shank goodness

Breaking News: IT'S CURRENTLY LESS THAN 48 HOURS TILL THE FOOD SHOW (actually it already started today, but I'm going on Sunday, and I'm hopeless at maths and can't actually figure out specifically how much less than 48 hours it is away so...momentum sustained!) I have blog business cards at the ready and my camera batteries charged and once at the event I will blog...hard.

We Wellingtonians are lucky folk. Sure, Auckland gets EVERYTHING, but we have Moore Wilson's food warehouse, which is superior to any food place I've ever been. And friend, I have been food places.

That said, I popped in there casually last Sunday, looking for quinces and brisket - you know, the usual basics - and found neither. Being as Moore Wilson's is well on the other side of town from where I live I decided I wasn't leaving without buying something to make the trip worthwhile and, in that sort of daze that ensues after walking a long distance and contemplating how long it will take you to get back home again, I ended up purchasing some succulent, happy farm-raised lamb shanks and a bag of organic pearl barley. The brisket I wanted for a recipe I saw in the latest Cuisine magazine, the publication of my heart, but with shanks in hand an idea of my own materialised quickly...

(Speaking of quinces, I hope I haven't missed their season. I understand it lasts from about 7.40am May 1st to 4.20pm May 10th, well in the Southern Hemisphere at least.)

Lamb Shanks with Marsala, Tomatoes, and Borlotti Beans

A few things you should know prior to the recipe reading experience:

1- I made this up on Sunday, so it hasn't been thoroughly tested or anything.

2- The lamb shanks came in a pack of three, even though lambs have four legs. Can anyone explain this as it has been preventing me from focussing on more important things in life.

3-This type of casserole is very low-maintenance, feel free to add other things to it. This is just what I did...

In a large casserole dish, place two onions, finely sliced, four cloves of garlic, also finely sliced, and two carrots, chopped into batons. On top of this, place your lamb shanks. Pour over 125 mls dry Marsala, 400 mls water, and a tin of chopped tomatoes. Add a couple of bay leaves, place the lid on top, and bake at 160 C for an hour or two. About half an hour before you're ready to serve, rinse a tin of borlotti beans and add this to the casserole dish, stirring a little. You may need to add a little butter and flour rubbed together to the liquid, which will thicken the sauce as it cooks in the oven. Serve as you like - over rice, couscous, potatoes, or as I did, wet polenta.

Is there a word for the moment where you're stirring your polenta and you taste it to see if it's done - if all the grit has cooked into delicious softness - and in doing so you burn the roof of your mouth? I bet the Italians have, like, thirty ways to describe this.

Above: No false modesty here - these lamb shanks were really good. I don't think you could go wrong with the ingredients though, so maybe culinary conservativeness on my part was the reason it turned out so well. The meat straddled a pleasing crossroads, being partly melt-off-the-bone tender and partly maintaining enough reassuring 'bite' to it, to ensure it didn't lose its identity in the dish entirely. Marsala is amazing, adding its reliably fabulous flavour to the whole shebang. And the borlotti beans held their own, providing an earthy counterpoint to the sweetness of the meaty young shanks and the creaminess of the polenta.

By the way, I LOVE polenta. I make it in an unorthodox way (if you're Italian, cover the eyes of any young children around and avert your own) in that I add the cornmeal to the water while it's cold, stir till smooth, and then heat that mixture to the boil. It's just that I haven't mastered the art of adding the cornmeal to boiling water without it siezing up in unforgiving, solid clumps that will not be whisked out. And there are few things more depressing than lumpy polenta.

The next day, inspired by a post on the lovely Sarah's blog (when I say inspired, I think I read the post around six month ago) I used the leftover lamb shanks in a risotto.

I sauteed two chopped onions and a couple of cloves of chopped garlic, then added carnaroli rice (actually I accidentally dropped the bag into the pan, spilling out quite a lot of rice grains. This is not the method I recommend you take. Chronic clumsiness + obscenely expensive artisinal rice = howls of pain). After stirring this for a bit, I poured in a generous slosh of Noilly Prat - from the bottle pictured in my header picture, come to think of it - and then stirred in the tomatoey sauce from the lamb shank dish, and plenty of water, stirring till the rice absorbed it. I carried on in this fashion - add liquid, stir, absorb, etc, and then finally chopped up all the remaining meat off the third shank and folded it into the risotto, whose grains of rice had now swollen puffily to absorb the meaty, winy, tomatoey juices.

Is there an Italian word for that thing where you eat so much risotto in the process of making it - bearing in mind that you have to stand there stirring it for at least half an hour - that by the time it gets to eating the finished product for dinner you're not really hungry? From what I nibbled stoveside, it was delicious, a really hearty, wholesome, heftily flavoursome dinner. So thankyou Sarah for the inspiration, now that the opportunity has finally arisen! I should point out that Sarah went on to make leftover leftover-stew-risotto risotto cakes, however I cannot even attempt to achieve those dizzy heights of food recycling.

Speaking of Wellington, if you're ever lurking near the Terrace (ie, the office building hub of the city) I can thoroughly recommend the coffee at Rise, where my work team had a little farewell lunch for a beloved colleage. I hate goodbyes but I loved Rise. The service was impeccable - attentive but not creepy, sassy but not rude. She's a fine line. The food was excellent, if a little on the expensive side, but you could tell it wasn't scooped out of a vat out the back (and if it was, they did a fine job of disguising the fact). And, as I said, the coffee - in this case a long black - was perfect.

Rise Cafe

90 The Terrace (straight across the road from the top of the Woodward St Stairs)

Wellington City

04-472 2400

______________________________________________

On Shuffle while I was writing this:

1: A Thousand Beautiful Things/Beautiful Day - by the fantastic Julia Murney at Birdland, one of the few people I'd trust to take on Annie Lennox...can be found on her album I'm Not Waiting

2: Deborah - T-Rex, from John Peel: A Tribute

3: I'm Straight - Modern Lovers, from their eponymous album, which I finally found after a long search this year. It's surprisingly elusive...

______________________________________________

Next time: I'm blogging the Wellington Food Show. Well, someone has to - last year when I did it I got the blankest stares from most of the people running the booths, and I'm endeavouring to change that. It's nothing heroic, mostly self-promotion, but nevertheless something I feel strongly about. Also I have this urge to make butter from scratch and bought myself a litre of cream with which to do so.

