Just a quick post to say IT’S OVER…We just finished watching the season 3 final of Outrageous Fortune, there was so much drama that I got muscle cramp from being so tensely clenched. Loretta had a bairn and Van delivered it! Judd and Cheryl talked! Munter finally got out of prison in time for his wedding! Gary is Rita’s son! And Wolf is still sinister!! How will we cope till season four starts?
Actual cooking tomorrow, I promise.
“The costumes are retro now, but they weren’t retro then. They were ‘nowtro.'” (A Mighty Wind) (one of my favourite films.)
After a retro cooking challenge was issued by an online food forum I frequent (ooh, alliteration!) I had a think about what I consider to actually be retro food. There is the obvious stuff – cheese fondue (which I have made successfully, and yes, it is delicious) or prawn cocktail, Boef en Croute and black forest gateaux – the sort of thing one reads about in a Jilly Cooper novel. And I concluded that as a child of ’86, I was really too young to be thinking about foods as retro – the closest I can get is being snide about that period in the late nineties/early 2000’s, where if it wasn’t drowned in balsamic vinegar it was covered in sweet chilli sauce, and chicken, cranberry and brie was the height of haute cuisine.
So I decided to let what was in our cupboards decide for me, and ended up with two distinctly different ‘retro’ dishes – one being Ratatouille, a dish densely packed with vegetables and, I understand, a classic of the seventies. The other thing I made – little coffee flavoured cakes, inexplicably named “Crybabies,” came from an Aunt Daisy cookbook that belonged to my great grandmother. Its margins are scrawled with notes and it is a piece of family history – indeed, social history- which I am very happy to own. It’s not what I would necessarily call retro, since the book would have been published in the 30’s or 40’s, but still pleasingly seems to go with the notion of cooking from the past.
Above: Ratatouille! The recipe I found in Nigella’s seminal text, How To Eat. It is so easy to make and is, if one entertains friends this way inclined, both vegetarian and gluten free. I had bought most of the ingredients at the vege market, and the only thing I didn’t put in the eggplant-courguette-tomato mix was capsicum because they are really expensive at the moment. It turned out absolutely delicious, by the way, and was a breeze to make in the non-stick pan I got for a 21st birthday present from family friends. (More alliteration, brought to you by the letter F)
Above: The Crybabies (sounds like a bad, coat-tail riding sixties girl group, speaking of retro…) These little cakes were so delicious and easy to make, that I’m going to list the recipe. I halved the original, by the way, but if you have the patience and a ton of golden syrup- be my guest.
Crybabies
Mix together the following: 1/2 cup hot, very strong coffee, 125 g soft butter, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup golden syrup (or, 6 tablespoons if this helps) 1 t each ground ginger and nutmeg. Stir in enough plain flour till it has a thick, cake batter dropping consistency. Pour 1/2 a teaspoon vinegar over one teaspoon baking soda, let it foam up and stir thoroughly into the batter. Drop spoonfuls onto a baking tray and bake at 180 for 20-25 minutes.
These are so good – spicy and doughy and treacly and perfect for dipping into a hot drink, or, as we ate them, to accompany a good movie. In our case, the amazing animated film Spirited Away, which we watched last night.
So; that was my retro project. I have a small problem now – I am going to be cooking lots of presents for Christmas – if this makes sense – but I can’t blog about it because a large proportion of my readers (ie my family) are to be the recipients for said food-gifts and I don’t want to ruin the surprise. So, although I have a lot of exciting stuff planned for the rest of the fast-speeding away time before Christmas, you probably won’t hear about it!
The title doesn’t have much to do with anything except for the fact that I am very excited, in a sniffly, boffinish way, to have discovered a Baby Sitters Club blog wherein a 20-something woman goes back and re-reads the books and then writes up all the glaring logistical errors and continuity flaws. The quote is taken from the BSC movie, something I had forgotten about until recently. Yesterday’s obsession is todays’ charmingly kitsch retro-pop-culture…so watch out. And by that, I mean that I have been on Trademe for BSC books. Shh!
We don’t have a heck of a lot of food in our cupboards at the moment. After the massive spree that was shopping for the Christmas dinner, I didn’t want to spend any more money on actual groceries. Let me tell you, I am looking forward to the vege market tomorrow.
Good Bive!
“I don’t feel a house is a home until there are leftovers in the fridge, and Christmas leftovers are my all-time favourite.”
