there's no business like show business

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The time has come once more for me to assume the authority (authority that I don't really have, hence "assume" instead of, say, "gather") of writing up the Wellington Food Show. You know how some people really get into things like the Superbowl? The Food Show is my Superbowl. And it comes but once a year. Between working full time and growing older the year sweeps by alarmingly quick, the upshot of which is that this year the Food Show approached a lot sooner than I thought it would.

The following is a selection of the foodstuffs we sampled on Sunday. (And the drinkstuffs. At one point I remember telling Tim "I like margaritas. They help me make decisions.") There are some points you should bear in mind as you scroll purposefully through them.

1) I'm mad useless at composition on the fly. Sorry, companies (and readers).

2) While I only talk about the good stuff, it's not the definitive list. There were 185 stands, so out of practicality not all of them will be mentioned below.

3) I may or may not be half asleep while I'm writing this. Apologies for any inaccuracies or metaphors that go nowhere.

Firstly a massive "cheers" to The Wright Sprouts who actually sent me a pass to the show, which was both unexpected and very cool. It is entirely without agenda that I reiterate my genuine love for The Wright Sprouts' products (their sproutput, if you, um, will). A wide range of nutty, crunchy, juicy organic sprouts that you can easily polish off by the handful straight from the bag or use in actual recipes. I know sprouts don't necessarily spring to mind when you contemplate awesomely delicious food, but friend, let them spring.

The Wright Sprouts
Contact: (the lovely) [email protected]

One of the hugely exciting highlights of the day was seeing Ray McVinnie's cooking demonstration. He's become a lot more well-known lately as a judge on NZ Masterchef but I was there in the front row simply as a long-time fan of his writing for Cuisine magazine. His Quick Smart column has always been a favourite of mine and it was nice to see he's every bit as excellent in person as he is in paragraph form.

Total rockstar. Seriously. He made these two stunningly excellent sounding dishes, one a chicken dish sweetened and soured with damson jam, red wine and moscatel vinegar, and the other a chorizo and prawn dish. He was engaging, thorough, sensible of advice and humorous of anecdote. He even quoted Nigella Lawson. I know. He even kind of gestured at Tim and I at one point and asked if we could smell cinnamon, I seriously couldn't but nodded eagerly all the same, not one to let the truth stand in the way of a good story.

To the food!

Freedom Farms

Harmony

Sunset Free Range

We were so happy to see the SPCA stand back once more to raise awareness of the importance of free range eggs and meat with their mighty omelets. I made the decision a while back to only purchase free range eggs and meat, for all those obvious reasons (like feminism - gotta look out for our feathered sisters and their wellbeing) and the deliciousness of the bacon and omelets we tried at this stand only further backed up my happiness in this decision. I realise it would be even more humane and actually just much better to just not eat eggs or meat at all but...not yet. Just love them too much really, and I'm happy to support people striving to get me those eggs and that meat in the best way possible.

Freedom Farms

Contact: [email protected]

Harmony

Contact: [email protected]

Sunset Free Range Poultry

[email protected]

Essential Cuisine

There ain't nothing wrong with a little getting someone else to make your stock. Essential Cuisine has the goods, light years away from the murky, salty, 2-minute noodle sachet type stuff donning a mask and calling itself stock these days. They make mighty fine pesto too and all their products come in these alluringly prod-able, jewel-coloured pouches.

Essential Cuisine

Contact here

St Andrews Limes

These guys have been around for a year or two now, so it was more of a perfunctory visit to their stand that I made. However I shouldn't have been so presumptuous as their "Just a Dressing" - the stuff in the ramekin on the right - was so deliciously mustardy and sharp that I wanted to devise an elaborate plan to distract the people in charge of the stall so I could quickly swipe the bottle and drink the lot.

St Andrews Limes

Contact: [email protected]

Lisa's

Lisa's is another company that has been around for a while, but still shaking up the hummus scene with her ridiculously delicious new range. The above was roast kumara and chickpea hummus topped with glossy pumpkin seeds. It was lusciously silky and nutty, an amazingly good combination. We spent some serious quality time with it.

Lisa's

Contact: [email protected]

The Collective Dairy

I LOVE this yoghurt.

What to say. It was wonderful stuff - cold, thick, creamy and swirled with fruit. Their halloumi was so delicious - salty, squeaky, soft but solid. Actually that makes it sound kind of awful, but trust me it was genuinely heavenly. Top ranking stuff all round.

The Collective Dairy

twitter.com/collectivedairy

Contact: [email protected]

Sweet Smart

These guys did sugar-free sour cola bottles that tasted real. Well, as real as actual sour cola bottles could get. They have an awesomely comprehensive range of sugar-free products online and were really friendly. Considering it was day three of the Food Show and all.

Sweet Smart

Contact: [email protected]

Lindt Chocolate

One of their reps was strangely cold-mannered, they didn't seem to have any business cards to hand and there's not even an NZ website to speak of. From this cavalierness I would assume Lindt clearly don't need me to promote them on my blog. Still, I kind of liked this picture. And their chocolate is just so knee-bucklingy delicious, particularly those legendary Lindor balls which are solid on the outside and meltingly truffly on the inside. It sells itself. You can find it in most supermarkets. I ended up buying a bar of 85% dark chocolate which I look forward to eating eventually - I've never had chocolate quite that dark before, maybe if it gets any darker it just turns into a charcoal briquette.

Loaf Handcrafted Breads

One of the perils of going to the Food Show on the last day is that some people might run out of food. Like these jammy dodgers from Loaf, whose shelves were nude but for what you see in the photo above when we got there first thing in the morning. While I love to make my own ginger slice, their take on it was pretty darn exquisite - soft, fudgey, and dark with gingery heat. Between the quality of their product and the disarming friendliness of the guys at the stand I'm not surprised at all that they were completely fleeced and ready to go home after our first lap of the stadium.

Loaf

Contact: [email protected]

Orcona Chillis'n'Pepper

Just the perfect thing to awaken the tastebuds mid-afternoon. Orcona has a fabulous range of chillis and chilli-related products. We were particularly taken with their harissa and their chilli feijoa relish - strangely sweet and hot at the same time and very moreish. I haven't got tastebuds that can really stand up to the bullying heat of chillis but if yours can then look these guys up for sure.

