Tag: Ingredient: Tahini and Sesame

"and one pasta with meatless balls (ew)"

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It hasn’t been all that long since I’ve blogged last but it feels like it – to me at least – and for a while I just stared at the photos of the quinoa I made feeling a bit “meh” and disconnected from it. Then the more I looked at the photos, the more I remembered how delicious it was and now I’m feeling all enthusiastic about this recipe again.

So why’s it been a while since I’ve blogged? On Friday afternoon, Tim and I left the city to stay in Wairoa with his grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins, sisters, mother…and some awesomely cute canaries that his grandad has been keeping. One of them honestly looks like its mum gave it a bowlcut, the feathers on top of its head all sprayed out flat give it the most adorably vexed expression. I tried to get a photo but it didn’t work. I did, however, get a photo of one of their cats, an enormous thing that would come and lean heavily on you like a dog does, and which would luxuriate in the sun like so – in the sort of way that makes your own lazing around seem inelegant and stiff-ankled in comparison.

But, back to stuff that I ate ages ago. After a cool lady that I work with mentioned that she’d successfully imitated a particular dish from Deluxe cafe using quinoa, I was inspired to try it myself, only making it completely vegan – why not? You’re already using quinoa, might as well go all out. And then I wanted to modify it further, to make a kind of meatballs-type recipe. I didn’t like the name “quinoa balls” and couldn’t think of what to call these nubbly orbs – something about “BALLS” in a food title to me indicates it’s only imitating something else, plus, you know, the anatomical description does the dish no favours. (“Groin!”) Strangely, meatballs themselves manage to safely avoid both connotations.

The quinoa ended up solving this issue for me, even though I didn’t see it as a good thing at first. See, the quinoa would not be balled. See the above picture? You can spot the granules already escaping at the edges, unwilling to maintain sphericality, but I can’t even express the amount of coaxing and spooning and rolling that it took just to get them to that shoddy, crumbling state. Nonetheless, I persevered and baked them, thinking that the heat might bind them together. It didn’t. They got even more crumbly and reluctant. In fact, of the sixteen balls that I put my heart, soul, and flavoursome sweat into rolling, but one survived the journey.

So now it’s just Baked Quinoa with Miso Tomato Sauce, and I don’t have to worry about the whole “balls” naming issue. It took me some time to get to this calm place of acceptance, though. One ball. Out of sixteen.

The tomato sauce is particularly magical, with a secret ingredient. And that ingredient is Peanut Butter. Yes. It thickens the sauce up a treat, and gives it an ever-so-slight nutty richness without tasting like a piece of toast fell in your sauce by mistake. Don’t leave it out! Unless you’re allergic to nuts, but you didn’t need me to tell you that.

Baked Quinoa With Miso Tomato Sauce (The M in Miso is also for “Magically Delicious”) 

1 cup quinoa
3 tablespoons sesame seeds
3 tablespoons poppy seeds
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
3 tablespoons tahini, or hummus if you have it
1 teaspoon ground cumin

Sauce 

1 can tomatoes, preferably the chopped kind
1 teaspoon dijon mustard (or grainy, if that’s all you’ve got)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon hot sauce (or more or none at all if you like)
1 tablespoon white miso paste
1-2 tablespoons peanut butter (or tahini, if you prefer)
A few tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

Rocket and almonds to serve.

Set your oven to 200 C.

Rinse the quinoa in a sieve under cold water – helps get the inevitable dust off – and tip into a pan which has about three cups of water in it. Bring to the boil and cook till the grains are tender, pale and fluffy. Drain, back in that same sieve if you like, and tip into a bowl. Mix in the rest of the ingredients, season to taste, and spread across the base of a small roasting dish. (Line the dish with baking paper if you like – easy cleanup, hey-ohh!) Bake for 15 minutes.

Empty the can of tomatoes into a pan, then fill it halfway up again with water and tip that in the pan too. Add all the sauce ingredients except the thyme – using your wooden spoon to break up the peanut butter and miso and get it mixed in – then bring to the boil and allow to bubble away for a couple of minutes while stirring, till thickened some. 

Take the quinoa out of the oven, pour over the sauce, then return to the oven for another ten minutes. Strew with rocket leaves and almonds, and serve with pride.

Despite causing me some trouble initially, this is exceptionally good-tasting stuff. The quinoa’s weightless texture and nutty flavour is emphasised with the addition of poppyseeds and sesame seeds, the sauce covering the deliciousness spectrum from salty to rich to sweet. Pour it over pasta or rice or even over real meatballs, it’s supremely lovely.

And yeah, the rugby world cup final happened and we won. My disinterest in the game remains, but as everyone else was watching it on Sunday night at Tim’s grandparents’ it would’ve been rude not to play along. So I offered some ideas for the drinking game: 1) have a sip every time the commentators indulge in outrageous hyperbole like “a nation at a standstill”, and 2) every time the word “groin” is mentioned we all cry “GROIN!” and sip our drink. I’m not actually big on drinking games, preferring to just drink in my own time, but fear not – it was more about coming up with rules than anything else, and we only had one drink each. I also, with not unnoticed irony, was the one of the whole rugby-interested crowd who managed to get the closest prediction of when the first try scored would be and what the final score would be. Flummoxedly baffled doesn’t even cover it.
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Title via: the Broadway musical RENT – again! – and the Act 1 closer La Vie Boheme. Not to write an essay – I could – but I like this bit in the song, because it really does swirl round in a flurry of earnestness but then the waiter appears talking about their orders for miso soup and seaweed salad and tofu and so on, as if to say just the sort of thing you’d expect from them, thus subverting the earnestness somewhat. Anyway. That’s a story for another (hotly-anticipated, no doubt) essay. As always with RENT, I direct you towards both the movie version and the original Broadway version from opening night, 1996.
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Music lately:

One of the fun thing about long car journeys is playing DJ. I didn’t have the time to make an actual playlist (just another thing I didn’t have time for!) so instead I went through the songs alphabetically and just chose one when it took my fancy. There’s not much more fun when you’ve been going round winding roads and the driver’s feeling weary, to put on Orinocco Flow and yell “Best Car Song Ever! SAIL AWAY SAIL AWAY SAIL AWAY!” It’s always appreciated.

I also love this song Best of Me by local singer Ria Hall. Love that there’s a mix of English and Te Reo in there and also that the station I listen to is thrashing it at the moment.
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Next time: I’m making a pavlova, and if it works out alright, you’ll be seeing it here. 

stone cold soba as a matter of fact

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Note: I’ve been mucking round with fonts and things, Blogger’s formatting is a bit of a nightmare and it has all gone horribly wrong. I ended up having to put my old font back but stupid blogger won’t seem to let me get rid of all these weird gaps between the photos and the text. Shoulda left well alone! Maybe the .com went to my head…

Yes, again. Like you’ve never been obsessed with a plate shaped like an autumn leaf before.
 
I was recently reading Wayfaring Chocolate, one of my favourite food blogs, and its writer/custodian Hannah acknowledged her considerable fear of spiders, and how she hilariously freaked out at the sight of one in her room before realising it was in fact a sock that she’d owned for years, with spiders printed on it. In this spirit of laughing with, not at, I’d like to disclose how massively scared I am of…pelicans. Now as I said last time, I’m honestly pretty scared of many things, to the point of it not being particularly hilarious (I’m talking panic attacks) but people tend to find this specific fear funny. And well they might. When Tim and I were in Europe earlier this year we went to three different zoos and every time, I had to get Tim to be on lookout for them and whenever they were on the horizon, he’d tell me which direction to not look in order to avoid accidentally seeing their scary eyes and death-beaks.
 
