every task you undertake, becomes a piece of cake

It was The Spice Girls who first said in their seminal text Wannabe, "now here's the story from A to Z, you wanna get with me you gotta listen carefully". And so it follows that if you wanna get with this cake you too should closely heed this recommendation. I guess what I'm saying is, this cake isn't complicated but there's plenty going on and so you might want to take the following hints into account. And the subtext: I really like quoting the Spice Girls on this blog.

- I can't think of a better way of extracting the juice from the mandarins than peeling the fruit, holding it in your fist and then clenching thoroughly over a receptacle of some kind. It's visceral, it's effective, it neatly does away with including another kitchen implement that you have to wash.
- You can of course use oranges, lemons, grapefruit, limes, any other citrus that I've shamefully failed to name here instead of mandarins.
- The texture of your yoghurt will affect how much icing sugar you need. If it's the more liquidy stuff, more icing sugar. If it's the fabulously whipped-cream thick variety, perhaps less is needed.
- With this in mind, go slowly with adding more yoghurt to the icing or it might all just slide right off the cake and make you nearly cry frustrated tears when you put it on the cake. How do I know? I just do.
- Only arrange the plums just before you serve this. Or they will fall off. They just will. Perhaps it's their passive-aggressive way of reminding us that they're not in season, and therefore they're not going to cooperate with no upstart food blogger.
- This cake is really delicious and not as scary as I'm making it sound.



Mandarin Cake With Yoghurt Icing and Plums

Cake adapted from a recipe in the Best of Cooking for New Zealanders by Lynn Bedford Hall. Icing and stuff all my idea though, for what it's worth.

125ml mandarin juice (this depends on your mandarins, but maybe seven altogether?)
125ml plain oil, like rice bran or grapeseed
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
175 sugar
250g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch salt

6 plums
3 tablespoons sugar
1 extra mandarin

3 tablespoons plain unsweetened yoghurt
150g icing sugar, plus more if necessary

Set your oven to 170 C and line a 21cm springform tin with baking paper.

Whisk all the cake ingredients together (that's from mandarin juice to the pinch of salt inclusive, by the way) for a few minutes till it forms a thick, pale golden batter. Tip this into the caketin and bake for an hour, though check after 45 minutes. Ovens can be tricksy.

Meanwhile, slice the plums into wedges and place them in a bowl. Sprinkle over the sugar and squeeze over the juice of the mandarin. Leave to sit at least for as long as the cake needs to cook, but overnight is even better.

Once the cake has cooled, whisk together the yoghurt and icing sugar till thick. Add more of either ingredient if necessary. Icing can be tricksy, too. Spread this thickly across the top of the cake, and place the plum slices on top.



Juicy plums, oddly-yet-pleasingly tangy icing, soft-crumbed and sweetly citrussy cake. Worth every Spice Girls quote it took to get to this point (and if you're not weary of Spice Girls quoting, ignore that sentence and instead read this one: Yay, Spice Girls!)

As I said, plums aren't in season, but they were only $6 a kilo and you can hardly get anything for $6 these days. If I sound a little defensive it's only because I recently had the good fortune to meet Nadia Lim, winner of 2011 Masterchef, and she is VERY big on seasonal eating. Which is highly admirable. Sorry to let you down, Nadia, but if it's any consolation, mandarins are in season right now so hard. And these ones couldn't be fresher or more local, as they're from Tim's grandparents' tree in Wairoa.



How did I meet her? My dear friend Jo and I were both invited to her Wellington On A Plate Masterclass by Pead PR. You can read Jo's thoughts on the event here. As well as being a great friend, Jo is also good to hang with at a party. She's all "Oh hey there Mayor Celia Wade-Brown, let's hug and talk about our lives and this is my friend Laura". And she stayed with me right to the end (the champagne helped the time fly by, admittedly) while I waited to meet Nadia and talk with her. Nadia herself should be commended for her massive patience in taking the time to talk to me after having talked to roughly a million other people beforehand. I admit I never actually saw Masterchef - we don't have a TV, and while I love cooking shows I honestly find the hugely competitive ones a little stressful to watch. All that running around and plating up and being edited to look like a mean person! So while I'd heard Nadia Lim's name around, and had read a few interviews with her and such, I didn't have much of a feel for what she was like as a person or a cook. Well, she seems awesome. She's enthusiastic about food, which I love, she's confident and fun, she's highly knowledgeable, and she made three different salmon entrees (using Regal King salmon) and a dessert in her half hour masterclass. All of which I wanted to try recreating myself as soon as possible. You know sometimes when a recipe is so simple and practical and delicious that you think "why haven't I been making this all the time?" That's how I felt about her salmon recipes.

And as I said, I got to have a chat with her and she graciously answered the three questions I threw down.
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HungryandFrozen x Nadia Lim

Me, Laura Vincent: You've just had a cookbook published. What's something people should know about the process? 

Nadia Lim: Mine was a seasonal cookbook, so if you shoot in winter...I had to use imported stuff which I hated, because I'm a huge fan of eating seasonally and locally, it was a huge dilemma. There are things I had to leave out...and some things I just couldn't use at all, like I couldn't put feijoas in. That was a challenge.

Me: I hear that. I am struggling to find strawberries for my photos. Luckily butter's always in season... I think it's awesome that you're young - 26 - and you've got a cookbook, you won this TV show, you're out there getting yours. In an industry generally presided over by older males, what do you think a younger perspective brings?

Nadia: I've always stayed pretty true to my food philosophy. When I was twelve I came up with my philosophy of 'eating from the ground, the sea and the sky, not the factory. But when you're younger, you're more more willing to learn new things. Sometimes people are a little stuck in their ways, their techniques, how they do things, but I'm very adaptable and I like to learn from lots of different people, I'm really open to it. And I also think the young generation has a real responsibility, now we're going back to more, you know, finding out about your ingredients. Whether they're ethical, sustainable, healthy, what their environmental impact is. That's really important.

Me: Say someone gave you a million dollars and you could travel anywhere in the world to eat their food-

Nadia [immediately]: Turkey. Yes. I love Middle Eastern flavours. I haven't been to the Middle East yet but I use a lot of their ingredients in my cooking. I love things like pomegranates, dukkah, labne...Turkish cuisine often - well, you know the flavour wheel, of whether your tastes are more tart/sour dominant or sweet, or salty...I'm quite sour orientated, and a lot of their food is quite tart, like their cheeses, and pomegranate molasses.