Orcona Chillis'n'Peppers
Contact: [email protected]

Moana Park of Hawkes Bay

This was the wine used in the aforementioned Ray McVinnie cooking demonstration and I felt obliged to show them how their advertising dollars had paid off handsomely in brand recognition. While I drink wine here and there I can't say I know an awful lot about it in the technical sense, apart from what you pick up from listening to other people and reading and so on, but I really did like their Malbec - it had a good, robust, confident flavour. I then tried something called a "sticky" which frankly isn't the name I'd choose to classify a wine but again, what know I? It was very good but awfully sweet, the sort of thing that would be nice with stone fruit or perhaps poured over a cake of some kind. The man at the stall was very nice, which is always appreciated when bumbling your way through this sort of thing.

Moana Park

twitter.com/moanaparkwinery

Contact: [email protected]

Lemon-Z Limoncello

Lemon-Z is first an foremost a fabulous locally made limoncello, smooth, resiny and incredibly lemony. They also make a brilliant ice cream out of such reassuringly familiar things as cream and egg yolks. I felt a bit bad as I made a massive hash of all my photos of their drink, but not toooo bad as they're doing alright for themselves without my awful photos - their international awards are many and prestigious.

Lemon-Z

Contact: [email protected]

Soprano Limoncello

The Soprano limoncello was rich and fragrant, deliciously sour and with a sprightly liqueur-y kick. They're relatively new to the limoncello party but clearly know exactly what they are doing. I liked it a lot.

Soprano Limoncello

Contact: [email protected]

Rejuva

I love it when people do the dinky shot-glass lineup thing, because it looks so pretty in photos. Look at them twinkle! Rejuva's aloe juice is so strangely delicious that you won't even think about how scarily spiky the actual aloe vera plant is, or how strangely gluey the sap encased within its spikes. Rejuva's range of juices include Pomegranate with Aloe and Green Tea with Aloe. The flavour is a little hard to pinpoint - a little cucumbery, a little grapey, but overall light-textured, refreshing and delicious. And really, really good for you.

Rejuva

Contact: [email protected]

Lighthouse Gin

There's a really long and complicated distillation process that makes Lighthouse gin a cut apart from the rest of the gin-peddlers out there, but the one thing I can remember is that they use hand-cut orange rind to flavour their gin, instead of the rather more pith-bitter dried stuff that most other makers use. Which appealed to me, as did their robustly delicious product, full of the evidence of that hand-zested fruit and whole spices.

Lighthouse Gin

Contact: [email protected]

Honourable mention to the following -

Martinborough's Coney Wines, from whom I sampled two incredibly good Reislings. Their wines are named after music references and the people at the stand were incredibly friendly. I took advantage of their deliciousness and good value and bought myself a bottle. It was pouring with rain and the endless walk out of the stadium is completely unsheltered. The paper bag that the wine was in grew soggy, broke, and the wine smashed onto the ground. Aaaaaargh. Began to hate whoever designed the walkway out of the stadium (seriously, this walkway it's about forty kilometres long, no roof at all, in Wellington of all places). Nevertheless, I'll still be looking out for them in shops, only if it's not raining.

Coney Wines - contact [email protected]

Las Margarita Restaurante Y Cantina from Lower Hutt, who were serving icy margaritas and wonderful hot-sauce doused, cheese-filled rolls called flautas, and the girl serving margaritas complimented me on my hair.

Contact: 04) 566 2646/[email protected]

Piako Gourmet Yoghurt - another incredible NZ dairy product, unfortunately by the time I got round to them I was completely over taking photos. Wonderfully thick, delicious yoghurt in such alluring flavours as coffee walnut and lemon curd. Really, really gorgeous stuff.

Piako Yoghurt

Contact: [email protected]

Oxfam, who were collecting signatures to petition supermarkets to stock more Fairtrade products. Fair deuce, said I, and signed up happily. Then he gave us a whole block of Whittakers chocolate to say thanks. I could not have been more filled with love for the Food Show at that moment.

Oxfam

Fairtrade

And that, good people, is it, more or less. Less, rather than more, as I really only captured a bare sprinkle of the goods on display, but there you go.

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Title via: the formidable, deeply talented Ethel Merman (they don't name 'em like they used to).

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Music lately:

Notorious B.I.G feat Method Man - The What from Ready To Die You sure don't need me to tell you why this is good but one day when I'm more awake I might just do it anyway.

Best Coast, When I'm With You. I don't know much at all about these people but I love this song - its lethargic, foot-dragging guitars and Hole-ish vocals are very appealing.

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Next time: Cheers for reading, everyone, I realise it's a bit of a hike. So much new food to eat now - can't wait. Maybe by the time the next one rolls round I'll have my own cooking demonstration or something. Am secretly tempted to look at flights to Auckland for their leg of the Food Show...

20th century soy

After all those feijoa brownies - which on one particular day served as both my breakfast and dinner, all I can say is that the heart wants what the heart wants - I thought I'd rekindle my relationship with tofu, get some soy back in my bloodstream. The stuff I like to get comes from the vege market on Dixon/Willis Street and is $4 for a generous block of four squares, or fillets if you like, of firm tofu.

We went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D that night and I wanted a fast-moving dinner planned for when we returned home. It all worked out fantastically - crisp slices of matzoh-crumbed tofu resting on a bed, no, a beanbag of chickpea and golden sultana-studded couscous, and a garlicky tahini sauce on top. It was all made very quickly - such is the joy of couscous, instantly puffing itself up into a meal, and tofu, which has no bacteria squatting within its meatless walls to be smoked out in the cooking process, cutting down on pan-time.

Yes, the photos aren't great but 1) I was tired and hungry and 2) all that beige. What would you do? There's only so much coriander in my fridge.

Tofu with Garlic Tahini, Couscous and Chickpeas

Half a block of firm tofu

Breadcrumbs

3 fat cloves garlic

2 Tablespoons tahini

Pinch smoked paprika

1/2 cup couscous

Boiling water

1 tin chickpeas

1/3 cup golden sultanas (you could use normal sultanas, or currants, or dried cranberries etc)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Handful almonds (or other nuts)

Tip the couscous into a bowl, pour over boiling water to cover and sit a plate on top while you get on with the tofu. When you return to it, remove the plate and fluff up the couscous with a fork. Stir in the drained can of chickpeas and the sultanas (or whatever you're using instead), the spices plus salt to taste.

