you got the peaches, i've got the cream, sweet to taste, saccharine

moving house = new background surfaces in photos on the blog

No matter how many times I dramatically fall over and hit every surface on the way down, one thing I can count on is how I almost always land on my feet one way or another. Alas, I'm only talking metaphorically here, because when it comes to literal fallings-over my kneecaps have a 100% hit rate with the ground.  

By which I mean: oh wow I finally, finally, found an apartment! I knew I would, and that the right place would appear at the 11th hour, but the lead-up to that was still such a stressful overwhelming time (and, as I noted in a previous blog post, it was also a heinously sweaty time schlepping about town to flat viewings.) My new place is everything I want though: It's up high, it's in the middle of the city, it has those exposed-brick-New-York-Loft vibes that I just can't quit (seriously: if you were all, "Laura you can live in this perfectly lovely villa or you can hold this one singular brick in your right hand and sit in a ravine" there is a ludicrously high chance that I'd take the brick) it has an elevator out of a noir film about murder, there's excellent light for food photography, and I've only got one other flatmate and they seem very cool and nice. I'm so happy! I really am! Like, so damn content! What is this feeling, so sudden and new? 

The actual moving process was hellishly exhausting (I acknowledge that I got movers in to do most of the legwork but there was definitely a point while packing where I was like what if I just lie down and shut my eyes eternally and let my possessions eat me alive) but now that I'm properly installed in the new place and have, at least, made my bed and hung up my clothes, it does feel like it's all starting to work out. 

As a moving-in treat I bought myself the new Cuisine - a local food magazine which for years I would collect with religious ferocity. I haven't picked it up in a while, but there's nothing like living in a new space to get me all renewed-vigour-y for cooking (obviously not the most practical way to get one's vigour renewed, however it is what it is.) At first I was slightly aghast that Ray McVinnie is no longer at the helm of the Quick Smart segment, an entertainingly rapidfire list of recipe ideas based around a theme, but I quickly got over that when I saw reliable replacement Ginny Grant's suggestion for Peach and Mozzarella Panzanella.  I do love a salad where it's essentially a process of buying five nice ingredients and putting them all on a plate together, and this is an excellent example - really rather removed from the original Tuscan recipe for panzanella, but whatever. It's the combination of the peaches, all crisp and fragrant and summery, with fresh mozzarella, all aggressively mild like Ned Flanders, which makes this special - crunch and sweetness plus pillowy softness plus the oiled, toasty bread...you may not personally consider salad a thrilling time, but this one: it thrills.  

peach mozzarella panzanella

adapted slightly from a recipe from the January issue of Cuisine magazine. Serves two-ish, but I could eat all of this quite joyfully and only be mildly uncomfortable afterwards. The quantities are kind of vague, please deal with it. 

half a loaf of ciabatta
two crisp, firm peaches (I went for a variety called Elegant Lady literally because of the name)
one tub of bocconcini mozzarella (or one big ball of it, I just find the smaller stuff easier to slice up) 
one punnet of cherry tomatoes (around a cupful I guess? Or 300g? Just like, get some tomatoes.)
a few handfuls of salad leaves of some description
olive oil
red wine vinegar
salt

Set your oven's grill to high. Slice the bread and then tear the slices into rough cube-type things, and place in an oven dish. Drizzle with plenty of olive oil, and place under the grill till lightly browned. 

Slice the peaches, halve the tomatoes (a pain, I know! But it makes them go further and gets all the tomato juice out) and finally, slice the mozzarella and then tear it into smaller bits. 

Mix all of this together with your salad leaves in a large bowl, then drizzle over more olive oil and around a tablespoon of vinegar. Add plenty of salt and stir again, and leave to sit for about an hour if you can, but even if you just do all the clean up first before eating that should allow some time for all the flavours to start moving.  Feel free to pour over more olive oil and add more salt once you've served it - salads can never be too oily or too salty in my opinion. 

I love this table at my new apartment, prepare to see it plenty in the future

This salad really benefits from sitting around for a bit first before you eat it, as the tomato juice and the olive oil soaks in to everything, making the bread deliciously soggy (I know, two words that don't seem like they should go together) but if you have to eat it all right away I understand.

setting up my wardrobe is my favourite part

things that also benefit from sitting: me, when I'm unpacking 

It has only been two days and already I'm blooming like a flower from living in the centre of town again (also wilting like a flower from the heat! That's right: I pledge to you, on bended knee, that I will never ever stop complaining about the weather.) It's just lovely to be able to walk out the door and be immediately in the middle of the city, then to go home again without having to take forever catching expensive busses, it makes everything feel easier and more fun. And I'm just moments from work! I am absolutely going to miss Newtown - my bedroom there was so sweet, and there were countless gregarious neighbourhood cats...but I'm happy to be back here. Less delighted about unpacking, but the promise of my bedroom becoming more and more of a haven is greatly motivating. (She says, immediately launching into another barely-justifiable nap.) 

PS: I can't be the only one who thinks Peach Mozzarella Panzanella is totally a name you want to check into a hotel with when you're a famous celebrity trying to travel incognito?

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title from: I mean, it's a Def Leppard song that has an unparalleled success rate for getting me on the dance floor, but for me Tom Cruise's appallingly sexy Stacee Jaxx in the Rock of Ages movie does the definitive version. 

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music lately: 

Is there anything worth talking about other than Beyonce's brand new song Formation? It's incredible and it's powerful and she's incredible and powerful. Watch it, I implore you. 

That said, I am super obsessed (obsessed anew, I should say, since I loved these guys when I was three) with You Got It (The Right Stuff) by New Kids On The Block. Till One Direction came along I fully believe there was no other boy band song that came even close to this one. Those oh-oh-ohhh's! So good! 

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next time: there's this coconut-crusted fried eggplant recipe in the Cuisine magazine that has majorly caught my fancy. But also I am planning to make some ice cream! Either way: yay new kitchen! 

everything i love is on the table, everything i love is out to sea

Here are some things that happened over the weekend.

