Tag: Ingredient: Coconut

we are the custard pie appreciation consortium

18 Comments

Pie!

Blackberry Coconut Custard Chocolate Chunk Cookie Pie!
But before the pie, one thing. I’m not even sorry for lulling you into a false sense of pie-related security, that was in fact my aim.
After becoming besotted with Parks and Recreation and watching it fanatically with Tim, I couldn’t work out who the character of Ron Swanson reminded me of. And then, while looking through photos, it hit me: Rupert, our dead family cat.
I even uploaded this unfairly terrible photo of myself with Rupert so I could say: See? Look at the similar contempt in their eyes. Their comparable face shapes. Their pelts, both elegant and abundant. The resemblance doesn’t stop at the physical or the disposition, either. Like Ron, Rupert’s appetite was legendary. I’m pretty sure had we offered it to him, he wouldn’t have turned down The Swanson (that’s a turkey leg wrapped in bacon.)
Anyway, unsparing self-indulgence aside, here’s some pie that I invented…self-indulgently.
I’ve had this idea tucked away in my brain for a week or two, but only had the time and energy to test it out this morning. That idea was: what if I made a pie, but instead of using pastry, I used cookie dough? It’d be like there was a giant cookie on top! But it’d be a pie! You can see how I got so enthusiastic about this.
I mean, I really thought this was a good idea. Luckily for me, it actually worked out well, because I can’t predict what would’ve happened to my self-esteem/general demeanour if it had tasted awful or broken in half or something – I made such a huge mess of the kitchen in the process of making this and it was gratifying to have something delicious to justify it.
I guess you could employ near-on anything in the filling, but I wanted to use things I already had, which was frozen blackberries, dessicated coconut, and a little dark chocolate. The custard powder acts as a thickening agent, but importantly, along with the coconut, absorbs the bulk of the berry juice, thus preventing it seeping into the pastry and becoming soggy. This was my assumption, and it did exactly what I’d hoped. Apart from the sheer uncertainty of it all, and my chronic clumsiness meaning that there was a large and suspicious looking pile of baking powder on the floor, THIS PIE IS SO STRAIGHTFORWARD that I had to put that bit in capitals in case you were scrolling through this in a bit of a hurry and not really properly reading it, because (a) it’s a very important point and (b) people do that, we’re only human.
It’s not only straightforward, it turned out vegan, so feel free to feed this to near-on anyone you like (except Ron Swanson, who probably wouldn’t appreciate that there was no meat was involved.)
Blackberry Coconut Custard Chocolate Chunk Cookie Pie (it’s a good name, right?)
Cookie Dough Pastry
Follow this recipe, leaving out the spices, but adding in a teaspoon of cinnamon. Note: the texture of the dough when I made it this time round was much more traditionally cookie-like, but I honestly think I forgot half the flour when I made it last time. Depending on your ingredients the results may vary but it should be recognisably like cookie dough.
Roll out a decent handful of the dough and carefully lay it in a pie plate (as you can see from the photos, I put a sheet of baking paper in the pie plate.) Press it down, but don’t bother to trim the edges too much. Refrigerate.
Roughly chop about 70g dark chocolate (I used Whittaker’s Dark Ghana) and stir through the remaining dough. Roll out another decent handful of this dough into a rough circle.
Filling:
2 1/2 cups blackberries (or whichever frozen berries you like)
3 tablespoons custard powder
1 tablespoon golden syrup
2 generous teaspoons vanilla extract or paste
1 cup dessicated coconut
Mix everything except the coconut in a small pan, so that the berries are covered in the custard powder. Heat gently, stirring constantly. The berries will start to release their juice which will absorb the custard powder, slowly becoming brighter in colour. Slowly bring to the boil, by which stage it should be pretty liquid, then simmer for about three minutes, stirring the whole time. Stir in the coconut and allow it to cool a little.
Spread it all into the base of the pie and then top with the chocolate chunk layer. Pinch/fold the edges together.
Bake at 190 C/375 F for 15 or so minutes. Keep an eye out on it though. Like cookies, the dough will become more solid upon cooling.
This will make more cookie dough than what you’ll need for a pie, but whatever you don’t use, tip into a freezer bag and use in future as an instant crumble topping for fruit. Or if you’ve got the energy, roll it out and use it to make cookies.
So what does it taste like? All the nicer for sitting on this brazenly pretty plate shaped like a leaf, I can tell you. (It’s from Vanishing Point at 40 Abel Smith Street and their stuff is very reasonably priced, considering this is Wellington.)
As I said, the hypothesis paid off and both the base and top were crisp and chewy and, well, cookie-ish, without the slightest hint of disintegrating into a pastry swamp from the berry juices. The cookie recipe’s a good one, so it wasn’t surprising that it tasted delicious, but the small bursts of very dark, velvety chocolate against the more sweet, fragrant filling was very delightful. The whole thing was pretty brilliant actually – richly berried, softly gritty and crimson of filling, sturdy and intermittently chocolately of exterior.
As far as endorsement that’s not from me goes, Tim and I cheerfully fed this pie today to a cool crowd: Kate, Jason, Jo (thanks for the flowers Jo) Kim, and Brendan (who doesn’t have anything to link to.) They all seemed to really like it, and not just because I was standing right there with a serrated knife. Also, it was ostensibly given in exchange for more Parks and Recreation from Kate and Jason (that kind of rhymes!) so it’s all nicely circular. Tim and I watched an episode while having dinner tonight, it’s actually concerning how hyped up we were. Mind you, we do this over a lot of TV, at least we’re both like this. (Tim: “Mmm, both of us”.)
It has been a good weekend: Yesterday I had the fortuitous opportunity to have lunch at Kayu Manis with the esteemed Chef Wan and several other local food bloggers (find out more and see the photos here) and on Friday night I had another very fun food blogger occasion in the form of a Wellington on a Plate dinner at Fratelli. Last night Tim and I went to see @Peace at Chow, which was a sort of awkward location, but it was a cool night. Well, a cool morning. It started after 1am. Hence these stilted and expressionless sentences. I felt things! I had emotions! I just had two really late nights in a row and am feeling increasingly useless at placing words in a row effectively as this evening wears on.
Luckily, this being 2011, my thoughts on this pie, and all other good things, can be summed up with one simple gif.
___________________________________________
Title via: The Kinks’ excellent, if lengthily titled Village Green Preservation Society, which now always makes me think of the good fight fought by the people of Otaua back in 2008.
___________________________________________
Music lately:
Scritti Politti, The Sweetest Girl. Some songs that you initially don’t think you like whatsoever and then end up listening to them on repeat many times over in one sitting? This one. Is one.
Have linked to it before but Disfunktional by the aforementioned @Peace is such a good song. Last night it was sent out to anyone fighting with their other half. Such is the fervour inspired in people by @Peace and its members, there was huge cheering from the audience, until they were told not to cheer because it’s not something to be proud of. I guess you had to be there, but it was pretty funny. Probably because I was standing near one especially enthusiastic guy. Who cheered at that point.
____________________________________________
Next time: Made a simple dinner of rice and peas tonight from the Lee Brothers’ book – might put that one up next. Doesn’t sound very fun, but it tasted just perfect.