Me: And sumac?
Nadia: Yeah! They use so many things that I love in that type of cuisine, and it's quite healthy, lots of grains and vegetables and freshly made food.

Me: I have spent one afternoon in Turkey - I didn't eat anything, I had one glass of apple tea. 

Nadia: Apple tea is so good!

Me: Yes! Based on that I can definitely recommend the place. And thanks heaps for your time.

Nadia: Thank you!
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Thanks again Nadia Lim, now established as my second-favourite Nadia, right after Ms Comaneci.

In a world where there is so much to be outraged at, like awful pizza companies being awful, I'd like to also throw some light on some things making me happy lately. Whittaker's sent me a wealth of their wonderful chocolate to assist my recipe testing, for which I'd like to individually hug every single Whittaker's employee. Tim and I found out we're going to be able to go behind the scenes at Third Man Records and will get to talk to co-founder Ben Swank when we're in Nashville in October. We went to a Whisky Breakfast for Wellington on a Plate at Arthur's cafe - our friend Kim has some glorious photos here on her blog. I got to meet Nadia Lim (okay, you already know that from just ten seconds ago, but I'm not above recycling nice news.) I finally finished and uploaded episode 3 of my podcast, The HungryandFrozen #soimportant Podcast. You can listen on iTunes or on the website. If you like.

And finally, this excellent cat video made me laugh.
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Title via: Was *this* close to quoting the 'jaded mandarin' line from Jesus Christ Superstar, which I thought for a long time was Judas calling Jesus a mandarin as in the fruit. But instead: MARY POPPINS with A Spoonful of Sugar. She is so important. 
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Music lately:

Willy Moon, I Wanna Be Your Man. He is one smooth babe.

Placebo, Slave to the Wage. Forgot how much I love them.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Down By The Riverside. She is the coolest.
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Next time: I'm as shocked as anyone, but it's nearly spring! I'm hoping there'll be some new fruit and vegetables coming in soon...I love winter so much but I'm ready for more fruit and for asparagus!

PS: I totally forgot to upload the photos first time I published this. Fail! But lots of people reminded me right away. Hooray for the people!

raspberry beret, i think i love her

There are so many things I'm no good at. I'll be the first to tell you. But no false modesty about one thing: I can speed read. When I was a kid with no income (I lived in the country! There was no such thing as a paper run) my skills would be particularly useful - if we ever went to town, I could absorb a Babysitters Club book in around 15 minutes in the bookshop, thus saving my family a cool $5.95 each time. 

Further to this, it seems everyone I know has been reading the Hunger Games books recently. This week Tim and I planned to meet up with a group of friends for a BYO dinner on Friday night, after all of them had seen the Hunger Games movie. On Wednesday night Tim started reading the book itself out of curiosity and finished it the next day. On Thursday I realised I was going to be the only person at the dinner table on Friday night who wouldn't have read it or seen the movie. So I thought to myself: Can I read it by the time we get to the movie? Could I what.

I finished it in less than three hours, that very night. Including checking Twitter constantly, and making dinner (which was toast, but still. Dinner.) While the book itself is easy enough to gallop through, I clearly still have the speedreading magic. At lunch on Friday it took little more than some significant eye contact for Tim and I to know exactly what the other person was thinking: we should book tickets to see the movie with everyone else that night. After the movie I nearly floated out of the cinema and analysed it so hard I almost lost my voice. Roughly 24 hours previous I was opening the book for the first time, knowing nothing about it other than the lead character was called Katniss and it was really, really popular. The only thing faster than my reading, was the material I was reading's ability to win me over. It won me over so fast it deserves an ironically slow clap from a crowded room.

However, back when I made this Coconut Raspberry Loaf on Wednesday to eat during an afternoon with my friend Kate, I was none the wiser. I strode purposefully up to her house in Mt Vic with the cake only partially cooked, because I was already late and it was taking forever to cook and I was starting to feel like I was in one of those dreams where you're trying so hard to get to your destination but things keep slowing you down and you never actually make it. Irrationally, I grabbed the wobbly loaf cake from the oven, wrapped the tin in several teatowels, put it in a bag and left (of course the wind dropped and the humidity rose at this point, directly in relation to the gradient of hill I was climbing) and continued baking it for a further 15 minutes at Kate's. Still turned out fine, which bodes well for your baking it in uninterrupted circumstances.

My entire motivation in these photographs was getting the cool couch in the background.

Raspberry Coconut Loaf with Raspberry Icing

Adapted liberally from a recipe in the Best of Cooking for New Zealanders Book. 

150g butter, melted

250g sugar

2 eggs

250g flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 cup dessicated coconut

3/4 cup milk

3/4 cup frozen raspberries

1/2 a cup extra raspberries

1 - 2 cups icing sugar

Set your oven to 180 C, find a loaf tin and line it with baking paper. My way of doing this is to just get a large rectangle of baking paper, squash it down into the inner corners, and then throw in the batter to hold it down. Your finished loaf cake will have some inconsistent lumps and bumps but don't we all?

Whisk together the melted butter and sugar to combine, and then beat in the eggs till the mixture is a little lighter in colour. Sift in the flour and baking powder, tip in the coconut and milk, and stir vigorously - you may need to move to a wooden spoon or spatula if it's too much for the whisk. Finally fold in the raspberries, tip the mixture into the tin, and bake for about an hour and a half, although start checking it for done-ness at about an hour - give the top a prod and if it's wobbly, it's not done yet.

For the icing, simmer the raspberries in a tablespoon or two of water till soft, then push through a sieve to remove the seeds - I know, horrible job - then stir in icing sugar to the juice that remains below till you have a smooth electric pink icing. Thickly spread across the somewhat cooled cake. 

Not one drop of food colouring went into that icing. Who knew raspberries with their natural muted-garnet hue, had it in them to deliver electro spilled-nailpolish pink like this? Not I. I was expecting a kind of dull, uncooked steak colour at best, not this bodacious fuchsia, the stuff of $2 Shop lipgloss.

Coconut's mild sweetness and the sharp juiciness of raspberries work beautifully together. While you could leave the icing off if you're in a hurry or don't have enough raspberries, the fast-dissolving nature of the icing sugar and retained sourness from the fruit adds marvelously to the overall deliciousness, more than your usual, potentially oversweet icing might. This cake is easy to make, slices beautifully, and the coconut and fruit makes sure it'll be okay the next day too. Frozen raspberries are cruelly costly,  but I wanted them for a few different reasons and so stuck to my guns. But you could use the cheaper blackberries or boysenberries happily here. Or even just leave them out altogether and you've got yourself a rather choice plain coconut loaf recipe.

