you can start by having a chat and then a glass of brandy then I will start playing mind games

I'll often insist that I don't like change and that what I do like is, in fact, a good status quo to settle into, but I think what I really mean by that is that it's a bit sad when nice people go far away. I'm honestly always trying to change things, most of the time incredibly rapidly without considering any consequences. Or at least, I will have thoroughly overthought the consequences, and then I'll just be like "uhhhh what if I leap head-first into this and whatever happens after, that's ten-minutes-from-now-Laura's problem." This could be anything from spontaneously bleaching my hair to the entire state of my life at any given time. It's certainly not the most advisable way to live out your days, but it does kinda get stuff happening. 

Anyway I got to thinking about this (with some self-awareness but no real emotional growth or change) following two events: I recently bleached my hair in almost panicky haste, and also some super nice people who I work with went far away to travel the world for a bit. I have no idea what to do with a status quo except frantically push in the opposite direction of it, but when people are about to leave, I know exactly what to do: make delicious sweet things for them. That's how I ended up making this gorgeously dense fudge, bejewelled with brandy-soaked sultanas. I had, in a nice piece of symbiosis, nicked the sultanas themselves from work prior to this, where they had been lending their flavour to brandy for a cocktail we were doing over Easter. One of the people who was leaving - Brooke, a gem of a lady - suggested that I turn them into fudge at some point, and so it seemed like a nice way to sweeten up the last shift we all worked together. 

I don't expect you to have sultanas sitting around in brandy for the opportunistic thieving, but they can be very easily recreated by quickly making your own (leaving you, joyfully, with leftover infused alcohol.) You don't even have to use brandy, rum is an obvious contender here, or you could use some other dried-grape-friendly liqueur, or - honestly - leave the fruit aspect out altogether and simply make yourself a slab of creamy, gloriously plain fudge.

This fudge has the silkiest bite to it, like your teeth are sliding through cool water. It dissolves on the tongue with rolling caramel flavours punctured by bursts of eyewateringly boozy sultanas. The sweetness of all the sugar and the heat of the alcohol plus the generally deliciousness of the butter come together to make something astonishingly balanced considering it's, y'know, a rectangle of sugar.  And while it's not as comfortingly crumbly as super-traditional fudge but the incredible satin texture more than makes up for this.

brandy butter sultana fudge 

adapted from this recipe. It's really easy to make, I just do a lot of explaining in the method below, in case you're freaking out at how long it looks.  

one cup of sultanas 
brandy - something not horrifically cheap but don't use anything expensive either 
100g butter
one can of sweetened condensed milk (the kind that's roughly 395g in size) 
two firmly packed cups of brown sugar

Put the sultanas in a bowl and pour in juuuust enough brandy that they all get a go at being in it. You don't have to swamp them, but it's all up to you - after all, you can use the soaking brandy however you please later, so if you want more of it then cover them in more. If you're like "noooo my precious brandy" then use a smaller amount. Leave it to sit, covered, at least overnight, but to be honest you could probably get away with like, an hour, if you're incredibly impatient. There's probably some way you could speed up the process by gently microwaving it all, but I don't have one and have completely forgotten what to do with one so couldn't really advise there. 

Put the butter, condensed milk, and brown sugar in a large saucepan. Bring to the boil, stirring pretty much constantly, and let it all bubble away like there's no tomorrow until it reaches the soft-ball stage. What is this? Get a bowl of cold water. If you drop a small spoonful of the fudge into the cold water and it forms a soft ball of like, fudgey stuff, then it's ready. If it simply dissolves into the water or collapses into nothing, it needs to keep boiling. 

Once it's ready, remove from the heat - I like to stick it in a sink that I've partially filled with cold water - and stir aggressively for honestly ages until it thickens and you can see it starting to crystalise and set around the edges. Halfway through, stir in the drained sultanas. Reserve the brandy for your own good times. Usually fudge will lose its gloss and become rather crumbly as you stir but this one was a little different - it just thickened up considerably. When you feel chill about it, spatula the lot into a baking paper-lined brownie tin (or similar regularly sized baking dish) and refrigerate till super firm. Cut into slices of whatever size you like, and eat. 

The fudge went down very well with the crew when I brought it in and achieved lavish praise (oh my god, do I only do this for attention and lavish praise, not just to be nice? Does it even matter if we all still get fudge as a result?) Literally all I've been doing otherwise is trying to stay awake long enough to write this post, and listening to Judy Garland (I was going to say "through tear-filled ears" but not only is that anatomically inaccurate it's also troubling to consider, but what I'm trying to say is that she makes me majorly emotional.) However! One exciting thing has occurred lately: I had another crush cake published on The Toast. This one is for glorious Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda, currently crushing it in the gasp-makingly successful musical Hamilton.  Go me! (Really, go me. Back to bed. Go back to bed, me.) 

small cake, big crush

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title from: Roll Deep, The Avenue - only one of the best songs to come out of the year 2005 ever.
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music lately:

My Shot, from the musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, Leslie Odom Jr and Anthony Ramos performing live at the White House - I honestly get aggressive shivers the minute this starts and can't stop watching this. 

Judy Garland, The Man That Got Away. Is there a duststorm happening inches from my face in this room? Oh wait no I'm sobbing uncontrollably at this. 

Soulja Boy Tell'em, Crank That (Soulja Boy) I dunno, I just really felt like listening to this. 
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next time: I reallllllly feel like making bread, so maybe that will have happened by the time I next am here?  

i'm free but i'm focused, i'm green but i'm wise

Ever since I was able to form cognitive thoughts I've been seriously into horoscopes and similar things. I can't decide whether to joke that this means I've been into them since last week or, to paraphrase the T-Rex song over the opening credits of Billy Elliot, to imply that I was analysing my star sign in the womb, but either way, yeah. It's a thing. It's my birthday on Sunday which means that my usual self-absorption and introspection is now off the scale. I can't stop thinking about myself! With all this in mind, my tarot card for this month was all, "don't focus on what you don't have and don't push people away if you're feeling down and don't be stupid you stupid idiot" and my horoscopes are all telling me about how Mars is going into retrograde on my birthday, which like, why doesn't the shunned fairy aunt in Sleeping Beauty just turn up and predict that I'm going to prick my finger on a spinning wheel and fall into a coma or something, and all in all I'm finding it a bit hard to just relax and be myself at the moment. It's not because of what the tarot card and horoscopes said, but it's more like I'm hyper aware of trying to not do stuff wrong because of their advice and I end up like a small bird flying into windows as a result. Classic Aries? Classic me, really. 

(Seriously though, if you ever read descriptions of the various star signs it'll be all, "Virgo - steadfast and thoughtful" and "Sagittarius people are ever so open-minded and motivated" and "Cancers are loyal and intensely nurturing" and then "Aries are big idiot babies who hit their head a lot and will not stop shouting to get your attention." I mean, I don't deny it...) 

