Of cauliflower

One of the joys of travelling is the brief, intense, transient friendships that suddenly spring up. Maybe there’s also a certain tristesse there, too, because they’re so fleeting. For me, memories of one such friendship are always triggered by cauliflowers. It was in Helsinki, and this blonde Californian with one of those ‘Californian’ names – Troy? Trent? Glenn? I forget now – and I bonded over a shared liking for munching on florets of uncooked cauliflower. Seems bizarre now, but maybe back then raw vegetables were less mainstream? But anyway, we got on tremendously well for a few days & then parted somewhere in northern Sweden. Never to cross paths again.

I was put in mind of this by the gorgeous cauliflowers available now … they’re a joy to behold.  And delicious in a cauliflower & egg curry, the recipe discovered in an Alison & Simon Holst cookbook.

But also delicious in that old-fashioned favourite, cauliflower cheese. Always faithfully following the recipe in the trusty Edmonds’ Cookbook. Where would we be without it!

Film festival hamburger

One of the great things about this time of the year in Wellington is the film festival. Two weeks of celluloid surfeit. For me, it’s like a mid-winter ritual; you emerge from a fortnight of dark cinemas and discover that spring is almost here. This year, though, I’ve only booked for a relatively modest ten films … in previous years I’ve often gone for more than double that number … it can become a bit of overload, I admit, but that too is all part of the experience. But a more modest personal programme has meant that only once this year have we had films back-to-back, giving a bare half-hour to grab dinner in-between. Courtenay Place has many fast food outlets, so not a problem really, especially near the Embassy where they tend to be a bit better quality. The other night, though, we were at the Paramount and for some bizarre reason, we went into Burger King! My first burger of the century, I think, and not a pleasant experience. Something crumbed and sold as chicken in a sawdust-y bun. However, true confessions time, I did enjoy the fries, and the chocolate sundae was somehow delicious in its artificialness. Which reminds me – we met a woman in Samoa who creates with chemicals food flavours; that sundae was probably a fine expression of her particular art. Anyway, at least Burger King sustained us during the second film, but I certainly wasn’t tempted to return any time soon.

And so ends my once-in-a-century hamburger encounter.

Return to winter

The most obvious thing to say about returning to NZ from Samoa … it’s cold! Weather for lighting fires and baking cakes. So, as a sort of welcome home consolation prize, I decided to make this lemon syrup cake, a friend’s recipe.

          6 oz caster sugar

          6 oz softened butter

          6 oz self raising flour

          3 eggs

          Juice & zest of a lemon

Put everything in a bowl and beat like mad until fluffy. Put into a buttered and paper-lined 8” cake tin. Cook until golden and done, about 40 minutes at 180C. Then, while the cake’s still hot, pour the syrup over and leave to soak in. For the syrup, put the following in a saucepan and boil for 2 minutes.

          6 oz sugar

          Juice of 3 lemons

          3 tbspns water

Served warm with whipped cream, it made up for the weather outside.

Tofa Samoa

Flights from Samoa to NZ seem to leave at ungodly hours. We were up at 4 a.m. to get our taxi through sleeping villages to Faleolo International Airport. All hassle-free, so no complaints really. There, at the airport, I had my first coffee in 9 days. A plunger pot from the downstairs stand near the Western Union booth … and boy! was it good! Walked away suffused with a warm glow and a sense of enormous well-being. Who says coffee isn’t a useful drug?!

 But anyway, final thoughts … Samoa a great place to holiday, if not really an eating (or shopping) mecca. Lacks the tourist infrastructure of, say, Fiji, but is correspondingly less touristic. And as for the places we stayed …

… Seipepa Bungalow, Apia – attractive, but inconveniently located; probably wouldn’t stay there again

… Namu’a Island – thoroughly enjoyed

… Lusia’s Lagoon Chalets – poorly managed; they had no record of our booking (and I’d paid a 15% deposit), rooms weren’t terribly clean, nor cleaned; a shame really, as it’s a pretty spot … but I’d hesitate to recommend it

… and finally, Airport Lodge – we chose this for our final night because of its relative proximity to the airport, whereas Apia is a lot further away; very attractive fales, and a quiet garden setting … a bit isolated, but I’d certainly consider it again … next time!

German bun

After a day on the white-sand beach at Lano, a 30 or 40 minute bus ride from Salelologa, we returned feeling a little peckish. So jumped off at the town’s bakery and ordered something to eat. One of those, and one of those. A doughnut & a German bun. I was intrigued. Was this some legacy from the German colonization of Samoa, 1899 – 1914? The woman behind the counter couldn’t tell me why it had that name, so let’s assume so. Anyway, essentially a deep fried bun, the same dough as the doughnuts, filled with grated coconut in a caramel reduction. Reminded me, rusty-red in colour & sweet in taste, of the reduced coconut toddy we’d mix with water and drink sometimes in Kiribati … though this was definitely sugar & water.

Fish ‘n’ chips, and seaweed

Have explored the not terribly attractive main town of Savai’i, Salelologa, which is more a service centre than a real town. In one of those inexplicable planning decisions, the market and bus station have been moved a few kilometers out of town, a sort of mini-industrial estate in the middle of nowhere, and that, I imagine, has removed half the commercial and three-quarters of the human activity from Salelologa. All the same, we quite enjoyed our little exploration of the place, and on the way back to Lusia’s stopped in at a local restaurant, a fale’aiga, which (I think) means something like ‘family house’ & if I’m right, isn’t that a  great way to regard a place where people come together to eat? Anyway, it wasn’t that flash, but staffed by three friendly middle-aged women. We ordered fish & chips, and when the food came there was a surprise. What was that green thing on the plate? Limu, we were told, and decided it had to be a type of seaweed. A little cautiously I tried it. Not bad at all. Soft & rubbery in the mouth, an explosion of intense saltiness when bitten into. A little like caviar. And the stem slightly stringy, in the way that broccoli sometimes is. I ate the lot.      

