when we walked through little italy i saw my reflection come right off your face

Ya girl is back. Or at least, ya girl is trying her best to be back. I'm still nowhere near being unpacked (my room somehow gets more embarrassingly messy the harder I try to clean? I dropped out of science early in high school but I'm pretty sure there's nothing in all academic teachings that could explain this phenomenon) but I'm cooking more and attempting to get back on the freelancing stallion and am generally determined to recapture my ambition. For something. I mean, I never lost my ambition of being outstanding in the field of excellence, I just lost my drive due to Extenuating Circumstances and if I'm being scrutinisingly harsh, which I don't enjoy, I probably got a bit exhaustedly complacent in that position of, well, not even trying to try. I'm not sure I'm quite approaching my old burn-all-candles-at-all-ends level, but I am rewatching a lot of Parks and Recreation to re-absorb all of Leslie Knope's power ("there's nothing we can't do if we work hard, never sleep, and shirk all other responsibilities") and I am trying to write more and I am going to start doing my chocolate cookie dough pretzel thing deliveries again!



Because ya girl is also somewhat broke. Moving house and being too busy/tired to maintain several sources of incoming cash is an expensive pastime. But also I miss scooting around town and dropping off parcels of deliciousness, like some kind of no-strings-attached moderately profitable fairy godmother. So if you're in the Wellington CBD region and want some of the good stuff for yourself or for your secret admiree, all the information you need is here.

As I said in my last post, I have started watching The Sopranos, and despite my immediate misgivings at the violence and boring wife-is-a-thankless-harpy outlawish-schlub-husband-is-horrible-and-also-the-beloved-hero tropes, it's so compelling. And it makes me crave Italian food something fierce. Initially I wanted to make meatballs but mine tend to fall apart and I didn't have it in me on this particular day to bounce back from that kind of failure, so instead I went for something very easy - pasta all'amatriciana. I was hoping that it would translate to something to do with matriarchy, but it gets its name from being a dish from the region of Amatrice. Which is nice in its own way - this is just pasta with bacon and tomatoes, but calling it by its proper name gives it a more official, elegant vibe, like, oh I'm just casually making myself this traditional recipe from a beautiful town in the Lazio region of Italy, how bout you?



It really is very simple though, and therein lies its charm - gloriously saucy enough to feel like you're doing yourself a favour, fast enough to not be stressful, familiar enough to serve up to fusspots. I feel like I've had several bad versions of this in my time at cafes that weren't trying very hard, but home made it's highly glorious. Thick tomato sauce, salty-sweet bacon, barely-melting parmesan - all twirled around ribbons of thick, comforting pasta. (Well, I for one find pasta comforting, it's probably my favourite food.)

I slightly adapted a recipe from the Scotto Family, whose book Italian Comfort Food I own and adore. Half a cup of olive oil may sound terrifying in these austere times, but it becomes part of the sauce, making it rich and deeply flavoured and delicious and more than otherwise just a can of tomatoes. However, I understand you using less. Olive oil is expensive. Their recipe called for bucatini pasta but I am a heathen and adore pappardelle, and it was on special at the supermarket - however if you can't find it, my sneaky and ingenious trick is to get sheets of fresh lasagne and slice them into wide lengths. Or use whatever pasta you fancy.

pasta all'amatriciana  

adapted slightly from a recipe by the Scotto family, serves two (or one with leftovers for lunch the next day, aw yeah) 

half a cup olive oil (or less, whatever)
100g pancetta or streaky bacon, diced (I used bacon but pancetta is superior if you can get it)
one onion, diced
one can chopped tomatoes
150g pappardelle pasta (or other pasta)
parmesan cheese, grated

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta according to the packet instructions, or until preeetty tender. 

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a saucepan, and fry the bacon in it till crisp and sizzling. Remove the bacon and set aside - I just put it on the plate I served the pasta on - and tip the onions into the still-hot pan, stirring them and allowing to cook until softened, but not browned. Basically until that harsh onion taste has been cooked out. At this stage, tip in the tomatoes and stir over a high heat till the sauce is thickened somewhat - maybe ten minutes - then tip in the bacon and stir again for another five minutes or so. Drain the pasta and stir it into the sauce, still over a high heat, and then remove from the heat, add as much parmesan as your heart desires, and serve. 

