The Three Cheeses

This is about a story, but as it's a story about cheese (among other things), I thought it would be okay to post it here. Last year I wrote The Three Cheeses for the Goethe Institute competition for a Grimm Fairy Tale for Aotearoa. It didn't win one of the three prizes, but the judge, Kate de Goldi, commended five other stories and mine was one of them.
          Yesterday it was my turn to be posted online on the Institute's fairy tale blog. To read it, go to The Three Cheeses. You can rate the story by going to the end and clicking on the last star for the rating you choose (so click on the 3rd star to give it 3/5, the 4th star to give it 4/5, and so on). The 12 best rated stories will be published in book form later this year. I've had lots of emails about it, but my favourite is this one from Lucy,  who writes the great food blog The Kitchen Maid :

"I am sitting at my laptop (which I have switched on in desperation, being unable to sleep) and tears are rolling down my face. This story is just beautiful. It has also given me an uncanny craving for cheese."

Three weeks to go...

Hot off the publisher's desk - the cover for my e-book, to be launched in June by Awa Press.
To whet your appetite, here (made public for the very first time!) are the ingredients:
To start with
1 More than enough
At home in Mount Eden, 1945-1965
2 Colour cookery
A husband, a kitchen, children, 1965-1972
3 Revolting
Bad food and women's liberation, 1945-1972
4 Mish me kos
Two years in Albania, 1973-1974
5 Bon appétit
Seduced by French food, 1958-2000
6 On not eating
Losing my son, 1979-1987 and after
7 Another messy cook
Finding my birth mother, 1950-2012
8 Dinner for two
Sharing a kitchen and table with Harvey, 1979-2004
9 Too much
When Harvey lost his appetite, 2005-2010
10 The next best thing
Learning how to dine alone, 2011-2013
Recipes
Books that have inspired me
About the author

Magic chocolate pudding

This week I went hunting for a half-remembered recipe - the magic self-saucing pudding. You mix it all up together and while it bakes, the cakey part rises to the top, leaving gooey sauce underneath. My own favourite version of this is the lemon one, best known as lemon delicious. But this time it had to be chocolate for my houseguest, who thinks that if dessert's not chocolate, it's not really dessert. I found exactly what I wanted on page 74 of Alexa Johnston's collection of old-fashioned desserts, What's for Pudding? Just one grumble: why oh why do designers think it's a good idea to put the list of ingredients - and in this case the page numbers as well - in pale coloured type that's really hard to read?

Chocolate fudge pudding (slightly adapted from What's for Pudding)

For the pudding:

1 c (125g) flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 Tbsp cocoa

pinch salt

3/4 c (150g) sugar ("a mixture of brown and white is a good idea")

1/2 c (125g) full-cream milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 Tbsp (30g) butter

1 egg, beaten

1/2 c chopped walnuts or chopped chocolate (I used a bar of very dark German chocolate which is too bitter to eat, but wonderful to bake with)

- Preheat oven to 180C. Butter a fairly shallow ovenproof dish that holds about 4 cups (1 litre).

(In fact the dish I used was a bit too shallow - a deeper one, about 8 cm, would let more sauce collect under the cakey top.)

- In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, cocoa and salt. Mix through the sugar.

- Melt the butter in a glass jug in the microwave or in a small saucepan. Stir in the milk and vanilla essence.

- Pour onto the dry ingredients, with the beaten egg, and mix until smooth.

- Stir in the walnuts or chocolate.

For the topping:

4 Tbsp cocoa

3/4 c (150g) brown sugar

1 and 1/2 c hot water

- Spread the batter evenly in the ovenproof dish. Sift the cocoa evenly over the top, followed by the brown sugar.

- Pour the hot water carefully over, completely covering the mixture. (The best way to do this is to hold a tablespoon or larger serving spoon over the mixture and pour the hot water slowly and gently into the spoon, moving the spoon around over the mixture, so that the water spreads evenly over it all without displacing it.)