at sideshow stalls, they throw the balls at coconut fur

14 Comments

Winter has got me, and not in an epic, sweepingly-caped Game of Thrones kinda way (although, phew, look at that show’s very casual body count) but in the more unremarkable, throat infection kind of way. While I’ve been coughing at intervals during the daytime, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some chemical or hormone that’s released just as you’re about to drift off to sleep (perhaps to dream about being cast as Amy in Company, as my brain somewhat plausibly presented me with recently) which reacts with whatever’s happening in your throat. Because it’s at night when I cough the most. My brain is woozy and dozy, but my throat and lungs are wide awake and on fire.

 

 

So I’ve generously applied a tea made from chopped, carroty-fresh tumeric root and fibrous chunks of fresh ginger. I’ve drunk a lot of water, sipped Gees Linctus, eaten leafy green vegetables, and dissolved so many lozenges on my tongue that my teeth’ll probably corrode before the season is out…and also had some whiskey. Fingers crossed this elixir mix gets the better of my immune system soon.

In the meantime, here are the promised Coconut Macaroons – luckily, as in previous winters, I haven’t got a blocked nose and therefore no sense of taste. Those winters are no fun at all. I’d take a cough and no energy over that any day. I’d never tried these Coconut Macaroons before, despite owning How To Be A Domestic Goddess since 2006. But one of the many manifest joys of Nigella Lawson is that with her massive quantity of recipes, there’s always deliciousness anew to discover and love.

This is how much coconut they use…On the other hand, only two egg whites! These macaroons are less sophisticated than their French macaron counterparts, but they’re significantly less terrifying to make, too.

Coconut Macaroons

From Nigella Lawson’s important book How To Be A Domestic Goddess

  • 2 egg whites
  • 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
  • 100g sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 250g shredded/fancy shred/long thread coconut (if all you have/can find is dessicated, I’m sure it’s fine, but Nigella does make a bit of a point of saying that shredded is better – am just the messenger)
  • 30g ground almonds
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or coconut essence

Set your oven to 170 C/340 F and line a baking tray with baking paper. In a non-plastic bowl, whisk the eggs till just frothy, then add the cream of tarter and whisk some more till you get soft peaks forming.

At this point, carry on whisking – fun! – while gradually adding the sugar a teaspoon at a time. It should eventually be thick and shiny, by the time all the sugar’s used up.

Now plunder all this gorgeous meringue-y hard work by tipping in the coconut, salt, extract and ground almonds, and fold together till you have a sticky mixture. I’ll tell you now: this mixture tastes amaaaazing.

Take a quarter cup measure, and scoop out cups-ful, dumping them down onto the tray. You should get between 8 and 12 out of this mixture. Bake for around 20 minutes, or until lightly golden. If you like, once they’re cool, drizzle them or swirl their bases in melted dark chocolate (around 150-200g should do this lot)

I love them. They’re satisfyingly large, pleasingly occupying both biscuit and cake territory, chewy with the fresh, summery taste of coconut and the bounty bar-echoing delight of their optional chocolate coating. They’re just seriously delicious.

Title via: the very lovely David Bowie’s earlyish song Karma Man, from the album London Boy.

Music lately:

With the lack of sleep that recurrent coughing brings, I’ve not been drawn towards anything with a heavy beat or a heavy meaning to process lately. Which is why Patsy Cline and the serenely beautiful Ali and Toumani album, for example, have been played a lot.

Next time: I found this amazing roast vegetable tart recipe, vegan and gluten free and delicious and everything. Hopefully will be blogging with a non-inflamed throat next time, too.

 

i want to be the girl with the most cake

20 Comments

I’m sure if someone made a perfume based on the feijoas, it’d sell heaps. Right? But then I’d happily wear perfume that smelled like bread baking, if only such a necessary thing existed. So far the only way I can scope that you could recreate that incredible scent is to tie a fresh-baked loaf to your head (or to any bit of you, really) and that’s not a particularly practical option (no matter which bit of yourself you tie it to).

When Mum came down to Wellington last weekend, she brought with her a large box of feijoas, from my Nana’s tree. (Thanks Nana!) At first it was enough just to let them be. Feijoas, like avocados, are objectionably expensive here in the capital, and so just having the option of grabbing one, slicing its thick green skin open and winkling out the contents with a teaspoon to be swallowed happily, was a pleasingly luxuriant act.


But being myself, I was looking for something to bake them into. Two people I work with helped me out, one by emailing me a recipe she thought I might like (thanks Alex!) and one by supplying a first-come-first-served bag of Granny Smith apples from his tree in Gisborne (cheers Tane!) which the intriguing recipe for cake required. From the East Coast, Waiuku and the desk across the office, many people have made it possible for this cake to exist.
So, it’s a good thing it tastes extremely amazing.


The apples sort of dissolve into the mixture, while small chunks of hot, sugary crystalised ginger and grainy feijoa flesh give it texture and intense fruitiness. The sticky, buttery, chewy coconutty topping works better than any icing could (that said, I’m imagining a cream cheese icing with extra chopped crystallised ginger on top…)


Feijoa, Apple and Ginger Cake

Recipe from this site.

1 cup feijoa pulp
1 cup finely chopped apple (depending on size this may be one or two apples)
1/4 cup chopped crystallised ginger
1 tsp baking soda
125 mls (1/2 cup) boiling water
125g soft butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour

Topping:

50g melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup thread coconut (or dessicated, if it’s what you’ve got)

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. Butter and paper a 20-22cm springform caketin.

Combine the feijoa, apple, ginger, baking soda and boiling water in a bowl, and set aside while you make the cake batter.

In a good sized bowl, cream the butter and sugar till fluffy, then beat in the egg, and stir in the flour. The mixture will be quite thick at this point – almost like scone dough. Fear not! Fold in the fruit mixture, stirring well, then tip this now significantly liquid-er mixture into your prepared caketin.

Bake for 40 minutes or until golden and not wobbling in the centre. Meanwhile, combine your topping ingredients and spread carefully over the cooked cake, returning to the oven for about 8-10 minutes till the coconut is golden.


