La lutta continua

Well, kicked off my campaign to save the unsliced Vogel’s Original loaf by emailing all sorts of people in my address book, asking them to ring the 0800 number (but only if they share my fondness for that bread … can’t be accused of manufacturing dissent!). Good response, with initial feedback over the first 24 hours along the lines of ‘they’ve had lots of complaints, are likely to start making it again’. But!  Always a but. The following day a friend rang to say she’d been told that the customer service response had changed. Now, no longer low consumer demand but increasing production complexities … whatever that means! It’s harder to bake unsliced bread??? So, the spin doctors have been at work. What happens now?

Blue cheese dressing for pasta

Anchovies & blue cheese make this a pungent coating sauce for pasta, but it’s unexpectedly popular in our household … even gets requested! It’s also one of those dishes, like pizza and potato frittata, that come to the rescue when the cupboard is bare, or you’ve forgotten to take anything out of the freezer. Like tonight. Again! But it’s a dish that needs a good salad accompanying it, I reckon, and it’s another that doesn’t really have a strict recipe.

 

So, while the pasta’s cooking, gently fry a finely chopped onion and at the same time in a food processor mix together an egg, a clove or two or crushed garlic, some olive oil, salt & pepper. Then thin with the juice of a lemon, add half a tin of anchovies & half a wedge of blue cheese, broken into pieces. Blend altogether, and if necessary add a bit more oil so it’s fairly smooth. Drain pasta, mix cooked onion (the onion adds a bit of texture) & blue cheese dressing through … it should coat the pasta & the heat of the pasta should set the dressing. Sprinkle with liberal amounts of chopped parsley … it needs the garnish, otherwise it looks a bit grey & yukky! But, like I said, has proved repeatedly popular over several years.

Pork with leeks & cider

Good-looking leeks at the Sunday market … not like those in the garden … my father said I should have trimmed their roots at planting, but HOW is one supposed to know things like that?? I ask you!!! Anyway, the leeks (and pork on special at the supermarket) had me digging out another old favourite recipe. One which I’ve been making on & off for over twenty years, ever since I found it in a cookbook when I lived in London, in Montagu Square. I think it came from the same book in which I found a rather bizarre recipe for a strawberry & garlic salad. Wonder if I still have that! Do recall making it, and friends being rather taken aback. But anyway, this recipe is delicious comfort food, and with the first pre-winter southerly chill arriving, just the thing.

 

Rub 4 pork chops with a mix of 2 cloves of garlic, 1 tspn rosemary, 2 tspn English mustard, salt & pepper.  Fry in a hot pan to brown on both sides & place in a casserole dish. Halve two leeks length-wise, rinse, and place on chops. Pour over a mixture of cider (1/2 a pint) & cream (4 tbspn). Top with a mixture of breadcrumbs & grated cheese. Bake covered at 180 C for (at least) an hour, leave uncovered for final 10 minutes to allow top to brown & crisp a little.

 

I must admit I like to cook this for a little longer than an hour, so the meat is falling off the bone. But that, I guess, is a matter of taste.

Yeah, right!

So, I rang the customer service number for Vogel’s bread. Helpful woman at the end of the line who said the only reason for discontinuing the unsliced loaf was low consumer demand. Well, if that’s the case, why does it always seem to be the first to sell out???!!! I feel a campaign coming on!

Roasted basil peppers

Well, no-one noticed the re-moulding of the pear & ginger cake at dinner the other night … candlelight disguises many failings! So that was a success, and so, I think, was the entrée. We began the meal with yet another seasonal favourite, roasted basil peppers. Great vibrant colour, great summer flavours (even in autumn). Take 4 large red peppers, & cut them in half lengthways removing the seeds but leaving the stalk intact. In other words, you halve the stalk when you halve the pepper. Lay them in a lightly oiled baking dish, and put 8 cherry tomato halves in each … well, if you run out of cherry tomatoes (as I sometimes do) quartered small tomatoes work just fine. Sprinkle with fresh basil. Mix together 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil & 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar … pour evenly over tomato-filled pepper halves, then season with freshly ground black pepper and sea salt. Roast in pre-heated (180 C) oven for 50 minutes, or more. The toms should be pulpy, the peppers soft. Serve hot or at room temperature, garnished with more fresh basil. Sometimes I plate them individually, sometimes arrange them on a platter … however presented, what you do want to ensure is that the flavoursome juices don’t all spill out. Would be a bit of a shame to lose them, ‘cos the balsamic gives the dish a real lift.

Save the Vogel’s loaf!

Have just returned from the supermarket. “Have you got any unsliced?” I asked the guy working in the bread section, when I couldn’t see my favourite loaf among the Vogel’s bread selection. “No, they’ve stopped making it,” he said. “Again?” “Permanently,” he assured me. What! The last time the manufacturers did this they trotted out some overly plump ‘celebrity’ cook who prattled on along the lines of, oh yes, it’s a good thing, people are so busy nowadays, they haven’t got time to slice bread. Oh, and they don’t like crumbs. To which the only adult response was to take a deep breath before yelling GET REAL at the TV screen. However, last time the public complained, we got our unsliced loaf back. What’ll happen this time???  I’m going to ring their 0800 100 538 number and complain on Monday. Hope many others do the same!