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!

rock the oat

There is something almost blissful about a Sunday where it's raining softly and you have no pressing tasks ahead of you. I'm the first to acknowledge that there's nowt more depressing than a quickly diminishing Sunday afternoon, but a gentle rain and a little slothfulness can counteract that swiftly. Right now I'm casually blogging and shmoozing the internet. Later on I'm going to make some bread rolls - in itself something best done when you have time to knead the dough and let it rise - and shape meatballs which will be simmered in rich tomato sauce. On a Saturday this might be a bit too slow-paced, not exciting enough. But on a rainy Sunday - perfect.

Before I get too nauseatingly earnest...I spent yesterday perambulating between the kitchen and my computer with equal laziness. Not that it was a day wasted - Tim and I were up at 4.50am to get to the dawn service. For those of you who don't have a working knowledge of New Zealand, 25th of April is ANZAC day, a time of remembrance and acknowledgement for those who have participated and lost their lives in war. (The acronym stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps.) Although largely associated with WWI, it encompasses all those who have served. I won't go too far into it because you'll be able to tell that I've just reworded stuff from Wikipedia. I got home from the dawn service at about 7am (I had to walk up the hideous hill as the cable car wasn't open) and excitedly anticipated having the whole day ahead of me to do necessary, productive things. Then I fell asleep for three hours.

World War I is of particular interest to me, probably influenced by my mother's own enthusiastic study of this time. I'm not pro-war in the slightest, but the horrors of these times shaped New Zealand irrevocably and I am lucky enough to have visited several areas of Belgium and Northern France where young Kiwi men - some pathetically young - lie buried in graves that bear row upon unfathomable row of white crosses.

.

Anzac biscuits are part of New Zealand baking tradition, not exclusive to any particular day, but what with the power of suggestion and all I decided yesterday, once I'd come to from my nap, would be as good a day to make some as any. The accepted story behind these biscuits is that Kiwi women sent them over to the troops in WWI because they were economic to make and kept well - but I don't know for sure and again, one doesn't want to appear to have plundered Wikipedia for information. Frankly, most of the ones you can buy in shops are really not that nice - all hard and mealy and undelicious. Much better made at home, and a gratifyingly buttery way to feel a connection with my country.

.

ANZAC Bicuits (never, ever 'cookies'.)

.

As every recipe you will ever find is basically the same, I don't feel the need to attribute this to anyone. I did, however, replace the normal white sugar with brown and up the butter slightly. And it produced a superior biscuit.

.

150g butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon golden syrup

1 cup plain flour

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup dessicated coconut

1 teaspoon baking soda

Set the oven to 180 C/350F. Melt the butter, sugar, and golden syrup together gently in a pan over a low heat. Once it has formed a delicious caramelly puddle, stir in the dry ingredients. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and mix it in quicky and thoroughly. Form mixture into small balls on a baking tray and carefully flatten with a fork (you may need to squish them together if the balls fall apart). Bake for 12 minutes, remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Above: Uncooked Anzac biscuits, ready for the oven. This recipe should make about 30. Having said that I ate a lot of mixture. Maybe it makes more than 30. You'd think I'd learn.

Once baked, they are far superior to anything you'll buy from a shop. Buttery, oaty, a little crisp and - as I said last Anzac day - "chewy with tradition", they are like apple crumble topping in cookie form. A seductive concept, yes? There's little fancy or fussy about these biscuits but they're child's play to make and considerably economical as far as baking goes.

Earlier this week Tim and I were fortunate enough to see Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant in Push, a show that has been touring worldwide and made its way to Wellington. Once again, if you want to know the history of Sylvie Guillem's life, Wikipedia will do a better job that I can (I don't mean to sound all caustic, it just puts me off when blatant chunks of information that came from some site or other on peoples' blogs appear sandwiched between the normal writing.) What you do need to know is that she is a legend in her field - dance - and widely considered one of the most brilliant dancers of modern times. She's not young - for a dancer that is - and being as New Zealand is by and large geographically estranged from where anything exciting happens, it was an utter privelege to have the opportunity to see her.

.

Guillem was so...limber. Like a flame, flickering across the stage. It was wonderful to watch someone utterly in control of their body, dancing with grace and ease and power. Maliphant was something of a revelation as well - and the two of them together were just faint-makingly beautiful. In the final piece of the programme they danced together as though there was a magnet connecting their bodies - Guillem would fling herself fearlessly at Maliphant and somehow land on his shoulder with one leg in the air. Not a hint of exhalation or exhaustion from either of them. The whole thing was just...exquisite. Celebrity alert - we saw the gorgeous Loren Horsley, (from Eagle vs Shark with Jemaine Clement), and - somewhat unexpectedly - a man we were quite convinced was Danyon Loader, Olympic medal-winning swimmer. Also present were a lot of ballet-dancery type girls who reminded me that I will never be a ballerina. Nevertheless, I can still be someone who appreciates and loves dance, and someone who dances round the bedroom with my iPod on...someone who arabesques while drying and putting away dishes and who plies to pick up something off the floor...

.

Finally: I still haven't kicked this dirty cough that I have. It's croupy, and worse from 6pm onwards - I end up coughing nonstop at about 2am, and my poor tired brain can't keep up with it. Anyone have any ideas? I'd rather be a hippy and not get antibiotics if I can help it, and I know your grandmother had some kind of natural remedy you can share with me. For what it's worth, I've been drinking my body weight in fresh ginger and lemon tea and have eaten a lot of garlic...any ideas muchly appreciated!

.

Next time: I did some homemade beetroot ravioli last night, and will probably bake something frivolous between now and whenever I blog next. Can you believe April is nearly done? Coming up on the calendar- The Wellington Food Show, which I am ridiculously excited about and shall be blogging about with vigour. We've managed to secure tickets to see charming comedian Dylan Moran on the 11th and the band Okkervil River on the 15th, and then on the 19th it's our graduation. Busy times ahead...

.

New stuff! After every blog I'll list three songs that came on shuffle while writing this blog. Why? Mostly narcissism probably, but also because I love music with a dark passion and I like the idea of possibly broadening your horizons, providing a little insight into who I am, or at the very least getting The Final Countdown stuck in your head.

.

1: Let Me Drown - Brian D'Arcy James and Idina Menzel - The Wild Party Original Cast Recording

2: Mad Tom of Bedlam - Jolie Holland - Escondida

3: Farmer John - Neil Young - Weld

house of the rising bun

While in my last post I extolled the joys of the five-day Easter weekend, I spent this whole week at work scrambling to get up to speed with everything. Hence, my lack of presence round here. The intention was definitely there, but the time didn’t materialise. Anyway the upshot of this is that if the food blogging world was a party, my hot cross buns would be Kate Moss, arriving scandalously late and with a fabulous rockstar on their arm, making everyone else wish they’d dared to be so louche and devil-may-care.