I suspect it would be very difficult to overcook this cake, which adds to its appeal, and everything going on – the coconut topping, the ginger – are a fitting showcase for this seasonal and gorgeous fruit. However, I reckon you could very easily substitute the same amount of mashed banana when feijoa is out of season or unavailable (like if you live overseas). Or soft, ripe pears…or a drained can of apricots…so much potential for deliciousness.
Thanks for all the kindness on my last post in regards to Rupert the ex-cat. I guess it won’t properly sink in till I next go home.
I’m sure Rupert would be entirely indifferent if he could know that he is remembered extremely solemnly round here…
Me: *wistful face*
Tim: Are you imagining a montage of the good times you and Rupert had together?
Me: Actually…..yes.
Tim: I’m sorry.
Me: (singing quietly) thankyou for the music, the songs we’re singing, thanks for all the joy– (at this point a straight face could no longer be maintained, extreme laughter ensued.)
________________________________________
Title via: the excellent Doll Parts by Hole. I love the contrast between the gentle strumming and pretty harmonies against the sad lyrics.
________________________________________
Music lately:
Happy Birthday, by Altered Images. Maybe it has been done already, but the light, twinkly intro would be really good sampled in something. I think so, anyway.

(Version) For The Love Of It by Salmonella Dub, back in their Tiki-fronted days. A really, really good song. Something about the methodical rhythm and drawn-out chorus…I was happily reminded of it while reading this article from the archives on DubDotDash.
_________________________________________

Next time: Don’t know! Should possibly do something veering away from the puddingy side of things, just for a bit of contrast or something…

so let’s find a bar, so dark we forget who we are

10 Comments

I’m tired as, partly from bad sleep and partly from the mental faculty resources required to organise yourself out of the country but here’s a quick blog post before we go…

So: by the time today’s over, Tim and I will be on our way to London. I realise people travel, or don’t travel, every single day and we’re not revolutionary or anything, but having saved and waited for ages, it’s quite the test of our comprehension skills to deal with the fact that it’s actually happening very soon. Not counting the time I got lost in the Christchurch airport last year, neither of us has been in an international airport since 2005. Our retinas are parched from being so wide-eyed, we’re clench-toothed from smiling. We’re ticking off so many to-do lists that…umm…anyway this is a big deal for us.
I’d like to say, massively sincerely but awkwardly, that I really hope all of you readers don’t completely forget this place in the four weeks that we’re away and then never read this blog ever again. I probably won’t get to update this often or at all, baking not being so practical while travelling, but who knows. I’m absolutely going to pick it all up and start blogging hard as soon as I get back in four weeks. In the meantime, I guess there’s the archives – my photography no-skills from 2007 are always good for a laugh.
For what it’s worth, Tim and I started a little travel blog so that instead of sending out mass emails we can just update it when we get the chance. We’re not going to be fervently overdocumenting every passing minute of our trip, but we’ll aim to add to it fairly often. It’s called Tim and Laura’s Adventure and we made it late at night this week. Now that I look at it again the layout’s pretty hideous but you know, feel free to read it, and I can tell you this: we won’t use “London Calling” as the title of a post. I’ll also be mildly active on Twitter, although all online stuff is at the mercy of wi-fi – luckily they’re pretty on to it with that in the northern hemisphere.


I had a day off on Monday and did a little baking, partly to use up some bits and pieces, partly to take something to take to work to help them cope with my month-long absence (that’s how I imagined it at least), and partly because I just love to bake so much and knew it’d be a while before it would happen again.
I tutu-d round with a recipe I found at grouprecipes.com and came up with the following. It’s easier than biscuits, tastes wonderful and also used up the rest of this jam that I made a while back. You can mess around with the ingredients depending on what’s in your cupboard – the type of nuts, coconut, oats and chocolate and the flavour of jam are all interchangeable with other types.


Chocolate Jam Bars

2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup brown sugar
200g butter, softened slightly
1 cup thread coconut or 1/2 cup dessicated coconut
1 cup almonds or other nuts, chopped roughly
1 1/2 cups whole or rolled oats
1/2 jam (or more) (I used this stuff)
100g dark chocolate, chopped roughly into chunks (I used Whittaker’s Dark Ghana)
Set your oven to 180 C/370 F, and line a large tin (the recipe recommends 13 x 9 inches, mine was bigger and it worked fine) with baking paper. In a bowl, mix together the flour, brown sugar and baking powder. Using your fingers, rub in the butter, till their are no large chunks left and the whole lot has a sandy texture. Stir in the oats, coconut, and almonds. Tip 3/4 of this mixture into the tin, and press it down flat with your hands, then smooth it with the back of a wet spoon.

Dot teaspoonfuls of jam fairly evenly on top of the base and then scatter the choppped chocolate over the top of that. Finally, evenly distribute the remaining flour mixture over the top of the chocolate and jam and bake for around 30 minutes.
I loved this recipe – it’s undemanding to put together, it makes a generous amount, and the texture is stunning. The crunch of the nuts, the roughness of the oats against the soft bite of the coconut, the sticky jam against the softly solid chocolate chunks. Total stunner.
Is it weird that I’m already thinking about things I’m going to bake/cook when I get back? Like recreating the banana panikeke that I had at Polyfest, like hummingbird cake, like the Bolognese Risotto from Nigella’s Kitchen book… Even if it’s weird I guess it’s not surprising, considering how I think about tomorrow night’s dinner while cooking tonight’s one and anticipate which second piece of cake I’m going to choose while eating my first piece. However, there’s so much to enjoy over the next four weeks, maybe this is my brain’s way of coping with it all – ignore the onslaught of mental stimulation by thinking about soothing cakes. Fingers crossed I can get heaps of awesome food over the border on the way home. New Zealand doesn’t have a reputation for merciless airport biosecurity does it? Oh wait…
PS: I might be typing all lacklustre-ly but it’s just the tiredness talking. Trust me, I’m grinning hard. CAN’T WAIT.
__________________________________________

Title via: The song Out Tonight from RENT, the musical that gave this blog its name. Please: Original Broadway Cast (Daphne Rubin Vega) and movie adaptation version (Rosario Dawson). (Chocolate Jam bars…let’s find a bar…see?)
__________________________________________
Music lately:

Shopping Cart from Parallel Dance Ensemble (who include our recent interview subject Coco Solid). Saw the new video for it today, too tired to harness the power of description right now, but love this track all over. Another new video bringing our ears and eyes much joy is Ladi6’s gorgeous track Like Water. Truly: get her albums, they’re amazing. (told you too tired for descriptions right now)
______________________________________

Next time: Hahahaha. I don’t know but as soon as I do know, you’ll be next in line to find out.

tengo de mango, tengo de parcha…

12 Comments

Only ten sleeps till Tim and I go on our massive adventure overseas. And there’s so much to do. Like pack. And suss out the best method of casually running into Angela Lansbury in London so I can tell her she’s one of my heroes. And I’m going away for three days for work on Thursday.