I haven't bought parmesan in forever, because every time I pass it in the supermarket I passively-aggressively sigh at myself like some kind of lazily-written thankless shrew wife in nearly any TV show and say "oh...no, no I shouldn't, that's expensive" even though the price is never going to change and I could pay a lot more for something else and have a lot less fun. I really should've bought some sooner, a fresh grating of it makes so many pastas and risottos more wonderful, and a little bit goes a long way. As I said a lot when I learned the phrase false economy: that's not false economy!

and it feels like home

There are a lot of things I don't do that cause varying degrees of incredulity in people - can't drive, can't ride a bike, have never changed a lightbulb in my life - but what seems to cause the most gasps is the fact that Harry Potter completely passed me by. I never read any of the books and at most I have half-watched the first movie. But I know several people who are majorly passionate about this series, and I have been wanting to read something that is charming but which I can gallop through for some time now, and so I just...started reading Harry Potter. Three days later I am up to book three, and can say with some authority that I now understand the resilient hype. It's so good! Hermione is so relatable, that overachieving, keen-to-inform-you-of-her-overachieving hero! Minerva is so icily awesome! Dobby sucks! A lot more of things referenced frequently on the internet make sense to me now! Hurrah for reading. Between Hermione and Leslie Knope, I'm at least surrounded by good influences. Now to allow myself to be aggressively influenced...

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title from: PJ Harvey, My Good Fortune. I've loved this song since I first heard it in 2000, with its jangling chevron-like melody and satisfyingly ridiculous drawing out of words at the end of each refrain. And PJ Harvey is obviously a goddess. 

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music lately

Beyonce's performance of a medley of her entire self-titled album at the VMA awards. This is so important. I cried, I got the chills, I cried again. I'm getting chills just typing about it, thinking about her face when she sings Jealous or the sight of her standing in front of the word FEMINIST in enormous lit up letters or when Blue says "good job mommy", I mean, just watch it. 

Liane La Havas, Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye. This wistful, dreamy Leonard Cohen song is made even more dreamy by her voice. 

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Maps. Wait. 

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next time: reading Harry Potter just makes me want to eat enormous feasts with hearty puddings and lashings of whipped cream, even though that's actually more of an Enid Blyton thing, there is a natural echo of her words in JK Rowlings' descriptions of food. Will see if I can make floating candles and a ceiling that looks like the night sky happen too. 

let me entertain you, and we'll have a real good time yes sir

Tim and I belong to a book group, which Ange, our ex-flatmate but still-friend started in early 2010. Every month we get together at someone's house and discuss a book. Last night it was at our place, a commitment that always fills me with joy. Firstly because everyone in the book group is really, really nice and fun to be with, and secondly because I get the opportunity to provide a spread for people. An opportunity I'm always keenly looking for. Normally I do one recipe per blog post, but instead today I've serving up three small nibbly recipes; Marteani, Beetroot Hummus and Cannellini Bean Dip; all in the name of playing host.

As I've outlined somewhere in my unrestrained 'About Me' section, I like to keep the recipes here fairly accessible, but also amazing. Every now and then though, usually under the influence of Nigella, something kind of impractical takes hold of my imagination.

Like Marteani. Which uses lots of Cointreau - quelle expensive - vodka, and Earl Gray Tea (hence its name) to make a cocktail of orange-scented sumptuousness. Cointreau is not the kind of thing I would normally have just knocking around. However. I had about an inch in a 750ml bottle that my step-grandmother had given me, and then I had a further litre bottle that I bought in duty-free on the way back from Tim's and my trip overseas in March. Both had sat untouched ever since they'd arrived (I think I got that partly-empty bottle in 2009?) and while it's good not to use up all your expensive things at once, whatever they may be, there's also a case to be made for actually enjoying what you've worked for before you drop it on the floor or something.

A little extravagant, sure...but never ever wasteful.

"I want your spirits to climb, so let me entertain you..."

Unfortunately I didn't have a better-looking jug to put it all in, but tra la la. That in the background was another duty-free conquest - a strapping 1.75 litre bottle of Absolut. As far as vodka goes (and I don't mean to sound like that guy from American Psycho, "I told you to keep Finlandia in this place") I'm very particular. There are just some horrible vodkas out there that I don't see any point in drinking. On the other hand, vodka is pretty pricey. Generally, I move between Absolut, for mixing (with soda water) and Zubrowka (yes, another duty-free, we really tested its limits) for sipping from a small glass over ice. When I drink at all. As I saw fit to last night, for book group.

If you've got a smallish amount of people coming around and the means to make it, I definitely recommend Marteani. It's a recipe from Nigella Lawson's book Nigella Christmas, and she suggests it with brunch.