Basically it's amazing, plus it easily stands up to a cross-town dash in the middle of the cooking process.

And the cake batter tastes brilliant. Bada bing.

Tim and I spent last night at the Wellington Zoo - with most of the people that we went to see the Hunger Games movie with. Yes. They run sleepovers during the warmer months, and usually schoolkids are their main market, but about 28 adults instead were there last night. Getting up close to the animals without any of the usual crowds? So cool. Sleeping on the floor, separated only from its unyielding flatness by a couple of thin sleeping mats? Do-able as. Discovering the Mighty Boosh-esque lizard lounge for various reptiles, decorated with records by Julio Iglesias? Delightful. Realising there was a pelican, one of the things I fear most in this world, living on Monkey Island where we gathered for 20 minutes to feed its simian inhabitants? Blood-chilling. Apart from that ugliness though (and thanks to everyone who helped by saying "it's gone! Oh wait it's back" while I hid my face in Tim's shoulder) it was a fantatically awesome time.

Especially when this sunbear stood on her hind legs and waved to us.

So gorgeous. Partially because we'd all just seen it, and partially because of the heightened silliness you feel when a little underslept and in an unfamiliar place, but there was a lot of raised eyebrows-ing and "this is SO Hunger Games" and so on. What, I enjoy wallowing in the obsession of pop culture, okay? Also, does anyone else get young Catherine O'Hara vibes from Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Katniss in the film? That is not-given-lightly high praise, by the way.
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Title via: Raspberry Beret, that jaunty classic by the jaunty Prince.
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Music lately: 


Althea and Donna, Uptown Top Ranking. So very good, I was led to this track by a way inferior but admittedly clever sampling of it in a mainstream track. So, really, thank you inferior but admittedly clever mainstream track. 


Bic Runga, Tiny Little Piece of My Heart. As beauteous as she ever was at this sort of thing.


Bernadette Peters, Being Alive. Never not obsessed with this song! Or her.
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Next time: I have a couple of quinces that I need some, uh, quincepiration for (sorry...not!) but I also am very set on turning Whittakers' new peanut butter chocolate into ice cream. First, to get my hands on some...

complainte de la bundt

It's a truth universally acknowledged that cakes look more exciting and complicated if they're baked in a fancy tin. It just seems more impressive if it's shaped like castle turrets or a giant rosebud or the Trevi Fountain. I mean, it's not like you actually painstakingly sculpted the cake into this particular form with a palette knife while wearing a beret. But there you go.

I was predictably excited to buy on sale recently a good sized silicone bundt caketin. I feel as though a bundt tin falls comfortably between practical and largely dust-gathering on the kitchenware scale. It's really just another cake tin, not as usable as a 23cm springform but not as confoundingly quixotic as, say, a madeleine tray (nothing against madeleines - every time I make them I end up wondering why humans haven't evolved to make small, honeyed cakes a staple food). A bundt cake just looks so majestic with its undulating curves and waves and towering hilltop form, so much more than your perfectly serviceable but normal looking regular round cake.

I was initially going to make a fabulous sounding orange cake from Annabelle White's Annabelle Cooks, which sported a large, fetching image of an orange bundt cake. However the recipe specified a 26cm springform tin and the disparity between instruction and image made me far too nervous. Not on my first bundt.

Instead I went for an equally lovely sounding Spice Cake from my charmingly eighties (if it moved, they set it in gelatine) Best of Cooking For New Zealanders cookbook by Lynn Bedford Hall (look for it in your local charity shop - I could use it every single day). As well specifically requesting a ring tin, it also used less eggs than the spurned orange cake. It was all going just peachy. You know me, always happiest when messing around with cake batter. I piled the cinnamon-spiced, nut-spiked batter into the tin, put it in the oven, marvelled as the house filled with the warm, happy scent of cinnamon...Oh how wrong I was. Fate (and possibly Annabelle White) were standing behind me, pointing and laughing the whole time.

Because then this happened.



What now? That's just not fair. You know how there's that saying? Pride goeth before a fall? Well with me it's excitement goeth before a fail. If I had a dollar for every time... Seriously, I don't know what went wrong. Half the cake just decided it wasn't ready to leave home yet. Any guesses from seasoned bakers out there? The tin was silicone and everything. I wonder if I didn't leave it long enough before turning it out? Maybe I left it too long? I'm in a quandary!

Aesthetics aside, the cake itself is really delicious though and very, very easy to make. Whatever I did wrong - presuming it was my fault at all - I definitely won't take it out on the recipe itself. If you want to recreate this psyche-damaging disaster in your own home feel free, may you have better luck than I had...

Spice Cake

2 tsp baking powder
350g brown sugar
2 eggs
450g flour
345mls buttermilk
250ml (1 cup) plain oil, like rice bran or grapeseed
2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp baking soda
175g sultanas (I used currants)
125g chopped nuts (I used walnuts)

Set the oven to 180 C (350 F). Place all the ingredients except for the nuts and sultanas into a large bowl and mix with electric beaters for one minute.

If you don't have electric beaters (like me), mix together the oil and sugar, then the eggs, then everything else till it's incorporated good and proper. Then, fold in the nuts and sultanas.

Spread this thick mixture into a bundt tin and bake for an hour, covering loosely with tinfoil if it starts to darken too much. Stand for five minutes (which I did!) before inverting onto a cake rack.



As you can probably tell from the ingredients this makes a large, moist, delicious cake that keeps well and has a gentle warmth from the spices used. Which means I can overlook the fact that it had a total breakdown in front of me. And I will carry on bundting.

For my sake at least, so I don't feel completely like what the French call les incompetents, here below is an example of something I actually achieved without a hitch.



I've made this caramelly, oaty slice before, blogged about it even, but whatevs. I'm calling upon it again. And at least you know it's good.

Breakfast Bars

From Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson

1 can of sweetened condensed milk (roughly 400g)
250g rolled oats
75g shredded coconut
100g dried cranberries
125g mixed seeds (sunflower, linseed, pumpkin, etc)
125g unsalted peanuts

Preheat oven to 130 C, and oil a 23x33cm baking tin or throwaway foil tin. Warm the condensed milk gently in a pan till it is more liquid than solid. Remove from heat and then add the rest of the ingredients, stirring carefully with a spatula so everything is covered. Spread into the tin, even out the surface, then bake for about an hour. Let cool for about 15 minutes then slice up. I swapped the expensive cranberries for a handful of currents lurking agedly in the pantry and left out the peanuts because I just didn't have any.

