that I’ve been singing along very loudly to the revival cast recording of Hair. Prosaic choice, and nothing new, but it’s just so fantastic.

2009 has been as packed with events as any other year – there was Otaua Village’s David triumphing over the Goliath that was the Pukekohe WPC oil company wanting to more or less cripple my hometown (okay, Otaua isn’t exactly Fern Gully but it was a no less worthy cause and a long and difficult battle from the people of the village. I couldn’t have been happier that we more or less ‘won’.) There was also graduation, a new existence on Cuba Street, the wonderful Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin at the Aotea Centre… In November I had completed a year’s full time work and had my contract extended for another year. A few weeks ago this very blog got me on the front cover of a magazine – the Sunday Star-Time’s Sunday magazine (I still haven’t worked out a non-time-consuming way of saying that). I’m ready I think, I hope, for whatever 2010 has got in store for me. Happy New Year, everyone! Stay safe and happy and try the lolly cake – it’s ridiculously good. Any New Year’s resolutions?

“super funk christmas”

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It’s rapidly zooming towards 1am. I still haven’t packed my bag for my flight home tomorrow afternoon. I do know that my overweight luggage fines will be such that they will probably be able to build and name a new wing of the domestic airport in my honour. The kitchen is covered in food. Oh yeah, and I’ve got work till 1pm tomorrow. Eek. Gotta say, Tim is being quite Florence Nightingale-esque amongst all this. Like a human cold compress. He’s rationalising all the Christmas presents into my bag while I type out this self-absorbed piece, and he’s got to be up at 5am tomorrow for work. Christmas can take you to some strange places. With all of that in mind, you know, be nice. I may not be lucid. But gosh darnit I will get this blog post done. My public needs me… I think.

In a salute to the season I made something bordering on ridiculously Christmassy today. It’s a simple but very clever idea that I discovered on the food forum I go on and would make a rather cute little gift, yes? Just looking at them makes me glad it is this time of year so that this sort of carry-on is allowed to even happen.

Even the hasty photo can’t disguise how cute these are. Simply face two candy canes together nose to tail (I trimmed the bases to make them more heart-y). Melt a little white chocolate, and carefully pour it into the recess till the two halves are somewhat poetically bound as one whole, and let it set firm. Can’t say I don’t recommend eating any leftover white chocolate either.

Dinner has been a bit all over the place lately, as both of us are going away to our respective homes for Christmas and therefore don’t want to be having a whole lot of perishables sitting around wilting glumly. Last night’s dinner was the result of several ingredients bought spontaneously at Moore Wilson’s while on a last-minute mercy dash for ingredients. So spontaneous that we ended up doing a dizzying circuit between Moore Wilson’s three adjoining stores, starting at Grocery, moving to Fresh, then to Alcohol, then back to Fresh and finishing in Grocery. Lists, and over-the-counter painkillers, were quite possibly invented for times like these.

But it ended up being a perfect pre-Christmas dinner.

Bodacious Hot Dogs (as opposed to the normal, watery ones) (that would also make a good band name)

It’s the ingredients that give it the edge over the usual stuff. Long, tapering sausages, a crunchy, doughy, seed-studded sourdough baguette, tomato sauce, Colman’s mustard, a tangle of caramelly fried onions. I chose these locally made sausages called Acme, and while I can’t find a website, if you see them it’s definitely worth dealing with the price they go for. They are expensive but completely free of additives and filler, and sweet fancy Moses do they taste good. Like a pig in tubular form. (Apologies to any vegetarian readers…you know I don’t eat a lot of meat). The onions I fried in butter and added a splash of balsamic vinegar, which evaporated in a whoosh of eye-blinking acidity and gave them an intensely savoury, honey-dark flavour. You could also try sprinkling over Worcestor Sauce for a similar effect. The hot, hot mustard against the sweet tomato sauce and rich pork, all sitting inside some really good bread was spectacular. Except I was so full afterwards – hotdog shock perhaps – that I basically had to sit there in a state of complete inactivity for an hour.

I recommend it sincerely. Italics are the most sincere of all the typefaces.