At least that’s what I tell myself.

As well as my seasonal buns, you can also look forward to a surprising amount of cafe reviews and a little shoutout to myself for being born upon a particular day (yesterday, if you're wondering).

To provide a bit of context, I made my initial batch of hot cross buns on Easter Sunday. I’d just flown back to Wellington from Auckland where I saw The Winter’s Tale. It was a spellbinding production, for a three hour play it flew by and stellar performances were delivered by all, despite the fact that the theatre was far from full (cough ‘economic climate’ cough). I’ll be frank, I wasn’t wildly taken with Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet (and much less taken with Julia Stiles’ Ophelia) but in The Winter’s Tale he was fabulous, playing his character like the lovechild of Bob Dylan and Captain Jack Sparrow. But Shakespearean.

Before I went up to Auckland I scoured through my Cuisine magazines and sussed out where some fun foodie shops were so I could hunt them down and possibly part company with a business card or two for my blog while spending time and money therein. The fates (and possibly stupidity) were against me as I just couldn’t find a bus to Mt Eden, where said shops were located. I can’t say it served to endear the city to me, however I did spend a happy hour or so at the art gallery taking in the delightful Yinka Shonibare exhibition.

I also met a friend at Alleluya Cafe in St Kevin's Arcade on Karangahape Road. Apparently it is the sort of place that attracts the sort of people that attracts the sort of words like "hipster" and "scene", but it wasn't intimidatingly so when I arrived on Saturday afternoon. My coffee, a long black, didn't arrive but the guy behind the counter looked so shocked - nay, crestfallen, when I told him I'd been waiting for a while that I didn't harbour any animosity, especially when it finally arrived with a complimentary biscotti and was the smoothest, mellowest black coffee I've had in forever. My friend and I shared a slice of lemon yoghurt cake, which was pleasant, and a piece of Jewish ginger cake, which was way good and still haunts my dreams a week later.

Alleluya Cafe
St Kevin's Arcade, K'Rd, Auckland CBD
09-377 8424
Verdict: Ignore the sneaking suspicion that you're not cool enough to be there because the coffee is gorgeous and it was worth the plane fare for that Jewish ginger cake alone.

Back in familiar Wellington and on a Shakespeare high, I got stuck into the joyful task of making hot cross buns following Nigella’s recipe from Feast. Everything was going well until the final hurdle. I burnt the sodding things. Considering they took the better part of the afternoon I was mightily unhappy, but I could only blame myself for letting them bake for too long.

Having said that it took only a bare amount of convincing to make another batch the next day. Upon closer inspection the burnt buns were still salvageable – I cut off and discarded all the severely blackened parts, bagged the lot up and put it in the freezer, where they will one day become the base of a warm, spicy bread and butter pudding. I can’t wait. For round two I tried an Alison Holst recipe, partly because I was intrigued by her method and partly because there’s something suspiciously trustworthy about her.

Hot Cross Buns

As I said, the method is a little unusual but don’t be scared – it’s seriously easy and the finished buns have a marvellous texture.

1 cup milk
½ cup hot water
2 T sugar
4 tsps/1 sachet active dried yeast
2 cups high grade strong bread flour
100g soft butter
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
1 T mixed spice
1 T cinnarmon
1 t ground cloves
1 cup currants/sultanas
2-3 cups high grade strong bread flour

Place the first four ingredients into a large bowl, making sure that the liquid is neither too warm nor too cold before you add the yeast. Stir in the first measure of flour, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and leave in a warm place to rise. This won’t take a heck of a long time – maybe half an hour.

Meanwhile, cream the butter and sugar together, add the egg, salt, spices and dried fruit. Following a suggestion of Nigella’s I added some cardamom seeds here which worked beautifully. The spices get really diluted in the dough so don’t worry about the fact that the measurements look large. When the original mixture has doubled in size and is looking spongy, mix in the fruit mixture and the second measure of flour. Knead till it comes together in a springy ball, then form into 16-24 buns. Arrange on a paper-lined tray, cover with plastic wrap and leave to rise, which they should do significantly. Don’t leave them for too long – trust your eyes.
Alison recommends a mixture of flour, butter and water rolled into thin strips for the crosses but I found that they tended to fall off after baking. Anyway, brush the buns with milk and lay the crosses o’er them. Bake uncovered at 225 C for 10-12 minutes till browned lightly.



Well Alison, you win this time. These hot cross buns were immensely delicious, filling the kitchen, as with many kitchens across the world, with a warm, cinnamony scent, like a hug in perfume form. I flagrantly added a handful of chocolate chips to the dough and...I liked it. A lot.



Needless to say, they were at their best still warm from the oven and liberally buttered. I'm thinking this recipe is definitely a keeper and would like to make these buns in other forms - without the crosses - throughout the year, as the basic recipe is too good to keep confined to one day in April.

Speaking of one day in April, yesterday was my birthday and I gotta say, I didn’t have high expectations. I almost forgot that it was coming up – it felt as though it was a shadowy date in the vague distance as opposed to being on the immediate agenda – and I’ve had a hearty cough getting the better of me this week, not to mention the fact that I was working. Nevertheless it turned out to be one of the nicest self-anniversaries I’ve had in a long time. Everyone at work was lovely – there were balloons and flowers on my desk, a coffee appeared out of nowhere, I was taken out to lunch and a homemade banana cake replete with candles was produced at the beginning of a three hour meeting in the afternoon, all completely unexpectedly. Extended family members from home sent me a kitchen blowtorch, which I’m quite wild to use on a crème brulee pronto, I had cards sent from dad and my great-aunty, and there were text-messages a-plenty. Mum, who is in Argentina, put a video of her charming classroom singing Happy Birthday to me in Spanish and English. With all of that it’s amazing I wasn’t weeping sentimentally the whole day. In case you are wondering, I am now 23, which is hopefully still young enough to be 'interesting' as a food blogger.

After work Tim and I bought a bottle of cheap red and found this adorable middle Eastern BYO called Casablanca to quaff it in. The service was perfect, the food was cheap, plentiful and fast, and the atmosphere was delightful. It’s not very fancy, but it’s fun, and the food tastes comfortingly home-made as opposed to assembled. A small plate of complimentary bread and dips appeared after we sat down, and we were asked if we were ready for our mains to be made after we finished our starters, both nice little touches that made the dining experience that much better. I wish I’d had my camera to take a photo of my taboulleh which was particularly delicious – full of verdant, fresh parsely and juicy tomato.