Nigella reckons this slice gets better with age and I agree - it just sort of settles into a chewier, nuttier, caramellier bite the longer you leave them. Super easy and good to have on hand to assuage any dips in blood sugar.



For what it's worth, and I realise there's little more nauseating than couples who start talking in their own cutesy language, but we've ended up pronouncing the word slice, as in oaty slice, "slee-che", inspired largely by Dr Leo Spaceman (pronounced spa-che-man) from 30 Rock. It's funny how many words you can start manipulating in this way. Face, place, rice, ice...it's like a Dr Seuss book here sometimes. Actually I have a really bad habit of mangling words when speaking casually. Such as 'whatevs' instead of 'whatever' which is a bad enough word in itself. I like to lengthen the 'i' in chicken so it rhymes with 'liken' and drop the end of 'decision' so it's just 'decish' and frequently substitute the letter 'j' with a 'y' or an 'h'...it's all a bit obnoxious really but I like to think of it as taking a simple joy in linguistics. Look at this, I haven't even been tagged with an internet meme and yet I'm revealing a bizarre fact about myself. Is that allowed?
.
The big news in our lives right now is that Tim is walking around looking all medieval, as while I was in Auckland one of his teeth just crumbled on him like an uncooperative bundt cake. He didn't tell me till six days later when we met up again as he couldn't figure out how to explain it in a txt message. Fair enough, I guess. As per usual the dentists want him to mortgage the tooth against our house with his liver as bond (ooh, I'm typing all heavily just thinking about it, the prices dentists charge get me all fired up.) Because he couldn't afford a root canal and I couldn't even afford to support him for it, he instead paid a smaller (but still hefty) sum to have the tooth pulled altogether. It's causing him no small amount of pain, and we've been eating very soft, liquidy dinners over the last couple of days - soup, long-simmered, falling apart stews, that sort of thing. Luckily it's not an entirely visible tooth but nevertheless, I'd like to think he has the panache to pull off looking like a Renaissance-era minstrel.
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On Shuffle whilst I type:

Amen by Jolie Holland from Escondida. We were lucky enough to see her in a beautiful, intimate gig earlier this year. If the idea of Appalachian folksy blues appeals to you then you would do well to look her up. This particular song is simply stunning.

John The Revelator by Son House from The Roots of The White Stripes, a compilation of the original blues and folk songs that the White Stripes have covered either live or in albums. Sounds tacky as hell but it's not - it's a fantastic listen packed with gems both dust-covered and well known.

Why Can't I Be Like The Boss a song cut from the 2006 Tom Kitt musical High Fidelity. I kinda love this song, especially when the Bruce Springsteen character really gets going.

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This blog title is bought to you by: Rufus Wainwright
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Next time: I got it in my head that ice cream flavoured with palm sugar and kaffir lime leaves would be pretty sassy. So I think I'm going to make that this weekend. Hopefully Tim's teeth, or lack thereof, are up to it. And one day, I will make another bundt cake.

Do You Hear The People Sing?

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I know I've plugged the Otaua video incessantly, in fact you are perhaps thinking "Gee, I know already Laura, you might get a waste oil refinery right by your house, I've watched the video three times, what more do you want from me?!" Firstly, a massive thankyou to those who have watched the video and especially to those who have commented with words of support. The thing is, the Franklin District Council actually...doesn't care. They think that right in the middle of residential Otaua village is a fine home for this oily oil plant. I'm guessing that if it was their home and hometown poised to be ruined forever it would be a wee bit different. Basically, it's not looking terribly positive for us, but the more support we have the more likely it is that the council will wake up to the fact that it can't happen. If nothing else, knowing the eyes of the world are upon them will annoy the council and the WPC Ltd. If you're wondering what else you can do apart from watch the video, well...there's not a lot. But you can visit the brand, spanking new Otaua Village blog, read an article and look at the lyrics to the song on the video. Hopefully there will be more to read soon. I know I keep talking about it but it's all I can offer in the way of help for the cause. Frankly I'm scared about what's going to happen. And angry.


So, Tim bought a barbeque yesterday. A $40 barbeque. It's pretty flimsy, and has all the power of an electric toothbrush, but he and Paul were monumentally excited in a primal, alpha-male kind of way. What is it about barbeques? (Or is that barbequi?) I look at them and think "oooh, griddled eggplant and Japanese marinades and stone-fruit kebabs!" while Tim and Paul de-evolve back to Cro-Magnon Man.

Above: Cro-Magnon Man is, however, modern enough to buy free-range organic chicken nibbles rather than woolly mammoth steaks.

Above: Fell in love with a grill...

The chicken nibbles were pre-marinated (*clutches pearls*) but still delicious, because there's little better than that smoky, outdoorsy, slightly charred taste that comes from barbeque-ing. It wasn't even particularly sunny yesterday (and it's downright icy today) but sitting round "Big Red" as it has been dubbed, with a glass of wine and the smell of protein coagulating over a hot flame, well it felt as though we were in the middle of some endless summer. I can't wait to think of things to cook on it...

Above: Beef - (a) the meat from an adult bovine (b) inf. gripe, objection, grudge. We got both.

Last time I went up home, Mum bought a healthy slab of corned beef for Tim and I which flew back to Wellington with me (much to the chortles of the guy scanning my backpack at the airport). It was sufficiently chilly over the weekend for me to defrost it and shunning the normal slow-cook way of cooking it, submerged in liquid, I instead adapted a recipe from the Best of Cooking for New Zealanders by Lynn Bedford Hall. I made several incisions in the flesh and pushed in a mixture of butter, white miso paste, garlic and parsely. I know, miso and corned beef, sounds hideously fusion-y, but think of it as a slightly more mysterious version of worcester sauce or marmite. Its mild, complex saltiness makes it good for more than just straightforward soup. The beef was then braised slowly on the stovetop with onions, Stones Green Ginger Wine (also courtesy of Mum), a little stock, some tomato puree, a squeeze of golden syrup and a dried bay leaf. This created a marvelously flavoursome, surprisingly moist corned beef, which we ate with mashed potatoes on day one...

Above: And on day 2, cold and sliced with soup.