Hence, the mood here is distinctly…squirrelly. Between all that, and keeping an eye on the regrettably escalating disasters both local and international, we haven’t been to bed before midnight once over the last three weeks. I don’t know if that’s gasp-worthy or not compared to your own patterns, but 11-ish used to be the zenith of my awakeness on a regular day. Seems a harder to settle down and relax for its own sake now.

However, I had a day off today, slept in, did some yoga, and fully intended to make this Mango Chutney. Unfortunately, in my absence last weekend the two mangoes had achieved a state of maturity not wanted for that recipe.

So…I thought about sensible ways of using up these heavily ripe mangoes. Because of our trip, it has been on my mind that I need to use up anything perishable. I had a can of condensed milk in the cupboard which took from our work’s emergency survival boxes (because it had reached its best-by date, like, I was allowed to take it). Despite the fact that so many other options would’ve been easier – including just straight eating them – I found myself deciding, trancelike, that the most judicious, pragmatic option would be to use the mangoes in a sauce to go with a chocolate cake using this *clearly dangerous* condensed milk.

See? Makes sense, right? I also kinda love the seventies vibes of the orange sauce against the chocolatey background.

Nigella Lawson has a recipe for chocolate cake which uses condensed milk in it, really easy stuff – one of those melt, mix, bake jobs. I adapted this a little to better serve the coconut-chocolate craving I had, and to make it more of a brownie than a cake. The mango sauce is my own creation and as long as you’ve got a food processor, it’s completely simple. Of course, the mango sauce can easily exist without the brownies and vice-versa, but they do taste blissful together, and I barely had to convince myself that they both needed to be made. And further to this, since I already find baking a calming, endorphin-inducing activity, if you feel this way too it can only have a restorative effect on your nerves…

Some things to keep in mind – with all that condensed milk I wanted to counteract it with some good, heartily dark cocoa and chocolate. The initial melted mixture is unspeakably delicious, but you can kinda feel your teeth wearing away like rocks on the shore with sweetness if you sneak a spoonful, so the higher the cocoa solids the better. The mango sauce tastes really good if it’s freezing cold. And the spoonful of Shott Passionfruit syrup isn’t essential but if you’ve got some, you may well be as flabberghasted as I am about how distinctly passionfruit-esque it tastes. I bought it at the City Market a while back after tasting some – it’s so delicious. Don’t feel like this recipe is pointless if you don’t have any – it’s all about the mangoes, and the syrup just encourages its wild fruitiness. Vanilla extract, while different, would provide a similar and delicious function.

Something about the presence of condensed milk made me want to include it in the title, you do as you please but this is what I’ll be calling them.

Chocolate Coconut Condensed Milk Brownies

Adapted from a recipe of Nigella Lawson’s from How To Eat

  • 100g butter
  • 200g sugar
  • 100g dark chocolate (I use Whittaker’s Dark Ghana 72%)
  • 30g cocoa
  • 1 tin condensed milk
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 2 eggs
  • 200g flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 2 cups long thread coconut OR 1 1/2 cups dessicated coconut

Set your oven to 180 C/370 F. Line a square or rectangle small roasting tin – the sort you’d make brownies in – with baking paper.

In a large pan, melt together the butter, sugar, water, chocolate and condensed milk. Sift in the flour, cocoa and baking powder, mixing carefully. Mix in the coconut and eggs. Tip into the tin, bake for about 30-40 minutes.

This mango sauce is drinkably gorgeous, light, perfumed, zingy and bright orange. You could use it on ‘most anything – pancakes, ice cream, porridge…

Mango Sauce

A recipe by myself. Makes about 1/2 cup sauce. Use more mangoes if you want more.

  • 2 Mangoes, fridge-cold
  • 1 tablespoon Schott passionfruit syrup OR 1 teaspoon good vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon custard powder mixed with a tablespoon water

-Chop as much of the mango fruit off the stone as you can. Place in a food processor with the syrup and blend thoroughly till it’s looking good and liquidised. Tip in the custard powder-water and blend again. Scrape into a jug/container, set aside till you need it.

I never really know what to do with sauces to make them look good – the spoonful that I draped over these brownies looked hopelessly drippy. So when in doubt: distract with a relevant garnish. In food as in life.

So what do they taste like? Separately, both recipes shine – the slippery, fragrant, island-paradise taste of mangoes, elusive and slightly peachy and barely tampered with in this sauce. The condensed milk gives the brownies a melting texture punctuated by the strands of coconut, like fibres in a coir mat (Wait! No! That doesn’t sound nice at all!) and the combination of dark chocolate and cocoa gives a broad spectrum of chocolate flavour. Together though, far out they’re good – the cool, fruity sauce cutting through the sweet, throat-filling brownie, the fragrant mango and coconut cosying up together in an extremely delicious manner.

And I’m pretty sure they’ll disappear in a hot minute. So no need to worry about baking lurking round limply while we’re overseas. Speaking of limpness, I nearly fainted from bunchy nerves after booking Tim and I into Ottolenghi’s Islington restaurant for a ‘birthday season’ dinner on the 18th of April (the day after my birthday). So you know, my actual birthday was booked out, over a month in advance. Yotam Ottolenghi is such an exciting, inspirational food-creator – a recent addition to my heroes of cooking, a mighty team that includes Nigella Lawson, Aunt Daisy and Ray McVinnie. To actually eat in one of his restaurants is seriously thrilling. Just…imagine someone whose work you think is really, really awesome. Then imagine you get to experience it. It’s like that.

Title via: I was totally going to quote M.I.A but her line felt more suited to the mango pickle that I never ended up making. If this process is of any interest to you; anyway instead today I quote Piragua, the song about shaved ice from Broadway musical In The Heights, from the pen of the gorgeous and formidably talented Lin-Manuel Miranda – special guest at the inagural White House Poetry Jam, for starters…

Music lately:

Cole Porter’s Anything Goes from the musical of the same title. Thought on its breezy, timeless moxie today while watching a clip of the also formidable star Sutton Foster tap-dancing the heck out of it in rehearsals – seriously, watch this video. I kinda wish songs still had unnecessary preambles and lengthy dance breaks.

Dum Dum Girls, He Gets Me High: makes me want to dance round like this.

Next time: Well, I’ve still got those quinces to use. Anyone got any suggestions, preferably something that doesn’t involve too much sugar?