If you’d read our little blog while we were traveling you’ll know how much I wanted to see a capybara. At one point, when it was starting to look unlikely, I said loudly “wouldn’t it be just my luck if the capybara and the pelicans were in the same enclosure” to kind of try and tempt fate or something, but no luck. There were just horrible shuddery pelicans (if anything, it’s like fate misheard me and was like “okay, gotcha, so you want heaps of pelicans and no capybara, right?)
 
In case you’re wondering what’s the deal, well solidarity, for one thing. And it’s a blog! I share without hurdles, I share without filters! (Don’t worry, this is actually me filtering.) And in case you’re wondering what’s the deal with pelicans, I had a spine-freezingly scary nightmare about them. And from that night forth, I’ve tried to keep my distance and avoid eye contact with them.
 

Anyway: Noodles. I love them. Cold, hot, spicy, salty, satay-y, wide, thin, whatever. In this case, intertwined with vegetables and with a hot and sour sauce coating each cold strand of soba. The always-important Nigella Lawson has this cool salad in Nigella Express which uses tom yam paste in the dressing, which uses the flavours of soup that you’d normally use said paste in, but in a concentrated manner. I took that dressing and instead dressed grainy buckwheat soba noodles and steamed vegetables with it. It only turned out the way it has because of what I had in the fridge and freezer (not a lot, to be honest) – you could use any number of things to make it SO much better than mine. Like broccoli, avocado, carrots, rocket, zucchini, mushrooms and so on. You could also swap it for any other noodles you’ve got hanging round – rice sticks, ramen, somen…I wouldn’t choose udon for this, since it suits a more solid bitey strand, but really as long as you’ve got the dressing, you’re all good.

I know I said it’d be Banana Pudding Ice Cream this time, but I only ended up making it late last night, and it wasn’t properly frozen this morning. So no photos, and therefore no blog post. I can tell you though, having ploughed into it with a spoon several times, that it is amazingly good and will be worth the wait.
Soba Noodles with Steamed Vegetables and Hot and Sour Dressing
(adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe)

 
Serves as many as you provide for. I’d hazard a guess that this dressing can deliver for noodles for between 1-4 people, any more than that and start increasing quantities.
Ingredients:
Soba noodles
Selection of vegetables – I used frozen peas, frozen soybeans, cavolo nero, and one smoked capsicum because that’s all I could cobble together.
Coriander or mint, sesame seeds, sesame oil etc to serve.
Dressing:
1-2 teaspoons tom yam paste (depending on your taste)
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice vinegar, lemon juice or lime juice (I had a lime – yuss!)
1 teaspoon honey or sugar
Good pinch of salt, or a splash of soy sauce

Whisk together the dressing ingredients in a large bowl.

Cook the noodles according to packet instructions. While you’re boiling the water for the noodles, fit either a metal colander or a steamer over the top of the pot you’re cooking them in and put in it any of your vegetables that need cooking (like…peas yes, avocado, no) and allow them to steam away.

 
Once the noodles have had their time, tip the colander of vegetables into the bowl of dressing, drain the noodles under running cold water in the same colander (well, this works if you used a colander – if you have a steamer just drain them separately.)

 
Tip the noodles into the bowl as well and carefully mix it all together to incorporate the vegetables and the dressing. Divide between the plates of people you’re serving. Top with coriander and/or mint, and sesame seeds if you like.
 


Super spicy and sharp and awesome. Taste to see if you need any more of a particular ingredient – don’t feel constrained to the (admittedly already vague) parameters I gave you. You might find you want more heat, more salt, or that you want it to be oilier. Tim and I had this for dinner on Monday night and it was damn wonderful, the slightly softened greens leaning into the noodles as they twirled round my fork, and the strong buckwheat flavour of said noodles being ably challenged by the hot, limey dressing soaking into them. We then had it for lunch today, and apart from the already annoying peas (they just don’t stick to your fork) losing their bright colour overnight, it was just as good on day two.
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Title via: Elton John’s The Bitch Is Back. That’s right I love Elton John. If you click through the footage of him singing this on Top of the Pops in 1974 is grainy, but very fun (like soba noodles, incidentally.)
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 Music lately:
 
Somehow, even with the internet making everything accessible and instant, I hadn’t thought to look up Missing You from the Set It Off soundtrack, which would make it…15 years since I’ve heard it? It’s emotional, it’s harmony-tastic, it’s got CHAKA KHAN. Closely rivaled by En Vogue’s equally dramatic Don’t Let Go (Love) from the same album, for ‘best song ever from a movie or anything ever’.

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Next time: That Ice Cream.

since folks here to an absurd degree seem fixated on your verdigris

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After a brief survey of four people (one of which was myself) I’d like to make the sweeping generalisation that Brussels sprouts are a bit like Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West: green, and misunderstood. So misunderstood. None of us could remember ever eating them in our childhood, but there was definitely the feeling that it was not a vegetable to welcome with open arms. Yes, plenty of people here in New Zealand must’ve eaten them, overboiled and sulphuric balls of punishment on the dinnerplate, but I can only hypothesise, or whatever comes at this stage of a scientific study, that pop culture has influenced a lot of my suspicion. Same reason I made my own earrings out of shells and beads and then wore them, sincerely. The Baby Sitters Club. I’m not saying that series of books is everyone’s reason for disliking on impact the Brussels Sprout, but I’m pretty sure it’s my reason. (Not that I can, admittedly, name a specific example, but I know it’s there.)

Anyway, I saw this recipe in Plenty, my Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook, called “Brussels Sprouts and Tofu”. And I thought, oh really? A plucky move, pitting two generally disliked ingredients against each other in one dish and working to stop the competition between them to see which can make the eater unhappy first. Now I love tofu, but this is not a sexy recipe title. Yet its bold simplicity appealed to me, as did the fact that brussels sprouts were very, very cheap at the vege market.
And if anyone knows how to de-misunderstand brussels sprouts, it’s Yotam Ottolenghi. He who pairs eggs with yoghurt and chilli and garlic with more garlic.
Interestingly the ingredients are very simple – the three main givers of flavour are chilli, sesame oil and soy sauce. For me, what seems important is the cooking methods: for the sprouts, you fry them till they’re browned and scorched in places. For the tofu, you marinate it while you’re getting everything else ready, then fry it up till the marinade is caramelised. You could probably do this to any kind of food and it would taste good, but here the ingredients really open up, come alive, I want to say snuggle into the flavour but that feels wrong…anyway, the sprouts become crunchy and juicy, their peppery flavour amplified by the smoky scorching. The tofu is salty and dense, with a crisp edge, its mildness subverted by the chilli.
This isn’t just ‘not bad…for Brussels sprouts and tofu’, any food would hope to taste this good! I served it on soba noodles, but it would be great on rice or alongside something else, or just as is. If tofu is nay your thing, the sprouts on their own would also make a fantastic side dish to a bigger meal. Seriously, I had to stop myself eating them all before returning them to the saucepan with the tofu. They’re good. At last.
Brussels Sprouts and Tofu

Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty. There are mushrooms in the original recipe but as Tim’s unfortunately not a fan I thought it’d be a bit harsh to leave them in along with everything else.

2 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons sesame oil (I reduced this to 1…sesame oil is expensive!)
1 teaspoon rice vinegar (I didn’t have any, used balsamic vinegar, worked a treat)
1 tablespoon maple syrup (I only had golden syrup, likewise was great)
150g firm tofu
500g Brussel sprouts
Mint, coriander, sesame seeds and (optional) toasted pumpkin seeds to serve

Whisk together the chilli sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar and syrup, then chop the tofu into cubes and add them to the bowl. Set aside while you get on with the next step.