Casablanca
18 Cambridge Tce (off Courtenay Place)
Wellington CBD
04-384 6968
Verdict: It's not the Logan Brown but it's probably more fun (unless some kind benefactor wants to shout me dinner there and refute this opinion). The menu could charitably be described as succinct, but what's there is nicely done. I can definitely see myself returning.

From there we spent a significant amount of time at one of my favourite haunts in town, a themed bar called Alice, tucked away down an unassuming side road off Tory Street. You tunnel through a quiet, curtained corridor and emerge into a softly-lit, split level room which seeks to recreate some kind of Alice in Wonderland experience. The drinks are expensive but classy and potent, and you can make them worth your while if you get one of the cocktails for two which comes in a teapot. The bar is much lower than the floor itself which adds to the surreal effect and there are framed illustrations from the novel and distorted mirrors everywhere. I’m not describing it very well but it’s a great place to sit for hours having cosy discussions about things that seem very important at the time, which is exactly what we did.

After concluding that the only way we’d get away with sitting there any longer would be to spend a small fortune on another cocktail, we decided to hightail it out of there for a fortifying coffee. I have to say, betraying my country village background maybe, that personally there is something hugely exciting about getting a coffee or a bite to eat late at night – it makes me feel deliciously sophisticated and worldly, and of course by being so excited about it instantly renders me distinctly un-sophisticated. But there you have it. We chose to patronise Deluxe, which is apparently something of a Wellington institution. It has so far always passed me by, because it’s only fairly recently that I’ve had more of an income to spend recklessly on coffee from funky cafes.

Deluxe is hugely popular in Wellington, even at 11.00pm we had to strain to find a table. I’ll be honest, our coffee wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but I suspect this was due to the fact that it was late at night and we’d had a couple of drinks and were therefore perhaps not a priority for quality control. Which is a shame, if this is true, but it’s better than the idea that their coffee is generally below average, yes? I’ve certainly had worse, and the delicious chocolate brownie that Tim and I shared raised our opinion of the place. We sat there for about half an hour, pretending to be hipsters as we drank our late night black coffee and chuckled over the pithy content in Vice magazine. I think I’ll definitely try Deluxe again, as 11.00pm on a Friday night is hardly condusive to a thorough, well thought critique of a café.

Deluxe
10 Kent Terrace (Next to the glorious Embassy Theatre)
04 801 5455
Verdict: This place probably is too cool for us, but that won't stop me returning to give it a proper scrutiny. As it is, my opinion doesn't matter since it is constantly packed with customers.

This morning Tim and I met with our friend Dr-to-be Scotty at Roxy Café. I hastily snapped some photos of what we ate, the images aren’t great but the food was. Special mention must be made about the hash browns, which were large, crunchy without and deliciously potato-ey within, and quite the nicest that I’ve had in a long time. Good friends and hash browns is a winning combination and we had a lovely morning talking smack with Scott.



Above: My French Toast with fresh fruit (and I ordered a hash brown on the side.) The toast itself was great, and generous at three pieces, although I felt that the chopped apple, pear and banana that made up the bulk of my "fresh fruit" was a little cheap, could they not have stretched to a stone fruit or something? The hash brown was fantastic.



Above: Tim and Scott ordered big breakfasts with extra hash browns. According to Tim his poached egg was perfect, and of course you already know about the hash browns at this place. Although I was comfortably full after my meal, I found myself looking wistfully at the small but intriguing lunch menu, which features some delicious sounding choices. The service was fine, I like that they brought out a carafe of water right away, and the cafe itself was a cool and airy respite from the heat of the outside world this morning.

Roxy Cafe
203-205 Cuba St
Wellington City
04-890 3939
www.roxycafe.co.nz
Verdict: All I can think about right now is their hash browns. This place is very nice and I'd definitely like to try it out again, the pricing is pretty reasonable so this shouldn't be an issue. They get an extra star for serving butter on a little dish with the big breakfasts. This sort of behaviour is to be encouraged.
If you made it through all that then congratulations. And I mean really reading it, not just looking at the pictures. There's gold in them thar paragraphs.

Next time: While up in Auckland I bought a fabulous Italian cookbook which I've already delved into and of course you know how excited I am about my kitchen blowtorch. I forsee a creme brulee on the horizon...

instant karma

_____________________________________________________


What’s exciting about Easter when you’re a kid? The chocolate. When you work full time? The chocolate…and the five day weekend. Since I’ve finished uni the holidays have completely dried up so I’ve been anticipating this long weekend with glee for quite some time. Tomorrow I’m zooming up to Auckland to see the Bridge Project production of The Winter’s Tale (a play by this underground, cult author named Shakespeare) which has made its way round the world to New Zealand, leaving excellent reviews in its wake. Even at face value it’s interesting – the Oscar and Olivier award-winning Mr Kate Winslet, Sam Mendes is directing it and it features a jaw-dropping cast including Ethan Hawke, Rebecca Hall, and Sinead Cusack. For a Shakespeare nerd like me, it’s going to be one heck of an evening. Sunday morning I’ll be back in Wellington to make hot cross buns…and I’m almost as excited about that as I am about the play tomorrow.

For some reason, it has been forever since I've made couscous – the food so nice they named it twice. I can't think why, other than I've been distracted by brown rice for too long, because couscous is the perfect fast food, just add boiling water and you’re good to go. I can’t think of any other starch that’s so utterly instant. Even after having a glass or three of wine at a a colleague's farewell get-together on Wednesday, I was able to deal with it and make a perfectly acceptable dinner. If I’d had to make something that required more concentration, like a risotto, it’s quite feasible that I could have flagged the lot and headed out for fish and chips instead.





Just as easy as couscous is what I made to go with it – halved tomatoes, roughly chopped butternut squash, cauliflower florets and foil wrapped beetroot, bunged in the oven and roasted for an hour. Not fast, but also not requiring any great amount of thought or committment. When the veges were nearly ready, I heated cumin, coriander and fennel seeds with a dash of cinnamon and ginger in a dry pan, then added the couscous and mixed them altogether. At this stage they smelled heavenly – just the sort of spices you want to have on a chilly evening. Boiling water was poured over, I removed the pan from the heat and covered it with a plate. A bare minute or so later the granules of couscous were tender and swollen, and I forked through a little butter before dividing the lot between two plates. On top of this went the vegetables, a tumble of baby spinach leaves, and chopped capers and walnuts. For a dinner so simple, comprised of ingredients in such unadulterated form…it was delicious.

