Something Else to Eat

Too much

2012-01-29T21:13:00.003+13:00

I had a great time in China and ate a huge range of interesting and mostly enjoyable food, but I obviously overdid it somewhere because this week I came down with a very nasty stomach bug. I've only just started to feel slightly better so hope to post properly later this week.

Pollo play

2012-01-06T22:34:00.001+13:00

Not having cooked many proper dinners since before Christmas, I was very happy to have friends coming for dinner this week. As I'm off to China on Monday, and want to leave at least a scrap of room in the freezer for my housesitter, I decided it would be a good chance to use what I had instead of going shopping. When free range chickens were on special a while ago I cut two up and froze the pieces. But I needed a recipe that involved some kind of marinade, because even when it's fresh, chicken can taste a bit boring.

What I came up with was a combination of two recipes from my oldest Italian cookbook, Ada Boni's venerable Talisman, organised so as not to use any flour (one of my friends doesn't eat gluten).
The marinade was from her Pollo frito alla Fiorentina, Florentine fried chicken with lemon and parsley. But the cooking was from her Pollo alla cacciatora, Hunter's chicken, which also uses parsley, as well as onion, garlic , celery and white wine - but no tomatoes, unlike most other versions of hunter's chicken I've seen.

Pollo alla Karori (with homage to Ada Boni)

Chicken pieces, trimmed of loose fatty bits and loose bits of skin (4 drumsticks and 4 thighs, all with skin on, is a good combination for 4 people)

For the marinade:
2 Tbsp olive oil
4 Tbsp lemon juice (I used the salty juice from a jar of my preserved lemons)
salt and pepper (I didn't need any more salt)
2 tsp finely chopped Italian flat-leaved parsley
Mix well and cover the chicken pieces with this marinade. Leave for at least 2 hours before cooking.

For the sauce and cooking:
Olive oil for frying
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 tender sticks celery, or a bunch of lovage leaves and stalks (this gives the flavour without any stringy bits)
2-3 sprigs flat-leaved parsley
salt and pepper
150 ml dry white wine

- Set oven to 180C, fan forced, or 190 without fan. Take chicken pieces out of marinade, shake well and pat them a little with paper towel to dry them slightly. Then, as Ada puts it, "Place in frying pan some olive oil" - or better, use a pan that can also go in the oven. Fry the pieces in two batches until they are thoroughly browned on all sides. Remove and keep warm.
- Add a little more oil and gently fry the onion, garlic, celery and parsley until soft. Add white wine. Cook for a few minutes to reduce a little, then add the remaining marinade. Check seasoning and add more salt and pepper if necessary.
- Add chicken pieces, put pan in oven uncovered, and bake until chicken is tender and cooked right through, but not dried out - about 35-45 minutes, depending on your oven and how large the pieces are. Baste chicken pieces with the sauce twice during cooking.
- Remove pieces and keep warm while you degrease the sauce - I carefully place a double-folded piece of thick paper towel on the surface to absorb the excess fat, doing it twice if necessary. If there is too much sauce or it seems too thin, reduce it a little on the hob. Check seasoning again

You can either put the chicken pieces back in the sauce, or serve the sauce separately, along with whatever kind of potatoes you prefer. I baked small red-skinned golden-hearted potatoes in a separate roasting tin on a lower shelf while the chicken was cooking - all they needed was a little oil and salt. We had pieces of preserved lemon with this, and a green salad, with a pinot gris. The light, summery celery/parsley/lemon flavours were a great success (she said modestly). Look for the next post (China!) in late January.

Eating my fill

2011-12-29T22:17:00.002+13:00

I think I've cooked less this Christmas than I ever have before, thanks to a combination of being invited to eat out, and having goodies brought to me (thank you all - you know who you are, and you know how much I enjoyed it all). On Christmas day night we had last year's pudding, doused liberally with extra brandy and steamed for two hours. It was a great success - except that because Harvey wasn't here, we couldn't get the brandy to flame up around it (he was always in charge of that and got it right).

But one thing I did manage to make, or at any rate assemble, was a new kind of mince pie. Last year Ali had given me some of her mistressly home-made Christmas mincemeat, but because of the upheavals back then I hadn't used much of it, and still had plenty left. It's as different from bought mincemeat as magnificent home-made marmalade is from its supermarket equivalent.

I love Christmas mince pies, but while I'll happily eat the ones with sweet short pastry when I'm given them, I've always preferred them made with flaky pastry and served warm. This year I came up with a new idea that suited me perfectly. I bought little ready-made filo pastry cases from Tony Gamboni, carefully filled them with Ali's mincemeat and heated them up gently in the oven. But when I went to take a photo I discovered I'd used all the cases, so I'll get some more when the deli reopens and put a photo in later. We had them for lunch after our gathering for Harvey's plaque, and I made some more for myself on Christmas Eve. You keep the cases and mincemeat separate until you need them, so they're perfect for extra visitors.

Another very simple Christmas treat I've got used to is buying the Italian Christmas bread, panettone, and toasting slices of it for breakfast. It's like a slightly solider brioche with crystallised peel and dried fruit, and the first time I had it was the year Harvey and I had Christmas dinner at Lake Como, when they served it as the last of six courses.
This year I didn't have it on Christmas morning because I was going down the road for fruit and croissants, first with Paul's home-smoked salmon and then with Lesley's jam. But I've been happily tucking in ever since. One medium panettone lasts a long time if you keep it in the fridge, and the last of it makes amazing bread and butter pudding (see that post).
On Wednesday I went up the coast to friends at their beautiful beach house for the afternoon and dinner outside (it was the last fine day). We had their home-smoked kahawai made into pate, and barbecued Middle Eastern spicy lamb fillets. I took the dessert - berries and lemon mousse (see that post too), which I decorated with more dried strawberries. I used all the pretty heart-shaped pieces, and kept the little side bits for myself. This morning I had them piled on toasted and buttered panettone, and it was absolute bliss, halfway between fruit and jam.

Moreish mayonnaise

2011-12-16T23:01:00.001+13:00

Home-made mayonnaise comes in really handy at this time of year. The asparagus will soon be finished, so it's good to make the most of it. Then there's potato salad - those lovely little Jersey Bennes make a really good one - and mayonnaise is great for that too, or for any kind of salmon.
The classic Julia Child recipe - not the tricky hand-made one, but the one you make in the food processor (she says it works much better than a blender for this) - makes quite a lot, and last week I wanted less, so I just adapted the recipe slightly and it worked fine.

Food processor mayonnaise (after Julia Child)
1 egg and 1 yolk
Process these together in the blender for a minute.

Pinch of dry mustard
1/4 tsp salt
Fresh lemon juice and/or wine vinegar

With the machine running, add the mustard, salt, and 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of lemon juice or vinegar.

1 cup best quality salad oil (you can also use olive oil, but I think a lighter oil tastes better, though it must be fresh, not old. I used canola.)
More salt, pepper, and lemon juice or vinegar as needed

Put the oil in a jug. With the machine running, start adding the oil in a stream of droplets, until you've used half the oil and the mayonnaise is very thick. Thin it out with lemon juice or vinegar, then continue with the oil until the whole cup has gone in. Taste and season carefully with more salt, pepper, and lemon juice or vinegar if required.

The way these very basic ingredients turn into such gloriously thick, glossy, delectable stuff always strikes me as a kind of kitchen magic. Bon appetit!

Essence of strawberries

2011-12-10T23:20:00.001+13:00

I wanted to make something special but very simple for a dinner tonight. Harriet Harcourt's blog Fridge Pie has an astonishing recipe for pink peppercorn meringues, lime curd and dried strawberries. I'll make the whole thing one day, but for tonight, all I wanted was the dried strawberries.

The recipe is really simple, it just takes a little time. Preheat the oven to 100C (or a little lower fan forced - I put mine at 90C). Slice 250g strawberries into thin slices. I used large ones, and got two heart-shaped centre slices and two side bits out of each strawberry. Place a sheet of baking paper on an oven tray and lay out the strawberry slices on it. Sprinkle them with 3 teaspoons of caster sugar.

Bake for an hour, or until dry. I found it worked best to turn each slice over carefully when the top side was dry, and leave them in for another 10-15 minutes to dry off the other side.

When they're cool,. lift them off carefully and leave on a rack.

They leave little strawberry ghosts behind on the paper.
We ate these entirely by themselves, after the cheese, but they'd also be very good alongside strawberry ice-cream, or on top of tarts... They look beautiful and give a burst of pure, intense strawberry flavour. There were three left, so naturally I ate them while I wrote this.

Christmas pudding advisory

2011-12-05T22:51:00.001+13:00

On 28 November last year I wrote about our Christmas and making the pudding, and Deborah commented: "I'm hoping that next year you will put a Public Service Advisory on your blog, telling us it's time to make our puddings, and linking to this post."

I'm sorry, I didn't think about it until today, but there's still time to make a pudding if you do it soon - it will taste fine, I sometimes didn't get around to making ours until early December.
But I'm not making one this year. I don't, of course, feel festive anyway, as readers of this and my Elsewoman blog will understand. But in any case there's no need to make a pudding, as I still have the one I made last year sitting in the fridge - we never ate it then.

I was a little anxious about whether it would be okay, but I checked it today and it's fine.

So I and the friends joining me in the evening of Christmas Day, in time to watch the Queen's Message, as we've always done, will definitely have it this year. Provided I remember to make sure there's enough brandy, and put it on in time to steam for two hours....

And we'll raise a toast to Harvey (it won't be the first that day) before we eat it.

Strawberries and salted lemons

2011-12-01T20:35:00.001+13:00

My friend Jane P. brought me this clever strawberry huller from New York, and it works brilliantly. Last Saturday I hulled a whole lot of luscious little red critters ready to cut in half and steep in bitter orange liqueur for dessert.

But three of them - one each - were enormous, and deserved a different fate. I'd already taken their stalks out, so I couldn't easily dip their pointy ends in melted chocolate. Instead I used the chocolate to fill the holes in their tops. Not only do they look good, but you get more chocolate this way.

This week called for sterner stuff. Today I went to a friend's for lunch (my boursin with her French bread, a lovely light orange and chicken salad, strawberries, and her firmish, superbly chewy/melty brownies), to get our strength up for the afternoon's task: preserving lemons.

I'm very keen on preserved lemons, but they're very expensive to buy, and often the bought ones have vinegar added, which is not good. They're one of the few preserves I'm happy to make. All you do is:

- Collect jars with lids - the mouths should be wide enough to push in a whole smallish lemon, and you'll want the jars big enough to get in around six lemons each - and put them and their lids through a hot dishwash cycle while you prepare the lemons. Make sure to keep the jars and lids matched.

- Get hold of enough smallish, firm, evenly yellow lemons (our Karori New World had really good ones this week, but they're even better fresh from the tree, if you've got one - mine is bravely struggling to survive).

- Either collect enough big juicy easy-to-squeeze lemons for juice to fill your jars, or cheat (as we did) and buy freshly squeezed lemon juice by the litre.

- Have ready about half a cup of salt for each jar, and enough olive oil to put a very thin layer over the top of each jar.

- Take off the stems and stem ends and cut the lemons almost in half lengthwise through the pointy end, then almost in half again the other way (so you get four quarters, still joined at the stem end)

- Put all the salt in a deep bowl and push each cut lemon into it, so that the salt goes up inside and more or less evenly coats each cut surface.

- Shake out any excess, or scrape it out with a teaspoon. (Of course if you're meant to be on a low-salt diet, you shouldn't make or eat these at all.)

- Push the lemons as tightly as possible into the jars - you can split some up into halves or quarters to fill awkward side gaps.

- Fill the jars carefully with juice, almost to the top. (My friend Ali says that instead, if you're patient, you can leave the jars in the pantry (not the fridge - see second comment below) and within a few days the lemons will have made lots of juice of their own, so then you just need to top the jars up - but we weren't patient.)

- Pour a very thin layer of olive oil over the top of each jar.

- Wipe the rims to get rid of salt, put the lids on, and tighten them.

- Leave the jars for at least four weeks. Once they've been opened, store them in the fridge.

- Eat the lemon skins (you're supposed to discard the flesh, but I often don't bother, I just eat that too) with grilled chicken, steak, chops, or fish, or use in salads. The salty lemony oily juice is delicious used sparingly in salad dressings or Middle Eastern stews or couscous.

Some recipes say you can use brine instead of juice, but this doesn't really work, they don't taste nearly as good. Our jars didn't look beautiful because the lemon juice was cloudy, not clear, and we weren't aiming for A & P prize quality, but I'm sure they'll taste fine.

Nourishing scraps

2011-11-25T22:55:00.000+13:00

We used to have a running joke about the lady of the manor descending on the poor with a basket of nourishing scraps. Much of the election hype has felt like that to me - leftover scraps for the poor graciously offered from the groaning tables of the rich, with gratitude expected in return.

Tomorrow night I'll be having a few like-minded friends round, all of then guaranteed to be glued to the election results as I will be, and Harvey always was. I'll give them a hearty soup, I think, then nourishing scraps of cheese and fruit to nibble on - something like this:

Later on we might have a repeat of this very good strawberry and mango combo. Or/and the hokey-pokey ice-cream left over in my freezer from feeding Emily and Rachel, the two gorgeous young Englishwomen who stayed here last week...

A few chocolatey bits from my hidden stores (hidden from me, not from visitors) could be a good idea too - just to keep us going through what's bound to be a gruelling night.

Kedgeree, meet risotto

2011-11-11T23:03:00.001+13:00

This week I wanted a light dinner. I'd found some good smoked fish, and often I make kedgeree, but this time I thought I'd create a risotto with it instead, because there was some very good fish stock in the freezer.

The recipe was much the same as for the ham and cheese risotto I made last January, not long after Harvey died. I poached the smoked fish gently in the stock before I started the risotto. Then I took out the fish, removed the skin, and flaked it, checking carefully for any stray bones.

I fried a little chopped bacon first, then added shallots instead of onions, and of course used the fish stock instead of chicken stock. No herbs - finely chopped parsley can go on when it's served - and of course no ham or cheese. When the risotto rice was almost ready, I added the small pieces of fish, pepper, and lemon juice. It was delicious, a good change from kedgeree. Serve it with extra lemon wedges and a green or tomato salad.

The other bit of culinary excitement this week was the arrival of a parcel from Amazon. I buy very few books online, because I want to keep good local booksellers in business, but I found a hardback 50th anniversary edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Vol.1 - I don't think I've ever used Vol.2) for a very low price. I'm tired of struggling to read my ancient, falling-apart Penguin copy, so I ordered it, and it's gorgeous.
I also got a very cheap hardback of Judith Jones' memoir The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food. She was the Knopf editor who published Julia Child. It's not as good as Julia's own memoir, My Life in France, but well worth reading all the same. For me, food and books are inseparable. They've just put Mastering the Art out as an e-book, but I'd rather have the real thing.

Getting it exactly right

2011-11-03T21:01:00.001+13:00

So last night I went to Logan Brown for their bistro dinner ( we paid for that part ourselves, but it's a steal at $39.50 each), before going to the ballet on the tickets I'd won in their competition. Here's the menu.

Entree
Potato Gnocchi with Sorrel Pesto, Asparagus & Chorizo
or
Puy Lentil Cake with Halloumi, Rocket & Red Capsicum Relish
Main
Crispy Skin Gurnard with Sauteed Baby Potatoes, Lemon Spinach & Almond Aioli
or
Braised Lamb Shoulder with Israeli Cous Cous, Green Olives & Fetta
Dessert
Bitter Chocolate Mousse with Rose Strawberry Ice Cream & Honeycomb
or
Orange Blossom Delicious Pudding with Poached Rhubarb & Pistachio Crumble

Between us, Jenn and I covered every possible choice, and of course gave each other tastes of everything, while sipping our complimentary glasses of champagne. If this sounds ridiculously nice, believe me, it was. I had the puy lentil cake, the gurnard and the orange blossom delicious, Jenn had the alternatives. I forgot to get a photo of the entrees before we started to eat them, but here are our two mains and two desserts.

That last photo doesn't capture the beautiful shine and sumptuousness of the chocolate. I could rave on about how it all tasted, but I won't, you'll just have to imagine it. It's enough to say that one of the things I like most about Logan Brown is that everything tastes of itself, but the very best of itself, exactly as it should.

So then they ordered a taxi to the ballet for us (we finished at 7 and the curtain rose at 7.30), and when we got out and tried to pay, we found it had already been paid for.

The ballet itself was perfect, the only flaw was that Harvey couldn't see it. Sleeping Beauty is a hoary fairy tale, but they managed to make it both utterly romantic, like scenes out of an old picture book, and yet at the same time fresh and amusing and not taking itself too seriously. Right at the end, the happy couple kiss on the staircase, and immediately after that the two charming cats-in-charge (who have been sparring all night) also kiss, just before the curtain falls. Brilliant.

Golden

2011-10-30T22:28:00.005+13:00

"The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again." George Miller

I usually try to post before the weekend, as I know that's when readers tend to look at this blog, but I had to wait until today to write about my friends' golden wedding anniversary. I think they're the only couple I know of my generation who've been married for fifty years. Of course they did start young, they were both just 20, but it's an impressive achievement all the same. To celebrate, they invited twelve friends to a long Italian lunch at La Bella Italia in Petone.

The antipasti were a meal in themselves.
Parma prosciutto, felino,
aged parmesan.
Buffalo mozzarella
with foccacia bread,
courgettes and peppers.

Then came the prima piatti, risotto and ravioli, followed by pork with prunes, hunter's chicken and salad.

I made a complete glutton of myself, but so did everyone else - and we did all take a long time, that was the whole point.

The crowning glory was the mimosa cake, covered in pretty yellow bobbles of sponge that looked exactly like mimosa. And on top was the bride and groom from their original wedding cake.

Green goodness

2011-10-21T20:48:00.000+13:00

Asparagus time again. Such a simple thing to cook. This week I worked my happy way through three bunches (with a little help from my friends), and kept all the snapped-off ends and turned them into soup.

Apart from gorgeous, incredibly calorific hollandaise, what I like to have with asparagus is another really simple green thing, salsa verde, deliciously sharp and tangy. Fortunately I've now got enough parsley in the garden to make it with - you need a lot.

Salsa verde (adapted from Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy)
Green sauce Emilian style

25g white breadcrumbs
1 large bunch Italian flat-leaved parsley, roughly chopped (she says 350g but I use about 200g)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 Tbsp shallots or onion
1 flat tin anchovies, including oil
2 Tbsp capers
3 Tbsp lemon juice
olive oil

If you don't already have fresh crumbs, make them by processing the bread in the food processor. Take them out and set aside.
Process garlic and shallots or onion uintil finely chopped.
Add parsley and process until finely chopped.
Add anchovies, capers and lemon juice and process to mix well. Then add breadcrumbs and process again.
Add olive oil in a thin stream while processor is running until you get the consistency you want - thick or thinner.
Taste to see if it needs more lemon juice or a little salt.
Spoon into a shallow bowl and serve with asparagus -
or grilled chicken, or steak, or stirred into pasta.
Or you can spread it thinly on slices of toasted ciabatta and put sliced tomatoes on top.

Rummaging round the web, I found this very odd ad for asparagus. Stalking the American life, indeed...

