Mariah Carey has taught us many things: gratuitious vocabulary words, chopping the top off your jeans with scissors so they’re more low-waisted, and of course, the art of the creatively honourable remix. For the true of heart, riffing on an existing idea doesn’t mean simply swapping out a teaspoon of this or that—it’s about giving a recipe another reason to live. In this case, I suspected that my triple tomato risotto could also be lavishly excellent when pulsified with beans instead of rice. I was correct—and it took quarter of the time to make.
Tag: Ingredient: Tomatoes
Noodles with smoky gochujang bokkeum
Some years ago I posted a recipe for a vegan variation on gochujang bokkeum, a Korean fried chilli sauce, and though I’m no longer vegan, the sauce in this iteration has lost none of its monumental appeal. Here I’ve simply stirred it through wide, chewy noodles with some flash-wilted greens and a hazy splash of liquid smoke; it makes for a dinner of such wild splendidness that even though it’s something of a retread; it does both bear repeating and stand alone on its own merit. Indeed, I’ve made a slight variation of this three times this weekend alone because it has thrice been the exact correct answer to ‘what should we have for dinner’, prosaic though that is.
pasta with prawns, tomatoes and cream
How many tomato pasta recipes does a person need? To me, one of the primary joys of cooking is working out each evening which puzzle pieces need to slot together to assuage that night’s tastebuds. I guess that’s my paid-by-the-word way of saying “what’s for dinner”. I like not knowing what my whims will be and yet knowing myself enough to answer their call accurately; whether it’s the prune-dark fruitiness of ancho chillies and the pre-banked temporal thrill of slow-cooking — anticipating anticipation, if you will — or whether the receptors down the side of my tongue long for the pugilistic sting of vinegar, or whether I want to indulge that strange human need for multi-sensory food that snaps, crackles, and pops. And sometimes I want another tomato pasta, and just the right recipe will feel brand new to me — and today, that recipe is this pasta with prawns, tomatoes and cream.
Triple tomato risotto
I had no real conceptual understanding, let alone appreciation of risotto until I encountered Nigella Lawson, from whom comes so much of my formative knowledge of food and the joys therein. In her 2010 book Kitchen, she speaks of “the solace of stirring” reiterating her stance that risotto’s comfort and calm emanates not only from its soft babyfood texture, but from the stirring itself, “the ritual of unchallenging but repeated actions”. There’s no fast-tracking risotto — or at least, if there is, I don’t want it — for twenty-five minutes you and the stove and the spoon are one, watching the rice rise under your clockwise or anticlockwise motion. It’s positively meditative.
Considering I lost most of Feburary to repeatedly testing a peanut brittle recipe where the science never quite matched my vision, it was a relief to have this recipe for triple tomato risotto stick the landing perfectly, its deliciousness providing as much comfort as the process of making it. I guess it’s good to be culinarily humbled now and then, but I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it, though more for cost-of-living reasons than maintaining my ego.
Salmon with roasted cherry tomatoes and fennel
I’ll tell you soon as look at you: SEO ruined food blogging. The death of Google, the concept of pivoting to video, AI and the word I don’t even want uttered near my blog because it makes me so belligerent and queasy — ChatG*T — are carving up the remaining carrion. I’ll leave expanding that preamble for another day, but all of this is to say, contextually, that while I’m a rabid hater of roughly 79-86% of food content out there (up to and including the word “content” to describe writing and developing recipes), there are still pockets of hope to be found, like the dimpling air bubbles in a focaccia — people who are driven by a bona fide and guileless love of food, not a love of affiliate link kickbacks (whatever they even are, other than none of my business!) I’m talking of course about people like Bettina Makalintal, ItsHolly, and in the case of the recipe that inspired today’s salmon with roasted cherry tomatoes and fennel, Hailee Catalano.