Trim the bases off the brussel sprouts and remove any flappy excess leaves. This’ll probably take a while. I slightly misunderstood the instructions on how to slice them but I don’t think it matters – Ottolenghi requests thick slices from top to bottom but I just sliced them roughly into quarters.


Heat about 2 tablespoons plain oil in a pan, and once it’s properly hot, add half the sprouts and a little salt. It’s good to turn them round so that a flat surface is touching the bottom of the pan, but it’s no biggie. Leave them for a couple of minutes – don’t stir them if you can help it, but they won’t take long to cook through. When the sides touching the pan are a deep brown, set them aside and repeat with the rest of the sprouts. Remove them all from the pan, and carefully – using tongs is good – transfer the pieces of tofu from the bowl of marinade to a single layer in the hot pan. The marinade may splutter and sizzle a little at this point. Reduce the heat, cook the tofu for about two minutes a side till caramelised and crisp.

Remove the pan from the heat and immediately throw in the rest of the marinade, plus the sprouts. You’re supposed to garnish it with coriander, but I had none, and only a tiny bit of mint – so in the interest of visual interest, I toasted some pumpkin seeds and scattered them across – pretty and delicious.
By the way, my parents got a kitten. A tiny, tiny, outrageously cute kitten who they’ve named Poppy. Looook at her with her enormous blue eyes and tiny tail. As you may remember, the recently late Rupert left my parents a one-cat family, and the remaining cat Roger isn’t as impressed by newcomer Poppy as everyone else seems to be. Look, is it morally dubious that I’m suddenly filled with motivation to plan a trip home? I’m narrowing my eyes suspiciously even as I type the question; I think the answer’s yes…but Poppy’s so cute that I can’t feel that bad about it.
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Title via: The aforementioned misunderstood character Elphaba, as played by the amazing Idina Menzel in the musical Wicked, singing The Wizard and I. Sigh.
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Music lately:
Karaoke, by the Good Fun – it is both good, and fun. I heard this song a long time ago but this official recording has scrubbed it up well. Like the Brussel sprouts recipe, this can rest on its own laurels…it isn’t just ‘not bad, for young guys.’

Marvin Gaye, How Sweet It Is. It’s always a good time.
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Next time: I found an amazing recipe for black sesame brownies, but I’m not entiiiirely happy with how they turned out – may have to re-try and then report back.

every time I eat vegetables it makes me think of you

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While I completely welcome, luxuriate in, and devote a lot of time to generating the puddings and soups and casseroles that Winter brings…sometimes it’s nice to interrupt all that, suspend the stodge-production and create something altogether more Spring-like and vegetable-focussed.
Although these are essentially just small pies, their unusual, sesame-studded pastry is light and crisp, and their filling has soft, caramelised vegetables contending with salty, fragrant miso. And I managed to make them while feeling physically dilapidated by a cold, which makes me think that they’re not that fiddly to make, either. (I’ve still got this cough, by the way, but I think as far as the battle goes I’m now winning.)
I found the recipe in the latest CLEO magazine (who, I should add, have been very good to me over the last year or so, if you see my “Attention” tab up the top there) and it’s by a clever lady called Janella Purcell who has a cookbook called Eating For The Seasons. Which, judging by this one excellent recipe, is probably a really good book. Despite what looks like Mistral font used on the cover.
The pastry is gluten-free, which is fun, especially if you can’t eat gluten yourself. I’m pretty sure that these are also vegan, so if you’re wondering what it is that’s even holding them together…read on.

Roast Vegetable Sesame Tarts

Adapted from a recipe by Janella Purcell, found in the July issue of CLEO magazine.

Pastry:

1 1/2 cups brown rice flour, or spelt flour, or whatever flour you’ve got really – even regular flour (which, I hope I don’t have to spell out to you, will mean these are no longer gluten-free)
1/2 cup sesame seeds, toasted if you have the energy (I didn’t)
2 tablespoons olive, rice bran or avocado oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce or Tamari sauce
3/4 cup boiling water

Combine the flour and sesame seeds in a bowl. Tip in the oils, the water, and the soy sauce and mix together. Knead well till it forms a soft ball, then rest for 30 minutes while you get on with everything else.

Filling:

Olive oil
1 onion, finely sliced
1 cup pumpkin or kumara (I used kumara) diced or thinly sliced
1 fennel bulb, sliced
1 tablespoon white miso paste
Toasted seeds to garnish – pumpkin, sunflower, or just more sesame seeds if you like. Pine nuts or almonds would be nice too, but seeds are less expensive and just as delicious.

Heat the olive oil in a pan and slowly cook the onions till caramelised. While this is happening, roast the vegetables on a tray at 200 C/400 F for about 20 minutes.

Once your onions are cooked, but while your veges are still roasting, roll out the pastry fairly thinly and use a cookie cutter or similar (I used one of those ramekins that you might make creme brulee in) to stamp out circles of pastry. It’s a little different to the usual – quite springy and playdough-y, and you’ll need to re-roll it a couple of times. Just bear with it though, it will work. Fit your circles of pastry into a greased and floured/silicon muffin tray, not worrying if you get folds of pastry, it’s all good if it looks a bit ramshackle – and bake them, as is, for 15 minutes.

Once the cases are out of the oven, dab a tiny bit of miso paste on the inside of each, then top with your roast vegetables and a sprinkling of toasted seeds. They should remove easily from the muffin tray – and then eat!

Makes 12.

Note – I made the following changes:

– Halved the recipe (so you can easily double what’s above)
– Used spelt flour instead of brown rice flour, as that’s what I had
– You’re supposed to use all sesame oil in the pastry but as it’s expensive and precious I cut it back and replaced some with other oil, but you do as you like
– I only had black sesame seeds, but it’s all good
– Used soy sauce instead of Tamari as that’s what I had
– Changed the vegetables a little – the original recipe didn’t have fennel and had pumkin instead of kumara
– I think that’s it. One other thing to note is that different flours absorb water at a different rate so don’t be afraid to add more flour if your pastry dough is a sticky mess, or more liquid if it’s not coming together. Just a little at a time though.
So as you can see I adapted this recipe quite a bit, and I think you could continue to do so yourself. Once you’ve got the pastry cases sorted, it’s really all a matter of what’s in your fridge.
For example, the following could be delicious…
– Roast capsicums and tomatoes, with toasted chopped almonds and a little orange zest
– Sliced leeks, softened and caramelised in a pan, with feta
– Roast mushrooms with thyme, then chop them up, fill the tarts and top with pumpkin seeds
– Roasted zucchini with capers
– Raw grated beetroot, coriander leaves and toasted walnuts
– Slices of avocado and raw zucchini, topped with mint…
– Mince and cheese! Yay. Or, like, slow-braised beef ragu and parmesan.
I’m also thinking about removing the soy sauce from the pastry, using a plain oil, and filling the cooked cases with sweet things instead, like berries, or chocolate mousse, or – best of all – nuts and caramel sauce. And beyond that, I’m also wondering if you could just roll out the pastry and stamp out and bake awesome crackers from it.
But all those imaginary tarts aside, how did the actual ones that I made taste?
Amazing.
So delicious. The pastry is all nutty and biscuity, and just a tiny bit salty – a very addictive combination. I personally am glad I added the fennel, its aniseedy freshness and quick-to-caramelise, oniony structure was quite lush against the sweeter softer kumara. And they taste really, really good cold as well, to the point where I was wishing I hadn’t halved the original recipe. Twelve mini tarts between Tim and myself just wasn’t enough.

