you may come full circle and be new here again

So I've moved house! Last week was so weird. But it's Monday now, and every Monday is like a little January 1, where you can start all over again. I have the day off work today and decided it would finally be the day I get my act together and buy some food and then cook that food for myself, for the first time in ages. My two options thus far for the last week or so have been buy food from cafes or takeaways, or sit in bed and contemplatively eat expired Golden Grahams cereal by the handful or a bag of twisties, scattering orange twistie dust everywhere (and here I'd like to apologise to my teddy bear, Avery, who looks like he has purchased a very bad fake tan.) The first option is not financially stable and the second option will probably have some weird effect on me eventually like dissolving my bones or giving me scurvy.

So, after eating some twisties in bed, I propelled myself towards the supermarket with the hopes that I'd inspire myself by the time I got there into knowing what it was I actually wanted to buy and make. I wanted something that could be done in one pan, so I wouldn't make too much mess in the new kitchen. I also wanted something vaguely nutritious. I had grand intentions to buy a ton of fruit, but then remembered that winter is when fruit is all "nah, not in the mood to exist right now", but potato and fennel are both present and cheap, and halloumi is the best way of making something half-assed feel celebratory and highly lux. And so, this salad appeared.

halloumi, fried potato, and raw fennel salad

a recipe by myself. Serves one, but it takes little rocket science to work out how to make it serve more.

one medium sized potato - I used a red one
half a large fennel bulb, or all of a small one
four thick slices of halloumi
olive oil
butter
juice of half a lemon

Dice the potato very finely - the smaller it is, the quicker it will cook. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a decent sized pan and wait for it to look sizzling, then throw in the potato and allow to cook till crisp, stirring occasionally. It'll feel like it's taking forever but the whole process really only takes about ten minutes - just make sure you let them sit till they're plenty golden. Undercooked potato is no fun.

Finely slice the fennel and arrange half of it on a plate. Tip the potato on top of it, and then top with the rest of the fennel. Heat some butter (I used about 25g) in the same pan, and fry your halloumi slices till very golden brown on each side. Slide the halloumi onto the plate, scatter over some of those feathery green fennel fronds, because what else are you going to do with them, squeeze the lemon juice into the buttery pan and then spatula all that over the halloumi. 

I'd started watching The Sopranos last night - a show I hadn't made any effort to seek out despite its general acclaim, on account of I don't fool with violence and I also don't need another TV show about a lawless white man who treats the significant woman in his life horribly and yet is received as the hero while she is the shrew, going through season after season of ultimately self-inflicted tension. However. I was with a group of people and the opportunity presented itself and I do have a very soft spot for the sadly late James Gandolfini. And wow, yeah, it's a very well-made show, and I can see how it impressively influenced later HBO and HBO-style shows. But where I'm going with this is oh damn I wanted some meatballs or Bolognese or eggplant or pretty much anything aggressively Italian to eat after watching it. Alas, this salad is what happened instead. Luckily, this salad is hugely excellent in its own way.

Fried potatoes and buttery, melting halloumi are so good together it's almost stupid, their textures both echoing and diverting from each other in a crunchily sybaritic fashion. The fennel itself also brings crunch of a different kind, not only stopping the entire thing from being burdonsomely rich, but also lifting the golden flavours of the halloumi with its faintly aniseed flavour. But then of course I pour over the melted butter from the pan, in case it's not quite burdonsomely rich enough. The squeeze of lemon brings it all together, and with very little effort you have yourself a massively amazing lunch.

In lieu of a carefully staged photo of the dish sitting on a beautiful table, because there is none, here's a photo of it on my lap on the couch, where I ate it. Four slices of halloumi is ideal - any fewer and you'd start to feel sad halfway through that the good times were nearly over, any more and you'd probably end up uncomfortably full but still doggedly determined to finish it because halloumi is halloumi. A scattering of sumac or mint leaves wouldn't hurt this in the slightest, but for a hastily assembled meal it's pretty great as is.

So, am slowly getting unpacked and used to my new world. My new bedroom has kind of got no natural light whatsoever, which is...something...but the people are nice and there's unlimited internet and I love being so central, right in town, and I'm gonna eventually get there and have all my stuff where it should be.

Like this dress, back on the wall where she belongs (admittedly rather crumpled from the moving process, but like, same)

I feel like now that I'm no longer in this pre-move limbo zone I very much want to get my life together and cook heaps and write heaps and do heaps and really just be as super excellent as I can to continue propelling myself towards being lowkey ridiculously famous and adored by all.

If you ever do want to feel adored by all, by the way, my advice for you is: visit a dog. My darling friends Kim and Brendan spontaneously adopted a corgi who needed a home, and she is the most loving tiny dingus that ever lived. She's like the hearts-for-eyes emoji existing in a corporeal form. I visited her on Friday, because she needs company and I needed dog hugs. As soon as I walked in she ran up to me and gazed up at me with such joy in her eyes, I actually felt my bones melt. And not just from eating all those twisties. I visited her again today for the same reason, and she was just the snuggliest thing ever, greeting me with a face that said "hi, you're perfect and I love you indiscriminately and also everyone around you and everything around you!"

We get on well because we're both fluffy and needy and have great eyeliner. 

Percy still has a lot to learn about taking selfies, but luckily Aunty Laura is here, and uncharactaristically patient.

So yeah, new house, new blog post, new hund friend! A lot of things in life are still very hard to deal with but I'm greeting the future with one hand in my pocket, and the other one is giving a peace sign (oh wait I started singing Alanis Morrisette there.)
______________________________________________________________
title from: Gil Scott-Heron's contemplatively perfect song I'm New Here. The low rumble of the guitar and the low rumble of his voice, "told her I was hard to get to know and near impossible to forget"...so sad I'll never get to see him live. 
______________________________________________________________
music lately:

Janine and the Mixtape, Hold Me. The anthem. 

Unknown Mortal Orchestra, So Good At Being In Trouble. The...other anthem. 

Nicki Minaj, Jessie J and Ariana Grande, Bang Bang. This song goes OFF. I intend to dance to it many, many times. Am also just generally pro anything Nicki Minaj lays her hands on or says or does. 
______________________________________________________________
next time: Maybe some bolognese or meatballs or something, yeah? 

to yoga, to yoghurt, to rice and beans and cheese

____________________________________________________


Today I spilled boiling hot tea on myself three times (and once on my office chair). I burnt my left hand on a hot pan while cooking dinner and whacked the other hand on the corner of the bench as I walked into it instead of past it. Finally I dropped beetroot on our telephone. Truly. It's like I'm in a Florence & The Machine song or something. I'm not sure if clumsiness begets more clumsiness - I know from experience that it's really, really easy to have one thing go wrong in the morning and then not even give the rest of the day a chance to do right by you, when that happens there's no doubt you're going to walk into doorframes. But today I woke up feeling relatively optimistic. I guess it just shows...I'm plain clumsy.


Such clumsiness is partially the reason why you're more likely to see recipes on this blog that don't involve sugar thermometers or weighing egg whites or...you know, that sort of thing. Rice and Beans involves - at least the way I make it - none of the above. It's stress-free, one-pan, traditional comfort food. Not traditional to me personally, but sometimes just knowing it's comfort food to someone is in itself comforting...right? And I always have room for adopting new traditions.