Today has been pleasantly blue-skied but you can tell it’s Autumn and not midsummer January – it’s chilly in the shade. Tim and I decided to capitalise on our time in the sun and set off towards the beautiful Botanical Gardens (or "the botans" as we call it), a mere ten minute walk from our flat to feed the ducks, a favourite activity of mine. Never mind that whenever we go we are the only twentysomethings amongst the toddlers and encouraging parents, it’s really fun. Tim and I got to the duckpond and noticed with trepidation that there were bits of bread floating untouched in the water. I tossed a morsel of bread hopefully towards the water where it landed with a splash, and was met with a look of disdain by one of the ducks. One of them – I swear – actually sighed. It slowly paddled towards the piece of bread and ate it dutifully before looking at me as if to say “Happy now? We’re full, give us some peace already!” I guess we weren't the only people who had decided to feed the ducks that day.

Dejected, we left the duck pond. Fate had other plans though, because as we headed up the road to our flat, we were lucky enough to see a tui – one of New Zealand’s native birds – barely a metre and a half away from us in a tree, singing his wee heart out. If the ducks had complied and done what they were supposed to, we would have missed the tui completely. Must have been meant to be.





(photo care of google images - I'm good, but not that good)



For some reason there is quite a significant urban tui population in Wellington. Whenever I see them I always wonder if they go and visit the tui in the forests and countryside, and talk about inner-city pressure and complain that you can’t get a decent kowhai flower in the middle of the night or something. Anyway, I’ve never seen one so close before and this particular specimen was adorable – quite rotund and almost like something out of a Disney cartoon as its stomach puffed in and out comically while singing its distinct, discordant call. Presently, a second tui appeared and Tim and I decided that there was some kind of burgeouning courtship happening, because both of them engaged in this hilarious behaviour where they fluffed out their feathers, and coyly pretended to ignore each other while hopping from branch to branch. Eventually they flapped off together to another tree – I get the feeling Tim and I were cramping their style, and obstructing how they were trying in their way to be free. (ahem, can't resist quoting Leonard Cohen unnecessarily there). I’m no audobon, heck, I'm not usually even that fussed on nature, but it was quite an enchanting moment and completely unexpected in this big-city setting.

Hmm. Somehow we decended into the ornithology round-up segment, my apologies for those of you who were expecting recipes and instead ended up with curmudgeonly ducks and rutting native birds.

By the time we got home I was hungry and managed to convince myself that the best course of action would be to make us some instant ice cream, as it would use up some of the fruit taking up space in the freezer, plus there was this bottle of cream in the fridge rapidly deteriorating. Nevermind that we’d just gone for a hearty walk, my need to create food comes first!

Yes, that’s right. I decided to make ice cream as a quick snack. But how? I hear you cry. Well, with the glazed eyes of a fifties housewife in an advertisement, I’ll tell you! Once you try this, no other foodstuff will satisfy!







I put two frozen, peeled bananas and about a cup of frozen boysenberries in the food processor and whizzed them to an appealing purple mess. Then, with the motor still running, I emptied in about 250mls cream. To explain it scientifically, the whole lot just kind of seizes together and turns into ice cream. The most deliciously textured, amazing ice cream you will ever try. The trick is to eat it right away, because freezing it for another day ruins the beautiful texture. Not only does the flavour of the berries shine through, you also get the delightful taste of fresh cream. And the colour is out of this world. All that in about 30 seconds and it fed Tim and I generously. For more people, just add more stuff. You could use any combination of frozen berries – or try with just frozen bananas. The important thing to remember is to keep the ratio of liquid to frozen fruit fairly even. You could of course use yoghurt, which wouldn't be wrong, but I can't emphasise enough how lovely the simple taste of cream and fruit is in this.





It’s just as quick to eat as it is to make, too. And yes, Tim did eat his out of a beer glass – or ‘barfighting mug’ as we call them. What can I say, he's a student. I had mine in a Nigella Lawson measuring cup. What can I say, I'm weird. But seriously - make this stuff. It’s so good it actually deserves it’s own fifties-style Madmen ad campaign in celebration of it - something along the lines of: “with this instant ice cream, now I have more time to iron his shirts!”



I hope you all have a lovely Easter break and do whatever it is that makes you happy. As I said earlier, I'm pretty hyped up for my hot cross buns on Sunday, but the age old question must be raised - to add or omit chocolate chips? I know they're not traditional, but then neither am I, and I did the trad thing last year...Any suggestions?

pie fidelity

_________________________________________________

Do you ever get to that stage in a recipe, when perhaps the walls of your kitchen are schmeered with sugary paste and there's butter in your hair and a light dusting of flour coats all surfaces and you kind of think to yourself "Why did I attempt something this ambitious?" You've decided to make a braised dish involving seven wine-based reductions that weren't immediately apparent the first time you scanned the recipe, or maybe it occured to you that a poached meringue topped with toffee sculptures would be the perfect follow up to a meal, when suddenly it's 10.30pm and you've used every pan in the house and have internal bruising from trying to whisk egg whites to stiff peaks.


Maybe I paint a slightly dramatic picture, but the pie I made on Wednesday night more or less fell into this category. Luckily, this high-maintenance girlfriend of a recipe was worth it eventually because it tasted incredibly good, despite my ham-fisted tendencies threatening to ruin it at every step of the way...





Based on a recipe I found in Cuisine magazine (and you can find the original recipe here) the idea is to roll a mixture of grated eggplant, crumbled feta, eggs, mint and dill up into sausages with buttered filo pastry then coil them round in a pie plate, to create a pie with a difference. I'll be the first to admit that my own wobbly, bulging pie didn't quite match the neat-edged vortex of filo of the picture in Cuisine. This could be due to filo pastry being incredibly fiddly - I seemed to tear it every time I set my pastry brush down. Also, I replaced the eggplant with grated zucchini but didn't bother to let them drain in a colander and - getting what was coming to me - the mixture was quite liquid and difficult to wrangle.
.

I very nearly considered biffing it all and ordering in a curry, especially when the filled rolls of filo kept breaking as I laid them in the pie dish. I also didn't factor in how long it would actually take to bake (my advice to you all: factor in the time something will actually take to bake) so we had a relatively late dinner by the time it was done. Finally, it was a nightmare to slice up neatly. But luckily it tasted amazing, and how could it not, with all the good things in life like butter and pastry and feta appearing in such proportions. Would I try it again? Yes, and next time I'd be more careful in reading the instructions. And maybe renovate my kitchen so I have enough benchspace to deal with all the filo pastry. At present our benchspace falls into the "laughable to non-existant" end of the scale.

I took a slice to work the next day for lunch and waited hopefully for people to say "my stars that looks like a complicated, deliciously gourmet pie...what - you made it? What an asset you are to this company" But no-one did. Tasted good second time round though.