Rhubarb rhubarb

2011-10-06T21:54:00.001+13:00

I thought I'd written before about the wonders of rhubarb, but there's no label for it so I can't have. It's one of the best things to buy right now, and last weekend, when I got back from a trip to Auckland (where I had rhubarb crumble), I found a beautiful bunch of slender deep red sticks at my local. I had friends comiing to stay to see Sirocco (more about him coming up on Elsewoman), and I knew I'd seen a rhubarb cake recipe somewhere in my Lois Daish folder. I reckon it's the best cake I've made this year.

Rhubarb and ginger cake (Lois Daish, Listener, 10 October 1998)

450g rhubarb (I had a bit less so I put in pieces of firm fresh pear as well - it worked perfectly)
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 and 1/4 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 cup cooking oil (sunflower, safflower - I used canola)
1 egg
1/2 cup roughly chopped crystallised ginger
icing sugar for dusting

>Preheat oven to 180C. Line base of a ring tin with baking paper and lightly oil the sides. (I used a square one - it doesn't rise a lot but it makes nice square slices.)
>Wash and trim rhubarb and cut into 1cm lengths. Mix with the brown sugar and let stand for 15 minutes.

>Sift flour, baking soda and ginger into a large bowl.

>In a small bowl, beat the egg with the oil to mix and pour into the rhubarb and sugar. Add the crystallised ginger and mix well.
>Tip rhubarb mixture into the bowl of flour and stir carefully to combine. (This mixture is quite wet, but don't worry, it's fine.)
>Spread mixture in the cake tin, smoothing the top with the back of a spoon. (At this point I placed some extra, thin square slices of ginger on top.)

>Bake for 60-75 minutes until top is well browned and springy to touch. Cool in the tin before turning out. Dust icing sugar thickly over the top before serving. (I forgot to do this, never mind.)

We ate it for afternoon tea, and again for a late dessert when we got back from seeing Sirocco. With it we had Clearwater cream-top yoghurt with honey. Oh yes.

Of the earth, earthy - lentil and mushroom soup

2011-09-22T23:15:00.000+12:00

In 2006, straight after I finished my PhD, I took off for France with a friend. Harvey had already decided he wouldn't travel to Europe again, but it was a book he bought that inspired me to go: Stephanie Alexander's magnificent Cooking and Travelling in South-West France.

We stayed at a farm estate five minutes outside Sarlat-le Caneda, about four hours from Bordeaux. Every morning Madame would tell us what her son was cooking that night, so we could decide if we would be in for dinner. Duck was often the centrepiece. Everything was "bio" (organic) - not because it was "green", she told us, but because it just tasted better. Over our seven-night stay we managed to eat there five times, and it was consistently the best food experience I've ever had.

It was early summer, so we didn't have anything like this rich dark soup, but in winter I'm sure something very like it would have appeared. Stephanie Alexander says that although it's her own invention, "I feel sure it would be welcomed by any resident of the south-west".

Lentil and mushroom soup (serves 6-8)

300g Puy lentils (the French grey-green ones)
2 cups chicken stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper

6 large black mushrooms

2 Tbsp rendered duck fat or olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 large potato, peeled and diced

* Rinse lentils under cold water and drain. Put in a large saucepan and add 1.5 litres (6 cups) of water. Simmer gently for 20-30 minutes until tender.

* Make a fricassee: Chop mushrooms (including stems) into small pieces. Heat duck fat or oil in a wide ffrying pan and saute onion for 3-4 minutes. Add garlic, potato and mushrooms, cover, and sweat for a few minutes. Lift lid and stir well. Saute until potato is tender, mushrooms have started to colour, and there is a bit of a sizzle going on.

* When lentils are tender, tip the fricassee into the lentil pot and add the stock. Bring to a simmer and season to taste. Simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool until warm, then blend in a food processor or blender (do not overfill - you may need to do this in batches). Reheat and serve very hot, garnished with a few fresh herbs and/or a little cream.

I found this turned out to be a little too thick, so I thinned it down slightly with a bit more stock and water. I was worried that it might be just too earthy and rich for my dinner guests, but they loved it. And it froze and reheated beautifully for a later lunch.

Slow and simple

2011-09-18T21:34:00.002+12:00

On Friday we commemorated Harvey's birthday in fine style. I knew our mutual friend was bringing some magnificent beef for the main course, and a fine red to go with it, so I decided to splash out on Harvey's favourite entree - a dozen Bluff oysters. With them we had a very dry white Waimea wine I brought back from my trip to Nelson, made from a grape variety I'd never come across before: grüner veltliner.
The oysters, of course, didn't require me to do anything, but it was also my job to come up with the veges to go with the beef. I made a potato gratin using stock instead of milk - it looked gorgeous with its overlapping thin slices, but I didn't take a photo, dammit - and a big yellow pepper, charred over the gas, put in a plastic bag so its skin would come off easily, then sliced and softened in the oven.
These two went very well with the red onion confit I made that morning in the slow cooker. I haven't done it this way before, but it worked perfectly, and it was great to be able to leave it without worrying about it catching and burning. I adapted it from the caramelised onions recipe in Great Ideas for Crockpots and Slow Cookers, by Fiona Willison (2004).

Red onion confit
4 red onions, peeled and finely sliced
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 cup soft brown sugar
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 large or 2 small sprigs of rosemary
salt and pepper to taste

Turn the slow cooker to high and allow it to warm for 20 minutes.
Put all the ingredients in the warmed cooker. Cover and cook for 2 hours on high. Take the lid off and cook for another 2-3 hours until the onions are very soft. Check seasoning and adjust if necessary.

If you have any left over, it's very good warmed through and served on little pieces of toast, either on its own or alongside breakfast bacon. ( I haven't yet tried the amazing recipe on Hungry and Frozen for a kind of "jam" combining bacon and onion, but I can imagine it...)
After all that, we had a suitably restrained dessert brought by another friend - a little cheese, then some delicate orange jellies (the recipe was from What's for Pudding). It was a beautiful evening, and I was grateful.

Parsnips instead of pudding

2011-09-08T22:32:00.001+12:00

Yes, I know I promised a new pudding this week. I did make Alexa Johnston's Bavarian Coffee Cream, otherwise known as Bavarois au Café, but this is how it turned out. It tasted good, but I just didn't make it well enough, so I'll have another go later. I think I need some metal moulds...

But that wasn't the only new recipe I made last Saturday. I got completely carried away and made a new soup and a new vege dish as well. The soup was great but I'll write it up later when I get a good photo - I've got some in the freezer. The veges were marinated and grilled parsnips, yams and peppers. They were meant to be grilled and served as kebabs, but as I was having them with beef that didn't seem necessary - it was much simpler to do them in a grill pan. They looked lovely and their slightly sticky sweetness was good with the tender beef.

Grilled parsnips, yams and peppers
(adapted from Brian Glover, Homes and Gardens Cookbook 1996)

3 large parsnips
4 medium pink or yellow yams
2 medium red or orange peppers
1 tablespoon sesame seeds

For the marinade
2 Tbsp clear honey
4 Tbsp light soy sauce
4 Tbsp light sesame oil
finely grated zest and juice of 1 large orange
1 tsp ground coriander
2.5 cm fresh ginger, peeled and grated

* Peel and trim the parsnips and cut them into longish evenly sized pieces roughly the same length as the yams, cutting down through the centre of the thickest end. Trim the yam ends if necessary. Bring a pot of water to the boil, salt it, and add the parsnips and yams. Boil until almost tender. Drain and cool.
* De-seed the peppers and cut into even pieces - about 6 pieces per large pepper.
Place all the veges in a shallow dish.
* Mix the marinade ingredients in a bowl and pour over the veges. Marinade for at least an hour, turning the veges every so often. (I did them in the morning for the evening.)

* Turn the grill to high. Use a slotted spoon to lift the veges out of the marinade and spread the pieces evenly in the grill pan. Grill for 15 minutes, turning every 5 minutes and spooning over more of the marinade left in the dish. When cooked, sprinkle with the sesame seeds and put back under the grill for a couple of minutes.

Though we had these with beef, they'd be brilliant with chicken or pork too. They were the first things I cooked in my new oven. The old oven proved, when Julio was here and trying to use it for his baking, that it just wasn't up to the job - well, what else could I expect from a cheap, no-frills teenage Italian? There was a good special on a Fisher and Paykel one that would fit the old space, so I gritted my teeth and went for it.
The good news is that it does seem to cook very well indeed, and of course that's the most important thing. But the controls are another story. They seem to have been designed by someone who has never attempted to use them for cooking in a real-life kitchen. The knobs are so thick (the photo doesn't really show this properly) that they make the already very small numbers and symbols even more difficult to read, and the tiny notch on them that has to be aligned with correct function or temperature is almost invisible (everything shows up better in the photo than in real life, because of the flash). They're also very low - probably designed for wall placement rather than under the bench, though that's where many of these ovens will go. So I have to bend right down to set them correctly, because otherwise I can't see the markings around them. And surely it would be much safer to have assymetrical knobs that showed at a glance if they were off or on? In my next life, I want to be a kitchen appliance designer...

Crunch time

2011-09-02T22:46:00.001+12:00

Mystery of the Week: Watching the hype about New Zealand apples finally breaking into the Australian market, and setting aside the fact that a week later, some bright spark left a piece of leaf and a (reportedly dead) insect in a box of them, resulting in a new partial ban, I couldn't help wondering - where did the glossy, crunchy Rose apples shown in the news items come from?
We saw one happy Australian after another biting into these lovely apples which were absolutely nothing like the somewhat soggy, distinctly UN-crunchy Rose apples currently on sale in the shops here. Is it the usual story - all the good stuff goes overseas, leaving locals stuck with the leftovers? And if you go to Oz and try to bring one back, you'll be hit with a $200 fine, so don't even think about it...

News of the Week: Not much cooking going on, because (a) Julio's gone (this sounds like that lovely old Harry Belafonte ballad, "Delia's gone..."), (b) I've got plenty of delicious little scraps in the freezer to eat up, and (c) I'm working very hard on my food memoir, because I want to have it all finished by November at the latest, so it's crunch time. But do not despair..

Promise of the Week: NEXT week I'll report on my first attempt to make one of the recipes in Alexa Johnston's new book, What's for Pudding? On Tuesday I went to hear her talk about it at the wonderful Marsden Books, and it was a delightful experience - almost as good as actually eating pudding - so watch this space...

Lemon heaven

2011-08-27T22:02:00.001+12:00

For Julio's last dinner here, I invited round friends he'd already met (I'd been meaning to have them to dinner for ages) and roasted a nice piece of pork. I knew he liked light desserts, so the night before I made my favourite lemon mousse. It's a recipe I cut out of an impulse-buy copy of Vogue Entertaining and Travel in March 1999, and have used scores of times.
I suppose it's not really "light" at all, with 300mls of cream, but the delicate lemony fluff seems to float out of the bowl, off the spoon and into your mouth all by itself. The other thing I love about this is that it's made from basic, cheap ingredients that don't need to be hunted down.
You'll need a lot of bowls - two large, one medium and one small. Although it says "whisk", I use an electric beater for everything except the gelatine.

Lemon mousse
(This quantity serves 6 moderate people, or 4 greedy ones, or 4 on the night and a cook's reward next day)

185g castor sugar
3 large eggs, separated into two large bowls
juice and grated zest of 2 good-sized lemons or 3 smaller ones
1/3 cup boiling water
3 tsps powdered gelatine
300ml cream

Take the large bowl with the egg yolks and gradually whisk in the sugar until it turns pale and thick.
Add the lemon juice, a spoonful at a time, while whisking continuously.
Stir in the lemon zest. (The original recipe doesn't say so, but it's a good idea to blanch the zest for a minute in boiling water so it becomes softer and less bitter. Drain it thoroughly before mixing it in.)

Pour the boiling water into a small bowl. Sprinkle over the gelatine and whisk until it dissolves. Gradually stir this into the yolk mixture.
In a separate bowl, beat the cream until soft peaks form. Gradually fold the cream into the yolk mixture, using a metal spoon.
Take the large bowl with the egg whites and whisk them until stiff peaks form. Carefully fold into the mixture.

Pour gently into a serving dish (glass looks lovely). Cover with cling wrap. Refrigerate overnight or until the mousse is set (at least 4 hours).

Much to my relief, the pork was perfect (my oven seems to be getting less and less reliable), and we had it with roast potatoes and red cabbage with apple. Julio loved it, he said it's what his family eats on New Year's Day, though they have it with rice and salad.
I made two-thirds of the mousse recipe, because I knew that given my sensible guests (Julio, like Harvey, never seems to eat too much of anything), if I made it all I'd probably end up scoffing far more than was good for me. There was barely a bowl-scrape left.

Pudding on a plate

2011-08-20T22:29:00.003+12:00

What a week. On Monday my friend Rosemary came for Wellington on a Plate; her plane landed in sunshine but by the time we got to the Te Papa carpark, en route for lunch at Hippopotamus, snowflakes were falling thickly. Lunch was terrific from start to finish, completely different from Arbitrageur - no second-class treatment, a perfect table with the best view of the harbour (slate-grey, with a strange snowlit sky over the dark Eastbourne hills) and excellent service to go with the faultless food (Wairarapa lamb shank tortellini, bluenose on sautéed Ōtaki leeks with beurre blanc sauce). After a trip to Moore Wilson, we got home just before the snow covered the drive to match the garden.
We had some more good lunches, but the star turn was the concert and dinner put on by La Bella Italia at the Lower Hutt Little Theatre. By then the exotic snow had given way to relentless sheets of rain and a howling southerly, so we were incredibly grateful when two of the four friends we were going with drove us out and then insisted on driving us back, even though they live in the Hutt. Four soaring songs from soprano Julia Booth, prosecco and antipasta nibbles in the foyer, another four songs, then dinner at beautifully set tables right on the stage itself. (I think that's my black back right of centre - I was wearing warm velvet with layers underneath, and I needed them!)

We had risotto with taleggio cheese, pears, and walnuts, roast pork stuffed with prunes, and almond panna cotta. It was great fun as well as great eating, I was so pleased I'd managed to organise it.

The other highlight came courtesy of Julio. I hadn't had much time to get ready for Rosemary, and he offered to make a dessert for Monday night. I thought he said "pudding", but in fact it was "pudin" - a brilliant Brazilian version of creme caramel, again featuring condensed milk.

Pudin de leite condensado - Julio's creme caramel

Caramel:
150g sugar
1 cup hot water (poured from a boiled kettle)
Butter to coat the dish - you need a deep round china or glass dish with straight sides

Melt the butter and brush it very thinly over the base and sides of the dish.
In a small heavy-based saucepan, heat the sugar with a splash of water until about a quarter of it has melted.
Using a wooden spoon, give it a gentle stir and continue to cook and stir until it's turned to liquid and is a dark golden colour (10-15 minutes in all). Take the pan off the heat and carefully add enough water to give you the amount you need to thickly coat the base of the dish. You might need to remelt it over the heat and stir to get rid of any lumps. (I like LOTS of caramel. If you're a bit scared of this process, use the microwave caramel recipe I gave here.)
Carefully pour it into the dish, turning the dish to coat the bottom evenly and go a little way up the sides.

Creme
3 eggs
1 tin sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp flour
1 tin milk (not trim milk - use the condensed milk tin to measure it)

Preheat oven to 220C.
Sieve the eggs into a bowl.
Add condensed milk, stir well, and blend in the flour with a whisk.
Add milk and blend it in too.
Pour into the prepared dish, leave it to cool a little, and cover the dish with foil (dull side up).
Stand the dish in a metal roasting dish. Pour enough boiling water around it to come 3/4 of the way up the sides.
Bake for 1 hour or until the creme is well set. Remove from water, leave it to cool, cover with cling film and put it in the fridge. Take out at least an hour before you want to serve it.
To serve, carefully run a thin knife blade around the creme. Place a large plate with slightly raised sides or a rim (to hold any runny caramel) on top of the dish. Holding the plate firmly in place, turn the dish over so that the creme settles neatly onto the plate with the caramel on top.

This was just as delicious as any of the professional creations I ate this week. Rosemary was very impressed. Obrigado, Julio!

PS: I wrote this whole post last night but Google threw a hissy fit and lost the lot!

Les longeurs d"Arbitrageur

2011-08-11T23:14:00.001+12:00

Ali has had a birthday recently, and she's also retired, so as Wellington on a Plate was coming up, I asked her to choose wherever she'd like to be taken for a celebratory lunch (which would also be a thank-you to her for being such a wonderful friend). She chose Arbitrageur in Featherston Street, so I booked a few weeks ago for 1 pm today. Here's what happened.

12.55 I arrive. The restaurant looks pretty full. The waiter consults his bookings and crosses ours off.
W: "You're here for Wellington on a Plate?" A. "Yes."
Waiter leads me right through the long room and gestures to two high stools side by side in front of two place settings on the end of the bar.
A. (calmly and pleasantly) "We're getting on a bit, and this isn't what I had in mind. We'd like a proper table."
Waiter consults a colleague and leads me back to a perfectly satisfactory table for two at the first banquette, behind the cash register, alongside another table for two, where a couple are waiting for their order.
A. "That's lovely, thank you."
Ali arrives, and we chat happily. Beyond us stretches the long banquette, with every seat full. Beyond the bar and in the front, there are two more spaces with smaller tables, but I can't see whether they're all full too.
1.15 Waiter comes back to take our order. Though it wasn't mentioned in the WOAP programme, we're pleased to see there's both a two-course and a three-course option, as we plan to do this properly. So we order all three at the very reasonable price of $45, including a glass of (in our case) the Ata Rangi chardonnay: Castlepoint-caught blue warehou with crushed potatoes, fennel, tomato, capers and kalamata olives; roast pork belly with apple and fennel compote; meringue with Schekter's lemon curd, creme vanille and passonfruit. Yum.
1.20 Some little slices of bread arrive (there's already olive oil on the table) and water is poured.
1.25 Our wine arrives.
1.45 Our waiter passes by. Anne: "Might some food be arriving soon?" W. "We're very busy."
2.00 Our neighbours have finished their food, which arrived some time ago (they were clearly not having the Wellington on a Plate lunch). A different waiter clears their plates. I know I should not speak to the different waiter, but by this time I am feeling distinctly odd.
Anne: "Excuse me, we've been waiting for an hour." New W. (after short silence): "I'll ask." Neighbours: "Goodness, you still haven't had yours? That is a bit slow." Anne: "And we did book. " Neighbours: "We didn't!"
2.05 The large party starts to leave. They queue beside us to pay. This takes some time. Our waiter passes by. Anne: "Will our food be arriving soon? I'm thinking of collapsing in a dramatic faint." Waiter (who is not amused): "I'll check that it's being made."
2.10 Female waiter approaches with two plates of what look like our fish. Just as we start to perk up, she goes on past us to the front space.
2.13 Anne to Ali (who is, bless her, amused rather than embarrassed by my efforts, but is also getting very hungry): "If it doesn't arrive by 2.15, I think we'll go."
2.14 Our first course arrives. It is delicious and we polish it off reasonably fast. By this time the large party have all gone and the staff are resetting the long table. We may well be the last lunchers left.
2.25 Our second course arrives. We eat that a little more slowly. The pork belly is beautifully cooked and goes very well with the exquisite tiny morsels of apple, etc.
2.35 Waiter brings out our desserts, hesitates, takes them on past us and presumably puts them somewhere in the space out front to wait until we're ready for them. Fortunately, they're cold.
2.40 Our plates are cleared and the dessert is brought. The waiter also brings us two complimentary glasses of dessert wine, "because of the wait". I could be wrong, but I don't recollect hearing any actual words of apology. Still, we are suitably thankful.
We finish our desserts and wine slowly - perfect meringues with soft centres, like miniature pavlovas - follow them with coffee (promptly produced), pay (with nothing about our experience said on either side at the till), and leave about 3 pm.
Very good food, yes, and definitely a long lunch - but certainly not the relaxed experience I'd planned. Thank goodness Ali and I have been friends for such a long time.