I made a version of Nigella's South Beach Black Bean Soup - by that I mean I was too lazy to actually find the book with the recipe in it for fear that I'd be mising half the necessary ingredients and just souped it on the fly. First of all you need to simmer your black beans, I think I did about a cupful but I don't actually remember, I don't think it really matters though. Bring them to the boil in a large pot then turn it down to a simmer for about half an hour or until you can bite into a bean without breaking a tooth. Drain them, and (in the same pot if you like) slowly fry an onion, a diced capsicum, a teaspoon of cumin seeds, a diced, seeded red chilli if desired, and a a teaspoon of ground coriander. Then I added a slosh of dry sherry, the black beans, and plenty of chicken stock, and let it simmer away. It's so simple but also something a little out of the ordinary to add interest to cold leftovers.





The flavours are perfectly complemented by the earthy-yet-perky taste of coriander. And...the feathery green leaves prevent your soup looking like a bowl of swamp water. I mean, let's not lie here.

A few months ago I installed Google Analytics on my blog, which allows me to find out how people are accessing my blog. For high-powered business websites it's an asset, for the casual blogger it's merely a source of occasional interest. It comes into its own, however, when it lets you see how people have found you through Google. I haven't checked it in a while, and there are some intriguing paths being trekked to my kitchen door.

Firstly, I must be a veritable guru, nay, a shaman of burghal wheat because there is a staggering number of searches for it that resulted in people viewing my blog.

To the people who googled "Otaua WPC" and found my blog, well now you know to visit the Otaua Village site. If it was anyone from the council or indeed, WPC Ltd, I hope you were intimidated by my special brand of intimidation. Many food bloggers across the world now have contempt for your policies! Be uneasy!


To the person who googled "Bit on the side roast pork Allison Gofton Watties", you won't find any of that Food-In-A-Minute, cover-it-all-in-Watties-Sauce-and-potato-pompoms business here. I said good day!


To the person who googled "oat fritters" - oh dear. Even I, patron of the oat, wouldn't go that far.


To the many, many people who googled "the brain, the brain, the centre of the chain" from the Baby Sitters Club movie and ended up here - you are not alone. Re-reading your old BSC books is kitschy nostalgia, not worrying behaviour.


To the person who googled "Idina Menzel" and ended up here, I salute your dedication. Out of curiosity, I went and googled "Idina Menzel" and, thirty pages in, still had no sign of my blog. Clearly, our paths were destined to cross. But to the person who googled "Ina Menzel" and found me - I hope I set you on the right track. It's Idina. And it's not pronounced "eye-dina" because you strike me as the type. Also googled was "how many units of Idina Menzel's 'I Stand' have sold". Because a food blog is the obvious place to find out. But it's a nice thought that such queries would lead a person here.


To those who googled quotes pertaining to Rent, Wicked, Spring Awakening, The White Stripes, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Billy Bragg, Flight of The Conchords, and Neil Young and ended up reading my blog, it proves that quoting pop culture is nothing if not beneficial to your hit count.


And finally, to the person or people (please don't let there be more than one of you) who asked "why can't we eat polar bear liver" and inquired after the "polar bear liver iron count" - what you do in your own time is your business, but don't go dragging me into it. (also - Sarah Palin, is that you?)


To finish on a mildly amusing note, I found this carton of buttermilk in the fridge. I bought it a while ago, but haven't found the right use for it yet. Turns out I can take my sweet little time about deciding what to do with it.




Above: hey, if we can have adorable lolcats, why not lolkitchns also? According to this audacious little carton of buttermilk, I have till the year 2023 to use it. Now, I'm no dairy maven, but that strikes me as a little...optimistic. You better believe though, that if in ten years time I go to make a batch of muffins and this very buttermilk has disintegrated into dangerous spores, I will be complaining. 'Disgruntled of Wellington' demands a year's supply of buttermilk...or at least a voucher.

"People Pick Up On What I'm Putting Down"

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I apologise for being an entirely neglectful blogger, but there's two reasons why this particular post has been late-coming. Firstly after amassing 36 comments for my tiramisu, I refused to believe that my subsequent post could peak at only 12 comments. But there you have it, and now I have to face up to reality and move on. With the dizzying highs come the plummeting lows, and I remember when I used to be excited beyond belief if someone not in my gene pool commented. Ah, Tastespotting and Foodgawker, how you toy with my self-esteem. The other reason why I haven't posted is because I'm 99% sure that my life is happening in double-speed, like when you press fast-forward on a DVD. It's the only explanation for why it's SEPTEMBER THE 9TH already and I still feel like it's mid-June.


I found out a morsel of intensely exciting news recently: Neil Young is headlining the Big Day Out music festival next January! *hyperventilates* I am such a fan of his, oh my goodness, his music is amazing and he's so amazing that he makes me forget my grammar and write unintelligible run-on sentences. I have a small but perfectly formed list of people who, if they ever come to New Zealand, I have to drop everything for, and Neil Young holds pride of place on this list. (In case you're wondering the other members of this exclusive club are Idina Menzel, Jamie Cullum, Morrissey, The White Stripes, Leonard Cohen, and Rufus Wainwright, who we were lucky enough to see earlier this year.) I absolutely have to go, even if it's the most dire, shambolic set he's ever played it won't matter because it will be Neil Young. If you don't have the faintest inkling of who this man is, please get hold of one of his many many albums. I personally recommend Tonight's The Night or Rust Never Sleeps, (which features such choice lyrics as that which I quoted in my title as well as the particular gem, "I'm gonna ride my llama, from Peru to Texarcana.") His most mainstream, crowd-pleasing effort would be Harvest, but I prefer the other two. Of course, it's all genius.


Speaking of people that make me hyperventilate, in this case with laughter, Tim and I went to see Bill Bailey on Thursday. I'd never been to a comedy gig in my life so wasn't sure what to expect - apart from imminent hilarity - but it was an absolutely scorchingly funny night. Bailey has that classically British comedic grip on the English language, like say, Steven Fry or Rowan Atkinson does, the sort of person who knows how to use the word "fettle" or "thicket" to best effect. Laugh? I positively wept.

And we got to meet him after. As I'm not from London or New York or some other theatrical metropolis there isn't much opportunity for a gal to go stage-dooring. The last time I did it was to meet Baryshnikov in 1995. In fact Tim and I weren't quite sure if Bailey would even appear or what the protocol was, but we decided to be adventurous. There was every chance that we could have inadvertantly found ourselves in the "discreet back entrance" (as it were) of the strip joint next to the theatre but luckily the stage door was clearly labelled. We waited for about half an hour, and there were about ten or so other people with the same idea as us. I must say we were the quietest. I figured that if he was going to appear it would be best to remain calm and respectful rather than thrust a ballpoint in his face and demand he take a dozen photos.