Wrap the tofu in a couple of paper towels and press on it to let some of the moisture absorb away. Bin the paper and slice up the tofu. Put your breadcrumbs (I used matzoh meal) onto a plate and press the tofu slices into them, covering both sides of each slice. Heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil till good and hot, and fry the slices till golden, a couple of minutes each side.

Finally, crush or finely chop the garlic cloves, and fry gently (in the same pan that you did the tofu in is fine). Stir in the tahini and a tablespoon of water and adding as much water as you like till you have a smoothish pale sauce. Add the paprika. Serve the tofu slices on top of the couscous with the sauce drizzled over. Sprinkle with the almonds, chopped, and a handful of torn coriander.

The couscous thing was adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe and was delicious- buttery chickpeas, tender couscous grains and chewy, sweet golden sultanas. I'm always happy to be eating tofu but pressing the crumbs into it provided a bit more texture and welcome crunch. The sauce tied it all together with its garlic smoothness, although undeniably it was a really ugly colour...even with the 'sprinkle-the-coriander-over' routine I still couldn't disguise its utter beige-ity.

We ate this for dinner, as I said, after seeing Alice in Wonderland in 3D. It was my first 3D movie (yeah, so I still haven't seen Avatar) and once I'd stopped jumping every time a leaf swirled out in front of me off the screen it was really fun. Because I loved the Alice books so much as a youngster I was a bit suspicious about what a film version could offer me, especially since the trailer made it look pretty rubbish but...I absolutely loved it. Not since Step Up 2: The Streets have I been so pleasantly surprised by a film. It was visually gorgeous for a start, but the acting and the fleshed-out characters really made it a wonderful experience. Mia Waisakowska's Alice is powerful, at first simply reacting to what's around her then gradually becoming more powerful, overall a highly compelling character. Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter are stunning queens. Apparently Bonham-Carter drew inspiration from Nigella for her role, and yeah, I could see it. And Johnny Depp is as captivating as, you know, he ALWAYS is. It drooped occasionally but the only thing I really didn't like about it was the Avril Lavigne song that blasts immediately over the ending credits. It's so bad that it's like a parody of an awful song rather than just a simply awful song. Disney kindly showed us several fancy trailers for upcoming 3D films prior to Alice in Wonderland starting, including Toy Story 3, something about owls, and yet another Shrek sequel. I wonder if 3D is proving to be an exciting platform for companies to re-thrash already thrashed franchises...

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Title via: That other mad hatter, Marc Bolan, and T-Rex's 20th Century Boy.

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Music lately:

Martha by Rufus Wainwright from his new album All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu. I love Wainwright's music, his theatrical imagery and endless voice, so a new album is always a bit of a treat. This is just him and a piano, not sparse in the slightest, I'm not sure he could do 'sparse' but utterly beautiful and stripped of any real excess. Martha, presumably named for his sister, is one particularly affecting track on this album, the first he's put out there since his mother's death earlier this year.

Night Hawkes from Wellingtonian Red Steer's latest EP, The Fever Fold. It's an exciting track with an enviable beat that sneaks in partway through and makes me want to choreograph something. Tim reviewed it at The Corner, an NZ website so awesome that we both write for it, and you can even download the EP for free once you're done reading up on it (and my review of MGMT's Congratulations, there's no free download but I do reference Hair, almost as exciting...)

Sleigh Bells' Tell Em, crunchier than sandpaper and very fun. Their relentless fuzzity could be hard on the ears but as someone who grew up rural, ears pressed to the radio at night with one finger slowly inching the tuner round to pick up any kind of signal, it all makes sense to me.

Do you know what I'm emphatically not listening to? Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate's Ali and Toumani, the collaboration that has recently been released, five year's on from Toure's death. We walked from the top of Cuba Street to the bottom of Lambton Quay at the other end of town, entering every single music shop we found and not one place had it. I know, I should have bought it sooner...

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Next time: Oh sure we ate tofu but...I also made a pudding of the ice-creamy variety. So you'll find out about the all sharp change in direction when I next get time to update this.

to fruits, to no absolutes

I had a wonderful weekend at home, but I feel a bit talked out on the subject of RENT. All the way up to Auckland in the car my family and Tim politely listened while I talked about it anticipationally, and all the way through dinner afterwards and on the drive home I was generously tolerated during my frame-by-frame debrief of the entire production. But - oh my gosh thank goodness I imagine that I hear you say - I'm not entirely out of steam. For the sake of all involved though, and because I'm probably the only person who cares what I think about this particular production, I'll keep my review to the following thoughts: (I have more thoughts though! So many more!)

• I was very, very happy to be given the opportunity to see the songs I love so much performed live, and the Auckland Music Theatre did a great job.
• The vocal sound was a bit restrained which didn't do them any favours, because in RENT if you miss one throwaway line, well there goes an entire subplot.
• The choreography for Out Tonight wasn't overly satisfying, and I was a little disappointed Mimi wasn't wearing blue tights, but this seems typical of all local productions I've seen.
• Some of the songs - including the difficult Contact ("Mum, there's this giant, metaphorical...sex scene") in which Cameron Clayton as Angel just stunned and La Vie Boheme were staged and choreographed absolutely brilliantly.
• I didn't like what they did with Over The Moon - while it was clever to have it more dynamic with the cast-as-audience it lost the actual audience participation. And the cowbell.
• While the cast was overall brilliant, and it's not fair to compare them to the original Broadway stars, occasionally a singer's range didn't stack up to what you expected to hear.
• I really liked Kristian Lavercombe as Mark, he brought this narrow-hipped Buddy Holly feel to the role and led the show well.
• The much-publicised Annie Crummer (let's face it, there are no real main characters but if there were, Joanne wouldn't be one) looked stunning and sounded great but her distinct vocals coupled with the slightly quiet mic made most of her lines hard to hear. If you didn't know them off by heart already that is.
• Go see it if you can - it's running till May the 7th and frankly, I'd go back again if I could. We saw the Saturday matinee and I would have happily stuck around and seen the night show. I don't say that lightly.

Oh yeah... and it was fun hearing the name of my blog in the title song.