I'm short but I'm healthy, yeah

However! I'm not all uselessness. A particular horoscope that I joyfully subscribe to is the wonderful Meredith Graves' Stargrazing column for Lucky Peach magazine. It's food-related horoscopes and they're very fun and interesting to read (truly - check yours out) and this month I was advised to get into soup, basically because I needed to be really kind and gentle to myself - funny that - and since I wasn't in the mood for actual soup I decided instead to go find the most aggressively, ludicrously healthy ingredients I could lay my hands up on and make a thing out of that in the name of self-care. Those ingredients were matcha powder and chia seeds.

And that's how I ended up with this matcha coconut raspberry chia pudding. Matcha powder is ground up green tea leaves and apparently one teaspoon of it has the power of 20 glasses of green tea, although it all depends on which Pinterest pin you're reading. I nevertheless feel very calm and trusting of it. Chia seeds are little microbeads of intense goodness, with a billion omega's and proteins and vitamins and antioxidants. Put them together and nothing will ever go wrong in your life, ever.

I'm lost but I'm hopeful, baby

Chia pudding is essentially a delivery mechanism for chia seeds to get into your stomach, but it is delicious. And easy. The seeds absorb liquid with the-thirst-is-real enthusiasm and end up like a cross between jelly and sago (which might sound horrifying, but go with it, please.) Pink and green are a rather ultimate colour combination in my opinion so scattering freeze-dried raspberries across the top helped both visually and flavour-wise, but honestly use whatever fruit you like - passionfruit would be cool here, as would defrosted frozen berries, canned pears, or juicy slices of ripe mango. Whatever fruit you put up on there will complement the delicate green flavour of the matcha-tinged coconut and look lovely.

And yeah, the flavour is what I would describe as very green. It's green tea! What did you expect? There's nothing wrong with this, but I add a little honey to gently sweeten it and mellow out any intense fresh-cut grass vibes. My tastebuds appreciated this - yours might too.

Wait, one more thing - okay so matcha powder and chia seeds are both expensive ingredients, but once you've got them you only need to use a teaspoon or two at a time and thus they last near-on forever. This is me here, I wouldn't just casually tell you to buy something pricey! (Without getting defensive about it first.)

matcha, coconut and raspberry chia pudding

a recipe by myself although let us be real, I am 100% not the the inventor of this or anything. This is just what I made for myself. 

one teaspoon matcha powder 
around 125ml/half a cup of coconut milk or your choice of milkstuff
one teaspoon of honey or similar - I feel like agave syrup would be perfect here
one tablespoon of chia seeds
a handful of shaved coconut or coconut threads
a couple of tablespoons of freeze-dried raspberries

Using the teaspoon you measured them with, mix the matcha powder, coconut milk and honey together in a glass or whatever receptacle you're making this in - I recommend a glass because that way you can see the pretty layers of colour, but that's just me. Also when I say teaspoon and tablespoon I don't, for once, mean the kind that you measure baking ingredients with. This stuff isn't an exact science, so just use the kind of spoon you find in the cutlery draw and don't worry about whether they're heaped spoonfuls or whatever. Likewise just add more coconut milk if your glass doesn't look full enough. 

Stir in the chia seeds, making sure there aren't any lumps, and then refrigerate the glass for about an hour, although you can leave it longer, and then when you're ready to eat it, pile it up with coconut shavings and freeze-dried raspberries and wade in with a spoon. 

and what it all comes down to is that I haven't got it all figured out just yet

It's so healthful that it seems like you're gonna actually levitate after eating it. I've made it almost every day since, and while I can't entirely tell if I feel more brilliant or not, it's got to be doing something, right? It's as easy to consume as it is to make- the swollen chia seeds give it this soft, barely-set texture and the zing of raspberries and quiet sweetness of the coconut milk work beautifully with the verdant-as matcha powder. It's also remarkably filling, so makes an ideal breakfast or mid-snack snack. 

And what with turning thirty and all, despite having done a deal with the devil so I look barely 22 it certainly doesn't hurt to think of one's health more, right? (I'm not being conceited here, it's actually bordering on super weird how young I look?) (it's also how I know I'm getting proper old: I used to be really indignant about being ID'd and now I'm like, "awwww yeah") And it seems this is how I prefer to do health: by slothing about all day and then engaging in hardcore consumption of actual green tea leaves ground into dust like I'm the bones-eating giant in Jack and the Beanstalk. Like health shift-work. A lack of moderation followed by a hardcore lack of moderation!

everything's gonna be fine fine fine 

But back to my birthday: if you're wondering to yourself, "what can I do to make more delightful the birthday of my favourite food blogger- nay, my favourite writer altogether" -  well! My paypal is always open (it's my email address - laura@hungryandfrozen.com) and any donations big, enormous or small would be majorly gratefully received by ya perpetually bank-account-challenged gal. For free you could spend the day in quiet, solemn reflection on how great I am on twitter, or...you could carry on with your day because I hear a horrifying rumour that I'm not the only person on earth to have a birthday and everything doesn't stop on Sunday just because I do. It's chill, I'll be over here serenely glowing with omegas and the power of a thousand glasses of green tea and being myself and seeing what comes of it.
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title from: Alanis Morrisette and her laconically powerful and kinda deeply meaningful song One Hand In My Pocket, from the iconic Jagged Little Pill album. I saw her in concert in 1996! What! Ladies be aging! 
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music lately: 

Boy Problems by Carly Rae Jepsen. Her E-mo-tion album is SO important and this video is so important and her haircut in it is frankly very important and it's all just very, very good.

The Kills, Sour Cherry. I've been watching a lot of Gossip Girl, and this song is on the soundtrack. I love how both this show and this band's main aesthetic is "bratty". I'm feeling very influenced by it, nearly ten years after the show actually screened.
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next time: I made a massive three layer creme egg cake for a friend's gf's 21st birthday and was thinking about blogging about it just because, otherwise I made this mayo from scratch with matcha in it and it was amazing, so on the very other end of the scale, there's also that. 

everyone is waiting, waiting on you and you've got thyme

A Season For Peaches, a novel by Henri Michel

In case you are all, "damn that Laura is the epitome of perfection I really love what she does I just wish she'd sometimes display some kind of minor flaw to humanise her more" - and I have zero reason to believe this isn't what people are thinking all the time - then have I got a relatable and relatively dull anecdote for you about how I made a terrible dinner.

On Monday I was exceptionally tired and not really thinking and as a result, I made the most aggressively bland, horrible pasta of my life, and the more I tried to fix it the worse it got. I started off wanting to make some kind of dairy-free cauliflower sauce, where you puree an entire head of cooked cauliflower and it turns out all creamy and delicious. Why? Honestly, I don't know, but I've been reading too much pinterest but also if I can effortlessly conjure up a dope vegan pasta bake then that's a pleasing outcome. However it turned into the equivalent of mashed potato and refused to puree and also tasted of absolutely nothing so in a panicked state I ... upended an entire bottle of cream into it. It still wouldn't liquefy, so with mounting panic I mixed this mashed potato-esque stuff into cooked rigatoni along with some eggplant I'd roasted, so it was like...this weird billowy mass studded with the occasional piece of eggplant. How did I think this was going to turn into an awesome pasta bake? I topped it with parsley. That made it even less good. I shoved it in the oven to grill, which, as there was nothing in it to melt, just made it more warm and didn't change it miraculously on the cellular level that I'd been hoping for. 