This may well be the last post I do before the New Year, and I’m going to quietly ignore the fact that it is written while half-asleep and neglecting all other tasks at hand. For all that I stress about it, Christmas means a lot to me – we’ve spent it with the same people, give or take a few variations, my entire life. To me, Christmas is about family. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be flying home to spend it with them. (And to cook a giant, Nigella-heavy Christmas lunch for them.) Whatever this time of year means to you, I truly, truly hope that the time is spent with people you love and in a mellow, chilled out way. With lots and lots of good food.

Title brought to you by the late Marc Bolan of T-Rex, whose murmered message of glad tidings was the reason I even considered making my “Hark!” playlist in the first place. Plus I realised I’d barely referenced Christmas in any of my post titles this year. Plus I just like saying “super funk Christmas”….Super funk Christmas!

Whatever music I’m listening to right now, it’s probably brilliant. Okay I’ll do this semi-properly. I’ve been listening to Kristin Chenoweth singing anything but particularly Christmas songs (reading her autobiography will make you want to do that), Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night and the 2009 revival cast recording of Hair quite a lot lately.

Next time: Will deal with itself. In the meantime, I’m curious – what do you want for Christmas? It’s completely okay to say a diamond ring, instead of world peace (although of course I want world peace, whatever that even is). Me? I don’t even know – I don’t need much. Food and ingredient-type things are always my favourite things to give and recieve. I’ve had coconut scented shower gel on my mind, more blusher, I’d like to get a grip of Te Reo Maori as a language, love anything second hand or pre-loved in terms of kitchenware or really anything – like some hideous 70s dinner plates – an iPhone would be fun even though I only text about three people and call even less, and to be honest having a couple of pet cats would be great (none of this is a hint in the slightest by the way Santa, but it is if you can get perfect skin under the Christmas tree). But when I think about it I’d be quite happy with nothing much at all, the best thing will be just getting together with family who I haven’t seen in ages and having a big feed. Don’t let this somewhat sanctimonious, ‘end-of-It’s-A-Wonderful-Life‘ statement hold you back from sharing your heart’s desire though, no matter how frivolous. And while you’re at it, what’s your favourite Christmas song? I’m so indecisive I have a whole playlist (not to mention Christmas tapes from when I was a kid that still get brought out every year) because in Spice Girls as in life, I can never pick favourites.

And till next time, in the words of Marc Bolan I hope you have a super funk Christmas and a golden New Year. Yeah.

here i go again on my own

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According to Nigella Lawson, asparagus with a fried egg on top is “Asparagus Holstein.” A hamburger with the top half of the bun removed and a fried egg laid on top is a “Hamburger Holstein.” Riddle me this, Nigella. If I were to wear a fried egg as a protein-enriched hat, would that make me a Laura Holstein? Sorry everyone…Tim has gone to Palmerston North for the rest of the week and so this blog is basically the only outlet I have for my countless inanities. Countless.

I will not lie: yesterday at work was pretty stressful. It didn’t even start off well, what with me getting a particle of something unidentifiable stuck in my eye for about an hour first thing in the morning. The shining respite in the middle of it all was a client lunch – specifically, bringing themselves and an enormous feast over to our office – which culminated in some really bloody good blue cheese and perky chocolate topped eclairs. Between eating three helpings of everything there, and then the unexpectedly hot weather, I wasn’t all that hungry when I got home from work. Not that a lack of committed hunger would normally, unfortunately, stop me from eating large. I actually respected my appetite though, and made a serene meal of lightly steamed asparagus and soft boiled egg, as per a suggestion in Nigella’s seminal text How To Eat. I’m pretty hopeless at boiling and poaching eggs, normally Tim’s job, so it was lucky that Nigella had a recipe for boiled egg in Feast…otherwise it would have been asparagus Holstein for me.

It might sound a bit poncy and not like actual eating, but it’s truly delicious and a perfect solo meal if you can get the boiled egg just perfectly soft and then dip the asparagus spears into it before eating them. Plenty of salt, naturally – I used sparkly and flavoursome pink Himalayan salt, a Christmas gift last year.

To recreate it for yourself, should you find yourself coming home after a hot and stressful day interrupted by overeating, completely alone and in need of something calming, light and not too taxing on the arteries:

Asparagus and Boiled Egg

Inspired by a suggestion in How To Eat

One or two good, free range eggs. Every time you eat a caged egg, a tiny kitten cries. This is an actual fact. Kittens…they care.
A handful of slim asparagus spears.
Salt, and while we’re at it, might as well not be that bitter table salt but sea salt or rock salt in a grinder at least.