At last, a restaurant meal

Our sixth night in Samoa, and finally a chance for a proper restaurant meal, here at Lusia’s Lagoon Chalets on Savai’i. For three nights on Namu’a we ate what was prepared for us (and no real complaints; I was very happy to be served boiled breadfruit, something I remember fondly from Kiribati (especially when fried) along with barbecued chicken & salad one night) and before that in Apia, in the evenings, we didn’t venture far away from Seipepa’s bungalow. So, a treat to actually decide for ourselves what to eat.  I chose the oka, the raw fish salad, for an entrée – tuna, tomato, cucumber, in coconut cream – a bit bland actually – no onion, no lime juice, nothing to bring the dish alive in the mouth. The grilled fish main course was good, and served with a few quarters of mushroom; I never think of pairing something from the sea, like fish, with something as earthy as mushrooms; it doesn’t seem to go, not instinctively … but it does work; I had something similar (and better, to be honest) for lunch in Apia, at a café called Mari’s, near the Aggie Grey hotel. As this was our first restaurant meal I went the whole hog and ordered dessert, very boring ice cream and chocolate syrup. Staggered off to bed feeling very replete.  

Namu’a Island

After two nights in Apia, off to stay in a beach fale on Namu’a Island. The island’s a short boat ride from the mainland, and uninhabited apart from the tourist accommodation. Not a big island, but a great spot. The fales thatched and open-sided, with woven screens to drop down for privacy and protection from the elements. A white sand beach, places for snorkeling, coconut palms … picture perfect.  As part of the deal of staying there, breakfast & dinner are included in the daily rate. No shops, no restaurants, so it’s a case of either bringing lots of your own supplies for lunches & reassurance, or hoping for the best. We did the latter. And thanks heavens it wasn’t a diet of tinned food. The first night was modest, fried whole small fish that the young guys had been spearing in the shallows a couple of hours earlier … freshness guaranteed! … but our first breakfast was quite a spread. Bread and butter, plates of fried eggs (with runny yolks, yay!) garnished with finely chopped tomato & green pepper, of fried ham garnished with onion, of fried battered thinly sliced rounds of aubergine, and of pawpaw with small wedges of lime to squeeze over. Most impressive. And then, just when eating more seemed impossible a chocolate birthday cake was brought to the table. Always room for a slice of chocolate cake! I really think I haven’t had such a satisfying breakfast in a long time.

First night in Apia

An escape from winter to Samoa, and a very welcome chance, too, to escape from work before the next trimester begins. We arrived at our accommodation, a stand-alone Samoan-style tourist bungalow after dark, and with some misgivings. It seemed quite a long way out from the centre of town – away from places to eat – and was reached up a steep, slippery, heavily eroded track. The taxi driver was NOT happy, and we had to walk the last fifty metres or so. Just as well we were travelling light, no heavy suitcases to lug, no hat boxes. But, once we were settled (& the bungalow was very attractive), the hour and the location posed a dilemma. What to do for dinner? I volunteered to negotiate the track – and the dogs! – back to the main road to see what I could get at the nearby store. In vain did I look for anything fresh on the shelves, anything that said ‘romantic Pacific island’. Tinned tuna, tinned sardines, tinned corned beef … I’d forgotten, temporarily, the reliance on canned produce in urban parts. But still, I enjoyed my chat with the woman behind the counter, negotiated the dogs & the slippery path successfully both going & coming, and in the end we managed a scratch picnic supper on our verandah, helped by the bread and fruit that had been left for us in the bungalow for breakfast, washed down with a bottle of chilled Vailima (the local beer), and, for afters, shared an Anzac biscuit that had been handed out on the domestic flight this morning and had sat in my bag all day. Feeling happy to be here.

Sweet potato & carrot puree

I won’t keep harping on about the dinner the other night, but one of the interesting things was trying to source the ingredients that those Silver Palate chefs name. Yellow onions, I guess, are our normal onions, and heavy cream our normal cream. And who knew that watercress was so hard to find in Wellington (I ended up with a bag of mesclun mix instead), and shouldn’t raspberry vinaigrette be in the supermarkets? Ended up having to make my own with rather expensive raspberry red wine vinegar from Moore Wilson’s. Another thought was whether the North American sweet potato and our kumara are comparable. The vegetable puree was, I thought, a bit on the sweet side. Is our kumara sweeter? But it was fun to make, and who knew that kumara skins peeled away so easily when baked? That was a little revelation. Anyway, here, with my adaptations, is the recipe.

4 large kumara (about 1 kg; I think the sweetness of the puree the other night may have resulted from too much kumara)

1 pound carrots

2 ½ cups water

1 tbspn sugar

12 tbspns unsalted butter, at room temperature

Salt & freshly ground black pepper

½ cup cream

½ tspn nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375 F. Cut a small deep slit in top of kumara and place in centre of oven to bake till tender when pierced with a fork (about an hour). Meanwhile, peel & trim the carrots, cut into 1 inch lengths, put in saucepan with water, sugar & 2 tbspns butter, salt & pepper. Bring to boil over medium heat and cook, uncovered, until the water has evaporated and the carrots begin to sizzle in the butter (about 30 minutes). (I was pleasantly surprised that the carrots did just this). Pull skins off baked kumara, and combine with carrots in a food processor. Add the remaining butter & the cream, and process till smooth. Add nutmeg, season, process briefly.

The neat thing was that this could be made well ahead, put in an ovenproof dish, covered with foil, and reheated at 350 F for about 25 minutes. No last minute dramas.