- Bake for about 1 hour until the topping is firm to the touch and the pudding smells cooked. 

The magic at work - that's a macaroni cheese underneath.

As you can see, mine didn't look wonderful, as some of what should have been the sauce stayed stubbornly in the middle of the top (that too-shallow dish was the problem, I think). But there was absolutely nothing wrong with the taste. Alexa says "Serve with cream", but we ate ours with ice-cream - I love the contrast of hot and cold. My guest was ecstatic. With a bit of supervision, children could make this for Mother's Day tomorrow...

 

Pretty potatoes

 I've been buying bags of big fat dirt-covered Agria potatoes lately. Apparently potatoes keep better when they're still covered in dirt (and they tend to be cheaper than nicely washed ones). Usually I peel Agrias, but every so often I want to bake them with their skins on. Last year I bought a handy little book called Splendid Spuds, and in it was a recipe I've been wanting to try for a while, for Hasselback Potatoes. Named after the venerable Stockholm restaurant, Hasselbacken, that first served them in the 1940s, they're a traditional favourite in the USA. They look and taste wonderful, but they're very simple to make. Here's the Huffington Post raving about them recently:

"What emerges is a bit of a cooking miracle - LOTS of crispy edges, soft interior, toppings in every bite. Our only concern is that we haven't made more of these in our lifetime."

Hasselback potatoes (adapted from Splendid Spuds)
This serves four people with 1 potato per person - if you want more potatoes, just use more butter, and they might also take a little longer to cook..

4 smooth oval medium-size Agria potatoes, scrubbed clean but not peeled
1 Tbsp soft butter (approx. - a bit more does no harm)
salt and pepper

Set oven to 230C (or 220C fan forced).
Cut each potato in even 5cm slashes, almost through to the bottom but not quite. 
(The Huffington Post has an excellent tip: line up the handle of a long wooden spoon alongside each potato as you cut, so that the knife won't go right through. It helps to use a longer knife rather than a short vege knife.)
Pat tops of potatoes dry with paper towel and arrange them cut side up in an oiled metal baking dish.
Spread potatoes with half of the butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 15 minutes, then spread with remaining butter and bake for another 15-20 minutes. 

We gobbled ours up before I remembered to take a photo, and anyway by then it was night time and my dinner photos rarely come out well. 
But for once mine looked exactly like the picture in the book.

Pumpkin soup of the evening

Last time I wrote about pumpkin soup, I gave the link but not the recipe for Balkabagi Corbasi, which Harvey found for us (he loved making and eating soup). Now it's getting colder (well, here in Wellington anyway - I'm a bit tired of hearing "Auckland 25...Wellington 17") and the pumpkins are getting cheaper, this delicious recipe seemed like a good idea.

        I had two small round green pumpkins, one from the market ($1.99) and one from the supermarket (99 cents!). They looked similar from the outside, though one was a little bigger, but they were quite different inside - one was yellow and the other deep orange. Together they provided exactly the right weight of pumpkin flesh. It turned out very well, with a good colour and really rich depth of spicy flavour.

        The Soupsong site this comes from is one of my favourites. Here's what it says about this soup:

"This Turkish soup is famous in the village of Bursa, near ancient Mount Olympus. It's a lovely soup--fragrant, sweet and spicy with a tang...And be prepared to be tantalised by an elusive salaam to classic pumpkin pie."
            It's supposed to serve four, but that must be very large helpings. I find two ladlefuls are enough, so for me it serves 6-8.

