better get that dough sister

Not all food blogs are created equal. Some get abandoned, their last update around the May 2009 mark, often saying something like "I've been so busy lately..." Some have light pink text on a dark pink background, briskly searing the eyeballs like marinated tofu laid in a hot pan. Some get book deals (pick me!) And some are resources that continuously inspire with their fresh perspective, genuine wordsmithery, love of food, and crack up humour. Like Hannah's blog, Wayfaring Chocolate. Here's yet another recipe via her writing that I've appropriated cuz it looked so good.

Although maybe I should say sounded so good. Vegan Cookie Dough Truffles sounds wildly delicious, at least to me. But. Because I gave my almonds and brazils a once-over in a hot pan, and they hold their heat, the chocolate melted and dispersed through the mixture in the food processor. Instead of bordering-on-adorable chocolate studded balls of cookie dough like Hannah's, mine were...uniformly brown. After eating one I moved on pretty fast though. They really have a cookie dough flavour, but in a rich, textured way as opposed to the more instantaneous sugar rush of that which this imitates. If you were feeling up for it (and possibly if you're serving them to guests) you could actually dip these or drizzle them with dark chocolate. And if you're feeling super up for it, you could probably chop these up and stir them through vanilla ice cream. But they taste mighty amazing unadorned, whether or not you find them attractive.

I actually tried dusting them with this vanilla sugar I got given for Christmas but by the time I got the camera sorted the sugar had kind of absorbed into the surface. So I moved on.

No-Bake Vegan Cookie Dough Truffles

With thanks to Hannah from Wayfaring Chocolate

2/3 cup almonds

2/3 cup cashews (I used brazil nuts which I figured gave a similar texture)

2/3 cup oatbran (blitz oats in the blender to make this if you haven't got it)

1/4 teaspoon (or more) ground cinnamon

Pinch salt

1/4 cup agave nectar (I used golden syrup)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

About 50 grams dark chocolate (has to be dark stuff to make this vegan, but do as you please) roughly chopped

• Toast the nuts in a pan over a low heat if you like - gives intensity of flavour, although definitely makes this 'not raw' if that's what you're going for.
• Process everything up until the syrup into a fine-ish rubble.
• Add the syrup, vanilla and chocolate and process again till the mixture comes together. If it's looking super dry, add a tablespoon or so more syrup.
• Roll into balls in the palm of your hand - it will feel like it won't stick but keep rolling, it works.
• Freeze...then eat.

They taste absolutely wonderful, which is why I present them to you without any fear of what they look like. The nuts themselves give the truffles luscious body and softness (and in fact they'll probably do the same for your hair) their texture giving an almost-chocolatey bite to complement the actual chocolate. I know oatbran doesn't sound so fun but it gives general bulk to the truffle mix and whatever dusty oat-ness is there disappears into the rest of the ingredients, as well as adding to the general, but genuine, cookie dough stylings of this recipe. Don't leave out the salt, it means whatever flavour's there hits you that much faster, as well as hinting at that salted-caramel thing by bringing out the best of whatever form of syrup you end up using.

These are fantastic when you arrive home seriously hungry (or as a hasty breakfast on the run if it comes to it - all those oats and nuts keep you going for a while) and obviously keep just fine for ages, stashed in the freezer. If you're the kind of person who makes and freezes meatballs for a later date (and I am, very occasionally, that person) then...make sure you label things correctly. Biting into a frozen meatball while simmering these beauties in tomato sauce would be a grim outcome for such efficiency.

At this point in three weeks, Tim and I will be in London! We've still got a few nights' accommodation to book there but apart from that we're suspiciously organised. And, loving the sugary sweet names of the hostels we're staying at in Berlin and Warsaw respectively: The Helter Skelter and Oki Doki. A bit like how I like to make stupid words like "ham" when I'm playing Scrabble rather than trying to win, I can't lie that their respective names influenced me to want to stay there.

Yesterday Tim and I spent most of the day on the waterfront at the Homegrown festival, the first one I've ever attended instead of working at, and the first time it has rained on the day. Wasn't a thing though, as the bands were performing in big sturdy tents, and we mostly loitered between two in particular. Took in such excellence as Coco Solid, PNC, The Phoenix Foundation, The Clean, Nesian Mystik (I'm pretty sure It's On could've been released yesterday instead of 2002 and still be as smooth as freshly churned butter) ending the festival with a loud, aggressively athletic and seriously fun set from Die!Die!Die!.

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Title via: Even though I never actually once liked the music of Pink, Mya, or Christina Aguilera (Lil Kim, I couldn't say, haven't heard enough) somehow the whole was greater than the sum of its parts and I still have a fondness for their melisma-tastic take on Lady Marmalade for the film Moulin Rouge (possibly because at one point in time I watched this film at least once a week. Possibly also the amazing Missy Elliot's work on it - I distinctly remember driving somewhere with Dad one time, and him turning it up on the radio and telling me to listen to the production values.) And let's take some time to appreciate the original by Labelle, who wore costumes no less astonishing.

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Music lately:

After Homegrown we went back out to Happy to catch the back end of a quadruple bill raising money for Christchurch, namely Brains and Mammal Airlines. We'd never seen Brains before but liked them a lot, lots of dark moodiness and full-on drums and I'm very tired so that's as far as I'll try to go describing what we saw. Go listen and make up your own mind here.

Defying Gravity, from the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Wicked, which belongs to the wonderful Idina Menzel. I hadn't listened to this song in so long, and I know it's prosaic, but for want of a better decision I've set my ringtone to the vertigo inducing coda of this song (if you can't deal with sung dialogue, maybe skip to the final minute and a half or so.) Everyone call me!

