Everybody Loves Cake

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Last night Tim and I went to his friend’s 21st party in Palmerston North. We had a fantastic time and ate and drank like lords. I thought that I would show you a picture of the staggeringly enormous birthday cake – it was about 2ft wide!

Above: As Wesley in the Princess Bride would say: “I have never seen its equal.”

It took us forever to get back to Wellington on the bus, mostly because of the incompetent boobery of our driver. However my faith in bus drivers was restored when Tim and I, weary with carrying our heavy load and longing to get home, emerged from the railway station, hobbled across the road, and saw the bus that goes up to our flat about to take off in the distance. I ran towards it and waved it down and the driver actually stopped and let us on. The fact that buses that go up our way only come around once an hour on Sunday made this victory extra sweet.

For once: not Nigella.

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Apologies in advance if this post is a little lacklustre – have just watched a lot of telly and am pretty tired.

I have a difficult time staying consistently ‘healthy’ in my eating habits. I’ll do pilates, have some soymilk, and then follow it up with a buttered chocolate bar. Okay, I’m joking…barely. Last night’s dinner was a good enough example of this – salad and lentil soup (healthy) with homemade mince pies (unhealthy.) However, in my opinion, as long as there are lots of vegetables and other good things present, it can’t be too bad.

The lentil soup came from Alison Holst’s Dollars And Sense cookbook. I have no snarky comments to make – it was great soup, very easy and made from stuff I had in the cupboard. Yet another reminder of why this book is worth reading over.
Above: Lentils, vegetables, spices, water – this pretty much cancels out buttery pastry…right?

So taken was I with the beetroot and feta tarts that I thought I would make the pastry shells again and fill them with (much cheaper) mince to make a kind of homespun Big Ben pie, if you will. As you can see I got a little excited with the leftover pastry scraps…

Above: Twinkle, twinkle little pie…These were not just a pretty picture, they tasted rather lovely too. I could only manage one (my pie tin makes four) probably because I’d eaten too much pastry while making them, but Tim snarfed his down. He had my second one for breakfast this morning and said it was the best he’d ever had. Well, I guess anything beats Weet-bix (to which I have a particular aversion.)

Finally, balancing this out was a salad of beans, cucumber, and our old friends feta and walnuts. I didn’t have cucumber so replaced it with fennel, quelle surprise! This recipe comes from the New Zealand cookbook, and is a fabulous combination with a lovely lemony dressing. Tim and I hoovered it up in about ten seconds – it’s very more-ish.
Above: Hopefully everyone isn’t sick of seeing things scattered in feta and walnuts…

Dinner tonight was something I’ve been craving all day- a vast pot of pasta. I don’t know if there is Italian blood coursing through my veins somewhere but few things make me happier than pasta. Of course, creamy cheese-laden pasta dishes are a lot easier to love than the more austere tomato sauce that we had tonight, yet it was still richly flavoured and filling and all those other good things. I based the sauce on a Moroccan recipe in The Accidental Vegetarian, which adds cinnamon, cumin and tumeric to give aromatic depth. I biffed in a handful of red lentils and let them simmer away into nothing. It was delicious! I suppose it didn’t help that I ate half a packet of wine gums while watching America’s Next Top Model (oh the irony!)

Above: Made with canned tomatoes for 60c from Kmart! Tip for the wise: never buy your canned tomatoes from the supermarket, they are much cheaper at Kmart or the Warehouse. By the way…I crumbled some feta over the pasta, as you can probably see, but hastily stirred it through so it wouldn’t be a focal point of this picture.
Right, am off to bed now: being crosseyed and dozy does not make for a sparklingly witty blog.

“My conscience, thou art feta’d…”

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On the one hand: overkill. On the other hand: It’s what Shakespeare would have wanted…

But really, I am going to have to reign it in.