“lalalalalala….deep and crisp and even…” Thanks to Mum for the idea for the title by the way. And the donation – we would be eating bread dipped in water were it not for her kind, unexpected cash injection. And – just try and act surprised – this is a lengthy post, so don’t read it if you have to be somewhere in the next hour.
SO, the Team Hadfield Annual Christmas Dinner is officially over. I am officially all kinds of shattered after Tim and I spent over an hour doing the dishes (I washed, he dried, I felt like the sorcerer’s apprentice with the neverending plates appearing) but I can’t really complain since I’m the reason all the dishes were there in the first place. The dinner was a massive success, so much fun, and left us all groaningly full. Here it is – no pictures of Beckham, no kittens, no music reviews. Just FOOD.
As you know from the previous post (that’s if you actually read it and didn’t just pause on the David Beckham picture) I had been making things in advance, and the same pattern continued on Sunday. Tim had work at Starbucks at 7.30am, so I was awake fairly early. That is, my body was awake, my brain was a little on the fuzzy side.
First thing I did was make the ice cream. Sound a little madcap, I know, but I thought the Lemon Prosset would look rather stingy in bowls on its own and this is the easiest ice cream recipe I know. Nigella (who else!) has variations of it in a few of her books, the version I used was the Bitter Orange Ice Cream from Nigella Bites. It defies everything one is taught about making ice cream and shouldn’t work, but oh, how it does. Simply dissolve icing sugar – about 150g – in the juice of a couple of oranges, add 600mls cream, whisk till softly whipped and…freeze. You are supposed to add lime juice to this but I didn’t have any, so I upped the orange hit with a teaspoon of my beloved Boyajian Orange Oil (Nigella actually namechecked it in her books!) which made it headily…you know it’s difficult to find a synonym for “orange” so I’ll stop talking about it.
Above: The Orange Blossom Special…I used a whisk, rather than the electric beaters, because I figured that any extra activity would be beneficial. Considering all the cream.
While the ice cream was a-freezing I got on with the Rugelach. Now, I’m not one to appropriate other cultures – she says – but I think that there is nothing wrong with enjoying the many foods that the world has to offer. I say this because of a photo I saw of Justin Timberlake poking out his tongue in imitation while receiving a powhiri – Maori welcome – on his recent visit to New Zealand. I’m not quite sure why this annoyed me, but I had a bit of a think and concluded that it was one thing for me to make Jewish food, but it would be another thing entirely to say, wear a yarmulke while doing so. Anyway, I was getting so philosophical you could call me Anne of Green Gables and I nearly forgot to actually make the blooming things. Luckily they are a doddle.
Above: Doesn’t the sight of this make you want to convert…just a schmeer? Rugelach is pastry (which has butter, sour cream AND cream cheese in it, making it very sticky but easy to roll out) brushed with melted butter and, for artery thickening effect, rolled around chocolate and brown sugar. It is glutinous, but it was the only glutinous thing on the menu and frankly I’m not a miracle worker. This recipe comes from Nigella’s Feast and is, she says, a Hannukah treat. Nigella herself is actually Jewish, although not a practising one, hence the fact that I used her recipe for ham as well!
My cousin Paul came over at this stage and I realised that (a) I needed more chocolate to dip the truffles in and (b) I really wanted a drink. Luckily I managed to juggle both without detrimental effect, but I will say this – vanilla Galliano is sickly. I tend to enjoy a drier drop. There was a funny limbo time in the afternoon, because I didn’t want to get started on the meat and veges too soon, but of course everything would need quite a long time cooking.
The Fully Festive Ham, also from Feast, is a complete joy to make. It is worth pointing out that what I used was not what New Zealanders would know as ham – here we tend to get ours precooked, which we then just glaze and cook on Christmas day. The stuff Nigella uses – which is easier to find in England than here – is uncooked ham, called gammon, or here, pickled pork. Don’t be put off by the ‘pickled’ bit, it’s truly just uncooked ham. This means you can simmer it in whatever you want. Like coca cola. But that’s another story…
Above: The ham, submerged in a litre each of apple and cranberry juice, plus onion, cinnamon sticks, pink peppercorns and a star anise. You are supposed to use allspice berries but I didn’t have any. Anyhow I thought the star anise looked rather pretty bobbing round and the pink peppercorns would add the necessary earthiness. This simmers away for a couple of hours so it doesn’t really require too much effort.