And then he appeared! Famous person! Aaagh! He had his very young son with him and I felt a bit bad but he was very jovial, signing and taking photos with everyone. Tim and I got sort of pushed to the back but we managed to get our programme and tickets signed. I told him that I enjoyed his cameo in Hot Fuzz, he said thank-you. Someone took a photo of us but unfortunately the camera didn't save it. Well that's what we thought till we found it on the memory stick three days later...




Not the best photo by anyone's standards but a photo nevertheless, and therefore precious. Look at him! Isn't he delightful looking! And in case you're wondering, I'm not actually that short, I was just lunging to remain in the frame.


On Friday Tim and I went to see The Dark Knight again with some vouchers that we had for the Embassy theatre at the end of Courtney Place. I'd never been before but it's a staggeringly beautiful building. I can see why Peter Jackson chose to have the premiere of LOTR there. The toilet alone is nicer than our flat, and almost as big. TDK was all the better for a repeat viewing. Heath Ledger really was incredible in the role. And all those explosions! I hope it does well at the Oscars.

Before the movie, and with some sense of giddy extravagance, Tim and I decided to go out for dinner. We ended up at Istanbul, a delightful BYO on Cuba Street. I'm almost loathe to tell you about it because it was so good. Reasonably priced, fresh, delicious, enormous meals, astoundingly swift service, and these filo pastry rolls filled with feta cheese that make me weak at the knees just thinking about them.






Speaking of things that make me weak at the knees...okay so this oaty slice - or scrottage as it's known here - may not look like anything special, but it tastes fabulous. I whipped up a batch of these yesterday in about 20 minutes, they are the perfect thing to eat if you are in a hurry as the sugar keeps you going right away and the oats give you energy down the line. And it tastes amazing - chewy, nutty, caramelly, old-school delicious.


Scrottage

Adapted from the Best of Cooking for New Zealanders book.

150g butter
125g sugar
2 T golden syrup
1 t baking soda
175g rolled oats
90g dessicated coconut
120g flour
1 t cinnamon
.

Melt the butter, stir in the sugar, golden syrup and baking soda. Carefully fold everything else in, spread into a good-sized tin, well greased, and bake for 15 mins at 180 C. Cool, and cut into squares. It may look a little soft and puffy coming out of the oven but this is fine. Consider this recipe a mere blueprint though, as it can really take anything you throw at it. I added bran and kibbled rye to mine, but you could add all manner of goodies - chopped dried fruit, sultanas, chocolate chips, quinoa flakes, linseeds ground or whole, pumpkin seeds, etc. If I am going to be adding more things to it I tend to up the butter slightly just to give it more "glue" to hold together.





Above: In spite of the fact that it makes me sound like someone who would name their child Sebastien and make him learn ancient Latin and French at the age of two, I would smugly like to make it known that I used 7-grain flour in this recipe.


And finally this post cannot go by without acknowledging Fathers' Day. I'm not really into making a huge fuss of these kind of days - to me it feels too much like the people who call Christmas the "Primary Gifting Period" have won - though it's possible I'll be all about the presents once I actually have children. But in the spirit of enforced nationwide cheesiness...to Dad - musical genius, staunch defender of Otaua Village, cat whisperer and maker of the best scrambled eggs:





Above: Wait, what does that piece of paper say, Oscar?





Hope you get to spend at least part of your day looking like this:



Why yes, I am attempting to parlay Oscar's cuteness into his being an internet sensation.


Tomorrow: Rent closes on Broadway after 12 years, and I will attempt to provide some kind of tribute to this flawed but incredibly important show.

"I'll Cover You" or, "Today It's Your Birthday, We're Gonna Have A Good Time!"

Firstly: HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Dad and my younger brother. They were born on the same day, many years apart (but of course!) If I could, I would be singing "Birthday" by the Sugarcubes (ie, early Bjork) in Icelandic: Once heard, never forgotten.

Today was one of those rare days in Wellington, city of much wind, where you could wear a skirt without fear that your knickers will become fair game for passers-by to gawk at. Unfortunately I gauged it wrongly this morning (gauging has never been one of my skills) and ended up sweltering in jeans at the office all day. It is still warm enough here to have the bedroom windows open at 8.30pm. Oh how I love summer, even though it means I have to be super vigilant about not getting my pale, pale skin burnt.

You may have noticed, O faithful reader, that we seem to have been eating a lot of roast cauliflour lately. Tonight was no exception.

Above: Although roasted cauliflour is seriously dear to my heart, roasted beetroot is a close second. You don't even need to add any oil, (for those of you who worry about such things, as I do occasionally when my jeans feel tight.) Avocado is the perfect foil for my roasted vegetables - it provides cool, silky contrast in texture, and the colour seems to do something lift-y to the whole operation too. One of the best things about summer is how cheap and consistently edible the avocados are. No matter how often I eat them they still taste exciting.

Above: Tonight's dinner, as well as the roast vege avocado thing, was also Chicken with Soy and Sherry which was basically an idea I got from the New Zealand Cookbook, and some leftover gratin from last night - she says, realising I haven't even written about the gratin yet - and...

Above: We probably didn't need this on top of everything else, but I had all the ingredients and it is really rather light. I used the Simple Tomato Tart recipe from The Accidental Vegetarian, and the title does not lie - a few slices is all it takes. I grated parmesan cheese over and cut some dinky stars out of the leftover pastry. It tasted flipping delicious - summery and buttery and tomatoey. Did you know that tomatoes are actually better for you if you cook them? It increases the lycopene in them. Which makes me feel better about eating them on a mound of pastry...

Above: This is the aforementioned gratin, Potato and Mushroom Gratin, specifically, from Nigella Express, which was last night's dinner. It was quite easy to make, although I don't recommend you attempt it if you are doing the dishes - the dish is a complete nightmare to clean afterwards, and requires lengthy soaking. The gratin itself tasted great, the mushrooms were a fantastic addition and the fact that it was only cooked in milk meant I didn't have to rush out and buy any cream.