Eating in and out

2011-08-04T23:11:00.002+12:00

Last Friday I left pasta and creamy fish sauce in the fridge for Julio and took off. I struck it doubly lucky - the first night it was my brother-in-law's birthday dinner - fillet steak, mushrooms, mashed potato, broccoli and red pepper, brilliant baked parsnips with walnuts...

...then my other sister (who had just had a birthday) took me out for toothsome Thai, while her husband watched the rugby; and on Monday I went into town early and took myself out for an excellent breakfast.

Monday night it was back to cooking happily for Julio, who has of course neatly solved my solitary dinner problem for the time being, and greatly enjoys almost everything I give him (not so keen on lamb, though).

The parsnip recipe came from that great New Zealand classic, Digby Law's A Vegetable Cookbook (I have the well-worn original hardback, pulished in 1978, but it was reissued by Hachette in 2007). I've still got some Waikanae walnuts, so I'll be making these soon.

Buttered parsnips with walnuts (Digby Law)

750g parsnips
1/3 cup water
6 spring onions, chopped
salt and pepper
50g butter
1 Tbsp chopped parsley
50g walnut pieces

Heat oven to 180C. Put scraped, sliced parsnips (best cut lengthwise through the core) in an ovenproof dish and add water, spring onions, salt and pepper. Dot with butter. Bake, covered, for 50 minutes or until parsnips are tender. In the meantime, toast the walnuts in a shallow dish in the oven for about 10 minutes.
Just before serving, stir the parsley into the parsnips and sprinkle them with the toasted walnuts.

A time and place for pizza

2011-07-28T18:48:00.000+12:00

Very quick post, as I'm just about to go away for a few days (see Elsewoman), so tonight seemed like the perfect time to have pizza. Julio will be delighted - last night he was practising with me how to say "It's a long time since I had pizza" (past tense) or "I haven't had pizza for a long time" (past perfect). Fortunately we have a Mediterranean Warehouse pizza place nearby, and they really do make the best pizza in Wellington. He favours very traditional pizza which he calls Calabrese, but which sounds more like what I know as Margherita - very simple, with tomato, mozzarella and basil. Fast (we're going to hear the Sami Sisters later tonight), nothing to clear up (early start tomorrow), and makes a nice change for me from cooking. But we did have smoked salmon, bread and cream cheese jsut now - he thought he wouldn't like the smoked salmon, but one bite and he was won over. It's fun introducing people to new things.

Brazilian buns

2011-07-24T23:03:00.003+12:00

This week my first paying guest arrived (see Elsewoman). His name is Julio, and he immediately asked me - before he'd even tried my cooking - if I would provide dinner for him. Obviously he was putting a trusting faith in the immodest claim in my ad that "I have a very good reputation as a cook".
Fortunately he does like my food, and it's lovely for me having someone to eat with every night. While he doesn't cook himself, he has worked in a bakery, and when we went shopping last week, he suggested that he could make his aunt's recipe for "condensed milk bread" (though in fact they're buns) - pão de leite condensado. It was a very good thing to do on a horribly cold, wet day.

Pão de leite condensado

Put in the food processor:
2 eggs
1/2 tin sweetened condensed milk
The same amount of warm water
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 tsp salt
Process until combined, then add yeast.
Julio usually uses 1/2 cake of compressed yeast - he sprinkles it over the top of the mixture and leaves it for 5 minutes. But we could only find dried yeast, so we did it this way:
Dissolve 1 and 1/2 tsps sugar in a cup of warm water.
Sprinkle over 1 slightly rounded Tbsp active dried yeast (do not stir) and leave for 10 minutes.
Add to egg mixture.

In a large bowl, mix
500g high grade (bread) flour
with the egg and yeast mixture to make a fairly stiff dough.
Cover and leave to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour. (We resorted to covering the bowl with plastic wrap and putting it in a sinkful of warm water with the chopping board on top.)

Heat oven to 220C and oil an oven tray.

Oil your hands and form the risen dough into neat round buns - it makes about 12 - and spread them out on the tray.
Leave to rise again for 30 minutes
(the top of the stove is a good place, because it's warm).

Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden-brown on top.
When the buns come out of the oven, the correct way to finish them is to paint them with melted butter and dust them with powdered parmesan cheese. I didn't have any, and in any case I thought I'd prefer mine just plain. We tried putting grated cheddar on some for Julio, but it didn't stay on very well. Still, they were delicious that day, and next morning they were wonderful cut in half and toasted - they tasted like brioche.

Shelling out

2011-07-15T23:21:00.008+12:00

Every so often I know some kind of pasta with lots of sauce is what I really want to eat. When I felt like this on Saturday and opened my Food of Italy, out fell a months-old Dom-Post clipping - a Jill Dupleix recipe for pasta shells with pork ragu and parmesan cream.
I had everything listed except the shells. My first impulse was to make do with one of the other five kinds of pasta in the pantry, but it was a nice day, so I stifled that unworthy thought and set off for Gamboni's. His beautiful shells were superbly named
"conchiglioni al bronzo", making them sound like an Italian toyboy.

They cost $6.95. Once upon a time I would have thought, "that's a whole $4 more than supermarket pasta - no, that's too much". But now I've learnt better - the right thing to compare it with is the cost of eating the same dish in a restaurant, twice.
So here's the recipe. It's a little ironic, because Dupleix's latest book is called Lighten Up, and on her website she says, "I have always loved good food, but now I want it to be good for me too. So I have learned how to lighten up on everything but freshness and flavour, without the cream, pastry and unnecessary animal fats that slow me up and weigh me down." There are lots of veges in this - but the cream is the whole point...

Pasta shells with pork ragu and parmesan cream (Jill Dupleix)

It says "serves 4" but that must mean four starving Italians - I reckon this will feed at least 6.

(original recipe photo)

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp butter
1 onion, finely diced
50g pancetta or ham, finely diced
2 medium carrots, finely diced
1 celery stalk, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, finely grated
500g coarsely minced pork
1 Tbsp plain flour
400ml tomato passata
2 Tbsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp dried oregano (I used more of the fresh leaves)
salt and pepper
2 Tbsp flat-leaved parsley, chopped
250g large pasta shells (e.g. conchiglioni) (so I got this EXACTLY right!)
150g frozen peas (I admit, I left these out)

Parmesan cream
150ml cream
50g grated parmesan
1 tsp grated lemon zest
a few fine grates of nutmeg

* If you have a food processor, instead of finely dicing the veges by hand, put chunks of onion, peeled carrot and celery into the bowl and pulse until finely chopped together.
* Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a large pan, gently cook garlic, then add veges and cook gently for 10 minutes. Add pork and cook till browned. Scatter with flour and cook for another 2 minutes, then add tomato passata and paste, oregano, parsley, salt, pepper and 300ml water. Stir well and simmer gently for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thickened.
* Put large pot of water on to boil for pasta. Heat oven to 180C. Cook pasta shells in boiling salted water until just tender (I find this takes about 10 minutes), then scoop out and drain carefully (the water tends to get stuck inside them). Cook peas, if using them, in the pasta water for 1 minute, then drain.
* Toss shells in the other 1 Tbsp olive oil. Spoon the ragu into each shell and arrange in a lightly oiled baking dish. (I found it was easier to arrange them first and then fill them.) Scatter with peas and put another couple of large spoons of ragu over the top.
* In a small pan, gently heat the cream with most of the parmesan, lemon zest, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Pour over the top and scatter with remaining parmesan. Bake for 20 minutes until golden and bubbling.

I think I took this before I cooked it - I was sure I'd taken one after as well, but it's vanished. Annoying, because the finished dish looked exactly like the picture (minus the peas). But you get the idea. Ample red wine, a green salad and enough other people to stop you making a total maiale of yourself are the only other things you need. Buon appetito.

Small pleasures

2011-07-07T20:26:00.003+12:00

Last week ran away on me, with many visitors and lots of household sorting out (see Elsewoman). While I did do a lot of cooking, everything I made had either already been posted here or else had no good pictures (usually because it got eaten). So this week I thought I'd just put together a few of the small food pleasures that have come my way lately.

First, this beautiful new-laid egg. My friend Fiona grew up with hens and chickens, and says she can't believe how old the eggs in the supermarket are (you can tell by putting them in water and seeing if they float). She gave me this one, fresh from her hens, to bring home for my breakfast. Harvey bought me the pink cat egg-cup nearly thirty years ago in Auckland.
Second, this very simple first course: mild sopresa salami freshly cut for me by Tony at Gamboni's in Karori, and small red Peppadew peppers stuffed with my homemade boursin. The combination of mild, smooth, sharp and salty was very good.

And third - this is really cheating - this sensational selection of chocolate blocks, chocolate truffles and marzipan, a belated birthday present from Ulrike, Matthias and Lisa in Germany. Naturally, I'll be sharing it around. Well, some of it. To some extent. Of course I will.

A closer look

2011-06-25T22:22:00.000+12:00

Not a lot going on in my kitchen today (see Elsewoman). But I did have a superb mushroom soup for lunch, finished with lemon juice and zest - I got the recipe and will post it when I've tried it out. Dinner was a quick and simple combination of clams in their juice with vermouth, cream and parsley, served over spaghetti.

But before I made this, I went out to the garden in the late afternoon and picked the last of the raddichio. The punnet of seedlings I planted in that pot was labelled "Cos lettuce" - I wanted it for Caesar salads. But I was more cheerful about having raddichio instead when I found it was selling in Moore Wilson for $25 a kilo. Today its beauty made me feel better - Harvey would have approved of it.

California sunshine

2011-06-16T22:46:00.004+12:00

For a professed non-baker, the number of cake posts seems to be increasing rather fast, but that's just too bad - or good. For a dessert last week I made one I found years ago in a US vegetarian cookbook. (I kept only this one recipe and have since lost the book, so I can't recall who wrote it.) I know New Zealand oranges are really out of season, but as it's a Californian recipe, I thought it would be okay to use Californian oranges.
The original quantities contain mysterious US measurements like "a stick of butter" (about 60 grams, so my American friends tell me). The recipe also specifies " "buttermilk" (I use half milk and half plain yoghurt) and "pastry flour", which is apparently halfway between "cake flour" (only 8 to 9 percent protein) and normal flour (11% protein or more). We don't have either cake flour or pastry flour - well, I've never seen any here - but I just use normal standard flour and it seems to work fine.

Californian orange and raisin cake

2 oranges
1 cup seedless raisins
60 g butter
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup milk, mixed with 1/3 cup plain yoghurt
2 cups sifted white flour
1 tsp baking soda
another 1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup orange flavoured liqueur (I use a cheapish triple sec, it's less sweet)

- Set oven to 180C.
- Prepare cake tin - a well greased ring tin carefully lined with paper on the bottom works well, or use a medium-sized square tin lined with baking paper - have it coming up the sides and extending a little beyond the rim so you can lift the cake out easily later.
- Juice the oranges, strain juice and set it aside. Grind the two orange rinds in a food processor with the raisins.
- Add all other ingredients except the orange juice, and process just to combine.
- Spread evenly in tin and bake for about 45 minutes - a square tin takes a little longer - until a skewer ot thin knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- While cake is baking, mix 3/4 cup of the orange juice, the second 1/4 cup sugar, and the liqueur in a jug.
As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, spoon this liquid evenly all over the top.
- When the cake is almost cold and has absorbed the liquid, either lift it carefully out of the square tin using the bake paper, or for a ring tin, turn it carefully out onto a plate and then immediately invert it onto another plate so the top is again on top.

It has a really fruity, moist texture and tastes beautifully orangey, but not too sweet - I use less sugar than the original recipe. I'm afraid this is the last slice (yes, once again I forgot to snap it before we ate it), and it's a bit fuzzy - the photo, not the cake. If you have leftover cake, keep it in the fridge and take it out ahead of time, or warm it up gently, if you want to serve it for dessert - it shouldn't be eaten really cold. You can serve it with whipped cream, slightly flavoured with orange liqueur, or with yoghurt - vanilla is nice.

Such a simple lemon cake...

2011-06-09T23:59:00.002+12:00

Now this post will probably be of no use to all those savvy readers who've been making this cake ever since they could first say "Alison Holst". But as I thought there just might be someone out there who hadn't heard about it, and it's the only cake I set out to make that never, ever goes wrong, I thought it would be worth writing about. I got some free lemons from my friends from Linton, and I needed something to serve as dessert, so I made it for Monday night. I originally got the recipe from Ali, but she says it's really from the other Alison. The ingredients are listed in the order you use them.

Lemon Yoghurt Cake

1 and 3/4 cups sugar (I cut this down a little to 1 and 1/2)
rind of two medium lemons
2 eggs
1 cup oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup yoghurt (any kind, plain or sweetened, though of course lemon is good - but more expensive)
2 to 3 tbsp lemon juice
2 cups self-raising flour

Set oven to 180C. Grease and flour cake tin - a ring tin with baking paper on the bottom works well. Or else just put baking paper into a square tin.
Put sugar and lemon rind into food processor bowl. Process until completely combined.
Add eggs, oil and salt. Process until thick and smooth.
Add yoghurt and lemon juice and process to mix.
Add flour and process briefly, just to combine.

Pour into tin and bake at 180C for about 40 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. (A square tin may take a bit longer.) Cool for 10 minutes before removing from tin.
Serve with icing sugar sieved over the top, and/or either whipped cream or plain or lemon yoghurt or lemon sorbet.

As you can see, it's still a tiny bit damp at the bottom - I was in a hurry and took it out of the oven slightly too soon - but as it was for dessert, that didn't matter in the slightest. I served it with a quick syrup made from lemon curd heated up with a little juice and water.

A little of what you fancy does you good

2011-06-02T22:21:00.004+12:00

What shall I eat? Food, of course - but what kind of food? I know this looks like a silly question, and that I'm very lucky to even be able to ask it. But ever since I started cooking, which was several decades ago, after I got married the first time, I've had some sort of framework for deciding what to make for dinner (breakfast is pretty much routine, and lunch often seems to take care of itself). And that framework has always involved cooking for other people as well as myself. I did enjoy what I made - but what I personally wanted to eat was almost never the main thing I thought about when I was deciding what we would have.
         Of course, after the boys left home, there would be the odd stretch of time when Harvey was away, but I tended to have a few set things I always made then because I liked them and he didn't - things like vege curry and some Albanian dishes. He was the same when I was away, he'd indulge in pickled pork and tinned tongue and those round beef roasts stuck together with skewers.
         But now it's a different story. I'm just not used to having only myself and my own preferences to consider. Quite often, of course, I'm having one or more people to dinner, and making what I think will work for them, and then there are usually leftovers and I eat them quite happily. But otherwise it's really odd how difficult it can seem to decide what I actually do want to eat. There's always cost to consider - I'm not rushing off to buy fillet steak or blue cod every day, not that I'd want to anyway. Still, within reasonably broad limits, I can get what I want - if I could only know what that was...
         I've started trying to pay attention when I have even a slight yen for something. I find that when I do manage to work out what I'd like at that time, and go to the effort of getting and making it, I enjoy it much more than when I just vaguely make do with whatever seems easiest or happens to be on special. And now and then it's actually okay to throw away the last helping of something that won't freeze well, or wasn't all that nice to start with, or I really don't want to have again, and get something fresh to eat instead - or just have a poached egg, if that's what I fancy.

PS - to Susan who posted a comment on Saturday on my Lois Daish post, asking for Gina'a no-knead bread - I have the recipe and have put it up on that post for you to see. Must try it out myself!

Persimmon pudding

2011-05-26T22:47:00.002+12:00

Tonight I was having dinner brought to me by friends - all I was responsible for was dessert. The glowing orange persimmons at the greengrocer reminded me that I have Fran's brilliant recipe for persimmon pudding, so I made that. You put together three separate mixtures, then combine them.

Fran's persimmon pudding
Heat oven to 180C.
Make
1 cup persimmon puree (peel, cut up, removing seedy part, and puree in blender or processor - my persimmons were a little too firm, so I added a couple of slightly squishy feijoas)
and add
1 tsp baking soda.

In a large bowl, mix:
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt
and add
1 tsp baking soda.

In a small bowl, mix:
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla.

Add puree and egg mixture alternately to dry ingredients, mixing well, then add:
1 tbsp melted butter
1/2 cup currants or raisins
1/2 cup nuts - macadamia or pecan or walnut
(I used raisins and walnuts - I had a big bowl of those from Fran's tree at Waikanae.)

Line light square baking tin with baking paper, or use individual ramekins.
Pour in mixture and cook at 180C for 15 minutes.
Dust with a mix of caster sugar and cinnamon.
Bake another 15 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave to cool until warm, before serving with cream or custard, and if you like, some slices of lightly poached persimmon on the side.

This pudding has a beautiful rich warm colour and tastes faintly mysterious - if you don't tell people what it's made of, they're unlikely to guess. A delicious early winter special.

Buying dinner

2011-05-21T22:06:00.008+12:00

This post is a little late - it's been a busy week. As I was going to be occupied on the evening of my birthday (see Elsewoman), I arranged to have my French friend Diane to dinner on Wednesday. But I knew I wouldn't have much time to cook, as I had some work due, and my neighbour Frances had invited us for drinks before dinner. A trip to Moore Wilson was clearly called for. Here's what I bought.

Fresh prawn cutlets, to cook with pasta for a main course (Frances's nibbles would do nicely for a starter).

I fried them quickly in butter, took them out and reduced some vermouth, added lime and lemon juice, put the prawns back and cooked them gently a little longer, stirred in a bit of chilli jam and some fresh coriander, finished the sauce off with fresh cream, and added a little more finely chopped coriander and black pepper just before serving.

Vermouth - Noilly Prat cost only slightly more than Martini, and I love using it with seafood - as well as a gorgeous green broccoflower, four different kinds of pears and a new tin of smoked paprika. The slice of goat's cheese came from Gamboni's, our brilliant Karori deli - we had a tiny bit for the obligatory French cheese course, after a salad of the very last of my garden lettuce (I know I should have planted some more while it was so warm this month, but I didn't).

For dessert we had Arobake rhubarb tart, then peppermint tea with the little biscuits Diane brought.

Since then (see Elsewoman!) I've done little else but eat, as kind friends treated me for my birthday (they know me all too well, obviously). This can't go on (she said feebly, reaching for the last chocolate). Well, only till Monday. Then I will live on nothing but salads and scraps and water for a while.