I had a day off in lieu from work on Friday. Tim and I went back to the Maranui Cafe thinking that at 2pm on a weekday it might be quiet. We thought wrong. It was packed, we had the choice of only two tables, and there was a steady stream of customers entering. I must say, my nerves were feeling a little jangled by the time we got there. You see - and I should perhaps warn you about the x-rated content here - on our way to the bus stop, I noticed a cicada resting casually - leisurely even - on my chest. I sort of froze up and flapped my arms ineffectually at Tim, who gallantly came to my rescue and flicked it away. Somehow it went down my top and decided to it quite apparent that my cleavage was not where it wanted to make a permanent home. At this stage I had no other option but to more or less remove my top. I'm quite thankful that ours is a quiet road. Because of this hair-raising incident we missed our bus - luckily they are fairly frequent - and between that, and the fact that the bus we did catch managed to break down twice on the way, I had a dark feeling that the whole thing just wasn't meant to be.

But it was. We finally arrived in Lyall Bay, climbed the stairs up to the cafe, and were seated immediately near (but not right in front of) the picture window. I ordered the vegetarian big breakfast and the very act of doing so made me feel a little more calm. By the time it was ferried to me by the charming, friendly waiter, I'd graciously made my peace with the world (but not that wretched cicada.)



Above: The vegetarian big breakfast, called the "Victory Breakfast" on the menu. It's dangerously good. I'd walk barefoot to Lyall Bay to taste those tomatoes again. Notice the generous dollop of pesto, and the size of the dark, glossy 'shrooms. The 5-grain bread (from Pandoro) was so delicious I nearly fainted with every bite.



Above: As you can probably surmise from the vast quantities of meat, Tim ordered the non-vegetarian "Big Bay Breakfast". He said the bacon was delicious and I can vouch for the quality of the kransky, as I audaciously stole a piece. The waiter who brought us our dish said there had been some kind of stuff-up out back with the poached eggs and said we were more than welcome to order fresh ones, but neither Tim nor I - fairly discerning when it comes to our eggs - had a problem with them.

Obviously this alone just won't do. We were going to buy cake to share afterwards but we were both so visibly unenthusiastic about how it would reduce the actual cake-per-person ratio that we quickly decided to do the logical thing, which was to get two cakes to share.




Above: A plum and coconut tart with a chocolate pastry base and yoghurt. It was lovely - the coconut gave the tart a delightfully dense, moist texture which contrasted with the smooth, ascerbic slices of plum dotted throughout. The pastry gave a further contrast in flavours without being too sweet. The yoghurt was nice as an accompaniment but we mostly chose it because it was offered for free and we like to squeeze out every last drop of value-juice.




Above: The caramel star cookie had the most wonderful filling. I may be a little biased since I have an intense love of caramel flavours, but nevertheless it was a nice cookie. The biscuits themselves sandwiching the filling were pleasant enough and not overly sweet which I think was a good choice.

As with last time, the Maranui Cafe has earned my whole-hearted recommendations. It's very easy to find as well - just jump on a number 3 bus to Lyall Bay. Although I have no idea what day of the week is best in terms of being relaxed about finding a table. I'll be honest, I was more impressed by the savoury options than the sweet, although I will stress that they didn't taste bought in and probably weren't. I do find it rare that a cake or pudding in cafes will knock me off my feet with its deliciousness. This could be that I'm not eating at places that are super-expensive, but I don't think it's that big an ask.
.
Now, I don't run a cafe or restaurant, but is it that hard to make your own cakes and desserts? Surely you are running such an establishment because you actually like making food? I hate it when I go out to dinner and the meal itself has been amazing but then the blah, blatantly bought in pudding disappoints. Don't even get me started on the state of the abysmal muffins you get served everywhere these days (especially at airport cafes - it's a kind of fatalistic instinct I have that whenever I'm stuck in an airport I get the urge to spend money on overpriced cakes...) What companies out there are purposefully making these challengingly dry, unloveable muffins?Isn't that appallingly wasteful, when their time and resources could be spent making quality cakes instead? I realise I'm talking about several things at once here but...any thoughts? Am I expecting way too much? I think not.

.
In other news, Mum is still in Argentina and I'm loving reading about her escapades on her blog. Daylight savings has started here and while it means that it will be darker earlier in the day, I'm adoring this transition stage where you wake up in the morning and realise it's earlier than your body thinks it is and you can go back to sleep - bliss! Finally, Tim and I are currently very, very into 30 Rock. I don't tend to get into TV shows when they're actually on TV as we have no reception and I prefer to just buy seasons on DVD where there are no ads, which is why we're so late to this particular party. But it's brilliant and densely so, with about 7 one-liners per humorous minute and Tina Fey has created a highly endearing main character in Liz Lemon.
.
Next time: Not sure...although I suppose since Easter is a-coming I'll probably try my hand at hot cross buns again.

viva las veges

_________________________________________________
.

It's the miracle of life! I have borne fruit! (well, a vegetable, to be precise)




To grow you is to love you.

It seems I can't pick up a magazine or lifestyle section of a newspaper without some recessionista sighing smugly about how they are positively overrun with their homegrown zucchini and if they have to eat another fritter they will just die. Tim and I, with all the best intentions, embraced our inner hippies and exchanged a large amount of coin for various packets of seeds, a bag of potting mix, a pair of gloves that make your hands chafe and a trowel that bends at the slightest pressure. Three months of tenderly weeding our little garden, gently throwing coffee grounds and potassium-rich banana peels at it in the anticipation of a bounty of zucchini, beetroot and runner beans...


And our impotent, nutrient-deficient soil threw forth one, solitary sodding zucchini.


I couldn't be prouder. Okay, so gardening isn't as easy as every chatty columnist claims it is, (I mean, exactly where are our beans and beetroot?) but the endorphin increase I got from this single vegetable must equal a positively delirious hallucinogenic head rush if you actually manage to harvest an actual garden of edible goodies. So we're planning to buy some more seeds and start again - the grow must go on...





The zucchini was sliced lovingly and went into a ratatouille to accompany the above roasted chicken on Sunday night. I had a feeling that I hadn't eaten meat in forever and needed to remedy this immediately by consuming the sort of protein you just can't get from lentils. When we do eat meat I want it to be good. Luckily the chicken I purchased from Moore Wilson's was tender and fleshy and tasted like the happiest ex-bird ever to socialise and dust-bathe in its natural environment.