Steam or boil your asparagus till tender, but not floppy and losing its colour.

While this is happening, bring a small pan of water to the boil. If your eggs are fridge cold, put them in with the cold water and allow them to come to the boil with it. If they’re at room temperature, simply lower them into the boiling water once it’s started. Nigella recommend putting a match in with the water because her great-aunt always did, others recommend a splash of vinegar or sprinkling of salt in the water. Let it bubble for about four minutes, maybe a little less. Have another pan of cold water handy so that you can plunge the eggs into it once you think they’re done, this will stop them cooking further. Lay your asparagus on a plate, sprinkle with salt, put the egg into an eggcup and whack the top off with a spoon.

And that’s all you need for dinner, really. If you’ve got someone else around who hasn’t taken off to Palmerston North just before Christmas to work on his parents’ farm because the job situation in Wellington is so hopeless right now (ahoy cool media people!) then I would double the proportions, get someone who really knows how to boil eggs in charge, and add some bread and butter.

The first egg was successful – soft, golden and yolky within. For some reason the second one I did was a bit more solid, but not bad considering it’s a job I always delegate out.

We watched the final of Glee the other day – it was intense, and intensely wonderful stuff. I was disappointed to see in the Dominion Post today that the music reviewers would like to see less of Glee in 2010, I was even more disappointed to see that they lumped it in with High School Musical. Yes, the HSM comparison is a quick and easy way to basically illustrate the tropes used in Glee to readers but it’s also flawed and lazy, in the same way that it feels as though the “barbeque reggae” tag is a box certain albums are unable to break out of because reviewers keep putting them in that box before they’ve even listened to their review copy. (That said, if you ever want to do a spotlight on my blog, Dominion Post…call me!)

Now that Glee is riding the tidal wave of Twitter trending topics, glossy magazine spreads, and young-person love, it’s highly likely there’ll be some kind of anti-hype backlash. To which I say: eh. I know I go on about this show a lot, but I’ve been excited about it since July and it’s so, I don’t know, emotionally fulfilling to see Broadway stars, Broadway tunes, and in fact the idea of breaking out into any tune altogether being legitimised on mainstream TV and in such deliciously sharp fashion. I remember when the film Centre Stage was released (there was also Billy Elliot but obviously it’s a bit of a different kettle) and hopelessly bad as the dialogue was – although Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows speak eloquent volumes with one silent, bristly twitch – I was elated to see ballet and dance brought to the big screen in a way that would, I hoped, make people see what it was that I loved about it and how ridiculously wonderful it was. Not that I need any of this. Indeed there’s always something nice about knowing that 99% of the world is missing out on this particular song or whatever that you love, but it’s just…really nice to see it get out there on people’s radars.

Speaking of things that you insist you liked long before the film adaptation of it ever came out: we also saw Where the Wild Things Are on Tuesday night. I really liked it, I liked how the Wild Things were slightly human but mostly monster and everything that happened in their own world seemed right. Max Records, the kid playing Max, was gorgeous, and it was notably, but not surprisingly, pretty dark. The only thing I was a little frowny over in hindsight was that – spoilers – Max runs away and sails off to an island of monsters, rather than having the forest grow up around him in his room. Maybe they had to spin it out more, I don’t know. Apart from that I thought it was fantastic so if the line “please don’t go, we’ll eat you up we love you so” makes you a little tearily nostalgic for something you can’t even quite remember and you’ve got a DVD compilation of cool music videos by cool directors then you’re probably the right audience for this.

Eight more days till Christmas! Good grief! And six more days till my last day at work for the year. I’m flying home on the evening of the 23rd. This means, once more, my annual and highly dramatic attempt to pack my bags and get them weighing under the requisite amount you need to get from A to B in New Zealand. I’m looking forward to bonding with the cats again, and family members, and the kitchen. Still trying to finalise a Christmas Day menu in my head…

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Title brought to you by: Yes, I quoted Whitesnake in the title. Did I do it ironically? I don’t even know anymore. The musical Rock of Ages will do that to ya. I do know what it means to walk along that lonely street of dreams. Check out the original Broadway cast’s exuberant take on it here, and just be thankful I didn’t call this thing “here I go egg-ain.”
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On Shuffle these days:

The Reading of the Story of The Magi/Silent Night by The White Stripes. It’s strange but I love it. To you it may be just…strange. But I love it.