Hooray for pie!

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Title via: The Ramones, and the song really is called Every Time I Eat Vegetables I Think Of You. I love them (the Ramones, but also vegetables.)
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Music lately:
Ella Fitzgerald, When I Get Low I Get High. I think partly because of its compelling Puttin’ On The Ritz style fast swing, Fitzgerald’s gorgeous voice, and partly the fact that it’s just so short, is why I would’ve listened to this song roughly a squillion times over the last week or two.
Matthew and Son by Cat Stevens, I’ve said it before but I love this song so much that it’s always worth repeating: oh my gosh I love this song so much. The video (if you click through) is also quite incredible. His shoulder-pumping dance, the strangely bland and unaffected expressions on the young people’s faces, the bit around 1.55 where he stares down into the camera while singing *fans self*
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Next time: Billy Crudup’s Grandma’s Chocolate Fudge Pie. It’s wild.

like eating glass

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I was supposed to have this blog post sorted last night, but by 7.30pm I was a loose-jawed, slumpy mess and didn’t really have what it took to stage a decent blog-comeback. However, I managed to at least get dinner done – the following recipe for Glass Noodles and Edamame – whilst bearing the increasingly shackle-like load of jetlag that I can’t seem to shake. I don’t want to complain about it as such, (oh poor me, I travelled so much and now I’m just too fatigued for words), I just want to draw your attention to the fact that I did make it at all despite wearing a heavy cloak of semi-somnolence, and therefore you should be able to make it on any given day. That said, I understand if exhaustion and unmotivation of the non-travel variety is part of your day-to-day routine. I’m not the only person ever to feel sleepy, or worse, sleepy in the middle of cooking something involving a little concentration, causing you to collapse to your knees into a bowl of soaking noodles and cry ceilingward, What have I doooooooooone?

But this is do-able. Plus, it comes from the Ottolenghi cookbook Plenty, which Tim got me for my birthday. We’d actually also reserved ourselves a table for an evening at Ottolenghi the restaurant on the day after my birthday. (The day of was all booked out. A month in advance.) It was such a cool night. They made a huge fuss of us having come all the way from New Zealand, gave us prime seats, our waiter was genuinely friendly, our food was genuinely amazing. It was also wildly expensive but it’s not the kind of place we go often…or ever. So we put the price in the back of our minds while we feasted on tender shredded brisket, cheese-stuffed zucchini flowers (the first time either of us had tried them), barley with asparagus and radicchio, so many beautiful flavours, followed by a plain but perfect vanilla cheese cake carrying crunchy, sugary, caramelised macadamias. I’d been a fan of Yotam Ottolenghi’s for a while now, and I found it hard not to grin throughout our meal.

Plenty allows me to recreate those beautiful flavours and combinations at home. It’s a completely vegetarian cookbook, with no pudding recipes (yet I love it still) and when I saw the following recipe for Glass Noodles with Edamame Beans, I could see it was one of those dishes that largely relies on your cupboard being stocked up, as opposed to any skill, and therefore is ideal for the first meal after a month away. There’s a little heating and chopping involved, and then suddenly you’ve got this gorgeous piled-up pile of salty-sweet noodles and edamame beans that taste so nutty and creamy they betray the fact that they are actually a vegetable.

I know glass noodles as vermicelli or rice noodles, but kept the name because it sounds kinda pretty. However I removed the “Warm” from the start of the title – maybe I read too many Baby-Sitter’s Club book scenes of Kristy Thomas describing the SMS cafeteria lunch offerings – but whenever I see the word “Warm” in a title (and it does appear a bit, you know, “Warm Salad of Lamb and bla bla bla” etc) I always mentally add the word “socks” afterwards. Warm…socks. Not cool, but there it is. I get frozen edamame beans – soybeans – at the supermarket up on Torrens Terrace or in Moore Wilson (if you’re in Wellington) but if they’re too hard to find, this would still rule with frozen peas as a substitute. That said, my ancient Aunt Daisy cookbook has a recipe for “Soya Bean Rissoles” (easily digestible seems to be their selling point) so they can’t be that obscure, right?

Glass Noodles and Edamame Beans

From Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty

  • 200g glass (rice, vermicelli) noodles
  • 2 T sunflower, rice bran or other plain oil
  • 3 garlic cloves, finely diced
  • 300g podded, cooked edamame beans
  • 3 spring onions
  • 1 fresh red chilli, chopped finely
  • 3 T chopped coriander, plus more to serve
  • 3 T shredded mint leaves
  • 3 T toasted sesame seeds

Sauce

  • 2 T grated galangal or fresh root ginger
  • Juice of 4 limes or 1 – 2 big lemons
  • 3 T peanut or rice bran oil
  • 2 T palm sugar, crushed or 1 T dark brown sugar
  • 2 tsp tamarind pulp or paste
  • 1 tsp soy sauce
  • 1 tsp fine sea salt

Soak the noodles in a bowl of hot water for five minutes, or until soft. If, like mine, they don’t soften up right away, tip them into a pot with a bit more water and simmer for a bit. Don’t let them get too soft and collapsing though. Drain.

Whisk together the sauce ingredients in a small bowl.

Heat the sunflower or rice bran oil in a large frying pan or wok, and add the garlic. When it starts to go lightly golden and smell amazing, remove the pan from the heat and add the sauce and the noodles. Gently stir together, so that you incorporate the sauce but don’t crush the noodles, then add the edamame beans, plus the spring onion, chilli, coriander and mint.

Divide between plates or pile onto a platter and scatter over the remaining beans, sesame seeds and coriander.

Notes: I used sambal oelek instead of chilli, lemon instead of lime, and brown sugar instead of palm – and I just didn’t have any coriander or tamarind. My cupboard is pretty well stocked but I’ve been away for a month and wasn’t going to spend heaps on a few ingredients when I could wait till the vege market this Sunday and get them for cheap. I also didn’t use mint because it grows up on the roof at my place and it was raining and freezing and windy and I just didn’t want to go outside to get it.

Please scuse the photos by the way – now that the late-afternoon darkness is a daily occurrence, I really need to remember how to take decent night-time photos.

Even though I wish we were still traveling and doing things like this:

…on a cold and rain-soaked evening I’m so happy to be back in the kitchen, and this is just the recipe to welcome me back to it. The flavours of chilli, ginger, garlic and soy lift the bland, slippery noodles into something substantial and the beans not only look gorgeous, their pistachio-like taste makes this fairly cheap dinner taste luxurious as. As Ottolenghi suggests, you could double the soy content by adding tofu to make it more of a meal, but I loved it as is.

Actually this isn’t even my greatest jet lag achievement. I did manage – somehow – to make caramel ice cream at Mum and Dad’s place on our first day back in the country, and I helped with the feijoa and apple crumble that went with it. Have you ever separated 6 eggs on 2 hours’ sleep? I don’t recommend it, but my drive to make everyone ice cream overrode my drive to be sensible. We did have a great weekend at home, landing at 5.30am only to be whisked up to the Manukau Heads to see Dad’s band Apostrophe play at a school fundraiser. Despite calling to mind something that Coco Solid once mentioned about the particular awkwardness of performing in the daytime, it was my first time seeing the band play and it was very cool. I don’t think it was just the jetlag that made the songs sound so good – between absorbing all those Dad-penned tunes and seeing Mum make up a bread and butter pudding on the spot with bits of leftover hot cross bun and bread rolls, I left for Wellington with a bit of a “my parents are awesome” glow. We managed to see heaps of family on our short time at home which was so great, even if the later it got in the afternoon the less sense we made.