Rice and Beans

I kind of made this up on the fly, inspired by a dish I had at the amazingly good Amigos on Tory Street.

Heat a wide, non-stick pan and toss in a finely chopped onion and plenty of finely chopped garlic. The first time I made this I added a diced carrot, the second time I added a diced zucchini. Once this has softened a little, without browning too much, add a pinch of smoked paprika, a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard, a teaspoon of coriander seeds and 2/3 cup of long grain rice and stir through. Pour in 250mls water, cover, and simmer for five minutes. Add more water, stir, cover - the kind of rice you use affects the amount of water you need and basmati seems to need more water than other kinds. Add a splash of beer, a drained tin of corn kernels and a drained tin of red beans. Add more liquid if the rice still needs it, partially cover and let it simmer over a low heat for a further ten minutes. Serves 2 generously. Maybe cover with feathery, torn coriander leaves or stir grated cheese through if you like.

This is one of the cheapest, nicest, heartiest dinners you can make for yourself. It's quicker if you use canned beans but cheaper if you take the time to cook up dried - up to you. The savoury warmth of the spices and the beer against the soft, grainy beans and rice is simple but incredible. And, as you will know once I'm done telling you, rice and beans are quoted in La Vie Boheme which put the idea in my head in the first place. (Truly. Was listening to it, thought, "huh, am now hungry for rice and beans". Power of suggestion, right there.)




Sunny Santa Fe would be...nice

While you're buying red beans for the above recipe, you might as well stock up good and proper for this Santa Fe Ceasar Salad. The recipe comes from Simon Rimmer's The Accidental Vegetarian, and the first hundred times I flicked past it I was all "hmm, bit random" but all of a sudden on flick-through #101 it seemed like a something I wanted to try. Allow me to fast-track this process for you and just tell you to make it already.

Santa Fe Ceasar Salad

I didn't use any chillies. I had some pita bread that I used instead of tortillas, and I didn't have any parmesan to hand so just left it out. Still so good.

1 Cos lettuce, trimmed
2 soft corn tortillas
1 tin pinto or kidney beans, drained
2 red chillies, deseeded and chopped
1 ripe avocado, chopped
fresh coriander leaves

Dressing:

125mls good mayonnaise
125mls plain unsweetened yoghurt
1 garlic clove, crushed
Juice of 1 lime or lemon
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
100g freshly grated parmesan cheese

Whisk dressing ingredients together, set aside. Break up the corn tortillas, dry-fry in a hot pan till a little charred. Tear up the lettuce leaves, place in a bowl with the cooked tortillas, drained beans, avocado and chillies. Fold through the dressing, top with coriander leaves and sprinkle with parmesan to serve.




Clearly, the dressing is sublime, what with the eggy, oily mayonnaise, rich garlic and sharp vinegar coming together. The crunch of tortilla croutons against those grainy red beans and the crisp lettuce is marvelous. It's surprisingly filling and while not entirely healthy, you could certainly do worse. You could have an actual ceasar salad.

_____________________________________________________

Title comes to you via: Surprise! La Vie Boheme from RENT, the musical that inspired the title of this blog and also inspired me to go to both Levin and Palmerston North to see local productions of it. I love this bit of the musical so much that I'm going to direct lucky you to both a stealthy clip of the Original Broadway Cast in 1996 and the altogether shinier 2005 film version where most of the still-stunning original cast reprised their roles. Oh sure, you could be snide about a bunch of self-titled bohemians prancing about shouting out their carefully chosen influences, I say this is laziness and it's much better to look beyond that and actually love it for the joyfulness, the inclusiveness, the catchiness, and the awesomeness of rhyming "German wine, turpentine, Gertrude Stein"...
_____________________________________________________

Music while I type:

Laurie Anderson's O Superman which you can find on the album Big Science. Breathy but direct, strangely meditative, this song made itself known to me via a few different channels - a John Peel compilation, an American Lit paper with a delightfully passionate teacher ("Language! It's a virus!") and RENT (as in, all roads lead to) with Idina Menzel's character Maureen being clearly something of an homage to Anderson as witnessed in the sublime Over The Moon. Seeing The Groove Guide twitter about this song today, plus hearing another of her songs on Radio Active this evening made it feel like I'd be lying if I didn't put it down here.

Bucky Done Gun by M.I.A from her album Arular. I first saw the music video to this song in a hotel room in Germany in 2005, it's as acid-bright as her hand-penned album artwork. It was about the most exciting thing I'd heard in a year clogged with Razorlight et al. Five years on it still thrills and I still wish I could handle a jumpsuit like her.

Matthew and Son. It's my absolute favourite Cat Stevens song. You know I could tell you why, but I'll let Mr Cat Steven's snake hips in this video do the talking for me.

__________________________________________________

Next time: I found this highly do-able recipe for vegan banana cake on the Savvy Soybean's blog and long to try it. I appreciate both savviness and soybeans in a person so have no doubt this recipe will be good.

lime warp

I have never been a fussy eater. Nooooo. But when I was younger, and I don't think this classifies me as "fussy", olives were too salty, ginger was too spicy, and I couldn't quite see the point of black liquorice. As my tastebuds have aged, and no doubt reduced in numbers, I can suddenly eat olives by the oily handful and, well, the briefest of glances over this blog will show how much I love ginger now. Liquorice I still have no time for. There's a photo of me on my first birthday showing how I, with quiet resolve, plucked a black jellybean from my birthday cake and chewed on it. The photo shows my immediate distaste upon chewing. I'm very sure that if I ate a black jellybean now I'd pull a pretty similar face. And while my tastes have expanded, I still have that not entirely useful, Homer Simpson-like quality of "Ooooh look, food, I'm going to eat it all!" documented at that birthday party long ago.



I first tried preserved lemons last year when my godmother gifted me a jar of them that she'd made herself. I was never exposed to them as a child - Morrocan chic hadn't quite reached the rural outpost where I lived - but I'm sure they would have seemed aggressively salty and sour to my young self. Right now, to my current collective of tastebuds, they are so, ridiculously good. I'm pretty sure it's not how they're supposed to be used, but I love just eating slices of lemon whole, straight from the jar. This Christmas just gone, inspired by the now long-consumed preserved lemons I was given, and hungry for more, I decided to make my own as edible presents for people. Obviously I couldn't blog about this prior to Christmas, but now that we're safely in January...it's on.

Predictably, I turn to Nigella Lawson and her engaging book How To Be A Domestic Goddess. In the final chapter, all about preserves and pickles and jams and other exciting things, she has a recipe called "Edith Afif's Lime Pickles". The recipe is a little quirky but seemed straightforward enough, and the end result is exactly like preserved lemons, but with limes in their place. I couldn't afford as many limes as Nigella asked for so used a mix of limes and lemons and didn't feel bad about it at all. Limes are expensive but lemons are not, the salt I found for about a dollar at the supermarket and the olive oil doesn't have to be fancy so all up these are a rather tidily priced gift. As I believe in self-gifting, I set aside my own personal stash as well as divvying up the fruit slices into pretty jars for other people.

Edith Afif's Lime Pickles

From Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess

10 limes (or a mixture of lemons and limes)
1 kg coarse salt
Approximately 500mls olive oil, not extra virgin
1 tablespoon tumeric
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
3 dried chilli peppers, crumbled.