Don’t Rain On My Parade by Barbra Streisand from Funny Girl. After the final of Glee, and being gently reminded that this song has perhaps the jauntiest, most purposeful opening notes in the history of all song, Tim and I ended up comparing, unfairly but predictably, Idina Menzel’s live’n’mesmerising take on the song with Lea Michele’s also brilliant but super clean version. Which naturally, brought me back to the fantastic original again. And the notion that Glee is taking us to some strange places.

Watching The Planets by the Flaming Lips from their latest album Embryonic. It’s all heavy and fuzzy and amaaaazing.
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Next time: Hopefully by the time “next time” rolls around I’ll be miraculously organised. Apparently a colleague and I are going halvesies in a wheel of goat’s cheese from Moore Wilsons – so that may appear a lot. I’m pretty sure, organisation or not, that I can manage to wrangle one more blog post into existence before I leave for Christmas. It may mean completely alienating all people who aren’t whisks or bags of sugar though.

california tuber alles

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On Friday we had our Office Christmas Party. Capital letters because it feels like some kind of social institution…articles, columns and entire pull-out sections of glossy women’s magazines emerge at this time of year offering advice on office parties and how to organise/survive/acquit yourself with dignity/deflect awkward photographic evidence from said shindig. Ours was largely without incident and I had a marvelously pleasant time. I only mention it because I bonded particularly with a colleague while eating our lunch about how much we loved leftovers, in particular barbequed sausages, eaten cold for breakfast early the next morning while standing at the open-doored fridge. That moment of connection achieved more than a thousand team-building activities involving blindfolds and ‘trust’ games, I promise you.

And no, I’m not just saying how much I love leftovers because Nigella goes on about them too. Although I will allow that she kind of makes it easier to admit to such activities…like picking at a chilled roast chicken while standing at the fridge, perhaps alternating with a spoonful of raspberry jelly or trifle from its bowl that you’ve surruptitiously peeled the clingfilm back on…

As you can imagine we definitely had leftovers after last Sunday’s flat Christmas dinner. Some things got demolished, like the ham in Coca Cola. But it turns out that I made enough potatoes to service another three Christmas dinners. Not that this is any kind of problem…On Monday night I used some of those potatoes in a Spanish Omelette, from Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Express.

A golden, eggy crust containing hot chunks of new potatoes and juicy capsicums. It’s quick and it’s fabulous. We don’t eat potatoes that much and I forget how good they taste. There’s a simple evolutionary reason – Tim is usually working when I go to the vege market on a Sunday, and there’s really only so much I can deal with toting back to the flat. Having a glut of leftover potatoes this week has been no burden whatsoever – cold with gherkins, sauteed with coriander and cumin seeds and cinnamon, simmered in a vegetable curry – delicious. I love them.

Spanish Omelette

From Nigella Express

225g boiled new potatoes
4 eggs
75g chopped roasted capsicums
3 spring onions, finely chopped
75g grated Manchego or Cheddar Cheese
1 teaspoon butter
drop of oil

Turn on the grill and let it heat up. If the potatoes aren’t already cooked, halve and boil them until tender then drain. Whisk the eggs in a bowl, then add the capsicums, spring onions, cheese, and potatoes. Heat the butter and oil in a small, oven-proof frying pan and when hot, tip in the omelette mix and cook gently for five minutes. Eventually, the base of the omelette should begin to feel ‘set’ and rather than trying to flip it, instead sit the pan under the grill for a few minutes to set the top. Turn the omelette out onto a plate to cool. Even if it’s slightly wobbly it should carry on cooking as it cools. Slice into wedges. Note – I left out the cheese and used a lot more potatoes.

I’m not sure if this a great photo to display the merits of this dish, but it really does taste good. My omelette kind of fell apart as I attempted to slide it onto the chopping board and a bit of it stuck to the pan because SOMEONE had a huge fry-up one weekend when I wasn’t there and damaged the nonstick finish. The fact that it was non free-range eggs and those permanently soggy supermarket hash browns made it not so much insult to injury as an offense worthy of a punch to the face. (Don’t worry, Tim only got a verbal facepunch. I am pretty anti-violence, even when it is involving the nonstick finish of my good pan.)