Just checked the clock and it’s 9.20pm which is the latest night I’ve had yet since we got back on Saturday morning – yuss.

Title via: Bloc Party’s Like Eating Glass from Silent Alarm. I remember when they were all new and exciting and now they’re just…a bit old and exciting. When Kele Okerere sings “it’s so cold in this house” it’s like you can see the puff of air coming from his mouth.

Music lately:

I haven’t had time to listen to much since I’ve been back but of course there’s Apostrophe, my dad’s band – they have so many good songs but to be fair, I really can’t judge ’em unbiasedly, anyway the only thing of theirs online is their single The Skeptic, check it out.

Next time: I’ve got a day off on Friday and I’m going to be baking SO many things. Or at least, more than one thing. I’ve missed baking. There might also be a moment-by-moment recount of how I felt during Wicked. I will also be catching up on all the food blogs on Friday, looking forward to all the pending inspiration.

 

just a little too soft, al dente

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In a triflingly small number of sleeps, Tim and I will not be in New Zealand anymore. For a whole month. So don’t come looking for us. Unless you’re in London, in which case by all means come find us. Unless you’re into knife crime. Even though I never once felt unsafe during my time in London, well, at least up till July 7th 2005, I still can’t help thinking “knife crime!” said like the scene-change ‘dun-dunn!’ on Law and Order. But we’ll be fine. We’re confident, like Maria Von Trapp. Thanks so much to everyone who has emailed in offering ideas and websites and even their roof for us to stay under. And a massive thanks to my godmum and her family who loaned Tim and myself some awesomely functional luggage, especially compared to our sorry, carpal-tunnel-inducing offerings.

I can’t say that it has really made its way through to my brain properly – that instead of getting up and going to work every day, I’ll be on the other side of the world to where I am right now, for a month. Firstly, there have been some extremely heavy events both locally and overseas filling my mind – natural disasters, disastrous man-made situations…plus I was up in Auckland again on the weekend just been, this time working at ASB Polyfest (amazing but exhausting) so between that and Pasifika the weekend before, there hasn’t been much time to really properly consider it. Somehow it’ll all come together though. As I said. Confident. Like a Von Trapp.

Part of making it all come together is using up any perishable food. This might mean chugging a hefty volume of soymilk, or it might mean lots of thrown-together pasta dishes like the following, where a vegetable that’d otherwise curl up remorsefully in the fridge becomes the star. The star of what I named Sexy Pasta. I just looked at our dinner and the name appeared to me, organically and fully-formed.

Admittedly, it looked a lot sexier in person. Now that we’re further into the year and darkness falls earlier, I need to try and remember how to take decent photos at night.

But look at those ingredients. Hello. You don’t have to use pappardelle – it’s unfairly more expensive than other kinds of pasta, and I’m pretty unlikely to get it again for a long time, after the moment of wacky extravagance that got it in my cupboard in the first place. Regular spaghetti is more than fine, although something with a bit of width, like fettucini, would be great. I use almonds a lot because I bought a kilo from Moore Wilson’s for relatively cheap (much cheaper than buying little packets in the long run, I mean, and also cheaper compared to other bulk nuts) but use what you have – walnuts, pinenuts, pecans, cashews or Brazils would all rule.

Sexy Pasta aka Pappardelle with Roasted Capsicums, Sesame Garlic Toasted Almonds, Capers, Lemon and Mint

  • 160g pappardelle pasta or 200g other pasta
  • 3 capsicums
  • 1/2 cup whole almonds (be generous, this is your protein)
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 tablespoon sesame oil
  • 1 tablespoon capers, rinsed of their salt
  • Half a lemon
    Handful of mint leaves
  • Bring a large pan of water to the boil with plenty of salt, cook the pasta according to packet instructions (around 10 minutes) and then drain.

While this is happening, set your oven to 220 C. Halve the capsicums, remove the core and stem, and place cut-side down on an oven tray with some baking paper on it. Roast for about 20 minutes or until they’re a little blackened. Remove from the oven, tip them into a bowl and cover with gladwrap (this will make it easier to remove the skins later) and turn the oven down to 200 C.

While they’re roasting, finely chop the garlic clove. Once you’ve removed the capsicums from the oven tray – leaving the paper where it is – replace them with the almonds and the garlic. Drizzle with the sesame oil, and use a spatula to get it all mixed well, so each almond is slickly coated with oil and the chopped garlic is well dispersed. Return to the oven for about 5 minutes – make sure you keep an eye on it, burnt nuts are no fun.

Carefully peel the skin from the capsicums – should come away easily enough – and tear them into strips.

Finally – assemble. Divide the pasta between two plates, then divide the strips of roasted capsicum over that (including any syrupy juices that appear in the bottom of the bowl). Tumble over the almonds and the capers, squeeze the lemon’s juice on the top, and then rip the mint into bits and sprinkle over.

Soft, slippery capsicums, tender wide ribbons of pasta, salty capers, the sweetness of the almonds roasted into popcorn-crunchy, sticky nutty garlicky excellence, the fresh hit of the lemon and mint. The flavours and textures plow into each other to create a seriously gorgeous meal.

The next post’ll be the last one before our trip, but I’ll try to jump on here occasionally during our time away, to be all like “here’s a fuzzy picture of a hot chocolate I had” and “look! Me in front of a Krispy Kreme donut shop!” etc…

Title via: PNC’s recent single Murderer off his upcoming album. I love his music and it ably translated live, too, when we caught the end of his set at Homegrown earlier this month. I first heard this song a while ago and when he mentioned both Pad Thai and al dente I thought “huh, I’ll most likely end up using that in a title sometime…”

Music lately:

Gary Numan, Are Friends Electric? Whether they are, not much gets my head swaying dreamily from side to side, Stevie Wonder-styles, like this tune.

While looking for Julie Andrews singing Confidence on youtube I found this clip of her tapping and singing Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious with Gene Kelly. As well as being half adorable, half bewildering, it showcases the incredibly polished, staggeringly professional nature of stars at the time. When in doubt, lightly banter.

Next time: Like I said, last post before we go, and I’ve got a recipe for Chocolate Jam Bars for you. And I’ll maybe require some advice on how to be separated from your blog that you love for a month.

 

honey to the bee that’s you for me

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Note: As mentioned in my last blog post, I’ve been nominated for a Wellingtonista award, and while it’s seriously exciting and happiness-inducing to be amongst some distinctly high-profile nominees, it’s also quite nice to be voted for, so I can hype myself up into thinking I might win. As well as myself, you can also vote for other Wellington-related things you like, or nothing at all – the only compulsory fields are your name and email address. What I’m trying to say is that if you do vote (here here here) it’d be really great and I’d appreciate it heaps and heaps.