I stuffed the chickens, which was about as undesirable a job as I remember it to be (and the cavities are strangely cold.) I scrapped the idea of challah, and bought some bread rolls, as well as a gluten-free loaf instead – didn’t have the psychological space in my head for dealing with more dough – so luckily I didn’t have to worry about faffing about with oven temperatures.
The potatoes went in the oven and the kumara and parsnips were chopped up to go in Tim’s electric frypan that he got for his 21st. It is worth knowing that you can quite effectively “roast” vegetables in this machine, if you are feeding a crowd. I made a quick salad, to offer crisp contrast, out of a packet of fancy salad mix and half a block of feta. Ooooh I love feta. I made a quick dressing out of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and that was it – simple is best sometimes (ha!)
Above: The ensalada. The “green stuff” that saved our arteries from all the chicken and ham and chocolate…
As we were setting the table, Emma said “weren’t you going to do some peas?” Bugger! Quickly biffed them in the microwave, and then thought, heck, I might as well make some gravy too. So I poured the chicken roasting juices into a pot, with a spoonful of the cranberry sauce that I used to glaze the ham (which was in the oven at this point) and even though it ultimately makes things gluggy, a spoonful of gluten-free cornflour. While this was boiling up I added a slosh of Marsala, quarter of a porcini stock cube and a cup or so of water and let it bubble away.
Above: “They call it riding the gravy train…” I’m something of a gravy novice, and gluten-free is probably not the best way to start, but it was pretty good stuff. Behind you can see the remainder of the stuffing which I cooked in my silicone muffin tray for people.
And then, it was time to eat.
Above: The groaning board (which handily extends out.) Far left is the ham, then the chickens, and the salad on the right. Of course the chickens were free range, they taste so much better, and as the ham came from our delightful local butchers I was reassured it was a happy pig in life.
Above: Tim’s plateful. I’m full just looking at it.
Mercifully, everyone liked it. The stuffing was very well received, the ham was unbelievably tender (hey, it’s a good recipe) and we all just ate and ate and ate and ate. We had a brief pause between courses, just enough to try and locate a nook into which pudding could fit.
Above: Psychocandy – from front to back, the Rugelach, the Crunchie Bar Slice, and the Chocolate Truffles. For some reason I never got a photo of the ice cream or the Lemon Prosset, but here – one looks pale and slightly orange, the other looks pale and slightly yellow. As Jack White opined, “Sugar never tasted so good.” I’m so glad I decided to do heaps of things- I honestly can’t decide which I like more. By the way, the sweeties above are resting in none other than my Nigella Lawson Living Kitchen platter, which is ENORMOUS. I got it ridiculously cheap on Trademe and didn’t realise how huge it was when I bought it. It is gorgeous though and the perfect vessel for the dessert. Again, a giant “phew” that everyone loved the desserts. I knew the Lemon Prosset wouldn’t fail me!
Now that I have been cooking for two days, washing up for over an hour and typing for two hours…well I don’t know how to finish that sentence but my brain is tired and I’m not looking forward to work tomorrow. It was a seriously rewarding weekend (not least because of all the eating) and I had such a great time cooking up The Feast and feeding people who are important to me. It doesn’t feel that long ago that we had ours last year, and I who knows where we will be this time next year…
By the way if anyone is here at this point -thanks for reading so far and sorry if it is a little uninspired…but to be fair, my sinuses are packed with ham and my lungs are filled with truffle mixture which may have contributed to the syntactical errors and glaring ommissions above…To finish, it has to be said that the only thing that is better than having an enormous Christmas dinner…is roast potatoes for breakfast the next day. Note to self – rekindle your relationship with Pontious Pilates.
Above: Doesn’t that question kinda answer itself?
I got this photo off the stuff.co.nz website (wherein you can also see a photo from last night with Emma’s head in it – we were sitting in front of some very dressed up girls whose photo got onto this site) Since Tim’s camera is broken we used Emma’s – she has the same model – but it is very slow and has terrible zoom. Therefore none of our photos are worth writing home about, unlike the above… When the game finished massive fireworks went off, which was all very thrilling, and Becks waited for ages before taking off his shirt. Everyone cheered when he did – he must have known that’s what half the crowd was there for. He played for the whole game, which was fantastic, because he was only contracted to play a minimum of 55 minutes. What a guy!
Above: Becks in action – as Cheeky Hobson would say, “It’s so physical!” Becks is in the dark blue, by the way.
