Chocolate sauce

There’s only one way to make chocolate sauce. Well, of course, that’s not true. There are many ways, but the BEST way is very simple. Start by dissolving some squares of chocolate in a very little water. I add a dash of brandy to the dissolved mix, but other flavourings – or none at all – are equally possible. Then add cream and small pieces of butter to the sauce to finish. No measurements here; it’s all instinct & common sense. The end result is always rich & smooth, and poured over vanilla ice cream, just delicious. One of those ends to a meal that silences conversation for a minute or two.

Deboning a duck

The final challenge for Julie Powell when she worked through Julia Childs’ Mastering the art of French cooking was de-boning a duck. Probably a very satisfying thing to achieve, but not something I can ever imagine wanting to do myself. However, it is true that one of my favourite meals of all time featured a boned duck. It was in Cambodia, at a wedding. Memory tells me this dish was brought to the table, a complete cooked duck. Head in tact. But only when you cut into it did you realize it was boned and stuffed with white beans, the whole dish steamed to perfection. One of those occasions where you think, I could eat ALL of this … but you’re a guest at a table with others … reluctantly you share. I think, actually, that if someone could tell me more about this dish, and how to make it, I’d grab a copy of Mastering the art of French cooking and tackle de-boning a duck.

Julie & Julia

The rest of the world has probably already seen this film, and formed its opinions, but I finally got round to seeing it. Could have seen it on a plane, of course, but wanted the big screen experience. And had read the book, so knew what I was getting, more or less. The film, however, much better than the book in some ways, thanks to Meryl Streep as Julia Childs. Thinking about it afterwards, I decided the Julie Powell character, like her persona in the book, doesn’t manage to convey a love of food, a passion for eating, and cooking.  If she were a sauce, she’d be a little thin and watery. An admirable determination, of course … having browsed Mastering the art of French cooking in the book shop the following day, I knew it wasn’t a cook book I’d ever want to work my way through. What’s the point of aspic, after all!?

Return to summer?

From the fag-end of autumn in Europe to the first day of summer in NZ. It doesn’t feel like summer! Everything seems lush & green, as though there’s been a great deal of rain since I’ve been away. But it’s lovely, the walk to work almost like being in the countryside. And the bird song! Wonderful.

The vegetable garden at home, however, such a disappointment. Only the tomatoes seem to have grown. The lettuce, silver beet, peas, zucchini … they all look stunted, struggling, unhappy. The plentiful harvests of last summer may not be repeated this year. But I’ll embark on a programme of determined watering & tender care, and see what happens.

Still, it’s good to be home.

The end of summer

Home again. Where it really does feel like the end of summer … it sounds at all hours as though the cicadas are frenetically playing their violins! But at least fears of the garden drying up during my absence have proved groundless. Indeed, perhaps perversely, there seems to have been a great deal of rain … the lawn is unexpectedly green & lush … the (outdoor) tomatoes & zucchini look a little the worse for wear … though the largest marrow would be a fitting entrant in a harvest festival! … and gnawing pests have been enjoying themselves overly on the silver beet & cauliflower. But the only real casualty has been the indoor tomato plant … dried up and keeled over. Such a shame, but this season the tomatoes do seem to have been jinxed anyway. 

Of charred courgettes and failing lemons

A friend writes from Brighton. It’s like Narnia there, when the White Witch reigned … at least, their beautiful garden is quilted with snow and everyone I hear from in Europe complains of the enduring, extreme winter. But it was not of the weather he was writing. My charred courgettes entry had caught his eye, struck a chord. So I’m going to share HIS recipe for a similar dish.

 

750g courgettes, sliced into very thin rounds
Olive oil
3 cloves garlic, very finely chopped
12 sprigs fresh mint, coarsely shredded
Cayenne pepper
4 tablespoons white wine vinegar
Sea salt and cracked pepper

Griddle the courgettes on a hot pan until well marked with colour. Drain on kitchen towel then place a layer on the bottom of the bowl you intend to serve them in. Sprinkle with garlic, a few mint leaves, a hint of cayenne, a good splash of vinegar and salt and pepper. Top with another layer of the same and repeat, building as many layers as ingredients allow. Cover tightly and leave to marinate in the fridge. Remove at least an hour and a half before serving as this salad is best served at room temperature.

 

Worth a try, next time. Next summer? Depends. Will the courgettes still be producing when I return in two or three weeks? And I’ll take heed of his suggestion not to be too heavy-handed with the vinegar. That may have caused the sogginess I complained of. So much to learn!

 

And, before I forget, a response to another troubling problem … why won’t the lemon tree fruit? A text from Napier. Spray with sulphur. Nothing to lose, and if it works, well, it would be so gratifying to have my own lemon tree to rely on. Instead of raiding my father’s all the time!

The importance of appearance … or am I shallow?

