Hey Hey, Chai Chai

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Yes, that is a slightly forced Neil Young reference in the title.

Nana kindly emailed me a recipe for some delicious sounding Chai spiced cookies, which I tried out this afternoon. I have had Chai tea before (as you know from previous posts) and I absolutely love its aromatic warmth. It is funny because I was just thinking about how Chai would make a great flavouring for something when I got the email from Nana. Doo dee doo doo (twilight zone theme, etc)
The recipe gave a blueprint for Chai flavouring – a heady combination of ground cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and white pepper. Unfortunately I didn’t have the cardamom like I thought, so my biscuits weren’t quite what the recipe specified, but were still fantastic, and pleasingly complementary to a mug of hot Chai tea.
Above: Cookies, straight from the oven…with the malevolent black beans lurking in the background…
Above: Cookies and Chai…I was trying, not altogether successfully, to imitate the photography in posh food magazines. I should point out that I never store or serve my bickies like this.

They tasted seriously good together though. Will definitely be making these again – thanks Nana!

The black beans (sent to me by Mum, by the way) ended up in a sort of loose Mexican style dinner, as you can see below. I love how they look more like gleaming beads than something actually edible.

Above: Dinner. I sauteed an onion and some garlic, tossed in some cumin and coriander seeds, browned the mince, added the mild chilli from a jar, paprika and a little cocoa for kick, biffed in beans both black and frozen, stirred in a tin of tomatoes and some water and let it simmer for half an hour. I served it over rice and it was really good – I just wish I’d had some fresh coriander to go with.
We ate this while watching the Christmas special of Outrageous Fortune on our DVD, the one where they go camping…it made me want to go to Awhitu so bad! Roll on summer! (And once again, no, TV3 isn’t paying me for free advertising of their show. I wish…)

Christmas is a-coming…

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As I mentioned in earlier posts, I had acquired a glut of rhubarb, which I finished off today while making Nigella’s Rhubarb Vanilla Mincemeat from Feast. I don’t like it when Christmas starts tooo early (particularly in areas of retail) but I didn’t want the rhubarb to wilt and mincemeat can only improve on sitting. Nigella says it would make an excellent gift, and after tasting some of the end result, I’m inclined to agree. So if you like what you see, take a number, stand in line…

First of all, I chopped up my stash of rhubarb-
 It’s really that colour! To paraphrase Anne (she of Green Gables, that is), you could say “pink” a thousand times and it wouldn’t describe how pink this rhubarb is.

I then did something that falls into the category of “silly but not surprising for Laura.” I measured in the brown sugar, and the spices, and the dried fruit (raisins, sultanas, currants) before realising that the rhubarb and sugar needs to be simmered alone first before adding the fruit. So I spent a good ten minutes fishing out 300g of raisiny things out with a spoon, before I started simmering the rhubarb.

 

A darkly fragrant vanilla bean, sliced in half and then into bits. All the seeds are scraped into the rhubarb and the pods are chucked in for good measure.

 

Once I had simmered the rhubarb, I returned the fished out raisins, currants and sultanas to their rightful place! This needed simmering for half an hour, and filled the flat with a gorgeous, spicy fruity aroma.
Mincemeat! The rhubarb sort of “melted” into the fruit. The final step was to toss in some brandy (which I don’t have and so used the more-than-worthy substitute of Marsala All’uovo)
The mincemeat is now cooling, along with some black beans which I boiled and left to soak in anticipation of tonight’s dinner (I’m thinking something Mexican-esque.) Once the water heats up, the beans turn everything black:
Above: Oh, you sinister beans!

What would Scarlett O’Hara Do?

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I admit that I haven’t actually seen Gone With The Wind, but I remember reading years ago in…a Sweet Valley High book (oh the delicious juxtaposition between high and low culture) that she was particularly resourceful. Incidentally, is it worrying that “Johanssen” not “O’Hara” is the first thing that pops into my head upon hearing the word Scarlett?

Anyway, what S’OH might have done, if she found out that her boyfriend had deleted the photos of roast pork and the ensuing stir fry (when of course, she should have uploaded them sooner so the blame is on both sides)…is shown the world some photos she prepared earlier! This year, before I started this blog, I was taking photos fairly regularly of recipes (usually Nigella’s) that I’d made. In fact, it was in pondering why I took these photos that I first considered starting a blog.
So; with a flourish to distract you from the empty promises of previous posts- a trip down memory lane! Disclaimer – these photos were taken before I started this blog and so aren’t that great – not that the rest of my photos are – but, well, this is what our food looks like under the light of our kitchen.