All semi-nudity aside though, it was an amazing game and Beckham was all kinds of classy. Even though we lost, the crowd got on their feet and cheered when he scored a goal. It was unbelievably exciting to watch him in action – I don’t know much about soccer (Me:”who is that guy in yellow, Tim?” Tim:”The ref.”) but whenever he had the ball it looked effortless and graceful. Every now and then I would turn to Tim and say “I can’t believe we are watching Beckham!!” Alright, the gushing is over already!
Because the weather was so exemplary yesterday – one of those days that come along just often enough in Wellington to remind you why on earth you live there – it was very difficult not to join Tim, my cousin, and his mates outside to drink in the sun. But there were most definitely things to be done!!
Above: The chocolate malteaser slice from Nigella.com. Except it has chopped up Crunchie bars in it instead. Who knew that malteasers were heavily glutinous? Not I! Crunchies are a more than worthy substitute in this gloriously tacky slice, which comprises a heady mix of biscuit crumbs (gluten free of course) melted chocolate, golden syrup, crushed Crunchies, and, ahem, butter. I am going to chop it into elegant triangles and serve it with coffee alongside the truffles and rugelach, but if you make this for a five year old I guarantee they will be your best friend for life.
Above: Tim, helpfully stirring the stuffing for me. Frankly, with all the bacon in it the stuffing didn’t look so wonderful in close up…unlike Tim!
The recipe is from Nigella’s Feast, and is slightly unusual but intriguingly delicious. Three onions and two green apples, blitzed in the food processor followed by a ton of bacon (the idea of finely chopping it all makes me want to weep – hoorah for food processors! Unfortunately the onions made me sob like a baby anyway) which is fried up in butter with the zest of an orange. When it is cool, crumble in a loaf of gingerbread – the unusual bit – and add some eggs before cooking. It tastes and smells incredible and is also made with gluten free gingerbread (the stuff that comes in the green plastic packet at the supermarket – expensive but really really edible.)
After this I made the chocolate truffle mixture, which came up looking too unattractively brown in the photos, so I thought I’d wait for the finished product before commiting it to film. Then I got Tim to help me peel vast amounts of potatoes, which I was parboiling in advance (Nigella says it’s okay!) for roasting them tonight. I only have one stockpot, you see, which will be occupied with the ham.
Above: Potatoes, tiddly tee! But really – that is a Big Pot.
After that I sat down in the sun for a while, with another Nigella creation, from Forever Summer, a cocktail that goes by the joyfully camp name of “Pomme Pomme.”It is a combination of Apple Schnapps and apple juice and is seriously a delight to imbibe. So delightful that I forgot to take a photo of it. So I had another one. And forgot to take a photo of that. So I had another one…and decided that since a drink that is largely apple juice doesn’t make the most exciting photo subject I’d just leave it.
I also made the Lemon Prosset, which doesn’t come with a photo, (would you believe I forgot again?) but it does come with a recipe as it is so flipping fantastic. The recipe is from an old edition of Cuisine Magazine, and is child’s play to make. In fact the only hard thing about it is trying to measure 600mls and 100mls, both are rather awkward amounts.
Lemon Prosset:
Bring to the boil, stirring all the time: 600 mls of cream and 2/3 cup sugar. As soon as it starts to boil, turn the heat way down and stir for exactly three minutes. Once the time is up, take it off the heat, and stir in 100mls of lemon juice. Chill overnight, in about 6 ramekins or one bowl, and serve to your rapturous guests.
By the time all this had been achieved, it was time to head into town for the game, and you all know how that went. Tonight’s the night, as Neil Young would say, and I have so far made some orange ice cream (surprise! A new addition to the menu, because I can) and started on the rugelach. So, a lot to get done…better get to it then! Next time I post I may or may not be ten kilos heavier…
The First of December today! Tis officially the season to be jolly now – not October, as many soulless chain department stores would have you believe. This means that our $2 shop mini Christmas tree can be displayed now – and it is, perched aloft on our microwave (which is perched aloft on one of the fridges, incidentally – we have space issues in our kitchen), helpfully absorbing radiation everytime we defrost some mince.
Guess who we saw yesterday?
Above: Becks on the big screen! He was actually on the field in reality too, but LA Galaxy (lined up here during half time to recieve a pounamu ‘trinket’ as the commentator clumsily put it) were on the complete opposite side of the field to us.
Above: Ohyeahtherewassoccertoo. But Beckham!!
