Tag: Ingredient: Chilli

under the leaves of that old lime tree

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Achtung: I’m STILL hyping myself up about being nominated for CLEO magazine/Palmolive Wonder Woman (Read more about it here.) There’s still time to help out – just email cleo@acpmagazines.co.nz with WONDER WOMAN in the subject line and “voting for Blogger: Laura Vincent” in the body of the email. (FYI – you can only vote once) I should change my name to humbleandfrozen because of how nice so many people have been about this – whether or not I get anywhere, it has still been a fun wave to flutterboard on.



As I mentioned last time, Mum sent me a large box of gorgeously green limes. I hadn’t really done much more than sniff them luxuriantly, and throw a glossy wedge into the occasional glass of vodka and soda water. Until tonight, when I made this incredibly fantastic dressing from Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer.


This recipe harnesses the power of one. whole. lime.

Lime Dressing


1 bunch (approx 125g) fresh coriander, or mint, or a mixture of the two
1 clove garlic, peeled
1-2 tablespoons fish sauce (you could make this vegan by using soy sauce)
1/2 a teaspoon sugar
1 green chilli, deseeded (optional)
1 lime
6 tablespoons rice bran oil

Cut the top nubby end off the lime, sit the now-flat end on a chopping board, and carefully slice off all the skin and pith. Cut off the other end, halve the now-peeled lime and flick out any seeds with a knife. Mine luckily didn’t seem to have any seeds. Throw the lime, and any juice that has collected, into a food processor with everything else except the oil. Blitz to a paste, pouring in the oil as you go. By the way, I only used half the oil because even for me that felt like a lot, but then if you were serving more people, you might want to keep the original quantities or even boost them, along with the rest of the ingredients.


This dressing is just perfect – sharp and full of lime, fragrant with coriander, deliciously salty, but not in the slightest bit oily. I could have drunk the stuff. Once I finished dinner, I not only licked the plate, I also ran a spatula around the inside of the food processor and licked that, and then finally – I’m sorry – ran my finger along the processor blade, picking up the excess dressing clinging to its slicey edges, and licked that too.

In Forever Summer, Nigella pairs this dressing in a salad draped with fried squid rings, and lovely as that sounds I didn’t have any of the ingredients. I took the liberty of pouring the dressing over a pile of flat rice noodles, carrot slices and soybeans, with a final sprinkle of black sesame seeds (Handy tip: don’t go pouring them over someone else’s plate while saying “Look! Ants!”) It might not sound like much of a dinner, to the point of barely even existing (when carrot slices are part of the main thrust of your meal it’s probably time to do some more groceries) but think again. The dressing soaked into the soft, silky noodles. The buttery, nutty soybeans contrasted marvelously with the sharp lime in the dressing. The sesame seeds provided a little crunch. The carrots…well, they were there too. But altogether it was damn special stuff. By the way, I recommend Forever Summer hard – it’s full of some of Nigella’s most inventive-yet-classic, beautiful food, and an amazing and inspiring ice cream chapter.

I had a couple of days off in lieu which was pretty amazingly blissful – not having an alarm clock in the morning was a nice feeling. All the good sleeping patterns were undone on Tuesday night however as we stayed up to watch the All Whites’ first game at the FIFA World Cup against Slovakia in South Africa, beginning 11:30pm our time. As if we were ever going to miss it – it was a thrillifying match, with Winston Reid’s equalising goal in the 93rd minute causing a complete rush of intense happiness to all of us watching. To be beaten at the World Cup is no disgrace, considering the eye-watering level of talent present, and considering New Zealand hasn’t been there in 28 years. But to draw against a team that’s miles ahead of us in the table – that was special. While what I know about sports could fit on one side of a black sesame seed, I can’t wait to see our next match against Italy – they’re one of the best teams in the world, so to simply prevent them scoring, or lose by a small margin is still some kind of victory. Although we might win…that’s what’s exciting about it, that we just could win a game. Pity the official All Whites scarves aren’t longer though – not very practical in windy Wellington to have something that doesn’t wind round the neck several times.
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Title via: Bright Eyes’ Lime Tree from his 2007 album Cassadaga. There’s only so many winsome male singer-songwriters I really ever need to listen to, but ol’ Bright Eyes makes the cut easily with his earnest, swoonsome songs. There’s something about the music behind this track that makes it sound like it could run over the opening credits of some 1930s film involving wide American plains and several scenes in a charming general store, which is more than enough reason to love it in my opinion.
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Music lately:

XXXO, MIA’s new single. I’ve long been a fan of MIA and new music from her is always greeted eagerly. It amuses me to read pearl-clutching comments on youtube (not that reading youtube comments is ever a good use of time) about how “mainstream” this sounds. I personally thought this song couldn’t be any less mainstream if it tried, but whatever. It always amazes me how MIA manages to be more or less what you’d call pop, but also a million miles removed from everyone else out there doing it. The chorus reminds me of all the best bits of those Real McCoy songs I used to adore. Can’t wait till she drops the album.