Above: Custard Cream Hearts, from Nigella’s Feast. The custard buttercream filling is quite, quite addictive. I’m lucky there was any left to fill these beauties!

Above: Chickpea and Zuchinni Filo Pie, from Nigella’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess. It sounds much more like something you’d buy at a cafe and not ever contemplate making at home, but it isn’t tooooo fiddly (despite the word ‘Filo’ in the title) and tastes soooo good, all fragrant with cumin and tumeric. I recommend this if you are ever needing to seduce a vegetarian.
Above: Chocolate Fudge Cake, from Nigella Bites. It is an old fashioned, solid chocolate cake and the icing is just ridiculously good.I made it for Tim’s birthday in September.
Above: Pasta from my impulse-bought pasta machine. It is more delicious than any pasta I have ever had…definitely worth the effort! I used the pasta recipe from Nigella Bites (1 egg to every 100g flour, which feeds one person – an easy equation) and got Tim to help me crank the machine. It cooks in literally seconds, in boiling salted water, and I dressed it simply in butter and nutmeg. If I had the time, I’d probably eat this every day.
The roast pork, by the way, was from Nigella’s Feast, and was an Italian recipe for New Years called “Roast Pork Cinghiale.” The marinade involved marsala fine, pink peppercorns, garlic, allspice, olive oil, brown sugar, and a few other bits and pieces. Once roasted, the sugar and the wine caramelised it wonderfully while the pepper and spices provided a densely earthy flavour. A seriously great way of treating pork.
In honour of the New Years Pork: I resolve to be more organised!

Oh, wouldn’t it be luver-lee…

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Tim is off at his awkwardly early staff Christmas party, to which partners (ie me!) are not invited. With him is the camera you see, and since I forgot to upload the latest photos it will be a wee while before you can see how the roasted pork turned out, and indeed, the Thai stirfry with cubes of leftover roast pork that we had for dinner the next night.

All is not lost though, because as per usual, I have plenty to ruminate upon. I walked into town with Tim today, and left him at Starbucks to begin his shift while I went off to wander round town, clutching my complimentary Chai steamed soy milk. It was cold and drizzly today- the perfect weather to be inhaling the spicy gingerbread scent of Chai. While on a fruitless mission locating Kilner jars (for Christmas food projects!) I ended up in Kirkcaldie and Staines – a place I don’t really frequent for fear of knocking over something expensive, or having some long thin woman look down her long thin nose at me.

However, in their “Cuisine” section, I found the place where I want Santa to visit for me this year. It’s as though they read all of Nigella’s books, wrote down everything she uses, and then sourced it out for this shop.

I found all manner of enticing goodies including (not exclusively, by the way, I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few things in the excitement):

-Dried Trompette De Mort mushrooms, sold 25g at a time, along with chantarelles and porcini
-Beautiful glace fruit, glistening with sugar; Orange slices, figs, and muscatel grapes
-Gelatine leaves
-Carnaroli Rice (like arborio rice for risotto, but well, more expensive)
-Tiny sugar flowers for decorating cupcakes
-Smoked paprika
-Canned chesnuts, whole and pureed (I was lucky enough to get a can of them last Christmas)
-Mushroom Ketchup, something that has presented a giant question mark in my mind since Nigella mentioned it in How To Eat…well, it exists!

In the cookware section I salivated over copper pots, mini bundt and savarin tins (although what on earth would I do with them?) ceramic pie weights for blind baking and of course, Nigella’s range of Living Kitchen gear. I had a moment of wishing I could buy the lot (singing “If I were a rich wo-man, do do do de do de do de do de deeee) but sometimes it is nice just to dream, and happily I felt satisfied and inspired, rather than resentful and skint. In the end I bought a present for Tim – some very classy looking sugar-free shortbread. The man before me at the checkout had bought some leaf gelatine, but he didn’t look at all pleased about it like I would have. I suppressed the temptation to say to him, “Isn’t it a trifle off-putting that in large letters the label states that the main ingredient is pig skin?” Maybe he’d already noticed.

Thus, with my Starbucks takeaway cup and Kirk’s bag I must have looked a lot richer than I really am, strolling down the road.