I recently got sent some honey – two jars – from the astute folk at Airborne. I was caught off-guard when they contacted me, am not sure where I stand on “accepting then blogging about free stuff” because it hasn’t really happened till now. Some people are hardline about this, refusing to accept anything, and I suspect I’d want to avoid it too – this is my blog and I’ll talk about what I want when I want – but damnit, I liked the idea of free honey and was 99% sure it would taste good and not compromise some kind of policy I haven’t even got the kind of clout to be developing in the first place. To find out more about Airborne, by the way, their “Why Choose Us” page is a reassuring read – these people treat their bees and their honey well.
So, two jars arrived – a large jar of thick, creamy Kamahi and a smaller jar of liquid, clear Tawari. And, thought I, here’s the chance to try all those recipes with lots of honey in them! But for some reason I either couldn’t find anything, or the stuff I could find, I was all “eh” about, so I decided to just make up my own stuff instead. (That said, Mum, if get the time could you please email me the recipe for those honey buns we used to make? From that handwritten recipe book I think?) (Edit: Thanks heaps Mum!)
At the vege market down the road there’s this amazingly good tofu at $4 for a large block, scored into four ‘fillets’ as I call them. However no matter how much I try, I can never quite finish it before it starts to go all orange and creepy. There’s only so much dense, filling firm tofu I can get through in a couple of days. On top of that we somehow ended up with three heads of brocolli, because I forgot that we had it and then bought some more. I hate wasting food but I’m also very forgetful, so this just sometimes happens. This following recipe however takes some neglected brocolli, some teacher’s pet asparagus, and some tofu that was somewhat past its best (not at the ‘unsafe’ stage or anything, just not looking so happy to see me when I opened the fridge) and turns it into a feast.
Honey Miso Roast Vegetables

I used a square of firm tofu, a head of broccoli, and a handful of asparagus. Use what you have – the veges need to be able to withstand some roasting. Cauliflower and kumara would be pretty perfect here too.

Whisk together:
  • 2 teaspoons white miso paste

  • 1 tablespoon clear honey (I used Airbourne’s Tawari)

  • 1 teaspoon (or more) sambal oelek or other red chilli paste

  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil

  • 1 teaspoon wholegrain mustard

Set your oven to 200 C. Chop your vegetables and tofu into fairly similar sized smallish pieces. lay the chopped vegetables on a baking-paper lined tray and spoon over the miso-honey mixture. You could also pour the mixture into a big bowl and toss the veges through it, but I couldn’t be bothered with the extra dishes. Roast for about 20 minutes or until everything looks burnished and cooked through. Eat over rice or noodles or just as is.
Don’t be alarmed by the dark, miso-toffee bits that appear (strangely delicious too, I couldn’t help peeling it off the baking paper and eating it) as whatever clings to the vegetables and tofu will taste incredible – sticky, savoury and full of complex, fragrant flavour. The tightly clenched branches of brocolli stretch out under the heat and become deliciously crisp, while their stems remain juicy and tender. The flavour of the asparagus intensifies under the caramelly, hot honey and the tofu becomes…totally passable.
Obviously with honey some kind of pudding or baking attempt is only right. It was relatively recently that I learned about frangipane, a buttery, almondy mix for filling pies and tarts and so on. I had an idea that honey could be a good exchange for the sugar. So I did it.
Honey, Almond and Dried Apricot Tart

1 square of bought puff pastry (I guess you should try and get good quality all-butter stuff. The ingredients on my Edmond’s ready-rolled sheets said “butter” but I have heard terrifying rumours of some awful sounding substance called “baker’s margarine”.)
1 egg
2 tablespoons creamy honey – I used Airborne’s Kamahi
Heaped 1/3 cup ground almonds
40g butter, melted
About 20 soft dried apricots

Set your oven to 220 C, and place the square of pastry onto a baking paper-lined tray. Lightly score a 1cm border around the edge with a sharp knife (don’t cut right through). Once in the oven, this will puff up and look really pretty.

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and the honey. Stir in the ground almonds and melted butter. This will make enough for the tart plus a generous amount for you to taste (it’s delicious!) Spoon carefully over the centre of the pastry, spreading a thin layer across to meet the edge of the margin you’ve scored (as per the picture.) Carefully pull or slice the apricots in half or – if you’ve got lots of apricots, just leave them whole – and arrange on top of the pastry. Paint a little melted butter or egg yolk round the margin if you like. Bake for about 15-20 minutes – as long as you can leave it in without burning.
The first time I made it, I was doing the dishes and forgot to check on the oven. All the sugars in the honey and apricots couldn’t take being ignored, and the tart was a blackened mess (did this stop us eating it? Erm, no). It was late at night, the kitchen was covered in frangipane-smeared implements (myself included), and the ingredients aren’t the cheapest, so I may have yelled “I’m never doing the dishes again! It’s a sign! I hate everything!” Or something to that effect.
The second time I made this tart earlier in the evening and with new enthusiasm, I watched it like I was judging gymnastics at the Olympics – focussed, scrutineering, coldly assessing for any stepping outside the lines. I can’t have eaten nearly enough delicious frangipane mixture though because there was too much on the pastry – it billowed up and spilled over. I quickly turned the oven off to halt the frangipane pilgrimage to the edge of the oven tray, but this meant that the centre of the pastry sheet didn’t have time to get light and flaky. It wasn’t uncooked, just sadly damp, floppy and uncrisp.

While this was happening Tim was watching footage of the Pike River chief executive Peter Whittall, who can’t have slept in the past week, showing a map of where the 29 miners were thought to be, deep in the stomach of the earth. The projector cast shadows across Whittall’s face, and I looked at the tart and thought “oh well”. So we ate it, and it was fine – delicious in fact, with what I considered a bonus breadth of cakey frangipane to pull off the tray contemplatively. Yes, the underside needed longer in the heat, but the soft dried apricots were warmed to an heady, jammy perfumedness, while the fruity, creamy Kamahi honey somehow amplified the fresh, Christmassy flavour of the often dull ground almonds.

While it may need some tweaking here and there, you can feel free to go ahead and make this recipe. Although, while I ended up with deliciousness I’ve only made this recipe twice and it was somewhat fail-y both times…don’t blame me if you get frangipane all over your oven/walls/hair.
For any international readers, the Pike River mine explosion last Friday caused the disappearance, followed by confirmed death after a second explosion on Wednesday, of 29 miners on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island. I was a bit naive and was saying “I hope they’re staying calm” to which people would reply, “if they’re alive”. The sickening sadness that their families, friends, colleagues and community went through, and continue to go through, makes the heart ache. If you read the newspaper (and it’s usually the narrow columns to the left and right of the page that relay the saddest stories in the briefest of paragraphs) you’ll see that tragedy happens everywhere and every day. The scale and public nature of this disaster means it has particular resonance across the country though. With that in mind – with anything in mind really – a burnt or awkward tart is something I can shrug at.
On Thursday morning, the Kamahi honey was spread thickly across hot toast, cut from a loaf of Rewena, the honey slowly filling the pools of butter that gathered in the bread’s crevices. The simplest solution of all, and it was so good. And, at a stretch, a kind of an early prototype version of the above tart. Actually I bet honey and apricot jam on toast (just spontaneously riffing here) would be amazing.
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Title via: YES, quoting Billie Piper’s Honey To The Bee here. It’s strange how, while not one note of the rest of her music appeals to me, I have an intense and unapologetic love for this one song. The swooning rapturousness with which the bizarre lyrics are delivered, the slow-dripping melody, and the late-nineties technological charm of its video make for quite the experience.
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Music lately:
Mariah Carey, Emotions from her album of the same name. Listening to her non-stop brings me no closer to the secret of what makes her so flawless.
The Damned, Eloise. Excellence!
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Next time: most definitely the Chicken Salad Lorraine, plus we’re off to Tiger Translate tonight so there’ll probably be a breathless account of that too.

we’ll start with the seed of an idea

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Truth be told, I love my food blog best of all. But I’m always inspired by other bloggers out there. There are so many great writers, like-minded souls, and awesome recipes to be found. My favourite discoveries are recipes where the overall result doesn’t involve 12 layers of sponge or a tray of eggs or whatever, just something that’s recognisable, but with a sassy combination of flavours to make you think I must make this immediately and I’m so happy the internet exists so I could find this and not even have to pay for it, even. Like this Spiced Sesame Slice from the very cool Wayfaring Chocolate blog. It’s basically a cake. But then there’s sesame seeds in it. And on it. Plus ginger and cinnamon. I don’t know about you, but that sort of old-fashioned-plus-sexy-modern combination is pretty alluring. Then again, I get all hepped up over things that other people sneer at (like the music of Jesus Christ Superstar.) I may not be the best yardstick to measure “exciting stuff” by but trust me – this cake is damn good.