While I was being unorthodox, and continuing with the homegrown theme, I thought I might as well make some flatbread to mop up the chicken and ratatouille juices. I don't know about you, but if the gap between the present moment and when I last made bread grows too wide, I become a little antsy. Making bread is just something I really enjoy - watching the unlikely mixture of flour and liquid come together as I knead it, the slow swelling of the yeasted dough, and the incredible smell it imparts as it bakes. To say nothing of the ridiculously wonderful taste of it hot from the oven (with butter, thank you...)


I've made this recipe a couple of times before, it's a very easy dough to work with and while home-made flatbreads aren't perhaps as visually rewarding as a proudly towering traditional loaf of bread, they are just as delicious and make a meal feel like a feast.




Garlic and Parsely Hearthbreads adapted from How To Be A Domestic Goddess, by Nigella Lawson.

500g bread flour
1 sachet (7g) instant yeast
1 tablespoon nice salt (if you're using iodised table salt, halve this amount)
300-400mls warm water
5 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat oven to 190 C. Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl, then stir in the water and oil. Stir to combine then knead till it becomes a soft, springy dough, which I find happens quite quickly with this particular recipe. Form into a ball, wash out and dry the bowl, tip in a little olive oil and turn the ball of dough in it before covering it with clingfilm and leaving it to rise for an hour or so. Meanwhile, trim the tops off two large heads garlic, dribble with a little olive oil and wrap loosely in tinfoil, then pop n the oven to cook for about 45 minutes. If you sit the bowl of dough on top of the warm oven it will aid the rising process.





Once the dough is sufficiently risen, punch it down and leave it while you remove the garlic from the oven and turn it up to 200 C. Divide the dough in two and press each out into a large, roughly oblong shape (you will need two lined baking trays for this) Prod them with your fingers to make dimple marks and cover them with a teatowel and allow to prove for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, Nigella recomends blitzing the cloves of garlic (squeezed out of their skins) and a good bunch of flat leaf parsely in the food processor but you might find it easier just to chop it all together. Mix in a little olive oil either way, and spread this fragrant mixture across the dough.

Bake for 20 minutes or so until the breads are golden brown and cooked.


These are unbelievably delicious.





Is it slightly obscene that the two of us ate roughly one and three quarters of these enormous flatbreads on Sunday night?

I've also been doing a bit of baking. I like to keep the old tin full at all times in case of any unexpected dips in blood sugar from The Diabetic One, but I just like to bake selfishly for its own sake too, to be honest.

I found this recipe in the February/March edition of the magazine Essentially Food. It can be hit and miss in terms of content, but it's improving and they are really worth sifting through because there's almost always a couple of brilliant recipes in there. This is one of them - Belgian Slice. I don't know if y'all around the world get Belgian biscuits which are essentially two small spicy cookies bound with jam and bearing a disc of pink icing. What they have to do with the nation of Belgium is beyond me - perhaps they'd be more appropriate if they smelled of fine beer and were sandwiched together with aioli, but who am I to question culinary history? This following recipe is infinitely easier, combining the flavours of Belgian biscuits in non-threatening slice form.





Belgian Slice

120g butter
120g sugar
1 egg
1 Tablespoon golden syrup

2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons mixed spice
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup raspberry jam

Preheat oven to 170 C. Cream the butter and sugar, then add the egg and beat well. Mix in the golden syrup and then the dry ingredients. Press the mixture into a baking paper lined swiss roll tin and spread carefully and evenly with the jam. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Essentially Food recommends covering it with pink-tinted icing before sprinkling over raspberry flavoured jelly crystals but as I didn't have any in the house, I compensated by adding raspberry flavouring to the pink buttercream instead.




There's something about the refined, spiced biscuit underneath and the garish, artificially flavoured buttercream and the contrasting textures of each that is both comforting and strangely delicious. Like a culinary crossroads between "childish" and "grown-up" flavours.

I'm really tired this week, all this going out to gigs and such is kind of catching up on me. My feet are bruised from being constantly stood on in audiences and my neck ached all last week from craning my neck (being undertall, I was doing this quite a lot...) The Kills last Wednesday were great fun, I was right up in the front and could practically grope their achingly hip, Kate Moss-dating ankles. However being up the front meant we were dealt a terrific mauling due to the extremely vigorous jostlings of the audience. We emerged feeling like potatoes that had been pressed through an expensive ricer (well those weren't Tim's exact words). At Kings Of Leon on Friday it wasn't much better, even though we were considerably further back. They were in cracking good form and handsome as ever, even though they didn't talk as much as they did at their concert last year. The next big thing on my horizon is the production of The Winter's Tale, directed by (gasp!) Sam Mendes, up in Auckland and Sylvie Guillem back here in Wellington later next month. I think I can confidently say that watching Shakespeare and ballet should be fairly moshpit-free.
.

In other news, (self-pimping alert here) I've been asked by menumania.co.nz to write for their blog. Check out my first post by clicking ---------------> here. I'm still finding my feet with the direction I want my posts to take but it's fun to stretch myself and certainly an honour to be noticed and invited!
.

Next time: Bearing in mind that what I say will happen next time often bears little relation to what actually happens next time...I have this pie recipe I really want to try from an old edition of the gorgeous Cuisine magazine. Watch this space.

won't get fooled again

Two things that cause within me a sense of intense anticipation and upon which there is much potential for happiness or dismay - a new cookbook, and a new avocado. You know what they are when you go into the shop, you know that they can be awesome, you might even pick them up appraisingly to gauge whether it's worth your time and money. But it's not till you get them home, open them up and try them out that you really know what they are like inside.

I've had a pretty fortunate run of things lately with my avocado buying - every last one of them has been firm but yielding, nuttily rich and buttery and as chartreuse as a satin blouse from 1995. I was able to take advantage of the fact that Tim was out one night last week and made myself a solitary dinner of grilled mushrooms (one of Tim's least favourite vegetables), spinach, and a whole avocado. A private pleasure, is the avocado - I'm loathe to share once I've found a good one. If you ask me for a bite of mine I'll probably sigh and roll my eyes and make you feel bad that you even suggested it. But after this particular dinner, even someone as elephantine of appetite as I had to admit that a whole avocado is way too rich for one person.

It was a pretty fabulous meal though, one that I think will definitely go in my little notebook of potential recipes that will pay off my student loan. I clamped two large, flat field mushrooms in the George Forman grill, and while they were stewing away I used my mezzaluna to make quick work of roasted peanuts, capers, and a slice of preserved lemon. This was spooned over the outstretched palm-like cavity of the mushrooms and grilled again for another couple of minutes until wonderfully fragrant. I crumbled feta on top of them and sat them on a bed of spinach leaves, and then chopped up my triumphantly green, whole avocado.