Connection by Elastica, from their self-titled album. I love gurgly opening riff and wish I could deliver anything as breezily as Justine Frischmann sings those lyrics.

Raul Esparza’s knee-wobblingly good cover of The Man That Got Away. Every particle of that man is filled with vocal talent. He needs a solo album, and fast!
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Next time: Well, I still have this box filled with limes…don’t think I’m done just yet.

looking through a glass onion

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It is so, so freezing in Wellington lately, that straight-through-your-clothes harsh chill which makes getting out of bed in the morning that much more aggrieving. I was in Christchurch and Dunedin over the weekend for work which was also an intensely cold experience, not to mention pretty exhausting (can’t say I’ve been sleeping well recently, and sitting in clenched frustration for an hour and a half on a plastic chair in the Dunedin airport where there is nothing to do while waiting for your flight, followed by a further hour and a half’s wait at the Christchurch airport will take it out of you. This is New Zealand, not the mighty plains of Canada, I don’t see why we need flights with stop-overs.) Hence why it has been a while since I’ve blogged.

There’s not much I love doing more in winter than sitting by a roaring heater with a pile of my cookbooks, going through and imagining what shenanigans I could get up to. Cooking in winter is fun – all those long-simmered warming dishes that make the house smell amazing and warm you as you stand over them – unlike the summer heat when all you really want to do for dinner is sit quietly inside the freezer and lick its icy walls. One book that I had a flick through recently was the Supercooks Supersavers Cookbook, which I picked up at the local opshop back home for about a dollar a few years back. I love its season-based chapters, its 1980 style, and its seriously enthusiastic title.
I found this awesome sounding recipe for Onions Smothered with Walnuts. It’s basically onions roasted in a sticky, spicy sauce, and though they’re more “vaguely scattered” than “smothered” with the walnuts it’s a gorgeous combination of flavours.
Onions Smothered with Walnuts
From the Supercook’s Supersavers Cookbook

450g small pickling (pearl) onions, peeled (I didn’t have any, so just used whole onions, quartered)
75g walnuts, chopped
25g melted butter
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon chilli sauce
1/2 cup stock or water
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oven to 170 C. In a bowl, mix everything together and pour into an oven-proof dish. Cover with tinfoil, and bake for around an hour, stirring once or twice. *Use olive oil and balsamic vinegar instead of the butter and worcestershire sauce to easily make this vegan. Yay!
It’s so good that I actually made it two nights in a row. In a weird twist of events, the first night I made it in a silicon dish and the second night I made it in a metal dish, and the second night the onions and sauce turned all black. Made me a little nervous, but not so nervous that I didn’t carry on eating the lot. This recipe has a lot going for it – it has punchy, warm flavours, it’s very cheap to make, it’s versatile, and it just cooks away by itself, not really requiring any attention. The honey, chilli and cinnamon are a brilliant combination and it’s perfect over pasta, which is how I had it, but would also work on couscous, mashed potatoes, rice, or stirred into a stew or roasted vegetables. Thanks, Supercook’s Supersavers Cookbook!
As I said, I’m pretty weary from the weekend, I haven’t been sleeping so well and on top of that I actually wasn’t feeling that great over the weekend. There were some diverting moments – seeing Graeme Downes of The Verlaines, The Dead C’s Bruce Russell and Flying Nun’s Roger Shepherd weighing in on a discussion panel about NZ Music, subsequently sitting behind the Verlaines on the flight to Dunedin, meeting with former flatmate Emma for a jolly catch-up, having an enthusiastic person “help” me by picking up my phone that I’d put on the ground right by my feet so I could take down a poster at an event, only to watch them accidentally drop it down three flights of stairs…
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Title via: The Beatles’ Glass Onion from The White Album. One of their more intriguing contributions…
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Music lately:
A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow, sung by Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy, from the film A Mighty Wind. This is absolutely my favourite film, and having it on my iPod made the four plane trips over the weekend much more bearable. This song is gorgeous even though it’s sending up the folk music genre, and Catherine O’Hara is just…perfect. Makes me want to learn the autoharp. Sincerely.
Bloodbuzz Ohio from The National’s new album High Violet. The album itself didn’t set me on fire but this song is a stunner and really showcases everything that’s good about The National. And you can check out a lengthier review I did of High Violet here at The Corner if you like.