Tim and I drank a lot of coffee and started planning our wedding. We went to see Unknown Mortal Orchestra live at Bodega. They were amazing. A guy collapsed in front of me while we were there, which sent a shot of adrenaline to my heart like the "a shot of adrenaline to the heart" scene in Pulp Fiction, but by the time I ran to tell the bar staff his friend had taken him outside. I made burnt butter madeleines for friends Kate and Jason as a small token of my gratitude for giving us this beautiful formica table that they no longer needed. I've always loved formica, but it's near-impossible to get hold of in Wellington, since every cafe and their mother seems to love it, too. 

And I spent three hours - three whole hours to the minute - huddled under the dining table, with Tim, and our friends Kim and Brendan, during a big earthquake, and through aftershock-after-aftershock. So, uh, yeah. The aftershocks continued throughout the night, when Tim and I (I dazedly, Tim pragmatically) gathered medication and a jacket and bottled water and then went to bed. I slept somewhere between midnight and 3.00am, and that was...it. There have been aftershocks all morning. The table that this laptop is sitting on wobbled just before, and it probably will again. Right now my legs and hands are shaking and my head is sort of spacey and my butt and heart are twitching in a syncopated motion and I sincerely can't tell what is tiny aftershock and what is me. 

I'd like to acknowledge a ton of things: everything rattled fearsomely but nothing broke, we weren't hurt, and Christchurch has dealt with this kind of thing x a million. Three hours is a long time to spend under a table, and admittedly we probably could've come out after an hour? Maybe even twenty minutes. But not only did it feel marginally safe under there, it was distracting. We had an instant world to focus our energies in. After the first big, terrifying quake finally subsided, we grabbed a bottle of whisky. Incidentally, the bottle Kim and Brendan gave us for an engagement present, and which we promised we'd drink with them sometime. This wasn't what we'd pictured.

a whole new world.

Soon it acquired chips, pretzels, diet lift, dried fruit, knitting, the laptop that I'm typing this on, soothing music, cushions and blankets, and, as I joked weakly on Twitter, "a French Quarter". While we were all varying degrees of scared, there was some bleak comedy happening under the table as well - like the shrieks of people excitedly playing Candy Crush on their phones jolting the rest of us, or when I elected to play Walk the Line instead of God's Gonna Cut You Down (even if I don't believe, Johnny Cash sounds like he means it), or our various Tetris-like attempts to fit comfortably under there. And just the fact that this was our house, and we had invited our friends there, gave me this unusual ability to channel general we-can-get-through-this Julie Andrews levels of brisk practicality. I mean, I was still kind of a mess, but honestly, relatively Andrews-esque. No one can brisk like her. After we'd dropped Kim and Brendan off at their house, I ended up having to ask Tim to pull over because I was having a small panic attack, I think my brain finally exhaled and stopped putting on a show. Later that night, after trying to lull myself into a false sense of security with Parks and Recreation, which is a surefire way to make myself feel like the world is a better place, I lay in bed absolutely awake, every particle of my body alert and unwilling to sleep. Tim, meanwhile, happy-go-lucky bastard that he is, was clearly half asleep already. And then he was all "we could just talk about stuff if you want, like the wedding" and so we did, even though I knew both of us were only trying to distract me. And it was so damn sweet I nearly cried. Oh no, wait, I did.

We're both home today, partly because of my barely-slept NOPE in response to the world, but mostly legitimately - lots of CBD workers have been sent home or advised not to come in at all - trying to stay calm and ride out the aftershocks. My nerves are coming to pieces like the frayed end of a ribbon and everything feels very weird. A mix of "is this even that bad?" and "is this our life now? Waiting for earthquakes?" 

In the middle of all that, I found a madeleine that didn't make it to the container for Kate and Jason, and ate it. Still good. 

Sweetly ruffled surface and palm-friendly shape aside,  these madeleines may look a little dryly unpromising from the outside. However each bite rewards your mouth with dense, buttery sponge, made rich with almonds and the purposeful, necessary burning of the butter. Madeleine tins aren't the hardest thing to come by, or else I wouldn't have one, but I'm sure you could try making this in cupcake liners and something delicious would still happen. These do take a bit of effort and musclework, but sheesh, your friends just gave you a whole table! 

burnt butter madeleines

recipe from issue 148 of that favourite magazine of mine, Cuisine. I doubled this, and used a whole 70g packet of ground almonds, because I just did.

150g butter

75g sugar

2 eggs

30g ground almonds

75g flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Firstly, get your madeleine tin ready and set your oven to 180C/350F. In a small pot, melt the butter over a high heat, and then let it continue to bubble away scarily until it goes from a bright yellow frothy mixture to a darker, more burnished gold. Sit it in a sink of cold water, or tip into a cold bowl, so it quickly cools down. Whisk the eggs and sugar together for about five minutes, till pale and thick, then continue to whisk in the ground almonds. Sift in the flour and baking powder, alternating with pouring in the butter, and fold it all together gently. Let it sit for fifteen minutes, by which stage it should have thickened up quite a bit. Brush the madeleine tin with melted butter or a neutral oil (or some of the residual burned butter in the pan) and spoon small dollops of the mixture into the tin. Bake for ten minutes, then repeat with remaining mixture, allowing the cooked madeleines to cool on a rack as you go. 

Am fresh out of adjectives, to the point of narrow-eyedly using the Thesaurus app on this laptop for the word 'good'. I can advise, therefore, that these are outstanding, sterling, and simply ace. Like many foodstuffs I like, these are a pleasing melange (that was the thesaurus too) of fancy and plain, soft and spongy and sweet and yet calmly straightforward of flavour - despite the burned butter's richness that I mentioned, they really just taste like sublime (that adjective was mine!) cake.

And I'd like to just mention again that I love the table. Formica is a little nostalgic, a lot practical, and looks damn sweet in photos. 

Today, despite my nerves, brittle and fragile like a crisp meringue, I am enjoying just spending time with Tim and consuming more Orange is the New Black and knitting. It's a bummer we're here under these strange, nerve-wracking circumstances, but we might as well try to enjoy it while we're here and be thankful for what we've got. It's so odd going from being anxious about vague nothingness, to suddenly having that plus anxiety about potential reality, but on the other hand this affliction means I'm pretty much always fight-or-flight ready anyway? It's not right, but it's okay, as the great Whitney Houston once sang. I'm also super grateful for Twitter - the importance of that instant feeling of not being alone can't be overstated. Stay safe everyone, pals, suspicious non-pals, the indifferent. And if someone works out how to, I don't know, throw an earthquake in jail, I'd be open to listening. Especially if there's a robust rehabilitation programme and preventative societal change involved. 