Bone with a hole - osso buco

2011-05-14T21:29:00.002+12:00

The first time I went overseas with Harvey was to Sydney, in 1981. I'd never been to Australia, and was a bit overwhelmed by the food. Harvey wanted to go to an Italian restaurant he'd been to before. I can't remember its name, but it seemed very authentic - too much so for me. It was large and noisy and had a vast, multipage Italian menu that completely baffled me, partly because I could barely read its curly brown type in the dim light.
         Harvey knew exactly what he wanted - mussels, followed by saltimbocca. I wasn't impressed by the idea of mussels, because I thought they'd be like the giant New Zealand ones, and I wasn't sure what saltimbocca was. So I chose two things I'd often heard of, but never had - minestrone and osso buco.
          I didn't enjoy my foolish combination of two very hearty, meaty dishes, and the bones in the osso buco were embarrassingly difficult to deal with. Meanwhile Harvey tied on a huge white bib and feasted on a big bowl of tiny black mussels cooked in white wine, completely different from the ones I'd had back home, followed by a delicate, delicious-looking combination of veal, ham and sage that lived up to its lovely name of jump-in-the-mouth.
           I've made minestrone many times since, but never osso buco. Then before Christmas I found a neat package of the right cut of veal in Moore Wilson (remarkably cheap at $6.95), and bought it to freeze and make later for Harvey - I knew he'd enjoy it, and the Claudia Roden recipe (the modern version, with tomatoes - the older one didn't use them, it was more like a veal blanquette) looked remarkably simple.
          Of course, I never got the chance to make it for him. But this week, with visitors due, I decided it was time to have a go.

Osso buco alla milanese
(from The Food of Italy, Claudia Roden)

4 thick slices of shin of veal, each cut with a piece of marrow bone in the middle
flour for dusting
50g butter, or less (I did use this much, but removed some later, it's a lot)
125 ml dry white wine
225g tomatoes, peeled and chopped (or a good quality can of crushed tomatoes)
meat stock or water
salt and pepper

For the gremolata:
4 tbsp finely chopped Italian flat-leaved parsley
1 tbsp finely grated lemon zest
1 small clove garlic, crushed
1 large anchovy, finely chopped

- Coat pieces of meat with flour and brown in butter on both sides. Add tomatoes and stock or water to cover, then season.
- Cook very gently with lid on for 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't stick, until meat is so tender it comes away from the bone. (I used the slow cooker for this stage.) Add stock or water to keep meat covered at first, but sauce should be thick by the end.
- Make gremolata: mix parsley, lemon zest, garlic and anchovy, place a little on each piece of meat and cook a few minutes longer.
- Serve with risotto alla milanese or plain white rice.

The flavour and texture is beautifully smooth and rich without being too heavy, and the sharp gremolata offsets it perfectly. Buon appetito.

A Right Royal Nosh-up

2011-05-01T18:14:00.009+12:00

Sadly, the invitation arrived too late. But in any case, I was already
booked for a Royal Wedding Dinner with friends.

According to a former royal chef's glossy cookbook, Eating Royally (I am not making this up), Buckingham palace menus are always written in French, and ours was no exception.

The sausages (tasty traditional pork, of course, from the local butcher) were arranged around the mash to make a lovely crown shape, topped with pea jewels and escorted by cabbage with peas, roast veges and onion gravy. Propped up behind is the welcoming picture on the back of the menu cards, standing in for our distant hosts. (I'm sure they would have preferred our sausages to chocolate biscuit cake.)

Dessert was a proper English trifle, with the right (generous) amount of sherry, decorated with the happy couple's crests surrounded by chocolate sprinkle hearts.

By the time we'd worked our way through all this, interrupted by occasional dashes to the telly to see well-known guests arriving at the Abbey (including Princess Eugenie and her hat, described by Rosemary McLeod as resembling an ancient contraceptive device - the Really Good Stuff was about to start.
(PS - Our eagle-eyed hostess has pointed out that the one in pink with that hat was Beatrice, Eugenie was the one in blue brocade.)

We oohed and aahed as the bride appeared, gasped as the ring got stuck (I suppose it Isn't Done for the bride to try it on first, but I admired how well the groom coped with this unforeseen crisis), and then welcomed the clever way our hostess filled the awkward gap before the Balcony Appearance with the promised friandises. And what magnificent little morsels they were.

To accompany them we had, naturally, the Queen's favourite tipple - a cup of tea. Just like us, and most of the guests, the teapot was properly dressed for the occasion.

After the second kiss, toasted with a glass of Deutz (proudly New Zealand, but also a better-sounding match for the German-descended Windsors than anything French), we called it a night - and a very good night it was too.

Wild duck time

2011-04-28T22:38:00.002+12:00

The duck shooting season begins on 1 May. For some time I've had three dead ducks in my freezer. Harvey's brother Bruce is a very good shot, and each year brings down more ducks than they can cope with. So I was the lucky recipient of these.
I've tried various ways of cooking wild duck. The slow cooker method works the best, but it can only cope with one duck at a time, so it's no good for more than two people, given that wild ducks don't have nearly as much flesh on them as domestic ducks.
So I had another scout around the net and came up with a brilliant recipe by none other than Steve Logan and Al Brown of Logan Brown fame. What's more, it required precisely three ducks. I organised a dinner and planned my campaign.

Oh dear - I had this whole post written and saved and then Blogger went awol, wouldn't let me in, and when I finally got back most of it had gone. Now it's 10.30 pm and I haven't the energy to rewrite it all! Have a look at the recipe here. I made duck stock with the carcasses and roasting pan veges instead of chicken stock, used considerably less stock than they say so as not to drown it (maybe they had bigger ducks), and less flour to thicken, and served it with potato and parsnip puree instead of pasta. The consensus: it was magnificent - and even better next day. Hard to photograph, though - here's the best I could do. And now I'm going to bed.

Biscuits for Anzac Day

2011-04-19T12:29:00.009+12:00

On Saturday morning I decided I wanted to do some baking - a rare event. What could I make with what was on hand? Harvey often used to have porridge, so I made sure there was a constant supply of rolled oats. Our old kitchen had open shelves, and I kept what we used most often in nice-looking tins, preferably ones that matched the contents. (They were hopeless for storing biscuits and crackers, but fine for everything else.)

When I found this great tin in a long-gone gift shop in Willis St, I was really pleased - not only was it perfect for the rolled oats, but tigers were Harvey's favourite animal.

I never eat porridge, and I hate wasting things. So of course the perfect thing to make, especially at this time of year, was - Anzac biscuits. And yet again I turned to Lois Daish, whose Listener column showed how much effort she put into getting her recipe right. I'd used it before (a long time ago!). Only this time I did it properly and weighed everything out. She points out that "the quantity of golden syrup is thr trickiest variable", so you should make sure you measure out exactly three tablespoons, "with no syrup overflowing or clinging to the spoon".

Anzac biscuits (from A Good Year, 2005)
170g caster sugar
130g flour
100g rolled oats
60g dessicated coconut
100g butter
3 tablespoons golden syrup
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
4 tablespoons boiling water

- Preheat oven to 160C (on fanbake if you have it) and line two baking trays with baking paper.
- Put sugar, flour, oats a nd coconut into a large bowl and mix well.
- Put butter and golden syrup in a small pot over gentle heat until melted.
- Put baking soda in a cup and pour the boiling water over it. Stir until dissolved and add to melted butter and syrup.
- Pour this hot fluffy mixture into the dry ingredients and stir very thoroughly.
- Use your hand to form the slightly crumbly mixture into a mass. Form balls about the size of a small walnut and place onto the lined trays, leaving enough room for spreading. Press each ball lightly with a fork and put in the oven. (A friend told me to dip the fork in water first so it doesn't stick to the biscuits.)
- After 5 minutes, open the oven and you'll see that the biscuits have flattened and puffed up. Give each tray a gentle bang to deflate the biscuits - you may need to do this again after another minute or two. (Actually, mine didn't seem to puff up, but I did make them too big and I think I was a bit light on the flour, they really spread out.)
- Total baking time about 10 minutes."When ready", says Lois, "the biscuits will be a light chestnut brown and will still feel slightly soft when pressed."
- Take out of the oven, leave to cool for a minute or two, then transfer to a rack to harden and cool. (I just carefully lift off the whole sheet of baking paper and put that on the rack with the biscuits still on it.)
- Store in an airtight container.

They're thinnish, and a bit too big, but I like them like that. I've been proudly producing them for friends and eating one a day with my coffee. And sometimes another one with my afternoon tea. And now and then one for dessert, with fruit. So there aren't going to be any left for Anzac Day.

Back at the table

2011-04-07T22:36:00.003+12:00

When I was in Auckland, a strong-minded friend who lives on her own for most of the week advised me to reclaim my dining table. The thing is, unless we had visitors, I hardly ever used the table in this house before Harvey died, except for dinner. The light isn't good enough to read the paper, so I took to sitting in an armchair near the window for breakfast, and often for lunch as well. Harvey sat at the table if he was having porridge, but otherwise his pattern was much the same as mine - a plate on his lap.

Still, I knew she was right - the table is definitely the best place to eat dinner. So I've now made myself use it again. I'd rather sit at the side than the end, with the table stretching out rather forlornly in front of me, but if I do that I can't see the TV, and as I wrote over on Elsewoman, I need it on for company while I'm eating - it's too quiet otherwise. So this is the best I can do. Notice how I've carefully filled the table up.

And here's the delicious fish stew my friend served me for dinner at her place - she's a brilliant cook. It's a Lois Daish recipe, "Summer Fish Bowl", from her 2005 book A Good Year.

Summer Fish Bowl ( serves 2-3)
Sauce
1/2 c olive oil
1 large red or brown onion, finely diced
1 large carrot, finely diced
1 celery rib, finely diced
1 small fennel bulb, finely diced
1-2 cloves garlice, peeled and finely sliced
1/2 c white wine - suavignon blanc or a dry riesling
6-8 low acid tomatoes, chopped
salt and pepper
pinch saffron stamens
pinch cayenne pepper
fresh thyme leaves
1 and 1/2 cups fish stock, chicken stock or water with a splash of fish sauce
chopped fresh parsley

Warm oil in heavy pot, and gently fry onion, carrot, celery and fennel for several minutes, then add garlic. Fry briefly again and pour on the wine. Allow to bubble up for 1-2 minutes.. Add tomatoes, seasoning and thyme leaves. Cook for a few minutes then add liquid and simmer for 20 minutes until everything is tender. Check seasonings. Gently reheat 10 minutes before the fish is ready.

Fish
500g fresh fish, cut into large pieces (we had bluenose)
olive oil
salt and pepper

Carefully remove any bones. Place in rimmed roasting pan, brush with olive oil and season. Preheat grill. Slide fish under grill and cook for 3-5 minutes, depending on thickness, until fish is barely opaque right through. Transfer fish into heated shallow bowls. Pour any juices from pan into pot of sauce.

Check seasonings in hot sauce, add parsley and ladle over the fish. Serve with steamed white rice, potatoes or bread.

Cooking in the Catlins

2011-04-01T21:11:00.011+13:00

Here I am on the perfect picnic log, at what used to be called Moa Bone Point, on the Papatowai estuary in the Catlins. Walking along the beach, you can see where the sea has eaten into the bank and exposed the layers of ash from the moa hunters' hangi. If you're lucky you might even see a moa bone sticking out (though of course you won't remove it - all such finds are protected).
      We picnicked most days, very simply - bread and butter, salami, cheese, fruit - but not till 2 pm or even 3. No rushing, that's the essence of a good holiday. We were lucky - we left Dunedin on a Saturday, so we were able to stock up first at the railway station farmers' market.

Breakfast was fancy organic muesli and fruit, including the rhubarb from the cottage garden cooked up with the wonderfully tart red apples Jenn salvaged from a roadside tree. You can't buy proper cooking apples like these any more. (Apparently everyone has the right to pick fruit from roadside trees growing outside fences or hanging over them - it's called fructage.)

After coffee and one small piece of toast with comb honey, we set off for wherever Jenn had planned. She grew up in the area so I couldn't have had a better guide. By lunchtime, after what seemed to me like a really virtuous amount of walking - to beaches, waterfalls, rainforests - we were ready for morning tea. I'm happy to report that there was no shortage of good cafes. Owaka had giant slabs of carrot cake. Balclutha's indifferent coffee was offset by sensational home-made neenish tarts.  Gore had magnificent date scones and passionfruit yoyos, plus remarkable sculptured latte leaves. The only off-note was the eye-watering $24 we paid for two mochas and two afghans at McLean's Falls.

I had offered to take over the cooking, to give Jenn a break after doing all the driving. I really like working out what to make in holiday kitchens, and our Papatowai eco-cottage had all the basics. I think my piece de resistance was the Owaka Four Square's Bluff oysters, followed by a pretty pasta with (frozen) shrimp, broccoli and fresh pale green Italian courgettes (a present from Jenn's friends' Dunedin garden), and a sauce made from the oyster liquid, softened mild fresh onions (another garden gift), lime juice and white wine....

.... but the salad of Taylor's Gold pears, farmers' market goat's cheese, gifted Dunedin walnuts and rocket nicked from an absent local friend's garden was pretty good too....

... and our market plums and sweet little pinot noir grapes, plus a square or two of chocolate, did very well for dessert, priming us up nicely for the nightly Scrabble contest. Once (thanks to two blanks) I got all my letters down - but even so, I only just beat Jenn.

PS: The only cheese roll I had was awful.

Off down south

2011-03-17T12:48:00.000+13:00

I'll be away until 1 April - my housesitter will miss Dorothy. I'm off to explore the Deep South - I've never gone down past Dunedin before. Maybe I'll encounter the legendary Cheese Rolls! Meanwhile here are pictures of the beautiful greengage plums I baked with brown sugar in the slow cooker this week - the last of them will do for dessert tonight after Indian takeaway curries with friends - and the salmon fishcakes I made on Monday night to commemorate Dorothy, using up the tin I'd opened for her last breakfast.

Tarte tatin - with an Auckland twist

2011-03-16T22:59:00.006+13:00

I stayed with my family and with three different friends in Auckland. I'm lucky - they're all really good cooks. On Monday I went to Milford Mall, and saw a display of cookware which included a dish labelled as being for tarte tatin. I'd seen these before but I had never realised that was what they were for. It had odd downward-sloping handles, making it easy to turn the dish over at the end and get the tarte onto a plate - it's often translated as "upside-down apple tart".
The next day I went to Camille's, and she'd asked a mutual friend round for dinner. On her shelves I saw the same dish. She'd bought it in France, and used it often, but hadn't realised exactly what it was for. So I offered to make a tarte tatin for dessert.

I found a Peta Mathias recipe and adapted it a bit, according to what I could remember of the recipe I use in Wellington, which comes from a book brought back for me from the Loire Valley by a friend - The Cuisine of the Kings (with no author's name). It's essential to have a shallow, solid, flat-bottomed pan, preferably with handles, which can be used both on top of the stove and in the oven.

Tarte tatin
(the proper name is Tarte des Demoiselles Tatin, the tart of the Misses Tatin, after the sisters who were said to have invented it and served it in their restaurant)

1 kg firm, tart apples (Cox's Orange are good, but Granny Smith will do, providing they're fresh and firm)
75 g butter (this is half the quantity in my French recipe)
50 g sugar
2 sheets frozen puff pastry (If you're clever, make your own)

Peel, quarter and core the apples. Thaw the pastry sheets. Preheat the oven to 200C.
Put the butter and sugar into the pan and heat it until the butter is melted.
Fit the apple quarters into the pan, core side down.
Cook them for about 10 minutes until they begin to soften and the butter and sugar begin to caramelize.
Carefully turn them over and cook again while the butter and sugar continue to bubble and caramelize. You need to make sure nothing is burning, so the heat should not be too high, but you want the apples to soften while retaining their shape, and go a lovely golden brown on their rounded side. (My French recipe says to put the dish with the apples into the oven instead - this works okay too, but I got better results doing it on the stovetop.)

Leave the apples to cool a little while you join the pastry sheets carefully together, using a pastry brush and milk, to make a sheet big enough to fit completely over the pan and hang down a bit all round.
Trim it off in a circle around the pan, leaving enough extra to tuck in neatly around the apples.
Place the pastry over the apples and brush the top with milk. Bake for about 15 minutes until golden brown.
Cool for 5 minutes. Place a serving plate over the pan - it should be a little larger than the pan.
Turn the pan over holding the plate in place, so that the pastry is on the bottom and the apples are on top. Serve with cream and/or with this sauce, which is used in my French recipe.

Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup apple juice
1 tbsp honey
50 g butter
1/4 tsp each ground cinnamon and nutmeg

Mix all ingredients except the spices in a saucepan, bring to the boil and cook for 2 minutes. Blend in the spices.

When I made this at Camille's, I didn't have enough apples and they shrank too much when I cooked them. She had a bucketful of feijoas from her tree, so before I put the pastry on, I cut some in half, scooped them out and put them cut side down around the apples to fill up the dish.

Then I put the pastry on and baked it well.

The result was fantastic - the delicate, sharp scenty flavour of the feijoas combined perfectly with the caramelly apple. I wish I could grow them in Wellington. And that dish worked so well - it was by far the best tarte tatin I've made. Very satisfying!

Wedding cake bakers

2011-03-16T22:00:00.001+13:00

I've been to Auckland for my nephew's wedding (you can see a photo of the happy couple here).. One of the many nice things about it was the cake. In this picture it's minus its bottom layer - I couldn't get a good shot of it before.

What I liked was the way it kept up the family tradition, only with a nice modern twist. Our mother made the cakes for my wedding (the first one!) and for my sister's wedding. But it was my brother-in-law who made the cake for his son's wedding. He's always made the family Christmas cake, too.
My nephew takes after his father - he's an excellent cook, and so is his wife. They go in for mini-Master Chef contests at their place. I couldn't help thinking how nice it would be if, in the years ahead, he made the cake for the wedding of his son, or daughter.

The basics

2011-02-26T23:39:00.004+13:00

The Christchurch earthquake has underlined the human basics with shocking clarity. Water. Food. Staying clean. Waste disposal. Dry, warm shelter. Family, friends, neighbours. Plus, of course, simply being lucky enough not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
         Before, I knew that the main problem would be Harvey's survival. Mine seems a much simpler matter.
         I had meant to get my preparation act together last time, but didn't. This time I've got as far as putting everything I already have in the way of basic essentials together in a safe, accessible place, and I have every intention of getting the missing items as soon as I can.
         Top of the list: big black plastic bags. A wind-up torch and a wind-up radio. (I spoke to an elderly family member today who is surviving brilliantly without water and power, with wonderful help from her neighbours, but I knew far more about what was going on than she did - she does have a battery radio, but it's permanently tuned to FM, so she hadn't heard any of the info on National Radio, whose staff have been doing a brilliant job.)
          I do have water (though it's in the garage and could be hard to reach) and I have water purification tablets, as well as bleach in the laundry. I don't have any means of cooking or boiling water, but both my neighbours do - and you can cope without if you have to.
          For food, I'm still relying mainly on Harvey's leftover stock of Fortisip, the complete meal in a bottle (they taste like a revoltingly sweet milkshake, but they don't need refrigerating or heating). But they'll only be okay until about July. Their "best before" date is June, and I know this can be safely exceeded, whereas "use by" shouldn't be - but I don't know how long past the "best before" you can go and not get sick.
           I've got a stock of baked beans as well. You could easily live on them for a while, and they're not too bad even when they're cold. With any luck, the tins in the pantry would still be usable too - unlike the jars, and the wine, they won't smash open.
           The only snag is - I haven't got that vital extra can-opener yet.
           Anyway, I'm doing my best, knowing that it might all be no use at all against the shocking power of nature. But it's been so heartening to see the way everyone, from the people next door right up to the army and Fonterra, has rushed to provide whatever help they can.
            If you're not usefully down there, listen to the good guys and please don't send stuff, just send money.