Above: I served it with the Bacon and Tomato Hash from Feast. This is so simple - just fried bacon and tomatoes - so simple that I passed it by for a long time (also, bacon is kinda expensive.) But it is seriously good, fast, and well, good again. Since there seems to be a theme tonight of revealing what things are after I've mentioned them, I might as well tell you that we mopped up the salty tomato juices with the leftover bread that I had baked the night before.

Above: I made this on Sunday afternoon. It is a recipe from the excellent Brenda, from the food forum I am a member of, and this is not the first time I have made it. Let me just come right out and say this: I LOVE making bread. I love kneading it, watching it rise, the smell of it baking...I can see their use, but I don't think I could ever own a breadmaker - it just takes all the fun out of the process.

With this I made the Chef's Salad again - that's how much I like it.

Above: This one was even better than the first one I made, because I had actual chunks of ham in it, not shaved ("ham ends" were very cheap at New World, perhaps because with a name like that no one would buy!)

And that is basically everything we have eaten up until this point.

Much as I hate how whatever they are calling the generation after me tends to overuse the word "Random," Tim and I had a very random Sunday night. Tim was doing a shift at Starbucks that afternoon, when some American guys came in. They got to talking, after ordering their Venti Mocha Whatevers, and it conspires that these Americans were in fact, in a band that was playing at the San Fransisco Bath House (an ostentatiously named venue in the city) that night. Their name is Me First and The Gimme Gimmes. Their gig was sold out and Tim had never heard of them before, but he must have absolutely charmed them with his, well, charm, because they told him they'd put his name on the door with a plus-one (that's me!) and he could go to their gig. Tim was pretty stoked with the whole name on the door thing, and came home and told me. You may be asking who this band is. Basically put, they are a punk rock covers band, which may not sound terribly alluring, but I had a massive thing for these guys in third form and so was pretty excited that we could just waltz in for free. And also the idea of one's name being on the door of an event makes one feel pretty darn grown up.

They were excellent fun, and played some of my old favourites that I used to listen to on Channel Z - like Leaving on a Jet Plane and Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Amusingly, they would say "Okay, for this next song we're going to play a cover" before every tune they played. Purists may well sneer at a punked up cover of Blowin In The Wind, but how can you resist when they precede it by saying "Here's a song we've basically stripped of any meaning whatsoever." After the gig we talked to their sound guy, (I'm sure there is a more technical name for what he does) who was very friendly and gave us the set list. Rock and Roll!

It might not be quiiiite as cool as the time the guy who plays "Hands" on Boston Legal went to Tim's work, but it is giving me half a mind to quit my job and work at Starbucks if only for the occasional celeb sighting. Yes, "You can take the girl out of Hicksville" etc etc.

Let The Good Times Roll

It is hard to contemplate (A) that it is exactly one week till Christmas and (B) that Outrageous Fortune has really finished- it just doesn't feel like a Tuesday without it. Tim and I are getting up super early tomorrow to go Christmas shopping, so hopefully there is nice weather for it - there were massive wintry rainfalls today which was a bit worrisome.

I've been trying to make sure we eat relatively healthily this week. It doesn't always work.

Above: I always thought that rice paper rolls were a bit like haircuts - best done by professionals. But the recipe in Nigella's Forever Summer showed me that they were in fact, incredibly do-able. A little fiddly, yes, but nevertheless a simple, impressive, and healthy nibble. We even made them while camping last year, if that is any indication of their non-threateningness (should such a word exist.) I made very simple rolls on Sunday night - just grated carrot, sliced avocado and mint, no noodles or anything. I think they were in fact the nicest ones I have ever made. Once you get into a rhythm of dunking the rice paper, laying the filling on their softened surfaces, and rolling them up, there's not much to it at all.

Above: The rice paper rolls were a precursor to our actual dinner, which consisted of roasted vegetables, boiled potatoes, and my usual fall-back when I have no idea what to cook for dinner but Tim wants some kind of meat component to the meal - mince spiced with cumin, cinnamon, etc. I added some cooked down red lentils to the mince, just to make it all the more sparklingly healthy, and grated in some carrot. All in all a model dinner...until...

Above: The real Canadian cake! Alicia's friend sent her a box of Betty Crocker cake mix, complete with a TUB OF ICING and we made it after dinner. Although I am generally vehemently opposed to cakes made from boxes, I was intrigued to say the least. You might not be able to see it in the photo but everything on the packaging is charmingly translated into French as well as English. Anyway, we mixed this up and baked it while watching the Simpsons movie on DVD. How do I put this - the cake was appallingly fabulous. It had this spookily puffy, moist texture, like something not found in nature, and the icing tasted like butter. It also had little clumps of e-numbers, I mean sprinkles, clustered throughout. It tasted pretty amazing, but left me rolling around groaning afterwards, filled with too much sugar.

Above: This was last night's dinner and I have to say, all self-congratulatory, that it was an absolute stonker of a feed. Tim and I went to New World Metro in town to grab some milk after work and ended up spontaneously buying some steak for dinner. I followed a recipe from the New Zealand cookbook, which basically involves frying it and deglazing the pan with sherry and cream. I used the sherry Mum gave me, and the little bit of cream that I had leftover from the pav. Well. It tasted INCREDIBLE, like restaurant food or something. The smell, when the sherry hits the hot pan and starts sizzling, is sensational.

To go with I made a salad of raw, sliced beetroot, blanched brocolli, and cashews, which was very fresh and crisp tasting, and roasted some potatoes. What a feast.

Above: Tonight I kept it fairly simple. Penne pasta, with avocado and roasted beetroot, capsicum, and courgette. I drizzled over a little of the basil oil that Mum and Dad got me when they went to Australia earlier this year, and it was the perfect foil for the mix of flavours on the plate. The beetroot inevitably stained the pasta, but I thought the combo looked rather festive.

Above: Well, I kept it simple until I started to make baked cheesecake, that is...Apparently we are having some kind of flat barbeque tomorrow, I say apparently because it is Emma that is organising it and I'm not quite sure on the particulars. As long as it doesn't rain like it did today we should have a jolly old time. Either way I'm always up for feeding people and so volunteered to make the Chocolate Lime Cheesecake from Nigella Bites, using gluten free cookies for the base. It is largely a case of bunging all the ingredients in the processor, the difficult bit is baking it in a waterbath, but not much is difficult in the kitchen when you have Tim to lift things for you. It is cooling on the bench now and smells pretty amazing. I'll let you know tomorrow night what the general consensus is. I've never made a cheesecake before so it's all a bit exciting.