I have a confession to make. I completely forgot to add the tumeric and am retroactively kicking myself about it as I'm sure it would have looked gorgeous and tasted amazing. But the end result is still fantastic without it so don't fear or go on a dazed mission to the supermarket if you don't have any in the cupboard.

• Cut the fruit into eighths lengthways and cover the bottom of a baking dish with them. Cover the limes in the salt and then put in the freezer overnight. I actually forgot about them for a couple of days and they were perfectly fine.
• Remove from the freezer and thaw. Rinse under running water in a colander. I saved some of the salt which had absorbed an amazingly citrussy flavour and used it on a poached egg. A worthwhile recycling effort. Shake the lime/lemon slices to remove most of the water, and divide between clean jars (fills roughly 3 x 350ml jars).
• Mix the oil and spices together in a measuring jug then pour into each jar. Add more oil if the slices aren't covered.
• Close the jars, put away in a cool dark cupboard for a week or so - the longer the sit, the more ridiculously good they'll taste.

Nigella says "you either have a sour tooth or you don't" (and I maintain that I have a fat tooth, if not several) but I think these have mainstream appeal. The sharp, satiny slices of lime and lemon give this incredibly savoury, mouth filling citrussyness, not overly salty despite the fact that they were blanketed in salt at one point. Sliced or chopped finely they add a softly sour kick to basically anything - salads, couscous, pasta, tagines, anything meditteranean. As an added bonus the oil surrounding the fruit slices takes on a gorgeous flavour and can be spooned from the jar and used as a useful condiment in its own right. Hardly a day goes by when I don't use these in something. Even though they sound like something other people do and you don't, preserved lemons (or limes...or lemons) are completely within reach and not difficult at all. It's a tired argument but if I can handle making them without any ensuing trauma, basically anyone could.

So, I heard this wacky rumour that food blogs need to have decent photos. Which is a shame because I made this amahzing Feta Bread on Tuesday night and even though it tasted like a dream it didn't photograph so nice. While I was considering just uploading my ugly photos anyway as good photography isn't so much a right as a pleasant surprise round these parts, I think I'll just quickly share the recipe instead.

Feta Bread

From Simon Rimmer's The Accidental Vegetarian

This makes two large loaves. You could halve the recipe if this scares you, but you will eat all this bread, trust me.

• 15g (2 sachets) instant dried yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 600mls/1 pint warm water
• 1 kilo strong bread flour
• 2 T salt
• 4 T olive oil
• 350g firm feta cheese, crumbled - I used Whitestone which was perfect - solid chunks of sharp cheese. If you use a softer variety it will likely disperse into the dough and you won't get any noticeable bits of feta in the bread, but it's not the end of the world.
• Handful of mint leaves

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in a little of the water. This will take about five minutes. Tip in the flour, the rest of the water, and mix to a dough. Knead for 7-10 minutes until it forms a springy, firm dough that isn't sticky. You may need to add a tiny bit of extra flour or water but go very gently with this. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, leave it to rise for about 2 hours. It will rise to spookily large heights. At this point, punch it down and knead the oil, mint and cheese into the dough. What Simon Rimmer doesn't tell you is that this is a mission and a half. The dough doesn't really absorb the cheese at all and you kind of have to prod the bits of cheese in with your fingers and hope for the best. Coax the dough into two loaf shapes on a paper-lined tray, cover with a clean teatowel or a bit of tinfoil and leave at room temperature for 40 minutes. Finally, bake at 180 C/350 F for 30 - 40 minutes, which doesn't sound like a lot but it's just right.

This bread is off the scale good - softly chewy, almost buttery in flavour which is odd considering there's none in there, crusty, and punctuated by chunks of gorgeous feta cheese and cool mint leaves. You could actually leave out the feta and still have wonderful bread - it's not exactly a recipe I can afford to make every week for that very reason. But it does make a lot of bread, and amazing stuff it is - shoved in a sandwich press for a minute or so, it makes the most incredible toast. The first loaf didn't last long but we sliced up the second, bagged it and froze it, toasting slices straight from the freezer. We finished the last of it yesterday and I'm actually feeling a bit fragile knowing that it's no longer in our lives. The feta aside, there's nothing unusual or different about the method so, putting aside the possibility that I am a bread whisperer, it's a bit of a head-scratcher why it turned out tasting so outrageously delicious.

I'm feeling much better than I was at the start of this week, which is good of course. On Thursday we attended an awesomely elegant book club initiated by our ex-flatmate, but not ex-friend Ange, and last night we finished Season 4 of The Wire. Gruelling? I felt like how a potato must feel after being mashed. Absolutely mind-blowingly good though, but now I'm torn about whether to recommend it or not - it's utterly brilliant but you get emotionally invested in characters against your will and none of them are really 'safe'. That's all I'll say...Tomorrow is that rare delight - a public holiday. (Wellington Anniversary Day) This year's a bit desperate as two of the usual public holidays have the useless bad timing to fall on a Saturday so I'll have to enjoy tomorrow even more, a bit tough because Tim's working tomorrow at stupid Starbucks, earning enough to be thankful he's got a job at all but not enough to actually do anything...but anyway. I'm sure I'll be able to entertain myself, if nothing else the fact that it's a Monday and I get a sleep in will be pretty fantastic.
____________________________________________________
Title comes to you via: Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Show...those of you who wanted to have probably already seen the film so instead I link you to a clip of the utterly lovely Raul Esparza of the 2000 Broadway revival cast vibrato-ing his lungs off. I love the music from Rocky Horror, it reminds me of the score to Hair in some ways because it's so joyful and all over the place and the lyrics and melody don't flow in the way you might expect it to. "It's just a jump to the left..."
____________________________________________________
On Shuffle while I type:

We're going to Laneway music festival next Monday so in honour of that fact we've been refresher-coursing the acts that are going to be there including...

Katrina by the Black Lips, I love their scrappy, poppy sound and can't wait to see them live.

I Had Lost My Mind by the deeply intriguing Daniel Johnston, another person whose name we've put a bit asterisk beside on the Laneway timetable.

Dog Days Are Over by Florence and the Machine. It would be easy to narrow one's eyes in dislike at Florence Welch, what with her unattainably long legs and doe eyes and tendency towards music videos where she canters about with flowers in her hair and floaty capes and no trousers. But her music is gorgeous and this song in particular is pretty astounding - she's closing the festival and I'm very excited about hearing her sing it live.
___________________________________________________
Next time: Last week we invited Ange over for pancakes and Thoroughly Modern Millie (ie the second greatest film in existence, after A Mighty Wind, and that is truth.) The pancakes were flipping marvelous and I think I got a decent photo or two out of them so...that's what you're likely to be seeing.

plantain in vain

_________________________________________________


I don't know why, or what it says about me, but I go through these intense, whirlwind infatuations with foodstuffs, consume vast amounts of them, and then move on, breaking it off as fast as it started. There was lentils, then oats...later tofu followed by soy products in general...then plantains. At the moment it's tahini. Make of this what you will. The only good thing we can take from this is that my eating patterns usually settle into something more normal afterwards. Like, not soy products six times a day. This post will outline my brief but heady flirtation with plantains.