Something Else to Eat will have no new posts for a couple of weeks. My lovely housesitter will be here looking after my dear elderly Dorothy, who isn't eating very well.

Best-laid plans...

2011-02-20T12:25:00.003+13:00

Soon after Jonathan and Eric left, I got on the phone and arranged three evenings having friends to dinner, and one dinner going out - I had that on Friday, we went to Hede in Cuba St for cheap and cheerful Japanese. I remembered having delicious Japanese grilled eel in China, so I bravely ordered that (I think I impressed the waiter, who assured me "we do it well"), and it was just as I remembered - subtly sweet, rich but delicate.
On Saturday I had my first guest, my French friend Diane, who brought a lovely selection of cheeses, including a thick slice of my current favourite - bouche de chevre, goat's cheese log. I'd planned a proper dinner, and parts of it were very good, but others went badly askew.
The entree was a great success. The new Cuisine magazine arrived on Friday and I adapted one of the recipes from that. I cut a sheet of puff pastry into four even squares, then ran a knife around each square to give an edge that would rise. In places I cut right through the pastry by accident, but it didn't seem to matter. Then I transferred the squares to baking paper on an oven tray, spread grainy mustard over the inner square, arranged slices of tomato on top, and added salt, pepper and some grated cheese (cheddar rather than the gruyere in the original recipe, but it worked fine).

I brushed milk around the edges and put them in the oven at 200C for about 15 minutes. Of course we ate all four between us. Well, they're very light, we said.

I must work out the proper timing for cooking potatoes in the oven in various ways. Mine seem to veer between not being done quite well enough, and being overdone. Saturday was an overdone night - smallish oval half potatoes baked on a flat tray with oil, salt and rosemary, but I put them in too early and even though I moved them down to the bottom they ended up far too crispy ont he bottom (well, that was the polite word, in fact they were a bit burnt). Diane still ate them happily and so did I, but I was annoyed with myself all the same. Still, the steak was just right, very pink inside but not fleshy, and the plain green salad and cheese followed it very well.
(Had to stop here to rescue our elderly cat Dorothy, who had managed to get her rear end completely entangled in the blind cord and was dangling down from it onto the sofa, meowing piteously - thank goodness I was home.)
I made my worst faux pas with the pears in red wine. It's one of my favourite desserts but I haven't made it for a while, and I had intended to write it up properly here, complete with gorgeous photos. Here's the only one I managed to take.

I'll make it again and post the recipe properly. It involves three steps - bringing the red wine syrup to the boil and simmering it for five minutes, cooking the pears in it (I do it in the oven, it's easier), then reducing the syrup to just the right consistency to coat the pears. That's where I came unstuck. I was running a little bit late and tried to speed things up by putting the pan with the syrup on the back gas hob on high. But then Diane arrived and I forgot about it. Not good. We were sitting down for the entree when she politely pointed out that something seemed to be burning. The lovely red syrup had boiled away to a kind of red wine toffee. I managed to salvage enough to scoop over the pears, sitting ready on their plates, but by the time we ate them, instead of a luscious pool of syrup, both plates had a hard shiny dark glaze in the bottom. The cream seemed to soften up most of it enough to eat, and the pears were perfect - thoroughly cooked but not soft. But there were still rock-hard blobs of toffee on our plates, and as for the pan - I'm not sure it's going to recover. Ah well, c'est la vie.

Getting it right

2011-02-16T23:02:00.005+13:00

After four weeks with me, my son and his friend left today for Auckland en route back to China. It's been very interesting working out what to feed them. I could tell Eric really needed regular injections of rice, or, at a pinch, noodles or pasta, while Jonathan was intent on eating potatoes and salad. They both loved fish and veges, and were happy to fill up on bread and peanut butter and fruit during the day. On the whole we managed pretty well, and they seemed very happy with whatever I produced. For their last night I managed to get hold of three pieces of orange roughy, and we had it with boulangere potatoes (chunks of potato and thinly sliced onion in stock with bits of butter, cooked in the oven).
         I had trimmed the thin side flaps and ends off the fish, so I had these bits left over for me tonight. I cooked them gently in butter, added the leftover white wine sauce I had made yesterday, plus some cooked peas, poured the lot over freshly cooked potato and settled down contentedly with it all on a tray in front of the TV, glasses of a nice Giesen sauvignon blanc and water beside me.
         Unfortunately neither the plate nor the tray were right for the job. All it took was a slight tilt and I ended up with a great big slop down the front of my just washed white top. What I was most annoyed about was wasting all that lovely sauce.
         So, Lesson in Eating Alone No.1: If you're eating something wet and don't want to sit at the table (which I really don't like doing much, it just feels too solitary), then (a) use a big soup plate, not a dinner plate; (b) make sure you use a tray with a proper rim, so that even if it does spill, it won't escape; and (c) in case of accidents, have another glass of wine.

The Year of the Rabbit

2011-02-05T14:37:00.008+13:00

The Year of the Rabbit officially began on 3 February, so Jonathan's friend Eric, here visiting from China, said he would cook dinner. We already had two kinds of soy sauce and some of the other things he needed, including a wok. But he did all the main shopping himself at the local supermarket, except for the frozen dumplings - they came from Yan's in Hopper Street.

I was terrifically impressed by the calm, ordered way he went about getting everything ready in a foreign kitchen - much less drama and panic than would be usual for me when cooking four different dishes, plus of course rice, which he prefers to be stickier than the separate grains I'm used to producing.

Jonathan and I set the table nicely with the appropriate red cloth, chopsticks (and knives and forks), and my flowery Chinese teacups.

Everything was delicious - quite delicate, subtle flavours all going very well together. First we had the jiaozi, dumplings, filled with meat and vegetables. They're seen as lucky because they look like ancient Chinese money, dumpling-shaped silver and gold ingots called yuan bao. They symbolize wealth and hopes for a profitable future.

Jonathan loves salad, and recently was very happy to find that Northern Chinese have very good salads, so we had one of those. It's made of cooked rice noodles (the very thin stiff white ones you buy in a bundle), finely chopped cucumber, red pepper and coriander, plus pieces of cooked omelette, dressed with a mixture of garlic, oil, vinegar and salt.

The secret is to cook the noodles ahead of time, mix them with the veges and dressing and leave them to stand in the fridge for at least two hours, before mixing in the omelette and serving.

For the main dish omelette, Eric cut up mixed seafood and stirred it into seasoned beaten eggs, adding chopped onion and tomato on top while it was cooking. This is a beautifully light dish which would make me a lovely supper on its own.

Eric comes from the Hubei area, and fish was a feature of the food he had as a child. But no Chinese New Year dinner would be complete without meat, so he adapted a local dish of gently spiced meat and carrots by using lamb instead of beef, and adding potatoes. He had a few mussels from his seafood mix, so they went in too. It all worked very well.

We drank sparkling sauvignon blanc, and the lovely delicate green tea Eric brought me from China, and watched astonishing acrobats performing in the famous New Year Gala showing on the locally available Chinese TV channel, and generally felt we'd seen in the Year of the Rabbit in splendid style.

Small pleasures

2011-01-24T00:04:00.006+13:00

Over the last four weeks I've been cheered by some small pleasures, mostly brought by sympathetic friends, and often turning up at exactly the right time to take me out of myself and lift me over a rough patch.

First there were the beautiful blueberries Lesley grew on her Karori bushes, the offspring of the ones she grew in Taupo. She gave me some just before Harvey died, and more just after. I can't show you a picture because I've eaten them.

On Christmas Day itself, my friends turned up with a whole tableful of nourishment, including this platter of no less than seven different kinds of what can only be described by the medieval term of sweetmeats. Fortunately I had many people over the folllowing week to share them with.

On the Monday, Ali came to stay with me. She brought her home-made bread, a delicate French sauce to heat up slices of ham in, and my delayed Christmas present - a whole home-made panforte. But I forgot to photograph it, and now it's all gone (I cut up the last piece for last night's dinner, to eat after the cheese). Later others brought cardamom shortbread, lemon pesto, madeleines, and a certain superb small fruitcake...

On the day of the private funeral, Harvey's niece flew up with a freshly caught and cooked crayfish. I ate it with my sister and brother-in-law, who stayed on for the weekend to look after me. There was a little bit left, and on the Monday, when everyone had gone, I ate it creamed for lunch.

A few days later, Lois gave me this beautiful little box of macarons - I didn't know you could get the real thing in Wellington. I ate all four of them - strawberry, coffee, vanilla and lemon (the best) - in bed one night after dinner.

Now it's my turn to provide. Jonathan and his friend Eric have arrived, and for a month I will have people to cook for and eat with every night.

Savoury comfort food from Italy

2011-01-16T22:00:00.003+13:00

In the three weeks and a day since Harvey died, I've eaten dinner on my own nine times, mostly in the last two weeks. One night, I took myself over the road to Flavours, the local Indian restaurant. I felt perfectly comfortable eating alone in their upstairs room that catches the late summer sun - and there was enough curry left over to bring home for another night.
I haven't done much shopping and I've been inclined to eat pasta and rice - I haven't felt like cooking red meat, though I'm happy to eat it when I'm out and someone else cooks it for me. The remains of the Christmas ham have come in handy too.

It was the last of the ham that inspired me to cook myself a lovely risotto, from the Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta section in Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy. Even Harvey, never a great rice lover, enjoyed this one, though I didn't make it often. The first time I must have had some rice which, though it was labelled arborio, took ages to absorb the liquid and put me off trying again. But eventually I did, with different rice, and it worked much better.
This time, as well as good ham, I had good stock too - I'd made it from a smoked chicken carcase, and put it in the freezer. It's strange cooking with things I made, or even just bought, before Harvey died. Such a sudden line drawn across life.
Anyway, here's the recipe - I made enough for two servings and froze half, I don't know how successful that will be. But here I've given the original quantities (only with rather more ham and cheese) to feed 4-6 people. It's very comforting food, a bit like a savoury rice pudding.

Antico risotto sabaudo (based on Claudia Roden's recipe, serving 4-6)
50g butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
100g cooked ham, diced (I used quite a bit more to finish up the ham, especially as it was for my dinner rather than an entree)
1 large sprig of rosemary
400g Arborio rice
150ml white wine
1.25 litres chicken stock
150g fontina or gruyere cheese, cubed
4-6 tbsps freshly grated parmesan

Melt the butter over low heat in a saucepan, add onion and cook gently for 5 minutes until soft but not coloured. Add ham and cook 1 minute, then rosemary and rice, stirring until the rice is transparent. (Mine never seems to go transparent properly but it doesn't matter.)

Add wine, stir and cook until it's absorbed. Add stock a ladleful at a time, stirring until each is absorbed. After about 20 minutes the rice should be creamy but al dente. Stir in fontina or gruyere cheese and cook for another 5 minutes.

Serve in warmed pasta plates with parmesan scattered over the top. I had this with a tomato and basil side salad.

On my own

2011-01-07T21:57:00.002+13:00

Harvey died early on Christmas Day.

On Tuesday 4 January I went to the supermarket for the first time. There were so many things I no longer needed to buy. But when I tried to think what I should buy, I simply had no idea what I wanted.

I wandered round very slowly, trying to work out what to do. I knew I had Lynn coming round Wednesday night and Frances for dinner on Friday, so I bought ravioli and chicken. Bread - there was none left. Milk, garlic, wine. That was about it.

Ever since I started shopping and cooking, after I first married at nineteen, I've had a framework of other people to work within. Now all that has vanished and suddenly there's only me.

Christmas 2009

Turning into the Christmas Grinch

2010-12-20T17:25:00.002+13:00

The pork is ordered, the Jersey Bennes are bought, and the pudding is in the fridge. But just in case anyone out there was under the illusion that Everything is Going Jolly Well around here, here's the naked truth.

Thanks to the humid weather we've been having in Wellington, plus my lack of common sense in not putting half of them in the fridge, the expensive box of beautiful cherries I bought for Harvey at Moore Wilson last week is starting to Go Off. So tonight I'll have to poach what's left in red wine, which was not what I had wanted to do at all.
On Saturday, after my third trip to the shops, I had a meltdown and started shouting about Having to Do It All. Which was not nice, as I know perfectly well that what Harvey would like most in the world is to be able to do what he used to do for Christmas, from buying presents to cooking the dinner.
I have long known that Sellotape and me do not mix. Now I've proved very firmly that cellophane and me don't mix either. Besides, it lets you see what's inside, spoiling the fun of opening the present. Next year I'll remember this, I hope.
The only advantage of Harvey's illness is that as he can't get up the stairs, I can leave everything up here in a mess. The spare room is currently strewn with the remains of my card-making efforts, ends of wrapping paper, discarded cellophane (see above), the year's store of ribbons and bows (for recycling), assorted half-used sheets of stick-on gift tags left over from last year (some no longer stick and most of the rest are too naff or cutesy to use for anyone), and (hiding somewhere underneath all this) the scissors, the sticky tape and the pen. Oh, and the presents (other than the ones I've already dispatched to friends and rellies).

And once again I have failed to produce anything like the number of delicious, impressive home-made Christmas gifts I had intended to make. Even the hamper for my sister had nothing home-made in it, except the card. One person - one! - is getting some macaroons. That's it.

Merry Christmas!

Making French macaroons, sort of

2010-12-18T00:14:00.003+13:00

Strictly speaking they're macarons, but they're called macaroons in the latest Dish, which has a ridiculously perfect plate of them on the cover. So I bought it, thinking that now was the time to get together with my friend Amy and have a go at making them. She can't eat gluten, and when we went to France together four years ago, we used to buy them and take them back to our hotel for an afternoon snack (though they weren't as good as the ones I had in Melbourne). And I knew they were supposed to be difficult, so I figured two heads and pairs of hands would be better than one. We had a lot of fun.

Raspberry Parisian Macaroons - adapted slightly from Dish 33, December 2010-January 2011

100g free range egg whites
pinch of cream of tartar
2 tbsps caster sugar
1-2 tsps raspberry essence
red food colouring
140g ground almonds
220g icing sugar

Preheat oven to 150C (though as the macaroons have to stand so long before cooking, you can do this later).
Whisk egg whites and cream of tartar to soft peaks in a large bowl, using an electric beater.
Add caster sugar, raspberry essence and a few tiny drops of red food colouring.
(They say the colour will fade during cooking, so you want a deepish pink, but we slightly overdid it with our first batch. Still, the French ones were quite deep pink too.)

In another large bowl, sift the ground almonds and icing sugar together, and add any almonds that haven't gone through the sieve. (Not sure about this - I think it could be best to sieve the almonds first separately, then weigh the sifted ones to get 140g - that way it might be easier to get smoother macaroons. Or better, do as Mrs Cake suggests (see below) and grind the almonds again in the processor with the icing sugar.)

Using a large metal spoon, fold the almonds and icing sugar mix into the egg whites until well combined.

(They say not to worry about losing volume as the mixture should not be too light and airy. But ours didn't rise as much as we thought they would, so we might have overdone this slightly.)

The next step is the tricky one. The recipe says:

Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a 1.5cm wide plain piping nozzle. Pipe small rounds, about 3 cm apart,

onto baking trays lined with baking paper.

This might work fine with a proper piping bag, but we didn't have one. We tried using a plastic bag with the corner cut off, but it didn't work very well, and we thought far too much mixture got wasted - it really sticks to the bag. (And how small? About 2 cm across - we made them too big at first.)

So then we just used two teaspoons to make small rounds instead, which was much easier. We certainly didn't get the perfect smoothness of the ones in the picture - but could any home cook get this, I wonder? If anyone's done it, please let me know.

The bottom far left one is really round and pretty smooth...

Drop the trays a couple of times on the bench to get rid of any air bubbles and flatten the macaroons slightly.

(It was fun doing this but we still didn't get rid of all the bubbles.)

Leave for 45-50 minutes until a good skin has formed on top of the macaroons.
(They say "This is an integral part of the recipe. Without this step they will not have the distinctive smooth tops." We did it, but they still weren't smooth. If you haven't put the oven on yet, do it now.)

Bake the trays, one at a time, for 12-14 minutes (in my underpowered oven, 16 was better). Leave for 5 minutes before gently transferring to a cooling rack. (We just transferred the whole sheet of paper to the rack with macaroons still on it, and took them off later - this worked very well.)

What we were most proud of was that they all had the mark of a true macaroon - that distinctive little "foot" around the bottom (though it didn't actually stick out all round the way it did on the Melbourne ones, but never mind, there it was).

What you sandwich them together with depends on how authentic you want to be. Dish suggests butter icing, and gives the recipe (I think there should be an incentive to buy it, since we've made so much use of it, so I'm not going to copy the filling recipe here - you get a free calendar and drinks booklet with this issue too). I've seen a fiendishly long French recipe for a proper creme filling. Or you could have a look at Mrs Cake's blog - her macaron recipe (avert your eyes from her foray into, er, distinctive colouring) is similar but includes some useful extra information, and her filling recipe has an egg and an egg yolk in it - handy, since you'll have some to use up. But it requires a candy thermometer and I haven't got one of those either...

Anyway, our first ever "Parisian macaroons" have gone down really well with me and the people I've offered them to so far. They have a distinctive texture, crunchy, chewy and melting all at once. Next time I think I'll try making vanilla and coffee ones, maybe with some Nutella in the filling.

Gingerbread in the house

2010-12-09T20:07:00.004+13:00

Friends have begun dropping in for pre-Christmas visits, and we're really enjoying seeing them. But this also means I need to have something good in the tins to offer them.

The traditional offering is Christmas cake, but I have to confess I've never made one. The boys, of course, would happily devour any kind of cake. Chris loved it, so I was grateful that his mother Marion made a small test cake each year, then gave it to us. We would get a slab of my mother's cake as well. Marion's was beautifully traditional, dark and fruity. Mum had this persistent delusion that sherry was just as good as expensive brandy, and she threw in generous sploshes of it, so hers tended to be paler and rather damp - though it was good heated up a bit, with custard.

As I've said before, I'm no baker, and bought baking is either really expensive or not very nice. Or else it tastes okay until you read the label and realise it's full of strange numbered substances and nasty cheap butter substitutes, such as palm oil and beef fat.

So last year I was really pleased with myself for coming up with the idea of gingerbread. I had a great recipe from my New Plynouth friend Beth that I'd never tried. It was perfectly simple and worked beautifully, producing deliciously sticky, spicy, fragrant gingerbread that kept well through the Christmas visiting season. And apart from the ones who couldn't eat anything with flour in, everyone liked it, including Harvey - ginger is one of his favourite flavours. Given a choice between Christmas cake and gingerbread, he'll go for the gingerbread every time.
I made it again this week. The mixture is, as Beth warned me, extremely wet, but don't let that worry you. It just takes quite a while to cook. I used two loaf tins this year, giving me deep slices which work well cut in half. On the whole people seem to prefer having two (or more) small pieces than one (or more) big ones, and it's a bit crumbly, so smaller slices are easier to manage. You'll see that mine sank a bit in the middle - I probably took it out of the oven a bit too soon. But it still tasted really good.