We're so countrified that we spent five traffic light cycles taking a photo of me in front of the Civic theatre on Queen Street. I guess since our community is now shunted into the Waikato we can officially qualify as tourists in Auckland supercity. Imagine if I ever made it to New York - but then there are probably thousands of people who take photos of the "look at me standing by this distinctive structure" variety over there.

I was also home for Anzac Day and after watching the amazing and moving coverage on Maori TV (I could have done with someone a little drier in delivery than Judy Bailey, that said, I wish I had her legs), we went to the local wreath-laying ceremony, catching up with plenty of whanau in the process. A large bag of feijoas was pressed upon us by old family friends and I managed to carefully transport them back on the plane to Wellington. Feijoas are a fairly localised fruit, I think they mostly pop up in NZ and Australian cooking but not necessarily many other places in the world. I would describe them as being similar to passionfruit in fragrance, a little like a strawberry mixed with pineapple in flavour and not unlike guava in texture. They're basically the greatest thing on earth.

Unfortunately their relative rarity and short season (they're one of the best things about the colder autumn days) means that recipes are few and far between. So I decided to improvise, and made Feijoa Coconut Brownies. If you aren't within reaching distance of a feijoa I'd substitute equal weight of banana or applesauce.

Improvised on the spot though these may be, they tasted like they'd been prophesied about to come and save the world by some holy sage a thousand years ago. I'm trying to say they were really good.

Feijoa Coconut Brownies

200g butter

100g good dark chocolate

150-200g feijoa flesh (just cut them in half, scoop out the flesh with a teaspoon and mash with a fork. The weight here refers to the flesh only, not the whole fruit)

100g sugar

3 eggs

2 tablespoons good cocoa (like the Fairtrade stuff Mum gave me! Yay!)

50g thread coconut (or dessicated, the longer thread stuff gives good texture)

200g flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

100g good dark chocolate, chopped (optional)

Set oven to 180 C/350 F. Melt the chocolate and butter together gently, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pot of simmering water. Stir to combine. Tip in the rest of the ingredients apart from the flour and baking powder, and mix thoroughly. Fold in the flour, baking powder and chopped chocolate if using, and spread the mixture into a baking paper lined 20x30cm-ish tin. Bake for 20-25 minutes (no less - this is a supermoist mixture, it can handle the slightly longer oven time). Allow to cool a bit, then slice into bars.

Notice my new favourite toy - a cakestand from my godmother and family. I love how clean and elegant it is - makes me feel very Scandinavian. Or at least what I think being Scandinavian might feel like. (Other characteristics: writing excellent electro-pop and sprinkling dill on everything)

These brownies were, and I don't care that I'm saying so myself because look at them, gorgeous. The feijoa gave an acidy kick to the chocolate's embroidered velvet pants, while the softly textured coconut buffered against the feijoa's grittiness and provided a delicate richness of its own. They are super moist, cocoa-y and dense. They're damn good brownies.

I had one for breakfast this morning and it felt good.

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Title coming your way via: surprise! RENT! I'm confident that feijoas aren't the kind of fruits that Mark sings about in La Vie Boheme...and yet feijoas are undeniably one of the fruitier brothers in existence, so it all kind of works out.

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Music lately:

Just one more - Santa Fe from RENT. I don't have a favourite, but this mellow beauty still thrills with every listen despite not being one of the huge showstoppers. I was a bit let down by the staging/arrangement of this song in the production we saw, but funnily enough Mum thought it was going to be the end of Act I, like Act II would be all about this group of bohemians and their attempt to start a restaurant out west. Looking back to when I first heard this song, I have to admit I didn't quiiiiite pick up on the hypothetical nature right away either.

The amazing M.I.A's new Suicide-sampling song Born Free. Watch the video if you dare (if you can find it) it's definitely...an eye-widener.

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Next time: I've been given so many cool food-related things for my birthday (cake tins, maple syrup, limoncello, etc) that I'm going to have fun working out how to use them all, hopefully managing to incorporate my new cakestand in the process...

where is my master, the rebel quince

It's astounding. Quinces are fleeting. Madness takes its toll. When you realise that you've just come to truly love the fruit and there's none to be found, not a damn skerrick, for a whole year. Like some kind of token gesture from Mother Nature to say sorry for ending summer, quinces appear with autumn, but unlike the terrible weather, their time with us is ridiculously brief. They're like the Jimmy McNulty of fruit, charming but unreliable, showing up at random intervals to steal your heart then run off again. I mean, I saw them at the supermarket and a week later there were no more. I didn't even see them at all at the vege markets this year, although I was out of town one weekend. So you have to live every fruit as if it's your last.

Now that I'm writing all this, like I'm some kind of bearded prophet issuing a clifftop warning, it occurs to me that it's probably not the best subject to blog on, since...by the time I get round to hitting the 'publish' button quince season may well be over and this post will be of no use to anyone. Seriously, last time I managed to get my hands on quinces was 2007. What luck do the rest of you guys have? Ah, well, I've started. Gonna plough.



If you've never tried quince before, think of them as a cross between an apple and pear with a hint of lemon in flavour, and like persimmon in texture. They are gorgeously fragrant and really need cooking down to be edible - they're far too dry and wooly when raw. I thought sorbet would be a good way to showcase these subtle flavours, and actually apples or pears could be substituted for quinces in their absence, which does make this post a bit more relevant to you.



Quince Sorbet

This recipe is slightly fiddly but not too bad. It's just something I made up, so there are probably improvements that could be made. A bit of equipment helps, as always...

3 large, firm quinces
1/3 cup sugar plus another 1/3 cup
125 mls water plus another 250 mls

Chop the quinces roughly (as per the photo above) and place in a roasting dish. They're pretty tough little beasts, but nothing a good sharp Victorinox can't handle. Be careful though! Sprinkle over the first 1/3 cup sugar and the 125 mls water, cover with tinfoil, and place in a 160 C oven for about 2 hours or until completely soft. Once they've cooled a bit, puree the lot including any juices or liquid in the roasting dish. Here I should point out that I tried pushing the puree through a sieve, and then a potato ricer, to get rid of all the skin. I think I should have peeled the fruit to begin with but this is up to you - you either get sorbet with bits in it or you don't.

Bring the 250mls water and second measure of sugar to the boil in a pan and let it bubble away for a bit. You're not trying to make a full on syrup, just allow the sugar to dissolve and the liquid to thicken slightly. Pour it over the quince puree and stir thoroughly. Pour into a container and freeze till solid. You may want to blast the frozen mixture in the food processor, which will make it extra smooth and creamy.