It might sound "insufferable" or like "not a real problem" or "good god shut up Laura" but like I said, I was super tired and making dinner is a thing I'm always good at when all else crumbles around me and honestly, just the waste of money and ingredients was incredibly disheartening. However, I did manage to avoid panic-eating the lot, and dealt with it by going for a nap and searching youtube for ASMR videos specifically featuring someone telling you repeatedly in a very gentle voice that you're actually a good cook. (A later cursory prod of the abandoned pasta bake revealed that it had not improved with time but I made myself eat some anyway, because I was both hungry and miserably stubborn about the aforementioned waste of money and ingredients.)

This is all completely unimportant and not terribly interesting, it's just every time I do something stupid I feel pathologically compelled to tell the entire internet about it. An incident of totally sucking shared is an incident of totally sucking halved, I say.

Having since made a few things that mercifully turned out deliciously, I am safely back in the mindset that I love cooking and it loves me. For example, these honey and thyme roasted peaches. I went to brunch at Flight Coffee Hangar with one of my dearest friends Charlotte for her birthday and had brioche covered in vanilla mascarpone and said peaches. (It's one of those places where the menu is so good that it's actually inconvenient, because I can never choose what to get.) I was so taken with my brunch that I bought peaches on the way home and immediately tried to recreate what they'd done.

I don't know how similar my method is to what the cafe does, but it worked incredibly well for me. Before you even get to taste them, the slowly roasting peaches fill your house with their heady perfume, so rich and intoxicating that you want to float through the air with hearts for eyes like some kind of amorous cartoon animal from a bygone era. 

There's something oddly lovely and lazily sensual about drizzling sticky, slow-moving honey over soft freshly cut peaches before scattering them with fragrant herbs, like you have no cares in the world apart from getting weirdly skittish over ripe stone fruit. 

Cooked, they have this floral depth of sweetness from the slick of honey and the caramelising heat of the oven, and the smoky herbal thyme cuts through this and makes it more than just merely sugary. With very little effort suddenly you have yourself this gorgeous quantity of fruit that you can tuck around scoops of ice cream, stir through muesli, arrange on top of a cake, or indeed, add to toasted brioche with mascarpone as they did at the cafe. 

honey thyme roasted peaches

a recipe by myself, but inspired directly by my brunch at Flight Coffee Hangar

four large ripe peaches
two teaspoons runny honey
one teaspoon olive oil - I guess you could leave it out but I feel it adds some fruity richness and will put a shine on your coat
several sprigs of fresh thyme

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. Roughly slice the peaches into quarters or thirds or whatever and lay them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Drizzle over the honey and the olive oil, then scatter over most of the thyme leaves, and just throw the remaining sprigs on top. 

Roast for twenty minutes, then turn the oven off and leave the peaches in there while it cools, for about an hour.  Use how you please, and throw any remainders into a jar and keep in the fridge. 

That afternoon, 100% not sick of peaches yet, I ate them with Nigella's miso ice cream that I'd made a variation on (by adding shredded coconut and white chocolate) and it was an incredible combination, the kind of thing that makes you feel so incredibly grown up that you end up going full circle and feeling childish again because you feel so grown up; then this morning I added them to some intensely healthy chia seed muesli to which they brought depth and sweetness. I still have half a jar left, I may just eat them straight from it with a fork but I like the idea of deploying them savoury-ly, perhaps in some tagine-type dish or to accompany crispy, slow-cooked pork belly. What I'm saying is, you will not regret making these. If you avoid honey for whatever reason, I do believe maple syrup would be an excellent substitution; if you don't like thyme then that's a little harder as it's not as though you could successfully use, like, parsley instead - I'd just leave it out altogether. I adore thyme though and am pretty much forever trying to work it into everything I cook.



Because my friend Charlotte and I are practically twins (that is, we're very similar personality-wise and we were born only a handful of days apart, one can only dream of having a face as beautiful as hers) her birthday happening means that mine is getting super close. I'm feeling more chill about it than I was a few blog posts ago, I mean...it's going to happen. It just is. Also I remembered that you get presents and lots of attention, both things that I adore, and I'm frankly curious to see what thirty-year-old me is like. It will possibly involve singing Grown Woman by Beyonce with increasing desperation, but who knows!
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title from: You've Got Time, the stunning Orange is the New Black theme song by Regina Spektor. We have this cocktail at work that has thyme in it and whenever someone orders it I always get this song in my head, I figured I might as well pass on this gift and curse to you too. 
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music lately: 

Sevendust featuring Skin, Licking Cream. Some nu-metal is oddly timeless, okay? This song is so exhilarating and big and soaring and happy? And honestly it's impossible to tell who is hotter out of Skin or the Sevendust lead singer LaJon Witherspoon (when Skin sings "crawling down your spine" I'm pretty sure she wins but it's not actually a competition and I'm just incredibly glad they collaborated on this amazing song.)

Chelsea Jade, Low Brow. This stellar human who I am proud to call a pal has released this gloriously dreamy new tune with a video that's both beautiful and beautifully silly. "Just hold me closer than you know how to" - ugh it's so good.
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next time: I may well have to make some kind of elaborate pasta bake again to exorcise the demons of the last failed one. Will make sure I've slept enough this time. 

i don't think you're ready for this jelly

Much as I have respect for juice that is usually followed by the word "cleanse" and involves several pulverised green vegetables bringing joy to your liver, my preferred kind of juice is the sort that comes in rainbow colours, is preferably imported from somewhere exotic like America, and is found in the fridge in the dark back corner of the dairy down the road. Golden Pash is my absolute favourite, a passionfruit-tinged fizzy beverage in a purple can with hangover-healing properties in every carbonated bubble. I believe it's manufactured in New Zealand but there's something about its rather desperate insistence that it contains a whole 5% fruit juice that is kind of charming. Like, mate, my shampoo probably has five percent fruit juice in it. My shoes are probably five percent fruit juice (I'm a bartender, so this is actually possible, as opposed to hyperbole for hyperbole's sake alone.) I'm ride-or-die for Golden Pash...but I am also easily swayed by pretty packaging and the promise of exciting flavours.

example: the results of a very casual trip to the dairy 

Anyway, after a recipe misfire where I thought I was making gummy-type candy out of Peach Snapple but instead ended up simply making delicious jelly, I thought: jelly! Fun! And so set about to make jelly on purpose out of the next juicy beverage which took my fancy. And that happened to be Arizona Iced Tea, pomegranate flavour.

one of two ingredients

Some might ask, why make your own jelly? But like, why do anything, really? In its favour, this is cute and really easy and perfect if you need to take a dessert to some kind of potluck situation or provide something for your friends - either go childs-birthday-party-esque and make a big bowl of it to be scooped up and served with ice cream, or pour it into dinky glasses and ramekins for individual servings. Oh, and it's completely delicious - the surprisingly delicate flavour of the pomegranate, all fresh and gently astringent, tastes wonderful when suspended in gelatine. It's refreshing, it's barely sweet but just sweet enough, it's gloriously wobbly when you smack it with the back of your spoon for no good reason other than to bring about your own good cheer; and if you hold it up to the light it glows gloriously red and pink like some kind of magical crystal, the sort of thing that Captain Planet would have as a household knick-knack, like a sunset's reflection caught in water.