Marteani

I tripled the tea content and halved the Cointreau - well, it was only a Monday, and Cointreau is still expensive. This made it go a lot further, while still maintaining a liqueury thrill. This would probably be ideal served in actual Martini glasses, but not having any, I just poured small amounts into whatever glasses we could find. Including a small glass jar shaped like a beer stein which used to have mustard in it (Tim bagsed that one.)

250mls/1 cup strong, cold Earl Gray Tea

250mls/1 cup vodka

250mls/1 cup Cointreau (or Nigella suggests Grand Marnier or Curacao or Triple Sec.)

Pour all the ingredients together in an ice filled jug. As I said, I used 750mls tea and 125 mls Cointreau. It was still extremely fine stuff.

Also I forgot to make ice ahead of time so I just put it in the fridge till needed: still good.

If you don't have resiny, syrupy Cointreau then Limoncello would be an excellent substitute - it can be pretty reasonably priced and is in that same juicy, citrussy family of flavours.

Should you be having people around, I also emphatically recommend the following dips. One - the Beetroot Hummus - is kind of involved, and the other - Cannellini Bean Dip - delivers so much disproportionate deliciousness for how simple its recipe is that I could cry happy tears just thinking about it. Alas, you really do need a food processor for these. A stick blender could probably do the trick, otherwise maybe find a friend who's got one and share some of the resulting dip with them.

Beetroot Hummus

Adapted from a recipe in the 2011 River Cottage Diary, a demonstratively multi-purpose book sent to me by the lovely Lisa at Prime TV.

3 medium sized beetroots, leafy tops and creepy tails trimmed off

1 piece of white bread, crusts removed

50g walnuts, almonds, brazils (whatever you can find - probably not peanuts though, their texture and flavour isn't quite what's needed here)

Ground cumin or Ras-el-hanout

Salt and olive oil to taste

Wrap each beetroot in tinfoil and roast at 180 C/350 F for about an hour and a half - till a fork can easily pierce through. Allow to cool. Toast whatever nuts you're using - if you like, add them on a small tray to the oven that the beetroot are in once you turn off the heat, if that makes sense.

In a food processor, blitz the nuts and the bread until fairly fine. Remove the beetroot from the tinfoil, rub off their skin - it should happen easily, leaving you with oddly silky-smooth peeled beetroot - and chop them roughly before adding them to the food processor as well. I don't recommend you wear white for this. Blitz again till a dark, chunky purple-red paste forms. Add a little salt, the spice, and a little olive oil if you like, and blend again. Spatula into bowls and serve.

Note: I completely missed the instruction in the recipe to add a tablespoon of tahini - which I love, but didn't have any of anyway. It's still brilliant without it, but it would add a little richness and texture, plus that sesame flavour.

Cannellini Bean Dip

This incredible recipe is one I've adapted slightly from the Scotto Family Italian Comfort Food book. It has barely any ingredients and yet is the most ridiculously creamy, luscious thing you can imagine. Especially considering it's made from beans, not known for being life of the party, food-wise.

2 cans cannelini beans

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (or avocado oil, or some other oil that you don't mind the taste of)

Salt

Drain the cans of their liquid, pour the beans into the food processor, add a little salt, and blitz to a thick, wheat-coloured paste forms. Pause, scrape down the sides with a spatula, taste to see if it needs more salt. Blend again, pouring in the oil. That's all.

The beetroot dip excellently plays up the vegetables sweetness and earthiness with the nuts and the cumin respectively. The beetroot becomes rich during its time in the oven yet the finished result - despite the nuts and bread - is very light. The cannellini dip is just all plush and velvety, like the dip version of...a bunny rabbit.

In case you're wondering, the book I'd chosen was Barbara Anderson's Long Hot Summer, which we all agreed was fine, but seemed to leave many potentially dark or exciting plot avenues gently unexplored. That said, we've been reading things like Therese Raquin and Frankenstein, it's possible we just weren't ready for such mildness.

Unfortunately the lurgy that I was labouring under a couple of weeks ago seems to be taunting my immune system once more. The weather in Wellington has been headline-makingly cold, and there has even been moderately unprecedented snow around the place - not in our neck of the woods, unfortunately. When I get the time, I plan on getting the thyme (HA! HA!) to make this restorative sounding brew. Anyone else in NZ had snow?