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Next time: saw this recipe for mango chutney after it was linked to on Twitter, and as luck would have it, mangoes were going reasonably cheap at the market today and as such, I'm pretty sure this is up next.

you're a sensitive aesthete, brush the sauce onto the meat

So, six days till Christmas. Fa la la la la. Hope everyone's staying as mellow as possible. I was doing all good, until our computer broke down and I found out that the place my family's been camping at since I was a TINY BAIRN is full up till the 4th of January so I can't be out there for very long before going back to work and Tim probably can't be there at all since he's got work on the 5th and hasn't accumulated enough leave yet. Writing that down and re-reading it like that makes me realise that well, we've still got a lot of things going for us this Christmas (jobs! Family!) and it's very easy to lose perspective. But I still couldn't help a bit of significant sulking at the people who innocently thought the place we go camping in every year would be a nice place to spend their summer. Which...is fairly pointless. But seriously. The campground isn't even that great. Go to the Coromandel, everyone. Leave our place alone.

And yeah, our computer spontaneously busted on Wednesday morning. The guy at Harvey Norman declared it certified broken, but I think Tim managed to impress upon the guys at the computer-fixit place how central it is to my wellbeing, so we're able to have it home for the weekend. It's become like a brand new, empty one though - while I'm pretty sure most of our stuff was backed up, I did have a terrible habit of saving things to desktop…and I had a whole bunch of photos lined up to blog about that are now stuck somewhere in a sticky mess of binary code. Luckily I still had some stuff on the camera's memory stick and they even kinda go together. So here goes.

I found this recipe for Dijon Sauce in a semi-unlikely place, being the latest issue of mighty music mag Rip It Up, in a very cool article where local musicians talk about their love of food and share recipes. As someone who has enjoyed forcing food and music into one blog for a long time now, this feature made total sense to me, and I was drawn to Iain Gordon's (of Fat Freddy's Drop) recipe - his partner's actually, as he acknowledges.

Dijon Sauce

Cheers to Rip It Up and Iain Gordon for sharing

75g butter

3 egg yolks

1/3 cup cream

3 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Juice of a lemon

Melt the butter and set aside to cool. Whisk three egg yolks and then add to the butter, continuing to whisk. Add cream, mustard, and the lemon juice. Stir over a very low heat till it has thickened. Be careful to keep stirring and not let it get too hot or it'll curdle, but apparently it can be rescued by pouring in more cream.

It was the day after our Christmas Dinner and we had heaps of leftovers, including half a loaf of sourdough bread, so I cut some thick slices to make sandwiches with. This sauce used up some leftover egg yolks (from the Baked Alaska) and cream (from the chicken) and gave a rich, golden mustard-hot hit to the sandwiches of chicken, roast capsicum, stuffing (hell yeah!) and avocado.

You could probably adjust this to what you have - two egg yolks and slightly less butter should still make plenty. And it just occurred to me that if you didn't have Dijon you could use wasabi, and it also occurs to me that I really want to try making that too…Anyway, it's worth keeping this recipe in mind over the next stretch of time because its buttery deliciousness is perfect for not just perking up Christmas leftovers, but for pouring across the whole Christmas feast itself.

While we're on a sauce tip, if you've gone to town with the cheap prices and bought more strawberries than you can handle, you've got to try this amazingly good recipe. I made it for a work Christmas thing the other night, not only does it look so pretty, it's also incredibly delicious and seems to last for a while in the fridge too. If it's a hot hot day on the 25th I couldn't think of anything much nicer than ice cream and this sauce for pudding. Or breakfast.

Strawberry Sauce

I found this recipe on a site called Julia's Kitchen - cheers Julia!

2 cups strawberries

1/3 cup honey (I used the last of my Airborne Tawari)

1 vanilla bean (optional - I didn't have any to hand so I used good vanilla extract. The flavour is great in this sauce, so use what you've got really)

1 1/2 tablespoons good balsamic vinegar

Instead of measuring out two cups of fruit that you're just going to chop up anyway, I cut off the tops of the strawberries and then halved them and put that fruit into a cup measure till it was filled, then repeated…I hope that makes sense.

Put everything except the balsamic vinegar in a pan and bring to the boil. If you are using the vanilla bean, split it open, scrape the seeds into the pan and then chuck the pod in too. Otherwise just use a teaspoon or two of good vanilla extract. Bring to the boil and then simmer over a low heat for around 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. I used a little wire whisk to stir this, which helped to break up some of the bigger pieces of strawberry. When the sauce is thicker, add the vinegar and continue to cook for another couple of minutes. Store in the fridge.

This is beautiful stuff - soft pieces of strawberry suspended in lipstick-red, honeyed syrup. The balsamic vinegar might sound strange but there's something about its dark sweetness that makes it a natural friend of the strawberry. It gives a kind of acidic punchyness to the syrup which is then mellowed out by the soft vanilla flavour - excellence all round, really. I reckon you could fold it through cream that had been whipped up with a little icing sugar, and then freeze it to make a seriously amazing fast ice cream.

Life is going to be full-on busy over the next couple of days - Tim and I are flying up to Auckland on Tuesday afternoon to see the Gorillaz (caaaaaan't wait) and there's heaps to be done beforehand. But it's not Christmas without a few frantic late nights, right?

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Title via: Santa Fe, from RENT (ohh, RENT, such fertile referencing-ground).

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Music lately:

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects, their nod to a 'dappy holidays' tune…holy this lady is amazing. Tim and I saw Jones and the Dap-Kings at the Opera House on Friday night, it was just a truly incredible show. And as a surprise bonus we ended up sitting behind Flight of the Conchords' Bret McKenzie. We took some photos on the night (of the band, not McKenzie), check 'em out at 100sand1000s (click on the date to see the photos in full).

Clint Eastwood, by Gorillaz…did I mention we're excited about seeing them next week? Doesn't even start to cover it. I've loved this band since they first appeared, in fact their debut album was one of the first I purchased with my own money (hey, no source of income made this a big decision) along with Dre's 2001 and the Moulin Rouge soundtrack.