A week has now passed since I was in the Sunday Star-Times Sunday magazine. So far, no movie deals or cookbook offers but I have had some interesting, and often completely lovely, correspondence. I don’t mean to keep going on about it, but be nice, this is the first time anything like this has happened. I was once in an ad for Camera House when I was three years old, but at the time I didn’t have a food blog to promote and thus it was just a one-off opportunity. These days, who knows? A three year old blogger could well be my biggest competition, and they’ve probably got more Twitter followers than me too.

Speaking of the passage of time, it’s now ten days till I go home for Christmas. To which I say: aaaaargh. It feels like I have a lot to achieve and not much time to achieve it in, which would be…accurate. However, I Skyped with Mum yesterday and managed to get some thoughts in order (my thoughts previously were: Christmassdkfhsdfwph). I’ve spent today serenely making edible Christmas presents for people which has been great fun. All will be revealed recipe-wise after Christmas to make it fair on those actually receiving these gifts. Tim is hunting for our little $2 shop Christmas tree and I’ve been playing my traditional Christmas playlist, (entitled “Hark! Merry Christmas from Laura!”), where I’ve gathered together seasonal tunes by artists I love (you can hardly claim to have lived till you’ve heard Johnny Cash and Neil Young duetting on The Little Drummer Boy) and artists that I’m dubious about at all other times but Christmas (you can hardly claim to have lived till you’ve heard Twisted Sister’s aggressively upbeat take on O Come All Ye Faithful.) Every year I scour the internet for more tunes to add to this increasingly ridiculous list and I look forward to doing it again this year. All that and I’m going to tape some tinsel to our bookcase. Fa la la la la. Bring it on.

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Title comes to you via: The Dead Kennedys song California Uber Alles. I know it’s barely significant but I really find it very hard to pass up something that amuses me like this. I like to think the title tranlates to “Potatoes above all”. Or something.
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On Shuffle lately:

Obviously some Hark! selections, including…

O Holy Night, sung by the ever-ridiculously-astounding Julia Murney and also Max von Essen, who I don’t feel quite so strongly about. I do like how it remains gently but firmly secular in its delivery. And how Julia Murney sounds incredible.

And then…The Avenue by Roll Deep, from their album In at the Deep End. Rediscovered it recently – takes me back to the summer of 2005 when I was in England and it still holds up as an ideal happy summer tune.

Out of the Blue by Julian Casablancas (if you thought I was going to say Julia Murney again, then ten points to you) from his solo debut, Phrazes for the Young. I like his album but it does have a lot of awkward song titles…Though really, as I’m a Pink Floyd fan I can hardly judge him. Anyway, this song chugs along merrily and has a joyfully sing-along chorus. And every time you listen you can think of Mr Casablancas and his lovely eyes and floppy hair which is no bad thing at all.

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Next time: I may cook even more potatoes, since Tim miraculously had the day off today and was thus able to be my pack-mule at the vege market. I may also provide even more Christmas music ridiculousity…

hot lunch jam

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Disclaimer: this particular post is photo-heavy, so if your internet browser has all the thrust of an electric toothbrush you may want to consider coming back another time. Although, these photos were all hastily snapped on the Automatic setting so they probably aren’t that big, pixel-wise. You should also know that I’m still in a stumbling haze of fullness and am quite, quite sleepy on top of that. Who knows where this heady combination could lead us. But – tonight’s post will be – hopefully – a kind of recap of the day that was the Flat Christmas Party. I’ll return to what you could call regular programming with the next post. I guess now is as good a time as any to be a new reader – if you can handle all this then we’re going to get along just fine!

My assessment is that yesterday’s lunch was our best Christmas dinner yet – although each year has its fond memories. (Like the rugelach of 2007….that’s all I can think about right now actually)

THE FEASTENING



Nigella’s Soft and Sharp Involtini from Nigella Bites, minus the feta but with many toasted macadamias, pecans, almonds and hazelnuts added. In my experience, involtini is basically stuff wrapped around other stuff, in this case slices of seared eggplant (one of the more boring jobs of the weekend) rolled around spoonfuls of herbed, nutty bulghur wheat and baked in tomato sauce. I was smugly eating it cold for lunch today at work – it’s even better after a day or so.