Instant gnocchi, big beans, and red chilli pesto sauce
Though it’s my favourite meal of the day, I struggle to approach dinner with any conceptual normalcy, probably partly driven by not having to account for anyone’s tastes but my own. What do I mean by this? It might only make sense in my head, but you may notice a lack of everyday, meal-prep-food-kit-type practicality to the recipes on here. I favour a certain abstraction and loose formlessness and outsized abundance when it comes to dinner, and of course am perpetually hostile to the kind of SEO that other food blogs blandly benefit from. Hence all the big plates of pasta or dishes that could be sides consumed as the meal in their entirety. The closest I get to traditional friendly dinner recipes are still vast and singular: this hands-free black bean and brown rice casserole or my sheet pan gnocchi puttanesca. Somewhere in the middle of the nebulous and the breezily circumspect sits this recipe for instant gnocchi, big beans, and red chilli pesto sauce.
Zibdiyit Gambari (Prawns in Spiced Tomato Sauce)
When I say I saw the moon last month, I mean for real: through a mighty telescope, staring right at her, frankly exposed and yet somehow voyeuristic — like seeing a painted Edward Hopper character, but also through a telescope — and undeniably powerful, not least because it happened on my birthday, not least because it had rained all evening and in the final minutes before calling it for the night, the sky suddenly shrugged and cleared for us. On the other hand, I completely missed the Aurora Borealis this week, experiencing it only as a vicarious facsimile of a facsimile through other people’s photos; to which I say: it’s the same sky! Give it to me! Food blogging in winter evokes those same emotions when I’m in a breakneck race against the clock to photograph my food in the twelve usable minutes — at best! — of Good Light. I can see the blue sky! It’s light and airy in my apartment! Give me the light! Why does my food look so muddy and dull?!
Fortunately, I caught this Zibdiyit Gambari at the golden hour of 4.38pm-4.52pm, and so you get to see it and hear about it. And not that I deal in hypotheticals, because they’re not real options and therefore there’s no point considering, but if a small goblin appeared and offered me either the chance to see Aurora Borealis or the ability to always catch the perfect light for my food blogging I can’t tell you, hand on heart, that I’d definitely go for the captivating visual miracle of science. Or at least, not the one you’re thinking of.
Banadora Wa Sumac — Tomato, Mint and Sumac Salad
It’s a new year! To paraphrase Dorothy Parker — out of indolence, not because she needs editing — another one? How? 2024 feels too far into the future for my taste, we all know too much but we’ve learned nothing and Google doesn’t work anymore and the date of my birth is shrinking in the distance to the point where it’s improbable that I existed both now and then. But, here we are, now, and based upon experience I approach the early days of January 2024 cautiously — like I’m throwing a steak to distract and appease a pugnacious neighbourhood dog — but not without hope.
On that somewhat discordant note, I’m beginning the year with Banadora Wa Sumac, an ebullient salad from Palestine on a Plate by Joudie Kalla that echoes the nation’s flag colours and cools the brain while delighting the palate.
Hands-free Black Bean and Brown Rice Casserole
Where last week’s recipe was flighty and fancy, this Hands-free Black Bean and Brown Rice Casserole is more sensible and functional — not exactly dinner party fare but highly amenable to that evening slump in energy and inspiration when you require dinner but wish to neither think nor try. While my blog is not generally a perky resource for busy people with many mouths to feed — it’s merely a collection of recipes that I love — I aim, at least, to be practical about the outwardly impractical. This recipe, however, is pure pragmatism without qualification. You plonk a bunch of long-life pantry ingredients in an oven dish, bake for an hour, and there’s your dinner.
Sheet Pan Gnocchi Puttanesca
Look, I’m the first to yell about how SEO has ruined food blogging and I know we probably don’t say “sheet pan” in New Zealand, but sometimes you have to dance with the enemy in order to steal their jewels, and so this recipe is called Sheet Pan Gnocchi Puttanesca in the hopes that capitulating to Big Algorithm delivers me some sweet, sweet optimisation. That modern ugliness aside, what this recipe will undoubtedly deliver you is a delicious, hands-off dinner in little more than half an hour.
Hungry and Frozen 