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Title via: Sondheim's amazing musical Gypsy. Let Me Entertain You is a thematic tune running through the whole show, starting it off as performed by Baby June in her squeaky voice and eventually developing into what Louise sings during her stripping montage. Gypsy in all its stage and screen forms has starred some seriously stunning women over the years as Rose and Louise - Angela Lansbury, Patti LuPone, Bernadette Peters, Ethel Merman, Bette Midler, Laura Benanti, Natalie Wood...Hopefully I'll see it live one day with a similarly worthy contender for the roles.

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Music lately:

I think I'm becoming a bit obsessed with Judy Garland. There, I said it. I might have listened to her Live At Carnegie Hall record three times in a row (which takes up quite a bit of energy, what with it having four sides and all.) I love Lena Horne's famous version, but when Judy sings "can't go on, everything I have is gone" in Stormy Weather my eyes can't help but start pricklingly anticipating tears. (It really doesn't help to listen to her singing while reading a biography of her.)

Moana and the Moa Hunters: AEIOU, especially as analysed by Robyn Gallagher on her fantastic site 5000 Ways To Say I Love You - wherein she will watch every single NZ On Air funded music video she can find.

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Next time:

Well, I saw this and any alternate plans disappeared.

brown sugar, how come you taste so good

I've got a bit of that Sunday night 'blah' feeling that can happen after a really good weekend. The reason for this weekend going so well was because several family members (Mum, godmother, godmother's sister) coming from afar to visit, acting as entourage for my godsister who was having her university house ball. Now that they're gone and my mind has to turn to practical things, like waking up early tomorrow for work...You know how it goes. Of course there are several cures for such feelings: make sure you live in a charming flat on Cuba Street for one thing, listen to the relentlessly sunny revival cast recording of Hair, eat tofu, absorb the happiness of those around you that the Wellington Phoenix football team actually won a game, that sort of thing. I happen to be doing all those things simultaneously right now so there's barely a moment to feel wibbly.

I spontaneously invited everyone round for dinner on Friday night. We had take-out noodles from my noodle hut of choice: Chow Mein Cube on The Terrace, plus hot chips from the excellent chippie across the road. I made a salad and they bought the wine. Pudding consisted of brown sugar meringues that I'd made that evening after work (I know, how deranged housewife am I) and two different kinds of ice cream, Kohu Road vanilla and Whittaker's Peanut Slab. It is with some pinkness of cheek that I admit my love for the peanut slab ice cream, since I had so emphatically stated that Kohu Road is the only kind of non-homemade ice cream I'd ever consider buying. Well, now I can add Whittaker's to the list. It's flipping lovely stuff.

These meringues have the edge on their paler sisters - I normally find meringues to be a bit too blatantly, in-yer-face sweet, whereas here the brown sugar gives complexity of flavour and a pleasing dark caramel taste. You could of course use something like muscovado sugar for an even more intense experience. I found this recipe in Italian Comfort Food by the Scotto family, a cookbook that persists in changing my previously held perception that all American cookbooks are unusable and ask for incomprehensible ingredients like Bisquick and half-and-half.

Brown Sugar Meringues

Adapted from Italian Comfort Food by the Scotto Family.

4 egg whites
1 cup brown sugar

Preheat oven to 140 C/300 F and line a tray with baking paper. You may need two trays but I managed to squish everything onto one. This recipe is so simple you could fit it into a Twitter update. Whisk egg whites till frothy. Carry on whisking, slowly adding brown sugar till a stiff meringue forms. Drop spoonfuls onto tray, bake for an hour. You should get 16-18 out of this. And I made it with an actual whisk so don't feel like you can't either. No need for heavy machinery here.




What's really, really fun is then to take spoonfuls of ice cream and sandwich it between two meringue halves. This becomes almost impossibly sublime after a day or two when the meringues have softened slightly. It's so good you practically need to slap yourself back into reality afterwards. The contrast between cold, creamy ice cream and resolutely dry room temperature meringue is surprisingly seductive while the strong caramel of the slowly cooked brown sugar counteracts any excessive sweetness. They're aesthetically pleasing too, calling to mind those fancy macarons that you see all over the place but in a much simpler, ramshackle fashion.





It's a little difficult to really paint a picture in words how delicious this is, especially when it seems so simple. I might have to eat another so that I'm inspired into further colourful description.

If your life is like the Tom Wolfe novel Bonfire of the Vanities you might consider making your own ice cream to go with the meringues. It will drive home to your dinner guests that you are an aggressively accomplished cook. Their self esteem will wither and the only way they will be able to jump over this raised bar is by baking individual souffles at their next dinner party. Even if your life is not like a Tom Wolfe novel and does not involve making individual desserts while wearing pearls, and even though we're all well aware by now that there is perfectly sufficient stuff available on the market, making your own ice cream is not difficult. To paraphrase an argument that I often employ (if the Dire Straits were that good, surely I'd like them?) if ice cream was really that difficult then surely I wouldn't be able to achieve it.