In other news, after seeing the headlines in the Dominion Post (can’t remember specifically, but it was tantamount to “The End Is Nigh and nothing you can do will stop it”) I unplugged all possible power cords at our flat, and quaked nervously for a bit. Our flat is actually pretty green – most of our lightbulbs are the aforementioned long lasting ones, we recycle religously, we only use cold water in the washing machine, we only buy free range eggs, do all our groceries in one go (less car trips!) and anyone who leaves a lightbulb on while out of their room gets a withering look. I know every bit helps, but it’s not easy to keep from freaking out at such headlines as the Dom Post had. I do, however, see the irony of doing all this while drooling over imported foreign Nigella-friendly food items…c’est la vie…

24 Little Hours…

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After all that steak-and-cake, I felt like doing something a little lighter for dinner last night. A bit difficult to say this with a straight face though, as I currently have almost 2 kilos of pork marinading in the fridge…

Above: Marinading pork – you know those arcarock plates aren’t small either!
Well, the pork was only $7.99 a kilo at New World Metro in town, which is actually cheaper than mince was when we last went to Pak’n’Save. Nothing against mince though, as it was used to great effect at last night’s dinner, Thai beef in lettuce from Nigella’s Forever Summer. It is so quick, all you need to do is zap some rice to go with. It is also cheap to make and a great use for Fish Sauce, should your bottle be languishing in the cupboard. The kindest way to describe fish sauce is pungent…but it really is worth getting over the initial scent for the salty depth and flavour it brings to food. It’s only about $2.50 a bottle, to boot.

Thai Crumbled Beef in Lettuce Wraps
-1 t vegetable oil
-1 red chilli, finely chopped (I used some of that chilli and lime that comes in a jar, because neither Tim nor I can handle tooo much heat)
-375g beef mince (or however much will feed the people you are serving – this is a loose recipe)
-1 T Thai fish sauce
-Zest and juice of one lime
-Coriander and iceberg lettuce to serve.

This is a loose, undemanding recipe, which I have adapted slightly from the book. Heat the oil in a wok/pan, and when it is hot add the chillis and stir till softened. Add the mince, and cook till it is no longer pink. Stir in the fish sauce, lime juice/zest, and most of the coriander. It might look quite dry and crumbly, but don’t worry. To serve, rip off whole lettuce leaves and fill with the mince, so the lettuce acts as a kind of bowl. Sprinkle over the rest of the coriander. It might end up looking something like this-
Above: Last night’s dinner. I sprinkled sesame seeds over, and stirred some frozen beans into the rice because, well, it’s so easy.

This is seriously delicious! Speaking of which…here is the blonde mocha cake, 24 hours later…
Above: That’s how good it is! 

Shameless Self Promotion

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Hoorah! This page has had 200 views! Not bad considering I have about 4 readers. Also exciting is that this blog has been around long enough to have archive pages…

The 200th view may or may not have had something to do with me clicking the ‘refresh’ button…

The Hardest Button To Button…

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We had a bit of a feast yesterday because, well, yesterday marked two years since Tim and I started going out. Yay for us! We toyed with the idea of going out to dinner but (a) it would cost too much, (b) I like to cook too much and (c) we didn’t want to make too big a deal of it. So instead, we splurged on some steak, which I marinated, Scandinavian-styles, in vodka, garlic, thyme and olive oil. This recipe comes via Nigella’s Feast and is very simple. I did take a photo of the steak marinading in one of those bags you get at the bulk section at Pak’n’Save (which I always hold on to for this very purpose) but…it looked a little too unattractively like something out of “Silence of the Lambs” for my liking. For all of our sakes, it will not feature here.

I had a hankering to do something with white chocolate for pudding and found the perfect recipe in Nigella’s Forever Summer: Blonde Mocha Layer Cake, so named for its pairing of coffee and white chocolate flavours. Sounds like hard work, but really it isn’t. It is a coffee flavoured sponge sandwiched together with creamy white chocolate icing, and it’s a doddle to make. So, while the steak was marinading fleshily, I got on with the cake.

It is based on a Victoria Sponge recipe, one that Nigella often adapts in her books. I creamed equal amounts of butter and sugar (225g) and added four eggs, 225g self raising flour, 1/4 cup strong black coffee and a tablespoon of milk. Dollop this into two buttered and lined 21cm caketins and bake at 180 C for 25 or so minutes. This recipe can be made plain – with all milk instead of coffee – and roughly halved (that is, 125g butter, sugar, and flour, 2 eggs, 2 T milk) it makes fantastically easy cupcakes, which you bake for about 20 or so minutes. Anyone passing through our flat earlier this year will remember my brief but torrid affair with cupcakes, which resulted in all sorts of creations (mostly Nigella’s)…lavender cupcakes, orange cupcakes, carrot cake cupcakes, coca-cola chocolate cupcakes…The point is, it is all kinds of versatile.