For something containing no carbohydrates and bugger all protein it was hugely filling. I don't know if this is a well documented problem - The Foodie's Dillema perhaps - or just a personal quirk, but does anyone else ever find themselves in that position where they are becoming uncomfortably full, but can't stop eating because (in this case) the avocado is so delicious and I can't waste the opportunity for this perfect avocado over something as trifling as my waning appetite? I'm not sure if I explained it well, but it's a bit like how I always eat lots of food if it's there for free, even if I'm not hungry...Don't even get me started on the caveman-style, eating for the next six years that I do at buffet tables.

Anyway, please do try the mushrooms because they were amazing. There's no point being modest and coy, they really were delicious. They're gluten free and vegetarian to boot, although I guess you could leave off the feta and call them vegan and dairy free as well.

As I mentioned earlier, avocados and cookbooks have many similarities. I tried out a recipe from a new cookbook of mine recently, Jo Seagar's The Cook School Recipes. It was my first recipe from this book and I was really excited and it went DRAMATICALLY WRONG. Is there a disappointment as disappointing as gathering together ingredients and time and excitement and ending up with a gluey, sticky, doughy mass instead of a cake? I don't want this to stop you from rushing out and buying Jo Seagar's book - the culinary version of getting back onto a pretty horse that bucks you I suppose.

But riddle me this: does the idea of a cake, made solely from 2 cans of crushed pineapple, 4 cups self-raising flour, 1 1/2 cups sugar and 3/4 cups dessicated coconut, mixed together and baked for 45 minutes not sound somewhat unlikely? I mean, I can handle the fact that there are cakes out there that don't have butter in them, and not everything is leavened with eggs. And I really wanted this to be amazing, because I loved the idea of such a store-cupboard, economic-climate friendly, and delicious sounding cake. Unfortunately it was awful. Even baking it for a further hour and a half couldn't turn it into anything resembling a cake and it was far too gluey to serve as some kind of exotic trifle base. But with the hat of resourcefulness upon my head I turned to the woman who will never let me down - Nigella Lawson - and found a way to at least turn the non-cake into something useable.

In her book Nigella Christmas, La Lawson has a recipe for these little truffly bonbon things made from crumbled fruitcake, melted chocolate, liqueur, and golden syrup, which are then rolled into balls and festooned with white chocolate and cherries to look like miniature Christmas puddings.

So I thought why the heck can't I create pina colada truffles using the crumbled up pineapple cake instead of fruitcake? I used melted white chocolate (125g) and a splash of Cointreau along with the golden syrup (3 tablespoons) and using my increasingly sticky hands rolled this challengingly viscous mixture into small balls. Tim and I then set to with toothpicks spearing the chilled truffles and rolling them in melted white chocolate. A fun job, but truly, you need more melted chocolate than is humanly fathomable to coat these truffles. Ours started off luxuriously blanketed, but the ones towards the end were only kind of smattered in chocolate. The main thing is that they tasted curiously...wonderful. A fine example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I am of course predisposed to like these since I'm a mad fiend for the white chocolate, but there is something appealing in the combination of chewy, fragrant interior and crisp smooth exterior. And I love not wasting food. Although a small voice in my head says that I would have saved more money had I just thrown the cheap cake in the bin rather than adding expensive chocolate, liqueur and more chocolate to it. But whatevs.

.

Of course if you wanted to recreate these without damaging your nerves, go out and buy a sponge cake, allow it to go stale, adding a little pineapple juice and coconut as you go. But like me, you needn't be restricted by Nigella's recipe. I'm sure there are truffles just begging to be made out of anything - stale blueberry muffins, a chocolate cake that didn't rise, the last of a lemon and poppyseed loaf (which would probably be equally sensational coated with dark chocolate as it would white). Let your imagination run wild. And as for Jo Seagar's book, like I said I'm not put off and I'll definitely be trying something else out of it soon. It would be fantastic to hear from any other kiwis out there that have had success with this cake though. Surely the recipe must work or it wouldn't have made it into the book at all, yes?

.

Like Julia Murney (and Patti LuPone before her) in Evita, my mother will be able to say "What's new, Buenos Aires," as she is now officially in South America. I look forward to using this newfangled invention they call Skype to keep in touch with all her exciting news. My younger brother is heading to Australia next week to help out a dear family friend of ours at the motel she owns, and my dad, keeping it local, is working hard with the help of others on maintaining momentum in the fight against the intensely dislikeable Pukekohe Waste Petroleum Combustion Ltd who, as I've said time and again, are trying to render Otaua Village a lifeless vacuum by thwacking an unwanted waste oil plant there, regardless of the children, livestock and history that the place is teeming with and with full knowledge of the fact that we don't have a lot of money or resources to fight them with. Very admiral stuff.

The reason that Otaua Village is so present in my mind is because I was just there on the weekend - which also accounts for my rejuvenated vigour in trying to promote and defend our cause. The reason I was up home is because Tim and I were fortunate enough to be able to go to see The Who with Dad and my brother Julian. Well, what's left of the Who. People of a certain age and perhaps background (like the man who owns the chip shop down the road) will scoff and say "that's not the real Who," well, that's what they're calling themselves and I'll take it, especially as I'm only 22 and it's the only way I'll ever come close to experiencing this sort of zeitgeist-embodying, era-defining music, the sort of music that many people of my generation listen to on their iPods with a yearning nostalgia for an age they never even born in. I could describe the evening for you but instead I've gathered my thoughts together in the form of a bad poem.

.

The Who

Saturday, 21st of March

Our seats are excellent

If I had a dollar for every mullet haircut

Hello Sailor are the opening band and hearing Gutter Black live is a joy

Then the Counting Crows, who play...competently

Feelings of mild ambivalence towards them

turn into feelings of "Why are you here and why are you not the Who already"

The man sitting next to me eats slice after slice after slice of plastic-wrapped, processed cheese

the scariest cheese of all

Finally The Who appear

Roger Daltrey dapper and youthful of face, Pete Townshend wearing a hat

They are wonderful

Both in good voice

Nearly faint from the brilliance of Baba O'Riley

The knowledge that my godfather, a longtime Wholigan and fan to end all fans is in the audience makes me even happier

Forgot how fab the guitar riff from My Generation is

Their background videos rival Roger Waters' for dizzying intensity

Hey! Ringo Starr's son is on drums!

Feel benevolent towards the world, even the horrible tall people in front of me

A bittersweet feeling at the end with just Daltrey and Townshend onstage together...

Praise mercy our dubiously parked car was not towed away

.

Next time: I just got a bunch of second hand Cuisine magazines and I'm in one of those I-want-to-cook-and-bake-everything moods but I haven't really got anything specific planned yet.