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title via: Don't Swallow the Cap, from The National's marvelously dour new album, Trouble Will Find Me.

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music lately:

UMO's song So Good At Being In Trouble. Bliss. And what a title.

Frank Sinatra, New York, New York. Rat Pack = soothing to me.

This isn't music, but Tim and I listen to Bob Ducca's list of ailments at least weekly, and did again on purpose last night. Makes me helpless with laughter every time.
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Next time: Um. No more quakes, please. Seriously.

she gets too hungry, for dinner at eight

I am a tired person these days. It's because I think about this blog a lot. I think about what I can do on it. I think about whether other people are thinking about it, loving it as much as I do. I stay up late writing stuff. I write stuff early in the morning. I'm not sure if it's the sort of thing you're supposed to admit, but it's true. When I finally go to bed at night, instead of relaxing into a powerful sleep, my silly brain is all "meeean now's my chance to brainstorm! Get it? I'm a brain! Time to plan a squillion smurfillion things...to stay awake and think. Hard." My kingdom for a more cooperative brain! (Or as some dry fellow once said, "if I only had a brain!") (Also I had a late night last night at a party for cool lady Kim's birthday. Double tiredness! But this was the good kind at least.)

Conversely, I'll often arrive at needing to make dinner, one of my favourite times of the day, and my brain'll be all "umm...there's cookbooks everywhere, and yet...I can't even?" However this week, despite not sleeping all that much and having a brain whittled down to a nub, I somehow managed to get some spontaneous inspiration happening. So I made sure I remembered what I did. I don't have the monopoly on tiredness, needing to eat and wanting something delicious all at the same time, and these two hasty dinners I made recently might work for you too.

Spicy Tomatoes and Chickpeas with Coconut Milk.

Fun because: three cans of stuff = dinner. And it takes all of seven minutes and costs hardly anything.

Pasta with Bacon, Pears, Pecans, Rocket

Fun because: you can change heaps of the ingredients for other things you have. 

Spicy Chickpeas with Tomatoes and Coconut Milk


1 can tomatoes
1 can chickpeas
1 can coconut milk 
1 teaspoon each of the following: cumin seeds, coriander seeds, cinnamon, nigella seeds...oh, whatever you like, really, but that's a good mix)
1 tablespoon chilli sauce
1 onion
Optional - to garnish - plain yoghurt, coriander, more coriander seeds.


Disclosure: my canned tomatoes were the cherry kind, and my chickpeas were "brun" because I go in for fancy stuff like that, but the plainest of plain stuff will be great too.


Slice up the onion, and fry it in a little oil over a good fierce heat till browned. Tip in the drained chickpeas, the tomatoes (with their juice), the spices, and the chilli sauce and let it come to the boil. Simmer away, stirring, for a couple of minutes, then pour in as much coconut milk as you like, stir, and remove from the heat. Divide between two bowls, and top with whatever garnish you fancy. 

We got delicious, quilt-sized garlic naans from Aaina (at 255 Cuba Street) and they were perfect for absorbing up this soupy spicy mess and making it feel like a feast. The mild coconut milk seeps into the spiced up tomatoes, the sturdy chickpeas give it some body - add a little chilli sauce and it's gonna rock your pants. It's vegan till you add the yoghurt - which isn't even necessary, you could just drizzle over whatever's clung to the coconut milk can - completely gluten free too.

Pasta with Bacon, Pears, Pecans and Rocket


This was inspired by a recipe of Al Brown's in the latest Cuisine magazine. I admit, I tried getting in touch with my deeply Germanic roots by making Spaetzle, a kind of pasta dish that I love but have only ever had made for me. The recipe didn't quite work for me...like the pasta ended up delicious but the dough was like the strongest adhesive and wouldn't go through the colander like it should and was a big complicated messy mess. I recommend you just use regular pasta.


200g pasta
100g streaky bacon, cut into small squares.
1 pear, cored and sliced.
Butter.
Handful of rocket
Handful of pecans
Thyme leaves


Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, and cook your pasta till...it's cooked. Meanwhile, heat up a little butter in a saucepan and fry your bacon till nearly crisp, then add the pear slices. Let them get a good amount of heat on each side so they colour up a bit, then tip it all onto a plate and cover with tinfoil to keep warm. Hot trick: tip it onto your plate so you get extra bacony-flavour goodness when it's all served up. In that same pan, quickly toast the pecans. Drain the pasta thoroughly, add it to the pan along with the bacon and the pears, stir it all together, and divide between two plates. Cover with rocket and thyme leaves and serve. 

It's one of those dinners that might not look like much - almost like a bunch of different garnishes all piled on top of each other, masquerading as a proper meal. But hear me out. You've got the salty, butter-fried crisp bacon, the caramelised and juicily sweet pears, and toasty, softly crunchy pecans all twirled into your pasta. Cover it in a peppery tangle of rocket, both virtuous and visually sprucing and a few sprigs of thyme just because, and it's honestly tastebud magic right there. 

Apart from how spectacularly excellent it tastes, it's also versatile as: use whatever pasta you like, for a start, or even something like leftover boiled potatoes that have been fried in butter. The bacon's optional, the pecans - they aren't always cheap - could be walnuts or almonds or even sunflower or pumpkin seeds. Rocket could be swapped for spinach or any other green stuff you fancy, the pear could be a green apple...see? 

Despite my brain being like a crumbly old Ryvita, it has been a fantastic weekend - lurking with friends old and new, drinking tea and cider and vodka, making up ice cream, practicing cornrowing Tim's hair so he can look like Ron Swanson for Halloween (I'm going to be Elphabaaaa!) reading in the sun, admiring Snacks the goldfish, that kind of thing. The kind of weekend you wish it could be every weekend...

...it's also now time to get started on fulfilling the tasks on my List which I haven't really properly finalised yet (maybe I should add "finish list" to my list?)

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Title via: there are literally zillions of awesome versions of The Lady Is A Tramp, but the most recent to take my fancy is a duet by Lady Gaga and Tony Bennet - am not a fan of her music or anything but she's incredible in this. 