The roasted chooks. I love the way they’re sitting here in the same roasting dish as if they were buddies. It’s also partly necessity – our oven isn’t very big. We got two plump Rangitikei Free Range Corn Fed chickens, and according to the Rangitikei website the chickens are lovingly raised and are able to safely roam in the grass. The site is certainly convincing and I have no reason to believe these chickens weren’t raised in a safe, humane way – I find it very difficult to buy meat these days that hasn’t been.

Stuffing for said lucky chickens. On the left, Cornbread and Cranberry Stuffing from Nigella’s Feast, and on the right, the (dairy-free!) Pear and Cranberry Stuffing from Nigella Christmas. Both divine – the butteryness of the cornbread stuffing would be bordering on ludicrous if it wasn’t for the sharp berries interrupting each mouthful. The pear stuffing is moist and lusciously rich without being overwhelming, because it’s basically just fruit and nuts.


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Silky, slippery roasted Capsicums with Pomegranate from Nigella Christmas – I bought about five packs of past-their-best capsicums from the market yesterday morning, then completely forgot that the recipe needed pomegranates. Never mind – we also needed coffee, ice and a loaf of bread so we picked up the pomegranate from Moore Wilson’s straight afterwards. (Where we are now Silver Customers on their loyalty programme!) Pomegranates really are excitingly Christmassy. But to be fair, before I got into Nigella pomegranates were linked in my mind, for some reason, with other mythical things like unicorns and reindeer (okay, reindeer actually exist, but they sound like they shouldn’t). How things change. Avocados were also cheap and perfectly ripe at the market – so they were added spontaneously to the feasting. Avocados are never not a treat.

Above: The gorgeous Scotty! Not only visual proof that we actually have friends, Scotty is modelling the Poinsettia cocktail, or at least my simplification of Nigella’s recipe for it in Nigella Christmas. I upended a bottle of dry bubbles and a bottle of cranberry juice into a large bowl, and topped it up with Cointreau and ice. The bubbles were kindly provided by Ange, the cranberry juice by Megha and Ruvin, and the Cointreau…well, we’ve been nursing that bottle since Ange’s sister left it at our old flat a few years back. The Poinsettia is intensely drinkable but not overwhelming – ideal whether the sun is over the yard-arm or not. If you’re wondering where his natty headwear is from, Anna and Paul brought along some gorgeous Christmas crackers which, once pulled to shreds, produced silver hats of such crisp quality and hatmanship that Tim and I decided to hold on to them for next year’s party. The jokes were woeful though. “Q: What do you get if you cross a skeleton and a detective? A: Sherlock Bones.” So wholesome and inoffensive it’s bordering on sinister.

As well as this there was a vat of boiled new potatoes with mint from our garden (which is where the only near-disaster of the day happened – I turned the gas on under said vat of potatoes without realising there was no water in the pot yet. Luckily an angry sizzle alerted me to this fact; apart from the occasional scorch mark the potatoes were unharmed) the Ham in Coca Cola from How To Eat (which was from the butcher in Waiuku, gifted to be by Mum and flown back to Wellington with me and frozen last time I went up home.) It was perfect pork – not weighed down with fat and gristle but utterly pink and deeply flavoursome from the Coca Cola. Also there were salad greens, roasted root vegetables, and a loaf of Heidelburg bread.

After all this eating we all kind of staggered round in a dazed stupor, bodies weighted to chairs by all the food. Blinking slowed down, just breathing in and out became unhurried and meditative. We chose that moment to have dessert.

Chocolate Pavlova from Nigella’s Forever Summer. As I complained about on Twitter, I did something wrong and while enormous, the pav wasn’t very high. However, whatever I did made it taste amazing. I wish I knew! I drizzled it in dark chocolate, covered it in cheap strawberries from the market, and served the whipped cream on the side for those who wanted it. The plate that the pav is sitting on was a present from Emma, a Dunedin-based former flatmate who was also at the very first Christmas Dinner we had in 2006.