(If you’re wondering what the foliage in the background is, on the left is harakeke and on the right is our boutique saffron plantation. If you weren’t wondering at all, I just like calling two bulbs a boutique plantation.)



Spiced Sesame Slice 


Recipe from Wayfaring Chocolate…cheers Hannah!

50g sesame seeds
125g flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
2 eggs
140g brown sugar
125g butter, melted

Set your oven to 180 C/375 F and line a rectangular or square cake tin, don’t worry about the size – just one of those usual-sized caketin things, you know? Even if you’ve got nonstick or silicone it would pay to butter it because this stuff sticks quite a bit. Not sure why.

First of all, toast the sesame seeds till they’re good and brown and smelling popcorn-y in a pan. Set aside. Don’t taste them, you’ll burn your tongue. Like me.

Whisk the eggs and sugar till thick and creamy and increased in volume. Pour in the melted butter, and then fold in the dry ingredients and half the sesame seeds. Turn it into the cake tin and sprinkle over the rest of the sesame seeds. Bake for 20 mins until firm-but-springy to the touch. Let it cool for a bit before slicing up.



So delicious. It’s really light-textured, and the buttery nuttiness and the warm spiciness is seriously good. It was so easy to just keep slicing off bits…tidying up edges…eating the broken bit…ah, you know how it goes. We go through bottles of sesame oil – its rich, dark nutty flavour is amazing, and the seeds work really well in a sweeter setting. I didn’t have any allspice (does anyone ever have allspice?) so in a move that I hope Hannah of Wayfaring Chocolate would be proud of (she eats stuff like chilli-studded chocolate and kangaroo meat very casually) I used Ras-el-Hanout spice mix instead. But you could just leave it out, or even add more cinnamon and ginger.



And it’s really, really good with a cup of tea.
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Title via: Untitled Opening Song from [title of show], the musical about two guys writing a musical about two guys writing a musical. This show is pretty special to me, even though I obviously never got to see it on the Broadway, and I won’t go on about it (although you know I could easily go on about it) but I will say this: don’t anyone let a New Zealand production get made (and I seriously believe it could work) without me playing Susan. I just want to so bad, and I think that’s a good enough reason to make it happen.
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Music lately:

Apart from the sweet writing skills and chocolate-a-plenty and recipes, the other thing I like about Hannah’s blog is that it always makes me think of the song Poor Wayfaring Stranger. We used to sing it in choir at school, which is when I really started to dig its melancholy, old-timey, Americana sound. This version by Dusty Springfield is particularly choice.

Gypsy Eyes from Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland…we just love us some Hendrix. Gypsy Eyes is a very cool song…I like the way he pronounces all the vowels on ‘re-a-lize that I’ve been hypnotised’.

The whole entire Distant Relatives album, from the one-two punch of Nas and Damian ‘Junior Gong’ Marley… amazing. Purposeful beats, powerful messages, impassioned delivery, but you only have to listen to first track As We Enter for five seconds to know it’s special stuff. I like the titular togetherness of the lyrics as they go back and forth – “My man’ll speak patois, and I can speak rap star…”
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Next time: Butter is so expensive! Hey! Wha’happen? If anyone could make this all go away and get it down nearer to $2 a block I’d be most obliged. Till then, we’re probably looking at some dairy-free times up ahead.

here comes the brand new flava in your ear

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While I’m usually as inspired by Cuisine magazine and its contents as the next person, the July issue that arrived in the mailbox a few days ago seemed to make me want to cook even more than I usually do. Be aware: this is some high-level longing. Inside its pages is an interview with Yotam Ottolenghi, who, apart from having an extremely cool name, has developed a small empire of eateries in the UK (the name Ottolenghi is really built to carry an empire, I’m not sure mine is) and penned a cookbook here and there too. He has a new one out called Plenty, of which a sampling of recipes were featured in Cuisine. From this one alone I think I would, at the very least, go make puppy-dog eyes at Plenty in a bookshop and stroke its elegant cover thoughtfully. (Hello, at $70 – sure, it’s probably worth actually buying, but at this stage the only headway I can afford is to make significant eye contact with it.)

The thing that attracted me to this recipe was not just that I magically had all the ingredients – (except the green chilli but I made up for this by adding a daring spoonful of chilli paste to the sauce; I substituted kumara for butternut because that’s what I had) – but that the combination of flavours seemed so new and yet so obviously meant to be together. I’d never had cardamom like this before or poured tahini over kumara. I wanted to try it, and immediately.

Roasted Kumara with Lime, Yoghurt Tahini Sauce and Chilli

Adapted from a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi from his book Plenty, in the July Cuisine magazine.

2 whole limes
4 Tablespoons olive oil1 large kumara, or enough to make about 900g (or of course, butternut)2 tablespoons cardamom pods
1 teaspoon ground allspice100g plain, Greek-style yoghurt
30g tahini
1 green chilli, thinly slicedcoriander leaves
Sea salt
Preheat oven to 210 C. Trim the tops and tails off the limes, stand on a chopping board and carefully slice off the peel and pith (a bit like this recipe here). Quarter the limes from top to bottom, and cut each quarter into thiin slices (basically – you want really thin slices of lime. The instructions are a little fiddly.) Place the slices in a small bowl, sprinkle with a little sea salt and pour over one tablespoon of the olive oil. If you have a really, really nice olive oil this is the place to use it.

Cut the butternut or kumara into slices about 1cm thick. Lay them on a baking tray. Grind the cardamom pods in a pestle and mortar (or you could probably use a food processor or something) so the seeds are extracted, and then discard the greenish pods (this took forever! The recipe does not mention this fact!) and continue to work them into a rough powder. Add the allspice and remaining oil (I used only about a tablespoon or so) and brush over the slices, sprinkle with a little salt and place in the oven for 15 minutes or until tender. Remove from the oven.
Meanwhile, whisk together the yoghurt, tahini, a tablespoon of lime juice squeezed from one of the slices chopped earlier, 2 tablespoons of water and a pinch of sea salt. To serve, arrange the slightly cooled slices of butternut or kumara on a plate, drizzle with the yoghurt sauce, spoon over the lime slices and scatter the coriander and chilli over the top.

These flavours together were so stunning. After one mouthful I involuntarily cried “Damn this is good!” and defied anyone within my empire (Tim) not to agree with me. Luckily he liked it too.

Here’s what this plate is serving you: the soft, satiny, caramelised slices of sweet kumara, roasted with lemony, tongue-numbing cardamom and cooled with earthy, nutty, tangy yoghurt and tahini sauce. The wince-inducing sharpness of the limes is somehow softened during their brief olive oil and salt spa session, leaving only pure, juicy lime flavour. You know what perky lift the coriander brings, that’s why it’s so popular. The chilli that I added into the sauce brought a little necessary dark heat. We had this with rice and it was a small but perfect dinner for two. You could leave out the yoghurt and make this completely vegan or serve it alongside a gingery roasted chicken or sesame and soy-marinated steak. It’s something special all right. So special I wheeled out alllllll those adjectives.