As far as food goes - as far as any old thing goes, in fact - plantains are pretty special. They look like bananas, but clenched and stumpy. Like a banana that has tensed up in anticipation of getting a punch to the face. They're infomercial-tastic in their multipurposeness. They start off green, tight-skinned, firm and savoury, with a flavour echoing kumara (or sweet potato.) Then they progress into a yellow shade, becoming sweeter - but wait there's more! They finally blacken, becoming even softer and more sweet in the process. Something particularly cool about the plantain is that they have similar complex carbohydrates that you'd find in a potato, but they cook in about ten seconds flat. If you have the deep misfortune to be a coeliac type-one diabetic, you could do well to look these up.

I grabbed them on a whim from our local supermarket because they were cheap and intriguing, like all good things in life. Unfortunately they don't seem to be stocking them any more. The lesson is - I should have updated this blog sooner. However bear in mind that a lot of the time, bananas can be readily substituted for plantains - even in savoury dishes. The following though, is something you'll have to get the actual article for. I first dipped my toe in the water by taking firm green plantains, peeling them, slicing them thickly and frying them in a sizzling dab of butter and drop of rice bran oil till they were golden and crisp on the outside.

And there you have it. Looks like banana, tastes like potato. Truly. They cook up in about five minutes, but have that same solid, fluffy bite of a baked potato. With a banana's potassium! This made a fantastically sunny side dish to something - I can't even remember what it was now - and was repeated several times over in the following days.


Following an idea from Simon Rimmer's The Accidental Vegetarian, I tried stirring some fried, sliced plantains through dahl made with red lentils. Amazingly, surprisingly good. The graininess of the lentils and the fried plantains worked excellently together. However the photos I took were kinda heinous and I won't subject you to them. You're better off without them.


Realising I'd enthusiastically brought far more plantains than I could really deal with, and that they were ripening with alarming speed, I decided to use them for sweeter pursuits, and turned them into Plantain Ice Cream. A cursory Google search didn't throw forward any recipes so I made up my own. I threw about 6 ripe, soft plantains into the food processor and blended them till smooth. I then added 2 crumbly tablespoons muscovado sugar and 2 tablespoons of juice from a can of pineapples and continued to process till it was light, fluffy and moussy. I considered adding some coconut milk but decided to leave well alone and not be so damn obvious with my flavour pairings. When I say moussy - the blended plantains really were curiously aerated and could actually have been chilled and served as some kind intensely natural alternative to those powdery, whizzed up instant puddings of my youth.

And then I froze it.

Having made virtuous ice creams before of fruit and not much else, I remembered how utterly rock-hard they set, and had intended to give this a cursory second blitz in the food processor before tasting it. Well there must be some enzyme in plantains which makes them awesomer than other fruit because it was perfectly spoonable straight from the freezer. Curiouser and curiouser!

And completely, amazingly delicious. The fun thing about it is that you're more or less eating just fruit, which is quite the exciting concept to grasp when your brain is sending "ICE CREAM, OOH BABY BABY" messages around your body. It tastes sugary, but it's pretty damn healthy. In terms of taste, sure it's banana-y, but the plantain is somehow zestier, zippier, (apologies for the supercilious vagueness of my description there) almost citrussy compared to the banana. Which is not to say that you couldn't get perfectly fine ice cream out of a banana, I've done it myself and you may substitute freely if plantains aren't available. Just make sure you process it again after it has frozen, to break up the ice crystals it will form.






I just realised that I've purposefully not included a photo of the dhal that I snapped just before it was eaten because it was terrible, whereas these carefully styled photos of ice cream are here on display. In the past I might have obstinately included the terrible photo of the lentils simply because I have this feeling that blogging about what you're cooking and eating should show what you're eating as it exists in real life, not how it looks in a studio set-up, painstakingly lit and strewn with vanilla beans or...autumn leaves or something. And yet here I am, choosing the created over the real. I mean, I can assure you that I stood there leaning on the windowsill, eating the ice cream while I was taking photos of it, but it was in my bedroom, on my chest of drawers, and that blue fabric is a scarf of mine. Eh. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this. I'd like to think I'm relatively principled in my aims for this blog. But ice cream is prettier than under-exposed, grainy CCTV-esque footage of lentils, let's face it.


I guess I shouldn't get so wound up about stuff I can't really explain adequately. All that aside, the ice cream is an ideal use of this beguiling fruit and worth letting them sit around to ripen for. Cooling, refreshing, not at all heavy and arrestingly delicious. Thus...if you see plantains at your local market or whatever, don't be afraid of them. They're cool. Take a walk on the wild side.


Tim and I just got back from seeing Elaine Paige live in concert. What a night. She was so dynamic, so engaged, so sparklingly classy and in such good voice. I know I joked a while back that I'm surprised she didn't play Elphaba in the London transfer of Wicked, but truly - she has been in so many shows, and it was amazing to hear a kind of retrospective of many of these. As she was singing Don't Cry For Me Argentina, I reflected on how astounding it is that I have been able to see the original London and the original Broadway stars of Evita sing this song in less than six months, in New Zealand - Patti LuPone back in July, and now Elaine Paige. She didn't sing Nobody's Side, as I'd hoped, suspecting a live version would have more passion and soul than her strangely (or not so strangely, really) sterile pop version. Instead she came out and sang Someone Else's Story, and then I Know Him So Well, with the orchestra filling in on the other part. Well, I guess she had to do that one. There were so many classic songs she gave us that it was hard to keep track but a highlight was when she poured herself into the character of Edith Piaf and gave a stunning rendition of Je Ne Regrette Rien. It was an incredible night and...we were easily the youngest there. I felt lucky to be a part of it all.

If you get the chance, check out Glee on TV3 on Friday nights at 7.30pm (with repeats on C4TV at the same time on Wednesdays). It's a bit strange to me to see all these Broadway stars plastered across New Zealand media channels and hearing people talk about them. Not in a snobby way, like I don't want anyone to know about them - but literally in a strange, blinky kind of way. I double-take every time I see a picture of Lea Michelle or Matthew Morrison in a local magazine. I'm just used to a large chunk of the pop-culture stuff I like being completely obscure to the general population. If it means that things like choirs and singing and musical theatre and dancing are made to seem okay and 'cool' to young people, then bring it on. All that aside, I've seen most of season one already and it is sharp as a tack and great fun. Find it!

__________________________________________________

On Shuffle while I type

Smart Women by Stephanie J Block, from her debut album This Place I Know. While I admire SJB and think she's a fantastic singer, actress, and surely person too, I really didn't click with her album. But this song from it, oh my. I'm obsessed with it. Don't even try to listen to it or you will be too. It's beautiful.

Dominoes by The Big Pink from their album A Brief History Of Love. Okay, the lyrics to the verses are kind of useless, and it is maybe derivative and will probably get ridiculously overplayed, and normally the only music from Big Pink I'm interested in is the one coming from The Band but all that aside...WHAT a chorus.
__________________________________________________

Title comes to you via...The Clash, Train In Vain. Why? Because...I like The Clash almost as much as I like inserting rhyming words awkwardly into places they don't belong.
__________________________________________________

Next time: I predict that next time I will be deeply, deeply in denial that it's November already and a good chunk of it has passed at that.

it looks like you'll stay, as the days go by

_________________________________________________


On the 13th my blog will be two years old. Considering the blinding speed in which the internet turns around, in which networks are signed up to enthusiastically and then never updated, and also the fecklessness of youth (well, I'm only 23 and therefore highly likely to be lacking in feck) it's a pretty tidy achievement all round. Two seems like such a tiny number to measure the amount of time that this blog has been existing. But I guess it's likely to be a lot more significant to myself than, say, anyone else on the planet. I also guess that this gives me a free pass to bake something ridiculous and unnecessary in the name of celebrating my blog's anniversary.