And there's only two ingredients! One is simple: some kind of juice; you obviously do not need to use Arizona iced tea or even pomegranate flavoured iced tea or EVEN iced tea, I mean if you want to be truly unkind to yourself you could literally use plain water, this would not be a good time at all, but the gelatine won't know the difference. However as I've outlined above, pomegranate flavour makes for a delightful jelly. The other ingredient is gelatine: mysterious, unfortunately-non-vegetarian, gelatine.

I used leaf gelatine which is pretty easy to get hold of in supermarkets and very easy to use - just let the sheets of gelatine soak in water, give them a squeeze, and then stir them into hot liquid and that's literally it. However, if all you can find is powdered gelatine, I mean, that will be a perfectly fine substitute, and google should be able to help you with converting quantities.

pomegranate iced tea jelly

a recipe by myself

one 500ml bottle of arizona pomegranate flavour iced green tea; or whatever you like
4 sheets of gold-level leaf gelatine (I use Equagold) 

Soak the gelatine sheets in a bowl of cold water till they soften, then pick them up and give them a squeeze - this bit is delightful, not gonna lie - and tip out the water. Put the softened gelatine leaves back in the bowl and pour over about a third of a cup of recently boiled water from the kettle - just enough to cover the gelatine leaves - and stir till they've dissolved, which should only take a few seconds. You don't need the entire bottle of tea, so you might as well have a sip or two first before pouring it slowly into the gelatine/hot water, stirring as you go. From here, simply pour it into cute serving bowls or one larger dish and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours to set. 

pomegranate jelly or a still from the sinister film Picnic at Hanging Rock?

Bonus: apparently gelatine helps put a shine on your coat and make your nails strong, so I look forward to being intimidatingly sleek and glossy any day now.

Speaking of monitoring one's glossiness levels: somehow it's March already, which means I'm turning thirty actual years old next month: I fluctuate between being terrified at this and all like "what if I am suddenly no longer interesting to anyone and everything I do is the actions of an elderly crone who no-one wants to care for" and being all like "Beyonce arguably did the most important and amazing work of her life post-thirty and she is only becoming more powerful with the passing of each day also you are not the first person to turn thirty so this is really kind of patronising and it's probably the patriarchy's fault that you have a weird sense of fear about leaving your twenties and how that relates to your value as a woman, nay, as a person, and to the merit of your work." If there's anyone out there who turned thirty and didn't immediately turn into a small pile of ash, feeble and unwanted, then holla at ya girl!
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title via: Bootylicious by Destiny's Child (speaking of Beyonce). I don't think you're ready for how obvious this song choice is for this recipe. 
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music lately: 

The Pharcyde, Drop. Made even better by its hypnotic backwards-forwards music video.

EMF, Unbelievable. I don't really go in for youtube comments (full stop) where people are all nostalgic for the 90s when they were never even there, but there are a few songs where I'm like damn it why wasn't I out clubbing in England somewhere in 1993. This is one such song.
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Next time: I haven't had time to cook anything in a while so mate, I don't even know. 

swallow it down, what a jagged little pill

that cactus is a visual metaphor for how my throat felt, also, juxtaposition! The word that saved me in Art History 101 

Next time you're just hanging about, you know, existing within your corporeal form or whatever, take note of how many times you unconsciously swallow. Turns out humans do it a ton which is super fun when out of nowhere you have a sore throat and it feels like a serrated knife has lodged itself horizontally within your larynx. Every time you swallow. Which, as we've established, is unfairly often! Anyway so I've had a miserable bunch of days (the sore throat came with the free gift of an earache!) to the point where I couldn't even eat soothing stuff like ice cream or soup because it was agony to swallow anything. Even cool, clear water might as well have been a nutritious bowl of sand, because they both would've felt the same to my poor tender throat.

In wonderful news I am now thoroughly improved, mostly due to ibuprofen, rest, and gargling so much salt water and apple cider vinegar that I'm surprised I haven't turned into a pickle. However, I choose to attribute my entire recovery to the incredible bowl of porridge that I fixed for myself yesterday. I'd taken enough painkillers that my throat was tentatively amenable to food, and I wanted to have something aggressively nutritious and filling, but also soft and warm as the underbelly of a rabbit. Oatmeal covers all these bases, as well as allowing me to be irritatingly cute by using the portmanteau of Sore Throatmeal, and I do love to be irritatingly cute.

 rock the oat

I mean, everyone has their own way of making porridge and you can feel free to ignore my method or write it off as garbage (but if so, honestly, why are you still reading this far?) but mine has much going for it - the oats are toasted first, a step that only adds a minute to the cooking time but turns what could be gluey flavourless glue into a richly flavoured, warmly nutty concoction. I also stir in ground almonds, which add a gentle sweetness and swollen softness and richness and also, y'know, almonds put a shine on your coat. You could use any dried fruit you like but cranberries are full of anti-inflammatory and hella-vitamin properties, they also look incredibly pretty, all ruby red against the white cream and pale oats. Similarly, you could use coconut milk or almond milk or ginger instead of cinnamon and so on and so forth; but this is the recipe I made and it is so damn good.

Also I know this recipe looks really long and complicated, it's because I'm talky and like to hold your hand throughout the process just in case there's any small detail that confounds you. Once you sift through all my added nonsense it's really, really straightforward, I promise.

the softest porridge, or, sore throatmeal

a recipe by myself

a handful of dried cranberries 
half a cup oatmeal or finely rolled oats
quarter of a cup of whole oats 
half a cup of water
half a cup of milk
a pinch of salt
quarter of a cup of ground almonds
cinnamon
brown sugar
cream, and lots of it

Place the cranberries in a small bowl and cover with water from a just-boiled kettle. 

Place a smallish saucepan over a medium and throw the oats in, stirring them frequently to allow them to toast - they'll start to smell incredibly, well, toasty, and when this happens remove them from the heat and allow them to sit for a minute just to cool slightly. 

Stir in the water, milk, and salt, and return to a low heat, stirring occasionally to prevent it from sticking as it heats up and thickens. You want to get it to the stage where it's starting to have big bubbles rise to the surface and burst, like some kind of geothermic mudpool (I think, I mean I have very little knowledge of geothermic...stuff) and at this point stir in the ground almonds and decide whether or not you think it needs a splash more milk or water - I like my porridge a little on the softer, creamier side, but you might like yours thicker. So, either it's ready, or you need to stir it a bit longer with more liquid. 

Once you're done, remove it from the heat, drain the cranberries (I just used a spoon to hold them back while tipping the water into the sink) and stir them in along with a hearty pinch of cinnamon. Spatula all this into a deep bowl (a deep bowl helps it stay warm for longer!) and spoon over as much brown sugar and cream as your mouth desires. 