Fat Freddy's Drop, Roady - nothing like the power of suggestion. After making that sauce I had a massive urge to listen to this sunny sunny song featuring the gorgeous vocals of Ladi6.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas sung by Christine Ebersole…she takes a song you've heard a million times and does nothing in particular with it, but it's so stunning. That voice.

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Next time: Tim's got to take this computer back to the computer-fixing guys, hopefully they can work their magic. I may well be able to get another hasty blog post in from home (I mean Home, where the whanau is) before Christmas though...

and if you don't want to be down with me, you don't want to pick from my apple tree

I made these Apple and Cinnamon muffins ages ago - they were the second thing I tried from Nigella Lawson's book Kitchen after the Spaghetti with Marmite (which got slated in a column in the local paper - any Dominion Post readers out there, don't disregard its deliciousness! I guess that was one opinion, and mine is merely another, but still.) I don't know why it's taken me so long to blog about them, but...here they are.

I do agree with Nigella's emphatic and continued suspicion of the muffins you run into in many cafes and supermarkets. What they lack in tenderness and flavour, they make up for in height and overpricedness. It could be easy to dislike the concept of muffins altogether if your main experience of them is handing over $4.50 for a mountain of foam mattress sprinkled in chocolate chips, somehow dry and oily simulataneously. Maybe you like this, or your experience of shop muffins is better than mine. All good.

However home-made muffins, while less uniform in shape, are very easy to make and as long as you don't over-mix them, pretty well guaranteed to be extremely delicious. I realise apple and cinnamon muffins might sound like the obvious-est of the obvious but this recipe of Nigella's is incredibly good - dense and sweet with honey and yoghurt and textured with chunks of apple and almonds. And it probably costs less to make a whole dozen than it would to buy just one from the supermarket.

Nigella uses spelt flour in this recipe instead of regular flour, which makes them more acceptable for some people who eat wheat-free, but not necessarily those who are gluten-free - it's a little complicated but go with what you know is best for you, I guess. I bought a bag of spelt flour a year ago and never ended up using it so it was nice to have the opportunity to try it out. These muffins are so full of flavour that I couldn't say they were distinctively spelt-ish, they just came out looking and tasting like muffins should. You could definitely just use regular plain flour rather than rushing out to find spelt.

Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

From Nigella Lawson's Kitchen

2 apples

250g spelt flour (or just plain flour)

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

125g brown sugar

125ml honey (1/2 a cup)

60ml (1/4 cup) natural yoghurt

125 ml oil (1/2 a cup - and I use Rice Bran oil)

2 eggs

75g natural almonds, roughly chopped.

Set your oven to 200 C and line your muffin tin with papers.

Chop the apples into small dice, leaving out the core of course, and put to one side. Whisk together the brown sugar, honey, yoghurt, oil and eggs in a bowl.

Tip in the apples, flour, baking powder, half the almonds, and one teaspoon of the cinnamon into this and gently fold it together with a spatula. Try not to overmix - I tend to lift and shift the batter rather than do a full on stirring motion, if that makes any sense at all.

Spoon evenly amongst the muffin tin, and sprinkle with the remaining cinnamon and almonds, plus a little more brown sugar if you like. Bake for 20 minutes. Let them stand 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

While the comfort-food element of cinnamon and apple obviously works, the almonds, growing smokily nutty under the oven's heat, and honey, complementing the diced apple's clean but layered sweetness, keep these muffins from being predictable. They take minutes to throw together but stay good for ages in a sealed container, if anything becoming even more delicious with time (although that could be a product of imagination and anticipation, waking up thinking "OHBOY a delicious muffin for a mid-morning snack.")

In fact, one of the excellent things about muffins is that they're really just cake, but you can eat them any time of day including breakfast, without getting strange looks - in the sort of way that a pavlova or ice cream might. Not that avoiding strange looks should be your main motivation in life, not at all! It's just a nice thought...breakfast cake.

Tim and I went out to Petone yesterday and at the record shop partway down Jackson Street, I found the original Broadway cast recording of Company on vinyl. I didn't even think it existed in New Zealand - considering the juggernaut that is Amazon.com only has about 6 copies, one for US$90...and now for relative pennies I've got Elaine Stritch barking "she's tall enough to be your mother" as people originally heard her the first time round in 1970. I had to keep taking it out of the bag and looking at it on the bus back into the city in case I'd just done a really good job of imagining it. But it exists. It's damn exciting.

Speaking of, I am seriously anticipational about Tiger Translate on the 26th of November, if you're in Wellington around this time you should most definitely give it your time of day. Even though I feel like I don't quite have a grip on what it is, there's a whole lot of creativity that'll go down and there will be some amazing locals performing. We've been lucky to witness many of them in action already over the last year or so, with their powers combined who knows what kind of fresh mayhem will occur. TrinityRoots' stunner drummer Riki Gooch, Julien Dyne and Parks who we saw just last week onstage with Ladi6, Homebrew, whose lyric-memorising male fans still astound months after we saw them with David Dallas at Watusi, Adi Dick who despite being in a squillion different music projects we've never actually seen live, the mighty intriguing Orchestra of Spheres, the amazing Electric Wire Hustle who we saw back in February and have since been galloping round the globe, Tommy Ill, Alphabethead whose happy style we love, Scratch 22, Fried Chicken Sound System, The Jewel School plus particularly special guest DJ Zooloo from Mongolia. Tim and I are going to be there and if you get a move on the first 500 people to register online get free tickets - not sure if this has filled up but either way check out their website for more info.

While I'm talking to Wellington, can anyone tell me where to get decent garlic? It seems like even the expensive stuff from the supermarket, with the pretty purple-tinged papery casing is all chomped and denty, gets green shoots quickly, and burns the tongue like raw onion. I guess people selling garlic have no way of knowing what's underneath the stuff you peel off, but I'm also guessing you can't return a bulb once you've bought it. Sure, there's the mulched up stuff in jars, but for those times you want whole cloves...?