Balkabagi Corbasi (Turkish pumpkin soup)

1 Tbsp olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
1 leek, with the tender white and green parts cut into fine rings
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp honey (the original has 1 tsp but I find that isn't enough)
1 kg pumpkin flesh (see the instructions for the easiest way to deal with pumpkin here - you will end up with partially cooked flesh, but that's fine)
4 c vegetable stock (miso works well)
salt and pepper to taste
plain unsweetened creamy yoghurt

Heat the oil in a saucepan on a low heat. Stir in the onions, leek, and garlic and sweat, covered, until transparent.
Stir in the spices, honey, and pumpkin, cover, and let sweat together for another couple of minutes.
Pour in the stock, raise the heat, and bring to a boil.
Reduce the heat, partially cover, and let simmer for 30-40 minutes, until the pumpkin is soft.
Puree in a blender, solids first.
Pour back into the pan and reheat (add a little more water if it's too thick).
Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Ladle the soup into bowls. Swirl one good tablespoon of yoghurt into each bowl.

        The recipe suggests saving some slices of leek to saute and scatter on top of the soup, but I never do this - I think it tastes better without intrusive bits of green on top. Pepper is good though.

Trying to bake a chocolate cake

As I have said before, I am not a baker. But with two guests who love chocolate cake, when I found what looked like a me-proof recipe, I thought I'd have a go.
       The recipe came via a friend's food blog, Capital Living, and she got it via Annabelle White, who calls it "Lady Glenorchy's Super Simple Chocolate Cake". It really did look easy. You just put all the ingredients into the food processor in the order given, whizz for one minute, then pour into the prepared tin and bake.
        Now that's my kind of cake recipe. But I should have paid attention to the "Cook's Tip" at the bottom:
"Slice this un-iced cake in half and freeze one part and keep the other for immediate use." Because (as I should have known from the list of ingredients) this makes a pretty big cake. So big, in fact, that it only just fitted into my reasonably large processor. And when I poured it into my carefully prepared tin, it came almost up to the top. Oh dear, I thought. Not good.

By then it was too late to do anything but bake it. I knew the oven would work best for a big cake like this on "bake", no fan, but I think I should have also set the temperature slightly lower - I'm pretty sure this oven tends to be a little hotter than the dial says. When I checked, the cake was looming up alarmingly in the tin and starting to plop gently over the edge on one side and down onto the bottom of the oven. Not a pretty sight. 
          I turned the temperature down 5 degrees and left it in until it was cooked through. Once it was cool, I eased it gently out of the tin. It looked rather splendid, a great high domed creation,  a bit of a crest on top but beautifully smooth all round - except for the crumbly bit where it had plopped over and hadn't come out quite cleanly.
          Icing covers a multitude of baking sins. I was determined to do this properly, so I found a good ganache recipe I'd cut out of the paper years ago, from Clark's Cafe in Wellington's wonderful central library. I'd never actually made it before, but it looked very simple too. The recipe says "chocolate buttons", but I used Whittaker's Dark Ghana 72%, so I microwaved it first to make up for it melting less easily than the buttons would.          

          It was the best chocolate icing I've ever made. There was just one problem: after I'd covered my very tall cake thickly in a casual rustic way, filling in the little crater on one side, I had quite a bit left over. Whipping it with extra cream produced a very nice filling. I needed this, given the impressive height of the cake. It was just a pity I hadn't thought to cut the cake in half through the middle and fill it before I iced it...Still, serving the filling alongside the slice meant you got more. My guests didn't complain. 

          While the cake was good, it seemed to settle and taste even better next day. Next time, I'll get it right. I reckon that for most purposes the recipe would be better halved, and the icing would work neatly with 250ml cream (from a 300ml bottle) and 250g chocolate (the weight of one large Whittaker's block). You might still have some left over, but I'm sure you could cope creatively with that.

Lady Glenorchy's Super Simple Smaller Chocolate Cake
1 cup white sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup plain yoghurt

1/4 cup cocoa and 1/8 cup cocoa (halving 3/4 is a bit tricky, but this will work)

100g melted butter

1 tsp baking soda

just under 1 tsp vanilla (well, 3/4 tsp, but I don't think the tiny bit more would matter)

1/8 tsp salt

1 and 1/2 cups self-raising flour

1/2 cup boiling strong coffee

Set oven to 160C.