Chocolate Pavlova

Forever Summer

6 egg whites
300g caster sugar
50g good cocoa
1 tsp balsamic or red wine vinegar
50g dark chocolate, chopped roughly

Set oven to 180 C. Do the usual pavlova thing: Whip up the egg whites till satiny peaks form, then continue to beat them while adding the sugar a tiny bit at a time. Once the sugar is all added the mixture should be thick, shiny and stiff. Sift in the cocoa and sprinkle over the vinegar, folding in carefully along with the chocolate. Spread mixture into a 23cm circle on a baking paper lined tray. Immediately turn down oven to 150 C and leave for about an hour. Once done, turn oven off and leave pav to cool completely.

If I don’t tell you, no-one will – I made this entire pav just using a whisk. You, however, are more than welcome to use electric beaters or a cake mixer. It doesn’t make you a bad person, just a person who can, unlike myself, locate their electric beaters.

Neither of the ice creams let me down – the chocolate coconut version was rich, intense and bounty bar-esque, while the ginger ice cream was described as “ridiculous” by Ricky – call me when you find yourself offered a better compliment for your ice cream.

Despite nearly everyone saying they don’t like candy canes (and fair enough, it’s like eating toothpaste) we somehow all ended up chewing thoughfully on one by the end of the day. Also bolstering the pudding table were some amaretti that we bought on sale from the Meditteranean Warehouse in Newtown (on sale because their best-before date was ages ago but I don’t believe in worrying about that sort of thing) and some dark chunks of Whittaker’s Chocolate. Eventually people started to leave until it was just Tim, myself, Scotty and Ange playing spirited and politically charged card games. Our flatmate Jason arrived home from doing film work at the cricket in the rain and we chilled with him for a bit (and had already saved him a plate of food from before). While it was a shame he couldn’t be there during the day, as the Christmas Dinner is about flat solidarity, but there was no way around it – Sunday was the only day the majority of us were free to make it happen.

Tim and I after the stragglers left at around 5.30pm. Please bear in mind that I was up till 1am the night before somewhat manically stuffing slices of eggplant with bulghur wheat. I’d like to think I own my inability to take a decent spontaneous photo. By the way, the eyepatch came in one of the Christmas crackers, it’s not a regular accessory for Tim. Although, what with his diabetes and all that ice cream, he might as well get used to the feel of it. Kidding! We spent the evening watching Glee, nibbling at leftovers, and reading over all the lovely comments I’d got on my blog since I was fortunate enough to be on the front cover of the Sunday Star-Times Sunday magazine.

So, like I said, the Christmas dinner (even though it was actually a lunch, I’m just affectatious that way) was a roaring success, with people already locking in their availability for 2010. I didn’t intend it to become a giant homage to Nigella Lawson, although in hindsight…I probably did. An enormous thank you to everyone who came, who contributed with their fantastic presence and also with actual things that I asked to be brought along. Again, if there are any new readers drawn here after reading the article in the Sunday Star-Times, welcome welcome welcome and hope you see something in this madness worth sticking round for.

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Title of this post comin’ atcha via the great Irene Cara and the hyper-percussive Hot Lunch Jam from one of my favourite films of everrrr, Fame. Also known as “that film that really didn’t need remaking at ALL.”
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Music that’s happening to me these days:

My Doorbell and Passive Manipulation from the White Stripes’ wonderful wonderful 2005 album Get Behind Me Satan. We had a DVD of them playing live on while I was writing this, Jack and Meg White are both mesmerisingly compelling (LOVE it when Meg sings) and if there are any spelling mistakes in this post I blame them entirely.

The entire Time Is Not Much album, the seriously stunning debut from local MC, the soultastic Ladi6. Every time it finishes it feels like it should just…be started again. It’s that good.

Shout Out by the Honey Claws. Just try to listen to this song without jiggling. It can nay be done. ________________________________________________

Till next time: I’ll be doing a bit of dedicated basking in the truly nice feedback I’ve received about the article/cover story in the Sunday Star-Times Sunday magazine. Lest any astute readers notice that Nigella Express was the only book of Lawson’s that didn’t get a look-in this Christmas and start to suspect something (I’m not sure what, just…something) I made a Spanish omelette using a recipe from said book and leftover potatoes this very evening. If the photos turn out okay you’ll probably be seeing it up here before long.