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Title via: Erykah Badu and her song Appletree from the beautiful album Baduizm. Such an amazing woman - I wish she'd tour on down to New Zealand.

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Music lately:

I Learned The Hard Way, by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, from the album of the same title. Now there's an amazing woman who is coming to New Zealand, and luckily for us we were able to buy tickets. Can't wait.

Obviously, have got Company doing many revolutions right now. Can't get enough no.

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Next time: I am on a prawn high right now, watch out.

one night in bangkok makes a hard man crumble

Crumble has got to be some of the the best kind of food in existence, among the comforting-est of all the comfort food. In Nigella Express, there is this very cool idea where you make up some crumble topping in advance and freeze it so if you ever want pudding, but the thought of actually having to cook makes you weepy, you're still good to go. I mean, there's a bit of initial effort that goes into it. But that's the good thing about Nigella - there's options. Whether you're in the mood for a seven layer trifle where you make your own sponge and custard by hand, or something more or less instant but not so instant that you're sitting on the couch ejecting a can of whipped cream into your mouth, she's got you covered.

That said, I can't help being suspicious of crumble recipes, and will often think "that's not nearly enough butter!" as I read the list of ingredients. I definitely trust Nigella Lawson, the woman who taught me that 250g butter in one cake is just fine, but even so when I saw that her recipe was for four servings, it took effort to stick to the 50g she stipulated. Worrying, maybe, but true. No one wants wafer-thin crumble coverage.

Turns out 50g was all good, and there was no need to get so hand-wringingly righteous over it. That said, when you divide 50 between 4 that's only like...less than 1 tablespoon of butter per person. That's practically nothing. But go with it, you somehow end up with just the amount of crumble you need. Nigella calls this "Jumbleberry Crumble", which is just an olde English term for "whatever berries you have". I had the end of a packet of frozen blackberries, plus some cranberries leftover from last Christmas. While I held back from exaggerating the topping quantities, I did add some dark chocolate chunks to the fruit. It felt right, but then adding chocolate to things usually does...right?

Jumbleberry Crumble

From Nigella Lawson's Nigella Express

For the Crumble Topping:

50g butter

100g flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

3 tablespoons brown sugar

Rub the butter into the flour and baking powder, till it resembles coarse crumbs (with some inevitable floury dustiness). Stir in the sugar, and then tip into a freezer bag till needed.

Assembly:

Set your oven to 220 C. Get some ovenproof ramekins, fill with frozen berries (and a few dark chocolate chunks if you like), sprinkle over 1 teaspoon cornflour, two teaspoons sugar, and a couple of tablespoons (roughly 50-75g) frozen crumble topping. Bake for 15-20mins depending on the size of the ramekin - 125g ones for the lesser time, but 250-300ml ones will take a little longer.

I made these fairly late at night with both low lighting and low camera battery, not giving me a lot of room to move as far as getting quality photos. Next time?

These were delicious - the chocolate melting into the sharp juices released by the frozen berries as they stewed in the oven, creating a thick, rich sauce for the fruit. The crumble topping was highly satisfying despite my earlier nervousness - biscuity, sweet and gratifyingly crisp in places. Plus, because there's only the two of us, I've got some crumble mix in a sandwich bag in the freezer, just waiting to be sprinkled over fruit on another cold evening. For all that I talked about Spring and skipping along in the mild sunshine with armfuls of asparagus bushels in my last post, the weather in Wellington is so variable (and it varies heavily towards the murkier, chillier end of the scale more often than not. This is a pain, but there is an upside when it means you're more likely to be in the mood to eat crumble.)

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Title via: One Night In Bangkok from the musical Chess. Confession: I actually thought that my title was the lyrics but it turns out it's actually "makes a hard man humble". Whatever. I love this song - the strange, theatre-plus-rapping that became a chart hit despite having perhaps seriously Top 40-unfriendly lyrics and concept. Adam Pascal's take is pretty fabulous, from the 2008 concert with Idina Menzel and The Wire's Clarke Peters, but is cruelly unavailable on Youtube. You'll just have to buy the DVD...Nevertheless Murray Head's original has its dubious charms also. I did a jazz dance to this many, many years ago, I can still remember bits of it to this day.

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Music lately:

The Little Things by TrinityRoots. We saw them on Sunday night at the Opera House on their 'reunion' tour. They seemed so comfortable with each other - spinning a tune out for ten minutes and then with a collective nod seamlessly bringing it back down to earth. All three of them are wonderful to watch - Warren Maxwell looking calm and a bit spiritual, Riki Gooch's boyish face belying his monster talent on the drums and Rio Hemopo, who looks somehow familiar (I realise he's a musician and all) providing bass in both guitar and voice. They were supported by Isaac Aesili, who is hugely talented in his own right, and Ria Hall, who I'd met before when she emceed the Smokefree Pacifica Beats, and has an absolutely stunning voice. It was a beautiful night.

What's Going On, Marvin Gaye, from the album of the same name. Tim got some Marvin Gaye on vinyl and this song is just up there with the very best of all music, like crumble is among the best of all foods.

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Next time: As I said last time, I have some options, so it all depends on what I feel like...by the way, I've tinkered round and added the option of a Facebook 'like' button just below, in case you're all "I don't like change!" I don't even really like Facebook so am a bit unsure about actively letting it invade my blog but wanted to give this 'like' thing a whirl. Considering how rubbish the photos are this week it possibly isn't the best place to start and will probably put any new readers off, but anyway, if you don't know, now you know...

and all shall fade, the flowers of spring

Whenever Spring rolls round again (I know it's boring to insist how fast the year seems to be moving but: the year seems to be moving fast) there's this flurry of asparagus-loving that goes on in the food-related media. Which is fair enough since it's really delicious and takes its sweet seasonal time getting here and, importantly, its arrival means we're getting closer to summer. Somehow I haven't really embraced asparagus much this year - it's nearly November and this is the first time I've cooked it. I've been travelling round a bit lately and had a few late nights that slow down my ability to get to the vege market, and while "social life > asparagus" looks good on paper...it's good to finally have some in the fridge.