Pear and ginger cake

A friend’s birthday, have to have a cake. So, home from an evening meeting and into the kitchen. My favourite autumn cake, and with pears from last Sunday’s market now nicely ripened a good time to make it. (But let me have a little parenthetical moan about another of life’s little annoyances … the bullet-hard pears that supermarkets often sell thus thwarting any (admittedly infrequent) spur-of-the-moment decisions to cook with ripe fruit. Grrr! We can’t always be planning ahead, you know.) Still, simple recipe, shouldn’t be a problem, never has been before … but a little tired this Thursday night … over-keen to get to bed perhaps, I tried to turn the cooked cake onto a wire rack too soon … the bottom of the cake stuck to the bottom of the tin! Many rude words were loudly spoken!! However, all moulded together again … thanks to my in-house plasterer … crisis averted. And here’s the recipe: 

125 g butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 ¼ cups flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

2 – 3 ripe pears, peeled cored & sliced

½ cup glace ginger, chopped

 

Preheat oven to 150 C. Melt butter. Put all other ingredients in a large bowl, add melted butter. Mix well. Put in greased cake tin, smooth top. Bake for, well, around an hour … use the skewer test. Cool on rack … dust with icing sugar … serve with whipped cream.

Potato frittata

Another one of those bare cupboard moments recently … thank goodness for recipes like this, snipped from a magazine and filed away. A frittata better suited for the basis of a meal than the finger food-y one I made for book club nibbles a little while ago. A little less elegant perhaps.

 

Anyway … melt some butter in a heavy pan – it does need to have a heavy base – & cook 3 sliced onions until evenly lightly browned. Add around 500 gms of sliced unpeeled potatoes, mix together well with the onions, cover and cook for 15 – 20 minutes, stirring regularly. The onions go really brown and a little gluggy during this, which triggered one of these oh-dear-is-this-going-to-work moments the first time I made it, so I find I’m keeping a watchful eye on the pan … and this is why it needs a heavy base … turning quite often, but taking care not to break the potato slices. After about 10 – 15 minutes, add a couple of sliced zucchini, and keep cooking. The potato & zucchini should be cooked about the same time, and when they are press down the veggie mix, add 4 eggs beaten with a couple of tablespoons of water & mixed with about ¼ of a cup of grated parmesan. Oh, and seasoned. Cook over a gentle heat until the sides & bottom are cooked then sprinkle with more grated parmesan and brown under a grill.

 

This is one of those recipes that can cope with all manner of adaptations. Fewer onions, feta instead of parmesan, another vegetable instead of zucchini (but that’s what I have in the garden) … A very forgiving recipe really.

Sunday market

Such a stunning autumn day. True to its promise at breakfast – looking down the harbour, a suggestion of mist draping the Tararuas – the day unfolded windless and sunny, warm but with a crisp undertone, the whisper of things to come.  The sort of day when minds turn to gardening, and harvesting. And so this morning I decided it really was time I visited the Sunday market in upper Willis Street. It’s one of those things I’ve long been aware of (sometimes, to be sure, as a mild annoyance if trying to drive through town when it’s on) and vaguely intending to do (friends, after all, have said how good it is). And they were right! It was good all right, unexpectedly, surprisingly good. Packed with people, generally young, culturally diverse … a snapshot of the new urban New Zealand perhaps? But also a wonderful range of produce. Not a farmers’ market, exactly … bananas aren’t grown locally, for starters. And maybe it wasn’t all first-grade produce … malformed red peppers, rock melons that didn’t smell of melon, over-ripe plums … but a real market. Lots of squeezing and sniffing of produce. Such fun. So pleased I finally made the effort. I’ll be back. Often.

The importance of salt

“Oh no,” I thought, when I tasted the beef stew the other night, “did I forget the salt?!” Can’t believe I did, but I do tend to be quite light-handed with adding salt to dishes. And, because the sauce reduced rather too much, or too quickly, or both, I did add a cup or so of water to the casserole towards the end of the cooking… maybe that altered the balance? (And maybe I forgot to taste the dish – even though the reality TV cooking show judges are forever asking that of harried contestants!!!) Still, people weren’t reaching for the salt cellar after their first mouthful, so it can’t have been too bad. But it did remind me of a story I loved as a child. A vain king has three daughters … he summons them & demands they each declare how much they love him … the eldest two say all the expected flattering things … the youngest, who of course he loves the best, says only “I love you as much as salt loves meat.” In a rage he banishes her … eventually, though, she gets a job in the royal kitchens & one night manages to make sure the meat goes unsalted. At table the king gags on his meal, has an epiphany … and they all live happily ever after, the king suitably chastened. Of course!