 

a custard pirate lost at sea

11 Comments

In the middle of writing this, there was a small but hefty-feeling earthquake in Wellington. At first it felt like a truck backed into our flat. Then the bottles on top of our fridge started clinking together and everything shook. I dove under the table which holds up the computer that I’m typing on, clutching my phone – just like I’ve imagined doing a million times over the past week actually. I’m normally over-scared of earthquakes as it is, but hot on the heels of last week’s disaster in Christchurch a jolt like this, even though it was forty km deep and only went for about 10 seconds, had me unable to stop my hands from shaking while I tried to text mum to let her know. And then Christchurch got some aftershocks themselves. Ugh. Am looking very respectfully at the ground, at the hills in the distance (well, what I can see over the high rise apartments) and at the sky and asking them all to just…keep still.

First of March today, meaning it’s only about three weeks till Tim and I head off on our massive-for-us trip to London, Berlin, Warsaw and LA. It has also been a week since the earthquake in Christchurch, which is hard to believe – time goes fast enough as it is, but that was really a blur. And we’re not even in it.
After the fantastic time I had on Saturday baking and selling it for Christchurch at Grow From Here with Millie Mirepoix I got to thinking even more about comfort food. As I said in my last post, on Tuesday night when I got home, I made Tim and I a risotto. Since then we’ve eaten soup, curry, more soup, rice and beans…there’s something about food that’s hot and soft and bowl-confined, and I don’t want to overthink it, which administers delicious psychological aid when times are tough.
One good reason not to overthink it is that I’m lucky to be in a position to choose what is my opinion of comfort food at all in this time, when plenty in Christchurch are eating whatever’s in their rapidly warming freezer, whatever they can reach or whatever they’re given.
Nevertheless, if you need comfort food, then the zenith of yieldingly soft bowl-food is probably this coconut custard semolina, which I invented fairly successfully this evening. It’s hot, it’s fast, you eat it with a spoon. Another example of how I’m really not doing so badly is I fully struggled with what to call it. On the one hand, it’s really just custard flavoured semolina made with coconut milk, why I’ve named it thus. On the other hand I hate the word semolina but to call it coconut custard would be misleading given its ingredients. Yeah, this is how I think sometimes.
Of course the food that brings you peace might be some seriously spicy prawns or a giant steak or something (both of which appeal right now to be honest). Just in case you were considering it, don’t let me tell you what your comfort food is, or that you should buy into the concept at all. However, the very act of making what is considered comfort food can be comforting in itself, a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The stirring, the heat, the slow thickening of textures, the minimum of chewing required.
At best you’ve cooked yourself something and have the attitude of: Look at me being inevitably comforted by this so-called comfort food against my better judgement! Looook at me! Oh my, I feel a sense of calm. At the very least you’ve cooked yourself something that will stop you feeling hungry for a bit, and which costs hardly anything.
Instant Coconut Custard Semolina

2 tablespoons semolina
1 heaped tablespoon custard powder
1 can (400mls?) coconut milk or coconut cream
Brown sugar

A little whisk is one of the best tools here but if not a wooden spoon or a silicon spatula is more than fine. In a small pan, mix together the semolina and custard powder so there’s no lumps. Mix in enough of the coconut milk to make a smooth paste, then tip in the rest. Don’t worry if it’s a grey-ish colour from the coconut milk, it goes more golden as it heats up. Stir over a low heat for about five minutes.

It thickens quickly – at first like white sauce, before stiffening up significantly, like really thick cake batter. At this point take it off the heat, spatula it into a bowl or two, and pour over as much brown sugar as you like.
Initially I would’ve said this just serves one but it probably wouldn’t be silly to divide this generous bowlful between two people. Looking back, one can of coconut milk is maybe a lot for one person. But it’s delicious, so if you want to eat the lot yourself you have my blessing and my example to follow.
Until you add the brown sugar it’s a formless, hot bowl of gently-flavoured mush. Which is more or less what I was aiming for. The grains of semolina swell and disappear, muting the coconut flavour somewhat. The milky vanilla of the custard powder is subtle in all ways except for the yellow food colouring. It’s incredibly easy to eat, a thick, smooth, coconut scented paste untroubled by any semblance of texture. And then with the sweetness of the brown sugar it all makes sense somehow, the flavours immediately enhanced. The coconut, vanilla custard and melting caramelly sugar are all gorgeous without overpowering each other, but feel free to add a shake of cinnamon, which is one of the most comforting flavours I can think of, or some vanilla extract if you like.
Back to where I started, I can’t believe we’re actually going to be going on our holiday so soon. I’m a bit nervous (as I am about all things) but I also seriously can’t wait. As I’ve said before, if anyone has been to London, Berlin or Warsaw recently and knows something good, your shared knowledge would be hugely appreciated. It’s a different world now to back in 2005 when we were there. No more sequined boho skirts (as was the style at the time) for one thing.
____________________________________________
Title via: local maven of tunes, Sam Flynn Scott. Mostly a member of the Phoenix Foundation, but also does his own delightful solo stuff occasionally too, like this song Llewellyn from his album Straight Answer Machine. He’s also pretty fantastic on Twitter, one of those types where you nod and shout “me too” after everything you read.
____________________________________________
Music lately:

I’ve been listening to the music of Michael John LaChiusa, both startling and awesome in its time signatures, pastiche of styles, and subject matters. Not much of it is on youtube, but Gloryday from See What I Wanna See, which I did track down, still gives me thrill-shivers every time I listen to it.
________________________________________
Next time: Again, one day at a time. Got some raw vegan chocolate truffles that I made which may end up being next in line though…

you’re not into making choices, wicked witches, poppy fields…

18 Comments

So, I recently became in possession of 1kg of poppyseeds.

From Moore Wilson‘s grocery store of course, and while they’re not all-bulk, I guess they’ve seen enough people come and go to only stock their poppyseeds writ large and behind the counter. Ask for them by name. I only wanted some to make the dressing for this bean salad, and assumed rakishly that I could use up the rest with ease. But, like some cruel, curve-of-the-earth perspective trick, whenever I walked towards the bag it seemed to grow bigger and bigger, poppyseeds regenerating themselves when removed by the incremental spoonful.

Actually it’s not as dramatic as that. There is in fact…no drama. The bag of poppyseeds can sit pretty much forever on the shelf waiting to be used. It’s just that their plentiful existence has caused me to consider them pretty closely, and what I could do with at least some of them.

Unfortunately a perfunctory search of recipes didn’t serve up anything too inspiring. And then I wondered, as I always wonder, if they’d make a decent ice cream, especially since I had some lemons lurking round that Tim’s mum had given us. Should I do a custard based ice cream? A semifreddo thing? That would’ve meant buying ingredients, and we’re trying to save money by using up things we have in the cupboard. What I did have however, as always, was canned coconut milk. And so…that’s all I used. I didn’t even make a coconut milk custard, like I do for my Chocolate Ice Cream recipe. I guess it’s a slight stretch to call this ice cream now, but it’s a stretch I’m going to make. It sets so solid that all you can do is cut it with a knife like that’s what you meant to do in the first place, and it’s truly delicious.