Esther's gingerbread
(via Beth - Esther is quiltmaker Esther Woollaston, who has also worked for Ruth Pretty).

280g (2 cups) plain flour
200g (1 cup) brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2-3 dessert spoons of powdered ginger (I used 2 and a half, whcih seems about right)
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
360g (1 and 1/3 cups) golden syrup
225g butter (roughly diced)
2 eggs
250ml (1 cup) milk

* Preheat oven to 150C. Line either a 23 cm square tin or two loaf tins with baking paper (I folded mine double).
* Sift the flour into a large bowl, together with the brown sugar, baking soda and baking powder, and all the spices. Stir lightly to mix.
* In a small saucepan, melt the butter and golden syrup together.
* Lightly beat the 2 eggs.
* Add the golden syrup and butter mixture to the dry ingredients, followed by the eggs and the milk.
* Combine everything well, using a wire whisk, and pour into prepared tin(s). The mixture will be very wet.

* Bake until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. The recipe says 45 minutes for one square tin, but in my oven it takes an hour, and a little longer for two loaf tins.

* Leave in tin(s) to cool for at least 30 minutes before turning out.

* Keep in an airtight tin or plastic box.

I like a milkless cup of spiced chai tea with this, but it's good with coffee too.

A fringe of leaves

2010-12-02T22:58:00.002+13:00

The first time I ever ate artichokes was in Albania. They're wonderful things, so beautifully shaped, and it feels so decadent eating them - delicately nibbling off the bottom of each leaf until you get to the succulent heart.

Last week my friend Lesley and I had lunch with Ali at Eastbourne. She's a great gardener and has a magnificent row of artichokes, and she cooked them for lunch.

You can do them in a pressure cooker for about 20-30 minutes, depending on size and age, or just boil them steadily in a large covered saucepan for 40-50 minutes, until an outer leaf pulls off easily, and when you push a sharp knife or skewer down into the heart, it feels soft

The small ones early in the season take less time, but Ali says she tends to leave them till they're bigger - the leaves are a bit tougher, but there's more favour, and more heart. And she always washes them well first, to get rid of any passengers - "finding a cooked earwig on the leaf you're about to eat is not nice".

The best thing to have with them is garlic butter: melt what looks like a suitable quantity, and add crushed garlic to taste, some black pepper, a squeeze of lemon and a dash of olive oil (not extra virgin) to make it a bit less rich. Mayonnaise is good too.

Christmas pudding time again

2010-11-28T22:15:00.001+13:00

As things change, we find we have to keep changing what we do at Christmas. With no family in Wellington, we used to follow a wonderful plan, introduced to us by dear friends. It involved a succession of guests and at least five well-spaced courses, appearing as people came and went according to their other commitments. Doing it that way meant we could make Christmas dinner last all day. We still do it, but with adaptations.

Over the years a large roast of pork gave way to two ducks, and then to a fillet of beef. Last year I tried having the beef warm, with salads, instead of having everything hot, though I did hot spuds for Harvey, who unlike me does not enjoy potato salad. It was a fine day, fortunately, and it was much easier for me to manage. But Harvey admitted later that he missed his roast (he used to do the whole main course himself, with assistance from at least one male helper, but now of course it's all up to me).

So this year there's going to be a radical innovation - early dinner, starting about 4 pm, instead of late lunch. That'll give us time to have a properly leisurely morning, and I won't need to start cooking until after brunch. More of the old crowd will be able to come, after they've done their rounds elsewhere. And I think we'll go back to roast pork, Harvey will be really happy about that.

A Light Dessert of some kind used to follow, and maybe some cheese before or after. Then we gathered reverently (not) in front of the TV for the Queen's Message. We might skip the Light Dessert this year, but keep the cheese, it will go very well with the great red wine that usually appears.

The traditional Holly Walk has to happen at some point, to get a spray of holly for the Christmas pudding which follows the Queen's Message (I know better than to mess with this bit, Harvey loves his pudding). It used to be a drunken foray in the dark to the holly bush growing near the Northland tunnel. Now it's a reasonably sober early evening stroll up to the Karori Anglican church grounds and back round the block.

After that will come the flaming pudding, always made by me, complete with its holly and brandy sauce. I make it at least a month in advance, mixing it and letting it stand overnight (this step is essential, as I discovered one year when, a bit pushed for time, I left it out - not good). The next day it steams for four hours.

The only problem is remembering that it has to steam for another two hours on Christmas Day. After all that wonderful food and drink and company, I'm likely to forget, and one year there was no pudding till 10 at night. Harvey was not amused. Then there was the year I got very slaphappy with the brandy for the brandy sauce - you could almost have lit that too.

I always use the same recipe. It originally appeared in the Edmonds Cook Book, but disappeared some time in the mid-1980s. I made it last weekend, but if you want to make it now there's still time. It used to be called "Christmas Pudding (Rich)" but in later editions (the one I use now is 1982) the "Rich" has gone. This recipe serves eight people. You need a traditional metal pudding basin with a lid and a large lidded saucepan to steam it in. The slightly odd measure of "125g" was originally 4 ounces.

Edmonds Rich Christmas Pudding

50g plain flour

125g plain white soft breadcrumbs

125g brown sugar

125g grated suet (the kind you buy in the supermarket - it only appears around Christmas now)

125g chopped apple

125g raisins
125g sultanas
125g currants (I put in some dried cranberries this year as part of this measure)
50g whole, unpeeled almonds

25g mixed peel (I often add a bit more)

grated rind of 1 large lemon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 Tbsps brandy

* Put sifted flour, breadcrumbs, sugar and suet into a large mixing basin. Add chopped apples and dried fruit. Add spices and salt. Mix gently.

* Beat the eggs well and add them with the lemon juice. Stir well to mix. (Everyone in the house should have a stir at this point, for good luck in the New Year.)

* Cover the bowl and leave to stand overnight.

* Next day, add brandy, put mixture into a lightly buttered pudding basin, and put on the lid.

* Place enough water in a large saucepan to come halfway up the sides of the pudding basin (test it). Bring the water to a gentle coninuous boil.

* Stand the pudding basin in the water, cover everything with a lid, and steam for 4 hours, making sure the water stays at a gentle boil. You will need to add more boiling water about halfway through to keep the level roughly halfway up the basin.

* Turn off the heat and leave to stand for another hour. Then remove the basin and put it in the fridge until Christmas Day.

* Steam for 2 hours on Christmas Day. Turn out onto a large dish.

* Gently heat about 2 tbsps of brandy, pour over the pudding and light it so it's flaming as you bring it in to serve.

If you want brandy sauce, make a classic buttery white sauce, but with brown sugar, and add brandy to taste. Serve on the side.

I can't show you the pudding now, of course - it's sitting in its basin and won't appear in all its dark fruity glory until Christmas Day, when I will try to remember to take a photo.

The last of the whitebait

2010-11-25T21:29:00.005+13:00

I thought we wouldn't be eating whitebait again this year, but a little while ago a friend brought round - wait for it - a whole pound, over 500 grams. It was amazing whitebait, the biggest I'd ever seen, with a thin stripe down the back. The picture doesn't do it justice, it was still a bit frozen in its packet, I should have taken another one when it had thawed.

What I like is where it came from. He knows a woman farmer who lives in Westland, and she has a creek on her land. She gets a pair of pantihose, sets them in the creek with the top part opened wide, and the whitebait swim in and up the legs. Perfect.
I was a bit nervous about cooking it after my previous less-than-brilliant efforts, but this time I had help - the farmer sent her own recipe for the batter. For this much whitebait, it was two large eggs, two dessertspoons of flour, and salt. (She said pepper too, but as I explained last time, Harvey doesn't approve of that.) And here - ta-daa! - is the fantastic result - I made three of these.

For the first time in his life, Harvey had more whitebait than he could eat. So the whitebait-bringer and I finished his off between us.

Tarted up for lunch

2010-11-19T10:26:00.004+13:00

I had a brilliant time in Tauranga - you can see some pix on Elsewoman - and it's been very busy since I got back. On Wednesday Harvey's brother Bruce and sister-in-law Margaret came up for the day from Methven to see him, so I wanted to make something tasty for lunch. I remembered a very good Harriet Harcourt recipe for potato, brie and onion tart. It's from a book called Mission for Entertaining, a fundraiser for Wellington City Mission, with a great collection of recipes from the capital's top chefs, caterers, restaurateurs, food retailers and food writers.
          A friend gave it to me for Christmas two years ago, and it's proved very useful. It has one excellent feature which is notably lacking in every one of the lavish new celebrity cookbooks I've looked at recently. There are no pictures, but the recipes are clearly printed in black on white, so you can read them easily while you're cooking.
           Now isn't that a novel idea! Without exception, the new books by Jamie, Nigella, Annabel et al. feature coloured or grey type, often in quite a small font size, printed on coloured backgrounds or even over photos, making the recipes difficult and in some cases impossible to read. Obviously the designers don't cook - or at any rate, not from these books. And I won;t be cooking from them either.
             So, to the tart. I cooked the potatoes and the onions the night before, making it very quick to assemble next day. And (forgive me, Harriet) I added a bit of chopped lean bacon on top as well, because I had some and thought it would be good - and it was. This is more substantial than the usual quiche, so it worked very well for hungry people who'd left home about 5 am to get here.

Potato, onion and brie tart (slightly adapted from Harriet Harcourt's recipe - hers serves six, mine serves four)

Two sheets of savoury shortcrust pastry
About six small gourmet potatoes, each cut into 4-6 even chunks depending on size (no need to peel them)
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 large onions (or more small ones) thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 Tbsp fresh thyme leaves
2 Tbsp grainy mustard
125g round of brie, cut into smallish chunks (I sliced it in half horizontally before cutting it up, and didn't use it all because I had bacon as well)
2 rashers of lean bacon cut into small pieces (optional)
2 large eggs
150 ml creme fraiche
salt and pepper

*Heat oven to 200C and lightly butter a 27 cm flan dish (I use one with a loose bottom)
*Use one sheet of pastry to line the flan dish and the other, cut into strips, to join to the edges and neatly cover the sides of the dish. Put the pastry lined dish into the fridge for 15 minutes. (I used to skip this bit, until I discovered that the pastry then shrank down the sides of the dish and didn't hold the filling properly.)
* Put potatoes in a pan of cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 8-10 minutes until just cooked. Drain and allow to cool slightly.
* Gently heat oil in a non-stick frypan, add onion and cook gently for 2-3 minutes until soft. Add crushed garlic and half the thyme leaves and cook for another 3 minutes. Take off the heat and leave to cool slightly.
* Take pastry lined dish out of fridge and spread the mustard over the base.
* Spread the onions over the mustard.

* Scatter over the pieces of potato, then add the pieces of brie and (if using) the bacon.
* Beat together the eggs and creme fraiche, season with salt and pepper, and pour carefully over tart.

* Sprinkle with the rest of the thyme and bake for 25 minutes until golden and set.
* Serve warm with a simple salad.

Spring is sprung

2010-11-10T13:20:00.003+13:00

I'm going off to Tauranga (Garden and Art Festival!) for a few days tomorrow. In place of a proper new post, here are some tastes of spring in Wellington.

Aubergine sounds nicer than eggplant

2010-11-05T22:57:00.007+13:00

As I think I've said before on this blog, Harvey hates aubergines. But lately there've been gorgeous ones gleaming out at me from the greengrocer. So I managed to organise a little series of something elses for Harvey, and made myself aubergine with tomato and parmesan (parmigiana di melanzane - it took me quite a while to realise that melanzane meant aubergine, not melon) one night and moussaka another.

Both the recipes come, again, from Claudia Roden - the parmigiana from The Food of Italy and the moussaka from her invaluable Book of Middle Eastern Food, the first "foreign" cookbook I fell in love with. This is the revised edition replacement for the first one I owned (which fell to bits), and as you can see it's been well used, though I can't imagine how I managed to tear off the bottom corner.
I won't give quantities because I was making small helpings for myself (even so, using just one large aubergine altogether, each dish lasted me two meals).

Preparing the aubergines
You do this the same way for both dishes, so it made sense for me to do it all in advance.
* Slice the aubergines lengthwise, sprinkle the slices with salt and leave for half an hour to let the bitter juices run out.

* Rinse and drain the slices, dry them, and fry them in hot olive oil, turning them once. Drain on absorbent paper. (Roden says to deep-fry them but I never do that, I just shallow-fried them in a pan until they were starting to turn golden brown, and they were fine.)

For parmigiana
* Make the tomato sauce: Fry garlic in a little olive oil until the aroma rises. Add one can (more for a large dish) of chopped Italian tomatoes, 1 tsp sugar, a little salt and pepper, and a bunch of basil or mint leaves, chopped. Cook vigorously to reduce.
* Arrange the slices of aubergine in an oven-proof dish, cover with the tomato sauce, sprinkle with diced mozzarella and grated parmesan, and bake at 180C for about 30 minutes.

I didn't have mozzarella but I did have cream cheese, so I used that. I had a little good parmesan and added some crumbled blue cheese to it. The result was brilliant: rich, creamy, tasty. The uabergine seems to melt into the tomato and cheese, so you're aware of the flavour but not the texture. Very good reheated, too.

For moussaka
Badly made moussaka was the bane of 70s parties, with lumpy bland mince, potato, and few or no aubergines. This is much nicer.

Prepare the aubergines as for parmigiana. Fry chopped onions in 2 tablespoons olive oil until pale golden.
Meat sauce: Add minced beef or lamb and fry until well browned. Season with salt, pepper and cinnamon or allspice. (A bit of sumac is good too.) Add tinned chopped tomatoes, plus 2 tablespoons of tomato paste, and a little chopped parsley. Stir well, moisten with a little water and simmer for about 15 minutes until the meat is well cooked and the water is absorbed. Allow to cool.
*At this point I do something Roden doesn't mention, but it works really well. I grind the meat sauce in the food processor, making it finer and less lumpy. This makes it taste exactly like the sauce I had in Albania - it's called kime and it's the basis for many different dishes.
White sauce: see my earlier post on bechamel for how to get this right. I used about 2 tablespooons of butter, 2 of flour and 1/2 a pint (300 ml) milk (Roden uses twice as much, and 2 eggs). Season with salt, pepper and a little grated nutmeg. When the sauce has thickened, beat an egg, stir in a little of the sauce, beat again, and pour slowly back into the white sauce, stirring constantly over low heat (don't let it boil).

To bake: Put alternate layers of aubergine slices and meat sauce into a deep baking dish, starting and ending with a layer of aubergines (I just had three layers, a sort of aubergine sandwich with the meat in the middle). Pour over the white sauce and bake, uncovered, at 180C for about 45 minutes. You can sprinkle a little grated parmesan - or cheddar or gruyere - over the top before baking. I did, and it was indeed, as she says, "very rich", but completely delicious.

Getting creative with asparagus

2010-10-31T17:27:00.032+13:00

Asparagus time again. It's great to have a treat that's also got to be good for you!
I got creative with it in the weekend. I had some blue cheese left over from Harvey's launch. (Yes, I know that was a while ago, but it was very good Kapiti blue cheese and it was perfectly fine.) And friends had brought us some walnuts from their tree.

Harvey was pefectly happy with leftover mince on toast, but I felt like pasta (which he really isn't madly keen on). In my favourite Italian book, Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy, I found a recipe for gorgonzola sauce for spaghetti.

It's extremely simple: melt a little butter, stir in the crumbled cheese, mix well, add a little milk (I put a teaspoon of flour in the milk before adding it), stir well and pour over cooked spaghetti.

Before that, though, I snapped the woody ends of a bunch of skinny asparagus - we like the skinny ones best - and cooked the stalks until they were easy to bite but still crunchy.

While they were cooking, I fished out my ancient nutcracker and got to work on a little pile of walnuts, then finely chopped up the shelled nuts.

Once the spaghetti was cooked, I poured the sauce over it, scattered pieces of asparagus over the top, sprinkled over the chopped walnuts and added a good grinding of black pepper. Magnifico.

The path to creme caramel

2010-10-24T17:34:00.005+13:00

Last week I had the luxury of a live-in caregiver for Harvey, the wonderful Marjorie. The idea was for them to get used to each other and what needs to be done while I roamed happily around Wellington. With the willing co-operation of friends booked in to keep me company, it all worked very well, from ....

Petone, and GoBang's rhubarb and custard brioche, to...

Willis St, and Cafe Neo's mini cupcake - I love it when you can have something delicious but small - to...

Porirua, and Pataka's chewy apricot slice...

Brilliant exhibitions at Pataka, go and see them. Two are by women, and "SHEEP - NZ Icons in Art" features lots of work by women too. The one that struck home for me was the "triple portrait", the heads of three raggedy, venerable sheep, all looking haggard and angry, painted in sinister shadings of green and magenta. It's called "The Mothers".

So after all that, I was quite happy to stay home this weekend and do some cooking. For ages I've been yearning after creme caramel, but I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to boiling sugar. So I use a clever microwave version from a really good book Harvey's mother Betty passed on to us in 1989, when she got it as a free gift from Reader's Digest. (She didn't need it because she didn't have a microwave, but her neighbour did. So when Betty gave her one of the ducks Harvey's brother had shot, the neighbour tried to cook it in her fancy new oven. The lead shot exploded, destroying both the duck and the microwave.)

Creme caramel (from Good Housekeeping Microwave Encyclopedia, by Susanna Tee)

For the caramel:

3 tablespoons caster sugar

3 tablespoons water

glass jug

round or oval ceramic dish which holds 750 ml

Mix in a glass jug and microwave on high for 5 minutes until the caramel turns brown. Watch it very carefully - I gave mine 4 minutes, then 30 second bursts and finally 10 seconds. Stop as soon as the sugar begins to darken. Pour the caramel immediately into the bottom of the dish.

For the creme:

450 ml full milk (not trim) in larger glass jug

3 eggs

2 tablespoons caster sugar

natural vanilla essence

Microwave milk on high for 90 seconds, just to warm it.

Lightly beat the eggs with the sugar.

Add the eggs and sugar to the milk and mix in a few drops of vanilla essence. (Or, if you have a vanilla bean, you can heat the seeds with the milk.)

Strain the milk and egg mixture carefully over the caramel.

Cover with two layers of cling film and place in a larger dish which will fit in the microwave.

Using a jug and a funnel, pour boiling water into the larger dish until it comes halfway up the smaller dish.

Microwave for at least 25 minutes until the custard is lightly set. My recipe says to do this on low, but that didn't seem to be hot enough to set the custard, so I used medium low instead.

Leave to stand for 5 minutes. Remove the dish from the water, take off the cling film and leave to stand for 30 minutes.

Refrigerate for 4 to 5 hours until set.

I didn't even try to turn this out, as I'd used an oval dish. I just started eating it straight out of the dish. I could do this because Harvey doesn't like it, so it was mine, all mine. It was a bit too wobbly still, but it tasted and felt exactly as it should, slippery creamy blobs of custard bathed in golden caramel. It should serve four, but I ate half of it yesterday and I'm going to finish it off tonight.