Last night’s dinner used up the last of the pork. I thought there wasn’t much left on the bone, but once I started digging I amassed a sizable pile. To go with I made Feta Bread from The Accidental Vegetarian, and the Red Peppers with Feta and Almonds from Nigella Bites. Except I didn’t have almonds so I used walnuts. I like to get the most out of my luxury items (guess which two things they are this week?) which is why you may notice some repetition in ingredients this week…


Above: Doh! This is the dough after rising for an hour or so – I halved the recipe, and this is our biggest bowl – I can’t imagine what would have happened if I’d kept to the original proportions. I don’t know why this photo came out so dark, but I rather like how it looks rather sinister and dark side of the moon-esque…

The recipe was incredibly easy, the only difficult bit was kneading in the feta, mint and olive oil after it rose. I think if I were to make it again, I’d add the oil at the start, as putting it in at the end made the dough completely uncooperative, and nothing would cohere. I eventually managed to bully the dough into incorporating the feta but it looked a bit messy. Luckily it cooked up well and tasted amazing!


Above: The finished product. It tasted wonderful! I think it would be great as part of a ‘bread and dips’ selection.

As I mentioned up there, we had red peppers sprinkled with feta and walnuts to go with. For the two of us, I cut one large red pepper into six – they are still pretty expensive, hence the holding back, as I could eat cooked peppers till the cows come home! This is a very simple recipe – just shove the peppers under the grill for a bit, and that’s about it. I added some sliced fennel for contrast and, well, extra presence of veges. The combination was, not surprisingly, fantastic.


Above: Pretty, too! I imagine this would be fab chopped up and stirred through pasta as well.

After that we all drank wine and beer (prompted by Emma, who had her last exam yesterday) and stayed up yarning till 3am asking all those questions that life throws at you – like, “why are students taxed so bloody much when we earn so little?” and “is it pronounced di-PLOD-oh-cus or dip-lo-DOH-cus?”

Is This A Beetroot I See Before Me…

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After handling the stalks and leaves of a bunch of beetroot yesterday, I came to the conclusion that Shakespeare is trying to tell me something from beyond the grave…Hamlet style! Or perhaps more in the style of Richard III, after all…okay, I’ll stop, I mean I have finished my exam and everything.


Above: Out, damned spot! I guess it makes sense that if beetroot make your hands red, so will their stalks. If there is one thing I enjoy more than a pun it is a visual pun, and as soon as I saw my hands turn so “incarnadine” I knew that somewhere out there, Shakespeare was endorsing my continued delight in misusing his words.
Anyway –

Above:These are the intensely pink stalks of beetroot, which, with the leaves, went into my intensely healthy lunch yesterday: Noodles with Beet Greens from Nigella’s How To Eat. I made this because I had noticed that our beetroot from the market was so, erm, well endowed with stalks, and didn’t want to waste them, even though it had never occured to me to eat them before. A word of caution – apart from the obvious, that they stain – only use the very thin stalks, anything too thick will taste unsurmountably fibrous and woody. So: into boiled soba noodles go the steamed and wilted beet bits, followed by a few Asian flavourings.

Above: Once I got over the fact that like a panda, I was eating shoots and leaves, I really liked this. The greens (and pinks) had a strong silverbeet flavour which went well with the soy sauce I’d put in, and it was satisfyingly filling.
For dinner we had leftover pork, which I augmented with some Beetroot (waste not, want not) and Feta tarts from The Accidental Vegetarian. Well. They are incredible. I simplified the recipe somewhat, making my own pastry – smugly, I didn’t even use a recipe. Well, I think pastry is justifiable to be smug about, but then maybe it’s not – all you do is use flour, half its weight in butter, whizz it up, add a little water…and that’s it!
I got to use some awesome little tart tins that I bought impulsively at the Food Show earlier this year (all the while telling Tim “of course I’ll use them!!”) The very cool thing about them is that the base lifts out of each little indentation to make it easier to lift them out.