Above: Two moons! Actually, the golden coffee flavoured sponges fresh from the oven. (incidentally, I found out that it was the place where I work that was behind the “Two Moons” ad all those years ago! It has been their most well received ad campaign ever apparently.)

While they were cooling I boiled the potatoes in preparation for another recipe from Feast, “Sticky Garlic Potatoes.” While they were bubbling away I heated up some olive oil in a roasting dish in the oven, and chopped some garlic cloves. The idea is, once you have drained the boiled potatoes, you bash them up a bit with the end of a rolling pin or somesuch, tip them, with the garlic into the hot roasting dish, and roast them, the garlic and oil sort of “catching” the fuzzy bits and making it all crispy and delicious.

Once they were in the oven, I heated up the pan for the steak and put some frozen beans on to boil. Now I have to admit here that I forgot to scale down the marinade ingredients (Nigella’s recipe feeds a lot more than two) so…the steak was a schmeer on the intense side. To be honest, I had to send it back for a second go in the pan in order to cook out all the vodka. I was a bit annoyed with myself because I’d made this before with great success. In the end it tasted great – and looked pretty good too.


Above: Say it with steak, not flowers, I reckon…the potatoes were all they promised to be: crunchy (but creamily fluffy within!) and garlicky. The beans were…well, they made our dinner look healthier.

Because the table was too covered in junk for us to eat on we opted for the lounge where we watched another installment of Season 2 Outrageous Fortune on DVD…before switching over to TV3 to watch the current season’s episode. They should definitely be paying me for all the free advertising I’m giving them! In the ads I made the icing for the now-cooled sponges. It involved butter, (90g) white chocolate, (250g) sour cream (250g) and icing sugar (250g) in rather terrifying proportions. It was very easy to make though – melt this, stir this, sift that – and looked absolutely wondrous:


Above: Mmmmmmmm….There was actually rather a lot of icing, which made licking the bowl all the more gratifying.

I then thickly iced and sandwiched the sponges. It has to be said that the baked sponges look rather shallow and unimpressive, but once they are filled and iced it is another story altogether. I thought a dusting of cocoa on top might make it evocative of a cappucino…See?


Above: The finished Blonde Mocha Cake.

I have to say, it is an inspired flavour pairing. I think if I was having an actual espresso, I would rather have some dark chocolate, but for coffee in cake-form, white chocolate is the way to go. It’s rich fudginess is the perfect foil for the smoky depth that the coffee provides, the slight bitterness of which means that the combination isn’t at all cloying.

Happy Labour Day!

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Tim and I decided to honour Labour Day by doing as little as possible.
We did consider going for a picnic in the Botanical Gardens, but concluded that it would be far too much effort and easier, not to mention just as pleasant, to have lunch outside our flat. Not only did this capitalise on the fab weather, it also dealt with some leftovers, “European Style.” We had the minestrone and crepes-canneloni from the other night, and I whipped up a quick pasta salad. It is based on one I have eaten at Tim’s place a few times, (I believe it is his Mum’s recipe and a family favourite.) I can’t say that mine was as good as the original, but still pretty moreish. I boiled up some pasta spirals, ran them under cold water, and then added sesame seeds, soy sauce, sesame oil and chopped celery. I also made a batch of rhubarb muffins from Nigella’s Feast, which made a small dent in my enormous bunch of the stuff.


Above: The chopped rhubarb for the muffins – look how pink it is!

The muffin recipe is very easy, as most tend to be. While they were baking, we had our lunch, with a table fashioned from Stefan’s chilly bin.


Above: Pasta Salad, Minestrone, Crepes-Canneloni…

Can I just say that the Minestrone tasted a trillion times nicer after its time in the fridge? Make it before you even think you might want it, is my advice. We managed to put away quite a lot, and it was lovely sitting out there in the sun. We had Rufus Wainwright on the stereo because we are seeing him in concert next year (am Very Excited about it – for those of you who don’t know, he’s the guy who sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah for the movie Shrek) After eating all that, plus wine and beer (European Style!) I wasn’t sure we’d have room for muffins but…look at these babies.