I couldn't fight the inexplicable need to take lots of is-it-isn't-it-focussed photos of it first.

This would have been a lot more dramatic if I'd had more asparagus, but whatever.

The reason I don't have more asparagus up my sleeve to take fancy photos of is because I used half my stemmy green bounty earlier this week in something that Nigella calls "Sweet Potato Supper" - a roasting dish of chopped kumara, stems of asparagus, and chopped bacon, sprinkled with thyme and drizzled with oil then baked for an hour. So good.

With the remainder, once I'd finished snapping it from high and low angles, I made a recipe from the Floriditas cookbook. Floriditas is a restaurant down the road and the sort of place that I find myself gazing wistfully at as I pass. Similar to how, if we were ever at the Warehouse in town, I used to ask salespeople to find out how many Spice Girl polaroids there were left in stock, and how much one cost. When they came back and told me I would then sigh and say "okay, thanks" and just stand there, looking wistful. I don't know why, I guess I was hoping some eccentric millionare would be wandering through the Pukekohe Warehouse and take pity on me or something. Anyway, Floriditas is so, so nice. I've only ever been in there for coffee and cake as it's a bit out of our reach but their elegant cookbook allows it to come closer to home.

It's divided into months, beginning with December, and recipes reflect the seasonal produce and mood of each time of year. It assumes you know a lot - recipes tend to be sparsely worded - and it could have done with a bit of subediting, but there are a lot of beautiful things to be made, gorgeous pictures and a lovely introduction from Julie Clark and Marc Weir, both of whom can often be seen through the windows serving diners. I only really wish that it had more baking recipes in it - but then as their cakes are so amazing maybe they don't want to play all their cards at once.

My main reason for attempting their Asparagus and Tarragon Spaghetti with Garlic Crumbs was that I'd spontaneously bought a giant tarragon plant from those stands selling herbs at the supermarket because it felt like a good idea at the time. This recipe not only helped out with that but also is a decent showcase for the asparagus spears sitting in the fridge and the idea of 'garlic crumbs' was pretty alluring. It's a recipe for two people but you fry the breadcrumbs in 100g butter. It's like they were thinking of me, specifically, when they were writing this.

Asparagus & Tarragon Spaghetti with Garlic Crumbs

Adapted slightly from Morning, Noon and Night, the Floriditas cookbook.

For the crumbs:

1/2 a loaf fresh ciabatta

8 cloves garlic, finely chopped

100g butter

2 tsps olive oil

Tear the ciabatta into chunks (I left the crust on, despite being told to remove it) and use a food processor to chop the bread into fine-ish crumbs. I should have done this, but couldn't be bothered getting out the food processor for one job, so instead I hacked and sliced the crumbs into submission with a serrated knife. In a large pan, melt the butter and oil together, then add the crumbs and garlic, stirring regularly till they are golden and crunchy and starting to colour slightly. It might look a bit terrifying to some at this point but the bread absorbs all that butter very quickly. Anything you steal from the pan at any stage will taste amazing.

For the spaghetti:

100g spaghetti (I upped this to 200g for the two of us - 100 seemed too little)

1 bunch asparagus

olive oil

1/2 cup fresh tarragon leaves

4 T freshly grated parmesan

Optional: I added a handful of frozen peas to the pasta during the last five minutes of the cooking time. With all that butter I wanted a bit of extra vegetable.

Cook the spaghetti as per packet instructions in a pot of boiling salted water. Meanwhile, slice the ends off the asparagus then slice the stems diagonally. Heat a little olive oil in a pan and saute the asparagus till it turns bright green and is cooked through and a little darkly crisp in places. Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and toss into the pan with the asparagus, mixing gently to disperse (never very easy, to be fair). Add the tarragon leaves, parmesan and crumbs, mixing gently again, and then divide between two plates.

I knew if I made the crumbs first I'd end up eating them all while the pasta was cooking. So, to save the crumbs and also to save on washing up, I sauteed the asparagus first, set it aside, then made the crumbs in that same pan in the last five minutes of the pasta cooking. I thought this was a good thing but it turned out to highlight how my good intentions don't always turn out right. Nothing dramatic, I just forgot that I'd set the asparagus - one of the central, yay-it's-Spring-already ingredients - to the side. It wasn't till I'd finished taking photos and we'd sat down to eat that I remembered.

So there's the asparagus, hastily

It was incredibly good - the grassy, slightly scorched sauteed asparagus against the deeply buttery crumbs and intense garlic flavour. It possibly doesn't sound like much of a meal - bits of vegetable and bread on spaghetti - but it's not only filling, it also tastes somehow luxurious but comforting, with the smell of fried bread as you stir the crumbs...it's a fantastic way to celebrate one of the nicest Spring vegetables, but even if you don't have asparagus you could make this with just peas, or maybe courgettes, to give green juiciness against all that butter and crunch.

Last night Tim and I went to see Sage Francis at San Fransisco Bath House. I didn't know a lot about him till this year when I read an article about him by Tourettes in the late Real Groove magazine. I'm very glad we went along - it's supposed to be the last tour he's ever doing - and whether or not he decides to pick it up later on isn't something you want to count on. We've seen opening act Alphabethead once or twice before and he was as alarmingly dynamic as ever, deftly throwing in So So Modern's Berlin (a couple of the band members were in the audience) and doing things that I can't even describe on the turntables but they looked very complicated. And he seemed really happy to be doing it, which is awesome. Sage Francis appeared draped in a flag bearing the logo of his record label and gave us his fired-up, powerful and occasionally humorous material, (at one point ripping off a toupee) delivered with amazing flow - the way he twisted words and rhymes around rhythms (all in his American accent with its hard R's that Seth Rudetsky would be proud of) was awe inspiring. Tim and I hung back, curious and interested observers, but it was cool to see many in the crowd obligingly throwing his own lyrics back to him whenever he lifted the needle on the track. He finished with the stunning, spine-tingly The Best of Times, which, even if you aren't sold on my description of the evening, I urge you to check out. Then he jumped into the crowd and started shaking hands and taking photos. We left the true fans to it, feeling like we'd seen something seriously special.