I took one bite and was literally cured 

On account of this peskily sore throat I've done more or less nothing lately, I've either been in bed or at work; when in bed I've been on a Nigella-watching spree - I mean this in the nicest way, but I don't have to think at all when I'm watching her show, and it doesn't matter if I fall asleep halfway through, and all the stirring and gentle clattering and plummy vocals are utterly soothing to someone like me who adores background noise while I sleep. So you can see how I'm so Hallelujah-chorus rapturous over this porridge, it's pretty much the most exciting thing to happen to me in the last few days. It was so delicious though, that I'm very sure it would still provide some kind of thrill even if you're in full health.
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title from: Alanis Morrisette, You Learn. Remember when this album was the hugest thing in the world? This song has such a strange, meandering, conversational vibe to it that you don't get a lot now, and I remember thinking how subversive and rad it was that her voice was kinda screechy and drawly (I was ten, okay.) 
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music lately:

Fiona Apple, Sleep to Dream. So dark and moody and intense, "this mind, this body and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways,  so don't forget what I told you, don't come around, I got my own hell to raise" - ooof. 

Kendrick Lamar, Alright. I mean the song itself was already amazing but the video is just... *falls over sideways*
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next time: it is SO FREEZING in Wellington right now, so I'll probably be cooking something to try and warm myself up, which at this stage is going to be a bowlful of the earth's molten core. 

stars in the night blazing their light can't hold a candle to your razzle dazzle

There's nothing like lovingly taking photos of a cake on your camera and then sticking the camera's SD card into your pocket and then losing it somewhere in the street to hinder the blog post writing process; luckily for me should anyone find it there is only cake photos on there and nothing incriminating (all my photos of me holding up signs saying "I just robbed this bank!" while pointing to a bank are on another SD card, phew!) but it was one hell of a pain to try and take photos of the cake again when I'd since demolished so much of it directly into my mouth. I managed to take a few hasty photos of what was left of it and found a couple of grainy-like-sugar snaps on my phone, but yeah, consider yourself warned that these photos aren't my best work, and my best work is in fact dissolving in a puddle somewhere between Newtown and Wellington central.

caught by the fuzz(y photography) 

But at least the cake itself was good, and what a name: Bobby Dazzler Cake. Bobby Dazzler Cake. I found the recipe carefully written in the back of a cookbook belonging to one of my great-grandmothers (a smartly bound Aunt Daisy book with my great grandmother's name embossed in gold on the cover, fancy!) I was utterly smitten with the name before I even saw what was in the cake itself. You know when you hear a word or a phrase for the first time and then suddenly you see it everywhere? That happened to me with didymo, although it only occurred to me recently that it was probably because there were suddenly all these "watch out for didymo" campaigns everywhere and previously there hadn't been (once more for the people in the back: didymo! A satisfying word to say, even if you have to Watch Out for it.) But uh, sometimes it feels like more of a coincidence than that, in this case my excellent girlfriend and I were watching the terrible/amazing miniseries Tipping The Velvet and one character exclaimed to the other, "you're a real bobby dazzler." I was thoroughly taken with this phrase and while I initially assumed it was some secret Victorian-era glasses-waggling code, like "she's civic-minded" or "she stands up on the night train" or "she's remarkable" it turns out it simply means something along the lines of "the cat's pyjamas" which makes it no less delightful. Anyway, mere days after seeing this show, I discovered this recipe, in this book I must have read dozens upon dozens of times, and I knew it was a sign that I should bake it with immediacy. 

the bee's knees

The recipe was written in that type of handwriting that was probably considered terribly neat and full of propriety sixty years ago, and is entirely unintelligible nowadays, not to mention all in imperial measurements - a pound of this and a pound of that - and finally, as was the style of the time, it trails off mysteriously halfway through and doesn't give you any detail about how to mix it, what temperature and how long to bake it for, or indeed what sort of tin to put it in. There was so much that you just had to know back then! In the spirit of trying to just know stuff, I made some presumptions and biffed it into a ring cake tin and baked it for an hour at 180 C, or what Aunt Daisy might've cryptically referred to as "a good oven".

And it turned out splendidly! The mixture contains a resolutely old-timey mixture of prunes, grated carrot, grated apple, and sultanas, as if it's trying to be five different cakes at once, but you get a kind of moist fruitiness that's very comforting, the sort of cake you want to have with a large pot of tea while the rain dashes at the windows (a very easy scenario to come by in Wellington these days as we approach the middle of a neverending winter.) Honestly, when (when! Not if!) I make this again I'll increase the apple and carrot quantity to two, and dice the prunes a lot finer - the former sort of dissolved into the cake while the latter were all like "here I am! Prune! In your face!" I'd also use brown sugar instead of white, just to hold all that fruit together with a slightly more darker caramelliness. But honestly, this cake was wonderful, especially when I spread it with a thick cream cheese icing.

bobby dazzler cake

adapted from a handwritten recipe from my great-grandmother

250g soft butter
one and a half cups sugar
three eggs
one cup milk
one cup sultanas
one cup prunes, roughly chopped
one large carrot, grated
one large green apple, grated
three cups plain flour
one teaspoon baking soda

Set your oven to 180C/350F and generously butter and flour a ring/tube cake tin. I say generously because ring tins always make me a bit nervous, since there's so much surface area for cake to stick to. 

Beat the butter, sugar, and eggs together till soft, light and fluffy. Meanwhile, heat the milk till just below a simmer - hot and starting to wobble but not bubbling - and carefully stir it into the butter. I added a little at first, and whisked that in, then a little more and a little more and then finally tipped the lot in - this makes it easier to mix it all together. 

Stir in everything else, and spatula it into the cake tin. Bake for around an hour, or until firm and brown on top. Allow to sit for about ten minutes before running a knife carefully around the cake and its inner ring, and tipping it onto a plate. Ice with a mixture of around 250g room temperature cream cheese mixed with around half a cup of icing sugar. 

Keeping it familial, and while you're here I may as well tell you, the grey rose-patterned plate that I photographed the cake on used to belong to a family friend's great-aunt (if I remember correctly) and it was given to me as a birthday present years ago. The blue gold-edged plate belonged to my late grandmother on my dad's side. I love new things and new cookbooks but there's something quietly lovely about looking at a cookbook and seeing someone's handwriting on it, someone who only knew you when you were a baby, and thinking about them at your own age; or how a plate that would've had a thousand different cakes on it throughout the years is still getting to have cake on it; or just, I don't know, knowing that these bits and pieces aren't stuck in a cupboard somewhere but are still getting used and loved. It's nice!

oh wow also this knife belonged to the great-grandparents too now I think on it; also this photo is an instagram which is why it's all clean and bright like an eidelweiss

I daresay you could do further things to spruce this up; soak the prunes and sultanas in dark rum before you mix them in, skewer the cooked cake and pour over dark rum; order take-out and forget the cake completely and drink a lot of dark rum; add sultanas or dried apricots or dark chocolate - whatever, really. And then you can look fondly at your cake and say, a la Tipping the Velvet, "you're a real bobby dazzler". 