I still have a little Cocoa Sorbet left in the freezer but decided that two ice creams on the hop would be practical. I can’t remember how I justified it, I think it was something like “I love ice cream!”

Lemon Poppyseed Ice Cream

  •  2 x 400ml cans plain, full-fat coconut milk
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • Juice and zest of 2-3 lemons (depending on the juiciness)
  • 3 tablespoons poppyseeds

In a large pan, gently heat the coconut milk and sugar, stirring, till the sugar has dissolved. Continue to gently heat and stir for another five minutes then remove from the heat and allow to cool a bit.

Stir in the lemon juice and zest, and pour the mixture into a loaf tin (depending on how much lemon juice you used and the size of your loaf tin there may be a bit too much mixture) Carefully – don’t spill it like I did – place in the freezer. Allow to partially freeze, then stir it briskly with a fork or small whisk, then stir in the poppyseeds (at this stage, so they don’t all sink to the bottom) and return it to the freezer. To serve, cut thick slices.

I love this ice cream. Firstly it’s so easy to make. Just stir and pour. It has a popsicle-fresh, clean sweet lemony goodness, a thick and icy but still pleasing texture, and the nuttishly flavoursome poppyseeds delivered lovingly to your mouth in each spoonful. The coconut flavour isn’t overly pronounced, but whatever you do recognise will only be enhanced by the other ingredients. And if you have poppyseeds around already, and you’re lucky enough to either have a lemon tree or a lemon benefactor, then it’s a very, very inexpensive recipe. You could always leave the poppyseeds out and use a mix of lemon and orange juice and zest. Toasted coconut stirred through instead of the poppyseeds might work too. Play round and see what you like, although I do recommend first just trying this recipe itself – the summery, zingy lemon with the poppyseeds is pretty lovely.

My poppyseed adventuring didn’t end there, as, deciding on ‘both’ instead of ‘which’, I also made a lemon poppyseed cake (using this recipe here). Was it overkill? Most definitely not.

The very opposite of the ice cream, this cake is soft, buttery, and lush, the lemon flavour absorbed into the golden grit of the polenta and almonds to produce something wildly good. Pictured here is, sadly, the last piece.

Tim and I had an amazing night at Aloe Blacc’s concert on Thursday – he was an absolute diamond performer with a stupefyingly lovely voice and hugely comfortable stage presence. We took some photos, which you can see here and here. Tonight we’re going to the Wellington Laneway show which should be fun as, and if you’re in Wellington and want tickets they’re available for purchase here.

In our travel plan developments…we bought tickets to see Wicked in London! It sorta feels like the only appropriate response is a youthful OMG.

Title from: the song of the same name from the late Jonathan Larson’s musical 30/90, which I was able to see performed by a local theatre group a couple of years ago. It was fairly thrilling then, so one can only speculate what the Lear Jet-voiced Raul Esparza would have been like in the lead role in his day.

Music lately:

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Round and Round from Before Today, strangely alluring with its “na na naaah” opening deceptively evoking the sort of music that plays when you’re put on hold on the phone, swirling into something uplifting and exciting and…swirly. He’ll be at Laneway too, so.

Sadly not at Laneway or anywhere near my line of vision, is Idina Menzel, whose album I Stand – which still feels recent-ish – became three years old the other day. You go, Idina. While her debut Still I Can’t Be Still remains a flawless highpoint for me, I Stand is fantastic and I hope she continues to write music. And that I actually see her sing one day for real.

Next time: I made some gingerbread cut-out cookies but it has been heavy on the sweet things lately so I might instead do the pasta I made tonight with a raw tomato sauce. Either way: delicious.

what good is cake you have but never eat?

10 Comments

I don’t know why, or how to explain this in a straightforward way, but if there’s a recipe for a cake with an ingredient that wouldn’t normally be in a cake, I’ll really, really want to make it. Which is why I got my cake on immediately after finding the Beetroot Cake recipe, the Kumara Cake recipe, and…digging into the 2007 archives before I committed to a lyrical pun for every title…Chocolate Chickpea Cake (No lie. Chickpeas.) If it has a vegetable or similar trying to disguise itself as a cake – bring it on.

And then I found a recipe for a cake with mayonnaise in it. In a way it sounded familiar, like I’d heard of this combination before. But till now an actual recipe has never appeared to me, in fact it wasn’t even something I was actively searching for. Then I was reading the new issue of Spasifik magazine, and there was an advertisement for Best Foods Mayonnaise with a recipe for Amazing Cake Pasifika, sent in by the staff of the Glenn Innes Library. And it all made sense. I had to try it. Especially with an awesome title like that, as someone slightly given to hyperbole, I like a cake that announces itself as Amazing before you even try it.
When you think on it, mayonnaise in a cake isn’t so spooky after all. It’s more or less just eggs (or egg yolks), oil and vinegar – all things that help give a cake its cakeyness. Just don’t use aioli by mistake…and maybe check how high stuff like mustard appears on the list of ingredients while you’re at it…
Amazing Cake Pasifika
With gratitude to the Glen Innes Library Staff (if there’s any GI locals reading this, feel free to give your library staff a high five for me) and Spasifik Magazine.
Original recipe here.