This doesn't make an awful lot - around 600 mls. However I was just experimenting and so didn't want litres of sorbet on my hands. You could always use more quinces and indeed, add a couple of chopped up apples to the mix to make the overall volume greater.



Because the ingredients are fairly simple, the delicate, fresh crisp apple flavour of quinces were able to shine in this sorbet. Quinces tend to run into oversweetness but the iciness of the sorbet stared it down nicely. It is truly delicious and really the only disappointment was (a) that it'll be a long time till I can make some more and (b) the colour was a bit unimpressive, a kind of nondescript pinkish-brown. I guess I should have stuck a mint leaf on top to make it look a little nicer. I guess I'll have to wait till next year...

Speaking of things leaving town, last night Tim and I went to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet in From Here To There, a showcase of three different modern ballet works. I love ballet so much, and try to support these guys where I can. Christopher Hampson choreographed Silhouette, the first piece. I was lucky enough to see his Romeo and Juliet many years ago, the ending of which completely slayed me in spite of the fact that I knew exactly what was going to happen. His choreography here was witty, crisp, stylish and a little camp, with plenty of good old fashioned man-leaping, the kind you normally only get at the end of story ballets. A Song In The Dark, the second work, choreographed by Andrew Simmons, was frantically beautiful and set to the glorious music of Phillip Glass. A Million Kisses To My Skin, the final piece choreographed by David Dawson was joyful, playful, and stunningly costumed. Throughout all three pieces there were incredible displays of strength, balance, flexibility, trust, and energy. The entire season finishes tonight so if you haven't already seen it, like the quince, there's not much you can do about it now.

Afterwards we headed to Happy bar to see Auckland rapper Tourettes reading some of his poetry. Nothing like some poetry near midnight at a dark underground bar to make you feel a bit grown up. The enchantingly friendly DJ Alphabethead started us off with some blindingly fast moves on his turntable, and then Tourettes appeared. He's a favourite musician of mine but it was rather brilliant to have the opportunity to hear his equally excellent spoken word material, both old and new. While his words are raw like a steak in places there was also plenty of funny-because-it's-true hilarity from Tourettes, who is so self-deprecating that he self-deprecatingly calls himself out for being so self-deprecating. It's all brilliant stuff and if any of the above sounds vaguely interesting and you live in the Auckland region I absolutely recommend trying to catch him live, buying his albums or for starters, watching this mini doco from TVNZ 6's The Gravy.
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Title brought to you by: Opera Hunk Rufus Wainwright, who were were lucky enough to see live a few years ago, and his brooding, French-tinged tune Rebel Prince from his truly lovely album Poses.
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Music while I type:

Straw Into Gold from Idina Menzel's evergreen stunner of a debut album, Still I Can't Be Still. I know I said it on Twitter already, but I hear this album when I listen to Florence and The Machine. Was Florence listening to this when she wrote Lungs? Well, I'd like to think so, which is a start.

Yeasayer's Ambling Alp from their album Odd Blood. I hate the song title but gosh it's catchy, and uplifting with it, a kind of modern equivalent to S Club 7's Bring It All Back, but for cool people. These guys have been around for a little while so maybe it's kind of ho-hum to bring it up now, but they really do sound a bit special and stand out from the crowd.
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Next time: I made this vegan apple cake today, it's still in the oven as I type. If it's any good, you'll be the first to know, if not, I'll pretend like it never happened but secretly be grumpy for a week.

let's have a ball girl and take our sweet little time about it

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My nana is seriously fantastic. She's the only person in my life who will txt me to say that RENT is on TV and that she's going to tape it, while also being able to identify buttonholing and stitching on a opshop dress of mine as dating it back to the 1950s. She was one of the very first readers and supporters of this blog back in 2007 and has always been a positive presence in my life. As if all that weren't enough, a while back she commented on a tofu-centric post on this blog with Tofu "Balls", a recipe she "used heaps over 20 years ago."




I guess the title isn't overly inviting - anything with inverted commas seems a little hesitant. That said, these literally are balls of tofu - just because there's not any meat doesn't make these any less, erm, ballsy, so there's no need for them to cower behind quotation marks. Amusing thought they may be.




All hesitancy aside, they're really, really delicious. I did kind of tweak the recipe - I love tofu, I love rolled oats, but I don't think I can face them together. The combination belongs back in the shadows of "over 20 years ago"...for everyone's sake. That said, if you're game, then certainly go ahead and use them instead of the breadcrumbs/ground almonds.

Tofu "Balls"

With thanks to Nana for the heads-up.

In a food processor, mix the following till a crumbly mixture forms.

1/2 cup chopped peanuts or cashews
1 finely chopped onion
2/3 cup soft breadcrumbs, or 1/2 cup ground almonds
1 egg (optional - leaving it out makes these vegan)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
2 Tablespoons Shoyu or soy sauce
1 block firm tofu (I used half, or two squares, from those four-packs of firm tofu you get from the vege market)

Roll into balls, not too large - about the size of the old 50c pieces, or a walnut. The second time I made these I rolled them in ground almonds which was rather nice, but the world won't fall apart if you don't do it. Heat a little rice bran oil in a wide pan, and cook till the balls are crisp and browned on all sides.

Nana also recommended a sauce made by bringing peanut butter, lemon juice and water to the boil in a pan while stirring with a spatula, although I imagine any kind of dipping sauce you have to hand would work with these - chilli sauce, for example...

Forget your fear of tofu and maybe your further fear of well-meaning vintage recipes involving tofu. These are so good! A crunchy without, nutty and mouthfilling like peanut butter within. The tofu has a really lovely fresh flavour which balances out the richness of the nuts, but the softness of the texture means that they really slow you down - which is why you don't want to roll them too large. They went brilliantly with a crunchy green salad of sliced cabbage, sugar snap peas and avocado, plus soba noodles, slippery and cool with sesame oil and soy sauce. Because tofu is so awesome and kind of holds everything together you can afford to toy with these as you wish. If you wanted to you could also add into the food processor a number of ingredients...sesame seeds, tahini, sunflower seeds, lemon rind, chopped ginger, garlic...As well as being a very filling main meal, you could make them even smaller - like bonker marble sized - and serve with toothpicks and a variety of dipping sauces at your next soiree.