Funnily enough I used a recipe the other night that I last used exactly a year ago - Rendang Asparagus and Shallot Curry, from Simon Rimmer's pretty awesome book The Accidental Vegetarian. Incidentally the photos I took last year were much better than the photos you're going to see today, which shows that no matter where I live, there is always potential for uselessness. Asparagus is one of the few things I'm happy to wait around for. Well, it would be choice if it was available for the eatin' all year round, but it's not, and it's usually worth the wait. If I'm eating asparagus it means that the weather is getting better and Summer's on the way.


This recipe is so good, even if the original is a little deranged in terms of volume of sugar, coconut and chilli. Simon Rimmer writes an excellent recipe, but we don't see eye to eye on what 'mild' is. Simon Rimmer thinks nothing of flinging eight chillies into a recipe for general consumption. His tastebuds must be made of asbestos-reinforced concrete roofing tiles. This is truly delicious though, and the combination of soft, caramelised buttery onions and juicy green asparagus is pretty fabulous. I'd go a little easy on the amount of brown sugar you use, between that and the coconut milk it can be almost like eating pudding if you're not careful.






Rendang Shallot and Asparagus Curry

50g butter
75g brown sugar (I used less)
20 banana shallots
400g asparagus
400ml tin coconut milk
3 T toasted dessicated coconut
Coriander to serve

Melt the butter in a pan, add the sugar and when it starts to dissolve throw in the shallots, peeled but left whole. Turn down the heat and cook slowly for at least 20 minutes, (he recommends 45 but they were more than fine with less). Blanch the asparagus and refresh in cold water. I sliced them into two-inch lengths.

Curry Paste:

1 onion, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
3 red chillies, or however much you desire
1 tsp ground coriander
1 T tamarind paste (or substitute lemon juice)
1 t tumeric
1 t curry powder
1 stalk of lemon grass
pinch of salt

Whizz the lot together in a food processor, or chop and mix everything well like I did using my mezzaluna. This results in a chunkier but no less flavoursome paste. Heat a little oil in a pan and gently fry the paste, carefully, and stir in the coconut milk, letting it bubble away and thicken slightly. Add the now magically caramelly shallots and the blanched asparagus, letting it simmer for about ten minutes. Finish by stirring through the toasted coconut and chopped coriander. If you like, add a handful of frozen peas or soybeans to beef it up (as it were). Serve over rice. This should feed four easily.



On Thursday I realised I hadn't cooked any chicken in a long, long time. In fact that I hadn't really eaten meat in ages. A trip to Moore Wilson's quickly changed this, and I had a go at Nigella Lawson's Slow Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken from Forever Summer.

I'd bought a couple of Maryland pieces (ie thigh and drum attached together) because it was cheaper than buying just thighs. I figured I could cleave them in half, capable-modern-lady style with one of the many enormous knives we have in our kitchen. But, could not cut them for the life of me, even using this ridiculously sharp knife and putting all my body weight on it. They remained uncloven. Strains of Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner singing I Will Never Leave You from Side Show ran through my head.


Resigned to the fact that we were going to be eating enormous pieces of chicken for dinner, I arranged the ingredients artfully in this fancy schmancy roasting tin I bought from Briscoes that made me feel very Nigella - it's one of those deep, rectangular dishes with metal handles that she's always flinging about. It was also about 20cm too wide for our oven. Aaaaargh. By this stage I was tempted to biff the lot out the window. But, I patiently transferred the contents into a smaller dish and left it to roast for the requisite two hours - one of the nicest things about this recipe. You have a large window of time to chill out.




Ever more and always, we'll be one though we're two (Seriously, watch the clip. It may well blow your mind.)


This is a really simple recipe but what's there works wonders. Soft cloves of garlic and chunks of lemon, a slosh of wine and some olive oil all relax into a deliciously juicy sauce, and the slow, slow cooking of the chicken renders it ridiculously tender.



Slow-Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken

From Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer.
This is Nigella's recipe with her proportions - scale it down or up as you like.

1 chicken cut into 10 pieces
1 head garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
2 unwaxed lemons, cut into chunky eighths
Small handful fresh thyme
3 tablespoons olive oil
150mls white wine

Preheat oven to 160 C.

Put everything into a roasting tin. A roasting tin that you know will fit into your oven. Make sure the chicken is skin side up. Cover with tinfoil fairly tightly, place in the oven and leave for 2 hours. Once this is up, remove the foil, raise the heat to 200C, and cook uncovered for another 30 or so minutes till everything is nicely browned and crisp. Serve straight from the roasting tin. Serves 4-6.


Not having eaten meat for a while, particularly roasted chicken, I had completely forgotten how strong it is, how that oiliness can be really heavy in your stomach. I'd also forgotten how amazing it smells as it roasts and how good the pan juices taste drizzled liberally over rice. So there you go. I can see how people could go vegetarian, but then I could also happily eat a steak on a daily basis.


Speaking of things ornithologian, on Saturday I had the privelege of seeing the Imperial Russian Ballet performing Swan Lake at the Opera House. I went with Tim and my godsister, Hannah, and we had fantastic seats. There were a LOT of children in the audience, which I don't have a problem with - I'm all for encouraging nippers to go to the theatre - in fact it was the adults in the audience who were more fury-inducing. Some idiot behind me decided to rustle a wrapper or chip packet of some sort right in the middle of the swans' dancing. For about 45 seconds. I have no idea what was so important in their life right at that moment that they had to rustle this plastic so incessantly. Meanwhile, another person behind me was keeping time to the music by tapping the floor heavily with their foot and slapping their knees. Why? What can tiy possibly add to the experience? The only other negative I have to get out of the way is that the Opera House isn't the nicest location. It looks like a shadow of its former grandeur. The fact that the sound came from speakers, not an orchestra, dulled the majesty somewhat.


The dancers, however, were absolutely stunning. Swan Lake, Nutcracker and Romeo and Juliet are three ballets which don't so much tug at my heartstrings, as blow them up and make a balloon animal out of them. The music is just so achingly beautiful and it was beautifully captured by the dancers. The girl playing Odette/Odile had a mournful featheriness with a steely reserve that showed exactly why she was chosen as the leader. The prince was leggy and leapy and could express pain and happiness and that's all you really need. The costumes were gorgeous and the whole thing was just intensely riveting. I know I go on about Broadway a lot but while I was brought up on a fairly equal diet of musicals and ballets, dance was my first love and it's always a pleasure to see it live.


______________________________________________


On Shuffle whilst I type:

Saturday Getaway from Rookie Card by PNC featuring Awa from Nesian Mystik. This guy is probably the best thing to come out of Palmerston North since Tim.

Nobody's Side from the recording of Chess In Concert by Idina Menzel. I bought this today at Real Groovy and the very sight of it was so unexpected and so exciting that I proceeded to tell the lady behind the counter how awesome it was and how ridiculously excited I was about it. Probably should have played it a little more cool. But seriously though, Chess is a nightmare to follow but the music is ridiculously good and Idina tears this song to shreds.