Speaking of turntables, Tim got home from work yesterday holding one. We've been together for five years now ('anniversary' sounds a bit uncool but there it is) and he decided to get it as a present for us, even though we don't really 'do' presents. I guess it was more of an excuse than anything, but to be fair he did secretly bus to Petone to one particular second-hand music shop to find me some old Broadway records. It's exciting times - there's all these ancient recordings and they're so cheap. I've been listening to the original Broadway cast recording of Hair more or less non-stop. Not that we're going to replicate our music collection on vinyl, it's more of a case-by-case thing (or for me, a caseload-by-caseload of Broadway thing). Although, now that I've fleeced Real Groovy and Slowboat, it might be time to look further afield...especially if I want Sondheim...

Finally in music-related stuff, my dad's band Apostrophe has their first music video for their song The Skeptic - I'm proud as, especially as I know all the work that went into it. Bear in mind it was all made during whatever spare time was available, with zero funding and relatively unfancy technology. Feel free to check it out by clicking ---> HERE.

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Title via: Spring Awakening's finale, Song of Purple Summer. A beautiful song with some gorgeous harmonies. Going more 'thematic' here since there just isn't a wealth of songs about asparagus.

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Music lately:

Amongst the Streisand and the Liza and the (unfortunately skippy) Godspell and so on, we picked up this amazing collection of 38 Bessie Smith songs. All gold, but If You Don't, I Know Who Will is one of my favourites.

Typical Girls by The Slits. Ari Up, aspirational woman who formed The Slits when she was only 14, died on the 20th aged 48.

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Next time: I am in a rare situation where I've ended up with a ton of things to blog about so it could be anything depending on what I feel like writing about when I next get some spare time - but my money's on that crumble.

that one treasure, thick golden crust and a layer of cheese

As I said in the sign off for my last post, I'm probably going to have to lay off the Nigella Kitchen recipes before I end up recreating the entire book here, because I'm not sure it would go down well with her camp (that said, there are a squillion food blogs out there and I doubt her camp is watching me. If they are...hi Nigella, you're amazing!).

Anyway, here we are again with Kitchen. While I'm more than happy improvising dinner from what's around, it's nice to look at a recipe and realise you actually have everything and you don't have to make any special trips or put it off or never even consider making it ever (like that cake in How To Be A Domestic Goddess which has about a litre of real maple syrup in it). Nigella's crustless pizza recipe is a nice example of this as I had everything, even the more expensive cheese and chorizo, within reach. Not that there's a lot to it. A little flour. One egg. A cup of milk. Somehow it turns into a seriously good dinner. I wish I'd known about this back when I was a hungry student.

Nigella's description of her Crustless Pizza was a little confusing - I pictured a pile of melted cheese and toppings especially when she says "think of it as a cheese toastie, without the bread". So...just cheese then? I thought it turned out more like a giant pancake myself, but the main point is, it tastes absolutely amazing and comes together when you think you've got nothing in the cupboard.

Crustless Pizza

From Nigella Lawson's Kitchen

Serves 2 - 4 but I wouldn't want to share this with more than one other person.

1 egg

100g plain flour

250ml (1 cup) milk

100g grated cheese

Optional - 50g chorizo, sliced finely

1 round ovenproof pie dish, about 20cm diameter

Set your oven to 200 C. Whisk the egg, milk and flour with a little salt to make a smooth batter. Butter the pie dish, pour in the batter, using a spatula to make sure you get it all, and sprinkle over half the grated cheese. Bake for 30 minutes. While it's baking, get your chorizo ready. Once this time's up, sprinkle over the chorizo slices and remaining cheese and bake for another couple of minutes till it's all melted. Cut into four slices.

I was nervous about it sticking to the tin but using a plastic pie-lifter fish slice thing it came away easily. I did butter it pretty generously though, and if you're worried that you've got a sticker of a pan on your hands maybe you could go to the trouble of cutting out a little circle of baking paper. Or, you could just eat the whole thing straight from the pan, digging it out with a fork... it's what I'd do.

It's not crustless at all, more like sort-of-crusted, but that just sounds bad... The egg, flour and milk forms a deliciously thick, crisped pancake-like base for the cheese and chorizo. I just loved how simple and fast it was and couldn't believe that so few ingredients turned into something so delicious and comforting to eat - but then I just love melted cheese. You could probably replace the milk with soymilk and leave out the cheese to make the base dairy-free, but how to replace the egg is a bit beyond my skills, however if you're a vegan maybe you've already got an artillary of egg-replacements up your sleeve and don't need me to clumsily google them for you. Of course the chorizo doesn't need to be there - although it is delicious, all oily and spicy - it could be replaced or supplemented by any number of things, the obvious one being tomatoes...

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Title via: Horse The Band's Crippled By Pizza, just one of their heavy, driven odes to pizza. Even if you don't like their hardcore sound, there's something likeable about an EP devoted to pizza.

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Music lately:

Mara TK's the main vocalist for Electric Wire Hustle who we saw earlier on this year electrifying the packed crowd at San Francisco Bath House. Like many local artists, he doesn't stick to just one project, and he's now got some solo stuff happening - check out Run (Away From the Valley of Fear) on his bandcamp site and watch out for more mightiness from him in the form of Taniwhunk, his pending EP.