New basil plants for old

2010-10-14T15:24:00.001+13:00

From about now I want lots and lots of basil. One plant on a windowsill doesn't quite fit the bill. Here's a wonderful solution from my friend Ali. I'm going to try it as soon as my current basil plant goes woody.

"For years I tried to grow basil plants outdoors, with little success. Whether I raised my own plants from seed or bought them from the garden centre, they never grew into the big bushy plants you see in the illustrations of Mediterranean cookbooks."
"So eventually I gave up, and resorted to pots of basil on the kitchen windowsill, courtesy of the local greengrocer. But however well I fed them the plants never produced for more than a few weeks, and I’d be left with a pot of woody stalks, each with a few small leaves."

"Then late last year, as I was about to empty a pot of tired plants into the compost, I decided to put them out in the garden, and see what happened. I chose a sheltered sunny corner, added some compost to the soil, and planted the basil in two rows about 15 cm apart, surrounded by some old bricks to keep out the wind and keep in the heat."
"The results were spectacular. Within a couple of weeks the plants were shooting up and smothered in big fresh leaves. I soon had enough basil to pick by the handful, just like it says in the recipes! By watering regularly, and pinching out any flower-heads that formed, I managed to keep my basil forest going right through the summer. Such a treat, being able to make regular batches of homegrown pesto! "

"I’ve just bought a new pot of basil for the windowsill, and when the plants have done their dash indoors (and the weather improves!) they too will get a second life out in the veggie garden, just in time for the first tomatoes… "

A feast of poems

2010-10-08T14:17:00.001+13:00

Not much cooking is going on around here at the moment, because we're getting organised for Sunday's launch of Harvey's new poetry anthology These I Have Loved: My favourite New Zealand poems, published by Steele Roberts. Beattie's Book Blog today has a really lovely post about it.

To give you a taste of what's inside, I've chosen one poem that just happens to be about food, along with what Harvey writes about why he chose it.

“When I was young a trip to town (Christchurch) by Pop or Mum usually resulted in a packet of butcher’s saveloys. In a regular diet of home-killed mutton, they were a colourful treat. Anne can’t believe that I still like them. Tasteless things, she says. Elizabeth will probably be horrified at my selection of this poem out of her ample array, but like her, for childhood’s sake, I still enjoy my saveloy.”

Saveloy

Elizabeth Smither
Why should one long for something
supposedly composed of sawdust
or sweepings and bulked up with
excessive breadcrumbs? Coloured

like a tart’s lips and typically
when the water in the pot comes to boil
steeping out of her underthings
or worse, looking like a condom?

And yet, sometimes passing the butcher’s
I compose a worthy list: eye fillet
and a nice beef roast (special visitors)
and just casually, like childhood, a saveloy.

For information about Harvey's book, email info@steeleroberts.co.nz

Pretty retro: pumpernickel and guacamole

2010-10-07T17:37:00.003+13:00

I'm not very good at doing fancy starters. By the time I've come up wth a first course, main course and dessert, I just don't feel like putting a lot of work into something for people to nibble on with a drink when they arrive.
One good solution is pumpernickel. Apart from its splendid name, it's not too dry, works really well with lots of other flavours, and looks good as well. Here's a plate I prepared earlier... Cream cheese (in fact I used some boursin I'd made) with tomato and basil, and provolone with tarragon leaves.

I think this photo looks amazingly retro, pure 1950s. It's the colours and the way they contrast. Pumpernickel is very good with smoked salmon, too.
Another lovely word, and a great thing to start with, is guacamole - avocados are easy to get now. Mine is a made-up recipe. I don't put chile or tomato in it, I love the pale green colour and they spoil it. I make it all in the food processor, but rough fork-mashed is good too. The main thing is to taste it as you go.

Guacamole
Finely chop at least 2 cloves of garlic (we like more) and add:
Flesh of 2 large or 3 smaller ripe avocados (they should be soft but not brown, or at least not TOO brown - you can cut out the dark bits)
Strained juice of 1 large lemon (but you may well want more)
A little olive oil (but you don't want it too sloppy to work as a dip or spread)
Salt

Process till smooth, or mash together, taste, add more salt and/or lemon juice if needed. Serve with corn chips or crackers, and black olives are good as well.

Picking up the pieces

2010-10-03T23:37:00.001+13:00

I had a tiny taste of the Christchurch earthquake last week. Ironically, it happened because I'd tried to do some earthquake-proofing. My kitchen clock was bought for me by my mother at the vast Farmers' store in Auckland, not long before it closed (I've been trying to find out when - I thought it was 1991). So last week, thinking about earthquakes, I decided I'd better stick on a blob of Bluetack to fasten it more securely to the wall. But I must have done it wrong, because that night the clock suddenly leapt off the wall and crashed to the floor. Its glass was broken, but otherwise it's okay, so maybe I can have it fixed. But on the way down it managed to smash my lovely old china salt box. It's not a family treasure, I bought it years ago in a "collectibles" (junk) shop, but I was very fond of it.

These small breakages made me think how sad it must have been for so many people to lose all their loved, familiar things in the earthquake - not on a par with losing your house and job, I know, but still distressing.

I've recently worked out a good remedy for when I'm feeling a bit down, as I was after this happened. I take myself off to Martha's Pantry, in an old brick building on the corner of Cuba Street and Karo Drive. It's beautiful, full of flowers and sunshine and white embroidered cloths, and it's quiet - the fabrics soak up sound so that all you're aware of is a quiet murmur of conversation and the gentle tinkle of teacups and spoons. You get your own teapot, in a knitted cosy - they have a good range of teas, plus the usual (good) coffees - and a selection from their vast collection of pretty cups and saucers. And plates, of course - for something to eat from their range of gorgeously retro cakes. A few times I've had the pleasure of introducing it to friends who've never been there before. They sell things, too - old-fashioned games and toys and lots of pretty flowery stuff. You do see the occasional chap in there, but it's definitely women who love it most - from bright young ones and mothers with kids to, well, mature women of my vintage. Macaroons, butterfly cakes, hot chocolate with the teacup tealight you get late on a winter afternoon... brilliant.

Cosy casserole

2010-09-30T21:24:00.002+13:00

It's been a foul day in Wellington - non-stop heavy rain since last night. It's days like this that I'm cravenly glad not to have to go Out to Work, managing all the paid stuff on-line instead.
Given the weather, and following last week's surfeit of takeaways, I thought it was time for a cosy casserole. We had some rapidly-going-soft tamarillos (not as pretty as the ones in the picture) and in the freezer there was a pack of pork pieces, so I put together a recipe that Harvey invented, only with variations, of course. It's called, with stunning originality, pork and tamarillo casserole!

Pork and tamarillo casserole

Approx. 500g lean pork pieces (cut them up if necessary so they're all as much the same size as possible - the bought pieces often vary wildly in size)
6 tamarillos (fewer if very large, more if very small)
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
Some interesting liquid to cook it with - white wine, red wine, cider - for this one I used leftover juice from cooking apples and the last of the bottle of port, plus extra lemon juice
Juice of 1-2 lemons (depending on how tart you like it)
Bay leaf
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil

For the slow cooker:
- Heat cooker on high, with lid on, for 20 minutes while preparing the ingredients.
- Finely chop the onion and garlic and check size of pork pieces (they should be no bigger than 2 cm square).
- Put oil into cooker and add onion and garlic. Leave to sweat for a few minutes.
- Cut the tamarillos in half, scoop them out of their skins and halve again.
- Add the other ingredients, using just enough liquid to cover meat.
- Cover and cook for 5-6 hours on high.

Without a slow cooker:
- Either in a casserole dish that can go on the hob, or in a pan, heat olive oil gently and sweat onions and garlic till softened. Prepare the rest as above.
- On top of onions and garlic in casserole dish, add other ingredients and enough liquid to cover meat. (Check while it cooks - you may need to add more if it evaporates in the oven.)
- Cover and cook for 3 hours in a slow oven (170F).

Check to see meat is tender. If liquid is too thin, mix a little flour in cold liquid, add, and cook a little longer.
We had this with the everlasting mashed potato, but rice is good and so is couscous or orzo pasta. The colour is good and the flavour is deliciously fruity and tart.

Wrapped Kitchen

2010-09-25T22:43:00.004+12:00

You may be familiar with a series of artworks which are usually said to be by Christo, although in fact they're by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Their early works involved wrapping things up - starting with smaller things and going on to very large things. Here's one they did in Spoleto in 1968. It's called Wrapped Fountain.

I thought of them this week when my kitchen was wrapped. I was having part of it sprayed to give it a nice new surface, and this involved covering most of it in plastic for a few days. The effect was what I think Christo and Jeanne-Claude might be after: it turned the utterly familiar into something strange and mysterious and oddly beautiful.

Because it was wrapped, I couldn't work in it. Couldn't cook, couldn't clean, couldn't wash dishes. We ate takeaways - Chinese, Indian, cooked chook, smoked fish pie from the Gipp St deli. It felt like being on holiday.

I do like cooking. What I don't like is having to do the thinking and shopping and cooking and washing up all the time. Especially the washing up (even though we have a dishwasher). So this enforced break was remarkably refreshing. And when it ended today I had the pleasure of rearranging all the stuff I usually keep on the bench and the deep windowsill.

The ultimate comfort food

2010-09-22T21:42:00.001+12:00

When I was young, there was only one kind of rice, short-grain, and it was mostly used for one thing - rice pudding. Made properly, it's very good. But I never much liked the skin on top, no matter how golden it was. And it takes two and a half hours in a slow oven, so it doesn't make sense unless you're cooking something else which takes that long.
           One of the friends we had round in the weekend for corned beef doesn't eat gluten, so puddings can be a bit of a challenge. I was thinking about a lovely sticky compote of winter fruit, but what could I serve with it? It was too cold for ice cream.
           Then I had a sudden inspiration: rice pudding! Not the usual kind, though - I wanted the creamy sweet version you can cook much more quickly on top of the stove. I thought I had the recipe I wanted in my Lois Daish folder, and I was right. In fact it wasn't hers, it came from her friend Anne England, who was then (in 2000) running Two Rooms restaurant in Miramar. (I never managed to eat there, sadly, it had a great reputation.)

Two Rooms Rice Pudding
(Anne England via Lois Daish,
Listener, 1 April 2000)
(serves 4)

55g (3 tablespoons) short grain rice
(I couldn't find anything called "short" in the supermarket, so I used "medium" and that seemed to work fine. But I wonder if it would be even better made with arborio rice?)
30g (2 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 teaspoon sugar
575ml (2 and 1/2 cups) full cream milk
4 tablespoons cream
3 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk (I used 4)
pinch salt
(I added a small teaspoon of vanilla paste, a thoughtful Christmas present)

Put all the ingredients in a saucepan. Slowly bring to the boil, then lower the heat to a bare simmer and cook gently for about 30 minutes (mine took a bit longer, I don't think I got it hot enough to start with.) While the rice is cooking, use a wooden spoon to carefully stir from the bottom of the pot. Push down from the sides of the pot too, where it could stick and burn. Serve warm or at room temperature. If you make it in advance and want to reheat it, you may need to stir in a little more cream or milk to loosen the texture.

With this, we had a winter fruit compote made of Otago dried apricots and golden kiwifruit. I pre-soaked the apricots in some reduced white wine combined with a sugar syrup, then cooked them slowly for about half an hour in a small saucepan, while I briefly pre-poached the peeled and halved kiwifruit in the microwave with a little of the soaking liquid. Then I put the fruit together in a shallow oval ovenproof dish, checked for sweetness and baked it all for about an hour in the bottom of a slow oven while other things cooked there. The idea is to get both the apricots and the kiwifruit thoroughly cooked, so they're soft, but keep their shape, and the liquid reduces to a lovely sticky syrup that isn't too sweet, so it doesn't kill the wonderful sharp notes in the fruit. But watch it to make sure there is some syrup, you don't want it to disappear. You can use other kinds of dried fruit as well, or other fresh fruits, but the dried apricots are essential.

The combination of this fruit with the soft creamy slightly caramel-tasting rice pudding was blissful.
Anne England finished her pudding off with a sugar glaze, melted with a cook's blowtorch. I don't have one so I didn't even try it, and I don't think it's necessary. Here's what Lois wrote: "At home, I am content to eat this pudding still warm from the pot, without the bother of glazing the top. The flavour is so friendly that I don't even serve fruit with it." I love that word "friendly" - that's exactly how it tasted. And the leftovers made a sublime Sunday breakfast.

Corned beef and cabbage

2010-09-20T20:43:00.004+12:00

To tell you the truth, I'm not immensely fond of corned beef, but Harvey, like most of the men we know, is, and I'll eat it quite happily now and then. And it's such an easy thing to cook, especially in a slow cooker. I had a nice lean piece of silverside (lovely name) in the freezer, so we had it for dinner with friends on Saturday.

I haven't had a slow cooker all that long. Soon after I got it I was up in Auckland seeing my sister, and she showed me her collection of slow cooker recipe books. The one I liked the look of most was Fiona Wllison's Great Ideas for Crockpots and Slow Cookers (Stylus, 2004). Others must have agreed with me - it was reprinted twice. It has good guidelines and a manageable selection of about 60 appealing recipes. And it's got something that seems to be getting rarer by the minute in recipe books - a really user-friendly format, spiral-bound and lie-flat, with sturdy board covers and clear, readable print, plus sumptuous photos. It was long out of stock in the shops, but I managed to track down a new copy on the net. Very satisfying. Fiona's recipe for corned beef works perfectly, just like my mother used to make.

Old-fashioned corned beef

1 kg corned beef (mine was a bit bigger, about 1.3 kg)
2 bay leaves
1 brown onion, peeled and studded with cloves (she says 8 but I use 12)
2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped (or you can use one carrot and one parsnip)
A few sprigs of fresh parsley
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
2 tablespoons golden syrup
2 tablespoons malt vinegar
rind of two oranges (I popped in the last mandarin, cut into quarters)
boiling water

Turn slow cooker to High and leave to heat for 20 minutes. (Almost all her recipes start this way).
Rinse corned beef in cold water and place in warmed cooker. (I trim almost all the fat off it first.)
Add remaining ingredients and add enough boiling water to just cover the meat.
Cover and cook on High for 5-6 hours.

We didn't eat the veges with it - I saved them for soup later. I served it with mashed potato (what else) and the same red cabbage, with apple and onion (photo shows it ready to cook), as in my post on venison, as well as a selection of mustards - English for Harvey, Dijon for me and grainy for anyone who liked that better. The next night we ate up the leftovers all mixed together and fried as corned beef hash.
I got a new slow cooker book in Melbourne, so I'll find something out of that to make soon.

Whitebait birthday

2010-09-17T22:33:00.004+12:00

I missed my usual Thursday post because I'd managed to leave my camera at Martha's Kitchen (of which more later) and hadn't yet got it back, so I didn't have the photos I needed. So here, a bit belatedly, is the story of Harvey's birthday whitebait. He has them every year - luckily for him, they come into season just in time for his birthday on the 13th (a number that's always been lucky for us). Every year he'd get enough to make himself one really large patty, and I would have scallops. (I like whitebait, but I like scallops better, and as they're about a third the price it always makes more sense for us to have what we each prefer.) I made my first patty for him last year and it went really well. This year we were having a dear friend to dinner, so he asked me to buy twice as much as usual.
Buying it, from the very nice lady at Wellington Trawling Sea Market, 220 Cuba St, was the easy part (they have parking, the whitebait came in that day, and Harvey had given me his card). When it came to cooking it, I tried to get instructions.
My mistake. I must have asked last year too, but it all worked fine for one person. For 200 grams I think the batter must have taken only one egg, milk, a little self-raising flour and a generous bit of salt. (Because whitebait come from fresh water, they aren't salty, so they need it. But Harvey reckons pepper is a no-no, it's too strong and changes the flavour.)

This year I made two lots of batter, according to Harvey's directions, thinking it would be easier than doubling the quantities. But I think Harvey got his arithmetic wrong, because we ended up with too much. I cooked the first large patty and could see it had more batter than it should. Well, probably it would have been about the right amount for most people, but Harvey likes wall-to-wall whitebait, and so does our friend - who had brought this wonderful wine to go with it. (I'm no good at describing wine, you'll jsut have to imagine it - it was sort of very slightly oily, almost like a brilliant riesling.)

The idea was to make one large patty, divide it, and give it to them to eat while I made the second one. It was lovely and light and golden, but it wouldn't flip over properly, instead it broke apart. So what they got was a roughly fair share each of unevenly sized pieces. They were polite and ate it happily enough, but I could see it wasn't right. So the next time I took out around a third of the batter before I added the whitebait. That looked much better - but it still broke apart. Never mind, it went down well - how could it not? and I enjoyed my scallops. But next year I'll just make it up as I go along, and I reckon I'll do much better.

A bloke bakes

2010-09-09T21:22:00.010+12:00

When a copy of Steve Joll's Baking for Blokes arrived in the mail, I thought I'd better find a bloke to try it out. In the old days Harvey would have jumped at the chance. This is the man who once fearlessly tackled Pink Pears on a Chocolate Tart for my birthday. His friend Geoff was due for a visit, so I decided to ask him - I knew he'd relish the challenge.

I'd meant to write up his report in time for Father's Day, but a few intrusive health glitches meant we couldn't see him until today. On the whole he found the book good value. "The blokey stuff was a bit over the top in places, but often it was funny and I enjoyed it. The instructions seemed pretty clear and easy to follow."
         And then he proudly presented us with the results of his baking debut - an apple tart. (In fact it was Tart 3 - taking no chances, he'd had two test runs first.)
            He's an engineer, and he didn't approve of being told to "chop the apples" - "I thought nice slices would look much better". Nor did he agree with the recommended amount of sugar - "6-8 tablespoons is far too much, I used 3." But he used more cinnamon than it said, because he likes it. He had made the pastry from scratch, mixing in the butter and egg by hand as Joll recommends. I was very impressed. "You get it all over your hands, I was hoping the phone didn't ring!"
             Everything went well until it came to putting the pastry in the dish. "It said to let it hang over all round, and then trim the overhang evenly and fold it in." At this point his wife Pam explained the problem: Geoff had thought he was making an apple pie, like his mother used to make (that's why he'd chosen this recipe) and he didn't realise that tarts are different, they don't have pastry on top.
            What he ended up with was the perfect compromise, halfway between a tart and a pie - a lovely rustic French-style galette, with the pastry overhang draped nicely around the edges of the apple slices. The four of us shared it for dessert tonight. He'd done a pretty good job, it was yummy - and he was right about the sugar.

"Did you pick up the hint of apricot jam?" Geoff asked, sounding as if he'd been baking for years. "Yes", I said, "was that in the recipe?" "Of course!"
             As a reward, I told him he could keep the book. He's already started planning what to bring us for afternoon tea on their next visit.

Baking for Blokes: DIY in the Kiwi Kitchen, Steve Joll, New Holland, $29.99
(There's a nice TV3 piece about it here )
PS: I couldn't resist this picture of How a Real Bloke Mixes a Cake (thank you, Dale!)

World famous on NatRad!