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Music lately:

Wooden Shjips, Lazy Bones. Rather like it.

Not Fade Away - it owes more than a little to Bo Diddly with that rhythm, which is possibly why it's one of my favourites by the sadly shortlived (of both career and life) Buddy Holly.

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Next time: I still have that idea for the pear sorbet sitting there, but as I ended up using one of the pear's in that pasta, it's looking less likely it'll be happening right away. However, I have made my first hummingbird cake - I haven't tasted it yet but all the ingredients sound amahzing on paper at least. 

but if that salt has lost its flavour it ain't got much in its favour

There are many things in life to be afraid of. But, being a person who tends rapidly towards non-endearingly sweaty anxiety I can say this with confidence: adding salt to your caramel slice - or your caramel anything - should not be on that list of things you fear.

You know what else isn't so scary? Buying a DOMAIN NAME! I am now hungryandfrozen.com! It's really, sincerely thrilling. I know people have been doing it since forever (Tim: "this is truly a special day" Me: "Yes. No one has ever done this before. Surely good things will only come of this") but whatever. I'm inordinately pleased with myself for finally making it happen - someone might as well be - and surprisingly, that snappy little .com really does make me feel more part of it all. (Note: I really wanted to link through to a song called Part of it All from [title of show] there but inexplicably it's not on YouTube. I might've been the only person who actually listened to it, but it makes me feel better that you know what my intentions were, anyway.)

As I was saying, don't feel held back by the salt component of this caramel slice. The recipe is in the new issue of the excellent Cuisine magazine, and even though it's one of those hand-it-to-you-on-a-plate kind of recipes where you can tell immediately by the title that it's going to be really good, I was not prepared for just how amazingly amazing it'd taste.

As with browning butter in last week's recipe, salt sharpens up every good thing about caramel. It becomes more roundedly toffeed, more intensely buttery, and less straightforwardly sugary. Lay that salt on. I can't lie that it helps if it's the kind of nice, flaky sea salt that costs twelve times more than the regular stuff.

This recipe is pretty uncomplicated, with just melting and stirring and then more melting and stirring involved. However, there's a few elements that make it not your average supersweet chocolate-topped caramel slice. Not that I'm anti the regular stuff, I struggle, and always have, to choose anything else when I go to bakeries. First, there's the salt. Then, fine cornmeal is added to the base, giving a little contrasting grit and crispness, and echoing the sweetness of the contents more than just plain flour would. Finally, the sweetened condensed milk feels more heat than usual, boiled away in the pan and then further blasted in the oven, reducing its liquid and making it as spreadable and roof-of-mouth coating as peanut butter. That's a good thing, by the way. All told, it's one heck of a recipe.

Salted Caramel Slice

Adapted from a recipe by Fiona Smith, from the September/October issue of Cuisine. For example, I didn't have a tin small enough and so increased some ingredients.  

115g brown sugar  
100g fine cornmeal
100g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
150g butter
3 tablespoons golden syrup  
A 395g can of sweetened condensed milk
2 teaspoons flaky sea salt

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F and butter and line an average sized slice tin. Mix the brown sugar, cornmeal, flour and baking powder together in a bowl. 

In a pan, melt 120g of the butter. Pour it into the dry ingredients, mix together well and press into the base of the tin, flattening out carefully with the back of a spoon. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes.  

In the same pot/pan, melt the rest of the butter, tip in the condensed milk and the golden syrup, and cook over a low heat for six minutes or so, stirring plenty. The caramel should darken slightly and thicken up. Spread it carefully and evenly - it'll only be a thin layer - over the base, sprinkle with the salt, and return to the oven for another 10-12 minutes.  

Allow to cool, then slice how you like.
 

It is without hyperbole that I tell you that this is intensely dazzlingly delicious. Real special stuff. The sort of thing you should definitely make for your friends, or even people that you're hoping to be friends with, because it's so good and no-one could hate you after eating it, no matter how bad a first impression you made (unless they're allergic to dairy or something, in which case this would be a really, really bad first impression). And for all that it has three different kinds of sugar in it, it's not scarily sweet.

Speaking of things not scarily sweet, and for the sake of variety: a salad so healthy I served it in a plate shaped like a leaf. Because none of us will ever have the same ingredients as each other it would be unfair to tell you to stick exactly to this, but it was very good and served to clear out some packets of things that had been guiltily neglected for a while; quinoa, edamame, peas, torn up cavolo nero leaves, toasted almonds and pumpkin seeds, black sesame seeds, and a weird but good dressing involving peanut butter, cider vinegar, nigella seeds, ground cumin, lemon-infused olive oil and...something else that I forget. My rule for dinner salads is that there needs to be nuts or seeds involved, and an amazing dressing, and the rest will all fall into place - just use whatever's in the fridge, freezer, and cupboard.

Saturday was awesome - rapturous sunshine, a Petone food mission with Kate, Jason, Kim and Brendan; Tim joining us after getting a haircut that mercifully didn't make him look like a Hitlerjugend (I've seen his school photos, the regulation buzzcut was not kind to him); putting salmon and pork ribs into Kate and Jason's smoker; eating said food with heaps and heaps of cider. Later that evening Tim and I went to Kayu Manis - having had such a good time there the week before with Chef Wan - and I laughed both with and at Tim while he struggled with the chili content of his curry. Finally we went home and watched Parks and Recreation. It was so fun that Sunday couldn't help but be slightly mopey in contrast (but really: you go grocery shopping late on a Sunday afternoon, hear that really weird "Give me the Beach Boys" song playing over the loudspeaker and just try not to cry dismally.)  

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Title via: Light of the Earth from Godspell, a musical that I love unashamedly (although loving musicals in the first place could be cause of shame for some, but not I!) This isn't even the best song from it. But it does use the word salt.  

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Music lately: I really recommend listening to Judy Garland's You Made Me Love You followed by Sherie Rene Scott's hilarious version from her musical Everyday Rapture. Which does not appear to be on Youtube. But if all you can manage to locate is just Judy's original or anything by Judy and/or something that Sherie Rene Scott has sung, things are still looking up for you. All Your Love, John Mayall's Blues Breakers - Tim bought this record on Saturday and I was all "Eric Clapton? Boring!" but actually that was a bit of an unfair call.