Just kidding. I admit freely – well, I do loathe sports – that to me last night’s Phoenix/Adelaide game was a mere precursor to the Beckham game tonight, but in fact I really got into it, and have to say soccer is faaaar more exciting to watch than rugby and more elegant, too. We lost in the end – but it was rather thrilling to watch, and great fun to be part of the record crowd turnout for soccer in New Zealand (around 18,000 – Beckham was probably laughing his head off that this was the biggest crowd we’ve had.) So, am something of a convert to The Beautiful Game – but remain unwavering in my belief that Sport = Bullying.
Anyway, because this is a food blog, and not some kind of psychological diary for how being forced to do sport at school has scarred me for life, (I’m not kidding though, I think it might have…) I’d better get back on topic. Have just picked up my enormous chunk of ham from the butcher, and am going to start cooking all manner of things in advance for tomorrow night. Needless to say, I’m very, very excited!
Have just done The Grocery Shop for the Christmas Dinner, which is breathing down my neck…wait that doesn’t sound so positive. It’s looming – wait, that sounds too shadowy and dark. The Christmas Dinner approacheth! I won’t lie, I’m feeling a little frazzled but I really don’t want to turn into one of those people who insist on doing everything themselves and then complain that they have so much to do. But look at it this way: The dinner is on Sunday. I am working all day tomorrow, then we are going to the Phoenix/Australia soccer game. On Saturday night is the Beckham/Phoenix game. I will be very, very busy. I was going to get the truffles started tonight, but of course the only (so far) thing I forgot to buy was bloody icing sugar and the stuff we have has gluten in it which kiboshes that. Never mind, I feel that making truffles after 10.00pm can only end with a tearful breakdown, followed by eating All The Truffle Mixture.
Before you ask, I didn’t make scones just so I could use that as a title. I am not like the oily Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice, who stored up delicate compliments and witticisms in the hopes of being able to drop them in the conversation at some stage…Ah, who am I kidding.
Outrageous Fortune update: Loretta, don’t give away your baby! Cheryl, don’t go near Gary! And once more, Judd! Come back! Only two more episodes till the season ends which means only two things: things will get even more fraught on the show, and there will be a black hole in our Tuesday evenings till Season 4 starts.
Another day, another disorganised camera drama. This one isn’t on the scale of The Pork Debacle or the day the biscuit photos disappeared…but it is nonetheless a pain. This means I can’t show you a photo of my new pride and joy, a large bottle of sherry – a present from Mum – which I am super excited about using, or all the cookbooks that Tim lugged back for me from home, which I also can’t wait to try out, or – more’s the pity – the finished Chocolate Guinness Cake, which deserves every bit of its capitalisation – it is enormous, dense, and dark, a king amongst cakes.
Don’t fret though, as I do have some photos which I uploaded to the hard drive before leaving home. I organise with one hand, and disorganise with the other. And, as all you can do is step back in time, here are some things from the weekend, when I was still at home.
Above: The veges for the Tunisian vegetable stew from Nigella’s Feast! Look at them all! I made this, and the Chocolate Guinness Cake also from Feast, to take along to a family party on Saturday. Tim helped me chop everything, otherwise it would have taken hours. I have often made the meatballs – just the other day we had them, in fact – and have made the vege stew before, but haven’t had them together yet, as per Nigella’s suggestion. Well, it is a fab combo, and great to take to potluck dinners. We didn’t have any harissa, so I just added a bit more cumin to the mix, which didn’t matter as there were going to be people of all ages eating this who might not like chilli!
Above: The meatballed stew in its toureen, with Feast in the background…never realised how useful those cookbook holders are for preventing your books from getting mucky – haven’t seen one in shops for ages though! This stew is not only easy, it is delicious, very good for you, and adaptable as heck.
Above: Butter and Beer, together at last. Mine and Tim’s favourite things, respectively… Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer asks Apu if he has any of that beer with candy floating in it, “You know, Skittlebrau?” Apu says Homer must have dreamt it. So Homer buys a dozen beer and a packet of skittles. By the way, the above picture is for the Chocolate Guinness cake. We could only find packs of 4x440ml cans and the cake needed a mere 250mls so Tim manfully dealt with the rest…
Above: This is the biggest one-tin cake I have ever made! I don’t know what makes it so enormous – perhaps the Guinness bubbles?
Mum is posting me the usb cord for the camera, so you won’t be able to see what the iced cake looks like till then. Let me tell you this though: It tasted intensely gooood. And, I suspect, it would taste even better the next day. Now, I’m off to work, which is a little jarring after a week of gallivanting and watching movies I’ll admit…
Hungry and Frozen 