1 cup Best Foods mayonnaise (if you don’t have that, then use some other decent mayo)
1 cup brown sugar, packed in
1 cup orange juice
1 cup coconut (desiccated is all good, but I saw “fancy shred” at the supermarket and was drawn to it…if I ever became a DJ – don’t worry, I won’t – DJ Fancy Shred could definitely be my pseudonym)
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. In a good sized bowl, whisk together the mayo, brown sugar, and orange juice. I will tell you now…it tastes kinda good. Mix in the rest of the ingredients and pour – it’ll be a fairly liquid batter – into a lined, greased 22-ish cm caketin. Bake for 45 minutes or so. The recipe suggests a lemon cream cheese icing (yum) but I just sprinkled it with more coconut (which looked pretty but fell off as soon as I cut into the cake…so. Stupid fancy shred.)
I guess it was something in the mayo, but this cake is incredibly moist, soft and light. Not actually so great for cutting into as you can see from the photo below – the slices would droop a bit and fall apart if handled too aggressively, but despite this it’s exactly the sort of thing you want to have if family or friends drop in on you – a big crowd-pleaser of a cake. You can even use it as a conversation starter if things start to get awkward (“hey, guess what the secret ingredient in this cake is?) Between the orange, coconut and the spices it might sound kind of aggressively flavoured but it wasn’t – just fragrantly delicious with an amazing golden colour.
And can you even taste the mayonnaise? Nahhhh (well a tiny bit. But only if you concentrate. The cake’s delicious, so if you can’t deal with mayonnaise in it then all the more for me, but if it helps, just remember the separate ingredients: egg, oil, vinegar.)
Tim’s down in Christchurch this weekend to see the Wellington Phoenix (starting to suspect that it’s Phoenix here *hold hand high* Laura here *hold hand less high*) and luckily they won – I was following the scoring on Twitter while writing this and it seemed like there was some kind of red card situation and…actually I’m not the best person to explain this. I’ve had an awesome weekend on my own – the weather was incredible on Saturday, I ate a whole eggplant for dinner tonight (Tim hates them), I did a yoga class, had a Christine Ebersole youtube marathon, and last night caught up with ex-flatmate but not ex-friend, Ange.
On Friday night Tim and I went to the Wellingtonista Awards at the mighty Mighty Mighty bar and…I didn’t win! I really wanted to but in the end it’s all good. It was fun just to be nominated, especially because I had no idea it was coming, and we had a seriously good night all the same. The crowded nature of the place – I was perched on a beer crate because there were no chairs left – meant we ended up getting practically on first name basis (if we’d thought to ask their names) with the sassy ladies of Wellington On A Plate who were next to us – at first it was all “we’ll cheer for you if you cheer for us” but suddenly we were rejoicing in each others raffle ticket victories and consoling (“it’s great just to be nominated”) each other’s respective non-wins.
We also ran into the lovely Anna Dean from Tiger Translate and Kate from Lovelorn Unicorn and tried to be cute in the super fun Amazing Travelling Photobooth. Good times all round. On top of that we won a Grow From Here voucher and a night tour of the Zealandia sanctuary (kiwis!!) from the raffle, so we didn’t even go home empty handed. A massive massive thanks to everyone who voted – I realise there’s been a bit of “vote for me! Please! Oh sorry I didn’t even win” highs and lows this year but I really, really appreciate it.
________________________________________
Title via: Ate The Cake I Had, from the 2006 musical Grey Gardens. I’m sure there’s probably some mayonnaise lyric out there but I’m on the most humungous Grey Gardens kick these days (see: Christine Ebersole below) so it’s all good.
________________________________________
Music lately:
ChakaKhanletmerockyouletmerockyouChakaKhan. On Saturday morning Tim and I grabbed I Feel For You on vinyl from Slow Boat (with “Happy Christmas, Annie” written in ballpoint across the front, did you just write on your album sleeves back then or something?) and I love the title track so much. And also Chaka Khan’s hair.
Christine Ebersole‘s entire back catalogue – a brief but dazzling intro here on 100sand1000s.
Mariah Carey’s Oh Santa from Merry Christmas II You. It cracked me up how the sticker on the CD claimed it was her new Christmas classic, but to be fair: it’s awesome. It maintains its upward bounce and has some minor key action and it’s extremely catchy and happy without trying to be All I Want For Christmas Is You. Love it.
__________________________________________
Next time: a couple of interesting new vegetable dishes I’ve tried out lately…

my mother said i should eat an ice cream cone

13 Comments

I love ice cream so much. Maybe it’s that extremely cold food is more exciting, maybe it’s that the creamy chillyness is the ideal taxicab to drive a million different flavours to your tastebuds, maybe it’s that particular melty smoothness.

Maybe it’s that ice cream reminds me of good times growing up. So many of my ‘birthday cakes’ were a tub of vanilla ice cream sprinkled with Smarties or jellybeans and spiked with sparklers, which were then set alight for extra glamour. Mum would put a scoop of ice cream in a cup and top it up with Coke or Fanta to make ice cream sodas for everyone which I thought was very cool. (Some kids got lovingly baked cakes but not everyone’s mum has the foresight to combine Tip Top and gunpowder.)

So… I love ice cream. And one of the best, best, and once more best recipes in the world is one that I’m sharing today. I can’t remember where I absorbed it from, it just mysteriously became part of my frozen repertoire. I’d like to say “I absorbed it from my own brilliant mind” but that’s just not true. What I did invent was this particular version – a completely vegan, two-ingredient, relatively instant and completely delicious-ful ice cream.

Confession: I don’t usually serve my ice cream on a bowl-within-a-plate thing. And I never eat it with second-hand commemorative spoons. It was all done so the photos would look nice. Between that and the precisely situated forkful of risotto last week, this blog has become an offal pit of visual lies! To force some honesty into the situation, I made myself eat that bowl of icecream using only the decorative spoon which has a palm-tree embossed cavity of 2cm. It took roughly forty minutes.

Anyway! That’s a lengthy bit of emotional baggage for such a quick recipe. I first made this last year using delicious cream but not only does coconut milk make it vegan-tastic, it also lends a fluttery flavour of its own. How this works is – I think – as the food processor blades reduce the frozen fruit to rubble, the liquid is forced through at great speed, turning it into a kind of instantly frozen puree thing which resembles actual ice cream. It’s not perfect – you have to eat it on the spot as it loses its texture if refrozen – and it’s not overly sweet, so pour in sugar if you like. I chose blackberries because they were cheapest at the time – the seeds to get in your teeth a bit but between friends it’s no biggie, plus their tart berryishness and beautiful colour makes up for any of that.

Blackberry-Coconut Ice Cream

2 1/2 cups frozen blackberries (or other)
250ml/1 cup canned coconut milk (or cream, or yoghurt)


Put everything in a food processor. Add some sugar if you like. Blend. Be warned: it will make a racket. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides and process again till it looks like magical ice cream. Scoop into bowls and sprinkle with coconut if you like (or any kind of sprinkly thing, really).

I’m not sure how many this serves – only you can look inside yourself and find the answer – by which I mean Tim and I finished this but it probably could have been divided between four people. It tastes sparklingly and singularly of the fruit that went into it, with a clean, softening hint of coconut. It comes together in seconds, so if you have a can or two of coconut milk in the cupboard and a bag of frozen fruit in the freezer you’re only ever moments from ice cream. Which is a very good feeling. 


Spontaneous dinner party? Spontaneous children appear? Spontaneous vegan children appear? Spontaneous simple desire for ice cream? Sorted.