______________________________________________

The roundabout, kind of oblique (eh, it's 10.30pm on a Sunday night) title for this post is brought to you by: Stephen Sondheim and his song Not A Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along. Bernadette Peters sings it and can't be argued with, but predictably I'd like to offer Idina's one-off take on it, worth it for the hatey youtube comments alone.

______________________________________________

Next time: Well, I probably will end up baking something frivolous in the name of celebrating my blog's two-year existence.

the dough must go on

My problem with homemade pasta is psychological: I always, every time, bury deep within me and ignore the fact that I have to roll out the dough using my deranged pasta machine and the traumatic act of doing so will render me too sweaty and exhausted and emotionally fragile to properly enjoy the finished product. Every time.

I think even if I had a pasta machine that didn't emit high pitched death-squeals, and that didn't change from setting 1 to setting 6 without warning, and whose handle wouldn't fall off every thirty seconds, it is still the sort of thing that shouldn't be undertaken in a kitchen such as ours.

To wit:

This is, more or less, the kitchen in my flat. It measures 3 1/2 metres by 2 1/2 metres, and I know, that sounds pretty spacious. But within that space, as well as what you see above, is a table, two fridges, a washing machine, a three-tier plastic rack which holds various things - spices, the tinfoil, our collection of plastic bags - and an entirely superfluous sink in the corner that doesn't work and which serves as storage space for various cooking implements. This image above was taken for a photo essay I did last year, so be assured that while the spatula indeed was on the floor because of natural causes (ie, someone dropped it there and didn't pick it up) it has since been moved. All that aside, can you imagine trying to make pasta in this space? It's not exactly the spacious, sun-warmed cobbles of Tuscany or the spacious, granite-topped stainless-steel abode of Nigella Lawson. If one person turns the handle of the pasta machine, the other person feeding the lump of dough in and out of the roller ends up standing in the hallway, clutching the ever-thinning sheet of pasta, weeping softly as flour gets trampled permanently into the carpet.

Such is the power of an evocative cookbook - in this case, Italian Comfort Food by the Scotto Family of New York. It has a recommendation on the front cover from Regis Philbin so, you know, it must be good. It is filled with family photos - the Scotto family all glowing and gorgeously Italian - and anecdotes of famous customers to their cafe, Fresco (did you know Jennifer Aniston likes their tuna salad? Giuliani was a regular? And my favourite, Bill Clinton once ate seven ice cream sandwiches meant for his dinner guests, while they sat there watching politely?) It is one of the few American cookbooks that has instantly appealed to me (I know you're the leaders of the free world but till you stop measuring butter in cups and sticks I remain unimpressed) and every single recipe gives me that feeling of kitcheny anticipation.

One such recipe was for ravioli with black truffles and red beets (or beetroot as we say here, and as I will from now on), which is the reason for my whole aforementioned rant about the Jeckyll-and-Hyde nature of my pasta machine and the lamentably tiny size of my kitchen. The recipe stuck in my head though and not only am I a sucker for beetroot, I also thought I could make use of this bottle of white truffle oil that I bought ages ago and have barely used since.



Perception is a funny thing though. Ravioli sounds pretty easy - lay out a sheet of pasta, make small piles of mixture, fold over your pasta, cut...but for me it was a classic case of easier said than done. After taking the above photo, I ended up individually wrapping the dough around the filling, pressing the edges together haphazardly and, towards the end, somewhat maniacally. I did about four or five ravioli at a time before heading back to the pasta machine to roll out another lump of dough. This was not a swift process, the dough would tear and refuse to stick to itself, and the beetroot would just...spread. Nevertheless, the finished product was utterly delicious, so if you want to recreate this emotional mess in your own kitchen, follow my lead.

I was pleased to see that the Scotto family recipe for pasta seemed to echo Nigella Lawson's - one egg per 100g flour, which kneaded together equals one serving. None of this Jamie Oliver/Gordon Ramsey business where it seems as though they're in silent competition with each other, trying to see who can have the most audacious number of egg yolks in their recipe. I'm not saying their pasta wouldn't be delicious, or that they don't know what they're doing, just...three words: current economic climate..

For the filling I deviated from the delicious sounding recipe to accomodate what I had in my fridge. This is what happened: I roasted two foil wrapped beetroot for an hour, till a cake tester could be plunged into them without resistance. They were then mashed roughly (and I should have whizzed them in the food processer but was too lazy, don't be like me) with 125mls sour cream, some chopped garlic, a few drops of white truffle oil, and some crumbled feta cheese. Once this was haphazardly and hamfistedly turned into ravioli, I cooked them in rapidly boiling, heavily salted water for about 1 minute.

And despite being the most woeful-looking, irregularly shaped ravioli to the point where it is almost an insult to Italy to name them as such, they tasted utterly marvelous.



So good I can almost forgive my pasta machine, even though I'm scared it might stab me in my sleep.
As you can see, beetroot isn't the most well-behaved of vegetables and its deep crimson juice seeped into the pasta dough, creating a marbled pink surface on the cooked pasta which wasn't really the least bit attractive. To serve, I tossed them in a little melted butter and sprinkled them with mint and parmesan. Despite appearances they really were good - the deep-toned creaminess of the sour cream mingling pleasingly with the sweetness of the beetroot and the almost terrifying pungency of the truffle oil, which made itself felt even in the tiny quantities that I used.

Tim and I went to a play last night, because we cultured like buttermilk. The play was God of Carnage, it's very recent and currently lighting up Broadway and starring James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels and Marcia Gay Harden. It is a French play but originated in English on the West End and starred the ridiculously cool Janet McTeer and Tamsin Grieg, plus the moderately cool Ralph Fiennes. With that alone in mind, it's quite exciting that someone in New Zealand managed to secure the rights to stage it so soon. The play itself was hilarious, but rather excruciatingly so, as the four characters onstage slowly became less and less able to maintain their social graces and good manners with each other.

What Wikipedia can't tell you however, is that at the age of 23 I managed to book tickets online for - how do I explain this - what I thought was the 2nd of May, but was actually the 1st. So, we had tickets for Friday night but I thought they were for Saturday night, and when we showed up to Circa Theatre on Saturday night wearing arty theatre-going clothes and anticipating an evening of light entertainment, the woman at the box office gave me a blank stare and said that we couldn't go in. Mercifully, after a stomach-clenching wait wherein I was able to contemplate my own debilitating uselessness, we were told that there were two free seats - not together, but whatevs - that we could take. My peevish hatred for the box office lady who laughed at my predicament softened into the deepest gratitude. All of which seemed to heighten the awkwardness that the characters on the stage portrayed. A particular treat was that it starred the brilliant Jeffrey Thomas, who I recognised instantly from one of his more recent roles as irrepressible hippie commune polygamist Vern in Outrageous Fortune, and whose rich, mellifluous voice is a delight to the ears.