Caught up with the friend who launched me into the blogosphere the other night. Of course we talked about blogs, and blogging. “But yours is all about food,” she said. Well, y-e-s, that was the point of doing it. And we were a bit food-focused that night too … went to try Wellington’s only Caribbean restaurant, Calypso Café, in Taranaki Street. Not a great location, being on a busy arterial route, but we knew that in advance. We were there for the food. And my drunken pig, think that was the name of the dish, was delicious … the pork very tender, the rice of good quality and taste. But the whole wasn’t an I’d-come-again success. Beside the pork and rice, crammed onto the plate, was this great massed mound of chopped, stir-fried veggie (& pineapple?) pieces.  Plus the odd garnish – an overripe wedge of kiwifruit & a couple of rounds of slightly browning, sliced unpeeled banana. Now, sure, it’s bound to be an authentic approach, but this was restaurant food, not street fare. It had no eye-appeal. And it got me thinking, how can people in the food business get things so wrong? Just like on that TV show I’m a bit of a fan of, The Kitchen Job, where they try and save struggling restaurants & cafés, even a pie cart on one occasion, from financial melt-down. So I wondered what I’d do. ‘Cos with only nine diners including us that night, echoing in a large dining room, you have to wonder whether Calypso can survive. So, I’d keep the authentic street food look but make it smarter. Scale down the very generous portions, make them less pricey (they were very much at the top-end of café pricing). You might even sell a few desserts that way. And maybe serve the stir-fried veggie mix separately, in stylish bowls, garnished appealingly. That would put the place on my eating map. But for now it’s, tick, done that, move on.

A gardener’s pre-holiday angst

Two more sleeps and I’m on my way. Inevitably, and no matter how well-organised I think I am, no matter how well-organised I plan to be, there’s always a welling of anxieties. As predictable as a pimple on the eve of the school ball! This time, I find, I’m getting especially anxious about leaving the garden. There’s always something happening … a few days ago the last of the neighbour’s pohutukawa’s red stamens fell. Or something to do. The dahlias need constant deheading. The irises need lifting. The roses are coming into flower again. And as for the all-important veggies … Will it rain while I’m away? Should I ask a friend to come & water? I did that a year ago, when I was in Hong Kong. Reports of days of torrential rain in Wellington made me think I needn’t worry. But I was away three weeks, the friend’s squirting with a hose didn’t really do the job, the return to the garden was disheartening. This year, well … if the courgettes expire during my absence I won’t be too upset, have about eaten my fill of courgettes this summer, but the tomatoes are just ripening. Seem to have been nursing them along for MONTHS and it’d be truly annoying to lose the fruit.

 

A friend at work did say, how can you leave Wellington in February? I know what he means. The best summer month. Heard my first cicadas the other day. Long, hot days ahead – with luck. But it’ll be fun to be away. And I’ll be back in time for the start of autumn.

… and the cupboard was bare

Last night I found there wasn’t much in the house to base a meal around. Rather out-of-character, but explained partly, I guess, by the fact that I’m going to be away for a while soon. Looking at lots of leftover bits & pieces in the fridge, however, the answer was obvious … pizza! Only one hurdle … pizza dough.

 

Now, something I always appreciate receiving at Christmas is a food & recipes calendar. Don’t always get one, but three or four years ago my mother took herself off for a holiday in Sicily – the family reaction to this octogenarian statement of independence is another story – and that Christmas she gave me an Italian calendar of food & recipes … not liking to throw away anything that might be useful, at the end of the year I cut out the successful and/or appealing recipes and last night dug out the one for Neapolitan pizza. Not a very exact recipe for pizza dough, but I figured I could make up the quantities where they weren’t given. So … mixed in a bowl 1 lb white flour, an 8g sachet of dry yeast, & salt. Added about ½ litre warm water & a slosh of olive oil & left to rise. I figured it wasn’t too late to order takeaways if it didn’t work … the yeast had an expiry date of Jan 2000, after all … must add yeast to the shopping list. But rise it did, so I just turned it out onto a floured baking tray and pressed it out to a large rectangle, covered with tomato paste & sliced tomatoes, black olives, anchovies, sun-dried tomato, mozzarella, pretty well cleaning out the fridge in the process… and bunged it in the pre-heated (hot to very hot) oven. The dough did seem a little wet and rather bread-y, I couldn’t remember whether pizza bases where supposed to be thin & dry or not, and I wondered whether it’d all rise up into a brioche-like blob … half hoped it would, actually … aren’t cooking disasters more entertaining to read about than mild successes (maybe the ancient yeast saved me there)? But it turned out okay … except that I forgot to add the salt to the dough mix. Or should that be, doh!

 

Later, I remembered my Gabriella Rossi cookbook and found her recipe for pizza dough. A rather more sophisticated approach, with 10 minutes of kneading here, a further couple of minutes there … but I was well-satisfied with my simple effort. Which, incidentally, could have fed at least four people. So I know what I’ll be having for lunch for the next couple of days.

Summer drinks

An email from my niece last night, asking for my ginger beer recipe, precipitated a hunt this afternoon for the damn thing, a loose newspaper clipping of course. And of course, while I knew where it should be, it wasn’t … And, even worse, there was no one around to blame! 

 

This little exercise in frustration did get me thinking a bit about the lemon beer I’ve been making this summer. Lemon beer has rather usurped ginger beer in my kitchen this year … for one thing, it’s not fizzy so not a challenge to open. Though maybe for my 12-year-old niece that fun’s the whole point of ginger beer. Anyway, I’ve been playing with the recipe a little, the lemon beer recipe that is. Have tried different sweeteners – white sugar, brown sugar, honey – and have decided I like brown sugar best … it gives the drink a lemony hue. And I’ve also been adding a couple of leaves of mint to the sliced lemon before adding the boiling water … gives the drink a lovely fresh nose. So I guess now it should be called lemon & mint beer?

 

But anyway, back to the ginger beer recipe hunt. After a good hour I suddenly thought, why not Google it? Easy enough, because I remembered it was the Hardie Boys family recipe … makers of fine ginger beer. And there it was, along with the article in which I found it. Success. I suppose now I should go and make some.