Above: I can’t believe something that dinky sprang forth from my hands.
I filled them with a mixture of roast beetroot, parboiled brocolli, feta and walnuts. Ooooooh they were good.
Above: Ooooooh. Words fail me.
I guess it goes without saying that after dinner we watched Outrageous Fortune…

Gentlemen Prefer Blondies

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I bought some more pork. I wasn’t going to, but I thought – My public needs me. However, I made a different recipe to the last, semi-disastrous time, mostly because Marsala is relatively pricey and the Roast Pork Cinghiale uses rather a lot of it. I turned instead to the much simpler Slow Cooked Pork from Nigella Bites, actually a recipe for 12 people (with 9 1/2 kilos of pork!!) so I had to scale it down…a lot. You are supposed to cook it in a low oven overnight, after smearing it with a chilli-garlic-ginger paste, but I just left our comparitively meagre 1.6kg in for about 5, while Tim and I went off to do our exam. Still tender as a woman’s kiss. I presume.

Above: An actual photo of pork! Look, you guys didn’t miss out on much last time because…I still haven’t figured out how to make pork look good on camera. I believe studio lighting and some photoshop might help.
To go with, I made a dish I’ve been eyeing for some time, from The Accidental Vegetarian: Fennel, Asparagus and Roast Potato salad. I fiddled with it slightly, in that I didn’t add the Italian dressing or rocket leaves, but it was amaaaazingly good. The roasted potato gave crunch, the asparagus gave its own brand of magical deliciousness, and the crisp shards of fennel gave cool, fresh contrast, not only to the slight oiliness of the other veges but also to the rich pork.

Above: The reason I am thankful for the vege market.
We ate this while watching The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, which is a pretty amusing film, though I think I prefer the book. I particularly like how the doors on the spaceship open and close with a sigh – and how we caught a glimpse of New Zealand at the end when they are zooming all over the world. Then, as you know, we went and watched the spectacular fireworks, from the top of the Cable Car lookout, which is a 5-10 minute walk from our place. It was a very clear, still night – miraculously – so perfect for such an occasion.
When we got back I was going to make something for dessert but didn’t have the energy. The idea of having to measure flour made me want to weep like a bairn, so I left it till this morning to make…White Chocolate Brownies (or Blondies, if you will.) These come from Nigella’s How to Be A Domestic Goddess and are child’s play to make.
Speaking of which, I found the following amusing:
Above: Zoom in – gorgeous white chocolate.
Above: Zoom Out – Why yes, that is a pack of loo roll and half a roast chicken on our dining table.
Anyway, melted white chocolate and butter goes into beaten eggs and sugar (I used half brown to give it extra fudginess) and flour gets folded in (or flung, in my case – I can never keep the stuff in one place.)

Above: photo by Tim, who is as adept at capturing slow-moving batter as he is with fireworks. Even though you can only see about 1/18 of my hands (okay, 1/3, they’re pretty small) what is visible is very floury and smeary. Imagine That!

Above: The finished blondies. These are great, in that they are no effort to make and yet repay you with such gratifying squidginess. The only thing that I think would improve these is a handful of white chocolate chips or the like in the batter but…I just really like white chocolate (even though there is a vogue for claiming to love the intensely bitter 300% cocoa solids dark chocolate these days.)

Kaboom!

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Am very, very tired so no update tonight. (She says, presuming people are actually out there on tenterhooks awaiting my every word.) The exam is over, which is such a great feeling, I wish I could bottle it. Eau d’temporary freedom. Anyway, you will find out about tonight’s dinner tomorrow, but in the meantime, here’s what we did tonight –

Above: Photo by Tim. The Wellington fireworks display is pretty big, I’m talking Olympic-opening-ceremony big. It went for a whole fifteen minutes! Happy Guy Fawkes!

Chickpeas in unexpected places…

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Shakespeare Exam tomorrow! Forsooth! I actually reeeally enjoy Shakespeare and will miss incorporating him into my blog in the vague hope that everything-is-learning (in the same way that Mum and I watched Amelie when I was studying for French in high school.)