Above: These muffins were awesome – soft and warm from the oven, with a great sweet-sour contrast from the brown sugar sprinkled on top and rhubarb encased within. What a great day…back to work tomorrow though!

Madeleines, Crepes-Canneloni, and…Judi Dench?

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Warning: Long Post Ahead. Anyone reading this who knows me will be used to this…anyone reading this who doesn’t know me…Welcome!

Yesterday was that rare, rare thing in Wellington: A sunny day without wind. Unfortunately it was pretty much wasted on us as Tim had work all day at Starbucks. Nevertheless, we made the most of what time we had and went to the vege market in town to get a tray of free range eggs (definitely worth it, even if you are on a budget – plus we have a strict “happy chicken only” policy in our flat) They were white eggs, which is pretty unusual these days, although contrary to popular belief brown eggs aren’t in any way superior to white ones, it’s just that, (like people I guess) brown hens seem to lay brown eggs and white hens lay white ones.

So, while Tim toiled away making syrup-cinos for people, I went back to the flat, sat out on our sunny courtyard (with sunblock on and with my head in the shade, by the way) and read some Shakespeare. I was so busy basking in the sun and feeling self-satisfied that I almost forgot to read but it was a nice way of studying whilst not missing out on the weather.

I had started making some Proust’s Madeleines from Nigella’s How To Eat before I started studying – this is because they require an hour’s sit in the fridge. I know of the late Proust but not about him; a bit like when you get a word in Pictionary that you know you could easily spell but not draw a description of. A quick Wikipedia search reveals him to be an asthmatic, gay French novelist who expounded the delights of this little cake in his novel, À la recherche du temps perdu. Since I have recently acquired a natty silicone madeline tray (at the same time I got the steamer) I wanted to try them out, and enjoyed the sense of history behind my baking venture.

The recipe is pleasingly simple. I don’t know if anyone out there has a madeleine tray and would appreciate the recipe – let me know if you do. Firstly, one beats a couple of eggs and some sugar till thick. Nigella recommends using electric beaters, and so do I, in hindsight, but I decided to pursure with a mere whisk, not only in the hopes of dovetailing making cakes with excercise, but also to keep in the spirit of Proust himself, whose madeleines most likely preceded the invention of the electric beater.


Above: the whisked eggs and sugar, with How To Eat behind the bowl.

To this one adds sifted flour and some melted butter with a tablespoon of honey mixed in. I used some manuka honey that Mum and Dad had sent in a parcel. This needs to sit in the fridge for an hour, and then out of the fridge for half an hour, to get to room temperature. I don’t know what the reasoning behind this is, but I dutifully did it anyway. This isn’t something one could make spontaneously, but is definitely not taxing if you have the time, a bit like making bread from scratch. So, while it sat patiently, I went and absorbed myself in Shakespeare’s Cybeline. To help out with our learning, Tim and I have been watching lots of movie adaptations of the plays we have been studying – the lavish Branagh Hamlet, the reliable BBC Richard III (both over four hours long.) A particular gem though is a 1960s, avant garde take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream which not only features a young Helen Mirren as Hermia, but also has young Judi Dench as Titania, queen of the fairies, naked but for a few strategic flowers and covered in green and silver paint.

While this was happening, I was defrosting some mince and some frozen raspberries – the one for dinner, the other to go with the madeleines. After I had had enough Shakespeare, I started to make the crepes for the Crepes-Canneloni from Nigella’s Feast. It may seem rather taxingly fiddly – mince rolled up in crepes and baked in a tomato sauce – it couldn’t be simpler. The crepes take all of ten minutes to make and are reliably easy to flip, even for someone as cack-handed as me. I put them on a plate to the side, and used the same pan to brown the mince, which is then rolled up in the crepes and placed in a roasting dish. As for the tomato sauce, it is just a large can of tomatoes mixed with a little sugar and milk. This goes over the top and then you bake it. At any rate, it’s much easier than lasagne…

The madeleines only need about 6 minutes to bake, which meant I had to be hovering round the oven keeping an eye on them. As soon as they look brown on top they are done. The silicone mould meant that they slid out easily and retained their characteristic shell-markings. But first things first: Dinner, which I served with beans and some bulghar wheat (a little pan-European, but it meant extra carbs for Tim, plus it is fast and I couldn’t be bothered cooking rice or pasta.)