Grease sides of a 23cm round loose-bottomed cake tin and line base with baking paper [Capital Living's useful instruction]. 

Place all the ingredients, in the order given, into food processor bowl.  Process for 1 minute.

Bake at 160C for approximately 45 minutes (it might take a little longer, depending on your oven). 

Cake is cooked when a skewer in the middle comes out clean.

Cool in tin before removing and ice with your favourite chocolate icing.

Clark's Even Better Chocolate Ganache
250 ml cream
250 ml Whittaker's Dark Ghana 72% chocolate

Break chocolate into pieces, put in large glass jug, and microwave on low until just starting to soften. 
In a small saucepan, bring the cream just to the point of boiling.
Pour it over the chocolate and stir until smooth. 
[You need to keep stirring for quite a while - at first the mixture looks pale and unappetising, but the longer you stir, the more it darkens.] 

The advice that came with this recipe was excellent. Of course if I'd read it earlier, I would have made the icing before I made the cake.
"If you serve this while it is warm, it is the best chocolate sauce. If you leave it for a few hours [2 hours seemed to be enough], it becomes spreadable and this is when you ice the cake.  When it is at the spreadable stage, if you whisk it, it becomes an airy chocolate filling. If you leave it overnight it will become hard. To soften it again, chop into pieces, slightly warm and stir to combine." 

Back to the beginning

I've been busy lately writing up recipes to go in the back of my e-book food memoir (cover and title coming very soon). One of the first recipes I put in dates back to when I first started learning to cook - I was about to get married, so I had to learn fast. Luckily I was able to turn to my married friend Frances for help (her mother had been a home science teacher). Here's a tiny advance taste of that chapter:

I had been married barely a month when I asked my favourite English professor, Tom Crawford, to dinner. It all seemed simple enough. The meat would be seventeenth-century pork chops (a recipe from Frances), spread well ahead of time with a mixture of parsley, chopped onion, oil, salt and lemon juice, and then grilled. With them we would have rice (because potatoes were boring and bourgeois and I often got them wrong) and green beans (frozen, so no problems there).

... The chops weren’t raw but they were rock hard. The rice was gluggy and the beans were grey. Tom bravely chewed his way through it all, keeping up a flow of urbane literary chat.

I did get it right eventually - the secret is to bake the chops instead of grilling them. The other night I made this for my neighbour, who is also called Frances. Here's the recipe.

Seventeenth century pork chops

1 small onion

2 Tbsp parsley

2 tsp lemon juice

3 Tbsp olive oil

salt and ground black pepper

2 large pork chops

- Peel onion and grate it into a small bowl. Finely chop parsley and add it to onion. Add lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and mix well
- At least 1 hour and up to 10 hours before cooking, brush one side of chops with the remaining 1 Tbsp olive oil and place them in a shallow ceramic baking dish, oiled side down. (You can also use a metal dish – this speeds up cooking, but it can also dry the chops out, so keep an eye on them.) Spread onion mixture over their upper sides. Leave in refrigerator until 30 minutes before cooking.

- Preheat oven to 180°C. Place baking dish on rack in middle of oven. Bake chops for approximately 1 hour, until topping is browned a little and a thin knife slides easily into the meat. Lift out and rest on kitchen paper for 10 minutes before serving.

Baked Agria potatoes are good with this. I had two large oval ones, so I scrubbed them well and halved them horizontally, brushed them with oil, sprinkled them with salt, then put them into the oven at the same time as the pork chops, to bake on a lower shelf.

     We had a rare treat with our chops: beautiful fresh runner beans from Ali's garden (I haven't got room to  grow them here). I have a neat little bean slicer that works perfectly for them, peeling away the stringy sides. Harvey preferred his beans cut into traditional angled chunks, but I love the thin green ribbons my slicer produces, with slivers of pink dotted along them. A brief steaming is all they need.