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Next time: I’ll hopefully be a touch more awake. It’s Queen’s Birthday weekend in a day or two, nothing like a Monday off to make you feel unbendingly fond of the monarchy. I found this really cool recipe for pumpkin bread that I’m keen to try, I also am thinking of getting the crock pot out from its hiding place, it’s now definitely cold enough out there…

tuna or later

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

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

Seared Pepper Crusted Tuna with Soba Noodles and Peanut Sauce

Thanks to Lori for the peanut sauce recipe and inspiration!

Serves 2

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

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

Sauce

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

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

Assembly:

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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


Music these days:

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

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

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

it looks like you’ll stay, as the days go by

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On the 13th my blog will be two years old. Considering the blinding speed in which the internet turns around, in which networks are signed up to enthusiastically and then never updated, and also the fecklessness of youth (well, I’m only 23 and therefore highly likely to be lacking in feck) it’s a pretty tidy achievement all round. Two seems like such a tiny number to measure the amount of time that this blog has been existing. But I guess it’s likely to be a lot more significant to myself than, say, anyone else on the planet. I also guess that this gives me a free pass to bake something ridiculous and unnecessary in the name of celebrating my blog’s anniversary.

Funnily enough I used a recipe the other night that I last used exactly a year ago – Rendang Asparagus and Shallot Curry, from Simon Rimmer’s pretty awesome book The Accidental Vegetarian. Incidentally the photos I took last year were much better than the photos you’re going to see today, which shows that no matter where I live, there is always potential for uselessness. Asparagus is one of the few things I’m happy to wait around for. Well, it would be choice if it was available for the eatin’ all year round, but it’s not, and it’s usually worth the wait. If I’m eating asparagus it means that the weather is getting better and Summer’s on the way.

This recipe is so good, even if the original is a little deranged in terms of volume of sugar, coconut and chilli. Simon Rimmer writes an excellent recipe, but we don’t see eye to eye on what ‘mild’ is. Simon Rimmer thinks nothing of flinging eight chillies into a recipe for general consumption. His tastebuds must be made of asbestos-reinforced concrete roofing tiles. This is truly delicious though, and the combination of soft, caramelised buttery onions and juicy green asparagus is pretty fabulous. I’d go a little easy on the amount of brown sugar you use, between that and the coconut milk it can be almost like eating pudding if you’re not careful.

Rendang Shallot and Asparagus Curry

50g butter
75g brown sugar (I used less)
20 banana shallots
400g asparagus
400ml tin coconut milk
3 T toasted dessicated coconut
Coriander to serve

Melt the butter in a pan, add the sugar and when it starts to dissolve throw in the shallots, peeled but left whole. Turn down the heat and cook slowly for at least 20 minutes, (he recommends 45 but they were more than fine with less). Blanch the asparagus and refresh in cold water. I sliced them into two-inch lengths.

Curry Paste:

1 onion, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
3 red chillies, or however much you desire
1 tsp ground coriander
1 T tamarind paste (or substitute lemon juice)
1 t tumeric
1 t curry powder
1 stalk of lemon grass
pinch of salt

Whizz the lot together in a food processor, or chop and mix everything well like I did using my mezzaluna. This results in a chunkier but no less flavoursome paste. Heat a little oil in a pan and gently fry the paste, carefully, and stir in the coconut milk, letting it bubble away and thicken slightly. Add the now magically caramelly shallots and the blanched asparagus, letting it simmer for about ten minutes. Finish by stirring through the toasted coconut and chopped coriander. If you like, add a handful of frozen peas or soybeans to beef it up (as it were). Serve over rice. This should feed four easily.

On Thursday I realised I hadn’t cooked any chicken in a long, long time. In fact that I hadn’t really eaten meat in ages. A trip to Moore Wilson’s quickly changed this, and I had a go at Nigella Lawson’s Slow Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken from Forever Summer.

I’d bought a couple of Maryland pieces (ie thigh and drum attached together) because it was cheaper than buying just thighs. I figured I could cleave them in half, capable-modern-lady style with one of the many enormous knives we have in our kitchen. But, could not cut them for the life of me, even using this ridiculously sharp knife and putting all my body weight on it. They remained uncloven. Strains of Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner singing I Will Never Leave You from Side Show ran through my head.