Almost as exciting as thinking about cake, is the fact that I wrote about important television show Pretty Little Liars for The Spinoff; I am really so proud of this piece that I wrote since this show means so much to me and it took me so long to write and research but was also so fun, not since I wrote an essay about Idina Menzel for a media studies paper in university have I had such joy approaching a deadline. So even if you're all, "this show is about teenage girls and therefore I'm quite sure without really knowing why that it is TERRIBLE and MEANINGLESS" perhaps I can change your mind or at least outrage you by comparing it to The Wire?  

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title from: Old Devil Moon, a song as comfortingly old-timey yet sassy as this very cake that I'm writing about. Judy Garland could break my heart singing the happiest song and as I admire that quality greatly, that's the version I'm directing you to. 

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music lately: 

Idina Menzel covering Radiohead's Creep, live in Manila. Oh wow. I haven't listened to the original of this song (it's one of those ones that you utterly thrash and then it starts to lose all meaning) and I wasn't sure how this would work but Idina is gold here, like, old-timey late early 2000s Idina all sweary and dark and twisty and her voice sounds amazing. I love her.

Laura Lee, Little Too Late. My rad pal has just released a new single, it's gorgeous and dreamy and fun and I love it and am so proud of her! It's a good time to be a Laura. 

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next time: whatever it is I'm gonna take better care of my SD card, that's for sure! 

if green pears you like, if old chairs you like, if back stairs you like, if love affairs you like

Poire Belle Helene - pretty Helen pear - man, everything sounds so much better in French, but then do the French sit around being like man everything sounds so romantic in English? I, uh, I doubt it. 

Because I am heedlessly whimsical and waggishly adorable, when the notion strikes me to make a classic French dessert for my lunch in its entirety, I indulge that whim. Hard. Some might describe that as not providing one's body with enough necessary nutrients or a lot of work for a small result or even simply annoying, but I've said the magic word - whimsical - and as such am exonerated from all such opinions. For what it's worth though, later that day I was later horribly ill and had to go home from work but I refuse to blame this poached pear in chocolate sauce. I don't actually know what I'm blaming - it was all very mysterious and came out of nowhere, but I've eaten both pears and chocolate since and been utterly fine, so who knows. I hate going home sick from work - firstly when you're a bartender you have to try and find someone to cover you at the last minute, secondly you miss out on hours, thirdly there's this sense I have with hospo instilled from my ballet days where like, you can be coughing up blood and yet the show must go on - but maaaaan I was sick. Fortunately I have a marvelous girlfriend who was able to immediately administer panadol and cold flannels and such, but wow it was horrible. Um, anyway, this recipe is really delicious and you should definitely make it without fear of incapacitation. Definitely.



There's this scene in the musical Company where the lead character, Robert, is recounting a story to a woman that he's trying to sleep with, about another woman whom he tried to sleep with - in this story they had just met and were thoroughly into each other and rented a motel for the night, she then suggested that he go buy champagne, he drove to the nearest shop and bought all the champagne he could carry, sped back to the motel and - he says devastatingly - I could not find it. He then drove around for three hours looking for the motel before leaving. This was me, but with a block of Lindt dark chocolate that my mum had sent me. I was like, this would be perfect for the Poire Belle Helene whim that I've been taken with, and then I could not find it. I then ransacked my bedroom for twenty minutes. I don't know how a person loses a block of chocolate in their room but I'm sure I'll find it somewhere ridiculous when I least expect it, like in my sock drawer or on my head or melted and dripping down the mirror. I wanted some damn Poire Belle Helene though, so scooted to the corner dairy and bought some milk chocolate to use instead. A fascinating story, I know!

Honestly poached pears have never appealed to me that much as a dessert - if I wanted a damp fruit I could just open a can of them, thank you, don't insult me with this pretense of a pudding - but cover them in chocolate sauce and suddenly I get it. Poire Belle Helene was a dessert invented by that clever man Escoffier in the late 1800s in honour of an opera (that was what people did for fun back then, I guess, and I'm all for it) and it's a fetching combination - fragrant, sweet pear with creamy, rich chocolate sauce, the gritty yet yielding fruit against the silky, warm chocolate. It's blatantly a good idea for lunch. My recipe here is for one person (hence the flighty name) but the quantities are easy enough to increase.

poire belle helene seulement pour vous  (poire belle helene for you only) 

a recipe by myself. Serves one.

one firm pear
four tablespoons sugar
two cups of water
a tablespoon or so of riesling or sweet white wine, if you have it
one teaspoon vanilla extract 

75g milk chocolate
half a cup of cream
a tablespoon of butter
a pinch of salt

Peel the pear, leaving the stalk intact. If it's a bit wobbly and won't sit upright, cut a small slice out of the base so it's steady, otherwise leave as is. Put the sugar, water, riesling and vanilla in a small pot and lower the pear into it - it probably won't be submerged but this is okay. Bring the pan to the boil and then lower to a simmer, turning the pear over occasionally so that all sides spend time submerged by the hot syrup. Stick a skewer into the pear after about ten minutes, and if it's soft and yielding then you're good to go. Remove it from the syrup and place in the bowl that you're going to serve it in.

In a small pan, heat the cream till the surface is wobbly and it seems like it's just about to bubble. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate, and allow it to sit for a minute - the heat of the cream will melt the chocolate instantly. Stir briskly till all the chocolate is melted and you have a smooth, shiny sauce. Stir in the butter and the salt and then pour lavishly over the pear. Drink the rest of the sauce or save it for something else, up to you. 

aggressively autumnal

Obviously this makes a fairly gorgeous pudding to be had at the usual time of after dinner, but honestly, in the middle of the day, eaten contemplatively and reverently at the kitchen table while wearing stretchy pants and a large, soft hoodie and wooly socks...it was sublime. Milk chocolate brings a different vibe than 80% cocoa dark chocolate but I'm such a fan of its friendly, vaguely caramelly flavour. Whatever chocolate you use, try to make sure it's good, that is, that it's actually going to impart some kind of chocolate flavour at all, you know? The pears can be any old trash but the quality of the chocolate is really going to make or break this thing. That said, I used the fakest, cheapest vanilla essence in the syrup because it's all I had, and I manage to sleep at night (that's not true, I'm a terrible sleeper, but it's not from synthetic vanilla guilt at least!)

chomp

So the most exciting news in my life right now is that my flat now has A CAT. It's actually so hard for me to type this because just the knowledge that there is a cat in my presence makes me want to do triumphant forward rolls around the room for a good solid forty minutes. Oh sure, you say, cats are nice, but do you have any idea how fervently my heart has been yearning for one? I mean, if you read this blog you should have a decent idea since I go on about it quite a lot, but if not, just imagine the ferocious intensity of a thousand perturbed alligators: that's me. And now, a cat! Just as I was at the pinnacle of my I-have-no-cat feelings, the universe threw me a bone in the form of my flatmate, who was a last-minute replacement cat sitter for a friend going overseas for work for several months. Isn't that wonderful? 

caaaaaaaaaaaat faaaaace

business cat has key performance indicators to think about and doesn't have time for you right now, Bob

Her name is Wednesday and she has a tiny crooked tail and a curious disposition and she's just the happiest little nubbin ever. And so am I. 