Boring as it is to begin with weather, it needs to be said that it has been horrible lately in Wellington – humid and windy, (so your hair goes both frizzy and knotty) blustery, damp and generally miserable. What happened to the sunny days of last week, and the week before? In spite of this, Tim, Kieran and I schlepped down to the vege market and I ended up with all sorts of cheering goodies – another tray of free range eggs, a fennel bulb, rhubarb, beetroot, brocolli, coriander, chillies, kaffir lime leaves, strawbs ($1.50 a punnet!) bananas, celery, and red capsicums, all for very cheap.
For dinner tonight I made Nigella’s Chicken Stew with Chickpeas and Harissa from How To Eat. I wish I’d thought to make it sooner on in the year because it is very easy and relatively inexpensive. It does require forward planning; the chickpeas I soaked, earth-motherlike, in a bowl overnight, and the harissa I made this afternoon.
Above: The ingredients for the harissa, which I arranged artfully on this board before realising that now I had to veeery carefully chop the chillies and garlic without disturbing the mound of salt.
Harissa is – from experience – a sort of paste of chillies, garlic, salt, cumin, coriander, caraway, vinegar and olive oil. I personally can’t deal with much chilli but find this mixture completely addictive. I only used one chilli, and made the whole thing in my pestle and mortar that I got from Mum and Dad for Christmas a few years back. I dry-fried a teaspoon each of cumin, coriander and caraway seeds, then ground them into dust in the P&M. In this goes the chopped chilli, garlic, and sea salt, plus a little vinegar and enough olive oil to amalgamate the lot.
Above: Harissa. I can eat it by the spoonful…
It is worth pointing out that I cooked the chickpeas while this was happening. I then assembled the chicken stew which involved nothing more arduous than putting a whole lot of stuff in a pan, covering it with water, and bringing it to the boil. The harissa gets stirred in too, which is why it needs making first. You can, of course, buy harissa, but I guess it is in my nature to want to make this sort of thing from scratch.

Above: The chicken was so tender after its hour or so simmering away that it fell to pieces at the mere prod of a wooden spoon. Considering it was freezer-burned chicken that I’d found buried under the frozen peas and forty half-bags of mixed veges, I was Very Impressed. I served this with bulghur wheat, and it was really, seriously delicious and comforting.
The rest of the chickpeas that I’d cooked up went into – of all things – a chocolate cake. I found a recipe from Nigella.com for this gluten-free creation, based on chickpeas as opposed to the usual ground almonds. Intrigued by its simplicity and the positive review that the person who posted it gave, I decided to make it.
Above: Good grief! It’s fantastic! It is chocolately, moist, and has a somehow puffy yet dense texture.
Emma, our resident gluten-shunner is happy as most cakes suitable for her involve hundreds of dollars worth of ground almonds, or are seriously rich – it has to be said that celiac cakes tend to be very puddingy, rather than tasting of homespun baking. In fact I’m so taken with it that here is the recipe. I used orange juice squeezed from oranges that Stefan’s dad sent him from the Hawke’s Bay – acerbic and heavy with juice.
Gluten Free Chocolate Chick Pea Cake (okay, that title is awful, sorry)

  • 300 -400g chickpeas (I had about 350g freshly cooked, otherwise I would use a well-drained can.)
  • 2/3 cup orange juice
  • 2/3 cup cocoa
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 t baking powder
  • 1 t baking soda
  • 4 eggs

Whizz up the chickpeas in a food processor, till very smooth. Add the other ingredients, whizz till incorporated, pour into a baking paper lined tin (I used 22cm) and bake at 180 for 50 minutes till a skewer comes out clean. If there are any remaining lumps of chickpea in the cooked cake – just tell people its walnuts.

PS – sorry bout the squint-making incongruity in paragraph size/spacing etc – try as I might, I haven’t managed to figure out how to make it uniform. In other words, it’s the computer, not me!

As Hamlet would say: "Fie upon’t!"

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Tim’s camera spat the dummy (and Tim is all, “now that it’s not working it’s my camera, huh?”) and all the photos I took yesterday have disappeared off the memory stick so…no photos. An expletive-inducing situation.

I had all sorts of things planned, too – I made the birthday biscuits from Nigella’s How To Eat yesterday after work, and took some actually rather good photos of them. I’m tempted to make them again, to try and recreate the magic, but in the meantime, if you want to see what they look like, this blogger made them also and has some awesome pix. This particular blog is what you might call a ‘touchstone’ (much as I dislike the buzzwordiness of that term) for me in matters concerning How To Eat, and makes for great reading, being that I am such a card-carrying Nigella boffin.