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Next time: While I was at Kate and Jason's I took stock of their other Lee Brothers book, and from it will be making Banana Pudding Ice Cream. I can't wait, haven't done any ice cream in aaaages. Also, If you're in Wellington, look out for people selling cupcakes for the SPCA on Monday 29, and if you like, be kindly towards them and buy said cupcakes. It's possibly too late to make some yourself now, although having spent many a midnight frantically baking I wouldn't rule it out entirely.

red enough it could burn you...

I was away in Auckland for work over the weekend, but very happily, I got to fit a night at home with the family in around it. During my 18-hour stint at home I somehow managed to catch up with huge amounts of family, both extended and immediate. Well, the family minus one cat (Rupert, who died in May). Roger, the remaining feline, seemed to enjoy the extra attention but didn't go so far as to actually sit on my lap for an extended time period or sleep on my bed that night.

While packing up on Sunday in my Auckland motel to head to the airport, I bent down to check if I'd left anything under the bed (I always do this, even if I hardly bring anything with me - I once found twenty cents!) and on the way down my right temple connected hard and swift with the wooden back of a desk chair. It hurt so bad, and I wailed really loudly. And then kind of laughed at the fact that there was no-one to hear me saying "owwww", which...actually sounds fairly sinister now on paper. Anyway, if this blog is completely non-inspiring to read, blame it on my sore, impacted head.

The new Cuisine magazine arrived in our mailbox the day before I left to go up to Auckland, giving me just enough time to read it, but not enough time to cook any of its content. I did daydream about one particular recipe while away, which I then made pretty well immediately after returning home to Wellington. Rote Grutz, or its supercool translation Red Grits (I find it hard not to spell it Gritz) is a German recipe that Ray McVinnie, one of my very, very favourite local food writers, discovered while researching food in Berlin. I'm not even going to pretend to *cough* when I say: "Luckyyyy".

It doesn't look like there's much to this recipe, and it's true, but the ingredients come together to form something that's a gorgeous merging of jam and custard. The 'grits' part of the name come from the berries' seeds, at least that's my guess. They're certainly gritty. The cornflour and juice cooks together and becomes satiny and light (apart from that one lump of unstirred cornflour stirring in my glass), stunningly red, not too sweet. In fact, the sour-sugary aspect makes it compelling eating. I even sneaked back to the fridge in a bit of a trance while it was cooling to eat some more spoonfuls, then accidentally dropped a steak right into the bowl of berries. Luckily the steak was wrapped and on a tray and I removed it fast.

I didn't have the exact ingredients that Ray McVinnie specified, but I'd like to think what I had worked just as well. There's something nice about the red-on-red of the juices but I'm sure you could use orange or apple juice if that's what's most accessible to you.

Rote Grutze/Red Grits

From the June/July 2011 issue of Cuisine magazine.

250mls cranberry juice

150g sugar

800g frozen raspberries

50g cornflour mixed with 4 tablespoons water

Or, my appropriation based on what was in the fridge and the amount of people it was feeding:

125ml (1/2 cup) strawberry juice (I know! I bought it at the food show, the brand is NJoy but I can't find anything about them online. Anyway, this seemed like a practical use for it.)

75g sugar

400g frozen cranberries and blackberries

25g cornflour mixed with 2 tablespoons water

Bring the sugar and juice to a boil in a saucepan. Add the berries, bring to the boil again and carefully stir in the cornflour mixture, stirring really well so you don't end up with lumps of cornflour. Remove from the heat, cool, then pour into glasses. Out of mine I got enough for the two glasses you saw plus a couple of tablespoons left over to be saved for making future breakfasts more exciting.

The Red Grits are pretty to look at, dark as garnets and just as light-catching. While they'd taste gorgeous with a cascade of fresh cream plunging into their red depths, they were satisfactorily delicious as is. As well as served in glasses, I imagine these saucy berries could be spooned over ice cream, tucked under a crumble topping, or used to fill a pie shell.

And extremely easy to make. Tim and I never actually saw these on a menu in Berlin, but it does feel nice to be eating something Germanic, so that our holiday doesn't feel quite so far away in the past.

Last week I had the extremely cool opportunity to go to the launch of Visa Wellington on a Plate. Which I'm really excited about. Particularly the set menus which allows me to briefly feel like a Lady Who Lunches. At last year's launch I met Mika of Millie Mirepoix for the first time, and also the magnificent Ray McVinnie himself. He wasn't there this year, but I re-met Delaney of Heartbreak Pie and Rosa of Mrs Cake, and met for the first time Joanna from Wellingtonista, etc. We ploughed through beautiful nibbles, ended up at Cuckoo round the corner for wine (I will pay you back Delaney and Rosa) and then Tim appeared and he and I ended up having a wild dinner at Foxglove with Jo and her friend Heather. It all happened really spontaneously which is a word that I don't usually use to describe activities that I participate in. It was so fun, and several bonus points to the staff at Foxglove who dealt with our increasing raucousness. But as well as making real-life friends of people that also seem cool online, Wellington on a Plate has plenty to offer people who just want to eat stuff: check em out.

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Title via: Linda Clifford, Red Light, from the Fame soundtrack. I love this song so much. It's also an amazing moment in the film itself - obviously Leroy is a total babe and it's supposed to be humourous but I always felt so sad for Shirley Mulholland. When she says "who wants to go to a...school and learn to dance anyway" a bit of my heart chips off (this is why I can't watch this film too often) because I know how she feels.

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Music lately:

Arctic Monkeys, Don't Sit Down Because I've Moved Your Chair. Some of the music I was really wild about six years ago really hasn't aged too well, or successive output has downright deteriorated. So it's nice to see the Arctic Monkeys continuing to be awesome.

Patrick Wolf, The Magic Position. I had a bad headache today from the aforementioned head-hitting moment and so was feeling a bit grim. This song came on my ipod and, with its carousel-ride sound and Bolero-baiting violins, it was about halfway through before I realised I was happily swaying my head side to side like Stevie Wonder.