Busy times lately - Tim and I spent both Thursday and Friday night at the cocoon of body heat that is the San Francisco Bath House firstly to see Brooklyn - as in New York - band Dirty Projectors, then local sensations Mint Chicks last night. Dirty Projectors have this unusual, intriguing sound - kind of minimalistic, with wonky time signatures, chunky drumbeats and flutey harmonies that take the role of instruments in places. Occasionally the sound got a bit repetitive, (and all those "ehhh-ohhhs" make me think of the Tellytubbies) although if I could sing like the gorgeous ladies in the band I'd probably do the same thing over and over too. They all looked really happy though which tends to endear me to performers, and damnit if I haven't been humming the stunning No Intentions constantly. I'm glad we went and saw them - there's some extraordinary talent within the band, I just wonder where they're going to go from here with their sound.

Two of the Dirty Projectors. They looked so young, and for some reason the more the girl on the left - the main female voice - belted, the younger she looked...

The Mint Chicks' set last night was fantastic although so loud that I occasionally felt nauseous. A compliment? More than any other local band I can think of they always feel like A Big Deal whenever they roll into town. That said, the audience - largely composed of new-in-town or returning students - seemed a little disengaged. Like the couple who spent 90% of the time pashing extensively next to me. Why even leave the house! Hopefully it was a good experience for the Mint Chicks themselves, they all looked completely impassioned while onstage but who could know? The sound quality seemed decent, so the scrawlyness of their music translated really nicely into a live setting and didn't turn into a incomprehensible blur of noise. Their older songs sounded as brilliant as ever and their newest track Bad Buzz was maybe my favourite moment - it's such a ridiculously fantastic song as I clumsily tried to explain here. I hadn't seen them live since 2006 so it was wonderful to catch them again, hopefully they stick around and keep on creating...
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Title brought to you by: Ball and Biscuit from Elephant, the album you probably own if you're a casual White Stripes fan. Casual we are not.
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Music to blog by:

The Dirty Projectors' No Intentions, as above, from their album Bitte Orca. See? Intriguing! Hummable!

I Cut Like A Buffalo from the Dead Weather's debut album Horehound. The music video for this is compelling stuff. I hope sincerely that Jack White recreates that dance on stage when we see them live on the 17th. I don't think I'll be that functional on the 16th. 2005 seems a long time ago.

Patti LuPone singing Rainbow High - say what you will about Andrew Lloyd Webber, but the music to Evita is stunning, and this cabaret performance from LuPone at Les Mouches in 1980 is particularly ferocious. Makes me want to grab a microphone and snarl "so Christian Dior me!" too. Wish someone would stage a version of it here.
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Next time: we're having a combined Wellington Phoenix pre-game get-together/Rod Stewart Appreciation Day thing tomorrow (long story...actually no, that explains it all really) which I'm catering (self-imposedly) and the menu is growing more and more dizzying in proportions...no doubt I'll have plenty to blog about. Like Nigella's Girdlebuster Pie. Do you not want to know more with a name like that?

masters of raw

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Rawr.

So, when I'm not making butter-and-golden-syrup sandwiches or having pancakes for dinner I enjoy the occasional dog-paddle through the chilled, unsalted waters of raw cooking. This isn't something I'd want to make a lifestyle of but it's fun to try new recipes. It can hardly be a secret that the less you do to vegetables, the better they are for you and I'm all for including more of them on my plate. I'm not so convinced by recipes that require half a bottle of agave nectar and a kilo of cashews sitting in a dehydrating machine for nine hours till it turns into some kind of cheesecake-esque creation - that doesn't seem quite right to me.


These raw 'cookies' are a particularly lovely example of this sort of carry-on - the ingredients are likely to be in your cupboard already and they're cheap if you don't have them. It's quick but involved enough to make you feel like you're doing something, and you can eat them as soon as you've made them. They're practical - energy dense and hardy - and also really, really delicious which is, I guess, a requirement rather than an eye-brow raising bonus with healthier recipes these days. I found this fantastic recipe on Gourmeted, but changed it up a tiny bit. The original was composed of dates and raisins but I swapped the altogether sexier dried apricots for the sad pinched little raisins. I added a tiny bit of liquid and included linseeds. You do as you wish.


Date and Apricot 'Cookies'.


1 cup oats of some form - wholegrain, rolled, raw (I used the big wholegrain ones)
2 tablespoons linseeds, whole or ground
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup dates, pitted, packed
1/2 cup dried apricots


Combine oats, linseeds and cinnamon in food processor and pulse until you get small pieces. Add dates and pulse well. You should have a thick/dense paste, but don't fear if it is still crumbly. Add a tablespoon of water if it's really not coming together at all, but the apricots will help. Add apricots and whizz to blend them through. I then just wet my hands, rolled small tablespoonfuls of 'dough' and pressed/squeezed them flat into 'cookies'. I say squeezed for a reason - the texture of this is a little different but they will work, trust me.





As I said, these 'cookies' are delicious - in their own right, not just in a "not bad for something without butter in it" kind of way. In fact they really deserve to just be called cookies, rather than being encased in patronising apostrophes. Be free from my sneering punctuation, cookies! They are figgily dense in texture, fragrant with apricot, and fantastically chewy. They make a perfect hurried breakfast, and probably would be brilliant with some roughly chopped dark chocolate included in the mixture. On top of all that they're a really cheap way of filling the biscuit tin.


Had been feeling a bit grumpy while writing this - waited for a phone call today that never arrived which meant I put off other things, wrangling with all manner of other things in the meantime, and finally ruining dinner - I somehow managed to oversalt the cooking water for the pasta despite every cookbook seeming to imply that no amount of salt can be too much. I persisted in eating it all the same so there wasn't any waste but feel a bit like a preserved lemon now. Coupled with the inevitable post-Laneways-blahs, it'd be easy to feel sorry for myself and snap at people for the sake of it. Let us instead relive the happiness of Monday's shenanigans...


Monday was Auckland Anniversary Day, which unfortunately isn't recognised as an official holiday in Wellington. So it was with a day's annual leave clutched tightly in my hands that Tim and I attended the inaugural Laneways music Festival at Britomart. The day was exceptionally relaxed, with the intentionally small audience moving like schools of fish between and around the two stages. The brilliance of the lineup became more and more apparent as the day went on. Highlights included...