In the wider scheme of things there is a lot of terribleness out there right now (well, there always is, but right now it's bubbling closer to the surface) and while I have nothing to say that would change or help, I would just like to draw your attention to the following two things while I'm here: if you're able to contribute to the people of Nepal following the horrifying earthquake that hit them, this FB post has some very useful information. If you are able to contribute to the people of Baltimore in the wake of ongoing police brutality, a wonderful woman I follow on Twitter is doing great, highly transparent work gathering essential supplies for people and can be supported via her Indiegogo account here. That is all. 

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title from: the gloriously sassy title song from the glorious musical Anything Goes. Okay so you should absolutely listen to the stridently excellent Patti LuPone sing it on the 1988 Broadway cast recording and then I urge you to watch Sutton Foster breezily belt it out and then tap dance effortlessly at the 2011 Tony Awards, and then speaking of things called Tony, I really truly adore Lady Gaga and Tony Bennet's take on it. Finally Melanie C's version is so gorgeous. Listen to them all or get outta here, quite frankly. It's just one of the best show tunes there is and Cole Porter, who wrote it, is an actual genius. 

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music lately:

DVS's brand new mixtape DVTV is SO VERY good, as is he. 

Janelle Monae, Yoga. "Get off my areola" is honestly the best line of 2015.

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next time: anything goes! (loooool)

we live in a wheel where everyone steals but when we rise it's like strawberry fields

December is really dissolving like a sachet of colourfree raspberry flavoured Raro juice powder into a litre of water, huh? For some reason this year I've barely heard Christmas music or been exposed to any other trappings of the season. I've seen like, one Christmas tree. For all I know it could still be mid-September. I clearly need to find a pine tree to lean into and reverently sniff and then to play thirty two renditions of Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You, y'know, basically method acting that it's this time of year until it sinks in that it really is this time of year.

Somewhere in the middle of all this seasonal denial I made breakfast for my roomie Kate, who was being a bridesmaid, as well as for the bride herself and the rest of the bridesmaids. That same weekend I was also feeding a friend's cat while they were away. How unlike me to be so selflessly helpful! How like me to tell everyone about my good deeds and blow them way out of proportion! I made a large jar of Strawberry Jam Granola,  and then chopped up some actual strawberries and a mango and sprinkled them with sugar and put them in the fridge overnight to let the flavours sort of get to know each other better, and then there were also grilled croissants with brie which Jason made and I therefore cannot take credit for (I swiped some and they were so, so delicious.)



The recipe comes from my cookbook, and you should know that I still have copies left and it makes a really, really good Christmas present. The thought of them all being finally gone fills me with a weird kind of foggy dread, because the book itself isn't being reprinted and so these are the only remaining copies left in the world. Just one year ago I was in a glowing bubble of joy from being freshly published. I exist in the pages of those books. Once they're gone, that's it. It won't be available anywhere, to anyone. Oh wow, so I'm doing a truly appalling job of encouraging you to buy my book from me, but yeah, I unyieldingly believe that my cookbook is a brilliant read that you all deserve to own. If you do want to order one of the remaining copies from me - and my stocks are dwindling rapidly, so better hustle - then completely ignore all my existential angst and confidently email me (my email address is in the sidebar of this blog).

This granola is very, very easy and fairly adaptable - I doubled it without any difficulty and always use the cheapest jam I can find when I make this. The strawberry jam gives the oats a sticky-sweet summery flavour while making them pleasingly clumpy, and the almonds and linseeds bring their own toasty crunchiness. Add other nuts or seeds if you like, but I find almonds and strawberries to be particularly friendly together.

strawberry jam granola

a recipe by myself, from my cookbook Hungry and Frozen

one and a half cups whole oats
one and a half cups rolled oats
three tablespoons linseeds
70g almonds
50g brown sugar
half a cup strawberry jam

Place everything except the jam in a large saucepan and stir over a low heat till lightly toasted and warmed through. Stir in the jam and continue stirring over a low heat till it's sticky and slightly clumpy. Allow to cool then transfer to an airtight container or jar.

The gloriously lipgloss-like scent of the strawberry jam slowly seeps into the milk, making this a highly perfect breakfast (especially with fruit and a large mound of thick Greek yoghurt) but I also like to just grab a handful from the jar at any time of day to snack upon carte blanche. 

The granola itself would also make a swell Christmas present - personally all I ever want is wine, food, or money, (or something so meaningful and so deeply from the heart that it makes me cry as soon as I see it, no biggie!) so giving someone a jar of breakfast cereal doesn't seem in the slightest bit weird to me. Put it in a cute mason jar, since they're everywhere these days, tie a cute ribbon around it, you could even write the recipe out on a cute notecard for the person. Cute! 

Other than being uncharacteristically helpful I've been either stupidly busy and running amok from one end of town to the other, or concrete-limbed with exhaustion in bed, or at work, or going to gigs and also writing a novel (I haven't written fiction in so, so long but it's all I used to do with my time and it's massively fun. And I just feel like writing a novel. So I'm gonna.)

hard twee

Also on my agenda lately: being cuter than a jar of homemade granola. As if playing some large scale game of Whimsy Bingo, I found two flower crowns at work. This was a timely discovery, since there's not much I can do with my hair now that it's short, and also I love free things. And as always, I'm trying to befriend the neighbourhood cats (this neighbourhood has neighbourhood cats in abundance, I can tell you.)

 

this one definitely wants to be my friend

Once more with feeling, in case you haven't quite absorbed what I'm trying to impart because I am far, far too wordy while trying to get my point across: if you want to buy a copy of my cookbook for a Christmas present then there's no better time than now. Considering it's like, not yet Christmas. It's yours for the taking while my stocks last! Give the gift of literary perfection! (Well, so far I'm the only person who has described the book like that, but I think I'm a fairly trustworthy source.)

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title from: Bush, Glycerine. I remember when I first heard this on the radio when I was maybe eight or nine and did not get it at all, pronouncing it boring and gloomy and pointless. For what it's worth, Bush, I quickly realised I loved grungey music and that your song wasn't that pointless after all. (Gavin Rossdale: "well thank goodness for that")

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music lately: 

Sky Ferreira, I Blame Myself. This song is really, really perfect. That is all. 

Belle and Sebastian, The Blues Are Still Blue. I always thought the only Belle and Sebastian song I liked was Lazy Line Painter Jane (which I could listen to over and over and over again) but yay, I found another one! This one is so simple but also zigs just when you think it's gonna zag. 

Janet Jackson, I Get Lonely. Damn, though. 

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next time: Gonna try and be more Christmassy! And might make a list of lots of food-present ideas and recipes. 

down with love, with flowers and rice and shoes

I have a day off today and approached it with gleeful anticipation of writing a blog post with diligence and discipline, but instead I had a terrible sleep last night (the kind where you just wake up at irritatingly regular intervals for no good reason) and I'm assuming it's that which has left me staring listlessly at the screen unable to think of anything cool to say about this rice pudding.