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Next time: I've been tutu-ing with the idea of making a Facebook page for this blog. On the one hand...it might be a good way for people to latch ever further onto this blog. A lot of people like Facebook. On the other hand, I don't really like Facebook (it's true! You have to scrape me away from Twitter with a silicon spatula but I can't spend more than a minute on Facebook) and I wouldn't know what to say on there, and research would suggest that you actually have to have an engaging Facebook page to keep people around. On a further, auxiliary hand, what if I built a Facebook page and nobody turned up? Any thoughts'd be appreciated.

i've got strength and endurance, so i count my blessings

So. After Tuesday's horrific earthquake in Christchurch, from which the sad news continues to eclipse any good, I couldn't consider much of anything, let alone blogging. Which is fine.

Tim and I and my whole family are so lucky. Removed physically from the horror, although not emotionally. My cousin and his partner down in Christchurch were fine, despite being in the city centre at the time, and we were able to hear this news pretty quickly. Any other friends and family we had down there have been accounted for. But the number of fatalities climb with sorrowful speed. We had two people staying in our lounge last night, friends of our flatmate's who were in Christchurch when it happened. Their stories were a further reminder to be thankful for what I've got.

Thankful or not (and it's not proper gratitude, how can you be truly thankful that something awful happened to someone else and not you?) I've been changed by this earthquake. Wellington, where I live, is supposed to be earthquake central, not Christchurch. I used to be such a daydreamer, floating down the street in my own world. Now I dart from block to block, each shop front a potential missile that I pass like a small victory. I take my phone everywhere. I feel nervous when Tim and I go our separate ways for work in the morning. I lie awake, mentally assessing what might fall on me in the night, the useless-in-an-earthquake concrete walls staring back at me, every twitch of my muscles or distant slamming door feeling like the opening bars of an earthquake's crescendo. One good thing about staying up so late to listen to the news and refresh Twitter is that my eyes shut that much faster when I do get to bed.

Worth pointing out here that this specific fear of earthquakes and feeling like every creak of a building is nature getting angry isn't anything new. It's been this way ever since a well-intentioned but excessively heavy school assignment on disasters when I was about 10. Just now it's a lot more...near.

As with when I was 10, I try to comfort myself with the thought that my grandma Zelda, who died when she was about 75 (would've been so much longer if emphysema hadn't set in) once told me that she'd never once been in an earthquake. She might've been lying to an overly nervous kid (that said, she did live in Tuakau, not known for its tremors.) But then and still now, I tell myself like a mantra that if Grandma could be that age and never be in an earthquake, then maybe I could be that person too. Then there's practical things to help soothe the mind too: we refreshed our bottled water supply, located a torch, that kind of thing.

Of course there's food. On Tuesday night I came home and made us a risotto with extra butter and frozen peas, remembering Nigella's philosophy of the mindless stirring being good for the soul. It wasn't half bad, just focussing on that wooden spoon spiralling through the slowly expanding grains of rice. We ate it out of bowls on the couch and listened to Radio New Zealand till well after midnight.

With some renewed sense of purpose, I baked some stuff for the bring-and-buy sale happening at Grow From Here up the road. In a sort-of humorous twist, the friends from Christchurch who I mentioned earlier were asleep on our lounge floor while I was trying to quietly, quietly ice a cake and wrap up cookies without waking them. At Grow From Here we met up with another local food blogger, Mika of Millie Mirepoix. I'd made Chocolate Guinness Cake, gluten-free peanut butter cookies, and a couple of fruit tea loaves. Mika had made lemon-iced gingerbread (as in the dense sticky cake, not the biscuit), lemon shortbread, and mini cinnamon-raisin-walnut pinwheels. Other people had bought clothes, shoes, a stack of (mostly amusement-causing, MOR-tastic) vinyl thanks to Real Groovy, homemade candles, jigsaws, even a TV. I'm glad Tim and I were there - it felt extremely self-helpful to do something positive for others. There were so many nice people that came and bought things, often giving extremely generous donations, and it was so cool to hang with Mika and with Kaye who is one of the people who runs Grow From Here. FYI if you're near Wellington and longing for some plant-life, totally go see Kaye at Grow From Here, she's lovely and full of good advice and their range of fruit and vegetable plants is amazing. Massive respect to them for getting this organised.

With our powers combined, about $200 was raised by the afternoon. All going to Christchurch. I went back and visited again this afternoon and at that point $700 had been raised. Kaye said that about five minutes after Tim, myself and Mika left, someone turned up asking if they could volunteer. For all the the universe gets it really twisted sometimes, it also provides. I'm going to be dropping some more baking off tomorrow morning and while I can't hang around, please come to the top of Cuba Street if you can - just a donation of any kind and you can take what you like. And there's plenty of deliciousness for the taking.

Before Tuesday, this blog post was going to be a salute to vegetables, but not only do I not have the energy to talk about them in detail, I have even less energy to write recipes out. But in the interest of not being entirely lazy and self-pitying...

...if you roast a halved eggplant, a few good halved tomatoes, and a halved red onion and some garlic cloves with some salt and olive oil, then simmer them (as is) with stock or water, then peel the garlic cloves and puree everything (carefully...maybe fish out the vegetables and puree them then pour them back into the stock in the pan) with some chilli then you'll have yourself a delicious, thick and darkly savoury soup. Vegan too. I got this recipe from the latest issue of Cuisine magazine.

And if you slice a cucumber into sticks, mix it with some sliced red onion (sit the onion in water for a while to make it less tongue-harsh) mint leaves, finely chopped roast peanuts and some crisply fried garlic, and then pour over a dressing of white vinegar, fish sauce, a little sugar and sliced red chilli (I just used a spoon of sambal oelek as that's what I had) then you have Vatcharin Bhumichtr's gorgeously contradictorial Yoam Droksok, a Cambodian salad which heats and cools on impact and is strangely addictive.

So the baking has helped some. We went to see friends in Ngaio for book group on Wedneday night and played with/coveted deeply their kitten and ate their mini lemon meringue pies and laughed so much, which also helped. Every time I pause from any activity though, my mind goes immediately to Christchurch. Which I guess is just fine. It's not over for them just because a little time has passed. It's probably never going to be 'over' in fact, just...different.