- the mellow, be-caped stompiness of the Phoenix Foundation.
- seeing Chris Knox emerge from behind a fence to watch the Black Lips with the rest of the audience.
- Daniel Johnston's entire set, punctuated by a rather joyfully sung-along rendition of You've Got To Hide Your Love Away. Nearly had wobbly tears in my eyes till I recognised someone with a similar look on their face and checked myself for being an unnecessarily sentimental git.
- Realising I knew more Echo and the Bunnymen songs than I initially thought.
- Florence Welch. She was almost a lowlight - so gorgeous and long-legged, must she have this gloriously swirling voice tucked in her throat as well? I've never, ever been into acrobatic female vocalists (Well, I did and still do have a soft spot for Mariah Carey but she's different) - have always been resolutely unmoved by Beyonce or Christina Aguilira, and any of those dime-a-dozen introspective bores that appear on Grey's Anatomy - but listening to Florence live made me realise how thrilling seeing someone belt their face off could be. To any of you out there who have seen Idina Menzel or Julia Murney singing live - my envy grew tenfold after Florence.




Above: Chris Knox flanked by the always elegant Shayne Carter. They performed a swift but crunchily powerful set which was, not forgetting the fact that Knox suffered a stroke last year, pretty marvelous.


The day was made easier by the fact that the "Friends and Family" area had much nicer toilets, chairs and shade, plus no queues to get a bottle of water or beer. The only real frown-inducing thing about the day was my uncanny but unfortunate ability to get stuck behind the person in the audience who insists on smoking. I can't even understand why someone would think everyone directly around them wants to breathe in poisonous smoke as well. All I could think the whole time was "there's no safe level of exposure to cigarette smoke." But on the whole the day was utterly smashing and not much apart from that troubled me. Oh wait. There was the crowd of girls behind me who insisted on shriekily singing along with Florence at great volume. Sounds simple enough, even curmudgeonly on my part, but it's the sort of thing that after a long day makes you want to push someone into a swimming pool. A bit like the smoking thing - what made them think I paid to hear them sing? That aside, am already anticipating what untold joys next year's lineup could bring. Laneways - I think you really need a round of applause.


The night before Tim and I went relatively spontaneously to "Dig Deep" at Fubar, the proceeds of which went to aid Haiti. It was a very good night, in particular Tourettes' set; but between that and Laneways I'm now feeling like the pasta we struggled at dinner - limp and overly saline.

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Title brought to you by: Bob Dylan's Masters of War from The Freewheeling Bob Dylan. The lyrics really bear little resemblence to quietly making cookies, or maybe they do - he's pretty deep, that Bob Dylan.

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On Shuffle lately:

Dance My Pain Away by Rod Lee from The Wire:...And All The Pieces Matter. There are few soundtracks I'll seek out (cast recordings, different story) but this is such a perfectly structured gem. We are inordinately excited about the approaching release of Season 5 on DVD. The tourism guide books will tell you that New Zealand is a fabulous place to live and raise a family and it may well be; it's a terrible place to wait for a DVD to be released. We are always woefully behind.

You Got The Love by Florence and The Machine from her aptly titled album Lungs. When you first hear this cover you might think "hmmm, prosaic enough" but then it gets all swirly and wonderful. Less swirly but no less special is the XX remix which was put over the loudspeakers once the XX finished their set - was great fun watching everyone who'd diligently waited for Daniel Johnston on the other stage getting panicky that Florence was making an unexpected early cameo.

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Next time: I bought some wonton wrappers! They're much easier to get your hands on than they sound, and made some potstickers which miraculously turned out perfectly and were ridiculously good. It's Waitangi Day this Saturday, and because it's a Saturday PLUS a public holiday it's like, quadruple guaranteed that Tim will be making coffees for people but I'll probably traipse out to One Love anyway, sounds like it's going to be an excellent day...

another year, it'll be the best year ever

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Last post for 2009! Might as well end the year with something horrendously bad for you. There is not one single particle of nutrients in the recipe I've got for you today. But isn't that what half-hearted New Year's resolutions are exist for? Hope everyone had a smashing Christmas. Even though it can be a time where looming tensions rub up against each other, I was spared most of that - the closest we got was a bit of stress over getting lunch out all at the same temperature on Christmas Day. As our life is not an episode of Mad Men, there was no social failure involved with having to wait for the gravy to heat. It was wonderful to spend a whole week with my family doing not much in particular, especially since I've barely been home at all this past year. We did quizzes, drank tea, ate leftovers, went through cupboards and looked at old trinkets and schoolbooks, and my parents even indulged me by letting me watch Chess on the big TV with surround sound. Woke up the next morning to hear Don't Rain On My Parade - Dad was looking up Idina Menzel on Youtube. Felt as though it was some kind of small achievement.






New Year's will be a low-key one for me - lots of food, some drink, and Tim, myself and our friend and ex-flatmate Ange eating and drinking the lot over the course of the evening. The weather is looking typically dubious, so my fantasies of swanning about on the rooftop deck in a flowing dress while eating prawns (I don't know, I've clearly read one too many Australian Women's Weeklys or something) are fading but with good company, good food and no agenda I think we're quite safe from the evening descending into some kind of awkward Rupert-and-Hubert Mr Bean situation. I'm perfectly happy (she says defensively) being low-key this time of year.


Part of the evening's feastings is that artery-solidifying stalwart of the birthday party, Calf Club and school gala days, Lolly Cake. Also known in some circles as lolly log, quickly googling it would suggest that it is a concept more or less exclusive to New Zealand. Once you've tried it I'm sure you'll agree that whoever the bright spark that invented it was should surely have their face on the back of a coin or at the very least, have a commemorative stamp made in their honour.





Lolly Cake

Recipe from the back of the fruit puffs packet. Nigella would get a kick out of this I'm sure, in a "slumming-it" kind of way - look at all those packets in the ingredients!

100g butter
200g (1/2 a tin) sweetened condensed milk
250g (1 packet) malt biscuits, crushed
150g (1 packed) fruit puffs, roughly chopped
Dessicated coconut

Melt butter, stir in condensed milk, biscuits and lollies. Shape mixture into a log, roll in coconut, and refrigerate till solid, whereupon you cut it into slices.