Resigned to the fact that we were going to be eating enormous pieces of chicken for dinner, I arranged the ingredients artfully in this fancy schmancy roasting tin I bought from Briscoes that made me feel very Nigella – it’s one of those deep, rectangular dishes with metal handles that she’s always flinging about. It was also about 20cm too wide for our oven. Aaaaargh. By this stage I was tempted to biff the lot out the window. But, I patiently transferred the contents into a smaller dish and left it to roast for the requisite two hours – one of the nicest things about this recipe. You have a large window of time to chill out.

Ever more and always, we’ll be one though we’re two (Seriously, watch the clip. It may well blow your mind.)

This is a really simple recipe but what’s there works wonders. Soft cloves of garlic and chunks of lemon, a slosh of wine and some olive oil all relax into a deliciously juicy sauce, and the slow, slow cooking of the chicken renders it ridiculously tender.

Slow-Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken

From Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer.
This is Nigella’s recipe with her proportions – scale it down or up as you like.

1 chicken cut into 10 pieces
1 head garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
2 unwaxed lemons, cut into chunky eighths
Small handful fresh thyme
3 tablespoons olive oil
150mls white wine

Preheat oven to 160 C.

Put everything into a roasting tin. A roasting tin that you know will fit into your oven. Make sure the chicken is skin side up. Cover with tinfoil fairly tightly, place in the oven and leave for 2 hours. Once this is up, remove the foil, raise the heat to 200C, and cook uncovered for another 30 or so minutes till everything is nicely browned and crisp. Serve straight from the roasting tin. Serves 4-6.

Not having eaten meat for a while, particularly roasted chicken, I had completely forgotten how strong it is, how that oiliness can be really heavy in your stomach. I’d also forgotten how amazing it smells as it roasts and how good the pan juices taste drizzled liberally over rice. So there you go. I can see how people could go vegetarian, but then I could also happily eat a steak on a daily basis.

Speaking of things ornithologian, on Saturday I had the privelege of seeing the Imperial Russian Ballet performing Swan Lake at the Opera House. I went with Tim and my godsister, Hannah, and we had fantastic seats. There were a LOT of children in the audience, which I don’t have a problem with – I’m all for encouraging nippers to go to the theatre – in fact it was the adults in the audience who were more fury-inducing. Some idiot behind me decided to rustle a wrapper or chip packet of some sort right in the middle of the swans’ dancing. For about 45 seconds. I have no idea what was so important in their life right at that moment that they had to rustle this plastic so incessantly. Meanwhile, another person behind me was keeping time to the music by tapping the floor heavily with their foot and slapping their knees. Why? What can tiy possibly add to the experience? The only other negative I have to get out of the way is that the Opera House isn’t the nicest location. It looks like a shadow of its former grandeur. The fact that the sound came from speakers, not an orchestra, dulled the majesty somewhat.

The dancers, however, were absolutely stunning. Swan Lake, Nutcracker and Romeo and Juliet are three ballets which don’t so much tug at my heartstrings, as blow them up and make a balloon animal out of them. The music is just so achingly beautiful and it was beautifully captured by the dancers. The girl playing Odette/Odile had a mournful featheriness with a steely reserve that showed exactly why she was chosen as the leader. The prince was leggy and leapy and could express pain and happiness and that’s all you really need. The costumes were gorgeous and the whole thing was just intensely riveting. I know I go on about Broadway a lot but while I was brought up on a fairly equal diet of musicals and ballets, dance was my first love and it’s always a pleasure to see it live.

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On Shuffle whilst I type:

Saturday Getaway from Rookie Card by PNC featuring Awa from Nesian Mystik. This guy is probably the best thing to come out of Palmerston North since Tim.

Nobody’s Side from the recording of Chess In Concert by Idina Menzel. I bought this today at Real Groovy and the very sight of it was so unexpected and so exciting that I proceeded to tell the lady behind the counter how awesome it was and how ridiculously excited I was about it. Probably should have played it a little more cool. But seriously though, Chess is a nightmare to follow but the music is ridiculously good and Idina tears this song to shreds.

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The roundabout, kind of oblique (eh, it’s 10.30pm on a Sunday night) title for this post is brought to you by: Stephen Sondheim and his song Not A Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along. Bernadette Peters sings it and can’t be argued with, but predictably I’d like to offer Idina’s one-off take on it, worth it for the hatey youtube comments alone.

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Next time: Well, I probably will end up baking something frivolous in the name of celebrating my blog’s two-year existence.