At any rate, the biscuits were very easy to make, and rolling them out wasn’t a chore. I used the star cutter that Mum got me from Ballantynes in Christchurch for my 17th birthday, and a heart cutter that I bought in a weak moment off Trademe, when I could have got it from the $2 shop or the Warehouse or something… They look quite beautiful and taste delicious, all warm with caramel and cinnamon. Though it pains me to admit it, I think they are actually far superior to the cut out biscuits that Nigella champions heavily in other books of hers. Ah well, it’s not like she’s reading this anyway…

The other thing, which unfulfilled is somehow is even more injurious to my soul, was that I had a photo of steak from last night’s dinner (we went to La Casa Pasta for a friend’s going-away) and I was going to caption it with “I am a pretty piece of flesh” (from Romeo and Juliet…my excitement over puns is a little worrying, I suppose.)

Camera: I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. Yes, I realise I’m talking to a camera.

Back to studying…the Shakespeare exam ain’t going to pass itself.

No pudding again? Souper…

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First post of November! Wait, it’s November already? Aaargh! Tim and I spent 4 hours at the library today, watching the BBC production of Richard III, which although erring on the side of endless, is really very enjoyable, with lots of fantastic lines. But still: Four Hours. I am drained…

I have restrained myself from making pudding lately, because, well, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to lay off the sugar a little. And boy, do I miss making pudding…sometimes a quartered orange just doesn’t cut it, but it is, as Nigella accurately notes in How To Eat, “something to stave off that moment of loneliness and despondency that always threatens to settle when you realise eating is over for the day.” Though it pains me a little to quote Meatloaf, she took the words right outta my mouth. The words were no doubt covered in butter.

Last night I made another recipe from Nigella.com, Tomato, Red Lentil and Chorizo Soup. I realise that chorizo probably isn’t the thing to eat if one is worrying about having too much pudding, but I figure the inclusion of red lentils and canned tomatoes instantly squashes any of that…At any rate, it was flavoursome and full of veges (and lentils!) and was very easy to make.


Above: Everything looks good in the bowls Ange left at our flat. Thanks, Ange.

Speaking of which, this soup would, I’m sure, be fine if you wanted to take it in a vegetarian direction and leave out the chorizo, or indeed you could replace the chorizo with bacon or somesuch to make it gluten-free. Now that I’ve talked it up, I feel I should provide the recipe, which is…here! Note – I halved it, used canned tomatoes, and didn’t have any capsicums. Still great!
To go with, I used a recipe from Annabel Cooks, a book by a very pleasant NZ cook, which I haven’t really used much because of the…expensive…nature of many of her recipes. I realise that someone so devoted to Nigella can’t throw stones but it’s different with her!! Anyway, Annabel Cooks is all “feta cheese” and “creme fraiche” this and “pine nuts” and “boneless skinless chicken breast” that. I did however find a recipe containing things I had in my cupboard, which was her variation on a dish that I consider to be a Kiwi ”classic” – potato bake.

The main difference in this one is that the potatoes are grated (kindly done by Tim.) It bakes slowly in the oven, ensconced in a mixture of eggs, milk and cheese, and comes out almost like a giant baked rosti, with lots of delicious crunchy bits on top and creamy yielding potato below.

Above: Looks good, right? Also vegetarian and gluten-free…oh what a world we live in.

Tonight’s dinner was a bit dull because I was pretty drained after all that Richard III and hadn’t planned anything exciting (and obv there was no pudding.) More soup though – something from Alyson Gofton’s Flavours cookbook, which is a million times superior to her schilling Watties products for Food in a Minute. Flavours has a good concept, too – each recipe is dedicated to a different flavouring, some familiar, like cocoa, vanilla pods, and ginger, some a little more interesting, like sherry, tumeric, and walnut oil, and some are those “I bought this on a whim and now what?” flavourings like saffron, verjuice and tamarind. I made the Garlic Soup, which although worryingly flatulent in title is nothing more taxing than onion soup with garlic in it. It is easy to make, with a lovely creamy texture – despite no cream – and is good for when you don’t think you have anything in the cupboards.
Above: Someone else: “Why is that photo cut off…let me adjust it a…” Me: “It’s supposed to be creative!” Just as some people can strew throw-pillows about their houses without looking messy, while others just look like they dumped cushions everywhere, well…you guess which category I fall into.
PS: Without wanting to sound like I’m asking for them…Don’t be shy with comments!