So then I had a break and spontaneously danced around the lounge, free-limbed and embarrassingly passionate! I leapt and did high kicks and sank into the splits and twirled! And now I'm back on the couch sitting under my laptop and I'm still tired and uninspired but like, dancing was fun, I guess. But if doing enthusiastic self-flinging to Inside Out by Eve Six and Problems by ASAP Rocky and Honey to the Bee by Billie Piper can't help inspire one to talk about rice pudding, then, well. What is there.

But now that I think about it, having worn holes in my socks from pirouetting on carpet and exhausted my lung capacity from doing powerful leaps, this rice pudding was really, really good. I don't even consider myself someone who considers rice pudding...at all. But I had some at a cafe recently and was, upon eating it, filled with profound thoughts like "This is so exemplary, I might make my own damn rice pudding some time."

The rice pudding I've made is part of a mighty enough English tradition of milk-based puddings, with this being rice cooked slowly in said milk till it has swollenly absorbed the lot and turned all creamy and soft and comforting. Numerous cultures worldwide have their own similar version, presumably with everyone coming to the same culinary conclusion around the same time many years ago. It can be utterly vile, and worse, boring, but when made right it's pretty brilliant. Rice has its own subtle flavour and texture which suits the aggressive creaminess, and as a prop for other flavours - in this case, sesame-tinted caramel sauce and sugary blackberries - it's excellent.

I was determined to avoid any troubling blandness here so used a mixture of full cream milk and water plus milk powder, which seems counter-intuitive for the sake of it, but if there's one thing I enjoy, it's seeming counter-intuitive for the sake of it. But also I do like the vanilla-salt-kick that milk powder gives, and have this vague and unfounded scientific feeling that a mixture of milk and water makes for better liquid absorption. The rice itself releases its starches slowly, making it stupidly creamy all on its own, and then you can pour over as much actual cream as you like once it's cooked. The sesame seeds aren't super necessary but their warm toasty nutty flavour makes things more compelling, and works oddly well with the particular tartness of the berries. And when you're making a pudding that you're not entirely sure you're even that enthused about the concept of in the first place, "oddly well" is a highly respectable result.

rice pudding with blackberries and sesame caramel sauce

a recipe by myself. Serves four, although I ate the lot entirely alone (in two sittings, not that I'm entirely concerned what you think about my portion-related decisions) This makes honestly about seventeen times more caramel sauce than you need but it's nice to wake up the next morning and drink the remainders of it while standing in front of the fridge. I'm assuming you've got frozen blackberries here, but by all means use freshly picked ones if you've got them, you princess of the meadow.  

three cups full fat milk
two cups water
four tablespoons full fat milk powder
two tablespoons sugar
a pinch of salt
three quarters of a cup of arborio rice

one cup of frozen blackberries
one tablespoon caster sugar
one teaspoon vanilla extract

one tablespoon of sesame seeds
50g butter
half a cup of brown sugar
half a cup of cream
a small pinch of salt

Place the blackberries, sugar, and vanilla in a bowl and leave to sit while you make the rice. 

In a large pot, bring the milk, water, milk powder, sugar, and pinch of salt gently to the boil. Pour in the rice and stir it, lowering the heat to a simmer. Allow to simmer, stirring often, for around thirty minutes or until the rice is swollen and soft. You may need to add extra water if it's looking like this will never happen. I did. There was totally a point where I was like, 'wow, I guess I'm never going to have rice pudding ever', because the rice just would not soften entirely. You just have to keep stirring and tasting (don't bother tasting till most of the liquid is absorbed though) and eventually it honestly will be cooked.

Let it sit while you make the caramel sauce - toast the sesame seeds in a small pan till they're browned, then quickly tip them into a bowl (quickly, because they will burn swiftly if left unattended) and in the same pan, melt the butter and brown sugar together. Once it's bubbling, tip in the cream and stir vigorously, then remove from the heat. It might look all weird and separated but stirring will bring it together! Tip the sesame seeds back in along with the salt and stir them through. 

The blackberries by now should have defrosted into the sugar and be all glossy and syrupy. Spatula the rice into a serving dish, fling the berries and some of their syrup over the top and then spoon over as much caramel sauce as you like. Serve with more cream and caramel sauce for pouring over. Should you have leftovers, it's worth knowing that the rice near the berries will turn an unpromising blue colour, it's all good and all still plenty edible. 

Describing rice pudding as comforting might seem a bit obvious, but sometimes things are obvious for a reason. It is just so soft, and creamy, and mildly sweet, and warm, like eating that particular feeling where you pull a pile of laundry out of the dryer and then lie down and pile it all on top of yourself like a cosy mountain. The caramel sauce pierces all the plainness with its dark sugary salty toffee vibes, and the blackberries bring some pure fruity sweetness which feels necessary in the face of all that milk and starch.

And importantly, the berries also look so pretty against the snowy white rice.

Aside from trying to write this post I've spent the weekend thus far rewatching Skins, reading up with terror and horror on Ferguson (I recommend this brief but devastating piece by Roxane Gay), making a pre-wedding breakfast for a bride and bridesmaids at my flat (my roomie Kate being one of those bridesmaids), lying in bed willing myself to go buy iron pills, and anticipating December with trepidation. My tarot card for November was all "it's over, let it goooo" and "get lots of hugs" and I'm not sure that I've quite lived up to the potential of it but I mean, I did cut my hair.

I still have short hair! And that was the weekly Laura's Hair Roundup

So the thought of December being amongst us is making me a little nervous - this will be the first ever Christmas I don't spend at home with family, because I'll be working, and also there's just that weird thing where the end of a year makes you consider every damn moment that's led up to this point and what you could have done differently and what it all means and who you are and where you're going with life and stuff. But my tarot card for December is Queen of Wands, which is a super rad one to have, being all about things like creative vision and achieving goals; enjoying the limelight; acting upon feelings; and, according to one site, potentially finding love by meeting someone through a light-haired friend (am I that light-haired friend to myself?) Cool, yes? Well, whatever the cards say could happen, as long as I thrive aggressively and be 100% successful in all aspects of my life and get intimidatingly rich and radiate pure happiness, I'll be quietly satisfied. 

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title from: Down with Love, by that queen Judy Garland. Up with love, I say, but the song's sentiment is pretty understandable sometimes. Especially if Judy's singing.

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music lately: 

Eve 6, Inside Out. Erm yeah I listened to this about nineteen times yesterday, whatever. 

Lorde, Yellow Flicker Beat, live at the AMA's. The last five seconds, chills through my heart. 

En Vogue, Don't Let Go (Love). The lyrics to this are blisteringly good. "Have the right to lose control", omg. This is the kind of song that gives me false nostalgia about the nineties. Actually, so is the Eve 6 song. Damn it!

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Next time: I might blog about the granola that I made for the bridal kids? It's delicious stuff and looked pretty, and those are my usual requirements covered.