Afterwards we decided to have a debrief over a drink (or, as I used to say before I started working full-time in an office, "a conversation") and found this delightful, utterly gorgeous place called Duke Carvell's, off Cuba Street. It was so lovely that afterwards I wondered if I dreamed the whole thing. We went on a whim - after aimlessly walking up Cuba, not being able to settle on anywhere, it appeared out of nowhere, tucked down Swan Lane, which is really an abandoned parking lot and therefore not as charming as it sounds. Duke Carvell's is quiet from the outside and softly lit with fairy lights - oh, I'm a sucker for fairly lights - and inside mismatched chandeliers and candles illuminate paintings of various sizes and the books and trinkets artfully laden upon the wall-mounted shelves.

Our dapper friend Scotty joined us for a drink, which was lovely, and then without warning a full-on brass band burst through the doors, circled the room playing their music, before leaving as swiftly and mysteriously as they came. I have no idea if the band were in cahoots with the owners of the place or if they were as bewildered as the rest of us, but it certainly added a delightfully surreal touch to the night. The drinks, however, are eyebrow-raisingly expensive, as though there's a $2 surcharge for the ambience...
___________________________________________________

Overheard In Our Kitchen

Laura: Man, that Duke Carvell's place was cool. Really gorgeous. I'm glad we found it.
Tim: Yep.
Laura: But so expensive. Like they had a $2 surcharge for the ambience or something.
Tim: Sure.
Laura: Heh. Surcharge for the ambience. I'm gonna use that in my blog.
Tim: Okay...
___________________________________________________

What came on shuffle while I was writing this:

1: Another Year: A Short History of Almost Something by Amanda Palmer, from Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
2: I Will Never Leave You, by Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley, from the 52nd Tony Awards performance
3: El Paso, by Marty Robbins, from Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs

Next time: Lamb shanks with Marsala. That's if the photos turn out pretty, difficult with braisy-stewy-casseroly type dishes...

Finally: Addicted to Twitter like I am? Thought so! Follow me by clicking these hyperlinked words!

Still Hungry and Frozen

I was highly excited anticipating the one-year-anniversary of my blog. I invisaged all manner of things - maybe some kicky new features, or a photo essay dedicated to the cat, or some kind of conceptual baking, or maybe a video, something new and fun to try and make our relationship last beyond the honeymoon, "hey this blog is mildly diverting" stage and into full-on commitment. But then I had to hand in a 3000 word essay, and if that were not enough we exceeded our 20gb internet limitation...by a lot. We lack the technology to make a cooking video happen and I was not feeling telegenic in the slightest. So, a few days late, I apologetically offer you this post, like a bunch of wilted flowers and slightly melted chocolates purchased at the last minute from a petrol station.

But really - it is exciting to me that this blog has existed for a whole year. I remember having the epiphany to make one, I don't remember when, it was just an idea that made so much sense to me. I'd read blogs and thought "I'd like to do that," and I read other blogs and thought, hubristically, "well I can definitely do better than that." Little did I realise that my badly lit photos taken on auto were not going to cut it with fickle blog readers. I rather naively assumed that my terrible photography would be seen as charming and positively daring, but actually it was just...terrible. And as I learned new skills (helloooo macro function) I gained more readers. But I'd like to think it's the content and recipes as well as the photography that makes people stick around, especially because my photos still have a long way to go. Indeed if you have a little time on your hands and you're up for a laugh, why not peruse my very early archives? I truly thought that all I had to do was put my opinion out there and the adulation would pour in. I love my blog wholeheartedly and with complete bias though, it has been a haven, a diary, a self-indulgent soapbox, a recipe file, and a record of my life for the past, swift-moving year. I look forward to seeing how long it lasts.



I went to the vegetable market on Sunday and gamely trudged back up the hill with my spoils, (sweating like a donkey all the while, as is the nature of Wellington hills) but it wasn't till I got my breath back and stopped perspiring that I realised how utterly gorgeous the vegetables were. They made me want to don a voluminous cape and floppy beret and paint them in a still life. Fellow food-bloggers, tell me I'm not the only one who thinks food is really preeettyyy.



I mean these would not look out of place in some medieval, suckling pig feast. I've honestly never purchased shallots before (don't faint, but I've always used onions instead when a recipe asked for it, well I am a student) which is probably why I'm so embarrassingly enthusiastic, but they were cheap and rather beautiful so I grabbed a bunch.



Oh asparagus how I love you. Especially when it's two fat, healthy bunches for $3, that can last for four separate dinners. I used the shallots and asparagus in an intriguingly delicious recipe from Simon Rimmer's excellent, inspiring cookbook The Accidental Vegetarian. It was so monumentally good that I considered making the whole thing again the next night, or perhaps eating the whole lot on my own and pretending it never existed. I've altered the recipe a bit as Rimmer's version was more coconut-happy than I go in for. It's a little fiddly but not difficult, and makes the kitchen smell completely fabulous.

Rendang Shallot and Asparagus Curry

50g butter
75g brown sugar (yes, it does sound like a lot and yes, I used less for the two of us)
20 banana shallots
400g asparagus
400ml tin coconut milk
3 T toasted dessicated coconut
Coriander to serve

Melt the butter in a pan, add the sugar and when it starts to dissolve throw in the shallots, peeled but left whole. Turn down the heat and cook slowly for at least 20 minutes, (he recommends 45 but they were more than fine with less). Blanch the asparagus and refresh in cold water. I sliced them into two-inch lengths.

Curry Paste:

1 onion, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
3 red chillies, or however much you desire
1 tsp ground coriander
1 T tamarind paste (or substitute lemon juice)
1 t tumeric
1 t curry powder
1 stalk of lemon grass (which I left out because I didn't have any)
pinch of salt

Whizz the lot together in a food processor, or chop and mix everything well like I did using my mezzaluna. This results in a chunkier but no less flavoursome paste. Heat a little oil in a pan and gently fry the paste, carefully, and stir in the coconut milk, letting it bubble away and thicken slightly. Add the now magically caramelly shallots and the blanched asparagus, letting it simmer for about ten minutes. Finish by stirring through the toasted coconut and chopped coriander. If you like, add a handful of frozen peas to beef it up (as it were) quite easily. This should serve four-six.



The combination of flavours were so perfect - zingy, spicy, earthy, fresh, sweet. I truly could have eaten this whole thing surruptitiously by myself. And shallots - oh my! Rich, mild, gently oniony, what have I been missing out on all this time!

My blog's one year of existence coincided rather bittersweetly with the closing of [title of show], one of the most exciting new shows on Broadway...I, of course, make this statement without having seen it at all, such is the nature of being a theatre fan from New Zealand. Rice Krispie treats are referred to in one of the songs, and I've had a distinct hankering for them ever since hearing it for the first time. Nigella has a version made with melted marshmallows which indeed sounds delightful, but I opted for an old Edmonds recipe for what we in New Zealand call Rice Bubble Cake, using honey and butter to bind the cereal together in sugary squares.

Rice Bubble Cake



125g butter (incidentally, one year ago a block of butter was $2.70 from the corner shop, now it's $5)
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon each of honey and golden syrup

Melt the butter and sugars together till gently bubbly. Once it has bubbled away for a little while, remove from the heat and carefully stir in 4-5 cups rice bubbles. Spread this into a waiting square tin, and allow to cool. The butter-sugar mix will be very hot, so don't go sticking your face into it or anything.