2010-09-07T21:22:00.003+12:00

A friend emailed me today to tell me that in her regular spot talking websites with Jim Mora on National Radio this afternoon, Ele Ludemann of homepaddock had talked very enthusiastically about this blog! A wonderful surprise boost. Sometimes you think you're just writing away out here being read by a select few of your kind friends and rellies and sister bloggers, and suddenly you discover that someone else you don't know at all is a fan. Thank you, Ele, you made my day, week, month. Here's a watercolour of a cabbage for you! Harvey grew it, I painted it, then we ate it.

Daphne Day

2010-09-05T17:24:00.004+12:00

I don't know anyone called Daphne - unlike Poppy and Iris, it's one of those old-fashioned flower names that don't seem likely to be revived. But we have two bushes of it in full bloom and I bring their distinctive sweet/sharp scent inside for Harvey.

This is a photo of two heads of daphne. But only one is the real thing. The other is made entirely of icing. My neighbour brought it over for me to see - she'd been to a wedding, and the cake had daphne decorations. Here's a close-up.

My mother went to evening classes at the local intermediate school to learn how to do this kind of icing, and got enormous pleasure and satisfaction out of it. (That whole superb tradition of evening classes has now been attacked by having its funding cut, which is really sad. I don't care what people were learning to do in their spare time, the main thing was that they were learning, and plenty of women like Mum went on to turn their new skills into a way of earning - though that's hardly all that matters.) She made and iced the cake for my first wedding, with little clusters of apricot roses matching the bridesmaids' dresses. But I don't have a photo of it.
It's not my thing at all - on the rare occasions when I've tried to ice a cake it's always looked more like a Cake Wreck than a clever creation. I used to manage well with the kids' birthday cakes, because I'd been given a plaster train which held up to six candles. So all I had to do was make tracks out of slices of liquorice strap, stick in a little "Happy Birthday" flag I found, and wrap it all round in a fancy cake fringe.
But I can see and admire how much skill goes into producing something like this amazing daphne. The only trouble is, it's much too pretty to eat.

Pretty good pancakes

2010-09-02T23:12:00.003+12:00

Pancakes are one of those magic creations that use only a few simple ingredients - flour, eggs, milk, butter. But I'm a newcomer to making them. This is because Harvey used to always be the one who made them, and he was very good at it.
         When he had to stop, for ages he didn't feel like anything brunchy, but lately he's had the urge for mid-morning Saturday pancakes again, which is great. So I've been making them under his guidance. Only that sounds much tidier than what really happened the first time I had a go.
           First I asked where the recipe was. "I just use the Edmond's one", he said. So I got it out and showed it to him, because I've learnt from long experience that he doesn't often follow a recipe exactly. Sure enough, he used self-raising flour instead of flour and baking powder, he always used two eggs, and he added "a bit of melted butter". How much, I asked. "Just a bit." Gritting my teeth, I cut off a lump about the size of a walnut and showed it to him. Yes, he said, that was about right.
            I mixed it all together. "Don't mix it too much", he said. "But you said it had to be a really smooth batter." "Yes, but the lumps disappear while you leave it to stand." "It doesn't say anything about leaving it to stand." "Well, I always do." :How long for?" "Oh, about half an hour."
            I didn't say a word. I just went off and made myself some toast and peanut butter to keep me going while I waited.
            Fortunately we've now got a big Tefal non-stick pan which keeps an even heat and makes really good ones, even on a gas hob. So after the half hour was up I heated it up and got to work. I had to make two different kinds of pancake, because we've always disagreed about how they should be - Harvey likes one giant thickish one, I like two or three thin ones. We both have lemon juice on them, but he likes white sugar, whereas I prefer golden syrup or brown sugar.

I actually managed to toss them all beautifully - even Harvey was impressed.

Harvey's pancakes (enough for 4 thin ones or 2 big thick ones)
125 grams self-raising flour (it does work better if you weigh rather than measure - this is about one cup plus a heaped tablespoon)
1/8 tsp salt
2 eggs
300 ml (half a pint) milk
Walnut-sized knob of butter, melted
Butter for cooking

Sift the flour and salt together into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre and drop the eggs in, then add milk, and mix gently to make a thin batter. Add melted knob of butter and mix in well. Pour into a jug and leave to stand for half an hour. Meanwhile, get the toppings ready and have the plates ready to warm just before you start cooking.

Heat non-stick pan until hot. Melt a little butter in it, pushing it over the bottom with a non-stick slice. Pour in a little batter and tip the pan to let it flow evenly out to the edges. (If you want a thick one pour in more to start with.) Cook over medium heat until several little bubbles form over the surface. Loosen around the edges with the slice and flip it over - tossing is the easiest way to do this. Turn the heat down a little and cook the other side until it looks a bit brown when you lift the edges. Put on a hot plate, spread with whatever you fancy, roll it up and eat it. Repeat until the batter's all gone.

Cooking the books

2010-08-26T21:02:00.002+12:00

Every time I go to Melbourne I do new things. On a fine Tuesday morning, R. knew exactly what she wanted to do - go to Fitzroy and find Books for Cooks - and I was very happy to go along (though I couldn't resist pointing out that I was probably the only person she knew who could be counted on to happily spend most of the morning there with her). We caught the free No. 35 tram up to Carlton Gardens, walked up Nicholson St and turned right into Gertrude St. After a couple of blocks there are lots of beautiful designery shops along it, and another marvellous bookshop devoted to textile arts and crafts. My favourite title was The Anarchist Knitting Book.
Books for Cooks is at 233-235, and it's - astonishing.

This is just one wall of its books - there are three more in its two rooms, plus many more fitted into the ends and the middle. As well as hundreds of new and recent and older recipe books covering every possible region and topic (we spotted Lois Daish and Alyson Gofton and some other NZers, though they were in the Australian section!) it has every other kind of book to do with food - classic reprints, histories, memoirs, art books, polemics, the lot. It has long out of print and second hand books as well, and lovely foodie cards. Heaven. The most esoteric book I found - which gives you a good idea of the incredible range of books there - was The Centaurs, by Patience Gray, a history of the Italian, Greek and Mediterranean food served on the ships of the Blue Funnel Line from the 1950s on. Harvey's birthday was a really good reason for doing more than just looking (I can't tell you what I bought, because he reads this).
By the time we'd done our dash, and cash, it was lunchtime, so we sensibly asked the very helpful owner where to go. Just two doors up, he said, to the Gertrude Street Enoteca.

It was full, so we had to perch at one of the crates in the back part where there are wine bottles lining shelves from floor to ceiling, but we kept an eye on the marble tables in the front room and leapt to grab one as soon as it came free.

A smallish but satisfying menu. R. had the goat's cheese and sorrel tart with salad, and I had the winter plate - chicken salad, potato cake, winter salad, a soft stuffed baked onion, artichoke, tiny olives, green tomatillos, bread.

R. chose the wine (she's much better at it than me) - a delicious Australian pinot gris, but I forgot to note which one. We sank into the lovely state of relaxed happiness you get when you're travellng and manage to find exactly the right place at the right time.

(PS - I've just found the winelist - it wasn't Australian, it was an Italian KRIS Pinot Grigio 2009.)

Salmon, pastry, leeks

2010-08-23T22:19:00.003+12:00

We had K. and G., US friends we haven't seen for two years, here for dinner last night, plus their and our friend B. (who very kindly brought a marvellous apple cake for dessert, bless her). K. doesn't eat meat so we started with an antipasto of vege things, including pickled garlic and white bean dip, plus salami for the carnivores and herrings for her.

For the main course I bought a fillet of fresh salmon, creamed it in a white sauce made with wine and fish stock (French stock cubes) as well as milk, and wrapped the result in puff pastry envelopes - half a sheet, filling on one side, eggwash around the edges, pastry folded in half to make a big triangle and carefully sealed, baked at 220C for around 20 minutes.

I'm convinced, though, that my oven is quite seriously underpowered. In Melbourne I looked in Cuisine World, a supply shop for professional and serious home cooks at 245 Elizabeth Street; it had lots of different thermometers, but not one for ovens. I did get a very good baking sheet, and used it under the pastry envelopes.

To go with them, I made up a nice way of doing leeks. I cut all the tender parts into fine rings and microwaved them in half a cup of orange juice. Then I poured the leeky liquid into a small pan and reduced it with more orange juice, lemon juice, blanched orange zest, a splash of orange liqueur, and a little lump of butter. Just before serving I stirred the reduction into the leeks and reheated them. They had a lovely sweet-sharp citrusy flavour that went really well with the rich creamy salmon and pastry, and the colours looked good too. But I can't seem to take decent photos at night, everything goes yellow in the electric light.

Let them eat cake

2010-08-22T00:41:00.003+12:00

So, Melbourne. Let's start with the cake.

Monday afternoon: we're flagging after our very early morning start (3.10 am in my case), so I lead my friend R. to Koko Black in the Royal Arcade off Bourke Street. Inside it's exactly like a classy Belgian chocolatier, everything is brown.

We divide the little $5 chocolate platter (I remember it from last time I was here): two small shortbreads trimmed with chocolate, a neat little mound of chocolate mousse, and a small chocolate cake. The hot chocolate is incredibly rich and smooth. We've scoffed everything before I think of taking a photo. Sorry.

Tuesday morning: It's fine, so we catch the free tram to Fitzroy and stop at Hudson's Famous Catering in Gertrude Street for coffee and a little something.

R. is more tolerant than me, but I can't help noticing that no one seems to be able to make a proper flat white like the ones back home. But as for the yoyo...mmm.

Wednesday morning: Damp, windy and cold, perfect for the art exhibition that's the excuse for our trip, but the gallery doesn't open till 10. Brunetti's is in exactly the right place for morning coffee. Not the glorious big one in Carlton, just the little one in City Square off Swanston St. R. has a modest biscuit, I have a sort of Italian cream horn, only it's filled with ricotta studded with lemon peel, not sweet at all, just right.

Wednesday, 5 pm: Grumpy after a fruitless trawl through Myers and David Jones (unlike R., I am not size 14), I go through The Causeway, the lane our hotel is named after, into Little Collins St, and on the corner I discover the glorious Laurent... and its macaroons.

Unlike the other cakes, they're only $2.20, and they're only little. Slightly crunchy outside and softly chewy inside, around the cream filling, with intensely pure flavour. Raspberry, vanilla, chocolate, mango and passionfruit... I take coffee and lemon back for afternoon tea. R. doesn't want any. Something tells me to save the lemon one for dessert that night. (See the next post...)

Thursday morning: Our last day. I cunningly inveigle R. to Laurent for morning coffee. It's too early for macaroons. So she has a passionfruit curd tart, and I have a raspberry frangipane.

Thursday afternoon: It's 2.45 and our shuttle is coming at 3.30. But Laurent is almost opposite our hotel (another really good reason for staying there). Time for one last afternoon tea, with macaroons. Very hard to decide, but I choose orange and lime. I don't regret this. Maybe I can learn how to make them...

Away Days

2010-08-12T17:16:00.002+12:00

I'm going to Melbourne very shortly FOR FUN - well, that's the idea. I'm going to take my camera - I plan to eat a lot of good food and take pictures of it and write it up when I get back. The friend I am going with is both the finest private cook and the most judicious food-finder I know, so we should have a great time.
        Meanwhile, just to be going on with, here's what I did with the wild venison last week. I browned the beautiful tender slices briefly in olive oil - not TOO hot, so they wouldn't toughen up. Then I took them out, poured in some red wine and reduced it over high heat. I turned it down to low medium, and put the meat back in for a few minutes; took it out again and let it rest while I added Ali's quince jelly to the pan; and when that had dissolved with constant stirring, some cream. Last came some grainy French mustard, stirred in well.
       This whole sauce-making process takes a very short time. The trick is not to let the sauce reduce so much that it burns or gets too thick. There was one large spoonful of sauce for each person's venison.
I served this with parsnip and potato mash and red cabbage softened gently in a little oil with red onion, a spoon of sugar and a bit of balsamic vinegar. (Apples are good too.)
        Didn't get any decent venison photos, so you'll just have to imagine it, but here's the mash and cabbage.

Taking the pissaladiere

2010-08-08T21:00:00.005+12:00

If you're easily shocked foodwise, stop reading now. From time to time, instead of starting from scratch with the yeast and flour and blah blah, I buy ready-made pizza bases. Problem is, they don't work very well. So when my friend Camille told me to buy the thin Turkish ones instead because they make a much nicer thin crispy base, I listened.

Tonight I decided to try one of these out. I didn't want to start with the usual tomato stuff, so instead I came up with a sort of modified pissaladiere, the famous Provencal tart made with fresh yeast dough covered in soft onion, anchovies and black olives. There's a recipe for it in the lovely New Zealand Vegetable Cookbook, which was launched on Friday (it's by Lauraine Jacobs, Ginny Grant, and Kathy Paterson, Random House, $49.99 - why don't they just say $50, I wonder?)
Of course it would be much better to start with the fresh dough. I know that. But sometimes life gets in the way of food. And this was for dinner, so I wanted something a bit more substantial than onions on top.
I chopped the onions fine instead of slicing them, added some thyme leaves, cooked them till soft and spread them over the base. On top went a layer of grated cheese, then the usual anchovies and olives (Gamboni's oil-cured Provencal flavoured ones) and a few scraps of bacon.

The instructions with the base were to cook it for 6-8 minutes at 200C on a preheated tray or stone, but they were wrong. You need the oven as hot as it will go. For ours this is meant to be 230C but I think it's really only 220C at best, probably less.

After 15 minutes I was too hungry to leave it in any longer, though I should have. And the bacon didn't add much. Still, for an illegitimate quickie take on its wonderfully named original, it wasn't bad at all.

Mussels made moreish

2010-08-05T21:26:00.006+12:00

I love mussels, but they do present a few problems. We used to buy them live from the excellent tanks in Woolworths, which kept them in constant running water. Then they changed the tank design. I'm sure they're still perfectly safe and healthy, but the percentage of broken and open ones seems higher these days. They also seem to be very large.
What has had more impact on us is that Harvey used to put them in water under a very slowly running tap, then debeard them. After that they were simplicity itself to cook - into a big pot with good lid, along with a bit of wine, herbs, chopped garlic and shallots; cook over a high heat for a few minutes until they open, shaking them around; discard any that haven't opened; serve the rest in big bowls with lots of crusty French bread to mop up the juice.
These days I tend to get a bit lazier still and buy a big vacuum pack of them instead. They're very lightly cooked already, but still in their shells, with their juice. And they're all more or less the same size, not too big and muscle-y. I buy them on Tuesdays, so the shells and feet and stringy bits can go out in the rubbish that night. Then I turn them into a kind of delicious soupy stew.

To serve four (or really hungry three), you need:
Vacuum bag of mussels, chilli flakes, thyme leaves, garlic, shallots or red onion, good olive oil, dry white wine, two tins of plain chopped tomatoes - or better still, a large jar of Italian passata - and chopped flat-leaf parsley.

Carefully cut open the bag of mussels, pour all the liquid into a bowl, and either remove the top shell from each mussel or take them right out of the shells (easier to eat, but not as pretty).
In a large pot, soften the chopped shallots/onion, garlic, thyme, and a good pinch of chilli in a little olive oil over a gentle heat.
Add about two glasses of white wine (or more!) and reduce it a little over a high heat.
Turn down to medium heat, and add the passata or the chopped tomatoes with all their juice. Add the mussel liquid and a few empty shells to the pot. Simmer gently for a few minutes and remove the shells.
Add the mussels and cook gently for another five minutes. Check the flavour and add salt and black pepper to taste. (You don't need much salt - the mussel liquid is usually enough.)

Ladle into large wide bowls, and scatter chopped parsley generously over the top. Have your favourite bread warm and ready to mop it all up. These days I like a good ciabatta or French country loaf better than a baguette.

Not fit to eat

2010-07-31T15:39:00.002+12:00

A friend sent me this picture. She found the pack being sold in a South Auckland dairy for $2.50 as a "school lunch". This is what was inside it.

Apart from the Oreos, a US "treat" that used to be unobtainable here, the other three things are all brands I've never seen before. My friend worked out that for $2.50, children get "almost no dietary fibre, 40mg vitamin C, rather more salt than they need, 35% of their daily requirement for simple sugars, quite a lot of fat, and about 25% of their total daily energy needs. That is, they get a lot of empty calories. Of course, they’ll be hungry from the lack of fibre by mid-afternoon, as well as thirsty from all the salt and sugar, but hey! That’s what $1 bottles of fizzy drink are for."
         She asked the dairy owner if he was embarrassed about selling this stuff to school children, and he said no, because "it’s what they like". So she asked if he would give this to his own children for lunch. He eventually said no, because "they didn’t like it".
          I detested making school lunches, and by the time the boys reached secondary school, I'd given up, I'm afraid. Fortunately in those days their school canteen sold plenty of things that were fine, like filled rolls, and they were old enough to make their own lunches at home if they wanted to make money on the deal. The last government's drive to get schools to sell healthy food was having really good effects by the time this government binned it, along with Fruit in Schools (which heaps of schools had used very successfully for learning about healthy eating).
           I don't know what the answer is, but it certainly isn't this rubbish. At least it looks as if that dairy may soon not be able to sell their big brothers and sisters booze.

PS: This post, plus a Child Poverty Action Group Facebook reference to it, was picked up and criticised in a post on the Hand Mirror recently, and got many pro and con comments. It charged me with "promoting a diet mentality" and "food morality". I then put up a post about my point of view, which in turn drew many more comments. You can read these posts and comments here.

Yummy yams

2010-07-29T22:38:00.006+12:00

Winter brings few vege pleasures, but yams are one of them. Harvey introduced me to these pretty shocking pink (or yellow, but we like pink best) bundles of sweetness. He even invented his own way of cooking them. Last Saturday I made an easy dinner using two large baking dishes, with chicken legs in one and yams, carrots and parsnips in the other, bathed in Harvey's secret-until-now ingredients. Kumara would have been good too. (Mind you, I had huge trouble getting him to tell me what to do - he used to do it all by instinct, not by exact measures, temperature and timing.)

Set the oven to the temperature you need for any meat and/or potatoes you're baking or roasting with the veges - anywhere between 160C and 200C is fine. As well as yams and your other chosen veges, you need olive oil, orange juice, a lemon, marsala and salt. Peel and neatly slice the veges so the pieces are roughly the same size as the medium to large yams. Put a little olive oil into a baking dish large enough to hold them all without packing them tightly. Turn the pieces so they're lightly oiled all over.

Mix the baking liquid - half and half orange juice and marsala, with a few squeezes of lemon juice. The amount depends on how large your tray of veges is. It should form a shallow layer in the bottom, enough not to evaporate completely and burn. Pour it over the veges and bake for between 1 hour and 2 and 1/2 hours, depending on what else is in the oven, how hot the temperature needs to be for those things, and whether the vege dish is near the top or near the bottom. (I often start it at the bottom and give it a final half hour near the top.) Turn the veges once about halfway through cooking, taking care to unstick them neatly from the bottom.

You just need to experiment a bit to see what works for you. The essential thing is to get the yams thoroughly cooked, so they keep their shape but are soft when you stick a knife in. Arrange the veges on a hot serving plate. If there's any lovely sticky, orangey, marsala-ey liquid left - there should be a little - you can use it for making a sauce or gravy.