On Thursday night Tim and I went to the Whitireia Performing Arts School’s first year performance of Godspell, a musical by Stephen “Defying Gravity” Schwartz, who wrote the bulk of the music when he was only in his early 20s. The cast themselves on Thursday night must have been around 19 and they were brilliant – there were some beautiful voices, sure, but the humour was sharp and the ability to grab props and change character out of nowhere was fairly mind-boggling. I ended up sitting next to this woman who knew my dance teachers from when I was growing up south of Auckland, miles and miles away from Wellington. Small world, isn’t it…It was funny in the intermission, they played a karaoke version of Wicked. You could hear pockets of girls in the audience singing along quietly. In these post-Glee days it’s more cute than anything else but a couple of years back I probably would have gone and introduced myself with a qualifying “Oh my gosh you know who Idina Menzel is”.
___________________________________________________________
Title via: The philosofly girl Coco Solid in another incarnation as Parallel Dance Ensemble with their song Weight Watchers, which won best video at Handle The Jandal awards last year. I was there – imagine those donuts and psychedelic licorice allsorts writ large across the Embassy cinema screen in psychedelic colours. Lip-smackingly delicious both to watch and listen to.
___________________________________________________________
Music lately:


Michael Franti and Spearhead, Sometimes, from their 2001 album Stay Human. Nice as this song is, I love the acoustic version, although the fact that I learned a dance to it at a workshop a few years back may have cemented it in my mind – sometimes it’s impossible not to love the music you learn dances to, no matter how bad. Not that this is bad. This is gorgeous.

By My Side from the aforementioned Godspell. We used to sing this in choir sometimes, it’s satisfying for an alto like me. Such a beautiful, beautiful song, I can’t believe it was the pretty but abrasively earnest Day By Day that instead made it onto the Billboard charts when Godspell came out in the 70s. The video I linked to is the film version featuring an astonishingly good-looking young Victor Garber as Jesus. (FYI, he’s in the Superman tshirt). The harmonies aren’t as clear as I’d like but it’s one of the better versions available on Youtube. Plus, Victor Garber, hello!
___________________________________________________________
Next time: I think this is the third time I’ve put off the Grumble Pie. With a name like that I can’t keep denying it a blog post…

you say stop, i sago, go go

14 Comments

Even though I’m pretty sure I never got fed sago or tapioca when I was a kid, I always assumed I didn’t like it. It just sounded like one of those things I should resist. I don’t remember reading, as an impressionable kid, any Malory Towers books where the girls in lower 6th are all “oh golly, not that sago again.” In fact my main food impressions that I took from those kind of books was that a) there is romance in the tinned peach b) kippers are apparently a Good Thing and c) I want biscuits and butter, right now.

There are many, many things in this world you don’t have to experience to know you don’t want them, but sago…? It really falls more into the category of “broaden your horizons and don’t be so narrow-minded, fool”. And to be fair, I can’t really hate on something that reminds me of Thoroughly Modern Millie (one of the best films ever).
I don’t tend to research heavily before launching into a blog post but hit up Wikipedia after looking at the back of my packet of Budget Sago Pearls, (ingredients list: “Sago”. The nutritional information – not much more than a few long-lasting carbohydrates and a little sodium) and thinking “what even is this stuff?” Turns out sago comes from a sago palm – of course! – and is not only the food staple of many countries, the sago plant rivals the awesome soybean for intense versatility in that it can be a key ingredient in (according to Wikipedia) adhesives, paper, ethanol, high fructose glucose syrup and MSG. I mean, that is some wide-ranging output. The starch of the sago palm is also made into sago pearls and the larger tapioca pearls, which can be turned into a whole lot of different puddings.
I used a recipe in Jill Dupleix’s book Lighten Up which looks like it’s based on the Malaysian Sago Gula Melaka pudding – sago coated in a palm sugar syrup and coconut milk. It’s fairly straightforward to make and the end result is so incredibly good that I consider myself a full convert. Not to mention, this is a seriously cheap-but-pretty-fancy-looking pudding to be serving up. The bag of sago cost me less than $2, and none of the other ingredients cost much, but the results are gorgeous. I realise it’s not as immediate as, say, chocolate pudding, but if anyone you serve this to tries to tell you they don’t think they’ll like sago, kindly direct them to the above category that it sits within.
Sago Pudding with Palm Sugar and Coconut Milk

From Jill Dupleix’s Lighten Up

150g pearl sago
80g brown sugar or palm sugar
100ml coconut milk
pinch of salt

Bring a pan of water to the boil. Add the sago slowly and stir, leaving it to simmer away for another 15 minutes or so, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, gently heat the sugar and 100mls water in a pan, allowing it to dissolve and reduce slightly to a syrup (don’t let it overheat though!) Drain the sago – this was a bit of a mission, the sago sticks to things, then rinse under cold water and drain well.

Tip it into a bowl and add half the sugar syrup, half the coconut milk and the pinch of salt. Mix well, pour into four ramekins or bowls or whatever and refrigerate them for a couple of hours. Run a knife around the inside of the ramekins and turn out into a bowl, pouring over the rest of the sugar syrup and coconut milk. Jill suggests mango on the side, this would be perfect but I didn’t have any so sprinkled over some coconut threads instead. Serves 4.
Each grain of sago is so perfectly round and gleamingly opague, it’s like a mass of tiny bubbles clinging together on your plate. Its texture is weirdly addictive – I guess “cold and slippery” isn’t the most alluring description but give it a chance – the sago absorbs the light, caramelly syrup and the richness of the coconut milk and is seriously, seriously delicious.
I stupidly tried to strain the cooked sago into a regular colander…which has sago-sized holes in it. Luckily I managed to quickly chuck it into a fine-meshed sieve. The bits that landed in the sink and stuck to everything though were kind of magic looking – like solid water droplets, tiny shining orbs, like something David Bowie’s character in Labyrinth (first crush!) would eat…or twirl craftily on his hands.
_______________________________________________________________
Title via: The Beatles…fertile ground for blog post titles, hey.
_______________________________________________________________

Music lately:
Tim and I had a fairly full on weekend, catching The Newtown Rocksteady (twice!) and Street Chant, who came down from Auckland for an album release gig. I love Wellington but sometimes I see advertisements for gigs happening in Auckland and think “wahh”, I guess because it’s where the majority of people live it’s where a lot of the stuff happens, so it was cool that Street Chant made the effort to get down here. It was a bit late in the day when we got to their gig, but we had a very good time. Check out Yr Philosophy if you like.
There are two musicals called The Wild Party, both based on the same Joseph Moncure March poem, and both hit the stage around ten years ago. I tend to go on about the Andrew Lippa version (we-hell, Idina Menzel and Julia Murney, as well as Taye Diggs and Brian D’arcy James) BUT the LaChiusa version is also, naturally, seriously awesome. And had an even heavier-weight cast, with the likes of Eartha Kitt, Toni Collette, Mandy Patinkin and Marc Kudisch. I seriously love Toni Collette’s song from this musical – The Lowdown-down, and how her sultry voice draws out the lyrics. When we saw Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin in Auckland last year I got him to sign my copy of the cast recording afterwards at the stage door – yusss!
_______________________________________________________________

Next time: I made some stuff from the Edmonds cookbook, but I also made brisket…you’ll read it all eventually, and knowing me, I’m picking the baking will probably be next up to the plate.