Alright, it's now past midnight and I have to brave a shopping mall tomorrow, so I need my sleep.

"The Brain, The Brain, The Centre of The Chain."

The title doesn't have much to do with anything except for the fact that I am very excited, in a sniffly, boffinish way, to have discovered a Baby Sitters Club blog wherein a 20-something woman goes back and re-reads the books and then writes up all the glaring logistical errors and continuity flaws. The quote is taken from the BSC movie, something I had forgotten about until recently. Yesterday's obsession is todays' charmingly kitsch retro-pop-culture...so watch out. And by that, I mean that I have been on Trademe for BSC books. Shh!

We don't have a heck of a lot of food in our cupboards at the moment. After the massive spree that was shopping for the Christmas dinner, I didn't want to spend any more money on actual groceries. Let me tell you, I am looking forward to the vege market tomorrow.

Above: This here is the very last of the leftovers, and indeed, the last of most of our vegetables. I'm not so good at 'making up' salads, but I was proud of this concoction - the rest of the roast chicken, with roasted cauliflower and red peppers, avocado, and capers. It was so unbelievably delicious! We had this dumped on top of rice, and it was surprisingly filling (you know, for a salad.)

Above: Fish Pie. It is actually a kind of low-rent fish pie that I make a lot in Winter, and since the weather was jarringly cold and wet the other day I decided to have another go at it. Basically it is a can of tuna stirred into white sauce with anything else you have in the fridge - in my case, frozen peas and beans - and topped with breadcrumbs made from crushing toasted bread in your hands. It was inspired by a recipe in the NZ Cookbook, which uses a splash of sherry in the white sauce. I used the sherry Mum gave me recently - its first outing! - and the sauce smelled divine, all winey and warming and delicious. We had this with rice too, some Basmati that Mum sent us (and yes, it does taste a lot nicer than Budget Long Grain.)

Above: Lentil and Potato Pie...you may or may not know that I have a slight obsession with lentils, I think it's just because they are so good for you that I find their very presence in my meal soothing. This was such an easy dish to make, and came from the NZ Cookbook also. Just layers of onion, potatoes, and brown lentils (I biffed a handful of red lentils in too just for kicks) and then pour in some stock and bake for an hour. I used the Knorr porcini stock cubes (that Nigella uses!) that my aunt brought back for me from Italy, which are so intensely savoury and almost fudgily dense with flavour that they make any bland combination of flavours taste wonderful. This was even better the next day, cold for breakfast, as unappetising as it sounds.

Above: I served the potato-lentil amalgam with mince. Just mince. Sometimes I try so hard to make mince exciting and different to what we had the night before (ie, Bobotie, anyone?) that I forget how nice it can be on it's own, just fried with some onion and a splash of soy sauce (for Alison Holst Chic!) It reminds me of this time when I was much younger and Mum was away for the week somewhere. Dad cooked us mince and mashed potatoes, (and no doubt some veges too, knowing Dad) plain as anything, and suggested that the two were nice mixed together. It was so delicious I can remember this meal over ten years later. So, simple can be your friend.

I didn't post last night (Mum, I'm talking to you, here) because of the stonkering fabulous Friday night line up on UKTV. After America's Next Top Model on 3, there is the genius Green Wing on UKTV, followed by Little Britain, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and Shameless. The only thing missing is the old Men Behaving Badly, which I always had a soft spot for. But for real, what a night! How is anyone supposed to move from the telly to go out and do Friday night-type things?

Anyway had better go and cobble together a meal before Tim gets home from making syrup-cinos, so...

Good Bive!

Above: I know, I said no more kittens and music and non-food stuff but...I didn't mean it. Got this photo off a colleague of mine who was also at the game and could nay resist.

For once: not Nigella.

Apologies in advance if this post is a little lacklustre - have just watched a lot of telly and am pretty tired.

I have a difficult time staying consistently 'healthy' in my eating habits. I'll do pilates, have some soymilk, and then follow it up with a buttered chocolate bar. Okay, I'm joking...barely. Last night's dinner was a good enough example of this - salad and lentil soup (healthy) with homemade mince pies (unhealthy.) However, in my opinion, as long as there are lots of vegetables and other good things present, it can't be too bad.

The lentil soup came from Alison Holst's Dollars And Sense cookbook. I have no snarky comments to make - it was great soup, very easy and made from stuff I had in the cupboard. Yet another reminder of why this book is worth reading over.

Above: Lentils, vegetables, spices, water - this pretty much cancels out buttery pastry...right?

So taken was I with the beetroot and feta tarts that I thought I would make the pastry shells again and fill them with (much cheaper) mince to make a kind of homespun Big Ben pie, if you will. As you can see I got a little excited with the leftover pastry scraps...

Above: Twinkle, twinkle little pie...These were not just a pretty picture, they tasted rather lovely too. I could only manage one (my pie tin makes four) probably because I'd eaten too much pastry while making them, but Tim snarfed his down. He had my second one for breakfast this morning and said it was the best he'd ever had. Well, I guess anything beats Weet-bix (to which I have a particular aversion.)

Finally, balancing this out was a salad of beans, cucumber, and our old friends feta and walnuts. I didn't have cucumber so replaced it with fennel, quelle surprise! This recipe comes from the New Zealand cookbook, and is a fabulous combination with a lovely lemony dressing. Tim and I hoovered it up in about ten seconds - it's very more-ish.

Above: Hopefully everyone isn't sick of seeing things scattered in feta and walnuts...

Dinner tonight was something I've been craving all day- a vast pot of pasta. I don't know if there is Italian blood coursing through my veins somewhere but few things make me happier than pasta. Of course, creamy cheese-laden pasta dishes are a lot easier to love than the more austere tomato sauce that we had tonight, yet it was still richly flavoured and filling and all those other good things. I based the sauce on a Moroccan recipe in The Accidental Vegetarian, which adds cinnamon, cumin and tumeric to give aromatic depth. I biffed in a handful of red lentils and let them simmer away into nothing. It was delicious! I suppose it didn't help that I ate half a packet of wine gums while watching America's Next Top Model (oh the irony!)

Above: Made with canned tomatoes for 60c from Kmart! Tip for the wise: never buy your canned tomatoes from the supermarket, they are much cheaper at Kmart or the Warehouse. By the way...I crumbled some feta over the pasta, as you can probably see, but hastily stirred it through so it wouldn't be a focal point of this picture.

Right, am off to bed now: being crosseyed and dozy does not make for a sparklingly witty blog.