I'm sure you've seen this information in a million other places but in the interest of being part of the solution:

• Red Cross seems to be one of the most reputable ways to donate. Anything helps, but if you haven't got anything to give, then maybe pass the link on through your networks.

• If you're on Vodafone (in New Zealand) you can txt Quake to 333 or 555 which will send $3 or $5 respectively to the Red Cross. Telecom users txt 4419 - a simple way of doing the above option.

• MusicHype has an enormous 'mixtape' where you can download roughly a metric ton of music for a donation which goes to Red Cross. Very cool idea, and it's also awesome that they got it set up so quickly. Artists include Salmonella Dub, Mel Parsons, King Kapisi, 1995, DJ Sticky Fingas and literally quite a few more. Click here for more info.

Finally: as a blogger it has been so heart-swellingingly good to know that all the Christchurch people whose blogs I read and who I follow on Twitter are more or less okay.

Stay safe.

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Title via: Nas and Damian Marley's Count Your Blessings from Distant Relatives. It feels like ages ago since anything, let alone when I saw them live earlier this month, but their lyrics feel as important now as they did then.

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Music lately:

Well...I've spent a good long time listening to what I consider Mariah Carey's Early 90s Trifecta of Emphatic Reliability: Anytime You Need A Friend, I'll Be There, and Hero. In times of high stress comes both comfort food and comfort listening. And all those songs with the simple theme of "I'll be there", just listen to these songs enough and you do get some sense that yeah, you can get through this. Temporary it may be, but it does help. It might help more if you have songs of some kind of equivalence to this. Maybe listening to Mariah Carey really, really wouldn't help some of you right now.

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Next time: Each day as it comes so... Who knows. Promise I'll write the recipes out proper though.

i've bean waiting so long, to be where i'm going

Have I got a relatively exciting bean salad for you. Bean salad in and of itself isn't all that thrilling, but compared to other bean salads this one is pretty special. Aaand I think I've used up my quota of saying "bean salad" just there. It was never something I sought out as a kid, although it's not like my tastebuds were all that sophisticated - mind you neither is bean salad. I do remember eying it up at the deli counter of the supermarket. It looked dubious, a pile of small brown and green pebbles bathed generously in a tub of watery vinegar. This recipe is neither dubious nor watery. It's verging on sexy. Again...relatively.

I found it while searching for something else entirely on Cuisine's website and was tangentially inspired, thinking it would be an awesome summer dinner - filling, fast, cheap, oven barely required. As I've veered well away from the original, you too can muck round with the following recipe. If you want to use cannellini beans or whatever, no worries. If you want to use more than three kinds, be my guest. If you want to use lemon juice instead of cider vinegar because that's what you've got, then you're more than welcome to. I included the avocado oil and nigella seeds because I got them for Christmas (thanks, Mum and Dad!) but also because I wanted their respective mellow richness and subtle oniony kick. However you use what you like. As long as there's some form of bean involved, otherwise...you're not even really making this recipe at all.

Bean Salad with Poppyseed Dressing

Inspired by this recipe by Fiona Smith from Cuisine magazine.

1 can borlotti beans

1 can chickpeas (I found some super intriguing red chickpeas on special, but regular is obviously fine.)

Roughly 1 cup frozen edamame/soybeans (I say frozen because I presume that's how you got 'em) You could use frozen peas or broad beans instead.

Handful of almonds

Mint, to serve

Cook your soybeans in boiling water - I tend to throw the beans and the water in the pan at the same time so they all heat up together, as I imagine it'll shave a couple of minutes off the cooking time. Drain and refresh under cold water. In a hot pan - you can use the same one once the beans are drained - briefly toast the almonds, and then slice up roughly.

Dressing:

3 tablespoons decent-tasting oil. I used avocado, but olive or peanut oil would be great.

2 tablespoons cider vinegar (or lemon or lime juice)

1 tablespoon honey

2 tablespoons poppyseeds

1 fat clove garlic, finely chopped

A pinch of nigella seeds OR cumin seeds (optional)

Salt and pepper to taste.

In a large bowl, whisk together the oil, the vinegar, and the honey. Tip in the poppyseeds, the garlic, the nigella seeds if using and a pinch of seasalt (or a small pinch of regular salt) plus some pepper if you like. Whisk again. Drain the two cans of beans from their creepy can-liquid, and tip into the bowl of dressing along with the cooked soybeans. Using a spatula or large spoon, carefully fold the lot together so that everything becomes properly covered with the dressing, but none of the canned beans get too crushed.

Transfer into the bowl you're going to serve it from, and top with the almonds and the mint. Or just add both to the bowl you've mixed it in if you want to save on dishes.

This salad is brilliant - light, filling, flavoursome, and kinda pretty as far as bean salads go. There's something texturally satisfying about the combination of soft canned beans and the bite-ier, nutty green soybeans. The dressing also pleases, with its balance of sweet, sharp, salty, rich, and crunchy, and soaks flavoursomely into the otherwise mild beans. The almonds and mint are really just there to make it seem more exciting (something about a plate of beans doesn't seem like anyone's first choice) but contribute in a way that you'd want them there every time.

This made enough for dinner alongside some brown rice and sliced, fried zucchini, with the leftover rice stirred into the beans to take for dinner at the Botanic Gardens. It was night one of the ASB Gardens Magic and we saw the wonderful Nudge (standing in for the Thomas Oliver Band). It started to rain about ten minutes into their show but we stuck around and had a fantastic night, first watching people dance round in the rain and then joining in ourselves.

Speaking of rain, but in more horrifying quantities, the dreadful flooding in Australia has been on my mind a lot. The number of deaths seems to rise like the water itself, and it must be awful to have everything you know just...underwater. For what it's worth, my heart goes out to everyone affected by it (including all the animals), and I hope this land of extreme weather settles down soon.

Having finished my first week back at work (hitting the ground at a brisk canter, this is a busy time for us) I can only conclude that my heart and brain are both at the beach. Feels like a squillion years ago that the most taxing decision I had was which book to read (answer: Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, Witi Ihimaera's Tangi, a tribute to Jennifer Paterson, and half of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock.)