Above: Crepes-canneloni – delicious! One is supposed to use buffalo mozzarella on top, which we absolutely didn’t have…so we used colby instead. Still great.

As for the madeleines, they were fantastic! Soft, puffy and redolent of honey. The raspberries, which I had sprinkled a little caster sugar over, had formed their own syrup once defrosted, the tartness of which went beautifully with the cakes.


Above: The Madeleines, with the raspberries sitting darkly behind. Proust would have been proud.

Not to be outdone, Emma, who has been making quite a bit of jelly recently, produced this number: Orange jelly with orange pieces suspended within. Last week she made a gorgeous-looking raspberry jelly with raspberries in it, but I never got a photo of it. However, here is the jelly from last night:


Above: Emma’s jelly. Tim unmoulded it a little lopsided, yes, but no-one else can do it.

It tasted really zingy and summery, the orange pieces somehow completely lifting your everyday orange jelly. It was made from a sachet of sugar free jelly to boot – good for diabetics and celiacs alike! Hoorah!

As if all that was not adventure enough, after dinner our entire flat drove to Brooklyn (next ‘burb over from town) where there is a playground, complete with flying fox. It is actually three flying foxes (foxi?) set up next to each other so that three people can go at the same time. We had so much fun whizzing up and down (even I did, and I am intensely suspicious of anything that reminds me of OPC.)

After that we hit the actual playground, and while Emma and I rediscovered the simple joy that a good swing can bring, Kieran, Tim and Stefan (especially Kieran) attempted to garrot themselves on the spiderweb climber. Our downfall was probably jumping on the seated merry-go-round and taking her as fast as she could go. All of us emerged queasy and unable to walk in a straight line. A go on the see-saw seemed to put the internal organs back in place and we drove home happy and tired to watch the DVD of Outrageous Fortune, season 2. (Purchased like this: Tim and I decided to walk past the sales at the CD shop to practice not spending our money on crap. Ten minutes later, we had bought the DVD. We need to work on this.)

From Pig’s Bum to Cowpats…

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Haven’t posted in a wee while on account of studying for an upcoming Shakespeare exam, my only one – hoorah!

Last night’s dinner came via Nigella.com, which has a section where people can post their own recipes. It is indeed fertile ground for food creations, and I found two recipes that suited the ingredients I had to hand. The main was a Turkish dish, very easy, more of a suggestion than a recipe. Into a casserole dish go chicken pieces (I used thighs as that is what we always have) a chopped onion, chopped potatoes, a can of tomatoes, and a sprinkling of cinnamon. Bake till the chicken and potatoes are cooked, and well, that’s it. To go with I made something called Pumpkin Tian, which involves cubing some pumpkin, dusting with a little seasoned flour, sprinkling with grated parmesan and baking.

The end result:

Above: Turkish Chicken with Potatoes and Tomatoes.

There was a photo of the chicken with the pumpkin on the side but the stove looked a bit toooo grimy for my liking – it has since been given a wipe so don’t worry! The chicken tasted great, really warming and hearty, and cooking everything bathed in tomatoes meant that the chicken was super moist and the potatoes flavoursome. I can’t honestly say that I tasted the cinnamon, so I added an extra shake before serving. If I was to make this again I might biff a whole cinnamon quill in while it cooks and fish it out at the end, for extra flavour.

Because it was a day of the week ending in Y, I had a hankering for some pudding. To go with the homestyle dinner, I thought that a chocolate self-saucing pud might be good. I think chocolate self saucing pudding is one of those dishes in the canon of “classic” New Zealand food, I’m not sure how or why this came about though. I remember Mum making it occasionally for pudding when I was younger, in my household it was called, rather poetically, “Chocolate Floating Pudding.” The recipe I used came from Nigella’s Feast, and is not only easy to make but requires the simplest of ingredients – a great one for when you think you have nothing in the cupboard. Nigella’s recipe is a somewhat modern take on the original though, with cinnamon in the mixture and an optional slug of rum in with the water that goes on top. Not having rum, I used some Marsala all’uovo.


Above: Closeup on the Chocolate Floating Pudding. Nigella succinctly notes that the pudding “isn’t the most beauteous creation, there is a touch of the cowpat about it.” I feel that my photo is a direct visual realisation of her description.

No harm done, as it tasted fantastic. The marsala added resiny depth and fullness of flavour and it was as easy to eat (doused liberally with milk) as it was to make.