On Saturday night Tim and I headed to Watusi to check out Eddie Numbers who was down from Auckland. Our flatmates brother was on the decks and while it was well, an intimate set (I guess not many people knew it was happening) it was fun and I'm glad we went. I'd already heard some of his stuff here and there (specifically Cracks In The Evening) and it was cool to see someone talented doing what they love, he even dropped a Wellington-specific freestyle on the spot. I've sadly forgotten the name of the guy who was on stage with him but he had a sweet voice too....

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Next time: I made an awesome crumble tonight, the lighting was low and the camera battery ready to fall asleep but I managed to get a few good snaps, I also made this awesome pasta recipe from the Floridita's cookbook...

give peas a chance

So long since my last update - sorry you were stuck with that badly-exposed brisket for ages. I was in Hamilton over the weekend for the Smokefreerockquest finals and arrived back in Wellington on Sunday afternoon feeling very tired and still a bit blah that I'd missed Tim's birthday on Saturday. Even though he claimed he didn't care about birthdays. I really wanted to stumble into bed, but dinner needed sorting and after a weekend of hastily grabbed dinner (specifically: pineapple lumps and a packet of ready salted chips) I didn't want to get take-out. Tired, uninspired, and with not much in the cupboard, I turned to Nigella's seminal text How To Eat, feeling instinctively (and maybe a little overdramatically) that it would provide the answer.

Sure 'nuff, after some aimless page-flipping her Pea Risotto stopped me. Rice. Frozen peas. Got them both. Not to mention, Nigella quite often bangs on about the soothingly zen properties of exhaustedly stirring a risotto into starchy submission, which significantly adds to the glamour of making dinner while half asleep.

I didn't have any of the required parmesan cheese, so instead I added a few strips of lemon zest and a handful of peppery rocket to provide a similar kick. I normally feed my risottos with butter, but with the lack of parmesan I decided instead to use extra virgin olive oil instead and make the whole thing vegan. I'm pretty sure the fact that I met an incredibly good looking vegan on the weekend has nothing to do with it - but who knows what decisions are secretly made by our subconscious.

My subconscious is reminding me that I can't lie: these photos was taken the next morning before I went to work. Once I'd finished snapping I scraped all the cold rice into an empty Tupperware container and took it to work for lunch. I even placed that pea deliberately on the fork. It's just that we were watching a documentary when I was making the risotto the night before and the lights were all off - not healthy photography settings. So the next day I recreated our dinner from the leftovers. If my photography can't be honest, at least I am, right?

This is a very simple dinner but devastatingly good - creamy rice, bright green peas bursting with their pea-flavour (can anyone effectively describe the flavour of a pea? At this stage: not I). Yes, there's a lot of stirring but think like Nigella and wallow in the romance of it all.

As well as removing the dairy aspect of this risotto, I also made a few other slight tweaks. I had no fresh nutmeg so left it out. Instead of heating up stock, I crumbled in half a porcini stock cube (my favourite, all-purpose flavour) and had a pan of hot water simmering next to the pan of rice. Rather than pureeing the peas I just divided them into two small bowls, mashing one half with a fork while leaving the other plain. I had no vermouth or white wine so went daringly cross-country and splashed in some Sake instead, which worked perfectly - its warm, ricey depth of flavour naturally complementing the rice it was absorbed into. I can't pretend like I don't think good carnaroli rice tastes a million times nicer than the bland gluggy Sun Rice arborio from the supermarket but I'm also lucky enough to be in a position to choose between rices (don't get me wrong - good rice isn't cheap, but there are other areas I don't spend my money...so.) You do what works for you.

Pea Risotto

From Nigella Lawson's How To Eat

60g butter (or more! Or olive oil)

150g frozen peas

Approximately 1 litre stock

Freshly grated parmesan

Freshly grated nutmeg

1 small onion or shallot

200g arborio or Carnaroli rice

80mls white wine or vermouth

Melt half the butter in a pan and add the peas, cooking for a couple of minutes. Remove half the peas, and to the pan add about half a cup of stock. Simmer till the peas are very soft, remove and puree along with a tablespoon each of parmesan and butter and a pinch of nutmeg, or if you don't have the energy, mash roughly with a fork. You should now have an empty pan and two small bowls of peas, one solid, one not.

Finely chop the onion and melt some more butter in the pan. Cook the onion, stirring occasionally, till golden and soft. Add the rice and stir "till every grain glistens with the oniony fat" as Nigella says. Pour in your wine - or sake! - and allow it to absorb. Now here comes the commitment. Add a ladleful of hot stock (or hot water if you've crumbled in a good stock cube like me) and continue to stir till absorbed. Repeat. And again. And then some more. You can't rush it, you can't walk away. Just keep stirring, watching the rice slowly expand and absorb all the liquid. After about ten minutes, return the whole peas to the pan and continue to slowly add hot liquid. When you're satisfied that it's done (taste as you go) stir through the pea puree and as much butter or extra virgin olive oil as you want. Divide between two plates and sprinkle with more parmesan if you like, parsley would be good here too.

As I said, this is simple food, but very, very good - soft, dense granules of rice studded with Elphaba-green peas. Very easy to eat curled up in a chair, feeling better about the world with every mouthful. The scent of sake hitting a hot pan is something else - I can almost taste its savoury, buttery aroma just thinking about it. The porcini stock cubes add a subtly earthy flavour and the peas have their green sweetness. And it's all absorbed by the rice.

The documentary we were watching while I was making this, by the way, was the recent Trinity Roots story Music Is Choice by Sarah Hunter. Trinity Roots have always stirred in the background of my consciousness, but considering they got together, had a lifetime and pulled apart again all before Tim and I even got to Wellington, it's no wonder we are more familiar with its members' other more recent incarnations, like Little Bushman. It's a beautiful doco, and listening to the stories of Warren Maxwell, Riki Gooch and Rio Hemopo, woven together with clips of their music, why, the constant stirring of the risotto felt almost meditative.