Rice bubble cake makes me reminisce twofold; I remember making this with mum as a child, wanting to eat the buttery sugary mixture so bad and not thinking it would be enough to cover all those rice bubbles. It also reminds me of my gap year in a boarding school in England, where the kitchen would serve up cakes of some sort for afternoon tea with soothing regularity. One of the mainstays of afternoon tea was rice bubble cake, sometimes it was sublime and sometimes it was crumbly and oily and weird. We never knew what happened behind the scenes to make it so, and frankly I don't want to know. But for those of you who've never tried this before, I know it looks a little odd, but just try and stop at one piece. Or three. Crunchy, texturally delightful, caramelly, buttery - it's great stuff.



To paraphrase [tos], let my blog be the Rice Krispie Treat?
____________________________________________________

Overheard in our kitchen: (in the throes of discussing what we'd do if we won the $30 million lotto this weekend)

Me: I could fund my own cookbook and get it done next year. Then I could create my own stage show around it, where I bake stuff and tell hilarious anecdotes and feed the audience and...maybe sing and dance...
Paul: You mean like an infomercial?
Me: NO! Like a proper stage show! But with baking, which I'd give to the audience! And it can promote my book but also be a fantastic piece of theatre in its own right!
Tim: So...it'll be an infomercial.
______________________________________________________

Well, I do have plenty of hilarious food-related anecdotes (particularly involving grapefruit and Jersey Caramels as friends and family will know from the many times they have been told). But that's the thing about imagining what you'd do if you won the lottery, especially if you have a particularly vivid imagination like me - your mind bounces from concept to concept and then you get overexcited and your heart starts to thump wildly with the very fullness of your own potential excellence and then you remember that you haven't won $30 million at all.

As I said earlier in this post, I handed in a 3000 word essay - well it was my final essay for uni. I have an exam on the 4th but my lectures, assignments, etc, are over for good. Luckily I've finished on a relative high, getting A's on two essays (on the social influence of Idina Menzel and the subordination of female Beat poets respectively) and loving all my papers. I started this blog while still in the middle of uni, now that I've come to the end of that time it's a little sad, but also exciting to think what might be in store for me next. Hopefully you, the reader will stick around with me - I'd flatter myself that this is kind of a fun read - and not just come here if Tastespotting tells you to.

In the words of Rent: "How do you measure a year in the life...how about love?"

In the words of the always inspiring Nigella Lawson: "I have made the most of being a food obsessive. For good or bad, it's my life, it's me and I don't see anything changing."

And appropriately, in the words of [title of show]: "I'd rather be nine peoples' favourite thing than a hundred peoples' ninth favourite thing."
.
So true. Quality over quantity any day. And ah, maybe next year I'll do something more exciting to mark the occasion.

Pasta Of The House

______________________________________________

I apologise in advance if this post is lacking in my usual sparkle and moxie (presuming of course that I usually possess said qualities), Tim and I went out last night to our good friend Dr Scotty's birthday shindig and...I awoke this morning with a sliiight (by which I mean thumping) headache. And now I'm craving apple crumble and so help me, we have no apples. Tim and I had a great night though, and I made some chocolate cupcakes to add to the general pool. At the last minute I adorned them with some garish sweets that mum gave me a while ago, and took a quick photo.

Above: Yes, I took the photo on Auto but I was in a hurry, my point being to illustrate the alarming extent to which these lollies resemble plastic. And don't they just? But nothing says "par-taaayyy" like an elephant on a cupcake. They certainly seemed to go down well.


When I saw this recipe for Manti last week in the September 2004 Cuisine magazine I thought, "I've got flour, I'm got mince...cheap dinner! Kapow!" It wasn't until halfway through that I realised I was actually knee deep in home-made ravioli, which, when put like that, sounded so much more complicated.





You'd think I would have figured it out sooner, since it completely resembles ravioli In. Every. Way. It really is easy in execution though, and has that rare virtue of being something new to do with mince. This is supposed to serve 6 as an entree or light lunch...but you could also comfortably serve it as dinner for two people like I did.



Okay I have a confession to make. After extolling the simplicity of this recipe, while re-reading it to type it up I just, JUST now realised that I actually missed out an important step. Where the recipe it tells you to cut the pasta into small squares, I just...didn't. So Tim and I ended up with eight large ravioli as opposed to many small, dainty pieces as per the recipe. I mean it was delicious but...missing a whole step of the recipe? In the words of Rush, "Why does it happen? Because it happens."

Manti - Turkish Ravioli

Pasta Dough:
1 egg
190g flour

Combine the egg with 1/4 cup water, mix into the flour and knead for five minutes till the dough is smooth and elastic. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for half an hour. Chill the dough that is, although feel free to kick back and relax yourself.

Filling: Mix the following in a bowl.

250g minced beef or lamb
1 medium onion, grated (I used some of Nigella's caramelised onion that I'd made earlier and frozen in 100g lots. I haven't blogged about it so...nevermind)
handful finely chopped parsely
pinch of good salt.


Cut the dough into six pieces, and roll out each piece as thinly as possible. I did this by layering it between two pieces of gladwrap, which made it clean and easy to roll without sticking. Cut each rolled out piece into 5 squares about 9x9cm. Place a heaped teaspoon of the filling in each little square, fold over diagonally and press down to seal. Bring a large pot of water to the boil, salt well. Cook the ravioli in batches for about 3 minutes each, then drain well.




Above: Yes, I did take this photo on top of the washing machine. Well, it was the only available benchspace. I'm still Laura from the block you know.


I served the giant ravioli with a sauce made from Greek yoghurt, sumac, and chopped garlic (that I'd poached in the boiling pasta water to soften and mellow the flavour). Roasted asparagus and cos lettuce on the side, coriander sprinkled over...it really was a marvelous meal, the pasta was not stodgy in the slightest in spite of my heavy-handed rolling and the sauce gave it that lovely rounded flavour that only garlic and more garlic can provide.

One more recipe, because this is too delicious to let it get lost in my archives of dinners that I've photographed...




From Simon Rimmer's excellent and meaty-in-the-non-literal-sense cookbook The Accidental Vegetarian comes Pan Haggerty, which you could describe as a kind of low-rent dauphinoise. It comprises astonishing proportions of butter, cheese, and potatoes, so need I say more?

.
Pan Haggerty
.
50g butter
1 onion, finely sliced
200g new potatoes, cleaned and finely sliced
75g mature Cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 180 C. Heat half the butter in an ovenproof fan and fry the onions till soft, then set aside. Put a layer of potato in the pan and fry for a few minutes. Layer up with fried onion and sliced potato, finishing with a layer of potato on top. Dot with the remaining butter, bake for about 40 minutes. Just before serving, grate the cheese over and pop under a hot grill for a few minutes. If you don't have an ovenproof fan, you can do what I did which was just transfer the fried onion and potatoes to a smallish pie plate. I forgot to layer the onions and just left them on the bottom but they went all caramelly and soft and wonderful so you know, serendipity! Oh and I used what was left of the Havarti cheese that mum sent down with me so feel free to use whatever you have to hand.
.
Once again, sorry for lacking in lustre, I'm just pretty weary. Tomorrow Tim and I will attend our last ever lectures at university, which is pretty heavy, although we aren't altogether finished - I have a socking great essay due on Monday and we both have an exam on the 4th. Hopefully after a good night's sleep I can produce the kind of bloggery that you deserve...especially since this blog is almost one year old. Good night!