A while ago I got it in my head that palm sugar might be a delicious ice cream flavouring. It is highly likely that I should have been focussing on spreadsheets at the time which is why the idea was not immediately acted upon. However this time of idea-incubation allowed me to also consider adding kaffir lime leaves to this icecream-in-my-mind.



Last weekend I had a crack at it, making a custard boldly infused with kaffir lime leaves and a syrup of palm sugar. The two were mixed together and frozen and I'll be honest, it actually worked. The flavours were subtle but intriguing. Not overtly limey and not wildly sugary, but both elements definitely present, cutting through the frozen custard with their unfamiliarity.

I'll give you the recipe I used - which I made up - but I'm not quite sure it's the exact final prototype yet. There was something about the texture that I wasn't entirely sure about. However Tim, with his simple rustic wisdom, said I was overthinking and he couldn't see anything wrong with it. So feel free to give it a go yourself.

Palm Sugar and Kaffir Lime Leaf Ice Cream

4 egg yolks
3 tablespoons brown sugar
600 mls cream
5 dried kaffir lime leaves
4 lumps of palm sugar (does this make sense? Palm sugar generally comes in rounded lumps. There might be a better way of describing it)

Heat half the cream (300mls) with the kaffir lime leaves in a pan till it's pretty hot but not boiling, just slightly wobbly. Remove from heat and let it sit for a while to allow the lime leaves to infuse. Whisk the egg yolks and brown sugar together gently, then pour the heated cream into it, still whisking. Rinse and dry the cream pan and then transfer the egg-sugar-cream mix back into the pan and heat it gently, stirring all the while, till it thickens into custard. This isn't hard at all but it can be good to have a sink full of ice cold water ready to plunge the pan into to stop it cooking. You can choose to remove the lime leaves at any stage here, but I left them in as long as possible.

Put the custard aside to cool while you put the palm sugar into a pan, and add 1/2 cup water. Heat very gently till a syrup forms. Depending on the palm sugar it may take a while to break down. The aim of this excercise is more to melt the sugar into a usable liquid rather than cook it into a caramel, if that makes sense. Once it has dissolved into liquid put it aside to cool for a little bit before whisking it into the custard (with lime leaves removed) and finally, stir in the final 300 mls cream. Sorry if this all sounds a bit complicated.

Pour into a container and freeze, stirring occasionally. It makes around 900mls which is a good, non-threatening quantity for an experimental batch like this.

Anyway it must have been pretty good because Tim and I managed to get through it in less than a week. Largely aided by the fact that it tasted so mind-blowingly smashing sandwiched between meringues. Be not afraid to try it. The instructions may not fit on a Twitter update but they're pretty straightforward.

Last night the lot of us - Tim, myself, visiting family members went to La Kasbah, a Morrocan restaurant down the Left Bank arcade of Cuba Street. It's an adorable place with a short but solid menu, gorgeously painted walls and friendly wait staff. We were all very much taken with our meals and in particular I loved the tumeric-yellow bread that came with the breads and dips. Well, I hope it was tumeric that gave it that radioactive tint. I'd love to know their recipe because it's gorgeously moreish stuff. It was a seriously lovely night and I definitely recommend it if you're looking for another BYO to add to your inventory.

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The title of this blog is bought to you by: The Rolling Stones
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On Shuffle whilst I type:

Where Do I Go? sung by Gavin Creel and the Tribe from the 2009 revival cast recording of Hair. It's more thematic than plot-heavy, which makes sense for a show that follows its own rules, but I have the feeling that this is currently among the best ways to spend a few hours on Broadway right now. The current Broadway cast is so full of energy and joy that even a million miles and continents away it is impossible not to love them.

Meadowlark by Patti LuPone from Patti LuPone at Les Mouches. Recorded in 1980 this is an utterly gorgeous and occasionally hilarious album.

You've Got Her In Your Pocket (live) by the White Stripes from the Blue Orchid single. Thought this song is most excellent on the album, live it just...soars.
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Next time: Nigella Lawson has this chocolate Coca Cola cake in How To Be A Domestic Goddess, and I thought it might be fun to switch the cola for ginger beer. It was flipping lovely, let me assure you, and you'll be finding out all about it in good time...

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...
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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...
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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!