"Brevity is the soul of wit…"

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Spake the irritating Polonius in Hamlet, before launching into a lengthy speech, unaware of his foolishness…well at least I’m aware that this is a long post.

As I type I am having a very serene afternoon tea- a bowl of miso soup (made by adding boiling water to a spoonful of white miso paste.) I am even drinking it straight out of the bowl, both hands cupped around its warm curves – how very zen!


Above: What Othello might have called “Ocular proof” that I am, in fact, having soup. Anyway, I need all the “zen” I can get, as I have Shakespeare coming out my ears, rather than staying in my brain where he belongs, and our exam (Monday by the way) looms ever closer.
Last night I decided to peruse a much-loved but never used book of mine – the Victoria League of Auckland’s Tried Recipes, 5th edition (price: 2/-) It has recipes sent in by Good Women of Auckland, and has many chapters, including “Creams, Jellies, and Pretty Sweet Dishes” and “Gravies, Forcemeats and Sauces for Meat Dishes.” How I yearn for the days when cream-based puddings had their own category in cookbooks. I must admit, I was surprised to see the chapter “Vegetarian Cookery and Salad Dressings,” in that I small-mindedly didn’t think anyone was ‘allowed’ to be vegetarian in ‘those days.’ Should the discerning vegetarian about town in the 1940s/50s be looking for a meat-free substitute for brawn, this book has it. (And I quote – “The sago binds it”)

This book, like all good books of its kind, has three trillion variations on fruit cake, not to mention a plethora of obscurely named puddings that all seem to be the same – has anyone out there ever heard of: Chandos Pudding, Russel Pudding, Verney Pudding, Totnes Pudding, Marlborough Pudding? I think it’s worth pointing out that you could replace the word ‘pudding’ with ‘disease’ or ‘syndrome’ and they would sound quite credible. I know they were economising on eggs and butter but surely not beautiful words too? (also noted – the book includes recipes for both American Pudding and Canadian pudding and they are different, thank you very much.)
I know it sounds like I’m making fun of this book, but oh how I love it, and others of its ilk (Aunt Daisy, I’m looking at you.) In fact, last night’s dinner came from it, and I was snared instantly by its straightforward, thrifty title: “A Way to Cook Fish.”
It goes thusly: Fry an onion in butter, add some fish, lemon juice, and two egg yolks (into which I stirred a little cream.) It took as long to cook it as it did to type it out, and it is very, very good. I served it on top of pasta, with some greens that I had squeezed the rest of the lemon over.

Above: Yes, not much based on canned tuna will ever be photogenic. But, it tasted great. So, to Miss E.T Rose, of Stonehurst, Auckland, from whence this recipes came, I salute you.

In the spirit of economy, I decided to use the egg whites for dessert. I had found a recipe on Nigella.com for Butterscotch Mousse, which sounded like one of those store cupboard recipes that the Victoria League would go nuts for. It is very simple. First of all, make a caramel sauce, by melting 75g butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 100 mls cream together in a pot. Let this cool thoroughly, and then whisk up two eggs whites till stiff, and fold them in, followed by 200mls whipped cream (I used the same bowl.) It is rich and creamy and has a wonderful caramel flavour. If you cannot be bothered with whisking things, the sauce on its own would be great poured over ice cream.

Above: The Mousse, partially eaten.
It doesn’t ‘set’ like a gelatine-based mousse but completely makes up for its gloopiness with its voluptous butterscotch kick. We all (even Emma – it’s gluten free!) ate out of the same bowl, passed from person to person, as we watched Outrageous Fortune (technically studying since the title is a quote from Hamlet.)