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Title via: John Lennon's Give Peace A Chance, I know it's a sorry pun but I've got the "I'm tired" card and I'm putting it on the table right here. Plus, you really should give peas a chance. They're awesome as far as vegetables go.

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Music lately:

Spotted a tweet from the mighty DJ Sirvere on Sunday inviting people to share their favourite Jay Z guest spot. Not an expert on this but my mind immediately presented me with his appearance in Mariah Carey's Heartbreaker. Which then spiralled into hours of unproductive inactivity. Oh sure I blame the tiredness, but I haven't listened to Mariah in years and with one click of the mouse I was riding the Mariah Carey Love Train all the way through youtube. Highlights included the delicious Can't Let Go, Honey (Bad Boy Remix) this reminds me of when MTV Europe was briefly on our TVs, One Sweet Day with Boyz II Men (slathers you with emotion like I slather butter on toast) and Thank God I Found You with Nas and Joe. I don't often like power ballads, and endless impressing upon the listener about how in love they are isn't usually my thing either but what can I say. Mariah is flawless.

I Aint Mad At Cha by Tupac, from All Eyez On Me. Yesterday was 14 years since Tupac was shot. There's no right age to have someone take your life...but he was only 25.

So, The Good Fun were the winners of the Smokefreerockquest on Saturday night - check out footage of them performing their song Karaoke for the sell-out crowd. I liked all the finalists in their own way but The Good Fun definitely have an out-of-nowhere zany awesomeness - I hope they go far.

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Next time: It'll be the Grumble Pie that I promised for this time round. Photographed at night right before it was eaten, even. Also, right now: Happy birthday, Mum! You rule.

you say stop, i sago, go go

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

There are many, many things in this world you don't have to experience to know you don't want them, but sago...? It really falls more into the category of "broaden your horizons and don't be so narrow-minded, fool". And to be fair, I can't really hate on something that reminds me of Thoroughly Modern Millie (one of the best films ever).

I don't tend to research heavily before launching into a blog post but hit up Wikipedia after looking at the back of my packet of Budget Sago Pearls, (ingredients list: "Sago". The nutritional information - not much more than a few long-lasting carbohydrates and a little sodium) and thinking "what even is this stuff?" Turns out sago comes from a sago palm - of course! - and is not only the food staple of many countries, the sago plant rivals the awesome soybean for intense versatility in that it can be a key ingredient in (according to Wikipedia) adhesives, paper, ethanol, high fructose glucose syrup and MSG. I mean, that is some wide-ranging output. The starch of the sago palm is also made into sago pearls and the larger tapioca pearls, which can be turned into a whole lot of different puddings.

I used a recipe in Jill Dupleix's book Lighten Up which looks like it's based on the Malaysian Sago Gula Melaka pudding - sago coated in a palm sugar syrup and coconut milk. It's fairly straightforward to make and the end result is so incredibly good that I consider myself a full convert. Not to mention, this is a seriously cheap-but-pretty-fancy-looking pudding to be serving up. The bag of sago cost me less than $2, and none of the other ingredients cost much, but the results are gorgeous. I realise it's not as immediate as, say, chocolate pudding, but if anyone you serve this to tries to tell you they don't think they'll like sago, kindly direct them to the above category that it sits within.

Sago Pudding with Palm Sugar and Coconut Milk

From Jill Dupleix's Lighten Up

150g pearl sago

80g brown sugar or palm sugar

100ml coconut milk

pinch of salt

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

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

Tip it into a bowl and add half the sugar syrup, half the coconut milk and the pinch of salt. Mix well, pour into four ramekins or bowls or whatever and refrigerate them for a couple of hours. Run a knife around the inside of the ramekins and turn out into a bowl, pouring over the rest of the sugar syrup and coconut milk. Jill suggests mango on the side, this would be perfect but I didn't have any so sprinkled over some coconut threads instead. Serves 4.

Each grain of sago is so perfectly round and gleamingly opague, it's like a mass of tiny bubbles clinging together on your plate. Its texture is weirdly addictive - I guess "cold and slippery" isn't the most alluring description but give it a chance - the sago absorbs the light, caramelly syrup and the richness of the coconut milk and is seriously, seriously delicious.

I stupidly tried to strain the cooked sago into a regular colander...which has sago-sized holes in it. Luckily I managed to quickly chuck it into a fine-meshed sieve. The bits that landed in the sink and stuck to everything though were kind of magic looking - like solid water droplets, tiny shining orbs, like something David Bowie's character in Labyrinth (first crush!) would eat...or twirl craftily on his hands.

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Title via: The Beatles...fertile ground for blog post titles, hey.

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Music lately:

Tim and I had a fairly full on weekend, catching The Newtown Rocksteady (twice!) and Street Chant, who came down from Auckland for an album release gig. I love Wellington but sometimes I see advertisements for gigs happening in Auckland and think "wahh", I guess because it's where the majority of people live it's where a lot of the stuff happens, so it was cool that Street Chant made the effort to get down here. It was a bit late in the day when we got to their gig, but we had a very good time. Check out Yr Philosophy if you like.

There are two musicals called The Wild Party, both based on the same Joseph Moncure March poem, and both hit the stage around ten years ago. I tend to go on about the Andrew Lippa version (we-hell, Idina Menzel and Julia Murney, as well as Taye Diggs and Brian D'arcy James) BUT the LaChiusa version is also, naturally, seriously awesome. And had an even heavier-weight cast, with the likes of Eartha Kitt, Toni Collette, Mandy Patinkin and Marc Kudisch. I seriously love Toni Collette's song from this musical - The Lowdown-down, and how her sultry voice draws out the lyrics. When we saw Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin in Auckland last year I got him to sign my copy of the cast recording afterwards at the stage door - yusss!

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