For those of you not in New Zealand, fruit puffs are like a solid, ovoid fruit flavoured marshmallow. Marshmallows themselves would be too soft, but what with America being the leaders of the free world or something surely you must have something similar to this in the sweets aisle of your supermarket? When Tim and I were in the UK we made this for a charity bake sale at the school we were working at (they'd never had lolly cake before) and used Dolly mixture quite successfully (picking out and eating the jellies first, though).




As you can imagine, Lolly Cake is the most delicious thing upon this earth.




It tastes a little like the base of a cheesecake, and is surprisingly sophisticated texturally - dense, cool biscuit crumbs nestled around almost sherbetty fruit puffs with the occasional damp, fibrous burst of coconut. Even though I completely avoids shop-bought biscuits (hey, 'hydrogenated palm oil' freaks me out a little) here the ingredients just make sense. Oh, how they make sense.

What with it being the end of a year and the end of a whole decade, everyone's suddenly getting all list-happy and attempting to define the finest output of the last ten years. I certainly haven't the inclination to do anything too exhaustive, and because this is a food blog, I'm sure no-one is expecting me to (as if that is a reason to stop me). I already talk about music plenty, but in terms of films I feel like a lot of lists aren't reflecting the real best of the decade. The following could only be considered indicative of this insomuch as I feel like my opinion is correct, but...

Films That Happened In The Last Ten Years That I Truly Liked

Only six. I looked at Wikipedia's list of all films released this decade and came to the conclusion that I don't feel very strongly passionate about many of them. The following, however...

1: A Mighty Wind. (2002)
This film is perfect. I love it more each time I see it. It features a trifecta of the most incredible actresses in existence - I'd use the word girl-crush but I don't like it - Catherine O'Hara, Parker Posey, and Jane Lynch. The acting is devastatingly good, the music is joyfully sharp and despite it being a mockumentary, dammit if the clever lot of them don't make you care for their characters. (Trailer)


2: Hamlet 2 (2008)
This film is very close to A Mighty Wind for me in terms of brilliance. In fact I don't know how it isn't the top of all these best-of lists being released. It stars Steve Coogan, Catherine Keener (another incredible actress, she's often the best thing in whatever she stars in), Spring Awakening's Phoebe Strole and Skylar Astin, Elisabeth Shue, and the eye-wideningly gorgeous Joseph Julian Soria. It's about a sequel to Hamlet. I mean...really. (the glorious trailer)


3: Moulin Rouge (2001)
I know this one will never make a best-of list, but I think Baz Luhrmann is brilliant. This movie and its music was hugely important to me in my teens. I'm truly not kidding, just keeping the songs in my mind (we didn't have iPods back then) helped me psychologically get through the pain of one of those awful school camps where they force you to climb mountains and cross wire bridges and so on. It's beautiful, it's dramatic, it's dark, it's sumptuous, and truly, were Ewan MacGregor's talents ever better put to use than in this film? (Trailer)


4: RENT (2005)
Oh alright, it's not exactly Woody Allen or Sam Mendes or anything, it cuts out several important songs from the stage show and features a montage sequence in Santa Fe that may or may not be identical to every Bon Jovi music video ever made. But for employing all available original Broadway cast members to reprise their roles, for recognising the joy that is Tracie Thoms and Rosario Dawson, for having Idina Menzel sing Over The Moon live, for the gorgeous slow pan across at the screen end of La Vie Boheme, and most of all for making this musical accessible for people like myself on the other side of the world in New Zealand who would have struggled to find out about RENT any other way, it should be on this list. And all lists. (Youtube is a bit useless on the trailer front, so here's Seasons of Love)


5: The Wackness (2008)
Aha! A film that would be considered cool by discerning folk! It's a gorgeous, sad, funny little film that combines unrequited love, early nineties hip hop, and a stunning cast. (Trailer.)


6: Taking Woodstock (2009)
This film with its mellow but affecting storyline with one of the more important social and cultural events of the century as a backdrop is so good! And yet I read so many negative reviews. Many complained about how a movie with a music festival in its title didn't really feature any performances. This I felt was a bit simplistic, as the film was centred on a person's journey and experiences leading up to and during Woodstock. It was about people coming together for the music, not the music itself. There's already wonderful footage of the actual performances on that day, I don't see why this film was supposed to recreate that. Convincing, compassionate performances from all involved (including - yay! - Broadway's Jonathan Groff, who looks like he was born to wear sandals and ride a white horse) made this film hit me where films should. (Trailer)

(Honourable mention to Moon, an incredible film directed by Duncan Jones...the fact that it's not in the top six is more a reflection on my memory than its merit as a film. It belongs!)

There have been a lot of other films this decade that I've really enjoyed, (Ponyo, Billy Elliot, Revolutionary Road, Memento, Orange County, Every Little Step if that counts), plenty that I've disliked, and there are, admittedly, plenty that are on a lot of best-of lists that I've never even seen. You'd think having done two years of film studies I could muster up something a little more intellectual and film-festival-ish, but here we are. The list is slim, but sound.

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Title almost came atcha via Led Zep but I switched at the last minute to Amanda Palmer, quoting her beautiful beautiful song Another Year (The Point of It All) from her album Who Killed Amanda Palmer. She's touring New Zealand in March and I absolutely can't wait.
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On Shuffle while I type:

I would be completely lying if I didn't own up to the fact that I've been singing along very loudly to the revival cast recording of Hair. Prosaic choice, and nothing new, but it's just so fantastic.
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2009 has been as packed with events as any other year - there was Otaua Village's David triumphing over the Goliath that was the Pukekohe WPC oil company wanting to more or less cripple my hometown (okay, Otaua isn't exactly Fern Gully but it was a no less worthy cause and a long and difficult battle from the people of the village. I couldn't have been happier that we more or less 'won'.) There was also graduation, a new existence on Cuba Street, the wonderful Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin at the Aotea Centre... In November I had completed a year's full time work and had my contract extended for another year. A few weeks ago this very blog got me on the front cover of a magazine - the Sunday Star-Time's Sunday magazine (I still haven't worked out a non-time-consuming way of saying that). I'm ready I think, I hope, for whatever 2010 has got in store for me. Happy New Year, everyone! Stay safe and happy and try the lolly cake - it's ridiculously good. Any New Year's resolutions?