Speaking of adjectives…

On Monday Tim and I were fortunate enough to see Wanda Jackson performing live at the San Francisco Bath House. At 75 years of age her voice is as menacing as it ever was and she put on an amazing show, revisiting old favourites (Let’s Have A Party – hooo!) and new zingers, with stories of how she got to be where she is. Afterwards she appeared on the floor and waited patiently to sign photos for everyone, Tim and myself included – we got squeezed to the back by some understandably, but undeniably pushy folk so she looked a little dazed by the time our turn rolled round, but was still friendly. She’s often mentioned in conjunction with dating Elvis and for Jack White producing her next album but far from being defined by the men in her life she appeared on stage as who she is – an incredibly talented, powerful, gracious woman.

In my last post I mentioned the All Whites’ exciting trajectory in the FIFA World Cup – Tim and I got up and trudged to the pub in the freezing cold at 2am Thursday night to witness their final game of the tournament against Paraguay. While they didn’t win they definitely didn’t lose either – they remain one of the few unbeaten teams of the whole shebang and truly, when you compare the amount of times that Paraguay could have scored, but didn’t, and our few chances at a goal, it was a fairly astonishing game. ___________________________________________________

Title via: Craig Mack’s superfine Flava In Ya Ear from Project: Funk Da World.
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Music lately:

Wanda Jackson’s devastatingly good Shakin’ All Over, produced by Jack White for Third Man Records. On Monday night Jackson was wearing this white, heavily fringed sweatshirt (it reminded me a little of a pink sweater I used to have as a kid with a giant purple fringed V-shape across the front, I called it my “Barbie Goes West” outfit because I was cool like that) which she used to great effect in performing this song. I love it!

Devo’s new-ish song Fresh from their album Something For Everybody. I do love a song that exercises its right to multiple tempos and both Fresh and Shakin’ All Over do this staggeringly well.
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Next time: I did promise pavlova and it is on its way, but I also made some seriously enticing homespun marshmallows today and they might well jump the queue. In other news Tim and I have embarked on a side-project together, a little site largely devoted to music called 100s and 1000s, check it out if you’d like to…

20th century soy

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After all those feijoa brownies – which on one particular day served as both my breakfast and dinner, all I can say is that the heart wants what the heart wants – I thought I’d rekindle my relationship with tofu, get some soy back in my bloodstream. The stuff I like to get comes from the vege market on Dixon/Willis Street and is $4 for a generous block of four squares, or fillets if you like, of firm tofu.

We went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D that night and I wanted a fast-moving dinner planned for when we returned home. It all worked out fantastically – crisp slices of matzoh-crumbed tofu resting on a bed, no, a beanbag of chickpea and golden sultana-studded couscous, and a garlicky tahini sauce on top. It was all made very quickly – such is the joy of couscous, instantly puffing itself up into a meal, and tofu, which has no bacteria squatting within its meatless walls to be smoked out in the cooking process, cutting down on pan-time.

Yes, the photos aren’t great but 1) I was tired and hungry and 2) all that beige. What would you do? There’s only so much coriander in my fridge.
Tofu with Garlic Tahini, Couscous and Chickpeas
Half a block of firm tofu
Breadcrumbs
3 fat cloves garlic
2 Tablespoons tahini
Pinch smoked paprika
1/2 cup couscous
Boiling water
1 tin chickpeas
1/3 cup golden sultanas (you could use normal sultanas, or currants, or dried cranberries etc)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Handful almonds (or other nuts)
Tip the couscous into a bowl, pour over boiling water to cover and sit a plate on top while you get on with the tofu. When you return to it, remove the plate and fluff up the couscous with a fork. Stir in the drained can of chickpeas and the sultanas (or whatever you’re using instead), the spices plus salt to taste.

Wrap the tofu in a couple of paper towels and press on it to let some of the moisture absorb away. Bin the paper and slice up the tofu. Put your breadcrumbs (I used matzoh meal) onto a plate and press the tofu slices into them, covering both sides of each slice. Heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil till good and hot, and fry the slices till golden, a couple of minutes each side.

Finally, crush or finely chop the garlic cloves, and fry gently (in the same pan that you did the tofu in is fine). Stir in the tahini and a tablespoon of water and adding as much water as you like till you have a smoothish pale sauce. Add the paprika. Serve the tofu slices on top of the couscous with the sauce drizzled over. Sprinkle with the almonds, chopped, and a handful of torn coriander.
The couscous thing was adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe and was delicious- buttery chickpeas, tender couscous grains and chewy, sweet golden sultanas. I’m always happy to be eating tofu but pressing the crumbs into it provided a bit more texture and welcome crunch. The sauce tied it all together with its garlic smoothness, although undeniably it was a really ugly colour…even with the ‘sprinkle-the-coriander-over’ routine I still couldn’t disguise its utter beige-ity.
We ate this for dinner, as I said, after seeing Alice in Wonderland in 3D. It was my first 3D movie (yeah, so I still haven’t seen Avatar) and once I’d stopped jumping every time a leaf swirled out in front of me off the screen it was really fun. Because I loved the Alice books so much as a youngster I was a bit suspicious about what a film version could offer me, especially since the trailer made it look pretty rubbish but…I absolutely loved it. Not since Step Up 2: The Streets have I been so pleasantly surprised by a film. It was visually gorgeous for a start, but the acting and the fleshed-out characters really made it a wonderful experience. Mia Waisakowska’s Alice is powerful, at first simply reacting to what’s around her then gradually becoming more powerful, overall a highly compelling character. Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter are stunning queens. Apparently Bonham-Carter drew inspiration from Nigella for her role, and yeah, I could see it. And Johnny Depp is as captivating as, you know, he ALWAYS is. It drooped occasionally but the only thing I really didn’t like about it was the Avril Lavigne song that blasts immediately over the ending credits. It’s so bad that it’s like a parody of an awful song rather than just a simply awful song. Disney kindly showed us several fancy trailers for upcoming 3D films prior to Alice in Wonderland starting, including Toy Story 3, something about owls, and yet another Shrek sequel. I wonder if 3D is proving to be an exciting platform for companies to re-thrash already thrashed franchises…
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Title via: That other mad hatter, Marc Bolan, and T-Rex’s 20th Century Boy.
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Music lately:

Martha by Rufus Wainwright from his new album All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu. I love Wainwright’s music, his theatrical imagery and endless voice, so a new album is always a bit of a treat. This is just him and a piano, not sparse in the slightest, I’m not sure he could do ‘sparse’ but utterly beautiful and stripped of any real excess. Martha, presumably named for his sister, is one particularly affecting track on this album, the first he’s put out there since his mother’s death earlier this year.
Night Hawkes from Wellingtonian Red Steer’s latest EP, The Fever Fold. It’s an exciting track with an enviable beat that sneaks in partway through and makes me want to choreograph something. Tim reviewed it at The Corner, an NZ website so awesome that we both write for it, and you can even download the EP for free once you’re done reading up on it (and my review of MGMT’s Congratulations, there’s no free download but I do reference Hair, almost as exciting…)
Sleigh Bells’ Tell Em, crunchier than sandpaper and very fun. Their relentless fuzzity could be hard on the ears but as someone who grew up rural, ears pressed to the radio at night with one finger slowly inching the tuner round to pick up any kind of signal, it all makes sense to me.
Do you know what I’m emphatically not listening to? Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate’s Ali and Toumani, the collaboration that has recently been released, five year’s on from Toure’s death. We walked from the top of Cuba Street to the bottom of Lambton Quay at the other end of town, entering every single music shop we found and not one place had it. I know, I should have bought it sooner…
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Next time: Oh sure we ate tofu but…I also made a pudding of the ice-creamy variety. So you’ll find out about the all sharp change in direction when I next get time to update this.