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Title via: Gotta say, when I started typing this up I thought "ha! There must be sooooo many songs that use the word 'been' which I can twist for my purposes." But with my aforementioned brain at the beach, Sunshine of Your Love by Cream was all I could think of. It's a mighty fine song, but I know there's something better out there. Hopefully for all of us my brain returns to its rightful location soonish.

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Music lately:

The aforementioned Nudge. They crop up here and there in Wellington and are fantastic live, all three members being fearsomely talented and easily watchable.

Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, Happy Days Are Here Again/Get Happy. Too beautiful.

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Next time: I managed to procure from Giapo, via Twitter, a recipe for Cocoa Sorbet. Yay for Twitter, and yay for you if it turns out decent because I'll be blogging about it.

if you want my gravy, pepper my ragu

I guess the food I grew up on wasn't fancy. Things like 2-minute noodles, boiled potatoes, microwaved frozen mixed veges were standard. I've probably said it before, but for a long time we mostly ate just microwaved food (sure, Mum had this amazing golden syrup sponge pudding recipe, but there's definitely a reason why 'Microwave Gourmet' cookbooks are always over-represented at op shops and book fairs). Anyway, we ate just fine, and I should count myself lucky to have got regular meals anyway. But I wonder if it's a product of my non-fancy upbringing, plus maybe some general deep-seated New Zealand backwards-in-coming-forwards-ness that I sometimes feel a bit bashful with fancy sounding recipes. Just realised I've said fancy about twelve times now. Anyway, the reason I got to thinking about this was that I have a recipe for Ragu Di Piselli - Italian for Pea Ragu - and for some reason my mind automatically went "well I'll just call that peas and tomatoes". Why? False modesty? At what? It's not like I have to worry about Tim not eating his dinner because it doesn't sound familiar (ha!). It's not like you readers can't handle some culinary Italian language.

Really, you can call this what you like, although it's nice to acknowledge the lineage of something, food or not. I found this recipe in a Cuisine magazine (September 2005) and if nothing else, the Italian name cleverly masks the fact that this sauce is just peas and tomatoes. Maybe the sort of person who would sneer at an unrecognisable name for their dinner would also sneer when they found out that their dinner largely consists of two vegetables. Maybe these people can deal with it and learn something - it's seriously delicious. From my own experience, Italian food can be aggressively simple. It's good to just go with it, rather than be nervous that what you're serving isn't 'enough'. (as I learned with the Peaches In Muscat back in February.)

Ragu Di Piselli/Pea Ragu/Peas and Tomatoes

From the September 2005 issue of Cuisine magazine

50g butter

1 T olive oil

1 onion, finely diced

100mls white wine

200g frozen peas (or fresh, but frozen is mostly how they arrive)

400g can cherry tomatoes or whole peeled tomatoes

One teaspoon tomato paste

Salt, pepper, parsely and Parmesan to serve

Melt half the butter with the olive oil in a pan. Saute the chopped onion till translucent, pour in the wine and allow it to fizz up and evaporate slightly. Now, add the peas and tomatoes. If you've got cherry tomatos, handle them carefully so they stay whole, but if you've got bigger tomatoes mash them up. Add the tomato paste, simmer on a low heat until the sauce thickens slightly. Stir in the remaining butter and serve.

Notes:

• Canned cherry tomatoes are getting easier to find. But the usual whole or chopped ones are fine.
• One teaspoon of tomato paste is an annoying measurement. If you don't have any, just leave it out.
• I've made this before with sake when I didn't have any white wine. It was awesome.
• I added some frozen soybeans along with the frozen peas here.
• If you just use olive oil and leave out the Parmesan (which I hardly ever have anyway) you've got yourself a vegan dinner. If you want to take things in the other direction, chorizo or bacon could be added.
• The recipe apparently serves six, but...nahh. This amount fed two of us.
• I served it on a huge pillowy pile of polenta, which I'm a bit obsessed with, but pasta is obviously good and what the original recipe recommends.

Simple, sure, but also amazingly delicious. The tomato becomes sweet and soft and intensified, the peas give texture and bite, while the wine imparts a mysteriously good flavour once it makes contact with the hot pan. Something about the vibrant colours and juicy tomatoes means that it doesn't feel like you're just eating two vegetables stirred together (a bit like the soup from last time). Whatever you want to call it, this dinner can be made entirely from stuff at the back of your cupboard and freezer, which is really awesome for when you want to make dinner but feel like there's nothing around. Sometimes I do run out of frozen peas and canned tomatoes...that's not fun.

The conference last week up in Auckland went really well - my presentation bit was hitch-less, I learned heaps and I had an amazing lychee shake at a Vietnamese restaurant in Panmure that I really want to recreate. I got back on Friday night absolutely exhausted though, so even though I had grand plans to head out again, I ended up quickly faceplanting, unfortunately missing the fireworks. Luckily people round Wellington have interpreted this as "Guy Fawkes Season" rather than sticking to the actual night itself, and so there have been plenty of lit-up skies. I love fireworks (and still have a soft spot for sparklers) so it was a shame to miss the big show on the waterfront. The weather on Friday night was particularly brutal though, so I was happy as to just flag it and go to bed. Either way, it felt so, so good to be back in Wellington.

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Title via: The cast recording of Chicago (Chita Rivera, Gwen Verdon, Jerry Orbach, hello!). The 2002 film soundtrack I can hear in its entirety just by closing my eyes thanks to an aunty who played it a lot (something I can totally understand.) From it comes the beautiful Queen Latifah's portrayal of Matron Mama Morton, whose big number When You're Good To Mama is where this title comes from.

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Music lately:

I know I mentioned her last week, but whatever. On Saturday night we saw Ladi6, back in New Zealand after some significant creative time in Berlin, at San Francisco Bath House. She was amazing and I wrote some thoughts here at 100s and 1000s. Her punchy ode Like Water from new album The Liberation Of... has been rippling persistently through my mind ever since then.

Gomez, Bring it On, from their album Liquid Skin. I'm not sure how consistent these guys are but there's a lot of amazing stuff on this album - maybe I'm a bit biased as I listened to it a lot back when I was in England - I love the mix of layered, bluesy sounds and voices.

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Next time: I'll probably start panicking about how close to Christmas it is. I've found some photos from the first recipe I made from Nigella Kitchen (apple cinnamon muffins) so I should really blog about them sooner rather than later...